Intrepid Women
Cantinières and Vivandières of the French Army
Description:... "Women have traveled with armies since the beginnings of history, but during the early modern period, the phenomenon of so-called camp followers became more strictly controlled and regulated in European armies. While most armies reduced or eliminated female auxiliaries between 1750 and 1850, the French army strengthened women's legal position with their units and increased their numbers." "The French army's official female auxiliaries (known interchangeably as vivandieres and cantinieres) lived, traveled, and fought with their combat units on battlefields across Europe and the world, providing food and drink to soldiers whose army logistical system often left them in the lurch. Altogether, tens of thousands of women served in these positions from 1793, when the government of the French Revolution formally recognized them, until just before WWI, when the government of the Third Republic suppressed them." "Based on previously unpublished French archival records as well as published primary sources from France, its enemies, and its allies from the early 1700s until the Great War, Intrepid Women is the first serious book-length study of a previously ignored aspect of women's and military history. Thomas Cardoza shows that these women were far more numerous and far more important to French logistics and morale than previously recognized, and suggests that their suppression was both premature and ultimately counterproductive. He also paints, for the first time in any language, a complete picture of these women's daily lives: social origins, recruitment, business dealings, behavior on the battlefield, marriage and family life, retirement, and death. What emerges is a complex and shifting landscape of gender relations in a male-dominated military world." "This groundbreaking account of women's activities in the early modern era blurs the line between women's and military history, and dramatically enhances and revises our understanding of women's roles in nineteenth-century French society and in the French army. It provides a rich historical context for the supposedly "new" introduction of women into twentieth-century militaries." --Book Jacket.
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