It was not until the death of Bakounine, in 1876, that the propaganda of action can be said to have commenced in earnest. At the revolutionary conference of Berne, held this very year, was proclaimed the era of violence by Italian extremists who had attached themselves to the Anarchist doctrines of Bakounine. “The Italian Federation,” they announced, “is of opinion that open rebellion, resorted to with a view to back up by deeds the profession of Anarchist principles, is the only effective method of propagating the doctrine.” These words were soon to be carried into effect. In April, 1877, an Anarchist revolutionary attempt took place in the Italian province of Benevento. Malatesta, Cafiero, and Ceccarelli, at the head of a band of revolutionaries, burnt the archives at Letino and San Galo, and laying hands on whatever arms and money they could find, distributed them to the mob. The next year, 1878, was a record year for its attempts on the lives of monarchs. On May 11, at Berlin, whilst the Emperor was passing, a boy of nineteen, Hoedel, fired several revolver shots, for which he was afterwards executed. In the following month a second attempt was made by a Dr. Nobiling, resulting in the Emperor being wounded in seven places. October saw an attempt on the life of the King of Spain at Madrid, for which a young Anarchist named Moncasi was executed. On November 17, at Naples, a cook of twenty-nine years, Passanate, stabbed the King of Italy, but the wound was only slight. Early in the same year General Trepoff, the Chief of Police at St. Petersburg, was assassinated by a young woman named Vera Zassulitch, in revenge for his alleged ferocity towards a Nihilist named Bogolionboff, for which she was afterwards, strange to say, acquitted. On August 16, at St. Petersburg, General Metzenseff, Chief of the Imperial Police, was stabbed to death by two Nihilists, who escaped by using their revolvers.

Next year saw the Chief of the Odessa Secret Police murdered also—this time by strangulation. The murderers left a note on the table saying that the execution was carried out by the Revolutionary Committee. Prince Kropotkin established this year at Geneva the Anarchist paper, Le Revolte. Several daring attempts were made this year upon the life of the Czar of Russia, Alexander II. On April 14, Solovieff fired several shots without hitting him. On December 1, 1879, a mine, tunnelled out beneath the railway over which the Czar had to pass, exploded at the passing of the Imperial train, but the Czar had fortunately passed by another train half an hour earlier. Another attempt was made on February 17, 1880. This time the Czar’s dining-room was blown up with dynamite; but again the Czar providentially escaped, his dinner having been put off to a later hour. However, fate overtook him in the year following. A bomb was thrown under his carriage on March 13, by a young Nihilist named Ryssakoff, but missed; the Czar got out to walk, but was mortally wounded by a second bomb thrown by another Nihilist named Grinevetsky, who died the next day of wounds received from the guard. Six persons in all were executed for this, one of whom, Sophie Petrovskaya, daughter of an ex-Governor of St. Petersburg, organised the whole series of plots. This last was a determined attempt, for had the Czar gone another way, a loaded mine awaited him. The bombs were brought from a house occupied by Navorotsky and Hess Helfmann. When the police came to arrest them, Navorotsky fired on his comrade, but missed him in the darkness, and then blew out his own brains.

On December 30, 1880, a young Anarchist named Otero fired two shots at the King and Queen at Madrid, for which, on April 17, he was executed. In March, a young man, Mlodetsky, who fired on General Melekoff, was hanged.

On May 27, 1882, was first published in Italian, the work of Stepniak on “Underground Russia.” A meeting of French and Swiss Anarchists at Geneva proclaim their total separation from the political parties, Socialist, or otherwise.

In 1883, sixty-six Anarchists were sentenced at Lyons for conspiracy, including the famous and undoubtedly sincere Prince Kropotkin, who is now living in England. On May 26, in Spain, the trial of the “Mano Negra” (black hand) secret society of Christian Anarchists began. Louise Michel, the “Red Virgin” of the Commune, was this year condemned to six years’ imprisonment for plundering bakers’ shops, after an unemployed demonstration. Cyvoct, condemned to death for having incited the riots of October 22 and 23 at Lyons, was afterwards reprieved and sent to penal servitude.

