In June, 1853, the war between Russia and Turkey broke out. The Turkish government, to swell the ranks of the army, were obliged to beat up for recruits among the semi-barbarous tribes of Asia Minor. The chief of one of the wild tribes in the Cilician mountains having been imprisoned by order of the Sultan, his wife, Fatima, a little old woman, about sixty years of age, with a dark complexion, who governed during his absence, exercising the double duty of Queen and Prophetess, raised three hundred of her best horsemen and led them to the Allied Camp at Scutari, in the summer of 1854. Her appearance created no little sensation amongst English and French. There was very little of the Amazon in her personal appearance, though she bestrode her steed like a trooper, and wore a costume intended to represent the military dress of a chieftain. She was attended by two handmaids, also in male attire.
Fatima, apprehensive that her entreaties for the release of her husband would prove insufficient to move the Sultan, thought the best means of propitiating the Turkish Government was to lead a few hundreds of her bravest warriors to fight the frozen Russ. The pay for her troops was to be eighty piastres a month, besides tooth and stirrup money in every village through which they should pass.
When the Allies were storming the Mamelon in June, 1855, Lady Paget (wife of Lord George, and daughter of General Sir Arthur Paget, brother of the famous Marquis of Anglesey) was present on the field, at a short distance from the scene of action. General Pennefather went up to the dead body of a Russian officer, and cut a medal off his coat. He then pinned the medal on Lady Paget's shawl, paying her a handsome compliment to the effect that she deserved a medal as much as any one present.
Most people can remember the fortitude and courage displayed by the British ladies at Cawnpore, Lucknow, and other Indian cities during the terrible Mutiny. Ladies, some of them mere girls, delicately nurtured, unused to hardships of any kind, endured without a murmur, the most heartrending privations; and so far from giving way to useless repinings or sinking into apathy, they tried in every way to cheer up their brave defenders. They bore provisions and ammunition to the soldiers, loaded the rifles, and more than once took their turn in mounting guard and firing on the rebels.
The heroine of Cawnpore, Miss Wheeler, was one of the prisoners captured by the notorious Nana Sahib on the 26th June, 1857, and all who survived the terrible Massacre bore witness to her unflinching courage. She is said to have shot five Sepoys with a revolver; that she was then taken away by a sowar (trooper) to his hut, when she snatched his sabre, cut off his head, and flung herself down a well. An ayah, belonging to an English family, stated that it was in the hut, after killing the sowar, that she shot the five Sepoys.
The romantic conquest of Naples and Sicily, by General Garibaldi in 1860, has already melted into the past and become an almost distant event in European history. It was said at the time that if Francis II. had possessed a particle of the military courage of his Queen, it would have been easy for him with his trained battalions to have captured or dispersed the handful of Garibaldian volunteers. When Bombino had taken refuge in Gaeta, the great stronghold of Southern Italy, he fancied himself secure from the attacks of the foe; but the Sardinian troops were soon battering the walls with long-range guns, and all the appliances necessary for a modern siege.