Boadicea

Boadicea, 'the British warrior-queen,' wife of Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, a tribe in the time of the Romans inhabiting the part of Britain now occupied by the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. On the death of her husband about the year 60 A.D., the Romans seized her territory, and treated the inhabitants with the most brutal cruelty. The queen herself was scourged, her daughters were outraged, and the noblest among the Iceni were treated as slaves. Boadicea, roused to fury by her wrongs, gathered round her a large army, destroyed the Roman colony of Camulodunum (Colchester), took Londinium and Verulamium (London and St Albans), and put to death, according to Tacitus, as many as 70,000 Romans. Suetonius Paulinus, the Roman governor of Britain, who had been absent in Mona (Anglesey), now advanced against the queen, and with not more than 10,000 men inflicted an overwhelming defeat on an enemy twenty times as numerous. The British loss is said to have been 80,000, the Roman only 400. Boadicea, overwhelmed with despair, killed herself by poison. Her story is best remembered by the noble poems of Cowper and Tennyson.