| Rome’s
Gurkhas
The Batavian Cohorts
By David Meyler
April 2018
The army of the British East India Company went to war with
the Gurkha kingdom of Nepal in 1814. It took two years of
hard fighting before the small Himalayan state was subdued.
However, the British had been so impressed with the ferocity
of the Gurkha soldiers that the kingdom was allowed to maintain
a nominal independence, while the British won the right to
recruit Nepalese into their army. Gurkha regiments became
elite shock troops in many of the subsequent conflicts fought
by the British Empire and commonwealth. This unique recruiting
partnership continues to this day.
The Batavian auxiliary cohorts served a similar role for
the Roman imperial army. Auxiliary in general usage can mean
supplemental or even secondary, but auxiliary cohorts were
not necessarily second-class troops. They came in two types.
One was a short-term militia recruited as needed from local
natives for the duration of a campaign. Such units were used
“come as you are” with their own weapons, organization
and leaders. The more regular type of auxiliary unit had a
permanent structure and often had a long-term partnership
with a specific legion. In both cases, auxiliaries were often
raised as specialist troops in areas where the regular Roman
army was weak (cavalry both heavy and light, missile troops,
marines). The regular auxiliaries often had a mix of Roman
and native arms and armor. Some of these units, the eight
Batavian cavalry cohorts among them, were certainly veteran
and elite troops.
Batavi is a latinized form of a Germanic tribal name, probably
close to Batauen. Like many German tribal names, the meaning
is geographical, and derives from two elements, bat, meaning
good or excellent, and avo meaning land (and so related to the
“ow” element in the modern English word meadow).
The tribal name then simply meant “the people of the excellent
meadow”. The modern Dutch region called the Betuwe is
still a rich agricultural region.
The Batavi enter written
history with a mention in by Julius Caesar in his work, The
Conquest of Gaul:
“The Maas rises from mount Le Vosge, which is in
the territories of the Lingones; and, having received a
branch of the Rhine, which is called the Waal, forms the
island of the Batavi, and not more than eighty miles from
it falls into the ocean. But the Rhine takes its course
among the Lepontii, who inhabit the Alps, and is carried
with a rapid current for a long distance through the territories
of the Sarunates, Helvetii, Sequani, Mediomatrici, Tribuci,
and Treviri, and when it approaches the ocean, divides into
several branches; and, having formed many and extensive
islands, a great part of which are inhabited by savage and
barbarous nations (of whom there are some who are supposed
to live on fish and the eggs of sea-fowl), flows into the
ocean by several mouths.”
(The people who inhabit this region today still eat a lot
of seafood, and in the Frisian region of the Netherlands,
the country dwellers still go out in early spring to collect
the eggs of the lapwing, a shore bird (although conservation
laws now limit the number of eggs which can be collected).
The person who finds the first egg of the season wins a prize
– it’s a remnant of an ancient tradition associated
with spring fertility festivals, echoed to this day by the
Easter egg hunt!)
Tacitus, the Roman historian, writing a century after Caesar,
gives a somewhat more positive view in The Germania:
“The most conspicuously brave of all the German tribes
in Gaul, the Batavi, hold little of the river-bank, but
do hold the Rhine island. They were once a section of the
Chatti [modern Hesse], and on occasion of a civil war they
migrated to their present home – destined there to
become part of the Roman empire. But they still retain an
honourable privilege in token of their ancient alliance
with us. They are not subjected to the indignity of tribute
or ground down by the tax-gatherer. Free from imposts and
special levies, and reserved for employment in battle, they
are like weapons and armor – ‘only to be used
in war’.”
The Batavians, since at least 12 B.C., were one of Rome’s
earliest and most staunch German allies, providing both mounted
and foot troops. The Romans held their skills in horsemanship
and swimming in high regard – for the men and horses could
cross the Rhine without losing formation, according to Tacitus.
This was a useful skill indeed considering their homeland was
bounded by two major rivers, intersected by many smaller streams
and subject to seasonal flooding.
