Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Hanny]

Tacitus* "for some there are that record that almost 80,000 Britons fell"

Interestingly, Dio claims that 'eighty thousand of the Romans and their allies perished' during the revolt. Tacitus says instead that 'about seventy thousand citizens and allies' were killed in Cochester and London.

Dio alone records the size of Boudica's army as 120,000 at the beginning of the revolt, and 230,000 at the final battle. Tacitus alone reports the story that 'little less than eighty thousand of the Britons' died in the battle.

Needless to say, I believe all these figures are hopelessly unreliable and probably hugely exaggerated. Estimating crowd sizes is hard enough today (just compare the figure given out by organisers of a demonstration with that recorded by the police, and try and determine which is closer to the truth!) - in antiquity it was notoriously difficult.

A recent survey by the Museum of London, however, estimated that the civilian population of London in AD61 was c.10,000. Colchester might have been a little larger, St Albans much smaller. There were probably fewer than fifty thousand Roman civilians in the entire province of Britain, and many of them would have been far from the rebel districts.

Tacitus's estimate of 'around ten thousand' for Paulinus's force at the battle is perhaps more reliable; armies in regular-sized units are rather easier to count. If we give him c.9000 infantry, he would have had 18 cohorts. I do not think we can any more exact than that about army composition, and beyond their being 'in close array' (frequens ordinibus) we know nothing definite about how they were deployed.

Re number of Cohorts, alegion and a half plus aux set out from the Legionary home bases at Manchester and Colchester,( for the campaign they start at Worcester and Usk now I look it up, ta Renatus) so a min of half a legion stayed back,  campaign season starts in Late March, go to Iona, so any sick and wounded would be coming back to the legionary home bases, any any supplies coming towards them along the same route, and then the Iceni rise, first problem I see is there is time to sow the spring crop before you rise, how do the Iceni know what’s going on in any event?, depending on start date of course, where is the unused half a legion and gather up any walking wounded sick garrisons of the many fortified places, etc back along the line of supply, so it’s poss that the number of Cohorts was in the 20s, while total strength was still a tad under 10k.  Number of ranks per Cohort would go down while the frontage of the aCohort would not, so getting a fix on number of Cohorts would be very helpful.

When I’m back from hols I’ll look at the books I’ve asked to be sent over, and work up some numbers, and compare 230k to the other suggested numbers and a base line of effectiveness, in the mean time, we have Roman accounts of battle frontages for 9960 men in  close array and ranks being 1000 Roman paces, so each legions pigs head wedge frontage can be adduced for different number of ranks as so give us entire Army frontage. Two legion pig head offensive deployment puts more men in contact than line abreast, which also means more officers in contact, as most casualties are inflicted by a minority of persons in combat, most seek to stay alive rather than seek to kill, example in ww2 a German ace pilot was far more likely to get a kill in a sortie than the average polite, 90%of air to air kills came from a fraction of German pilots, just the sharpshooters in Uk Regiments and US civil over achieved in hits per rnd fired, so a a Roman Officer was far more likely to kill you in close combat than a legionary, so more of them in contact makes the combat effectiveness go up disproportionally, just as has putting your best shots in specialist formations.

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"this would give 30,000 Iceni and Trinovante warriors at the start of the revolt, and 57,500 warriors by the final battle." I really like these numbers, I would buy into this structure (if ever asked).

The Brit forces would be light on armament and discouraged from serious martial practice following the 47AD rising, so not in the great shape and their key age group up to 30 would be very light on experience and battle culture. 

The Brits would want to go in with a 3:1 advantage minimum, probably double that against prepared positions on disadvantageous terrain far from home, so these numbers look really plausible. The odds are looking less stacked against the Legions now thanks to Nathan. 

Story telling and glory over all, I blame generations of Classics teachers .......

Regarding Daylight hours, my working hypothesis is that the engagement took place in June 61 AD, so about 16 hours of daylight to get in from a Brit muster point (Hunsbury Hill) engage (Church Stowe) and then maybe a little more pursuit time into the night.

16 hours from sunrise to sunset in June seems high for that latitude, Romans marched the way they were trained to do so, so they have food before they expect to fight, they take 80 mins to clear a legionary camp by all exists to deploy for combat, the march rate to where they expect to fight is either at 100 or 120 paces a min, so we can get fair idea of several hours from sunrise to get into position.Then there is the other side movement, Hunsbury to Church Stowe is 10 miles or so, so the slowest Iceni wagonselements could take all day to get there if we take the 230k number but we know they are there to hinder retreat at end of the combat, so perhaps 5 hours at 2 mph lost hours at a min and prob far more.