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In our previous videos we detailed the catastrophic Roman defeat in the Teutoburg Forest and its
aftermath. This calamity had resulted in the loss of all territories east of the River
Rhine and had annihilated three entire legions, while their revered Aquilae were lost. However,
the Romans would not accept this humiliation sitting down, and revenge would soon be meted
out on the treacherous Arminius, culminating in the battles at Idistaviso and the Angrivarian
Wall.
It is 9 AD, and as the news of the clades Variana - the Varian Disaster - radiated throughout
the Roman Empire, it became obvious that reinforcements had to be sent to the Gallic border. The closest
commander to the area Tiberius, marched north towards the Rhine. He found its defenses almost
unmanned. He garrisoned the forts and ordered guard details to be posted at strategic points
along the Rhine, to prevent any possible Germanic crossing of the river. With these arrangements
made, he departed for Rome and left his adopted son, Germanicus, as commander in the area.
The boy who would become Germanicus was born Nero Claudius Drusus in 16 BC. He was the
nephew of Tiberius and great-nephew of Augustus himself. His father, another Nero Claudius
Drusus, was killed when he fell off his horse in 9 BC. The Senate granted the family the
honorific Germanicus as a battle honour. Despite this lack of experience, young Germanicus
proved himself brilliant, and recruited, trained and marshalled his own army from scratch,
as the Illyrian situation deteriorated in 6 AD. With his army assembled from freedmen
and conscripts in Rome, Germanicus crossed the Adriatic to the warzone in Illyria.
At this point in the conflict, many professional commanders were bogged down by the insurgents’
guerilla tactics, but Germanicus enjoyed much success. He conquered the Illyrian Mazaei
people, in whose territory his army wintered. As the conflict dragged into 8 AD, Germanicus
rejoined his army and moved south to take Splonum - a prosperous mining centre. After
some difficulty he took the city, followed by Raetium and many other rebel strongholds
along the way. After these many successes, he was given command
of an entire army group, with which he helped to turn the war in Rome’s favour during
9 AD. After the Illyrian surrender, Germanicus received triumphal honours, in addition to
the position of praetor as a reward for his great courage and prowess. Before the war
he was a naive civil magistrate with a talent for writing, and now he was a battle commander.
This is what Germanicus had accomplished before taking the office along the Rhine, in the
aftermath of the Teutoburg catastrophe in 9 AD. After a brief stint as military commander
in the region, during which he stabilized the regional defenses, he returned to Rome,
where he performed his duties as a Praetor expertly.
In 11 AD the responsibility to deal with the possible Germanic threat was given to Tiberius
and Germanicus. They passed across the Rhine border, marching with impunity through Germany.
Due to the cautiousness of both sides, there was no pitched battle, and in late 11AD, Germanicus
returned to Rome. Upon his arrival at the start at 12AD, he
became a Consul at the age of 27 - one of the youngest ever to receive the honour. After
his year as Consul had expired, Germanicus was appointed legatus Augusti pro praetore
- or ‘deputy and governor’ for the three Gallic provinces and Germania - the very same
position which his father Drusus the Elder had occupied. The new Legate’s duties included
nation building in the new regions, ensuring internal stability, and promoting Rome’s
economic interests in the area. In the late summer of 14 AD and at the old
age of 75, Augustus, the creator of the Roman Empire and adopted son of Julius Caesar, passed
away while visiting Nola. The succession of Augustus had been a prime concern throughout
his reign. Eventually Tiberius was chosen by the late Princeps to inherit the Empire,
while Germanicus and his family were now permitted to take the name Caesar.
In Rome, Tiberius consolidated his power among the military, senate and aristocracy while
his heir-apparent - Postumus Agrippa, perished, with Germanicus ascending to the role instead.
At this point it is possible that Tiberius became paranoid about his popular nephew’s
power, and that feared he might attempt to overthrow him. However, Germanicus was unswervingly
loyal to the new Emperor, and proved it by his actions, not at all thinking of usurping
the imperial authority. A test of this loyalty was put to the vibrant
young General in mid-15 AD, when the legions on the Rhine and Danube revolted. They were
angry about pay, conditions and the cruelty of their centurions. Dissatisfied at Tiberius’
response, they attempted to proclaim Germanicus the Emperor, but he angrily refused. Instead,
he proclaimed that he would rather die than betray the Emperor and threatened to commit
suicide. The legions stopped him, and they eventually came to a compromise.
Seeking to focus the legionnaire’s energy on a common foe to restore their unity, Germanicus
sent 15,000 men across the Rhine to devastate the Marsi nation, ruthlessly ordering that
everything in a 50 mile radius of their city should be burned and destroyed, while all
enemy civilians in the area were murdered. When this was done, other Germanic tribes
attacked as the Romans were marching back to the Rhine. Germanicus rallied his troops
to victory, then travelled back to Rome. Word of his exploits in crushing the mutinies and
invading Germania reached the eternal city before he did, and the people of Rome, as
well as the praetorian cohorts, came to meet him upon his return, applauding his achievements.
As a reward for his services, Germanicus received the privilege of a triumph.
Germanicus then returned to modern day Cologne, where he began to plan that year’s campaigns.
Across the [river?] lived a tribe called the Chatti. As they were close to the sphere of
Roman urban influence, they had urban settlements, engaged in lengthy military campaigns and
even elected their leaders. Their power represented a large threat to Roman interests in the region,
and so Germanicus launched a brutal two-pronged attack against them. Many Chatti villages
were burned and countless men, women and children were killed in this campaign, which drew the
attention of the Cherusci, the tribe of Arminius, and the remnants of the Marsi. The latter
were quickly defeated by Germanicus. The Romans even captured Arminius’ pregnant wife Thusnelda.
