Boudica's uprising

Boudica (also spelled Boudicca, formerly better known as Boadicea) (d. CE 60 or 61), a queen of the Iceni people of Norfolk in Eastern Britain, leads an uprising of the tribes against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire.Her husband, Prasutagus, an Icenian king who had ruled as a nominally independent ally of Rome, had left his kingdom jointly to his daughters and the Roman Emperor in his will, but when he died his will was ignored, possibly because the Romans, unlike the Britons, did not recognize daughters as heirs.

The kingdom had been annexed as if conquered, Boudica ihad been flogged and her daughters raped, and Roman financiers had called in their loans.In AD 60 or 61, while the Roman governor, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, is leading a campaign on the island of Anglesey in north Wales, Boudica leads the Iceni, along with the Trinovantes and others, in revolt.

They destroy Camulodunum (Colchester), formerly the capital of the Trinovantes, but now a colonia (a settlement for discharged Roman soldiers) and the site of a temple to the former emperor Claudius, built and maintained at local expense, and rout a Roman legion, the IX Hispana, sent to relieve the settlement.On hearing the news of the revolt, Suetonius hurries to Londinium (London), the twenty-year-old commercial settlement which is the rebels' next target, but concluding he does not have the numbers to defend it, evacuates and abandons it.

It is burnt to the ground, as is Verulamium (St Albans).

An estimated 70,000-80,000 people are killed in the three cities.

Suetonius, meanwhile, regroups his forces in the West Midlands, and despite being heavily outnumbered, defeats Boudica in the Battle of Watling Street.

The crisis has led the emperor Nero to consider withdrawing all Roman forces from the island, but Suetonius's eventual victory over Boudica secures Roman control of the province.The history of these events, as recorded by Tacitus and Cassius Dio, would be rediscovered during the Renaissance and lead to a resurgence of Boudica's legendary fame during the Victorian era, when Queen Victoria would be portrayed as her "namesake".

Boudica has since remained an important cultural symbol in the United Kingdom.

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