Hell Hath No Fury (7 page)

The 1971 war was unique in that the Indian political leadership exhibited a proper understanding of the use of military power to achieve a clear national aim. Vital to this success, and a tribute to Indira Gandhi's accomplished handling of the crisis, was the use of the Indian Navy. As East and West Pakistan were two separate geographical entities separated by over more than sixteen hundred miles, the only way Pakistani forces in East Pakistan could be sustained was by sea. Indira Gandhi decided that the Indian Navy was to be given the strategic task of denying East and West Pakistan access to war supplies by mounting a comprehensive naval blockade, a mission that it carried out with complete success. Not for nothing was Gandhi sometimes compared to the Indian goddess Durga, who rode on a tiger.

In 1971 India had carried the day, but victory was followed by a period of acute economic instability. In 1975, after a series of massive demonstrations, Gandhi declared a state of emergency, imprisoned thousands of political opponents, and imposed harsh censorship of the Indian press. Her growing unpopularity was exacerbated by the ambitious commercial plans of her younger son, Sanjay, and his project to control the spiraling Indian population by the enforced sterilization of men, for which each was to be compensated by a free transistor radio. She was defeated in the general election of 1977, and a coalition of parties, the Bharatiya Janata (BJP), came to power.

In 1980 factional fighting among her political opponents enabled Indira Gandhi to regain power. But it could never be glad, confident morning again. That same year Sanjay died in a plane crash. His mother was now preoccupied with mounting political problems in the Punjab. In June 1984, seeking to crush the secessionist Sikh movement led by the militant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, she ordered the storming of the holiest Sikh shrine in Amritsar, the Golden Temple (Operation Blue Star), in which Bhindranwale died and the temple was badly damaged. In October 1984, Gandhi was assassinated at her home by two of her Sikh bodyguards. Her elder son, Rajiv, became prime minister in December 1984, and in 1991 he was assassinated by a
Tamil Tiger
suicide bomber (see Chapter 4).

Reference: Katherine Frank,
Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi,
1998.

ISABELLA OF FRANCE

“The She-Wolf of France,” Queen of England, b. 1292, d. 1358

Isabella, a French princess given in marriage to King Edward II of England, earned her wolfish nickname for raising the war that cost her husband his throne and his life. Her military prowess owed much to her lover, Roger de Mortimer, Earl of March, but her skill in winning the propaganda war against the king was all her own.

The marriage in 1308 had been ill-starred from the first. Although a beauty, the fifteen-year-old Isabella held no charms for the openly homosexual Edward, who treated her with neglect, if not contempt. Although he performed his dynastic duty and fathered a son on her, the king centered his life on his male lovers, which provided Isabella with an opportunity she was not slow to take.

In the religious Roman Catholic temper of the time, homosexuality was regarded as a mortal sin, and it was also a capital offense under the law of the land. Not for a king, however, who was above the law. Edward's behavior thus alienated many of his subjects, who could not have said which they hated most, Edward's gay lifestyle or his blunders in running the country, squandering money on his favorites while England's overseas territories were being reannexed by the French. Playing upon this, Isabella secretly won to her side most of the powerful men of England, including the dashing Mortimer, later Earl of March, who became her lover.

Isabella then traveled to France to raise an army, trading her teenage son in marriage in return for an army of mercenaries, and returned in 1326 to invade England, with Mortimer at the head of her troops. Drawing near London, she bombarded the city with slogans claiming she had come to end the tyranny of her husband the king, and, although a Frenchwoman born and bred, to champion the good old English freedoms of ancient days.

Isabella played the battered-woman card to great effect in her campaign, declaring Edward had sworn “that if he had no other weapon, he would crush her to death with his teeth.” But, she loudly complained, “the King carried a knife in his hose to kill the Queen.” Reference to what Edward carried in his hose (i.e., in his pants) was a crude attempt to stir up hatred for him on the grounds of his homosexuality, and it helped to turn public opinion against the king, who fled for his life. Edward was captured and forced to abdicate in favor of his young son, Edward III, and Isabella declared herself and Mortimer regents for the boy.

