Wolves of Rome

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘Right, sing, sing,’ growled Aulus Caecina. ‘We’ll see if you’re in the mood for singing tomorrow.’ He knew they were surrounded by the enemy on every side, but he also knew that he could still be a threat to them. He called his officers to council.

  ‘I’ve learned from a secure source that these barbarians have two options. Armin wants to let us pass and then, when we’re back in the middle of the swamps and forests, just like at Teutoburg, they’ll attack from both sides until they’ve bled us out. His uncle, Ingmar, wants to attack us here at camp directly so that they can lay their hands on everything we have. His plan will prevail as it appeals to the Germanics’ nature. So, if that is indeed the case, they’ve got a big surprise in store.

  ‘Four of you,’ he said, pointing at four cohort commanders, ‘will go out with four thousand men and you’ll lie in wait . . . there, where that patch of oak trees is, and there, behind that mound of earth. You’ll let them approach our defensive wall and when they’re close enough you’ll hear trumpet blasts. That will be your signal. You’ll attack them from behind with complete force. In the meantime, we’ll come out from inside and we’ll squeeze them in the middle. The four of you will leave now.’

  They made their way out without a sound and took position. The Cherusci were so sure of victory and so drunk they didn’t notice a thing and the Romans were even able to get some sleep, under the watchful eyes of their sentries.

  At dawn, the Cherusci poured out of their camp en masse, heading for the modest defence structure built by Caecina’s army. They tossed down boards to cross the trenches and readied for the final battle. At that moment trumpets blared and horns echoed through the valley. The Roman troops who had been hiding came out into the open, closed ranks in a single formation and attacked, while Aulus Caecina burst out of the camp with the rest of his army. The Cherusci and their allied warriors found themselves being attacked from front and back.

  A furious fray ensued and incredibly the Romans made a show of willpower and physical strength that was nearly miraculous. Ingmar was gravely injured and Armin barely managed to save him. By midday the battle was over. The surviving Germanic warriors had fled into the woods. The legions of Aulus Caecina marched over the pontes longi until they met up with Germanicus’s ships. They were taken on board and delivered back to their fort on the Rhine without suffering serious losses.

  GERMANICUS’S EXPEDITION closed with mixed fortunes, although substantially in favour of the Romans, and it served to make him understand the enormous difficulties involved in conquering a land like Germania. His first enemy was nature. The obstacles put in their way in terms of geography and climate were practically insurmountable for an army like Rome’s that had to be continuously supplied with an enormous quantity of materials and that needed open spaces in order to exploit their force. Swamps, impenetrable forests, quicksand, ocean tides in the coastal areas which could swallow up entire armies: crossing such treacherous terrain cost immense effort and resources; even just building a camp was often impossible. The summers were very short, the winters long, damp and icy. And the natives were indefatigable. They defended their territory fiercely and they were well equipped to blend in with the natural surroundings that they were well familiar with. They could strike and vanish instantly, but they were also able to mass multitudes of warriors capable of fighting like lions against the Roman armies. When the legions had finally reached the area of operations, they were too challenged by all these other aspects to think about making those lands more accessible with roads, bridges, water drainage systems and riverbanks – all of the elements that would counter the adverse nature of climate and territory.

  Germanicus thought long and hard about how he could get around these obstacles and manage to make it to the operative phase in full force and in the best conditions of troop strength and morale.

  The answer was a fleet.

  A thousand ships.

  The vessels of each sector were designed according to the use they would be put to in the shallows, rivers, lakes or the ocean. The ships destined to navigate in the ocean were built with two prows with a helm at each end, so that merely switching the direction of the oars would suffice to change direction, without wasting time in manoeuvres. They were equipped with decks wide enough to accommodate hundreds of men in full battle order as well as provisions, rigging and sails. There would be ample room for heavy and light artillery machines: ballistae, onagers and catapults.

