Editor’s note: The following is extracted from Ambushes and Surprises, by G.B. Malleson (published 1885).
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On the walls of the temple of Ancyra—the modern Angora—in the northern part of Asia Minor, may be traced even now, on the tables of brass on which it was engraved, a writing designed by the Emperor Augustus to be a permanent record of his life. The style of this record is pure; it is concise, free from exaggeration, sublime almost in its simplicity. Translated, it runs as follows:—
At the age of nineteen, raising an army at my own expense, and without any other counsellor but myself, I delivered the State from the yoke of factions. Admitted into the Senate, I took rank among the consular personages with a voice in the deliberations. Soon, clothed with the title of pretor, I shared power with the two consuls, Hirtius and Pansa; then, in my turn, I was nominated consul, and finally triumvir, charged to constitute the Republic. By a just application of the law, I avenged the murder of my father, and condemned the guilty to exile…. On sea and on land, at Philippi, at Actium, I fought the enemies of the State. Conqueror, I pardoned; and my clemency reached in foreign countries those who, of their own will, had quitted the soil of their native land. Five hundred thousand Roman citizens have been enrolled under my banners. After their time of service had expired I sent more than three hundred thousand of them into the colonies or to their cities, giving to all lands and money taken from my treasury. Twice has the oration been decreed to me, thrice the triumph; twenty-one times have I been proclaimed IMPERATOR. When, once again, it was wished to decree me the triumph, I did not accept it, but contented myself with deposing my laurels at the capital….Thirteen times was I consul; thirty-seven times did I exercise the duties of the tribunial office. Thrice did I receive the powers of censor, and I accepted for five years the title of regulator of the laws and morals. Thrice did I preside at the numbering of the Roman people-a numbering which had not been made for fortytwo years-when for the first time I had it made. During my sixth consulate the number of citizens rose to 4,063,000; then to 4,233,000 during the consulate of Censorinus and of Asinius; it was 4,097,000 during the consulate of Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Apuleius. New laws have recalled the Romans to the culture of the virtues of their ancestors. Wishing to surround the magistrates and the priests with a great consideration, I increased their privileges.
After entering into a detail of the manner in which this was carried out, the Emperor thus concluded:
I have pacified and organised the provinces without having made an unjust war on any people. Egypt has been comprised within the empire; Armenia might have been, but I preferred that it should receive a king of my choice. Africa, Sicily, the Spains, Achaia, Asia, Syria, Gaul, Pisidia, have received military colonies. The standards lost by other generals have been recovered by me, and the Parthians, in restoring to us the eagles of Crassus, have implored the clemency of the Roman people. The Kings of India, the Bastarnæ,[1] the Scythians, the Sarmatians, who dwell beyond the Tanäis [the Don], the Albanians, the Iberians, the Medes, have solicited my alliance. Finally, after having extinguished civil wars, I restored to the Senate and the People the power which, in the interest of the Republic, the unanimous consent had confided to me. To recompense me, the Senate decreed to me the name of Augustus, and suspended above the door of my dwelling a crown of oak. Later, during my thirteenth consulate, patricians, plebeians, knights, combined to call me “the father of the country.” That was, in my eyes, the greatest of honours, the noblest of recompenses. Written in the seventy-sixth year of my age.
The year following he died (29th August, 14 A.D.).
Yet simple, truthful, and grand as is this record, there must have been moments during its composition when the mind of its illustrious author dwelt upon an event he did not refer to, but which had caused him intense anguish at the time of its occurrence. Only four years before, the bitter cry, repeated continually, a long time even after the news of the catastrophe had reached him, “Varus, give me back my legions,” had told how the defeat in the forest of Teutoburg had rent his soul. It was so strange, so unaccustomed, so unexpected. That his armies, the armies which had recovered the standards taken from other generals and brought back the lost eagles of Crassus, should have succumbed to a horde of barbarians was incredible, unaccountable. Yet incredible, unaccountable as was the fact, it produced a general panic. It was found most difficult to raise an army which should proceed to the Rhine to repair the tarnished honour of the country. In the heart of Augustus the blow penetrated deeply: it was keenly felt. How deep, how keenly felt, is displayed most vividly by the omission from the long list of nations in the record I have transcribed of all mention of the German race proper; the race whose homes were nearer to Rome than many of the people enumerated, and which, under the leadership of Arminius, had inflicted this wound on the pride of the first and greatest of the Roman emperors!
Who were these Germani? It is the purpose of this chapter to answer that question, and to describe the ambush and surprise into which their leader, Arminius, enticed the Roman legions under Varus in the ninth year of the Christian era.
The Germani were the people, so called by the Romans, who occupied the lands between the Rhine and the Vistula. A branch of the great Aryan family, these people had migrated, at an unknown period, from their Asiatic homes to the shores of the Baltic. They were certainly domiciled on those shores four centuries before the birth of Christ. By degrees they spread, until, split up into various tribes, each under its own ruler, they came to occupy the entire country between the rivers I have mentioned.
It is difficult to enumerate the names of all their tribes in the pre-Christian era. Tacitus mentions three great divisions: the Ingævones on the shores of the Baltic; the Istævones in the west, the Hermiones in the centre. He distinguishes, further, the Suiones (Scandinavians), and the south-eastern Germans, such as the Bastarnæ, the Rencini, and others. Not to mention more particularly the Bastarne, who inhabited Moldavia, it is probable that the tribes who first came in contact with the Romans were the Cimbri and Teutones or Teutoni. Cæsar certainly had to deal principally with the Suevi (Swabians). On the banks of the Rhine dwelt the Sigambri, the Usipii, the Teucteri, the Tubanti, the Batavi; further eastward, the Bructeri and Marsi; then the Chatti or Catti, and behind these, between the Main and the Danube, the Hermunduri. On the northern side, between the Rhine and the Elbe, were the Frisii and the Chauci or Cauci. To the south of these were the Cherusci, who occupied both banks of the Weser and whose territories extended to the Harz and the Elbe. Near to them, on the banks of the Main, lived the Marcomanni. There were also other tribes less powerful, who changed every year the place of their abode. The characteristics of all these tribes were generally the same. They were tall and strong, delighting in war, and possessing an unconquerable love of liberty. Their women were chaste and held in high honour. The people were divided into four classes: nobles, freemen, vassals, and serfs. From the first-named class a king or executive officer was elected; but his authority was very limited, and in case of war breaking out it was often resigned to a warrior considered more competent.
