It is very much in vogue today for Hollywood to portray beautiful women as ferocious barbarians who can fight men (mostly evil) and dispatch them either maimed or dead to all points of the compass. It’s unbelievable but fun.

In AD 60, however, there was a Celtic tribe living in the southern area of Britain known as East Anglia called the Iceni. The women in this tribe were as tall and as fierce as the men. Armed with swords and axes they would be alongside the men in battles and fall upon their opponents with hideous screams.

“She was huge of frame, terrifying of aspect, and with a harsh voice. A great mass of bright red hair fell to her knees: She wore a great twisted golden necklace, and a tunic of many colors, over which was a thick mantle, fastened by a brooch. Now she grasped a spear, to strike fear into all who watched her……” –Dio Cassius (Dudley and Webster, 54).

The person being described was a woman in her early thirties and she was the Queen of the Iceni, and widow of King Prasutagus. Prasutagus had died after an illness and left the bulk of his lands, properties, personal possessions and monies to the Roman Emperor Nero. A much smaller portion he willed to his wife, Boadicea (also called Boudicca, Boudica, Voadicia and Bunduca) with his wife named as regent until his daughters came of age. They were 12 at the time. Roman law, however, did not allow royal inheritance to be passed to daughters nor co-ownership of a kingdom and a dead King’s wife would certainly not be called or recognised as a Queen.

Only a few days after Prasutagus died Roman officials were dispatched to seize the remainder of his estate. Kinsmen of the royal house were enslaved and Boadicea was flogged. Her daughters were raped in front of her and tortured. Can you imagine the rage and fury she must have felt? She and her daughters managed to escape and Boadicea was almost insane with blood lust and vowed vengeance on all Romans.

The Romans were hated not only by the Iceni but all the neighbouring tribes including the Trinovantes, considered the most powerful tribe in Britain. It says much for Boadicea’s character and high esteem that they followed her when she incited her people and her neighbours to throw off the chains of Roman rule. She led over one hundred thousand men and women into battle. First she marched on Colchester (Camulodunum) burning the temple dedicated to Claudius the Roman Emperor, followed by London (Londinium), which she razed to the ground, then on northwest to St. Albans (Verulamium), which met a similar fate.

Wherever they went Boadicea’s army burned and pillaged. They took no hostages and captives were subjected to every known barbaric outrage. Women were disfigured and then impaled on sticks and it is said that Boadicea made many a human sacrifice to the Celtic Goddess Andrasta. Boadicea’s barbaric deeds paralysed the British countryside with fear. Divisions of soldiers were sent by Rome against her army but all were defeated. Even Londonium fell when the current Governor, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus abandoned it to fight another day.

Suetonius did fight another day and chose to attack Boadicea in a valley because his troops were outnumbered by Boadicea’s thus nullifying her advantage. The actual location for what was to become Boadicea’s last battle is unknown although most historians seem to favour somewhere in the West Midlands and in one account the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales is mentioned. Wherever it was the Romans were at an advantage for the first time with more armour and shorter swords. The Celts had longer slashing swords and little to no armor. The Romans swords proved to be deadly at close quarters, while the Celts were crushed so close together their longer weapons were rendered useless. They were massacred.

What happened to Boadicea is not clear although the popular version is she escaped back to her kingdom and ended her life by taking poison.

Smaller battles continued to rage throughout the year but eventually the diminished, defeated, Iceni are resettled in a capital at Caistor St. Edmunds located along the river Tas. Near to Swaffham in a village called Cockley Cley there is a reconstruction of an Iceni village.

She will go down in history viewed in many different lights and a great bronze statue of Boadicea with her daughters in her war chariot furnished with scythes stands in her memory next to Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament.