Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits
Page 31
25 Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot” (Paris, 1968), p. 58.
26 EA 141, Ordre de service, March 1, 1912.
27 JA 17, report of February 2, 1912.
28 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), p. 372; André Salmon, La Terreur noir (Paris, 2008), p. 285; Davranche, Trop jeune pour mourir, pp. 215–116; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 241; Excelsior, April 4, 1912.
29 JA 16, dossier Dieudonné, report of June 8, 1912; Émile Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot” (Paris, 1968), pp. 21–22; Steiner, Les En-dehors, pp. 118–119; Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot, pp. 85–88, 94; Renaud Thomazo, Mort au bourgeois! Sur les traces de la bande à Bonnot (Paris, 2009), pp. 136–138; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 151. Dieudonné admitted recommending the place on the rue Nollet to a compagnon named Jules, but claimed that he had no idea that it was Bonnot. Rollet and his wife insisted that Bélonie sent Comtesse/Bonnot to their establishment.
30 JA 20, police report of June 8, 1912; Frédéric Lavignette, pp. 167–168, Le Petit Parisien, March 20 and June 26, 1912, Le Matin, March 20, 1912.
31 Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot,” pp. 25–26; Thomazo, Mort au bourgeois!, pp. 152–154; Lavignette, p. 166, Le Petit Parisien, March 14, 1912; Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot, pp. 90–94, claiming that 500 francs that ended up with Bonnot, representing the value of securities left in the consigne, had been given to an informer named Georges Taquard, a usurer.
32 JA 20, report of June 8, 1912; Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot,” pp. 26–28; Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande, pp. 72–73; Thomazo, Mort au bourgeois!, pp. 154–144. They claimed that a banker had agreed to purchase half of the securities there available for 2,500 francs but had only 500 francs with him—this on a Paris street—and that he would pay the remainder the next morning. However, the man was no banker; rather, he was Georges Tacquart, a fence.
33 Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot, pp. 95–96; EA 141; Le Petit Parisien, May 6, 1912; Bill joined the army during the war under a false name, but in 1918 he was recognized by another soldier and imprisoned, dying in March 1918.
34 JA 15, report of March 19, 1912, 4 p.m.
35 Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, pp. 206–207; Excelsior, March 29, and Le Petit Parisien, March 27, 1912.
36 L’Anarchie, March 21, 1912.
37 Le Petit Parisian, March 26, 27, and 28; L’Excelsior, March 28.
38 Last quote from JA 17, report of April 3, 1912. Thomazo, Mort aux bourgeois!, p. 121; André Salmon, La Terreur noir (Paris, 2008), pp. 275, 298. One letter from Ixelles by Clément Vander Cammen, an administrative employee there, related that he knew Callemin and wanted to take the liberty of reporting that “he had always given good advice to his comrades in the office, and that he followed it himself.”
39 Steiner, Les En-dehors, pp. 117–118; Thomazo, Mort aux bourgeois!, pp. 121–122.
40 JA 16, report of June 3, 1912; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 217; Le Petit Parisien, March 30, 1912; Steiner, Les En-dehors, pp. 123–124.
41 Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (New York, 2012), pp. 41–42; Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, pp. 52–55, 90; Steiner, Rirette l’insoumise, pp. 56–57; Steiner, Les En-dehors, pp. 124–125.
42 L’Anarchie, February 28 and April 11, 1912.
43 Steiner, Les En-dehors, p. 155.
Chapter 13: The Bonnot Gang’s Murder Spree
1 Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang (London, 1987), p. 113.
2 Dominique Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande: Le tourbillon sanglant (Paris, 2009), pp. 79–80; Anne Steiner, Les En-dehors anarchistes individualistes et illégalistes dans la Belle Époque (Montreuil, 2008), pp. 125–126; Frédéric Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque (Lyon, 2008), p. 183; L’Excelsior, March 26, 1912.
3 Victor Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, 1901–1941, edited by Jean Rière (Paris, 1978), pp. 42–43; Émile Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot” (Paris, 1968), pp. 30–33; Steiner, Les En-dehors, pp. 125–126; William Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot: Les révélations des archives policières (Paris, 1990), pp. 105–110; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, pp. 188, 194; Le Petit Parisien, March 26, 1912.
4 EA 140; Le Matin, March 18, 1912; André Salmon, La Terreur noir (Paris, 2008), p. 77.
5 Le Petit Parisien, March 27, 1912; Action Française, March 28, 1912.
6 Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (New York, 2012), pp. 40–42.
7 JA 19, report of March 28, 1912; JA 20, report of June 8, 1912, Rodriguez from the prison de la Santé, March 26 and 28, 1912; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 210; Action Française, March 29, 1912.