Already, more than a century immediately preceding the Christian era, all-conquering Rome had trembled before the advancing hordes of the Cimbri and Teutoni (113 to 104 в.с.). Rome was delivered by the genius of Caius Marius (102 в.с.), but the name of the tribes which had defeated Roman armies did not the less for a long subsequent period inspire terror. When Julius Cæsar, the political successor of Marius, planned the conquest of Gaul, he was animated by the idea of forming a strong outer barrier against German invasion. Augustus went further still. He would do to Germany what Caius Julius had done to Gaul. With that object he sent his best troops, and, as he believed, his best generals, across the Rhine. At the outset the undertaking seemed to succeed. The border tribes, the Rhæti, the Vindelici, the Norici, the Pannonii, yielded to the arms of Drusus and Tiberius. Further conquests followed, until, in the year 15 в.с., the Roman frontier was pushed on to the Danube. To form a basis for the outposts, and, if necessary for further operations, a line of fortresses-some of which under other names still remain was built along the valley of the Rhine. During the three years, 12 to 9 B.C., Drusus pushed forward victoriously as far as Aliso on the Lippe, built there a strong fortress, proceeded then to occupy a portion of the lands of the Chatti, and advanced to the Elbe. On his untimely death at the early age of thirty, Tiberius took the supreme command. This able man succeeded, by inciting tribe against tribe, and by forming a Roman party in each, in completing the submission of the whole race. When he had accomplished this he resigned his command, and the Emperor commissioned Quintilius Varus to proceed to administer the newly acquired territories as a part of the Roman Empire.
Quintilius Varus was the son of a man who had espoused the party of Pompeius, afterwards that of Brutus and Cassius, and who had killed himself rather than take a part in a world of which the victors of Philippi would be the masters. The son, however, rallied to the new order of things, became (13 в.с.) consul with Tiberius (afterwards Emperor), and obtained, on the expiration of his consulate, the government of Syria. It has been asserted* that he undertook, a poor man, the administration of a rich province, and that in a few years he retired, a rich man, from the administration of a poor province. Certain it is that he lived there a life of luxury, menaced by no enemies, disturbed by no cares. There could not have been a worse preparation for the difficult task which was to devolve upon him in Germany. The talents which an energetic life would have developed were allowed to decay, and the hard working soldier became a sensualist bent only on self-enjoyment.
Such was the man who was sent by Augustus, A.D. 6, to introduce Roman laws and Roman customs into the newly-acquired territories beyond the Rhine. Varus proceeded thither, taking with him crowds of officials, of place hunters, and of adulators, and fixed his head-quarters amid the Roman fortresses on the banks of the lower Rhine. Hence, whilst he continued the custom of his Syrian administration, whilst he feasted and flattered the heads of the tribe, his officers and followers endeavoured to spread Roman civilization in the country between that river and the Weser, inhabited by the Cherusci. To this end they established tribunals in which the Latin language only was to be used and recognised, imposed the Roman system of taxation, introduced the Roman manner of punishments, even the Roman mode of carrying out the death-sentence. Everywhere the ancient German customs were uprooted to make way for a civilisation which the people did not understand, and which was utterly unsuited to their ideas. The old methods, the cherished traditions, the time-honoured habits of the Germans were rudely displaced in order that the rude men of the forest might aspire to become Roman citizens.
There are no races in the world which cling so much to their own ways as the races which inhabit northern Germany. In another work[2] I have endeavoured to show how it required more than three hundred years and a vast expenditure of blood to bring the Borussi or Prussi into the fold of Christian civilisation. The pertinacity, the clinging to their own ways, the dislike to dictation from outside which they then displayed, were born in them. The same qualities characterised them a thousand years previously. In this respect the Cherusci and the Catti were the true ancestors of the Borussi. They resented bitterly, deeply, indignantly, the attempt to uproot the customs that gave them a nationality of their own.
Of this bitterness, of this resentment, of this indignation, Varus knew nothing. He had an army of 50,000 men, an army resting on fortresses, engaged in making military roads and forming strong military posts over the country, and the people might well have regarded, as they did regard, their case as hopeless and beyond remedy. It would probably have remained so but for two circumstances; the credulity and carelessness of Varus, and the arrival at his court of one of the master-spirits of the age.
Varus had administered his province for about a year when a contingent of Cheruscan troops which had recently taken part in an expedition against the insurgent Pannonii and Dalmatii, returned to their country. With them came their leader, a young Cheruscan in his twenty-fifth year, who had been educated at Rome, had entered the military service, had thoroughly acquainted himself with the Roman language and manners, and upon whom, for his services, the Emperor had conferred the right of Roman citizenship and the order of knighthood. The name of this young man was Arminius, the son of Sigimer, a leading chieftain of the Cherusci; he had just succeeded to the headship of the family. This birthright, combined with his great talents, gave him practically the leadership of the clan. To a proved courage he added vast powers of dissimulation, an extraordinary fertility of resources, and the ability, granted only to a few, to dominate over his kind. There is nothing to prove that before his arrival at the court of Varus Arminius had entertained the idea of conspiring against Roman supremacy. Certainly, in the flattering welcome given him by Varus there was nought to inspire hatred. His feelings, then, in the course which he took, were not based upon personal dislike. He came to the court of Varus a Roman citizen, a Roman knight, but possessing a Cheruscan heart. That heart was roused to indignation scarcely controllable at the sight of the attempts made by the satellites of the proconsul to romanise his countrymen. He saw that their indignation, if silent, was deep-seated. It has been said that opportunity makes the man. The sight before him, the sight of an oppressed people and a careless, easily flattered ruler, burst as an opportunity upon Arminius. From that moment he became a conspirator.
His first care was to gain Varus. This, in spite of the opposition of Segestes, the leader of the Roman party amongst the Cherusci, and who had refused consent to the marriage of Arminius with his daughter Thusnelda, he accomplished easily. His Roman manners and apt address made their way with the easy-going Roman consul. His next step was to persuade Varus to move his headquarters to the Weser. He wished to see him cut off from the Rhenish fortresses; forced to distribute his troops to keep open the communications. In this he succeeded: Varus advanced to the Weser. He then passed the word that the system of silent acquiescence in the new system till then displayed by the people was to be exchanged for a more active demonstration in its favour. At the same time he assured Varus that his countrymen were like himself; that as he, a Cheruscan, had become a Roman citizen, so would they likewise be more than willing to adopt the Roman system, the Roman language, and the Roman manners. There must have been a fascination, very taking, about him; for, in spite of the warnings to Varus of Segestes, often repeated, that Arminius was deceiving him, Varus did allow himself to be completely deceived.
Then Arminius gave the pre-arranged signal—a signal, not for the defeat, but for the complete annihilation of the Roman legions. It was the summer of the year 9 A.D. Varus, with three legions, some cavalry, and some auxiliaries, in all twenty-seven thousand men, was at Rinteln, ten miles south-east of Minden, on the Weser. Suddenly information reached him that a rising of the tribes had taken place to the south, probably in Hesse. To repress this rising Varus at once took the field. Vainly did Segestes warn him of the events which would happen if he were to set out without taking precautions to secure his base! Unheeded was he when he urged the Roman leader at least to secure the persons of Arminius and the other chiefs of the Cherusci! The advice and the warning were alike attributed to jealousy.
