Born: Unknown, Italy
Died: 1237
Country most active: Italy
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from “Female Warriors: Memorials of Female Valour and Heroism, from the Mythological Ages to the Present Era,” by Ellen C. Clayton (Mrs. Needham), published in 1879 and shared online by Project Gutenberg.
The contests between the Guelfs and Ghibelines proved fatal to Italian liberty. Might became right, tyrants arose on every side, and either by open force or by fraud, possessed themselves of the sovereign power in some one of the Lombardian cities and the adjacent territories. The various military leaders, whether Italians or Germans, were mere freebooters, accountable to no one for their acts, permitting the utmost license to themselves and their followers. One of the most infamous of these mercenaries was Acciolin, who was not a brutal and rapacious robber, but a man of refined cruelty. His favourite mode of torture was to fasten his prisoners to half-putrified corpses, and leave the living and the dead to rot away together.
In 1253, this fiend in human shape captured Bassano by storm, after a tiresome siege. The garrison was commanded by John Baptista de Porta, who was either governor or lord of the place. Blanche de Rossi, his wife, a native of Padua, put on armour, mounted the ramparts, and fought by the side of her husband. When the town fell the governor was slain, and Blanche, after making a desperate resistance, was made prisoner and led in triumph before Acciolin. Directly the villain set eyes upon his beautiful captive, he was seized with a violent passion for her; and to escape him, she sprang, clad as she was in armour, through a window. But in place of death, she only met with a sprained shoulder. Directly she recovered from her swoon the tyrant sent for her again, and finding his renewed protestations were repulsed with loathing, he obtained by force what was denied to his prayers. Blanche then withdrew to the place where her husband’s body had been thrown, and flinging herself into the open grave, was crushed to death by the falling earth and stones.
The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.
The wife of Battista de la Porta, of Padua, was a noble, brave, and faithful woman. In 1237, during the war between the Guelfs and Ghibellines, she went with her husband, who was sent as commander of the forces to Bassano, to defend the city against the tyrant Ezzelino.
Blanche fought by the side of her husband in various skirmishes, and upon the walls of the city, and often took the place of his aid-de-camp, when the man was exhausted by his duty. When the city fell into the hands of the enemy by treachery, Battista was killed at the head of his soldiers, fighting to the last. Blanche, tied with cords, was dragged before the conqueror. The tyrant, inflamed by her beauty, offered her liberty and wealth if she would consent to make his house her home. She refused indignantly, and threw, herself out of the window, but, contrary to her expectation, she escaped unharmed, and was again brought before her enemy. She pretended to accept the tyrant’s proposals, and made only one condition, that of seeing once more the body of her husband. The tyrant consented, and ordered his guards to accompany her to the grave. When they had arrived at it, and after the heavy stone had been removed, she jumped into the grave and caused the stone to fall upon and crush her. Thus died the noble wife of Battista.