8 - Understanding the terrorist: anarchism, medicine and politics in fin-de-siècle France

Summary

Between 1892 and 1894, dozens of self-professed anarchists were tried in the French courts following a series of murderous assaults. Although there were just a handful of notorious cases, the outrageousness of crimes such as the bombing of restaurants and the assassination of the President meant the incidents were immediately seized upon to exemplify the perniciousness of all anarchist ideas. The defendants combined violence, political idealism and extreme individualism, and the mixture stimulated a wide-ranging commentary among all strands of the national political community. The press, particularly the illustrated weeklies, feasted on a sumptuous diet of horror, graphically portraying the destruction caused and the expressions of terror on the victims' faces. Although some anarchists used the old-fashioned assassin's dagger, the most feared were those who resorted to explosives, new weapons which lent a lethal unpredictability to the terrorists' acts. A lurid picture was painted of a handful of fanatics gathering to read subversive tracts and share the simple chemical knowledge needed to fabricate bombs. The bombings themselves were seen as indicating a special kind of criminal mentality, a cold and calculated willingness to hurt unknown people against whom the offender had only an abstract political, rather than personal, grudge.

While the technical paraphernalia of anarchism – chemicals, sieves, measuring-spoons, nails, fuses etc. – excited morbid interest when displayed in court, the people who used them to terrorize Paris and other cities fascinated both the lay public and officials. Every detail of their lives and characters was examined – their love letters perused, antecedents investigated, mèmoires recorded.