AD 60–61
XX. BOUDICCA’S BRITISH REVOLT
14th Gemina versus the warrior queen
“Close up the ranks, and having discharged your javelins, then with shields and swords continue the work of bloodshed and destruction.”
SUETONIUS PAULINUS, ROMAN GENERAL, PRIOR TO THE BATTLE WITH BOUDICCA’S BRITONS. TACITUS, Annals, XIV, 36.
Intent on subjugating the Welsh island of Anglesey, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, governor of Britain for the past two years, marched out of Camulodunum in the spring of AD 60, and, after assembling an army in the Welsh borderlands, pushed through the mountain valleys toward the northwest coast of Wales. His task force was made up of the 14th Gemina Legion and auxiliary cohorts including Batavian light infantry which had fought beside the 14th Gemina for decades, plus the famous Batavian Horse and other cavalry units.
Ambitious Paulinus had come to Britain with a big military reputation and something to prove. In AD 42 he had cleared Mauretania of rebellious Moors, and, according to Tacitus, this “hardworking and sensible officer” was determined to use his latest posting to challenge Corbulo, who had recently recovered Armenia for Rome in the East, for the title of the empire’s leading soldier. [Tac., A, XIV, 29; Agr., 5]
Paulinus recognized that a unifying strand of the disparate British tribes was the Druidic religion. The children of British nobles were educated by the Druid priests. Some of these children themselves later became priests. Others became leaders of their tribes. And all the tribes appealed to the same Celtic gods to give them the power to defeat their enemies. Because of its seditious potential, Augustus had made it illegal for Roman citizens to follow this Druidic religion, and Claudius banned it altogether, empire-wide. The Druids’ religious center was on Anglesey, which was called Mona Insula by the Romans. And Paulinus was determined to seize Mona and snuff out this illegal cult, and so snuff out the Druidic fire at the heart of British resistance.
During the winter, the men of the 14th Gemina Legion had prepared by building small, collapsible, flat-bottomed boats for river and inshore work. These were carried in the task force’s baggage train and unloaded at each river encountered on their progress through north Wales. From their jumping-off point at Deva, today’s Chester, there were several major waterways to cross—the Dee, and later the Clwyd and Conway. The Roman force which reached the Menai Strait that summer launched its small boats once more, and began the crossing to Anglesey. They made the crossing in several places, the infantry rowing themselves across, part of the cavalry finding and using a shallow ford, and the Batavian squadrons swimming across with their horses.
Welsh warriors, probably from the Deceangli, Ordovice and Silure tribes, formed up on the southeastern shore of the island in “dense array” and waited for the Roman troops to land. [Tac., A, XIV, 30] As the legionaries and their auxiliary colleagues clambered from their boats, frenzied women came dashing through the assembled Celtic ranks. Dressed in black, their hair disheveled, the women waved burning firebrands and shrieked like animals. All around, Druid priests raised their hands to heaven and called down the wrath of their gods on the heads of the invaders.
The sight of these witches’ crazy antics dazed the superstitious legionaries, and they froze in their ranks, not even raising their shields to protect themselves as they watched. It took Paulinus himself to take the lead, goading his men into action by asking if they were afraid of women. Without waiting for the cavalry to join them, the legionaries charged forward and cut down warriors and witches alike. Piles of Celtic bodies were soon being consumed in the flames of funeral pyres lit with the women’s own firebrands.
Roman troops spread over the island, locating the sacred groves where the Druids reputedly made human sacrifices, and rounding up prisoners. But as the Roman general was congratulating himself on his success, urgent dispatches arrived from the east—there had been an uprising of tribes in eastern Britain. Paulinus ordered his troops to prepare to march.
