The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siecle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror (14 page)

IN AUGUST
1892, Émile Henry's attention, like that of many people in France, turned to a bitter strike in the south. In the small coal-mining and glass-making town of Carmaux, north of Toulouse and near Albi, miners pitted themselves against the Carmaux Mining Company. Many of these men had previously worked as farmers or farm hands, but as it became nearly impossible to make a decent living from agriculture, they found part-time and eventually full-time work in the mines. Now their survival almost totally depended on the low wages they earned there. When the demand for coal fell, unemployment in the mines brought extreme hardship. Even in relatively good times, their work was exceedingly dangerous. Thirty-six men were killed in the mines of Carmaux alone from 1880 to 1892.

Carmaux's glass workers too had gone on strike the previous fall, demanding a unified pay scale for their trade throughout France because their wages were falling (in part because of the mechanization of production). The miners' union had contributed funds to support the glass workers' walkout, but the strike eventually failed. The next spring, Jean-Baptiste Calvignac, a machine fitter in the mines and the secretary of the miners' union, was elected to the municipal council, thanks to the support of workers. The council then elected him mayor. But the powerful mining company fired Calvignac on August 2,1892, after refusing to give him time off to fulfill his duties as the town's chief administrator.

The miners went on strike the following day, both to protest Calvignac's dismissal and to demand pay increases. This did not sit well with company management. Moreover, on several occasions the unions had challenged the management about disciplinary measures taken against workers. This resistance led to an aggressive counteroffensive against the miners' union. Some labor leaders working in the mines were suspended or fined, and others were fired as Baron Reille, president of the board of directors, re-asserted the company's complete authority over the miners.

The Carmaux strike became a polarizing event in France. Collections were taken up in support of the striking miners, who were widely recognized as poorly paid workers in an extraordinarily dangerous industry. The socialist politician Jean Jaurès used the popular press to carry the strike, and the issues it raised about workers and employers, to a national audience. The miners' determination, solidarity, discipline, and political engagement gained the admiration of ordinary people, while the arrogance of the Carmaux Mining Company earned castigation. After three bitter months, with soldiers camped outside Carmaux, innumerable confrontations, and attempts at arbitration and compromise, on November 3,1892, the miners capitulated.

The Carmaux situation was widely discussed at anarchist gatherings that October. Émile was moved by the strike and impressed by the miners' resolve. His father, after all, had worked in mines in Spain. In Émile's opinion, the strike had been co-opted by socialist leaders, "the fancy speakers," who feared that if a violent struggle began, thousands of men would no longer obey their orders. And then hunger—"their habitual companion"—began to eat away at what meager funds their little union had in reserve. They had been forced to return to the mines, even more miserable than before. And so "order" returned to Carmaux, and the company continued to exploit miners. Company profits rose once again.

Émile was shaken by events in Carmaux, and his anarchism took an even more violent turn. He proudly admitted "a deep hate, each day revived by the revolting spectacle of this society ... where everything prevents the fulfillment of human passions and the generous tendencies of the heart, and the unimpeded growth of the human spirit." The extremely sensitive Émile had evolved into a fanatic who believed that only terrorism could solve the deep problems of society. Émile wanted to "strike as hard" as he could. He had been particularly impressed by the Russian anarchist Souvarine in Émile Zola's great novel
Germinal.
Souvarine declares: "All the reasonings about the future are criminal, because they stand in the way of pure and simple destruction and thus of the march of the revolution ... Don't talk to me about evolution! Raise fires in the four corners of cities, mow people down, wipe everything out, and when nothing whatever is left in this rotten world perhaps a better one will spring up!" To Émile, striking out was a perfectly rational decision, based on a sense of both impatience for the revolution to begin and optimism about its eventual outcome. With political scandals rampant, the Third Republic seemed particularly vulnerable. Police repression had increased the indignation of the poor.

Émile decided "to add to the concert ... a voice that the bourgeoisie has already heard, but which they believed stilled with the death of Ravachol, that of dynamite." The "insolent triumphs" of the bourgeoisie would be shattered, "its golden calf would shake violently on its pedestal, until the final blow knocks it into the gutter and pools of blood." And he wanted to show the miners that only the anarchists truly understood their suffering and stood ready to avenge them.

