2.11.06
The Varus Battle - Historical Context
In a way, it began with Caesar (if you don't count the Cimbri and Teutones marching in the direction of Italy scaring the beejuzes out of the Romans until consul Marius in 102 BC made haggis of the lot). We all know from Asterix that Caesar conquered Gaul in 52 BC - when Vercingetorix, drooping moustache and all, threw his sword at Caesar's feet - and established the provinces of Gallia Lugdunensis and Gallia Belgica west of the Rhine. Already Caesar had troubles with Germanic tribes who thought Gaul looked good, especially when it came to moveable goods including horses they could ferry across the Rhine, and they kept up with that long after Caesar was lying dead on the cold marble floor of the curia in Rome. They also killed Roman soldiers who came in their way.
To put an end to the raids, Drusus the Elder and Tiberius (the later emperor) led several campaigns into the lands of the Cherusci and Chatti and pushed as far as the Elbe (Albis) between 16 and 9 BC. They managed to play the tribes and families against each other, and for some years it looked like Germania Transrhenania (Germania Magna) could become a Roman province.
Since all the sources are a) Roman and thus biased (Tacitus) and b) mostly written a considerable time after the events (Cassius Dio), we can't say for sure what happened, but some basics seem to be somewhat clear. The Romans built forts east of the Rhine, and the remains of one have recently been discovered as far east as the Weser (Visurgis), more or less at my backdoor.
In 1 AD, the German tribes revolted against the Romans and nixed almost a legion near the Rhine frontier. So Tiberius went back with more soldiers, built more forts and put the fear of the eagles into the tribes along his path. In 4 AD the place looked peaceful again. At that time, Tiberius must have made peace contracts with some of the German chiefs, among them Arminius' father, the Cheruscian Segimer. According to Roman custom, the young prince and his brother Flavus went to Rome as hostages where they received an education and military training. Between 6-8 AD Arminius probably fought in the Pannonian War on the Roman side as commander of a German auxiliary regiment of cavalry. He received the Roman citizenship and was enrolled in the equestrian class, part of the Roman nobility.
Meanwhile in Germany, the governor Publius Quinctilius Varus tried to turn Germania Transrhenania into a proper Roman province the way Caesar had done with Gaul. The Roman sources made him the scapegoat for the disaster and stated that his rule was too hard, not taking into account German customs, overtaxing them and generally running roughshod over the province-to-be. Some of this may be an exaggeration since Varus had been governor of Syria, another troublesome province, with success. We also don't know if Arminius always harboured a secret hartred towards the Romans even while he lived among them, or if he upon his return indeed was provoked by the way Romans acted in Germany (that's what most of the sources say). It is also possible that he after his father's death strove for some sort of High Kingship not only over the Cheruscians but over other tribes as well and that his war against Rome was guided not by hartred but by ambition, and Varus simply the wrong man in the wrong place.
What happened was that Arminius accompanied Varus during his summer stay in Germania in 9 AD, all the while secretly mobilising the Cherusci, Chatti, Bructeri and other tribes. When the Roman army marched all the way from the Weser back to their winter camp in the forts west of the Rhine, Arminius guided them away from the main way (Cassius Dio mentions a pretext that there was uprising, which would not explain why Varus took the entire train of noncombatants on a minor punitive expedition, though). Arminius then left the army while they cleared a way through a terrain of woods and bogs, and obviously under formidable German autumn rains, to spring the final trap.
For two days the Germans attacked the Roman marching column guerilla style, already causing a lot of casualities. During the first night, the Romans still managed to set up a fortified camp the way they used while on the march, but in the second night, discipline was going downhill, and probably also the capacity to entrench in the soaked earth, and the men were tired from slogging through difficult terrain, all the way under attack from German javelins and arrows. At some point, the cavalry fled or changed sides (there may have been Cheruscian units, and Numonius Vala, the Roman officer in charge of the horse, was a coward according to the sources, and got killed during his flight). On the third day, the rest of the army reached a particularly small part of the path, woods to one side, a swamp to the other, and to make things worse the Germans had built wall and wicker defenses to hide behind. They now stormed out from behind their shelters in full force and fell upon the Romans.
