Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/105

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AZZ. BAB. BAG.
88

the rear, that she was prevailed on to proceed.

When the revolters reached Bassora, they were refused admittance into the city. In the end, however, they gained possession. All assembled an army, and marched against Ayesha, who violently opposed all pacific counsels, and resolved to proceed to the utmost extremity. A fierce battle ensued, In which Telha and Zobier were slain. The combat raged about Ayesha's camel, and an Arabian writer says, that the hands of seventy men, who successively held its bridle, were cut off, and that her litter was stuck so full of darts, as to resemble a porcupine. The camel, from which this day's fight takes its name, was at length hamstrung, and Ayesha became a captive. Ali treated her with great respect, and sent her to Medina, on condition that she should live peaceably at home, and not intermeddle with state affairs.

Her resentment afterwards appeared In her refusal to suffer Hassan, the unfortunate son of Ali, to be buried near the tomb of the prophet, which was her property. She seems to have regained her influence in the reign of the caliph Moawiyah. She died in the fifty-eighth year of the Hegira, A. D. 677, aged sixty-seven; having constantly experienced a high degree of respect from the followers of Mahomet, except at the time of her imprudent expedition against Ali,

AZZI DE FORTI, FAUSTINA,

A native of Arezza, distinguished for her poetical talents, and admitted into the academy of Arcadia, under the name Eurinomia. She published a volume of Italian poems, and died in 1724.

BABOIS, MADAME VICTOIRE,

A French poetess, was born in 1759 or 1760, and died in 1839. She was the niece of Duels, the celebrated French dramatist and translator of Shakspere. This lady spent her whole life at Versailles, in the midst of her family and friends; and having but a slight acquaintance with men of letters, she was never taught the rules of style and composition, but wrote as nature dictated. Her poetry is very popular in France, and she is also the author of several little prose works. Her elegies were particularly appropriate, for she had much true feeling, and always sympathized with the sorrows she described.

BACCIOCCHI, MARIE ANNE ELISE,

Sister of Napoleon Bonaparte, formerly princess of Lucca and Piombino, was born at Ajaccio, January 8th., .1777, and educated at the royal institution for noble ladies at St. Cyr. She lived at Marseilles, with her mother, during the revolution. In 1797, with her mother's consent, but against her brother's wish, she married Felix Pascal Bacciocchi, a captain in Napoleon's army in Italy. In 1799, she went to Paris, and resided with her brother Lucien, where she collected around her the most distinguished men of the capital. Generous as she ever was towards distinguished talents, she conferred particular favours on Chateaubriand and Fontanes. Conscious of her intellectual superiority, she kept her husband in a very subordinate position. It was she in fact, who governed the prin-