BOUDICA

Boudica was queen of the Iceni, in the area now called East Anglia after the Anglish tribes who later settled there. The name Boudica was spelled Boadicea (and, therefore, pronounced Bo-di-see-uh) in British school history books for many years, but Boudica or Boudicca (pronounced Boo-dee-kuh) are the spellings commonly used more recently, since they more accurately represent the probable original name, which is derived from the Celtic bouda, meaning ‘victory’.

A marble statue of Boudica and her daughters, carved by J. Howard Thomas in 1913-15 and now housed in Cardiff.

Boudica’s husband was Prasutagus, a Roman client-king. We have to assume that Prasutagus was the regent and Boudica the consort, since it was Prasutagus who had negotiated the treaty with Rome. The Roman emperor at the time (AD 61) was Nero, and the military governor of Britain was Caius Suetonius Paulinus. Prasutagus was a weak king, although the Iceni were a powerful people and held sway over all of what is now Norfolk, most of Suffolk, and parts of Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. Prasutagus had made a will bequeathing his property half to his daughters and half to Nero, in what was obviously intended to be a gesture of reconciliation and submission to Rome. It was a very generous gesture, too - the Iceni had prospered in the few years of Roman rule since the Claudian invasion, and the estates of the royal and noble households were heavily stocked with grain and fat cattle.

When Prasutagus died, the temptations offered by such riches were too great for the Roman troops stationed in Iceni territory to resist. The officers began the breach of the treaty by raiding and occupying a few choice farmsteads; they killed the occupying families, or let them escape to fend for themselves, then looted the grain stores, gave themselves feasts on the slaughtered livestock, and took whatever coinage, jewellery or other treasure they could find. As the king’s relatives attempted to retaliate, or to reclaim the estates, they in turn were either killed or taken prisoner as slaves. Such lawlessness was unusual in the Roman army; it was Suetonius Paulinus’s preoccupation with the druids of Anglesey in the west which kept him distant from his officers, and perhaps made them more reckless.

There were Roman procuring agents, merchants and slaves who lived and worked among the Iceni, some of them even in the royal palace. When news broke of the officers* raids on the royal and noble households, these lesser Romans decided that they, too, wanted a piece of the action. They began looting the palace. Boudica, outraged at the open breach of the treaty, attempted to stop them. She was viciously subdued and taken prisoner in her own palace. First she was publicly flogged. Next, she was made to submit to a far greater torture, being forced to watch helplessly while her two young daughters were repeatedly raped in front of her. To modern sensibilities, it is hard to imagine a more vicious or cruel crime; to the ancient Celts, for whom pride and personal honour were immeasurably important, the humiliation as well as the viciousness of the crime itself would have been unbearable.

This blatant insult to the royal family brought the Iceni immediately to open rebellion, and Queen Boudica immediately became their champion and commander. She was, according to Dio Cassius, an imposing figure:

In stature she was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh. A great mass of red hair fell to her hips. Around her neck was a large necklace of gold and she wore a multicoloured tunic over which a thick cloak was fastened with a brooch. . . . She grasped a spear to help her terrify all beholders.

It was not difficult to rouse the Iceni. There had been many pent-up resentments of Prasutagus’s weak conciliations with Rome, and the tribal families responded vigorously to Bo - dica’s call for support.

Other tribes joined the rebellion, notably the Trinobantes. The expansion of the Roman settlement at Camulodunum (Colchester) by retiring Roman legionaries had driven many of the Trinobantes into exile or slavery in their own territory. The greatest wound of all had been the erection of a temple to the former emperor and now god Claudius on one of the most sacred sites in Trinobantian territory.

So the Iceni and Troniobantes together began the rebellion by attacking Camulodunum. Tacitus tells us how the Britons took heart from an unusual omen as the attack began:

At this juncture, for no visible reason, the statue of Victory at Camulodunum fell down - with its back turned as though it were fleeing the enemy. Delirious women chanted of destruction at hand. They cried that in the local senate-house outlandish yells had been heard; the theatre had echoed with shrieks; at the mouth of the Thames a phantom settlement had been seen in ruins. A blood-red colour in the sea, too, and shapes like human corpses left by the ebb tide, were interpreted hopefully by the Britons - and with terror by the settlers.

The Roman settlers could not appeal to Suetonius Paulinus - he was still engaged in northern Wales - so they called for help instead from the imperial procurator’s agent, Catus Decianus. He sent them fewer than two hundred men, poorly armed. The settlers, scantily supported by Decianus’s troops, neglected to build a rampart or even trenches - they had become so accustomed to soft living in the conquered province. Nor did they send away their old people, women and children. As Tacitus observes, ‘their precautions were appropriate to a time of unbroken peace’.

