Boudica

A map of the Boudican Revolt

The first target of the rebels was Camulodunum (modern Colchester), a Roman colonia for retired soldiers.[16] A Roman temple had been erected there to Claudius, at great expense to the local population. Combined with brutal treatment of the Britons by the veterans, this had caused resentment towards the Romans.[17]

The Iceni and the Trinovantes comprised an army of 120,000 men.[18] Dio claimed that Boudica called upon the British goddess of victory Andraste to aid her army.[19] Once the revolt had begun, the only Roman troops available to provide assistance, aside from the few within the colony, were 200 auxiliaries located in London, who were not equipped to fight Boudica's army. Camulodunum was captured by the rebels;[20] those inhabitants who survived the initial attack took refuge in the Temple of Claudius for two days before they were killed.[21] Quintus Petillius Cerialis, then commanding the Legio IX Hispana, attempted to relieve Camulodunum, but suffered an overwhelming defeat. The infantry with him were all killed and only the commander and some of his cavalry escaped. After this disaster, Catus Decianus, whose behaviour had provoked the rebellion, fled abroad to Gaul.[22]

Suetonius was leading a campaign against the island of Mona, off the coast of North Wales. On hearing the news of the Iceni uprising, he left a garrison on Mona and returned to deal with Boudica.[18] He moved quickly with a force of men through hostile territory to Londinium, which he reached before the arrival of Boudica's army[21] but, outnumbered, he decided to abandon the town to the rebels, who burned it down after torturing and killing everyone who had remained. The rebels also sacked the municipium of Verulamium (modern St Albans),[23][24] north-west of London, though the extent of its destruction is unclear.[25]

Dio and Tacitus both reported that around 80,000 people were said to have been killed by the rebels.[4] According to Tacitus, the Britons had no interest in taking the Roman population as prisoners, only in slaughter by "gibbet, fire, or cross".[26] Dio adds that the noblest women were impaled on spikes and had their breasts cut off and sewn to their mouths, "to the accompaniment of sacrifices, banquets, and wanton behaviour" in sacred places, particularly the groves of Andraste.[27]

Suetonius regrouped his forces. He amassed an army of almost 10,000 men at an unidentified location, and took a stand in a defile with a wood behind. The Romans used the terrain to their advantage, launching javelins at the Britons before advancing in a wedge-shaped formation and deploying cavalry.[13]

The Roman army was heavily outnumbered — according to Dio the rebels numbered 230,000[11] — but Boudica's army was crushed, and according to Tacitus, neither the women nor the animals were spared. Tacitus states that Boudica poisoned herself; Dio says she fell sick and died, after which she was given a lavish burial. It has been argued that these accounts are not mutually exclusive.[28]

Boudica depicted as a Tudor queen in Holinshed's Chronicles (1577)

During the Renaissance the works of Tacitus and Cassius Dio became available in England, after which her status changed as it was interpreted by historians, poets and dramatists.[38] Boudica appeared as 'Voadicia' in a history, Anglica Historia, by the Italian scholar Polydore Vergil, and in the Scottish historian Hector Boece's The History and Chronicles of Scotland (1526) she is 'Voada'—the first appearance of Boudica in a British publication.[38][39]

Boudica was called 'Voadicia' in the English historian Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles, published between 1577 and 1587.[38][40] A narrative by the Florentine scholar Petruccio Ubaldini in The Lives of the Noble Ladies of the Kingdom of England and Scotland (1591) includes two female characters, 'Voadicia' and 'Bunduica', both based on Boudica.[38] From the 1570s to the 1590s, when Elizabeth I's England was at war with Spain, Boudica proved to be a valuable asset for the English.[41]

The English poet Edmund Spenser used the story of Boudica in his poem The Ruines of Time, involving a story about a British heroine he called 'Bunduca'.[42] A variation of this name was used in the Jacobean play Bonduca (1612), a tragicomedy that most scholars agree was written by John Fletcher, in which one of the characters was Boudica.[43] A version of that play called Bonduca, or the British Heroine was set to music by the English composer Henry Purcell in 1695.[44] One of the choruses, "Britons, Strike Home!", became a popular patriotic song in Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries.[45]

The statue Boadicea and Her Daughters near Westminster Pier, London

During the late 18th century, Boudica was used to develop ideas of English nationhood.[46] Illustrations of Boudica during this period—such as in Edward Barnard's New, Complete and Authentic History of England (1790) and the drawing by Thomas Stothard of the queen as a classical heroine—lacked historical accuracy. The illustration of Boudica by Robert Havell in Charles Hamilton Smith's The Costume of the Original Inhabitants of the British Islands from the Earliest Periods to the Sixth Century (1815) was an early attempt to depict her in an historically accurate way.[47]

