Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Renatus]

Anyone has been able to download it for decades.
https://www.quia.com/files/quia/users/be...e_General_

     
That may be so, but Goldsworthy sent me the paper as a Word 97 document, so it has been in my possession for quite a long time.

Steven

Goldsworthy's paper first appeared in print in 1998 but the file linked to was not created until April 2010, so it has only been available to download for one decade and a year.

[Hanny]

     
That may be so, but Goldsworthy sent me the paper as a Word 97 document, so it has been in my possession for quite a long time.

Steven

First did he give you express consent to re post his private email contents containing his intelectual property?.

Second, your copy past in post 2021 contains no use of  notes that are present in the original, already linked to, and subsequent published versions, here  https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1v1O...n.&f=false

Can you explain why after it has been published for decades with notes, he then removes all note refernces and gives it to you whan you could have had it with those notes decades ago, or he could have given it to you as its written, with notes.

Goldsworthy's paper first appeared in print in 1998 but the file linked to was not created until April 2010, so it has only been available to download for one decade and a year.

whats your point?, the article was written earlier back when he was research fellow at Cardif Uni, depending on who you are you can read from when first printed.

---

Look again at my post with seasons in them, you asked a question i had already answerd.

I assume that you are referring to your post #1991, which is the one containing the wording that I am querying.  As you suggest, I have looked at it again.  It is a long post and contains a lot of material that may or may not be relevant to this issue.  Frankly, I am none the wiser, so please indulge me and set out in simple terms what you are suggesting.  You need not go into great detail; a broad outline will do.  Of course, if I have the wrong post, please give me the number of the correct one.

You refer to  , https://www.romanarmytalk.com/showthread...#pid351987

So we have a 2 month operation to get there and take it, and 3 months to create the supply base to hold it, a 5 month operation which fits a single campaign season.

Two problems with compressing it all into a single year, first is tacitus records it as a 2 season event, second is the problems of logistics and time and crop cycles, when you compress it to a single year, so to do so means getting creative.

I had already defined the campaign season earlier  here, if teh above is not clear enough.

Hanny Wrote:
Roman campaign season along with all its religious festivals set at specific times had a set month to start and ends in October, just because this campaign set out late would not change that.

---

... So horse relay is an unfinished function and gives the absolute ceiling. Most books ive read on the courier service of Rome give that ceiling at 150klm a day for important dispatch, going same route as orbis is a 24 day journey, 10 days longer than Orbis.

So having referred us to Orbis, you now decide that Orbis is... faulty? Hmm.

However, it is once again your own calculation that is faulty - Orbis gives the route as 2044km (see screenshot), which at your own figure of 150km per day would get our courier to Rome in 13.6 days - only a day or two over my estimated timeline.

Your calculation of 24 days might be right if the courier was travelling about 50 miles per day - the speed of the regular cursus publicus postal service. Military messengers carrying urgent reports could and did travel considerably faster than the ordinary post, of course - in one recorded case a message from Mainz, via Reims in Gaul, reached Rome in only 8-8.5 days, in the middle of winter.

Meanwhile, I continue to await your own projection of how this campaign would have worked, based on your own exaggerated notions of the plausible. Until you provide it, I'm afraid all you are demonstrating is the same generally obnoxious attitude that you have displayed on multiple threads on this board!

No i pointed out the limitation of orbis when calculating London to Rhine along the cursus publicus  which may or may not be along the fastest route, or it may or may not be present on the shortest route, and a difference again of a day each leg. Your estimate of 37 days, is well below Orbis 250klm a day horse relay of time period from london to rome to the rhine. So just like you want Roman legions manouvering at a war fighting tempo of the extreme top of human capabilities, you now want information to move faster than the top speed that was present to transfer it. Just to fit a timeline you made up, like the others you made up up thread.

You are still under the false impression i am under an obligation to do/give you what you want, if i did, considering both primary texts on logistics, and data we have from UK/French/Austrian/Priussian Army operating on the same technology level of mules horse cart etc for logistics, and weight carried,, i would compare those historical manouvering rates that show the operational movement rates of supply from base and or living of the land, and time spent in garrison awaiting supply, that we can then use to predict the samerange of rates for Ad 60 for supply from base, as in Austrian and Uk, living of the land as in French and combinations of both. But i dont need to do that to know your wrong, and simply dont like being wrong.

[Hanny]

Professor Ridley has offered to help in this matter and is searching the Omnium annalium monumenta and translating any fragments of Alimentus.

She has?, when anyone can search it online? or read teh book, https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/O...edir_esc=y as its already been done as im posative Professor Ridley already knew.

[Renatus]

---

Look again at my post with seasons in them, you asked a question i had already answerd.

I assume that you are referring to your post #1991, which is the one containing the wording that I am querying.  As you suggest, I have looked at it again.  It is a long post and contains a lot of material that may or may not be relevant to this issue.  Frankly, I am none the wiser, so please indulge me and set out in simple terms what you are suggesting.  You need not go into great detail; a broad outline will do.  Of course, if I have the wrong post, please give me the number of the correct one.

You refer to  , https://www.romanarmytalk.com/showthread...#pid351987

So we have a 2 month operation to get there and take it, and 3 months to create the supply base to hold it, a 5 month operation which fits a single campaign season.

Two problems with compressing it all into a single year, first is tacitus records it as a 2 season event, second is the problems of logistics and time and crop cycles, when you compress it to a single year, so to do so means getting creative.

I had already defined the campaign season earlier  here, if teh above is not clear enough.

Hanny Wrote:
Roman campaign season along with all its religious festivals set at specific times had a set month to start and ends in October, just because this campaign set out late would not change that.

