Post by David Von PeinI find it quite humorous to see how CTers treat Ruth Paine, whom the CTers
have no evidence against whatsoever. They treat her as much more of a
criminal than they do Lee Oswald, who is the man who took the life of JFK.
There's a special Back to School sale this weekend at Home Depot. You
need to go and buy a broader brush to use in your attacks on all
conspiracy believers just because you found ONE KOOK who thinks the
Patines did it. (Well, Michael Paine did have a rifle and Ruth knew
about Oswald's rifle, yada yada yada.
Post by David Von PeinI guess the "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" motto that CTers SAY they live
by goes flying out the window when the discussion turns to Mrs. Paine.
I think you got that backwards. Maybe some of you foreigners don't
understand how the law works in OUR country. Each person is PRESUMED
innocent ntil conivicted in a court. Oswald never got his day in court.
But you think that YOU should be the prosecutor, judge and executioner
who declares Oswald guilty of everything because they found his
fingerprints in the building where he worked. That just proves that he
actually did some work.
We found YOUR fingerprints on YOUR computer so we can say that YOU are
guilty of any crime we can imagine. Maybe kidnapping the Lindburgh baby.
Something, anything.
Post by David Von PeinBecause in the minds of many conspiracists, Ruth Paine **IS** guilty--of
something.
Like Trump you inflate everyhing. Please post all of theses "many."
Oh, I get it, his NAME is MANNY. Just a simple typo.
Post by David Von PeinIrony at its best.
[...]
Once we remove the notion that ANYONE planted Lee in the TSBD, then where
do [CTers] go with any type of "handler" theory? What did Ruth DO to
Framing Oswald does not require planting Oswald.
We were talking about PLANTING evidence.
so you really never took history in College and you never heard of
Dreyfus? Why is it up to me to cut and paste whole articles when you
should be able to find them with Google. You do know what Google is,
don't you?
Home
Library
Center for the Study of Intelligence
CSI Publications
Studies in Intelligence
studies
Vol. 55 No. 1
The Lessons for CI of the Dreyfus Affair
Intelligence in Public Literature
The Lessons for CI of the Dreyfus Affair
John Ehrman
Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters, by Louis Begley. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2009), xvi + 250 pp., notes, index.
For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus, by Frederick
Brown. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), xxv + 304 pp., notes, index.
Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century, by Ruth
Harris. (New York: Henry Holt, 2010), xvii + 542 pp., notes,
bibliography, index.
Officers new to counterintelligence (CI) and overwhelmed by the scope of
what they need to learn often ask the same question: “Where do I start?”
The best place might be the Dreyfus affair. The tale of French Army
Captain Alfred Dreyfus, his wrongful conviction for treason, and how the
argument about his guilt plunged France into turmoil is as dramatic and
riveting as any true story can be. Just as important, it took place at
the dawn of the modern intelligence era, when governments were forming
the permanent, professional intelligence services that we know today.
Its timing made the affair not only the first modern CI case, but it was
also the first modern CI disaster—that is, not just an investigative and
legal error, but one that spilled over from the intelligence world into
the sphere of mass politics, with consequences for culture and society
as well.
Is there anything new to be learned about the Dreyfus affair? More than
115 years have passed since Dreyfus was convicted of treason, and it has
been more than a century since he was exonerated. With the facts of the
case long settled, the archives thoroughly mined, and hundreds of books
and articles published, it would seem unlikely that there is much left
to be discovered or said. As the appearance of three new books within a
year indicates, however, scholars still can find new ways to look at the
affair and draw fresh insights from it.
Download PDF to read the complete article. [PDF 105.6KB*]
*Adobe® Reader® is needed to view Adobe PDF files. If you don't already
have Adobe Reader installed, you may download the current version at
www.adobe.com (opens in a new window). [external link disclaimer]
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in this article
are those of the author. Nothing in the article should be construed as
asserting or implying US government endorsement of an article’s factual
statements and interpretations.
Posted: Mar 29, 2011 04:11 PM
Last Updated: Mar 29, 2011 04:11 PM
________________________________________
Dreyfus affair
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The Dreyfus Affair (French: l'affaire Dreyfus, pronounced [la.fɛʁ
dʁɛ.fys]) was a political scandal that divided the Third French Republic
from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. The affair is often seen as a
modern and universal symbol of injustice,[1] and it remains one of the
most notable examples of a complex miscarriage of justice and
antisemitism. The major role played by the press and public opinion
proved influential in the lasting social conflict.
The scandal began in December 1894 with the treason conviction of
Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young Alsatian French artillery officer of
Jewish descent. Sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly
communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris,
Dreyfus was imprisoned on Devil's Island in French Guiana, where he
spent nearly five years.
Evidence came to light in 1896—primarily through an investigation
instigated by Georges Picquart, head of counter-espionage—identifying a
French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy as the real culprit.
After high-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, a
military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy after a trial lasting
only two days. The Army then accused Dreyfus with additional charges
based on falsified documents. Word of the military court's framing of
Dreyfus and of an attempted cover-up began to spread, chiefly owing to
J'accuse…!, a vehement open letter published in a Paris newspaper in
January 1898 by writer Émile Zola. Activists put pressure on the
government to reopen the case.
In 1899, Dreyfus was returned to France for another trial. The intense
political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society
between those who supported Dreyfus (now called "Dreyfusards"), such as
Sarah Bernhardt, Anatole France, Henri Poincaré and Georges Clemenceau,
and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards), such as Édouard
Drumont, the director and publisher of the antisemitic newspaper La
Libre Parole. The new trial resulted in another conviction and a 10-year
sentence, but Dreyfus was given a pardon and set free. Eventually all
the accusations against Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless. In
1906 Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French
Army. He served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with
the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He died in 1935.
The affair from 1894 to 1906 divided France deeply and lastingly into
two opposing camps: the pro-Army, mostly Catholic "anti-Dreyfusards" and
the anticlerical, pro-republican Dreyfusards. It embittered French
politics and encouraged radicalization.
Contents
1 Summary
2 Contexts
2.1 Political
2.2 Military
2.3 Social
3 Origins of the case and the trial of 1894
3.1 The beginning: Acts of espionage
3.2 Discovery of the Bordereau
3.3 The search for the author of the bordereau
3.4 Expertise in writing
3.5 The arrest
3.6 The enquiry and the first military court
3.7 The enquiry
3.8 The trial: "Closed Court or War!"
3.9 Transmission of a secret dossier to the judges
3.10 Conviction, degradation, and deportation
4 Truth on the march (1895–1897)
4.1 The Dreyfus family exposes the affair and takes action
4.2 The discovery of the real culprit: Picquart "going to the
enemy"
4.3 The denunciation of Esterhazy and the progress of Dreyfusism
4.4 Trial and acquittal of Esterhazy
5 J'accuse ...! 1898
5.1 The Dreyfus Affair becomes "The Affair"
5.2 The trial of Zola
5.3 Henry unmasked, the case is rekindled
5.4 Crisis and reshaping the political landscape
5.5 The appeal on the judgment of 1894
6 The trial in Rennes 1899
6.1 Conduct of the trial
6.2 New conviction
6.3 Reactions
7 Rehabilitation, 1900–1906
7.1 Death of Zola
7.2 The semi-rehabilitation
8 Consequences of the Dreyfus Affair
8.1 Political consequences
8.2 Social consequences
8.3 International consequences
9 Other related events
9.1 Commission of sculpture
9.2 Centennial commemoration
10 Historiography of the Dreyfus Affair
11 See also
12 Notes
13 Sources
13.1 Primary sources
13.2 Reference bibliography
13.3 Other general works
13.4 In French
13.5 Specialised works
13.6 Anti-Dreyfusard works
13.7 Articles and newspapers
13.8 Testimonials
14 Other reference material
14.1 Literature
14.2 Filmography
14.3 Theatre
14.4 Radio
15 References
16 External links
Summary
Dreyfus affair board game, 1898, Poster, 65 x 48 cm, Musée d'Art et
d'Histoire du Judaisme
At the end of 1894 a French army captain named Alfred Dreyfus, a
graduate of the École Polytechnique and a Jew of Alsatian origin, was
accused of handing secret documents to the Imperial German military.
After a closed trial, he was found guilty of treason and sentenced to
prison for life. He was deported to Devil's Island. At that time, the
opinion of the French political class was unanimously unfavourable
towards Dreyfus.
Certain of the injustice of the sentence, the family of the Captain,
through his brother Mathieu, worked with the journalist Bernard Lazare
to prove his innocence. Meanwhile Colonel Georges Picquart, head of
counter-espionage, found evidence in March 1896 indicating that the real
traitor was Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. The General Staff,
however, refused to reconsider its judgment and transferred Picquart to
North Africa.
In July 1897 Dreyfus' family contacted the President of the Senate
Auguste Scheurer-Kestner to draw attention to the tenuousness of the
evidence against Dreyfus. Scheurer-Kestner reported three months later
that he was convinced of the innocence of Dreyfus and also persuaded
Georges Clemenceau, a former MP and then a newspaper reporter. In the
same month, Mathieu Dreyfus complained to the Ministry of War against
Esterhazy. While the circle of Dreyfusards widened, in January 1898 two
nearly simultaneous events gave a national dimension to the case:
Esterhazy was acquitted of treason charges (afterwards shaving his
moustache and fleeing France), and Émile Zola published his
"J'accuse...!" a Dreyfusard declaration that rallied many intellectuals
to Dreyfus' cause. France became increasingly divided over the case, and
the issue continued to be hotly debated until the end of the century.
Antisemitic riots erupted in more than twenty French cities. There were
several deaths in Algiers. The Republic was shaken, which prompted a
sense that the Dreyfus Affair had to be resolved to restore calm and
protect the stability of the nation.
Despite the intrigues of the army to quash the case, the first judgment
against Dreyfus was annulled by the Supreme Court after a thorough
investigation and a new court-martial was held at Rennes in 1899.
Despite increasingly robust evidence to the contrary, Dreyfus was
convicted again and sentenced to ten years of hard labour, though the
sentence was commuted due to extenuating circumstances. Exhausted by his
deportation for four long years, Dreyfus accepted the presidential
pardon granted by President Émile Loubet. It was only in 1906 that his
innocence was officially recognized through a decision without recourse
by the Supreme Court.[2] Rehabilitated, Dreyfus was reinstated in the
army with the rank of Major and participated in the First World War. He
died in 1935.
The implications of this case were numerous and affected all aspects of
French public life. In politics, the affair established the triumph of
the Third Republic (and became a founding myth);[3] in the renewal of
nationalism, in the military. In religion, it slowed the reform of
French Catholicism and republican integration of Catholics; and in
social, legal, press, diplomatic and cultural life. It was during the
affair that the term intellectual was coined. The affair engendered
numerous antisemitic demonstrations, which in turn affected emotions
within the Jewish communities of Central and Western Europe. These
demonstrations affected the international movement of Zionism by
persuading one of its founding fathers, Theodor Herzl, that the Jews
must leave Europe and establish their own state.
Contexts
Political
In 1894, the Third Republic was twenty-four years old. Although the May
16th Crisis in 1877 had crippled the political influence of both the
Bourbon and Orléanist royalists, its ministries continued to be
short-lived as the country lurched from crisis to crisis: three
immediately preceding the Dreyfus Affair were the near-coup of Georges
Boulanger in 1889, the Panama scandal in 1892, and the anarchist threat
(reduced by the "villainous laws" of July 1894). The elections of 1893
were focused on the "social question" and resulted in a Republican
victory (just under half the seats) against the conservative right and
the reinforcement of the Radicals (about 150 seats) and Socialists
(about 50 seats).
The opposition of the Radicals and Socialists resulted in a centrist
government with policies oriented towards economic protectionism, a
certain indifference to social issues, a willingness to break
international isolation, the Russian alliance, and development of the
colonial empire. These centrist policies resulted in cabinet
instability, with some Republicans members of the government sometimes
aligning with the radicals and some Orléanists aligning with the
Legitimists in five successive governments from 1893 to 1896. This
instability coincided with an equally unstable presidency: President
Sadi Carnot was assassinated on 24 June 1894, his moderate successor
Jean Casimir-Perier resigned on 15 January 1895 and was replaced by
Félix Faure.
Following the failure of the radical government of Léon Bourgeois in
1896, the president appointed Jules Méline as prime minister. His
government faced the opposition of the left and of some Republicans
(including the Progressive Union) and made sure to keep the support of
the right. He sought to appease religious, social, and economic tensions
and conducted a fairly conservative policy. He succeeded in improving
stability, and it was under this stable government that the Dreyfus
Affair occurred.[4]
Military
General Raoul Le Mouton de Boisdeffre, architect of the military
alliance with Russia
The Dreyfus Affair occurred in the context of the annexation of Alsace
and Moselle by the Germans, an event that fed the most extreme
nationalism. The traumatic defeat in 1870 seemed far away, but a
vengeful spirit remained. Many participants in the Dreyfus Affair were
Alsatian.[Note 1]
The military required considerable resources to prepare for the next
conflict, and it was in this spirit that the Franco-Russian Alliance,
which some saw as "against nature",[Note 2] of 27 August 1892 was
signed. The army had recovered from the defeat but many of its officers
were aristocrats and monarchists. Cult of the flag and contempt for the
parliamentary republic prevailed in the army.[5] The Republic celebrated
its army; the army ignored the Republic.
Over the previous ten years the army had experienced a significant shift
in its twofold aim to democratize and modernize. The graduates of the
École Polytechnique competed effectively with officers from the main
career path of Saint-Cyr, which caused strife, bitterness, and jealousy
among junior officers expecting promotions. The period was also marked
by an arms race that primarily affected artillery. There were
improvements in heavy artillery (guns of 120 mm and 155 mm, Models 1890
Baquet, new hydropneumatic brakes), but also and especially the
development of the ultra-secret 75mm gun.[6]
The operation of military counterintelligence, alias the "Statistics
Section" (SR), should be noted. Spying as a tool for secret war was a
novelty as an organised activity in the late 19th century. The
Statistics Section was created in 1871 but consisted of only a handful
of officers and civilians. Its head in 1894 was Lieutenant-Colonel Jean
Sandherr, a graduate of Saint-Cyr, an Alsatian from Mulhouse, and a
convinced anti-Semite. Its military mission was clear: to retrieve
information about potential enemies of France and to feed them false
information. The Statistics Section was supported by the "Secret
Affairs" of the Quai d'Orsay at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which
was headed by a young diplomat, Maurice Paléologue. The arms race
created an acute atmosphere of intrigue in French counter-espionage from
1890. One of the missions of the section was to spy on the German
Embassy at Rue de Lille in Paris to thwart any attempt to transmit
important information to the Germans. This was especially critical since
several cases of espionage had already hit the headlines of newspapers,
which were fond of sensationalism. Thus in 1890 the archivist Boutonnet
was convicted for selling plans of shells that used melinite.
The German military attaché in Paris in 1894 was Count Maximilian von
Schwartzkoppen, who developed a policy of infiltration which appears to
have been effective. In the 1880s Schwartzkoppen had begun an affair
with an Italian military attache, Lieutenant Colonel Count Alessandro
Panizzardi.[7] While neither had anything to do with Dreyfus, their
intimate and erotic correspondence (e.g. "Don’t exhaust yourself with
too much buggery."),[8] which was obtained by the authorities, lent an
air of truth to other documents that were forged by prosecutors to lend
retroactive credibility to Dreyfus's conviction as a spy. Some of these
forgeries even referenced the real affair between the two officers; in
one, Alessandro supposedly informed his lover that if "Dreyfus is
brought in for questioning", they must both claim that they "never had
any dealings with that Jew. ... Clearly, no one can ever know what
happened with him."[9] The letters, real and fake, provided a convenient
excuse for placing the entire Dreyfus dossier under seal, given that
exposure of the liaison would have 'dishonoured' Germany and Italy's
military and compromised diplomatic relations. As homosexuality was,
like Judaism, then often perceived as a sign of national degeneration,
recent historians have suggested that combining them to inflate the
scandal may have shaped the prosecution strategy.[10][11]
Since early 1894, the Statistics Section had investigated traffic in
master plans for Nice and the Meuse conducted by an officer whom the
Germans and Italians nicknamed Dubois.[Note 3] This is what led to the
origins of the Dreyfus Affair.
Social
The social context was marked by the rise of nationalism and of
antisemitism.
The growth of antisemitism, virulent since the publication of Jewish
France by Édouard Drumont in 1886 (150,000 copies in the first year),
went hand in hand with the rise of clericalism. Tensions were high in
all strata of society, fueled by an influential press, who were
virtually free to write and disseminate any information even if
offensive or defamatory. Legal risks were limited if the target was a
private person.
Antisemitism did not spare the military, which practiced hidden
discrimination with the "cote d'amour" system of irrational grading,
encountered by Dreyfus in his application to the Bourges School.[12]
However, while prejudices of this nature undoubtedly existed within the
confines of the General Staff, the French Army as a whole was relatively
open to individual talent. At the time of the Dreyfus Affair there were
an estimated 300 Jewish officers in the army (about 3 per cent of the
total), of whom ten were generals.[13]
The popularity of the duel using sword or small pistol, sometimes
causing death, bore witness to the tensions of the period. When a series
of press articles in La Libre Parole[14] accused some brilliant Jewish
officers of "betraying their birth", the officers challenged the
editors. Captain Crémieu-Foa, a Jewish Alsatian graduated from the Ecole
Polytechnique, fought unsuccessfully against Drumont[Note 4][15] and
against M. de Lamase, who was the author of the articles. Captain Mayer,
another Jewish officer, was killed by the Marquis de Morès, a friend of
Drumont, in another duel, which triggered considerable emotion far
beyond Jewish circles.
Hatred of Jews was now public and violent, driven by a firebrand
(Drumont) who demonized the Jewish presence in France. Jews in
metropolitan France in 1895 numbered about 80,000 (40,000 in Paris
alone), who were highly integrated into society; an additional 45,000
Jews lived in Algeria. The launch of La Libre Parole with a circulation
estimated at 200,000 copies in 1892,[16] allowed Drumont to expand his
audience to a popular readership already enticed by the boulangiste
adventure in the past. The antisemitism circulated by La Libre Parole,
as well as by L’Éclair, Le Petit Journal, La Patrie, L'Intransigeant and
La Croix, drew on antisemitic roots in certain Catholic circles.[17]
Origins of the case and the trial of 1894
Main article: Investigation and arrest of Alfred Dreyfus
The beginning: Acts of espionage
Photograph of the bordereau dated 13 October 1894. The original
disappeared in 1940
The origin of the Dreyfus Affair, although fully clarified since the
1960s,[18] has aroused much controversy for nearly a century. The
intentions remain unclear.[Note 5] Many of the most eminent historians
express different hypotheses about the affair[Note 6] but all arrive at
the same conclusion: Dreyfus was innocent of any crime or offence.
Discovery of the Bordereau
The staff of the Military Intelligence Service (SR) worked around the
clock [19] to spy on the German Embassy in Paris. They had managed to
hire a French housekeeper who worked in the building to help in this
effort and in September 1894 she found a torn-up note[20] which she
handed over to her employers at the Military Intelligence Service. This
note later became known as "the bordereau".[Note 7] This piece of paper,
torn into six large pieces,[21] unsigned and undated, was addressed to
the German military attaché stationed at the German Embassy, Max von
Schwartzkoppen. It stated that confidential French military documents
regarding the newly developed 120 calibre artillery piece[22] were about
to be sent to a foreign power.
The search for the author of the bordereau
General Auguste Mercier, Minister of War in 1894
This catch seemed of sufficient importance for the head of the
"Statistical Section",[23] the Mulhousian[24] Jean Sandherr, to inform
the Minister of War, General Auguste Mercier. In fact the SR suspected
that there had been leaks since the beginning of 1894 and had been
trying to find the perpetrator. The minister had been harshly attacked
in the press for his actions, which were deemed incompetent,[25] and
appears to have sought an opportunity to enhance his image.[26][27] He
immediately initiated two secret investigations, one administrative and
one judicial. To find the culprit, using simple though crude
reasoning,[28] the circle of the search was arbitrarily restricted to
suspects posted to, or former employees of, the General Staff –
necessarily a trainee artillery[Note 8] officer.[Note 9]
The ideal culprit was identified: Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a graduate of
the École polytechnique and an artillery officer, of the Jewish faith
and of Alsatian origin, coming from the republican meritocracy.[29] At
the beginning of the case the emphasis was rather on the Alsatian
origins of Dreyfus than on his religion. These origins were not,
however, exceptional because these officers were favoured by France for
their knowledge of the German language and culture.[30][31] There was
also antisemitism in the offices of the General Staff,[32] and it fast
became central to the affair by filling in the credibility gaps in the
preliminary enquiry.[28] In particular, Dreyfus was at that time the
only Jewish officer to be recently passed by the General Staff.
In fact, the reputation[33] of Dreyfus as a cold and musty character,
even haughty, as well as his "curiosity", worked strongly against him.
These traits of character, some false, others natural, made the charges
plausible by turning the most ordinary acts of everyday life in the
ministry into proof of espionage. From the beginning a biased and
one-sided multiplication of errors led the State to a false position.
This was present throughout the affair, where irrationality prevailed
over the positivism in vogue in that period:[34]
From this first hour the phenomenon occurred that will dominate the
whole affair. It is no longer controlled by facts and circumstances
carefully examined which will constitute a belief; it is the
irresistible cavalier conviction which distorts the facts and beliefs.
— Joseph Reinach
Expertise in writing
Major du Paty de Clam, head of investigation, arrested Captain Dreyfus
To condemn Dreyfus, the writing on the bordereau had to be compared to
that of the Captain. There was nobody competent to analyse the writing
on the General Staff.[35] Then Major du Paty de Clam[36][37] entered the
scene: an eccentric man who prided himself on being an expert in
Graphology. On being shown some letters by Dreyfus and the bordereau on
5 October, du Paty concluded immediately who had written the two
writings. After a day of additional work he provided a report that,
despite some differences, the similarities were sufficient to warrant an
investigation. Dreyfus was therefore "the probable author" of the
bordereau in the eyes of the General Staff.[38]
Alphonse Bertillon was not a handwriting expert, but he invented the
theory of "autoforgery"
General Mercier believed he had the guilty party, but he exaggerated the
value of the affair, which took on the status of an affair of state
during the week preceding the arrest of Dreyfus. The Minister did
consult and inform all the authorities of the State,[39] yet despite
prudent counsel[Note 10] and courageous objections expressed by Gabriel
Hanotaux in the Council of Ministers[40] he decided to pursue it.[41] Du
Paty de Clam was appointed Judicial Police Officer to lead an official
investigation.
Meanwhile several parallel sources of information were opening up, some
on the personality of Dreyfus, others to ensure the truth of the
identity of the author of the bordereau. The expert[Note 11] Gobert was
not convinced and found many differences. He even wrote that "the nature
of the writing on the bordereau excludes disguised handwriting".[42]
Disappointed, Mercier then called in Alphonse Bertillon, the inventor of
forensic Anthropometry but no handwriting expert. He was initially no
more positive than Gobert but he did not exclude the possibility of its
being the writing of Dreyfus.[43] Later, under pressure from the
military,[44] he argued that Dreyfus had autocopied it and developed his
theory of "autoforgery".
The arrest
On 13 October 1894, without any tangible evidence and with an empty
file, General Mercier summoned Captain Dreyfus for a general inspection
in "bourgeois clothing", i.e. in civilian clothes. The purpose of the
General Staff was to obtain the perfect proof under French law: a
confession. That confession was to be obtained by surprise – by
dictating a letter based on the bordereau[45][46] to reveal his guilt.
In the morning of 15 October 1894 Captain Dreyfus underwent this ordeal
but admitted nothing. Du Paty even tried to suggest suicide by placing a
revolver in front of Dreyfus, but he refused to take his life, saying he
"wanted to live to establish his innocence". The hopes of the military
were crushed. Nevertheless Du Paty de Clam still arrested the
captain,[47] accused him of conspiring with the enemy, and told him that
he would be brought before a court-martial. Dreyfus was imprisoned at
the Cherche-Midi prison in Paris.[48]
The enquiry and the first military court
Cover of Le Petit Journal, 20 January 1895 (illustration by Lionel Royer
and Fortuné Méaulle)
Mrs. Dreyfus was informed of the arrest the same day by a police raid to
search their apartment. She was terrorized by Du Paty, who ordered her
to keep the arrest of her husband secret and even said, "One word, one
single word and it will be a European war!"[49] Totally illegally,[50]
Dreyfus was placed in solitary confinement in prison, where Du Paty
interrogated him day and night in order to obtain a confession, which
failed. The captain was morally supported by the first Dreyfusard, Major
Forzinetti, commandant of the military prisons of Paris.
On 29 October 1894 the affair was revealed in an article in La Libre
Parole, the antisemitic newspaper owned by Édouard Drumont. This marked
the beginning of a very brutal press campaign until the trial. This
event put the affair in the field of antisemitism where it remained
until its conclusion.[51]
On 1 November 1894 Alfred's brother, Mathieu Dreyfus, became aware of
the arrest after being called urgently to Paris. He became the architect
of the arduous fight for the liberation of his brother.[52] Without
hesitation, he began looking for a lawyer, and retained the
distinguished criminal lawyer Edgar Demange.[53]
The enquiry
On 3 November 1894 General Saussier the Military governor of Paris
reluctantly[54] gave the order for an enquiry. He had the power to stop
the process but did not, perhaps because of an exaggerated confidence in
military justice.[55] Major Besson d'Ormescheville, the recorder for the
Military Court, wrote an indictment in which "moral elements" of the
charge (which gossiped about the habits of Dreyfus and his alleged
attendance at "gambling circles", his knowledge of German,[Note 12] and
his "remarkable memory") were developed more extensively than the
"material elements",[Note 13] which are rarely seen in the charge:
"This is a proof of guilt because Dreyfus made everything disappear".
The complete lack of neutrality of the indictment led to Émile Zola
calling it a "monument of bias".[56]
On 4 December 1894 Dreyfus was referred to the first Military Court with
the empty file. The secrecy was lifted and Demange could access the file
for the first time. After reading it the lawyer had absolute confidence,
as he saw the emptiness of the prosecution's case.[57] The prosecution
rested completely on the writing on a single piece of paper, the
bordereau, on which experts disagreed, and on vague indirect testimonies.
The trial: "Closed Court or War!"
Main article: Trial and conviction of Alfred Dreyfus
From Le Petit Journal (23 December 1894).
