Paul Henri Roussenq

French vagabond and itinerant, known as the "anarchist convict" for the long prison sentences he endured (including on the notorious Devil's Island in Guyana) following various offences against authority.

Paul Henri Roussenq was born on September 18, 1885, rue du Puit de Paty in Saint-Gilles, in the Gard (France). At sixteen, he leaves his parents, and lives on expedients while making the road. He suffered a conviction on 6 September 1901 in Aix-en-Provence. Subsequently, he was sentenced in Chambery to three months in prison for vagrancy. He was again brought to justice in Chambery on 5 March 1903. He is eighteen years old. During the pleadings of Advocate General Orsat, the young man will throw a crouton of bread in his face and refuse to apologize. The penalty is harsh: five years in prison that he will serve in Clairvaux, in the Dawn.

It was then incorporated on 8 October 1907 into the 5th Battalion of Africa (matricle 6470). Later, Roussenq will write about the Bats’d Af. “The life of the barracks is much the most mind-boggling that is under the ice cap of heaven... The soldiers are only machines to obey.” By serving punishment, the 22-year-old set fire to his trellis; on 5 May 1908, the military court sentenced him to—including an attempt to arson at a building belonging to the army at 15 years of a stay ban and 20 years of prison.

Roussenq landed in French Guiana on January 13, 1909 and did not return to France until January 16, 1933. Passing 25 years of his life in the hell of the bag, he will mark the story of Cayenne, like many other anarchists, moreover. But Paul Roussenq, named L’Inco (The Incorrigible), is the champion of the days of dungeon (3779 days inflicted, nearly eleven years). Provoking the chiourm guards of the Prison Administration), willingly showing solidarity with his companions of misfortune, he wrote dozens of letters of denunciation of the cruel acts committed by the guards on the deportees. His letters were addressed to the captain of the bagne. Some of them like Jarry, in their souvenir books, will evoke Roussenq’s memory and actions. The journalist Albert London, who had met him at the prison during his investigation, devoted an entire chapter to Roussenq, “L’as des revoltés”, in his book “Au bagne” (1932). Misery, abuse, dungeon and undernutrition will shake our man.

In France, press campaigns are organized to denounce the scandal of the bagnes. The example of Roussenq is often approached to illustrate the cruelty of living conditions. Political mobilizations (especially communists) will popularize “the Roussenq case”. In accordance with the regulations, he was released in 1929, but prohibited from staying, he was obliged to reside in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, the die of the released prisoners. He was finally granted amnesty in 1932.

On his return to France, in 1933, he began a lecture tour in France, under the leadership of the Communist Party and its satellites. He will describe what he has experienced; then he will be delegated by the Red Relief to visit the USSR; this four-month stay (August to November 1933) in the “Homeland of Socialism” will also be an opportunity to write a brochure, at the request of the French supporters of Soviet socialism. This brochure, which will be partially censored, will be the subject of a rupture and a sharp criticism of the author himself, in the columns of number 5 (September 1934) of the anarchist newspaper printed in Nîmes, Terre libre (65 issues between May 1934 and June 1939). This newspaper, which has known up to ten regional editions – including a German edition Freie Erde published in Strasbourg – was made at the cooperative printing house La labieux, rue Émile-Jamais. His main craftsman was the anarchist group of Nimois, which then counted André Prudhommeaux in his ranks.

In issue 12 (April 1935) Roussenq published under the title Un libertaire en USSS his travel notes where one could read: We are not other libertarians, against the Soviet proletariat, but against the bad shepherds who lead it. We must fight against international fascism, with the workers’ groups, on the ground of action, without abdicating anything of our principles and without playing the role of fools. Roussenq then began another series of lectures on the USSR, organized by the anarchist groups of the Gard region (Nîmes, Alès, Beaucaire, Aimargues) grouped within the Free Alliance of Anarchists of the Midi Region (ALARM). He became manager of the newspaper Terre libre from 1934 to 1936 where the publication was transferred to Paris. Then he resumed a travelling activity of peddler.

Suspect under the Vichy regime, he knew the prison again and was interned in the camps of Sisteron (Alpes-de-Haute Provence) and Fort Barreau (Isère). At the Liberation, he resumed hawking in the southwest. Remaining in liaison with the anarchists of the Gard, it is one of them, Élisée Perrier, of the anarchist group of Aimargues, who will have the sad privilege of chronicling the suicide of his friend in the Libertarian of August 19, 1949 where he quoted his last letter: My dear Elisha, I am at an end. In Bayonne, there is a beautiful river where, this very evening, I will go to seek the great remedy to all sufferings: death. Roussenq, worn out, sick, indigent, threw himself into the Adour, in Bayonne, on 3 August 1949.