TEUTOBERGER WALD
In Germany, in the modern principality of the Lippe, may still be
seen traces of the historic struggle between the Roman legions
under Varus and the Germanic barbarians led by Arminius. The names
“das Winnefeld” (the field of victory), “die Knochenbahn” (the
bone-lane), “die Knochenleke” (the bone-brook), “der Mordkessel”
(the kettle of slaughter), which still characterize various places
in the gloomy Teutoberger Wald, are in themselves reminders
of scenes of horror which were once dread realities; while
scattered here and there may still be seen traces of the Roman
camp--unmistakable evidence of the one time presence of the Roman
eagles.
TRAPPED.
Perhaps all is fair in war, and the end justifies the means, and
the eleventh commandment “Do to the enemy what he’d like to do
to you”, being altogether heartless and godless is peculiarly
applicable to war: nevertheless the victory won by treachery never
sounds so clarionly joyous adown the ages as the victory following
a fair fight; and the deadly defeat that came by treachery has in
it a pathos that redeems defeat from disgrace. Time is just.
When Varus started out at the head of his legions to quell, as he
thought, an insurrection of a few unimportant tribes scattered
along the Weser and the Ems rivers, Germany seemed comparatively at
peace; and Arminius, the most dreaded war-lord of the barbarians,
seemed to have been won over by the blandishments of the Roman camp.
It was a gala day for the troops as with ample supplies, generous
baggage-wagons, plenty of camp followers, jesters, entertainers,
they turned away from the frontier and plunged into the Black
Forest. There was nothing to indicate that concerted action
on the part of the Germans was the cause of that far distant
uprising against Roman authority, and that within their ranks were
half-Romanized barbarians who would desert at a given signal and
use their arms against their present comrades; above all, that
Arminius had secretly instigated a general uprising and that the
Black Forests were blackly alive with the foe.
On went the Roman troops following their treacherous guides who
purposely led them into the dense marshy depths of the woods; and
when thus lost and entangled, their cavalry unable to advance,
and while all the troops were called upon to construct a rude
causeway over which the horses might proceed--suddenly from the
gloom encompassing them on all sides came deadly arrows, missiles,
javelins hurled by an unseen foe.
Varus seems to have been unable to realize that he was the victim
of a stratagem. His best men, officers and soldiers, were falling
around him; his cavalry slipping in slimy blood lay floundering
on the way; his light-armed auxiliaries, composed in great part
of brawny German youth, were slinking away and becoming strangely
one with the forces whence came the arrows, missiles, javelins.
Still Varus urged on the work on the causeway, and still veterans
advanced to the work as veterans fell and at last the gloomy march
resumed.
The attack seemed over and Varus thought some isolated tribe of
barbarians had taken advantage of their hour of disability to
harass them on the march. On reaching a declivity of the woody
plain Varus drew up his forces as best he could in battle line and
thus awaited the coming of the foe. But Arminius was not prepared
to meet the Romans in battle; his rude warriors were no match for
the trained Roman soldiers fully protected by helmet, cuirass,
greaves, and shield. There could have been but one result to such
an encounter--victory for the Romans, defeat for the cause of
liberty and native land.
Arminius held in leash his blood-hounds all thro’ the night. The
Romans halted on the slope and, perceiving no enemy near, pitched
their camp with true Roman precision and then slept long and well
the heavy sleep of worn out nature that last night of mortal life.
At early dawn, while the Roman camp yet lay moveless, undreaming
of the savage blood-hounds around or the deadly ambush
ahead,--Arminius despatched men to the farther end of the defile
with orders to fell trees and erect an impassable barricade. He
then sent troops to different points of advantage on either side
of the defile thro’ which the fated army would advance; he gave
instructions as to concerted action at the sound of the agreed-upon
signal, and thus awaited the coming of morn and the renewed
activities of the Roman camp.
There is something sternly terrible in the human heart which
can thus joyfully contemplate the destruction of thousands upon
thousands of one’s fellow mortals. And yet, in this case, these
Roman soldiers were the concrete embodiment of a cause which would
enslave Arminius’ native land, intrude deadly enervation into the
integrity of a German home; and more--much more: Rome had deeply
wronged Arminius, lover of liberty, lover of native land; but even
more deeply had she wronged Arminius, the lover, and the man.
His wife, Thusnelda, was held a captive in Rome and his child,
a fair haired boy of only five years, had been made to grace a
Roman triumph. Rivers of blood could not wash away such seared yet
burning memories from the heart.
With fierce exultation did Arminius watch the waking of the camp,
the taking up of pickets, formation of line, and the slow winding
motion towards the way, the fatal way, he had foreseen they must
go. Had Varus even then become suspicious of concerted treachery,
he would have hastened back, would have plunged into the heart of
the unknown wood, would have remained in camp, would have done
anything under the sun rather than advance right into that narrow
densely wooded way ambushed at every vantage point on both sides
and shut in at the farther end by that barricade high as the tops
of the trees. But he looked and knew not; Arminius saw and knew and
exulted.
