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Wichmann
Wid III.52
III.52. After the next Easter, the barbarians rushed into the region, with Wichmann only as dux in this crime, not in command. But, acting with no delay, dux Hermann himself also arrived with a military garrison. Seeing the serious army of the enemy and the very few that might arrive for battle with civil war looming, he judged more deliberately to put off battle in this doubtful state of affairs. So he ordered the crowd—which, extremely large, had flocked together in one burg while they despaired of the rest—to be calling urgently for peace by whatever agreement they were able to achieve. The soldiers took that advice most reluctantly, however, most of all Siegfried, who was the fiercest warrior. The citizens of the Cocarescemi, however, did as the dux had ordered: they obtained peace with the agreement that the free men with their wives and children would climb up onto the wall unarmed, with the servile condition and every possession left in the center of the burg for the enemy. When the barbarians were rushing into the fortress, one of them recognized his slave in the wife of a certain freeman; while trying to snatch her from the man’s hand, he received a blow of the fist and proclaimed the agreement violated by the Saxons. Thus it came about that all were turned to slaughter and they left no one behind; rather, they were giving to slaughter1 all those of adult age and leading away the mothers with their children as captives.