If we except Joan of Arc and poor Olympe de Gouges, guillotined by Robespierre for wanting to defend Louis XVI, no woman in our country, apart from queens and royal mistresses, has been as talked about as Louise Michel , the Red Virgin, the “maid of Belleville”, the “fairy of anarchy”.
She embodies for posterity the fight of the Communards against the Versailles.
But, through her very excesses, Louise Michel is above all the victim of the merciless fury desired and theorized by Adolphe Thiers.
This cynical and cunning republican had understood very well that it was necessary to bloodily crush the Commune in order to better rule out the last credible hope of monarchical restoration.
Indeed, as he declared, the “
Republic will be conservative or it will not be
”.
The repression of the Commune will carry out a “
true exorcism of the Revolution
” (Robert Tombs).
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