The Massacre of Verden, Bloodbath of Verden, or Bloody Verdict of Verden (German Blutgericht von Verden) was a massacre of 4,500 captive rebel Saxons in 782. During the Saxon Wars, the Saxons rebelled against Charlemagne's invasion and subsequent attempts to Christianize them from their native Germanic paganism. The massacre is recorded as having occurred in what is now Verden in Lower Saxony, Germany. In 1935, landscape architect Wilhelm Hübotter designed a memorial, the Sachsenhain, that was built at a possible site for the massacre. Some scholars have attempted to exonerate Charlemagne of the massacre since, but these attempts have been generally rejected.
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Famous quotes containing the word massacre:
“It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)