good and just, having compassion on your errors, hath sent me unto you.  If ye put not away your iniquity, I foretell unto you a trouble that ye do not expect, and that the King of Heaven hath ordained aforetime:  there shall come a prince, strong and wise and indefatigable, not from afar, but from nigh at hand, to fall upon you like a torrent, in order to soften your hard hearts and bow down your proud heads.  At one rush he shall invade the country; he shall lay it waste with fire and sword, and carry away your wives and children into captivity.”  A thrill of rage ran through the assembly; and already many of those present had begun to cut, in the neighboring woods, stakes sharpened to a point to pierce the priest, when one of the chieftains, named Buto, cried aloud:  “Listen, ye who are the most wise.  There have often come unto us ambassadors from neighboring peoples, Northmen, Slavons, or Frisians; we have received them in peace, and when their messages had been heard, they have been sent away with a present.  Here is an ambassador from a great God, and ye would slay him!” Whether it were from sentiment or from prudence, the multitude was calmed, or, at any rate, restrained; and for this time the priest retired safe and sound.

Just as the pious zeal of the missionaries was of service to Charlemagne, so did the power of Charlemagne support and sometimes preserve the missionaries.  The mob, even in the midst of its passions, is not throughout or at all times inaccessible to fear.  The Saxons were not one and the same nation, constantly united in one and the same assembly, and governed by a single chieftain.  Three populations of the same race, distinguished by names borrowed from their geographical situation, just as had happened among the Franks in the case of the Austrasians and Neustrians, to wit, Eastphalian or Eastern Saxons, Westphalian or Western, and Angrians, formed the Saxon confederation.  And to them was often added a fourth people of the same origin, closer to the Danes, and called North-Albingians, inhabitants of the northern district of the Elbe.  These four principal Saxon populations were subdivided into a large number of tribes, who had their own particular chieftains, and who often decided, each for itself, their conduct and their fate.  Charlemagne, knowing how to profit by this want of cohesion and unity among his foes, attacked now one and now another of the large Saxon peoplets or the small Saxon tribes, and dealt separately with each of them, according as he found them inclined to submission or resistance.  After having, in four or five successive expeditions, gained victories and sustained checks, he thought himself sufficiently advanced in his conquest to put his relations with the Saxons to a grand trial.  In 777, he resolved, says Eginhard, “to go and hold, at the place called Paderborn (close to Saxony) the general assembly of this people.  On his arrival he found there assembled the senate and people of this perfidious