Officially the rivers Rhine and Danube formed the border between Germania and Gaul, and later between Germania and the Roman empire, in reality this borders shifted over time; the area directly south of the river Rhine (northern Gaul) is often considered Celtic but had a largely Germanic population and even the areas further to the south (what is now northern France) had been the destination of many Germanic migrations, in northern Gaul Germanic and Celtic tribes lived side by side; first in freedom and later under Roman rule, this also resulted in mixed Celtic/Germanic tribes; the Belgae for instance are believed to have been the result of such a fusion, the modern Belgians have named themselves after this tribe because they live in roughly the same area as the old Belgae but the modern Belgians are mainly descendants of Germanic tribes that settled there later.
The Romans on their turn have often crossed the Rhine into the Rhinedelta (the area that is now known as "the Netherlands" or "Holland"), they never managed to keep the newly obtained areas north of the river for long so their territory mostly ended at the Rhine, though with some influence beyond it.
Across the river Rhine lived the tribe of the Batavians who had allied themselves with the Romans; this is one of the main reasons for the Roman influence north of the Rhine.
Roman incursions over the Rhine:
In 58BC a Roman army under Julius Caesar invaded Gaul and defeated the Celtic (Gallic) tribes there, in the north they encountered heavy resistance from the Nervians and the Belgae but eventually managed to defeat them, in his "Bello Gallico" Julius Caesar called the Belgians "the bravest of all Gauls", something that the modern Belgians still like to brag about ;)
Caesar also attacked the Germanic army that had invaded northern Gaul under Ariovistus and drove them back over the Rhine, to make sure that they would stay there he crossed the Rhine too and attacked them in their homeland as a warning not to undertake any further invasions.
Caesar even began thinking about conquering parts of Germania but had to abandon those plans when he was attacked by the Frisians who forced him to retreat over the Rhine.
Under Julius Caesar's son and successor Octavianus (better known as Augustus) a second attempt to subdue the Germanic tribes was made; the Roman general Drusus managed to conquer Germania to the river Elbe, but he never succeeded in bringing the area under complete Roman control since the tribes in the newly conquered area proved to be unruly and disloyal towards their Roman oppressors, in 9AD the Romans lost control over the land again and had to retreat to the Rhine after the enormous defeat they had suffered in the Teutoburger forest.
Roman influences in the Rhinedelta:
In the years after their defeat the Romans only dared to show their faces in the areas that were close to the river Rhine and its Roman border troops; especially the Rhinedelta in what is now the Netherlands was popular among the Romans because it could serve as a base of operations from which the British islands and the rest of Germania could be attacked, it was also a good place to conduct trade with the tribes from whom the Romans bought many hides, slaves, and amber.
Although the Romans could not gain complete control over the Rhinedelta they did have a great amount of influence over it; this influence was quite high in some places but the Romans have always overestimated their control over the region which caused them to make premature decisions that resulted in the opposite of what they intended.
The Frisian rebellion:
One of this Roman decisions caused the Frisian rebellion, which was not as big as the Batavian one but still caused some humiliating Roman defeats before it was eventually quelled.
In 28AD the Roman governour Olennius asked an enormous tribute from the Frisians in the form of a huge number of aurochs hides (an aurochs is an ancient type of ox), the Frisians normally paid tribute to the Romans without a murmur because they were afraid of a Roman attack but this exaggerated tribute was too much for them.
They contacted Olennius and told him that they could not pay such an amount of tribute, they also told him that they did not even had aurochses so they could not pay the tribute even if they wanted to, but the Romans did not believe the Frisians.
Later archeologists have proven that the Frisians were telling the truth; they did not posess a single aurochs...
The Frisians had little choice; they simply could not pay the Roman tribute but knew that the Romans would attack them if they did not pay it; since a Roman attack was unavoidable they decided to take the initiative and attack the Romans first.
They attacked the nearest Roman camps and crucified the greedy Roman taxcollectors, a punishment they had learned from the Romans themselves.
