Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits

by John Merriman

  Judges inflicted harsh sentences on anarchists. The anarchist burglar Marius Jacob, whose band stole from people of professions he considered parasitical—such as bankers or rentiers—faced life in prison because some of the take from his nighttime burglaries went to anarchist propaganda. Such laws were not used against other “opponents” of the regime, such as Action Française, which worked for a restoration of the monarchy. The effect, at first, had been that many anarchists went underground and others left France. The anarchist press retreated. Moreover, some anarchist militants, particularly those who had been in the struggle for some time, withdrew from the fray. By the time Victor and Rirette had taken over L’Anarchie, anarchism had been revived. The police crackdown was amplified as well.5

  After Victor’s arrest, thirteen more “suspects” were rounded up. When the police burst into an accordion dance in Belleville, a brawl followed, with shots fired here and there. No anarchist suspects were present. Rirette wrote an article calling attention to the anarchists—“our prisoners”—who had been arrested, including Victor, and were being held in a cell in the prison of La Santé.6

  In the meantime, Rirette remained free—undoubtedly because Jouin hoped she would lead them to the others. But she was interrogated three times, denying any link to the holdup on rue Ordener. Her daughter Chinette got to know Jouin well. The policeman told her not to be afraid of him, and Chinette said she recognized him—that he was the person who had taken away “Papa Louis,” then “Papa André,” and then “Papa Victor.” “Pauvre gosse” (poor kid), commented Jouin sadly. Rirette was still legally the manager of L’Anarchie, which the authorities claimed served as a “gathering place for criminals.” Rirette insisted from the beginning that she did not share the same ideas as the illegalists, but that she had remained in Romainville throughout the summer of 1911. Even so, Rirette was hardly in the clear.7

  Early on the morning of January 31, two anarchist burglars were surprised at work in the small train station of Fleury-les-Aubrais just north of Orléans. They shot dead the stationmaster and hopped on the next train for Paris. When news outran the train, they jumped off into the night. Cornered by two gendarmes, they killed one before being captured. One of them yelled, “Long live Anarchy!” and put a bullet into his own head. The other, Joseph Renard, a friend of Louis Rimbault, was arrested. This bloody incident had nothing necessarily to do with the events in the Paris region, but it appeared to confirm the interpretation that anarchism and criminal violence were linked.8

  The minister of the interior asked all of the prefects of France to provide information on how many anarchists in their départements owned automobiles or drove them as chauffeurs. Their movements were to be closely observed. After all, recent events had demonstrated that anarchist bandits “will not hesitate to employ the perfected means of locomotion to carry out their evil deeds (thefts, acts of sabotage, and more).”9

  Parisians joined the police in looking closely at what they believed to be unlikely or suspicious automobile activity. Again, most of the tips led nowhere. For example, a well-off gentleman driving his “workers” to the post office near the place de la République at about 6:30 one evening watched as a young woman stepped out of a “superb limousine with a patent-leather interior.” He heard her say to the driver “Do you think?” using the familiar “tu” and with an accent from the faubourgs. Then she went into a nearby building. The man contended that women owning automobiles did not usually tu-toi, particularly ordinary employees. The “good citizen” moved his car closer so he could discreetly have a better look at the car’s driver. The well-heeled gentleman, immediately suspicious of an “accent from the faubourgs,” carefully described the two men in the car, as if he had been asked to draw up a police description. All this made him think that what he had observed “appeared to me far from the customs of people of means.” The small woman returned, getting back in the car with a tall man. The gentleman concluded that the men he had seen strongly resembled men believed to have held up the Société Générale on rue Ordener. But he refused to provide his name, “having no desire to become a target for the band of murdering robbers.” Authorities could contact him with a notice in Le Journal and Le Matin. But he would soon be leaving on a business trip. Police spent hours if not days checking out such “tips.” In this case, the people the “witness” had seen turned out to be “honorable.” The owner of the car worked for the Bank of France. The driver was his regular chauffeur, and another man in the car was his son. The woman was his mistress, and the third man was one of her friends. Nothing could be simpler.10