Wounded and aware that everything was lost, Varus and most of the other officers fell upon their swords. Those who didn't were captured and sacrified to the German gods. Of some 18,000 men, three legions à 5,200, six auxiliary cohorts à 500 and the noncombattant train, including women and children, very few survived either by breaking through the German lines or were later bought free of captivity. It was a complete disaster that shocked the Emperor Augustus and all of Rome.
The second part of the war in Germany is up here. ¶ 4:39 AM
In a way, it began with Caesar (if you don't count the Cimbri and Teutones marching in the direction of Italy scaring the beejuzes out of the Romans until consul Marius in 102 BC made haggis of the lot). We all know from Asterix that Caesar conquered Gaul in 52 BC - when Vercingetorix, drooping moustache and all, threw his sword at Caesar's feet - and established the provinces of Gallia Lugdunensis and Gallia Belgica west of the Rhine. Already Caesar had troubles with Germanic tribes who thought Gaul looked good, especially when it came to moveable goods including horses they could ferry across the Rhine, and they kept up with that long after Caesar was lying dead on the cold marble floor of the curia in Rome. They also killed Roman soldiers who came in their way.
To put an end to the raids, Drusus the Elder and Tiberius (the later emperor) led several campaigns into the lands of the Cherusci and Chatti and pushed as far as the Elbe (Albis) between 16 and 9 BC. They managed to play the tribes and families against each other, and for some years it looked like Germania Transrhenania (Germania Magna) could become a Roman province.
Since all the sources are a) Roman and thus biased (Tacitus) and b) mostly written a considerable time after the events (Cassius Dio), we can't say for sure what happened, but some basics seem to be somewhat clear. The Romans built forts east of the Rhine, and the remains of one have recently been discovered as far east as the Weser (Visurgis), more or less at my backdoor.
In 1 AD, the German tribes revolted against the Romans and nixed almost a legion near the Rhine frontier. So Tiberius went back with more soldiers, built more forts and put the fear of the eagles into the tribes along his path. In 4 AD the place looked peaceful again. At that time, Tiberius must have made peace contracts with some of the German chiefs, among them Arminius' father, the Cheruscian Segimer. According to Roman custom, the young prince and his brother Flavus went to Rome as hostages where they received an education and military training. Between 6-8 AD Arminius probably fought in the Pannonian War on the Roman side as commander of a German auxiliary regiment of cavalry. He received the Roman citizenship and was enrolled in the equestrian class, part of the Roman nobility.
Meanwhile in Germany, the governor Publius Quinctilius Varus tried to turn Germania Transrhenania into a proper Roman province the way Caesar had done with Gaul. The Roman sources made him the scapegoat for the disaster and stated that his rule was too hard, not taking into account German customs, overtaxing them and generally running roughshod over the province-to-be. Some of this may be an exaggeration since Varus had been governor of Syria, another troublesome province, with success. We also don't know if Arminius always harboured a secret hartred towards the Romans even while he lived among them, or if he upon his return indeed was provoked by the way Romans acted in Germany (that's what most of the sources say). It is also possible that he after his father's death strove for some sort of High Kingship not only over the Cheruscians but over other tribes as well and that his war against Rome was guided not by hartred but by ambition, and Varus simply the wrong man in the wrong place.
What happened was that Arminius accompanied Varus during his summer stay in Germania in 9 AD, all the while secretly mobilising the Cherusci, Chatti, Bructeri and other tribes. When the Roman army marched all the way from the Weser back to their winter camp in the forts west of the Rhine, Arminius guided them away from the main way (Cassius Dio mentions a pretext that there was uprising, which would not explain why Varus took the entire train of noncombatants on a minor punitive expedition, though). Arminius then left the army while they cleared a way through a terrain of woods and bogs, and obviously under formidable German autumn rains, to spring the final trap.For two days the Germans attacked the Roman marching column guerilla style, already causing a lot of casualities. During the first night, the Romans still managed to set up a fortified camp the way they used while on the march, but in the second night, discipline was going downhill, and probably also the capacity to entrench in the soaked earth, and the men were tired from slogging through difficult terrain, all the way under attack from German javelins and arrows. At some point, the cavalry fled or changed sides (there may have been Cheruscian units, and Numonius Vala, the Roman officer in charge of the horse, was a coward according to the sources, and got killed during his flight). On the third day, the rest of the army reached a particularly small part of the path, woods to one side, a swamp to the other, and to make things worse the Germans had built wall and wicker defenses to hide behind. They now stormed out from behind their shelters in full force and fell upon the Romans.
