Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
September 9 CE · in Battle View, played out step by step on the ground where it was fought
Germanic tribes led by Arminius destroyed three Roman legions under Varus, halting Roman expansion east of the Rhine.
The sides
- Rome, led by Varus: about 20,000 men
- Germans, led by Arminius: about 18,000 men
States that fought: Roman Empire.
How it went
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
Rome means to make Germany between the Rhine and the Elbe a province. Its governor, Varus, trusts Arminius, a Cheruscan prince who served in the Roman army and is a Roman citizen. Arminius has been planning to destroy him.
Into the forest
On the march to winter quarters, Arminius reports a rising and Varus turns aside to put it down, ignoring a warning that Arminius is a traitor. The column, three legions with wagons, women and children, stretches for kilometres on forest tracks.
Days of ambush
Arminius slips away to his warriors, and the attacks begin: out of the woods, in pouring rain, again and again. The Romans burn their wagons, fortify a camp each night and march on, fewer each day.
The Kalkriese gap
The way narrows to a strip a hundred metres wide between the hill and the Great Bog. Along the foot of the hill the Germans have built a turf wall, and from behind it they fall on the column.
Against the wall
The legionaries try to storm the wall and fail. Numonius Vala's cavalry breaks away to save itself and is caught and cut down before it reaches the Rhine.
Varus falls
Wounded, Varus and his senior officers fall on their swords. The rest are killed where they stand, taken to be sacrificed, or enslaved. The three eagles are taken.
Teutoburg
Some 15,000 soldiers die. "Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!" Augustus cries. Six years later Germanicus finds the bones and buries them, and wins back two eagles, but Rome never again tries to rule beyond the Rhine.
Three legions with their auxiliaries and camp followers; how many Germans fought is unknown. The battle ran over several days and many kilometres; this shows its end, at Kalkriese, where archaeologists found it in 1987.
People and wars
- Augustus (63 BCE – 14 CE): First Roman emperor, who ended the civil wars and ushered in the Pax Romana, a long period of relative peace.