Teutoburg Forest, Battle of, << TOO tuh buhrg or TOI tuh buhrg, >> was a historic battle between Roman and Germanic forces in A.D. 9. The battle took place in what is now northern Germany. The Romans sought to secure their conquest of Germanic lands between the Rhine and Elbe rivers. They fought a united group of various Germanic peoples led by Arminius. Arminius was a prince of a Germanic tribe called the Cherusci. His forces almost completely destroyed those of the Romans. The Roman Emperor Augustus was forced to abandon his efforts to absorb most of what is now Germany into the Roman Empire.
As early as 12 B.C., Augustus had begun large-scale invasions of northern Germany. By A.D. 9, the Romans had claimed much of the area from the Rhine River eastward to the Elbe River. They began establishing towns and administering the territory as a new Roman province under the command of Publius Quinctilius Varus, a Roman general and senator.
Arminius had become a Roman citizen and a trusted officer of the Roman army. But he secretly organized a Germanic rebellion against Roman rule. In the early fall of A.D. 9, the Roman army headed for its winter quarters near the Rhine. The rebels ambushed the Roman army as it was traveling along boggy, forested roads. Several days of battle followed. The rebels nearly wiped out the Romans, who numbered about 20,000 soldiers and several thousand camp followers, including women, children, and servants. Arminius did not try to break through the Roman defenses on the Rhine, which in effect became the Roman Empire’s new boundary.
The site of the battle has long been a subject of debate. In the 1600’s, the woods outside Detmold, Germany, were named Teutoburg Forest. For several hundred years, historians considered this area to be the site of the battle. A spectacular monument to Arminius was erected at Detmold in 1875, during the age of German unification. However, many scholars now believe that the battle took place about 45 miles (72 kilometers) to the northwest, at a site called Kalkriese. Excavations at Kalkriese since 1989 have uncovered bones, coins, and military artifacts that many historians believe came from the battle.
