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 In
the consulship of Caesonius Paetus and Petronius Turpilianus, a serious
disaster was sustained in Britain, where Aulius Didius, the emperor's
legate, had merely retained our existing possessions, and his successor
Veranius, after having ravaged the Silures in some trifling raids,
was prevented by death from extending the war. While he lived, he
had a great name for manly independence, though, in his will's final
words, he betrayed a flatterer's weakness; for, after heaping adulation
on Nero, he added that he should have conquered the province for him,
had he lived for the next two years. Now, however, Britain was in
the hands of Suetonius Paulinus, who in military knowledge and in
popular favour, which allows no one to be without a rival, vied with
Corbulo, and aspired to equal the glory of the recovery of Armenia
by the subjugation of Rome's enemies. He therefore prepared to attack
the island of Mona which had a powerful population and was a refuge
for fugitives. He built flat-bottomed vessels to cope with the shallows,
and uncertain depths of the sea. Thus the infantry crossed, while
the cavalry followed by fording, or, where the water was deep, swam
by the side of their horses.
On the shore
stood the opposing army with its dense array of armed warriors,
while between the ranks dashed women, in black attire like the Furies,
with hair dishevelled, waving brands. All around, the Druids, lifting
up their hands to heaven, and pouring forth dreadful imprecations,
scared our soldiers by the unfamiliar sight, so that, as if their
limbs were paralysed, they stood motionless, and exposed to wounds.
Then urged by their general's appeals and mutual encouragements
not to quail before a troop of frenzied women, they bore the standards
onwards, smote down all resistance, and wrapped the foe in the flames
of his own brands. A force was next set over the conquered, and
their groves, devoted to inhuman superstitions, were destroyed.
They deemed it indeed a duty to cover their altars with the blood
of captives and to consult their deities through human entrails.
Suetonius while
thus occupied received tidings of the sudden revolt of the province.
Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, famed for his long prosperity, had
made the emperor his heir along with his two daughters, under the
impression that this token of submission would put his kingdom and
his house out of the reach of wrong. But the reverse was the result,
so much so that his kingdom was plundered by centurions, his house
by slaves, as if they were the spoils of war. First, his wife Boudicea
was scourged, and his daughters outraged. All the chief men of the
Iceni, as if Rome had received the whole country as a gift, were
stript of their ancestral possessions, and the king's relatives
were made slaves. Roused by these insults and the dread of worse,
reduced as they now were into the condition of a province, they
flew to arms and stirred to revolt the Trinobantes and others who,
not yet cowed by slavery, had agreed in secret conspiracy to reclaim
their freedom. It was against the veterans that their hatred was
most intense. For these new settlers in the colony of Camulodunum
drove people out of their houses, ejected them from their farms,
called them captives and slaves, and the lawlessness of the veterans
was encouraged by the soldiers, who lived a similar life and hoped
for similar licence. A temple also erected to the Divine Claudius
was ever before their eyes, a citadel, as it seemed, of perpetual
tyranny. Men chosen as priests had to squander their whole fortunes
under the pretence of a religious ceremonial. It appeared too no
difficult matter to destroy the colony, undefended as it was by
fortifications, a precaution neglected by our generals, while they
thought more of what was agreeable than of what was expedient.
Meanwhile,
without any evident cause, the statue of Victory at Camulodunum
fell prostrate and turned its back to the enemy, as though it fled
before them. Women excited to frenzy prophesied impending destruction;
ravings in a strange tongue, it was said, were heard in their Senate-house;
their theatre resounded with wailings, and in the estuary of the
Tamesa had been seen the appearance of an overthrown town; even
the ocean had worn the aspect of blood, and, when the tide ebbed,
there had been left the likenesses of human forms, marvels interpreted
by the Britons, as hopeful, by the veterans, as alarming. But as
Suetonius was far away, they implored aid from the procurator, Catus
Decianus. All he did was to send two hundred men, and no more, without
regular arms, and there was in the place but a small military force.
Trusting to the protection of the temple, hindered too by secret
accomplices in the revolt, who embarrassed their plans, they had
constructed neither fosse nor rampart; nor had they removed their
old men and women, leaving their youth alone to face the foe. Surprised,
as it were, in the midst of peace, they were surrounded by an immense
host of the barbarians. All else was plundered or fired in the onslaught;
the temple where the soldiers had assembled, was stormed after a
two days' siege. The victorious enemy met Petilius Cerialis, commander
of the ninth legion, as he was coming to the rescue, routed his
troops, and destroyed all his infantry. Cerialis escaped with some
cavalry into the camp, and was saved by its fortifications. Alarmed
by this disaster and by the fury of the province which he had goaded
into war by his rapacity, the procurator Catus crossed over into
Gaul.
