Discover how her Iceni uprising almost crushed the Roman invasion
Sometime in the early 3rd century, the Roman historian Cassius Dio reflected on the mental state of Emperor Nero in the year 60 CE. The notorious Nero, who had already ordered the murder of his mother, was now trying to present himself as a musical genius. His public performances were reputedly so bad that audiences openly laughed at him, but he had thousands of soldiers to lead rounds of applause. All this was reportedly done to “celebrate the shaving of his beard; and in behalf of his preservation and the continuance of his power”.
This dangerously unstable ruler may have been mad but he held sway over the huge Roman Empire. Nevertheless, Dio recorded that this deranged imperial hubris received a severe shock from the west on the far edges of Nero’s domains: “While this sort of child’s play was going on in Rome, a terrible disaster occurred in Britain. Two cities were sacked, eighty thousand of the Romans and of their allies perished, and the island was lost to Rome. Moreover, all this ruin was brought upon the Romans by a woman, a fact which in itself caused them the greatest shame.”
The woman who caused the Romans “the greatest shame” was Boudica,
Queen of the Iceni. Although she was not Britain’s first warrior queen, Boudica was the first British female ruler to be historically recorded in any detail – and her story was dramatic in the extreme. An epic tale of vengeance, destruction and bloodshed, Boudica almost ejected Roman forces from Britain in a great uprising during c.60-61 CE. Dio was wrong to state that Rome temporarily lost Britain to the rebellious Britons and their warrior queen but she definitely came closer than most. The question is: how close?
Claudian conquest
In 60 CE, Britain had only been under Roman rule for 17 years since the invasion of Emperor Claudius in 43
CE. Apart from Ireland, this was the western limits of the known world for the Romans, and their actual rule was then limited to what is now central and southern England. In 60 CE an informal military frontier existed from Lincolnshire in the East Midlands down to Devon in the southwest, while the rest of Britain consisted of free Celtic tribes. Many occupied Britons initially welcomed Roman rule or capitulated without a fight, including the Iceni tribe.
The Iceni lived in what is now Norfolk and parts of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. They were already known to Julius Caesar when he invaded Britain in 54
BCE, when he referred to them as the “Ceni Magni” in his Commentaries. It’s believed they were divided into several royal clans or subkingdoms, and one of their centres was a place near modern-day Norwich called Venta Icenorum (‘Market of the Iceni’). They minted coins and made metalwork and fine jewellery, but were comparatively isolated and less wealthy than more southern British tribes.
Although they had initially peacefully submitted to the Romans in 43 CE, the Iceni subsequently launched a minor revolt in 50 CE. This event prompted the Romans to disarm the tribe and an uneasy relationship existed for the next decade. Despite the tension, one Iceni king called Prasutagus allied himself with the Romans and sought accommodation with them. When he died in c.60-61 CE he named both the Emperor Nero and his two daughters as his co-heirs.
According to the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus, Prasutagus believed that this “act of deference would place his kingdom and household beyond the risk of injury. The result was contrary – so much so that his kingdom was pillaged by centurions, his household made slaves; as though they had been prizes of war”.
The Romans clearly took advantage of the power vacuum left by Prasutagus’s death and his queen dramatically entered Tacitus’s history as the victim of a craven assault: “As a beginning, his wife Boudica was subjected to the lash and his daughters violated: all the chief men of the Icenians were stripped of their family estates, and the relatives of the king were treated as slaves.”
The Romans’ severe ill-treatment of Boudica, her daughters and the Iceni nobility was to have grave consequences. Tacitus recorded that after these violations the Iceni rose up under
Boudica’s leadership and joined forces with neighbouring tribes to restore their freedom: “Impelled by this outrage and the dread of worse to come – for they had now been reduced to the status of a province – they flew to arms, and incited to rebellion the Trinovantes and others, who, not yet broken by servitude, had entered into a secret and treasonable compact to resume their independence.”
Of the two Roman historians who chronicled what happened next – Tacitus and Cassius Dio – it is the former who is the most important. Dio was born approximately 100 years after the Boudican Revolt and was heavily influenced by Tacitus, although he may have had access to other sources that are now lost. The value of Tacitus is that his Annals were written half-a-century after the revolt and he was also the son-in-law of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the governor of Britain.
“Although they had initially peacefully submitted to the Romans in 43 CE, the Iceni subsequently launched a minor revolt in 50 CE”
Agricola fought against Boudica as a junior officer in the Roman Army, which makes it likely that Tacitus was told about events first-hand from someone who was there. Although he was biased against Boudica, Tacitus was, in his own words: “Dedicated to writing history without anger or bias.” We can therefore view his history with a reasonable degree of accuracy, albeit alongside a significant dose of scepticism.
Of Boudica herself, virtually nothing is known of her life before the events of c.60-61 CE. Dio said (with an unfortunate amount of sexism) that she was “a Briton woman of the royal family and possessed of greater intelligence than often belongs to women”. He also described of her appearance: “She was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, the glance of her eye most fierce; her voice harsh. A great mass of the tawniest (reddest) hair fell down to her hips. Around her neck was a large golden necklace, and she always wore a tunic of many colours over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch. This was her invariable attire.”
