Vivandière
Their actual historic functions of selling wine to the troops and working in canteens led to the adoption of the name 'cantinière' which came to supplant the original 'vivandière' starting in 1793.
[3] By 1700, there was a clear category of women accompanying the French army, composed of soldiers' legitimate wives who served as vivandières.
This was typical of Europe in the period of the Old Regime, in that custom and law granted a monopoly to a small number of privileged persons.
As serving soldiers (vivandiers) were often too busy with their military duties to spend much time selling, their colonels granted them permission to marry.
This private enterprise provisioning operation was needed because the logistical system seldom supplied the troops with food, drink, or other items beyond basic rations.
Thousands of women, many of them girlfriends or prostitutes, traveled with the armies, eating rations, consuming supplies, and taking up space.
A small number of female soldiers, or femmes soldats also enlisted in the ranks and fought openly alongside the men.
[7] Cantinières expanded their numbers greatly during the Napoleonic Wars, gaining fame for battlefield heroism as well as for nursing the sick and wounded.
[citation needed] During the Second Empire the cantinière achieved a popular, if romanticised, image as a virtual icon of the French military.
[9] As part of their newly acquired official status, the cantinières appeared in uniform with their regiments on ceremonial reviews and parades.
The actual number of cantinières authorised for each regiment after 1865 varied according to the branch or corps - ranging from one for each battalion of line infantry, through four for artillery, to six for the grenadiers of the Imperial Guard [10] With the adoption of a short-term conscript army under the Third Republic, the cantinières were phased out and replaced by civilian workers who were employed at the regimental depot only and did not wear uniforms.
By the time of the French intervention in Belgium in 1832, cantinières routinely wore a female version of their regiment's uniform.
[11] A collection of colored prints dated 1859 of Second Empire cantinières by the French artist Hyppolyte Lalaisse, show their uniforms as matching the colors of their respective regiments in nearly all cases (for example green jackets and skirts with red facings, the latter worn over red trousers, for the Dragoons of the Imperial Guard).
During the Second Rif War of 1909–1910 a photograph of "Senorita Asuncion Martos, Cantinera of the Talavera Battalion in Morocco" was published in the Illustrated London News, under the heading "The vivandière still a factor in modern warfare".
In the photograph Senorita Martos wears a female version of the tropical uniform of the soldiers for whom she is pouring wine against a background of military tents, indicating that the classical role of the Spanish cantinière continued to a later date than that of her French counterpart.
[citation needed] French vivandières and cantinières frequently appeared in popular entertainment in the 19th century, from operas and musicals to picture postcards.
[15] In Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868–69), Jo March expresses a wish to become a vivandière for the Union Army: "Don't I wish I could go as a drummer, a vivan – what's its name?
