The doctrines of Bakunin have also left their mark on the recent social history of France and French Switzerland. About 1879 the anarchist propaganda showed signs of activity in Lyons and the surrounding industrial centres. Some disturbances among the miners at Montceau-les-Mines in 1882, also provoked the attention of the police and Government, with the result that sixty-six persons were accused of belonging to an international association with anarchist principles. Of the accused the most notable was Prince Kropotkine, who, with the eminent French geographer Elisée Reclus and the Russian Lavroff, may be regarded as the greatest recent exponents of anarchism. There is no more interesting figure in the recent revolutionary history of Europe than Prince Kropotkine. Like Bakunin, he belongs by birth to the highest aristocracy of Russia; his family, it was sometimes said among his familiar friends, had a better right to the throne of that country than the present dynasty. A man of science of European fame, of kindly nature and courteous manners, it may seem strange that he should be an avowed champion of the most destructive creed now extant. A few of the leading facts of his life, as he gave them in his defence at the trial at Lyons in 1883, may throw some light on that question.[2] His father was an owner of serfs, and from his childhood he had been witness to scenes like those narrated by the American novelist in _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_. The sight of the cruelties suffered by the oppressed class had taught him to love them. At sixteen he entered the school of pages at the Imperial Court, and if he had learned in the cabin to love the people, he learned at the Court to detest the great. In the army and the administration he saw the hopelessness of expecting reforms from the reactionary Russian Government. For some time afterwards he had devoted himself to scientific work. When the social movement began, Kropotkine joined it. The demands made by the new party for more liberty met with a simple response from the Government: they were thrown into prison, where their treatment was terrible. In the prison where the Prince was detained nine lost their reason and eleven committed suicide. He fell seriously ill, and was carried to the hospital, from which he made his escape. In Switzerland, where he found refuge, he witnessed the sufferings of the people caused by the crisis in the watch manufacture; everywhere the like miseries, due to the like social and political evils. Was it surprising that he should seek to remedy them by the transformation of society?