Félix Milliet, born on July 19, 1811, in Valence and died on October 22, 1888, in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, was a French officer and then republican activist, poet and chansonnier.

After leaving the army, he became known for his politically committed songs, which he published in newspapers that were regularly banned by the July monarchy and then by the republican regime of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte.

He continued to write and publish songs, until one of them, Chansonnier impérial pour l'an de grâce 1853, led to him being sentenced to exile again, this time to London.

He owes his fame in part to his son Paul Milliet, who recounts his life in a family biography published in Charles Péguy's Cahiers de la Quinzaine in 1910.

[10] His circle of friends included the pedagogue and feminist Marie Carpantier, then director of the salle d'asile, an early form of nursery school,[10][11] the writer Louis Clément Silly, the Phalanstrian couple Trahan,[10] the radical publicist Napoléon Gallois,[alpha 2] the republican Édouard Prudhomme de La Boussinière, director of a workers' reading circle, Julien Chassevant,[alpha 3] a fervent follower of Charles Fourier, and Dr. Jacques François Barbier.

[alpha 4][8][9][12][13][14][15] With the families of the latter two, the Milliets met regularly at picnics where they developed their republican and Fourierist[15] ideas - the latter being mainly transmitted by Julien Chassevant.

[alpha 4][14] They were so-called "advanced" republicans, supporters of the left-wing parliamentary group La Montagne and its leader Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, a candidate in the presidential election.

[7] Montagnard newspaper, it claimed to denounce the "dynastic and dictatorial pretensions that dared to threaten the Republic"; however, its publication was short-lived, from February to April 1851, and it only had eight issues.

During the first months of the Second Republic, he defended the defeated workers of the national workshops,[14] notably through his song Courage and faith, written after the deadly repression of the June Days in 1848 in Paris; a "cry for mercy", in the words of his son Paul.

In the preface to a collection published in 1850 by Propagande Démocratique et Sociale, in which Félix Milliet included the letter Béranger had sent him, Napoléon Gallois described his friend's songs as an expression of "hatred of tyranny, pity for those who suffer, aspiration towards a more equitable organisation of society, faith in a future of peace and world harmony".

[1][10] In the same year, Félix Milliet published a song, Marchons en frères, with music by P. Garreaud,[21] dedicated to Doctor Auguste Savardan,[1] an important Fourierist from the Sarthe region with whom he was in contact.

In the days following the coup, Félix Milliet was accused by the Bonapartist forces of having participated in an attempted insurrection which took place in the commune of La Suze.

[24] During the following January, Félix Milliet was the target of a wanted notice published in the press and on posters, which announced : "The government has just given the order to search for and arrest wherever they are found the following persons: [...] Milliet, ex-captain of the national guard, aged 50 [...] Warrants have been issued for these nine persons, who have fled and who are accused of being authors or accomplices of the insurrection which took place in La Suze (Sarthe).

His name appears alongside those of Trouvé-Chauvel and his close companions as well as Jean Silly[alpha 5] and Philippe Faure, both members of the Bonhomme Manceau team.

[23] The Sarthe Commission condemned Félix Milliet to expulsion, along with twelve other men judged for the same acts - including Édouard Prudhomme de La Boussinière and Philippe Faure - who were the following: "They have all been affiliated for a long time, as directors or principal agents, with the political society which, under various titles, had given itself the mission of spreading demagogic or socialist principles in the department of La Sarthe; That at all times they were seen drafting or distributing the writings of this society, convening or presiding over its meetings, ensuring the execution of its decisions and, in a word, striving to direct public opinion in the direction of its doctrines, as attested by all the documents seized at the home of Mr Bouteloup.

That it was resolved to wait until the following day, the 5th, at four o'clock in the afternoon; that the plan was to violently replace all the authorities then in office; to install in their place provisional administrations and thus paralyse all governmental action by the President of the Republic.

[1] His close comrades also suffered repression: Auguste Savardan was kept under surveillance at his home,[9] Napoleon Gallois was sought by the police and took refuge in Belgium, Jacques François Barbier, who was present at the famous meeting of the 5th December at Sylvain Fameau's house, fled to the island of Jersey before the end of the judicial investigation;[19] with Félix Milliet, there were nine Freemasons from the "Lodge of Arts and Commerce" who were prosecuted.

Le Chansonnier impérial pour l'an de grâce 1853[25] was published anonymously[22] with the false location "Brussels and London", but was in fact printed in Lausanne.

[19] One of its printers wrote to a friend of Félix Milliet: "I hesitated for a few days, because I'll be damned if I'm not going to be hanged if I find out about such strong coffee things.

[25] Thus, his name was quickly known and recognised; the Journal de Genève presented him as a conspirator, an agent provocateur "allied with the French nobility"[22] and the Geneva police minister Abraham Louis Tourte,[26] politically a radical, wrote of him on 9 May 1853 that he was one of the "ultramontanes" who, according to him, were manoeuvring jointly with the Austrian Empire in order to confuse Geneva and France, that he was a "socialist [...] allied with legitimist families!

[25] Indeed, Milliet was appreciated and had several supporters in the town, notably that of Colonel Alexandre Humbert, who threatened a riot and to go and get his comrade by force; he was in turn arrested and expelled to Bern.

[1][25] Their daughter Jeanne, whom Louise Milliet had been able to repatriate to Bonneville a few months earlier,[32][33] died at the age of six in November 1854, carried off by an unknown illness.

Félix and Louise Milliet found some of their friends from Le Mans at Condé, such as Julien Chassevant, a shareholder since 1863 who was a director there for six years in the 1880s, and Marie Pape-Carpantier, whom they introduced to the community.

[39] The capitulation of the provisional government - captured by the enemy, Napoleon III was defeated and a Third Republic was proclaimed on 4 September 1870 - was signed on January 28, 1871,[45] which allowed the whole Milliet family to meet again at Condé-sur-Vesgre,[46] until they were separated again due to the siege of the French army on the insurrection of the Paris Commune.

[51] Alix Payen reports a concert where a mobile guard sings a song by Félix Milliet, Anathema to the coward criminal, written after the December 2.

[27] In 1882, he translated the dramatic play The Triumph of Love by the Italian Giuseppe Giacosa, inspired by the work of the 15th-century poet Pétrarque, which was published in Le Mans.

[41] In 1872, she was a member of an interim executive committee responsible for responding to the projects decided during a phalanstery congress held the same year and managing a periodical entitled Bulletin du mouvement social,[41] which lasted until 1879.

At his funeral, Gustave Chatelet read a eulogy by Eugène Nus: "In the name of the Colony, which she loved with all her heart and all her intelligence for the seed of progress that she saw in the future, the members of this societary household, to which she was so useful and where she leaves such a great void, send to the one they have just lost the homage of their profound regrets and their ineffaceable memory.

[58] Although her parents lost most of their fortune in their misadventures,[56] she inherited the assets of the whole family and of an uncle general, which enabled her to lead a wealthy and capitalist life.

With the logic of a deep conviction, they always put these doctrines into practice and allowed their children the greatest freedom in the choice of work and pleasure.