All this toing-and-froing is getting us nowhere.  The link you have provided just takes us to a post of mine, so that doesn't help.  You then talk about to periods of 2 and 3 months adding up to a 5 month operation, which I assume relates to Suetonius' Anglesey campaign.  Then, after quoting the passage I am querying, you refer to the Roman campaigning season with its religious festivals ending in October.  None of this has any relevance to when the revolt broke out, how Suetonius was forced to react to it and how long the whole process lasted.

In order to resolve this and to establish how you see this episode developing, I am going to ask you for your suggestions for four dates.  I am not asking for precise days; months will be quite sufficient.  Nor am I asking you to commit to specific years, AD61/2 or 60/1; first year and second year will be enough.  What I am asking of you are your suggestions for:

1.  The date(s) of Suetonius' Anglesey campaign.

2.  The date the revolt broke out.

3.  The date of the sowing season relevant to that outbreak.

4.  The date of the final battle.

With that information, I should be able to work out what you mean by a '2 season event'.

[Hanny]

It is a long post and contains a lot of material that may or may not be relevant to this issue.
The link you have provided just takes us to a post of mine, so that doesn't help.

The link refers to your question,which then of course refers back to the post its related to, the contents of which i copy pasted that answer your question. I also answerd it seperatly in yet another post, 2002 "Tactitis tells us how he is going to record events Tactitus, e suum quaeque in annum referre 4.71, meaning he intends to record each event in its year of occurrence, he list 2 years and chronicles the events, one of the years lacks crops sown." Why your confused as to how many campaign season there are in 2 years, i have no idea, esp since since i refererd to not being sure it can be all done ina single one several times.

Ill expand on why the years seasons are important in case its that i was unclear on that.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YEEI..._mylibrary

This has 10 years UK  Army,1702-1712 covering the war of spainish succession, so living in Europe among allies and not taking from them but needing to be supplied,  using the same technology more or less, means of logistical support. The UK Army campaign from 3rd week April to 3rd week Oct, average year they spend 195 on campaign, of which 39 are marching days and 178 in garrison sitting on supplies or awaiting them, when they march they achieve 14 klm, or 1.4 marching days in a week.
A slow army that is being supplied from base, by mules who can perform the march rates from magazine to Army, armies stood still consume the local food and it has to be brought in to sustain them.

By the time of the 7YW, Austria with the same supply from base, had 131 garrison days, 234 campaign days, 46 marching days, for 13klm, 1.4 days a week marching. Prussian 107 garrison days, 258 campaign days, 90 marching days, 17klm, 2.4 days a week marching. So that's  3 examples of tempo of operations, from supply from base by roughly the same technology.

What happens when you live of the land as do the French to change the operational tempo by the NW?,( France changed how to fight wars by living of the land, and everyone else was being supplied from base and had to change to keep up)  then we get 173 campaign days 122 marching days, 15klm a day, average days a week marching 5.
What does it all mean, well if you can march and live of the land ( depends on population levels being there to take from them the food you need in the quantity you need) you can can 76klm a week, if your carrying it with you you can go between 22 and 40klm a week.

Iceni Campaign in days.
June/July P build his way Angelsey in 61 days effort at c9 mpd, c120 miles.
August at Angelsey resting in camp and building assualt ships, c20 days in camp, 5 building ships/camps, 6 days in the field in combat.
Sept 13 days rest,17 campaign days. Distance moved is 300 miles, 18mpd.
Oct 2 days 19mpd, 2 days rest 1 day combat.

Campaign rest days 40 (inc 5 ship building as rest days for most)
Campaign march days, 80.
Days in combat, 6.
Average march rate for campaign, 11 mpd, 6 days a week marching rate, for Sept, 18mpd, and marching rate of 17 from 19 days.

Alexander the Great Campaignhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Alexander-Great-Logistics-Macedonian-Army/dp/0520042727 in days.
See apendix 5, March rates. 80lbs carry weight. Note 10 day max can be carried.
Average march rate for campaign, 13 mpd, rest day every 5 to 7 days, so max of 6 days a week marching.Fastest single day 19.5 achieved once only.

Difference between Alexander and P is Alexander can do 18mpd once while P gets to do it for 17 days in 19 with 100lbs carried. Rest of the time both armies profile looks very similar as both have the time to live of the land.

How fast is marching 17 days out of 19 at 18mpd?, is so fast we wont need not to mechanise for warfare, but we can also see the simmularity between French and Alexander and Roman practice of operational tempo coming from living of the land as being twice that of being supplied from base. How slow are the Brits moving in this alt timeline, c5 mpd and c25 miles a week, but the archeolgy show this was horse and chariot culture, same as others using supply from base logistics and or living of the land as a Roman would, but doing so less effiecently.

UK average miles a week 18.
France average miles a week 76.
Austrian average miles a week 22.
Prussian average miles a week 42.
Alexander average miles a week 78
P in Iceni campaign average miles a week in Sept, 110+
Iceni campaign average miles a week 25.

WBTS US Army averaged 8 to 13 mpd, a range of 48 to 78miles a week, Note usual was a 3day ration carried, with a max of 10 more held in transport elements. CSA was a tad faster. Sherman lived of the land going to the sea from Atlanta, 8 mpd for 36 days, 1 rest day a week, 48 miles a week.

So USA and France and Alexander did their best to get the most out of muscle technolgy based logistics and got a range in the 70s, while in this alt timeline Romans get 110.

So Romans can roughly  live of the land and move at twice the rate they can if they have to supply from base, ( this is also suppotrted by HB movement rates to get to italy and his manouver rates when in italy as being of the same ratio) depending on how effiecent they are at getting the most out of logistical tail a mule with a pay load of 190 lbs that consumes 5lbs of it has a predictable limit of 38 days before it exhusts its payload, this is why farmers who used animal muscle to bring cerial crops to towns could know if they were going to makea profit in doing so, if  x is eaten over time getting it to the twon, then what you sell has to cover x or you cant makea profit and is why town with no river acess gre slower than those of rivers and sea access as they can bring in food in volume quicker and cheaper,  this is known as ton miles, a mule with 190lbs in a day can deliver its 190 lbs to the distance of a round trip, twice the distance means half a payload and so till it places practical limitations to the distance supply and numbers of mules moving it is reached. So we look then at Roman Britain population numbers of c3 million thats 50 a sq mile, to feed 50 people on subsistence means they have around 3lbs of food a day to live off, so a single harvest puts, perhaps 1.5lbs of cereals into storage to live of till next harvest, so c273lbs a person.

