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FEMALE WARRIORS by Ellen C. Clayton
Sep. 18th, 2013 09:01 pmVol. I and Vol. II! Published 1879.
The research in this doesn't seem too strong, especially the sections about the ancient world. However, it's a good long list that serves as a starting point for names to further research, and additionally the writer is talented as a writer. The foreword is a fine feminist smackdown in itself. Have an additional pertinent link about woman warriors: Chronologic history of female warriors, military commanders and duelists. (Note: Some women who passed as men might identify as transmen if they were asked to select a twenty-first century gender identity, but I'm limiting myself to the definitions of their times.)
Sometimes women want sugar candy hearts, sometimes backrubs, sometimes scented fucking candles, and sometimes they want fiery bloodthirsty roaring rampages of revenge.
As Jane de Belleville, corsair, discovered. She was frequently seen with a sword in one hand and a flaming torch in the other amidst smoking ruins of destruction. But don't worry - she sent her twelve-year-old son to England first to keep the delicate boy safe!
Her husband, Oliver, Lord of Clisson, was accused of holding secret intelligence with the English; and in 1343 Philip de Valois, without waiting till the evidence should be well substantiated, caused him to be decapitated. The widow, burning for revenge, sold her jewels, and with the proceeds equipped three vessels. After sending her son, a lad of twelve, to England, to ensure his safety, Jane cruised about the coast of Normandy, attacking every French ship which came in her way, and ravaging the country for a mile or so inland. This female corsair was frequently seen, with a sword in one hand and a torch in the other, amidst the smoking ruins of a castle, or the smouldering heaps of a destroyed village, directing with inhuman exultation the ferocious cruelties suggested by her thirst for vengeance.
But many other women in this list are praised for mercy as well as bloodshed - which is as it should be.
A brave swordswoman called Barbara de St. Belmont has a similar story to the reputed duellist Agnes Hotot. She was trained in military exercises and the use of arms from childhood, and when she was affected by the smallpox she became better able to pass as a man. She passed herself off as her husband's brother to fight a duel for her own honour, easily won, and then revealed her true identity. She is known elsewhere as Alberte-Barbe de Saint-Balmon, female soldier during the Thirty Years' War and author of Les Jumeaux Martyrs, a tragedy that shows she'd literary gifts as well as military.
Oscar François de Jarjayes had a real-life predecessor a century before her in the form of Captain Bodeaux - a soldier who distinguished herself at the battle of the Boyne, and fell covered in wounds at the siege of Limerick in 1691 after holding Thomond bridge against the English. (This is an additional source for Bodeaux; the book is supposed to be fiction by Daniel Defoe about a real person and events.)
Then there is Hannah Snell, a female British soldier disguised a man - and her female friend, a black nurse who healed her of a dangerous bullet wound and kept her secret. Hannah survived her military service and lived to run a public house in Wapping. A portrait on her sign-board was known as "The Widow in Masquerade, or the Female Warrior." Unfortunately, though, she died in Bedlam due to mental illness at the very end of her life. Soldier Phoebe Hessel also warrants a mention by this book.
And then there are the women of La Vendée - a place that's also the subject and title of an Anthony Trollope novel. Mademoiselle de la Rochefoucault both led troops with a sword and pistols and treated the wounded from both sides. Renée Bordereau bought herself a musket, drilled, and fought in battles--killing twenty-one soliders in one engagement, it's said, fighting in two hundred battles, and helping to save the lives of eight hundred and fifty priests. Trollope dedicated his book to Marie Louise Victoire de Donnissan, marquise de La Rochejacquelein, who wrote her memoirs in 1815 about the war and her survival.
I've covered a tiny sample from this extremely interesting list. Do click for more. :)
The research in this doesn't seem too strong, especially the sections about the ancient world. However, it's a good long list that serves as a starting point for names to further research, and additionally the writer is talented as a writer. The foreword is a fine feminist smackdown in itself. Have an additional pertinent link about woman warriors: Chronologic history of female warriors, military commanders and duelists. (Note: Some women who passed as men might identify as transmen if they were asked to select a twenty-first century gender identity, but I'm limiting myself to the definitions of their times.)
Sometimes women want sugar candy hearts, sometimes backrubs, sometimes scented fucking candles, and sometimes they want fiery bloodthirsty roaring rampages of revenge.
As Jane de Belleville, corsair, discovered. She was frequently seen with a sword in one hand and a flaming torch in the other amidst smoking ruins of destruction. But don't worry - she sent her twelve-year-old son to England first to keep the delicate boy safe!
Her husband, Oliver, Lord of Clisson, was accused of holding secret intelligence with the English; and in 1343 Philip de Valois, without waiting till the evidence should be well substantiated, caused him to be decapitated. The widow, burning for revenge, sold her jewels, and with the proceeds equipped three vessels. After sending her son, a lad of twelve, to England, to ensure his safety, Jane cruised about the coast of Normandy, attacking every French ship which came in her way, and ravaging the country for a mile or so inland. This female corsair was frequently seen, with a sword in one hand and a torch in the other, amidst the smoking ruins of a castle, or the smouldering heaps of a destroyed village, directing with inhuman exultation the ferocious cruelties suggested by her thirst for vengeance.
But many other women in this list are praised for mercy as well as bloodshed - which is as it should be.
A brave swordswoman called Barbara de St. Belmont has a similar story to the reputed duellist Agnes Hotot. She was trained in military exercises and the use of arms from childhood, and when she was affected by the smallpox she became better able to pass as a man. She passed herself off as her husband's brother to fight a duel for her own honour, easily won, and then revealed her true identity. She is known elsewhere as Alberte-Barbe de Saint-Balmon, female soldier during the Thirty Years' War and author of Les Jumeaux Martyrs, a tragedy that shows she'd literary gifts as well as military.
Oscar François de Jarjayes had a real-life predecessor a century before her in the form of Captain Bodeaux - a soldier who distinguished herself at the battle of the Boyne, and fell covered in wounds at the siege of Limerick in 1691 after holding Thomond bridge against the English. (This is an additional source for Bodeaux; the book is supposed to be fiction by Daniel Defoe about a real person and events.)
Then there is Hannah Snell, a female British soldier disguised a man - and her female friend, a black nurse who healed her of a dangerous bullet wound and kept her secret. Hannah survived her military service and lived to run a public house in Wapping. A portrait on her sign-board was known as "The Widow in Masquerade, or the Female Warrior." Unfortunately, though, she died in Bedlam due to mental illness at the very end of her life. Soldier Phoebe Hessel also warrants a mention by this book.
And then there are the women of La Vendée - a place that's also the subject and title of an Anthony Trollope novel. Mademoiselle de la Rochefoucault both led troops with a sword and pistols and treated the wounded from both sides. Renée Bordereau bought herself a musket, drilled, and fought in battles--killing twenty-one soliders in one engagement, it's said, fighting in two hundred battles, and helping to save the lives of eight hundred and fifty priests. Trollope dedicated his book to Marie Louise Victoire de Donnissan, marquise de La Rochejacquelein, who wrote her memoirs in 1815 about the war and her survival.
I've covered a tiny sample from this extremely interesting list. Do click for more. :)
