fight, or would not. Bohemian annals, to be sure, record the legend of a
literal war between the sexes, in which the women's army was led by Libussa
and Wlasla, and which finally ended with the capture, by the army of men,
of Castle Dziewin, Maiden's Tower, whose ruins are still visible near
Prague. The armor of Libussa is still shown at Vienna; and the guide calls
attention to the long-peaked toes of steel, with which, he avers, the
tender princess was wont to pierce the hearts of her opponents, while
careering through the battle. And there are abundant instances in which
women have fought side by side with men, and on equal terms. The ancient
British women mingled in the wars of their husbands, and their princesses
were trained to the use of arms in the Maiden's Castle at Edinburgh, in the
Isle of Skye. The Moorish wives and maidens fought in defence of their
European peninsula; and the Portuguese women fought on the same soil,
against the armies of Philip II. The king of Siam has, at present, a
body-guard of four hundred women: they are armed with lance and rifle, are
admirably disciplined, and their commander (appointed after saving the
king's life at a tiger-hunt) ranks as one of the royal family, and has ten
elephants at her service. When the all-conquering Dahomian army marched
upon Abbeokuta, in 1851, they numbered ten thousand men and six thousand
women. The women were, as usual, placed foremost in the assault, as being
most reliable; and of the eighteen hundred bodies left dead before the
walls, the vast majority were of women. The Hospital of the Invalides, in
Paris, has sheltered, for half a century, a fine specimen of a female
soldier, "Lieutenant Madame Bulan," who lived to be more than eighty years
old, had been decorated by Napoleon's own hand with the cross of the
Legion of Honor, and was credited on the hospital books with "seven years'
service, seven campaigns, three wounds, several times distinguished,
especially in Corsica, in defending a fort against the English." But these
cases, though interesting to the historian, are still exceptional; and the
instinctive repugnance they inspire is a condemnation, not of women, but