Boudica by Vanessa Collingridge

Author:Vanessa Collingridge [Collingridge, Vanessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO000000, BIO022000, HIS000000, HIS002000, SOC011000
ISBN: 9781468303810
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2007-06-26T07:00:00+00:00

Unbeknown to the terrified Romans cowering in the temple, their forces had already made a disastrous attempt at rescuing their beleaguered countryfolk. Commanding the Ninth Legion was Petilius Cerealis, by many accounts an impetuous man but one who would rise over the next decade to become governor of Britain. When he heard that Boudica had raised an army and was heading south in the direction of Camulodunum, he quickly gathered together a detachment of his legion and raced down towards the town from his base in the east Midlands. It should have been no more than a hard three-day march but Boudica’s forces were ready for them: en route to Camulodunum, he was ambushed – probably by a separate band of rebels – and around fifteen hundred out of his two thousand best infantrymen and horsemen were annihilated in a brutal and well-orchestrated attack. This was a total disaster for the Romans; Cerealis had little option but to head back with what was left of his cavalry to his fort at modern Longthorpe in Peterborough where he did his best to protect his force by building a smaller, more easily defended fort and then holing up until some kind of calm returned to this hostile land. His efforts at rescuing Camulodunum had not only failed dismally, but just like his fellow Romans to the south, Cerealis and his surviving men were now themselves under threat from the warring Britons.

Meanwhile, for the men, women and children holding out in the temple, it was the beginning of the end. They had been inside the cold, dark emptiness of the vast structure for two whole days – but no imperial god could save them now. As the last of their lamps flickered and died, so all their hopes were extinguished. Outside were possibly tens of thousands of Britons, baying for blood, looting the buildings and transforming their proud town to ashes; inside were all that remained of the doomed Romans of Cumulodunum. They had tried to defend themselves with no leader, no battle plan and a mere seven hundred or so soldiers most of whom had already been pensioned off; but now they knew they had failed. Although the walls were made of thick stone and plaster, the Achilles’ heel of the temple was its tiled roof. When the Romans heard the Britons scrabbling on to the tiles, then smashing them like the shell of a giant egg, they knew that it was over: with the final defences breached, the victorious natives rained down on their helpless enemy and everyone inside – men, women and children, Romans or their British sympathisers – were butchered.

The last vestiges of Camulodunum had now been annihilated. Around ten thousand people are estimated to have died during the sacking of the town, with all its buildings destroyed in a holocaust of fire and hatred. As the tribes of Britons celebrated their glorious victory with feasting and thanksgivings to the gods, the acrid smoke of the devastated town hung on their clothes and in their hair and dimmed the light for miles around.

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