by Jason Porath
Laskarina Bouboulina was a badass baby.
Bouboulina’s badass beginnings were due to the politics of the time. For centuries, Greece had been under the rule of the Ottoman Empire—a fact that didn’t sit well with a large number of Greeks, Bouboulina’s father included. For participating in one of the many failed attempts at overthrowing the Ottomans, her father had been locked up in Istanbul. It was on a visit to said prison that Bouboulina’s pregnant mother went into labor, and several hours later Bouboulina took her first breath in a Turkish prison cell. She was to take after her father.
Her path from jailbird to revolutionary wasn’t a straight road by any means. The first part of Bouboulina’s life was, on the whole, rather conventional. She married twice (not at the same time!), and both husbands were seafaring merchants. Each was killed in battle with Barbary Coast pirates, leaving her with an enormous fortune and unheard-of free agency by the age of 35.
While many in her position might have blown their savings or fallen prey to nefarious hangers-on, Bouboulina did just the opposite. She took the reins of the family finances and started investing like a pro. Said investments, which grew her wealth even more, included partnerships in several ships. Said vessels would turn out to be good investments in the realms of both finance and butt-kicking.
This level of control was not achieved without some difficulty. Early on, the Ottomans tried to lay claim to her late husband’s wealth, through dubious legal antics. In response, Bouboulina put on her diplomacy hat and played several factions against each other (including Russia). This years-long political game ended with Bouboulina the victor—she charmed a sultan’s wife into officially declaring the money Bouboulina’s in perpetuity. Remember this, it will come up later!
Eventually Bouboulina grew in influence to the point where she was inducted into the Filiki Etairia, or “Friendly Society,” a Greek secret society dedicated to overthrowing the Ottoman Turks. She was the only female member of the group. In that role, she used her fine upstanding reputation to smuggle arms and ammunition. She hid the weaponry all across her home island of Spetses, like the world’s deadliest squirrel.
Because arming an entire landmass worth of people evidently wasn’t enough, she also commissioned a full-fledged warship. If the Ottomans asked, she said she was just building a merchant vessel—albeit one with 18 cannons. When a local brown-noser tried to rat her out, she bribed her way to safety. Part of the bribe involved wisely getting the brown-noser booted off Lethal Scavenger Hunt Island Spetses.
And so, when the Greek War of Independence began in 1821, Bouboulina was at the front of its navy, commanding the warship Agamemnon and seven other ships. She laid siege to a number of Ottoman strongholds, chief among them Tripoli and Nafplio. She had her own army—the Brave Young Lads—and personally commanded their attacks against the Turks.
The war was incredibly brutal. The Ottomans wiped out entire islands of people—around 100,000 were killed or enslaved in the taking of Chios alone. The Greeks were no less brutal in their tactics: once they took Tripoli, the revolutionaries spent three days killing around 25,000 of its inhabitants.
Bouboulina brought a sense of mercy to this brutality, at great personal risk. As her fellow revolutionaries sacked Tripoli, she rushed to the sultan’s palace in order to save the lives of the sultan’s wife, children, and harem. In so doing, she was repaying the support of the sultan’s wife from years prior (told you it would come up later!). She didn’t have to—her side definitely held the upper hand, and sparing the lives of the Ottoman ruling class was certainly not high on the Greek priority list. But Bouboulina did what she thought was right. She held nothing back in the war: within two years virtually her entire fortune was gone. But at the end of it, so were the Turks.
Unfortunately, the years after the war were not kind to Bouboulina—or to Greece, for that matter. The country, though free from the Turks, rapidly sank into a series of civil wars. During one of said upheavals, Bouboulina was arrested for her political opinions, and she was eventually exiled to Spetses. Once released, she prepared to head back to war, this time with Egypt, when she was shot dead in a family dispute.
Her son had eloped, and the bride’s family was none too pleased. Bouboulina got involved and met her end. No one ever confessed to shooting her.
She has returned to prominence in the years since her death. Not only has her likeness been featured on the drachma, on postage stamps, and in movies, but her descendants remain heavily involved in politics and the military. In fact, one of the main World War II resistance groups based in Greece was named Bouboulina—and led by her descendant Lela Karayianni to boot!
Ching Shih
(1775–1844, CHINA)
Princess of the Chinese Seas
In 1809, the Chinese government sprang a trap. They were gunning for a group that had taken control of its southern waters, the Red Flag pirate fleet. Blockading the pirates in a bay, the authorities laid siege to them for three straight weeks with an overwhelming amount of firepower. In the end, the Red Flags strode out through a graveyard of government ships, largely unscathed. At the head of the Red Flags stood one of the most fearsome pirates in history—Ching Shih, a former prostitute turned leader of over 70,000 men.
Getting accurate information on Lady Ching (alias Cheng I Sao) is a bit difficult. Nobody knows much about her early life. Even the name Ching Shih isn’t her own: it translates to “widow of Ching,” Ching being her late husband and the commander of the Red Flags before her. We do know that before her husband died, he (and by extension, his fleet) was so renowned that the emperor, in an early attempt at curbing his piracy through bribery, gave him the title “Golden Dragon of the Imperial Staff,” effectively promoting him to the rank of prince—and thus, one could argue, obliquely making Ching Shih a princess.
