Chapter IV: Roman Germany and the Free Germans (1)

[Sidenote: Limitation of Roman Germany.]

The two Roman provinces of Upper and Lower Germany were the result of that defeat of the Roman arms and of Roman policy under the reign of Augustus which has been already (p. 55 f.) described. The original province of Germany, which embraced the country from the Rhine to the Elbe, subsisted only twenty years, from the first campaign of Drusus, 742 U.C. {12.}, down to the battle of Varus and the fall of Aliso, 762 U.C. {A.D. 9.}; but as, on the one hand, it included the military camps on the left bank of the Rhine--Vindonissa, Mogontiacum, Vetera--and, on the other hand, even after that disaster, more or less considerable portions of the right bank remained Roman, the governorship and the command were not, in a strict sense, done away by that catastrophe, although they were, so to speak, placed in suspense. The internal organisation of the Three Gauls has been already set forth; they embraced the whole country as far as the Rhine without distinction of descent--except that the Ubii, who had only been brought over to settle in Gaul during the last crises, did not belong to the sixty-four cantons, while the Helvetii, the Triboci, and generally the districts elsewhere held in occupation by the Rhenish troops, doubtless did so belong. The intention had been to gather together the German cantons between the Rhine and Elbe into a similar association under Roman supremacy, as had been constituted in the case of the Gallic cantons, and to bestow upon it, in the altar to Augustus of the Ubian town--the germ of the modern Cologne--an executive centre similar to that which the altar of Augustus at Lyons formed for Gaul; for the more remote future the transference of the chief camp to the right bank of the Rhine, and the restoration of the left, at least in the main, to the governor of the Belgica, were doubtless in contemplation. But these projects came to an end with the legions of Varus; the Germanic altar of Augustus on the Rhine became or remained the altar of the Ubii; the legions permanently retained their standing quarters in the territory, which properly belonged to the Belgica, but--seeing that a separation of the military and civil administration was, according to the Roman arrangement, excluded--was placed, so long as the troops were stationed there, for administrative purposes also under the commandants of the two armies.[62] For, as was formerly stated, Varus was probably the last commandant of the united army of the Rhine; on the increase of the army to eight legions, which was consequent upon that disaster, the division of it to all appearance also ensued. What we have to describe in this section therefore is not, strictly speaking, the circumstances of a Roman province, but the fortunes of a Roman army, and, as most closely connected therewith, the fortunes of the neighbouring peoples and adversaries, so far as these are interwoven with the history of Rome.

[Sidenote: Upper and Lower Germany.]

The two headquarters of the army of the Rhine were always Vetera near Wesel and Mogontiacum, the modern Mentz, both doubtless older than the division of the command, and one of the reasons for introducing that division. The two armies numbered in the first century four legions each, thus about 30,000 men[63]; at or between those two points lay the main bulk of the Roman troops, besides one legion at Noviomagus (Nimeguen), another at Argentoratum (Strassburg), and a third at Vindonissa (Windisch not far from Zürich) not far from the Raetian frontier. To the lower army belonged the not inconsiderable fleet on the Rhine. The boundary between the upper and the lower army lay between Andernach and Remagen near Brohl,[64] so that Coblenz and Bingen fell to the upper, Bonn and Cologne to the lower military district. On the left bank there belonged to the upper German administrative circuit the districts of the Helvetii (Switzerland), the Sequani (Besançon), the Lingones (Langres), the Rauraci (Basle), the Triboci (Alsace), the Nemetes (Spires), and the Vangiones (Worms); to the more restricted lower German circuit belonged the district of the Ubii, or rather the colony Agrippina (Cologne), those of the Tungri (Tongern), the Menapii (Brabant), and the Batavi, while the cantons situated farther to the west, including Metz and Treves, were placed under the different governors of the three Gauls. While this separation has merely administrative significance, on the other hand the varying extent of the two jurisdictions on the right bank coincides with the varying relations to their neighbours and the advancing or receding of the bounds of the Roman rule conditioned by those relations. With these neighbours confronting them, matters on the lower and on the upper Rhine were regulated in ways so diverse, and the course of events was so thoroughly different that here the provincial separation became historically of the most decisive importance. Let us look first at the development of things on the lower Rhine.

[Sidenote: Lower Germany.]

We have formerly described how far the Romans had subjugated the Germans on both banks of the Rhine. The Germanic Batavi had been peacefully united with the empire not by Caesar, but not long afterwards, perhaps by Drusus (p. 28). They were settled in the Rhine delta, that is on the left bank of the Rhine and on the islands formed by its arms, upwards as far at least as the Old Rhine, and so nearly from Antwerp to Utrecht and Leyden in Zealand and southern Holland, on territory originally Celtic--at least the local names are predominantly Celtic; their name is still borne by the Betuwe, the lowland between the Waal and the Leck with the capital Noviomagus, now Nimeguen. They were, especially compared with the restless and refractory Celts, obedient and useful subjects, and hence occupied a distinctive position in the aggregate, and particularly in the military system, of the Roman empire. They remained quite free from taxation, but were on the other hand drawn upon more largely than any other canton in the recruiting; this one canton furnished to the army 1000 horsemen and 9000 foot soldiers; besides, the men of the imperial body-guard were taken especially from them. The command of these Batavian divisions was conferred exclusively on native Batavi. The Batavi were accounted indisputably not merely as the best riders and swimmers of the army, but also as the model of true soldiers, and in this case certainly the good pay of the Batavian body-guard, as well as the privilege of the nobles to serve as officers, considerably confirmed their loyalty. These Germans accordingly had taken no part either preparatory to, or consequent upon, the disaster of Varus; and if Augustus, under the first impression of the terrible news, discharged his Batavian guard, he soon became convinced of the groundlessness of his suspicion, and the troop was a short time afterwards reinstated.

