Massacre of Verden - Attestations

Attestations

An entry for the year 782 in the Royal Frankish Annals records that, after Charlemagne lost two envoys, four counts, and around twenty nobles in battle with the Saxons, Charlemagne responded by massacring 4,500 rebelling Saxons in what is now Verden. Regarding this massacre, the entry reads:

When he heard this, the Lord King Charles rushed to the place with all the Franks that he could gather on short notice and advanced to where the Aller flows into the Weser. Then all the Saxons came together again, submitted to the authority of the Lord King, and surrendered the evildoers who were chiefly responsible for this revolt to be put to death—four thousand and five hundred of them. This sentence was carried out. Widukind was not among them since he had fled to Nordmannia. When he had finished this business, the Lord King returned to Francia.