Tyrol (Austria) -- Description and travel; Tyrol (Austria) -- History
The moral effect of this invasion upon the Rhætians, through whose
territory the Cimbri had passed, bore fruit a few years later, when
they attempted the same tactics, making frequent raids into Roman
territory. Some sixty years after the incursion of the Cimbri they
were defeated and driven back into their valleys and mountains by the
Roman general, Munatius Plancus; and a few years later, in 36 B.C.,
not only was a fresh raid repulsed, but the invaders were followed
home, and a considerable portion of the district in the neighbourhood
of what is now known as Trent was taken possession of by the Roman
forces.
[Sidenote: ROMAN CONQUEST OF TYROL]
The Rhætians, however, were a hardy, valorous, and pugnacious tribe,
and so frequent were their attacks upon the Roman forces left to hold
the conquered country that the Emperor Augustus, about twenty years
after the subjection of the Trent district, decided as a measure of
self-protection on the conquest of the whole of Rhætia, as far as the
River Danube.
And for this work he deputed his two stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius.
The campaign, historians are agreed, was planned with great skill, and
probably by the Emperor himself. The Roman forces were divided, one
portion, under Drusus, entering Tyrol from the south, having Tridentum
(Trent) as its base; and the other, under Tiberius, delivering its
attack from the west across what is now Switzerland. Tiberius took
this route (the most direct, though a difficult one) because at that
time he was absent from Italy, in Gaul, as governor. Drusus had a more
easy task, and pushed his way up the wide valley of the River Adige[2]
to the present site of Bozen. His objective was the Pass of the
Brenner, which, once seized, would give him the command of the
country. His advance was not, however, made without opposition, for
the Breones and Genones, who dwelt in the vicinity of the Brenner,
attacked the Roman forces, and a fierce battle and series of
skirmishes ensued. Horace, in Book IV., Ode 14 and 4, gives a vivid
if, possibly, highly coloured account of the struggle which took place
in the gorge near Bozen. The river Icarous ran red with the blood of
both conquerors and conquered. And--as has been the case on many
subsequent occasions when fighting has had to be done by the
Tyrolese--the women played a valorous part, even, according to the
historian, Florus, throwing their infant children into the faces of
the Roman soldiery when other weapons failed.
The campaign of the two stepsons of Augustus resulted in the complete
and final conquest of Tyrol. The victory, won in the narrow gorge of
the Eisack, was commemorated in the name of the bridge _Pons Drusi_
spanning the river, hard by which now stands the interesting mediæval
town of Bozen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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