During the two months before the trial, the press went wild. La Libre
Parole, L'Autorite, Le Journal, and Le Temps described the supposed life
of Dreyfus through lies and bad fiction.[58] This was also an
opportunity for extreme headlines from La Libre Parole and La Croix to
justify their previous campaigns against the presence of Jews in the
army on the theme "You have been told!"[59] This long delay above all
enabled the General Staff to prepare public opinion and to put indirect
pressure on the judges.[60] On 8 November 1894, General Mercier declared
Dreyfus guilty in an interview with Le Figaro.[61] He repeated himself
on 29 November 1894 in an article by Arthur Meyer in Le Gaulois, which
in fact condemned the indictment against Dreyfus and asked, "How much
freedom will the military court have to judge the defendant?"[62]
The jousting of the columnists took place within a broader debate about
the issue of a closed court. For Ranc and Cassagnac, who represented the
majority of the press, the closed court was a low manoeuvre to enable
the acquittal of Dreyfus, "because the minister is a coward". The proof
was "that he grovels before the Prussians" by agreeing to publish the
denials of the German ambassador in Paris.[63] In other newspapers, such
as L’Éclair on 13 December 1894: "the closed court is necessary to avoid
a casus belli; while for Judet in Le Petit Journal of 18 December: "the
closed court is our impregnable refuge against Germany"; or in La Croix
the same day: it must be "the most absolute closed court".[64]
The trial opened on 19 December 1894 at one o'clock[65] and a closed
court was immediately pronounced.[Note 14] This closed court was not
legally consistent since Major Picquart and Prefect Louis Lépine were
present at certain proceedings in violation of the law. The closed court
allowed the military to still not disclose the emptiness of their
evidence to the public and to stifle debate.[66][67] As expected, the
emptiness of their case appeared clearly during the hearings. Detailed
discussions on the bordereau showed that Captain Dreyfus could not be
the author.[68][69] At the same time the accused himself protested his
innocence and defended himself point by point with energy and logic.[70]
Moreover, his statements were supported by a dozen defence witnesses.
Finally, the absence of motive for the crime was a serious thorn in the
prosecution case. Dreyfus was indeed a very patriotic officer highly
rated by his superiors, very rich and with no tangible reason to betray
France.[71] The fact of Dreyfus's Jewishness was used only by the
right-wing press and was not presented in court.
Alphonse Bertillon, who was not an expert in handwriting, was presented
as a scholar of the first importance. He advanced the theory of
"autoforgery" during the trial and accused Dreyfus of imitating his own
handwriting, explaining the differences in writing by using extracts of
writing from his brother Matthieu and his wife Lucie. This theory,
although later regarded as bizarre and astonishing, seems to have had
some effect on the judges.[72] In addition, Major Hubert-Joseph Henry
made a theatrical statement in open court.[Note 15][73] He argued that
leaks betraying the General Staff had been suspected to exist since
February 1894 and that "a respectable person" accused Captain Dreyfus.
He swore on oath that the traitor was Dreyfus, pointing to the crucifix
hanging on the wall of the court.[74] Dreyfus was apoplectic with rage
and demanded to be confronted with his anonymous accuser, which was
rejected by the General Staff. The problem had an undeniable effect on
the court, which was composed of seven officers who were both judges and
jury. The outcome of the trial remained uncertain. The conviction of the
judges had been shaken by the firm and logical answers of the
accused.[75] The judges took leave to deliberate, but the General Staff
still had a card in hand to tip the balance permanently against Dreyfus.
Transmission of a secret dossier to the judges
Max von Schwartzkoppen always claimed never to have known Dreyfus
Military witnesses at the trial alerted high command about the risk of
acquittal. For this eventuality the Statistics Section had prepared a
file containing, in principle, four "absolute" proofs of the guilt of
Captain Dreyfus accompanied by an explanatory note. The contents of this
secret file remained uncertain until 2013, when they were released by
the French Ministry of Defence.[76][77] Recent research indicates the
existence of numbering which suggests the presence of a dozen documents.
Among these letters were some of an erotic homosexual nature (the
Davignon letter among others) raising the question of the tainted
methods of the Statistics Section and the objective of their choice of
documents.[78]
The secret file was illegally submitted at the beginning of the
deliberations by the President of the Military Court, Colonel Émilien
Maurel, by order of the Minister of War, General Mercier.[79] Later at
the Rennes trial of 1899, General Mercier explained the nature of the
prohibited disclosure documents submitted in the courtroom.[Note 16]
This file contained, in addition to letters without much interest, some
of which were falsified, a piece known as the "Scoundrel D ...".[80]
It was a letter from the German military attache, Max von Schwarzkoppen,
to the Italian military attaché, Alessandro Panizzardi, intercepted by
the SR. The letter was supposed to accuse Dreyfus definitively since,
according to his accusers, it was signed with the initial of his
name.[81] In reality, the Statistics Section knew that the letter could
not be attributed to Dreyfus and if it was, it was with criminal
intent.[82] Colonel Maurel confirmed in the second Dreyfus trial that
the secret documents were not used to win the support of the judges of
the Military Court. He contradicted himself, however, by saying that he
read only one document, "which was enough".[83]
Conviction, degradation, and deportation
Alfred Dreyfus' degradation, 5 January 1895. Picture by Henri Meyer on
the cover of Le Petit Journal (13 January 1895), captioned "The
Traitor".[84]
Dreyfus’ officer stripes that were ripped off as a symbol of treason –
Museum of Jewish Art and History
On 22 December 1894, after several hours of deliberation, the verdict
was reached. Seven judges unanimously convicted Alfred Dreyfus of
collusion with a foreign power, to the maximum penalty under section 76
of the Criminal Code: permanent exile in a walled fortification
(prison), the cancellation of his army rank and military degradation.
Dreyfus was not sentenced to death, as it had been abolished for
political crimes since 1848.
For the authorities, the press and the public, doubts had been dispelled
by the trial and his guilt was certain. Right and left regretted the
abolition of the death penalty for such a crime. Antisemitism peaked in
the press and occurred in areas so far spared.[85] Jean Jaurès regretted
the lightness of the sentence in an address to the House and wrote, "A
soldier has been sentenced to death and executed for throwing a button
in the face of his corporal. So why leave this miserable traitor alive?"
Clemenceau in Justice made a similar comment.[86]
On 5 January 1895, the ceremony of degradation took place in the Morlan
Court of the Military School in Paris. While the drums rolled, Dreyfus
was accompanied by four artillery officers, who brought him before an
officer of the state who read the judgment. A Republican Guard adjutant
tore off his badges, thin strips of gold, his stripes, cuffs and sleeves
of his jacket. Witnesses report the dignity of Dreyfus, who continued to
maintain his innocence while raising his arms: "Innocent, Innocent! Vive
la France! Long live the Army". The Adjutant broke his sword on his knee
and then the condemned Dreyfus marched at a slow pace in front of his
former companions.[87] An event known as "the legend of the confession"
took place before the degradation. In the van that brought him to the
military school, Dreyfus is said to have confided his treachery to
Captain Lebrun-Renault.[88][89] It appears that in reality, the captain
of the Republican Guard had boasted that Dreyfus had made no admission.
Due to the affair's being related to national security, the prisoner was
then held in solitary confinement in a cell awaiting transfer. On 17
January 1895, he was transferred to the prison on Île de Ré where he was
held for over a month. He had the right to see his wife twice a week in
a long room, each of them at one end, with the director of the prison in
the middle.[90]
Dreyfus's Hut on Devil's Island in French Guiana
At the last minute, at the initiative of General Mercier, a law was
passed on 9 February 1895, restoring the Îles du Salut in French Guiana,
as a place of fortified deportation so that Dreyfus was not sent to
Ducos, New Caledonia. Indeed, during the deportation of Adjutant Lucien
Châtelain, sentenced for conspiring with the enemy in 1888, the
facilities did not provide the required conditions of confinement and
detention conditions were considered too soft. On 21 February 1895, he
embarked on the ship Ville de Saint-Nazaire. The next day the ship
sailed for French Guiana.
Le Petit Journal (27 September 1896)
On 12 March 1895, after a difficult voyage of fifteen days, the ship
anchored off the Îles du Salut. Dreyfus stayed one month in prison on
Île Royale and was transferred to Devil's Island on 14 April 1895. Apart
from his guards, he was the only inhabitant of the island and he stayed
in a stone hut 4 by 4 metres (13 ft × 13 ft).[91] Haunted by the risk of
escape, the commandant of the prison sentenced him to a hellish life,
even though living conditions were already very painful.[Note 17]
Dreyfus became sick and shaken by fevers that got worse every year.[92]
Dreyfus was allowed to write on paper numbered and signed. He underwent
censorship by the commandant even when he received mail from his wife
Lucie, whereby they encouraged each other. On 6 September 1896, the
conditions of life for Dreyfus worsened again; he was chained double
looped, forcing him to stay in bed motionless with his ankles shackled.
This measure was the result of false information of his escape revealed
by a British newspaper. For two long months, Dreyfus was plunged into
deep despair, convinced that his life would end on this remote island.[93]
Truth on the march (1895–1897)
The Dreyfus family exposes the affair and takes action
Mathieu Dreyfus, the elder brother of Alfred, was convinced of his
innocence. He was the chief architect of the rehabilitation of his
brother and spent his time, energy and fortune to gather an increasingly
powerful movement for a retrial in December 1894, despite the
difficulties of the task:[94]
After the degradation emptiness was around us. It seemed to us that
we were no longer human beings like others, we were cut off from the
world of the living…[95]
Mathieu tried all paths, even the most fantastic. Thanks to Dr. Gibert,
a friend of President Félix Faure, he met at Le Havre a woman who spoke
for the first time under hypnosis of a "secret file".[96][97] This fact
was confirmed by the President of the Republic to Dr. Gibert in a
private conversation.
Little by little, despite threats of arrest for complicity, machinations
and entrapment by the military, he managed to convince various
moderates.[98] Thus the anarchist journalist Bernard Lazare looked into
the proceedings. In 1896 Lazare published the first Dreyfusard booklet
in Brussels.[99] This publication had little influence on the political
and intellectual world, but it contained so much detail that the General
Staff suspected that Picquart, the new head of SR, was responsible.
The campaign for the review, relayed little by little into the leftist
anti-military press, triggered a return of a violent yet vague
antisemitism.[100] France was overwhelmingly anti-Dreyfusard; Major
Henry from the Statistics Section in turn was aware of the thinness of
the prosecution case. At the request of his superiors, General
Boisdeffre, Chief of the General Staff and Major-General Gonse, he was
charged with the task of growing the file to prevent any attempt at a
review. Unable to find any evidence, he decided to build some after the
fact.[citation needed]
The discovery of the real culprit: Picquart "going to the enemy"
Main article: Picquart's investigations of the Dreyfus Affair
Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart dressed in the uniform of the 4th
Algerian Tirailleurs
Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart was assigned to be head of the SR in
July 1895 following the illness of Colonel Sandherr. In March 1896
Picquart, who had followed the Dreyfus Affair from the outset, now
required to receive the documents stolen from the German Embassy
directly without any intermediary.[101][Note 18] He discovered a
document called the "petit bleu": a telegram that was never sent,
written by von Schwarzkoppen and intercepted at the German embassy at
the beginning of March 1896.[102] It was addressed to a French officer,
Major Walsin-Esterházy, 27 rue de la Bienfaisance – Paris.[103] In
another letter in black pencil, von Schwarzkoppen revealed the same
clandestine relationship with Esterhazy.[104]
On seeing letters from Esterhazy, Picquart realized with amazement that
his writing was exactly the same as that on the "bordereau", which had
been used to incriminate Dreyfus. He procured the "secret file" given to
the judges in 1894 and was astonished by the lack of evidence against
Dreyfus, and became convinced of his innocence. Moved by his discovery,
Picquart diligently conducted an enquiry in secret without the consent
of his superiors.[105] The enquiry demonstrated that Esterhazy had
knowledge of the elements described by the "bordereau" and that he was
in contact with the German embassy.[106] It was established that the
officer sold the Germans many secret documents, whose value was quite
low.[107]
Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy was a former member of French
counterespionage where he had served after the war of 1870.[108] He had
worked in the same office as Major Henry from 1877 to 1880.[109] A man
with a personality disorder, a sulphurous reputation and crippled by
debt, he was considered by Picquart to be a traitor driven by monetary
reasons to betray his country.[110] Picquart communicated the results of
his investigation to the General Staff, which opposed him under "the
authority of the principle of already judged". After this, everything
was done to oust him from his position, with the help of his own deputy,
Major Henry. It was primarily the upper echelons of the Army that did
not want to admit that Dreyfus's conviction could be a grave miscarriage
of justice. For Mercier, then Zurlinden and the General Staff, what was
done was done and should never be returned to.[111] They found it
convenient to separate the Dreyfus and Esterhazy affairs.
The denunciation of Esterhazy and the progress of Dreyfusism
The nationalist press launched a violent campaign against the burgeoning
Dreyfusards. In counter-attack, the General Staff discovered and
revealed the information hitherto ignored in the "secret file".[112]
Doubt began to surface, and figures in the artistic and political
spheres asked questions.[Note 19] Picquart tried to convince his seniors
to react in favour of Dreyfus, but the General Staff seemed deaf. An
investigation was started against him, he was monitored when he was in
the east, then transferred to Tunisia "in the interest of the service".[113]
At this moment Major Henry chose to take action. On 1 November 1896, he
created a false document, subsequently called the "faux Henry" [Henry
forgery],[Note 20] keeping the header and signature[Note 21] of an
ordinary letter from Panizzardi, and wrote the central text himself:
I read that a deputy will call on Dreyfus. If you ask further
explanations from Rome, I would say that I never had relations with the
Jew. That is understood. If asked, speak like that, because that person
should never know what happened with him.
This was a rather crude forgery. Generals Gonse and Boisdeffre, however,
without asking questions, brought the letter to their minister, General
Billot. The doubts of the General Staff regarding the innocence of
Dreyfus flew out the window.[114] With this discovery the General Staff
decided to protect Esterhazy and persecute Colonel Picquart, "who did
not understand anything".[114] Picquart, who knew nothing of the "faux
Henry", quickly felt isolated from his fellow soldiers. Major Henry
accused Picquart of embezzlement and sent him a letter full of
innuendo.[115] He protested in writing and returned to Paris.
