[Comic strip] Louise Michel (May 29, 1830 - January 9, 1905) - PDF

Daughter of a servant and certainly the son of the chatelains for whom her mother works, Louise Michel was born at the castle of Vroncourt-la-Côte in the East of France (Haute-Marne). She grows up with her mother, pampered by « her grandparents », receiving a liberal education and good education.In 1852, she obtained the necessary diploma to become a teacher and opened a free school. After a few years of teaching in Haute-Marne, Louise Michel decided to settle in Paris where she found a job as a teacher in a boarding school.

In 1865, she sold her property to buy an externship in the XVIIIe arr. of Paris (North-West). She teaches there, while having charitable activities.

From 1869, she followed the courses of popular instruction organized by republicans and thus began her political and militant commitment. In besieged Paris (september 1870), Louise Michel attended the Republican committee of vigilance of the XVIIIe arr.

She participates, until the end, in all the actions of the Commune.

Incarcerated at Versailles, Louise Michel was very dignified and courageous during her trial during which she was sentenced to deportation to a fortified enclosure.

After two years in prison and four months by boat, Louise Michel arrived on the coast of New Caledonia in December 1873, East of Australia.

Louise Michel is amazed by the beauty of this land of exil and is immediately interested in the culture and manners of the Canacs, supporting them during their revolt in 1878. After five years of detention, she can settle in Noumea where she resumes her activities as a school teacher. In 1880, the General Amnesty of the Communards allowed her to return to France.

Until her death, Louise will be, for twenty-five years, a tireless activist.

She travels through France, England, Holland and Belgium to give thousands of lectures, interspersed with periods of imprisonment.

In January 1888, during a public meeting in Le Havre, a man attempts to kill her by firing two shots of a revolver. She is hit in the temple and doctors will never be able to remove the bullet that remains lodged near her brain.

During a lecture tour in the Alps, she caught cold and died of pneumonia in Marseille on January 9, 1905. Her body was brought back to Paris, and on January 22, 1905, a huge crowd followed her coffin through the streets to the cemetery in Levallois-Perret, bordering the XVIIIe arr. of Paris.