Sir Edward Creasy
Taken from: The Fifteen Decisive Battles of
The World From Marathon to Waterloo (1851)
"Hac clade factum, ut Imperium quod in littore oceani non
steterat, in ripa Rheni fluminis staret."--FLORUS.
To a truly illustrious Frenchman, whose reverses as a minister
can never obscure his achievements in the world of letters, we
are indebted for the most profound and most eloquent estimate
that we possess of the importance of the Germanic element in
European civilization, and of the extent to which the human race
is indebted to those brave warriors, who long were the
unconquered antagonists, and finally became the conquerors, of
Imperial Rome.
Twenty-three eventful years have passed away since M. Guizot
delivered from the chair of modern history at Paris his course of
lectures on the History of Civilization in Europe. During those
years the spirit of earnest inquiry into the germs and early
developments of existing institutions has become more and more
active and universal; and the merited celebrity of M. Guizot's
work has proportionally increased. Its admirable analysis of the
complex political and social organizations of which the modern
civilized world is made up, must have led thousands to trace with
keener interest the great crises of times past, by which the
characteristics of the present were determined. The narrative of
one of these great crises, of the epoch A.D. 9, when Germany took
up arms for her independence against Roman invasion, has for us
this special attraction--that it forms part of our own national
history. Had Arminius been supine or unsuccessful, our Germanic
ancestors would have been enslaved or exterminated in their
original seats along the Eyder and the Elbe; this island would
never have borne the name of England, and "we, this great English
nation, whose race and language are now over-running the earth,
from one end of it to the other," [Arnold's Lectures on Modern
History.] would have been utterly cut off from existence.
Arnold may, indeed, go too far in holding that we are wholly
unconnected in race with the Romans and Britons who inhabited
this country before the coming over of the Saxons; that,
"nationally speaking, the history of Caesar's invasion has no
more to do with us than the natural history of the animals which
then inhabited our forests." There seems ample evidence to prove
that the Romanized Celts, whom our Teutonic forefathers found
here, influenced materially the character of our nation. But the
main stream of our people was and is Germanic. Our language
alone decisively proves this. Arminius is far more truly one of
our national heroes than Caractacus: and it was our own primeval
fatherland that the brave German rescued, when he slaughtered the
Roman legions eighteen centuries ago in the marshy glens between
the Lippe and the Ems. [See post, remarks on the relationship
between the Cherusci and the English.]
Dark and disheartening, even to heroic spirits, must have seemed
the prospects of Germany when Arminius planned the general rising
of his countrymen against Rome. Half the land was occupied by
Roman garrisons; and, what was worse, many of the Germans seemed
patiently acquiescent in their state of bondage. The braver
portion, whose patriotism could be relied on, was ill-armed and
undisciplined; while the enemy's troops consisted of veterans in
the highest state of equipment and training, familiarized with
victory, and commanded by officers of proved skill and valour.
The resources of Rome seemed boundless; her tenacity of purpose
was believed to be invincible. There was no hope of foreign
sympathy or aid; for "the self-governing powers that had filled
the old world, had bent one after another before the rising power
of Rome, and had vanished. The earth seemed left void of
independent nations." [Ranke.]
The (German) chieftain knew well the gigantic power of the
oppressor. Arminius was no rude savage, fighting out of mere
animal instinct, or in ignorance of the might of his adversary.
He was familiar with the Roman language and civilization; he had
served in the Roman armies; he had been admitted to the Roman
citizenship, and raised to the dignity of the equestrian order.
It was part of the subtle policy of Rome to confer rank and
privileges on the youth of the leading families in the nations
which she wished to enslave. Among other young German
chieftains, Arminius and his brother, who were the heads of the
noblest house in the tribe of the Cherusci, had been selected as
fit objects for the exercise of this insidious system. Roman
refinements and dignities succeeded in denationalizing the
brother, who assumed the Roman name of Flavius, and adhered to
Rome throughout all her wars against his country. Arminius
remained unbought by honours or wealth, uncorrupted by refinement
or luxury. He aspired to and obtained from Roman enmity a higher
title than ever could have been given him by Roman favour. It is
in the page of Rome's greatest historian, that his name has come
down to us with the proud addition of "Liberator haud dubie
Germaniae." [Tacitus, Annals, ii. 88.]
Often must the young chieftain, while meditating the exploit
which has thus immortalised him, have anxiously revolved in his
mind the fate of the many great men who had been crushed in the
attempt which he was about to renew,--the attempt to stay the
chariot-wheels of triumphant Rome. Could he hope to succeed
where Hannibal and Mithridates had perished? What had been the
doom of Viriathus? and what warning against vain valour was
written on the desolate site where Numantia once had fourished?
Nor was a caution wanting in scenes nearer home and in more
recent times. The Gauls had fruitlessly struggled for eight
years against Caesar; and the valiant Vercingetorix, who in the
last year of the war had roused all his countrymen to
insurrection, who had cut off Roman detachments, and brought
Caesar himself to the extreme of peril at Alesia--he, too, had
finally succumbed, had been led captive in Caesar's triumph, and
had then been butchered in cold blood in a Roman dungeon.
It was true that Rome was no longer the great military republic
which for so many ages had shattered the kingdoms of the world.
Her system of government was changed; and, after a century of
revolution and civil war, she had placed herself under the
despotism of a single ruler. But the discipline of her troops
was yet unimpaired, and her warlike spirit seemed unabated. The
first wars of the empire had been signalised by conquests as
valuable as any gained by the republic in a corresponding period.
It is a great fallacy, though apparently sanctioned by great
authorities, to suppose that the foreign policy pursued by
Augustus was pacific. He certainly recommended such a policy to
his successors, either from timidity, or from jealousy of their
fame outshining his own; ["Incertum metu an per invidiam."--Tac.
Ann. i. 11] but he himself, until Arminius broke his spirit, had
followed a very different course. Besides his Spanish wars, his
generals, in a series of principally aggressive campaigns, had
extended the Roman frontier from the Alps to the Danube; and had
reduced into subjection the large and important countries that
now form the territories of all Austria south of that river, and
of East Switzerland, Lower Wirtemberg, Bavaria, the Valteline,
and the Tyrol. While the progress of the Roman arms thus pressed
the Germans from the south, still more formidable inroads had
been made by the Imperial legions in the west. Roman armies,
moving from the province of Gaul, established a chain of
fortresses along the right as well as the left bank of the Rhine,
and, in a series of victorious campaigns, advanced their eagles
as far as the Elbe; which now seemed added to the list of vassal
rivers, to the Nile, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube, the Tagus,
the Seine, and many more, that acknowledged the supremacy of the
Tiber. Roman fleets also, sailing from the harbours of Gaul
along the German coasts, and up the estuaries, co-operated with
the land-forces of the empire; and seemed to display, even more
decisively than her armies, her overwhelming superiority over the
rude Germanic tribes. Throughout the territory thus invaded, the
Romans had, with their usual military skill, established chains
of fortified posts; and a powerful army of occupation was kept on
foot, ready to move instantly on any spot where a popular
outbreak might be attempted.