Queen Boudica’s army rapidly surrounded the settlement, and the Romans were forced to retreat to the temple. The ninth Roman division, commanded by Quintus Petilius Cerialis Caesius Rufus, came to relieve the town, but the infantry was massacred and its commander escaped with his few remaining cavalry. The temple garrison fell, and Boudica’s rebels seized Camulodunum.

With scarcely a pause, they advanced southwards towards Londinium. At the time, London was no larger or more important a town than Colchester, although its control of the Thames gave it obvious strategic importance. It did not even rank as a Roman settlement, although it was a busy trading centre. Suetonius Paulinus, alerted by reports of the fall of Camulodunum, marched swiftly from north Wales and reached Londinium before the rebels. We can presume that his original intent was to stand and resist the Celtic forces there, but he appears to have changed his mind. Despite what Tacitus calls the ‘lamentations and appeals’ of the Roman merchants, he decided to withdraw and let the rebels have Londinium. Under Boudica’s command, the Celtic force swept through the city, slaughtering indiscriminately as they went.

(In parenthesis, it is worth noting that this is the only occasion in history when a Celtic army successfully invaded and occupied the city of London as an identifiable territory. The Cornish rebel army of 1497, led by Myghal Josef an Gov and Tomas Flamank, reached London and gave battle against the king, but was defeated at Blackheath. The Celts may be said to have the distinction of having initiated both the first and the last invasions of London.)

Fired by their success at Londinium, Boudica’s forces moved on to Verulamium (modern St. Albans), which they also rapidly subdued. As so often happened in Celtic warfare, however; indiscipline, greed and excessive cruelty dissipated the Celtic strength:

The natives enjoyed plundering and thought of nothing else. Bypassing forts and garrisons, they made for where loot was richest and protection weakest. Roman and provincial deaths at the places mentioned are estimated at seventy thousand. For the British did not take or sell prisoners, or practise other war-time exchanges. They could not wait to cut throats, hang, burn and crucify - as though avenging, in advance, the retribution that was on its way.

In light of the tragic indignities forced upon Boudica, it is perhaps not surprising that the Celts took no prisoners, or that they were thirsty for vengeance in recompense for the gross insult given to their queen. Incidentally, there is no other mention of Celts ever using crucifixion as a method of execution - that was a Roman invention - so Tacitus’s account may not be wholly reliable in this particular regard.

Suetonius Paulinus gathered his forces - the fourteenth brigade, detachments of the twentieth, plus auxiliaries, amounting to about ten thousand men - and moved to battle with Boudica without further delay. We do not know where this battle took place, other than that it was somewhere in the Midlands, within open country, and that Suetonius Paulinus ranged his troops in a defile with a wood behind him so that he could not be attacked from the rear. Mancetter in Warwickshire has been suggested as a possible site. Tacitus’s account of the battle begins with a rousing speech from Boudica:

Boudica drove round all the tribes in a chariot with her daughters in front of her. ‘We British are used to woman commanders in war,’ she cried. ‘I am descended from mighty men! But now I am not fighting for my kingdom and my wealth. I am fighting as an ordinary person for my lost freedom, my bruised body, and my outraged daughters. Nowadays Roman rapacity does not even spare our bodies. Old people are killed, virgins raped. But the gods will grant us the vengeance we

Deserve! The Roman division which dared to fight us is annihilated.

The others cower in their camps, or watch for a chance to escape.

They will never face even the din and roar of all our thousands, much less the shock of our onslaught. Consider how many of you are fighting - and why. Then you will win this battle, or perish.

That is what I, a woman, plan to do! Let the men live in slavery if they will.

That image of Boudica in her chariot with her daughters beside her is very familiar to Londoners, although they may not know it. A statue depicting the rebel Celtic queen was erected in 1902 on the Embankment opposite the Houses of Parliament, where it is passed by thousands upon thousands of Londoners and visitors every day, a romantic but nevertheless fitting representation of the spirit of British nationhood. It is worth noting that the image of the queen and her two daughters is reminiscent of the image of the Triple Goddess, feared and revered by the Celts over many centuries.

