Qualla: Eresburg https://qualla.com/eresburg en-us © 2026 Bendyline Tue, 11 Aug 2026 13:49:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/n/k/eresburg-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Eresburg https://qualla.com/eresburg Eresburg: Introduction https://qualla.com/eresburg/ Photo credit Johann Georg Rudolphi, Public domain. The Frankish army had allowed itself two or three days to finish wrecking the shrine, and partway through it ran out of water. What happened next is recorded in the Royal Frankish Annals as divine grace: at midday, while the whole army rested, a stream near the camp suddenly ran full, and there was enough for every man and beast. It is the sort of detail that finds its way into a chronicle when a campaign needs justifying. The year was 772. The shrine was the Irminsul, a pillar or tree standing at the centre of Saxon religion. And the fortress Charlemagne had just taken was the Eresburg, a hill castle on a flat-topped rise 130 to 150 metres above the river Diemel - the largest Saxon refuge castle known, and the opening move in thirty years of war.

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Image: Johann Georg Rudolphi | Public domain

]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/n/k/eresburg-wp/u1nk-eresburg-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Eresburg: A Thousand Years Before the Franks https://qualla.com/eresburg/ Photo credit Johann Georg Rudolphi, Public domain. People had been using this hill for a very long time before anyone wrote about it. Pottery from the Michelsberg culture has come out of the ground here, and excavations near the present collegiate church have turned up ditches, ramparts and post holes whose radiocarbon dates put ...

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]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/n/k/eresburg-wp/u1nk-eresburg-a-thousand-years-before-the-franks.mp3 0:06 2 full Eresburg: The Sentence That Will Not Settle https://qualla.com/eresburg/ Photo credit Johann Georg Rudolphi, Public domain. Whether the Irminsul actually stood on the Eresburg is a question that turns on the grammar of a single line. The Annales Petaviani record that Charlemagne "conquered the Eresburg and found the place which is called Ermensul, and set these places on fire." He came to the place ca...

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]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/n/k/eresburg-wp/u1nk-eresburg-the-sentence-that-will-not-settle.mp3 0:06 3 full Eresburg: A Church on the Temple Floor https://qualla.com/eresburg/ Photo credit Johann Georg Rudolphi, Public domain. Conquest was the first half of the strategy; the second was slower and more permanent. In 779 Charlemagne sent Sturmius, the abbot of Fulda, into this country as a missionary and directed him to this place in particular. In the winter of 784 into 785 the king based himself at the...

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]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/n/k/eresburg-wp/u1nk-eresburg-a-church-on-the-temple-floor.mp3 0:06 4 full Eresburg: 915: A Bad Year on the Hill https://qualla.com/eresburg/ Photo credit Johann Georg Rudolphi, Public domain. Border positions do not stop being fought over just because the border moves. In 915 the Eresburg saw a bloody clash between the Saxon duke Henry the Fowler, soon to be king, and Conrad, the king of East Francia - a dynastic quarrel settled, as such quarrels were, with axes on a ...

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]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/n/k/eresburg-wp/u1nk-eresburg-915-a-bad-year-on-the-hill.mp3 0:06 5 full Eresburg: The Village on Top https://qualla.com/eresburg/ Photo credit Matthäus Merian, Public domain. Nothing of the Saxon fortress stands. What sits on the plateau today is Obermarsberg, a village of the town of Marsberg in the Hochsauerlandkreis, reached by a climb that immediately explains why the place was chosen: the ground falls away on every side toward the Diemel, and the...

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]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/n/k/eresburg-wp/u1nk-eresburg-the-village-on-top.mp3 0:06 6 full