Battle of Idistaviso
About
Germanicus led Roman legions in a punitive campaign against Arminius, the same chieftain who had destroyed Varus's legions at Teutoburg seven years earlier, and broke his army on this open plain by the Weser river. Germanic dead reportedly littered the field and river for miles as they tried to flee. It was Rome's clearest battlefield revenge for the Teutoburg disaster. Tiberius nonetheless recalled Germanicus and abandoned further conquest beyond the Rhine soon after.
What happened here
A Roman army fights the way it camps: in lines, by drill, on ground chosen if possible. The legions form up in cohorts with gaps that let ranks rotate, throw a volley of heavy javelins at close range, and then close with the short sword, pushing behind the shield. Auxiliaries hold the flanks and do most of the cavalry work and most of the skirmishing. Battles are short and decided by whether one line breaks, and the killing happens in the pursuit rather than the fighting. The camp is dug and palisaded every night regardless. Afterwards the dead are stripped and the field is looted for days; the ground is remembered locally long after the campaign is a paragraph in someone's history.
Sources
Nearby
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