Battle of the Angrivarian Wall

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Battle of the Angrivarian Wall
Part of: Roman-Germanic Wars
date 16 AD
place Presumably Location close to the Weser north of Porta Westfalica
output Roman victory (after Tacitus)
Parties to the conflict

Roman Empire

Germanic tribes (coalition army under the leadership of the Cherusci )

Commander

Nero Claudius Germanicus

Arminius

Troop strength
unknown; 8 legions plus Germanic u. a. Auxiliary units unknown; presumably outnumbered the Romans

The battle of the Angrivarian Wall took place in 16 AD as part of the Germanicus campaigns . In summer the legions of Nero Claudius Germanicus and the coalition army of Arminius fought their last armed conflict here. According to Tacitus , Germanicus decided the battle in his favor. The location of the battle is uncertain (see Angrivarian Wall). Most researchers assume a place near the Weser north of Porta Westfalica .

swell

The battle at the Angrivarian Wall is only known from Tacitus. Despite the detailed description, the exact course of the battle remains unclear, but the historian did not want to provide an exact description of the battle. The course of the battle can therefore only be shown in outline.

Participants and troop strengths

Romans and allies

Before the Battle of Idistaviso , which occurred a few days or weeks before, Germanicus had eight legions with auxiliary troops: Among them are Tacitus' Germanic allies such as the Batavians (especially horsemen), Chauken , and Celtic contingents such as the Raeter , Vindeliker and Gauls testified. It is possible that Ampsivarians , Belgians and Frisians were among the relief peoples. Archers and mounted archers were also mentioned. The size of the ally contingents is unknown, but it is believed to have been substantial.

The legionary target strengths of around 8,000 men each (including legionary auxiliaries ) were by no means achieved at the Angrivarian Wall. Troop numbers in an unclear amount must be deducted for the crews remaining in the garrisons, for troops to secure the supply and communication routes as well as for losses in the previous battles (see below).

For the troop strength of the campaign army in the year 16, Hans Delbrück assumes “not below 50,000”. Klaus-Peter Johne names 80,000. Explicitly for the battle at the Angrivarian Wall, Wolfgang Jungandreas puts far too high 100,000 men.

Arminius coalition

It is even more difficult to give the number of troops available to the Cheruscans under Arminius. Overall, the coalition appears to have been stronger than last year.

Essentially, the Cheruscan allies were the tribes that participated in the Battle of Varus in AD 9 . The military operations of Germanicus were directed against this to a particular degree. It can therefore be assumed that the Brukterer and Martians belonged to the coalition. Legionary eagles , which had been captured in the Battle of Varus, were recovered from both tribes . In addition, Usipeters , Tenkerites and Tubanten are counted among the allies.

The chat include not only the Cherusci and Angrivariern to the three strains, particularly emphasizing the Tacitus in his report of Germanicus triumph of the year 17 AD.. "Caesar (Germanicus) held his triumph over the Cherusci, chatting and Angrivarii and the other Tribes that inhabited (the land) up to the Elbe ”. It is unclear whether and in what way the Chattas integrated themselves into the alliance of Arminius in the summer of 16 AD. Due to their rivalry with the Cheruscans, they may at best have participated in the fighting, operating independently.

The Angrivarians seemed to have been pacified at the beginning of the campaign, but then, during his approach, Germanicus was forced to send his cavalry legate Stertinius to the Angrivarians to punish their rubbish "with fire and murder". After the battle, the Angrivarians, according to Tacitus, were kept under control by Stertinius and, after unconditional submission, were resumed at grace. They later helped the Romans buy captured legionaries from the tribes.

Other smaller tribes or individual followers may have supported Arminius. Thus, in Strabo reported the Sugambri Deudorix (a nephew of Lollius-conqueror Maelo ) was carried in triumph of Germanicus in 17 n. Chr.. Deudorix could have presided over the Sugambrians , who decided to resettle in 8 BC. And remained on the right bank of the Rhine.

Strabo enumerates other tribes (Lander, Kaulker, Kampsaner ), but they either represented unknown, smaller groups or their names merely hide alternative names for the tribes already mentioned. If you calculate the number of warriors in the coalition with the help of the data given by Günter Stangl for the individual tribes, you get 40,000 to around 75,000. The upper number marks a hardly achievable upper limit. For the battle at the Angrivarian Wall even the lower number could be set too high because of the unclear status of chats, Angrivarians and followers / smaller tribes as well as because of the Germanic losses in an unknown amount in the previous battles.

prehistory

After the Varus catastrophe in 9 AD, Tiberius , designated successor to Augustus , hurried to Germania and stabilized the situation. In the year 13 Germanicus took over the supreme command and fought possibly in the same year, but certainly in the next. In the year 15 he led an army as far as the Weser , but suffered great losses (including the return march battle on the pontes longi ). In AD 16, Germanicus was under enormous pressure to succeed: Tiberius, emperor since AD ​​14, vehemently pushed for the risky and costly offensives to be abandoned. Regardless of this, in the summer of 16, Germanicus transported a total of eight legions with auxiliary troops with around 1,000 ships from the Lower Rhine via Drusus Canal , Flevo Lake (today: IJsselmeer) and the North Sea to the mouth of the Ems . Some research suggests a trip to the Weser instead of the Ems. The march after the landing is not described by Tacitus, only the revolt of the Angrivarians suppressed by Stertinius is mentioned.

