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The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were the Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony (Latin: Antiqua Saxonia) which became a Carolingian "stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. [1] Many of their neighbours were, like them, Germanic-speaking, including the Franks and Thuringians to the south.
The name of this tribe, the Saxons (Latin: Saxones), was first mentioned by the Greek author Ptolemy. The name Saxons is derived from the Seax, a knife used by the tribe as a weapon. [citation needed] In the 3rd and 4th centuries, Germany was inhabited by great tribal confederations of the Alamanni, Bavarians, Thuringians, Franks, Frisii, and ...
He describes them as peaceful, calm, and levelheaded. At some point they may have merged with, or were perhaps synonymous to, the Saxons. It has been claimed that the Old Saxons were composed of an aristocracy of nobles, a free warrior class of distinction and renown, leading freemen united and controlled by ancient custom of kindred and clan.
The Saxons were one of the most robust groups in the late tribal culture of the times, and eventually bequeathed their tribe's name to a variety of more and more modern geopolitical territories, such as Old Saxony (Altsachsen), Upper Saxony, the Electorate, the Prussian Province of Saxony (in present-day Saxony-Anhalt), and the Kingdom of ...
After Charlemagne's conquest of the Saxons (772–804), their land was incorporated into the Carolingian empire, and late in the 9th century, it became the first Duchy of Saxony. It occupied nearly all the territory between the Elbe and Saale rivers to the east and the Rhine to the west; it bordered on Franconia and Thuringia in the south.
The old Saxon coats of arms today lives on in the coats of arms of Lower Saxony and Westphalia.. The original Duchy of Saxony comprised the lands of the Saxons in the north-western part of present-day Germany, namely, the contemporary German state of Lower Saxony as well as Westphalia and Western Saxony-Anhalt, not corresponding to the modern German state of Saxony.
Saxony has a long history as a duchy, an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire (the Electorate of Saxony), and finally as a kingdom (the Kingdom of Saxony).In 1918, after Germany's defeat in World War I, its monarchy was overthrown and a republican form of government was established under the current name.
In mid-January 772, the sacking and burning of the church of Deventer by a Saxon expedition was the casus belli for the first war waged by Charlemagne against the Saxons. It began with a Frankish invasion of Saxon territory and the subjugation of the Engrians and destruction of their sacred symbol Irminsul near Paderborn in 772 or 773 at Eresburg.