I was surfing the web trying to gather information about the movie “Warrior.” To be honest with you, I’m not even sure there is such a thing. There was some indication that the movie, which is supposed to be about the Celtic Queen Boudica, who led a revolt against the Roman Empire in 60 or 61 CE, was supposed to be released this year.
I was curious about the fate of the project so I went around checking some movie blurbs on the web. What I found funny about the blurbs was the amount of historical misinformation present while describing the plot. Whether this was due to poetic license on the part of the developers or simply sloppiness is unclear. The beauty of the Internet is that it’s SO easy to search for corroborating or conflicting information that there is little excuse for gross errors in simple facts.
What ever happened to the idea that accuracy, even about trivial issues, was important?
The story of Boudica is based primarily on the history of Tacitus and, to a lesser extent, the history of Dio Cassius. If I were to believe the movie blurbs then:
- Boudica rose from peasant beginnings to Warrior Queen
- Boudica was looking to avenge the death of her husband
- Boudica rebelled against the Romans in the 9th Century
- Boudica led a rebellion of all the tribes of Briton
Wow. Well let’s see. First of all Boudica was married to the King of the Iceni and most likely as the result of a political marriage. That would mean that she was herself of royal, or near royal, blood rather than a peasant. The rebellion took place in the 1st century CE, around the year 60 CE, and only two tribes, the Iceni and the Trenovantes, both from the East Anglia region, took part.
As for looking to avenge her husband, King Prasutagus, her hubby, died of natural causes and while it was his death which precipitated the trouble, she was looking to avenge herself and her daughters. According to Tacitus, following the death of her husband, the Romans moved in to confiscate the kingdom. When Boudica resisted, she was beaten and her daughters raped by Roman troops.
Exactly WHY the Romans moved in to confiscate the lands of a deceased client king is a little unclear. Tacitus blames it on Catus Decianus, the procurator in Britain, who ignored Prasutagus’ will, which left his kingdom in equal halves to his daughters and the Emperor, and tried to curry favor with Nero by taking the whole lot. Modern writers like to focus on the idea that the Britons treated women as legal equals, while the Romans didn’t. Since a woman, under Roman law, could not inherit, Prasutagus’ will would have been considered illegal. Or at least that’s how the argument goes.
Dio Cassius claims that good old Prasutagus had actually been living high off of loans taken from Rome and secured by his kingdom. So, when Prasutagus died, the Romans moved in to collect. I’m sure the movie will present the more sympathetic nasty villain Decianus story, but personally I think the loan explanation is more plausible.
So, was Boudica a true heroine? Well, her cause may have been just but she was no war leader and made the same mistake the Jews would make ten years later. She badly underestimated the professional Roman Army.
Boudica started with a string of victories. First she overran the Roman colony at Camulodunum (current day Colchester) which was unfortified and only defended by about 200 light troops. Then the Celts managed to ambush and maul a detachment of the 9th Legion of around 2,500 men because the general of the 9th made the mistake of not gathering any intelligence before rushing toward Camulodunum upon hearing of the revolt.
Boudica then marched toward Londinium. Paulinus Suetonius, the governor of Britain, had been crushing the Druids on Mona Island several hundred miles away to the northwest when the rebellion occurred. Being a lot smarter than the general commanding the 9th Legion, Suetonius marched toward Londinium with a small force in order to gather information. He left orders for his own troops, the 14th and 20th Legions, to follow him while conserving their strength on the march and sent word to the 9th and 2nd Legions to rendezvous with his army. However the 9th Legion was in no shape to respond and, for some unknown reason, the commander of the 2nd Legion chose not to do so.
When Suetonius arrived in Londinium and found out about the scale of the forces marching against him, which may have been as many as 100,000, he realized he couldn’t hold the town and abandoned it. He then rejoined the 14th and 20th Legions and retreated northwest along Watling Street looking for a favorable battlefield.
He found it. According to Tacitus, Suetonius selected a narrow field guarded on both flanks by heavy woods. He set up his 10,000 or so legionnaires and waited for the Celts.
In the meantime Boudica and her army burned Londinium, killing everyone they could find, and marched after Suetonius. Along the way they destroyed Verulaminun, near current St. Albans, as well. Regardless of what you think of Boudica’s cause, her army’s actions weren’t terribly laudable. The killed everyone, men, woman and children, that they could find without mercy.
When the Celts found Suetonius, they prepared to meet him in battle. Boudica’s “army” was more like a massive migration than what we would consider a real army and had lots and lots of wagons and non-combatants. When they pitched camp, they set up the wagons in the rear blocking their line of retreat. The next day, they got ready to engage Suetonius.
Boudica make three horrendous errors. First, she allowed her easy victories over tiny or unprepared forces to inflate her assessment of her army’s capabilities. She wasn’t facing 200 auxiliaries nor taking on a small contingent in ambush, she was going up against 10,000 seasoned, and ready, front line Roman troops.
Second, she allowed Suetonius to pick the battlefield. A battlefield that, with its narrow front, would not only neutralize the Celts numerical advantage, but would actually turn it against them.
And finally, as already noted, she had her wagon train blocking her path of retreat. This would turn a defeat into an unmitigated disaster. The Romans broke two waves of assault and then, in wedge formation, drove Boudica’s troops back into the wagons and proceeded to kill anyone and anything in the vicinity. Exactly how many Celts died on the field is unknown but it could have been as high as 80,000. The Romans lost 500 dead and about an equal number wounded.
As for Boudica, according to Tacitus, she and her daughters survived the battle but committed suicide to avoid capture. Suetonius, unamused by the revolt, appears to have exacted a punishment on the Iceni and Trenovantes so extreme that even Nero was appalled and replaced him as governor about a year later.
Not a very romantic tale and there was enough barbarity to go around. Assuming the movie project is still underway, it should be interesting to see what kind of spin Hollywood puts on the story.
A long essay about nothing of any great interest except how, as a society, we appear to have lost our demand for accuracy and truth. It wasn’t all that long ago that this was a high priority in this country. So high a priority that even innocent misinformation was frowned upon and led to abject apologies when the error was identified. Today we shrug at blatant lies or distortions not seeming to care about the millions of folks that never find out they were lies or distortions.
What the hell happened? The responsibility for correcting inaccuracies is with those that have the necessary knowledge and that responsibility exists regardless of how trivial or unimportant the matter. Maybe if we get back into the attitude of zero tolerance for lies and inaccuracy we can start to get things back under control.
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