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WOMEN IN WAR

FRANCIS GRIBBLE

AUTHOR OF "THK LIFE OF THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH"

LONDON
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON AND CO. LTD.

1916

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

The Amazons in ancient and modern times — Miss Beebe Beam —
Senora Loreta Velasquez — Women who have served in the
British Army, disguising their sex — Christian Davies — Hannah
Snell — Mary Anne Talbot — Dr. James Barry, Inspector-
General of Army Hospitals . . . . pp. 1-13

CHAPTER II

The Amazons of France — The real Mme Sans-GSne — Bernadotte's
admiration for her — Her ultimate marriage to a gendarme —
Virginie Ghesquidre — Angelique Brulon — Marie Schellinck —
Liberte Barrau — Felicite and Theophile Fernig, the heroines
of Jemmappes — Felicite' s romantic marriage — Theophile' s
secret sorrow ....... pp. 14-25

CHAPTER III

The Vtvandi&res — Heroines of the Retreat from Moscow — Heroines
of the war of 1870-71 — Annette Drevon — Jeanne Bonne-
mere — Madame Jarrethout, the Mother of the Volunteers —
Louise de Beaulieu pp. 26-38

CHAPTER IV

The courageous exploit of Mile Juliette Dodu, of the Telegraph
Service, in the Franco-German War — Mile Wipper and Mile
Meyer of the same service pp 39-48

CHAPTER V

Women in the Russian Campaign of 1812 — Elizabeth Hatzler, the
dragoon — Josephine Trinquart, the cantinidre — Women at the
crossing of the Beresina — Nidia, the mistress of General Mont-
brun — Adventures of the actresses at the Moscow theatre —
Mme Verteuil — Aurore de Bursay — The Reminiscences of Mme
Domergue ... ... pp. 49-56

CHAPTER VI

Louise Fusil of the Moscow Theatre — Her performance before
Napoleon during the occupation — Her return with the Grande
Armee — Her narrow escape from death — Her adoption of a
foundling — Nadeje, the Orphan of Vilna — Her dramatic talents
and untimely death ..... pp. 57-66

vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII

Deborah — Boadicea — Genevidve — Fredegonde — Hermangarde —
Julienne de Breteuil — Eleanor of Guienne — Guirande de Lavaur
— Jeanne de Montfort ..... pp. 67-77

CHAPTER VIII

Matilda of Tuscany— How she brought the Emperor to Canossa—
Jeanne d'Arc — The state of France during her childhood —
Voices and Visions — Her interview with Robert de Baudricourt
— Summoned to the King at Chinon — Inquiries of the eccle-
siastics into her bona fides — The examiners satisfied and the
Maid launched upon her mission . . . pp. 78-90

CHAPTER IX

The nature of the Maid's enterprise— The march to Orleans-
Orleans entered — The English siege-works attacked — The siege
raised ........ pp. 91-100

CHAPTER X

Theological treatises on the Maid's mission — Disputes between
rival historians as to her military capacity — The power of faith
— The march to Reims and the coronation of the King of
France pp. 101-109

CHAPTER XI

After the coronation — Vicissitudes of fortune — Failure of the
attack on Paris — Rival prophetesses — Capture of the Maid at
Compiegne — Failure of the French to ransom her — Her trial
and execution at Rouen ..... pp. 110-121

CHAPTER XII

False Maids arise after Jeanne's death — Jeanne des Armoises —
The Maid of Sarmaize — The Maid of Le Mans — Other women
fighters — Isabeau de Lorraine — Marguerite de Bressieux —
Jeanne Hachette — The Lady of Bretigny . . pp. 122-130

CHAPTER XIII

End of the Middle Ages — Wars of the Roses — Queen Margaret —
Her exploits in the field — Her abdication and sorrowful old
age pp. 131-138

CHAPTER XIV

The wars of religion at the time of the Reformation — Women who
helped in the defence of besieged cities — Ameliane du Puget —
Jeanne Maillotte — Others — Louise Labe, the poetess — Kenau
Hasselaar — Her services during the siege of Haarlem by the
Spaniards pp. 139-151

CONTENTS vii

CHAPTER XV

The Wars of the Fronde — The Fronde of the Parlement and the
Fronde of the Noble Lords — Part played in the war by Mile
de Montpensier — Her friendship for the great Conde — Her dash
for Orleans — Her return to Paris . . . pp. 152-163

CHAPTER XVI

Attack on Paris by Turenne — Mile de Montpensier points the guns
on his army — Disappointment of her matrimonial ambitions —
Peace concluded without her consent — Fear, flight, and nervous
breakdown . ..... pp. 164-172

CHAPTER XVII

Madame de Longueville, sister of the great Conde — Her attempt to
raise Normandy — Her escape from Dieppe — Her defence of
Bordeaux — Her repentance in her old age, and her devout
religious observances ..... pp. 173-185

CHAPTER XVIII

The insurrection in La Vendee — Various women warriors — Mme
de Larochejaquelein — Success and failure — The crossing of the
Loire ........ pp. 1 86-200

CHAPTER XIX

The check at Granville — The check at Angers — Dispersal of the
royalist army — Madame de Larochejaquelein in hiding — Ther-
midor and the subsequent amnesty . . . pp. 201-210

CHAPTER XX

The Duchesse de Berry — -Her attempt to raise La Vendee for the
Comte de Chambord — Failure of her friends to dissuade her —
The rising — Defeat — Mme de Berry seeks a hiding-place at
Nantes pp. 211-218

CHAPTER XXI

Mme de Berry in hiding— Her betrayal by the Jew Deutz— Her
discovery in a secret chamber by the gendarmes — Her arrest
and removal to prison — How Deutz received the reward of his
treachery pp. 2197-228

CHAPTER XXII

The Empress Eugenie — Did she " make " the Franco-German War?
—The news of Sedan in Paris— Outbreak of the Revolution-
Flight of the Empress from the Tuileries — Her appeal to Dr.
Evans — The drive to Deauville — The crossing of the Channel
ia Sir John Burgoyne's yacht . pp. 229-244

viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXIII

Catherine the Great of Russia— Her civil war against her husband—
His discomfiture, arrest, abdication, and death in prison-
Was he murdered there ? — Was Catherine responsible ?

pp. 245-254

CHAPTER XXIV

Spanish wars — The Maid of Saragossa — The shooting of Cabrera's
mother and other hostages in the Carlist War — The nuns of
Seville — The termagants of Barcelona . . pp 255-265

CHAPTER XXV

Queen Cristina of Spain and General Espartero — General Leon's
attempt to kidnap Queen Isabella — Fighting on the palace
staircase — Gallant defence by the Halberdiers — Capture and
execution of General Leon — Further fighting in 1854 and
1866— The Revolution of 1868 . . . .pp. 266-278

CHAPTER XXVI

Women in war in India — Cawnpore — Details of the siege and the
massacre. ....... pp. 279-287

CHAPTER XXVII

The First Afghan War— The retreat through the Khyber Pass— The
massacre — Extracts from Lady Sale's Diary . pp. 288-301

CHAPTER XXVIII

Woman as pacificist — Baroness von Suttner as controversialist and
novelist — The value of Die Waff en nieder ! . . pp. 302-312

CHAPTER XXIX

Florence Nightingale— How she prepared herself for her life's work,
and how she performed it — Her courage — Her thoroughness —
Her modesty — Her supreme title to immortal fame pp. 313-322

EPILOGUE

pp. 323-342

WOMEN IN WAR

CHAPTER I

The Amazons in ancient and modern times — Miss Beebe Beam —
Sefiora Loreta Velasquez — Women who have served in the
British Army, disguising their sex — Christian Davies — Hannah
Snell — Mary Anne Talbot — Dr. James Barry, Inspector-
General of Army Hospitals.

THE chronicler of woman's achievements in war
will perhaps be expected to begin with the
Amazons ; but he will hardly be expected to
go into details, or to waste space in disengaging
history from myth. The balance of authori-
tative opinion inclines to the view that the
Amazons did actually exist, but that there is
no foundation for the statement that they cut
off their right breasts in order that they might
be better able to draw the bow. One hears of
the existence of companies, regiments, and even
armies of fighting women, in both the hemi-
spheres and all the continents. The river
Amazon itself derives its name from a tribe of
women warriors whom the traveller Orellana
believed to dwell upon its banks. There are
well-accredited stories of the Amazons of
Dahomey ; and it is well known that Ranjeet
Singh of Lahore had a bodyguard of a hundred

2 WOMEN IN WAR

and fifty Amazons recruited from the loveliest
girls procurable in Cashmere, Persia, and the
Punjab. In Bantam, again, when it held a semi-
independent position under the Dutch, the king
had a royal troop of women soldiers who rode
astride and carried muskets and lances, while
Tien- Wang, the Celestial King of the Tae-Pings,
had a bodyguard of a thousand woman soldiers.

And so forth. One could add many such
instances if one cared to dig erudition from the
Encyclopaedias, and did not mind being weari-
some ; but it will be better to refer the curious
to Mr. Guy Cadogan Rothery's most learned
monograph, The Amazons in Antiquity and
Modern Times. The one point which it is
worth while to pause and make is this : that
whereas organised groups of professional fight-
ing women have been gradually eliminated by
the progress of civilisation, the hour of need
has often brought individual women into action.
Sieges, in particular, have often called them to
deeds which have covered them with glory.

In the annals of almost every country we
find the story of some besieged city which the
women have helped to defend. Plutarch, for
instance, tells us of such a case in Greece. The
women of Argos, he says, defended themselves
so valiantly against the Spartans that they
were allowed to dedicate a statue to the God
of War, and permitted, as a symbolical distinc-
tion, to wear false beards on their wedding days.
The city of Avila in Spain has a similar legend

THE ESCALADE 3

of the repulse of the Saracens by the women.
We all know how nobly the Maid of Saragossa
acquitted herself during the historic siege of
that city ; and we all ought to know how
Kenau Hasselaar and the three hundred
women placed under her command helped to
keep the Spaniards out of Haarlem. These
stories shall more fully be related in the
chapters to which they belong ; but we may
pause here to recall the prowess of the brave
woman who helped to save Geneva from the
Duke of Savoy on the night of the famous
escalade.

The Duke had tried to rush the city treacher-
ously, in the dark, in time of peace. Some
of his Spanish mercenaries got over the walls,
and ran through the streets shouting, " Ville
gagnee ! Tue ! Tue." The citizens jumped
out of bed, snatched up their weapons, and ran
out to confront the intruders in their night-
shirts. Their pastor, Simon Goulart, to whom
we owe a jubilant description of ,the episode,
writes that he himself would willingly have
taken part in the fighting, in spite of his sacred
office, if only he had been able to lay his hand
on a suit of mail. Mme Royaume, when she
heard the tumult, was in one of the upper
chambers of a high house in a narrow street,
making soup for the breakfast of her large
family. She heard the call to arms, and she
responded without waiting to look for a suit of
mail. Opening the window wide, she sacri-

4 WOMEN IN WAR

ficed her breakfast, and tossed out the sauce-
pan,— boiling soup and all — on to the heads
of the men-at-arms. The unexpected missile
threw them into such dire confusion that the
Genevans had easy work with them ; and the
saucepan is still preserved, together with the
captured scaling ladders, in the Hotel de Ville,
as a perpetual memorial of the proudest day in
Genevan history.

In that case, of course, — and in most of the
cases with which we shall deal, — our women
warriors have fought without making any
mystery of their sex. In other case^ — a con-
siderable number of cases, too — we find women
concealing their sex in order to be allowed to
fight. The penetration of the disguise of such
a Serbian heroine was one of the romantic
incidents of the recent Balkan War ; and the
military history of almost every nation contains
several anecdotes of the kind. In the United
States, for instance, there is still living, or was
still living until quite recently, a Miss Beebe
Beam, who fought for her country against
Spain. In order to reach the seat of war in the
Philippines, she disguised herself as a cabin-
boy ; arriving at Manila, she disguised herself
as a soldier, and followed the campaign for a
twelvemonth ; and then, according to the cus-
tom of her country, she was interviewed :

" I saw war/' she said to the astonished
pressman, " and I lived it, just as a soldier
sees it and lives it ; and, for what I saw and

MISS BEEBE BEAM 5

learned, I do not feel I paid too much — even
in the illness that came to me and the horrors
of that voyage on the City of Para."

Curiosity, it would seem — a feminine char-
acteristic, as we are sometimes told — was the
lure in the case of Miss Beebe Beam ; certainly
there was no cause at issue which could inspire
deep emotions. Another woman who fought,
also in an American army, for the sheer joy of
righting, was Sefiora Loreta Velasquez, a lady
of Cuban birth who had, in 1856, contracted
a secret marriage with an American officer.
She was, she has related, " perfectly wild about
war " ; and when the Civil War broke out she
not only persuaded her husband to desert the
Union Army and join the Confederates, but
begged him to let her enlist as a private under
his command. When he refused she put on
a suit of his clothes and ran away to New
Orleans. There she found a tailor who could
keep a secret, had the clothes altered to suit
her figure, procured a false moustache, and, thus
equipped and embellished, raised a regiment
of recruits and took them to her husband at
Pensacola.

This time he not only submitted to his wife's
whim, but taught her how to drill her men.
His own life was not a long one — he was
accidentally killed by the bursting of his car-
bine ; but his death did not prevent Loreta
from continuing under arms. Assuming the

6 WOMEN IN WAR

name of Lieutenant Harry Buford, she fought
at Bull Run, where the Federal enemy did most
of the running ; and we have her word for it
that " no man on the field fought with more
energy and determination " than she did. She
also, more than once, crossed the Federal lines
as a spy, and brought back valuable informa-
tion ; and when the war was over, and her
military services were no longer in request,
she went west and renewed the life of adven-
ture as a Calif ornian miner.

The British Army, it must be admitted, has
never included a woman soldier of quite that
dash and distinction ; but there are records of
women who have seen service alike in the Army,
the Navy, and the Marines. The adventures
of several of them are set forth in James Caul-
field's Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters of
Remarkable Persons, and have often been repro-
duced, in magazines and popular weekly papers.
There is more of curiosity than of romance in
the interest which they excite ; and it will be
sufficient to deal with them briefly, beginning
with Mrs. Christian Davies, commonly called
Mother Ross.

Mrs. Davies, nee Cavanagh, was the daughter
of a maltster of Dublin, who raised a troop of
horse for James II, and was so disappointed at
the result of the battle of the Boyne that he
fell sick of a fever " which carried him off in
a short time." His spirited daughter kept a
public-house, and married the waiter, whose

CHRISTIAN DA VIES 7

name was Thomas Welsh. This Welsh, having
gone out to pay a debt of fifty pounds to his
brewer, got drunk and was kidnapped and
carried off to Holland with a ship-load of
recruits. He wrote home to say that, having
reached the Netherlands without a penny in
his pocket, he " was under the necessity, for
support, to enlist as a private soldier." His
wife, hearing the news, decided to sell her
public-house, follow his example, and cross the
seas to look for him.

She found him ; but the circumstances of the
meeting were not what her fancy had pictured :
" To her inexpressible surprise and mortifica-
tion, she recognised her husband caressing a
Dutch woman who appeared to be congratu-
lating him on his safe return from the late
battles." Still, though she was disappointed,
she behaved magnanimously, and " gave him a
piece of gold, informing him, at the same time,
he should always find in her an affectionate
brother, but that he must not think of her as a
wife, while she could remain concealed and the
war lasted." So they parted " in a friendly
way," but came together again in consequence
of the discovery of Mrs. Welsh's sex by the
surgeon who attended her for a wound which
she received in the battle of Ramilies.

They were reconciled, and Mrs. Welsh resumed
the female garb and became the regimental
cook. Her husband having been killed in
action shortly afterwards, she " found conso-

8 WOMEN IN WAR

lation in the arms of one Hugh Jones, a grena-
dier,'* who became her second husband. He,
too, fell in battle ; and his widow then went
back to Dublin, where she once more started
a public house, " and by this, and by making
pies, contrived to pick up a comfortable liveli-
hood." There, a third soldier named Davies
wooed and won her. As Serjeant Davies, he
ultimately was admitted into Chelsea Hospital,
where Mrs. Davies nursed him until she caught
a cold and died of it, on July 7, 1739, being
interred, with military honours, in the Hospital
burial-ground.

Hannah Snell, whose name comes next on
our list, adopted a martial career for the same
reason as Christian Davies. Her husband had
disappeared, and enlistment seemed the most
hopeful way of looking for him. She did not
succeed in finding him, but learnt that he had
committed a murder and been executed. In
the meantime, however, she had had various
and painful experiences, receiving five hundred
lashes for an offence which she had not com-
mitted, and a wound in the groin, from which
she had to extract the bullet herself, in order
that her secret might not be discovered. She
was at Carlisle at the time of the Young Pre-
tender's invasion, and was afterwards sent to
India, where she distinguished herself in action
in the Madras Presidency. It is related that
she endeared herself to her messmates by
washing and mending their linen ; and the

MARY ANNE TALBOT 9

end of her career was not unsatisfactory. She
went on the stage and " sung several songs at
the theatre in Goodman's Fields " — an indica-
tion that, even in those days, intelligent impre-
sarios perceived that it might be profitable to
exploit notoriety as well as talent.

Thirdly, there was Mary Anne Talbot, said to
have been the youngest of the sixteen illegiti-
mate children of Lord William Talbot, Steward
of His Majesty's Household, and Colonel of the
Glamorganshire Militia. Born in London, in
1778, she was disgracefully treated by her
lover, Captain Essex Bowen, of the 82nd
regiment of infantry. He took her to San
Domingo, whither he had been ordered, in the
disguise of a foot-boy, and, arriving at Port-au-
Prince, caused her to be enrolled in the regi-
ment as a drummer-boy, threatening to sell her
into slavery if she did not acquiesce. As a
drummer-boy, she took part in the siege of
Valenciennes. Deserting from the Army, she
joined the Navy as a powder-monkey, was
with Lord Howe on the famous First of June,
and was subsequently, for eighteen months, a
prisoner of war in France. To her, as to Hannah
Snell, it appeared that the theatre might afford
fitting scope for her talents. Like Hannah
Snell, she was given her chance — the sort of
chance of which any novice would be glad.
Covent Garden was one of her theatres ; Juliet
was one of her parts ; but the ghost would
seem to have walked with fitful irregularity :

io WOMEN IN WAR

" Finding this pursuit/* she writes, " more
pleasant than profitable, I was compelled to
give it up, and solicit assistance towards my
support from several respectable persons to
whom I had made my adventures and sufferings
known/9

We will leave her soliciting, and turn to the
case of Dr. James Barry, the woman who
became an army-surgeon, and rose to be
Inspector-General of Hospitals. She was buried
at Kensal Green ; and the inscription on her
tomb-stone, which may still be read, runs as
follows :

DR. JAMES BARRY,

INSPECTOR-GENERAL OF ARMY HOSPITALS.

DIED JULY 15, 1865.

AGED 71 YEARS.

That, as the dates show, is quite a modern
story — modern enough for the record of services
and promotions to be extracted from Hart's
Annual Army List. The salient facts have,
indeed, been copied from Hart's Annual Army
List into the Dictionary of National Biography ;
and there is an anecdotal photograph of the
doctor in Lord Albemarle's Fifty Years of
My Life. Lord Albemarle met her, in his
youth, at Cape Town ; and this is what he
writes :

DR. JAMES BARRY n

" There was at this time at the Cape a person
whose eccentricities attracted universal atten-
tion— Dr. James Barry, staff-surgeon to the
garrison, and the Governor's medical adviser.
Lord Charles (Somerset) described him to me as
the most skilful of physicians, and the most
wayward of men. He had lately been in pro-
fessional attendance upon the Governor, who
was somewhat fanciful about his health ; but
the Esculapius, taking umbrage at something
said or done, had left his patient to prescribe
for himself. I had heard so much of this
capricious yet privileged gentleman that I had
a great curiosity to see him. I shortly after-
wards sat next to him at one of the regimental
messes. In this learned pundit I beheld a
beardless lad, apparently of my own age,
with an unmistakably Scotch type of coun-
tenance — reddish hair, high cheek-bones.
There was a certain effeminacy in his man-
ner, which he seemed to be always trying to
overcome. His style of conversation was
greatly superior to that one usually heard at
a mess-table in those days of non-competitive
examination.

" A mystery attached to Barry's whole pro-
fessional career, which extended over more than
half a century. While at the Cape he fought
a duel, and was considered to be of a most
quarrelsome disposition. He was frequently
guilty of flagrant breaches of discipline, and,
on more than one occasion, was sent home under

12 WOMEN IN WAR

arrest ; but, somehow or other, his offences were
always condoned at headquarters.

" In Hart's Annual Army List for the year
1865 the name of James Barry, M.D., stands
at the head of the list of Inspector-Generals of
Hospitals. In the July of that same year The
Times one day announced the death of Dr.
Barry, and next day it was officially reported
to the Horse Guards that the doctor was a
woman. It is singular that neither the land-
lady of her lodging nor the black servant who
had lived with her for years, had the slightest
suspicion of her sex. The late Mrs. Ward,
daughter of Colonel Tidy, from whom I had
these particulars, told me further that she
believed the doctor to have been the legitimate
granddaughter of a Scotch Earl, whose name I
do not now give, as I am unable to substantiate
the circumstances of my friend's surmise, and
that the soi-disant James Barry adopted the
medical profession from an attachment to an
army-surgeon who has not been many years
dead."

There is much here which cannot be tested ;
but there are one or two facts which it is possible
to add. Dr. Barry's antagonist in the duel was
a young aide-de-camp named Cloete, afterwards
Sir Josiah Cloete. On one of her voyages home
she was required, to her great inconvenience, to
share a state-room with a certain Lieutenant
Rogers ; but she knew how to deal with the

DR. JAMES BARRY 13

difficulty. Every night he had to go to bed,
before she did, in the berth above her, and
remain there ; every morning he had to leave
the state-room, whatever agonies of sea-sickness
he might be suffering, while she dressed. A
savage dog that she had with her saw to it that
the injunctions were obeyed.

CHAPTER II

The Amazons of France — The real Mme Sans-Ge"ne — Bernadotte's
admiration of her — Her ultimate marriage to a gendarme —
Virginie Ghesquidre — Angelique Brulon — Marie Schellinck —
Liberte Barrau — Felicite and Theophile Fernig, the heroines of
Jemmappes — Felicite's romantic marriage — Theophile's secret
sorrow.

THE French Army, like the English, boasts of
its heroines as well as its heroes ; and the atti-
tude of French writers towards women warriors
has always been very different from that of
Mr. James Caulfield. He viewed them as eccen-
trics ; the French have rejoiced over them as
paragons. Their exploits belong, in France, to
the romance of war rather than to its odd and
abnormal detail ; there is an element of gallan-
try as well as of curiosity in the admiration
accorded to them all, from Jeanne d'Arc down
to the humblest of the vivandieres.

Jeanne d'Arc, however, must wait ; and the
vivandieres must also wait. We are speaking
now only of the women who have put on uniform
and marched or ridden in the ranks ; and our
first heroine shall be Mme (or more properly
Mile) Sans-Gene. The name is familiar on
account of Sardou's play and Mme Re jane's
interpretation of it ; but that drama, though

MME SANS-GENE 15

dramatic, is not true to fact. Sardou's Mme
Sans-Gene is the wife of Marshal Lefebvre,
whom Napoleon made Duke of Dantzig — a
promoted washerwoman, with a rasping tongue
but a good heart, who came to Court, bringing
with her the unpolished speech of the laundry,
and a disconcerting odour, as it were, of soap-
suds ; but her performances do not fall within
the scope of the present inquiry. The name
Sans-Gene, however, which Sardou took for his
play, was a real name — or, at all events, a
real nom de guene ; and our business here is
with the brave woman who bore it.

She was Therese Figueur of Lyon, where
she was born in 1774. Her father was a Giron-
din — one of those who defended Lyon against
the Convention in 1793, when it was decreed
that the city should be razed to the ground, and
a pillar erected on the ruins, with the inscrip-
tion : Lyon rebelled, against the Republic ; Lyon
is no more. There was much guillotining, and
even more fusillading, for Fouche had said that
the Republic must " march to Liberty over
corpses/ ' Carlyle has drawn us a vivid picture
of two hundred and nine men " marched forth
over the river to be shot in mass, by musket
and cannon, in the promenade of the Brotteaux."
The Girondin Figueur was to have been one of
them — or perhaps one of the earlier batch of
seventy victims whose bodies were flung into the
Rhone ; but he escaped, taking his daughter
with him — both of them disguised in Repub-

16 WOMEN IN WAR

lican uniforms — and Th6rese made the assur-
ance of her safety doubly sure by joining a
regiment of dragoons.

There never was much mystery about her
sex ; they called her Mile Sans-Gene, in fact,
because she seemed so little embarrassed by it ;
but she gave her proofs and therefore was per-
mitted to remain in the Army when other
women, similarly situated, were turned out of
it. She was under Dugommier at the siege of
Toulon ; and it was there that she was first
brought into relation with that " olive-com-
plexioned officer of artillery " who was presently
to be Emperor of France. He sent her to the
guard-room. It was her boast, in later years,
that she called him an " ugly little beast " for
doing so ; and, from the fact that she did so
with impunity, it seems reasonable to infer that
he was one of those who knew her to be a woman.

At any rate, he knew it later, and then took
sufficient interest in her to remove her from
the Army and attach her to the service of the
Empress Josephine. For whatever reason, she
and Josephine did not get on very well together ;
and she was transferred to the service of the
wife of Marshal Augereau, to whom she acted
as private secretary. In that establishment,
too, however, she failed to give satisfaction,
being addicted to rough practical jokes more
suitable to a barrack-room than to the house
of a Marshal of France, and making mischief
by her hints that the Marshal was unfaithful

MME SUTTER 17

to his wife. It was thought better that she
should leave ; so she returned to the Army
and took part in the battles of Ulm and Auster-
litz, and it was during this period of her service
that she attracted the attention of Bernadotte.
She tells us that Bernadotte was in love with
her, but that she was not in love with him ;
but that story of rejected addresses need not
detain us.

" My motto/' she writes, " has always been
that a heart is the proper price to be paid
for a heart " ; and, in the end, she gave her
heart, together with her hand, to a gendarme
named Sutter, having by that time attained
the mature age of forty-four.

It was a rule of the service that a gendarme
must not marry a woman without a dowry ;
but that regulation was specially abrogated in
her favour. The marriage of a gendarme to
an ex-dragoon was felt to be so unique an event
that the regulations of the service must not be
allowed to stand in the way of it. It seems
to have been a happy marriage, though poverty
ultimately compelled Mme Sutter to seek admis-
sion to the Hospice des Menages. She was
admitted to it in 1839 > an(^ s^e died tnere>
some twenty years later, at the great age -of
eighty-five. The one sorrow of her life is said
to have been her failure to win the red ribbon
of the Legion of Honour.

She probably grieved the more because that
military distinction was actually awarded to
2

r8 WOMEN IN WAR

three other women soldiers of her period ;
Virginie Ghesquiere, Angelique Brulon, and
Marie Schellinck, whose careers and records we
may briefly run over. Virginie Ghesquiere is
perhaps the most interesting of them.

Mile Ghesquiere was of Delemont near Lille,
and she entered the army as a " substitute."
Her brother, who should have been recruited,
had no taste for fighting, so she took his place,
disguising herself in a suit of his clothes, was
promoted to the rank of sergeant for saving an
officer's life at Wagram, and was subsequently
mentioned in the Order of the Day for distin-
guished services under Junot in Portugal. There
is a song about her, once popular though now
forgotten, set to the tune of Partant pour la
Syrie. One may cite a few stanzas, without
committing oneself to any opinion as to its merits
as poetry :

Une jeune guerriere,
Pour avoir du renom,
Veut partir pour son frere
Dans 1'habit de ga^on.

D'une ardeur martiale,
Elle vole au combat,
Et partout se signale
Comme un brave soldat.

La guerriere intrepide
Que 1'amour fraternel
Sert en tout lieu de guide
Sauva son colonel.

MARIE SCHELLINCK 19

Par une maladie
Son sexe est reconnu.
Soldats, de Virginie
Imitez la vertu !

Ang clique Brulon was not less famous. Born
in 1771, the daughter and afterwards the widow
of a soldier, she served from 1792 to 1799, was
remarked for her gallantry in the defence of
Corsica, was there wounded, and was after-
wards admitted to the Invalides ; but she was
not forgotten there. In 1822 she was promoted,
being then fifty-one years of age, to the rank
of lieutenant on the retired list, on the proposal
of General de Latour-Maubourg ; and, as she
did not die until 1859, there must be sight-seers
still living to whom she has been pointed out,
swaggering innocently about, as an octogenarian,
in her lieutenant's uniform.

And then comes Marie Schellinck, who was
Belgian by birth, but French in virtue of her
military services. Born at Ghent, in 1757, she
fought in no fewer than twelve campaigns, was
wounded at Jemmappes, Austerlitz, and Jena,
and mentioned in the Order of the Day for
gallantry at Arcola. She retired on her pen-
sion in 1808, and took up her residence in her
native town. In 1811, when Napoleon came. to
Ghent, she had the honour of being presented
to the Empress Marie-Louise ; but the presents
which Marie-Louise took the opportunity of
giving her were suited to her sex and not
inspired by any recollection of her feats of arms.

20 WOMEN IN WAR

They consisted of a silk dress, a brooch, and a
pair of earrings.

These, it will have been observed, are very
different stories from those related of Hannah
Snell, Mary Anne Talbot, and Christian Davies
— more dramatic and more spectacular. The
heroines of them have been the objects of
enthusiasm, not of mere gaping curiosity, and
have consequently been able to hold their heads
as high in private life as on the stricken field.
One finds the note struck yet again in the
story of Liberte Barrau, who fought by her
husband's side in the war with Spain in 1794.
She burst with him into Spanish entrench-
ments— the third soldier to enter them — and,
after the fighting was over, she addressed him in
the inflated language of the period. " Ah ! it
is sweet, after the victory is gained, " she ex-
claimed, " to press you to my bosom and dress
your wounds. " Whereupon the Recueil des
Actions hero'iques, published by order of the
Convention, comments :

" In thus lavishing upon him the attentions
of conjugal affection, she demonstrates that she
has in no way renounced the virtues of her own
sex while displaying those generally regarded as
the special appanage of the other."

That is the true, characteristic utterance of
France : the voice which one would expect to
hear in the country which produced Jeanne
d'Arc, La Grande Mademoiselle, Mme de La

THE SISTERS FERNIG 21

Rochejacquelein, the Duchesse de Berry, and
Mile Juliette Dodu — of all of whom we shall
have to speak. One hears the voice louder than
anywhere else perhaps in the story of Felicite
and Theophile Fernig, those Amazons of Jem-
mappes, whose exploits have been celebrated
by the lyric pen of Lamartine in his Histoire des
Girondins, and whose memory is kept alive by
a monument recently erected on the field on
which they acquitted themselves so gallantly.

Felicite was twenty-two, and Theophile was
seventeen. Their father was some sort of a clerk
in the public service, and also a traveller, a
philosopher, and a patriot. He had visited
Voltaire at Ferney ; he was reckoned homme
sensible, as became a disciple of Rousseau ;
his fellow citizens had elected him to com-
missioned rank in the National Guard. He
was the father of five children — a son who was
in the army, and four daughters who would have
liked to be in it. Felicite had distinguished her-
self in the competitions of some local Society of
Archers, and been nominated to the honorary
office of Queen of that Society ; and when the
Austrians, who were trying to put Louis XVI
back on his throne, were at Mons and Tournai,
the thunder of the guns reached the girls' ears
in the village of Mortagne in French Flanders.
It was their opportunity ; and Felicite and
Theophile were old enough to seize it.

They began as what we should call Girl Guides.
Their father had often taken them with him

22 WOMEN IN WAR

when he went shooting ; and they knew every
inch of the country. So they offered their ser-
vices, and showed the French sharp-shooters
how to lure the enemy into ambuscades — all
this, at first, without their father's know-
ledge :

" Their secret/1 writes Lamartine, " was
long kept loyally. M. de Fernig, when he
returned to his domicile in the morning, and
discussed the night's exploits over the breakfast-
table, never suspected that his own daughters
had been in the forefront of the fray with the
sharp-shooters, and had, more than once, rescued
him from danger/'

But the secret was revealed at last. One day,
after the fighting had been more severe than
usual, and the combatants were worn out with
their exertions, the elder Fernig saw a strange
sight : Felicite and Theophile, armed with rusty
sabres and antique blunderbusses, their faces
blackened with powder, lying fast asleep in the
open, their heads supported by their knap-
sacks :

" It was an indescribable scene," Theophile
has recorded. " Affection, alarm, and joy
found successive expression on my good father's
countenance. He came to us with open arms,
and pressed us to his heart, stammering out :
' Ah me ! Chips of the old block ! I recognise
my blood/ "

THE SISTERS FERNIG 23

The rest was simple. There was no longer
any need for mystery. The sisters were pre-
sented to Dumouriez — " a happy encounter/'
he writes, " and one calculated to stimulate
the courage of my men/' He gave them uni-
forms and horses, and they proved themselves
worthy of the gift. " The Fernig girls/1 General
Beurnonville reported to the Convention, " were
very capable of killing their men " ; and
there is unanimous testimony to the effect that
they were as modest and well-conducted as
they were brave. " They were even more
remarkable/1 Dumouriez writes, "for the pro-
priety of their behaviour than for their reckless
daring " ; and the Commissaries' of the Con-
vention, sent to inspect the army, declared
that they found them " respected and honoured
in the midst of an army of young men/'

Moreover, the record of their valiant deeds is
particular as well as general. Felicit6 rode in
a charge by the side of the Due de Chartres,
afterwards Louis-Philippe, and saved a young
Belgian officer, Frangois van der Wallen, from
the sabres of the Uhlans ; Th6ophile brought
a Hungarian major back to the French camp as
her prisoner. All France would have rung with
their praises if they had not made the mistake
of putting too much faith in Dumouriez. He
was their king of men, and, when he turned
traitor, they concluded that whatever so great
a man did must be right, and crossed the frontier
with him : an error of judgment for which

24 WOMEN IN WAR

they paid the penalty with a wandering life
and a period of destitution. One hears of
F61icite keeping a small lottery office at Brussels,
while Theophile, whom her younger sister
Louise had joined, went round the village fairs,
hawking combs and other trifling toilet articles ;
but that occupation proved unprofitable, and
they moved on.

A poor end, it will be thought ; but happily
it was not the end — there is a romance to
follow. We have seen how Felicit6 saved a
young Belgian officer's life, killing two Uhlans
in order to do so. The young Belgian was
wounded, and was laid up for a long time in
the military hospital at Brussels. When he
recovered he vowed that he would devote
his life to searching for the woman who had
saved him. Whether she was in Brussels, un-
known to him, at the time, is uncertain : at all
events, he searched for her elsewhere, wandering
through Germany, and other northern countries.
At last he discovered her, in a remote refuge,
somewhere in Denmark, brought her back to
Belgium, and married her. Four children were
born of the marriage ; and two of them at
least grew up to do well in the world. One of
them became Honorary Counsellor at the Douai
Court of Appeal ; another Inspect or- General
of the Belgian prisons.

Of Theophile' s subsequent career one knows
less ; but there is reason to believe that she
too had her romance, though it was not a happy

THE SISTERS FERNIG 25

one. There exists a letter of hers, addressed,
in 1801, to one of her cousins, an officer of
dragoons :

" My heart, dearest, is not a heart of bronze.
It felt keenly, though it was stoically firm ; and
it has been the victim of its resolution. Five
years ago I swore to renounce, and also swore
that I would never love again."

No more than that, of which we may make
what we like. It proves, at any rate — what
many of our stories may prove — that the heart
of a woman warrior is not necessarily coated
with triple brass ; though we need not conclude
that Theophile died of love because she died
young. Her secret, whatever it may have been,
is buried with her in her tomb, which is at
Brussels ; but she and her sister now have
their joint monument at Jemmappes.

CHAPTER III

The Vivandieres — Heroines of the retreat from Moscow — Heroines
of the war of 1870-71 — Annette Drevon — Jeanne Bonne-
mere — Mme Jarrethout, the Mother of the Volunteers —
Louise de Beaulieu.

JUST as the French delight to see in the woman
warrior a heroine who does not cease to be
tender and virtuous because she is strong and
of a good courage, so they are always eager to
acclaim the romance of war in stories of the
endurance and valiant indifference to danger
of their picturesque vivandieres. They call
them cantini&res nowadays, — vivandieres is an
eighteenth-century word ; but it is only the
name that has changed. The office remains ;
the duties are still pretty much what they
were ; the standard of intrepidity has not been
lowered. The cantiniere with whom an officer
remonstrated for coming up under a heavy
fire with her refreshments, and who reproached
the officer, in her turn, for wishing to deprive
the boys of their drinks at the hour when they
stood in greatest need of them, dates from no
further back than the Franco-German War, and
is admiringly remembered as a model.

Larousse, in his great Encyclopaedia, may

THE VIVANDIERES 27

chaff the cantiniere, as Sir William Gilbert, in
H.M.S. Pinafore, chaffed dear little Buttercup,
the bumboat woman. He finds her, in fact,
unf eminine — unsexed ; he tells the story of
the cantiniere who, being asked how many
children she had, passed the question on to her
husband, with the scornful remark that she,
for her part, was too seriously occupied to have
time to attend to such homely details. But the
French soldier knows better ; and the French
civilian accepts the soldier's verdict. From
the time of Mere Belgrade, who earned her
sobriquet at the siege of the Serbian capital in
1717, many and many a cantiniere and vivan^-
diere has had her name inscribed upon the roll
of honour. Bonaparte himself, in his first
Italian campaign, paid signal homage to one
of them, hanging a gold chain about her neck
as a token of his appreciation of the courage
with which she had plunged into the Taglia-
mento and rescued a drowning grenadier.
When the history of the vivandieres comes to
be written — and one can imagine few pleasanter
occupations for a literary officer on the retired
list — the mine of anecdote will be found to be
rich in golden deeds.

Here and there, no doubt, a story will crop
up more suitable to comic opera than to military
history. A story of that kind, related in the
Memoirs of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, constitutes
one of the minor episodes of Bonaparte's cam-
paign in Egypt. The heroine of it — if heroine

28 WOMEN IN WAR

be the word — was a cantiniere, the wife of a
sergeant, whom the Mamelukes caught in a
garden, where she was eating figs, and carried
off into captivity in Syria. The sergeant
appealed to the general to appeal to the chivalry
of the enemy to compel the restoration of his
stolen wife. Bonaparte consented, and opened
negotiations, with the result that it was agreed
that the cantiniere should, if she desired it, be
exchanged for a number of Arab prisoners
whom the French had taken. But the canti-
niere did not desire to be exchanged, and sent
a message to say so. She was very happy, she
said, in a Pasha's harem, and she proposed to
remain in it ; so there was nothing for Bonaparte
to do but to shrug his shoulders and admit
himself beaten.

That, obviously, is an anecdote belonging
to the lighter side of the subject. One prefers
the stories which show the cantiniere as devoted
wife and mother ; and one may take two
typical stories of that kind in the annals of
the great retreat from Moscow.

The heroine of one of them, the wife of a
drummer in the 7th regiment of Infantry, had
the misfortune to fall ill during the occupation
of Moscow. Her husband procured a horse
and cart for her, and marched beside her while
she drove as far as Smolensk. At Smolensk,
however, the horse collapsed, and was cut up
and eaten by the starving soldiers. No other
horse could be procured, for the few which then

THE VIVANDIERES 29

remained were wanted for the artillery. It
seemed as if the cantiniere would have to be
abandoned to the tender mercies of the enemy ;
but the drummer would not have it so. " No,
no/' he said. " She wouldn't desert me, and
I am not going to desert her. As there are
no more horses, I shall draw the cart myself/'
He harnessed himself to it, and dragged it
through the snow, all the way from Smolensk
to Vilna. But that was all that he could do.
At Vilna the Cossacks came up ; and drummer
and cantiniere surrendered themselves together
as their prisoners.

A striking story that ; but still more striking
is the story of the cantiniere of the 33rd.

We know nothing of her husband — perhaps
she was a widow, for that terrible war made
many widows. At any rate, she was a mother
with one child — a daughter just six months
old. A mother, too, of whom all mothers
everywhere will be proud ! Whatever hap-
pened, she vowed, she would bring her baby
safely back to France ; so she wrapped the
infant in furs and marched with the soldiers,
carrying it in her arms. She could not nurse
it ; and there was no milk to be had. There
was nothing for it but to devise a new kind of
infant's food — a sort of paste made of the
blood of dead horses, and held to her body to
be warmed by the heat. Incredible though it
may seem, that noisome mixture kept the
child alive.

30 WOMEN IN WAR

Twice in the course of that awful journey
the mother lost her child, putting it down
for a moment while she rested, and then
separated from it by the sudden alarm of a
Cossack charge, but each time she found it
again. The first time it was lying in a field ;
the second time she found that some good
Samaritan had placed it in a bed in one of the
ruined houses of a burnt-out village. She
rescued it, and went on to the hardest of all
her trials — the passage of the Beresina, under
the Russian fire.

There were two pontoon bridges, but these
were giving way beneath the weight of an
army which had become a mob. Our can-
tiniere, however, caught a stray horse, mounted
it, and set out to swim the frozen river, down
which the ice-floes were swirling. The exhausted
beast sank so far under her weight that only
its head was above water ; and its rider, too,
was almost completely submerged. Neither
her courage, however, nor her resourcefulness
failed her. With one hand she held her child
aloft ; in the other she gripped a sabre with
which she kept off the floating blocks of ice.
And so, at last, she reached the bank with her
burden, while thousands of unencumbered
men were perishing all around her ; and so to
safety, without any further trouble — without,
it is said, having so much as caught a cold
in the head as the result of her terrible
ordeal.

THE VIVANDIERES 31

An amazing example, truly, of hardihood
and resolution, and only one among many
such examples, though perhaps the most notable
of them. One regrets that the names of the
heroines have been lost, though their deeds
have been remembered ; but when we pass to
the war of 1870-71 — a time when records were
more carefully and exactly kept — we still find
the cantinieres of the French army exhibiting
all the old intrepidity. Stories of their nerve
and devotion abound in the books of personal
reminiscences which supplement the formal
histories ; and we may select a few of them,
almost at random, beginning with the story of
Annette Drevon of the 32nd regiment of the
line.

Annette was an old campaigner, a veteran
among cantinieres. She had served with the
Zouaves in Italy, and gained her decoration
on the field of Magenta, where she had saved
a flag from capture, running through the body
the two Austrians who had tried to take it.
Now she was at Thionville ; and Thionville had
to surrender. The French garrison was de-
spatched to a German prison ; and Hessians,
Bavarians, and Wurtembergers swaggered in
the streets in their place. Annette was not
the woman to remove her red ribbon in the
presence of the victorious enemy ; she wore it
as usual when she walked abroad. A burly
Bavarian thought it funny to plant himself in
front of her on the pavement and laugh in her

32 WOMEN IN WAR

face. Annette passed him without a word ;
and then he gave tongue and insulted her.
" Coward ! " cried Annette ; and the Bavarian
drew his bayonet. But Annette was too quick
for him ; her revolver was drawn first, and
she blew his brains out.

Of course she was quickly seized, disarmed,
and taken before a court-martial. The court
condemned her to be shot ; and shot she would
have been had not Prince Frederick Charles
intervened and pardoned her, and so enabled
her to end her days in a peaceful civilian calling.
She became a market woman — one of the most
highly esteemed of those dames de la halle who
give colour and interest to Parisian life. For
years she was to be seen, on fete days, at the
Halles Centrales, presiding over the sale of
vegetables with the cross of honour pinned to
her breast, and receiving the congratulations
of innumerable friends.

Another interesting case is that of Jeanne
Bonnemere, another veteran. Visitors to Paris
have seen her in comparatively recent times,
making and selling bouquets in a small florist's
shop at one of the entrances to the Louvre.
She, too, wore orders on her bosom, — the
Turkish Cross of the Medjidie, as well as
the Crimean and Italian medals. Her first
decoration had been won at the battle of the
Tchernaya, where she had received a bayonet
wound while rushing to the rescue of a French
officer whom she had seen fall. She had left

JEANNE BONNEMERE 33

the service in 1867 ; but the invasion brought
her back to it — a woman, by that time, fairly
well advanced in years. She was at Metz ;
and after Metz had fallen, she reported herself
at Orleans.

At Orleans she heard that the Prefect had
despatches of the first importance which he
wished to send to Paris. Forthwith she waited
on him, and volunteered to carry them. " I'm
an old woman," she said. " The Prussians
will hardly suspect me. I'm more likely to get
through than a man." The Prefect accepted
her offer, and entrusted her with one copy of
the despatches, sending two other copies separ-
ately by other messengers. The two men were
caught and shot out of hand at Villeneuve
Saint-Georges. Jeanne Bonnemere was also
caught, told that she was known to be carrying
despatches, and threatened with instant death
if she did not produce them ; but she showed
no sign of fear. " I have no despatches. If
you disbelieve me, search me," she said ; and
they searched her and found nothing. She
had rolled the despatch up into a ball, chewed
it to a pulp, and swallowed it : a difficult meal,
but Jeanne Bonnemere, as we have seen,
recovered from the indigestion, and ended her
days tranquilly as a florist.

And then there was Mme Jarrethout, known

indifferently as the Mother of the Volunteers,

and the cantiniere of Chateaudun, where she

not only served out refreshments, but gave first

34 WOMEN IN WAR

aid to the wounded, and helped to bury the
dead. She lost her cart at Chateaudun, but
continued to follow the campaign on foot,
was taken prisoner, and escaped, served at
Coulmiers an4 Le Mans, saved the lives of a
Major of Mobiles and a franc-tireur who after-
wards became one of the Paris Municipal
Councillors, and was finally accorded her decora-
tion for " exceptional courage and devotion "
by a decree of July 13, 1880. And then-
last but not least — there was Mme Louise de
Beaulieu : a volunteer and a woman of
means.

Somehow or other Mme de Beaulieu's case
was overlooked at the hour when recompenses
were distributed. General de Cissey had, in
fact, sent her the Military Medal ; but, through
some oversight, the distinction had not been
officially confirmed. She was actually brought
up before the magistrates for wearing decora-
tions to which she was not entitled, and she
was reduced to poverty. France awoke to the
fact when it read the following announcement
in the newspapers :

" Mme de Louise Beaulieu, who lost her right
arm as the result of a wound received on
December 2, 1870, decorated with the Military,
and with eight other medals for saving life,
is hereby authorised by the Prefect of Police to
distribute prospectuses in the public streets.
Tradesmen who are willing to avail themselves

LOUISE DE BEAULIEU 35

of her services are requested to write to her
at 63 Rue Quincampoix."

To such depths can officialism be dragged
down by its red tape. It was a case for the
intervention of a journalist to teach the Govern-
ment its duty ; and Victor Hugo's friend,
Auguste Vacquerie of the Rappel, took the
matter up. " Who/' he asked, " is Mme Louise
de Beaulieu ? " and he answered his own ques-
tion by a simple, but eloquent, statement of
her services.

" In 1870 she was thirty years of age. She
was well off, and might have stayed by her
own fireside. Instead of doing so, she enlisted
as a cantinihe in the Legion of the Friends of
France. She took part in eight battles, helping
to collect the wounded under fire.

" She narrowly escaped being shot. By the
Prussians ? No, by the French. On October
13, at Saint-Denis, a corporal, thinking that
she looked too distinguished for a cantiniere,
assumed that she was a spy and dragged her
to a miserable cellar in the Rue Compoise.
She was kept in it for four days, and only taken
out of it to be led to the place of execution,
where she was tied to a post, with her hands
fastened behind her back. A soldier stepped
forward to bandage her eyes ; she would not
have it, but claimed to be allowed herself to
give the order to fire. She was about to give
it when an officer of mobiles thrust him-

36 WOMEN IN WAR

self between her and the firing party. A few
days later she received the bronze cross of the
French Society for the Aid of the Wounded on
Land and Sea.

"In the same month, we find her again at
the skirmish of Nanterre, and then at three
battles at Bourget, and in November at
Bry-sur-Marne, and at Villiers, where her
conduct was thus remarked upon, on the
following day, in the columns of L* Ami de la
France :

" ' Our cantiniere, Mme Louise de Beaulieu,
gave proofs of a courage beyond all praise. In
defiance of the order of the major, she remained
in the firing line, and brought in twenty-five
wounded, whom she picked up under fire and
took to the ambulance/

" On December 2 she was at Champigny ;
and it was there that she got her wound in the
right arm. The wound did not prevent her
from continuing her work of courage and
humanity. During the fights at Grospay and
on the plain of Drancy she carried the wounded
in her left arm, affixed the bandages with her
uninjured hand, and used her teeth to help
make the ligatures.

