The 1871 Paris Commune was an accidental revolution that occurred in Paris after the fall of their last Emperor to the Prussians. 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, 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’. Afterwards, it forced around forty thousand more to military trials, and charged eight thousand women with setting fire to Paris: they were found guilty largely on the basis of their sexual histories.
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.