  The search for the bandits was not limited to land, as flying had emerged as a nascent sport. Prefects and police turned their attention toward aviation, listing “known aviation schools,” of which there were now twenty-four, only one of which was in the département of the Seine. The minister of the interior worried that he had received information, from “a very serious source,” that anarchists or other revolutionaries were trying to be admitted to “aviation schools with the intention of taking advantage of the new means of aerial locomotion to put into practice their subversive theories.” In several cases, he asked the police to look into the background of aviators, students, and employers “and to watch them attentively.” From Beauvais came worries about two “suspect students,” one German, the other Austrian, and that “certain revolutionaries” had attempted to find jobs there. There was no real reason for such suspicion, but the reports that reached high desks reflected the degree of fear generated by the anarchist bandits at a time when new technology seemed to pose a potential threat for misuse while speeding up society. There is no evidence that Garnier, Bonnot, Callemin, or anyone else in the Bonnot Gang intended to fly anywhere; fancy automobiles remained their transportation of choice.11

  As police aggressively monitored anarchists in Paris, on February 3, 1912, Le Libertaire spoke for many: “The cops, kings for the moment, burst into the homes of comrades, searching everywhere, and in their rage at not finding anything just tear the place up. They track, they watch, they visit concierges, and they convince bosses to get rid of those who chance has put into their sight and under their claws. And the mass press sings the same refrain.”12

  Police pressure and the inevitable whispers of police spies with their hands out for payments eroded individualist and illegalist solidarities. Victor believed that some compagnons were saving their skins and picking up some extra cash by tipping off the police about the activities of some of their comrades. To some extent, the mood had become “sauve qui peut.”13

  On February 15, Jouin ordered a search of Lorulot’s residence near Buttes-Chaumont, not far from the former office of L’Anarchie. They found Jeanne Bélardi sleeping there. She was no longer with Édouard Carouy. That nothing suspicious had been found did not prevent police from closely monitoring the comings and goings of most everybody coming by to see Lorulot; nor did it prevent them from following him when he went out.

  The next day, Jouin sent a summary report along to Xavier Guichard, his boss. In Jouin’s view, a band of “dangerous anarchists” were at work. He insisted that police had found a base in Romainville where L’Anarchie had been published; then on rue Fessart, when the newspaper had moved back into Paris; as well as in the residence of Louis Rimbault in Pavillons-sous-Bois. In these places, Jouin related, plans for robberies were made, and booty from such coups divided up, designated as “taking back from the bourgeoisie.” Jouin identified five members of “this formidable [anarchist] organization”: Garnier, Dieudonné, Bonnot, de Boe, and “X,” known as Raymond la Science. Carouy and Rimbault stood accused as accomplices in the theft of the Delaunay-Belleville automobile used in the event.14

  Early on the day of February 27, a gray Delaunay-Belleville had been seen racing along rue de Rivoli. A policeman noted the license plate number, 878.8, but couldn’t stop the drivers. The car, stolen in Saint-Mandé, knocked down the stand of a woman selling vegetables, scattering her wares on the stre
et. Ten or fifteen minutes later, the Delaunay-Belleville came to a sudden stop on rue des Dames at the corner of rue Nollet. Jules Bonnot, who was as usual at the wheel, took out his tools; a gas leak was the problem.

  Once the car had started up again, Bonnot drove toward the place du Havre near Gare Saint-Lazare, which was encumbered by that most Parisian of events: a traffic jam. The Delaunay-Belleville tried to maneuver through the cars, brushed a bus, and was pinned against the sidewalk by a truck. A policeman appeared, coincidentally named Garnier (François), demanding the driver’s license and announcing that he would be drawing up a ticket. Bonnot got out of the automobile without saying a word, turned the crank handle and started the car up again. It began to move up the street, until a carriage and then a bus blocked its way.

