This series of posts will insure that these authors' works live on in living memory.
If only a few.
Don't lose hope.
Rule by force has had it's day.
We just have to survive its death throes.
#### There is a reason these authors are not in the modern curriculum.
***
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/paul-z-simons-illegalism-why-pay-for-a-revolution-on-the-installment-plan-when-you-can-steal-on#toc5
## Disharmonic Convergence
In terms of political activity and propaganda things were also afoot in the form of Albert Joseph, or Albert Libertad, or just Libertad.
[source](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EU_hJm4-Ewk/TzOQ-dCLnFI/AAAAAAAABNM/mAeEbm-hjuo/s1600/libertad02.jpg)
Born in 1875 in Bordeaux and abandoned at birth he became a ward of the state, and faced the usual miserabilist existence then doled out by the Third Republic to its unfortunates.
Having lost the use of a leg as a result of childhood illness, probably polio, Libertad walked the rest of his life with the assistance of canes or crutches - which also doubled as clubs in a fight.
At the age of 21 Libertad moved to Paris and dove into writing, publishing, organizing, partying, lovemaking, just about every available opportunity for life and joy was not lost on the man.
He worked and contributed to numerous journals including Le Libertaire, L'En-Dehors, and finally on 13 April 1905 there appeared the influential individualist journal that he founded, l'Anarchie, a four page broadsheet.
The journal was widely read, and - being sufficiently easy to publish - occasionally had incredible large print runs; as an example one issue specific to the July 14th holiday was issued in a print run of 100,000.
(By comparison, most contemporary North American anarchist publications run far less than 5,000 copies - Modern Slavery has an average print run of 3k.)
This issue included a manifesto appropriately entitled "The Bastille of Authority."
During Libertad's life he met and worked with an astonishing array of writers, artists and oddly, politicians.
As an example, he worked as a correct on Astride Briand's journal La Lanterne, which is weird because Briand was not only a Socialist Politician but served a total of eleven terms as Prime Minister of France, and later offered one of the first proposals for an economic union of European nation-states some 90 years before the EU was realized.
Libertad also worked with various anarchist agitators from Zo d'Axa (quoted above), the founder of the pre-eminent individualist anarchist journal, L'En-Dehors (The Outside), reborn in 2002 and currently a franco-phone website (http://endehors.net); Sébastien Faure, Victor Kibalchich, George Mathias, Paraf-Javal, and Émile Armand.
The last two anarchists listed, along with Libertad, founded and organized the Causeries Populaire, well-attended individualist anarchist public discussion groups which eventually proliferated throughout Paris.
Libertad wrote in short clipped stacccato pronouncements strung together by a common theme, very like prose poetry.
Finally, Libertad's version of free love and his natural combativeness backfired when in February of 1908 during an internecine individualist brawl he was kicked in the stomach by one of the two Mahe sisters, both of whom had been at one time or another his lovers.
He died a week later in the hospital.
Victor Kibalchich picked up the editorship of l'Anarchie, and if anything cranked the articles into a virtual storm of individualist and illegalist rhetoric.
[source](https://jjmlsm.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/victor_serge.jpg?w=280)
L'Anarchie moved rapidly into deep individualist waters propelled not only by the experimentation of the editorial staff with free love, vegetarianism and water-only diets, but by the discovery of the anarchist community in France of Max Stirner, the prophet of the sovereign self.
[source](https://dailyasianage.com/library/2019/06/25/1561490306_0.jpg)
His work, L'Unique et sa propriété, was read, quoted, argued, lauded and reviled throughout the first decade of the 20th century in France, and indeed in most of Europe and the United States by anarchists of all stripes.
Stirner's most basic argument is grounded in an effective reduction of all conceptual political categories to ash, he derides all external logic of power, coercion and control and places the individual his or her needs and desires, including the desire for real community, at the center of his universe.
When first published in German, Marx, among others, immediately recognized the ramifications of the work and in response he wrote a typically lengthy and dull polemic in The German Ideology in a failed attempt to squash the individualist challenge.
Later editions of Marx's book edited out most of the anti-Stirner material (almost 300 pages), primarily as a result of the shunting of [The Unique and Its Property](https://archive.org/details/max-stirner-the-unique-and-its-property) into a side-yard of theory for several decades.
With the re-discovery of Stirner in the 1890's, and the printing of the first French translation of his work in 1900, the individualists had found a sound theoretical underpinning for a number of different projects.
As an example of Stirner's thought that directly addresses the issue of crime, guilt and liberation,
Only when I expect neither from individuals nor from a collectivity what I can give myself, only then do I scrape the bonds of love; the rabble stops being rabble only when it seizes....Only that seizing is sin, crime, only this rule creates a rabble...If people reach the point where they lose respect for property, then everyone will have property, as all slaves become free people as soon as they no longer respect the master as master.
The praise of crime was not just sounded in the individualist milieu and journals, rather it was found in almost all of the anarchist press of the time with varying degrees or rapidity.
One of the better examples was Émile Pouget's journal [Père Peinard](https://archives.ville-saint-denis.fr/galerie/galerie/images/14/n:56), the most widely read working class anarchist periodical, described vividly by a contemporary as, [having] no display of philosophy [which is not to say that it had none], it played upon the appetites, prejudices, and rancorous of the proletariat.