DER MORDKESSEL.
Fate is always on the winning side. As day advanced and the
troops were all now fairly within the ravine, the heavens opened
in streams of torrential rain. The Black Forest seemed to groan
with impending doom: old Thor and Odin seemed fighting for their
altars in the Druid wood, and Roman Jove was no match for this grim
Teutonic Thor.
Arminius watched from the height; and just as the vanguard rounded
the curve at the summit of which rose the barricade of trees, the
signal for general assault all along the line arose clear and
decisive from the height.
The slaughter was appalling. The bulk of the infantry, fourteen
thousand men, were slain; while the cavalry which at first had
numbered about eighteen hundred horsemen, partly Romans partly
provincial, made here its last dread stand against the foe
and--lost.
Numonius Vola, a Roman cavalry officer, seeing the utter
uselessness of the attempt to continue the unfair strife, made a
bold dash for deliverance. At the head of a small force, he turned
away from the floundering mass of horses and men and plunged
into the unknown forest. He was, however, soon surrounded by the
Germans, and he and his soldiers were cut to pieces.
A brave band of Romans, last of that death-devoted multitude of
men, gained a point of vantage on a hill slope and arranging
themselves in a solid circle presented to the foe an almost
impenetrable line of glittering points of spears. The Germans, tho’
outnumbering them a hundred to one, yet quailed before that steely
welcome. Perhaps, too, being themselves brave men, they were in awe
and admiration of that heroic despair; perhaps, being perfectly
sure of their prey, they were loth to break the savage satisfaction
of gloating upon its desperation; perhaps no Arnold Winkelreid
opportunely came forth to offer himself in sacrifice upon those
outstretched points and so wedge open the way; perhaps, and O most
dread truth-perhaps! those wild children of the Druid wood saw
safely entrenched behind that helpless steel--worthy victims for
Odin. And thus the night passed--that awful last night upon earth
for the last of the legions of Varus.
There is an open space on the flat top of an overhanging rock,
darkly terrible even today and still the favorite haunt of century
old oaks: and this place tradition points out as the spot upon
which human sacrifices were of old offered to Thor and to Odin.
And thither the blue eyed barbarians dragged those Roman soldiers,
bravest of the brave, who had stood entrenched behind their
helpless steel until exhaustion overcame them and who at last
overpowered by sheer force of numbers, had been taken alive by the
implacable foe and dragged to the altar of sacrifice.
Strange indeed is that delusion, so often inextricably assimilable
with religious fanaticism, wherein a man makes himself believe that
he honors or placates Deity by immolating thereto his own enemy!
Truly the human-heart god is the deification of its own desires.
And that God-man upon the Cross who is essentially the everlasting
antithesis of the desires of the human heart is not of man. We
can understand Jove and Juno and Mars and Venus and even Odin and
Thor--they are ourselves only more so: not so the Christ crucified
on Calvary.
EFFECTS.
Fifteen thousand eight hundred men are estimated to have formed the
army lost in the Teutoberger Wald. This irreparable loss gave to
the heart of Cæsar Augustus its pathetic cry enduring even to the
day of death, “Varus, Varus, give back my legions, Varus!”
Suetonius tells us that at the news of the Black Forest disaster,
Augustus, in bitter grief, beat his head against the wall crying
incessantly and inconsolably, “Bring back my legions, Varus”: and
that after many years had passed and even to the day of his death
he lamented the loss as irreparable. Not, indeed, because so many
men had fallen; Rome was prodigal of human life; but because his
prophetic eye saw in this defeat the beginning of the end of Roman
supremacy; the change of policy from aggressive to defensive; the
fatal turning of a tide which should roll down upon southern Europe
in inundations of desolation.
Many other ancient writers attest the seriousness of this defeat
to Rome and corroborate what Suetonius says as to its effect upon
Augustus. 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 were 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.”
Florus also expresses its effects: “_Hac clade factum est ut
imperium quod in litore oceani non steterat, in ripa Rheni fluminis
staret_.” (The result of this disaster was that the empire which
had not been content that it be bounded by the shore of ocean was
forced to accept as its boundary the River Rhine).
ARMINIUS.
There was an attempt made many years ago to erect a statue to the
memory of Arminius. The site chosen for this imposing monument
was, of course, the Teutoberger Wald. It was suggested that
contributions be received only from the English and German nations
and that the statue should stand as a memorial of the common
ancestry and heritage of the German-English races.
Arminius is indeed more truly an English national hero than was
Caractacus, if the Saxon genealogy be properly traced.
However, the project fell through. England and Germany are not yet
amicably one under the tutelage of a far off German war-lord: and
no colossal statue of Arminius--successful strategist and wholesale
slaughterer--rises today in gloomy Teutoberger Wald from out the
dark depths of Der Mordkessel.