Trial of The Thirty - The Trial

The Trial

On 6 August 1894, thirty defendants were judged by the Cour d'assises of the Seine. Among the most famous were included Jean Grave, Sébastien Faure, Charles Chatel, editor at La Revue anarchiste, Félix Fénéon, Matha. Five inculpees had gone underground: Paul Reclus, Constant Martin Émile Pouget, Louis Duprat, Alexandre Cohen. Alongside these anarchist theorists, common law inculpees were included in the trials ; this amalgam was favorized by the illegalism supported by some anarchists who claimed a right to live in margins of the law. Those included Ortiz, Chericotti, and others. In total, 19 theoricians and propagandists and 11 thieves claiming themselves from anarchism.

The chief prosecutor, Bulot, prohibited the press from reproducing the interrogatories of Jean Grave and Sébastien Faure, leading Henri Rochefort to write, in L'Intransigeant, that the criminal association concerned not the defendants, but the magistrates and the ministers. The defendants easily discharged themselves of the inculpation of "criminal association", since at that time the French anarchist movement rejected the sole idea of association and act exclusively as individuals. Despite this, the president of the court, Dayras, dismissed all objections from the defense, leading Sébastien Faure to say:

"Each time we prove the error of one of your allegations, you declare it unimportant. You may very well sum up all zeros, but you can't obtain an unity

In the same sense, Fénéon, was accused of having been the intimate friend of the German anarchist Kampfmeyer. Le Figaro 's correspondent thus transcribed his interrogatory:

He cross-examines F.F. himself: "Are you an anarchist, M. Fénéon?"
"I am a Burgundian born in Turin."
"Your police file extends to one hundred and seventy pages. It is documented that you were intimate with the German terrorist Kampfmeyer."
"The intimacy cannot have been great as I do not speak German and he does not speak French." (Laughter in courtroom.)
"It has been established that you surrounded yourself with Cohen and Ortoz."
"One can hardly be surrounded by two persons; you need at least three." (More laughter.)
"You were seen conferring with them behind a lamppost!"
"A lamppost is round. Can Your Honour tell me where behind a lamppost is?" (Loud, prolonged laughter. Judge calls for order.).

Fénéon received support from the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, who qualified him as a "fine spirit" and one of the "more subtile critique" (un esprit très fin et un des critiques les plus subtils et les plus aigus que nous avons). Debates continued during one week. The general prosecutor Bulot intended to prove that there had been an effective agreement between theoricians and illegalists, but failed to do so for lack of evidence. He abandoned the accusations for some of them, and claimed attenuating circumnstances for others, but requested harsh sentences for those he depicted as the leaders: Grave, Faure, Matha and some others. Finally, the jury acquitted all, except the common law prisoners, Ortiz, Chericotti, Bertani, respectively condemned to 15 and 8 years of forced labour and to six months of prison.