The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siecle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror (11 page)

Most preached direct, violent action against the agents of the state, admitting that some "innocents" might get hurt in the process, which had in fact happened when Irish bombs, though not made with dynamite, had been detonated. Revolutionary groups welcomed him as a hero when he arrived in the United States as a political refugee. He continued to publish
Freiheit
in New York, lectured widely, and greatly influenced American anarchists. He worked for a time in an explosives factory in New Jersey, the right man in the right place. Imagining new uses for these substances, such as letter bombs (although the first one was not sent until 1895) and bombs dropping from the sky, Most wrote, "Let us rely upon the unquenchable spirit of destruction and annihilation which is the perpetual spring of new life." Most then published "The Science of Revolutionary Warfare—A Manual of Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitroglycerine, Dynamite, GunCotton, Fulminating Mercury, Bombs, Fuses, Poisons, etc., etc.," which was printed in Chicago and Cleveland in 1885 and 1886. What better way to prepare for revolution than with the "thunder" of dynamite? The explosive could "be carried in the pocket without danger ... a formidable weapon against any force of militia, police, or detectives that may want to stifle the cry for justice that goes forth from the plundered slaves ... It is a genuine boon for the disinherited, while it brings terror and fear to the robbers ... Our lawmakers might as well try to sit down on the crater of a volcano or on the point of a bayonet as to endeavor to stop the manufacture and use of dynamite." An anarchist newspaper in 1885 praised dynamite, "the good stuff! Stuff several pounds of this sublime stuff into an inch pipe ... plug up both ends, insert a cap with a fuse attached, place this in the vicinity of a lot of rich loafers who live by the sweat of other people's brows, and light the fuse ... A pound of this good stuff beats a bushel of ballots—and don't you forget it!" The newspaper
La Révolution Sociale
included a column called "Scientific Studies," which described how to make dynamite, as well as other explosives.

Poems sang the praises of dynamite:

At last a toast to Science
To dynamite that is the force
The force in our own hands
The world gets better day by day.

In Paris,
Père Peinard
did its part to perpetuate the cult of dynamite among the anarchist faithful. It seemed so simple. "Do you want some dynamite?" the newspaper asked. "For a little money ... you can buy a liter of it." An international anarchist gathering in London called for "the study of the new technical and chemical sciences from the point of view of their revolutionary value." Several anarchist groups during the 1880s in Paris enthusiastically took names invoking dynamite, such as the Dynamitards. In the Dordogne in southwest France, a liquor called Dynamite went on sale in 1888. At Montmartre's Cabaret du Chat Rouge, "Dame Dynamite" was high on the list of favorite songs. One could even dance to the "Dynamite Polka."

Dynamite played a part in the Haymarket affair in Chicago in 1886. During the 1880s, the influence of anarchism had grown in Chicago's labor movement, finding adherents particularly among the large number of German and Bohemian workers there. A wave of labor militancy, marked by increased organization, brought massive strikes followed by some major victories that affected workers of many trades, skilled and unskilled. Notably "The Great Upheaval" of 1886 led to a shorter workday. The lords of finance and industry launched a counteroffensive, targeting militants such as Albert Parsons.

A Texas-born former employee of the Internal Revenue Service, Parsons had married Lucy Gonzalez, a black woman with Mexican and Indian antecedents. He edited an anarchist newspaper,
Alarm,
which contended that one man with dynamite was the equivalent of an entire military regiment. According to Lucy Parsons, "The voice of dynamite is the voice of force, the only voice which tyranny has ever been able to understand." Other anarchists joined this chorus. During a speech, the German-born labor leader August Spies, who edited a German-language anarchist newspaper, held up an empty piece of tube and implied how it could be used: "Take it to your boss, and tell him we have 9,000 more like it—only loaded." Rumors spread quickly that anarchists planned to blow up the Board of Trade building.

On May 3, 1886, Chicago policemen attacked strikers outside the McCormick Reaper Works, shooting six men dead and beating others with their clubs. Such acts were fairly typical of the way bosses and police, cheered on by people of means, dealt with labor militancy at the time. Anarchist leaders prepared an armed retort.

