Female Warriors, Volume II by Ellen C. Clayton

During the eighteenth century there were to be found in nearly every European army, one or more female soldiers. They sometimes held commissions as officers, but more frequently served as non-commissioned officers or privates. Those women and girls who enlisted in the British Army were generally wives or sweethearts of soldiers whose regiments had been ordered abroad, and the women, preferring to encounter the dangers and hardships of a foreign campaign rather than the miseries of separation, disguised themselves in male attire and enlisted in some battalion which was embarking for the seat of war. Sometimes, indeed, women, deserted by their husbands, resolved to follow their unfaithful spouses all over the world: and, unable to afford travelling expenses, enlisted at the first recruiting depot, and trusted to chance for meeting with or hearing of the object of their search.

As no personal examination of recruits took place in those days, either in Great Britain or elsewhere, there was no way of finding out the imposture until afterwards, more especially as the female soldiers behaved themselves quite as _manly_ as their comrades.