MICHEL  , CL$MENCE

LOUISE (1830-1905), French anarchist, called la Vierge rouge de Montmartre, was born at the chateau of Vroncourt (Haute-Marne) on the 29th of May 1830, the daughter of a serving-maid, Marianne Michel, and the son of the house, Etienne Charles Demahis . She was brought up by her father's parents, and received a liberal education . After her grandfather's death in 185o she was trained to teach, but her refusal to acknowledge Napoleon III. prevented her from serving in a state school . She found her way in 1866 to a school in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, where she threw herself ardently into works of charity and revolutionary politics . She became violently anti-Bonapartist, and is said to have meditated the assassination of Napoleon . During the siege of Paris she joined the ambulance service, and untiringly preached resistance to the Prussians . On the establishment of the Commune she joined the National Guard . She offered to shoot Thiers, and suggested the destruction of Paris by way of vengeance for its surrender . She was with the Communards who made their last stand in the cemetery of Montmartre, and was closely allied with Theodore Ferri', who was executed in November 1871 . This ardent attachment was perhaps one of the sources of the exaltation which marked her career, and gave many handles to her enemies . When she was brought before the 6th council of war in December 1871 she defied her judges and defended the Commune . She was sent as a convict to New Caledonia, among her companions being Henri Rochefort, who remained her friend till the day of her death .

The

amnesty of 188o found her revolutionary ardour unchanged . 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 sametime as Prince 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 . She returned to France in 1895, and in 1902 was back in London . She was touring France and lecturing on behalf of anarchist propaganda when she died at Marseilles on the loth of January 1905 . Her Memoires (Paris, 1886) contain accounts of her trials . See also La Bonne Louise (Paris, 1906), by E . Girault .