BOUDICCA - Queen of the ICENI

Queen Boudicca (or Bodicea), waged a rebellion against the Romans in Britain in 61 A.D, and is something of a legend, but what do we know about her?

In the 1st century A.D, Boudicca married King Prasutagus of the Iceni, a Celtic tribe in East Anglia. At that time Britain, or at least a large part of Britain, was a Roman province. The Iceni became very rich in the period before the Romans invaded Britain, due to a thriving trade with the Romans across the English Channel. King Prasutagus also profited from this partnership, so much so that he bequeathed half of his land and effects to the Roman Empire and half to his Queen and their two daughters. Perhaps he took the view that by dividing his estate in this way, peace could be kept between the Iceni and the Romans, this was to prove a grave mistake.

When King Prasutagus died, the Romans seized the lands and property intended for Boudicca and her daughters, they then flogged Boudicca and raped her daughters. The old saying "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" could have been written for such a time as this. Boudicca amassed a vast army of supporters, Britons who still did not want to be a subject population under the Romans. Boudicca's cause was fuelled by discontent among the natives, who had probably heard for themselves about the wanton murder, and the destruction of the sacred groves and altars of the Druids on the island of Mona (Anglesey, North Wales), by soldiers under the command of Suetonius Paulinius, an ambitious military governor who wanted to make his mark.

The Boudiccan armies laid waste to Londinium (London), and sought retribution against those supporters of Rome, they also destroyed St Albans and Colchester, murdering and torching as they went.

Whilst Suetonius was busy subduing the island of Mona, he got word that murder and mayhem was taking place to the South, and had to request more men, his re-enforcements were only small in number compared to the huge numbers of rebellious Britons. But the Romans were better disciplined and better trained than the Britons, what they lacked in number they made up for in strategic skill.

Suetonius played a waiting game and chose the moment; it is believed that he waited until the Britons were in a gorge, which was densely wooded (probably somewhere in Warwickshire). The two sides engaged in battle, but as time went on the Britons lost the advantage, not helped by the fact that their chariots could not easily be driven through the trees. Many thousands of Britons were put to the sword, including the elderly and children, who were at the scene of battle because their leaders were so confident of victory that they took their families along to witness the Romans defeat.

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