Women Warriors throughout Time and Space
War is of long standing in human experience and it has been studied for millennia. Yet both our fascination with it, and our knowledge of it, keep expanding, especially as we look backward in time to investigate earlier and earlier examples of inter- and intraspecies violence.
For example, it was long thought that during the Bronze Age in northern Europe, there was no large-scale warfare. Skirmishes between bands and defenses of territory or homesites were assumed, but not large, organized military activities. But recent discoveries now tell a different story. Some 3,200 years ago, for example, two large armies totaling approximately 4,000 warriors fought in what is now northern Germany at the Tollense River. They were not defending their immediate homes, nor was it a chance encounter of rival bands.
In fact, both groups were heavily armed and many miles from any settlements. For several days they fought, maimed, killed, and died. These warriors left behind hundreds and hundreds of remnants and shards of that battle. This extensive site is now considered the first Bronze Age battle discovered in northern Europe. It is remarkable for its character as a full-fledged war on open ground in northern Europe.1
Coincidentally, perhaps, the battle at the Tollense River took place in roughly the same time frame as dozens of other major battles and wars occurred all across Europe and the Mediterranean basin, including the sack of Troy, the destruction of various Mycenean cities, the occupation of Cyprus and Crete, the destruction of the Hittite, and in other cities all across the Levant as well as in parts of Egypt.
Termed “The Catastrophe”—although it was probably not one for many of the successful “Sea Peoples” who caused it—its widespread nature remains a cautionary tale of how war is old, large-scale, and destructive.2
Indeed, by the time of the Tollense River battle and “The Catastrophe” of the Mediterranean, war was already many millennia of years old, as Wayne Lee indicates in his intriguing article, “When Did Warfare Begin?” For him, “War does not dominate the archaeological record but it does suffuse it.”3 He then cites evidence of intra- and interspecies violence found in walled cities 9,000 years ago in Turkey. Lee also sees what he terms “warfare” even much earlier than that, in the butchered and presumably eaten human remains found in the caves of 35,000 years (Les Rois in France) and 50,000 years (El Sidrón in Spain). It is even likely, he claims, that warfare extended far back into the unrecorded history of hunter-gatherer bands, although, because of their very transitory and migrant nature, that is very difficult to prove. Other writers such as Nichols Longrich also hypothesize that Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens engaged in armed conflict for 100,000 years over Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.4
War thus seems to predate “government” or “civilization.” We have, of course, no way of telling exactly when wars really began but we have these beguiling hints that it is very, very old.
We know that war also dominates some of our oldest and most influential written accounts, illustrating our species’ commitment to purposeful violence. Think, for example, of the earliest writings on the subject. Almost 3,200 years ago, the longest poem (with 2,000 verses) in the world, the Sanskrit Mahabharata (attributed to Vyas), celebrates an intense struggle between two Aryan forces in what is now India. The war and description of its concomitant violence exceeds even that found in the very bloody Iliad of Homer, which is more familiar to European or American readers.
The Mahabharata portrays what is essentially a dynastic struggle between two clans, the Kauravas and the Pandavas, for the throne of Hastinapura, a conflict culminating in a final cataclysmic battle, Kurukshetra, between them. The battle is eventually won by the Pandavas, and in the description of the battle, there is one haunting, overpowering, intense image which for me sums up the impact of war on humankind.
During the final climatic battle of Kurukshetra, the elder warrior Bhisma is shot with so many arrows by his foe Arjuna that when he falls from his chariot, his body cannot touch the ground: “There was not in Bhisma’s body space of even two fingers’ breath that was not pierced with arrows.”5
What better metaphor for human suffering caused by war and its claustrophobic embrace?
Likewise, 2,500 years ago, Thucydides, writing in the last decade of the 5th century BCE in his The History of the Peloponnesian War, captures in book 3 the wild, untamed nature of conflict and war, even among people of the same language and culture, which can be overwhelmingly violent. He points to the seemingly unending nature of war when, writing about the Corcyran Revolution, declaring, “The suffering which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible, such as have occurred and always will occur as long as the nature of mankind remains the same.”6
And of course, what of the most celebrated of stories from the Western tradition, Homer’s 2,700–year-old Iliad, which is a long and very detailed account of war in all its glory and pathos?7
Its story of Achilles, the ultimate warrior, has been told and retold countless times, but it still provides perspective and context for our appreciation of war’s influence on human history. If even a half-god can be ultimately destroyed by war, what will be the fate of humans throughout time and space ever since?
On the surface, of course, the central story of the Iliad is about gods and human interactions set against the backdrop of a 10-year-old war. But as Simone Weil so cogently and profoundly asserts in her long 1939 poem, “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force,” it is the war itself that is the real subject of the Iliad.
The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force. Force as a man’s instrument, force as man’s master, force before which human flesh shrinks back. The human soul seems ever conditioned by its ties with force, swept away, blinded by the force it believes it can control, bowed under the constraint of the force it submits to.8
It is precisely that force and its compelling nature that provides the holistic background for this book, as the nature of warfare presented in all three works gives us the added horror of familiarity because the participants speak the same language, worship the same gods, share the same cultural norms, and yet fight as if their opponents were only true “Others,” worthy of slaughter.
The long arc of the Tollense River, the Mahabharata, and the Iliad, then, all tell of war’s supremacy and ultimate power, which remain with us today. War is thus an institution and a beguiling attraction seemingly unstoppable throughout human history and prehistory as well as into its future.
Humans have long tried to grapple with war’s impact and nature. Virtually since its inception in the human record, war has been studied, pondered, and written about, yet much of its ultimately metaphysically true nature remains unknown, perhaps unknowable, even as the same questions are asked over and over.
Despite thousands of years of study, then, the ultimate causes and roots and ubiquitous nature of war remain elusive. Some say war is in our genes and therefore nearly immutable. Others say war begins with our cultures and that if we change cultural norms, we can reduce, even eliminate war. Still others believe war is a combination of genes and culture. But, and this is a big “but,” no one knows for certain. All we know, and continue to know, is that as a species, Homo sapiens has shown an enduring propensity for war’s practice and perfection.
Is war the results of hormones and DNA or more prosaic causes such as lust, greed, desire to dominate, to seek freedom, gain riches, subjugate, enslave, take, or defend?9
We do not know. Perhaps we cannot know, even though many of us may have once thought we knew or could know or were certain we did know. Perhaps from time to time, we came close to pinning down the hows and whys as well as the wheres of war, but we still do not really know its ultimate nature.
Luckily then, the metaphysical essence of war is not the subject of this book. For our purposes, war is simply the space-time milieu, the phenomenon, the matrix and context within which humans kill others for a multiplicity of purposes. It remains with us in all its horrible and monstrous power.
Again, as Simone Weil so cogently puts it,
For those who have supposed that force, thanks to progress now belong to the past, have seen a record of that in Homer’s poem; those wise enough to discern the force at the center of all human history, today as in the past, find in the Iliad the most beautiful and flawless of mirrors.10
It is within that matrix of the harsh reality of the contemporary and seemingly ubiquitous nature of war that we examine force, but from a different central focus: where are the women warriors in that long arc from the Tollense Bridge, the Iliad, and the Mahabharata to the present?
This volume seeks to put women in their rightful place into that most powerful and destructive of matrices, for they have so long been denied their fair positioning in its holistic nature and nearly ubiquitous past. They are, and have been, a fundamental part of the war space and processes, not just as victims, but also as planners, participants, and leaders. Women deserve belated recognition as purposeful actors in the history of warfare.
We are fortunate to be examining this subsection of topic today and not much earlier, because we find that the last few decades have seen scholarship not only focused more on the roles women play in war, but also new perspectives and new sources have emerged that highlight the positions of women in the historical landscape of war, illuminating their extensive participation across time and space.
As we begin our examination of women in the context of war, then, it is fitting therefore that the first recorded author in history was a woman; and she was indeed writing about war. Enheduanna was the Sumerian/Akkadian chief priestess who, during the reign of Sargon the Great (2285–2275 BCE) wrote, “You hack everything down in battle…. God of War, with your fierce wings.” Enheduanna
is where we start.
She, and her pronouncement, begin our search.
As we will see later in this volume, there are ancient echoes of women warriors far back in the mists of time: the Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut led armies in both Canaan and Nubia in the 15th century BCE; Lady Fu Hao in China in the 13th century BCE also captained a number of military campaigns; the Rigveda was written in the same time period, and also contains verses of praise for the women warrior Vishpala; while in the 6th century BCE Queen Tomyris led her army to a stunning victory over Cyrus the Great.
Accounts, however tantalizingly brief in many cases, suggest that women have been in the military sphere, albeit often underreported in that canon. One initial question of import, therefore, is that if women have been such widespread participants in warfare until recently, why have they been so neglected and understudied in the history of war?
Certainly, some of the biggest Anglo-American names in the study of warfare during the last generation—Michael Howard, Jeremy Black, Donald Kagan, John Keegan, Victor Hanson, Williamson Murray, Paul Kennedy, Allan Millett, and others—have spent very little time investigating women at war or have ignored them altogether. Some have gone farther, even denying their widespread participation, such as John Keegan, who confidently asserts “Warfare is… the one human activity from which women, with the most insignificant exceptions, have always and everywhere stood apart.”11
Nor are women exegetes on war immune to disregarding or substantially ignoring the combat history of women. Margaret MacMillan, in her widely praised contemporary account War: How Conflict Shaped Us, after giving women wide coverage as cheerleaders, excuses for war, victims of rapes in warfare, their roles as camp followers and in the peace movement, gives virtually no coverage to women warriors in combat, concluding her few examples with the caveat, “they are exceptions, seen as outside the normal order of things where war is the male sphere.”12
Others have been even more overtly dismissive.
For example, Israeli Martin van Creveld, who has dealt extensively with warfare, finds women’s contributions and even their potential as singularly unimpressive. He also states categorically and incorrectly, “Women have never taken a major part in combat—in any culture, in any country, in any period of history.”13
More recently, there have been substantial attacks on van Creveld’s positions vis à vis women in combat. One well worth noting here is Nina Liza Bode, in her The Imaging of Violent Gender Performances, which conclusively underscores his lack of familiarity with non-Western women warriors.14 Using the case studies of Tanja Nijmeijer, Xarema Muzhakhoyeva, Wafa Idris, and Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, Bode cogently attacks his assertions that warfare is not for women because biologically they are incapable of the heinous actions that are central to war.
By providing a refined and holistic image of the female participators of political violence, she shows how they are as capable of men of perpetrating mass slaughter and in the process refutes Creveld’s biological determinism. Bode also puts women realistically and squarely in the space/time continuum of purposeful war acts, including as perpetrators of genocide. The case studies she uses are worthwhile in and of themselves, for they show the wide range of motives and actions involved in these five women’s stories.
Part of the problem of the suppression of the deeds of women warriors is also cultural, for many societies did/do not think that women should be involved in war and therefore treated those who did as aberrations, oddities, anomalies or totally atomized and brainwashed by the experience, hence there is no real reason to explore it.
For example, the feminist theorist Cynthia Enloe writes,
None of these causes and consequences of militarization are more significant than the entrenchments of ideas about “manly men” and “real women.” I am convinced that women have special roles to play in exposing and challenging militarization, not because women are somehow innately, biologically wired for peacefulness, but because women are so often outside the inner circles where militarizing decisions are being made yet are likely to be called upon to support, and even work on behalf of, militarizing agendas.15
Although worldwide the military field remains a primarily masculine space, the existence and accomplishments of the women warriors included in this bibliography challenge the notion that war and militarization only re-entrench gendered conceptions of “manly men” and “real women.”
While the military space is certainly not female-dominated, the success of women warriors across space and time rejects the false dichotomy between femininity and military strength and positive participation. Joan of Arc and her military exploits stimulated proto-nationalism, which in turn freed northern and western France from English domination, and Queen Isabella of Spain personally oversaw the military campaigns to drive the Moors from Spain, so far permanently altering the political and religious contours of that country.
Another element in that denial may come from another source. And that is that for much of human history, most military historians were and even now are men, and many of the most celebrated simply did not want to include women, finding them so small in numbers and so scattered as to be useless in looking at the broader questions of waging war—or simply because they do not believe that women belonged in the sphere of war-making except as victims. Finally, many of them often lack extensive knowledge of women warriors (and warriors in general) in a non-Eurocentric context except as those societies defeated by “The Western Way of War.”
Perhaps Adrian Goldsworthy puts it best, especially for the earlier eras:
Women tend to be a shadowy presence in much of ancient history, and although it is obvious that they were often highly influential, their own voices are not preserved and they are seen solely through the prism of others.16
Part of the problem is also the scope of the data involved. With tens of thousands of battles, describing them and interpreting them required a broad brush in terms of sweep and detail. The bias for historians of military strategy and decisions was that even when women made those decisions, it was assumed that there were men behind the scenes actually making those choices for war and peace, for strategy and tactical actions. Hence it was safe to ignore them.
But they were there and in significant enough numbers to enable us to ask the following question: how many more women would have entered the armed forces and combat without the host of prohibitions in so many societies and polities preventing them from doing so?
At the present time, however, a number of mainstream male historians—such as Max Boot, John Lynn, Geoffrey Parker, and Robert Kaplan to name a few of the more prominent—are now paying more attention to the role of women, even when they have had to search for them resolutely in previously examined times and spaces.17 In the process, they are contributing to fresh examinations of the true roles played by women in warfare.