Without reserve or disguise, it incited theft, counterfeiting, the repudiation of taxes and rents, killing and arson.
It counseled the immediate assassination of deputies, senators, judges, priests and army officers.
[source](https://files.libcom.org/files/images/history/emile-pouget-pere-peinard-L-1[1].jpeg)
It urged ... farm laborers and vineyard workers to take possession of the farm and vineyards, and to turn the landlords and vineyard owners into fertilizing phosphates ... it recounted the exploited of olden-time brigands and outlaws and exhorted contemporaries to follow their example.
So the anarchist press hasn't really changed that much, the above content being stock in trade for the best libertarian periodicals now.
By 1910 all this theorizing, bombing, thieving individualist philosophy and intransigence would produce a group of young men and women determined to settle the score with bourgeois society in the form of the Bonnot Gang.
## Beginnings: The Gang Forms
Of significance is the fact that Belgium plays a role in the formation of the gang; the small, primarily francophone monarchy served as a destination for young men seeking to avoid service in the French army, political exiles, and on the lam criminals.
Several gang members would first encounter each other in Brussels and there they found sufficient agreement in ideals and goals to begin the process of forming themselves into a working illegalist combine.
Our first suspect is Raymond Callemin (La Science) who was born in Brussels and the earliest childhood friend of Victor Kibalchich, scion of an impoverished Russian refugee family.
The two young men worked their way through a course of reading and drifting slowly towards anarchism which among other results caused Raymond's father, an alcoholic and disillusioned socialist, to disown him for keeping bad company.
[source](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5a/b8/1f/5ab81ff744f387b58fa772a4ab89a866.jpg)
Kibalchich would eventually land a job on the French side of the border and while there made contact with [Causeries Popularies](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/richard-parry-the-bonnot-gang-the-story-of-the-french-illegalists) speakers and promoters, and it was here that he met and became enamored of Henriette Maîtrejean (Rirette).
[source](https://www.estelnegre.org/documents/maitrejean/maitrejean02.jpg)
Rirette had been married to an anarchist worker living in Paris at 17, but by the age of twenty-two with two small children and finding her husband rather boring had drifted through various anarchist millieux, until finally she settled into individualist circles.
One of the main anarchist papers in Brussels, [Le Révolte](https://archive.org/details/bnf-btv1b86002875), served as a center for anarchist and later individualist activities and propaganda.
It was here that Édouard Carouy, the paper's editor encountered a young Parisian draft dodger, thief, and anarchist named Octave Garnier, one of the two primary founders, with Bonnot of course, of the Bonnot Gang.
[source](https://www.anarcopedia.org/images/thumb/e/eb/Edouard_Carouy.jpg/450px-Edouard_Carouy.jpg)
[source](https://spartacus-educational.com/RUSgarnier1.jpg)
Garnier had been born in Fontainebleau, near Paris, on Christmas in 1989.
Garnier's life of crime begins early and he was initially imprisoned at the age of 17 for conducting a series of smash and grabs.
Exiting prison he found that without the requisite formal certificate indicating responsibility, sobriety and distaste for rebellion, most employers would have nothing to do with him.
So taking a practical stance he had the appropriate forms forged and entered in to the world of work, which he found to be far nastier than unemployment, theft, or prison.
He drifted from job to job, tried his hand at being a mechanic, but was repeatedly rejected by employers.
During this period of drifting employment he participated in a number of strikes - which disillusioned him to the viability of a working class revolution.
He found his workmates more interested in drink than in changing their situation, and this proclivity only made them more brutish, dull and easily led.
He observed that union leaders, and especially the syndicalists, were about the same as the capitalists, as they both sought to manipulate workers to serve their own ends.
Finally he concluded in his biography, penned shortly before his death and found on his body,
'So I became an anarchist.
I was about eighteen and no longer wanted to go back to work, so once again I began la reprise individuelle.'
By May 1910 he was nearing the age of being called up into the armed forces and so began to drift towards the refuge of Belgium.
Of note here is that the law of 1905 instituting compulsory military service had created an entire underclass of the militarily-challenged, by one 1910 estimate a full 90,000 Frenchmen were being sought for draft evasion or outright desertion.
While in Belgium, Garnier finally found himself in the company of at least some semi-professional criminals, including Carouy the editor of Le Révolte, who augmented his income as a part-time pipe fitter with an occasional burglary; counterfeiting was also on the menu, and here he was instructed by Louis Maîtrejean, Rirette's erstwhile husband.
Meanwhile Victor, having arrived in Paris, began writing for l'Anarchie, and finally got the chance to spend more with time Rirette, who, at their first encounter, found him uninteresting and "a poser."
It was in the Luxembourg Gardens that Victor introduced Rirette to a shy young anarchist named René Valet.
(no pic, ed)
Valet was born into a middle class home, became interested in anarchism at a young age and had fled Belgium to avoid military service.
It was there that he met Victor and Garnier.
His stay in Belgium was short though and upon return to Paris he collaborated on the journal Le Libertaire, attended anarchist meetings, and spent a lot of free time with Victor.
It was during this period that Rirette introduced Victor to André Soudy, a pale thin young man and the most easily identifiable symbol of the Bonnot Gang as the photographic image of "the man with the rifle" had passed into the anarchist collective consciousness, including some rather impressive tattoos based on the photo.
