French anarchist, and writer ,whose heroism during the Paris Commune insurrection and subsequent imprisonments, and example of selfless devotion to her ideals, made her one of the most celebrated female revolutionaries of her time Clémence-Louise Michel also known by her nickname of Enjolras, was born on May 29, 1830, in Vroncourt (Haute-Marne), at the Château de Vroncourt in Northeast France, the illegitimate daughter of a serving-maid, Marianne Michel, and the son of the house, Laurent Demahis.
Raised by her paternal grandparents, Michel received a liberal education at home and began corresponding with Victor Hugo as a young girl. Supported by her paternal grandparents until her thirties,
Some traits from her childhood stand out. She loved animals of every kind and always kept numerous pets. The unthinking cruelty of the peasants toward animals sickened her. She later declared that "the origin of my revolt against the powerful was my horror at the tortures inflicted on animals." The other trait was her habit of giving away to the needy whatever might be at hand, whether hers or not. She seemed devoid of any proprietary sense and as a child would steal food or money from her grandparents (who were in narrow straits) to give away, even after warnings. Her sympathy for any sufferers, human or animal, simply overrode ordinary prudence or even regard for the generally accepted rights of others.
Between 1844 and 1850, Louise Michel witnessed the deaths of her grandfather, Étienne-Charles Demahis, her father, Laurent Demahis, and then her grandmother, Louise-Charlotte Demahis. The need to work for a living then arose.
She spent three months at a boarding school in Lagny-sur-Marne to prepare for the teaching certificate, a rare profession accessible to the poor if they wished to escape their social condition.
She failed the exam, but met the man she admired most: Victor Hugo. She passed the exam on her second attempt in Chaumont in 1852. Once in a position in Audeloncourt (Haute-Marne), where she opened a private school, she distinguished herself through her thoroughly modern pedagogy.
She rejected punishments inflicted on students in favor of instilling a sense of duty and a love of learning. Her method seemed to work. She wrote plays that the schoolgirls performed. Ahead of her time, she introduced nature classes teaching about plants and animals. She didn't hesitate to bring in plant specimens and even snakes or birds. Some animals lived at the school; the students were responsible for taking good care of them.
Already rebellious, she refused to swear allegiance to the Empire and instead opened a private school in Audeloncourt (in 1853) and then in Millières (in 1855). She always wore a black dress with a red rose as the only embellishment. Black and red, not coincidentally the colors of anarchism . And Louise Michel was a comitted anarchist . Louise Michel adopted the black dress with the wide crinoline skirt around 1852, when Napoleon III seized power to proclaim the Second French Empire. In mourning for lost freedom, the headstrong Louise henceforth dressed exclusively in black.
Michel moved to Paris in 1865 and opened a school for working class children in Montmartre, where she taught and demonstrated liberal and revolutionary ideas to her pupils. It was there that she developed mutual aid programs in her community, teaching underprivileged women to read and write, connecting them with resources and representing women in legal and administrative matters.
It was also during this time that she became more closely involved in the radical political movements which developed in the tumultuous 1860s in Paris. She was actively involved with André Léo’s Société pour la Revendication des Droits Civils de la Femme where she advocated for girls’ education on a national level.
It was in Paris that she met Jules Vallès, Eugène Varlin, and especially Théophile Ferré, with whom she formed a close bond. She contributed to opposition newspapers and wrote poetry. Through her political activism as well as through her poetry and plays, Michel imagined a radical society where women and girls were afforded the same opportunities as men.
On January 22, 1871 , dressed as a National Guardsman, she participated in the shooting at the Hôtel de Ville against the government, which she accused of cowardice. She was an enthusiastic participant in the Commune of 1871, which she saw as an opportunity to live out her ideals of liberal education for young women.
The Paris Commune
https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2023/03/vive-la-commune-marking-anniversary-of.html was a radical socialist government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It emerged after France’s humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the collapse of Napoleon III’s Second Empire. The Commune tried to establish a more democratic and egalitarian society, but it was brutally crushed by the French army in what became known as the Bloody Week.
Michel was the outstanding female soldier of the Commune: "I love the smell of powder," she confessed. In the uniform of the 61st Battalion of the National Guard, she fought with utter disregard for her life, earning the affection of the soldiers though not of most officers, who disliked having women on battlefields.