8 Rirette Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie (Quimperlé, 2005), pp. 88–89.
9 JA 19, report of April 25, 1912. A poem by Aristide Bruant captures the atmosphere surrounding Deibler: “L’aut’ matin Deibler, d’un seul coup / Place d’la Roquette y a cou / -pé la tête.” (Francis Carco, La Belle Époque au temps de Bruant [Paris, 1954], p. 144).
10 Rirette Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, p. 88; Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot, pp. 114–116. Baraille was not prosecuted, although possibly he knew about Soudy’s alleged crimes (EA 141, procureur, n.d.). The unidentified anarchist may have been Napoléon Jacob, a specialist in counterfeit money, who probably was a mouchard (Jean Grave, Mémoires d’un anarchiste, p. 371).
11 JA 19, letter from a gardien de paix, Paris, fourteenth arrondissement, sent from the Sanatorium d’Angicourt, Liancourt, Oise, March 31, 1912; report of April 13, 1912; Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, p. 79; Steiner, Les En-dehors, pp. 127–129.
12 Victor Méric, pp. 108–110; Émile Becker, pp. 39–40; Émile Michon, Un peu de l’âme de bandits: étude de psychologie criminelle (1913), p. 278; Frédéric Lavignette, p. 246, Le Petit Parisien, April 5, 1912.
13 JA 24, report of April 27, 1912; JA 16, report of April 4, 1912 (relating that he had somehow got a pair of scissors); Rirette Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, p. 49; Dominique Depond, pp. 8, 83–84; Anne Steiner, Les En-Dehors, pp. 129–30.
14 JA 19, police report April 5 and procès-verbal April 6, 1912.
15 JA 18, reports April 15, June 11, 14, and July 10, 1912; JA 19, report of April 5 and p.v. April 6, 1912; Frédéric Lavignette, pp. 213–214, Le Matin March 20, 1912.
16 JA 16, “note” on Anna Dondon; Frédéric Delacourt, p. 84; JA 19, reports of May 1 and July 13, 1912.
Chapter 14: Panic in Paris
1 Frédéric Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque (Lyon, 2008), pp. 197–198; L’Humanité, March 27, 1912. See Aaron Freundschuh, “Colonial War Veterans as Police Investigators: La Sûreté de Paris in the early Third Republic,” paper presented at the Western Society for French History, Chicago, November 2015, noting that gendarmerie posts had been cut in half in Paris by 1887, to about 3,000, while the number of gardiens de la paix had increased to about 8,000.
2 Louis Lépine, Mes souvenirs (Paris: Payot, 1929), p. 266; EA 140, telegram 3:00, March 25, 1912; JA 15, “Recherches et vérification dans les cafés de Montmontre”; Louis Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime (Paris: Payot, 1995), pp. 304–305. Chevalier differentiates between “haut” Montmartre, where anarchist ideas thrived, “lower Montmartre” of pleasure adn treason,” and eastern Montmartre, where “plaisir” combined with violence. He sees the two as essentially part of the same phenomenon.
3 Mark S. Micale, “France,” in Michael Saler, ed., The Fin-de-Siècle World (New York, 2015), pp. 110–111; Robert A. Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France: The Medical Concept of National Decline (Princeton, 1984).
4 Marie-Claire Bancquart, Paris “Belle Époque” par ses écrivains (Paris, 1997),
p. 53; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 48; L’Humanité, October 13, 1911.
5 Newspaper coverage of the Bonnot Gang clearly reflected the role that crime played in contemporary editorial strategies; Dominque Kalifa, L’Encre et du sang (Paris, 1995), pp. 27, 44, 82, 123; Michel Winock, Les derniers feux à la Belle Époque (Paris, 2014), pp. 148–154; Frédéric Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque (Lyon, 2008), p. 11.
6 Winock, La Belle Époque, pp. 176–179, 187–188; Kalifa, L’Encre et du sang, p. 354. James Cannon notes that “zone” comes from the Greek for zôné, in this case the belt or girdle around Paris (p. 114). In the zone there were 79, 53, 43, and 42 murders, compared with but 3 in the sixteenth arrondissement and 5 in the seventh arrondissement.
7 Kalifa, L’Encre et du sang, pp. 151–163; Gérard Jacquemet, “La violence à Belleville au début du xxe siècle,” Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Île-de-France, Michelle Perrot, “Dans la France de la Belle Époque, les ‘Apaches’, premières bandes de jeunes,” in Les Marginaux et les exclus dans l’histoire, Cahiers Jussieu no. 5 (1979); Louis Chevalier, Montmartre du plaisir et du crime (Paris: Payot, 1995), pp. 298–300; Pierre Castelle, Paris Républicain 1871–1914 (Abbeville, 2003), p. 184; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 41; L’Excelsior, September 1912. On March 13, 1913, an apache wounded two policemen with a Browning, although knives remained the weapon of choice in La Chapelle. A journalist came up with the term apache (Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics, pp. 197–198.)