For today, if one truly wants to know about the various substantial roles women have played throughout history, it is now quite easy to find evidence of their activities and import across a wide array of time periods and societies. They are not, for the most part, hidden; they have simply been ignored. They are now, and have always been, in plain sight.
That is the theme of this book.
In terms of warfare, even with all the biases and submerging of the roles of women, they are still there for all to see.
They have always been there.
Women warriors have simply been hiding in plain sight.
Until fairly recently they have simply not been brought together in any holistic way. Patterns for their involvement have not been studied, and the differing contexts for their participation and success in warfare that exist have been scattered and seemingly random, or presented as sui generis, not placed in the context of the mode of warfare of their time and place.
But now, this highlighting has become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy because almost wherever we have looked, we find women playing important roles in war. As we hope to show in this annotated bibliography, there are thousands and thousands of women who have participated in warfare across the globe and across eons.
There have been some discernable reasons for the flood of articles and books dealing with women warriors over the last few decades: (1) more mainstream male military historians are writing about women in combat; (2) there have also been more women becoming military historians or having an interest in military dimensions involving women; (3) the historical revisionisms of Black history, social history, and women’s studies, including several strands of feminist thinking (one that more women engaged in military pursuits would change the nature of the military making it more pacific and another that sees women gaining equality within the military as having positive social value); (4) more recently, there has been considerable interest on the part of the LGBTQ? community in examining LGBTQ? participants throughout history including in the military sphere; and frankly (5) the Internet and sites such as Wikipedia and Military Wiki have greatly enhanced our opportunity for finding stimulating mention of often obscure women warriors. Some Internet “discoveries” turn out to be fantasy, some turn out to be debatable, but many, even most, are real and simply needed to be brought to our attention as contemporary sources are now much easy to access.
But all are stimulating a search for more information about more women in more cultures in military situations. For us, especially, in the present circumstances, it seems preferable to cast a too-wide net than one traditionally too narrow. Hopefully this volume errs on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion.
All five of these strands thus combine to contribute to greatly enriching our knowledge of women warriors and their actions throughout history and the present. We celebrate these activities and the momentum they have produced. Collectively they have greatly added to our store of knowledge about women playing active roles in warfare and stimulated interest in the study of war from different perspectives.
The women’s movement in general and gender studies in particular have become a most important part of this process of rediscovery, both in terms of simple description of where and when and how they participated, but also in terms of their multiplicity of intentions.
Women should be able to participate as equals, say many. They have in the past, often under duress and almost always with substantial resistance and difficulties, been present, whether societies have welcomed them or not.
Also, many in women’s and gender studies have reexamined history and found widespread cultural and societal censorship, and when that is stripped away, even more women and even greater roles for them have been uncovered.
Happily as a result, the last decades have seen a virtual tidal wave of articles and books and websites devoted to the new knowledge and much of this investigation has found it in the scholarly literature. In the process there have been many books and articles written looking at those various women through new lenses and with new perspectives.
There have been articles and books about the history of women at war. There have been articles and books of great women of history who have made strategic and policy decisions leading to war and it conduct. There has been an outpouring of historical works looking at individual women in action throughout time and space, but often under two rubrics, popular and scholarly.
Here we seek to bring together much of this new scholarship with the older, more popular versions of that interest, in order to present a truly holistic and far-ranging bibliography that melds the popular with the scholarly so that the interested reader can find both in one hopefully convenient resource.
We know of no other major work that seeks to combine the new knowledge about women and their various roles in warfare with the long-studied dimensions of warcraft and differing styles of war throughout human history, so we seek to buttress our collective knowledge of these illuminated women warriors with background and context for their achievements and the limits thereon.
In order to give the reader quick access to the military dimensions of the period in which the woman warrior appears, we have provided “Notes” in the annotated bibliography section that give some relevant background for the modalities of warfare in effect when particular women warriors operated.
We have included books, articles, essays, and other materials. Several such important companion sources are MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History and Osprey Publishing’s various series on warriors over the ages which have proven very useful to undergraduates and graduates alike in providing introductory and well-illustrated context for the women highlighted.
The articles and books cited in subsequent chapters are easy to read, yet they are based on superb scholarship and lavishly illustrated. This enables their texts to compete with PowerPoint presentations and the Internet. Many students in my classes have found these articles to be stimulating and enlightening, leading to further research rather easily and productively. By providing context for the women of a particular location or time frame, the interested reader can thus learn of the history of the modes of warfare along with the important dimensions of female participation. Some eras, some societies and some modalities of warfare give women better opportunities to participate than others.
While this annotated bibliography seeks to bring together for undergraduate use the scholarly and some popular works depicting the women we have identified as warriors, it is our hope that it also will prove useful to anyone seeking to examine the thousands of female warriors whose participation has added to that process.
Finally there is the question concerning the criteria for including women in the category of “women warriors.” Many other works include only women who have served directly in combat. Others broaden to the scope to any ruler or regent who saw war while they were in charge of its conduct. Still others would have us include women who have dramatically changed or even prophesized change in their broader societies.
Determining what constitutes a woman warrior is a perpetual—and rewarding—undertaking by the classes taking my course “Women at War.” Leaving the definition relatively broad but applying it most judiciously has proven to be the best way to understanding the involvement of women across the globe and throughout time and space.
We have thus cast our net most widely, including women generals and military strategists and leaders as well as women in combat, but the inclusion mesh is moderate, hopefully not too large and not too small. We hope readers will end up forming their own conclusions and weaving their own, surely improved, net.
Scholarship remains, and always will be, a collective enterprise.
There is now such a virtual cornucopia of women warriors arrayed across time, space, and cultures that trying to organize them in any coherent way presents considerable problems for those cataloging them.
What are some ways to sort and cluster women warriors? Obviously, they are numerous and varied, but what follows is a very small sampling that students over the years have found useful. These few typologies are meant to be suggestive, not exhaustive. Many cited in one typology could fit in one or more other categories and are kept sparse in the service of brevity. And also, to be honest, so as not to tax the attention span of those younger scholars addicted to the allures of constant screen time and Twitter feeds. In any case, the following categories are meant to be illustrative, not definitive, and the reader is encouraged to come up with additional ways of cataloging these many, many intriguing women.
One obvious way is to do it geographically, simply where were they located when practicing warcraft, not necessarily where they were born.
Here are some pertinent examples that fit with this approach:
Berenice II (273–221 BCE) was a Ptolemaic queen married to Ptolemy III Euergetes of Egypt during the Hellenistic period. She is credited with riding with her father Maga, king of Cyrene, into battle before her marriage and when his forces were on the verge of defeat in one, Berenice rallied the remaining troops, leading them to victory on horseback. “Tradition also emphasizes her bravery and even—like her chariot-riding cousin Berenice Syra—a certain blood lust.”18
Amina of Hausaland (1533–1610) was an African Muslim leader who defied a wide variety of conventions—male dominance, existing Islamic hierarchies, and African traditions—all of which militated against her success, yet she would go on to conquer much of north central Africa. She ruled northern Nigeria, with a capital at Zaria, south of what is now Kano. Born into the ruling house of Zazzau, she took the throne in about 1576. She reportedly refused all suitors and led her armies, fighting for 34 years and presiding over a great expansion of trade. Under her rule, the Hausa language became the language of trade.
In the Kano chronicle it says, “In her time, Amina, a woman as capable as any man.” The African playwright Wale Ogunyemi in his play Queen Amina of Zazzau goes even further, celebrating her warcraft as well, calling Amina “a strategist for all times.”19
Masarico (1470–1545) was a Mende woman who hived off from north central Africa and led her followers (subsequently known as the Manes) into what is now Liberia and Sierra Leone. Portuguese sources describe her military innovations, including complex three-pronged attacking units and other strategic imperatives, as well as their own fierce fighting with the Manes at their fortress at Mina.20
Or in more modern times, take the example of Rose Kabuye (1961–), a Rwandan freedom fighter for the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) during the 1990–1993 Rwandan War when the Tutsis invaded and again took over that country. She became a lieutenant colonel and highest-ranking female military officer in the Rwandan army. Later she became mayor of Kigali and eventually, chief of protocol under President Paul Kagame.
Finally, we could not really be putting a book together on women warriors throughout time and space in Africa and not include the “Amazons,” the women warriors of Dahomey in the 19th century.
During the reign of King Ghezo, who ruled over Dahomey from 1818 to 1858), women warriors were officially integrated into the army when faced with various other tribes pressing in upon him and European powers, especially France, trying to colonize and Ghezo faced a “manpower” shortage. His answer was an all-female force, the warrior women of Dahomey. As Stanley B. Alpern writes in his Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey, this all-female unit fought at Abeokuta against the Egba in 1851 and 1854, and later against the French in 1890 and 1892. While some (such as Martin van Creveld) have questioned their battle worthiness, it is worth quoting one of the French Legionaries who fought them:
These warrioresses fight with extreme valor,
always ahead of the other troops….
They are outstandingly brave…
well trained for combat
and very disciplined.21
And Major Grandin, who published a two-volume work in 1895, concluded:
The valor of the amazons is real. Trained from childhood in the most arduous exercises, constantly incited to war, they bring to battle a veritable fury and a sanguinary ardor… inspiring by their courage and their indomitable energy the other troops who follow them.22
For her part, Rani Lakshmibai (1834–1858) led her Jhansi State troops against the British during the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857–1858 (or as many Indians call it, “The Great Rebellion”). She exhorted her troops to die in battle if necessary and is today regarded as one of the pioneers for Indian independence. Michael Edwardes provides an interesting account of the role played by the Rani of Jhansi in the uprising and quotes the general who defeated her in battle, Sir Hugh Rose, who called her “the bravest and best of the military leaders of the rebellion” after she was killed in action during the Battle of Gwalior.23
Another Rani, Abbakka Chowta, the Rani of Ullal, “The Fearless Queen,” who reigned from 1525 to 1570, fought off the Portuguese for four decades, defending her port city of Ullal. Regarded as the “first woman freedom fighter of India,” she was later captured after attacking the Portuguese fort at Mangalore. There she led a revolt in prison and died in the subsequent fighting.
Or take Chand Bibi (1550–1599), a Muslim woman warrior who acted as Regent of Jaipur and Ahmednagar and led her soldiers against the Mughal forces of Emperor Akbar in 1595. She also personally put down various rebellions, reportedly taking her own life by filling a well with acid and then jumping into it as the Mughals closed in (although other accounts have her killed by her own troops for negotiating with the same Mughals).24
From China we find Quin Liang-Yu (1574–1648) in the Ming Dynasty period. Her well-documented life as a Ming female general in Sichuan Province indicates that she fought against the Manchus invading in the north and also put down a series of peasant revolts in the south. Leading an elite unit in a variety of combat situations, she is the only woman known to have been a regional military commander under the Mings. Taught by her father and initially accompanying her husband into battle, she took over his command in 1613 when he was killed. For her battlefield exploits, she was highly decorated and was appointed the Crown Prince’s Guardian by the Chongzhen Emperor.
Japan too is well represented in the field of women warriorhood. Although we feature the most famous one here, Tomoe Gozen, there were many others. Tomoe Gozen is of legendary proportions. She purportedly commanded 300 samurai in a battle against the Taira clan and later, fighting at the battle of Awazu in 1184, where she fought valiantly until told by Lord Kiso to flee, whereupon she immediately charged the leader of the opponents, Onda no Hachiro Moroshige of Musashi, and his thirty men, killing him and cutting off his head. Only then did she deign to leave the battlefield and according to Stephen Turnbull, who provides much background on female samurai, Tomoe’s near contemporary, Hangaku Gozen, fought at the siege of Torisaka Castle in 1201 and Tsuruhime took part in the naval battles of 1541 as well.25
It should be noted there are obviously many more Indian and Chinese and other Asian women who have not only been in battle but led in battle: Abbakka Chowta, who in the late 16th century fought off the Portuguese from Goa for 40 years, and Mah Chuchak Begum, who led an army to defeat Munim Khan at Jalalabad in the mid-16th century; the Thai queen Suriyothai, whose battle elephants helped defeat the invaders from Burma in 1548 when she fought with King Maha Chakkraphat during the 1547–1549 war between Siam and Burma,26 and the Sikh warrior Mai Bhago, who led soldiers against the Mughals in 1705.
Here we can cite Heni Te Kiri Karamu (1840–1933), a Maori woman warrior from northern New Zealand. Normally in Maori society women warriors were not encouraged to take part in battle except in exceptional circumstances. Heni’s clan, the Koherki, joined the Nga Te Pangi group that was being hard pressed by the British. Their defensive pa (fortified trench and dugout) was under attack and Heni went in action during the battle. Ironically, she is best remembered in Britain for giving water to wounded British soldiers before the Koherki retreated rather than for having fought against them.
There is also the Australian Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAF) (1941–1947)—Australian women who from 1941 to 1947 were a branch of the Australian armed forces and numbered 27,000. Machinists, signals traffic, intelligence, bomb armers, munitions experts, and many other positions were filled by them. They came under attack by the Japanese at various points and eventually paved the way for women to become regular members of the Australian Air Force after World War II.
Note: This is a good juncture to pay homage to the many women in many countries who participated in World War II in other “auxiliary” organizations. Some examples of these include: The Australian Women’s Royal Australian Army Corps (WRAAC) and Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS), the American Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve (SPAR), the U.S. Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squad (WAFS), Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES), Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) later the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), the Brit ish Women’s Auxiliary Air Force-UK (WAAF), the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps-UK (WAAC) and the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps (FANY).
These women were vital to the war effort, many had very dangerous jobs (such as ferrying aircraft across countries and continents), and some, like the Australians cited above, came under fire. This was especially true for such units such as the various antiaircraft battalions.
