Gustave Mathieu (26 February 1866 in Guise-14 January 1947, in the same town) was a French worker and illegalist anarchist. A very militant anarchist and central to the birth of illegalism, he notably associated with Placide Schouppe, one of the first illegalists. Mathieu was also one of the most wanted people in France at the start of the Ère des attentats (1892-1894), being accused of being one of Ravachol's main accomplices for the Saint-Germain and the Clichy bombings.
Born into a working-class family in Guise, Aisne, he joined the anarchist movement in France at least from his twenties. He organized various anarchist initiatives in Guise, was arrested, and dragged in chains for 25km during an arrest for putting up anarchist posters. He also began to be suspected of being linked to the Intransigents of London and Paris, a group of anarchists who were then developing the anarchist tendency of illegalism although he seemed actually closer to the Schouppe's gang, a closely linked and similar group.
Following the arrest of some of the Intransigents and Schouppe, Mathieu moved to the northern districts of Paris in the early 1890s—there he met a number of anarchists from the Saint-Denis and Saint-Ouen groups, which supported propaganda by the deed and illegalism. He stood as an anarchist abstentionist candidate in the 1890 legislative elections, and was then tasked, following the Clichy affair—a case of police brutality affecting anarchists—with defending the three victims. The judge's handling of the case, which exonerated the police, caused shockwaves in anarchist circles in France. Mathieu was then possibly involved in a planned bombing that was taking shape, also involving Ravachol and Charles 'Cookie' Simon, one of his close friends with whom he was living at the time. In March 1892, the Saint-Germain bombing followed by the Clichy bombing committed by this group led to France entering the period of the Ère des attentats (1892-1894). Mathieu managed to flee and was heavily searched for by the police, who suspected him of being one of the main perpetrators of the attacks and even of the Véry bombing, but he managed to escape and disappear, eventually obtaining a dismissal of the charges.
After returning to France and being arrested for a theft, he was incarcerated for a year and put on trial for transmitting coded notes containing explosive recipes to other anarchist companions in prison. While his two alleged accomplices were sentenced to heavy penalties, he managed to avoid any conviction. He was then arrested and imprisoned for five years in Belgium for committing a burglary intended to finance an escape attempt for Charles Simon. The latter having been killed by the police during the massacre of the convicts anarchists in 1894, he left Belgium upon his release and returned to France. Mathieu then continued his militant activities and was noted as being responsible for revolutionary groups in Guise until at least the 1910s. During the Interwar period, the anarchist was a diligent reader of revolutionary syndicalist press.
Mathieu died in Guise in 1947.
Gustave Louis Mathieu was born on 26 February 1866, in Guise, in the Aisne department. His father was working there as a laborer at the time.
Beginning of anarchist and Illegalist activities
In 1887, when he was in his early twenties, he was noted as having joined the anarchist movement in France and established an abstentionist revolutionary group in Guise, which he led with the companion Louis Basse - who was maybe his cousin. In October of the same year, he was arrested with Basse and Henri Jason following the posting of two placards threatening the director of the Godin factory and its foremen - a posting that followed the dismissal of the companion Alphonse Bal. During this arrest, the three anarchists were chained and led on foot for 25 kilometers to Vervins.
Having been dismissed from his job, he moved to Belgium where he worked as a moulder for a time in Morlanwelz. A refugee with Basse, the two spoke before 300 people at a meeting held in January 1888 in Carnières. Following this meeting, the Belgian authorities demanded that he be found, arrested, and incarcerated at the Petits-Carmes prison with Basse. However, he managed to flee.In parallel, Mathieu began to be suspected of being a member of the Intransigents of London and Paris, one of the first illegalist groups in history, formed around Vittorio Pini and Alessandro Marocco, Maria Saenen, or Paolo Chiericotti. In reality, Mathieu frequented Placide Schouppe and his family, who were themselves connected to Pini and at the head of their own gang of cosmopolitan anarchist thieves, according to Marie-François Goron. He is said to have assisted the group in its burglary and theft activities. Pini and other members of the group were arrested in 1889, but Mathieu escaped prosecution in this instance.
In 1889, he was sentenced to 24 hours in prison for organizing an undeclared meeting in an inn in Guise. In 1890, in Saint-Quentin, Mathieu was allegedly part of the anarchist group responsible for disturbances at a socialist meeting.
Integration within Northern Paris groups
In 1890, Mathieu moved to Saint-Ouen and joined the anarchist groups in the northern districts of Paris and Saint-Denis: groups characterized by a young, working-class population and relatively radical, advocating ideas such as individual reclamation and propaganda by the deed. He was also a member of the city's anarchist library, alongside figures like Philogone Segard, Désiré Pauwels, the Chaumentin couple, Charles 'Cookie' Simon, Élisée Bastard, and Auguste Heurteaux. He also collaborated with Zo d'Axa's paper, l'Endehors.
The anarchist lodged with companion Pompée Viard, but when the police showed up at Viard's home in August 1890 to arrest Mathieu, the latter was nowhere to be found. He ran as an abstentionist anarchist candidate in the 1890 legislative elections in the 2nd constituency of Saint-Denis.
In January 1891, Mathieu was arrested and convicted for his 'run-ins with the Saint-Ouen police' - he announced that upon his release, he would organize a conference on prisons.
Clichy affair, Ravachol, and the start of the Ère des attentats (1892-1894)
Following the Clichy affair, a case of police brutality affecting the Saint-Denis groups and shocking anarchists, Mathieu was tasked with companion Eugène Boutteville to publish a defense for the three victims then on trial: Henri Decamps, Louis Léveillé, and Charles Dardare. The police were not prosecuted during the trial, and apart from Léveillé, two of the three were sentenced to prison terms, which amplified the initial shock of police brutality among anarchists.
The judge presiding over the case, Edmond Benoît, became a target for a number of anarchists, who perceived him as the embodiment of the significant judicial and, more broadly, state repression affecting them in France. An affinity group then formed, possibly composed of Ravachol — an anarchist then on the run for a murder in Saint-Étienne and seeking refuge in Saint-Denis — Charles Simon, Charles Chaumentin/Chaumartin and his wife Clotilde, around whom the couple Rosalie Soubère-Joseph Jas-Béala also gravitated. This group, of which Mathieu was allegedly a member according to the police, began planning an attack aiming to assassinate judge Benoît.
Between late 1891 and early 1892, Mathieu was active in the unrest in Saint-Denis, getting involved in the anti-conscription lottery activities launched by anarchist groups there. In early February 1892, the police raided and arrested him with Charles Simon; they were living at the same address. They were accused of stealing the property of Pompée Viard, who had housed him, after his death. Both were released pending trial.