" During that terrible night of December 2,
after a most trying day, Mme de Beaulieu,
overcome with fatigue, covered with mud and
'blood, fell asleep on a truss of straw, with her
feet in the snow ; when she woke, her left foot
was frost-bitten. On January 19, however, she

LOUISE DE BEAULIEU 37

was back again at her work, lifting up the
wounded with her one remaining arm, making
them cling to her, with their arms round her
neck, and, in spite of the agony which she
suffered in her left foot, carrying them to places
of safety.

" Do you think it right now — do you think
it tolerable — that a woman with nine medals
should be reduced to distributing prospectuses
in the public streets ?

" But she had money, you will tell me. Yes,
she had money before the war. But she spent
it nobly. ' More than one surviving witness/
says a pamphlet which I have before me, ' can
testify to her generosity ; more than twenty
thousand francs of her fortune went in
brandy, tobacco, bread, and horses for our
soldiers.'

" In May 1871 she organised an ambulance
at her own expense.

" There is no need to insist — the facts speak
for themselves. Some newspapers have taken
the patriotic initiative of proposing that Mme
Louis de Beaulieu shall be set up in one of our
national tobacco-shops. We hope, at all events,
that the Committee of the Chamber of Deputies,
which has the matter in hand, will perceive
that here is a debt which the country ought to
pay."

Which debt, of course, the country did pay
when its attention was drawn to it.

38 WOMEN IN WAR

And here our chapter on the valiant deeds of
the cantinieres may close. It remains, before
we leave the Franco-German War, to speak of
the most famous of all its heroines — Juliette
Dodu, the telegraph operator ; but she must
have a chapter to herself.

CHAPTER IV

The courageous exploit of Mile Juliette Dodu, of the Telegraph
Service, in the Franco-German War — Mile Wipper and Mile
Meyer of the same Service.

JULIETTE DODU was a Creole from Reunion,
and the daughter of a naval surgeon — a girl
not yet quite twenty years of age. She was
an operator in the Telegraph Service, stationed
at Pithiviers, about twenty-five miles from
Orleans, between that town and Paris, at the
time when the seat of the Provisional Govern-
ment, formed to direct the defence while Paris
was besieged, was at Tours. General Vinoy,
who had approached Sedan too late for the
battle, had fallen back on Paris. The nucleus
of the first Army of the Loire was being got
together at Vierzon, Bourges, and Nevers.
The flying clouds of German cavalry, scouring
the country for information, had necessarily to
take Pithiviers on their way.

The first Uhlans were seen there on September
20, 1870 ; the first squadron of them entered
the little town on the following day, and
promptly stationed sentries outside the door
of the telegraph office. Mile Dodu had just
time to send the news of their arrival to Tours

40 WOMEN IN WAR

and Orleans ; then she walked out, through the
midst of the enemy, with her Morse apparatus
hidden under her cloak. The Prussians with-
drew, returned and cut the wires, and then
retired a second time. Mile Dodu, thanks to
her forethought in preserving her apparatus,
was able at once to re-establish communications
and inform the Prefect of Orleans of what had
happened. She had been specially charged to
send all the military news that she could get—
and she sent plenty of it — with great diligence.

On September 27, however, the Prussians
entered Pithiviers for the third time. Mile
Dodu had just time to telegraph that they were
entering the town, and to destroy all the docu-
ments which it was undesirable to let them
see ; then she once again made her escape,
carrying her apparatus with her as before.
Officers entered the office, made the most careful
search, but discovered nothing which was of
any use to them. Then they proceeded once
again to cut the wires ; but one wire happily
escaped their observation. Mile Dodu was able
to use it, unknown to them, by night ; and
despatch after despatch continued to be sent
from Pithiviers to Orleans.

Presently the fighting began. The Germans
defeated General de la Motterouge, and occupied
Orleans ; and then Mile Dodu succeeded in
establishing, with the help of an inspector
named Perceval, direct telegraphic communica-
tion with Montargis. General d'Aurelle de

JULIETTE DODU 41

Paladines next defeated the Germans, and
reoccupied Orleans, whence he came on to
Pithiviers, which the Germans had to evacuate.
Mile Dodu, of course, continued her service,
which was now heavier than ever : on one
occasion she remained on duty for seventy-two
hours without a chance of sleep. But Metz
had now capitulated ; and Prince Frederick
Charles's army was approaching by forced
marches. It was the turn of the French to
evacuate Pithiviers, the turn of the Germans
to reoccupy it. Once more Mile Dodu was
left to do what she could in the enemy's coun-
try : what she was able to do we are about to
see.

This time the enemy had brought military
telegraphists, equipped with everything required
for the repair of broken lines. Among other
things they brought two coils of wire which
they deposited in the waiting-room adjoining
the telegraph office. Mile Dodu and her mother
saw the coils of wire in the waiting-room ; but
they did not leave them there. They carried
them off to their bedroom and hid them under
their mattress, where they remained until the
conclusion of the war ; with the result that
other wires had to be sent for before the Germans
could establish telegraphic communication with
their base. It was a good beginning, but the
sequel was to be better ; and the great coup
was, as it curiously happened, inspired by
Prince Frederick Charles himself.

42 WOMEN IN WAR

He saw Mile Dodu sitting at her bedroom
window, and he saluted her. It seemed to her
that he saluted with an air of insolence ; and
she banged the window in his face, and told a
German officer what she thought of his be-
haviour. The news of her protest was reported
to the Prince, who valued his reputation for
courtesy and desired to recover it. He made
a point, therefore, of passing the window and
saluting again — as ceremoniously, this time,
as if he had been paying the tribute of his
homage to a princess of the blood. In that way
there grew up a sort of an acquaintance between
him and Mile Dodu ; and presently they had
speech with each other in rather exciting
circumstances.

It was on the day of the battle of Beaune-la-
Rolande. The German tenure of Pithiviers
was not yet quite secure ; the French were
pressing their troops hard. Prince Frederick
Charles was himself directing the German
operations from the telegraph office, whence he
despatched an urgent message for reinforcements
of artillery. Mile Dodu was present at the
scene, and understood what was being done ;
and her patriotic anguish was too much for her.
She broke out with indignant words :

" What ! " she exclaimed. " The French tele-
graph sending those orders to our enemies !
Good God ! And to think that there is no
Frenchman to whom it has occurred to cut the
line ! "

JULIETTE DODU 43

The words were shouted, not muttered.
Prince Frederick Charles knew French. He
turned to Mile Dodu with a significant smile,
and spoke to her in French :

' You could be a very dangerous young
woman, mademoiselle. It is very fortunate
for us that not all our enemies have your
courage and your presence of mind."

That was the suggestion which once more set
Mile Dodu thinking. She could be dangerous,
could she ? She asked nothing better. If she
could be dangerous, she would. Her courage
should not fail her ; all that she wanted was
an idea, an inspiration, an opportunity.

The battle continued to rage ; and the
French attack was rolled back, albeit Captain
Brugere — afterwards General Brugere of the
presidential household — captured and carried
off a German gun. The Germans returned to
Pithiviers, victorious but starving — reduced,
with the passion of their race for fat, to making
soup of Mme Dodu's tallow candles. At last
they fell asleep, and Juliette Dodu had her
inspiration, and saw her chance. Not hers to
drive a tent-peg treacherously through an
enemy's head, like Deborah — she knew a better
way. She had her professional skill, and she
had her Morse apparatus, which she had hidden ;
one of the wires passed close beside her window.
It was a simple business to establish a con-
nection with that wire and tap it.

No sooner said than done — and done with

44 WOMEN IN WAR

great effect, most disconcerting to the Germans.
The operator could only operate by night ;
but that sufficed. For seventeen successive
nights she sat up by her apparatus, taking
notes of the German orders and despatches,
and making full copies of them, which she
handed, the next morning, to the sub-Prefect,
who gave them to trusty messengers, by whom
they were quickly conveyed to the head-
quarters of the i8th French Army Corps, then
at Gien. For seventeen days, therefore, the
French commanders always had full knowledge
of the German plans, and never allowed them-
selves to be taken by surprise by them. The
Germans knew — for it was obvious — that there
was some leakage of information somewhere ;
but they failed to discover where or through
whose instrumentality.

At last, however, an accident, which almost
amounted to an act of treachery, betrayed the
truth to them.

The servant of the Dodu household — a
frivolous maid-of-all-work — was found to be
flirting with German soldiers. Mme Dodu,
furiously angry, spoke her mind to her ; the
girl lost her temper, as such girls, when so repri-
manded, are very apt to do. She rejoined with
a tu quoque :

" After all/' she said, " what I am doing is
not nearly so bad as what you are doing-
sitting up, night after night, to steal their
despatches/'

JULIETTE DODU 45

" Hold your tongue/' said Mme Dodu ; but
it was too late — the mischief had been done.

The wrangle had been overheard by a German
soldier who happened to know a little French.
He listened attentively, and reported what he
had learnt to an officer ; and, the clue thus
given, the mystery was quickly solved. Mile
Dodu was instantly arrested, brought before a
court-martial, and sentenced to be shot. The
sentence was to have been carried out in her
own garden, where she was kept under observa-
tion. A priest, suspected of being a disguised
franctireur, was also brought into that garden
and shot before her eyes. " It will be your
turn next/' they told her. " You have only an
hour to wait/'

But the commander of the German forces
had his humane hesitations. The war was so
nearly over that the execution would have
seemed an act of vengeance rather than of justice.
Seeing that France was already beaten, he shrank
from the responsibility of ordering it, and
carrying a hideous memory through life. One
may suspect that he admired in spite of his rage
at having been so cunningly deceived. So he
reprieved his prisoner, and telegraphed to
Prince Frederick Charles for instructions ; and
Prince Frederick Charles, though the French had
many reasons for not loving him, was of a dif-
ferent fibre from Von Bissing, Von der Lancken,
and Von Sauberzweig. He remembered, no
doubt, the exchange of pleasantries which we

46 WOMEN IN WAR

have recorded ; and his orders were that Mile
Dodu should be treated as a prisoner of war and
sent to Germany with the other prisoners. As it
happened, the armistice was arranged before
the convoy started, and it was at Pithiviers
that she was set at liberty. The French narrator
adds that the German officers in occupation of
the town were among the first to offer her
their congratulations on her release and the
assurance of their respectful homage.

That, properly speaking, is the end of the
story ; but it is a story with a sequel. The
Military Medal, and the Decoration of the Legion
of Honour, came to Mile Dodu in due course.
She received professional promotion — first a
post at Enghien, and afterwards the office of
Inspector-General of Ecoles maternelles ; but it
was left to a private citizen to come forward
with the offer of a more substantial reward.

A letter was delivered, one day, to Mile Dodu,
— a letter which fell, as it were, from the skies.
Her correspondent desired to know whether she
was the daughter of his old friend, Dr. Dodu,
the naval surgeon. She replied that she was,
and then he explained. He was a very old
man, he said ; he had quarrelled with all the
members of his family ; he proposed, therefore,
to bequeath the whole of his fortune — which
was considerable — to his old friend's daughter,
who had distinguished herself so nobly during
the dark days of the invasion. Mile Dodu
replied, as one would have expected her to reply,

JULIETTE DODU 47

that, while a souvenir would be welcome to her,
she could not think of accepting any legacy
which would do injustice to her benefactor's
relatives.

The philanthropist submitted to the remon-
strance. When he died, just six months later,
it was found that his relatives were to divide the
bulk of his fortune, but that Mile Dodu was a
legatee. Happily, however, the fortune was
so large that the legacy yielded such an income
as it was possible to live upon. Mile Dodu
decided, therefore, to leave the public service ;
her decision being partly prompted, it is said,
by the fact that her colleagues had shown
themselves jealous of her distinctions and
decorations, and made things uncomfortable for
her. At all events, she retired into private
life, and thenceforward divided her time be-
tween Paris and Bievres, where she possessed a
small estate. She had many friends ; but one
does not hear of any suitor ; and she died un-
married only a few years ago.

She was not the only employee of the Post
and Telegraph Department who risked her life
for her country during the war. One cannot
leave the subject without paying a passing
tribute to Mile Wipper, who was threatened
with a court-martial for refusing to work the
telegraph for the Germans at Sentheim, near
Belfort, and was only saved by the news of the
capitulation of Paris, and to Mile Josephine
Mayer of Molsheim, in Alsace, who hid French

WOMEN IN WAR

letters, refused to say where she had hidden
them, and was sent to serve seven years' im-
prisonment— a captivity from which she was
only delivered through the intercession of Jules
Favre, after the preliminaries of peace had been
signed.

CHAPTER V

Women in the Russian Campaign of 1812 — Elizabeth Hatzler.the
dragoon — Josephine Trinquart, the cantinitre — Women at the
crossing of the Beresina — Nidia, the mistress of General Mont-
brun — Adventures of the actresses at the Moscow theatre —
Mme Verteuil — Aurore de Bursay — The Reminiscences of Mme
Domergue.

A WORD next of the hardships which women
endured during the retreat from Moscow. Most
of them were actresses ; and some of them have
told their stories. One of them, Mile Louise
Fusil, at one time the bosom friend of Talma's
first wife, published a book on the subject. It
was her book, even if — as seems probable — a
journalist wrote it for her; and we will draw
on it, first pausing to glance at some of the
other stories of which only anecdotal notes
have been preserved.

There is the story, for instance, of Elizabeth
Hatzler, who wore the uniform, and served as a
dragoon. Her husband was with her ; he was
wounded, and she put him in a sledge, and
dragged him for many a weary mile over the
snow. At last, however, the sledge was over-
taken by the Cossacks, and both she and her
husband became prisoners of war, and spent no
less than two years in captivity. At last they
4 49

50 WOMEN IN WAR

obtained their release, and got back to France,
where he died in 1819. Elizabeth Hatzler
then emigrated to the United States, and settled
at Philadelphia, where, in spite of the shock to
her constitution, she lived to the great age of
ninety-one.

Then there is the story of Josephine Trinquart
— another of those valiant cantinieres whose
glories have already furnished the material for
a chapter. She led two soldiers to the rescue
of a wounded officer. They were shot down, and
she went on without them. Two of the enemy
galloped up to attack her. She shot one of
them, bayoneted the other, took his horse,
lifted her wounded officer on to it, and rode off
with him in triumph. Her constitution seems
to have suffered as little permanent injury from
her hardships as that of Elizabeth Hatzler, for
she did not die until 1872.

A third story may be taken from Segur's
account of the passage of the Beresina. The
soldiers pressing across the bridge, Segur tells
us, saw a woman trying to row two children
across in a fragile skiff. A hummock of ice
came up against the skiff and capsized it. Forth-
with an artilleryman plunged into the freezing
water, saved one of the two children, and swam
to land with it. The child was heard crying for
its mother, and the soldier was heard comforting
it. He had not fetched it out of the river, he
was heard saying, in order to leave it on the
bank. He would take its mother's place, and

<NIDIA" 51

see that it wanted for nothing ; but there the
story stops, and one does not know whether
circumstances permitted him to fulfil his promise.

It is with regret that one sets beside that
story another of a very different kind. One
mother, it is related, her mind unhinged by the
horrors she had witnessed, threw her baby away,
in order to save herself. Twice it was picked
up — once by Marshal Ney himself — and handed
back to her ; and twice she pitched it back into
the snow. In the end, we are told, another
woman took the infant from her, leaving its
mother to break down and perish by the way-
side— as there can be little doubt that she did.
The last that was heard of her was her cry of
protest : that she wanted to get back to France
—that the child was too young to care whether
it got back to France or not.

Next we come to the story of a certain Nidia,
related by Ney's mistress, Ida de Sainte-Elme,
in her Memoir es d'une contemporaine.

" There were quite a number of women, "
Ida de Sainte-Elme tells us, " following the
army. It was my good fortune to find a friend
in a young Lithuanian lady, whose enthusiasm
for the French reached the point of heroism.
She had given Prince Eugene some very impor-
tant information about Plat off' s march ; and,
by doing so, this modern Jeanne d'Arc had
earned the gratitude of the Commander-in-
Chief and the admiration of the army. In fol-

52 WOMEN IN WAR

lowing the dictates of her martial enthusiasm,
however, Nidia had also yielded to a more
intimate and secret passion. Alas ! During
the course of this terrible campaign she had
the sorrow of losing the hero who had inspired
her courage.'*

That hero was General Montbrun. His death
had left Nidia unprotected ; but his memory
continued to be her inspiration :

" Nidia had pinned a piece of crape to her
sleeve ; and when the liberties of military life
tended towards licence, and she had to listen to
jests ill adapted to her delicate taste, she
silenced the jesters with a haughty look, and
the words :

" ' Soldiers, I beg you to respect the mourn-
ing which I wear for the brave Montbrun ! '

It remains to be said that Nidia got safely
across the Beresina, but died at Torgau, during
the passage of the Elbe.

And now we come to the actresses, though
not yet to Louise Fusil. We will speak first
of Mme Domergue, the wife of the stage-
manager of the Imperial Theatre at Moscow, and
her friend Mme Verteuil, and her sister-in-law,
Mme Aurore de Bursay. Her husband was one
of the forty French residents whom Rostopchin
arrested and deported to Nijni-Novgorod when
Napoleon was about to enter the city. He subse-
quently wrote a book about his experiences—

AURORE DE BURSAY 53

a book to which his wife contributed a chapter
giving an account of her own adventures while
she was separated from him.

It is from her that we hear of the sad fate of
Mme Verteuil. A French officer had promised
to see her safely through her troubles ; but,
somehow or other, she got separated from him.
At Smolensk she tried to take shelter in some
building which a French sentry had been set
to guard. He tried to stop her ; but she would
not be stopped — presumably she was one of
those actresses who believe, in the pride of
their talents, that they can go anywhere and
do anything with impunity. But war breaks
down such privileges ; and the business of
sentries is to act, and not to argue. This sentry,
having remonstrated vainly, felt that he had no
choice but to run his bayonet through Mme
Verteuil ; and his thrust was fatal.

Aurore de Bursay was more fortunate ; and
in her story there is even a touch of comedy.
She was in a carriage, driving under fire ;
and the carriage was smashed by one of the
Russian cannon-balls, though its occupants
sustained no harm. But Aurore de Bursay was
a poet as well as an actress ; and the carriage
contained the manuscript of one of her poems,
a little piece entitled Le bonheur de la mediocrite.
She remembered the story of Camoens' swim-
ming ashore with the Lusiad ; and her one
anxiety was to rescue that manuscript from
the wreck. She would not stir — she would not

54 WOMEN IN WAR

allow any one else to stir — until it had been
sought and found. At last the search was
rewarded. The poem was found. Aurore de
Bursay stuffed it away in her corsage, and
accomplished the rest of her journey on one of
the ammunition wagons.

Mme Domergue herself had to take charge,
not of the poem, but of a baby. Ney at first
got her a carriage and handed her into it ;
but presently the carriage was wanted for some
other purpose, and she was turned out of it,
and then her sufferings began. How she could
get no food for her child except a few lumps of
sugar, but kept it alive on them ; how a Polish
officer, unable to help her otherwise, threw her
a hunk of bread as he rode by ; how soldiers
invited her to sit by their camp fires and share
their toasted horse-steaks, — all this is set forth
in her letter. And then she tells us how, by a
happy chance, when she was in despair, and
almost at her last gasp, a seat was once more
found for her in a carriage.

It was a full carriage ; and one of its occupants
was Mme Antony, the daughter of Leonard,
famous as the hair-dresser of Marie Antoinette.
" Give me the child. It can sit on my knee,"
called Mme Antony ; and Mme Domergue seized
that chance of saving it. Then it was the coach-
man's turn to help. His perch was not very
comfortable ; but Mme Domergue would be
better off there than in the snow. If she cared
to get up, he would get down, and mount the

MME DOMERGUE 55

horse instead. It was duly done ; and then
General Laborde happened to come by, full of
great oaths, and moved to indignation. What
was the meaning of that ? he wanted to know.
A woman shivering on the coachman's box !
Why was not room found for her in the carriage ?
Surely the carriage was not so full as all that !
What load was it carrying ?

The principal load, he was told, was a cask of
rum, placed in it by the orders of the general's
own aides-de-camp. No one in the carriage
dared to disobey those orders. And then the
floodgates of the general's eloquence were
opened, and the oaths poured forth :

" What's that ? You were going to keep a
cask of rum in the carriage and leave a poor
woman, tired to death, to tramp along on foot !
Blank ! Blank ! Blankety blank ! Just you
pitch that blankety cask out of the blankety
window. My aides-de-camp, indeed ! I'll talk
to my blankety aides-de-camp ! Water's good
enough for me to drink, and water shall be good
enough for them."

So out of window the cask went, and Mme
Domergue took its place ; and General Laborde
gave her some of his own store of wine, still
using winged words. There must be no blankety
nonsense ! She must drink it — not for her
own sake, but for the child's. He meant to
save that child ; it must come home safely, and
grow up, and be a soldier.

56 WOMEN IN WAR

He saved it ; and Mme Domergue ended her
journey in a carriage belonging to General Rapp.
Even then, though Rapp had a pack of hounds
which were killed and eaten, hound by hound,
she was not at the end of her dangers or her
discomforts. The Cossacks were very near ;
on one occasion Cossacks were killed with their
hands thrust through the carriage window
for the purpose of plundering her. Still, she
won through. Rapp, on parting from her at
Vilna, gave her five louis for current expenses ;
Mortier, at the same time, handed her ten louis.
The money enabled her to buy what she needed
during the fever which laid her up at Vilna ;
and when she recovered, she supported herself
as a needlewoman until the day when the
release of Rostopchin's prisoners enabled her
husband to rejoin her.

There we will leave her while we turn to the
story of Louise Fusil, who in the later years of
the reign of Louis-Philippe was still haunting
the foyer of the Comedie Frangaise, and telling
all who cared to listen to her how she had
crossed the Beresina with Napoleon. In her
case, thanks to her Souvenirs d'une femme sur
la retraite de Russie, we have no loose bundle of
anecdotes, but the full story of a life.

CHAPTER VI

LOUISE FUSIL was, in the French idiom, enfant
de la balle ; not only the daughter, but also
the granddaughter, of comedians. Her maiden
name was Fleury ; she was born at Stuttgart,
in 1774, and was brought up at Metz by her
grandfather, once " le beau Fleury " of the
Comedie Frangaise, and her grandmother, nee
Clavel. One of her Clavel cousins was
Mme Saint-Huberty, prima donna at the
Opera.

In 1784 Mme Saint-Huberty visited Metz,
and heard her cousin sing. Such a voice, she
said, must not be wasted in amateur circles on
provincial air ; she herself would see to the
training of it. So, at the beginning of 1788,.
she carried Louise off to Paris to receive finishing
lessons from Piccini, and then took her on tour
with her in the South of France. At Toulouse
Louise met and married the comedian Fusil ;
but the comedian became a soldier, and ulti-

58 WOMEN IN WAR

mately got his commission ; while the actress
remained an actress and was presently admitted
to the Theatre frangais, where she became inti-
mate with the Talmas.

As an actress, Louise made a considerable
reputation ; but she did not save money. She
thought that she might perhaps fare more
prosperously abroad ; so she set out in 1806
for St. Petersburg, and in 1807 obtained an
engagement at the Imperial Theatre at Moscow,
where she soon turned all heads with her charm-
ing interpretation of Chateaubriand's charming
lines :

Combien j'ai douce souvenance
Du joli lieu de ma naissance !

She became the fashion at Moscow. " My
songs, " she tells us, " were all the rage, and
people used to draw pictures to illustrate them
in their albums." She was received as a
friend of the family in the best houses, and gave
lessons in singing and elocution to the daughters
of the social leaders ; and so the time passed ;
and Louise Fusil was still at Moscow when the
war broke out, and the news came that Napo-
leon had crossed the Niemen and was marching
on the city.

Being on the best of terms with the authori-
ties, Louise was in no immediate danger : there
was no prospect, for instance, that she would be
included in the group of prisoners whom we
have seen deported to Nijni-Novgorod. She

LOUISE FUSIL 59

applied in vain, however, for a passport to St.
Petersburg ; and she knew that, if she ventured
to start without a passport, she would be
refused horses at the first post station she came
to. So she had to stay ; and that is how it
came about that the French soldiers, entering
Moscow, found a French actress ready to receive
them — an actress who introduced herself by
thrusting her head out of a window, and calling
to a dragoon : " Mr. Soldier ! Mr. Soldier !
You're a French soldier, aren't you ? I'm
French too."

They were delighted to make her acquaint-
ance ; the rigours of the occupation troubled
her very little. It was no distress to her, for
instance, that French officers were billeted
in the house. She welcomed them as her
protectors ; they treated her with flattering
consideration ; and it was arranged, with
Napoleon's approval, that she should organise
a theatrical entertainment.

A hall was found in a deserted palace which
the conflagration had spared, and a company
was got together. Mme Aurore de Bursay,
whom we have already met, acted as stage
manager, and the band of the Guards provided
the orchestra. The performances were con-
tinued daily until the very eve of the retreat ;
and Louise brought down the house with a
sentimental ballad of the style then in vogue,
applauded and encored, she assures us, by the
Emperor himself :

60 WOMEN IN WAR

Un chevalier qui volait au combat,

Par ses adieus consolait son amie :

" Au champ d'honneur 1'amour guide mes pas,

Anne mon bras ; ne crains rien pour ma vie."

But then came the sudden decision to retire.
The actresses were told that they might stay
where they were or accompany the retreating
army as they preferred ; but none of them
dared to remain behind. The weather was still
splendid ; and those of them who could get
carriages expected a pleasant, and not par-
ticularly adventurous, journey. Louise got a
carriage ; and her journey was not particularly
eventful until she reached Smolensk ; but there
began the accumulation of horror upon horror's
head.

There was a narrow bridge to be crossed there,
and Louise's horses broke down in the middle
of it, so that her carriage blocked the way.
The order was formal that any carriage which
blocked the way was to be burnt ; and the
soldiers liked burning carriages because it gave
them a splendid opportunity for pillaging. But
an officer came to the rescue. " One moment/'
he said. " I think I can get you by. I'll do
my best " ; and he gave his order : " Soldiers,
to the wheels of that carriage and push it ! "
They pushed, and got her across ; and presently
she knew why she had been helped. The officer
who had come to her assistance had mistaken
her for the wife of one of the generals ; and he
now begged her to bring his name before her

LOUISE FUSIL 61

husband's notice as that of a suitable candi-
date for promotion. She promised to do so, and
drove on.

At Smolensk Louise was able to take a days'
rest ; but her hardships were only beginning.
It was not long before she had to abandon her
carriage and all its contents, and trudge through
the snow with the rearguard, with the know-
ledge that hordes of Cossacks were hovering
near, awaiting their chance to swoop. She
managed to get another horse, taken from the
shafts of another carriage which had collapsed ;
but the horse broke down and she once more
had to walk. She walked all night, struggling
to get to Krasnoe, having heard that the
Emperor and his staff were there, and expecting
that one of her friends would help her. But
the Emperor and his staff had already left
Krasnoe when she got there. " Then there is
nothing for it," she said to the gendarme who
was helping her along, " except to lie down and
die. I haven't the strength to walk another
step." What followed was what one expects
to follow in a sensational serial story :

" I felt that the cold was freezing my very
blood. People say that it is a pleasant way of
dying, and I can well believe them. I heard
voices in my ear : ' You mustn't stop here ;
get up ! ' I felt some one shaking my arm,
and I did not like it. I had a delightful sensa-
tion of falling into a deep and peaceful sleep.

62 WOMEN IN WAR

In the end I heard nothing more, and completely
lost consciousness. When I came to myself
again I was in a peasant's cottage. They had
wrapped me in furs, and some one was holding
my arm and feeling my pulse ; it was Baron
Desgenettes. A group of men stood round my
bed, and I thought I was waking from a dream ;
but I was so weak that I could not move. I
scrutinised the various uniforms. General
Burmann, whom I did not then know, was
looking at me with interest. Old Marshal
Lefebvre came up and said to me : ' Well, how
are you getting on ? You've come to life again,
you see.'

" I learnt that they had picked me up in the
snow. At first they were going to put me close
up to a blazing fire, but Baron Desgenettes
had stopped them, exclaiming : ' Be careful !
You'll kill her if you do that. Wrap her up in
all the furs that you can find, and place her in
a room without a fire ! J

" For a long time I lay where I was. When I
began to recover a little warmth, the Marshal
brought me a large bowl of very strong coffee.
It stimulated me, and set my blood circulating
once again. ' Keep the bowl ! ' said the
Marshal. ' It will be an historical relic in your
family — if you ever see them again/ he added
beneath his breath. "

Nor did the Marshal's active interest cease
when Louise had drunk the coffee ; he put her

LOUISE FUSIL 63

in his own carriage, just as General Rapp had
put Mme Domergue in one of his carriages.
She crossed the Beresina in it, passing close to
Napoleon himself, who called to her not to be
frightened, and to the King of Naples, who paid
her a compliment as she passed. When she was
across, Marshal Lefebvre's son, General Lefebvre,
gave her his arm ; she was leaning on it, and
looking back, when she saw the bridge break.

And so to Vilna, where Louise had her
opportunity of rendering a service in return for
the services which had been rendered to her.
General Lefebvre had been wounded, and could
not be moved ; his father, the Marshal, was in
despair. He had written to the Russian general
who was about to enter Vilna, making an appeal
to the chivalry of a generous foe ; but he could
hardly trust the enemy to provide his son with
a nurse. It was Louise's chance. " I will stay
with him, Marshal," she said. " I promise you
that I will look after him like a mother.'* And
she kept her word, though Cossacks came to
raid the bed-chamber :

' They came up to the general's bed, and
threatened him, saying in Russian : ' Give us
money ! ' I then unfastened from my neck a .
little image of the Virgin of Kief which Princess
Kutusof had given me, while I was in Russia,
as a safeguard against ill-luck, and now it served
its purpose. I laid it on the general's bed,
saying : ' How dare you molest a dying man !

64 WOMEN IN WAR

You may be sure that God will punish you/
The Russians are great worshippers of icons,
especially of that of the Virgin of Kief ; so that
my presence of mind saved us, though the shock
to my poor patient gave his illness a bad turn.''

He got worse and worse, in fact, and died
in the early morning of December 19, 1812,
after whispering his last injunctions to his
nurse :

" No doubt you will get back to France,"
he murmured; "they don't detain the women.
Cut off a lock of my hair — now — you may be
afraid to do it after I am dead. Take it to my
parents and tell them that I entrust you to their
care. I would write to my mother about it if
I had the strength. You have lost everything, I
know ; but she is rich, and she will not forget
to reward you for your devotion.'1

Then the end came, and Louise had to think
about herself. She had no money, and no means
of earning any ; but she found friends who
looked after her while she continued to look after
the wounded. The Russians, as we have seen,
knew her ; and she consequently had nothing
to fear from them. And presently— surprise
of surprises! — a -Russian officer brought her a
French baby : a little girl just old enough to
speak. He had picked it up in the snow
and wrapped it up in his cloak. It was difficult
for him to take charge of it — would Louise do
so ?

LOUISE FUSIL 65

She said that she would, for the time being
at all events ; and she went to see Kutusof and
tell him what had happened. While she was
waiting for him in his antechamber she picked
up a volume of French poetry, and read these
lines :

Enfan£on malheure
M'est assurance,
Que Dieu n' envoi e
Pour 6tre ton pavois.

It seemed like an omen to Kutusof as well as
to Louise. She must be the child's mother, he
said, and he would be its godfather. It should
be called Nadeje — a Russian word meaning Fate.
It must go back to France, and he would supply
the necessary roubles for the expenses of the
journey.

So Nadeje was adopted, and grew up to be
famous, not only as the Orphan of Vilna, but
also as an actress of some distinction and still
greater promise. She made her debut at the
Comedie Franchise at the age of fifteen, but
died of consumption at twenty. One cannot
end her story better than by quoting the lines
which Mme Desbordes-Valmore — herself an
actress before she became a poet — consecrated
to her memory :

Elle est aux cieux, la douce fleur des neiges,
Elle se fond aux bords de son printemps.
Voit-on mourir d'aussi jeunes instants !
Mais ils suffraient, mon Dieu ! tu les abr£ges.

66 WOMEN IN WAR

Son sort a mis des pleurs dans tous les yeux,
C'etait, je crois, 1'aureole d'un ange
Tombee a 1'ombre et regrettee aux cieux;
D'un peu de vie, oh ! que la mort se venge

Fleur derobee au front d'un seraphin,
Reprends ton rang, avec un saint myst£re;
Et ce fil d'or, dont nous pleurons la fin,
Va Pattacher autre part qu'a la terre !

CHAPTER VII

Deborah — Boadicea — Genevi£ve — Fredegonde — Hermangarde —
Julienne de Breteuil — Eleanor of Guienne — Guirande de Lavaur
— Jeanne de Montfort.

THERE was Deborah — " a mother in Israel " ;
and there was Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite,
—" blessed among women." But that Bible
story is too well told to be repeated in a modern
book ; and though the exploit of Jael has the
sanction of Deborah's song — which is, perhaps,
for sheer poetry, the greatest war-song ever
written by a woman — it has to be classed with
methods of warfare which the civilised world
has outgrown.1 Yet Deborah, one must pause
to note, was a poet of war who had vision as
well as enthusiasm, and saw the suffering of
war as well as its triumphs :

" The mother of Sisera looked out at a window
and cried through the lattice : ' Why is his
chariot so long in coming ? Why tarry the
wheels of his chariots ? ' "

The feminine note, if one is looking for it,
may surely be found in that verse.

One comes next to Boadicea ; and of course

1 Or so one thought before one knew what the Germans
were capable of.

68 WOMEN IN WAR

all the world is familiar with Cowper's famous
lines :

When the British warrior Queen,

Bleeding from the Roman rods,
Sought with an indignant mien

Counsel of her country's gods. . . .

And the Druid's prophetic response :

Rome shall perish,— write that word

In the blood that she has spilt ;
Perish, hopeless and abhorred,

Deep in ruin as in guilt.

Rome, for Empire far renowned,
Tramples on a thousand States :

Soon her pride shall kiss the ground, —
Hark ! the Gaul is at the gates !

But when one turns from poetry to history
one finds that the authentic facts about Boadicea
are very few. She was Queen of the Iceni,
the widow of Prasutagus, an independent British
prince who had acknowledged the Roman
suzerainty, and she was scourged by the Romans
for resisting their attempt to incorporate her
principality in their dominions. Half Britain
took up arms in indignation ; though Britain
had also the further grievance that Seneca—
the eminent Roman who doubled the parts of
philosopher and money-lender — had suddenly
called in his loans. In the fighting which en-
sued St. Albans and Colchester were burnt, and
70,000 Romans and " friendlies " were killed.
The Romans recovered their ground in a battle
which is believed to have been fought in Watling

FREDEGONDE 69

Street ; but, even so, there was a long guerilla
war before peace was finally restored. That is
all ; it is quite impossible to add any of those
little details which endow portraits with veri-
similitude.

In the case, too, of the early women warriors
of France a few bare facts have to suffice.
The women of Gaul took part in the righting
against Caesar in 61 B.C. ; but the particulars of
their prowess have been lost for lack of a sacred
bard. Genevieve fought against Attila in
A.D. 451 ; but that bald statement cannot be
amplified. In the case of Fredegonde, who
fought against the Austro-Burgundians and
reconstituted the kingdom of Neustria in 593,
one is able to add just one interesting detail :
Fredegonde rode at the head of her army,
carrying her child Clotaire in her arms. There
follow on our list Hermangarde, the great-grand-
daughter of Charlemagne, who defended the
town of Vienne for two years against Boson
Comte d'Autun, and Richilde, wife of Baudouin
VI, Comte de Flandres, who allied herself with
Philip I of France, and went campaigning against
her own husband ; and then we come to Julienne
de Breteuil.

Julienne was the natural daughter of Henry. I
of England, and her husband was Eustache de
Breteuil. She fought for her husband against
her father, stood a siege, and formed a plot for
taking her father prisoner at an interview
arranged for the purpose of negotiating terms

70 WOMEN IN WAR

of surrender. How her plot failed, to her great
personal discomfiture, is set forth by the chroni-
cler Orderic Vital :

" The King/' writes Orderic, " never imagin-
ing that a woman could be capable of such base
trickery, came to the conference at which his
wretched daughter proposed to compass his
destruction. She aimed an arrow at her father
from a ballista ; but, by the special grace of God,
she failed to hit him. Then Henry instantly
caused the castle bridge to be broken down, so
as to cut her communications with it. Julienne,
seeing that she was surrounded, and that there
was no chance of her being rescued, surrendered
the castle to Henry ; but she could not obtain
his permission to depart from it in peace/'

On the contrary, he put her to great incon-
venience :

" By his orders she was required to slide down
from the top of the wall, without the help of a
bridge or any kind of support ; and she de-
scended in this disgraceful manner, displaying
her undraped limbs to the whole army. The
incident occurred at the beginning of Lent, in the
third week of February, so that the cold water
of the moat gave the delicate princess a chill
when she fell into it ; and the discomfited warrior
got out as well as she could, and made the best of
her way to join her husband at Paci-sur-Eure."

Evidently Henry I thought that war was not

MARGUERITE DE PROVENCE 71

woman's sphere, and was resolved to give his
daughter a lesson to that effect. Yet women
warriors did not cease — there were women who
fought in the Crusades. Eleanor of Guienne,
for instance, the wife successively of Louis VII
of France and Henry II of England, accompanied
her first husband to the Crusades ; but there
is not much to be said in praise of her. Her
first husband repudiated her for infidelity, and
her second husband found her so disagreeable a
companion that he sent her to a convent, where
she remained until Richard Cceur de Lion re-
leased her. We will leave her, and pass on to
Marguerite de Provence.

She was the wife of Louis IX, generally called
Saint Louis : she crossed the seas with him,
and was in Damietta during the siege. One has
a glimpse at her in a chronicler's record of a
conversation which she held with an officer in
her army :

11 Swear to me, sir, that you will grant me the
favour which I am about to ask of you/'

" Speak, madam; I swear that I will do
what you desire if it is in accordance with my
duty."

" Swear, then, that, if the Mussulmans get
into the town, you will cut off my head."

" That will I, madam, and right willingly;
I had already thought of doing so."

There was another woman Crusader, known
as La dame aux bottes d'or, on account of the

72 WOMEN IN WAR

magnificence of her uniform, who commanded a
company of women during the Second Crusade ;
and we have an account written by a woman—
the sister of a monk — of her experiences on the
ramparts of Jerusalem during Saladin's siege
of the Holy City :

" I discharged, as far as possible, the duties
which appertain to a soldier. I wore a helmet,
like a man ; or, at any rate, I walked on the
ramparts, wearing on my head a metal dish
which did as well as a helmet. Woman though
I was, I had all the appearance of a warrior. I
slung stones at the enemy ; and, though I was
sorely frightened, I learnt how to conceal my
fears. It was very hot ; and the combatants
had never a moment to rest. I brought out
water to the fatigued soldiers on the walls ;
and once a big stone, as big as a mill-stone,
fell quite close to me, and I was hit by one of
the fragments."

And still they come. In 1211, Guirande de
Lavaur defended the castle of Lavaur against
the Bishops of Toulouse, Lisieux, and Bayeux,
who had that redoubtable warrior, Simon de
Montfort, to command their forces. Simon was
so furious at her stubborn resistance that when,
at last, she surrendered, he threw her down the
castle well, and had the well filled up with
stones. In 1343 Jeanne de Belleville, widow
of Amaury de Clisson, whose head Philip of
France had cut off, swore to avenge her husband,

JULIENNE DU GUESCLIN 73

and appealed for help to Edward III of England :
he gave her three ships, and she became a pirate
and harried the French coasts. In 1370
Julienne du Guesclin, a sister of the famous
Constable du Guesclin, and a nun, at Ponterson
in Brittany, helped to defend her convent against
the English Captain Felton. With her own
hand she hurled three Englishmen down their
scaling-ladders, and the rest retired. The next
day the Constable du Guesclin arrived and took
Felton prisoner ; and the Constable's wife,
seeing what had happened, mocked at the un-
fortunate soldier :

" Aha ! my brave Felton ! " she exclaimed.
" So here you are again ! A nice experience
this, for a gallant soldier like you to be beaten
twice within the same twenty-four hours — first
by the sister, and then by the brother ! "

And then there was Jeanne de Montfort :
the most famous of all the woman warriors
before Jeanne d'Arc — she of whom Froissart
has written that " she had a man's courage and
a lion's heart." Hers is a story which it is
possible to tell at greater length than those of
some of the others.

The trouble arose out of a dispute as to the
succession to the dukedom of Brittany, not yet
an integral part of the kingdom of France.
The two claimants were Jean de Montfort, whose
wife was our heroine, and Charles de Blois who
claimed through his wife, Jeanne de Penthievre ;

74 WOMEN IN WAR

there is no need to confuse counsel by any
attempt to decide which of them was in the
right. It was Jeanne who urged Jean to assert
himself ; and he promised to do so. " If I
live, madam/1 he said, " you shall be Duchess
of Brittany " ; and he caused himself to be
proclaimed Duke by the citizens of Nantes, and
seized the fortresses of Rennes, Hennebon, and
d'Auray.

His rival appealed to the King of France,
as his liege lord ; and the King of France
decided in his rival's favour ; but Jean de
Montfort declined to accept the decision. He
appealed for help to Edward III, pointing out
to him that Brittany would be " the finest
possible entrance gate for invading and con-
quering the kingdom of France." Then the
fighting began. Nantes was betrayed to the
enemy, and Jean de Montfort was taken prisoner.
That was the disaster which made Jeanne a
fighting woman. " A new Penthesilea," writes
the historian Roujoux, " now arises in the midst
of Brittany, with all the grandeur of a noble
and generous character; and a mother's love
once more worked miracles. "

While Jean had been defending Nantes Jeanne
had been at Rennes ; and now she issued a mani-
festo. Her heart, she said, was " deeply grieved
at the news that her lord was taken " ; but she
continued : " Nevertheless, my lords, be not
discouraged. It is but a single man that we
have lost. Here is his son and heir, who, if it

JEANNE DE PENTHIEVRE 75

be God's will, shall restore him to his rights."
And then she went from stronghold to strong-
hold, repeating the appeal :

" Do not desert him who places his trust,
next to God, in you and your loyalty. I place
under your tutelage his heir, who will grow up
to be great and good, and will take his father's
place in the war against the enemies who, at
the present hour, are in occupation of his lands. "

That was her answer to Charles de Blois, who
bade her " go back to her spinning-wheel " ;
one finds the feminine note in it as surely as in
Deborah's song. And presently we find her
standing siege in her castle of Hennebon, and
inspiring even the maid-servants to help in the
defence. " Mere girls," we read, " were em-
ployed in digging up the paving-stones in the
castle yard, and carrying them to the battle-
ments, to be hurled thence on to the heads of
the assailants, together with fireballs and quick-
lime." And Jeanne herself headed a sortie,
and fired the enemy's camp, at the very time
when they were trying to batter down the main
gate.

Her retreat was cut off ; but she fought her
way to d' Auray, and thence fought her way back
to Hennebon, where, a few days later, an Eng-
lish contingent arrived by sea for her relief.
There followed a raid on the besiegers' battering
rams, in which a certain Messire Gauthier so
distinguished himself that Jeanne, as Froissart

76 WOMEN IN WAR

assures us — " kissed him two or three times,
like the valiant lady that she was." Then
the siege was raised ; and Jeanne, after dis-
tinguishing herself on land, distinguished herself
equally on sea. In a naval battle, fought off
the coast of Guernsey, " she had" — we are
still quoting Froissart — " a very sharp sword
in her hand and fought with great courage."

The issue of that engagement was doubtful,
however, and the war continued. Jean de
Montfort escaped from his captivity and re-
joined his wife, but only to die. Charles de
Blois was taken prisoner by the English ; but
his wife, Jeanne de Penthievre — a. woman of a
courage hardly less than that of her antagonist
— took the field on his behalf. Each of them,
as we see, was fighting for what she regarded
as the rightful inheritance of her child. Their
little war proceeded simultaneously with that
great war between France and England which
included the battle of Poitiers. It raged so
long that Jeanne de Montfort's child grew up
before it was concluded, and took his mother's
place as Commander-in-Chief of his partisans.

At last it was ended by the battle of d'Auray,
where du Guesclin was taken prisoner and
Charles de Blois was killed ; and then, in 1365,
the Treaty of Guerande was .signed. Charles
of France, the chronicler tells us, "was very
angry, for his discomfiture touched him to the
quick " ; but he nevertheless gave Jean de
Montfort and his adherents letters of pardon,

JEANNE DE PENTHIEVRE 77

for having " made war against the King without
any adequate reason/' and took into his service
as many of them as cared to join it. But
Jeanne de Montfort was, by this time, dead.

Assuredly she had shone in war, albeit only
in a private war. We shall speak next of
women who have been leaders in wars which
have involved greater and deeper issues.

CHAPTER VIII

Matilda of Tuscany — How she brought the Emperor to Canossa —
Jeanne d'Arc — The state of France during her childhood —
Voices and visions — Her interview with Robert de Baudricourt
— Summoned to the King at Chinon — Inquiries of the eccle-
siastics into her bona fides — The examiners satisfied and the
Maid launched upon her mission.

A GREAT name, to which only a brief space can
be given, is that of Matilda of Tuscany.

Matilda's period was that when the Papacy
and the Holy Roman Empire were at daggers
drawn. It is a long story ; but one can give
the essence of it in a sentence. Hildebrand, the
monk of Cluny who had become Pope Gregory
VII, prohibited the imperial investitures ; the
Emperor Henry IV replied by deposing the
Pope ; the Pope rejoined by excommunicating
the Emperor — and excommunication was not,
in those days, a thing to be treated slightly or
laughed at. Many imperial feudatories took up
arms and signified to the Emperor that he could
be Emperor no longer unless he abased himself
to the point of pleading for absolution. Matilda
was one of those who went to war to that end ;
and her castle at Canossa was the scene of the
crowning act of the drama.

The scene has often been described. There

MATILDA OF TUSCANY 79

could be no question of the Pope's going to the
Emperor — the Emperor had to come to the
Pope. He had to cross the Alps in the dead
of winter, and then to await the Pope's con-
venience. For three days the Pope kept him
waiting in the courtyard — standing bare-
footed in the snow — a miserable penitential
figure ; and, in the end, he had to implore
Matilda to intercede for him :

" Unless you come to my help, I shall break
down no more bucklers. The Pope has laid his
curse on me, and my strong right arm is withered.
Obtain absolution for me, my cousin ; go and
obtain it quickly."

She interceded ; and the Pope absolved the
Emperor, albeit in severe and bitter words
which cut him like a lash. The Emperor went
away, apparently penitent, only to try to entrap
the Pope in an ambush; but Matilda — "the
lady with the hundred eyes " — as a contem-
porary styled her — scented the danger and kept
the Pope out of it. That was the great event
which has made " going to Canossa " a sym-
bolic phrase for the submission of secular to
ecclesiastical authority. To follow up its con-
sequences would take us far astray from our
subject ; and a more famous name awaits us —
that of the Maid of France.

The air is, of course, in the case of Jeanne
d'Arc, thick with controversy. Was she, in
very truth, inspired by God, or did she only

8o WOMEN IN WAR

think that she was inspired ? Did she hear
real voices — the promptings of saints or angels
— or was she the victim of hallucinations ?
Did she herself devise a great scheme for the
deliverance of France, or was she merely a
tool in the hands of clever men who exploited
her in order to fan the flames of French fanati-
cism ? Did she succeed in her mission through
military genius, or because her task was easy
and her enemies were inefficient ? Such are a
few of the problems which beset our path ;
some of them real problems, and others, perhaps,
only verbal quibbles. We must steer our way
among them as best we can, first clearing the
ground by explaining " the great pity that was
in France."

France, we must remember, had long been
riven by a blood-feud. On the one side were
ranged the Burgundians under Jean sans
Peur ; on the other side the Orleanists or
" Armagnacs," led, after the murder of Louis
d' Orleans, by Bernard, Comte d'Armagnac.
In 1411 Burgundy invoked the aid of England ;
and that was the beginning of the war of which
the best-remembered incident is the battle of
Agincourt. Henry V, as we all know, married
the daughter of the King of France, and pro-
claimed himself his heir ; while the Dauphin,
presently to be Charles VII, fled to Bourges.
His nominal accession dates from his father's
death, two months after the death of Henry V,
in October 1422 ; but his was a kingdom pour

JEANNE D'ARC 81

rire. He was not crowned. None, or hardly
any called him the King of France ; those who
did not continue to call him the Dauphin
spoke of him derisively as the King of Bourges.

