target French officers. After several battles, the French prevailed in the Second Franco-Dahomean War and put an end to the independent Dahomean kingdom. French soldiers, particularly of the French Foreign Legion, were impressed by the boldness of the Amazons and later wrote about their "incredible courage and audacity" in combat. Against a military unit with decidedly superior weaponry and a longer bayonet, however, the Dahomey Mino could not prevail. During a battle with French soldiers at Adegon on October 6, 1892, during the second war, the bulk of the Mino corps were wiped out in a matter of hours in hand-to-hand combat after the French engaged them with a bayonet charge. The Dahomey lost 86 regulars and 417 Dahomey Mino, with nearly all of those deaths being inflicted by bayonets; the French lost six soldiers. Disbandment and legacy The troops were disbanded when the kingdom became a French protectorate in 1894. Oral tradition states that some surviving Mino secretly remained in Abomey afterwards, where they quietly assassinated a number of French officers. Other stories say the women pledged their services in protection of Agoli-Agbo, the brother of Béhanzin, disguising themselves as his wives in order to guard him. Some of the women married and had children, while others remained single. According to a historian who traced the lives of almost two dozen former Mino, all the women displayed difficulties adjusting to life as retired warriors, often struggling to find new roles in their communities that gave them a sense of pride comparable to their former lives. Many displayed a tendency to start fights or arguments that frightened their neighbours and relatives. Between 1934 and 1942, several British travellers in Abomey recorded encounters with former Mino, then old women who spun cotton or idled around courtyards. An unknown number of women are said to have trained with the members of the Dahomey Mino after they were disbanded, in effect continuing the tradition. They never saw combat. Around 2019, Lupita Nyong'o interviewed one of these who was still alive, for the TV documentary Warrior Women with Lupita Nyong'o. Nawi, the last Dahomey Mino The last survivor of the Dahomey Mino is thought to have been a woman named Nawi. In a 1978 interview in the village of Kinta, a Beninese historian met Nawi, who claimed to have fought the French in 1892. Nawi died in November 1979, aged well over 100. In