The issue of female violence in Early Modern France in the eighteenth century has been studied many times, as in the works of Arlette Farge and Cécile Dauphin, Dominique Godineau, and Jean-Clement Martin. However, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are there only addressed through the French Wars of Religion and the Fronde: too often women are either portrayed as victims or as subjects of amusement or curiosity. The archives are not as categorical: women fight, are violent and are armed, in peace time as well as in war-time. Well-trained and educated, they are actively involved in wars: split between being a victim or a fighter, some choose the later to preserve their property, their interests and their lives. This raises the question of relations between men and women in a hierarchical society where rank is more important than gender.
