In Search of the Dark Ages

by Michael Wood

  THE DESTRUCTION OF COLCHESTER

  Not surprisingly Colchester was the first object of the rebel army, with its amenities, its well-fed veterans, and its gleaming extravagance, the Temple of Claudius. On the way the Roman settlers out in the ‘bush’ were the first to be killed. One villa site in the path of the Iceni was at Foxton near Cambridge, and here excavators have discovered evidence of a brutal destruction. The place had been broken into and burned down; shattered lock bolts perhaps tell of the doors being battered down; evidence of fire was everywhere; a beautiful onyx cameo (of a type given by emperors in gratitude for service done) had been prised out of its gold setting and thrown into the cesspit. Of the owners there were few traces, though they will not have had time to escape: there were remains of their last meal which was a bowl of oysters. As in a twentieth-century guerrilla war, such as that in Rhodesia, the isolated settlers on their farms were the first to be murdered.

  As the rebel army moved south, rumour spread like wildfire. Tacitus says that in Colchester people were seized with foreboding of some terrible disaster. Shapes like human corpses were left by the ebb tide; delirious women screamed that destruction was at hand; dreadful moans were heard in the senate house, and the theatre echoed with shrieks; a blood-red stain was seen in the sea, and at the estuary a phantom colony was seen in ruins. These signs, says Tacitus, ‘were interpreted hopefully by the Britons, and with terror by the settlers’.

  The Roman governor Suetonius, however, was too far away to help. He was engaged in attacking the great druidic stronghold on the island of Anglesey when the storm burst. The veterans at Colchester frantically appealed for help to the imperial agent in London, Catus Decianus. But he sent them only two hundred men, poorly armed. The veterans prepared to protect themselves and, without rampart or trench, improvised defences around the precinct of the temple itself.

  The end came swiftly. Boudica surrounded Colchester and burned down the town. Most buildings were wooden and the place was swept by a firestorm. In the pottery shop in the High Street stocks were smashed to pieces before it was fired, leaving the modern archaeologist fragments of red Samian burned black. In the glass shop near the forum the heat was so intense that molten glass poured onto the floor and cooled in twisted shapes. A Roman bandsman’s gear was stamped on and broken before his house was fired. Traces of human remains, the bones of people who died in the fire, have also been found. Those who escaped – and the Romans had evacuated none of the women and children – fled to the one area that had withstood the fire and the one place where the veterans might hope to hold out against Boudica’s hordes: the precinct of the temple itself. There they resisted for two days before the building was taken by storm and all inside it slaughtered. The equestrian statue of Claudius was overturned and its head hacked off and thrown into the river Alde in Suffolk by one of Boudica’s men. The temple itself was razed to the ground, but the great vaulted plinth on which it was constructed was virtually indestructible: it is still possible to walk inside it today, deep below the Norman castle of Colchester which was later constructed on the site.

  In a final outrage the rebels even desecrated the Roman cemetery beyond what is now the west gate of Colchester, mutilating statues and breaking tombstones. Two exceptionally fine examples are now exhibited in Colchester Museum: Longinus, a cavalry officer from the Balkans, is shown proudly riding over the conquered race; his face has been smashed away by one of Boudica’s followers but the Briton cowering below him has been left intact. The tombstone was thrown over and shattered. Marcus Facilis, an Italian centurian, was depicted in his best parade armour:

  Here lies Marcus Favonius Facilis, son of Marcus of the Pollian tribe, centurion of the Twentieth Legion Erected by his freedmen Verecundus and Novicius.

  Facilis’ tombstone had been broken in half and his haughty nose knocked off.