[source](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/EF41XY/andr-soudy-1892-guillotined-1913-french-anarchist-member-of-the-bande-EF41XY.jpg)
[source](https://www.anarquista.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Andre-Soudy-posando-com-sua-arma.jpg)
Victor described Soudy as the perfect example of the crushed childhood of the back-alleys. He grew up on the street: "TB at thirteen, VD at eighteen..."
In the close anarchist circles in which Soudy moved he was known by the nickname "Pas de chance" (not a chance - a very prescient moniker indeed).
It also reflected the fact that he felt his life was to be short given "the price of medicine".
Then in the midst of all the fermentation in Paris an event in Tottenham, a northern suburb of London, broke like a storm on the international anarchist community.
In December of 1910, several members of a Latvian revolutionary cell, while engaged in breaking into a jewelers store, were interrupted by the police.
The comrades shot their way out, killing three policemen and wounding two, in the process also killing the leader of the kommando.
Eventually two comrades were traced back to Tottenham and there fought one of the anarchist equivalents of Thermopylae - there would be others.
The two men, armed only with pistols, held off seven hundred soldiers and dozens of cops.
The Home Office was eventually forced to bring in artillery, and a young Winston Churchhill, to the battle.
The fires started by the cannonade ended the confrontation with the anarchists expiring in the flaming building - they never surrendered.
The news traveled quickly around Europe and the Americas, drawing praise from most anarchist groups and derision from the powers that be.
A young and impressionable Alfred Hitchcock read all he could about the "Seige of Sidney Street" and eventually would put his artistic spin on it in the final scene of the 1934 version of "The Man Who Knew Too Much."
Kibalchich wrote an article in l'Anarchie entitled simply "Two Men" and in it he lays down one of the many conceptual visions that would subsequently animate the Bonnot Gang,
In the ordinary sense of the word we cannot and will not be honest.
By definition, the anarchist lives by expediency; work for him, is a deplorable expedient, like stealing...He takes no account of any conventions which safeguard property; for him, force alone counts.
Thus we have neither to approve nor disapprove of illegal actions.
We say: they are logical.
The anarchist is always illegal - theoretically.
The sole word 'anarchist' means rebellion in every sense.
Several other minor actors join the group over the course of the next several months, mostly very young men well heeled in individualist anarchism and burning for some way, any way, to strike back at bourgeois society.
This amorphous group moves back and forth across Paris, flats were rented, small communes came into being and were abandoned, arguments materialized and were forgotten.
The single greatest surprise of these months is that somehow the illegalists found themselves in complete control of l'Anarchie, with Kibalchich and Rirette taking over editorial duties.
## The Final Puzzle Piece - Bonnot
Much has been made of the character of Jules Bonnot, a charlatan, a dandy, a sociopath, a criminal masquerading as an anarchist, or vice versa.
[source](https://cdn-s-www.estrepublicain.fr/images/5e70d625-09ea-49cd-8df2-37acbaa79000/NW_raw/jules-bonnot-lors-de-sa-premiere-arrestation-en-1909-document-dr-1656601739.jpg)
It is known that unlike the other members of the gang he did serve in the military and made the most of the experience.
He learned to drive and fix motor cars and became a crack shot with both pistol and rifle - two skills that would serve him well when he decided on a career in crime.
Finally he was older than most of the other gang members by a decade, which provided him with determination and, strangely, a measured recklessness that rapidly infected (and affected) his younger comrades.
Mostly centered in Lyon after military service, he did occasional mechanic work and waited for the right burglary to come along - and when it did he hit it big.
Bonnot had been traveling around to the homes of various lawyers posing as a businessman asking for legal services and inquiring about the climate for commerce in various regions of France.
In July 1910 he found his target, the home of a wealthy lawyer from Vienne; Bonnot and an accomplice drove to the house during a downpour to cover any sounds of the burglary.
They cut through some shutters, broke a pane of glass, and Bonnot, using oxyacetylene torch burned a hole 30 cm wide into the safe from which 36,000 unfried francs were removed.
By the winter of 1911 Bonnot was finding Lyons far too warm for comfort, the heat included a visit to a garage he had been working at by the police where, among other swag, two recently stolen Terrot automobiles from the nearby Weber factory were identified.
Bonnot had luckily been out and after learning of the visit headed to Paris directly, only to return a few weeks later to see the love of his life, Judith, one last time.
Judith's husband worked as a grounds keeper in a cemetery and the two lovers said their final goodbyes among the quiet snow-blanketed tombs.
They would never see each other again.
So Bonnot and a companion, the hapless Platano, set off for Paris in a stolen La Buire automobile on 26 November 1911.
The journey was to be marred by misfortune, first of all, in spite of the freezing weather, the La Buire began to overheat causing the two companions to spend the night in a small hotel at Joigny.
The next day they set off again, only this time one of the cars tires punctured and as Bonnot set about fixing the flat, Platano began to inspect his newly acquired Browning 9mm pistol.
According to Bonnot as he took the weapon from Platano to show him its mechanism, it discharged and shot Platano behind the ear, wounding him fatally.
Bonnot, not wanting to leave his comrade mortally wounded, shot him again in the head and then tossed the body in the bushes after emptying the dead mans pockets.
Bonnot then sped off towards Paris.
