drew in haste, leaving
Grimoald master of the field.

We are further told of the king of the Lombards whose striking history
we have concisely given, that he gave many new laws to his country, and
that in his old age he was remarkable for his bald head and long white
beard. He died in 671, sixty years after the time when his mother acted
the traitress, and suffered miserably for her crime. After his death,
the exiled Bertarit was recalled to the throne of Lombardy, and Romuald
succeeded his father as Duke of Benevento, the city which he had held so
bravely against the Greeks.

_WITTEKIND, THE SAXON PATRIOT._

As Germany, in its wars with the Romans, found its hero in the great
Arminius, or Hermann; and as England, in its contest with the Normans,
found a heroic defender in the valiant Hereward; so Saxony, in its
struggle with Charlemagne, gave origin to a great soul, the indomitable
patriot Wittekind, who kept the war afoot years after the Saxons would
have yielded to their mighty foe, and, like Hereward, only gave up the
struggle when hope itself was at an end.

The career of the defender of Saxony bears some analogy to that of the
last patriot of Saxon England. As in the case of Hereward, his origin is
uncertain, and the story of his life overlaid with legend. He is said to
have been the son of Wernekind, a powerful Westphalian chief,
brother-in-law of Siegfried, a king of the Danes; yet this is by no
means certain, and his ancestry must remain in doubt. He came suddenly
into the war with the great Frank conqueror, and played in it a
strikingly prominent part, to sink again out of sight at its end.

The attempt of Charlemagne to conquer Saxony began in 772. Religion was
its pretext, ambition its real cause. Missionaries had been sent to the
Saxons during their great national festival at Marclo. They came back
with no converts to report. As the Saxons had refused to be converted by
words, fire and sword were next tried as assumed instruments for
spreading the doctrines of Christ, but really as effective means for
extending the dominion of the monarch of the Franks.

In his first campaign in Saxony, Charlemagne marched victoriously as far
as the Weser, where he destroyed the celebrated Irminsul, a famous
object of Saxon devotion, perhaps an image of a god, perhaps a statue of
Hermann that had become invested with divinity. The next year, Charles
being absent in Italy, the Saxons broke into insurrection, un