Michelle Rosenberg - Warriors and Wenches: Sex and Power in Womens History

Warriors and Wenches

For Jeremy, Lola and Madison

Michelle Rosenberg

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by

PEN AND SWORD HISTORY

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Michelle Rosenberg, 2019

ISBN 978 1 47389 936 0

eISBN 978 1 47389 938 4

Mobi ISBN 978 1 47389 937 7

The right of Michelle Rosenberg to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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When the destiny of a nation is in a womans bedroom, the best place for the historian is in the antechamber. Charles-Augustin Sainte-Reuve

Until relatively recently, history books and traditional school lessons have focused on the same few women, held up as examples of female achievement. On the positive side, times are changing. Womens history has become more prevalent in our collective consciousness, whether in the news, in books, through commemorative events like International Womens Day, the #MeToo movement, charities, education and through writers and academics.

There are countless women whose stories should be told. Warriors and Wenches highlights the fact that world history is full of women we dont know about.

Those women we do know about are often recorded, not specifically because of achievements in their own right, but because of their relation to a particular man in history. They are a wife, a mistress, a mother as opposed to themselves. For others, their stories have been overlooked or airbrushed from history. And for those whose names we will never know their number is incalculable. Historically, career and life choices for women have been limited and womens lives werent deemed important enough to record.

Warriors and Wenches showcases just some of those who took matters into their own hands, lived their lives on their own terms and were forces to reckon with.

The wenches would have been called tarts, whores, courtesans, mistresses or prostitutes. The warriors often had to disguise their sex in order to fight. These are women you should know about. Love them or loathe them, they made their mark and were often so extraordinary that their lives were recorded at times when womens stories traditionally werent.

Warriors and Wenches offers up an indulgent romp through centuries of history, featuring women who cross dressed as soldiers, widows turned tank drivers bent on bloody vengeance and fierce martial arts fighters to women who magnificently and outrageously schemed to turn their social lot in life to their advantage: the mistresses, courtesans and uniquely French maitresse-en-titres who wielded incredible power and influence in the sumptuous courts of Europe.

This book doesnt seek to decide whether these women were good or bad; I will leave it up to you to make up your own minds. These are women who, through military skill, incredible courage and loyalty, scandal, poison plots and sexual debauchery, have crossed over into the realm of legend and myth and become powerful symbols of feminist power.

Michelle Rosenberg

Amazons: the legendary tribe of women warriors, led by their Queen Hippolyte, now front and centre in the public eye following the smash hit Wonder Woman with the awesome butt-kicking Gal Gadot. These Scythian warriors are the stuff of legend. Mythical, marvellous, badass, and the equals of men in every way.

Members of this ultimate matriarchal society allegedly cut off one breast in order to make them better archers with their bow. Or of course that could have simply been propaganda of their enemies, the Greeks. You were only a true Greek hero if you conquered, fought or defeated an Amazonian warrior.

An archaeological discovery on the Russian border with Kazakhstan revealed over 150 graves or kurgans, burial mounds of a nomadic people the Greeks referred to as Scythians. They prove that there were indeed warrior women that fit the description of the Amazons. Whatever their men did, they did. They rode horses, they were very tall for their time, they had tattoos, fought, hunted for food. They were also buried with hemp-making kits and tattoo kits. If they gave birth to sons, the boys would be left with other tribes for fostering and as a way of cementing good inter-tribal relationships.

Legend and myth has it that Penthesilea, the daughter of Ares, the Greek God of War, and Otrera was the mythological Queen of the Amazons of Asia Minor during the Trojan War.

Roman historian Pliny claims that Penthesilea was beautiful and wise, highly skilled in weaponry and a fierce warrior and that she invented the battle axe. Her story is told in the lost Greek literary epic Aethiopis , of which only five lines survive.

Her tale is tempered by tragedy. Whilst out hunting she accidentally killed her sister Hippolyte with (depending on the story you read) either an arrow or a spear. Consumed by grief and regret, she wanted only to die, but as a warrior could only do so honourably in battle.

The great warrior Achilles supports the slumping figure of the Amazon queen, Penthesilea, whom he has mortally wounded.

She pledged her support to King Priam of Troy and prepared for battle in the Trojan War alongside her personal guard of twelve fellow Amazons (Antibrote, Ainia, Clete, Alcibie, Antandre, Bremusa, Derimacheia, Derinoe, Harmothoe, Hippothoe, Polemusa and Thermodosa).

Rising early on her first (and last) day of battle, she prepared herself. Determined to redeem her soul, she channelled her rage against Achilles, who had killed the Trojan prince Hector, and vowed to dispatch him. It must have been one hell of a hand-tohand fight between two epic warriors, especially considering one was the daughter of the god of war and the other was, apart from his heel, immortal.

Bronze Bust of an Amazon, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ultimately, however, Penthesilea died at Achilles hand as he thrust his sword through her breast and impaled her. Removing her helmet, Achilles fell completely in love with her. (Or, as other stories have it, he committed necrophilia and had sex with her corpse.)