Archeological finds in the Betuwe region have included many
skeletal remains of horses, lending weight to the ancient
commentaries on the Batavian expertise with horses, unlikely
though it may seem considering their marshy homeland. Most
Batavi lived in small agricultural settlements of up to a
dozen houses. Their main town was Batavodurum Noviomagus,
present day Nijmegen.
Tacitus describes one of the earliest accounts of the Batavi
acting as a kind of amphibious shock troop at the battle of
Idistaviso in 16 A.D. The Cherusci federation, under Rome’s
arch enemy Arminius, finally accepted battle against a Roman
army under Germanicus. Arminius had taken up a defensive position
on the Weser river, possibly near the present day village
of Stauwiesen. The Batavi, led by their war-leader Chariovalda
(Harold, possibly more of a title than a name; it means war
leader, although it is a personal name of a number of Saxon
and Scandinavian kings in later times), crossed the river
but were counter-attacked. Chariovalda formed a shield-wall,
but found himself surrounded. “Chariovalda, after long
sustaining the enemy's fury, cheered on his men to break by
a dense formation the onset of their bands, while he himself,
plunging into the thickest of the battle, fell amid a shower
of darts with his horse pierced under him, and round him many
noble chiefs. The rest were rescued from the peril by their
own strength, or by the cavalry which came up with Stertinius
and Aemilius. However, this loss of veteran cavalry was one
Romans could ill afford.
The emperor Claudius employed the Batavians in his invasion
of Britain. Dio Cassius describes their actions during the
battle of the River Medway in 43 AD (see Scenario I in Queen
of the Celts for a fuller commentary):
“The barbarians thought that Romans would not be
able to cross [the Medway] without a bridge, and consequently
bivouacked in rather careless fashion on the opposite bank;
but he sent across a detachment of Germanic tribesmen, who
were accustomed to swim easily in full armour across the
most turbulent streams. [...] Thence the Britons retired
to the river Thames at a point near where it empties into
the ocean and at flood-tide forms a lake. This they easily
crossed because they knew where the firm ground and the
easy passages in this region were to be found; but the Romans
in attempting to follow them were not so successful. However,
the Germans swam across again and some others got over by
a bridge a little way up-stream, after which they assailed
the barbarians from several sides at once and cut down many
of them.”
Batavians also made up a contingent of the emperor’s
horse guards, and a tombstone exists of a certain Indus, a
Batavian who served as one of Nero’s bodyguards. However,
the Batavians under their war leader Julius Civilis and the
prophetess, Veleda, led a major revolt rule during the chaotic
civil wars of 69 to 70 A.D. — Imperial Rome’s Sepoy
Revolt. The Veleda (again, this is likely a title, including
the root word Vala, the pantheon Germanic fertility gods)
lived isolated in a tower in a deep wood in the territory
of the Bructeri on the east side of the Rhine. No man was
allowed access, and all communications had to go through her
attendant priestesses (perhaps the Rapunzel story is preserves
a memory of this ancient cult). Her influence turned what
was really a side struggle into a dangerous
anti-Roman war.
In any case, the revolt was suppressed and Batavodurum was burnt.
The Roman fleet and other reinforcements from Britain played
a key role. It appears that the Batavians were treated relatively
leniently with a return to the status quo ante bellum, although
the X Gemina legion was now garrisoned permanently at Noviomagus,
and the Batavians were required to replace the eight cavalry
cohorts lost during the revolt.
The Batavi never revolted again, and the Batavian presence
in Britain proved to be a permanent one. A number of altars
and gravemarkers of Batavian cohorts have been found along
Hadrian’s Wall, dating from the 2nd and 3rd centuries.
Along with military settlements of Frisian auxiliary veterans
(the Frisii bordered the Batavian island to the north), a
German military presence in Britain was already well established
before the major Anglo-Saxon invasions after 450 A.D.
The Batavians are last mentioned as a separate people in
355 A.D. during the reign of the emperor Constantius II. Thereafter,
it appears that the Batavi became part of the tribal federation
that came to be known as the Salian Franks.
Spring into action...
ORDER QUEEN OF THE CELTS TODAY!
|
