weariness of revolution and civil war, and in consciousness of being too
debased for self-government, the nation had submitted itself to the
absolute authority of Augustus. Adulation was now the chief function of
the senate; and the gifts of genius and accomplishments of art were
devoted to the elaboration of eloquently false panegyrics upon the
prince and his favorite courtiers. With bitter indignation must the
German chieftain have beheld all this and contrasted with it the rough
worth of his own countrymen: their bravery, their fidelity to their
word, their manly independence of spirit, their love of their national
free institutions, and their loathing of every pollution and meanness.
Above all, he must have thought of the domestic virtues that hallowed a
German home; of the respect there shown to the female character, and of
the pure affection by which that respect was repaid. His soul must have
burned within him at the contemplation of such a race yielding to these
debased Italians.
Still, to persuade the Germans to combine, in spite of the frequent
feuds among themselves, in one sudden outbreak against Rome; to keep the
scheme concealed from the Romans until the hour for action arrived; and
then, without possessing a single walled town, without military stores,
without training, to teach his insurgent countrymen to defeat veteran
armies and storm fortifications, seemed so perilous an enterprise that
probably Arminius would have receded from it had not a stronger feeling
even than patriotism urged him on. Among the Germans of high rank who
had most readily submitted to the invaders and become zealous partisans
of Roman authority was a chieftain named Segestes. His daughter,
Thusnelda, was preeminent among the noble maidens of Germany. Arminius
had sought her hand in marriage; but Segestes, who probably discerned
the young chief's disaffection to Rome, forbade his suit, and strove to
preclude all communication between him and his daughter. Thusnelda,
however, sympathized far more with the heroic spirit of her lover than
with the timeserving policy of her father. An elopement baffled the
precautions of Segestes, who, disappointed in his hope of preventing the
marriage, accused Arminius before the Roman governor of having carried
off his daughter and of planning treason against Rome. Thus assailed,
and dreading to see his bride torn from him by the officials of the
foreign oppressor, Arminius delayed no longer, but bent all his energies
to organize and execute a general insurrection of the great mass of his
countrymen, who hitherto had submitted in sullen hatred to the Roman
dominion.
A change of governors had recently taken place, which, while it
materially favored the ultimate success of the insurgents, served, by
the immediate aggravation of the Roman oppressions which it produced, to
make the native population more universally eager to take arms.
Tiberius, who was afterward emperor, had recently been recalled from the
command in Germany and sent into Pannonia to put down a dangerous revolt
which had broken out against the Romans in that province. The German
patriots were thus delivered from the stern supervision of one of the
most suspicious of mankind, and were also relieved from having to
contend against the high military talents of a veteran commander, who
thoroughly understood their national character, and also the nature of
the country, which he himself had principally subdued.
In the room of Tiberius, Augustus sent into Germany Quintilius Varus,
who had lately returned from the proconsulate of Syria. Varus was a true
representative of the higher classes of the Romans, among whom a general
taste for literature, a keen susceptibility to all intellectual
gratifications, a minute acquaintance with the principles and practice
of their own national jurisprudence, a careful training in the schools
of the rhetoricians, and a fondness for either partaking in or watching
the intellectual strife of forensic oratory had become generally
diffused, without, however, having humanized the old Roman spirit of
cruel indifference to human feelings and human sufferings, and without
acting as the least checks on unprincipled avarice and ambition or on
habitual and gross profligacy. Accustomed to govern the depraved and
debased natives of Syria--a country where courage in man and virtue in
woman had for centuries been unknown--Varus thought that he might
gratify his licentious and rapacious passions with equal impunity among
the high-minded sons and pure-spirited daughters of Germany. When the
general of an army sets the example of outrages of this description, he
is soon faithfully imitated by his officers, and surpassed by his still
more brutal soldiery. The Romans now habitually indulged in those
violations of the sanctity of the domestic shrine, and those insults
upon honor and modesty, by which far less gallant spirits than those of
our Teutonic ancestors have often been maddened into insurrection.
