Part 216

The work of Roman conquest in Germany, left unfinished by Drusus, was taken up by his brother Tiberius (afterwards emperor) under the direction of Augustus. Tiberius crossed the Rhine, for the first time, B. C. 8. The frontier tribes made no resistance, but offered submission at once. Tiberius sent their chiefs to Augustus, then holding his court at Lugdunum (Lyons), to make terms with the emperor in person, and Augustus basely treated them as captives and threw them into prison. The following year found the German tribes again under arms, and Tiberius again crossed the Rhine; but it was only to ravage the country, and not to remain. Then followed a period of ten years, during which the emperor's step-son, dissatisfied with his position and on ill terms with Augustus, retired to Rhodes. In the summer of A. D. 4, he returned to the command of the legions on the Rhine. Meantime, under other generals,--Domitius and Vinicius,--they had made several campaigns beyond the river; had momentarily crossed the Elbe; had constructed a road to the outposts on the Weser; had fought the Cherusci, with doubtful results, but had not settled the Roman power in Germany. Tiberius invaded the country once more, with a powerful force, and seems to have crushed all resistance in the region between the lower Rhine and the Weser. The following spring, he repeated, with more success, the movement of Drusus by land and sea, sending a flotilla around to the Elbe and up that stream, to a point where it met and co-operated with a column moved overland, through the wilderness. A single battle was fought and the Germans defeated; but, once more, when winter approached, the Romans retired and no permanent conquest was made. Two years later (A. D. 6), Tiberius turned his arms against the powerful nation of the Marcomanni, which had removed itself from the German mark, or border, into the country formerly occupied, by the Boii--modern Bohemia. Here, under their able chief Marbod, or Maroboduus, they developed a formidable military organization and became threatening to the Roman frontiers on the Upper Danube. Two converging expeditions, from the Danube and from the Rhine, were at the point of crushing the Marcomanni between them, when news of the alarming revolt, in Pannonia and Dalmatia, called the "Batonian War," caused the making of a hasty peace with Maroboduus. The Batonian or Pannonian war occupied Tiberius for nearly three years. He had just brought it to a close, when intelligence reached Rome of a disaster in Germany which filled the empire with horror and dismay. The tribes in northwestern Germany, between the lower Rhine and the Elbe, supposed to be cowed and submissive, had now found a leader who could unite them and excite them to disdain the Roman yoke. This leader was Arminius, or Hermann, a young chief of the Cherusci, who had been trained in the Roman military service and admitted to Roman citizenship, but who hated the oppressors of his country with implacable bitterness. The scheme of insurrection organized by Arminius was made easy of execution by the insolent carelessness and the incapacity of the Roman commander in Germany, L. Quintilius Varus. It succeeded so well that Varus and his army,--three entire legions, horse, foot and auxiliaries,--probably 20,000 men in all,--were overwhelmed in the Teutoburger Wald, north of the Lippe, and destroyed. Only a few skulking fugitives reached the Rhine and escaped to tell the fate of the rest. This was late in the summer of A. D. 9. In the following spring Tiberius was sent again to the Rhine frontier, with as powerful a levy of men and equipments as the empire could collect. He was accompanied by his nephew, Germanicus, son of Drusus, destined to be his successor in the field of German conquest. {1431} But dread and fear were in the Roman heart, and the campaign of Tiberius, delayed another twelve months, until A. D. 11, was conducted too cautiously to accomplish any important result. He traversed and ravaged a considerable region of the German country, but withdrew again across the Rhine and left it, apparently, unoccupied. This was his last campaign. Returning to Rome, he waited only two years longer for the imperial sovereignty to which he succeeded on the death of Augustus, who had made him, by adoption, his son and his heir.

_C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapters 36-38._

ALSO IN: _T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 8, chapter 1._

_Sir E. Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, chapter 5._

_T. Smith, Arminius, part 1, chapters 4-6._

GERMANY: A. D. 14-16. Campaigns of Germanicus.