Émile had told friends that the workers should have attacked the company immediately. They should have burned the stocks of coal, broken the machines, and demolished the pumps necessary for extracting coal. Then the mining company would have quickly capitulated. He blamed "the great popes of socialism," such as Jaurès, for ignoring the anarchists' advice.

Émile decided to take action himself. In a phone book, he found the company's Paris headquarters, located in the elegant building at 11, avenue de l'Opéra. He purchased potassium chlorate on rue de la Sorbonne in the Latin Quarter, receiving a 10 percent discount because he claimed to be an assistant to a professor at a school in Saint-Denis. He picked up an iron pot for 3.30 francs from a hardware store, and back in his room he put ten dynamite cartridges into it. Lacking decent fuses, he put together a "reversal bomb," one that would explode when turned over or jarred. He added potassium chloride and some sodium, which he had locked in a cupboard in his room. When the canister was "reversed," the chemicals would mix and come into contact with water, igniting a fire and producing an immediate explosion. On November 4, he went to a paper store on rue La Fayette to purchase a metal pen case, which he transformed into a detonator by filling it with mercury fulminate.

Émile then went to scrutinize the building on avenue de l'Opéra, to make sure that he would not be blowing up "unfortunates." The company offices were located on the mezzanine. And the rest of the building was populated with the rich: "a wealthy milliner, a banker, and so on." There would be no innocent victims: "The entire bourgeoisie lives from the exploitation of the unfortunate, and all of it should pay for its crimes." If someone found the bomb before it exploded, perhaps they would take it to a police station, and thus, there too serve the purpose of "striking at my enemies." And if someone saw the bomb and called the police to the scene? In the event, Émile told himself, "either I will kill the rich or I will kill the police!" It was all the same to him.

On the morning of November 8,1892, Émile went to his job at 5, rue de Rocroy, not too far from the Gare du Nord. His employer, Dupuy, gave him two errands to do, handing him a little cash for public transportation. Émile left at about 10
A.M.,
catching an omnibus on rue La Fayette en route to place de la Madeleine. He walked quickly to the office of a judicial administrator on rue Tronchet, staying only a couple of seconds to drop off a document. Then, instead of proceeding to his second assigned point of call, an architect's office on boulevard de Courcelles, he took one of the capital's twenty-five thousand horse-drawn carriages to place Blanche. From there he walked to rue Véron and bounded up several flights of stairs to his room on the top floor. Reaching into the cupboard, he pulled out his bomb, which he wrapped in a copy of
Le Temps
dated June 1,1892. Putting the bomb under his coat, he hurried back to place Blanche, where he hailed another carriage. Taking great care not to jar the "reversal bomb," he asked the driver to take him to avenue de l'Opéra. Émile stepped out of the cab at 10:57 in front of a store, Du Gagne-Petit. He then walked a block to number 11. Entering the building, he caught a glimpse of the concierge, who was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. He also saw a woman carrying a basket, as well as a young man on the stairway.

Émile walked up the stairs to the first floor, or the mezzanine level, and placed his gift to the Carmaux Mining Company in front of the door to its offices. It was now between 11 and 11:05. Émile ran down the stairs, left the building, and walked quickly back to place de la Madeleine and then to boulevard des Capucines. There he took another carriage to the office of the architect on boulevard de Courcelles, thus completing the second errand for his boss. He then returned to work on rue de Rocroy, arriving shortly after noon. He had been gone for about two hours and fifteen minutes.

Monsieur Bernich, an employee of the Carmaux Mining Company, had an appointment that day with the chief accountant. Outside the main office door on the first floor, he found a package propped against the door. It was 11:10. He went to get Bellois, the cashier, and Émile-Raymond Garin, the twenty-seven-year-old office boy. Bellois picked up the package and removed the paper. Inside he found a brand-new pot of gray cast iron, resting on its handle. The lid was held on by a cloth strip tied to the handle. It seemed somewhat suspicious—given the recent explosions in Paris—so Bellois asked the concierge, Gamier, to carry it downstairs. He placed the half-opened package on the sidewalk outside the entrance on the back street. A small crowd formed. Several people noticed that white powder seemed to be seeping through the cracks of the cover. Jean-Nicolas Gung'l, the secretary of
Le Matin,
happened by, curious about the group of people clustered around a strange object. Later he remembered seeing the price of the pot written in chalk.

