Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits

by John Merriman

  2 Anne Steiner, Les En-dehors: anarchistes individualistes et illégalistes dans la Belle Époque (Montreuil, 2008), pp. 226–227; Dominique Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande (Paris, 2009), pp. 93–94; Frédéric Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque (Lyon, 2008), pp. 296–297; Excelsior, April 29, 1912.

  3 Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande, pp. 93–94; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, pp. 296–297; L’Excelsior, April 29, 1912.

  4 Steiner, Les En-dehors, pp. 139–140.

  5 Steiner, Les En-dehors, pp. 226–227.

  6 Robert Le Texier, De Ravachol à la bande à Bonnot (Paris, 1989), p. 171.

  7 Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 329; La Bataille syndicaliste, April 29, 1912.

  8 KA 77, dossier Paul Guichard.

  9 JA 20, “Affaire de Choisy-le-Roi,” p.v. April 28, 1912, 7:45 a.m., Xavier Guichard; JA 15m, dossier Jules Joseph Bonnot, report of April 28, 1912; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 348, Excelsior, April 29, 1912; Renaud Thomazo, Mort aux bourgeois! Sur les traces de la bande à Bonnot (Paris, 2009), provides a graphic account of the siege (pp. 202–215).

  10 Richard Parry writes that Bonnot had written his testament on rue Saint-Ouen, thus before the siege in Choisy-le-Roi (The Bonnot Gang [London, 1987], pp. 125–126).

  11 JA 15, dossier Bonnot; Steiner, Les En-dehors, pp. 140–143; Émile Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot” (Paris, 1968), pp. 41–46. In May 1912 the Tribunal civil condemned Judith Thollon to four years in prison, despite her constant denials that she had been aware of Bonnot’s criminal activities or that she had been his lover, and her husband to one year, but a suspended sentence (Michel Chomarat, Les Amants tragiques. Histoire du bandit Jules Bonnot et de sa maîtresse Judith Thollon [Lyon, 1978], pp. 36–47). During the trial, an allegation was made that Garnier had been there, as well, but these seems improbable. Petit-Demange faced a year in prison.

  12 Serge Pacaud, Vie quotidienne des français à la Belle Époque (Romorantin, 2008), p. 195; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 12.

  13 EA 141, prefecture of police report, May 2, 1912; William Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot: Les révélations des archives policières (Paris, 1990), pp. 157–158. The success of Maurice Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin novels also indicate publication fascination with “anarchist” bandits [Michel Winock, Les derniers feux de la Belle Époque (Paris, 2014), pp. 62–67].

  14 KC 19, dossier Louis Jouin; EA 141, L’Excelsior, May 15, 1912.

  15 KA 74, dossier Xavier Guichard; Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot,” p. 45; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 412; Le Petit Parisien, May 13, 1912, La Dépêche, Région du Nord, May 14, 1912. Fortan would be killed in World War I (Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang [London, 1987], p. 176).

  16 KC 19, dossier Louis Jouin; Bulletin Municipal Officiel de la Ville de Paris, May 10, 1912.

  17 Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 354; Le Matin, March 9, 1912 and Le Petit Parisien, April 14, 1912.

  18 Frédéric Delacourt, L’Affaire bande à Bonnot (Paris, 2006), p. 80; Anne Steiner, Rirette l’insoumise (Tulle, 2013), pp. 60–61. Mauricius was condemned to five years in prison for “d’apologie de crimes” but fled and the conviction was overturned on appeal in 1913. By then he had taken over directorship of L’Anarchie.

  19 Steiner, Les En-dehors, pp. 150–151; William Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot, pp. 160–161. In 1974, shortly before his death, Mauricius related that many anarchists rejected the crimes of Bonnot and the others but believed they should continue to support them because contemporary society inflicted twenty times the damage every day.

