The Great Failure of Germanicus

An Indirect Approach: 785-787 AUC

Chapter III, Part III

Marobodwoz’ arrival in Roma made for quite an illuminating encounter with Drusus and his advisors. There had been hints that Erminaz’ concordat had survived Roman withdrawal, but to hear that they were still working in concert was somewhat disturbing news. Marobodwoz, unaware of the dispute between Wigbiliz and Erminaz that had ensued following his egress, assumed that they would seize his lands for their own use, and he told the Princeps as much. Roman scouts soon refuted Marobodwoz’ claims; Boihaimaz appeared to have fallen to civil war as the great lords of the Marcomanni struggled over leadership of the tribe. This was no less worrying than the prospect of Erminaz seizing control of Marcomannic lands. Without another tribal power to counterbalance Erminaz’ alliance, Drusus and his inner circle believed that the nascent confederation might become a danger. Though the Marcomanni had been a problem for past rulers, Drusus would bend them to the will of Roma.

A military expedition was out of the question, but a more indirect approach might do well enough. Drusus would have to end the conflict among the Marcomanni and then prop up Marobodwoz’ kingdom under the leadership of a Roman puppet. Marobodwoz’ involvement in this affair was at its end, however. Instead of trying to aid Marobowoz in reclaiming his kingdom, however, Drusus had the exiled monarch shipped away to some residence or other in the north of Italia. There, he would live out the rest of his days under constant watch (Drusus made only a token effort to pass this arrangement off as anything better than house arrest). The Princeps would instead search for a better candidate among the warring nobility of the Marcomanni.

Harjawalda was not the mightiest of the competing Marcomannic nobles, but he was also not the weakest. He commanded a modest portion of the tribe’s fighting force, though not likely enough to prevail over his enemies. He was the ideal pawn for the Princeps. An investment in Harjawalda could easily put him above his rivals, and would put him in debt to Roma on the eventuality that he prevailed. Not one to count on the honor of a man who would put his own kind under foreign yoke, Drusus would ensure that Harjawalda could only hold power while under the shadow of Roma.

Harjawalda was prideful, but not unaware of where he stood in the conflict. The two most formidable combatants, each possessing about a fourth of the strength of the tribe, were Hloworiks, son of the recently-deposed Marobodwoz, and Inguharjaz, a nobleman of high standing. The two of them were narrowing down their opposition at a steady pace, either by the sword or by compelling the weaker lords to swear fealty. Harjawalda stood little chance of overcoming them, though he might be able to hold out for a year or two. Being as he was in dire straits, any means of reversing his fortunes would be welcomed without hesitation. The Roman envoy nevertheless caught him by surprise with his visit and Drusus’ promises. The Princeps promised him steel, supplies, and (albeit only in the extreme) military assistance. With hardly a second thought, Harjawalda entered into a pact with Roma.

With the Princeps’ backing, Harjawalda started to gain the upper hand over Hloworiks and Inguharjaz. Instead of using the provisions he’d been supplied with by Drusus to try and defeat his rivals in the field, he instead brought lesser nobles to his side by offering them a piece of the Princeps’ contribution. They joined their armies to Harjawalda’s, eventually placing him on even footing with Hloworiks and Inguharjaz. Harjawalda proved to be reasonably competent as a warlord as well, winning multiple engagements without any need for Drusus to draw a single cohort off of the Danube. With every victory, his flock of supporters grew in number, further cementing his dominance. After two years of fighting, Hloworiks and Inguharjaz were firmly on the losing side of the succession war. All the while, Harjawalda’s compact with Roma was kept quiet, with only a small number of agents and diplomats standing by and observing.

