The General lost his head and was unable to check the insolence of the mutineers who came crowding round him with complaints and threats. His nervousness encouraged them to fall on their most hated captains, about twenty of whom they beat to death with their own vine-saplings, throwing the bodies into the Rhine. The remainder they jeered at and insulted and drove from the camp.
Cassius Chaarea was the only senior officer who made any attempt to oppose this monstrous and unheard-of behaviour. He was set upon by a large party but instead of running away or begging for mercy rushed straight into the thick of them with his sword drawn, stabbing right and left, and broke through to the sacred tribunal-platform where he knew that no soldier would dare to touch him.
Germanicus had no battalions of Guards to support him but rode at once to the mutinous camp with only a small staff behind him. He did not yet know of the massacre.
The men surged about him in a mob, as they had done about their General, but Germanicus calmly refused to say anything to them, until they had formed up decently in companies and battalions under their proper banners so that he should know whom he was addressing. It seemed a small concession to authority, and they wanted to hear what he had to tell them. Once they were back in military formation a certain sense of discipline returned, and though by the murder of their officers they had put themselves beyond hope of his trust or forgiveness, their hearts suddenly went out to him as a brave and humane and honourable man. One old veteran--there were many there who had been serving in Germany twenty-five and thirty years before this--called out: "How like he is to his father!" And another; "He's got to be cursed good to be as cursed good as him." Germanicus began in a voice of ordinary conversational pitch, to command more attention. He first spoke of the death of Augustus and the great grief it had inspired but assured them that Augustus had left behind him an indestructible work and a successor capable of carrying on the government and commanding the armies in the way that he himself would have wished. "Of my father's glorious victories in Germany you are not unaware. Many of you have shared in them."
"Never was there a better general or a better man," shouted a veteran.
"Hurrah for Germanicus, father and son!"
It is a comment on my brother's extreme simplicity that he did not realise the effect his words were having. By his father he meant Tiberius [who also was often styled Germanicus], but the veterans thought he meant his real father; and by Augustus' successor he meant Tiberius again, but the veterans thought that he meant himself.
Unaware of these cross-purposes he went on to speak of the harmony that prevailed in Italy and of the fidelity of the French, from whose territory he had just come, and said that he could not understand the sudden feeling of pessimism that had overcome them. What ailed them?
What had they done with their captains and their colonels and their generals? Why weren't these officers on parade?
Had they really been expelled from the camp, as he had heard?
"A few of us are still alive and about, Caesar," someone said, and Cassius came limping through the ranks and saluted Germanicus. "Not many! They pulled me off the tribunal and have kept me tied up in the guardroom without food for the last four days. An old soldier has just been good enough to release me."
"You, Cassius! They did that to you! The man who brought back the eighty from the Teutoburger Forest?
The man who saved the Rhine bridge?"
"Well, at least they spared my life," said Cassius.
Germanicus asked with horror in his voice: "Men, is this true?"
"They brought it on themselves," someone shouted, and then a fearful hubbub arose. Men stripped themselves to the skin to show the clean silver scars of honourable wounds on their breasts and the ragged and discoloured marks of flogging on their backs. One decrepit old man broke from the ranks, and running forward pulled his mouth open with his fingers to show his bare gums. Then he shouted, "I can't eat hard tack without teeth. General, and I can't march and fight on slops. I served under your father in his first campaign in the Alps and I'd done six years' service even then. I've two grandsons serving in the same company as myself. Give me my discharge. General. I dandled you on my knees when you were a babyl And look. General, I've got a rupture and they expect me to march twenty miles with a hundred pounds' weight on my back."
"Back to the ranks, Pomponius," ordered Germanicus, who recognised the old man and was shocked to find him still under arms. "You forget yourself. I'll look into your case later. For Heaven's sake show a good example to the young soldiers!"
Pomponius saluted and returned to the ranks. Germanicus held up his hand for silence, but the men went on shouting about their pay and the unnecessary fatigues put on them so that they hardly had a moment to themselves from reveille to lights out, and that the only discharge a man got from the Army now was to drop dead from old age. Germanicus made no attempt to speak until he had complete quiet again. Then he said: "In the name of my father Tiberius I promise you justice. He has your welfare at heart as deeply as I have and whatever can be done for you without danger to the Empire, he will do. I'll answer for that."
"Oh, to hell with Tiberius!" someone shouted, and the cry was picked up on all sides with groans and catcalls. And then suddenly they all began to shout: "Up, Germanicus!
You're the Emperor for us. Chuck Tiberius into the Tiber! Up, Germanicus!
Germanicus for Emperor! To hell with Tiberius! To hell with that bitch Livia! Up, Germanicus!
March on Rome! We're your men! Up, Germanicus, son of Germanicus!
Germanicus for Emperor!"
Germanicus was thunderstruck. He shouted: "You're mad, men, to talk like that. What do you think I am? A traitor?"
A veteran shouted: '"None of that. General! You said just now that you'd take on Augustus' job. Don't back out!"
Germanicus then realised his mistake, and when the cheers of "Up, Germanicus" continued he jumped off the tribunal and hurried to where his horse was standing tied to a post, intending to mount and gallop wildly away from this accursed camp. But the men drew their swords and barred his way.
Germanicus, beside himself, cried: "Let me pass, or by God, I'll kill myself."
"You're the Emperor for us," they answered. Germanicus drew his sword, but someone caught his arm. It was clear to any decent man that Germanicus was in earnest, but a good many of the ex-slaves thought that he was just making a hypocritical gesture of modesty and virtue.
One of them laughed and called out; "Here, take my sword! It's sharper!"
Old Pomponius, who was standing next to this fellow, flared up and struck him on the mouth.
Germanicus was hurried away by his friends to the General's tent. The General was lying in bed half-dead with dismay, hiding his head under a coverlet.
It was a long [i9i] time before he could get up and pay his respects to Germanicus.
His life and that of his staff had been saved by his bodyguard, mercenaries from the Swiss border.
A hurried council was held. Cassius told Germanicus that from a conversation which he had overheard while lying in the guardroom the mutineers were about to send a deputation to the regiments in the Upper Province, to secure their co-operation in a general military revolt. There was talk of leaving the Rhine unguarded and marching into France, sacking cities, carrying off the women and setting up an independent military kingdom in the South-West, protected in the rear by the Pyrenees. Rome would be paralysed by this move and they would remain undisturbed long enough to be able to make their kingdom impregnable.
Germanicus decided to go at once to the Upper Province and make the regiments there swear allegiance to Tiberius.