[Sidenote: Cannenefates.]

[Sidenote: Frisians.]

[Sidenote: Chauci.]

On the other bank of the Rhine next to the Batavi, in the modern Kennemer district (North Holland beyond Amsterdam), dwelt the Cannenefates, closely related to them but less numerous; they are not merely named among the tribes subjugated by Tiberius, but were also treated like the Batavi in the furnishing of soldiers. The Frisians, adjoining these further on, in the coast district that is still named after them, as far as the lower Ems, submitted to Drusus and obtained a position similar to that of the Batavi. There was imposed on them instead of tribute simply the delivery of a number of bullocks' hides for the wants of the army; on the other hand they had to furnish comparatively large numbers of men for the Roman service. They were the most faithful allies of Drusus as afterwards of Germanicus, useful to him in constructing canals as well as especially after the unfortunate North Sea expeditions (p. 53). They were followed on the east by the Chauci, a widely extended tribe of sailors and fishermen along the coast of the North Sea on both sides of the Weser, perhaps from the Ems to the Elbe; they were brought into subjection to the Romans by Drusus at the same time with the Frisians, but not, like these, without resistance. All these Germanic coast tribes submitted either by agreement or at any rate without any severe struggle to the new rule, and as they had taken no part in the rising of the Cherusci, they still continued after the battle of Varus in their earlier relations to the Roman empire; even from the more remote cantons of the Frisians and the Chauci the garrisons were not at that time withdrawn, and the latter still furnished a contingent to the campaigns of Germanicus. On the renewed evacuation of Germany in the year 17 the poor and distant land of the Chauci, difficult of protection, seems certainly to have been given up; at least there are no later evidences of the continuance of the Roman dominion there, and some decades later we find them independent. But all the land westward of the lower Ems remained with the empire, whose boundary thus included the modern Netherlands. The defence of this part of the imperial frontier against the Germans not belonging to the empire was left in the main to the subject maritime cantons themselves.

[Sidenote: Limes and desert-frontier on the lower Rhine.]

Farther up the stream a different course was taken; a frontier-road was here marked off, and the land lying between it and the Rhine was depopulated. With the frontier-road drawn at a greater or less distance from the Rhine, the _Limes_,[65] was associated the control of frontier-intercourse, as the crossing of this road was forbidden altogether by night, and, as regards armed men, by day, and was permitted in the case of others, as a rule, only under special precautions for security and on payment of the prescribed transit-dues. Such a road was drawn opposite to the headquarters on the lower Rhine, in what is now Münster, by Tiberius after the disaster of Varus, at some distance from the Rhine, seeing that between it and the river stretched the "Caesian forest," the more precise position of which is not known. Similar arrangements must have been made at the same time in the valleys of the Ruhr and the Sieg as far as that of the Wied, where the province of the lower Rhine ended. This road did not necessarily require to be militarily occupied and arranged for defence, although of course the defence of the frontier and the fortification of it always aimed at making the frontier-road as far as possible secure. A chief means for protecting the frontier was the depopulation of the tract of land between the river and the road. "The tribes on the right bank of the Rhine," says a well-informed author of the time of Tiberius, "have been in part transferred by the Romans to the left bank, in part withdrawn of their own accord into the interior." This applied, in what is now the Münster country, to the Germanic stocks earlier settled there of the Usipes, Tencteri, Tubantes. In the campaigns of Germanicus these appear dislodged from the Rhine, but still in the region of the Lippe, afterwards, probably in consequence of those very expeditions, farther southward opposite to Mentz. Their old home lay thenceforth desolate, and formed the extensive pasture-country reserved for the herds of the lower Germanic army, on which in the year 58 first the Frisii and then the Amsivarii, wandering homeless, thought of settling, without being able to procure leave from the Roman authorities to do so. Farther to the south at least a portion of the Sugambri, who likewise were subjected in great part to the same treatment, remained settled on the right bank,[66] while other smaller tribes were wholly dislodged. The scanty population tolerated within the Limes were, as a matter of course, subjects of the empire, as is confirmed by the Roman levy taking place among the Sugambri.

[Sidenote: Conflicts with the Frisii and Chauci under Claudius.]

