Tony Robinson uncovers the real life story behind one of the greatest legendary heroic figures in history.
Boudica has come to symbolize indomitable British strength, but Tony uncovers the very different story of the real Iceni Queen - Boudica, who was a Roman collaborator and was prone to extreme, disorganized violence.
Boudica was famous for her long red hair, her chariot with blades on its wheels and her fight for justice and independence over the brutal Romans, In this ancient history documentary Tony Robinson goes in search of the first iron lady of Britain.
Playlist - World History Documentaries https://dailymotion.com/playlist/x8qyee
Boudica has come to symbolize indomitable British strength, but Tony uncovers the very different story of the real Iceni Queen - Boudica, who was a Roman collaborator and was prone to extreme, disorganized violence.
Boudica was famous for her long red hair, her chariot with blades on its wheels and her fight for justice and independence over the brutal Romans, In this ancient history documentary Tony Robinson goes in search of the first iron lady of Britain.
Playlist - World History Documentaries https://dailymotion.com/playlist/x8qyee
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TVTranscript
00:00This is the story of a British legend,
00:03a woman who fought to save her country
00:05from European invaders,
00:07a woman who nearly brought the most chauvinistic culture
00:10of its age to its knees.
00:12Who was she?
00:14Bodicea.
00:19She's one of the most recognizable figures in history,
00:21the ancient queen and her chariot with its deadly wheels.
00:25It's a brilliant and bloody image,
00:28but this caricature has blurred the truth of history.
00:31We've even got her name wrong.
00:33Her ancient British name was Boudicca, not Bodicea,
00:37and she lived a life that was both raw and violent.
00:41So now I'm gonna try and get to the facts
00:44about this woman who's ridden her way into British history.
00:48Boudicca's story begins a hundred miles away from London
01:11in her homeland, Norfolk,
01:12and 2,000 years back through time.
01:17It's a story of treachery, deceit, rebellion,
01:21and collaboration in an occupied country,
01:24our country, Britain.
01:27Boudicca stands on the edge of prehistory and history,
01:31so she's an ancient Brit,
01:33someone who is flesh and blood,
01:34someone we can actually give a name to
01:36and tell a story about.
01:43She's fighting these Roman imperialists,
01:45and she's the last gasp, if you like,
01:48of an attempt to defend Britain against the Romans.
01:52She's huge.
01:53She's got a loud, harsh voice.
01:55She's got long red hair to her knees.
01:57She's in a chariot.
01:59She is armed.
01:59This is very strange.
02:01This is quite horrendous.
02:05A woman who is totally wild.
02:07She's absolutely lacking in any inhibitions.
02:10Very exciting for men,
02:12inspiring for women because it's a woman released.
02:18Boudicca was queen of the Iceni tribe.
02:21She was born around the time
02:22that Jesus Christ was crucified.
02:25Her husband, King Prasutagus,
02:26ruled a kingdom that covered the whole
02:28of present-day Norfolk, bits of Suffolk, and the Fens.
02:34We've dug up gold and silver neck rings in Norfolk,
02:37torques like this one,
02:39which Boudicca's described as wearing.
02:42The British tribes were prosperous.
02:44The British tribes were prosperous.
02:47Prosperous enough to attract the attention
02:49of an empire that already spread
02:51from Syria to Northern France.
03:01And in particular, Britain caught the eye
03:03of an emperor who needed a bit of a boost.
03:07The Emperor Claudius was the sort of bloke
03:09who gets teased at school.
03:11He was bad at games.
03:13He had a stutter.
03:15In short, he needed some good PR.
03:21What could work better for him than invading somewhere?
03:27So in 43 AD, Claudius sent his legions
03:30across the Channel to conquer Britain.
03:34100 years before, Julius Caesar had opened the door
03:37with a small incursion, but he didn't stay.
03:40This time, Claudius meant business.
03:45When his 40,000 battle-hardened troops
03:47had done the actual fighting,
03:49Claudius himself popped over to claim the credit
03:52and receive homage from the British tribes,
03:54including Boudicca's Iceni.
03:57This was where he made his triumphal entry.
04:00Colchester is Britain's oldest recorded town.
04:03And at that time, it was far more important than London.
04:07This is the High Street today,
04:09root of Claudius's triumphal procession.
04:12If Boudicca wasn't there,
04:13news would have soon reached her
04:15of Claudius's extraordinary arrival.
04:18He wanted to make a big impact,
04:20so he brought along something
04:21that none of the locals would ever have seen before,
04:24huge, strange, terrifying animals.
04:27The Emperor Claudius loved to travel in style.
04:33The Emperor Claudius loved to travel in style,
04:36so he paraded along the streets with elephants and camels
04:41and anything else he could think of
04:43in what really amounted to a first-century photo opportunity.
04:54And what did Boudicca do
04:55when the Romans came trampling over Iceni lands?
04:59Well, nothing.
05:01The famous freedom fighter actually turns out
05:03to have been friends with the Romans nearly all her life.
