This video is sponsored by Curiosity
Stream but more on them later. “My father had me sent to the family of the police
commissioner Lemde in Anklam in order to train me ... One day Mr. Lemde came home with the news that
recruitment had been ordered and that the king had issued a nationwide conscription. My decision to
participate in the war, when it came to driving out the intruders, had been taken some time
before. So now, when the opportunity presented itself, I began to act. I planned how I should
go about this, so that I could leave the house without causing any trouble and get to the people
being recruited, who were gathering in droves. When Lemde’s wife happened to catch me while I was
making male clothes, I pretended that I wanted to give them to my younger brother, who was my size.
When I had prepared everything, I cut off my long hair, and left wearing my man clothes, leaving
all my other belongings behind. In the darkness of the night I went to Jasenitz near Stettin, a large village on the Oder, where the recruiters were. Here I
pretended to be a boy tailor, and was promptly accepted and sent to the reserve battalion of the
Kolberg Regiment in Wollin, where I was trained.” “The recruits and volunteers were first sent to
Kolberg ... Because there was no time for any actual thorough inspection - if the recruit
verbally agreed to serve in the military, there were no further questions and they were
given a coat, a little mounting stand, a rifle, a pouch with 60 cartridges and a slip of paper
that read; ‘Report to Captain v. Schmidt in Wollin for training and bring this and that with you.’ …
Among the fresh recruits who arrived at the camp there was a very handsome young person who was
assigned to the 4th company, and who, despite his lively temperament on the dance floor, otherwise
behaved well and diligently learned his duties.” So began the story of a Napoleonic Wars
Prussian soldier called August Lübeck, also known by her real name,
Sophie Dorothea Friederike Krüger. However, before we look at Sophie, and other women
who chose to join the army in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars while pretending to
be men, it would be prudent to first look at the general history of women warriors in
Europe. So we first turn to the middle ages. The early middle ages were a very tumultuous
time. For a myriad of internal and external reasons the Western Roman Empire fell to
invading barbarians of mostly Germanic origin, and new political, social, and economic
institutions were formed. To what extent these ‘new’ institutions were connected to
classical, mostly Roman, institutions is debated and if you want to know more on that watch
the beginning of my Early Medieval Guilds video. The very patriarchal classical Roman
and Greek societies, with their quote unquote 'professional’ armies, would never let
a woman fight, let alone lead an army to battle. But, in medieval Europe, with
the new institutions in place, this wasn’t necessarily the case. Even though
written evidence is hard to come by for early medieval Europe, some snippets, combined with
archeological records of warrior woman burials, show that warrior women, who fought alongside men, did exist. Most notably in Norse and Rus
societies but also in Germanic and other ones. One medieval monk wrote about
these Women Norse warriors stating “There were once women in Denmark who
dressed themselves to look like men and spent almost every minute cultivating soldiers'
skills; they did not want the sinews of their valor to lose tautness and be infected
by self-indulgence. Loathing a dainty style of living, they would harden body
and mind with toil and endurance, rejecting the
fickle pliancy of girls and compelling their womanish
spirits to act with a virile ruthlessness. They courted military fame so earnestly
that you would have guessed they had unsexed themselves. Those especially
who had forceful personalities or were tall and elegant, embarked on this way of
life. As if they were forgetful of their true selves they put toughness before allure,
aimed at conflicts instead of kisses, tasted blood, not lips, sought the clash of arms
rather than the arm's embrace, fitted to weapons hands which should have been
weaving, desired not the couch but the kill, and those they could have appeased
with looks they attacked with lances.” Once most of Europe was christianized in the
high to late middle ages and the feudal system of favors, vassalages, and personal retenues
became the most common way of raising armies. The warrior women did not disappear. In fact, thanks
to this more personalized system of army building, warrior women seem to have become more common.
“The basic military unit throughout most of Europe was the small group of warriors tied
to a lord by bonds of personal loyalty or vassalage — which often reinforced the still
deeper bonds of kinship”, therefore, warrior women could have been more common because the army was
essentially more domestic in character. There was no national conscription. If a lord needed people
to fight, and his household included women that were willing to take up arms for him, it was all
too easy and beneficial for him to agree to that. In the middle ages the majority of battles did
not happen on grand battlefields between two massive armies. Most conflicts of the middle
ages were small battles and skirmishes between various feuding lords, towns, and cities,
occurring among the farmlands of Europe. A couple dozen extra people in your army could
be the difference between victory and defeat, and, in that case, it did not matter much
whether these couple dozen extra people were women warrior known as bellatrices. The plural
of bellatrix, a latin word meaning warrior women. This is why, as stated by Frances and Joseph
Gies, “the participation of armed ladies [in war]…was considered, when everything
is taken into account, as fairly normal.” In fact, not only was the participation
of women in combat considered normal, but women leading a medieval army was
also fairly normal. The most famous example everyone knows about is Joan
of Arc but there were plenty of others. Aethelflaed, the daughter of Alfred the Great,
led an army with her brother Edward attacking the Scandinavians settled in the north of England.
