The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 1

by Theodor Mommsen

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.

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.

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.

Rising of the Batavian auxiliaries.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, Civilis. 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.

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.

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.

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.

First conflicts.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. Participation of the Germans on the right of the Rhine.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.

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.

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.