XLI. We have hitherto treated of political prudence only, in the
discussion of which point, we have contented ourselves with a few
examples, and have omitted the many. It is needless to insist on the
ability of women in point of œconomical prudence, as every day’s
experience exhibits to us, houses and families extremely well governed
by women, and very badly governed by men.
XLII. We shall next proceed to consider resolution as a property, which
the men look upon as peculiarly annexed to, or inseparable from, their
own sex. I admit that heaven has endowed them in comparison to the
women, with a quadruple portion of this ingredient; but not that it was
given them as an exempt property, peculiarly annexed to, and belonging
to their sex only, and that the other was to be excluded from the least
participation of it.
XLIII. Not an age has passed, which has not been ennobled and graced by
women of eminence and worth; and without dwelling on the heroines of
Scripture, and the martyrs to the law of grace, because actions, which
are aided by the especial intervention of a supernatural hand, should
be attributed to the divine power, and not to any natural virtue, or
faculty of a sex: I say, without having recourse to these sort of
examples, women of heroic valour, present themselves to the memory in
crouds; and after the Semiramis’s, the Artamissas, the Thomyris, the
Zenobias, there appears an Aretaphila, the wife of Nicrotatus, the
sovereign of Cyrene in Libya, in whose incomparably generous nature,
the greatest fortitude of mind, the most tender love of her country,
and the most subtile and discerning understanding, contended for
the pre-eminence; because, to deliver her country from the violent
tyranny of her husband, and to revenge the murder, which, for the
sake of possessing her he had perpetrated on her first consort, she
made herself the leader of a conspiracy, and deprived Nicrotatus of
the kingdom and his life. Leander, who inherited all his brother’s
cruelty, having succeeded to the crown, she had the valour and address
to rid the world of this second tyrant also; crowning in the end, all
her heroic actions, by declining to accept the diadem, which from a
grateful sense of the many benefits she had conferred on them, was
offered to her by the Cyreneans. Denepetina, the daughter of the great
Mithridates, and the inseparable companion and partner of her father,
in all his dangerous undertakings and projects, in the execution of
which she manifested upon every occasion, that strength of mind and
body, which the singular circumstance of her coming into the world with
double rows of teeth, seems to have foretold at her birth; after her
father was defeated by the great Pompey, she was shut up and besieged
in a castle by Manlius Priscus, where, finding it impossible to defend
herself, she deprived herself of life, to avoid suffering the ignominy
of being made a slave. An Arria, the wife of Cecinus Peto, whose
husband having been concerned in the conspiracy of Camilus against
the emperor Claudius, was for this crime condemned to death; and she,
determined not to outlive her consort, having several times tried in
vain to beat her head to pieces against a wall, procured at last to
be introduced to her husband in prison, where she extorted from him a
promise, to anticipate with his own hands the work of the executioner,
and, by way of encouraging him to do it, immediately transfixed her
own breast with a dagger. An Epponina, upon her husband Julius Sabinus
having in Gaul arrogated to himself the title of Cæsar, endured, with
rare constancy and fortitude, unspeakable toils; and being at last
condemned to death by Vespasian, she frankly and openly told him, she
should die contented, as death would deprive her of the disgust of
seeing so bad an emperor as him on the throne.