In this way matters were arranged on the lower Rhine after the abandonment of the more comprehensive projects, and thus a not inconsiderable territory on the right bank was still held by the Romans. But various inconvenient complications arose in connection with it. Towards the end of the reign of Tiberius (28) the Frisians, in consequence of intolerable oppression in the levying of tribute in itself small, revolted from the empire, slew the people employed in levying it, and besieged the Roman commandant acting there, with the rest of the Roman soldiers and civilians sojourning in the territory, in the fortress of Flevum, where, previous to the extension of the Zuyder See that took place in the Middle Ages, lay the eastmost mouth of the Rhine, near the modern island Vlieland beside the Texel. The rising assumed such proportions that both armies of the Rhine marched in concert against the Frisians; but still the governor Lucius Apronius accomplished nothing. The Frisians gave up the siege of the fortress, when the Roman fleet brought up the legions; but it was difficult to get near the Frisians themselves in a country so much intersected; several Roman corps were destroyed in detail, and the Roman advanced guard was so thoroughly defeated that even the dead bodies of the fallen were left in the power of the enemy. The matter was not brought to a decisive action, nor yet to a true subjugation; Tiberius, the older he grew, became ever less inclined to larger enterprises, which gave to the general in command a position of power. With this state of things was connected the fact that in the immediately succeeding years the neighbours of the Frisians, the Chauci, became very troublesome to the Romans; in the year 41 the governor Publius Gabinius Secundus had to undertake an expedition against them, and six years later (47) they even pillaged far and wide the coast of Gaul with their light piratical vessels under the leadership of the Roman deserter Gannascus, by birth one of the Cannenefates. Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, nominated governor of Lower Germany by Claudius, put a stop with his fleet to these forerunners of the Saxons and Normans, and afterwards vigorously brought back the Frisians to obedience, by organising anew their commonwealth and stationing a Roman garrison among them.

[Sidenote: The occupation of the right bank abandoned.]

Corbulo had the intention of chastising the Chauci also; at his instigation Gannascus was put out of the way--against a deserter he held himself entitled to take this course--and he was on the point of crossing the Ems and advancing into the country of the Chauci, when not only did he receive counter-orders from Rome, but the Roman government wholly and completely altered its attitude on the lower Rhine. The emperor Claudius directed the governor to remove all Roman garrisons from the right bank. We may well conceive that the imperial general with bitter words commended the good fortune of the free commanders of Rome in former days; in this step certainly there was a conclusive admission of defeat, which had been but partially owned after the battle of Varus. Probably this restriction of the Roman occupation of Germany, which was not occasioned by any pressure of immediate necessity, was called forth by the resolve just then adopted to occupy Britain, and finds its justification in the fact that the troops were not sufficient for accomplishing both objects at once. That the order was executed, and matters remained afterwards in that position, is proved by the absence of Roman military inscriptions on the whole right bank of the lower Rhine.[67] Only isolated points for crossing and sally-ports, such as, in particular, Deutz opposite Cologne, formed exceptions from this general rule. The military road keeps here to the left bank and strictly to the course of the Rhine, while the traffic-route running behind it, cutting off the windings, pursues the straight line of communication. Here on the right bank of the Rhine there is no evidence of Roman military roads, either through the discovery of milestones or otherwise.

[Sidenote: Its subsequent position.]

The withdrawal of the garrisons did not imply giving up possession, strictly speaking, of the right bank in this province. It was looked upon by the Romans thenceforth somewhat as the commandant of a fortress looks upon the ground that lies under his cannon. The Cannenefates and at least a part of the Frisians[68] were afterwards subject, as before, to the empire. We have already remarked that subsequently in the Münster country the herds of the legions still pastured, and the Germans were not allowed to settle there. But the government thenceforth relied--for the defence of such border-territory on the right bank as still existed in this province--in the north on the Cannenefates and the Frisians, and farther up the stream substantially on the space left desolate; and, if it did not directly forbid, at any rate did not give scope to Roman settlement there. The altar stone of a private person found at Altenberg (circuit of Mülheim), on the river Dhün, is almost the only evidence of Roman inhabitants in these regions. This is the more remarkable, as the prosperity of Cologne would, if special hindrances had not here stood in the way, have of itself carried Roman civilisation far and wide on the other bank. Often enough Roman troops may have traversed these extensive regions, perhaps even have kept the roads--which were here laid out in large number during the Augustan period--in some measure passable, and possibly laid out new ones; sparse settlers, partly remains of the old Germanic population, partly colonists from the empire, may have settled here, similar to those that we shall soon find in the earlier imperial period on the right bank of the upper Rhine; but the highways, like the possessions, lacked the stamp of durability. There was no wish to undertake here a labour of similar extent and difficulty to that which we shall become acquainted with further on in the upper province, or to provide here, as was done there, military defence and fortification for the frontier of the empire. Therefore the lower Rhine was crossed doubtless by Roman rule, but not, like the upper Rhine, also by Roman culture.

[Sidenote: The situation in Gaul and Germany after the fall of Nero.]

For the double task of keeping the neighbouring Gaul in obedience and of keeping the Germans of the right bank aloof from Gaul, the army of the lower Rhine would, even after abandoning the occupation of the region on the right of the river, have quite sufficed, and the peace without and within would not presumably have been interrupted, had not the downfall of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, and the civil or rather military war thereby called forth, exercised a momentous influence on these relations. The insurrection of the Celtic land under the leadership of Vindex was no doubt defeated by the two Germanic armies; but Nero's fall nevertheless ensued, and when the Spanish army as well as the imperial guard in Rome appointed a successor to him, the armies of the Rhine did the same; and in the beginning of the year 69 the greater portion of these troops crossed the Alps to settle the point on the battle-fields of Italy, whether its ruler was to be called Marcus or Aulus. In May of the same year the new emperor Vitellius followed, after arms had decided in his favour, accompanied by the remainder of the good soldiers inured to war. The blanks in the garrisons of the Rhine were no doubt filled up for the exigency by recruits hastily levied in Gaul; but the whole land knew that they were not the old legions, and it soon became apparent that these were not coming back. If the new ruler had had in his power the army that placed him on the throne, at least a portion of them must have returned to the Rhine immediately after the defeat of Otho in April; but the insubordination of the soldiers still more than the new complication which soon set in with the proclamation of Vespasian as emperor in the East, retained the German legions in Italy.

