158 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEfNG. 



This annual tribute, which the Saxons considered so 

 onerous, was 500 cows.'' 



Pepin the Short was the first who sought to sub- 

 stitute the five hundred cows thus levied for three 

 hundred horses. In a campaign against that people, he 

 thoroughly subdued them. ' The battle v;as very san- 

 guinary, but Pepin gained the victory. He advanced 

 to the Weser, and destroyed the fortresses or Jertes built 

 by the Saxons. The West Saxons submitted, and were 

 compelled to pay a tribute of 300 horses a year, and to 

 permit the preachers to preach among them in the name 

 of the Lord.'^ This was also considered a very severe 

 punishment. 



This indifference of the Merovingians to horses may 

 have had everything to do with the absence of horse- 

 shoes from their graves and other remains, which have 

 been explored in France within the last few years. The 

 Abbe Cochet remarks, in reference to this fact : ' It ought 

 to be mentioned that, up to the present time, nothing has 

 proved more rare in Prankish graves than the shoes of 

 horses. With the three or four horses we discovered at 

 Envermeu no shoes were found, although all the limbs 

 were present. But buckles and bits of a very character- 

 istic shape were there. Lindenschmidt, who found the 

 skeleton of a horse lying beside a warrior, at Selzen, 

 positively asserts that it was without shoes. Of all its har- 

 ness there was only found a bit and some small bronze 

 rings. This archaeologist adds, that it has been the same 

 at Sinsheim, Ascherade, Langweid, and Heidesheim. At 

 Nordendorf three skeletons of horses were discovered, but 



' Fre(/('garii/s. Cap. Ixxiv. p. 441. 

 ' Ibid. Annal. Metz. ap. Scrip. Rcruni Francic. V. S3^- 