A number of Indigenous women stand out here, women such as Queen Nanna of the Maroons (c. 1686–c. 1755) who was the acknowledged leader of escaped slaves in the eastern part of Jamaica. Originally from what is now Ghana, she led this cluster of “Windward Maroons.” Over the course of a decade, she thwarted and eventually defeated the British in the First Maroon War (1728–1734) using guerrilla tactics. The British eventually sued for peace and signed a treaty in 1740 giving her Maroons a land grant on which was built “New Nanny Town,” today known as Moore Town. She was a superb tactician and strategist, and her military prowess surprised the British.27
Or take note of Carlota Lucumi (?–1844). She was an Afro-Cuban woman who led the slave revolt of 1843 at the Triumvirato plantation in Matanzas Cuba. Yoruba African born, she was known as “La Negra Carlota.” She died in battle at the end of the revolt in 1844, one of a series of slave uprisings in Cuba that year. Fidel Castro, in sending Cuban forces to Angola in 1975, called the effort “Operation Carlota” in her honor.
Think also of La Mulatresse Solitude (c. 1772–1802). Her mother was raped on a slave ship coming from Africa and she was born on Guadeloupe. When the French Revolution freed the slaves in 1794, she joined a Maroon community in Guadeloupe. Although Napoleon reinstated slavery in 1802, a number of Guadeloupeans resisted under Joseph Ignace and Louis Delgrès. La Mulatresse Solitude joined the band of Delgrès. When the French troops (4,000) arrived under General Richepance, they attacked some 1,000 former soldiers and rebels at Galion in May 1802 and defeated them. La Mulatresse Solitude was captured, but she was not executed until after the birth of her child in November. She was hanged the next day.
Although mentioned below under slave revolts, Sanite Belair (1781–1802), the Haitian revolutionary, deserves mention here. A lieutenant in the army of Toussaint Louverture, she fought in numerous battles and when captured by the French and executed, she died calling out “Long live Freedom. Down with slavery!”
Some examples include Kenau Hasselaar (1526–1588) who, during Spanish pacification of the Low Countries under King Philip II of Spain, when the Spanish invaded the town of Haarlem, led a stiff fight against the invaders for seven months. In the process, Kenau Hasselaar organized and led a group of 300 women in defense of the city. When Haarlem finally surrendered, the garrison was put to death, but she survived. A great hero of Holland, she has had many ships named after her.
Then there is Cynane (357–323 BCE). Half sister of Alexander the Great (and daughter of Philip II and the Illyrian Audata), Cynane was a warrior princess in her own right. Illyrian women often were engaged as fighters and Cynane had considerable military training. She fought in a number of early battles with Alexander and, according to Polyaenus,
Cynane, the daughter of Philip, was famous for her military knowledge: she conducted armies, and in the field charged at the head of them. In an engagement with the Illyrians, she with her own hand slew Caeria their queen; and with the great slaughter defeated the Illyrian army.28
Eventually Cynane was killed by Alcetus after the death of Alexander as she was speaking to the Macedonian troops.
Or take Grace O’Malley/Gráinne Mhaol (1530–1603), the Lord of the Ó Máille dynasty in the west of Ireland. Upon her father’s death, she took over active leadership of the lordship on land and sea. She led raids and attacks and involved herself in Irish/English politics. Called “the nurse of all rebellions in the province for this forty years,” she interacted with Queen Elizabeth I, claiming equal status as Queen of Ireland. She also insisted on a personal meeting with her—and got one. A pirate’s pirate, Grace is now a feminist legend to boot.
Another interesting case is Laudomia Forteguerri (1515–1555), one of three women leaders in resisting the siege of Sienna by organizing a militia of 100 women in January 1553. The women built fortifications to resist the 1554–1555 siege of the city. Although she was married and had three children, Forteguerri is also thought to be one of Italy’s earliest lesbian writers. The city would eventually fall to the Imperial Spanish forces under Duke Cosimo de Medici after the bloody Battle of Marciano.
In Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, we find Agustina de Aragon (1786–1857). During the siege of Zaragoza in 1808, she stepped up when the French were about to break through the city’s defenses. She loaded a cannon and fired at point-blank range. Her courage electrified the defenders, and they fought the French off for the next two weeks. Augustina escaped the siege and became a low-level rebel leader for the guerrilleros. She was eventually painted by many, including Francisco Goya. See his “What Courage!” in the series “The Disasters of War.”
Four Inca women, Micaela Bastidas (1744–1781), Bartolina Sis (1750–1782), Gregoria Apaza (1751–1782), and Tomasa Tito Condemayta (1729–1781) should be mentioned here as all participated in Tupac Amaru II’s revolt against Spanish rule in what is now Bolivia. Tomasa Tito Condemayta was a military strategist of note and led her women’s army to defeat the Spanish at Sangarara. There is considerable literature on their roles, much of it quite recent.29
Dandara of Palmares (?–1694) was an Afro-Brazilian warrior of Palmares, a settlement of free Afro-Brazilian people established in the 17th century in what is now the state of Alagoas. Dandara fought in many battles as part of that free settlement despite efforts of slave owners to capture or kill her. When the head chief of the region, Ganga Zumba, signed a peace treaty with the government of the state of Pernambuco, she and her husband led another revolt because the treaty did not outlaw slavery. Eventually she was captured and committed suicide to avoid enslavement.
Then there was Rafaela Herrera (1742–1805). She was a Nicaraguan who fought the British at the battle for Rio San Juan de Nicaragua (1762). Educated by her father, who was a captain of artillery, she was put in charge of defense of the Fortress of the Immaculate Conception on the San Juan River when British and Mistiko filibusters attacked. When he died, she directed cannon fire that killed the British commander and led the defenders to a victory in a battle lasting six days.
Finally in this section, we note Juana Azurduy de Padilla (1780–1862). A mestizo (Spanish and Indigenous person), she was born in what is now Bolivia. When her father was killed by the Spanish, she married and, alongside her husband, subsequently gave birth right after the battle of Pintatora in 1815. Subsequently Padilla fought a guerrilla war against the Spanish including 16 major actions from 1809 to 1816. She was wounded in 1816 and her husband was killed trying to rescue her. Padilla then fled into what is now Argentina and established an insurrection commanding an army of 6,000. In one battle she reportedly killed 15 men while leading the all-female battalion of her personal bodyguard. Today, both Bolivia and Argentina recognize her as a national heroine.
One prominent example is Hind Bint ‘Utbah (late 6th century–early 7th century). Wife of an important pre-Islamic Meccan leader, she fought against the Muslims at Badr 622 (the Meccans lost) and Uhud 624 (the Meccans won). But then she converted to Islam and fought with them at the Syrian Battle of Yarmuk and is credited by Arab sources as playing an important role during the second day (the Battle of Yarmuk lasted six in total) by rallying the fleeing Muslims. This huge Muslim victory over Byzantium at Yarmuk (626) changed the course of history by projecting Muslim military and political power into the Levant from which it has never withdrawn.
After the Battle of Uhud (624), Hind declared “We have paid you back for Badr and a war that follows a war is always violent…. I have slaked my vengeance and fulfilled my vow.”30
Many accounts of the life and time of the Prophet Muhammad omit or downplay the military accomplishments of women in the early years of struggle, yet there were some prominent examples such as Umm ‘Umara (a.k.a. Umm ‘Uhud). An Arab Muslim woman who fought beside Muhammad in several key battles (including Uhud and Yamma) during his rise to power. After the battle of Uhud (624 CE) in which she was wounded several times including severely in the neck, Muhammed declared “Whenever I looked to the right or left I saw her fighting in front of me.” Umm later fought at Yamma (632), was wounded several more times, and lost her hand. For her valor and courage as well as her fighting ability, Umm was granted the high honor as being recognized as one of the “Companions of the Prophet.”31
There is an interesting contemporary parallel to Umm Umara in the female Kurdish Peshmerga fighters of the present day and the female pilots of the United Arab Emirates, both groups of which are held to be heretical by some in the Muslim world.
Another of the early female Muslim war leaders was Khawla bint Al-Azaar, a commander in the Rashidun army. She was in numerous battles in the Levant, including Syria, Jordan, and Palestine, including the decisive Battle of Yarmouk in 636 against the Byzantine empire (known to the Muslims as “Romans”). She is recognized today in Muslim countries such as Jordan, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates.
Think of how many women who fought in so many wars and who never had their accomplishments celebrated by subsequent historians because they were airbrushed out of those respective narratives or have had their roles downplayed or submerged.
There are numerous examples of women fighters in this category. Here is but a sampling.
The first is an exception to the thesis of this book, because the story of this Native American woman warrior was not hiding in plain sight but actually hidden from view for over a century. Buffalo Calf Road Woman (c. 1850–1879) was a Northern Cheyenne woman who saved her wounded warrior brother, Chief Comes in Sight, at the Battle of the Rosebud in 1876. She later fought alongside her husband, Black Coyote, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Eyewitness accounts have her going into battle with a pistol and much ammunition. Credited after 100 years in 2005 (the survivors of the battle took an oath of silence at the time to avoid retribution from the U.S.) for having knocked General George Custer off his horse during that battle by an eyewitness, Kate Bighead, who puts her at the center of the battle:
Most of the women looking at the battle stayed out of reach of the bullets, as I did. But there was one who went in close at times. Her name was Calf Woman… who had a six-shooter, with bullets and powder, and she fired many shots at the soldiers. She was the only woman there who had a gun.32
In 1878 she and her family broke out of the reservation with the Northern Cheyenne (from Oklahoma back to Montana). On the way her husband shot a number of Native Americans and U.S. soldiers. Eventually captured along with Black Coyote, she died of diphtheria while he was awaiting trial. Black Coyote then committed suicide in his cell. How many schoolchildren over the years have been deprived of knowing about her exploits?
Or take Harriet Tubman (1822–1913). Well known as an abolitionist and political activist, she was born a slave and escaped to take part in the Underground Railway and helped John Brown recruit men for his attack on Harpers Ferry. During the Civil War she worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, then an armed scout. But in this latter activity, she was a true pioneer, becoming the first woman to lead a military expedition, one which freed 700 slaves at Combahee Ferry. A major motion picture in 2019 reprised her various accomplishments.
Then there is Francoise Marie De La Tour (1602–1645). French born, in 1625 she went to Nova Scotia, married Charles de La Tour, and helped build Fort La Tour. In a conflict with Jesuit Seigneur d’Aulnay Charnise, she assumed the role of military commander when her husband was absent. In one engagement, she used their three ships to fight Charnise off, although later he returned and captured the fort, putting her soldiers to death and her in prison at Port Royale where she died.
Ignacia Reachy (1816–1866) was from Guadalajara, Mexico, and organized a battalion of women to defend her home during the Second French Intervention in Mexico (1861–1866). However, Reachy soon left Guadalajara to join the Army of the East, what is now the modern-day Mexican Army, and distinguished herself in Mexico’s fight against Napoleon’s France. Assigned to the Second Division under General Jose Maria Arteaga as a second lieutenant, she was captured for a year in 1862 while trying to protect General Arteaga. However, she escaped after a year and reported back to him, ready for more combat. She was then made the Commander of the Lancers of Jalisco, but in 1866 she was killed in action.
Several useful examples from Oceana would include Manono II (c. 1780–1819), a Hawaiian warrior woman who died fighting with her husband in a struggle for the traditional religion at the Battle of Kuamo’o in 1819. They were defending the traditional Kapu system, which kept women and men from eating together and prohibited women from eating certain foods.
We should note that while fighting to uphold the gender norms of the Kapu system, Manono II did defy the gendered expectations of women to be submissive and pacific. This tension and her actions remind us that we should not assume that the actions women warriors take always fit into the modern, Western understanding of women’s liberation.
Another example would be Queen Teriitaria II (1790–1858), Queen of Tahiti. She fought the French in the Franco Tahitian War of 1844–1847, repelling them in the Battle of Maeva in 1846 although she was later deposed by them.33
Other Polynesian women warriors of note fought on Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, the Society Islands, the Cook Islands, and the Marquesas and include the daughter of Chie Ahomee of Tonga and Putahaie, wife of Keatonui of Taiohae Bay, and Nukuhiva in the Marquesas.
Another way, more interesting albeit more difficult perhaps, is to look at women warriors in terms of the military typologies or patterns into which many of them seem to fall.
For many, the Sarmatian/Scythian warrior women horse archers began the “women warriors” saga. These women, like their male counterparts on the steppes, fought primarily from horseback and with composite bows and arrows. Certainly in the Western tradition, the Greeks were the first to describe women warriors known as “Amazons.” Interestingly enough, the Greeks were both fascinated and repelled by them. When the numerous Greek polis were established on the Black Sea, they encountered stories of and myths about women who rode horses and shot bows in battle. And although we don’t have any reliable records of the Greek phalanx encountering the female horse archers, it seems likely that such interactions occurred on the periphery of the steppe lands north of the Black Sea.
To the Greeks the very idea of women acting as independent beings and going to battle, let along killing men in action, was doubly anathema, although ironically enough, we do have instances of Greek warriors dressing as women for purposes of assassination.34
In the first instance, martial women went totally against their well-ordered universe of male hierarchical dominance, with women excluded from voting or participating in warfare. Amazons were a threat to the very underpinning of the patriarchy and thus to be both ridiculed and hated, because their existence upset the “normal” balance of the known universe.