Meanwhile the wave of conquest was spread-
ing, under the direction of John, Duke of Bed-
ford, Regent of France. Roughly speaking,
the English and Burgundians held France north
of the Loire, while the Dauphin was in posses-
sion of the country to the south of it. There
was desultory fighting going on here, there, and
everywhere, and even where there were no armies
marching and counter-marching, there were free-
booters waylaying merchants, burning farms,
and raiding cattle. And then, in 1428, the
English decided to force the line of the Loire,
and, to that end, laid siege to Orleans — the
Moscow of their invasion, though they did not
suspect it. That was " the great pity that was
in France " in the days when the Maid was
growing up.

She was born at Domremy on the Meuse,
apparently, though there is a doubt about the
date, on January 6, 1412. Her father, Jean
d'Arc, was poor, but owned a little property,
and enjoyed the esteem of his neighbours. Her
mother had acquired the name of Rome"e—
perhaps, though that, again, is not certain,
because she had been to Rome as a pilgrim.
One of her uncles was a village priest ; the others
followed trades. She herself prayed in churches
in preference to dancing in the fields with other
6

82 WOMEN IN WAR

children ; and presently she began to hear
Voices and to see Visions.

It would be absolutely idle to inquire whether
she actually heard the Voices or only fancied
that she heard them ; whether she actually saw
the Visions or only fancied that she saw them.
The distinction between hearing and fancying
that one hears — seeing and fancying that one
sees — means nothing except in relation to
material sounds and sights, the normal objects
of a normal consciousness. One need no more
try to draw it in the case of the Maid of France
than in the cases of Socrates and Bunyan. To
her, as to them, the voices were real ; and she
was fully persuaded that Saint Michael, Saint
Margaret, and Saint Catherine had appeared to
her. It was afterwards made a ground of eccle-
siastical reprobation that she did not tell a priest
what she had heard and seen ; but one can
easily understand why she did not. To chil-
dren, priests are apt to seem like school-
masters— unsympathetic persons, prone to snub
the fanciful.

Perhaps, if she had prattled and been snubbed,
the Voices and the Visions would have ceased :
such Voices and Visions depend upon a sensitive
receptivity, too easily destroyed by contact
with unsympathetic common sense. As it was,
the consciousness of exceptional communion
with the unseen gave Jeanne the feeling that
she was different from other girls, and dwelt
in a different world from them. She neglected

JEANNE D'ARC 83

her work, as well as her play, to give herself to
mystical devotion, kneeling for hours together
on the cold stones of the village church. So
doing, she heard more Voices, and the message
of the Voices became more and more specific.

" Jeanne, be a good girl ! " was all that they
had to say at first ; but then came the promise
of Saint Michael that Saint Margaret and Saint
Catherine should come to her, and give her good
counsel ; and then came the injunctions of
these holy visitants :

" Daughter of God, you must leave your
village, and you must go to France ! >:

' Take the standard from the King of Heaven :
take it boldly, and God will help you/'

" Daughter of God, you must take the
Dauphin to Reims, in order that he may receive
his worthy consecration ! "

" Daughter of God, you must go to Captain
Robert de Baudricourt, in the town of Vau-
couleurs, in order that he may give you men-at-
arms, to conduct you to the noble Dauphin."

And then, most specific of all, came the in-
junction to lead French troops to the relief of
Orleans. One can trace through the successive
utterances the gradual formation of a plan in
the Maid's mind ; one can also trace certain
influences at work, helping to form it. Most
potent of all was a certain current prophecy :
that one woman should ruin the kingdom of
France, and that another woman should restore

84 WOMEN IN WAR

it. The work of destruction had been done by
the Dauphin's mother, Isabeau de Baviere,
who had signed the Treaty of Troyes, and given
her daughter to the King of England ; the world
was waiting for the heroine who should undo the
mischief. The priests awaited her advent with
especial eagerness ; for they were among the
chief sufferers from the " great pity."

How far the priests, or any of them, encour-
aged the Maid's idea that she had a mission
from on high to restore the Dauphin is uncertain
and disputed. It was, at any rate, an accept-
able idea, alike to them and to the common
people ; and it was unquestionably through the
common belief in the current prophecy that
Jeanne was able to obtain access to Robert de
Baudricourt, who held Vaucouleurs for the
Dauphin. She appealed to her cousin, Durand
Lassois, to help her ; and it was by him that
she was conducted to Vaucouleurs, — " attired in
a patched red gown" — and introduced into
Robert de Baudricourt's presence. The voice,
she said, enabled her to identify the Captain
among his company of men-at-arms ; and she
said to him boldly :

" I come to you from my Lord, Messire, in
order that you may warn the Dauphin to be
on his guard, and not to give battle to his

enemies."

And furthermore :

" The kingdom belongs not yet, in fact, to the

JEANNE D'ARC 85

Dauphin. But it is the will of my Lord that
the Dauphin shall be King, and shall hold the
kingdom as a trust from Him ; and it is I who
am to conduct him to his coronation/1

" Who is 'my Lord1 ?" asked the Captain.
" The King of Heaven/' replied the Maid. But
Robert de Baudricourt was a ribald man to
whom it seemed incredible that any woman,
not professedly of light reputation, should seek
to consort with soldiers. He bade her cousin
take her home to her father ; and her father,
when she returned to him, was of much the
same opinion as the Captain. He would rather,
he said, drown his daughter in the Meuse than
let her follow the army.

But Jeanne's conviction of her mission had
grown upon her ; and she talked of it to all
and sundry. She stopped a labourer at his
work, for instance, in order to say to him :
" There is a Maid, between Coussy and Vaucou-
leurs, who, within a year, will bring about the
coronation of the King of France/ ' People
said that she was mad, and pointed to her, say-
ing derisively : " That is the girl who is going
to deliver France and the royal family ! " And
meanwhile the Voices continued to exhort her,
and the exhortations became more and more
precise, as Jeanne came to know more and
more of the military situation. After nine
months she was received a second time by
Robert de Vaucouleurs, and this time she said
to him :

86 WOMEN IN WAR

" Know you, Sir Captain, that God has several
times warned me that I am to go to the noble
Dauphin, who is to be, and is now, the King of
France, and that he is to provide me with men-
at-arms, and that I am to raise the siege of Or-
leans, and take him to be crowned at Reims/'

Robert was a j ovial, superficial man, as little
disposed as ever to take the Maid and her errand
seriously ; but the ceaseless flow of her pro-
phecies was making its impression on others,
if not on him. It does not much matter whether
those others believed in her or merely saw a way
of making use of her. Some of them, at any
rate, wrote to the Dauphin about her and
aroused his curiosity. He gave orders that she
should be sent to him at Chinon ; and she set
out with a small escort on February 23, 1429.

It was a journey of seventy-five leagues
through a country more or less in the occupation
of the enemy ; but the party, being small, was
unmolested because it was unobserved. Jeanne
rode in armour, subscribed for by some of the
citizens of Vaucouleurs, and carried a sword
given her by Robert de Baudricourt. To those
doubters who asked her whether she was quite
sure that she would carry out her purpose, she
answered boldly :

" Have no fear for me. That which I do I do
in obedience to command. My brothers in
Paradise tell me what I am to do. For four

JEANNE D'ARC 87

years, or even for five, my brothers in Paradise
and my Lord have bidden me go to war and
recover the kingdom of France."

And so, at the end of eleven days, to Chinon,
where Jeanne had to wait two other days while
the Dauphin considered whether she was a saint
or a witch. The question had to be sifted by
ecclesiastics before anything further could be
done ; but, as the ecclesiastics were divided in
opinion, Charles had to decide for himself.
He was probably helped to his conclusion by
an astrologer's prediction. ' ' Your victory/' the
astrologer had written to him, "will lie in fol-
lowing the counsel of a Maid; pursue your
triumph, without ceasing, to the walls of the
town of Paris/' So the Maid was introduced
into his presence, and told him that God had
sent her to his aid, and that, if he would give
her soldiers, she would raise the siege of Orleans
for him.

He was impressed, but he was cautious ;
and so were the ecclesiastics. The mediaeval
mind had its scepticism as well as its super-
stitions, and its own way of distinguishing
between prophetesses and adventuresses ; and
so investigations were set on foot. A Board. of
Theologians was deputed to examine Jeanne
in the articles of faith and religion. A special
commission was despatched to Domremy to
check her statements about her origin and early
life. Orleans, though its need was sore, had

88 WOMEN IN WAR

to wait six weeks while these inquiries were
pursued.

Perhaps it was the wiser way. It would be
easy to give such an account of the investiga-
tions as would make them seem trivial and silly.
To the modern student of evidence they prove
nothing except that Jeanne had always been a
well-conducted young woman ; and it did not
follow that, because she was a well-conducted
young woman, she had the power to put the
Dauphin's enemies to confusion. But faith,
as we know, moves mountains ; and it was
necessary, not only that the Maid should have
faith in herself, but also that France should have
faith in the Maid. The delay gave time for
rumour to spread, and so made it possible to
launch the Maid upon a world ready to believe
that her mission was a fulfilment of old pro-
phecies.

In a sense, no doubt, the proceedings were a
fraud upon credulity ; and there can be little
doubt that, in some ecclesiastical quarters, the
fraud was conscious and deliberate. The pro-
phecies which the ecclesiastics quoted for their
purpose were, in some cases, fabrications, and,
in other cases, had no bearing whatsoever on
the matter to which they were supposed to
refer. It was not true that the advent of the
Maid had been predicted by Merlin, and the
Venerable Bede ; among those who dissemi-
nated the belief there must certainly have been
some who knew better. But the Maid herself,

JEANNE D'ARC 89

it is quite clear, was no conscious party to any
fraud, pious or otherwise.

She had her fixed idea, and she was impatient.
She regarded the proceedings of the theolo-
gians pretty much as we regard " red tape/' It
seemed to her that they were wasting precious
time when it was urgent that she should be up
and doing. Her replies to their questions were
often curt and contemptuous. " What language
did your angels speak to you ? " she was
asked, for instance, by one of her examiners, who
spoke the patois of Limoges ; and her answer
was : " They spoke better French than you do."
She was most indignant, too, at the proposal
that she should prove her supernatural gifts
by working a miracle. She had not come to
Chinon to work miracles, she said. Let them
take her to Orleans, and there she would work
the miracle of raising the siege and scattering
the English.

The six weeks' ordeal passed, however, and
the report of the learned doctors was favourable.
They reported that Jeanne was of good repute,
and that there seemed to be miraculous circum-
stances associated with her birth and child-
hood ; that, though she had worked no miracle
as yet, she gave as her reason that God forbade
her to do so, and that it would be well to conduct
her to Orleans in order that she might work the
miracle which she promised there. To have
fear of her, they concluded, or to reject her aid
when no appearance of evil could be found in

90 WOMEN IN WAR

her, would be to show oneself unworthy of God's
help, as Gamaliel had said, with regard to the
Apostles, at a council of the Jews.

Copies of that report were circulated broad-
cast— the Holy Roman Emperor was one of
those who received a copy of it. And then, the
minds of men having been prepared, Jeanne
was taken to Tours, and equipped with a suit
of mail, and launched upon her enterprise.

CHAPTER IX

The nature of the Maid's enterprise — The march to Orleans —
Orleans entered — The English siege-works attacked — The siege
raised.

WE must not exaggerate the difficulty of the
Maid's enterprise, or the importance of the part
which the Maid was intended to play in it.

Orleans, as has already been said, was the
Moscow of the English invasion, and the relief
of Orleans was to be the turning of the tide.
The English army was constantly finding it-
self short of men, of munitions, of provisions.
It established a certain number of block-houses,
called bastilles, at intervals, outside the walls of
Orleans ; but the investment of the city was
never complete. Sorties were frequent ; and
both reinforcements and fresh supplies — herds
of cattle and droves of pigs — were received by
the besieged from time to time. If such a siege
was not raised, the only reason could be that
no serious attempt was made to raise it. Nor
was it likely that, in the absence of such an
attempt, it would be taken by assault. An old
chronicler's account of the repulse of such an
assault will be in its place here because women
played their part in it :

92 WOMEN IN WAR

" On Thursday, October 21, 1428, " we read,
" at about 12 a.m., the English made a terrible
attack on the French who held the rampart at
the end of the bridge. The assault was long
persisted in, and many English were killed and
wounded, for the French threw them down
from their scaling-ladders into the moat, where
they could not get up again, and pelted them
with blazing coals, and quick-lime, and poured
on to them boiling fat and boiling water, which
the women of Orleans fetched. Moreover, for the
refreshment of the French in the midst of their
hard struggle, the said women provided them
with wine, and meat, and fruit, and vinegar,
and clean napkins, together with stones, and
everything else what they needed for the de-
fence ; and some of them were seen in the course
of the assault, thrusting the English down from
the rampart with pikes/'

Decidedly, therefore, the condition of the
stronghold was by no means so desperate that
nothing short of a miracle could relieve it ; and
though the Maid had promised that God would
work a miracle beneath the walls, the relief
expedition was by no means prepared on the
assumption that the walls of the English block-
houses would fall down flat because a banner
was waved and a trumpet blown at them.
The army which accompanied the Maid con-
sisted of about 7,000 men, and convoyed 600
wagons laden with supplies, and 400 head of
cattle.

JEANNE D'ARC 93

Nor must we picture the Maid as commanding
this great host. Her mission was not to com-
mand, but to inspire. She had nothing to say
—she could in the nature of the case have
nothing to say — to the military organisation ;
she rode in the ranks as a prophetess rather
than a warrior. Not every one believed in her
at first, though all believed in her in the end ;
but everything was done that pomp and cir-
cumstance could do to make her a rallying-point
of religious enthusiasm. Priests marched before
her carrying a banner, and singing Veni creator
Spiritus. Her departure was heralded by the
despatch of a letter, addressed to King Henry,
his Regent, and the three officers — Scales,
Suffolk, and Talbot — in command of his army
before Orleans. It is a long letter ; but a few
lines will show what was the note of the sum-
mons :

" Restore to the Maid, who is sent from God,
the King of Heaven, the keys of all the goodly
towns which you have taken and outraged in
France. She has come from God, to claim the
royal blood. ... If you will not believe the news
thus sent to you by God and by the Maid, then,
wherever we find you, we will smite you hard,
and make such a to-do as has not been heard
in France these thousand years. For the King
of Heaven will give the Maid and the men-at-
arms who are with her greater strength than you
have in all your assaults, and in the battle you

94 WOMEN IN WAR

shall 3ee on which side is the right. But, if
you do the Maid's bidding, then shall you go
in her company thither where the French will
accomplish the greatest feat of arms ever yet
done for Christendom. Make answer, there-
fore, whether you will make peace in the city
of Orleans ; but if you will not make peace, then
shall great harm presently be done to you."

The letter is given to us as one which the
Maid, who could neither read nor write, dic-
tated ; and it is, of course, impossible to say
whether it was written out exactly as she did
dictate it. The summons to the English to
make peace with the French and join them in a
Crusade — presumably against the Turks who
were then threatening Constantinople — seems
more likely than not to have been added by an
ecclesiastic. But the spirit of the letter, whether
it was the Maid's own or a clerk's, was well con-
ceived. It gave the impression, in an age in
which such impressions were easily conveyed,
that the war of which the Maid was the figure-
head was a holy war, and that the powers of
Heaven would be found arrayed upon her side.

In the case of the English that impression
would doubtless be delayed — they would begin
by laughing at a girl's idle threats. But that
was no great matter — defeat would be likely to
shake them beyond recovery if they believed
that supernatural forces were at work against
them. And the French, of course, on their part,

JEANNE D'ARC

were infinitely more likely to inflict defeat if
persuaded that they had supernatural help.
So the letter was despatched and delivered ; and
the manner of its reception showed that it was
producing its effect. The herald who carried
it was detained ; and a message was sent to
Paris to inquire whether it would be proper to
burn him alive. The raising of the question
proves that the rumours of the Maid's
coming had already caused consternation in
the English camp.

Jeanne herself, meanwhile, entered Orleans
with her convoy ; and her army returned to
Blois to fetch a second. It was a clumsy tactical
course. The French, being in greater strength
than the English, who were hanging on by
the skin of their teeth, awaiting reinforcements,
ought to have given battle at once ; but Jeanne
had nothing to do with that. She looked upon
herself, at that hour, less as a military leader
than as the guardian of an army's morals ; she
had chased loose women from the ranks ; she
had insisted that her soldiers should refrain
from oaths and confess their sins to priests. In
that way she had formed, or fancied that she
had formed, a new army on a New Model;
she feared that, if she left it, the Old Adam
would reappear in its midst.

She left it, however, and entered the town by
night, clad in her armour, mounted on a white
horse, and escorted from the gate by a torch-
light procession ; and her arrival was like that

96 WOMEN IN WAR

of the generals of whom it has been said that
their presence on a battle-field is as good as an
additional army corps. Not men, but faith—
not the genius of a military leader, but the con-
viction that victory was within their grasp — was
what the citizens of Orleans needed. Jeanne
brought them that, with the result that pacific
tradesmen became as eager to fight as the
retainers of the feudal lords. It became an
instinct with them to sally and, storm block-
houses while Jeanne was still sending the
enemy summons after summons to quit those
blockhouses and depart in peace — " failing
which I shall make such a to-do among you as
will never be forgotten."

Her voices were still prompting her, though
their utterances were sometimes perplexing.
They woke her at night, and she leapt out of
bed, lamenting the dubiety of their commands :

' ' Name of God ! " she exclaimed. "My
Counsel has told me that I must march against
the English, but I know not whether I ought
to attack their blockhouses or to fall upon
Sir John Fastolf, who is to revictual them."

That matter, indeed, was already being
settled, not by the voices, but by the bourgeoisie
of Orleans. An attack upon a block-house was
already proceeding, and the Maid called for her
armour and hastened out to take part in it.
She had never taken part in a fight — she had
never even seen a fight — before ; but her mere

JEANNE D'ARC 97

presence transformed what had begun as a
demonstration into a serious assault. The
block-house fell, and prisoners were taken. So
great is the power of faith — its power was the
greater because the French were in a majority
of about five to one ; and the Maid harangued
her host.

" Confess your sins/' she said, " and render
thanks to God for the victory which you have
gained. Otherwise the Maid will no longer help
you by continuing in your company.0

It was a useful victory, won at a trifling cost.
In the course of three hours' fighting only three
French combatants had been killed. The
English were not discouraged ; but the citizens
were stirred to enthusiasm. Having begun to
fight, they meant to go on fighting, whether
with or without the approval of their military
leaders ; and it was the Maid who insisted that
they should be allowed to have their way. The
Sire de Gaucourt tried to keep them back-
presumably because he doubted their military
value, as professional soldiers always doubt the
military value of untrained amateurs ; but the
Maid admonished him :

" You are a wicked man," she said, " not to
let these people go out to battle. Yet it matters
little whether you let them or not. With your
leave or without it, they will have their sally and

98 WOMEN IN WAR

acquit themselves every whit as well as they did
the other day/'

So the Sire de Gaucourt gave way, and even
offered to lead the sally which he could not
prevent; but the real leader, both then and
until the end of the siege, was the Maid herself.

She had a personal insult to avenge. Her last
message, summoning the enemy to surrender,
had been shot into the English camp, fastened
to an arrow. An answer had been shouted back,
acknowledging the receipt of " a letter from the
harlot of the Armagnacs." Jeanne had burst
into tears on hearing the brutal words ; but she
had once more seen her Visions and heard her
Voices and been comforted ; and there would
be no weakness when she buckled on her armour
and took the field — not though a Voice had
warned her that she was destined to be wounded.

Once again we find her in conflict with the
professional soldiers. They argued at a Council
of War that, as the town was well provisioned
and an army was marching to its relief, it would
be better to await reinforcements before push-
ing the attack home — an absolutely sound
view by all the rules of strategy ; but the Maid
once more spoke up to the captains :

" You come from your Council/' she said,
" and I come from mine. Believe me, the
counsel of my Lord will be accomplished, and
your counsel will come to naught. "

JEANNE D'ARC 99

And so it happened.

The arguments of the captains were most
plausible. To denude the walls of their de-
fenders, as the Maid and the citizens proposed,
was to invite the enemy to " rush " the city
during their absence : the risk was not one
which it was reasonable for a garrison, not yet
hard pressed, and expecting a strong relieving
force, to take. Enthusiasm, however, required
that the risk should be taken ; and enthusiasm
—helped by the weakness of the English
forces — carried the adventure to a triumphant
issue. " Let those who love me follow me,"
Jeanne cried ; and they all followed her.

She was wounded, as the angels had warned
her that she would be. An arrow entered a
joint in her armour and pierced her shoulder —
it is said that the pain made her cry. But she
would not let the hurt be charmed, though she
believed that charms were efficacious. " Better
to die," she said, " than to commit a sin, or do
what is contrary to the will of God." So her
wound was dressed, and presently she re-
turned to the fray, cheering her men as before,
promising them the victory, and calling on one
of the English captains who had insulted her :
" Glasdale, surrender to the King of Heaven.
You called me a harlot, and I am full of pity for
your soul and the souls of all your men."

So the battle continued to rage ; and, in the
end, the great outwork known as Les Tourelles
was taken, and the Maid's standard floated on

ioo WOMEN IN WAR

the ruins. The bulk of the French army
marched back in triumph into Orleans, and
debated whether it was proper to renew the
battle on the next day, which happened to be
Sunday. Once more it was by the Maid, and
not by the captains, that the question was
resolved. Some of the world's greatest battles,
including Waterloo, have, as we all know, been
fought upon a Sunday; but Jeanne decided
that it was better to observe the Lord's Day
than to follow up a success and complete the
confusion of the enemy :

" For the love and honour of the holy Sunday,"
she said, " do not be the first to engage in battle.
Do not attack the English ; but if the English
attack you, defend yourselves valiantly, and
have no fear, for the victory will surely be yours."

But the English had no intention of attack-
ing. They drew up in line, as if in challenge
and demonstration ; but when they saw that
the demonstration was unheeded and the chal-
lenge was declined, they wheeled about, and
marched away in good order. "It is not my
Lord's will that you should fight them to-day,"
said the Maid. " You will be able to fight them
another time. Now go and give God the glory."

Thus Orleans was relieved after a siege of
209 days — nine days after the entrance of the
Maid.

CHAPTER X

Theological treatises on the Maid's mission — Disputes between
rival historians as to her military capacity — The power of faith
— The march to Reims and the coronation of the King of
France. /

THOUGH Orleans had been delivered, theological
deliberations did not cease. It was apparent,
and was therefore, in a general way, agreed
that the Maid was marvellous. The whole face
of the war had been altered by the inspiration
of her advent. But the phenomenon needed
explanation. All Christendom, in fact, was
talking about it ; and it was the clear business
of the clergy to lay down the law on the subject.
So, while the Maid and the men-at-arms were
following up the Orleans victory with other
victories, bishops and others were putting and
answering the questions : What was it proper
to think about the Maid ? What use was it
reasonable to make of her ?

We have a notable treatise on the subject,
dashed off at the topical hour, by Jacques Gelu,
Archbishop of Embrun. He was a most learned
clerk ; he supported his arguments with quo-
tations from innumerable classical authors,
from Euripides and Aristotle to Eratosthenes

101

102 WOMEN IN WAR

and Marcus Varro ; and the language in which
he contrasted the Maid's glorious feats of arms
with her humble origin sounds to a modern ear
more eloquent and picturesque than courteous.
He wrote of her as " a child brought up on
a dung-hill" ; he compared her to " the insects
such as flies and fleas, by means of which God
often abases the pride of men." But he meant
well.

His conclusion was favourable, though piety
and worldly wisdom were curiously commingled
in it. He advised, in the first place, that all
the armies should be properly equipped and
that all the measures which prudence prompted
should be taken. Then, but not till then, " the
counsel of the Maid should be asked, sought,
and solicited in preference to any other." And
that not only in military matters: the Maid
might also be engaged to promote piety in high
places :

" We give the King this advice : that he
should, every day, perform some task agreeable
to God, and should confer with the Maid about
it ; and that, whatever counsel the Maid gives
him, he should act upon it devoutly, in order
that God may not withdraw His support from
him, but may continue the gift of His grace."

Very similar, though in some respects more
ample, was the report of Jean Gerson, sometime
Chancellor of the University of Paris, and now
living in a monastery at Lyon.

JEANNE D'ARC 103

The Maid's supernatural endowment, he laid
down, was not one of those fundamental articles
of the Catholic faith which every man must
accept or perish everlastingly — it obviously
could not be, as the Pope had not been con-
sulted on the subject. But it was a probable
belief, convenient and edifying ; and its wide dis-
semination was desirable. If the King and the
clergy preferred to reserve their own judgment,
hey should at least discourage doubt on the
part of the soldiers and the common people.
Nor need they be perturbed by that Article of
the Canon Law which forbade women to wear
men's apparel. That article was only directed
against an indecorum which was not here
involved. On the assumption that the Maid
was the channel of the divine grace, operating
for the greater glory of France, the end might
properly be held to sanctify the means.

Meanwhile the fighting continued. Jargeau
and Beaugency were taken ; Meung was evacu-
ated ; the battle of Pathay was won. Suffolk
was made prisoner, and Sir John Fastolfs
relieving force was scattered. How much or
how little the Maid had to do with it all is one
of those obscure problems concerning which
rival historians are apt to argue with excess of
fury. Nearly all the authorities are on the one
side ; nearly all the probabilities are on the
other. Andrew Lang, discussing the point
with M. Anatole France, belaboured his oppo-
nent with quotations from eye-witnesses of the

104 WOMEN IN WAR

Maid's prowess, declaring that there is nothing
to set against their evidence except " the
repeated assertions of a peaceful man of
letters/' concluding with a scorn which is any-
thing but peaceful :

" Dunois, de Termes, d'Alencon, and the
other knights are dust, their good swords are
rust ; and it is safe to give them the lie ! "

No doubt ; but M. France might reply that
it is also impossible to cross-examine them, and
inquire whether they intended to criticise or
to pay compliments. And he might add that
what we know of the Maid's military disposi-
tions is extremely vague ; and that that is
where Andrew Lang's comparison of her to " the
untutored Clive " breaks down. We know that
Clive won the battle of Plassey by acting in de-
fiance to the advice of a Council of War ; where-
as, in the case of the Maid, we know little except
that she urged men forward, assuring them of
victory, with such stimulating words as—

" On, friends, on ! The Lord has judged the
English. Be of good courage. Within an hour
from now we shall have them ! '

And that, surely, is enough to know. It
makes Jeanne something more than the " mas-
cot " to which M. Anatole France sometimes
seeks to reduce her, though a good deal less than
the great military leader which Andrew Lang
in her. Her true mission was not to direct

JEANNE D'ARC 105

but to inspire ; and Jeanne inspired enthusiasm
in the French army, anxiety in the English
army, and curiosity throughout Europe, not
because she was believed to be a great general,
but because she was believed to be a prophetess
inspired by God. Even in Germany men dis-
puted whether she was a human being or an
angel in human shape ; while an alderman of
Toulouse wrote to consult her concerning a pro-
posal for the depreciation of the currency.
Faith, it is evident, was the force which was
moving mountain*; though the mountains, as
we have seen, were in unstable equilibrium,
and not very difficult to move.

Besides her faith, however, the Maid had her
fixed ideas — fixed in an unalterable order of
succession. The first had been to relieve
Orleans ; the second was to take the Dauphin
to be crowned at Reims. After that, she meant
to march to Paris, expel all the English from
French soil, and obtain the release of Charles
Due d' Orleans — the prisoner of Agincourt, who
languished, a prisoner, in English castles,
writing ballades in praise of peace, and cheerful
songs to ward off melancholy.

But though the Duke sang blithely in Dover
Castle, while the Maid worked her wonders,
years were to elapse before he got his freedom.
The Maid meant to do things, one at a time, in
the order of their importance. The fighting
after Orleans had been the soldier's idea, not
hers. A great general would assuredly have

io6 WOMEN IN WAR

followed up the successes by marching on Paris,
where Henry VTs Regent, stricken with panic,
had taken refuge in the fortress of Vincennes.
But Jeanne, not being a great general, but only
a great prophetess, held that the Dauphin's
coronation must come first.

" Noble Dauphin/' she said to him, when he
wavered, like the weak man that he was, not
knowing what to do next, " hold not such long
and wordy councils, but come at once to Reims
and be worthily crowned there " ; and Dunois,
the Bastard of Orleans, tells us how she argued
that, " when the Dauphin was crowned and
consecrated, the power of his adversaries would
continually dwindle. So all came over to her
opinion " — an opinion for which there was, no
doubt, something to be said, though there was
also a great deal to be said against it. From
the soldier's point of view, of course, it was
sheer folly to give the enemy the opportunity to
recuperate. On the other hand, coronation—
especially at Reims — had a sentimental and
superstitious value. Miraculous virtue was
attributed to the oil preserved through the ages
in the Sainte- Ampoule. The English had talked
of anointing Henry VI with that unguent ; and
it was natural that the French should wish to
anticipate them by first anointing Charles.
They could reasonably believe that it would
brace him and win him adherents.

As, in fact, it did, the march to Reims be-
ginning on June 29. One might call it the race

JEANNE D'ARC 107

for the chrism, were it not for the fact that
neither the King of England nor the Regent,
on his behalf, was in a state, just then, to begin
a rival march to the holy city. They held cer-
tain towns on the road, but not in sufficient
force to resist. At the most, they could only
demonstrate and bargain before surrendering.
That was what happened at Auxerre, at Troyes,
at Chalons, and at Reims itself ; and it was only
at Troyes that there seemed to be even a possi-
bility of trouble. The threat brought the Maid
into the Dauphin's Council, and also into the
field:

" Noble Dauphin/' we find her exhorting
him, " give orders to your people to assail the
town of Troyes, and waste no more time in
over-long deliberations, for, in the name of
God, before three days I will cause you to
enter the town, which shall be yours through
love, power, and courage. And false Burgundy
shall look very foolish."

And so it happened. There was a demon-
stration— a semblance of preparations for
assault. Jeanne was seen by the burghers
throwing — or making the gesture of one who
threw — fascines into the moat; and presently
the Bishop came out to negotiate, and it was
arranged that Charles should enter the town in
peace, pledging himself to accord an amnesty
to all those who had been his enemies. And so
to Chalons, where the Count-Bishop came out

io8 WOMEN IN WAR

to yield up the keys of the town, and thence to
Reims, where there was as little resistance as
at Chalons. The report that the English were
marching in force on Reims was not believed
there ; and the inhabitants worked all through
the night in order to have everything ready for
the French King's coronation on the morning of
July 17.

The great regalia of the kingdom were lack-
ing. The crown, and the sword, and the sceptre
of Charlemagne were at Saint-Denis, which was
in the possession of the English. But a crown
which might serve was found in the cathedral,
and the other appurtenances proper to the cere-
mony were improvised. The Maid stood by
the King's side holding her standard aloft
during the performance of the rite ; and it was,
relates a chronicler, " a most fair thing to see the
goodly manners of the King and the Maid " ;
and then the Maid knelt to the King, and said
to him with tears :

" Gracious King, now is accomplished the
good pleasure of God, whose will it was that I
should raise the siege of Orleans, and conduct
you to this holy city of Reims, to receive your
holy consecration, which proves that you are
the true King, and that the kingdom of France
is rightly yours."

"And great pity," we read, "overcame all
those who beheld her, and many of them wept."

One knows not why, unless it be because

JEANNE D'ARC

109

tears belong to joy as well as grief, and to all
sudden reverses of fortune, however happy.
The pity and the pathos of the tears were not for
those who shed them, but for us who come to
this climax of the Maid's story with the know-
ledge of the end of it in our minds, and the
distant vision of the funeral pyre — not so very
distant either — clouding with the wreaths of its
black smoke the glorious spectacle of the re-
nascence of France, accomplished by the Maid's
simple and single-hearted faith.

But the end was not quite yet. The Maid
had set herself other tasks not destined to be
accomplished in her life-time. We have to
accompany her on other marches, and see how
she quitted herself in other battles.

CHAPTER XI

AFTER the coronation, the French seem to have
muddled their business badly. The attack on
Paris was delayed too long, and then it was
made with an insufficient siege-train, and with
insufficient energy. The assailants were called
off by their vacillating King before their ina-
bility to enter was really demonstrated ; and
they left behind them three hundred hand-carts
and six hundred and sixty scaling ladders. The
Maid's intrepidity was the one redeeming feature
of the defeat, though it would still seem that
she was there — whatever legend may say-
not to command, but only to encourage and
exhort. Neither by officers nor by men were
her exhortations accepted as commands. The
men went back when she cried, " Forward ! '
not because they were panic-stricken, but
because they were " called off." And that
though she had called, in their name, upon the
Burgundians to yield, shouting to them :

" In Jesus' name, surrender to us speedily.

JEANNE D'ARC in

For if ye yield not by night-fall, we shall enter
by force, whether ye will or not, and ye shall
all be put to death without mercy/'

It was her first failure, visible and palpable ;
the more tragic because it was not in any way
her fault. It proved to the English that the
faith of the French in her was, after all, limited.
It gave vigour to the shouts of " Wanton ! " and
[< Minx ! " with which they derided her, and
encouraged them to think of her as a witch, a
limb of the devil, not an angel sent from God
for their distress. So we may say that the long
cloud which was presently to eclipse, not her
glory, but her material triumphs, first touched
her on that disastrous day ; but the unfalter-
ing courage of which, at the moment, men took
so little notice, remains an heroic example for
all time. One may gratefully quote Andrew
Lang's tribute, even though one has difficulty
in accepting his doctrine of the Maid's conscious
military genius :

" Through the mist," he writes, " one figure
stands out clear in the sunlight, discerned alike
by friend and foe : a girl of seventeen in white
armour, who lets herself down into the deep
dry fosse, who climbs out on to the dos d'dne
under the city wall, and, like Bruce at Perth,
fathoms the water of the great fosse with her
lance, under a rain of projectiles, till she is
smitten through the thigh. Undaunted, un-

ii2 WOMEN IN WAR

weakened, she cries on the men. History shows
no other such picture/'

Still, just as nothing succeeds like success,
so nothing fails like failure. It was known
already that Jeanne could be wounded; and,
indeed, no such immunity from the common lot
was claimed either by her or for her. Now it
was proved that she could be beaten — that her
presence with an army did not necessarily
bring good luck. The bodily wound was
nothing in comparison with the wound to her
prestige. Her personal courage never flagged ;
but her power of inspiration began to fail. And
her great mission had been to inspire. Wlien
she ceased to inspire, the faith which had begun
by moving mountains would end by failing to
move molehills.

No blame attaches to her : all the blame
belongs to her timorous King and his tortuous
diplomatists. A great military leader, of course,
would have overcome their fears, trampled on
their fatuous hesitations, and organised victory
in spite of them. Those who think of the Maid as
a great military leader might revise their opinion
if they try to picture any of the famous generals
of history, from Hannibal to Napoleon, taking
a lower place in the councils of such a sovereign
as Charles VII, and awaiting the pleasure of his
craven cowardice instead of hustling him into
instant action. But Jeanne was not a military
leader — she was a prophetess ; and prophetesses,

JEANNE D'ARC 113

like prophets, can do nothing for people who
stone them, or merely turn their backs on
them.

One finds a sign of the times in the fact that
rival prophetesses arose, and that Jeanne
wrangled with them. She wrangled, in particu-
lar, with Catherine de la Rochelle, a married
woman, who claimed to have miraculous means
of procuring her " wherewithal to pay your
men-at-arms." " Go back to your husband,
look after your husband, and feed your chil-
dren," the Maid retorted. There was, further,
a dispute between them as to whether the
Matron was, or was not, like the Maid, visited
in the watches of the night by saints and
angels ; and it seems that the gift of prophecy
loses some of its significance when too many
share it, because a dispersed faith suffers in
intensity.

The fact remains, of course, that the Maid
was the only prophetess who counted ; but she
counted for less than before, because prophecy
itself was counting for less than before. If
there were times when she still gave signs and
seemed to be supernaturally guided, there were
also times when, as Andrew Lang puts it, she
could work no miracles because of the people's
unbelief. She was to achieve yet again at the
siege of Saint-Pierre-Le-Moustier, where she
was found almost alone by the side of the moat,
after the others had retreated. " What are
you doing here all alone ? " one asked her.
8

H4 WOMEN IN WAR

'Why do you not retreat, like the others?"
Whereto came the answer of the mystic :

" I am not alone. With me are fifty thou-
sand of my folk. I will not quit this spot until
I have taken the town. To the fascines and the
hurdles, all of you, and make a bridge!"

She was obeyed : the assault was made, and
the town was taken. But at the siege of La
Charit6 the case was different. The beleaguer-
ing army fell into an ambush, and came to grief ;
the siege was raised, and the cannon were left
behind. It is a fact not altogether without
significance that the Maid's rival prophetess,
the Matron, Catherine of Rochelle, had advised
against the enterprise. " It is too cold," she
had said. " I would not go " ; and the warning,
whether wise or not, may have helped to under-
mine the enthusiasm which alone could carry
siege operations in the dead of winter to a suc-
cessful issue.

' A period of inaction followed. There was a
truce with Burgundy ; and the armies went
into winter quarters. We hear of the Maid,
some time between Christmas and Easter, being
entertained at a public banquet by the citizens
of Orleans, and buying the lease of a house in
the town. But presently the truces ended, and
the fighting was renewed. One of the Maid's
fixed ideas was that she would only " last " a
year, so that she had no time to lose ; and
already her Voices were warning her that the

JEANNE D'ARC 115

end was near. She would be taken, they told
her, " before St. John's Day/1 which was only
ten weeks ahead of her. " When I am taken/'
she implored them, " let me die immediately
without suffering long " ; and their response
was: " Be not troubled; be resigned! God
wi]l help thee I' Or so she told the story at her
trial, adding : " Often I asked them the hour,
but that they did not tell me. If I had known
the hour, I would not have gone into battle."

But there one hesitates to believe her, be-
lieving rather that, even in the face of such a
premonition, she would have proved to be braver
than she knew.

It was in the trenches before Melun that the
warning, as she supposed, was whispered to
her ; we can follow her thence to Lagny, to
Soissons, to Senlis, to Compiegne, where her
last fight was to be fought ; but the tactical de-
tails need not trouble us. Enough to note that
Compiegne was a strategic point dominating
the lie de France, held by the French and
threatened by the Anglo-Burgundian forces,
arid that Jeanne entered its gates on May 13.
She left for Soissons ; but Soissons had been
sold to Burgundy by its captain, so that she had
to return. She was back by day-break on
May 23, and, at five o'clock on the afternoon of
the same day she took part in a sortie, attired
as if on a parade, with a surcoat of cloth of gold
over her armour.

All that was intended was a raid upon an out-

n6 WOMEN IN WAR

post ; but the raiders stayed too long — whether
to destroy the works or to gather in the booty.
Reinforcements came up, and they were driven
back. The retreat ceased to be orderly ; and
the drawbridge was raised, and the portcullis
lowered, in order that the pursuers might not
follow on the heels of the pursued, and rush the
town. The Maid, whom a Burgundian chroni-
cler admits to have been doing deeds "beyond
the nature of a woman/* found herself in the
marshes, with her retreat cut off. Not till the
very end did she understand what was happen-
ing. Even when her companions urged her to
get back to the town, she still shouted, " For-
ward ! Forward ! We have them ! " But,
even as she did so, she was pulled to the ground
by her cloak, and found that her enemies had
surrounded her, and were calling upon her to
surrender. Whether she did surrender or was
taken matters little, though the point has been
disputed fiercely. She lay helpless, and was
too valuable a prize to be slain if she could be
captured.

That was the end of Jeanne's career in arms ;
the rest is pitiful to read about — a shame equally
to France, to Burgundy, and to England ; and
our relation of it shall be as brief as may be.
We have first to see how Jeanne was offered for
sale by her captor, Jean de Luxembourg, who
took her to his castle at Beaulieu, and how her
friends stood by while her enemies drove the
bargain ; and that, though prayers were being

JEANNE D'ARC 117

offered for her in half the towns of France, and
the appeal was addressed to the King of France
himself by that Archbishop of Embrun whom we
have already seen recommending that the Maid
should be given her fair chance of proving that
God had indeed sent her to the rescue :

" I commend unto you/1 he wrote, " that, for
the recovery of this damsel, and for her ransome,
ye spare neither measures nor money, nor any
cost, unless you would incur the indelible dis-
grace of a most unworthy ingratitude/'

The Archbishop might as well not have
written, for the King did not mind disgrace, and
did mind spending money otherwise than on
royal favourites. He was the poorest of poor
creatures, unstable as water, ready to flow this
way or that, in compliance with any kind of
doctrine or any tide of tendency. The wind of
doctrine had shifted, and was blowing against
Jeanne ; Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of
Chartres, was blowing the bellows.

His motives are impenetrable, save by con-
jecture. He certainly owed to Jeanne his
restoration to his see and its revenues — that
march to Reims, on which the Maid insisted,
had served his interests no less than it had
served the King's. But it is also clear that he
had some quarrel with her, and perhaps some
jealousy of her. There is a story — it cannot
either be proved or disproved — that he had tried
to steal a crown at the time of the coronation,

n8 WOMEN IN WAR

and that she had prevented him. At all events,
while the people were praying for Jeanne the
Archbishop produced a substitute for her, and
"ran" that substitute, as we moderns say,
against her.

There had appeared a certain half-witted
shepherd-boy of Gevaudan, in the Cevennes,
claiming, just as Jeanne had claimed, that he
had been sent by God to smite the English and
the Burgundians hip and thigh. He had shown
a sign — the stigmata in his hands, and feet, and
side ; he had spoken, not only against the
Burgundians and the English, but also against
the Maid :

" God suffered Jeanne to be taken/' he said,
" because she was puffed up with pride, and
because of the rich clothes she wore, and
because she had not done as God commanded
her, but according to her own will.1'

The Archbishop repeated that comment in a
communication to the people of his diocese, and
added comments of his own ; that Jeanne had
been overtaken by misfortune through her own
fault — because she " would not take advice,
but did as she chose " ; that God had raised up
in her stead this shepherd, who " said neither
more nor less than Jeanne." The letter is a
curious medley of cynicism and superstition ;
and the half-witted shepherd never did any-
thing to justify the belief professed in him. In
the fighting men, at all events, he inspired no

JEANNE D'ARC 119

faith at all ; and it was not long before the
English caught him, and, disdaining even to
give him a trial, simply sewed him up in a sack
and pitched him into the Seine. But mean-
while, as those who should have been her
friends did nothing for her, Jeanne's fate was
sealed. Just as an Archbishop had turned his
back on her, so a Bishop bought her for the burn-
ing ; the infamous Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of
Beauvais.

By what arguments Jean de Luxembourg was
persuaded to accept the price of blood ; how
Jeanne was taken from prison to prison, and
ultimately brought before an ecclesiastical tri-
bunal at Rouen ; how her ecclesiastical judges
bullied her in the dock, and tried to entrap her
into unwary answers ; how she bravely refused
to deny either her King or her Voices ; how she
was coerced into the abjuration of her deeds,
and then seized again, and retried, and con-
victed, and sentenced, — all these things,
happily, may be left to be read elsewhere. It
is a story of shame as well as pity — shame for
the soldiers, shame for the statesmen, shame,
above all, for the ecclesiastics. One realises,
when reading it, that it was the Church which
set the Revolution the example of " devouring
its own children" ; and it devoured them 'far
more cruelly.

It would seem that the Maid weakened at last
under the stress of the terror. It is recorded
that she shrieked and tore her hair, crying out :

120 WOMEN IN WAR

" Rather would I be seven times beheaded than
thus burned ! " She would have been more
than human if she had not ; it is not to secular,
but to sacred history that one turns to find the
parallel :

" And He was withdrawn from about a stone's
cast, and kneeled down, and prayed,

''Saying, Father, if Thou be willing, remove
this cup from Me : nevertheless, not My will
but Thine, be done.

" And there appeared an angel unto Him
from heaven strengthening Him."

To Jeanne also ; one needs no proof — one
need commit oneself to no mythology — in order
to believe that. Faith, as the word is too often
lightly used in pulpits, means little more than
the rendering of lip-service to formulae; but
there is also a mystical faith which creates the
help in which it puts its trust.

Jeanne's faith was of that order. This is the
last recorded dialogue in which we hear her
Voice :

" Master Pierre, where I shall be this even-
ing ? "

" Have you not good faith in the Lord ? '
" I have, and by God's grace I shall be in
Paradise."

And so to the last scene of the pilgrimage,
whereat the flames of Rouen, no less than the
flames of Smithfield, lighted a candle which was

JEANNE D'ARC

121

never to be put out. One turns from the spec-
tacle with averted eyes, lingering only to listen
to the cry wrung from the executioner after he
had done his work : ' ' Sadly I fear that we have
burnt a saint " — a cry which boded no good to
the success of English arms in France.

CHAPTER XII

False Maids arise after Jeanne's death — Jeanne des Armoises — The
Maid of Sarmaize — The Maid of Le Mans — Other women
fighters — Isabeau de Lorraine — Marguerite de Bressieux —
Jeanne Hachette — The Lady of Bretigny.

IT has been shown that Jeanne d' Arc was neither
the only saint nor the only woman included in the
armies of the King of France. Some of the others
have been named. It would not be worth while
to charge the memory with the names of all of
them. Historians speak of a " flying squadron ' '
of b£guines, guided, spiritually and otherwise,
by Brother Richard, the popular preacher, who
denounced the fashionable levities of the day.
There was the Maid Pierronne, for example, who
claimed that God had appeared to her " in a
long white robe and a purple cloak." Like
Jeanne, she was taken, and, like Jeanne, she
was burnt ; but her name is not glorified by
memorable legends, though she had the courage
to go to the stake, refusing to recant. It seems
a caprice of history that she should have
been thus forgotten ; but one infers from the
dearth of legend concerning her that she must
have lacked, like the half-witted shepherd of
Gevaudan, the inspiring gift of personality ;

122

JEANNE DES ARMOISES 123

and so, when she disappeared from the French
ranks, her fame was quickly blotted out.

Jeanne's fame, on the contrary, was to grow
and grow, with one inevitable consequence.
Though her body had been burnt there were
those who could not, or would not, believe that
she was really dead, but insisted that some
miracle must have preserved her, and that
she would reappear. So that the field was
clear for impostors, conscious and unconscious ;
and the demand for impostors brought forth
a supply. False Maids — who, in fact, were no
more Maids than they were from Domremy —
cropped up at intervals in the land.

The most famous of them was Jeanne des
Armoises. She was recognised by the Maid's
brothers, and also by Jeanne de Luxembourg,
the cousin of that Jean de Luxembourg who had
sold the Maid to the unspeakable Bishop of
Beauvais : a devout woman who wished to
obliterate the black memory of her cousin's
baseness. The Maid's eldest brother went to
Orleans to announce his sister's return, and
received a material reward for his good tidings —
" ten pints of wine, twelve hens, two goslings,
and two leverets." He also announced her to
the King, who promised him a reward of one
hundred francs, and actually gave him twenty.
A proposed memorial service for the Maid was
cancelled in consequence of the news.

Events progressed slowly ; but those were
days when people were often content to wait

124 WOMEN IN WAR

very patiently upon events. Her hour, it was
understood, was coming, but had not yet come ;
and patience was actually exercised while the
alleged Maid married and bore two children.
She maintained — and most people, though not
all, were willing to believe her — that her value
did not depend upon her virginity. When she
came at last to Orleans, Orleans entertained
her at a public banquet and presented her with
11 two hundred and ten livres of Paris as an
acknowledgment of the services she had ren-
dered to the town during the siege." In the
years of 1438 and 1439 we find her fighting for
France in the marches of Poitou and Guienne,
and appealing, not in vain, to Spain for the help
of a fleet. The Marechal de Rais placed her
in authority — just such authority as Jeanne
had exercised — over the men-at-arms. But
her end, nevertheless, was melancholy, though
somewhat less than tragic.

Faith in her had never been so profound or
so widespread as the faith in the Maid ; and
though she had fought, she had no outstanding
achievements to her credit. Though the popu-
lace— or a provincial section of it — believed
in her, the clergy did not ; but it is quite idle
to inquire why the mediaeval clergy believed in
one thing rather than another. At any rate,
when the King reoccupied Paris in 1440, they
treated her as an impostor and compelled her to
confess that she was one. She was placed, in
the character of an impostor, on a cold marble

FALSE MAIDS 125

slab in the Hall of Justice, and preached at.
Then she was told to get up and go ; and history
knows her no more.

But there were still other false Maids to
arise : the Maid of Sarmaize, and also the Maid
of Le Mans.

