Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape by Susan Brownmiller Read Free Book Online Page A

to rape ''to satisfy their needs," but that the two acts-raping an unwilling woman and buying the body and services of a more or less cooperating woman-go hand in hand with a soldier's concept of

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    Andrew Jackson supposedly named it in New Orleans during the War of i812. He was commenting, naturally, on the English attitude.
    Of course, the soldier-rapist may not see his act in these terms. In the thick of his cause, the rape for him may assume heroic proportions, justified by ideology or even by God. Sexual violence against women was fervently committed in the name of God, although not, we may believe, with His blessing, during the Wars of Religion in France. A remarkable description of one such reli gious rape, which occurred on December i8, i 567, near Provins, was recorded by Claude Haton, a local Catholic priest and a metic ulous diarist. The victim was a Huguenot woman.

    It so happened that this LeBlanc and his wife fell into the hands of some soldiers. The soldiers who held the woman did not hold her husband, but others did, and during this time they were not per mitted to see or talk to each other. The woman was finally delivered from the hands of these soldiers and put at liberty but only af ter they had used and enjoyed her at their pleasure and led her through the streets with her feet and legs and head all bare. The only clothing she had on was an undergarment and an apron . . . made of red material all covered with blood. This happened on the i8th day of December. When they passed by the church of St.-Ayoul the poor Huguenot was brought inside. This was between eight and nine o'clock in the morning. At the entrance to the church she was forced to take holy water and sprinkle her face with it and then she was brought before the main altar where a priest was saying mass. Here she was forced to both knees and given a lighted candle to hold dur ing the elevation of the mass. . . . She was told to ask mercy of God . . . for the terrible sin she had committed in straying from the true Catholic religion and adhering to the false Huguenot faith.

    his rights and pleasures. Prostitution near a battle camp has been linked his torically with the phenomenon of the camp follower, but this is a misrepre sentation of history. Up to and including the American Revolution, camp following was an occupation based on necessity, practically built into the conduct of war. Female camp followers-many of them were wives of the soldiers-cooked, washed laundry and functioned as nurses for their men, in addition to their obvious sexual function. When the army and Florence Nightingale took over the first-named activities, camp following lost its non sexual functions. Interestingly, while marriage to a foreign woman is made difficult for a soldier by complicated military regulations, access to prostitutes has generally been encouraged.
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    Then, too, there is mention in history of those chivalrous 1 = souls, those knights and squires, who took it upon themselves to I · protect women of rank, though not of the lower classes, from i- assault by common soldiers. Froissart's chronicles of the Hundred Years' War between England and France are filled with romantic incidents such as the moment when Edward III occupied the

    castle of Pois and found it deserted except for two noblewomen "who would have been raped by the low-born archers had not two noted knights . . . rescued them." Sidney Painter observed in his book on French chivalry, "Froissart took great delight in describing the courteous treatment accorded by French and English knights to any ladies whom the fortunes of war had placed at their mercy. When a nunnery was pillaged and the nuns were raped, he was careful to point out that it had been done by the Germans." Knights, however, did not always respect the class system. The chronicler Monstrelet reported with shock that when the French Army captured Soissons in 1414, noblemen joined the ordinary soldiers in