SECT. VII.
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.