Brigitta Scherzenfeldt

Brigitta Christina Scherzenfeldt, as married Bernow, Lindström, Ziems, and Renat (1684 – 4 April 1736), was a Swedish memoirist and weaving teacher who was captured during the Great Northern War and lived as a slave over 15 years in the Dzungar Khanate in Central Asia.

She remarried again in 1712, this time to a lieutenant, Michael Ziems, a German who had been taken prisoner of war in by the Russians during his service in the Swedish army; they were subsequently both deported to Tobolsk in Siberia.

[5] In 1716, Ziems was a part of the reinforcements sent to the garrison of Ivan Bucholtz at Jarmyn Lake, above the Irtysh River, by Governor Matvei Petrovich Gagarin.

[7] Scherzenfeldt was captured, abused with iron and ropes, stripped, and almost raped, but she defended herself so forcefully that she tore a piece of flesh from the leg of her attacker.

[8] The attacker then wished to kill her, but was stopped by a comrade, and she was then taken naked to the Khanate in Ili with the other survivors and presented to the Khan, Tsewang Rabtan, himself.

[9] The khan curiously asked her why she had resisted the rape attempt so forcefully, and when she told him about the customs of her country, he ordered that she should never be sexually attacked in the future.

Subsequently enlisting in the Russian army to escape captivity in Siberia, he was captured by the Dzungars, to whom he became an instructor in the cannon-forging and book printing.

[26] When the survivors entered Stockholm in 1734, the three remaining Kalmyks (Altan, Iamakiss and Zara) were baptized in the Lutheran Protestant Church to become Anna Catharina, Maria Stina and Sara Greta; they then became maids in the Renat household.