During the 17th century, Dahomey carved out an indelibly powerful legacy, flourishing under the protection of an all-female regiment of warriors
“ were renowned for their zeal and ferocity. The most fearsome were armed with rifles. There were also archers, hunters and spies. They exercised regularly to be physically and mentally fit for combat. They sang, ‘Men, men stay! May the men stay! May they raise corn and grow palm trees … We go to war.’ When not in combat, they guarded the royal palaces in Abomen and grew fruit and vegetables. They could also go out and take captives to sell as slaves.
“By all accounts, they were fearsome, excellent marksmen,” Toler says. “They were skilled with hand-to-hand fighting, using weapons that were a lot like machetes. And there was absolutely nobody there to tell them that they shouldn’t be involved in combat, or that they didn’t have the upper body strength as you heard in European and North American history until recently.”
a shift began in the late 1870s after the kingdom agreed to let France claim the city of Cotonou as a protectorate.But in 1889, a new king came to power. King Behanzin balked at European interference and eventually ordered slave raids and other hostilities against those French protectorates. This led to Second Franco-Dahomean War, which lasted from 1892 until 1894, and which some historians point to as end of a dominant role for the Dahomey women warriors.
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