Boudicca of the Iceni
-Chrissie
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By the last years of the Republic, there were few areas upon which Rome had set its sights that did not feel the influence of the growing empire. The British Isles were one of these. In 55 BCE, Gaius Julius Caesar crossed the Channel as part of his conquest of Gaul on the basis that the Gallic tribes were getting aid against the Romans from the island. He took with him two poorly equipped legions, indicating that this trip was for information gathering rather than to begin a conquest. When he crossed the Channel the next year, he brought with him a force of five legions and additional cavalry. His account in the Bellum Gallicum says that the Britons made no attempt to stop the Romans as they landed, because they were intimidated by the size of the force. Caesar and his legions ventured inland but soon had to turn back because a storm had damaged many of the ships left on the coast. After a few weeks spent in repair, they returned to the area around the Thames River only to find that some British tribes had come together under a warlord, Cassivellaunus, and were prepared to fight. The Romans beat them easily in a pitched battle, which led to months of harassment through guerilla tactics by the British against Caesar’s men. In the meantime, some British tribes offered friendship and alliance to Caesar; it was through these that he found out the location of Cassivellaunus’ stronghold, which he besieged in August of 54 BCE. The warlord worked with his allies to draw Caesar away with an attack on the Roman ships at the coast, but this was unsuccessful. He surrendered to Caesar and agreed to send hostages and a regular payment of tribute. Caesar made the agreement somewhat hastily; he sought to return to Gaul before winter set in and the death of his daughter Julia, wife to his fellow Triumvir Gnaeus Pompey Magnus, meant that he faced political problems as well. No Roman soldiers were left to garrison the area or to guarantee the tribute payments. Britain remained outside the Roman sphere for nearly a century.
A second attempt to take Britain for Rome was planned by Caligula, but was thwarted at the last minute at the Channel, when the emperor claimed their way was blocked by his rival, the god Neptune. Caligula’s forces fought a battle against the god by wading into the water and stabbing it until he declared a victory, after which they were instructed to take pretty stones and shells from the beach as spoils of war. He returned to Rome and was assassinated shortly thereafter.
It was Caligula’s successor Claudius who finally conducted a successful conquest. In 43 CE, the emperor himself led the forces overland to the Channel and onto the island. He was helped not only by Caesar’s accounts but also by the plans and preparations made in earnest for Caligula’s aborted invasion. His forces also included elephants, which were always impressive in a battle, if not entirely controllable. While the Romans certainly did meet resistance, Claudius claimed to receive the surrender of eleven of the British tribes without any losses, an exaggeration at best. Some of these were given the status of independent allies, including a group called the Iceni, led by a man named Prasutagus. Claudius then established a provincial capital at Camulodunum (modern Colchester) and returned to Rome to celebrate his victory. The territory was left under the authority of various Roman governors, who continued the conquest through the rest of the reign of Emperor Claudius and into that of his successor, Nero.
While we have a good number of primary sources for the events described above, there are only two surviving primary sources for the Boudiccan rebellion, both Roman, Cassius Dio and Publius Cornelius Tacitus. Dio wrote nearly a century after the events he describes, and his actual work is not extant; his telling is known from a summary written in the eleventh century. Tacitus wrote a few decades after the uprising; one of his sources was an eyewitness, his father-in-law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, who was in the army of Gaius Suetonius Paulinus during this time.
Prasutagus died in 60 CE. Having no sons, he willed his territory jointly to his two daughters and to Rome. Neither of these bequests were unusual: women did rule some British tribes and locals whose territory was surrounded by Rome often willed it to the empire, to avoid the human cost of Rome taking it by force. Whether Prasutagus had any understanding with the Roman governor about how the will would be received is not known, but the Romans decided to ignore the part about his daughters and simply annexed the territory for themselves. The soldiers who were tasked with carrying out the annexation asserted their authority by looting the villages and assaulting anyone they felt like. Boudicca and her daughters were taken hostage. The queen was whipped and her daughters raped as an assertion of Roman authority. These actions had the opposite effect: Boudicca began to formulate plans for a rebellion. The Iceni, enraged and desiring to avenge the violence brought upon themselves and their leaders, needed little encouragement. They also found friends and allies among other tribes who had received similar treatment.
Boudicca led her army first to the city of Camulodunum which, in the years since Claudius’ conquest, had become a community of retired legionaries and had very little military support. It was destroyed, though the last Romans held out for two days while besieged in the Temple of Claudius. The general Quintus Petillius Cerialis tried to get to the city, but his army was wiped out, leaving only Cerialis and a few of the cavalry. The Britons then moved on to Londinium, another Roman colony and the beginnings of the city of London. News of the rebellion reached the general Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, who took his army to meet them near the city. Seeing the size of the force led by Boudicca (much larger than his own) and with news of their victories, Paulinus decided to order evacuation of Londinium rather than try to hold it. It had already been largely evacuated by those who had the means. Boudicca’s people destroyed it, then moved on to the town of Verulamium (modern St. Albans), sacking it as well. It is estimated that they killed between seventy and eighty thousand people in these attacks.
Not long after the sack of Verulamium, Paulinus set up an ambush for the rebels. He had a smaller, but much more disciplined, force, which he deployed in such a way as to push Boudicca’s army into a small space, making her larger numbers irrelevant. It was a slaughter. Tacitus says that Boudicca’s 80,000 were destroyed with a loss of only 400 Roman soldiers. Boudicca did not die during the battle but shortly after; Tacitus says she committed suicide, Dio claims she died of an illness. Paulinus acted punitively against the rebels in hopes of quelling any future rebellion: all those involved were killed, including women and children in the baggage train. Not even the pack animals were spared. Southern Britain did not see any more major rebellions during the rest of the time it was under Roman control. By the time of the collapse of the Western Empire, they had become so thoroughly Romanized that the epitome of Britishness, King Arthur, may very well have been a Roman general.