Chatti (Germanic tribe)

The Chatti join with the Sicambri in 10 BCE and attack Drusus' camp, but are easily defeated.

Drusus then goes to meet Augustus and Tiberius in Lugdunum (at which point Claudius was born), and travels with them to Rome.

Nero Claudius Drusus, nephew and stepson of Roman emperor Augustus, is easily elected Consul for 9 BCE, but once more leaves the city before assuming office.

He once again smashes the Chatti, and then begins a campaign against the Marcomanni, but is turned back across the Rhine.

Drusus dies soon after in consequence of a fall from a horse, lingering on for a month after the accident.

His brother Tiberius Claudius Nero, who had been at Ticinum, on the Po River, south of what is now Milan, four hundred miles away, rides day and night to be with his younger brother, arriving just in time to see Drusus die.

Interestingly, soon before his death Drusus had written a letter to Tiberius complaining about the style in which Augustus rules.

Suetonius reports that he had refused to return to Rome just before his death.

Tiberius escorts the body back to Rome, walking in front of it on foot all the way.

Drusus' ashes are deposited in the Mausoleum of Augustus.

He remains extremely popular with the legionaries, who erect a monument (the Drususstein) in Moguntiacum (modern Mainz) on his behalf.

Remnants of this are still standing.

His family is granted the hereditary honorific "Germanicus", which is given to his eldest son before passing to his youngest.

Augustus will later write a biography of him that does not survive.

Drusus had in about 16 BCE married the younger Antonia, daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia.

Their surviving children are Germanicus, Livilla, and Claudius, who will later become emperor.

The lower reaches of the Elbe River, known to the Romans as the Albis, marks the limit of the Romans' farthest advance in Germany in CE 9.

Angered by the governance of the arrogant and tactless Varus, Arminius deceitfully persuades Varus to lead his entire force—composed of the Seventeenth, Eighteeth and Nineteenth legions, plus three cavalry detachments and six cohorts of auxiliaries—into the Teutoburger Wald (Teutoburg Forest) in the late summer of 9, with Arminius as head of a rear guard.

Lying in wait is an allied coalition force of Cherusci, Marsi, Chatti, Bructeri, Chauci and Sicambri.

Once the supply wagons mire (at a point supposedly near present Detmold, Germany) and the legions break formation, Germanic guerillas, the home advantage lying with their more loosely organized forces in the heavy woods, attack the unsuspecting Romans; the German recruits desert, and the rear guard falls on the legions from behind.

Varus desperately attempts to march west to safety, but the tribesmen annihilate his cavalry by the second day; by the end of the third, twenty thousand Roman soldiers are dead.

Varus, humiliated, takes his own life.

The Roman advance into Germany is thus halted at the Rhine, not the Elbe.

The Senate had appointed Germanicus commander of the forces in Germania after the death of Augustus in 14.

The legions a short time after had rioted on the news that their recruitment terms would not be marked back down to sixteen years from the then standard twenty.

Refusing to accept this, the rebel soldiers had cried for Germanicus as emperor.

Germanicus, preferring to continue only as a general, puts down this rebellion himself.

In a bid to secure the loyalty of his troops and his own popularity with them and with the Roman people, he leads them on a spectacular but brutal raid against the Marsi, a German tribe on the upper Ruhr river, in which he massacres much of the tribe.

Tacitus mentions the Marsi repeatedly, in particular in the context of the wars of Germanicus.

They had been part of the tribal coalition of the Cheruscian war leader Arminius that in 9 CE had annihilated the three Roman legions under Varus in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.

Germanicus, seeking revenge for this defeat, invades the lands of the Marsi in 14 CE with twelve thousand legionnaires, twenty-six cohorts of auxiliaries and eight cavalry squadrons.

The Marsi, celebrating the feast of their goddess Tanfana, are too drunk to respond effectively to the Roman surprise attack and are massacred.

According to Tacitus (Annals 1, 51), an area of fifty Roman miles is laid to waste with fire and sword: "No sex, no age found pity."

A Legion eagle from Varus’s Defeat, either from the XVII or XVIII, is recovered.

Several town names today remain as reminders of the ancient Marsi—e.g., Marsberg and Obermarsberg in eastern North Rhine-Westphalia and Volkmarsen in northern Hesse.

The frequently quarreling tribes, enraged by this and other similar bloodbaths (e.g., in the spring of 15 among the Chatti), unite once again to fend back the Roman invaders.

Rome after two more years of warfare will finally abandon its efforts to push its boundaries eastward to the Weser river and retreat permanently behind the Rhine.