XLIV. And, that it should not be thought the latter ages are inferior
to the antient ones in resolute and courageous women, see the maid
of Orleans present herself, and stand forth compleatly armed, as the
pillar, which, in its greatest distress, supported the tottering
monarchy of France; which she did so amazingly, that the English and
French, who were as opposite in sentiments as in arms, imputed her
extraordinary feats, the one to a diabolical compact, and the other
to divine assistance. The English perhaps feigned the first, for the
purpose of throwing an odium on their enemies; and those who had the
management of affairs in France, suggested the other politically;
for it was of vast importance, when the people and soldiers were so
greatly dismayed, to raise their dejected spirits, by persuading them,
that heaven had declared itself their ally, and introduced on the
theatre of the world, a damsel of perspicuity and magnanimity, as an
inspired instrument, which was equal to, and capable of effecting the
miraculous succour. A Margaret of Denmark, in the fourteenth century,
in her own person, headed an army, and conquered the kingdom of Sweden,
taking king Albertus prisoner. The authors of those times, call her the
second Semiramis. One Marulla, a native of Lemnos, an island in the
Archipelago, when the fortress of Cochin was besieged, upon seeing her
father slain, snatched up his sword and shield; and having prevailed on
the whole garrison to follow her, she put herself at their head, and,
encouraging them by her example, charged the enemy with such ardour,
that she drove them from their trenches, and obliged the Basha Soliman
to raise the siege: which action, the Venetian general Loredano, who
was proprietor of the place, rewarded, by permitting her to chuse for
a husband, whichever of the most illustrious captains of his army
she liked best, promising at the same time, to settle on her and her
consort, a fortune suitable to their rank, which he did in the name
of the republic. One Blanca de Rossi, the wife of Baptista Porta, a
Paduan captain, who, after defending valorously a post on the walls
of Bassano, a fortress in the march of Tresvina, finding the place
suddenly taken by treachery, and her husband made prisoner and put to
death by the tyrant Ezelinus, and perceiving she had no means left to
escape falling a victim to the brutal passion of that ravisher, who
was furiously enamoured with her beauty; she threw herself out of the
window of an upper room; but being afterwards, against her inclination,
cured of the bruises she received, and enduring with anguish and regret
under that oppressive barbarian, the shame of having been forced, she,
to relieve the bitterness of her grief, and to extricate herself from
continuing in a state of violation to her conjugal faith, deprived
herself of life in the sepulchre of her husband, which for the purpose
of doing it there she had caused to be opened. We could instance many
other women of heroic courage, and particularize the occasions on which
they exerted it; but, to avoid the recital appearing prolix or tedious,
we shall omit the relation of them.
XLV. The reason of my not having yet mentioned the Amazons, which is
a case so applicable to this matter, is, because I think it will be
better to treat of them separately. Some authors, in opposition to many
others who affirm it, deny their existence; but without engaging in
this dispute, we must allow, that much fable has been mixed with the
history of the Amazons; such as that they destroyed all their male
children; that they lived in a total state of separation from the other
sex, and only consorted with them once a year for the sake of becoming
pregnant. Of a piece with these, are the tales of their encounters
with Hercules and Theseus, and the succour given to afflicted Troy by
the fierce Penthesilea, and perhaps that also, of the visit of queen
Talestris to Alexander. But with all this, against the testimony and
credit of so many antient authors, it would be rash to deny, that there
was a formidable body of warlike women in Asia, who went by the name of
Amazons.
XLVI. But in case this should be denied, in lieu of the Asiatic
Amazonians they deprive us of, we should be supplied with another set,
drawn from the other three parts of the globe, ready to stand forth and
take their places. The Spaniards discovered American ones, navigating
armed, on the river Maranon, which is the largest in the world, and
to which, for this reason, they gave the name of the river of the
Amazons. There are some of them in Africa, in a province of the empire
of Monomotapa: and, it is said, they are the best soldiers in all that
territory; there are not wanting geographers, who made Monomotapa a
distinct state from the country these warlike women inhabit.
XLVII. In Europe, although in no part of it the women are military
people by profession, we may venture to give the name of Amazons to
those who upon different occasions, have fought in such battalions or
squadrons, as have defeated and triumphed over the enemies of their
country. Such were the French women of Beauvais, who, when that city,
in the year 1742, was besieged by the Burgundians, on the day of the
assault, united themselves together under the conduct or command of
Joan Hacheta, and vigorously repulsed the enemy; their captain Hacheta,
having with her own hands, tumbled the person headlong from the walls,
who attempted to erect the enemies’ standard there. To commemorate
this transaction, they keep an annual festival in that city, and the
women on the feast-day, have the singular privilege of walking in
procession before the men. Such also, were the inhabitants of the
islands Echinadas, called at present Bur-Solares, celebrated for the
victory of Lepanto, which was gained in the sea of these islands. The
year antecedent to this famous battle, the Turks having attacked the
principal island, the Venetian governor Antonio Balbo, and all the men,
were so terrified, that they betook themselves to flight in the night,
leaving the women behind them, who, at the instance of a priest named
Antonio Rosoneo, resolved to defend the place; and, much to the honour
of their own sex, and the disgrace of ours, they really did defend it.
N. B. With respect to the women who laid violent hands on themselves,
we do not mean to propose their resolution as examples of virtue, but
only to exhibit it, as a vicious excess of fierce courage, which is
sufficient to answer the purpose intended.