Jeanne de Clisson, Lioness of Brittany

When you think of female pirates, Anne Bonny or Mary Read come to mind. But they didn't have awesome nicknames like Jeanne de Clisson, the Lioness of Brittany. Driven by revenge for her husband's unlawful execution, Jeanne commanded a fleet of black ships and wielded a massive battle-axe, personally beheading any French nobleman she found. She got away with it, too, seeing her husband's honor posthumously restored, and died happily of natural causes. But it was a long, hard road on the way.

Jeanne was born in 1300, so she lived well before the so-called Golden Age of Piracy. Her hunting grounds were pretty much limited to the English Channel. Her prey: the French. Always the French. Particularly the French nobility. She was either a great heroine or a bloodthirsty bitch - maybe a little bit of both. But whatever else she was, she was certainly a Badass Chick of History.

Brittany is a part of northern France, but in the 1300s, they thought of themselves as Bretons, not Frenchmen. Jeanne's father was a nobleman, and her mother was from a noble family as well. They wanted to ensure young Jeanne had a strong marriage. At age 12 (not at all unusual for the time) she married the 19-year-old Baron Geoffrey of Chateaubriant. They had two kids, a boy and a girl, who would inherit their father's estates one after the other. Goeffrey died when he was 33 years old, leaving Jeanne young and still marriageable.

Four years later, she married Olivier de Clisson IV, a knight who held an important castle and estates in Brittany. It was the second marriage for both of them, and it was fertile: Jeanne bore five more children to Olivier. All in all, Jeanne spent the first part of her life in peace and domestic tranquility, despite the winds of war that had begun to blow.

Brittany was ruled by a Duke who paid nominal homage to the King of France. In reality, French kings were often weak and local nobles had a lot of power, relatively speaking. But when the Duke died without a direct heir, there were two nobles who each had a claim to take the duchy - Charles of Blois, who the French preferred, and John Montfort, who the English preferred. Unfortunately, this led to the War of the Breton Succession, which was just a chapter in the so-called Hundred Years War. The situation was complicated and we can't get into it all here, but it proved to be fateful for Jeanne.

Olivier and Jeanne supported Charles of Blois, as did most of the nobles in Brittany. But Montfort acted fast, and with English backing, took the Breton city of Vannes in 1342. Olivier and another nobleman were in charge of the defenses of the town. They did a good job at first - it took Montfort and the English several tries to take it. In the end, Olivier was captured. He was ransomed back to the French for such a low amount that Charles of Blois became suspicious. He accused Olivier of not doing all he could to defend Vannes.

When a truce between the English and French cooled things down for a while, Charles invited Olivier and several other nobles who'd irked him to a tournament in Paris. Once there, Olivier was captured and beheaded. His body was hung in a gibbet in Paris and his head returned to Brittany for public display as a warning to anyone else who might piss off the mighty Charles of Blois. This shocked the nobility. There was no demonstration of guilt, no trial, and public display of the body was a slap in the face to the family honor, as such treatment was usually reserved for low-class criminals.

It was this act of brutality that turned Jeanne into a Badass Chick of History.

She took her two sons to see the head of their father, and swore revenge against the French king, Philip VI, and Charles of Blois. Returning home, she sold every scrap of real estate she'd inherited - she had a plan and needed every ounce of money she could squeeze out of her estates. She used some of this initial money to hire a mercenary force of fighters who were at least nominally loyal to Olivier's memory, and she personally led them in several assaults on French forces.

Jeanne was merciless. She took a castle in Brittany and massacred every single inhabitant without regard to age or gender. She left one person alive to tell the French king what she had done. The force then stormed off and destroyed to a man another French garrison nearby.

Charles and the King turned up the heat, and Jeanne, now landless but with significant funds and a band of loyal followers, decided to get out of the kitchen - for now. She escaped by boat and fled to England. Unfortunately one of her sons died on the way; she left the others in the care of John of Montfort, who she now supported as the rightful ruler of Brittany.

Popular in England, she found the English nobles ready to assist her. With the rest of her own money, and some assistance from the King of England, Jeanne ordered the construction of three huge warships. As if three ships of war weren't fearful enough, she had them painted entirely black, but had the sails dyed a deep red crimson. Jeanne wanted to make sure everyone - especially the French - knew whose ships those were.

As soon as the ships were complete, Jeanne took her remaining band of soldiers, gathered up more from British ports, and sailed out into the English Channel. Within a week she'd taken a French merchant ship and slaughtered everyone on board except for one sailor. Him, she sent back to Paris with a warning for Charles and the French king. Ship after ship followed - together, her three warships were almost unstoppable. Her force quickly became known as The Black Fleet.

Before long, Jeanne had earned the nickname "The Lioness of Brittany." She didn't take prisoners, and looting enemy ships was just a way to pay her men. Revenge was her driving aspiration, and it kept her going for 13 long years on the sea. She's believed to have captured or scuttled almost 100 French ships, raided at least a dozen coastal villages, and put more than 3,000 French to the sword. And she didn't just order her men to kill everyone, either: no, Jeanne had all the survivors lined up on the deck of the captured ship, and she personally ran every one of them through with a broadsword. At some point in her career, she became fond of the battle axe as a weapon, and began using it to behead any French noble she found. She'd send the heads back to Paris (now ruled by King Jean II) with taunting, threatening letters.

She also assisted the English in the Hundred Years War. When King Edward III of England invaded France, the Black Fleet supplied his troops at the Battle of Crecy. This is when she met Sir Walter Bentley, and English knight who'd been instrumental in helping Edward III storm across France. In fact, he'd triumphed with English forces when he was outnumbered more than two to one at the Battle of Mauron. He was, you might say, a Lion fit for the Lioness of Brittany. He was rewarded with a castle and lands in Brittany. In 1356, Jeanne perhaps felt that she'd had enough revenge. After all, the English had taken control over much of Brittany, and after 13 years of piracy and slaughter, maybe Jeanne was running out of steam. Her old enemy Charles of Blois had been captured by the English (he was held as a prisoner for nine years, then ransomed). King Philip VI was long gone. She was fast approaching 60 years old. Jeanne decided to call it a day.