The La Buire, like Platano, finally died and Bonnot was forced to take a train during the final leg of the journey into the Gare de Lyon.
News of the death traveled rapidly to Lyons, and Bonnot was immediately identifies as the most likely suspect.
Police scoured his former residences where they culled anarchist literature, burglar's tools, and the 25,000 francs that Bonnot had meant to be a nest egg for his life with Judith.
Finally, Judith and her spouse were taken into custody and a warrant was issued for Bonnot's arrest.
Fortune was on Bonnot's side however, as the Paris papers ignored the story, so while being hunted in Lyon - he was relatively free to restart his criminal enterprises in the capital.
Upon arrival in Paris Bonnot looked up David Belonie, an anarchist whose name he had been given by contacts in Lyon; he explained the death of Platano to Belonie and it was suggested that a meeting of the illegalists be held to review the situation leading to the accident and to provide Bonnot the opportunity to clear himself of the homicide fully with the comrades.
[source](https://www.quercy.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Belonie-apres-arrestation.jpg)
A meeting was arranged in a top garret in Montmartre, Garnier, La Science, Carouy, Valet and a few others settled in to hear Bonnot's side of the story.
Bonnot aquitted himself well - angrily explaining the accident and denying that he'd kill Platano, rather the shooting was a freak accident.
The final coup de grace was delivered to save the wounded man from any further pain, not in an attempt to silence a homicide victim.
Sometime during the "trial", Garnier, and possibly others, realizes that this Bonnot was the man they had been waiting for - a mechanic, a sharpshooter, a tried and tested criminal with a certain degree of sang-froid, including ten years of experience in the demi-monde to boot.
## The Gang Bangs: A Fistful of Bullets
Within weeks Garnier, Bonnot and La Science began working together on their "big job".
A quick tangential note about the favored anarchist weapon of the time, the Browning 9mm semi-automatic pistol.
Thought not as accurate as other 9mm weapons like the Mauser, it was light, easily concealed, and ammunition was readily available.
Further, with a seven round clip and capable of firing off five clips per minute, it was vastly superior to most pistols wielded by the forces of law and order, especially the clunky cavalry surplus revolvers carried by the Paris police.
Finally, the Browning 9mm was the weapon wielded by Gavrilo Princip to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo precipitating the First World War, and to bring the discussion full circle the Browning was manufactured in Belgium, very much like the Bonnot Gang.
[source](https://www.awesomestories.com/images/user/ebac41542c7d714f73f7326fc15228ba.jpg)
The illegalists had visited various areas outside Paris to find an auto with which to perpetuate their crime and finally settled on a 1910 Delaunay-Belleville limousine belonging to a bourgeois in the suburb of Boulogne-sur-Seine.
The Delaunay-Belleville was considered one of the best cars then available, with a six-cylinder thirty horsepower engine and a distinctive circular radiator - Bonnot clearly had a hand in the decision, he rarely settled for second best.
The name also had anarchist connotations, Delaunay being the anarchist assassin of the second-in-command of the Sûreté in 1909 and Belleville being the Paris suburb where the Commune had begun, and where during the final bloody week of street fighting most of the Communards had been slaughtered by the troops of the triumphant Third Republic.
Bonnot, Garnier, and La Science stole the automobile on the night of 13 December without a hitch.
The next decision, however, was the key, who or what would they rob?
And when?
They had weapons, a series of safe houses sprinkled throughout the outer boroughs of Paris, and an impressively fast car.
Ont he evening of December 20th the four illegalists, Bonnot, Garnier, La Science, and one other usually thought to be either René Valet or Jon De Boe, picked up an acetylene torch and like Bonnot's previous burglary planned to enter the home of a bourgeois and relieve the capitalist of the contents of his safe.
The weather, however, remained dry and clear, and Bonnot insisted that they have rain to cover at least some of the noise made during the breaking and entering.
At about half past three they gave up on the burglary plan and decided instead to go for a more bold, innovative job that had been planned by Garnier and Bonnot a few days before - a daylight robbery on the bank messenger for the Société Générale, the largest Parisian bank and rivaled nationally only by the Credit Lyonnais.
The robbery would take place just as a bank messenger was to deposit funds into a branch of the Société Générale in the Rue Ordener, just west of the Butte de Montmartre, which would allow the gang to either flee outside of Paris rapidly or to use the neighborhoods of Belleville or Montmartre as a screen.
The men must have felt an air of destiny in the whole endeavor, Bonnot was wanted for murder and if caught would surely face the guillotine, Garnier and Carouy were wanted for an attempted murder in Charleroi, forgery, and had been under surveillance for several months, and Raymond La Science, the only non-fugitive, with his disgust for bourgeois society clearly had little to lose either.
They ran through the plan a few times and around eight o'clock found themselves parked on the Rue Ordener.
"We were fearfully armed," recalled Garnier, "I had no less than six revolvers on me, my companions each had three, and we had about four hundred rounds in our pockets; we were quite determine to defend ourselves to the death."
A little after eight Octave spotted the guard walking out of the bank and towards the corner where the messenger would arrive.
The guard stood on the corner and waited in the drizzle.
At last one of the local street cars ground to a halt and a handful of bowler-hatted men stepped off, though only one was greeted with a handshake from the guard.
The bank messenger carried a satchel and briefcase.
