Commander of Roman campaigns in Germania
In AD 13, Augustus appointed him commander of the forces at the Rhine, which totaled eight legions and was about one-third of Rome's total military force. The next year in August, Augustus died and on 17 September the Senate met to confirm Tiberius as princeps. That day the Senate also dispatched a delegation to Germanicus' camp to send its condolences for the death of his grandfather and to grant him proconsular imperium. The delegation would not arrive until October.
In Germany and Illyricum, the legions were in mutiny. In Germany, the legions in mutiny were those of the Lower Rhine under Aulus Caecina (the V Alaudae, XXI Rapax, I Germanica, and XX Valeria Victrix). The army of the Lower Rhine was stationed in summer quarters on the border of the Ubii. They had not been paid the bonuses promised them by Augustus and, when it became clear a response from Tiberius was not forthcoming, they revolted. Germanicus dealt with the troops in Germania, and Tiberius' son Drusus dealt with Illyricum.
The army of the Lower Rhine sought an increase in pay, the reduction of their service to 16 years (down from 20) to mitigate the hardship of their military tasks, and vengeance against the centurions for their cruelty. After Germanicus arrived, the soldiers listed their complaints to him and attempted to proclaim him emperor. His open and affable manners made him popular with the soldiers, but he remained loyal to the emperor. When news of the mutiny reached the army of the Upper Rhine under Gaius Silius (the Legions II Augusta, XIII Gemina, XVI Gallica, and XIV Gemina) a meeting was held to meet their demands. Germanicus negotiated a settlement:
After 20 years of service, a full discharge was given, but after 16 years an immunity from military tasks, except to take part in actions (missio sub vexillo).
The donative left by Augustus to the troops was to be doubled and discharged.
To satisfy the requisition promised to the legions, Germanicus paid them out of his own pocket. All eight legions were given money, even if they did not demand it. Both the armies of the Lower and Upper Rhine had returned to order. It seemed prudent to satisfy the armies, but Germanicus took it a step further. In a bid to secure the loyalty of his troops, he led them on a raid against the Marsi, a Germanic people on the upper Ruhr river. Germanicus massacred the villages of the Marsi he encountered and pillaged the surrounding territory. On the way back to their winter quarters at Castra Vetera, they pushed successfully through the opposing tribes (Bructeri, Tubantes, and Usipetes) between the Marsi and the Rhine.
Back at Rome, Tiberius instituted the Sodales Augustales, a priesthood of the cult of Augustus, of which Germanicus became a member. When news arrived of his raid, Tiberius commemorated his services in the Senate. The Senate, in absence of Germanicus, voted that he should be given a triumph. Ovid's Fasti dates the Senate vote of Germanicus' triumph to 1 January AD 15.
For the next two years, he led his legions across the Rhine against the Germans, where they would confront the forces of Arminius and his allies. Tacitus says the purpose of those campaigns was to avenge the defeat of Varus at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, and not to expand Roman territory.
In early spring AD 15, Germanicus crossed the Rhine and struck the Chatti. He sacked their capital Mattium (modern Maden near Gudensberg), pillaged their countryside, then returned to the Rhine. Sometime this year, he received word from Segestes, who was held prisoner by Arminius's forces and needed help. Germanicus's troops rescued Segestes and took his pregnant daughter, Arminius's wife Thusnelda, into captivity. Again he marched back victorious and at the direction of Tiberius, accepted the title of Imperator.
Arminius called his tribe, the Cherusci, and the surrounding tribes to arms. Germanicus coordinated a land and riverine offensive, with troops marching eastward across the Rhine, and sailing from the North Sea up the Ems River in order to attack the Bructeri and Cherusci. Germanicus' forces went through Bructeri territory, where a general, Lucius Stertinius, recovered the lost eagle of the XIX Legion from among the equipment of the Bructeri after routing them in battle.
