Je prie pour Carnot qui va être assassiné ce soir

Karine Salomé

On 25 June 1894, the president Sadi Carnot is assassinated at Lyon by the Italian anarchist Santo Caserio, after a term marked by agitation Boulanger and the Panama scandal. The president is stabbed with a dagger as he passes through the city in an open carriage: a procedure reminiscent of the regicide. But the gesture is part especially in the wave of anarchist bombings in recent years that shook France, the cry of "Vive la dynamite!" The denunciation of the "bourgeois" who "starve the people" is expressed in a particular virulence effect in these areas inflamed by the Russian example: the streets of Paris and the precincts of the House of Representatives have already witnessed this "propaganda by deed." In return, the most ferocious xenophobia is given free rein: thousands of workers and artisans Italian booed as accomplices of the murderer, are forced to leave the country. As the...