Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Hanny]

Not at all. You are not obliged to do anything here, except follow the basic rules of debate. But neither is anyone else obliged to read what you write or to engage with it, and if your posts are filled with bluster and sarcasm, riddled with typos and grammatical faults, and often resting on errors of calculation or interpretation, you cannot expect others to give your efforts the attention you desire.

How is it you know what i desire? and yes its up to anyone to engage or not, and as to basic rules of debate, they state that the proposer advances a concept, and then the opposer presents the arguments against the concept, so i have followed the basic rules, its you who want me to conform to your made up rules, and i declined to do so.

If you read back through this thread, you will find that I have been wrong many times, and have changed my ideas several times too. We all welcome discussion and critique, but it is possible to disagree with somebody without trying to insult their intelligence.

Indeed, reading back through the forum, i can see you have a long history of using the same anecdotes, Hazen for instance, without understanding it, as a part of your odd views on logistics.

But its ok for you to insult my intelligence, by, for example but not limited to, claiming that a human can carry 100lbs on their back and march at the same rate as they are trained to do with less weight, modern studies show you can achieve your expected 20mpd with 40/50 lbs, if its increased to 100 the actual rate of movement drops to 10 mpd. Example 2, using T that not having sown crops were an issue, and then having the Iceni reap the harvest before going to war which gives them years grain before lack of it becomes an issue as you changed crops not sown to being a non issue.

Nobody is winning any prizes here. All of us accept that we will perhaps never find the answers to the questions we are asking. The fun is in the debate, in trying out ideas, and in questioning assumptions and challenging theories. But to offer only carping objections and no positive alternatives is to try and disqualify everyone else on technicalities while refusing to participate yourself.

Pointing out modern studies of losing around third of your strength from a 100mile march with less lbs carried than 100 is not carping, pointing out your moving 60 miles cross country to find the road to go to Godmanchester 198 miles is not carping, P basing his strategic decision to go to Godmanchester from Angelsey in 11 days, at 18mpd when B is 50 miles from Godmanchester and 90 from london at your 5 mpd for B movements* means she could be there before him, is not carping. You have B burning in the countryside, yet archeology this not to occur "It should be noted that archaeology to date shows no Boudican destruction of Romano-British farmsteads in the countryside, only of large Romanised centres".

* your 5 mpd compares to other authors on British MPD and use 20 mpd for Romans, giving Roman to brits a 2:1 movement ratio advantage, you give it as 4 :1. Appleby has a map of the road net you now want to use and gives it as 370 to 400klm to london.
S Kaye/Grahame Appleby/Sullivan & Kinsella in their books on the same, all use 10 mpd.

As you mentioned in your previous paragraph, Paulinus had to build his road to get his army to Anglesey. He was marching back along a route he had laid and supplied himself only a month or two beforehand. It is Chester itself that dates (by dendrochronology) to Agricola, not the road.

Chester is not Roman occupied till after the revolt, around AD 70, the road connection back to Angelsey was built by Agricola afrer the Iceni revolt, so that road connection is not an option without use of cross county movement to get to the road from chester southwards.You now say, have him going back to Wroxeter, then on to Godmanchester and, and then onto London at 56, in 14 or so days at 18, meaning no rest days.which is actually longerhttps://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Periods/Roman/Topics/Engineering/roads/Britain/_Texts/CODROM/4*.html#map bya day. your other way of 198, went quicker by going cross country to get onto a different road net.

However, discussions of the Anglesey campaign are fairly superfluous here. We know the Romans could conduct campaigns of several months in Britain with armies of several legions, and not starve to death or grind to a halt. If you doubt this, you only need look at the marching camps in Scotland, the size of army they would have supported, and their distance from the nearest legion base. And there were certainly more than 10K auxiliaries in the province - Agricola had 13,000 of them at Mons Graupius.

Not superfluous at all, you advance a time line that starts in summer, which has many problems, inc, if its the summer the crops have been sown and there is enough for a year, so T is wrong that grain was not sown.What i doubt is you timeline that fits the evidence. P dies and a new policy is put into place, and the Iceni rise, it fails in part from lack of sown crops. First news comes to london of P death, it goes post haste to the Emp and policy comes back and is started to be implemented, all that takes time, between 20 and 30 days perhaps, during this time, mid summer as you have it, Roman grain buyers and Imperial agents wanting their render under to Caeser are in Iceni lands looking at the crops ready for harvest and thinking all is rosey. But that does not fit T grain comment, but if P dies in 4 month fallow period following the years before Autumn harvest, there are no crops to see, only plans made by Romans for what you will grow and seel sell us and or give us under the new policy and T comment fits that timeline as no crops are then sown that spring planting season as teh iceni are of at war instead. Its your version of history that i not only doubt, but consider wrong.

Paulinus, in my projected timeline, only needs to move fast for fourteen days; a single expediti march, on established roads and lines of supply, to confront an emergency. Your calculations are directed towards what is average, and you want this to be the limit of the possible. As we have seen with your mistakes about couriers above, there is a great difference between an average speed or timescale and what could be accomplished under exceptional circumstances (I think we can agree that the imminent revolt of a province and slaughter of a citizen colony counts as exceptional!)