The Greek disdain for women steppe warriors also comes from the nature of the Greek way of war versus the steppe warfare with its mounted horse archers. The steppe horsemen armed with composite bows would dominate many centuries of battle situations in Central Asia and its periphery in an arc of several thousand miles over a thousand years of history.35
The Greeks could never seriously challenge the horse archers effectively. The Greeks and their heavily armored infantry phalanx formations were able to operate effectively only in small valleys and for very short periods of time. They could not, and generally did not, do well on the open plains where any horse archers could kill from afar, and never come within striking distance of the Greek spears.
How frustrating then was the very idea that these horse archers killed from afar, and women doing some of that killing undoubtedly made it doubly hateful, even shameful, for the Greeks.
But these Amazons were not legends alone, nor did their military process require Greek certification one way or the other. Women horse archers were widespread and extensive across a broad arc among many societies. For over 1,000 years, across a 2,000-mile Eurasian arc, horse archers dominated the Eurasian landmass, leaving behind irrefutable evidence of their presence. With their mobility and standoff fighting ability to inflict casualities, as well as their durability and longevity when in action against heavily armed infantry, the horse archers, male and female, were the premium military formation across the vast steppes from Hungary to China.
In the Don Basin and Central Asia, for example, among the Sarmatians and Scythians and other steppe peoples, 20% of women’s graves have bows and other weapons buried with them. More recent archaeological and DNA evidence places these women warriors back as far as 2,500 years ago, thus providing stark new evidence that Herodotus was not wrong is depicting the “Amazons” of the day.36 They were, in fact, Scythian women engaged in ongoing warfare.
Just as horse archer warfare on the Asian steppes was conducive to women’s participation, certain other types of warfare seem to have been more open to female participation than other forms. For example, such as in the Middle Ages, castles and the nature of defensive medieval warfare from the fortifications enabled women to step into leadership roles more easily than at other times and in other situations.
Megan McLaughlin, in her seminal work “The Woman Warrior: Gender, Warfare and Society in Medieval Europe,” also draws our attention in this category to several important distinctions between women warriors as foot soldiers and women warriors as generals and points out that much of medieval warfare in Europe involving the defense of castles and therefore should be thought of as “domestic warfare.”37 They also can be thought of as women “military commanders” depending on their time, place in the decision-making apparatus, and activities.
For example, one can look at the large group of women who were in castles or fortresses and, in the absence of a male war leader, took charge during the Middle Ages. One of the most famous of these was Jeanne La Flamme, Jeanne of Montfort (1295–1374), Joanna of Flanders, or “Jeanne La Flamme.” She was the consort Duchess of Brittany and showed her skill as a military leader defending her captured husband’s (Jeane de Montfort, Duke of Brittany) dukedom against the challenge by the House of Blois during the Breton War of Secession. Jeanne La Flamme actually led her husband’s knights in battle when he was in prison and became famous throughout France for burning the tents and supplies of her French opponents.
Or take the even more famous Caterina Sforza (1462–1509). Milan born, she was Countess of Forli and Lady of Imola by her husband Girolamo Riario. After his death, she ruled Imola and Forli before being finally defeated by the Pope Rodrigo Borgia Pope Alexander VI, who sent his illegitimate son Cesare Borgia to capture her while she and her soldiers waited in a fortress in Ravaldino. Caterina is cited several times by Machiavelli in The Prince and Discourses on Livy for her harsh treatment of her subjects, but it may be she was only criticized because she was a woman, for contemporary men did all these things as a matter of course.
Elizabeth Lev in her The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy’s Most Courageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de ’Medici gives a fascinating account of her heroic stand in 1499 against Cesare Borgia, his mercenaries, and assisting French forces. For hours Catarina fought in battle with her troops, finally betrayed by someone on her own side “for she had no intention of leaving the battlefield alive.”38
Indeed, John Lynn, calling this category of women warriors in castles “Besieged,” finds that in the early modern period, women defending home and hearth are considered quite acceptable and widespread even when breaking gender norms for their sex, declaring as he does, “Women who fought bravely and publicly as women in siege warfare were anything but rare.”39
Some other examples include Agnes of Dunbar (1300–1369) in Scotland, Lady Mary Banks (d. 1661) during the English Civil War, and Jeanne d’Albert (1528–1572) during the Wars of Religion. Aluzehen (during the Chinese Jin dynasty [1115–1234]) also led troops against Puxian Wannu during a siege as well.
There was also Stamira of Ancona (1172) who defended the city of Ancona when she fought against the archbishop of Mainz during the Byzantine- Venetian conflict (1170–1177) as did Alruda Frangipani, who liberated the town of Ancona from imperial siege during the same war and Marzia Degli Ubaldini (1330–c. 1374) who defended the castle of Cesena (near Forli) against papal attacks in 1335 and 1357. Emma de Gauder (1059–1096), Countess of Norfolk, also defended her husband’s castle against the king as did Nicolaa de la Hay (1160–1230) of Lincoln who commanded during two sieges, one in 1191 and the other in 1216–1217 and Charlotte Stanley, Countess of Derby (1599–1664) who defended Lathom House during the English Civil War. In Poland, Anna Dorota Chrzanowska refused to let her husband surrender the castle of Trembowla during the Polish-Ottoman War of 1672–1676 while Ilona Zrinyi fought off the Habsburgs during the siege of Palanok castle (1685–1688).
In Japan, this phenomenon was also much in evidence during the 16th and 17th centuries. To take but a few examples: Lady Ichikawa defended Konomine Castle in 1569; Akai Teruko served as commander in the Battle of Kanayama Castle in 1574, holding out for 18 months; Kato Tsume fought that same year in the siege of Suemori Castle; Myorin-ni defended Tsurusaki Castle in 1585–1586 and Yuki no Kata defended Anotsu Castle in 1600.
There are many more from a number of countries.
This is thus quite an interesting and far-reaching category.
Also, at sea where ships are like little floating castles, there have been women admirals, in charge of their own ships and their fleets, and they successfully appear and reappear across time and space. Women admirals such as Artemisia of Halicarnassus, who was at the battles of Artemisia and Salamis, and her Aceh, Greek, Irish, and Chinese compatriots all show women warriors able to compete with their male counterparts in this type of warfare.
Here we encounter a whole array of successful women admirals such as the legendary Admiral Keumalahayati or Malahayati (c. 1501–16th century). Born into the Aceh Sultanate at the height of its power, Keumalahayati convinced the reigning sultan to form, and put her in charge of, an armada of Acehnese women whose husbands had died in war. This armada was called the Inong Bale, and Keumalahayati led it through successful warfare with the Dutch and diplomacy with the British. She eventually died in battle, at the hands of the Portuguese. The female GAM unit, the Inong Bale Forces of the Free Aceh Movement (1976–2005) was named for her.
Or take one of the most successful pirates in history, Ching Shih, a.k.a. Cheng I Sao (1775–1844). At one time, she commanded and at least loosely controlled as many as 300 ships and 20,000 pirates. At various points, she fought the British, the Portuguese, and the Quin dynasty. In the process, her Red Flag Fleet was never defeated in battle. Unlike most pirates, she knew when to retire and successfully made peace with the Quins and died ashore at age 69 after successfully running a variety of enterprises.
Another Chinese bandit queen and “outlaw of the marshes” is Huang Bamei (1906–1982) who fought in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949) and the Cross Strait conflict (1949–1955). Her life quickly became the stuff of legends in both China and Taiwan.40 She played a number of roles and had a variety of careers, first as a bandit, then as a smuggler who traded with the Japanese, then as an anti-Japanese fighter recruited by the Nationalists. After World War II, she fought the Communists, both during the Chinese Civil War before the Nationalists fled to Taiwan and afterward as a guerrilla leader on the mainland.
Known as “Double Gun” for her ability to shoot with both hands, she joined the Nationalist Army in 1940 as a protégé of Mao Sen, a top commander of the Nationalists. The CIA tried to recruit her for cross-straits operations after 1949, but she preferred to work directly with the Nationalists against Mao’s forces.
Like their male counterparts, numerous women wrote accounts of their military lives and published them, some to considerable acclaim. Some interesting ones include the following:
Loreta Velasquez (1842–1897) who, after her husband was killed in the American Civil War, signed up as Harry T. Buford, and fought at 1st Bull Run, Ball’s Bluff, Ft. Donelson, and Shiloh before being wounded and discovered to be a woman. She was then discharged, whereupon she served the Confederacy as a spy. She claims to have gotten close to both U. S. Grant and Abraham Lincoln. Velasquez wrote a book entitled The Woman in Battle: A Narrative of the Exploits, Adventures, and Travels of Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Otherwise Known as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, Confederate States Army.41
Nadezhda Durova (1783–1866) was a Russian woman who, disguised as a man, fought for the Czar during the Napoleonic wars. Becoming a cavalry officer and distinguishing herself in battle, she was awarded the Cross of St. George (the first woman ever) and promoted to lieutenant in a hussar (light cavalry) regiment by Czar Alexander I, who found out he had an “Amazon” in his army. By her own account, The Cavalry Maiden: Journals of Russian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars, this Russian woman from the Urals, disguised as a boy, joined the Imperial Army, and found herself in the Polish Regiment as a lancer, seeing combat in 1807 and again in 1812–1814 against Napoleon. “At last my dreams have come true! I am a warrior! I am in the Polish Horse, I bear arms and moreover, Fortune has placed me in one of the bravest regiments of our army!”42 She fought at the Battle of Smolensk and was wounded in the Battle of Borodino in 1812. Durova only left the army in 1816 to take care of her ailing father.
Flora Sandes (1876–1956) was an English woman who went to Serbia to serve as a St. John Ambulance driver, but later enrolled in the Serbian Army and was promoted to the rank of captain. Sandes fought in numerous engagements and earned seven medals. Wounded in battle, she received the highest decoration of the Serbian Military, the Order of the Karadorde’s Star. In her book, An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army, she outlines her military career in Serbia, Albania, and Corfu. She apparently loved “becoming an ordinary soldier.”43 Her account is charmingly self-effacing, and humorous and shows a fine eye for detail.
Finally, it is important to include in this section Christine de Pizan who although she was not in combat, nevertheless wrote two very important texts in the Middle Ages dealing with war and the women warriors of the past such as Artemisia: The Book of the City of Ladies and The Book of Feats of Arms and of Chivalry (see analysis of both in part 2), she was one of the first authors to rediscover and study the earlier Roman texts of military writers such as Vegetius and bring them back into the mainstream.
Here we have one of the largest and most inclusive categories, women who have participated as warriors in guerrilla warfare/revolutionary uprisings.
In modern times, these have included hundreds of thousands of participants in the Cuban, Algerian, Vietnamese, Angolan, Mozambique, South Africa, Eritrean, Guinee Bissau, Salvadorian, Peruvian, Argentinian Nicaraguan, Free Aceh, Huk Philipina, Malaysian, Cambodian, Timoran, and other revolutions. See for example, the women in this volume: the French women of the Paris Commune such as Louise Michel, Spanish Civil War Republican women such as Lina Odean, the Philipina HMB Huks, women of the Peruvian Shining Path, women of the Colombian FARC, Eritrean women of the EPLF, women of Mozambique FRELIMO, women of the Angolan UNITA, MPLA, women of Namibia SWAPO, women of Guinea Bissau PAIGC, women of South West Africa SWAPO, women of the South African ANC, the Rwandan RPF, Zimbabwe ZANU, Vietnamese, Malayan and Chinese women warriors, Cubans, Algerian FLN, Hungarian Freedom fighters, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, Cambodian Kamer Rouge and Pated Lao women warriors, Nicaraguan Sandinista FSLN, El Salvador FMLA, Free Aceh GAM, Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, Black Widows of Chechnya, Timoran Falintil-FDTL, the ISIS Al Khansaa Brigade, and Kurdish Peshmerga women warriors.44
But before the contemporary era, there were women who fought in earlier revolutions, including the American, the French, the Latin American revolts against the Spanish (Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, etc.)—and against them in the causes of Royalist France and Spain—women such as Renée Bordereau, “The Angevin;” Celeste Bulkekey, Catalina de Erauso, “The Lieutenant Nun,” and Rose-Alexandrine Darreou. We also have the example of Maria Lebstuck, the Croatian woman in the revolution of 1848 against the Austrian Empire
One could also include here another potential subcategory, partisans. Women participated in considerable numbers in a variety of partisan operations during World War II, including those in Russian, Yugoslavian, French, Italian, Dutch, Vietnamese, Danish, Belgian, Norwegian, Czech, Greek, Rumanian, Polish, Jewish, Chinese, Indonesian, Burmese, Malayan, Thai, Filipino, and other resistance movements.
Recent scholarship has also finally illuminated the war-making contributions of many Ethiopian women fighters. Wayzaro Shewaraged Gadle, Wayzaro Olamawarq Terunah, Wayzaro Shewanash Abreha, and Wayzaro Lakelas all fought against the Italian invasion of 1935–1936 and later with the shifta Patriot movement who resisted from 1937 to 1941, when Ethiopia was finally liberated.45
Additionally, contemporary studies now accent the key role played by women in the Taiping Rebellion (which lasted from 1850 to 1864) against the Qing Dynasty and resulted in the deaths of 20 million people, making it the most destructive civil war in recorded history. For example, an expert on the rebellion, Maochun Yu, states that a “unique feature of the Taiping military organization was its utilization of women soldiers in combat units. Since all men and women were regarded as brothers and sisters under God, no one was supposed to face discrimination because of their sex.”46 Such female generals as Qiu Ersao, Hong Xuanjiao, and Su Snniang emerged during this most bloody of conflicts.