At Leipzig, on January 18, 1885, Reinsdorf and two other Anarchists were condemned to death, and two others to penal servitude, for causing explosions in the Frankfort-on-Maine police-barracks. In revenge for these hangings, a police commissioner named Rumpf was stabbed in front of his own house. On October 11, Kropotkin’s “Words of a Rebel” was published in French.

In 1886, the French Anarchist Gallo was sentenced to twenty years’ penal servitude for attempted murder. At a meeting of Anarchists in the Haymarket, Chicago, a bomb thrown kills eight policemen. For this four German Anarchists—Parsons, Spies, Fischer, and Engel—were tried on a charge of “constructive murder” and executed in the year following.

Convicted of burglary and incendiarism, Clement Duval, a French Anarchist, is sent to penal servitude for life, on January 29, 1887.

In 1888, at an Anarchist meeting in Havre, Louise Michel was fired at by a fanatical anti-anarchist named Lucas. Although dangerously wounded, Louise protected Lucas from the fury of the Anarchists, and afterwards appeared as a witness on his behalf at the trial, and managed to get him acquitted.

Next year, 1889, another French Anarchist, Pini, was sentenced for forging bank-notes. The following year saw the assassination of General Seliverstoff, formerly Chief of the Russian Secret Police, by Stanislaus Padlewski, a Pole, who managed to escape arrest and reach America, where, a few years back, he committed suicide.

In 1892, six Anarchists were arrested at Walsall and sentenced to terms of five and ten years for bomb-making. This was the first indication of the existence of active Anarchism in England by British subjects. From this year occurred a perfect epidemic of bomb-throwing. In Paris, several explosions occurred, for which the Anarchist Ravachol was arrested. On the eve of his trial the Café Very, in which he was recognised, was the scene of an explosion; and an intimidated jury found him “guilty with extenuating circumstances.” He was sent to penal servitude for life, but was tried afterwards for murdering a poor old hermit and executed. The execution of the “Chicago Martyrs” was “avenged” this year, on October 29, by the assassination of the Mayor of Chicago. In January the peasantry of Xeres, in Spain, incited by the Christian Anarchists of the “Mano Negra” secret society, armed themselves and attempted to take possession of that town, with the object of pillage. They were driven back by the soldiery, and four leaders, the Anarchists Zarzuella, Lamela, Bisiqui, and Lebrijano, taken prisoners, and afterwards put to death. This was followed by numerous bomb-explosions all over the peninsula. In Paris an abortive attempt was made to blow up the house of the Princess de Sagan. In America, the great strike at Carnegie’s Steel Works, at Homestead, at which pitched battles between armed strikers and Pinkerton police were frequent, culminated in the attempt of the Anarchist Berkmann to shoot the manager, Frick, for which he was afterwards sent to penal servitude. In Spain an attempt was made to blow up the Parliament (Cortes), for which, two years later, an Anarchist named Ferriera was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. On November 8, a bomb placed before the Paris offices of the Carmaux Mining Company was discovered by the police and removed to the Rue des Bons Enfants police station, where it exploded and killed four policemen.

In 1893, at Barcelona, a bomb was thrown from the gallery of the Liceo Theatre, killing some twenty persons. For this iniquitous crime Salvador Franch and six other Anarchists were shot. In Paris, August Vaillant threw an explosive bomb into the French Parliament from one of the public galleries. The missile exploded in mid-air, wounding more or less severely some sixty persons, including deputies, ushers, and visitors. He was guillotined two months later. In England an Anarchist leader named Conway was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment for an attempted jewel robbery. On September 24, a dynamite bomb was thrown by the Spanish Anarchist Pallas at Marshal Martinez Campos, who was about to review the troops at Barcelona. The bomb exploded among the staff-officers, killing a sergeant of the Civil Guard and injuring a general. The Marshal’s horse was killed under him, but he himself escaped with a severe contusion. Pallas was afterwards tried by court-martial and shot. At Madrid, on July 2, a bomb exploded before the house of Signor Canovas, ex-President of the Council, killing an Anarchist named Ruiz, who was the author of the attempt. This same year the Anarchist Schinhi was sentenced at Viterbo in Italy to eleven years’ penal servitude for shooting a policeman. During some popular disturbances in Italy, the Anarchists attempted to throw a train off the line at Avenza, and to cause a bomb explosion at the Monarchical Club at Leghorn.