Michel in uniform
Tireless, she also organized ambulance nurses to remove the wounded from the field, nursed soldiers herself, continued with the Montmartre Vigilance Committee, presided over a "Club de la Révolution" which passed all manner of radical proposals (including a total revamping of all laws and the judiciary), sent in ideas for educational reform, continued her school and refuge, and once even slipped through the lines to Versailles and back to prove that her (rather harebrained) proposal to assassinate French president Louis Thiers was feasible.
She was not, however, a high-level leader, e.g., on the Central Committee of the "Union of Women for the Defense of Paris and the Care of the Wounded" led by the Marxist Elizabeth Dmitrieff , or a "captain of guerrillas" as the government later charged.
Michel fought to the last when Montmartre fell early in "Bloody Week" (May 21–28), barely escaped death or capture, but gave herself up (May 23) to release her mother, who was being held hostage for her capture.
Arrest of Louise Michel after the Paris Commune, May 1871 – Jules Girardet
She endured the horrors of the march to Versailles and the encampment on the Sartory plain, was singled out with some other "ringleaders" and twice examined by a court-martial, and finally was tried (December 16), convicted of armed rebellion (after more serious charges were dropped), and condemned to life under guard in a prison colony. She had admitted only the minimum at first, but especially after her pleas failed to save one of the Commune's leaders, Théophile Ferré, she defiantly confessed everything and even claimed responsibility for acts she had not committed.
She probably had fallen in love with Ferré (though he did not reciprocate), and his execution (November 28) left a permanent wound in her heart.
Louise Michel wrote the following poem in honor and memory of Théophile Ferré, who refused to recognize a military court’s right to judge him after the defeat of the Commune, and was sentenced to death and executed.
Red Carnation – A Poem for Théophile Ferré
If one day to the cold cemetery I were to go,
brothers, cast on your sister,
like a final hope,
some red carnations in bloom.
In the final days of the empire,
as the people awoke,
red carnation, it was your smile
that told us all was reborn.
And now, go blossom in the shade
of dark and drear prisons,
go blossom near the somber captive,
and tell him we love him.
Tell him that in these changing times
everything belongs to the future;
that the victor with his pallid brow
can die as easily as the vanquished.
At her trial, she made a sensational appearance garbed and veiled in black, a spectral symbol of 25,000 dead Communards, accepted no attorney, challenged the judges to put her to death, and refused to appeal her conviction.
Poem by Louise Michel to the Commission of Pardons, 1871
To the Commission of Pardons
Auberive prison, November 28, 1872, 7 a.m
Murderers, can you hear time’s bell?
In any event, I’m content with this.
We suffered but we saved our cause.
So many cynically accumulated crimes, coldly done, so much
cowardice and inability widely expose you.
Bravo, Gentlemen! The white orgy is complete!
Can you take your good name away from here, no!
In history you will always be the commission for the “coup de grâce,”
executioner’s valet! Gentlemen, you must remember that we will be afraid, and we will laugh at you because you are such horrible, grotesque people.
Original French transcript A
la Commission des Grâces
Centrale d’Auberive, 28 novembre 1872, 7 heures du matin
Assassins, Entendez-vous l’heure qui sonne ?
Eh bien, je me félicite de ce qui s’est passé.
Nous avons souffert mais la cause est sauvée.
Tant de crimes cyniquement entassés, froidement accomplis ; tant
de lâchetés et d’incapacités vous démasquent largement.
Bravo, Messieurs ! l’orgie blanche est complète !
Otez maintenant vos noms de là ! impossible !
Vous serez à jamais pour l’histoire de la commission du coup de grâce, les valets du bourreau ! Souvenez-vous bien Messieurs, on aura horreur et on rira,
car vous êtes horribles et vous êtes grotesques.
Charged with attempting to overthrow the government, at her trial she dared the judges to execute her, saying ‘Since it seems that every heart that beats for freedom has no right to anything but a little lump of lead, I demand my share. If you let me live, I shall never cease to cry for vengeance and l shall avenge my brothers. If you are not cowards, kill me!’.
The authorities declined and while some 20,000 Communards were executed, Michel was among the 10,000 who were deported, in her case to New Caledonia in the Pacific Ocean.
