Bonnot gang
Encyclopedia
The Bonnot Gang was a French criminal anarchist group that operated in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 during the Belle Époque
Belle Époque
The Belle Époque or La Belle Époque was a period in European social history that began during the late 19th century and lasted until World War I. Occurring during the era of the French Third Republic and the German Empire, it was a period characterised by optimism and new technological and medical...

, from 1911 to 1912. Composed of individuals who identified with the emerging illegalist
Illegalism
Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...

 milieu, the gang utilized cutting-edge technology (including automobiles and repeating rifle
Repeating rifle
A repeating rifle is a single barreled rifle containing multiple rounds of ammunition. These rounds are loaded from a magazine by means of a manual or automatic mechanism, and the action that reloads the rifle also typically recocks the firing action...

s) not yet available to the French police.

Originally referred to by the press as simply "The Auto Bandits", the gang was dubbed "The Bonnot Gang" after Jules Bonnot
Jules Bonnot
Jules Bonnot was a French illegalist famous for his involvement in a criminal anarchist organization dubbed "The Bonnot Gang" by the French press. He viewed himself as a professional and avoided bloodshed, preferring to outwit his targets...

 gave an interview at the office of Le Petit Parisien
Le Petit Parisien
Le Petit Parisien was a prominent French newspaper during the French Third Republic. It was published between 1876 and 1944, and its circulation was over 2 million after the First World War.-Publishing:...

, a popular daily paper. Bonnot's perceived prominence within the group was later reinforced by his high-profile death during a shootout
Shootout
A shootout is a gun battle between armed groups. A shootout often, but not necessarily, pits law enforcement against criminal elements; it could also involve two groups outside of law enforcement, such as rival gangs. A shootout in a military context A shootout is a gun battle between armed groups....

 with French police in Nogent
Nogent
Nogent is the name or part of the name of several communes in France:* Nogent, in the Haute-Marne département* Nogent-l'Abbesse, in the Marne département* Nogent-l'Artaud, in the Aisne département* Nogent-sur-Aube, in the Aube département...

.

Their story was adapted in cinema in 1969. It also appeared in the popular 70s TV series Les Brigades du Tigre and its cinematographic adaptation
The Tiger Brigades
Les Brigades du Tigre is a 2006 French crime film, based on a very successful 1970s-'80s French television series of the same name. The story involves an Untouchables-type crack "Flying Squad" formed by Georges Clemenceau to combat rampant crime in 1912 Paris...

 made in 2005 with Jacques Gamblin
Jacques Gamblin
Jacques Gamblin is a French actor.He was born in Granville, Manche. He studied at the Centre dramatique de Caen before he tried to film in Paris.-Filmography:*Périgord Noir...

 as Jules Bonnot.

Members

The Bonnot Gang originally consisted of a group of French anarchists centered around the individualist anarchist magazine L’Anarchie
L’Anarchie
L'Anarchie was a French individualist anarchist journal established in April of 1905 by Albert Libertad. Along with Libertad, contributors to the journal included Émile Armand, André Lorulot, Émilie Lamotte, Raymond Callemin, and Victor Serge)....

. The group was founded by Octave Garnier
Octave Garnier
Octave Garnier was a French anarchist and founding member of the infamous Bonnot Gang.-Life:Born in Fontainebleau, Seine-et-Marne on Christmas Day 1889, Garnier worked as a butcher and baker at an early age. He took up theft at the age of thirteen and had served his first prison term by age...

, Raymond Callemin, and René Valet. It was Garnier's idea to use automobile
Automobile
An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...

s in the service of a daring criminal act. Jules Bonnot joined them in December 1911.

Principal gang members included:
  • Anna Dondon
  • Marie Vuillemin
  • André Soudy
  • Édouard Carouy
  • Jeanne Belardi,
  • Jean De Boe
  • Élie Monier
  • Eugène Dieudonné


Minor players included David Belonie, Marius Medge, Antoine Gauzy, Pierre Jourdan, Charles Reinart, Victor Serge
Victor Serge
Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...

, Godorowski, Henriette Maîtrejean, and Berbe Leclech.

The gang's political and social perspective was heavily influenced by Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...

 and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...

 as well as Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...

, Ludwig Büchner
Ludwig Büchner
Friedrich Karl Christian Ludwig Büchner was a German philosopher, physiologist and physician who became one of the exponents of 19th century scientific materialism.Büchner was born at Darmstadt, Germany, on 29 March 1824...

, and Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

. Bonnot's ideas were more part with late anarchist Ravachol
Ravachol
François Claudius Koenigstein, known as Ravachol, , was a French anarchist. He was born 14 October 1859 at Saint-Chamond and died guillotined 11 July 1892 at Montbrison.-Biography:...

.

