The life story of Marie-Antoinette Lix (1839-1909), a participant in the January Uprising and the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), especially the Polish phase of her life, still hides many secrets.

Short biography of Marie-Antoinette Lix
She was born on the Franco-German border, in Colmar, Alsace, as the youngest of four siblings. At the age of four, she lost her mother and was brought up only by her father, Françoise Antoine Lix, a former horse grenadier of the imperial guard, later an ouster officer, who taught her horse riding, fencing and shooting. She mastered these skills perfectly. She received a more conventional education for the era at the School of the Sisters of Divine Providence in Ribeauvillé, Alsace, after which she qualified as a domestic teacher. In 1856 or 1857, aged 17-18, she left France for Poland as a governess for the children of a landed gentry family. According to the most widely circulated, though difficult to verify, version, she was engaged in Paris by the Łubieński counts.

Marie-Antoinette Lix - a woman in the January U prising
After the outbreak of the January Uprising (1863), the governess, following in the footsteps of her benefactors, became involved in helping the participants of the national uprising: she cared for the wounded and carried out courier missions in the areas of northern Lesser Poland and the Kielce region (around Miechów, Jędrzejów and Pińczów). The main source of information about Marie-Antoinette Lix's involvement in the national uprising movement and her active participation in the uprising battles (under the pseudonym Michel le Sombre - Michael the Gloomy) is an article from 1906 in the prestigious French magazine Revue des Deux Mondes. The material was based on Lix's diary. A detailed, colourful description of participation in the uprising battles, whose drama and twists of action bring to mind the novels of Alexandre Dumas' father, was used by Maria Bruchnalska in her book Ciche bohaterki. Women's Participation in the January Uprising (vol. 1, Miejsce Piastowe, 1934).

Marie-Antoinette Lix's involvement in helping the insurgents, and even more so her participation in armed combat, is difficult to verify. Apart from her memoirs in a French journal, no other source confirms them. The account often disagrees on dates and details of events, as well as the participants. Bruchnalska stressed, however, that at the time of publication of Lix's memoirs, none of the surviving insurgents had disputed them. Perhaps in her memoirs the author deliberately confused the clues. Circumstantial evidence remains suggesting some form of Lix's involvement in the national uprising in the Kielce region and contacts with the units of Konrad Antoni Blaszczyński 'Boncza' (1835-1863) and Zygmunt Chmielski (1833-1863). She was eventually to be captured by the Russians and was saved from inevitable death by her sex and French passport.

Marie-Antoinette Lix's participation in the Franco-Prussian War
Marie-Antoinette Lix's life after her return to France in 1865 is much better documented. she initially worked as a saleswoman in Alsace. and after completing a nursing course, she left for Lille in 1866, where she became devotedly involved in the fight against the cholera epidemic. Her dedication and achievements were rewarded - through the intercession of the wife of the Minister of the Interior - with the post of postmaster at Lamarche (in the Vosges on the border between Lorraine and Burgundy) in 1869.

After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War (1870) and the disastrous surrender of the French army at Sedan, Marie-Antoinette Lix joined in the defence of the country. Because of her gender, she was not accepted into the army, so she served with the rank of lieutenant in irregular rifle formations in the volunteer Army of the Vosges commanded by the Italian revolutionary, Giuseppe Garibaldi. She distinguished herself during the Battle of Nompatelize (6 October 1870). Fighting in the Saint-Dié and La Bourgonce area, she led the defence of La Salle and Saint-Rémy in Burgundy. She repulsed enemy attacks and did not retreat until she ran out of ammunition.

In 1872, in recognition of Marie-Antoinette Lix's services to the defence of France, the Alsatian women's association presented her with an honoured silver spade, which was donated to the Army Museum (Musée de l'Armée) in Paris in 1910, where it is still on display today.

Marie-Antoinette Lix's tombstone in Saint-Nicolas-de-Port
After the end of hostilities, Lix returned to work as a postmaster (until 1876). Around 1880, she settled in Paris and, living in poverty, devoted herself entirely to writing. Under the pseudonym Tony Lix, she was the author of short stories and four patriotic and religious novels ( Tout pour la patrie, Les neveux de la chanoinesse, Jeunes brutions et vieux grognards, À Paris et en province ). In 1898, she took up residence in an asylum run by nuns in Saint-Nicolas-de-Port, a Lorraine town, where she died in 1909.

Marie-Antoinette Lix's unusual life became the plot of at least three novels: Camille Destouches, Michel le Sombre, ou le double visage d'Antoinette Lix (1958); Françoise d'Eaubonne, L' amazone sombre. Vie d'Antoinette Lix (1837 [sic]-1909) (1983); and Jean-Daniel Baltassat, Le galop de l'ange (1996; German translation Die Kriegerin , 1998).

Marie-Antoinette Lix is laid to rest in a modest grave in the cemetery of Saint-Nicolas-de-Port. The gravestone is located to the right of the entrance near the cemetery wall. The inscription on the deteriorated sandstone tombstone reads: "Antoinette Lix. 1839-1909 Pro Deo et Patria. De profundis". On the cemetery wall, at the back of the quarters, are two plaques. The first, of stone, recalls her participation in the January Uprising:

A

Marie-Antoinette

LIX

Heroïne française

de l'Insurrection polonaise

de 1863

was founded on the centenary of the 1963 uprising by soldiers of the Polish Guard Companies attached to the US Army in France. These were auxiliary military formations, existing between 1945 and 1967, stationed in occupied Germany (until 1989), France and Belgium, subordinate to the Supreme Command of the American Armed Forces in Europe. The soldiers of the Guard Companies met every year at the grave of Marie-Antoinette Lix. Generals Władysław Anders and Stanisław Kopański were also here in 1963.

In 2023, the local authorities placed a second cast-iron plaque on the wall next to Lix's grave to commemorate her participation in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. There is also a commemorative plaque on the building where Marie-Antoinette Lix was born in the Alsatian town of Colmar; it states that Lix was, among other things, a lieutenant of Polish lancers.