Louise Michel

Biography

Louise Michel was born the May 29th 1830 in Haute-Marne with the castle from Vroncourt, girl of a lord of the manor (more probably of his son) and of her maidservant, Marianne Michel. She grows in the family of those which she calls her grandparents, where she seems to have been happy, showing herself, very young person, altruistic by nature with her entourage, and where she receives a good instruction and a liberal education.

She continues then studies with Chaumont where she obtains the patent of capacity making it possible to follow the occupation of teacher. But she refuses to lend oath to the Empire, and creates a private school where she teaches during three years according to republican principles which are worth some reprimands on behalf of the authorities to him.

She was member of the Franc-maçonnerie.

Paris

It then comes to settle with Paris where it teaches in an institution close to the Castle-D' Water, directed by a certain Mrs Voillier with whom it maintains the quasi subsidiary reports/ratios. Start then for it one intense working life. It is at this time that it meets Jules Vallès, Eugene Varlin, Raoul Rigault, Emile Eudes and especially Theophilus Ferré, that it liked passionately. She collaborates in newspapers of opposition, continues a literary activity. She will address some poems to Victor Hugo, one of the most respected most famous characters and this time, which she hardly meets arrived at Paris, wise virgin, young teacher of province, and which one claims that she would have had a child, Victorine, placed as a nurse with his birth. This last assertion remaining very discussed.

It will consequently have a political activity which it will undertake until its death. As of 1869, it is secretary of the Democratic society of raising the moral standard, having for goal to help the workers. It has then nearly forty years. A police report affirms (in 1878) that it adheres to the Internationale. At that time, and to the exile, Louise was Blanquiste, i.e. follower of the socialist republican movement founded by Auguste Blanqui, author of the famous slogan “ Neither god nor Master! ”

In 1870 the day before the Commune, it is elected president of the Committee of vigilance of the citizens of the XVIIIe district of Paris. She teaches in a externat founded by itself in 1865. In famished Paris, it creates a canteen for its pupils. It meets Georges Clémenceau, mayor of Montmartre. One attends astonishing demonstrations then: federate women, children, guards surround the soldiers who fraternize with this merry and peaceful crowd. Louise Michel then forms part of the revolutionary wing most radical at the sides of the anarchists, and thinks that it is necessary to continue the offensive on Versailles to stop the government of Adolphe Thiers which does not have whereas few troops. That will not last and the occasion is missed. At this point in time the destiny of Louise Michel rocks and precipitates. She is even voluntary to only go to Versailles and to kill Thiers.

The Commune

Recipient of the Common of Paris when intervenes the episode many times mentioned, where, out of dress of national guard, it makes the shot Place of the Hotel-of-City. Propagandist, guard with the 61e battalion, ambulancière, it animates also the Club of the Revolution and is always interested by the problems of education. It is interesting to notice that it is very advances some over its time, recommending measures which today appears to us acquired and normal, but which at the time is innovations, like vocational schools and laic orphanages, deciding in favor of an alive and popular teaching.

On the barricade of Clignancourt, in May 1871, it takes part in the street battle in which it will draw its last shots. It goes to make release her mother, stopped in her place. It attends the executions then and sees dying all her friends, among whom his friend Theophilus Ferré (carried out with the former minister for the War of the Commune, Louis Rossel), to which it forwards a poem of moving good-bye, red eyelets . She claims death with the court, and it is undoubtedly by it learning that Victor Hugo dedicates his poem to him, Viro Major . It spends twenty month in detention then and is seen condemned to the deportation. It is time when the press of Versailles names it the red She-wolf , the Good Louise .

Deportation

Embarked on the Virginia to be off-set in New Caledonia, she sings with other communards “the time of the cherries” while looking at moving away the coast, she will arrive on the island after four months of crossing. On board, it becomes acquainted with Henri Rochefort, celebrates polemist, and of Nathalie Lemel, it also large stimulating of the Commune. And it is undoubtedly in contact with the latter that Louise became anarchistic. It will remain seven years in New Caledonia, refusing to profit from another mode that of the men. She seeks to inform the autochtones Kanak S and, contrary to some Communards which join their repression, she takes their defense at the time of their revolt, in 1878. It would have even forwarded to the chief of the rebellion Ataï a piece of its scarf. It obtains the following year the authorization to settle with Noumea and to take again its trade of teaching, initially near the children of deportees, then in the schools of girls.

