Altar of Blood: Empire IX (51 page)

On the face of it, then, the German frontier in AD
186
was stable and even tranquil. And yet if the threat level in the immediate vicinity of fortress towns like Vetera (modern day Xanten), Novaesium (Neuss), Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium (Cologne) and Bonna (Bonn) was low enough for substantial numbers of troops to have been posted to Britannia to help cope with an ongoing tribal rebellion in that troubled province, there were plenty of reasons for the governor of Germania Inferior (Lower Germany) to be nervous.

For a start there was the salutary lesson which Rome had learned from her subject peoples in the Rhine valley only a century before. The revolt of the Batavians, a German tribe who had become Rome’s most favoured mercenaries to the degree that they provided the imperial bodyguard, shocked Rome’s ruling class to the core. With a justified grievance that had swiftly ignited the tinder of a dozen tribes along the river’s course, and which came at the time of a bloody civil war that had the empire’s attention elsewhere, this dirty war resulted in a series of bloody defeats and legion mutinies that would have been required reading in an imperial Roman staff college had such a thing existed. Scattering the previously home-based tribal auxiliary forces across the empire had removed the threat of their rising in defence of their own people and interests – for a while, until they interbred and went native – but no Roman general could henceforth ignore the risk of a general German revolt on both sides of the river, with the ever-present spectre of both barbarian and (highly effective) Romanised troops on the other side of the battlefield.

And to the east (not all that far to the east either) a vicious fourteen-year war with (variously) the Chatti, Chauci, Langobardi, Lacringi, Astingi, Iazyges, Victuali, Costoboci and, above all the Marcomanni and the Quadi, took advantage of an empire ravaged by plague brought back from the eastern campaigns against Parthia, putting hostile forces on Italian soil for the first time since
101
BC and winning several major victories over Roman armies. In the wake of this near disaster, a portent of invasions to come that would result in the empire’s eventual dismemberment,
16
of the
33
legions were henceforth stationed on the Rhenus and the Danubius. So while the historical context of Germania Inferior in AD
186
might have been one of peace, Rome’s watch on the tribes over the river would have been sharp-eyed and calculating.

And what of my other conceit in this book, the idea of there having been shadowy imperial appointees tasked with fostering discord and even war between the tribes? The British empire used political officers to influence those countries it couldn’t or didn’t want to subjugate, and I find it hard to imagine that Rome wouldn’t have taken a similar approach to its neighbours. At least one tribal war – that which ‘resettled’ a devastated Bructeri tribe from their former homeland at the hands of the Chamavi and the Angrivarii in the last decade of the
1
st century AD – was started with the direct connivance of Rome (as you’ll see in the story), orchestrated by a Roman governor who was rewarded with a statue in the senate to record his achievement in getting some further measure of revenge on the tribe whose influence was a significant cause of the Batavian Revolt.

And the book I’d recommend you to read in connection with this story? You could do a lot worse than
The Roman Empire At Bay AD
180
-
394
, by David S. Potter, from which you’ll gain a clear understanding of the increasing desperation with which Rome hung onto its frontiers from the time of this story onwards.

By the late second century, the point at which the
Empire
series begins, the Imperial Roman Army had long since evolved into a stable organisation with a stable
modus operandi
. Thirty or so
legions
(there’s still some debate about the Ninth Legion’s fate), each with an official strength of
5
,
500
legionaries, formed the army’s
165
,
000
-man heavy infantry backbone, while
360
or so
auxiliary cohorts
(each of them the rough equivalent of a
600
-man infantry battalion) provided another
217
,
000
soldiers for the empire’s defence.

Positioned mainly in the empire’s border provinces, these forces performed two main tasks. Whilst ostensibly providing a strong means of defence against external attack, their role was just as much about maintaining Roman rule in the most challenging of the empire’s subject territories. It was no coincidence that the troublesome provinces of Britannia and Dacia were deemed to require
60
and
44
auxiliary cohorts respectively, almost a quarter of the total available. It should be noted, however, that whilst their overall strategic task was the same, the terms under which the two halves of the army served were quite different.

The legions, the primary Roman military unit for conducting warfare at the operational or theatre level, had been in existence since early in the republic, hundreds of years before. They were composed mainly of close-order heavy infantry, well-drilled and highly motivated, recruited on a professional basis and, critically to an understanding of their place in Roman society, manned by soldiers who were Roman citizens. The jobless poor were thus provided with a route to a valuable trade, since service with the legions was as much about construction – fortresses, roads and even major defensive works such as Hadrian’s Wall – as destruction. Vitally for the maintenance of the empire’s borders, this attractiveness of service made a large standing field army a possibility, and allowed for both the control and defence of the conquered territories.

