Women have played a leading role in active warfare. The following is a list of prominent women in war and their exploits from about 1500 up to about 1699.
Only women active in direct warfare, such as warriors, spies, and women who actively led armies are included in this list.
16th century:[5]Mah Chuchak Begum leads her army in person and defeats Munim Khan at Jalalabad.[6]
16th century: Portuguese explorers report that a group of female warriors existed in the Congo, and that their king assigned regions where only female children were raised. Angola resists the Portuguese under Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba.[1]
16th century: Jeanne d'Albret is involved in the French Wars of Religion. She often accompanied Admiral de Coligny to the battlefield where the fighting was at its most intense; together they inspected the defences and rallied the Huguenot forces.[7]
16th century: Sikhism founded.[8] One of its tenets is equality for women[9] which extends to allowing them into participate in combat and warfare.[10] See Category:Female Sikh warriors for more information.
16th century: Louise Labé dressed in male clothing and fought as a knight on horseback in the ranks of the Dauphin (afterwards Henry II) at the siege of Perpignan.[12]
Early 1500s: Idia, mother of Esigie, the Oba of Benin, is described as a great warrior, and receives much credit for her son's conquest of the Igala.[16]
1501: Christina of Saxony holds the city of Stockholm for the Danish during a Swedish rebellion against the Danish.[17]
1520: Christina Gyllenstierna becomes the leader and commander of the defence of Sweden and Stockholm during the war between Denmark and Sweden.[24]
1520: Swedish noble Anna Eriksdotter (Bielke) commands the city of Kalmar in place of her dead spouse during the war between Denmark and Sweden.[25]
1520: Women participate actively in the defense of the Swedish city of Kalmar against the Danes. In his famous chronicle from 1555, Olaus Magnus briefly note that during the defense of Kalmar, the female inhabitants of the city participated in the defense as bravely as did the men.[26]Anna Bielke also defends Kalmar.[25]
1520: Barbro Stigsdotter helps the Swedish rebel and future King Gustav Vasa to escape capture by the Danes and are therefore hailed as a war heroine in Sweden.[27]
1522–1524: Sati Sadhani was the daughter of the Chutia King Dharmadhwajpal also known as Dhirnarayan. Born in Sadiya, she was married to Nityapal or Nitai. Sadhani who played a prominent role in the fight against the Ahoms during Chutia-Ahom conflicts (1512–1522) in Ancient Assam of North East India.
1539–1540: Gaitana of the Paez leads the indigenous people of Colombia in armed resistance against the Spanish.[33]
~1540: The Codice Casanatense describes the residents of Patna as "very warlike", with the women of the city accompanying the men to fight, followed by an illustration of 2 Patnan women shooting arrows from horseback.[34]
1540: Gaspar de Carvajal, a Dominican friar, reports being attacked by a band of armed women while travelling in Brazil.[35]
1546: Isabel Madeira, Isabel Fernandes, Catarina Lopes, Isabel Dias and others women serve in the defense of the city walls during the siege of Diu in Portuguese India.[39]
1548–1580: Likely time period for the reign of legendary Malaysian queen Siti Wan Kembang.[43] According to legend, she rode into battle with a sword, leading women horse riders.[44]
1550s: Siena, Italy falls under siege. Every able citizen was mobilized in the effort to build fortifications, and Laudomia Forteguerri leads a group of 1,000 noble and artisan women to aid in the construction.[46][47][48]
1557: Wa Shi leads over 6000 Zhuang infantry against pirates and successfully defeated them at Wangjiangjing (north of modern Jiaxing). She personally fought in combat, using a dao sword.[50]
1558: Scotland, Janet Beaton marches at the head of an armed party consisting of two hundred members of her clan to the Kirk of St. Mary of the Lowes in Yarrow, where she knocked down the doors in an attempt to apprehend Sir Peter Cranstoun.[51]
1572: In defense of the city during a siege of Haarlem by Spanish troops, which lasted from December 1572 to 1573, Kenau Simonsdochter Hasselaer (1526–1588) was described by a source as an unusually fearless woman who worked night and day carrying earth to the city walls to rebuild the defense line.[63]
1576: Portuguese explorer Pedro de Magalhães de Gandavo reports that some Tupinamba Indian women of northeastern Brazil "give up all the duties of women and imitate men, and follow men's pursuits as if they were not women. They wear the hair cut in the same way as the men, and go to war with bows and arrows and pursue game, always in company with men; each has a woman to serve her, to whom she says she is married, and they treat each other and speak with each other as man and wife."[67]