Militant an tireless anarchist

Of return in France in November 1880, it is cordially accommodated by crowd in Paris. She there will take again her activity of untiring militant, giving many conferences, intervening in the meetings, will decide against the capital punishment, will take only poorly share with the agitation caused by the Affaire Dreyfus (acting for her to protect the " frère" Henri Rochefort, attacked here), but will claim himself until his death of the anarchistic movement. “I became anarchistic when we were sent in New Caledonia”, she will say. It is on March 18th, 1882, at the time of a meeting Favié room in Paris, that Louise Michel, wishing to dissociate itself from the authoritative and parliamentary Socialists, decides without ambiguity for the adoption of the black flag by the anarchists (socialist libertarians), More wet red flag of the blood of our soldiers. I will raise the black flag, carrying the mourning of our deaths and our illusions .

This new engagement is concretized soon by the action: March 9th, 1883, it carries out, with Emile Pouget, a demonstration in the name of the " without-travail" who degenerates quickly into plunderings of bakeries (like that of the n° 3 of the street of the Quills) and into confrontation with the police force. Louise is consequently condemned to six years of prison for " excitation with the pillage" .

From 1890 to 1895, she lives with London where she manages a libertarian school. Of return in France, it alternates its lecture tours with stays in London with friends. It is several times stopped at the time of demonstrations, again imprisoned for six years and released at the end of three on intervention of Clemenceau, to re-examine her mother about to die. Still some imprisonments, less long; she is, could one say, followed hour per hour by the police services.

She dies in Marseilles of a pneumonia at the time of a lecture tour; its funeral drained in Paris an huge crowd which did not fail to impress the contemporaries. Many speakers spoke and, among them, the Worthy one of the Cabin of Universal Fraternity . Badges and maconnic emblems flowered on its tomb, so that the anarchist Sebastien Faure pointed out that it had never belonged to any association, not even anarchistic, since this movement was not structured yet of federation (had adhered to it if he had been it? One can wonder whether this independent nature would have accepted). An eyewitness, Lorulot, affirm however that it had given its adhesion to the Order Maçonnique Mixte International the founded Human right in 1893. If it belonged to a Cabin, this had to be with that one, initially because the large majority of the Obédience S, sexists and preserving, today still, does not accept the women then, which would certainly not have been of its taste, because the mixed cabin rested by a woman, Maria Desraimes, was the only one which could to possibly be appropriate him. On the proposal of Madeleine Lepelletier, it was invited there, one year before its death, there made a speech of reception, “was not initiated there” but to some extent not co-opted, the members of the aforesaid the cabin estimating themselves honoured by its consent at their request and retaining that its action exempted it rite of initiation. When it was asked him why it had never been presented there, it answered that it believed that the women there were not accepted .

Until 1916, a demonstration took place each year on its tomb, located at Levallois-Perret, flowered until our days with each birthday. In 2005, was celebrated the hundredth birthday of its death. On this occasion two conferences paid homage to the “good Louise”, in particular the important conference of March organized by the Town hall of Paris and the religious organization Actazé “Louise Michel, figure of the transversality” (under the direction of Valerie Morignat). This event gathered 22 specialists in Louise Michel who underlined an unclassable personality, brilliant and always contemporary. Louise Michel appeared in all her topicality through the conferences, that it is by the extraordinary influence that she still exerts on the departments of American female Studies, where still by the perspicacity of its novel “the misery” (1000 new pages) which announces the social crisis of the suburbs. The complete informations on this conference entitled “Louise Michel, Figure of the transversality” on the pages of are actazé which will publish at the beginning of 2007 entirety of the conferences.

Social heritage of Louise Michel

Legendary figure of the anarchistic movement and the Labor movement in general, Louise incontestably makes move crowd. It is often a concerning vocabulary that reserved for holy and to the heretics who is applied to him: when it is not the “ Bonne Louise ”, it is the “ Vierge red ”. In the good as in the evil, for better and for worse, it seems to have exerted a real fascination on its contemporaries. It is curious to notice that this woman, educated and cultivated, intelligent but who however had anything neither the insipidity neither of oiling, nor the beauty of some of the " half-mondaines" and others " cocottes" who pullulate the day before the Belle Time, is surrounded by many known male figures, even famous, of which it with the indéfectible friendship, until the end of its life, or more often of their. Normal, one will say, at one time when the women do not have yet any right, and where, with many regards, it has the appearance of an exception.

If the photographs which one has of it show us a woman with the virile face and without finishes, as cut with blows of bill hook with the age, it is undoubtedly by looking at Freedom guiding the people , famous table of Eugene Delacroix, which one represents best this Spartan with the athletic body. And, when it went up to the platform, it is undoubtedly with Pasionaria that it was to resemble. It is, with George Sand, one of the very rare women of the 19th century to have adopted the male Costume at one time of its life, revealing fact of a claim Féministe.

