During the 1871 Paris Commune, the people of Paris created the world’s first socialist state.
It was a moment of high drama in French history, where the suffering of the people under Louis-Napoleon III’s Second Empire, followed by the starvation, hunger and violence of the Prussian Siege, saw the people of Paris spontaneously seize power in a ‘peaceful’ Revolution.
For seventy-two days, Paris ruled herself: and built a society with new laws that we might now consider features of modern democracy: free education, the separation of church and state, social welfare, fair work measures, the recognition of common law marriages, the abolition of the death penalty and the opening up of museums and art galleries to the public.
Yet the French government attacked the Commune, and ten weeks later, killed forty thousand of its own citizens – men, women and children – during one ‘Bloody Week’. After Bloody Week, another 40,000 prisoners were taken to trial in Versailles, including 8,000 poor women, known as ‘pétroleuses’ (petrol girls), who were accused of setting fire to Paris: they were found guilty largely on the basis of their sexual histories.
Louise Michel in the Paris Commune
Louise was the first to raise the alarm when events began on March 18, 1871, as she had been sleeping the night at the National Guard Headquarters in rue de Rosiers, where the first shot was fired in the early hours of the morning. On discovering that the government planned to steal the cannons of the people, she escaped and ran through the streets of Montmartre, waking everyone up. The people confronted the soldiers, and the Revolution was made.
During the Commune, Louise organised and spoke at the clubs, maintained a school of several hundred children, and worked as both an ambulance nurse and a soldier on the battlefield. When Versailles breached the city walls, she returned and fought on the barricades until the very end. However, on returning home she discovered that her mother had been captured, and so she turned herself in, to take her mother’s place.
Louise was then marched to Chantiers prison in Versailles, under great violence and degradation. Every day of her imprisonment she was told she would be killed the next day. But instead she was eventually questioned and sent to trial before the Military courts.
Louise defended herself in an electric testimony, where she said, amongst other things, Since it seems that any heart that beats for liberty has only the right to a lump of lead, I demand my share… if you are not cowards, kill me.
The military tribunals, cowed by her popular support, and confused by her contradictory presentation as both a virgin, saint, educated woman, illegitimate daughter and cross-dressing warrior, did not kill her, but instead exiled her to New Caledonia.
Louise was amongst the accused, and defended herself in an electric testimony, where she said, amongst other things, Since it seems that any heart that beats for liberty has only the right to a lump of lead, I demand my share… if you are not cowards, kill me. The military tribunals, cowed by her popular support, and confused by her contradictory presentation as both a virgin, saint, educated woman, illegitimate daughter and cross-dressing warrior, did not kill her, but instead exiled her to New Caledonia.
While in New Caledonia, Louise developed close relationships with the indigenous Kanaks, writing the first kanak-French dictionary and recording her observations of their society and culture in her book
The Commune and its events deeply marked Louise, and most of the art and writing she created for the rest of her life referred to the Commune, both directly and indirectly. The violence and democratic failures that occurred during the Commune were also a likely cause of her later attachment to the anarchist cause.