Crime spree

The first robbery by Bonnot's Gang was at the money transfer of Société Générale
Société Générale
Société Générale S.A. is a large European Bank and a major Financial Services company that has a substantial global presence. Its registered office is on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, while its head office is in the Tours Société Générale in the business district of La...

 Bank in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 on December 21, 1911. They escaped in an automobile (a Delaunay-Belleville
Delaunay-Belleville
Automobiles Delaunay-Belleville was a French luxury automobile manufacturer from Saint-Denis, France, north of Paris. At the beginning of the 20th century they were among the most prestigious cars produced in the world, and perhaps the most desirable French marque.Julien Belleville had been a maker...

) they had stolen a week before. Robbers Bonnot, Octave Garnier, Eugène Dieudonné and Raymond Callemin got booty equal to 5,126 francs, but the rest of it was composed of securities. The gang had the dubious honor of being the first to use an automobile to flee the scene of a crime, presaging by over twenty years the later methods of John Dillinger
John Dillinger
John Herbert Dillinger, Jr. was an American bank robber in Depression-era United States. He was charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana police officer during a shoot-out. This was his only alleged homicide. His gang robbed two dozen banks and four police stations...

 and Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow were well-known outlaws, robbers, and criminals who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934...

.

On December 28, 1911, the gang broke into a gun shop in the Paris center. A few days later, on the night of January 2, 1912, they entered the home of the wealthy M. Moreau and murdered both him and his maid. The booty take was equal to 30,000 francs.

French Central Police Sûreté Nationale did its best to catch the gang. They were able to arrest one man based on their registry of anarchist organizations. The Gang fled temporarily to Belgium, where they sold the stolen automobile and tried to carjack another. In the process they shot a Belgian policeman.

The gang continued their automobile thefts and robberies, shooting two more policemen in the process. Automobiles were not yet common so the gang usually stole still expensive cars from garages, not from the street.

By March 1912, police had arrested many of the gang’s supporters and knew many of the members' faces and names. In March 1912, gang member and would-be leader Octave Garnier sent a mocking letter to the Sûreté with his fingerprints. In those days, the French police still did not yet use fingerprinting.

On March 25, 1912, the gang stole a de Dion-Bouton
De Dion-Bouton
De Dion-Bouton was a French automobile manufacturer and railcar manufacturer operating from 1883 to 1932. The company was founded by the Marquis Jules-Albert de Dion, Georges Bouton and his brother-in-law Charles Trépardoux....

 automobile in the Sénart Forest south of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 by shooting the driver through the heart. They drove into Chantilly
Chantilly, Oise
Chantilly is a small city in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune in the department of Oise.It is in the metropolitan area of Paris 38.4 km...

 north of Paris where they robbed the local branch of Société Générale Bank shooting the bank's three cashiers. They escaped in their stolen automobile as two policemen tried to catch them, one on horseback and the other on a bicycle.

Sûreté Chief Xavier Guichard
Xavier Guichard
Xavier Guichard was a French Director of Police, archaeologist and writer.His 1936 book Eleusis Alesia: Enquête sur les origines de la civilisation européenne is an early example of speculative thinking concerning Earth mysteries, based on his observations of apparent alignments between...

 took the matter personally. Even politicians became concerned, increasing police funding by 800,000 francs. Banks began to prepare for forthcoming robberies and many cashiers armed themselves. The Société Générale promised a reward of 100,000 francs for information that would lead to arrests.

Pursuit and capture

On March 30, police arrested André Soudy at the English Channel
English Channel
The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...

 coast, where he announced that he did not care whether he died of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 or by guillotine
Guillotine
The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...

. Édouard Carouy was arrested April 3. Raymond Callemin was arrested April 7, and police had to prevent an angry mob from lynching
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...

 him on the spot. Antoine Monnier was arrested in Paris on April 24. By the end of that month, police had arrested 28 gang members and supporters. Still, Bonnot, Octave Garnier and René Valet remained at large.

On April 24, three police officers surprised Bonnot in the apartment of a suspected fence
Fence (criminal)
A fence is an individual who knowingly buys stolen property for later resale, sometimes in a legitimate market. The fence thus acts as a middleman between thieves and the eventual buyers of stolen goods who may or may not be aware that the goods are stolen. As a verb, the word describes the...

. He shot at the officers, killing one and wounding another, and then fled over the rooftops. Part of the 100,000 francs reward was later given to the widow of the killed police officer, Jouin.

