Legio XVII: Roman Legion at War (44 page)

Ariovistus was not particularly concerned about the coming engagement.  His warriors were used to fighting the
Teutons
in the north and were battle wise.  He had no reason to doubt his own tactics and envisioned fighting the Romans as he fought all his battles: two sides face each other and charge!  There was no subtlety involved.  The stronger wins!  It was man-to-man personal combat.  Anything less is not honorable.

Two hours later, the first of his scouts came back with a disturbing report.  “We rode west along the river road.  Just past the Innsbruck-Brenner road, we saw a line of Roman cavalry in the distance blocking the road.  We turned south to go around them and saw other cavalry spread out at intervals in the woods.  We kept going south and kept seeing more Roman horsemen.  We decided to test their purpose and road back to the river road and approached them.  When we got within 100 yards, they charged us and we came back here.  They didn’t follow us.”

Ariovistus hastily assembled his subordinate Commanders for a meeting.  He told them about the scouts’ report and the failed link up with Vocion.  He started the discussion, “It bothers me a great deal that we don’t know the location of Vocion.  We should have made contact by now.  Also why are the Romans so keen on blocking our scouts’ westward movement?  I can only conclude that they know the general location of Vocion’s army and are desperately trying to prevent a link up.  That tells me that the Romans are fewer in number than our forces, which is no surprise, and they don’t want to fight us.  I say that because we saw about 2000 of them by the bridge the other day.  Even if they have double that number, Vocion out numbers them and we have almost three times that.”

At this point additional scouts returned.  Ariovistus told them to give their report to the assembled Commanders: “There are Romans covering all possible routes west.  We tried to find a way around them and even went as far south as the entrance to the Brenner where we found several hundred more Romans guarding the road.  They fired arrows at us as we approached them.  Three of our horses were hit, but they all made it back.”

Ariovistus dismissed them and continued to talk.  “They could be guarding the pass to ensure we don’t block their way out of the valley.  We could send a force up there that’s large enough to push the Romans away and hold it.”  One man spoke up and said, “Until we know what we are facing, I don’t think we should reduce our strength.  Let’s keep the army together for now.”  Another said, “Why not send a strong force up the road alongside the river and push the Romans out of the way.  Then we can find out if Vocion is ready to attack.  For all we know, he’s in position now and waiting for us to show up.”

A third man said, “That sounds good, but what if the Romans don’t want to be pushed off the road and then summon reinforcement.  Then we have to reinforce and then they follow suit, and so on.  My point is, if we try to push them away, we need to be prepared to fight the battle on or near the road.  Is that what we really want to do?  I suggest we keep the army together and keep moving west.  If the Romans want to fight, then we fight them, with or without Vocion.”

Ariovistus agreed with the last speaker.  “Let’s keep the army together for now and keep moving west.  I think Vocion and his men can’t be far away.  I also have a gut feeling the Romans are close to their cavalry screen, which puts them about 2 miles away.  They’re hiding something.  Let’s proceed west.  Put half the army in the fields close to the river and the other half in the woods with the east-west road separating the two halves.  When we meet the Romans, we’ll decide what to do.  Get your men moving!”  It was noon when the army cleared the wood heading west.

*******

Rasce’s first belt of cavalry and mounted archers guarded the north-south Innsbruck-Brenner road.  His second line was two miles west of the first line and extended from the river to the mountains.  His final line was a mile east of Kematen.  It was almost 1300 hours when the first line of horsemen spotted about 5000 men crossing the fields to their front and moving in their direction.  They sent back word immediately to Manius and held their position.  They alerted the other cavalrymen across the entire belt and soon Rasce rode up to see for himself.  “When they get within 200 yards, shoot your arrows and ride back to the second belt,” he told them, and then he rode south to the woods where his other cavalry waited.  Within 30 minutes, Rasce and the scouts could see the
Suevi
making their way through the woods.  They fired a hail of arrows at them and rode back to the second belt.

An hour later, the second belt spotted the advancing
Suevi
, brought them under fire, and then rode back to the third line.

Manius plotted the advance of the
Suevi
on his map.  He figured that in about two hours they would be in Kematen, which was his starting point earlier in the day, and about two miles from the hill he now occupied.  He did not like the fact that about 5000 of the
Suevi
were in the open close to the river.  This group could easily get around behind him and attack his left flank.  Somehow, he had to force them back into the woods with the rest of the
Suevi
army.  Calvus,” he called.  “Look here at the map.

Half the
Suevi
army is about two miles away in the open space north of the woods.  As they get closer, we need to force them south and into the woods.  I want you to take all 6
ballistae
and move them immediately to the road and prepare to fire.  When you’re set up and the
Suevi
are even with Kematen, come and get me.  Go now and hurry!”  Calvus got 12 horses and rode over to where the
ballistae
crews were waiting to go into the fort.  “Hook up the horses and 6 weapons.  You’ve got a new mission.”  Within 15 minutes, they were galloping to the wood line.

