The Provinces of the Roman Empire (Illustrated Edition). Theodor Mommsen

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СКАЧАТЬ patriots, were now again at open variance with the much stronger national party, and invoked the intervention of Germanicus. He was actually successful in liberating Segestes, the friend of the Romans, when hard pressed by his countrymen, and at the same time in getting possession of his daughter, the wife of Arminius. Segestes’ brother Segimerus, once the leader of the patriots by the side of Arminius, submitted. The internal dissensions of the Germans once more paved the way for the foreign rule. In the very same year Germanicus undertook his main expedition to the region of the Ems; Caecina marched from Vetera to the upper Ems, while he in person went thither with the fleet from the mouth of the Rhine; the cavalry moved along the coast through the territory of the faithful Frisians. When reunited the Romans laid waste the country of the Bructeri and the whole territory between the Ems and Lippe, and thence made an expedition to the disastrous spot where, six years before, the army of Varus had perished, to erect a monument to their fallen comrades. On their farther advance the Roman cavalry were allured by Arminius and the exasperated hosts of the patriots into an ambush, and would have been destroyed had not the infantry come up and prevented greater mischief. More serious dangers attended the return homeward from the Ems, which followed at first the same routes as the march thither.

      Retreat of Caecina.

      The cavalry arrived at the winter camp uninjured. Seeing that the fleet was not sufficient for conveying the infantry of four legions, owing to the difficulty of navigation—it was about the time of the autumnal equinox—Germanicus disembarked two of them and made them return along the shore; but inadequately acquainted with the ebbing and flowing of the tide at this season of the year, they lost their baggage and ran the risk of being drowned en masse. The retreat of the four legions of Caecina from the Ems to the Rhine resembled exactly that of Varus; indeed, the difficult, marshy country offered perhaps still greater difficulties than the defiles of the wooded hills. The whole mass of natives, with the two princes of the Cherusci, Arminius and his highly esteemed uncle Inguiomerus, at their head, threw themselves on the retreating troops in the sure hope of preparing for them the same fate, and filled the morasses and woods all around. But the old general, experienced in forty years’ of war service, remained cool even in the utmost peril, and kept his despairing and famishing men firmly in hand. Yet even he might not perhaps have been able to avert the mischief but for the circumstance that, after a successful attack during the march, in which the Romans lost a great part of their cavalry and almost the whole baggage, the Germans, sure of victory and eager for spoil, in opposition to Arminius’ advice, followed the other leader, and instead of further surrounding the enemy, attempted directly to storm the camp. Caecina allowed the Germans to come up to the ramparts, but then burst forth from all posterns and gates with such vehemence upon the assailants that they suffered a severe defeat, and in consequence of it the further retreat took place without material hindrance. Those at the Rhine had already given up the army as lost, and were on the point of casting off the bridge at Vetera, to prevent the Germans at least from penetrating into Gaul; it was only the resolute remonstrance of a woman, the wife of Germanicus and daughter of Agrippa, which frustrated the desperate and disgraceful resolve.

      The resumption of the subjugation of Germany thus began not quite successfully. The territory between the Rhine and Weser had indeed been again trodden and traversed, but the Romans had no decisive results to show, and the enormous loss in material, particularly in horses, was sorely felt, so that, as in the times of Scipio, the towns of Italy and of the western provinces took part in patriotic contributions to make up for what was lost.

      Campaign of the year 16.

