A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Boadicea
BOADICEA,
A British Queen in the time of Nero, wife, first of Arvinagus, and afterwards of Prasatagas, King of the Iceni, that is, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, and Huntingdonshire. Prasatagas, in order to secure the friendship and protection of Nero for his wife and family, left the emperor and his daughters co-heirs. The Roman officers, availing themselves of a privilege so replete with mischief, seized upon all his effects in their master's name. Boadicea strongly remonstrated against these unjust proceedings, and being a woman of high spirit, she resented her ill usage in such terms, that the officers, in revenge, caused her to be publicly scourged, and violated her daughters. Boadicea assembled the Britons, and standing on a rising ground, her loose robes and long hair floating in the wind, a spear in her hand, her majestic features animated with a desire for vengeance, she reminded her people, in a strain of pathetic eloquence, of the wrongs they had endured from the invaders, and exhorted them to instant revolt. While speaking, she permitted a hare, which she had kept concealed about her person, to escape among the crowd. The Britons, exulting, hailed the omen, and the public indignation was such, that all the island, excepting London, agreed to rise in rebellion.
Boadicea put herself at the head of the popular army, and earnestly exhorted them to take advantage of the absence of the Roman General, Paulinus, then in the Isle of Man, by putting their foreign oppressors to the sword. The Britons readily embraced the proposal, and so violent was the rage of the exasperated people, that not a single Roman of any age, or either sex, within their reach, escaped; no less than seventy thousand perished.
Paulinus, suddenly returning, marched against the revolting Britons, who had an army of one hundred thousand, or, according to Dion Cassius, two hundred and thirty thousand strong, under the conduct of Boadicea and her General, Venutius. The noble person of Boadicea, large, fair, and dignified, with her undaunted courage, had gained for her the entire confidence of the people, and they were impatient for the engagement with Paulinus, whose army consisted of only ten thousand men. Notwithstanding this disparity of numbers, however, the discipline and valour of the Roman cohorts proved too much for their barbarous adversaries, who, at the first attack, fell into disorder, and precipitately fled; the baggage and wagons in which their families were placed, obstructing their flight, a total defeat and dreadful carnage ensued. Eighty thousand Britons were left on the field. Boadicea escaped falling into the hands of the enemy, but, unable to survive this terrible disappointment, she fell a victim either to despair or poison. The battle was fought in the year 61.