The year, 61 AD. The place, somewhere between Londinium and Viroconium in the land that would much later be called England.
Two armies face off against each other. The contrast between the two couldn’t be starker. On the one side, formed up in disciplined ranks on carefully chosen high ground, are the most feared soldiers in the ancient world, Roman legionnaires. These men are armed and armored with the state-of-the-art weaponry of their day and trained to function as a unit.
On the other side, at the base of the hill, are a mostly unarmored collection of Celtic freedom-fighters, some naked, screaming their defiance in a milling, chaotic mass. After years of disarmament imposed by the conquering Romans, they are poorly equipped, but they wave what weapons they have with vigor. Women stand alongside their men, some bearing swords.
Most prominent among them is a woman in a chariot, her face painted blue patterns in the fashion of a druidic warrior priestess. Her name is Boudica, Queen of the Iceni tribe, and leader of all the rebels. She is an imposing woman of greater than average height, with long red hair flowing to beneath her waste, now flying behind her like a guidon as she rides up and down her lines. She addresses her warriors:
“I am descended from mighty men! But now I am not fighting for my kingdom and 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 legion which dared to fight 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.”
The Celts bang their shields and scream their readiness for battle.
Up the hill, the Roman Commander is more succinct.
“Ignore the racket made by these savages. There are more women than men in their ranks. They are not soldiers—they’re not even properly equipped. We’ve beaten them before and when they see our weapons and feel our spirit, they’ll crack. Stick together. Throw the javelins, then push forward: knock them down with your shields and finish them off with your swords. Forget about plunder. Just win and you’ll have everything.”
His men make no response.
The Celts begin their charge up the hill. They have a few charioteers in the vanguard, but most are on foot, making their way up the slope hemmed by forests on either side, channeled into the waiting Roman legion.
The Romans lock their shields, only their spears protruding, creating an unbroken porcupine wall facing the enemy. Behind the front rank, the men make ready with javelins, prepared to throw into the charging barbarians.
The Celtic charioteers make ready with javelins of their own. Behind them the lightly armed men and women charge faster, despite the incline, letting loose their battle cries the whole way.
The armies meet at the top of the hill, the fate of Britain in the balance. Will the Romans crush these rebels as they have all others who stood against their empire, or will the Britons win their freedom?
Before we answer that question, lets go a few years back and find out how we got here.
You’ve probably heard of the Celts. If you’re an American, its most likely in the context of the Boston Celtics basketball team, which has a shamrock-covered leprechaun for a mascot. Celtic, in contemporary popular culture, is associated with Ireland or, sometimes, Scotland. Because of that you might have the impression that the Celts originated in Ireland or Scotland.
This is incorrect. We associate the Celts with Ireland and other remote areas of the British Isles not because the Celts originated there, but because those were the last holdouts of Celtic culture after the Romans annihilated it everywhere else.
In fact, the best historical evidence is that the Celts originated somewhere in central Europe, perhaps near modern-day Austria and from there spread out to cover most of Europe. The celts were not an empire. Instead, they were a loosely affiliated ethnic group consisting of hundreds of tribes with a shared culture, set of religious beliefs, and language. They built no cities and had no system of writing, and because of that our knowledge of them is drawn to a large degree from what other peoples, principally the Romans, wrote down about them.
The Romans regarded them as primitive, warlike savages. But that’s not fair. In many ways they were quite advanced. They were expert craftsmen, artisans, and artists. They were among the first peoples in the world to master the use of iron. They were fierce warriors, to be sure, but part of the reason they were so effective in battle is their early adoption of iron swords and other weapons, which gave them a technological advantage over many contemporary peoples. Although some Celts went into battle naked, that wasn’t always the case. Indeed, the Celts invented chainmail armor, another application of their mastery of iron-working. They were highly successful tradesmen and merchants, leaving behind evidence of massive wealth in the form of jewelry and art wrought of Gold and other precious materials.
Their religious and social life was led by an educated caste of scholar priests and priestesses known as the druids. Boudica herself was a Druid priestess. Druids not only led the religious lives of their communities, interceding with nature and the many gods of the Celtic pantheon, they were also teachers, healers, historians and diplomats. When a dispute arose between two Celtic tribe it was often the druids who negotiated a peace. Druids worked from a young age to memorize enormous amounts of information about their people, its religion, and the natural world. They had to memorize it because, again, there was no written language. Even in the latter days when some Celts had learned to read and write Latin, it was still forbidden to record the sacred knowledge of the Druids in writing. It had to be passed down verbally, from one generation to the next. Unfortunately, because of that, we don’t know nearly as much about the details of their beliefs and practices as we would like to. The problem with oral tradition is that once the chain of person-to-person transmission of knowledge is broken, that knowledge is lost forever.
