Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
And the Romans were used to winning. They were used to being the top dog on the turf and having lost so catastrophically was worse. Rome might have sent more Legions after the Germanic forces and found more hospitable conditions and won. It was largely that the Legions were trapped and unable to use their best training that defeated them. I wonder what ran through the minds of those who had to decide if they should pay them back. Did they choose not to because they were still haunted by the loss, or in fear of another one. Under different circumstances, it well might have been different. And they gave us all the wars over that divide in culture for centuries....
The "deep history" of that pay back comment is interesting. Again, I am not a proper historian, just an interested party, but the story is that Roman commander made a nuisance of himself and over taxed and lorded over the Germanic tribes.
Losing to the Romans wasn't really all that bad a deal. In the territories they ruled they were the ultimate authority and a lot of old tribal wars just sort of went away. Seems like the tribes had someone else to worry about all of a sudden, and all the tribes had to pay taxes. The Romans did encourage a little conflict between the tribes so that the Romans would not become a common enemy, but it seems that that strategy stopped working when the Roman commander went too far. "Harsh rule and high taxes" Wikipedia calls it.................
You know it's fascinating to see how the tides of history ebb and flow as time goes on. In 9 AD, 3 crack Roman legions were destroyed by Germanic 'barbarians'. Fast forward a few hundred years later within the Empire and we find more and more 'Germans' as commanders in the Roman armies. Political alliances, demographics, migration of peoples all coalesced to fashion a different Empire from the one early in the first century. That's history for you!
The "deep history" of that pay back comment is interesting. Again, I am not a proper historian, just an interested party, but the story is that Roman commander made a nuisance of himself and over taxed and lorded over the Germanic tribes.
Losing to the Romans wasn't really all that bad a deal. In the territories they ruled they were the ultimate authority and a lot of old tribal wars just sort of went away. Seems like the tribes had someone else to worry about all of a sudden, and all the tribes had to pay taxes. The Romans did encourage a little conflict between the tribes so that the Romans would not become a common enemy, but it seems that that strategy stopped working when the Roman commander went too far. "Harsh rule and high taxes" Wikipedia calls it.................
A lesson there.....
Classic Rome offered two scenerios to those they conquered. On was the carrot. Not only did the state still exist as a local one within Roman bordors, but the leaders remained. All took an oath to Rome and the local laws and customs remained in force. Only foreign policy belonged entirely to Rome. And as many of the smaller city states were plagued by constant attacks from neighbors, all that stopped. So they had their own laws and their own leaders, and didn't have to watch their backs. And Rome also build roads, which were safe and protected. Where trade was always at risk, it was now freeflowing. Then as now money mattered and especially towns on the main highway did wonderfully well under Roman control. In a generation they simply considered themselves Romans.
The stick was drastic. The area would be destroyed and the citizens enslaved. Rome took a lot of small disconnected places without any problem at all since in the end it was an advantage. This was what happened in Gaul. The tribes had to make peace with each other. Rome built cities and roads and wealth poured in. The population diversified. This is the origion of what we call France today, germanic, viking, celtic and Roman. It was the Roman which tied them together.
In the north, there had been little contact with Rome, and north of that the expanding power and population of the far north was pushing satalite tribes south, squeezing them out. This was the first wave of migration south of the Angles and Saxons and such. They were far more warlike than the Gauls and in survival mode already. They weren't interested in becoming a Roman provience either. It's largely a fluke of the weather, unexpectedly heavy rain which mired down everyone, but especially the Legions, which led to the killing of the Legions. But slightly different conditions it might have easily gone the other way.
Rome took another tact, paying the tribes as mercenaries to watch the border. But what didn't happen were the roads and the cultural mixing. Gaul and southern Europe became a celtic/germanic/roman mix. North of that while Germanic commanders held rank, culturally they remained Germanic.
It's also true that the treatment of these contract soldiers which became the primary source of the Legions by Roman commanders in later Rome caused them to split away and later return in conquest. It's said that Rome had the capacity to have lasted much longer IF its culture had not sunk into the depravity it sometimes did and they had not contracted their safety to tribes which had no stake in their culture anyway.
Inbetween he first waves of germanic migrants and the ones that broke with Rome there were continuing population pressures driving more of the northern european clans south, and these which had had even less contact with Rome and Roman culture were primary players at the end.
In terms of western culture, this was the drawing of the lines which fed politics and trade and old agendas for hundreds of years and still is the central map today.
One footnote in US/Mexico history is the Battle of Buena Vista in early 1847:
Quote:
General Taylor's troops on the battle of Buena Vista numbered four thousand six hundred and ninety-one. Santa Anna had over twenty-one thousand, besides General Miñon's brigade of two thousand cavalry. The Americans lost two hundred and sixty-four killed and four hundred and fifty wounded. The Mexicans lost two thousand five hundred in killed and wounded, and four thousand missing soldiers, who deserted on the night of the 23rd, fleeing to the east and west toward their homes.
The majority of the American dead in this battle were buried in a couple of different spots in & near Saltillo, Mexico.
In 1960, I toured the battlefield with my Dad and a Mexican university professor. We were unable to locate the battlefield burial site of the US casualties, but according to the maps my Dad & his friend were using, the "cemetery" was supposedly partially covered by a modern soccer field on the outskirts of the city.
There was another burial site within the city itself where many Americans were purportedly buried. When we surveyed that place, it was currently half a city block surrounded by a high adobe wall, and the interior was being utilized as a garbage dump. We went inside the walls and looked around - I took a close look at the adobe wall which most likely had been constructed from soil on site. There were numerous bones imbedded in the adobe dirt, which I could not identify.
It would've taken a skilled forensic scientist to identify if the bones were even human, much less Caucasians from the 1847 period. Sixty years before we toured that site, there had been an effort by some Americans to prompt the US government to pay for the excavation of both places and load the tons of burial dirt onto railroad cars to return what was left of the remains to a US military cemetery. However, according to my Dad's research, that program was never enacted.
Apparently the 260 or so American troops who fell in that battle were still burind there...under a soccer field and in a garbage dump, unmarked....forgotten.
Few battles in history could match the body count of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus placed the body count at over 1,000,000. Even if somewhat exaggerated, it must have been appalling. The maddened Roman soldiers who finally breached the walls left little intact. The graphic detail of the suffering of the population, as told by Josephus, is not pleasant reading.
Few battles in history could match the body count of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus placed the body count at over 1,000,000. Even if somewhat exaggerated, it must have been appalling. The maddened Roman soldiers who finally breached the walls left little intact. The graphic detail of the suffering of the population, as told by Josephus, is not pleasant reading.
Roman policy about resistance had not changed. Early Rome would have done the same. It was just that mostly before everyone chose to live. The Romans were absolutely ruthless when it came to rebellion and direct challenges. The people inside the walls must have known that when Rome prevailed, that was their fate.
In other times and places in that era, total destruction was the method of the day to make sure nobody was going to get revenge on you. Rome was brutal in a very organized way, but no more brutal than most of the time.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
