[1] Many of their neighbours were, like them, speakers of West Germanic dialects, including the inland Franks and Thuringians to the south, and the coastal Frisians and Angles to the north who were among the peoples who were originally referred to as "Saxons" in the context of early raiding and settlements in Roman Britain and Gaul.

Previous Frankish rulers of Austrasia, both Merovingian and Carolingian, fought numerous campaigns against Saxons, both in the west near the Lippe, Ems and Weser, and further east, near Thuringia and Bohemia, in the area which later medieval sources referred to as "North Swabia".

Long before any clear historical mention of Saxony as a country, the name "Saxons" was also used to refer to coastal raiders who attacked the Roman Empire from north of the Rhine, in a similar sense to the much later term Viking.

There is however a single possible classical reference to a smaller and much earlier Saxon tribe, but the interpretation of this text ("Axones" in most surviving manuscripts) is disputed.

[3][4] The term "Saxon" was first definitely used in written records to describe coastal raiders who attacked the Roman Empire from regions north of the Rhine using boats.

[7] For the majority of scholars who accept the existence of Saxons in Ptolemy, their reappearance as a much more important and widespread people in third century records is nonetheless remarkable.

Eutropius the historian, a contemporary and companion of emperor Julian (died 363), claimed that Saxon and Frankish raiders had already attacked the North Sea coast near Boulogne-sur-Mer almost a century earlier in about 285, when Carausius was posted there to defend against them.

[10] The Panegyrici Latini, which were written soon after those events instead mention Franks, Chamavi and Frisians, but not Saxons, indicating that these and possibly others entered the Rhine and Scheldt delta areas within the empire and held control of it for decades.

On the other side of the English channel two coastal military commands were created, over the Tractus Armoricanus in what is now Brittany and Normandy, and the coast of Belgica Secunda in what later became Flanders and Picardy.

Writing in the Byzantine empire in the 6th century, the historian Procopius described only three large nations living in "Brittia", Angles, Frisians, and Britons, and he does not mention Saxons at all.

In the late 5th century a dramatic description of Saxon raiding was written by Sidonius Apollinaris writing to a friend who was assigned to a coastal defensive post in Saintonge near Bordeaux.

Early in this period it is believed that Stilicho, the most powerful military leader in the western Roman empire until 408, campaigned in Britain and northern Gaul, and reorganized the defences against the Saxons.

[23] Writing in the mid-sixth century, Procopius states that after the overthrow of Constantine "III" in 411, "the Romans never succeeded in recovering Britain, but it remained from that time under tyrants.

[27] In what is now France, during the 460s, an apparent fragment of a chronicle preserved in the History of the Franks of Gregory of Tours, gives a confusing report about a number of battles involving one "Adovacrius", who led a group of Saxons based upon islands somewhere near the Loire.

The ancestors of Charlemagne, the Arnulfings, took control of the neighbouring Austrasian kingdom of the Franks and sought to assert power over the peoples to the east including not only the Bavarians, Swabians and Thuringians, which were long under Frankish rule, but also the Saxons and Frisians.

The Duchy of Saxony (804–1296) covered Westphalia, Eastphalia, Angria and Nordalbingia, which is roughly equivalent to Holstein, the southern part of modern-day Schleswig-Holstein state, now bordering on Denmark.

Charlemagne deported 10,000 Nordalbingian Saxons to Neustria and gave their largely vacant lands in Wagria (approximately modern Plön and Ostholstein districts) to the loyal king of the Abotrites.

Einhard, Charlemagne's biographer, says on the closing of this grand conflict: The war that had lasted so many years was at length ended by their acceding to the terms offered by the king; which were renunciation of their national religious customs and the worship of devils, acceptance of the sacraments of the Christian faith and religion, and union with the Franks to form one people.

During the High Middle Ages, under the Salian emperors and, later, under the Teutonic Knights, German settlers moved east of the Saale into the area of a western Slavic tribe, the Sorbs.

According to the historical linguist Elmar Seebold, this development can only be explained if continental Saxon society prior to the migration to Britain was effectively composed of two related, but different forms of West Germanic.

In his view, the group of people who, in the 3rd century, first migrated southwards to what is now the northwestern portion of Lower Saxony spoke North Sea Germanic dialects closely related to Old Frisian and Old English.

There, these migrants encountered an already present population whose language was significantly different from their own, i.e. belonging to the Weser–Rhine Germanic grouping, over whom they then formed an elite, lending their name to the subsequent tribal federation and region as a whole.

In the land of the Saxons itself, the departure of a large part of this former elite caused the sociopolitical landscape to change, and the original population, after the departure of the majority of the elite's descendants, became so predominant that their dialects (presumably the language of the Chauci, the language of the Thuringians, and possibly other ancient tribes) prevailed and ultimately formed the basis for the Low Saxon dialects known today, while their speakers retained the tribal name.

[52] Bede, a Northumbrian writing around the year 730, remarks that "the old (that is, the continental) Saxons have no king, but they are governed by several satraps who, during war, cast lots for leadership but who, in time of peace, are equal in power."

[54] According to very early traditions that are presumed to contain a good deal of historical truth, the edhilingui were the descendants of the Saxons who led the tribe out of Holstein and during the migrations of the sixth century.

The lazzi represented the descendants of the original inhabitants of the conquered territories, who were forced to make oaths of submission and pay tribute to the edhilingui.

The procedure by which dukes were elected in wartime, by drawing lots, is presumed to have had religious significance, i.e. in giving trust to divine providence – it seems – to guide the random decision-making.

[61] The conversion of the Saxons in England from their original Germanic religion to Christianity occurred in the early to late seventh century under the influence of the already converted Jutes of Kent.

Even some contemporaries found the methods employed to win over the Saxons wanting, as this excerpt from a letter of Alcuin of York to his friend Meginfrid, written in 796, shows: If the light yoke and sweet burden of Christ were to be preached to the most obstinate people of the Saxons with as much determination as the payment of tithes has been exacted, or as the force of the legal decree has been applied for fault of the most trifling sort imaginable, perhaps they would not be averse to their baptismal vows.

The Finns and Estonians have changed their usage of the root Saxon over the centuries to apply now to the whole country of Germany (Saksa and Saksamaa respectively) and the Germans (saksalaiset and sakslased, respectively).