Forbidden from sleeping with men, the Egozi, the regiment of immensely fierce female warriors

who fought for the kingdom of Dahomi, were recruited when young and forced to undergo

the kind of military training that would turn most of us into conscientious objectors.

One British traveler described how the women were forced to scramble across dense thickets

of acacia thorns without anything to protect their feet from bleeding.

Other tests were designed to desensitize them to the horrors of combat.

Every year, new recruits of both sexes were required to mount a platform 16 feet high,

pick up baskets containing bound and gagged prisoners of war and hurl them over the parapet

to a baying mob below.

And in perhaps the most horribly memorable detail, a French officer called Jean-Béol,

watched as a teenage recruit called Manisca, who had not yet killed anyone, was brought

before a captured young man whose hands were bound.

According to Béol, she swung her sword three times with both hands, then calmly cut

the last flesh that attached the head to the trunk.

She then squeezed the blood off her weapon and swallowed it.

Nice.

Now that was top historian of Africa, Dominic Sandbrook.

Oh, my word.

I'm getting in unheard, U-A-N-H-E-R-D.

And Dominic, you were prompted to write that article.

Yeah, based on my own close research, I haven't stressed on.

Yes, well, that's very evident.

...