The first destination of the Roman army was Aliso,[3] a fortress built by Drusus near the mouth of the Lippe. The way to this place lay across uncultivated wastes and primeval forests. The paths were rough and rugged, but so long as the rain held off they presented no insuperable obstacles to soldiers. Varus, however, in the manner of the French generals who, more than seventeen centuries later, marched to encounter Frederick II of Prussia, encumbered his line of march with a train of waggons and beasts of burden, conveying women, children, servants, and all the paraphernalia attaching to such a convoy. One result of the march of all these impedimenta on a narrow road was to prolong enormously the length of the line; to weaken the military disposition, and render defence, in the event of a brisk attack, almost impossible. To render matters, in such an event, more hopeless still, Varus—on his way, be it remembered, to combat an enemy in his front—was careless enough to allow Arminius and his fellow Cheruscans to march in the rear. To such an extent did his faith in the Cheruscans master him, that when, on the second day, information reached him that they had quitted his camp to bring up the several sections of their clans who had been summoned to the field, he seemed to regard it as a very natural proceeding.
Varus had made the first day’s march unmolested. The second day passed without causing him any annoyance, beyond that occasioned by the sudden and mysterious disappearance of his Cheruscan guides. The third day, the 9th September, unaided by men acquainted with the lay of the land, he entered the forest of Teutoburg.
Here his difficulties increased with every step. The unevenness of the ground, the thickness of the forest, the absence of roads, combined to impede his movements. The pioneers were constantly employed to hew a way by which the troops could advance. They were called upon to clear thick underwood, and to fell mighty trees. Often the whole line was stopped by the necessity to cast a bridge over a deep stream or a roaring torrent. In the midst of their labours a terrific storm came to increase enormously their difficulties. Huge branches were blown down; torrents of rain made the earth spongy, and caused the rivers to swell; the order of the march became broken, each man trying to the best of his ability to maintain his footing as he slowly advanced.
Such was the condition of the Roman army when it arrived within sight of a hill eleven hundred and sixty-two feet high, now called, and called since the year 1581, the Grotenburg; known in the middle ages by the name of Teut, and, with its surroundings of tree and brushwood, spoken of by Tacitus as Teutoburgiensis saltus. Whilst the Roman soldiers and their long convoy are creeping with difficulty along this slope, let us turn to examine the proceedings of Arminius and his comrades.
Arminius had not quitted the rear of the Roman army until he had ascertained that its front, without guides, was entangled in the rough paths leading to the Teutoburg. Then sped he and his comrades to the point previously fixed as the place of assembly for the national contingents. Thence, at once, war-signals, fire-signals, blasts on the horn, call from every district between the Harz and the Taunus, from the Ems to the Main, every true-hearted German to the chase of the foreigner. They rush in crowds, from far and near, eager for the contest, the confidence of each man increasing as he beholds the constantly augmenting numbers. Boundless enthusiasm prevails. Not even Segestes, the real friend of Varus, can make head against it. He, his brother, and his nephew are forced to join the ranks of the national gathering. One chief alone sternly refuses to be false to his plighted word. This is the Ampsivarian chief, Bojocalus. Him Arminius places promptly in chains. Then with joyous anticipation of victory each section starts for the post allotted to it, some to close up the road by which the enemy had advanced; some to face him; others to hem him in on both flanks. On the ground on which they will attack the Romans there will be no room for manœuvring, no chance for the exercise of discipline. Their numbers aided by the surprise must and will prevail.
That ground, the slopes of the Teutoburg, the Romans had now reached. As they tread the ground, now spongy, now slippery, with hesitating and tired foot, there suddenly appear on all sides the Germans, long and anxiously expected by the still-trusting Varus. For a few moments his hopes mount high-but only for a few moments. The Germans halt at a convenient distance, and then from every thicket, from every brushwood, from behind every tall tree the thick German javelins are hurled into the long Roman line. Not even then is Varus undeceived. At first he deems it a rough horse-play, and orders his men not to return the discharge. Then he thinks it is a band of mutineers, whom an effort can repress. But when, immediately afterwards, heavy columns dash down to break his long line, selecting especially those parts where the soldiers and the camp-followers are mixed in disordered heaps, then the naked truth bursts upon him. He feels that he is betrayed as well as surrounded!
For a long hour his men, slowly advancing, endeavour to repel the ever-increasing foe. At last they reach a broad, open plateau. Here they halt, and here they intrench themselves in the manner familiar to the Roman soldier. Great as have been their losses, their position is now far from desperate. They are in the open, they are formed up, they are covered by intrenchments. In such a position a Marius or a Cæsar, a Drusus or a Germanicus, would have felt confident of ultimate victory. But Varus was still not equal to the occasion. Whatever might have been his capacities in his younger days, a career of idleness and self-indulgence had completely undermined them. Nor among the officers serving under him did any step forward to supply his place. It has been urged that his task was the more difficult, inasmuch as the majority of the men who composed his legions-the XVIIth, XVIIIth, and XIXth-were young soldiers, unused to warfare in Germany. This is true; and, if the entire soldiers had been young, the excuse would have had great force; but they were supported by a backbone of tried and experienced warriors. They required only leading. With a similar material, young soldiers of the Latin race, aligned with and supported by veterans, Napoleon, eighteen hundred and four years later, won, against the descendants of the Cherusci and the Catti, not very far from the same spot, the hardly-contested battle of Lützen. The victory was due to his leading. If, instead of by a Napoleon, those conscripts had been commanded by a Varus, the result would most certainly have been exactly opposite.
During the night of the 9th September the Roman legions, secure behind their intrenchments, were not assailed. They spent that night in burning the carts and the unnecessary articles of baggage. Varus, too, endeavoured by the despatch of men, singly and in small detachments, to discover whether it might not be possible to gain, by a cross-road, the main road leading from the Weser to Aliso. When the day broke, matters looked better. The men were less hampered by impedimenta, the order of march in which they formed was of a more practical character. With the early morn they set out, making, as far as their knowledge allowed them, for the great highway of which I have spoken. For a time all seemed to prosper: they were indeed still harassed by the Germans, and their losses were not inconsiderable; but the knowledge that they were prepared for action gave them better heart; the weather, too, had improved, and they reached gradually more open ground, ground upon which they could act more freely. But this gleam of sunshine was merely temporary. Advancing, in the hope of reaching the military road, they became gradually more and more involved in the jungle and brushwood. Then the attacks of their enemies increased in vigour and in intensity. Vainly did the Romans endeavour by repeated charges to drive them back. Whilst the nature of the ground broke their formation, the Germans found an easy shelter in the forest. The absence of leadership made itself painfully felt. Varus, though brave as a lion, acted more like a wolf wearied by a long pursuit.[4] He gave no orders, but left to each section the task of pursuing the plan which the sectional leader should think best. What wonder that when evening arrived the army had lost confidence! What wonder, that when they reached, with the falling day, a place fit for encampment, the men, wearied out, fainting with hunger, dispirited, and depressed, intrenched themselves in a careless and perfunctory manner! Rest would, under any circumstances, have been impossible; for the weather had changed, and the rain poured down in torrents. They passed a wretched night; the rain not only deprived them of rest, it slackened and rendered useless the bowstrings of the light troops. In the most miserable condition, then, the legions issued from the intrenchments in the early morning. With difficulty, but in safety, they reached the entrance into the Dören pass. Could they traverse this pass they might still hope, for from its further end Aliso was only distant three or four hours’ march; the ground, too, was open, the plain was wide, and, though nature had fought for the Germans, the heavy rain soaking into clayey soil, they might still hope with confidence to reach the fortress whence they could bid defiance to the enemy.
