Boudicca's Rebellion AD 60-61: The Britons rise up against Rome (Campaign) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

In the past six months, Osprey has published no less than three Campaign series titles on Roman campaigns fought in the First Century AD - I would say they have that century pretty well covered now. Dr. Nic Fields' Boudicca's Rebellion AD 60-61 is one of these three. Boudicca - a queen of the Iceni tribe in southeastern England - elected to lead her people in rebellion against their Roman occupiers and after a brief spell of success, were promptly annihilated. The main issue with this book, which is common in Ancient history, is lack of sources and hard data. Virtually everything we know about this campaign is based upon a few pages from Cassius Dio and Tacitus, neither of which are particularly detailed. The exact location of the battlefield and even specific information about Boudicca are unknown, which forces the author to try and fill in the numerous gaps with artfully-reasoned conjecture. At times, the author seems too willing to engage in diversionary soliloquies comparing ancient and modern perspectives on warfare and women, which is annoying. Overall, Boudicca's Rebellion is interesting, although with the actual information in hand, it is a tale that is told in less than twenty pages and the rest is essentially padding.

The author begins with a rather long-winded introduction that lays out the basis of the clash between Roman and Iceni in Britain, but does so in a very roundabout way. To be honest, I hated this introduction, since it does not serve very well as a springboard for the campaign and the author devolves into too much subjective commentary. He offers up nuggets such as, "soldiers, no matter when or where they serve, seem inclined to sexual carnality (civilians are therefore asexual?)" and "soldiers...have more than a smidgen of larceny in their souls." So, according to this author, soldiers by definition are inclined to be rapists and thieves. This shows very poor historical writing form and is driven by stereotypes rather than fact. How does the author know that Boudicca's daughters were raped by Roman soldiers and not some petty bureaucrat (or lawyer)? This is not how you write history. This section does include two nice maps depicting the tribes in Britain in AD 60 and the location of Roman forts.

The section on opposing commanders is a throwaway, since the author spends a page discussing Boudicca before admitting, "we actually know nothing about Boudicca." He then spends three pages on the Roman governor, of whom we know slightly more than nothing. The 15 page section on opposing armies should have been better, but it isn't. It does have some nifty pictures of weapons and Roman re-enactors, but the author's description of Celtic tactics is based upon generalities and his description of the Roman Army reads like a management organization chart. If one could summarize, this section would say something like: the Romans won because they were a professional army and the Celts were not. I would add, Roman discipline and superior tactics (use of reserves) made up for lack of numbers. However, while these observations are more or less correct, they don't add much. Indeed, they might not even be correct. Given our lack of hard information on this campaign, there may well have been other specific factors that contributed to the end result (e.g. illness, luck, religious factors). If we knew this little about the Battle of Midway in 1942, we would know that the Japanese had a big fleet but were defeated by a smaller American fleet, without knowledge of US code-breaking or faulty Japanese operational planning.

The campaign narrative itself is 37-pages long, but with barely 20 pages of text. Furthermore, most of this section covers the outbreak of the rebellion, initial rebel victories and the concurrent Roman campaign in Wales, with only 10 pages covering the show-down between the Romans and Boudicca. Nevertheless, this section is interesting and well-written and serves to redeem this volume. The four battlescenes by Peter Dennis, four maps and lots of color photos also add to the splendor. Dr. Fields may not have much to work with, but the Osprey art staff sure helped him to fill in those potholes. The final battle is anti-climatic. Once again, the Romans demonstrated that the best form of warfare is strategic offensive coupled with tactical defense. Boudicca's horde smashed itself to pieces against two Roman legions and they she disappeared from the pages of history. The aftermath section is also a bit weak, since other than mentioning post-campaign Roman punitive measures, it doesn't say too much about Roman Britain in the decade after the rebellion. I felt that the whole diplomatic-economic angles were missing and that the picture of the rebellion presented here is somewhat one-dimensional. The author also seems to inject some Modern prejudices by suggesting that the Romans were "cruel," which ignores the fact that plenty of organized cruelty has occurred in modern times. Despite all my criticisms, I would still say that this volume is worth a read by anyone interested in Roman military history, but compared to a Battle like the Teutobergerwald, it lacks real detail.

The cover of this book I got from Amazon doesn't matches the cover shown.

