SEX SHOCKER
There was a very good reason why one of the troopers in the Royal Scots Greys was known as “The Pretty Dragoon”. He was actually a she. The trooper’s decade-old secret came out when she was brought to doctors with a fractured skull during the Battle of Ramillies in 1706. Not only that, but a fellow trooper passing himself off as her brother turned out to be her husband.
Dublin woman Christian Cavanagh had first joined the army in 1693 after discovering her husband had run off to join the British forces fighting in Flanders. She was to serve in several regiments before finding her husband in the ranks of the Royal Scots in 1704. During that time, she was wounded a least once and captured by the French, but she always managed to avoid her true sex being revealed. She was to serve five years with the Scots Greys before her secret was finally exposed.
Although Cavanagh was kicked out of the army, she was allowed to remain with the troops as a cook. During the fighting at Ath in 1706 she couldn’t resist snatching up a musket. She was shot in the face but survived. Her husband was killed in 1709 but within three months she had married another soldier. He was killed not long after the wedding but Cavanagh then married a Welch Fusilier. By then she was famous and known throughout the army as “Mother Ross”. The petticoat warrior was eventually granted a pension of a shilling a day and when she died in 1739 she was buried with full military honours.
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