by Nene Adams ©2000 - All rights reserved

In an age when the navel of the world was Rome, and all roads led to that magnificent city of the seven hills, there burst onto the scene a barbarian woman who would, by her actions in life and in death, become a legend.

Her name was Boudica (or Boadicea or Boudicca) and she was a member of the Iceni tribe of Celts who occupied the territory around modern Norfolk and northern Suffolk in Britain.

When Gaius Julius Caesar and his legions tramped through Britain in his second invasion of Gaul, around 54 B.C., doing their level Latin best to bring the recalcitrant Celts beneath the Roman yoke, the Great General accepted the surrender of a number of tribes, including the powerful Iceni. In 48 A.D., however, the Iceni were at it again, and the Romans under the governor Aulus Plautius hiked up their togas and gave them a good thrashing, bringing the tribe into line once more. Despite these embarrassing little lapses, the Iceni were still allowed a quasi-independence as a client-kingdom of Rome, with their king considered a client-king and having certain obligations and responsibilities towards the Empire.

In 49 A.D., the King of the Iceni, Prasutagus, married Boudica, a woman of royal birth. The real trouble didn't start until Prasutagus died around 60 A.D., leaving Boudica a widow with two unmarried daughters. In his will, the King left half of his lands and possessions to the Roman Empire, and half to his widow. Boudica was named as regent for his daughters, as he had no sons to inherit his throne. Poor Prasutagus thought he was providing for peace with this Solomon-like solution, but alas! He was wrong. As a client-state of Rome, dominion over the territories of his kingdom was reserved for Rome alone - at least in the rapacious eyes of the chief financial administrator of the British province, one Catus Decianus.

The writer Dio Cassius describes Boudica as a woman in her 30's at the time of her husband's death. She had a mass of tawny hair hanging to her waist, she was very tall and strapping, with a fierce expression and a harsh voice. Every inch a Queen, and a Warrior Queen at that. No doubt she expected her late husband's will to be honored; her shock can be imagined when the local Roman administration reacted unfavorably and with very unfortunate consequences.

Representatives of Decianus made haste to seize the late King's estate and all of his treasure - which was not inconsiderable. Furthermore, members of Prasutagus' court were humiliated and maltreated. In the Roman writer Tacitus' words, "kingdom and household alike were plundered like prizes of war." To add injury to insult, Boudica was flogged and her two daughters raped.

Decianus' treatment of the Iceni was not designed to provoke. In fact, peoples subject to Rome were often handled in a brutal fashion, in order to teach the barbarians their "place," emphasize their lowly status and reinforce the uselessness of resistance to Rome. In a continuance of his aggressive policy, certain moneys which had been given to the Britons as a gift from the Emperor Claudius were now considered loans - at least in Decianus' view. After confiscating Prasutagus' treasure and inflicting pain and suffering on his widowed Queen and heirs, Decianus demanded the repayment of this "loan."

This demand, on top of the mistreatment they had already suffered, was the straw that broke the Celt's complacency. Having nothing further to gain by backing Rome, some tribes in the British province became seething hotbeds of festering resentment and intrigue. Into this boiling and brooding pot stepped Boudica.

She gave a speech to the Iceni and the Trinovantes tribes (and probably members of the Coritani, Corvonii and Brigantes) on the eve of the battle which was to destroy the Roman town of Camulodonum. Both Tacitus and Dio give accounts of this rousing speech - she talked about the difference between slavery and freedom, reminded her people of their ancestral way of life, slowly dying beneath the yoke of Rome. Boudica didn't spare the details about her mistreatment or the rape of her daughters, either. Brandishing a spear and praying to Andraste, goddess of Victory, Boudica released a hare from the folds of her robes - this was done as a form of divination - and the animal was seen to run in an auspicious direction. Having driven her tribesmen into a howling frenzy, and assuming the mantle of priestess, prophetess and war leader, Boudica leaped aboard her chariot and led her initial host of 120,000 to helpless Camulodonum.

Why wasn't Camulodonum prepared? After all, retired veterans of the Roman legions had settled there and they certainly knew which end of the sword was sharp. The fact is that the Romans simply could not conceive that the Celts would rebel, a common mistake on the part of a conquering power. Even when the citizens knew the Celts were coming, they were not unduly alarmed. Decianus was content to send a mere 200 men to defend the town; there were no walls or ramparts built and the women, children and aged were not sent away. This short-sighted complacency would have disastrous consequences. Boudica swept in at the head of her army, overran the town, sacked and burned it to the ground. The slaughter was fierce and after surveying the smoking ruins, she turned her face towards Londinium, capital city of Roman Britain.