  The policeman jumped onto the running board of the automobile. Octave Garnier fired three shots. The policeman fell to the ground, fatally wounded. The Delaunay-Belleville raced off, crossed the boulevard Haussmann, and moved down the rue Tronchet and then the rue Royale. A soldier tried to follow them on a bicycle, as did two policemen who commandeered a sportscar from an astonished driver. That car crashed into a female pedestrian, gravely injuring her. Bonnot, Callemin, and Garnier were soon on the Champs-Élysées and then out of Paris.15

  While Paris was stunned by the brutal murder of a policeman, Bonnot, Callemin, and Garnier prepared again to take their talents beyond the Parisian region. Callemin was in touch with Élie Monier, “Simentoff,” who was in Alès, in the southeast. He had a robbery in mind for the gang. On February 25, a telegram had arrived addressed to Dieudonné from Alès with the cryptic message “This evening Mama’s health is very good.” It had been sent by Simentoff to indicate that everything was ready for the men to rob an employee who was transporting money from the silver mines near Alès. With this heist planned, Bonnot, Garnier, and Callemin and two others—wearing melon-shaped hats—began to drive to Alès, at the time at least a fourteen-hour drive from Paris, if not more.16

  With Bonnot at the wheel again, on February 29 the car ran into a sidewalk in Pont-sur-Yonne, about eighty miles from Paris, damaging a tire. A nearby mechanic had the tools necessary to repair the car. Not long thereafter, the automobile broke down again, this time just outside Arnay-le-Duc in Burgundy, twenty miles northwest of Beaune. A rear tire had gone flat, and the men drove the car into town, causing considerable damage. The bad-tempered Garnier went after Bonnot about his driving, suggesting that he had again been responsible for “their” car breaking down because he had clipped a sidewalk. Bonnot responded with anger. The men paid someone to drive them to Beaune, where they lunched. Their chauffeur noted to the police that “a large ruddy man,” somewhat older than the others, appeared to be the organizer of the five. From Beaune they returned to Paris on the train. From photos, witnesses identified Bonnot, Garnier, and Dieudonné. The benevolent driver added that the leader appeared to be Bonnot.17

  In the meantime, police surveillance of the anarchist typographer Léon Bouchet and of Jeanne Bélardi, as well as information divulged in an anonymous letter, led police to a rooming hotel on rue Nollet in the seventeenth arrondissement. The letter had denounced Dieudonné, indicating that he was staying in that lodging house. Jouin placed two policemen as lodgers in the building to monitor comings and goings.

  On February 27, Jouin and his team interviewed Georges Rollet, who ran the lodging house. He said that a “Monsieur Aubertin” had come looking for a room in late December, having been sent by “Jules Comtesse… who had recommended our establishment to him.” He had asked for room number 6, where Monsieur Comtesse had stayed. “Aubertin” left on January 12 and returned on February 2 with his spouse.18

  Eugène Dieudonné, suspected of participation in the Bonnot Gang.

  Rollet’s wife recalled that “Monsieur Comtesse” had been “presented” to them by David Bélonie, whom she had known four or five year earlier when she was concierge on rue Saint-Lazare near the railroad station, where she had lived with her first husband, who had subsequently passed away. At the time, Bélonie worked at a pharmacy on the same street.

  As for M. Comtesse, he had first arrived on November 28 and stayed a fortnight. Several days later, Bélonie showed up to return the keys and take items that Comtesse had left behind, including a suitcase. Bélonie had come by to visit his friend several times. Comtesse had flashed large bills and “mentioned before his departure that he was going to work with a woman to start up a business and said that he had thirty thousand francs.” Comtesse, of course, was Jules Bonnot, as the police now were convinced based on the description provided by Rollet.

  Aubertin, then, was Eugène Dieudonné. He had introduced himself as an “industriel” from Nancy and taken a room with his wife, Louise Kayser, who had returned to her husband with their young son after the events on rue Ordener. The police settled in to watch the residence around the clock, hoping that Dieudonné and perhaps even Bonnot would return.

