Boudica was the icean queen whose husband died and left a will, which the Romans asserted gave them control over the Icean lands. Boudica said otherwise, and for her refusal to hand over her territory, the Romans whipped her and raped her daughters.
Thus it came to pass in ~61AD, that whilst the Roman Governor was in NW Wales fighting the Welsh, and some British druids who had fled there, Boudica along with other tribes started a war of independent against Roman control.
The Fake Story
The general lead up to the events is accepted, but then it all gets ridiculous. Because some academic in the last millennium decided that the Roman governor of Britain galloped down Watling Street to London (the Roman road from Wales), took one look at the situation in London, and then (ignoring the text that says he was looking for a “seat of war” and had to be encouraged to “put off delay”, the academic asserted the Roman governor, took one look at London and immediately fled to safety … not doubt galloping again … not toward Rome, the natural direction of any Roman seeking refuge, but toward Wales and into the heart of Britain where he would be surrounded by hostile peoples only recently slaughtered to conquer by the Romans.
Thus that appalling academic then asserted that Boudica’s last battle must be along Watling Street. It was the work of a madman, and all the more insane because it was eagerly seized upon by British academic Roman Scholars as the authoritative account.
And, ever since then, the idiots have been working out detailed timelines of the days that followed and just how far someone could gallop up Watling street and then looking for signs of some magical battle site along the line of Watling Street. The battle was “in a valley” … so there probably isn’t a single valley up Watling Street that didn’t get suggested as the likely site.
And, then metal detectors arrived … and people started combing these sites looking for the evidence of battle … and they found none.
My Concerns
I read the “experts” talking about the gallop back and forth along Watling Street, and it seemed to be the work of madmen. Why would a Roman governor, knowing one of his Legions had been almost entirely obliterated by the Iceni, then gallop down to London, a well known location, which he must have known well, and would have known full well its circumstances before he got there? And then suddenly realise it could not be defended as a town? He would have known that well in advance.
He clearly had a plan, and that plan included the fact that London had no defences and was not a place he could hold. So why head for London? Because London is the key to one of the best defensive walls in Britain. Not Hadrian’s wall, not the Antonine wall … or as it might be better termed the “Antonine ditch”, for the wall was really a very big and steep sided ditch, with a small and easily crossed turf wall. It was the ditch that created the Antonine “wall”, along with the Kelvin river valley, a boggy plain, that even today is only crossed in a few places. In the Roman period, the river, and the boggy ground on either side, was the main barrier.
Likewise, if anyone goes to Hadrian’s “wall”, we find that yet again, it follows the course of a river. Because rivers make defensive barriers.
So, why might a Roman General head for London? A place that a few decades before had been a barrier to the Romans in their advance North? Because London is a portcullis on a massive wall, called the Thames. London Bridge was the only point that the Thames could be crossed easily at least as far as Wallingford. Wallingford was the last major ford of the upper Thames before the river goes through the Goring gap, and turns into a sluggish wide and deep lower river with a few strong rapids. Here it used to regularly flood and overflow the plain on either side often creating boggy difficult to cross ground. So, not just the river, but the ground either side created a barrier to a large army especially one far from home needing a lot of heavy supplies. That meant carts, which were difficult to get across a river and even more difficult to get across boggy ground at the side of a river.
There is no doubt that the reason the Roman governor headed to London was to secure the only decent crossing of the Lower Thames. After which the Iceni were effectively cut off from the south of the Thames, creating a massive Roman fort. The only way around, was for them to head west to the Upper Thames crossings, which then meant they could only move south by crossing the Berkshire downs which have a steep northern face which was easily fortified and would have given the Romans to the south of these hills a huge advantage in any battle with the Iceni ~140 miles away from their home base in Norfolk. More problematic, if the entire Iceni army crossed the Thames and moved south, what was stopping the Romans crossing the Thames and attacking the Iceni heartland in Norfolk?
