British Army officer uncovers the trail of Rome’s doomed Legions
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One of the great archaeological discoveries of the 20th Century has solved a 650-year mystery, the location of the lost Roman/German Varus Battlefield of AD9.
The secret of the three ‘lost legions’ of Rome was uncovered by a British Army officer serving in Germany. In 1987 Major Tony Clunn made a series of archaeological discoveries which ultimately revealed where the advance of the Roman Empire was finally halted in AD9.
Some 15 years later his work and that of the chief archaeologist, Prof Dr Wolfgang Schluter and his team, has lead to the establishment of a permanent Battlefield and Museums Park on the main central core of the battlefield area. At a cost of some £9 million the Museum, Park and refreshment areas are to be finally opened in Osnabruck, Germany on the 21st June 2002. A forty-metre observation tower has also been erected to allow a birds eye view of the far reaches of the battlefield area.
The story of this amazing discovery started when Major Clunn was posted to what was then the British Army of the Rhine. Shortly after his arrival he set out to uncover the stories of Roman treasures and artefacts said to lie in the areas surrounding Osnabruck and in doing so solved one of the greatest mysteries of German history: the precise site of the battlefield where the lost Legions were defeated.
The Battle of the Teutoberg Forest, in which three Roman Legions were wiped out, had been assumed to have taken place near Detmold. In 1875 the Germans erected a large bronze statue called the “Hermann’s Denkmal” to commemorate the victory. However, Major Clunn’s discovery revealed that the missing Legions were 50 miles away when they were finally massacred by the German tribes. Nevertheless, his theories on this anomaly actually support the premise that this conflict, possibly fought over three days as a running battle, with the Germans applying a series of guerrilla style attacks may well have started at the lower end of the Teutoburger Hills, perhaps not far from the Detmold area itself.
It was a ‘lost patrol’ scenario on a grand scale, with some 20,000 Roman soldiers and possibly as many as 5,000 servants, dependants, women and children mostly, slain either in combat or in the Cherusci tribes’s post-battle sacrificial rites. The Romans had been moving from their summer camp near Minden to winter quarters on the River Lippe, just east of the Rhine. Varus had taken his command in to the Teotoburger Forests to pacify rebellious tribesmen in the vicinity. That Varus even thought to engage the enemy while on line of march with dependants and a cumbersome baggage train in tow indicates that he viewed the hostile Germans as a minor threat, few in numbers and poorly organised and therefore easy to suppress.
The first inklings of the disaster to come might have been communicated by the forest itself. The Teutoberg was a dark and surely hateful place to these men of Italy, who much preferred the warmth, sun and comparative openness of their Mediterranean homeland: even the most practical minded legionary, upon entering the forest, might have felt a supernatural dread, imagining demons and monsters lurking behind every gnarled oak, haunting every ghostly mist. If only that had been the case. Far worse than the monsters and demons of Greco-Roman mythology was the horde of Cherusci that awaited them. The Romans probably didn’t realise their doom was approaching until a contingent of supposedly loyal German auxiliaries, commanded by none other then Arminius (Hermann) himself, made off into the forest depths. Soon thereafter, perhaps minutes later, the trap was sprung.
The Cherusci fell upon the Romans with merciless ferocity. The Romans fought valiantly but ultimately in vain; aided by foul weather that hindered manoeuvre by the Roman formations, the Cherusci assailed the Romans again and again until, finally, all were dead. “Quintili Vares, legiones redde” wailed the Emperor Augustus when informed of the debacle: “Give me back my Legions!”. Perhaps his anguish stemmed from awareness of what the defeat entailed; namely that Roman expansion into Germany was temporarily halted at the Rhine. What he could not know was that the halt was permanent. Middle Europe would remain un-Latinized and dominated by Germanic peoples, with profound, far reaching and still unresolved consequences for the development of Western civilisation and the course of world history.