Hearing of his wife’s capture, Arminius rallied his Cherusci tribe and their Germanic
allies. Germanicus knew that he needed to launch a preemptive strike before the tribes
could launch their own attack, and planned a massive three-pronged attack to surround
the Cherusci, aiming to cut them off from their Bructeri and Angrivarii allies.
While two commanders led the legions on land, Germanicus himself headed an amphibious invasion
up the river Ems. The central column reached the main Bructeri settlement and pillaged
it, managing to find the Aquila of Legio 19. The three army groups then joined together,
and Germanicus diverted their route into the area in which Varus’ legions had been slaughtered.
Roman remains and equipment still littered the area and, in an emotional experience,
the Roman soldiers buried their massacred comrades and honoured them with a tumulus
- a sacred mound. As he retreated, Germanicus’ army was attacked and suffered badly, but
the campaigns of 15 AD had largely been a success.
The next year Germanicus decided to launch a decisive campaign against Arminius. A massive
amphibious invasion of 52,000 soldiers and 1,000 ships again thrust up the Ems and disembarked
on the left side of the river. His legions marched east until they met the Germanic forces
on opposite side of the Weser River. The two armies drew up for the coming conflict
in an area of the channel in which there were fords, but no bridges. Germanicus decided
that without safe crossing points, he would be exposing his legionaries to unnecessary
danger if he forced them to cross, and so came up with a new plan. While the majority
of his army stayed where it was, he commanded the left and right wing cavalry units under
Stertinius and Aemilius to distract the Germanic infantry on the flanks, while the elite Batavian
cavalry under Charivalda crashed into the enemy centre.
The Batavians made progress against Arminius’ front line, and almost broke through to the
enemy leader. But he had served with the Roman military during the years before Teutoburg,
and was familiar with this diversionary tactic. He had laid a trap of his own and at this
point his Cherusci cavalry swept out of the forest and surrounded Charivalda’s forces,
killing the cavalry commander. Their horsemen began to melt away under the charge, but the
two flanking cavalry forces turned inward and attempted to rescue their Batavian counterparts.
They succeeded, and a small amount of the surviving central cavalry managed to escape.
Seeing that his initial strategy had failed, Germanicus sounded a retreat across the river
and returned to the camp. The Roman commander wanted to campaign against
Arminius further, but he was unsure about the morale of his soldiers. He was soon reassured
when the taunting of a Germanic warrior was replied by the legionaries angrily jeering,
and shouting back that they would take their lands and wives as spoils of war. Confident
in the high spirits of his soldiers, Germanicus marched out once again to engage the enemy
on the Plain of Idistaviso. His army consisted of Gallic and Germanic
auxiliaries, as well as foot archers in the vanguard. Four Imperial legions were behind
them, followed by Germanicus himself, accompanied by two Praetorian cohorts and some handpicked
cavalry. Next came four more Roman legions, lightly armed troops, some horse-archers and
the remaining allied cohorts. Arminius’ Angrivarii and Cherusci infantry
forces began on a hill slope and charged viciously down at the Roman front line to open the battle.
Seeing the Germanic infantry making their charge, Germanicus ordered the cavalry under
Stertinius to attack Arminius’ flank and rear, holding his infantry back for the time
being. He waited until the cavalry made contact, and then ordered his auxiliaries and the first
four legions to advance at the charging Germanic infantry.
As the legionaries threw their two Pila the enemy began to immediately suffer casualties,
and they eventually started to flee. However, Arminius himself, along with the second line
of Germanic warriors, charged towards the exposed Roman archers, which were then reinforced
by the allied cohorts. Gradually, the tide of battle turned against the Germans and they,
as they had done to the Romans seven years earlier, were utterly slaughtered. No prisoners
were taken, while Arminius escaped. After his victory, Germanicus constructed
a victory monument, and this angered the Germans enough to fight once again. Arminius and the
tribal war council decided to retreat to Angrivarii land to prepare for the next battle. The warriors
of this land erected an earthwork barricade between a swamp and a forest, with Arminius
wishing to draw the Romans into attacking the barrier while the Cherusci cavalry and
infantry laid in ambush. However, Germanicus’ scouts had seen the Germans constructing their
defensive fortification, and he developed a counter-strategy.
He drew up his army in front of the barricade with himself commanding the battlegroup assaulting
the more difficult terrain on the right flank, accompanied by the Praetorian cohorts. Meanwhile,
Seius Tubero commanded the left flank on more level ground.
The battle opened when the left battlegroup attacked the wall, facing difficulty and drawing
Germanic reinforcements to them. At the same time, the Roman cavalry on the right engaged
the Germanic forces in the forest, who Germanicus knew were there. Nevertheless, they still
suffered losses. In order to soften the enemy up, the Roman
archers, slingers and artillery rained down missiles on the wall. Germanicus decided this
was the moment, and he led his Praetorian cohorts forward up the slope toward the barrier.
After some brutal combat, this elite formation managed to break through the barrier and then
swung right, attacking the Cherusci forces from the rear. In this brutal fighting, Germanicus
himself slew many enemies, inspiring his soldiers to victory. After hours of intense fighting,
the Romans drove the enemy from the battlefield, and the remaining Germanic leaders fled.
The Roman psychological wounds from the Teutoburg disaster had been avenged, but Tiberius decided
that conquering Germania was not worth the cost, and recalled Germanicus to Rome, where
he again was awarded a triumph and the Consulship in 18 AD. After this he was sent to Asia and
reorganised the provinces there. However, he either died of disease or was poisoned
in 19AD - the Roman conqueror was dead. Similarly in Germany, Arminius, lacking the Romans as
an active enemy, began to war against other Germanic tribes and was eventually killed
by opponents in his own tribe who thought that he was becoming too powerful.
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