Vast however, and admirably organized as the fabric of Roman
power appeared on the frontiers and in the provinces, there was
rottenness at the core. In Rome's unceasing hostilities with
foreign foes, and, still more, in her long series of desolating
civil wars, the free middle classes of Italy had almost wholly
disappeared. Above the position which they had occupied, an
oligarchy of wealth had reared itself: beneath that position a
degraded mass of poverty and misery was fermenting. Slaves, the
chance sweepings of every conquered country, shoals of Africans,
Sardinians, Asiatics, Illyrians, and others, made up the bulk of
the population of the Italian peninsula. The foulest profligacy
of manners was general in all ranks. In universal 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 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 favourite 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 their
frequent feuds among themselves, in one sudden outbreak against
Rome; to keep the scheme concealed from the Romans until the hour
for action had 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 pre-eminent 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, sympathised far more with the heroic spirit of her
lover, than with the time serving 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 inertness
to the Roman dominion.
A change of governors had recently taken place, which, while it
materially favoured 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 afterwards emperor, had
lately 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
auspicious 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 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 for human feelings and human sufferings,
and without acting as the least check 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 honour and modesty, by which far less gallant
spirits than those of our Teutonic ancestors have often been
maddened into insurrection.
[I cannot forbear quoting Macaulay's beautiful lines, where he
describes how similar outrages in the early times of Rome goaded
the plebeians to rise against the patricians:--
"Heap heavier still the fetters; bar closer still the grate;
Patient as sheep we yield us up unto your cruel hate.
But by the shades beneath us, and by the gods above,
Add not unto your cruel hate your still more cruel love.
* * * * * *
Then leave the poor plebeian his single tie to life--
The sweet, sweet love of daughter, of sister, and of wife,
The gentle speech, the balm for all that his vext soul endures,
The kiss in which he half forgets even such a yoke as yours.
Still let the maiden's beauty swell the father's breast with
pride;
Still let the bridegroom's arms enfold an unpolluted bride.
Spare us the inexpiable wrong, the unutterable shame,
That turns the coward's heart to steel, the sluggard's blood to
flame;
Lest when our latest hope is fled ye taste of our despair,
And learn by proof in some wild hour, how much the wretched
dare."]
Arminius found among the other German chiefs many who sympathised
with him in his indignation at their country's debasement, 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's 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 it 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
his schemes until a favourable opportunity should arrive for
striking a decisive blow.
For this purpose the German confederates frequented the
headquarters 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 taste, 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 the Proconsul;
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 woody 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 (Teutoberger wald--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 Detmoldt, the present 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." [I am indebted for much
valuable information on this subject to my friend Mr. Henry
Pearson.]
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-waggons, 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 the 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 armour, 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. [See Gibbon's description (vol. i, chap. 1) of the Roman
legions in the time of Augustus; and see the description in
Tacitus (Ann. lib. i) of the subsequent battles between Caecina
and Arminius.] 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 woody ground, which is one of the off-shoots of the
great Hercynian forest, and is situate 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-waggons were abandoned from the
impossibility of forcing them along; and, as this happened, many
soldiers left their ranks and crowded round the waggons 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. [The circumstances of the
early part of the battle which Arminius fought with Caecina six
years afterwards, evidently resembled those of his battle with
Varus, and the result was very near being the same: I have
therefore adopted part of the description which Tacitus gives
(Ann. lib. i. c. 65) of the last mentioned engagement: "Neque
tamen Arminius, quamquam libero in cursu, statim prorupit: sed
ut haesere caeno fossisque impedimenta, turbati circum milites;
incertus signorum ordo; utque tali in tempore sibi quisque
properus, et lentae adversum imperia aures, irrumpere Germanos
jubet, clamitans 'En Varus, et eodem iterum fato victae
legiones!' Simul haec, et cum delectis scindit agmen, equisque
maxime vulnera ingerit; illi sanguine suo et lubrico paludum
lapsantes, excussis rectoribus, disjicere obvios, proterere
jacentes."] 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 lieutenant-generals 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 the 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 yester morning 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 honourable
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 at the alters 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. ["Lucis
propinquis barbarae arae, apud quas tribunos ac primorum ordinam
centuriones mactaverant."--TACITUS, Ann. lib. i. c. 61.]
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 was received with an agony of
terror, the descriptions of which we should deem exaggerated, did
they not come from Roman historians themselves. These passages
in the Roman writers 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 reunite for a common purpose,
but also they reveal bow weakened and debased the population of
Italy had become. [It is clear that the Romans followed the
policy of fomenting dissension and wars of the Germans among
themselves. See the thirty-third section of the "Germania" of
Tacitus, where he mentions the destruction of the Bructeri by the
neighbouring tribes: "Favore quodam erga nos deorum: nam ne
spectaculo quidem proelii invidere: super LX. millia non armis
telisque Romanis, sed, quod magnificentius est, oblectationi
oculisque ceciderunt. Maneat quaeso, duretque gentibus, si non
amor nostri at certe odium sui quando urgentibus imperii fatis,
nihil jam praestare fortuna majus potes quam hostiam
discordiam."] Dion Cassius says: [Lib. lvi. sec. 23.] "Then
Augustus, when he heard the calamity of Varus, rent his garments,
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
emancipated slaves, and collecting as large a force as he could,
sent it, under Tiberius, with all speed into Germany."
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 towards 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's 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 for 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. [Florus expresses its effect most pithily: "Hac clade
factum est ut imperium quod in litore oceani non steterat, in
ripa Rheni fluminis staret" (iv. 12).]
The Germans did not pursue their victory beyond their own
territory. But that victory secured at once and for ever the
independence of the Teutonic race. Rome sent, indeed, her
legions again into Germany, to parade a temporary superiority;
but all hopes of permanent conquest 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 Cherusci 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. I
have not space to go into them here, but they will be found in
the early chapters of the great work of Dr. Robert Gordon Latham
on the "English Language;" and in the notes to his edition of the
"Germania of Tacitus." 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 Maraboduus, 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
favourable to the legions, and Tiberius was too skilful, to
entangle his troops in difficult parts of the country. His march
and counter-march 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 energetic in his country's defence. The old
quarrel between him and his father-in-law, Segestes, had broken
out afresh. Segestes now called in the aid of the Roman general,
Germanicus, to whom he surrendered himself; and by his
contrivance his daughter Thusnelda, the wife of Arminius, also
came into the hands of the Romans, being far advanced in
pregnancy. She showed, as Tacitus relates, [Ann. i. 57.] more
of the spirit of her husband than of her father, a spirit that
could not be subdued into tears or supplications. She was sent
to Ravenna, and there gave birth to a son, whose life we find,
from an allusion in Tacitus, to have been eventful and unhappy;
but the part of the great historian's work which narrated his
fate has perished, and we only know from another quarter that the
son of Arminius was, at the age of four years, led captive in a
triumphal pageant along the streets of Rome.
The high spirit of Arminius was goaded almost into frenzy by
these bereavements. The fate of his wife, thus torn from him,
and of his babe doomed to bondage even before its birth, inflamed
the eloquent invectives with which he roused his countrymen
against the home traitors, and against their invaders, who thus
made war upon women and children. Germanicus had marched his
army to the place where Varus had perished, and had there paid
funeral honours to the ghastly relics of his predecessor's
legions that he found heaped around him. [In the Museum of
Rhenish antiquities at Bonn there is a Roman sepulchral monument,
the inscription on which records that it was erected to the
memory of M. Coelius, who fell "BELLO VARIANO."] Arminius lured
him to advance a little further into the country, and then
assailed him, and fought a battle, which, by the Roman accounts,
was a drawn one. The effect of it was to make Germanicus resolve
on retreating to the Rhine. He himself, with part of his troops,
embarked in some vessels on the Ems, and returned by that river,
and then by sea; but part of his forces were entrusted to a Roman
general, named Caecina, to lead them back by land to the Rhine.
