Boudicca: The Firebrand

Boudicca: The Firebrand

The first Briton to burst onto the pages of history was none other than Boudicca; a woman who had one thing on her mind; revenge. A fiery Celtic leader, she took a stand against the Roman conquerors who had raped her daughters and pillaged her land, fighting for the independence of the Iceni tribe of which she was Queen.

Boadicea Haranguing the
Britons by John Opie

Boudicca was a striking woman; tall with fire red or tawny hair, and a piercing stare. The Roman historians Tacitus and Dio both confirm that she was of royal descent, although her parentage is unknown. She was a member of the Iceni tribe, who occupied the area that now roughly equates to the county of Norfolk, and had occupied the area prior to the Roman Conquest in AD 43.

Boudicca’s husband Prasutagus was the King of the Iceni, and the couple had two or three daughters. Prasutagus was possibly one of the eleven British kings who surrendered to Claudius on invasion in AD 43 and was therefore allowed to keep his kingdom, or he may have been a Roman puppet installed after the Conquest. Either way, this enabled the Iceni to remain nominally independent, although Prasutagus named the Roman Emperor Claudius as co-heir to the kingdom, a sign of deep-seated Roman control. The Iceni did act as if they were in charge of their own lands as Prasutagus acted as if he was an independent king. This was most notable in AD 47 when the Iceni revolted when the governor Publius Ostorius Scapula tried to disarm them. However, Prasutagus survived this incident and both Tacitus and Dio agreed that Prasutagus lived a long life and became wealthy. Celtic law did not discriminate against female inheritors, so when Prasutagus left his kingdom to his wife and daughters, it was accepted by the tribe.

However, to the Romans, Prasutagus’ legacy would be treated very differently. It was general practice for nominally independent kings who had submitted to the Romans, to rule for life and their lands to be subsumed into the Empire on their deaths. The Romans entered Iceni lands as if they were conquerors and forcefully took it over, but not before destroying crops and homes. Roman creditors, including Seneca the Younger, chose this point to call in their debts, further attacking the Iceni. One creditor, Catus Decianus, was supposedly particularly greedy, and called in all the loans that Prasutagus owed him. According to Tacitus, defiant Boudicca was flogged, and her daughters were raped, and it was this humiliation that made Boudicca take a stand.

The Iceni were up against a strong foe. Gaius Suetonius Paulinus had been appointed the Governor of Brittania in AD 59 after a successful career in Africa. In AD 41 he had put down a rebellion in Mauretania (modern day Algeria and Morocco) and was the first European to cross the Atlas Mountains, eventually discovering black tribes in areas that now correspond with modern day Senegal and Mali, and was mentioned by Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, the largest surviving work from the Roman period. He had been appointed as Governor to replace his predecessor, Quintus Veranius, and continued his policy of ruthlessly quashing the Welsh tribes, particularly in Northern Wales.

In AD 61, Suetonius continued his predecessor’s conquest of Wales and made an attack on Mona (modern day Anglesey). Boudicca took Suetonius’ absence as an opportunity for revolt, and made an alliance with the neighbouring Trinovantes tribe and decided to attack Roman settlements in the Southeast. According to Tacitus, their ancestor’s who had thwarted Julius Caesar’s earlier attempt to conquest Britain; and the German leader Arminius, who had famously destroyed three Roman Legions in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, inspired Boudicca and the Celts. Dio paints a more supernatural picture of Boudicca, claiming she released a hare and decided to follow which way it ran, while evoking the British goddess of victory, Andraste.

Whether it was the way the hare ran or the fact of her alliance with the Trinovantes tribe, their first target was Camulodunum (modern day Colchester). It had previously been the Trinovantes capital, but having been conquered by the Roman’s it was turned into a colonia, or the most important type of Roman city. Camulodunum was not defended by fortifications and it’s garrison stationed only 200 soldiers. It was easy pickings for Boudicca’s forces. The last defenders of Camulodunum sought refuge in the temple, but Boudicca’s forces besieged them and they surrendered after two days. Quintus Petillus Cerialus tried to relieve the city with Legio IX Hispania but were defeated and his army wiped out. Catus Decianus, who had originally been in charge of supplying Camulodunum with troops, fled to Gaul in disgrace.

