For three years after this tragic period little noteworthy occurred in the history of terrorism. In Barcelona, Spain, a bomb was thrown, and immediately three hundred men and women were arrested. They were all thrown into prison and subjected to torture. Some were killed, others driven insane, although after a time some were released upon appeals made by the press and by many notables of other countries of Europe. The Prime Minister of Spain, Canovas del Castillo, was chiefly responsible for the torture of the victims. And in 1897 a young Italian, Angiolillo, went to Spain, and, at an interview which he sought with the Prime Minister, shot him. The same year an attempt was made on the life of the king of Greece, and in 1898 the Empress of Austria was assassinated in Switzerland by an Italian named Luccheni. The latter had gone there intending to kill the Duke of York, but, not finding him, decided to destroy the Empress. In 1900 King Humbert of Italy was assassinated by Gaetano Bresci. The latter had been working as a weaver in America, where he had also edited an anarchist paper. He was deeply moved when the story reached him of some soldiers who had shot and killed some peasants, who through hunger had been driven to riot. He demanded money of his comrades in Paterson, New Jersey, and, when he obtained it, hurried back to his native land, where, at Monza, on the 29th of July he shot the King. The next year on September 5, President McKinley was shot in Buffalo by Leon Czolgosz.
No other striking figure appears among the anarchists until 1912. In the early months of that year all Paris was terrified by a series of crimes unexampled, it is said, in Western history. The deeds of Bonnot and his confederates were so reckless, daring, and openly defiant, their escapes so miraculous, and the audacity of their assaults so incredible, that the people of Paris were put in a state bordering on frenzy. Just before the previous Christmas, in broad daylight, on a busy street, the band fell upon a bank messenger. They shot him and took from his wallet $25,000. They then jumped in an automobile and disappeared. A short time later a police agent called upon a chauffeur who was driving at excess speed to stop. It was in the very center of Paris, but instead of slackening his pace one of the occupants of the car drew a revolver, and, firing, killed the officer. A pursuit was organized, but the murderers escaped.
Several other crimes were committed by the band in the next few days, but perhaps the most daring was that of March 25. In the forest of Senart, at eight o'clock in the morning, a band of five men stopped a chauffeur driving a powerful new motor car. They shot the chauffeur and injured his companion. The five men then took the car, and proceeded at great speed to the famous racing center of Chantilly. They went directly to a bank, descended from the car, and shot down the three men in charge of the bank. They then seized from the safe $10,000. A crowd which had gathered was kept back by one of the bandits with a rifle. The others came out, opened fire on the spectators, started the car at its utmost speed, and disappeared.
Not long after, Monsieur Jouin, deputy chief of the Sûreté, and Chief Inspector Colmar were making a domiciliary search in a house near Paris. Instead of finding what they thought, a man crouching beneath a bed sprang upon them, and in the fight Jouin was killed and Colmar severely injured. Bonnot, although injured, escaped by almost miraculous means.
At last, on April 29, the band, which had defied the police force of Paris for four months, was discovered concealed in a garage said to belong to a wealthy anarchist. A body of police besieged the place, and after two police officers were killed a dynamite cartridge was exploded that destroyed the garage. Bonnot was then captured, fighting to the last. The police reported the finding of Bonnot's will, in which he says: "I am a celebrated man.... Ought I to regret what I have done? Yes, perhaps; but I must live my life. So much the worse for idiotic and imbecile society.... I am not more guilty," he continues, "than the sweaters who exploit poor devils." [(12)] His final thought, it is said, was for his accomplices, both of whom were women, one his mistress, the other the manager of the Journal Anarchie.
CHAPTER VI
SEEKING THE CAUSES
Such is the tragic story of barely forty years of terrorism in Western Europe. It reads far more like lurid fiction than the cold facts of history. Yet these amazing irreconcilables actually lived—in our time—and fought, at the cost of their lives, the entire organization of society. Surely few other periods in history can show a series of characters so daring, so bitter, so bent on destruction and annihilation. Bakounin, Nechayeff, Most, Lingg, Duval, Decamps, Ravachol, Henry, Vaillant, Caserio, and Luccheni—these bewildering rebels—individually waged their deadly conflict with the world. With the weakness of their one single life in revolt against society—protected as it is by countless thousands of police, millions of armed men, and all its machinery for defense—these amazing creatures fought their fight and wrote their page of protest in the world's history. Think of it as we will, this we know, that the world cannot utterly ignore men who lay down their lives for any cause. Men may write and agitate, they may scream never so shrilly about the wrongs of the world, but when they go forth to fight single-handed and to die for what they preach they have at least earned the right to demand of society an inquiry.