Hell Hath No Fury (4 page)

To the patriarchal Romans, the worst of this disaster was that it was led by a woman, “which caused them the greatest shame.” With a force of about ten thousand, Suetonius brought Boudicca's considerably more numerous army to battle somewhere in the English Midlands, cheering his soldiers by telling them that they had little to fear from Boudicca, as her army consisted of more women than men.

Tacitus describes Boudicca on the opposing side, driving around all the tribes in her chariot, with her daughters in front, to deliver a fiery speech:

We British are used to women commanders in war…but I am not fighting for my kingdom or my wealth. I am fighting for my lost freedom, my battered body and my violated daughters…. Consider what you are fighting for, and why. Then you will win this battle, or perish. That is what I, as a woman, plan to do. Let the men live in shame and slavery if they will!

In a symbolic gesture, she released a live hare, an animal sacred to the Great Goddess, between the two armies and dedicated it to Andraste, for victory.

On a more practical level, her army labored under the signal disadvantage of having no battle plan. Though a charismatic commander, Boudicca displayed scant generalship, meeting Suetonius and his force on open ground where Celtic fervor proved no match for Roman organization and discipline. Suetonius, a veteran of mountain warfare, fought with a forest at his back, forcing the Britons to charge headlong up a slope onto Roman javelins. The Britons' women, confident of victory, watched from a laager of wagons on the edge of the battlefield.

When the Britons had exhausted themselves, the Romans counterattacked in wedge formation, driving them back onto their wagons, where they were routed. In the bloody mêlée of defeated warriors, women, children, pack animals, and baggage, the Romans slaughtered everything that moved. Tacitus estimated the Roman dead at four hundred, compared with eighty thousand Britons. In Tacitus' account, Boudicca took poison, although others assert that she was taken prisoner after the battle and died in captivity. What became of her daughters is unknown.

Reference: Anne Ross,
Druids,
1999; and Graham Webster,
Boudicca: The British Revolt Against Rome,
1978.

BRUNHILDE AND FREDEGUND

Frankish Empresses, fl. 567–613 and 549–597, respectively

Chiefly remembered for her hideous death, Brunhilde deserves more credit for her long and power-packed life. As warrior queen and stateswoman, she displayed indomitable courage and formidable skill through forty years of continuous war. Thrown into the bear pit of Frankish politics as a young bride, she ruled until she was regent for her great-grandchildren, and was almost eighty years of age when she died.

Her lifelong rival and mortal enemy, Fredegund, the Lady Macbeth of the Dark Ages, achieved power through her husband and used it to keep his kingdom in a state of war for more than forty years. One of the most bloodthirsty and sadistic women in history, she spent a lifetime stirring up old conflicts and creating new ones throughout the vast empire of the Franks, a territory covering most of modern Europe. Always ready for open aggression, Fredegund was also an early exponent of dirty warfare and relied heavily on poison and other covert operations to dispatch her foes.

Fredegund's career as a psychopath began humbly enough, as a slave girl at the court of the depraved and vicious Frankish emperor Chilperic, whose kingdom comprised most of northern France. Fredegund caught Chilperic's eye, became his mistress, and persuaded him to set his wife aside and later to have her killed. The oldest of four brothers who had carved up the vast empire of their father, the powerful Chlotar I, at his death in 561, Chilperic was always at odds with his siblings, above all his youngest brother Sigebert, who held the kingdom next to his.

Brunhilde's tragedy lay in her entanglement with these warring brothers as soon as she was old enough to marry. A Spanish princess christened Bruna, the daughter of the king of the Visigoths, she was noted for her intelligence and beauty from an early age, and in 568 she was married to Sigebert, ruler of the eastern Frankish kingdom that covered most of modern Germany.

Her father the king then sought another union with the Franks. Chilperic had already murdered one queen at the instigation of his slave mistress, Fredegund, but despite his vicious reputation, Brunhilde's sister Galswintha was forced into marriage with him.

The marriage did not last. Brunhilde soon learned that her sister was dead. Fredegund had persuaded Chilperic to have Galswintha strangled in her bed, only to marry the less-than-grief-stricken widower herself a few days later.

With her husband's help, Brunhilde made war upon the murderous couple. In early engagements, Chilperic was defeated by Sigebert, but Fredegund turned the tables in 575 when she hired assassins to stab Sigebert to death. Brunhilde was captured but set free by Chilperic's son Meroveus, who fell in love with her. In revenge, Fredegund hounded Meroveus to his death.