Picquart confided in his friend, lawyer Louis Leblois, who promised
secrecy. Leblois, however, spoke to the vice president of the Senate,
the Alsatian Auguste Scheurer-Kestner, who was in turn infected by
doubts. Without citing Picquart, the senator revealed the affair to the
highest people in the country. The General Staff, however, still
suspected Picquart of causing leaks. This was the beginning of the
Picquart affair, a new conspiracy by the General Staff against an
officer.[116]
Major Henry, although deputy to Picquart, was jealous and fostered his
own malicious operation to compromise his superior.[117] He engaged in
various malpractices (making a letter and designating it as an
instrument of a "Jewish syndicate", wanting to help Dreyfus to escape,
rigging the "petit bleu" to create a belief that Picquart erased the
name of the real recipient, drafting a letter naming Dreyfus in full).
Parallel to the investigations of Picquart, the defenders of Dreyfus
were informed in November 1897 that the identity of the writer of the
"bordereau" was Esterhazy. Mathieu Dreyfus had a reproduction of the
bordereau published by Le Figaro. A banker, Castro, formally identified
the writing as that of Esterhazy, who was his debtor, and told Mathieu.
On 11 November 1897, the two paths of investigation met during a meeting
between Scheurer-Kestner and Mathieu Dreyfus. The latter finally
received confirmation that Esterhazy was the author of the note. Based
on this, on 15 November 1897 Mathieu Dreyfus made a complaint to the
minister of war against Esterhazy.[118] The controversy was now public
and the army had no choice but to open an investigation. At the end of
1897, Picquart returned to Paris and made public his doubts about the
guilt of Dreyfus because of his discoveries. Collusion to eliminate
Picquart seemed to have failed.[119] The challenge was very strong and
turned to confrontation. To discredit Picquart, Esterhazy sent, without
effect, letters of complaint to the president of the republic.[120]
Émile Zola in 1898
The Dreyfusard movement, led by Bernard Lazare, Mathieu Dreyfus, Joseph
Reinach and Auguste Scheurer-Kestner gained momentum.[121] Émile Zola,
informed in mid-November 1897 by Scheurer-Kestner with documents, was
convinced of the innocence of Dreyfus and undertook to engage himself
officially.[Note 22] On 25 November 1897 the novelist published Mr.
Scheurer-Kestner in Le Figaro, which was the first article in a series
of three.[Note 23] Faced with threats of massive cancellations from its
readers, the paper's editor stopped supporting Zola.[122] Gradually,
from late-November through early-December 1897, a number of prominent
people got involved in the fight for retrial. These included the authors
Octave Mirbeau (his first article was published three days after
Zola)[123] and Anatole France, academic Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, the librarian
of the school normale supérieure Lucien Herr (who convinced Léon Blum
and Jean Jaurès), the authors of La Revue Blanche,[Note 24] (where
Lazare knew the director Thadee Natanson), and the Clemenceau brothers
Albert and Georges. Blum tried in late November 1897 to sign, with his
friend Maurice Barrès, a petition calling for a retrial, but Barrès
refused, broke with Zola and Blum in early-December, and began to
popularize the term "intellectuals".[124] This first break was the
prelude to a division among the educated elite after 13 January 1898.
The Dreyfus Affair occupied more and more discussions, something the
political world did not always recognize. Jules Méline declared in the
opening session of the National Assembly on 7 December 1897, "There is
no Dreyfus affair. There is not now and there can be no Dreyfus
affair."[125]
Trial and acquittal of Esterhazy
Portrait of Georges Clemenceau by the painter Édouard Manet
General Georges-Gabriel de Pellieux was responsible for conducting an
investigation. It was brief, thanks to the General Staff's skillful
manipulation of the investigator. The real culprit, they said, was
Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart.[126] The investigation was moving towards a
predictable conclusion until Esterhazy's former mistress, Madame de
Boulancy, published letters in Le Figaro in which ten years earlier
Esterhazy had expressed violently his hatred for France and his contempt
for the French army. The militarist press rushed to the rescue of
Esterhazy with an unprecedented antisemitic campaign. The Dreyfusard
press replied with strong new evidence in its possession. Georges
Clemenceau, in the newspaper L'Aurore, asked, "Who protects Major
Esterhazy? The law must stop sucking up to this ineffectual Prussian
disguised as a French officer. Why? Who trembles before Esterhazy? What
occult power, why shamefully oppose the action of justice? What stands
in the way? Why is Esterhazy, a character of depravity and more than
doubtful morals, protected while the accused is not? Why is an honest
soldier such as Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart discredited, overwhelmed,
dishonoured? If this is the case we must speak out!"
Newspaper showing Esterhazy
Although protected by the General Staff and therefore by the government,
Esterhazy was obliged to admit authorship of the Francophobe letters
published by Le Figaro. This convinced the Office of the General Staff
to find a way to stop the questions, doubts, and the beginnings of
demands for justice. The idea was to require Esterhazy to demand a trial
and be acquitted, to stop the noise and allow a return to order. Thus,
to finally exonerate him, according to the old rule Res judicata pro
veritate habetur,[Note 25] Esterhazy was set to appear before a military
court on 10 January 1898. A "delayed" closed court[Note 26] trial was
pronounced. Esterhazy was notified of the matter on the following day,
along with guidance on the defensive line to take. The trial was not
normal: the civil trial Mathieu and Lucy Dreyfus[Note 27] requested was
denied, and the three handwriting experts decided the writing in the
bordereau was not Esterhazy's.[127] The accused was applauded and the
witnesses booed and jeered. Pellieux intervened to defend the General
Staff without legal substance.[128] The real accused was Picquart, who
was dishonoured by all the military protagonists of the affair.[129]
Esterhazy was acquitted unanimously the next day after just three
minutes of deliberation.[130] With all the cheering, it was difficult
for Esterhazy to make his way toward the exit, where some 1,500 people
were waiting.
Antisemitic riots in an engraving of Le Petit Parisien
By error an innocent person was convicted, but on order the guilty party
was acquitted. For many moderate Republicans it was an intolerable
infringement of the fundamental values they defended. The acquittal of
Esterhazy therefore brought about a change of strategy for the
Dreyfusards. Liberalism-friendly Scheurer-Kestner and Reinach, took more
combative and rebellious action.[131] In response to the acquittal,
large and violent riots by anti-Dreyfusards and anti-Semites broke out
across France, respecting neither property nor people.
Flush with victory, the General Staff arrested Picquart on charges of
violation of professional secrecy following the disclosure of his
investigation through his lawyer, who revealed it to Senator
Scheurer-Kestner. The colonel, although placed under arrest at Fort
Mont-Valérien, did not give up and involved himself further in the
affair. When Mathieu thanked him, he replied curtly that he was "doing
his duty".[130] The army declared Esterhazy unfit for service. To avoid
personal risk he went into exile in England, where he lived comfortably
and ended his days in the 1920s.[132] Esterhazy benefited from special
treatment by the upper echelons of the army, which was inexplicable
except for the General Staff's desire to stifle any inclination to
challenge the verdict of the court martial that had convicted Dreyfus in
1894.
J'accuse ...! 1898
The Dreyfus Affair becomes "The Affair"
Main article: J'accuse…!
Page one of L'Aurore, J'accuse ...! by Émile Zola, 13 January 1898
Alfred Dreyfus in his room on Devil's Island in 1898,
stereograph sold by F. Hamel, Altona-Hamburg...; collection Fritz Lachmund
On 13 January 1898 Zola touched off a new dimension in the Dreyfus
Affair, which became known simply as The Affair. The first great
Dreyfusard intellectual, Zola was at the height of his glory: the twenty
volumes of the Rougon-Macquart were being distributed in dozens of
countries. He was a leader in the literary world and was fully conscious
of it. To General Pellieux, he said at his trial, "I ask General
Pellieux if there are not many ways to serve France? It can be served by
the sword or by the pen. General Pellieux has probably won great
victories! I have won mine, too. By my work the French language has been
brought into the world. I have my victories! I bequeath to posterity the
name of General Pellieux and that of Émile Zola: history will choose![133]
Outraged by the acquittal of Esterhazy, Zola decided to strike a blow.
He published a 4,500-word article on the front page of L'Aurore in the
form of an open letter to President Félix Faure (Clemenceau thought up
the headline "J'accuse...!"). With a typical circulation of 30,000, the
newspaper distributed nearly 300,000 copies that day. This article had
the effect of an explosion. The article was a direct attack, explicit
and clear, and named names. It denounced all those who had conspired
against Dreyfus, including the minister of war and the General Staff.
The article contained numerous errors, exaggerating or minimizing the
roles of one or another of the figures involved.[Note 28] but Zola never
claimed to be a historian.[134]
"J'accuse...!" provided for the first time a compilation of all existing
data on the affair in one place.[135] Zola's goal was to make himself a
target, to force the authorities to prosecute him. His trial forced a
new public review of both the Dreyfus and Esterhazy affairs. Here he
went against the strategy of Scheurer-Kestner and Lazare, who advocated
patience and reflection.[136] Thanks to the national and international
success of Zola's brilliant coup, a trial became inevitable. From that
critical moment the case followed two parallel paths. On one hand, the
state used its apparatus to impose a limitation on the trial,
restricting it to one of simple libel so as to separate the Dreyfus and
Esterhazy cases, which had already been adjudicated. On the other hand,
conflicting camps of opinion tried to influence judges and the
government—one side pushed to obtain a review and the other to convict
Zola. But Zola achieved his aim: the opening of a public debate at the
Assize Court.
On 15 January 1898 Le Temps published a petition calling for a
retrial.[137] It included the names of Émile Zola, Anatole France,
director of the Pasteur Institute Émile Duclaux, Daniel Halévy, Fernand
Gregh, Félix Fénéon, Marcel Proust, Lucien Herr, Charles Andler, Victor
Bérard, François Simiand, Georges Sorel, the painter Claude Monet, the
writer Jules Renard, the sociologist Émile Durkheim, and the historian
Gabriel Monod.
On 20 January 1898, after an anti-Zola speech by rightist politician
Albert de Mun at the Chamber of Deputies, the chamber voted 312–22 to
prosecute Zola.[138] On 23 January 1898 Clemenceau, in the name of a
"peaceful revolt of the French spirit", picked up the term
"intellectuals" and used it in L'Aurore, but in a positive sense. On 1
February 1898 Barres lambasted the intellectuals in Le Journal.
Anti-intellectualism became a major theme of right-wing intellectuals,
who accused the Dreyfusards of failing to put the nation's interests
first, an argument that continued throughout the years that followed and
which became the basis of the public debate: a choice between justice
and truth on the one hand, and the defense of the nation, preservation
of society, and superiority of the state on the other.[139] At first,
the political left did not echo this mobilization of intellectuals—on 19
January 1898 Socialist Deputies distanced themselves from the "two rival
bourgeois factions".
The trial of Zola
Henry de Groux, Zola faces the mob, oil on canvas, 1898
General Billot, Minister of War, filed a complaint against Zola and
Alexandre Perrenx, the manager of L'Aurore, to be heard at the Assises
of the Seine from 7 to 23 February 1898. Defamation of a public
authority was liable to trial in the Cour d'Assises, while insults to
private figures—such as journalists and intellectuals—uttered by the
nationalist and antisemitic press were limited to the civil adversarial
system. (The taxpayer is at risk in the first case, while only the
plaintiff is at risk in the second.) The minister referred to only three
passages of Zola's article,[140] eighteen lines out of hundreds. He
accused Zola of having written that the court martial had committed
"unlawful acts [...] by order".[141] The trial opened in an atmosphere
of extreme violence—Zola had been the object of "the most shameful
attacks"[Note 29] as well as important support and congratulations.[Note 30]
Anthropometric photography of Émile Zola at his trial
Fernand Labori, Zola's lawyer, intended to call about 200 witnesses. The
details of the Dreyfus Affair, unknown to most of the public, were
published in the press. Several papers[Note 31] published shorthand
notes verbatim of the debates every day to build support in the
population. These notes were, for the Dreyfusards, an essential tool for
later debates. The nationalists, behind Henri Rochefort, however, were
more visible and organized riots, which forced the prefect of police to
intervene to protect Zola whenever he left the facility[142] after every
hearing.[143]
This trial was also the scene of a real legal battle in which the rights
of the defence were constantly violated.[144] Many observers were aware
of the collusion between France's political and military worlds.
Evidently the court received instructions not to raise the subject of
former judicial errors. President Delegorgue, on the pretext of the long
duration of the hearings, juggled the law incessantly to ensure that the
trial dealt only with the alleged defamation by Zola. Delegorgue's
phrase "the question will not be put" was repeated dozens of times.[145].
Example of an exchange between Fernand Labori, lawyer for the defence
and the President of the Court, Delegorgue
Labori: I beg your pardon, Mr. President, to intervene, but I would
be interested to hear Messrs Couard, Belhomme and Varinard.
President: No, no I have said ...
Labori: But I have a question to put
President : You will not put it.
Labori: I insist Mr. President.
President: I have told you, you may not put it.
Labori: Oh! Mr. President! It is of interest...
President: It is pointless to shout so loudly.
Labori: I shout because I need to be heard.
President : The question will not be put.
Labori: I understand you have said that; but I said that I want to
put it.
President: Well! I say no, and it is a case already heard! The
president has a right to dismiss this debate. All this prolongs the
debate needlessly. It is my right to do this.
Labori: You do not understand the question. You do not know what
the question is.
President: I know perfectly well what you are going to ask.
Labori: Well, I have come to the conclusion that the court should
be stopped at this point.
President: Come to all the conclusions that you want.
Labori: If you believe you can cut short the debate you deceive
yourself.
President: Well, we will decide on the findings during the recess
(To the court bailiff): Another witness.
(Mr. Auguste Molinier presents himself at the bar and takes the oath.)
President: Has the witness been summoned in the normal way?
Court Clerk: Yes, Mr. President.
President: What is the question, Master Labori?
Labori: I beg your pardon. I have written a finding, and I consider
it absolutely essential that the testimony of Mr. Paul Meyer and the
events described therein finish being discussed before the testimony of
another witness. I do not need more than two minutes. I ask respectfully
that you allow me to quickly question the witness.