The surviving Romans fled to castellum Flevum (a nearby Roman fortress) and waited for help, some of them managed to reach the Roman fortification near Colonia Ulpia Traiana (Xanten) and from there the Romans launched a counterattack; a Roman army marched towards the site of the rebellion and attacked the Frisians, at the same time Germanic footsoldiers and Cananefatian horsemen who collaborated with the Romans attacked the Frisians in the back.
In the battle that followed the Frisians miraculously managed to gain the upper hand and broke the Roman lines; 900 Roman soldiers fled back to the Rhine but were surrounded and destroyed in the Baduhennaforest, a holy forest near the modern city of Velsen (west of Amsterdam) that was dedicated to the wargodess Baduhenna, another group of 400 Roman soldiers commited mass suicide because they were afraid of what the Frisians would do to them if they were captured alive; in total the Romans lost 1300 men in the battle which was quite a lot in that time.
After their defeat at the Baduhenna forest the Romans sent their 5th legion to defeat the Frisians but it suffered so many casualties that it had to retreat.
It took the Romans 19 years to defeat the Frisians; in 47AD the Roman general Corbulo managed to quell the rebellion and subdued the Frisians again.
Some funny events...
The Roman underwater fortress:
When the Romans were still at war with the Frisians they increased the amount of border troops near the Rhine and constructed extra fortresses to strenghten the borders against future Germanic attacks.
In 40AD a Roman cohort (a cohort consisted of 500 men) arrived at the mouth of the river Rhine; with much display of power they marched through the swamps and forests and started constructing a fortress (castellum) near the Rhine.
The proud Roman soldiers started chopping wood, raising walls, digging moats, building barracks, etc.
In the meantime the people from the local villages had walked out to see the spectacle and were watching the Romans from the other side of the river; the Romans were used to this kind of audiences, everywhere they came the locals were impressed with their discipline and building skills and often entire villages came to see the show.
After some time the Romans noticed that there was something wrong; the amount of Cananefatians on the other side of the river was rising with the minute and it looked like they even came from towns that were miles away, the Romans began to wonder why there was such an enormous audience and decided to go and take a look; when they approached the amassed Cananefatians they noticed that they were not impressed at all; they were all laughing, the Romans asked them why they were having so much fun but none of the Cananefatians wanted to tell them the reason.
In spring the Cananefatians returned and an enormous audience had amassed itself on the other side of the Rhine; because of the rising temperatures the snow had started to melt and the waterlevel of the river had risen to enormous proportions.
The Romans had forgotten that they were in the delta of a river that had to drain away the enormous amount of water that was created by the melting snow of the Alps, and had built their fortress in the water-meadows of the Rhine that were flooded each spring...
The mighty Roman fortess disappeared beneath the flooding water of the Rhine and the surprised Roman soldiers finally found out why the Cananefatians were laughing during the construction of the fortress, swearing and cursing they swam to shore in their soacking wet uniforms while the Cananefatians were rolling over the floor laughing their heads off.
After the flood the Romans raised the land and rebuilt their fortress, but only a short time later it was destroyed again by Chaukian pirates under their Cananefatian leader Canascus.
To the Romans it must have seemed that the fortress was cursed; after they had rebuilt it for the third time is was destroyed by Batavians during the Batavian rebellion in 69AD.
The Roman war against Neptune:
Some years later the Cananefatians could have a good laugh for the second time; the Roman emperor Caligula arrived with his army on the beach near the modern city of Katwijk from where he was planning to invade Britannia.
However, Caligula was not entirely sane and it is believed that he had a serious mental problem; he argued that he first had to defeat Neptune (the Roman god of the sea) before crossing to Britannia and ordered his men to attack the water; his archers shot arrows at the waves while other soldiers were ordered to collect shells at the beach to take them as spoils of war.
The local Cananefatians must have had a good laugh about this scene, the people who called them "dumb barbarians" were even trying to defeat the sea itself!
The Frisians visit Rome:
In the 1st century AD the Romans cleared a strip of land north of the Rhine that had to function as a bufferzone against invading tribes, this landstrip had to remain uninhabited.
