I found a website the other day called gendergap.com and the
quote at the top said
“If one man taking one step on
the moon can prove that humankind is capable of space travel, then why can’t
over 6,000 years of history and thousands of women in combat prove that women
can fight.”
Below are the abbreviated stories of some fabulous fighting women. They deserve to have their stories told, so that hopefully before too much longer, the martial history of women will be shared and accepted as fact, just as that of men is now.
I am looking for scripts that are 10 – 20 minutes in length, containing at least one fight sequence for the woman whose story is being told. If it is a fight involving two or more women, all the better (if that fits the story). Keep in mind that I will be trying to get this produced on a shoe-string budget, so anything that can be done to facilitate that will make it much more likely that your script will be produced.
A quick note on tone: I am not adverse to comedy, despite the fact that most of these stories are heavy ones. However, I am not interested in satires in which the women are the butt of the jokes. Making fun of the concept of women fighting, or of these women fighters, is the exact opposite of what I am hoping to do with this project.
Please feel free to do any additional research you can on these women, and also, if you have another women warrior you would really like to write about, you most definitely have a wild card option! And feel free to email me with any questions you may have.
Completed scripts can be emailed to me at dawn.sam.alden (at) gmail (dot) com. Regardless of whether or not your script is chosen for production, all copyrights will remain yours, and you are free to pursue production through other sources should you so desire. The deadline for submissions is October 10th, 2010.
Thanks and enjoy!
Dawn Alden
Marguerite de Bressieux
In France, in the late 1400s, Royalist troops battled
against renegade nobles. In one
such battle Marguerite de Bressieux, the princess of a Royalist castle, was
captured by Louis de Chalon, the Prince of Orange, and along with her 11 women
in waiting, was raped by his men.
Several months later, while Royalist troops prepared to attack Louis de
Chalon at the battle of Autun, 12 knights appeared. They were dressed in black armor, wore black crepe veils
over their helmets, and carried a black banner depicting an orange pierced by a
spear, emblazoned the words Ainsi tu seras (you will be so).
Eyewitnesses reported that they fought
well. Each time they confronted
one of the rapists, they would raise their visor so that he would know the
identity of his executioner before killing him. Marguerite herself was badly
injured in the battle, and died several hours later. She was buried with full military honors.
The Valiant Ladies of Potosi
In the mid-1600’s lived who would become two of Peru’s
favorite folk heroines: the
valiant ladies of Potosi. Doña Ana
Lezama de Urinza, adopted into the de Sonza household, developed a close
friendship with the de Sonza daughter, Doña Eustaquia, and in later years
became her lover.
Both women displayed a passionate interest in the fencing
lessons provided for Eustaquia’s brother, and after the young man’s death, were
allowed to pursue their interest.
By age 13, they were studying with a swordmaster, as well as learning to
handle firearms.
As was befitting proper young women of their class and
times, they were raised in virtual seclusion from the rough life of
Potosi. In their late teens,
however, they often dressed as men, slipped away from the de Sonza hacienda,
and plunged into the violent nightlife of the city for adventure and a test of
their martial skills.
In one street fight against four men, Ana was knocked out,
and Eustaquia warded off the attackers with her sword until Ana regained
consciousness and jumped to her feet.
Ana identified the man who had struck her down, and attacked him with
such ferocity that she cut through his shield and nearly severed his hand. The remaining three men fled.
For five years, the lovers wandered Peru, engaging in fights
and gaining great fame as swordswomen.
They returned to Potosi after Eustaquia’s father died, and willed them
his estate. A few years later, Ana
died from a wound she received in another of her dangerous pastimes: bullfighting. Four months later, Eustaquia died of grief.
Nancy Wade
Nancy Wade, a New Zealander, was living with her husband in
Marseilles when WW2 broke out. She
became an ambulance driver, later moving on to serve in the French
resistance. Her group is estimated
to have saved over 1000 downed airmen and lost soldiers from capture by the
Germans.
Nancy became a thorn in the side of the Germans, and in
November of 1942, the Gestapo records indicate their concern with an enemy
agent they called “the White Mouse.”
After being captured in 1943 and escaping, she was flown to England
where she underwent grueling training for the Special Operations
Executive. The only woman in
Special Ops, she was ranked as a marksman with a Sten gun, and taught various
methods of silent killing.
On March 1st, 1944, Nancy was dropped into France
near Montlucon. Operating under a
false name, she soon worked her way into the leadership of a 7,000 man
guerrilla task force. On their
first major assignment, Nancy and her guerrillas were attacked at their base by
22,000 German soldiers, supported by aircraft and artillery. Nancy and her men slipped out of the
trap after dark, leaving 1500 German soldiers dead. By July, she was operating with a task force of 2000 maquis,
attacking German conveys that were bringing troops and supplies to the Normandy
front.