On the middle reaches of the Weser, probably near Minden , the legions met Arminius. This was followed by a defeat of Batavian auxiliaries in a cavalry battle, the Battle of Idistaviso and other marching battles , of which it is only recorded that they brought the Romans into distress ("turbant").

It is possible that Germanicus was already moving backwards when, in late summer, he ran into a fortified position of the Germanic peoples, which historical research would later call the "Angrivarian Wall".

course

Description of the battlefield on the Angrivarian Wall near Tacitus, Annals II 19.2 (Codex Mediceus; Source: Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana ).

Lineup

The Teutons had prepared the spot well: "Finally they chose a place that was enclosed by the river and forests and inside (formed) a narrow, damp plain," reports Tacitus; "The forests were also surrounded by a deep swamp, only on one side the Angrivarians had piled up a wide wall through which they were separated from the Cheruscans."

The Germanic foot troops positioned themselves to defend the wall, the cavalry hid in neighboring groves or clearings in order to hold the legions in the back as soon as they entered the forest. Even this list is unclear and cannot be interpreted with certainty from the further course of the battle.

Germanicus divided his troops into three parts: He handed over the "plain" to the cavalry under Seius Tubero . A (apparently smaller) part of the foot troops penetrated into the forest without any problems. It remains unclear how this arrangement is to be imagined and why these two units were apparently not attacked by the Germanic cavalry.

Storming the wall

Germanicus himself took over the third part of the troops, the main part of the legions. He had the wall attacked, initially unsuccessfully. “The general noticed the unequal hand-to-hand combat, withdrew the legions a little and had slingers and throwers send out projectiles and drive away the enemy; Lances were sent out of the throwing machines, and the more defenders became visible, the more sank under wounds. "

It is unclear why Germanicus did not use the long-range weapons until the second attempt. The statement by Paul Höfer, according to which the operation was a diversionary maneuver to hide a bypassing of the Germanic front, is unsatisfactory.

Fight in the woods

After the wall was taken, the young Caesar personally, according to Tacitus, advanced into the woods with his praetoric cohorts. The use of the Praetorians, the bodyguard of the emperor's heirs, as well as the use of Germanicus himself, is not a normal procedure according to the current Roman battle strategy. The reasons for the measure are not known, the assumption of a critical battle situation is obvious, but would be speculative.

In the forest a murderous struggle broke out for both sides: "The enemy was enclosed in the rear by the swamp, the Romans [,] river or mountains: for both the place (was) unchangeable, (was) hope in bravery, (came) salvation from victory. ”The hand-to-hand combat swayed to and fro, the Germanic leaders Arminius and Inguiomerus , according to Tacitus, left the fortunes of war.

Battle exit

Germanicus ordered no prisoners to be taken - “only the downfall of the people would put an end to the war.” In the evening, one legion was assigned to set up a camp, while the other legions “were fed up with the blood of the enemy until late at night ) ". The next morning, Germanicus had the opponents' weapons piled up as a trophy (after Tacitus no tropaion or tumulus !) And praised the winners in a public meeting. The role of the cavalry troops remained unclear until the end. Tacitus remarks succinctly: "The riders fought without a decision."

Germanicus had claimed the battlefield, but then ordered the return to the winter quarters on the Rhine "as the summer was already drawing to a close". This measure seems strange in view of the victory and the pressure to succeed that weighed on Germanicus. Research has given several reasons. For example: A reoccupation of the attacking wall by the Germanic peoples at night or the threatening advance of the defeated but not destroyed Arminius army towards the naval base. It may have been a precautionary measure to avoid falling into autumn storms when returning troops by ship.

