#title To Carnot the Killer
#author An anarchist group
#authors Anonymous
#date 6 February 1894
#source French archives — courtesy of Archives anarchistes (http://anarchiv.fr/) / Wikisource : https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Livre:%C3%80_Carnot_le_Tueur.djvu
#lang en
#pubdate 2025-09-14T22:26:52
#topics repression, propaganda of the deed, Sante Caserio, Sadi Carnot, Sidonie Vaillant, Auguste Vaillant
#notes Pamphlet published in London in French shortly after Auguste Vaillant’s execution for having launched a bomb in the French Chamber of Deputies. Since Vaillant killed no one and lightly injured his targets, a deliberate choice, according to him, and because he left behind a daughter, Sidonie Vaillant, who was orphaned by his execution, a number of anarchists were deeply revolted. The text is thus an outburst of anger directed at the repression faced by the anarchist movement at that time, and calls for the killing of Sadi Carnot, President of the French Republic and the principal architect of this repression. Sadi Carnot was assassinated 138 days later by the Italian companion Sante Caserio, likely helped by other anarchists in France in carrying out the plot.


To Carnot the Killer


  If Carnot pardons Vaillant, we will not grant him the mercy of re-election.
<br>
<em>A Senator</em>.
<br>
(<em>NEWSPAPERS OF 3 FEBRUARY 1894</em>)


The crime is accomplished : yesterday at dawn, secretly, cowardly surrounded by a gang of police-assassins and unconscious children of the people, dressed in horrible, bloody rags of military garb, the guillotine was erected. Then, this hideous gang slipped into the prison to revel once more in Vaillant’s agony.

— I am ready, said the comrade.

And he fell heroically, while he was singing his sublime cry : <em>Death to the bourgeois Society! Long live Anarchy!</em>

At seven and a half, the mackerels of the Aquarium[1] were avenged…

Are you happy now, Carnot?

In your luxurious den, former nest of whores, where since then all tyrants have stayed, beside your gueuse,[2] you must have climaxed, bandit, grandson of the guillotiner and lackey[3]; the shadow of Carnot-Samson went to fuck Carnot-Deibler.[4] And when the blade’s shadow rang out across the square of La Roquette, in your atrophied brain, you smiled, you were satisfied, believing yourself avenged. What does it matter for you that there is a widow, an orphan?[5] <em>Cash or death</em> : isn’t that your criminal formula?

However, prepare yourself, rascal!

Didn’t you understand what just happened, didn’t you feel it, didn’t you hear that vast cry for the pardon rising from the thousands of chests of the People, yesterday unconscious, today revolted, didn’t you read, filthy imbecile, those flowery, those tearful, those violent calls for mercy from all those writers, those thinkers, your friends, often your own supporters, begging you not to let a head fall, all in the name of their bourgeois interests!

No, you felt nothing, you read nothing, being stagnant, being ignorant, and now, thanks to your cowardice, the deed is done, the ditch has been dug, and within it, agonizing, Pity is dying, not your Pity, but the people’s Pity!

You and your pimps have nothing left now but to wait for Death, death without a word!

Vaillant, through his highly revolutionary, flawless, and undeniable action, made the People’s heart tremble; striking at the den of thieves and assassins, he opened wide the gates of Revolution and the tidal wave of the People will surge through, scarcely stained by the blood of fatal reprisals. The era of Panama and secret funds, of lotteries and mass thefts is over, it was not enough to throw a bone to the howling mob of the desperate, you only sent one Baïhaut to prison, the wall or the streetlamp wait for you, and already, your ugly faces do grimaces, you scared shitters.[6]

The long, international series of martyrs for the anarchic Revolution did not pass before your eyes in vain, Companion of misery, enslaved People; Chicago, Jerez, Barcelona, Montbrison, Paris,[7] so many sublime steps, so many triumphant victories for Anarchy, for Freedom!

Now, the revenges are being forged, now, the People’s revenge is being prepared. To the nails, sadly without material effect, of martyr Vaillant, shall succeed the nails, the bearers of death.

To the bombs singing the tocsin of the Red Easter, to the bombs, desperate cries of Revolt, shall succeed the joyous detonations of explosives, thundering amid the battle, beneath the clear, luminous sun of the unleashed Revolution, and those will be implacable, and those will kill![8]

For you must die, assassins, you must die, for the health of the People, for the glory of the Revolution.

That’s why, Guillotine dude, president of the Bourgeois Gueuse, your re-election is far from assured; that’s why, hideous asshole, from now on, you won’t stop trembling.

You can surround yourself with snitches dressed as bourgeois, with cops in uniform, you can hide in your bandit’s den.

Nothing will change the outcome, Sadi-the-Killer; passing over you, the people’s Justice will come to strike you there, if need be.

Because now, your skin is the target, scum!

‘You’ll see, bourgeois, how an anarchist dies’, yesterday’s martyr screamed at you through the blemished faces of the scoundrel, your allies. He won’t be here to witness your cowardice, your terror, but in dying, he saw at least part of that future, so near now, of revolutionary settling of scores.

When you and your gang are finished, Revolution, Anarchy, will rise sublime and triumphant!

You took Vaillant’s head, we will take yours, President Carnot!

        <strong>LONG LIVE ANARCHY!</strong>

                                            <em>An anarchist group.</em><br>London, 6 February 1894.



[1] The ‘Aquarium’ is a derogatory term used to refer to the French Chamber of Deputies, that Vaillant just targetted.

[2] ‘Gueuse’ is a French word meaning ‘beggar’ in the feminine form, in an archaic usage. Here, it appears as part of the misogynistic vocabulary commonly deployed in anarchist literature of the period to denigrate the French Republic, whose symbolic embodiment is Marianne, often referred to either as the ‘Gueuse’ or the ‘Slut’,depending on the text(s).

[3] Lazare Carnot (1753–1823), the grandfather of Sadi Carnot, was a prominent political figure during the French Revolution; he was implicated in the Reign of Terror and the massacres in the Vendée before fully aligning himself with the bourgeoisie. He later became a hero of French Republican historiography, a status precisely targeted by this text, which highlights his role in the massacres and his use of the guillotine.

[4] Anatole Deibler (1863–1939) was the French executioner who killed Vaillant (and various other anarchists, including Ravachol or Émile Henry).

[5] The fate of Sidonie Vaillant (1883–1966), who was left orphaned by her father’s execution, mobilized a significant portion of French working-class society and the anarchist movement, both of whom took great interest in her poverty and abandoment.

[6] The text is referrencing the Panama scandal (one of the largest corruption scandals of the 19<sup>th</sup> century), during which the French Chamber of Deputies was deeply compromised in a corruption affair surrounding the Panama Canal. The scandal effectively impoverished a large segment of the French public who had invested in the company and severely damaged the popularity of the Chamber of Deputies. Ravachol also referenced it as one of the reasons determining his actions, as Vaillant did later on.

[7] The text references a series of massacres, repressions, and executions targeting the anarchist movement, including the Haymarket Square executions, the hanging of anarchists in Jerez, the execution of Paulino Pallas in Barcelona, Ravachol’s execution in Montbrison, and Vaillant’s execution in Paris.

[8] Wording intended to emphasize that Vaillant’s bomb killed no one and caused only minor injuries to the victims, with no serious casualties.