Émile Henry (anarchist)

Émile Henry

Émile Henry (26 September 1872 – 21 May 1894) was a French anarchist who engaged in several terrorist attacks. First, he bombed a police station, in 1892, killing 5 people, then, on 12 February 1894 detonated a bomb at the Café Terminus in the Parisian Gare Saint-Lazare, killing one person and wounding seventy.

Though his activity in the anarchist movement was limited, he garnered much attention as a result of his crimes and of his age. He was also seen as one of the first people of a growing group of revolutionaries (largely anarchist) who subscribed to the doctrine of the "propaganda of the deed", which would later take the life of many governmental figures.

Biography

Early life and studies

Joseph Félix Émile Henry was born on 26 September 1872 in a small town near Barcelona. He was born in Spain because his father, Fortuné Henry, a former Communard now a coal miner, had been sentenced to death in absentia and had taken refuge there to escape French justice. His mother, Rose Caubet, who had worked as a seamstress before their exile, decided to follow him, and the couple settled in Catalonia. Émile was the youngest of his siblings; he had several brothers, including Jean-Charles Fortuné Henry, who would later become an anarchist activist like him, and a sister, Marie Constance Gabrielle Henry, who died in infancy. Taking advantage of a general amnesty in 1880, the family returned to Paris and settled at 5 Rue de Jouy in the fourth arrondissement of the capital. However, Fortuné Henry died a few months later from mercury poisoning, forcing Caubet to seek income to support her children and granting Henry the status of a ward of the city of Paris. This was done by setting up a drinking establishment on the ground floor of their home, called 'La Buvette de l'Espérance'.

Their family was relatively well-off, and Henry excelled in his studies at the Lycée Jean-Baptiste-Say, passing his baccalauréat in sciences a year early, at the age of seventeen. Destined for a promising career, he pursued scientific studies in preparatory classes and was eligible for admission to the École Polytechnique. However, he decided not to take the oral entrance exam, justifying his choice to his professors by citing, first, his reluctance to pursue a military career and, second, an opportunity offered by a family member—a wealthy industrialist—who had proposed that he become his private secretary. Henry was deeply influenced by the memory of the Paris Commune and the legacy of his father, who had a significant impact on him. He attempted to take part in a few spiritualism sessions to communicate with his father's soul but quickly deemed it a useless practice, less precise than the sciences he was studying.

Politicization, radicalization, love

It was in this first job as a personal secretary that Henry became aware of the harshness of society. He quickly resigned, refusing to oversee workers in Italy on behalf of his industrialist relative. Upon returning to Paris, he spent three months unemployed, and during this period, he became increasingly conscious of the social inequalities dividing French society. Henry wrote about this time:

Everywhere I went, I witnessed the same suffering among some, the same pleasures among others.

Henry also wrote about other issues, such as the monopolization of intellectual knowledge by the bourgeoisie and the morality of his society. Thus, he opposed the view that a bourgeois, being an exploiter in his view, could be considered an 'honest man'. More broadly, Henry perceived the society he lived in as profoundly shocking and revolting. Increasingly outraged by the injustices he witnessed, Henry began sheltering activists or people in need if they required a place to stay. He stole food to feed beggars he encountered on the streets—even stealing a cow for a starving woman. He also gave money to the poor.

Moreover, his elder brother, Fortuné, became involved in the anarchist movement, where he established himself as a recognized speaker at anarchist meetings. Émile assisted him in organizing these gatherings and gradually embraced anarchist ideas through his contact with and influence from his brother. Henry likely joined anarchist circles around November 1890 and quickly became an active and 'able to act' militant. Well integrated into the anarchist network of the French capital, he spent the year 1891 engaging with Parisian anarchist circles. He also began writing for a series of anarchist publications, such as L'En Dehors. In particular, he met Charles Malato, who quickly became one of his close friends and introduced him to smaller anarchist groups. During this time, he worked in various jobs, which he performed fairly well. Malato noted his determined character—he would engage in anarchist discussions until late at night and still wake up early in the morning to go to work.