Together, she and Sir Walter settled in the castle of Hennebont, a port town on the coast of Brittany, overlooking the sea where Jeanne had been responsible for so much violence. Happily for her, she lived out the rest of her days in peace, seeing most of her children be granted estates or married well. Her son Olivier, who'd been fostered in England by Montfort, eventually inherited his father's estates and title. In fact, he'd go on to serve as the Constable of France under King Charles VI.

Jeanne lived for three more years in peace, writing that she was "content that justice has been served" (maybe a little too much justice, to be honest...). Jeanne died quietly of natural causes in 1359.

She left behind her a legend and legacy that was later novelized by romantic writers on both sides of the Channel. However, today her legend is less well-known. It should be noted that the Hundred Years War was a stage of action for many Badass Chicks of History, including Montfort's wife, who supposedly went into battle with a flaming sword, and the most Badass Chick of them all, Joan of Arc. Maybe Jeanne de Clisson, the Lioness of Brittany, has been a bit overshadowed by more famous or more recent fighting women. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that Jeanne surely ranks highly among the Badass Chicks of History.

Sarah Emma Edmonds

Franklin Thompson was a soldier, mail courier and spy for the Union Army during the American Civil War. He was also a woman. 

When Sarah Emma Edmonds was a little girl growing up in New Brunswick, Canada, she read a book called "Fanny Campbell, the Female Pirate Captain." It told the tale of a woman who, dressed as a man, had dashing adventures as a pirate. She later said it was this book that inspired her to start dressing like a boy.

Sarah's father was a farmer, and he'd really wanted boys to help with the crops. He was irritated that instead, he got a daughter, and he treated her abominably, physically and emotionally abusing her. She'd often dress as a boy and hire herself out for labor jobs just to escape the drudgery of her real life.

In 1857, as the American Civil War was brewing south of the Canadian border, Sarah's father attempted to force her into an arranged marriage with a much older man she did not love. She decided this would not be her fate. Running away from home, she slipped across the border to America. Terrified of being tracked down - and more than a little inspired by her childhood hero Fanny Campbell - Sarah decided to disguise herself as a man, and took the name Franklin Thompson. Her good looks shone through as "boyishly handsome," and she quickly landed a job as a traveling Bible salesman. She turned out to be amazingly successful at this, and was sent west to Michigan, where she ended up in Flint, staying at a boarding house and continuing to sell Bibles.

"Thompson" was considered by the Flint locals to be intelligent and politically active. She was a strong believer in the Union. She wrote that she believed if the Confederacy was allowed to secede, it would be the eventual death of the United States. When the Civil War broke out and recruiting posters went up for the Union Army, "Franklin Thompson" decided to enlist.

"Franklin Thompson"

So in May 1861 joined up for a three-year stint with the 2nd Michigan Infantry. Luckily for her, extensive physical examinations were not required to enlist, so no one knew her secret. Her compassionate nature (and possibly a feminine nurturing instinct) ensured she was assigned as a male leader of a nursing unit assigned to the army of Union General George B. McClellan. She was at the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), and although she wasn't involved in the forward fighting, she stayed behind to help cover the retreat of wounded soldiers. In fact, she barely escaped a Confederate cavalry picket, hiding until they passed by. Eluding them, she made her way back to the Union forces, and was present at several other major battles, including the Second Battle of Bull Run, a few skirmishes in the so-called Peninsula Campaign, and the battles of Antietam and Vicksburg.

While she was normally in the rearguard of the army in some sort of field hospital during battles, Sarah saw actual combat more than once. At the Battle of Williamsburg the field hospital was overrun by Confederates, and she took up a musket and helped fight them back, even personally leading a bayonet charge, according to one eyewitness. Then, under withering cannon-fire and later pouring rain, she and another soldier carried stretcher after stretcher of wounded soldiers to safety miles away.

At the Second Battle of Bull Run, she was assigned to carry messages - more dangerous than it sounds. Carrying orders from one part of the battlefield to another, Sarah was thrown from her horse when it was shot out from under her. She landed in a ditch, broke her leg, and sustained several internal injuries. It's speculated she might not have sought out the level of medical treatment she really needed, because she didn't want to be discovered as a woman and sent home. She also acted as a courier in the Battle of Fredericksburg, serving as an orderly to Col. Orlando Poe. She avoided direct action but was in the saddle constantly throughout the battle, relaying orders.

During this time, Sarah was assigned to military mail delivery, which was incredibly dangerous. It often involved journeys of more than 100 miles, and when it wasn't directly through enemy territory, mail carriers were in constant danger from "bushwackers" and southern sympathizers behind Union lines. While she would often be assigned back to nursing duties, Sarah continued carrying mail - always as Franklin Thompson, of course - and it was sometime during this service that she began to act as a spy for the Union.

It turns out Sarah was aching for revenge - she had a close male friend in her unit, James Vesey, who may have known her secret. He was killed in a Confederate ambush and she was devastated. When she learned a Union spy had been captured and executed in Virginia, she applied for the job, and, as Franklin Thompson, got it. 