The next day, a mass meeting began at 7:30 in the evening on Desplaines Street, adjacent to Haymarket Square. As armed police moved in amid fiery speeches by Spies and others, someone—probably a German anarchist—threw a small dynamite bomb in their general direction. A policeman lay dead, probably killed by the explosion. Subsequent shots resulted in the death of four other policemen, almost certainly killed by "friendly fire." Businessmen and newspapers screamed for revenge. Albert Parsons, who had gone into hiding in Wisconsin, returned (foolishly) to stand trial with seven others. The prosecution proved no conspiracy of any kind to start a social revolution or to bomb the police, nor any connection between the men and the bomb, but that made little difference to the jury. It found seven of the defendants guilty of murder as charged, giving them the death penalty. The penalties of three were commuted, but Louis Lingg, a violent German anarchist, somehow managed to get a dynamite cartridge into his cell and committed suicide by blowing himself up. Despite petitions calling on the Supreme Court and the governor of Illinois for clemency, Albert Parsons, Spies, and two others were hanged in Cook County Jail in November 1887.

The Haymarket riot was a touchstone for anarchists in Europe and in the United States, where the trials and subsequent executions pushed Emma Goldman, an immigrant from Russia, to anarchist militancy. The events in Chicago demonstrated three things to anarchists: that anarchism had international appeal, that anarchists could mobilize workers, and that the repressive power of the state, serving the interests of high finance and big business, remained strong. The image of the bodies of four men hanging in the Windy City in the United States, supposedly a progressive republic, became etched in the anarchist collective memory. Like the Paris Commune, Haymarket made clear that given the strength and resolution of the bourgeois state, the revolution would have to be bloody.

And François-Claudius Ravachol was prepared to take action. He wanted to avenge the three anarchists mistreated by the Clichy police, two of whom had been sent to prison in 1891. During the night of February 14–15, 1892, Ravachol and several other anarchists stole a considerable amount of dynamite, called "La Camelote" (or "junk"), from a quarry in Soisy-sous-Étiolles, southeast of Paris and not too far from Brévannes. In all, thirty kilograms of dynamite, 1,400 to 1,500 capsules, and two hundred yards of fuse disappeared in the night. The
compagnons
left the site with pockets "full of firecrackers." On February 29, a bomb exploded at an elite residence on elegant rue Saint-Dominique, doing little damage but frightening the city.

On March 7, with the help of Cookie and a cooking pot, Ravachol put together a bomb in a warehouse in Saint-Denis. It consisted of fifty dynamite cartridges and pieces of iron. His target was the Clichy police station, to avenge the three anarchists severely beaten there. But since police stations tend to be surrounded by police officers, Ravachol could not get close enough to place the bomb. He decided instead to kill Judge Benoît, who had presided over the trial of the Clichy three. On March 11, after Cookie had checked out the magistrate's house on boulevard Saint-Germain on the Left Bank, he, Ravachol, and two others took the tramway into Paris. After a few nervous moments at the customs barrier surrounding the capital—with the bomb hidden under the skirt of Rosalie Soubère (known as Mariette)—they entered Paris, after which the woman, her work accomplished, got off the tramway and returned home, the three men continuing on their route. On boulevard Saint-Germain, Ravachol entered the building, carrying two loaded pistols. Because he did not know which apartment was Benoît's, he placed the bomb on the second floor in the center of the building. He lit the fuse and sneaked out without being seen. The bomb detonated as he reached the sidewalk—a huge, terrifying explosion. But it killed no one and injured only one person slightly. Judge Benoît, who lived on the fifth floor, was unhurt.

Four days later, a dynamite cartridge exploded in front of the Lobau barracks near the town hall, shattering windows in Saint-Gervais church. The man responsible was Théodule Meunier, a cabinetmaker who had managed to escape to London after serving jail time for another crime. Charles Malato described him as "the most remarkable type of revolutionary visionary illuminist, an ascetic, as passionate in his search for the ideal society as [the French revolutionary] Saint-Just, and as merciless in seeking his way towards it." Many anarchists celebrated what
L'Endehors
called a "nicely symbolic" bomb.

