Behanzin
1845 — 1906 · Last king of Dahomey; commander of the Dahomey Amazons; resisted French conquest to defeat
Béhanzin, born Kondo around 1845 in Abomey, was the eleventh and last independent sovereign of the Kingdom of Dahomey, the centralized Fon state on the Bight of Benin in present-day Benin. On the death of his father, King Glele, he ascended the throne in January 1890 and took the royal name Béhanzin — remembered in the praise-formula "the egg of the world that none may break." He inherited a kingdom already pressed by French ambition on the coast.
His reign was defined by resistance. When France advanced its claim over Cotonou, Béhanzin met the encroachment with force, opening the first Franco-Dahomean conflict in 1890 and the decisive war of 1892–1894. He marshaled Dahomey's celebrated standing army, among them the Mino — the corps of women soldiers whom Europeans named the Dahomey Amazons, and whom the Fon called "our mothers." These warriors fought at Cotonou and were tasked with striking at French officers directly.
Against modern artillery and rifles the kingdom's courage could not prevail. After fierce fighting and heavy losses on the road to Abomey, Béhanzin surrendered on 15 January 1894, and Dahomey was absorbed as a French protectorate. He was deposed and sent into exile, first to Martinique in the Caribbean and later to Algeria.
He died in Algiers on 10 December 1906, far from the land he had ruled; his remains were later returned to Abomey. Béhanzin stands among the last African kings to take up arms against the tide of colonial conquest. May the King of Dahomey be honored, and may the courage of his people and his mothers never be forgotten.
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