In 1900, the British governor demanded to sit on the Golden Stool, the soul of the Asante nation. A grandmother in her sixties answered him with a war.
Yaa Asantewaa was a farmer and the queen mother of Ejisu, in what is now Ghana. With the Asante king exiled by the British and the chiefs unsure whether to fight, she stood up and shamed them into it: if the men wouldn't go forward, the women would. She led the siege of the British fort in Kumasi, one of the last great African wars against British colonial rule, and became one of the very few women in history to lead an army against a European colonial power.
The Asante lost the war. But the British never got the stool.