The next year, 1327, she saw to it that the king was killed in captivity. Conscious as ever of public opinion, she ordered the king's body to be displayed to show that there was no mark of violence upon it, claiming that he died from natural causes. This did nothing to allay the widespread belief that he had been murdered, since Edward was a man of famously good health, with a strong constitution and a lineage of outstanding longevity. The display of the unblemished body merely gave rise to the rumor sniggered over by every English schoolboy from then on, that Edward had met his end through a red-hot poker inserted up his anus, which, in the temper of the time, would have been considered poetic justice for his sins.

Edward's death secured Isabella and Mortimer from further plots on his behalf, but the stench of adultery and murder created a strong backlash against them. Isabella made a final attempt to deflect criticism by planning a war against the Scots, but her power was ebbing. And the “She-wolf” was not the only plotter in the family. In 1330, her eighteen-year-old son, Edward, copied her tactic of using the nobility to turn the tables on a hated ruler and had Mortimer arrested. Mortimer was hauled out to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, while Isabella was imprisoned in Castle Riding in Norfolk. But Edward bore no long-term grudge against his mother, restoring her to court and giving her an honored place before she died—unlike her enemies, her husband, or her lover—in her old age, at peace, and in her own bed.

Reference: Michael Prestwich,
Plantagenet England,
2005.

ISABELLA I OF SPAIN

Queen of Spain, b. 1451, d. 1504

Isabella was a warrior monarch who, during the reconquest of Spain, often appeared on the battlefield “superbly mounted and dressed in complete armour.” This tactic to inspire the soldiers with both loyalty and chivalry was employed by a number of queens in time of war (see
Elizabeth I,
Chapter 2).

The daughter of Juan II of Castile and Isabella of Portugal, she was three years old when her father died. She was brought up by her mother until the age of thirteen, when she was taken to the court of her ineffectual half-brother, Henry IV, king of Castile. Although Isabella became the focus of opposition in the corrupt and febrile court, she avoided entanglement in conspiracy and in September 1468 was eventually recognized as the heir to the throne of Castile.

She married Ferdinand of Aragon, her own choice, in 1469. In 1474, on the death of Henry IV, Isabella swiftly arranged to be crowned “Queen Proprietress” of Castile instead of Juana, Henry's illegitimate daughter and his final choice as heir. The king of Portugal invaded Spain in support of Juana but was defeated in 1479. Juana retired to a convent, and in the same year Ferdinand succeeded to the throne of Aragon as Ferdinand II.

In 1480 the intensely austere and pious Isabella allowed the establishment of the Inquisition in Andalusia, principally as a measure to deal with Jews and Muslims who had been forcibly converted to Christianity but whose loyalties she did not trust. Both Ferdinand and Isabella were later given the title “the Catholic” by the Pope in recognition of their “purification” of the Catholic faith.

Although Isabella and Ferdinand governed independently, they came together in the wars to expel the Moors (Muslims) from the territories in Spain that they had occupied for centuries. The
Reconquista
lasted ten years and was completed in 1492 with the conquest of the kingdom of Granada. Isabella played a prominent part in the campaign, traveling with her five children and involving herself in every detail of the military establishment. She founded the Queen's Hospitals, consisting of six large hospital tents staffed with physicians and surgeons, which trundled across the landscape from siege to siege.

The
Reconquista
was primarily a war of sieges, during which the arrival of Isabella in her chain mail was counted on to stimulate such enthusiasm in her troops that the beleaguered citadels quickly fell. Her qualities as a quartermaster-general were invaluable. She oversaw the recruitment of thousands of pioneers to build roads that eased the passage of the cannon in her siege train and also engaged Don Francisco Ramirez, dubbed “El Artillero,” to deploy them at their destination under the direction of her husband.

With her final victory over the Moors, 1492 was a busy year for Isabella, which also saw the expulsion from Spain of all Jews who refused to convert to Christianity and the voyage of discovery undertaken by Christopher Columbus, a venture she supported after much procrastination. In addition to sponsoring exploration, Isabella supported many scholars and artists, founded educational establishments, and amassed a huge art collection. She left the throne of Castile to her daughter Joan, as she had been predeceased by her eldest son, Juan, and daughter Isabella. Another daughter, Catherine of Aragon, became the first wife of Henry VIII of England.

