On 24 June 1894, French President Sadi Carnot was assassinated by Italian anarchist Sante Geronimo Caserio in Lyon, France. A part of the Ère des attentats anarchist terrorist campaign (1892–1894), it led to a historic crackdown on French anarchist activities.
Carnot was one of the main supporters of the lois scélérates ('villainous laws'), which aimed to break up anarchist activities during the Ère des attentats, as well as the repression targeting them in early 1894. He became a central target to the movement, especially after refusing to pardon anarchist terrorists Ravachol, Auguste Vaillant, and Émile Henry: the first two having not caused any deaths during their attacks. Vaillant's death in particular sparked a desire for revenge against Carnot, as Vaillant's young daughter Sidonie became orphaned. Caserio, a refugee in France, then likely started working with a small group of anarchists to assassinate him.
Caserio left Sète in late June 1894 and headed for Lyon, trying to deter police from tailing him. He arrived at the first French Colonial Exhibition, as the attack was also an anti-colonial statement, and was positioned precisely to the right of Carnot's procession. As the President mingled with the crowd, Caserio lunged at him, stabbed him, and then tried to flee before being beaten by the crowd and arrested. Carnot died from his injuries that night, and Caserio was brought to trial. He claimed to have acted alone, a position questioned by historians, but accepted by the French judiciary, which sought to bring him to trial as quickly as possible. He was sentenced to death and executed.
Carnot's death was a major shock to the French population, and many people paid tribute to him. His remains were placed in the Panthéon. The assassination provoked significant xenophobic violence directed against Italians in the Rhône region, and resulted in the Chamber of Deputies' adoption of the last, most significant of the lois scélérates: prohibiting all types of anarchist propaganda in France (until its repeal in 1992). The law was the basis for the Trial of the Thirty in August 1894, which aimed to destroy the nation's anarchist movement.
Development of anarchism and propaganda by the deed
In the 19th century, anarchism was born and established itself in Europe before spreading. Anarchists advocate for the struggle against all forms of domination perceived as unjust, including economic domination, with the development of capitalism. They are particularly opposed to the State, seen as the institution that validates many of these dominations through its police, army, and propaganda.
At the end of the 1870s, anarchists developed the strategy of propaganda by the deed, aiming to communicate anarchist ideas directly through action, without recourse to discourse, and to precipitate the Revolution through actions that incite the people to revolt. Leading anarchist figures extensively developed this strategy, such as Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, Andrea Costa, Carlo Cafiero, and especially Johann Most. In 1879, it was adopted by the congress of the Jura Federation in La Chaux-de-Fonds. It gained renewed centrality at the International Congresses of Paris and London in May and July 1881.
In 1881, the first attack of this nature in France, the Saint-Germain-en-Laye bombing, failed to destroy the statue of Adolphe Thiers that it targeted. In the years that followed, the practice became widespread in anarchist circles in France—especially as the French State's repression against them intensified, which created dynamics of vengeance on the part of the anarchists.
On 1 May 1891, two simultaneous events occurred during the mobilisation day: on the one hand, in Fourmies, the French army carried out the massacre of peaceful strikers who were demonstrating in the church square. On the other hand, anarchists demonstrating between Levallois-Perret and Clichy found themselves in a violent confrontation with the police after taking refuge in a wine shop, three of them, arrested after the shooting, were transferred and then severely beaten at the police station by the police officers. This became known as the Clichy Affair. These two events provoked the anger and fear of the anarchists, a situation reinforced by the trial of the Clichy defendants, where the police were not prosecuted.
In this context, anarchists like Ravachol began carrying out attacks targeting the presumed officials responsible for the repression of anarchists—starting with the judge in the Clichy affair: Edmond Benoît. Thus, in 1892, a period in French history opened that the contemporary press and Jean Maitron termed the Ère des attentats ('Era of Attacks'), a period marked by great political violence between the French State, which further intensified repression against anarchists, and the latter, who responded with increasing terrorist violence.
Sadi Carnot: a president in conflict with anarchists
At the centre, both of the theory of propaganda by the deed—which aims to target political or financial leaders in order to provoke revolutionary and insurrectionary phenomena where the people would bring about the Revolution, and of the anarchists' desire for vengeance, stood Sadi Carnot. Carnot, born on 11 August 1837 in Limoges, came from a family that included many names from the Republican elite; he was particularly distinguished by the prestige of his grandfather, Lazare Carnot, nicknamed 'Carnot the Great', a member of the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror and a notable figure of the French Revolution.
Sadi, for his part, pursued a career as a senior civil servant and held numerous political and governmental posts: Deputy for the Côte-d'Or, Prefect of Seine-Inférieure, then Under-Secretary of State for Public Works. He was subsequently appointed Minister of Public Works, then Minister of Finance. Following the resignation of Jules Grévy, who was implicated in the decorations scandal, Carnot surpassed Jules Ferry in the first round of the 1887 presidential election. He then won in the second round, on 3 December 1887, against General Félix Gustave Saussier with 616 votes to 188.
At the beginning of his mandate, Carnot was relatively well-regarded by the population and French political parties; the parliamentary Left and Right agreed on him because he offered assurances to the political orientations of the parties represented in Parliament. However, as his term progressed—which notably included the Panama scandal, his political choices alienated a portion of the population and, most notably, the anarchists.
In the summer of 1892, Ravachol was the first anarchist executed in France after Carnot refused to grant him a pardon, despite a campaign by the anarchist press to obtain it. This execution caused a profound shock among anarchists and centralised their attention on Carnot. Louise Michel opened her text Today or Tomorrow, shortly after the anarchist's execution, by writing about the Élysée palace, official residence of the French President:So much the better if these bandits have finished their work. The scaffold has started the party, and the fire will beat its wings over the apotheosis.
The blood of Ravachol splashes, from his false collar to his cuffs, the cold man of the Élysée.
The Élysée! That's the spot that draws the looks!
From it the grand finale, the final bouquet will rise into the air, and the cross of Our Lady of the Slaughter will be the streetlamp.