Used to riding long distances alone and handling herself without an escort, Sarah was sent behind enemy lines to gather information. Already a master of disguise, fooling her own fellow soldiers and commanders, she adopted new disguises to help in her espionage work. She even had an alternate identity in the south as a black man named Cuff, which she'd use to get close to Confederate troops to overhear plans and make notes of troop strength and locations. To do this, she used silver nitrate to dye her skin black, and wore a black wig. No one ever suspected Cuff. She also operated as a white woman under the name Bridget O'Shea. "Bridget" was an Irish immigrant, a peddler who sold soap, fruit and other luxuries to Confederate soldiers. Another time, she disguised herself as a black woman to get a job as a laundress for the Confederates. This paid off when she found a packet of official war papers an officer had left in his jacket when he sent it to be laundered. We don't know what was in those papers, but we know it was important enough that she immediately returned to Union territory and "delighted" the Union command with the contents of the papers. The commanders then sent her (still thinking she was Franklin Thompson, of course) into Maryland disguised as a detective named Charles Mayberry to track down a secret agent working for the Confederates. It's worth noting that no official proof of any of these spying activities has come down to us, other than stories Sarah herself shared. But formal records, then and now, of espionage activities were often not kept.

Although Sarah managed all of this without ever taking a bullet, without ever letting her real identity and gender be known, there was one enemy she couldn't fight - malaria. When she realized she'd come down with it, she was terrified that army doctors would discover her secret.

Sarah applied for a medical furlough, but it was denied. One evening in the spring of 1863, "Franklin Thompson" slipped away from camp, and Sarah Emma Edmonds entered a private hospital. By the time she'd healed, she was ready to resume her identity as Thompson and go back to war - but, to her horror, she saw posters saying Franklin Thompson was being hunted as a deserter.

Rather than risk execution as a deserter, Sarah decided to quit while she was ahead. She acquired feminine garb and started living again under her real identity, fears of her father's vengeance long gone. But Sarah was still called to serve. She quickly secured a position with the United States Christian Commission as a nurse - a female one - and went right back into the field hospitals to care for wounded soldiers.

As the war wound down, newspaper stories about other female soldiers who had dressed as men to serve the Union began to surface. Frances Clayton was one, and we'll visit her in a future article. Pauline Cushman was another. Sarah realized she had a story to tell, and she wasn't likely to be punished for her Franklin Thompson charade. She wrote a book called "Nurse and Spy in the Union Army." It was a best-seller, and, continuing her convictions, she donated almost all of the proceeds to help wounded soldiers in their recovery.

Things turned out well for Sarah. She met and married a mild-mannered Canadian mechanic named Linus Seelye three years after the war. They had three children together. In the late 1870s she attended a reunion of the 2nd Michigan Infantry and was "warmly received." Her fellow-soldiers remembered Franklin Thompson as "fearless and active." Despite the fact that women who'd done what she did were often considered "mentally ill" (that's 1860s code for "lesbian") or prostitutes, the men of the 2nd Michigan Infantry treated her like a hero.

In fact, her fellow soldiers thought so much of her they joined together to petition to have the charges of desertion against Franklin Thompson formally rescinded. They also fought to get her a military pension due to her injuries from the fall from her horse at the Second Battle of Manassas. Wouldn't you know it - one act of Congress later, they were successful. Sarah received a full military pension and Franklin Thompson was cleared as a deserter.

Sarah lived on and was active with veteran's organizations, including the Grand Army of the Republic, of which she is the only female member. She lived until the late 1800s, and was buried with full military honors in Houston in 1901.

So it seems Sarah was able to live out her dreams of dressing like a man and having adventures after all. And, like the storybook hero Fanny Campbell, Sarah got a happy ending.

Bona Lombardi

After spending some time in the 20th century in our last two posts, let's go back to Renaissance Europe, which has always been a historical arena for badassery. Lots of women from European history stand out, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine or Queen Elizabeth of England. But let's meet a woman who isn't as famous as either, and was more of a badass (physically speaking) than both.

Bona Lombardi was a popular, beautiful and intelligent peasant girl who became a mercenary warlord in war-torn Renaissance Italy. True love led her to fight for a living. It's also possible true love killed her - but a sword never did.

Few places and times in Europe were more horrific than Italy in the 1300s and 1400s. Italy was not politically united, with small principalities and city-states constantly at one another's throats. Worse still, paid bands of mercenary soldiers from all over Europe were strutting their stuff around Italy, in the pay of one local warlord or another. They'd often switch sides. When they weren't paid, the mercenaries tended to loot, pillage and rape whatever and whoever was nearby.

These warlords were known as Condottieri. Some were statesmen and talented generals. Most of them were overpaid thugs with a curse of ignorance and a penchant for needless brutality. As it happens, female Condottieri were not unheard of, and Bona Lombardi was one of them. But she didn't start off that way: she was, in the beginning, just a beautiful peasant girl.

Around 1430, a gentleman from Parma, one Captain Brunoro, was ordered by the ruler of Milan to set up a base in the middle of some recently conquered territory, the better to keep an eye on the restless province. Of course, that didn't keep him occupied 24/7. Even Captain Brunoro needed some time off. When he got it, he loved to go hunting. During one such trip, he stopped for a rest in a wooded grove where the local peasantry was putting on a spring festival. One of the girls there hit him "like the thunderbolt," as the Italians say. Not only was she the prettiest girl there, in Brunoro's opinion: she surprised him with her wit and charm and the sophistication of her answers to his questions.

Brunoro returned home, but he couldn't stop thinking about the girl. Using his power to ask around, he found out the girl was Bona Lombardi, and that he wasn't the only one who was smitten with her. Local lads from throughout the neighborhood of the town of Sacco had all sought her hand, with no success. Even the local girls admired her, and often made her the "Queen" in their nature festivals. Bona was an orphan, raised by her uncle, who was a priest, and his sister, the manager of a thriving country household.

Bona's father, Gabriel, was a warrior - another private mercenary in one of the ubiquitous Italian armies - and he was killed when she was just a child. Her mother, stricken with grief, died soon after. Perhaps some of Gabriel's martial spirit passed into his young daughter. Certainly there was some dark foreshadowing of her own fate in the fate of her parents.

Needless to say, Brunoro found plenty of opportunities to just happen to amble past Bona's household that summer. He visited with Bona often, and eventually, he asked her to marry him. She agreed, but was afraid her uncle and aunt would not approve, so they kept the marriage a secret.

