By military organization of the Germanic peoples is meant the set of forces that made up the armies of the Germanic peoples, including the organization of their units, their internal hierarchy of command, tactics, armament and strategy, from the Cimbrian Wars (late 2nd century B.C.) to the Marcomannic Wars (mid-3rd century A.D.). After this period a whole series of confederations of peoples (from the Alemanni to the Franks, Goths, and Saxons) were generated, each with its own internal military organization, which will be analyzed individually and separately.
Historical context
Origins
In ancient times there was a widespread hypothesis, reported by Publius Cornelius Tacitus, in De origine et situ Germanorum, that the Germani were an indigenous people of Germania itself.. Again according to the Roman historian, they considered themselves descendants of Tuisto, deity of the land, from where his grandchildren, offspring of his son Mannus, would be the progenitors of the three Germanic lineages: that of the Ingaevones, the Istvaeones and the Irminones. According to other traditions, however, Tuisto's sons were more numerous, having thus given rise to other tribes: the Marsi, Suebi, Gambrivii, and Vandals..
According to modern archaeological research, the Germani would constitute the result of Indo-Europeanization, of the first half of the third millennium B.C., in southern Scandinavia and Jutland by people from central Europe, which had already been Indo-Europeanized during the fourth millennium B.C.Villar, cit., p. 425. By the mid-eighth century B.C., the Germani are attested along the entire coastal strip from Holland to the mouth of the Vistula. The pressure continued in the following centuries, not as a unified, unidirectional movement but as an intricate process of advances, retrogressions, and infiltrations into regions also inhabited by other peoples. Around 550 BCE they reached the Rhine area, imposing themselves on the pre-existing Celtic peoplesVillar, cit., p. 428. and partly mixing with them (the border people of the Belgae are considered mixed).
From the 5th to the 1st century BC, during the Iron Age, the Germani pressed steadily southward, coming into contact (and often conflict) with the Celts and, later, the Romans. In the area of contact with the Celts, along the Rhine, the two peoples came into conflict. Although possessing a more articulated civilization, the Gauls suffered the settlement of Germanic outposts in their territory, which gave rise to overlapping conflicts between the two peoples: settlements belonging to one or the other of these two peoples alternated and penetrated, even deeply, into their respective areas of origin. In the long run, the Germani, who would spread west of the Rhine a few centuries later, emerged victorious from the confrontation. An identical process would occur, to the south, along the other natural embankment to their expansion, the Danube.Villar, cit., pp. 428-429.
Germani and Romans (late 2nd century B.C.-mid 3rd century A.D.).
The Germani came into contact with Rome from the latter part of the 2nd century BC, with the incursions of the Cimbri and Teutons into Roman territory. The two Germanic peoples moved from Jutland and penetrated Gaul, pushing first into Pannonia, then into Noricum (where they beat a Roman army at Noreia in 113 BC), and finally into the newly established Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis. However, the raids continued for about a decade until, after some failures on the part of the Roman generals who rushed to stop them, the intervention of the consul Gaius Marius was necessary. The two Germanic populations were annihilated in two separate battles at Aquae Sextiae (102 B.C.) and Vercellae (101 B.C.). Rome was now safe from a possible Germanic invasion.
At the time of the conquest of Gaul led by Caesar (58-50 BC), new conflicts flared up along the Rhine, the border between the Celts and the Germani. Since 72 B.C., a group of Germanic tribes, led by the Suebi of Ariovistus, had crossed the river and harassed Gallic territory with their raids, even inflicting a severe defeat on the Gauls near Amagetobria (60 B.C.). It seems that Ariovistus had crossed the Rhine together with the Suebian peoples from the valleys of the Neckar and Main rivers.These were the peoples of Marcomanni, Triboci, Nemetes, Vangiones, Sedusi, Suebi and Harudes, as reported by Caesar in De bello Gallico, I, 51. The Gauls then invoked the help of Caesar, who finally defeated Ariovistus near Mulhouse (58 B.C.).Caesar could therefore have covered in 6 days of march (starting from Vesontio), a distance of about 120-140 km, with an average of about 20-25 km per day (E. Abranson and J.P. Colbus, La vita dei legionari ai tempi della guerra di Gallia, Milan 1979, pp. 30-31), considering that the route from Vesontio to the Rhine is about 150 km and that the site of the battle, according to what Caesar himself has handed down to us, was only 7.5 km from the Rhine River (De bello Gallico, I, 53.1), perhaps confused with the Ill River.
However, the defeat of Ariovistus Appian (in History of Gaul, fragment 3) speaks of 80,000 Germans killed in the course of the battle between armed men and civilians. was not enough to stop the pressure exerted by the Germanic peoples on the Gauls in those years. A few years later Caesar was also able to build a bridge over the Rhine and cross it, bringing devastation to the German territories east of the river during two different campaigns in 55; ; ; ; ; Cicero, Against Piso, 81. and 53 BCE. The story goes that driven from behind by the pressure of the Suebi, the Germanic tribes of the Usipetes and Tencteri had wandered for three years, and had pushed on from their territories, north of the Main River, until they reached the regions inhabited by the Menapii at the mouth of the Rhine. Having defeated the two tribes in Belgic Gaul,; ; ; the Roman proconsul had penetrated into the lands of the Germani.