A portrait of Isabella shows her with a long nose and a glum expression. The surviving armor of the husband-and-wife architects of the
Reconquista
indicates that Isabella was taller than Ferdinand by as much as an inch.

Reference: William Thomas Walsh,
Isabella of Spain: The Last Crusader (1451–1504),
1987.

MATILDA

Countess of Tuscany, b. 1046, d. 1115

Matilda was the right-hand woman of Pope Gregory VII in the struggle between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. Her spiritual adviser, Anselm of Lucca, later Pope Alexander II, observed that she combined the will and energy of a soldier with the mystic and solitary spirit of a hermit. Fighting for the Supreme Head of the Church of Rome provided Matilda with the opportunity to fulfill both the spiritual and martial sides of her indomitable nature.

She was born in northern Italy, the daughter of the Margrave Boniface, whose citadel was the impregnable Apennine fortress of Canossa, and Beatrice, the daughter of the duke of Upper Lorraine. Her father was assassinated in 1052, and the death of her siblings left her to inherit some of the richest lands in Italy.

As a child, Matilda was taught to ride like a lancer, spear in hand, and to wield a battle-axe and sword. She was strong and tall and was said to be accustomed to the weight of armor. She also liked needlework, and sent an embroidered war pennant to William the Conqueror. Her mother supervised her education, and she was unusually well schooled for the time, fluent in German, French, Italian, and Latin.

Matilda's introduction to the turbulent power politics of the eleventh century came in 1059, when she accompanied Beatrice and her stepfather, Godfrey of Lorraine, to the Council of Sutri, at which noble families maneuvered and bickered over the papal succession following the death of Pope Stephen IX.

It is likely that Matilda's first appearance on the battlefield came two years later, at her mother's side, as Alexander II battled against the schismatics who challenged his succession to the papacy. A contemporary account describes the young Matilda, “armed like a warrior” and carrying herself with “such bravery that she made known to the world that courage and valor in mankind is not indeed a matter of sex but of heart and spirit.” It is also possible that she was present at the Battle of Aquino (1066) in which Godfrey of Lorraine defeated the Roman and Norman supporters of a rival pope.

The death of Godfrey in 1069 marked a turning point in Matilda's life. Aided at first by her mother, who died in 1076, she began to exercise her own authority in Italy in the absence of her husband, her stepbrother Godfrey the Hunchback, whom she had married in 1069. Matilda controlled Tuscany, parts of Umbria, and Emilia-Romagna and encouraged the economic power of the Florentine guilds.

In February 1076, Godfrey the Hunchback was killed campaigning in the Low Countries, and Matilda's mother died the following April. Marriage to Godfrey had left her with no heir—their children had died at birth—and she was free to take up arms for the papacy of Gregory VII in his struggle with the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. In 1077 Henry was received by Gregory as a penitent at Matilda's stronghold at Canossa. The emperor was obliged to stand for three days in the bitter winter cold outside the castle, barefoot and clad only in a woolen penitential robe, before he was allowed in to beg forgiveness from the Pope.

This spectacular triumph was short-lived. Gregory was driven from Rome into exile, dying in 1085. The emperor's allies preyed upon Matilda's possessions, and their efforts, although grievously undermining her strength, provoked the occasional stinging riposte. Her castle at Sorbara, near Modena and a softer target than Canossa, was besieged in 1084, only for the attackers to be driven off by an audacious sortie launched under the cover of darkness, and personally led by Matilda wielding her father's sword.

The election of Pope Urban II in 1088 saw an improvement in Matilda's fortunes. However, papal politics required her, at forty-three, to marry the seventeen-year-old Welf V of Bavaria and thus bring the callow teenager into an alliance with the See of Rome. It was a marriage of convenience that lasted six years and gave no pleasure to either partner, but it enraged Matilda's old enemy Henry IV.

At the end of her life she made peace of a kind with Henry's successor, his son Henry V, who came to visit her at Canossa on happier terms than his father and swore that “in the whole earth there could not be found a Princess her equal.” She died in her seventieth year, having willed her lands to Henry V, a generous gesture that conveniently ignored the fact that in 1102 she had made them over to the papacy. Much confusion ensued, and ironically, the jostling between emperor and pope was renewed. In the seventeenth century the body of the “Pope's handmaid “was reinterred in St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome.