Memoirs of a Revolutionist by Peter Kropotkin

Demands for our release were continually raised, both in the press and in the Chamber of Deputies -- the more so as about the same time that we were condemned Louise Michel was condemned, too, for robbery! Louise Michel -- who always gives literally her last shawl or cloak to the woman who is in need of it, and who never could be compelled, during her imprisonment, to have better food than her fellow prisoners, because she always gave them what was sent to her -- was condemned, together with another comrade, Pouget, to nine years' imprisonment for highway robbery! That sounded too bad even for the middle-class opportunists. She marched one day at the head of a procession of the unemployed, and, entering a baker's shop, took a few loaves from it and distributed them to the hungry column: this was her robbery. The release of the anarchists thus became a war-cry against the government, and in the autumn of 1885 all my comrades save three were set at liberty by a decree of President Grévy. Then the outcry in behalf of Louise Michel and myself became still louder. However, Alexander III objected to it; and one day the prime minister, M. Freycinet, answering an interpellation in the Chamber, said that "diplomatic difficulties stood in the way of Kropotkin's release. " Strange words in the mouth of the prime minister of an independent country; but still stranger words have been heard since in connection with that ill-omened alliance of France with imperial Russia.

In the middle of January, 1886, both Louise Michel and Pouget, as well as the four of us who were still at Clairvaux, were set free.