Duke of Saxony Hermann Billung Saxony

• Death Notes
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• General Notes
  • The Christianizing of the Wends
    Henry the Fowler, we must remember, was a Saxon. Therefore the Saxon tribe of Germans which Charlemagne had subjugated and forced to accept Christianity, had now become the chief tribe of the German kingdom, stronger even then the Franks. These Saxons in their turn took up the vigorous work of spreading Christianity by force. While King Henry held his people back from attacking the Huns, he kept them practiced in arms by directing them against the Sclavic races which we now hear of for the first time as beginning to press upon the Germans from the east. The first of these Sclavs to encounter the heavy handed conversion of the Saxons were a people called the Wends, dwelling in what is now eastern Prussia.
    The Saxons marched against the Wends in several expeditions, the most noted being led by a fierce old chieftain called Herman Billung. Herman gave each captured Wend the choice of Christianity or death, and having no strong devotion to their own gods, they accepted a nominal Christianity. So completely was the power of the Wends broken that they continued to exist only as slaves of the Saxons. Indeed it was here that the word `sclav' began naturally to be used in its German and English sense as indicating a slave.
    
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