By September of 787 Ab Urbe Condita, Harjawalda had taken full control of the heartland of Boihaimaz. Inguharjaz had suffered his final defeat in battle some months before and had parted with his head in the fray. Hloworiks alone remained in opposition to Harjawalda, and he had been forced back to the mountain range on the edge of his tribe’s domain. As it happened, it was even less desirable to be driven against these peaks by an oncoming enemy that to lay siege through them. The Hermunduroz had been watching the passes ever since Marobodwoz’ incursion and would not permit the Markamannoz to go beyond their lands alive and intact. Demoralized and likely doomed, some of Hloworiks’ men found themselves evaluating the situation with slim notion of loyalty or honor. As Harjawalda’s army neared, self-preservation eclipsed all else. Hloworiks’ men surrendered upon Harjawalda’s arrival presented their leader to the warlord, bound, bloody, and betrayed. Satisfied with this turn of events, Harjawalda summarily executed the last son of Marobodwoz, leaving only himself as the uncontested king of the Markamannoz. He was not finished with his war, however. He denounced Hloworiks’ army for their betrayal of their leader, and ordered an attack in defiance of their efforts to spare themselves. Two thousand men were cut down in the passes, and any who managed to escape Harjawalda’s army likely met their end by the Hermunduroz.

Shortly after the end of the war, Roman diplomats and military officials flocked to Harjwalda’s stronghold, setting up their bureaucracy and quietly tightening their grip on the tribal kingdom. Harjawalda had served Drusus’ purposes well. His kingdom would check the rise of Erminaz, or so the Princeps hoped, and extend Roman influence north of the Danube. Indeed, the conflict between north and south in the tribal lands was hardly at its onset. War lay ahead, that much was certain, but the ramifications of the conflict between north and south in these tribal lands extended far into the future, beyond the foresight of an human being.
 
Hey there Vinland, long time reader first time poster here. I really enjoy reading your time lines both the Ambitions and the Failure, keep it up. Also some pages ago you wrote that the Germanics used bows and arrows during their ambush of the Romans. I do believe that the Germanics used bows during that time but they may have been mostly hunting bows, used to hunt small game and not very effective (damage and range) to kill people. Longbows and the like might have been present but in small quantities.
Ave, Tillo.
 
Oh wow, I can't believe I missed an update. Once again, good work, Vinland. This is easily one of my favorite TLs.
 
Hey there Vinland, long time reader first time poster here. I really enjoy reading your time lines both the Ambitions and the Failure, keep it up. Also some pages ago you wrote that the Germanics used bows and arrows during their ambush of the Romans. I do believe that the Germanics used bows during that time but they may have been mostly hunting bows, used to hunt small game and not very effective (damage and range) to kill people. Longbows and the like might have been present but in small quantities.
Ave, Tillo.

I think we discussed the bows-and-arrows issue quite a bit when it initially came up. It's really nothing short of a research failure on my part. I suppose it can be waved away retroactively by assuming that they were primarily hunting bows used by villagers who were not well-acquainted with warfare and lacked much in the way of an arsenal.

Oh wow, I can't believe I missed an update. Once again, good work, Vinland. This is easily one of my favorite TLs.

Thanks again for the support Miker!

A quick word about updates: I may not be able to update as frequently as I said I would at the beginning of the summer. I've been busy moving into an apartment and starting a research fellowship with my university, all of which has been more laborious than expected. I haven't thought a great deal about the TL in a week or so. I do still intend to continue the timeline and keep it off of a hiatus.
 
In which we take a break from warfare to examine the family life of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

Family Matters: 785-790 AUC

Chapter III, Part IV


In between wars and foreign subterfuge, the upper echelons of Roman politics remained as vivid as ever. Drusus and Agrippina’s ouster of Seianus some years back had left quite a number of loose ends and had left the Iulio-Claudian family in an interesting situation. The role played by Agrippina had left her and her children in ascendancy and Drusus indebted to her (and she meant to enforce this if need be). With the death of Livia, matriarch and grey eminence of Roma, she was left unrivaled as the most powerful woman in the Roman World. Drusus, although he acknowledged the role Agrippina had played in the downfall of Seianus, was not eager to allow her to direct internal affairs as his grandmother had. Drusus would prove to be of stronger will and far more adept at hoarding power than his predecessor, and he sought to restrain the rampant intrigues in the Senate and his family. The death of the ambitious Praefectus had done little to abate the subtle conflicts among the political class of Roma, and such warring would become the way of things under the watch of the Iulii and Claudii.

