Declaration of Émile Henry at his trial

Gentlemen of the jury,

You know the facts with which I am charged: the explosion on rue des Bons-Enfants that killed five people and caused the death of a sixth; the explosion at the Café Terminus that killed one person, caused the death of a second, and injured several others; finally, six revolver shots fired by me at those who were pursuing me after this last attentat.

The proceedings have shown that I acknowledge myself responsible for these acts.

This is therefore not a defense that I wish to present to you. I do not seek in any way to evade the reprisals of the society I have attacked.

Besides, I answer to only one tribunal: myself; and the verdict of any other is indifferent to me.

I simply want to give you an explanation of my actions and tell you how I came to commit them.

I have been an anarchist for only a short time. It was scarcely around mid-1891 that I threw myself into the revolutionary movement. Before that, I had lived among circles entirely imbued with current moral standards. I had been accustomed to respect and even to love the principles of country, family, authority, and property.

But the educators of the present generation too often forget one thing: life, with its struggles and injustices, takes it upon itself, this indiscreet life, to open the eyes of the ignorant and reveal the truth to them.

That is exactly what happened to me, as it happens to everyone. I had been told that life was easy and wide open to intelligent and energetic people, yet experience showed me that only cynics and sycophants could secure a good place at the banquet.

I had been told that social institutions were founded on justice and equality, yet all I observed around me was lies and deceit.

Each day stripped away another illusion.

Wherever I went, I witnessed the same suffering in some, the same pleasures in others.

I soon came to understand that the lofty words I had been taught to revere—honor, dedication, duty—were merely masks concealing the most shameful turpitude.

The factory owner who built a colossal fortune on the labor of workers who themselves lacked everything—was considered an honest gentleman.

The deputy, the minister whose hands were always open to bribes—were said to be devoted to the public good.

The officer who tested a new rifle model on seven-year-old children had simply done his duty, and in the very halls of Parliament, the Prime Minister congratulated him!

All that I saw filled me with outrage, and my mind turned to criticizing the social order. This critique has been made far too often for me to repeat it.

It will suffice to say that I became the enemy of a society I judged criminal.

Attracted for a time by socialism, I soon distanced myself from that party. I had too much love of freedom, too much respect for individual initiative, too deep an aversion to regimentation, to take a number in the enlisted ranks of the fourth state.

Moreover, I realized that at bottom socialism changes nothing in the current order. It maintains the authoritarian principle, and this principle, whatever so-called freethinkers may claim, is nothing but an old remnant of belief in a higher power.

Scientific studies had gradually introduced me to the workings of natural forces.

At that time, I was a materialist and atheist; I had understood that the hypothesis of God had been discarded by modern science, which no longer had any need of it. Religious and authoritarian morality, based on falsehood, therefore had to disappear. What, then, was the new morality—aligned with the laws of nature—that could regenerate the old world and give birth to a happy humanity?

It was precisely at that moment that I was introduced to some anarchist companions, whom I still consider today as among the finest people I have ever known.

Their characters captivated me at first sight. I appreciated in them a great sincerity, absolute frankness, a profound contempt for all prejudices, and I wanted to understand the idea that made these men so different from anyone I had met before.

This idea found in my mind a soil already prepared by my own observations and reflections.

It merely clarified what in me had still been vague and uncertain.

I became an anarchist in turn.

I do not intend to elaborate here on the theory of anarchism; I want to focus only on its revolutionary, destructive, and negative side—the aspect for which I now stand before you.

In this moment of sharp struggle between the bourgeoisie and its enemies, I am almost tempted to say, like Souvarine in "Germinal": "All reasoning about the future is criminal, because it prevents pure and simple destruction and hinders the progress of the Revolution."

As soon as an idea is mature, as soon as it has found its formula, one must proceed without delay to its realization. I was convinced that the current social order was evil, and I wanted to fight against it, to hasten its disappearance.

I entered the struggle with deep hatred, each day sharpened by the revolting spectacle of this society, where everything is base, everything is shady, everything is ugly—where everything is an obstacle to the expression of human passions, to the generous impulses of the heart, to the free development of thought.

I wanted to strike as hard and as precisely as I could. Let us move on, then, to the first attack I carried out—the explosion on the rue des Bons-Enfants.

I had followed with close attention the events in Carmaux.

The first news of the strike had filled me with joy: the miners seemed finally ready to abandon those peaceful and useless strikes, in which the trusting worker patiently waits for his few francs to triumph over the millions of the mining companies.

They seemed to have entered a path of violence which was clearly affirmed on August 15, 1892.

