Chapter XV

OF THE SO-CALLED AMAZONS AND THE DAHOMAN ARMY.

A chronic exaggeration touching the mis-called “Amazons[52]” has of late years prevailed in England. Mr. Duncan found it “certainly a surprising sight in an uncivilised country.” Commander Forbes, who drew, as artists say, “from feeling,” was the first to colour the melodramatic picture with a “sensation” and picturesqueness, a sentiment and a wild romance, in which the real object is wholly wanting. He begins his account with the untravelled statement that “there is not a more extraordinary army in the world than that of the military nation of Dahome.”

The origin of the somewhat exceptional organization is, I have said, the masculine physique of the women, enabling them to compete with men in enduring toil, hardships, and privations. I have remarked this corporeal equality of the sexes in the grand Bonny and the “Oil Rivers” of the Biafran Bight, where the feminine harshness of feature and robustness of form rival the masculine; and writers upon Siam have made the same observation.

Bosman (1700) allows the kinglet of Whydah 4000 to 5000 wives, who, besides labouring in the fields, were used to execute the royal sentences.[53] The monarch of Yoruba, according to Clapperton, could boast that his wives, of whom some composed his body-guard, would, linked hand in hand, reach clean across his kingdom. The late King Gezo used to boast that he had organized the Mi-no; but the History depicts them before he was born. The Europeans who visited Agaja (1708-1730), found the Dahoman Court much as it is at the present day. “If the chief officers wished to speak to the King they first kissed the ground, then whispered their pleasure into the ear of an old woman, who communicated it to the King, and brought his answer.” The same volume also informs us that the warlike monarch, when his force had been reduced by the “Eyeos,” “armed a great number of women like soldiers, having their proper officers, and furnished like regular troops with drums, colours, and umbrellas, making at a distance a very formidable appearance.” With these, in about A.D. 1728, he attacked and defeated the combined host of the Whydahs and Popos, and since that time the Amazons have ever been a power in the empire.[54]

Doubtless Gezo, one of the most successful amongst the Dahoman monarchs, regarded the feminine force with favouring eye. He depended upon it to check the turbulence and treachery of his subjects, and to ensure his own safety, for

“Qui terret plus ipse timet; sors ista tyrannis

Convenit.”

He may have also wished to cause rivalry, by the example of what is in most cases illogically termed the “weaker sex.[55]” Perhaps, like the old-school Anglo-Indian Nabob, he may have preferred the maid to the man-servant.

Gezo ordered every Dahoman of note in the kingdom to present his daughters, of whom the most promising were chosen, and he kept the corps clear of the servile and the captive. Gelele, his son, causes every girl to be brought to him before marriage, and, if she pleases, he retains her in the palace: the only subjects exempt from this rule are the old English and French slaves at Whydah. These girls, being royal wives, cannot be touched without danger of death, they never leave their quarters unless preceded by a bell to drive men from the road, and all have slaves who act as spies. The sexes meet on the march and in the field: at parades, as has been shown, they are separated by the typical bamboo. A peculiar fetish, placed by the priests at the Agbo-dewe gate of the royal abode,[56] induces, by reason of the purity of the place, certain pregnancy[57] in the soldieress that sins. Instances have been known where conscience has made the offender coward enough to sicken, to confess, and to doom her paramour, if not herself, to a cruel death. They have also a “pundonor.” Like

“That Mary Ambree

Who marched so free,”

many an Amazon captured at Abeokuta[58] has refused to become a wife till the captor, weary of opposition, has killed the acerba puella as a useless animal.[59]

Of Gelele’s Amazons about two-thirds are said to be maidens, a peculiar body in Africa, where—though 11,000 may have been buried at Cologne—no one expects to find the integra puella, much less the old maid.[60] The remaining third has been married. That an element of desperation might not be wanting, women taken in adultery and liable to death, are dashed to the King and duly enlisted. Besides these criminals, the Xanthippes, who make men’s eyes yellow, are very properly put into the army, and Africa is well stocked with the noble army of martyrs that begins not with Socrates, and that ends not with Mr. Thomas Sayers.[61]

