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Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.
(12-08-2015, 06:06 PM)John1 Wrote: a rebellion wouldn't be travelling 8 miles a day, they would be steaming it.... I would suggest that it would not be unreasonable for the guys doing the damage to be travelling at 30-40 miles a day

Just wanted to pick up on a point about the movement speed of the rebels. I don't think we should overestimate this. Roman legions marching on good roads could cover 18-20 modern miles per day, according to Vegetius, because they were trained to do so. Untrained civilians, tribespeople and warbands would not be able to keep up anything like that pace.

Most Roman posting stations seem to have been at intervals of 9-11 miles along the major roads, indicating that this was a usual day's travel distance.

We may think that rebels would travel faster. But as a possible comparison, during the German Peasant's Revolt of 1525, a rebel force apparently travelled 42 miles from Gundelsheim to Amorbach in about five days, suggesting an average speed of around 8.4 miles per day. Another rebel group during the same conflict took 2-3 days to travel the 17.5 miles from Grunbuhl to Heilbronn, which again suggests a similar sort of speed. These rebels would have been moving on foot or by wagon, perhaps plundering along the way, similar (I think) to Boudica's people many centuries before. Mounted men could have travelled faster, although not over great distance, and probably not in sufficient numbers to pose a significant threat to the Romans.

In other words, Paulinus's men could well have been moving at least twice the speed of the Britons!
Nathan Ross
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Messages In This Thread
Re: Calling all armchair generals! - by Ensifer - 03-11-2010, 03:13 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-18-2012, 06:26 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 12:02 AM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 02:50 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 05:40 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 11:26 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 05:11 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 09:42 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 10:10 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 03:11 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 03:25 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 08:36 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-26-2012, 02:57 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-27-2012, 01:50 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 08-05-2012, 02:24 PM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-07-2014, 02:18 PM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-08-2014, 01:50 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-11-2014, 02:03 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-18-2014, 07:54 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-20-2014, 02:37 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-25-2014, 08:29 AM
RE: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand. - by Nathan Ross - 01-09-2016, 11:18 PM

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