e
outrages, publicly scourged Boadicea, queen to the deceased prince, and
violated his daughters. These cruelties, aggravated by the shame and
scorn that attended them,--the general severity of the government,--the
taxes, (new to a barbarous people,) laid on without discretion, extorted
without mercy, and, even when respited, made utterly ruinous by
exorbitant usury,--the farther mischiefs they had to dread, when more
completely reduced,--all these, with, the absence of the legate and the
army on a remote expedition, provoked all the tribes of the Britons,
provincials, allies, enemies, to a general insurrection. The command of
this confederacy was conferred on Boadicea, as the first in rank, and
resentment of injuries. They began by cutting off a Roman legion; then
they fell upon the colonies of Camelodunum and Verulam, and with a
barbarous fury butchered the Romans and their adherents to the number of
seventy thousand.

An end had been now put to the Roman power in this island, if Paulinus,
with unexampled vigor and prudence, had not conducted his army through
the midst of the enemy's country from Anglesey to London. There uniting
the soldiers that remained dispersed in different garrisons, he formed
an army of ten thousand men, and marched to attack the enemy in the
height of their success and security. The army of the Britons is said to
have amounted to two hundred and thirty thousand; but it was ill
composed, and without choice or order,--women, boys, old men,
priests,--full of presumption, tumult, and confusion. Boadicea was at
their head,--a woman of masculine spirit, but precipitant, and without
any military knowledge.

The event was such as might have been expected. Paulinus, having chosen
a situation favorable to the smallness of his numbers, and encouraged
his troops not to dread a multitude whose weight was dangerous only to
themselves, piercing into the midst of that disorderly crowd, after a
blind and furious resistance, obtained a complete victory. Eighty
thousand Britons fell in this battle.

[Sidenote: A.D. 61] Paulinus improved the terror this slaughter had
produced by the unparalleled severities which he exercised. This method
would probably have succeeded to subdue, but at the same time to
depopulate the nation, if such loud complaints had not been made at Rome
of the legate's cruelty as procured his recall.

Three successive legates carried on the affairs of Britain during the
latter part of Ner