8 Francis Carco, La Belle Époque au temps de Bruant (Paris, 1954), pp. 55–56.
9 James Cannon, The Paris Zone: A Cultural History, 1840–1944 (Farnham, UK, 2015), pp. 83–88, quoting Soulier’s “Le Zonier,” December 1, 1897, “Think of your safety and carry a gun when you walk through the zone.”
10 Fantômas was the creation of Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre.
11 Kalifa, L’Encre et du sang, pp. 152–163, especially p. 153; Gérard Jacquemet, “La violence à Belleville au début du xxe siècle,” Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Île-de-France, 1978, pp. 141–144; Bernard Marchand, Paris, histoire d’une ville, xixe–xxe siècle (Paris, 1993), pp. 210–211; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 47; Jean-Marc Berlière, Le Préfet Lépine: Vers la naissance de la police moderne (Paris, 1993), pp. 212–218.
12 Jacquemet, “La violence à Belleville au début du xxe siècle,” p. 164; Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics, p. 212.
13 EA 140, April 28, 1912.
14 Émile Michon, Un peu de l’âme de bandits: étude de psychologie criminelle (Paris, 1913), pp. 20–21; 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), p. 393, from an article in the Revue pénitentiaire et de droit penal (juillet–octobre 1913), p. 1081.
15 Kalifa, L’Encre et du sang, pp. 49, 227; Michel Winock, Les derniers feux à la Belle Époque (Paris, 2014), pp. 133–137.
16 James Laux, In First Gear: The French Automobile Industry to 1914 (Montréal, 1976), pp. 169–171; Eugen Weber, France, Fin-de-Siècle (Cambridge, MA, 1986), p. 207; Michel Winock, Les derniers feux à la Belle Époque, p. 61; Paul Morand, 1900 (Paris, 1931), p. 118; James Laux, pp. 195–202, 212; Winock, La Belle Époque, p. 61. In 1913, Peugeot turned out 5,000 automobiles, Rochet-Schneider 4,704, Berliet 3,000, Dion-Bouton 2,800, and Delauney-Belleville 1,500; Pierre Castelle, Paris Républicain 1871–1914 (2003), p. 344.
17 Weber, France, Fin-de-Siècle, pp. 208–209; Winock, La Belle Époque, pp. 326–327.
18 Stephen L. Harp, Michelin: Publicité et identité culturelle dans la France du XXe siècle (Paris, 2008), pp. 245–246, 256–257; Steiner, En-dehors, p. 103; Mary McAuliffe, Twilight of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Picasso, Stravinsky, Proust, Renault, Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, and Their Friends Through the Great War (New York, 2014), p. 94.
19 Harp, Michelin: Publicité et identité culturelle dans la France du XXe siècle, pp. 12–13, 55–64, 89–90, 97–104, 109, referring to “a certain kind of national consciousness in la bourgeoisie française.”
20 William Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot: Les révélations des archives policières (Paris, 1990), pp. 59–60. Caruchet’s book, although unfootnoted, is the best of the many journalistic accounts of the Bonnot Gang.
21 Paul Morand, 1900 (Paris, 1931), pp. 116–117; McAuliffe, Twilight of the Belle Epoque, p. 44.
22 Jean-Pierre Bernard, Les deux Paris: les représentations de Paris dans le seconde moitié du xixe siècle (Paris, 2001), p. 191. There were about 98,000 horses in Paris in 1900, more than at any time in the previous century. Omnibuses drove at 8 km per hour, but automobiles sped by at 10 km an hour. Bateaux-mouche could go even faster—15 km per hour.
23 Émile Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot” 1911–1912 (Paris, 1968), pp. 9–10.
24 Kalifa, L’Encre et du sang, pp. 235–245; Renaud Thomazo, Mort aux bourgeois! Sur les traces de la bande à Bonnot (Paris, 2009), pp. 163–166.
Chapter 15: Police Dragnet
1 Renaud Thomazo, Mort aux bourgeois! Sur les traces de la bande à Bonnot (Paris, 2009), pp. 164–166.
2 Jean Grave, Mémoires d’un anarchiste (1854–1920) (Paris, 2009), p. 377; L’Anarchie, March 14, 1912.
3 Guillaume Davranche, Trop jeune pour mourir (Paris, 2014), pp. 220–222; André Salmon, La Terreur noir (Paris, 2008), p. 279.
