Hanri Gauche: Militant Anarchist

 Hanri Gauche was born 7 Feb 1860 in Paris, France.

Paris France Police mug

Second-rate French anarchist, who has a certain interest to recall as an example, for the ideological garbage that, with his battle name René Chaughi , his fellow followers translated and consumed in Spanish. He also wrote under the Rene Chaughi as well.

Born in the comfort of a bourgeois family, at the age of twenty he was fascinated by libertarian ideals, to which he devoted himself as an activist and journalist propagator. He publishes one of his first articles in November 1893.

He stuttered so badly that having a conversation with him was next to impossible. Briefly studied literature at the Sorbonne. At the age of 20 he came into contact with libertarian circles and wrote for various anarchist magazines, such as Revue Anarchiste and La RÉvolte by Jean Grave (which Grave edited together with Peter Kropotkin and Élisée Reclus) and also wrote poems for the literary magazine La Plume . In 1894, Chaughi was raided by the police. A report of this, no doubt written by himself, appears in La Revue Libertaire:"After smelling his pee pot ... and mistaking a photo of Wagner for the portrait of a burglar, the gentlemen withdrew ... Since then, Henri Gauche has mysteriously disappeared - no doubt murdered by his family. , very stupid citizens - his place at the magazine will henceforth be taken by Comrade Henri Gange ... who knew him best ... and otherwise looks amazingly like him. " In the period 1892-1894, some major anarchist attacks took place in Paris. Several raids were made on Grave's house. In 1894, Grave was tried during the so-called 'trial of thirty' under the just decreed lois scÉlÉrates, a series of laws that restricted freedom of the press. He was sentenced to two years plus a fine for the publication of his writings and Le RÉvoltÉ was banned. Chaughi then became too hot under his feet and moved to Belgium and later to the Netherlands. On his return, he was immediately arrested for an attack in Liège, in which he was only indirectly involved and because anarchist propaganda material was found during a search. After his release he became one of the first employees of the Temps Nouveaux (from 1895-1914).

In 1895, back in Paris, he began a fruitful and continuous collaboration in Les Temps Nouveaux, a publication that he also helped finance. Sensitive to the situation of the human female, he published in 1898 the little book Immoralité du mariage (in the editions of the Libertaire ) and in 1900 the little booklet La Femme Slave (by the «Groupe de propagande communiste-anarchiste» of Les Temps Nouveaux, Paris 1900 ). In 1899 he published his short booklet Los tres accomplices(“The murderers, the rainmakers, the Man who judges”; which is, obviously, as he describes elliptically, in less than twenty pages, the military, the clergy and the judges). These three works were reissued several times throughout the first half of the 20th century.

In 1914, when the war resumed, convinced by the arguments of Grave and Kropotkin - Manifesto of the 16 - , he left as a volunteer to the front (to defend with arms the interests of France, the French State). In 1916 he repented of so much patriotic ardor, believing then to have made a serious theoretical and practical error as a soldier of the Great War. He still survived for ten more years, until on July 19, 1926 he passed away peacefully as a rentier at his residence in Elancourt (Isle of France).

I didn't find much genealogy information on him but his books are available on Good Reads and Amazon.