At 50 persons a sq miles that 13650lbs per sq mile to take or depending on season is in the fields and you can take it there at a lower return depending on season and maturation of crops. If its a society that not only sustains its existing pop base and wants to grow it by having exceeds food,  but also has obligations to provide another with crops, then it runs a two crop cycle or double cropping, so now there is whats stored and whats growing in the second crop cycle, so if at end of second crop cycle, you can can have perhaps 1.5 times that to be taken.

Moving at 9mpd a Roman Army living of the land can take what it wants from the sq miles it moves over, so for its own protection it prob covers an hours mounted range to either flank so has covered a box 12*9 or 108 sq miles and has time to confiscate or pay for what it takes,, and has the opportunity to acquire 1474200 lbs, from the people moved through. A 5000 man Legion requiring 11000 lbs a day is taking 1% of the available food stores each day can move and take what it wants if it can find it in storage or in the fields .Roman roads were contructed at c1.5 to 2 yards a man so to construct the road is man 105600 mens work, so a single Legion, uses 1760 men a day for 60 days, in which thats all they can do that day, to make the road to Angelsey, then another third to gather crops, leavinga third to gaurd teh other two thirds.

If otoh the legion needs speed, and wants 18mpd, it has to carry that 11000lbs instead ( its called impedimenta, ie a hindrance when referred to by Roman authors as opposed to a different name i forget atm, to supply shipped ( everyone except Dio acount seems to ignore the most cost effective means of supply is ships or barges)  or muled/carted in etc,  to and gains nothing and losses that 11000 by end of day, but can double its march rate, just as the French did by living of the land, so to me understanding prob pop levels, crop cycles, helps put any time line into perspective. The roman road from N wales to Chester does not exist yet, Agricola build it next decade, so the first 60 od miles with 100lbs on their backs is done cross country to get to the road to go to Godmanchester.

If the spring crop is not sown, how come the Romans dont think thats odd, why is that?, they have grain contractors buying the crops and they dont spot there are none being grown?, if its not grown why wait till june to fight sincde your eating up what you plan to use to fight with, (is it not a celtic mistake but a part of celtic planning, we know the gauls used scorched earth to fight Caesar, we know the celts did the same against caeser in Britain, we know celts when planning for war prepared the crops the year before to provide the means to wage it, if there are no crops the Romans cant live of the land and have to supply themselves, of course it cuts both ways, no crops that year mean you have to take the grain from the Romans as per Tactitus, so if there are 120000 Iceni then there must be enough Romans eating that level of grain, but i dont see any pop estimates that there are 120000 romans in  S E Brittain, or perhaps you have stored the grain away to allow you to fight next year, some hill forts had many years of cerials stored in them, so perhaps the Romans view is not the same as the celts view, from not sowing in spring.) and ravage it anyways and bring on a revolt in the spring same goes if its a later crop autumn crop cycle, the celts have grown the spring crops.

Then there is how much weight you give to the druid influence, if they are organising resistance, you should expect the Iceni and Angelsey region to act in a concerted manner, not wait for one is crushed before acting, if P heads for Angelsey in Spring, against a celtic population using average pop density of under 15k,  why do the Iceni wait if they Druids are organising resistance?, why would P need 20k? to defeata a total pop of 15k.

[Nathan Ross]

You are still under the false impression i am under an obligation to do/give you what you want... But i dont need to do that to know your wrong, and simply dont like being wrong.

Not at all. You are not obliged to do anything here, except follow the basic rules of debate. But neither is anyone else obliged to read what you write or to engage with it, and if your posts are filled with bluster and sarcasm, riddled with typos and grammatical faults, and often resting on errors of calculation or interpretation, you cannot expect others to give your efforts the attention you desire.

If you read back through this thread, you will find that I have been wrong many times, and have changed my ideas several times too. We all welcome discussion and critique, but it is possible to disagree with somebody without trying to insult their intelligence.

Nobody is winning any prizes here. All of us accept that we will perhaps never find the answers to the questions we are asking. The fun is in the debate, in trying out ideas, and in questioning assumptions and challenging theories. But to offer only carping objections and no positive alternatives is to try and disqualify everyone else on technicalties while refusing to participate yourself.

The roman road from N wales to Chester does not exist yet, Agricola build it next decade, so the first 60 od miles with 100lbs on their backs is done cross country to get to the road to go to Godmanchester.

As you mentioned in your previous paragraph, Paulinus had to build his road to get his army to Anglesey. He was marching back along a route he had laid and supplied himself only a month or two beforehand. It is Chester itself that dates (by dendrochronology) to Agricola, not the road.

However, discussions of the Anglesey campaign are fairly superfluous here. We know the Romans could conduct campaigns of several months in Britain with armies of several legions, and not starve to death or grind to a halt. If you doubt this, you only need look at the marching camps in Scotland, the size of army they would have supported, and their distance from the nearest legion base. And there were certainly more than 10K auxiliaries in the province - Agricola had 13,000 of them at Mons Graupius.

Paulinus, in my projected timeline, only needs to move fast for fourteen days; a single expediti march, on established roads and lines of supply, to confront an emergency. Your calculations are directed towards what is average, and you want this to be the limit of the possible. As we have seen with your mistakes about couriers above, there is a great difference between an average speed or timescale and what could be accomplished under exceptional circumstances (I think we can agree that the imminent revolt of a province and slaughter of a citizen colony counts as exceptional!)

