Background
While King Otto was distracted by his campaigns against the Magyars, his contemptuous vassals Wichmann the Younger and his brother Egbert the One-Eyed instigated a Slav revolt in the Billung March. The Obotrites invaded Saxony and sacked Cocarescemier, killing the men of arms-bearing age and carrying off the women and children into slavery. According to Widukind of Corvey, in the aftermath of Lechfeld, Otto pressed hard into Slav territory, where Wichmann and Egbert had sought refuge. Otto razed the Slav population centres and soon had encircled them; he offered to spare his enemies if they would surrender. A Slav embassy came to an assembly Otto held in Saxony and offered to pay annual tribute in return for being allowed self-government; "otherwise," they said, they would "fight for their liberty." Reuter argues that this is indicative of a change in German governing practice: a change from overlordship, which the Slavs were willing to accept, to lordship, which the Slavs protested.
Dendrodates reveal that in the context of the Saxon-Obodrite conflict, the Slavs in present-day northeast Germany started to built lots of forts - only few forts were built before. A second phase of extensive fort construction occurred in the 980s, in the context of the great uprising of 983.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Recknitz
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