But Arminius had no intention that the victims whom he had enticed so far should ever emerge from that defile. The “Dörenschlucht,” as the Germans call it, is thus referred to in the general description of the Teutoburger Wald:— “The Lippian Forest, or, simply the ‘forest,’ known in the middle ages as Osneggi, and, as it is likewise now, Osning, by many recognised as the real Teutoburger forest, stretches twenty-nine kilometres wide through the principality of Lippe from the Völmerstost to the defile of Oerlingshausen, and is, just in its centre, traversed diagonally by the Dörenschlucht, a very deep chasm, through which the road runs to Paderborn. It consists of two almost parallel chains separated from each other by a deep valley.”[5] Knowing well the conformation of this pass, and predetermined to make it the grave of the Romans, Arminius had stopped up the further exit from it with abattis covered by palisades, at the same time that he had crowned the heights on both sides, leaving strong divisions handy to act as occasion might require.
Doubtless the danger of the situation struck forcibly Varus and his soldiers, but it was the last danger. On the further side of the pass was comparative safety; once on that side, indeed, they might lose some more men, but the bulk of the army would reach Aliso. They plunged in, then, with all the boldness of despair. Then the real battle began. Surrounded, assailed by groups organised for special purposes, the Roman soldiers fought wildly and desperately, each man for his own hand. The cavalry, led by Vala Numonius, forced their way through and dashed wildly in the direction of Aliso. Many of them, including their leader, perished in the attempt, but some reached the fortress. Varus, himself wounded, when he saw that all was lost, rather than become a prisoner to the Germans, fell upon his own sword, following the example of his father after Philippi. Many of his superior officers did the same, amongst them Lucius Eggius, one of the prefects of camps (præfectus castrorum). The eagle-bearer of the XVIIth Legion, terribly wounded as he was, when he, too, recognised that the day was irrevocably lost, tore the eagle from its staff, concealed it under his dress, and then, throwing himself on the heap of corpses, killed himself. The soldiers, deserted by their leaders, either submitted unresistingly to be slaughtered, or ran upon their own swords. With the termination of resistance all the most savage passions of the Germans reached their fullest height. They thought only of the insults and oppression which had been dealt out to them during the few preceding years. Their one idea was blood. It was not until their hands were weary with slaughter, that, vengeance giving place to avarice, they turned to grapple for the plunder. Those who had survived were then treated as prisoners.
But the horrors of the day were not yet ended. The prisoners made and despatched, and the booty collected, Arminius addressed to the assembled warriors an harangue of congratulation and triumph. The excitement had roused him to fever pitch. Every word that he uttered, every allusion which he made to the contempt which had been showered upon them by the Romans; his repeated references to the valour of the men who had conquered the masters of the world, whetted the barbaric instincts of the crowds whom weariness alone had caused to cease from the slaughter of enemies who no longer defended themselves; and when, at the close of his oration, Arminius pointed to the captured eagles of two of the Roman legions, and other trophies of the fight, and then produced the third eagle, that of the XVIIth Legion, which had been recovered, all bloody, from the body of the man who had hoped to save it from capture by his death; those barbaric instincts passed the bonds of control. Not only did the victors recommence the work of slaughter on the prisoners who still remained in their hands, but they wreaked their vengeance likewise on the dead bodies of those who had fallen before. They hacked to pieces the corpse of the previously decapitated Varus and the corpses of his comrades. Nor was this all. Religious excitement came, not to calm, but to increase the natural ferocity of humanity. On the hedges near the slaughterground the Germans improvised altars to their deities, and leading to these the officers of the noblest blood whom they had captured, they sacrificed them as thank-offerings to the unseen Providence who had worked all things for their advantage. Other sections, less piously disposed, erected gallows or crosses, to which, or to trees in the vicinity, they nailed their victims. It is recorded that one man only, a patrician of pure blood and ancient race, escaped their unrelenting fury. This was Caldus Cælius, who preferred to dash out his brains with the chains by which he was bound. So bloody and so merciless was the slaughter that, six years later, the bones of the Romans still whitened the ground upon which they had been murdered; the trees still bore the heads or the skeletons of the victims.[6]
A special fate was reserved for the head of Varus. Severed from the trunk, it was despatched by Arminius to Maroboduus, king or chief of the Marcomanni, in the hope that the proof of the vengeance wreaked by Germans on a Roman pro-consul would incite him to join them in the war which the Cherusci certainly would have now to wage against the Imperial legions. But Maroboduus had felt only shortly before the power of the empire, and, believing that the act of Arminius would only draw upon him certain vengeance, he declined the proffered co-operation, and sent the head of Varus to Rome. There it was decently buried.
In this manner did the Cheruscans destroy the army which had held in bondage the country between the Weser and the Rhine. Of that army, which counted with its three legions, its three brigades of cavalry and six auxiliary cohorts, not less than twentyseven thousand men, but few escaped slaughter; and the fate of the majority of those few, sold into slavery, was less enviable than that of their comrades. But the loss of twenty-seven thousand men was the least part of the injury which the fight of Teutoburg inflicted upon the empire of Augustus. It dealt a death-blow to the prestige of the empire, it announced to the rest of the world that there was a portion of it which would not submit to the supremacy of Rome; and although, in the years that followed, Germanicus splendidly avenged the soldiers of Varus, the triumph achieved on the field of Teutoburg was not the less valid and lasting: it released North Germany for ever from subjugation to Rome. Notwithstanding many defeats which followed, the consequences of Teutoburg were permanent. That battle sent back the frontier of the Roman empire from the Weser to the Rhine!
In Rome the effect was indescribable. More than two hundred years had passed since Hannibal had been in Italy to threaten her with destruction. Then, the courage—the front, bold, almost audacious—displayed by her citizens had been the admiration of the world. At that period she had never wanted a man to send into the field against the invader! But now-was it that increased luxury and dominion had impaired the energy and sapped the selfreliance of her children?-there was seen amongst them no eagerness to avenge the outraged honour of the country. The prevailing fear was lest, at any moment, the conquerors of Varus might appear at the gates of the city and there was no rush to defend them!