At the other end of the war spectrum, there are a number of countries which have included women in their peacekeeping details seconded to the United Nations. By 2020, some 5% of United Nations “Blue Helmets” were female, serving in South Sudan, the Central Africa Republic, Darfur, Mali, and Haiti and on the India-Pakistan border. They have come from a number of countries as part of the regular army units of countries such as India, Bangladesh, Ireland, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, Niger, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.
Some countries have also used this participation as a method of integrating former rebels and opponents into their national armies. These include Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and Liberia.
A great variety of women of note can be found here. Sabiha Gokcen (1913–2001) who was the adopted daughter of Mustafa Kemal and the first Turkish woman pilot as well as believed to be the first woman in air action bombing the Kurds during a punitive strike in 1937.
Or look at Ecaterina Teodoroiu (1894–1917), the Romanian woman killed in action leading Romanian troops into battle against Germans. Originally a nurse, when her brother was killed, to avenge his death she joined the 18th Infantry Regiment. Captured and wounded in action, she then became the first woman in World War I to command men in action. She was eventually killed defending a bridge with the 11th Division during the Battle of Marasesti.
Then there is Evgeniya Shakhovskaya (1889–1920), the first female aviator in Russia, who, during World War I, flew reconnaissance missions over the battlefield on the Eastern Front. Accused of spying and put in prison, she was later liberated by Bolsheviks and became a chief executioner for the Cheka.
Of note also is Susan Travers (1909–2003), an upper-class English woman raised in France. Travers joined the Red Cross in 1939 and in 1940 served with the French expeditionary force that was sent to Finland, where she was a nurse during the “Winter War.” After the fall of France, she fled with the Free French to North Africa via Central Africa and the Horn and Syria. Travers then became a driver during the East African campaign and was trapped with the 1st Free French Brigade at Bir Hacheim, Libya, where she drove the commanding general in the combat breakout after the unit held off Rommel for 15 days. Travers eventually served in Italy and France and later in French Indochina as well after officially joining the Legion in 1945. Travers was the first woman to join the French Foreign Legion and she eventually received the Medaille Militaire and the Legion d’Honneur.47
More recently, Captain Linda Bray (1953–2011) was the first American woman to officially fight in combat. An ROTC Army MP, she led in combat some 30 male U.S. Army MPs in the 1989 invasion of Panama (dubbed “Operation Just Cause”) against the Panamanian Defense Force (PDF).
And there was Nguyen Thi Dinh (1920–1990), the first female general in the Vietnam People’s Army, who began by commanding an all-female force known as the “Long Haired Army” after being arrested by the French during World War II, 1940 through 1943. Nguyen subsequently helped lead insurrections in Ben Tre in 1945 and again in 1960. She was a founding member of the National Liberation Front (NLF) and was highly decorated, being awarded the Lenin Peace Prize and the Hero of the People’s Armed Forces medal.
There have been a number of women throughout history who have been called the “Joan of Arc” of their country. In some situations, such as that of Lady Trieu (Trieu Ba) (225–248) who is often called the Vietnamese “Joan of Arc” this is something of a misnomer because Lady Trieu was in the history books over a thousand years before there even was a French “Joan of Arc.” It would be more accurate to say Joan of Arc was the “Lady Trieu of France.” However, given the weight of works on the French Lady Trieu and the historical accumulation of accolades in her honor and centrality, such historical accuracy may be beside the point.
Nevertheless, there are quite a number of women who are now viewed as being heroines of their country’s ultimate struggle to be free and are often referred to as the “Joan of Arc” of that country, just as a number of Chinese women are called the Hua Mulan (the legendary Chinese woman warrior) of their area, such as Han E, a.k.a. Han Guanbao (1345–1409), who is known as the “Hua Mulan of Sichuan Province.”
The list of “Joan of Arcs” includes both India’s Rani Lakshmibai and Arc-Veera Mangai Rani Velu Nachiyar, the Congo’s Beatrice Kimpa Vita, Brazil’s Maria Quiteria, Lithuania’s Emilia Plater, Russia’s Alena Arzamasskaia, Serbia’s Sofija Jovanovic, Russia’s Arzamasskaia Alena, and the Philippines’ Remedios Gomez-Paraiso, “Kumander Liwayway,” among others.
Others officially and unofficially also given that rubric are the North African Dihya or Al-Kahina, “The Prophetess.” Born late in the 7th century, this Berber queen and military and religious leader led resistance to the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb, then known as Numidia. She and her forces fought off the Arab Islamic armies of the Umayyad Dynasty, defeating Hasan ibn al-Nu’man at the Battle of Meskiana. Hasan eventually defeated her in what is now Tunisia at the Battle of Tanarka (703 CE). In 2003, the Algerian government dedicated a statue to her, calling her the “Berber Joan of Arc.”48
Then there was Dona Jesus Dosamentes (sometimes Dosamantes), the Mexican “Joan of Arc” who fought at the battle of Monterrey in 1846, leading a troop of lancers and earning the praise of her American opponents, one of whom described her prowess and courage: “There’s an example of heroism worthy of the days of old. It has remained for Mexico to produce a second Joan d’Arc, but not, like her, successful.”49
This category has more than its share of un- or underrepresented women. Nowhere is the devaluing of women’s participation more glaring than in this cohort. Thousands of unnamed women took part in the dozens and dozens of slave revolts, resistances, and defenses, yet we have the names of only a few, and the references to them are often fragmentary or negative or both.
But exist they did and should also be of note today even as we wish we knew more about them and their companions. For example, in addition to America’s Harriet Tubman, Brazil’s Dandara of Palmares, Jamaica’s Queen Nanny of Nanny Town, and Cuba’s “La Negra Carlota” mentioned above, Haiti had Sanitte Belair (1781–1802), Victoria “Abdaraya Toya” Montou (c. 1739–1805), Dedee Bazile (?–1816) and Marie-Jeanne Lamartiniere (?). St. Croix had Queen Mary Thomas (c. 1848–1905), St. John had Breffu (?–1734) and Martinique had Fermina (dates unknown). Guadeloupe had “La Mulatresse Solitude” (c. 1772–1802) and Martha-Rose. Barbados had Nanny Grigg (dates unknown). Brazil had Filip a (sometimes Filipa) Maria Aranha (1720–1780) in Amazonia, and Zeferina (dates unknown) near San Salvador. Guyana had Amelia, Barbara, and Pallas (last names and dates unknown) who were executed for their part in the 1763 Berbice slave uprising.
There were many more.
The sheer numbers of women executed after slave revolts in the New World suggests that they often played leadership roles in the rebellions and thus suffered the same penalties as male leaders. Unfortunately, we simply do not have their names to remember their sacrifices.
Nor do we have the names of the many women who participated in the slave revolts during their transport from Africa to Europe and the New World. It has been estimated that 1% of the total number of slaves involved—according to some estimates one hundred thousand—were killed in ship revolts and their aftermaths and judging from the numbers of female executions after the revolts were suppressed, women were involved in the thousands.50
One reason for the large number of women involved in the revolts is that on many ships they were allowed more movement than their male counterparts:
Female slaves were rarely shackled while on board and were housed separately from men and closer to officer quarters, where they were closer to weapons and key. As they were sometimes sexually abused by crew members, women also had access to information that was essential to planning a revolt.51
With the current debate about transgender and transsexual inclusion in the United States military highlighting the issue, there could also be a special category for transgender and transsexual warriors from the past and present in order to provide appropriate recognition to put their activities in this context.
The considerable outpouring of recent literature on the subject looking at warriors throughout history through this lens also argues for an exploration of this category. In general we are including persons who identified as male, not just in battle, but previously or subsequently or both, continuing to self-identify as male as well.
In our analysis of the transgender warriors below, we use “she/her” and “he/him” pronouns to mirror the pronouns used to describe the warriors in the scholarship consulted, usage which varies by exegete and era. If those sources are confusing or seemingly contradictory, we use the hybrid she/he designation. If that designation is used, it is meant neutrally and does not involve an editorial comment.
In some Native American cultures, for example, there exists a concept of two-spirit people, individuals who possess both a female and male spirit and therefore occupy a third gender or are gender nonconforming. For example, Bíawacheeitchish/Fallen Leaf/Warrior Woman and Otaki/Running Eagle of the Blackfeet Nation are characterized by some to be two-spirit (see their descriptions below).
Such a gender category would help to distinguish these warriors from women who simply dressed as men (and were thus transvestites in some sense of that term) in order to participate in battle—either not hiding their identity, such as Joan of Arc, or hiding their gender in order to pass muster with recruiting officers and subsequently with compatriots.
This category of transgender warriors would include a number of fairly well-known historical examples. Petra “Pedro” Herrera was one. Unfortunately the only truly certain date for him is 1914, when he and his band of armed 400 women took the city of Torreon in the Second Battle of Torreon, but we know he had previously joined the revolutionary movement of Pancho Villa. As Pedro, he had been accepted as a military leader, but later split with Villa and went off to war on his own with other like-minded women and fought other battles during the Mexican Revolution.
There is also the prominent case of Amelio Robles, who also fought during the Mexican Revolution. According to Gabriela Cano in his “Unconcealable Realities of Desire: Amelio Robles’s (Transgender) Masculinity in the Mexican Revolution,” Amelia Robles was born female, but subsequently identified as male. So Amelia became Amelio and fought with the Zapatas in a number of battles (later supporting General Álvaro Obregón) and was wounded no fewer than six times.52 He subsequently was given the Mexican Legion of Honor and Revolutionary Merit Award.
Cano rightly notes the importance of this military self-emancipation, “As a guerilla fighter, Amelia discovered, in her words, ‘the sensation of being completely free.’”53 As the author states, “Amelio Robles made the transition from an imposed feminine identity to a desired masculinity: he felt like a man, acted like a man, and constructed a male appearance.” He also didn’t take kindly to bullying about his gender thereafter, allegedly shooting two men who tried to intimidate him.54
As Michy Martinez observes, Amelia had no interest in just being considered “only” a soldatara camp follower, as Amelio, he wanted to serve in combat.55 It is important to reiterate that the mere fact of dressing as a man in order to join an army was of considerable importance in and of itself to some.
The liberating aspects of wearing men’s clothing is a theme throughout many of the women warriors’ history. For example, the cross-dressing British “Colonel” Barker put it very forthrightly:
Trousers make a wonderful difference in the outlook on life. I know that dressed as a man I did not, as I do now I am wearing skirts again, feel hopeless and helpless…. Today when the whole world knows my secret I feel more a man than a woman. I want to up and do those things that men do to earn a living rather than spend my days as a friendless woman.56
Another powerful example of a transgender women is Bíawacheeitchish or Fallen Leaf, also known as Warrior Woman. She was the only known woman chief among the Sioux, Arickaras, Assiniboines, Crees, and Crows. This Gros Ventre girl, captured at age 10 by the Crows, had a foster father who allowed her to pursue her passions, which included hunting, counting coup four times (which involved striking an armed opponent with a small wooden stick in the heat of battle), stealing horses, and showing great proficiency with weapons.
She gained very high stature among the Crows fighting the Blackfeet. Upon the death of her father, she assumed command of his family and participated in both warfare and tribal decision-making. In the process, she continued to act as a man and would acquire four wives before being killed, ironically enough by her original people, the Gros Ventres.57
Also consider Otaki or Running Eagle of the Blackfeet Nation (c. 1840–c. 1878) who entered the Braves Society and fought the Crows and others and was eventually killed in battle by the Flatheads. Born “Pitamakan” in southern Alberta Canada, her father instructed her in hunting and warcraft, and with his death, she assumed responsibility for the family and forced her way onto a raiding party despite its leader’s wishes. Her subsequent vision quest and participation in the Medicine Lodge Ceremony were unusual for women. The Chief, Lone Walker, gave her the name Running Eagle, and she became a member of the Braves Society of the Young Warriors. Otaki led numerous war parties and was eventually killed by the Flatheads, who purposefully targeted her as a woman posing as a man. She continued to wear men’s clothing when not going to war, and many today would put her in the transgender warrior category.
Maria van Antwerpen (1719–1781) was also an interesting if somewhat ambiguous example of transsexuality in the 18th century. She donned men’s clothing and joined the Dutch army as Jan van Ant and subsequently served in a variety of locations during wars with the French. Jan courted many women and married two of them, rejoining the army in the process, not once but twice, finally “being discharged because of a ‘quarrelsome nature.’”58
This category is probably the most widely used by those who look at war through a female lens. Here we find many of the best-known rulers who strategically (if not necessarily tactically) guided their armies and countries in significant military action. Cleopatra, Aethelflaed, Nzinga, Zenobia, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I, Matilde, Isabella of Spain, Boudica, and Eleanor of Aquitaine are often included in most lists of “warrior queens.”
In Jonathan and Emily Jordan’s The War Queens: Extraordinary Women Who Ruled the Battlefield, a strong case is also made for more women who may not have actually been in battle per se but whose strategic imperatives guided the outcome of those wars. In this category, their examples in addition to some of the above, include the Georgian Queen and “King of Kings” Tamar, the Mongol Manduhai, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, and Indira Gandhi.59
Perhaps the interesting example falling into this category is Christine de Pizan, cited above. De Pizan wrote The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry, an amazing document for the 15th century. Imagine how many cultural and religious barriers this early feminist writer had to overcome in order to even get her book published. Written in the 15th century by this Italian born, but French court author, The Book of Deeds resurrects many classical writings on war (especially Vegetius) but also provides very useful contrasts between Medieval Europe war practices and those from antiquity, including just war, siege warfare, chivalry, trickery, and “subtlety.” De Pizan skillfully uses many examples from contemporary Europe as well as campaigns of Scipio, Hannibal, and Hanno. It is a truly amazing work given the time, the place, and the gender of its author.