As both men began to walk towards the bank, branch Garnier pulled his hat down low and said, "Let's go," as he stepped out of the car.
He fixed his gaze on the messenger and marched straight towards him, with La Science a few paces behind.
Twenty yards from the bank, and six from the cash laden messenger, Octave and Raymond pulled out their pistols and thrust them in to the bodyguard's and messenger's faces.
The guard made a sprint for the bank doors as Garnier pushed the messenger down to the ground and grabbed his satchel.
Raymond grabbed the briefcase but the messenger reused to let go of it and was dragged a few yards up the street towards the waiting Delaunay.
[source](https://images.prewarcar.com/pics/r2w-1200x800-caradverts/296568/296568-1578604766-3412861.JPG)
Octave shot the messenger twice in the chest and ran to the car that Bonnot had just brought alongside the action.
Octave jumped in the front seat, and Raymond, after dropping the briefcase in the gutter and retrieving it, hopped into the back seat.
Garnier held his pistol out the window and fired a few shots above the heads of any would be pursuers, and any traffic that impeded the escape.
Five minutes later they flew past the Port de Clichy customs barrier and headed northwest towards St. Denis.
Sometimes around 11 o'clock they halted the car and divided up the loot.
The small satchel revealed just 5,500 fr and the briefcase some 130,000 fr in bonds and checks.
What was unknown to the men was that the messenger carried a small wallet inside his coat where the remaining 20,000 fr in cash was stashed.
Bonnot was irritated, he was much more comfortable with burglary and now that he had tried a daylight robbery it hadn't even paid very well.
They stopped for bread and chocolate and the proceeded to Rouen.
They had decided to dump the auto over a cliff near Le Havre but ran out of gas too soon, so they pushed the car onto the breach where it stuck deep in the mud.
They stripped the license plates - one of which was thrown into the sea and the other into a large garden behind a seaside casino.
The men then took a late boat train back into Paris, arriving about 1 am.
Upon alighting in the Gare St-Lazare train station Raymond bought a copy of the right-wing La Patrie whose headlines included, "The Audacity of Parisian Brigands - A Bank Messenger Attacked in Rue Ordener", and "Bold Attack in Daylight."
La Presse reported the robbery as being "without precedent in the history of crime," and called them, "les bandits auto" - the auto bandits.
The Press also blasted the police for allowing such a thing to happen, especially when it was discovered that of the 84 cops assigned to the area where the robbery occurred only 18 were on duty at any given time.
The Times of London editorialized that, "at the moment when thieves and other pests of society are daily resorting to more daring methods, the police are being more diverted from their primary duties in order to mount guard over strike-breakers and others who ... in normal circumstances ought not require special protection."
In this sense the class struggle, far from being the means to the social revolution, was proving to be an effective diversion for the ends of the illegalist insurrection.
The issue of the bonds and checks immediately played on the minds of the illegalists, so Bonnot, with an interpreter, went to Amsterdam to see if they could recoup some of the money lost in the robbery by selling, trading or finding some way to turn the effectively worthless paper instruments into francs.
Of course the bonds' and checks' individual numbers were known across Europe within hours of the robbery and he was advised to wait until the heat had dissipated, or try cashing them in South America or Asia, where the likelihood of their origins may not, as yet, have been made known.
On the afternoon of December 24th La Science and Octave decided to visit Kibalchich and Rirette at home.
They knocked lightly at the door and a wide-eyed, incredulous Rirette let them in, hardly believing them still alive.
They sat quietly and discussed the robbery with Victor, while Rirette occasionally shushed them for fear of waking the children.
As hours drew long the church bells rang in the new day, Christmas Day 1912, Garnier suddenly realized it was his birthday, he was 22.
The two illegalists took their leave of Victor and Rirette and went their own ways to spend the Christmas holiday.
Victor, however, seeing Raymond and Garnier at close quarter had realized that the time had come for l'Anarchie to rise to the occasion and to pour some gasoline on the illegalists' fire, and to stand, at least in journalistic solidarity with the actions of the illegalists.
Kibalchich faced the dual issue of his friendship with La Science, and his acquaintance with Garnier, (Bonnot being unknown to him), and for the fact that much of his writings were clearly an incitement to just exactly the type of action that had occurred on the Rue Ordener.
Something had to be written, and write it he did - in the first edition of l'Anarchie for the New Year appearing on Thursday 4 January 1912, bylined Le Retif and titled "The Bandit,"
To shoot, in full daylight, a miserable bank clerk proved that some men at least have understood the virtues of audacity.
I am not afraid to own up to it; I am with the bandits.
I find their role a fine one; I see Men in them.
Besides them I see only fools and nonentities.
Whatever may result, I like those who struggle.
Perhaps it will make you die younger, or force you to experience the manhunt and the penal colony; perhaps you will end up beneath the foul kiss of the guillotine.
That may be!
I like those who accept the risk of a great struggle...
Besides one's destiny whether as victor or vanquished isn't it preferable to sullen resignation and the slow interminable agony of the proletarian who will die in retirement, a fool who has gained nothing out of life?
The bandit, he gambles.
He has therefore chances of winning.
And that is enough.
The bandits show strength.
The bandits show audacity.
The bandits show their firm desire to live.
Kibalchich was not done.
He knew that his friends were still at large and that now was the time to attempt to build some level of understanding and even support for the auto bandits among the various anarchist communities.