Louise Michel in exile in New Caledonia.
Even in exile in New Caledonia, where she lived for eight years, Michel found ways to advocate for marginalized groups. Befriending the Kanak indigenous people she met, she encouraged them to revolt against the French colonial power and contributed to the first French-Kanak dictionary.
On her return to France 7,000 Parisians turned out to welcome her home.Her nickname, the “Red Virgin,” played an important role in the dynamics of disqualification of women’s speech and ideas. Louise Michel’s opponents referenced her alleged virginity as soon as she got back to Paris: she was variously called “the virgin of the Commune,” “the Maid of Belleville” and “the petroleum virgin.”
That virginity became the proof of her deviance. In the novel Gil Blas, one finds the following lines about Louise Michel: “She’s not pretty, and they say she’s a virgin. That’s bad for sanity! Virginity is the mother of dementia.”
As their reasoning went, being ugly, Louise Michel couldn’t entice a man; without marriage or motherhood, she trained her affection on the struggle for civil rights. In 1886, a contributor to La Petite Gazette defended that hypothesis of frustration in these terms: “You see, that ardent and perverted soul doesn’t know what to do with its immense need for affection, it would have required a husband to occupy her heart, and children, who are women’s great consolation. A married Louise Michel would have meant one less ‘great female citizen’ and one more happy homemaker; and we would not have been worse off.”
Originally used by her critics, the Red Virgin nickname offered a two-fold justification for Louise Michel’s deviance: her ugliness and her virginity. Between the lines, the goal was always to discredit feminist demands and revolutionary struggle in general by discrediting her, an icon of those struggles.
Louise also draws, writes poems and ( political ) essays. She uses the pseudonym Enjolras . That fictional character, 'a soldier of democracy, the marble beloved of Liberty', comes from the epic Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, with whom she corresponds and who 'glorifies' her in his poem Viro Major . There are even rumors that they had an amorous liaison.
Her poetry follows the dramas, joys, and adventures of her extraordinary life: poems-cries uttered from the prisons of Versailles in an attempt to save the man she loved; expansive and exalted poems written during the cyclones of New Caledonia, and more directly social and political pieces written during the years of feverish propaganda throughout France and abroad.
Anarchist comrades and/or friends often asked her for occasional poems, which she composed with pleasure: for weddings (Verlaine's, for example), births, and deaths (Blanqui's, for example). Absorbed by her commitment to political groups, she had little involvement in literary movements (she was simply a member of the Union of Poets in 1862 and, on October 20, 1886, she participated in a literary conference for the benefit of the Decadents).
But we must acknowledge the abundance and originality of the poetry of the woman whom Verlaine hailed as "the hoarse and fragile Muse/Of the Poor" and whose verses Hugo described as "mysterious and sweet."
Her poems served an effective function for her, like songs (which she also composed in great numbers), like "La Marseillaise," of which she wrote several versions, and "The Internationale": the poems had to provoke the emotion that led to action or strike the enemy like a rifle bullet.
In 1890 she was arrested again and after an attempt to commit her to a mental asylum she moved to London with her friend Charlotte Vauvelle.
She continued to give speeches and conduct revolutionary activity in London, France and across Europe, attending anarchist meetings, leading demonstrations and speaking to huge crowds.
She was friends with the Pankhurst family and made a particular impression on a young Sylvia Pankhurst.
At first Michel lived in ‘Petite France’, just north of Soho and the traditional quarter of French political refugees but in 1893 she moved to 15 Ardsley Terrace, Placquett Rd, now Copleston Road East Dulwich. Her house was at the Grove Vale end, though it no longer exists.
The houses cost £50 pa to rent, contained six rooms, a washhouse, and gardens front and back. The residents at the time were ‘comfortably off with good average earnings’ and were mostly clerks. Michel was said to be on the brink of poverty most of the time but while about half the houses in the road were in multiple occupation, she was able to rent the whole house.
Placquett Road was probably fairly cheap at the time because it backed on to Camberwell council’s depot; the depot particularly impacted nos 11 and 13 - the Council bought both houses themselves.
