The Battle of the Teutberg Forest (or Battle of the Teutoburger Wald), in 9 AD, was a defeat for the Roman general Publius Quinctilius Varus, husband of Augustus' niece, who was crushed in the Teutoburg Forest.
The battlefield was recently located by a prospector using his metal detector. In all likelihood, it was not in the Teutoburg Forest, but in Kalkriese, near Osnabrück, that the Roman Empire suffered one of its greatest defeats.
The XVII, XVIII and XIX legions were massacred (fifteen thousand legionnaires died on the battlefield), their tactics being poorly adapted to combat in the thick forests of Germania. The Germans commanded by Arminius, chief of the Cheruscan tribe, who was well acquainted with Varus and Greek poetry, even captured the eagles of the legions, and Varus committed suicide.
This defeat traumatized the emperor. Suetonius writes (Life of the Divine Augustus, 23):“As it is said, finally, Augustus was so devastated by this disaster that for several months in a row he no longer cut his beard or his hair, and that he occasionally banging his head against the door, with this cry:"Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!" ". He always regarded the anniversary of this disaster as a fatal day. This was the halt to Roman expansion during his reign; centuries later, the Roman army had still not reformed a XVII, XVIII or XIX legion. The Roman general Germanicus carried out some campaigns to pacify the region and ensure the tranquility of the Roman provinces. He defeated Arminius in 14, and recovered the lost ensigns as well as the bones of the legionnaires. He apparently prepared his campaign better by dividing the Germanic tribes before attacking them, since they fought each other until 16.