A History of Germany from the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by Bayard Taylor

Before this migration took place, Europe was inhabited by a race of primitive savages, who were not greatly superior to the wild beasts in the vast forests which then covered the continent. They were exterminated at so early a period that all traditions of their existence were lost. Within the last fifty years, however, various relics of this race have been brought to light. Fragments of skulls and skeletons, with knives and arrow-heads of flint, have been found, at a considerable depth, in the gravel-beds of Northern France, or in caves in Germany, together with the bones of animals now extinct, upon which they fed. In the lakes of Switzerland, they built dwellings upon piles, at a little distance from the shore, in order to be more secure against the attacks of wild beasts or hostile tribes. Many remains of these lake-dwellings, with flint implements and fragments of pottery, have recently been discovered. The skulls of the race indicate that they were savages of the lowest type, and different in character from any which now exist on the earth.

The second migration of the Aryan race is supposed to have been that of the Celtic tribes, who took a more northerly course, by way of the steppes of the Volga and the Don, and gradually obtained possession of all Central and Western Europe, including the British Isles. Their advance was only stopped by the ocean, and the tribe which first appears in history, the Gauls, was at that time beginning to move eastward again, in search of new fields of plunder. It is impossible to ascertain whether the German tribes immediately followed the Celts, and took possession of the territory which they vacated in pushing westward, or whether they formed a third migration, at a later date. We only know the order in which they were settled when our first historical knowledge of them begins.

In the fourth century before the Christian Era, all Europe west of the Rhine, and as far south as the Po, was Celtic; between the Rhine and the Vistula, including Denmark and southern Sweden, the tribes were Germanic; while the Slavonic branch seems to have already made its appearance in what is now Southern Russia. Each of these three branches of the Aryan race was divided into many smaller tribes, some of which, left behind in the march from Asia, or separated by internal wars, formed little communities, like islands, in the midst of territory belonging to other branches of the race. The boundaries, also, were never very distinctly drawn: the tribes were restless and nomadic, not yet attached to the soil, and many of them moved through or across each other, so that some were constantly disappearing, and others forming under new names.

113 B. C. THE CIMBRIANS AND TEUTONS.

The Romans first heard the name "Germans" from the Celtic Gauls, in whose language it meant simply neighbors. The first notice of a Germanic tribe was given to the world by the Greek navigator Pytheas, who made a voyage to the Baltic in the year 330 B. C. Beyond the amber-coast, eastward of the mouth of the Vistula, he found the Goths, of whom we hear nothing more until they appear, several centuries later, on the northern shore of the Black Sea. For more than two hundred years there is no further mention of the Germanic races; then, most unexpectedly, the Romans were called upon to make their personal acquaintance.

In the year 113 B. C. a tremendous horde of strangers forced its way through the Tyrolese Alps and invaded the Roman territory. They numbered several hundred thousand, and brought with them their wives, children and all their movable property. They were composed of two great tribes, the Cimbrians and Teutons, accompanied by some minor allies, Celtic as well as Germanic. Their statement was that they were driven from their homes on the northern ocean by the inroads of the waves, and they demanded territory for settlement, or, at least, the right to pass the Roman frontier. The Consul, Papirius Carbo, collected an army and endeavored to resist their advance; but he was defeated by them in a battle fought near Noreia, between the Adriatic and the Alps.

The terror occasioned by this defeat reached even Rome. The "barbarians," as they were called, were men of large stature, of astonishing bodily strength, with yellow hair and fierce blue eyes. They wore breastplates of iron and helmets crowned with the heads of wild beasts, and carried white shields which shone in the sunshine. They first hurled double-headed spears in battle, but at close quarters fought with short and heavy swords. The women encouraged them with cries and war-songs, and seemed no less fierce and courageous than the men. They had also priestesses, clad in white linen, who delivered prophecies and slaughtered human victims upon the altars of their gods.

102 B. C.

Instead of moving towards Rome, the Cimbrians and Teutons marched westward along the foot of the Alps, crossed into Gaul, devastated the country between the Rhone and the Pyrenees, and even obtained temporary possession of part of Spain. Having thus plundered at will for ten years, they retraced their steps and prepared to invade Italy a second time. The celebrated Consul, Marius, who was sent against them, found their forces divided, in order to cross the Alps by two different roads. He first attacked the Teutons, two hundred thousand in number, at Aix, in southern France, and almost exterminated them in the year 102 B. C. Transferring his army across the Alps, in the following year he met the Cimbrians at Vercelli, in Piedmont (not far from the field of Magenta). They were drawn up in a square, the sides of which were nearly three miles long: in the centre their wagons, collected together, formed a fortress for the women and children. But the Roman legions broke the Cimbrian square, and obtained a complete victory. The women, seeing that all was lost, slew their children, and then themselves; but a few thousand prisoners were made—among them Teutoboch, the prince of the Teutons, who had escaped from the slaughter at Aix,—to figure in the triumph accorded to Marius by the Roman Senate. This was the only appearance of the German tribes in Italy, until the decline of the Empire, five hundred years later.

The Roman conquests, which now began to extend northwards into the heart of Europe, soon brought the two races into collision again, but upon German or Celtic soil. From the earliest reports, as well as the later movements of the tribes, we are able to ascertain the probable order of their settlement, though not the exact boundaries of each. The territory which they occupied was almost the same as that which now belongs to the German States. The Rhine divided them from the Gauls, except towards its mouth, where the Germanic tribes occupied part of Belgium. A line drawn from the Vistula southward to the Danube nearly represents their eastern boundary, while, up to this time, they do not appear to have crossed the Danube on the south. The district between that river and the Alps, now Bavaria and Styria, was occupied by Celtic tribes. Northwards they had made some advance into Sweden, and probably also into Norway. They thus occupied nearly all of Central Europe, north of the Alpine chain.