Arminius found among the other German chiefs many who sympathized with
him in his indignation at their country's abasement, and many whom
private wrongs had stung yet more deeply. There was little difficulty in
collecting bold leaders for an attack on the oppressors, and little fear
of the population not rising readily at those leaders' call. But to
declare open war against Rome and to encounter Varus' army in a pitched
battle would have been merely rushing upon certain destruction. Varus
had three legions under him, a force which, after allowing for
detachments, cannot be estimated at less than fourteen thousand Roman
infantry. He had also eight or nine hundred Roman cavalry, and at least
an equal number of horse and foot sent from the allied states, or raised
among those provincials who had not received the Roman franchise.
It was not merely the number, but the quality of this force that made
them formidable; and, however contemptible Varus might be as a general,
Arminius well knew how admirably the Roman armies were organized and
officered, and how perfectly the legionaries understood every manoeuvre
and every duty which the varying emergencies of a stricken field might
require. Stratagem was, therefore, indispensable; and it was necessary
to blind Varus to their schemes until a favorable opportunity should
arrive for striking a decisive blow.
For this purpose, the German confederates frequented the head-quarters
of Varus, which seem to have been near the centre of the modern country
of Westphalia, where the Roman general conducted himself with all the
arrogant security of the governor of a perfectly submissive province.
There Varus gratified at once his vanity, his rhetorical tastes, and his
avarice, by holding courts, to which he summoned the Germans for the
settlement of all their disputes, while a bar of Roman advocates
attended to argue the cases before the tribunal of Varus, who did not
omit the opportunity of exacting court fees and accepting bribes. Varus
trusted implicitly to the respect which the Germans pretended to pay to
his abilities as a judge, and to the interest which they affected to
take in the forensic eloquence of their conquerors.
Meanwhile a succession of heavy rains rendered the country more
difficult for the operations of regular troops, and Arminius, seeing
that the infatuation of Varus was complete, secretly directed the tribes
near the Weser and the Ems to take up arms in open revolt against the
Romans. This was represented to Varus as an occasion which required his
prompt attendance at the spot; but he was kept in studied ignorance of
its being part of a concerted national rising; and he still looked on
Arminius as his submissive vassal, whose aid he might rely on in
facilitating the march of his troops against the rebels and in
extinguishing the local disturbance. He therefore set his army in
motion, and marched eastward in a line parallel to the course of the
Lippe. For some distance his route lay along a level plain; but on
arriving at the tract between the curve of the upper part of that stream
and the sources of the Ems, the country assumes a very different
character; and here, in the territory of the modern little principality
of Lippe, it was that Arminius had fixed the scene of his enterprise.
A wooded and hilly region intervenes between the heads of the two
rivers, and forms the water-shed of their streams. This region still
retains the name (Teutobergenwald = _Teutobergiensis saltus_) which it
bore in the days of Arminius. The nature of the ground has probably also
remained unaltered. The eastern part of it, round Detmold, the modern
capital of the principality of Lippe, is described by a modern German
scholar, Dr. Plate, as being a "table-land intersected by numerous deep
and narrow valleys, which in some places form small plains, surrounded
by steep mountains and rocks, and only accessible by narrow defiles. All
the valleys are traversed by rapid streams, shallow in the dry season,
but subject to sudden swellings in autumn and winter. The vast forests
which cover the summits and slopes of the hills consist chiefly of oak;
there is little underwood, and both men and horse would move with ease
in the forests if the ground were not broken by gulleys or rendered
impracticable by fallen trees." This is the district to which Varus is
supposed to have marched; and Dr. Plate adds that "the names of several
localities on and near that spot seem to indicate that a great battle
had once been fought there. We find the names '_das Winnefeld_' (the
field of victory), '_die Knochenbahn_' (the bone-lane), '_die
Knochenleke_' (the bone-brook), '_der Mordkessel_' (the kettle of
slaughter), and others."