Germanicus's legions met up to the north, and ravaged the countryside between the Ems and the Lippe, and penetrated to the Teutoburg Forest, a mountain forest in western Germany situated between these two rivers. There, Germanicus and some of his men visited the site of the disastrous Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, and began burying the remains of the Roman soldiers that had been left in the open. After half a day of the work, he called off the burial of bones so that they could continue their war against the Germans. He made his way into the heartland of the Cherusci. At a location Tacitus calls the pontes longi ("long causeways"), in boggy lowlands somewhere near the Ems, Arminius's troops attacked the Romans. Arminius initially caught Germanicus's cavalry in a trap, inflicting minor casualties, but the Roman infantry reinforced the rout and checked them. The fighting lasted for two days, with neither side achieving a decisive victory. Germanicus's forces withdrew and returned to the Rhine.
In preparations for his next campaign, Germanicus sent Publius Vitellius and Gaius Antius to collect taxes in Gaul, and instructed Silius, Anteius, and Caecina to build a fleet. A fort on the Lippe called Castra Aliso was besieged, but the attackers dispersed on sight of Roman reinforcements. The Germans destroyed the nearby mound and altar dedicated to his father Drusus, but he had them both restored and celebrated funerary games with his legions in honor of his father. New barriers and earthworks were put in place, securing the area between Fort Aliso and the Rhine.
Germanicus commanded eight legions with Gallic and Germanic auxiliary units overland across the Rhine, up the Ems and Weser rivers as part of his last major campaign against Arminius in AD 16. His forces met those of Arminius on the plains of Idistaviso, by the Weser River near modern Rinteln, in an engagement called the Battle of the Weser River. Tacitus says that the battle was a Roman victory: the enemy were slaughtered from the fifth hour of daylight to nightfall, and for ten miles the ground was littered with corpses and weapons.
Arminius and his uncle Inguiomer were both wounded in the battle but evaded capture. The Roman soldiers involved on the battlefield honored Tiberius as Imperator, and raised a pile of arms as a trophy with the names of the defeated tribes inscribed beneath them.
The sight of the Roman trophy constructed on the battlefield enraged the Germans who were preparing to retreat beyond the Elbe, and they launched an attack on the Roman positions at the Angrivarian Wall, thus beginning a second battle. The Romans had anticipated the attack and again routed the Germans. Germanicus stated that he did not want any prisoners, as the extermination of the Germanic tribes was the only conclusion he saw for the war. The victorious Romans then raised a mound with the inscription: "The army of Tiberius Caesar, after thoroughly conquering the tribes between the Rhine and the Elbe, has dedicated this monument to Mars, Jupiter, and Augustus."
Germanicus sent some troops back to the Rhine, with some of them taking the land route, but most of them took the fast route and traveled by boat. They went down the Ems toward the North Sea, but as they reached the sea, a storm struck, sinking many of the boats and killing many men and horses.
Then Germanicus ordered Gaius Silius to march against the Chatti with a mixed force of 3,000 cavalry and 33,000 infantry and lay waste to their territory, while he himself, with a larger army, invaded the Marsi for the third time and devastated their land. He forced Mallovendus, the defeated leader of the Marsi, to reveal the location of another of the three legion's eagles lost in AD 9. Immediately Germanicus despatched troops to recover it. The Romans advanced into the country, defeating any foe they encountered.
Germanicus's successes in Germany had made him popular with the soldiers. He had dealt a significant blow to Rome's enemies, quelled an uprising of troops, and returned lost standards to Rome. His actions had increased his fame, and he had become very popular with the Roman people. Tiberius took notice, and had Germanicus recalled to Rome and informed him that he would be given a triumph and reassigned to a different command.
The effort it would have taken to conquer Germania Magna was deemed too great when compared with the low potential for profit from acquiring the new territory. Rome regarded Germany as a wild territory of forests and swamps, with little wealth compared to territories Rome already had. However, the campaign significantly healed the Roman psychological trauma from the Varus disaster, and greatly recovered Roman prestige. In addition to the recovery of two of the three lost eagles, Germanicus had fought Arminius, the leader who destroyed the three Roman legions in AD 9. In leading his troops across the Rhine without recourse to Tiberius, he contradicted the advice of Augustus to keep that river as the boundary of the empire, and opened himself to potential doubts from Tiberius about his motives in taking such independent action. This error in political judgment gave Tiberius reason to controversially recall his nephew. Tacitus attributed the recall to Tiberius' jealousy of the glory Germanicus had acquired, and, with some bitterness, claims that Germanicus could have completed the conquest of Germania had he been given full operational independence.
