Publius Quinctilius Varus - Battle of The Teutoburg Forest

Battle of The Teutoburg Forest

In 9 AD, Varus had stationed his armies near the Weser River with his three legions, the Seventeenth, the Eighteenth and the Nineteenth, when news arrived of a growing revolt in the Rhine area to the west. Despite a warning from Segestes, Varus trusted Arminius, the man who appealed for his help, because he was a Romanised Germanic prince and commander of an auxiliary cavalry unit.

Not only was Varus' trust in Arminius a terrible misjudgment, but Varus compounded it by placing his legions in a position where their fighting strengths would be minimized and that of the Germanic tribesmen maximized. Arminius and the Cherusci tribe, along with other allies, had skilfully laid an ambush, and in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in September (east of modern Osnabrück), the Romans marched right into it.

The heavily forested, swampy terrain made the infantry manoeuvres of the legions impossible to execute and allowed the Germanic fighters to defeat the legions in detail. On the third day of fighting, the Germans overwhelmed the Romans at Kalkriese Hill, north of Osnabrück. Accounts of the defeat are scarce, due to the totality of the defeat, but one account tells of some Roman cavalry which abandoned the infantry they were supposed to be supporting and fled to the Rhine, but were intercepted by the Germanic tribesmen and killed. Some captured Romans were placed inside wicker cages and burned alive (see Edward Gibbon); others were enslaved or ransomed. Tacitus reports that the victorious Germanic tribes sacrificed captive officers to their gods on altars that could still be seen years later. Varus himself, upon seeing all hope was lost, committed suicide (see Bunson, A Dictionary of the Roman Empire). Arminius cut off his head and sent it to Bohemia as a present to King Marbod of the Marcomanni, the other most important Germanic leader, whom Arminius wanted to coax into an alliance, but Marbod declined the offer and sent the head on to Rome for burial. The Romans did later recover the lost legions' eagles (see Edward Gibbon), two of them in 15 AD – 16 AD, the third in 42 AD. See Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The Romans ultimately never succeeded in putting the north and east of Germany under direct Roman rule as were the regions on the Rhine, the Danube, and the Agri Decumates.

So great was the shame, and the ill luck thought to adhere to the numbers of the Legions, that XVII, XVIII and XIX never again appear in the Roman Army's order of battle. The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest was keenly felt by Augustus, darkening his remaining years. According to the biographer Suetonius, upon hearing the news, Augustus tore his clothes, refused to cut his hair for months and, for years afterwards, was heard, upon occasion, to moan, "Quinctilius Varus, give me back my Legions!" ("Quintili Vare, legiones redde!"). Gibbon describes Augustus' reaction to the defeat as one of the few times the normally stoic ruler lost his composure.