History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0144/01441.txt

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$Title{Germans Under Arminius Revolt Against Rome
Part I.}
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$Author{Creasy, Sir Edward Shepherd}
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Title:       Germans Under Arminius Revolt Against Rome
Author:      Creasy, Sir Edward Shepherd

Part I.

A.D. 9

Introduction

     The German race was beginning to make itself felt to a greater extent
than hitherto in its efforts for freedom from the Roman rule.  Research shows
that from the earliest days there were two distinct peoples under this
designation of German - the northern or Scandinavian, and the southern, being
more truly the German.  Both consisted of numerous tribes, the Romans giving
separate names to each; from this arose the generic titles of Franks,
Bavarians, Alamanni, and the rest.

     They were great fighters and, as a natural sequence, mighty hunters. When
warfare did not occupy their attention, hunting, feasting, and drinking took
its place.  Tacitus writes: "To drink continuously, night and day, was no
shame for them." Their chief beverage was barley beer, though, in the South,
wine was used to some extent.

     Rome had garrisons throughout the whole land, and the fortunes of the
Germans were at a low ebb.  Freedom seemed stifled forever when Arminius led
his forces against the Roman hosts in the forest of Teutoburgium.  Rightly
does Creasy rate this important battle so highly, for it meant the final
uplifting of the Teuton, and with it the English-speaking races of a later
time.

Germans Under Arminius Revolt Against Rome

     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 ^1 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 primary 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 Eider 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 overrunning the earth,
from one end of it to the other," would have been utterly cut off from
existence.

[Footnote 1: Guizot was minister of foreign affairs, and later (1848) prime
minister, under Louis Philippe.]

     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.

     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 valor.  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."

     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 rank 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 honors 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 favor.  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."

     Often must the young chieftain, while meditating the exploit which has
thus immortalized 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 Mithradates had perished?  What had been the doom
of Viriathus? and what warning against vain valor was written on the desolate
site where Numantia once had flourished?  Nor was a caution wanting in scenes
nearer home and more recent times.  The Gauls had fruitlessly struggled for
eight years against Caesar; and the gallant 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 year of the empire had been signalized 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 (incertum metu an per invidiam: Tac., Ann., i. II),
but he himself, until Arminius broke his spirit, had followed a very different
course.  Besides his Spanish wars, his generals, in a series of generally
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 Wuertemberg, Bavaria, the Valtelline, 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 on
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 harbors of
Gaul along the German coasts and up the estuaries, cooperated 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 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 of 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 favorite
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 the frequent feuds
among themselves, in one sudden outbreak against Rome; to keep the scheme
concealed from the Romans until the hour for action 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 to 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 preeminent 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, sympathized 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 hatred to the Roman dominion.

     A change of governors had recently taken place, which, while it
materially favored 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
afterward emperor, had recently 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 suspicious 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 also 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 to human feelings and
human sufferings, and without acting as the least checks 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 honor and modesty, by
which far less gallant spirits than those of our Teutonic ancestors have often
been maddened into insurrection.

     Arminius found among the other German chiefs many who sympathized with
him in his indignation at their country's abasement, 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' 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
them 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 their schemes until a favorable opportunity should arrive for striking a
decisive blow.

     For this purpose, the German confederates frequented the head-quarters 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 tastes, 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 Varus, 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 wooded 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
(Teutobergenwald = 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 Detmold, the modern 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. late 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."

     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
wagons 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.