Markitantka is ... Marktantka: definition, history and interesting facts

From early medieval chronicles and chronicles it is known that along with the troops always followed the markittans. It's just girls and women who served soldiers and knights. How exactly, we will tell below.

Life in the war

She is not a beauty, but a middle-aged aunt who can drink hard, yell at anyone and not be afraid of bullets, bayonets, or dirty work. In the rear, the army was followed by carts that served simultaneously as shops, infirmaries, laundries and baths. They owned the markants. In addition, some women were able to successfully use weapons to protect themselves in unforeseen circumstances and not become prey to the enemy. These were the cantinière.

Others, who were called Vivantiere, went straight into the battle. They had no weapons. There was only water and vodka. To them was a bell tied, which, ringing, informed the wounded that the help was close. The soldiers cherished and respected their helpers, and if someone decided to kill a woman during the battle, then they straightened this man without trial.

Another function

In addition, the girl is a "girl for entertainment". The soldier does not always fight, he needs a discharge, and for this purpose he was approached by female characters, from the age of twelve and ending with the old women.

Each soldier had his own woman, who gave him not only sexual pleasures, but also served him as a squire, carrying unnecessary at the moment weapons and accessories for the kitchen. She sought food and drink for him, helped to take the prey and even divide it. And if the soldier was wounded, then faithfully he took care of him. The most desperate and lost went to the distant crusades, where it was easy to fall into slavery to Muslims, but they were driven by a thirst for profit, stronger than fear.

An attempt to drive out "merry girls"

Women "easy behavior" with detachments and armies accumulated more and more. The command decided to fight with this situation, as too many provisions were spent on them, and they carried venereal diseases. In the English army at the end of the XVI century it was allowed to take money from the girls, expel them and even break their left arm. It is not known how far the struggle against them came, but without "public women" no army existed, but adapted them to their own needs. Soldiers caught in adultery or unlawful union were put in prison and deprived of a monthly salary.

The Duke of Burgundy of women, accumulated in the number of three thousand people, forced to dig a bypass channel under Neis, which he besieged. Every day they went to work with the sounds of drums and flutes, a flag fluttering over them with a woman painted on it. The executioner supervised their actions. Thus, women were not expelled from the army at all, but only forbade personal ties with the soldier. In France, they were all under the watchful eye of the provost, who, like soldiers, they arranged shows and forbade keeping horses, so that the forage lacked the horses' horses.

The German Army

The Germans from these women formed detachments, to whose superiors they obediently obeyed.

For them, a charter was created, according to which they were obliged to be faithful to their masters, to carry their luggage as pack animals, during cooking to cook, serve, wash, wash and clean up, and not defiantly hold themselves. Accessibility was receding into the background.

The atrocity that remains in the documents

In the army of the French military commander, Philip Strozzi, in 1570 there were so many women that movement became impossible. Without thinking twice, he cut the "Gordian knot" in the most horrible way. At first the most beautiful women were selected, and the remaining ones, there were eight hundred of them, were simply drowned in the river under their heart-rending cries and cries. This crime did not go unpunished. Twelve years later, the same Strozzi suffered a crushing sea defeat in the Azores. Eight hundred people remained alive: an amazing coincidence. The Spaniards executed every one of them, and they drowned the very Messiah Philip in the sea depths. So he was overtaken by providence.

What attracted the markant to the Landsknecht

No matter how difficult was the life of a woman in the war, they still tried to join the army. The girl is a practical and dreamy creature at the same time. They all wanted to get married or get rich. Some succeeded. After serving five years, or even seven in errands, they skillfully participated in the division of production and accumulated decent conditions. This allowed you to buy a farm or inn or even a husband from impoverished nobility, becoming after the general "bedding" by a lady.

How can I not remember Marta Skavronskaya, who managed to make a dizzying career with a quiet sap ? Where to her German maiden Ruth Thalheim! This powerful brewer with the habits of the grenadier, when the detachment began to run under the pressure of the Swiss, fought so hard that the Germans returned and won. Ruth was wounded, but she survived. Their chief, Colonel Alkhoits, demanded that everyone throw a handful of gold at her feet. And the emperor raised her to noble dignity.

Romanticism

Only in time all the dirt was forgotten, and the romantic wrote a song about the young cognac. Okudzhava, the last war, does not describe his heroine, but she appears before us beautiful. The girl died, but the battle continues. Who survives and why is unknown. Hands hold the bolt, in the head - longing, and already the soul seems to take off. Why, asks the poet, we write on the sand with blood? Nature does not need it. Man is a being that requires war, and everything will be repeated later: words, bullets, and love. He was right. Blood is pouring everywhere. For a moment there is no peace on earth.

To admire the charming warrior, shrouded in a romantic flair, you should see the ballet "Markitanka". He was written by Caesar Puni, and the choreographer and performer was Arthur Saint-Leon in 1844.

Short libretto of the ballet "Markitantka"

The ballet consists of one act. The scene is the Hungarian village. Cathy, the regimental columnist, loves Hans, the son of an innkeeper.

But she wants to marry both the mayor and the local baron who consider themselves to be grooms of Kathy. The adventures of a charming girl and a brave young man make up the plot of the work.

Marius Petipa staged the Marittinatta ballet in the Mariinsky Theater of St. Petersburg in 1881. He had a good talent, and in every his work good defeated evil. And the beauty of the dances set by them has long become an unfading classic.