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. He campaigned alongside his wife Louise Milliet, who was born on January 28, 1822, in Le Mans and died on July 10, 1893, in the 5th district of Paris. An orphan from Drôme, Félix Milliet developed his republican ideas after the July Revolution in 1830. He pursued a military career, which led him to Maine, and practised the art of poetry. There he met Louise de Tucé, a teenager from a wealthy noble family. They married and moved to Le Mans. It was in Le Mans that Félix Milliet's political career reached its peak. He rubbed shoulders with important republicans in town, such as Auguste Savardan, Marie Pape-Carpantier and Jacques François Barbier. 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 described himself as a socialist, although in practice he was very moderate, and shared the anti-clerical and Fourierist ideas of his friends. He supported the Parisian insurrection of the June days in 1848 and then stood in the legislative elections the following year among the candidates of the Montagne. After the coup of December 2, 1851, he was implicated in an attempted insurrection in the Manche region and condemned to exile in Nice at the beginning of 1852. He took refuge in Geneva, brought his family back to him and continued his commitment. 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. Félix Milliet took refuge in Savoie, which was then attached to the kingdom of Sardinia. He stopped his political publications and devoted himself to painting and his family. Still a Fourierist, he considered joining the Phalansterian project of La Réunion in Texas, before the project collapsed; he saw in these small communities the possibility of a utopian "world harmony". He did not return to France until 1866, seven years after the amnesty law for politically convicted people and fourteen years after the beginning of his exile. He spent the last twenty years of his life retired in Paris, then at La Colonie, a phalanstery located in Condé-sur-Vesgre (Seine-et-Oise). His wife Louise Milliet took an active part in the organisation of the community, but he was not very active. He died in 1888. 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. Source: Wikipedia (en)