[Sidenote: Preparations for the insurrection.]

Gaul was in the most fearful excitement. The rising of Vindex was, as we formerly remarked (p. 82), in itself directed not against the rule of Rome but against the rulers for the time being; but it was none the less on that account a warfare between the armies of the Rhine and the levy _en masse_ of the great majority of the Celtic cantons; and these were none the less subjected to pillage and maltreatment resembling that of the conquered. The tone of feeling which subsisted between the provincials and the soldiers was shown, for instance, by the treatment which the canton of the Helvetii experienced as the troops destined for Italy marched through it. Because a courier despatched by the adherents of Vitellius to Pannonia had here been seized, the columns on the march from the one side, and the Romans stationed as a garrison in Raetia on the other, entered the canton, pillaged the villages far and wide, particularly what is now Baden near Zürich, chased those who had fled to the mountains out of their lurking-places, and put them to death by thousands or sold the captives under martial law. Although the capital Aventicum (Avenches, near Murten) submitted without resistance, the agitators of the army demanded that it should be razed, and all that the general granted was that the question should be referred not, forsooth, to the emperor, but to the soldiers of the great headquarters; these sat in judgment on the fate of the town, and it was merely the turn of their caprice that saved the place from destruction. Outrages of this nature brought the provincials to extremities; even before Vitellius left Gaul, a certain Mariccus, from the canton of the Boii, dependent on the Haedui, came forward a god on earth, as he said, and destined to restore the freedom of the Celts; and people flocked in troops to his banner. But the exasperation in the Celtic country was not of so very great moment. The very rising of Vindex had most clearly shown how utterly incapable the Gauls were of releasing themselves from the Roman embrace.

[Sidenote: Rising of the Batavian auxiliaries.]

[Sidenote: Civilis.]

But the tone of feeling of the Germanic districts reckoned as belonging to Gaul--in the modern Netherlands--of the Batavi, the Cannenefates, the Frisians, whose distinctive position has already been dwelt on, had a somewhat greater importance; and it happened that, on the one hand, these very tribes had been exasperated to the utmost, and on the other, that their contingents were accidentally to be found in Gaul. The bulk of the Batavian troops, 8000 men, assigned to the 14th legion, had for a considerable time a place along with the latter in the army of the upper Rhine, and had then under Claudius, on occasion of the occupying of Britain, gone to that island, where this corps shortly before had, by its incomparable valour, gained the decisive battle under Paullinus for the Romans; from this day onward it occupied indisputably the first place among all the divisions of the Roman army. When it was recalled on account of this very distinction by Nero, in order to go off with him to the war in the East, the revolution breaking out in Gaul had brought about a quarrel between the legion and its auxiliary troops; the former, faithfully devoted to Nero, hastened to Italy; the Batavi, on the other hand, refused to follow. Perhaps this was connected with the fact that two of their most noted officers, the brothers Paulus and Civilis, had, without any reason and without respect to many years of faithful service and honourable wounds, been shortly before put on trial as suspected of high treason, and the former executed, the latter placed in captivity. After the downfall of Nero, to which the revolt of the Batavian cohorts had materially contributed, Galba released Civilis and sent the Batavians back to their old headquarters in Britain. While they, on the march thither, were encamped among the Lingones (Langres), the legions of the Rhine revolted from Galba and proclaimed Vitellius emperor. The Batavi, after considerable hesitation, ultimately joined the movement; Vitellius did not forgive them for this hesitation, but did not venture directly to call to account the leader of the powerful corps.

[Sidenote: Progress of the movement.]

Thus the Batavians had marched with the legions of lower Germany to Italy and had fought with their usual valour in the battle of Betriacum for Vitellius, while their old legionary comrades confronted them in the army of Otho. But the arrogance of the Germans exasperated their Roman comrades in victory, however much these acknowledged their valour in battle; the very generals in command did not trust them, and even made an attempt to divide by detaching them--a course, which, in this war, where the soldiers commanded and the generals obeyed, was not capable of being carried out, and had almost cost the general his life. After the victory they were commissioned to accompany their hostile comrades of the 14th legion to Britain; but when matters came to a skirmish between the two at Turin, the latter alone went to Britain, and the Batavians to Germany. Meanwhile Vespasian had been proclaimed emperor in the East, and, while in consequence of this Vitellius gave to the Batavian cohorts marching orders for Italy as well as ordered new comprehensive levies among the Batavi, commissioners of Vespasian opened communications with the Batavian officers to hinder this departure, and to provoke in Germany itself a rising which should detain the troops there. Civilis entered into the suggestion. He resorted to his home, and gained easily the assent of his own people as well as the neighbouring Cannenefates and Frisians. The insurrection broke out among the former; the camps of the two cohorts in the neighbourhood were surprised and the Roman posts seized; the Roman recruits fought ill; soon Civilis with his cohort--which he had caused to follow, ostensibly to employ it against the insurgents--threw himself openly into the movement, along with the three Germanic cantons renounced allegiance to Vitellius, and summoned the other Batavians and Cannenefates, who just then were breaking up from Mentz for the march to Italy, to join him.