The effect produced upon the Emperor himself has been handed down to us by a historian who was born, indeed, a century and a half after the event, but who enjoyed the very best opportunities of obtaining trustworthy information. “When Augustus,” wrote Dion Cassius, “heard of the defeat of Varus, he tore his clothes. Not only was he to the highest degree chagrined for the loss of his army, but he felt the greatest anxiety regarding the next action of the Germans and the Gauls. He dreaded especially lest these should march into Italy and upon Rome. Rome, he knew, could not produce those hardy youths, trained to warfare, who in early days had been her safeguard, whilst the allies who had served for her had been destroyed. He made, then, as well as he could, preparations for the worst. As the citizens of the proper age for service declined to enrol themselves, he forced them to draw lots, and punished every fifth man under the age of thirty-five, and every tenth man above that age, by the confiscation of his property and the cancellation of the rights of citizenship. When this did not suffice, he caused some to be executed. It was only by the use of drastic measures of this nature that he managed, after a long interval, to recruit an army of discharged veterans and emancipated slaves, and these he sent in all haste under Tiberius into Germany.”[7]
This account shows how terribly had the Romans degenerated since the days of Hannibal and the Scipios. In those days the defeat on the Trebia, the slaughter in the defiles of Lake Trasimenus, the crushing overthrow of Cannæ, only served to rouse the spirit of the people, to make them defy with greater boldness the conqueror, to cause the display of the nobler qualities of a free people. All this was changed now. Boldness had given place to superstition, manliness to fear. The executioner had to be called on to perform the duties of his horrible craft before the youth of Imperial Rome would serve against the enemy who had destroyed one great army!
And yet the prestige of Rome still lived; the discipline enforced in her armies was still stern enough to enable them to defeat the men who had destroyed the legions of Varus. It will be interesting to follow for a brief space the movements of the army formed “of discharged veterans and emancipated slaves” which Tiberius led to restore the fortunes of Rome beyond the Rhine. Their prowess did not, indeed, affect the ultimate result, for the lure of the Teutoburgerwald was decisive; it emancipated Northern Germany for ever from the yoke of Rome; but with respect to the conduct of the Roman legions and to the skill of the Roman generals, the struggle which followed after an interval of five years was not unworthy of the best days of her military renown.
After he had consummated the slaughter of the legions of Varus, Arminius devoted himself to the destruction of the forts which the Romans had built, and to the obtaining of support from the other tribes of Germany for the struggle which he knew to be imminent. In this latter effort he only partially succeeded, but he nevertheless raised an army large enough to threaten Italy from the banks of the Rhine. Meanwhile, Tiberius had, with his newly-raised army of veterans and emancipated slaves, remained during the winter of 9-10 A.D. in Italy. At first he, too, dreaded lest Arminius should cross the Rhine and possibly raise Gaul. But, happily, the German leader had been prevented from executing that project by the skill and conduct of Lucius Apronius. This officer, a nephew of Varus, was, at the time of the defeat of his uncle, with two legions in Lower Germany. He remained there in a strong position, maintaining in subjection the tribes which would otherwise have revolted. His presence there restrained Arminius from aggressive action. With the spring, then, Tiberius marched to the Rhine. But he was on the eve, he well knew, of the succession to the empire. He did not care to compromise either the renown he had acquired or his future prospects in a contest in the marshes and forests which had proved fatal to Varus. During the year 10, then, he was content to maintain the frontier of the Rhine, and to repress a rising feeling of revolt, produced by the defeat of Varus, among the Gauls. The year following he was somewhat bolder; he crossed the Rhine, but, after some skirmishes, in which his troops had always the advantage, he retired to the left bank. At the close of the year, he returned to Rome; leaving one division of the army on the Upper Rhine, under the command of C. Silius, the other on the Lower Rhine, led by Severus Cecina. Germanicus, his nephew and the adopted grandson of Augustus, then Consul for the year, was to succeed him in the command.
One year elapsed, a year of “masterly inactivity.” The arrival of Germanicus to assume the command was almost contemporaneous with the news of the death of Augustus (29th August 14 A.D.). This news produced a revolt amongst the legions, and it required all the tact, the judgment, the power over his fellows which Germanicus ever commanded, to repress that revolt. When it was repressed, the soldiers demanded, with loud cries, to be led against the Germans. Germanicus responded to their ardour. He threw a bridge across the Rhine, led across it twelve thousand mensoldiers of the legions-twenty-six allied cohorts, and eight squadrons of cavalry, traversed the Cesian forest by way of the modern Koesfeld,[8] encamped upon the rampart of Tiberius, and, learning there from his spies that the Marsi-who had been, and were, in league with the Cherusci-were celebrating a solemn festival, he marched, surprised, and fell upon them. To satisfy still further the impatience of his troops, he divided them into four columns, and despatched them to follow up his easy victory. Over an extent of fifty miles they carried fire and the sword. But this barbarous devastation only roused the German tribes in the vicinity. The Bructeri, the Tubanti, and the Usipii (inhabiting the modern provinces of Cleve, Jülich, Berg, and part of Westphalia), hastened to occupy the country between the Romans and the Rhine. But Germanicus, forewarned of their dispositions, led back his troops well in hand, and, after a skirmish, in which the XXth Legion, which formed the rear-guard, covered itself with glory, he gained the Rhine without further effort.
Early in the following year Germanicus pushed the war with vigour. A spring of exceeding dryness had made the roads easy to be traversed in April. He had ascertained that divisions were rising amongst the Cherusci, Arminius urging the other tribes to rise against the Romans, Segestes doing his best to prevent them. With a view to take advantage of these divisions, he despatched Cecina with four legions, five thousand auxiliaries, and the German levies, against the Bructeri, the Cherusci, and the Marsi, whilst he himself, with a force not inferior, marched to the Taunus range, restored on that range a fort which had been built by his father Drusus, and then, leaving behind him Lucius Apronius to repair the roads and the dykes, burst into the country of the Catti (Hesse). The Catti, susprised, submitted or dispersed, and allowed the conqueror to burn their capital, Mathuin (Maden, on the Eder). Cecina, meanwhile, had, whilst holding in check other hostile tribes, gained a victory over the Marsi. Germanicus and Cecina then returned to the Rhine; but the former had scarcely reached his head-quarters when a deputation arrived from the Cherusci, headed by Segimund, son of Segestes, demanding help against Arminius, who was besieging him in his stronghold. Germanicus at once returned, attacked and defeated the besiegers, made a great number of prisoners, and delivered Segestes. This chieftain proceeded at once to Rome, where he was received with great distinction. Amongst the prisoners taken on this occasion was Thusnelda, whom Arminius had married despite the opposition of her father, Segestes. The annals of Tacitus give no more touching picture than that of the attitude of this noble woman. Expecting soon to suffer the pangs of maternity, she displayed a loyalty to her husband and her fatherland which has caused her name to descend with honour to posterity.[9] The capture of his wife, and the opposition of his father-in-law, greatly embittered Arminius. Declaring that Segestes, if he liked, might till a servile soil, but that the German people would never forget that they had seen the rods, the axes, and the toga between the Elbe and the Rhine, he redoubled his exertions. In a short time he induced almost all the tribes round about him to join the Cherusci. Germanicus felt the danger of the situation, but he was equal to it. To divide the enemy he despatched Cecina, with forty Roman cohorts, through the country of the Bructeri towards the Ems; directed the Prefect, Pedo, to march with his cavalry along the borders of East Friesland; whilst he himself embarked with four legions on the Zuyderzee. Soon he had his army re-united and well in hand on the Ems. The people of East Friesland, the Chauci or Cauci, described by Tacitus as the best and noblest of the German tribes, who were then at war with the Bructeri, offered their alliance, which was accepted. Germanicus attacked the Bructeri, who were actually devastating East Friesland, defeated them with great loss, and recovered one of the eagles, that of the XIXth, lost at the massacre of Teutoburg. Following up the Bructeri, Germanicus ravaged their country between the Ems and the Lippe. Learning that the bones of the soldiers who had fought under Varus remained, unburied, on the spot where those soldiers had fallen the Roman leader determined to render to them the last honours due to mortality. Preceded by Cecina, charged to cover the advance, and guided by some of the men who had escaped the carnage, he arrived, the sorrow of his soul depicted in the sadness of his countenance, on a plain white with human bones, except where, ever and anon, bent and broken armour disturbed the painful uniformity. To dismount, to have the bones collected, to cause to be dug a vast grave, to deposit there the bones, and to cover the mound with turf, of which with his own hand he laid the first sod, was the first action of Germanicus; the second to rush in pursuit of the man who, though born a German, had been trained in Rome, had accepted service under and honours from Rome, had eaten Roman salt, and whose treachery had caused the destruction of which the sight he had just witnessed reminded him. Arminius, meanwhile, retreating by ways nearly impenetrable, had reached a plain flanked by thick forest on the one side, on the other by a spongy morass. Here, placing his chosen troops in the forest, he resolved to meet the Romans. Germanicus hurried into this plain, the troops led by Cecina forming the vanguard. Arminius fell back till the Roman army was well compromised. He then gave the signal, and from the side of the forest the Germans rushed on the flank of their enemies, and drove them towards the morass. The day had been lost but that Germanicus, his reserves well in hand, brought up his legions, checked the too-confident charge of the Germans, and forced them in their turn to retire. But this was all he could accomplish. Neither side could claim the victory, and, as the bad season was approaching, Germanicus hesitated to risk his army in an unknown and difficult country. Ordering, therefore, Cecina to fall back on the Rhine, he led his own corps to the Ems, and employed the means by which he had advanced to return.
