Born: 1496 (circa), Spain
Died: 1531
Country most active: Spain
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.
During the early years of the Emperor Charles V.’s reign, the nobles of Castile formed a confederacy called the Holy Junta, and took up arms to recover their traditional rights and privileges. John de Padilla, a young noble, was at the head of this insurrection; but it was his wife, Doña Maria Pacheco, who really conducted the confederacy. She was highly gifted and extremely ambitious, though, like most ambitious people, not at all scrupulous as to the means employed, so long as the event turned out according to her wishes.
The Junta soon began to languish for want of money, so Doña Maria persuaded the people to strip the cathedral at Toledo of its plate and jewellery. In 1521 Padilla was captured, and sentenced to death. He wrote to his wife, telling her not to grieve, but rather to consider his death as his deliverance from a weary life. But his capture proved fatal to the confederacy. Toledo, the head-quarters of the rebels, was soon invested by the king’s troops. Doña Maria used every means to secure her position. She even wrote to the French general on the Spanish frontier, inviting him to invade Navarre. By keeping the death of Padilla fresh in the minds of the citizens, she incited them to make a resolute defence. Sorties attended with varied success were made, sometimes daily, from the garrison.
At last the canons of the cathedral, whom she had offended, worked on the minds of the ignorant, credulous multitude, telling them that Maria’s influence over them was due entirely to witchcraft. The loss of three hundred men in a desperate sortie so humbled the citizens that they drove Maria into the Alcazar, and opened the gates to Charles’s troops.
Maria defended herself four months longer in the citadel. But at last, reduced to the utmost extremities, she fled into Portugal, where many of her relatives and friends resided, and there passed the remainder of her days in great poverty.