Some recorded speeds of Roman armies are exceptional indeed - Caesar marched from Rome to Spain 'with a heavily-laden army, by a very long route' in only 27 days, according to Appian (Bell Civ 2.103): he would have needed to cover over 20 miles a day every one of these days to even pass the Spanish border. Perhaps an exaggeration (did the full army join him along the way?), but Appian and his Roman readers must have considered it within the spectrum of the possible.

If the spring crop is not sown, how come the Romans dont think thats odd, why is that?

As we discussed above (using sources you cited yourself), the main crop during this period was sown in the autumn.

If there was a second crop, sown in the spring of AD61, both crops would have been harvested in August, just before the outbreak of the revolt.

Then there is how much weight you give to the druid influence... if P heads for Angelsey in Spring... why would P need 20k? to defeata a total pop of 15k.

I doubt there was any Druidic connection. None of our sources mention it, and Dio had Boudica acting as a priestess herself.

The campaign season in Britain began in summer (Agricola 20). We don't know the size of Paulinus's army - I guessed 20K above somewhere, which seems about right for a legion plus strong detachments of at least two others, and an equal-ish number of auxiliaries. But the figure may have been lower. Paulinus would have used all the men he could muster though - there was a lot of construction required, he needed to garrison his forts, and using a sledgehammer to crack a nut was entirely Roman practice. You need only look (again) at the size of armies taken into the sparsely-populated north-east of Scotland.

When he marched against Boudica, Paulinus took only a fraction of his total force; he wanted to leave sufficient troops to hold his conquests in Wales, and knew he could move faster with a smaller body of men. He probably took exactly the number he knew he could provision for two weeks or a little more on the road. As it happened, the revolt was a lot larger and went on longer than he'd anticipated, and he apparently ended up surrendering all or most of what he had won in Wales as he pulled his army back to crush the rebels.

[Renatus]

The link refers to your question,which then of course refers back to the post its related to, the contents of which i copy pasted that answer your question. I also answerd it seperatly in yet another post, 2002 "Tactitis tells us how he is going to record events Tactitus, e suum quaeque in annum referre 4.71, meaning he intends to record each event in its year of occurrence, he list 2 years and chronicles the events, one of the years lacks crops sown." Why your confused as to how many campaign season there are in 2 years, i have no idea, esp since since i refererd to not being sure it can be all done ina single one several times.

Thank you.  I think we're getting somewhere.

What particularly interests me at this stage is your take on the chronology of this event, rather than the logistical grounds for your reaching your conclusions.  I think that it would be helpful to summarize what Tacitus has to say on the matter, not because I think that you are unfamiliar with it but because I think that a brief resume would assist the debate.  He begins by saying that in AD61 a disaster occurred in Britain.  A tribal revolt broke out while the governor Suetonius Paulinus was campaigning on Anglesey.  He was in the final stages of that campaign when the news reached him.  He made his way through hostile territory to London and in the meantime Colchester was sacked and the Ninth Legion was severely mauled.  In London, he concluded that he had insufficient troops to defend the town and left.  London was then sacked by the rebels, as was St. Albans.  Finally, having collected a force of about 10,000 men, he engaged the enemy in battle and, despite their superior numbers, decisively defeated them.  After this, he brought his whole army together and kept them in tents to finish the war.  Legionary and auxiliary reinforcements were sent from Germany and the auxiliaries were placed in new winter quarters.  Meanwhile, Suetonius embarked on a campaign of reprisals and, in addition to the distress caused by this, the rebels also suffered from famine, having gone to war without having planted crops, believing that they would be able to seize all they needed from the Romans.  A number of rebels who had escaped from the battle remained at large, being unwilling to surrender for fear of the retribution they would suffer at the hands of Suetonius.  Consequently, the new procurator, Julius Classicianus, reported to Rome that there would be no end to the fighting as long as Suetonius remained governor.  An imperial freedman, Polyclitus, was sent to investigate and, following his report, Suetonius was retained in office.  However, following a further setback involving the loss of a number of ships, he was replaced by Petronius Turpilianus.  Turpilianus took no further action against the rebels and peace ensued.  I believe that this is a reasonably neutral summary of Tacitus' account.

In the article in Britannia that you cited, Kevin Carroll comments that all those who have studied the revolt realize that Tacitus' account covers more than one year.  You say that he lists two years and refer to his statement in Ann. 4.71 that he will deal with events in the year in which they occur.  Carroll takes a different approach and calls in aid Ann. 12.40.5 in which he states that, for ease of comprehension, he has dealt with an event as a whole, although it spans more than one year.  Carroll believes that he has done this with the Boudican revolt and it is arguable that, in doing so, he has actually recorded a period including parts of three years, if Petronius Turpilianus remained in Britain until AD63, leaving in that year to become curator aquarum in Rome.  His approach seems to be borne out by the beginning of the following chapter, Ann. 14.40, which starts, 'That same year', apparently referring back to AD 61 and thus indicating that Tacitus was resuming his annalistic method.  Carroll assumes that the revolt broke out in May 61 and lasted for about five weeks until the final battle, the subsequent events occupying the rest of that year and part of the following year(s).

What I draw from your latest comments (please correct me if I am wrong) is that Suetonius commenced his Anglesey campaign in spring and that it was the spring planting season that was missed.  Your query as to why the Romans did not notice that crops had not been planted implies that the revolt actually broke out after that time.  In all these three instances, it would be helpful to know the month in which you consider them to have occurred.  If they have, perhaps, been mentioned before, please repeat them; do not just refer to the earlier post.  This makes it easier to follow your argument.

