Béhanzin

Born Kondo around 1845, he was a prince of Dahomey, a powerful Fon kingdom whose walled capital, Abomey, lay in what is now Benin. When he became king in 1890 he took the throne name Béhanzin and the shark as his royal totem. By then France already held footholds on the coast and wanted the whole kingdom; Béhanzin refused the agreements his predecessors had been pressed into, and prepared instead to fight.

Twice the kingdom went to war with France. In the First Franco-Dahomean War of 1890 the Dahomeans withdrew after the battle of Atchoukpa. The far larger Second War (1892–94) pitted Béhanzin's army — among them the Mino (also called the Agojie or 'Amazons'), the only all-female combat regiment in modern history — against General Alfred Dodds and his repeating rifles and artillery. The Dahomeans fought with extraordinary courage but were outgunned; thousands fell. When Abomey was about to be taken, Béhanzin had its royal palaces burned rather than surrender them whole, and fled north to organise more resistance.

On 15 January 1894 he gave himself up to spare his people further suffering. France deported him with his family to the island of Martinique, and later to Blida in Algeria, where he died on 10 December 1906, far from the coast he had vowed to guard. Years later his remains were brought home to Abomey.

When the French took Abomey they also looted its royal treasures — thrones, palace doors and sacred statues, including a striking figure of Béhanzin carved as half-man, half-shark. These were displayed in Paris for more than a century. In 2021, after a law passed by the French parliament, France returned 26 of the Abomey treasures to Benin, where crowds lined the streets, drumming and weeping, to welcome them home.