Café Terminus attack

On 12 February 1894, Émile Henry carried out an anarchist attack at the Café Terminus. Initially planning to assassinate Sadi Carnot, the president of the republic, who had just refused to pardon Auguste Vaillant, he decided against the attack upon noticing the large number of police officers stationed around the Élysée Palace. Instead, he redirected his efforts to the Café Terminus, where he detonated his bomb, killing one person and injuring 17 others. Émile Henry was arrested at the end of this episode, sentenced to death, and guillotined three months later. The attack was part of the 1892-1894 period called the Era of Attacks.

This was one of the first attacks targeting indiscriminate civilians rather than specific individuals. Some scholars consider it a pivotal event in the emergence of modern terrorism.

This bombing, along with other attacks during the Era of Attacks, also marked an early shift in another point of terrorist strategy: instead of targeting specific individuals, it focused on symbolic locations—in this case, the Café Terminus as a stand-in for a precise human target. This shift became a hallmark of modern terrorism but was poorly understood by contemporaries.