her age as about sixty-four. She had been a witness in the trial of Marshal Bazaine.
The annals of all military nations are full of examples of women-soldiers. They have marched in the ranks with common soldiery, they have commanded with skill as officers; this, in a great proportion of instances, without detection of sex, till wounded or dead on the field or in the hospital. They have defended trench and bastion against the Ottoman in Hungary, the Spaniards in Holland, the Moor in Spain, the invader in Italy, and to a particular extent have served Poland. The hundred wars of Germany and Austria have found women fighting shoulder to shoulder by their brothers, with pike or musket, serving the cannon instead of rooking children to sleep or sweeping kitchens. The latest frontier-fighting in Albanian, Macedonian and Turkish localities has striking examples of female soldiering, several officers being women,
A Fighting Ura-
niad: Catalina de
Erauso.
The career of Catalina de Erauso, a noted Spanish soldier-uraniad, is a story of curious interest in Spanish warfare in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Catalina de Erauso, called the "Monja Alferez"—"The Fighting Nun"—was born in San-Sebastian in 1585. There appears to be nothing in her origin or earliest life to influence toward her becoming the man-woman that she grew up to be. In her childhood she was committed to a relative, the abbess of a convent, for her bringing-up; and till she was about fifteen Catalina wore a nun's habit. She was expected to adopt a religious vocation, the last one that circumstances suggest as natural to her. Catalina was an unruly little novice; slapped and fought with the sisters; and finally decided to escape the convent for a purely secular life, and to be incidentally as wholly masculine as possible. She hid in a wood several days, having a page's dress at hand. When she emerged from
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