Arminius followed this division on its march, and fought several
battles with it, in which he inflicted heavy loss on the Romans,
captured the greater part of their baggage, and would have
destroyed them completely, had not his skilful system of
operations been finally thwarted by the haste of Inguiomerus, a
confederate German chief who insisted on assaulting the Romans in
their camp, instead of waiting till they were entangled in the
difficulties of the country, and assailing their columns on the
march.
In the following year the Romans were inactive; but in the year
afterwards Germanicus led a fresh invasion. He placed his army
on ship-board, and sailed to the mouth of the Ems, where he
disembarked, and marched to the Weser, where he encamped,
probably in the neighbourhood of Minden. Arminius had collected
his army on the other side of the river; and a scene occurred,
which is powerfully told by Tacitus, and which is the subject of
a beautiful poem by Praed. It has been already mentioned that
the brother of Arminius, like himself, had been trained up, while
young, to serve in the Roman armies; but, unlike Arminius, he not
only refused to quit the Roman service for that of his country,
but fought against his country with the legions of Germanicus.
He had assumed the Roman name of Flavius, and had gained
considerable distinction in the Roman service, in which he had
lost an eye from a wound in battle. When the Roman outposts
approached the river Weser, Arminius called out to them from the
opposite bank, and expressed a wish to see his brother. Flavius
stepped forward, and Arminius ordered his own followers to
retire, and requested that the archers should be removed from the
Roman bank of the river. This was done: and the brothers, who
apparently had not seen each other for some years, began a
conversation from the opposite sides of the stream, in which
Arminius questioned his brother respecting the loss of his eye,
and what battle it had been lost in, and what reward he had
received for his wound. Flavius told him how the eye was
destroyed, and mentioned the increased pay that he had on account
of its loss, and showed the collar and other military decorations
that had been given him. Arminius mocked at these as badges of
slavery; and then each began to try to win the other over;
Flavius boasting the power of Rome, and her generosity to the
submissive; Arminius appealing to him in the name of their
country's gods, of the mother that had borne them, and by the
holy names of fatherland and freedom, not to prefer being the
betrayer to being the champion of his country. They soon
proceeded to mutual taunts and menaces, and Flavius called aloud
for his horse and his arms, that he might dash across the river
and attack his brother; nor would he have been checked from doing
so, had not the Roman general, Stertinius, run up to him, and
forcibly detained him. Arminius stood on the other bank,
threatening the renegade, and defying him to battle.
I shall not be thought to need apology for quoting here the
stanzas in which Praed has described this scene--a scene among
the most affecting, as well as the most striking, that history
supplies. It makes us reflect on the desolate position of
Arminius, with his wife and child captives in the enemy's hands,
and with his brother a renegade in arms against him. The great
liberator of our German race stood there, with every source of
human happiness denied him, except the consciousness of doing his
duty to his country.
"Back, back! he fears not foaming flood
Who fears not steel-clad line:--
No warrior thou of German blood,
No brother thou of mine.
Go, earn Rome's chain to load thy neck,
Her gems to deck thy hilt;
And blazon honour's hapless wreck
With all the gauds of guilt.
"But wouldst thou have ME share the prey?
By all that I have done,--
The Varian bones that day by day
Lie whitening in the sun,
The legion's trampled panoply,
The eagle's shattered wing,--
I would not be for earth or sky
So scorn'd and mean a thing.
"Ho, call me here the wizard, boy,
Of dark and subtle skill,
To agonise but not destroy,
To curse, but not to kill.
When swords are out, and shriek and shout,
Leave little room for prayer,
No fetter on man's arm or heart
Hangs half so heavy there.
"I curse him by the gifts the land
Hath won from him and Rome--
The riving axe, the wasting brand,
Rent forest, blazing home.
I curse him by our country's gods,
The terrible, the dark,
The breakers of the Roman rods,
The smiters of the bark.
"Oh misery, that such a ban
On such a brow should be!
Why comes he not in battle's van
His country's chief to be?--
To stand a comrade by my side,
The sharer of my fame,
And worthy of a brother's pride
And of a brother's name?
"But it is past!--where heroes press
And cowards bend the knee
Arminius is not brotherless;
His brethren are the free.
They come around: one hour, and light
Will fade from turf and tide,
Then onward, onward to the fight
With darkness for our guide.
"To-night, to-night, when we shall meet
In combat face to face,
Then only would Arminius greet
The renegade's embrace.
The canker of Rome's guilt shall be
Upon his dying name;
And as he lived in slavery,
So shall he fall in shame.
On the day after the Romans had reached the Weser, Germanicus led
his army across that river, and a partial encounter took place,
in which Arminius was successful. But on the succeeding day a
general action was fought, in which Arminius was severely
wounded, and the German infantry routed with heavy loss. The
horsemen of the two armies encountered without either party
gaining the advantage. But the Roman army remained master of the
ground, and claimed a complete victory. Germanicus erected a
trophy in the field, with a vaunting inscription, that the
nations between the Rhine and the Elbe had been thoroughly
conquered by his army. But that army speedily made a final
retreat to the left bank of the Rhine; nor was the effect of
their campaign more durable than their trophy. The sarcasm with
which Tacitus speaks of certain other triumphs of Roman generals
over Germans, may apply to the pageant which Germanicus
celebrated on his return to Rome from his command of the Roman
army of the Rhine. The Germans were "TRIUMPHATI POTIUS QUAM
VICTI."
After the Romans had abandoned their attempts on Germany, we find
Arminius engaged in hostilities with Maroboduus, the king of the
Suevi and Marcomanni who was endeavouring to bring the other
German tribes into a state of dependency on him. Arminius was at
the head of the Germans who took up arms against this home
invader of their liberties. After some minor engagements, a
pitched battle was fought between the two confederacies, A.D. 16,
in which the loss on each side was equal; but Maroboduus
confessed the ascendency of his antagonist by avoiding a renewal
of the engagement, and by imploring the intervention of the
Romans in his defence. The younger Drusus then commanded the
Roman legions in the province of Illyricum, and by his mediation
a peace was concluded between Arminius and Maroboduus, by the
terms of which it is evident that the latter must have renounced
his ambitious schemes against the freedom of the other German
tribes.
Arminius did not long survive this second war of independence,
which he successfully waged for his country. He was assassinated
in the thirty-seventh year of his age, by some of his own
kinsmen, who conspired against him. Tacitus says that this
happened while he was engaged in a civil war, which had been
caused by his attempts to make himself king over his countrymen.
It is far more probable (as one of the best biographers of
Arminius has observed) that Tacitus misunderstood an attempt of
Arminius to extend his influence as elective war-chieftain of the
Cherusci, and other tribes, for an attempt to obtain the royal
dignity. [Dr. Plate, in Biographical Dictionary commenced by
the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.] When we
remember that his father-in-law and his brother were renegades,
we can well understand that a party among his kinsmen may have
been bitterly hostile to him, and have opposed his authority with
the tribe by open violence, and when that seemed ineffectual, by
secret assassination.
Arminius left a name, which the historians of the nation against
which he combated so long and so gloriously have delighted to
honour. It is from the most indisputable source, from the lips
of enemies, that we know his exploits. [See Tacitus, Ann. lib.
ii. sec. 88; Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii. sec. 118.] His
country men made history, but did not write it. But his memory
lived among them in the lays of their bards, who recorded
"The deeds he did, the fields he won,
The freedom he restored."