Returning to her own kingdom, Brunhilde found herself at war again. Her young son was now established on Sigebert's throne, and Brunhilde took up the reins of power on his behalf. The rule of a woman was anathema to a strong political party of noblemen, who raised an army against her. Brunhilde appealed for peace, but in a grim foreshadowing of her eventual fate, she was warned, “Depart from us, lest our horses' hooves trample you underfoot.” Undeterred, Brunhilde led her forces into battle and won the day. Confirmed in power, she was able to rule openly on behalf of her still-youthful son, Childebert.

At Childebert's majority, Brunhilde stepped down. Meanwhile the war with Fredegund dragged on, and Brunhilde's son and his wife were poisoned, most probably on the orders of the wicked queen. Brunhilde took up arms again to govern on her grandsons' behalf, making them and herself once again the target of Fredegund's uncontrollable rage. Fredegund's lust for power only deepened in 584 when she had her own husband murdered and began to rule in her own right, posing as regent for her young son, Chlotar II.

Brunhilde and her grandsons were now in constant danger of assassination, as Fredegund made more than one attempt to have them poisoned. She was still directing both open and dirty warfare, involving her favorite weapons of knife and poison, when she died unexpectedly in 597, leaving her kingdom to her equally cruel and murderous son, Chlotar II.

The threat from Fredegund had ceased. But Brunhilde's wars were not over. Her former enemies among the Frankish nobles now persuaded the older of her two grandsons to seize power and to banish her. With the aid of the younger brother, Brunhilde fought back, mounting a successful military operation in which her opponent was defeated and killed. But her success was short-lived. Her victorious grandson died suddenly at the age of twenty-six, leaving four young sons.

Approaching seventy years of age, Brunhilde found herself regent again, this time for her great-grandchildren, but was no longer able to contain the rapacious ambition of her noblemen. Her enemies turned in secret to Fredegund's son, Chlotar II, and offered him the kingdom if he would remove the queen.

Chlotar accepted. Betrayed by the leader of her own party, Brunhilde was handed over to her former rival's equally depraved and cruel son. Accounts of her death vary, but all agree that she was subjected to three days of appalling humiliation and torture before Chlotar and all his army, and finally torn to pieces by wild horses.

Reference: Gregory of Tours and Lewis Thorpe,
A History of the Franks,
1976.

CARTIMANDUA

British Queen, First Century
CE

Faced with war and invasion, Cartimandua was a ruler who chose to negotiate rather than to fight. Unlike her contemporary
Boudicca
(see Chapter 1), she came to a working accommodation with the Romans in Britain, thereby preserving the peace of her people and her own throne.

Cartimandua was the ruler in her own right of the Brigantes, the largest tribe in Britain, whose lands stretched from Stoke-on-Trent in the English Midlands to Newcastle in the north, and ran from coast to coast. Like a number of Celtic queens in the pre-Christian era, Cartimandua enjoyed full sovereignty as the incarnation of the Great Goddess and the spirit of the land. The early relations of the Brigantes with the Roman conquerors were friendly, since Cartimandua was a ruler of considerable diplomacy and skill. “Sleek Pony,” the meaning of Cartimandua, described a horse far above the rough-coated native breeds, and the queen lived up to her name. She negotiated a treaty relationship with the Romans and the invaders allowed her to continue her rule as an independent ally.

In 51
CE
, Cartimandua divorced her consort, Venutius, and replaced him with a younger man, fulfilling the Goddess tradition of refreshing herself with a more vigorous lover, since the sexual power of the ruler was vital to the health of the tribe. But in the world of the Romans, men held sway, and the cast-off consort refused to go quietly. Venutius may also have been infuriated by Cartimandua's choice of his replacement, a youth called Vellocatus, who had served as his armor bearer. He decided to usurp Cartimandua and seize her throne. Her supporters rose in outrage against him, and a full-scale civil war broke out. Cartimandua appealed to the Romans for support, and their commander declared the whole of the vast Brigantine territory a Roman protectorate.

