<infobox> <title source="name"/> <image source="image">
</image> <group> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Relatives</label> <label>Affiliation</label> </group> <group> <header>Biographical information</header> <label>Marital status</label> <label>Date of birth</label> <label>Place of birth</label> <label>Date of death</label> <label>Place of death</label> </group> <group> <header>Physical description</header> <label>Species</label> <label>Gender</label> <label>Height</label> <label>Weight</label> <label>Eye color</label> </group> </infobox>Louise Michel (1830 - 1905) was an anarchist, feminist, schoolteacher, poet and important figure of the Paris Commune.
Life
Louise Michel was raised by her mother and paternal grandparents. Her love and understanding of everything downtrodden, human and animal alike, developed from her empathy with her childhood world. Her compassion and sensitivity to suffering grew, as she grew. This, along with her instinct to rebel against social inequalities, led her along the revolutionary path.
In January 1853 she took a position as a schoolmistress at Audelancourt. In the time she was teaching there, she constantly dreamed of going to Paris. When she did move there, she concentrated on teaching, on writing poetry and reading. In the little free time she had left, she attended lectures on physics, chemistry and law. These courses helped to quench her thirst for knowledge. While walking home at night through the streets of Paris, she began to see more of the impoverished victims of Parisian society. During the Franco-Prussian War she was arrested for organising a volunteer militia to against the Prussians. Upon her release a few weeks later, she provided food and shelter and organised protests. During the Paris Commune, she gave herself completely to the revolution, but the commune failed and she turned herself in to prevent her mother being executed. She was marched, along with other prisoners who were active in the commune, from Versailles to Satory. Along the way some were woken in the middle of the night, made dig their own graves and then shot. In total, there were about thirty thousand men, women and children executed. She was spared and deported to New Caledonia, meeting Natalie Lemel who introduced her to anarchism. She began to advocate for indigenous self-determination and revolution in New Caldeonia, and was granted amnesty in 1880 and returned to Paris.