The Battle of Arausio was fought on 6 October 105 BC during the Cimbrian War. Two Roman armies led by Quintus Servilius Caepio and Gnaeus Mallius Maximus were crushed by a much larger Germanic army of Cimbri and Teutons in present-day southern France in Rome's worst defeat since the Battle of Cannae during the Punic Wars.
Background[]
Following the disastrous Battle of Burdigala in 107 BC, the Roman Senate became aware of the threat of the Germanic Cimbri and Teutons and prepared an army of 80,000 troops to face them in battle. As Rome's greatest general Gaius Marius was fighting the Jugurthine War in North Africa, command of the army was given to the commoner Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, while the patrician Quintus Servilius Caepio was made his second-in-command. Caepio, descended from one of the oldest patrician families in Rome, resented having to take orders from a commoner, causing division between the two men.
Battle[]
In 105 BC, the 80,000-strong Roman army arrived in Gallia Narbonensis and encamped outside the town of Arausio on the Rhone. Caepio only followed Mallius across the river in response to a Senatorial order, but he insisted on having a separate camp. King Boiorix of the Cimbri attempted to negotiate with Mallius, asking that his tribe be allowed to migrate into Hispania. However, Caepio did not want Mallius to get the credit for defeating the Germanic threat, so he launched his own attack on the Cimbri camp. His smaller force was easily stopped, surrounded, and slaughtered by the Germans, and the Germans swiftly counterattacked, encircled Mallius' legionaries, and massacred his men as well. 80,000 legionaries and 40,000 auxiliaries and camp followers were killed in Rome's worst defeat since the Battle of Cannae, and the Germans then proceeded to invade Hispania.