When her husband died unexpectedly, Ching Shih took on the family business, assuming control of the Red Flag fleet. According to legend, following her husband’s death, she summoned the scattering fleet captains and announced: “Under the leadership of a man you have all chosen to flee. We shall see how you prove yourselves under the hand of a woman.”
She was a leader unlike any they’d had before. Where her husband had been brash and loud, she was quiet and calculating. Soon after her rule began, she took a charismatic man named Chang Pao as her husband and installed him as head of the fleet. This proved a savvy move for a number of reasons. Chang Pao had been her husband’s right-hand man (and lover . . . and adopted son . . . yeah, it’s a bit weird) and was widely respected among all the pirate fleets. Moreover, Chang Pao was an illiterate fisherman’s son (he’d been taken by the pirates as a child and received little to no schooling) and was likely easy to manipulate.
Under Chang Pao’s rule (and Ching Shih’s guiding hand), many rowdy pirate fleets united beneath the Red Flag banner, and the Red Flags soon eclipsed all other pirate groups in size. Every single ship, no matter how small, was given an edict from Ching Shih that all were to learn and obey. This outlined an incredibly hardcore code of conduct:
• Ching Shih okays all attacks beforehand. Disobey, and you’re beheaded.
• You give all loot to your superior, who distributes it afterwards. Disobey once, you’re beaten severely. Disobey twice, you’re dead.
• Don’t desert your post or take shore leave without permission. Disobey once, we cut off your ears (since you clearly weren’t using them) and parade you around. Disobey twice, you’re dead.
• Rape a female captive, off with your head.
• Have consensual sex with a female captive without permission from the boss, you’re headless and she’s taking a swim with a lead weight.
• If you want to have sex with a female prisoner, you take her as your wife. You are faithful to her. You treat her well. Or we take your head.
• Oh, and don’t use the word “plunder.” Instead, say “transferring shipment of goods.” It just sounds nicer.
It is telling that one of t
he primary sources of information on Ching Shih’s life was a Westerner she’d imprisoned for three months while setting up his ransom.
Under the leadership of Ching Shih, the Red Flags were unstoppable. As previously remarked, the Chinese government (with the help of the Portuguese) made a concerted effort to isolate and kill her in late 1809. That didn’t happen. When the government sent “suicide boats”—ships loaded up with straw and explosives, set on fire, and launched at the pirates—the Red Flags extinguished the flames, repaired the ships, and incorporated them into their fleet. In the end, the pirates lost 40 people and not a single ship. So humiliating was the government’s loss that the leader of the government expedition ended up falsifying the official reports to make himself look better.
Eventually, the government’s persistent interference became too troublesome for even Ching Shih, and she put up her swords . . . but here, too, her genius shines through. Instead of merely negotiating amnesty by informing on her shipmates, she spent months bargaining with the government—at one point even giving herself over as a hostage to ensure her shipmates’ safety. The end result: she actually retired. The government gave over a big chunk of cash, canceled all warrants for her arrest, and made Chang Pao a lieutenant in the Chinese navy (giving Ching Shih official status as a capital-L Lady in Chinese society). One of Chang Pao’s first acts? Using the government forces to destroy all their old pirate rivals.
According to most sources, Ching Shih spent her final years running a brothel and gambling den. She died at age 69, a wealthy and widely respected woman.
Christine de Pizan
(1364–C. 1430, FRANCE)
Literary Architect of the City of Ladies
At the age of 25, Christine de Pizan faced a crisis. Already reeling from the death of her physician-astrologer father, she received word that her beloved husband had succumbed to the bubonic plague. Suddenly deprived of support (and income), and with three young mouths to feed, she had few options. With the courts unwilling to give Christine her husband’s back wages or property (creditors even seized some of her property!), she faced the last resort of so many women of the time: entering the convent.
But Christine did not become a nun. Instead, she picked up a pen and became the hardest-working woman in France—a woman who enraptured queens and tricked kings, went toe-to-toe with the intellectuals of her day, and developed into one of history’s greatest defenders of her gender.
Christine’s move into the role of breadwinner, while entirely within her abilities, was emotionally exhausting. Well educated by an intellectual father who “took great pleasure from seeing” her “inclination to learning,” Christine was, skills-wise, well disposed to become a writer. Mentally, though, the transition was devastating. In one poem, she described herself as a passenger on a boat struck by catastrophic weather, who had to take the helm amid nigh-suicidal grief. She went on to speak of this moment as one in which an anthropomorphized Fortune switched Christine’s gender by repeatedly touching her body—a passage that surely launched a thousand dissertations.
Regardless of Christine’s personal gender politics,* her prolific outpouring of work not only proved successful but also soon established her as one of France’s premier intellectuals. She began her career with uncontroversial love poetry designed to attract patrons. Once her finances were more in order (and her children were older), she took an abrupt left turn into the areas for which she became best known: French politics and the defense of women.