“A Lombard princess Sichelgaita was said to present a ‘fearsome’ sight when dressed in
full armor, and was credited with rallying her husband's men at the siege of Durazzo
in 1081 by chasing after the enemies on horseback and threatening them with her spear.”
There was also Therasia of Portugal who raised and led her own army purely because
she just wanted to conquer more land. And Matilda of Tuscany, led an army
in defence of the pope and was said to have been the "most prudent war-leader
and most faithful soldier of St. Peter." There was even an early 15th century
handbook written by a noble women for other noble women which stated that “she, [a
noble woman], ought to have the heart of a man, that is, she ought to know how to use weapons and
be familiar with everything that pertains to them, so that she may be ready to
command her men if the need arises. She should know how to launch an
attack or to defend against one, if the situation calls for it. She should take
care that her fortresses are well garrisoned.” With all of this said, however, with the
fact that warrior women or women leading armies wouldn't be strange in medieval
Europe, there’s much more nuance to this. The occupation of a warrior was always seen as
a male job. Even on occasions when gender roles had been loosen, like in the middle ages, women
warriors, even though not unusual for any soldier to see on the battlefield, weren’t numerous in
any stretch of the imagination. Bellatrices, IF present in a battle, always
constituted a small minority of the army. A minority whose presents wouldn't
be unusual, but a minority nonetheless. On top of that, there did always exist writings
and people that would chastise women who actively partook in battle. Accusing them of being
‘“forgetful of their true selves," in that they "cultivated soldiers' skills"’. One anonymous
account of the third crusade stated that woman couldn’t and shouldn’t be warriors in the
crusades “because of the fragility of their sex.” Other accounts accused warrior women
of sexual misconduct or even witchcraft. This is why, by the time of the early modern
period, when “the small group of warriors tied to a lord by bonds of personal loyalty or
vassalage” became to be replaced with more professionalized armies and mercenaries, and
the renaissance began to reinforce the gender roles of the classical period more thoroughly,
woman warriors started to be no longer accepted. And so, starting in the 16th century,
women warriors not only disappeared as active participants of armies but
also faded into historical obscurity. The role of women, in armies, in the early modern
period, became to be almost solely supportive. Women were part of the baggage train, known as
‘camp followers’, that followed the army around. They provided nursing and production support,
“logistical support and sexual favours and acted as entrenchment workers.” Women
already did this in the middle ages but, by the time of the early modern period, it became
the only thing they did. A woman’s role in a war increasingly came to be viewed through a quote
‘natural gender order’. That is, just as the perceived domestic role of women was to be the
support of the head of the household, the man, so were the women in armies supposed to be
only a support to the soldiers, the men. But even this supportive role of women in
armies started to change by the end of the early modern period. Women's involvement with
any kind of military action started to be seen as a nuisance that only distracted the rest of
the men. And as militaries became increasingly professionalized, standardized, and modernized,
women involvement with the military decreased. I am glossing over a lot of history
here, especially on how gender systems evolved and changed with things like the
protestant reformation and the enlightenment, all of which, of course, also affected
women's position within the military, but there’s just no time to get into
that. So just be aware of it happening. By the time of the late early modern period,
the only way a woman could see military action was by crossdressing and posing as a man.
Which did happen but very rarely. For example, only one instance of it happening is known in
today’s Germany and only 16 instances in Britain. However, at the end of the 18th century
and the start of the 19th century, there began an active push for women involvement
in war, correlated with an increase of women crossdressing to get into active combat.
Which brings us back to Sophie Krüger. But first, let me tell you about this video’s
sponsor, Curiosity Stream. Curiosity Stream is an entertainment streaming platform for people who
want to learn more. Their documentaries use “true storytelling” and the medium of video, to teach
you about history, music, nature, science, etc. In the context of this video I would recommend
checking out their two part history documentary on the French Revolution. So you can get a sense
of how the French revolution actually came about, and how it questioned and changed the status
quo in Europe. Or, on a bit of a side note, I would also recommend the introductory
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ideas, that most people are familiar with, also looked at his interesting philosophical
ideas that many people actually don't know about. So if you want to learn something new on Adam
Smith check that documentary out. But how am I supposed to check that documentary out I hear you
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to Curiosity stream for sponsoring this video. So why did so many women, like
the aforementioned Sophie Krüger, suddenly decide they wanted to fight? Well,
the answer to that is very multifaceted. As stated by Hagemann, women's decisions to
join the army could have been multiple. “Some women were driven by social and economic hardship.
