Biography
Louise Michel was born at the Château of Vroncourt (Haute-Marne) on 29 May 1830, the daughter of a serving-maid, Marianne Michel, and the daughter of the châtelain, Etienne Charles Demahis.
She was brought up by her father's parents and received a liberal education. After her grandfather's death in 1850 she was trained to teach, but her refusal to acknowledge Napoleon III prevented her from serving in a state school. She became violently anti-Bonapartist, and is even said to have contemplated the assassination of Napoleon III. In 1866 she found her way to a school in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, where she threw herself ardently into works of charity and revolutionary politics.
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