Gustave Mathieu

Gustave Mathieu, (26 February 1866 in Guise-14 January 1947, in the same town), was a French worker and illegalist anarchist. A very militant anarchist and central to the birth of illegalism, he notably associated with Placide Schouppe, one of the first illegalists. Mathieu was also one of the most wanted people in France at the start of the Ère des attentats (1892-1894), being accused of being one of Ravachol's main accomplices for the Saint-Germain and the Clichy bombings.

Born into a working-class family in Guise, Aisne, he joined the anarchist movement in France at least from his twenties. He organized various anarchist initiatives in Guise, was arrested, and dragged in chains for 25km during an arrest for putting up anarchist posters. He also began to be suspected of being linked to the ''Intransigents'' ''of London and Paris'', a group of anarchists who were then developing the anarchist tendency of illegalism although he seemed actually closer to the Schouppe's gang, a closely linked and similar group.

Following the arrest of some of the ''Intransigents'' and Schouppe, Mathieu moved to the northern districts of Paris in the early 1890s—there he met a number of anarchists from the Saint-Denis and Saint-Ouen groups, which supported propaganda by the deed and illegalism. He stood as an anarchist abstentionist candidate in the 1890 legislative elections, and was then tasked, following the Clichy affair—a case of police brutality affecting anarchists—with defending the three victims. The judge's handling of the case, which exonerated the police, caused shockwaves in anarchist circles in France. Mathieu was then possibly involved in a planned bombing that was taking shape, also involving Ravachol and Charles 'Cookie' Simon, one of his close friends with whom he was living at the time. In March 1892, the Saint-Germain bombing followed by the Clichy bombing committed by this group led to France entering the period of the Ère des attentats (1892-1894). Mathieu managed to flee and was heavily searched for by the police, who suspected him of being one of the main perpetrators of the attacks and even of the Véry bombing, but he managed to escape and disappear, eventually obtaining a dismissal of the charges.

After returning to France and being arrested for a theft, he was incarcerated for a year and put on trial for transmitting coded notes containing explosive recipes to other anarchist companions in prison. While his two alleged accomplices were sentenced to heavy penalties, he managed to avoid any conviction. He was then arrested and imprisoned for five years in Belgium for committing a burglary intended to finance an escape attempt for Charles Simon. The latter having been killed by the police during the massacre of the convicts anarchists in 1894, he left Belgium upon his release and returned to France. Mathieu then continued his militant activities and was noted as being responsible for revolutionary groups in Guise until at least the 1910s. During the Interwar period, the anarchist was a diligent reader of revolutionary syndicalist press.

Mathieu died in Guise in 1947. Provided by Wikipedia