Following the sack of Camulodonum, the IXth Legion Hispana, under the command of Petilius Cerialis, set off from nearby Longthorpe for the town with the intention of smashing the rebellion. The legion was met somewhere to the north of Camulodonum by a waiting British contingent - a separate striking force from those which had attacked the town. The ambush was a bloody success and Cerialis' infantry was cut to pieces. He himself escaped with his calvary and high-tailed it back to his camp. Like the rat that he was, the procurator Decianus fled the sinking ship, along with his officers and his papers.

Shortly before the Camulodonum disaster, the governor of the province, Seutonius Paulinus, was on the island of Mona, the sacred sanctuary of the Druids. A number of British rebels had taken refuge there and Paulinus was a man with a mission - namely, search and destroy. It wasn't just the rebels he was after, either; Romans had long had a horror of the Druidical practice of human sacrifice and Paulinus intended to stamp it out once and for all. After the Celtic enemy had been destroyed and the groves put to the torch, Paulinus congratulated himself on a job well done, then he got the dreadful news about Camulodonum and made all haste back to Londinium.

Unfortunately, Londinium wasn't a fortified city and was unable to withstand either siege or attack. Turning a deaf ear to the wailing civilians, Paulinus decided to abandon the town to the enemy. The Roman legions and calvary marched away, accompanied by the able-bodied. All those who could not travel were left behind to face their doom.

Boudica and her army fell upon Londinium like a pack of hungry wolves on a baby lamb and the results were equally predictable. Dio Cassius lovingly describes the stomach-wrenching slaughter and torture of the citizens, while Tacitus contents himself with a statement that "there was no form of savage cruelty which the angry victors refrained from." Afterwards, Londinium was also plundered and put to the torch.

Next, Boudica and her triumphant army turned a burning gaze on Verulamium. Once again showing a cool headed and cold hearted reasoning, Paulinus declined to defend the town. The more fortunate citizens loaded up their valuables and got the hell out of Dodge, figuratively speaking, while the remainder stayed to be skewered. Sharing the same fate as Camulodonum and Londinium, the town was burned... but only after every scrap of booty was snatched up by the victors.

It has to be said that Boudica's army was probably more interested in plunder than in justice. So far, they had bypassed forts or other military garrisons and concentrated their war-like efforts on targets where the loot was richest and the protection weakest. In the meantime, Paulinus was gathering his strength and securing reinforcements, eventually welding together a force of men estimated at between 10-15,000. At this point, the estimated strength of Boudica's army was around 230,000, so Paulinus was seriously outnumbered. Nevertheless, he decided to meet the Britons without delay and chose his ground for the final battle.

Looks can be deceiving, however. It is true that the Celts outnumbered the Romans, but Boudica's army was composed mainly of farmers who wore no body armor of any sort and were not used to fighting in formation. They were undisciplined, poorly equipped and untrained - in short, everything the Romans were not. They had also brought along their families; women and children in wagons stationed at the edge of the battlefield at their backs, prepared to act as cheerleaders and morale boosters. The Celts were overconfident and in that boastful pride lay their downfall.

The training, armor and weapons brought to bear by the Roman legions carried the day. The Celts, trapped between the advancing Romans and their own wagons, were slaughtered, along with their woman and baggage animals. Tacitus' careful estimate says that 80,000 Celts died, compared to only four hundred Roman dead. Boudica did not fall on the battlefield; she was taken prisoner and committed suicide by swallowing poison. The fate of her daughters is unknown, although it is likely that they, too, survived the battle and perhaps were given a final, fatal kindness at the hands of their loving mother, who did not want her children to fall into Roman hands twice.Her dream of freedom and the redressing of wrongs died with her. Although resistance to Roman rule continued, the province was bloodily pacified and the Iceni did not revolt again. What, then, did Boudica gain by her rebellion?

Only the satisfaction of having, even for a moment, one last taste of true freedom - something denied her people for seventeen years of Roman mis-rule. The legions of Paulinus turned her vision of a free Britain to ashes, but like a phoenix, Boudica the Warrior Queen of the Iceni rose to live again in legend, in plays, books, poems and song. In London today can be seen the famous statue of Boudica and her daughters in their scythe-wheeled chariot, which was erected by the London County Council in 1902. Inscribed on the plinth of the statue are the lines: "Regions Caesar never knew/Thy posterity shall sway" - by William Cowper.

The spirit of Boudica lives in all Amazons - ancient or modern. She will never be forgotten, and that is the greatest immortality of all.

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