  THE REVOLT SPREADS

  Things now took on a momentum of their own. With their vast supply of fine horses the Iceni aristocracy possessed great speed and mobility. They and their allies, the Trinovantes, moved south, destroying other towns and settlements including Chelmsford (a large Roman site as yet only partially excavated) and the native colony at St Albans where the Britons living a Roman life-style received short shrift from the ‘army of liberation’. Wherever archaeologists have been able to examine the levels from the period there seems to have been killing and destruction. But the Britons were not a leaderless mob. When the commander of the nearest Roman legion, the 9th, based at Longthorpe in North Cambridgeshire, rushed his forces south towards Colchester in an attempt to crush the revolt in the bud, he fell into a carefully planned ambush in the wooded country north-west of Colchester. The legionaries (probably about 2000 strong) were wiped out, and only the cavalry were able to escape. Boudica must have laid her plans well to overcome a strong force of battle-hardened regular troops, and doubtless she attacked them in line of march. It was a major triumph, and one to lift Iceni morale sky-high. Suddenly the whole Roman presence in Britain was at stake. The governor, Suetonius Paulinus, was with the main Roman army far away in Wales, and had perhaps only just received news of the seriousness of the revolt. With the 9th gone, Boudica’s next prey was defenceless.

  LONDON: FIRST-CENTURY BOOM TOWN

  London is a Roman creation. It was set up around AD 50 to exploit the wealth of the new province, and the exploiters had crowded in. By 60 its population was numbered in thousands, perhaps more than ten thousand. Here was the office of the procurator, the emperor’s agent Decianus. Here too were many merchants, no doubt including people from established provinces like Gaul and Spain. One person then living in Londinium as it was called was Aulus Alfidius Olussa, a Greek from Athens who died aged seventy before the end of the first century and who was buried near Tower Hill.

  London seems to have owed its origin not to a fort (there is no evidence for a military site then) nor to an established Iron Age ford. Its attraction seems to have been its location at about the tidal limit of the river at that time. This made it possible for seagoing vessels to sail upstream against the strong current. By 50, with the Fosse Way frontier established and ‘a time of unbroken peace’ in the offing, south-east England was secure and sufficiently stable for continental merchants and Roman bankers to invest heavily in trade with Britain and to develop a new civil port. By 60 London was an undoubted commercial success. Through it came the many imports and exports of the new province, and according to Tacitus, though London was not dignified with the title of colony, it was ‘crowded with traders and [was] a great centre of commerce’.

  Recently archaeologists have located the civic centre of this, the earliest London. It lay across where Gracechurch Street is now, near the Bank of England, bounded by Cornhill to the north and Fenchurch Street and Lombard Street to the south, in other words where the later basilica and forum were built. A series of wattle and daub buildings lay along the main east-west street, probably houses and shops, while where the forum later grew up, across Gracechurch Street, there was a large gravel area which was perhaps London’s earliest market place. A grain dump found in one of the houses adjoining the main street suggests that some merchants were already setting up lucrative warehouses, for such a store would be for civilian, not army consumption. The town was extensive – debris of this period has been found stretching out to Newgate – and its loss would have been a major blow to the whole Roman effort in Britain; indeed it would very likely cause the imperial policy makers to question the worth of further investment in the province.

  Suetonius, though a military man, understood these realities clearly enough, and after destroying the druidic centre in Anglesey, turned his two legions eastwards, he himself riding on ahead day and night down Watling Street (the military road to the frontier) to see whether the Roman investment in Londinium could be saved.

  When Suetonius arrived in London his intelligence reports showed him that the situation was worse than he could ever have guessed. The 9th was out of action,
Colchester wiped out, and other tribes were joining the Iceni. Survivors will have given him some idea of the size of Boudica’s army. London of course had no walls, and, we may presume, after a stiff wine in the procurator’s office, Suetonius decided that the town could not be saved. It was now a question not of saving London, but of saving the whole province. ‘Unmoved by tears and prayers,’ says Tacitus, ‘Suetonius gave the signal for departure.’ Those who could went with him back into the military zone. Others will have fled over the Thames into the pro-Roman tribal areas of the south. Some tried to hire boats and get back to Gaul – among them was Decianus himself, the emperor’s procurator whose rapacity had done so much to inflame feelings before the revolt. Perhaps the Greek Olussa went with him, clutching his moneybags. The rest, the old, the women and children, those who were too attached to the town or simply unwilling to leave their new shops, waited anxiously for the last dawn of the first London.

