Grande Dame of Anarchy

Louise Michel

Louise Michel (French pronunciation: [lwiz miʃɛl]; 1830–1905) was a French anarchist, school teacher, medical worker, and important figure in the Paris Commune. She often used the pseudonym Clémence and was also known as The red virgin of Montmartre. Journalist Brian Doherty has called her the "French grande dame of anarchy."

Biography

Louise Michel was born at the Château of Vroncourt (Haute-Marne) on 29 May 1830, the illegitimate daughter of a serving-maid, Marianne Michel, and the châtelain, Etienne Charles Demahis.

She was brought up by her mother and her father's parents near the village of Vroncourt-la-Côte and received a liberal education. She became interested in traditional customs, folk myths and legends. After her grandfather's death in 1850 she was trained to teach, but her refusal to acknowledge Napoleon III prevented her from serving in a state school. She became violently anti-Bonapartist, and is even said to have contemplated the assassination of Napoleon III. In 1866 she found her way to a school in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, where she threw herself ardently into works of charity and revolutionary politics.

In 1869 a feminist group called the Société pour la Revendication du Droits Civils de la Femme (Society for the Demand of Civil Rights for Women) was announced by André Léo. Among the members of the group were Michel, Paule Minck, Eliska Vincent, Élie Reclus and his wife Néomie, Mme Jules Simon, Caroline de Barrau and Maria Deraismes. Because of the broad range of opinions, the group decided to focus on the subject of improving girls' education. Commonly known as the Revendication des Droits de la Femme (Demand for Women’s Rights), the group had close ties with the Société Cooperative des Ouriers et Ouvrierés (Cooperative Society of Men and Women Workers). The July 1869 manifesto of the group was thus signed by the wives of militant cooperative members. The manifesto was also supported by Sophie Doctrinal, signing with Citroyenne Poirier, who would late become a close associate of Michel in the Paris Commune. In January 1970 Michel and Léo attended the funeral of Victor Noir. Michel was disappointed that the death of Noir had not been used to overthrow the Empire. As Paris began to be besieged by the Prussians, in November 1870, Léo in a lecture declared "It is not a question of our practicing politics, we are human, that is all."

Paris Commune

During the Siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War, Michel untiringly preached resistance against the Prussians. On the establishment of the Paris Commune, she joined the National Guard. She offered to shoot Adolphe Thiers, President of the French Republic, and suggested the destruction of Paris as a form of vengeance against the victorious Prussians. She was also active as an ambulance woman treating those injured on the barricades.[citation needed]

According to the historian Carolyn Eichner, women like Michel played a key role in the Paris Commune. They not only chaired committees, but also built barricades and participated in the armed violence. Michel ideologically justified a militant revolution, proclaiming: “I descended the Butte, my rifle under my coat, shouting: Treason! . . . Our deaths would free Paris”. Yale historian John Merriman notes that Michel also embraced the cause of women's rights, arguing that one could not separate "the caste of women from humanity". Michel was at the end among the few militants who survived the Paris Commune and later reflected: "It is true, perhaps, that women like rebellions. We are no better than men in respect to power, but power has not yet corrupted us."

She was with the Communards, who made their last stand in the cemetery of Montmartre, and was closely allied with Théophile Ferré, who was executed in November 1871. Michel dedicated a moving farewell poem to Ferré, l’œillet rouge (The Red Carnation). Upon learning of this loss, Victor Hugo dedicated his poem Viro Major to Michel. This ardent attachment was perhaps one of the sources of the exaltation which marked Michel's career, and gave many handles to her enemies.

The text of the L’œillet rouge is as follows:

If were to go to the black cemetery Brothers, throw on your sister, As a final hope, Some red 'carnations' in bloom. In the final days of Empire, When the people were awakening, It was your smile red carnation which told us that all was being reborn. Today, go blossom in the shadow of the black and sad prisons. Go, bloom near the somber captive, And tell him/her truly that we love him/her. Tell that through fleeting time Everything belongs to the future That the livid-browed conqueror can die more surely than the conquered.

In December 1871, Michel was brought before the 6th council of war, charged with offences including trying to overthrow the government, encouraging citizens to arm themselves, and herself using weapons and wearing a military uniform. Defiantly, she vowed never to renounce the Commune, and dared the judges to sentence her to death. Reportedly, Michel told the court, "Since it seems that every heart that beats for freedom has no right to anything but a little slug of lead, I demand my share. If you let me live, I shall never cease to cry for vengeance."

