Émile Henry (anarchist)

Émile Henry (26 September 1872 – 21 May 1894), nicknamed 'the Saint-Just of Anarchy', was an individualist and illegalist anarchist militant and terrorist. He is best known for his terrorist actions and is considered one of the main founders of modern terrorism.

Born into a family of exiled Communards, they moved to France in 1880, where he pursued studies that promised him a prestigious career. However, after witnessing the misery and social inequalities of his society, he abandoned his studies to join Parisian anarchist circles, particularly under the influence of his older brother, Jean-Charles Fortuné Henry. Associating with various anarchists of the time, especially Charles Malato, who became his friend, he closely followed the beginning of the Ère des attentats, literally "Era of Attacks" (1892–1894) and the first attacks of Ravachol. As he became increasingly isolated, Henry paid close attention to the Carmaux strike and considered the agreement signed by the employers and socialists a betrayal of the proletariat. He then organized the Carmaux-Bons-Enfants bombing (8 November 1892), possibly with his brother and Adrienne Chailliey, targeting the headquarters of the Carmaux Mining Company by planting a parcel bomb. This bomb, retrieved by the police and an employee, exploded at the Bons-Enfants police station, killing four policemen and the employee. This was the deadliest attack in the French part of the Ère des attentats.

Although Henry managed to avoid strong suspicion, he fled France and took refuge in the United Kingdom. From this base and Belgium, in 1893, he participated in a series of robberies with the group of the Intransigents and Léon Ortiz, following the emerging anarchist ideology of illegalism. His robberies and movements during this period are difficult to reconstruct, but he took part in the 1893 general strike in Belgium, where the army fired on the population. Henry himself fired at the police on this occasion. At the beginning of 1894, he returned to Paris, where the authorities were increasingly searching for him. The news of Auguste Vaillant's execution (5 February 1894) pushed him to act, seeking to assassinate the French president, Sadi Carnot. Failing to approach the Élysée Palace with a bomb, he went instead to the Café Terminus, where he threw his bomb into the crowd—killing one person and injuring about twenty others. Pursued by the police, at whom he fired, he was finally arrested.

The Café Terminus bombing and Henry's trial were central events in the emergence of modern terrorism. By targeting an adversary identified with society as a whole, he ushered terrorism into the era of mass terrorism, a phenomenon that continues into the 21st century. Unlike Ravachol or Vaillant, his predecessors, he did not present himself as an avenger but rather as a fighter who must destroy 'bourgeois society' or die. He was sentenced to death, which did not seem to trouble him; he refused to appeal—declaring that he did not recognize 'bourgeois justice'—and was executed on 21 May 1894 in Paris. His figure and his final attack were rejected by most anarchists in France, who began to question the use of terrorism to achieve their goals after this event. Thus, he foreshadowed the end of the Ère des attentats and the evolution of anarchism from propaganda by the deed to other forms of struggle, such as anarcho-syndicalism. However, some anarchists, especially within individualist anarchism, used him as a symbol and hero of their struggle. Even though he did not influence later anarchist terrorism, the directions he gave to modern terrorism continued into the 21st century within very different movements.