Wounded and aware that everything was lost, Varus and most of the other officers fell upon their swords. Those who didn't were captured and sacrified to the German gods. Of some 18,000 men, three legions à 5,200, six auxiliary cohorts à 500 and the noncombattant train, including women and children, very few survived either by breaking through the German lines or were later bought free of captivity. It was a complete disaster that shocked the Emperor Augustus and all of Rome.
The second part of the war in Germany is up here. ¶ 4:39 AM
Comments:
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Wow, Gabriele. Not very good times. I enjoyed your history lessons and detail and links to the photos. You have sparked my imagination! I'll be checking in again!
Thanks for taking the time.
Thanks for taking the time.
Neat history snippet, Gabriele. Thanks for sharing. I always learn from your site!
Thanks for the pictures too, they help me get a feel for things. I found my pictures from when I lived in Italy, but it's a different feel. Mostly temple sites in Sicily and aquaducts. Hey, what can I say, I was an engineer...
:)
Thanks for the pictures too, they help me get a feel for things. I found my pictures from when I lived in Italy, but it's a different feel. Mostly temple sites in Sicily and aquaducts. Hey, what can I say, I was an engineer...
:)
Thanks for this, Gabriele. Interesting that you mention that Varus may have been made the scapegoat by the Roman chroniclers. Why do you suppose they might have done that - why not try to put all the blame on perfidious Arminius betraying his Roman friends?
What happened to Arminius afterwards - did he become High King?
What happened to Arminius afterwards - did he become High King?
Hi Cynthia,
glad you liked it. I'll get the second part up during the weekend.
Constance,
Sicilian aquaeducts sound fun. Share some, if you want.
Carla,
it's one of the few consistent aspects in rather diverging sources, and Germanicus who - if you add up his losses - didn't fare much better only less spectacularly so, and he was granted a triumph in Rome as victor over the Germans. :)
Arminius was killed by some of his own relations in 21 AD.
glad you liked it. I'll get the second part up during the weekend.
Constance,
Sicilian aquaeducts sound fun. Share some, if you want.
Carla,
it's one of the few consistent aspects in rather diverging sources, and Germanicus who - if you add up his losses - didn't fare much better only less spectacularly so, and he was granted a triumph in Rome as victor over the Germans. :)
Arminius was killed by some of his own relations in 21 AD.
Germany does lend itself to ambushes of that kind, doesn't it? Reminds me of Sempach and Nafels.
As for governors getting undeserved blame, we have plenty of that. I guess I shouldn't mention the name Marcus Hordeonius Flaccus, lest you get wandering plotbunnies....
As for governors getting undeserved blame, we have plenty of that. I guess I shouldn't mention the name Marcus Hordeonius Flaccus, lest you get wandering plotbunnies....
Ouch.
Seems like I mentioned the wrong battle. It's Morgarten, not Sempach. So, Sempach, Nafels, and the Teutoburger Forest. Swamp on one side, heights on the other, ambush, slaughter.
Sounds like those folks were having a pretty good time. ;P
Seems like I mentioned the wrong battle. It's Morgarten, not Sempach. So, Sempach, Nafels, and the Teutoburger Forest. Swamp on one side, heights on the other, ambush, slaughter.
Sounds like those folks were having a pretty good time. ;P
The tribes north of the Hadrian's Wall had that sort of fun, too, only with less trees. Antonine Wall and Gask Ridge forts nonewithstanding, Rome never got a firm foothold up there.
Nice read, Gabriele. I have been reading up on Rome's war in Germany and your piece is a nice summary. Thanks.
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