A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Pacheco, Donna Maria
PACHECO, DONNA MARIA,
Wife of Don John de Padilla, a young nobleman, who was at the head of the confederacy in Castile, during the minority of Charles the Fifth, called the Holy Junta, raised to recover those laws and liberties the Castilians had always prized so highly. During their hostile operations, they were in much distress for money. Donna Maria, a woman of great abilities and unbounded ambition, proposed to seize all the magnificent ornaments in the cathedral of Toledo; but lest that action, apparently sacrilegious, should offend the people, she and her retinue went in a solemn procession to the church, and implored pardon of the saints, whose shrines she was about to violate. The populace thus appeased, they stripped the cathedral, and obtained the necessary funds.
In a subsequent engagement, in 1521, the young and brave Padilla was taken prisoner, and condemned to death. He wrote an affectionate letter to his wife, exhorting her to consider his death as his deliverance. This blow was fatal to the confederacy. The city of Toledo alone, animated by Donna Maria, who sought to revenge her husband's death, held out. The prudence and vigour with which she acted justified the confidence the people reposed in her. She wrote to the French general, encouraging him to invade Navarre; she endeavoured to arouse the other Castilian cities; raised soldiers; and, by keeping the death of their beloved general fresh in the minds of the people, she prevented them from being dispirited. Her enemies in vain endeavoured to undermine her popularity; the city was invested, but she defended it so vigorously that no progress was made in reducing it, till the clergy, whose property she had been forced to invade, openly deserted her, and persuaded the credulous multitude that her influence over them was the effect of enchantment; and that she was assisted by a familiar spirit in the form of a negro maid. Incensed at these suggestions, they themselves took up arms against her, drove her out of the city, and surrendered it to the royalists. She then retired to the citadel, which she defended with amazing fortitude, four months longer; and, when reduced to the last extremity, fled in disguise to Portugal, where she had many relations, and where she passed the remainder of her life.