Louise Michel - History

Louise Michel rose from an inauspicious start in life to become one of most prominent women during the Paris Commune, nicknamed the Red Virgin of Montmartre.   She was born in 1830, the daughter of either the master or son of the chateau Vroncourt and a servant, Marianne Michel, and was raised as the grand-child of the family.  Louise Michel became a teacher, one of the few occupations available to women at the time. 

 

On the death of her grandparents, Louise Michel moved with her mother to Paris.  Refusing to swear allegiance to the Emperor Napoleon III, she was not permitted to work in a state school so she opened a series of private schools.  Her methods were unusual including having animals in the classrooms and welcoming and teaching of children with learning difficulties alongside their peers.  In Paris, she met some of the leading thinkers and activists of the day, continued teaching and became increasingly involved in the problems of the poor.  Her own lines reveal her anger, her passion and sense of injustice

 

“I have seen criminals and whores

And spoken with them.  Now I enquire

If you believe them made as they now are

To drag their rags in blood and mire

Preordained an evil race?

You to whom all men are prey

Have made them what they are today”.

 

During the Franco-Prussian War 1870-1871, Paris was besieged.  Workers were called up into an armed National Guard but when the surrender came, many refused to hand in their weapons and set up the Paris Commune.  Elections were held for city government and in a festival atmosphere public meetings discussed issues of social justice and personal freedom, the role of the church and organised co-operatives.  Louise Michel led the Women’s Vigilance committee, was involved in political clubs which met in churches, organised ambulances and, sometimes dressed in men’s uniform, herself fired at troops.  After 72 days, the exasperated government sent in troops and “the most crucial event of nineteenth century working-class history” ended with the estimated death of 16-25,000 men, women and children.  Louise Michel escaped but gave herself up when she heard that her mother had been arrested in her place. 

 

Prisoner Number One, Louise Michel put up no defence to the many charges which included trying to overthrow the republic and encouraging citizens to arm.  She infuriated the court with her challenge  “Since it seems that any heart which beats for freedom has the right only to a lump of lead, I too claim my share.  If you let me live, I shall never stop crying for revenge and I shall avenge my brothers.  I have finished.  If you are not cowards, kill me”  They dared not make a martyr of her and she was exiled to New Caledonia where after a four month journey the group of urban people were dumped on a hot malarial island and left to fend for themselves.  Louise taught other prisoners and their children, became an amateur anthropologist,  studying the indigenous Kanak people and wrote plays and poems.

 

Freed under the 1880 amnesty, Louise Michel returned to an enormous welcome from a crowd of 7,000 at the Gare St Lazaire.  She continued to support and radicalise the poor and was imprisoned 3 more times, including a 6 year sentence of solitary confinement, for her involvement in the bread riots of 1883.   She was shot in the head while at the theatre but refused to prosecute.  She fled from further prosecution and spent some time in London where she was known as “the good woman” setting up a school in Fitzrovia which was closed down when a bomb, possibly planted by the police, was found on the premises.  Travelling throughout Europe and as far as Algeria, Louise Michel preached anarchist, anti-imperialist ideas arguing that “Power monopolised is evil”.  Louise Michel died in Marseilles in 1905 and her body was taken back to Paris where, accompanied by a vast crowd, she was interred at the cemetery Levallois-Perret.

 

209 street names celebrate this remarkable woman as well as numerous educational establishments and a station on the Paris metro.  Louise Michel, feminist before the term was coined, is a rousing final subject for this series French History Through Street Names.