Your comment, 'Why your confused as to how many campaign season there are in 2 years, I have no idea', answers the question that I raised earlier as to what you meant by a '2 season event'; you were referring to campaigning seasons.  This raises two questions; which of the events described by Tacitus do you ascribe to which season and what do you envisage happening (if anything) in the intervening period between the two seasons.  I look forward to your comments on these matters.

[Nathan Ross]

A tribal revolt broke out while the governor Suetonius Paulinus was campaigning on Anglesey.  He was in the final stages of that campaign when the news reached him.  He made his way through hostile territory to London and in the meantime Colchester was sacked and the Ninth Legion was severely mauled.

Good summary.

Most of our ideas about the chronology of all this, going back to Mommsen and Haverfield, assume that Boudica and co moved against London directly after the fall of Colchester and the defeat of Cerialis, which leads to the question of how Paulinus got to London before them.

Reading back through T, though, I notice that he doesn't explicitly say that. He has Decianus flee in alarm - presumably from London - which suggests that the rebels are close at hand, but doesn't confirm it.

If Boudica remained in the vicinity of Colchester for some time after the fall of the city, or her followers perhaps made an initial move north-west, towards Godmanchester or even Longthorpe, then Paulinus could have marched directly down to London at a much less hurried pace. (I think John and Deryk might have suggested something like this in the past)

That would stretch out the campaign itself over a longer period though, with corresponding problems about sailing seasons and troops movements - unless the war began earlier, with the Iceni for some reason totally abandoning their harvest and beginning the revolt in mid summer?

[John1]

It will be a lot easier and less fractious if you simply accept the site was Church Stowe and then reverse engineer the campaign from there. Deep down y'all know that's the truth

[Renatus]

It will be a lot easier and less fractious if you simply accept the site was Church Stowe and then reverse engineer the campaign from there. Deep down you know that's the truth

I recall that you created, and provided a link to, a series of videos in which you reviewed the merits of most of the sites that have been suggested by various researchers.  At the end, you said something along the lines of, 'If the actual site is discovered, it will probably be none of these.'  That included Church Stowe.

Correction  Having listened again: 'Almost certainly, none of the candidates is correct.'

[Hanny]

Not at all. You are not obliged to do anything here, except follow the basic rules of debate. But neither is anyone else obliged to read what you write or to engage with it, and if your posts are filled with bluster and sarcasm, riddled with typos and grammatical faults, and often resting on errors of calculation or interpretation, you cannot expect others to give your efforts the attention you desire.

How is it you know what i desire? and yes its up to anyone to engage or not, and as to basic rules of debate, they state that the proposer advances a concept, and then the opposer presents the arguments against the concept, so i have followed the basic rules, its you who want me to conform to your made up rules, and i declined to do so.

If you read back through this thread, you will find that I have been wrong many times, and have changed my ideas several times too. We all welcome discussion and critique, but it is possible to disagree with somebody without trying to insult their intelligence.

Indeed, reading back through the forum, i can see you have a long history of using the same anecdotes, Hazen for instance, without understanding it, as a part of your odd views on logistics.

But its ok for you to insult my intelligence, by, for example but not limited to, claiming that a human can carry 100lbs on their back and march at the same rate as they are trained to do with less weight, modern studies show you can achieve your expected 20mpd with 40/50 lbs, if its increased to 100 the actual rate of movement drops to 10 mpd. Example 2, using T that not having sown crops were an issue, and then having the Iceni reap the harvest before going to war which gives them years grain before lack of it becomes an issue as you changed crops not sown to being a non issue.

Nobody is winning any prizes here. All of us accept that we will perhaps never find the answers to the questions we are asking. The fun is in the debate, in trying out ideas, and in questioning assumptions and challenging theories. But to offer only carping objections and no positive alternatives is to try and disqualify everyone else on technicalities while refusing to participate yourself.

Pointing out modern studies of losing around third of your strength from a 100mile march with less lbs carried than 100 is not carping, pointing out your moving 60 miles cross country to find the road to go to Godmanchester 198 miles is not carping, P basing his strategic decision to go to Godmanchester from Angelsey in 11 days, at 18mpd when B is 50 miles from Godmanchester and 90 from london at your 5 mpd for B movements* means she could be there before him, is not carping. You have B burning in the countryside, yet archeology this not to occur "It should be noted that archaeology to date shows no Boudican destruction of Romano-British farmsteads in the countryside, only of large Romanised centres".

* your 5 mpd compares to other authors on British MPD and use 20 mpd for Romans, giving Roman to brits a 2:1 movement ratio advantage, you give it as 4 :1. Appleby has a map of the road net you now want to use and gives it as 370 to 400klm to london.
S Kaye/Grahame Appleby/Sullivan & Kinsella in their books on the same, all use 10 mpd.

As you mentioned in your previous paragraph, Paulinus had to build his road to get his army to Anglesey. He was marching back along a route he had laid and supplied himself only a month or two beforehand. It is Chester itself that dates (by dendrochronology) to Agricola, not the road.

Chester is not Roman occupied till after the revolt, around AD 70, the road connection back to Angelsey was built by Agricola afrer the Iceni revolt, so that road connection is not an option without use of cross county movement to get to the road from chester southwards.You now say, have him going back to Wroxeter, then on to Godmanchester and, and then onto London at 56, in 14 or so days at 18, meaning no rest days.which is actually longerhttps://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Periods/Roman/Topics/Engineering/roads/Britain/_Texts/CODROM/4*.html#map bya day. your other way of 198, went quicker by going cross country to get onto a different road net.

However, discussions of the Anglesey campaign are fairly superfluous here. We know the Romans could conduct campaigns of several months in Britain with armies of several legions, and not starve to death or grind to a halt. If you doubt this, you only need look at the marching camps in Scotland, the size of army they would have supported, and their distance from the nearest legion base. And there were certainly more than 10K auxiliaries in the province - Agricola had 13,000 of them at Mons Graupius.

