Prasutagus?, her husband, was the ineffectual king of the Iceni who had compromised his political position by entering into a number of compromising agreements with the Romans, amongst them acceding control over part of his dominions to them on his death. When he did die, the Romans invaded, plundered and committed a number of atrocities, including flogging Boudicca, and raping her daughters.
Boudicca hastily assembled an army, said by some sources to number as many as 100,000 men, although the numbers were probably much lower. They laid waste to Colchester?, London and St Albans before they were eventually defeated by a numerically vastly smaller yet inevitably far more organised Roman army led by [Caius Suetonius Paulinus]?. When the battle turned against Boudicca's army, her troops panicked and fled, becoming trapped amidst their own camp-followers and baggage, whereupon they were massacred.
The reports of her death are contradictory: some accounts state that she committed suicide by poisoning rather than be captured, others assert that she died in a Roman prison cell.
A statue of Boudicca, depicted as she is conceived in folk memory, astride a chariot with knives set into the wheel-hubs, is to be found in central London beside the river Thames
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