In notes for two causeries held during the weekend of January 27 and 28 he further developed his ideas.
He argued that society was the enemy of all individuality through its laws of social conservation and conformity, which deformed individuals into stunted, though "socialized" beings who could do little more than conform to a pre-defined role.
He was under no illusions about social progress, and fatalistically suggested that things had been, were and would continue to be pretty much the same.
As he indicated in a reply to a letter criticizing his article on the bandits, he considered their actions being "logical, inevitable, even necessary."
Kibalchich would write one more article for l'Anarchie defending the bandits entitled, "Anarchists and Criminals," in which he emphasized, "Outlaws, marginals, bandits - they alone dare, like us, to proclaim their will to live at any price.
Certainly they live far from us, far from our dreams and our desires," but he had as much sympathy for them as he had for "honest folks who've either made it or missed the boat."
Whatever that last line meant in modifying the general intransigence of the rest of the article, he was, at least, clear about the importance of the bandits, and their crimes as they apply to theory.
The police, however, were under no illusions as to how close, both physically and ideologically, l'Anarchie and the auto bandits were to each other.
On January 31st the offices of l'Anarchie were raided and searched, though nothing of note was found in that incursion.
Of interest is the attitude of Jouin, the Inspector in charge of the anarchist section for the Sûreté, who spoke to Kiblchich wistfully of the ideas of Jean Grave, and how the illegalists were harming the "good name" of Anarchy.
Which is an old trick and has been used as recently as the arrest of Stuart Christie for his alleges involvement in the [Angry Brigade Bombings](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/various-authors-the-angry-brigade-documents-and-chronology-1967-1984) of the early seventies, when during his questioning the interrogating officer came on as an anarchist sympathizer more concerned with saving the good name of anarchy, than being a bloodhound sniffing about for sufficient evidence to send the arrestees to prison for several decades.
Yet another lesson for us all - beware the empathetic, politically engaged cops who "respects" your ideals - his real motive is to suck your blood, steal your time, and sink your soul - not save the good name of Anarchy.
The police returned later the next week and searched l'Anarchie's offices once again, this time they unearthed two of the ubiquitous 9mm Brownings, which led to both Victor and Rirette's arrest for the possession of stolen goods (the pistols) which they identified as swag from the burglary of a gunsmith's shop that had occurred on Christmas Eve 1911.
Rirette was eventually turned loose, but Victor waited in jail for something to occur that would either lead to freedom or to his being charged as a fence for stolen property; either way his oaths of silence and non-cooperation with police interrogators ran deep and he remained silent - willing to sit out his detention.
The illegalists for their part were pretty certain the Sûreté was only a few steps behind them, so they went to ground, changing their hair color and shaving off their distinctive moustaches; further Bonnot suggested that they begin to dress like the bourgeois enemy to allay suspicion - so he handed out collars, cuffs and new shirts to further their disguises.
Despite the notoriety attached to the Rue Ordener robbery, not one of the gang members thought for a minute of leaving France, let alone Paris.
La Science and Octave also maintained contact with Rirette, meeting her in restaurants and cafes to get the latest news and to hear how Victor was holding up in the belly of the beast.
The gang also kept scouting out new locations for the robberies and burglaries, particularly in the south, eventually happening upon Élie Monier (aka Simentoff) yet another draft dodger who had flung himself as far as Switzerland to escape French military service.
In 1910 he had written a brief piece for l'Anarchie detailing an anti-syndicalist action for comrades in Arles.
He readily joined the insurgent army of crime when the time came for his assistance.
On 15 February 1912 a superb Peugeot limousine was stolen in Beziers by persons unknown and driven northwards towards Paris.
By 9 am the following morning, however, the limo had flattened and the five well-dressed occupants of the auto managed to get a lift from a local garage owner as far as Beaune.
After lunch the men caught a train to Paris, arriving in at 6:15 pm.
No one would ever be charged with the theft but the Sûreté detectives suspected it was yet another exploit of Bonnot and the gang.
Four days later the Parisian press announced that the hunt for Garnier had reached as far afield as Chemnitz and Berlin, though the gang's next "outrage" showed just how close the illegalists had stayed to their old stomping grounds.
In a spasm of spontaneity the gang had decided to travel south to rob the Lavernede mine near Alais and then the Comptoir National d'Escompte (a bank) near Nimes.
Once again they chose a Delaunay-Belleville for a getaway car, this one well fitted out by a bourgeois who was planning to follow the Tour -de-France as it wound its way through the French countryside.
The car though, almost from the very beginning, developed mechanical problems and after four hours wasted getting it repaired the disgruntled illegalists headed back to Paris.
A real lemon.
Their drive through Paris was epic by the standards of the day, Bonnot behind the wheel kept the limo above 80 miles an hour through much of the city knocking over a few stalls near the Palais Royale and barely missing an autobus backing out of a berth at the Gare St-Lazare by hopping the car up onto the sidewalk nearly crushing two pedestrians as the engine coughed and sputtered into silence.
A traffic policeman who had been watching as the limo careened wildly to avoid disaster hurried over to demand the driver's papers.
Bonnot ignored the cop and finally got the engine roaring again.
Garnier who had stepped out of the Delaunay for a moment, probably to slow the onset of an oncoming panic-induced heart attack, hopped into the back seat as the cop jumped on the running board and attempted to grab the wheel.
