At first, this event seems to belong to a long European tradition of communities using transgression - including the inversion of gender and social roles - in ritualistic events. The most common occasion for this is the carnival, where the world "turned upside-down" is used in a festive way: today, cross-dressing is still a major feature in some modern carnivals, like the Carnival of Dunkerque in Northern France.

Less known today is the charivari (skimmington, shivaree/chivaree, among other names), an ancient ritual that was widely practiced until the 19th century (with local cases in the 20th) in Europe and later in North America. The charivari shares many elements with the carnival, notably its festive elements such as parades, loud ("rough") music, and disguises. However its objective was popular justice: during charivaris, individuals accused of trespassing communal norms - unruly women, dominated husbands, adulterers, widows/ers who remarried too soon - were physically or symbolically humiliated by the crowd. Carnivals and chivaris are liminal experiences (Thomassen, 2009), occasions for transgressions, criticism and mockery that are unacceptable in normal times. All the men in Dunkerque who, once a year, parade in the streets wearing miniskirts and fishnet stockings can testify to this! Whether the carnival/charivari is by nature subsersive and conducive to actual subversion of the social or political order, or instead merely a "safety valve to help shore up that order" (Sahlins, 1994) is a question outside the scope of this short text. In some cases, indeed, "the borderline between a festivity and a riot could become blurred" (Dekker et al., 1989) and carnivals turned into protests.

However, it is certain that social protests and rebellions borrowed from these traditions, sometimes explicitly: from the 1600s to the 1800s, communities used the language and methods of the carnival and charivari to protest against authorities. Instead of targeting shrews and adulterers, these communities directed their wrath at another sort of social trespassors: the representatives of the state or local powers that tried to deny or limit freedoms that had been until then enjoyed by communities, such as the right to use the commons. Targets included people such as tax collectors, forest guards, customs officers, or surveyors, as well as objects and buildings. Barry Reay describes the popular riots that took place in England in the 15-18th century as fundamentally "moral" riots with limited objectives, "pragmatic, not revolutionary", acted in the name of the community (Reay, 1998).

In a number of cases, the riots featured prominently men disguised as women, and sometimes women dressed as men. I will give below some of the better known examples of the former.

The Western Rising, anti-enclosure and anti-disafforestation riots, England, 1626-1632

In the 17th century, South West England (notably Wiltshire and Goucestershire) saw a series of riots where people opposed the sale of royal lands (notably forests) to private owners who would "enclose" them, thus depriving the populations from the right to use them for agriculture, timber, or mining. The protests took several forms, ranging from festive (parades) to violent and destructive (armed mobs). This was notably the case 1626-1632, where the riots are known as the "Western Rising".

On 25 March 1631, in the Forest of Dean (Gloucestershire), 500 people led by men dressed in women's clothing assembled to destroy the enclosures. On 5 April, the mob has grown to 3000 people and destroyed enclosures, houses and ore pits. In May and July, similar riots erupted in the Braydon Forest (Wiltshire): thousands of people led by cross-dressing men fought against the enclosures, threatening the new owner and his employees. In July, the riot moved to the nearby forest of Chippenham. The rioters used "Skimmington" or "Lady Skimmington" - "skimmington" is one of the local names for the charivari ritual - both as a call to protest or as an alias for the leaders. The three leaders of the riots in the Braydon Forest were eventually captured in 1635, fined and placed on the "Pillory at the Assizes in Womens Clothes as they were disguised in the Riots". It seems, in fact, that no more than seven men actually participated in the riots wearing women clothes but the sheer transgressiveness of cross-dressing made "Skimmington" a powerful symbol, and authorities focused for several years on those cross-dressing riot leaders.