4 F7 13053, “Notes sur l’Anarchie en France,” April 25, 1913.
5 F7 13053, “Notes sur les menées anarchistes,” March 30, 1912.
6 Émile Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot” (Paris, 1968), p. 19; Renaud Thomazo, Mort aux bourgeois! Sur les traces de la bande à Bonnot, pp. 166–168.
7 JA 15, A. Rivat, Lyon, March 27, 1912; February 28, 1912; JA 25, n.d. and May 2, 1912; March 21, 1912.
8 JA 15, dossier “Assassinat de M. Jouin,” report of April 24, 1912.
9 William Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot: Les révélations des archives policières (Paris, 1990), pp. 111–12; André Salmon, La Terreur noir, p. 291; Frédéric Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque (Lyon, 2008), p. 204; Le Petit Parisien, March 28, 1912.
10 Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 277; L’Humanité, April 24, 1912, poem of A.M. Maurel.
11 Émile Michon, Un peu de l’âme de bandits: étude de psychologie criminelle (Paris, 1913), pp. 266–274; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 300, Le Petit Parisien, April 27, 1912.
12 Rirette Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie (Quimperlé, 2005), p. 57.
13 JA 18, January 7, April 7 and 11, July 10, 1912, and March 13, 1913.
14 JA 17, dossier Clément femme Hutteaux; reports of April 7 and July 3, 1912.
15 EA 141, prefect of police, April 7, 1912; JA 17, dossier Callemin, p.v. Louis Jouin, April 5, 1912; report of July 3, 1912; Maîtrejean, Souvenirs d’anarchie, pp. 57, 78; Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande, pp. 84–86; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, pp. 253, 269, Le Matin, April 8, and Action Française, April 12, 1912. In 1913, Louise Hutteaux would be condemned to prison for five years for helping a young woman obtain an abortion.
16 JA 17, report April 27, 1912.
17 EA 141, Interrogation of Callemin; Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque, p. 269; Le Petit Parisien, April 12, 1912.
18 Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot, pp. 117–119.
19 Le Petit Parisien, April 8, 1912; Le Matin, April 10, 1912.
20 Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot,” pp. 35–36. L’Anarchie argued on May 2, 1912, that the sinking of the Titantic demonstrated that nature is more powerful than civilization.
Chapter 16: Antoine Gauzy’s Variety Store
1 JA 16, dossier Pierre Cardi, report of September 3, 1912.
2 JA 16, dossier Pierre Cardi, reports of April 25 and September 3, 1912.
3 Louis Chevalier, Montmartre du Plaisir et du crime (Paris: Payot, 1995), p. 279.
4 JA 15, police report April 24, 1912; JA 24, April 19 and May 25, 1912; JA 19, report, n.d., April 1912; Renaud Thomazo, Mort aux bourgeois! Sur les traces de la bande à Bonnot (Paris, 2009), pp. 182–87; Anne Steiner, Les En-dehors: anarchistes individualistes et illégalistes dans la Belle Époque (Montreuil, 2008), p. 131.
5 JA 19, dossier Monier dit Simentoff, p.v. April 24 and report of July 15, 1912.
6 Monier had met Bonnot at place de la République on the morning of April 22.
7 JA 18, p.v. April 25, Xavier Guichard, and reports of n.d., April 25, n.d., and May 23, 1912; JA 19, report of June 10, 1912.
8 Frédéric Lavignette, La bande à Bonnot à travers la presse de l’époque (Lyon, 2008), p. 283; L’Excelsior, April 25, 1912.
9 JA 19, p.v.; KA 74, prefect of police, February 17, 1913 (remembering that he was “fort capable” of striking Gauzy following the death of Jouin but that “il n’est pas possible que j’ai frappé Gauzy”); Émile Becker, La “Bande à Bonnot” (Paris, 1968), pp. 37–40; Dominique Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande (Paris, 2009), pp. 67–69, 86–88, 141–42; William Caruchet, Ils ont tué Bonnot: Les révélations des archives policières (Paris, 1990), pp. 135–37.
10 JA 18, p.v. April 25, Xavier Guichard, and reports of April 25, n.d., and May 23, 1912.
11 KC 19, “discours de M. Lépine, préfet de police”; Émile Michon, Un peu de l’âme de bandits: étude de psychologie criminelle (Paris, 1913), p. 266.
12 Le Matin, April 26, 1912.
13 JA 22; Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (New York, 2012), pp. 42–43; Guillaume Davranche, Trop jeune pour mourir: ouvriers et révolutionnaires face à la guerre (1909–1914) (Paris, 2014), p. 218.
Chapter 17: Besieged in Choisy-le-Roi
1 EA 141, interrogation of femme Maîtrejean; Dominique Depond, Jules Bonnot et sa bande (Paris, 2009), pp. 80–81.