The year 1894 was a year of great Anarchist activity. In England, the Anarchist Martial Bourdin blew himself to pieces with his own bomb while bent on destroying the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park. Two Italian Anarchists, Polti and Farnara, who had given a Blackfriars Road firm of engineers an order for iron bomb-shells, were sentenced in June to ten and twenty years respectively. It is surmised that their intention was to blow up the Stock Exchange or the Houses of Parliament. In this year, also, David Nicoll, editor of the notorious Commonweal, was sent to prison for an article advising murder. In July, the compositor and assistant of this paper were sentenced to six months apiece for seditious libel. This year, also, Rolla Richards, a Deptford Anarchist, was condemned to seven years for blowing up a number of post-offices in South London. A Birmingham Anarchist, C. C. Davis, for smashing a jeweller’s window with a brick wrapped in a copy of the Walsall Anarchist, and scattering the jewellery in the roadway, was sent to eighteen months’ imprisonment. In France, the chief Anarchist event was the assassination of President Carnot. As the French President was driving at Lyons a young Anarchist named Caserio Santo mortally wounded him with a dagger. The assassin acted on his own initiative alone, but the police depositions made it abundantly clear that he must have heard the assassination of Carnot continually discussed in Anarchist circles. On July 26, the Anarchist Meunier, extradited from England, was sent to penal servitude for life for an explosion at the Café Very. Early in the year Emile Henri threw a bomb from the balcony of the Café Terminus, wounding twenty-four persons and causing two deaths. He also confessed himself to be the author of the abortive attempt in 1893 against the Carmaux’s Company’s office, and was afterwards guillotined. On March 15, Joseph Pauwells exploded a bomb and himself at the Madeleine Church, Paris; and an unsuccessful attempt was made to blow up the Chamber of Deputies at Rome. On April 4, an explosion occurred at the Café Foyet, opposite the Luxembourg Palace, wounding an Anarchist poet named Laurent Tailhade. In the same year, a bomb placed over the door of a room in the Rue Saint Jacques, by an unknown person giving the fictitious name of “Rabardy,” wounded the landlady, Madame Calabresi, who afterwards died. The police were directed by “Rabardy” to a house in the Rue Faubourg St. Martin, where also a bomb was placed over a door, but this was detected and exploded by them at a safe distance, by means of electric wires. For these crimes a German Anarchist named Muller, in May, confessed himself the author. A French Anarchist shoemaker, Leauthier by name, aged twenty years, was this year condemned to hard labour for life for wounding M. Georgevitch, the Servian Minister in France, at a Paris restaurant. From the age of sixteen, when Leauthier first became an Anarchist, his character was observed to change; he showed signs of a disturbed mind; became morose; and in November of 1893 wrote to Sebastian Faure, the Anarchist leader, saying that he felt he must attack a bourgeois. In Italy an attempt was made to assassinate Signor Crispi.

The two following years saw a lull in Anarchist activity, due mainly to the severe repressive measures employed by the various Governments. But in 1897 occurred the murder of Antonio Canovas del Castillo, the Spanish Premier, by the Anarchist Angiolillo.

This was followed shortly after, in 1898, by the cowardly murder of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria by an Anarchist named Luccheni, who, condemned to life-long solitary confinement, is reported to be more or less demented, spending the grey hours of his silent existence in abyssmal despair, varied by periods of ethereal and frightful excitement.

In 1900, King Humbert of Italy was stabbed to death by the Anarchist Bresci, who, unable to endure the terrible punishment of solitary immurement for life, preferred to die in his cell by his own hand.