Who the former was no one really appears to
know. She came, as it were, from nowhere,
and proposed to play a game of tennis with
Simon Fauchard, the cure of Notre-Dame-de-
Sarmaize. He accepted her challenge, and, in
the midst of the game, she said to him : " Now
you may tell all the world that you have played
tennis with the Maid." Then she went to the
house of Perinet, the carpenter, to whom she
said : " I am the Maid ; I have come to visit
my cousin Henri." The cousin invited her to
stay in the house, and set good cheer before
her. Afterwards she seems to have wandered
through Anjou, giving out that she was Jeanne
and persuading some people to believe her.
Perhaps it was little more than a case of obtain-
ing food, lodging, and consideration by means
of false pretences. It would also appear, how-
ever, that, in the course of her wanderings, she
obtained a husband ; and there exists a docu-
ment, dated February 3, 1456, according her
permission to return to Saumur, on condition
that she would dress as a woman and live in
obedience to the prescriptions of respectability.

And then there was the Maid of Le Mans,
whose real name was Jeanne La Ferone. She

126 WOMEN IN WAR

impressed her Bishop with the belief that she
was divinely inspired ; and he commended her
in many letters. There was some idea that she
might be helpful to the King, who was suffering
from an ulcer in the leg. Officers were sent to
Le Mans to examine her, and she gave them a
message for the King :

" Commend me very humbly to the King,
and bid him recognise the grace which God has
granted him by lightening the burdens of his
people. "

It was a way of demanding a reduction of the
taxes at a time when the Treasury was empty.
That may be one of the reasons why this Maid
was summoned before the Royal Council to be
examined further ; and it may also be one of
the reasons why the examination had unsatis-
factory results for her. It transpired, at any
rate, that she was no maid, but a baggage ;
and the ecclesiastical court condemned her to
be preached at in public in the towns of Le
Mans, Tours, and Laval, to wear a fool's-cap
during the sermon, and then to be imprisoned
for a term of seven years on a diet of bread and
water. She endured the penance, and then
found a new avocation more suited to her
character.

So much — and perhaps it is more than enough
— of the saints and prophetesses of our period.
It remains to speak of a few other women who,
at the same time, wielded the sword, without

ISABEAU DE LORRAINE 127

setting up any supernatural pretensions. The
great names are those of Isabeau de Lorraine,
Marguerite de Bressieux, and, — after the lapse
of an interval — Jeanne Hachette, and a certain
Dame de Bretigny.

Isabeau de Lorraine was the wife of the
famous Ren6 of Anjou, and the mother of that
Margaret of Anjou who was to marry our
Henry VI, and become equally renowned in
arts and arms — to found colleges, and to win
battles. It was the mother who set the daugh-
ter the example of taking the field on a help-
less husband's behalf. King Ren6 inherited
the kingdom of Sicily while his enemies held
him in prison ; and Isabeau set out for Sicily
in 1435, to fight for his kingdom in his place.

' This veritable Amazon/ ' writes Etienne
Pasquier, " who had a man's heart in a
woman's breast, did so many noble deeds
during her husband's imprisonment that her
achievements ought to be inscribed in letters
of gold in the annals of Lorraine."

Marguerite de Bressieux was also of Anjou,
but she took the field in order to avenge a
wrong which she herself had suffered. Her
father's castle had been taken by storm by
Louis de Chalons, Prince of Orange ; and she
herself, as well as other maidens, had endured
the last insult at the hands of a brutal soldiery.
That is how it came about that, when the royal
troops, under Raoul de Gaucourt, Governor

128 WOMEN IN WAR

of Dauphine, were marching against Louis de
Chalons, twelve strange and mysterious cava-
liers, attired in black, wearing scarfs of crape,
and carrying a banner which bore the device
of an orange transfixed by a lance and the
motto Ainsi tu seras, greeted the general with
ceremonious salutations :

" Deign, noble lord, to accord us a place in
your ranks. If our arms are weak, our hearts
are strong, and bent upon nothing but ven-
geance. Victims of the most cowardly, the
most degrading outrage, we aspire to wash it
out in blood. "

Raoul de Gaucourt would seem to have been
quite modern in his protestations. War, he
said, was a man's rough trade, and no game
for girls to play at. If they did play at it,
they might be hurt — no one could say how
badly. But the girls knew all about that, and
were taking risks with their eyes open. In-
sisting, they were enrolled in the French
King's army ; and they had no patience with
the chivalrous desire of the general and the
other officers always to keep them from actual
contact with the enemy.

At the battle of Autun they got their chance,
and proved their worth. They uncovered their
faces to charge ; and those who had wronged
them recognised them, and took them, in their
superstition, for the troubled spirits of the dead,
returning to earth for their discomfiture. WTith

JEANNE HACHETTE 129

the result that the rout was complete, and the
peasants finished with their pitch-forks those
of the enemy who could not swim the Rhone.
But Marguerite's first battle was also her last.
She was picked up, mortally wounded, after
the charge, and, dying before sunset, was
buried with military honours.

Jeanne Hachette's exploit belongs to a date
some forty years later, when Charles VII was
dead, and Louis XI was ending the Middle Age
by breaking up the feudal system. The most
powerful of Louis's enemies was Charles the
Bold, of Burgundy — he whom the Swiss ultim-
ately broke at Morat, Grandson, and Nancy ;
and Charles came, in 1472, to lay siege to
Beauvais, the town of the Bishop who had
caused Jeanne d'Arc to be done to death. If
Beauvais fell, Paris itself would be in danger,
and the assailants numbered no less than
80,000 ; so the women helped the men to
defend the walls, and Jeanne Fourquet, spinster,
found herself famous among women. In
the great assault she felled the Burgundian
standard-bearer with an axe and took his
standard from him. Whence the name by
which men know her : a name which a statue
at Beauvais still keeps alive.

The King sent for Jeanne and complimented
her and all the women of Beauvais, and accorded
them certain honourable and material privi-
leges. Thenceforward, he said, the women of
Beauvais should have the right to walk before
9

130 WOMEN IN WAR

the men in the procession of Ste. Agrademe,
and to wear, whatever their degree, such gor-
geous apparel as they thought most becoming,
without reference to the sumptuary laws
which bound other women elsewhere. As for
Jeanne herself, both she and her husband, when
she married, should be exempted, thenceforth
and for ever, from the payment of all taxes.
So, being very eligible, Jeanne married twice,—
her first husband, one Colin Pilon, being killed
at Nancy in 1477 ; and, as late as the reign
of Charles X, we find a certain Pierre Fourquet
Hachette, drawing a pension from the King in
consideration of the gallant exploit of his
ancestress.

And that brings us, in conclusion, to Madame
de Bretigny, who, though she did not fight,
nevertheless rendered a valuable service. She
caught the Bishop, who was trying to sneak out
of the town, taking his valuables with him ;
and she stopped his exit. " Shut the gate ! ):
she called. " Shut the gate ! The Bishop is
trying to run away " ; and she seized the bridle
of the Bishop's horse, and recalled the Bishop
to his duty. " Stay, Bishop ! ' she said.
" You have always lived with us, and now you
must remain and die with us, if needs be! '
And the Bishop had to stop.

CHAPTER XIII

End of the Middle Age — Wars of the Roses — Queen Margaret —
Her exploits in the field — Her abdication and sorrowful old
age.

THE precise date of the end of the Middle Age
depends upon the taste and fancy of the chrono-
logist. All historians, however, would agree
in fixing it some time in the long reign of
Henry VI — some time after Henry's attain-
ment of his majority, and perhaps some time
after the accession of Louis XI to the throne of
France. One of the things which belonged to
the Middle Age, and perished with it, was
the feudal system. Louis destroyed that system
in France by breaking the power of the great
feudal lords ; while, in England, the great
feudal lords destroyed each other, like the cats
(of Kilkenny) in the adage, in the long and
bloody Wars of the Roses. And the great
figure of those wars, for the purposes of this
book, is obviously Margaret of Anjou, King
Henry's consort.

She was not, of course, the first Queen of
England to play a man's part in a civil war.
We all learnt at school how Matilda, the mother
of Henry II, fought for the crown against

131

132 WOMEN IN WAR

Stephen, and was beleaguered by Stephen in
the old Norman castle which still stands at
Oxford, and had to escape as best she could.
The Chronicle of Abingdon tells us that " they
let her down at night from the tower with ropes,
and she stole out, and went on foot to Walling-
ford." From school, too, we carried, or ought
to have carried away, the knowledge that
Isabelle, daughter of Philippe le Bel, of France,
and wife of Edward II of England, took up
arms against her husband and his favourites,
and was afterwards sent to a nunnery by her
son, Edward III, in order that she might cause
no further trouble. Remarkable women, both
of them, no doubt ; but Queen Margaret cuts
both a more glorious and a more pathetic figure.
We have met her already, or, at all events,
we have met her mother, the fighting consort
of the luckless King Rene ; and the daughter
was with the mother at the time of her campaign
for her husband's Sicilian kingdom. At the
time of her marriage all the omens seemed
prosperous ; but those omens were to prove
deceptive. King Henry was a youth of great
charm of character, most amiable and most
cultivated, though, as it turned out, unequal to
the rough task before him ; he desired to live
at peace with all the world, and his bride was
the pledge of peace. But there was to be little
peace in his time or hers : there were too many
of those outstanding, unsolved problems which
bring about " inevitable " wars.

QUEEN MARGARET 133

There was, to begin with, the outstanding
problem of the English occupation of French
territory. Others had to follow the plough
to which Jeanne d'Arc had set her hand ; and
there could be no enduring peace between
France and England until France was definitely
French. And then, of course, there was the
problem of English distress and discontent
which brought Jack Cade to London, where he
arrogated, and for a brief space exercised, the
right of chopping off the heads of the illustrious ;
and then there was the long duel, so sanguinary
and so calamitous, between the Houses of
Lancaster and York. Those were to be the
salient events of the reign of a King and Queen
of literary, artistic, and religious tastes : the
founders of King's and Queens' colleges at
Cambridge — the task of Queen Margaret being
completed by Edward IV's consort, Queen
Elizabeth, who had been one of her retinue.'
The arms of Queens' are still the arms of Anjou
—its quarterings including the arms of the
kingdoms of Hungary, the two Sicilies, Jeru-
salem, the county of Anjou, and the Duchies
of Bar and Lorraine.

Poor Henry, as we know, was quite unfit to
cope with the troubles which circumstances
interposed between him and the life of pious
and cultivated ease to which he aspired ; but
Queen Margaret had the energy which he lacked.
She raised armies, rode with them, and, at
times, even directed them ; she passed to and

134 WOMEN IN WAR

fro across the Channel, seeking help in France
and bringing it to England. She did not hesi-
tate to disobey commands which the Duke of
York sent to her in the King's name, saying :
" If I were to obey him, the day would come
when he would be very angry with me for having
done so." She advanced to Waken eld, and
showed a great talent for military tactics, so
arranging her host as to catch the Duke of
York's advance guard " like a fish entangled in
a net." The Duke fell in the fight, and his
head, encircled with a paste-board crown, was
placed as a decoration on the walls of York.

A work like this, however, must not let itself
be resolved into a precis of English history.
Marches and counter-marches, victories and
defeats, exile, return, and the renewal of exile
—battles of St. Albans, Blore Heath, North-
ampton, Wakefield, Towton, Tewkesbury, Hex-
ham, Barnet : these incidents, spread out over
a period of some twenty years, may be studied
in many books of which the most recommend-
able, perhaps, is Professor Oman's Life of
Warwick the King-maker. Queen Margaret's
cause, like the cause of the Maid of France, was
to triumph in the end, but not until after her
death. Another Lancastrian was to come into
his own, if we may so call it without seeming to
take a side, at the battle of Bosworth Field ;
but Queen Margaret had meanwhile suffered
all the pangs of disappointed hope.

Her father, King Rene, would have liked to

QUEEN MARGARET 135

lielp her, but could not : the sentimentalists,
nevertheless, made it a grievance against him
that he did not. His own troubadour sang
scorn at him in his own hall :

" Awake, King Rene, awake ! Suffer not
your soul to be subdued by grief. Your
daughter, the wife of King Henry, now weeps,
and now kneels in piteous entreaty, but still
contrives to smile/'

Truly a daring ballad for a troubadour to
sing, and a sorry one for a king to have to listen
to — especially if he was not the only listener.
But Rene nevertheless loved his daughter, and,
though he could not take the field for her,
secured her deliverance from captivity. We
have a letter which he wrote her at a time when
she was a widow and a prisoner, first in the
Tower and afterwards in English country-
houses :

" My child, may God help thee with His
counsels, for rarely is the aid of man tendered
in such reverse of fortune. When thou canst
spare a thought from thy own misfortunes,
think of mine ; they are great, my daughter,
and yet I would fain console thee."

Consolation was not for her ; but Rene ceded
his inheritance of Provence to Louis XI on
condition that Louis should pay the ransom of
50,000 crowns which Edward IV demanded
for his daughter, and so, at last, Queen Mar-

136 WOMEN IN WAR

garet embarked at Sandwich and landed at
Dieppe. She was the daughter of a King, the
widow of a King, and the cousin of Louis XI,
who was the most powerful monarch of his
time ; but she had fallen so low that, in the
act of abdication which she had to sign, she
had to describe herself, not as a Queen who
abandoned royal claims, but merely as a widow
who renounced her title to any inheritance
from her husband :

"I, Margaret, formerly married in the king-
dom of England, renounce all that I could lay
claim to in England by the conditions of my
marriage, with all my other possessions there,
to Edward, now King of England/*

And so to the place of exile, which she did
not the less regard as a place of exile because
France was her native land. Louis XI, though
he had ransomed her, for a consideration, was
no true friend, and showed no real sympathy.
It did not suit him, for political reasons, to let
her come to Paris to thank him for delivering
her : he provided, instead, an escort to take
her to her father. Her proud spirit bade her
take offence and decline the escort, with the
result that she narrowly escaped being murdered
on her way through Normandy.

She came safely through that final peril,
however, and reached her father's castle, at
Reculee, near Angers, whence she presently
removed to the castle of Dampierre, near

QUEEN MARGARET 137

Saumur. Her father, being a poet, and also
a painter, could find consolation for his own
sufferings in the contemplation and creation of
beautiful works of art — the writing of verse,
and the illumination of Books of Hours ; but
there was no relief in that anodyne for his
daughter. She had lived too active and agitated
a life : she attached — unlike Rene — too great
importance to the things which she had lost,
after trying hard to keep them.

She was a broken woman : broken rather
than bent. Louis XI, to whom Rene com-
mended her on his death-bed, promised her a
pension, but often forgot to pay it, so that
she knew narrow circumstances, if not actual
poverty. Her pride was abased ; her health
was ruined; and, with her health, her beauty
also left her. The prize of beauty at tourna-
ments had once been hers ; but now the
ravages of some loathsome skin disease began
to make her hideous. Contemporary writers
speak of her as becoming, in the end,
a spectacle of horror. When she died, in
1482, she was buried in Angers cathedral ;
but no monument was erected there to her
memory, beyond a portrait on a stained glass
window. She was only fifty-two, as men count
time, but very, very old in trouble and mis-
fortune ; and her lot was the more pathetic
because it took historians and biographers so
long to realise her character and do her justice.

With her death we are definitely and unques-

138 WOMEN IN WAR

tionably clear of the Middle Age. We shall
not meet another name as great until, nearly
two hundred years later, we come to that
Mademoiselle de Montpensier whom history
knows as La Grande Mademoiselle ; but there
are other heroines of equal courage, albeit of less
renown, whose exploits must be first reviewed.
Those religious wars which rent France in the
sixteenth century, and gave Paris to Henri IV
at the price of a mass, brought forth a crop of
them. It was a time of sieges ; and almost every
siege produced its heroine or heroines. The
historians speak specially of the heroines
of : Marseilles, Saint-Riquier, Peronne, Metz,
Montelimar, Poitiers, La Rochelle, Sancerre,
Livron, Saint-L6, Aubigny, Cahors, Lille, Vitre,
Autun, Montauban, Montpellier, Lamotte, Dole,
and Saint- Jean-de-Losne.

A long list truly : so long that these pages
cannot possibly do full justice to all the exploits
of all the heroines whose memories it recalls.
We must pick and choose among them, recon-
structing a personality where we can, quoting
Brantome, as often as Brantome is suitable to
quote.

CHAPTER XIV

THERE is no more need to take a side in speaking
of the wars of religion than in speaking of the
Wars of the Roses. Whatever the theological
rights of the case, it has seldom been the hair-
splittings of the theologians which have inspired
women to take up arms. The thing which has
fired their fury has been the menace to their
homes rather than the menace to their creeds.
They have taken part in the defence more often
than in the attack of cities ; and one can, in
consequence, still regard them as womanly
women even when one finds them wielding
weapons of war. There is a long list of them,
beginning, for the purposes of the present
chapter, with Ameliane du Puget of Marseilles,
and ending with Kenau Hasselaar of Haarlem.
Ameliane du Puget (nee de Glandeves) was
the daughter of the Governor and Chief Magis-
trate of Marseilles ; and the date of her exploit
was 1524, when the Constable de Bourbon,
being at war with his King, laid siege to the

139

140 WOMEN IN WAR

city. The Constable's guns breached the wall,

and his men came pouring through the breach.

The men of Marseilles withstood them as long

as they could, but were about to yield, when,

of a sudden, they received a reinforcement — a

regiment of women headed by their Governor's

daughter ; and that reinforcement turned the

scale, and drove the assailants back. More

regular and leisurely siege operations were then

commenced ; and still Mile Ameliane and her

company found work to do. When the enemy

mined, they counter-mined, digging what was

long known as the Tranchee des Dames, in the

place where now stands the Boulevard des

Dames. It is pleasant to relate that Mile

Ameliane's heroism won her a proposal of

marriage, and that she accepted it, and that

her husband, Guillaume du Puget, added her

name to his and called himself du Puget-

Glandeves : a double-barrelled name which has

a more interesting origin than most. Let those

who desire to know more hunt out Mile de

Grandpre's novel, Une heroine. They will read

in it of other heroines besides Ameliane — to

wit, Gabrielle and Claire de Laval, who also

raised regiments of Amazons for the defence of

the Phocaean city.

In 1535 we encounter a similar story of
prowess on the part of Marie Fourre and other
ladies of the town of Saint-Riquier. That town
had only a garrison of 100 men when the Count
of Nassau laid siege to it with 2,000 Flemish

THE COMTESSE DE LUDE 141

veterans. The women helped in the defence,
and so effectively that an interesting corre-
spondence passed between the Count and the
Archduchess from whom he held his commission:

" I am astonished/' the Archduchess wrote,
" to see that you are so long in taking the place.
It is, I understand, nothing more than a dove-
cote."

" Madam/' the Count replied, "it is true
that the place is nothing more than a dove-cote ;
but the doves within it are exceedingly difficult
to take. The female doves are every whit as
courageous and formidable as the males."

So that the Count had to raise the siege
and retire, leaving behind him a standard which
had been taken by Marie-Fourre, wife of M. de
Poix, the tax-collector, and a worthy successor
of Jeanne Hachette of Beauvais.

The siege of Niort, in 1559, brought out the
Comtesse de Lude, of whom it is recorded that,
" distressed to observe that the captain and
his men were inadequately animated by martial
ardour, she overwhelmed those who had
executed a retreat with the bitterest reproaches,
and promised the brave that she would give
them, as the reward of their valour, scarves
embroidered by the best-looking ladies in the
town": an incitement to valour which pro-
duced the desired result, and compelled the
raising of the siege. And then, just ten years

142 WOMEN IN WAR

later, the siege of Montelimar by Admiral Coligny
brought out Marguerite Delaye, who lost an
arm in the fighting, and in whose honour an
armless statue was erected in a public place.

Sometimes, though not always, the valour of
such valiant women extorted the admiration
and compliments even of their enemies : the
valour of Marie de Brabancon did so. With
only fifty men to help her, she defended her
castle of Benegon against a beleaguering force
of 2,000 ; but, in the end, she was taken prisoner
by one Montare, and held to ransom. But
Charles IX would not have it so. " He sent
strict orders to Montare and the other captains
not to accept one penny of ransom from this
great-hearted lady, but to escort her back, with
all honour, to the castle from which they had
taken her, and to give her her liberty, and to
excuse her from carrying out any of her pro-

mises/'

Charles IX, it is clear, admired Marie de
Brabancon as much as Henri IV admired
Madeleine de Saint-Nectaire, Comtesse de Mire-
mont, who, in 1584, commanded a company of
sixty Huguenot cavaliers — cavaliers who, writes
that gallant Huguenot, Agrippa d'Aubigny,
" followed her flag and that of love at the same
time— every one of them being passionately
enamoured of her, though no one of them was
even able to boast that she had so much as let
him kiss her." Whereat the Vert-Gallant ex-
claimed in his enthusiasm : " Venire saint-

THE LADIES OF LIVRON 143

gris ! If I were not King, I would like to be
Mile de Saint-Nectaire."

The ladies of Livron, of whom we will speak
next, are famous for the way in which they
expressed their contempt for the assailants of
their town : they took their work up on to the
ramparts, and sat there with their knitting-
needles and their spinning-wheels, to show that
they were not in the least alarmed. As for the
ladies of La Rochelle, which stood a siege in
1572, we cannot do better than observe them
through the eyes of Brantome :

" Many of the people of the town/' Brantome
writes, " put in an appearance on the ramparts,
and on the walls. Above all, there were seen
there about one hundred ladies of good condition,
the noblest, the richest, the fairest, all attired,
from head to foot, in white garments, of fine
Dutch cloth, which made them very beautiful
to look upon. They were thus dressed because
they were at work on the fortifications, digging
trenches, and carrying loads of earth. Other
clothes would have been both soiled and dam-
aged, but these only needed to be sent to the
wash ; so that they were very conspicuous in
them. We others were charmed at the sight
of these beautiful ladies ; and some of us, 1
assure you, found it more amusing than any-
thing else that was going on. They took no
pains to keep out of sight, but were quite willing
that we should see them ; for they came to

144 WOMEN IN WAR

the very edge of the rampart, looking so beauti-
ful and elegant that one desired, not only to
gaze at them, but to embrace them."

Which may or may not have been the im-
pression which the ladies were most anxious
to produce. There is, at any rate, a feminine
note in the story ; which is not surprising,
seeing that it is Brantome who tells it. And
there is also a feminine note in the story of
Jeanne Mailotte, innkeeper of Lille, in whose
house of refreshment enemies who hoped to
take the town by surprise and loot it had
arranged their rendezvous. Jeanne, overhear-
ing their conversation, penetrated their designs,
and gave the alarm, contributing her own
very important share to their discomfiture
by throwing the ashes of the kitchen fire into
their eyes while they were looking for their
weapons. We may quote from an old poem
which enshrines her memory :

Mais leur hotesse, en vaillante Amazone,
Creniant Dieu createur et hainant les Hurlus,

Centre les heretiques alia s'en courir sus,

L'allebarde entonstant au corps de leur personne.

But what to say about Louise Labe, the
poetess, who belongs to the period with which
we are dealing, but was associated with the
Renaissance rather than the Reformation, which
was, in the view of many, the Renaissance on
its religious side ?

Certainly it is not as a woman warrior that
Louise Labe is most famous. Her glory depends

LOUISE LABE 145

upon her poems, her culture, and her beauty ;
and it is as la belle Cordiere — the beautiful wife
of the rope-maker — that the world has decided
to remember her. She presided over a literary
salon at Lyons, — the birth-place of two other
eminent salonilres, Mile de Lespinasse, and
Mme Recamier. Still, there is a story of her
having ridden out to war and taken part in the
siege of Perpignan, in the reign of Francois I.
It is true that M. Charles Boy, the editor of her
collected works, insists that she never took
part in any more perilous military operation
than a tournament ; but the legend is rather
well accredited that she went campaigning
under the nom de guerre of Captain Loys. A
young officer, it is said, turned troubadour for
love of her, and sang nightly serenades outside
her tent. It is added that her heart was
impenetrable to the assault, and that her
lover, despairing of her favours, went to the
wars in Italy, where he fell in battle.

Perhaps it is true : there is a couplet in
Louise Labe's works which the memory of the
incident may have inspired :

Mais quoi ? Amour ne put longuement voir,
Mon coeur n'aimant que Mars et le savoir.

Which is like the language of a gifted, but
militant, suffrage-seeker from the Bedford
College for Women, but is flagrantly at variance
with common report, and with the general tone
of the woman warrior's later poetical works.
10

146 WOMEN IN WAR

For common report, which perhaps only repre-
sents the envy and malice of less successful
women, speaks of Louise Labe, after her return
from the tented field, as passionate, volatile, and
indifferent to the prescriptions of propriety ;
while she herself utters what has all the air of
being at once the confession and the justifica-
tion of a fault :

A faire gain jamais je ne soumis

Mentir, tromper, et abuser autrui,

Tant m'a deplu que de medire de lui.

Mais si en moi rien y a d'imparfait,

Qu'on blame amour, c'est lui seul qui me 1'a fait.

If she has erred, that is to say, the fault is
love's, not hers; but the excuse accords with
the declaration of one who knew her that " she
preferred men of letters to noble lords, and
would rather entertain one of the former
gratuitously than one of the latter for the
reward of a large sum of money." And it
would certainly seem, if poetry be evidence,
that Louise Labe took her levities, such as they
may have been, very seriously, and that some
man — if not several men — caused her to suffer.
One gathers that from the passionate sonnet
which begins :

Ne reprenez, Dames, si j'ay aime ;
Si j'ay senti mile torches ardantes,
Mile travaux, mile douleurs mordantes ;
Si en pleurant j'ay mon temp consume

The passionate sonnet which ends :

Et gardez-vous d'estre plus malheureuses!

KENAU HASSELAAR 147

Evidently Louise Labe was a worthy
daughter of the Renaissance : a worthy star
in the Pleiade. Her appearance in this gallery
of women warriors is really accidental— the
caprice of a high-spirited girl who knew that
she cut a fine figure on horse-back. We enter
a very different world when we pass to Holland
and review the valiant deeds of Kenau Hasselaar
during the memorable siege of Haarlem by the
Spaniards.

For the story of the siege itself — the circum-
stances which led up to it, and the horrors which
marked its progress and its conclusion — the
reader must be referred to Motley's graphic
pages. There he will read how, for seven
months, 4,000 men — mostly burghers with only
a stiffening of soldiers — kept 30,000 Spaniards
at bay ; how assaults were repelled, and sorties
successfully made ; how mines were dug and
met by counter-mines ; how relieving forces
were cut up, and traitors were hanged, and
prisoners were murdered ; how the garrison
flung their last loaves of bread over the walls,
to give the impression that supplies were still
plentiful, while they were living on cats and
dogs and rats and mice and weeds and nettles ;
how the final surrender was followed by military
executions on the scale of massacres — hundreds
of victims being tied back to back and drowned
in Haarlem Meer. But of Kenau Hasselaar
he will only read these brief and insufficient
sentences :

148 WOMEN IN WAR

" The garrison at last numbered about 1,000
pioneers or delvers, 3,000 fighting men, and
about 300 fighting women. The last was a
most efficient corps, all females of respectable
character, armed with sword, musket, and
dagger. The chief, Kenau Hasselaar, was a
widow of distinguished family and unblemished
reputation, about forty-seven years of age, who,
at the head of her Amazons, participated in
many of the most fiercely contested actions of
the siege, both within and without the walls/ '

No more than that ; but though that suffices
for Motley, it does not suffice for the Dutch,
least of all if they are citizens of Haarlem.
Kenau Hasselaar is for the citizens of Haarlem
what Jeanne d'Arc is for the citizens of Orleans ;
and all that is known or knowable about her
is set forth in a little book entitled Beroemde
Nederlandsche Vrouwen, written for children,
and bearing a motto from the works of our own
Samuel Smiles upon its title-page.

Kenau Hasselaar, we learn from this source,
was Vrouw Borst, forty-seven years of age, as
Motley rightly says, and of a family which, if
distinguished, was, at all events, in trade, and
the mother of three children — two girls and a
boy. Her husband had been a ship-builder.
Kenau had inherited his yard, with its various
contents of timber, ropes, canvas, tar, and
pitch : her nephew, Pieter Hasselaar, was one
of the standard-bearers of the Haarlem garrison,

KENAU HASSELAAR 149

and a renowned marksman. Pieter came to
his aunt with the news — also proclaimed by
the ringing of alarm-bells and the rolling of
drums — that the Spaniards were coming, and
that the assault was imminent. Kenau Hasse-
laar went into the yard and lighted a large
fire.

She knew, as everybody knew, what would
be wanted for the repulsion of the storming
party : plenty of boiling water, boiling oil,
boiling pitch, and molten lead. She filled great
cauldrons with such things, and set them on
to boil ; and then she and her little daughter
Gwrtje carried the cauldrons to the walls, where
their contents were found very useful in
hastening the descent of the Spaniards from
their scaling-ladders. Wooden hoops, dipped in
pitch, set alight, and dropped over their heads,
were particularly disconcerting to them. Little
Gwrtje found time, in the midst of the excite-
ment, to complain that the pitch made her
little hands horribly dirty ; but Kenau laughed
at her, and told her not to be a silly child.

Then Kenau reflected : Why should the
women of Haarlem stand idle while the men of
Haarlem risked their lives ? She discussed
that question with her cousins and her neigh-
bours ; she lay awake all night, thinking of it.
Decidedly the women could do something, and
ought to do it ; why should she not herself
organise their forces ? She opened her Bible,
as her daily practice was, for guidance ; and

150 WOMEN IN WAR

her eyes lighted upon a passage in the twentieth
chapter of the Second Book of Chronicles :

" O our God, wilt Thou not judge them ? for
we have no might against this great company
that cometh against us ; neither know we what
to do ; but our eyes are upon Thee. . . .

" Then upon Jahaziel, the son of Zechariah,
i . . came the spirit of the Lord in the midst
of the congregation,

" And he said, Hearken ye, all Judah, and
ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou king
Jehoshaphat, Thus saith the Lord unto you,
Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this
great multidude ; for the battle is not yours,
but God's.

" To-morrow go ye down against them."

It was as if an oracle had answered one who
sought advice ; and Kenau Hasselaar now
knew what she must do. She went, at once,
to the military governor of the town, and
proposed to raise a regiment of women who
should help to guard the walls. He agreed,
and more than 300 women instantly volunteered
to serve ; they were to dress as women, but
also to wear steel corselets. So a meeting was
held at which weapons were distributed —
muskets, and daggers, and pikes — and officers
were duly elected. Kenau Hasselaar herself
was placed in chief command ; the position
of second-in-command was given to the bur-
gomaster's wife. Maria van Schoten, a girl

KENAU HASSELAAR 151

of seventeen, and Maria van der Laan were
appointed subaltern officers, and the bearing of
the banners was entrusted to Henrika van
Vliet, and Gertrui van Brederode, who were
accounted the belles of the town. They all
marched off to the walls, where they were
welcomed with a blast on the trumpets.

Their first work was to buttress the weak
walls with timber . Presently they were engaged
in mining operations ; and ultimately they
took part in the sallies. Kenau Hasselaar's
battle-cry—" For Haarlem, for Holland ! "—
became the battle-cry of all. The Governor
complimented them, saying that the women
fought like men, and Kenau made answer :
" They only defend what they love best : that
is their courage. " Their courage is not held
in the less honour because their defence was
vain. A messenger, with his nose and ears
cut off, arrived with the news that the Stad-
houder's attempt to send a force to raise the
siege had failed ; and there was nothing for it
but to yield on such terms as the Spaniards
would grant.

Their hands were heavy, — they gave out that
every one who harboured a refugee would be
hanged; but Kenau Hasselaar, by whatever
means, escaped their vengeance. Her subse-
quent career was obscure and inconspicuous.
We know that her grateful fellow countrymen
gave her a public appointment as a tax-collector,
but we know nothing else.

CHAPTER XV

The Wars of the Fronde — The Fronde of the Parlement and the
Fronde of the Noble Lords — Part played in the war by Mile de
Montpensier — Her friendship for the great Conde — Her dash
for Orleans — Her return ho Paris.

THE Wars of the Fronde furnish the frame of
the picture of which Mile de Montpensier is to
be the central figure ; and it would require all
the skill of a competent expert to unravel the
tangled skein of their complications. In this
place we must try to make a very little unravel-
ling suffice ; the first point to be made clear
being that the word fronde means a sling, and
that the word frondeur, which is obviously
derived from it, first came into popular use in
consequence of a riot, of no political importance,
in which slings were the weapons used. The
frondeurs who belong to history were all those
who fought against the King — Louis XIV,
who was then a child — his mother, Anne of
Austria, and his minister, Cardinal Mazarin,
in the civil wars which raged intermittently
from 1648 to 1652.

It is a question whether we should speak of
two Wars of the Fronde, or of one war divided
into parts : historians, at all events, distinguish

152

THE FRONDE 153

between the Fronde of the Parlement and the
Fronde of the Noble Lords. The French Parle-
ment, however, it must be borne in mind, was
not the exact equivalent of an English Parlia-
ment. Membership of it was hereditary, and
dependent upon the payment of certain taxes ;
its functions were primarily judicial, though it
also possessed the privilege of addressing respect-
ful " remonstrances " to the King concerning
the proceedings of his Government. It was
disposed to press that privilege, having before
its eyes the instructive precedent of the English
Parliament, which had defied and deposed its
King, and was about to send him to the block.
And there were genuine grievances. French
foreign policy had prospered ; but the domestic
condition of France was far from prosperous.
The people were poor ; the taxes were heavy ;
Cardinal Mazarin was observed to be pocketing
more than his fair share of them. So that there
was a disposition, on the part of the populace
of Paris, not merely to back the Parlement,
but to go a good deal further than the Parlement
had any idea of going. Hence, in the first
place, riots, and the famous Day of the Barri-
cades ; hence, in the second place, the retreat
of the royal family from Paris to Saint-Germain,
and the reconquest of Paris, on their behalf,
by the great Conde, who fell upon the adven-
turous Parisians at Charenton, when they
attempted a sortie, and routed them. Then in
August, 1649, the Court was able to re-establish

154 WOMEN IN WAR

itself at the Tuileries. That was the end of
Act I : the Fronde of the Parlement.

Act II — the Fronde of the Noble Lords — was
due to the great Conde's exorbitant pride and
pretensions. He wanted preferments and ad-
vantages for all his friends ; he also wanted to
have a right of veto on all public appointments,
and on the marriages of Mazarin's nieces. The
Court stood a great deal from him, but finally
laid him by the heels in the prison of Vincennes.
His friends, including the great Turenne, took
the matter up : he was released, and there was
a second civil war. The war was not, this
time, to any extent, a popular movement—
the points at issue were mainly, if not solely,
personal. To the mass of the people, the fight-
ing was a nuisance, interrupting industry and
reducing the industrious to destitution ; at
the most they took such an interest in it
as the spectators take in a foot-ball match.
Among the actual combatants — and especially
among the leaders — there was a great deal of
bribery and corruption, intriguing, treachery,
and changing of sides. It is all very intricate ;
but we need attempt no further relation of
anything connected with it, except Mile de
Montpensier's feats of arms.

She was the daughter of Louis XIIFs brother,
Gaston d' Orleans ; consequently Anne of Austria
was her aunt, and Louis XIV was her cousin.
She was high-spirited : of the type of the young
women who, in our own day, compete with men

MLLE DE MONTPENSIER 155

at golf and tennis, go shooting or salmon fishing
with them, and ride to hounds with them — a
type which attracted more attention then, than
now, for the simple reason that it was rarer.
People admired and applauded her because she
kept things lively, and gave them the excitement
of wondering what she would be up to next.
The populace, in particular, cherished the sort
of enthusiasm for her which the modern popu-
lace cherishes for the champions who distinguish
themselves in athletic sports : she was often
the idol of Paris.

She was romantic with it all, but in a style
of her own : far more romantic than sentimental.
In the end, she was to love, and even to marry,
beneath her, losing her heart to that remarkable
adventurer, Lauzun ; but that romance belongs
to a period of her life with which we have no-
thing to do. In her youth she had many suitors
(for she was rich as well as attractive) ; but no
love-affair in which her heart would appear
to have been engaged. Romance only served
her, in these days, as the hand-maid of ambition.
She was solicited, but was not to be persuaded,
to marry our own Charles II, and help him to
recover his kingdom. She had some thought
of becoming Conde's second wife ; but Conde's
first wife recovered from the attack of erysipelas
which was expected to carry her off when the
proposal was under consideration. A more
brilliant idea was that she should marry Louis
XIV.

156 WOMEN IN WAR

Louis was only ten, and Mile de Montpensier
was twenty-one when that project was first
discussed ; but she was willing to wait for him.
He liked her well enough; there would have
been nothing impossible in the arrangement if
the Court had smiled on it. Objections were
raised, however, and Mile de Montpensier con-
ceived a further brilliant idea : to force the
hands of her enemies by joining the party of
the Fronde. Her marriage with the King, it
seemed to her, might be made one of the condi-
tions of peace. There was no reason why it
should not have been, if the war had had a
different issue ; but there is no need to
anticipate.

For some time Mile de Montpensier had been
on bad terms with Conde ; and the first scene
in which we obtain a characteristic glimpse of
her is that of her reconciliation with him. She
draws the picture herself in her Memoirs :

" Compliments finished, we admitted the
mutual aversion which we had previously felt
for one another. He confessed that he had
been delighted to hear that I had the small-pox,
and had hoped that it would mark or disfigure
me, and, in fact, that he could not have detested
me more than he did. I, on my part, told him
that I had never been so pleased as when I
heard that he was in prison ; that I had hoped
that he would be sent there, and had never
thought of him without wishing him evil. This

MLLE DE MONTPENSIER 157

explanation, which took a long time, amused
the company immensely, and concluded with
expressions of sincere friendship on both
sides."

It concluded, in fact, with the conditional
proposal of marriage already referred to ; and
there is a fine, frank sincerity about it which
disarms criticism. From that date onwards,
in spite of the impossibility of concluding the
proposed marriage, Mile de Montpensier was,
as the Queen said, furieusement frondeuse ; and
we may skip all intermediate incidents and
come to the adventure which constitutes her
title to inclusion in this gallery.

The royal army was advancing on Orleans.
Gaston d' Orleans was the liege lord of the
town ; but no great confidence was felt in its
loyalty to him. The townsmen, in fact, very
much desired to be left alone while their liege
lord and his King settled their quarrels else-
where ; their desire was simply to cultivate their
gardens, and not to stand a siege. It was
important that some member of the family
should go to Orleans in order to bring them to
a better frame of mind. Gaston d' Or leans
ought to have gone ; but he made excuses,
and the matter was settled over his head. At
a supper-party, an officer whispered to his
daughter : " We are in luck : it is you who are
to go." She said her prayers, according to
the practice of the age, and made her prepara-

158 WOMEN IN WAR

tions, putting on a plumed hat, and a riding
habit of grey, embroidered with gold, and driving
off in her coach, at about three o'clock in the
afternoon. The people cheered her, shouting,
" Point de Mazarin ! " An escort of five hun-
dred horsemen met her ; and, when her coach
broke down, she mounted a horse and rode with
them. They offered her the chief command,
and she not only took it, but exercised it, giving
orders for the holding up of couriers and the
confiscation of their despatches. One has the
impression, not of a heroine, with a fixed idea,
sacrificing her ease and risking her life for a
great cause, but rather of a jolly sportswoman
coming to the conclusion that the game of war
is ever so much more amusing than the game of
hockey.

Regarding war as a game, however, she
played her game with great spirit. An emissary
from Orleans who begged her to seek a lodging
outside the gate, on the ground that her entrance
into the town was the one thing certain to
provoke the King to attack it, met with a
discouraging reception. " Nothing/' she as-
sured the messenger, " inspirits the people more
than to see persons of my quality expose them-
selves to danger " ; and she further assured
him that he need not tremble for her. At the
worst, she was only likely to be arrested, and
" in that case I shall be in the hands of men
who speak my language, who know me, and
even in captivity will show me the respect due

MLLE DE MONTPENSIER 159

to my birth." As for any possible danger to
the citizens of Orleans, that was a branch of
the subject which does not seem to have troubled
her in the least.

So she went on, and found the gates of
Orleans closed against her. She demanded
that they should be opened, but the answer of
the garrison was evasive. The people cheered,
the soldiers saluted, the Governor begged her
to accept cakes and sweetmeats which he
lowered to her from a window ; but the bolts
were not withdrawn. " Very well. I shall
either break the gates down or climb over the
wall/' said Mademoiselle ; but there was no
response to that menace except low and
elaborate bows. Whereupon Mademoiselle
walked on until she came to the Loire, where
she found boatmen who were willing, for a con-
sideration, to help her. They banged at one
of the gates which opened on the quay, and
knocked a hole in it.

There was no fighting, no escalade even, in
the ordinary sense : it was merely a case of a
determined young woman insisting upon her
own way and getting it. Only passive resist-
ance was offered ; and we may take it that
no other kind of resistance was either intended
or expected. Seeing that Mademoiselle de
Montpensier entered the town by crawling
through a hole in the gate, unsupported by any
armed force, nothing would have been easier
than either to tap her on the head and drive her

160 WOMEN IN WAR

back, or else to haul her through the hole and
take her prisoner. But she had friends within,
and her persistence commanded universal ad-
miration. She had no sooner got into the town
after this farcical attempt to storm it than she
was " chaired " and carried through the streets
in triumph. " I thought I should have died
of laughing/' is the gay conclusion of her
narrative of the incident.

The farce, nevertheless, was not without its
military value. There had been a race for the
possession of Orleans, and Mile de Montpensier
had won the race. She had the satisfaction of
pointing out that fact to the representatives of
the royal forces who arrived and demanded
admission on the following day, and with whom
she held converse from the top of a tower.
" I informed them," she says, " that I was
mistress in Orleans, and that there was no
longer any hope there for the Mazarins." But
she was only mistress of Orleans in a very
limited sense. Compliments and congratula-
tions poured in upon her from her father and
from Conde : she was the new Maid of Orleans,
the worthy granddaughter of Henri IV, etc.,
etc.; but the authorities of the town were, on
the whole, more polite than compliant. They
kept her regularly supplied with cakes and
comfits, they vaguely promised obedience to
all her commands ; but they nevertheless
pursued their own policy. Their welcome
was for ladies only of the Conde party : no

MLLE DE MONTPENSIER 161

soldiers, no generals, no princes, even, could
be admitted. " I got very angry/* she writes.
" I lost my temper. I scolded them. I
cried. "

In particular, she scolded M. de Sourdis, the
Governor of the town, who retorted by suspend-
ing his pleasant practice of sending her a parcel
of sweetmeats every morning ; but she made
her peace with him — one of her conditions,
conveyed to him by the persuasive tongue of the
Bishop, being that he should send her all the
confectionery which he had withheld during
the period of estrangement. " So that I
gained a good deal," she explains, " by com-
posing my dispute with him." But inaction,
even on a diet of bonbons, bored her. She
explored the town ; she visited the churches ;
she played skittles in her garden ; but these
amusements soon ceased to amuse her. She
wanted to be up and doing — to play at soldiers
properly, with Conde for her playmate ; so,
as his armies could not come to join her, she
rode off to join them, nobody presuming to
interfere with her movements. The soldiers
cheered her ; Conde spoke of her march as
" worthy of the great Gustavus Adolphus " ;
when she proposed to pray, a military band
escorted her to church. " The effect," she
says, " was very fine."

And so back to Paris, with Conde sitting be-
side her in the coach.

Her father was annoyed. He was a father
ii

162 WOMEN IN WAR

whose chief desire was for a quiet life ; whose
instinct it was, when any crisis called for action
or decision, to go to bed with the gout. He had
no followers, though there were those who
wished to push him along in front, and even
ladies who followed the profession of gallantry
ventured, when he walked abroad, to stop him
in the street and tell him what he ought to do.
Naturally, therefore, his daughter was not afraid
of him. She " called him to order as if he had
been a dog " ; and she thoroughly enjoyed her
popularity. Conde, indeed, did not take her
into his confidence as completely as she ima-
gined ; but she was acclaimed wherever she
appeared. She was, she tells us, " like a Queen
of Paris ; . . . held in the highest honour and
the greatest consideration * ' ; and presently she
had, and seized, her chance of rendering Conde
a real military service.

An instinct warned her that she would be
wanted, and that the call would be a sudden one.
She had been feeling unwell and had been mean-
ing to take medicine ; but a timely premonition
bade her postpone the treatment, in order that
she might be in a condition to " make herself
useful/' Glory first and medicine afterwards,
should be her motto. So she threw the dose
away ; and when she was wanted, she was
ready.

It was a scorching July day. Conde had
been fighting outside the walls of Paris, and was
being beaten. The wounded were already ar-

MLLE DE MONTPENSIER 163

riving within the city walls ; the routed were
about to try to follow them. Everything
depended upon the attitude of Paris. Conde
would need the help of all his friends ; and Mile
de Montpensier was to prove herself the most
valuable friend he had.

CHAPTER XVI

PARIS, on the whole, favoured Cond6 and the
Fronde ; but Paris did not speak with a single
voice, and there were limitations to its sym-
pathy. Delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi. Paris
had already suffered enough to realise the truth
of that saying; and, though it accepted a
certain amount of suffering as inevitable, it
had no desire to suffer more than it could help.
It was bad enough that business should be
suspended, and supplies scarce, while the streets
were crowded with starving fugitives from the
devastated country ; they wished to avert the
crowning horror of being besieged, and stormed,
and sacked. And that horror, they feared,
would infallibly befall them if they opened
their gates to Conde and then slammed them in
the face of Turenne — now Conde' s enemy, though
once his friend. The apprehension was specially
acute among serious people : merchants, trades-
men, town councillors, and the like.

Conde, of course, had never thought of that ;

MLLE DE MONTPENSIER 165

and Mile de Montpensier did not think of it
either. To her, as to him, the masses were
just the masses : people of whose interests it
behoved no one to consider ; people from whom
loyalty was due ; mere pawns in the game of
intrigue played by the great. Conde's duty
was to himself, and Mademoiselle's duty was to
Conde. Reluctant adherents must be shamed,
or persuaded, or coerced into adhering : that
was Mademoiselle's simple view of the matter.
Conde had appealed to her, and he should not
appeal in vain. There is a point of view, of
course, from which her proceedings seem selfish
and indefensible ; but her energy — so long as
it lasted, for we shall come presently to a col-
lapse— is worthy of all our admiration.

The appeal for help was addressed, in the first
instance, to her father : an appeal to compel
the opening of the gates of Paris to Conde's
retreating army. The invariable effect of an
appeal of that sort on Cast on d' Orleans was to
bring on an attack of the gout ; but Made-
moiselle de Montpensier knew that gout, and
had no sympathy with it. She had the less
sympathy with it because it did not, this time,
send her father to bed, but only kept him in-
doors. She stormed at him ; she called in her
friends to help her storm at him. He was
induced, at last, not to act himself, but to
delegate his authority to his daughter, and to
despatch her to the Hotel de Ville, there to give
orders, " as his representative."

166 WOMEN IN WAR

She dashed off, and found the town councillors
in session, and a howling mob assembled outside
the building, threatening the City Fathers so
violently that not a man among them dared to
look out of window for fear of being shot at.
She burst in upon them, and demanded instant
armed succour for her friend, and an order for
the opening of the gates.

" Picture it, gentlemen ! J: she cried im-
petuously. " Even now, while you confabu-
late, the Prince is in peril in your faubourgs.
What grief, what everlasting shame for Paris,
if he should die there for want of help ! It is
your place to help him : make haste and do
your duty ! "

Her eloquence, if not her arguments, over-
came them. She obtained her order for Conde's
admission, and galloped off in her coach to the
Porte Saint-Antoine, outside of which the battle
was still raging furiously. A procession of the
wounded met her : La Rochefoucauld, of the
Maxims, Guitaut, Valon, who had been with her
on the ride to Orleans — scores of the noblest of
the nobility of France, who had been fighting
the last fight of the feudal aristocracy against
the King. She opened the gate, and Conde
entered, dust on his face, his hair matted, and
his shirt and collar soaked with blood, exclaim-
ing, " You behold a desperate man ; I have
lost all my friends."

But, even so, the army was not safe, and

MLLE DE MONTPENSIER 167

Mile de Montpensier had not finished her day's
work. The fighting continued, before the eyes
of the bourgeoisie assembled on the walls ; and
Mademoiselle climbed to the top of one of the
towers of the Bastille, to get a better view of it.
She saw Turenne's cavalry about to charge the
rear-guard of the retreating host ; and, on her
own responsibility, she gave the order to point
the guns on them, and fire, with the result
that their front ranks were swept away and
their advance was checked. The volley, accord-
ing to Mazarin, " killed her husband " — de-
stroyed for ever, that is to say, her chance of
marrying Louis XIV ; but it also saved the
Army of the Fronde. " You are our deliverer/'
the men cried, as they passed beneath her
window and saluted.

