Louise Michel: a leading light and feminist figure in the Paris Commune

The Paris Commune, a working-class insurrection which seized and ruled Paris for three months in 1871, marked its 150th anniversary on 18th of March. Women played a major role in the revolt and none more so than firebrand Louise Michel.

Michel was a teacher, writer, and revolutionary, committed to education for all, especially girls and women.

She opened classes and schools in working class neighbourhoods in Paris.  

In her Mémoires (1886) she wrote that “the role of schoolteachers [...] is to give people the intellectual means to rebel”.  

She did just that, working only in free schools that refused to pledge allegiance to Emperor Napoleon III and defended the right to sing La Marseillaise, banned at the time.

When France capitulated to the Prussian army in late 1870, she was quick to join the bakers, tailors, seamstresses and other workers who rose up in opposition to the pro-monarchist government. On 18th of March 1871 they took over government buildings and seized power. A square in Montmartre, where the revolt began, carries her name.

The Paris Commune held the city for 72 days and Michel played a major role driving ambulances and using her formidable oratorical prowess to rally the masses to take up arms against the government.

Armed with a Remington rifle, she fought as part of the 61st batallion of Montmartre. She plotted the assassination of Adolphe Thiers, the chief executive of the French national government, but comrades persuaded her not to.

For her detractors she was a "blood-thirsty wolf";  for the French writer Victor Hugo, one of her many admirers, she was "Viro Major"- greater than a man.

The Paris Commune came to an abrupt halt with the "Bloody Week" (21 to 28 May) when at least 20,000 Communards died on the barricades, or were shot by firing squads.

Michel survived, but handed herself over to the authorities on 24 May in exchange for her mother's release.

The war council found her guilty of trying to overthrow the government, a charge she readily admitted to.

"If you are not cowards, kill me!" she told the judges during her trial.

They refrained, and she was deported to a penal colony in New Caledonia. During her seven years on the island she continued her political activism, supporting the Kanak revolt and teaching.

Convinced that the 1871 revolution had failed, she turned to anarchism.

When, in July 1880, Communards were offered a general amnesty, Michel returned to France and began defending anarchist ideology all over Europe.

On 9th of March 1883 she took part in a protest in support of the unemployed, waving a flag she had concocted from an old black skirt and a broomstick. It's believed to be the earliest known use of the  black flag or anarchism.

She defended the cause through to her death in 1905.  More than 100,000 people attended her funeral. 

Michel holds a special place in the history of Paris. She is the only woman to have a metro station named exclusively after her.

This story first appeared in the Spotlight on France podcast. Listen here