The Forgotten Battle at the Harzhorn
Which was the same way this battlefield got found - by accident. In Germany, the usage of metal detectors for hobby "archaeologists" is illegal. Which, naturally, doesn't faze the more eager ones of them. In 2000, two of them were hunting for the remains of a medieval castle and found several artefacts. However, in 2008, the photo of one artefact, a hippo sandal, which they posted in an internet forum, got identified as something much older than expected. So they confessed to their illegal search and handed over what they had found to the local authorities for archaeology. The hippo sandal turned out to be a Roman artefact and almost 1800 years old. the other artefacts they'd found as well.
Memento mori: hodie mihi, cras tibi
Within a very short time, the experts were up to their noses in Roman and Germanic artefacts of a large military encounter. A military encounter nobody had heard of before. Our tour guide at the site told us that approximately 3000 - 10.000 Romans had fought against 3000 - 6000 Teutons! In the middle of nowhere, much further north and east than people had thought the Roman army to have advanced into Germanic territory en masse! The first assumption that some Teutons fought each other with looted Roman weapons had been corrected soon. The finds show that there had been Roman infantile, archers, heavy cavalry and artillery as well as baggage and auxiliary like African javeliners and Syrian archers. Btw. this shows that ancient Romans had been much more open for intercultural enrichment than today's Italian ruling party...
Traditionally, the Romans had used the Rhine as channel of supply for their army. So along the Rhine, the Romans had been up til Xanten. And they had built their border wall from west to east a bit north of Frankfurt (Main). But the south of Lower Saxony?
The blue dot shows where the battlefield is (more or less). The Rhine, however, passes Koblenz, Bonn and Düsseldorf!
After some research and thanks to some coins they have found, experts nowadays assume that the Germanic battles of the first Roman Barracks Emperor Maximinus Thrax are connected to the combat at the Harzhorn. According to the Historia Augusta, Maximinus Thrax (directly after coming into power in 235 A.D.) and his troups pushed forward trecenta or quadringenta (300 or 400) miles into Germanic territory. Starting from their Mainz camp, this would have put them deep into Germania Libra. But earlier scientists did not think it possible to have launched such an enormous military campaign during the Crisis of the Third Century. So the information of the script got "corrected" to triginta and quadraginta (30 or 40 miles). Only after finding the battlefield at the Harzhorn was it proven that the original information of the Historia Augusta had been correct and no exaggeration and that there had been a thrust into the interior of Germania Libra around 235 A.D. as an answer to the Germanic devastation of Roman territory in 233 A.D..
Our tour guide told us that by now it is believed that the combat happened on the Romans' way back "home", towards Mainz and the Rhine (German winters aren't fun for people from Italy, Arabia or Africa!).
The assumed route of the retreating Roman army after their battle with the Suebi.
(The green line shows the location of the Limes, the Roman border wall that was supposed to protect the conquered, now Roman territory against the Germanic tribes. Btw., the wall didn't really work in the long run. Just saying...)
Several armies might have met to retreat (more or less) together. Furthermore, it was the habit to plunder everything that wasn't nailed down on the way back home, mostly food, livestock - and slaves. Which made a retrieval essential for survival for the Teutons! A winter without wife might be a blessing, but a winter without food and helping hands for the hunt was a death sentence. So this might explain why the Teutons risked their lives by attacking such a huge number of Roman soldiers.
The pictures I took of that battle site aren't really exciting, but I'll try to pass on some of the story behind it. Any mistakes I make are mine and not those of our fantastic guide Mr. Goettig!
So, the retreating army faced a muddy middle of nowhere with enough hills and low mountains to make any soldier unhappy.
The spot I took the photo from is an older road, the road you see in the forground is the federal highway B 248, which got build in more modern time, and the road in the middle of the picture shows he newest connection, the Autobahn A 7 (Hannover - Kassel). It is Germany's north-south connection and with 962,2 km the second longest Autobahn in Europe. As you can see, the more modern the road, the deeper it is in the pass. But, thanks to the Rodenbergbach (the Rodenberg creek), in 235/ 236 A.D. there weren't green fields, there was mostly mudd. It wasn't a fun route to chose for an army.