05:06The Iceni became allies, a client kingdom,
05:10and were left alone to manage their own affairs.
05:15In return, the Romans got what were considered
05:17to be the best oysters in the empire
05:19from just up the East Coast here,
05:21as well as cereals, cattle, gold, silver, and iron,
05:25hunting dogs, and slaves.
05:27And it was the client kingdoms who had to provide them.
05:31Boudicca was supping with the devil,
05:35but initially everything seemed to be going fine.
05:39Traditionally, we see Boudicca
05:41as very much part of an anti-Roman lifestyle,
05:45but that, to me,
05:47is a rather simplistic caricature of Boudicca.
05:50When we start to actually compare Boudicca
05:53with other Roman elites in other parts of France,
05:58Germany, and Britain at this time,
06:01these are the groups of people who are most open to change.
06:05They're the groups of people who are gonna be,
06:07in some senses, adopting Romanized ways.
06:12This Iceni coin proves how Romanized Boudicca was.
06:16Her tribe copied the Roman style of coinage,
06:19and she'd probably have spoken some Latin.
06:22So Boudicca and the Iceni aren't exactly
06:24the Roman-hating freedom fighters we might have expected.
06:29You've got a king and queen drinking fine continental wines,
06:33ruling a people living more simply,
06:35but with a taste for hard liquor.
06:38You've got cakes and ale, and lovely new roads,
06:42and everyone happy to be doing the Romans' bidding.
06:45But of course, this cozy little arrangement can't last.
06:48So what was it that finally turned Boudicca
06:52against her Roman pals?
06:54Well, the truth of the matter is
06:56that the deal offered the Britons
06:58that there was a good alternative
06:58to being hacked to pieces by the legions,
07:01but the price paid for their peace was a pretty high one.
07:05And the price was freedom.
07:07While the tribes of the southeast had knuckled under,
07:10fighting was still going on in Wales and the north.
07:21The rebellions were draining the Roman forces,
07:23spreading their troops dangerously thin.
07:26To protect themselves, they started to forcibly disarm
07:29even the friendly tribes like the Iceni,
07:31just in case trouble spread.
07:33It had the opposite effect.
07:38To take their weapons was a grave insult
07:41to a people who saw themselves as great warriors.
07:43A confrontation was bound to happen,
07:46and it did here at Holcombe in North Norfolk.
07:50The Roman writer Tacitus says that the Iceni
07:53retreated to a stronghold,
07:55which was defended by earth banks and ditches,
07:57by waterways, and by natural fortifications,
08:01with a single line of approach leading
08:03to a narrow entrance.
08:07But against the organized might of the legions,
08:10the island fortress was totally ineffective.
08:13The Iceni rebels were crushed,
08:16but it seems that Boudica had distanced herself from them.
08:19She remained in power and would probably have continued
08:22to be a Roman ally if it hadn't been
08:24for a series of events 1,100 miles away,
08:26at the heart of the empire.
08:28In 54 AD, Claudius died in mysterious circumstances
08:33and was promptly succeeded by the brutal Nero.
08:36A repressive regime took over,
08:38and in Britain, its first act involved the old emperor.
08:43Even after he was dead, poor stuttering Claudius
08:46continued to disrupt the lives
08:47of the people of first century Colchester.
08:50The Roman response to his death was to declare him a god,
08:54and they built a magnificent temple to him.
08:56These are the foundations.
08:58Yet amazingly, they still exist under the Norman castle.
09:03And that castle we can still see today
09:06is built on those very foundations,
09:08the same spot where the Roman temple used to be.
09:13A vast classical building would be quite familiar to us,
09:17but to Boudica and her people who lived in simple huts,
09:20it was strange, alien, and unnecessarily provocative.
09:28The temple became the main focus
09:29of opposition to Roman power.
09:32The Britons were used as slave labor to build it,
09:34and they were taxed to pay for it.
09:36And if that wasn't bad enough,
09:37the whole thing was so in your face,
09:39it was like a great Roman boot
09:41stamping out the message of the emperor's power.
09:46There's plenty of evidence for Romans
09:48maltreating the natives of the countries
09:50that they conquered.
09:51And of course, that's given by our historians
09:54as the key reasons behind the revolt,
09:55that the treatment of Boudica and her nobles
09:58by the Romans for the Trinovantes in Colchester,
10:01it's being bullied by the Roman veterans
10:03and kicked off their land.
10:05We know that that sort of thing went on.
10:07We hear about bullying Roman soldiers elsewhere.
10:11We hear about it in the New Testament,
10:13in Juvenal, a Roman satirist talks about
10:16the typical Roman soldier who's a bully.
10:20So it seems to be a regular feature
10:22that Roman soldiers are able to be pretty unpleasant
10:26to civilians and get away with it.
10:32Romans fought with the short sword, the gladius,
10:35which is essentially a thrusting weapon
10:38when used with the shield, the scutum.
10:41So the strength of the Roman army
10:42was they fought as a unit,
10:44like the fascis, the symbol of Rome,
10:46a bundle of rods, strength in unity.