The jubilant Boudicca and her army next turned their eyes southwards, towards the city of Londinium (present day London). It was a new city, having been built by the Romans after the conquest of AD 43, and had grown to become rather a wealthy city under Roman rule. Meanwhile, Suetonius, hearing of the rebellion, marched down the ancient Watling Street to Londinium, in an attempt to surprise Boudicca’s forces. On seeing the scale of the Iceni Queen’s forces, Tacitus describes how Suetonius decided to abandon Londinium to it’s fate, as he felt he could not defeat her in the city, to save the Roman colony. Boudicca’s army slaughtered those who did not leave with Suetonius, and burnt the fledgling city to the ground. They then turned to Verulamium (modern day St Albans), which suffered the same fate.

Tacitus paints a clear picture of the sheer violence and cruelty perpetrated by the Celtic army. He wrote how they did not take prisoners, or bargain, or make deals with the Romans, but burnt, murdered and mutilated all those that were in the way. Dio goes further, and describes how the Celts made sacrifices to the goddess Andraste, by impaling noble Roman women, cutting their breasts off and sewing them to their mouths. However, this depiction could just be the imaginings of a largely hostile chronicler.

Meanwhile, Suetonius prepared his next move. While Boudicca ravaged Verulamium, he amassed a force of ten thousand men from all over the province, including the Legio XIV Gemina and the XX Valeria Victrix. In spite of the success of Boudicca’s rebellion, other Romans did not answer Suetonius’ cry for help, including Poenius Postumus who kept the IX Hispana safely within the walls of Exeter.

Suetonius, realising he was outnumbered and unsupported, picked his battleground carefully. Retreating back across Watling Street, the great Roman road that crossed most of southern England, he went to a place that has been identified as being in the Midlands. Along the road, he found a narrow gorge backed by a forest, which would have prevented Boudicca from outflanking the Romans with her larger forces. It was not long before Boudicca and her army arrived.

It was at this point that Tacitus credits Boudicca with a speech in which she portrays herself as an ordinary women, fighting for her, her daughters and her peoples liberty. He states “she was not avenging her kingdom and her power as a woman born of noble ancestors…but rather her lost freedom.” It is here that the legendary Boudicca is first glimpsed; the noble savage defending he island kingdom.

In contrast, Tacitus also gives Suetonius a speech, which contained the phrases “There are more women than men in their ranks” and “Just win and you’ll have everything.” While Boudicca’s speech seems to be a later construction due to it’s poetic turn of words, Suetonius’ is blunt and forthright and may have been his original speech to his desperate troops.

Boudicca’s forces charged towards Suetonius’, but due to the geography of the area were channelled into the gorge where Suetonius’ army picked them off with their pila or javelins. With the Britons decimated by the javelins, they retreated, allowing the Romans to use their trademark wedge formation to push the Britons back and slaughter them. The Britons were trapped against their own supply wagons and were decimated.

The statue of Boudicca and her daughters by Thomas
Thornycroft (1905). Photograph by A. Brady

Tacitus and Dio come to different conclusions about Boudicca’s demise. Dio argues that she fell sick and died and was then given an expensive Celtic funeral. However, it’s Tacitus’ account of Boudicca’s suicide along with her daughters that has gone into romantic legend. She supposedly gave them all cup of poison, and they lay down in the grass together to die. A further legend presents the idea that she is buried under Kings Cross Station, but this seems to be more myth than anything else, and an attempt to link this ancient, powerful warrior with a Britain she would have barely recognised.

After Boudicca’s death in AD 60, her legend gradually ascended to new heights. During the nineteenth century, Queen Victoria became greatly associated with the legend of the Iceni Queen, as their names come from the same “Victory” word root. A statue of her and her daughters was suggested by Prince Albert and built by Thomas Thornycroft, finished in 1905. It stands next to the Houses of Parliament in London, the city she once destroyed. Boudicca had now become a symbol of the British Empire, and her statue was accompanied by the words “Regions Caesar never knew/ Thy posterity shall sway.”

In life, Boudicca was the first Briton to appear on the pages of the history books, and was a powerful, angry and failed rebel. She conjures up images of a tribal Britain, long lost in history, and a time of British isolation from the rest of the world. Over a thousand years after her death she became a potent symbol for the British Empire, the largest empire the world had ever seen, and even the imperialism it embodied which she had despised in life.

Next time...Margaret of Anjou and the Paper Crown

Books to read:

Adler, Eric, 'Boudicca's Speech in Tacitus and Dio' (2008)