That year, he suffered a romantic disappointment, but according to Maitron and Bouhey, this should not be seen as the cause of his radicalization, as they reject such a psychological interpretation of his life. In any case, Henry fell in love with Élisa Gauthey, a Parisian anarchist activist who was married. He met her through his brother, who often visited the Gautheys, and he quickly became infatuated with her. One day, when she offered Fortuné to write her a poem, Émile volunteered to write it instead. She was surprised but accepted. The young man, then 19 years old, wrote her several poems, which she received without much interest, merely finding them 'amusing'. While the Gautheys were in Brévannes, at the house where Rose Caubet was living, Henry sought every opportunity to approach Élisa and speak with her. One day, he fainted upon seeing her kiss her husband. When she came to his side to help him recover, he woke up and confessed his feelings to her, which made her laugh. Hurt by her reaction, he replied that one day she would see how much he loved her. After this incident, he returned to Paris and wrote to her in September 1891, apologizing for what he had said and asking for her patience with him. Later, Henry kept a small lock of hair that Gauthey had given him, which the police found on him when they arrested him following his attacks.

Although he still claimed to be in love with her in his letters, he began to adopt a more contemplative and detached demeanor, according to Merriman. He stopped visiting his mother, and she no longer received any news from him; Malato also noticed a change in the young man.

Henry avoided military service by having a letter sent to his mother from Berlin in his name—likely sent by one of his companions. In this letter, the anarchist told her that he had left France to evade military service. As the police were unable to locate him, he was declared a deserter in February 1892.

Era of Attacks

Main articles: Carmaux-Bons Enfants bombing and Terminus bombing

Carmaux-Bons Enfants bombing

During the Era of Attacks (1892–1894), which began with the Saint-Germain bombing on 11 March 1892, carried out by Ravachol, Henry was initially opposed to anarchist terrorism and to Ravachol himself, according to Merriman and Badier, who provide some of his writings. He later would have changed his stance. They argue that Henry's thinking evolved, and he gradually came to support the use of propaganda by the deed after Ravachol's execution (11 July 1892).

Conversely, Bouhey contends that while Ravachol's execution may have further radicalized Henry and pushed him to take action, he was already on this path by March 1892. At that time, French police informants had already noted acid marks on his hands several times, suggesting that he was preparing explosive material. In reality, according to Bouhey, the idea that Henry was gradually radicalized during this period overlooks two key elements: the fact that he had planned his first attack long in advance and that he was assisted by other anarchists in carrying it out.

In August 1892, the Carmaux strike began. This strike was triggered by the abrupt dismissal of Jean-Baptiste Calvignac, a socialist and trade unionist working in the Carmaux mine, following his election as mayor of Carmaux. What started as a small, local movement quickly spread and gained national attention, particularly from prominent socialists such as Jean Jaurès. These figures persuaded the workers to negotiate and initially accept a return to work. Henry closely followed the strike and viewed the actions of the socialists and Jaurès as a betrayal that ultimately served only to benefit the bourgeoisie. The fact that the workers resumed work even poorer than when they had left reinforced his belief that they should have directly attacked the means of production, destroyed them, and thereby forced the bourgeoisie to negotiate.

He began manufacturing explosives to target the headquarters of the Carmaux Mining Company, whose address he found in the directory. For this attack, he was likely assisted by his brother and the anarchist activist Adrienne Chaillet. After assembling the bomb, he took advantage of a moment when his employer sent him on an errand in Paris to place it at the company’s headquarters. However, the building's concierge noticed the suspicious package and alerted the police. Officers arrived, retrieved the package, and, accompanied by a company employee, brought it to the police station on Rue des Bons-Enfants. There, the bomb exploded as the officers opened it, killing four policemen and the employee. The Carmaux-Bons Enfants bombing was the deadliest incident of the Era of Attacks in France.

Exile and illegalism

This attack caused shock both among the police and the anarchists. The police were caught off guard, as they had been preparing for unrest and attacks in Carmaux itself, not suspecting that the target would instead be the company's headquarters in Paris. Anarchists were also surprised by the attack. Kropotkin, Malatesta, and Malato, who were in London at the time, knew nothing about the attacker’s identity or the plan, which seemed to be unknown to most anarchist circles. Meanwhile, Henry feigned illness with his employer, Dupuy, writing to him that he needed to spend a few days in Brévannes. In reality, he quickly fled the country, going to the United Kingdom. He was placed on a list of 180 suspects compiled by the police, which also included Malatesta and his brother. However, when the police raided his room, they found nothing to incriminate him. Furthermore, Dupuy, when questioned, stated that it was impossible for Henry to have carried out the attack during the errands he had assigned him. French authorities, additionally receiving testimonies suggesting that a woman had planted the bomb - maybe Chaillet -, abandoned his trail for a time.

Having fled France and living in hiding, his trajectory is difficult to trace. However, while settled in London, he appears to have had connections with certain members of the illegalist group of the Intransigents, such as Luigi Parmeggiani, Alessandro Marroco, and Placide Schouppe, among others, while also maintaining ties with Malato. During this period, he participated in armed robberies in France with this group and Léon Ortiz, though it is difficult to determine when and where exactly. He notably carried out a robbery with Ortiz in December 1892 in Fiquefleur-Équainville, where they stole 800,000 francs from a property owner.

In April 1893, he was in Brussels and joined the general strike of 1893 in Belgium, declared in response to the refusal by Belgian parliamentarians to grant universal male suffrage. The Belgian army intervened and fired on the protesters, and Henry participated in the fighting by shooting at the police—without being arrested, which surprised him. He hoped for a revolution, but an agreement was signed by the socialists, who accepted a compromise and a property-based suffrage—which gave more votes to people who owned land. Henry saw this as another betrayal by the socialists.

During the year 1893, the anarchist continued this life and traveled several times to Paris, staying there for up to a month at a time without being arrested. However, little by little, the police began to suspect him of the attack—especially since he was untraceable, and information gradually reached them suggesting that he might be the perpetrator of the assault. Meanwhile, the French police, in collaboration with other European police forces, launched large-scale repressive operations against anarchists, with hundreds being searched, arrested, or placed in temporary detention in France and Spain, and thousands sent to penal camps in Italy. Anarchist attacks also continued, including the actions of Pauli Pallas and, notably, Santiago Salvador with the Liceu bombing (7 November 1893) in Spain. In France, two attacks marked the end of 1893: the 13 November 1893 stabbing by Léon Léauthier and the National Assembly bombing by Auguste Vaillant (9 December 1893).

After Vaillant's attack, which was considered very positively by all anarchists because he targeted political representatives intimately linked with the State, the political authorities took advantage of the situation to pass the first two lois scélérates ('vilainous laws'), a series of laws targeting the anarchist movement and curbing individual freedoms. Being an anarchist then became a crime in itself in France.

Terminus bombing

Vaillant, in the meantime, was quickly put on trial, sentenced to death, and executed on 5 February 1894. His execution provoked an explosion of anger among anarchist circles in France, who saw him as a martyr undeserving of the death penalty—since he had killed no one. Henry was in Paris, and the police were increasingly searching for him, gradually becoming convinced that he was the perpetrator of the attack on Rue des Bons-Enfants.

Seven days later, on 12 February 1894, Henry went near the Élysée Palace, the residence of the President of the French Republic. He intended to assassinate Sadi Carnot, who had refused to pardon Vaillant and had supported the lois scélérates, making him an enemy of the anarchists. Armed with a bomb strapped to his belt, a dagger with a poisoned blade, a loaded revolver, and brass knuckles, the anarchist found himself facing a strong police presence around the palace, making an attack unlikely—especially as he did not seem well-prepared.

Henry's capture

He decided to leave the area and moved toward the Gare Saint-Lazare. There, Henry entered the Café Terminus, located near the station and frequented by many tourists and travelers. As he walked in, a Romani orchestra was playing on the café's stage. Henry sat down and observed the scene. Then, after ordering two beers and a cigar, around 9 PM, he used the cigar to light the fuse of his bomb. He stood up and threw the bomb toward the stage where the orchestra was performing—before fleeing into the street. The bomb exploded in the middle of the café, injuring about twenty people, some severely—one of whom died.

He then ran into the street, intending to take a train from Gare Saint-Lazare to the Parisian suburbs and disappear. However, he was pursued by a café employee, who shouted at him to stop and tried to prevent his escape. The chase was soon joined by a nearby policeman, who threw himself at Henry. Henry shot him in the chest, and when the wounded officer drew his saber to attack, Henry emptied his revolver into him, gravely injuring him. However, more police officers rushed to the scene and tackled Henry, engaging in a struggle until they finally subdued and arrested him.

