Nathalie Lemel - Fighting For The Commune

Fighting For The Commune

The insurrection began on 18 March 1871. After that date, Lemel was very active in the women's clubs where she often made speeches. These speeches helped to create, with Elisabeth Dmitrieff (a relation of Karl Marx), the Union des femmes (Union of Women), on 11 April, of which she became member of the central committee.

On 26 March, following the elections, a revolutionary council was put in place, which counted people such as Jules Vallès, Charles Delescluzes, Raoul Rigault, Gustave Flourens, and Eugène Varlin. The city of Paris was going to be governed by the Commune until the Bloody Week (Semaine sanglante) when, on 21 May, Versailles troops entered the city; this week ended on the 28th, with the final battle at the Père Lachaise cemetery. During this period, Nathalie Lemel was on the side of the barricades next to la place Blanche (on rue Pigalle). On top of her fighting against the police, she also cared for the wounded.

After the defeat of the Commune, the War Council condemned her to deportation and exile in the Nouvelle-Calédonie penal colony. She embarked on board the Virginie, on the same convoy as Henri Rochefort and Louise Michel. Nathalie Lemel and Louise Michel were strongly opposed to separating the women at the deportation site. Nevertheless, they arrived five days after the men, on 14 December 1873, on the peninsula Ducos, where they ended up sharing the same cell; it is possible that she had a certain influence on her cellmate. She had to wait for the amnesty in 1880, enacted by President Félix Faure, before returning to Paris. She was later employed by the newspaper L'Intransigeant and continued her fight for women's rights.

She died in 1921 in the hospice of Ivry-sur-Seine, in Val-de-Marne.