Herman Boel
   full-time freelance translator & author

The history of Flanders - Chapter 1

The beginning - The Roman period

Written by: Charles Vanderhaegen - slightly modified and translated by Herman Boel - Edited by David Baeckelandt July 2008
Published with kind permission of Charles Vanderhaegen.

The Romans were the most formidable conquerors the world has ever known. In the course of the last two centuries before and the first century after Christ they conquered the whole of Western Europe from Gibraltar to the river Rhine, including most of Great Britain.The Romans also controlled the area from the Balkans to beyond the river Danube and held absolute sway throughout whole Northern Africa and the Middle East up to the Caspian Sea.Never in the history of the Western World were so many different nations governed from one single centre, Rome.

Our region was also part of this gigantic imperium. We can start our history from when the Iron Age ends - the time when the Roman legions invaded our region - from what we now call the 'Roman Period' begins. This period began in 57 BC and ended in 407 AD when the wild hordes of Vandals, Alans and Suevi broke through the weakened Roman lines. These barbarians spread throughout Gaul, murdering, looting, raping, and ruining. Three years later the Visigoths plundered and burned down Rome. This was the end of the Roman Period, and of pulcherrima rerum (the most beautiful of all), as the Romans called their city.

But in 58 AD there was still no question of Rome being weak. In that year, Caius Julius Caesar is appointed proconsul of Gaul. Gaul was where in the 2nd century BC the Cimbri and Teutons from Scandinavia had invaded the old Celtic world. Gaul was also where the numerous tribes were continuously at war with each other or entered into alliances that were as many times reneged on as they were honoured.

But Caesar realised that behind the Celts, i.e. east of the river Rhine, there were a large number of Germanic tribes who, if they gained a firm foothold west of the Rhine, would constitute a serious danger to Rome's power. In line with the Roman military tactic 'no dawdling, but attack' (adopted from Alexander the Great) and in line with his inspiring leadership and fearlessness, Caesar invaded Gaul with his legions and ran into the first of the Belgian tribes in 57 BC: the Nervians. With their allies, the Viromanduer and the Atrebates, under the command of Boduognat, had taken cover in the woods along the right bank of the river Sambre. Thanks to information gathered from spies sent on ahead, Caesar was already en route with eight legions. The First Legion was at the head of the army and was separated from the other legions by a long line of wagons carrying food supplies, tents, and other materiel.

Boduognat's goal was to attack the First Legion by surprise and to take possession of the long line, with valuable booty, before the other legions could intervene. His plan almost worked. As soon as the first Roman soldiers appeared on the opposite bank of the river Sambre, the Nervians crossed the river and attacked the Roman soldiers, who had just begun to set up camp. However, Boduognat's spies had not informed him of Caesar's changed march formation. Behind the First Legion were five other legions. The clash between the armies was horrendous. The Atrebates and Viromanduer were dispersed and fled in total confusion, pursued by Roman cohorts. Boduognat and his Nervians risked another counterattack by penetrating the breach that had been left by the fleeing Viromanduer. His attack was stopped and his men were surrounded by the reserve troops of Caesar's second in command, Labienus. The situation for the Nervians was now completely lost. They were ruthlessly wiped out. Of the 60,000 men who had joined the battle against Caesar, barely 500 survived.

The Atuatuci, who were en route to join the Nervians, turned around when they heard about the catastrophe of the battle at the River Sambre. Pursued by Caesar's troops, they took refuge in a castle in the Hoei area. This proved pointless as the Romans immediately brought up their siege equipment and battering-rams into action. The Atuatuci were forced to give up their refuge after a short while and surrender to their besiegers. All 53,000 men, women, and children of the besieged group were taken prisoner and brought to Rome to be sold as slaves. This was a trip of almost two thousand kilometers on foot through one of the most inhospitable regions of Eastern Gaul and Northern Italy. The number of prisoners that died on the trip from Hoei to Rome remains unknown, but it surely cannot have been a small number.

After defeating the Nervians, Caesar headed his troops further west to force Great Britain to submit to his power. However, he ran into the Morinians who at that time lived along what is now the Flemish coastline. After some skirmishes that did not change the situation, they were defeated by Caesers' commanders Sabinus and Cotta, who were readying to cross the Channel with five legions.

Meanwhile the Germanic Suevi had invaded the land of Usipetes and Tencteri in the east and had expelled the local population. After three years they were tired of roaming around and tried to settle in a part of the Menapian land. The Menapians were not pleased with this invasion. There was a fierce battle that ended in slaughter. The Menapians got the worst of it.

This suited Caesar fine. He exploited the weakness of the defeated Menapians by advancing his troops immediately to the area conquered by the Usipetes and Tencteri. Everyone living there, men, women, and children, was killed. The slaughter was complete. The Usipetes and Tencteri were forever wiped off the face of the earth.