After arriving at the Ems, the return journey across the North Sea followed. In fact, the fleet got caught in a severe storm, resulting in high losses of people and material.

consequences

The meaning of the battle is unclear. The Romans had claimed the battlefield, but did not achieve their real goal of destroying the opposing tribes, especially the Cherusci. Possibly the battle contributed to the fact that the fleet started the return journey too late and thus got into fatal autumn storms. What is certain is that Tiberius stopped the fighting after 16 AD and sent Germanicus to the east of the empire. A great triumphal procession should keep the form. However, the emperor had already pushed for the end of the offensives in Germania last year, and the battle at the Angrivarian Wall was by no means the trigger for the imperial decision.

literature

  • Armin Becker , Rome and the Chattens , Darmstadt 1992.
  • Gerhard Bersu , G. Heimbs, H. Lange, Carl Schuchhardt : The Angrivarian-Cheruscan border wall and the two battles of the year 16 AD between Arminius and Germanicus. In: Prehistoric Journal. No. 17, 1926, ISSN  0079-4848 , pp. 100-131.
  • Hans-Dieter Berlekamp , Rhine-Weser Teutons. In: Bruno Krüger (Ed.): Die Germanen I. Berlin 1978, pp. 396–403.
  • Hans Delbrück , History of the Art of War in the Framework of Political History , Part 2: The Germanic Peoples, Berlin 1902.
  • Boris Dreyer , places of the Varus catastrophe and the Roman occupation in Germania , Darmstadt 2014.
  • Hans-Werner Goetz , Karl-Wilhelm Welwei , Old Germania. Excerpts from the ancient sources on the Germanic peoples and their relations to the Roman Empire , parts 1 and 2 (= selected sources on German history in the Middle Ages, volume 1a), Darmstadt 1995.
  • Paul Höfer , The campaign of Germanicus in AD 16, Bernburg 1885.
  • Klaus-Peter Johne , The Romans on the Elbe. The Elbe river basin in the geographical world view and in the political consciousness of Greco-Roman antiquity , Berlin 2006.
  • Wolfgang Jungandreas , The Angrivarian Wall. In: Journal for German Antiquity and German Literature, Volume 81, H. 1/2 (1944), pp. 1–22.
  • Marcus Junkelmann , The Legions of Augustus , revised edition. Munich 2015.
  • Peter Kehne , Germanicus. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA) 11, 1998, 438–448.
  • Friedrich Knoke , The war campaigns of Germanicus in Germany , Bremen 1887.
  • Johannes Norkus , The Roman Campaigns in Northwest Germany in the Years 9-16 AD, Seen by a Soldier (1963), 2nd edition. Hildesheim 1976.
  • Günter Stangl , Population sizes of Germanic tribes in the 1st century AD. In: Tausend 2009, pp. 227–253.
  • Klaus Tausend , Inside Germaniens: Relations between the Germanic tribes from the 1st century BC. Until the 2nd century AD Geographica Historica, Volume 25, Stuttgart 2009.
  • Dieter Timpe , The Triumph of Germanicus. Investigations into the campaigns of the years 14-16 AD. in Germania . Bonn 1968.
  • Dieter Timpe: history. In: Heinrich Beck et al. (Hrsg.): Germanen, Germania, Germanische Altertumskunde (= RGA, study edition "Die Germanen"), Berlin 1998.
  • Dieter Timpe: The “Varus Battle” in its contexts. A critical review of the 2009 bimillennium. In: Historische Zeitschrift Volume 294, 2012, pp. 593–652.
  • Reinhard Wolters , Integrum equitem equosque… media in Germania fore: Strategy and course of the Germanicus campaign in the year 16 AD In: Johann-Sebastian Kühlborn et al. (Ed.): Rome on the way to Germania. Geostrategy, roads of advance and logistics. Mainz 2008, 237-251.
  • Reinhard Wolters: The battle in the Teutoburg Forest. Arminius, Varus and Roman Germania. Munich, 2nd revised edition 2009.