It soon became apparent that Bona was just as smitten with Brunoro as he was with her. She couldn't stand to be away from him, even for a short separation when his military endeavors would take him away for a mission. Instead of waiting for him at home, Bona dressed herself up in Condottierre armor and followed her husband into all his battles.

Mercenaries work with a dynamic national soldiers don't: they're not fighting for a cause, but for pay. With the ever-shifting tapestry of battlefields and constant rise and fall of petty princes throughout Italy, Brunoro often found himself obliged to switch employers. Like a lot of Condottierri, he sometimes found himself going up in battle against respected former employers.

Because of these shifting loyalties, Brunoro managed to anger someone who would have been better left alone: King Alexander of Naples. For some reason - we're not sure exactly why, but it had to do with shifting political moves - Alexander developed a bitter hatred for Brunoro, and was determined to do him in. Alexander ordered his men to lay an ambush for Brunoro as he and a small band went on a fact-finding mission. For once, Bona wasn't with him. Brunoro fell for the ambush hook, line and sinker. He was captured and by the next day found himself languishing in the prisons of Naples.

He probably would have stayed there until he died, but for the courage and tenacity of his badass wife. Bona tried everything. First she offered Alexander bribes to let Brunoro go. Alexander refused. Then Bona begged him, trying to rouse pity in the king's heart. Despite her good looks and charm, this too failed. Finally, she flat-out threatened Alexander with military intervention if he didn't release Brunoro. Alexander laughed in her face. But when it became apparent that Bona's good name and her husband's reputation had earned her a host of local allies, Alexander relented. Rather than face a mercenary force led by a female Condottierri - and possibly face the ignominy of losing to her - he released Brunoro.

The two continued to fight together as husband and wife. Said one contemporary, "(Bona) learned the art of war to perfection." She was so admired by the people of Venice, for example, that she was offered command of the defense of the the town of Negropont on the Greek island of Euboea. The Turks were hell-bent on making headway into the Mediterranean world through the Black Sea and Greece. In the end, propriety reigned, and Bona and Brunoro were offered joint command together, rather than her alone, which showed she had respect for her husband's abilities (and, probably, pride).

As the constant wars stretched on, Brunoro managed to get himself captured again. During a war between Milan and Venice, Brunoro led an attack on a Provoze Castle in Brescia. Bona was traveling a few days behind her husband with a small relief force. When she arrived and learned he'd been captured, she went ballistic (to use a modern turn of phrase). She went among the disheartened Venetian soldiers and with a combination of shame and good coaching, roused them to a renewed sense of vigor. Bona personally led the charge in a second attack on Provoze Castle - and this time, with her at their head, the Venetians stormed the gates, scaled the walls, and took the castle in a matter of hours.

Brunoro, languishing away in chains, must have been very happy to see Bona, who personally released her husband and all the rest of the prisoners.

But Brunoro and Bona's story doesn't have a happy ending. He died in 1468 - whether from natural causes or as the result of a battlefield injury we don't know, although the latter seems likely. Bona descended into a terrible depression. She told everyone she couldn't - and more importantly, wouldn't - long survive her husband. She ordered the creation of a marble tomb to hold both of their remains. After interring Brunoro in it, she simply wasted away. She didn't commit suicide, but seems to have literally died of a broken heart. Said one contemporary, "she sank into a state of languor from which she never recovered." She died soon after her husband, and both were buried together.

So while it may not have turned out all right in the end, Bona and Brunoro had a good ride, and before it was over Bona Lombardi certainly proved that she was a Badass Chick of History.

Violette Szabo

This time let's flash-forward to World War II. Violette Szabo was a British spy who aided the French resistance against Nazi domination. She had courage, spirit, an infectious laugh, and a cute Cockney accent. She also spoke fluent French, was good-looking, and an expert marksman. Although her superiors thought she wasn't smart enough, and too driven by revenge to be an effective spy, she proved them wrong and received the George Cross after the war. Unfortunately, she was not alive to collect it personally. She paid the ultimate price to stop Nazi aggression.

She was born in Paris in 1921, but grew up mostly in London. She did return to France briefly to live with in-laws because her parents were having trouble making ends meet during the Great Depression. However, by the time she was 11 she was back in London. The only girl among four brothers and multiple male cousins, Violette was considered a "tomboy," and she excelled at sports--particularly biking, skating and gymnastics. Her father, although he was a strict disciplinarian, was devoted to her. He enjoyed sport-shooting, and taught Violette to be an excellent marksman. This would come in handy later. However, she was headstrong, and rebelled against her father's authority. She even ran away to France once when she was a teenager. By the time she was 14 she'd left school and was working at Woolworth's selling perfume.

When World War II began, she joined the Women's Land Army, which was a group that did agricultural work to replace men who had been called into military service. After spending some time picking fruit in the country, she was bored enough to return to London and get a job in an armaments factory.

France had fallen to the Nazis quickly, and many French refugees crowded London. The city fathers honored them with a Bastille Day celebration and parade. Violette's mother (who, along with Violette, spoke fluent French), sent her to the parade to find a homesick French soldier and invite him to dinner where he could speak in his native tongue. Violette took one look at the dashing French officer Etienne Szabo and decided it had to be him. She was 19 and he was over 30, but the two were married only 42 days later. Almost immediately, he left for Africa to fight with Free French units alongside the British.

Violette got a job as a telephone operator, and worked through the Blitz in London. But she wanted to do more. With her good looks and charm, she managed to talk her way into an anti-aircraft gun unit in a job called "director," which meant she used trigonometry to help gunners hit moving targets (specifically, German bombers). But almost as soon as she started, she found out she was pregnant, and returned to London to give birth to a daughter, Talia. When the baby was born, Violette sent her to the country, out of harm's way, and worked at an aircraft factory alongside her father.