10:48So they fought as a machine, as a bundle.
10:50And when they're there,
10:51then this is the thrusting sword there
10:53and it doesn't interfere with the man next door.
10:56And in Colchester, the Romans were ruthless.
11:01The skulls of Britons have been found
11:03in a legionary ditch just down there.
11:06They'd been stuck on poles
11:08as a warning to others to toe the line.
11:15We have six skulls, which are the skulls of young Britons
11:23who were executed on the eve of the Boudiccan Revolt.
11:27You can see sword gashes at the back of the skull,
11:31wounds which never healed.
11:33And I'm pretty sure that these were Britons
11:37who'd taken part in some minor insurrection
11:40against the Romans shortly before the Boudiccan Revolt.
11:44And I'm sure that when the fighting broke out in AD 60,
11:47there were a lot of people who could remember a brother
11:50or a father or an uncle who had been executed by the Romans.
11:54And so they had plenty of old scores to settle
11:58and they were ready to throw in their lot
12:00with anyone who was going to take on the Roman Empire.
12:07In the end, what brought Boudicca into open revolt
12:10was a personal insult.
12:13When her husband died, the Romans ignored his will
12:16and seized the Iceni lands.
12:18The nobility were forced into slavery
12:21and the young men conscripted into the Roman army.
12:25When Boudicca protested about these injustices,
12:28the Romans arrested her, had her dragged to a public place
12:32and then flogged her in front of her people.
12:35Then they took her two young daughters and raped them.
12:39It was this first shocking step
12:41that opened the door to war.
12:43War.
12:44War.
12:45War.
12:46War.
12:47War.
12:47War.
12:48War.
12:49War.
12:50War.
12:51War.
12:52War.
12:52War.
12:53War.
12:54War.
12:55War.
12:56War.
12:57War.
12:57War.
12:58War.
12:59War.
13:00War.
13:01War.
13:02War.
13:03These Iron Age defenses are in Thetford in Norfolk,
13:06deep in the heart of Iceni territory,
13:08where Boudicca was flogged and her two daughters
13:10were raped by the Romans.
13:13Now, she was no longer a collaborator.
13:16She wanted revenge.
13:18Ah!
13:19Ah!
13:20Ah!
13:20Ah!
13:21Ah!
13:22Ah!
13:23Ah!
13:24Ah!
13:25And this was her rallying point.
13:27This rather unpromising industrialist state in Thetford
13:30covers the remains of the very nerve center
13:33of Boudicca's rule.
13:34It's almost certainly where she assembled her army
13:37and got ready to take on the Roman Empire.
13:40Ah!
13:44Soon, the Iceni were joined by the Trinovantes of Essex,
13:48and Boudicca took command of the combined forces.
13:51Then, they headed off for Colchester.
14:06When they set off on the war path,
14:08it was a whole population on the move,
14:10a juggernaut of warriors, wives, children,
14:13chariots, and animals.
14:16Their objective was the source
14:18of so much of their grievance, Colchester.
14:23Rumors of strange and dreadful omens began to spread
14:26as Boudicca rode south.
14:28The Romans in Colchester panicked
14:30when their statue of victory crashed forward off its base.
14:34It lay face down as though it was surrendering
14:36to its enemies.
14:40Then, the sea turned blood red.
14:43The shape of a ruined city could be seen under the water,
14:46and strange human corpses lay abandoned on the shore.
14:56For the Romans, as well as for the Britons,
14:59portents, omens were very, very important.
15:02The Romans were as superstitious as anybody
15:04in the west of Europe.
15:06Look at this dreadful thing.
15:07This altar has just burst into flames on its own account.
15:09This means something awful's going to happen.
15:11This means the Romans are going to be destroyed.
15:17And yet, even though they'd seen omens,
15:20even though they'd heard stories
15:21of Boudicca's approaching army already laying waste
15:24to anything in its path,
15:26the people of Colchester were completely unprepared.
15:29Like colonialists everywhere,
15:31they just didn't believe the natives would dare attack them.
15:35And they'd left Colchester incredibly vulnerable.
15:39The original defences had been removed
15:41to make way for new buildings,
15:43and the legions had left.
15:45The city was protected by only a handful of retired officers.
15:49On the brink of disaster, life carried on as normal.
15:54Archaeologists have unearthed
15:56extraordinary household objects from the city.
16:00We even know what one family were eating
16:02the night Boudicca arrived.
16:062,000 years ago,
16:07someone around here bought some dates and took them home.
16:11And the house where they lived was just over there,
16:14where Boots the chemist is now.
16:16Maybe they had a bowl of fruit on their table,
16:18fruit from exotic parts of the Roman Empire,
16:21dates from Syria and figs from Greece.
16:24Then suddenly, one terrible day,
16:27their comfortable lifestyle came to an abrupt end.
16:33Boudicca fell on Colchester like an avenging angel.
16:37Her hordes overran the city, burning and killing.
