Fire and Steel, Volume 1

Germania and the Holy Roman EmpireBy the time of Christ and the Christian era, the Roman Empire, with its insatiable quest for land, riches, slaves, and power, had swallowed up much of the European continent. One could leave the Roman capital and travel in a northwesterly direction on well-maintained Roman roads for 1,200 miles.But if one traveled due north, up the long boot of Italia and across the Alps, one quickly reached the northern border of the empire. In the vast lands to the north of the Danube River and to the east of the Rhine lived a collection of tribes so fierce, so warlike, and so incapable of being civilized that eventually the Roman legions fortified the southern border of those lands and left the people alone. Caesar called that unconquerable north land with all of its dozens of tribes Germania.The Germani were not farmers other than having small garden plots cultivated by individual families. They were hunters and warriors. No one owned land as...