[REQUIRED READING]
FOR THE
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle for 1883-4.
NOVEMBER.
[GERMAN HISTORY.]
By Rev. W. G. WILLIAMS, A.M.
II.
From the time of Julius Cæsar to the fall of the Roman Empire, a period of more than four hundred years, the greater part of the Germans were subject to Roman rule, a rule maintained only by military force. But the struggle against Rome never entirely ceased—and as Roman power gradually declined the Germans seized every opportunity to recover their liberty and in their turn became conquerors. To trace the succession of their vicissitudes during this period would be to give the narrative of a bold, vigorous, war-like people in their rude barbaric condition. We should discover even in those early times those race characteristics of strength, bravery and persistence which became so marked in later centuries; we should recognize in Hermann, the first German leader, the prophecy of the Great Charles who steps upon the scene nearly eight centuries later.
HERMANN, THE FIRST LEADER.
He it was (Hermann Arminius) who, with a power to organize equal to that of William of Orange, bound the German tribes in a secret confederacy, whose object it was to resist and repel the Roman armies. While still himself serving as an officer in the Roman army, he managed to rally the confederated Germans and to attack Varus’s army of forty thousand men—the best Roman legions—as they were marching through the Teutoburger Forest, where, aided by violent storms, the Germans threw the Romans into panic and the fight was changed to a slaughter. When the news of the great German victory reached Rome the aged Augustus trembled with fear; he let his hair and beard grow for months as a sign of trouble, and was often heard to exclaim: “O, Varus, Varus, give me back my legions.” Though Rome, under the able leadership of Germanicus, soon after defeated the Germans, yet she had been taught that the Germans possessed a spirit and a power sufficient to make her tremble for her future supremacy.