Hartmann the Anarchist: terrorism in a late 19th century novel
Nov 18th, 2015 by bachmann
The first and second bombs fell on the Tower, reducing
it half to ruins ; they were of the largest kind,
and terribly effective instruments. Meanwhile the
quick-firing guns played havoc at all points of the
compass. But the worst was to come. As we rode
over the heart of the City—that sanctum of capital,
where the Bank of England, many other banks of
scarcely less brilliant fame, the Royal Exchange,
Stock Exchange, with credit companies, insurance
offices, and discount houses innumerable lie herded
—the bombs fell in a tempest, shattering fabric after
fabric, and uprooting their very foundations. There
was a constant roar of explosions, and the loss of life
must have been something terrible.
Acts of terrorism in the modern age can be historically traced back to the anarchists of the late 19th century. The anarchist movement developed and carried out a number of acts of violence, from random bombings to targeted assassinations. The world’s newspapers would record these events, but sometimes in a banal fashion with minimal elaboration, as if it were unexceptional.
A foreign Anarchist was blown up at Greenwich by an explosive with which, it is supposed, he intended to wreck the Observatory; the bomb-outrage by Emile Henry at the Hotel Terminus, Paris, is said to have been part of a vast Anarchist plot. —New-York tribune. (New York [N.Y.]), 16 Feb. 1894.
Amidst this wave of anarchist violence in Europe, Edward Douglas Fawcett published his futuristic science fiction novel, Hartmann the Anarchist. Edward Douglas Fawcett, only 17 years old when he wrote this story in 1892, tells the tale of an anarchist revolution set in a future European world of 1920. The novel is narrated by a socialist, named Stanley, who provides a journalist-like account of the exploits of Rudolph Hartmann, an anarchist presumed dead after he botched an attack on the Westminster Bridge, resulting in the deaths of innocent bystanders. In actuality, Hartmann survived and has now plotted a major attack on European capitals, beginning with London. To meet his evil purpose, Hartmann developed an electrically powered flying machine, named Attila, to drop dynamite bombs on prominent targets such as the Houses of Parliament and St. Paul’s Cathedral.
During the violent engagement, Stanley described the chaos.
The wretched victims were fighting for the
blocked gates and outlets like creatures possessed,
bloody gaps opened and shut in their midst, and
heaps of butchered and trampled bodies tripped up
the frantic survivors in batches as they ran. The din
was simply unearthly ; the picture as a whole
indescribable, not being set off by two or three easily
detachable features, but so compositely appalling in
its details as to baffle the deftest pen. It lingers still
vividly in my memory.
Eventually, Hartmann fails:
Despite the devastation he had caused, Hartmann
was very dissatisfied with the result. His vast outlay
of material had not effected the ruin of one-fifth part
of the great city, while in all probability the resources
of the Attila were becoming somewhat strained…
A flash that beggared the levin bolt, a crash
shattering the window-panes and deadening the car,
a shock hurling us both on our backs, broke the
utterance. Then thundered down a shower of massive
fragments, fragments of the vast ship whose decks I
had once trodden. Hartmann, dismayed with the
failure of his plans and rendered desperate by the
letter, had blown up the Attila.
Fawcett’s novel was not a major work and its influence was modest, especially in comparison to the contemporary works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Fawcett lived a very full and active life, continuing to write a few more sci-fi novels before turning his attention toward philosophical ideas, mountaineering, flying, and chess competitions.
- Description:
- Fawcett, E. Douglas. Hartmann the anarchist, or, The doom of the great city. London : Edward Arnold, 1893.
- Persistent Link:
- http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:10875981
- Repository:
- Widener Library
- Institution:
- Harvard University