I venture to assert, then, that woman’s social inferiority has been, to a great extent, in the past a legitimate thing.  To all appearance, history would have been impossible without it, just as it would have been impossible without an epoch of war and slavery.  It is simply a matter of social progress,—­a part of the succession of civilizations.  The past has been inevitably a period of ignorance, of engrossing physical necessities, and of brute force,—­not of freedom, of philanthropy, and of culture.  During that lower epoch, woman was necessarily an inferior, degraded by abject labor, even in time of peace,—­degraded uniformly by war, chivalry to the contrary notwithstanding.  Behind all the courtesies of Amadis and the Cid lay the stern fact,—­woman a child or a toy.  The flattering troubadours chanted her into a poet’s paradise; but alas! that kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and the violent took it by force.  The truth simply was, that her time had not come.  Physical strength must rule for a time, and she was the weaker.  She was very properly refused a feudal grant, by reason, say “Les Coustumes de Normandie,” of her unfitness for war or policy:  C’est l’homme ki se bast et ki conseille.  Other authorities put it still more plainly:  “A woman cannot serve the emperor or feudal lord in war, on account of the decorum of her sex; nor assist him with advice, because of her limited intellect; nor keep his counsel, owing to the infirmity of her disposition.”  All which was, no doubt, in the majority of cases, true; and the degradation of woman was simply a part of a system which has, indeed, had its day, but has bequeathed its associations.

From this reign of force, woman never freed herself by force.  She could not fight, or would not.  Bohemian annals, to be sure, record the legend of a literal war between the sexes, in which the women’s army was led by Libussa and Wlasla, and which finally ended with the capture, by the army of men, of Castle Dziewin, Maiden’s Tower, whose ruins are still visible near Prague.  The armor of Libussa is still shown at Vienna; and the guide calls attention to the long-peaked toes of steel, with which, he avers, the tender princess was wont to pierce the hearts of her opponents, while careering through the battle.  And there are abundant instances in which women have fought side by side with men, and on equal terms.  The ancient British women mingled in the wars of their husbands, and their princesses were trained to the use of arms in the Maiden’s Castle at Edinburgh, in the Isle of Skye.  The Moorish wives and maidens fought in defence of their European peninsula; and the Portuguese women fought on the same soil, against the armies of Philip II.  The king of Siam has, at present, a body-guard of four hundred women:  they are armed with lance and rifle, are admirably disciplined, and their commander (appointed after saving the king’s life at a tiger-hunt) ranks as one of the royal family, and has ten elephants at her