Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Owein Walker]

Re supposed Boudican fire South of Thames

It is codswallop!

It is in one of these pits – just yards from passageways used by thousands of commuters each day [At London Bridge station] – where the team has discovered the remains of one of the earliest buildings in Roman Southwark. Dendrochronological analysis shows that the 17 timber piles were made from trees felled between AD 59 and AD 83.

Not a single mention of burning ... timbers throughout the Boudican period and no burnt layer between 59-83AD
Remains of Roman Southwark found below London Bridge Station

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This feels like I'm trying to help you, but you aren't listening. You either don't want to know or choose to ignore them, but I don't understand why. I assume you know what you know and that's final, but if that's the case then I'd expect you to have a final battlefield in mind ,so where is it?

I was going to mention the Fosse Way, but you are nowhere near there and have ignored it completely until now, so let's move on.

Someone on here gave some plausible evidence for somewhere .. near I think it was Aylesbury ... Tring rings a bell (LOL) ... however, since I've not looked at any sites in the area, I'm too far away to visit and look and I don't don't know where they got the battlefield evidence I don't want to push any particular site... and frankly it was a long time ago and there have been so many sites ... and I got confused, I was hoping that if I kept posting stuff that eventually they would pop up.

However, there are numerous valleys along the Chilterns which would fit a general movement from around Dorchester heading toward the Iceni

Also, ... to be frank ... I want whoever found the site to take the credit ... if as I seem to remember it had finds indicative of a Roman battle site and was the right size for the battle they deserve the credit. And, maybe there were more than one site?

And maybe it wasn't the Chilterns. Starting at Dorchester, it might be possible to suggest a more northern route ... perhaps linking up with the Ninth ... but I've forgotten where they are supposed to be ... and I've forgotten where someone suggested battle sites.

But, it is also possible to suggest that Boudica has taken over St.Albans, but again, I think others are far better placed to know whether the evidence supports that ... and I would bow to their better knowledge.

Also, I'm not that clear on where the Boudican side would be ... so, I don't know how Suetonius goes from the defensive line of the Thames, to one where he is forcing Boudica's hand to engage him in battle at a site of Suetonius' choosing.

There are some incredible experts here ... I am only an expert on fording the Thames**, the Mons Graupius campaign and with a dabbling interest in Roman walls. All I have done, is to say that the Thames cannot be ignored, and the military logic them pushes Suetonius to the west and toward Calleva as his seat of war. But ... it isn't much, because we end up heading toward Watling st where it crosses the Chilterns. So, it's a long way around to get to the same place.

Unfortunately, there are no line of forts to mark Suetonius' campaign as there is in the Agricolan campaign. From (approx) Dorchester NE toward the Iceni is a land advance ... which seems like any other Roman campaign and there are better experts than me on how that might go.

**To put it in context, I have forded every major river from the Forth to the Spey on the Agricolan advance to Mons Graupius including the Clyde and Tay. I have also forded numerous small rivers and large rivers such as the Tyne at Corbridge. I have also tracked several Roman roads, looking for evidence of Fords and studied in detail about a dozen rivers including the Tiber (which is perhaps fordable at Rome in exceptional circumstances - although the hydrology is complex - and there is evidence it was different at the time of Rome and that might have made it temporally fordable)

And all this changes nothing.
Both north and south of the Thames were unified by Cunobellinus, son of Tasciovanus around 20AD.
Coins minted in Camulodunum.

I'm not sure of the importance, but let's give it a whirl as it's interesting.

I was trying to work out what evidence you have. By their very use as a means of exchange, coins get moved about, so I was wondering whether it could be explained by the normal movement of coins. The Britannica article on Cunobelinus says:

Cunobelinus succeeded his father, Tasciovanus, as chief of the Catuvellauni, a tribe centred north of what is now London. Tasciovanus’s capital was Verlamio, above the later Roman site of Verulamium (modern St. Albans). Either shortly before or shortly after his accession, Cunobelinus conquered the territory of the Trinovantes, in modern Essex. He made Camulodunum (modern Colchester) his capital and the seat of his mint. The many surviving coins from the mint are stamped with Latin slogans and figures from mythology. His power and influence were so extensively felt in Britain that the Roman biographer Suetonius referred to him as Britannorum rex (“King of the Britons”) in his life of the emperor Caligula.

