gratwicker@aol.com


Charlemagne had 4500 Saxons beheaded in one day in the year 782 at Verdun. I can imagine the night before the scene of the axmen being order to sharpen their axes, and the tree stumps being arranged for the next morning. There must have been a general busy-ness as the prisoners' hands were tied behind their backs. Imagine the merchant who received the huge order for rope. When the order was made known there might have been a general panic among the prisoners--they were pagans, however, and might have had thoughts of honorable deaths and Valhalla.

Charlemagne justified his brutality by his desire to unite Germany as a Christian state. Germany was still a mass of fighting tribes of savages and soon he would join the Frenchies into his brutally Christianized kingdom.