By this point in Britannia’s history three legions were positioned to control the restive peoples both beyond and behind the province’s borders. These were the
2
nd, based in South Wales, the
20
th, watching North Wales, and the
6
th, positioned to the east of the Pennine range and ready to respond to any trouble on the northern frontier. Each of these legions was commanded by a
legatus
, an experienced man of senatorial rank deemed worthy of the responsibility and appointed by the emperor. The command structure beneath the legatus was a delicate balance, combining the requirement for training and advancing Rome’s young aristocrats for their future roles with the necessity for the legion to be led into battle by experienced and hardened officers.

Directly beneath the legatus were a half-dozen or so
military tribunes
, one of them a young man of the senatorial class called the
broad stripe tribune
after the broad senatorial stripe on his tunic. This relatively inexperienced man – it would have been his first official position – acted as the legion’s second-in-command, despite being a relatively tender age when compared with the men around him. The remainder of the military tribunes were
narrow stripes
, men of the equestrian class who usually already had some command experience under their belts from leading an auxiliary cohort. Intriguingly, since the more experienced narrow-stripe tribunes effectively reported to the broad stripe, such a reversal of the usual military conventions around fitness for command must have made for some interesting man-management situations. The legion’s third in command was the camp
prefect
, an older and more experienced soldier, usually a former centurion deemed worthy of one last role in the legion’s service before retirement, usually for one year. He would by necessity have been a steady hand, operating as the voice of experience in advising the legion’s senior officers as to the realities of warfare and the management of the legion’s soldiers.

Reporting into this command structure were ten
cohorts
of soldiers, each one composed of a number of eighty-man
centuries
. Each century was a collection of ten
tent parties
– eight men who literally shared a tent when out in the field. Nine of the cohorts had six centuries, and an establishment strength of
480
men, whilst the prestigious
first cohort
, commanded by the legion’s
senior centurion
, was composed of five double-strength centuries and therefore fielded
800
soldiers when fully manned. This organisation provided the legion with its cutting edge:
5
,
000
or so well-trained heavy infantrymen operating in regiment and company-sized units, and led by battle-hardened officers, the legion’s centurions, men whose position was usually achieved by dint of their demonstrated leadership skills.

The rank of
centurion
was pretty much the peak of achievement for an ambitious soldier, commanding an eighty-man century and paid ten times as much as the men each officer commanded. Whilst the majority of centurions were promoted from the ranks, some were appointed from above as a result of patronage, or as a result of having completed their service in the
Praetorian Guard
, which had a shorter period of service than the legions. That these externally imposed centurions would have undergone their very own ‘sink or swim’ moment in dealing with their new colleagues is an unavoidable conclusion, for the role was one that by necessity led from the front, and as a result suffered disproportionate casualties. This makes it highly likely that any such appointee felt unlikely to make the grade in action would have received very short shrift from his brother officers.

A small but necessarily effective team reported to the centurion. The
optio
, literally ‘best’ or
chosen man
, was his second-in-command, and stood behind the century in action with a long brass-knobbed stick, literally pushing the soldiers into the fight should the need arise. This seems to have been a remarkably efficient way of managing a large body of men, given the centurion’s place alongside rather than behind his soldiers, and the optio would have been a cool head, paid twice the usual soldier’s wage and a candidate for promotion to centurion if he performed well. The century’s third-in-command was the
tesserarius
or
watch officer
, ostensibly charged with ensuring that sentries were posted and that everyone know the watch word for the day, but also likely to have been responsible for the profusion of tasks such as checking the soldiers’ weapons and equipment, ensuring the maintenance of discipline and so on, that have occupied the lives of junior non-commissioned officers throughout history in delivering a combat-effective unit to their officer. The last member of the centurion’s team was the century’s
signifer
, the
standard bearer
, who both provided a rallying point for the soldiers and helped the centurion by transmitting marching orders to them through movements of his standard. Interestingly, he also functioned as the century’s banker, dealing with the soldiers’ financial affairs. While a soldier caught in the horror of battle might have thought twice about defending his unit’s standard, he might well also have felt a stronger attachment to the man who managed his money for him!

At the shop-floor level were the eight soldiers of the tent party who shared a leather tent and messed together, their tent and cooking gear carried on a mule when the legion was on the march. Each tent party would inevitably have established its own pecking order based upon the time-honoured factors of strength, aggression, intelligence – and the rough humour required to survive in such a harsh world. The men that came to dominate their tent parties would have been the century’s unofficial backbone, candidates for promotion to watch officer. They would also have been vital to their tent mates’ cohesion under battlefield conditions, when the relatively thin leadership team could not always exert sufficient presence to inspire the individual soldier to stand and fight amid the horrific chaos of combat.