I was planning to feature individual battles as separate posts - and may still do that depending on what research turns up, but in the meantime, thanks to some brilliant research from Anja - here's a quick round up of the possibly the most impressive....We are still trying to find just one instance of an all male army defeating an all female army...........
The real "battles of the sexes". Known historic instances of an all-female armies fighting against all-male armies
There are five known historic cases of a purely female army facing a purely male army that are acknowledged even by the patriarchal male historians.
1) 494 BC: Women of Argos vs Spartan men
We know about this real historic "battle of the sexes" from historians Plutarch and Pausanias. The Spartans waged war against the city of Argos and managed to kill all the Argive able-bodied men by crushing them in a battle and tricking the survivors into a trap under false promises of truce and then burning them alive. After they dealt with the men, they marched towards the city of Argos which was exclusively defended by women. The women were rallied under the local female poet named Telesilla who urged them to take arms and defend the city from the Spartan men. The Spartan men then faced this all-female army and much to their shock and humiliation, they were soundly defeated by the women of Argos!
The historian Plutarch explicitely writes about this battle that "Under the lead of Telesilla, they [the women of Argos] took up arms, and, taking their stand by the battlements, manned the walls all round, so that the enemy were amazed. The result was that they repulsed Cleomenes with great loss, and the other king, Demaratus, who managed to get inside, as Socrates says, and gained possession of the Pamphyliacum, they drove out. In this way the city was saved." In other words, the mighty Spartan men got their butts kicked by a female poetess and ordinary women of Argos who had no prior military training. Plutarch writes that the women of Argos established a matriarchy afterwards, showing "disrespect and an intentional indifference to [their] husbands in their married relations from a feeling that they were underlings." The Spartan men, who suffered heavy losses, learned their lesson and never tried to revenge their shameful loss, and they never dared to attack this newly established matriarchy of Argos. We can also reasonably assume that in the absence of Argive men, the surviving Spartan men who were captured by the triumphant women of Argos were turned into their sexual slaves and used for reproduction. The women of Argos really had their way with Spartan men in every sense of the word.
2) 1149: Spanish women of Tortosa vs Moorish men
This happened during the war between Christian Spanish and Muslims Moors in Spain. In 1149, the city of Tortosa was abandoned by Spanish Christian men as they went to fight elsewhere under Ramon Berenguer IV, count of Barcelona. He mobilized all the able-bodied men he could find to fight against the Muslims elsewhere. This left the city open for an attack by the Muslim Moors. The women of Tortosa, however, decided to fight back. The city was defended exclusively by women with no military training. Furthermore, there were hardly any weapons left so they had to use improvised weapons like hatchets, knives and axes. This didn't deter them from not just defending the city but actually decided to sally out of the city and attack the Moorish men openly. The charged at them and a real battle of the sexes followed in which the Spanish women of Tortosa were able to soundly defeat the Moorish male soldiers, despite having inferior improvised weapons and no training and facing a very feared army of professional male mercenaries. Even more shockingly, the victory of women seems to have been very one-sided. The battered, humiliated and defeated Moorish men were slain all over the battlefield by a bunch of poorly armed untrained women.
In honor of these women, count Berenguer established an all-female chivalric order named Order of the Hatchet, named after the most common improvised weapon that these women used. These women were then given rights and privileges, they were exempt from taxes and took precedence over men. It looks like this was count's attempt to bribe these women so that they wouldn't try to establish a real matriarchy in Tortosa.
3) 1542: Matriarchal tribe of Native American "Amazon" women vs Spanish conquistador men
While the Spanish women won their battle of the sexes against Moorish men centuries prior to that, it was the Spanish men who lost their battle of the sexes against a handful of Native American women. This was not just a battle between the two sexes but also a battle between the patriarchy and matriarchy as the Native American women had their society organize in the warrior Amazonian matriarchal way. Hence, the river and the area in which they ruled was named after the mythical Amazons by the humbled Spanish men.
It happened in 1542 during the Spanish expedition on the Amazon river by Francisco Orellana. After crushing the Incas, the Spanish were looking for the mythical land of gold named "el Dorado". This lead them deep into Amazon rainforest and Orellana became the first (Western) man to sail the entire length of the river.
We know a lot about this expedition from the writings of the priest named Gaspar de Carvajal who was present on this journey and wrote a diary. He wrote that the local Indian men told them about a rich tribe of warrior women called "The Great Ladies" who ruled the interior of the Amazon and dominated the men who had to pay tributes to them. The Spanish men didn't listen to the warnings and sailed ahead, until they were eventually attacked by these Amazons in battle! This is how Carvajal described the Amazon women they were fighting, noting that a single Amazon was worth "10 Indian men" and were much more skilled than local men, "These women are very white and tall and their hair is long and braided and wrapped about the head, and they are strong and go about naked, with only their genitals covered, and with bows and arrows in their hands, fighting as much as ten Indians."
According to Spanish, they fought with these women and claimed to have killed some of them, but they also admit their defeat at the hands of women and that they had to rout in shame. So even the Spanish sources admit that their armored Spanish macho men with steel swords were fleeing back to their boats battered and humiliated by a group of scantily clad Indian women with primitive weapons. They were very lucky that they had their armor and boats, otherwise they would have suffered the same fate of the Spartans, turned into slaves of the clearly stronger and better skilled women warriors.