Looking for the source of this, I found a short mention in:

 All that he accomplished was to receive the surrender of Adminius, son of Cynobellinus king of the Britons, who had been banished by his father and had deserted to the Romans with a small force; yet as if the entire island had submitted to him, he sent a grandiloquent letter to Rome, commanding the couriers who carried it to ride in their post-chais

Latin Suet. Cal. 44.2

English

Looking through Wokepedia on the Trinovantes all I found was this:

For a brief period c. 10 BC Tasciovanus of the Catuvellauni issued coins from Camulodunum, suggesting that he conquered the Trinovantes, but he was soon forced to withdraw, perhaps as a result of pressure from the Romans, as his later coins no longer bear the mark "Rex", and Addedomarus was restored.

I have this from 'London city of the Romans'by Ralph Merrifield .

BRITAIN BETWEEN THE INVASIONS P18

Developments that might have led to the establishment, or re-establishment, of an emporiumon the Thames did in fact take place in the 97 years that elapsed between the departure of Caesar and the invasion of Claudius in AD 43. The process of absorption of minor tribes into greater kingdoms, which seems to have been at an early stage in Caesar's time--certainly south of the Thames--continued, so that the south bank became the northern limit of the two Kingdoms of the Cantiaci and Atrebates only, while the north side of the river was shared between two peoples, the Trinovantes and the Catuvellauni, who are difficult to distinguish from one another politically or culturally. The Cantiaci do not appear to have been a completely unified kingdom, but the Atrebates further west were ruled by a powerful dynasty founded by Commius, whose princes were proud to call themselves 'sons of Commius', perhaps even in the second generation. North of the Thames, an even more powerful dynasty had been founded by Tasciovanus, a Catuvellaunian by the conventional view, although Dr Kent suggest that he may have been a Trinovantian. In view of the mobility of these rulers, who on occasion seem to have been able to take over a new kingdom when driven out of the old,it may be wiser to consider the conflicts of this period as dynastic rather than tribal struggles, in which case the tribal label perhaps doesn't matter very much. What little we know about these rulers is based almost entirely on their coins, which are fortunately inscribed with abbreviations of their names, sometimes with an indication of their parentage, and occasionally with an abbreviation of the name of the place where they were minted. The chief mint of Tasciovanus was at Verulamium, where the pre-Roman settlement, which lay south-west of the later Roman city, commenced about 15 BC, probably as a successor to the Wheathampstead oppidium. For a brief period he also issued coins at Camulodunum, and his coins are widely distributed in Essex. If the spread of coins is an indication of political influence, as is usually assumed, Tasciovanus seems to have exercised some measure of control over a fair part of eastern Britain north of the Thames and south of the Fens, and also in north Kent. It seems that a powerful kingdom consisting of a federation of tribes north of the Thames was established, and an extension of its power south of the river had been achieved over the peoples of north Kent. The rule of Tasciovanus was contested by a rival named Athedomarus, however, whose coins are found extending over much of the same area north of the Thames. A successor or conqueror of Athedomarus was Dudnovellaunus,a Kentish king who also ruled in Essex.
         In this confusing struggle for power, Cunobelinus, the son of Tasciovanus, finally emerged as the victor, and from the distribution of his coins recovered control over all the territory north and south of the Thames that was ever ruled by his father. He made Camulodunum his capitol, and it was here that his coins were minted.
        Until the reign of Cunobelinus, the southern bank of the Thames to the west of the Kentish tribes had remained the northern boundary of the Atrebatic kingdom established by Commius, which extended to the south coast in Hampshire and West Sussex. This dynasty was weakened by internal dissension, and Cunobelinus gained control of the Thames in this western area also, where soon after 20 AD his brother Epaticcus was established as ruler in the northern tribal centre of the Atrebates at Calleva(Silchester)............IT GOES ON

This also begs the question of how safe was Silchester?

I recommend this book and the author,Ralph Merrifield, 'father of London's modern archaeology ', and thank him for the work he did .