Having crossed the Rhine, he carried out raids and looting to terrorize the enemy and induce him to renounce new incursions into Gaul. Caesar, by repelling the Germanic peoples across the Rhine during these years, had in fact transformed this river into what would be one of the most important natural barriers of the Empire for the next four to five centuries. It had, therefore, not only stopped the migratory flows of the Germani, but also saved Celtic Gaul from the Germanic danger, thus giving Rome, which had won the war, the right to rule over all the peoples in its territory.Jérôme Carcopino, Julius Caesar, pp. 277-278.
The Germanic peoples apparently remained calm for about twenty-five years, while in 38 B.C., the Germanic client population of the Ubii was moved into Roman territory. In 29 B.C. a new Suebi incursion again brought devastation to the eastern part of Gaul; again in 17 B.C., a coalition of Sicambri, Tencteri, and Usipetes caused the defeat of the Roman proconsul Marcus Lollius and the loss of the legionary insignia of legio V Alaudae. It was as a result of these advents that the Roman Emperor Augustus, who traveled to Gaul in 16 B.C. with his adopted son, Tiberius, felt it was time to permanently annex Germania Magna (as Caesar had done with Gaul), bringing the natural borders of the Roman Empire further east, from the Rhine River to Elbe.
The actual campaigns began in 12 B.C. by Augustus' stepson, Drusus the Elder,Suetonius, Claudius, 2-4; Tacitus, Annals, II, 8. Cassius Dio, Roman History, LIV.32. who led the Roman armies until they occupied much of the territory between the Rhine and Weser rivers, although in 9 B.C. he died prematurely.
New Roman operations were undertaken in Germania in the following years, taking the imperial borders as far as the Elbe, mainly through the leadership of the future Emperor Tiberius, who succeeded in permanently occupying all Germanic territories west of the river,Augustus, Res gestae divi Augusti, 26; . with the sole exception of Bohemia in its southern part.
It was necessary, therefore, to annex the powerful Marcomanni kingdom of Maroboduus as well. Tiberius was thus prepared to attack even the last bastion of free Germania (in 6 A.D.),R. Syme, L'Aristocrazia augustea, p. 156. moving simultaneously with two armies (one from Mogontiacum and the other from Carnuntum), and converging on Bohemia. The Roman armies were stopped, however, by the outbreak of revolt in Pannonia and Dalmatia..
All the territories conquered in this 20-year period were compromised when in the year 7 Augustus sent Publius Quinctilius Varus to Germania, who lacked diplomatic and military skills, as well as being unaware of the people and places.
In 9 an army of 20,000 men consisting of three legions and a dozen auxiliary units was massacred in the forest of Teutoburg by Arminius, a Roman citizen of Germanic origin. As luck would have it, Maroboduus did not ally himself with Arminius, and the assembled Germani stopped before the Rhine, where only 2 or 3 legions remained to guard the entire province of Gaul.
The military campaigns that followed by the Romans (A.D. 10 to 16), first under the high command of Tiberius and then of the heir-designate, Germanicus, were aimed both at averting a possible Germanic invasion and at preventing possible uprisings among the populations of the Gallic provinces.
Eventually Tiberius, having become emperor himself, preferred to suspend all military activity across the Rhine, leaving the Germanic peoples themselves to settle it by fighting each other. He only made alliances with some peoples against others, so as to keep them always at war with each other;. avoiding having to intervene directly, with great risk of incurring new disasters such as that of Varus;. but above all without having to employ huge military and economic resources, in order to maintain peace within the "possible and new" imperial borders.
It is said that in 18 Arminius, having grouped under his command numerous Germanic tribes (such as Lombards, Semnones, and some of the Suebian lineages of the kingdom of Maroboduus), waged war on the Marcomanni kingdom of Maroboduus. And contrary to ancient Germanic traditions, both Germanic commanders, now accustomed to following Roman tactics, having both served for years in Roman auxiliary troops, faced each other in an orderly manner and with tactics unusual to them. Tacitus relates that:
Tiberius replied to him that he would not intervene in internal affairs of the Germanic peoples, since Maroboduus had remained neutral, when in 9, Augustus had requested his military aid in vain after the defeat of Varus. Maroboduus was thus forced to seek asylum from the emperor Tiberius, who accepted him, allowing him and the remnants of his court to take up residence in Ravenna, where he died a full 18 years later, in 36 or 37.
The following year, in 19, Arminius was assassinated by his subjects, who feared his growing power:
The next sixty years saw relative peace reign along the borders of the Roman Empire and Germania Magna. The client system created by Tiberius gave Rome a period of relative peace, at least until the Batavian revolt of 69-70. Then under Vespasian. and Domitian, the Romans again advanced into Germania, albeit in a marginal area called Agri Decumates (between the Rhine and the Danube, with the purpose of joining Mogontiacum with the Danube near Castra Regina).