It is evident that such an organization presents nought of novelty: the systematic organization is more logical and less harmful than the volunteer furies who, as Abolitionists, urge men to ruin and to death. The soldieress, at least, joins in the danger: this thing does not. David flying from Absalom left ten of his concubines to guard his palace at Jerusalem. The Greeks probably derived their Amazonian myth from exaggerated reports of the strength and valour of the Caucasian women. With respect to the visit of Thalestris, who desired issue by the conqueror of Asia (which Arrian has exploded), it is no more than what many a Badawiyah will solicit from the traveller who in fair fight beats off her husband and brother. Amongst the Homerites of South Arabia it was a law for wives to revenge in battle the deaths of their husbands, and mothers their sons. The Suliote women rivalled the men in defending their homes against Osmanli invaders. The Damot or Abyssinian Amazons of Alvarez (1520) would not allow their spouses to fight, as the Jivaro helpmates of Southern America administer caudle to the sex that requires it the least. The native princes of India, especially those of Hyderabad in the Deccan, for centuries maintained a female guard of Urdu-begani[62] whose courage and devotion were remarkable. Bodies of European fighting women are found in the celebrated “Female Crusade,” organized in 1147 by order of St. Bernard. Temba-Ndumba, among the Jagas of Southern inter-tropical Africa, according to old travellers, made her subjects rear and teach their female children war, but she was probably mad.[63] The Tawarik women rank with men like the women of Christianity, and transmit nobility to their children. Denham found the Fellatah wives fighting like males. According to Mr. Thompson (1823), the Mantati host that attacked old “Lattaku” was led by a ferocious giantess with one eye. M. D’Arnaud (1840) informs us that the King of Bahr, on the Upper Nile, was guarded by a battalion of spear women, and that his male ministers never enter the palace, except when required to perform the melancholy duty of strangling their master. At present the Tien-Wang, or Heavenly King of the Tae-pings, has 1000 she-soldiers.

Sporadic heroines, like Tomyris and Penthesilea of the Axe, are found in every clime and in all ages, from Semiramis to the artilleryman’s wife of Saragossa. Such were Judith and Candace; Kaulah the sister of Derar, and her friend Oserrah; the wife of Aban Ibn Saïb; Prefect Gregory’s daughter; Joan of Arc; Margaret of Anjou; Black Agnes; Jeanne Hachette; Begum Sombre; Kara Fatimah; Panna Maryan, and many

“A bold vigaro stout and tall,

As Joan of Arc, or English Moll,”

—charmers far too numerous to specify. Many a fair form was found stark on the field of Waterloo. During the late Indian mutiny the Ranis were, as a rule, more manly than the Rajahs. And at present the Anglo-American States and Poland show women who, despite every discouragement, still prefer the military profession to all others.[64]

The regimen in which these women are compelled to live, doubtless increases their ferocity in fight. It is the essence of training every animal, from a game cock to a pugilist, and a married she-soldier would be useful only as a mother of men. Commander Forbes thus explains the action of forced celibacy: “The extreme exercise of one passion will generally obliterate the very sense of the others; the Amazons, whilst indulging in the excitement of the most fearful cruelties, forget the other desires of our fallen nature.” But all the passions are sisters. I believe that bloodshed causes these women to remember, not to forget, love; at the same time that it gratifies the less barbarous, but, with barbarians, equally animal feeling. Seeing the host of women who find a morbid pleasure in attending the maimed and dying, I must think that it is a tribute paid to sexuality by those who object to the ordinary means.[65] Of course they are savage as wounded gorillas, more cruel far than their brethren in arms.

“For men at most differ as heaven and earth;

But women, worst and best, as heaven and hell.”

The existence of the Amazons is the second great evil of the empire. The first is, or rather was, a thirst for conquest, which, unlike the projections of civilized lands, impoverish and debilitate the country. The object of Dahoman wars and invasions has always been to lay waste and to destroy, not to aggrandize the empire by conquest and annexation. As the History puts it, the rulers have ever followed the example of Agaja, the second founder of the kingdom: aiming at conquest and at striking terror, rather than at accretion and consolidation. Hence there has been a decrease of population, with an increase of territory, which is, to nations, the surest road to ruin. In the present days the wars have dwindled to mere slave hunts—a fact which it is well to remember. The women troops, assumed to number 2500, should represent 7500 children; the waste of reproduction, and the necessary casualties of “service,” in a region so depopulated, are as detrimental to the body politic as a proportional loss of blood would be to the frame personal. Thus the land is desert, and the raw material of all industry, man, is everywhere wanting. Finally, as regards the Amazons, nothing so outrageously insults manly pride in the adjoining nations as to find that the warriors who attacked them so stoutly are women—and some of them old women.

The dress, the physique, and the personal appearance of the Amazons, have repeatedly been described in these pages. I have also alluded to the organization of the corps, which requires, however, more detail.

The soldieresses are not divided into regiments, as is supposed by Mr. Duncan. There are, however, in the “Household Brigade,” three distinct divisions or commands, female as well as male.

