His strategies include either destroying sacred sites or turning them into Christian sites. Additionally, he directs troops to take down entire forest groves to provide lumber for the army, and to build both forts and churches, while also decimating the Indigenous woodland cultures of the region. Charlemagne is the first Christian soldier to build a strategy around forced conversions. Conversions in the past had often been manipulative, but they were not forced at the end of a sword. Charlemagne takes what was formerly a political and philosophical discussion about religion and turns it into an essential quality of European kingship: fighting for the spread of Christianity.