In Atlas Obscura’s Q&A series She Was There, we talk to female scholars who are writing long-forgotten women back into history. Around midday on July 4, 1643, in the countryside just north of Birmingham, Queen Henrietta Maria was in her battle tent. Outside, shells exploded. Bullets zoomed past. Anxiously, the Queen of England waited. Taking Burton-Upon-Trent, a strategic town with a river crossing connecting northern and southern England, was her army’s first real challenge. Defeat was not an option. But the fighting had already raged for five hours—how much longer…