Not superfluous at all, you advance a time line that starts in summer, which has many problems, inc, if its the summer the crops have been sown and there is enough for a year, so T is wrong that grain was not sown.What i doubt is you timeline that fits the evidence. P dies and a new policy is put into place, and the Iceni rise, it fails in part from lack of sown crops. First news comes to london of P death, it goes post haste to the Emp and policy comes back and is started to be implemented, all that takes time, between 20 and 30 days perhaps, during this time, mid summer as you have it, Roman grain buyers and Imperial agents wanting their render under to Caeser are in Iceni lands looking at the crops ready for harvest and thinking all is rosey. But that does not fit T grain comment, but if P dies in 4 month fallow period following the years before Autumn harvest, there are no crops to see, only plans made by Romans for what you will grow and seel sell us and or give us under the new policy and T comment fits that timeline as no crops are then sown that spring planting season as teh iceni are of at war instead. Its your version of history that i not only doubt, but consider wrong.

Paulinus, in my projected timeline, only needs to move fast for fourteen days; a single expediti march, on established roads and lines of supply, to confront an emergency. Your calculations are directed towards what is average, and you want this to be the limit of the possible. As we have seen with your mistakes about couriers above, there is a great difference between an average speed or timescale and what could be accomplished under exceptional circumstances (I think we can agree that the imminent revolt of a province and slaughter of a citizen colony counts as exceptional!)

Your timeline is one that has no equal in all of human history, and no one has been able to emulate, no force of 6k has marched 14 days back to back with 100lbs at start on its back so can be dismissed. I pointed out how you have the couriers system moving information fater than is humanly possible and faster than all the historical data that makes up Orbis contains, it was not mistake to point that out. In Iraq when you have 100lbs on your back you out with it for 4 hours and than back to base. The average person needs to replace 10% of there bodyweight to prevent dehydration, so 10 lbs is the average, so thats the average person being 100lbs, currently the Regs give a 200lb solder 20lbs of water a day to avoid heats effects, do you really want me to add in the average extra water requirement for teh average roman solder?, or just use the average water ration to mostly avoid dehydration during the march and drink all they want each night when resting.S.L.A. Marshall's book Soldier's Load and the Mobility of a Nation, https://mcoepublic.blob.core.usgovclouda...201980.pdf on the subject. Marshall concludes that a soldier could optimally carry 33 percent of his body weight. The same Marine Corps study determined the average weight of a Marine male was 169 pounds and the average female's was 130 pounds. This would put their combat loads at 56 pounds and 42 pounds, respectively. So now you dont want 10lbs water on average, you want 17lbs if the average roman soldier is 170 lbs as he is carrying 100lbs on his back and sweating like a horse and requiring more water than he was used to drinking when training in under half the kits weight to march the same distance. US FM 21-18, from 2018 does not take into account individual body weight. It prescribes a fighting load of no more than 48 pounds and an approach march load of 72 pounds as an average, its the average weight of a soldier that gives you the water ration, so you can see i have been bending over backwards to make the logistical requirment easy for the timeline.

Some recorded speeds of Roman armies are exceptional indeed - Caesar marched from Rome to Spain 'with a heavily-laden army, by a very long route' in only 27 days, according to Appian (Bell Civ 2.103): he would have needed to cover over 20 miles a day every one of these days to even pass the Spanish border. Perhaps an exaggeration (did the full army join him along the way?), but Appian and his Roman readers must have considered it within the spectrum of the possible.

Caeser left Rome and is next heard of at Corduba, its 68 days at 20 mpd every day with a supply train from Rome to Corduba, but if like any sensible army that want to move 2300s of klm, they get on a ship, saving 2000 klm of marching, they are there 21 days later at the fastest, by horse over land Caeser can get there to join them in 27 days at 50mpd. Maps for the campaign show caesers army going to Spain by sea, as we know Munda was fought 17th March, then legions did not march out in Jan month s before teh campaign season starts, by road to get there.

Your also confusing strategic ( administrative movement) norms of movement miles a week conducted not in the presence of the enemy, with rest days to recover,( like the Greek march of Xenephon 10,000 with as many rest as marching days, or Persian civil war strategic movement along the Royal road with supplies purchased in the markets along the road ahead of time, to facilitate the milk ripe May start of the campaign march to go to Cunaxa, Cyrus march to Cunuxa, from around first week of March, and took 178 days, 1770 miles, 10 mpd, 4 days a week marched average week, with a rest days for every day marched at 21mpd, or 85 marching days each of 21mpd in your prefer) with moving at them through hostile land that you know is full of the iceni looking to ambush anyone marching all day, every military Roman water we have recovered clock has 2 division, 12 hours night 12 hours day, night Vigilia is 3 hours of 4 sections, the daylight hours are also divided into 12 equal sections, so the Army was trained to march 5 of its 12 divisions to get 18 mpd and then perform other duties. TAB in the prescence of the enemy in the ancient world was not undertaken in full marching kit, but fighting kit only.

Some nations make 100ls carried a criminal event in the workplace, others give amounts thats re safe to lift.
https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardi...13-06-04-0

As we discussed above (using sources you cited yourself), the main crop during this period was sown in the autumn.

Except i stated it was not the main crop sown in first cent AD.

If there was a second crop, sown in the spring of AD61, both crops would have been harvested in August, just before the outbreak of the revolt.

Indeed two crops if they are double cropping in your time line, so not an earthy chance of running out of grain in your time line.

I doubt there was any Druidic connection. None of our sources mention it, and Dio had Boudica acting as a priestess herself.

Except we know Angelsey was an Iceni a place of worship, just like Thetford, and they then sacrifice to the Celtic god of revenge during the campaign.

The campaign season in Britain began in summer (Agricola 20). We don't know the size of Paulinus's army - I guessed 20K above somewhere, which seems about right for a legion plus strong detachments of at least two others, and an equal-ish number of auxiliaries.

