Suetonius was in Anglesey when the news reached him of the British uprising and the sacking of Colchester. He realised that his army could not make the distance in time to prevent an even greater disaster, but, says Tacitus, he, "undaunted, made his way through hostile country to Londinium, a town, though not dignified by the title of colony, was a busy emporium for traders". This remark was the first made to London in literature. Though fragments of Gallic and Italian pottery which may or may not antedate the Roman conquest have been found there, it is certain that the place attained no prominence until the Claudian invaders brought a mass of army contractors and officials to the most convenient bridgehead on the Thames.

Suetonius reached London with only a small mounted escort. He had sent orders to the Second Legion to meet him there from Gloucester, but the Commander, appalled at the defeat of the Ninth, had not complied. London was a large, undefended town, full of Roman traders and their British associates, dependants, and slaves. It contained a fortified military depot, with valuable stores and a handful of legionaries.

The citizens of London begged Suetonius to protect them, but when he heard that Boadicea, having chased Ceralius towards Lincoln, had turned and were marching south; he took the hard but right decision to leave them to their fate. The commander of the Second Legion had disobeyed him, and he had no force to withstand the enormous masses hastening towards him.

His only choice was to rejoin the Fourteenth and Twentieth Legions, who were marching with great urgency from Wales to London along the road in which we know today as Watling Sreet. The carnage that befell London was universal. No one was spared, neither man, woman or child. The wrath of the revolt concentrated itself on all those of British blood who had lent themselves to the wiles and seductions of the invader.

In recent times, with the redevelopment of London and excavations and taller buildings needing deeper foundations, the power driven excavating machines have encountered at many points the layers of ashes which marks the effacement of London at the hands of the Britons. With equal tenacity Boadicea turned upon Verulamium (St.Albans). Here was another trading centre, to which high civic rank had been accorded. A like total slaughter and obliteration was inflicted, and, according to Tacitus

"No less than seventy thousand citizens and allies were slain" in these three cities, "for the barbarians would have no capturing, no selling, nor any kind of traffic usual in war; they would have nothing but killing, by sword, cross, gibbet, or fire"

These grim words show us an inexplicable war, like that waged between Carthage and her revolted mercenaries two centuries before. Some high modern authorities think that these numbers are exaggerated; but there is no reason why London should not have contained thirty or forty thousand inhabitants, and Colchester and St Albans between them about the same number. If the butcheries in the countryside are added then the estimates of Tacitus may well stand. This is probably the most horrible episode in which our island has known. We see the crude and corrupt beginnings of a higher civilisation blotted out by the ferocious uprising of the native tribes. However, it is the primary right of men to die and to kill for the land they live in, proven time and again in our history as recent as the 1939 - 1945 conflict.

"And now Suetonius, having with him the Fourteenth Legion, with the veterans of the Twentieth, and the auxiliaries nearest at hand, making up a force of about ten thousand fully armed men, resolved for battle. Selecting a position in defile closed in behind by a wood, and having made sure that there was no enemy but in front, where there was an open flat unsuited for ambuscades, he drew up his legions in close order, with the light-armed troops on the flanks, while the cavalry was massed at the extremities of the wings"---Tacitus.

History tells us that the day was bloody and decisive. The barbarian army, eighty thousand strong, attended, like the Germans and the Gauls, by their women and children in an unwieldly wagontrain, drew out their array, resolved to conquer or perish in the effort. On both sides it was all for all. In spite of all the odds against them Roman disciplin and tactical skill triumphed. No quarter was given, even the women and children.

Tacitus wrote--

It was a glorious victory, fit to rank with those of olden days. Some say that little less than eighty thousand Britons fell, our own kill being four hundred, with a somewhat larger number wounded

These are the tales of the victors, no one can be certain of the truth of the matter, propaganda was invented and applied but there must have been enough bloodletting to disarm the British 'rabble'. Boadicea poisoned herself. The camp commander of the Second Legion, who had both disobeyed his general, and deprived his men of their share in the victory, on hearing of the success of the Fourteenth and Twentieth fell upon his sword. Suetonius now only thought of vengeance, and indeed there was much to repay. Nero sent Reinforcments of four or five thousand men from Germany, and all hostile or suspect tribes were harried with fire and sword.

Worst of all was the want of food; for in their confident expectation of capturing the supplies of the Romans the Britons brought every available man into the field and left their land unsown. Yet even so their spirit was unbroken, and the extermination of the entire ancient British race might have followed but for the remonstrances of a new Procurator, supported by his Treasury seniors at Rome, who saw themselves about to be possessed of a desert instead of a province.

As a mean of action Suetonius ranks high, and his military decisions were very sound. But there was a critical faculty alive in the Roman State that cannot be discounted as arising merely throughthe jealousies of important people. It was held that Suetonius had been rashly ambitious of military glory and had bee caught unaware by the widespread uprising of the province, that"his reverses were dueto his own folly, his success to good fortune", and that the Governor must be sent, "free from feelings of hostility or triumph, who would deal gently with our conquered enemies"

The Procurator, Julius Classicianus, whose tombstone is in the British Museum, kept writing in this sense to Rome, and pleaded vehemently for the pacification of the warrior bands, who still fought without seeking truce or mercy, starving and perishing in the forests and fens. In the end it was resolved to make the best of the Britons.

Caesar and Britian No 5.  |  Back to Caesar and Britian No 3

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