Others took up arms to defend their own property. Some sought adventure, others to escape
the narrow confines of female existence, and some followed lovers or husbands into
the fray”, etc. However, all these reasons, for women wanting to fight, existed even before
the modern period, so why the change now? Well, what the Revolutionary and Napoleonic
wars provided, that wasn’t there before, was a restructuring or, at least, questioning of
core social dynamics and ideas all across Europe. Ever since the French revolution,
the status quo was being challenged. The superficial individual loyalties to a monarch,
to a people’s sovereign, started to be superseded by one's loyalty to a perceived ethnic kinship,
to one’s own “peoples”, to a nation. A nation, which theoretically, was composed of equals, of
both women and men. This meant that the period of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars provided
a nationalistic drive, for mostly young women, to fight for a perceived single and equal national
identity. This was correlated with the push by women towards equal rights not only in politics
or the workplace but also in the military. For example, it was the first time in history that
a quote “Army of Amazons” was seriously tabled to national governments by women in countries like
France and Prussia. It was also the first time for most European countries that a nationwide
conscription was enacted, the administration of which was poor in favour of quick recruitment and
so many women could easily enlist without being found out. These conscriptions were clearly
meant for men but some nationalistic women, like Sophie Kruger, felt like they had the
patriotic right to sign up, and so they did. The already existent reasons for women wanting
to fight, combined with the rise of nationalism across Europe and the enacting of first national
conscriptions, created a situation which was ripe for an increase in women crossdressing
and joining the army. It is prudent to mention, however, that even though there was an increase in
women crossdressing to join the army at this time, it was still a very marginal number and
most women involvement with the war, and the military, was on the home
front (or as camp followers). Nonetheless, it was in this context, when
the social order was being questioned in Europe, that Sophie Krüger, or August Lübeck, enlisted, so that she could help quote “drive out
the intruders”, who in her case were the French. August Lübeck was found to be a girl even before
the training of the regiment ended. Both the captain of the regiment v. Schmidt and the general
v. Borstell confronted Sophie Krüger and ordered her to leave the army. To which Sophie replied
“If I am not allowed to remain a soldier here, I will be accepted elsewhere”. Seeing that there
was no convincing Sophie. The officers reluctantly told her if she continued to dress and act as
August Lübeck she could remain with the company. But you must still act and dress as August Lübeck. August Lübeck participated
in multiple battles of the Napoleonic wars and showed particular
bravery at the Battle of Großbeeren, and later the Battle of Dennewitz, the
story of which I will recount here. During the Battle of Dennewitz, the Kolberg
regiment came under heavy fire from an enemy force. They hid in a mill in the village of
Boelsdorf, severely weakened. The commanding officer saw that the only chance the regiment
had of winning was to seize the enemy cannons and so asked for volunteers for this attack.
“August Lübeck was the first to come forward; seven other men from the much weakened company
joined her, and after that several more followed. After a short advance towards the cannons a piece
of the rifle of the man next to Lubeck shattered from an enemy bullet and the shrapnel violently
hit Lubeck in her left eye. Soon afterwards she was wounded to the bone in the left shoulder by
a blow from a grenade, and her arm was paralyzed. Wrapping her wound with a handkerchief and
taking the rifle under solely her right arm, she rejoined her battalion, which was
now being repulsed and tried to regroupe. Half an hour later [after the battalion regrouped]
they advanced again towards the cannons and she was hit by a blow in the right foot, the
force of which turned her around in a circle and knocked her down on the ground. However,
even before a medic, who rushed to her aid, had time to stop the bleeding and bandage her
up properly she pulled herself up again and joined in the pursuit of the enemy with her
regiment which … had secured the cannons”. After she recovered from her injuries, she fought
in the 1814 campaigns, entered Paris as part of the Coalition troops, and, for her enormous
bravery, received the Iron Cross Second Class and the Russian Order of St. George. Then, a
year later, she fought in the Waterloo Campaign, helping to defeat Napoleon for good.