[Sidenote: Its character.]

All this was more a soldiers' rising than an insurrection of the province, or even a Germanic war. If at that time the Rhine legions were fighting with those of the Danube, and further with these and the army of the Euphrates, it was but in keeping that the soldiers of the second class, and above all their most distinguished troop, the Batavian, should enter independently into this divisional warfare. Any one who compares this movement among the cohorts of the Batavians and the Germans on the left of the Rhine with the insurrection of those on the right bank of the Rhine under Augustus, may not overlook the fact, that in the later rising the alae and cohorts took up the part of the general levy of the Cherusci; and, if the perfidious officer of Varus released his nation from the Roman rule, the Batavian leader acted in the commission of Vespasian; in fact, perhaps, on the secret directions of the governor of his province privately inclined towards Vespasian, and the rising in the first instance was directed simply against Vitellius. It is true that the position of things was such that this soldiers' revolt might change itself at any moment into a German war of the most dangerous kind. The same Roman troops who covered the Rhine against the Germans of the right bank were, in consequence of the corps-warfare, placed in an attitude of hostility to the Germans on the left bank; the parts were of such a nature, that it seemed almost easier to exchange them than to carry them out. Civilis himself may possibly have left it to depend on the sequel, whether the movement would end in a change of emperor or in the expulsion of the Romans from Gaul by the Germans.

[Sidenote: State of the armies on the Rhine.]

The command of the two armies on the Rhine was held at this time, after the governor of lower Germany had been made emperor, by his former colleague in upper Germany, Hordeonius Flaccus, a gouty man advanced in years, without energy and without authority, either, moreover, in fact secretly holding to Vespasian, or at any rate very much suspected of such faithlessness by the legions, who zealously adhered to the emperor of their own making. It is characteristic of him and of his position that, to clear himself of the suspicion of treason, he gave orders that the government despatches on arrival should be sent unopened to the eagle-bearers of the legions, and these should read them in the first instance to the soldiers, before they forwarded them to their address. Of the four legions of the lower army which had primarily to do with the insurgents two, the 5th and the 15th, were stationed under the legate Munius Lupercus in the headquarters at Vetera; the 16th, under Numisius Rufus, in Novaesium (Neuss); the 1st, under Herennius Gallus, in Bonna (Bonn). Of the upper army, which then numbered only three legions,[69] one, the 21st, remained in its stated quarters Vindonissa, aloof from these events, if it had not rather been drawn off wholly to Italy; the two others, the 4th Macedonian and the 22d, were stationed at the headquarters Mentz, where Flaccus also was present; and in point of fact, his able legate Dillius Vocula exercised the chief command. The legions had throughout only half of their full complement, and most of the soldiers were half-invalids or recruits.

[Sidenote: First conflicts.]

[Sidenote: Participation of the Germans on the right of the Rhine.]

Civilis, at the head of a small number of regular troops, but of the collective levy of the Batavi, Cannenefates, and Frisians, advanced from his home to the attack. In the first instance, on the Rhine he met with remnants of the Roman garrisons driven from the northern cantons and a division of the Roman Rhenish fleet; when he attacked them, not merely did the ships' crews, consisting in great part of Batavians, go over to him, but also a cohort of the Tungri--it was the first revolt of a Gallic division; such Italian soldiers as were present were slain or taken prisoners. This success brought at length the Germans on the right of the Rhine into the movement. What they had long vainly hoped for--the rising of the Roman subjects on the other bank--now came to be fulfilled, and as well the Chauci and the Frisians on the coast, as above all, the Bructeri on both sides of the upper Ems as far down as the Lippe, the Tencteri on the middle Rhine opposite to Cologne, and in lesser measure the tribes adjoining these on the south--Usipes, Mattiaci, Chatti--threw themselves into the struggle. When, on the orders of Flaccus, the two weak legions marched out from Vetera against the insurgents, these could already confront them with a numerous contingent drawn from beyond the Rhine; and the battle ended, like the combat on the Rhine, with a defeat of the Romans through the defection of the Batavian cavalry, which belonged to the garrison of Vetera, and through the bad behaviour of the cavalry of the Ubii and of the Treveri.

[Sidenote: Siege of Vetera.]

The insurgents and the Germans who flocked to them proceeded to invest and besiege the headquarters of the lower army. During this siege news of the events on the lower Rhine reached the other Batavian cohorts in the neighbourhood of Mentz; they at once wheeled round towards the north. Instead of ordering them to be cut down, the weak-minded commander-in-chief allowed them to go, and when the commandant of the legion in Bonn sought to intercept them, Flaccus did not support him as he might have done and had even at first promised. So the brave Germans dispersed the Bonn legion and succeeded in joining Civilis--henceforth the compact core of his army, in which now the banners of the Roman cohorts stood by the side of the animal-standards from the sacred groves of the Germans. But still the Batavian held, at least ostensibly, by Vespasian; he swore in the Roman troops in Vespasian's name, and summoned the garrison of Vetera to join him in declaring for the latter. These troops, however, saw in this, probably with warrant, a mere attempt to overreach them, and repelled it as resolutely as they repelled the assailing hosts of the enemy, who soon found themselves compelled by the superiority of Roman tactics to change the siege into a blockade. But, as the leaders of the Roman army had been taken by surprise in these events, provisions were scarce and speedy relief was urgently called for. In order to bring it, Flaccus and Vocula set out with their whole force from Mentz, drew to themselves on the way the two legions from Bonna and Novaesium as well as the auxiliary troops of the Gallic cantons appearing at the word of command in large numbers, and approached Vetera.

