During the reign of the Emperor Nero, the
Roman conquest of Britain was less than a generation old. With conquest came Romanization, which meant
that Roman immigrants were now flooding onto the island. The King of the Iceni, one of the independent
tribes here, could see the writing on the wall, so when he died, his will designated
3 heirs: as his two daughters, and the Roman Emperor. This was supposed to be a subtle way to peacefully
transition the Iceni people into the Roman Empire, while upholding the King's daughters
at the head of the tribe. It didn't work. The Romans used this as justification to move
against the Iceni. Soldiers went into their homes, confiscating
anything of value. Many of the Iceni men were simply taken and
sold into slavery, while the women were raped with impunity. Even the King's two daughters were raped,
and when their mother, the Kings widow, a woman named Boudicca, tried to intervene,
she was stripped naked and whipped. After this incident, Boudicca called for a
secret meeting with the Iceni leadership, and invited many neighbouring tribes that
had been subjected to similar treatment by the Romans. At this meeting they agreed to all unite under
one banner and launch an open revolt against the Roman occupation. A vote was held, and Boudicca was elected
War-Queen of the united tribes. That spring, we're told that the tribes didn't
even bother to plant crops. For months, all they did was make weapons,
gather supplies, and secretly prepare for war. When summer rolled around, Paulinus, the governor
of Britain, took a legion and marched off on campaign. Now, if you'll indulge me, I want to follow
Paulinus's campaign. We'll come back to Boudicca, don't worry. Paulinus planned to invade the island of Anglesey
in Wales, which the Romans called Mona Insula. This island was one of the most important
religious sites in Britain, and conquering it would be an huge symbolic victory for the
Romans. When they arrived offshore, the soldiers climbed
down off of their boats and started wading towards the beach. When they got closer, they could see that
the beach was packed with Druids. They were dressed in black, with their arms
raised to the sky, chanting in their native tongue. Accompanying them was an mob of women, also
dressed in black, armed with nothing but flaming sticks. The women started screaming like wild animals,
and charged into the water while the Druids continued chanting on the shore. The Roman soldiers were so petrified by what
they saw that everybody stopped moving, and lowered their weapons, and just stared. They couldn't even process what they were
seeing. After a long moment, Paulinus started shouting
insults at his men and ordered everyone to charge. That snapped them out of it. It was really no contest. The Romans cut their way through the women
all the way to the beach, and when they reached the chanting Druids they cut them down as
well. But they slowly realized that the Druids weren't
just standing on the beach, they were standing on a giant funeral pyre. One of the surviving women, still carrying
her flaming stick, lit the pyre, and the entire beach went up in flames, consuming the bodies
of the Druids. It wasn't until this moment that the Romans
realized that this wasn't a battle, this was a massive human sacrifice. And they had just unwittingly participated
in it. To a certain extent Romans believed in magic. Omens, witchcraft, oracles, sorcery, superstitions,
all that stuff was fair game. They also believed that foreign gods were
just as real as their own. To them, what they had just done was going
to have real world consequences. What kind of consequences? They didn't know. Just after this incident on Mona Insula, there
were reports of strange happenings back east. People said that the English Channel turned
blood-red. People said they saw the ruins of a destroyed
civilization under the Thames river. People said that there were corpses washing
up on beaches. People said that a statue to the Roman goddess
of victory strangely collapsed for no reason. Were some of these omens invented by later
historians? Maybe. We don't know. But if any these rumours were swirling around
at the time, the Romans would have been predisposed to believing them. This was the mood in the air when Boudicca
finally launched her revolt. Boudicca's first target the city of Camulodunum,
which was one of the largest Roman settlements in Britain. Messengers from Camulodunum were sent to the
cities of Londinium and Longthorpe, saying that a massive army was marching on the city,
requesting aid. When Londinium got word of this, they sent
200 unarmed slaves to help restore order. Basically a slap in the face. When the messenger arrived at Longthorpe,
they actually took the threat seriously. They sent their entire detachment of 2,500
men to help. But neither force arrived in time. A small group of soldiers in Camulodunum made
a heroic last stand protecting thousands of civilians hiding in a large temple, but after
a siege lasting several days, the temple fell, and all the inhabitants were slaughtered. The residents of Camulodunum were subjected
to every horrific indignity you could possibly imagine. Some were hanged. Some were crucified. Some were tortured to death. Some were boiled alive. Some were forced to watch as they were disemboweled. According to the Roman historian Dio, "They
hung up naked the noblest and most distinguished women and then cut off their breasts and sewed
them to their mouths, in order to make the victims appear to be eating them; afterwards
they impaled the women on sharp skewers run lengthwise through the entire body." The entire population of the city was subjected
to stuff like this. Boudicca's people were trying to send a message. No Roman was safe. By this time, Paulinus was starting to get
reports that there had been a revolt. He got his men together and set off back east
as fast as he could. Longthorpe's 2,500 man relief force was expecting
to just march right in there and put down some local uprising. It never even occurred to them that they were
dealing with a complete mobilization of the entire Iceni people, plus their allies. They were met by Boudicca's forces outside
the city. 2,000 were killed and the remaining 500 fled. As Paulinus was en route, he heard of this
defeat. All Paulinus had with him was 1 legion, only
5,000 men. He sent out messengers to every little town
along the way, calling up every retired soldier still able to hold a sword and shield. He was able to bring his numbers up to 10,000
this way. There was another legion - another 5,000 men
