The Mystics Of Anarchy - Les Mystiques de l'Anarchie

An essay by Alexandre Bérard, published 1897             Translated by David Mallinson

Thirteen years ago, in 1882, Anarchy made itself known in Lyon with the horrendous attack on the Theatre Bellecour, with an explosion at the army recruitment office, followed by the arrest of about fifty people. Cyvoct was convicted by the Rhône Assizes and Anarchy lay dormant for eleven years, when suddenly there was a noisy awakening with Vaillant’s bomb in the Chamber of Deputies at the Palais Bourbon.

Anarchy is not a band of organized miscreants; it is the state of the modern soul of all those who, possessing an unbalanced spirit, guided by envy, have nothing but jealous hate in their hearts for a society in which their pride tells them that they do not have the place they deserve.

All political and social crises are an immediate and direct result of the development of madness in unbalanced brains, and the spirit of imitation is so innate in mankind that each type of crime immediately finds numerous mimics. Anarchy and its imitators follow a similar pattern.

It is right to render to each one their due; certainly Anarchy has developed as it has done due to the gutter press, to the neurotics and cynics of our capital city, who see a curious novelty, and its theories act as a spice to their jaded appetites. It is not, indeed, amongst the desperately poor that anarchy has gained the most adherents, but amongst the ‘déclassés’ who follow no particular trade; it is not amongst the blue collar workers that Anarchy recruits its soldiers, but amongst the failures who wear tatty frock-coats; Emile Henry and Vaillant were in this category. What do you expect when publicists like Laurent Tailhade celebrate the ‘beauty of the gesture’ and duchesses are full of support for the ‘comrades’ with the dynamite.

After Vaillant it was Emile Henry who threw his murderous contraption against inoffensive customers at the Café Terminus in Paris. It was an unknown criminal who that same night placed bombs filled with shrapnel in two different parts of the city. One was intended for the policemen who were coming to investigate the supposed suicide of a man called Rebaudy, but which only succeeded in causing the death of a poor landlady. After Vaillant, after Emile Henry, after the false Rebaudy, it was  Pauwels who, intending to throw a bomb in the Church of the Madeleine, fell victim to his own infamy, horribly mutilated and killed by his own murderous contraption. Then it was Caserio and then the attack in Lyon.

During the year 1894 imitation reached the provinces where bombs both harmless and harmful were left by unknown criminals in Lyon. On the evening of 24^th February one bomb exploded and another was discovered in one of those miserable hovels where the anarchists like to hang out. At Clermont, on 26^th February a bomb was laid against the window of the police station; at Villefranche de Rouergue a device laden with dynamite blew up a night watchman’s hut at a mine; at Béthune, a bomb was found which, had it exploded, would have caused serious damage; at Vienne on 11^th March, at Dijon on 14^th March, at Bourges on 18^th March, dangerous devices were found on public highways; at Bourgoin on 21^st March a bomb exploded in a church. Even abroad, in Hungary, in Turin, in Rome where on 8^th March a powerful bomb placed at the legislative assembly at Montecitorio blew up numerous victims; at Lucca, at the theatre, on 20^th March, and elsewhere the bandits of Anarchy had their imitators.

So the jokes in bad taste multiplied. Without dwelling on them too much, as an example, on 20^th February, two apprentice tinsmiths placed a device in the appearance of a bomb against the wall of a house just to frighten the occupants.

The madmen came out of the woodwork, imitating the exploits of Emile Henry and Vaillant, manufacturing bombs or pretend bombs, like when there is a notorious crime similar people like to accuse themselves, or like in the years 1870 and 1871 the sad torments of the time led some people to declare themselves the inventors of infernal devices that would sweep away all the Germans, devices that were only infernal in the imaginations of their inventors. One day on 26^th February 1894, in Paris, a man succeeded in exploding a tobacco pouch transformed into a bomb; another day, on the Rue Oberkampf, a madman placed against a wall a device which was no more than a box containing a timer!