Christian Davies born Christian Cavanagh, was a trooper and later a sutler

Sutler

A sutler or victualer is a civilian merchant who sells provisions to an army in the field, in camp or in quarters. The sutler sold wares from the back of a wagon or a temporary tent, allowing them to travel along with an army or to remote military outposts...

 for the 4th Dragoons, later the 2nd Royal North British Dragoons. She was also known as Kit Cavanagh and Mother Ross. She served, in disguise, as a soldier in the British Army. First as an infantry man, from 1697 until 1701, and then for five years as a dragoon in the Scots Greys from 1701 until discovered in 1706 while searching for her husband.

Early life

Christian "Kit" Cavanagh was born in 1667 in Dublin, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

. Throughout her life, she would use the surnames: Welsh, Welch, Ross, Jones, and Davies. She was the daughter of a local brewer. Although her parents were Protestants, they supported King James II

James II of England

James II & VII was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland...

 during his campaign in Ireland. Her father served with the Jacobite Army, dying as a result of wounds at the Battle of Aughrim

Battle of Aughrim

The Battle of Aughrim was the decisive battle of the Williamite War in Ireland. It was fought between the Jacobites and the forces of William III on 12 July 1691 , near the village of Aughrim in County Galway....

. Her family's property was confiscated as a result of their support for the Jacobite cause.

Kit Cavanagh was a bit of a wild girl. As a teenager, she became involved with a relative of her mother's. Unable to care for her, some accounts have her fleeing her mother, Kit Cavanaugh went to live with her aunt who ran a public house

Public house

A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...

 in Dublin. Soon, she met and married Richard Welsh (some sources have him down as Richard Walsh), a servant of her aunt's. After her aunt's passing, she inherited the pub. Despite her relative youth, she ran the pub as her own with Richard being one of the waiters. They had two children, and she was pregnant with a third when suddenly Richard disappeared in 1691.

Infantryman

Under circumstances that are unclear, her husband ended up in the British Army. Some accounts have him volunteering. Others have him being pressed into the army. In either event, he apparently attempted to write to her to inform her of his situation. Eventually, one of the letters made it to her, telling Cavanagh that he was in the British Army serving in Holland. Unwilling to simply lose her husband, Cavanagh placed her children in the care of her mother, cut her hair, and disguised herself as a man to join the British Army to find her lost husband.

Initially, Cavanagh joined Captain Tichborne's company of foot under the name Christopher Welch. As an infantryman, she fought at the Battle of Landen

Battle of Landen

The Battle of Landen , in the current Belgian province of Flemish Brabant, was a battle in the Nine Years' War, fought in present-day Belgium on 29 July 1693 between the French army of Marshal Luxembourg and the Allied army of King William III of England...

. There she was wounded and captured by the French. In 1694, she was exchanged and returned the British Army, who were still unaware of her true sex.

After being exchanged, she continued to soldier on in the British Army, still looking for her husband. She remained a member of Tichborne's company until she became embroiled in a dispute with a sergeant of the company, whom she killed in a duel over a woman. Following the duel, and possibly as a result of it, Welch as allowed to be discharged from the army.

Dragoon

Once discharged, she promptly re-enlisted, this time in 4th Royal North British Dragoons (later the Scots Greys) in 1697. As a dragoon, she took part in the fighting until the Peace of Ryswick. Demobilized at the end of the war, she had yet to find her husband. Still looking for her husband, she would eventually re-enlist with the Scots Greys when the War of Spanish Succession began in 1701.

Somehow, she managed to conceal the fact that she was a woman. As Marian Broderick notes, "Amazingly, she managed to do this without being discovered: she ate with them, drank with them, slept with them, played cards with them, even urinated alongside them by using what she describes as a ‘silver tube with leather straps’. No one was ever the wiser." She was so successful at passing herself off as a man that a prostitute claimed she was the father of her child. Rather than give proof that this was impossible, Cavanagh paid child support to the woman.

During her time as a dragoon, Cavanagh grew to enjoy the life of a soldier. She particularly seemed to enjoy the marauding and looting that followed in the wake of battles. For a woman who had been successful in business, she was alleged to be just as successful a marauder.

Riding with the Scots Greys, she was wounded at the Battle of Schellenberg

Battle of Schellenberg

The Battle of Schellenberg, also known as the Battle of Donauwörth, was fought on 2 July 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession. The engagement was part of the Duke of Marlborough's campaign to save the Habsburg capital of Vienna from a threatened advance by King Louis XIV's Franco-Bavarian...

