The Historians' History of the World 06

Moved rather by apprehension at the growing love and devotion of the legions for their general and his family than by annoyance at the mishaps of the German expedition, the emperor resolved to recall Germanicus from the Rhine and despatch him to the East. This circumstance made the general all the more anxious to bring to a glorious issue the war in Germany which he regarded himself as bound in honour to terminate. A fleet of a thousand ships, with flat bottoms adapted for the ebb and flow, well manned and abundantly provisioned, was collected in the Batavian islands. In these he voyaged with eight legions to the mouth of the Amisia and then marched by land to the Visurgis, on whose right bank the Germans were posted under the command of Arminius.

A brother of the Cheruscan chieftain was serving in the Roman army and had been rewarded for his military services in Pannonia and for the loss of an eye with pay and badges of honour. Arminius asked and obtained an interview with him; but warmly as he exhorted him in his own name and their mother’s to take the part of their beloved country and to fight for their hereditary freedom and native gods, his words recoiled without effect from the breast of the misguided and degenerate man. If the Visurgis had not flowed between these dissimilar brothers they would have come to blows. Thus even in the earliest times Germany exhibits the spectacle of fraternal strife and national disunion.

Next day Germanicus led his army across the river. The Batavian cavalry, which preceded the main body, was enticed by a feint of flight on the part of the Cherusci into a plain encircled by wooded heights, where the majority of them, including their gallant leader Cariobald, succumbed to the blows of the enemy. Soon afterwards battle took place in a plain called by Tacitus Idistavisus, that stretched from the Visurgis to the range of hills that bordered it.

Battling with Arminius

Before the fight began both leaders endeavoured to inflame the ardour of their warriors, Germanicus trying to rid his men of their dread of the unequal combat on wooded ground and of the lofty stature and savage looks of their adversaries, and insisting on the superiority of their armour over the wretched weapons of the other side—their shields of wood and wickerwork, their short spears and sticks hardened in the fire; Arminius reminding the Germans of former victories, and then asking whether any choice was left to them save to maintain their freedom or die before slavery overtook them.

But bravely as the Germans advanced to the fray, victory favoured the tactics of the legions directed by the military genius and resolute generalship of Cæsar Germanicus. In vain Arminius strove to rally the fight by bold rushes and cheers, the Cheruscan column was shattered against the advance of the auxiliary troops, Gauls, Ræti, and Vindelici; wounded and with his face disfigured with blood to evade recognition, the German prince escaped to the mountains by the strength of his war horse. Inguiomer also saved himself by the same artifice and the fleetness of his steed. The rest were cut down. Many who attempted to swim across the Visurgis met their death from the missiles of the enemy, the violence of the stream, the hurrying crowd behind them or the yielding bank in front. Some who hid themselves in the tops and branches of lofty oaks were shot by the archers or killed by the felling of the trees. The slaughter lasted far on into the night, for two miles the ground was strewn thick with corpses. The Romans hailed Germanicus as imperator and erected on the battle-field a stately trophy with the names of the conquered tribes upon it.

The Germans had succumbed before the superior might of Rome, but their spirit was unbroken; the erection of the trophy on their territory and soil inflamed them with wrath and vengeance. High and low, young and old, flew to arms and, led by Inguiomer and the wounded Arminius, set upon the Roman army. Thus a second battle took place a few days later two miles to the east of the scene of the first, near a wide dam which the Angrivarii had thrown up as a barrier against the Cherusci.

It was a terrible battle. The Germans, sheltered by the rampart, offered a desperate resistance, and when they were at length forced to give ground by the slingers and archers, they ranged themselves afresh in a wood, where they had a swamp in their rear, and the struggle was renewed with unabated vehemence until night separated the combatants. The Germans were at a disadvantage on account of the cramped space and their sorry armour; “their unhelmeted heads, their unprotected breasts, were exposed to the sword thrusts of the mailed Roman soldiers.” They nevertheless fought with marvellous valour. Inguiomer flew to and fro in the ranks, exhorting them to stand fast; Germanicus also took off his helmet that he might be recognised of all men and spurred on his troops with orders to cut down all assailants.