Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits by John Merriman

Author:John Merriman [Merriman, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-10-27T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

POLICE DRAGNET

Protecting society meant putting an end to the Bonnot Gang. Guards monitored the city gates of Paris and soldiers patrolled the main railroad stations. The Societe Generale offered one hundred thousand francs for information leading to the arrest of the robbers, who had struck their banks twice in a matter of several months. “Suspicious” automobiles generated panic and police mobilization well beyond Paris, among other places in the Nord, Pas-de-Calais, and in Chartres.1

The police went after anyone vaguely associated with anarchism. Aggressive roundups (rafles) in working-class neighborhoods came more frequently. Police searches and arrests of random anarchists continued in the Paris region. In L’Anarchie, Victor Meric noted on March 14 that each day the public feasted on “previously unpublished details” and the attacks continued, after which the bandits simply disappeared: “The police arrest, release, and arrest again.” For his part, the anarchist Jean Grave mocked the frantic chorus for defending bourgeois society: “Let’s come up with more great laws and build more prisons!” Who were the people really responsible for these attacks? It was stated that amid the misery and suffering of ordinary people, “As long as you have not taken by the throat these odious criminals who are Luxury, Wealth, Indolence, and insolent Good Fortune, you the bourgeoise, you can fortify your police, increase the numbers of your defense forces, and continue to insult us, but there is nothing you can do.”2

n the anarchist press, Le Libertaire, which had ignored the events on rue Ordener and in Thiais, noted that the victims of the crimes of Montgeron and Chantilly were ordinary people doing their underpaid jobs. An editorial refused to condemn the perpetrators, suggesting that social inequalities were behind the acts. The members of the Bonnot Gang were minor figures compared to those pillaging the colonies, “legal bandits” who were even more guilty. An editorial regretted that Bonnot had not put his “heroisme” and energy into “the emancipatory cause of the oppressed class.”3

On March 21, L’Anarchie saluted the “four or five determined and audacious men who held the police, gendarmes, and magistrates at bay…. They managed to escape a powerfully armed organization, an entire dragnet closely linked…. Let’s imagine a thousand men with the same courage as this handful of resisters and tell me if you do not see this “dying society” really in danger?4 During a meeting of the Groupe de la Federation Revolutionnaire in the thirteenth arrondissement, an individualist stated what was painfully obvious: “Those who possess great fortune have never backed away from any means to enrich themselves and similarly the ‘illegalists’ have done the same thing in acting as they have.” In his view, the bandits’ actions were good for anarchist propaganda and could bring “only good results.”5

L’Anarchie continued to publish, although magistrates were taking copious notes of editorials for further use. From the point of view of the authorities, it was preferable to allow the anarchist newspaper to continue, because it provided a constant source of information on anarchist meetings, causeries, and other events that could easily be monitored.

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