She spent twenty months in prison and was sentenced to deportation.

At this time the Versailles press gave her the name la Louve rouge, la Bonne Louise (the red she-wolf, the good Louise).

Deportation

Michel was loaded onto the ship Virginie on 8 August 1873, to be deported to New Caledonia, where she arrived four months later. Whilst on board, she became acquainted with Henri Rochefort, a famous polemicist, who became her friend until her death. She also met Nathalie Lemel, another figure active in the commune. Most likely, it was this latter contact that led Louise to become an anarchist. She remained in New Caledonia for seven years, refusing special treatment reserved for women. Befriending the local Kanaks, she attempted to educate them and, unlike others in the commune, took their side in the 1878 Kanak revolt. She is even said to have sent the ringleader of the rebellion, Ataï, a piece of her scarf.

The following year, she received authorisation to become a teacher in Nouméa for the children of the deported—among them many Algerian Kabyles ("Kabyles du Pacifique") from Cheikh Mokrani's rebellion (1871)—and later in schools for girls.

Return to France

In 1880, amnesty was granted to the Communards and Michel returned to Paris, her revolutionary passion undiminished. She gave a public address on 21 November 1880 and continued her revolutionary activity in Europe, attending the anarchist congress in London in 1881, where she led demonstrations, spoke to huge crowds, and headed a libertarian school. Whilst in London, she also attended meetings at the Russell Square home of the Pankhursts where she made a particular impression on a young Sylvia Pankhurst.

She travelled throughout France, preaching revolution, and in 1883 she led a Paris mob which pillaged a baker's shop. For this she was condemned to six years' imprisonment, but was released in 1886, at the same time as Kropotkin and other prominent anarchists. After a short period of freedom, she was again arrested for making inflammatory speeches. She was soon liberated, but, hearing that her enemies hoped to intern her in a lunatic asylum, she fled to England in 1890. She returned to France in 1895, taking part in the agitation provoked by the Dreyfus affair in 1898, and from this time forward, she divided her time between conferences and stays with friends in London.

During a period of illness she visited Algeria. She was touring France and lecturing on behalf of anarchist causes when she died in Marseille on January 10, 1905. Her funeral in Paris drew an immense crowd that did not fail to impress contemporaries. Numerous orators spoke.

Michel's grave is in the cemetery of Levallois-Perret, in one of the suburbs of Paris. The grave is maintained by the community. This cemetery is also the last resting place of her friend and fellow communard Théophile Ferré.

Political theory

Michel once joked, "We love to have agents provocateurs in the party, because they always propose the most revolutionary motions." Michel's political ideas evolved throughout her life. Once a teacher with progressive ideals, her activism saw her embrace revolutionary socialism, but the experience of a failed revolution turned her into a radical anarchist. Her political theory progressed from peaceful reform to violent revolution, because she came to believe that contemporary society had to be completely destroyed for a new egalitarian era to emerge. The many years she spent in prison and in the French penal colony New Caledonia were central to her change of heart.

Michel's political theory had its roots in the aftermath of the French Revolution, which was followed by a series of monarchies. Two prevailing theories emerged. There were those who believed that the Reign of Terror that followed the revolution was proof that democracy was flawed. Business people who feared the wage labourers thought that the best way to protect their business was to align with the politically powerful. For the economy to succeed, it was necessary to control the labour market, wages and working conditions. This theory was prevalent among the ruling elites of the post-revolutionary monarchies. Thus few labour reforms were enacted. When France in 1874 outlawed child labour, it was the last European country to do so. On the other hand, French romanticism emerged in the early 19th century and reinterpreted the French Revolution as the tangible spirit of the French people. In its early stages French romanticism focused on the individual and the pursuit of happiness. But in the 1840s romanticism in France shifted, because it became accepted that individual happiness could not be achieved in isolation. Romanticism became preoccupied with social progress and reform. Writers embarked on a quest to realistically portray the lives of the working poor. Victor Hugo and Emile Zola emerged as key writers who shaped French romanticism as cultural legacy of the French Revolution.