Your timeline is one that has no equal in all of human history, and no one has been able to emulate, no force of 6k has marched 14 days back to back with 100lbs at start on its back so can be dismissed. I pointed out how you have the couriers system moving information fater than is humanly possible and faster than all the historical data that makes up Orbis contains, it was not mistake to point that out. In Iraq when you have 100lbs on your back you out with it for 4 hours and than back to base. The average person needs to replace 10% of there bodyweight to prevent dehydration, so 10 lbs is the average, so thats the average person being 100lbs, currently the Regs give a 200lb solder 20lbs of water a day to avoid heats effects, do you really want me to add in the average extra water requirement for teh average roman solder?, or just use the average water ration to mostly avoid dehydration during the march and drink all they want each night when resting.S.L.A. Marshall's book Soldier's Load and the Mobility of a Nation, https://mcoepublic.blob.core.usgovclouda...201980.pdf on the subject. Marshall concludes that a soldier could optimally carry 33 percent of his body weight. The same Marine Corps study determined the average weight of a Marine male was 169 pounds and the average female's was 130 pounds. This would put their combat loads at 56 pounds and 42 pounds, respectively. So now you dont want 10lbs water on average, you want 17lbs if the average roman soldier is 170 lbs as he is carrying 100lbs on his back and sweating like a horse and requiring more water than he was used to drinking when training in under half the kits weight to march the same distance. US FM 21-18, from 2018 does not take into account individual body weight. It prescribes a fighting load of no more than 48 pounds and an approach march load of 72 pounds as an average, its the average weight of a soldier that gives you the water ration, so you can see i have been bending over backwards to make the logistical requirment easy for the timeline.

Some recorded speeds of Roman armies are exceptional indeed - Caesar marched from Rome to Spain 'with a heavily-laden army, by a very long route' in only 27 days, according to Appian (Bell Civ 2.103): he would have needed to cover over 20 miles a day every one of these days to even pass the Spanish border. Perhaps an exaggeration (did the full army join him along the way?), but Appian and his Roman readers must have considered it within the spectrum of the possible.

Caeser left Rome and is next heard of at Corduba, its 68 days at 20 mpd every day with a supply train from Rome to Corduba, but if like any sensible army that want to move 2300s of klm, they get on a ship, saving 2000 klm of marching, they are there 21 days later at the fastest, by horse over land Caeser can get there to join them in 27 days at 50mpd. Maps for the campaign show caesers army going to Spain by sea, as we know Munda was fought 17th March, then legions did not march out in Jan month s before teh campaign season starts, by road to get there.

Your also confusing strategic ( administrative movement) norms of movement miles a week conducted not in the presence of the enemy, with rest days to recover,( like the Greek march of Xenephon 10,000 with as many rest as marching days, or Persian civil war strategic movement along the Royal road with supplies purchased in the markets along the road ahead of time, to facilitate the milk ripe May start of the campaign march to go to Cunaxa, Cyrus march to Cunuxa, from around first week of March, and took 178 days, 1770 miles, 10 mpd, 4 days a week marched average week, with a rest days for every day marched at 21mpd, or 85 marching days each of 21mpd in your prefer) with moving at them through hostile land that you know is full of the iceni looking to ambush anyone marching all day, every military Roman water we have recovered clock has 2 division, 12 hours night 12 hours day, night Vigilia is 3 hours of 4 sections, the daylight hours are also divided into 12 equal sections, so the Army was trained to march 5 of its 12 divisions to get 18 mpd and then perform other duties. TAB in the prescence of the enemy in the ancient world was not undertaken in full marching kit, but fighting kit only.

Some nations make 100ls carried a criminal event in the workplace, others give amounts thats re safe to lift.
https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardi...13-06-04-0

As we discussed above (using sources you cited yourself), the main crop during this period was sown in the autumn.

Except i stated it was not the main crop sown in first cent AD.

If there was a second crop, sown in the spring of AD61, both crops would have been harvested in August, just before the outbreak of the revolt.

Indeed two crops if they are double cropping in your time line, so not an earthy chance of running out of grain in your time line.

I doubt there was any Druidic connection. None of our sources mention it, and Dio had Boudica acting as a priestess herself.

Except we know Angelsey was an Iceni a place of worship, just like Thetford, and they then sacrifice to the Celtic god of revenge during the campaign.

The campaign season in Britain began in summer (Agricola 20). We don't know the size of Paulinus's army - I guessed 20K above somewhere, which seems about right for a legion plus strong detachments of at least two others, and an equal-ish number of auxiliaries.

A guess that shows how far wrong you can be when guessing.

But the figure may have been lower. Paulinus would have used all the men he could muster though - there was a lot of construction required, he needed to garrison his forts, and using a sledgehammer to crack a nut was entirely Roman practice. You need only look (again) at the size of armies taken into the sparsely-populated north-east of Scotland.

