the only
language worthy to use to a traitor, and would have ridden across the
stream to kill him, but that he was held back by his men.

A battle soon succeeded, the Germans falling into an ambuscade artfully
laid by the Roman leader, and being defeated with heavy loss. Germanicus
raised a stately monument on the spot, as a memorial of his victory. The
sight of this Roman monument in their country infuriated the Germans,
and they attacked the Romans again, this time with such fury, and such
slaughter on both sides, that neither party was able to resume the fight
when the next day dawned. Germanicus, who had been very severely
handled, retreated to his ships and set sail. On his voyage the heavens
appeared to conspire against him. A tempest arose in which most of the
vessels were wrecked and many of the legionaries lost. When he returned
to Rome, shortly afterwards, a fort on the Taunus was the only one which
Rome possessed in Germany. Hermann had cleared his country of the foe.
Yet Germanicus was given a triumph, in which Thusnelda walked, laden
with chains, to the capitol.

The remaining events in the life of this champion of German liberty were
few. While the events described had been taking place in the north of
Germany, there were troubles in the south. Here a chieftain named
Marbodius, who, like Hermann, had passed his youth in the Roman armies,
was the leader of several powerful tribes. He lacked the patriotism of
Hermann, and sought to ally himself with the Romans, with the hope of
attaining to supreme power in Germany.

Hermann sought to rouse patriotic sentiments in his mind, but in vain,
and the movements of Marbodius having revealed his purposes, a coalition
was formed against him, with Hermann at its head. He was completely
defeated, and southern Germany saved from Roman domination, as the
northern districts had already been.

Peace followed, and for several years Hermann remained general-in-chief
of the German people, and the acknowledged bulwark of their liberties.
But envy arose; he was maligned, and accused of aiming at sovereignty,
as Marbodius had done; and at length his own relations, growing to hate
and fear him, conspired against and murdered him.

Thus ignobly fell the noblest of the ancient Germans, the man whose
patriotism saved the realm of the Teutonic tribes from becoming a
province of the empire of Rome. Had not Hermann lived, the history of
Europe might have pursued a different course