The first campaign, which Germanicus with his legions and auxiliaries began in the autumn of the same year, was consequently crowned with success. On a star-lit night he attacked the Marsi as they were celebrating a religious solemnity with joyous banquets, and having craftily surrounded them massacred them without pity, destroyed a sanctuary which they held in high reverence, and wasted their territory for ten miles with fire and sword. Enraged at this treacherous attack, the Bructeri, Tubantes, and Usipetes flew to arms and vigorously attacked the retreating Romans. But thanks to admirable leading and wary valour they reached their winter quarters on the Rhine without serious loss. Next year Germanicus invaded the land of the Chatti from Mogontiacum, burned Mattium their capital, and wasted the country. He then rescued Segestes, who, being besieged by Arminius, had appealed to the Romans for succour, carried Thusnelda (whom her perfidious father had snatched away from her husband and delivered over to the enemy) into captivity, and sent the son of Segestes, Segimund by name--who, though a priest of the Ubii, had once torn the sacred fillet and fought for freedom at his country’s call in the Teutoburg forest--under a strong escort to Gaul. Thusnelda, inspired by the spirit of her husband rather than of her father, followed the victor, not humbled to tears, not with entreaties, but with a proud look, her hands folded on her breast, thinking of the son she bore beneath her heart and who should be born to servitude. [Sidenote: [15 A.D.]] Full of rage and fury at this domestic disgrace, Arminius flew through the territory of the Cherusci and summoned all the people to revenge upon the Romans, who were not ashamed to wage war by treachery and against helpless women. He succeeded in combining the Cherusci and several neighbouring tribes into a great armed confederacy, and induced his uncle Inguiomer, who ruled over the region near the Teutoburg forest, to join the league. Germanicus met this new danger with courage and discretion. While he himself with four legions went down the dyke of Drusus and the Flevo Lacus by ship as his father Drusus had once done, and sailed along the coast, his legate Cæcina marched through the country of the Bructeri, and Pedo, leader of the cavalry, through that of the Frisians. The three divisions of the army reunited on the banks of the Ems and, reinforced by the conquered Chauci, marched, bearing hideous devastation with them, towards the Luppia, where they visited the battle-field in the Teutoburg forest and paid the last honours to the bones of the fallen. _Gruesome Relics in Teutoburg Forest_