The chance to strike came speedily.  Absalon had been bishop only a few months when, on the evening before Palm Sunday, word was brought that the enemy had landed, twenty-four ship-crews strong, and were burning and murdering as usual.  Absalon marshalled his eighteen house-carles and such of the country-folk as he could, and fell upon the Wends, routing them utterly.  A bare handful escaped, the rest were killed, while the bishop lost but a single man.  He said mass next morning, red-handed it is true, but one may well believe that for all that his Easter message reached hearts filled with a new, glad hope for their homes and for the country.  That was a bishop they could understand.  So the first blow Absalon struck for his people was at home.  But he did not long wait for the enemy to come to him.  Half his long and stirring life he lived on the seas, seeking them there.  Saxo mentions, in speaking of his return from one of his cruises, that he had then been nine months on shipboard.  And in a way he was shepherding his flock there, if it was with a scourge; for, many years before, a Danish king had punished the Wends in their own home and laid their lands under the See of Roskilde, though little good it did them or any one else then.  But when Absalon had got his grip, there were days when he baptized as many as a thousand of them into the true faith.

He was not altogether alone in the stand he took.  Here and there, from very necessity, the people had organized to resist the invaders, but as no one could tell where they would strike next, they were not often successful, and fear and discouragement sat heavy on the land.  From his own city of Roskilde a little fleet of swift sailers under the bold Wedeman had for years waged relentless war upon the freebooters and had taken four times the number of their own ships.  Their crews were organized into a brotherhood with vows like an order of fighting monks.  Before setting out on a cruise they were shriven and absolved.  Their vows bound them to unceasing vigilance, to live on the plainest of fare, to sleep on their arms, ready for instant attack, and to the rescue of Christians, wherever they were found in captivity.  The Roskilde guild became the strong core of the King’s armaments in his score of campaigns against the Wends.

Perhaps it was not strange that Valdemar should be of two minds about venturing to attack so formidable an enemy in his own house.  The nation was cowed and slow to move.  In fact, from the first expedition, that started with 250 vessels, only seven returned with the standard, keeping up a running fight all the way across the Baltic with pursuing Wends.  The rest had basely deserted.  On the way over, the King, listening to their doubts and fears, turned back himself once, but Absalon, who always led in the attack and was the last on the homeward run, overtook him and gave him the talking to be deserved.  Saxo, who was very likely there and heard, for there is little doubt that he accompanied his master on many of the campaigns he so vividly describes, gives us a verbatim report of the lecture: