Auguste Vaillant

Auguste Vaillant (; 27 December 1861 – 5 February 1894) was a French anarchist known for his bomb attack on the French Chamber of Deputies on 9 December 1893. The French government's reaction to this attack was the passing of the infamous repressive Lois scélérates ("villainous laws"), three French laws passed from 1893 to 1894 which restricted freedom of the press.

Life Auguste Vaillant's father was a gendarme in Corsica who abandoned his mother, forcing her to put Auguste into foster care. At the age of 12, he was living alone in Paris, apprenticed to a pastry chef. He was arrested and jailed several times in various cities, for begging and for theft. In 1885, he was living on rue Ordener in Paris, and was secretary for the Revolutionary Socialist Union of the 18th arrondissement. Over time, he moved further towards anarchism.

In 1890, he left for Argentina and participated in the newspaper Liberté. In 1893, he returned to Paris.''

His bombing and execution in turn inspired the attacks of Émile Henry and Sante Geronimo Caserio (who stabbed to death Marie François Sadi Carnot, President of the French Third Republic) and Bhagat Singh (who threw a low-intensity bomb into the Central Legislative Assembly in British India, and was later hanged).