1580: At the Battle of Senbon Matsubaru between Takeda Katsuyori and Hojo Ujinao, approximately 30% of the army in battle consisted of samurai women (Onna-musha).[4]
1585–1586: Myorin led the defense of Tsurusaki Castle in Kyushu Campaign. When Shimazu army retreated from Tsurusaki, she advanced against 3,000 men and beheaded 2 enemy commanders in Terajihama.[78]
17th century to 1894: Dahomey Amazons act as an all female regiment (under female command) of the west African Kingdom of Dahomey.[89]
17th century: Antónia Rodrigues serves as man in the Portuguese army and is decorated for bravery in the war against the Moors.[90]
17th century: A woman serves in the Dutch dragoons sometime between 1642 and 1710: she is found dead after a private duel, and her unnamed skeleton is donated to the University of Rotterdam (founded in 1642), where it is first documented in 1710 as "Aal de Dragonder".[91]
17th century: Keumalahayati was killed in combat while attacking the Portuguese fleet at Teuluk Krueng Raya.[92]
1611: Mayken Blomme serves in the Dutch navy dressed as a man.[62]
1612: SwedishEmerentia Krakow defends the Fortress of Gullberg against the Danes in the place of her wounded spouse, the commendant of the fortress.[98]
1659–1665: Willemtge Gerrits serves in the Dutch Marine as a man.[130]
1663: Annetje Barents serves in the Dutch navy dressed as a man under the name Klaas Barents.[62]
1665: Jacoba Jacobs serves in the Dutch Marine as Jacob Jacobs.[131]
1666: Hendrick Albertsz in the Dutch navy is discovered to have been a female dressed as a male.[62]
1667: Engeltje Dirx serves in the Dutch army dressed as a man.[62]
1667: Jacoba Jacobs serves in the Dutch navy dressed as a man.[62]
1670: Alena Arzamasskaia, a Russian female ataman rebel, commanded a detachment of about 600 men and participated in the capture of Temnikov while disguised as a man.[132][133]
1672: Annetje Pieters serves in the Dutch navy dressed as a man; the same year, another unnamed female is discovered to have done the same.[62]
1672: Margaretha Sandra, as well as several other women, participate in the defence of the Dutch city of Aardenburg against the French.[65]
1673: Elisabeth Someruell is reputed to have served as Tobias Morello in the Spanish army.[62]
1673: Isabella Clara Gelvinck serves in the Dutch army dressed as a male.[62]
1673: An unnamed female serves in the Dutch army dressed as a male.[62]
1674: An unnamed female serves in the Dutch army dressed as a male.[62]
1674: Francijntje van Lint serves in the Dutch army dressed as a male.[62]
1675: An unnamed female serves in the Dutch army dressed as a male.[62]
1675: An unnamed female serves in the Dutch navy dressed as a male.[62]
1676: Kong Sizhen succeeds her spouse as Chinese Imperial military commander of Guanxi during the rebellion of Wu Sangui.[134]
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Further reading
De Pauw, Linda Grant. Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present (University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), popular history by a leading scholar
Dugaw, Dianne. Warrior Women and Popular Balladry: 1650–1850 (Cambridge University Press, 1989)
Fraser, Antonia. The Warrior Queens (Vintage Books, 1990)
Hacker, Barton C. "Women and Military Institutions in Early Modern Europe: A Reconnaissance," Signs (1981), v. 6 pp. 643–671.
Illston, James Michael. 'An Entirely Masculine Activity'? Women and War in the High and Late Middle Ages Reconsidered (MA thesis, University of Canterbury, 2009) full text online, with detailed review of the literature
Little, Ann. Abraham in Arms: War and Gender in Colonial New England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007)
Lynn, John. "Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
McLaughlin, Megan. "The Woman Warrior: Gender, Warfare and Society in Medieval Europe." Women's Studies (1990) 17: 193–209.
Martino, Gina M. Women at War in the Borderlands of the Early American Northeast. (University of North Carolina Press, 2018).
Stolterer, Helen. "Figures of Female Militancy in Medieval France," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 16 (1991): 522–549
Taufer, Alison. "The Only Good Amazon is a Converted Amazon: The Woman Warrior and Christianity in the Amadís Cycle" in Playing With Gender: A Renaissance Pursuit ed. by Jean R. Brink et al. pp. 35–51. (University of Illinois Press, 1991)
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