Suetonius,
however, with wonderful resolution, marched amidst a hostile population
to Londinium, which, though undistinguished by the name of a colony,
was much frequented by a number of merchants and trading vessels.
Uncertain whether he should choose it as a seat of war, as he looked
round on his scanty force of soldiers, and remembered with what
a serious warning the rashness of Petilius had been punished, he
resolved to save the province at the cost of a single town. Nor
did the tears and weeping of the people, as they implored his aid,
deter him from giving the signal of departure and receiving into
his army all who would go with him. Those who were chained to the
spot by the weakness of their sex, or the infirmity of age, or the
attractions of the place, were cut off by the enemy. Like ruin fell
on the town of Verulamium, for the barbarians, who delighted in
plunder and were indifferent to all else, passed by the fortresses
with military garrisons, and attacked whatever offered most wealth
to the spoiler, and was unsafe for defence. About seventy thousand
citizens and allies, it appeared, fell in the places which I have
mentioned. For it was not on making prisoners and selling them,
or on any of the barter of war, that the enemy was bent, but on
slaughter, on the gibbet, the fire and the cross, like men soon
about to pay the penalty, and meanwhile snatching at instant vengeance.
Suetonius had
the fourteenth legion with the veterans of the twentieth, and auxiliaries
from the neighbourhood, to the number of about ten thousand armed
men, when he prepared to break off delay and fight a battle. He
chose a position approached by a narrow defile, closed in at the
rear by a forest, having first ascertained that there was not a
soldier of the enemy except in his front, where an open plain extended
without any danger from ambuscades. His legions were in close array;
round them, the light-armed troops, and the cavalry in dense array
on the wings. On the other side, the army of the Britons, with its
masses of infantry and cavalry, was confidently exulting, a vaster
host than ever had assembled, and so fierce in spirit that they
actually brought with them, to witness the victory, their wives
riding in waggons, which they had placed on the extreme border of
the plain.
Boudicea, with
her daughters before her in a chariot, went up to tribe after tribe,
protesting that it was indeed usual for Britons to fight under the
leadership of women. "But now," she said, "it is not as a woman
descended from noble ancestry, but as one of the people that I am
avenging lost freedom, my scourged body, the outraged chastity of
my daughters. Roman lust has gone so far that not our very persons,
nor even age or virginity, are left unpolluted. But heaven is on
the side of a righteous vengeance; a legion which dared to fight
has perished; the rest are hiding themselves in their camp, or are
thinking anxiously of flight. They will not sustain even the din
and the shout of so many thousands, much less our charge and our
blows. If you weigh well the strength of the armies, and the causes
of the war, you will see that in this battle you must conquer or
die. This is a woman's resolve; as for men, they may live and be
slaves."
Nor was Suetonius
silent at such a crisis. Though he confided in the valour of his
men, he yet mingled encouragements and entreaties to disdain the
clamours and empty threats of the barbarians. "There," he said,
"you see more women than warriors. Unwarlike, unarmed, they will
give way the moment they have recognised that sword and that courage
of their conquerors, which have so often routed them. Even among
many legions, it is a few who really decide the battle, and it will
enhance their glory that a small force should earn the renown of
an entire army. Only close up the ranks, and having discharged your
javelins, then with shields and swords continue the work of bloodshed
and destruction, without a thought of plunder. When once the victory
has been won, everything will be in your power."
Such was the
enthusiasm which followed the general's address, and so promptly
did the veteran soldiery, with their long experience of battles,
prepare for the hurling of the javelins, that it was with confidence
in the result that Suetonius gave the signal of battle.
At first, the
legion kept its position, clinging to the narrow defile as a defence;
when they had exhausted their missiles, which they discharged with
unerring aim on the closely approaching foe, they rushed out in
a wedge-like column. Similar was the onset of the auxiliaries, while
the cavalry with extended lances broke through all who offered a
strong resistance. The rest turned their back in flight, and flight
proved difficult, because the surrounding waggons had blocked retreat.
Our soldiers spared not to slay even the women, while the very beasts
of burden, transfixed by the missiles, swelled the piles of bodies.
Great glory, equal to that of our old victories, was won on that
day. Some indeed say that there fell little less than eighty thousand
of the Britons, with a loss to our soldiers of about four hundred,
and only as many wounded. Boudicea put an end to her life by poison.
Poenius Postumus too, camp-prefect of the second legion, when he
knew of the success of the men of the fourteenth and twentieth,
feeling that he had cheated his legion out of like glory, and had
contrary to all military usage disregarded the general's orders,
threw himself on his sword.
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