      For the next campaign (16) Germanicus changed his plan of warfare. He attempted the subjugation of Germany on the basis of the North Sea and the fleet, partly because the tribes on the coast, the Batavi, Frisians, and Chauci, adhered more or less to the Romans, partly in order to shorten the marches—in which much time was spent and much loss incurred—from the Rhine to the Weser and Elbe and back again. After he had employed this spring, like the previous one, for rapid advances on the Main and on the Lippe, he, in the beginning of summer, embarked his whole army at the mouth of the Rhine in the powerful transport–fleet of 1000 sail which had meanwhile been made ready, and actually arrived without loss at the mouth of the Ems, where the fleet remained. Thence he advanced, as may be conjectured, up the Ems as far as the mouth of the Haase, and then along the latter as far up as the Werra–valley, and through this to the Weser. By this means the carrying of the army, 80,000 strong, through the Teutoburg Forest, which was attended with great difficulties, particularly as to provisions, was avoided. A secure reserve for supplies was furnished in the camp beside the fleet, and the Cherusci on the right bank of the Weser were assailed in flank instead of in front. Here the Romans encountered the levy en masse of the Germans, again led by the two chiefs of the patriot party, Arminius and Inguiomerus. What warlike resources were at their disposal is shown by the fact that on two occasions, one shortly after the other, in the Cheruscan country—first on the Weser itself and then somewhat farther inland22—they fought in the open field against the whole Roman army, and in both hardly contested the victory. The latter certainly fell to the Romans, and of the German patriots a considerable number were left on the fields of battle. No prisoners were taken, and both sides fought with extreme exasperation. The second tropaeum of Germanicus spoke of the overthrow of all the Germanic tribes between the Rhine and Elbe; the son placed this campaign of his alongside of the brilliant campaigns of his father, and reported to Rome that in the next campaign he should have the subjugation of Germany complete. But Arminius escaped, although wounded, and continued still at the head of the patriots; and an unforeseen mischief marred the success won by arms. On the return home, which the greater part of the legions made by sea, the transport–fleet encountered the autumn storms of the North Sea. The vessels were dashed on all sides upon the islands of the North Sea, and as far as the British coasts. A great portion were destroyed, and those that escaped had for the most part to throw horses and baggage overboard, and to be glad of saving their bare life. The loss of vessels was, as in the times of the Punic war, equivalent to a defeat. Germanicus himself, cast adrift alone with the admiral’s ship on the desolate shore of the Chauci, was in despair at this misfortune, and on the point of seeking his death in that ocean the assistance of which he had at the beginning of this campaign invoked so earnestly and so vainly. Doubtless afterwards the loss of men proved not to be quite so great as it had at first appeared, and some effective blows which the general, on his return to the Rhine, inflicted on the nearest barbarians, raised the sunken courage of the troops. But, taken as a whole, the campaign of the year 16, as compared with that of the preceding year, ended in more brilliant victories doubtless, but also in much more serious loss.

      The altered situation.

      The recall of Germanicus was at the same time the abolition of the command–in–chief of the Rhenish army. The mere division of the command put an end to the conduct of the war as heretofore pursued; the circumstance that Germanicus was not merely recalled, but obtained no successor, was tantamount to ordaining the defensive on the Rhine. Thus the campaign of the year 16 was the last which the Romans waged in order to subdue Germany and to transfer the boundary of the empire from the Rhine to the Elbe. That this was the aim of the campaigns of Germanicus is shown by their very course, and by the trophy that celebrated the frontier of the Elbe. The re–establishment, too, of the military works on the right bank of the Rhine, of the forts of the Taunus, as well as of the stronghold of Aliso and the line connecting it with Vetera, belonged only in part to such an occupation of the right bank as was in keeping with the restricted plan of operations after the battle of Varus; in fact it had a far wider scope. But the designs of the general were not, or not quite, those of the emperor. It is more than probable that Tiberius from the outset allowed rather than sanctioned the enterprises of Germanicus on the Rhine, and it is certain that he wished to put an end to them by recalling him in the winter of 16–17. Beyond doubt, at the same time, a good part of what had been attained was given up, and in particular the garrison was withdrawn from Aliso. As Germanicus, even in the following year, found not a stone left of the memorial of victory erected in the Teutoburg Forest, so the results of his victories disappeared like a flash of lightning into the water, and none of his successors continued the building on this basis.

      Motives СКАЧАТЬ