16:43They just wanted to kill anything and everyone Roman,
16:48and to erase all trace of Roman civilisation from Britain.
17:02The Roman historians tell us that what followed wasn't a battle,
17:05it was a massacre.
17:08The Britons didn't take prisoners like the Romans to be sold as slaves.
17:12The inhabitants were butchered.
17:14They were crucified, hung, burnt and sliced with the sword.
17:18One of the atrocities the Britons committed on the Romans
17:21was to crucify them using a Roman punishment,
17:25a punishment inflicted on non-citizens
17:28and low criminals, on the Romans themselves.
17:32This wasn't just killing, it was ritual slaughter,
17:35a sacrifice to the gods of war.
17:37Boudicca's rebels burned the whole city to the ground.
17:41Soon all that was left standing was the massive symbol of imperial tyranny.
17:45The Romans in Colchester fled to the temple for refuge,
17:48where they held out for two days
17:50before the Britons burst in, slaughtered them and torched the whole building.
18:03The firestorm Boudicca raised was so fierce
18:06that it melted the wattle and daub buildings
18:08and baked the rubble into a kind of red clay.
18:11Archaeologists call it the Boudiccan destruction layer,
18:14and it's still there,
18:16a gruesome reminder of a first-century holocaust
18:19packed deep underneath Colchester.
18:22This place always been like this?
18:24No, until about 20 or 30 years ago,
18:26it was actually a bar, a cellar bar,
18:29of the George Hotel,
18:31and, of course, people would come down here
18:33and they'd be drinking and carousing,
18:35and this archaeological section was preserved
18:37as a kind of conversation piece.
18:39When the glass was on, I couldn't see a thing here,
18:42and I have to say that now that the glass is off,
18:44I can't see much more.
18:46Where is the Boudiccan destruction layer?
18:48Look at the top of the section,
18:50because what you're actually looking at
18:52is bright red lumps of burnt daub.
18:55Oh, this is the burnt daub?
18:57Yeah, this is it.
18:59What you've actually got up there in the top of the section
19:02is ruins of a house that was sacked in AD 60.
19:06Those lovely bright red lumps of daub,
19:09you can see them down here.
19:11This is the remains of a wall which has collapsed,
19:14it's been burnt, it's collapsed,
19:16and it's fallen that way,
19:18and all this daub has cascaded over the floor level.
19:21But why is it so low down?
19:23The street's about six foot up that way.
19:25Well, you're absolutely right.
19:27The thing is, Colchester has been occupied continuously
19:30for 2,000 years,
19:32and in the past, people simply didn't remove their rubbish
19:36from where it was generated,
19:38and so rubbish has accumulated.
19:40Six foot of it? It's six foot of rubbish.
19:43And you're quite happy that this is indicative
19:46of the Boudiccan uprising?
19:48Yeah, there's no doubt about it at all.
19:50Anyone who knows the archaeology of Colchester or London
19:54or Verulamium,
19:56any of these cities that have been destroyed by Boudicca,
19:59you will see this same lovely red layer of destruction
20:03running through all of them.
20:05I'm now touching something that was actually set alight
20:09by our Senai warriors.
20:11Yes, that's right, you're actually literally touching history.
20:16Nothing survived.
20:18Well, almost nothing.
20:21Rather surprisingly, Boudicca's inferno in Essex
20:25has given us the kind of domestic insight
20:27normally associated with Pompeii.
20:30Remember the dates in Boots the Chemist?
20:34You may think that these are little bits of coal,
20:37but believe it or not, they're the actual dates
20:40that were dried and scorched in the inferno
20:43that Boudicca unleashed.
20:45You can still see crinkles on that bit of fruit.
20:49And these are charred grains.
20:53Over here are bits of burnt pottery
20:57that was found in the merchant shop just up the road.
21:00And this is a fragment from a burnt mattress.
21:05And you can still see the imprint of the pattern burnt onto it.
21:12And out in the country, there was another great find,
21:16one which gives us a glimpse of the triumphant Boudicca
21:19and her beliefs.
21:24Early last century, a boy fished up a bronze head
21:28from a Norfolk riverbed.
21:30He took it home with him, whitewashed it
21:32and stuck it outside his cottage like a garden gnome.
21:35Eventually, it found its way to the British Museum
21:38who paid five shillings for it.
21:45It turned out to be the head from a huge statue of Claudius.
21:51There are jagged edges round the neck
21:53where Boudicca and the Iceni
21:55had hacked off the symbolic head of the animal.
22:03We know that the Britons had a powerful,
22:06We know that the Britons had a cult of offering human heads
22:10to watery places, springs, wells, rivers.
22:15And I think by throwing this head of the Emperor Claudius in a river,
22:21it was a religious act.
22:23It wasn't just an act of political vandalism.
22:27There was a lot of religious symbolism vested in this.
22:32The Britons' religious obsession with heads
22:35was one of the things that revolted the Romans.
22:38Warriors used to hang the heads of victims on their horses
22:41and display them in sacred oak groves.
