# 15 decisive battles of the world Vol 1 (London)/Chapter V

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CHAPTER V.
VICTORY OF ARMINIUS OVER THE ROMAN LEGIONS UNDER VARUS. A.D. 9.
Hac clade factum, ut Imperium quod in litore 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 ​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 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 overrunning the earth, from one end of it to the other," 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 Cæsar'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 mainstream 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 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."
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 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 Germaniæ."
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 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 flourished? Nor was a caution wanting in scenes nearer home and more recent times. The Gauls had fruitlessly struggled for eight years against Cæsar; 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 Cæsar himself to the extreme of peril at Alesia — he, too, had finally succumbed, had been led captive in Cæsar'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 years 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. ll), 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 Wirtemberg, Bavaria, the Valtelline, and the Tyrol. While the progress of the Roman arms thus ressed 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 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 fortified posts; and a powerful army of occupation was kept on foot, ready to move instantly on any spot where any 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 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 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 partizans 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 organise 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 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 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 for 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 honour 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 sympathised 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'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 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 manœuvre 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 favourable 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 woody and hilly region intervenes between the heads of the two rivers, and forms the watershed 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 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. Plate adds, that "the names of several localities on and near that spot seem to indicate that a great ​battle has 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-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 his 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, greavesy 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. Arminius suffered die 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 b one of the offshoots 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. 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 altars 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.
​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 were received with an agony of terror, the reports of which we should deem exaggerated, did they not come from Roman historians themselves. They 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 unite for a common purpose, but also they reveal how weakened and debased the population of Italy had become. Dion Cassius says (lib. lvi. sec. 23), — "Then Augustus, when he heard the calamity of Varus, rent his garment, 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 of 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, bad 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, bad, of its own accord, turned rounds 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 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.
The Germans did not pursue their victory beyond their own territory. But that victory ​cured 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 conquests 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 Cheruscans 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 my friend Dr. Robert Gordon Latham on the "English Language;" and in the notes to his forthcoming 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 Maroboduus, 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 bis 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 the 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 active 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, bis daughter Thusnelda, the wife of Arminius, also came into the bands of the Romans, being far advanced in pregnancy. She showed, as Tacitus relates, 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 know, 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. 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 Cæcina, 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 lost, 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 born 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 the 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 was 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 he 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 torture, 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 hark.
Oh, misery that such a ban
On such a brow should he !
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 claim 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 the ​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 hostililies 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. 19, in which the loss on each side was equal; but Maroboduus confessed the ascendancy 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 be 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 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. 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 violences, 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 line ​of enemies, that we know his exploits. His countrymen 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, writing 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 Eresburgh 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." 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 "Irminsúl," 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.
There is at the present moment a song ​respecting the Irminsul current in the bishopric of Minden, one version of which might seem only to refer to Charlemagne having pulled down the Irminsul.
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 fürsten sind kammen,
Met all eren-mannen
Hebt Varus uphangen.
About ten centuries and a half after the demolition of the Irminsul, 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.
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 Winfeld." The epithet of "sister of Cannæ" 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 FÜRSTEN."
Supposed to be sung by a chorus of Bards.
A CHORUS.
Sister of Cannæ! Winfeld'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
"'T was their last day."   TWO BARDS.
Yet spared they messengers: — they 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 Cæsar Augustus sate.
They filled up wine-cups, wine-cups filled they up
For him the highest — 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 dread 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 those cowards— (for aye
Be it!) — "from Rome and Romans, and her day
Is done," — and still he mourned,
Synopsis of Events between Arminius's Victory over Varus, and the Battle of Chalons.
A.D. 43. The Romans commence the conquest of Britain, Claudius being then emperor of Rome. The population of this island was then Celtic. In about forty years all the tribes south of the Clyde were subdued, and their land made a Roman province.
58—60. Successful campaigns of the Roman General Corbulo against the Parthians.
64. First persecution of the Christians at Rome under Nero.
68 — 70. Civil wars in the Roman world. The Emperors Nero, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, cut off successively by violent deaths. Vespasian becomes emperor.
70. Jerusalem destroyed by the Romans under Titus.
83. Futile attack of Domitian on the Germans.
86. Beginning of the wars between the Romans and the Dacians.
​98 — 117, Trajan, emperor of Rome. Under him the empire acquires its greatest territorial extent by his conquests in Dacia, and in the East. His successor, Hadrian, abandons the provinces beyond the Euphrates, which Trajan had conquered.
138 — 180. Era of the Antonines.
167 — 176. Along and desperate war betweetn Rome, and a great confederacy of the German nations. Marcus Antoninus at last succeeds in repelling them.
192 — 197. Civil wars throughout the Roman world. Severus becomes emperor. He relaxes the discipline of the soldiers. After his death in 211, the series of military insurrections, civil wars, and murders of emperors recommences.
226. Artaxerxes (Ardisheer) overthrows the Parthian, and restores the Persian kingdom in Asia. He attacks the Roman possessions in the East.
