Romes’s Biggest Defeat: 9AD: Battle of the Teutoburg Forest:
Emperor Augustus presided over Rome’s Golden Age. As the adopted son and successor of Julius Caesar, he was perhaps the most clever politician who was ever born. But he lacked his father’s talent for military affairs. In 9 AD he trusted the wrong man, a Publius Quinctilius Varus, as a military officer. He sent him with his legions to the far reaches of the empire near the Elbe River near the North Sea in what would later become the German port city of Hamburg. On the way back they were ambushed by another man, a German who had supposedly turned Roman, Hermann the German, who had adopted the Roman name, Arminius. He also had deceived Augustus as someone who could be trusted near the legions. He had assembled the German tribes to chase the Romans out of Germany all together. In that surprise attack Augustus lost three of his best legions along with their standards, which would later have to be recovered by the Roman General, Germanicus.
This history forms the backdrop for Cheops Books LLC’s upcoming publication, Cherusci Plot. The Cherusci were the tribe from which the traitor Arminius hailed.