  LONDON DESTROYED

  The archaeological evidence makes the catastrophe that enveloped London in AD 60 dramatically clear. Wherever you dig into the foundations of London you come across a red and black layer of burned ash and soot. Food jars have been found which were thrown into rubbish pits. There is a hoard of money whose owner buried it for safety but never came back to collect it. The familiar burned Samian has been picked up east and west of the Wallbrook. In the marketplace smouldering debris spilled out over the gravel surface of the main street. Gracechurch Street was the centre of a large area of conflagration, but there were major gaps in the area of burning, showing that fires were started separately: this is what is to be expected in a new town where there was plenty of open space and ribbon development. The debris also provides confirmation of Tacitus’ picture of a mass evacuation prior to the arrival of Boudica’s army. There is a general (though not complete) absence of domestic objects from the portions of burnt buildings that have so far been excavated. Many escaped then, though possessions were certainly left behind in some houses, and these were perhaps those of people who perished, as many certainly did. There were no prisoners, says Tacitus, ‘they could not wait to cut throats, hang, burn and crucify … Roman and provincial deaths at the places mentioned are estimated at seventy thousand’. This may be an exaggeration, but there is no doubt that many settlers met very cruel deaths. The later writer, Dio Cassius, in his Roman History, may just be adding lurid detail to titillate his readers when he describes how rich Roman women were hung up, their breasts cut off and sewn to their mouths, how they were tortured and impaled on sharpened stakes. It may be that such details were invented like some modern atrocity stories – Huns bayoneting babies, Vietnamese Russian-roulette – but it may be, as Tacitus implies, that such rites were done in fulfilment of religious practices demanded by the Druids. Unfortunately we are in the dark as to the true nature of druidic involvement in the war, the degree to which they spurred on Boudica’s war of liberation. Whether these details are true or not, the many severed skulls of this period found in the silt of the Wallbrook stream close to the financial heart of Boudican London near Gracechurch Street, may well be the heads of captured Romans and British collaborators beheaded by Boudica’s vengeful troops. It is known from illustrations on such monuments as Trajan’s column in Rome that Celtic and Germanic tribes decapitated their enemies and displayed their heads: such seems to have been the fate of these Londoners.

  So the investment in London went up in smoke. After the firestorm the ashes settled. Boudica had reached her moment of decision. The impetus of the attack had come to a halt. What should she do now? She seems to have had no alternative. She had to follow Suetonius back up Watling Street into the Roman military zone and attempt to deal the decisive blow. Any delay and the Romans would be able to send reinforcements from Gaul to Suetonius’ army supply base at Richborough in Kent, and attack her from behind. She may also have known that a swift victory might have far-reaching effects. The rebellion had been so savage and destructive that a further loss of regular troops might give the upper hand to those men in Rome who favoured pulling out of Britain altogether. After all, why go to such expense to consolidate a province whose profits might never be very great? Boudica herself may have known how the disastrous defeat of Varus in Germany 50 years before, with the total loss of three legions, had led to the withdrawal of Roman forces there and the establishment of a Rhine frontier.

  How much control Boudica had over her forces we shall never know. Did she even know that other risings were taking place from Lincolnshire down to the south-west? That at Margidunum just north of Nottingham Romans were being slaughtered? Or that rebels were in arms as far away as Somerset, where archaeologists have associated with Boudica’s revolt a terrible massacre of British women and children inside one of the gates of the Iron Age hillfort at South Cadbury? It must have taken great personal force to keep some sort of order in her army, still more to cajole them away from the prospect of more loot and into a situation they must have feared – a pitched battle with Suetonius’ legions.