Agrippina, much like Livia, sought the empowerment of her offspring above all else (at least once every track leading back to the assassination of Tiberius had been covered). The suicide and disgrace of Drusus’ first wife provided another opportunity for Agrippina to expand her influence by suggesting the marriage of her eldest daughter, also named Agrippina [1], to the Princeps, to which Drusus agreed, the wedding taking place in 785 Ab Urbe Condita. In addition, she took subtle measures to push Drusus’ only son by his first wife, Gemellus, into obscurity in favor of her own children. Nero and Drusus the Younger, her two eldest, were cemented into the political landscape and advanced by Agrippina’s connections within the Senate. Gaius (or Caligula, a nickname he was growing weary of) meanwhile favored a military career, and was appointed as Propraetor of Germania Inferior in 790, aged 25 at the time. The unlucky Gemellus, however, was left with scarcely more than a growing psychological burden, owing to his mother’s fate, the absence of his father through most of his childhood, and the general shape of his life. His withered will all but closed him off from ambition, though Drusus did try to instill some verve in the boy.

With the brothers Nero and Drusus the Younger both on the rise in Roma and one of them likely to be successor, a rivalry sprouted naturally. At its onset, their relationship was all the same amicable, but given that domination over the whole of the Roman World was at stake, this peace was not to last. Tensions escalated in the wake of a few otherwise-minor political slights on the part of one brother or the other. From there, the insults progressively became harsher and the two made increasingly aggressive attempts to subvert the other, and all the while their mother made small effort to intervene, perhaps even encouraging it to some degree. Their antagonism had become the stuff of legends after a few years. Nero commissioned from Seneca the Elder a set of scurrilous orations concerning his brother, to which Young Drusus supposedly responded by arranging for a number of Nero’s personal slaves to be covertly shipped away to some distant province, and so on and so forth in an unending cycle of attempted humiliation. More ominously, however, each had begun to knit together a web of alliances military, political, and mercantile, as if to make ready for war (a distressing likelihood come the Princeps’ death). Through the whole of his elder brothers’ feuding, Caligula, ever dutiful and collected, remained separate from them, heading the legions in one borderland or another. Try as they might, neither of his siblings ever truly secured Caligula’s support over the other.

Drusus (the Elder, though the distinction must seldom be made in common discourse) it should be said was not oblivious to the fact that his prospective successors’ ruthless parentage had rubbed off on them. The two would have been exiled or killed, but Drusus felt that the least he could do to repay his debt to Agrippina was to not murder her children. He soon took measures to quell the rivalry in practical terms, having Seneca and any other contributing rhetoricians and poets exiled and mending any damages incurred by the brothers. Reparations were not sufficient, however. In a twist of irony, he employed the Praetorian Guard, now led by his loyal friend Marcus Iunius Silanus, as a secret policing force to deal with the brothers and other problematic actors. The Guard made use of intimidation and bribery to constrain the political and financial networks of Drusus the Younger and Nero, limiting their ability to exert power to any end. Their political backers were uprooted where they could be, although the brothers concealed their allies well. They also targeted Agrippina’s faction on orders from the Princeps, who had grown irritated with the matriarch’s scheming and saw her as the root of the problems caused by her children. Their alliance had decayed within only a few years’ time.

Though Drusus eventually succeeded in reigning in the brothers’ public contest, he was incapable of actually mending their relationship (emotional counseling was not, after all, his strength). His wife (and their sister) attempted to intervene in the rivalry herself, but fared no better. The Princeps had developed a fine political foresight in his years of dealing with Agrippina, the Senate, and others, and he envisioned his succession to be nothing short of catastrophic. Whichever of the brothers was denied the Principate would certainly attempt to wrest it from the other. Nero and Drusus the Younger would not suffer to have power divided between them, and in that case might tear apart the Roman World. Gemellus, if made Princeps, would quickly be assassinated and the scenario would recurse back to civil war. Caligula stood out as a viable third option, but the strength of his political connections would not protect him from his siblings. However, Caligula might still provide him with a means of ensuring a stable succession. Determined to maintain stability in Roma and his family, Drusus set to work consorting with Silanus to plan for the Princeps’ death and the years beyond.


[1] Agrippina the Younger and her younger sister Drusilla were born a year or two prior to the death of Germanicus, so their father’s death would not likely disrupt their existence.
 
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