Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Nathan Ross]

if you are desperately clinging to the last vestiges of the "parade" theory

Unless you consider the movement of a large body of people in a single direction necessarily a 'parade', I see no need for such a theory! :-)

Nothing I've suggested requires the Britons to move for more than a couple of days as a combined force...

someone, at some point in the rebellion, put a torch to the buildings. This cannot credibly imply a single Iceni column (parade) on the move, convention? pah!

Mmm, well. Tacitus provides the convention, I think: " like ruin fell on the town of Verulamium" (eadem clades municipio Verulamio fuit). This certainly implies to me that the same or similar people destroyed London and also destroyed St Albans, and did so in similar fashion...

Mind you, Tacitus could have been mistaken, in which case :eek:

I'm pretty sure it would have been

You might be, but was he? Once Paulinus discovered that the Second were out of the picture, he may have realised that time was short and he needed to use the troops he had available and not hang around waiting for more. Longer term reinforcement may not have been an issue - finding a good tactical site would be more pressing.