[Sidenote: Vocula.]

But instead of throwing at once the whole force from within and without on the besiegers, however great their superiority in numbers, Vocula pitched his camp at Gelduba (Gellep on the Rhine, not far from Krefeld) a long day's march distant from Vetera, while Flaccus lay farther back. The worthlessness of the so-called general and the ever increasing demoralisation of the troops, above all, the distrust towards the officers, which frequently went so far as to maltreat and attempt to kill them, can alone at least explain this halting. Thus the mischief gradually thickened on all sides. All Germany seemed desirous to take part in the war; while the besieging army constantly obtained new contingents from that quarter, other bands passed over the Rhine, which in this dry summer was unusually low, partly in the rear of the Romans into the cantons of the Ubii and the Treveri to lay waste the valley of the Moselle, partly below Vetera into the region of the Maas and the Scheldt; further bands appeared before Mentz and made pretext of besieging it. Then came the accounts of the catastrophe in Italy. On the news of the second battle at Betriacum in the autumn of the year 69 the Germanic legions gave up the cause of Vitellius as lost and took the oath, though reluctantly, to Vespasian, perhaps in the hope that Civilis, who had in fact inscribed the name of Vespasian on his banners, would then make his peace. But the German swarms, who had meanwhile poured themselves over all northern Gaul, had not come to install the Flavian dynasty; even if Civilis had ever wished this, he now had no longer the power. He threw off the mask, and openly expressed--what indeed was long settled--that the Germans of north Gaul intended, with the help of their free countrymen, to shake off the Roman rule.

[Sidenote: Relief of Vetera.]

But the fortune of war changed. Civilis attempted to surprise the camp of Gelduba; the attack began successfully, and the defection of the cohorts of the Nervii brought Vocula's little band into a critical position. Then suddenly two Spanish cohorts fell on the rear of the Germans; what threatened to be a defeat was converted into a brilliant victory; the flower of the assailing army remained on the field of battle. Vocula indeed did not advance at once against Vetera, as he possibly might have done, but he penetrated into the besieged town some days later after a renewed vehement conflict with the enemy. It is true that he brought no provisions; and, as the river was in the power of the enemy, these had to be procured by the land-route from Novaesium, where Flaccus was encamped. The first convoy passed through; but the enemy, having meanwhile assembled again, attacked the second column with provisions on its way, and compelled it to throw itself into Gelduba. Vocula went off thither to its support with his troops and a part of the old garrison of Vetera. When they had arrived at Gelduba, the men refused to return to Vetera and to take upon themselves the further sufferings of the siege in prospect; instead of this they marched to Novaesium, and Vocula, who knew that the remnant of the old garrison of Vetera was in some measure provisioned, had for good or evil to follow.

[Sidenote: Mutiny of Roman troops.]

In Novaesium meanwhile mutiny had broken out. The soldiers had come to learn that a largess destined for them by Vitellius had reached the general, and compelled its distribution in the name of Vespasian. They had scarcely received it, when, in the wild carousing which ensued upon the largess, the old grudge of the soldiers broke out afresh; they pillaged the house of the general who had betrayed the army of the Rhine to the general of the Syrian legions, slew him, and would have prepared the same fate for Vocula, if the latter had not escaped in disguise. Thereupon they once more proclaimed Vitellius emperor, not knowing that he was already dead. When this news came to the camp, the better part of the soldiers, and in particular the two upper German legions, began in some measure to reflect; they again exchanged the effigy of Vitellius on their standards for that of Vespasian, and placed themselves under the orders of Vocula; he led them to Mentz, where he remained during the rest of the winter 69-70. Civilis occupied Gelduba, and thereby cut off Vetera, which was most closely blockaded; the camps of Novaesium and Bonna were still held.

[Sidenote: Insurrection in Gaul.]