Ukraine
I started following the events in Ukraine, to try to understand the nature of real war. Of course, modern war is very different. Where in the Roman period, a man could kill another only if they could through or fire a spear or arrow, or sling shot at them, today, regular guns can kill people hundred of meters away … a far greater reach than any Roman soldier, and large guns can fire shells many kilometres away. So, in many ways the two are not easily comparable, particularly the “reach” of modern weapons when compared to the ancient. But, as Ukraine has proved, there are also many similarities. Troops need to be fed, weapons need to be produced, roads need to be repaired or made to bring in supplies, and if not, the whole movement of troops and supplies bogs down and everything grinds to a snails pace.
However, having only ever seen war as part of US propaganda films from Holywood, I had only seen war as a “blitzkrieg” where the US (for it is always the US) drives forward at great speed and … without ever doing any preparation, or needing any supplies … destroys the enemy in a matter of hours (slight exaggeration .. but you get the point).
And, then we got Ukraine. Where the front line stayed in the same place for years on end, and despite regular videos posted on line of this or that side killing a few of the other, nothing much changed. And, then when one side pushed forward, it quickly came to an end, it stalled and then sat still again.
Eventually we began to see the overwhelming superiority of the Russian forces making steady progress. Not a Blitzkrieg getting to Kiev in a day and winning the war the next day, but progress, one field at a time, then pause … and then weeks later taking the next. You hardly notice it on the map it is so slow, but when you see how far they have gone, it is clear that the Russians are winning massively.
So, it was clear they had the resources to respond to any attack by the Ukrainians. But, did they do the Holywood narrative … a battle one day, followed within hours by a decisive counter attack. Not at all. The response, even where the Russians clearly had everything ready would take days to weeks, even months. Every time I guessed how long it took … you could multiply that by 10 and it was still too fast. Clearly, despite having the means to win, everything takes a lot longer than in the (US) movies. There clearly was a lot lot lot more to war, than the “glory” boys shown in the US propaganda movies.
So, I started working out what that might mean in practice. What was it they were having to prepare, what took the time. When you start considering the real logistics of a real war, not a lot has changed since the Roman period. Equipment, men, food, accommodation. It all takes time and resources. Intelligence, probing attacks, softening up the enemy, subterfuge attacks, preparing equipment, men and tactics to overcome the obstacles that the enemy has prepared, that also takes time.
Before Ukraine, I was thinking the Roman governor had retreated over the Thames, leaving London to the Iceni, and had perhaps taken up to a month to prepare to take the war back to Boudica. Following Ukraine, I now know, that despite being “off the wall” in suggesting the Romans took “up to a month” to take the fight back to Boudica, even I was almost certainly massively underestimating the timescale. I would now suggest the Roman governor likely spent as much as a whole year preparing to start the offensive campaign against the Iceni.
So Where Was the Battle?
Let me use the old approach to work it out! A man may gallop a horse at … let’s say 10mph (I pluck that out of the air and it is wrong). They gallop for 24 hours a day (because Roman horses don’t need food or rest) and they do it for 365 days. That gives us a maximum radius of 87,000 miles. So, that constrains it to anywhere on the globe … and beyond, thus proving the Romans had invented space travel.
It doesn’t work as a technique. It is stupid!
You simply cannot use the distance a person can travel to work it out. That was NOT the constraining factor. A man could have crossed the known world many times in the time it took the Romans to prepare for battle.
We can only pin down potential locations by understanding the Roman strategy. We know, because the Romans saw London as critical, that the Thames was the front line, and so the Iceni hold the land north of the Thames, the Romans the south. The Romans need to draw the Iceni into a battle that the Romans can win, despite having a fraction of the Iceni total forces.
We are told the Romans chose to fight in a valley. The reason for that, I now understand, is to create a form of bottleneck, which allows a tactic that can destroy much larger forces, as did occur in the decisive battle with the Iceni.
Iif the Romans can create panic leading the other side to attempt to flee …whereupon, if they have nowhere to flee, except within their own forces, the crush their own side to death. Once you start that crush, the other side is finished, because the fear and noise of those being crushed create further alarm and so long as the enemy cannot easily retreat, they destroy their own forces. That is how a force of perhaps 10,000 could defeat some 100,00 enemy.