22:44Boudicca and her followers flaunted their druidic religion
22:48to defy and terrify the Romans.
22:52Druids were regarded by the Romans as being a subversive element,
22:56partly because of their religious rituals,
22:59because they practised human sacrifice.
23:01The Romans thought that that was barbarous.
23:04In some areas, they had had some political influence.
23:12In fact, Boudicca got her chance to rebel
23:15because the Romans decided to try and wipe out druidism
23:18by attacking its headquarters on the Isle of Anglesey,
23:21the most sacred shrine in Britain.
23:23The governor, General Suetonius, had sent most of the army up to Wales
23:28because the druids were putting up such a fierce fight,
23:31and that is why Colchester was left undefended.
23:37Boudicca had scored a fairly easy victory against a soft target,
23:41but inevitably, the Romans responded.
23:45A detachment of the Ninth Legion
23:47was sent to rescue the town and crush the upstarts,
23:50but Boudicca was flush with success, and she wasn't finished yet.
23:54She decided to fall back on the kind of fighting
23:57she knew from years of tribal warfare, guerrilla tactics.
24:07As the Ninth Legion approached Colchester,
24:10Boudicca's troops lay in wait in the woods.
24:17And then they attacked.
24:24CROWD SCREAMS
24:34The ambush was as bloodily successful as the sack of Colchester.
24:391,500 professional soldiers butchered
24:42without even denting Boudicca's momentum.
24:45News of her victory would have sent shockwaves throughout the empire.
24:49The Romans really are terrified
24:51whenever it looks like the barbarians are going to win.
24:54They've got a real, really deep-seated angst and fear
24:59of the day when the barbarians will pour over the Alps.
25:06And so Boudicca defeating the Romans in Britain
25:09looks absolutely catastrophic.
25:11If she can do it, then the rest of the barbarian world
25:14will rise up against us too.
25:16The Romans have also got a hang-up about powerful women.
25:19There are no powerful women at Rome,
25:21and the idea of being beaten by a woman would have been a pretty shameful thing
25:25because it subverts the natural order of things.
25:29The Boudiccan revolt was becoming a serious threat
25:32to the most powerful empire in the world,
25:35and she'd still got a long way to go.
25:39She was determined to force the Roman invaders out of her country,
25:43so now Boudicca set her sights on London.
25:50Boudicca seemed unstoppable.
25:52She'd burned Colchester to the ground,
25:54killed thousands of Roman soldiers,
25:56and was now heading for London.
25:58A young Norfolk woman,
26:00threatening to boot the mighty Roman invaders out of Britain.
26:04No wonder the Victorians loved her.
26:09The image we have of Boudicca,
26:11which is this powerful, tall woman with long red hair
26:15streaming out behind her, charging around,
26:17sweating horses in front of her,
26:20ploughing through the enemy.
26:22Very powerful, very exciting, very erotic.
26:27Very exciting woman until you feel the spear plunge into your chest,
26:31and then the ardour deflates.
26:35The fearsome chariot and the huge rearing horses
26:38were modelled on Queen Victoria's own stallions.
26:41But, as always, real history is a story of war.
26:45But, as always, real history is stranger,
26:48but slightly less romantic than the fiction.
26:51Meet Fudge and Turnip.
26:53These are the kind of horses that Boudicca and her army
26:56would have been fighting with.
26:59The great fearsome beasts.
27:03And Boudicca's chariot wouldn't have been metal.
27:06It would have been made of wicker, built for speed.
27:09We're pretty sure there were no blades either.
27:15Blades were used like a kind of battle taxi,
27:17with warriors hopping on and off to get to the action.
27:21Blades would have cut Boudicca's own troops to ribbons
27:24before she got to the enemy.
27:27Still, even if the blades are made up,
27:29there's no doubting the violence of her uprising.
27:46Her army, as it streamed out of Colchester,
27:49could have filled Wembley Stadium twice over.
27:52They cut a slow swathe,
27:54plundering their way through modern-day Essex, heading for London.
28:07This is High Street Londinium,
28:09the very centre of the Roman city of London that Boudicca attacked.
28:13In area, we reckon it would have been about the same as the city today,
28:16although its ground level would have been about 16ft lower.
28:20And as for population,
28:22we think there would have been about 10,000 people living and working here.
28:31London had only been going for ten years.
28:34It was a Roman creation,
28:36a trading post full of first-century yuppies.
28:39It wasn't a military stronghold.
28:42But the Romans desperately needed to stop Boudicca,
28:46and the military chief, Suetonius,
28:48raced back from Wales ahead of his troops to assess the situation.
28:53He made the cold but probably necessary decision
28:56that London couldn't be defended against Boudicca's hordes.
29:00He ignored the vain tears and prayers of the doomed Londoners
29:04and abandoned them to their fate.
29:07Anyone who could have fled did.
29:09There must have been complete panic.
29:11They all knew what they were in for.