Boudicca's Rebellion written by Nic Field proves to be a well written book overall but it really doesn't offered anything new to the reader who are familiar with Roman history. The book has nice photos of Celtic and Roman gears, latter helped by Roman reenactors and the book goes into the background of the conflict. The maps provided are pretty decent but full colored illustrations proves somewhat limited Two of the four show Boudicca standing tall addressing her warrior hordes. There is no full colored illustration reflecting the final battle.

This author does not stray from the written passages of the entire campaign. The book doesn't even questioned if Boudicca was actually flogged and her young daughters raped. I would think it would actually be other way around as Boudicca was often describe as tall, blond and good looking woman.

Putting this review in proper perceptive, I would compared it unfavourably with the book, Mons Graupius written by Duncan Campbell, Osprey Campaign book 224. Both Mons Graupius and Boudicca's revolt had the same problem, lack of original sources to fill out the huge empty hole of unknown. But where both books differs is that author of Mons Graupius went out on a limb and gave his readers his perception and his educated assumptions of what might have happen to filled in that huge hole of unknown. In doing so, he gave the readers an educated narrative based on his own knowledge and education of the campaign to come up with a reasonable study. But with Boudicca's Revolt, this author did no such thing and anyone who is familiar with Boudicca's Revolt prior to reading this book, will gain no new insight from reading this book. There are a lot of "filler material" in this book that don't add much. The book's narrative doesn't even offer an analysis of how Boudicca lost control and direction of her revolt since whatever plans she initially had, was gone when her revolt against Roman injustice become more of a rape/pillage/torture/loot expedition. Such a revolt will turn on itself if they were ever successful. I thought the book was bit too harsh on Suetonious Paulinus who was campaigning in northwestern Wales when the revolt broke out. It was his actions that saved Roman Britain and he won a decisive victory against overwhelming odds to end this revolt. Even his choice for the final battle remains questionable even to the author and the book offers no new insight to alternative locations.

It pretty clear that the author of this book didn't go very deep into his research. He read the familiar accounts, brush up his Celtic and Roman lore and wrote a quick book that basically rehashed material you can easily find on the internet. The book is pretty decent for beginner readers of this subject. My three stars is pretty generous since I choose to round up from what this book really deserves..2.5 stars.

The truth behind the famous uprising of the Iceni will most likely never be known. Not only did the victors, the Romans, write the histories but the British tribe that struck terror into them were not a literate people. They left no written records at all. This would make any book on the subject difficult but somehow Nic Fields' "Bouddicca's Rebellion" seems to make the matter worse.

To be fair Mr. Field's knows his stuff and his Roman sources and that ultimately may be the problem. Far too much of his work is recounting needless Roman history. I understand the need to know the background, but for example in the section where the two leaders are introduced, pages 22-23 cover the Roman commander's actions *after* the war and about 1/3 of page 21 is dedicated to a General who *may* have been a rival of the Roman commander but fell foul of Nero and....who cares? It doesn't apply to this subject. For this history of a war in the 1st century CE we have no need to know that the Celts were a bronze age people living in the Upper Danube in 1300 BC any more than we would need to know what George Patton's ancestors were doing a millenia before he fought his way across France in a book about WW2. Far too much of nearly the first third of the book is like this. A map shows forts and fortresses without explaining what, the difference is. One gets the feeling Fields wants to write a more scholarly work on the days of Nero and is using this as his test pattern.

Because of the lack of surviving Celtic records much of Fields' writing about them is based on archeology and Roman writings, BUT he writes them from that, presenting these views and their sources as theirs not his, as if you want to challenge him, go pick a dispute with them, not him. I've tried, Tacitus doesn't return my calls. There is no sense that Mr. fields' wants to put his interpretation on the facts available when he can just present the facts others have found and let the reader try to do the work.

I may be coming across as a bit harsh but I really didn't enjoy this. I couldn't get past the fact that Fields seemed more intent of showing off his scholarship than writing out the history. Each time he went off on as meaningless tangent I found myself saying "get on with it."

These Osprey books are supposed to be an introduction to the item, not the final word, but it should give a good overview that might encourage the curious student to look a little deeper. In the end all Fields did was encourage me to dig up my own copy of Tacitus and read, again, it for myself. Not because Fields whet my appetite but from frustration sake I want to read an account by a better writer!