To create that crush, the Romans needed a valley which would constrain the movement of the Iceni, and give them only one way in and out (if the Romans were at one end). If the Romans then used their cavalry to outflank the Iceni (perhaps arriving as a new force behind the Iceni), the Iceni at the open end of the valley could be made to flee into those engaging with the Romans. If the Romans then pushed forward causing the front line to attempt to retreat, the mass hoards of 100,000 Iceni, perhaps 20 to 40 deep would all be attempting to head toward the centre of their own forces in a mass wave of fear. Those at the centre would be killed simply by the pushing and shoving of their own side attempting to flee the Romans. Within minutes the vast majority of the Iceni would be dead simply by the action of their own side attempting to flee the Romans.
All the Romans needed to do, was to lure the Iceni, confident in victory after defeating the 9th legion, into a suitable valley. The valley would have steep sides that were not farmed, and instead were filled with dense vegetation that prevented large groups running through. Such a valley created a funnel. The slopes were not themselves an obstacle, anyone could walk up them. But, the slope was rocky and too steep for the plough and so only the valley bottom was farmed and thus mainly clear. The slopes on either side were left to grow dense undergrowth. But, nor was the undergrowth a barrier. Individuals might easily pass through the vegetation, because there were numerous paths made by cattle and wild animals. But these paths were narrow, twisty and had many “choke points”. An individual might easily pass, but when 1000 people attempt to run up the same slope at the same time, 1000 people find they all arrive at the one choke point where only one may pass at a time. The first gets through, the second perhaps, the third is shoved by the fourth and they stumble, the fifth trips over the third now lying on the floor, soon the 6th, 7th, 8th are on the floor, with 9th, 10th, 11th scrambling over their prone bodies. More and more bodies pile up at the choke points as people desperately scramble over the growing pile, and the result is that almost no one except the very first makes it through.
Panic and choke points are a deadly mix, and the Romans knew that very well and used it to their advantage time and time again to win battles.
There are half a dozen suitable valleys along the Chilterns that are great candidates for such tactics. Undoubtedly there would have been other places as well. However, the ground flattens as we head toward Norfolk, so as we head away from the Thames and past the Chilterns we rapidly run out of candidates. A thorough search of all the possible candidates that a Roman force advancing from south of the Thames by hope to reach before an Iceni force from Norfolk or perhaps St.Albans could arrive would reveal a manageable number of candidates which could be searched and evaluated. I mention St.Albans, only because it is a known settlement at this time and we know the Iceni sacked St.Albans. It is possible they then stayed in the vicinity after sacking that town. But they may have chosen another town, or indeed none. But, most likely there were Iceni people in various places all the way from the Thames to Norfolk and it took weeks to gather them all together.
Likewise, based on Ukraine, the Romans could have marched to Norfolk and back in the time it took the Iceni to gather together. The Roman’s main concern was choosing a location where they could guarantee supplies to their troops.
As such, it is likely the Romans did not advance much beyond the Thames “wall” before they started building a temporary defensive Roman camp. The purpose of that advance would have been to provoke the Iceni to attack the Romans. So, it must have been a considerable advance beyond the Roman Thames wall, perhaps as far as some iconic location, that would be too difficult for the Iceni to ignore, but not so far as to make the Roman supply lines vulnerable. Here there would be a valley, into which the Romans could “retreat”, probably to prepared defensive lines and perhaps the valley itself had fences and walls to constrain the Iceni in their attack and make aid the Roman crush tactics.
But, we must not focus on the camp. The real war is a war to gain control of territory. A camp is just the centre of a large piece of controlled land.