Which brings us back to the Romans, who over the course of a couple centuries crushed the Celts throughout most of Europe. For internal political reasons, the Romans were driven to conquer. Ambitious young Romans earned renown by leading legions to remote regions and conquering previously independent peoples. By the First Century B.C. Rome was engaged in near-constant attacks on Celtic Europe, gradually pushing the Celtic peoples farther and farther to the fringes of the continent. Julius Caesar himself, the future emperor of Rome, led the conquest of Gaul (modern France and Belgium).
That brings us back to Britain. In talking to merchants in conquered Gaul, Caesar learned of a near mythical land across a sea channel. This was a place where no Roman was known to have set foot and which many doubted even existed. It was off the edge of the map. For someone looking to make history, it was an irresistible opportunity. Caesar wanted to be the first Roman to plant his standard in this mythical land.
So, he did. In 55 B.C. he led a reconnaissance in force on the island, landing on the coast near what is not Dover, England. The locals got wind of it and met him the beach, setting up one of the first recorded contested amphibious assaults in history. The Roman boats were too deep to get all the way up on the beach, so the Roman legionnaires had to leap out in chest deep water while javelins rained down on them from the shore. The Britons waded out to meet the attackers, but in doing they exposed themselves to javelins thrown at their flanks from other Roman boats Caesar had positioned for just that purpose. The water turned red and the Romans suffered losses, but eventually they waded to shore. The Celtic tribesmen retreated.
Caesar constructed a Roman fort, before sallying forth to survey the region. The Celts made several more attempts to dislodge the Romans, trying to ambush isolated pockets of Roman troops sent foraging, but Caesar was always able to rally his troops before suffering major losses. He left at the end of the campaign season, with the weather turning bad, but returned and 54 B.C. to continue his conquest. Taking advantage of the disunity of the Celtic tribes, as he had in Gaul, he obtained pledges of loyalty from a number of the less powerful tribes who saw the Romans as a means to gain advantage over their local enemies. He eventually conquered the most powerful local chieftain, who sued for peace and pledged loyalty to Rome as the price of his survival. At that point Caesar declared mission accomplished, left Britain, and met his fate some years later on the Ides of March. But that, as they say, is a different story.
With Rome distracted by internal power struggles and rebellions elsewhere in the Empire it was almost ninety years before the legions returned. That doesn’t mean the Romans forgot about Britain. There was trade, and the most powerful Celtic kingdoms paid duties (i.e. bribes) in an effort to convince the Romans that it was more profitable to leave them nominally free than to conquer them. It worked for a while. But in 43 A.D. the Roman emperor Claudius ordered the conquest of Briton.
Four legions land in Britain, this time with no intention of leaving. Boudica, born in 30 A.D., was 13 years old when the second Roman invasion began. She was a member of the Iceni tribe, a Celtic people who occupied a territory along the eastern coast of central Britain. As a druidess in training of royal descent, she would have been well-informed about what was happening. You can imagine the conversations, the royal councils, the meetings with other tribal leaders, the divination rituals in sacred oak groves.
All these would have centered around the Romans. How to deal with this seemingly unstoppable force? Do you bargain with them? Do you fight them? Do you flee? Even as these conversations take place, the Romans advance. They capture the capital of the once powerful Catavullauni tribe. They capture hillforts. They burn the villages, torture and kill those who resist while offering bribes to those who collaborate. Soon, within five years, they control almost all of what is now southern England.
In 47 AD the Romans insist that the Iceni relinquish their weapons. The tribe briefly resists, but the Romans bring overwhelming force and Boudica’s husband, Prasutagus, King of the Iceni tribe, concludes resistance is futile. He agrees to collaborate with the Romans on two conditions. He will remain nominally independent as an ally of Rome and will name as his heirs, jointly, the Roman emperor and his children, with the understanding they will continue the arrangement. The Romans agree and even throw in a massive “loan” of Roman currency to their ally. In fact, they insist he accept the loan.
Some years later, Prasutagus dies, and the Romans respond by sending a legion to the Iceni lands to collect repayment on their “loan.” They use non-payment on the loan as a pretext to disregard the bargain with Prasatagus. The legions plunder, steal, and take Iceni into slavery to repay the supposed debt. Queen Boudica objects and insist the Romans honor their agreement to allow her two daughters to rule as a Roman ally as their father did.
