Bedriacum
About
Vespasian's Danubian legions fought through the night and destroyed Vitellius's field army on the same ground where Otho had lost months earlier, then sacked and burned nearby Cremona in the aftermath. Vitellius was dragged through the streets of Rome and killed within weeks. The victory made Vespasian undisputed emperor and founder of the Flavian dynasty. It ended the bloodiest year of civil war Rome had seen since Actium.
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.
In ancient writing
- Tacitus, Histories 3.15–25
A night battle fought by moonlight in which a legion's soldiers salute the rising sun and are taken for the enemy's reinforcements by their own side.
Sources
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