  20 Michel Winock, Les derniers feux de la Belle Époque, p. 98.

  Chapter 18: Spectacle in Nogent-sur-Marne

  1 Rumors later would have Marie la Belge as having revealed the residence of Garnier, although she would always deny this.

  2 Dominique Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande (Paris, 2009), pp. 97–98. See also Jacques Porot, Louis Lépine: Préfet de Police, Témoin de sons temps (1846–1933) (Paris, 1994), pp. 269–272. Richard Parry relates (without citing a source) that a letter arrived at the prefecture of police on Monday from a man who claimed to have recognized Garnier on the tramway to Nogent, sitting with a younger man (p. 142).

  3 JA 15, report of March 19, 1912, 4 p.m.; Rirette Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie (Quimperlé, 2005), p. 78; Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande, pp. 98–99.

  4 Marcel Guillaume, Mes grandes enquêtes criminelles. De la bande à Bonnot à l’affaire Stavisky (Paris, 2005), p. 103; Frédéric Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque (Lyon, 2008), p. 422, L’Excelsior, May 15, 1912. Anna Dondon, Valet’s girlfriend, had left the “villa” before the police arrived and was never accused of a crime (Frédéric Delacourt, L’Affaire bande à Bonnot [Paris, 2006], pp. 144–146; Anne Steiner, Les En-dehors: anarchistes individualistes et illégalistes dans la Belle Époque [Montreuil, 2008], p. 226).

  5 Guillaume, Mes Grandes Enquêtes criminelles, pp. 101–104; EA 141, prefecture of police, May 15, 1912.

  6 André Salmon, La Terreur noir (Paris, 2008), pp. 294–295; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 427; Le Temps, May 16, 1912.

  7 JA 20, report May 14 and 15, 1912.

  8 EA 141, Rapport, commissaire divisionnaire, chef du service, de sûreté, to Directeur de police, May 16, 1912; report of Paul Guillebaud, May 14, 1912; report of gardien de la paix Mametz; Émile Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot” (Paris, 1968), pp. 52–54; Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, p. 78; Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande, pp. 102–103; William Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot: Les révélations des archives policières (Paris, 1990), pp. 172–177; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 438; L’Excelsior, May 15, 1912. Valet’s father was denied the right to see and to take away his son’s corpse. Rumors circulated that Garnier had been alive when he was killed—needlessly—by a policeman. Authorities refused to deliver the bodies of Garnier and Valet to their families, which compounded questions about their deaths.

  9 Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande, p. 102.

  10 Renaud Thomazo, Mort aux bourgeois! Sur les traces de la bande à Bonnot (Paris, 2009), pp. 238–241.

  11 Laurent López, La guerre des polices n’a pas eu lieu: Gendarmes et policiers, co-acteurs de la sécurité publique sous la Troisième République (1870–1914) (Paris, 2014), pp. 382–391.

  12 López, La guerre des polices n’a pas eu lieu, pp. 399–400.

  13 López, La guerre des polices n’a pas eu lieu, p. 394; Jean-Marc Berlière, Le monde des polices en France (Paris, 1996), pp. 94, 107; Jean-Marc Berlière, Le Prefet Lépine: Vers la naissance de la police moderne (Paris, 1993), pp. 249–250.

  14 L’Anarchie, September 5, 1912; Guillaume Davranche, Trop jeune pour mourir: ouvriers et révolutionnaires face à la guerre (1909–1914) (Paris, 2014), p. 223.

  15 EA 141, L’Humanité, May 16, 1912.

  16 Steiner, Les En-dehors, p. 149; Thomazo, Mort aux bourgeois!, pp. 246–247.

  17 JA 22.

  18 JA 22, April 28, 1912.

  19 JA 20, report of February 16, 1912; Le mouvement anarchiste. Vol. 1, Des origines à 1914, pp. 431–432; Thomazo, Mort aux bourgeois!, pp. 255–256.

  Chapter 19: On Trial

  1 Émile Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot” (Paris, 1968), pp. 61–62.