Generous, devoted to the cause the most stripped of, it is without any doubt its courage which characterizes best its personality. When it is found with the court on the dock, it makes use of it like political platform and imposes some even on its judges, who on several occasions commute his judgments by attenuating them.

If its literary work comprises few theoretical writings but many Poème S, Légende S and Conte S, including for the children in which it never ceased being interested, and if it more passed to the posterity for its activism of tireless militant of the “ revolution Sociale ”, as itself said it, its name, paradoxically, one of is used with the frontispieces of the nursery schools and primary, of the colleges and colleges of the communes of France. Proof if it is that it represents well, in the memory and the unconscious popular one, the image of the teacher, the laic and popular missionary who it was.

In France, the Prix Louise Michel is decreed with a supposed personality to defend the republican values. Its recent attribution with leaders such as Ben Ali or Hosni Mubarak makes nevertheless plane some doubts about the objectivity of the criteria used.

The group of French Rock'n'roll Louise Attaque car its name of the character.

Works

It is, undoubtedly, to return justice to this woman that Victor Hugo, which knew it perhaps better than anybody, depicted it to us such “Judith dark Juive” and “Aria the Roman”, woman with the destiny certainly exceptional, but terrible, cruel and tragic, and thus to return to him all its place, too often occulted for the benefit of militant for reasons which one suspects, who is his in the French Littérature. It is probably what she would have wished while coming to Paris to live of its feather, if times in which she lived it had more easily allowed a woman, if the Commune, resulting from the policy and fall from the Second Empire, of that which same Hugo called small the “ Napoleon”, had not precipitated the events in an irreversible way.

Through the life , poetries, Paris, 1894.

Bastard imperial the , by L. Michel and J. Winter, Paris, 1883.

the opera hat-teeth , Paris.

the Commune, History and memories , Paris, 1898.

Tales and legends , Paris, 1884.

Crimes of the time , new news, Paris, 1888.

Defense of Louise Michel , Bordeaux, 1883.

the new Era, last thought, memories of Calédonie (song of the prisoners) , Paris, 1887

the Girl of the people by L. Michel and A. Grippa, Paris (1883) Flowers and brambles, poetries, Paris,

the Yvon Guy, legend Breton , Paris, 1882.

encyclopedic Readings by gravitational cycles , Paris, 1888.

international League of the revolutionary women, Call to a meeting. Signed: Louise Michel, Paris, 1882.

the book of the New Year's Day: historiettes, tales and legends for the children , Paris, 1872.

Gleams in the shade. More idiots, more the insane ones. The intelligent heart. The free idea. The lucid spirit of the ground with God… Paris, 1861.

Proclamation and proclamation of Louise Michel to the citizens of Paris , Signed Louise Loony, Paris, 1883.

Memories , Paris, 1886, T. 1.

Mistakes, large Parisian social novel , by Louise Michel and Jean Gaiter, Paris, 1882.

human Microbes , Paris, 1886.

Misery by Louise Michel, 2nd part, and Jean Gaiter 1st part, Paris, 1882.

Le Monde new , Paris, 1888

Legends and songs of canaques epic: with drawings and vocabularies/by Louise Michel. The rat and the octopus/by Charles Malato, waiter Gallica

posthumous Works :

vol. I. Before the Commune. Preface Laurent Tailhade, Alfortville, 1905.

the Peasants by Louise Michel and Emile Gautier, Paris, Incomplete.

Taking possession , Saint-Denis, 1890.

the Dream (in a work of Constant Martin), Paris, 1898.

Legends and songs of gestures Canaque S. Présentation. Gerard Oberlé. Edition 1900. 1988.

I write to you of my night, general correspondence, 1850 - 1904 , edition established by Xavière Gauthier, Édition of Paris max Chaleil, 1999.

The problem arose, following an assertion of Ernest Girault in the Good Louise published in 1906, to know if Louise Michel were in all or partly the author of the novel of Jules Verne, Twenty thousand miles under the seas . After attentive study of the case by Hem Day (Books Thought and Action, n° January 9th, th and th - March 1959) and Lorulot (the Free Idea, April 1959), it seems that it is necessary to conclude by the negative one.

See too

Museum of Art and History (Saint-Denis)

the station of the subway of Paris éponyme

Museum of the alive History (Montreuil)

Institute International of social history (Amsterdam)

Caricatures of Louise Michel

Notes/References

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