Nero's Killing Machine by Stephen Dando-Collins

Author:Stephen Dando-Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published: 2011-01-23T16:00:00+00:00

After General Stertinius rejoined the main task force, Germanicus sent him with a large part of his cavalry to probe across the river and determine German dispositions. Stertinius split his mounted force into three groups commanded by himself; a first-rank centurion from the legions named Aemilius; and Chariovalda, king of the Batavians.

As King Chariovalda and his men penetrated deep into Germany, Cheruscans appeared at their front, then turned and fled. The king and his nobles eagerly gave chase, as if taking part in a wild boar hunt. Behind, the regular Batavian cavalry struggled to keep up and maintain formation. Suddenly Cheruscan warriors appeared from the trees to their rear and on either side of them. It was a trap. Now, too, the Germans the Batavians had been pursuing turned and charged. Chariovalda found himself fighting for his life.

Messengers from Chariovalda found Stertinius and Aemilius, and as they came to the rescue, the Cheruscans dispersed into the forest. But help arrived too late. Unhorsed, isolated from the regular cavalry, Chariovalda and the nobles with him had been filled with darts. In contrast, most of the Batavian troopers kept their discipline and their lives.

There would have been much celebration around German campfires that night. The Batavians had long been considered sellouts by other German tribes, and now their leaders had paid the price of collaboration. What was more, Germanicus Caesar had been stung. Many Germans took it as proof that he could be beaten.

As Germanicus advanced east with his main force and crossed the Weser, a German deserter came to him saying that Hermann was assembling an army farther to the south, in the Great Forest, a place sacred to Donar, the German Hercules. According to the deserter, Hermann was readying for a full-scale battle. Hermann, he said, had even chosen a battle site, beside the Weser. This information tallied with reports from Germanicus’s scouts, who’d spotted campfires in the Great Forest and had heard the neighing of horses and the hum of thousands of voices on the chilly night air. Germanicus turned south, and set up camp several miles to the north of the Great Forest.

Germanicus himself was ready to take on Hermann, and his officers assured him the men were keen for battle. But he knew that tribunes and centurions tended to report what their commander wanted to hear. So that evening he pulled on a hooded camp follower’s fur cloak that disguised his uniform and rank, and slipped out the back of his headquarters tent. Then, with just a lone, similarly disguised staff officer for company, he wandered around the streets of his huge camp at suppertime. Every now and then the general would pause at a row of tents and listen to the conversations around campfires. At every turn, he heard legionaries praise their general and express their determination to serve him well and repay the Germans for what they had done to Varus and his legions. Just as Germanicus was about to call it a night, he heard a voice calling from outside the camp walls.

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