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Widukind, I, 35; M. G. SS. folio, III, p.432.

Henry, duke of Saxony, king of the Germans, 919–936, was the first king of the Saxon house. He was also the first king of the Germans to accept the feudal state and to attempt to build up a government on that basis. He did not revive the imperial claims on Italy, but devoted himself to strengthening his own authority in Saxony, to defending the frontiers of the kingdom, and to creating a German state. This selection is from the history of the Saxons written by Widukind, a monk in the monastery of New Corvey, who wrote in the latter part of the tenth century. The passage illustrates the relations of the Germans to the Slavs on the east and the origin of the Saxon cities. The Slavs had moved as far west as the Elbe, occupying the lands left vacant by the Germans after the migrations. Much of this territory was gradually recovered by the Germans from the time of Henry. Here we see the capture of the city of Brandenburg and the reduction of Bohemia. Following the conquest came the establishment of the marks and the colonization and Germanizing of the land.

It lies beyond my power to relate in detail how king Henry, after he had made a nine years’ truce with the Hungarians, undertook to develop the defenses of his own land [Saxony] and to subdue the barbarians; and yet this must not be passed over in silence. From the free peasants subject to military service he chose one out of every nine, and ordered these selected persons to move into the fortified places and build dwellings for the others. One-third of all the produce was to be stored up in these fortified places, and the other peasants were to sow and reap and gather the crops and take them there. The king also commanded all courts and meetings and celebrations to be held in these places, that during a time of peace the inhabitants might accustom themselves to meeting together in them, as he wished them to do in case of an invasion. The work on these strongholds was pushed night and day. Outside of these fortified places there were no walled towns. While the inhabitants of his new cities were being trained in this way, the king suddenly fell upon the Heveldi [the Slavs who dwell on the Havel], defeated them in several engagements, and finally captured the city of Brandenburg. This was in the dead of winter, the besieging army encamping on the ice and storming the city after the garrison had been exhausted by hunger and cold. Having thus won with the capture of Brandenburg the whole territory of the Heveldi, he proceeded against Dalamantia, which his father had attacked on a former occasion, and then besieged Jahna and took it after twenty days. … Then he made an attack in force upon Prague, the fortress of the Bohemians, and reduced the king of Bohemia to subjection.