The team of Ravachol and Cookie went to work again, preparing another bomb, this one with 120 cartridges of dynamite. The target would be Bulot, the prosecuting attorney in the Clichy case. On March 17, thanks to a police informer, Chaumartin (Ravachol's host) and Cookie were arrested. But Ravachol had already left for the suburb of Saint-Mandé. On March 27, he placed the bomb in Bulot's building on rue de Clichy, taking off down the street as it exploded. Seven people were injured, but not the magistrate and his family, who were away at the time. Ravachol climbed onto a bus that would take him down rue de Clichy so that he could see the great damage his bomb had inflicted. Soon thereafter, he stopped in a restaurant called Le Very, on boulevard de Magenta. He engaged a waiter called Lhérot in conversation. When the latter complained about military service, Ravachol held forth on anarchism. The waiter remembered a scar the diner had on his left hand. Three days later, Ravachol returned to dine in the same place. The waiter by then had seen a newspaper description of Ravachol, and instead of going to get the first course, he went to see the
patron,
who returned with the police. Ravachol was arrested, but not without a fight. It took ten policemen to subdue him.

Ravachol's arrest became the talk of anarchist circles—a policeman observed that the anarchists "hoped for and counted on at least some sort of violent response." Some bemoaned Ravachol's extreme imprudence. They felt it would have been better if he had been gunned down after shooting a policeman, not taken because he had talked too much. The police knew that Lhérot, the waiter, needed to look out for himself. At a gathering of about fifty anarchists on March 12, a speaker advised the faithful that the time had come to attack the "great exploiters"—banks, the Bourse, and elegant private residences. Foreign tourists began to flee the City of Dynamite. The fact that some anarchist publications brazenly described how to assemble bombs and even recommended the use of chemical weapons or poison heightened mass anxiety.

On April 22, 1892, at 5
A.M.,
twelve policemen banged on the door of the journalist Zo d'Axa and searched his apartment for dynamite. After fifteen days in custody, he managed to leave the tribunal before his sentencing on charges of insulting a magistrate and provocation to murder (condemned to eighteen months in prison and a fine of two thousand francs). He headed for London, first staying with Charles Malato near Regent's Park. Émile Pouget and Errico Malatesta were now also in the British capital, along with other anarchist exiles.

Just before Ravachol's trial was to begin in Paris, on April 25, a bomb blew up the restaurant Le Véry. It had been placed in a small suitcase recently purchased for the occasion. The explosion killed two men, including Monsieur Véry himself, giving rise to the savage pun of
Père Peinard: "Vérification.
" With Ravachol in jail, two principal suspects remained, both members of a group of anarchist cabinetmakers called the Flat Feet: Meunier and Jean-Pierre François, known to friends and police simply as Francis—a powerful man, with a black beard and mustache and a look of sullen resignation etched on his face. Francis accompanied Meunier to the restaurant, and the latter placed the bomb in its case next to the counter. A French police agent working in London noted that as far as he knew, Francis had not previously killed anyone, and he spent most of his time drinking. In and out of jail for years, Francis had the typical itinerary of many a militant anarchist, as he dodged policemen and landlords alike.

On April 26, Ravachol's trial took place in the Assize Court in the Palace of Justice on the île de la Cité. Soldiers guarded the courtroom, and police even stood between the accused and the judge and jury. Bulot, the prosecuting attorney, the same man Ravachol had tried to kill a month earlier, contemptuously called the anarchist "a mere knight of the dynamite club," which the anarchist took as a compliment. Four other anarchists, all workers, were also tried, including Cookie, Ravachol's faithful, dangerous assistant. When asked specifically if he had helped Ravachol, Cookie coolly replied, "Absolutely." The jury condemned Ravachol as well as Cookie to life in prison with hard labor. (Cookie would be killed two years later during a prison riot on Devil's Island, French Guiana.)

In June, Ravachol again went on trial in the town of Montbrison, near Saint-Étienne. Amid rumors that anarchists would strike a blow there, security measures were extremely tight. In the Palace of Justice, a former convent, Ravachol addressed horrified magistrates and jurors. "See this hand?" he asked the courtroom. "It has killed as many bourgeois as it has fingers." As for the murder of the hermit monk, Ravachol explained, "If I killed, it was first of all to satisfy my personal needs, then to come to the aid of the anarchist cause, for we work for the happiness of the people." His only regret was the society he saw around him. Condemned to death for the murder of the hermit and two women near the small industrial town Saint-Chamond, as well as for several other killings that he probably did not commit, Ravachol went to the guillotine on July 11,1892. Smiling, confident, insolent, with his "jaw of a wolf" set firmly forward, he told the priest who approached him with a crucifix, "I don't give a damn about your Christ. Don't show him to me; I'll spit in his face." On the way to the guillotine, which was guarded by a cordon of troops, he sang,