s said)
"were indulging in festivities while they had condemned Louise Michel,
the champion of the proletariat, to a cruel imprisonment."

The French Government now thought it no longer possible to look on
quietly at these proceedings, and sought to secure the agitators,
which proved no light task. Of the fourteen prisoners accused of
complicity in the riots of Montceau-les-Mines, only nine were
condemned to terms of imprisonment of one to five years or less
important counts. On the other hand, at the Lyons trial of 19th
January, 1883, only three out of sixty-six were acquitted; the
others, including Kropotkin, his follower Gautier, a brilliant orator
and fanatical propagandist, Bordas, Bernard, and others, were
condemned to imprisonment with the full penalty on the strength of
the law of March 14, 1872, against the "International." Almost
all the accused, including Kropotkin, openly confessed that both
intellectually and in deed they were the originators of the excesses
at Lyons and Montceau-les-Mines, and that they were Anarchists, but
denied the existence of an international organisation, and protested
against the application of the law of the 14th March, 1872.

Similarly the Government succeeded in securing the ringleaders of the
demonstrations in Paris. At the same time the Government endeavoured
to check the Anarchist agitation by administrative methods; but
nothing could stay the progress of the new movement that had started
since the London Congress. France is the headquarters of Anarchism,
Paris contains its leading journals, over all France there exists a
network of groups; the propaganda of action here celebrated its
saddest triumphs, as is only too well shown by the cases of Ravachol,
Henry, and Caserio.

Switzerland, the original home of the Anarchism of action, now gives
rise to but little comment. Immediately after the London Congress
Kropotkin developed his most active agitation in the old Anarchist
centre, the Lake of Geneva district. On July 4, 1882, at Lausanne, at
an annual congress of some thirty delegates, Kropotkin estimated the
number of his adherents at two thousand. Lausanne Congress adopted
the same attitude as the London Congress, and took the opportunity on
the occasion of the international musical festival at Geneva, August
12 to 14, 1882, to hold a secret international congress there. At this
the question of the separation of the Anarchists from every other
party was discussed. As a ma