Female Warriors, Vol. 2 (of 2): Memorials of Female Valour and Heroism, from the Mythological Ages to the Present Era.Clayton, Ellen C. (Ellen Creathorne)
History
Female Warriors, Vol. 2 (of 2): Memorials of Female Valour and Heroism, from the Mythological Ages to the Present Era.
Clayton, Ellen C. (Ellen Creathorne)
Amazons; Women -- Biography; Women soldiers
In June, 1853, the war between Russia and Turkey broke out. The Turkish
government, to swell the ranks of the army, were obliged to beat up for
recruits among the semi-barbarous tribes of Asia Minor. The chief of
one of the wild tribes in the Cilician mountains having been imprisoned
by order of the Sultan, his wife, Fatima, a little old woman, about
sixty years of age, with a dark complexion, who governed during his
absence, exercising the double duty of Queen and Prophetess, raised
three hundred of her best horsemen and led them to the Allied Camp
at Scutari, in the summer of 1854. Her appearance created no little
sensation amongst English and French. There was very little of the
Amazon in her personal appearance, though she bestrode her steed like
a trooper, and wore a costume intended to represent the military dress
of a chieftain. She was attended by two handmaids, also in male attire.
Fatima, apprehensive that her entreaties for the release of her husband
would prove insufficient to move the Sultan, thought the best means of
propitiating the Turkish Government was to lead a few hundreds of her
bravest warriors to fight the frozen Russ. The pay for her troops was
to be eighty piastres a month, besides tooth and stirrup money in every
village through which they should pass.
* * * * *
When the Allies were storming the Mamelon in June, 1855, Lady Paget
(wife of Lord George, and daughter of General Sir Arthur Paget, brother
of the famous Marquis of Anglesey) was present on the field, at a
short distance from the scene of action. General Pennefather went up
to the dead body of a Russian officer, and cut a medal off his coat.
He then pinned the medal on Lady Paget's shawl, paying her a handsome
compliment to the effect that she deserved a medal as much as any one
present.
* * * * *
Most people can remember the fortitude and courage displayed by the
British ladies at Cawnpore, Lucknow, and other Indian cities during
the terrible Mutiny. Ladies, some of them mere girls, delicately
nurtured, unused to hardships of any kind, endured without a murmur,
the most heartrending privations; and so far from giving way to useless
repinings or sinking into apathy, they tried in every way to cheer
up their brave defenders. They bore provisions and ammunition to the
soldiers, loaded the rifles, and more than once took their turn in
mounting guard and firing on the rebels.
The heroine of Cawnpore, Miss Wheeler, was one of the prisoners
captured by the notorious Nana Sahib on the 26th June, 1857, and all
who survived the terrible Massacre bore witness to her unflinching
courage. She is said to have shot five Sepoys with a revolver; that she
was then taken away by a sowar (trooper) to his hut, when she snatched
his sabre, cut off his head, and flung herself down a well. An ayah,
belonging to an English family, stated that it was in the hut, after
killing the sowar, that she shot the five Sepoys.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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