"The day before I was introduced to this extraordinary female," says Sir John, "she had been entertained at dinner by Admiral Purvis on board his flag-ship.... As she received a pension from Government, and also the pay of an artilleryman, the admiral considered her as a military character, and, much to his credit, received her with the honours of that profession. Upon her reaching the deck, the marines were drawn up and manœuvred before her. She appeared quite at home, regarding them with a steady eye, and speaking in terms of admiration of their neatness, and soldier-like appearance. Upon examining the guns, she observed of one of them, as other women would speak of a cap, 'My gun,' alluding to one with which she had effected a considerable havoc among the French at Saragossa, 'was not so nice and clean as this.'"
Agostina lived to the age of sixty-nine, and died at Cuesta in July, 1857; when her remains were interred with all the honours due to her public position as a Spanish patriot.
Although the women of Saragossa had been ordered to leave the town in November, 1808, previous to the commencement of the second siege, most of them remained, and assisted bravely in raising fortifications. During the siege they exceeded even their past valour. In the short space of two months no fewer than six hundred women and children perished by the bayonets and musket-balls of the French; without reckoning the thousands who owed their deaths to the frequent explosions of powder-magazines and the constant bursting of shells in the streets. A girl named Manuella Sanchez was shot through the heart. A noble lady named Benita, who commanded one of the female corps raised to carry round provisions, to bear away the wounded, and to fight in the streets, narrowly escaped death again and again; and at the last she only survived the dangers of war to die of grief on hearing that her daughter had been slain.
All through the Peninsula women displayed the same Amazonian prowess. Those towns which ventured to resist the Imperial Eagles were as much influenced in their stubborn patriotism by the courage of the women as by the exciting speeches of the priests or the promise of assistance from England. And all those places which were besieged by the French were defended by women as well as by men. In 1810 there was, it is said, a woman holding the commission of Captain in a Spanish regiment.
In 1811, Mrs. Dalbiac, wife of a British colonel, "an English lady of gentle disposition and possessing a very delicate frame," accompanied, or perhaps followed, her husband to the Peninsula, and shared in all the hardships of more than one campaign. At the battle of Salamanca, July 22nd, 1812, she rode into the midst of the fight, and was several times under fire.
The King of Prussia, unable to shake off the yoke of Napoleon in 1806, when the star of the "Modern Attila" was at its zenith, took advantage of the Emperor's misfortunes in 1813 to call upon the Germans to rise against the tyranny of France. His call was warmly responded to from all parts of the realm; and, like France in the early days of the Republic, almost all who could bear arms hastened to enrol themselves as volunteers, and march away to fight the Gaul. Perhaps the best known rifle-corps was that commanded by Major Lutzow. Young men of the best families, men of genius (amongst others, Körner the poet, who has celebrated it in verse) joined this battalion. In this corps there was a female soldier, who enrolled under the name of Renz. A monument was erected to the memory of this heroine at Dannenberg, in September, 1865. It is in the form of a pyramid, one foot high. Nothing further is known concerning her history, beyond what is told by the inscription on this memorial.
"Ellonora Prochaska, known as one of the Lutzow Rifle Volunteers, by the name of Augustus Renz, born at Potzdam on the 11th March, 1785, received a fatal wound in the battle of Göhrde on the 15th September, 1813, died at Dannenberg on the 5th October, 1813. She fell exclaiming:—'Herr Lieutenant, I am a woman!'"