250. The Goths invade the Roman provinces. The emperor Decius is defeated and slain by them.
253 — 260. The Franks and Alemanni invade Gaul, Spain, and Africa. The Goths attack Asia Minor amd Greece. The Persians conquer Armenia. Their king, Sapor, defeats the Roman ​Emperor Valerian, and takes him prisoner. General distress of the Roman empire.
268 — 283. The Emperors Claudius, Aurelian, Tacitus, Probus, and Carus defeat the various enemies of Rome, and restore order in the Roman state.
285. Diocletian divides and reorganizes the Roman Empire. After his abdication in 305 a fresh series of civil wars and confusion ensues. Constantine, the first Christian emperor, reunites the empire in 324.
330. Constantine makes Constantinople the seat of empire instead of Rome.
363. The Emperor Julian is killed in action against the Persians.
364 — 375. The empire is again divided, Valentinian being emperor of the West, and Valens of the East. Valentinian repulses the Alemanni, and other German invaders from Gaul. Splendour of the Gothic kingdom under Hermanric, north of the Danube.
375 — 395. The Huns attack the Goths, who implore the protection of the Roman emperor of the East. The Goths are allowed to pass the Danube, and to settle in the Roman provinces. A war soon breaks out between them and the Romans, and the emperor Valens and his army are destroyed by them. They ravage the Roman ​territories. The Emperor Theodosius reduces them to submission. They retain settlements in Thracia and Asia Minor.
395. Final division of the Roman empire between Arcadius and Honorius, the two sons of Theodosius. The Goths revolt, and under Alaric attack various parts of both the Roman empires.
410. Alaric takes the city of Rome.
412. The Goths march into Gaul, and in 418 into Spain, which bad been invaded by hosts of Vandals, Suevi, Alani, and other Germanic nations. Britain is formally abandoned by the Roman empire of the West.
428. Genseric, king of the Vandals, conquers the Roman province of North Africa.
441. The Huns attack the Eastern empire.
* ↑ <Arnold's " Lectures on Modern History."
* ↑ See post, remarks on the relationship between the Cherusci and the English.
* ↑ Ranke.
* ↑ Tacitus, " Annals," ii. 88.
* ↑ 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."
* ↑ I am indebted for much valuable information on this subject to my friend Mr. Henry Pearson.
* ↑ See Gibbon's description (vol. i. chapter 1) of the Roman regions in the time of Augustus; and see the description in Tacitus, "Ann." lib. i. of the subsequent battles between Cæcina and Arminius.
* ↑ The circumstances of the early part of the battle which Arminius fought with Cæcina 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 ("Annal." lib. i. c. 65) of the last-mentioned engagement. "Neque tamen Arminius, quamquam libero incursu, statim prorupit: sed ut hæsere cœno fossisque impedimenta, turbati circum milites; incertus signorum ordo; utque tali in tempore sibi quisque propenis, et lentæ adversum imperia aures, irrumpere Germanos jubet, clamitans 'En Varus, et eodem iterum fato victæ legiones!' Simul hæc, et cum delectis scindit agmen, equisque maxime vulnera ingerit; illi sanguine suo et lubrico paludum lapsantes, excussis rectoribus, disjicere obvios, proterere jacentes."
* ↑ "Lucis propinquis barbaræ aræ, apud quas tribunos ac primorum ordinum centuriones mactaverant." — Tacitus, Ann. lib. i. c. 61.
* ↑ It is clear that the Romans followed the policy of fomenting dissensions 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 prœlii invidere: super lx. millia non armis telisque Romanis, sed quod magnificentius est, oblectationi oculisque ceciderunt. Maneat quæso, duretque gentibus, si non amor nostri, at certe odium sui: quando urgentibus imperii fatis, nihil jam præstare fortuna majus potest quam hostium discordiam."
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ "Ann." i. 57.
* ↑ In the Museum of Rheinish Antiquities at Bonn, there is a Roman sepulchral monument, the inscription on which records that it was erected to the memory of M. Cœlius, who fell "Bello Variano."
* ↑ Dr. Plate, in "Biographical Dictionary," commenced by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
* ↑ See Tacitus, "Ann." lib. ii. sec. 88; Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii. sec. 118.
* ↑ Palgrave on the "English Commonwealth," vol. ii. p. 140.
* ↑ See Lappenburg's "Anglo-Saxons," p. 376. For nearly all the philological and ethnographical facts respecting Anninius, I am indebted to my friend Dr. R. G. Latham.
* ↑ See Grimm, "Deutsche Mythologie," 329.
* ↑ On the subject of this statue I must repeat an acknowledgment of my obligations to my friend Mr. Henry Pearson.
* ↑ The battle of Cannæ, B.C. 216 — Hannibal's victory over the Romans
* ↑ Winfeld — the probable site of the "Herrmanschladt," see supra.
* ↑ Augustus was worshipped as a deity in hie lifetime.
* ↑ See supra, p. 234.
* ↑ I have taken this translation from an anonymous writer in "Frazer," two years ago.