Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe

Lynn makes the point that there are many questions to be answered about the role of women in the armies of early modern Europe. Still getting us to think about the possible answers to these questions is an achievement, and in the places where he is able to provide plausible answers, he has made quite a contribution to women's and military history. An enjoyable read.

I've read my share of academic writing, and this book suffers from the worst excesses of those who write for an audience of mainly other academics: taking forever to get to the point, excessive footnoting of sources, and not really having much of a point to make.Fifty to sixty pages into the book, the author was still saying things like "Several of the topics to be discussed in this volume..." and "this volume aims at exploring...." meaning that I was already one quarter of the way through the book, but the author hadn't even started his discussion yet.The book is littered with footnotes. It's a rare page that doesn't have at least one, and it's more common for 30 - 50 percent of the page space to be taken up with footnotes. While this proves to other academics that the author did their homework, as a general reader it's highly distracting to have a footnote at the end of every sentence. The publisher or editor should have encouraged the author to either reference his footnoted quotes in the body of his text or save all of his references for end notes, where they don't disrupt the flow for the reader. And oddly enough, despite the plethora of footnotes, there was not a bibliography or suggested reading section included in the book. Which meant that I had to go back through and hunt for sources that I thought might be relevant to my future research.I think I was most disappointed because the cover of the book led me to think that this might be a good resource for my research into the lives of 16th century camp followers of the Landsknecht. But the author jumps around through three centuries (16th, 17th, and 18th) with the majority of his sources in the latter two centuries. If you're interested in the 16th century, you're better off buying Peasants, Warriors, and Wives, as it seems the majority of his 16th century source material came from that book. The author also bounces all over Europe, attempting to draw comparisons between how armies were composed in England, France, Spain, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Austria, and Prussia. And he devotes 50 pages of the book to the topic of women who disguised themselves as men to join the army, which has nothing at all to do with his theories on the importance of women in the baggage trains (as women soldiers were not part of the baggage trains).The "groundbreaking" discoveries in this book boil down to the following points, which seem fairly obvious to me:- Women in the baggage trains were prostitutes (who took multiple sexual partners), whores (unmarried women with a single sexual partner), and wives.- Women's roles in the baggage trains were mainly as cooks, laundresses, seamstresses, and nurses. Roles that were "unmanly" but necessary to the upkeep of the army.- Women's lives in the baggage trains were hard, they were exposed to the same dangers and diseases as the men, with the added possibility of being raped.

Essential reading for any student of women's military roles in history. This groundbreaking book convincingly shows that early modern armies could not operate without women. Some actually fought, but most filled essential roles in supply and support. Exemplary in its critical use of sources, this book is outstanding for classroom use and general reading, as well as for researchers. Anyone researching or teaching European history should start here.

Ever since I read that women were the pack mules in Alexander the Greats army, carrying all the food and camp gear while their men only carried a sword, I've wondered about the role of women in armies.Very little has been written about the history of women in armies because not much is known. Records such as memoirs or legal proceedings don't exist until modern times, when the number of women accompanying armies dropped precipitously. Women weren't paid either, so they don't show up in military budgets. And you can't trust fiction - the public always enjoyed reading about cross-dressing women who secretly enlisted as men, but there were very few women who actually did this.Before 1650, armies were like huge cities moving across the landscape. When Charles the VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494, there were roughly 50,000 non-combatants who supported 20,000 soldiers. There were always larger numbers of camp followers than soldiers. In some armies, boys came along as servants, with as many as one per two soldiers.In addition to women, support came from bakers, carpenters, blacksmiths, and all the other professions needed to provision an army. In order to survive, these huge moving armies preyed on the farms and towns they passed through, including their own people. They pillaged, raped, and took what food and provisions they needed. Also, tens of thousands of horses fed on the lands they crossed, and the land owners were rarely compensated.Plunder was the "lottery" of its time, a way for the poor to escape miserable jobs and come home wealthy. Some men and women formed temporary plunder partnerships. Women helped in the plunder and helped carry the booty. They also cooked, and if the couple had a business, often kept the books and helped sell the product, plus did men's work, digging trenches and other hard labor. But men never did womens work - women had a hard life in the army.Many couples weren't married, and single women earned so little doing laundry and other menial chores they often had to prostitute themselves to get by. And many of the most desperately poor women earned their livings as prostitutes in the army.In the 15th century, Erasmus wrote a colloquy called "of a soldier's life". In this, he argues that "The wicked Life of Soldiers is shewn to be very miserable: That War is Confusion, and a Sink of all manner of Vices". In this colloquy, a solder is told "it is not love of country, but love of booty that made you a solder" and the solder replies "I confess so, and I believe very few go into the army with any better design".Pillaging was a free-for-all, sometimes the soldier got to keep what he took, but often the booty was piled up and distributed based on agreements between officers and men.But very few soldiers returned with plunder, because they spent the booty was spent on whoring, wine, gambling, food, and other necessities.And plunder was a necessity at times, because although the armies from 1450 to 1650 were mainly mercenaries, hired as needed, but they often didn't get any pay (the deal makers kept it). So armies sometimes went on strike just before a battle, demanding pay. At times the lack of pay led to mutiny, but usually it resulted in the pillage of towns and farms.Since the people armies preyed on were from the same lower social classes as the soldiers, they tried to see peasants as inferior. This contempt made it easier for them to prey on those so like themselves. The hatred was mutual - farmers and towns people favored art and literature where peasants wreaked revenge on marauding soldiers.Quartering armies was so onerous that Louis the XIV of France tried to compel Protestants to convert to Catholicism by forcing them to quarter the infamously badly behaved Dragonnades.Americans detested quartering British troops so much that the 3rd amendment of the U.S. Constitution forbids quartering in peacetime without the owners consent.These small moving cities of soldiers and their supporting non-combatants flouted the morality of the settled farmers and townspeople. The soldiers wore uniforms that were a parody of upper class clothing and in violation of the sumptuary laws. Women wore flamboyant costumes that defied civilian morals. As author John Lynn puts it "these sons of peasants transformed themselves from sparrows into assertive peacocks". Many soldiers spent their pay and booty to finely adorn their prostitutes.This all changed when state armies arose after 1650 and troops became more disciplined, got better pay, health care, and consisted of far less mercenaries. Eventually their mission was to protect civilians, and they became welcome rather than feared.John Lynn also covers the status of women, the roles of wives, unmarried partners, and prostitutes, how women in armies appeared in cultural works of art and literature, the work they performed, biographies of the few women who did cross-dress as men, and much more.Women must have fought in battles that turned against them, and townswomen must have fought to defend their homes and honor. But so little is known, and will always remain a mystery.

needed for school, good read.