29:13They either fled north-west to the military area under General Suetonius
29:17or crossed the river south to the Roman-friendly tribes
29:21in what are now Surrey and Sussex.
29:26The only people not joining the line of refugees
29:29were the old, the infirm, and the women, children and shopkeepers
29:33who trusted that the reports of Boudicca's atrocities were exaggerated
29:37and that they wouldn't be harmed.
29:39They were wrong.
29:48It was Colchester all over again.
29:51Some of the houses even had running water, but it didn't help.
29:54Boudicca's firestorm engulfed the city.
29:58Today, building sites in the City of London
30:01reveal the same grisly red layer deep beneath the surface
30:04that we saw in Colchester,
30:06evidence of the severity of Boudicca's attack.
30:17And there have been some grisly finds which are thought to come from her era.
30:21Decapitated skulls,
30:23Roman writers tell us that, by now, the death toll had reached 70,000
30:28and the unfortunate population of London
30:30was subjected to every known outrage.
30:37The death toll of Boudicca's attack
30:40was as high as the death toll of any other city in the world.
30:44It was the death toll of Boudicca.
30:47It was the death toll of Boudicca.
30:51News of the attack must have shocked Roman readers with its barbarism.
30:56One writer said,
30:58''The Boudicca's followers took the noblest and most eminent women
31:02''and strung them up naked.
31:04''Then they cut off their breasts and sewed them to their lips
31:07''so it looked as though the victims were eating them.
31:10''Then afterwards, they impaled them on sharp skewers
31:14''which ran the entire length of their bodies.''
31:17Now, we've no way of proving these atrocities one way or the other,
31:21but given our knowledge of recent ethnic conflicts,
31:24they do have the sad ring of truth about them.
31:29And another Roman writer goes further.
31:32He tells us that the atrocities were accompanied by sacrifices.
31:36Boudicca made her bloody offerings in the Grove of Andraste,
31:39her goddess of victory,
31:41accompanied by feasting and what the Romans primly called wanton acts.
31:46If you read about it in the tabloids,
31:48they'd probably call it a ritual orgy.
31:52In her fight against the occupiers,
31:54Boudicca was enlisting the ancient power of the Celtic gods.
31:59It's quite likely that somebody like Boudicca would have been regarded
32:03as being at least semi-divine,
32:05because we have to remember that she managed to get tribes
32:09that had perhaps for hundreds of years
32:11fought against each other for land and so on
32:13to pull together against Rome,
32:15so the fact that as a female she was able to command an enormous army
32:19would have meant that she was regarded as special
32:22with almost magical qualities.
32:24And I think even the episode with Andraste, with the goddess,
32:28shows that she was, in a sense, at one with the goddess.
32:32And a lot of these sovereigns at this time, I think,
32:35we could almost regard as shamans.
32:37They were the ear of the gods.
32:39Boudicca not only entranced and terrified
32:42both Britons and Romans alike,
32:44but she's also fascinated just about everyone who's read her story since.
32:50It's the kind of combination that can turn a girl
32:53into a one-woman legend factory.
32:55It's all myth, isn't it? I mean, most of it is myth.
32:58You can only connect with the station
33:01where they say that she's buried at the end of the station.
33:04Whether she was killed in battle or...
33:07I mean, there's rumours that she committed suicide, I do believe.
33:10What station did they say she was buried at?
33:12They say King's Cross Platform 10 and 11,
33:16somewhere underneath there.
33:19And how did you hear about that?
33:21From other drivers.
33:24It's just one of them things that are handed around,
33:27a myth that goes on and on and on, I suppose.
33:31Maybe cabbies have been passing on that story since the Iron Age.
33:34Could be, could be.
33:36I don't know if there were cab drivers in the Iron Age.
33:38I don't know, at the moment they're digging up King's Cross Station,
33:42renewing it, maybe they'll find something when they're digging.
33:45It'd be great if they found an old chariot, wouldn't it?
33:48Yeah, it would be a wickerwork chariot, wouldn't it?
33:52Our chariots were wickerwork.
33:54The Roman chariots, I think, was solid, heavy metal.
33:57You could polish it up, put a metre on it.
33:59Absolutely, absolutely.
34:04Well, I didn't find any definite evidence at all
34:07of Boudicca at King's Cross, and nor has anybody else, for that matter.
34:13But at the station, I did get back to her story
34:16when she was still very much alive and at the height of her powers.
34:23Boudicca left London in ruins and headed north.
34:27She had another Romanised town in her sights, St Albans,
34:31and it's here she made a fatal mistake.
34:35Suetonius was still reeling from her assaults,
34:38and Boudicca should have attacked him when he was down,
34:41but St Albans was a soft target.
34:43A few more of the civilians managed to escape,
34:46but apart from that, it was the usual story.
34:49Burning, red lair, attacking where the loot was richest.
34:57Boudicca had led her army against civilian settlements
35:01rather than try to engage Roman armies.
35:04In her forces had sacked Colchester, London and St Albans,
35:07and they had obviously taken their wives and children with them
35:12and collected a lot of booty on the way.
