[2] The Sorbian march had already lost its importance around 900 AD; the last known margrave Poppo was deposed by King Arnulf in 892 and replaced with Conrad who continued to appear as a "Duke of Thuringia".

These territories were under constant attacks by the East Frankish rulers; in 908 they were first campaigned by the Saxon prince Henry the Fowler, son of Duke Otto the Illustrious.

In 928 and 929, during the final campaign against the Glomacze tribes, Henry the Fowler, East Frankish king since 919, chose a rock above the confluence of the Elbe and Triebisch rivers to erect a new fortress, called Misni (Meissen) Castle after the nearby Meisa stream.

The town beneath the fortress grew, however, eventually becoming one of the most important cities in the vast Marca Geronis, covering the Slavic lands east of the Saxon stem duchy.

King Henry, and later on his son and successor Otto I, continued the Slavic campaigns into the lands of the Polabian Milceni tribes around Bautzen (Budissin), with their gained territory being gradually incorporated into the Saxon Eastern March.

When the Marca Geronis was divided in 965 upon the death of Margrave Gero, Meissen became the center of a new march with the goal of controlling the local Slavic population.

By 982, the territory of the march had extended as far as the Kwisa river to the east and as far as the slopes of the Ore Mountains to the south, where it shared a border with the Přemyslid duchy of Bohemia.

In 983, following the defeat of Emperor Otto II at the Battle of Stilo, the Slavic Lutici tribes bordering eastern Saxony rebelled in the Great Slav Rising.

When Eckard was assassinated in 1002, however, Mieszko's son, the Polish king Bolesław I Chrobry, took the occasion to conquer the margravial lands east of the Elbe and demanded the surrender of Meissen.

In 1423, Margrave Frederick IV was assigned the heirless Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg, formerly held by the House of Ascania, by Emperor Sigismund in turn for his support against the Hussites.