The Stellinga thus despised the Lex Saxonum (law of the Saxons), which had been codified by Charlemagne, preferring to live in accordance with ancient and unwritten tribal custom.
Having patronised new families and removed from power old ones, Louis the German made the Saxon aristocracy his organ of government there and forced his foes, such as Lothair, to look to the lower classes for support in Saxony.
Gerward, author of the Annales Xantenses, wrote under the year 841 that "throughout all of Saxony the power of the slaves rose up violently against their lords.
Louis the German, however, marched against the Saxon "freedmen seeking to oppress their lawful lords" and "crushed [them] ruthlessly by sentencing the ringleaders to death".
According to scholar Eric Goldberg, Marxist analysis has tended to ignore the simultaneous civil war in the Carolingian kingdoms and has mostly failed to explain why "exploitation" or "oppression" did not incite more revolts during the Middle Ages.