Boudica and her allies gave no quarter in their victories and when Londinium London and Verulamium St. Albans were stormed, the defenders fled and the towns were sacked and burned! The revolting Britons even desecrated the Roman cemeteries, mutilating statues and breaking tombstones. Some of these mutilated statues can be seen today in Colchester Museum.
Finally Suetonius , who had made a tactical withdrawal fled with his troops into relative safety of the Roman military zone, decided to challenge Boudica. He assembled an army of 10, regulars and auxiliaries, the backbone of which was made up from the 14th Legion. Boudica and her daughters drove round in her chariot to all her tribes before the battle, exhorting them to be brave.
She cried that she was descended from mighty men but she was fighting as an ordinary person for her lost freedom, her bruised body and outraged daughters. The Britons attacked crowding in on the Roman defensive line. The order was given and a volley of several thousand heavy Roman javelins was thrown into the advancing Britons, followed quickly by a second volley. The lightly armed Britons must have suffered massive casualties within the first minutes of the battle.
The Romans moved in for the kill, attacking in tight formation, stabbing with their short swords. Win the battle or perish, that is what I, a woman, will do. Statue of Boudicca. Like other ancient Celtic women, Boudica had trained as a warrior, including fighting techniques and the use of weapons.
With the Roman provincial governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus leading a military campaign in Wales, Boudica led a rebellion of the Iceni and members of other tribes resentful of Roman rule.
They went on to give similar treatment to London and Verulamium modern St. By that time, Suetonius had returned from Wales and marshaled his army to confront the rebels. In the clash that followed—the exact battle site is unknown, but possibilities range from London to Northamptonshire—the Romans managed to defeat the Britons despite inferior numbers, and Boudica and her daughters apparently killed themselves by taking poison in order to avoid capture.
Bolton intended to write a history of the reign of Emperor Nero, but was so taken by Boudica that he devoted at least half his text to her and her rebellion. It was he who first put forward the notion that Stonehenge was erected by the ancient Britons in memory of the warrior queen. In the 17th century, antiquarians seemed most keen on Boudica. Aylett Sammes, another antiquarian and historian, composed a somewhat tongue-in-cheek tribute to Boudica and her daughters in his illustrated history of Britain, Britannia Antiqua Illustrata , of Boudica and her daughters had been violated by the Romans and fought back as best they could, even if they were doomed to fail.
How could three women stand against such a powerful foe? Insofar as we can draw any conclusions about how she has been viewed, it seems clear that people have embraced her as a heroic figure. It can be tempting to take a single representation of Boudica — a statue, for instance — and see it as typical or representative of a time and place. But it is often more interesting to dig deeper and find out the individual perspective that lies behind a representation. Scholars have viewed this work as representative of a time — the late 19th century — and an attitude — embattled Victorians seeking to assuage fears of imperial decline.
However, the story is both more interesting and more banal than that. Thornycroft first began his statue in the s, when he was struggling to secure commissions. He found himself with an abundance of two things artists thrive on: time and an emotional predicament that lent itself to self-expression. He worked on the statue for 20 years and when he died in it was still only a plaster model. Boudica was embraced by Victorian Londoners, despite the fact that one of her most well-known acts was to burn the place to cinders.
Similarly, the towns of Colchester and St Albans have embraced her as a local heroine, a status testified to by everything from stained glass windows to car park graffiti, at least in the case of Colchester. St Albans has taken a more staid approach and is content with telling her story in the local museum, while occasionally using her image to represent the town. Audiences from the reign of Elizabeth I onwards have tended to respond positively to Boudica, even to the point of disowning negative portrayals.
A case in point is the critical reaction to a play about Boudica produced in Glover, a politician first and a playwright second, was most concerned with getting across his political message: private prejudice had no part to play in public life.
But Glover let slip the subtleties of dramatic composition that critics and audiences most valued. His play was a flop. Irrational mood swings and errors of judgment abound.
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