WITTEKIND, or WIDU KIND, Saxon leader in the struggle with Charlemagne: d. about 807. He came of a noble Westphalian house, and first appears at the head of the Saxon expedition against the Westphalian fortress of Eresburg in 1774. Charlemagne's return from Lombardy drove him across the Weser, and instead of submit ting to the emperor at the Diet of Paderborn in '777 like many other Saxon leaders, having renewed the revolt in 776, he fled to Jutland. He returned during Charlemagne's absence in Spain, laid waste the Rhineland and surprised and annihilated the Frankish army on the SUntelgebirge (782). The emperor retaliated by executing 4500 Saxon prisoners, an action that aroused the entire Saxon race to arms. The battle of Detmold was indecisive (783), but that of Osnabruck forced Wittekind to enter on negotiations; the issue was that in 785 he accepted baptism in the imperial camp at Attigny, in Champagne. The emperor, it is
said, made him duke of the Saxons and lord of Engern, and from the castle of Babilonie, near Lubeck, he exercised a benignant sway till he fell in battle with Gerold, the Swabian duke. Various princely houses, as those of Brunswick and Sardinia, claim Wittekind for the founder of their line. The Emperor Charles IV in 1377 placed a monument to him in the parish church at Enger, where he is supposed to have been buried, and in Menden. Westphalia, a monument was erected to him in 1812. Consult Dettmer, J., 'Der Sachsenfiihrer Widukind nach Geschichte und Sage' Wurzburg 1879); Die kamp, 'Widukind der Sachsenfiihrer. nach Geschichte und Sage' (Minister 1877); Mow bert, 'Charles the Great' (New York