The Fanti Company[66] takes the centre, and represents the King’s body-guards. These women wear round the hair, which requires scanty confinement, narrow white fillets, with rude crocodiles of blue cloth sewn on to the band.[67]

The right wing, under the Gundeme, or she Min-gan, and the Khe-tun-gan, or female Gau. It is not distinguished by any peculiarity of costume.

The left wing, in charge of the Yewe or she-Meu and the Akpa-dume, who is the coadjutress of the Po-su.

The King generally pays “distinguished strangers” the compliment of placing them in command of his bodyguard, which honour, however, does not entitle them even to inspect the corps. The “Bush-king” has also his captains both on the men’s and on the women’s sides. There are lifeguards and commanders for all the deceased sovereigns; moreover, every high official has his head war-man or war-woman, with a recognized title. The cadre of commissions, in fact would become a country numbering twenty millions instead of some 150,000.

These three corps[68] consist of five arms, under their several officers—

1. The Agbarya or blunderbuss-women, who may be considered the grenadiers. They are the biggest and strongest of the force, and each is accompanied by an attendant carrying ammunition. With the blunderbuss-women rank the Zo-hu-nun, or carbineers, the Gan’u-nlan, or Sure-to-kill Company, and the Achi, or bayoneteers.

2. The elephant huntresses, who are held to be the bravest. Of these women, twenty have been known to bring down, at one volley, with their rude appliances, seven animals out of a herd.

3. The Nyekplo-hen-to, or razor women, who seem to be simply an épouvantail.

4. The infantry, or line’s-women, forming the staple of the force, from whom, as in France, the élite is drawn. They are armed with tower muskets, and are well supplied with bad ammunition; bamboo fibre, for instance, being the only wadding. They have but little ball practice. They “manœuvre with the precision of a flock of sheep,” and they are too light to stand a charge of the poorest troops in Europe. Personally, they are cleanly made, without much muscle; they are hard dancers, indefatigable singers, and, though affecting a military swagger, their faces are anything but ferocious—they are rather mild and unassuming in appearance. They fought with fury with Gezo before Abeokuta, because there was a jealousy between them and their brother soldiers, and because they had been led for many years by that king to small but sure victory. They fled, however, with the rest, when a little perseverance would have retrieved the fortunes of the day.

5. The Go-hen-to,[69] or archeresses, who in Gezo’s time were young girls—the parade corps, the pick of the army, and the pink of dancers. They were armed with the peculiar Dahoman bow,[70] a quiver of poisoned light cane shafts—mere birdbolts, with hooked heads, spiny as sticklebacks—and a small knife lashed with a lanyard to the wrist. They were distinguished by scanty attire, by a tattoo extending to the knee, and by an ivory bracelet on the left arm. Their weapon has naturally fallen in public esteem. Under Gezo’s son, they are never seen on parade; and when in the field they are used as scouts and porters; like our drummers and doolee-bearers, they also carry the wounded to the rear.[71]

In 1863, I saw all these women troops marching, on service, out of Kana. The officers, distinguished by their white head-cloths, and by an esquiress-at-arms, generally a small slave girl, carrying the musket, led their commands. They were mostly remarkable for a stupendous stratopyga, and for a development of adipose tissue which suggested anything but ancient virginity—man does not readily believe in fat “old maids.” I expected to see Penthesileas, Thalestrises, Dianas—lovely names! I saw old, ugly, and square-built frows, trudging “grumpily” along, with the face of “cook” after being much “knagg’d” by “the missus.” The privates carried packs on cradles, like those of the male soldiery, containing their bed-mats, clothes, and food for a week or a fortnight, mostly toasted grains and bean-cake, hot with peppers. Cartridge-pouches of two different shapes were girt round their waists, and slung to their sides were water-gourds, fetish-sacks, bullet-wallets, powder-calabashes, fans, little cutlasses, wooden pipe-cases enveloped in leather tobacco-bags, flint, steel, and tinder,[72] and Lilliputian stools, with three or four legs, cut out of single blocks. Their weapons were slung, and behind their backs dangled their hats, scarecrow felts, “extinguishers” of white cotton useful as sacs de nuit, umbrellas of plaited palm-leaf, and low-crowned, broad-brimmed home-made straws, covered with baft more or less blue.