Dio’s image of a formidable warrior queen entirely chimed with her standing as the leader of a vengeful revolt. After her family’s assault, she was now poised to lead the Iceni, Trinovantes and others against the symbol of Roman power in Britain: Colchester.
“Citadel of tyranny”
Located in what is now Essex, Colchester was known as Camulodunum by the Romans. It had been a significant British settlement but was occupied and became a prosperous town that was settled by Roman Army veterans and their nativeborn wives. Colchester was dominated by the Temple of Claudius, which was then the largest in Britain and included a bronze equestrian statue of the old emperor. Even Tacitus described Colchester as “a citadel of an eternal tyranny”. However, it had no substantial defences.
When the revolt broke out, the main Roman military forces under the command of Governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus were far away fighting druids on the island of Anglesey off the northwest coast of Wales. Colchester’s veterans hurriedly constructed defences around the temple but Boudica’s new British force surrounded them and razed the town to the ground. The veterans received little support from Nero’s procurator (representative) Catus Decianus and they endured a two-day siege inside the temple. They were ultimately “carried by storm” and massacred along with the rest of the town’s population.
Colchester began a bloodthirsty trend for Boudica’s revolt as the rebellious
Britons destroyed all Roman forces and settlements that stood in their way. Chelmsford (Caesaromagus) was torched and a major victory was won by the
Britons in an engagement known as the Battle of Camulodunum. A relief army of the 9th Legion commanded by Quintus Petillius Cerialis had attempted to relieve Colchester but according to Tacitus, “The victorious Britons routed the legion and slaughtered the infantry to a man.”
Cerialis escaped but the damage to Roman prestige was enormous. His force had been a large vexillation (detachment) of 2,500 men, with approximately 2,000 being killed by the Britons. Boudica’s victory at this unknown location in southeast England could be regarded as a miniature version of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE when Germanic tribes destroyed three Roman legions.
The Battle of Camulodunum forced Paulinus to personally return through enemy-held territory to assess the situation from the busy settlement of London (Londinium). With Colchester and a third of one of his legions destroyed, the future of Roman Britain was hanging in the balance thanks to Boudica’s uprising. Paulinus made the difficult decision to leave London to the mercy of the Britons and left to regroup his army in the north so that the Romans could defeat Boudica at a later date.
London’s burning
London was only a decade old when Boudica’s forces descended upon it.
Already a successful commercial Roman port, it was (like Colchester) largely undefended and militarily vulnerable. Other British tribes had now swelled the ranks of Boudica’s army and most of London’s earliest inhabitants fled before the gathering storm.
The settlement was comprehensively destroyed in a firestorm and the Londoners who remained were reputedly subjected to excessive violence. Dio gave a lurid account of how the Britons committed, “bestial [atrocities],” by mutilating women, pillaging, committing sacrilege at Roman religious sites and conducting themselves with, “wanton behaviour.”
This may be a melodramatic interpretation but it is true that the sack of London was a traumatic event. Tacitus described how, “the enemy neither took captive nor sold into captivity; there was none of the other commerce of war; he was hasty with slaughter and the gibbet, with arson and the cross (crucifixion).”
Boudica moved on from London with her forces inflicting similar destruction on St Albans (Verulamium) in Hertfordshire. The Romans claimed that the Britons deliberately avoided enemy forts and garrisons and were primarily motivated by loot. The truth of this statement cannot be ascertained but this bitterly biased perspective fails to acknowledge that Boudica had inflicted a severe blow to Roman power in Britain. Tacitus admitted that the combined destruction of Colchester, London, St Albans and elsewhere caused the deaths of approximately 70,000 Roman citizens and their British allies. For a land with a much smaller population than the United Kingdom today this was a catastrophic blow for the Romans. The triumphant Boudica now effectively controlled southeast Britain and only the army of Paulinus stood in her way.
A lost battlefield
British history hung on a knife-edge at this point between the ascendant Boudica and the embattled Paulinus who was licking Roman wounds to the north. The revolt had spread out from the southeast with
“Dio’s image of a formidable warrior queen entirely chimed with her standing as the leader of a vengeful revolt”
Britons attacking Roman forces in places as disparate as Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Somerset. Boudica’s personal control over her own uprising is impossible to establish but she was clearly determined to directly meet Paulinus in battle.
In one sense, she had no choice. The Roman Empire was the greatest power in Europe and if their presence in Britain was not immediately removed then she would be defeated – either by Paulinus or by a later punitive expedition. Boudica seemingly decided to meet Paulinus in battle as soon as possible because the odds appeared in her favour.
The location of the battlefield for this fateful clash is unknown but historians believe it was fought somewhere along – or near to – an ancient highway known as Watling Street. Originally a British route that ran northwest from Dover in Kent to Wroxeter in Shropshire, Watling Street was paved by the Romans shortly after their invasion in 43 CE. It is supposed that Boudica followed Paulinus after he left London to rejoin his forces that were returning from Wales.