The Batavi, a sub-tribe of the Germanic Chatti tribal group who had rendered valuable aid under the early emperors, had been well treated in order to attach them to the cause of Rome.

They are exempt from tribute, but are obliged to supply a large number of men for the army.

Gaius Julius Civilis, a hereditary prince of the Batavi, the prefect of a Batavi cohort, and a veteran of twenty-five years' service, had distinguished himself by service in Britain, where he and the eight Batavi cohorts had played a crucial role in both the Roman invasion in 43 CE and the subsequent subjugation of southern Britain.

Before and during the disturbances that followed the death of Nero, Civilis had been twice imprisoned on a charge of rebellion, and narrowly escaped execution.

Civilis in early 69 had been released by Vitellius, when the latter, having launched his mutiny against Otho, was in urgent need of the Batavi's military support.

The Batavi regiments, having duly helped Vitellius overthrow Otho at the Battle of Bedriacum, were then ordered to return home, but at this point came the mutiny of Vespasian, commander of forces in Syria.

Vitellius' general in Germania Inferior, ordered to raise more troops, squanders the goodwill of the Batavi by attempting to conscript more Batavi than the maximum stipulated in their treaty.

The brutality and corruption of the Roman recruiting centurions bring already deep discontent in the Batavi homeland to the boil.

Civilis, commanding the Batavian auxiliary troops allocated in the summer of 69 to the Rhine legions, takes up arms under the pretense of siding with Vespasian and induces the inhabitants of his native country to rebel.

The Batavi are immediately joined by several neighboring German tribes, the most important of whom are the Frisii.

Vespasian, who is fighting Vitellius for the imperial throne, salutes the rebellion that keeps his enemy from calling the Rhine legions to Italy.

The Batavi are promised independence and Civilis is on his way to becoming king, but, for unknown reasons, this is not enough for the Batavi.

Civilis chooses to pursue vengeance and swears to destroy the two Roman legions.

The timing is well chosen: with the civil war of the Year of the Four Emperors at its peak, it will take some time before Rome can produce an effective counterattack.

Moreover, the eight Batavian auxiliary units of Vitellius' army are on their way home and can be easily persuaded to join the rebellion for an independent Batavia.

This is an important reinforcement.

Apart from being veteran troops, their numbers are greater than the combined Roman troops stationed in Moguntiacum (Mainz) and …

…Bonna (Bonn).

The tribe of the Cananefates lives in lands between the Batavians and the North Sea.

The inducements used by Civilis to instigate rebellion are not known, but the Cananefates, led by their chief Brinno, attack several Roman forts, including Traiectum, modern Utrecht.

With most of the troops in Italy fighting in the civil war, the Romans are caught off guard.

Flaccus, commander of the Rhine legions, sends auxiliary troops to control the situation.

The result is another disaster for the Romans.

Civilis assumes the role of mastermind of the rebellion and defeats the Romans near modern Arnhem.

Flaccus orders the V Alaudae and the XV Primigenia legions to deal with the problem.

Accompanying them are three auxiliary units, including a Batavian cavalry squadron, commanded by Claudius Labeo, a known enemy of Civilis.

The battle takes place near modern Nijmegen.

The Batavian regiment deserts to their countrymen, dealing a blow to the already feeble morale of the Romans.

The result is disastrous: a Roman army is beaten and the legions forced to retreat to their base camp of Castra Vetera (modern Xanten).

Civilis in September 69 initiates the siege of Castra Vetera, the camp of the five thousand legionaries of V Alaudae and XV Primigenia.

The camp is very modern, filled with supplies and well defended, with walls of mud brick and wood, towers and a double ditch.

After some failed attempts to take the camp by force, Civilis decides to starve the troops into surrender.

Flaccus meanwhile decides to wait for the result of the war in Italy.

The Rhine legions not long before had been punished by Galba for their actions against the rebel Vindex of Gallia Lugdunensis.

Vespasian is winning the war and Civilis is helping him to become emperor by preventing at least the two legions besieged in Xanten, loyal to Vitellius, from coming to his rescue.

Flaccus and his commanders do not want to risk a second military gaffe and decide to wait for instructions.

Civilis continues the siege after the news of Vitellius' defeat arrives; he is fighting not for Vespasian but for Batavia.

Flaccus starts to prepare a counterattack to rescue the besieged legions.

Civilis is not going to wait until they were fully prepared and launches a surprise attack.

His best eight cavalry regiments in the evening of December 1 attack the Romans in Krefeld.

The Roman army wins the battle and destroys the Batavian cavalry, but their own losses are enormous.