What did Louise Michel say on 3 June 1886?
The text about the meeting in Louise Michel’s memoirs was written long after the event, in 1904 to be precise. It is interesting that the words she used in her memoirs were the words pronounced by a witness for the prosecution during the trial on August 10, 1886. Here she stood trial on the accusation of inciting violence in her speech of June 3 in the Chateu d’eau Theater. Probably this is because when she wrote this part of her memoirs, she only had some newspaper clippings of the trial at hand and not of the actual meeting. In her archive at the IISH on this event we also only find information on the trial.
See Louise Michel papers inventory no 1053 below, or download as pdf.
The crucial passage in the memoirs reads as follows:
Ces gens-là ceux qui nous gouvernent sont des voleurs et des assassins, on arrête les voleurs, on tue les assassins, tous ces gens-là : à l’eau à l’eau. From: Louise Michel, Mémoires de Louise Michel, (Bruxelles, 2005). 508.
In translation : All those people over there who govern us, they are thieves and killers. One arrests thieves, one kills murderers, all those people over there: to the water, to the water.
This was what was reproduced at the trial, some seven weeks after the words were spoken. Louise Michel even helped the hostile witness to reproduce her incriminating words.
In the police archives of Paris there is a handwritten report. But it is undated, so we do not actually know how much time elapsed between the meeting and this report. This report quotes:
Ces gens-là sont des voleurs et des assassins – On arrête les voleurs, on tue les assassins.…. . …. . Il faut qu’on soit honnête, que celui qui produit ne crêve pas de faim. …. . …. .
C’est bien d’être à la tête du gouvernement, d’emploi ses proches, d’acheter des biens à l’étranger, c’est là où ils s'enfuiront le jour de la révolution. Tous ces gens-là : à l’eau à l’eau. (Archives de la préfecture de police (BA-1185))
In translation : All those people over there are thieves and killers – One arrests thieves, one kills murderers. ….. It is necessary to be just, the one who produces should not perish of hunger. … . … . It is a good thing to be at the head of the government, to give jobs to dear ones, and abroad is where they will flee the day the revolution breaks out. All those people over there: to the water, to the water.
In the memoirs Michel states that what she really said was even worse ('pire'). She used the opportunity before the court to make propaganda for the social revolution again. As she always did. She conducted her own defense and was sentenced to four months in prison.
In the next chapter, five reports from the French daily press written immediately after the Chateau d’Eau meeting are reproduced.