Tacitus, many years after the death of Arminius, says of him,
"Canitur adhuc barbaras apud gentes." As time passed on, the
gratitude of ancient Germany to her great deliverer grew into
adoration, and divine honours were paid for centuries to Arminius
by every tribe of the Low Germanic division of the Teutonic
races. The Irmin-sul, or the column of Herman, near Eresburg,
the modern Stadtberg, was the chosen object of worship to the
descendants of the Cherusci, the Old Saxons, and in defence of
which they fought most desperately against Charlemagne and his
christianized Franks. "Irmin, in the cloudy Olympus of Teutonic
belief, appears as a king and a warrior; and the pillar, the
'Irmin-sul,' bearing the statue, and considered as the symbol of
the deity, was the Palladium of the Saxon nation, until the
temple of Eresburg was destroyed by Charlemagne, and the column
itself transferred to the monastery of Corbey, where, perhaps, a
portion of the rude rock idol yet remains, covered by the
ornaments of the Gothic era." [Palgrave on the English
Commonwealth, vol. ii. p. 140.]
Traces of the worship of Arminius are to be found among our
Anglo-Saxon ancestors, after their settlement in this island.
One of the four great highways was held to be under the
protection of the deity, and was called the "Irmin-street." The
name Arminius is, of course, the mere Latinized form of "Herman,"
the name by which the hero and the deity were known by every man
of Low German blood, on either side of the German Sea. It means,
etymologically, the "War-man," the "man of hosts." No other
explanation of the worship of the "Irmin-sul," and of the name of
the "Irmin-street," is so satisfactory as that which connects
them with the deified Arminius. We know for certain of the
existence of other columns of an analogous character. Thus,
there was the Roland-seule in North Germany; there was a Thor-
seule in Sweden, and (what is more important) there was an
Athelstan-seule in Saxon England." [See Lappenburg's Anglo-
Saxons, p. 378. For nearly all the philological and
ethnographical facts respecting Arminius, I am indebted to Dr. R.
G. Latham.]
There is at the present moment a song respecting the Irmin-sul
current in the bishopric of Minden, one version of which might
seem only to refer to Charlemagne having pulled down the Irmin-
sul:--
"Herman, sla dermen,
Sla pipen, sla trummen,
De Kaiser will kummen,
Met hamer un stangen,
Will Herman uphangen."
But there is another version, which probably is the oldest, and
which clearly refers to the great Arminius:--
"Un Herman slaug dermen;
Slaug pipen, slaug trummen;
De fursten sind kammen,
Met all eren-mannen
Hebt VARUS uphangen."
[See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 329.]
About ten centuries and a half after the demolition of the Irmin-
sul, and nearly eighteen after the death of Arminius, the modern
Germans conceived the idea of rendering tardy homage to their
great hero; and, accordingly some eight or ten years ago, a
general subscription was organized in Germany, for the purpose of
erecting on the Osning--a conical mountain, which forms the
highest summit of the Teutoberger Wald, and is eighteen hundred
feet above the level of the sea--a colossal bronze statue of
Arminius. The statue was designed by Bandel. The hero was to
stand uplifting a sword in his right hand, and looking towards
the Rhine. The height of the statue was to be eighty feet from
the base to the point of the sword, and was to stand on a
circular Gothic temple, ninety feet high, and supported by oak
trees as columns. The mountain, where it was to be erected, is
wild and stern, and overlooks the scene of the battle. It was
calculated that the statue would be clearly visible at a distance
of sixty miles. The temple is nearly finished, and the statue
itself has been cast at the copper works at Lemgo. But there,
through want of funds to set it up, it has lain for some years,
in disjointed fragments, exposed to the mutilating homage of
relic-seeking travellers. The idea of honouring a hero who
belongs to ALL Germany, is not one which the present rulers of
that divided country have any wish to encourage; and the statue
may long continue to lie there, and present too true a type of
the condition of Germany herself. [On the subject of this
statue I must repeat an acknowledgment of my obligations to my
friend Mr. Henry Pearson.]
Surely this is an occasion in which Englishmen might well prove,
by acts as well as words, that we also rank Arminius among our
heroes.
I have quoted the noble stanzas of one of our modern English
poets on Arminius, and I will conclude this memoir with one of
the odes of the great poet of modern Germany, Klopstock, on the
victory to which we owe our freedom, and Arminius mainly owes his
fame. Klopstock calls it the "Battle of Winfield." The epithet
of "Sister of Cannae" shows that Klopstock followed some
chronologers, according to whom, Varus was defeated on the
anniversary of the day on which Paulus and Varro were defeated by
Hannibal.
SONG OF TRIUMPH AFTER THE VICTORY OF HERRMAN, THE DELIVERER OF
GERMANY FROM THE ROMANS.
FROM KLOPSTOCK'S "HERRMAN UND DIE FURSTEN."
Supposed to be sung by a Chorus of Bards.
A CHORUS.
Sister of Cannae! Winfield's fight!
We saw thee with thy streaming bloody hair,
With fiery eye, bright with the world's despair,
Sweep by Walhalla's bards from out our sight.
Herrman outspake--"Now Victory or Death!"
The Romans, . . . "Victory!"
And onward rushed their eagles with the cry.
--So ended the FIRST day.
"Victory or Death!" began
Then, first, the Roman chief; and Herrman spake
Not, but home struck: the eagles fluttered--brake.
--So sped the SECOND day.
TWO CHORUSES.
And the third came. . . . The cry was "Flight or Death!"
Flight left they not for them who'd make them slaves--
Men who stab children!--flight for THEM! . . . no! graves!
--'Twas their LAST day.
TWO BARDS.
Yet spared they messengers: two came to Rome.
How drooped the plume! the lance was left to trail
Down in the dust behind: their cheek was pale:
So came the messengers to Rome.
High in his hall the Imperator sate--
OCTAVIANUS CAESAR AUGUSTUS sate.
They filled up wine-cups, wine-cups filled they up
For him the highest, Jove of all their state.
The flutes of Lydia hushed before their voice,
Before the messengers--the "Highest" sprung--
The god against the marble pillars, wrung
By the dred words, striking his brow, and thrice
Cried he aloud in anguish--"Varus! Varus!
Give back my legions, Varus!"
And now the world-wide conquerors shrunk and feared
For fatherland and home
The lance to raise; and 'mongst those false to Rome
The death-lot rolled, and still they shrunk and feared;
"For she her face hath turned,
The victor goddess," cried these cowards--(for aye
Be it!)--"from Rome and Romans, and her day
Is done!"--And still be mourned
And cried aloud in anguish--"Varus! Varus!
Give back my legions, Varus!"
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Fifteen Decisive Battles of
The World From Marathon to Waterloo, by Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY (1812-1878), English historian, was born at Bexley in Kent, and educated at Eton and Kings College, Cambridge. He became a fellow of Kings College in 1834, and having been called to the bar at Lincolns Inn three years later, was made assistant judge at the Westminster sessions court. In 1840 he was appointed professor of modern and ancient history in the university of London, and in 1860 beame chief justice of Ceylon and a knight. Broken down in health he returned to England in 1870, and after a further but short stay in Ceylon died in London on the 27th of January 1878. Creasy`s most popular work is his Fifteen decisive Battles of the World, which, first published in 1851, has passed through many editions. He also wrote The History of the Ottoman Turks (London, 1854-1856); History of England (London, 1869-1870); Rise and Progress of the English Constitution (London., 1853, and other editions); Historical and Critical Account of the several Invasions of England (London, 1852); a novel entitled Old Love and the New (London, 1870); and various other works.
