'I have heard, ' said the tsar...'that you are not a man. Is that true?' In December 1807, Alexander I granted a commission to Nadezhda Durova who, in male guide, served nearly ten years in the Russian light cavalry during the Napoleonic wars. The Cavalry Maiden, a selection of the edited journals of her military service, first published in 1836 with Pushkin's encouragement, is a lively narrative Russian life on and off the battlefield in the Alexandrine era.