Britain honored her with the King George medal, America awarded
her the Medal of Freedom with Bronze Palm for her aid in the rescue of two
American officers, and the French government awarded her two Croix de Guerre,
and a third Croix de Guerre with Star, and the Resistance Medal.
Concerning Nancy Wade, a fellow maquis
leader told an historian, “She is the most feminine woman I know, until the
fight starts. Then she is like
five men.”
Abbess Odette de Pougy
From the 7th through the 13th century in
Western Europe, Abbesses held enormous powers. They commanded huge tracts of land with their knights,
levied taxes on the surrounding populations, and even had coins struck in their
own images. The often waged war on
one another, and fortresses of warrior monks and nuns grew such a problem that
laws were passed forbidding citizens to loiter outside convent walls, for their
own safety. The king or queen
could only subdue them with difficulty, and various popes established creeds
against women engaging in martial combat in an attempt to weaken the
sisterhood. The papal ban against
women wearing armor proved to be the technicality on which Joan of Arc was
sentenced to be burned as a heretic.
In 1265 Abbess Odette de Pougy of Notre Dame Aux Nonnains
challenged Pope Urban IV. He
wanted to build a church on the site where his father’s shoemaker’s shop once
stood. The Abbess forbade him to
do so, as the land belonged to her abbey.
Pope Urban sent a work crew to break ground, despite the Abbesses’
objections, and she sent an armed party that drove them from her land. Two years later, he tried again with
the same results. Enraged at the
Abbess, the pope excommunicated the entire abbey. The sentence remained in effect for 14 years, but the Abbess
was resolute, and the pope’s church was not built until after her death.
Philothey Benizelos
It was not unusual in world history for women warriors to be
nuns: in the 1650’s, Philothey
Benizelos established a convent in Greece and so successfully attracted women
students that the local governments feared her growing power. The women of the convent were armed and
trained as fighters, for several times Philothey had been called to forcibly
pacify rebellious tenants who protested the harsh taxes exacted by the convent
managers.
Sammuramat
In the late 9th an early 8th centuries
BC, Assyrian Queen Sammuramat secured the throne from her husband Ninus,
ordered him killed, and seized control of the expansion of the Assyrian
empire. She fought her way to
oceans, thereby accessing foreign trade ports for land-locked Assyria. She conquered Babylon, and constructed
one of the seven wonders of the world, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. She went on to capture Ethiopia and
Egypt, held Bactria against her husband’s attack, and repulsed the armies of India.
According to chroniclers of the time, the
Queen led an army of 300,000 foot soldiers, 5,000 horse cavalry, and large
contingents of camel-mounted cavalry and charioteers.
Her impressive legend of accomplishment and conquest led the
Greeks (who called her Semiramis) to fashion tales that she must be descended
from the gods.
She left behind her own records of her accomplishments on a
variety of self-glorifying monuments.
At the base of one statue, the Queen had engraved
“Nature made me a woman, yet I
have raised myself to rival the greatest men. I swayed the scepter of Ninos, I extended my dominions to
the river Hinamemes eastward; to the southward to the land of frankincense and
myrrh; northward to Saccae and the Scythians. No Assyrian before me had seen an ocean, but I have seen
four. I have built dams and
fertilized the barren land with my rivers. I have built impregnable walls and roads to far places, and
with iron cut passages through mountains where previously even wild animals
could not pass. Various as were my
deeds, I have yet found leisure hours to indulge myself with friends.”
Khawlah Bint al-Kindiyyah
In the early days of Islam, women of noble status had the
same rights as their husbands, including the right to raid, to wage war, and to
fight in battles. Khawlah Bint
al-Kindiyyah rode with her female captains in the front ranks of Arab army, as
they clashed with the Greeks at the battle of Yermonks. The Greek strategy bested the Arabs,
and the Arab army retreated in panic. Khawlah and several other women captains
assumed control of the army and turned back on the Greeks, urging the men to
follow her into the center of battle.
When a Greek soldier knocked Khawlah to the ground and advanced for the
kill, her captain Wafeira severed his head with her sword, and displayed it to
inspire the Arab soldiers.
Khawlah and her women captains (Alfra’Bint Ghifar
al-Humayriah, Oserrah and Wafeira) were eventually captured by the Greeks in a
battle near Damascus and their weapons were confiscated. Feeling that she and her captains were
being treated rudely by their captors, Khawlah stirred her captains to
escape. With no other weapons than
the poles that held up their tent, they attacked their guards, and the soldiers
fled before them.