Meanwhile, her husband was in North Africa, fighting with Free French and English troops against the feared Afrika Korps of Erwin Rommel. He barely escaped with his life after a battle with the 15th Panzer Division, and a few months later personally led an attack at the Second Battle of El Alamein. He was shot in the chest and killed in action.

When she heard this, Violette was filled with rage and vowed revenge. After a seemingly innocuous conversation with a recruiter who realized she spoke fluent French, she was invited to train as a secret agent with the Special Operations Executive (SOE), with an eye toward assigning her to the so-called "F Section" in France. She could speak French and was attractive. The SOE had learned that Nazi troops tended to give good-looking women more leniency than men, when it came to searches and curfews. F Section was in desperate need of female couriers and intelligence-gatherers. Violette was sent to Scotland to train in paramilitary and commando warfare. She was also trained in "silent killing," escape and evasion tactics, demolitions (for sabotage work) and cryptography.

But her superior officers were reluctant to use her in the field, primarily because of her "fatalistic" attitude. One wrote that she "seems perfectly willing to die" as long as she could get revenge for her husband's death. They also thought she was too impulsive. Furthermore, her training course grades were somewhat mediocre (she received the equivalent of a "D"), and it was determined that she had "only average intelligence." But the need outweighed the risks, and partially because she was the best female marksman they had, they decided to activate her. She was trained in parachuting, but on her first jump, she landed badly and wound up with a terribly sprained ankle. As it turned out, this injury would later have tragic consequences.

After healing, she passed the course and was sent to join a spy unit operating in France under the code name SALESMAN. She was popular among both the men and women she worked with. Her Cockney accent and infectious laughter endeared her to her cohorts. She had high spirits and enjoyed playing practical jokes. One contemporary called her "a dark-haired slip of mischief." When it came time for her to go on her first mission, her commanders gave her one last chance to refuse, saying she had only a 1 in 4 chance of survival. She went anyway.

In 1944, Violette and spy-organizer Phillippe Liewer parachuted out of a B-24 Liberator bomber into Nazi-occupied France. Her cover was that she was a secretary who was a resident of Le Havre - this ruse got around Nazi rules and allowed her to go to her "home" in the so-called "Restricted Zone" along the French coast. Her code name was Louise. She traveled the countryside and collected intelligence about arrested spies. This intelligence convinced Liewer that the SALESMAN unit was compromised beyond repair. In fact, she learned that the Nazis already knew Liewer's identity and code name. She also figured out which factories were making war material for the Nazis, which helped the Allies determine targets to bomb.

After this, it was deemed prudent for her to return to England, but on the way, the plane she was in was hit by anti-aircraft guns. She'd not yet gotten a look at her blonde-haired, blue-eyed pilot, so when he made an emergency landing and opened the door, she thought  he was a Nazi. Screaming curses at him, she tried to physically attack him, but soon realized her mistake. Instead of hitting the pilot, she kissed him.

Her service wasn't over, however. Just after D-Day (on June 8 1944) she parachuted into France again, this time near the village of Sussac. She was part of a four-person team of British and Americans. This time, her cover was that she was the widow of an antiques dealer. What she was really doing was sabotaging Nazi communication lines.

Then a new mission came: she and a French associate, Dufour, were to travel to organize resistance fighters in Correze and Dordogne. Violette was an avid cyclist and wanted to take a bike, especially because the Nazis had banned the French from driving cars. But partially because of the need for speed, and partially because of her bad ankle, Liewer insisted on her taking a small Citroen. Violette, at her own request, was armed with a submachine gun and eight clips of ammunition. On the way, they picked up another resistance fighter called Bariaud. He told them something they didn't know: that the 2nd SS Panzer Division was in the area, searching for a commander that had been captured. They soon came upon a roadblock, and Dufour, the commander of the mission, wasn't taking any chances. He slowed the car so that Bariaud could jump out and warn resistance fighters elsewhere of the Panzer division's presence.

Dufour stopped the car some way before the roadblock, but within sight of the Nazis. He and Violette ran from the car in opposite directions - he into a cornfield, she into a stand of trees. A gun battle ensued in which one innocent farmer's wife was killed. Szabo crossed the road under fire to join Dufour in the cornfield. Still under fire, they ran through the field, across a stream, and up a hill toward a large apple tree. But her old ankle injury came back to haunt her: she fell, badly twisting the ankle, and could barely walk, let alone run. Dufour chivalrously attempted to carry her, but she demanded that he save himself while she provided covering fire. She literally dragged herself to the apple tree, and started shooting at the Nazis while Dufour escaped to hide in the barn of a resistance-friendly fighter.

For a full half-hour, Violette single-handedly held off the Nazi pursuit. She killed at least one Nazi officer, and it's possible she killed a few more. She wounded nearly a dozen. But eventually, she ran out of ammunition. Two Nazis dragged her to an armored car, where she spit in the face of a Nazi officer. Defiantly, she demanded that they untie her so she could smoke a cigarette.

Violette was interrogated for four days at a local SS Security Service building, but they couldn't get anything out of her. Meanwhile, Dufour was desperately making plans to try to free her, and he may have succeeded, had she not been transferred first. The Gestapo stepped in, and informed the SS that since she was fighting behind enemy lines in civilian clothes, the Geneva Convention did not apply to her. She was transferred to the French Gestapo headquarters. There, she was interrogated under torture. She didn't give up anything, and gave them a false name, but German intelligence eventually deduced her identity as the agent code-named Louise.

She and other prisoners were transferred to Germany by train. On the way, an allied air strike caused the Nazis to abandon the train for a time; chained to another female prisoner, Violette brought water to the male prisoners, who were kept in cages, which encouraged them so much they sang patriotic songs once the train got going again, to the irritation of the Nazi officers, who issued a few beatings to shut them up.