- stationed in a stronghold to the southwest. Paulinus sent a message to them ordering them
to come to his aid, but the the guy in charge of the legion at this time, their Primus Pilus,
just flat-out refused his orders. So Paulinus was stuck with only 10,000 men,
and arrived at the city of Londinium just as Boudicca was closing in. He told the locals that he didn't have enough
men to effectively mount a defense, and advised them to evacuate the city. He offered the legion's protection to anybody
who wanted to come with them, and with that he marched north, followed by thousands of
refugees. When Boudicca reached Londinium, she subjected
the remaining population to the same treatment that Camulodunum had got. They tortured, mutilated, and killed everyone
they could find, and then they burned the city to the ground. Boudicca then took off north in pursuit of
Paulinus's legion. Paulinus was headed towards the last surviving
large city in Roman Britain, Verulamium. When Paulinus arrived at Verulamium, he advised
the inhabitants to evacuate the city, and said that he would protect anybody who came
with his legion, just like before. Then he continued north, followed by even
more refugees. When Boudicca's forces descended on Verulamium,
she had it destroyed in exactly the same manner as the other two cities. At this point, the three largest Roman cities
in Britain were simply gone. 80,000 Romans had been massacred, which was
a huge percentage of the total Roman population of the province. The entire colonization effort was now in
jeopardy. Paulinus continued marching north, but now
he was nearing the edge of Roman territory. There wasn't really anywhere left for him
to go. He had thousands of refugees with him, very
little food, and no hope of receiving reinforcements any time soon. Paulinus decided to turn and fight. He sent the refugees ahead, and told them
to keep walking west until they hit a new settlement near Wales. But he must have known that before long Boudicca
would come for them too. According to Dio, Paulinus speaks to his men:
"it would be better for us to fall fighting bravely than to be captured and impaled, to
look upon our own entrails cut from our bodies, to be spitted on red-hot skewers, to perish
by being melted in boiling water. [...] Britain will be a noble monument for
us." Dio liked to invent grandiose speeches, but
you get the point. Paulinus didn't think he'd live to see tomorrow. Paulinus found an area with a forest on both
sides that would work as a choke point. That's where he chose to fight. Boudicca's army showed up, and it had grown
in size. Our best source from this period claims that
this was the largest army Rome had ever faced, and there's some evidence supporting this. In Boudicca's army the women may have outnumbered
the men. Most of them were now outfitted with captured
Roman weapons. The Iceni liked to use chariots, but Boudicca
didn't have very many, presumably because most of their horses had been taken by the
Romans. Boudicca's massive horde of infantry loosely
formed up, and she had her supply wagons brought in and put in a semicircle behind her line. Some people argue that this was for non combatants
to watch the battle, but that's kind of a troupe in Roman history without a lot of evidence
attached to it. I think it was to prevent the Romans from
escaping. Boudicca's forces closed in, and when they
were in range, the Romans let loose with their javelins. When they were out of javelins, the Romans
infantry formed up into 3 wedge-like formations, and then, without warning, they charged at
full speed into Boudicca's line. Paulinus anticipated that they would immediately
be surrounded, which is exactly what happened, but the wedges allowed them to fight in several
directions at once. Even though they were surrounded, they relentlessly
moving forward, hacking through multitudes of Iceni. Boudicca's surrounding forces bombarded the
Romans with arrows, javelins, and stones from all directions, but the Iceni were not used
to fighting heavy infantry, and most of the missiles were light enough to bounce off Roman
shields and armour. Boudicca ordered the few chariots at her disposal
to charge into the Roman line several times, but the Romans would just tighten up, hold
their ground, and then continue pushing forward. After continuing like this all day, there
was a break. The Iceni were frustrated and exhausted by
the Roman's unstoppable, machine-like forward momentum, and they tried to pull back. They started to run into their own wagons,
which caused a bit of a traffic jam. Before long, a serious situation had developed
where there was a huge crush of Iceni pushed up against the wagons, and they couldn't move. The Romans charged into this mass of humanity,
and a battle that could have been a stalemate instantaneously turned into a slaughter. The Romans didn't differentiate between man,
woman, child, horse, pack animal, they killed everything that moved. Boudicca and some others would escape the
slaughter, but she would take her own life by drinking poison a few days later. We are told that including children and non
combatants, a little less than 80,000 of the Iceni were killed. The Romans claim that only 400 killed and
another 400 wounded, but that seems really low considering the nature and duration of
the fighting. In the immediate aftermath, the Romans would
do an emergency transfer 6,000 additional soldiers to Britain, so make of that what
you will. And with that Roman colonization of Britain
was pulled back from the brink. The Emperor Nero briefly thought about abandoning
the entire island, but that idea died when he did. The Romans would occupy the Britain for the
next 300 years, but this was the largest conflict to ever occur on British soil.
GOD DAMN I LOVE THESE VIDEOS
I've heard the guy who wouldn't send his legion to help committed suicide because he was so ashamed.
I didn't know the stuff with the driuds was that spooky
The Romans' ability to slaughter and conquer will never fail to impress me
Swiggity swooty, I'm coming for that Boudi
Fun fact: The person commanding the legion that refuses the orders to join Paulinus at that time committed suicide. He was actually the 3rd in command of the legion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legio_II_Augusta
I watched a video on Boudicca in college; still intrigued by her and her rebellion.
I love this guy's style
Why didn't the Iceni just surround the roman army by going through the forest ? ? They had 10 times as much manpower seems weird to not try to do that even for a light ghetto army.