  2 Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot,” pp. 64–65.

  3 Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot,” pp. 66–67.

  4 Rirette Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie (Quimperlé, 2005), p. 58; Victor Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, 1901–1941, edited by Jean Rière (Paris, 1978), pp. 45–46.

  5 J(ean) Maitron, “De Kibaltchiche à Victor Serge. Le Rétif (1909–1919),” Mouvement social, 47, avril–juin 1964, pp. 51–54, from a letter January 22, 1913,
to Émile Armand; Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (New York, 2012), p. 46.

  6 JA 18, reports of October 24–25, 1912; Frédéric Delacourt, L’Affaire bande à Bonnot (Paris, 2006), p. 101; Le Petit Parisien, February 4, 1912; Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 48.

  7 Frédéric Delacourt, L’Affaire bande à Bonnot (Paris, 2006), pp. 99–100; Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang (London, 1987), p. 7. Two of the accused were not present: Gorodsky, on the run, and Rimbault, in a mental institution.

  8 L’Anarchie, February 6, 1913. The original forty included three propriétaires, four commerçants, four rentiers, one officier supérieur en retraite, three agents de change and clercs de notaires, nine patrons and entrepreneurs, and nine employés. Of the twelve jurors and two alternates, there were two engineers, a rentier, a fabricant de voitures, a clerc de notaire, a propriétaire, commis d’agent de change, commerçant, employée, entrepreneur de ciments retraité, docteur en médecin. One propriétaire and one rentier served as alternates.

  9 L’Anarchie, February 6, 1913.

  10 Marius Boucabelle, A propos de l’affaire Bonnot (Paris, 1912), p. 4.

  11 Rirette Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie (Quimperlé, 2005), p. 90; Victor Méric, Les bandits tragiques. (Paris, 1926), p. 105.

  12 Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, p. 59; Victor Méric, Les bandits tragiques (1926), p. 95; Frédéric Lavignette, Action Française, February 4, 1913, p. 510.

  13 Robert Le Texier, De Ravachol à la bande à Bonnot (Paris, 1989), p. 189; Le Matin, February 23, 1913.

  14 Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot,” pp. 94–95, 129; Luc Nemeth, “Victor Serge, marqué, par son passé,” in Rirette Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, p. 102; Frédéric Delacourt, L’Affaire bande à Bonnot (Paris, 2006), p. 107; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 510; Le Matin, February 23, 1913.

  15 Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 46.

  16 EA 141; Delacourt, L’Affaire bande à Bonnot, pp. 108–118, 151.

  17 Le Petit Parisien, February 5, 1913.

  18 Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, p. 59: Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot,” pp. 95–97; Delacourt, L’Affaire bande à Bonnot, pp. 110, 118–22; Arthur Bernède, Bonnot, Garnier et Cie (Paris, 1930), pp. 175–176.

  19 JA 17, report of August 8, 1912.

  20 Méric, Les bandits tragiques, p. 69; Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande, pp. 109–11; Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot,” pp. 98–100; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, pp. 235, 513; L’Humanité, March 31, 1912; Robert Le Texier, De Ravachol à la bande à Bonnot (Paris, 1989), p. 187; Le Petit Parisien, February 6, 1912.

  21 Frédéric Delacourt, L’Affaire bande à Bonnot, pp. 122–125.

  22 Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot,” p. 100; Delacourt, L’Affaire bande à Bonnot, pp. 128–133.

  23 Delacourt, L’Affaire bande à Bonnot, pp. 133–135.

  24 JA 20, report of April 27, 1912; Delacourt, L’Affaire bande à Bonnot, pp. 137–143.

  25 When Huc, the gardener at Romainville, testified, his head shaved for whatever reason, he related that he had promised to denounce his “copains” because he had been promised a pardon. He had changed his mind: “Monsieur le president, parce que j’ai été lâche, je ne veux pas devenir un salaud.”

