Battle of Wogastisburg

According to the contemporary Chronicle of Fredegar, the Battle of Wogastisburg was a battle between Slavs (Sclav, cognomento Winidi[1]) under King Samo and Franks under King Dagobert I in 631. The Frankish armies advanced into the area of the Slavic tribal union in three groups - Alamanni, Lombards, and Austrasian Franks. The first two were quite successful, but the main fighting force was defeated in a three-day battle near a place referred to as Wogastisburg.

Battle of Wogastisburg
Date631 CE
Location
Wogastisburg
Result

Decisive Slavic victory

  • Establishment of Samo's Empire
Belligerents
Slavic tribes Francia
Commanders and leaders
Samo Dagobert I

The site of the battle cannot be successfully located because the source, Fredegar's chronicle, gives no geographical specifications. Thus a lot of places claim to be connected with the battle (usually based on linguistic parallels and some excavations), such as Rubín hill near Podbořany (Bohemia), Úhošť hill near Kadaň (Bohemia), Bratislava (Slovakia), Trenčín (Slovakia), Beckov (Slovakia), Váh river = Voga (Slovakia), Staffelberg near Bad Staffelstein (Upper Franconia), Burk near Forchheim (Upper Franconia), Vienna, Augustianis[2][Note 1] and other places along the middle Danube etc.

In fact, there is no conclusive evidence for any of these locations and it is even possible that the term Wogastisburg referred only to a kind of temporary encampment rather than a permanent settlement, in which case establishing a definite location would be impossible.[3]

Notes
  1. Jan Cinert has several arguments for position of Wogastisburg in Roman camp Augustianis, today Traismauer. He says: So called Fredegar wrote in vulgar latin, for which shift of diphthong Au to O is very common. With the fact, that the root of the name shifted to germanic gast (guest, buyer), the name August(-ian-is) could change to *Ogast(-is)-. After adding prothetic W- and another root -burg with meaning of "raised and defended", later "fortified place" could lead to the name Wogastisburg.
  1. "Fredegarii scholastici chronicum cum suis continuatoribus, sive appendix ad sancti gregorii episcopi turonensis historiam francorum". Archived from the original on 2008-05-21. Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  2. Cinert, Jan. "Místo Samova Wogastisburgu nalezeno | Bylo to jinak - Jan Cinert". www.bylotojinak.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 2018-08-19.
  3. (in Polish)Gerard Labuda, Słowiańszczyzna starożytna i wczesnośredniowieczna, 2003


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