Such was the celebrated Joan de Mountfort, disputing for her duchy of Bretagne, and engaging the enemy herself.
Such was the still more celebrated Margaret of Anjou, queen of England and wife of Henry VI. She was active and intrepid, a general and a soldier. Her genius for a long time supported her feeble husband, taught him to conquer, replaced him upon the throne, twice relieved him from prison, and though oppressed by fortune and by rebels, she did not yield, till she had decided in person twelve battles.
The warlike spirit among the women, consistent with ages of barbarism, when every thing is impetuous because nothing is fixed, and when all excess is the excess of force, continued in Europe upwards of four hundred years, showing itself from time to time, and always in the middle of convulsions, or on the eve of great revolutions.
But there were eras and countries, in which that spirit appeared with particular lustre. Such [p47] were the displays it made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Hungary, and in the Islands of the Archipelago and the Mediterranean, when they were invaded by the Turks.
Every thing conspired to animate the women of those countries with an exalted courage; the prevailing spirit of the foregoing ages; the terror which the name of the Turks inspired; the still more dreadful apprehensions of an unknown enemy; the difference of dress, which has a stronger effect than is commonly supposed on the imagination of a people; the difference of religion, which produced a kind of sacred horror; the striking difference of manners; and above all, the confinement of the female sex, which presented to the women of Europe nothing but the frightful ideas of servitude and a master; the groans of honor, the tears of beauty in the embrace of barbarism, and the double tyranny of love and pride!
The contemplation of these objects, accordingly, roused in the hearts of the women a resolute courage to defend themselves; nay, sometimes even a courage of enthusiasm, which hurled itself against the enemy.—That courage, too, was augmented, by the promises of a religion, which offered eternal happiness in exchange for the sufferings of a moment.
It is not therefore surprising, that when three beautiful women of the isle of Cyprus were led prisoners to Selim, to be secluded in the seraglio, one of them, preferring death to such a condition, conceived the project of setting fire to the [p48] magazine; and after having communicated her design to the rest, put it in execution.
The year following, a city of Cyprus being besieged by the Turks, the women ran in crowds, mingling themselves with the soldiers, and, fighting gallantly in the breach, were the means of saving their country.
Under Mahomet II. a girl of the isle of Lemnos, armed with the sword and shield of her father, who had fallen in battle, opposed the Turks, when they had forced a gate, and chased them to the shore.
In the two celebrated sieges of Rhodes and Malta, the women, seconding the zeal of the knights, discovered upon all occasions the greatest intrepidity; not only that impetuous and temporary impulse which despises death, but that cool and deliberate fortitude which can support the continued hardships, the toils, and the miseries of war.