re: In your opinion, who was the greatest leader in history?

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Ching Shih

female pirate that went undefeated. a true badass that was apparently beautiful too.

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The fleet under her command established hegemony over many coastal villages, in some cases even imposing levies and taxes on settlements. According to Robert Antony, Ching Shih "robbed towns, markets, and villages, from Macau to Canton."[18] In 1806 a British officer reported on the terrible fate of those who resisted Ching Shih's pirates; the pirates nailed an enemy's feet to the deck and then beat him senseless.[19] Contemporary reports from the British admiralty called her “The Terror of the South China"[20]

The Chinese navy lost sixty-three ships in the attacks. Even the hired navies of Portugal and Britain could not defeat Ching Shih.[21] Finding it hopeless to defeat her, in 1810, amnesty was offered to all pirates. Ching Shih and Chang Pao wanted to take advantage of the amnesty but negotiation at sea between Chang Pao and the government official ZHANG Bai Ling (???)hit a deadlock. Besides the fate of the loot, one sticking point was the government's demand that the pirates had to kneel before them. For the pirates to consider kneeling in front of their previous defeated foe was too much to accept.

Ching Shih took 17 illiterate women and children and walked into Zhang Bai Ling's office in Canton unarmed and began negotiation. She got everything she wanted including keeping all her loot. The kneeling deadlock was solved by ZHANG Bai Ling acting as a witness at the marriage of Chang Po and Ching Shi. (Officially, Chang Pao was still Ching Shi' son, so a government blessing was needed.) The two had to kneel to thank him. That was accepted as part of the act of surrender. [22][23][24]

She ended her career that year with all her loot. Chang Pao was given an official position in the government. After he died suddenly, Ching Shih went back to Canton with her young son and opened a gambling house.[25] She died in 1844, at the age of 69.[25]

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