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Thanks, Ghost, it does indeed! If we take Boudica as sole leader, though, with overwhelming numbers and morale, she could easily have ordered flanking forces to at least try to harass the Romans at Mancetter(?) through the woodlands? Thus Paulinus would have deployed his meagre force accordingly, diluting it's forward strength?

Was Boudicca simply battle-naive in facing the Romans in pitched battle? Over-confident with victories and swelling numbers? Or had she lost control of her indisciplined army and maybe was overruled by Iceni commanders or possibly even rival royal factions? As we know, this former Roman collaborator and now vengeful warrior-queen (she was flogged and her two young daughters gang raped, for her protesting about disarmament and her inheritance) almost battered the Romans out of the island. But why did she risk the lives of her entire 100-250,000 army of British warriors & families on just one open plain at what was basically a choosing of the Roman Governor Paulinus, when she could at least have simultaneously tried to outflank the 10,000 enemy through the flanking woods & trackways known only to them, whilst facing them also? With her united Iceni/Trinovante army growing by the day into a vast sea of ferocious British warriors and families, she had attacked and wiped out Colchester (home of Roman army veterans)- massacring the marching and unsuspecting IX Hispana legion en route from Lincoln to save a hopelessly undefended London. Paulinus, with two legions in Wales (having massacred the Anglesey druids) dashed ahead on horseback to London but could only leave the vast civilian city to it's fate. He ordered his two legions to strike camp and march the two weeks from N.Wales towards London, commanding the II legion at Exeter to meet him on the Fosse Way (which, under Posthumus inexplicably failed to do so, and suffered great shame afterwards). Maybe he feared ambush and massacre in the same way the IX Hispana had? Turning her army northwards Boudicca hoped to catch Paulinus, wiping out St.Albans on the way. Somewhere between the current A5 road and the Fosse Way, Paulinus's 10,000 Romans - hedged in between woods and on a hill to their front- waited for Boudicca's c.230,000 warriors, chariots and families advancing on the open plain. To their war horns, the British charged in typically disorganised but fierce fashion- into the Roman missiles, and as the Roman steamroller drove forward stabbing and crushing warriors underfoot, British wives, children and babies were also butchered as Boudicca's broken men fled in terror, until Paulinus ordered a halt. 80-100,000 Britons lay dead and mutilated according to the Romans, possible over-exaggeration. But need it have been so? A Caractacus or a Vercingetorix would probably have devised some cunning scheme to rout the Romans, or at least launched a double-envelop manoeuvre?

Thanks guys. I am still surfing the posts and getting ready to start new threads.

Hi folks My first post here! Please be patient- I am no Roman expert by any standard, but my interest in Roman history and culture (though I am sometimes cynical about their claim to be the world's light), especially Roman Britain and the 'Celts', is strong. I am a keen amateur artist (historical real warriors, not fantasy) usually found discussing the latter Anglo-Saxon world of England, along with Vikings and Normans, but have a love of history in general and run my own history forum I look forward to debating with you.