Hitherto the Gallic land, apart from the few insurgent Germanic cantons in the north, had kept firmly by Rome. Certainly partisanship ran through the several cantons; among the Tungri, for example, the Batavi had a strong body of adherents, and the bad behaviour of the Gallic auxiliary troops during the whole campaign may probably have been in part called forth by such a temper of hostility to the Romans. But even among the insurgents there was a considerable party favourably disposed to Rome; a Batavian of note, Claudius Labeo, waged a partisan warfare not without success against his countrymen in his home and its neighbourhood, and the nephew of Civilis, Julius Briganticus, fell in one of these combats at the head of a band of Roman horse. All the Gallic cantons had without more ado complied with the injunction to send contingents; the Ubii, although of Germanic descent, were in this war mindful simply of their Romanism, and they as well as the Treveri had offered brave and successful resistance to the Germans invading their territory. It is easy to understand how this was so. The position of things in Gaul was still much as it was in the days of Caesar and Ariovistus; a liberation of their Gallic home from the Roman dominion by means of those hordes, which, in order to lend to Civilis the help of his countrymen, were just then pillaging the valleys of the Moselle, Maas, and Scheldt, was tantamount to a surrender of the land to its Germanic neighbours; in this war, which had grown out of a feud between two corps of Roman troops into a conflict between Rome and Germany, the Gauls were, properly speaking, nothing but the stake and the booty. That the tone of feeling among the Gauls, in spite of all their well-founded general and special complaints as to the Roman government, was predominantly anti-Germanic, and that the materials for kindling such a national rising suddenly bursting into flame and reckless of consequences, as had spread through the people in an earlier time, were wanting in this Gaul now half-Romanised, events up to this time had most clearly shown. But amidst the constant misfortunes of the Roman army the courage of the Gauls hostile to the Romans gradually grew stronger, and their defection completed the catastrophe. Two Treveri of note, Julius Classicus, the commander of the Treverian cavalry, and Julius Tutor, commandant of the garrisons on the banks of the middle Rhine, Julius Sabinus one of the Lingones, descended, as he at least boasted, from a bastard of Caesar, and some other men of like mind from different cantons, professed in thoughtless Celtic fashion to discern that the destruction of Rome was written in the stars and announced to the world by the burning of the Capitol (Dec. 69).

[Sidenote: The Gallic empire.]

So they resolved to set aside the Roman rule and to set up a Gallic empire. For this purpose they took the course of Arminius. Vocula allowed himself to be really induced by falsified reports of these Roman officers to set out, with the contingents placed under their command and a part of the Mentz garrison, in the spring of 70 for the lower Rhine, in order with these troops and the legions of Bonna and Novaesium to relieve the hard-pressed Vetera. On the march from Novaesium to Vetera, Classicus and the officers in concert with him left the Roman army and proclaimed the new Gallic empire. Vocula led the legions back to Novaesium; Classicus pitched his camp immediately in front of it; Vetera could not now hold out long; the Romans could not but expect after its fall to find themselves confronted by the whole power of the enemy.

[Sidenote: Capitulation of the Romans.]

The Roman troops refused to face this prospect and entered into a capitulation with the revolted officers. In vain Vocula attempted once more to urge the ties of discipline and of honour; the legions of Rome allowed a Roman deserter from the 1st legion to stab the brave general on the order of Classicus, and themselves delivered up the other chief officers in chains to the representative of the empire of Gaul, who thereupon made the soldiers swear allegiance to that empire. The same oath was taken at the hands of the perfidious officers by the garrison of Vetera, which, compelled by famine, at once surrendered, and likewise by the garrison of Mentz, where but a few individuals avoided disgrace by flight or death. The whole proud army of the Rhine, the first army of the empire, had surrendered to its own auxiliaries; Rome had surrendered to Gaul.

[Sidenote: End of the Gallic empire.]

It was a tragedy, and at the same time a farce. The Gallic empire lapsed, as it could not fail to do. Civilis and his Germans were doubtless, in the first instance, well content that the quarrel in the Roman camp delivered the one as well as the other half of their foes into their hands; but he had no thought of recognising that empire, and still less had his allies from the right bank of the Rhine.

As little would the Gauls themselves have anything to do with it--a result, to which certainly the split between the eastern districts and the rest of the country, which had already become apparent at the rising of Vindex, materially contributed. The Treveri and the Lingones, whose leading men had instigated that camp-conspiracy, stood by their leaders, but they remained virtually alone; only the Vangiones and Triboci joined them. The Sequani, into whose territory the Lingones marched to induce their accession, drove them summarily homeward. The esteemed Remi, the leading canton in Belgica, convoked the diet of the three Gauls, and, although there was no lack there of orators on behalf of political freedom, it resolved simply to dissuade the Treveri from the revolt. How the constitution of the new empire would have turned out, had it been established, it is difficult to say; we learn only that Sabinus, the great-grandson of Caesar's concubine, named himself also Caesar, and in this capacity allowed himself to be beaten by the Sequani; whereas Classicus, who had not such ascendency at his command, assumed the insignia of Roman magistracy, and thus played perhaps the part of republican proconsul. In keeping with this there exists a coin, which must have been struck by Classicus or his adherents, exhibiting the head of Gallia, as the coins of the Roman republic show that of Roma, and by its side the symbol of the legion, with the genuinely audacious legend of "fidelity" (_fides_). At first, doubtless, on the Rhine the imperialists, in concert with the insurgent Germans, had full freedom. The remnants of the two legions that had capitulated in Vetera were put to death, contrary to the terms of surrender and to the will of Civilis; the two from Novaesium and Bonna were sent to Treves; all the Roman camps on the Rhine, large and small, with the exception of Mogontiacum, were burnt. The Agrippinenses found themselves in the worst plight. The imperialists had certainly confined themselves to requiring from them the oath of allegiance; but the Germans in this case did not forget that they were properly speaking, the Ubii. A message of the Tencteri from the right bank of the Rhine--this was one of the tribes whose old home the Romans had laid desolate and used as pasture-ground, and which had in consequence of this been obliged to seek other abodes--demanded the razing of this chief seat of the Germanic apostates, and the execution of all their citizens of Roman descent. This would probably have been resolved on had not Civilis, who was personally under obligation to them, as well as the German prophetess Veleda in the canton of the Bructeri, who had predicted this victory, and whose authority the whole insurgent army recognised, interceded on their behalf.

