The heart of the country was thus inhabited by a Gallic race, but the frontiers had been taken possession of by Teutonic tribes.
When the Cimbri and their associates, about a century before our era, made their memorable onslaught upon Rome, the early inhabitants of the Rhine island of Batavia, who were probably Celts, joined in the expedition.

A recent and tremendous inundation had swept away their miserable homes, and even the trees of the forests, and had thus rendered them still more dissatisfied with their gloomy abodes.

The island was deserted of its population.

At about the same period a civil dissension among the Chatti--a powerful German race within the Hercynian forest--resulted in the expatriation of a portion of the people.

The exiles sought a new home in the empty Rhine island, called it "Bet-auw," or "good-meadow," and were themselves called, thenceforward, Batavi, or Batavians.
These Batavians, according to Tacitus, were the bravest of all the Germans.