After studying the thesis of nineteenth-century historian Theodore Mommsen, a Nobel Prize winner from Berlin and in consultation with Prof Schluter at the Osnabruck Museum, Major Clunn decided to concentrate his search on Kalkriese, a rural farming area to the north of Osnabruck. “I spent many months studying archival material, examining aerial photographs and looking at conditions on the ground,” he explained. “I also closely examined a number of reported find sites from the 17 and 1800’s which Mommsen had highlighted in his investigative works.”
Having spent some three months carefully examining all the information available to him and having made one or two assumptions based on his military expertise he then set out with a variety of specialist metal detectors to search the key areas.
As soon as he had gone out on this the first of many forays over the coming years, the British Army officer struck lucky, on the first survey finding a few Roman silver coins. By the following weekend he had found a much larger treasure of some 100 denarii. When the site had been completely explored a total of 164 coins had been recovered. Prof Schluter had previously admitted that in his 13 years as the resident archaeologist he had never found one single Roman coin or artefact, so was understandably excited by this find when Major Clunn deposited the find on his desk the following week.
In 1988, having made a variety of other finds, Major Clunn then began to uncover lead sling-shot pieces, definite indication of a battle area. Later, another coin was discovered with the special mintmark of the Roman General Quinctilius Varus, further evidence that Major Clunn was on the right track of the lost army.
In 1989 the Osnabruck museum authorities under Prof Schluter began a series of intensive archaeological investigations. This took the form of a series of exploratory excavations at the point where Major Clunn’s explorations had drawn him to a 100 metre bottleneck pass between the Kalkriese Hills and the Moorlands to the north. These excavations revealed evidence of a five metre wide embankment or wall, suggesting the Germans were on the site for some time, perhaps lying in wait for the luckless remnants of the three Legions to pass through into the final point of ambush.
Over the ensuing years many thousands of artefacts and coins have been recovered from the site, including gold and silver coins, many copper coins bearing the mint mark of Varus himself and a huge amount of bronze pieces and rare items. A silvered bronze medical scalpel and gauge, writing equipment’s, bronze fasteners, a large yoke chain and “glocken” style bell, a huge pioneers axe, and many, many more. The medical and writing pieces, “indicate the presence of a Legion’s general staff,” said Prof Schluter. In 1990, the most dramatic find was made where Major Clunn had sourced many deep lying metal trace elements: a Roman battle mask.
Since then the site has revealed a series of startling discoveries that have done much to endorse the premise that Kalkriese is the true site of the Varus Battlefield. Major Clunn’s continuing involvement with the ongoing investigations have widened the extent of this battle area some 10 kilometres to the east and south-east, the direction from which the Romans had come and some 3 kilometres to the west where all the finds finally peter out as the fleeing remnants of the Roman army met their end.
In 1996 one of the strange anomalies of the Kalkriese Battle site over the years of investigations was solved. It also opened up whole new areas of speculation that are still being hotly debated today. Throughout all the archaeological investigations no human bones had been revealed. Bodies were normally burnt in those days and in any case may not have survived for 2,000 years in the heavily mineralised soil. Major Clunn had surmised that the greater number of Roman losses had most likely occurred at the brunt point of the earthen ramparts or ambush wall. This was where the mass of Romans flowing in to the narrowing gap became a constricted mass of men and animals, unable to deploy to fight effectively and easily picked off by the flights of spears and missiles from the German attackers.
In 1996 excavations at that point were finally initiated and sliced through what appeared to be a mass burial mound, of human bones. They had not been thrown in to pits and buried, but interred in the ground, carefully placed, a level of grass sods placed over and then bones of horses above that. From the annals of Tacitus, the renowned Roman historian, down through the centuries came the echoes of his reports that some 6 years after the battle, in AD15, Germanicus decided to visit the Varus Battlefield to pay his respect to his fallen comrades in arms.
The occasion provided Tacitus with one of his highlights:
“Now they were near the Teotoburgian Woods, in which the remains of Varus and his three Legions were said to be lying unburied. Germanicus conceived a desire to pay his last respects to these men and their general. Every soldier with him was overcome with pity when he thought of his relations and friends - and reflected on the hazards of war and of human life. Caecina was sent ahead to reconnoitre the dark woods and build bridges and causeways on the treacherous surface of the sodden marshland. Then the army made its way over the tragic sites.