With France knee-deep in the Hundred Years’ War against England, Christine de Pizan tried her best to prevent the unstable political situation from erupting into all-out civil war. To avoid this, she continually pointed to the menace of the English in an attempt to galvanize the country in one direction. In her Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry (yes, she wrote a book on warfare!), she even warned the French to take the threat of England’s archers seriously. They didn’t, and five years later they faced catastrophic losses at Agincourt, owing in large part to English archers. These losses would prove instrumental in the rise of Joan of Arc.*
Christine’s most lasting legacy came in her literary uplifting of women. Disgusted by a contemporary’s misogynist depiction of her entire gender,* she started a public quarrel over women’s place in literature—one of the first debates of its kind. To give some context, here was an educated woman standing her ground at an advanced intellectual level, in an era when it was thought that knowledge would make women sterile and that females were “empty thing[s] and easily swayed.”
Her frustration over the treatment of women led to one of her greatest masterpieces, The Book of the City of Ladies, in which she stages an extended defense of her gender and builds a metaphorical city out of exemplary historical women. Amazons and skilled women are the gates and foundations, morally upright women the buildings, and saints and martyrs the lofty towers. The Book of the City of Ladies was a beautifully illustrated illuminated manuscript, the creation of which Christine oversaw, employing only other skilled women.
At the end of her career, Christine had written thousands of pages, a staggering output considering the manually laborious nature of writing in medieval times. She established herself as one of the premier female intellectuals of human history and provided a role model for generations of women.
• ART NOTES AND TRIVIA •
Christine de Pizan is seen here constructing a model “city of ladies” out of the women in the other entries in this book.
The presence of a dog is historically accurate: she appears in one of the illustrations of The Book of the City of Ladies with a cute little white dog at her feet.
There is one person in this illustration who is not a woman. This person bears a striking resemblance to this book’s author.
Harriet Tubman
(1822–1913, UNITED STATES)
The American Moses
For most people, the first words that spring to mind when they hear the name Harriet Tubman are probably “Underground Railroad”—which is a shame, since those words should be something more along the lines of “unstoppable force of nature.” For Tubman, a smuggler, nurse, spy, general, and modern-day Moses, was one of the toughest women in history.
Harriet (birth name: Araminta Ross) was born into plantation life slavery, but decided after 27 years to free herself. One can hardly blame her. Her upbringing had left her body a mass of scars due to daily whipping sessions. Her most notable scar was received from a lead weight that was thrown at her, cracking her skull. Probably because of this injury, she suffered narcoleptic symptoms her entire life, often falling asleep mid-sentence. Luckily, she was able to balance her disadvantages with two amazing qualities—borderline-inhuman stamina from all the backbreaking labor and a burning hatred of slavery.
Nobody knows much about the first few years of Harriet’s freedom. It’s likely she was aided by a nascent Underground Railroad, but with the need for secrecy at the time, little information survived as to the particulars of her escape. It is known that she left the plantation without warning anyone, including her parents, siblings, and husband. She covered 90 miles in her journey to Philadelphia, probably on foot, by sleeping in forests during the day and avoiding slave catchers at night.
Once in Philadelphia, however, she made a startling choice. Instead of continuing northward to safety or even settling into a simple life there, she joined the Underground Railroad in the most dangerous capacity of all. She became an “abductor,” or someone who would sneak into the southern United States, where slavery was legal, and personally extract slaves from their bondage.
Harriet was possibly the most skilled abductor of all—even though, as an escaped slave, she was in far more danger than any of her white colleagues. Making the situation even riskier was the fact that, working by herself, she smuggled out groups of slaves instead of the more customary one or two at a time. The anecdotes from this period of her life are awe-inspiring:
• She led around two chickens on a leash.
If she saw one of her former slave owners—not an uncommon occurrence, as she’d been rented to many in her childhood—she would pull the leashes, causing the chickens to squawk and allowing her to hide her face as she ducked down to deal with them.
• She carried around newspapers, pretending to read, even though she was illiterate. This fooled more than one slave owner into thinking she was someone else.
• She would sing aloud to herself as she walked, choosing songs that could signal to escaped slaves within earshot whether it was safe to come out.
• Harriet carried a loaded revolver nearly everywhere she went. One of the only times she used it was when an escaped slave, exhausted from the journey, threatened to turn around and head back. She put the gun to his head and forced him to continue. A week later, he and the rest of the group were free.
• Another notable occasion for using her gun came when she was in the wilderness smuggling a group to safety. Isolated from civilization and suffering from a painful tooth infection, she used the revolver to knock out her entire top row of teeth.
• She disguised herself as an old woman and sneaked into a courthouse to rescue an escaped slave about to be sent back south. She forcibly yanked him out of the bailiff’s grip and rushed him down the stairs, even as cops beat her half-unconscious. When he was recaptured and put in a judge’s office, she and several others rushed in and got him out a second time, even as bullets were flying overhead.
A solid decade of these escapes, during which she smuggled out almost her entire family,** earned her the moniker “Moses.” An intensely religious woman prone to visions, Tubman would often have premonitions of oncoming patrols and stop her groups in their tracks.
