Roman Legionaries: Soldiers of Empire by Simon Elliott

Author:Simon Elliott [Elliott, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Military, Ancient, HISTORY / Military / Ancient, history, Rome
ISBN: 9781612006123
Google: lMnXDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2018-08-19T23:40:38.194521+00:00

The defeat of Boudicca

The most famous event in the story of the Roman occupation of Britain is the blood-soaked rebellion of Boudicca in AD 60/61. This almost ended the Roman presence in the islands and saw the legionaries fighting in the most extreme of conditions. Defeat would have meant destruction of four whole legions, on a scale even larger than the loss of the three legions in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9. That the legionaries won through is testament to their morale, training and fitness.

By the late AD 50s, through a series of lightning campaigns, the legionary spearheads had defeated all opposition in the south, east and the midlands of Britain. In the north the Brigantes, allies of Rome, kept the peace. This just left Wales, where the governor Gauis Suetonius Paulinus was mounting a gruelling campaign in difficult conditions and terrain. His target was the north-west of the peninsula, specifically Anglesey deep in the heart of Deceangli territory. This mysterious island was home to the druids, leaders of LIA religion in pre-Roman Britain and the emotive centre of any remaining resistance to Rome. In AD 60 he made an amphibious assault there. This was a Claudian invasion in miniature using specially built flat-bottomed transport boats to cope with the treacherous coastal currents and shallows around the island. Though the fighting was desperate, Paulinus was ultimately successful and Anglesey captured.

However, the governor’s attempt to consolidate was cut short by the revolt of Boudicca, queen of the Iceni in northern East Anglia. The context behind this dramatic event was the earlier death of the Iceni king Prasutagus, Boudicca’s husband. He was an ally of Rome who in his will left his kingdom to both his daughters and Emperor Nero. However, when he died this was ignored and the kingdom annexed by Rome. The primary sources say Boudicca protested but was flogged and her daughters raped for her trouble, though one adds that another factor was Roman financiers calling in their loans to the British elites.

Whatever the cause, the queen rebelled. Soon the Iceni were joined by all their regional neighbours, keen to break free of the shackles of Rome. An enormous column 100,000 strong (mostly families and camp followers rather than warriors) now marched south. First they destroyed the provincial capital Colchester, a colonia built on the site of the previous Catuvellauni capital Camulodunum. This was a particularly brutal event, many of the Romans unaware of the danger until it was too late. A large number were burned alive as they sought shelter in the Temple of Claudius, built to celebrate Plautius’ earlier victory.

The Roman military did try to intervene at this point, with the future governor Quintus Petilius Cerialis leading vexillations of the legio IX Hispana (of which he was a legate) to intercept Boudicca. His small force arrived too late to save Colchester and was then decisively defeated by the main British army, he fleeing for his life with his cavalry. They remained incongruously holed up in a nearby fort until after the insurrection had been defeated.

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