As we commemorate the #SemaineSanglante - crushing of the Paris Commune 149 years ago this week - today I'm focusing on Victorine Brocher... cantiniere of the Turcos de la Commune, and her action at the Bastille on Weds 24 May.... 
By 24 May the Communards had been pushed out of the Hotel de Ville and were defending the Bastille/Place de Voges. Victorine's unit took position at 3 Boulevard Beaumarchais (now a pharmacy) with an excellent field of fire over the entire intersection...
Victorine's husband was a regular soldier in an elite unit, which partially went over to the Commune - so not a National Guard battalion. They were called the Turcos de la Commune, and were similar to zouaves... she was technically the cantiniere...
They were shelled and outflanked: Victorian tried to place a red flag on a barricade but in the process several of the unit got killed... so they retreated towards Belleville...
Victorian survived and wrote the memoir Souvenirs d'une mort vivante... which I will come back to on the 26/28th - she ended up in Lausanne and married the anarchist leader Gustave Brocher...
Her original name was Victorine Louise Malenfant. This carte de visite in Northwestern University's collection is labelled "Louise Bonenfant, cantiniere". Side by side with her in later life it looks possible they are the same person. Any face recognition experts out there???
Victorine and Gustave rocked up in London just in time for the famous anarchist conference of 1891, where the census captures them living in Akerman Road, near Kennington, where I live! With a house full of, er, youngish anarchist sounding people and of course a servant...
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