Tabla de Contenidos
Boudica, queen of the Iceni, a British tribe that populated England, led an uprising against the occupation of the Roman Empire. The place or date of her birth is not known, but it is believed that she died between 60 and 61 AD, after being defeated by the Romans. Her name derives from the Celtic word bouda , which means victory; she today she is buddug in welsh and bua in irish. She is also called Boadicea or Boadacaea, according to the Latin records of the writers of the time. Two Roman writers told the story of Boudica: Tacitus, in Agricola (year 98) and Los Anales (year 109); and Dion Casio, in The rebellion of Boudica (around the year 163).
roman occupation
Boudica was the wife of Prasutagus, king of the Iceni. The Iceni were a British tribe, part of the Celts who inhabited present-day Great Britain; They inhabited the region of England that today corresponds to the county of Norfolk. The Romans had conquered Britain in 43 AD, when Claudius was emperor. The Iceni were allies of the Romans after the conquest, maintaining a certain independence and their own king. However, the occupation generated great resentment in the Britons, due to the Roman brutality to impose their rules, their onerous taxes and their attempt to suppress the Celtic religion.
In the year 48, the Roman governor Publius Ostorio Scapula ordered the requisition of all the weapons of the Iceni to discourage them from supporting the resistance of Caratacus, king of the Catuvellanos, another Celtic tribe located south of present-day England. This measure caused an uprising that the Romans quickly put down.
The death of Prasutagus
Between the year 60 and 61 Prasutagus died, bequeathing half the kingdom to his two daughters and the other half to the Roman Empire. Under Roman law, agreements with local kings expired on his death, and all his possessions then became the property of Rome. Prasutagus’s legacy generated a violent reaction from the Romans, not only for trying to maintain the independence of the kingdom but also for ceding power to two women, which was an insult to the patriarchal structure of Roman society.
Roman commanders ordered the imposition of Rome’s authority in the kingdom as soon as Prasutagus’ inheritance was made public. The Romans flogged Boudica in public, in front of her people, and raped her daughters; they also confiscated the estates of leading Celtic nobles. These actions exacerbated the resentment of the Iceni and sparked an uprising led by Boudica, the tribe’s new queen.
The uprising against the Roman occupation
The Iceni were not the only ones who had reason to confront the Romans, and many other Briton tribesmen joined Boudica’s army. However, the army that faced the Romans was constituted mainly by the Trinovantes and the Iceni; It is estimated that some 100,000 people were part of this army, including the wives and children of the combatants.
The first action of Boudica’s army was to attack the city of Camulodunum, now Colchester, in Essex, England. Camulodunum had been the capital of the Trinovantes, but the Romans had turned it into a colony in AD 50, expropriating the land to give it to Roman soldiers. The nobles who allied themselves with the Romans were commissioned to build a temple in honor of Emperor Claudius; To pay for the construction of the temple and the facilities of the colony, the Roman State and the financier Seneca gave them large loans. Suddenly, the attorney Cato Deciano demanded the full repayment of the loans; This, together with the onerous taxes they paid and the abuses they had suffered, led to the participation of the Trinovantes in the uprising.
The British uprising occurred at a militarily advantageous moment. Several major cities were virtually unprotected; Governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus had mobilized two thirds of the Roman army to the west of the province to invade the island of Mona, off the coast of Wales. The island of Mona was an important religious center for the Druids, Celtic priests who, in addition to being religious leaders, had supported the Celtic uprisings against the Roman Empire in Gaul and Britain. The Romans invaded the island, massacring all the Druid priests.
With most of the Roman army in the west, Boudica and his allies met little resistance as they advanced towards Camulodunum. The IX legion commanded by Quintus Petillius Cerialis tried to intercept them but they fell into an ambush; of the 2,000 legionaries only 500 survived. The Britons occupied Camulodunum without much resistance and destroyed the city.
The next target of the British uprising was Londinium, London, the economic center and principal city of the Roman province of Britain. The military strategy of the Roman governor Paulino was to abandon Londinium to concentrate his forces in a battle that would take place under favorable conditions; he knew that Rome faced a much larger but poorly equipped army, with little military training and experience. Londinium was almost uninhabited when the British army arrived; Like Camulodunum, the Britons destroyed Londinium and executed the remaining inhabitants. The same happened with Verulamium, near present-day Saint Elba (St. Albans), in the county of Hertfordshire, the next town the British attacked. It is estimated that about 75.
The defeat of Boudica’s army
The Roman governor Paulino reorganized the army with the XX legion, some units of the XIV legion and auxiliary personnel, together with the survivors of the IX legion; about 10,000 soldiers in all, far fewer than Boudica’s army. Paulinus strategically positioned his forces and waited for the Britons, who were outmatched by an experienced and well-equipped army, deployed in an advantageous position. The British army was decimated and Boudica committed suicide by taking poison to avoid capture by the Romans.
Later there were other British uprisings but of lesser magnitude: the rebellion led by Boudica was the main act of resistance of the Britons against the Roman Empire.
Sources
- Boudica Vs Rome – An Ancient Battle For Britain | All About History (historyanswers.co.uk)
- Mark, Joshua J. Boudicca. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 2019.
- Britannica. Boudicca. The Editors of Encyclopaedia. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2017.