Remarks

  1. ^ Tacitus, Annalen , 2, 19-21
  2. ↑ cf. Boris Dreyer, Places of the Varus Catastrophe and the Roman Occupation in Germania , Darmstadt 2014, p. 30 u. 82; Dieter Timpe: The “Varus Battle” in its contexts. A critical review of the 2009 bimillennium. In: Historische Zeitschrift Volume 294, 2012, pp. 593–652, here pp. 631f.
  3. ^ Tacitus, Annals 2:11
  4. ^ Tacitus, Annals 2, 17
  5. ↑ cf. Tacitus, Annals 13, 55
  6. ↑ a b Klaus-Peter Johne, The Romans on the Elbe. The Elbe river basin in the geographical world view and in the political consciousness of Greco-Roman antiquity , Berlin 2006, p. 189.
  7. ↑ cf. Marcus Junkelmann, The Legions of Augustus , revised edition. Munich 2015, p. 137f.
  8. ^ Hans Delbrück, History of the Art of War in the Framework of Political History , Part 2: Die Germanen, Berlin 1902, p. 119.
  9. ^ Wolfgang Jungandreas, The Angrivarian Wall. In: Journal for German Antiquity and German Literature, Volume 81, H. 1/2 (1944), pp. 1–22, here p. 14.
  10. ^ Dieter Timpe: History. In: Heinrich Beck et al. (Ed.): Germanen, Germania, Germanische Altertumskunde (= RGA, study edition “Die Germanen”), Berlin 1998, p. 44; Peter Kehne, Germanicus. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA) 11, 1998, 438–448, here p. 444.
  11. ↑ Reinhard Wolters: The battle in the Teutoburg Forest. Arminius, Varus and Roman Germania. Munich, 2nd revised edition 2009, p. 122.
  12. ↑ Klaus Tausend, Inside Germaniens: Relations between the Germanic tribes from the 1st century BC. BC to the 2nd century AD Geographica Historica, Volume 25, Stuttgart 2009, p. 25. Thousands, however, do not count the Martians among the secured coalition members.
  13. ↑ Tacitus, Annals 2, 41, 2; Translation here and below after Hans-Werner Goetz, Karl-Wilhelm Welwei, Altes Germanien. Excerpts from the ancient sources on the Germanic peoples and their relations to the Roman Empire , parts 1 and 2 (= selected sources on the German history of the Middle Ages, volume 1a), Darmstadt 1995, p. 117.
  14. ↑ Armin Becker, Rom und die Chatten , Darmstadt 1992, p. 201
  15. ↑ Hans-Dieter Berlekamp, Rhein-Weser-Germanen. In: Bruno Krüger (Ed.): Die Germanen I. Berlin 1978, pp. 396–403, here p. 400.
  16. ^ Tacitus, Annals 2, 8, 4
  17. ^ Tacitus, Annals 2, 22, 2
  18. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 2, 24, 3
  19. ↑ Strabo, Geographica 7,1,4
  20. ↑ Strabo, Geographica 7,1,4
  21. ↑ cf. Klaus-Peter Johne, The Romans on the Elbe. The Elbe river basin in the geographical world view and in the political consciousness of Greco-Roman antiquity , Berlin 2006, p. 193.
  22. ↑ Günter Stangl, Population sizes of Germanic tribes in the 1st century AD. In: Tausend 2009, pp. 227-253, here pp. 236f.
  23. ↑ Klaus-Peter Johne, The Romans on the Elbe. The Elbe river basin in the geographical world view and in the political consciousness of Greco-Roman antiquity , Berlin 2006, p. 182.
  24. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 1, 49-51
  25. ↑ Tacitus, Annalen 1, 63-68
  26. ↑ Reinhard Wolters, Integrum equitem equosque… media in Germania fore: Strategy and course of the Germanicus campaign in 16 AD. In: Johann-Sebastian Kühlborn et al. (Ed.): Rome on the way to Germania. Geostrategy, roads of advance and logistics. Mainz 2008, 237–251, here p. 239. Fundamental to the topic: Dieter Timpe, Der Triumph des Germanicus. Investigations into the campaigns of the years 14-16 AD. in Germania . Bonn 1968.
  27. ^ Tacitus, Annals 2, 8
  28. ↑ cf. Reinhard Wolters, Integrum equitem equosque… media in Germania fore: Strategy and course of the Germanicus campaign in the year 16 AD In: Johann-Sebastian Kühlborn et al. (Ed.): Rome on the way to Germania. Geostrategy, roads of advance and logistics. Mainz 2008, 237-251.
  29. ^ Tacitus, Annals 2:11
  30. ^ Tacitus, Annals 2, 16-18
  31. ↑ Tac. Ann. II 19.1
  32. ^ Tacitus, Annals 2, 19, 2
  33. ^ Tacitus, Annals 2, 20, 1
  34. ^ Tacitus, Annals 2, 20, 2
  35. ^ Paul Höfer: The campaign of Germanicus in the year 16 AD Bernburg 1885, p. 77f.
  36. ^ Tacitus, Annals 2, 20, 3
  37. ^ Tacitus, Annals 2, 20, 3
  38. ^ Tacitus, Annals 2, 21, 1
  39. ↑ a b Tacitus, Annalen 2, 21, 2
  40. ^ Tacitus, Annals 2, 23, 1
  41. ↑ Friedrich Knoke, The war trains of Germanicus in Germany , Bremen 1887, p. 548.
  42. ^ Johannes Norkus, The Roman Campaigns in Northwest Germany in the Years 9-16 AD, Seen by a Soldier (1963), 2nd edition. Hildesheim 1976, p. 101.
  43. ↑ On the subject of loss of time, see also Reinhard Wolters, Integrum equitem equosque… media in Germania fore: Strategy and course of the Germanicus campaign in AD 16. In: Johann-Sebastian Kühlborn et al. (Ed.): Rome on the way to Germania. Geostrategy, roads of advance and logistics. Mainz 2008, 237–251, here p. 245.
  44. ^ Tacitus, Annalen 2, 23f