Usipetes

The Usipetes (also: Usipier, Latin: Usipetes, Usipii, Greek Ουσιπέται, Ουσίπιοι Ouispoi ) are a first attested by Gaius Julius Caesar's De Bello Gallico Germanic tribe on the right bank of the Lower Rhine opposite.

Around the year 55 BC the Usipetes left their ancestral settlement area because they were harassed by their eastern neighbors, the Suevi. They migrated first to the mouth of the Rhine, a part turned to the west and moved up the river Maas. Caesar defeated the Usipetes in two battles and forced her back into her old settlement area to sweep across the Rhine. There they had their old settlements not only maintain, but still considerably expand.

The eastern boundary of Gaul was BC remained until the year 15 with no permanent stationing of Roman troops, although already Caesar, who had conquered Gaul, including the left bank of the Rhine Germania, the Rhine had touted as a boundary line between the imperium Romanum and the Germanic tribes. Without military presence on the Rhine but the military situation on Gaul 's eastern border remained unstable. There have been repeated invasions of Germanic tribes and subsequent ( poorly coordinated ) punitive expeditions of the Romans.

There were two main reasons that prompted the Germans to cross the Rhine:

Twice Caesar had to deter the Rhine crosses (55 and 53 BC), to prevent a not -controlling influx of Germanic warriors kept alive the hopes of Gallic independence. Caesars Germania policy thus ultimately aimed at securing Gaul. To this end, he included also rechtsrheinischen tribes contracts obliging them to protect the Rhine frontier.

Since the Rhine crossings Caesar and his brief, unsuccessful forays into Germany, however, had only too clearly shown that the hard-won Roman rule over Northeast Gaul could be seriously threatened by incursions rechtsrheinisch - Germanic warrior hordes in alliance or in the pay of rebel Gallic tribes repeatedly.

In the year 16 BC Murdered Sugambri ( Sigambrer ) Usipetes and Tencteri Romans in Germania east of the Rhine, then led a plundering expedition into Gaul, defeated them. Persecuting Roman cavalry and eventually even the 5th Legion This defeat ( clades Lolliana ) was a serious blow to the imperial prestige of Augustus. The Germans withdrew from the dispute and received a ( bogus) peace.

The legionary camp Vetera controlled over the lip mouth the settlement areas of the right bank of the tribes of the Sicambri, Bructeri, Tencteri and Usipetes. It was precisely these peoples, on whose account were the incursions into Gaul. By Lippetal connect Veteras was given with the Munsterlander bay.

Sugambri and other allied tribes broke out in 12 BC again in Gaul, as they were ruled by serious unrest due to the first Provincial Census. Drusus urged a troop contingent back the invaders and opened on the other side of the river immediately after August 1, 12 BC a punitive expedition. The invasion of Germania went from lower Rhine area, first in the land of Usipetes ( southeast of the present province of Gelderland), then against the settled between the Lippe and Ruhr Sugambri Strabo refers to the as the cause for the outbreak of war.

The Sicambri were later, similarly to the above already settled the Ubii by the Romans on the left side of the Rhine. Your vacated settlements on the right bank of the Rhine were taken until the end of the first century AD by the Usipetern in possession, together with the Tenkterern with which they are often mentioned together. The later area of Usipetern and Tenkterern on the right side of the Rhine stretched between the territories of Bructeri and chatting. The Tencteri moved south to win the Usipetes in addition to unterern Lahn.

In the 4th century the Usipetes went on in the tribal alliance of the Franks.