Garnier thinking quickly, fired three bullets point blank into the cops chest killing him as his body crumpled off the side of the car and collapsed into the road.
Bonnot pushed the Delaunay back up to speed.
Two "honest" citizens attempted to give chase in their own automobiles but were mistaken by the gathering crowd as the auto bandits and were surrounded, and nearly seized and lynched.
Despite the best efforts of the mob to exact vigilante justice, the car of the would-be heroes pulled away from the growing pocket of bystanders and sped off only to run over a hapless young woman crossing the street.
Their pursuit finally abandoned, the luckless posse of two were questioned severely by police, and subsequently released.
Bonnot and the others continued their search for a target and after 24 hours finally found a house worth burglarizing.
They made quick work of the safe but raised enough noise to wake the inhabitants of the house.
The owner of the mansion, yet another lawyer, thinking quickly fired six shots at the burglars, which sent the illegalists running for cover and ended the attempt of the gang for an honest, non-violent burglary.
Octave, in a fit of pique, found sufficient flammables to set the Delaunay alight and the gang returned to Paris without a penny to show for 48 hours of wild illegality, including very nearly vehicular manslaughter.
As a result the gang decided to lay low for a few months and during this time the Sûreté went into overdrive arresting anyone even remotely associated with l'Anarchie, eventually catching two fish worth having - Belonie and Rodriguez, the two fences who had been given the responsibility of selling the bonds and checks taken during the Ordener robbery.
After selling the financial instruments and realizing a small sum for the gang, both men were taken into custody and Rodriguez started doing all in his power to avoid the guillotine, both wet and dry.
The illegalists had grown somewhat depressed in the meantime; the sale of the bonds had yielded almost nothing, their last attempt at crime had been fun but a fiasco, the anarchist community had almost unanimously condemned them, and just as a final painful reminder of just how isolated they truly were, l'Anarchie had published a piece bylined "LA" that had thrown some real mulch at the gang.
The author had called them, "feeble, narrow minded simpletons," whose theories were a load of crap; LA further noted that while their lives would be short, it was necessary for all anarchists to denounce their deeds and move as rapidly as possible in the opposite direction.
Of course the article drew scorn from a few in the individualist camp, an article written in response by Victor Metric scorned LA roundly and concluded with a request for funds to assist those in custody.
Garnier, of course, was nothing if not incensed and in order to get out in front of the criticism decided to do something truly seismic - he would write a challenge and send it in to one of the scions of the bourgeois press, Le Atin, which published it on 20 March 1912.
In the letter addressed to specific detectives in the Sûreté including Jouin, he taunted them and ridiculed the 10,000 fr offered to his companion Marie to betray him, adding, "...multiply the sum by ten, messiuers, and I will surrender myself to your mercy, bound hand and foot..."
He goes on to exonerate one of his friends caught in the dragnet, [Dieudonné](https://spartacus-educational.com/ANA-Eugene_Dieudonne.htm), and emphasized that he alone was guilty.
Lastly he declared that,
I know that there will be an end to this struggle which has begun between me and the formidable arsenal at society's disposal.
I know that I will be beaten; I am the weakest.
But I sincerely hope to make you pay dearly for your victory.
Concluding jauntily, "Awaiting the pleasure of meeting you...Garnier."
Another enclosed sheet of paper bore inked impressions of Garnier's index finger and right hand to prove the identity of the author.
Bonnot, not to be outdone by his partner walked into the offices of the Petit Parisien (a Parisian equivalent of the tabloid press today like the Sun in the UK or the New York Post), and placing his Browning menacingly on the desk of the journalist Charles Saurwein and stated that,
We'll fire our last round at the cops, and if they don't care to come, we'll eventually know where to find them.
Then after picking up his pistol he walked nonchalantly out of the paper's office.
Of course the paper should have contracted the police immediately, it was the bourgeois thing to do, but the but the gang was slowly beginning to garner some mild popular sympathy, and the police, for whom the average Parisian felt at least a tinge of hostility, were sinking low in the perceptions of the press.
As an example many journals had begun to call the gang "the tragic bandits" though the Petit Parisien had settled on the "Bonnot Gang," which would stick long after the gang and the journal ceased to exist.
The effect of these interactions with the press was to bring even more pressure to bear on the police to do something spectacular and apprehend the outlaws, and completely outrageous.
Garnier had been thinking about firepower a great deal, feeling that though the police in Paris carried only old cavalry revolvers, the gang needed something truly intimidating to make the next robbery successful.
He finally found what he was looking for when he purchased four Winchester rifles from a local anarchist fence - basically the modern equivalent of would-be criminals among themselves with surface to air missiles, or rocket propelled grenades to rob a 7-11.
Car owners throughout Paris had become far more security conscious as a result of the spate of recent auto thefts, so in response the illegalists developed their final innovation to modern criminal activity - the car-jacking.
The gang, this time was made up of Soudy, Garnier, Bonnot, Valet and the new guy, Monier.
They armed themselves, including Soudy who carried the Winchester under his great coat, and took suburban trains into the countryside.
They disembarked at Villeneuve and walked as the final rays of sun peaked from behind trees into the forest to bed down for the night.
They had selected a piece of road on the N5, a main north-south artery, and by mid-morning had found an ideal spot for their ambush.
