The heathen temples were destroyed and churches built on their
sites of the timber gathered for the siege of Arcona. The people,
deserted by their own, accepted the Christians' God in good faith,
and were baptized in hosts, thirteen hundred on one day and nine
hundred on the next. Three days and nights Absalon saw no sleep. He
did nothing half-way. No sooner was he back home than he sent over
priests and teachers supplied with everything, even food for their
keep, so that they "should not be a burden to the people whom they
had come to show the way to salvation."
The Wends were conquered, but the end was not yet. They had savage
neighbors, and many a crusade did Absalon lead against them in the
following years, before the new title of the Danish rulers, "King of
the Slavs and Wends," was much more than an empty boast. He
organized a regular sea patrol of one-fourth of the available ships,
of which he himself took command, and said mass on board much
oftener than in the Roskilde church. It is the sailor, the warrior,
the leader of men one sees through all the troubled years of his
royal friend's life. Now the Danish fleet is caught in the inland
sea before Stettin, unable to make its way out, and already the
heathen hosts are shouting their triumph on shore.
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