The Provinces of the Roman Empire (Illustrated Edition). Theodor Mommsen
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in opposition to Arminius’ advice, followed the other leader, and instead of further surrounding the enemy, attempted directly to storm the camp. Caecina allowed the Germans to come up to the ramparts, but then burst forth from all posterns and gates with such vehemence upon the assailants that they suffered a severe defeat, and in consequence of it the further retreat took place without material hindrance. Those at the Rhine had already given up the army as lost, and were on the point of casting off the bridge at Vetera, to prevent the Germans at least from penetrating into Gaul; it was only the resolute remonstrance of a woman, the wife of Germanicus and daughter of Agrippa, which frustrated the desperate and disgraceful resolve.
The resumption of the subjugation of Germany thus began not quite successfully. The territory between the Rhine and Weser had indeed been again trodden and traversed, but the Romans had no decisive results to show, and the enormous loss in material, particularly in horses, was sorely felt, so that, as in the times of Scipio, the towns of Italy and of the western provinces took part in patriotic contributions to make up for what was lost.
Campaign of the year 16.
For the next campaign (16) Germanicus changed his plan of warfare. He attempted the subjugation of Germany on the basis of the North Sea and the fleet, partly because the tribes on the coast, the Batavi, Frisians, and Chauci, adhered more or less to the Romans, partly in order to shorten the marches—in which much time was spent and much loss incurred—from the Rhine to the Weser and Elbe and back again. After he had employed this spring, like the previous one, for rapid advances on the Main and on the Lippe, he, in the beginning of summer, embarked his whole army at the mouth of the Rhine in the powerful transport–fleet of 1000 sail which had meanwhile been made ready, and actually arrived without loss at the mouth of the Ems, where the fleet remained. Thence he advanced, as may be conjectured, up the Ems as far as the mouth of the Haase, and then along the latter as far up as the Werra–valley, and through this to the Weser. By this means the carrying of the army, 80,000 strong, through the Teutoburg Forest, which was attended with great difficulties, particularly as to provisions, was avoided. A secure reserve for supplies was furnished in the camp beside the fleet, and the Cherusci on the right bank of the Weser were assailed in flank instead of in front. Here the Romans encountered the levy en masse of the Germans, again led by the two chiefs of the patriot party, Arminius and Inguiomerus. What warlike resources were at their disposal is shown by the fact that on two occasions, one shortly after the other, in the Cheruscan country—first on the Weser itself and then somewhat farther inland22—they fought in the open field against the whole Roman army, and in both hardly contested the victory. The latter certainly fell to the Romans, and of the German patriots a considerable number were left on the fields of battle. No prisoners were taken, and both sides fought with extreme exasperation. The second tropaeum of Germanicus spoke of the overthrow of all the Germanic tribes between the Rhine and Elbe; the son placed this campaign of his alongside of the brilliant campaigns of his father, and reported to Rome that in the next campaign he should have the subjugation of Germany complete. But Arminius escaped, although wounded, and continued still at the head of the patriots; and an unforeseen mischief marred the success won by arms. On the return home, which the greater part of the legions made by sea, the transport–fleet encountered the autumn storms of the North Sea. The vessels were dashed on all sides upon the islands of the North Sea, and as far as the British coasts. A great portion were destroyed, and those that escaped had for the most part to throw horses and baggage overboard, and to be glad of saving their bare life. The loss of vessels was, as in the times of the Punic war, equivalent to a defeat. Germanicus himself, cast adrift alone with the admiral’s ship on the desolate shore of the Chauci, was in despair at this misfortune, and on the point of seeking his death in that ocean the assistance of which he had at the beginning of this campaign invoked so earnestly and so vainly. Doubtless afterwards the loss of men proved not to be quite so great as it had at first appeared, and some effective blows which the general, on his return to the Rhine, inflicted on the nearest barbarians, raised the sunken courage of the troops. But, taken as a whole, the campaign of the year 16, as compared with that of the preceding year, ended in more brilliant victories doubtless, but also in much more serious loss.
The altered situation.
The recall of Germanicus was at the same time the abolition of the command–in–chief of the Rhenish army. The mere division of the command put an end to the conduct of the war as heretofore pursued; the circumstance that Germanicus was not merely recalled, but obtained no successor, was tantamount to ordaining the defensive on the Rhine. Thus the campaign of the year 16 was the last which the Romans waged in order to subdue Germany and to transfer the boundary of the empire from the Rhine to the Elbe. That this was the aim of the campaigns of Germanicus is shown by their very course, and by the trophy that celebrated the frontier of the Elbe. The re–establishment, too, of the military works on the right bank of the Rhine, of the forts of the Taunus, as well as of the stronghold of Aliso and the line connecting it with Vetera, belonged only in part to such an occupation of the right bank as was in keeping with the restricted plan of operations after the battle of Varus; in fact it had a far wider scope. But the designs of the general were not, or not quite, those of the emperor. It is more than probable that Tiberius from the outset allowed rather than sanctioned the enterprises of Germanicus on the Rhine, and it is certain that he wished to put an end to them by recalling him in the winter of 16–17. Beyond doubt, at the same time, a good part of what had been attained was given up, and in particular the garrison was withdrawn from Aliso. As Germanicus, even in the following year, found not a stone left of the memorial of victory erected in the Teutoburg Forest, so the results of his victories disappeared like a flash of lightning into the water, and none of his successors continued the building on this basis.
Motives for the change of policy.
If Augustus gave up the conquered Germany as lost after the battle of Varus, and if Tiberius now, when the conquest had once more been taken in hand, ordered it to be broken off, we are well entitled to ask, What motives guided the two notable rulers in this course, and what was the significance of these important events for the general policy of the empire?
The battle of Varus is an enigma, not in a military but in a political point of view—not in its course, but in its consequences. Augustus was not wrong when he demanded back his lost legions, not from the enemy nor from fate, but from the general; it was a disaster such as unskilled leaders of division from time to time bring about for every state. We have difficulty in conceiving that the destruction of an army of 20,000 men without further direct military consequences should have given a decisive turn to the policy at large of a judiciously governed universal empire. And yet the two rulers bore that defeat with a patience as unexampled as it was critical and hazardous for the position of the government in relation to the army and to its neighbours; they allowed the conclusion of peace with Maroboduus, which, beyond doubt, was meant to be in strictness a mere armistice, to become withal definitive, and made no further attempt to get the upper valley of the Elbe into their hands. It must have been no easy thing for Tiberius to see the collapse of the great structure begun in concert with his brother, and after the latter’s death almost completed by himself; the energetic zeal with which, as soon as he had again entered on the government, he took up the Germanic war which he had begun ten years ago, enables us to measure what this self–denial must have cost him. If, nevertheless, the self–denial was persevered in not merely by Augustus, but also after his death by Tiberius himself, there is no other reason to be found for it than that they recognised the plans pursued by them for twenty years for the changing of the boundary to the north as incapable of execution, and the subjugation and mastery of the region between the Rhine and the Elbe appeared to them to transcend the resources of the empire.
The Elbe frontier.
If the previous boundary of the empire ran from the middle Danube up to its source and to the upper Rhine, and thence down that river, it was, at all events, materially shortened and improved by being shifted to the Elbe, which in its head–waters approaches the middle Danube, and to its course throughout; in which case, probably, besides the evident military gain, there came into view also the political consideration that the keeping of the great commands as far as possible remote from Rome and Italy was one of the leading maxims of the Augustan policy, and an army of the Elbe would hardly have played such a part in the further development of Rome as the armies