GQ? The question is binary. It happened, or it didn’t.
GD? Controversy exists.
IMHO? Better suited for people with a casual interest.
I’ll leave it to the Mods to move if necessary.
Did the Massacre of Verden happen as described? That is, were 4,500 Saxons really beheaded?
One of Charlemagne’s more recent biographers, Roger Collins ( 1998 ) seems to accept that it did and it does not seem particularly out of character or difficult to imagine. Charlemagne’s grandson Louis the German was similarly ferocious ( on a much more minor scale ) in the aftermath of the Stellinga uprising ( more or less the last gasp of pagan Saxony ):
He punished 140 of them with beheading, hung fourteen on the gallows, maimed inumerable others by amputating their limbs, and left no one to oppose him further.
From the Annales de Saint-Bertin, quoted in Struggle for Empire:* Kingshp and Conflict Under Louis the German, 817-876* by Eric Goldberg ( 2006, Cornell University Press ).