Varus himself, upon seeing all hope was lost, committed suicide (see Bunson, A Dictionary of the Roman Empire). Tacitus reports that the victorious Germanic tribes sacrificed captive officers to their gods on altars that could still be seen years later. Some captured Romans were placed inside wicker cages and burned alive (see Edward Gibbon) others were enslaved or ransomed. Accounts of the defeat are scarce, due to the totality of the defeat, but one account tells of some Roman cavalry which abandoned the infantry they were supposed to be supporting and fled to the Rhine, but were intercepted by the Germanic tribesmen and killed. On the third day of fighting, the Germans overwhelmed the Romans at Kalkriese Hill, north of Osnabrück. The heavily forested, swampy terrain made the infantry manoeuvres of the legions impossible to execute and allowed the Germanic fighters to defeat the legions in detail. Arminius and the Cherusci tribe, along with other allies, had skilfully laid an ambush, and in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in September (east of modern Osnabrück), the Romans marched right into it. Not only was Varus' trust in Arminius a terrible misjudgment, but Varus compounded it by placing his legions in a position where their fighting strengths would be minimized and that of the Germanic tribesmen maximized. Despite a warning from Segestes, Varus trusted Arminius, the man who appealed for his help, because he was a Romanised Germanic prince and commander of an auxiliary cavalry unit.
In 9 AD, Varus had stationed his armies near the Weser River with his three legions, the Seventeenth, the Eighteenth and the Nineteenth, when news arrived of a growing revolt in the Rhine area to the west.
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