Prasutagus, king of the Iceni tribe of Norfolk in East Anglia, had died a year or so before. To preserve his kingdom, and his family’s control of it, he had willed his Iceni territory jointly to his two daughters and to the Roman emperor Nero. This was designed to keep his family in power, with the protection of Rome. But it had not worked out as Prasutagus had planned. Procurator Decianus Catus, the Roman financial administrator of the province of Britain, had taken the terms of the will literally and sent his staff into the Iceni kingdom to confiscate the homes and property of many nobles in the name of the emperor. The slaves in his employ had not only ransacked the villa of the late king, they had raped his two virgin daughters. And when his widow had tried to intervene, they had stripped and whipped her. Queen Boudicca, young wife of King Prasutagus, had vowed vengeance on the Romans in the name of Andraste, Iceni goddess of war. [Dio, LXII, 6]
Cassius Dio wrote that there was another, financial cause of discontent among the British tribes at this time. The wealthy philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca, who was Nero’s chief secretary, had loaned the tribes 40 million sesterces, only to call in the money at short notice. Seneca, said Dio, had “resorted to severe measures in enacting” repayment of the loan. [Ibid., 2]
Insult was added to injury by the legion veterans who had settled in the recently proclaimed military colony at Camulodunum, who “drove people out of their houses” and “ejected them from their farms.” Boudicca and her incensed Iceni nobles had met in secret and conspired against their Roman overlords, sending envoys to the Trinovantes tribe in Essex to the south, just above the Thames, bringing them into their revolutionary plot. [Tac., A, XIV, 31]
All tribal thoughts turned to rebellion, and, instead of sowing the new season’s wheat crop, tribesmen had devoted their time to making arms, with the intention of helping themselves to the contents of the granaries of the Roman legions’ fortresses once the rebellion began. The rebel leadership elected Boudicca their war queen, and deliberately timed their uprising for when the governor and many of his troops were away campaigning, in the summer of AD 60.
The revolt was first felt at Camulodunum, home to tens of thousands of Roman citizen settlers and Romanized Britons. With the Iceni descending from the north and the Trinovantes flooding up from the south, 120,000 wild-eyed rebels swarmed into the city, killing everyone they encountered. The desperate people of Camulodunum sent messengers galloping away seeking help. [Dio, LXII, 2] Some messengers hurried to the southwest to Londinium (London). Others rode northwest to the base of the nearest legion, the 9th Hispana, at today’s Longthorpe, near Peterborough.
“There was in the place [Camulodunum] only a small military force,” said Tacitus. [Tac., A, XIV, 32] There were two Roman military camps at Camulodunum at this time. The main camp, originally of more than 40 acres (16 hectares), had been occupied by the 20th Legion for a number of years prior to its transfer west. Archaeological evidence shows that although this camp had been scaled down to half its size, it was still in use in AD 60. There was also a fully operational 26-acre (10.4-hectare) cavalry camp on the southwestern side of the city, which was occupied by the 1st Thracian Ala until AD 71. [Hold., RAB, App.]
Auxiliaries of this small force at Camulodunum combined with legion veterans residing there, who hurriedly assembled at the massive nine-year-old temple of Claudius at the center of the city. The senior centurions decided to attempt to defend the temple, and were joined by thousands of terrified civilians—men, women and children, many of them the families of the retired legionaries. The civilians would have clustered in the temple basement, which still exists today beneath the Norman castle later built over the site of the Roman temple.
From Londinium, Procurator Catus, who had stoked the uprising, sent 200 men “without regular arms”—probably his slaves, armed merely with cudgels—in response to the call for help. Catus himself boarded a ship at the Londinium wharves, and sailed for Gaul, and safety. The Temple of Claudius at Camulodunum was surrounded by the rebels, and for two days the v
eterans and their supporters held out. In the end, rebel agents among those inside the temple provided access for the tribesmen. Thousands of Boudicca’s warriors then flooded in and overwhelmed the defenders.
At the Roman base at Longthorpe, the new commander of the 9th Hispana Legion, Quintus Petilius Cerialis Caesius Rufus, received Camulodunum’s urgent plea for help, and quickly assembled a relief force. [W&D, 6, n. 15] Cerialis (whose last two names indicate that he had blue eyes and red hair), was married to the cousin of Vespasian, former commander of the 2nd Augusta Legion and future emperor.
Archaeology suggests that the Longthorpe base could only accommodate 2,500 men, or five legion cohorts. Subsequent events indicate that, leaving one cohort to garrison the fort, Cerialis set off for Camulodunum with the 2,000 men of four cohorts of the 9th Hispana and several squadrons of cavalry. With the pace of the relief force dictated by the marching speed of the infantry, at best Cerialis’ force would have taken four days to reach Camulodunum, using the paved military highways that led south and east. Unbeknownst to the men of the relief force, when they were only halfway to their destination, Camulodunum fell.
