Historic male vs female battle: Swedish soldiers vs Bregenz forest women 1647

[mermao]

Legends within historical time usually have a basis in fact, even if exaggerated. No one imagines that the entire invading Swedish army, commanded by their military genius level King Gustav Adolph, was destroyed by a female village militia. But it's entirely possible that a small detachment bent on recreational rape got caught with their pants down and got their balls and asses handed to them by enraged local women. Then they invented a story about supernatural beings to cover their disgrace. Eventually the Swedish army was expelled from Germany after Gustav Adolph was killed in a battle which his forces won.

[Amazonia]

Originally Posted by mermao [Only Registered Users Can See LinksClick Here To Register]

Legends within historical time usually have a basis in fact, even if exaggerated. No one imagines that the entire invading Swedish army, commanded by their military genius level King Gustav Adolph, was destroyed by a female village militia. But it's entirely possible that a small detachment bent on recreational rape got caught with their pants down and got their balls and asses handed to them by enraged local women. Then they invented a story about supernatural beings to cover their disgrace. Eventually the Swedish army was expelled from Germany after Gustav Adolph was killed in a battle which his forces won.

You're right that it was definitely possible for a well-prepared and motivated force of women to surprise and embarrass an unprepared Swedish detachment in a hostile territory.

Back in those days the armies were primarily trained to fight in the open-field in disciplined infantry formations. They were not really that well-suited for guerrilla warfare with their long pole weapons and muskets that took a lot of time to reload. So even well-trained professional Swedish soldiers would be out of their element in such skirmish.

The Alps were always a very traitorous terrain for foreign armies and home to very tough people. In the past, the Swiss inflicted a lot of humiliating defeats on the foreign elite knights during the middle ages using their terrain to their advantage, ambushing them at narrow passes and throwing rocks at them. The Tyrol people inflicted a lot of casualties on the invaders during the Napoleonic wars. There's a reason why Swiss is known for neutrality because these Alpine lands were just hard to invade and aggressors would likely have enormous casualties if they tried. Vorarlberg (where this battle took place) is right next to Switzerland, in fact the local people even voted on referendum that they wanted to be part of Switzerland in 1919 with 80% of majority but it didn't materialize because of strong opposition from other nations.

So these people were definitely very tough and freedom-minded and had a history of guerrilla warfare and their women were no doubt very strong.

One correction about what you wrote, though. Sweden did not pull out of the war after Gustaph Adolph died in 1635. They continued to fight and after the French entered the war on their side they progressed deep into south of German territory with generals like Wrangel, including modern-day Czechia and Austria. They defeated the Imperial army many times and forced the enemy to enter peace negotiation which lasted for years until 1648 when the war was ended in Westphalen. During that time the Swedish army wanted to plunder as much as possible before the peace. This supposed skirmish with Bregenz women happened during that phase (1646 or 1647), when the detachments of the victorious Swedish army were pillaging the countryside to exert pressure on the German Emperor to sign the peace treaty. The local population had no choice but to either fight back or just let themselves be raped and plundered. I think like a 1/4 of German population died during this entire conflict (1618-1648) because of the famine and devastation caused by constant plundering by all these armies. After the war was ended Sweden became a superpower for some time.

[jiminy]

Originally Posted by socalblues [Only Registered Users Can See LinksClick Here To Register]

without jumping into the larger debate, please do your own research on events like these. there are a number of documented female warriors, or women taking up arms, but these are not them. the Swedish one has no historical evidence, the Spanish one is anti-moor propaganda from the time (which I can find no evidence of outside of the initial claim, no reference from other scholars. please correct me if you can find this) and the Spartan one was a anecdote from Herodotus, a proto-historian. He was writing down stories he personally heard, rumors, and at times outright guesses. Google Herodotus Flying Snake or Herodotus Desert Ant to learn more. while groundbreaking for his time, Herodotus is not any sort of accurate chronicle of history. it’s wrong to try and cite it as “the truth”. just 2 cents from a old History student.

I'm going to reply to this here as it's more relevant to this discussion than the Taylor Swift thread.

The purpose of my post you replied to was to show @[Only Registered Users Can See LinksClick Here To Register] is not just a fantasist that believes any and all women will beat any and all men as someone accused, but a clearly well-read, well-educated man that invests time and effort into posts like these and is worth listening to and learning from. Even if you don't agree or are skeptical, this is not low level posting. You can't deny these posts didn't take time and effort - researching, translating and presenting something a good number of people appreciate including myself.

Furthermore, for you to be so dismissive, I have to ask how much research have you done into this legend? How do you explain the women changing their dress? How about the Alma Cheese company and their support of the story? Have you travelled to Bregenzerwald and done any research yourself, spoken to locals, translated texts from German? It's highly unlikely, IMO, that it was all just fabricated out of thin air.

[Amazonia]

The Argive women defeating the Spartans story was not mentioned by Herodotus but by two other historians Pausanias and Plutarch. Herodotus did mention Pythia oracle predicting a victory of women over men in relation to Argos, so clearly there was a tradition of some tale of women of Argos beating Spartan men after the battle of Sepeia where Argos men lost. Since the Spartans did not take over the city despite killing the men, clearly women were able to handle it on their own, and defended it on their own.

There are more evidences for this victory of women of Argos over Spartans that there are for many ancient events that we take for granted happened even though they're only alluded to by some second hand source centuries later. The only reason why people doubt this one is because they can't/don't want to imagine Spartans being defeated by an army of women.

The same goes for the other two battles.

I never argued men aren't better at war than women but the idea that men would always under any circumstances win against women is also weird. Clearly under certain circumstances women could and did beat men in battles.

For example there are many cases where the armies that defended cities during sieges had a lot of women and beat much larger armies of men. I was recently told about the siege of Beauvais in 1472 where local Frenchwomen helped defending the town against Burgundians (who had one of the best armies at the time) and one of them named Jeanne Hachette became a heroine after she beat one of Burgundian captains in single combat and wrestled him down to the mud, taking his flag.

[Only Registered Users Can See LinksClick Here To Register]

I also saw some historian article that I can't find now saying that it was particular embarrassment to Burgundian Duke he couldn't take this city and lost to a smaller army with so many women in it.

And Jeanne Hachette was definitely real, the French king awarded her for her achievements in battle and praised the women of the town.

So while this wasn't a clear women vs men battle it was a numerically small force with large presence of women beating a renowned army of men.

Is it so far-fetched that a larger army of only women could beat a less prepared army of only men in a similar scenario? I don't think so, especially because men who actually lived at the time and recorded such story didn't think it was unrealistic either.