4) 1647: Bregen Forest Women vs Swedish men
The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) was very devastating in Central Europe and caused a lot of casualties, both among soldiers and civilians. By the end of the war, the Swedish proved themselves to be the most capable professional army and plundered territories in southern Germany and modern day Austria. Much like the Spartans, they were the most feared male soldiers of their era, achieving numerous victories against other men. And just like the Spartans, they also faced an all-female army.
The local Austrian women of Bregenz Forest (Bregenzerwald) in the Alpine region of Vorarlberg were left completely to themselves in face of the Swedish threat as their men were either gone serving as mercenaries or were deceased as this war had claimed a lot of casualties. The Swedish looted the local area and the women decided to defend it. Once again it's a story of a group of regular local untrained women picking up improvised weapons like pitchforks and scythes and taking on the most elite male soldiers of their era. The women of Bregenz Forest attacked the Swedish soldiers and to their utter shock and humiliation, the Swedish men were soundly defeated! The elite professional Swedish male soldiers wearing armor and leather and armed with muskets and halberds lost to a group of untrained farmgirls wielding pitcforks and scythes, dressed in feminine white gowns. The battle was named as the "battle of the red Egg", as the grass became red from the Swedish men slained by victorious local Austrian women.
This is how the battle is described in the book A Companion to Women's Military History:
"Female civilians in rural communities sometimes banded together to attack enemy forces which threatened their homes. During the Thirty Year’s War, the women in the forest of Bregenz were living in villages left undefended after their male relatives went to fight elsewhere. When Swedish troops arrived in the region, the women organized themselves to defend their homes. Using sickles and pitchforks, they successfully drove the Swedes away."
The women not just beat the men, but their victory was completely one-sided. The women themselves were surprised in how easily they achieved their victory. A bunch of local farm girls with no training managed to beat the most elite male soldiers of their time. Supposedly only one Swedish soldier was left to survive to deliver the news to other Swedish men about their humiliating defeat at the hands of local women. Of course, it's easier for men to accept that all of their defeated fellow male soldiers were slain by the victorious women than to deal with the much more likely but more shameful scenario that the surviving men were captured and sexually violated by the victorious women. Let's be real, a group of horny Bregenz Forest women who had been without male company for a long time just got their hands on handsome but helpless Swedish men. It's safe to assume that they were doing other things with them than killing them out of senseless bloodlust. Interestingly enough, there is a 1870 novel based on this event which alludes to this faith of Swedish men being used as sexual slaves by Bregenz Forest women Der Marsch Nach Hause by Wilhelm Raabe who writes about a surviving Swedish man who is taken captive by one of the Bregenz Forest women and turned into her servant. In any case, another impressive victory by a group of untrained women over elite male soldiers!
5) 1917: Russian Women's Battalion vs German men
During First World War, the Germans were starting to completely dominate the Russians on the Eastern Front and the Russian society was collapsing with the Tsar just being deposed and replaced by a liberal government. The morale of the soldiers was very low. The Russian government tried to raise the fighting spirit by creating an all-female army unit called the Women's Battalion of Death, thinking that it would shame their men into fighting when seeing their women at the front. These women had very little to no training when they were sent to the front. On July 9th, they experienced their first battle. They were meant to advance together with men, but the men hesitated and the women decided to attack without their support. To the shock of both Russian and German men, they managed to beat the Germans in their engagement and advanced in their territory, conquering the first and the second line of German trenches and suffering very few casualties in the process. The Germans were humiliated. They were destroying Russian men, but now they got spanked by Russian women! They wanted to retaliate badly and restore their honor, and put together 6 counterattacks, but the Women's Battalion defended each one of them successfully, despite being outnumbered and poorly armed. The Russian women were easily beating the German men and captured many of them, including highly ranked officers who felt utterly demoralized and humiliated after they realized they lost a battle to an all-female unit and were captured by them.
The book Warrior Women: An Unexpected History by Pamela Toler describes their humiliation extremely well:
"They [The Women's Battalion] captured two machine guns and a number of Germans, including two officers, who were not happy about being taken prisoner by women. One officer was so distraught with the shame of being captured by women that the Russian women tied him down for fear he would commit suicide."
Unfortunately, despite these successes, the Russian authorities were not pleased by the Women's Battalion as it was creating unrest among male soldiers. I wonder why? They didn't admit this openly but it sure had a lot to do with being outperformed by a group of barely trained women. In any case, the Women's Battalion achieved the victory over enemy men on the battlefield and contributed yet another victory to women in the historic battles of the sexes.
The final score? 5:0 for women!
A total one-sided crushing of the males!
Men have yet to win a single victory against women and considering the advantages they had in the previous ones and still lost, it's hard to imagine a scenario in which they would be successfull!
I also have to add that there were many other cases of women warriors in history and all-female units having success like for example Kenau Simonsdochter leading a group of 300 women and inflicting a lot of losses on the Spanish who were besieging her Dutch city of Haarlem in 1572-53, or Kurdish women spanking ISIS men recently, but these were not purely female vs male battles so I didn't include them on this list.
