Source
Soon, a new disaster overtook l'anarchie: there was an accident with the printing machine that reduced the 14th September issue to only one page.
Within a couple of weeks the Marinoni press had packed up almost completely, and it was not known whether the fault was repairable.
There was no money to go to another printers to print a proper issue and publication of Le Rétif's Against Hunger and Levieux's antimilitarist pamphlet would have to be postponed.
The crisis was serious enough to warrant a special meeting on the following Sunday to discuss the whole question of the future of the journal.
On top of this, the bookshop, a principal source of income, was selling less and less; being stuck out in suburbia was losing them both financial and physical support.
With the press broken, it was decided that the situation in Romainville was hopeless, and it would be better to return to Paris.
Rirette scouted around for somewhere suitable and came up with a small place in the rue Fessart, near Buttes-Chaumont, which overlooked Paris from the east.
The first edition of l'anarchie sporting the new address came out on the 19th October. A week later the bookshop was moved to Paris as well.
In the capital, however, the atmosphere was stifling.
The revolutionary movement was deadlocked, the organized section of the working class having been bludgeoned into temporary submission since the defeat of the railwaymen's strike.
Kibalchich wrote:
"We breathed the oppressive air of the prelude to war".
Imperialist squabbles ran their course towards the impending catastrophe of the First World War:
the Agadir incident, the partition of Morocco, the massacre at Casablanca, the Turkish-Italian war, the Austrian annexation of Bosnia, the build-up to the Balkan wars, and the feverish arms race between the great powers.
The revolutions in China and Mexico were greeted with enthusiasm, but simply highlighted the sense of impotence of revolutionaries in seemingly tranquil Europe.
At l'anarchie, however, life went on, despite some fuss with the building's proprietor over the mail.
Three new pamphlets were printed: one on Free Love, Le Rétif's Against Hunger and Mauricius on The Social Role of the Anarchists.
The causeries went on as usual with Lorulot, Kibalchich and Mauricius as the main speakers.
Lorulot announced that the first issue of Idée Libre would appear on 1st December.
Few, if any, of the old comrades visited Victor and Rirette at rue Fessart; Marius Medge popped in occasionally and André Soudy made a reappearance.
The tuberculous young Soudy had had some very bad luck: while in hospital in 1910 he'd let a friend use his garret, and the friend had subsequently given his address when caught thieving.
The place was searched and stolen goods found — Soudy was taken from his hospital bed and charged with receiving.
His sentence was eight months in prison and five years exile from Paris:
his previous convictions for insulting police, resisting arrest and distributing leaflets in the course of a strike at the big grocery stores were taken into account.
He was released on 24th August, and went to the new premises of l'anarchie.
Soudy enjoyed taking Maud and Chinette for walks in the pretty little park on the Buttes-Chaumont, where, with the few centimes he had, he would buy them sweets.
The kids called him Le Béchemel (white sauce), due to his very pale complexion.
He was still ill, but could not afford to go to the seaside health resort at Berek where he sometimes went for a cure.
Instead Rirette booked him into the Parisian sanatorium of Brévannes under the false name of 'Columbo', because he was officially forbidden to be resident in the capital.
Edouard Carouy had meanwhile dyed his hair from red to black and was living off the thirty to forty francs a week that he made by selling false jewellery and trinkets in the suburban markets.
On his travels, he also kept his eyes open for places that could easily be burgled: in his little hand-cart he had a secret drawer containing the necessary tools of the trade.
His main partner in crime, Marius Medge, had hired a small detached house in Garches in the western suburbs where he lived with his girlfriend, Barbe Leclech, an illiterate Breton from the wilds of Morbihan, who knew some of the illegalists from Charleroi.
Together, then, Carouy and Medge got to know both the eastern and western suburbs of Paris, and, over the two months following l'anarchie's departure from Romainville, they burgled houses in Alfortville, Pavillons-sous-Bois and Rueil-Malmaisons, a shop in Chatou, the Société Electro-Industrielle and the post office in Romainville.