Antisegregation riot, France, 1723

In the 17th-18th century, the French royal governement was trying to abolish the discrimination against the Cagots, a population in South-West France that rural communities forced to live apart in humiliating conditions. Those anti-discrimination laws, which included fines and jail time, were not well received by the inhabitants, who strongly opposed Cagot's rights. On August 1723, in the seaside town of Biarritz, a sergent and two archers were tasked with posting on the door of the church the recent anti-segregation ruling of the parliament of Bordeaux. The royal envoys were welcomed by a crowd of vituperating women and forced to retreat. In their report, they wrote that this "mutinous and tumultuous crowd was made of men disguised as women" and armed with weapons such as "lime, salt, ash and whale oil". It is not fully certain that the rioters were all men in disguise and it is likely, like in the English riots, that the rioters included women and men disguised as men.

The war of the Maidens, Pyrenees, France, 1829-1832

Between 1829 and 1832, in the Ariège department of the Pyrenées in South-Western France, groups of male peasants disguised (more or less) as women waged a low-intensity, guerilla-style "war" against forest guards and charcoal makers to reclaim the possession of the forests that was denied to them after the establishment of the National Forest Code of 1827. Two centuries after the Braydon Forest riots in Southwest Enland, it was the turn of Southwestern French peasants to fight disafforestation.

The riots were first mentioned in May 1827 by a state forest inspector, who had been chased by "three women of a size much larger than is expected of this sex". This woman disguise was rather crude and mostly consisted in wearing the shirt untucked and a woman hat. Some of the rioters blackened their hands and faces, others wore animal skins, and other donned military uniforms. Still, it was this woman-like appearence that gave the name to the movement and to the people who participated in it, the Demoiselles (the Maidens), and the rioters presented themselves under this name. The riots consisted mostly in targeting forest guards and charcoal makers. The Demoiselles chased them out of the forests by threatening them with death or mutilation, shouting invectives, shooting guns into the air, and destroying their properties. This ritualized violence went on for a few years, until it collided with the Revolution of July 1830. In 1831, the Forest Code was modified in favour of the peasants, and a blanket amnesty for all "past crimes and transgressions" was granted. There were further skirmishes (and one rioter was killed) until 1834 but the Demoiselles were gone.

The Rebecca riots, Wales, 1839-1842

On 6 June 1839, a group of men, some in blackface, other wearing women's clothes, destroyed a newly installed toll gate (and the toll house) at Efailwen in West Wales, demanding "free laws" and driving away the constables that protected the gate. Tolls were resented by small farmers who had to pay to use the roads to market their products. A month later, they reappeared, still in blackface or wearing white dresses or petticoats, and smashed again the repaired gate. The leader was referred to as "Becca", possiblt after a passage in the Bible where Rebecca talks of the need to "possess the gates of those who hate them" (Genesis 22, 60). In 1842, a large mob of men, many of them in women's clothes, and armed with guns, pistols, scythes, and hay knives, attacked another toll gate. "Rebecca and her daughters", as they called themselves, led a long series of attacks throughout 1843, mostly destroying gates, though one workhouse (an institution where poor people were forced to work) was attacked and other properties (enclosures, farms) were destroyed. The "Rebeccaites" also threatened people through letters and posters that were political in nature, demanding lower rents and fair leases. Authorities eventually sent the troops and the movement died out in early 1844.

Other examples

For completeness sake, we can cite other examples mentioned by Natalie Zemon Davis in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (1975):

• The grain riot in Maldon (Essex) of 1629, headed by a woman, "Captain" Alice Clark, who led a group of women and male weavers dressed as women.

• Rioting laborers in Surrey in 1720, also dressed as women.

• Cross-dressing male peasants attacking surveyors in the Beaujolais (France) in the 1770s (their wives told the police that the attackers were fairies from the mountains).

• During the Luddite movement, on 14 April 1812 in Stockport (North West England), two weavers dressed as women led a crowd of hundreds to stone the houses of factory owners, and then to destroy the powerlooms and set fire to the factory oand house of owner John Goodair. The story of the "General Ludd’s Wives" immediately passed into local folklore (Glen, 2019). It is likely that this print of the "Leader of the Luddites", dated May 1812, showing a man wearing a dress and a woman's bonnet, is a direct allusion to these events.

Part 2: but why cross-dressing?