Incursions
Index
Stodorania
997. The Slavs, with the treachery innate to them, broke the agreement of the peace that had been achieved and gnawed the Saxon borders with furtive robberies. Provoked against them, the emperor invaded with a large army, conquered, and pillaged Stodorania, which is commonly called Heneldum, a distinguished land among the Slavonic ones, and as a conqueror entered gloriously into Magdeburg, the preeminent burg of the Saxons. In the meantime however, while the august emperor, that is Otto III, passed through Hevaldum laying waste, the assembled Veletabi attacked unexpectedly the province of Bardengau with much plundering and burning. Seeing this, the Westphalians, whom the aforementioned emperor, proceeding on his campaign, had left to guard the province, swiftly and powerfully overtook the Liutizi and, although they were few, they laid low an innumerable multitude of pagans with such great slaughter and seized so much booty from them that the amount neither of that slaughter nor of the booty can in any way be set forth in human speech.1