Slaughtered, dismembered, our tribe always remembered! Boudicca! Superstar!! Ah,
Britain in the 60s. Who can forget their golden torques, chainmail armour, impressive
road network, and their incredible taste in music. The 60s AD truly were a remarkable time,
I was born in the wrong generation. This is one of those episodes I think is going to really speak to
like 5% of my audience the other 95% of you, well you’re about to learn something. Because on top
of my references being extremely dated, Boudicca also appears to be a very British thing. She was
the queen of a small kingdom at the fringes of the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago who ruled for
like one year, in which time she did one thing and failed at it. Hardly a pop culture icon. But
for whatever reason, in the 1800s the British reflected on this woman who gave her life to an
exceptionally violent uprising against foreign imperialism and thought to themselves “Yas,
queen, slay! Ugh, that is so me, you know what I mean?” and so she’s survived in
popular consciousness, at least a little bit, and here I am, doing my part to help.
[intro]
Today’s video is brought to you by MagellanTV. I learned a lot about
the Celts and the process of studying iron age history watching Time Team,
a wonderful little series where the team travels around and explores the cutting
edge of archaeological research. MagellanTV is a brilliant gem of a streaming service,
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they celebrate the drama of real life from the critical battles that shaped history, to the
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adding over 20 hours of new content. I’ve been a subscriber for years now, I’ve been recommending
them for a long time, and today they’re offering you a free trial so you can watch Time Team’s
episode about Boudicca and the rest of their history collection at Magellantv.com/JackRackam
The trouble began in 43 AD when Rome invaded Britain. “Fear not! Buddy of ours is a king
around here who got fired or something, we are only here to rape and pillage in
the name of self defense! Resistance will be met with overwhelming self defense!”
Boudicca’s tribe, the Iceni, is presented with two options. They can either oppose the Romans,
lose, and be forced to pay reparations in the form of handing over all their
weapons and paying taxes every year, or they can ally with the Romans in which
case they can hand over all their weapons and pay tribute every year. But thankfully,
because the Iceni were friends with the Romans, a very rich man came to them one day with a deal.
“Yyyyyah! Here you go!” “What - what are these?”
“These are 40 million Roman Sesterces.” “I don’t want them.”
“You’ll need them if you want to pay your taxes - oh, I’m so sorry,
your tribute. Plus interest on the loan, so you’d better start trading with us.”
“What… do we have that you want to buy?” “Well that’s for you to know, and me to find out.”
Then in 60 AD Boudicca’s husband, the king of the Iceni, dies. Whether as a way to pay back his
debts, or a way to ensure a peaceful Romanization while saving some wealth for his family, his will
gives half of everything to his daughters and half of everything to Emperor Neckbeard. Then suddenly,
once the man is out of the picture, the Roman government decides the Iceni’s debt
is due right now, the Iceni can’t pay, so a bunch of Roman soldiers come into town.
“Ho ho ho! It’s Reverse Christmas everybody, take out everything you own and put it in the bag!”
It was a grim and ghastly scene – the soldiers treated the Iceni worse than they did their
slaves – after ripping them from their homes, they beat the people in the streets, Boudicca
herself was flogged and her daughters assaulted. Boudicca assembles the leaders of all the nearby
tribes. Whatever side they were on before, they’re all the same now, and they all agree to fight
together under her banner. Roman historian Tacitus suggests that the men under Boudicca’s command
left their fields empty that year, diverting all their efforts to prepare for war. They don’t have
long to strike, but they don’t have long to wait. The governor in charge of Roman Britain is away on
campaign, trying to exterminate a religion, as one does, when Boudicca takes to the offensive.
Her first target was the town of Camulodunum, a community of retired Roman soldiers,
the exact people who would be called to arms in case of an emergency. It was a grim and
ghastly scene. Bear in mind, of course, that the closest thing to a primary source we have on this
is from one high-society Roman guy about fifty years after the fact, but the picture he paints
isn’t pretty. Boudicca tore down the temple to Emperor Claudius, the man who conquered their
lands a generation ago, then burned the city to the ground, killing and torturing everyone inside.
When word of the revolt made its way back to London, the governor was still away on
campaign. So his second-in-command, a tax collector named Decianus who
bears perhaps the most blame for the Iceni’s savage treatment, has to act.
Soldier: “Sir, Camulodunum has fallen.” Decianus: “Fallen? To what enemy?”
Soldier: “The Iceni, sir. They put every last man, woman, and child to the sword.
The very sea runs red with their blood! Their commander is on there way here this very moment!
If nothing is done, she will do the same to us!” Decianus: “She?”
Soldier: (trembling) “Boudicca.” Decianus: “All right, I’m sure we
can muster a couple hundred men” Soldier: “Her army numbers
over a hundred thousand!” Decianus: “Oh I’m sure her army
does. But a mob of barbarians led by a woman does not make an army any more than a pile of sticks
and stones makes a house.” 2 seconds later
Soldier: “She killed them all!” Decianus: “Arrivederci!”
It was governor Paulinus who arrived in London before Boudicca, but having a look at her hundred
thousand soldiers, and then at his five thousand soldiers, and then back at her hundred thousand
soldiers, decided this was not the best time to fight. Against the desperate cries of the
Londoners, Paulinus rode off and left anyone who couldn’t escape in time to the hands of Boudicca.
Paulinus Revere rides throughout the countryside, warning every town along the way,
“The British are coming! The British are coming!” Civilians are ordered to flee,
while any retired soldiers are called to suit up. Because Boudicca knows as well as he does
that there will come a point where he can’t run anymore. That point is called the ocean.
Boudicca finally catches up to the Romans, by now there’s about ten thousand of them,
holding their ground in a narrow pass between two woods. There’s another Roman historian who
pretty much just made up a dramatic speech for Boudicca and Paulinus right before the battle,
which is exactly the kind of creative liberty I live for, because one of these two armies
is about to throw itself into a meat grinder, but it’s not the one you would expect if you
were there watching two football stadiums worth of Celts collapsing on the Romans.
This is, sadly for Boudicca, not a triumph to throw off the shackles of the empire. The Celts
were, on average, less trained for battle, the battlefield made it difficult to surround the
Romans, and the Romans easily had the upper hand technologically, what with their cleated sandals,
sturdier armour, their spears they could chuck into the enemy to thin out a few waves before
even having to start the real fight. Boudicca’s soldiers were still using chariots, which doesn’t
sound that unusual, until you realize that for the average Roman, the only people who rode chariots
were pro racers, like for sport, chariots hadn’t been an important part of battle for like three,
maybe four hundred years, it would be a little like if Texas decided to leave the United States,
and showed up for battle dressed like a conquistador. It would definitely throw them off,
and I bet the Pentagon’s file on how to defend against an arquebus attack is pretty small,
but send in a couple guys with AR-15’s and a drone or two and I’m sure you’ll get the job done.
Boudicca herself escaped, and what happened to her next is a bit of a mystery. The traditional story
is that she drank poison to preserve her honour or something, but that’s also a very Roman thing
to do. We’ll probably never know her exact fate but archaeologists today are still working to
understand more about Boudicca and her people using pieces of the things they left behind.
While the idea of Boudicca as this symbolic hero of Britain feels deeply hypocritical,
ultimately I think the real value in her story surviving for as long as it has,
aside from pointing out that hypocrisy, is that all this research into the Iceni
has given us a much better understanding of Iron Ages peoples and all the ways in
which their society was remarkable in its own right. Which I think is pretty neat.