The scene lived up to its horrible associations. Varus’ extensive first camp, with its broad extent and headquarters marked out, testified to the whole army’s labours. Then a half-ruined breastwork and shallow ditch showed where the last pathetic remnant had gathered. On the opening ground were whitening bones, scattered where men had fled, heaped up where they had stood and fought back. Fragments of spears and horses limbs lay there: also human heads, fastened to tree trunks. In groves nearby were the outlandish altars at which the Germans had massacred the Roman Colonels and senior company commanders.
Survivors of the catastrophe, who had managed to escape from the battle or from captivity, pointed out where the generals had fallen, and where the Eagles were captured. They showed where Varus received his first wound, and where he died by his own unhappy hand. And they told of the platform from which Arminius (Hermann) had spoken, and of his arrogant insults to the Eagles and standards: and of all the gibbets and pits for the prisoners.”
Germanicus gathered his commanders together and gave his orders: to gather all the remains of their fallen comrades, from the beginning to the end of the battle area. To clean the whole area and to take down the gibbets and platforms. To lay their comrades to final rest. To pay their last respects and then leave the site, and then to let the very mists of time cloud it’s very existence.
This staggering find, essentially two historical points in one site, one of AD9 and one of AD15 still continues to excite the archaeological and historical fraternities.
In 1990 Prof Schluter had said, “All the finds are relatively small or fragments of larger pieces. The area was obviously well plundered by the victors. All that has been left was either trampled into the mud and boggy ground, or lost in the surrounding undergrowth.”
15 years later he is delighted to report that as at June 2002 the site is still revealing masses of artefacts and treasures, some not so small and now in excess of some 4,500 pieces. Work is planned to continue for at least the next ten years.
The loss of the Legions and their Eagles was a terrible blow to the burgeoning young Empire. For years afterwards the Emperor Augustus was reported to have banged his head against a door, crying out, “Quinctilius Varus, give me back my Legions!”
Derek Williams, a renowned Roman historian wrote:
Like most who write about history’s fatal encounters, Major General J F C Fuller included the Teutoberg Battle in his Decisive Battles of the Western World. Here is his attempt to calculate the incalculable:
“Had Germany been for four centuries thoroughly Romanised, one culture, not two would have dominated the western world. There would have been no Franco-German problem, no Charlemagne, no Louis XIV, no Napoleon, no Kaiser Wilhelm II and no Hitler.”
The Teutoberg Battle still holds the Germans in thrall. It was the first great expression of their nationality and birthplace of their nation; like Bannockburn to the Scots or a combination of Hastings and Runnymede to the English.
In July 1996 the Queen in recognition of his work on the project and furthering Anglo-German relations awarded Major Clunn the MBE. In 1998 he was the first recipient of a specially created honours award for his support to community services by the German authorities, and in 1999 the President of the Landschaftsverband awarded him the Medal of Honour.
He still works on the site in his spare time, extending the limits of the battlefield ever east and southwards towards the hills of the Teutoberger Forests.
He has recently published a book called “In Quest of the Lost Legions,” which is creating a huge amount of interest, not only in Germany in its translated form, “Auf der Such nach den verlorenen Legionen,” but also here in the UK. It is also now becoming very sought after in America, where some 40% of the American population originate from German ancestry and family roots. By no means a stuffy technical work, this is very much an adventure written in two parallel strands. First, an archaeological diary and personal narrative, describing the search and discovery of a profusion of treasures. Secondly, throughout the narrative text it continuously regresses 2,000 years with an imaginative reconstruction, in dramatic and semi-fictional terms of the sinister events of the year AD9 leading up to and including the battle proper itself. If you have seen the Roman/German battle at the beginning of “Gladiator” then don’t miss this book.
(Available from all leading bookshops).
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