As I’ve written before, terror was invented in Paris, starting out as state terror during the French Revolution. But out of the same philosophy that led to the French Revolution came another philosophy, one that would lead to the terror of lone individuals in the 19th and 20th centuries: anarchism. To understand this phenomenon, we need to go back to the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who argued that man is good by nature and that his natural state is freedom. According to this philosophy, the state, as the body that strips a certain amount of freedom from the individual for the sake of security, is the root of all evil. From this idea, two schools of thought emerged. The first understands that the state still has a limited role in the life of the citizen, mainly when it comes to protecting their security, but that it shouldn’t interfere in other areas of life (the approach we know today as classical liberalism or libertarianism). The second school sees government itself, simply for being government, as an enemy that must be eliminated in order to return man to his natural state of absolute freedom. These were the anarchists, and they struck fear into Europe in the late 19th century in general, and into Paris in particular.
The man who coined the word “anarchism” was the French philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), who declared that private property was theft and opposed nearly every state institution (interestingly, he actually supported the institution of a central bank, since it could fund workers’ projects). Mikhail Bakunin (1812-1876), a Russian political exile who met with Proudhon, decided to put this philosophy into action and created what he called “propaganda by the deed”, which was really just a polished name for a terrorist act. Bakunin took part in the uprisings of 1848 in Paris and 1849 in Dresden. He was arrested but managed to escape to England, where he began plotting a worldwide anarchist revolution. His young associate Sergey Nechayev (1847-1882) summed up the spirit of the movement in the “Catechism of a Revolutionary” (1869), a text long attributed to Bakunin himself: “The revolutionary has only one goal: destruction. Between him and society there is a war to the death, permanent and unceasing!” Bakunin died in 1876, but he left behind a legacy that would translate, in the years that followed, into a wave of terrorist attacks in Paris during the 1890s.
In 1891, a violent workers’ demonstration was held in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris under the black flag of anarchism (the exact same color as the ISIS flag). The demonstration led to a wave of arrests by the police. In response, on March 11, 1892, bombs were thrown at the home of the judge who had sentenced the protesters to prison. A few days later, another bomb went off at the home of the chief prosecutor. The man who planted the bomb was a French anarchist with a German name, François Claudius Koenigstein (1859-1892), who adopted the name Ravachol for himself. He was identified by Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914), the inventor of criminal identification, who developed a method for identifying criminals through facial features and body measurements. Even so, the terror continued, and in December 1893 an anarchist named Auguste Vaillant (1861-1894) threw a bomb inside the French legislature in an attempt to kill the prime minister of France. But just as he threw it, someone grabbed his arm, and the bomb flew off course and hit a column instead. As a result, a shower of nails and plaster rained down on the politicians below and caused many injuries, though no deaths. The victims at the Parisian Café Terminus two months later were less lucky, when Émile Henry (1872-1894) threw a bomb there, killing one person and wounding twenty others. While fleeing, Émile still found time to shoot a policeman dead before he was caught by passersby. Both Vaillant and Henry were executed, but the feeling of being under siege lingered over Paris.
The peak of anarchist terror came in 1894 with the assassination of the president of France, Marie François Sadi Carnot (1837-1894). This time the killer was an Italian named Sante Caserio (1873-1894), who had been forced to flee his homeland after being caught distributing pamphlets with anarchist content. When he heard that the French president was traveling to Lyon to open the colonial exhibition, Caserio understood that this was a perfect opportunity to kill him. On June 24, the president rode through the streets in an open carriage when the assassin suddenly emerged from the crowd and, shouting “Long live anarchy”, jumped into the carriage and plunged his knife into Sadi Carnot’s stomach. After the act, he tried to flee but was caught by passersby and handed over to the police. In his jail cell he said: “I am an anarchist, and I have just managed to strike down a head of state. I would have done the same to any president, king or emperor, no matter which country he came from.” Although his lawyer argued that his client was not of sound mind, Sante Caserio was executed on August 16.
As with later waves of terrorism, the terrorists of the 19th century also found support among parts of the bohemian scene, who shared their desire to free society from its chains. The cafés of Montmartre were a fertile ground for support of anarchism, and the singers who performed there wrote more than a few songs praising anarchist terror. Maxime Lisbonne (1839-1905), a former member of the Paris Commune, opened an anarchist café-cabaret in Montmartre where the doors and windows had bars on them, the chairs and tables were chained to the floor, and the waiters dressed up as convicts. The place’s advertising claimed it was the only café in Paris where there was no chance of a terrorist attack ever happening. Another spot popular with the anarchists was the Café Le Zut, which was also tied to the anarchist newspaper Le Libertaire. This was one of the favorite haunts of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) during his early years in Paris.
After the police shut down Le Zut, its owner, Frédéric Gérard (1860-1938), decided to open a new place, known today as the Lapin Agile (it was previously called the “Cabaret of the Assassins” because of paintings of murderers that hung on its walls). The new name came from a pun on the name of the painter André Gill (1840-1885), who had painted a rabbit (lapin in French) jumping out of a cooking pot above the entrance. Since it opened, the cabaret has become a meeting place for criminals, anarchists, and plenty of bohemian figures, who loved visiting the cabaret partly because of the cheap food served there. The place saw not only joy and music but also tragedy, when the owner’s son was shot dead at the entrance to the cabaret in 1911 (the killer was never caught).
These days, no anarchist activity takes place there anymore, and food isn’t served either (so it’s a good idea to eat dinner before you arrive). Even so, this is one of my favorite spots in Paris, thanks to the chanson performances that take place there nearly every evening. In 2014, I had the chance to visit twice, and both times I left feeling pure euphoria. Everything begins around 9:00 p.m., when the waiter seats you at one of the tables scattered around the hall, its walls lined with paintings by various artists who frequented the place over the years, including Picasso. In the middle of the hall sits an old piano, and as you settle in and try to get used to the atmosphere, someone starts playing it. At first you think he’s just warming up and the show will begin shortly, but then, a few minutes later, people sitting at a table right next to you suddenly start singing along to the songs being played on the piano. At that moment it looks like it might just be tourists who decided to break into some kind of impromptu sing-along, but pretty quickly you realize the show has actually already started. And so, over the course of about four magical hours, you get to hear chansons, some famous, some less so, spanning a repertoire that runs from the end of the 19th century to the end of the 20th. The place has a whole roster of singers, and only some of them perform on any given night, so even if you come back several times, you’ll hear different songs each time. So if you’re in Paris, I highly recommend not missing out on this experience. Since photography isn’t allowed there, let me share with you the song by Alain Turban, which will give you at least a small taste of what the place feels like:
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