The World From Marathon to Waterloo (1851)
"Hac clade factum, ut Imperium quod in littore oceani non
steterat, in ripa Rheni fluminis staret."--FLORUS.
To a truly illustrious Frenchman, whose reverses as a minister
can never obscure his achievements in the world of letters, we
are indebted for the most profound and most eloquent estimate
that we possess of the importance of the Germanic element in
European civilization, and of the extent to which the human race
is indebted to those brave warriors, who long were the
unconquered antagonists, and finally became the conquerors, of
Imperial Rome.
Twenty-three eventful years have passed away since M. Guizot
delivered from the chair of modern history at Paris his course of
lectures on the History of Civilization in Europe. During those
years the spirit of earnest inquiry into the germs and early
developments of existing institutions has become more and more
active and universal; and the merited celebrity of M. Guizot's
work has proportionally increased. Its admirable analysis of the
complex political and social organizations of which the modern
civilized world is made up, must have led thousands to trace with
keener interest the great crises of times past, by which the
characteristics of the present were determined. The narrative of
one of these great crises, of the epoch A.D. 9, when Germany took
up arms for her independence against Roman invasion, has for us
this special attraction--that it forms part of our own national
history. Had Arminius been supine or unsuccessful, our Germanic
ancestors would have been enslaved or exterminated in their
original seats along the Eyder and the Elbe; this island would
never have borne the name of England, and "we, this great English
nation, whose race and language are now over-running the earth,
from one end of it to the other," [Arnold's Lectures on Modern
History.] would have been utterly cut off from existence.
Arnold may, indeed, go too far in holding that we are wholly
unconnected in race with the Romans and Britons who inhabited
this country before the coming over of the Saxons; that,
"nationally speaking, the history of Caesar's invasion has no
more to do with us than the natural history of the animals which
then inhabited our forests." There seems ample evidence to prove
that the Romanized Celts, whom our Teutonic forefathers found
here, influenced materially the character of our nation. But the
main stream of our people was and is Germanic. Our language
alone decisively proves this. Arminius is far more truly one of
our national heroes than Caractacus: and it was our own primeval
fatherland that the brave German rescued, when he slaughtered the
Roman legions eighteen centuries ago in the marshy glens between
the Lippe and the Ems. [See post, remarks on the relationship
between the Cherusci and the English.]
Dark and disheartening, even to heroic spirits, must have seemed
the prospects of Germany when Arminius planned the general rising
of his countrymen against Rome. Half the land was occupied by
Roman garrisons; and, what was worse, many of the Germans seemed
patiently acquiescent in their state of bondage. The braver
portion, whose patriotism could be relied on, was ill-armed and
undisciplined; while the enemy's troops consisted of veterans in
the highest state of equipment and training, familiarized with
victory, and commanded by officers of proved skill and valour.
The resources of Rome seemed boundless; her tenacity of purpose
was believed to be invincible. There was no hope of foreign
sympathy or aid; for "the self-governing powers that had filled
the old world, had bent one after another before the rising power
of Rome, and had vanished. The earth seemed left void of
independent nations." [Ranke.]
The (German) chieftain knew well the gigantic power of the
oppressor. Arminius was no rude savage, fighting out of mere
animal instinct, or in ignorance of the might of his adversary.
He was familiar with the Roman language and civilization; he had
served in the Roman armies; he had been admitted to the Roman
citizenship, and raised to the dignity of the equestrian order.
It was part of the subtle policy of Rome to confer rank and
privileges on the youth of the leading families in the nations
which she wished to enslave. Among other young German
chieftains, Arminius and his brother, who were the heads of the
noblest house in the tribe of the Cherusci, had been selected as
fit objects for the exercise of this insidious system. Roman
refinements and dignities succeeded in denationalizing the
brother, who assumed the Roman name of Flavius, and adhered to
Rome throughout all her wars against his country. Arminius
remained unbought by honours or wealth, uncorrupted by refinement
or luxury. He aspired to and obtained from Roman enmity a higher
title than ever could have been given him by Roman favour. It is
in the page of Rome's greatest historian, that his name has come
down to us with the proud addition of "Liberator haud dubie
Germaniae." [Tacitus, Annals, ii. 88.]
Often must the young chieftain, while meditating the exploit
which has thus immortalised him, have anxiously revolved in his
mind the fate of the many great men who had been crushed in the
attempt which he was about to renew,--the attempt to stay the
chariot-wheels of triumphant Rome. Could he hope to succeed
where Hannibal and Mithridates had perished? What had been the
doom of Viriathus? and what warning against vain valour was
written on the desolate site where Numantia once had fourished?
Nor was a caution wanting in scenes nearer home and in more
recent times. The Gauls had fruitlessly struggled for eight
years against Caesar; and the valiant Vercingetorix, who in the
last year of the war had roused all his countrymen to
insurrection, who had cut off Roman detachments, and brought
Caesar himself to the extreme of peril at Alesia--he, too, had
finally succumbed, had been led captive in Caesar's triumph, and
had then been butchered in cold blood in a Roman dungeon.
It was true that Rome was no longer the great military republic
which for so many ages had shattered the kingdoms of the world.
Her system of government was changed; and, after a century of
revolution and civil war, she had placed herself under the
despotism of a single ruler. But the discipline of her troops
was yet unimpaired, and her warlike spirit seemed unabated. The
first wars of the empire had been signalised by conquests as
valuable as any gained by the republic in a corresponding period.
It is a great fallacy, though apparently sanctioned by great
authorities, to suppose that the foreign policy pursued by
Augustus was pacific. He certainly recommended such a policy to
his successors, either from timidity, or from jealousy of their
fame outshining his own; ["Incertum metu an per invidiam."--Tac.
Ann. i. 11] but he himself, until Arminius broke his spirit, had
followed a very different course. Besides his Spanish wars, his
generals, in a series of principally aggressive campaigns, had
extended the Roman frontier from the Alps to the Danube; and had
reduced into subjection the large and important countries that
now form the territories of all Austria south of that river, and
of East Switzerland, Lower Wirtemberg, Bavaria, the Valteline,
and the Tyrol. While the progress of the Roman arms thus pressed
the Germans from the south, still more formidable inroads had
been made by the Imperial legions in the west. Roman armies,
moving from the province of Gaul, established a chain of
fortresses along the right as well as the left bank of the Rhine,
and, in a series of victorious campaigns, advanced their eagles
as far as the Elbe; which now seemed added to the list of vassal
rivers, to the Nile, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube, the Tagus,
the Seine, and many more, that acknowledged the supremacy of the
Tiber. Roman fleets also, sailing from the harbours of Gaul
along the German coasts, and up the estuaries, co-operated with
the land-forces of the empire; and seemed to display, even more
decisively than her armies, her overwhelming superiority over the
rude Germanic tribes. Throughout the territory thus invaded, the
Romans had, with their usual military skill, established chains
of fortified posts; and a powerful army of occupation was kept on
foot, ready to move instantly on any spot where a popular
outbreak might be attempted.
