The Provinces of the Roman Empire (Illustrated Edition). Theodor MommsenЧитать онлайн книгу.
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.
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.
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.
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,