Shortly after Michel was born in 1830 a constitutional monarchy had been established through a short-lived revolt. Louis Philippe I encouraged commercial interests and the enrichment of the upper-middle class through colonization and penal transportation, but at the same time practiced laissez-faire when the socio-economic plight of the working class was concerned. Michel first made a name for herself by publicly defending the poor and working class women. In the 1860s she became a republican activist. She vehemently opposed Emperor Napoleon III policies. Napoleon III curtailed the civil and political rights of the French citizens and enacted economic policies that crushed the working class. She signed a number of her political writings with Enjolras, the name of the revolutionary in Hugo's Les Misérables.

In 1865 she provocatively wrote a new Marseillaise, the call to arms during the French Revolution. In her Marseillaise, Michel called for a mass uprising of the people to defend the republic, arguing that martyrdom was preferable to defeat. This sentiment would be echoes in her subsequently published poetry, plays and novels. Unlike her contemporaries Michel repeatedly lamented the violent treatment of children and the gory abuse of animals. Michel's political characters fought for justice, while the children and animals in her fictional works were too weak, sick and starved to resist or survive.

When Emperor Napoleon III and his army were captured by the Prussians in 1870, the French Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris. But the provisional government continued the war against the Prussians and a four-month siege of Paris resulted in bleak hardship. Parisians starved and froze to death. Some managed to save themselves by eating cats, dogs and rats. The government surrendered, but Michel and other Parisians had taken up arms and organised themselves as a National Guard. When the Paris Commune was proclaimed Michel was named head of the Women's Vigilance Committee and played a key role in initiating economic and social reforms. Michel pushed through the separation of church and state, initiated educational reforms and codified rights for workers. When the Paris Commune was crushed in May 1871 Michel witnessed unrelenting bloodshed and the summary execution of thousands. In her memoirs she expressed the hope that the heroic death of her comrades would bring about a new era. When Michel was trialled, she demanded to be killed by firing squad and proclaimed "If you let me live, I shall never stop crying for vengeance, and I shall avenge my brothers by denouncing the murderers". The military court refused to make her a martyr.

Michel was imprisoned for two years before she was deported. While in prison she demanded to be treated just like the other prisoners and rejected efforts by her friends Hugo and Georges Clemenceau to have her sentence commuted. She considered preferential treatment a dishonour. On the four months journey to New Caledonia Michel re-examined her believe in revolutionary socialism. She embraced anarchism and for the rest of her life rejected all forms of government. In 1896 she wrote about her change of mind:

"I considered the things, events and people of the past. I thought about the behaviour of our friends of the Commune: they were scrupulous, so afraid of exceeding their authority, that they never threw their full energies into anything but the loss of their own lives. I quickly came to the conclusion that good men in power are incompetent, just as bad men are evil, and therefore it is impossible for liberty ever to be associated with any form of power whatsoever."

Michel was introduced to the tenets of anarchism by a fellow prisoner Nathalie Lemel, with whom she was imprisoned in a large cage for several months. Michel became known for her selfless generosity and devotion to others. In the penal colony she lived in voluntary poverty, giving away her books, clothes and any money she acquired. Michel took up teaching again. She spent time with the indigenous Canaques, teaching them French so that they could challenge the French authorities. Michel supported them in their revolt against the colonial power.

When she returned to Paris in November 1880 she was greeted by Henri Rochefort, Clemenceau, a crowd of 20,000 and the police. She soon began her career as a public speaker and found an audience all over Europe. In 1882 she staged her first anarchist play Nadine, assisted by Maxime Lisbonne, a fellow veteran of the Paris Commune who had also turned anarchist in New Caledonia. In the late 1880s she authored several works in which she revisited the themes of her earlier works, but also portrayed the demise of the old order and its replacement with a society of equals. Utopian fiction was at the time frequently published by mainstream and anarchist authors. Michel, who had previously thought that a violent death was the be-all and end-all of a revolutionary, embarked on a journey towards a new political philosophy. The revolutionary characters in The Strike expected to die, but instead they gave life to a new age and Michel discussed the rights and responsibilities of the people who lived in the aftermath of a revolution. She staged her plays in accordance with Jean Grave's theory on audience participation. The audience was integrated through a political and artistic program of lectures, poems and songs. The audience was encouraged to react and re-enact the conflicts of the plays.

In her plays The Human Microbes (1886), Crimes of the Times (1888) and The Bordello (1890) an agricultural utopia emerges out of a devastated Europe. Michel's political ideals owed much to the French romanticism of Victor Hugo and are described at length in The New Era, Last Thought, Memories of Caledonia (1887):

"It is indeed time that this old world die since no one is safe any longer... We can no longer live like our Stone Age ancestors, nor as in the past century, since the series of inventions, since the discoveries of science have brought the certainty that all production will increase a hundredfold when these innovations will be used for the general good, instead of letting just a handful of vultures help themselves in order to starve the rest."

