Parisian seamstress, Eulalie Papavoine (1846 – 1875) served as an ambulance attendant during the Paris Commune. Like others, she will suffer from the myth of the oily one.
Seamstress in Paris
We know very little about the life of Eulalie Papavoine before the Paris Commune, an insurrection that broke out in the spring of 1871 when she was 24 years old. Eulalie was born on November 11, 1846 in Auxerre and moved to Paris where she worked as a seamstress. Without having a family connection with him, she shares the surname of a criminal executed in 1825 for a double murder, an unfortunate homonym which may play a role during his trial.
When the Paris Commune started in March 1871, Eulalie was not married but lived in concubinage with Rémy Balthazar, an engraver, with whom she had a child. Federated Corporal of the 135th Battalion of the National Guard, Rémy takes part in the events of the Commune, and Eulalie follows him.
The Paris Commune
The French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the siege of Paris by German troops in the winter of 1870 – 1871 and the armistice signed in January 1871 are the triggers for the Paris Commune; many Parisians, who had suffered siege and famine, wanted to continue the war. But this insurrection also finds its roots in the particularly harsh living conditions of the workers of the time, working very hard for poverty wages, as well as a certain thirst for democracy.
On March 18, 1871, the government of Adolphe Thiers sought to disarm the National Guard by requisitioning the cannons paid for by the people of Paris and stored on the Montmartre hill. The population and the National Guard oppose it, and the soldiers sent refuse to fire. This is the start of the uprising. The government left Paris for Versailles and, the next day, elections were announced for a Council of the Commune.
The uprising will last about two months. Two months punctuated by conflicts with Versailles, and during which the Commune set up a policy close to self-management and took numerous social measures:opening up citizenship to foreigners, requisition of workshops and organization of self-managed workshops, recognition free unions, municipal canteens… Like Louise Michel, many women are involved in the Commune, on the barricades as well as in day-to-day management. The experience came to a tragic end when the revolt was bloodily suppressed during the Bloody Week from May 21 to 28, 1871. The repression was brutal:thousands of people were massacred, tens of thousands of others arrested and judged by more.
The oily myth
Eulalie Papavoine is one of those women who participate in the Commune. She follows her companion and father of her child, Rémy Balthazar, during fights in Neuilly, Issy, Vanves and Levallois; she herself does not fight but serves as an ambulance, administering first aid to the wounded before taking them to the hospital.
Eulalie is arrested after Bloody Week and accused of being a ringleader. Like other women, she is suspected of being a "petroleum", an arsonist responsible for the numerous fires that ravaged the buildings of the city during the fighting. The myth, propagated by the press, harms many women and remains tenacious today, even though no woman will be condemned as an arsonist. Eulalie denies having participated in the fires and the fighting, and only admits having helped the wounded. During her trial, she indicated that she wanted "to follow the fate of [her] lover".
In September 1871, Eulalie was sentenced to deportation and forced labor. In detention, she marries her companion Rémy Balthazar, also imprisoned, to legitimize her son. Of her conviction, Louise Michel wrote:
“Eulalie Papavoine was, by chance of her name, condemned to hard labor; it was not even related to the legendary Papavoine, but we were only too happy to ring that name. »
Eulalie Papavoine died in May 1875 at the asylum in Châlons-sur-Marne.