A historian who saw Khawlah fight in battle described her as
a tall knight, muffled in black and fighting with ferocious courage. She and her women captains were
experienced warriors with the strength to control a camel in battle, to fight
with a sword and lance, and to render a simple tent pole into a deadly weapon.
Black Agnes
In Scotland in 1334, Lady Agnes Randolph, called Black
Agnes, fought in defense of the Castle Dunbar in the Earl her husband’s
absence. Her adversary was
England’s Earl of Salisbury, a specialist in military engineering and technology. For five years, the English general
laid siege to Dunbar, and directed against her some of the most advanced
machinery that had appeared in England.
Black Agnes, leading her troops, withstood him, and after each
bombardment, ordered the maids to dust the furniture and shake out the rugs in
her chambers, and act of normalcy designed to irritate Salisbury, as he
attempted to terrorize the inhabitants of Dunbar with his mines and
cannon.
When the bombardment failed, Salisbury’s men built a testudo, a wheeled, covered shed under which his men worked
battering rams. Agnes observed the
apparatus for a time, before ordering her men to swing a large rock over the
battlements and drop it on the testudo.
As Salisbury’s men fled the crushed war machine, Agnes commanded that
fire be dropped on the remains.
Finally, Salisbury brought Agnes’ brother, the Earl of Moray
from prison to the Castle Dunbar.
He displayed the Earl, and threatened to kill him if she did not
capitulate. Her response came in
two parts: first, because the
castle did not belong to her, she could not surrender it, and second, because
her brother had no children, his death would simply assure that she would
inherit all his lands and with them, even greater power. Salisbury reluctantly returned her
brother to prison.
On June 10th, 1338, Salisbury withdrew his siege
from Castle Dunbar and never returned.
A small poem written by some of his men conveys his attitude about Black
Agnes:
She
kept stir in tower and trench,
that
brawling, boisterous Scottish wench.
Came
I early, came I late,
I
found Agnes at the gate.
Gallus Mag and Sadie the Goat
In the year following the Civil War, a number of women
outlaws populated the American scene.
New York claimed barkeep Gallus Mag, a brawler and thief, who displayed
neatly labeled jars of pickled human ears she had bitten off in her many
fights.
Sadie the Goat, another
New Yorker, was famous for butting strangers in the stomach with such force
that they were disabled while she robbed them.
One evening Sadie, despondent over losing an ear to Gallus
Mag in a recent fight, walked along the New York waterfront. Hearing some shots, she discovered a
robbery in progress and watched with fascination as a group of drunken men
attempted to steal a small sailing sloop anchored mid-river. A handful of crewmen easily drove the
would-be pirates into the river.
Sadie assessed the soundness of the robbers’ scheme as well
as their ineptness in executing Hudson River piracy. Confident that she could captain the crew, she helped the
floundering men out of the river and proposed her plans. Within days, she discovered a larger
sloop, engineered its hijacking, and led her crew on a rampage of robbery,
murder, arson, and kidnapping up and down the Hudson and Harlem Rivers.
Sadie the Goat earned a fortune before
the determined and organized farmers who lived along the Hudson River forced
the end of her piracy career. She
returned to the Fourth Ward, acclaimed as “Queen of the Waterfront.” In a gesture of good will, Gallus Mag
returned her ear, and a grateful Sadie mounted it in a locket, which she wore
at all times.
Mrs. Wright and the women of Groton
Though the Sons of Liberty are celebrated for participating
in the American Revolution, few know of the existence of the Daughters of
Liberty. As the rebellion against
the British escalated, many women were moved to warrior effort.
In Old Middlesex, Massachusetts, when
Prescott moved out with his regiment of “Minute Men,” Mrs. David Wright of
Pepperell, Mrs. Job Shattuck of Groton, and a group of local women whose names
have not been recorded put on their husbands’ clothing, armed themselves with
muskets, axes and pitchforks, and took possession of Jewett’s Bridge, an
important link between Pepperell and Groton. They elected Mrs. Wright their captain and vowed that no
enemy would cross the bridge.
Captain Leonard Whiting, a heavily armed courier carrying
British intelligence dispatches from Canada to Boston, failed to fight his way
through Mrs. Wright’s small army and was taken captive. The women discovered the letters and
sent them to Colonel Prescott.
Kenau Hasselaar
In 1581, the Netherlands came under attack by Spain. At the Dutch city of Harlaam, three
thousand fighting men and a unit of women warriors prepared to receive the fury
of the Spanish army. The women,
led by Kenau Hasselaar, a 47 year-old widow, formed the elite corps at
Harlaam.
