Celtic History

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Queen Boudica and the Burning of Londinium

The Iceni queen who led the great revolt against Roman rule in 60-61 CE, the destruction of Camulodunum, Londinium, and Verulamium, and the decisive battle that ended the uprising.

The story of Boudica, the queen of the Iceni who led the great revolt against Roman rule in 60-61 CE, famous episodes in the history of Roman Britain and one of the most powerful in the wider tradition of the Celtic encounter with Rome. The destruction of Camulodunum, Londinium, and Verulamium, the sacking of the three principal cities of the new Roman province, was the largest single rebellion against Roman rule in the history of the western empire, and the figure of Boudica, standing in her chariot with her daughters, has become one of the central icons of the British national imagination. The story of Boudica is part of the wider gallery of famous Celtic warriors and leaders whose deeds defined the military tradition of the Celtic world, and it has particular significance in the context of the women in Celtic society who exercised power in the British and Gaulish Celtic world.

The Iceni Before the Revolt

The Iceni were a tribe of what is now Norfolk and Suffolk, a region of eastern Britain that had been drawn into the Roman sphere of influence in the years following the Claudian invasion of 43 CE. The Icenian king Prasutagus, the husband of Boudica, had been a Roman ally, and he had been allowed to remain on his throne as a client king of the Roman empire. The arrangement, common in the early years of Roman provincial rule, allowed the Iceni to maintain their internal autonomy while acknowledging the overlordship of Rome.

Prasutagus, when he came to die, made a will in which he left his kingdom jointly to the Roman emperor and to his two daughters. The will was a piece of careful diplomacy, designed to protect his family and his tribe from the worst consequences of Roman annexation. The Romans, however, did not honour the will. The Roman procurator Catus Decianus, who administered the province during the absence of the governor, treated the Icenian royal family with calculated brutality. The kingdom was annexed, the royal estates were confiscated, the leading Icenians were treated as slaves, and Boudica herself was flogged and her daughters were raped. The Roman treatment of the Icenian royal family was a clear signal that the days of client kingdoms in Britain were over, and it provided the spark for the great revolt.

The Outbreak of the Revolt

The revolt broke out in 60 CE, in the absence of the Roman governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, who was leading a campaign against the druids of Anglesey in the far northwest of the province. The timing was well chosen: the principal Roman forces were engaged in the difficult and dangerous campaign on the island of Mona, and the eastern part of the province was relatively undefended. The Iceni rose in revolt, joined by the Trinovantes and by other eastern British tribes, and the Roman settlers and the pro-Roman Britons of the east became the targets of the uprising.

The first target of the revolt was Camulodunum, the former capital of Cunobelinus and now the centre of the Roman administration in Britain. Camulodunum had not been fortified, and the Roman veterans and officials who lived there were unprepared for the scale of the uprising. The Roman soldiers of the Ninth Legion, who were based at Longthorpe near Peterborough and who were sent to relieve Camulodunum, were ambushed and routed, and the city was sacked and burned. The temple of Claudius, the great centre of the Roman imperial cult in Britain, was a particular target of the British attack, and the destruction of the temple was a deliberate humiliation of the Roman gods.

The Burning of Londinium

The destruction of Londinium, the commercial centre of Roman Britain and the future capital of the province, was the most dramatic episode of the revolt. Boudica, having sacked Camulodunum, led her army south to Londinium, which had been founded as a Roman commercial centre in the years following the Claudian invasion. Londinium was at the time an undefended town, with no walls and no Roman garrison, and the Roman procurator Catus Decianus, who had been sent to evacuate the town, was unable to organise a defence. The Roman merchants and officials of the town fled, and the Britons entered Londinium and burned it to the ground.

The destruction of Londinium was thorough and complete. The Roman historians Tacitus and Dio Cassius both describe the sack in vivid terms, with Tacitus estimating that around 70,000 Romans and Roman-aligned Britons were killed in the sack of Londinium and the sack of Verulamium, the third of the great Roman towns of eastern Britain, which was destroyed in the days that followed. The numbers are certainly exaggerated, but they give a sense of the scale of the destruction. The towns of Roman Britain were rebuilt in the years that followed, and there is little archaeological trace of the British sack, but the historical memory of the destruction of Londinium has remained one of the most powerful in the British historical tradition.

The Roman Response

The Roman response to the revolt was led by the governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, who had hurried back from Anglesey with the bulk of the Roman forces in Britain. Suetonius gathered the Roman forces that were available to him, around 10,000 legionaries and a similar number of auxiliary troops, and marched south-east to confront Boudica. The Roman forces were heavily outnumbered by the British army, which Dio Cassius puts at 230,000, a figure that is certainly exaggerated, but the British army was probably several times the size of the Roman force.

The decisive battle, fought at an unknown site in the Midlands, probably in the area of the modern Warwickshire or Northamptonshire, was described by Tacitus and Dio Cassius with considerable care. The Roman forces chose a position with a wood behind them and an open plain in front, with the legions in the centre and the auxiliary infantry on the wings. Boudica, in her chariot with her two daughters, addressed her army in a speech that has been preserved by Tacitus and that is one of the great set pieces of Roman historical writing. The speech, attributed to Boudica by Tacitus, calls on the Britons to revenge the insults to their queen, the violation of their daughters, and the destruction of their gods.

The Battle and Its Outcome

The battle was a decisive Roman victory. The Roman legionaries, with their disciplined close-order tactics, the pilum and the gladius, were a formidable force even when heavily outnumbered, and the British charge, although fierce, was not able to break the Roman line. The British army suffered heavy losses, and the Roman cavalry, having outflanked the British position, completed the rout. The British dead, according to Tacitus, numbered around 80,000, with only about 400 Roman dead, figures that are certainly exaggerated but that give a sense of the scale of the disaster.

Boudica, according to Tacitus, took poison rather than submit to capture. Dio Cassius, with alternative information, reports that she fell ill and died, and that her burial was a magnificent affair, with the Britons mourning her passing with great ceremony. Whatever the actual circumstances of her death, the result of the battle was the end of the revolt. The Roman reconquest of the east, in the years that followed, was carried out with considerable brutality, and the province was reorganised under the Roman administration that would last for the next three centuries.

The Legacy of Boudica

The figure of Boudica has had a long and powerful afterlife. In the medieval Welsh and English traditions, she was remembered as a great queen, and the stories of her revolt were incorporated into the legendary histories of Britain. In the early modern period, with the rediscovery of Tacitus and the other Roman historians, Boudica became a focus for the construction of the British national identity, and the image of the British queen, the noble savage, the avenger of her daughters’ honour, became a stock figure in English historical writing.

The great bronze statue of Boudica that stands on Westminster Bridge in London, designed by Thomas Thornycroft and erected in 1902, has been the focal point of public and political appropriation ever since. The statue, with Boudica in her chariot, her daughters beside her, her spear in her hand, has been the scene of many demonstrations, and the figure of Boudica has been claimed by feminist, nationalist, and anti-colonial movements in equal measure. The image of Boudica, the unconquered British queen, has remained one of the central icons of the British historical imagination, and it continues to shape modern perceptions of the ancient Celtic world.

More in Famous Celtic Warriors and Leaders

Caratacus and the Resistance in Roman Britain The British prince who led the resistance to the Roman invasion of Wales for nearly a decade, his final defeat, his famous speech to the Roman senate, and his pardon by the emperor Claudius. The Story of Vercingetorix and the Revolt of Gaul The young Arvernian nobleman who united the Gallic tribes against Julius Caesar in 52 BCE, the great campaign of 52 BCE, and the siege of Alesia that ended independent Celtic Gaul.