After his departure Cecina had to make head against Arminius, who was inclined to press him hard. A very capable soldier, possessing a cool head, Cecina fell back, constantly fighting, before his enemy. He suffered much, however, from the attacks repeatedly directed upon him, and he was forced at last to abandon his baggage. Scarcely hoping to be able to prolong his retreat, and determined, if he were to die, to die with his face to the foe, he halted in a plain which the enemy must traverse, prepared to give them battle. In reality, his fate lay in the hands of the German leader; for Cecina had exhausted his supplies, and had no means, under the constant and harassing assaults of his enemy, to procure any. In war, there is a time to attack and a time to refrain from attacking. This was a time when a great leader would have exercised a wise restraint over himself, and have preferred to condemn his enemy to die by inanition rather than to risk all the fruits of his labours by assailing him. It is due to Arminius to state that he was very sensible of this truth, and that he used all his efforts to persuade his countrymen to remain quiet. But the fiery spirits about him preferred the more violent counsels of his uncle, Inguiomer. Under the influences of those counsels they rushed upon the all but exhausted Romans. The battle once joined, Roman discipline prevailed. The German assailants were routed with great slaughter, and Cecina was able to fall back on the Rhine without further molestation.
The loss at sea, in a storm, of two legions, commanded by Vitellius, more than counterbalanced this success; but that loss, again, was so far indirectly favourable to the cause of Rome in that it evoked from Gaul, from Spain, and from Italy, offers to Germanicus to supply his army with arms, with horses, and with money. Germanicus accepted only the arms and the horses. His own funds were sufficient to reward his soldiers. He endeared himself to them further by the manner in which—a precursor in that respect of the illustrious Turenne—he interested himself in their individual wants and sufferings, and sought at all costs to lessen their privations.
The campaign, though it had been barren of real success, had been very fruitful of experience; and of that experience Germanicus disposed himself, the following year, to profit. He had realised that whilst the Roman soldiers were more than a match for the Germans when they once fairly met them on the battle-field, yet that the knowledge of the country possessed by the latter, their superior numbers, their greater power of movement, unencumbered with heavy armour, in a country woody and marshy, every turn of which they knew, enabled them to force upon his soldiers long and often painful marches, and to harass them in a manner which prevented him from reaping the fruits of many a well-concerted plan. He found, moreover, that the last campaign had exhausted the resources of Gaul for the supply of baggage animals. In this extremity Germanicus conceived the bold plan of transporting himself and his army to the seat of war by sea. Adopting such a plan he would be able to begin the campaign earlier; the march of his legions would not be retarded by their baggage; ascending the course of the rivers they would meet the enemy fresh and eager for the fray. He set himself at once to construct vessels which should be specially adapted for this enterprise, and directed that they should be ready at a fixed date, off the island of the Batavi (Insula Batavorum.)[10] Before his vessels, which numbered a thousand, had assembled there, and whilst C. Silius, who had replaced Cecina, was marching to repress an outbreak of the Catti, information reached Germanicus that a large body of Germans were besieging a Roman fortress on the Lippe, presumably the fortress of Aliso, Germanicus marched thither with six legions, compelled the enemy to raise the siege—they retired in fact on his approach—and united the fortress more firmly than ever by a string of impregnable posts with the Rhine. He then returned to the island of Batavia, and, having seen that his transports were thoroughly well furnished with provisions and other requirements, he embarked his troops, and entered the canal which bore the name of Drusus, invoking, as he did so, the spirit of his father to guide his enterprise. Pushing on with all speed he arrived safely in the Ems. But instead of ascending that river, as he had probably originally designed, he disembarked at Ancisia, on the left bank, and proceeded to throw bridges to enable his army to cross to the right bank. Thence he marched to the banks of the Weser. Scarcely had he reached that river when he learned that the Angrivarii, the near neighbours of the Cherusci, had revolted in his rear. The repression of their outbreak by Stertinius, detached for that purpose with the cavalry and light troops, occupied some time, but it was thorough. Meanwhile Arminius, warned of the danger, had approached the opposite bank of the Weser. Knowing that his brother, Flavius, held a high command in the Roman army, Arminius demanded permission to have an interview with him. The permission having been accorded, Arminius, surrounded by his chiefs, advanced to the brink of the river. Noting that Flavius had lost an eye, and being told that he had lost it in the service of the Romans, Arminius asked in what manner he had been rewarded. Flavius replied that his pay had been increased, that he had received a chain of gold, a crown, and other military honours. Arminius mocked his brother for the cheap rate at which he had sold his services, and asked him what compensation he found in such rewards for the betrayal of his country. Flavius replied with equal heat, denouncing the treason of Arminius. So bitter did the wordy contest become, that, but for the intervening river, the two brothers would have come to blows.
