Hell Hath No Fury Read Online Free Page A

commander always sent her out at the head of the host, “equipped with strong armour, an oversized sword, and a mighty bow, [with which] she performed more deeds of valour than any of his other warriors.”
    There is a compelling poignancy in the image of this tiny Japanese woman leading troops into battle and laying about her with her massive sword. But even for a small woman, handling a sword, shield, spear, or bow would not have presented an insuperable problem in these early times, since the size difference between male and female was far less marked, an effect still observed in the great apes today. In addition, as each item of warfare had to be handmade, women could always have the tools of war adapted to their personal needs, as smaller or less able-bodied males had to do.
    Fighting women flourished in an age of single combat and had no place in the organized military formations that began to emerge. The Macedonian battle phalanx, a key military innovation of the ancient world, consisted of a densely packed mass of fighting men, each wielding a
sarissa
or spear up to twenty-three feet long and weighing thirteen to fifteen pounds; not surprisingly, this was an all-male affair. Similarly, women, excluded from the Roman army, took no part in warfare involving the
testudo,
or tortoise, a Roman infantry maneuver that required the shields of the attackers being held above their heads in time of siege to shelter them from bombardment from above.
    The decline of the fighting woman continued into the early modern period, when military experts argue that the first military firearms, such as the musket, were too heavy for women to bear. However, at ten pounds, a French musket of 1777 represents less than the weight any normal woman puts on in pregnancy and less than that of a one-year-old child, which in the days before contraception, a woman would carry everywhere, very probably along with a newborn infant or an older child as well.
    Modern weapons such as the automatic rifle are considerably lighter than the weapons of the past. But weight is not the real issue. Through the ages, the decline of the fighting woman has gone hand in hand with the progress of “civilization,” which in every age has insisted on women’s weakness and inferiority through a battery of religious, biological, social, and cultural constraints that have kept women out of public life and in the home. In particular, anything that smacked of “mannish” or “masculine” behavior was severely discouraged and even punished by law: wearing men’s clothing remained a capital offense in Europe until the eighteenth century. How were women to fight when they were not allowed to wear pants or any form of masculine attire, the offense for which Joan of Arc (see Chapter 3) was burned to death in 1431?
    But even in the depths of the Dark Ages and up to the present day, some women were still active in the front line, battling it out, unfazed by any supposed weakness of their sex. History has consistently refused to grant the dignity and status of warrior to the female of the species. The women we have chosen to write about seized it for themselves.
    AMAZONS
    Female Fighting Bands of the Classical World
    â€œGolden-shielded, silver-sworded, man-loving, male-child-killing Amazons”: so the Greek historian Hellanicus described Amazons in the fifth century BCE .
    Stories of women who organized themselves to fight in bands are found in history, literature, and legend from the dawn of time. They are most persistent in the Mediterranean region and the Near East, where written and oral accounts record the existence of a tribe of women warriors who lived and fought together, taking men to sire children but destroying any boy babies who resulted, rearing only the girls. Amazons were also famous for their skill in horse taming and were among the first people in history to be recorded fighting on horseback. Their association with horses