Eventually, kept on starvation rations in squalid conditions, she was sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, a place specifically for women prisoners. It was notorious for the brutality of its guards. Violette and other women were place in a hard labor gang, forced to work outside cutting trees in the dead of winter - while obliged to wear only summer clothes. They were given barely-digestible bread crusts and forced to sleep in unheated huts with no blankets. Many froze or starved to death.

Not Violette. She kept making plans to escape. Survivors who knew her said she was upbeat and confident of either liberation by the Allies or that her escape plans would work out. She even managed to construct a makeshift transmitter on the sly and tried to send coded messages back to England, but it's unknown whether she succeeded. When this was discovered, the Nazi guards brutally beat her and sexually assaulted her, then threw her into solitary confinement. Weeks later, she and two other similarly treated female prisoners were led to the grounds of the crematorium. The other two were too badly beaten to walk, but Violette managed to hold her head high. Her morale had suffered, but she remained defiant, refusing a blindfold and demanding a cigarette, which the amused guards gave her. After that, they shot her in the head three times and cremated her body. Violette was only 23 years old.

No one knew what happened to her until 1946. She was posthumously awarded the George Cross, as well as numerous French medals. Her five-year old daughter Talia solemnly accepted the George Cross from King George IV personally. Today, there are no less than seven monuments to her in England and France. She was the subject of multiple books at one 1958 film starring Virginia McKenna.

And she wasn't the only one. Women played a huge part in SOE operations during World War II, and very few of them survived to tell the tale. Said one, Odette Hallowes, of Violette: "She was the bravest of us all."

I think it's time for another movie, personally, to introduce this hero to a new generation - because without a doubt, Violette Szabo was truly a Badass Chick of History. 

"Black Agnes," Countess of Dunbar

Let's travel to Scotland in the early 1300s. A nobleman called Patrick, the Earl of Dunbar and March, married well. His lovely bride had pale skin, flashing black eyes and blue-black raven hair. She was the daughter of the fierce fighter Randolph, Duke of Moray - a powerful crony of William Wallace and later Robert the Bruce - and as it turned out, she inherited his belligerent nature and sarcastic attitude. It would serve her husband and her people well.

After the wars of Scottish independence, Robert the Bruce's son, David II, ended up King of Scotland. But David was just a child, and the English weren't at all happy with an impudent and free Scotland just north of the border. The English King Edward III, who was in the midst of fixing the problems he inherited from his incompetent father, backed an upstart called Edward Balliol, who had a decent claim to the Scottish throne. Edward III stormed into Scotland and installed Balliol on the throne.

Meanwhile, Edward III had more important things on his mind than Scotland - mainly that he believed he should be the King of France as well as England. Devoting himself to that, he left the continued pacification of Scotland in the hands of his lieutenants. One of those was Montague, the Earl of Salisbury. There was one castle Montague had to take before Scotland could be tamed - the Castle Dunbar, which lie at a vital strategic point. It had been recently fortified by Patrick, Earl of Dunbar and March. But Patrick was away, fighting elsewhere. He left his beautiful wife Agnes in charge.

She had earned the nickname "Black Agnes" because of the great contrast of her dark eyes and hair with her pale complexion. Turns out, the name was also a fit moniker for her warlike spirit. She was determined that Montague wasn't going to take Castle Dunbar on her watch.

Montague rolled up his troops before the castle, believing it wouldn't take much more than intimidation to settle things. He was wrong. It soon became apparent that Black Agnes was a skillful commander. All in all, Montague was obliged to spend almost half a year trying to take the castle. Worse, Agnes appeared on the walls daily to taunt her opponents with what one historian has called "biting sarcasms."

In a famous scene of history, the English rolled up catapults, battering rams and other siege engines. Hurling boulders at the walls, they called for Agnes to surrender. Instead, she and her chief ladies marched out onto the ramparts, wielding not swords, but hankies. They sarcastically proceeded to wipe down the battlements, insinuating that Montague had accomplished nothing but to kick up some dust.

By this time, Montague had figured out that Agnes was no ordinary woman. He'd come to respect her, and maybe he even had a little crush on her. When he was personally overseeing the installation of some siege engines, an arrow whizzed out from the castle and thunk! It pierced the chain mail armor of a knight who stood next to Montague. The knight fell and died right at Montague's feet. Montague sighed and said, "Agnes's love-arrows shoot straight for the heart!"

His next strategy was something called "the sow." It was essentially a massive battering-ram covered with boiled and hardened leather to protect the men operating it. With great trouble, the English rolled it up to the walls. Seeing it, Agnes couldn't keep her sarcasm at bay. She hollered, "Montague, be careful! Soon that sow will give birth to pigs!" At that, she directed a dozen men to hurl a massive chunk of masonry onto the sow, crushing both it and its occupants.

Montague tried bribery next, convincing a gatekeeper to open it for him in the dead of night. But the gatekeeper informed Agnes. She told him to go ahead and open the gate. Montague led his raiding party through the darkness. One of his soldiers, John Copeland, passed in front of Montague to enter the gate, and at that moment, Agnes dropped the portcullis. She meant to snag Montague himself, but made the best of the situation. As he was dragged away from the walls by his men, Agnes called to him, "Farewell! I'd hoped you would dine with me tonight and help me defend my castle from the English!"

Montague thought he'd scored an ace in the hole when the English captured Agnes's brother, John, the Earl of Moray. The prisoner was paraded out before the castle, in chains and wearing a noose around his neck. Montague threatened to execute John if Anges didn't surrender. She called, "Then execute him, and I shall inherit the Earldom of Moray." To Montague's credit, he didn't kill the hapless fellow, who survived the war and lived on. 

Frustrated, Montague couldn't think of anything else to do but blockade the castle and starve them out (one wonders why he didn't try that in the first place). He lined up ships on the sea-side and troops on the landward side. But the fierce Scottish patriot Sir Alexander Ramsay had heard of Agnes's bravery. With only 40 hand-picked men, he eluded the English patrols and snuck into the castle through a postern gate by the sea-side. The next morning, Agnes, Ramsay, and the able-bodied men of the castle stormed out of the gates and utterly routed the advance guard of the besieging English.

