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.