It was a remarkable personal triumph.
Mademoiselle was under the impression that
it was also a great triumph for the cause ; but
the historian, looking backwards, discerns in it
the beginning of the discomfiture of the party.
Conde was under the impression that the City
Fathers esteemed it a privilege to risk their
lives for him, and desired nothing better than
to place him at the head of a provisional
Government. What they did desire was to
conclude a peace, whether with his approval
or without it ; and they said so. The mob
favoured Conde, and attacked the City Fathers
in the Hotel de Ville, apparently with Conde' s
connivance. Mademoiselle achieved another

168 WOMEN IN WAR

triumph by driving to the rescue ; and the
people cried : " God bless you ! Whatever
you do is done well." But there had been
killed and wounded ; and there had also
been an appearance of treachery. The City
Fathers had fallen, it was said, into a guet-
apens. So that the better opinion of Paris
became adverse to Conde, and his power
crumbled.

For some weeks longer Mademoiselle con-
tinued to play at soldiers, with negotiations for
peace going on behind her back. It is said that
officers fought duels for the honour of holding
commissions in regiments under her command ;
and she dreamed grandiose dreams of military
glory. She would raise a great army at her
own expense, and call it the Army of Made-
moiselle. She would seize a fortress some-
where, and intimidate the King into treating,
— and perhaps into marrying her. Or perhaps
she would marry Conde — whose wife was again
ill — and make him King. But there was no
actual fighting ; and that fact also gave the
City Fathers food for reflection. Not, of course,
that fighting was what they craved for, but that
a camp in which " nothing was going on except
luncheon parties and flirtations " outraged their
sense of the fitness of things and the proper
relation between ends and means. If the
soldiers did not fight how was this war, which
was such a nuisance to men of business, to be
brought to an end ?

MLLE DE MONTPENSIER 169

They decided to end it by sending a deputa-
tion to the King, inviting him to return to
Paris. Mademoiselle appealed to her father
to hang them — which, if we take a purely
military view of the matter, was obviously the
proper thing to do ; but Gaston d' Orleans was
secretly on their side, and had opened his own
negotiations with his nephew. So that the
King came into his own again, almost as quietly
as if he had never been kept out of it, and
Conde withdrew to the armies which held out
for him in the East of France, and Gaston
d' Orleans obeyed an injunction to leave Paris,
and, as Paris sang :

Mademoiselle son atnee,
Disparut, la m6me journee.

It was the end of the great adventure, and
it was also the end of Mademoiselle's heroism.
She was frightened by the receipt of anonymous
letters, warning her that she was likely to be
arrested. She asked no questions ; she was
deaf to faithful friends who implored her to
keep cool. She simply fled, as the wicked flee -
" when no man pursueth " —screaming at every
one who attempted to delay her retreat, in a
coach without armorial bearings, driven by a
coachman without livery — that is to say, in
the seventeenth-century equivalent of a four-
wheeler. Every horseman who passed her on
the road appeared to her terrified imagination
a soldier sent to capture her ; she put on a

170 WOMEN IN WAR

mask which she represented as designed to
cover the ravages of small-pox, and called her-
self Madame Dupre.

Her secretary begged her father to receive
her in his own retreat at Blois ; but he would
not. Her energy was always compromising
him, and he was tired of being compromised.
" I don't want her/1 he said ; " and, if she comes,
I shall turn her out." Conde, on the other hand,
wrote to her from the frontier begging her to
join him. " I place my fortresses and my army
at your disposition," he wrote, " and MM. de
Lorraine and de Fuensaldagne do the same" ;
but she declined the invitation, having played
at soldiers long enough to have discovered that
the game was attended with unpleasant risks.
It seemed better to repair to her own chateau
at Saint-Fargeau, and wait there until the clouds
rolled by.

She was in no real danger — -the King had
written to promise her " safety and liberty " ;
but her confidence had been too severely shaken
to be restored so easily. So she hurried on,
travelling far into the night, in fear not only
of the royal troops but also of irresponsible
marauders, who did, in fact, succeed in stealing
some of her ready money and a portion of her
secretary's wardrobe. And then, at last :

" We arrived," she writes, " at Saint-Fargeau
at two in the morning. I had to dismount,
because the bridge was broken down. I entered

MLLE DE MONTPENSIER 171

an old house which had neither doors nor
windows, but had grass growing knee-high in
the courtyard. It was a terrible shock. They
led me into a wretched room, propped up in
the middle by a beam. I was so annoyed and
horrified that I began to cry."

Hysterics after heroism. The anti-climax is
so obvious that there is no need to dwell on it ;
and, of course, the tears evoked by the appre-
hension, not of danger, but of the discomfort
of spending a night in a cold and empty house,
without a bed to lie upon, are a proof that
Mademoiselle, masculine as she had appeared
to be, had her share of the weaknesses of her
sex. One is helped by them to believe that
when, a few years later, she met Queen Christina
of Sweden at Fontainebleau, she was, to the
amazement of that northern monarch, frightened
by the display of fire-works with which the
entertainment concluded.

That story, however, belongs to a later date,
and we have nothing to do with it ; just as we
have nothing to do with the interesting story
of Mademoiselle's love for Lauzun. Our busi-
ness is still with the Wars of the Fronde, and
the parts which other women played in them :
roles to which Mazarin himself rendered hom-
age in conversation with the Spanish Prime
Minister :

" You Spaniards," he said, " are lucky.
Love is the only thing with which your women

172 WOMEN IN WAR

concern themselves. It is very different in
France. We have three women here who would
be capable of governing or subverting three
great kingdoms : the Duchesse de Longueville,
the Princess Palatine, and the Duchesse de
Chevreuse."

He might have added that the most enter-
prising of these was Madame de Longueville.

CHAPTER XVII

Madame de Longueville, sister of the great Conde — Her attempt
to raise Normandy — Her escape from Dieppe — Her defence of
Bordeaux — Her repentance in her old age, and her devout
religious observances.

MADAME D£ LONGUEVILLE was Conde' s sister.
There is little to be said about her husband
except that he was several years her senior,
and had a considerable, though not an im-
moderate reputation for gallantry. La Roche-
foucauld, of the Maxims, was her lover —
though neither her first Jover nor her last ; but
we need not go too deeply into that, though
a democratic pamphleteer might make great
play with the connection between the wars
which ravaged France and the love-affairs of
the leaders of French society. All that con-
cerns us in our study of the vanities of the
Duchesse de Longueville is the light thereby
thrown upon the causes, and springs, and
motives of the Fronde of the Noble Lords.

All the Noble Lords, and the Noble Ladies
also, wanted something for themselves as the
condition of their faithful allegiance to Anne
of Austria and Mazarin. Some of them wanted
money, others public appointments, others,

173

174 WOMEN IN WAR

again, court privileges. Madame de Longue-
ville wanted the government of the Pont de
L'Arche, in Normandy, for her husband, " the
honours of the Louvre " — the right, that is to
say, of driying a coach into the courtyard of
any palace in which the King happened to be
residing — for her lover, and the tabouret, or
privilege of sitting, instead of standing, at royal
receptions, for her lover's sister, and another
lady in whom her brother was interested. To
her, and to those about her, it seemed perfectly
natural, not only that Noble Lords should fight
for these privileges, if they could not obtain
them by intrigue, but also that the common
people should suspend their ordinary occupa-
tions and fight for them on their behalf. That,
in the view of the ancienne noblesse, whose
feudal pride Louis XI had not entirely broken,
was what common people were for.

We first, therefore, discover Madame de
Longueville behind the scenes, pulling the wires
with great dexterity, foreseeing civil war, and
preparing for it. It is a characteristic fact
that, after having given provocation in compli-
ance with the claims of love, she strengthened
her position by lending her countenance to a
secret marriage. The young Due de Richelieu,
who was still a minor, and one of the richest
partis in France, had been persuaded that he
wanted to marry Madame de Pons, one of the
ladies for whom Madame de Longueville had
obtained a tabouret — a buxom widow who was

MME DE LONGUEVILLE 175

nearly double his age. Anne of Austria and
the boy's guardian not unnaturally withheld
their consent ; and Madame de Longueville
saw her opportunity. If the boy would seize
Havre and hold it for the House of Conde, she
would arrange for his marriage to take place
at her residence at Trie near Beauvais. The
boy, being love-sick, agreed ; and the bargain
was duly struck and carried out. That defiance
of the royal authority was the last straw
which broke the royal patience. The arrest of
Conde, of which we have already spoken,
followed.

Not only Conde and his brother Conti were
to have been arrested : the same sentence was
launched against La Rochefoucauld and Madame
de Longueville herself. But Madame de Longue-
ville, though commonly regarded as a languorous
beauty, was a woman of energy and resource :
she saw what was coming, and got away before
it came. She was ordered to repair to the
Palais-Royal, the intention being to arrest
her on her arrival ; but, though she started
for the Palais-Royal, she did not reach that
destination. Instead, she drove to the house
of the Princess Palatine, where she borrowed
the Princess Palatine's coach, and set off for-
Normandy, accompanied by La Rochefoucauld,
proposing there to raise the flag of rebellion
in her brother's interest. She had a small
escort with her, sufficient to arrest a royal
courier, whom she met upon the road, despoil

176 WOMEN IN WAR

him of his despatches, take him to Rouen as
a prisoner, and lock him up in a room in one
of the inns.

It seemed to the feudal mind of the Duchesse
de Longueville the most natural thing in the
world that Normans should wish to kill and be
killed on account of any affront put upon her
or any member of her family ; and she began
her campaign by sending the stolen despatches
to the Rouen Parlement, with her compli-
ments. She encountered, however, that hard,
business-like, middle-class opinion which always
objects to the derangement of its commerce
by quarrels with which it has no direct concern :
a new spirit, but nevertheless a growing one.
The Parlement not only sent officers to demand
the release of the courier whom Madame de
Longueville had locked up in his bedroom, but
also issued a decree prohibiting " all persons, of
whatever quality and condition, from holding
any armed assemblages, without the King's
explicit orders, under pain of death." It was
a hint to Madame de Longueville to move on,
and she took it.

She moved on to Havre ; and there too she
was disappointed, in spite of the fact that her
friend the Due de Richelieu held the citadel.
Mazarin had written promising to recognise the
boy's marriage, if he would shut the gates of
Havre in Madame de Longueville' s face ; and
the boy, loving his wife better than he loved
the House of Conde, begged to be excused

MME DE LONGUEVILLE 177

for not receiving his visitor. So Madame de
Longueville proceeded to Dieppe ; and there
she had a mixed reception. The Governor of
the Chateau received her hospitably, and
made her as comfortable as he could ; but
the citizens were loyal to the King. They
went so far as to say, with stubborn obstinacy,
that " since the Governor had abandoned the
service of the King, he no longer had any right
to issue orders to them." And presently royal
troops arrived to support the loyalty of the
citizens, and to blockade the Dieppe Chateau
on the land side ; so that there remained nothing
for it but for Madame de Longueville to get
away to the Netherlands, and see what she
could do for Conde there.

Getting away, however, was neither com-
fortable nor easy. When Madame de Longue-
ville slipped out of the postern gate of the
fortress, she found the Dieppe militia waiting
for her on the beach. Though she could not
embark, she managed to evade them, and
walked a couple of miles along the coast to
a small creek, where she lighted upon a couple
of fishing-smacks. She hired the skipper of
one of them to take her out to her ship in the
offing. Bargaining for a big price because the
weather was rough, he undertook to try ; but
with calamitous results. The sailor who was
carrying Madame de Longueville out to the
boat stumbled and dropped her ; the waves
rolled her ashore, drenched and very nearly

178 WOMEN IN WAR

insensible. The fishermen refused to try again ;
and it was necessary to hire horses and ride to
Poerville, where the cur 6 entertained the party.
Remembering how glad she had been of his
warm fire, Madame de Longueville never forgot,
in happier after-years, to send him an annual
gift of firewood from her estate, for the use
of his distressed parishioners.

Meanwhile the ship for which she was waiting
arrived, and she had another narrow escape,
being warned, in the nick of time, that the
captain had been bribed to betray her, and that,
if she embarked, she would be arrested ; so
she fled, seeking other hiding-places and a
fresh disguise. In the end she got to Havre, in
men's clothes — •" the humiliating marks," as
she calls them, "of her misfortunes" — repre-
senting herself as a gentleman in danger of
arrest for having killed his antagonist in a
duel. And so to Rotterdam, where she resumed
" the majestic apparel which so well became
her," and, after a hospitable reception by the
Prince and Princess of Orange, joined Turenne
at Stenai — Turenne, who was now styling himself
"Lieutenant-General of the army of the King
for the deliverance of the Princes," and had
concluded, in the interest of the Princes, an
offensive and defensive alliance with Spain.
It is significant of the supreme importance of
personal aspects in this civil war that the treaty
provided for the payment of a substantial
annuity to Madame de Longueville herself.

MME DE LONGUEVILLE 179

Nor was Turenne the only Richmond, or
Mme de Longueville the only lady, in the field.
La Rochefoucauld had parted from her, but
only to pursue other adventures. Through
the death of his father he had become a Duke ;
and he had made his father's funeral a pretext
for assembling his friends and their retainers
for a martial enterprise. He an$ the Due de
Bouillon agreed to act together ; and they
invited the Princesse de Conde to join them-
which she did, with unexpected spirit. She
was supposed to be, if not under arrest, at least
under observation, at Chantilly ; but she es-
caped, and travelled across country to join her
friends near Limoges, where cannon saluted
her, and her health was drunk at a banquet
of a hundred covers — so repeatedly and so
thoroughly that hosts, and guests, and servants
are all reported to have been " in a state verging
upon intoxication."

Thence she proceeded to Bordeaux, with her
little son, the Due d'Enghien, whom she had
taught to play his part. Led by the hand, the
child made his appeal to the Parlement in
the Palais de Justice : " Pray be a father to
me, gentlemen, for Cardinal Mazarin has taken
my own father from me." The Parlement
hesitated, but the mob insisted. It was voted
that "the Princesse de Conde* and the Due
d'Enghien, her son, may reside in the town in
safety, under the protection of the laws.'' On
the following day, the mob insisted on the

i8o WOMEN IN WAR

admission of La Rochefoucauld and the Due
de Bouillon ; and very soon Guienne was in
open revolt against the crown, and Bordeaux
had to stand a siege : a siege in which there
were many scenes thoroughly typical of this
war, in which the aristocracy fought, as it were,
in kid gloves, while the people suffered.

We hear of the little Due d'Enghien con-
ducted to the ramparts, and there calling for
a sword in order that he might " kill Mazarin."
We hear of the Princesse de Conde herself,
accompanied by ladies of rank and fashion,
carrying baskets of earth, decorated with bows
of ribbon, to the trenches. We hear of Bouillon
and La Rochefoucauld conducting themselves
as if at a picnic, and " regaling the ladies with
fruit and confectionery." WTe hear, finally, that
the Princesse de Conde held nightly receptions
on the ramparts, and that there was dancing.
One needs those details, as well as the stories
of battles, sallies, charges, and skirmishes — as
well as the stories of pillage and starvation —
if the wars of the Fronde are to be fully and
faithfully realised.

The principal disputants were presently to
shake hands, make friends, and admit that they
had misunderstood each other. " ^ho would
have believed, a week ago/' Mazarin asked
on that occasion, " that we should be riding
in the same coach to-day ? " ' Tout arrive
en France/' La Rochefoucauld then made
answer. But in the meantime thousands of

MME DE LONGUEVILLE 181

persons who had no real concern in the quarrel
had perished in helping to bring it to a settle-
ment ; and, in the meantime also, Madame de
Longueville was devoting herself, with per-
tinacity and cunning, to the execution of her
plans, though there was one step of possible
utility which she did not take — she did not
make love to Turenne, though that great
commander seems to have been most anxious
for her to do so.

" M. de Turenne/' we read in one of her
Lives, " did not confine himself to directing the
political enterprises of this princess ; he made
her the most tender declarations, which, how-
ever, she did not receive with all the gratitude
that he expected ; for it is said that she jested
much about them with La Moussaye, Governor
of Stenai."

The consequences, however, of her rejection
of his addresses were not so disastrous as they
might have been. Turenne and Mme de
Longueville remained allies ; and she was able
to accomplish by intrigue what he failed to
achieve by force. Mazarin, who had himself
been a soldier before he became a priest, beat
Turenne badly at the battle of Rethel ; but
Madame de Longueville "worked" the Paris
Parlement in favour of the Princes with the
result that Mazarin thought it well to release
them. She was clever enough, in short, to
bring about an alliance between the Fronde

182 WOMEN IN WAR

of the Parlement and the Fronde of the Noble
Lords ; and Mazarin was so much impressed
that he bowed low to Conde, and even, if
Mile de Montpensier may be trusted, " kissed
his boot."

He kissed it, however, if at all, hypocriti-
cally, and with mental reservations. His ob-
ject was to split the coalition, and presently
he attained it. Before very long, Conde was
once more in fear of arrest, once more in
flight, and once more in the field ; and Madame
de Longueville was one of those who urged
him to fight instead of making terms. Turenne
turned against him, but she stuck to him to
the last ; this being the period of the Fronde
to which belongs Mile de Montpensier' s remark-
able ride to Orleans — ground which there is
no need for us to cover a second time. Made-
moiselle slips out of the story at the time of
Conde' s evacuation of Paris ; but Madame de
Longueville continued the resistance at Bor-
deaux, where the attempt was made to weave
intrigues, not only with Spain, but also with
England.

The attempt came to nothing : for a season
the Frondeurs had shaken the power of abso-
lute monarchy in France ; but, in the end,
having kicked their last feudal kick, they found
themselves beaten to their knees. Treachery
accelerated the end — Conde' s own brother,
Conti, deserted him ; but it was recognised
that it would be futile even to tempt Madame

MME DE LONGUEVILLE 183

de Longueville. " Madame de Longueville,"
writes Abbe de Cosnax, who had a hand in
the treachery, " was so attached to the interests
of Monsieur le Prince that she would never
have consented to any treaty of peace in which
he did not participate " : a just tribute, so far
as it goes, and thoroughly well deserved.
Madame de Longueville was not only as brave
as she was clever, but also as loyal as she was
brave. One is compelled to admire her, though
equally compelled to make certain reservations
in doing so.

Loyalty is always admirable ; but conceptions
of loyalty vary from age to age, and Madame
de Longueville' s conception of it cannot but
strike a modern reader as wrong-headed. She
could not rise to the height of Montesquieu's
doctrine that the claims of one's province should
be preferred to the claims of one's commune,
and the claims of one's country to those of one's
province. Family quarrels, it seemed to her,
were the things which really mattered : it was
natural, and right, and proper to fight for her
brother against her King, to the injury of the
interests of France,— and that even to the
point of entering into treacherous relations with
foreign Powers. But there was nothing charac-
teristically feminine in that view of the matter.
It was the common doctrine of the aristocrats
of the ancien regime, largely acquiesced in
by the common people, and not finally shat-
tered until the storm of Rousseau's eloquence

184 WOMEN IN WAR

broke against it. No feelings appear to have
been outraged because, when the war ended,
the principal rebels were treated leniently,
whereas a common man — a retired butcher —
was broken on the wheel.

Yet Madame de Longueville did ultimately
come to realise that she had made mischief,
and that the consequences of that mischief
had involved innumerable innocent sufferers :
that her brother's soldiers, and Mazarin's sol-
diers also, had comported themselves as high-
way robbers ; that the mortality in battle had
been largely exceeded by the mortality due to
disease and destitution ; that the pleasant land
of France had become a wilderness, depopulated,
but with an undue proportion of widows and
orphans, with three thousand paupers clamour-
ing for relief in the town of Laon alone.
Realising these things, she became religious,
and spent a great deal of her time on her knees
in nunneries, and was particularly attracted
by the austere ways of the Jansenists. A
remarkable tribute is paid to her by one of
the historians of Port-Royal :

" Thou hast without doubt written the reward
of this princess in heaven, where I shall pre-
sently behold it, and Thou waitest for Thy great
day to overwhelm her with the glory which
she has justly merited for her good works. . . .
She suffered in patience the insults of the
proud. She knew the scornful things which

MME DE LONGUEVILLE

were said of her, and people did not blush to
call her the shame and the ignominy of the
royal family. Thou wilt cause them to see
that she was its ornament ; and Saint Louis,
without doubt, will not blush for her in heaven."

Which seems to show that, in the view of
some devout witnesses, the roads which lead
to heaven are as many and as tortuous as
those which lead to Rome.

CHAPTER XVIII

The insurrection in La Vendee — Various women warriors — Mme
de Larochejaquelein — Success and failure — The crossing of the
Loire.

THE eighteenth-century aspects of our subject
have already been glanced at ; and we may now
pass straight on to the Revolution. We find,
when we come to it, that the line between
military and political activity is not very sharply
drawn, — except in the case of such definite
soldiers as the demoiselles de Fernig and Mme
Sans-Gene ; and there is nothing for it but to
pick and choose capriciously. There shall be
nothing, therefore, about the storming of the
Bastille, though women bore pikes in the
assault ; nothing about Theroigne de Meri-
court, though she led the women who marched
to Versailles and carried the King and Queen
and Dauphin back in triumph to Paris ; nothing
about Mme Roland or Charlotte Corday, though
their careers could be linked with insurrec-
tionary movements in Normandy. But there
shall be a chapter about Mme de Laroche-
jaquelein and her adventures in the war of
La Vendee.

She was not a heroine of the stamp of Jeanne

1 86

LA VENDEE 187

d'Arc. She did not play at soldiers like Mile
de Montpensier, or pull the strings of intrigue
like Mme de Longueville. But she saw much
hard fighting and cruel suffering, and she was
a part of what she saw and has chronicled
her experiences fully and faithfully. One can
sympathise and admire, even though one feels
her to have been wrong-headed. At the most,
she was only one wrong-headed person among
many; for "wrong-headed" is an epithet ap-
plicable to the whole Vendee business.

A great deal of wrong-headed admiration
has been wasted on the Vendean peasants be-
cause they were loyal and religious ; because
they served God, honoured and obeyed the King,
and behaved respectfully to their landlords.
Their only virtue was in fact their courage, which
is not to be denied. For the rest, they were
priest-ridden boors, whose brains were impene-
trable fog-banks ; devoid of any sense of the
solidarity of the interests of France, stubbornly
resolved to set their own interests above those
of their country, submissive only to the local
authority of the territorial magnates. They
remind one, in short, of the peasants whom
the poet represents as singing :

God bless the squire and his relations,
And keep us in our proper stations.

It is a significant fact that they began their
revolt on the very day on which the Republic
abolished, without compensation, those feudal

188 WOMEN IN WAR

privileges which had been among the worst
evils of the ancien regime.

But that, of course, was not their grievance.
Though the feudal lords of their neighbourhood
had been lenient in the exercise of their privi-
leges, the abolition of the corvee would hardly
by itself have exasperated their dependents
to the point of civil war. The thing which
they really, fundamentally, and unwaveringly
objected to was compulsory military service
at a distance from their homes. They had
objected to it while Louis XVI was on the
throne, just as keenly as they objected to it
after his deposition, and their passive resistance
had generally enabled them to evade it. The
Republic, however, would not stand the non-
sense which the King had stood. The country
being in danger, it decreed the levee en masse,
and proceeded to enforce it. That, rather than
the persecution of the King and the priests,
was the governmental act which stirred the
hornets' nest. The proof is in one of their
own proclamations :

" No militia ! Let us live in peace in our
own part of the country ! You say that the
enemy is coming, and threatens our home-
steads ! Very well ! We are quite able to de-
fend our homesteads against him if he comes ! "

Which meant, of course, as Michelet points
out in a cunning paraphrase :

LA VENDEE 189

" Let the enemy come ! Let the Austrian
armies, with their Pandours and Croats, rav-
age France as much as they please ! What
does France matter to Vendee ? Lorraine and
Champagne may be overrun with fire and
sword ; but Lorraine and Champagne are not
Vendee. Paris may perish ; the eye of the
world may be put out ; but what does that
matter to Vendee ? Never mind about France !
Never mind about the world ! Time enough
for us to look to our safety when we see the
enemy's horsemen from behind our hedges ! "

Not a very elevated sentiment, truly ; but
a very convenient sentiment for those who
laid themselves out to exploit it in the interests
of the royal family of France, even at the
risk of rending France asunder while .her
hereditary enemies thundered at the gate.
And they exploited it, of course, without any
qualms of conscience, having been brought up
to believe that Kings ruled by divine right, and
that the privileges of landlords had the same
sacred origin, and having always been too
much occupied with gaiety and field sports to
examine those propositions, even when they
heard that wicked philosophers, like Jean
Jacques Rousseau, were questioning them. That
point in their mentality made clear, we may
proceed to study their performances, and the
part which Mme de Larochejaquelein played
in them.

WOMEN IN WAR

One calls her Mme de Larochejaquelein be-
cause that was her name when she published
her Memoirs ; but Louis de Larochejaquelein
was her second husband, and she did not marry
him till after the war was over : at the time
of the revolt she was Mme de Lescure. Her
father was gentleman-in-waiting to the Comte
de Provence (afterwards Louis XVIII); her
mother lady-in-waiting to the King's sister
Mme Victoire. She had the King for her
godfather, and was born at Versailles, and
lived in the Palace there until that 6th of
October, when the mob took the royal family
to Paris. One of her aunts followed the Prin-
cesses when they fled to Rome.

Married at the age of nineteen to the Marquis
de Lescure, who was twenty-five, she left
Poitou for Paris in February 1792. Her hus-
band meant to emigrate and join the army of
Conde ; but Marie Antoinette pressed him to
remain. Consequently the family was still
in Paris on that loth of August when the mob
stormed the Tuileries and massacred the Swiss
Guard. Their lives were in peril : they had
to disguise themselves and hide, and only
succeeded in obtaining passports for their
return to Poitou by the help of a commissary
of police, who had once been M. de Lescure' s
tutor, and who now drove with them in his
uniform, shouting "Vive la nation!" at inter-
vals, prepared to sacrifice everybody and every-
thing to their safety — as he proved when the

LA VENDEE 191

party met a company of the Marseillais on the
road :

" The postilion took it into his head to drive
through the very middle of them, throwing
down two or three. In an instant we saw
guns levelled at us. M. Thomassin showed
himself at the coach-door. ' My comrades/
said he to them, ' kill that rascal. Vive la
nation / ' "

Thus they progressed to their estate, the
Chateau de Clisson ; and M. de Lescure' s
cousin, Henri de Larochejacquelein — the brother
of the Louis de Larochejaquelein whom Mme
de Lescure was ultimately to marry — joined
the party. It is to be noted that Mme de
Lescure, at that stage, could not even ride,
and was timorous : when the excitement began
and the gendarmes came to the chateau to
requisition horses, she " wept/' she says, " from
fear/' But she was to find her courage when
she needed it ; and she was to need it very soon.
All aristocrats were " suspect " ; and the hour
was coming for all suspects to be arrested.
The gendarmes were very polite about it, but
quite firm. Mme de Lescure and her mother
were taken to Bressuire, and locked up in the
house of a grocer, with a pressing caution not
to excite popular animosity by showing them-
selves at the windows.

That was her position when the rising began,
and " a reinforcement of four hundred Mar-

192 WOMEN IN WAR

seillais arrived and insisted upon putting the
prisoners to death." She heard them, from
her hiding-place, singing their patriotic songs :
eleven peasants were marched beneath her
window to the place of execution, where they
were cut down with sabres while they knelt
in prayer ; it was fortunate for her that these
self-appointed executioners did not know her
whereabouts. Even when the royalist attack
was compelling the republicans to retire in
disorder, she did not feel safe :

" During this retreat we expected our fate,
not supposing that we should be overlooked
entirely. Our window shutters were closed,
and every time we heard a company halt before
our door we imagined that they had come to
seize us. At last, by degrees, they evacuated
the town, without having remembered us, and
we were free."

And then they went back to Clisson, where
Mme de Lescure began to make white cockades,
while the gentlemen fomented the conspiracy,
and performed military exercises in the court-
yard : one may suppose that Mme de Lescure,
at the same time, took the opportunity of learn-
ing to ride. A few days later, La Vendee was
in a blaze ; and Mme de Larochejaquelein was
acting as her husband's aide-de-camp and
secretary. She " galloped off," when necessary ;
she " had the tocsin sounded " : she " delivered

LA VENDEE 193

requisitions"; she " sent expresses to the
neighbouring villages " ; she " harangued the
peasants to the best of my ability" ; etc., etc.
Her power to write a very small and legible
hand was particularly useful : she was employed
to copy out an appeal for help which was to be
sent to England, concealed in the wadding of
the emissary's pistols.

The war was a guerilla war, without any
concerted plan of operations ; the peasant
partisans were continually disbanding and re-
assembling, claiming the right to revisit their
homes in the intervals between the battles ; no
general staff combined and no intelligence depart-
ment recorded their movements. Consequently
it would be idle to attempt any systematic ac-
count of the vicissitudes of the struggle, though
such accounts have, in fact, been pieced together
by military experts. A few anecdotes — a few
pictures — are all that there is space for ; and
we must first single out the stories which Mme
de Larochejaquelein tells us of the women who
actually bore arms against the Blues.

According to the Blues there were quite a
number of them ; according to Mme de Laroche-
jaquelein that allegation was their false excuse
for the atrocities which they perpetrated. " I
do not believe," she writes, " there were in all
ten women bearing arms disguised as men " ; but
about some of the ten she gives us particulars :

" I saw two sisters, fourteen and fifteen
13

194 WOMEN IN WAR

years old, who were very courageous. In the
army of M. de Bonchamp, a young woman
became a dragoon to avenge the death of her
father, and performed prodigies of valour during
the whole war, under the name of L'Angevine.
... I one day saw a young woman, tall and
beautiful, with pistols and a sabre hung at her
girdle, come to Chollet, accompanied by two
other women, armed with pikes. She brought
a spy to my father, who interrogated her. She
told him she was from the parish of Tout-le-
Monde, and that the women kept guard there
when the men were absent in the army."

And then there is the story of the woman
whom the Republicans found dead after the
battle of Thouars, and supposed to have " passed
among the Vendeens for an inspired Maid, like
Jeanne d'Arc." She had never, according to
Mme de Larochejaquelein, passed for anything
of the kind; nothing of the kind having ever
been encouraged by the Vendean leaders :

" The generals had not only strictly pro-
hibited any women from following the army,
but declared that any found there should be
ejected with ignominy ; and during the short
periods in which the troops were assembled,
even female sutlers were not allowed to attend."

But Mme de Larochejaquelein had known
the Maid in question, and had even corresponded
about her with the vicar of her parish, who

LA VENDEE 195

replied that " she was a very good girl, but that
he had been unable to dissuade her from be-
coming a soldier, and that she had taken the
sacrament immediately before leaving home."
So she became a soldier — with what result
Mme de Larochejaquelein tells us :

" The evening before the battle she sought
for M. de Lescure, and, addressing him, said,
' General, I am a woman ! Mme de Lescure
knows it, and also that my character is good.
To-morrow there is to be a battle ; let me have
a pair of shoes; I am sure that I shall fight
so that you will not send me away/ She
fought, indeed, under the eye of M. de Lescure,
and called to him, ' General, you must not pass
me; I shall always be nearer the Blues than
you/ She was wounded in the hand, but this
only animated her the more, and, showing the
wound to him, she said, ' This is nothing/
Rushing furiously into the thickest part of the
engagement, she perished."

There must have been, altogether, about
100,000 royalists in arms in La Vendee ; and,
as the country was denuded of regular troops,
they began by carrying everything before
them. Properly led and obedient to discipline,
they might very well have overrun France' ;
but they had no desire to venture far from
home, and presently certain prisoners of war
—released by the enemy on the understanding
that they would not serve against the Coalition

196 WOMEN IN WAR

for a year — were available to be turned against
them. Their most ambitious enterprise was
the attempt to take Nantes ; but, though
Angers and Saumur had fallen to them, Nantes
was not to fall. General Canclaux was a match
for them : they got into the suburbs, but they
did not get into the town ; and, though they
were not pursued when they retired, the repulse
was the turning-point of their fortunes. Catheli-
neau had been killed ; Biron and Westermann
were after them.

They were by no means done for, but were
still to win several bloody battles, being always,
to the last, very formidable when on the defen-
sive. Both Biron and Westermann were to
be recalled to Paris, and guillotined, like so
many other unsuccessful generals. It was a
case, however, of winning battles, but losing
the campaign — and not all the battles were won.
In particular the Vendeans lost the battle of
Tremblaye, where M. de Lescure was dan-
gerously wounded, and the battle of Chollet.
The net result of the battles was that they
were rounded up on the banks of the Loire,
and decided to cross it, and see whether fortune
would favour them better on the northern bank
of the river. It is the point at which Mme de
Larochejaquelein's narrative once more becomes
personal.

War, it would seem, had not been her sole
occupation during the period of revolt. " I
was three months gone with child/' she said ;

LA VENDEE 197

" my situation was shocking/' This is her
description of the scene :

" The heights of Saint-Florent form a kind
of semi-circular boundary to a vast level strand
reaching to the Loire, which is very wide at
this place. Eighty thousand people were
crowded together in this valley ; soldiers,
women, children, the aged, and the wounded,
flying from immediate destruction. Behind
them they perceived the smoke rising from the
villages the republicans were burning. No-
thing was heard but loud sobs, groans, and
cries. . . . Twenty bad boats carried succes-
sively the fugitives who crowded in them ;
others tried to cross on horses ; all spread out
their arms towards the other side, supplicating
to be taken there. . . . Many of us compared
this disorder, this despair, this terrible uncer-
tainty of the future, this immense spectacle,
this bewildering crowd, this valley, this stream
which must be crossed, to our idea of the last
judgment/'

To add to the horror, there was a dis-
pute whether the Republican prisoners — some
5,000 in number — should or should not be
massacred before the crossing. M. de Lescure,
lying helpless on a mattress, pleaded for their
lives ; and they were spared. Mme de Lescure
had to arrange for the crossing, not only of
her wounded husband, but also of her little
child ; the latter being wrapped in his bed-

198 WOMEN IN WAR

clothes and put in an arm-chair covered with
a kind of mattress. " We descended," she
writes, " from Saint-Florent to the shore, in
the middle of the crowd. Many officers accom-
panied us. They drew their sabres, made a
circle round us, and we arrived at the edge of
the water." Thus they were rowed over to a
half-burnt hamlet, where Mme de Lescure sent
for some milk for her child, while her father
went to look for her mother :

" Varades is a quarter of a league distant,
on the side of a hill. M. de Lescure was im-
patient to arrive there. The weather was
clear, but the wind was cold. They placed two
pikes under the arm-chair, and the soldiers
carried it. My femme-de-chambre and myself
supported his feet, wrapped up in napkins."

At Varades there was an alarm of an attack :

" I had never found myself so near a battle,
and what a moment to be attacked ! I stopped,
quite terrified. The firing reanimated M. de
Lescure, who was almost insensible. He asked
what it was. I entreated him to let himself
be carried to a neighbouring wood. He an-
swered that the Blues would do him a service
by despatching him, and that the balls would
hurt him less than the cold and wind. I did
not listen to him ; he was carried into the wood ;
my child was brought after me, and many
other people took refuge in it."

LA VENDEE 199

The noise of the firing, however, rolled away ;
and presently the march could be begun. A
peasant of the neighbourhood proposed to hide
M. de Lescure and the child ; but the proposal
was not accepted :

" I was tempted to take advantage of this
offer for my child ; but the fear that it would
be carried to the foundling hospital, or that
they would not take enough care of it, and the
hope that she would continue in good health,
determined me to keep her. I could not make
up my mind to part with so dear a thing ; and
we all wished, at that time, to run common
dangers, and share a common fate."

So they set out, M. de Lescure crying aloud
from the pain caused by the jolting of the cart
in which he had been placed. Another means
of conveying him had to be found ; and we
will conclude this chapter with another of Mme
de Larochejaquelein's graphic pictures of the
procession of the fugitives :

" We had a kind of litter made from an old
arm-chair ; we put hoops over it, and hung
sheets, to keep the air from the poor sufferer.
I determined to walk near the litter with my
maid Agatha and some of my people. My
mother, my aunt, and my child were gone
before. Families and friends walked together,
and tried to keep united. Each had protectors
among the officers and soldiers. . . . M. de

200 WOMEN IN WAR

Lescure uttered such cries as harrowed my
very soul. I was overcome with fatigue and
distress. My boots wounded my feet. We
travelled between two files of cavalry, and
a fairly large body of infantry marched be-
hind us. . . . The rear-guard . . . was specially
charged with guarding M. de Lescure/1

And then, when there was a false report that
the hussars were charging the fugitives :

" Reason failed me ; my first idea was to fly.
But then I recollected that I was with M. de
Lescure. Doubting my own courage, and fear-
ing that the approach of the hussars would
strike me with an involuntary and invincible
terror, I entered quickly into the carriage,
without telling the reason, to make it impossible
for me not to perish with my husband. "

And so along the road to the coast.

CHAPTER XIX

The check at Granville — The check at Angers — Dispersal of the
royalist army — Mme de Larochejaquelein in hiding — Ther-
midor and the subsequent amnesty.

THE royalists, though in retreat, did not regard
themselves as beaten : they had plenty of fight
in them still, and soon formed an aggressive
plan of campaign. They would raise Brittany,
raise Normandy; they would seize a port on
the Channel, and receive reinforcements from
England. The port of Granville was chosen
as their objective.

Seeing that they were marching, encumbered
by their wounded, their women, and their
children, in a column several miles long, a
competent general would have had no great
difficulty in cutting the straggling column in
half, and throwing it into disorder. General
Lechelle, who opposed them, however, was
equally timorous and incapable. He attacked
the head of the column with only a portion
of his forces, and was badly beaten, afterwards
committing suicide — presumably in order to
avoid the guillotine. The royalists won three
battles in two days, and other battles at
longer intervals, and swept on in triumph,
believing that all was well.

201

202 WOMEN IN WAR

But just as Nantes had held them up before,
so Granville held them up now. The expected
English help was not forthcoming : on the
contrary, French men-of-war came out from
Saint-Malo and cannonaded them. They spent
thirty-six hours in front of Granville, losing
about 200 men ; and then the rank and file
exclaimed that they had had enough, and
clamoured to be taken back to their own
country. So the retreat began, with the winter
setting in. They could still win battles, though
the campaign was lost ; but they did not win
all the battles. At last they sustained crushing
defeats at Le Mans and Sacenay ; and the war,
after those disasters, was little more than
brigandage, difficult to suppress, but not in
a military sense formidable. Carrier was at
Nantes, guillotining and drowning the refugees.

That outline sketched, we will turn to Mme
de Larochejaquelein for the details in so far
as they concerned her.

Her husband, too enfeebled by his wound to
retain the command, passed it on to his cousin,
Henri de Larochejaquelein, a mere lad of
one-and-twenty. He got a little better during
the halt at Laval, but he soon relapsed, and
died. His wife wished to have his body em-
balmed and placed in the carriage with her ;
but that could not be done. " They repre-
sented to me," she says, " the dangers to which
I exposed the child which I bore in my womb."
She had reason, in fact, to fear a miscarriage :

LA VENDEE 203

she was told that she would inevitably miscarry
if she were not instantly bled. A surgeon
cupped her, and she struggled on, getting as
far as Granville, and then turning back with
the rest. She tells us how her personal in-
fluence saved a republican deserter, whom the
royalists regarded as a republican spy, from
being shot :

" As he finished his story Agatha came in,
exclaiming, ' Madam, here are the Germans
coming to take him to execution ! ' He threw
himself again at my feet : I resolved to save
him. I went up to my father's, where the
council was held ; when I was there, in the
midst of the generals, they asked me what I
wanted. I did not dare to explain myself, and
only answered, ' I came for a glass of water/
I went down again, and with a tone of authority,
said to the Germans, ' You may go ; the
council puts the prisoner under the guard of the
Chevalier de Beauvolliers.' They retired. I
sent for M. Allard, and I begged him to arrange
this affair."

Splendide mendax : that action was worth
more than the embroidering of banners and
the making of white cockades for the royal
cause. Presently there was a rout, the first
of several routs ; and even those who ran were
indignant with others for running too :

" I was among the horsemen, quite be-

204 WOMEN IN WAR

wildered, without knowing anybody or to whom
to have recourse. A horseman held his sabre
over me, saying, ' Cowardly woman, you shall
not pass/ ' Sir, I am with child, and dying ;
have pity on me/ ' Poor wretch, I pity you/
he answered, and he let me pass. The soldiers,
while flying themselves, reproached the women
very unjustly for doing the same, and for having
caused the rout by their fears/'

Yet, if we may believe Mme de Laroche-
jaquelein, it was largely by the women that
the rout was stopped. A boy nearly killed his
own mother for running away ; but, on the
other hand :

"Madame de Bonchamp, who was in the
town, rallied the men of her husband's army.
I also wanted to oppose myself to the rout ;
but I was so weak and ill that I could hardly
stand. I saw at a distance some of my acquaint-
ances, but did not venture to move to join
them, for fear of adding to the confusion and
appearing to be running away. A number of
women showed prodigious resolution and de-
cision of character. They stopped the run-
aways, struck them, and opposed their passing.
I saw the femme-de-chambre of Mme de la
Chevalerie take a musket and put her horse
to a gallop, crying out : ' Forward, women of
Poitou ! ' "

That was at Dol. The tide of battle was

LA VENDEE 205

turned, and " the women were thanked for
the share they had had in this success/' The
army resumed its march, and tried to take
Angers, as unsuccessfully as it had tried to
take Granville. It was at the attack upon An-
gers that Mme de Larochejaquelein ventured
under fire, and was fetched back by a horseman
whom her father sent after her. " I experi-
enced," she candidly admits, " a secret feeling
of satisfaction in thus seeing myself out of the
danger which I had gone to seek/' At Angers,
too, Mme de Larochejaquelein's aunt disap-
peared ; and the search for her was vain :
' We never knew the particulars of her strange
and melancholy disappearance ; but we heard
of her being taken prisoner and perishing on
the scaffold, two days afterwards/'

Then began the march through La Fleche
to Le Mans ; and, on the way, another of the
terrors which war has for women who are also
mothers was experienced :

" While I was at La Fleche, I looked out for
an asylum for my poor little girl. Nobody
could undertake the charge of her, notwith-
standing the rewards I offered ; she was too
young to be concealed and kept from crying/'

At Le Mans, too, no refuge could be found
for the child ; and the royalists had hardly
entered Le Mans when the republicans attacked
them there, and drove them out, after a battle
in which there were 15,000 casualties. Mme

206 WOMEN IN WAR

de Larochejaquelein was swept away in the
rout :

" I saw a young man on horseback pass near
me, with a gentle countenance. I took his
hand. ' Sir/ said I to him, l have pity on a
poor woman, sick, and with child. I cannot
go on/ The young man began to cry, and
answered, ' I am a woman also ; we shall
perish together, for I cannot make my way in
the street any more than you can/ We both
stayed and waited. "

Separated from her mother and her child,
she picked them up again at Laval. The next
halting-place was Craon, where she learnt that
her aunt — a woman of eighty — had been taken
at Angers, and shot. It was a race now for the
Loire ; and it was doubtful whether those who
reached it would be able to cross. A few suc-
ceeded, at Ancenis ; but Mme de Larocheja-
quelein was one of the many who did not. She
found, at Ancenis, a peasant woman who was
willing, for money, to take charge of her little
girl : she herself went on to Nort, where the
demoralised royalist officers opened the military
chest and divided its contents. From Nort,
she continued with the diminishing remnant
to Blin, and from Blin to Savenay. Her
description of the dress of the fugitives, who
had by this time worn out all the clothes with
which they began the campaign, is very graphic :

" Besides my peasant dress, I had on my

LA VENDEE 207

head a purple flannel hood, and an old blanket
wrapped about me, and a large piece of blue
cloth tied round my neck with twine. I wore
three pairs of yellow worsted stockings, and
green slippers, fastened to my feet with cord.
My horse had a hussar's saddle with a sheep-
skin. M. Roger Mouliniers had a turban, and
a Turkish dress which he had taken from the
theatre at La Fleche. The Chevalier de Beau-
volliers was wrapped up in a lawyer's gown, and
had a woman's hat over a flannel night-cap.
Mme d'Armaeille and her children were covered
with pieces of yellow damask. M. de Verteuil,
who was killed in battle, had two petticoats on,
one fastened round his neck, and the other round
his waist."

It was as if they had dressed for a comic opera
and then been called upon to play a tragedy ;
and the last act of the tragedy was near. At
Savenay, Mme de Larochejaquelein was roused
from her sleep, and warned by her friend, the
royalist leader, M. de Marigny :

" It is all over," he whispered. " We are
lost. To-morrow's attack cannot be resisted.
In twelve hours the army will be exterminated.
I hope to die. Try to escape. Save yourself
during the darkness. Farewell ! Farewell ! "

She set out at midnight with her mother and
a Mile Mamet. Their guide was drunk : they
fell into many ditches, but they found a refuge

208 WOMEN IN WAR

for the night at the Chateau de 1'Ecuraye.
Thence they were conducted to a farm-house
in a wood, getting out by a back door while the
republican hussars were entering the courtyard
of the chateau, and sent out to tend sheep, as
the least suspicious occupation available for
them. And even that place of refuge was not
final —no place of refuge could be. The Blues
were everywhere on the prowl, and it fared ill
with any royalists whom they caught. It was
not safe to stay long in any one hiding-place :
it was often necessary, when the Blues were
known to be coming, to hide in a wood, or even
in a ditch.

That was the manner of Mme de Laroche-
jaquelein's life, all through the winter, all
through the spring, all through the summer :
sometimes in comfortable, more often in uncom-
fortable, asylums. In these distressing con-
ditions, she gave birth to twins ; they were
secretly baptized, and their baptismal certi-
ficates were scratched on pewter plates with
a nail, and buried. In the end, when the
severity of the search was relaxed, and an
amnesty was offered — though it was doubtful
whom that amnesty would include and whom
it would exempt — she got into Nantes, " dressed
as a peasant, with a wallet on my shoulders,
and some fowls in my hand/* It was not till
she got there that she learnt the fate of her
friends.

Some of them had been taken in battle ; some

LA VENDEE 209

had been captured and shot ; others had been
guillotined or drowned in the Loire ; a few—
but they were very few — had escaped. In the
last class was included her friend, Mme de Bon-
champ who, at the time of the dispersal of the
royalists at Ancenis, had sickened for the small-
pox while hiding in the trunk of a hollow tree :

" At the end of three months she was dis-
covered, conveyed to Nantes, and condemned
to death. She had resigned herself to her fate,
when she read on a slip of paper, handed to
her through the grate of her dungeon, these
words : * Say you are with child/ She made
this declaration, and her execution was sus-
pended. Her husband having been dead a long
time, she was obliged to say the child belonged
to a republican soldier."

The lie was eventually exposed ; but it tided
her over the time of peril, and she obtained her
reprieve. Few others were as fortunate, though
Mme de Larochejaquelein's maid Agatha escaped
by finding favour in the eyes of the republican
General Lamberty. Her indignant resistance
of his advances, even when the acceptance of
them seemed to be the price of her salvation,
so impressed him that he removed her from
the boat on which she had been placed, to be
drowned, and found her a hiding-place. And
then came Thermidor, and Mme de Laroche-
jaquelein's opportunity to obtain a passport
and get away. She mentions with pride the

210 WOMEN IN WAR

fact that republican officers, who were address-
ing each other as " thee " and " thou," spoke
to her deferentially in the third person, the
style which domestic servants and small trades-
people adopt in conversation with their
employers and social superiors. She adds :

" The Vendean ladies, and I in particular,
had such a warlike reputation that they
fancied Mme de Lescure must be a great, mas-
culine woman, wielding her sabre, and fearing
nothing. I was obliged to disclaim all the
high feats attributed to me, and frankly tell
how the least danger frightened me."

Thus she got to Bordeaux, and thence to
Spain, subsequently returning to France to
engage in further intrigues which there is no
need to review. Decidedly she was not a great
woman, though her experiences were painful
and interesting. No one can deny that her
ideas were firmly fixed ; but no one can contend
that her ideals were high. She fought (or,
at least, embroidered banners and stitched
cockades) for a faction at the very time when
the conception of the fatherland as something
greater and worthier than any faction was
obtaining a new grip on the minds of her
countrymen ; and she flattered herself that her
sedition was noble and religious.

So we leave her ; but about La Vendee, and
the women of La Vendee, there is still some-
thing more to be said.

CHAPTER XX

The Duchesse de Berry — Her attempt to raise La Vendee for the
Comte de Chambord — Failure of her friends to dissuade her —
The rising — Defeat — Mme de Berry seeks a hiding-place at
Nantes.

