55 BC - Caesar's Invasion of Batavia
The northwestern corner of the vast plain which extends from the German Ocean to the Ural Mountains is occupied by the countries called the Netherlands. This small triangle, enclosed between France, Germany, and the sea, is divided by the modern kingdoms of Belgium and Holland into two nearly equal portions.
The oldest inhabitants of Holland of whom anything is known were of Celtic origin; so much may be gathered from scanty remains found in cairns, from a few proper names, such as Nimeguen (Nimwegen) and Walcheren, and from the Druid altars found in that island. In Caesar's day the whole district between the Rhine and the Scheldt was occupied by Belgae, the bravest of Celts, while the Bataw, the "good meadow," the Insula Batavorum, was peopled by a portion of the Germanic tribe of the Chatti, and provided first the stoutest foes and then the most serviceable allies of the Roman empire. But if the Batavi were the most distinguished of the Germanic tribes in the country, the "free Frisians", who filled the whole northern potion of it, were by far the most important; in addition to them, and mostly on the borderland, were others, Usipetes, Bructeri, Sicambri, Chamavi, Eburones, and the like, of whom little is known but the names.
Much of the earliest information concerning this territory is derived from the Romans. Julius Caesar saved from oblivion the heroic savages who fought against his legions in defense of their dismal homes with ferocious but unfortunate patriotism; and the great poet of England, Alfred Lord Tennyson, learning from the conqueror's Commentaries the name of the boldest tribe, kept the Nervii, after almost twenty centuries, still fresh and familiar in modern ears. Tacitus, too, described with singular minuteness the struggle between the people of these regions and the power of Rome, overwhelming, although tottering to its fall: and moreover, devoted several chapters of his work upon Germany to a description of the most remarkable Teutonic tribes of the Netherlands.
Caesar says of the Nervii, a Belgic people, that "against attacks of horsemen from olden times they have been wont to protect themselves by cutting down tender trees and weaving the branches, so that the countless twigs, interlaced with thorn-bushes and other shrubs, might make a hedge not only impenetrable to the foot, but even to the eye." [De Bello Gallico, ii. 17] Caesar was a soldier, and viewed everything from a military point of view. The hedge to him was a military defense, and nothing more. As a soldier he hated it. Varus did not fall before the Germans in the Teutoburger Wald, but west of it, among the Westphalian hedges.
Tacitus says that the people of Germany (meaning the free Saxons whom he had seen north of the Rhine) "do not live in towns. They cannot endure houses in close proximity to each other. Scattered and separated, they settle where attracted by a spring, a pasture, or a grove. The villages are not arranged in our manner [the Romano-Celtic] with united, dependent buildings. Each surrounds his house with a garth, from fear of fire or from ignorance of how to build. They do not even use stones or tiles, but employ a common material without show or value [the Devonshire cob] and thatch." [German. 16.]
The whole territory of the Netherlands was girt with forests. An extensive belt of woodland skirted the seacoast, reaching beyond the mouths of the Rhine. Along the outer edge of this barrier, the dunes cast up by the sea were prevented by the close tangle of thickets from drifting further inward, and thus formed a breastwork which time and art were to strengthen. The groves of Haarlem and the Hague are relics of this ancient forest. The Badahuenna Wood, horrid with Druidic sacrifices, extended along the eastern line of the vanished Lake of Flevo. The vast Hercynian forest, nine days' journey in breadth, closed in the country on the German side, stretching from the banks of the Rhine to the remote regions of the Dacians, in such vague immensity (says the conqueror of the whole country, Cajsai*), that no German, after travelling sixty days, had ever reached, or even heard of, its commencement. On the south, the famous groves of Ardennes, haunted by faun and satyr, embowered the country, and separated it from Celtic Gaul.