Contrary to the usual strict principles of Roman discipline, Varus had
suffered his army to be accompanied and impeded by an immense train of
baggage wagons and by a rabble of camp followers, as if his troops had
been merely changing their quarters in a friendly country. When the long
array quitted the firm, level ground and began to wind its way among the
woods, the marshes, and the ravines, the difficulties of the march, even
without the intervention of an armed foe, became fearfully apparent. In
many places the soil, sodden with rain, was impracticable for cavalry
and even for infantry, until trees had been felled and a rude causeway
formed through the morass.
The duties of the engineer were familiar to all who served in the Roman
armies. But the crowd and confusion of the columns embarrassed the
working parties of the soldiery, and in the midst of their toil and
disorder the word was suddenly passed through their ranks that the
rear-guard was attacked by the barbarians. Varus resolved on pressing
forward; but a heavy discharge of missiles from the woods on either
flank taught him how serious was the peril, and he saw his best men
falling round him without the opportunity of retaliation; for his
light-armed auxiliaries, who were principally of Germanic race, now
rapidly deserted, and it was impossible to deploy the legionaries on
such broken ground for a charge against the enemy.
Choosing one of the most open and firm spots which they could force
their way to, the Romans halted for the night; and, faithful to their
national discipline and tactics, formed their camp amid the harassing
attacks of the rapidly thronging foes with the elaborate toil and
systematic skill the traces of which are impressed permanently on the
soil of so many European countries, attesting the presence in the olden
time of the imperial eagles.
On the morrow the Romans renewed their march, the veteran officers who
served under Varus now probably directing the operations and hoping to
find the Germans drawn up to meet them, in which case they relied on
their own superior discipline and tactics for such a victory as should
reassure the supremacy of Rome. But Arminius was far too sage a
commander to lead on his followers, with their unwieldy broadswords and
inefficient defensive armor, against the Roman legionaries, fully armed
with helmet, cuirass, greaves, and shield, who were skilled to commence
the conflict with a murderous volley of heavy javelins hurled upon the
foe when a few yards distant, and then, with their short cut-and-thrust
swords, to hew their way through all opposition, preserving the utmost
steadiness and coolness, and obeying each word of command in the midst
of strife and slaughter with the same precision and alertness as if upon
parade. Arminius suffered the Romans to march out from their camp, to
form first in line for action and then in column for marching, without
the show of opposition.
For some distance Varus was allowed to move on, only harassed by slight
skirmishes, but struggling with difficulty through the broken ground,
the toil and distress of his men being aggravated by heavy torrents of
rain, which burst upon the devoted legions, as if the angry gods of
Germany were pouring out the vials of their wrath upon the invaders.
After some little time their van approached a ridge of high wooded
ground, which is one of the offshoots of the great Hercynian forest, and
is situated between the modern villages of Driburg and Bielefeld.
Arminius had caused barricades of hewn trees to be formed here, so as to
add to the natural difficulties of the passage. Fatigue and
discouragement now began to betray themselves in the Roman ranks. Their
line became less steady; baggage wagons were abandoned from the
impossibility of forcing them along; and, as this happened, many
soldiers left their ranks and crowded round the wagons to secure the
most valuable portions of their property; each was busy about his own
affairs, and purposely slow in hearing the word of command from his
officers.
Arminius now gave the signal for a general attack. The fierce shouts of
the Germans pealed through the gloom of the forests, and in thronging
multitudes they assailed the flanks of the invaders, pouring in clouds
of darts on the encumbered legionaries as they struggled up the glens or
floundered in the morasses, and watching every opportunity of charging
through the intervals of the disjointed column, and so cutting off the
communication between its several brigades. Arminius, with a chosen band
of personal retainers round him, cheered on his countrymen by voice and
example. He and his men aimed their weapons particularly at the horses
of the Roman cavalry. The wounded animals, slipping about in the mire
and their own blood, threw their riders and plunged among the ranks of
the legions, disordering all round them. Varus now ordered the troops to
be countermarched, in the hope of reaching the nearest Roman garrison on
the Lippe.
