François Malicet

French barber, lifelong anarchist, member of Les Déshérités group in Nouzon. Killed by a burglar.

François Malicet had been arrested and sentenced to 25f fines for having participated on October 14, 1877, in the elections following the coup de force of Mac-Mahon, in a meeting in a cabaret of Nouzon where had been shouted “Long live the reds, down the whites, Long live the Commune”.

Since his formation in September 1892, he joined the anarchist group Les Deshérités, one of whose hosts was Émile Roger and met that same year Fortuné Henry, who had come to give a lecture and of which he became a friend. In a letter dated November 21, 1893, Fortuné Henry, imprisoned in Clairvaux, wrote to Nicolas Thomassin: “A handshake to Malicet the figaro of Nouzon.”

On January 1, 1894, Malicet opposed the police officers wanting to search his house, calling them murderers and thieves, shouting “Encamp me or I’m burning your mouth”, threatening to throw a bucket of water and concluding with a masterful “I bother you”, which earned him to be sentenced on January 3 to 8 days in prison.

When Fortuné Henry founded the L’Essai colony in the Aiglemont forest in 1903, Malicet had put a large part of his credit for the Colony, which he regularly attended until 1909. During one of these visits, and while he was playing cards and he had thought he saw the companion André Mounier cheat, he had angry and had thrown his cards saying “When you fly, even to the cards, you are only a false brother. We are not a true libertarian. Goodbye, you will never see me again.”

Malicet wore a black tie streaked with green, the two colors of his political ideas. Every year he made a calendar also lined with green and black and annotated with the motto of his vintage "And the casing of the last priest, let's squeeze the neck of the last cop". Prankster, he had fun for years playing the revenants to frighten his old bigot of sister. He sheltered and fed a tenant free of charge that, on Sunday, September 7, 1927, he surprised entering the house from behind; the tenant armed with a hatchet threw himself on Malicet and hit him. Malicet asked him “Why did you do that? – For your money! – Had to ask me, I already gave you some, you know that.” When the gendarmes appeared, Malicet ordered them to leave his home and died in the night without having denounced his killer.

In his series of novels, Les Mamert, Jean Rogissart reproduced the portrait of François Malicet. The last born of the eight children of Malicet, wrote many books and brochures and converted (cf. The Faith is a dawn, testimony of a convert, 1964).