Germanicus--the son of Drusus--was given the command on the Rhine at the beginning of the year 13 A. D. The following year, Augustus died and Tiberius became emperor; whereupon Germanicus found himself no longer restrained from crossing the river and assuming the offensive against Arminius and his tribes. His first movement, that autumn, was up the valley of the Lippe, which he laid waste, far and wide. The next spring, he led one column, from Mentz, against the Chatti, as far as the upper branches of the Weser, while he sent another farther north to chastise the Cherusci and the Marsi, surprising and massacring the latter at their feast of Tanfana. Later in the same year, he penetrated, by a double expedition,--moving by sea and by land, as his father had done before,--to the country between the Ems and the Lippe, and laid waste the territory of the Bructeri, and their neighbors. He also visited the spot where the army of Varus had perished, and erected a monument to the dead. On the return from this expedition, four legions, under Cæcina, were beset in the same manner that Varus had been, and under like difficulties; but their commander was of different stuff and brought them safely through, after punishing his pursuers severely. But the army had been given up as lost, and only the resolute opposition of Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus, had prevented the Roman commander at Vetera, on the Rhine, from destroying the bridge there, and abandoning the legions to their supposed fate. In the spring of A. D. 16, Germanicus again embarked his army, 80,000 strong, at the mouth of the Rhine, on board transports, and moved it to the mouth of the Ems, where the fleet remained. Thence he marched up the Ems and across to the Weser, and was encountered, in the country of the Cherusci, by a general levy of the German tribes, led by Arminius and Inguiomerus. Two great battles were fought, in which the Romans were victorious. But, when returning from this campaign, the fleet encountered a storm in which so much of it perished, with the troops on board, that the disaster threw a heavy cloud of gloom over the triumph of Germanicus. The young general was soon afterwards recalled, and three years later he died,--of poison, as is supposed,--at Antioch. "The central government ceased from this time to take any warm interest in the subjugation of the Germans; and the dissensions of their states and princes, which peace was not slow in developing, attracted no Roman emissaries to the barbarian camps, and rarely led the legions beyond the frontier, which was now allowed to recede finally to the Rhine."

_C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 42._

ALSO IN: _T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 8, chapter 1._

_T. Smith, Arminius, part 1, chapter 7._

GERMANY: 3d Century. Beginning of the "Wandering of the Nations."

