Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[dadlamassu]

Goodness me! This discussion has moved on apace while I was involved in events surrounding the Lying At Rest of Queen Elizabeth in Edinburgh.

The distances from London to these sites are not great and there are several good military reasons for going there:
- Fighting in a town (London) is difficult to control and in very manpower intensive - he has too few troops to do so.
- He lacks the forces to fight Boudica's horde in the open
- His troops are tired and probably a bit demoralised - morale up after victory, morale falling as (possibly exaggerated) reports of massacres come in
- His main reinforcements are to the west and north
- His war supplies from the Mona campaign are also northwest
- The tribes immediately north and east are hostile and out for Roman Blood
- The tribes south are relatively friendly
- The possibly unsettled tribes west and northwest are not openly hostile and a Roman army marching through may show the flag (eagle) enough to calm them a bit
- Allowing London to fall undefended will gain him time while the tribal forces loot, pillage, destroy, rape, torture, sacrifice and generally celebrate for a few days before control is re-established. He may also hope that a significant portion will go home with their loot.
- The Emperor does not like two armies wiped out in his morning report!

So where does that leave him? I have looked at a couple of road maps online bearing in mind that we are less than 20 years since the Claudian invasion. I see him as having already ordered a muster at some point, maybe round Luton? Though I did look at the Bannaventa area too but it may be too far out of the way. I also looked that the possibilities of Cirencester and Silchester but I can find no references to them (again correct me if I am wrong). The main theatre of operations seems to lie in the box formed by the Iceni homeland, Colchester, London and St Albans. I am aware that these may be places chosen by the writers as places known to the audience rather than the actual theatre.

1. The fastest and shortest route is directly to St Albans - a day's hard march or a 2-3 days if fighting but this may deplete his already small force.
2. The longer westward the north east route is (marginally?) safer as the tribes may not be as hostile and allows gathering up garrisons and reserves into the field army.
3. To march west several miles, order a muster at some point around Luton then march cross country more or less northwards.

By making an obvious concentration in that area he is inviting the Britons to move their huge and victorious army again if they want to eliminate the Romans. Keeping a great horde in the field is a logistic and political nightmare. The Britons have little or no logistic backup so are foraging and looting slowing their progress. Keeping so many in the field will be upsetting the normal farming cycle so tribes will be getting distracted. The longer the Britons are in the field the better from a military, if not political, view. Did Suetonius know that St Albans had been raided when he was in London? Or did he go north and again leave the town to the Britons again to gain time?
I remind you that warfare was then a brutal affair, massacres, genocide and enslavement were common. It is likely that we will see this as the picture of the war in Ukraine becomes clearer.

I still favour option 1 as it fits with what I have read about Roman military practice. Deal with it it, deal with it fast and effectively with strength and ruthless resolution. That said I could equally be persuaded by those with more detailed knowledge that Sueutonius pursued either of the other options whichever, in his opinion, gave him the best chance of having a substantial enough force to defeat the rebels.

I have discounted going east as that takes his small force into the jaws of death. Also going south is unlikely as it surrenders quite a large Queendom to Boudica and expelling her would need a major campaign with substantial reinforcements from the rest of the Empire. This in turn weakening the other frontiers. It is only 45 years since Varus lost his legions and Suetonius has already effectively lost one and has one tied up in the south west. So I do not see him risking defeat. I do see concentration of forces, logistic build up, seizing the initiative and going on the offensive to recover the lost areas in a short ruthless campaign into the Iceni homeland. To do that he needs to go to his reinforcements and that is west and northwest. I doubt he expected the scale of his victory.