The real pace of war … a snail’s pace
The reality of war, as I discovered watching Ukraine, is that it proceeds at a snail’s pace. A kilometre advance in a day is a huge change. That’s not a kilometre advance with the enemy soldiers standing in a line able to shout insults at the other. That is an enemy that is out of sight, but the advancing army now “controls” that land, so that they are able to keep soldiers in that area, if they so wish. Each force has a mental map of what the other controls. The areas where it is safe to go, and the areas it is not. There is not exactly a gentleman’s agreement between the two sides, but there is custom and practice which determines where one side can and can’t go. And, if the other side presses them, they will decide they cannot go so far. And, if their own side wins ground, there will be more areas that they feel they are relatively safe to go into. There is no “safe area”. Its a gradient of safety going from ground that is mostly safe for one side, reducing in safety for that side, and growing in safety for the other, until it is mostly safe for the other. That distance is tens of kilometres, but it becomes more and more perilous for either side to move forward as they approach the “front line”. That is not a physical line, although often soldiers do pick a recognisable landmark so they are sure not to cross it. It is a mental frontier, one that soldiers are fearful to approach and terrified to cross.
Were the Romans sitting in their camp?
Here again, is the idiocy of academia showing through. If you read any account of the Roman campaigns, you will be told how the Romans hid behind their camp walls, barely daring to go out the few hundred meters to the local stream to get water, let alone further afield. Then, suddenly one day, the entire contents of one camp, would move in one single line to another location …. where the Romans (apparently never seeing the placed before) would then look for a place to build a camp, and then magically in a few hours, build the new camp – using materials that always magically appear when needed, build everything to do with living (like ovens for bread). And, then they would repeat the same exercise the next day and every day thereafter, in a blitzkrieg to make Holywood proud.
What happens if a Roman soldier loses their sandal in a bog, or a vital piece of horse tackle gets broken? When do these Roman soldiers who are marching all day, building camps in the evening and then cooking after dark, just in time to get up again … when do they repair anything? They can’t can’t. So, magically nothing critical can break … because if it did, there would be soldiers and equipment left at each camp … which if the rhetoric of academia is to be believed, has a hoard of the enemy waiting a few meters from the back gate ready to enter the camp as soon as the last Roman troops (able to move) leave the front gate. I don’t know if the Iceni were supposed to roll a big ball like in Indiana Jones, but we do get the sense that any Roman who even hesitated to tie up a shoe lace would be immediately surrounded by the enemy and slain.
That is the biggest load of claptrap!
When the Roman’s built a camp, it was primarily a place to stay. They might spend a week building the next camp. And, most of the time they did not need armour, they did not need arms because there was absolutely no risk of attack. Because the Romans, like any army, went out every day to patrol the area for tens of miles around, and if there was the slightest sign of any enemy, it was quickly and decisively dealt with. They dominated the landscape for tens of miles and that included the entire area for tens of miles around the next camp.
Only if the enemy were seen preparing to go to war (they had spies, there patrols would push right into the enemy lands and see who was doing what). Only if the enemy were preparing, would the Romans start preparing for battle themselves. The Romans would see them coming You cannot confront a Roman army, without a large army, and a large army needs a lot of provisions and a lot of provisions move very slowly … even with Roman roads, it still took a lot of time to move an army.
The Romans knew the enemy was coming days in advance, and they had time to decide where they were going to meet them, to ensure they had a camp to protect them at night and they had a fair idea where they might do battle. These battlefield were then cleared of all obstacles that might impede Roman tactics and then obstacles were added to impede their enemy’s tactics.
The Romans didn’t actually need a camp. Many campaigns have no sign of any camps. It was only when they were subject to gorilla style tactics that they needed the protection of a camp. The only time the Roman’s might have been caught in their camp, is if the enemy chose to use the cover of darkness to sneak up of the camp. They would not get very close. There would be centuries at a distance from the camp who would warn of any approach, and the Romans were trained to prepare rapidly for battle. However it still takes time to move an army out of a camp. So, the commander of the camp would have to decide whether he had time to move his troops out into the open (the preferred ground for a Roman army) or to use the added security of a camp, but which constrained them in their tactics and prevented the Romans attacking and so driving away the enemy.
A Roman army with its huge baggage train, could only move through ground it controlled. It had to win the ground, and that meant driving away the enemy from that ground. Because only once the Romans had secured all the ground around them, and around the next camp, would they start constructing their next place to stay. That might take a week. A week of building new ovens, erecting new latrines, new places to store the grain away from the vermin. Obviously they’d also build some wall, roads, probably a few make-do temples and perhaps a bath for the commander. And, during the week, more and more people and supplies would move, not it a mass movement, but it in steady too and fro as carts carrying all kinds of things moved the contents of one camp to the next over many days. That was only possible if the Romans had total control over the entire area. Unless they had that control they were “constrained” in the one camp.