De Pizan is also the author of The Book of the City of Ladies, which highlights numerous women in fact and legend, most important for our purposes, the Amazons, Zenobia, and Artemisia, who she unfortunately puts on the side of the Greeks in the Persian wars.60
There are some startling examples of women who played important strategic and military roles at the time but who were mostly airbrushed out of many subsequent accounts. Without the four daughters of Genghis Khan—Checheyigen, Alaqai, Al-Altun, and Yesui Khatun—there would have been no Mongol empire. The feats of the “Four Tiger Queens,” suppressed by Muslim, Christian, and Chinese chroniclers and written out of subsequent histories. In the Secret History of the Mongols, they are all there. All four daughters played major roles in ruling and warfare during this period and kept the dynasty viable.61
Also the later Mongol “Queen Manduhai the Wise” or “Wolf Mother” (1449–1510) who reunited the warring Mongols, defeating the Oirats and Mings. At 45, she married Bat Monkh Dayan Khan, a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, and fought in numerous battles, often leading from the front. In one, when she was eight months pregnant, she was knocked from her horse and only saved by her loyal bodyguard. The next month she gave birth to twin boys, Ochir Bolod and Alju Bolod. She was the driving force behind the resurgence of Mongol power in central Asia.62 Later, Queen Anu of the Dzungar Khanate (r. 1693–1696) died in battle protecting her husband in fighting against the Qings at the Battle of Jao Modo (1696). The Mongol women deserve wider attention and credit.
Likewise many Muslim women who fought in various situations over the century have tended to have faded from the accounts of later historians although there have been some attempts to renew interest in them as Moroccan author, Asma Lamrabet, whose Women in the Qur’an: An Emancipatory Reading provides a rereading of the Muslim Holy Scriptures from a female perspective. For example, on page 19, she quotes the Prophet describing a woman warrior, “Who else could endure all that you are suffering here Umm “Umarah?” The author says Umm was wounded 13 times in various battles including Uhud, Hudaybiyyah, Hunayn, and Al-Yamama, where she lost a hand.
Or take the example of Ahilyabai Holkar (1725–1795), Sardar of the Maratha Empire. When her husband was killed in the battle of Kumbher and her father-in-law, Malhar Rao Holkar, died in 1764, she became ruler, personally leading her troops into battle on her favorite war elephant. As the Rani of Indore, she played a key role in preventing the Mughals from taking over the Maratha Confederacy from her position in Malwa which abutted Mughal forces at Delhi. She was also in charge of the Maratha artillery in the Battle of Panipat (1761), one of the largest battles of that era, yet only belatedly has she been given full credit for her exploits in modern military annals.63
Regardless of how long it took for women to be recognized as warriors by large number of observers, today there are a lot of countries that accept women in that capacity—and they don’t have to dress up as men to be accepted either.
At the time of this writing, women play vital roles—including actual and potential combat forces—in the armed forces of Canada, Singapore, the United States, Brazil, Cuba, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Pakistan, South Africa, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Iran, Rwanda, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Denmark, Finland, France, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Turkey, Taiwan, Norway, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Greece, Kurdistan, Latvia, Romania, Russia, Holland, Spain, Italy, Argentina, Bolivia, Ukraine, Singapore, Serbia, Thailand, South Africa, Bangladesh, Algeria, Tunisia, Czech Republic, Macedonia, Slovenia (note that in 1988, Major General Alenka Ermench became the first female chief of staff in NATO), Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates.
When looking for a fit subject for interest and research among the woman warrior cohort, it is often necessary to look at how much material is available in readable or usable form. As we have indicated, there are a large number of women about whom we would like to know more, often much more.
Note: It is very important to distinguish between a lot of different material versus a smaller amount of material cited by a lot of works.
In some cases there are specific references to women in battle, references that intrigue and make one want more information and lament no one was paying enough attention or cared enough to write down more about them.
Who, for example, wouldn’t want to know more about Maria de Jesus Dosamantes, the Mexican woman who fought as a captain with General Ampudia in his defense of Monterrey during the American invasion in the Mexican War of 1846? According to an eyewitness when she led a valiant attack with her Mexican lancers, an American officer cried out “There’s an example of heroism worthy of the days of old.”64
Or how about Giuseppa Bolognani “Peppa la Cannoniera”? She was a Sicilian woman in revolt against the restored Bourbons. Wouldn’t we like to know why she acted as she did and what happened to her? In the swirl of the Italian unification struggle, there must be quite a few women like Giuseppa who joined that effort.
Even more intriguing would be additional information about the Assyrian Queen Semiramis (Shammuramat), Assyrian wife of Shamshi-Adad V (824–811 BCE). According to Diodorus, after the death of her son, she masqueraded as him and subsequently led the army he had inherited from his father, winning a number of battles as far away as India and expanding the Neo Assyrian Empire (911–605 BCE). She appears to be the only woman ever to have led the Assyrian Empire.65
Or Clara Camarao: wouldn’t we like to know more about this woman who led tribal warriors against the Dutch invasions of Brazil during the period 1630–1637? Or Maria Estrada, who fought with Cortés in Mexico during his conquest of the Aztec and participated in a number of battles?
And what about Xi, the Tang dynasty woman who commanded a troop of women who fought against the Qidan and was given the title Mistress of Loyalty and Integrity? Or the legendary Toltec queen (c. 1116 CE) Xochitl who created a women’s battalion and was killed leading it in battle?
These would all be very interesting to study if we only knew more.
We would also like to know much more about Zoia Smirnova, who left home to join the Russian Army in 1914 on the Austrian front. Despite all odds and obstacles, she was accepted as a fighter, was wounded twice, and was awarded the St. George’s Cross.
There are a large number of women warriors about whom much has been written and the scholarship is readily available. Most of the warrior queens listed above, women such as Cleopatra, Isabella of Spain, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Matilda of Canossa, Boudica, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Margaret Thatcher, Aethelflaed, and the like are all quite well represented.66
So too are some lesser-known (at least to most American readers) figures such as the Rani of Jhansi, Zenobia, Amina of Hausaland, Nzinga of Mbundu, Lozen the Apache, Chand Bibi, and Maria Bochkareva.
As mentioned above, there is a lot of material on many of the resistance and partisan fighters as well as revolutionaries from a great variety of countries and ages. Women warriors operating in these spheres are quite well represented.
There is also a lot of currently available information on American women who fought or played major military roles in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II. There is also a fairly large number of works looking at contemporary American women who have been steadily increasing their numbers fighting in the various campaigns in wars since the Reagan era.
A considerable literature has also grown up around women who fought in the Spanish Civil War, the Mexican Revolution, and especially Russian women during World War II, including those who fought in both the regular armed forces and the partisans.
In addition, there is a considerable body of material dealing with European women resistance fighters during World War II, including—but not exclusively—those in Great Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. There seems to be less available on the female resistance fighters in Asia and Africa.
Perhaps surprising to many new to this search, there is now also a substantial body of literature dealing with Native American and Indigenous women warriors, along with a considerable amount of material on the earlier Scythian and Sarmatian fighters. Twenty years ago, these would have been ignored by military writers. Now they can only be ignored at those writers’ intellectual peril.
More surprising to traditional historians or casual history buffs may be the ever-growing literature on warriors housed in the LGBTQ? community. While much more needs to be done to reexamine the women throughout history who fit into this category, even a quick glance into this annotated bibliography will provide a quite amazing list of recent material in this genre. This scholarship has not only enriched and enlightened us to the specific participations from the LGBTQ? community, but it collectively points to our need to question many of our assumptions about history. Also, this new knowledge has come from a variety of genres and disciplines.
Joan of Arc is probably the warrior woman about whom the most has been written. There are over 20,000 works written about Joan of Arc in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France alone. There are also numerous poems, novels, essays, books, and monographs. This body of work is an astonishing amount for someone who, when her career is examined closely, really had a more important afterlife than the life she actually led.67 In terms of volume of work, scholarly and otherwise, she is the gold standard by which biographies are compared.
Over the years, many students have been interested in which women warriors stand out in the professor’s mind, either for sheer novelty or in terms of perceived impact and the degree of difficulty of their achievements. Here are a few of those favorites, for it would be hard to beat the following examples if you want to study the exciting examples of women warriors in action.
Lozen the Apache (1840–1898). Even among the most fearsome of the western Native Americans such as the Chiricahua and Mescalero Apaches, with leaders such as Cochise, Geronimo, Nana, and Victorio (her brother) in the last decades of the 19th century, Lozen stands out, treated as an equal in terms of warriorhood.
She fought with all four, leaving a reservation to fight with Geronimo, led and served as a most important leader for her people, fighting the Mexicans and the Americans as well as other tribes. As a true warrior, she must have relished her final battle, when she and her tiny band were outnumbered 7,000 to 42. As the patriarch of the Apaches, Nana, put it “Though she is a woman, there is no warrior more worthy than the sister of Victorio.”68
War with various Apache clans turned out to be the longest in U.S. history (officially 1861–1886 but actually beginning in 1857).
Empress Zenobia (sometimes Zabbai) (240–c. 275). From Tadmor-Palmyra in what is now Syria, Zenobia led a rebellion against the Romans from 269 to 272 CE, and, for a time, she operated skillfully in the seam between Roman power and Persian power, taking advantage of their internal problems and martial competition. She led her victorious army through Egypt, Arabia, and Mesopotamia, declaring herself Queen of Egypt. But like Boudica in Britain, eventually the power of the Roman Empire came to bear, and she was eventually captured and brought to Rome as a prisoner (although some Arab sources claim she committed suicide, thereby imitating Cleopatra).69
Matilda of Canossa (1046–1115) was an ally of Pope Gregory VII in 1087 when she marched with her Tuscan army on Rome to fight and oust one of the anti-popes, putting one pope back in on the throne of St. Peter’s, and later sustained another in office. A master strategist and military leader who waged war for 40 years defeating the Holy Roman Emperor (HRE) Henry IV when he invaded Italy.
Her military biographer calls her simply, “The most powerful woman of her time” for she denied the Holy Roman Emperor, the most powerful male leader of the period, his designs on Italy, the papacy, and especially her territory. This was an unheard-of feat for a woman in her era. It was in fact at her castle that Henry IV was so famously made to kneel in the snow in order to have his excommunication by the pope lifted. Urban II was the second pope she kept in the Holy See.70
Maria Bochkareva (1889–1920). Dirt poor and harmed by domestic abuse perpetrators (her drunken father, her drunken lovers, and her drunken husband), she petitioned the Czar to let her join the army. Imagine her struggles as a woman in the Czarist army of 1914, when peasant soldiers were considered to be serfs. She fought for two years in the Imperial Army, becoming a noncommissioned officer (NCO), being wounded twice, and inspiring her troops and officers to fight under very difficult situations.
When the Czar fell, she got the new government under Alexander Kerensky to let her form the Russian Provisional Government’s 1st Russian Women’s Battalion of Death (6,000 women) in 1917 which continued to fight against the Germans. She and her cohort of women shamed their fellow male units to fight on several occasions when they preferred to avoid combat. Later, she was captured by the Bolsheviks, met Trotsky and Lenin, and when they wanted her to integrate her female warriors into their Red revolutionary army, she fled and made it to the United States by way of Siberia. Once in the United States, she met and hectored President Wilson to intervene and fight the Reds. Frustrated when he refused, she returned to Russia to fight for the Whites. This time when she was captured by the Bolsheviks, she was shot.71
Njinga (Nzinga) of Ndongo and Mataba (c. 1583–1663). Ruling as regent, she killed her nephew and became the first queen of the Ndongo (Mbundu) people, successfully orchestrating a variety of campaigns and maneuvers. Her military prowess, including a decade-long stretch of successful battles both guerrilla and set-piece warfare (1624–1663), is matched only by her strategic and diplomatic efforts as she played the Portuguese, Dutch, and African tribes off against each other, even negotiating successfully with Pope Alexander VII.
Also noteworthy is her defiance of the gender, sexuality, and religious norms of her time (she took both men and women as lovers and sometimes dressed as a man but made her male lovers dress as women) and her most skillful blending of Mbundu, Impangala (Jaga), and Christian traditions to support her legitimacy, explaining to the cannibal Impangala that their religion was compatible with Christian beliefs since the Christians symbolically, at least, drank the blood and ate the flesh of Christ and were thus, at heart, cannibals. A woodcut shows her leading her troops into battle at age 73, and Ndongo survived as an independent state until 1909 when the Portuguese finally annexed it into Angola. Njinga is now rightly considered a mother of her country.72
What a woman. What a warrior.
Looking over the past several decades of scholarship, we find:
It is hoped that the annotated bibliography that follows will help stimulate these ongoing efforts across time and space, especially in getting those who come at the subject from a women’s and gender studies perspective to do more to set their scholarship in a context that highlights the warfare qua warfare demands of time and place and, even more important, those who study military affairs from the perspective of the near totality of male domination of the subject should strive harder to examine the exceptional women who broke the barriers to participation in warfare as a subject and actor, not simply as an object or curiosity.
Also in light of the previous siloing of many academic disciplines, we seek here to integrate the work of military historians with disciplines frequently overlooked for their contributions to study of warfare, such as gender and sexuality studies, anthropology, and religious studies.