[Sidenote: Advent of the Romans.]

The victors were not left long to contend over the booty. The imperialists certainly gave the assurance that the civil war in Italy had broken out, that all the provinces were overrun by the enemy, and Vespasian was probably dead; but the heavy arm of Rome was soon enough felt. The newly confirmed government could despatch its best generals and numerous legions to the Rhine; and certainly an imposing display of power was there needed. Annius Gallus took up the command in the upper, Petillius Cerialis in the lower province; the latter, an impetuous and often incautious, but brave and capable officer, took the really serious action. Besides the 21st legion from Vindonissa, five came from Italy, three from Spain, one along with the fleet from Britain, and, in addition, a further corps from the Raetian garrison. This and the 21st legion were the first to arrive. The imperialists had possibly talked of blocking the passes of the Alps; but nothing was done, and the whole country of the upper Rhine lay open as far as Mentz. The two Mentz legions had no doubt sworn allegiance to the Gallic empire, and at first offered resistance; but, so soon as they perceived that a larger Roman army confronted them, they returned to obedience, and the Vangiones and Triboci immediately followed their example. Even the Lingones submitted--merely upon a promise of mild treatment--without striking a blow on the part of their 70,000 men capable of bearing arms.[70] The Treveri themselves had almost done the same; but they were prevented from doing so by the nobility. The two surviving legions of the lower Rhenish army that were stationed here had, on the first news of the approach of the Romans, torn the Gallic insignia from their standards, and withdrew to the Mediomatrici that had remained faithful (Metz), where they submitted to the mercy of the new general. When Cerialis arrived at the army, he found a good part of the work already done. The insurgent leaders exerted themselves, it is true, to the utmost--at that time by their orders the legionary legates delivered up at Novaesium were put to death--but in a military sense they were impotent, and their last political move--that of offering the Roman general himself the sovereignty of the Gallic empire--was worthy of the beginning. After a short combat Cerialis occupied the capital of the Treveri, the leaders and the whole council having taken refuge with the Germans. This was the end of the Gallic empire.

[Sidenote: Last struggles of Civilis.]

More serious was the struggle with the Germans. Civilis, with his whole fighting strength, the Batavi, the contingent of the Germans, and the refugee bands of the Gallic insurgents, suddenly assailed the much weaker Roman army in Treves itself. The Roman camp was already in his power, and the bridge of the Moselle occupied by him, when his men, instead of following up the victory which they had won, began prematurely to pillage, and Cerialis, compensating for his imprudence by brilliant valour, restored the combat and ultimately drove the Germans out from the camp and the town. There was no further success of importance. The Agrippinenses again joined the Romans, and killed the Germans, who were staying among them, in their houses; a whole Germanic cohort encamped there was shut up and burnt in its quarters. Whatsoever in Belgica still held to the Germans was brought back to obedience by the legion arriving from Britain; a victory of the Cannenefates over the Roman ships which had landed the legion, and other isolated successes of the brave Germanic bands, above all, of the more numerous and better managed Germanic ships, did not change the general position of the war. On the ruins of Vetera Civilis confronted the foe; but he had to give way to the Roman army, which had meanwhile been doubled, and at length, after an obstinate resistance, had to leave his own home to the enemy. As ever happens, discord ensued in the train of misfortune. Civilis was no longer sure of his own men, and sought and found protection from them among his opponents. Late in the autumn of the year 70 the unequal struggle was decided; the auxiliaries now on their part surrendered to the burgess-legions, and the priestess Veleda went as a captive to Rome.

[Sidenote: Nature of the Roman task and its issue.]

When we look back on this war, one of the most singular and most dreadful in all ages, we cannot but own that hardly ever has an army had a task set before it equally severe with that of the two Roman armies on the Rhine in the years 69 and 70. In the course of a few months soldiers successively of Nero, of the senate, of Galba, of Vitellius, and of Vespasian; the only support to the dominion of Italy over the two mighty nations of the Gauls and the Germans, while the soldiers of the auxiliaries were taken almost entirely, and those of the legions in great part, from those very nations; deprived of their best men, mostly without pay, often starving, and beyond all measure wretchedly led, they were certainly expected to perform feats physically and morally super-human. They ill sustained the severe trial. This was less a war between two divisions of the army, like the other civil wars of this terrible time, than a war of soldiers, and above all of officers, of the second class against those of the first, combined with a dangerous insurrection and invasion of the Germans, and an incidental and insignificant revolt of some Celtic districts. In Roman military history Cannae and Carrhae and the Teutoburg Forest are glorious pages compared with the double disgrace of Novaesium; only a few individual men, not a single troop, preserved a pure escutcheon amidst the general dishonour. The frightful disorganisation of the political and, above all, of the military system, which meets us on the fall of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, appears--more clearly even than in the leaderless battle of Betriacum--in those events on the Rhine, to which the history of Rome never before and never after exhibits a parallel.

[Sidenote: Consequences of the Batavian war.]