President: But this witness has been sworn; It is absolutely
necessary that he be questioned now.
Clemenceau: It is a question of two minutes.
President: Ask your question now! It is useless to waste our time.
Labori: I think that hearing Messrs Couard, Belhomme, and Varinard
is essential to the truth and I maintain that the refusal of this order
is recorded before the witness testifies: I consider it essential from
the standpoint of the defence.
(The President turns the pages in the Code of Criminal practice.)
President to Mr. Molinier: Sir, would you please leave.
(To the court bailiff): Would you remove this witness please.
(Mr. Labori drew his conclusions)[146]
Zola was sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of 3,000
francs,[Note 32] which was the maximum penalty. This harshness was due
to the atmosphere of violence surrounding the trial. "The excitement of
the audience and the exasperation of the crowd in front of the
courthouse were so violent that one could fear the worst excesses if the
jury acquitted Mr. Zola".[147] However, the Zola trial was rather a
victory for the Dreyfusards.[148] Indeed, the affair and its
contradictions had been widely discussed throughout the trial,
especially by the military. In addition, the violent attacks against
Zola and the injustice of the conviction of Dreyfus reinforced the
commitment of the Dreyfusards. Stéphane Mallarmé declared, "[I am]
imbued by the admirable actions [of Zola]"[149] and Jules Renard wrote
in his diary: "From tonight I hold on to the Republic that inspires
respect in me, a tenderness in me that I do not know. I declare that
Justice is the most beautiful word in the language of men and I must cry
if men no longer understand it".[150] Senator Ludovic Trarieux and
Catholic jurist Paul Viollet founded the League for the Defence of Human
Rights. Even more than the Dreyfus Affair the Zola affair resulted in a
regrouping of intellectual forces into two opposing camps.
On 2 April 1898 an application to the Supreme Court received a
favourable response. This was the court's first intervention in the
affair. The military court made the complaint, rather than the minister.
Prosecutor-General Manau supported a review of the Dreyfus trial and
strongly opposed the anti-Semites. The judges of the military court,
whom Zola had challenged, sued him for libel. The case was brought
before the Assizes of Seine-et-Oise in Versailles where the public was
considered more favourable to the army and more nationalistic. On 23 May
1898, at the first hearing, Mr. Labori appealed to the Supreme Court
regarding the change of jurisdiction, which adjourned the trial and
postponed the hearing to 18 July 1898. Labori advised Zola to leave
France for England before the end of the trial, which the writer did,
departing for a one-year exile in England. The defendants were convicted
again. As for Colonel Picquart, he found himself again in prison.
Henry unmasked, the case is rekindled
Photograph of the "faux Henry". The header ("my dear friend") and
signature ("Alexandrine") are from Panizzardi. The rest is from the hand
of Henry.
The acquittal of Esterhazy, the convictions of Émile Zola and of Georges
Picquart, and the continued presence of an innocent man in prison had a
considerable national and international effect.[151] France was exposed
as an arbitrary state, which contradicted its founding republican
principles. Anti-Semitism made considerable progress and riots were
common throughout the year 1898. However politicians were still in
denial about the affair. In April and May 1898, they were mostly
concerned with elections, in which Jaurès lost his seat of Carmaux.[152]
The majority was moderate, though a parliamentary group in the House was
anti-Semitic. Nevertheless the cause of the Dreyfusards was restarted.
Godefroy Cavaignac, the new minister of war and a fierce supporter of
anti-revisionism, definitely wanted to prove the guilt of Dreyfus and
from there "wring the neck" of Esterhazy, whom he considered "a
pathological liar and blackmailer".[153] He was absolutely convinced of
Dreyfus's guilt, a conviction reinforced by the legend of the confession
(after meeting the main witness, Captain Lebrun-Renault).[154] Cavaignac
had the honesty of a doctrinaire intransigent,[155] but absolutely did
not know the depths of the affair—the General Staff had kept him in the
dark. He was surprised to learn that all the documents on which the
prosecution was based had not been expertly appraised and that
Boisdeffre had "absolute confidence" in Henry. Cavaignac decided to
investigate—in his office, with his assistants—and retrieved the secret
file, which now contained 365 items.[156]
On 4 April the newspaper Le Siècle published Lettre d'un Diplomate, the
first of four documents, that were of critical importance in exposing
Esterhazy's guilt, and enabled the Dreyfusard cause to regain the
initiative it had lost with Zola's conviction. The secret information
had been provided by Zola, who had received it from Oscar Wilde; Wilde
had gained it from best friend Carlos Blacker, who was an intimate
friend of Alexandro Panizzardi.[157][158]
Portrait of Godefroy Cavaignac, Minister of War
On 7 July 1898 during a questioning in the House, Cavaignac reported
three items "overwhelming among a thousand", two of which had no
connection with the case. The other was the "faux Henry".[159]
Cavaignac's speech was effective: the MPs gave him an ovation and voted
to display copies of the three documents in the 36,000 communes of
France.[160] The anti-Dreyfusards had triumphed, but Cavaignac
implicitly recognized that the Dreyfus's defence had not had access to
all the evidence. The application for annulment made by Lucie Dreyfus
became admissible. The next day, Picquart declared in Le Temps to the
council president, "I am in a position to establish before a court of
competent jurisdiction that the two documents bearing the date of 1894
could not be attributed to Dreyfus and that the one that bears the date
of 1896 had all the characteristics of a fake," which earned him eleven
months in prison.
On the evening of 13 August 1898, Cuignet, who was attached to the
cabinet of Cavaignac, was working by the light of a lamp and observed
that the colour of the lines on the "faux Henry" paper header and footer
did not correspond with the central part of the document. Cavaignac was
still trying to find logical reasons for the guilt and conviction of
Dreyfus[161] but was not silent on this discovery.[162] A board of
inquiry was formed to investigate Esterhazy, before which he panicked
and confessed his secret reports to Major du Paty de Clam. Collusion
between the General Staff and the traitor was revealed. On 30 August
1898 Cavaignac resigned himself to demanding explanations from Colonel
Henry in the presence of Boisdeffre and Gonse. After an hour of
questioning by the minister himself, Henry broke down and made a full
confession.[163] He was placed under arrest at the Mont-Valérien
fortress, where he killed himself[164][165] the next day by cutting his
own throat with a razor. The request for review filed by Lucie Dreyfus
could not be rejected. Yet Cavaignac said "less than ever!",[166] but
the president of the council, Henri Brisson, forced him to resign.
Despite his apparently entirely involuntary role in the revision of the
1894 trial, Brisson remained convinced that Dreyfus was guilty and made
a statement disparaging and offensive to Dreyfus at the Rennes trial.[167]
Drawing by Caran d'Ache in Le Figaro on 14 February 1898.
The anti-revisionists did not consider themselves beaten. On 6 September
1898 Charles Maurras published a eulogy of Henry in La Gazette de France
in which he called him a "heroic servant of the great interests of the
State".[168] La Libre Parole, Drumont’s anti-Semitic newspaper, spread
the notion of "patriotic fake" ("faux patriotique"). In December the
same newspaper launched a subscription, in favour of his widow, to erect
a monument to Henry. Each gift was accompanied by pithy, often abusive,
remarks on Dreyfus and the Dreyfusards. Some 14,000 subscribers,[169]
including 53 MPs, sent 131,000 francs.[170] On 3 September 1898,
Brisson, the president of the council, urged Mathieu Dreyfus to file an
application for review of the military court of 1894. The government
transferred the case to the Supreme Court for its opinion on the past
four years of proceedings.
France was really divided into two, but no more generalization is
possible: the Jewish community was little involved, intellectuals were
not all Dreyfusards,[Note 33] the Protestants were divided, and Marxists
refused to support Dreyfus.[171] The split transcended religion and
social background, as shown in a cartoon by Caran d'Ache A family dinner
: before, « Above all, never talk about it ! », after, « They had a talk
about it ».
Crisis and reshaping the political landscape
Henry was dead, Boisdeffre had resigned, Gonse had no more authority,
and du Paty had been severely compromised by Esterhazy: for the
conspirators it was a débâcle.[172] The government was now caught
between two fires: the nationalist pressure on the street and the higher
command. Cavaignac, having resigned for continuing to spread his
anti-Dreyfusard vision of the Affair, arose as an anti-revisionist
leader. General Zurlinden who succeeded him and was influenced by the
General Staff, delivered a negative opinion at the review on 10
September 1898 comforting the extremist press by saying that, "a review
means war". The obstinacy of the Government, who voted to revert to the
Supreme Court on 26 September 1898, led to the resignation of Zurlinden
who was soon replaced by General Chanoine.[173] When Chanoine was
questioned in the House he handed in his resignation; trust was denied
to Brisson and he was also forced to resign. Ministerial instability
caused some governmental instability.
On 1 November 1898 the Progressive Charles Dupuy was appointed in place
of Brisson. In 1894 he had covered the actions of General Mercier at the
beginning of the Dreyfus Affair,[174] and four years later he announced
that he would follow the judgment of the Supreme Court,[175] thus
blocking the road for those who wanted to stifle the review and divest
the Court. On 5 December 1898 in the shadow of a debate in the House on
the transmission of the "secret file" to the Supreme Court the tension
rose another notch. Insults, invective, and other nationalistic violence
gave way to threats of an uprising. Paul Déroulède declared: "If there
has to be a civil war so be it."[176]
A new crisis arose at the same time in the heart of the Supreme Court,
since Quesnay de Beaurepaire, President of the Civil Chamber, accused
the Criminal Chamber of Dreyfusism in the press. He resigned on 8
January 1899 as a hero of the nationalist cause. This crisis led to the
divestiture of the Criminal Division in favour of joint chambers. This
was the point of blockage for the review.[177]
In 1899 the affair took up more and more of the political scene. On 16
February 1899, Félix Faure, the President of France, died.[178] Émile
Loubet was elected, which was an advance for the cause of the review as
the previous president had been a fierce opponent. On 23 February 1899
at the funeral for Faure, Paul Déroulède attempted to force a coup at
the Élysée Palace. It was a failure as it was not supported by the
military. On 4 June 1899 Loubet was assaulted at the Longchamp
Racecourse. These provocations plus permanent demonstrations from the
extreme right, although it never actually put the Republic in danger,
created a burst of Republicanism leading to the formation of a
"government of republican defence" around Waldeck-Rousseau on 22 June
1899. The center of French politics, including Raymond Poincaré, had
aligned itself with the pro-revisionists. The progressive
anti-Dreyfusard Republicans such as Jules Méline, were rejected
outright. The Dreyfus affair led to a clear reorganization of the French
political landscape.[179]
The appeal on the judgment of 1894
The judges of the criminal division in Le Petit Journal
The Supreme Court considered the affair in the context of press
campaigns against the Criminal Division, the magistrates being
constantly dragged through the mud in nationalist newspapers from the
Panama scandals.[180] On 26 September 1898, after a Cabinet vote the
Minister of Justice appealed to the Supreme Court. On 29 October 1898,
after the submission of the report from the recorder Alphonse Bard, the
Criminal Chamber of the Court stated that "the application is admissible
and will proceed with a supplementary investigation".[181]
The recorder Louis Loew presided. He was subjected to a very violent
campaign of antisemitic insults due to his being an Alsatian Protestant
accused of being a deserter and tainted by the Prussians. Despite the
compliant silence of Mercier, Billot, Zurlinden, and Roget, who hid
behind the authority of "already judged" and "state secret",
understanding of the affair increased. Cavaignac made a statement two
days long, but failed to prove the guilt of Dreyfus. On the contrary, he
unwittingly exonerated him by a demonstration of the exact date of the
bordereau (August 1894).
Picquart then demonstrated all the workings of the error, then the
conspiracy.[182] In a decision dated 8 December 1898 in response to his
divestiture announcement, Picquart was protected from the military court
by the Criminal Division of the Supreme Court.[183] This was a new
obstacle to the wishes of the General Staff. A new furiously antisemitic
press campaign burst during the event, while L'Aurore on 29 October 1898
published an article entitled Victory in the same character as
J'accuse...![184] The work of the investigation was still to be taken
back by the Criminal Division.[185] The "secret file" was analyzed from
30 December 1898 and the Criminal Division requested disclosure of
diplomatic records, which was granted.
On 9 February 1899, the Criminal Division submitted its report by
highlighting two important facts: it was certain Esterhazy used the same
paper as the bordereau[Note 34] and the secret file was completely void.
These two major events alone destroyed all proceedings against Alfred
Dreyfus. In parallel, President Mazeau conducted an inquiry by the
Criminal Division, which led to divestiture thereof "to not only leave
it to bear alone all responsibility for the final decision," so
protecting the Criminal Division from actions arising from its report.