  Shipyards were spread along the entire coast from Gaul to Germania for building the hulls and masts. They relied on hundreds of other construction yards where trees were chopped down, debarked, cut and shaped to craft them into frames for the skeletons and planks for the sides. Thousands of carpenters and ironsmiths went to work day and night in the yards, which were constantly being supplied with all the necessary materials: tall piles of oars, winches, anchors, coils of rope, stacks of hemp fabric for the sails and masts to support them.

  Once completed, the fleet was so huge that if all the ships had been lined up in a single direction, they would have stretched out for more than twenty miles in length. As the immense fleet was assembling, Germanicus sent Silius, one of his lieutenants, to attack the Chatti who were besieging a fort on the Lipias River. He managed to disperse them, but the bad weather blocked further operations, forcing him to linger. On a bleak and rainy day, Silius had to take note that the mound Germanicus had erected over the bones of the fallen in Teutoburg had been demolished.

  The fleet was ready to enter the canal that Drusus had excavated for over thirty miles, connecting the Rhine to a coastal lagoon. From there, once it had sailed into open waters, it began to make its way up the River Ems. Their Batavian allies, who had always lived along the ocean, made a show of diving into the water from the ships’ sides and swimming against the waves of the ebb tide. A number drowned doing so.

  Armin was informed that Germanicus was sailing upriver with a thousand ships and eight legions. Germanicus had heard that Armin was preparing for a massive attack.

  The armies faced off on the two shores of the Weser: the Germanics on the right bank, the Romans on the left. Armin and several chieftains stood on the right bank, observing the movements of the enemy troops. At a certain moment, seeing a group of Roman officers walking along the shore, he yelled out in Latin, ‘Is it true that the commander is in camp?’

  ‘It’s true all right,’ replied one of the tribunes.

  ‘I want to ask if he’ll let me talk to my brother. I’ve heard he’s in camp as well. His name is Flavus.’

  The officers exchanged a look, realizing that the man standing on the opposite shore was Armin, the leader of the Germanic coalition. ‘Wait,’ the tribune answered. ‘We’ll go and see.’

  ‘You wait!’ shouted Armin. ‘Hold back your archers when I approach.’

  ‘You bastard,’ one of the three officers grumbled.

  A short time passed and Flavus appeared accompanied by Stertinius, one of the lieutenants of Germanicus’s general staff. He stood to one side and allowed Flavus to go forward.

  ‘Hail!’ shouted Armin. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Not bad, or good.’

  ‘What did you do to that eye? That’s why I barely recognized you under that mask in Teutoburg.’

  ‘Don’t you dare mention Teutoburg!’ Flavus cut him short.

  ‘How did you lose that eye?’

  ‘In battle. Fighting for Commander Tiberius.’

  ‘What did you get for it?’

  ‘That’s my business. It’s my eye, not yours.’

  ‘You haven’t changed. So quick-tempered.’

  ‘Is that what you wanted to tell me?’

  ‘No. I thought I could talk to you. We used to be brothers once . . . I have a message for you from Mother.’ Flavus said nothing. ‘She says, cross this river and join us. It’s your side too. Your people and your land. You can’t betray us, you can’t be a servant to the Romans!’

  ‘I’m not a servant to
anybody! I gave my word and I kept it, like the Romans do. Germanicus promised he would treat your wife and your son humanely and he has kept his word. You? You accepted Roman citizenship, the rank of Eques, you wore a toga. And then you betrayed them. It’s you who are the traitor, you! Not me! Do you know how many of my friends died at Teutoburg? Friends who had saved my life, more than once, in battle. Their heads were ripped off! And Taurus? You killed him, didn’t you? And Thiaminus, Privatus? They brought food to our table, remember? What did you do to them? Cut out their tongues? Gouge their eyes out? Varus? You ate his bread, drank his wine, you won his trust and then you cut off his head. You are not my brother! You are a bastard! My word is my bond, yours is worth nothing!’

  Armin responded with insults of his own and both became livid with fury. The two brothers raced to the ford, urging their horses on, ready to make it a duel to the death, but they were pulled back, one by the Roman officers and the other by the Germanic chieftains.

