She was one of the most extraordinary young women in Chinese and world history, but you probably never heard of her.

Her story could have come straight from a Walt Disney cartoon: ‘The Little Mermaid in ancient China” perhaps. There’s a good Dad, an evil villain and the struggle for Utopia. What it doesn’t have is a handsome prince and a happily ever after - at least not for our courageous princess.

Her name to history is Princess Pingyang.

She was one of eight daughters fathered by a man named Li Yuan, who had been born a peasant but had risen through the ranks to become a general in the army of the evil Emperor Yang. (No, I’m not making this up.)

Yang had taken the throne after having his father poisoned by hired assassins. No less than six million people then died working on his plans to extend the Great Wall and the Grand Canal - over ten per cent of the entire population. He was one of the most thoroughly unpleasant men in history; Donald Trump with attitude.

Yang then invaded Korea and Vietnam, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory despite overwhelming numerical superiority. He lost a million men in those campaigns and bankrupted the empire. Then, to prove the first time wasn’t a fluke, he did it a second time, this time with an army of slaves, conscripts and paroled prisoners.

Li Yuan was one of the few military commanders to have fought with honor and retained the respect of his men. So, true to character, Yang sent him into exile .

With the Empire in shambles and the countryside ravaged by bandit gangs and warlord armies, Li decided to revolt. He sent for his daughter Zhao and her husband, Chai, who were unfortunately living inside Yang’s palace; Chai was commander of the Emperor’s Palace Guard.

Zhao told her husband: you go, don’t worry about me. He said, oh all right then and took off. The young woman then somehow avoided Imperial assassins and roving bandit tribes and made it home to the family estates in Huxian.

Instead of feeling faint and lying on the lounger waiting for Daddy to return from exile to rescue her, she sold off her family’s home and land and used the money to raise an army - which became known as the “Army of the Lady.”

She was anything but ladylike. She approached local bandit leaders, and offered them cash and commissions in her new army if they joined her; it was an offer they really couldn’t refuse. If they did, she routed their army, executed them and seconded their troops.

She played rough when she had to, but she had a good heart. She forbade raping and pillaging; instead she threw open her family’s rice stores and fed the starving population. This novel tactic won hearts and minds and gained her massive support in the countryside. Soon her army had swollen to a fighting force of over 70,000 warriors.

Yet still Emperor Yang did not take her seriously - military genius that he was - because she was a woman, and barely out of her teens.

Late in 617, her father returned, crossing the Yellow River; so Pingyang joined him, setting up her own separate headquarters. She then joined the final assault on the Imperial palace at modern day Xi’an. General Li seized the throne and declared himself Emperor, becoming the first ruler of the Tang Dynasty.

It was a dynasty that was to last three centuries, and is now seen as the high point in Chinese Imperial civilization. China grew to become the largest and most powerful empire on Earth. Philosophy, trade and the arts flourished.

Up until that time, women were little more than slaves, required to obey their father before marriage, their husband during marriage, and their sons in widowhood. But over the next hundred and fifty years China underwent dramatic change. Women won the right to own land, to divorce and even to remarry.

A Tang Dynasty divorce agreement, unearthed from Dunhuang, reads: “Since we cannot live together harmoniously, we had better separate. I hope that after the divorce, niangzi (a form of address for one’s wife) can be as young and beautiful as before, and may you find a more satisfactory husband. I hope that the divorce will not plant hatred between us in the future.”

So Princess Pingyang not only won the throne for her father - she helped win emancipation for the sisters, too. Unfortunately she did not get the happy ending she deserved. She died at just 23 years old, two years after her father assumed the throne.

Her father gave her a military burial fit for a general; when officials of the Ministry of Rites objected he said: “The Princess personally beat the drums and rose in righteous rebellion to help me establish the dynasty. How can she be treated as an ordinary woman?”

It was China’s Renaissance. Lily feet, subservience and Mao Tse Tung were still to come. But for three centuries China and Chinese women prospered, thanks to one of the most extraordinary and courageous young women in history, riding at the head of the “Army of the Lady.”