The substantial lack of communication across disciplines continues to amaze us and contributes to the marginalization of women’s accomplishments in warfare. Through examining the widest ranges of scholarship in this select but wide-gauge annotated bibliography, women warriors are put in their rightful place as essential combatants, strategists, and leaders within the war space of the past, present and future.
Two final thoughts.
The first is about the nature of the scope of this inquiry. We have sought to be inclusive rather than exclusive and to define “warrior” in wide but discernable terms. We have sought to call those women who participated in wars in an active fashion as “warriors” whether as leaders or actual combatants and when in doubt have sought to adhere to a scholarly parallelism, i.e. if we consider men to be in the army (even if they are not actually in battle) as warriors, so too women belong in that category. Also, from using a weapon in combat or directing an operation of a battle or a war, the same criteria obtain.
The second concluding note has to do with the ultimate nature of war. Including women in the armed forces of a particular nation or society seems to always involve raising questions as to whether that is good or bad policy for the polity, the armed force in question, or for the individual.
Some have argued also that the inclusion of women in the realm of war in a strategic as well as a tactical sense will change the women and/or the nature of war. Some—both men and women—argue that the inclusion of women ipso facto changes either the women (making them more manlike and hence warlike) or the nature of warfare (making war itself less violent, less horrible in both intent and outcome).
For the former, we conclude that war changes men and women in similar ways if not in identical fashions. We have long argued in our War Trilogy that it is war that dominates humans, not humans war. There is something about the nature of war which seems to develop a life of its own, a life that overcomes individual and collective human impulses to alter it, to make it less destructive or less frequent or both. And like the COVID-19 virus that overhangs this effort, war always seems to mutate itself over and above the strictures humans try to put on it.
This overpowering nature of war cannot be disregarded, even now. In the battle of the gods, for example, throughout human history and even today Mars wins, turning pacific religions into violent ones, turning violent ones into self-justifying ones, and so on. War does the same with secular religions or ideologies such as nationalism or communism or capitalism. Regardless of economic system or political belief set, polities and societies end up tolerating and utilizing war despite all of its destructive outcomes.
War dominates.
So in that sense, we now circle back to the intent of Simone Weil, force is in and of itself a powerful determinant of human action and when war occurs, it changes the nature of men and women to suit itself.
In that sense it remains the ultimate leveler.
Women, as men, are thus war’s participants, as well as its victims.
1. Andrew Curry, “Slaughter at the Bridge,” Science, Vol. 25, #351 (March 2016), pp. 1384–1389.
2. For background on the Sea Peoples, see Neil Silberman, “The Coming of the Sea Peoples,” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Vol. 10, #2 (Winter 1998), pp. 6–13. The author indicates how the chariot, the main weapon for the Mediterranean basin for hundreds of years, was superseded by lightly armed infantry known as the Sea Peoples that swept out of the Balkans and caused the “Great Catastrophe” (although it was not a catastrophe for them) and Peter Tsouras, “Bronze Age Cataclysm: The Collapse of the Civilized Near East,” Strategy and Tactics, #315 (March–April 2019), pp. 42–51. Silberman, an analyst at the U.S. Army’s Intelligence and Threat Center in Washington, examines how the major powers of the area (with the exception of Egypt) and their reliance on chariots were swept away by the Sea Peoples and their newly specialized infantry weapons and tactics. This phenomenon shows how receptivity to innovation is the key to military success over time. Additional useful information on the Sea Peoples is also to be found in Eric Cline, “Raiders of the Lost Bronze Age,” MHQ: The Quarterly of Military History, Vol. 28, #1 (Autumn 2015), pp. 66–75. Cline sees the Sea Peoples as perhaps initially victims turning to conquest out of desperation and hope for martial supremacy elsewhere.
3. Wayne Lee, “When Did Warfare Begin?,” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Vol. 27, #2 (Winter 2015), pp. 64–71. Others take a more benign interpretation of Neanderthal/Homo sapiens interaction. See, for example, Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art (New York: Blooms-bury Sigma, 2020). Perhaps we are on firmer ground with the statement of Trevor Watkins, “The origins of warfare are hidden in the mists of human prehistory, but by 1200 BC there was a long tradition of armies, campaigns, pitched battles and siege warfare” (p. 15) in his “The Beginnings of Warfare” in John Hackett, Warfare in the Ancient World (New York: Facts on File, 1989), pp. 15–35.
4. Nichols Longrich, “The Conversation,” November 3, 2020. See also Robert O’Connell, “The Origins of War,” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Vol. 1, #3 (Spring 1999), pp. 8–15.
5. Mahabharata (trans. By John Smith) (New York: Penguin Classics, 2009), CXXIV. Much of what we know about Aryan chariot warfare comes from the Mahabharata. For an examination of war during Vedic times, see Richard Gabriel, “Armies of Ancient India: Vedic and Imperial Periods,” in his The Great Armies of Antiquity (Westport: Praeger, 2002), pp. 207–224.
6. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Book Four (3.84.1).
7. Homer, (trans. by Robert Fagles) The Iliad (New York: Penguin Books, 1990). See especially “The Death of Achilles.”
8. James Holoka (ed. and trans.), Simone Weil’s The Iliad, or the Poem of Force: A Critical Edition (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), p. 45.
9. Many of the arguments against war per se and the notion that it can and must be resisted can be found in Robert Gonzalez, Hugh Gusterson, and Gustaaf Houtman (eds.), Militarization: A Reader (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019). This work contains stimulating essays by Dwight Eisenhower, Margaret Mead, Noel Perrin, Naoko Shibusawa, Leslie Sponsel, and Robert Lifton.
10. Holoka, op. cit, p. 45.
11. John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1993), p. 76.
12. Margaret MacMillan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us (New York: Random House, 2020), pp. 312, 131.
13. See his “Women of Valor: Why Israel Doesn’t Send Women into Combat,” Policy Review (Fall 1991), pp. 65–67. He amplifies these arguments in, “Armed But Not Dangerous: Women in the Israeli Military,” War in History, Vol. 7, #1 (January 2000), pp. 82–98, “The Great Illusion: Women in the Military,” Journal of International Studies, Vol. 29, #2 (2000), pp. 429–442, Men, Women and War (London: Cassell, 2001), “Warrior-Women of Dahomey,” Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift, Vol. 39, #1 (2018), pp. 115–123 and The Culture of War (New York: Ballantine Books, 2008).
14. Nina Liza Bode, The Imaging of Violent Gender Performances, Master’s Thesis (University of Groningen, 2014).
15. Women Peacemaker Program, Gender and Militarism Analyzing the Links to Strategize for Peace (Netherlands: Women Peacemakers Program, 2014), p. 9.
16. Adrian Goldsworthy, Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conquerors (New York: Basic Books, 2020), p. 7.
17. See especially John Lynn, Women Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) (some of his other works in this genre include, “Women in War,” Military History (October 2001), pp. 60–66, The French Wars 1667–1714 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2002), and “The Strange Case of the Maiden Soldier of Picardy,” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Vol. 2, #3 (Spring 1990), pp. 54–56, Robert Kaplan, Imperial Grunts and Mark Bowden, “The Huong River Squad” in his Hue, 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2017). With regard to Bowden’s recent book, think of the thousands of works on the Vietnam War and how few ever highlight the role of women.
18. Alexander Ingle, “Berenice II Euergetes,” Pennington, op. cit., p. 53. For more on her complex dynastic and marital background, see Grace Harriet Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens: A Study of Woman-Power in Macedonia, Seleucid Syria, and Ptolemaic Egypt (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1932), pp. 130–136. For a useful and more recent full-length biography that highlights her many literary and political accomplishments, see Dee Clayman, Berenice II and the Golden Age of Ptolemaic Egypt (London: Oxford University Press, 2014). For the political and economic background of Ptolemaic Egypt, see Andrew Monson, From the Ptolemies to the Romans: Political and Economic Change in Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Note that the term “Hellenistic” is usually defined as the period from the death of Alexander in 323 to the fall of the Ptolemaic dynasty in 30 CE even though Macedonia had long before fallen to the Romans. For a sprightly overview of the Hellenistic world, see Peter Thonemann, The Hellenistic Age (London: Oxford University Press, 2016).
19. Wale Ogunyemi, “Queen Amina of Zazzau,” Play 1959. See also Philip Ko-slow, Hausaland: The Fortress Kingdoms (New York: Chelsea House Press, 1995).
20. Patrick Kagbeni Muana, “Masarico,” in Pennington (ed.), op. cit., pp. 285–286. For a history of the later Sierra Leone colony, see Joe Alie, A New History of Sierra Leone (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990).
21. Stanley B. Alpern, Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey (New York: New York University Press, 1998), p. 207.
22. Ibid. Another important West Africa warrior woman of note was Orompoto, the 16th-century female Alaafin (king) of the Yoruba remembered for her skillful use of cavalry at the battle of Illayi.
23. Michael Edwardes, Red Year: The Indian Rebellion of 1857 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1973). See also Joyce Libra-Chapman, The Rani of Jhansi: A Study in Female Heroism in India (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986).
24. See especially Sayyid Ahmad-Ullah Qadri, Memoires of Chand Bibi The Princess of Ahmednagar (Hyderabad: The Osmania University Press, 1939). Another Indian women who led from the front was Tarabai Bhonsale (1675–1761), a Maratha Maharani who resisted Mughal incursions and fought on horseback with a cavalry regiment.
25. Stephen Turnbull, Samurai Women 1184–1877 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Company, 2002), p. 37. Turnbull provides a powerful set of insights into the existence of a little-known female warrior class in this well-illustrated work. See also Royall Tyler, “Tomoe: The Woman Warrior,” in Chieko Irie Mulhern (ed.), Heroic with Grace: Legendary Women of Japan (London: M.E. Sharpe, 1991), and “Death of Lord Kiso,” excerpted from “The Tale of the Heike,” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Vol. 25, #3 (Spring 2013), pp. 94–97.
26. Aunait Chutintaranond, “Suriyothai in the Context of Thai-Myanmar History and Historical Perception,” in Sunait Chutintaranond and Kanokphan U-sha (eds.), From Fact to Fiction: History of Thai-Myanmar Relations in Cultural Context (Bang-kok: Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, 1992), pp. 30–41, provides a fulsome and detailed account of the battle, including her bravery and the gruesome details of Suriyothai’s life-ending wounds. See also Irene Stengs, “Dramatising Siamese Independence: Thai Post-colonial Perspectives on Kingship,” in Robert Aldrich and Cindy McCreery (eds.), Monarchies and Decolonization in Asia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), p. 274. Pamaree Surakiat, “Thai-Burmese Warfare during the Sixteenth Century and the Growth of the First Toungoo Empire,” Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 93 (2005), pp. 69–100 puts this war in a broader context of the rise of the Toungoo Empire. Further background is provided by Jon Fernquist, “Min-gyi-nyo, the Shan Invasions of Ava (1524–27), and the Beginnings of Expansionary Warfare in Toungoo Burma: 1486–1539,” SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, Vol. 3, #2 (Autumn 2005), pp. 28–35. Queen Suriyothai and her legendary sacrifice in battle continues to fascinate even today. See Amporn Jirattikorn, “Suriyo-thai: Hybridizing Thai National Identity Through Film,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, #2 (2003), pp. 296–308.
27. For an in-depth look at Maroon resistance and communities in the Spanish America, the French Caribbean, Jamaica, Brazil, and the Guianas, see Richard Price (ed.), Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1979) and Alvin O. Thompson, Flight to Freedom: African Runaways and Maroons in the Americas (Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2006).
28. Polyaenus, quoted in Paul Chrystal, Women at War in The Classical World (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2017), p. 90. Cynane and her military proclivities are well sourced. Adrian Goldsworthy in his Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conquerors (New York: Basic Books, 2020), p. 535, for example, cites her appearances in Athenaeus, Polyaenus, and Arrian.
29. Charles Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014); Leon Campbell, “Women and the Great Rebellion in Peru, 1780–1783,” The Americas, Vol. 42, #2 (October 1985), pp. 163–196; and Lillian Fisher, The Last Inca Revolt 1780–1783 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966).
30. Asma Lamrabet, Women in the Qur’an: An Emancipatory Reading (Leicester-shire: Square View Press, 2016), p. 19. Readers interested in the rise and success of the Arab armies and the implementation of light horse warfare should consult Robert Hoyland, In God’s Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (London: Oxford University Press, 2003); Tom Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire (New York: Doubleday, 2012); and for a broader perspective, Anthony Pagden, Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and West (New York: Random House, 2008). For a closer look at the Muslim armies as armies, note the trilogy by David Nicolle, The Armies of Islam 7th–11th Centuries (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1983), Armies of the Muslim Conquest (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1993) and The Moors: The Islamic West 7th–11th Centuries (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2001).
31. For some insights into Arab light horse warfare, see Gabriel, “The Arab Armies 600–850 C.E.” op. cit., pp. 304–314.
32. Thomas B. Marquis, Custer on the Little Big Horn (Algonac: Marquis Custer Publications, 1967), p. 93. See also Rosemary Agonito and Joseph Agonito Buffalo Calf Road Woman (Guilford, CT: TwoDot, 2006) for more on the battle and her role in it. Another Cheyenne woman warrior from this era was Ehyophsta (1826–1915). Also known as Yellow Haired Woman, she fought in the 1868 battle against the U.S. Army at Beecher’s Island and later engaged the Shoshoni on Beaver Creek in 1873, counting coup and killing an opponent. She was subsequently admitted to the Crazy Dog Soldier Warrior society.