But she was powerless to contain the intertribal war. A skilled commander, she scored many victories but was finally forced to flee. With Vellocatus in tow, she sought refuge with the Romans, who took her into the safety of their massive fort at Camulodunum, modern Colchester, where they spent the rest of their days. She had held power for twelve turbulent years, and, unlike many of her fellow Celtic rulers, lived to die in her own bed.

Nevertheless, the impulse to turn Cartimandua's story of survival against the odds into one of disaster has been strong. Accounts of her rule found their way back to Rome, and Roman mothers used Cartimandua as an example to their daughters of the fate that attended women who descended into adultery and lust, unaware that adultery did not exist in the British world: unlike Roman and Christian wives, Celtic women did not become the possessions of the men they married. Cartimandua was strong, she was successful, sexual, powerful, and free, and in the end she lived to enjoy all that. It is not hard to imagine why later historians found this difficult to admire.

Cartimandua's career shows that in the first century
CE
, British women held supreme authority, made treaties with foreign powers, led their own armies into battle, and disposed of unwanted husbands at will, rights denied to her Roman sisters at the time and to most women worldwide for the next two thousand years.

Reference: John King,
Kingdoms of the Celts,
2000.

CLEOPATRA VII

Egyptian Queen, b. 690
BCE
, d.30
BCE

Cleopatra, wrote the French poet Théophile Gautier in 1845, “is a person…whom dreamers find always at the end of their dreams.” She was born in Alexandria, the third daughter of King Ptolemy XII, a descendant of one of Alexander the Great's generals, whose family had ruled Egypt since 323
BCE
and whose empire, at its greatest extent, had extended as far as Syria and Palestine.

By the time of her birth, however, Ptolemy was a puppet of Rome. Cleopatra had no Egyptian blood, and although she may have spoken Egyptian, she was to all intents and purposes Greek. Her father's singularly undistinguished reign ended with his death in 51
BCE
, and he was succeeded by the eighteen-year-old Cleopatra and her twelve-year-old brother-husband, Ptolemy XIII. Their roles as sister-wife and brother-husband underlined their divine origin as lawgivers.

Within three months, relations between the siblings broke down. Cleopatra's attempts to govern alone defied the Ptolemaic tradition of the subordination of female rulers to males. She was removed from power by a cabal of courtiers and, after failing to raise a rebellion, was forced to flee Egypt with her surviving sister, Arsinoë.

In the subsequent Egyptian civil war, Ptolemy XIII sought the aid of Julius Caesar, one of Rome's ruling Triumvirate. Caesar's response was to seize Alexandria and impose himself as arbiter of the rival claims of the young king and his sister. Cleopatra played a finely judged hand, allegedly having herself smuggled to meet Caesar inside a carpet. Caesar abandoned his plans to annex Egypt and backed Cleopatra's claims to the throne. Ptolemy XIII drowned in the Nile, and Cleopatra was restored to the throne with a younger brother, Ptolemy XIV, as co-regent. Cleopatra bore Caesar a son, dubbed Caesarion, who in 47
BCE
accompanied his mother to Rome, where she lived in one of Caesar's villas. After Caesar's assassination in 44
BCE
, she returned to Egypt, where in all probability she was responsible for the death by poisoning of Ptolemy XIV. With another brother successfully dispatched, she resumed her position as co-sovereign with her son Caesarion (Ptolemy XV).

Two years after Caesar's death, Cleopatra was summoned to a meeting in Tarsus to confirm her loyalty. Her inquisitor was Marcus Antonius (Shakespeare's Mark Antony), another triumvir. Through Cleopatra's Eastern techniques of seduction, Antony was expertly reeled in and persuaded to live with her in sybaritic idleness in Alexandria. There she bore him three children and, according to the Roman historian and gossip Suetonius, married him in an Egyptian rite, despite the fact that he was already married to the sister of one of his fellow triumvirs.

As Anthony's credit ran out in Rome, where he was believed to have lost his Roman integrity and sunk into Eastern excess, Cleopatra financed his disastrous campaign against the Parthians, in which he lost the greater part of his army. This did not prevent Antony and Cleopatra from celebrating with a triumph (a formal victory parade) in Alexandria, where she and her children were declared rightful rulers of both the Roman and Egyptian Empires. Mark Antony now planned to found a new imperial dynasty whose power base was to be Alexandria rather than Rome. Cleopatra would be Isis to Antony's Osiris, a notion that did not endear him to his enemies in Rome.