The road was now free for Caesar to deal with the Eburones. But in 54 the Menapians and Eburones had entered into an alliance against the Romans, forcing Caesar to alter his war plans. Instead of heading straight to the land of the Eburones, Caesar decided in 53 BC to deal with the Menapians for once and for all. With five legions, divided into three divisions, he surrounded the Menapian territory. The destruction was systematic. All the villages the Romans encountered during their advance were burnt to the ground and the herds of cattle were dispersed. Unable to resist the Roman army, the Menapians retreated to the dense woods and swamps that were abundant in Menapian land. Yet, the technically superior Romans made paths through the woods, built bridges over the swamps and thus penetrated the very heart of Menapian land. After giving up all hope to resist any further, the Menapians surrendered that same year to the Romans.

The road was now clear for Caesar to also subjugate the Eburones. Caesar wanted to deal with those stubborn Celts because he wished to return as soon as possible to Rome, for political reasons. News had just reached Caesar that Pompeius and Crassus had (in 55 BC) been elected consuls.

In October 54 one legion and five cohorts, under the command of the already mentioned Caesarean generals Sabinus en Cotta, had gone into winter quarters in Atuatuca (currently Tongeren). Ambiorix, however, the leader of the Eburones, used some cunning to lure the Romans out of their camp and entirely destroyed the occupying force. Freed from Roman occupation, Ambiorix headed for the Roman camp of Quintus Cicero (brother of Marcus Cicero, the Roman statesman and orator) and arrived there with 60,000 men. His intention was to destroy this Roman settlement as well. This would have been possible if this serious predicament had not come to Caesar's notice.

Caesar understood that Ambiorix (see picture) was the source of the Eburones' resistance towards the Roman legions. He needed to capture him dead or alive. In 53 BC Caesar marched against Ambiorix' Eburones with 10 legions (one legion consisted of around 6,000 men) and settled his headquarters in Atuatuca. From there he undertook several campaigns that eventually led to the loss of the Eburones. It took him three months to massacre the population. He marched through the Ardens, plundering as he went. Everywhere his troops passed through everything was burnt to the ground, houses were destroyed, and both people and cattle were killed.

But Caesar failed to capture Ambiorix himself. He had probably found refuge with the Germanic people on the other side of the river Rhine, but remained a spectre to Caesar.
In 51 BC Ambiorix suddenly reappeared with 25,000 men and laid waste to the land recently conquered by the Romans. Ambiorix probably tried to unite his dispersed and defeated countrymen one more time to give the hated Romans a mortal blow. He failed. His troops were wiped out and the Eburonian land, or what was left of it, was completely destroyed. It had been the last struggle for independence in our region. Ambiorix never returned. What eventually happened to him is unknown, but he most probably died as an exile in Germania.

After the conquest of Gaul, Caesar returned to Rome in 49 BC to fight Pompeius, who in the meantime had, together with the Senate, seized power in Rome. Caesar crossed the river Rubicon and began a long civil war against Pompeius, whom he finally defeated in Greece. Caesar then became the supreme ruler and never returned to Flanders.

There was no real need for Caesar to return to the Roman frontier in Flanders either as from then onwards and for more than four centuries our country was part of the Roman Empire. It was the longest period of relative peace our country has ever known.
We do say relative peace since in 30 BC the Morinians again rose in revolt against the Romans. There was no talking to the Morinians. They were fierce, unmanageable, hot-headed, and belligerent. It had been 25 years since Sabinus defeated them, but they had not forgotten their former glory. Moreover they felt offended because the Romans counted them among the tributary tribes and regarded them as barbarians, unworthy of any serious legal status.

Augustus, Julius Caesar's adopted son who had meanwhile accepted the title of Emperor of Rome, sent pro-consul Carrinas to the Morinians. He had a very hard time as the Morinians succeeded in forming a coalition with the neighbouring Atrebates and with the Suevi from across the river Rhine. But even this powerful coalition was no match for the well-organised Romans. The Morinians fought like maniacs, charging at their enemy while shouting, and usually to their deaths at the end of Roman javelins whose iron heads could easily pierce the wooden shields of the rebels. As could be expected, the battle ended with a sweeping victory for the Romans. From that moment onwards there was never any further disturbance by the Morinians. Once more, thanks to Roman aggression, another people had vanished from the face of the earth.

