What eras and location are you looking for? I could tell you of the experience of women and children in WW2 (specifically France, Japan, China) from their cities undergoing destruction and/or occupation, but you may be more interested in pre-renaissance war, which is largely out of my area of expertise.

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This is slightly outside the time specified by OP, but I think I can discuss some personal accounts of the experience of women and children after sieges and captures of towns during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).

One account comes from a German man named Fredrich Friese who was a boy in 1631 during the infamous Sack of Magdeburg by the Catholic League forces of the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years' War. The Sack of Magdeburg came following a two month siege during which the Protestant defenders refused to surrender, choosing to hold out in hope of Swedish reinforcements that never came. On the morning of May 20, 1631, the Imperial forces launched a huge surprise attack on the city which finally overran the defenses and thousands of enraged, unpaid soldiers entered the city and the situation quickly descended into widespread looting and raping and killing that lasted for several days, during which 20,000 civilians lost their lives. Some soldiers were just looking for food or a little money or some shoes, while others were much more ruthless.

The evening before the city was sacked, Fredrich Friese accompanied his father Daniel Friese (a well off senior city clerk employed at Magdeburg) for a walk along the wall of the city where they saw that all the posts appeared to be well guarded. The password that night was "angel." Additionally they did not suspect an attack because they believed a truce was in the process of being negotiated. Despite this, the next morning at around 7 AM the Friese family could hear heavy firing. Fredrich writes:

We children had scarcely got up and crawled out of the cellar, where we had been hiding because of the fire bombs and other shooting. We were almost used to it now, because the Imperials had already assaulted the city over four times and been repulsed on each occasion. However, this assault got longer and fiercer. Meanwhile, our father came running from the city hall and asked where mother was. She had left our house and was at that moment in the church ... Just as she had heard the firing and had left the church with other people, a maid was sent running to fetch her ... (157)

The children were then told to pray until their mother arrived at the house a few minutes later. Then the family changed into dark, torn clothes in an attempt to disguise their wealth and especially so that their father wouldn't be recognized and held for ransom. Fredrich then writes:

The firing now got more and more out of control until there was a final great and terrible salvo. There were no more shots after that, from which everyone deduced that there was no more resistance and the city was taken. This was obvious from the fleeing burghers. They came running with their guns and cried Oh and Woe. Everyone shut their doors and prepared as best they could.

Soon after, Imperial soldiers came through the streets shouting that all was won and started hammering on people's doors to let them in. Fredrich writes:

We poor people were so scared that we nearly died in our houses, prayed and called to God to have mercy. Soon they thumped on our door. Our tutor, Johann Muller, a student, looked out from above [the upper window of the house] and called:'Quarter!' But two shots were quickly directed at him. The soldiers threatened they would not leave a soul alive if they got in unless we opened up. We had to let them in; they soon attacked father and mother and craved money; they were only two musketeers. Father and mother gave them the money they had with them, as well as some clothes and utensils. They were satisfied with this, and only asked for shoes and went away again.

The family then pleaded with the soldiers to help them get away but the the soldiers "didn't listen, because they said they had to find booty first." The university student Johann Muller who was the children's tutor then decided to go with the soldiers on the pretext of somehow getting the family safe conduct passes out of the city, but he never returned and they didn't wait for him. Fredrich's father then took an axe and smashed up their own house, breaking the windows and making it appear they had already been thoroughly looted. They also put ham and sausage and other foods out on their dining table in hopes of momentarily distracting any soldiers who next came in so they could have time to hide. The house was left alone for a while after this, but eventually four more soldiers entered in and again began violently attacking Fredrich's father and mother while demanding money. Fredrich vividly describes the violence inflicted on his parents that he and his siblings were forced to watch and desperately tried to stop:

There were four of them, all musketeers with burning matches. They hit and punched father hard. Mother put up her hand, but it didn't help. We children hung like chains around the soldiers, cried and screamed that they should let father and mother live for us. And though we hung on and pulled at the soldiers, God nonetheless ensured that no soldier did the least harm, hit us or beat us. On the contrary, the furies were moved to rage a little less against the parents.

They were then forced to give the soldiers some of their jewelry and other valuables, and the soldiers then left. Shaken by this more vicious attack, Fredrich's father then decided they should leave the house as well and take refuge in a dark coal shed in the back of their house near an empty stables. As they crossed the backyard, they were startled by their terrified neighbor, a university student who boarded with the family next door, who had been forced by the soldiers there to go light a torch so they could search the house's dark cellar. From their neighbors’ house they could hear the soldiers rampaging about and swearing and yelling for him to "get a light" as they held the others hostage.

