Bodicea - Quick facts

 

 

 

Boudicca was queen of the Iceni tribe of what is now known as East Anglia, a peninsula of eastern England.

Her dying husband, Prasutagus, left half of his possessions to Rome in order to ensure his kingdom would be protected. Needless to say the Romans didn't entirely hold up their side of the bargain. They entered the kingdom and helped themselves to all that was left.

When Queen Boudicca protested she was flogged, her teenage daughters were raped and the Iceni were driven off their land.

Joining together with other neighbouring tribes she managed to pull a force of around 120 000 men, and fought her way through Southern Britain, burning St Albans, Colchester and London, it is estimated her force killed around 70 000 Roman settlers and sympathisers.

Her final moments came somewhere in the Midlands area of Britain where upon suffering a massive defeat she persuaded her daughters to drink 'hemlock', before taking the poison herself, rather than fall into the hands of the Romans.

Boudicca remained nearly lost to historical record after her death. Much of what was later written about Britain's Roman era failed to mention her.

The first official biography of Boudicca came in 1591 from an Italian living in England, Petruccio Ubaldini, The Lives of the Noble Ladies of the Kingdom of England and Scotland.

The significance of Boudicca's heroic exploits endured well into the twentieth century-Winston Churchill wrote of her in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples. The former prime minister of England during World War II declared that her revolt was "probably the most horrible episode which our Island has known. We see the crude and corrupt beginning of a higher civilization blotted out by the ferocious uprising of the native tribes.