Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Renatus]

I am not sure that we are adressing the underlying problem here. The rich and wealthy would have left once they saw that the Procurator had fled. They could rebuild their lives anywhere. The word would have got around immediately after he had gone.

This is an assumption for which there is no evidence. We do not know the manner of Catus’ departure but I suspect that it was clandestine. His absence may not have been generally noticed for at least a couple of days and, even then, the reason may not have been realised. It might have been thought that he was ill or that he had been recalled to Rome or that he had gone to inspect some estate that was to be taken over or even that he had been summoned to see Paulinus for a dressing-down over some misdemeanours of his staff in the east of the province that the populace had only vaguely heard about. Some of the wealthy may have left, not with him but shortly afterwards, but this may well have depended upon their having somewhere to go: estates or relatives in the country, perhaps, or even in Gaul. However, some will almost certainly have stayed for the reasons that I suggested in an earlier post, in the same way that today there are those who refuse to move in the face of some impending natural disaster, such as a hurricane or forest fire. These are the ones, I suggest, who finally decided to leave with Paulinus.

I never said that people of ability were precluded. I just don’t believe that was a criteria for them to go with Paulinus that you stated in your original argument . . . This of course does not answer the question “why take them at all?"

I suggested that those who accompanied Paulinus were those whose wealth and influence could assist in the reconstruction of the province and I stand by that. I do not accept that there would have been no such persons remaining in London after the flight of Catus. The fact that there were other persons with similar resources elsewhere need not have prevented Paulinus from accepting those from London. I have now added those whose manual skills would be helpful. One may speculate about what caused Paulinus to accept civilians into his column. He may have been so appalled by the atrocities committed by the Britons that he was willing to protect as many as possible from a similar fate, provided, of course, that it did prejudice his strategic withdrawal. I suspect that his motives were more practical; as I have suggested already, these people would be useful in the work of reconstruction after the suppression of the revolt.

I am not suggesting that he was going for the homelands, I never have. Typical Roman tactics would suggest that they would have gone to beat the opposing army (or in this case horde). What I have said is that the Ninth were ambushed on the borders of the Iceni on their way to Colchester. I have not said that the Ninth were marching on the Iceni but that they were going past their territory.

I’m sorry. I misunderstood you. However, in my own defence, I will set out your previous comments that led me into error:

The Roman Army on the other hand like the Super Powers of today preferred to fight "toe to toe" and the difficulty (as in today's Afghanistan or the Iraq War) was actually getting the enemy to "stand and fight" mainly because the Romans always won because of superior weaponry and tactics.

The one way that the Romans could get people to fight them in a "battle" was to march onto the homelands of their enemies and destroy them until people came and fought them.

In AD60 they had been doing this for 17 years in Britain; the locals would have known this and perhaps we can see this in the way that the Ninth Legion were destroyed on the borders of the Iceni on their way to Colchester in a typical Brythonic ambush.

The Iceni and Trinovantes were prepared and I believe that they were expecting Seutonius Paulinus to march on them perhaps at Colchester and also at Thetford. For them to have marched on London would have left their own lands, which they had literally just taken back from the Roman State open to attack with no one there to defend them.

I think that the very act of SP leaving triggered the attack on London as Pualinus realised it would due to its being undefended. Also the Brythons could leave their homelands because there was no longer a threat to their territories.

To say that the Brythons were “hovering on the outskirts of London” is not my interpretation but that they were in fact defending their borders and ready to move to intercept his column/s on the march.

After 17 years of watching how the Romans operated (which was to march on an enemy’s territory to force them in a battle to defend it) the Brythons had changed their tactics to one of guerrilla fighting and siege warfare. They had obviously been successful at this as the Romans after 17 years still had not conquered the far West or the North . . . The Brythons were expecting the other Legions from the West to join Paulinus and march on their territories to exact revenge, as would have been a typical Roman tactic (exactly what the Ninth did).

I still maintain that for the Iceni and the Trinovantes to have vacated their own homelands would have been suicide if the Ninth, Fourteenth and the Second had invaded from the North, East and South East.

It was not the point of settling back to await retribution but take into account what the Romans normally did. Of course the Ninth did exactly that and SP would have also done so had the rest of his troops turned up.

The other reason is that the Brythons tactics were more guerrilla tactics where they were highly successful in ambush and siege warfare not massed formations where they knew they were likely to get beaten.

This is where I display my ignorance. Can you give me chapter and verse on this proposition? I am aware of Tacitus’ description of Ostorius Scapula’s campaigns against the Silures.

Renatus wrote:

That assumes that the Iceni came down Watling Street, which I doubt that they did.

No reason to doubt that at all.

There is every reason to doubt it. The sources give no hint of any such thing. Your contention, as I understand it, is that the Iceni cleared the Roman forces from their territory and then remained there while the Trinovantes attacked and destroyed Colchester. Tacitus, in the Annals, describes the Iceni flying to arms in response to the outrages against the royal house and the nobility and rousing other tribes to regain their freedom. He then immediately moves on to the threat to Colchester and its eventual destruction, followed by the threat to London. There is no suggestion that this was anything other than a continuous process in which the Iceni were involved throughout. In the Agricola, he describes the Britons discussing their woes, taking up arms under the command of Boudica and then, after dealing with the Roman forts, invading the “colony”, which can only be the territorium of Camulodunum. Dio has Boudica rousing the Britons with two lengthy speeches and then leading her forces against the Romans, sacking and plundering two Roman cities. These can be identified from their descriptions in Paulinus’ speech to his troops as Colchester and London. None of this involves travelling down Watling Street.

Not at all. It would have made sense for him to have secured the port to receive re-inforcements from Gaul . . . Perhaps he had already sent for re-inforcements and was waiting for them to arrive before setting off . . . Postumus would have been one of the most courageous men in his Legion. He stayed where he was because of his bravery and trying to perform for Rome. It was just that events conspired against him. What we need to understand is what those events were.

As Nathan rightly says, we do not know what Postumus did not do. All that Tacitus tells us is that he committed suicide, having heard of the exploits of the Fourteenth and Twentieth Legions, because he had cheated his legion of sharing in the glory and because he had disobeyed the orders of his commander. We have to infer that these two failings were connected, although it seems logical that they should be, despite Tacitus mentioning them in what seems to be reverse order. The logical inference is that, but for Postumus’ disobedience, his legion would have joined Paulinus’ army and participated in the final battle. Further than this we cannot go. We do not know precisely when in the sequence of events that we have Postumus failed and any attempt to attribute any particular action or motive to him is pure speculation. Much as we may sympathise with a man who may have been out of his depth, any suggestion that he actually was obeying his orders, but slowly or hesitantly, or that he was seeking to clarify them is overly generous to him. The verb that Tacitus uses to describe his failure to obey is abnuo, which means ‘to deny, refuse, decline, reject’. There is no room to interpret this in any other way than as the absolute refusal to accept the order, whatever it was.