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The Historians' History of the World 06 [The Early Roman Empire]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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This plan of operations brought the Romans into great straits. The causeway of piles was interrupted in many places, and the forty cohorts which Cæcina led over the slippery ground, hemmed in by impassable ravines and morasses, surrounded by the Germans and distraught by constant attacks, were in danger of succumbing to the fate of Varus. Exhausted and covered with wounds in the unequal struggle by day, they were alarmed and terrified at night by the wild war songs of the enemy encamped on the higher ground; imagination presented to their overwrought minds the hideous images of death which they had seen in the Teutoburg forest. In his dreams Cæcina saw the bloody figure of Quintilius Varus rise from the marsh and beckon him. They had lost their baggage in two days of fruitless fighting, and with exhausted strength saw certain destruction staring them in the face.
Then the Germans in the insolence of triumph and the wary Cæcina in his superior military skill wrought them an unexpected deliverance. A premature assault upon the hostile camp, attempted by the Germans against the advice of Arminius and at the instigation of Inguiomer, was driven back by a sudden charge of the Romans. Inguiomer left the field severely wounded and the Germans withdrew into the mountains in disorder, pursued by the enemy. Cæcina then led his legions rapidly to the Rhine. But rumours of disaster had outstripped them; men believed that the army was already annihilated, and in imagination saw the enemy rushing upon themselves. They were in the act of making preparations to destroy the bridges about Vetera when Agrippina hurried thither and prevented the cowardly deed. And when the army arrived this heroic woman, standing like a general at the head of the bridge, welcomed it with friendly greetings, nursed the wounded, and bestowed gifts on those who had been plundered.
A Roman Emperor
(After De Montfaucon)
Germanicus arrived soon after with his troops, likewise preceded by rumours of disaster. And in truth they too had passed through great dangers. Owing to the shallowness of the water only two legions could be put on board; the legate Vitellius was to lead the rest along the margin of the sea. But this latter body was overtaken by the tide, which rose breast-high around the soldiers and put an end to all order; waves and eddies carried men and beasts away; draught cattle, baggage, and corpses drifted hither and thither in the water. They escaped destruction narrowly and with heavy loss. Germanicus and Agrippina exerted themselves to the utmost to make them forget their sorrows and hardships by condescension and kindly encouragement, by attention and rewards; and Gaul, Spain, and Italy vied with one another in the effort to make good their losses in arms, horses, and money.
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.