The next day Germanicus crossed the Weser. He had but just effected the passage when he learned from a deserter that Arminius had massed his army in a neighbouring wood, and that he intended to surprise the Roman camp that night. This information was shortly afterwards confirmed by scouts. Germanicus formed his army, then, in a manner to resist such an attack, covering the camp with earthworks and palisades. Having done this, he went amongst his men, as nearly eighteen centuries later Napoleon went, before Austerlitz, to assure himself of their dispositions. To disguise himself he threw a bear’s skin over his shoulders, and was accompanied by but one man, similarly wrapped up. The result, in the main, but confirmed the parallel. Everywhere he heard nothing but praises of, and confidence in, himself: one man praised his high birth, another his noble carriage, a third his patience, a fourth the affability which knew no distinction of persons; all declared that in the coming fight they would prove their gratitude and their appreciation. To praise of Germanicus, the soldiers added expressions of contempt for the enemy; they derided their want of discipline, the roughness of their armour, and the lightness of their weapons of offence. Whilst they were thus engaged in conversation, the voice of a German was heard in front of the palisades, pouring abuse on the Romans. The latter answered by shouts of defiance. Then about 3 o’clock in the morning the German masses rushed on. After a brief conflict they were repulsed, and for the rest of the night the camp was not disturbed.
On the morrow, both armies, alike eager for battle, marched into the plain of Idistaviso—the modern Hastenbeck, in Hanover. It is an irregular plain, bounded on one side by the Weser, on the other by a chain of hills. One end of it is shut in by forest-clad hills, in the form of a semicircle, the other is comparatively open. The Germans occupied alike the forest-clad hills and the chain; the Romans, who were the attacking party, the open.
Germanicus ranged his army in this manner. The Gaulish and German auxiliaries formed the vanguard; behind these came the slingers and archers; then the legions, the cavalry, and the light troops; in the rear of all, the other allied contingents.
As the Roman army advanced, the Cherusci, who occupied the chain of hills opposite the river, descended with loud cries to attack them. Germanicus saw his advantage. He promptly ordered Stertinius to interpose, with one half of the cavalry, between them and the rest of the German army on one flank, whilst he commanded the other half to gallop round their right, and take them in rear. Wheeling, at the same time, his infantry to the right, he advanced in firm order against the forest-clad hills, in which Arminius was posted with his main army. The double attack succeeded. Whilst Stertinius crushed the Cherusci and drove them back to their original position, and beyond it, Germanicus, on his side, carried all before him. In vain did Arminius, who was wounded in the head early in the day, strive to restore the combat. Whilst the energies of his troops were already lessening, a fatal occurrence took the remainder of the fight out of them.. The Cherusci, driven from their position, dashed, panic-stricken and breathless, pursued by Stertinius, at the critical moment, into their already wavering ranks. Then all was over. The Germans, forced to flee, were cut down by thousands. For ten miles from the field of battle the plains were covered with their slain. Many were forced into the Weser. The fugitives cast away arms, and lost all their baggage. Amongst the latter were the chains they had brought for their Roman conquerors.
On the field of battle the enthusiastic Roman soldiers hailed Germanicus as “Imperator.” On it, likewise, they erected a trophy, bearing the names of the tribes they had defeated. For a moment they may have thought that the victory had been decisive.
But it was far otherwise. It was a great victory gained on ground chosen by the Germans, but, in the matter of decisiveness, it was not a sufficient answer to Teutoburg. On the contrary, the news of the defeat, and especially of the erection of the trophy, roused the tribes of Germany to further and stronger efforts. From the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, they rushed eagerly to the war. Almost on the morrow of the battle, when Germanicus had hoped to see the country cleared as far as the Elbe, a new army sprang, as it were, from the earth, to dispute with him the very ground on which he had fought!
Germanicus recrossed the Weser; the new German host followed him. At length, by a flank march, they gained a plain, a causeway across which formed the boundary line between the lands of the Cherusci and the Angrivarii, and offered battle. Germanicus could not refuse it, for the Germans were between him and his base. They had chosen a splendid position. The plain was narrow, shut in between the river and thick forests, and the approach to it covered by marshes. The forests, likewise, were covered on all sides by marshes—one space alone excepted, the ground upon which the demarcation causeway had been thrown up. Arminius took the fullest advantage of the position. He formed his infantry on the causeway to face the Romans, whilst he placed his cavalry in ambush in the wood, to dash upon them as they should advance. This time he could not but feel certain of victory.
But in Germanicus he had to deal with the most skilled leader of the day. That great soldier had detected in an instant the plans of Arminius, and had decided how to baffle them. Charging his lieutenants to protect his flank, he led his choicest infantry against the causeway. Long and bitter was the contest. At length the disciplined and solidly-armed Romans penetrated into the wood. Once in that wood it became for both parties a battle for dear life; for there was no retreat for either. But here again superior discipline, aided by unsurpassed leadership, asserted itself. In the close conflict the long spears of the Germans had no chance against the short swords of the soldiers of Rome. In vain did Inguiomer, uncle of Arminius, whose wounds had kept him from taking an active part in the battle, rush from rank to rank to encourage his warriors. Germanicus, who had taken off his helmet and fought bareheaded, to be the better recognised by his men, urged his men to the slaughter, declaring that the only mode of finishing the war is to exterminate. Not till evening fell did he relax his pursuit.[11] He then drew back his troops, “satiated with gore,” to a palisaded camp beyond the causeway. The next day, after having thanked his soldiers for their conduct, he erected with the arms captured from the vanquished, a trophy bearing the inscription: “Victorious over the people between the Rhine and the Elbe, the army of Tiberius Cæsar has consecrated this monument to Mars, to Jupiter, and to Augustus.”
The monument having been erected, Germanicus, though the summer was still in its glory, fell back, the presence of his army being sufficient to repress a threatened rising of the Angrivarii. On reaching the Ems he re-embarked his troops on the vessels which had conveyed them thither, and set sail for the island of Batavia. But hardly had his fleet gained the ocean, when a terrible storm set in, which dispersed his ships, and drove many of them on rocks and islands. The vessel which bore Germanicus was driven on the coast of the territory inhabited by the Cauci. Finding himself alone with his immediate crew, and fearing lest all the others had been lost, the illustrious Roman leader was in despair, and loudly accused himself of being the cause of the misfortune. At length the weather moderated, and gradually Germanicus recovered the greater number of his soldiers. But the mischief had been done. The news of his misfortune had spread, in exaggerated form, over the northern coasts of Germany, and the terrors caused by the recent victory had given place to renewed hope. To nip this feeling in the bud, Germanicus seized the earliest opportunity to despatch Silius with thirty thousand infantry and three thousand horse against the Catti, whilst he led the rest of his army against the Marsi. In a preliminary skirmish against these, he not only had the advantage, but recovered another—the second—of the lost eagles of Varus. He then ravaged the country, the Marsi carefully avoiding a pitched battle. The campaign then terminated.