35:15In many ways, it was as much an attempt to plunder
35:19as it was to free Britain from a Roman presence.
35:25The Britons had got distracted.
35:27By plundering and settling old tribal scores,
35:30the lumbering army had become unwieldy and desperately slow-moving.
35:34The Romans had been taken by surprise by Boudicca's rebellion
35:38and by its success, but now they were regrouping
35:41and pulling their forces back together.
35:44More Romans arrived from Wales.
35:49It was time for Boudicca's first pitched battle against a proper army.
35:55Locating the site of Boudicca's battle with Suetonius
35:59is one of the great academic gains.
36:02The favourite candidate is here at Manceter,
36:05just beyond Atherstone in the Midlands.
36:08The railway line cuts right through the battle site
36:11and follows the route that Boudicca's followers would have taken
36:14as they came down into the valley where the Romans were waiting for them.
36:18Suetonius was outnumbered 20 to 1,
36:21but he couldn't afford another humiliation.
36:24Victory for Boudicca could well mean
36:27the Romans abandoning Britain as too much trouble.
36:33As they approached the field of battle,
36:36Boudicca's 200,000 poorly armed but reckless followers
36:40knew they were one fight away from achieving the impossible.
36:44Getting one over on the Roman Empire.
36:50Manceter in the Midlands.
36:52It means the place of chariots
36:54and it's probably the site of Boudicca's last stand
36:57against her Roman opposite number, Suetonius Paulinus.
37:01The Romans had been beaten before by surprise attacks
37:05and the success of a certain devil-may-care recklessness
37:08from Boudicca's side.
37:10This time, Suetonius intended to win
37:13with Roman tactics, experience and discipline.
37:18Romans would remember that three legions had been wiped out in AD 9.
37:22This, if you like, was their Battle of Stalingrad.
37:25And in AD 60, they were terrified
37:28that there was going to be a rerun of this.
37:31Suetonius couldn't risk another ambush from Boudicca.
37:35He chose a wooded hillside where he could watch his back
37:38and then he waited.
37:48There was a sense of inevitability.
37:50Once they did take on the Romans,
37:52it was almost a tragedy in the making.
37:55It's absolutely awe-inspiring, the almost tired way
37:58that they go into their old routine.
38:00Setting up, right, we're going to win this, chaps.
38:02There's no two ways about it.
38:04Once you take us on, there was nobody that could stand up to them.
38:08So the Romans were arrayed all along this ridge,
38:11looking down on the Britons, all 200,000 of them,
38:14who arrived and spread out across a wide area
38:17about a mile away on the far side of the river.
38:21On the British side, there wasn't just the army.
38:24There were the soldiers' wives and children and mothers
38:27and all the camp followers.
38:29The British were so confident of victory,
38:31they'd line them all up in wagons on the side of the battlefield
38:34so they could watch them winning.
38:38This circle of wagons formed a great defensive wall
38:41between the Romans and the Britons.
38:43It was a great defensive wall,
38:45but it was also a great defensive wall
38:48This circle of wagons formed a grandstand,
38:51but fatally committed the Britons.
38:53Any retreat was blocked by cheering relatives, paraphernalia and plunder.
38:59Passing through the multitude in her chariot,
39:01Boudicca addressed the assembled tribes.
39:05I am fighting as an ordinary woman
39:08for my lost freedom, my bruised body and my outraged daughters.
39:13The Romans are vastly inferior to us in numbers and bravery.
39:18Let's show them that they are hares and foxes
39:21trying to rule over wolves and dogs.
39:33She ended with a mocking appeal to her menfolk.
39:37I am going to win this battle or perish, she said.
39:41That's what I, a woman, am going to do.
39:44But if you want to, you men can carry on living in slavery.
39:50And so saying, she released a sacred hare
39:53as an offering to the goddess of victory.
39:56She watched how it ran and declared its path a lucky omen.
40:00The Britons cheered wildly.
40:04The general spoke for longer but was equally lucid.
40:08Despise the yells and shouts of those undisciplined barbarians, he said.
40:13In that mixed multitude, women outnumber men.
40:17They're void of spirit, unprovided with arms.
40:21They're not soldiers, they're bastards, runaways,
40:25the refuse of your swords.
40:27Keep your ranks, discharge your javelins,
40:30rush forward to a close attack and hew a passage with your swords.
40:35Pursue the vanquished and victory will give you everything.
40:43The great seething mass of Boudicca's tribesmen,
40:46yelling and blowing trumpets,
40:48surged across the plain towards the hill.
40:55The Romans held their line.
40:57They were treaded.
40:59In the face of these murdering hordes, they stuck to the manual,
41:02waiting until the enemy were almost on them.
41:10So, can you imagine, there were 10,000 Romans on that hill,
41:15each with two pillai,
41:18and they would launch them in two quick throws.
41:21One, and then the second one.
41:2420,000 iron-shod spears
41:28driving down in a hail onto these lightly clad Britons,
41:32devastating in the first 20 seconds of the battle.