After that she retired from the military whereupon her story became public and she
became an overnight sensation in Prussia. But August Lübeck, or Sophie Krüger,
wasn’t the only woman we know about that fought in the Prussian army during this time. There was Anna Lühring who, under the name
Eduard Kruse, fought for the Lützow Free Corps. There was Maria Werder who crossdressed
and followed her husband to war and attained the highest rank possible
for a non-commissioned officer, she was a sergeant major in the
Second Silesian Hussar Regiment. And most notably there was Eleonore Prochaska
who, while serving as an infantryman, died at the battle of Göhrde. Once it was revealed that
she was a woman, and that she died in a battle fighting for her nation, many patriotic poems and
stories were written about her across the German speaking lands. This Heldenjungfrau ‘Heroic
Virgin’ or ‘Heroic Maiden’, became so famous that Ludwig van Beethoven even composed
music to a play about her romentesized life. These warrior women were also not unique
in the Prussian and greater German armies. There were around 120 known instances
of crossdressing French women in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Armies. There was
also Franziska Scanagatta who was Italian and served in the Austrian army, there was Marie
Schellinck who was from today’s Belgium, there was Nadezhda Durova from today’s
Ukraine who served in the Russian army, etc. There were, of course, also many more women that
we just don’t know about, because, after all, they were trying to hide. By the pure nature
of this topic we will never know how many women actually enlisted in those first drafts of Europe
and how many of them fought acting as men purely because they were told by the establishment that
they couldn’t fight for their “nation” as women. Those aforementioned proposals for the “Army
of Amazons” during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era were always quickly shot down by
all the European governments. With one Parisian newspaper Les Revolutions de Paris writing
that “A woman belongs at home with her family or household . . . weapons must be forbidden
to women.” Such allegations were attacked by one Parisian woman, Pauline Leon, who, in
front of the French Legislative Assembly, stated that “How can we be denied the sweetness of
avenging our fathers, husbands, and brothers or, of dying at their sides? The Declaration of the
Rights of Man give us this right, unless these do not concern women?” She was given an applause
from the Assembly but her request was denied. Despite nationalistic zeal sweeping across Europe,
despite the status que being questioned or, in some places, actively changed, the classical
gender roles still remained deeply entranched in European society. On top of that, the rise of
nationalism, that spurred on some women to act, also changed, or evolved, a perceived defining
factor of masculinity pertaining to a man’s duty as the protector. No longer was a man viewed as
just the protector of his family or his household, his protective duties expanded to encompass
the greater “ethnic family”, the nation. So in that sense, the warrior women were
seen as actively undermining the male role as protectors of the nation. “To display
female strength openly appeared to invoke the complementary notion of male weakness –
a provocation that was bound to seem all the more aggressive since the call to arms
for collective self-defence of female honour suggested that male protectors
were either inadequate or superfluous.” On top of warrior women challenging the
male notion as the protectors of the nation, female want for weapons and active
participation in war was one more step towards equal rights with men. As Hangmann states, “The French Revolution had shown already how
short the leap was from calls for arms for women, to demands for civil equality with men.” A thing
that the men in charge were seldom eager to do. The few (relatively speaking) women heroines
like Eleonore Prochaska or Sophie Krüger, who were praised for their bravery and became national
heroes, but not without opponents, were very much so treated as the exceptions that proved the rule
of established gender roles. Therefore, even these Heldenjungfrauen were always reminded of their
place in society. For example, when Sophie Krüger retired and shortly after got married, Fredrik
William the 3rd of Prussia payed for her dowry while sending her a letter which had the lines
‘‘May she now forget the non-commissioned office, obey her husband and always keep in mind the words
of the Holy Scripture: ‘He shall rule over you!’” These heroic warrior women, who were
seen as national heroes, challenged the established gender order in Europe and as
such, they, along with the population at large, had to be reminded of their quote
“true place” in the gender hierarchy. Of course, this entire topic is very nuanced,
and as McLaughlin states “gender systems affect everyone who comes into contact with them —
those who conform to expected roles as well as those who engage in anomalous behavior” and
in that sense there where also plenty of women, who agreed with the status quo, and even
condemned the women who wanted to fight. One woman stated in a newspaper in 1813 that
“No, Sisters! Let us instead take on tasks more appropriate to us, let us care for those
injured in war, for there we can do much good. Women seem to have been created to alleviate
man’s pain through patient attendance and gentle care [. . .] Femininity is a woman's
greatest charm. It would be immediately lost in the tumult of battle and camp, and the happy
future for which our men and boys are fighting would perhaps no longer include the accustomed
comforts of female company. For that reason, [let there be] no
army of Amazons!” With all that said, however, the most ironic part
of this, perhaps, is that the “Male officers and administrators [who fought alongside women]
were often surprisingly ambivalent towards such cross-dressing … and tolerated their
deception even after it had been discovered.” I will end with a quote from the
commanding officer of Sophie Kruger, Captain v. Schmidt, “One day an
officer approached me and said: ‘Your compatriot: Kruger, is one of the most
well-behaved non-commissioned officers in the regiment and is the only one in the regiment to
have earned the Iron Cross. Whenever there was a call for volunteers, for some daring act,
she was always the first to step forward, and her bold courage and presence of mind
often aroused admiration. She also commands great respect from the whole regiment for her
impeccable, morally pure, performance. Truly, she lives up to her hometown, Friedland
should be proud to have such a daughter.’” long time ago for reading some
of the quotes in this video. Link in the description and the pinned comment or
the top right of the video, if you prefer that. Also, thank you to curiositystream for
sponsoring this video, and to my Patreons. It’s all very helpful considering that
my videos take a long time to make. As always there’s more information in
the pinned comment, you can download my script which has all the sources in it
for free on my Patreon … with that said, my name M. Laser, and stick around, for history.
