But flushed with victory, impatient for the slaughter, animated with desperate resolution to die or conquer, the Britons cast no look or thought behind them. Boadicea herself drove from rank to rank, from nation to nation, with her daughters beside her, attesting the outrage she had endured, the vengeance she had already taken, proclaiming the gallant deeds of the queens before her, under whom British warriors had so often triumphed, denouncing as intolerable the yoke of Roman insolence, and declaring that whatever the men might determine, the women would now be free or perish. The harangue of Suetonius, on the other hand, was blunt and sarcastic. He told his men not to mind the multitudes before them, nor the noise they made; there were more women among them than men; as for their own numbers, let them remember that in all battles a few good swordsmen really did the work; the half-armed and dastard crowds before them would break and fly when they saw again the prowess of the Roman primipiles. Thus encouraged, the legionaries could with difficulty be restrained to await the onset; and as soon as the assailants had exhausted their missiles, bore down upon them in the wedge-shaped column which had so often broken Greeks, Gauls, and Carthaginians. The auxiliaries followed with no less impetuosity. The horsemen, lance in hand, pierced through the ranks which still kept their ground. But a single charge was enough. The Britons were in a moment shattered and routed. In another moment, the Romans had reached the long circumvallation of wagons, among which the fugitives were scrambling in dismay, slew the cattle and the women without remorse, and traced with a line of corpses and carcasses the limits of the British position. We may believe that the massacre was enormous. The Romans declared that eighty thousand of their enemies perished, while of their own force they lost only four hundred slain, and about as many wounded. Boadicea put an end to her life by poison; we could have wished to hear that the brave barbarian had fallen on a Roman pike. Suetonius had won the greatest victory of the imperial history; to complete his triumph, the coward, Postumus, who had shrunk from his assistance, threw himself, in shame and mortification, on his own sword.