After a careful computation in 1863, I obtained the following results:—Before ten A.M. were counted 1439, mostly weaponed; they then marched in knots, in all 246; making, when we retired to breakfast, a total of 1685. The movement was interrupted till our return, when the King set out with a body-guard of 353. Thus the grand total was 2038, and at most, allowing for omissions, 2500. But of these one-third were unarmed, or half-armed, leaving the fighting women at a figure of 1700. Mr. Bernasko and others, who exaggerate the consequence of the country, asserted that, this being a small campaign, a large corps of Amazons remained at Agbome, but I subsequently ascertained that such was not the case.[73] Mr. Duncan (1845) reckons 6000 women soldiers (in vol. i. p. 227), and 8000 Amazons (vol. i. p. 231). Commander Forbes and Mr. Beecroft (1849-1850), give 5000, but the heroines, like the commissariat cattle in Afghanistan, were marched out of one gate and in through another.[74] M. Wallon (1856-1858), besides dreaming of twenty or twenty-five howitzers, carronades, and bronze mortars on campaigning beds, assumed the number to be 5000; but his figures are all seen through a magnifying medium.[75] Mr. Enschott (1862), after inventing a park of artillery, furnished Dahome with 10,000 Amazons, which Commodore Wilmot (1863) reduced to a half. The fact is, these “most illustrious viragoes” are now a mere handful. King Gezo lost the flower of his force under the walls of Abeokuta, and the loss has never been made good.

If the feminine force of Dahome is poor, the male is poorer far. The History asserts, that “fear never enters the Dahoman mind”; but that race has been long extinct, and Nagos, slaves, and mongrels occupy its place.[76] The women are as brave as, if not braver than, their brethren in arms, who certainly do not shine in that department of manliness.[77] Except a few guards, the huissiers of the palace, there are absolutely no regulars; all are military men—even the singers, the hunchbacks, and the eunuchs; they live in the town, and they are a mere militia, trading and mechanical bourgeois and slaves. Dr. M‘Leod (1803) describes the 5000 to 6000 men whom he saw bivouacking near Grigwee (Whydah) as a “wild-looking group, and armed in the most irregular manner, some with musket, others with swords, spears, and clubs.” I inspected them when setting out in 1863. Of the soldiers, about one-third was armed with swords and Tower muskets, or more generally with cheap trade guns; the others were serviles, used for carriage; some had the artless bow, many carried only a knife or a war-club; and all were provided with the inevitable rope to secure “chattels.” I need hardly repeat that the object of a Dahoman war is to capture, not to kill. It was not easy to form an estimate of their numbers, but, reckoning all hands, 15,000 men, and certainly not more, might have passed through Kana.[78] This would leave, at the end of a week’s march, 8000, and a maximum of 9000, both sexes and all arms included; and these are the numbers that are estimated, by English officers who afterwards visited their deserted camps, to have been “out” when attacking the towns of Ishagga (1862), Igbara (1863), and Abeokuta (1864).

The reader will see that I differ totally from Mr. Duncan[79]: “After all I have seen of Africa, I believe the King of Dahomey possesses an army superior to any sovereign west of the Great Desert”; and from M. Wallon: “L’armée de Dahomy est donc suffisamment aguerrie et assez forte pour lutter avec avantage sur son terrain même avec des troupes disciplinées, extenuées par de longues marches, par le climat et dépourvues d’artillerie.” And when Commodore Wilmot declares that “they (the Amazons) would prove formidable enemies with good weapons, if they possessed discipline and real courage,” it is equivalent to saying that they would be good soldiers if they were good soldiers.

The capture of Abeokuta, and the massacre of its population, have ever been, since Commander Forbes’ time, the pet theme of Dahoman bard and warrior, and the King’s daily thought and nightly dream. To those who know anything of the subject, it is evident that the capital of Egba-land will, like threatened folks, live long. Gelele has twice attempted to retrieve his father’s honour, but he and his troops have never dared to cross the Ogun River, in fact to sight the city. This year will be the third attack, and if it prove a failure he will not try another assault for many a long day.

Thus Dahome steadily loses prestige. Weakened by traditional policy, by a continual issue of blood, and by the arbitrary measures of her King,[80] and demoralized by an export slave trade, by close connection with Europeans, and by frequent failure, this breed of black Spartans is rapidly falling into decay. The Abeokutans, far from feeling their old terror of the King, now openly boast that they will “whip” the man who attacked them with women. Had the capital of Egba-land not engaged in a four years’ war with Ibadan, the Lord of the Amazons would not have retired in safety from Ishagga and Igbara. At present, the Egbas, shut up within their walls, are afraid to take the initiative; but some day the King’s pet prophet will lead him to measures involving the loss of his army, and possibly of his life.[81]