Louise Michel

French socialist heroine of the 1871 Paris Commune, working under the pseudonym "Clémence." Born in a chateau of a servant and the son of the lord of the house, she was given a privileged upbringing by her father's parents. Given a good education and trained as a teacher, she developed socialist sympathies and became an ardent anti-Bonapartist. Because of her political views, she could not teach in a school run by the state. Moving to Paris and living in the Montmartre section, she became engaged in revolutionary politics and works of charity, becoming an ambulance woman and treating those on the barricades. Equal in passion to her socialistic views were her ideas about women's roles and equality of the sexes.

Victor Hugo's poem "Viro Major" was written in her honor. A prolific writer, resistance worker and organizer, she was exiled to New Caledonia in 1873, returning to Paris in 1880 when amnesty was granted. In 1881, she was arrested for anti-government activities and she was sentenced to six years in prison. Pardoned, she spent several years in London. She died January 9, 1905, age 74.