The offices and buildings of the mine were overrun by a crowd weary of suffering without revenge. Justice was about to be done upon the engineer so hated by his workers—when the timid intervened.

Who were these men?

They were the same men who cause all revolutionary movements to fail, because they fear that once unleashed, the people will no longer obey their voices. They are those who push thousands of workers to endure privations for entire months, simply to drum up sympathy through their suffering and build a popularity that will win them a political mandate—I mean the socialist leaders. Indeed, these men took the lead of the strike movement.

Suddenly, the country was flooded with well-dressed, eloquent gentlemen who entirely devoted themselves to the strike, organizing subscriptions, giving lectures, and sending out fundraising appeals from all directions. The miners surrendered all initiative into their hands. What followed is well known.

The strike dragged on; the miners became reacquainted with hunger, their usual companion. They exhausted the small reserve funds of their own union and of other workers' associations that had come to their aid. Then, after two months, ears lowered and spirits crushed, they returned to their pit more miserable than before.

It would have been simple, from the very beginning, to strike the Company where it was most vulnerable: its finances—to burn the coal reserves, smash the extraction machinery, and destroy the drainage pumps.

Certainly, the Company would have capitulated quickly. But the great high priests of socialism do not accept such methods—they are anarchist methods. In playing that game, one risks prison, perhaps even a bullet such as those that worked wonders in Fourmies. And one gains no municipal or legislative seat. In short, order, momentarily disturbed, soon reigned once again in Carmaux.

The Company, stronger than ever, continued its exploitation, and gentlemen shareholders congratulated themselves on the favorable outcome of the strike. Well then, dividends would still be pleasant to collect.

It was then that I decided to add, to this chorus of respectable voices, a note the bourgeoisie had already heard before—but one they believed silenced forever with Ravachol: the voice of dynamite.

I wanted to show the bourgeoisie that from now on, their joys would no longer be complete, that their arrogant triumphs would be disturbed, that their golden calf would tremble violently upon its pedestal, until the final shake that would cast it down into the mud and blood.

At the same time, I wanted to make clear to the miners that there is only one category of men—the anarchists—who genuinely feel their suffering and are ready to avenge them.

These men do not sit in Parliament, like gentlemen Guesde and company, but rather they march toward the guillotine.

I therefore prepared a bomb. For a moment, the accusation leveled against me regarding Ravachol came back to mind: what about the innocent victims? But I quickly resolved the issue. The house containing the offices of the Carmaux Company was inhabited exclusively by bourgeois. There would therefore be no innocent victims.

The bourgeoisie as a whole lives off the exploitation of the poor; it must as a whole expiate its crimes.

It was with the absolute certainty of the legitimacy of my act that I placed my bomb in front of the door to the offices of the company.

I explained during the trial how I hoped that, if my device were discovered before it exploded, it would detonate at the police station, thereby still hitting my enemies. These are the motives behind the first attack of which I am accused.

Let us move on to the second one, the attack at the Café Terminus. I had come to Paris during the Vaillant affair. I witnessed the terrible repression that followed the bombing at the Palais-Bourbon. I saw firsthand the draconian measures taken by the government against anarchists.

From all sides, people spied, raided, and arrested. Random roundups tore countless individuals from their families and threw them into prison. What became of the women and children of these companions during their incarceration? No one cared.

The anarchist was no longer considered a man, but a wild beast being hunted from every direction, whose extermination the entire bourgeois press—vile slave of force—called for in every tone imaginable.

At the same time, anarchist newspapers and pamphlets were seized, and the right to assembly was prohibited.

Even worse: when they wanted to get rid of a companion entirely, a police informer would leave a package containing, he claimed, tannin in the person's room late at night, and the following day a search warrant, dated two days earlier, would be executed. A box filled with suspicious powders would be "found", the companion would be brought to trial, and sentenced to three years in prison.

Just ask whether this is not true of the wretched informer who infiltrated companion Mérigeaud's home?

But all these methods were effective. They struck down an enemy they had feared, and those who had trembled wanted to appear courageous.

As the crowning achievement of this crusade against heretics, did one not hear Mr. Raynal, Minister of the Interior, declare at the podium of the Chamber that the measures taken by the government had produced good results, and that they had spread terror throughout the anarchist camp? That was still not enough. They had sentenced a man to death who had killed no one, and to appear courageous to the very end, they beheaded him one fine morning.

But, gentlemen bourgeois, you had reckoned a little too much without your host.

