Battle of Recknitz

Battle on the Raxa
Date 16 October 955 Location uncertain, probably on the Recknitz or Elde rivers Result German victory
Belligerents
Kingdom of Germany Rani	Obodrites, Veleti, and allied Slavs
Commanders and leaders
Otto I of Germany	Nako Stoigniew †
Strength
8,000	9,000
Casualties and losses
1,100 killed 2,000 wounded	4,500 killed 2,000 wounded 700 prisoners

The Battle on the Raxa river (German: Schlacht an der Raxa) was fought on 16 October 955 over control of the Billung march (in present-day Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, northeast Germany) between the forces of Otto I of Germany allied with the Rani tribe on one side, and the Obotrite federation under Nako and his brother Stoigniew (Stoinef, Stoinneg, Stoinegin, Ztoignav) with their allied and tributary Slav neighbours on the other. The Raxa river is identified with either the Recknitz or the Elde river. The German victory over the Slavs followed up on the August victory at the Lechfeld over the Magyars and marked the high point of Otto's reign. A thirty-year peace followed, only ending with the Slavic revolt in 983.

While King Otto was distracted by his campaigns against the Magyars, his vassals Wichmann the Younger and his brother Egbert the One-Eyed instigated a Slav revolt in the Billung March. The Obotrites invaded Saxony and sacked the Cocarescemians' settlement, killing the men of arms-bearing age and carrying off the women and children into slavery. According to Widukind of Corvey, in the aftermath of Lechfeld, Otto pressed hard into Slav territory, where Wichmann and Egbert had sought refuge. Otto razed the Slav population centres and soon had encircled them; he offered to spare his enemies if they would surrender. A Slav embassy came to an assembly Otto held in Saxony and offered to pay annual tribute in return for being allowed self-government; "otherwise," they said, they would "fight for their liberty." Reuter argues that this is indicative of a change in German governing practice: a change from overlordship, which the Slavs were willing to accept, to lordship, which the Slavs protested.

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