In the following year, 1901, President McKinley was assassinated by a Polish Anarchist named Czolgosz while in the act of holding a reception at the Temple of Music in the Buffalo Exhibition. On February 27, this same year, M. Bogoliepoff, Russian Minister of Education, was killed.

In 1902, Hirch le Kuch, a Russian Anarchist, made a murderous attack on Lieutenant-General Whal, Governor of Wilna, for which he was hanged on June 11. April 15 saw the assassination of M. Sipiaguine, Russian Minister of the Interior, who was shot four times in the vestibule of the Council of the Empire, in St. Petersburg.

In 1903, the Russian General Bogdanovitch, Governor of Ufa, was killed on May 19.

1904 saw the assassination of General Bobrikoff, Governor of Finland. In the same year, M. de Plehve, the iron-handed Russian Minister of the Interior, was blown to pieces by a bomb as he was driving through St. Petersburg on July 28. Only a month before he had said: “My police easily control the Nihilists—every one of them is known.” A ragged man standing in the door of a café threw the De Plehve bomb. “If the police persists in its present policy M. de Plehve’s successor will meet with the same doom,” he told the police.

In 1905—on January 19—an extraordinary attempt was made to assassinate the Czar, Alexander III.—a cannon loaded with case shot being fired at him during the ceremony of blessing the waters of the Neva in St. Petersburg. The crime failed in its object, but a policeman was killed by one of the bullets, while two other persons were injured. Bullets also broke the windows of the Winter Palace. The astonishing feature of this attempt was that the loaded cannon—one of a battery of eight saluting guns—was fired by the Guards corps, who are the custodians of the Emperor’s person. On February 16, the Russian Grand Duke Sergius was blown to pieces by a bomb, in revenge for the events of “Red Sunday” (January 22) when peaceful men, women, and children were massacred in the streets of St. Petersburg, while exercising their constitutional right of petitioning their sovereign. Prince Andronnikoff, also, was stabbed to death in Warsaw for the part he took in these outrages, and so also was Prince Vasiltchykoff “removed.”

On March 23, 1905, was concluded the sensational trial at Amiens of the Abbeville gang of forty Anarchist thieves, with the passing of life-sentences on the leader, Marius Jacob, and Bour. Ferré was sentenced to ten years’ solitary confinement, and Pelisard to eight years’ penal servitude. Jacob’s mother, and the woman Lazarine, Roux, and Ferré each received five years’ imprisonment. Shorter terms were served out to the lesser members of this unique organisation. They received their sentences with cries of “Long live Anarchy!”

An attempt to assassinate General Maximovitch, Governor-General of Warsaw, was frustrated on May 19, by two detectives, who paid with their lives the penalty of their zeal. On going to arrest the would be assassin, an Anarchist named Dobrowolski, the bomb exploded, killing all three. An attempt was also made this year to assassinate the King of Spain in Paris, a bomb being thrown at the carriage in which His Majesty and the President of the French Republic were driving after a visit to the Opera.

At the Old Bailey, two Italian Anarchists, Adolfo Antonelli and Francesca Barberi, were sentenced to ten months’ and nine months’ imprisonment respectively for publishing in L’Insurrezione, a justification of political assassination, and inciting to the murder of the sovereigns and rulers of Europe, notably King Victor Emmanuel III. of Italy.

On March 17, 1906, the notorious Johann Most died in Cincinnatti, U.S.A., of erysipelas. In 1881 he was sent to prison here for applauding the assassination of the Czar, and his paper, Die Freiheit, and printing-press, were confiscated.

A bomb was thrown at the carriage in which the King and Queen of Spain were returning from their wedding on Thursday, May 31, 1906, fatally injuring twenty-five people and inflicting serious wounds on thirty-four others. The assassin, an Anarchist named Mateo Moral, escaped, but was arrested on June 2, fourteen miles from the scene of the outrage, by a gendarme, whom he shot on the spot, afterwards turning the weapon on himself.