You had arrested hundreds of individuals, you had violated countless homes; but outside your prisons there still remained men you did not know, men who, in the shadows, witnessed your hunt for anarchists, and who were only waiting for the right moment to, in turn, hunt the hunters.

Raynal's words were a challenge thrown at the anarchists. The glove has been picked up.

The bomb at the Café Terminus is the answer to all your violations of liberty, to your arrests, your raids, your press laws, your mass expulsions of foreigners, your guillotined companions. But you will say: why attack peaceful customers, who are listening to music, and who may well be neither magistrates, nor deputies, nor officials?

Why? It's very simple. — The bourgeoisie has made one block of all anarchists. — Only one man, Vaillant, had thrown a bomb; nine-tenths of the companions didn't even know him. It made no difference. We were persecuted en masse. Everyone with even a slight anarchist connection was hunted down.

Well then! Since you hold an entire party responsible for the acts of a single individual, and since you strike as a group, we too will strike as a group.

Should we attack only the deputies who make laws against us, the magistrates who enforce those laws, the police officers who arrest us?

I don't think so.

All these men are merely instruments acting not in their own name; their functions were established by the bourgeoisie for its own defense. They are no more guilty than others.

The good bourgeois who, without holding any official position, nevertheless collect the coupons from their bonds, who live idly off the profits produced by workers' labor—these too must have their share of retribution.

And not only them, but also all those who are complicit in the current order, who applaud the government's actions and become its accomplices—these clerks earning 300 to 500 francs a month who hate the people even more than the rich bourgeois, this stupid and pretentious mass that always sides with the strongest, the usual clientele of the Terminus and other grand cafés.

That is why I struck in the mass, without choosing my victims.

It is essential for the bourgeoisie to understand clearly that those who have suffered under oppression are finally tired of their suffering; they bare their teeth and strike all the more brutally as they have been treated with greater cruelty.

They have no respect for human life, simply because the bourgeoisie themselves show no concern for it.

It is not for the murderers who perpetrated the Bloody Week and the massacre at Fourmies to accuse others of being murderers.

They spare neither bourgeois women nor children, because the women and children of those they love are not spared either. Are not those slow-dying children in the suburbs, perishing from anemia because bread is scarce at home, innocent victims? Are not those women in your workshops, growing pale and exhausted for a wage of forty sous a day, happy even when misery does not force them into prostitution? Are not those elderly people whom you have treated like production machines their whole lives, and whom you throw onto the scrapheap and into hospitals once their strength is gone?

At least have the courage to acknowledge your crimes, gentlemen of the bourgeoisie, and admit that our reprisals are entirely legitimate.

Certainly, I am not deluding myself. I know that my actions may not yet be fully understood by crowds insufficiently prepared for such ideas.

Even among workers, for whom I have initiated much, many are misled by your newspapers and believe me their enemy. But this matters little to me. I care nothing for anyone's judgment. I am also well aware that there are individuals who claim to be anarchists, yet quickly condemn any solidarity with propagandists by the deed.

They try to make a subtle distinction between theorists and terrorists. Too cowardly to risk their own lives, they disown those who act. But the influence they claim to have over the revolutionary movement is nonexistent. Today, the field belongs to action, without fables or pretense.

Alexander Herzen, the Russian revolutionary, said it well:

"Either one thing or the other: either be an avenger or move forward, or pardon and stumble halfway through the road."

We want neither to pardon nor to stumble, and we will always march forward until the revolution, the goal of our efforts, comes to crown our work by making the world free.

In this ruthless war we have declared against the bourgeoisie, we ask for no mercy.

We give death, and we shall know how to endure it.

Thus, I await your verdict with indifference.

I know that my head will not be the last you sever; others will fall too, for the starving are beginning to take the path to your grand cafés and prestigious restaurants like Terminus and Foyot.

You will add more names to the bloody list of our fallen. You have hanged in Chicago, beheaded in Germany, hanged in Jerez, shot in Barcelona, guillotined in Montbrison and Paris—but what you will never be able to destroy is Anarchy.

Its roots run too deep; it is as strong as a rotten society falling apart. It is a violent reaction against the existing order. It embodies the egalitarian and libertarian aspirations that seek to overthrow the current authority. It is everywhere, and that is what makes it invincible. It will end up killing you.

There you have it, gentlemen of the jury—what I wished to say to you.

You will now hear my lawyer.

The law requires that every accused person have a defender, and my family has chosen Mr. Hornbostel.

But nothing he can say will alter in any way what I have stated. My declarations are the exact expression of my thoughts. I will not retract a word.