Trial

After his arrest, Henry was transferred to the Conciergerie, placed in the same cell that Ravachol had occupied before his trial, which greatly pleased him. His mother, visited by the police, insisted that it was impossible for her son to have committed the attack. Gauthey was also arrested in case she needed to testify, as the police had found a lock of her hair on Henry at the time of his arrest.

Henry’s attack took both anarchists and French society as a whole by surprise. The completely indiscriminate nature of the bombing was particularly shocking. In anarchist circles, such an indiscriminate attack was met with considerable distance. Most anarchists rejected this act, as it did not target a specific figure of power or the bourgeoisie. Le Révolté, led by Jean Grave, immediately denounced Henry, writing:

Let this be clearly understood: every time an explosion does not target authority, wealth, or capitalist exploitation, one can safely attribute it to those who have an interest in discrediting us. We know exactly what kind of scoundrels we are talking about.

While most anarchists rejected his actions, some—particularly within the individualist anarchist tendency—considered them legitimate. In certain individualist defenses of Henry, the idea of propaganda by the deed was secondary; he acted simply because his 'disgust had reached its maximum intensity'.

In any case, this innovative aspect of terrorism continued during his trial, which began on 27 April 1894. Unlike Vaillant or Ravachol, who both presented themselves as avengers during their respective trials, Henry portrayed himself as a fighter in a war to the death. To him, society was engaged in a total war between the bourgeoisie and the rest of the population, with only two kinds of people: those who resist, those who oppress, and those who fail to realize they are complicit. Thus, he saw the majority of French society as a legitimate target. He made no attempt to downplay his actions—on the contrary, he fully assumed them and even lamented that he had not killed more people. According to Bouhey and Badier, this stance may have been an attempt to obscure the possible involvement of his brother and Chaillet in the Carmaux-Bons-Enfants bombing.

Henry also fully embraced the mass nature of his terrorism, making him the first to theorize this new form of violence. He said that he wanted to 'strike at random' or that:

The bourgeoisie has made all anarchists into a single bloc. […] Well! Since you hold an entire movement responsible for the acts of one man and strike as a bloc, we too will strike as a bloc.

Whereas Ravachol accepted a certain degree of legitimacy in the judicial process, Henry outright rejected it. The prospect of execution did not trouble him in the slightest. In doing so, he pioneered the strategy of total rupture in the courtroom. After being sentenced to death, he declared:

I do not recognize bourgeois justice and will not ask anything of them—neither favor nor mercy. I will not file an appeal, nor seek clemency, and the only thing I desire is to be handed over as quickly as possible to the executioner of the bourgeoisie.

Execution

Two days before his execution, on 19 May 1894, Célestin Nat stabbed a bourgeois in Marseille during the 1894 Marseille stabbing as an act of vengeance for Henry being sentenced to death.

On the evening of 20 May 1894, Henry went to bed at 9 P.M. His execution was scheduled for the night at place de la Roquette, guarded by five hundred policemen. Access was restricted to notable figures of the capital, including Georges Clemenceau and Maurice Barrès, who attended the event.

Around 3:15 AM, executioner Louis Deibler and his assistant set up the guillotine. Deibler had met with Henry the previous day to discuss the details of the execution, and their conversation had reportedly gone smoothly. At approximately 4:00 AM, the gate of the adjacent prison opened, and Henry stepped out onto the square. His wrists and ankles were bound, making his walk difficult. He advanced toward the scaffold with a resolute stride but paled as he neared the end of his path. He stopped and declared:

Courage, comrades! Long live anarchy!

He repeated the second part of his exclamation before the executioners seized him and placed him into the execution device. He was guillotined shortly thereafter, his head falling into the basket in front of the guillotine. His death certificate recorded the approximate time of death as 4:10 AM.

Legacy

Immediate aftermath

After his death, Henry was buried in Brévannes. His mother was devastated, while Élisa Gauthey seemed quite pleased to be interviewed by newspapers about Henry. She spoke extensively to journalists, even expressing regret over not having accepted his advances at the time, and shared numerous intimate details about their relationship.