In response, the Roman commander orders Boudica flogged in front of her people, and her two daughters raped in front of her. After taking everything of value, the Romans march off, leaving Boudica in the dirt, struggling to comfort her traumatized daughters.
She didn’t stay down for long. She rose to her unusual height and spoke to her gathered tribesmen. It is unknown exactly what she said, but it must have been something. Roman sources claim she had an intense glare. I imagine she swept that glare over every man and woman there, and told them that they could bow down to Roman tyranny no more. They had no choice but to fight and win, or die in humiliation.
Whatever she said, it worked. Soon the Iceni rose up in arms, and quickly forged alliances with other Celtic tribes similarly tired of Roman oppression. She picked a good time to strike. The Roman governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus had taken a large portion of his men west to crush the Druid stronghold of Anglesey, on an island off the coast of modern-day Wales.
Meanwhile, in what is now central England, Boudica led a series of lightning strikes. First she struck against the Roman military colony of Camulodunum, catching the city lightly defended. Her army rampaged through the city, burning it to the ground so thoroughly that archeologists today still find a distinct layer of ash marking when the event occurred. The nearest legion attempted to march to the rescue, but was unprepared for the size and ferocity of Boudica’s army, who caught the legion out in the open and annihilated the Roman infantry. Only some Roman cavalry and the legion’s commander escaped on horseback to tell what had happened.
Then the rebels moved on Londinium, the Roman commercial center that would one day become London. Governor Paulinus got word in time and could have defended the city. But he was a ruthless man. Londinium did not have good natural defenses, and the rebels outnumbered his legions. He calculated that attempting to defend the city would get his men killed in a battle they couldn’t win. He abandoned the city, and Boudica’s people fell upon Londinium like the vengeance of their Gods, leaving another ash pile still visible to modern archeologists. Another Roman settlement, Verulamium, met the same fate. Historians estimate Boudica’s army slew upwards of 80,000 Romans, a huge number in those times.
Governor Paulinus meanwhile gathered all his forces and prepared to make a stand at a carefully chosen location, a wooded defile where his army would be guarded by thick woods on three sides, leaving only a single uphill path for the Celts to charge if they chose to fight him. That brings us back to where we started, to the climactic battle for the fate of Britain fought on this unknown hill somewhere in what is now central England.
I would like to be able to tell you that the heroic warrior queen won her people’s freedom that day. I would like be able to tell you that the cruel imperial governor was defeated. If this were a fantasy novel, that’s how I would right it.
Unfortunately, this is not fiction. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. The Celts, poorly equipped after the earlier confiscation of their weaponry, charged with heartbreaking bravely. They threw their unarmored bodies against the Roman shield wall, and they died. The armored, discipline men of the Roman legions held firm, methodically, robotically, stabbing under their shields as they pushed forward, crushing the rebels under foot, pushing downhill with gravity on their side. The narrowness of the battlefield made it impossible for the Celts to take advantage of their numbers, or to flank the advancing Romans.
Tragically, as was tradition, the Celts took their families to war with them. The family wagons had lined up at the bottom of the hill to watch the battle. When the Romans reached the wagons, they spared no one. Not even a draft animal was left alive. The rebels, and their families, were slaughtered.
Boudica, more mobile than most upon her chariot, managed to escape with her two daughters. That is where she exits the history books. Some Roman sources say she fell sick and died, and others say she killed herself, but there is no concrete proof. I’d prefer to think she escaped somehow, perhaps to parts north where Celts still fought for freedom, but we’ll never know.
What we do know is that the Iceni tribe were destroyed as a people, and that no indigenous force would ever again seriously challenge Roman rule in the lands now known as England.
So, why tell Boudica’s story? She failed and her people were destroyed. It’s a sad story, isn’t it?
Yes and no. Boudica and the people she inspired knew what they were getting into. She said it in her speech on the day of that final battle. Their options were to live in slavery, or fight to the death—to win or to perish. They knew what they risked. They accepted it. They chose it.
Boudica and her people risked everything to live free and, though they failed, at least they failed standing on their feet, charging against impossible odds, rather than bending the knee of servitude.
That is why the name of Boudica is remembered two thousand years from her time. Her story is an inspiration, not only to the other Celts who kept fighting and preserved some pockets of their culture until the present day, but to free people everywhere in all times.
“Consider how many of you are fighting – and why,” Boudica said.
Boudica fought, and she knew why. How many can say so much?
. . .
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