A guess that shows how far wrong you can be when guessing.

But the figure may have been lower. Paulinus would have used all the men he could muster though - there was a lot of construction required, he needed to garrison his forts, and using a sledgehammer to crack a nut was entirely Roman practice. You need only look (again) at the size of armies taken into the sparsely-populated north-east of Scotland.

Agricola needed c30k to invade scotland, and faced c 30k so thats 90,000-120k population to put that in the field, while Angesey need 20k, to fight a total population of under 15k, and a mil population of c5k.Your cont comparing apples and oranges, your comparing apples and lampshades. If its overkill how come both legions get mil rewards for doing overkill?. Show me why you think throwing inferior numbers into combat without understanding the tactical situation is Roman practice, you cant so dont bother, S klnow when he is in Anmgelsey that he cant get back to london and defend it, there is simply not enough time, so no he was not performing overkill, he prob did not march his foot to London either as he knew before getting there he would be marching back again as the best outcome.

When he marched against Boudica, Paulinus took only a fraction of his total force; he wanted to leave sufficient troops to hold his conquests in Wales, and knew he could move faster with a smaller body of men..

Except angelsey remained Roman free and took another campaign to put it under roman control, so no. As for moving faster yes moving with his mounted arm to recon ahead was certainlya wise thing to do but you dont have anyone doing any recon at all, just marching with 100lbs on yoru back inviting ambush, and if i add in the mounted daily requirement, guess what, your timeline gets even further pushed into the dustbin.

Thank you. I think we're getting somewhere.

Your welcome.

What I draw from your latest comments (please correct me if I am wrong) is that Suetonius commenced his Anglesey campaign in spring and that it was the spring planting season that was missed. Your query as to why the Romans did not notice that crops had not been planted implies that the revolt actually broke out after that time. In all these three instances, it would be helpful to know the month in which you consider them to have occurred. If they have, perhaps, been mentioned before, please repeat them; do not just refer to the earlier post. This makes it easier to follow your argument.

Yes, spring is the start of the campaign season, you can time your attack to take advantage of crops becoming rip as you move over them so easing your logistical requirements, it makes less sense to wait till summer and let the enemy have his crops stored in granaries, unless you want to conduct sieges, so if that your conceptual plan you then have to bring siege equipment with you, or have a conceptual plan based on manouver, you maneuver over the crop lands and force them to fight for them and you dont have to worry about finding them to fight, if they dont they starve. Since P has to build the roads to Angelsey he needs plenty of time. Lastly yes im coming round to a 3 campaign season for the big picture, but have still to flick through a large number of publications.

I cannot narrow it down to a specific month when it broke out, but the fallow 4 month period from a subsistence single crop system would solve the issue if the events take place during the fallow period, nothing to see, nothing to worry about as nothing un normal going on, but if the new administrative policy of Rome ( along with hey those grants are now loans so we want you to pay up) includes you will adopt this new grain called spelt, and or, this new 2 crop a year idea we want you to move over to to give us what we want from you, then this could be part of what the Iceni did not like, along with not importing Roman wines etc as it undermined traditional values, so changing what they had to render under Caeser by increasing production from new methods just to stand still, making them import things rome wanted them to adopt, changing their chariot culture to more horses becoming plough horses instead. As we are told " we have nothing to gain from submission except heavy burdens from willing shoulders".

I think this chariot threat froma Roman pov goes back to the last revolt, the forts were dismantled and the garrisons used elsewhere post revolt when they were disarmed, but the Iceni retain a strategic military mobility from large scale chariot ownership, so an ability to rapidly raid over a large area, that worried mil thinkers that needed the garrisons elsewhere instead of being able to keep an eye on the Iceni.

This raises two questions; which of the events described by Tacitus do you ascribe to which season and what do you envisage happening (if anything) in the intervening period between the two seasons. I look forward to your comments on these matters.

The following prob will seem like a unsatisfactory answer to your question, if time permits i may return to it later next week when i hope to finish a first pass on several other works and get a better idea of who knew what/when and how the military choices unfolded.

Its a summary of events, most modern accounts seem to favour putting it all into a single decisive main battle, ( like writting a history of the waterloo 1815 campaign and only referencing using Waterloo battle to explain the mil defeat and will to resist was broken, i dont see it like that, a see it as a protacted affair of which we only havea fraction of events) and very short battle sequence from around a 2 week period and the back of the revolt is broken, im not so sure that the Iceni Confederation of 3 tribes needs to be in a huge mass, administratively and logistically is unlikely to have been so, its just as poss that fast chariot mobile groups radiated out from each tribe giving recon and raiding over huge area while slower main forces moved on that intel.

Romans used lookout towers and flag code between to rapidly send messages between towers and onto a legionary base to act on it, in a most effective time to space manner. Brits lacked this and had to go see and report on it. I see C getting news in short order of iceni raiding Godmanchester in the early days and coming with his QRF only to be ambushed and rubbed out as chariot and larger slower force was broughtb to bear, I tend to think the main Iceni force was broken by P, but smaller forces were still in the field for rest of the year. Drudaism and Christianity are the only 2 religions banned by Rome, i think religion was much more involved in organizing and co ordinating anti Roman British activity and had been doing so since Caeser came into Gaul, British assistance to mainland Europe coming in the shape of minted coins to pay for wars, warriors we know moved all over Europe to fight in others wars, bronze age Celtic swords in bronze pre date mainland Europe iron ones, so mainland Europe adopted British sword designs and not the other way around. Commercial trade between Brittany and SW Britain being one economic reason lodon was created to break up the Celtic trade routes and replace them with Roman ones.

