Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Renatus]

Picking up on some of Nathan's points and doing some recapping of my own, I would like to add the following:

1. From my perspective, any site south of the Thames, however attractive topographically, is a strategic non-starter. Paulinus had already decided that he had insufficient forces with him to confront the rebels advancing on London and, consequently, his first priority would have been to seek reinforcements. He was not going to find them in any appreciable numbers in the south and he would almost certainly have been cut off from the rest of the army by the rebels, if he had gone that way.

2. I initially favoured a withdrawal into the west but that was when I thought that the full Second Legion was at Exeter. Now that I believe that the bulk of the legion was in North Wales with the campaign army and only the veterans remained at base, the west suffers from a similar objection with regard to the immediate availability of reinforcements, although he would not have been cut off and would have been able to call in troops from Wales and the south-west to build up an army for a retaliatory strike. However, this would probably have taken some time.

3. Consequently, as will by now be well-known to readers of this thread, the conclusion I have reached is that Paulinus withdrew up Watling Street as far as Verulamium and then branched off west along Akeman Street to the strategically important crossroads at Tring to await his reinforcements.

4. The Romans understood the value of strategic withdrawal, so avoiding combat until he had built up sufficient forces would not necessarily have been frowned upon. Engaging the enemy with inadequate forces and being wiped out would probably have gone down even less well in Rome. In the event, of course, a strategic withdrawal is exactly what Paulinus undertook.

5. Allowing the rebels to disperse to their homelands might not necessarily have been a bad thing. The tribes would have been split up and could possibly have been dealt with piecemeal. Had the final battle not taken place as it did, this is presumably what Paulinus would have done.

The effect of the troops in North Wales upon the time-scale of the campaign had not occurred to me but I have now given it some thought. I cannot offer a timing for the revolt as a whole (other than what has been done before) but the conclusion I have reached as to its final stages, after the withdrawal from London, is that these could possibly have lasted little more than two weeks. Precision is impossible, of course, because there is so much that we do not know but, for what they are worth, I offer my thoughts for consideration.

Assuming, as I do, that Paulinus actually summoned the legions in North Wales to join him but that they did not arrive in time to take part in the final battle, the first thing to consider is when he gave that order. I do not think that he did this until quite late. When he was first made aware of the uprising, he may well have thought that it involved only the Iceni and that two legions, the Ninth and the Fourteenth, could handle it. He would have been reluctant to compromise his Welsh conquests by withdrawing too many troops, perhaps unnecessarily, to deal with what might have been no more than a local revolt. Even after he heard of Cerialis' defeat, he may still have thought that he had enough troops with him to deal with the rebels. Cerialis had lost 2000 men but Paulinus had a full legion and probably a number of auxiliaries. He almost certainly did not have the 10,000 men that he had at the final battle but his force could still have been three or four times the size of Cerialis'. Thus, it was probably not until he reached London and was able to make a full appreciation of the situation that he decided that he had to call down the troops in North Wales. Up to then, he had probably done no more than to warn the legionary commanders there that they might be required to march at short notice, although he might have summoned the veterans of the Second, Fourteenth and Twentieth Legions from their various bases.

The time-scale after that depends upon how far the rebels were from London when Paulinus left it, how long they spent in sacking the city and their speed of travel. Allied with that is when the legions in North Wales set off and what their speed of travel was. We have postulated that the rebels, encumbered by a train of ox-drawn wagons, possibly travelled at a rate of approximately 5 miles a day. The legions were trained, according to Vegetius, to march at the military pace of 20 miles in eight summer hours* and a full pace of 24 miles in the same period. However, these figures relate to training circumstances and we know that the Romans over-trained to make the conditions experienced on campaign seem easy. These figures, therefore, should be regarded as simply the rate of march, not the distances expected to be covered, bearing mind also that a camp had to be constructed at the end of a day's march. The legions would also have had baggage animals but these may be assumed to have been mules, rather than oxen. Let us assume, therefore, that the Roman reinforcements travelled at three times the speed of the rebels.

The distance between Bangor on the Menai Straits and London, following the line of the present A5, is approximately 250 miles. Assuming, for the sake of this argument, that the legions coincidentally left the Welsh coast on the same day as the rebels left London and that both proceeded along Watling Street at the rates mentioned above, they would have met after 12-13 days in the region of Towcester. As we know that these legions were not at the final battle, the time between the rebels leaving London and the battle would have been less than this. If I am right in thinking that the battle took place in the vicinity of Tring, this is approximately 40 miles from London, travelling via St Albans, so the rebels could have been there in eight days, say ten to allow some time for the sacking of Verulamium. In this time, the legions from Wales would have covered approximately 150 miles bringing them to the vicinity of Hinckley, still some 70 miles and about five days from Tring. With his reinforcements that far away, one can see why Paulinus felt that he had to give battle with the forces that he had immediately to hand.

One final thought arises from this analysis: how realistic would it have been to expect Poenius Postumus and the men of the Second Legion to have reached the battle site in time to take part in the battle? Exeter is approximately 190 miles from Tring taking the Fosse Way to Cirencester and then Akerman Street to Tring. A more direct route, if it were available, through Frome and Marlborough is some 30 miles shorter. We do not know when Postumus was ordered to march but, if he had left Exeter at the same time as the rebels left London, neither route would have brought him to the battle site in time. If, as is generally accepted, he simply ignored the order, it would not have cut much ice for him to have protested that it would not have made any difference, even if he had obeyed.

* That should be five summer hours, not eight.