Note: For a truly magical in-depth look at Cheyenne warfare during this era, see Father Peter John Powell, People of the Scared Mountain: A History of the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs and Warrior Societies 1830–1879, Vol. I (New York: Harper & Row, 1981). Also interesting background on those who tried to find ways of peace between the whites and the Cheyenne can be found in Louis Kraft, “Between the Army and the Cheyenne,” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Vol. 14, #2 (Winter, 2002), pp. 48–55.
33. Queen of Tahiti Niel Gunson, “Sacred Women Chiefs and Female ‘Head-man’ in Polynesian History,” Journal of Pacific History, Vol. 22, #3 (1987), pp. 139–172. The author believes that the role of women, both in terms of politics and standing as well as in terms of warriorhood, was submerged by missionaries and early anthropologists and needs to be revised significantly. In Polynesia, “the mana of a great warrior was inherited through his daughter, not a son.” (p. 139). Female head-men were common in Polynesia and “Very often they were known for their prowess in warfare” (p. 142).
34. Debra Hamel, “Ancient Greeks in Drag,” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Vol. 14, #4 (Summer 2002), pp. 81–89.
35. In terms of longevity of the style of warfare, it is difficult to match the horse archers of the Eurasian steppe regions. See D. V. Cernenko, The Scythians 700–300 BC (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1983) and R. Brzezinski and M. Mielczarek, The Sarmatians 600 BC—AD 450 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2002). For a closer look at this clash of war cultures in the Greek world and the differing styles, see Gabriel , op. cit., “The Greek Way of War: Classical and Imperial Periods 500–323 B.C.E.,” pp. 171–205.
36. https://www.newswise.com/articles/dna-reveals-2-500-year-old-siberian-warrior-was-a-woman2. Further scientific research is continuing on Scythian DNA material from 4,000 years ago.
37. Megan McLaughlin, “The Woman Warrior: Gender, Warfare and Society in Medieval Europe,” Women’s Studies, Vol. 17, #3–4 (1990), pp. 192–209. This is a seminal work providing as it does a very useful dichotomy of women at war as generals versus women as foot soldiers. Second, the author rightly looks at much of medieval warfare involving the defense of castles as “domestic warfare” and points out the advantages this type of war provides opportunities for women. See also Susan Johns in her Noblewoman, Aristocracy and Power in the Twelfth-Century Anglo-Norman Realm (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003) and Malcolm Hebron, The Medieval Siege: Theme and Image in Middle English Romance (London: Clarendon Press, 1997). For warfare in this era, see Philip Warner, The Medieval Castle: Life in a Fortress in Peace and War (New Noble, 1971); Maurice Keen (ed.) Medieval Warfare (London: Oxford University Press, 1999); Brian Carey, Joshua Allfree and John Cairns, Warfare in the Medieval World (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2006); A. V. B. Norman, The Medieval Soldier (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1999); as well as David Nicolles’s two worthwhile works, European Medieval Tactics (1): The Fall and Rise of Cavalry 450–1250 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2011) and European Medieval Tactics New Infantry, New Weapons 1260–1500 (2) (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2011).
38. Elizabeth Lev, The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy’s Most Courageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de ’Medici (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011). See especially chapter 17, “Italy’s Idol,” pp. 216–234.
39. John Lynn, Women, Armies and Warfare in Early Modern Europe, p. 208. For the host of factors militating against those women and many others trying to play military roles, see Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1978).
40. Weiting Guo, “The Portraits of a Heroine: Huang Bamei and the Politics of Wartime History in China and Taiwan, 1930–1960,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, Vol. 33 (2019), pp. 6–31.
41. Loreta Velasquez, The Woman in Battle: A Narrative of the Exploits, Adventures, and Travels of Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Otherwise Known as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, Confederate States Army (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004, reprint of 1872 edition).
42. Nadezhda Durova, The Cavalry Maiden: Journals of Russian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).
43. Flora Sandes, An English Woman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1917).
44. Jessica Trisko Darden, Alexis Henshaw and Ora Szekely, Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars (Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 2019), p. 78.
45. See especially Tsehai Berhane Silassie, “Women Guerrilla Fighters,” Northeast African Studies, Vol. 1, #3 (Winter 1979–1980), pp. 73–83. Documents the activities of important female guerrillas. Points out that in feudal Ethiopian society, their military leadership status depended on their existing landholdings (derived from their dead fathers or husbands). The author often helpfully quotes the women’s fighting in their own words. See Jeff Pearce, Prevail: The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia’s Victory over Mussolini’s Invasion, 1935–1941 (New York: Skyhorse Publications, 2014), and for Ethiopian efforts to pry themselves loose from the South Africans and British, see C. P. Potholm, Liberation and Exploitation: The Struggle for Ethiopia (Lanham: University Press of America, 1976).
46. Maochun Yu, “The Taiping Rebellion,” in David Graff and Robin Higham (eds.), A Military History of China (Boulder: Westview Press, 2003), p. 143.
47. Susan Travers, Tomorrow to be Brave (New York: The Free Press, 2000).
48. Abdelmajid Hannoum, “Historiography, Mythology, and Memory in Modern North Africa: The Story of the Kahina,” Studia Islamica, #85 (1997), pp. 85–130. For a fuller examination of all these issues, see Hannoum’s extensive and useful work, Colonial Histories, Post-Colonial Memories: The Legend of the Kahina North African Heroine (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2001) and Benjamin Hendrickx, “Al-Kahina: The Last Ally of the Roman-Byzantines in the Maghreb Against the Muslim Arab Conquest?,” Journal of Early Christian History, Vol. 3, #2, pp. 47–61.
49. Quoted in John Belohlavek, Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies: Women and the Mexican-American War (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017), p. 65 and elsewhere.
50. Johannes Postma, Slave Revolts (Greenwood Press, 2008), p. 28. Note also that in the New World from 1522 to 1865, according to Holly Norton, Estate by Estate: The Landscape of the 1733 St. Jan Slave Rebellion (Syracuse: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Dissertation, 2013), there were 135 slave revolts and the author warns that “this list is not exhaustive” (p. 318).
51. Ibid, p. 26.
52. Gabriela Cano: “Unconcealable Realities of Desire: Amelio Robles’s (Trans-gender) Masculinity in the Mexican Revolution,” in Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Kay Vaughan and Gabriela Cano (eds.), Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 35–56.
53. Cano, op. cit, p. 43.
54. Ibid., p. 37.
55. Thanks also to Michy Martinez for pointing out two additional soldaderas who transitioned from female during the Mexican Revolution, Angel(a) Jimenez and Maria de la Luz Barrera. For more information on the differing roles (ranging from camp followers, sutlers, fighters, and even commanders) of the soldaderas, see Elena Poniatowska, Las Soldaderas (El Paso: Cinco Puntos Press, 2006).
56. Colonel Barker, The Sunday Dispatch, 31 March 1929, quoted in Julie Wheel-wright, Amazons and Military Maids: Women Who Dressed as Men in the Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness (London: Pandora, 1989), p. 50. For a further exploration of this theme, see her chapter, “Becoming One of the Boys,” pp. 50ff.
57. John Koster, “The Other Magpie and the Woman Chief Were Crow Warriors of the ‘Weaker Sex,’” Wild West, Vol 26, #1 (June 1913), pp. 24–25. Koster also highlights another Crow woman warrior as well, the companion of The Other Magpie, Finds Them and Kills Them. Finds Them and Kills Them, who is described a “neither a man nor a woman” and who helps The Other Magpie rescue Bull Snake. See also Jerry Matney and D. A. Gordon, Woman War Chief: The Story of a Crow Warrior ( Bloomington: First Books, 2002) and Edwin Denig, “Warrior Woman,” in John Ewens (ed.), Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), pp. 195–201.
58. Rudolf Dekker and Lotte C. van de Pol, The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), pp. 63–69.
59. Jonathan Jordan and Emily Jordan, The War Queens: Extraordinary Women Who Ruled the Battlefield (New York: Diversion Books, 2020).
60. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, eds. Sophie Bourgault and Rebecca Kingston (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2018) and The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry, ed. Charity Cannon Willard (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. For an in-depth look at de Pizan’s various political and social theories, see Kate Langdon Forham, The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan (Hampshire: Ashgate 2002). Unfortunately, there is not much here on her military theories and writings. See also the breezy but illuminating National Geographic Profiles, “Christine de Pizan: France’s First Lady of Letters,” in National Geographic History (March/April 2020), pp. 8–11, which highlights her extraordinary life and career and points out that her portrait of Joan of Arc is the only contemporary account we have of “La Purcell.”
61. The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteen Century, translated by Igor de Rachewiltz (Boston: Brill, 2004). For a further examination of this fascinating subject, see Jack Weatherford, The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire (New York: Broadway Books, 2010) and especially Ruby Lal, Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan (New York: W. W. Norton, 2018). The 20th wife of the Mogul emperor, Jahangir, Nur led troops in several key battles to rescue her husband after he was captured on the way to Kashmir. While this work is mostly about the rest of her life, the battle stories are well worth a look purely from the point of her as a warrior.
62. For a brief, engaging introduction to Manduhai’s rise, war-making skills and ultimate success, see Jordan and Jordan, “The Year of the Tiger” in their War Queens, op. cit., pp. 84–95. For the Mongol way of war, see Gabriel, “The Mongols 1206–1294,” op. cit., pp. 328–344. It is important to note that the Mongols perfected a “modern” way of war which was not matched until the 19th century in Europe: Christian Potholm, Winning At War, pp. 21–29 and S. R Turnbull, The Mongols (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1980). To examine the founding of the Mongol empire and legacy, see Frank McLynn, Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy (New York: Da Capo Press, 2015).
63. James W. Hoover, “Holkar, Anilyabhai,” in Reina Pennington (ed.), Amazons to Fighter Pilots, two vols. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2003), pp. 205–209.
64. Robert Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas (London: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 137.
65. For a helpful look at Assyrian warfare during her rule and beyond, see Richard Gabriel, op. cit., “The Iron Army of Assyria 890–612 B.C.E,” pp. 124–139.
66. Take, for example, Eleanor of Aquitaine who is the subject of hundreds of works. Not surprisingly, married to two kings (Louis VII of France and Henry II of England, the mother of two kings (Richard I and John of England) and the grandmother of another (Henry III), Eleanor of Aquitaine has also been the subject of many dramatic histories and novels. In many of them, the family dynamics of her life have tended to overshadow her serious political and military activities. For a succinct account of these dimensions, see Natalie Forget, “Eleanor of Aquitaine,” in Pennington, Amazons to Fighter Pilots, pp. 140–143, which details her military activities on behalf of her son John, including hiring and leading mercenaries and later, holding out and directing troops during the siege of Mirebeau.
Note: those enjoying fiction about the medieval period will enjoy the novels of Sharon Kay Penman, especially the trilogy dealing with Eleanor and the Plantagenets: When Christ and All His Saints Slept (New York: Ballentine Books, 1995), Time and Chance (New York: Ballentine Books, 2003), and The Devil’s Brood (New York: Putnam’s, 2008). Other works about Eleanor include another trilogy of novels by Elizabeth Chatwick, The Summer Queen (New York: Landmark, 2014), The Autumn Throne (New York: Landmark, 2000), and The Winter Crown (New York: Landmark, 2015) as well as the nonfiction Eleanor of Aquitaine by Sara Cockerill (London: Amberley Publishing, 2020), Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine (New York: Ballentine Books, 2001), and Marion Meade, Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography (New York: Penguin, 1991). A recent work of scholarly note is Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France and England, Mother of Empires (Gloucestershire: Amberley, 2019) which allows the reader to sample various conflicting sources and the author’s evaluation of them.
67. Among the more recent and useful of these works include: Kelly DeVries, Joan of Arc: A Military Leader (London: Sutton, 1999); Mary Gordon, Joan of Arc (New York: Viking Penguin, 2002); Kathryn Harrison, Joan of Arc: A Live Transfigured (New York: Doubleday, 2014); Stephen W. Richey, Joan of Arc: The Warrior Saint (Westport: Praeger, 2003); Helen Castor, Joan of Arc: A History (New York: Harper, 2015); and Craig Taylor (editor and translator), Joan of Arc: La Pucelle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006).
68. See Sherry Robinson, “Lozen” in her Apache Voices (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), pp. 3–9. Lucia St. Clair Robson has also written an engaging novel about Lozen, Ghost Warrior (New York: Forge Books, 2012), which captures the flavor of the times and her ability to foretell upcoming battle situations.
69. Pat Southern, Empress Zenobia: Palmyra’s Rebel Queen (London: Continuum, 2008); Agnes Carr Vaughan, Zenobia of Palmyra (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967); Rex Winsbury, Zenobia of Palmyra: History, Myth and the Neo-Classical Imagination (London: Duckworth, 2010); Yasmine Zahran, Zenobia: Between Reality and Legend (London: Stacey International, 2010); and Byran Nakamura, “Palmyra and the Roman East,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, Vol. 34, #2 (1993), pp. 133–150. Nakamura most helpfully looks at Zenobia’s rise to power, short reign (270–272 CE) during which she expanded and tried to hold territory in the Levant, Arabia, and Egypt and also analyzes her military forces, a mixture of heavy cavalry, light bowmen, and auxiliaries and how she was fatally hampered by her lack of a large standing army.
70. David Hay, The Military Leadership of Matilda of Canossa 1046–1115 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008) and Catherine Hanley, Matilda: Empress Queen Warrior (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).
71. Isaac Levine, My Life as Peasant, Officer and Exile: The Life of Maria Bochkareva (New York: Frederick Stokes, 1919).
72. Linda Heywood, Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017).