The peace was short-lived. The Romans had barely dealt with the Morinians or the Trevirans revolted (in 29 BC). This rebellion was swiftly put down by Nonius Gallus, Carrinas' successor.
However, this did not do much good as 50 years later, in year 21 of our era, the tribes of Gaul, commanded by Julius Sacrovir, leader of the Aedui, and by Julius Florus, leader of the Trevirans, rose up against the Roman occupation again. Both rebels descended from well-to-do families that had received Roman civil rights in exchange for loyalty to the Roman Emperor. The rebellion was therefore not really an attempt to regain some long lost independence, but rather resistance to the high burden of Roman taxation.

Florus' plan consisted of killing the rich Roman merchants and thus compelling the authorities to grant tax relief. The Trevirans were not very willing to participate and so the plan failed. Florus was forced to flee and hid himself with a group of rebels in the woods of the Ardennes. Pursued by the elite troops of Julius Indus, a Treviran himself but collaborator with the Romans, Florus tried to escape, but when Indus' soldiers blocked the road, he committed suicide. Thus ended this bloody rebellion.

It was not, however, the last one. In 69 AD a civil war broke out in Rome between Galba, Otho, Vitelius, and Vespasianus. Many legions were called back from the Rhine to Rome, substantially weakening the Roman frontier posts. The Celts and the Germanic tribes from Northern Gaul, the Trevirans (again), and the Batavians, made use of this situation and join an alliance under the command of the Batavian Claudius Civilis. Civilis was descended from a royal family and was a Roman citizen. Because of his actions against the Romans, Fonteius Capito, the commanding officer of the Roman army west of the river Rhine, charged him with high treason and had him sent to Rome to be sentenced by Nero. But Nero died prior to sentencing and Civilis was aquitted by Nero's successor, Galba. Civilis returned to Northern Gaul where he intented to make use of the political confusion following Nero's death to free his people from Roman rule.

Assisted by the Cananefates and the Frisians, Civilis began his uprising against the Roman legions. Under command of Brinio, the leader of the Canenefates, they took by surprise a Roman army camp of two cohorts in what is today south Holland. Shortly after there was a clash between Civilis and the Romans in the Betuwe, where Civilis gained a complete victory. Civilis topped this when he succeeded in destroying the Roman fleet which was anchored off the North Sea coast. Hordeonius Flaccus, supreme commander of the Roman army on the Rhine, consequently ordered his troops to march against Civilis. There was a second clash in the Betuwe which was again won by Civilis.

By this victory Civilis (see picture) also gained support from the Nervians and the Menapians and  therefore marched to the east at the head of a vast army. He easily reached the river Meuse near current Maastricht, where the crossing was controlled by Claudius Labeo, a Roman officer who had been able to gather a number of volunteers in great haste. Civilis' power was too great for the hastily assembled Romans. Labeo was forced to flee in great haste in order to avoid being surrounded.

But Civilis' fortunes soon changed. In Rome Vespasianus has eliminated his rival Vitelius so that new legions could be sent to Gaul to restor order. Cerialis, an exceptionally competent general, was appointed to lead different legions coming from Spain, Italy and Great Britain to march against Civilis. Civilis was first defeated at Mainz, later at Trier, and finally at Vetera next to Xanten at the river Rhine in July 70 AD.
Civilis withdrew to the island of the Batavians (in the Rhine delta) from where he undertook further raids on the Romans. However, the battle was fought. The insula Batavorum was also taken and destroyed by Cerialis. Shortly after, in October 70, peace was concluded between Civilis and Ceriales. We do not know what became of Civilis. It is one of many historic enigmas.

Things becamer quieter in Flanders from the year 70 AD until the year 356 AD when the Franks crossed the Rhine for the first time and invaded the territory of Tongeren. This occupation did not last long. In the spring of 358 they were taken by surprise by the Romans and fled. They returned in 427 AD and found their empire on the old Gallo-Roman lands.

This ended what we call the "Roman Period" for our country.

What has been left for our country of that long period of more than four centuries? Not much. One needs to know that the Flemish land of that time was not as fertile as it is now. Because of its vast woods and swamps, the land was only scarcely populated and never sparked the interest of romanised large landowners. This is why the Flemish land never completely became Roman. Even though Flanders officially fell under the same Roman rule that was set up over the whole of Gaul after Caesar, Roman practices and culture never fully took hold.

When the Franks crossed the Rhine and conquered our region, they found a sparsely populated land where they could easily mix with the local population who adopted their Germanic language. At the border of the more densely populated south, current Wallonia, they bumped into a full romanised area. Thus, between those two areas, the Flemish land in the north and Wallonia in the south, arose a language barrier that still exists today.

One legacy of the Roman Period in Flanders is Christianity. After emperor Constantinus abolished the persecution of Christians in 313 AD, this new religion gradually spread across almost the whole of Europe. As far as our region is concerned, this religion first appeared in the area of Tongeren and was probably introduced by soldiers that came from Rome and joined the Rhine River garrisons.

Table of Contents - to chapter 2