. Not willing to be sidelined by the musket ball that remained in her upper thigh, she was with the regiment at the Battle of Blenheim

Battle of Blenheim

The Battle of Blenheim , fought on 13 August 1704, was a major battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. Louis XIV of France sought to knock Emperor Leopold out of the war by seizing Vienna, the Habsburg capital, and gain a favourable peace settlement...

. After the battle, she was assigned to guard French prisoners. There she found, after 13 years of searching, her husband. Richard Welsh was then a private in the 1st Regiment of Foot. According to some accounts, she recognized him while he was trying to pick up a Dutch woman. Welch claimed he had sent her numerous letters, none of which ever reached her. Having found her husband with another woman, she refused to go back to him, preferring to remain a dragoon in the Scots Greys.

Despite her anger at having found her husband cheating, the two remained somewhat close. The pair agreed to not reveal her identity, instead pretending to be brothers. The deception worked, with no one in the regiment suspecting her of being a woman, even though she was known as the "pretty dragoon".

Ms. Welch' life as trooper continued until 1706 and the Battle of Ramillies

Battle of Ramillies

The Battle of Ramillies , fought on 23 May 1706, was a major engagement of the War of the Spanish Succession. For the Grand Alliance – Austria, England, and the Dutch Republic – the battle had followed an indecisive campaign against the Bourbon armies of King Louis XIV of France in 1705...

. There she was again wounded, this time fracturing her skull. When the regimental surgeon treated her, he discovered that Christopher Welsh was in fact a woman. The news of the discovery soon spread through the British cavalry brigade. Eventually Lord Hay, the Scots Greys brigade commander, intervened, having Cavanagh's husband brought from the 1st Regiment of Foot. After hearing the whole story from Cavanagh, he ordered that her pay be continued while she remained under the care of the army.

Sutleress

Once she was well enough, Cavanagh, now back to being called Mrs. Welsh, was formally discharged from the Scots Greys. As part of her discharge, the officers of the Scots Greys paid for a new wardrobe for Mrs. Welsh. Some sources have reported that she fought openly as a woman, however this unlikely. She was, apparently, carried on strength as a wife and a sutler. After the Battle of Ramillies, there is no evidence that she continued to serve as a dragoon. She was allowed to remain with the army as an official wife on strength with the 1st Foot as a sutler

Sutler

A sutler or victualer is a civilian merchant who sells provisions to an army in the field, in camp or in quarters. The sutler sold wares from the back of a wagon or a temporary tent, allowing them to travel along with an army or to remote military outposts...

ess.

Although accounts list her as being a faithful wife, her husband's reputation is the opposite. Even after being reunited with his wife, Richard Welsh continued to see other women. When Cavanagh discovered one of his mistresses was still following the regiment, Cavanagh attacked the woman, cutting off her nose. However, at the Battle of Malplaquet

Battle of Malplaquet

The Battle of Malplaquet, fought on 11 September 1709, was one of the main battles of the War of the Spanish Succession, which opposed the Bourbons of France and Spain against an alliance whose major members were the Habsburg Monarchy, Great Britain, the United Provinces and the Kingdom of...

, her husband died. Cavanagh spent much of the day after the battle searching for her husband's body, turning over as many as two hundred bodies before finding him so that she could bury him.

After the death of her husband, she became involved with a Captain Ross of the Scots Greys. Forever afterwards, she was known in the regiment as "Mother Ross". She never married Captain Ross, instead marrying another dragoon of the Scots Greys, Hugh Jones, three months after the Battle of Malplaquet. Jones would die at the Siege of Saint-Venant in 1710.

Return from the continent

In 1712, as the War of Spanish Succession was winding down, Cavanagh returned home with the troops. Because of her extraordinary tale, she was presented at court to Queen Anne. Queen Anne granted her a bounty of £50 and a shilling a day for the rest of her life as a pension.

Finally returning to Dublin in 1713, she married for the third and final time. Her third husband, like the rest, was a soldier. His name was Davies.

She lived in Dublin for some years, opening a new pub. But her years in the army had left her and her husband unsuited to settled life. For many years, they moved about England and Ireland, making a living through a variety of jobs as well as her celebrity status among the military. Eventually, she was admitted to the Royal Hospital Chelsea

Royal Hospital Chelsea

The Royal Hospital Chelsea is a retirement home and nursing home for British soldiers who are unfit for further duty due to injury or old age, located in the Chelsea region of central London, now the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is a true hospital in the original sense of the word,...

 as one of its pensioners

Chelsea pensioner

A Chelsea pensioner is an in-pensioner at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a retirement home and nursing home for former members of the British Army located in Chelsea, London...

. Mrs. Davies was buried, at her request, with full military honors with other military pensioners at Royal Hospital Chelsea.