appeared before the court of assizes of the Rhone, and was condemned to death. His sentence was afterward commuted to that of enforced labor, and in 1897 he was pardoned. On March 29, 1883, the carpenters' union of Paris called the unemployed to a meeting to be held on the _Esplanade des Invalides_. Two groups of anarchists formed. One started toward the _Elysee_ and was scattered on its way by the police. The second went toward the suburb of Saint-Antoine. On the march many bakeries were robbed by the manifestants. Arrived at _Place Maubert_, they clashed with a large force of police. As a result, many arrests were made. Accused of inciting to pillage, Louise Michel and Emile Pouget were condemned to several years' imprisonment. The same month, at Monceau-les-Mines and in Paris, great demonstrations of the "unemployed" took place in the streets, combined with robbery and dynamite outrages, while in July there were sanguinary encounters with the armed forces in Roubaix and elsewhere. Again and again the populace was incited to rise against the bourgeoisie, "who (it was said) were indulging in festivities while they had condemned Louise Michel, the champion of the proletariat, to a cruel imprisonment."[15] These are but a few instances of the activity of the anarchists at the end of the seventies and at the beginning of the eighties. They are perhaps sufficient to show that the Propaganda of the Deed was making headway in Western Europe. Certainly in Germany and Austria its course was soon run, but in France, Italy, Spain, and even in Belgium every strike was attended with violence. Insurrections, dynamite outrages, assassinations--all played their part. At the same time the governments carried on a ferocious persecution, and the chief anarchists were driven from place to place and hunted as wild animals. Police spies and _agents provocateurs_ swarmed over the labor, socialist, and anarchist movements, and at the slightest sign of an uprising the soldiers were brought out to shoot down the people. Hardly a month went by without some "anarchist trouble," and many harmless strikes resulted in dreadful massacres. It was a tragic period, that reminds one again of the picture in Dante in which the two bitter enemies inflict upon each other cruel wounds in a fight that on both sides was inspired by the deepest hatred. CHAPTER IV JOHANN MOST IN AMERICA