The opposing armies could have met anywhere along this road, with suggested sites being proposed in the Midlands or the northwest. One of the most intriguing locations, suggested by archaeologist Dr Graham Webster in the 1970s, is the village of Mancetter in Warwickshire. Tacitus described how Paulinus “chose a position approached by a narrow defile, closed in at the rear by a forest”. This area also had an “open plain” that “extended without any danger from ambushes”.
Mancetter is near to what was then the Roman military frontier and the village contains both woods and extensive fields that are still crossed by Watling Street. Archaeological evidence has uncovered a Roman Army base nearby as well as military coinage and the remains of legionary and cavalry armour. What is even more intriguing is a potential glimpse of the British military activities in the etymology of ‘Mancetter’ itself.
By the time the British and Roman armies met, Boudica commanded a numerically superior force. Tacitus said that the British were gathered “in unprecedented numbers”, while Dio gave a figure of 230,000 warriors. This statistic is perhaps unlikely but the
British certainly greatly outnumbered the Romans. Paulinus only commanded 10,000 men, which included the 14th Legion, a detachment of the 20th Legion and auxiliaries. These were fearful odds for a Roman force that was the last effective imperial presence in Britain.
Because the Britons had such a large army they were confident of victory and stationed their families in lines of carts in the rear of their forces. Mancetter was originally called Manduessedum, which translates as ‘The Place of Chariots’. It is tantalisingly possible, but by no means certain, that the large number of chariots and carts in Boudica’s army left a vivid folk memory that was reflected in the village’s place name.
“Conquer or die”
No matter where the final battle was fought it was certainly decisive and recognised as such by both commanders beforehand. According to Tacitus, Boudica and her daughters rode before each tribe in a chariot and asserted that the Britons had fought under female leadership before. Tacitus then recorded Boudica delivering a fiery pre-battle speech where she declared: “It is not as a woman descended from noble ancestry, but as one of the people that I am avenging lost freedom, my scourged body, the outraged chastity of my daughters… If you weigh well the strength of the armies, and the causes of the war, you will see that in this battle you must conquer or die. This is
“Boudica now effectively controlled southeast Britain and only the army of Paulinus stood in her way”
a woman’s resolve; as for men, they may live and be slaves.”
Whether Boudica actually uttered these words cannot be known. However, it is possible that Tacitus, through the recollections of his father-in-law Agricola, perhaps recorded some of the real words of Paulinus to his soldiers. While Boudica’s warriors chanted loud war cries, Paulinus gave a speech that focussed on discipline and contempt for the enemy: “There, you see more women than warriors. Unwarlike, unarmed, they will give way the moment they have recognised the sword and courage of their conquerors… Close up the ranks, and having discharged your javelins, then with shields and swords continue the work of bloodshed and destruction, without a thought of plunder. When once the victory has been won, everything will be in your power.”
The following battle saw the complete rout of Boudica’s army. The Britons descended on the Roman lines but Paulinus ordered an attack. The legionaries threw two volleys of several thousand javelins before they advanced in a tight, wedge-shaped column. Using their large shields for defence, the legionaries also stabbed at the Britons as they moved forward with their short swords. The Roman auxiliaries deployed similar tactics while their cavalry used extended lances. The Britons, who were not as well armoured or disciplined as the Romans, were slaughtered and “turned back in flight”. Their retreat “proved difficult, because the surrounding wagons had blocked retreat”.
The Britons’ huge numbers created a huge crush between the carts and the Romans who acted without mercy as men, women, children and even pack animals were killed. Tacitus claimed that 80,000 Britons were killed compared to just 400 Romans and said of the battle: “Great glory, equal to that of our old victories, was won on that day.”
Boudica’s army was completely destroyed along with her hopes of ending Roman rule in Britain. She died shortly afterwards although the manner of her death, like much of her life, is uncertain. Tacitus said that she “put an end to her life by poison” while Dio claimed that Boudica “fell sick and died”. The latter went on to state that: “The Britons mourned her deeply and gave her a costly burial; but, feeling that now at last they were really defeated, they scattered to their homes.”
Dio’s account of this despondency among the Britons certainly fits with the Roman response to the revolt. Nero reinforced Paulinus’s forces in Britain with thousands more legionaries, auxiliaries and cavalry, and hunted down any remaining resisting tribes with “fire and sword”. The Britons were then hit by a famine that was caused by them not sowing crops during the revolt.
The heavy-handed Roman crackdown against British resistance is an indication of just how rattled they had been by the actions of Boudica and her followers.
Even after the retribution and famine, the Britons were still defiant when one of Nero’s courtiers, Polyclitus, was sent to head an enquiry into the revolt. Tacitus wrote that the Britons regarded Polyclitus as “a laughing stock, for they still retained some of the fire of liberty”.
This undimmed fighting spirit was the main impact of Boudica’s revolt and the fear she spread across the Roman Empire went right to the top. This previously obscure British queen had shaken imperial power to its very core, which was reflected 60 years later in an account of Nero’s life by Roman historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus. In his account, Boudica had been such a threat that Nero “even thought of withdrawing the army from Britain”. These few words succinctly explain why Boudica’s story endures and is a remarkable reflection of how close she came to defeating the Roman Empire.
“Boudica’s army was destroyed along with her hopes of ending Roman rule in Britain”