Sadi Carnot, who had refused to pardon Ravachol, Vaillant, and Henry, was assassinated a few months later by Sante Geronimo Caserio, who stabbed him to death.

Anarchist circles and thought

Among anarchists, reactions to Henry’s execution and the legacy of his attacks were significant. The Café Terminus bombing, due to its extreme violence and indiscriminate nature, was one of the key events signaling the end of the Era of Attacks. In reality, after this attack, anarchist attacks slowed down until they eventually stopped. Anarchists increasingly recognized the weakness of terrorist strategy, as it led to harsher state repression without necessarily gaining popular support—something that became particularly evident with the indiscriminate nature of the Terminus bombing. In France, anarchist circles gradually abandoned propaganda of the deed, shifting their focus toward other forms of struggle, particularly the emerging anarcho-syndicalist movement.

At the same time, Henry became a central figure for the emerging individualist anarchist tendency. Though a minority within anarchism, these militants adopted him as a symbol, a process that had already begun during his lifetime with attacks like those of Désiré Pauwels on the 20 February bombings, and the Madeleine bombing. In this sense, Henry’s life played a key role in shaping individualist anarchism—an 'anarchy within anarchy'.

Birth of mass and modern terrorism

Ferragu places Henry alongside Léon Léauthier and Santiago Salvador as one of the early founders of modern terrorism. However, since Léauthier refrained from theorizing this form of terrorism during his trial to avoid the death penalty, and Salvador’s trial took place later in the year, Henry was, in fact, the first to fully articulate this ideology. This characterization is supported by Merriman and Badier from different perspectives but is criticized by Salomé, who argues that Henry’s attack still targeted a specific bourgeois enemy rather than society as a whole.

While this form of indiscriminate terrorism had little impact on later anarchist terrorism, which either faded away or returned to more traditional forms of tyrannicide, it was quickly adopted by various terrorist groups well into the 21st century. Merriman highlights Henry’s intellectual shift, in which he came to see society as a whole as guilty and thus a legitimate target, as an idea that later resurfaced in very different forms of terrorism, including Islamist terrorism in the early 21st century. However, he warns that such comparisons must be made with great caution, as the respective ideologies are vastly different. Still, this notion of a guilty and indiscriminately targeted society is a common thread between Henry and these later movements.

Ferragu describes this massification of terrorism as follows:

By striking ‘into the crowd’, Émile Henry redefined the framework of the attack, ultimately moving beyond the old model of tyrannicide in favor of a modern form of terrorism—one that blindly targets a society defined both as an enemy and as an objective adversary (the ‘bourgeoisie’).

Bibliography

• Badier, Walter (2010), "Émile Henry, le « Saint-Just de l'Anarchie »" [Émile Henry, the 'Saint-Just of Anarchy'], Parlement[s], Paris: Revue d'histoire politique
• Bouhey, Vivien (2009), Les Anarchistes contre la République [The Anarchists against the Republic], Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes (PUR)
• Chambost, Anne-Sophie (2017), "« Nous ferons de notre pire… ». Anarchie, illégalisme … et lois scélérates" [«We’ll Do our Worse». Anarchy, Illegalism … and Evil Law], Droit et Cultures, 74 (2): 65–87, doi:10.4000/droitcultures.4264
• Ferragu, Gilles (2019), "L'écho des bombes : l'invention du terrorisme « à l'aveugle » (1893-1895)" [The echo of bombs: The invention of indiscriminate terrorism (1893–1895)], Ethnologie française, 49 (1): 21–31, doi:10.3917/ethn.191.0021
• Merriman, John M. (2016). The dynamite club: how a bombing in fin-de-siècle Paris ignited the age of modern terror. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-21792-6.
• Merriman, John M. Merriman (2018), "The Spectre of the Commune and French Anarchism in the 1890s", The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism, Palgrave Macmillan Cham, pp. 343–352{{citation}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
• Salomé, Karine (2011), L'Ouragan homicide : L'attentat politique en France au XIXe siècle [The homicidal Hurricane: political assassination in 19th century France], Paris: Champ Vallon / Epoque, ISBN 978-2-87673-538-5

External links

• Was this man the first terrorist of the modern age? at BBC News
• Émile Henry Reference Archive at Marxists.org