Béatrix Excoffon

Béatrix Excoffon, born Julia Euvrie or Œuvrie (10 July 1849 - 30 December 1916) was a militant communard who served as an ambulance nurse during the Paris Commune in 1871.[1] She was vice-president of the Club des Femmes de la Boule Noire, and was known as "the republican".[2]

Life

Excoffon was born in Cherbourg on 10 July 1849.[3] In 1870, she was living in Paris with her partner, François, a printer. They had two children.[1]

In La Commune, Louise Michel relates that Sophie Poirier, Blin, and Excoffon asked her to join them in creating the Comité de vigilance de Montmartre.[4] That committee then organized the Club des Femmes de la Boule Noire, and Excoffon became its vice-president. Sophie Poirier became its president.[2] She requisitioned an apartment at 32 rue des Acacias in Paris, where she lived, for the use of the Vigilance Committee.[3]

At a meeting of the club of the Salle Ragache at the beginning of April, she said, "there are enough of us to attend to the wounded."[5] On 3 April 1871, Excoffon took part in a women's march to Versailles, where the National Assembly was located, reminiscent of the march of October 1789.[1] Excoffon set up a mobile ambulance at Fort d'Issy for the Enfants-Perdus for a fortnight.[6] Excoffon's ambulance[7][1] was joined by Alix Payen, who first became an ambulance nurse on the day her husband was wounded in the eye.[8]

During Bloody Week, when the Versailles troops entered Paris, Excoffon defended place Blanche at the barricades on 23 May 1871[1] along with Élisabeth Dmitrieff, Nathalie Lemel, Blanche Lefebvre, and Malvina Poulain, also an ambulance nurse.[9] 120 women delayed General Clinchant's troops before retreating, exhausted and low on ammunition, to place Pigalle.[10][11]

After the end of the Commune, she was detained at Satory,[3] along with Louise Michel.[12] The 4th Court Martial condemned her to deportation to a fortress on 13 October 1871.[1] She was then imprisoned in Auberive.[3][13] Louise Michel asked Victor Hugo to intervene on her behalf, since her parents and brother-in-law had died recently.[13] Her sentence was reduced to ten years of imprisonment on 28 March 1872, and reduced further by one year on 15 August 1876.[3] Finally, Excoffon made an act of submission and her sentence was commuted, resulting in her release on 26 November 1878.[12][1]

Excoffon and her partner married on 5 September 1874.[1]

References

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h "Excoffon Béatrix [née Euvrie Julia]". Le Maitron. 26 July 2009. Retrieved 2 September 2020.
  2. ^ a b Fauré 2004, p. 378.
  3. ^ a b c d e Rey, Gayat & Pepino 2013, p. 123.
  4. ^ Louise Michel (1898). "Les femmes de 70". La Commune (PDF). Paris: Editions Stock, collection Stock+plus, 1978. p. 174..
  5. ^ "Quelques clubs sous le Siège et la Commune - Maitron". maitron.fr. Retrieved 2021-03-09..
  6. ^ Thomas 1963, p. 158-159; Thomas 1966, p. 137.
  7. ^ Dolorès Martín Moruno (2014). ""Le temps des cerises": The Ambulance Women in the Paris Commune". Bulletin of the UK Association for the History of Nursing. 3 (3): 44 à 56..
  8. ^ Michèle Audin (2018). "Lettres d'Alix Payen (3) Alix au fort d'Issy". La Commune de Paris..
  9. ^ Bibia Pavard; Florence Rochefort; Michelle Zancarini-Fournel (2020-09-03). Ne nous libérez pas, on s'en charge (in French). La Découverte. p. 543. ISBN 978-2-348-05567-6. Retrieved 2020-10-28..
  10. ^ Linton, Marisa; Hivet, Christine (1997). "Les femmes et la Commune de Paris de 1871". Revue Historique. 298 (1 (603)): 44. ISSN 0035-3264. JSTOR 40956129. Retrieved 2020-10-29..
  11. ^ Thomas, Edith (1971). "The Women of the Commune". The Massachusetts Review. 12 (3): 416. ISSN 0025-4878. JSTOR 25088134. Retrieved 2020-10-30..
  12. ^ a b Michel, Louise (2000). Histoire de ma vie. Presses Universitaires Lyon. p. 170. ISBN 978-2-7297-0648-7. Retrieved 2020-10-27.
  13. ^ a b Thomas 1980, p. 132.

Bibliography

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.