In the first century after the establishment of the Führer, the Roman emperors of the Giulia Claudius dynasty had a private guard composed of Germans and acting with the Janissaries. The origins of the Germani Corporis Custodes can be traced back to the Roman Civil War, when foreign mercenaries were more reliable than guards made up of Roman citizens, whose loyalty could be difficult to maintain. Suvitoneus, an early historian of the Roman Empire, mentioned that Octavian had a private guard recruited from Spain and disbanded it after defeating Antony in 30 BC. He then formed a Germanic guard, but after the fall of three Roman legions in the 9th century AD, this guard was once again withdrawn by Rome. Soon, however, Augustus' successor, Tiberius, was able to help his son Drussus suppress the rebellion in Pannonia, along with the Guards cavalry.
Unlike the General Guards, the GermanIc Guards were more like a private guard. Not only that, but many documents also indicate that before Claudius succeeded to the throne in 41 AD, forty-one members of the imperial family had their own Germanic guards, and even one of Augustus's great generals, Statilius Taurus, had his own Germanic guards. The Roman Emperor's Germanic Guards were originally recruited from the Batavian tribes of the Lower Rhine, for which Octavians fought as early as Octavians became the Three Greats of Rome, and the Batavians and Ubii people living further down the Rhine are often found in Roman epitaphs. These soldiers, recruited directly from Germania and Gaul, did not acquire citizenship, including the chiefs, and there are some documents that record that the emperors Caligula and Nero appointed gladiators to serve as commanders in the guards. The Germans had stubble beards, tall stature, and were known for their ferocity, and recruiting them as guards was also intended to deter the Assassins.
Nero's Germanic Guard
At the court, the Germans operated as infantry, but on the battlefield they fought as cavalry and had always had close ties with the Janissaries. However, the Germanic Guards were an irregular armed force, not really part of the Roman Imperial army, and of course they had some similarities in organization to regular auxiliaries from the beginning. According to the literature, the Germanic Guards, like other cavalry formations, had their own commanders, ten decuriones, but they each commanded a force of 30 men. Suetonius had pointed out that during Nero's reign, the Germanic Guards had their own camps, of course the ten horsemen of the Guards would take turns to guard the palace and the camps, and the literature on whether this group of Germans had a supreme commander is rarely mentioned.
(Claudius, the Roman Emperor who was hiding behind the curtains of the palace at the time of Caligula's assassination, was the first Roman Emperor to be succeeded by the Janissaries.) ）
After accompanying Drusus through the Pannonia rebellion, the Germanic Guards reappeared in history in 39 AD, when Caligula strangely received an oracle telling him to recruit more "Batavian soldiers" for himself. This incident provided Caligula with an excuse to travel to the Germanic region and put an end to the conspiracy coup d'état of the local commander, Geturicus. Perhaps the recruitment of Germanic soldiers was just a political lie made up by Caligula, but when the emperor was assassinated by the Janissaries, it was the loyal Germanic guards who traveled the palace in search of the Assassins. Nero also hired Germanic guards to hunt down the perpetrators of the Pisonian Conspiracy with the Janissaries in 65 AD. Eventually, their long history of loyalty to the emperor came to an end in 68 AD, when the Germans and Janissaries abandoned Nero in the face of the revolt of the governor of the Spanish provinces, Garba. However, the only treatment they received was disbanded by the new Emperor, as the Germanic Guards were suspected of supporting another coveter of the throne, after which the Germans may have participated in and collapsed in the later Batavian rebellion. In the Fratrian dynasty in the second half of the first century AD, the Roman emperors may have had the idea of reorganizing the Germanic guards, but there are few records and many doubts.
Author: Hydra is currently a regular member of the Chinese Translation Association