Meanwhile at 7am in Paris, a brand spanking new De Dion-Bouton 18 horsepower limousine, that had been ordered and purchased by the Comte de Rouge, was being revved and readied for delivery.
Two men were in the car, a chauffeur in the pay of De Dion and a secretary sent by the Comte to make the 18,000 fr purchase; the Comte, who couldn't be bothered with the mundane was sunning himself on the Cote d'Azur, waiting for his new car to be delivered.
Bonnot, Garnier and La Science recognized that they had only once chance to obtain a car in this fashion, should a driver get past them, their whereabouts would immediately be flashed to the capital, including all the cops just waiting for the opportunity to pounce.
Luckily as they waited by the side of the road two horsecarts came spanking down the N5, the illegalists ran out flashing their weapons and seizing the two conveyances which they propped in the middle of the road.
At the same moment the yellow Dion-Bouton came into view. The car came to a halt and the anarchist walked with guns in hand towards the auto, La Science calling out, "It's the car we want."
The chauffeur pulled out his pistol, but he was too slow, Bonnot fired and shot him in the heart. Garnier, perhaps in response to Bonnot's shot, fired at the other passenger, hitting him four times in the hands, which had apparently been raised in protection.
The two bodies were dragged into the woods, the gang scrambled in and the Dion Bouton was turned around and roared north towards Chantilly.
They skirted Paris through the eastern suburbs and taking the N16 arrived after two hours of driving at the offices of the Société Générale in Chantilly, located on the main square.
Bonnot sat at the wheel while Garnier, La Science, Valey and Monier walked into the bank.
Soudy remained on the pavement outside the bank, the Winchester raised and ready.
La Science called out, "Messieurs, not a word!" as the gang came charging into the office, one of the clerks instinctively dove for the floor, which caused Garnier to shout, "Fire!".
Garnier shot one of the clerks six times and La Science poured four shots into another teller, while Valet winged the youngest clerk, a sixteen year old, with a shot to the shoulder.
The remaining bank employees escaped by diving out the back door as bullets zipped past them.
Monier stayed at the door while Garnier, finding a set of keys after a "Jesse James" leap over the counter said, "Get the money first,"; perhaps wishing to avoid the embarrassment of staring lamely at a pile of worthless bonds and checks.
The shooting obviously did not go unnoticed by the locals, including the bank manager who began to walk back across the square.
Soudy leveled the rifle at him and shouted, "Hold it!
Hold it or I'll pick you off," finishing the statement with four rounds fired over the man's head.
The manager wisely retreated in the opposite direction.
Soudy now began to fire rounds at anyone who ventured into the square as well as those who appeared in windows.
The illegalists raced over out of the bank, guns roaring as cover for the retreat, and crammed themselves into the waiting car.
Soudy fired a final shot and ran after the already accelerating car, he slipped as he was jumping in but was caught and hauled in by his comrades who realized that he had fainted in the excitement of trying to catch the auto.
In minutes the limo was racing south to Paris, and the relative safety of her teeming millions.
Though sighted at numerous places on the return trip no effective chase was given and having abandoned the car, they hopped a fence and found themselves in Levallois-Perrer, a neighborhood swarming with police due to the presence of the headquarters of the then striking taxi drivers union.
The strike had lasted for several months and results in numerous violent collisions between the taxi drivers, strike-breakers, and of course, the police.
So the gang strolled right through the largest cluster of police in all of France with 50,000 fr in their pockets and no one paid them any attention at all.
Again the class struggle had reared up and provided the perfect screen for the illegalist insurrection to occur.
The robbery at Chantilly sent the representatives of law and order and especially the bourgeois press into apoplectic fits.
Meetings were held up and down the various chains of command, and like the September 11 occurrences, the final outcome was a forgone conclusion - unbounded police surveillance powers, augment by increased funding for the violation of rights, torture of suspects, whatever would bring the sad, and seemingly endless chapter to at least perceived conclusion.
Within 24 hours of the robbery raids took place across Paris, especially in the communities to the north and east, the "red belt" as it had been know since the days of the Commune.
L'anarchie was raided for the third time (in all the offices would be searched six times in as many months).
The public mood at this time had turned from one of mild, silent approval for the Bonnot Gang to a raging hysteria - the image of a pale young man shooting at the honest, law-abiding denizens of a quiet Parisian suburb was unnerving to the point of psychosis for much of the bourgeois.
Gun sales spiked upwards as the middle and upper classes began to arm themselves in response to the possibility of confrontation with these neo-barbarians, and when the public realized that Bonnot had been trained to shoot and drive by no less a criminal conspiracy than the French army, many wondered if the entire structure of sovereignty might not collapse with an armed forces made up of such malcontent recruits.
Further, like the resurrected Elvis, sightings of the gang began to be reported in such far flung places in Marseilles, Calais, and of course...Brussels.
In one incident, a Belgian stationmaster opened fire on a group of innocent, and probably stunned passengers convinced that the Bonnot Gang had decided to include train robbery in its repertoire.
In the working class neighborhoods, however, the mood was visibly different; kids exuberantly played "Bonnot Gang" with an unlucky few of the youngsters forced to play cops.
[source](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/42/fa/e2/42fae23c8906c01b9240dae29e6fcdcd.jpg)
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