OUR next Vendean name is that of Marie-
Caroline, Duchesse de Berry. In her story,
too, the romance of war was supplemented by
romance of a tenderer kind ; and we shall
not find the war so bloody that it need
distract our attention from the lighter and
brighter aspects of that ' romance. Mme de
Berry was of the generation of the Romantics :
the contemporary of George Sand, Alfred de
Musset, Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Alfred de
Vigny, and other interesting men and women
of letters who, in order that they might write
romantic books, laid themselves out to live
romantic lives. She shared their temperament,
if not their talents ; and she may be said
to have represented the Romantic Movement
in royal circles, and in the sphere of civil
strife. She was not bloodthirsty, like the Ven-
deans of the revolutionary epoch ; and her
enemies were not ferocious, like the republicans
of that date : romanesque is the epithet to

212 WOMEN IN WAR

which she is best entitled. Her attempted
revolution can be best described as an escapade :
a revolution which was to have been made in
rose-water, and was delicately dealt with by
antagonists who wore kid gloves.

Born in 1798, Mme de Berry was the daughter
of Bomba, King of Naples, and the sister of
Queen Cristina, consort of Ferdinand VII of
Spain. She and her sister had many traits in
common : an equal energy ; an equal passion
for political intrigue, based on the unreasoned
assumption that it was really worth men's while
to fight, and suffer, and die for the dynastic
causes which they represented ; an equal
susceptibility, in the third place, to the passion
of love inspired by men of inferior station ; an
equal readiness, in conclusion, to settle down,
after the period of sturm und drang had passed,
to the domestic duties of the mothers of large
fainilies. Just as Cristina, after Ferdinand had
died, lost no time in proposing marriage to
Private Mufioz of the Guards, whom she
promoted to the rank of Grandee of Spain, so
the Duchesse de Berry — but we shall see.

The Due de Berry, it will be remembered, was
the heir of Charles X, and was assassinated,
the inheritance thus passing to his infant son,
the Comte de Chambord. In 1830, however,
came that " July Revolution" which drove
Charles X into exile. He fled to England, and
the Duchesse de Berry fled with him, and made
her headquarters at his home, first at Lulworth,

MME DE BERRY 213

in Dorsetshire, and afterwards at Holyrood
Palace, in Edinburgh. It was a dull life for
her, for Charles X was a dull man to live with,
a man who divided his time between long prayers
and long games of whist. He was not welcomed
and feasted at Holyrood, but simply allowed
to live there, seeking sanctuary there from
his creditors — army contractors who desired,
but were unable, to obtain, some payment, on
account of expenses incurred by them, long
before, in equipping the army of Conde.

At first Mme de Berry was able to relieve her
tedium by exploring England and visiting the
country seats of the aristocracy. She was
present at the opening of the railway between
Manchester and Liverpool ; she stayed with
the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, and
with Lord Scarsdale at Kedlestone. We hear
of her at Malvern, Birmingham, Cheltenham,
Gloucester, Clifton, Bristol, and Bath. " She
made/' writes Mme de Boigne in the last instal-
ment ot her Memoirs, " quite a long stay at
Bath. The news reached Paris that, at Bath,
she had given birth to a daughter. The sequel
renders all stories of that kind quite probable ;
but, at the moment, I believed the rumour to be
the calumnious invention of her enemies, and
was most indignant at it."

The " sequel," however, was not to be im-
mediate, and will have no place in these pages.
Here we have only to note that Mme de Berry
was bored, and, being bored, decided to go to

214 WOMEN IN WAR

Italy, " where/' according to Mme de Boigne,
" nobody in the least wanted to see her."
Whether her plans for the enterprise which was
to relieve her boredom were formed before she
left England or afterwards, it is difficult to
say, — it was not, at all events, until after her
arrival in Italy that they matured and took
shape. She then decided to hire a boat, land
on the French coast, issue a manifesto, and
appeal to her friends to help her. So, having
provided herself with £6,000 for preliminary
expenses, she set out on the Carlo Alberto, and
succeeded in disembarking on a beach near
Marseilles.

The opinion of her friends was sharply divided
as to the wisdom of her proceedings. Hotheads
like Charette, the Vendean guerilla chieftain,
were urging her on ; more cautious supporters,
like Chateaubriand, and the eloquent royalist
advocate, Berryer, were trying to hold her
back. Charette, in fact, wrote to her to say
that he had armed and organised La Vendee,
and concluded with the appeal : " Every day
that you remain absent from the country is a
day stolen from your son's inheritance/' Cha-
teaubriand, on the other hand, refused the
post which she offered him in the Provisional
Government which she proposed to nominate.
" Minister Plenipotentiary by night," he wrote,
" charge d'affaires receiving his credentials in
the dark — those are commissions for which I
am not sensible of any aptitude. Concealed

MME DE BERRY 215

devotion makes no appeal to me. I must show
my loyalty openly or not at all."

That was his polite way of expressing him-
self : in conversation with Mme de Boigne, he
expressed himself less politely, speaking of
Mme de Berry as " that Italian dancer on the
tight-rope." And Mme de Berry, in the mean-
time, was beginning to fail, without even
having enjoyed a first encouraging glimmer
of success. The revolution was to have begun
at Marseilles ; but it was found impossible even
to bring about a riot there. The signal was
to have been given by the ringing of the tocsin
at the Church of Saint-Martin ; but the sexton
who had the key of the belfry could not be
found when he was wanted. The rioters dis-
persed quietly, supposing that they had mis-
taken the day for the revolution. The few of
them who still hung about were arrested, and
the Duchesse de Berry, who was hiding in the
vicinity, received the laconic note : " The
movement has failed ; you had better get out
of the country at once."

The sea was so rough that she could not do
so ; and the custom-house officers were search-
ing the coast for her. Moreover, she remembered
a dream which she had had before her departure
—a dream in which her dead husband had
appeared to her, and spoken these significant
words : " I quite approve of your plans ; but
you will not succeed in the south — only in La
Vendee." That was a plain intimation that

216 WOMEN IN WAR

she had better get to La Vendee as best she
could ; so she smashed open the door of a
fisherman's hut, and spent the night in it. The
next day she threw herself on the hospitality
of a republican, who was too chivalrous to
betray her, and got thence to the chateau of
M. de Bonrecueil. A post-chaise was there
found for her, and she drove across France,
like any ordinary traveller, unsuspected by
the gendarmes — representing that one of her
retainers was her husband and another her
footman. A hiding-place was found for her :
she dressed herself as a peasant girl, and assumed
the name of Petit Pierre.

Once more her serious friends urged her not
to be so foolish. Berry er, in particular, under-
took a romantic journey in order to obtain a
secret interview with her. Guided mysteri-
ously to her hiding-place by a little child, he
not only admonished her himself, but handed
her a letter of admonition from Chateaubriand.
"The true friends of Your Royal Highness,"
Chateaubriand wrote, " consider that, if Your
Royal Highness is now in the West or the South
(where they cannot believe her to be) it would
be well for her to withdraw as promptly as
possible, after first exerting all her authority
for the pacification of the departments, and
leave France the pleasing recollection of her
courage, her beneficence, and her virtue/'
Some of the local leaders spoke in the same
sense, pointing out that their organisation was

MME DE BERRY 217

incomplete, their supply of munitions inade-
quate, and the failure of their projected enter-
prise as nearly certain as anything in this world
can be.

But Mme de Berry was not to be put off like
that. She had been promised a revolution,
and she meant to have one, or to know the
reason why : she spoke to that effect, thumping
the table vigorously. The most effective argu-
ment which Berryer could use was that the
Government did not take her seriously, and was
not likely to do so ; that there was no chance
whatever of her perishing gloriously either in
action or on the scaffold ; that she would
certainly be taken prisoner, and might be locked
up for a very long time — perhaps for the
remainder of her life. That prospect frightened
her, and she promised to drop her schemes ;
but she had hardly given her promise before
she exercised the privilege of her sex, and
changed her mind, owing to the receipt of false
news contained in a lying letter, which doubtless
emanated from one of the hotheads of the party.

" What's this ? " she exclaimed, when she
had read it. " The heather on fire in the
south ! Then I shall not leave France ! No,
no ! " And she hastily scrawled and despatched
to Charette a note concluding with these oracular
words : " Don't hand in your resignation, my
friend ! Petit Pierre has no intention of hand-
ing in hers." And Charette obeyed her loyally,
and she had her civil war, though it was a

218 WOMEN IN WAR

badly bungled business ; so badly bungled,
and so quickly over, that it is not worth while
to attempt any detailed relation of the fighting.
Wherever the partisans presented themselves
they were easily scattered ; and the only feat
of arms of any consequence was the defence of
the Chateau de Penissiere by 45 Vendeans
against about 900 regulars. The chateau being
burnt over their heads, they charged and cut
their way out, cheering for Henri V — Mme de
Berry having made her escape just before the
attack began.

That was all, except for brigandage and
reprisals. Mme de Berry's war was over almost
as soon as it had begun ; and she now found
herself abandoned in an out-of-the-way farm-
house, a leader without followers, and with no
companion except the daughter of one of her
supporters, Mile Eulalie de Kersabiec, who
had gone through the campaign with her—
such a poor campaign as it had been — under
the name of Petit Paul. She and her friend
conferred together, and decided that they would
go to Nantes, and that Madame de Berry should
hide there, and wait upon events.

It is not a very exciting story, so far ; but
it has a sequel. In fact, it has two sequels,
each of them exciting in its way.

CHAPTER XXI

Mme de Berry in hiding — Her betrayal by the Jew Deutz — Her
discovery in a secret chamber by the gendarmes — Her arrest
and removal to prison — How Deutz received the reward of his
treachery.

IT was in the disguise of peasant women coming
to market that the Duchesse de Berry and
her friend passed the gates of Nantes ; and, as
it was the custom of peasant women in those
days to go about with bare feet, Madame soiled
her feet in the filth of a farm-yard dunghill in
order that their whiteness might not arouse
suspicion. And so she disappeared from view ;
and for five months all France — and indeed all
Europe, with the exception of a few personal
friends — wondered what had become of her.
Some thought that she was dead ; others that
she was still dodging the gendarmerie in Ven-
dean farm-houses ; others, again, that she had
escaped from the country and was travelling
under an assumed name. The truth was that
she was living at Nantes, in a garret at the top
of the house belonging to the loyal Miles de
Guiny, prepared, whenever the alarm might be
raised, to seek the greater seclusion of a secret
chamber behind the fire-place.

219

220 WOMEN IN WAR

" You had better hang Walter Scott. It is
he who is really to blame for the escapade,"
was the verdict of a sage cynic on the pro-
ceedings ; and, in truth, they were just such
proceedings as the exciting romances of a
popular novelist might have suggested. Yet
there was, at the same time, a certain method
in the madness. It was not merely that
Madame thought it incumbent on her to share
the risks of the- insurrectionists whom Louis
Philippe's soldiers were busily hunting down ;
it was also not unreasonable for her to hope, like
Mr. Micawber, that, if she waited long enough,
1 ' something " would, in point of fact, "turn
up."

Neither Louis Philippe nor his ministers en-
j oyed great personal popularity ; and there was
a likelihood of complications resulting from
their foreign policy. The question of Belgian
independence, in particular — for Belgium had
lately cut itself away from the United Nether-
lands— seemed likely to embroil France with
the northern Powers. Should it do so, France
might be invaded : should there be such an
invasion, and should Madame then show herself
at the head of a Vendean host, there was no
saying what might not happen. Those were
the reflections of which she chewed the cud in
her garret, during those five months, corre-
sponding, the while, secretly and, as a rule, in
cipher, with her supporters, and even with the
King of Holland, to whom she looked for help.

MME DE BERRY 221

Meanwhile the Orleanist Government continued
its search, and the nets closed.

Not that the Orleanists had any particular
desire to capture her, or any intention of treat-
ing her with severity, if they caught her. She
was the Queen's niece ; and, if the royal family
thirsted for the blood of her adherents, it
certainly did not thirst for hers. If only she
would have taken to flight, honour would have
been declared to be satisfied ; and she would
have been laughed at, and pardoned. Still,
as she would not take to flight, and as her
continued presence in the country entailed
possibilities of further mischief, there was
nothing for it but to rout her out of her retreat.
The task of finding her devolved upon Thiers :
a most devoted adherent of the House of
Orleans, and a Minister of the Interior to whom
the duties of police espionage attaching to the
office were not repugnant. The narrative of
his method of discharging them reads like an
instalment from a sensational story of mystery
and crime.

He strongly suspected, if he did not actually
know, that Mme de Berry was in Nantes ; but
her secret was well kept, and private houses,
and even convents, were searched for her in
vain. But then, one day, Thiers received 'an
anonymous letter, which promised him " import-
ant revelations on an affair of State," if he could
meet his correspondent alone, at midnight, in
a solitary spot near the Champs £lysees. This

222 WOMEN IN WAR

looked like a plot to murder or kidnap him ;
and he was a cautious man. He kept the
appointment ; but he took several detectives
with him, with the result that he saw no one.
On the following morning, however, he received
a second anonymous letter, running thus :

" I asked you to come alone; but you came
with an escort : that is why I did not speak to
you. If you really wish for the information
which I am able to give you, come again to
the same place to-night ; but you must come
unattended. "

Even so, Thiers was not fully reassured ; but
he, nevertheless, did as he was bidden, taking
his courage in both hands, and a brace of pistols
in his pocket. He waited a few minutes, and
then, just as he was beginning to suspect a
hoax, a man emerged from the darkness, saying
that he was the author of the anonymous
communication, and that his name was Deutz.
The following dialogue ensued :
* ' What do you want with me ? "
" I have reason to believe that you are
looking for the Duchesse de Berry.'*
" Supposing that I am—
" I can put you in the way of finding her."
" What is your price ? "
" Five hundred thousand francs."
" Very well. If you find her for me, you
shall have the money ; but you will be kept
under surveillance, and, if you fail to find her,

MME DE BERRY 223

you will be arrested as an agent of the con-
spiracy."
" Agreed."

This man Deutz was a German Jew, the son
of a Rabbi, but a convert — at all events, an
alleged convert — to Christianity. He had been
in relations with Mme de Berry, and had won
the partial confidence of the Legitimists by the
ardour of his orthodox professions. If he did
not know where Madame was hiding at the
moment, at least he knew people whom he
could induce to tell him : he proposed to get
this information, and to sell it for pieces of
silver. Thiers sent him to Nantes, but was
careful to send police officers with him, to make
sure that he ran straight.

He did not obtain his information quite so
easily as he expected, having to deal with people
to whom all Jews, whether converted or other-
wise, were objects of suspicion. At last, how-
ever, Madame herself heard that he was look-
ing for her, and sent for him. Though her
friends suspected him, she did not : she even
entrusted him with a letter to deliver, and gave
him twenty-five louis for his services in deliver-
ing it. He took her money, and then went out
and betrayed her to the police, who had already
surrounded the house, and were watching all
the exits : he gave them their signal, and they
acted.

It was by the merest accident that his

224 WOMEN IN WAR

treachery was not detected in time. At the
very moment when he was assuring Mme de
Berry of his unflinching devotion to her in-
terests, a letter, written in sympathetic ink,
was handed to her. One of her companions,
M. de Mesnard, took the necessary steps for
making it legible, and found that it contained
a warning that she was " about to be betrayed
by a person in whom she reposed perfect
confidence." " You hear that, Deutz ? Per-
haps it is you," she said with a smile. " Very
possibly," he replied, turning the matter off
with a laugh ; and very few minutes had passed
before she knew his treachery. For another
of her companions, M. Guibourg, looked out of
window, and saw the police closing in on the
house, and called out : " Quick, madame. We
are betrayed ; we must make haste and hide."
Whereupon, they all ran upstairs to the garret,
and crawled into the secret chamber, while the
gendarmes were searching the lower rooms.

The gendarmes found the dinner -table laid
for five ; but the only person who presented
herself to them was the elder Mile du Guiny,
who explained that she had been expecting
guests, but rather imagined that the ferocious
aspect of the gendarmes had frightened them
away. The gendarmes did not believe that
story : they garrisoned every room, and sent
for architects and masons to advise and help
them in their quest, which was destined to be
a long one. The architects demonstrated theo-

MME DE BERRY 225

retically that the structure of the house was
such that it could not possibly contain a secret
chamber. The masons banged at all the walls
with heavy hammers, but failed to detect any
hollow ring indicating such a hiding-place.
Night overtook them before they had finished
their task. They knocked off work and went
home ; but the gendarmes were ordered to
remain at their posts until the morning. They
tempted Mile du Guiny's cook with offers of
money, spreading innumerable pieces of gold
before her eyes on the kitchen-table ; but that
loyal woman resisted the temptation.

Meanwhile, as we know, Mme de Berry and
her friends were in the secret chamber behind
the fire-place. It was so small a secret chamber
that the tallest of them could not even stand
upright in it, but had to crouch as if in a cage ;
and they had nothing to eat except a few lumps
of sugar which M. de Mesnard had hurriedly
stuffed into his pocket. For sixteen hours they
stood thus, huddled together, munching a lump
of sugar from time to time ; and they would
have stood siege even longer, if an accident had
not brought about their discovery.

It was a chilly November night, and the
gendarmes on guard in the garret began to
feel cold, and decided to light the fire. There
was no wood or coal in the room, but there
was an enormous bundle of the various fashion
papers to which Mme de Berry subscribed ;
so they made a fire of them, and the flames
15

226 WOMEN IN WAR

were soon roaring up the chimney. Un-
happily, however, it was by way of the
chimney that the secret chamber was provided
with air, and it was now, of course, being filled
with smoke and flames instead of air. The
prisoners were in imminent danger of being
suffocated if not of being burnt. They must
either surrender, or perish like rats in a hole;
and — horror of horrors ! — when they tried to
press the spring which should have released
them, they found it too hot to be pressed.
There was nothing for it, after all, but to
appeal to the gendarmes for help, for already
Madame1 s skirts were catching fire ; so they
kicked violently at the panelling to attract
attention.

" What's that noise ? Who is there ? " the
startled gendarmes called to them.

" It is us. We surrender. Quick, and help
us to get out ! " came the reply ; and the
gendarmes made haste to extinguish the fire
and pull down the partition. It was quickly
done ; and then out stepped a woman, whose
arm was scarred with burns, and whose dress
was covered with ashes.

" What ! Madame la Duchesse! It is
you ? "

"Yes, it is I. You are Frenchmen and
soldiers. I throw myself on the protection of
your honour."

So they detained her, doing her no harm,
until the general came. She asked if she might

MME DE BERRY 227

spend the rest of the night where she was, but
was told that an apartment had been prepared
for her at the castle, and that she must be
removed there at once.

" But I shall be insulted in the streets ! "

" I pledge myself that you shall not be."

"And, general, we've had nothing to eat
for four-and-twenty hours. Would you mind
giving the jailer orders to have some hot soup
ready for us."

' With pleasure, madame. You shall have
your soup, and a good bottle of wine with it."

" I thank you."

That was the serio-comic end of the first sequel
of the Duchesse de Berry's civil war. Its second
is perhaps too romantic to be related in this
work ; but we must give the picture of the
treacherous Deutz receiving the reward of virtue.

There is no doubt that he regarded — or at
least represented — his remuneration in that
pleasing light ; for he wrote a vindication of
his conduct. The arrest of the Duchesse de
Berry, so brought about by him, had, he said,
saved France from the horrors of a civil war
and a foreign invasion. Madame had promised,
if she succeeded in her insurrection, to ennoble
him ; but he had sacrificed his personal interest
to his sense of his duties as a citizen. In order
to do so he had even braved the peril of assas-
sination by the Legitimists :

"France was my passion; the rule of Louis

228 WOMEN IN WAR

Philippe was my Utopia. I made up my
mind to perish, a martyr for my cause. ' All
for France' — that was my motto. I have
done my duty, and conscience is at ease. Long
live France ! Long live Louis Philippe ! "

But he could not persuade the Orleanists to
take that view of the matter. For them he
had been, and still was, the " dirty Jew" whom
they had hired to do dirty work with which
they would not have soiled their own fingers.
They made that clear to him, even in the act
of paying him, as we know from Dumas fits,
who had the story from Henri Didier, the son
of the appointed paymaster. The boy was told
by his father to hide behind a curtain at the
time when the money was to be handed over,
in order that he might learn betimes " what a
traitor was, and how one recompensed a traitor
for his ser vices. " This, according to Dumas,
is what Henri Didier saw :

" Deutz was shown in. M. Didier was stand-
ing before his desk, on which lay the 500,000
francs, in two heaps of 250,000 francs each.
As Deutz approached him, M. Didier signalled
to him to stop ; then, picking up the tongs, he
lifted the two packets of banknotes in them,
handed them to Deutz, and pointed to the
door, without uttering a single word."

CHAPTER XXII

The Empress Eug6nie — Did she " make " the Franco-German War ?
— The news of Sedan in Paris — Outbreak of the Revolution —
Flight of the Empress from the Tuileries — Her appeal to Dr.
Evans — The drive to Deauville — The crossing of the Channel
in Sir John Burgoyne's yacht.

THE Empress Eugenie is hardly to be spoken
of as a woman warrior ; but she nevertheless
has her place in this gallery on account of the
common allegation that she " made " the war
which brought the Second Empire to grief.

It is a very improbable charge, and one which
certainly cannot be proved. We know that
the Empress opposed the war with Austria for
the liberation and unification of Italy, on the
ground that it would be detrimental to the
interests of the Pope ; and we also know that,
in spite of her opposition, that war took place.
It seems over-bold to conclude that, because
she was in favour of the Mexican expedition
and the war with Prussia, therefore she was
responsible for those unfortunate adventures.
She certainly was not strong enough to in-
duce Napoleon III to hang on in Mexico
after the President of the United States had
called his attention to the Monro doctrine ; and
that, though her ambitions were supported by

230 WOMEN IN WAR

the tears and entreaties of the Empress Char-
lotte, who knelt at the Emperor's feet, imploring
him not to desert her husband, the misguided
Maximilian.

That the Empress desired the war with
Prussia is, indeed, hardly in dispute ; but it is
equally certain that she was only one of many,
on both sides of the frontier, who desired it.
Bismarck, as we all know, desired it so intensely
that he tampered with the text of a despatch
in order to give the French the impression that
the King of Prussia had insulted their Am-
bassador, and so work them up into aggressive
fury. That doctored despatch published, it
was as if a spark had been dropped on tinder ;
and, if the Empress helped to fan the resulting
flame, the flame, in fact, needed very little
fanning. The Paris mob was already shouting
" A Berlin ! " two days before the meeting
of the Council at which the Empress is declared
to have pronounced, in fiery language, that war
was necessary to save the honour of France ; and
it certainly was not the Empress who composed
the Due de Grammont's provocative despatches
to Benedetti, for Grammont assumed full respon-
sibility for the calamitous decision :

" I determined upon the war," he wrote,
" with complete confidence in victory. I be-
lieved in the greatness of my country, in her
power, in her military valour, as firmly as I
believe in my religion."

THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 231

The Empress, no doubt, also believed in
these things, and believed in the famous assur-
ance of a Marshal of France that everything
was ready down to the last button on the last
soldier's gaiter, and did not believe — if she had
ever heard of them — in the grave warnings
addressed to the Emperor by Colonel Stoffel, the
French military attache at Berlin. " She knew/'
writes General du Barrail, who desires to fix
responsibility on her, " that, sooner or later,
war would break out, and, like a woman,—
and a passionate women — she thought it best
to get it over immediately. She neither saw
nor heard any advisers save those who assured
her that success was certain " : an indication,
of course, not that she was exploiting her
advisers, but that her advisers were exploiting
her.

It has been said that she was responsible
for the decision to withhold from the Emperor's
knowledge that verdict of his physician con-
cerning the state of his health which might have
caused him to hesitate to take the field ; but
that responsibility was really the physicians'
rather than hers. There was a consultation,
and the doctors disagreed : Dr. Ricord, who
took the pessimistic view, would not sepa-
rate himself * from his colleagues. Prince
Napoleon once, at a dinner-party, put all the
blame for the suppression of the truth and its
consequences on him. " That man," he said,
" held the destinies of France in his hands.

232 WOMEN IN WAR

If he had spoken, we should not have had the
awful war of 1870. " But that is not so certain.
There were many who held that war was
necessary to the dynasty, but that the Emperor
— a brave man, but an incapable strategist-
was by no means necessary to the war.

So the war was declared, and the Emperor
rode out to battle, while the Empress remained
in Paris to act as Regent. There was little for
her to do except to issue proclamations, and
combat a proposal, supported by Prince Napo-
leon, that the Emperor should, after the first
disasters, be recalled to Paris. " His return/'
she replied, " would look like flight. The one
place for the Emperor is with the army/' It
was the one place in which he could do no good,
and might do infinite harm ; and Bonapartist
writers have maintained that the noble lan-
guage was really the cloak of a palace
intrigue :

" She had," writes M. de la Gorce, " three
great grievances against the Emperor — he had
grown old ; he had become a Liberal ; he had
been beaten. Weakened at home by his con-
cessions, disarmed by defeat, exhausted by ill-
ness, it remained for him only to disappear. But
she was still young, and was ambitious, and
a mother. And she was Regent. . . . Hence
the secret design of providing for France,
for the Empire, for the Prince Imperial, even
without the Emperor, who would be, more or

THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 233

less, a victim sacrificed to fate by his own
faults."

That statement, however, can neither be
proved nor disproved ; and events were im-
minent which were to make palace plots,
whether real or imaginary, of no importance
whatsoever. Sedan sealed the fate of the
dynasty, though it did not bring the end of
the war. "Abdicate, and summon M. Thiers,"
was the advice given by Emile de Girardin,
the journalist, when the news of the disaster
arrived. " I think, General/' said M. de Lesseps
to a friend, " that you have eaten your last
dinner at the Tuileries." The servants at the
Tuileries, except those in immediate attendance
on the Empress, began to desert the sinking ship,
adjudging themselves small portable ornaments
as souvenirs of their services. The Empress
herself became sufficiently alarmed to tear up
private papers, unsuitable for the inspection
of revolutionists, and pulp them in a hot bath ;
though, at the same time, she sent a reassuring
telegram to her mother :

"Do not lose courage, dear mother. France
is still able to defend herself if she wishes. I
shall do my duty. Your unhappy daughter,

" EUGENIE. "'

But then followed the invasion of the Chamber
of Deputies by rioters, the overthrow of the
Ministry, and the proclamation of the Republic ;

234 WOMEN IN WAR

and then the mob proceeded towards the
Tuileries, shouting " Down with the Spaniard ! "
The Empress asked General Mellinet, a Crimean
veteran, whether the Palace could be defended
without bloodshed. He feared not. " Then
I am resolved," said the Empress, " that no
drop of blood shall be shed for me." A little
later the Prefect of Police ran in, exclaiming :

" We are betrayed. It is quite impossible
to resist. The crowds are already battering
down the railings. Her Majesty has no chance
except in immediate flight."

With her at the time were the Austrian and
Italian Ambassadors — Prince Metternich and
Signor Nigra — Admiral Jurien de la Graviere,
M. Conti, the Chief of the Emperor's Cabinet,
Lieutenant Conneau, and Mme Lebreton,
General Bourbaki's sister, her reader and com-
panion. It was the Ambassadors who took
the lead and hurried her away. She dared not
take her own carriage on account of the livery
and the crown painted on the door. Metternich
offered his carriage, but it could not be got to
the door because of the density and fury of
the mob. Admiral Jurien de la Graviere went
to the gate to gain time by parleying with the
rioters : the others meanwhile followed the
corridor leading from the Tuileries to the
Louvre. The communicating door was locked ;
but, by a happy accident, the Emperor's
Treasurer appeared, with a master-key in his

THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 235

pocket. The party passed through the gal-
leries, and found their way out on to the square
in front of the Church of Saint - Germain
TAuxerrois.

They stood there, unnoticed — at all events,
unrecognised. — watching the rabble which
streamed by, shouting : "A bas Badinguet! A
bas 1'Espagnole ! Vive la R6publique ! " Met-
ternich went to look for a cab, and luckily found
a closed one. A passing boy recognised the
Empress, but Nigra found a means of closing
his mouth ; while Metternich handed the
Empress and Mme Lebreton into their con-
veyance, and gave the driver his direction :
the residence of M. Besson, Councillor of State,
on the Boulevard Haussmann. But M. Besson
was not at home, and the door of his flat was
locked. The Empress waited, sitting on the
staircase, for a quarter of an hour, and then
lost patience. Another cab was hailed, and
another direction given. Mme Lebreton sug-
gested that they should drive to the American
Legation, but the Empress had a happier
thought :

" No, I will go to Dr. Evans. He is an
American also, but he has no political responsi-
bilities, and besides is an old friend. I am sure
he will not hesitate to render us every assistance
we may require."

It was, indeed, an inspiration. Dr. Evans
was the fashionable American dentist of the

236 WOMEN IN WAR

day : one of the two dentists (the other being
Talma) whom the world remembers for other
things besides their skill in dental surgery.
He was also a gallant man — the sort of man who
might be trusted to accept such a commission
as was now offered to him, and see the business
through without weighing the risk. So when
Dr. Evans, who had been strolling out to
inspect the Revolution, returned to his house
at the corner of the Avenue happily named
de rimperatrice, a servant met him with a
message :

" There are two ladies in the library who wish
to see you. They have not given their names,
and decline to state why they have come here ;
but they seem to be very anxious to see you,
and have been waiting for you more than an
hour."

Ladies suffering from tooth-ache are often
exceedingly anxious to see dentists, even after
the surgery is closed ; but they do not usually
decline to state the nature of their business
to the dentist's attendants. So Dr. Evans
entered wondering, and was amazed to recog-
nise the Empress, who, at once, explained why
she was there :

" You know what has taken place to-day —
that the government is in the hands of the
Revolutionists. I have come to you for pro-
tection and assistance, because I have full

THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 237

confidence in your devotion to my family. The
service I now ask on my behalf and on that of
this lady — let me introduce you to Mme Lebre-
ton — will be a severe test of your friendship/'

Never before, one imagines, in the history of
the world, was such an appeal addressed by an
Empress to a dental surgeon ; and Dr. Evans
rose to the occasion with chivalry, and faced it
with resource. Of course the Empress was
welcome to his help and hospitality. It was
most unfortunate that he was expecting a few
friends to dinner — it would not be wise to
invite suspicion by putting the party off. His
friend, Dr. Crane, however, would entertain his
guests for him, and get rid of them as early in
the evening as possible. Meanwhile, there was
no danger to be apprehended. Her Majesty
had not been traced to his house, and it was the
last place in Paris in which any one would think
of looking for her — who would suspect her of
suspending her flight in order to pay a visit
to the dentist ? It would be unwise for her to
drive, as she proposed, to Poisy, and there
pick up the night train to Havre; she would
almost certainly be recognised by some fellow
passenger. In the early morning, she would
have a fair chance of getting off unobserved;
he would himself drive her to Deauville, where
Mrs. Evans was staying : there she would
probably be able to hire a boat to take her to
England.

238 WOMEN IN WAR

The Empress agreed, and produced a bundle
of passports which she had acquired in view of
emergencies. One of them, covering the case
of a British physician and a patient, was
selected as the most appropriate. Dr. Crane
would impersonate the physician, and the
Empress the invalid ; Dr. Evans would pretend
to be her brother, and Mme Lebreton would
travel as her nurse. So it was arranged ; and,
after a night's rest, the start was made at five
o'clock in the morning, the Empress wearing
no disguise except a veil, and carrying no
luggage except a small reticule. At the Porte
Maillot Dr. Evans leant in front of the Empress
in order to answer the questions of the officer
on guard. His statement that he had promised
to spend the day with friends in the country
was accepted. They drove through, the Em-
press chattering the while, telling Dr. Evans
why she had refused to abdicate, and how much
she would have preferred to remain in Paris
during the inevitable siege :

" I could have been of service in many ways.
I could have been an example of devotion to
my country. I could have visited the hospitals ;
I could have gone to the outposts ; I could
have encouraged and stimulated the defence
at every point of danger by my presence. . . .
Oh ! why could they not have let me die before
the walls of Paris ! "

And so forth ; for if the Empress lacked

THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 239

discretion, she, most assuredly, did not lack
courage. She was to have, and to take, her
chance of proving that fact before the journey
was over.

An exciting journey, of which the particulars
should be read in Dr. Evans's graphic Memoirs.
How the carriage broke down ; how other
carriages, and relays of horses, had to be
intrigued for ; how the travellers got hungry
and were glad to divide a saveloy ; how, at
the wayside inn at which they stopped for the
night, another guest had to be bribed to give
up his room to the " invalid " and the " nurse " :
— these are details which cannot be related
within the narrow compass of these pages,
though one may pause to say a word of the
courtesy of the shopkeeper of Lisieux, who, not
knowing who the ladies were, brought chairs
for them when they took refuge from the
rain in his door- way, while Dr. Evans and
Dr. Crane were engaged in a long search for
a conveyance. They apologised for the liberty
they had taken ; but :

" That," said the young man, " is a liberty
which belongs to everybody in France on a
rainy day. Should your carriage not come,
and should you get tired of standing, if you
will come into the office, we shall be happy to
find seats for you."

The carriage came, however, and Deauville
was duly reached. Dr. Crane and Mme Lebreton

240 WOMEN IN WAR

entered the Hotel du Casino and asked for
rooms ; while Dr. Evans smuggled the Empress
up to Mrs. Evans's apartment. A few drops of
rain gave him an excuse for opening his umbrella,
which he held so as to screen the Empress's
face. She greeted Mrs. Evans, and then fell
back exhausted into an arm-chair, exclaiming,
" Oh ! Mon Dieu ! Je suis sauvee." But, of
course, it still remained to get her across the
Channel, on which a storm was raging — the
famous storm in which the Captain went down
with all hands.

Dr. Evans went down to the harbour to see
what could be arranged. He found the yacht
Gazelle, and introduced himself to its owner,
Sir John Burgoyne, to whom he told his secret
and preferred his request. It was hardly
weather in which such a yacht as his could
safely put out to sea ; and the service which he
was asked to render was not without its political
significance. Dr. Evans argued with him.
" In our country," he said, " every man will
run any risk for a woman, and especially for
a lady whose life is in danger." Sir John was
not thinking of any risk to himself ; but he
had Lady Burgoyne with him. It was agreed
to refer the matter to her ; and she did not
hesitate.

"Why not? " she said. "I shall certainly
be very pleased if we can be of any assistance
to her, and I can readily understand how

THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 241

anxious she must be at the present moment to
find a refuge. Let her come to us to-night, or
as soon as she can safely do so."

So Dr. Evans smuggled the Empress down to
the harbour at midnight, in the gale — walking
three quarters of a mile over sand-drifts, stumb-
ling into holes full of water, and arriving be-
draggled, drenched, and splashed, from head
to foot, with mud. The ladies were very glad
of the changes of clothing provided by Lady
Burgoyne, and also of the hot punch provided
by Sir John : they retired to their bunks, and
the voyage began at about seven on the follow-
ing morning.

The gale was fierce, and got fiercer. The
spinnaker boom was lost : it was necessary to
reef the mainsail, run down the jib, and set
the storm- jib. Sir John Burgoyne proposed to
return for refuge to a French port ; but the
Empress begged him not to, assuring him that
she was not afraid. He said no more, but
continued on his course.

' The Empress told me afterwards," writes
Dr. Evans, " that during this night she several
times thought we were sinking, and that the
noise and the creaking were such as to cause her
to believe that the yacht would certainly go to
pieces before many minutes. ' I was sure we
were lost/ she said ; ' but, singular as it may
seem, I did not feel alarmed in the least. I
have always loved the sea, and it had for me
16

242 WOMEN IN WAR

no terrors then. Were I to disappear, I thought
to myself, death, perhaps, could not come more
opportunely, nor provide me with a more
desirable grave.' "

By degrees, however, the storm abated, and
the party landed at Ryde, giving their names
at the hotel in which they sought shelter as
"Mr. Thomas and sister, with a lady friend/'
They looked so dilapidated that the Pier Hotel
declined to accommodate them, and the York
Hotel would only give them small rooms at
the top of the house. But there was a Bible
there ; and the Empress who, as a Catholic,
was not very familiar with Holy Writ, opened
it, in idle curiosity, and lighted upon a consoling
passage : " The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall
not want. He maketh me to lie down in
green pastures ; He leadeth me beside the still
waters." One can imagine that the promise
of " still waters" struck her as particularly
apposite at that hour, and that the only text
which could have pleased her better would have
been that which promises that, in the life after
death, " there shall be no more sea."

Her adventures were over, however ; and
she was able to go to Hastings and meet the
Prince Imperial, who had just arrived there
after passing through Belgium. Dr. Evans
found a house for her — the house in which she
lived, for so many years, at Chislehurst ; and
she settled down in it. But, though her

THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 243

adventures were over, she had not yet done
with the diplomacy arising out of the war and
the Revolution. There were still to be what
some call negotiations, and others call intrigues :
those intrigues (or negotiations) in which were
mixed up Bazaine, Bourbaki, the Prussian
Ambassador at the Court of St. James's, and
the mysterious Henri Regnier.

Perhaps we shall, some day, know the full
truth about that story ; perhaps we shall never
know it. It is not certain that the Empress
herself knew at the time, or knows now, who
R£gnier was, or by whom he was accredited ;
though the probability is that he was a secret
agent in the Prussian service. The purpose
of the intrigue (or negotiation) in which he was
employed as a go-between was to arrange a
peace : the Empress, as Regent, to conclude
that peace over the heads of the Provisional
Government of National Defence, and Bazaine's
army to be released from Metz in order to
guarantee the observation of the terms agreed
to. Bourbaki was allowed to go to Chislehurst
to discuss the matter with the Empress ; and
a certain amount of fresh light is thrown upon
the proceedings by the Bernstorff papers.
There is an account in them of a secret interview
between the Empress and Count Bernstorff at
Lady Cowley's house in Albemarle Street :

" I remember/' the editor writes, " one
point of curious interest. My father told me

244 WOMEN IN WAR

that the Empress was obviously rouged. She
dabbed the tears out of her eyes during the
interview, after the custom of ladies who do
not wish the salt drops to injure the artificial
colouring of their cheeks. "

A very natural desire. But the negotiations,
very naturally, and most rightly and properly
came to nothing. Bismarck may or may not
have been willing to grant better terms to the
Empress than to Jules Favre ; the Empress
may or may not have believed that she was
serving the true interests of France by treating
with him. But the attempt, nevertheless, was
an attempt to override the will of the French
people in the interest of the House of Bonaparte,
and to place a Bonapartist army, under a
Bonapartist general, in the field against the
Republic. The Empress was acting as a wife
and a mother rather than as a patriot ; and
it was well that she should fail. What the
republicans thought of the attempt was made
clear when Bazaine stood his trial for treachery,
and was told by the Due d'Aumale, in reply
to his contention that, at the time of his sur-
render, there was no Government in the country
from which he held any commission : " II y
avait toujours la France/'

CHAPTER XXIII

Catherine the Great of Russia — Her civil war against her husband —
His discomfiture, arrest, abdication, and death in prison —
Was she murdered there ? — Was Catherine responsible ?

THE preceding chapters must have given the
impression that women warriors, if they achieve
distinction, are generally Frenchwomen. Even
the English Queens on our list have mostly
been French by birth. One might also, of
course, mention Queen Elizabeth on account
of the great military and naval events which
happened in her time ; but her personal associa-
tion with them is hardly more intimate than
that of Queen Victoria with the Crimean
expedition and the Indian Mutiny. We have
all seen pictures of Queen Elizabeth reviewing
the train-bands at Tilbury ; but a review is
not a battle. Nor can it be contended that the
special glories of the Elizabethan age were
primarily due to Elizabeth, or even that she
treated her great generals and her great admirals
particularly well. Russia and Spain are coun-
tries in which we may discover heroines more
definitely distinguished for specific martial
exploits. We will take the case of Russia
first.

245

246 WOMEN IN WAR

The case of Russia is, of course, in this con-
nection, the case of Catherine II, commonly
called Catherine the Great. How much of the
glory of the conquests of her reign was due to
her, and how much to Potemkin, may be dis-
puted ; and most serious historians will probably
agree that Potemkin is entitled to the lion's
share of it. Even the civil war in which
Catherine overthrew her husband, the debauched
and drunken Peter III, was less her work
than that of her lover, Gregory Orloff, and his
brother Alexis ; but she was, at any rate, up
to her neck in the conspiracy which they pro-
moted in her interests. Her life was staked on
the success of the game, and she knew it ; and
she mounted her horse and rode astride to the
battle which there was to be no need for her
to fight.

Her summons came suddenly, at an hour
when she was not expecting it. The conspira-
tors had heard that their conspiracy had been
betrayed ; and they knew that, if they were
to act at all, it was imperative that they
should act at once. So Alexis Orloff tapped
at Catherine's bedroom door at Peterhof, and
bade her get up at once and come with him in
the carriage which he had waiting for her ; and
she joined him as quickly as she could, and
raced through the white night of a northern
midsummer — a race in which, if a crown was
the prize, death on the scaffold, or in a dungeon,
was as certainly the penalty of failure — the

CATHERINE THE GREAT 247

immediate goal being the barracks occupied
by those guardsmen whom the promise of
handfuls of gold and bucketfuls of vodka had
corrupted from their fidelity.

The soldiers, like Catherine, were taken by
surprise. They hurried down to her, half
dressed, but dressing as they came. She ha-
rangued them while they were completing their
toilets, and they cheered her till the rafters
rang, while she called for a priest to consecrate
her usurpation. And then, if the writer may
be allowed to quote a previous work of his own
— The Comedy of Catherine the Great :

" They fetched the regimental chaplain from
his bed and hustled him down into the barrack-
yard — soldiers on each side of him, gripping
him firmly by the arm. They told him what
to pray for, and he prayed for it. They told
him to hold out the cross to be kissed, and he
obeyed them ; and then they formed a pro-
cession, bidding the priest carry the cross aloft,
and pushing him along in front."

No violence was needed for the suppression
of the few violent attempts at resistance : be-
yond the smashing of the windows of a few
wine-shops, hardly any material damage was
done. In a very brief space of time Catherine's
supporters, 18,000 strong, had escorted her
in triumph to the Winter Palace, where she
dined at an open window, coram populo, lifting
her glass, from time to time, to pledge the mob

248 WOMEN IN WAR

outside. The Senate and the Holy Synod had,
in the meantime, paid their respects to her ;
and the printing-presses had been set to work
on a manifesto, and a communication to the
Ambassadors and Ministers Plenipotentiary :

" Her Imperial Majesty, having to-day as-
cended the throne of All the Russias, in response
to the unanimous wishes and pressing solicita-
tions of all her faithful subjects, and all true
patriots of this Empire, has given orders that
the news of the event shall be communicated
to all the Foreign Ministers residing at her
Court, and that they shall be assured that Her
Imperial Majesty desires to maintain friendly
relations with the sovereigns, their masters.
The Ministers will be informed, at the earliest
possible moment, on what day it will be con-
venient for them to present their compliments
to Her Imperial Majesty and offer their con-
gratulations/'

It seemed as if all was over except the
shouting ; it was said, afterwards, that Peter
collapsed " as easily as a naughty child lets
itself be sent to bed without its supper." Still,
it was by no means certain, at the moment,
that Peter would prove so amenable. He had
1,500 soldiers actually with him, and others
within reach. In attendance on him, more-
over, was Marshal Munnich, the most renowned
of Russian soldiers — a warrior who, having

CATHERINE THE GREAT 249

smashed the Turks in the past, might well
expect to be able to smash Catherine's fac-
tion now. So that Catherine needed all her
nerve.

She had plenty of nerve ; she took the bold
course at once, marching against her hus-
band's Palace at Oranienbaum, putting on a
uniform, and riding astride at the head of her
men. And her husband, who was a craven
as well as a drunkard, fled before her, brave
Marshal Munnich foaming at the mouth be-
cause he would not fight — because no one
fought except a few peasants, armed with
scythes, whom Gregory Orion0 scattered with
the flat of his sword :

" What ! " the octogenarian warrior ex-
claimed. " You're not going to put yourself
at the head of your troops and die like an
Emperor ! If you're afraid of being hurt,
hang on to a crucifix. Nobody will dare to
touch you then, and I'll do the fighting for you,
myself."

But Peter would not fight. His mistress,
Elizabeth Vorontsof — another woman in war —
persuaded him not to. She had an idea that,
if he abandoned his throne, Catherine would
be willing to leave him the Grand Duchy of
Holstein, and that she might become his Grand-
Duchess. So he dismantled the Oranienbaum
fortifications, and wrote to Catherine, whose

250 WOMEN IN WAR

reply was a request that he would immediately
sign the following Act of Abdication :

" During the brief period of my absolute
reign over the Russian Empire I have discovered
that I am not on a level with my task, but am
incapable of governing that Empire either as
a sovereign ruler or in any fashion whatsoever.
I have also observed its decline, and the im-
minent peril of its complete collapse, which
would have covered me with eternal disgrace.
After mature deliberation, therefore, acting
under no compulsion, I solemnly declare, before
Russia, and before the Universe, that I resign
the government of the said Empire for ever ;
that I have no desire to rule over it, whether
as absolute ruler or under any other form of
constitution ; and that I will never seek to do
so by means of any support that I may be able
to obtain. In faith whereof I take my oath,
before God and the Universe, having written
and signed this Act of Abdication with my own
hand."

He wrote it out, and signed it, too broken
a man to stipulate even that the offensive
reflections on his character and competence
should be toned down ; so that Catherine's
triumph was complete. If she had not actually
fought, she had at least been prepared to
do so ; and it was because she had been
prepared to do so that she had gained so
easy a victory. We may think that she humi-

CATHERINE THE GREAT 251

liated her husband with unnecessary cruelty ;
but she was acting under provocation, and in
self-defence. Peter had insulted her in public,
and had announced his intention of shaving
her head and sending her to a nunnery. A
woman of Catherine's charm, who enjoyed life
as Catherine did, would naturally take extreme
measures to avoid such treatment, and could
hardly be expected to show merciful con-
sideration to a man who had threatened her
with it.

So that Peter, as soon as he had signed his
Act of Abdication, was arrested and treated
with contumely. He heard the soldiers on
the road cheering for Catherine as he passed
them ; and then, if another quotation from
The Comedy of Catherine the Great may be
allowed :

" It was not Catherine who received him —
her attitude was like that of the litigant who
stands aside on the ground that the matter in
dispute has passed out of his hands into those
of his solicitor. This matter was in the hands
of the soldiers ; arid their hands were rough.
They sent off Peter's aide-de-camp in one
direction and his mistress in another ; they
turned out Peter's pockets, scattering handfuls
of diamonds on the ground. ' Now undress/
they said ; and Peter stood, on the grand
staircase of his own Palace, bare-footed, clad
only in his shirt, a miserable object of mockery,

252 WOMEN IN WAR

crying like a child. Then at last they threw
a shabby cloak over him, and drove him off
to Ropscha, where he was to be confined.
According to one account, he asked that his
mistress, his negro servant, and his monkey
might accompany him. According to another
account, he begged only for a bottle of burgundy
and a pipe. They gave him, at any rate, a
Bible and a pack of cards ; and he proceeded
to beguile the time by building toy fortresses."

Presently he wrote Catherine another letter
from his prison. He was " disgusted/' he
assured her, " at the wickedness of mankind/ '
and, in order that it might trouble him the less, he
" was resolved henceforward to devote himself
to a philosophical life." But he got no chance
of doing that — he died in prison. The official
bulletin was to the effect that he had been
suddenly carried off by " hemorrhoidal colic "
— a complaint to which he was officially stated
to be subject. It was an obvious lie ; and
there can be no doubt whatever that Peter
strangled in prison by Alexis Orloff, who
was remarkable for his physical strength.
The only question really at issue is whether
Catherine ordered or was privy to the outrage.

D'Alembert thought that she was. He de-
clined Catherine's invitation to visit her on the
ground that " fatal colics are too frequent in
that country" ; but d'Alembert, of course, had
only rumour to guide him. This is what

CATHERINE THE GREAT 253

Catherine's friend, Princess Dashkof, wrote on
the subject in her Memoirs :

" I could not bring myself to enter the Palace
until the following day. I then found the
Empress with a dejected air, visibly labouring
under much uneasiness of mind. These were
her words when she addressed me : ' My horror
at this death is inexpressible ; it is a blow
which strikes me to the earth.' t It is a death
too sudden, madam/ replied I, ' for your glory
and for mine/ "

Yet Princess Dashkof believed that Catherine
knew nothing of the crime until after it had
been committed ; and the present writer has
indicated elsewhere that he endorsed Princess
Dashkof 's verdict, basing his view, not upon the
evidence — for there is no evidence worth speak-
ing of — in favour of either conclusion, but on
his general impression of Catherine's character.

