Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Crispianus]

Hold on though! I can, in fact, answer both of the possible objections I mentioned...

1. Catus Decianus could have fled because he believed he would be blamed for the disaster he had caused 'by his rapacity', and wanted to exonerate himself as soon as possible. Perhaps he also feared the wrath of the provincials, or even of Suetonius himself? Tacitus does not, in any case, explicitly say that he was in danger of imminent attack. He may just have been a coward... But we could hardly blame him for thinking that he was under threat, even if events turned out otherwise.

2. With the province in turmoil over the winter of 60/61, Suetonius Paulinus may have believed that he could not draw men from any of his garrisons in Wales or the west without risking further outbreaks of rebellion in those places. He may also have had his hands full trying to contain such outbreaks across the country... Only in the spring of 61 did he concede that he had to confront and defeat Boudica's main army in order to break the back of the uprising. At that point, the only additional troops available to him were the veterans of the Twentieth and the Second - and the latter's commander refused to leave camp, perhaps feeling that the local situation was still too volatile.

p.s. - can we distinguish between grapes and raisins, archaeologically speaking? The Colchester reports do specify grapes...

Dealing with these points:

1.  I don't think that this is any different from what we have always assumed.

2.  On the traditional scenario, this is exactly what Suetonius did after the battle.  He gave up his Welsh conquests and brought the whole army together, even though numbers of the enemy had escaped and, had Boudica not died, could well have continued with the revolt.  The idea that he would not have gathered a substantial force for the final encounter runs entirely counter to what we know of a cautious general who leaves nothing to chance.  His request for reinforcements was almost certainly made after he had assessed the situation in London and in the knowledge that a large part of the Ninth had been wiped out.  Tacitus implies that they were sent over fairly promptly and went straight into winter quarters, not that they did not arrive until the following summer and waited until autumn before going into winter quarters.  Nor is there any indication in the sources that Suetonius fiddled around over winter dealing with unrecorded local outbreaks.  Indeed, this is quite contrary to Agricola 16: 'Had not Paulinus learned of the stir in the province, and come hastily to the rescue, Britain would have been lost' (Loeb).  Would Boudica have been swanning about idly during that winter?  No, she would have either been consolidating her position and gathering more tribes to her cause or she would have gone home, in which latter case we would have to move the postulated site for the battle to the east side of the country.  There is nothing whatsoever in the sources to suggest that the events described were anything other than a continuous course of action.

p,s.  The photograph in the Colchester Archaeologist article shows the 'grapes' looking more like raisins.  In any event, would it be possible to distinguish raisins from grapes that had shrivelled in a house fire or vice versa?

There were no defences at Colchester the original fortress ditch had been partly filled in on the east side for the construction of public buildings, there are two forts to consider one at gosbecks (possibly mixed or cavalry) and another at fingeringhoe (port poorly excavated in the 1930s military equipment was found but likely no longer used as a fort) which may have had auxiliarys, Crummy estimates 500men plus 200 reinforcements from london and perhaps as many as 2000 settled legionaires, but no doubt weapons etc would likely be a problem for these...

Thers also evidence of the remains of human bodies in the burnt layer...

The theory is the the temple area was fortified I think there is no archaeological evidence for this though...

What interests me about the dates from WG is they dont stay on the stalk when ripe, so these must have been shipped in an unripe yellow state and may have been unripe still when burnt, interestingly there are two other burnt sites in colchester with dates and these do not appear to have been on the stalk so may have been dried.