no longer the only people to have been charged with the rule of a great dominion. To the east of their heartlands, on the very margins of Christendom, a new power was rising. A power capable, as time would prove, of securing the West against its most fearsome enemies, and of forging a new Roman Empire, even as all the while the Millennium drew ever nearer.
2
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH ...
The Thousandth-Year Reich
Though Christendom was embattled, not all its frontiers were collapsing. In the marches of Saxony, along the banks of the Elbe, the broad-flowing river which served East Francia as its flank, Christian warriors stood on watchful sentinel, and dreaded no one. The Saxons, as they contemplated the heroic struggle to uphold God's order, knew themselves in its vanguard. Beyond the Elbe to the east, in sinister groves adorned with idols and animal horns, Slav tribes, known collectively by the Saxons as the "Wends', still worshipped demons and indulged in their 'vain superstitions'; 1 but westwards, the very landscape bore witness to the protecting hand of Christ. Wherever the soil was fertile, and the wilderness capable of being tamed, there the marks of His favour thrived: farms, and homesteads, and raw stone churches. Even on the Elbe itself, the border forts were prospering - and this despite the continued enthusiasm of Wendish war bands for crossing it in search of plunder.
The linchpin of the defences raised against such raids was the fortress of Magdeburg: originally founded by Charlemagne as a frontier station, where the bags of merchants travelling out of Christendom could be inspected for contraband armour and weapons,
it already ranked, by the early tenth century, as the capital of the eastern marches. 2 Flush with the profits of trade, and a booming hinterland, it could boast churches, markets and even a ' Hof - a court for the entertainment of Saxony's duke. Meanwhile, beyond its haughty gatehouses, and the road which led eastwards over the Elbe, the pagans 'lived in such brutish poverty that what in Francia would seem an insupportable burden is counted by them almost as a pleasure'. 3 As it had been back in the earliest days of the Magdeburg customs post, even a mail shirt was held a wonder by many tribes. Indeed, such was the awe with which helmets and hauberks were regarded by the Wends that armour was likeliest to adorn, not their warriors, but their gods. Deep immured in forest shrines, their idols stood, blank-eyed and menacing, 'fearsomely girt in mail'. 4
To the Saxons, the folly of this demon-worship was all the more minatory for the fact that they had once shared in it themselves. A people who had learned to rejoice in the felling of trees and the raising of churches on root-cleared plains could not forget that they too, barely a century and a half before, had staged their most sacred rituals in the darkness of oaken glades. The dreadful rumours of what had been practised there still darkened the nightmares of Christian homilists. Prisoners, it was whispered, hung from the boughs of sacred trees, having been pierced through with spears: for the spear had been sacred to Woden, most far-seeing of the gods. To the initiates of this sacrifice, awful privileges had been owed: to those who harvested the blood of the still-writhing victims, and traced it over runes, the wisdom of Woden himself; and to those who consumed their beating hearts, a power over the dead. Charlemagne, storming the strongholds of this monstrous evil, had felt himself obliged to purge it thoroughly with axe and sword. Trees holy to Woden had been hacked down and the branches consigned to fire.
The Saxons themselves, as obdurate in their paganism as in their reluctance to accept the Frankish king, Christ's own anointed, as their new master, had been treated with a matching ferocity. After one particularly savage rebellion, thousands of prisoners had been beheaded in a single dispatch; the populations of
2
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH ...
The Thousandth-Year Reich
Though Christendom was embattled, not all its frontiers were collapsing. In the marches of Saxony, along the banks of the Elbe, the broad-flowing river which served East Francia as its flank, Christian warriors stood on watchful sentinel, and dreaded no one. The Saxons, as they contemplated the heroic struggle to uphold God's order, knew themselves in its vanguard. Beyond the Elbe to the east, in sinister groves adorned with idols and animal horns, Slav tribes, known collectively by the Saxons as the "Wends', still worshipped demons and indulged in their 'vain superstitions'; 1 but westwards, the very landscape bore witness to the protecting hand of Christ. Wherever the soil was fertile, and the wilderness capable of being tamed, there the marks of His favour thrived: farms, and homesteads, and raw stone churches. Even on the Elbe itself, the border forts were prospering - and this despite the continued enthusiasm of Wendish war bands for crossing it in search of plunder.
The linchpin of the defences raised against such raids was the fortress of Magdeburg: originally founded by Charlemagne as a frontier station, where the bags of merchants travelling out of Christendom could be inspected for contraband armour and weapons,
it already ranked, by the early tenth century, as the capital of the eastern marches. 2 Flush with the profits of trade, and a booming hinterland, it could boast churches, markets and even a ' Hof - a court for the entertainment of Saxony's duke. Meanwhile, beyond its haughty gatehouses, and the road which led eastwards over the Elbe, the pagans 'lived in such brutish poverty that what in Francia would seem an insupportable burden is counted by them almost as a pleasure'. 3 As it had been back in the earliest days of the Magdeburg customs post, even a mail shirt was held a wonder by many tribes. Indeed, such was the awe with which helmets and hauberks were regarded by the Wends that armour was likeliest to adorn, not their warriors, but their gods. Deep immured in forest shrines, their idols stood, blank-eyed and menacing, 'fearsomely girt in mail'. 4
To the Saxons, the folly of this demon-worship was all the more minatory for the fact that they had once shared in it themselves. A people who had learned to rejoice in the felling of trees and the raising of churches on root-cleared plains could not forget that they too, barely a century and a half before, had staged their most sacred rituals in the darkness of oaken glades. The dreadful rumours of what had been practised there still darkened the nightmares of Christian homilists. Prisoners, it was whispered, hung from the boughs of sacred trees, having been pierced through with spears: for the spear had been sacred to Woden, most far-seeing of the gods. To the initiates of this sacrifice, awful privileges had been owed: to those who harvested the blood of the still-writhing victims, and traced it over runes, the wisdom of Woden himself; and to those who consumed their beating hearts, a power over the dead. Charlemagne, storming the strongholds of this monstrous evil, had felt himself obliged to purge it thoroughly with axe and sword. Trees holy to Woden had been hacked down and the branches consigned to fire.
The Saxons themselves, as obdurate in their paganism as in their reluctance to accept the Frankish king, Christ's own anointed, as their new master, had been treated with a matching ferocity. After one particularly savage rebellion, thousands of prisoners had been beheaded in a single dispatch; the populations of
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