" Unless/' he wrote, " she was cruel and
vindictive on this one occasion, she was very
far from being a cruel and vindictive woman ;
nor was she, so far as one can judge, a woman
to be impelled to crime by fear. But she was
a woman in the hands of men ; a stranger in
a land which had not outgrown the traditions
of savagery — a land in which one Emperor had
fried his enemies in frying-pans, and another

254 WOMEN IN WAR

had knouted his own son to death, and both
were styled c the Great/ '

But Catherine may, nevertheless, have been
ready to fall in with the view of the kind friends
who recommended her to make the best of a
bad job which might turn out to be a blessing
in disguise. Apparently she did so ; and it is
difficult to see what else there was for her to do.

CHAPTER XXIV

Spanish wars — The Maid of Saragossa — The shooting of Cabrera's
mother and other hostages in the Carlist War — The nuns of
Seville — The termagants of Barcelona.

IN our Spanish section one name stands out
pre-eminently : France is hardly more proud
of the Maid of Orleans than Spain of the Maid
of Saragossa. Unhappily, however, one cannot
make a long story about her without trespassing
on the domain of romance ; the authentic
facts are few and will fill but little space.

Spain, it will be remembered, rose, in 1808,
against King Joseph — II Rey Intruso — defied
Napoleon, and appealed to England for help.
Saragossa, in particular, astonished Napoleon
and his Marshals by the vigour of its defence,
and showed them how a city could be defended,
house by house, and street by street. Lac-
onic despatches were interchanged between the
French General Verdier and the Spanish General
Palafox :

" Headquarters, Santa Engracia.— Capitula-
tion ? "

" Headquarters, Saragossa. — War to the
knife."

255

256 WOMEN IN WAR

And the Spaniards gave the French war to
the knife. The civilians fought as well as the
soldiers, the monks as well as the laymen, the
women as well as the men ; and the memorable
scene which concerns us here was enacted at
the Portillo Gate. We shall, no doubt, be
safest in following Professor Oman's account
of it:

" The gunners at the small battery in the
gate had been shot down one after another by
the musketry of the assailants, the final survivors
falling even before they could discharge the
last gun that they had loaded. The infantry
supports were flinching and the French were
closing in, when a young woman named Agostina
Zaragoza, whose lover (an artillery sergeant)
had just fallen, rushed forward, snatched the
lighted match from his dying hand, and fired
the undischarged twenty-four-pounder into
the head of the storming column. The enemy
was shaken by a charge of grape delivered at
ten paces, the citizens, shamed by Agostina' s
example, rushed back to reoccupy the battery,
and the assault was beaten off. Palafox states
that the incident occurred before his own eyes :
he gave the girl a commission as sub-lieutenant
of artillery, and a warrant for a life pension :
she was seen a year later by several English
witnesses, serving with her battery in Anda-
lusia/'

In a footnote, Professor Oman adds :

THE MAID OF SARAGOSSA 257

" Sir Charles Vaughan was introduced to the
heroine by Palafox while he was staying in
Saragossa. . . . He describes her as ' a hand-
some young woman of the lower class/ and
says that, when he met her, she was wearing
on her sleeve a small shield of honour with the
name ' Zaragoza ' inscribed on it. The fact that
the dead sergeant was her lover is given by
Palafox in his short narrative of the siege,
which ought to be a good authority enough."

A further authority is W. Jacob, M.P., who
travelled in Spain in the years 1809-10, and
who says that he met Agostina at Seville, that
she was wearing a blue artillery tunic, with one
epaulette, over a short skirt, and that she was
present when Lord Wellesley entered Seville,
and was welcomed by the Junta. One may as
well add Napier's commentary, — the commen-
tary of a chronicler temperamentally inclined
to scepticism, but driven by the facts to faith :

" Romantic tales of women rallying the troops
and leading them forward at the most dangerous
period of the siege were current ; their truth
may be doubted. Yet, when suddenly environed
with horrors, the sensitiveness of women, driving
them to a kind of frenzy, might have produced
actions above the heroism of men."

And the proof is clear that the sensitiveness
of one woman did produce that effect.

Another story of the same war, worth reviving
in the same connection, relates to the siege of

258 WOMEN IN WAR

Badajoz. Our soldiers, after storming that
citadel, got out of hand, drank freely of what-
ever they could get to drink, rioted, looted, and
ravished, and lost all power of discriminating
between their French enemies and their Spanish
friends. One of their victims was Dona Juanna
Maria de los Dolores de Leon — a young lady,
as her name indicates, of noble birth. Her
earrings were torn from her ears ; her life—
if not her honour also — was in peril. But there
came to her rescue, in the nick of time, a certain
young Lieutenant Smith, who not only saved
her, but also fell in love with her and married
her : a very notable romance of war, seeing
that Lieutenant Smith lived to become Sir
Harry Smith, Governor of Cape Colony, and
that his Spanish bride lived to give her name to
a town which stood a siege hardly less famous
than that of Badajoz- — the gallant town of
Ladysmith in Natal.

We turn to the first Carlist War, and there
too we find stories of women involved in the
tragedies of war. In that terrible civil struggle
they suffered chiefly as hostages, no mercy
being shown to them by the generals of either
side. The most awful of all the stories is that
of the shooting by the Cristinos of the aged
mother of the Carlist General Cabrera. Cabrera
had shot two alcaldes ; and the execution of
his mother was the Cristino reply :

" On the morning of February 16, sitting

THE CARLIST WAR 259

in the stocks, and in irons, she confessed, but
was not allowed to receive the sacrament. She
was shot without trial in the Barbacana at
eleven a.m. She was a little over fifty- three
years of age. The civilised world was moved
by this barbarous act. Lord Aberdeen, on
March 18, in the House of Lords, called it an
assassination/'

So writes William Bollaert, financial agent
to Don Carlos ; and William Bollaert also tells
us how Cabrera exercised reprisals on his own
women hostages. " You will go with me," he
told them, " until my mother is liberated ; if
she suffers, you will. I cannot believe they
will harm her ; so be tranquil." But they had
harmed her ; and now :

" The day after the execution it was known
to Cabrera's aides. On the igth he asked them
the cause of their gloom. On the 2oth, being
at Valderobes, the commandant, Juan Portigaz,
was with him at 8 a.m., and, on his asking
for news, replied, ' Some say your mother has
been sent away from Tortosa ; some that they
will kill her/ ' No/ replied Cabrera, ' not while
I have Fontiveros' wife and the others. . . .
Come not to me with mysteries. . . . What of
my mother ? ' 'I shudder ; I have to tell
you the fatal words — your mother is no more ! '
* Portigaz, I wish to die. No — to live, to
revenge her death ! ' exclaimed Cabrera. His
sufferings were dreadful. During the day he

260 WOMEN IN WAR

had indited and had printed the following :
i. Noguera and all who serve the Queen are
traitors. 2. To be shot at once: the Senoras
Fontiveros, Cinta Tos, Mariana Guardia, and
Francisca Urquiza ; also others up to thirty
in number. 4. For one shot by the Cristinos
I will shoot twenty.1 An hour afterwards the
sentences pronounced on those in his power
were carried into execution/'

In the end, of course, Cabrera was beaten
by Espartero, and the Cristinos triumphed
over the Carlists ; and then General Espartero
and Queen Cristina quarrelled, and there was
further fighting. We are only concerned with
the fighting in so far as women were involved
in it ; but they were involved in it on more
than one occasion. Espartero was an anti-
clerical ; and consequently the nuns were his
enemies to a woman — especially when he
began a siege of Seville, and shells hit the
convents. Then the nuns descended into the
streets, screaming that Espartero was the most
shameless and sacrilegious of all imaginable
ruffians, and appealing to all pious men to fight
him with all their force. It may have been
partly, though it certainly was not entirely, on
account of their envenomed hostility that he
raised the siege and fled.

There was also, at about the same date, a
striking scene at a siege of Barcelona — an assault
upon the gates by an army of 6,000 women.

THE WOMEN OF BARCELONA 261

The story, which has its humorous aspects, is
related by Hughes in his Revelations of Spain :
When the siege began the bulk of the female
population retired from the city, taking their
children with them. Unfortunately, not expect-
ing the siege to last long, they left their winter
clothes behind them ; with the result that,
when the weather became wet and cold, they
found themselves " shivering in the blast, and
suffering from the frequent rains, against which
their gossamer garments were a miserably poor
protection/' They sought permission, there-
fore, to return to Barcelona for their winter
garments ; but the garrison suspecting
treachery, refused them permission to enter :

" Their women/' writes Hughes, " were
regarded as would that Adam had looked on
his in Paradise, in the light of a satanic snare ;
they dreaded lest their valour should ooze from
their lips in tender salutes, and their heroism
melt like snow in the presence of their too
long separated beauties, whose southern ardour
would be more than a match for the firmness
of Coriolanus ; they thought — that is, the few
classics among them thought — of the Trojan
horse and his bellyful of warriors ; they twitted
their mischievous Helens on the wall, and
dreaded Narvaez's forces, et dona ferentes."

But the women advanced none the less,
prepared to face bristling lines of bayonets

262 WOMEN IN WAR

" for the spectre of a shawl or the shred of a
petticoat " :

1 ' Their blankets, their shawls, and their
petticoats ! Their petticoats, their shawls, and
their blankets ! Were they to be left to shiver
and to starve in the outer world, and their
ever-loving lords to be the heartless dragons
by whom permission for one single hour to
seek these needful articles of clothing was to
be sternly refused ? It could not be. The
ghosts of their emaciated limbs would cry to
La Mancha's sheep for vengeance ! "

Their eloquence, however, was of no avail ;
and so their rage became ungovernable. They
dashed aside the bayonets, and leapt upon the
astonished sentries — and with great effect :

" They mangled the citizen-soldiers' faces,
tore their hair, damaged their eyes, and covered
their cheeks with scratches ; threw them on the
ground, disarmed them, rushed over their
panting bodies, and flung their muskets in the
ditch. The Junta of Defence and improvised
authorities of the city became seriously alarmed,
two battalions of Petulia were called out to
reinforce the ordinary guards and pickets, and
the gunners were sent to the ramparts."

But the resources of their ingenuity were not
yet exhausted. The petticoats were a prize
worth fighting for, and the women continued
to fight for them :

THE WOMEN OF BARCELONA 263

" Furor arma ministrat. The ladies took off
their stockings and filled them with stones.
They brandished these formidable weapons
round their heads, and wielded them like life-
protectors. At every blow a bearded soldier
fell. Others, who preferred a serviceable shawl
to the flimsy mantilla, tied 'a ponderous stone
in one end, and from the other plied it as a flail.
Others, again, made sacks perform the functions
of mallets, and baskets of basket-hilted swords,
sacking the town with the former weapon, and
carrying by storm with the latter. . . . Some,
with their nails, did terrible execution, and all
performed prodigies of valour with their tongues.
Veterans fled from the aspect of their enraged
dames, and the voices of the assailants were
more potent to scare the defenders than a
battery of field artillery. For half an hour
these new and unheard-of hostilities raged with
unremitting violence, and Barcelona trembled
to its foundations.'1

If it was comic, it was also serious. The
petticoats had become a symbol, and the
women were fighting for them as if for a sen-
timental grievance or an ideal. In order to
disperse them it was actually necessary to bring
out the guns, and to order volley-firing. But
when that was done :

" No flock of wild geese, alarmed by the
fowler, ever fled in greater precipitation ; away
they scampered, matron and maid, in the

264 WOMEN IN WAR

confusion of a general panic, and never halted
till they reached the main streets of Gracia,
more than half a league distant, the head-
quarters of the Captain-General. . . . Happily,
though many were scratched, and some slightly
wounded, not one amongst the whole army of
6,000 met with a serious mishap."

And for a good reason — because the chivalry
of the men had not deserted them in the hour
of peril :

" The cannon were loaded, and so was the
musketry, but both were fired over the
assailants* heads ; so that the angels were
merely fluttered and frightened, draggled a
good deal in the mud through which they
plunged topsy-turvy in their precipitate flight,
and scratched a little in the face by the onslaught
of their inordinate valour. "

So that their enterprise was a failure, and
not even a particularly glorious failure ; and
the sequel of the failure was unpleasant. They
"were left for a month longer shivering and
starving in the cold and wet, with no protection
either of clothing or bed furniture to preserve
them from the inclemencies of a rigorous
winter " ; and a subscription had to be opened
for their relief.

That was the tragic side of this serio-comic
romance of war. Viewed in its broad outlines,

THE WOMEN OF BARCELONA 265

however, it indubitably borders on the farcical ;
and there was no one among the players with
whose name we need burden our memories.
Our next chapter shall deal with more serious
matters, and see how war affected the fortunes
of famous Spanish Queens.

CHAPTER XXV

THE question at issue in the Carlist War was a
simple one : Should a bad King or a bad Queen
have the sovereign power in Spain ? Chivalry
favoured the cause of the bad Queen, who was
still a baby, and therefore not known to be
bad ; piety favoured the cause of the bad King,
who was confidently expected to take money
away from laymen and give it to clergymen.
Those were the guiding principles which deter-
mined the multitude in taking sides ; while,
from the point of view of Queen Cristina, the
widow of the unconscionable Ferdinand VII,
and Don Carlos, his unconscionable brother,
the kingdom of Spain, and everything contained
in it, was simply a patrimony which obviously
Belonged to one or other of them Neither of
them would give way ; so they fought for it
with devilish ferocity — how devilish our story
of the shooting of Cabrera's mother, and the

266

CRISTINA OF SPAIN 267

retaliatory shooting of the wives of the Cristino
officers, has already shown.

Cristina, in short, is as striking an example
as history produces of woman behind the scenes
of war, pressing springs and setting the
machinery of war in motion. She intrigued
for her daughter's kingdom at her husband's
death-bed, knowing perfectly well that she —
or rather her supporters — would have to fight
for it. In order to acquire supporters, she
made promises of constitutional reform which
she had no intention of fulfilling if she could
help it. When the war was in progress she
fomented jealousies among her generals, pitting
one of them against another — pitting Narvaez,
in particular, against Espartero ; and when
her quarrel with Espartero compelled her
abdication of the office of Regent, she went to
Paris, intrigued with Espartero' s enemies, and
brought about a second civil war, in order to
recover that dignity, and avenge herself on her
antagonists.

It is a mute point whether we should say that
she made use of Espartero's enemies or that
Espartero' s enemies made use of her ; on the
whole, perhaps it is safest to say that they ex-
ploited each other to their mutual satisfac-
tion. Cristina, at any rate, got back to Spain,
and Espartero, after a brief resistance, made
a hurried flight, execrated by the nuns
into whose convents at Seville we have seen
him throwing shells. The multitude was fickle

268 WOMEN IN WAR

enough to receive her with acclamations, after
having expelled her with taunts and threats ;
and she was able to embrace her " Isabelita "
amid ringing cheers. And Isabelita had, in
the meantime, thanks to her mother, ac-
quired some experience of the operations of
war. Isabelita, in fact, had had a very narrow
escape from being kidnapped by her mother's
friends.

The banner of rebellion had been raised by
Leopold O'Donnell at Pampeluna ; and other
leaders had engineered other revolts in other
provincial towns. Isabella and her sister, the
future Duchesse de Montpensier, were living
in the royal Palace, on the outskirts of Madrid—
a place so lonely, according to Washington
Irving, who was then American Minister in
Spain, " that ten minutes' gallop from its walls
takes you into scenes as savage and deserted
as any of Salvator Rosa's." The plan was to
carry the girls off to the insurgent headquarters,
and fight Espartero in their name as well as
their mother's. Generals Leon and Concha
were charged with the execution of it ; and
they had bribed the troops on guard without
the Palace, though they had not thought it
worth while to try to tamper with the Halberdiers
on guard within. There were only a score of
these — under the command of General Domingo
Dulce — and it was not to be supposed that they
would make any defence worth considering.
It seemed certain that the rush would succeed,

ISABELLA II 269

and that, if only the kidnappers got ten minutes'
start down the dark and solitary valley, pursuit
would be unavailing.

Isabella was eleven years old at the time — her
sister a year younger. The head governess in
charge of them was the Countess Mina, the
widow of the famous guerilla leader of the
Peninsular War, from whom we have a long
and exciting account of the adventure. Mme
Mina had left the children in charge of an
assistant governess at half-past six, meaning
to return to them at a quarter to eight. She
was about to do so when she heard a strange
noise for which she could not account — shout-
ing and cheering in one of the exterior courts.
She had no special reason for apprehending
danger, but nevertheless judged it well to hurry,
running first into the Crystal Gallery where the
Halberdiers were stationed, and then on to
the head of the main staircase, where she could
see what was happening. This is what she
saw :

" A considerable number of armed men were
on the landing of the Lions ; while the Hal-
berdiers, also armed and ready for action, were
stationed by the balustrade at the edge of the
staircase. They were receiving the first volley
of the rebels just at the moment when I passed."

She was under fire, but was not hit, though
mirrors were smashed to right and left of her.
She was still under fire —or believed that she

270 WOMEN IN WAR

was — when she reached the door of the Prin-
cesses' apartment, and banged at it, demanding
instant admission. The timorous women within
kept her waiting for some time, but withdrew
the bolt at last, and she entered and found her
eleven-year-old Queen in an agony of terror,
asking whether the men who were making the
noise were " rebels" and whether they had
" come for her." Nor would they be reassured
by the statement that nothing in particular had
happened or was happening. They sobbed in
the arms of their nurses and governesses,
shrieking : " What is it ? What is it ? I
won't be good unless you tell me." They
were told something— as much as it seemed
good, or necessary, to tell them ; and then
it was : " Inez ! Inez ! Please hear me say
my prayers ! "

The governess, the under-governess, and the
nurses themselves, in fact, knew nothing except
that the Palace was being attacked and defended,
that the staircase was being assailed and held,
that the Halberdiers had taken cover behind
the stone balustrade, and that they and the
mutineers were potting at each other. What
would happen next depended upon many
things : the royal party could only wait upon
events, and prepare for possibilities.

" At about half-past ten," Mme Mina re-
ported, " we managed to persuade the Princesses
to lie down, though we took the precaution of

ISABELLA II 271

making them do so with their clothes on, so
that, whatever happened, we might not be
found unprepared. In order that our attention
might not be divided, we improvised a bed for
the Infanta in the Queen's alcove ; and we had
hardly put the two to bed there when a bullet
came through the window, breaking the glass,
tearing off the hinge, and remaining embedded
in the shutter ; so that if, in our excitement, we
had forgotten to fasten the shutter, her Royal
Highness might have been killed, and would
almost certainly have been hit."

An idea occurred to Mme Mina : to force a
way through an old door which had recently
been bricked up, and escape along a corridor
to a remote corner of the Palace, where they
might hide until a rescue party reached them.
She made the attempt, but failed. It was a
mason's, not a governess's work ; it needed to
be done with a pick-axe, not with a poker.
There was nothing for it but to trust the Hal-
berdiers, who had sent an urgent message to
Espartero, appealing for help, but might, or
might not, be able to hold out until help came.
Meanwhile, the fusillade continuing :

" At twelve o'clock," Mme Mina proceeds,
" we decided to remove the Princesses to an
inner room, the position of which seemed to
offer greater security, while the thickness of
the walls promised protection against any fire
which might be directed at the windows. We

272 WOMEN IN WAR

could still hear the firing very clearly there —the
firing in the Hall of the Ambassadors in parti-
cular made a terrible noise ; but still the
Princesses were somewhat reassured, and the
noise of the volleys no longer seemed to trouble
them very much."

Nature, in short, was asserting itself. These
were late hours for the children — they were
sleepy and also hungry. No supper, no break-
fast, no dinner, so long as the siege lasted —
that was the prospect which alarmed them
most ; but even upon that prospect they were
too tired to dwell. Mattresses were spread for
them on the floor, out of the reach of bullets ;
they fell asleep, and slept so soundly that a
bullet smashed the window without disturbing
them. And, while they slept, the battle raged.

It had begun, as we have seen, at about
eight o'clock in the evening ; it continued to
rage, all through the night, until about six in
the morning. Then the fusillading ceased, and
friendly voices were heard. The door was
opened, and the Steward of the Palace presented
himself, and told Mme Mina how the situation
had been saved in the nick of time. The
despatch-bearer had got through, and the
troops had been called out — cavalry as well
as infantry, with a view to pursuit as well
as deliverance. The mutineers had dispersed,
many of them cut down in the act of flight ;
and the Halberdiers sought humble permission

ISABELLA II 273

to kiss Her Majesty's hand while the horsemen
chased Generals Leon and Concha down the
valley in the dark. Concha escaped from them ;
but they caught Leon, and he faced a firing
party, in full uniform, with all his medals on
his breast. ,

That was Isabella's first experience of the
realities of war, but by no means her last.
Reculer pour mieux sauter was her mother's
motto. Baffled in her first attempt, Cristina
soon tried again, helped, this time, by Narvaez
and Espiroz, as well as Concha and O'Donnell.
Espartero's Government collapsed like a house
of cards, and two invading armies converged
upon Madrid. The National Militia made its
preparations to resist them ; and Isabella and
her sister — the prizes of the encounter — were
once more in imminent peril. The National
Guard, as we read in one of Washington Irving' s
letters, " was resolved to dispute the ground
street by street, and to make the last stand
in the royal Palace" ; while Mendizabal, the
leader of the party, threatened that, if pushed
to the utmost, he would sally forth with the
Queen and her sister in each hand, put himself
in the midst of the troops, and fight his way out
of the city."

Nothing came of the threat, as it happened :
the resistance was collapsing so fast in the
provinces that Madrid was glad to make terms.
For a little while, however, the risk seemed
very grave ; and the corps diplomatique as-
18

274 WOMEN IN WAR

sembled and decided that the task of saving
the Queen devolved upon them. They were
prepared, they announced — every man of them
— -to proceed to the Palace, and " remain there
during the time of peril/' placing themselves
and their diplomatic immunity between the
little Queen and any possible assailant, believing
that the divinity which hedges an Ambassador
would protect her better than any company of
Nationals or Halberdiers. Though the offer
was declined, we cannot doubt that the gesture
helped to bring Mendizabal to reason.

Such is the manner in which Isabella was
schooled to the risks of war, even from her
infancy. Presumably it was because she was
schooled to them so early that she faced them
so fearlessly in after-life. Certainly she did
face them with admirable nerve ; and there
were few intervals in her reign in which she was
not within sight of them. Two revolutions,
with a counter-revolution intervening, would
not be an unreasonable description of the leading
incidents of her stormy reign ; while the years
in which there were no actual revolutions were
often marked by abortive revolutionary at-
tempts. The detailed particulars may be read
in The Tragedy of Isabella II : here we can only
select one or two of the most illuminating scenes.

In the revolution of 1854 O'Donnell took
the field in the country, and the streets of
Madrid bristled with barricades on which, in
the intervals of the rioting, the revolutionists

ISABELLA II 275

sat feasting and playing the guitar. Cristina' s
Palace was burnt in those alarming days, and
Isabella' s Palace was beleaguered. Cristina had
taken refuge there, and the mob wanted to get
hold of her and hang her from a lamp-post.
Only the Palace Guard stood between her and
that shocking fate ; and it was not absolutely
certain that the Palace Guard could be trusted.
The mob howled for her blood, singing to the
air of La donna e mobile :

Muera Cristina !
Muera la ladrona !

Which meant, " Death to Cristina ! Death
to the thief!" But neither Cristina nor her
daughter showed any sign of fear. Espartero
was sent for ; and he promised to put the
revolution down, on condition that Isabella
would undertake, for the future, to live a
moral life, and grant Spain a Liberal constitu-
tion. She gave the undertaking, though she
thought morality the most tiresome of the
virtues ; and she bided her time, made friends
with O'Donnell, intrigued with him against
Espartero, and was rewarded with a counter-
revolution, which restored her to absolute
power, in 1856,— absolute power which lasted
until the movement associated with the name
of Prim.

That movement began with an abortive rising
in 1866. The Madrid garrison revolted ; and
the sergeants led their men against their officers.

276 WOMEN IN WAR

They were suppressed, after a good deal of
bloodshed ; and the inevitable series of military
executions followed. If the story which is told
be true, Isabella's temper, at that time, was
like that of the tiger which has tasted blood.
She sent a message to O'Donnell — or, at all
events, a message purporting to come from her
reached O'Donnell, to the effect that she desired
all the prisoners, without exception, to be shot ;
that the establishment of their identity might
be regarded as sufficient proof of their guilt.
Whereto O'Donnell, who had lost some of his
thirst for blood with the advancing years,
retorted bitterly :

" Does not the lady understand that, if we
were to shoot all the prisoners taken in arms
against her, the blood would rise until it drowned
her even in her boudoir? For my part, I
shoot no one. There are competent tribunals
to try offenders and condemn the guilty."

And he stalked out of her Palace, vowing that
he would never set foot in it again so long as
she was on the throne.

But she was not, as it happened, to remain
on the throne a great deal longer. Previous
revolutions had only been directed against her
advisers ; the revolution of 1868 was directed
against herself. The programme of the revolu-
tionists was to " pitch the throne out of
window." So the storm broke at a time when
Isabella, attended by her lover Marfori, the son

ISABELLA II 277

of an Italian cook, and once a strolling player,
was enjoying herself at the pleasant seaside
resort of San Sebastian. She was at a ball
there when she heard the rumour — speedily
confirmed — that Admiral Topete had " pro-
nounced " at Cadiz, and that Captain-General
Serrano— with whom, twenty years before, she
had been in love — was marching on Madrid.

Once more she showed great courage in the
hour of trial. Her first idea was to sail for
Cadiz on a ship of war which was lying at anchor
in the port ; but the captain, whose sympathies
were with Topete, set off for Cadiz without
waiting for her. Then she proposed to make all
haste to Madrid ; but General Concha, who was
commanding there on her behalf, sent a despatch
exhorting her to stay where she was. He feared
that, if she came, she would bring her lover with
her, and that her lover's arrival would set
Madrid itself ablaze. So she contented her-
self with sending telegrams, and waited until
it was unsafe for her to wait any longer ; and
then, Serrano having defeated Novaliches at
the Bridge of Alcolea, and entered Madrid in
triumph, she took a special train for Biarritz,
where Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie
welcomed her and did what they could to make
her comfortable.

It was a sorry end, truly, to her experiences
of the tented field, though she had no one but
herself to blame for it ; and we cannot con-
clude the chapter dealing with her adventures

278 WOMEN IN WAR

better than by quoting a verse from the topical
song with which her enemies pursued her into
exile :

Los reyes que salen a balazos

Acaro volveran:
Pero aquellos que salen a escobazos,

Esos no volveran.

An expression of opinion that, though re-
storation was always possible for sovereigns
defeated in civil wars, there was no prospect
of return for those who fled ignominiously, as
if beaten out with broom-sticks.

CHAPTER XXVI

Women in war in India— Cawnpore— Details of the siege and the
massacre.

ENGLAND has been so seldom and so ineffectively
invaded that Englishwomen have probably
seen less of war than the women of any other
European nation. In civil strife wives have,
now and again, held castles for absent husbands ;
and there is, of course, the story of the women
of Fishguard, whose red shawls caused the
French raiding party to mistake them for
militia-men, and so expedited their capitulation.
But Englishwomen at home have never had
to respond to the same call upon their courage
as the French during the Hundred Years' War,
or the Spaniards during the Peninsular War,
or the Dutch during the struggle which gained
them their independence. Those of them who
have shared men's dangers have been those
who have crossed the seas with their husbands,
and helped, in the ways in which women can
help, in the building of the Empire.

Abroad— and notably in India— they have-
had, if not to fight, at least to endure, and to
look imminent death again and again in the
eyes. Most notably in the year of the Mutiny,

279

280 WOMEN IN WAR

perhaps, but also on many occasions before and
after that terrible time, they have been called
upon to give their proofs, and have given them.
Women, it will be remembered, were among
those who endured the horrors of the Black
Hole at Calcutta ; women were surrendered
as hostages in that first Afghan War which
resulted in the destruction of an entire British
army in the Khyber Pass ; to comparatively
recent times belongs the story of Mrs. Grim-
wood's flight from the massacre at Manipur.
Where the material is sufficient to fill an ency-
clopaedia, one can only select a few typical
scenes for presentation. The scene at Cawnpore
will serve.

Sir George Trevelyan's is perhaps the most
graphic of the narratives of it : he strikes
with graphic power the note of contrast between
the lives lived by the women involved in it
before and after the day of the revolt :

" These women had spent their girlhood in
the pleasant watering-places and country homes
of our island, surrounded by all of English
comfort and refinement that Eastern wealth
could buy. Their later years had slipped away
amidst the secure plenty and languid ease of
a European household in India. In spacious
saloons, alive with swinging punkahs ; where
closed and darkened windows excluded the
heated atmosphere, and produced a counterfeit
night, while through a mass of wetted grass

CAWNPORE 281

poured a stream of artificial air ; with piles of
ice, and troops of servants, and the magazines
of the preceding month, and the sensation
novels of the preceding season, monotonous
but not ungrateful, the even days flew by."

And then came the change, brought about
almost in the twinkling of an eye. A thousand
souls, of whom only 465 were men, were herded
together in a small enclosure, and bombarded
there by night and day. The women were
placed there in plenty of time ; but the men
followed them at the last moment, and in a
hurry :

" There was no time for packing, or even for
selection. There was not leisure to snatch a
parting cup of coffee, or a handful of cigars,
or an armful of favourite books, or a pith
helmet that had been tested by many a long
day's tiger-shooting under the blazing Indian
sun. . . . Few and happy were they who had
secured a single change of raiment. . . . Half-
clad, unbreakfasted, confused and breathless,
our countrymen huddled like shipwrecked sea-
farers into the precincts of the fatal earthwork,
which they entered only to suffer, and left only
to die."

They had hardly occupied their improvised
citadel, and arranged for its defence, than
the attack began — the concentrated fire of

282 WOMEN IN WAR

thousands of muskets and a score of heavy
cannon :

" At first every projectile which struck
the barracks was the signal for heartrending
shrieks, and low wailing more heartrending yet ;
but, ere long, time and habit taught them to
suffer and to fear in silence. Before the third
evening every window and door had been
beaten in. Next went the screens, the piled-
up furniture, and the internal partitions ; and
soon shell and ball ranged at will through and
through the naked rooms. Some ladies were
slain outright by grape or round-shot. Others
were struck down by bullets. Many were
crushed beneath falling brick- work, or mutilated
by the splinters which flew from shattered sash
and panel. "

And, of course, the peril of the bombardment
was only one among many horrors :

" Accustomed to those frequent ablutions
which, in England at least a duty, are in India
a necessity, they had not a single spongeful
of water for washing from the commencement
to the close of the siege. They who, from
childhood upwards, in the comprehensive and
pretty phrase which ladies love, ' had had
everything nice about them/ were now herded
together in fetid misery, where delicacy and
modesty were hourly shocked, though never
for a moment impaired. Unshod, unkempt,
ragged and squalid, haggard and emaciated,

CAWNPORE 283

parched with drought and faint with hunger,
they sat waiting to hear that they were widows.
Each morning deepened the shadow in the
youngest cheek, and added a new furrow to
the fairest brow. Want, exposure, and depres-
sion speedily decimated that hapless company.
In these regions, a hideous train of diseases
stand always within call : fever and apoplexy,
and the fell scourge of cholera and dysentery,
plague, more ghastly still. . . .

" . . . Woe was it in those days unto them
that were with child. There were infants born
during the terrible three weeks ; infants who
had no future. There were women who under-
went more than all the anguish of maternity,
with less than none of the hope and joy. ...
An ayah, while dandling an infant, lost both
her legs by the blow of a cannon-ball. That
was in truth a dismal nursery. "

So that horrors accumulated on horror's
head. We will not dwell upon the painful
details, but will finish the story of the siege
with two scenes in which two women appear
—one the wife of an officer, and the other the
wife of a private, and both acquitting them-
selves courageously and cheerfully :

" During one of the earliest of the sorties,
eleven mutineers were captured, and brought
into the entrenchment. As no sentry could
just then be spared from the front, they were
placed under the charge of Bridget Widdowson,

284 WOMEN IN WAR

a stalwart dame, wife of a private of the 32nd
Regiment. Secured by the very insufficient
contrivance of a single rope, passed from wrist
to wrist, they sat quietly on the ground like
good children, while the matron walked up
and down in front of the row, drawn sword in
hand."

The officer's wife was Mrs. Moore, whose
husband, Captain Moore, was the soul of the
defence — an Irishman who fought in high
spirits as well as bravely :

" When the vicissitudes of battle called her
husband to the outposts, Mrs. Moore would
step across with her work, and spend the day
beneath a little hut of bamboos covered with
canvas, which the garrison of Barrack No. 2
had raised for her in their most sheltered corner.
Seldom had fair lady a less appropriate bower."

So the days passed until, at the end of three
weeks, Nana Sahib's offer of a safe-conduct to
Allahabad was accepted ; and the story of the
N ana's treachery, culminating in the Cawnpore
massacre, is too well known to every one to
be repeated in detail here. The refugees were
put on boats, and then the boats were fired
on, and the few who were not killed and had
not the rare luck to escape were brought back
as prisoners. Most of the men were killed
forthwith ; the women, with only a very few
men among them, were placed in a humble
dwelling, since known in India as the House

CAWNPORE 285

of the Ladies and in England as the House of
the Massacre :

"It comprised two principal rooms, each
twenty feet by ten, certain windowless closets
intended for the use of native domestics, and
an open court some fifteen feet square. Here,
during a fortnight of the eastern summer, were
penned 206 persons of European extraction,
for the most part women and children of
gentle birth. The grown men were but five
in number. . . . They had neither furniture,
bedding, nor straw ; nothing but coarse and
hard bamboo matting, unless they preferred
a smoother couch upon the bare floor. They
fed sparely on cakes of unleavened dough,
and lentil-porridge dished up in earthen pans
without spoon or plate. There was some talk
of meat on Sundays, but it never came to
anything. . . . The matron of these female
prisoners, whom it took so little to keep in
order was ... a waiting-maid of the courtesan
who then ruled the circle of the Nana. The
Begum daily took across two ladies to the
N ana's stables, where they were set down to
grind corn at a handmill for the space of several
hours. . . .

" Hardship, heat, wounds, and want of space
and proper nourishment released many from
their bondage before the season marked out
by Azimoolah for a jail delivery such as the
world had seldom witnessed. Within eight
days there succumbed to cholera and dysen-

286 WOMEN IN WAR

tery, eighteen women, seven children, and a
Hindoo nurse. . . . Dying by threes and fours
of frightful maladies, the designations of which
they hardly knew ; trying to eat nauseous
and unwonted food, and to sleep upon a
bed of boards ; tormented by flies and mos-
quitoes, and dirt, and prickly heat, and all
the lesser evils that aggravate and keep for
ever fresh the consciousness of a great mis-
fortune ; doing for the murderer of their
dearest ones that labour which in Asia has
always been the distinctive sign and badge
of slavery ; to such reality of woe had been
reduced those beings for whom nothing had
formerly been too dainty and well-appointed ;
whose idea of peril had once been derived from
romances ; and who had been acquainted with
destitution only through tracts and the reports
of charitable institutions/'

They were " hostages "; and there was a
danger that they would die so fast that the
Nana would have no hostages left in the hour
of need. Fearing that result, he caused them
to be driven twice a day into the verandah,
there to inhale enough fresh air to keep them
alive, while idlers stood about and stared at
them. Meanwhile, the reinforcements from
England were coming, ignorant, save for
rumour, of the exact conditions prevailing
at Cawnpore, but fighting their way to the
deliverance of the captives. They had won

CAWNPORE 287

battles, and were close at hand, when the
Nana decided that, instead of using his prisoners
as an asset in a bargain, he would have them
killed.

It was a decision to which, one is glad to
know, the ladies of his own household opposed
such resistance as they could. If he murdered
women, they said, they would throw themselves
and their children out of the upper windows.
To show that they meant what they said, they
began what we now call a "hunger-strike";
but the only result of the protest was to ex-
pedite the execution of the order. Many of
the sepoys shrank from the task ; but willing
murderers were found — some of them butchers
by trade. They drew their swords and entered ;
and then — too late — Havelock fought his way
into the town, and Nana Sahib fled into the
wilderness, and covered up his tracks so effec-
tively that no one, to this day, knows for
certain what became of him, or what sort of
an end he made.

CHAPTER XXVII

The First Afghan War— The retreat through the Khyber Pass— The
massacre — Extracts from Lady Sale's Diary.

IT is agreed that the first Afghan War was
a blunder, alike in conception and in exe-
cution ; but this is not the place in which
to review the political miscalculations which
inspired it. Enough that we undertook, for
insufficient reasons, to set Shah Soojah on
the throne occupied by Dost Mahomed, and
that disaster was, from the first, predicted
by those best qualified to judge. Marquis
Wellesley wrote of " this wild expedition into
a distant region of rocks and deserts, of sands
and ice and snow." Mr. Elphinstone, who
knew Afghanistan well, predicted that " if
an army was sent up the passes, and if we
could feed it, no doubt we might take Cabul
and set up Shah Soojah ; but it was hope-
less to maintain him in a poor, cold, strong
and remote country, among so turbulent a
people."

Nevertheless an army was assembled and
despatched, and Shah Soojah was escorted into
Cabul on August 6, 1839 ; and it was clearly

288

THE KHYBER PASS 289

seen that, if his throat was not to be cut by
his subjects, the expeditionary force must
remain as an army of occupation. Conse-
quently, to quote Archibald Forbes' s History
of the War :

" The officers sent for their wives to inhabit
with them the bungalows in which they had
settled down. Lady Macnaghten, in the
spacious mission residence which stood apart
in its own grounds, presided over the society
of the cantonments, which had all the cheery
surroundings of the half-settled, half-nomadic
life of our military people in the East. There
were the ' coffee house ' after the morning
ride, the gathering round the band-stand in
the evening, the impromptu dance, and the
burra khana occasionally in the larger houses.
A race-course had been laid out, and there
were ' sky ' races and more formal meetings.
And so * as in the days that were before the
Flood, they were eating and drinking and
marrying and giving in marriage, and knew
not until the flood came, and took them all
away/ "

But the government, as Archibald Forbes
also writes, " was a government of sentry-
boxes," and Afghanistan was " not governed
so much as garrisoned." The line of com-
munications was long, and was interrupted
from time to time in the summer of 1840 ;
and Sir William Macnaghten, the British Envoy

2go WOMEN IN WAR

to the Court of Shah Soojah, became " mourn-
fully conscious that the capital and the sur-
rounding country were ripe for a rising. "
General Nott, a level-headed but peppery
Anglo-Indian officer of the old school, who
hated " politicals," wrote vigorously from
Candahar :

lt The conduct of the thousand and one
politicals has ruined our cause, and bared the
throat of every European in this country to
the sword and knife of the revengeful Afghan
and bloody Belooch ; and, unless several regi-
ments be quickly sent, not a man will be left
to describe the fate of his comrades."

He wrote in a burst of temper, and probably
without surmising how true a prophet he was
to be. Military, as well as political incapacity,
was needed to make the catastrophe com-
plete ; both were to be forthcoming in abun-
dance. One dangerous step was the cutting
down of subsidies paid to Afghan chiefs
as bribes for good behaviour — a measure for
which the Ghilzais avenged themselves by
quitting Cabul, occupying the passes between
Cabul and Jellalabad, and intercepting the
communications with India by the Khyber
route. Sir Robert Sale had to fight his way
to Jellalabad in order to clear the passes; but
still the people at Cabul did not understand
that very much was the matter, though they
were annoyed by the temporary interruption

THE KHYBER PASS 291

of the postal service. Lady Sale was about
to leave for India, accompanied by the Mac-
naghtens and General Elphinstone, and — to
quote Forbes again :

' Her Diary expresses an undertone of re-
gret at having to leave the snug house in the
cantonments which Sale had built on his
own plan, the excellent kitchen garden in
which her warrior husband, in the intervals of
his soldiering duties, grew fine crops of peas,
potatoes, cauliflowers, and artichokes, and
the parterres of flowers which she herself
cultivated, and which were the admiration of
the Afghan gentlemen who came to pay their
morning calls. "

The entry thus summarised is dated October
31 ; and the rising began on November 2.
In consequence of that rising, in which Sir
Alexander Burnes lost his life, it was decided
to send for Sale, who decided, for sufficient
military reasons, not to come, and to ask for
a reinforcement from Candahar — a reinforce-
ment which could not be sent, owing to the
severity of the weather. Such fighting as
occurred resulted disastrously. The troops
had to be concentrated in the cantonments,
and terms had to be made.

Whether it was wise, or soldier-like, to accept
the terms offered is a question which we have
to leave. Certainly nothing worse than befell
the party could have befallen them, if they

292 WOMEN IN WAR

had defied the Afghans to do their worst, and
held out to the last extremity ; and it was
also certain at the time that the Afghan chiefs
could not control their men, and that no engage-
ment into which they might enter was worth
the paper on which it was written. Still, rightly
or wrongly, it was decided to submit : to hand
over all small-arms and ordnance stores as
" a token of friendship " to the Afghans,
and to agree to march back to India, at the
height of a cruelly cold winter, trusting to the
promise of the chiefs to supply them with
provisions and protect them.

The 4,500 armed men — 690 of them Europeans
— might reasonably have expected, if unen-
cumbered, to cut their way through all the
Afghans in Afghanistan ; but encumbrances
are the curse of Indian armies. With this
army there were no fewer than 12,000 camp-
followers, together with many invalids, many
women, and many children ; and the tem-
perature was well below zero, and the snow
more than a foot deep. It took the host two
hours and a half to march the first mile ; and,
as the army evacuated the cantonments, the
Afghans poured into them, and fired on the
rear-guard. So the disorder began at once.
As Lady Sale writes :

" The servants who were not concerned in
the plunder all threw away their loads, and
ran off. Private baggage, commissariat, and

THE KHYBER PASS 293

ammunition were nearly annihilated at one
fell swoop. The whole road was covered with
men, women, and children lying down in the
snow to die. The only baggage we saved was
Mrs. Sturt's bedding, on which the ayah rode."

Altogether — the whole country being " a
swamp encrusted with ice " — only six miles were
covered in the course of the first day ; and the
halt for the night was made in great discomfort :

1 There were no tents save two or three
small palls that arrived. All scraped away the
snow as best they might, to make a place
to lie down on. The evening and night were
intensely cold : no food for man or beast
procurable. . . . Captain Johnson, in our
great distress, kindly pitched a small pall
over us : but it was dark, and we had few
pegs ; the wind blew in under the sides and
I felt myself gradually stiffening. I left the
bedding, which was occupied by Mrs. Sturt and
her husband, and doubled up my legs in a
straw chair of Johnson's/'

And Lady Sale remembered how, while her
party had been considering whether they
could save any of their books, she had opened
one of the volumes, in a manner reminiscent
of the old Sortes Virgiliance, and lighted
upon these ominous lines :

Few, few shall part where many meet,
The snow shall be their winding-sheet ;
And every turf beneath their feet
Shall be a soldier's sepulchre.

294 WOMEN IN WAR

" Heaven forbid/' she comments, " that our
fears should be realised ! but we have com-
menced our retreat so badly that we may
reasonably have our doubts regarding the
finale." Doubts strengthened when " at day-
break we found several men frozen to death/'
and when the officers of the rear -guard re-
ported that the road was strewn with aban-
doned baggage, and that " numbers of men,
women, and children are left on the road-
side to die." And worse was to follow, and
that quickly. Already the Afghans, in de-
fiance of the undertaking of their chiefs,
were beginning to hover threateningly on the
flanks of the retreating army ; already it was
necessary to spike and abandon guns, while
fatigue parties sent to draw water were fired
on ; and, at one point, the Afghan horsemen
charged and " succeeded in carrying off an
immense quantity of baggage and a number of
camels, without experiencing the least resist-

ance/3

So January 7 passed ; and the dawn of
January 8 found " nearly every man paralysed
with cold, so as to be scarcely able to hold
his musket or move/' They broached casks
of spirits, and drank too freely of their contents :

" For myself," writes Lady Sale, " whilst
I sat for hours on my horse in the cold, I felt
very grateful for a tumbler of sherry, which
at any other time would have made me very

THE KHYBER PASS 295

unladylike, but now merely warmed me, and
appeared to have no more strength in it
than water. Cups full of sherry were given to
young children three and four years old with-
out in the least affecting their heads."

Then the march was resumed ; and the ladies,
as well as the soldiers, quickly found them-
selves under fire :

" The pony Mrs. Sturt rode was wounded
in the ear and neck. I fortunately had only
one ball in my arm ; three others passed through
my poshteen near the shoulder without doing
me any injury. The party that fired on us
were not more than fifty yards from us, and
we owed our escape to urging our horses on
as fast as they could go over a road where,
at any other time, we should have walked our
horses very carefully."

There were other women who lost their
horses — women, some of them, with little
children in their charge. Often they were cut
down, or carried off ; but a few reached camp
safely. Lady Sale tells us how Mrs. Mainwaring
" preserved her child through these dreadful
scenes " :

" She not only had to walk a considerable
distance with her child in her arms through
the deep snow, but had also to pick her way
over the bodies of the dead, dying, and wounded,
both men and cattle, and constantly to cross

296 WOMEN IN WAR

the streams of water, wet up to the knees,
pushed and shoved about by men and animals,
the enemy keeping up a sharp fire, and several
persons being killed close to her. She, how-
ever, got safe to camp with her child, but
had no opportunity to change her clothes."

And the camp was a poor place of refuge.
Already 500 regulars and about 2,500 camp-
followers had been killed :

" To sleep in such anxiety of mind and in-
tense cold was impossible. There were nearly
thirty of us packed together without room to
turn. The Sipahees and camp-followers, half
frozen, tried to force their way, not only into
the tent, but actually into our beds, if such
resting-places could be so called — a poshteen
(or pelisse of sheep-skin) half spread on the
snow, and the other half wrapped over one.
Many poor wretches died round the tent in the
night/'

Nor had those who survived the night many
more days to live. It is a matter of history
that Dr. Brydon ultimately struggled into
Jellalabad,— the sole survivor of the army. Most
of them were caught in a trap, — detained in a
narrow gorge by an abattis of prickly brush-
wood, and there massacred by the Ghilzais.
Twenty officers and forty-five European soldiers
made the last stand near Gundamuk ; and six
reached Futtehebad. Of the four who' left

THE KHYBER PASS 297

Futtehebad, three were cut down before Jella-
labad was reached. The one who attained that
goal was wounded and ready to drop. The others,
to whom we owe the tale of the sufferings, were
a few ladies, and a few officers, whom Akbar
Khan accepted as prisoners, promising them
safe conduct and good treatment, before the
final attack.

Lady Sale was one of those thus entrusted to
the doubtful mercies of the enemy :

" Overwhelmed with domestic affliction/* she
writes, " neither Mrs. Sturt nor I were in a fit
state to decide for ourselves whether we would
accept the Sirdar's protection or not. . . . All
I personally know of the affair is that I was
told we were all to go, and that our horses were
ready, and we must mount immediately and
be off. . . . We were taken by a very circuitous
route to the Khoord Cabul forts, where we
found Mahommed Akbar Khan and the hostages.
. . . Three rooms were cleared out for us,
having no outlets except a small door to each ;
and, of course, they were dark and dirty. . . .
The dimensions of our room are, at the utmost,
fourteen feet by ten. At midnight some mutton
bones and greasy rice were brought to us.
All that Mrs. Sturt and I possess are the clothes
on our backs in which we quitted Cabul."

