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"The Real Soul of a Man in her Breast": Popular Opposition and British Nationalism in Memoirs of Female Soldiers, 1740-1750

In the “Preface” to The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies, commonly called Mother Ross (740), the anonymous author reports that Christian Davies, a woman who purportedly passed as a male foot soldier and dragoon during the War of the Spanish Succession, “died on the 7th of July 739, and was interr’d in the burying ground belonging to Chelsea Hospital, with military honours.”1 This intriguing narrative treats readers to a plebeian woman’s humorous, nostalgic chronicle of Britain at war during the victorious years of King William and Queen Anne and provides us with a window into the workings of popular nationalism, just as it reached a zenith in expression at midcentury. In the year the memoir was published, England, despite Walpole’s reluctance, had entered the AngloSpanish War (739 – 48) and the overlapping War of the Austrian Succession (740 – 48); and court and opposition leaders vied for control of the patriotic, imagined community of the British public. To many, the Georgian court’s hesitation to pursue war served simply as another glaring indication of its lack of British pride and its contamination by the effeminizing culture of Europe (particularly France).2 In this climate of dissatisfaction with the nation’s elite men, publishers Walker and Montagu turned for