6,000 Women Ran an Army. Europe Called Them Amazons.

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]At its peak, an all-female regiment of roughly 6,000 soldiers guarded a West African king. And Europeans nicknamed them Amazons. Their real name was the Agojie. They served the kings of Dahomey in what is now southern Benin from at least the 1720s into the 1890s. The surviving record says King Gezo expanded the core in the 1840s after wars thinned his male army. Women became the answer.

[00:00:25]Recruits were drilled to scale thorn-covered walls barefoot. Hesitation was punished. Survival meant promotion.

[00:00:33]They carried Dane guns, machetes, and clubs. European officers who watched their drills called them disciplined beyond their own troops. They lived inside the royal palace at Abomey, sworn to celibacy under the king's command.

[00:00:47]Touching one without permission meant death. In 1851, they assaulted the walled city of Abeokuta. Thousands died.

[00:00:55]They tried again in 1864 and then were beaten back a second time. Their end came against France. In the second Franco-Dahomeyan War of 1892, they charged Lebel rifles and bayonets with blades and old muskets. By most accounts, the Agojie were nearly annihilated in close combat. Dahomey fell. The regiment was disbanded. The last known Agojie veteran, a woman named Nawi, was interviewed in her village in 1978.

[00:01:21]She said she had killed a man in battle.

[00:01:24]She was likely over 100 years old.