However, the Teutons somehow blocked the pass and the easier road along the ridge as well, forcing the Roman army (coming from the right) along a steeper way up the hill...
And the Teutons were smart enough to let the vanguard pass unmolestedly. This is known because they found another battlefield about 3 km further along, closer to Kalefeld where there is a strong spring which would be a perfect resting place for an army. It is assumed that some Teutons kept the vanguard busy there, while their main army attacked the baggage struggling uphill over a dirt road through the forest.
Since the whole area is and was too woody, stony and steep to be of agricultural use, the battlefield had been almost completely undisturbed for almost 1800 years, allowing the archaeologists to not just find hundreds of battle artefacts, but also to find them more or less where they had (been) dropped during the battle. In the case of the arrowheads and bolts it could even be seen in which direction they had been shot, this way making it possible to use them as witnesses to Germanic and Roman combat strategies.
It was decided to make the combat more visible by using different colors for different finds. The yellow flags you can see here show where Roman arrowheads lay, the blue flag shows a Germanic find. So in the pictures above we have one spot, where a Teuton stood - with lots of Roman attempts to shoot him dead.
The orange flags show where bolts of Roman torsion siege engines were found.
As you can see, shooting uphill is a bitch! That they still tried so hard indicates that they really wanted to hit whoever was on top of that knoll. Maybe the commanders of the Germanic hordes?
The red flags show where found artefacts indicate close combat.
The info point (in the middle) tells the story of a single Roman rider or Germanic auxiliary in Roman service, who got surrounded and probably killed by surrounding Teutons. The little knoll has hardly enough space to swing a cat around, not to mention to have several warriors fight each other! The archaeologists found (among other things) bridle trimmings, a buckle, a terminal decorated with an animal head, a phallic pendant, a knife, two Roman spear tips, relics of a chain mail shirt - and a copper coin minted in Nicaea, Asia Minor.
Another thing they found close by was an almost complete chain mail shirt (which you can see, together with the other finds, at the Braunschweigischen Landesmuseum, the history museum in Braunschweig).
And as you can see, the find was not buried very deep by time. And it is the first time such a well-preserved chain mail shirt could be found on a Roman-Germanic battle field. Only in a few cases, chain mail shirts were found in Germanic graves and normally not whole shirts but just smaller combinations of links. A chain mail shirt was made out of up to 30.000 links and, yes, in this case most of them did not survive their slumber in the ground. Reportedly, however, the links can still easily be distinguished.
So, the Romans and the wagons got forced up the hill, which is pretty steep on both sides.
This made it difficult for the Romans to use their favorite weapons, the long range weapons. Which makes it puzzling to understand, why some more nimble Teutons ran down the hill to engage the soldiers at the foot of the hill.
So the baggage struggled up the hill while Roman soldiers with long range weapons were still at the northern foot of the ridge. The Teutons were on top of the ridge, trying to steal the wagons. The find of wagon parts hint at a mule that had bolted and overturned the wagon down the ridge. Found Roman hobnails indicate that the Roman soldiers had tried to recover the overturned wagon after the encounter. That they left many things behind to be found hundreds of years later shows that they didn't feel secure enough to linger and pick up all the pieces. An inkwell and a box full of keyes were left behind. Looks as if the tools of administration were not nearly as fascinating to Roman soldiers nor Germanic warriors as food and luxury goods.
But the Teutons had to flee, too! Finds indicate that a large group of Roman soldiers made it back to the battlefield, fighting their way up hill from the south. In addition, the Roman cavalry found a way up further down the road. The Teutons found themselves between a Roman rock and one or two Roman hard places - and took off. The originally about 2,0 x 0,5 Kilometer long battlefield is frayed towards the west. Several finds show people losing loot without taking the time to recover it, probably thanks to being chased.
We left the ridge and doubled back...
...towards the info building.
If you ever plan to visit this battlefield, I highly recommend to not do it in March. It was a bit bleak and cold even though very fascinating!
Wolfram and I found much more to admire during our short trip. I'll show it to you in my next blog. Stay tuned!