Vast however, and admirably organized as the fabric of Roman
power appeared on the frontiers and in the provinces, there was
rottenness at the core. In Rome's unceasing hostilities with
foreign foes, and, still more, in her long series of desolating
civil wars, the free middle classes of Italy had almost wholly
disappeared. Above the position which they had occupied, an
oligarchy of wealth had reared itself: beneath that position a
degraded mass of poverty and misery was fermenting. Slaves, the
chance sweepings of every conquered country, shoals of Africans,
Sardinians, Asiatics, Illyrians, and others, made up the bulk of
the population of the Italian peninsula. The foulest profligacy
of manners was general in all ranks. In universal 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 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 favourite 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 their
frequent feuds among themselves, in one sudden outbreak against
Rome; to keep the scheme concealed from the Romans until the hour
for action had 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 pre-eminent 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, sympathised far more with the heroic spirit of her
lover, than with the time serving 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 inertness
to the Roman dominion.
A change of governors had recently taken place, which, while it
materially favoured 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 afterwards emperor, had
lately 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
auspicious 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 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 for human feelings and human sufferings,
and without acting as the least check 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 honour and modesty, by which far less gallant
spirits than those of our Teutonic ancestors have often been
maddened into insurrection.
[I cannot forbear quoting Macaulay's beautiful lines, where he
describes how similar outrages in the early times of Rome goaded
the plebeians to rise against the patricians:--
"Heap heavier still the fetters; bar closer still the grate;
Patient as sheep we yield us up unto your cruel hate.
But by the shades beneath us, and by the gods above,
Add not unto your cruel hate your still more cruel love.
* * * * * *
Then leave the poor plebeian his single tie to life--
The sweet, sweet love of daughter, of sister, and of wife,
The gentle speech, the balm for all that his vext soul endures,
The kiss in which he half forgets even such a yoke as yours.
Still let the maiden's beauty swell the father's breast with
pride;
Still let the bridegroom's arms enfold an unpolluted bride.
Spare us the inexpiable wrong, the unutterable shame,
That turns the coward's heart to steel, the sluggard's blood to
flame;
Lest when our latest hope is fled ye taste of our despair,
And learn by proof in some wild hour, how much the wretched
dare."]
Arminius found among the other German chiefs many who sympathised
with him in his indignation at their country's debasement, 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's 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 it 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
his schemes until a favourable opportunity should arrive for
striking a decisive blow.
For this purpose the German confederates frequented the
headquarters 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 taste, 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 the Proconsul;
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 woody 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 (Teutoberger wald--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 Detmoldt, the present 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." [I am indebted for much
valuable information on this subject to my friend Mr. Henry
Pearson.]
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-waggons, 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 the 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 armour, 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. [See Gibbon's description (vol. i, chap. 1) of the Roman
legions in the time of Augustus; and see the description in
Tacitus (Ann. lib. i) of the subsequent battles between Caecina
and Arminius.] 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 woody ground, which is one of the off-shoots of the
great Hercynian forest, and is situate 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-waggons were abandoned from the
impossibility of forcing them along; and, as this happened, many
soldiers left their ranks and crowded round the waggons 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. [The circumstances of the
early part of the battle which Arminius fought with Caecina six
years afterwards, evidently resembled those of his battle with
Varus, and the result was very near being the same: I have
therefore adopted part of the description which Tacitus gives
(Ann. lib. i. c. 65) of the last mentioned engagement: "Neque
tamen Arminius, quamquam libero in cursu, statim prorupit: sed
ut haesere caeno fossisque impedimenta, turbati circum milites;
incertus signorum ordo; utque tali in tempore sibi quisque
properus, et lentae adversum imperia aures, irrumpere Germanos
jubet, clamitans 'En Varus, et eodem iterum fato victae
legiones!' Simul haec, et cum delectis scindit agmen, equisque
maxime vulnera ingerit; illi sanguine suo et lubrico paludum
lapsantes, excussis rectoribus, disjicere obvios, proterere
jacentes."] 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 lieutenant-generals 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 the 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 yester morning 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 honourable
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 at the alters 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. ["Lucis
propinquis barbarae arae, apud quas tribunos ac primorum ordinam
centuriones mactaverant."--TACITUS, Ann. lib. i. c. 61.]
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 was received with an agony of
terror, the descriptions of which we should deem exaggerated, did
they not come from Roman historians themselves. These passages
in the Roman writers 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 reunite for a common purpose,
but also they reveal bow weakened and debased the population of
Italy had become. [It is clear that the Romans followed the
policy of fomenting dissension and wars of the Germans among
themselves. See the thirty-third section of the "Germania" of
Tacitus, where he mentions the destruction of the Bructeri by the
neighbouring tribes: "Favore quodam erga nos deorum: nam ne
spectaculo quidem proelii invidere: super LX. millia non armis
telisque Romanis, sed, quod magnificentius est, oblectationi
oculisque ceciderunt. Maneat quaeso, duretque gentibus, si non
amor nostri at certe odium sui quando urgentibus imperii fatis,
nihil jam praestare fortuna majus potes quam hostiam
discordiam."] Dion Cassius says: [Lib. lvi. sec. 23.] "Then
Augustus, when he heard the calamity of Varus, rent his garments,
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
emancipated slaves, and collecting as large a force as he could,
sent it, under Tiberius, with all speed into Germany."
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 towards 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's 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 for 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. [Florus expresses its effect most pithily: "Hac clade
factum est ut imperium quod in litore oceani non steterat, in
ripa Rheni fluminis staret" (iv. 12).]
The Germans did not pursue their victory beyond their own
territory. But that victory secured at once and for ever the
independence of the Teutonic race. Rome sent, indeed, her
legions again into Germany, to parade a temporary superiority;
but all hopes of permanent conquest 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 Cherusci 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. I
have not space to go into them here, but they will be found in
the early chapters of the great work of Dr. Robert Gordon Latham
on the "English Language;" and in the notes to his edition of the
"Germania of Tacitus." 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 Maraboduus, 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
favourable to the legions, and Tiberius was too skilful, to
entangle his troops in difficult parts of the country. His march
and counter-march 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 energetic in his country's defence. The old
quarrel between him and his father-in-law, Segestes, had broken
out afresh. Segestes now called in the aid of the Roman general,
Germanicus, to whom he surrendered himself; and by his
contrivance his daughter Thusnelda, the wife of Arminius, also
came into the hands of the Romans, being far advanced in
pregnancy. She showed, as Tacitus relates, [Ann. i. 57.] more
of the spirit of her husband than of her father, a spirit that
could not be subdued into tears or supplications. She was sent
to Ravenna, and there gave birth to a son, whose life we find,
from an allusion in Tacitus, to have been eventful and unhappy;
but the part of the great historian's work which narrated his
fate has perished, and we only know from another quarter that the
son of Arminius was, at the age of four years, led captive in a
triumphal pageant along the streets of Rome.
The high spirit of Arminius was goaded almost into frenzy by
these bereavements. The fate of his wife, thus torn from him,
and of his babe doomed to bondage even before its birth, inflamed
the eloquent invectives with which he roused his countrymen
against the home traitors, and against their invaders, who thus
made war upon women and children. Germanicus had marched his
army to the place where Varus had perished, and had there paid
funeral honours to the ghastly relics of his predecessor's
legions that he found heaped around him. [In the Museum of
Rhenish antiquities at Bonn there is a Roman sepulchral monument,
the inscription on which records that it was erected to the
memory of M. Coelius, who fell "BELLO VARIANO."] Arminius lured
him to advance a little further into the country, and then
assailed him, and fought a battle, which, by the Roman accounts,
was a drawn one. The effect of it was to make Germanicus resolve
on retreating to the Rhine. He himself, with part of his troops,
embarked in some vessels on the Ems, and returned by that river,
and then by sea; but part of his forces were entrusted to a Roman
general, named Caecina, to lead them back by land to the Rhine.