"Towards the middle of the third century, ... a change becomes perceptible in the relations and attitude of the German peoples. Many of the nations, which have been celebrated in the annals of the classical writers, disappear silently from history; new races, new combinations and confederacies start into life, and the names which have achieved an imperishable notoriety from their connection with the long decay and the overthrow of the Roman Empire, come forward, and still survive. On the soil whereon the Sigambri, Marsi, Chauci, and Cherusci had struggled to preserve a rude independence, Franks and Saxons lived free and formidable; Alemanni were gathered along the foot of the Roman wall which connected the Danube with the Rhine, and had, hitherto, preserved inviolate the Agri decumates; while eastern Germany, allured by the hope of spoil, or impelled by external pressure, precipitated itself under the collective term of Goths upon the shrinking settlements of the Dacia and the Danube. The new appellations which appear in western Germany in the third century have not unnaturally given rise to the presumption that unknown peoples had penetrated through the land, and overpowered the ancient tribes, and national vanity has contributed to the delusion. As the Burgundians ... were flattered by being told they were descendants of Roman colonists, so the barbarian writers of a later period busied their imaginations in the solitude of monastic life to enhance the glory of their countrymen, by the invention of what their inkling of classical knowledge led them to imagine a more illustrious origin. ... Fictions like these may be referred to as an index of the time when the young barbarian spirit, eager after fame, and incapable of balancing probabilities, first gloated over the marvels of classical literature, though its refined and delicate beauties eluded their grosser taste; but they require no critical examination; there are no grounds for believing that Franks, Saxons, or Alemanni, were other than the original inhabitants of the country, though there is a natural difficulty arising from the want of written contemporary evidence in tracing the transition, and determining the tribes of which the new confederacies were formed. At the same time, though no immigration of strangers was possible, a movement of a particular tribe was not unfrequent. The constant internal dissensions of the Germans, combined with their spirit of warlike enterprise, led to frequent domestic wars; and the vanquished sometimes chose rather to seek an asylum far from their native soil, where they might live in freedom, than continue as bondmen or tributaries to the conqueror. Of such a nature were the wanderings of the Usipites and Teuchteri [Tenchteri] in Cæsar's time, the removal of the Ubii from Nassau to the neighbourhood of Cöln and Xanthen; and to this must be ascribed the appearance of the Burgundians, who had dwelt beyond the Oder, in the vicinity of the Main and the Necker. Another class of national emigrations, were those which implied a final abandonment of the native Germany with the object of seeking a new settlement among the possessions of the sinking empire. {1432} Those of the Goths, Vandals, Alans, Sueves, the second movement of the Burgundians, may be included in this category; the invasions of the Franks, Alemanni, and Saxons, on the contrary, cannot be called national emigrations, for they never abandoned, with their families, their original birthplace; their outwanderings, like the emigrations of the present day, were partial; their occupation of the enemy's territory was, in character, military and progressive; and, with the exception of the Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain, their connection with the original stock was never interrupted. In all the migrations of German peoples spoken of from Cæsar downwards, the numbers of the emigrants appear to be enormously exaggerated. The Usipites and Teuchteri are estimated by Cæsar at 430,000 souls. How could such a multitude find nourishment during a three years' wandering? If 80,000 Burgundian Wehrmen came to the Rhine to the assistance of Valentinian, as Cassiodorius, Jerome, and other chroniclers state, the numbers of the whole nation must have approached 400,000, and it is impossible to believe that such a mass could obtain support in the narrow district lying between the Alemanni, the Hermunduri, and the Chatti. In other cases, vague expressions, and still more the wonderful achievements of the Germans in the course of their emigrations, have led to the supposition of enormous numbers; but Germany could not find nourishment for the multitudes which have been ascribed to it. Corn at that period was little cultivated; it was not the food of the people, whose chief support was flesh. ... The conquests of the barbarians may be ascribed as much to the weakness of their adversaries, to their want of energy and union, as to their own strength. There was, in fact, no enemy to meet them in the field; and their domination was, at least, as acceptable to the provincial inhabitants as that of the imbecile, but rapacious ministers of the Roman government. ... It was not the lust of wandering, but the influence of external circumstances which brought them to the vicinity of the Danube: at first the aggressions of the Romans, then the pressure of the Huns and the Sclavonic tribes. The whole intercourse of Germany with Rome must be considered as one long war, which began with the invasion of Cæsar; which, long restrained by the superior power of the enemy, warmed with his growing weakness, and only ended with the extinction of the Roman name. The wars of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, were only a continuance of the ancient hostility. There might be partial truce, or occasional intermission; some tribes might be almost extirpated by the sword; some, for a time, bought off by money; but Rome was the universal enemy, and much of the internal restlessness of the Germans was no more than the natural movement towards the hostile borders. As the invasion of northern Germany gave rise to the first great northern union, so the conquest of Dacia brought Goths from the Vistula to the south, while the erection of the giant wall naturally gathered the Suevic tribes along its limits, only waiting for the opportunity to break through. Step by step this battle of centuries was fought; from the time of Caracalla the flood turned, wave followed wave like the encroaching tide, and the ancient landmarks receded bit by bit, till Rome itself was buried beneath the waters. ... Three great confederacies of German tribes, more or less united by birth, position, interest, or language, may be discerned, during this period, in immediate contact with the Romans---the Alemanni, the Goths, and the Franks. A fourth, the Saxons, was chiefly known from its maritime voyages off the coast of Gaul and Britain. There were also many independent peoples which cannot be enumerated among any of the political confederacies, but which acted for themselves, and pursued their individual ends: such were the Burgundians, the Alans, the Vandals, and the Lombards."

_T. Smith, Arminius, part 2, chapter 1._

ALSO IN: _R. G. Latham, Nationalities of Europe, volume 2, chapter 21._

See, also, ALEMANNI; MARCOMANNI; QUADI; GOTHS; GEPIDÆ; SAXONS; ANGLES, FRANKS; BURGUNDIANS; VANDALS; SUEVI; LOMBARDS; and, also, Appendix A, volume 1.