  THE LAST BATTLE

  Where did the climactic battle of the war take place? Tacitus gives a description of the battlefield, to the effect that Suetonius held a defile with woods behind him and open country in front of him: apparently at a point where wooded hilly country broken with defiles opened out into a flat plain. But Tacitus does not say where this was. Most scholars have assumed that Boudica followed Suetonius up Watling Street, and that somewhere on that road, presumably near to the military frontier, his supply bases and his lines of communication, Suetonius offered battle in the strong defensive position described by Tacitus. There have been many fruitless attempts to be more precise but not long ago Dr Graham Webster suggested a site at the village of Mancetter near Nuneaton, and recently archaeological discoveries are adding colour to his hypothesis.

  Mancetter (later called Manduessedum, the ‘place of chariots’) lies below a wooded line of bluffs cut by pronounced ravines. In front, over the river Anker, a wide plain opens out which is crossed by Watling Street. Along the river the defences of a very large Roman military base have been found, and chance finds have included fragments of Roman armour from legionary and cavalry units, and a hoard of military issue coinage. Finds identify the site with the 14th legion, and we know from Tacitus that the 14th was the backbone of Suetonius’ army in the decisive battle with Boudica. Accordingly this camp may have been set up during the period when the Fosse Way frontier was established. After the fall of London, Suetonius therefore fell back on a base he already knew, a rendezvous for the reinforcements he had ordered in from the forts along the Fosse Way, a defensive position where he could stand and fight without being surrounded by Boudica’s superior numbers.

  If Dr Webster is right, then it was along the Anker that the Romans arrayed their army, with the woods behind them. The legionaries (all the 14th and part of the 20th) were in regular order in the centre, the light armed auxiliaries on their flanks and the cavalry on the wings. The position was very narrow, fronted by ditches and to the left anchored on a fort which has been discovered near the point where Watling Street crosses the Anker. The Roman numbers may have been around 7000 or 8000 legionaries and 4000 auxiliaries and cavalry. In front of them the British on foot and horse seethed over a wide area and kept up a terrific racket to frighten the Romans. So confident were they of victory that they stationed their wives and families in carts to watch the slaughter. Their numbers cannot be ascertained. Tacitus clearly thought there were over 100,000; Dio gives a quarter of a million. We can say with confidence that the Romans were heavily outnumbered, if immeasurably superior in arms and training.

  Tacitus and Dio say that the respective leaders gave speeches to their troops at this point. It is unlikely that Tacitus knew what Boudica had said, but one line rings true, a taunt to the men: ‘Win the battle or perish: that is what I, a woman will do; you men can live on in slavery if that’s what you want.’

  Tacitus’ version of Suetonius’ speech, however, may a
ctually reproduce some of the general’s words at that fateful moment, for it may have been heard by Tacitus’ father-in-law, Agricola, and recorded in his memoirs. It certainly has a blunt soldierly air about it:

  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 booty. Just win and you’ll have the lot.

  Annals Tacitus

  The Britons crowded up on the Roman line before Suetonius gave the order to attack. A volley of several thousand heavy javelins was thrown into them at about forty yards, followed by a second. The casualties must have been terrible from that alone, for few of the Britons can have had any body armour. Then the Romans attacked in tight array, stabbing with their short swords.

  There is nothing romantic about ancient battles, and in this one the Britons had no chance, despite their numbers. In fact their numbers made it worse. They were crushed onto each other so they were unable to use their long swords properly. The Roman cavalry now started to move out of the narrow position and work round their enemies’ flanks. Soon the packed rear ranks broke. In such battles more people are killed in the flight than in the battle itself, and here the Romans consciously took revenge. Driven against their carts the Britons were slaughtered even when they tried to surrender: men, women, children, and pack animals too. The Romans must have gone mad with blood lust. Tacitus says that 80,000 Britons were killed. The Romans lost 400 dead and a larger number wounded.