We were great. Once.
Our empire stretched from the frigid forests of northern Germania down to the warm southern tip of Italia.
We had the strongest armies, we were the best led and best trained, and when Chlodochar of the Suebi was our king, we were unstoppable. He was wise beyond his years, and brought us the glory that we Germanic people deserved.
But then Chlodochar died in battle, felled by Roman swords, and then it all began to fall apart.
His successor Ricfried desperately tried to hold the empire together but our enemies were too many.
With Chlodochar dead, the wild nomadic tribes to the east saw their chance and invaded, attacking like phantoms in the thick forests, killing thousands of brave Germanic warriors. These ghosts fought like no foe we had seen before, and for a long time we were unable to defeat them in open battle.
Strange painted men from across the western sea came on boats, raiding our lands. We were able to repel the raiders when they came, but they always inflicted heavy casualties and more importantly, they tied up our forces from more important battles. Every man that was used to repel these attacks from these raiders could have helped stem the tide of the disaster that got worse as the years went on.
Seeing our weakness, the remaining Romans attacked with a vengeance. They mustered a large army and attacked Brundisium, quickly taking back the city that Chlodochar gave his life to capture.
We managed to defeat that Roman army a few weeks later, which had marched north to "liberate" Italia from our control, but we took extremely heavy losses: there were many more of our dead on the ground than theirs, a Pyrrhic victory in the truest sense.
But more Romans came. Six experienced legions, fresh from fighting in Africa, invaded Italia to retake the lands that they lost.
We thought that we would be able to defeat them, but they were too many, even for our best generals. For every Roman we killed, two more took his place on the battlefield. Our armies in the south were defeated, then the survivors were chased down and ruthlessly massacred. We could not fault them for this though, as we did the same time and time again when we had the upper hand. With these victories they pushed us out of Italia.
Ricfried fell in one of these battles, killed by elite Roman cavalry as he fought to delay the Roman advance and give his men time to escape.
Even our long-time allies, the Aedui, betrayed us and invaded, taking a number of our towns including the fortress of Vesontio. But we did not let them take it without inflicting serious losses on the attacking Gauls. The defense of Vesontio became famous for how the two thousand defenders managed to kill over four thousand Aedui warriors before finally being overwhelmed. It is said that the walls were covered in blood and the bodies were stacked three deep in some areas.
With invading armies on all sides and our leadership crumbling, we turned on each other. Brother fought brother and Germanic blood was spilled as the nation that Chlodochar had worked so hard to build began to fracture into small tribes. The once powerful Suebi tribe were wiped out in the ensuing violence and the survivors became what is now known as the Semnones tribe. But they were a mere shadow of what the Suebi used to be, and they have lost the right to call themselves the true decedents of the greatest tribe the Germanic people have yet seen.
That was one hundred years ago. Since then, Rome violently expanded beyond Italia. They conquered most of Gaul and Iberia. They took control of Greece, and Anatolia, and eventually conquered the once powerful nation of Carthage as well. At their height they were the only real empire around, seeing that the once-great Germanic empire was in ruins. There was no fighting the Romans; they would win by numbers alone if anyone stood against them.
But then civil war came. Four powerful Roman generals went their separate ways and took large parts of the empire with them. Just like we had fractured, they have fractured as well.
This is where we enter the arena. My name is Theodoric, leader of the Marcomanni. We are a small Germanic tribe, and we have been subservient to our Roman and Gallic neighbors for far too long.
And now it is our turn.
Reunification: a Marcomanni AAR (updated chapter 25)
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