But retreat now was as impracticable as advance; and the falling back of
the Romans only augmented the courage of their assailants and caused
fiercer and more frequent charges on the flanks of the disheartened
army. The Roman officer who commanded the cavalry, Numonius Vala, rode
off with his squadrons in the vain hope of escaping by thus abandoning
his comrades. Unable to keep together or force their way across the
woods and swamps, the horsemen were overpowered in detail and
slaughtered to the last man. The Roman infantry still held together and
resisted, but more through the instinct of discipline and bravery than
from any hope of success or escape.
Varus, after being severely wounded in a charge of the Germans against
his part of the column, committed suicide to avoid falling into the
hands of those whom he had exasperated by his oppressions. One of the
lieutenants-general of the army fell fighting; the other surrendered to
the enemy. But mercy to a fallen foe had never been a Roman virtue, and
those among her legions who now laid down their arms in hope of quarter,
drank deep of the cup of suffering, which Rome had held to the lips of
many a brave but unfortunate enemy. The infuriated Germans slaughtered
their oppressors with deliberate ferocity, and those prisoners who were
not hewn to pieces on the spot were only preserved to perish by a more
cruel death in cold blood.
The bulk of the Roman army fought steadily and stubbornly, frequently
repelling the masses of assailants, but gradually losing the compactness
of their array and becoming weaker and weaker beneath the incessant
shower of darts and the reiterated assaults of the vigorous and
unencumbered Germans. At last, in a series of desperate attacks, the
column was pierced through and through, two of the eagles captured, and
the Roman host, which on the morning before had marched forth in such
pride and might--now broken up into confused fragments--either fell
fighting beneath the overpowering numbers of the enemy or perished in
the swamps and woods in unavailing efforts at flight. Few, very few,
ever saw again the left bank of the Rhine. One body of brave veterans,
arraying themselves in a ring on a little mound, beat off every charge
of the Germans, and prolonged their honorable resistance to the close of
that dreadful day. The traces of a feeble attempt at forming a ditch and
mound attested in after-years the spot where the last of the Romans
passed their night of suffering and despair. But on the morrow this
remnant also, worn out with hunger, wounds, and toil, was charged by the
victorious Germans, and either massacred on the spot or offered up in
fearful rites on the altars of the deities of the old mythology of the
North.
A gorge in the mountain ridge, through which runs the modern road
between Paderborn and Pyrmont, leads from the spot where the heat of the
battle raged to the Extersteine--a cluster of bold and grotesque rocks
of sandstone--near which is a small sheet of water, overshadowed by a
grove of aged trees. According to local tradition, this was one of the
sacred groves of the ancient Germans, and it was here that the Roman
captives were slain in sacrifice by the victorious warriors of Arminius.
Never was victory more decisive; never was the liberation of an
oppressed people more instantaneous and complete. Throughout Germany the
Roman garrisons were assailed and cut off; and within a few weeks after
Varus had fallen, the German soil was freed from the foot of an invader.
At Rome the tidings of the battle were received with an agony of terror,
the reports of which we would deem exaggerated did they not come from
Roman historians themselves. They not only tell emphatically how great
was the awe which the Romans felt of the prowess of the Germans if their
various tribes could be brought to unite for a common purpose,[83] but
they also reveal how weakened and debased the population of Italy had
become. Dion Cassius says: "Then Augustus, when he heard the calamity of
Varus, rent his garment, and was in great affliction for the troops he
had lost, and for terror respecting the Germans and the Gauls. And his
chief alarm was that he expected them to push on against Italy and Rome;
and there remained no Roman youth fit for military duty that were worth
speaking of, and the allied populations, that were at all serviceable,
had been wasted away. Yet he prepared for the emergency as well as his
means allowed; and when none of the citizens of military age were
willing to enlist, he made them cast lots, and punished, by confiscation
of goods and disfranchisement, every fifth man among those under
thirty-five and every tenth man of those above that age. At last, when
he found that not even thus could he make many come forward, he put some
of them to death. So he made a conscription of discharged veterans and
of emancipated slaves, and, collecting as large a force as he could,
sent it, under Tiberius, with all speed into Germany."
