#105 bc

Remember Cannae? Remember the two generals, a river, and a massive Roman defeat? Cool. Come forward 100 years and watch the Romans do it all over again in what could be one of their greatest defeats. Certainly it ranks up there with Cannae and it left Rome completely defenseless.

But what happened?

Well as Rome is stonking all over Europe there's a group of people called "the Cimbri" up on the Jutland peninsula. As a Germanic people, they were prone to beer, punching trees, and looking for fights to get into. And around 105 BC they banded up with the Teutones and went on a European vacation, literally roaming all over Europe, starting bar room brawls just about everywhere.

They roamed south-east, had a few scraps with the Boii and other Celtic tribes, and then invaded the lands of one of Rome's allies, the Taurisci. Rome responded, the Cimbri retreated while uttering "we were only kidding, guv'ner," but ended up fighting the Romans anyway at Noreia, where they defeated the pesky Italians in a decisive manner. Only a storm, which separated the combatants, saved the Roman forces from complete annihilation.

To celebrate such a victory the Cimbri drank a few more dark beers and headed towards Gaul while head-butting anything and everything in their way. This - naturally - caused a bit of a stir, and just like any good bar fight the Gallic region of Europe got all stirred up, which in turn provoked all sorts of attacks against the Romans there. Poor misunderstood buggers; they're just trying to spread a little civilization, education, and peace. Bloody barbarians.

Anyhoo, Rome decided that enough was enough: the Cimbri had to go.

Oddly the Romans did not send Publius Rutilius Rufus to deal with the problem. He was a highly experienced and decorated veteran, but instead of heading north himself he sent the inexperienced Gnaeus Mallius Maximus. No one knows why he did this, but I'm going with "I can't be assed to get out of bed, Maximus .. you go ... oh pass me the wine on your way out, be a good chap."

So Gnaeus Mallius Maximus headed north with his legions and he was joined by Quintus Servilius Caepio. Together these guys had 10-12 legions, or about 80,000 men ... which is a bloody considerable amount of gladius poking Italian anger. Opposing them were 200,000 Crimri and Teutones, which in hindsight makes the 80,000 Romans seem like a small number. The Romans would clear have to tread carefully.

Or they could do exactly what they did do: fuck up royally.

You see Quintus was of noble blood and Gnaeus was not. Strictly speaking Gnaeus was consul for the year and therefore out-ranked Quintus, but Quintus did not agree and promptly - and I kid you not - refused to work with or coordinate with Gnaeus. He also placed his men in a separate camp. When the two armies met at the Rhone river, Gnaeus camped on the other side. What a dick.

The first skirmish was between a Roman picketing group under legate Marcus Aurelius Scaurus and a Cimbri advance group. The Romans were defeated and Marcus was taken prisoner and dragged before the Cimbri king Boiorix for a chat. Marcus though was a superior human being: he was a Roman! Educated! Civilized! Attractive! How dare this barbarian pig capture him! Marcus - being a Roman - got lippy, advised Boiorix to give up and retreat, and was promptly executed for his troubles. I guess Boiorix really was not impressed.

But when he advanced his forces to within sight of the 80,000 Romans he started having second thoughts and entertained negotiations with Maximus. Quintus though wasn't having any of that bullshit! He took matters into his own hands and sallied forth, impetuously and with wild abandon. I can only imagine what Maximus must have reacted like. Gnaeus promptly got his ass handed to him. Due to the hasty nature of the attack and the fact that the Cimbri were 'ard, his forces literally ran into a brick wall and got wiped-the-hell-out. The Cimbri were also able to ransack Caepio's own camp, which had been left practically undefended. Caepio himself escaped from the battle unhurt. Of course he did, because douches tend to duck that type of thing.

The Cimbri were - naturally - freaking STOKED and pumped up after such an easy victory and halving the Roman forces, while the Romans felt pretty damned bummed; witnessing their commander's fighting, the complete annihilation of Gnaeus' force and sacking of his camp completely tore up their morale: retreat was in order.

EXCEPT THEY'D PLACED THEIR BACK AGAINST THE RIVER AND WERE UNABLE TO RETREAT. *facepalm* The bloody Romans kept doing this shit.

Giggling like little schoolgirls the Cimbri proceeded to execute every single Roman, auxiliary, support personnel, and anything else between them and the river. It was a complete butcher job.

80,000 Roman soldiers were killed - almost every single man jack - and with support personnel and camp followers the number is closer to 120,000. That's a big number. In fact - true story - Plutarch, in his "Life of Marius", mentions that the soil of the fields the battle had been fought upon were made so fertile by human remains that they were able to produce "magna copia" (a great quantity) of yield for many years. So when someone asks "what have the Romans ever done for us?" you can answer "they made some pretty damn good compost."

After the battle Rome was wide open and defenseless, but the Cimbri next clashed with the Averni tribe, and after a hard struggle set out for the Pyrenees instead of immediately marching into Italy. This gave time for Rome to rebuild her legions ... ah how close they were to losing everything.

On the plus side Rome had been shocked by this loss. The catastrophic scale of the losses inspired the Roman senate and people to set aside the peacetime legal constraints that prevented a man from being consul a second time until ten years had passed since his first consulship, and to immediately propose and elect Gaius Marius (despite his absence) to consulship instead, only three years after his first consulship, and then for a further four successive years after that. And Marius is famous for implementing the Marian Reforms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Marius

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