Cowper's 1782 poem Boadicea: An Ode was the most notable literary work to champion the resistance of the Britons, and helped to project British ideas of imperial expansion. It caused Boudica to become a British cultural icon and be perceived as a national heroine.[46] Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem Boädicéa (written in 1859, and published in 1864) drew on Cowper's poem. Depicting the Iceni queen as a violent and bloodthirsty warrior, the poem also forecasted the rise of British imperialism. Tennyson's image of Boudica was taken from the engraving produced in 1812 by Stothard.[48] Another work, the poem "Boadicea" (1859) by Francis Barker, contained strongly patriotic and Christian themes.[49]

A range of Victorian children's books mentioned Boudica; Beric the Briton (1893), a novel by G. A. Henty, with illustrations by William Parkinson, had a text based on the accounts of Tacitus and Dio.[50]

Boadicea and Her Daughters, a statue of the queen in her war chariot, complete with anachronistic scythes on the wheel axles, was executed by the sculptor Thomas Thornycroft. He was encouraged by Prince Albert, who lent his horses for use as models.[51] The statue, Thornycroft's most ambitious work, was produced between 1856 and 1871, cast in 1896, and positioned on the Victoria Embankment next to Westminster Bridge in 1902.[52]

• 
  The History of England (1791), illustration by Francis West
• 
  An engraving by William Sharp after Thomas Stothard (1812)
• 
  A caricature of Queen Caroline (1820)
• 
  Robert Havell, The Costume of the Original Inhabitants of the British Islands (1821)
• 
  John Cassell's Illustrated History of England (1857)
• 
  G.A. Henty, Beric, the Briton (1893)

Boudica was once thought to have been buried at a place which lies now between platforms 9 and 10 in King's Cross station in London. There is no evidence for this and it is probably a post-World War II invention.[53] At Colchester Town Hall, a life-sized statue of Boudica stands on the south facade, sculpted by L J Watts in 1902; another depiction of her is in a stained glass window by Clayton and Bell in the council chamber.[54]

Boudica was adopted by the suffragettes as one of the symbols of the campaign for women's suffrage. In 1908, a "Boadicea Banner" was carried in several National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies marches. She appears as character in A Pageant of Great Women written by Cicely Hamilton, which opened at the Scala Theatre, London, in November 1909 before a national tour, and she was described in a 1909 pamphlet as "the eternal feminine... the guardian of the hearth, the avenger of its wrongs upon the defacer and the despoiler".[55]

A "vocal minority" has claimed Boudica as a Celtic Welsh heroine.[56] A statue of Boudica in the Marble Hall at Cardiff City Hall was among those unveiled by David Lloyd George in 1916, though the choice had gained little support in a public vote.[57][56] It shows her with her daughters and without warrior trappings.[58]

Permanent exhibitions describing the Boudican Revolt are at the Museum of London, Colchester Castle Museum and the Verulamium Museum.[59] A 36-mile (58 km) long distance footpath called Boudica's Way passes through countryside between Norwich and Diss in Norfolk.[60]

• Cassius Dio (2015) [1925]. "Epitome of Book LXII". Roman history (in Ancient Greek and English). Vol. VIII. Translated by Cary, Earnest; Foster, Herbert Baldwin. London; New York: William Heinemann; G. P. Putnam's Sons. pp. 61–171. hdl:2027/mdp.39015004124510. ISBN 978-0-434-99176-1. OCLC 906698883 – via HathiTrust.
• Davies, John A. (2008). The Land of Boudica: Prehistoric and Roman Norfolk. Oxford: Oxford Books. ISBN 978-1-905223-33-6. OCLC 458727322.
• Frénée-Hutchins, Samantha (2016). Boudica's Odyssey in Early Modern England. London; New York: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-13171-7-296-3.
• Hingley, Richard; Unwin, Christina (2006) [2005]. Boudica: Iron Age Warrior Queen. London: Hambledon Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-4060-0. OCLC 741691125 – via Internet Archive.
• Vandrei, Martha (2018). Queen Boudica and Historical Culture in Britain: An Image of Truth. Oxford, UK. ISBN 978-0-19-881672-0. OCLC 1009182312.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Webster, Graham (1978). Boudica, the British revolt against Rome AD 60. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8476-6043-8. OCLC 1348905150 – via Internet Archive.
• Williams, Carolyn D. (2009). Boudica and Her Stories: Narrative Transformations of a Warrior Queen. Newark: University of Delaware Press. ISBN 978-0-87413-079-9. OCLC 316736523.