In the year 61, Paulinus Suetonius led the Roman army to the island of Mona, or Anglesey, the residence of the arch druid, and the asylum of all the enemies of the Roman power. He found an army drawn up in order of battle to receive him, whose appearance at first struck terror into his soldiers ; for b, sides the armed men, there were women in funeral apparel, who, with lighted torches, ran along the ranks like furies ; while woods, held sacred by superstition, and altars burning with fires, gave additional horrors to the scene, and multitudes of druids stood with uplifted hands, denouncing the ven geance of heaven on the approaching invaders of their mysteries. For a while the legions stood powerless, as marks to the arrows of tne Britons ; hut at last encou raged by their officers, they rushed forward and put them to the sword, and after demolishing the altars and groves, burnt the druids in their own fires.
In Suetonius's absence, the states of the mainland, oppressed by the insufferable tyranny of their Roman masters, conspired for vengeance and deliverance. Prasutxgus, the late king of the Iceni, had left the em peror joint heir with his daughters, in hopes of concili ating his protection ; but the Roman officers and sol diers plundered the unhappy survivors ; and when his widow Boadicea remonstrated, beat her with stripes, and violated her daughters before her eyes. Her whole kingdom was given up to plunder. The Trinobantest had been at the same time script of their lands, and dri ven from their houses. Those enraged tribes broke in furiously upon the Roman colony at Camolodunum, and after laying it in ashes, destroyed all the infantry of the 9th legion. Suetonius, on his return to London, was implored by them to remain, and defend them against the insurgents ; but he chose to march in quest of the enemy, who entered the place on his leaving it. and put all they found to the sword. In London, Verulamium, and other places, the carnage of the Romans and their confederates was computed at 70,000. Flushed by these successes, and joined by fresh associates, the British heroine gave battle to Suetonius ; and dressed in tier royal robes, with a spear in her hand, harangued her troops as she drove along their ranks in a lofty chariot, where her two unhappy daughters were seated at her feet. Her forces have been described as innumerably greater than we can suppose the country to have sup ported, or the Romans to have computed with certainty. Suctonius, with 10,000 men, waited their tumultuary attack in a position accessible only in front, and repul sed it with the usual success of the Romans. The Bri tons were entangled in their flight by waggon- loaded with their wives and children, whom, the Roman historian says, they brought to be witnesses of their va lour ; but whom IL Is much more probable they placed there for want of a better asylum. After an immense
slaughter of her army, the British queen ended her mi series by taking poison.
Broken as the British spirit must have been by so terrible a blow, it was kept alive, beyond its natural strength, by the torture of oppression. Suetonius, with all his abilities, was injudiciously vindictive. He was recalled from his post by Nero ; and three successive governors after him being men of indolent characters, the Britons enjoyed peace for a few years. But under Vespasian, the Roman energies revived. The Brigantes, with their warlike leader Venusius, were overcome, and the Silures, in spite of their mountainous country, and an obstinate resistance, were subdued. These suc cesses paved the way for the entire subjugation of the island, tinder the ablest and best of all the Roman go ve•nors, Julius Agricola, who knew how to retain, with the humane policy of a statesman, what he had won by his bravery as a soldier. In his first campaign, Agricola quelled the Ordovici,* and completed the conquest of Anglesey, from which Suetonius had been recalled by the dreadful insurrection of Boadicea. He accomplish ed this latter enterprise even without the aid of ships, selecting the best swimmers from his army, who passed the narrowest part of the channel with their horses and arms, but without baggage. In his second campaign, he carried his arms to the north, and subdued nations who never yet submitted to the Romans. Wherever he. marched, he slimed clemency to the submissive ; and, to secure his conquests, built a chain of fortresses from sea to sea, in or near the track where Hadrian's rampart, and Sevcrus's wall, were afterwards erected.
In his third campaign, he traversed the country of the Caledonians (hitherto unknown) as far as the Tay, with out meeting an enemy in the field. The Caledonians, expecting that their invaders would retire in winter, abstained from hostility ; but when winter set in, they were disappointed, for they found the troops of Agricola settled in well-stored and fortified quarters, in which they could neither surprise nor besiege them. In the next year of his government, Agricola built a line of forts between the Iriths of Forth and Clyde ; thus ex cluding, from all the valuable part of Britain, both the contagion of revolt, and from those barbarous inroads which might disturb its peaceable inhabitants. In his fifth year, he crossed the frith of Clyde ; and after some successful skirmishes with the ancient natives of Can tyre, Lorn, Argyleshire, and Lochaber, had a distinct view of the coasts of Ireland, and meditated a design, which he never fulfilled, of adding that island to the Roman empire.