41:43Then the order came for the Romans to burst forward.
41:46They charged downhill in a wedge formation, infantry and cavalry,
41:51battering at the Britons with their shields and stabbing with their swords.
41:55The British overwhelming numbers worked against them.
41:58As the Roman killing machine edged forward,
42:01the Britons' advantage was hampered by the sheer crush.
42:04Their long swords were useless.
42:06They'd never fought anyone like this.
42:09It was the ultimate triumph of training over numbers,
42:13and as the British lines broke in panic, there was nowhere for them to run.
42:18Their exit route was blocked by carts and the waiting audience.
42:22British men, women and children were slaughtered as they tried to surrender.
42:27The Romans demanded the highest price
42:30for the excesses of London, St Albans and Colchester.
42:41The Britons would rely heavily on the long iron sword.
42:45The nature of this sort of sword, of course,
42:48you really do need quite a bit of space to swing it around.
42:53So when they got pressed up against the baggage train
42:56towards the end of the Roman route,
42:58their natural style of fighting is really quite inhibited.
43:02And again, these swords, because they're really quite heavy,
43:05they're not the sort of sword that you would parry blows with.
43:08Their way of doing it would be to dodge out of the way
43:11and come back at the person from a different angle.
43:14So they're really relying on their mobility,
43:16which, of course, is absolutely right for a hero culture.
43:21And they had a hero culture.
43:23They relied on the individual prowess of the individual warrior.
43:28The Romans slaughtered everything, even the baggage animals.
43:40And what of Boudicca?
43:42We're pretty sure she was one of the dead,
43:44but exactly how she died, we'll never know.
43:47Despite many theories, no-one knows where, or even if, she was buried.
43:54For most of Iron Age Britain,
43:56when you died, you weren't actually buried.
44:00You were exposed or excarnated.
44:03You were put somewhere, they let your body rot,
44:06they did something with your bones so that archaeologists never recover them.
44:10They tied it in a tree, stuck it in a large basket,
44:13and after the body has decayed,
44:16then there'd probably be a separate funeral
44:18to do something with the loose bones which are left behind.
44:25Boudicca's rebellion had taught the Romans a harsh lesson.
44:29The natives just might attack.
44:32Undefended, Colchester had been a terrible warning.
44:37The Romans made sure that the Iceni after Boudicca
44:40would never be a problem again.
44:42They built a huge wall round the city.
44:44That's one of the pedestrian arches
44:46built next to the triumphal arch of Claudius.
44:54And then they started taking revenge on the unruly Brits.
44:58The Iceni suffered more than most, as they had to endure famine as well.
45:03Their brief moment of glory was well and truly finished.
45:07The Romans brought fresh troops from Germany,
45:10and Britain spent the next three centuries
45:12as a relatively peaceful Roman province.
45:17For about 1,500 years, nobody bothered much about Boudicca.
45:21It was around the time of Elizabeth I
45:24that people started to revive thoughts of that other great female leader,
45:28and it was the Victorians, under another woman of course,
45:31that gave us Boudicca as we think of her today.
45:34Though, in a way, they were at opposite ends of the spectrum,
45:37because Victoria was in charge of this huge imperialist empire
45:40and all the colonies and so on,
45:42and Boudicca was on the receiving end of that,
45:44in a funny sort of way, there must have been a kind of, you know,
45:47a fellow feeling on the part of Victoria,
45:49seeing again this woman in a man's world,
45:52rising over the odds
45:54and presenting a huge image of victory and aggression.
45:57The Victorian image of Boudicca has become synonymous with Britannia,
46:01the nation personified as an otherwise peaceful woman
46:05forced by injustice to defend her island.
46:09It's unusual for a woman to be a war leader,
46:12but when she is, our feeling is,
46:14well, there must be some deep reason for it,
46:16there must be a real morality behind what she's doing,
46:20because men seem to be suckers,
46:23psychologically, hormonally aggressive.
46:26Women tend to only be aggressive when there's a pure reason for it.
46:38I followed the story of Boudicca right through from her homelands
46:42in East Anglia to where she met her end,
46:45and I have to admit that the woman that I've discovered
46:49is a million miles away from that gung-ho caricature
46:52created by the Victorians.
46:54For most of her life, Boudicca tried to work with the Romans,
46:58and it was only that one massive act of injustice
47:01which sent her on the war path, and who can blame her?
47:04I know it's difficult to leap back into history
47:07to try to recreate one individual character,
47:10but nevertheless, despite her fierceness,
47:12I can't help feeling a degree of sympathy for her.
47:16And, in a way, it's a bit ironic that after 2,000 years
47:20of a culture created by the Romans
47:22and perpetuated by them in the religion that they brought with them
47:26to this country, it's only just now that we're beginning to be able
47:30to view a strong woman leader like Boudicca
47:33with an admiration that isn't tinged with fear and hostility.
47:47For information on this programme or related educational resources,
47:51please go to channel4.com slash learning.
48:16.