A journalist describes visiting her ‘small house near the station’ where the parlour had a piano, a few chairs, some photographs and a table on which stood several volumes by ‘prominent Anarchists’. Michel quickly became a central figure in London’s international anarchist circles. Her time was spent in writing and protest and her speeches and articles were reprinted across the world. She also wrote her memoirs and a history of the Paris Commune while she lived here.
She started the International Anarchist School in Fitzroy Square employing both exiled anarchists and pioneering educationalists as teachers, but the school closed when explosives were found in the basement. There is no evidence they were placed there by Michel and they may have been planted by an employee, Auguste Coulon, who was suspected of being a police spy. Louise was upset and felt herself surrounded by enemies: ‘I went back to East Dulwich in a most troubled frame of mind’.
She joined the Peckham International Anarchist Group, marched in the London May Day parades, spoke at revolutionary meetings and may have spoken at the Peckham and Dulwich Radical Club on Rye Lane. She often contrasted Britain’s liberal atmosphere with France’s repressive stance saying, ‘in England the destitute can assemble and say openly what they think; or at least they can tell one another about their miseries unreservedly’.
She also remarked that ‘the working classes find in England, under a monarchist regime, far more freedom than in Republican France’.
Edith Thomas, Michel’s biographer, mentions that Michel was visited in East Dulwich by journalists who found Michel, now in her sixties, surrounded by cats, dogs and a parrot called Coco that used to cry ‘Vive l’anarchie!'.
In December 1893 a New York Times journalist interviewed 'the notorious woman Anarchist, who occupies a little house at East Dulwich, a suburb of London'.
In 1895 the papers reported that she was hard at work on a novel in her ‘quiet house in Dulwich’ and also preparing a lecture tour of America.
Michel lived at Placquett Road until she moved to 25 Chesterfield Grove in 1899 where her neighbours were typically grocers, bakers, tobacconists and drapers, though unlike Placquett Rd the houses were mostly in single family occupation.
By 1900 she was boarding at 8 Albion Villas Road in Sydenham and appears in the 1901 Census there as an ‘authoress’. She was living there with her long-time friend and nurse Charlotte Vauvelle, Charlotte’s father, Auguste, and Charlotte’s brother, Achille, a lithographic printer. Again, their neighbours were typically shopkeepers and clerks. By 1903 she was living in Dahomey St (now Rd) in Streatham.
In 1904 Michel visited Algeria to advocate for an uprising against the French government. While there she became ill, returned to France and the following yearin in the Hôtel Oasis in Marseille,tLouise Michel passed away on January 9, 1905. By this time, she was one of the most prominent figures of contemporary anarchism and was often mentioned in the same breath as Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta.
Shortly before her death, when returning from her exile in London, Michel had been dubbed "the angel of petrol", "the virago of the rabble" and "queen of the scum" by the conservative French press. In turn, Charles Ferdinand Gambon compared her to Jeanne d'Arc in reference to her role in the Paris Commune. This imagery was further propagandized by Edmond Lepelletier in 1911.
Her funeral in Paris was attended by more than 100,000 people and memorial services were held all over France and in London.
Louise Michel’s legacy lived on. She is remembered in Paris through a metro station, a square near Sacré-Cœur, and a stamp issued in her honor. Today, a commemorative plaque at the hotel honours her memory, and her grave in the cemetery of Levallois-Perret—a wealthy suburb of Paris—has become a pilgrimage site.
At the time of her funeral, this suburb was still considered revolutionary ground.But her influence extends far beyond France. She is commemorated in the Louise Michel Sports Club in London, a radical sports club for people involved in the workers’ movement. The London-based Strawberry Thieves Socialist Choir sing ‘Danse de Bombe’, which Michel composed at the time of the Paris Commune.
Throughout her life, she fought for social equality, for education, for freedom, and for better living conditions for everyone. It is therefore no coincidence that the boat paid for by the British street artist Banksy to rescue refugees in the Mediterranean is named 'Louise Michel' .
She inspired feminist and anarchist movements worldwide, in the collective imagination. proving that one woman’s courage could spark global change, .her commitment to social justice, her caring for all life, her passion for learning and teaching, her striving for women’s rights and democracy in general, her unselfish work on behalf of others, her strong moral stance, and her unfailing courage set a mark to inspire anyone.