  26 Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande, pp. 103–111; Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot, pp. 184–185.

  27 Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, pp. 55–61; Delacourt, L’Affaire bande à Bonnot, p. 160. Rirette noted that she and Victor had largely renounced tu-toing each other because in the anarchist world everyone tu-toied everyone.

  28 Le Petit Parisian, February 20, 1913.

  29 Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot,” pp. 135–137; Delacourt, L’Affaire bande à Bonnot, pp. 137–143, 160–161; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, pp. 548–549, 554; Le Petit Parisien, February 25 and 27, 1913.

  30 Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, p. 60; Victor Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionaire, p. 48.

  31 Rodriguez then was transferred to Lille to face charges of fencing stolen goods and counterfeit money (Delacourt, p. 180). He claimed that Dieudonné had not shot Caby, but had been in the car—indeed, was the mystery person. Rodriguez, of course, was not there, and his claim should be taken with a grain of salt. The identity of the mystery person remains unknown. Barbe Le Clerch was not convicted of any crime and was still living in Paris in 1913 under an assumed name (JA 18, report of January 31, 1913). Anna Dondon told police that she did not know where the Bretonne was to be found.

  32 Anne Steiner, Les En-dehors: anarchistes individualistes et illegalistes dans la Belle Époque (Montreuil, 2008), p. 161; Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot, p. 198. Others who knew or sympathized or had helped gang members in any way also received prison sentences: Jean-Marcel Poyer to five years and Kléber Bénard to six years, both for having been go-betweens in stolen guns that ended up in the hands of the Bonnot Gang. Henri Joseph Crozat de Fleury, denounced by his wife, received five years for having sold stolen securities. Jourdan received eighteen months in prison (to which le conseil de guerre subsequently added six more). Charles Reinert went to prison for having concocted a false alibi for poor Dieudonné.

  33 Eugène Dieudonné, La vie des forçats (Paris, 2014), pp. 21–25.

  34 Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 49.

  35 Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, pp. 62–63; Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, p. 48; Méric, Les bandits tragiques, pp. 109–110; Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot,” pp. 146–147;Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 564; Le Petit Parisien, February 28, 1913.

  36 Luc Nemeth, “Victor Serge, marqué, par son passé,” in Rirette Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, p. 103.

  37 L’Anarchie March 6, 1913.

  38 André Salmon, La Terreur noir (Paris, 2008), p. 302; Guillaume Davranche, Trop jeune pour mourir: ouvriers et révolutionnaires face à la guerre (1909–1914) (Paris, 2014), pp. 304–306, 312. The former indicates that Raymond Callemin wrote a letter from his cell to L’Anarchie for it to stop making “apologies stupides” for acts that had no “aspect d’anarchisme ou de revendication sociale.” L’Anarchie devoted a column to “le droit d’asile” on January 2, 1913.

  Chapter 20: The Widow

  1 Émile Michon, Un peu de l’âme de bandits: étude de psychologie criminelle (N.p., 1913),

  pp. 45–51, 70–72. Michon concluded that if the bandits had been born into a different milieu, their lives could have turned out very differently. He noted that often the fathers were “not beyond reproach,” as in the case of Callemin. Another was brutal. Yet in several cases grandparents or aunts had played a positive role. While their level of intelligence varied, none had more than basic primary schooling. Those who read were essentially autodidacts. Besides Dostoevsky, Kropotkin, and Tolstoy (from whom they had taken ideas not of charity and kindness but only of violence and revolutionary instincts), a few had read Darwin, Lamarck, and Le Dantec, who viewed the ego as the basis of society. This, in Michon’s view, pointed at least several of them toward their obsession with the individual and “vivre sa vie!” The causeries pushed them toward individualism and then illegalism. Many had vowed revenge against society for their poverty. Carouy had been in Thiais but had not wielded a knife. Yet he tried to justify the killing of Monsieur Moreau and his aged maid because the securities stored in a chest of drawers had been built on the suffering of the poor. Strangely, he insisted that it was a good deed to put the securities back in circulation and benefit from them. Michon concluded that all of them were in some ways violent.