When the Spanish army was
approaching, she proposed to the military governor that she raise a women’s
fighting unit and arm it at her own expense. Permission was quickly granted, and three hundred women
instantly volunteered. Each woman,
an expert with sword, dagger, and musket, wore light armor over her dress,
disdaining to costume as a man.
Kenau Hasselaar’s troops fought in all major actions, both
within and without the walls of Harlaam.
She also led them in countermining operations and in heavy construction
to bolster damaged defenses. The
grateful citizens of Harlaam granted Kenau a pension in the form of a permanent
public position as a tax collector.
At this point, Kenau Hasselaar disappeared from the pages of history.
Madame de Chauteau-Gay
The crusades of the 13th century, as did those
preceding, found many women warriors in the Holy Land. A historian of the time wrote, “French
women warriors in this period were either duelists who made themselves locally
famous in France or hard-fighting crusader soldiers who usually died
unidentified.”
Madame de Chauteau-Gay exemplified the former. She was, as one commentator expressed,
“…both gallant and handsome; she was generally to be seen on horseback, wearing
huge top-boots, kilted skirts and a man’s wide-brimmed hat with steel trimmings
and feathers to crown all, sword by side and pistols at saddle bow.”
Though married, she challenged the captain of her lover’s
cavalry regiment to a duel after the officer had, in her opinion, mistreated
her friend. Aware of Madame de
Chauteau-Gay’s fame with sword and pistol, the cowardly officer appeared at the
duel with two swordsmen by his side.
Madame de Chauteau-Gay’s squire asked her to withdraw
because of the unfairness. She
responded, “It shall never be said that I encountered them without attacking
them.” She engaged all three
swordsmen at once and after offering an excellent account of her sword skills,
she was, in the end, overcome and killed by her adversaries.
Ingean Ruadh and Stikla
Saxo Grammaticus, an ancient Danish historian, wrote:
"There
were once women among the Danes who dressed as men and devoted every waking
moment to the pursuit of war.
Those who had the force of character or were tall and comely were
especially apt to enter into such a life.
Such martially trained women often functioned as “shield
maidens” and accompanied both male and female warriors in battle. They entered legend as “the
Valkyries.”"
The Irish, who were
often terrorized by Viking attacks, remember through their oral tradition on
Viking captain, Ingean Ruadh, “the Red Maiden.” Called Rusla in her home country of Norway, the Red Maiden
commenced her career with the overthrow of her brother, the king of
Norway. She with her constant
companion, the shield maiden Stikla, warred against Iceland, the British Isles,
Telemark, and Denmark.
Vera Krylova
One of the most extraordinary martial records of a Russian
woman fighter belonged to a young schoolteacher named Vera Krylova, the
daughter of a factory worker. In
the summer of 1941, after hearing Molotov’s speech announcing war between
Germany and Russia, she enlisted in the medical corps, having experience as a
student nurse.
Vera worked within 100 feet of the German lines, dressing
the wounds of injured soldiers.
She was credited with carrying and dragging hundreds of wounded men to
safety as bullets from German sharpshooters meant for her exploded the earth
around her. At 21, she became a
regimental medical inspector with the rank of Captain – and she had not yet
begun to fight.
In August of 1941, the German army pushed toward Moscow as
the Russian army rallied its resistance.
In the confusion, Vera’s company was separated from the main force which
she, injured in an earlier skirmish, was riding in a wagon with the
wounded. For days the remnant
company meandered in deep swamp an forest, trying to avoid capture. As they approached a seemingly deserted
village, the Germans sprang an ambush.
When the two commanders of the company were shot, the exhausted and
leaderless Russians stood numb in the face of the German fire.
Quickly mounting a riderless horse, Vera fired into the air
several times and ordered the company to follow her. She led them to shelter, while the Germans, using the
village as a center, dispatched soldiers into the forest to encircle the
Russians. She moved quickly to the
middle of the enveloping German offense before its units could link up. She commandeered some retreating
Russian artillery and ordered it to fire on the village to soften the German
position for her soldiers.
True to her nature, Vera led the first cavalry assault on
the German village, but as she approached the edge of town, six Germans rushed
from hiding and pulled her from her horse. Vera fought them until a German rifle butt smashed into her
face, knocking out three of her teeth.
In a fury she cursed and spit blood on her attackers as she kicked and
punched. Even her now weakened
resistance proved effective, as she bought enough time for her comrades to come
to her rescue.
Dazed and bleeding, Vera rallied her troops once more and
led them deep into the dense forest.
The German army was unprepared for forest warfare, but Vera had a talent
for it. Laffin writes that the
Germans “… learned some of their costliest lessons in the forest of Bialowieza
where Vera Krylova was in action.”