From early in January until September was
well advanced the party was destined to con-
tinue in captivity ; and we have detailed

298 WOMEN IN WAR

accounts of their detention, not only from Lady
Sale, but also from Colin Mackenzie and Vincent
Eyre. It is difficult to say by what standard
the treatment meted out to them ought to be
judged ; for the resources of their jailers were
not abundant, and there was Afghan public
opinion to be considered. There was, at any
rate, no breach of faith, such as had been
feared, and Archibald Forbes finds " kindness
and a certain rude chivalry " in Akbar Khan's
behaviour. He was a chief who seems to have
had some of the instincts of a gentleman, though
not all of them. He allowed his prisoners to
correspond with their friends ; he allowed them
to borrow money from Cabul usurers, and to
receive presents of books and other comforts ;
but the accommodation which he pro-
vided for them — in the early months of their
captivity, at all events, — was squalid. We
may borrow Archibald Forbes' s summary of
the conditions in which they had to live :

" For the whole party, there were but five
rooms, each of which was occupied by from five
to ten officers and ladies, the few soldiers and
non-commissioned officers, who were mostly
wounded, being quartered in sheds and cellars.
Mackenzie drily remarks that the hardships
of the common lot, and the close intimacy of
prison life, brought into full relief good and evil
qualities ; ' conventional polish was a good
deal rubbed off and replaced by a plainness

THE KHYBER PASS 299

of speech quite unheard of in good society/
Ladies and gentlemen were necessitated to
occupy the same room during the night, but
the men ' cleared out ' early in the morning,
leaving the ladies to themselves. The dirt and
vermin of their habitation were abominably
offensive to people to whom scrupulous cleanli-
ness was a second nature. . . . They had a
few packs of playing-cards ; they made for
themselves back-gammon and draught-boards,
and when in good spirits they sometimes played
hopscotch and blindman's buff with the chil-
dren of the party. The Sundays were always
kept scrupulously, Lawrence and Mackenzie
conducting the service in turn/*

So the time passed. At the end of three
months or so, the prisoners were removed and
maintained in greater luxury ; but even then
there was talk of carrying them away over the
Hindu Khush into a captivity which perhaps
might never end. There was also quite a
chance that they would be killed. As late as
July 31 we find Lady Sale writing :

" What will now be our fate seems very
uncertain ; but I still think he will not cut our
throats — not out of love to us, but because the
other chiefs would resent it ; as, having posses-
sion of us, they could at least obtain a hand-

some sum as our ransom/3

As a matter of fact, a message came to

300 WOMEN IN WAR

their custodian from General Pollock, offering
him 20,000 rupees and a life-pension of 12,000
rupees for their release. As there was some
doubt about the authenticity or bona fides
of that offer, the prisoners themselves signed
an undertaking to provide the money from
their personal resources if it were not forth-
coming from the Government. Then they were
set free, and occupied a fort, and gathered
provisions together, so that they might stand
a short siege, if necessary, while waiting for
Sir Robert Sale's cavalry. It was at this
penultimate stage of the adventure that Lady
Sale herself offered to carry a gun.

A few weapons were brought in, and Captain
Lawrence proposed to deal them out. " Now,
my lads/' he said, " here's Saleh Mahommed
Khan has brought arms and ammunition for
some of you : who volunteers to take muskets ?"

" I blush to record," writes Lady Sale,
" that a dead silence ensued. Thinking the
men might be shamed into doing their duty,
I said to Lawrence, ' You had better give me
one, and I will lead the party ' ; but there was
still no offer : and he told our general that it
was useless ; and he had better take them on.
It is sad to think the men were so lost to all
right feeling."

Fortunately, however, the rescue party was
so near at hand that their reluctance did not
matter. Sir Richmond Shakespeare rode in

THE KHYBER PASS 301

with 600 Kuzzilbash horsemen ; and Sale was
not far behind him. One may conclude the
chapter with Lady Sale's account of the happy
ending of her perilous adventures :

"It is impossible to express our feelings on
Sale's approach. To my daughter and myself,
happiness, so long delayed as to be almost
unexpected, was actually painful, and accom-
panied by a choking sensation which could
not obtain the relief of tears. When we arrived
where the infantry were posted, they cheered
all the captives as they passed them ; and the
men of the I3th pressed forward to welcome
us individually. Most of the men had a word
of hearty congratulation to offer, each in his
own style, on the restoration of his colonel's
wife and daughter : and then my highly wrought
feelings found the desired relief ; and I could
scarcely speak to thank the soldiers for their
sympathy, whilst the long-deferred tears now
found their course."

CHAPTER XXVIII

Woman as pacificist — Baroness von Suttner as controversialist and
novelist — The value of Die Waffen niedev \

THOUGH this book was finished some time
before the peace was broken, and is now being
revised in the midst of the war, there has been
no deletion of any story relating valiant deeds
performed by women of the Teutonic races.
The question of eliminating such stories did
not arise, because the author failed to discover
any in his manuscript ; and their absence from
his manuscript, not being the result of conscious
prejudice, presumably arises out of the nature
of things. He might, of course, have included
in his gallery the Empress Maria Theresa, from
whom Frederick the Great stole Silesia, with
as little ceremony as a pick-pocket snatching a
purse, and Queen Louisa of Prussia, whose
attitude during the years of servitude to
Napoleon was more dignified than that of her
husband ; but the scope of the volume would
have had to be somewhat enlarged to admit
them. They were not exactly Warrior Queens,
though the wars waged in their times had a
very direct effect upon their fortunes ; and

when one searches for such heroines as the

302

WOMAN AS PACIFICIST 303

book was designed to deal with, one finds
German annals singularly barren.

And that is as one would have expected : for
two reasons. The Germans, like their ancestors
the Goths and their prototypes the Huns,
have always owed the most notable achieve-
ments of their history to the organised efforts
of the mass rather than to the dash and
daring of the individual ; and they have
always been heavy-footed in their endeavours
to confine even exceptional women to the
domestic sphere of usefulness. That women
of unique ability and force of character have
been born in Germany, as well as elsewhere, is,
of course, hardly to be doubted ; but fewer
paths to glory have been open to them. In so
far as they have shone at all in relation to war,
they have done so by sounding the anti-militarist
note. Woman the Anti-Militarist is the chief
contribution of the German world to our
subject ; and for that fact also there is a reason.

That reason is not that war has brought
more suffering to the women of Germany than
to the women of other countries. On the whole,
they have suffered, not more, but less than other
women, for their enemies have nearly always
been more chivalrous than their protectors.
But the German theory of war, as expounded
by the teachers of the people, has, in the main,
been different — more brutal and material —
than the theory of the enemies of Germany.
Among the Germans alone of the peoples sup-

304 WOMEN IN WAR

posed to be civilised, has war been proclaimed
" an instrument of policy " — a means, that is
to say, not of defending the soil and the national
honour, but of gratifying unscrupulous ambi-
tions at the expense of the weak.

That was the Gospel according to Clausewitz,
and that is the Gospel according to Bernhardi.
To see it practically applied in the past, we
have to follow the career of Bismarck, who
deliberately picked two quarrels and brought
about two wars in order to establish Prussian
hegemony in Germany, and then provoked a
third war in order to establish German hegemony
in Europe. Wars of that sort may be popular
as long as they are successful. Philosophers,
and even divines, may be found to justify them
as necessary steps in the great march of civilisa-
tion ; for the prosperous seldom pause to
examine their ideals too closely. But the fact
remains that the ideals behind the wars which
are waged as " instruments of policy " will not
bear examination ; and at the hour of distress,
whether national or individual, the thoughtful
are apt to reconsider them, and to hear the
whispering of the still small voice.

To what extent the women of Germany have
heard the voice and attended to it during the
present war we shall not know for certain
until the extinguisher has descended on the
Censor, and the Press is once more free ; but
one already knows enough to remark certain
differences between their attitude and that of

GERMAN WOMEN 305

the women of the countries which Germany
has attacked. In the view of the latter, the
war, though terrible, is nevertheless worth
while, because of the great issues involved in it.
In the view of the latter, the war ceased to be
worth while when it began to be terrible, and
was never regarded as worth while by those
who foresaw that it was going to be terrible.
The writer is one of those whom the war caught
behind the enemy's lines ; he speaks, in this
matter, of what he saw and heard.

On the whole, the women of the officer caste
were true to the traditions of their caste, taking
the tone of the Spartan mothers who bade
their sons return " with their shields or upon
them " ; and there were also a good many
women of the commercial classes to whom the
war appeared in the light of a good stroke of
business. They spoke of the imminent
expansion of Germany with the same airy
satisfaction with which they might have an-
nounced their intention of moving into larger
houses because their husbands had been unex-
pectedly successful in their speculations. But
there were also women who, from the very first,
saw the horrors of war, and saw practically
nothing else. According to them, Germany
was engaged in a vulgar, unprofitable, and
bloody quarrel, provoked by the turbulent
Crown Prince, a person whose private char-
acter was that of an unconscionable reprobate.
The writer heard a German mother unbosom
20

306 WOMEN IN WAR

herself to that effect in the Grand Duchy of
Luxemburg.

" I can say here/' she said, " what I should
not dare to say in Germany. It is a scandal
and a shame that German mothers should be
called upon to sacrifice their sons to the miser-
able ambitions of that abandoned wretch/'

Such speeches were doubtless rare in those
days ; but they were to be heard even before
the disastrous check on the Marne, and they
have, since then, become much louder and
more frequent. Whereas the women of France
have suffered in dignified silence, the women of
Germany have suffered noisily, and with obstre-
perous protests ; and the explanation of the
difference in their attitude is obvious. In the
one case the cause is perceived to be worth the
sacrifice, and, in the other case, it is felt not
to be worth it. Germany went to war, not to
defend the national honour, which nobody was
attacking, but in order to filch territory under
the name of guarantees and steal money on
pretence of requiring " compensations/' The
consequence was that, when the material ad-
vantages were seen not to be forthcoming,
the martial enthusiasm of the women evapo-
rated in indignation at the enhanced price of
butter.

That, at all events, is a part of the picture :
the side of it which shows us the instinctive

GERMAN WOMEN 307

pacificism of the unreflecting. There is also
a Higher Pacificism in the country : a pacificism
which looks for a philosophical justification
of its principles, and sees nothing in war, as
war is understood in Germany, which warrants
the bloodshed and the privations. Rosa
Luxemburg, the Social Democrat, took that
line at the beginning of the war, and was
promptly locked up for doing so ; but, though
her voice was thereby silenced, her ideas were
not extinguished. The note which she struck
recurred in a controversy conducted, many
months afterwards, in the columns of the
Berliner Tageblatt between Fraulein Dr. Kate
Schirmacher, and Frau Ellen Passche.

The former lady is the chief of the German
champions of woman's claim to the vote. She
tries to take a man's view of things, and has
proposed that all the able-bodied women of
Germany should be enrolled in the Landwehr.
She is not only in favour of the war, but has
committed herself to the opinion that the longer
the war lasts the better :

" We Germans," she writes, " needed to
break with a number of bad habits which we
had fallen into through our comfort and our
enjoyment of life. A long war will accomplish
that result for us more thoroughly than a short
one. ... It is a lasting gain for the unity of
our people that south and east and west and
north should have to join in defending that

3o8 WOMEN IN WAR

unity with their blood. Only a long war can
thus educate and intensify our sentiments/'

It is a poor idea, though Bernhardi would
doubtless agree with it : that killing is a part
of education. But it is not wide-spread among
the women of Germany at the present hour.
Frau Ellen Passche most emphatically would
not have it so.

" How is it possible/' she asks, " that a woman
can have so hard a heart ? How is it possible
that a woman can tell us that we are living
so comfortably that only a prolongation of the
war can save us ?

" Can it be," she continues, "that Fraulein
Dr. Kate Schirmacher has lost in the war no
relative, no lover, no friend for whom she
weeps ? If so, let her thank God ; but let
her also turn her eyes to the future :

" You wives who have given your dearest ;
you mothers who have lost your only sons, or
all your sons ; you sisters who will never again
see a loyal brother standing by your sides,
think of the future ! Are we young women who
have bright young children playing around us
to sacrifice them too in twenty years' time ?
It must not be. ... Or are women to bear
children merely as food for powder ? That also
is hard to admit. German women must now
bear many children to fill up the gaps that
have been made ; but not for war — no, for an
eternal and blessed peace. And so I say— No

GERMAN WOMEN 309

half-heartedness ! Think of all that you may
have to lose in twenty years' time . . . and
you who have nothing more to lose because the
war has taken everything from you, think of
us, and help us younger women, that we may
be spared such tears and lamentations in the
years to come."

Of a truth it was a very womanly woman
who wrote thus ; but no one will draw the
foolish conclusion that, because English, French,
Belgian, and Russian women are not writing
thus, we must therefore class them as less
womanly. War, for them, is an odious ne-
cessity, thrust upon them as the only means
whereby oppression can be resisted ; and, in
the atmosphere which such a war engenders,
there is no room for pacificism — no room for
any feeling except the stern resolution to
endure until the end. For the Germans, on
the other hand, war is, as has just been said,
an instrument of policy, a trick in the great
game of grab. Out of war so conceived there
arises no sentiment strong enough to shame the
pacificists to silence. Such war, rather, creates
the atmosphere in which pacificism flourishes
and commands sympathy ; and that is why it
seems the most natural thing in the world that .
the most famous of the women pacificists-
Baroness von Suttner, the author of Die Waff en
nieder ! — should have been an Austrian.

Die Waff en nieder I is, of course, a novel with

3io WOMEN IN WAR

a purpose. It is a commonplace of criticism
to pronounce that novels with purposes are
generally bad, and the anti-militarist purpose
is, no doubt, here obtruded with a persistence
which all the canons of criticism condemn ; but
it is precisely this obtrusion of purpose which
gives the book its reality, and its aesthetic, as
well as its moral, significance. The trick which
produces these effects may or may not have
been deliberately adopted : a critic, at all events,
can have no difficulty in laying his finger on
the trick, and showing how what, in another
novel, might have been flaws, are here con-
tributory to the prevailing impression of truth.
What the novel seems to lack, if judged from
the conventional standpoint, is characterisation.
The narrator never seems to be inside her
characters, or even to have observed them
more than superficially : the temptation is
therefore strong to scoff at them as " wooden."
But that temptation is a pitfall into which one
must not stumble. Die Waff en nieder ! is not
presented to us as a study either of manners
or of psychology. It is presented as the
autobiographical lamentation of a woman-
beautiful, nobly born, well-educated, but not
otherwise exceptionally endowed — the daughter,
sister, and wife of Austrian officers — whom the
circumstances of her life brought into tragic
contact with the principal continental wars
of her time : the Italian War of 1859 » the
Danish War of 1864 ; the Austro-Prussian War

BERTHA VON SUTTNER 311

of 1866 ; and, finally, the Franco-German War
of 1870-71.

She lives, as it were, in the constant shadow
of the sword. All the talk in the circles in
which she moves is of the glory of war, and of
the superiority of the career of arms to the
debased pursuits of the civilians. But the
glory, as so often happens in Austrian wars, is
only forthcoming in a scanty measure ; and
every clash of arms involves some tragedy for
herself and those dear to her. So, under the
stress of successive calamities, she thinks
things out : observes how much suffering is
invited for the attainment of quite trivial ends ;
how irrational is the invocation of the God
of Battles by each of two contending armies ;
how fatal is the interest in war to the progress
of art, science, and industry. She also sees
the horrors at close quarters, and relates what
she has seen.

Characterisation, it is quite obvious, would
have been out of place in such a novel as that.
A woman writing under the obsession of such
catastrophes could not be expected to describe
her husband, her lover, and the members of
her family with the minute particularity of
Dickens, or to analyse their motives with the
cold-blooded cunning of Flaubert. She would
naturally take them for granted,, and expect
those to whom she told her story to take them
for granted too ; any more careful method of
relation would have been unreal and uncon-

312 WOMEN IN WAR

vincing. Enough that she loved, or did not
love ; sympathised, or did not sympathise.
Any minuter personal detail would be lost in
the magnitude of the tragedy : the only details
dwelt upon would be those which the tragedy
of war brought home to her — a tragedy which
would surely be avoided if those responsible for
it realised all that it meant.

Just because she does not make a plain
woman write like a woman of letters, or a
woman who has suffered write like a detached
observer, always on the look out for flashes of
humour or soul-revealing traits, the Baroness
von Suttner has produced a book which
rings true as a whole, whatever hypercriticism
may find wanting on this page or that. She
omits the detail which the brain would have
failed to remark because the heart was full ;
but she does not shrink from detail, though
it be gruesome, when it is pertinent to her
purpose. The description of the visit paid to
Sadowa after the great battle is one of the
most graphic and poignant scenes in modern
literature. It is on that, not on her formal
contributions to controversy, that the Baroness
von Suttner 's fame as an apostle of peace must
rest ; and it will rest upon it quite securely.

CHAPTER XXIX

Florence Nightingale — How she prepared herself for her life's work,
and how she performed it — Her courage — Her thoroughness —
Her modesty — Her supreme title to immortal fame.

WE come, in conclusion, to the one name which
is worthy to be set beside that of Jeanne d'Arc
—equally glorious, though for other reasons :
the name of Florence Nightingale. She is
better remembered, and worthier to be re-
membered, than any of the generals in any of
the allied armies, as the men of war them-
selves agreed at a certain dinner of Crimean
veterans. It was agreed that each guest at
the banquet should write on a slip of paper
the name of the person whose services during
the campaign were likely most to impress
posterity ; and when the papers were examined,
the name of Florence Nightingale was found
inscribed on every one of them. The only other
great reputation made by the war was that of
Todleben ; and Florence Nightingale's reputa-
tion stands the higher of the two.

A good many enthusiasts probably think of
her as a happy accident : a woman of genius
who achieved wonders through inspiration,
willing self-sacrifice, and intuitive womanly

313

314 WOMEN IN WAR

sympathy. Genius, assuredly, is a word which
one need not be afraid of using when one speaks
of her ; but even more remarkable than her
genius is the thoroughness with which she
prepared herself for her life's work, for all the
world as though she foresaw the call, and was
resolved to be ready to answer it. When the
war broke out, the War Office was not ready,
and the soldiers were not ready, but had to
pick up their business as they went along.
Florence Nightingale alone impresses one as
knowing exactly what to do and how to do it
— a professional among amateurs.

There was no need for her to work ; and one
can hardly speak of her as belonging to a
profession, for she practically created the pro-
fession which she adorned. She grew up in a
class of society in which the majority of women
go through life avoiding work as carefully as
a cat avoids puddles. The general view of her
period was that that was what a woman's
attitude to work ought to be. Work, it was
held, was for man, and for women of the lower
orders. A lady who worked sank in the social
scale of values — much as a baronet would do
if he opened a small shop, or practised a
manual trade. But Florence Nightingale did
not care about that. She had a strong will,
and she was socially sure of herself. It did
not matter that precedents were lacking — she
could afford to make one.

Illnesses in her own family which she was

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 315

called upon to nurse gave her her first
interest in nursing. She thus realised that
nursing was a serious business, calling for
experience and exact knowledge as well as
sympathy with suffering, and the desire to
relieve it. She was moved to study the subject ;
and her endeavour to study it in the Lon-
don, Edinburgh, and Dublin hospitals made
it clear to her that nursing was, in England,
a neglected, and almost a non-existent art :
that the only nurses worthy of the name were
the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity. Then
she heard of Pastor Fliedner of Kaiserswerth,
and his Order of Deaconesses. She went to
Kaiserswerth, studied under Pastor Fliedner,
and learnt all that he could teach her. She
also visited the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul
in Paris ; and, for some time after her return
to England, she took charge of the Harley
Street Home for Sick Governesses. That is
how it was that she was really ready when her
hour came — an hour announced by the appeal
in one of Sir William Howard Russell's letters
to the Times :

" Are there no devoted women among us,
able and willing to go forth to minister to the
sick and wounded soldiers of the East in the
hospitals at Scutari ? Are none of the daughters
of England, at this extreme hour of need, ready
for such a work of mercy ? . . . France has
sent forth her Sisters of Mercy unsparingly,

316 WOMEN IN WAR

and they are even now by the bedsides of the
wounded and the dying, giving what woman's
hand alone can give of comfort and relief. . . .
Must we fall so far below the French in self-
sacrifice and devotedness, in a work which
Christ so signally blesses as done unto Him-
self ? "

Of course, the appeal did not fall upon deaf
ears : the trouble was that it fell mainly upon
the ears of the incompetent. The War Office
was inundated with offers of service — mostly
from unsuitable persons. It was almost im-
possible to pick out the few who were suitable
from so vast a multitude ; and the authorities
were adverse to the experiment, fearing that
the confusion of the hospitals would be worse
confounded by what a later Commander-in-
Chief scornfully styled "the plague of women.' '
A statement to that effect was issued from the
War Office :

" Many ladies/' declared Sidney Herbert,
" whose generous enthusiasm prompts them
to offer services as nurses are little aware of
the hardships they would have to encounter,
and the horrors they would have to witness.
Were all accepted who offer, I fear we should
have, not only many indifferent nurses, but
many hysterical patients."

But that was not Sidney Herbert's last word.
If he feared the plague of women, he also knew
Florence Nightingale — personally as well as

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 317

by reputation. He was satisfied that she was
the one woman in England who could, if she
would, organise and execute, without delay,
such a reform of hospital administration as
circumstances urgently called for. He sat down
and wrote to her, telling her of his difficulties :

" I receive numbers of offers from ladies to
go out, but they are ladies who have no con-
ception of what a hospital is, nor of the nature
of its duties ; and they would, when the time
came, either recoil from the work or be entirely
useless, and consequently, what is worse, entirely
in the way. . . .

" There is but one person in England that
I know of who would be capable of organising
and superintending such a scheme, and have
been several times on the point of asking you
hypothetically if, supposing the attempt were
made, you would undertake to direct it. ...

" A number of sentimental enthusiastic ladies
turned loose in the hospital at Scutari would
probably, after a few days, be mises d la porte by
those whose business they would interrupt, and
whose authority they would dispute. My ques-
tion simply is, Would you listen to the request
to go out and supervise the whole thing ? . . .

" I must not conceal from you that upon your
decision will depend the ultimate success ^ or
failure of the plan. Your own personal qualities,
your knowledge, and your power of administra-
tion, and, among greater things, your rank

318 WOMEN IN WAR

and position in society, give you advantages
in such a work which no other person
possesses. . . .

" Shall I come to you between three and
five ? Will you let me have a line at the War
Office, to let me know ? "

It was not only a difficult task which Sidney
Herbert thus besought Florence Nightingale
to undertake, but also a dangerous one. The
hospitals were hardly less perilous places than
the trenches ; fever and cholera were to work
hardly less havoc than shot and shell ; those
who returned alive from the errand of mercy
were almost certain to return in broken health.
Both Sidney Herbert and Florence Nightingale
knew all about that ; but her acceptance of
the responsible charge offered to her was never
in doubt. While he was writing to ask for her
help, she herself was writing to volunteer it :
the two letters crossed in the post. And, as
promptitude was of the essence of the com-
mission, she had recruited her assistants and
started within a week of receiving her appoint-
ment : cheered across France by that whole-
hearted enthusiasm of which France has the
secret ; sped on her way by hotel-keepers who
would present no bills, waiters who would take
no tips, and porters and fisherwomen who
scorned to be paid for carrying the baggage of
thirty-nine persons from the steamer to the
train.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 319

A book would be needed to tell the story of
the expedition ; a chapter at the end of a book
cannot possibly tell it. For detail and anecdote
the reader must go to Kinglake, or to the
Life of Florence Nightingale, by Miss Sarah
Tooley. What strikes one most emphatically
in the narrative is not the courage and the
devotion — for many women, happily, are
courageous and devoted — but the amazing
competence displayed in new and perplexing
conditions. Florence Nightingale had learnt
all that she could about nursing ; but no such
experience as this had ever come in her way.
The mark of genius lay in this : that she so
evidently knew a great deal more than she had
been taught. She was called upon, not merely
to invent the art of hospital management, but
to improvise it ; and she succeeded.

That is the reason why, though many women
gave their services, and some gave their lives,
to the same task, her name alone became
supremely famous. The common impression
of her, consecrated by poems and pictures, is
of a ministering angel, moving silently about
by night, and smoothing pillows :

So in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see

Pass through the glimmering gloom,

And flit from room to room.

And slowly, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss

Her shadow as it falls

Upon the darkening walls.

320 WOMEN IN WAR

That is Longfellow's tribute from across the
Atlantic ; but it tells only a part of the truth,
and does Florence Nightingale something less
than justice. Sympathy, indeed, she showed
in abundance, never sparing herself in response
to any call ; but the case was one in which
sympathy without sense, and, above all, with-
out authority, would have availed very little.
Even when the presence of women has to be
denounced as " a plague/' there is generally
something which can be called sympathy in
the midst of them. They sympathise more
with officers than with privates ; but still,
they sympathise. Florence Nightingale's
strength lay in the fact that, born to command,
she had trained herself to organise. One can
imagine circumstances in which the complaint
would have been heard that she was too fond
of managing, interfering, and setting people
to rights. Even at Scutari that complaint
was occasionally heard, though the louder
voice of enthusiasm drowned it.

At Scutari, however, there was needed, above
all things, a woman who not only liked setting
people to rights, but was capable of doing so,
was not afraid of cutting red tape instead of
waiting for it to be untied, and shouldering
the responsibility for an opportune disobedi-
ence of orders. Florence Nightingale, it seems
quite clear, assumed even more authority than
the War Office gave her. She assumed it in
virtue of her knowledge, and was able to exercise

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 321

it through her exceptional strength of character.
It was not only to nurses and hospital orderlies
that she gave instructions ; surgeons and com-
missariat officers also found that they had to
obey her. Medical stores had to be opened
when she wanted them, whatever the regulations
said to the contrary. Within her sphere, if not
also a little outside it, the commands of the
Lady-in-Chief came to be accepted as unques-
tioningly as those of the Commander-in-Chief .

She was as fearless, too, in the field as in
the wards. When she visited the Crimea, she
went out to look at the trenches — to the great
alarm of a sentry, who tried to stop her. " My
dear young man," she said to him reassuringly,
" more dead and wounded have passed through
my hands than I hope you will ever see in the
battle-field during the whole of your military
career ; believe me, I have no fear of death."
And then M. Soyer, the cook who was with her,
persuaded her to sit, for a moment, on a gun
carriage, and introduced her to the company :

" Gentlemen, behold this amiable lady sitting
fearlessly upon that terrible instrument of
war ! Behold the heroic daughter of England
—the soldier's friend ! " All present shouted
" Bravo I Hurrah ! hurrah ! Long live the
daughter of England ! >:

The cheers were heard even in Sebastopol.
It is the only incident in Florence Nightingale's
career in which there is a suggestion of reclame ;
21

322 WOMEN IN WAR

and the reclame assuredly was not of her seeking.
Indeed, she positively shrank from advertise-
ment, declining the Government's offer of a
passage home on a man-of-war, but returning
incognito through France as " Miss Smith. "
One cannot do better than quote Punch's tribute
to her self-effacing modesty :

Then leave her to the quiet she has chosen ; she demands
No greeting from our brazen throats and vulgar, clapping hands.
Leave her to the still comfort the saints known that have striven.
What are our earthly honours ? Her honours are in heaven.

On earth her name is the greatest among the
names of the women whom war has brought into
prominence. She was the last woman to whom
it would have occurred to try to transcend the
limitations of her sex. Her aim, while keeping
within those limitations, was to attain to
absolute efficiency herself, and bring others as
near as might be to her high standard. She
was as efficient in her sphere as Todleben in
his — vastly more efficient than Lord Raglan,
or Saint-Arnaud, or Pelissier, or Canrobert.
Her name and that of Jeanne d'Arc are the
only two names in the whole history of woman's
achievements in war which are quite secure of
immortality.

EPILOGUE

IT has already been explained that this book
was not only planned, but written, at a time
when England was at peace with all the world,
and few Englishmen expected to see the peace
disturbed. The accidents which prevented its
appearance in times of peace had nothing to do
with the political situation. Then, suddenly,
the storm-cloud burst, making a further post-
ponement of publication advisable, suggesting
a certain amount of revision, and requiring that
the work should be, as the publisher said,
' brought up to date."

Theoretically, the author agreed with the
proposal ; practically, he found himself em-
barrassed by circumstances not under his
control. At the beginning of the war he
had been caught, as a tourist, in the Grand
Duchy of Luxemburg ; and he had been
detained, for more than a year, first in a small
village in that neutral country, and then in an
internment camp in Germany. The conditions
of his detention were more favourable to
philosophical speculation than to the detailed
study of current events. His opportunities of
corresponding with England were severely

323

324 WOMEN IN WAR

limited. The only newspapers which he was
able to read were German newspapers ; and
there was a time when even these were with-
held from prisoners of war. Consequently he
returned to England grossly ignorant of many
of the things which the historian of the war —
especially of this particular aspect of the war-
ought to know, and almost afraid to write on
the subject lest, in his ignorance, he should do
injustice by omitting to mention some dis-
tinguished achievement or some famous name.
At all events, things being as they are, it seems
proper for him to present this explanation be-
fore proceeding.

One generalisation, in any case, seems safe.
Since the civilised peoples of the world were
last at war, the education of women has made
great strides, and their position has vastly im-
proved ; and this social transformation, effected
in time of peace, has produced its results in
time of war. More has been demanded from
women in this war than in any previous one ;
they have volunteered to render more multi-
farious services ; and they have rendered those
services more efficiently. There has been no
repetition of Sidney Herbert's experience in the
Crimean War, when the search for an efficient
woman appears to have been only a little less
difficult than the search of Diogenes for an
honest man. If efficient women have not been
quite as numerous as devoted women — for
efficiency is always rarer than devotion — they

EPILOGUE 325

have, at all events, been discovered in astonish-
ing abundance ; and that not in one field of
labour only, but in many.

Nursing, of course, has always been regarded
as " woman's sphere " ; and, for a long time,
it was regarded as the only sphere connected
with war in which she was qualified to shine.
She might go to the hospitals and nurse, or she
might stay at home and make the bandages :
that was the alternative of old ; the adoption
of any third course was abnormal, and was
esteemed unfeminine. If any conceptions of
that kind, however, were still lingering when
this war began, experience has long since de-
stroyed them. Women have lately demonstrated
that they can be useful in war in many other
ways besides the mitigation of the horrors ;
that they can organise as well as work, and that
they are eminently capable of many kinds of
work in many spheres which man has hitherto
thought of as exclusively his own.

The phenomenon has not been peculiar to
any one of the countries engaged in the war,
but has been common to them all. The Ger-
mans, no less than ourselves, have, as they would
say, " mobilised " their women, whether they
belonged to the idle or to the industrial classes,
though they have made rather less use than we
have of their intelligence, and rather more use
of their muscles. The writer has not only seen
crowds of German nurses in neat uniforms
awaiting the arrival of the wounded at the

326 WOMEN IN WAR

railway stations ; he has also seen women work-
ing as plate-layers on the railway at Spandau,
and cleaning the streets and driving the tram-
cars in Berlin. On more than one occasion a
woman drove a tram, by inadvertence, into the
River Spree, and caused considerable loss of
life.

The inference could, no doubt, reasonably be
drawn that woman's war work has been less
efficient in Germany than here ; and there are
also incidents which indicate that it has been
more capricious. A case of the kind occurred
at Diisseldorf, when a military doctor, at a
public meeting, called for volunteers to help in
the hospitals. The volunteers were numerous
enough ; but lady after lady hedged her offer
with a qualification, saying that she was will-
ing to be a nurse on condition that she should
only be required to nurse officers. The doctor
naturally turned them out of the hall with
winged words ; but one is glad to feel that no
such incident would have been possible in any
of the Allied Countries. Its occurrence, at any
rate, places one in closer sympathy than ever
with those ladies of Luxemburg, who, when the
Germans asked them to volunteer their services
for Red Cross work, stipulated that they should
only be asked to render assistance to French,
English, and Belgian prisoners, and that the
German wounded should continue to be attended
by German nurses.

These remarks, however, are of the nature of

EPILOGUE 327

a digression. Space is limited, and is due to
the record of individual achievements : due, in
the first instance, to the women who have
actually borne arms and served in the ranks
during the present war. There have been such
women in both the Russian and the Austro-
Hungarian armies — no fewer than twenty of
them in the Voluntary Ukraine Legion alone ;
and the Evening Standard lately furnished par-
ticulars of the exploits of a Miss Helen Ruz of
that corps — the daughter of a high railway official
at Czernowitz, and a student, when the war
broke out, at the Vienna Commercial Academy.
This is what the Evening Standard gathered
about her from a Hungarian correspondent :

" The Legion went to the front, and after
two weeks Miss Ruz was appointed corporal.
She went through the whole Galician campaign,
in the worst places of the Carpathian Moun-
tains, lost her father, two brothers, and her
fiance, gained two medals, was transferred to
the Uhlans, had two ribs broken by a shrapnel
splinter, and is now impatiently awaiting her
complete recovery to rejoin. She is now being
carefully nursed in a pretty, small room of the
hospital, which is being directed by one of the
army lady doctors. . . . The nerves of that
nineteen-year-old girl have completely with-
stood the manifold shocks of one of the bloodiest
and most exacting campaigns of history, and
she is commissioned for commissioned rank."

328 WOMEN IN WAR

So much for the Amazons in the ranks of the
enemy. Our information about the Amazons
who have fought for Russia may be borrowed
from M. Ludovic Naudeau, the Petrograd
correspondent of Le Journal. The Russian
military regulations, M. Naudeau tells us, for-
bid the enlistment of women ; but those rules
have frequently been honoured in the breach,
the pioneer being Mile Apollovna Isoltsev, who
was accepted as a volunteer in a regiment com-
manded by her father :

" In the midst of the battle/' M. Naudeau
writes, " the colonel was mortally wounded and
was left lying in a burning cottage. Apollovna
dashed through the flames, discovered her
father's body, and carried it, under a storm of
shot and shell, back into the Russian lines/'

Very similar was the feat performed by Mile
Maria Bieloverskaia, who, seeing the major of
her battalion fall, severely wounded, rushed to
his assistance, and carried him out of the first
line to a place of comparative safety. For
this service she was awarded the Cross of St.
George, of the fourth class, and she was shortly
afterwards promoted to the third class of the
same order for discovering a telephone which
the enemy had concealed in a loft and was using
for the purposes of the Intelligence Department.
Other heroines of whom M. Naudeau speaks are
Miles Kokovtseva and Olga Serguievna Schid-
lowskaia.

EPILOGUE 329

' Mile Kokovtseva has also won the Cross of
St. George. Enlisting as a volunteer in a
Cossack regiment at the beginning of the war,
she has taken part in the most daring recon-
naissances, and has been once severely wounded.
" Mile Olga Serguievna Schidlowskaia be-
longs to a family of soldiers. Her elder brother,
Paul Schidlowsky, of the iO2nd regiment, was
killed at Soldau early in the war, and her other
brother, Alexander, was severely wounded.
Olga herself obtained leave from headquarters
to enlist in the 4th Hussars, the regiment in
which another heroine, Alexandra Dourova,
fought against Napoleon in 1812 as a cornet.
With close-cropped hair, she serves as Oleg
Schidlowsky/*

In conclusion, M. Naudeau tells the story of
a work-woman, Maria Limareva, who was
recently summoned in the Russian equivalent
of our County Court for failing to pay the hire
of her sewing-machine :

" What have you to say ? " asked the Judge.
' Nothing, except it be that I am unable to
pay, as I was wounded a short time ago, fight-
ing against the Austrians. Here are my papers. "

" On my word/' exclaimed the Judge, after
scanning the documents, " she speaks the truth.
Maria Limareva is a wounded soldier."

" In that case," said the plaintiff, " I wish
to withdraw the summons/'

330 WOMEN IN WAR

The stories recall the unique days of the
French Revolution ; and it seems very appro-
priate that the Demoiselles Fernig should have
found their most notable disciples among the
women of France's principal Ally, in a war
which has called forth just the same spirit of
popular enthusiasm as the wars waged on
behalf of the Gospel of the Rights of Man.
Still, such feats of arms, admirable as one finds
them, do not represent the characteristic war
work of the women of our time. The distinc-
tive notes have been, rather, the marvellous
adaptability displayed by modern women in
conditions to which no experience had accus-
tomed them, and the immense numbers in
which they have been found prepared to face
both peril and hardship, without a suspicion of
theatricality, as things which were all in the
day's work.

Where so many have done so well, and so
much as a matter of course, one is almost
ashamed to praise, lest eulogy should appear to
imply surprise, akin to that expressed by an
officer of Uhlans who questioned an English
nurse whom he found wandering among the
battle-fields of Belgium, and was startled into
saying, " Really ! really ! really ! You Eng-
lish women are wonderful." Examples, in any
case, are better than eulogies ; and it will
suffice to quote, almost at random, a few ex-
tracts from the newspapers which have printed
the stories of women — mostly doctors and

EPILOGUE 331

nurses — who went through the Serbian cam-
paign. There is the story, for instance, of Sister
Janet Middleton of Middlesbrough, told by
her to a contributor to Lloyd's Weekly News.
She was on field ambulance duty at Markovatz
when the overwhelming Bulgar-Boche advance
necessitated that flight through Albania which
is almost comparable to the British flight from
the Afghans through the Khyber Pass :

' We slept in our sleeping-bags on waterproof
sheets on the earth, and when we awoke in the
morning our blankets were covered with white
frost. We dressed our wounded and then sat
on our luggage, waiting for the order to depart.
Suddenly there was a whizz overhead. We
looked up, and there was an enemy aeroplane.
Our little party consisted of seven nurses and
two Sisters, and it was something of a task to
look after our wounded with bombs dropping
round. But we could not afford to lose our
heads — even if we had felt unnerved. One
man and three oxen were killed close to us, and
several people were wounded ; but there was
work to be done, since our orders had not come,
and we simply went on with it. ...

" I shall never forget the day on which we
started. It began to snow. We hoped we
should get out of it, but as the hours passed a
terrific blizzard came on. Walking was agony.
We had packed our goods on the ponies ; one
of them was in my charge. Every now and

332 WOMEN IN WAR

then the poor thing would slip on the rough
road, the pack would fall off, and I would have
to refasten it. We were climbing mountain
ground, the summits of which reached 7,000 ft.
above sea-level. The road was little more than
a narrow path, holding one at a time. On one
side was a deep precipice over which one of
our ponies fell. In one day I counted six dead
horses on the wayside. Along this winding
hill-path we had to climb. Our feet were sore
and frost-bitten, there was no protection from
the blinding snow. We could only go a step
or two at a time, feeling our way, clutching
at the barren grass on the roadside, lest we

fell

" Eventually we got across the lake, and
then began another trek to the coast side.
There we had to wait six days for a boat. We
had practically no food. Foodships were ex-
pected daily, but we learnt that two had been
sunk by the Austrians, and on the shores the
tide washed up a great side of fat bacon. Dirty
and smelly as it was, we were glad of it. ...
At last an Italian boat came in, which agreed
to take us to Brindisi. It was a very light
craft, and it was crammed with refugees who
were violently ill most of the time. ... I feel
as if I needed a long rest, I am so physically
done up."

Then there is Miss Linton's story, given in

the Standard :

EPILOGUE 333

" We had no medicines, and had to dry our
clothes by the fires of sticks which we made
when we halted. We once walked twenty-five
miles in one day, from Prizrend to Jaconitza;
but our usual average was about twelve miles.
Bombs flung from aeroplanes fell very near us
at Scutari. We saw many bodies of men who
had died of starvation and exhaustion lying by
the roadside. We wore out the top-boots and
shoes we started with, and were forced to buy
new ones whenever we had a chance, whatever
their quality, and however badly they fitted.
Miss Bell burned up a pair of top-boots by put-
ting them too near the fire to thaw the ice on
them. The bread and meat you put in your
pocket froze hard."

Such are typical stories of the hardships so
stubbornly and modestly endured in the good
cause ; but there is still something needed to
complete the picture — the nature of the fear
inspired by what was known of the disposition
and methods of the pursuing foe. In the wars
waged among civilised races, women — above
all, the women who tend the wounded — are safe
from molestation ; but, when the German is
the enemy, that is not the case. Doubtless there
are chivalrous men among the Germans — one
meets such a man, now and again, even in the
official reports on the atrocities perpetrated in
Belgium ; but chivalry is the exception, not
the rule, and the exercise of it has often been a

334

WOMEN IN WAR

violation of military discipline. The normal
German officer goes forth to war with the mark
of the beast on his forehead, and the lust of
cruelty in his heart. The higher his rank, the
less is he to be trusted, and the more likely is
he to pass the word for cold-blooded and calcu-
lated " frightfulness." Many things have been
done in the course of this war which brand the
race with the stigma of everlasting ignominy ;
and there is one crime which will be remem-
bered against them as long as the crime of
Pontius Pilate — the judicial murder of Edith
Cavell.

The story is so well known that the repetition
of all the details would be superfluous. All
that Edith Cavell had done, on the showing
of her accusers, was to assist Belgians to
leave their country in contravention of a Ger-
man order ; there was practically no evidence
against her, even on that charge, except her
own frank confession. Her whole life had pre-
viously been devoted to the tending of the
sick ; during the war German soldiers, no less
than others, had profited from her ministrations.
Never before in the whole history of warfare
among civilised peoples has such a trivial
offence committed by such a woman been visited
with the death penalty ; but Edith Cavell was
not in the hands of civilised men — she was in the
hands of Germans. How far remote are the
methods of German soldiers from those of
civilised mankind is shown even in the story of

EDITH CAVELL 335

her arrest, as told by Mr. W. T. Hill in his little
book, The Martyrdom of Nurse Cavell :

" Early in the evening of August 5 a loud
knock came to the door of Nurse Cavell' s hospi-
tal in the Rue de la Culture. Five heavily
booted German soldiers and a corporal stood
outside with a police officer. At that moment
the nurse was changing the bandages of a
wounded German. The soldiers broke open
the door with the butt-ends of their rifles, and
rushed into the ward. At a sign from the
police officer the corporal seized Miss Cavell
roughly. He tore out of her hand the lint
with which she was about to bandage the
wounded man, and began to drag her away.
The Englishwoman, astonished but calm, asked
for an explanation. The answer was a cuff."

It was a pretty beginning ; and the rest was
quite in keeping with it. The trial was not a
fair one. The prisoner was not allowed to see
the legal adviser who would have warned her to
be cautious in her admissions, and she was
tricked into the admission required to support
the capital charge. From her lips, and from
that source alone, her judges got the proof that
the men whom she had helped to cross the Dutch
frontier had actually reached a country at war"
with Germany ; and, after that statement had
been elicited, her doom was sealed. The Public
Prosecutor pressed for sentence of death ; the

336 WOMEN IN WAR

Court, as a matter of course, accorded it. For
the rest, the executioners acted on the
murderer's motto :

If, when 'twere done, 'twere well done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly.

They knew that what they were about to
do was shameful. Being ashamed, they were
afraid, and therefore they made haste. They
doubted their courage to go on in the face of
the indignation which they knew that their
sentence would arouse among the humane and
chivalrous throughout the world ; and there-
fore they lied as to their intentions, in order
that that indignation might be confronted with
an accomplished fact. They announced, that
is to say, that the execution would be delayed
for a few days, whereas they knew that it was
their intention to carry it out immediately, at
the dead of night ; and it is recorded against
them in the official report of the American
Legation to the British Foreign Office that they
deliberately blocked the path of mercy with a
barricade of lies.

It also stands recorded against them that the
American Legation, and the Spanish Legation,
believed that they lied, and acted upon that
assumption. The story of the action which
the Legations took may be borrowed from
the narrative contained in the Field's Supple-
ment on " The Crimes of the German Army " :

" Mr. Brand Whitlock, the American Minister,

EDITH CAVELL

337

who had been indefatigable in Miss Cavell's
cause, was himself too ill to go out ; but he gave
instructions to Mr. Hugh Gibson, Secretary to
the Legation. Mr. Gibson, accompanied by
M. de Laval, hastened first to find the Spanish
Minister, the Marquis de Villalobar ; and the
three went on a desperate errand of mercy, to
find Baron von der Lancken. They took with
them a note addressed by Mr. Brand Whitlock
to Baron von der Lancken, and a plea for
clemency addressed to the Governor-General,
Baron von Bissing. . . .

" They had to wait some time to see Baron
von der Lancken, who was absent for the
evening with all his staff ; but they sent a
messenger to him, and he returned with two
other officials. -He was told their mission, and
he read Mr. Whitlock's letter aloud. His re-
sponse was to express his disbelief that sen-
tence had been passed ; and he demanded the
source of the information. He continued to
try to put his interlocutors off, but finally was
prevailed upon to telephone to the Presiding
Judge of the Court-martial. He was then
obliged to admit that sentence had been passed,
and that the sentence would be carried out
before morning.

" Mr, Gibson, M. de Laval, the Marquis de
Villalobar pleaded for clemency; at any rat'e,
for delay ; they exhausted every plea, every
reason.

11 Baron von der Lancken replied that the

338 WOMEN IN WAR

Military Governor was the supreme authority ;
but appeal from his decision could be carried
only to the Emperor. He added that the Mili-
tary Governor had discretionary powers to
accept or to refuse acceptance to a plea for
clemency. . . . After some discussion, he agreed
to call up the Military Governor on the telephone
and learn whether he had already ratified the
sentence, and whether there was any chance of
clemency.

" He returned in half an hour, and said he
had conferred personally with Baron von Bis-
sing, who said that he had deliberated on the
case, and that he considered the infliction of
the death-penalty imperative. He therefore
declined to accept Mr. Brand Whitlock's appeal
for clemency, or any representation in regard to
the matter/'

So, the murder having been resolved upon, it
was committed at the dead of night. The Rev.
H. S. T. Gahan, the British chaplain at Brussels,
had already been admitted to offer the last
consolations of religion to the victim of the
murder, at the time when Von der Lancken,
the liar, was denying that sentence had been
passed. This is his story of her last hours :

" To my astonishment and relief, I found my
friend perfectly calm and resigned. But this
could not lessen the tenderness and intensity
of feeling on either part during that last inter-
view of almost an hour.

EDITH CAVELL 339

" Her first words to me were upon a matter
concerning herself personally, but the solemn
asseveration which accompanied them was made
expressedly in the light of God and eternity.
She then added that she wished all her friends
to know that she willingly gave her life for her
country, and said : ' I have no fear nor shrink-
ing ; I have seen death so often that it is not
strange or fearful to me/ She further said : * I
thank God for this ten weeks' quiet before the
end. Life has always been hurried and full of
difficulty. This time of rest has been a great
mercy. They have all been very kind to me
here. But this I would say, standing as I do
in view of God and eternity: I realise that
patriotism is not enough. I must have no
hatred or bitterness towards any one.'

" We partook of the Holy Communion to-
gether, and she received the Gospel message of
consolation with all her heart . At the close of the
little service, I began to repeat the words, * Abide
with Me/ and she joined softly in the end."

So the foul deed was done ; and the civilised
world raised a cry of " Shame ! " which will re-
echo down the ages, long after the German
Empire has been ground to dust; and the
German press, for a moment staggered and silent,
presently recovered itself and spoke out with
that callous vulgarity which is of the essence of
the German mind. This, for instance, is how
the Berlin Lokalanzeiger spoke :

340 WOMEN IN WAR

" The hypocritical blubbering and hysterical
howling that still go on in the English Press
over the Cavell affair make us downright sick.
The immeasurable depth of this true English
cant is proved by the fact that in London they
are at heart only too glad at the occurrence,
which has afforded the military authorities a
splendid instrument for reviving the waning re-
cruiting activities. To the British War Office
the dead woman is worth a score of recruiting
sergeants : she is also much cheaper to employ.
She costs no money, but only a liberal output
of those crocodile tears which John Bull's eyes
are ever ready to shed at a moment's notice. A
nation like the British, the pages of whose
history are besmirched with dirty deeds, incurs
the loathing of the human race from now to all
eternity when it dares to point the finger of
scorn and indignation at German officers who
only did their duty in carrying out the sentence
pronounced upon a guilty woman."

There is nothing to be said except, Crimine
db uno disce omnes. The German Press poured
out such apologies, together with others still
more degraded and bestial, for days. Reading
them, one feels as if a searchlight had been
thrown upon the place in which the German
soul should be, and only a speck of dirt had
been found there. And, if the Germans flatter
themselves that it is only in England that their
crime has met with contemptuous execration,

EDITH CAVELL 341

then let them consider the words in which M.
Painleve denounced it, at the ceremony ar-
ranged by the League of the Rights of Man, in
the presence of the President of the Republic
and the Ambassadors of the Allied Powers :

" Germany has neither accused nor excused
herself. Her lawyers are still quibbling over
the murdered nurse's so-called trial. It passes
their comprehension that the legality of this
murder increases its terror.

" What is intolerable precisely is that her
trial and execution conformed with German
justice. So long as Germany does not pro-
foundly feel the shame and remorse of this
crime no peace will be possible between Germany
and humanity. Even were an absurd and im-
possible hypothesis to come true, and violence
and iniquity to triumph over justice and right/
there is not a man worthy of the name who
would not prefer death with Miss Cavell to vic-
tory with her murderers.

" But it is to our victory, and not to defeat,
that those thousands of young Englishmen are
marching, who have enlisted to wreak vengeance
upon the German people for this murder. . . .
The Germans shot the frail nurse in vain.
Little English nurse, you have not been van-
quished ; you are victorious for all time. At
this great commemoration which anticipates
history, before crowds of French people
come to celebrate you, we greet in you the

342 WOMEN IN WAR

herald of better humanity and triumphant
justice.''

And on those two words " murder " and
" justice " we must continue to insist when the
hour comes. Murder has been done, and there-
fore justice must be done. Von Bissing and
the others must understand that, henceforward,
whether they fight or administer, they do so
with ropes round their necks, that we shall not
temper justice, any more than they tempered
injustice, with mercy, and that, unless their
own hands should rob the executioner of his
due, their fate is fixed, and they will be swung
ignominiously from the gallows into the presence
of the Judge of all the earth.

THE END

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Women in war

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