One of the hussars, who could do carpenter's work, made a cross of two young, white maple trees, which was placed over the heroine's grave.
The Garde Mobile (which, as an extra battalion to the National Guard, did good service to the people in '48,) when it was disbanded, proved to be half composed of Parisian women and girls.
Louisa Battistati, a heroine of the Lombardian Revolution, was a native of Stradella, in Sardinia, and a mantua-maker by trade. She was dwelling in Milan, following this business, when the five days' Revolution broke out. On Sunday, the 10th March, 1848, Louisa attacked and disarmed an Austrian cavalry soldier, although he carried a carbine. At the head of a valiant band of young women, she now took up her station at the Poppietti bridge, and defended it all through the 20th, the 21st and the 22nd. At every shot from her musket a Croat fell dead.
In June, 1853, the war between Russia and Turkey broke out. The Turkish government, to swell the ranks of the army, were obliged to beat up for recruits among the semi-barbarous tribes of Asia Minor. The chief of one of the wild tribes in the Cilician mountains having been imprisoned by order of the Sultan, his wife, Fatima, a little old woman, about sixty years of age, with a dark complexion, who governed during his absence, exercising the double duty of Queen and Prophetess, raised three hundred of her best horsemen and led them to the Allied Camp at Scutari, in the summer of 1854. Her appearance created no little sensation amongst English and French. There was very little of the Amazon in her personal appearance, though she bestrode her steed like a trooper, and wore a costume intended to represent the military dress of a chieftain. She was attended by two handmaids, also in male attire.
Fatima, apprehensive that her entreaties for the release of her husband would prove insufficient to move the Sultan, thought the best means of propitiating the Turkish Government was to lead a few hundreds of her bravest warriors to fight the frozen Russ. The pay for her troops was to be eighty piastres a month, besides tooth and stirrup money in every village through which they should pass.
When the Allies were storming the Mamelon in June, 1855, Lady Paget (wife of Lord George, and daughter of General Sir Arthur Paget, brother of the famous Marquis of Anglesey) was present on the field, at a short distance from the scene of action. General Pennefather went up to the dead body of a Russian officer, and cut a medal off his coat. He then pinned the medal on Lady Paget's shawl, paying her a handsome compliment to the effect that she deserved a medal as much as any one present.