Arminius followed this division on its march, and fought several
battles with it, in which he inflicted heavy loss on the Romans,
captured the greater part of their baggage, and would have
destroyed them completely, had not his skilful system of
operations been finally thwarted by the haste of Inguiomerus, a
confederate German chief who insisted on assaulting the Romans in
their camp, instead of waiting till they were entangled in the
difficulties of the country, and assailing their columns on the
march.
In the following year the Romans were inactive; but in the year
afterwards Germanicus led a fresh invasion. He placed his army
on ship-board, and sailed to the mouth of the Ems, where he
disembarked, and marched to the Weser, where he encamped,
probably in the neighbourhood of Minden. Arminius had collected
his army on the other side of the river; and a scene occurred,
which is powerfully told by Tacitus, and which is the subject of
a beautiful poem by Praed. It has been already mentioned that
the brother of Arminius, like himself, had been trained up, while
young, to serve in the Roman armies; but, unlike Arminius, he not
only refused to quit the Roman service for that of his country,
but fought against his country with the legions of Germanicus.
He had assumed the Roman name of Flavius, and had gained
considerable distinction in the Roman service, in which he had
lost an eye from a wound in battle. When the Roman outposts
approached the river Weser, Arminius called out to them from the
opposite bank, and expressed a wish to see his brother. Flavius
stepped forward, and Arminius ordered his own followers to
retire, and requested that the archers should be removed from the
Roman bank of the river. This was done: and the brothers, who
apparently had not seen each other for some years, began a
conversation from the opposite sides of the stream, in which
Arminius questioned his brother respecting the loss of his eye,
and what battle it had been lost in, and what reward he had
received for his wound. Flavius told him how the eye was
destroyed, and mentioned the increased pay that he had on account
of its loss, and showed the collar and other military decorations
that had been given him. Arminius mocked at these as badges of
slavery; and then each began to try to win the other over;
Flavius boasting the power of Rome, and her generosity to the
submissive; Arminius appealing to him in the name of their
country's gods, of the mother that had borne them, and by the
holy names of fatherland and freedom, not to prefer being the
betrayer to being the champion of his country. They soon
proceeded to mutual taunts and menaces, and Flavius called aloud
for his horse and his arms, that he might dash across the river
and attack his brother; nor would he have been checked from doing
so, had not the Roman general, Stertinius, run up to him, and
forcibly detained him. Arminius stood on the other bank,
threatening the renegade, and defying him to battle.
I shall not be thought to need apology for quoting here the
stanzas in which Praed has described this scene--a scene among
the most affecting, as well as the most striking, that history
supplies. It makes us reflect on the desolate position of
Arminius, with his wife and child captives in the enemy's hands,
and with his brother a renegade in arms against him. The great
liberator of our German race stood there, with every source of
human happiness denied him, except the consciousness of doing his
duty to his country.
"Back, back! he fears not foaming flood
Who fears not steel-clad line:--
No warrior thou of German blood,
No brother thou of mine.
Go, earn Rome's chain to load thy neck,
Her gems to deck thy hilt;
And blazon honour's hapless wreck
With all the gauds of guilt.
"But wouldst thou have ME share the prey?
By all that I have done,--
The Varian bones that day by day
Lie whitening in the sun,
The legion's trampled panoply,
The eagle's shattered wing,--
I would not be for earth or sky
So scorn'd and mean a thing.
"Ho, call me here the wizard, boy,
Of dark and subtle skill,
To agonise but not destroy,
To curse, but not to kill.
When swords are out, and shriek and shout,
Leave little room for prayer,
No fetter on man's arm or heart
Hangs half so heavy there.
"I curse him by the gifts the land
Hath won from him and Rome--
The riving axe, the wasting brand,
Rent forest, blazing home.
I curse him by our country's gods,
The terrible, the dark,
The breakers of the Roman rods,
The smiters of the bark.
"Oh misery, that such a ban
On such a brow should be!
Why comes he not in battle's van
His country's chief to be?--
To stand a comrade by my side,
The sharer of my fame,
And worthy of a brother's pride
And of a brother's name?
"But it is past!--where heroes press
And cowards bend the knee
Arminius is not brotherless;
His brethren are the free.
They come around: one hour, and light
Will fade from turf and tide,
Then onward, onward to the fight
With darkness for our guide.
"To-night, to-night, when we shall meet
In combat face to face,
Then only would Arminius greet
The renegade's embrace.
The canker of Rome's guilt shall be
Upon his dying name;
And as he lived in slavery,
So shall he fall in shame.
On the day after the Romans had reached the Weser, Germanicus led
his army across that river, and a partial encounter took place,
in which Arminius was successful. But on the succeeding day a
general action was fought, in which Arminius was severely
wounded, and the German infantry routed with heavy loss. The
horsemen of the two armies encountered without either party
gaining the advantage. But the Roman army remained master of the
ground, and claimed a complete victory. Germanicus erected a
trophy in the field, with a vaunting inscription, that the
nations between the Rhine and the Elbe had been thoroughly
conquered by his army. But that army speedily made a final
retreat to the left bank of the Rhine; nor was the effect of
their campaign more durable than their trophy. The sarcasm with
which Tacitus speaks of certain other triumphs of Roman generals
over Germans, may apply to the pageant which Germanicus
celebrated on his return to Rome from his command of the Roman
army of the Rhine. The Germans were "TRIUMPHATI POTIUS QUAM
VICTI."
After the Romans had abandoned their attempts on Germany, we find
Arminius engaged in hostilities with Maroboduus, the king of the
Suevi and Marcomanni who was endeavouring to bring the other
German tribes into a state of dependency on him. Arminius was at
the head of the Germans who took up arms against this home
invader of their liberties. After some minor engagements, a
pitched battle was fought between the two confederacies, A.D. 16,
in which the loss on each side was equal; but Maroboduus
confessed the ascendency of his antagonist by avoiding a renewal
of the engagement, and by imploring the intervention of the
Romans in his defence. The younger Drusus then commanded the
Roman legions in the province of Illyricum, and by his mediation
a peace was concluded between Arminius and Maroboduus, by the
terms of which it is evident that the latter must have renounced
his ambitious schemes against the freedom of the other German
tribes.
Arminius did not long survive this second war of independence,
which he successfully waged for his country. He was assassinated
in the thirty-seventh year of his age, by some of his own
kinsmen, who conspired against him. Tacitus says that this
happened while he was engaged in a civil war, which had been
caused by his attempts to make himself king over his countrymen.
It is far more probable (as one of the best biographers of
Arminius has observed) that Tacitus misunderstood an attempt of
Arminius to extend his influence as elective war-chieftain of the
Cherusci, and other tribes, for an attempt to obtain the royal
dignity. [Dr. Plate, in Biographical Dictionary commenced by
the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.] When we
remember that his father-in-law and his brother were renegades,
we can well understand that a party among his kinsmen may have
been bitterly hostile to him, and have opposed his authority with
the tribe by open violence, and when that seemed ineffectual, by
secret assassination.
Arminius left a name, which the historians of the nation against
which he combated so long and so gloriously have delighted to
honour. It is from the most indisputable source, from the lips
of enemies, that we know his exploits. [See Tacitus, Ann. lib.
ii. sec. 88; Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii. sec. 118.] His
country men made history, but did not write it. But his memory
lived among them in the lays of their bards, who recorded
"The deeds he did, the fields he won,
The freedom he restored."