Carouy also found some part-time work with an anarchist locksmith, Louis Rimbault, who ran a garage in Pavillons-sous-Bois, rue Bolivar.
He was a friend of Victor Coissac, later to be the organizer of the well-known and long-lived commune L'Intégral.
Rimbault himself had just come, in the summer of 1911, from the Bascon libertarian colony near Chateau-Thierry (Aisne) having failed to drum up any enthusiasm for his Proudhonist-inspired plans for the workers in the region.
He was thirty-four years old.
Octave Garnier and his companion Marie were now staying at his mother's house at 42 rue des Laitieres in Vincennes.
Raymond-LaScience, René Valet and Anna were staying with various friends in Paris, sometimes with their old comrade from Brussels and Romaiuville, Jean De Boe, who was working with Lorulot on his new magazine.
Louise Dieudonné was still with him, and in August Eugène arrived to try and convince her to come back to him and their child.
He talked to the other comrades, who, being at odds with Lorulot, were sympathetic to him, but he soon returned to Nancy, promising to come back again later in the year.
Whether Octave, Raymond, René and the others visited him is unclear.
In Paris they often went to concerts (Raymond loved Chopin especially) or the theatre together, but in general their activities remain obscure.
Garnier continued to work as a navvy, and card-carrying CGT member, on the construction of a second railway line between Pontoise and Dieppe.
He was involved in strikes at Chars, Marines and Cergy, where he worked on the Poissy-Vauréal tramline.
He was sentenced to a few weeks prison for assault, insulting behaviour and incitement to murder during a construction workers' strike.
He worked "next at Achères, then at Maisons-Lafitte, leaving suddenly after the death of a scab named Merck on 13th November.
In his memoirs, scribbled in school exercise books, Garnier recalled these as days when, "we didn't have much money; we carried out burglary upon burglary, of which I can mention the principal ones which were those in the months of August, September and October 1911.
"In August we did several which each brought in three hundred or four hundred francs, a post office which brought us seven hundred francs, and a villa in Nantes which got us four thousand francs.
But besides those we did several others which didn't bring in much.…
In the two months of September and October, our principal burglary was that of the post office in Chelles in the département of Seine et Marne, which brought in four thousand francs, and a few others of lesser importance.
Lastly, towards the beginning of November, we did another one in Compiègne, which got us three and a half thousand francs.
It was a good haul, but this money was soon spent, as many of our comrades, having been hassled by the police or other people, had been given financial help."
Clearly, Octave was dissatisfied. During that autumn, he, René and Raymond "discussed together ways of making the cry of our revolt be heard more strongly than ever".
Garnier wanted to do something on a much bigger scale and had already arranged the renting of several safe houses.
He admired Carouy's cool professionalism but felt that he lacked imagination; Raymond and René could be relied upon to back him up, but it was he, Octave, who would have to come up with a plan.
For once, Raymond was right: they must put science at the service of their revolt.
They must have the best tools, the best weapons and a fast car, then they would be prepared to make their attack upon society.
They had the know-how to steal a car, but only Octave had had a few lessons:
"I looked for a mate to act as driver, but in vain.
I had learnt to drive, but not yet being very good at it, still hesitated to rush out and steal a car in order to pull off a job that would keep us free from want for a good time.
At this point I became acquainted with Bonnot...".
The story continues at this link.
The book goes on at some length that a few more hours of reading will complete for you.
This series of posts will insure that these anarchists' works live on in living memory.
If only a few.
Don't lose hope now, dear reader.
We've made it this far.
At some point the ride gets easier.
Rule by force has had it's day.
When everybody sees the iron fist in the velvet glove we win.
We just have to survive its death throes.
There is a reason these facts are not in the modern curriculums.
Setting rewards to burn only burns the author portion of the payout.
The crowd isn't silenced.
Please cheer loudly, if that is your thing.
