Wanda and Adam Mickiewicz's Grażyna. She also admired Bouboulina, a woman who became one of the icons of the Greek uprising against the Ottomans, a Polish fighter Anna Dorota Chrzanowska, as well as Joan of Arc. These pursuits were accompanied by an early interest in equestrianism and marksmanship, quite uncommon for early 19th-century girls from aristocratic families. She was also deeply interested in Ruthenian and Belarusian folk culture and had contacts and friends in the Filaret Association. In 1823, one of her cousins was forcibly conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army as a punishment for celebrating the Constitution of 3 May; this incident is said to be one of the key events in her life and one that galvanized her pro-Polish and anti-Russian attitude. In 1829, Plater began a grand tour throughout the historical Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, visiting Warsaw and Kraków, and the battlefield of Raszyn. Her mother died a year later; her father remarried and refused to even meet his daughter. After the outbreak of the November Uprising against Imperial Russia, she became a vocal supporter of the anti-Tsarist sentiments in the lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. A dozen or so females joined the uprising, including Antonina Tomaszewska, but Plater became the most famous of them all. Uprising In her note from 25 March written at the Antazavė Manor, Plater claims that joining the uprising was her sole idea and that she had hoped to go to war her entire life. She cut her hair, prepared a uniform for herself and organized and equipped a group of volunteers. She went to her cousin in Dusetos and delivered a passionate speech after a mass on 29 March. The following day, her group attacked a post station in Daugailiai and captured horses for her unit. On 4 April, she signed a declaratory document marking her access to the local uprising forces. The same day, her unit is rumored to have seized the town of Zarasai, although the historians are not sure this event really occurred. She planned to take Daugavpils where two of her cousins, Lucjan and Ferdynand Plater, attended a military school and hoped to start an uprising from within, but after a reconnaissance mission discovered that the city was defended by a strong garrison and was impregnable to attack by such a small force as her own unit, that plan was abandoned. Her unit was composed of