[Footnote 83: It is clear that the Romans followed the policy of
fomenting dissensions and wars of the Germans among themselves.]
Dion mentions also a number of terrific portents that were believed to
have occurred at the time, and the narration of which is not immaterial,
as it shows the state of the public mind when such things were so
believed in and so interpreted. The summits of the Alps were said to
have fallen, and three columns of fire to have blazed up from them. In
the Campus Martius, the temple of the war-god, from whom the founder of
Rome had sprung, was struck by a thunderbolt. The nightly heavens glowed
several times as if on fire. Many comets blazed forth together; and
fiery meteors, shaped like spears, had shot from the northern quarter of
the sky down into the Roman camps. It was said, too, that a statue of
Victory, which had stood at a place on the frontier, pointing the way
toward Germany, had of its own accord turned round, and now pointed to
Italy. These and other prodigies were believed by the multitude to
accompany the slaughter of Varus' legions and to manifest the anger of
the gods against Rome.
Augustus himself was not free from superstition; but on this occasion no
supernatural terrors were needed to increase the alarm and grief that he
felt, and which made him, even months after the news of the battle had
arrived, often beat his head against the wall and exclaim, "Quintilius
Varus, give me back my legions." We learn this from his biographer
Suetonius; and, indeed, every ancient writer who alludes to the
overthrow of Varus attests the importance of the blow against the Roman
power, and the bitterness with which it was felt.
The Germans did not pursue their victory beyond their own territory; but
that victory secured at once and forever the independence of the
Teutonic race. Rome sent, indeed, her legions again into Germany, to
parade a temporary superiority, but all hopes of permanent conquests
were abandoned by Augustus and his successors.
The blow which Arminius had struck never was forgotten. Roman fear
disguised itself under the specious title of moderation, and the Rhine
became the acknowledged boundary of the two nations until the fifth
century of our era, when the Germans became the assailants, and carved
with their conquering swords the provinces of imperial Rome into the
kingdoms of modern Europe.
ARMINIUS
I have said above that the great Cheruscan is more truly one of our
national heroes than Caractacus is. It may be added that an Englishman
is entitled to claim a closer degree of relationship with Arminius than
can be claimed by any German of modern Germany. The proof of this
depends on the proof of four facts: First, that the Cheruscans were Old
Saxons, or Saxons of the interior of Germany; secondly, that the
Anglo-Saxons, or Saxons of the coast of Germany, were more closely akin
than other German tribes were to the Cheruscan Saxons; thirdly, that the
Old Saxons were almost exterminated by Charlemagne; fourthly, that the
Anglo-Saxons are our immediate ancestors. The last of these may be
assumed as an axiom in English history. The proofs of the other three
are partly philological and partly historical. It may be, however, here
remarked that the present Saxons of Germany are of the _High_ Germanic
division of the German race, whereas both the Anglo-Saxon and Old Saxon
were of the _Low_ Germanic.
Being thus the nearest heirs of the glory of Arminius, we may fairly
devote more attention to his career than, in such a work as the present,
could be allowed to any individual leader; and it is interesting to
trace how far his fame survived during the Middle Ages, both among the
Germans of the Continent and among ourselves.
It seems probable that the jealousy with which Maroboduus, the king of
the Suevi and Marcomanni, regarded Arminius, and which ultimately broke
out into open hostilities between those German tribes and the Cherusci,
prevented Arminius from leading the confederate Germans to attack Italy
after his first victory. Perhaps he may have had the rare moderation of
being content with the liberation of his country, without seeking to
retaliate on her former oppressors. When Tiberius marched into Germany
in the year 10, Arminius was too cautious to attack him on ground
favorable to the legions, and Tiberius was too skilful to entangle his
troops in the difficult parts of the country. His march and countermarch
were as unresisted as they were unproductive. A few years later, when a
dangerous revolt of the Roman legions near the frontier caused their
generals to find them active employment by leading them into the
interior of Germany, we find Arminius again active in his country's
defence. The old quarrel between him and his father-in-law, Segestes,
had broken out afresh.