From the early medieval annals and chronicles it is known that along with the troops, the Marktantes always followed. It is simply the girls and women who served the soldiers and knights. How exactly, we will tell below.
Life in war
The market-maker is not a beauty, but a middle-aged aunt who can drink hard, yell at anyone and not be afraid of bullets, bayonet, or dirty work. In the rearguard for the army went carts, which served both as shops, hospitals, laundries and bathhouses. They were owned by the maritime women. In addition, some women were able to successfully use weapons to protect themselves in unforeseen circumstances and not become prey for the enemy. It was a canteener.
Others, who were called vivanderki, went straight into battle. They had no weapons. There was only water and vodka. A bell was attached to them, which, ringing, informed the wounded man that help was close. The soldiers cherished and respected their assistants, and if someone decided to kill a woman during the battle, then they would deal with such a man without trial.
Other function
In addition, the marketer is a “girl for entertainment”. The soldier does not always fight, he needs a discharge, and for this purpose, female persons were suitable for him, starting from twelve years old and ending with old women.
Each soldier had his own woman, who gave him not only sexual joys, but also served him as a squire, carrying at the moment unnecessary weapons and
kitchen utensils. She looked for food and drink for him, helped carry away the prey, and even divided it. And if the soldier was wounded, then faithfully looked after him. The most desperate and missing went to distant crusades, where it was easy to get into slavery to Muslims, but they were driven by a thirst for profit, more intense than fear.
An attempt to expel the "happy girls"
Women of "easy virtue" in the detachments and armies accumulated more and more. The command decided to deal with this situation, since they spent too much on food, and they carried venereal diseases. In the English army at the end of the 16th century, it was allowed to take money from the girls, expel them, and even break their left hand. It is not known how far the struggle with them went, but without “public women” no army existed, but adapted them to their needs. Soldiers caught in adultery or illegal union were imprisoned and deprived of their monthly earnings.
The Duke of Burgundy of women, accumulated in the amount of three thousand people, forced to dig a bypass channel under Neiss, which he besieged. Every day they went to work to the sounds of drums and flutes, a banner with a woman painted on it fluttered over them. The executioner supervised their actions. Thus, women were not expelled from the army at all, but only personal relations with the soldier were forbidden. In France, they were all under the scrutiny of a prime minister, who, like soldiers, arranged shows for them and forbade them to keep horses so that horse forage would be enough for the horses.
German army
The Germans from these women formed detachments, the heads of which they implicitly obeyed.
A charter was created for them, according to which they were obliged to be faithful to their masters, wear their luggage, like
pack animals, cook, serve, wash, wash, clean and modestly, not provocatively
, while parking. Accessibility receded into the background.
The atrocities that remain in the documents
In the army of the French military commander Philippe Strozzi in 1570, so many women had accumulated that movement became impossible. Without thinking twice, he cut the "Gordian knot" in the most terrible way. First, the most beautiful women were selected, and the remaining, there were eight hundred, were simply drowned in the river under their heartbreaking cries and screams. This crime did not go unpunished. Twelve years later, the same Strozzi suffered a crushing sea defeat on the Azores. Eight hundred people survived: an amazing coincidence. The Spaniards executed every single one, and they drowned the sir Philip himself in the depths of the sea. So providence overtook him.
What attracted the marketers to the Landsknechts
No matter how hard the woman’s life in the war was, they still sought to join the army. The Marquantant is a practical and dreamy creature at the same time. They all wanted to get married or get rich. Some succeeded. After serving five or even seven years at the beck and call, they skillfully participated in the division of prey and amassed decent fortunes. This made it possible to buy a farm or a tavern or even a husband from impoverished nobles, becoming a lady after the general “litter”.
You can’t recall Martha Skavronskaya, who managed to make a dizzying career with a quiet glanders . Where to her German lass Ruth Talheim! This powerful Bavarian with the habits of the grenadier, when the detachment began to run under the pressure of the Swiss, fought so stubbornly that the Germans returned and won. Ruth was injured, but survived. Their boss, Colonel Alhgoitz, demanded that everyone throw a handful of gold at her feet. And the emperor elevated her to noble dignity.
Romanticization
Only with time all the dirt was forgotten, and the romantic wrote a song about a young markete. Okudzhava, who went through the war, does not describe her heroine, but she appears before us beautiful. The girl died, and the battle continues. Who will survive and why is unknown. Hands hold the bolt, in the head - longing, and already the soul seems to have taken off. Why, the poet asks, do we write in the sand with blood? Nature does not need this. Man is a creature that requires war, and everything will be repeated later: words, bullets, and love. He was right. Blood spills everywhere. There is no peace on earth for a minute.
To admire the charming warrior, shrouded in a fleur of romance, you should watch the ballet “Markitanka”. It was written by Caesar Pugni, and Arthur Saint-Leon became the choreographer and performer in 1844.
Short libretto of the ballet “Markantant”
Ballet consists of one act. The scene is a Hungarian village. Katie, a regiment marker, loves Hans, the innkeeper’s son.
But both the mayor and the local baron who wish to marry her are willing to marry her. The adventures of a pretty girl and a brave young man make up the plot of the work.
Marius Petipa staged the ballet “Markantant” in the Mariinsky Theater of St. Petersburg in 1881. He possessed good talent, and in each of his works, good conquered evil. And the beauty of the dances he posed has long been an unfading classic.