After running and fighting for 2 weeks, Vera’s soldiers
reached the last German barrier before the safe village of Serpukhov. A 23-hour battle ensued at the river
crossing as a German force fought to prevent Vera’s company from joining the
main Russian guerrilla force while also stalling for another unit to attack her
from the rear. Understanding the
enemy’s strategy, Vera waited for the right moment, and then led a charge
across the river. The German
defenders scattered, and she continued on to Serpukhov. When she entered the town at the head
of her unit, it was still only the beginning of her dazzling warrior life.
Vera survived the war and returned to teaching, one of the
most honored of Russia’s modern women warriors.
Hannah Snell
In the mid eighteenth century, a British woman named Hannah
Snell, aka “James Gray” joined the Frazer Marines disguised as a man to search
for her lost husband. Her unit
shipped for India aboard the Swallow,
and she was immediately thrown into the battle for Pondicherry. In the first assault group to cross a
river, Hannah waded chest deep under fire from the French batteries. She spent two weeks fighting in the
trenches and seven consecutive nights as a frontline picket. For her efforts, she received six
bullets in her right leg, five in her left, and one in her stomach. By doctoring the stomach wound herself,
she maintained her disguise.
After her recovery she was assigned to the Tartar Pink and later to the Eltham. At
first, her shipmates teased her for her lack of beard and called her “Miss
Molly Gray;” however, her courage
and toughness soon earned her the nickname “Hearty Jimmy.”
When she retired from the military in
1750, she published her autobiography and launched a speaking tour of England
and Europe. With the proceeds she
opened an inn, which she named the Woman Warrior.
Moll Cutpurse and the Roaring Girls
In the 16th and 17th centuries, urban
observers took note of the “Roaring Girls” phenomenon. Averell, in his Marvailous Combat, describes women “who from the top to the toe, are
so disguised, that though they be in sexe Woman, yet in attire they appear to
be men.” The chamberlain records
carried this account dated January 25, 1620: “Yesterday the bishop of London
called together all his Clergie about this towne, and told them he had express
commandment from the king to will them to inveigh vehemently and bitterly in
their sermons against the insolence of our women, and they’re wearing brode
brimd hats, pointed dublets, theyre haire cut short or shorne and some of them
stillettaes or poniard [knives and daggers], such other trinckets of like
moment.”
The cover girl smoking a pipe and carrying a sword, pictured
in the Roaring Girls, a book published
in London in 1611, depicted a real, historically verifiable model of the
type. Mary Firth, also known as
Moll Cutpurse, lived in the late 16th and early 17th
centuries. Her name appears in a
number of lawsuits of the period.
In her confession recorded in the Consistory of London Corrections Book
of 1605-1606, she admits to “frequenting alehouses, taverns, tobacco shops and
associating with ruffianly, swaggering and lewd company, namely with cutpurses,
blasphemers, drunkards, and other of bad note.”
She appeared in court again in 1621 on a charge of wrongful
arrest. Mary claimed that because
of her reputation for locating stolen goods, she was asked by a friend to find
a certain pickpocket and regain the purloined items. Mary sought to represent herself as an underworld policeman
to rationalize her high-handed manner with the plaintiffs.
During the English Civil War, Mary single-handedly robbed
the commander in chief of the parliamentarian forces, General Fairfax, even
though he was an excellent swordsman in the company of an armed guard. She not only slew several guards but
also killed the general’s horse so she could not be followed. She relieved Fairfax of his purse but
was soon captured and sentenced to be hanged. A bribe of 2000 pounds in gold won her release, and Mary
returned to a life of robbery. She
died in her mid-seventies, a wealthy woman.
Nguyen Thi Minh Khai
In the early 20th C, the Vietnamese defended
their homeland against a French invasion, and over one million women
participated in the fighting. The
initial successes of women in battle spurred more women to join the war, and with
these and many other examples to inspire her, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai joined the
Vietnamese guerilla force in the early 1940s, eventually leading them in the
fight against the French in Nam Ky.
She was captured and tortured by the French to learn her troop’s
movements.
While imprisoned, she
wrote a poem in her own blood on her cell wall:
A
rosy-cheeked woman,
here I am
Fighting
side by side with you men.
On
my shoulders weighs the hatred which is common to us,
The
prison is my school, its inmates my friends,
The
sword is my child, the gun is my husband.
Minh Khai cut out her own tongue rather than
divulge any secrets, and soon after, was executed. In Vietnam today, women’s groups and military units still take her name to honor her.
Wild Card Option Surprise me with a script about your favorite historical woman warrior!