On 28 February 1899, Waldeck-Rousseau spoke to the Senate on the floor
and denounced "moral conspiracy" within the government and in the
street. The review was no longer avoidable. On 1 March 1899, Alexis
Ballot-Beaupré, the new President of the Civil Chamber of the Supreme
Court, was appointed recorder for the consideration of the application
for review. He took on the legal files and decided on a further
investigation. Ten additional witnesses were interviewed, which further
weakened the version of the General Staff. In the final discussion and
by a model of objectivity, President Ballot-Beaupré demonstrated the
inanity of the bordereau, which was the only charge against Dreyfus. The
prosecutor Manau echoed the views of the President. Mornard who
represented Lucie Dreyfus argued without any difficulty or opposition
from the prosecution.[186]
On 3 June 1899, the joint chambers of the Supreme Court overturned the
judgment of 1894 in a formal hearing.[187] The case was referred to the
Military Court of Rennes. By that judgment, the Supreme Court imposed
itself as an absolute authority capable of standing up to military and
political power.[188] For many Dreyfusards, this ruling was the prelude
to the acquittal of the captain; they forgot to consider that it was
again the army who would judge. The court, in overturning the judgement,
believed in the legal autonomy of the military court without taking into
account the laws of esprit de corps.[189]
The trial in Rennes 1899
Conduct of the trial
Dreyfus' defense in Rennes: Edgar Demange and Fernand Labori
Alfred Dreyfus was in no way aware of what was happening thousands of
kilometres from him. Neither was he aware of the schemes hatched that he
could never return, or the commitment of countless men and women to his
cause. The prison administration filtered information deemed
confidential. At the end of 1898, he learned with astonishment the
actual size of the affair, about which he knew nothing: the accusation
by his brother against Esterhazy, the acquittal of the traitor, Henry's
confession and suicide, and the reading of the record of investigations
of the Supreme Court, which he received two months after its
publication.[190] On 5 June 1899 Alfred Dreyfus was notified of the
decision of the Supreme Court on the judgement of 1894. On 9 June 1899
he left Devil's Island, heading to France, but locked in a cabin as if
guilty, even though he no longer was. He disembarked on 30 June 1899 in
Port Haliguen on the Quiberon peninsula in the greatest secrecy, "a
clandestine and nocturnal return".[191] After five years of
imprisonment, he was on his native soil, but he was immediately locked
up from 1 July 1899 in the military prison in Rennes. He was remanded on
7 August 1899 before the military court of the Breton capital.
General Mercier, champion of the anti-Dreyfusards, intervened constantly
in the press to confirm the accuracy of the first judgement: Dreyfus was
surely guilty. Immediately, however, dissent emerged in the defence of
Dreyfus. His two lawyers actually had opposing strategies. Demange
wanted to stand on the defensive and just get the acquittal of Dreyfus.
Labori, a brilliant lawyer who was just 35 years old, wanted to take the
offensive, to aim higher and defeat and publicly humiliate the General
Staff. Mathieu Dreyfus imagined a complementarity between the two
lawyers. The conduct of the trial revealed the disunity that served the
prosecution with a defence so impaired.
Alfred Dreyfus' trial at the Rennes Court Martial
The trial opened on 7 August 1899 in an atmosphere of extreme tension.
Rennes was in a state of siege.[192] The judges of the court-martial
were under pressure. Esterházy, who admitted authorship of the
bordereau, was in exile in England. He and du Paty were both excused. On
the appearance of Dreyfus, emotions ran high. His physical appearance
disturbed his supporters and some of his opponents.[Note 35] Despite his
deteriorated physical condition, he had a complete mastery of the files
acquired in only a few weeks.[193] All the General Staff testified
against Dreyfus without providing any proof. They stubbornly considered
null and void the confessions of Henry and Esterhazy. The trial even
tended to go out of control to the extent that the decisions of the
Supreme Court were not taken into account. They discussed in particular
the bordereau, which was the proof of guilt of Esterhazy. Nevertheless
Mercier was booed at the end of the hearing. The nationalist press and
the anti-Dreyfusards could only speculate on his silence about the
"conclusive evidence" (the pseudo-note annotated by the Kaiser, which
nobody will ever see in evidence) that he had not ceased to report
before the trial.
On 14 August 1899 Labori was on his way to court when he was shot in the
back by an extremist who escaped and was never found. The lawyer was
missing from discussions for over a week at the decisive moment of the
examination of witnesses. On 22 August 1899 his condition had improved
and he returned. Incidents between the two lawyers for Dreyfus
multiplied. Labori reproached Demange about his excessive caution. The
Government, in the face of the military hardening stance, still had two
ways to influence events: call for testimony from Germany or abandon the
charge.[194] These negotiations in the background, however, had no
result. The German Embassy sent a polite refusal to the government. The
Minister of War, General Gaston de Galliffet, sent respectful word to
Major Louis Carrière, the government commissioner. He asked him to act
in the spirit of the revised judgment of the Supreme Court. The officer
pretended not to understand the allusion and helped the nationalist
lawyer Auffray to make the indictment against Dreyfus. The defence
needed to make a decision because the outcome of the case looked bad,
despite evidence of the absence of charges against the accused. On
behalf of the President of the Council, Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, aided
by Zola and Jaurès, Labori was convinced to give up his argument so as
not to offend the military. They decided to risk conciliation in
exchange for the acquittal that seemed to be promised by the
government.[195] Mr. Demange, alone and without illusions, continued the
defence of Dreyfus in an atmosphere of civil war. In Paris the
anti-Semitic and nationalist agitators of Auteuil were arrested. Jules
Guérin and those who fled and holed up in Fort Chabrol were assaulted by
the police.
New conviction
Dreyfus' reconviction
On 9 September 1899 the court rendered its verdict: Dreyfus was
convicted of treason, but "with extenuating circumstances" (by five
votes to two) and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment and a further
degradation. Contrary to appearances, this verdict was on the verge of
acquittal by one vote. The Code of Military Justice adopted the
principle that a minority vote of three against four was an acquittal.[196]
The day after the verdict, Alfred Dreyfus, after much hesitation, filed
an appeal for a retrial. Waldeck-Rousseau, in a difficult position,
tackled for the first time the possibility of a pardon. Dreyfus had to
accept guilt. Exhausted, having been away from his family for too long,
he accepted. The decree was signed on 19 September 1899 and he was
released on 21 September 1899. Many Dreyfusards were frustrated by this
final act. Public opinion welcomed this conclusion indifferently. France
wanted civil peace and harmony on the eve of the Universal Exhibition of
1900 and before the big fight that the Republic was about to take for
freedom of association and secularism.
It was in this spirit that on 17 November 1899 Waldeck-Rousseau filed an
amnesty law covering "all criminal acts or misdemeanours related to the
Dreyfus affair or that have been included in a prosecution for one of
these acts" excluding only Alfred Dreyfus himself who was instead
pardoned to be able to still seek acquittal. Many Dreyfusards protested
as this indemnified not only Zola and Picquart against (further)
punishment but also protected the real culprits. Despite these massive
protests the bill was passed.
Reactions
Colonel Albert Jouaust, Chairman of the Court Martial, reads the verdict
of conviction, in one of the weekly Le Monde illustré.
Reactions in France were strong, consisting of "shock and sadness" in
the revisionist camp.[197] Still other reactions tended to show that the
"verdict of appeasement" made by the judges was understood and accepted
by the population. The Republicans sought above all social peace and to
turn the page on this extremely long and controversial affair. Also
there were very few demonstrations in the provinces while agitation
persisted somewhat in Paris.[198] In the military world appeasement was
also essential. Two of the seven judges voted for acquittal.[199] They
refused to yield to the implied military order. This was also clearly
seen. In an apostrophe for the army, Galliffet announced: "The incident
is closed".
Anti-French demonstrations took place in twenty foreign capitals and the
press was outraged.[200] Reactions were twofold. Norwegian composer
Edvard Grieg cancelled his concerts in France in protest.[201] The
Anglo-Saxons, as legalists, focused on espionage and challenged rather
strongly this conviction devoid of positive arguments in its
construction. As such the report of the Lord Chief Justice of England,
Lord Russell of Killowen, on 16 September 1899, was a symbol of the
global effect of the Affair in Great Britain. The English judge, who
went as an observer to Rennes, criticised the weaknesses of the Military
Court:
The Military judges were not familiar with the law or criminal
proceedings. They lacked the experience and skill that can see the
evidence behind the evidence. They were drowning in prejudice and they
acted according to what they saw as the honour of the army. Impressed,
full of respect for their superiors, they accorded too much importance
to fragile allegations that were only made against the accused." Thus he
concluded: "For surely it might have been predicted with certainty that,
if the revision trial had taken place before the Cour de cassation ...
Dreyfus would now be a free man.[202]
In Germany and Italy, the two countries widely challenged by lawsuits
against Dreyfus, there was relief. Even if the Emperor of Germany
regretted that the innocence of Dreyfus was not recognized the
normalization of future Franco-German relations was seen as a welcome
relaxation. Diplomacy of the three powers with the help of England
sought to relax in an atmosphere that deteriorated again on the eve of
the First World War.
This judicial conclusion also had an unfortunate consequence for the
relationship between the Dreyfus family and the branch of ultra
dreyfusists. Fernand Labori, Jaures, and Clemenceau, with the consent of
Picquart openly accused Alfred Dreyfus of accepting the pardon and only
gently protesting the amnesty law.[203]
Rehabilitation, 1900–1906
Main article: Resolution of the Dreyfus Affair
Preferring to avoid a third trial the government decided to pardon
Dreyfus by a decree signed by President Émile Loubet on 19 September
1899 after much hesitation. Dreyfus was not found innocent. The
rehabilitation process was not completed until six years later without
sparkle or passion. Many books appeared during this period. In addition
to the memoires of Alfred Dreyfus,[204] Reinach published his History of
the Dreyfus Affair and Jaurès published The Proofs. As for Zola he wrote
the third of his Gospels: Truth. Even Esterhazy took advantage of his
secrets and sold several different versions of the text of his statement
to the consul of France.[205]
Death of Zola
On 29 September 1902 Zola, who was the initiator of The Affair and the
first of the intellectual Dreyfusards, died, asphyxiated by fumes from
his chimney. His wife, Alexandrine, narrowly escaped.[206] It was a
shock for the Dreyfusard clan. Anatole France, who demanded that Dreyfus
be present at the funeral while the Chief of Police wanted his absence
"to avoid problems", read his funeral oration for the author of
"J'accuse...!
The funeral of Zola, where Anatole France paid homage to his friend
Before recalling the struggle undertaken by Zola for justice and
truth is it possible for me to keep silent about those men bent on the
destruction of an innocent man and who, after feeling lost, was saved
and overwhelmed with the desperate audacity of fear?
How to depart from your sight then I have a duty to show you
Zola rises up weak and disarmed against them?
Can I hide their lies?
It would silence his heroic righteousness.
Can I hide their crimes?
That would conceal his virtue.
Can I silence the insults and calumnies which they have pursued?
It would silence his reward and honours.
Can I hide their shame?
It would silence his glory.
No, I will speak.
Envy him: he honoured his country and the world by a vast and a
great act.
Envy him, his destiny and his heart gave out the greatest.
It was a moment of human conscience.
In 1953, the newspaper Liberation published a death-bed confession by a
Parisian roofer that he had murdered Zola by blocking the chimney of his
house [1].
The semi-rehabilitation
Legal rehabilitation
Manuel Baudoin, attorney general at the heart of the rehabilitation of
Dreyfus
The elections of 1902 saw the victory of the left. Jean Jaurès was
re-elected and he revived the Affair on 7 April 1903 while France
thought the Affair buried forever. In a speech Jaurès evoked the long
list of falsehoods peppering the Dreyfus case, and placed particular
emphasis on two things, the letter of resignation from Pellieux, which
was worded in very harsh terms. Legally, it formed an admission of the
collusion of the General Staff,
[It] dupes people without honour [and] can no longer rely on the
trust of subordinates, without which command is impossible. For my side
I can not trust any of my chiefs who have been working on falsehoods, I
ask for my retirement.
and the note allegedly annotated (by Kaiser Wilhelm II), which General
Mercier had alluded to at the Rennes trial, which is reported by the
press to have influenced the judges of the Military Court.[Note
36][207][208]
Given these developments, General Louis André, the new Minister of War,
led an investigation at the instigation of Émile Combes and assisted by
judges. The investigation was conducted by Captain Antoine Louis Targe,
aide to the minister. During searches of the Statistics Section he
discovered numerous documents, most of which were obviously
fabricated.[209] In November 1903 a report was submitted to the Minister
of Justice by the Minister of War. This was in compliance with the
regulations since the Minister found an error committed by the Military
Court. This was the beginning of a new review led by lawyer Ludovic
Trarieux, the founder of the League of Human Rights, with a thorough
investigation to run over two years. The years 1904 and 1905 were
devoted to different legal phases before the Supreme Court. The court
identified three events (grounds) for review, the demonstration of the
falsification of the Panizzardi telegram, demonstration of a date change
on a document in the 1894 trial (April 1895 changed to April 1894) and
demonstration of the fact that Dreyfus had not removed the minutes
related to heavy artillery in the army.
At right, Captain Alfred Dreyfus rehabilitated at Les Invalides, talks
with General Gillain. In the centre, Targe, investigator and discoverer
of many falsehoods.
In regard to the writing of the bordereau the court was particularly
severe against Alphonse Bertillon who "reasoned badly on forged
documents". The report[Note 37] showed that the writing was certainly by
Esterhazy and that the latter had also confessed subsequently. Finally
the Court demonstrated by a comprehensive and skilled analysis of the
bordereau the futility of this purely intellectual construction and a
commission of four headed by a general of artillery, General Sebert,
maintained "it is highly unlikely that an artillery officer could write
this missive".[210]
On 9 March 1905 Attorney-General Baudouin delivered an 800-page report
in which he demanded the convictions be quashed without further
reference to another court and denounced the army. He began a
divestiture of the military justice system, which did not conclude until
1982.[211] It was not until 12 July 1906 that the Supreme Court
unanimously cancelled the judgment without reference to the military
trial at Rennes in 1899 and pronounced "the end of the rehabilitation of
Captain Dreyfus". The anti-Dreyfusards protested at this hasty
rehabilitation. The goal was obviously political: it was to finish and
finally turn the page. Nothing could dent the conviction of the
opponents of Dreyfus. This method was the most direct and most
definitive. What was annulled not only put a stop to Rennes, but the
entire chain of prior acts, beginning with the arraignment order given
by General Saussier in 1894. The Court focused on the legal aspects only
and observed that Dreyfus did not have a duty to be returned before a
Military Court for the simple reason that it should never have taken
place due to the total absence of charges:
Whereas in the final analysis of the accusation against Dreyfus
nothing remains standing and setting aside the judgment of the Military
Court leaves nothing that can be considered to be a crime or
misdemeanour; therefore by applying the final paragraph of Article 445
no reference to another court should be pronounced.