Within a short time the strip of land was settled by a group of stubborn Frisians who had their own opinion about this Roman rule and provocatively they started building houses there.
The Romans came and told them to leave the area or otherwise they would be attacked, the Frisians liked their new land and prefered to stay; two Frisian kings named Verritus and Malorix decided to travel to far away Rome to plea for their cause.
After their arrival in Rome the two kings were received in a very friendly manner, while their case was being dealt with they were invited for a show in the theater of Pompeius.
When they asked their hosts who those people on the front row were they were told that the front row was reserved for dignitaries and envoys of peoples who had proven their bravery and loyalty to Rome.
The two Frisians said that they had the right to sit on the front row too because there was nothing in the world that surpassed their people in bravery and loyalty, and they stood up and descended the stairs towards the front row.
The nobles on the front row quickly made place when they saw the two enormous Frisian warlords approaching and the audience in the theater laughed and cheered while the two rough men sat themselves on the soft seats of the front row.
The Roman emperor presented the two sympathetic Frisians with Roman civil rights, something that was a great privilege in those times, but he did not allow them to stay in their new area and disappointed the two kings left to tell their people the bad news.
An extraordinary love story:
Although this event took place much later than the events mentioned on this page it is still interesting to mention here; it was written down by a Byzantine writer called Procopius in the 6th century AD.
Hermegisclus, the king of the Warnians (a Saxon tribe), ruled over the Rhinedelta in what is now the province of Holland in western Netherlands, he had a son called Radigis from his first wife who had died long ago and later he decided to remarry with the sister of the Franconian king Theudebert (534-547) to establish good relations between his tribe and the powerful Franconians, this was normal in that period and nobles often chose for a strategic marriage in the best interest of their people and their diplomatic position.
For the same purpose the king asked his son Radigis to marry an Anglo-Saxon princess because Anglia (England) was an important area for trade, so together king Hermegisclus and prince Radigis travelled to Anglia and started marriage negotiations, but before the actual marriage was about to take place king Hermegisclus got a bad omen from a raven that told him he would die soon, some time later he indeed became very sick and on his deathbed he realized that an alliance with the mighty Franconians was more important than an alliance with the Anglo-Saxons, therefor he asked for his son Radigis, he asked his son to forget about his Anglo-Saxon princess and marry his stepmother (the sister of the Franconian king and the wife of Hermegisclus) instead, the old king managed to convince Radigis of the political need for a marriage between him and the Franconian wife of his father and Radigis decided to obey his dying father's wish.
When the Anglo-Saxon princess heard of this word-breaking she became furious and she amassed an army and crossed the Northsea, the Anglo-Saxons landed near the modern city of Den Haag (The Hague) and defeated the Warnians, the princess captured Radigis and asked him why he had broken the marriage agreement, Radigis told her about his father's wish and offered his apologies, after that he also promised to send his new Franconian wife back to the Frankenland.
Instead of killing him the Anglo-Saxon princess forgave Radigis and married him, the alliance between the Warnians and the Anglo-Saxons held out for a very long time.
Further developements:
During the Great Migrations the tribes of the Cananefatians and the Batavians became a part of the Franconians, who dominated northern France, Belgium, and the west- and southern part of the Netherlands.
The eastern part of the Netherlands was taken by the Saxons and the Frisians managed to gain control over the northern part.
In the early Middle Ages the Netherlands became a part of the Franconian empire and was Christianized, the Frisians managed to prevent this for a long time under their famous kings Aldgisl and Redbad but eventually they too were converted by force, when the Franconian empire fell apart most of what is now the Netherlands became a part of the Middle Franconian Empire of Lotharius and later it was annexed by the German Empire, in 1428 the Netherlands gained its independance.
Roman incursions over the Rhine:
The Frisians had little choice; they simply could not pay the Roman tribute but knew that the Romans would attack them if they did not pay it; since a Roman attack was unavoidable they decided to take the initiative and attack the Romans first.
The Roman war against Neptune:
Further developements: