Saxons

A German people whose name is usually derived from an old German word, sahs , “a knife,” and are first mentioned by Ptolemy, who makes them inhabit a district south of the Cimbrian Peninsula. They are mentioned as brave and skillful sailors who often joined the Chauci in piratical expeditions against the coast of Gaul. In the 3d century they appear in England under Car a us i us, a Belgic admiral in the Roman service, who made himself “August us” in Britain by their help. They had firmly rooted themselves, at the beginning of the 5th century, in the present Normandy, and they fought against Attila in the Catalaunian Plain, 451. They also obtained a footing at the mouth of the Loire; but all the Saxons who settled in France disappeared before the Franks, or were probably incorporated with their more powerful kinsmen of Southern Germany. Along with the Franks, they destroyed the kingdom of the Thu ring i ans in 531, and obtained po e ion of the land between the Harz and the Unstrut; but this district was in turn forced to acknowledge the Frankish sovereignty. From 719, wars between the Saxons and the Franks became constant; but the latter, after 772, were generally succe ful, in spite of the vigorous resistance offered by Wittekind, and in 804, the Saxons were finally subjugated by the arms of Charlemagne.