Nadezhda Durova

Nadezhda Andreyevna Durova (Russian: Наде́жда Андре́евна Ду́рова) (September 17, 1783 – March 21, 1866), also known as Alexander Durov, Alexander Sokolov and Alexander Andreevich Alexandrov, was a woman who, while disguised as a man, became a decorated soldier in the Russian cavalry during the Napoleonic wars. She was the first known female officer in the Russian military. Her memoir, The Cavalry Maiden, is a significant document of its era because few junior officers of the Napoleonic wars published their experiences, and because it is one of the earliest autobiographies in the Russian language.

Nadezhda Durova was born in an army camp at Kiev, the daughter of a Russian major. Her father placed her in the care of his soldiers after an incident that nearly killed her in infancy when her abusive mother threw her out the window of a moving carriage. As a small child, Durova learned all the standard marching commands and her favorite toy was an unloaded gun.

After her father retired from service, she continued playing with broken sabers and frightened her family by secretly taming a stallion that they considered unbreakable. In 1801, she married a Sarapul judge V.S. Chernov and gave birth to a son in 1803. Some accounts claim that she ran away from her home with a Cossack officer in 1805. In 1807, at the age of twenty-four she disguised herself as a boy, deserted her son and husband, and bringing her horse Alkid, enlisted in the Polish Horse Regiment (later classified as Uhlans) under the alias Alexander Sokolov.

Durova was fiercely patriotic and considered army life to be freedom. She enjoyed animals and the outdoors. She felt she had little talent for traditional women's work. In her memoirs, she described an unhappy relationship with her mother, warmth toward her father, and nothing at all about her own married life.

She fought in the major Russian engagements of the 1806-1807 Prussian campaign. During two of those battles, she saved the lives of two fellow Russian soldiers. The first was an enlisted man who fell off his horse on the battlefield and suffered a concussion. She gave him first aid under heavy fire and brought him to safety as the army retreated around them. The second was an officer, unhorsed but uninjured. Three French dragoons were closing on him. She couched her lance and scattered the enemy. Then, against regulations, she let the officer borrow her own horse to hasten his retreat, which left her more vulnerable to attack.

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