Manius was keeping track of the advancing
Suevi
and watching Tomaeus work his wonders on the fort.  Tomaeus was one of a kind.  After Calvus directed the removal of the
Suevi
dead from the site of the future fort, Tomaeus successfully orchestrated the work of 9,000 men as they dug the ditches, cut trees, built palisades, and erected the observation tower requested by Manius. He worked the men in shifts to ensure they all ate and had plenty of water.  By 1400, the major work was about 50% completed not counting the myriad details that make or break the successful defense of a fort.

The fort was on relatively flat ground about 75 yards from the crest of the hill.  The base of the triangular shaped fort was 1400’ in length and ran parallel to the hill.  This side had three fighting towers suitable for archers; one on each end and one in the middle of the wall.  The two sides were roughly 700’ in length.  There was one gate where the walls met with a tower over it.  Tomaeus dug two 8’ wide by 8’ deep ditches with a tradition “V” at the bottom completely around the fort.  The walls of the ditches were bristling with short sharpened stakes to deter anyone from attempting to climb through them or to impale those unlucky enough to fall in.

The first ditch was just below the walls of the fort and the second lay some 40’ out.  In addition, Manius directed Tomaeus to dig a series of short ditches close to the top of the hill and angling in towards the fort.  Deadly caltrops were sprinkled liberally on the enemy side of these ditches.  He hoped these obstacles would encourage infantry and horse to attack straight on and not sweep around to the sides of the fort.

The walls stood 10’ high or 16’ from the bottom of the ditch.  Dirt from the ditches and additional timber was used inside the fort to create a platform about 6’ wide and 4’ below the top of the walls for the defenders to stand on.

Manius told Andreas to place 4000 of the Auxiliaries in the fort to man the walls
.
He calculated he would allocate 2’ per man and stack them 3 deep on the 1400’ wall.  He planned to station 500 men each on the other two walls.  This would leave him with a 900-man Auxiliary reserve, which he told Andreas to position behind each of the three interior walls in three groups of 300 to act as a reserve.

He also envisioned situating the 1500-man
Triarii
in the center of the fort.  Ideally, at the critical moment, he would use them to march out of the fort and sweep around the north side of the fort to engage the
Suevi
.  His alternate idea was to use the
Triarii
as a final reserve if the
Suevi
successful stormed the fort.

He planned to place the
Hastati
and
Principes
just outside the walls on the back side of the fort and use them to sweep around the front of the fort.  He told Rasce earlier that when the cavalry completed its screening mission to assemble his men in the woods behind Ranggen, and to be prepared to attack on order.

A rider raced up the hill to where Manius stood and told him the
ballistae
were prepared to fire on the
Suevi
who were in the open alongside the road.  The other half of the
Suevi
army was now entering the mile long woods leading to the open field.  As Manius raced to the waiting
ballistae
, he knew everything was riding on driving all the
Suevi
into the woods.  Manius also had in mind the fact that he did not want to reveal too much capability.

When he saw Calvus and the waiting
ballistae
, he said, “
Optio
, load all the
ballistae
, but only fire four arrows.  If that doesn’t drive them into the woods, we’ll fire more, but at this point, I don’t want them to know how many
ballistae
we have or their rate of fire.”  It was 1500 hours.

*******

Ariovistus was extremely annoyed with the constant delays that the archers forced on him.  He did not mind the minor casualties they caused, but the day was slipping by and he still had not made contact with Vocion.  The Roman cavalry along with their cowardly archers had effectively blocked his men from finding Vocion and had also cost him at least two hours, maybe three.

He was perplexed as to the location of the Romans.  He thought they would be hiding immediately behind their cavalry, but the cavalry just kept moving west - and still no Romans.  He had only brought enough food for six days and this was already the end of the third. He decided to spend the night in the woods they were now entering, just past Kematen.  He still kept half his army in the open by the river, but had to keep reining them in to keep pace with the slower moving men in the woods.

“
Ballistae, ballistae
!” the cry went ringing through the woods.  Soon a man came running up to Ariovistus and told him the Romans were firing huge arrows from about 500-600 yards away and had just killed and wounded several men.

Ariovistus painfully mounted his horse.  When he arrived at the wood line, he was shown a
ballistae
arrow and could see wounded men lying about.  With some trepidation, he entered the open field and had some men point to where the
ballistae
were sited.  He could not see anything.  “How many arrows were shot at you,” he asked.  “Four,” was the answer.  “Stay in the woods from now on,” he told the Commander.  “In fact, move over and tie in with the rest of the army.  The Romans must be close by.”  Then he asked, “Have you heard anything from Vocion?”  He knew the answer before he asked and felt stupid for asking.

“
Ballistae
,” he thought.  He had heard of them, but never seen one.  But for now, he had to get off this horse.  It was about 1600 and he decided to camp for the night.  Maybe tomorrow they would make contact with Vocion and find the Romans with their cowardly bowman and
ballistae
.