Meanwhile, Boudicca’s rebel Britons were plundering and burning the city, and torturing and killing their thousands of Roman captives. According to Tacitus, some Romans at Camulodunum were hanged on gallows while others were crucified. All were subjected to torture by fire. [Tac., A, XIV, 33]
Dio described Roman prisoners being impaled on red-hot skewers and boiled alive. Some were forced to look at their own entrails after they had been cut from their bodies. Dio says that female Romans captives came in for particularly barbaric torture and mutilation at the hands of the Britons. [Dio, LXII, 7]
Approaching Camulodunum, Roman legate Cerialis and his 9th Hispana column were routed by rebels as they were “coming to the rescue” of their countrymen. According to Tacitus, all 2,000 of Cerialis’ infantry were wiped out, after which “Cerialis escaped with some cavalry into the camp, and was saved by its fortifications.” [Tac., A, XIV, 33]
Many modern writers have assumed this meant that Cerialis returned to his Peterborough camp, but it is more likely that, in darkness, Cerialis and his troopers gained the safety of one of the two camps at Camulodunum, which would have been much closer—probably the smaller cavalry camp. For, as Tacitus also pointed out, “the barbarians, who delighted in plunder and were indifferent to all else, passed by the fortresses with garrisons and attacked whatever offered most wealth.” [Ibid.] And there is no evidence the rebels went anywhere near Peterborough. Cerialis, behind the walls of the fort at Camulodunum, was saved by the rebels’ plundering mindset and lack of siege skills.
From Wales, the province’s propraetor Suetonius Paulinus came marching at the double with most of his Anglesey task force, having left several cohorts of auxiliaries on the island. He headed for Deva and then to Watling Street, the military road which sliced across England all the way to Londinium and the Thames. Mounted messengers galloped ahead, summoning reinforcements. Some rode as far as Isca Dumnoniorium, base of the 2nd Augusta Legion. General Paulinus would have carefully weighed his troop options. The 9th Hispana had just lost 2,000 men through Cerialis’ rashness. If Paulinus were to take anymore men away from the northern frontier forts he would invite tribesmen to the north to come flooding down and join the rebellion. To the west, the 20th Legion was holding the frontier; to withdraw the legion from their western defense line could invite the aggressive Silures to attack the Romans from the rear while they were trying to deal with Boudicca.
Tacitus writes that the army which Paulinus put together comprised “the 14th Legion with veterans of the 20th and auxiliaries from the neighborhood.” These “veterans of the 20th” were almost certainly Evocati militiamen, recalled to their 20th Legion standards by the governor after recently going into retirement, leaving the serving men of the legion to keep guard on the western frontier. Meanwhile, the officer in charge of the 2nd Augusta—both the legate and tribune of the legion were apparently absent—was the camp-prefect Poenius Postumus. Inconceivably, on receiving orders from the propraetor to march the 2nd Augusta Legion to his support, Postumus ignored them. [Ibid., 34]
On the march, Paulinus was met by some 2,500 veterans of the 20th Legion. Combined with the 14th Gemina, which would have been close to full strength with around 5,000 men, plus 2,000 auxiliary infantry and 500 cavalry, Paulinus’ force now numbered, said Tacitus, 10,000 fighting men. [Ibid.] With this small force, Paulinus had to confront a rebel army which he knew from initial reports numbered in excess of 100,000 warriors.
Paulinus pressed on to Londinium. By this time a wooden bridge crossed the snaking Tamesa river—the Roman bridge site is occupied today by London Bridge. A settlement had swiftly grown north of the bridge. Gracechurch Street today traces the Roman thoroughfare that led from the bridge up to the hub of the first-century settlement at Cornhill, with today’s Bank of England at the center of Roman London. By AD 60, the settlement had spread west to the hill occupied in modern times by St. Paul’s Cathedral. Near today’s Lloyd’s of London, at the site of the present-day Leadenhall Market, stood London’s basilica, the settlement’s meeting hall and law court.