  ‘Don’t you ever cross my path again, Armin!’ yelled Flavus while four men were struggling hard to drag him off. ‘Do not do it, or I will have no respect for the memory of our father, or of our mother either!’ He grabbed the reins of his own horse then, spurred him on and disappeared in a cloud of dust.

  GERMANICUS RECEIVED the spy in his tent in the middle of the night.

  ‘Armin has decided where the final battle will be. The second Teutoburg.’

  It was a level area, with wooded hills at the southern edge. The wood was full of big trees called something like ‘Idstwis’ in the local language, which the Romans renamed ‘Idistavisus’ to be able to pronounce it.

  ‘He’s put together a powerful army,’ continued the spy. ‘Armin reminds them constantly of Teutoburg, to give them the certainty of victory. He disparages the Romans for using the fleet instead of going on shore to fight. It’s evident that such a huge show of Roman force has greatly shaken his men. In any case, all the chieftains have given him the high command this time. Seven tribes have contributed all of their able warriors to the fight.’

  ‘If that’s the place he wants, it’s fine for me as well,’ replied Germanicus, and dismissed the informer.

  Germanicus left nothing to chance; he did not want to expose his men to any risks that could be avoided. When the spy came back, once again in the middle of the night, to say that the enemy army was just a short distance away and would attack the following day, Germanicus had already had two bridges built and placed hundreds of archers to cover the ford. The spy was still talking when Stertinius’s cavalry and the Batavian squads were starting to take up position on the eastern bank, while the heavy infantry passed over the bridges in silence.

  The first to attack were the Batavian auxiliaries, led by their chief Cariovalda who unleashed them against Armin’s tribe. The Cherusci feigned withdrawal only to lure their assailants into a closed space where the Batavi found themselves completely surrounded. Cariovalda tried to break through the encirclement, but there was no way out for him or his men. The Batavian chief was riddled with stab wounds, and he died crushed under his own horse that had been gutted by the Cherusci warriors.

  Stertinius’s cavalry arrived just in time to prevent the complete extermination of the Batavi and managed to bring the survivors back in. But the bulk of Armin’s Cherusci warriors hung back in the forest, waiting for Germanicus’s army to advance: first the Gallic and Germanic auxiliaries, then the archers, then four legions one after another and then Germanicus in person with one thousand two hundred praetorians and a hand-picked cavalry squad behind. These were followed by another four legions, with assault infantry, mounted archers and even more cohorts of allies. The mere sight of them behind their segmented loricas was frightening. Their officers wore muscle cuirasses, red cloaks and helmets with crests of the same colour. The standard-bearers, one for every legion, held their eagles high and shining in the sun.

  Armin, crouching in the forest, was searching for the point where he could break in two that apparently invulnerable mass of steel on the march and get at Germanicus. He had to hold back the warriors that he had until just now been firing up. They were perfectly primed: laden with ire and dying to get into the fray. Now that he saw the entire column was offering its flank, he launched the order for attack. He led the charge himself, whipping Borr up into a wild gallop down the slope of the hill. The forest was thick enough to hide them and yet the trees were sparse enough to allow them to race on at full speed.

  But the Roman officers knew what to do; they had been instructed countless times. Every legionary was as taut as a bowstring, waiting only for the command to pass from parade order to combat order. The order arrived in unison from all their officers: ‘right, face’ and ‘ranks in close order’. They turned as one towards the enemy cavalry charging at them. The archers let fly clouds of arrows, and then the heavy infantry hurled two waves of javelins that downed great numbers of the attackers and their horses. And Stertinius hadn’t even had his moment yet; he was hiding in the forest at the Romans’ backs with his heavy cavalry and with the surviving Batavi wild to avenge their murdered chieftain.

