Perhaps all is fair in war, and the end justifies the means, and the eleventh commandment “Do to the enemy what he’d like to do to you”, being altogether heartless and godless is peculiarly applicable to war: nevertheless the victory won by treachery never sounds so clarionly joyous adown the ages as the victory following a fair fight; and the deadly defeat that came by treachery has in it a pathos that redeems defeat from disgrace. Time is just.
When Varus started out at the head of his legions to quell, as he thought, an insurrection of a few unimportant tribes scattered along the Weser and the Ems rivers, Germany seemed comparatively at peace; and Arminius, the most dreaded war-lord of the barbarians, seemed to have been won over by the blandishments of the Roman camp.
It was a gala day for the troops as with ample supplies, generous baggage-wagons, plenty of camp followers, jesters, entertainers, they turned away from the frontier and plunged into the Black Forest. There was nothing to indicate that concerted action on the part of the Germans was the cause of that far distant uprising against Roman authority, and that within their ranks were half-Romanized barbarians who would desert at a given signal and use their arms against their present comrades; above all, that Arminius had secretly instigated a general uprising and that the Black Forests were blackly alive with the foe.
On went the Roman troops following their treacherous guides who purposely led them into the dense marshy depths of the woods; and when thus lost and entangled, their cavalry unable to advance, and while all the troops were called upon to construct a rude causeway over which the horses might proceed—suddenly from the gloom encompassing them on all sides came deadly arrows, missiles, javelins hurled by an unseen foe.
Varus seems to have been unable to realize that he was the victim of a stratagem. His best men, officers and soldiers, were falling around him; his cavalry slipping in slimy blood lay floundering on the way; his light-armed auxiliaries, composed in great part of brawny German youth, were slinking away and becoming strangely one with the forces whence came the arrows, missiles, javelins. Still Varus urged on the work on the causeway, and still veterans advanced to the work as veterans fell and at last the gloomy march resumed.
The attack seemed over and Varus thought some isolated tribe of barbarians had taken advantage of their hour of disability to harass them on the march. On reaching a declivity of the woody plain Varus drew up his forces as best he could in battle line and thus awaited the coming of the foe. But Arminius was not prepared to meet the Romans in battle; his rude warriors were no match for the trained Roman soldiers fully protected by helmet, cuirass, greaves, and shield. There could have been but one result to such an encounter—victory for the Romans, defeat for the cause of liberty and native land.
Arminius held in leash his blood-hounds all thro’ the night. The Romans halted on the slope and, perceiving no enemy near, pitched their camp with true Roman precision and then slept long and well the heavy sleep of worn out nature that last night of mortal life.
At early dawn, while the Roman camp yet lay moveless, undreaming of the savage blood-hounds around or the deadly ambush ahead,—Arminius despatched men to the farther end of the defile with orders to fell trees and erect an impassable barricade. He then sent troops to different points of advantage on either side of the defile thro’ which the fated army would advance; he gave instructions as to concerted action at the sound of the agreed-upon signal, and thus awaited the coming of morn and the renewed activities of the Roman camp.
There is something sternly terrible in the human heart which can thus joyfully contemplate the destruction of thousands upon thousands of one’s fellow mortals. And yet, in this case, these Roman soldiers were the concrete embodiment of a cause which would enslave Arminius’ native land, intrude deadly enervation into the integrity of a German home; and more—much more: Rome had deeply wronged Arminius, lover of liberty, lover of native land; but even more deeply had she wronged Arminius, the lover, and the man. His wife, Thusnelda, was held a captive in Rome and his child, a fair haired boy of only five years, had been made to grace a Roman triumph. Rivers of blood could not wash away such seared yet burning memories from the heart.