To one side of the bridge, the riverbank was lined with docks, which at any other time would have been crowded with trading vessels from Europe. Now, those docks were deserted. The merchantmen had fled, and the people of London, who had heard that the rebels were coming, were in a state of panic. They flocked around Paulinus and his troops, urging the governor to prepare defenses. Instead, he offered a place in his column to anyone who cared to leave with him, for he could not and would not defend London with so few troops. Thousands of refugees joined him, but other Londoners, convinced they had nothing to fear from the rebels, stayed. Paulinus retreated north, accepting more frightened civilians into his column as he passed through Verulamium, today’s St. Albans, then continued to withdraw to the northwest.
Boudicca and tens of thousands of warriors from the Iceni, Trinovantes and other tribes who had now joined the revolt descended on Londinium like a horde of locusts. They brought their families with them, in a train of wagons and carts for booty. The tribesmen tortured and killed everyone they found; then, after looting the city, burned it to the ground. Verulamium suffered the same bloody, destructive fate as Londinium and Camulodunum before the rebels moved on to pursue Paulinus’ column, leaving Verulamium in flames which soon consumed the corpses of its tortured occupants.
In a few chaotic weeks, Rome’s three principal settlements in the province of Britain had been destroyed by the rebels, and 80,000 Roman citizens and their allies had been slain. [Dio, LXII, 1] Tacitus was to marvel that the rebels saved no prisoners to sell as slaves. To him, the Britons had no head for business. As for the rebel killing spree, Tacitus likened it to a man seeking vengeance for his own imminent execution. [Tac., A, XIV, 33]
By the time that Paulinus’ column reached today’s Warwickshire, it would have been clear to the governor that the 2nd Augusta Legion was not going to join him. He realized, too, that if he continued to retreat, within a few days he would be at the frontier, while behind him, the rebels would be in possession of most of Roman Britain. Despite being hugely outnumbered, Paulinus decided that the time had come to fight. He would, in his own reported words, face the rebels and “conquer them, or die on the spot.” [Dio, LXII, 11]
Precisely where Paulinus and Boudicca did battle is the subject of hot dispute among modern historians. The most likely site is near today’s village of Mancetter, on the border between Warwickshire and Leicestershire. Mancetter takes its name from a Roman settlement which later grew here called Manduessedum, or “place of the chariots”—in the British army that was pursuing Paulinus there were numerous war chariots, which would soon be in action here. Halting his column, Paulinus gave orders for his troops to build a marching camp and for the civilian refugees to continue on, no doubt to seek shelter at the Roman frontier fortresses at Wall and Wro
xeter. As his men built their camp, Paulinus went for a ride, looking for a battle site. He settled on a location believed by many historians to be not far from the Anker river. According to Tacitus, it was approached by a narrow defile through the hills, which opened out on to a plain. [Tac., A, XIV, 34]
The Romans did not have to wait long before Boudicca and her massive throng came up Watling Street from the south. On a summer’s morning, after his scouts had assured him there were no Britons in his rear, Paulinus had his little army form up in battle order at the chosen place. According to Dio, new additions to the rebels’ ranks meant that Boudicca’s army had almost doubled in size since the attack on Camulodunum, to a massive 230,000 fighting men. [Dio, LXII, 8] It was, said Tacitus, “a vaster host than ever had assembled”; the largest opposition army ever encountered by the Romans. [Tac., A, XIV, 34] It was also by far the largest army to do battle on Britain’s shores, ever.
On Paulinus’ orders, the Roman troops formed three wedge formations. The men of the 14th Gemina Legion occupied the center, standing at the head of the defile. The Evocati cohorts of the 20th Legion were joined with them. The auxiliary cohorts were either side of them. The cavalry squadrons occupied the wings. The men of all three wedges were in “close array.” Across the field, the Britons had “masses of infantry and cavalry.” [Ibid.]
The rebels were so confident of success that their families had parked their booty-laden wagons in a semicircle at the rear, from where they could watch the battle. On one side of the field, the Roman legionaries wore helmets and body armor. [Dio, LXII, 5] The warriors had neither armor nor helmets, while their first-use weapon was the framea. Each Briton carried a flat oak shield, covered with hide, and longer than the legionary shield. [Warry, WCW]
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