Agricola needed c30k to invade scotland, and faced c 30k so thats 90,000-120k population to put that in the field, while Angesey need 20k, to fight a total population of under 15k, and a mil population of c5k.Your cont comparing apples and oranges, your comparing apples and lampshades. If its overkill how come both legions get mil rewards for doing overkill?. Show me why you think throwing inferior numbers into combat without understanding the tactical situation is Roman practice, you cant so dont bother, S klnow when he is in Anmgelsey that he cant get back to london and defend it, there is simply not enough time, so no he was not performing overkill, he prob did not march his foot to London either as he knew before getting there he would be marching back again as the best outcome.

When he marched against Boudica, Paulinus took only a fraction of his total force; he wanted to leave sufficient troops to hold his conquests in Wales, and knew he could move faster with a smaller body of men..

Except angelsey remained Roman free and took another campaign to put it under roman control, so no. As for moving faster yes moving with his mounted arm to recon ahead was certainlya wise thing to do but you dont have anyone doing any recon at all, just marching with 100lbs on yoru back inviting ambush, and if i add in the mounted daily requirement, guess what, your timeline gets even further pushed into the dustbin.

Thank you. I think we're getting somewhere.

Your welcome.

What I draw from your latest comments (please correct me if I am wrong) is that Suetonius commenced his Anglesey campaign in spring and that it was the spring planting season that was missed. Your query as to why the Romans did not notice that crops had not been planted implies that the revolt actually broke out after that time. In all these three instances, it would be helpful to know the month in which you consider them to have occurred. If they have, perhaps, been mentioned before, please repeat them; do not just refer to the earlier post. This makes it easier to follow your argument.

Yes, spring is the start of the campaign season, you can time your attack to take advantage of crops becoming rip as you move over them so easing your logistical requirements, it makes less sense to wait till summer and let the enemy have his crops stored in granaries, unless you want to conduct sieges, so if that your conceptual plan you then have to bring siege equipment with you, or have a conceptual plan based on manouver, you maneuver over the crop lands and force them to fight for them and you dont have to worry about finding them to fight, if they dont they starve. Since P has to build the roads to Angelsey he needs plenty of time. Lastly yes im coming round to a 3 campaign season for the big picture, but have still to flick through a large number of publications.

I cannot narrow it down to a specific month when it broke out, but the fallow 4 month period from a subsistence single crop system would solve the issue if the events take place during the fallow period, nothing to see, nothing to worry about as nothing un normal going on, but if the new administrative policy of Rome ( along with hey those grants are now loans so we want you to pay up) includes you will adopt this new grain called spelt, and or, this new 2 crop a year idea we want you to move over to to give us what we want from you, then this could be part of what the Iceni did not like, along with not importing Roman wines etc as it undermined traditional values, so changing what they had to render under Caeser by increasing production from new methods just to stand still, making them import things rome wanted them to adopt, changing their chariot culture to more horses becoming plough horses instead. As we are told " we have nothing to gain from submission except heavy burdens from willing shoulders".

I think this chariot threat froma Roman pov goes back to the last revolt, the forts were dismantled and the garrisons used elsewhere post revolt when they were disarmed, but the Iceni retain a strategic military mobility from large scale chariot ownership, so an ability to rapidly raid over a large area, that worried mil thinkers that needed the garrisons elsewhere instead of being able to keep an eye on the Iceni.

This raises two questions; which of the events described by Tacitus do you ascribe to which season and what do you envisage happening (if anything) in the intervening period between the two seasons. I look forward to your comments on these matters.

The following prob will seem like a unsatisfactory answer to your question, if time permits i may return to it later next week when i hope to finish a first pass on several other works and get a better idea of who knew what/when and how the military choices unfolded.

Its a summary of events, most modern accounts seem to favour putting it all into a single decisive main battle, ( like writting a history of the waterloo 1815 campaign and only referencing using Waterloo battle to explain the mil defeat and will to resist was broken, i dont see it like that, a see it as a protacted affair of which we only havea fraction of events) and very short battle sequence from around a 2 week period and the back of the revolt is broken, im not so sure that the Iceni Confederation of 3 tribes needs to be in a huge mass, administratively and logistically is unlikely to have been so, its just as poss that fast chariot mobile groups radiated out from each tribe giving recon and raiding over huge area while slower main forces moved on that intel.

Romans used lookout towers and flag code between to rapidly send messages between towers and onto a legionary base to act on it, in a most effective time to space manner. Brits lacked this and had to go see and report on it. I see C getting news in short order of iceni raiding Godmanchester in the early days and coming with his QRF only to be ambushed and rubbed out as chariot and larger slower force was broughtb to bear, I tend to think the main Iceni force was broken by P, but smaller forces were still in the field for rest of the year. Drudaism and Christianity are the only 2 religions banned by Rome, i think religion was much more involved in organizing and co ordinating anti Roman British activity and had been doing so since Caeser came into Gaul, British assistance to mainland Europe coming in the shape of minted coins to pay for wars, warriors we know moved all over Europe to fight in others wars, bronze age Celtic swords in bronze pre date mainland Europe iron ones, so mainland Europe adopted British sword designs and not the other way around. Commercial trade between Brittany and SW Britain being one economic reason lodon was created to break up the Celtic trade routes and replace them with Roman ones.