Tacitus, many years after the death of Arminius, says of him,
"Canitur adhuc barbaras apud gentes." As time passed on, the
gratitude of ancient Germany to her great deliverer grew into
adoration, and divine honours were paid for centuries to Arminius
by every tribe of the Low Germanic division of the Teutonic
races. The Irmin-sul, or the column of Herman, near Eresburg,
the modern Stadtberg, was the chosen object of worship to the
descendants of the Cherusci, the Old Saxons, and in defence of
which they fought most desperately against Charlemagne and his
christianized Franks. "Irmin, in the cloudy Olympus of Teutonic
belief, appears as a king and a warrior; and the pillar, the
'Irmin-sul,' bearing the statue, and considered as the symbol of
the deity, was the Palladium of the Saxon nation, until the
temple of Eresburg was destroyed by Charlemagne, and the column
itself transferred to the monastery of Corbey, where, perhaps, a
portion of the rude rock idol yet remains, covered by the
ornaments of the Gothic era." [Palgrave on the English
Commonwealth, vol. ii. p. 140.]
Traces of the worship of Arminius are to be found among our
Anglo-Saxon ancestors, after their settlement in this island.
One of the four great highways was held to be under the
protection of the deity, and was called the "Irmin-street." The
name Arminius is, of course, the mere Latinized form of "Herman,"
the name by which the hero and the deity were known by every man
of Low German blood, on either side of the German Sea. It means,
etymologically, the "War-man," the "man of hosts." No other
explanation of the worship of the "Irmin-sul," and of the name of
the "Irmin-street," is so satisfactory as that which connects
them with the deified Arminius. We know for certain of the
existence of other columns of an analogous character. Thus,
there was the Roland-seule in North Germany; there was a Thor-
seule in Sweden, and (what is more important) there was an
Athelstan-seule in Saxon England." [See Lappenburg's Anglo-
Saxons, p. 378. For nearly all the philological and
ethnographical facts respecting Arminius, I am indebted to Dr. R.
G. Latham.]
There is at the present moment a song respecting the Irmin-sul
current in the bishopric of Minden, one version of which might
seem only to refer to Charlemagne having pulled down the Irmin-
sul:--
"Herman, sla dermen,
Sla pipen, sla trummen,
De Kaiser will kummen,
Met hamer un stangen,
Will Herman uphangen."
But there is another version, which probably is the oldest, and
which clearly refers to the great Arminius:--
"Un Herman slaug dermen;
Slaug pipen, slaug trummen;
De fursten sind kammen,
Met all eren-mannen
Hebt VARUS uphangen."
[See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 329.]
About ten centuries and a half after the demolition of the Irmin-
sul, and nearly eighteen after the death of Arminius, the modern
Germans conceived the idea of rendering tardy homage to their
great hero; and, accordingly some eight or ten years ago, a
general subscription was organized in Germany, for the purpose of
erecting on the Osning--a conical mountain, which forms the
highest summit of the Teutoberger Wald, and is eighteen hundred
feet above the level of the sea--a colossal bronze statue of
Arminius. The statue was designed by Bandel. The hero was to
stand uplifting a sword in his right hand, and looking towards
the Rhine. The height of the statue was to be eighty feet from
the base to the point of the sword, and was to stand on a
circular Gothic temple, ninety feet high, and supported by oak
trees as columns. The mountain, where it was to be erected, is
wild and stern, and overlooks the scene of the battle. It was
calculated that the statue would be clearly visible at a distance
of sixty miles. The temple is nearly finished, and the statue
itself has been cast at the copper works at Lemgo. But there,
through want of funds to set it up, it has lain for some years,
in disjointed fragments, exposed to the mutilating homage of
relic-seeking travellers. The idea of honouring a hero who
belongs to ALL Germany, is not one which the present rulers of
that divided country have any wish to encourage; and the statue
may long continue to lie there, and present too true a type of
the condition of Germany herself. [On the subject of this
statue I must repeat an acknowledgment of my obligations to my
friend Mr. Henry Pearson.]
Surely this is an occasion in which Englishmen might well prove,
by acts as well as words, that we also rank Arminius among our
heroes.
I have quoted the noble stanzas of one of our modern English
poets on Arminius, and I will conclude this memoir with one of
the odes of the great poet of modern Germany, Klopstock, on the
victory to which we owe our freedom, and Arminius mainly owes his
fame. Klopstock calls it the "Battle of Winfield." The epithet
of "Sister of Cannae" shows that Klopstock followed some
chronologers, according to whom, Varus was defeated on the
anniversary of the day on which Paulus and Varro were defeated by
Hannibal.
SONG OF TRIUMPH AFTER THE VICTORY OF HERRMAN, THE DELIVERER OF
GERMANY FROM THE ROMANS.
FROM KLOPSTOCK'S "HERRMAN UND DIE FURSTEN."
Supposed to be sung by a Chorus of Bards.
A CHORUS.
Sister of Cannae! Winfield's fight!
We saw thee with thy streaming bloody hair,
With fiery eye, bright with the world's despair,
Sweep by Walhalla's bards from out our sight.
Herrman outspake--"Now Victory or Death!"
The Romans, . . . "Victory!"
And onward rushed their eagles with the cry.
--So ended the FIRST day.
"Victory or Death!" began
Then, first, the Roman chief; and Herrman spake
Not, but home struck: the eagles fluttered--brake.
--So sped the SECOND day.
TWO CHORUSES.
And the third came. . . . The cry was "Flight or Death!"
Flight left they not for them who'd make them slaves--
Men who stab children!--flight for THEM! . . . no! graves!
--'Twas their LAST day.
TWO BARDS.
Yet spared they messengers: two came to Rome.
How drooped the plume! the lance was left to trail
Down in the dust behind: their cheek was pale:
So came the messengers to Rome.
High in his hall the Imperator sate--
OCTAVIANUS CAESAR AUGUSTUS sate.
They filled up wine-cups, wine-cups filled they up
For him the highest, Jove of all their state.
The flutes of Lydia hushed before their voice,
Before the messengers--the "Highest" sprung--
The god against the marble pillars, wrung
By the dred words, striking his brow, and thrice
Cried he aloud in anguish--"Varus! Varus!
Give back my legions, Varus!"
And now the world-wide conquerors shrunk and feared
For fatherland and home
The lance to raise; and 'mongst those false to Rome
The death-lot rolled, and still they shrunk and feared;
"For she her face hath turned,
The victor goddess," cried these cowards--(for aye
Be it!)--"from Rome and Romans, and her day
Is done!"--And still be mourned
And cried aloud in anguish--"Varus! Varus!
Give back my legions, Varus!"
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Fifteen Decisive Battles of
The World From Marathon to Waterloo, by Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY (1812-1878), English historian, was born at Bexley in Kent, and educated at Eton and Kings College, Cambridge. He became a fellow of Kings College in 1834, and having been called to the bar at Lincolns Inn three years later, was made assistant judge at the Westminster sessions court. In 1840 he was appointed professor of modern and ancient history in the university of London, and in 1860 beame chief justice of Ceylon and a knight. Broken down in health he returned to England in 1870, and after a further but short stay in Ceylon died in London on the 27th of January 1878. Creasy`s most popular work is his Fifteen decisive Battles of the World, which, first published in 1851, has passed through many editions. He also wrote The History of the Ottoman Turks (London, 1854-1856); History of England (London, 1869-1870); Rise and Progress of the English Constitution (London., 1853, and other editions); Historical and Critical Account of the several Invasions of England (London, 1852); a novel entitled Old Love and the New (London, 1870); and various other works.