  His orders arrived, brought by a horseman, clear and precise: the cavalry would attack the Cherusci on the flank, and then immediately afterwards Stertinius and the Batavi would circle behind them and push them onto the plain. The supreme commander with his praetorian cohorts would then intervene. Stertinius ordered his men to charge forward at full speed. They penetrated the Cherusci column in a wild rush and broke it neatly in two. The Batavi were right behind them.

  Furious brawling started. Armin, who had taken a sword blow, fought on with interminable energy, even as blood poured out of his wounded shoulder. He was aiming at the spot where the archers were drawn up because it was there that he could open a breach and get to Germanicus, but the Raetians, Vindelici and Gauls, Roman allies all, realized what he was intending to do and raced to counter the attack, blocking his manoeuvre. Germanicus spotted him and sprang at him at the head of his praetorian cohort. The superiority of the Roman forces was crushing and what remained of the Germanic army had not yet even engaged the Roman heavy infantry, with its wall of shields and deadly hedge of gladii extending from the front line.

  Combat continued for nearly ten hours, until dark, and in the end Armin ordered a retreat to avoid a total debacle. He covered his face with the blood of his wounded shoulder and managed to escape unrecognized. His uncle Ingmar did the same. Many of their men tried to swim across the Weser, but these were easily picked off by the Roman archers. The riverbanks had collapsed at spots and other men fell into the current. Those who had sought shelter in the wood had climbed up onto the trees and were hiding amidst the leafy boughs but they too became easy marks for the Roman archers and they dropped one after another onto the ground.

  The bodies of the fallen and the cadavers of their horses were spread over an area ten miles wide. The officers of Germanicus’s army decreed that a mound be erected on the field, with an inscription listing all the peoples who had been defeated, to stand as a trophy and as retribution for the demolition of the mound of Teutoburg so soon after it had been raised.

  Armin did not give up the fight. He stitched up his wound himself and would say to everyone he encountered, ‘Not all is lost!’ He continued to send messengers everywhere, to call to arms anyone who could give their contribution. He told them about the inscription of the Romans declaring their defeat and naming the peoples put to rout to prolong their shame for all of eternity. This was the one thing, more than any other, that convinced them to react. Men poured in from every quarter, many of them still boys, warriors on foot and on horseback.

  Such a multitude gave him hope that their defeat could still be avenged.

  He concentrated them all in a place further north, at a point where there was a narrowing between the wood and the swamps, fortified by a high dirt embankment which was called the ‘Angrivarian Wall’ because it had been built by the Angrivarii as a barrier between the
ir territory and the Cherusci lands. It was a steep earthwork that included a palisade, and it had been well maintained. Many chieftains who were already thinking of passing to the other side of the Elbe changed their minds, and showed up with the full strength of their forces. The infantry was deployed to hold the wall, while the cavalry was hidden in the woods.

  The Roman commander was immediately informed of what was happening and he ordered an attack on the wall. The Germanics were offering fierce resistance and Germanicus realized that getting too close to the wall would mean big losses, so he decided that instead of risking the lives of more men, he would draw up the heavy artillery. The Roman war machines began to incessantly rain down projectiles of every sort on the bastion. Incendiary bales of straw soaked with pitch disintegrated into a deadly blaze, throwing the defenders into such a panic that they abandoned the wall.

  The battle shifted to the area remaining between the wall and the forest where the Germanics, massed in such great numbers in such a narrow space, could not use their agility and speed in striking to sufficient advantage. They had to face the compact formation of the legions and had no choice but to throw themselves at the wall of shields and the thousands of sharp sword blades sprouting between one shield and the next. Protected by neither helmets nor cuirasses, their losses were terrible.

  Although Armin was wounded, he had been fighting on relentlessly, without stopping to eat or rest. He could barely stand and in the end he collapsed. He could hear Germanicus riding by on his horse, shouting, ‘No prisoners! Take no prisoners, kill them all! Avenge Teutoburg!’

  The slaughter went on until dark. Ingmar, who had fought valiantly, racing on his horse from one point of the battle to another, felt his strength failing him; he was forced to fall back, to save those of his men still alive.