Subsequent career
Alfred Dreyfus in 1935, the year of his death.
Dreyfus was reinstated in the army with the rank of artillery major by
law on 13 July 1906. This reflected the rank to which he could
reasonably have been expected to have risen had his career not been
interrupted by the false charges against him.[212] However Dreyfus and
his supporters were disappointed that his five years of imprisonment
were not taken into account for the reconstruction of his career and
that his promotion to major was back-dated only to 10 July 1903.[212]
This decision blocked any hope of a career worthy of his past successes
before his arrest in 1894. After serving for a year as commander of the
artillery depot at Fort Neuf de Vincennes, Major Dreyfus retired in June
1907; a decision taken in part because of recurrent tropical fevers and
chronic fatigue arising from the strain of his imprisonment.[213]
On 4 June 1908 on the occasion of the transfer of the ashes of Émile
Zola to the Pantheon Alfred Dreyfus was the target of an attack. Louis
Grégori, an extreme right-wing journalist and assistant of Drumont,
fired two shots from a revolver and wounded Dreyfus slightly in the arm.
He was driven to do this for Action Française (French Action) not only
to disrupt the ceremony for the "two traitors" Zola and Dreyfus but also
to remake the Dreyfus trial through a new trial, a revenge of some
sort.[214] The trial was at the Assizes of the Seine where Grégori was
acquitted – the latest in a long series of judicial misconducts. It was
an occasion for new antisemitic riots that the government suppressed
half-heartedly.[215]
As a reserve officer Dreyfus participated in the First World War of
1914–1918, serving as head of the artillery depot at a fortified camp
near Paris and commander of a supply column. In 1917 he saw frontline
service at the Chemin des Dames and Verdun. Ironically, apart from Major
Du Paty de Clam, Dreyfus was the only officer directly involved in the
Affair to serve in the war.[216] Having been named as a Chevalier of the
Legion of Honour at the time of his reinstatement in 1906, Dreyfus was
promoted to the rank of officer of the Legion of Honour in 1919. His
son, Pierre Dreyfus, also served in World War I as an artillery officer
and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Alfred Dreyfus's two nephews also
fought as artillery officers in the French Army and both were killed.
The same artillery piece, the secrets of which Dreyfus was accused of
revealing to the Germans, was used in blunting the early German
offensives because of its ability to maintain accuracy during rapid
fire. He ended his military career as a colonel.[217]
Dreyfus died on 12 July 1935 at the age of seventy-five years. His
funeral cortège passed through ranks assembled for Bastille Day
celebrations at the Place de la Concorde and he was buried in
Montparnasse Cemetery. Colonel Picquart was also officially
rehabilitated and reintegrated into the army with the rank of Brigadier
general. He was Minister of War from 1906 to 1909 in the first
Clemenceau government. He died in January 1914 in a riding accident.[218]
Consequences of the Dreyfus Affair
For some the Dreyfus affair marked French society as a tortured society.
All sections of society were affected; some were devastated.[219]
According to Katrin Schultheiss, a modern historian:
The enduring significance of the Dreyfus Affair ... lies in its
manifest embodiment of multiple narratives and multiple strands of
historical causality. It shows how longstanding beliefs and tensions can
be transformed ... into a juggernaut that alters the political and
cultural landscape for decades. In the interest of increasing our
understanding ... the complexities of that transformation should be
recognized and analyzed rather than packaged for moral or political
usefulness.[220]
Political consequences
"Bilan fin de siècle" (Assessment at the end of the century),
anti-Republican caricature published in Le Pèlerin in 1900
The Affair brought the confrontation between two sides of France to
life.[221] However, according to most historians, this opposition served
the republican order. There was indeed a strengthening of parliamentary
democracy and a failure of monarchist and reactionary forces.
The excessive violence of the nationalist parties brought together
Republicans in a united front, which defeated attempts to return to the
old order.[222] In the short term, progressive political forces from the
elections of 1893 and confirmed in 1898 as a result of the Dreyfus
affair disappeared in 1899. The shock trials of Esterhazy and Zola
created a dreyfusian politics whose aim was to develop a Republican
consciousness and to fight against authoritarian nationalism, which
expressed itself during the Affair. For the uninhibited growth of
populist nationalism was another major result of the event in French
politics even though it did not originate from the Dreyfus affair. It
grew out of the Boulanger Affair, 1886–1889, and was shaped into a
coherent theory by Maurice Barrès in 1892.[223] Nationalism had its ups
and downs, but managed to maintain itself as a political force under the
name of French Action, among others, until the defeat of 1940 when,
after fifty years of struggle, it came to power and tried out the old
dream of Drumont, "to purify" the state with the consequences that are
well known. On that occasion many Republicans rallied to Vichy, without
which the operation of the State would have been precarious, which
showed the fragility of the republican institution in extreme
circumstances.[224] Upon liberation, Charles Maurras who was convicted
on 25 January 1945 for acts of collaboration exclaimed at the verdict:
"This is the revenge of Dreyfus!"[225]
The other result was an intellectual mutation of socialism. Jaurès was a
late Dreyfusard (January 1898) and was persuaded by revolutionary
socialists.[226] His commitment became unwavering alongside Georges
Clemenceau and from 1899 under the influence of Lucien Herr. The year
1902 saw the birth of two parties: the French Socialist Party, which
brought together jaurésiens; and the Socialist Party of France under the
influence of Guesde and Vaillant. Both parties merged in 1905 as the
French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO).
In addition 1901 saw the birth of the Republican radical socialist
Party, the first modern political party,[227] conceived as an electoral
machine of the Republican group. It had a permanent structure and relied
on networks of Dreyfusards. The creation of the French League for Human
Rights was contemporaneous with the affair. It was the hub of the
intellectual left and extremely active at the beginning of the century,
the conscience of the humanist left.
The final consequence on the political scene at the turn of the century
saw a profound renewal of political personalities with the disappearance
of great republican figures beginning with Auguste Scheurer-Kestner.
Those who at the end of the century could weigh heavily on the events of
the affair had now disappeared giving way to new men whose ambition was
to reform and correct the errors and injustices of the past.
Social consequences
Family of Félix Vallotton in Le Cri de Paris. The Dreyfus Affair
lastingly cut France in two, even within families.
Socially antisemitism was prominent. Existing prior to the Dreyfus
affair it had expressed itself during the boulangisme affair and the
Panama Canal scandal but was limited to an intellectual elite. The
Dreyfus Affair spread hatred of Jews through all strata of society, a
movement that certainly began with the success of Jewish France by
Édouard Drumont in 1886 but was then greatly amplified by various legal
episodes and press campaigns for nearly fifteen years. Antisemitism was
from then on official and was exposed in numerous settings including the
working classes.[228] Candidates for the legislative elections took
advantage of antisemitism as a watchword in parliamentary elections.
This antisemitism was reinforced by the crisis of the separation of
church and state in 1905, which probably led to its height in France.
Antisemitic actions were permitted on the advent of the Vichy regime,
which allowed free and unrestrained expression of racial hatred. At the
end of the war the monstrosity of the Final Solution was known by all
and even today the expression of antisemitism is revealed from time to
time through declarations of nationalist parties, which are all the more
startling that they have become rarities.[Note 38] The persistence of
residual antisemitic sentiment in France still seems likely to continue
for certain crimes that from time to time may make headlines.[Note 39]
Another social consequence was the enhanced role of the press. For the
first time it exerted an important influence on French political
life.[229] It was possible to speak of a fourth estate since it could
act the part of all state organs.[230] Especially as the high editorial
quality of the press was mainly derived from the work of writers and
novelists who used newspapers as a revolutionary way of expression. The
power of the press certainly brought politicians to action, an example
of which was Mercier, who appeared to have pushed at the Dreyfus trial
in 1894 to please La Libre Parole who attacked ferociously. This being
said the role of the press was limited by the size of circulation,
influential in Paris but to a lesser extent nationwide.[231] The entire
run of the national press appeared to revolve around four and a half
million copies whose real influence was relatively strong. There was
also assistance through the publication in 1899 of a specific newspaper
intended to coordinate the fight (in the dreyfusist camp), with the
People's Daily of Sébastien Faure.
International consequences
Theodor Herzl created the Zionist Congress after the Dreyfus affair.
The Dreyfus affair created difficulties and blocked the way for improved
relations between France and Italy after the customs war as Italy was
Europe's most Dreyfusard nation.[232]
The shock of the Dreyfus Affair also affected the Zionist movement
"which found fertile ground for its emergence".[233]
The Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl appeared profoundly moved
by the Dreyfus affair, which followed his debut as a correspondent for
the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna and was present at the degradation of
Dreyfus in 1895. "The Affair ... acted as a catalyst in the conversion
of Herzl". Before the wave of antisemitism that accompanied the
degradation Herzl was "convinced of the need to resolve the Jewish
question", which became "an obsession for him". In Der Judenstaat (State
of the Jews), he considered that:
[I]f France – bastion of emancipation, progress and universal
socialism – [can] get caught up in a maelstrom of antisemitism and let
the Parisian crowd chant 'Kill the Jews!' Where can they be safe once
again – if not in their own country? Assimilation does not solve the
problem because the Gentile world will not allow it as the Dreyfus
affair has so clearly demonstrated ...[234]
The shock was much stronger having lived his youth in Austria, an
antisemitic country, Herzl chose to live in France for the humanist
image that it claimed was a shelter from extremist excess. He had
originally been a fanatic supporter for assimilation of Jews into
European Gentile society. The Dreyfus Affair shook Herzl's view on the
world, and he became completely enveloped in a tiny movement calling for
the restoration of a Jewish State within the biblical homeland in
Israel. Herzl quickly took charge in leading the movement.
He organized on 29 August 1897, the First Zionist Congress in Basel and
is considered the "inventor of Zionism as a real political
movement".[attribution needed] Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary (1
September 1897):
Were I to sum up the Basel Congress in a word – which I shall guard
against pronouncing publicly – it would be this: At Basel I founded the
Jewish State. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by
universal laughter. Perhaps in five years, and certainly in fifty,
everyone will recognize this.[235]
On 29 November 1947, a little over fifty years after the First Zionist
Congress, the United Nations voted in favor to partition Palestine into
a Jewish State. The following year the state of Israel was established.
Consequently, the Dreyfus Affair is seen as a turning point in Jewish
history and as the beginning of the Zionist movement.[citation needed]
The Dreyfus affair also marked a turning point in the lives of many Jews
from Western and Central Europe, as the pogroms of 1881–1882 had done
for the Jews of Eastern Europe, as many Jews had believed that they were
Frenchman first. Yet Jews, despite the state-sanctioned efforts of the
emancipation movement, were never truly accepted into society and were
often deemed as aliens and outsiders,[236] even when they showed extreme
devotion by fighting courageously in the wars of their respective
countries.[15]
Other related events
Commission of sculpture
In 1985, President François Mitterrand commissioned a statue of Dreyfus
by sculptor Louis Mitelberg. It was to be installed at the École
Militaire but the Minister of Defense refused to display it there, even
though Alfred Dreyfus had been rehabilitated into the Army and fully
exonerated in 1906. It was instead installed at Boulevard Raspail, No.
116–118 at the exit of the Notre-Dame-des-Champs metro station, where it
can be found today. A replica is located at the entrance of Paris's
Museum of Jewish Art and History, housing the Fond Dreyfus, more than
three thousand historical documents donated by the grandchildren of
Captain Dreyfus.
Centennial commemoration
On 12 July 2006 President Jacques Chirac held an official state ceremony
marking the centenary of Dreyfus's official rehabilitation. This was
held in the presence of the living descendants of both Émile Zola and
Alfred Dreyfus. The event took place in the same cobblestone courtyard
of Paris's École Militaire where Capitaine Dreyfus had been officially
stripped of his officer's rank. Chirac stated that "the combat against
the dark forces of intolerance and hate is never definitively won", and
called Dreyfus "an exemplary officer" and a "patriot who passionately
loved France". The French National Assembly also held a memorial
ceremony of the centennial marking the end of the Affair. This was held
in remembrance of the 1906 laws that had reintegrated and promoted both
Dreyfus and Picquart at the end of the Dreyfus affair.
Historiography of the Dreyfus Affair
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List of documents in the French National Archives related to the Dreyfus
affair and given by the ministry of Justice.
The Dreyfus Affair is distinguished by the large number of books
published on this subject.[Note 40] A substantial portion of these
publications are mere polemical and not historical books. These works
can however be consulted in the context of a study of psycho-social
aspects of the Affair.[237][238]
The great interest in the study of the Dreyfus affair lies in the fact
that all records are readily available. Although the debates of the
Military Court of 1894 were not taken in shorthand, the accounts of all
public hearings of the many trials in the Affair can be consulted. In
addition, a large number of records are easily accessible in the French
National Archives and in the Military Archives at the fort of Vincennes.
The contemporary literature of the case was published between 1894 and
1906. Beginning with the pamphlet of Bernard Lazare, the first
intellectual Dreyfusard: despite factual errors, it remains a testament
of the different stages of the review.
The work of Joseph Reinach, The History of the Dreyfus Affair in seven
volumes, which first appeared in 1901 and ended with the index in 1911,
was the reference for the publication of the scientific historical work
delivered from 1960. It contains a wealth of accurate information
despite some interpretations generally challenged on the why of the
Affair.[239]
On the other hand, there are "instant memoires" of direct witnesses like
the antisemitic and dishonest book of Esterhazy, or those of Alfred
Dreyfus himself in Five years of my life. These are testaments to
complete the panorama of the Affair.