The office boy, Garin, called out to a retired policeman, who was helping children cross avenue de l'Opéra. Although the crossing guard could not leave his post, he alerted two officers—Étienne Fomorin and Marc-Michel Réaux—who went to examine the object on the sidewalk. They decided that the package should be taken to the nearest police station, on rue des Bons-Enfants, not far from the Palais-Royal. Garin and Fomorin hoisted the package, which was now wrapped in a towel supplied by the building concierge. Arriving at 22, rue des Bons-Enfants at 11:35, they entered the courtyard, which separated the two wings of the building. As they crossed the courtyard, Garin asked another policeman to help because the object was heavy. The three carried the package up the stairs into the police office, placing it on a table.

Two minutes later, the bomb exploded. Unimaginable horror followed. In the vestibule, the body of Sergeant Fomorin, a forty-three-year-old former gendarme with a wife and a ten-year-old child, lay face down, still shaking in the middle of debris, his uniform almost completely shredded, his exposed flesh turning an awful gray. Officer Réaux's legs had been blown off below the knee, his thighs crushed, his face and hands charred. Beyond the vestibule, the waiting room was completely destroyed by the explosion; the floor had caved in, and pieces of wood, clothing, and flesh were scattered here and there. Human remains hung from a gaslight attached to the ceiling. Blood splattered the walls. The office boy Garin and Henri Pousset, the secretary of the police station, had been killed. Inspector Troutot lay gravely wounded, his face shattered and one of his legs crushed. He died later that day, leaving a wife and four children.

Several days after the explosion, a funeral Mass was held at Notre Dame de Paris, following a solemn procession that had begun at the prefecture of police on the île de la Cité. Prime Minister Émile Loubet denounced "the cowardly assassins ... men, rejected by all parties, blinded by savage hatred, thinking that by such means they can carry out shameful vengeances in order to reform society." Such men were not working to improve society, but to destroy it. The five victims of the explosion were buried in Montparnasse Cemetery. The public contributed money for the families of the victims. In the meantime, prominent socialists and the miners of Carmaux quickly disavowed the attack, the latter affirming that the emancipation of the working class should be achieved through collective action, not dynamite.

When Émile returned to work shortly after noon on February 12, having accomplished the two errands, the other employees did not sense anything out of the ordinary. Dupuy was satisfied with Émile, as always. Indeed, he was considering raising the young man's salary. Before leaving earlier that morning, Émile had been working on a long and complicated report, to which he returned without the slightest hesitation. His letters penned that afternoon were nicely composed, even after news of the bomb had reached the office. Émile appeared sincerely moved, like everyone else, by what had occurred at the police station.

That evening Émile probably met five or six friends at the shop of Constant Martin, who gave him some money. The next day, November 9, Émile left work at about four in the afternoon, telling Madame Dupuy that he had fallen ill. He would be going to Brévannes for a day or two to get well. In a letter to Dupuy, he described his plans to recuperate and told his concierge on rue Véron the same thing. But instead, on the following day he took a train through Rouen to Dieppe and then boarded a boat to London via Newhaven, to avoid the more heavily policed Calais-Dover line. From London Émile wrote Dupuy, sending the letter to a
compagnon
and asking him to mail it from Orléans. He said that he had really left Paris because he "was worried about the consequences of the police investigations that were bound to follow the most recent anarchist events." He hoped that Monsieur Dupuy would not think badly of him because he was an anarchist. He re-counted his arrest in late May, insisting that it had been totally unjustified. This had given him "the remarkable honor" of spending a night in a holding cell provided by the prefecture of police, a brief imprisonment that had cost him his job in the garment district just because he had "subversive ideas." He related these details to his boss in order to show that he had reason to dread the police, "who would strike immediately every known revolutionary, whether active or not." He did not want to spend weeks, or perhaps even months, in jail until the police discovered who was really responsible for the bomb that exploded in the police station. A couple of anarchists were languishing in jail six months after being taken into custody, though they had still been charged with no crime. Émile apologized for having left so precipitously, especially as he hoped Dupuy would agree that he had done excellent work. He portrayed himself as a "victim of events" and hoped that his employer would understand. In a flourish of bourgeois convention, he offered "his most profound esteem," sending Madame Dupuy his respects.