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Etiévant, Georges (b. 1865)

Anarchist militant who was sentenced to prison for five years in 1892 after being accused of having helped procure the dynamite used by Ravachol. His defense speech at this trial was reproduced on numerous occasions under various titles. He joined the staff of the anarchist newspaper “Le Libertaire” upon his release in 1897, and was shortly thereafter condemned for an article published in that paper called” Le Lapin et le Chasseur” (The Hare and the Hunter). Informed that he was being sought by the police, he stabbed one policeman he found on the street and shot another when he was arrested, though neither of them was killed. Put on trial in 1898, he was found guilty and sentenced to death, despite the fact that his victims had not perished. His sentence was commuted and he was sent to the penal colony of French Guyana, where he died. The collections of his speeches were among the most influential pieces of propaganda for French fin-de-siècle anarchism.

See Etiévant, Georges Archive.