And because I want to see you all back here regularly, I am offering a free copy of Looking for Mr. Goodstory to anyone who joins my blog today! It’s a collection of my favorite blog posts over the last six months - all you have to do is join up, then write to me at colin underscore falconer underscore author at hotmail dot com. I’ll send you a copy as a mobi Epub or PDF file!

“I awake full of you. Your image and the memory of last night’s intoxicating pleasures has left no rest to my senses.”

Her name to history was married Joséphine de Beauharnais; she was born Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie, the daughter of a wealthy Creole sugar baron in Martinique.

But after hurricanes destroyed the family plantation, she was married off to the Vicomte de Beauharnais in Paris in October, 1779, in order to preserve the family fortune. It was an unhappy marriage, but it produced two children, Eugène and Hortense.

During the Reign of Terror, in 1794, her husband was arrested as an aristocratic ‘suspect’ by the Jacobins; Joséphine herself was imprisoned a month later. He was guillotined and she herself was only saved from the same fate by the timely overthrow of Robespierre, just one day before her scheduled execution.

As a widow with two children to support, she chose her lovers with her head rather than her heart.

She became mistress to several of France’s political and financial luminaries. But Joséphine was a shopper of the first rank and ran up enormous debts during her life.

In fact, when she met Napoléon it was rumored that her present lover, Paul Barras, was very happy for the other man to take her off his hands. He simply couldn’t afford her. He had met his financial Waterloo.

At that time Bonaparte was a general and a rising star in France’s political firmament. Napoléon’s siren - until then she had been known as Rose, Joséphine was the name Napoléon used - was an elegant and svelte chestnut haired beauty. She rarely smiled though because of her one flaw - she had bad teeth.

Perhaps she ate too much sugar growing up on daddy’s farm.

His family stood against the match; after all, she was a widow with two children, and his mother and sisters were jealous of her sophistication and breeding.

But Napoléon ignored his family’s objections and he and Joséphine married on 9th March, 1796.

Two days later he left to lead the French army into Italy, sending her a constant stream of love letters while he was away.

“You to whom nature has given spirit, sweetness, and beauty, you who alone can move and rule my heart, you who know all too well the absolute empire you exercise over it!”

His letters still exist. But what about hers? Were they lost - or did she seldom write? It seems the latter is true.

While he conquered Italy she allowed herself to be conquered by a handsome Hussar officer, Hippolyte Charles. When Napoléon finally heard of her infidelity, during his Egyptian campaign, something must have died in him.

He took up with Pauline Bellisle Foures, a woman who became known as “Napoléon’s Cleopatra.” By now his letters home to Joséphine were no longer passionate. After Pauline there was an endless line of mistresses, possibly intended as payback.

But even after their separation Napoléon insisted Joséphine keep her titles. “It is my will that she retain the rank and title of Empress, and especially that she never doubt my sentiments, and that she ever hold me as her best and dearest friend.”

Joséphine retired to the Château de Malmaison, near Paris, where she continued to burn holes in even her husband’s deep pockets. Yet she remained on friendly terms with Napoléon up to her death in 1814.

During his exile Napoléon admitted to friends that he truly loved her ‘but I did not respect her.’

‘Not tonight, Joséphine.’

There is no evidence whatever that he ever spoke these words; the earliest reference is a music hall song sung by Ada Jones and Billy Murray in 1911. But the greatest truth can rest in a lie; she was his one great love but he perhaps never forgot or forgave her affair with the hussar.

Could it be that France’s most tactically brilliant general was a romantic; and the woman he loved was a pragmatic? If so, it was the irony of his life.

His last words as he lay on his death bed were: “France, the Army, the Head of the Army … Joséphine.”

COLIN FALCONER

JOIN MY MAILING LIST! Last month subscribers got a coupon for a free copy of DISAPPEARED, just published in the US for the first time, a free excerpt of upcoming novel WARBABY. Sign on for more exclusive opportunities to win free books and news of upcoming releases, available to MEMBERS ONLY. Subscribe here!!!

See HAREM, now on Slideshare!!