[John1]

"That included Church Stowe" aaa haa...... so someone did watch those...... that's my excuse for standing aside on this debate. For me topo and finds come first, then a location that fits the narrative which can be interpreted to encompass a wide geography and timeline. I think I will live to see the site confirmed and then I will engage with the campaign debate, until then we are just kicking the inconclusive literature and conclusions around to limited effect. Deep down I know you know Church Stowe is the best all round candidate, but I also know there is a good chance I am wrong (as with so much in life) ...... Anyway here's a link to the videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1-WT_K...wxilmDZtkA

[Renatus]

Deep down I know you know Church Stowe is the best all round candidate

And deep down I know that you know that I believe that somewhere in the vicinity of Tring or at least somewhere in the Chilterns is the best candidate.

[Nathan Ross]

the road connection back to Angelsey was built by Agricola afrer the Iceni revolt, so that road connection is not an option without use of cross county movement

How do you imagine that Paulinus got his army to Anglesey, with all those thousands of men and mules and wagons?

you advance a time line that starts in summer, which has many problems, inc, if its the summer the crops have been sown and there is enough for a year, so T is wrong that grain was not sown.

The revolt began while Paulinus was on Anglesey. Unless you believe that a Roman commander would undertake a full-scale campaign involving a sea crossing in winter, or some time in early spring, that puts the revolt in summer. Since he had just concluded his operations when he heard about what was happening, late summer is most likely.

I've made the point repeatedly that the main crop was sown in the autumn in this period (quoting Varro and Pliny). Your single spring emmer crop was prehistoric - by the 1st C AD southeastern Britain was using the same agricultural calendar as the rest of northwest Europe.

I pointed out how you have the couriers system moving information fater than is humanly possible and faster than all the historical data that makes up Orbis contains, it was not mistake to point that out.

Slower than Orbis's estimate, and slower than our sources indicate, as I said. But let's move on...

S.L.A. Marshall's book Soldier's Load and the Mobility of a Nation... concludes that a soldier could optimally carry 33 percent of his body weight.

Optimal is the important word here. Marshall (pp.24-27) also claims that legionaries carried 80lbs on the march, as did US troops landed at Normandy, French troops in the Crimea carried 72lbs, British redcoats 80lbs, etc. The number and variety of calculations of how much soldiers could or should carry throughout history is so great as to indicate no definite rule. Training, and campaign location and season, apply too many variables.

Vegetius (1.19) says that Roman soldiers were trained to carry a load of 60 Roman pounds (43lbs, or 20kg) on the regular march, in addition to their arms and armour - 'cruelly laden', as Virgil has it. He has already told us (1.9) that the regular march was 20 miles (18 modern miles).

With the cooking equipment, entrenching tools, stakes and tent carried on the contubernium mule, most of the individual soldier's load would comprise rations. 14 days ration at 2.5lbs per day would total 35lbs, well within Vegetius's load limit. We know that Roman soldiers could routinely carry more than fourteen days (Cicero), seventeen days (Historia Aug, Ammianus) or greater (Caesar, Livy) amounts of personal rations on the march.

Even so, with arms and armour too each soldier would start out carrying something around 80lb (36kg). But this load would decrease steadily with every passing day, as they consumed their rations. I have already cited Junkelmann's experiment showing that relatively untrained men can carry 43-46kg on lengthy marches.

It comes down to whether you choose to believe the sources and the studies that have been done on them, or not.

S klnow when he is in Anmgelsey that he cant get back to london and defend it, there is simply not enough time, so no he was not performing overkill, he prob did not march his foot to London either as he knew before getting there he would be marching back again as the best outcome.

Ah, the return of the totally and thoroughly debunked cavalry dash theory!

I wondered if something like that might lie at the root of your thinking.

Three questions: if Suetonius Paulinus knew, as you suggest, that 'he cant get back to london and defend it, there is simply not enough time', why would he ride all the way down to London, in person, at enormous risk to himself and his command? Why would he, as Tacitus says, have wondered 'whether he should choose it as a seat of war' if he knew his troops could never reach it? And how could the refugees from London possibly have kept up with him if he was travelling at speed, on horseback?

you will adopt this new grain called spelt, and or, this new 2 crop a year idea... importing Roman wines etc as it undermined traditional values... horses becoming plough horses instead.

Spelt had been introduced to Britain long before, so this 'new administrative policy of Rome' is solely your own invention. And nobody would try using a horse to pull a plough until the middle ages - oxen were the draft animals, and oxen pulled the wagons that the Iceni brought to the final battle, so any ideas of rapid dashing fleets of chariots should be considered purely imaginary too!

As for wine - Dio has Boudica claim that the terrible Romans drink unmixed wine, rather than diluting it like civilised people. But we should probably take his ideas on life in Britain as seriously as his claim that the Iceni made their bread out of grass...

It will be a lot easier and less fractious if you simply accept the site was Church Stowe...

Nice try.. but no.

[John1]

"And deep down I know that you know that I believe that somewhere in the vicinity of Tring or at least somewhere in the Chilterns is the best candidate." sighs and shakes head in deep disappointment, sounds like a latinista trying to outgun a geographer again..... just so sad......

---

"How do you imagine that Paulinus got his army to Anglesey" I hadn't given it much thought until now, instead assuming they ran a boat ferry service across the rather challenging Menai Straights. But now you ask maybe it would make sense to do a big boat invasion from the Dee, landing somewhere more sympathetic like Red Wharf Bay. Naval logistics are not my thing but maybe a sudden big fleet landing into a secure anchorage would be better than an observable shuttle across challenging tides. The shuttle could then come into play as a resupply strategy if needed, depends on the size of the fleet and the round trip timing to proto-Deva

Paulinus "setting sail from Mona" to Deva (50 miles, 9 hours at 5 knots) makes more narrative sense in a journey of that length than merely hopping on a ferry for a couple of hundred metres.

PS it is Church Stowe you know..... xxxxx