Boudica was the queen of the Iceni tribe in Roman controlled Britain. Her husband had been king of the tribe, and had made allegiances to the Roman government. When he died, he left his kingdom split between the Romans and his daughters.
The Romans did not recognize women as heirs and called in their debts in addition treating the family of the fallen king like slaves. When Boudica filed a complaint against the treatment of her people she was publicly beaten and her daughters raped.
Just as the oft repeated saying notes, "Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn." Boudica gathered together with neighboring tribes and sacked Camulodunum (Colchester), routed a Roman legion sent to defend it, and burned a temple being built in the honor of former Emperor Claudius. She and her army then went on to sack Londinium (London), Verulanium (St. Alban's), and prepared for a final showdown with Suetonius, the current governor of East Anglia.
Although in the final battle Suetonius was heavily outnumbered by Boudica and her forces, he defeated her in the Battle of Wattling Street. Boudica refused to be captured and died on the field defending the Iceni peoples' autonomy.
Roman historian Cassius Dio had this to say;
"...a terrible disaster occurred in Britain. Two cities were sacked, eighty thousand of the Romans and of their allies perished, and the island was lost to Rome. Moreover, all this ruin was brought upon the Romans by a woman, a fact which in itself caused them the greatest shame....But the person who was chiefly instrumental in rousing the natives and persuading them to fight the Romans, the person who was thought worthy to be their leader and who directed the conduct of the entire war, was Buduica, a Briton woman of the royal family and possessed of greater intelligence than often belongs to women....In stature she was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh; a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips; around her neck was a large golden necklace; and she wore a tunic of divers colours over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch. This was her invariable attire."
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