  Dieudonné, who had lost his father at a young age, had started out as an apprentice cabinetmaker at the age of thirteen. He then began hanging around with a group of anarchists in Nancy. Dieudonné married Louise Kayser in 1907, the year he completed his military service. They had two children. Louise also became a passionate anarchist, and two years later the couple left Nancy for Paris, where in 1910 they attended anarchist causeries on rue du Chevalier de la Barre and nearby, on Wednesday evenings, in a small rented hall on rue d’Angoulême. Dieudonné got a job through the efforts of Charles Bill, who was also from Nancy and who had written an occasional piece for L’Anarchie. In October 1910, Dieudonné stayed with the anarchist Dupoux, known as Rémond, in the nineteenth arrondissement and worked in a grocery store in Belleville. He had one arrest for carrying a prohibited weapon and another for making explosives. Dieudonné left the apartment in July 1911 when Dupoux was arrested. Someone came to move out his belongings.19

  When Louise heard Lorulot speak, the object of her affection changed. Soon she was following the anarchist editor and orator to cafés and then hotel rooms, while Dieudonné worked. Gradually, when Dieudonné realized what was going on, he and Louise separated. He returned broken-hearted to Nancy, walking all the way because he had no money. Back home, he stole a bicycle and landed briefly in jail. Dieudonné returned to Paris in November 1911 in the hope of winning back his wife, who had become known in anarchist circles as the “Red Venus.”20

  The police outside the rooming house on rue Nollet on February 28 did not have to wait long. Jouin and his agents stopped “Aubertin” on rue Nollet and took him upstairs to the room he occupied, where Louise and de Boe’s lover were talking. Police found maps showing ways of avoiding the customs post at the Belgian border, Browning pistols, bullets, and a ticket for something left in temporary storage at the Gare du Nord. They took Dieudonné into custody. Realizing that Louise Dieudonné’s somewhat erratic personality and penchant for indiscretions might provide useful information, on March 1 they let “the Red Venus” go.21

  The next morning, Jouin and Guichard got to work, believing that the key to the murder of the policeman on February 27 must be with “Comtesse” and “Aubertin.” Again interviewing M. Rollet, this time in his office, Guichard, now the head of Security, showed him a photo of Jules Bonnot. Rollet quickly identified him as the “Monsieur Comtesse” who had stayed in his establishment and recommended it to “Aubertin”—Dieudonné. More important, witnesses at the place du Havre identified Bonnot from police photos. Guichard now concluded that Bonnot was the leader of the gang of bandits terrorizing Paris and its region. The police quickly found Bonnot’s wife living in Annemasse on the Swiss border. She had nothing good to say about her husband, describing him as lazy, unwilling to work, and obsessed with money. Madame Bonnot had no interest in ever seeing him again.22

  As the Parisian press expressed outrage that a policeman could be gunned down right in the center of Paris, Guichard and Jouin struggled with the enormous pressure of public opinion. T
he papers were doing detective work of their own. “A Policeman Killed!” screamed headlines in the papers of the next day. Action Française announced that the murderous shots came from Browning pistols, noting that the weapon was similar to those stolen from the store on rue Lafayette. L’Excelsior’s headline roared, “We Must Be Protected!” The newspaper organized a “Meeting of Public Safety” of leaders of banks, industry, and commerce to discuss the wave of crime that had engulfed the city. If France beyond its borders faced the challenge of an increasingly aggressive German empire, the country was threatened by bandits at home as well: “The hour of awakening has arrived. Just as the Agadir Affair succeeded in awakening our numbed sense of national pride, in the same way the hideous crimes of these scoundrels oblige us to defend ourselves against their attacks.”23

  About 3:00 a.m. on February 29, three men tried to burglarize the office of the notary Tintant, place de l’Hôtel de ville, in Pontoise, seventeen miles northwest of Paris. They arrived in an automobile and tried to enter with a “false key,” but they could not do so as the notary had installed new locks inside the door after a recent theft. They went around to a garden wall and climbed over it. When they broke through a door into the house, the noise awakened the notary. He opened his window above, fired a revolver in the air, and yelled a warning to a neighbor. The men fired two shots in the direction of Monsieur Tintant and then fled in the stolen gray Delaunay-Belleville. A few hours later, passersby saw several men get out of the Delaunay-Belleville in a vacant lot in Saint-Ouen, douse it with gasoline, toss some straw into the car, and set it on fire. Tintant and his neighbor agreed that there had been three men, but they could not positively identify Bonnot, Garnier, and Callemin from photos.24