  2 Michon, Un peu de l’âme de bandits, pp. 186–187.

  3 Michon, Un peu de l’âme de bandits, pp. 65–66.

  4 Michon, Un peu de l’âme de bandits, pp. 20–21, 34–38.

  5 Victor Serge, “Méditation sur l’anarchie,” Esprit, 55, April 1, 1937, pp. 38–39.

  6 JA 16, “Mes Mémo
ires: (Callemin dit Raymond la Science): Pourquoi j’ai cambriolé Pourquoi j’ai tué.” He added that “l’attentat contre la vie humaine” was a crime, but seemed to excuse it with the corollary, “perpétré dans certaines conditions” (Victor Méric, p. 115).

  7 William Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot: Les révélations des archives policières (Paris, 1990), p. 59.

  8 Rirette Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie (Quimperlé, 2005), p. 58.

  9 Patrick Pécherot, L’Homme à la Carabine: Esquisse (Paris, 2011), pp. 263–264.

  10 JA 21, April 11, 1913; Renaud Thomazo, Mort aux bourgeois! Sur les traces de la bande à Bonnot (Paris, 2009), pp. 265–266.

  11 EA 140, report of April 18, 1913.

  12 Gaetano Manfredonia, La chanson anarchiste en France des origines à 1914 (Paris, 1997), pp. 260–261.

  13 JA 21, p.v. of executions, April 21, 1913; Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 50; André Salmon, La Terreur noir (Paris, 2008), p. 303; Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, pp. 79, 131–132 (Annex II, Alexandre Crois, Crapouillot, January 1938); Dominique Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande (Paris, 2009), p. 113; Philippe Néris, La Bande à Bonnot (Paris, 1925), p. 154; Émile Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot” (Paris, 1968), pp. 155–156. Depond notes that it was known for criminals to have tattooed on their neck “Pour Deibler,” or “Réservé à Deibler” (p. 186); Michon, Un peu de l’âme de bandits, pp. 221–291. On June 27, 1908, Doctor Paul Gleize in Beaugency had expressed in writing his opinion that André Soudy “est attaint de troubles mentaux… il présente des idées d’homicide.” He recommended surveillance and perhaps admission to “un asile d’aliénés” (Michon, Un peu de l’âme de bandits, p. 337). Soudy was the subject of a novel published in 1911 by Patrick Pécherot, L’Homme à la Carabine; Esquisse. Marie Besse was shattered by Soudy’s execution and died at age seventeen (Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang [London, 1987], p. 175).

  14 Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot,” pp. 163–164; Robert Le Texier, De Ravachol à la bande à Bonnot (Paris, 1989), p. 191; Eugène Dieudonné, La vie des forçats (Paris: Libertalia, 2014), p. 26. The writer and journalist Albert Londres launched a campaign asking for his release from prison, and Dieudonné died on August 21, 1944, in the hospital of Eaubonne in the suburbs of Paris. Metge spent the rest of his life in Guiana, dying of fever in 1931 several years after being freed [Frédéric Lavignette, La Bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque (Lyon, 2008), p. 591.] Gauzy benefited from a campaign on his behalf and went free in July 1913. He sold old clothes and textiles in markets of the suburbs of Paris until his death in 1963 at age 83. An article in Paris-Jour on June 16, 1963, noted the death of the last member [sic] of the Bonnot Gang (EA 141). Émile Michon contended that Dieudonné, whom he interviewed several times at La Santé, had come to see his “errors” and that little by little “l’evidence a repris ses droits.” It had saddened him that many anarchists, who had evoked solidarity and the possibility of human happiness, had turned to individualism and egotism. Anarchists should return to the sincere sentiments of Kropotkin and others (Michon, Un peu de l’âme de bandits, pp. 279–285).