However inspiring Boudica may have been as a commander; her military generalship seems to have been less impressive. By meeting Suetonius Paulinus on flat, open ground, she lost any opportunity she might have had for ambush or for surprise manoeuvres: the collision was head-on, and very straightforward, which was of greater advantage to the more disciplined Roman soldiers. Worse, she had stationed all her supply waggons immediately behind the Celtic positions. When the Romans advanced in wedge formation, the Celts retreated, but were blocked by their own waggons, which could not be moved out of the way quickly enough. The Celtic warriors stumbled backwards into a confused melee of women, children, pack animals and belongings. The Romans pressed their advance with uncharacteristic ruthlessness - giving no quarter in exactly the same way as the Celts had done in earlier battles - and slaughtered warriors, women, children and pack animals alike. Tacitus gives the casualty numbers as four hundred dead and some wounded for the Romans, and eighty thousand dead for the Celts. This is almost certainly an exaggeration. The Roman force actually consisted of XTV Gemina, part of XX Valeria and auxiliaries, perhaps as many as 20 000 in total, with the Celtic forces probably about 50 000 in total.

When the battle was lost, Boudica poisoned herself, according to Tacitus. He does not tell us what became of her body. Suetonius Paulinus had ordered the second division up from Exeter to assist in the battle, but its commander; Poenius Postumus - presumably because he little regarded Suetonius Paulinus’s chances against the might of Boudica - refused the order. When he heard of the Roman victory, he stabbed himself to death.

Suetonius Paulinus solidified the victory by bringing in another two thousand regulars from Germany. The procurator Catus Decianus was dismissed, and a new imperial agent, Caius Julius Alpinus Classicianus, was appointed in his place. The rebellious tribes suffered intense famine, and their anger grew even greater, but so also did their sense of helplessness. Nero became concerned about the restlessness in the distant province, and sent a ridiculous envoy in the person of his foppish former slave, Polyclitus, at whom the still rebellious Celts merely roared with laughter. At one point, Nero even considered abandoning Britain altogether, as too remote and rebellious to be worth all the effort. If he could have been persuaded that Gaul would remain uninfluenced by the British tribes, he might have risked it. Eventually, however, Nero replaced the inept Suetonius Paulinus by Petronius Turpilianus, and the period of open rebellion came to an end.

Miranda Green comments on the association recorded by the classical historian Dio Cassius between Boudica and the Celtic war-goddess, Andraste:

Andraste and the unspeakable rites carried out in her honour are described by Dio in connection with the massacre of Roman women by Boudica at London. . . . Boudica’s female prisoners were sacrificed in Andraste’s grove, their breasts cut off and stuffed in their mouths, before being impaled vertically on great skewers. . . . The propitiation of the goddess appears to have demanded blood-sacrifices of especial ferocity, while the slaughter of the women seems to have been part of a specific rite associated with a goddess of battle.

As with all the classical authors, there is, of course, no guarantee of truth, and Dio’s account of Boudica’s ferocity may be yet another colourful fiction created to emphasize how barbarous those barbarians really were. Howevei; Miranda Green’s main point, namely that there appears to have been some real ritual connection between Boudica as warrior-queen and Andraste, one of the many Celtic goddesses of war, is well made.

It is clear that Boudica, like Vercingetorix, was able to command the respect and allegiance of Celts other than those of her own tribe, and that in itself gives evidence of an extraordinary strength of character. We can deduce that she was physically without blemish, and that Dio Cassius’s description of her as large of stature and imposing in aspea may be historically accurate. As with Vercingetorix, we can also easily imagine that Boudica did indeed establish authority by acts of unusual cruelty and savagery. She must certainly have had real battle skills, and real physical courage. We see in coins struck by the Redones and Turones, tribes of northwestern Gaul, images of naked female riders and charioteers waving weapons and shields; although they may be representations of goddesses rather than queens, the image of the woman warrior is quite unmistakable. There have been many attempts to ‘soften’ the image of Boudica, concentrating on the grievous wrongs done to her and her nobility of spirit, but my personal view is that the most obvious interpretation of her character is also the most likely one: she was probably a physically imposing figure, battle-hardened, ferociously proud and sensible of her royal status and rights, capable of acts of great cruelty herself, a ruthless and determined military leader.

She has certainly made her mark on history; her brief campaign lasted only a few months and ended in failure, yet Boudica has become a symbol of the British fighting spirit and passion for freedom and independence. John Fletcher wrote a play about her in 1619; William Cowper and Alfred Lord Tennyson both wrote long ballads in her honour; John Milton, a noted misogynist, dismissed claims of Boudica’s greatness, saying in his History of Britain that her story showed only that ‘in Britain women were men, and men women’. In the popular imagination, Boudica has acquired some of the attributes of Britannia: she represents all that is noble, determined and independent in the British character.