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Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.
Renatus wrote:

 

What you cannot get away from is that wives and wagons were present at the final battle and those in sufficient numbers as to impede the retreat of the rebel army. They would have got there at the speed at which draught animals, plausibly oxen, will travel which, again plausibly, has been put at eight miles a day. 


The problem here is that there appears to be that there are different interpretations not of only the "horde" but of the movement of Boudica and her forces.

 

John and I are of the opinion that Boudica and her military forces returned to their homelands after destroying Colchester and awaited further developments, whilst others are of differing opinions.

 

These range between the whole tribe of the Iceni (and the Trinovantes and others?) moving on after razing Colchester to the ground and then wandering on to London pillaging the whole way, then destroying London and its remnants of defenders and then perhaps following SP to St Albans...... gathering forces the whole way....... or plodding along half drunk on booze and exhilaration with their oxen to take on those Romans.

 

It is in my opinion more complex than the latter.

 

The locals had been fighting the Romans since Caesar's invasions a century before and understood their tactics.

 

What was noticeable in the first invasion in 55BC that although the Legions were able to beat the locals in a structured battle they couldn't finish the job because they had little cavalry and the Brythons would retreat swiftly to fight another day.

 

On his second invasion Caesar brought 1700 cavalry with him and was far more successful in defeating the Brythonic infantry. This forced the opposing general Cassivellaunus to send his infantry home and carry on the fight with his cavalry and 4,000 chariots. 

 

With this force he harried Caesar all the way to near St Albans and never fought a pitched battle again actually negotiating a cease fire with Caesar and payng only a few reparations.

 

The Brythons were swift and used to fighting with their warbands of cavalry and chariots.

 

I agree with John that it would have been quite possible for the mounted warbands to have travelled from the Trinovantes or Iceni homelands to either London or St Albans in 3 days and there may have been many hundreds or even thousands of warriors in a number of warbands originally protecting their borders from a Roman counter attack after the rebellion against Colchester.

 

If it is being assumed that the Roman cavalry could do 30 miles a day, so could the Brythons.


Also both London and St Albans had been emptied / evacuated of any major fighting force.



Wagons and women were at the final battle but I am not sure that these were necessarily wives and no children or families are mentioned at all.

 

If these were young women they would be able to travel quickly with the men and they may have travelled on wagons drawn by horses and not by oxen.  

 
Having said that I agree that the Roman army and their refugees would have been able to escape the infantry and wagons but this may have been at the risk of being badly mauled by the war bands. This, in my opinion, was a risk that SP was not prepared to take and which is why he found somewhere to fight…..


 

Vindex wrote:

 

If I misread it then I apologise but it was not very clear to me that it was cavalry or mounted infantry I edited my post to remove vehicles as I assumed no one would expect roads to be of such a good standard to allow that sort of rate of travel.

 

The archeological reconstruction of the “Wetwang Chariot” shows that these vehicles were extremely agile and didn’t need metalled roads. Again referring to Caesar there were chariots which the Brythons used to great effect without Roman roads.

 

 

Vindex wrote:

 

By the bye, where would the "guys doing the damage" get all the horses from?

 

I think that the Brythonic society may well have been “horse based”.  On the coins it is noticeable that the symbols are often wheat on one side and a horse on the other.

 

Perhaps this was an indication of their power base and their pride.

 

As a further reflection it would be  interesting to understand why the fort at Lunt with its equestrian centre was built sometimes in the AD60s – perhaps to train captured horses?

 

Cheers - Deryk

PS: Happy New Year     Smile  

 
Deryk
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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 Theoderic - 01-10-2016, 06:47 PM

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