The Book of Awesome Women. Becca Anderson

known, but their counterparts, the numerous crusading battle nuns known as the Martial Nuns are not, having been effectively “whited-out” of history—probably by jealous scribe monks! But there were armed nuns who accompanied fighting monks in the Crusades in the 1400s. But even nuns who stayed home were often armed—they had to defend their convents by themselves in the aggressively territorial Dark Ages. For example, when the anti-Christian Espartero invaded Spain in his famous siege, the nuns of Seville fought back and won. One nun who took up the pen and the sword wrote of her crusade to Jerusalem at the time of Saladin’s attack on the holy city, “I wore a helmet or at any rate walked on the ramparts wearing on my head a metal dish which did as well as a helmet. Women though I was I had the appearance of a warrior. I slung stones at the enemy. I concealed my fears. It was hot and there was never a moment’s rest. Once a catapulted stone fell near me and I was injured by the fragments.”

      Careful study of European military history shows a number of women armies, including many women of the cloth. Ultimately, success was too threatening to the men they fought beside and several popes declared such women to be heretics. Joan of Arc, of course, was the most famous. She was burned at the stake in 1431 on the letter of a law that was hundreds of years old that forbade women from wearing armor. At the same time, Joan was the national shero of France, having led the battle to free the French from the foreign power of England, at the advice of the voices of saints. Several women were inspired by Joan’s example and moved to courage by her murder. The most successful was Joan, the Maid of Sarmaize, who attracted a religious following that supported her in Anjou. She claimed to be the Joan of Arc returned and, like her predecessor, dressed in men’s clothing and armor. Several of Joan of Arc’s friends and family took her in and accepted her. Her actual identity was never known.

      Onorata Rodiani was an ahead-of-her time portrait and mural painter who was busy immortalizing the Tyrant of Cremona in oils when an “importunate nobleman” barged into the sitting. Onorata whipped out her dagger and ended the rude noble’s life on the spot, but was forced to go underground as a fugitive. She put down the brush and took up the sword as the captain of a band of mercenaries and died in 1472 in an attempt to defend her birthplace of Castelleone.

      In 1745, a Scottish woman named Mary Ralphson fought at Fontenoy right beside her husband. Known as “Trooper Mary,” she wasn’t deterred by having only five fingers and one thumb, living through war to the grand age of 110.

      The Amazon of the Vendeans, Mademoiselle de la Rochefoucalt fought the Republicans when Louis XVI was murdered. She was only a teenager, but was famed for her speeches on the battlefield, “Follow me! Before the end of the day we either sing our victory on earth, or hymns with the saints in heaven.”

      Alexandra Dourova was a Russian shero who fought against Napoleon as a colonel in the Fourth Hussars. In World War I, the very same regiment enlisted another fighting woman—Olga Serguievna Schidlowskaia.

      Major Tamara Aleksandrovna was in charge of an all-female air force for Russia in World War II. Their phenomenal success is evidenced by their record of flying 125 combats, 4,000 sorties, and shooting down thirty-eight Nazi aircraft. Other amazonian aviatrixes were Captain Budanova, Nancy Wak of New Zealand who flew for the allies in France and Ludmilla Pavlichenko who killed 309 Nazis by herself!

      Nina Teitelboim, called “Little Wanda with the Braids,” was an anti-Nazi fighter who commanded a special force of Poland’s People’s Guard which blew up the elite Cafe Club, a hangout for the top-ranking Gestapo. Thus empowered, she was part of a raid on the Nazis, stealing back the enormous stockpiles of cash the Nazis themselves had stolen from the people of Warsaw. After this success, the price on her head was higher than ever, and she was captured and executed.

      Florence Matomelo was a soldier in the anti-apartheid resistance movement. In 1965, she was arrested for her role in the African National Congress (Pro Azanian or black South African rebel government) and confined to solitary where she was starved, beaten, interrogated, and deprived of the insulin she needed for her diabetes. She died after five years of this abuse, leaving behind several children. She had led a life of constant courage, defying and protesting the unfair practices of apartheid laws, and she died for her cause, having made invaluable contributions to the changes that finally freed black South Africans from the racist rule set up by colonial whites.

      Fierce Asiatic Females

      In the year 39 AD, the Vietnamese Trung sisters led a revolt against China. Phung Thi Chinh was in the last stages of pregnancy, but fought beside the other women, gave birth in the middle of the rebellion, and kept on fighting with her babe bound to her back with cloth.

      Hangaku was a medieval noble’s daughter with topnotch archery skills. Born to the Taira shogunate, she fought beside the men to defend the family’s castle. She was fully acknowledged for having superior bow and arrow skills in comparison with her father, brothers, and husband, “shooting a hundred arrows and hitting a hundred times.” In 1201, a fateful attack on the familiar fortress occurred, during which Hangaku dressed like a boy and stood, unhidden, raining arrows down upon the attackers. Even her flawless archery couldn’t save the Tairas that round, and she was felled by an arrow and captured as a prisoner of war.

      Afra’Bint Ghifar al-Humayriah was a veil-less Arab woman who fought in the legendary tent-pole battles with Khawlah in the seventh century. These resourceful women rebelled against the Greeks who captured them with the only available weapon—the poles of the tents they were imprisoned in!

      Hindustan’s warrior queen of Gurrah, Durgautti led a bold and colorful army of 1,500 elephants and 6,000 horseback soldiers. “Like a bold heroine, mounted within her elephant’s howdar, armed with lance and bow and arrow,” writes herstorian Eleanor Starling, she bested the invasive Mongol Asaph Khan and his army of 6,000 horses and 12,000 foot soldiers. When he later turned the tables on her, she killed herself with her elephant handler’s dagger rather than endure defeat.

      Lakshmi Bar, the Rani of Jhansi is one of India’s national heroines. Raised in a household of boys, she was fearless and brilliant as a military strategist. When her husband died, she came out of purdah to fight the British, becoming the key figure extraordinaire who trained women for her army with special care. These women came to be known as the “amazons of Jhansi.” Lakshmi herself was famous for calmly taunting enemy generals, “Do your worst, I will make you a woman.” Her fame spread like wildfire throughout India, making her their national shero when she broke through an encircling ambush of British soldiers during battle and escaped in horseback to a hundred miles away in just twenty-four hours with a ten-year-old boy clinging to her back. She and the boy were the only two survivors of the slaughtered Indian troops. It should also be noted that Lakshmi was in full armor in sweltering 120 degree heat. She died on the battlefield in Gwalior when she was barely thirty; a British general called her the “greatest hero” he’d ever known.

      Qui Jin was called a “Heroine Among Women” by Sun Yat-Sen. She was simply amazing! Born in 1874, her hobbies included cross-dressing and riding through the streets of Chinese cities and villages. She founded the first newspaper for women in China, founded a school for girls, and escaped from her arranged marriage to pursue her revolutionary goals of overthrowing the Qing Monarchy. Quite the intellectual, she wrote poetry and took a vow of silence during her imprisonment upon being arrested for plotting the assassination of the Qing governor. Her daughter followed in her mother’s pioneering footsteps by becoming China’s first aviatrix.

      Women Warriors of the Americas

      Coyolxauhqui was an Aztec divinity who fought her own mother, Coatlicue, for defending the warrior-god she had birthed (her brother, I suppose, but enemy nevertheless!) Coyolxauhqui’s daunting name means “the one whose face was tattooed with rattlesnakes.”

      According to herstorian Carolyn Niethammer, Pohaha was a brave battle axe with a sense of humor for whom the heat of battle was quite rousing. Of North American Tewa Indian tribal origin, Pohaha’s name tells the tale: “po” referred to the wetness between