At that point, Montague decided he'd had enough. Saluting Agnes, who stood proudly on the battlements, he withdrew his army and went away. Agnes was reunited with Patrick and she lived another 30 years, dying peacefully of natural causes. So with a combination of martial prowess, an acid tongue, and the help of a few friends, Black Agnes proved she was a Badass Chick of History.

Semiramis, Queen of Assyria

Let's go way back to the Assyrian Empire for our next Badass Chick of History: Semiramis, Queen of Assyria. While she was certainly a historic figure, our information comes from men who wrote about her hundreds of years later. Much of her story is wrapped up in myth and legend. But it's unlikely that such tales would have sprung up about a woman who wasn't out-of-the-ordinary, and we can assume from the stories that survive, whatever their truth, that her contemporaries thought of her as a badass.

Tales about her childhood are obviously mythical. She was the natural daughter of a goddess of the Philistines. But her mother, behaving oddly as most ancient deities did, abandoned the baby girl in the woods in Syria. Luckily, a flock of doves came and fed little Semiramis. She was discovered by a shepherd who raised her as his own. This sounds like about a dozen other ancient myths.

When she was about 14, Semiramis met the warlord Menon, who was one of the chief lieutenants of Ninus, lord of the Assyrian Empire. Menon was inspecting the king's flocks when he noticed the shepherd girl. He was charmed by her beauty and intelligence, captivated by the fact that he could actually hold a conversation with her. He essentially kidnapped her by tricking her into coming back to the palace with him. He kept her prisoner until she married him. When she did, she turned the tables on him, charming everyone at court and amassing huge influence, much greater than her husband's. She had two boys with Menon. But traditional family life wasn't for her - she ached to distinguish herself. All she needed was an opportunity. Her charm and popularity gave her the freedom to create one.

Soon, King Ninas invaded the land of Media. Semiramis insisted on going to war alongside her husband. The campaign was a blitzkrieg, as city after city fell to the conquering Assyrians. However, when the army reached Bactria, they found the walls nigh-impregnable. A bitter siege followed, but the Bactrian defense was so effective that Ninas decided to retreat. Semiramis would have none of it. She showed up to a council of war and offered to personally lead an assault on the walls. For whatever reason, the warlords let her. She rose to the occasion, storming the fortifications amidst showers of arrows and stones. The soldiers, shamed by her example, were spurred to greater efforts, but Semiramis was the first to climb atop the battlements. After a brief but vicious struggle on the city walls, Semiramis raised the standard of Assyria, winning the battle the king wanted to avoid.

King Ninas hadn't taken much notice of Semiramis before. He did now! He was smitten. He asked Menon to divorce her. Menon refused. Ninas offered his own royal sister in trade, but Menon still refused. Legend has it he even went a little bit crazy. Irritated, the king had Menon's eyes gouged out and threw him into prison, where he committed suicide. Ninas then married Semiramis, who bore him a son, Ninyas.

Ninas knew Semiramis had charisma, but he didn't count on her popularity with the court. She gave generous gifts and made sure to be friendly with the king's most powerful advisers and lieutenants. Eventually, she begged the king to let her show her stuff by putting the empire under her absolute rule for five days. Finally, Ninas relented and let her take control. Big mistake. Avenging poor Menon, she used her power to throw Ninas into prison and had him executed. She beautified the city of Babylon, and, legend has it, surrounded it with its famous wall. She is also credited with quite a few civic monuments and inscriptions that are almost certainly not her work, but again, this is more proof of how large her legend loomed.

This wasn't enough for her adventurous spirit, however. She had dreams of conquest, and unlike most women of the time, she had the power to make them come true. Under her leadership, the Assyrians stormed into Ethiopia and took most of it, making the Assyrian Empire even larger. While she was in Ethiopia she consulted a popular oracle there. She asked the prophet how long she had to live. The oracle told her she would not die until her son conspired against her. Following her conquest of Ethiopia she turned her army west toward Lybia and conquered it, too.

Like Alexander the Great after her, Semiramis could not rest until she'd conquered exotic India. She raised an army of more than three million, says one ancient historian. This is surely an exaggeration, but we can assume it was a huge force. Semiramis knew the power of the Indian army was its war elephants. Lacking any of her own, she ordered her artisans to create huge wicker-and-skin coverings for the biggest camels she could find. From a distance, it appeared to the Indians that she, too, had acquired war elephants. Stabrobates, the Indian king, sent envoys to ask Semiramis exactly what she was up to. She replied that her business was none of his, but that he'd learn her intentions in good time. She quickly marched to the Indus river and made a bridge of boats in an attempt to cross. The Indians fought hard, however, and even though they eventually retreated, a great many Assyrians lost their lives in the battle.

Undaunted, and against the advice of her military advisers, Semiramis pushed across the river and into the heart of India. But it turns out Stabrobates had only ordered a strategic retreat earlier. He'd had time to turn and face the Assyrians once again. This time, the real elephants charged into the fake ones and went hog wild, stomping and crushing everything in their path. The Assyrian army was scattered. But Semiramis, utterly unfazed by this, rallied her men. Mounting her warhorse, she stormed the Assyrian ranks with, as the ancient historian Diodorus tells us, "as little regard for her own safety as though she had been the meanest soldier in the army." Stabrobates, seeing her in the midst of the fiercest part of the battle, rode forward to take her on himself, and even though he wounded her twice, she fought him off. But by that time, the Assyrians were completely routed. Semiramis was pragmatic enough to realize there wasn't much more she could do. Spurring her horse, she fled Stabrobates, and, perhaps because she weighed much less, easily outdistanced him.