It was the last campaign of Germanicus in Germany. Tiberius Cæsar, long jealous of his renown, took the opportunity of the conclusion of a campaign which had been glorious for the Roman arms, to recall him. In vain did Germanicus demand one year more to finish the work so well begun, to replace Rome in the position she had occupied before the defeat of Varus. “You have fought great battles,” replied Tiberius, “but your losses have caused a greater drain on the resources of the empire. I, when on nine occasions I was sent by Augustus to Germany, obtained greater results by prudence than by force. As the Roman honour has now been avenged the Cherusci and the other refractory tribes may well be left to stew in their own juice.” Such, at least, was the main purport of his reply. He added, that if Germanicus thought it absolutely necessary that the war should be continued, he should leave the glory of concluding it to his brother by adoption, Drusus, who, in default of any other enemy, could hope, only in Germany, to merit the title of imperator and to gather noble laurels. Germanicus did not insist further; he returned to Rome to meet there the reception due to a hero.
The campaigns of Germanicus were the last efforts of Rome to recover the position lost by Varus in the forest of Teutoburg. These efforts, despite many victories, had failed. Rome had avenged the prestige of her armies, but she had not recovered the position she had lost. The battle of Teutoburg had been decisive of the question which lay nearest to the hearts of the Germans; it had prevented Germany from sharing the fate of Gaul; it had baffled the policy which Varus had been sent to carry out that of romanising the Germans. After Teutoburg that policy had become impossible. Not even the extra year so earnestly demanded by Germanicus would have sufficed. There is a vast difference between the retaining under a foreign yoke peoples who have always recognised the superior prestige of the conquering power, and the re-subduing of those peoples after, by their patriotic efforts, that prestige has been destroyed. Under all these circumstances, then, and considering the nature of the battles fought by Germanicus during the last year (17 A.D.) of his command, how a victory such as that gained at Idistaviso (Hastenbeck) led, almost immediately, to another battle, more bloody and more desperately contested, a contest in which defeat would have been ruin, I dare not presume to question the wisdom of the conclusion arrived at by Tiberius when he wrote: “The Roman honour has been avenged; let the Cherusci and the other refractory tribes stew in their own juice.” He was right. Rome had still a noble frontier. The moment she ceased to attempt to subdue the refractory tribes they began to stew in their own juice with a vengeance. The uncle, Inguiomar, jealous of his nephew’s glory, leagued with Maroboduus, chief of the Marcomanui, against him. To baffle these, there sided with Arminius the Longobardi and the Semnones, and with their aid the conqueror of Teutoburg gained a great victory. This victory so elated him that he aspired to supreme power in Northern Germany. His plans were, however, discovered and he was assassinated (20 в.с.). He was then only thirty-eight years old. “Arminius,” wrote Tacitus, just about eighteen centuries ago, ” was uncontestably the deliverer of Germany; he had not fought the Roman people in the rise of their power, as had other kings and generals, but when Rome was at the summit of her glory, when the empire had reached her greatest splendour. He was not always fortunate, but he did not cease for a moment to impose on the enemy by his attitude and by his army. During twelve years arbiter, with the consent of his fellow-citizens, of the affairs of Germany, he was the object of their veneration after his death.”
The history of the ambush and surprise of Teutoburg would have been incomplete unless it had been followed by a narrative of the events which prove the immense significance of that battle. The slaughter of the Roman legions treacherously led into an ambush would have been an affair of comparatively little moment if that slaughter had been promptly avenged and if the lost position had been as promptly regained. But the slaughter was not promptly avenged. In the presence of it Imperial Rome trembled; it shortened the life of Augustus, and it gave a living proof that the Rome of the Scipios was no more. Eight years of murderous warfare were required to wring from Tiberius the admission that the honour of Rome was satisfied. As for the position-that was lost for ever. Those eight years confirmed the aspirations of the German tribes, fortified in them the conviction that the free wild life of the forest was preferable to gilded slavery. The struggle which followed Teutoburg proved the value of the battle waged in that forest. The history of that struggle forms, then, a necessary continuation of the history of the battle.
(1825-1898)
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[1] The tribes inhabiting Podolia and Moldavia.
[2] The Battle–fields of Germany, 235-8.
[3] The exact position of Aliso is still disputed. The historian Ledebur, in his works, “Das Land und Volk der Brukterer,” “Blicke auf die Literatur des letzten Jahrzehends zur Kenntniss Germaniens zwischen dem Rhein und der Weser,” places it near the mouth of the Lippe; others believe that it is represented by Else, near Paderborn; others place it at the point where the Ahse and the Lippe unite; and there are still opinions besides these.
[4] In my young days in India I often used, with one or two companions, to ride down wolves. One animal was singled out and chased. When he was completely tired out he would lie down panting. It then became easy to capture him by the mere twisting round his neck of the thong of a hunting-whip.
[5] Brockhaus’ Conversations Lexikon, 12th edition (1879), vol. viii, p. 483.
[6] “The places in the vicinity of the little town of Detmold,” writes M. Stapfer in his article on Arminius in the Biographie Universelle, “are still full of souvenirs of that memorable event” (the defeat of Varus). “The field at the foot of the Teutoburg is still called Winnfeld, or the field of victory; it is traversed by the Rodenbach, or stream of extirpation, and by the Knochenbach, or stream of bones; near it is the Feldrom, or field of the Romans; a little further, in the environs of Pyrmont, the Herminsberg, or hill of Arminius, covered with the ruins of a castle which bears the name of Herminsburg; and upon the banks of the Weser, in the same county of Lippe, we come upon Varusholz, or the wood of Varus.”
[7] Many miracles which were said to have happened at the time tended to the still further discouragement of the Romans. It was declared that the summit of the Alps had fallen in, and that three columns of fire had issued from the cavity; the temple of the God of War on the Campus Martius had been struck by lightning; during the night the sky glowed as though it were on fire; comets traversed the firmament; fiery meteors in the form of spears darted from a northerly direction against the Roman camp; the statues of Victory on the frontier which pointed the way to Germany, had, of their own accord, turned round and now pointed to Italy. These and other supernatural occurrences were regarded by the multitude as connected with the defeat of Varus, and as indicating the wrath of the gods against Rome. Augustus himself was not free from the superstition Months and months after the day on which he received the fatal news he was continually crying: “Varus, give me back my legions.”
[8] In Westphalia, twenty miles to the west of Münster.
[9] Germanicus sent her to Rome, where she bore a son, whom she named Thumelicus. Mother and son graced the triumph of the conqueror on his return.
[10] The island inhabited by the Batavi, formed by the Rhine, the Waal, and the Maas. The chief town was Lugdunum, the modern Leyden, between the Maas and the Waal. According to Tacitus, who is loud in his praises of their courage, the Batavi were originally a branch of the Catti, by whom they were expelled from their home, and then took refuge on the island which, under the Romans, gave its name to the country now known as Holland.
[11] It is difficult to give, with perfect exactitude, the details of this battle, even to reconcile the accounts of the fighting with the description of the lay of the ground. There is reason to think that though Germanicus gained the victory, that victory was not so decisive as Tacitus would have us believe. For, in the first place, during the battle there was a cavalry fight, which, by the admission of the Romans themselves, was indecisive; in the next, although it was the height of summer, and the season was favourable for manœuvring, Germanicus, in spite of his victory, continued to fall back towards the Ems.
