He was a follower of the revolutionary Louis-Auguste Blanqui and in July 1870, he was tried for being part of a plot to assassinate Louis Napoleon III, but he was acquitted because of a lack of evidence.

These included Georges Darboy, the archbishop of Paris, Abbé Deguerry, the curé of the Église de la Madeleine, and several hundred others.

[3] However, the provisional head of the French government, Adolphe Thiers refused any negotiation with the Commune for the release of hostages.

A delegation of National Guardsmen, led by Gustave Genton, a member of the Committee of Public Safety, came to the new headquarters of the Commune at the city hall of the 11th arrondissement and demanded the immediate execution of the hostages held at the prison of La Roquette.

[4] Defenders of the Commune later justified the action of Ferré as an act of retaliation for the summary executions carried out by the French Army during Bloody Week.

Early on the morning of the 28 November, he was executed by firing squad, alongside Louis Rossel and Pierre Bourgeois, former French Army members who had defected to the Commune.

Louise Michel, the famed "Red Virgin" of the Commune celebrated in a poem by Victor Hugo, was deeply in love with Théophile Ferré.