PAYEN Alix (née MILLIET Louise, Alix) (1842 - 1903)

Alix Payen, née Milliet, was a French Communard ambulance driver. She is best known for her correspondence with her family, which was published after her death by her brother, the painter Paul Milliet.

Married at the age of 19 to Henri Payen, a sergeant in the Garde Nationale, she decided to follow him wherever he went to fight. She signed up as an ambulance driver with the ^153rd Battalion of the ^XIth Legion. For a month, from April to May 1871, she was at the fort in Issy, the fort in Vanves, in the trenches in Clamart, in Levallois and then in Neuilly. She wrote letters to her family back in Paris, recounting daily life in the middle of the fighting.

Her husband was wounded and suffering from tetanus, so she withdrew to Paris at the end of May to look after him. He died during the last days of the Commune. She managed to escape Versailles repression and retired to the Fourierist phalanstery "La colonie" near Rambouillet.

Alix's letters did not appear until after her death, and are an exceptional and remarkable testimony, particularly with regard to the details of the defence of Paris besieged by the Versaillais. Michèle Audin has had her writings published by Libertalia in 2020, under the title " C'est la nuit surtout que le combat devient furieux".

MILLIET Paul (1844 - 1918)

He was Alix Payen's brother and published her correspondence after the Commune. He was a painter and writer.

Under the Paris Commune, he was a lieutenant in the 1st company of the 1st engineer battalion, in charge of accommodation in the Lowendal barracks. On 17 September 1872, the 14th council of war sentenced him in absentia to deportation to a fortified enclosure and to degradation. He was amnestied in 1879.
He had been hidden in the La Colonie phalanstery, founded and run by his father in Condé-sur-Vèsgre, near Rambouillet. He managed to escape to Rome, where he settled in May 1872.

In January 1898, he signed the first Dreyfus petition.