The Iceni army burnt Colchester, and killed as many people as they could. It is difficult to know how many that was, because some people did manage to escape.
The Roman citizens knew that the Iceni were angry. When the news came of what had happened to Boudica and her daughters, people probably guessed what would happen next. We know about the fire because it left behind a thick layer of deep red burnt ash. That layer is still there. People excavating to build in Colchester still find it.
After Colchester the Iceni went on to London, and very much the same thing happened again. The town was burnt, but this time the Roman people had more warning. Not only did they flee, but they made sure not to leave behind food that would help the Iceni army. This was important. The Iceni must have counted on being able to get food from the stores of their enemies. Without food their huge number of fighters and followers would soon weaken.
But the Iceni went on. The town of St. Albans was also destroyed by fire.
They would not have been able to do this if most of the Roman army had not been far away in North Wales, but things were about to change. Messages reached Wales and the Romans began hurrying south. They were well trained and well organized and they could travel very quickly when they had to.
Boudica’s army was much bigger, but quite different. They were not trained fighters, they were angry country people – men, women and children. They could not move quickly because they had brought so many slow wagons with them. They were also weak from hunger.
The last battle of the Iceni was fought in a narrow valley. There was so little space that the Iceni chariots had no room to charge. In front of the Iceni were the Roman soldiers. Behind them were their wagons and families. The narrow valley became a trap. The Iceni were killed or crushed to death, completely overpowered.
Nobody knows what happened to Boudica. Some people think she was killed in the battle. Some believe she escaped, and later drank poison. I believe she died in the battle but I do not know because I was not there.
Someone who was there was a Roman soldier named Agricola. Later Agricola was to become the Roman Governor of Britain.
Kassy was right when she said there were some good Romans. Agricola was a good Roman. Agricola watched the battle from a hilltop and he never forgot what he saw. He told his daughter, Julia, and the man she married, Tacitus.
Tacitus was a Roman historian and he wrote it all down. He wrote a whole book about Agricola. It has been translated into English and I have read it. It tells of the Roman invasion and the suffering of the British people, and Boudica and the Iceni, and it tells us that afterwards things began to change. The Romans began to understand what Kassy and Marcus found out, that it is better to work together than to fight. They began to respect the people whose country they had taken. Agricola was a good Governor. He was fair and brave.
Imagine Agricola and Tacitus talking together, as they so often did. Perhaps Agricola said, “There was an Iceni boy, a brown curly-haired boy with a brown curly-haired dog. They slipped past me together at the end of the day, and I let them go...”
Perhaps that happened. I hope so.