Woman Warriors

[(deleted)]

The Trung sisters, Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, were daughters of a powerful Vietnamese lord who lived at the beginning of the first century. At the time, Vietnam was under the rule of the Chinese Han Dynasty. Vietnamese women still had many rights which they inherited through their mothers' lineages, while in China women had lost their privileges due to the popular teachings of Confucius requiring women's subservience.

Vietnamese people did not actively oppose the Chinese rule until the year 39 AD when they began to feel oppressed. To frighten the Vietnamese and bring them to submission, a Chinese commander Trung Trac and killed her husband. In retaliation, the Trung sisters organized a rebellion. With the support of various tribal lords, they formed an army of about 80,000 men and women. Thirty-six of the generals were women, including the Trung sisters' mother.

The Trung sisters led their army in an attack on the Chinese forces occupying their land. They won back the territory extending from Hue into southern China and they were proclaimed co-queens. Their royal court was established in Me-linh, an ancient political center in the Hong River plain.

In the year 42 C.E., the Chinese forces were sent to recapture the region. The queens and their people fought hard to resist the invader. One close comrade of the Trung sisters, a woman named Phung Thi Chinh, led one of the armies of resistance. She apparently fulfilled her mission despite being pregnant at the time. She delivered her baby at the front, hoisted the baby onto her back and continued fighting. However, in the end the Vietnamese troops were defeated. According to the popular belief, the Trung sisters elected to take their own lives in the traditional manner: by jumping into a river and drowning. Loyal Phung Thi Chinh did likewise. The Trung sisters became symbols of the first Vietnamese resistance to the Chinese occupation of their land. Temples were later built in their honor and the people of Vietnam celebrate their memory every year with a national holiday.

[rebelyell08_PREV (deleted)]

`What Spirit

Beautiful..and terribly sad.

[priestessashe]

`It seems all the Warrior Queens have tragic stories; tragedy also, to me, seems to build character and strength within a person. So it makes sense to me that such strong women had such tragic existences. But who is to say that they would have changed it? Perhaps if they had not had such trying lives, they might not have become the strong Warrior Women they had become! :)

[(deleted)]

`Strabo (100BC), Plutarch (102BC) Dio Cassius (49 AD), (Tactus, 60AD) all record the existence of women warriors in northern and eastern cultures with great regularity. Roman accounts of battles record finding bodies of female warriors on the battlefield. Thirty captive Gothic warrior women were paraded in front of Emperor Aurelian in 283 AD.

Saxo Grammaticus, writing his History of the Danes in 1200AD, mentions a number of fighting women in Denmark. Numerous other Danish women are listed in various histories as leaders of troops and `sword maidens. While some of them are daughters of kings, some of them appear to be just regular folk.

Saxon culture in 100 AD regarded women as equals with men. When marrying, men gave the women oxen, horses and bridle, shield and spear while she gave him armor or weapons. Graves of Teutonic women have been discovered which included armor, shield, lance, and sword. According to an article in the Times (8/22/00), DNA testing proves that two bodies buried with spears and knifes, dated AD 450-650, were women. Other graves in England and Denmark have been proven to be women buried with swords and other armaments.

Cimbrian women (100 BC) rode in moving `wagon castles and shot arrows at the enemy. They would occasionally emerge from the castle and fight with swords.