GERMANY: A. D. 277. Invasion by Probus.

The vigorous emperor Probus, who, in the year 277, drove from Gaul the swarms of invaders that had ravaged the unhappy province with impunity for two years past, then crossed the Rhine and harried the country of the marauders, as far as the Elbe and the Neckar. "Germany, exhausted by the ill success of the last emigration, was astonished by his presence. Nine of the most considerable princes repaired to his camp and fell prostrate at his feet. Such a treaty was humbly received by the Germans as it pleased the conqueror to dictate." Probus then caused a stone wall, strengthened at intervals with towers, to be built from the Danube, near Neustadt and Ratisbon, to Wimpfen on the Neckar, and thence to the Rhine, for the protection of the settlers of the "Agri Decumates." But the wall was thrown down, a few years afterwards, by the Alemanni.

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 12._

GERMANY: 5th Century. Conversion of the Franks.

See CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 496-800.

GERMANY: A. D. 481-768. Acquisition of supremacy by the Franks.

The original dominions of Clovis, or Chlodwig--with whose reign the career of the Franks as a consolidated people began--corresponded nearly to the modern kingdom of Belgium. His first conquests were from the Romans, in the neighboring parts of Gaul, and when those were finished, "the king of the Franks began to look round upon the other German nations settled upon its soil, with a view to the further extension of his power. A quarrel with the Alemanni supplied the first opportunity for the gratification of his ambition. For more than a century the Alemanni had been in undisturbed possession of Alsace, and the adjoining districts; Mainz, Worms, Speyer, Strasburg, Basel, Constanz, Bregenz, lay within their territory. ... The Vosegen range was a bulwark on the side of Gaul, waste lands separated them from the Burgundians, who were settled about the Jura and in the south-west part of Helvetia, and the Moselle divided them from the Ripuarian Franks. It is unknown whether they formed a state distinct from their brethren on the right of the Rhine; probably such was the case, for the Alemanni, at all times, were divided into separate tribes, between which, however, was generally a common union; nor is it certain whether the Alsatian Alemanni were under one or several Adelings; a single king is mentioned as having fallen in the battle with Chlodwig, who may have been merely an elected military leader.

{1433 and 1434 moved forward for continuity}

{1435} Equally obscure is the cause of their war with Chlodwig, though it has been assumed, perhaps too hastily, by all recent historians, that the Frank king became involved in it as an ally of the Ripuarians. The Ripuarian Franks were settled, as the name imports, upon the banks of the Rhine, from the Moselle downwards; their chief seat was the city of Cologne. It is probable that they consisted of the remains of the ancient Ubii, strengthened by the adventurers who crossed over on the first invasion, and the name implies that they were regarded by the Romans as a kind of limitanean soldiery. For, in the common parlance of the Romans of that period, the tract of land lying along the Rhine was called Ripa, in an absolute sense, and even the river itself was not unfrequently denominated by the same title. Ripuarii are Ripa-wehren, Hreop, or Hrepa-wehren, defenders of the shore. About the close of the fifth century these Ripuarii were under the government of a king, named Sigebert, usually called 'the lance.' The story told by modern writers is, that this Sigebert, having fallen into dispute with the Alemanni, called upon Chlodwig for assistance, a call which the young king willingly listened to. The Alemanni had invaded the Ripuarian territory, and advanced within a short distance of Cologne, when Chlodwig and his Franks joined the Ripuarii; a battle took place at Zülpich, about twenty-two English miles from Cologne, which, after a fierce struggle, ended in the defeat of the Alemanni. ... Chlodwig was following up his victory over the Alemanni, perhaps with unnecessary ferocity, when he was stopped in his course by a flattering embassy from the great Theodorich. Many of the Alemanni had submitted, after the death of their chief, on the field of battle. 'Spare us,' they cried, 'for we are now thy people!' but there were many who, abhorring the Frank yoke, fled towards the south, and threw themselves under the protection of the Ostrogothic king, who had possessed himself of the ancient Rhætia and Vindelicia."

_T. Smith, Arminius, part 2, chapter 4._