On April 28, police had tracked Bonnot to a house in the Paris suburb of Choisy le Roi. They besieged the place with 500 armed police officers, soldiers, firefighters, military engineers and private gun-owners. By noon, after a sporadic firing from both sides, Paris Police Chief Louis Lépine
Louis Lépine
Louis Jean-Baptiste Lépine was an eminent lawyer, politician and inventor who was Prefect of Police for Paris from 1893 to 1897 and again from 1899 to 1913. He earned the nickname of ‘’The Little Man with the Big Stick’’ for his skill in handling large Parisian crowds. He was responsible for the...

 sent three police officers to put a dynamite charge under the house. The explosion demolished the front of the building. Bonnot was hiding in the middle of a rolled mattress and tried to shoot back until Lépine shot him non-fatally in the head. Afterwards police again had to prevent the spectators from lynching Bonnot. They simply told the crowd that Bonnot was already dead and had been buried in a secret grave.

On the evening of May 14, Octave Garnier and Rene Valet were besieged in the Paris suburb of Nogent-sur-Marne
Nogent-sur-Marne
Nogent-sur-Marne is a commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. Nogent-sur-Marne is a sous-préfecture of the Val-de-Marne département, being the seat of the Arrondissement of Nogent-sur-Marne.-History:...

 by a large force including 300 police officers and gendarme
Gendarmerie
A gendarmerie or gendarmery is a military force charged with police duties among civilian populations. Members of such a force are typically called "gendarmes". The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary describes a gendarme as "a soldier who is employed on police duties" and a "gendarmery, -erie" as...

s and 800 soldiers. Sûreté Chief Xavier Guichard himself led the siege. The firing from both sides was intense, and at 2 AM, Guichard decided to blow the place up. Garnier died in the explosion, but Valet tried to keep firing despite his wounds.

Trial

The trial of the Gang's survivors began on February 3, 1913. Viktor Serge
Victor Serge
Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...

 was sentenced to five years for robbery. All the others were initially sentenced to death. The sentence of Eugène Dieudonné was commuted to life imprisonment. Sentences of Édouard Carouy and Marius Metge were commuted to life imprisonment at hard labor. Carouy later committed suicide. Metge was sent to a penal colony. Raymond Caillemin, Antoine Monnier and André Soudy refused to plead for clemency and they were executed by guillotine
Guillotine
The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...

.

Aftermath

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Bonnot Gang, French authorities used the threat of anarchist violence as the pretext for a substantial expansion in law enforcement power. Hundreds of raids were carried out against known anarchists and sympathizers (similar in scale to the Palmer Raids
Palmer Raids
The Palmer Raids were attempts by the United States Department of Justice to arrest and deport radical leftists, especially anarchists, from the United States. The raids and arrests occurred in November 1919 and January 1920 under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer...

 in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

). Although the actions of the gang were not widely supported, even within the anarchist milieu, the mainstream press called for a general crackdown on left-wing
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...

 revolutionary activity.

French anarchist communists
Anarchist communism
Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, markets, money, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with...

 attempted to distance themselves from illegalism
Illegalism
Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...

 and anarchist individualism as a whole. In August 1913, the Fédération Communiste-Anarchistes (FCA) condemned individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...

 as bourgeois and more in keeping with capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

 than communism. An article believed to have been written by Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...

, in the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 anarchist paper Freedom
Freedom newspaper
Freedom is a London-based anarchist newspaper published fortnightly by Freedom Press.The paper was started in 1886 by volunteers including Peter Kropotkin and Charlotte Wilson and continues to this day as an unpaid project. Originally, the subtitle was "A Journal of Anarchist Socialism." The title...

, argued that "Simple-minded young comrades were often led away by the illegalists' apparent anarchist logic; outsiders simply felt disgusted with anarchist ideas and definitely stopped their ears to any propaganda."

Nevertheless, the Bonnot Gang found some sympathy from the French working-class. As many as one hundred thousand people visited Nogent-sur-Marne
Nogent-sur-Marne
Nogent-sur-Marne is a commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. Nogent-sur-Marne is a sous-préfecture of the Val-de-Marne département, being the seat of the Arrondissement of Nogent-sur-Marne.-History:...

 (the site of the shoot-out that ended the lives of Garnier and Valet) and merchants in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 sold souvenirs depicting the bandits.

The Bonnot Gang remains one of France's best known anarchist groups.

Further reading

  • Cacucci, Pino. (2006) Without a Glimmer of Remorse. ChristieBooks. ISBN 1-873976-28-3.
  • Imrie, Doug. (1994) The Illegalists. Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed
    Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed
    Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed is a North American anarchist magazine, and is one of the most popular anarchist publications in North America. It could be described as a general interest and critical, non-ideological anarchist journal...

    .
  • Parry, Richard. (1987) The Bonnot Gang. Rebel Press. ISBN 0-946061-04-1.

Film


External links

  • The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists, by Richard Parry, hosted by the Internet Archive
    Internet Archive
    The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...

    .
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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