Ravachol: A cry in the wilderness

Ravachol

Francois-Claudius Koeningstein, known to posterity as Ravachol (his mother’s maiden name) was born on 14 October, 1859, in the small town of Saint-Chamond in eastern France. His father early abandoned the family plunging them into extreme poverty. The young Ravachol, himself still little more than an infant, now found himself having to provide for his ailing mother, brother, sister and nephew. He soon turned to crime to supplement his income. When he lost his job as an assistant dyer crime became his life. He found intellectual solace for the grinding poverty and relentless misery of his life in the political credo of anarchism. It provided justification for his own behaviour – the ownership of property was immoral and the theft of it thereby, a sacred act.

On 1 May, 1891, at Fourmies, the army fired upon a peaceful May Day Rally, killing 14 and wounded a further 40. Many of the the victims were women and children. It was rumoured that this act, unprovoked as it was, had been carried out to test the new Lobau machine gun. On the same day at Clichy, a small town just outside Paris, the Police attacked a small gathering of known anarchists. The anarchists defended themselves and pistol shots were exchanged. Later arrested the anarchists were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment and hard-labour. Ravachol was outraged by these events and vowed to exact revenge on behalf of the common people.

On 11 March, 1892, Ravachol avenged the Clichy attack by bombing the home of the presiding judge at the trial. On 27 March, he bombed the home of the chief prosecutor. He then avenged the Fourmies massacre by bombing the Lobau barracks in Paris. No one was killed in these attacks but extensive damage was done. He was reported to the Authorities as the perpetrator of these attacks by a waiter at a restaurant he frequented, and was promptly arrested. The night before his trial the restaurant was bombed and the owner killed. By then Ravachol was safely under lock and key. This didn’t prevent him from being charged with the crime, however.

At his trial Ravachol was sentenced to hard labour for life. But this wasn’t severe enough for the Authorities. Two months after his conviction he was transferred to a prison in his home region of Montbrison, to stand trial for murder. He was accused of murdering a landlady with whom he was acquainted and an elderly hermit. The evidence against him in both cases was flimsy and often fabricated. However, he did admit to robbing Jacques Brunel, the 93 year old Hermit of Montbrison but denied murder. The 15000 francs he stole he spent supporting the families of imprisoned anarchists. He also admitted to the unrelated crime of grave-robbing.

Despite his repeated denials of murder and the lack of evidence against him, he was sentenced to death and guillotined on 11 July, 1892. Just prior to his sentencing Ravachol attempted to read a pre-prepared speech to the Court. Predictably enough he was prevented from doing so. The text, however, has survived. It has become known as Ravachol’s Forbidden Speech. Here are a few extracts:

“If I speak, it is not to defend myself against the acts of which I am accused, for it is society alone that is responsible, since by its organisation it sets men in a continual struggle one against the other”.

“. . . what can he who lacks the necessities when he is working do when he loses his job? He has only to let himself die of hunger. Then they’ll throw a few pious words on his corpse”.

“. . . I could have begged but it is degrading and cowardly and even punished by your laws which make poverty a crime”.

“. . . we will quickly understand that the Anarchists are right when they say that to have moral and physical peace, the causes that give birth to crime and criminals must be destroyed”.

“So that is why I committed the acts of which I am accused, and which are nothing but a logical consequence of the barbaric state of a society which but increase the rigours of the laws that go after the effects without ever touching upon the causes”.

“In the same way you members of the jury will doubtless sentence me to death, because you think it is necessary and that my death will be a source of satisfaction for you who hate to see human blood flow, but when you think it is useful to see that blood flow in order to ensure the security of your existence, you hesitate no more than I do.”

A series of tit-for-tat killings and bombings followed Ravachol’s execution as he soon became an anarchist martyr and cult hero. In the years that immediately followed his death The President of France, Sadi Carnot; the Prime Minister of Spain, Antonio Canovas; the Empress Elisabeth of Austria; King Umberto of Italy; and the President of the United States, William H McKinley, were all to fall victim to anarchist assassination, as propaganda by deed reached its pinnacle. They were to be just the first of many.