290 



FRANCE. 



ance in the cafe, of the Terminus Hotel, killing 

 one person and seriously injuring others. He 

 had planned to explode it in the Opera or the 

 Comedie Francaise, but was unable to obtain 

 admission. After committing the outrage he 

 made a desperate attempt to escape, shooting 

 at and wounding the policeman who pursued 

 him. At his trial, in April, he gloried in his 

 crimes, one of which was the placing, in Novem- 

 ber, 1892, of a bomb at the door of the office of 

 the Carmaux Company, in the Rue des Bons En- 

 fants, indignantly rejected his lawyer's plea of 

 insanity, characterized his latest deed as a re- 

 prisal for the draconic measures taken by the 

 Government against the anarchists, and at the 

 conclusion of the trial made a speech to the jury 

 denouncing the morality of existing society, in 

 which, he said, cynics and sycophants obtain the 

 rewards and honor, and devotion and duty are 

 words used to mask base aims, and prophesying 

 the coming of a new morality, which, in har- 

 mony with the laws of Nature, will regenerate 

 the dying world and bring forth a happy hu- 

 manity. On the morrow of Henry's crime, and 

 again a week later, a round of domiciliary visits 

 was made in Paris and the provinces. An un- 

 known anarchist laid a trap by hiring two lodg- 

 ings and luring police officers to the places where 

 he had deposited infernal machines, one of which 

 exploded, wounding the keeper of the hotel, and 

 the other was purposely fired by the police to 

 find out its power. 



On Feb. 15 a French anarchist in London was 

 killed by the premature explosion of a bomb or 

 chemicals that he was carrying in Greenwich 

 Park. On Feb. 24 Jean Grave was condemned 

 to two years' imprisonment for certain passages 

 in his book " La Societe mourante et 1'Anarchie," 

 the principal philosophical exposition of anarch- 

 ism, which were regarded by the jury as incite- 

 ments to violence and to military insubordi- 

 nation. A month after Henry's crime a bomb 

 exploded in the vestibule of the Madeleine, de- 

 stroying the portal, but killing no one except the 

 anarchist, who would have thrown it among the 

 worshipers if the swinging door had not acci- 

 dentally struck his arm. On April 4 a bomb was 

 exploded on the window sill of the Restaurant 

 Foyot, near the Luxembourg, scattering its charge 

 of old nails among the diners and wounding sev- 

 eral, one of whom happened to be the anarch- 

 ist poet Tailhade. Henry was guillotined on 

 May 21. 



Meunier, who had been caught in London and 

 extradited, was convicted on July 26 of having 

 committed a murderous outrage in the Cafe Very 

 in the spring of 1892 to avenge the betrayal of 

 Ravachol. 



After the assassination of President Carnot, 

 with others, some of the representatives of theo- 

 retical anarchism were tried at Paris, under the 

 new law, as members of an association of male- 

 factors. There were 300 arrested, but only 30 

 were prosecuted, including Jean Grave, editor of 

 "LaRevolte" and author of some of the prin- 

 cipal doctrinal expositions of anarchism ; several 

 of his assistants, as the litterateur Ledot; Se- 

 bastien Faure, the leading propagandist of the 

 theory; Felix Feneon, a clerk in the Ministry 

 of War and an anarchistic writer; Matha and 

 Alexandre Cohen, his collaborators on " En 



Dehors," the extremist organ of the anarch- 

 ists, the editor of which, Galland de Perouse, 

 known under his pen name of Zo d'Axa, was al- 

 ready undergoing a ten-years' sentence in Sainte- 

 Pelagie prison ; the decadent poet Chat el and 

 his associate Agneli, an artist ; Paul Reclus ; 

 and Bastard, an anarchistic orator. Grave, Paul 

 Bernard, and Matha were undergoing sentences 

 of imprisonment, Paul Reclus and 4 others 

 were fugitives. The indictment charged that the 

 accused belonged to a sect that forms bonds of 

 companionship among all its members, the ob- 

 ject being the destruction of society, and the 

 means of action being theft, pillage, 'arson, and 

 murder ; the sect consisting of groups acting un- 

 der a common inspiration, which form propa- 

 gandist centers and refuges for foreign compan- 

 ions, and provide assistance for the individual 

 member who is bent on crime, each member of 

 the sect co-operating for the common object ac- 

 cording to his temperament and faculties. The 

 arguments of Jean Grave and Sebastien Faure 

 were kept out of the newspapers by order of the 

 court. Most of the accused admitted being an- 

 archists, and urged that as individualists it would 

 be impossible for them to submit to the rules of 

 aji organized association, such as was defined in 

 the complaint. Ortiz, who claimed to be a col- 

 lectivist, not an anarchist, was condemned for a 

 burglary that he had committed, and Chericotti 

 and Bertani as his accomplices, but the thinkers 

 and journalists were all acquitted by the jury,, 

 moved by the eloquence of Faure, who portrayed 

 anarchism as a doctrine of love, not of hate, aim- 

 ing to build up, not to destroy. 



Assassination of President Carnot. On 

 June 24 a young baker who had been working in 

 Cette, not very familiar with France and the 

 language, born of respectable poor parents in 

 Italy, stabbed President Carnot as he was driv- 

 ing in state through the streets of Lyons as the 

 guest of the city, which was holding* an exhibi- 

 tion of arts, sciences, and industries. The Presi- 

 dent had ordered away the special guard pro- 

 vided by the prefect for his safety, and hence 

 the man had no difficulty in leaping from the 

 front rank of the spectators upon the step of the 

 landau and striking M. Carnot with a poniard, 

 which he held concealed in a newspaper, piercing 

 the liver. The President died that night. Presi- 

 dent Carnot during his term, nearly past, had 

 fewer cabinets to appoint than his predecessors. 

 By choosing men of moderate and conservative 

 views, and excluding those favored by the Radi- 

 cals, he had incurred the displeasure of the lat- 

 ter, who accused him of being swayed in his later 

 selections by personal predilections. The suspi- 

 cion that he was aiming at re-election was already 

 obliterated, for he had declined, on the plea of 

 failing health, to be a candidate. He asserted 

 himself more positively than M. Grevy had done, 

 not by sending messages to the Assembly, but by 

 choosing ministers on his own judgment alter 

 consultation with men in whom he placed most 

 reliance. His speeches, in which he alluded to 

 the past misfortunes of France and the renascence 

 of her army and international prestige in phrase*- 

 at which no foreign power could take exception, 

 were models of adroitness. He was never more 

 popular and respected during a career that was 

 unimpeachable (see CARNOT, MARIE FRANCOIS 