But, when “constrained”, the Romans would be going out and in. Going out getting water, wood, etc. Unless the enemy were close enough to strike within the hour … and then everyone either retreats into the camp, or moves out to confront the enemy.
Where was the camp?
The Romans didn’t need a camp, but if the Agricolan campaign is followed, they likely built one on a suitable hill. It would have had wooden fences and ditches …. not so much an impenetrable barrier, as a way to slow down an assault, limit the number of attacks penetrating the camp and give the defenders to respond in overwhelming numbers and kill the attackers.
Such ditches occur all over the place for many different reasons and if there is any agriculture, they are quickly erased from the landscape. Even in Scotland, where there has not been a lot of ploughing, along the Agricolan approach to Mons Graupius, almost none of the camps are now visible to the naked eye. They can only be found through aerial photography, and that is only possible, because of the relative sparsity of other similar ditches, and the fact that if one camp is on one hill, there are only so many places the next camp will be located.
If you have no idea where you are looking, and you are looking at fertile land that has been heavily farmed for millennium, there is no chance of finding any Roman camp. Even if you knew where it was supposed to be, there is a very good chance that all trace has been obliterated.
And, even if a camp were found, there would be no way to tie it with the Boudican campaign unless a closely dated coin were found in a hole, that could only have been present at the time of the camp and for a short time after. There are well known Roman forts in Scotland that were in use for years, where not a single piece of dating evidence has been found. The chance of a temporary camp in use for a few weeks having dating evidence is close to zero. But, even if something dateable were found, the chance it could be securely linked to the camp, is miniscule.
Can we find the battlefield?
The battle of between the Roman forces of Pompey & Caesar on 9th August 48 BC near to the old town of Pharsalus is recorded a several Roman texts, which given the nature of the battle of Roman upon Roman, was recorded in great detail. The old town of Pharsalus cannot be far from the modern town, and moreover the texts tell us the battle was next to the river Enipeus. It’s not difficult to work out where it was. Yet, despite the location being known with a great deal of confidence, there has not been a single find from the battle site.
Unlike Pharsalus, no one knows the location of Boudica’s last battle and places throughout England have been suggested. The evidence from Pharsalus, is that even if the battle site is well known, even if huge numbers died, there can be absolutely no trace of the battle.
It may one day be found. Probably in the last place anyone expected. Almost certainly not along Watling Street (except where it crosses the Chilterns) and I doubt there will be any sign of a camp.
The most likely evidence is going to come from the detritus of battle such as the Roman sling shots found at Burnswark. These sling shots could be stone, and so difficult to spot or they might be lead … eagerly gathered up, but some may have penetrated the ground and remained undisturbed. Likewise the tips of arrows and spears, that penetrated into the ground, although only those that broke off, as an arrow and all the spears that could be gathered up were undoubtedly gathered up and the iron re-used.
There may have been incidental items lost, bits of armour that broke off. But these would mostly settle on the surface and whilst they might have been many in the areas of the greatest fighting, these were also the areas that scavengers would focus on. And, if they were not gather up at the time, any area that was ploughed would regularly bring them back to the surface where (when farmed with manual labour) eager eyes would snap them up.
There may have been burials of Romans, which could have been sizeable at the time … but I cannot recall any such burials associated with a battlefield having been found. So, the chances of the first one being at Boudica’s last battle is slim.
If we look at known battlefields in more recent history, like for example, the battle of Falkirk Muir during the Jacobite uprising, recorded on many maps of the time, including the William Roy Map … it has not been found, despite the accounts of numerous rounds of musket. Perhaps no one has looked …. or they are looking in the wrong place, but again, if we cannot find a battlefield from the 18th century marked on a map, we are going to struggle to find a battle field which no one has even the faintest idea where it is, from the Roman period.
But, that doesn’t mean it won’t turn up some day.