The family hid in the coal shed for a while and listened to the soldiers ransacking the house next door:

They cried, swore and blasphemed for booty and money without end. We heard all this as we sat in our coal shed as quiet as mice.

Eventually Fredrich's father went out to see what had happened but the soldiers immediately saw him, yelled and began running toward him. Fredrich writes:

Mother heard the shouting and also ran out and we children all followed. There were about seven soldiers, all with burning matches. They spoke a foreign tongue and no one understood what they said. They kept putting out their hands for money. Excuses were no good, father could say what he liked. They didn't understand, but fired at him twice in the house. ... The bullets buried themselves in the wall. Father and mother fled into the lounge. One of them who was probably an NCO, lunged at father with a halberd. At that moment father went through the lounge door; the rogue hacked a large piece out of the ledge above the door.

Finally Fredrich's father was able to speak Latin to one of the officers and tell him they have nothing except clothes and linens and such, which seemed to calm the soldiers down. However, the officer still wanted money and refused to leave until he got it. Fredrich's mother then retrieved another stash of money and valuables and gave this to the officer while the soldiers ate in their house. They then pleaded with the officer to help escort them out of the city but he got angry and left along with his men after taking Fredrich's father's "best cloak with lace and satin cuffs." The family then went back and hid in the coal shed near the stables for the next half hour while more soldiers came and ransacked their house but didn't find them. After this, things started to quiet down again, and they decided to come out of the coal shed and hide in the dark of the stable loft instead. However, the children's maid or nanny who was taking refuge with the family caused them to be discovered again:

We all went up to the old loft and hid ourselves. Our old maid, who had married a tailor who had stood guard that day at the Lakenmarcher Gate, was our fortune and misfortune. This maid had run to us during the great terror and wanted to stay with us, because she thought her husband was dead, since he had been on guard duty. While we hurriedly crept up to the loft, she stayed a while in the coal shed and put her things into a basket. Now she wanted to run from the stables across the yard to join us. A soldier saw her and came in after her shouting: 'Stop! Stop!' The maid, who wasn't slow on her feet, ran crying 'Oh! Oh!' quickly up the stairs to us in the loft.

The soldier followed her into the stables and found them all together with Fredrich's father yelling at the maid for giving them away. Fredrich writes:

The soldier then came at father with a pick axe. We children crowded round the soldier, begging and crying that he should please let father live. Christian, my fourth brother, was then a small child who could barely walk and stammer a few words. He spoke in the greatest fear to the soldier: 'Oh please let father live, I'll gladly give you the three pennies I get on Sundays.' Father used to give each child something each Sunday if he learned a phrase [from the Bible].

When Jerusalem was being besieged by Saladin’s forces in 1187, the city’s leaders held a council to discuss surrender. The two main protagonists were Balian of Ibelin and Eraclius, the Patriarch. (highest church position in the kingdom). They negotiated several times with Saladin to secure terms of surrender. Eraclius was very concerned about the people’s lives. Estimates are that there were about 30,000+ people in the city, lots of whom were refugees from other towns who had fled to Jerusalem for safety. They arranged that the townsfolk would pay for their own safety. Every male of 10 years or higher would pay 10 bezants; women would pay 5; and boys of 7 and below would pay 1. (What about girls? What about boys between 7-10? The sources for some reason don’t mention this, which is weird!). About half the people seem to have been able to pay.

What happened to the other half? Basically they were enslaved. Ibn al-Athir, a Muslim historian, tells a sad story. In Aleppo some months later, in a scene he thought was not particularly out of the ordinary, a Muslim and his slave went to a house in the city:

“Then he [the owner of the house] brought out another Frankish woman. When the first one caught sight of this other, they both cried out and embraced one another, screaming and weeping. They fell to the ground and sat talking. It transpired that they were two sisters. They had a number of family members but knew nothing about any of them.”

(Quote pinched from Malcolm Barber, The Crusader States, p. 308–it’s D.S. Richards’ translation of Ibn al-Athir, volume 2).

Was this a typical experience for the women of Jerusalem? My guess would be ‘probably’, but in all honesty the women and children disappear almost completely from the historical record, which is unfortunate but typical. I have also written elsewhere about how women in Nazareth seem to have been raped when the city fell in 1187. There are no accounts ‘from’ (i.e. written by) women or children that I am aware of. Accounts ‘of’ them are incredibly rare, let alone ‘by’ them.

More reading: Yvonne Friedman, Encounters between Enemies; Christopher MacEvitt, Rough Tolerance.

Hi folks,

As a reminder, threads asking for accounts or sources here on /r/AskHistorians are not an invitation to simply drop links with a sentence or two of description. Sources must be properly placed in their historical context and accompanied by informed discussion.

We will ban misogynist and bigoted comments or jokes.

As always, thanks for your understanding.