Le Figaro has started a series about public enemies in French history.

The opening article deals with Jules Bonnot, a French illegalist famous for his involvement in a criminal anarchist organization dubbed “The Bonnot Gang” by the French press. He viewed himself as a professional and avoided bloodshed, preferring to outwit his targets. Often posing as a businessman, his taste in expensive clothing earned him the pseudonym “Le Bourgeois” among comrades. Read all about his career on Wikipedia.

His last day in the office wasn’t very glorious:

On April 28, police tracked Bonnot to a house in the Paris suburb of Choisy-le-Roi. They besieged the residence with 500 armed police officers, soldiers, firemen, military engineers and a lynch mob of local citizens. Armed with three Brownings and a Bayard pistol, Bonnot succeeded in wounding three police officers.

By noon, after sporadic firing failed to extract Bonnot from the house, Paris Police Chief Louis Lépine ordered the building bombed, using a dynamite charge. The explosion demolished the front of the building. Barely conscious, lying underneath a mattress, Bonnot was shot ten times in the upper-body before Lépine shot him non-fatally in the head. Afterwards police had to prevent the spectators from lynching Bonnot. They simply told the crowd that Bonnot was already dead and had been buried in a secret grave.