In her memoirs Michael said that the Anarchist Manifesto of Lyon (1883) precisely expressed her views. The Manifesto had been signed by Peter Kropotkin, Émile Gautier, Joseph Bernard, Pierre Martin and Toussaint Bordat. Kropotkin, like Jules Guesde and Émile Pouget would become close friends and associates of her. Instead of focusing on violent revolution, as she had done in her earlier works, she emphasised the spontaneous uprising of the people. Unlike some anarchist contemporaries, she rejected terror as a means to bring about a new era. She wrote "Tyrannicide is practical only when tyranny has a single head, or at most a small number of heads. When it is a hydra, only the Revolution can kill it". She took the view that it is best, if the leaders of such a revolution would perish, so that the people would not be burdened with surviving general staff. Michel sought that "power is evil" and in her mind history was the story of free people being enslaved. In a 1882 speech she said "All revolutions have been insufficient because they have been political". Organisation was, in her mind, not necessary. Because the poor and exploited would rise up and through their sheer numbers would force the old order to shrivel up.

Legacy

Michel was among the most influential French political figures in the second half of the 19th century. She was also one of the most powerful women political theorists of her day. Her publications on social justice for the poor and the cause of the working classes were read in France and all over Europe. When she died in 1905 she was mourned by thousands. Memorial services were held all over France and in London. Although her writings are today forgotten, her name is remembered in the names of French streets, schools and parks.

Publications

• À travers la vie, poetry, Paris, 1894.

• Le Bâtard impérial, by L. Michel and J. Winter, Paris, 1883.

• Le claque-dents, Paris.

• La Commune, Paris, 1898.

• Contes et légendes, Paris, 1884.

• Les Crimes de l'époque, nouvelles inédites, Paris, 1888.

• Défense de Louise Michel, Bordeaux, 1883.

• L'Ère nouvelle, pensée dernière, souvenirs de Calédonie (prisoners' songs), Paris, 1887

• La Fille du peuple par L. Michel et A. Grippa, Paris (1883) Fleurs et ronces, poetry, Paris,

• Le Gars Yvon, légende bretonne, Paris, 1882.

• Lectures encyclopédiques par cycles attractifs, Paris, 1888.

• Ligue internationale des femmes révolutionnaires, Appel à une réunion. Signed "Louise Michel", Paris, 1882.

• Le livre du jour de l'an : historiettes, contes et légendes pour les enfants, Paris, 1872.

• Lueurs dans l'ombre. Plus d'idiots, plus de fous. L'âme intelligente. L'idée libre. L'esprit lucide de la terre à Dieu... Paris, 1861.

• Manifeste et proclamation de Louise Michel aux citoyennes de Paris, Signed "Louise Maboul", Paris, 1883.

• Mémoires, Paris, 1886, t. 1.

• Les Méprises, grand roman de mœurs parisiennes, par Louise Michel et Jean Guêtré, Paris, 1882.

• Les Microbes humains, Paris, 1886. (translated by Brian Stableford as The Human Microbes, ISBN 978-1-61227-116-3)

• La Misère by Louise Michel, 2nd part, and Jean Guêtré 1st part, Paris, 1882.

• Le Monde nouveau, Paris, 1888 (translated by Brian Stableford as The New World, ISBN 978-1-61227-117-0)

• Louise Michel à Victor Hugo, lettres de prison et du bagne (1871–1879) "Nous reviendrons foule sans ombre", lettres de prison et du bagne (1871–1879), adaptation de Virginie Berling, coll. Scènes intempestives à Grignan, ed. TriArtis, Paris 2016, ISBN 978-2-916724-78-2.

Posthumous

• Vol. I. Avant la Commune. Preface by Laurent Tailhade, Alfortville, 1905.

• Les Paysans by Louise Michel et Émile Gautier, Paris, Incomplete.

• Prise de possession, Saint-Denis, 1890.

• Le Rêve (in a work by Constant Martin), Paris, 1898.

• Légendes et chants de gestes canaques. Présentation. Gérard Oberlé. Edition 1900. 1988.

• Je vous écris de ma nuit, correspondance générale, 1850-1904, edition established by Xavière Gauthier, Édition de Paris-Max Chaleil, 1999.

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