The Assyrian army made it back to the Indus, but the soldiers were panicked, and without martial discipline, crowded onto the makeshift boat-bridge. Thousands of Assyrians were trampled to death in the confusion. When Semiramis made it across, she ordered the bridge destroyed. The Indian king had the good sense to let it go at that - as long as she wouldn't cross the Indus, he had no desire to pursue her.

By the time Semiramis returned to Babylon, she learned that her son had been conspiring to take her place. This fit perfectly with the oracle she'd heard in Ethiopia. She loved her son. To avoid conflict with him, she voluntarily abdicated the throne in his favor. He became king and she retired with honor, living to be 62 years old.

In all of ancient history, only two rulers had the wherewithal, courage, and skill to carry a battle eastward past the Indus river: Alexander the Great and Semiramis. I think that's enough to make her a Badass Chick of History.

Marie-Christine de Lelaing, Princess d'Espinoy

Marie-Christine de Lelaing was descended from badasses on both sides of her family, and was married to one, too. When her town came under attack in 1581, she personally led the defense and stood up to the infamous Duke of Parma. Wounded in battle, she lived to tell the tale...for a little while.

We all know the date July 4, 1776, when the United States declared independence from Great Britain. Lesser known is the date July 26, 1581, when the United Netherlands declared independence from Spain. The Spanish Empire had taken vast swaths of the Netherlands as part of the devastating wars that followed the Protestant Reformation. The Netherlands, spitting in the eye of Spain, invited the French Duke of Anjou to rule over them as an independent constitutional monarchy.

Of course, Spain would have none of this. The Duke of Anjou boldly entered the Netherlands at the head of a massive army - some 12,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry troopers. But the Spanish governor of the Netherlands, Alexander Farnese, the Duke of Parma, was a military genius. Even worse, the Dutch themselves were not unilaterally Protestant, and many welcomed the Spanish rulers. With the Dutch people divided, and Farnese's skill as a soldier and administrator, the Duke of Anjou's army was frustrated at every turn. Eventually, decided maybe ruling the Netherlands wasn't such a hot idea after all and went home.

That left a lot of locally recruited Protestant-friendly soldiers out of work. Most of them flocked to the nearest friendly city, Tournai, in modern Belgium. Its French-elected governor, Pierre de Melun, the Prince d'Espinoy, had created there a haven for a strong Protestant community. He was away, however, serving in the Prince of Orange's army. Farnese saw the leaderless town as easy prey, perhaps, and marched against it.

Governor Pierre's wife, known to the people as Princess Christine, surprised everyone by immediately taking command of the town and preparing to resist the Spanish. It should have been no surprise. Her father was Count Charles II, a Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece and seasoned military veteran. Her mother was related to the French admiral Duke Montmorency, a war hero who opposed the sinister Cardinal Richelieu and came to a glorious end in battle. Defiance in the face of danger was in Christine's blood.

Donning armor, she appeared on the city walls and bolstered the courage of the citizens. Her words, as history has transmitted them: "It's me, the wife of your governor who is marching into war, risking his life for you and his country. Follow my lead! I would rather die than abandon my nation!" Or something like that.

According to some accounts, the soldiers wept with joy to see her. When Farnese maneuvered his troops into place against Tournai, he called upon the lieutenant of the garrison to surrender. But Christine herself appeared on the walls to answer him with what one witness called "a defiant refusal." The odds were against the town, but Christine's bravery inspired the soldiers to put up a valiant defense in the first assault, pushing the Spanish back from the town walls. Farnese, seething, settled in for a siege, writing that he would reduce the place in two weeks.

Two months and several major assaults later, the Spanish had not yet taken Tournai. Every day, the Princess Christine donned her armor and appeared on the town walls in sight of both the Dutch and Spanish. She was more than an inspiring figurehead - she issued orders to her husband's lieutenants and supervised all the defenses in person. When the Spanish attacked, she fought alongside the defenders. In a particularly hard-fought battle she took a terrible wound in the arm. Hearing this, Farnese again called for Tournai's surrender. Again, the Princess was defiant.

But this state of affairs couldn't last. Spanish sappers had been busy undermining the walls from outside the town. Meanwhile, inside the city, a Dominican friar called Father Gery - part of an order that essentially amounted to a black ops organization for the Vatican - was undermining the morale and spiritual confidence of the soldiers from within. There were also many Catholics in the town, and Father Gery had taken advantage of the turmoil to unite them.

With crumbling walls and hostile neighbors, the Protestants of Tournai begged the Princess to surrender the town. They told her they were afraid an insurrection would break out among the Catholic inhabitants any moment. Christine was hesitant. If the Spanish were true to their reputation, Farnese's men would brutally and thoroughly sack the town.

Like a good ruler, however, she was pragmatic enough to know when to quit. Had she not been, in her reported words, "abandoned by Protestants and Catholics alike," she would have fought on. Instead, she turned a strategic defeat into a victory of propaganda. Negotiating herself with Farnese under a flag of truce, she obtained surprisingly honorable terms of surrender. In lieu of storming through the town with fire and sword for rape, murder and looting, Farnese accepted a payment of 100,000 crowns from the city treasury. Princess Christine, with her cavalry escort and entourage, were allowed to pass through the gates of the town "with all the honors of war," carrying every last bit of her and her husband's personal property with her.

As the Princess passed through the ranks of her Spanish enemies, they spontaneously erupted in applause. Brutal and oppressive on the whole, there was a spirit of gallantry and daring among the Spanish commanders. Throughout the siege, Christine had acquired their respect. She marched to join her husband in Oudenaarde, and enjoyed a high reputation in Europe as the story spread. The couple retired to Antwerp where she died soon afterward (the manner of her death is not recorded).

In 1863, the city of Tournai erected a statue to honor her. It still stands today in the heart of Grand-Place in Tournai as a testament to the courage of a woman brave enough to thumb her nose at the Spanish Empire and live - at least a little while - to tell the tale.