The precis of the Dreyfus Affair by "Henri-Dutrait Crozon", a pseudonym
of Colonel Larpent,[Note 41] is the basis of all anti-Dreyfusard
literature after the Affair to the present time. The author develops the
theory of conspiracy, fueled by Jewish finance, to push Esterhazy to
accuse himself of crime. Under a scientific exterior there will be found
there an elaboration of theories without evidence or support.
The publication of notes by Schwartzkoppen in 1930 shed light on the
guilty role of Esterházy in the Affair and exonerated Alfred Dreyfus at
the same time, if it was needed. The extreme right questioned the value
of this testimony but most historians hold it to be a valid source
despite some ambiguities and inaccuracies.
The period of the Occupation throws a veil over the case. The Liberation
and the revelation of the Holocaust brought a deep reflection on all of
the Dreyfus Affair. Jacques Kayser (1946) then Maurice Paléologue (1955)
and Henri Giscard d'Estaing (1960) revived the case without great
revelations, a process generally considered insufficient historically.
First brochure of A Miscarriage of Justice, Bernard Lazare published in
1896 in Brussels
Marcel Thomas, chief curator at the National Archives, in 1961 provided
through his The Affair without Dreyfus in two volumes a complete review
of the history of the affair supported by all available public and
private archives. His work is the foundation of all subsequent
historical studies.[240]
Henri Guillemin in the same year with his Enigma Esterházy seemed to
find the key to the "riddle" in the existence of a third man (other than
Dreyfus and Esterhazy), an explanation that was shared momentarily with
Michel Lombarès then abandoned a few years later.
Jean Doise, of the École Normale Supérieure and a military professional
with a strong technical background attempts to explain the genesis of
the case through the development, between 1892 and 1897, of the French
75mm field gun. Doise proposes in A Secret well guarded. Military
History of the Dreyfus Affair that Alfred Dreyfus had been used by
French counterintelligence to distract German espionage from the French
75's secret development and furthermore that Esterhazy, who once served
in military counterintelligence, had played a role in this manipulation.
These hypotheses are regarded with skepticism.
In 1983, the lawyer and historian Jean-Denis Bredin published L'Affair
(The Affair); it is recognized as the best summary[citation needed] of
the Dreyfus affair. The interest of the book focuses on a strictly
factual relating of the story with documented facts and multifaceted
reflection on the different aspects of the event. The book also revealed
for the first time the existence of homosexual correspondence in the
prosecution case.
Reflecting the intense interest in social history that gripped
historians since the 1960s and 1970s, Eric Cahm wrote The Dreyfus Affair
in French Society and Politics (1996), an excellent analysis of the
sociology of the Affair. Michael Burns, Rural Society and French
Politics, Boulangism and the Dreyfus Affair, 1886–1900 (1984) does the
same in a more limited fashion. Vincent Duclert's Biography of Alfred
Dreyfus (2005) includes, in 1300 pages, the complete correspondence of
Alfred and Lucie Dreyfus from 1894 to 1899.
Expanding on a 2008 article they published in la Revue d'histoire
moderne et contemporaine, in 2012 the historians Pierre Gervais, Pauline
Peretz and Pierre Stutin published Le dossier secret de l'affaire
Dreyfus (The Secret Record of the Dreyfus Affair). Their research
enabled the original contents of the secret file to be established.
Their thesis was that historians had neglected the correspondence of
Schwartzkoppen and Panizzardi, and that homosexuality played a central
role in the slandering of Dreyfus.[10][11]
In addition the Dreyfus Affair provided the basis for many novels. The
last work of Émile Zola (1902), Truth, transposes the Dreyfus affair to
the world of education. Anatole France published Island of penguins
(1907), which recounts the Affair in Book VI: "The Case of 80,000
bundles of hay".[241] Marcel Proust devoted significant passages of his
second, third and fourth volumes of In Search of Lost Time to Parisian
society's reaction to the Dreyfus affair. Other authors have also
contributed, such as Roger Martin du Gard, Maurice Barrès, and Robert
Harris.
Many artifacts and documents related to the affair are on display in the
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme in Paris.
See also
Beilis affair
Hilsner Affair
Leo Frank affair
Human Rights League (France)
The Dreyfus Affair (film series), an 1899 series of short silent
docudramas
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme
Notes
Dreyfus was from Mulhouse, as were Sandherr and Scheurer-Kestner,
Picquart was from Strasbourg, Zurlinden was from Colmar.
Auguste Scheurer-Kestner in a speech in the Senate.
This was the purpose of the letter intercepted by the French SR called
the "Scoundrel D ...", used in the "secret file" to convict Dreyfus
Count Esterházy was, ironically, one of the witnesses for Crémieu-Foa
Acute spy mania? Panic by the General Staff? Brainwashing of the French
SR? Smokescreen for the development of ultra secret 75 mm gun?[citation
needed]
Hypotheses because the evidence does not exist.[citation needed]
The French word bordereau [bɔʁ.də.ʁo] means simply a note or slip of
paper and can be applied to any note. In French many documents in the
case were called bordereaux; however, in this translation the term
bordereau is used only for this note.
On the indication of Captain Matton, the only artillery officer in the
Statistics Section. Three of the documents transmitted concerned short-
and long-range artillery.
The documents could come from 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th offices – only a
trainee appeared able to offer such a variety of documents as they
passed from one office to another to complete their training. This was
the reasoning of Lieutenant-Colonel d’Aboville, which proved fallacious.
From General Saussier, Governor of Paris for example.
Expert in writing from the Bank of France: his honest caution was
vilified in the indictment of Major Ormescheville.
"[...] he speaks several languages, especially German which he knows
thoroughly."
These are treated in the single penultimate paragraph in one sentence:
"The material elements consist of the incriminating letter including
review by the majority of experts as well as by us and by the witnesses
who have seen it until now except for those who wilfully see
differences, showing a complete similarity with the authentic writing of
Captain Dreyfus".
Trial takes place solely in the presence of judges, the accused, and his
defence.
Deputy Head of SR and discoverer of the bordereau.
This was obviously wrong. The motive of Mercier was much to condemn
Dreyfus unbeknownst to the defence. V. indictment.
The temperature reached 45 °C, he was underfed or fed contaminated food
and hardly had any treatment for his many tropical diseases.
It was he who had been the captain on the morning of 15 October 1894 at
the scene of the dictation.
Cassagnac, though antisemitic, published an article entitled Doubt (in
French) in mid-September 1896.
Otherwise known as "faux patriotique" [patriotic forgery] by the
anti-Dreyfusards.
Alexandrine, Panizzardi's usual signature.
"He had already intervened in Le Figaro in May 1896, in the article "For
the Jews".
According to the Syndicat of 1 December 1897 and the Minutes of 5
December 1897.
At that time the heart of the artistic avant-garde, publishing Marcel
Proust, Saint-Pol-Roux, Jules Renard, Charles Péguy, et al.
"What is already judged is held to be true".
The room is emptied as soon as discussion covers topics related to
national defence, i.e., the testimony of Picquart.
President Delegorgue refused to be questioned when he was called to the bar.
The role of General Mercier is thus greatly underestimated,
He is treated as a stateless Italian immigrant.
On 2 February, Octave Mirbeau, Laurent Tailhade, Pierre Quillard and
Georges Courteline, among others, in L'Aurore signed an "Address to
Émile Zola" assuring him of their support "in the name of justice and
truth".
Le Siecle and L’Áurore among others.
Octave Mirbeau paid 7,525 francs from his own pocket, which represented
the amount of the fine and court costs on 8 August 1898.
Of the 40 members of the French Academy Anatole France was the only
revisionist.
The court did make several detailed scientific expert assessments to
conclude with certainty.
Maurice Barrès made a poignant description of Dreyfus.
Faced with the evidence that the identity of the writer of the bordereau
was Esterházy, the General Staff had spread the rumour that the
bordereau was in fact copied from a note that was even commented in the
handwriting of the German Emperor Wilhelm II. This allowed the people
behind the rumours to explain the secrecy surrounding the whole affair,
and the transmission of the "secret file" in 1894. Evidently, nobody
ever found any evidence of these convenient assertions.
Among the experts consulted, the contribution of the mathematician and
physicist Henri Poincaré was noted.
Because of the penalty.
Although the underlying attitude is largely Islamist Jew-hatred, rather
than the Christian antisemitism that animated the anti-Dreyfusards.
The bibliography listed in this article only exposes a small part of
what has been published for over a century.
Inspired by Major Cuignet.
Sources
Book or article used as a source for writing this article
Primary sources
1898 (in French) Verbatim record of the trial of Emile Zola in the
Assizes of the Seine and the Supreme Court.
1898 (in French) Enquiry of the Supreme Court (1898–1899).
1898 (in French) Proceedings of the Supreme Court for the revision
of the Dreyfus trial.
1899 (in French) Verbatim record of the proceedings of Rennes
Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3
1904 (in French) Memoire of Alfred Dreyfus to the Supreme Court.
1904 (in French) Enquiry of the Supreme Court.
1906 (in French) Debates of the Supreme Court.
1906 (in French) Decision of the Supreme Court for the verdict of
the Dreyfus trial without reference to 1899.
2013 (in English) The Secret File, posted online by Ministry of
Defence 6 March 2013 and transcription
Reference bibliography
1901 (in French) Joseph Reinach, History of the Dreyfus Affair,
Fasquelle, 1901–1911; éd. Robert Laffont, two vol., 2006 231.
1961 (in French) Marcel Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus, Fayard
– Idégraf (Geneva), 1961–1979 – 2 volumes.
1981 (in French) Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair, Fayard, Paris, 1993
(1ère édition 1981) (ISBN 2-260-00346-X).
1986 (in English) Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: the Case of Alfred
Dreyfus, George Braziller, New York, ISBN 0-8076-1175-1 Plunkett Lake
Press Ebooks
2005 (in French) Vincent Duclert, Biography of Alfred Dreyfus, The
honour of a patriot, Fayard, Paris, 2006 (ISBN 2213627959).
Other general works
McMillan, James F. Twentieth-Century France: Politics and Society
in France 1898–1991 (1992) pp. 3–12
Sowerwine, Charles. France since 1870: Culture, Society and the
Making of the Republic (2001) excerpt and text search pp. 67–72
1984 (in English) Michael Burns, Rural Society and French Politics,
Boulangism and the Dreyfus Affair, 1886–1900 Princeton University Press.
1991 (in English) Alfred S. Lindemann, The Jew Accused: Three
Anti-Semitic Affairs, Dreyfus, Beilis, Frank, 1894–1914 (Cambridge
University Press).
1992 (in English) Michael Burns, Dreyfus: A Family Affair, from the
French Revolution to the Holocaust, New York: Harper.
1998 (in English) Michael Burns, France and the Dreyfus Affair: A
Documentary History (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's)
1996 (in English) Eric Cahm, The Dreyfus Affair in French Society
and Politics New York: Longman
2006 (in English) George R. Whyte, The Accused – The Dreyfus
Trilogy, Inter Nationes, ISBN 3-929979-28-4
2006 (in English) George R. Whyte, The Dreyfus Affair – A
chronological history, Palgrave Macmillan 2006, ISBN 978-0-230-20285-6
2007 (in English) Ruth Harris, The Assumptionists and the Dreyfus
Affair, Past & Present (2007) 194#1 175–211. in Project MUSE
2010 (in English) Ruth Harris, Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the
Scandal of the Century (Henry Holt and Company)
2008 (in French) Philippe Oriol, History of the Dreyfus Affair –
Vol 1 – The History of Captain Dreyfus, Stock, (ISBN 978-2-234-06080-7)
2009 (in English) Louis Begley, Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters
(Yale University Press)
2010 (in English) Frederick Brown, For the Soul of France: Culture
Wars in the Age of Dreyfus (Alfred A. Knopf)
2012 (in English) Robert L. Fuller, The Origins of the French
Nationalist Movement, 1886–1914, Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
2012 (in English) Piers Paul Read, The Dreyfus Affair, Bloomsbury,
London
In French
1961 (in French) Pierre Miquel, The Dreyfus Affair, University of
France Press – PUF – coll. "What do I know?", réprinted 2003 (ISBN
2130532268)
1989 (in French) Pierre Miquel, The Third Republic, Fayard
1986 (in French) Michel Winock, The fever of France. The great
political crises. 1871–1968, Points Seuil, (ISBN 2020098318)
1999 (in French) Michel Winock, The School of Intellectuals, Le
Seuil, coll. Points
1994 (in French) Pierre Birnbaum, The Dreyfus Affair, The Republic
in peril, Gallimard, coll. "Discoveries", (ISBN 978-2070532773).
1994 (in French) Pierre Birnbaum, The France of the Dreyfus Affair,
Gallimard, Paris
1998 (in French) Pierre Birnbaum, Was the French Army Antisemitic?,
pp. 70–82 in Michel Winock: The Dreyfus Affair, Editions du Seuil,
Paris, ISBN 2-02-032848-8
1994 (in French) Michael Burns, Histoire d'une famille française,
les Dreyfus, Fayard, 1994 (ISBN 978-2213031323)
1994 (in French) Éric Cahm, The Dreyfus Affair, Päperback, coll.
"references"
1994 (in French) Michel Drouin (dir.), The Dreyfus Affair
Dictionary, Flammarion, reprinted 2006 (ISBN 2082105474).
1994 (in French) Vincent Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, The
Discovery, reprinted 2006 (ISBN 2707147931).
2006 (in French) Vincent Duclert, Dreyfus is Innocent: History of
an Affair of State, Larousse, (ISBN 203582639X)
2006 (in French) Vincent Duclert, Alfred Dreyfus, Librairie Artheme
Fayard, ISBN 2-213-62795-9
2010 (in French) Vincent Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair. When justice
enlightens the Republic, Private
1999 (in English) Martin P. Johnson, The Dreyfus Affair: Honour and
Politics in the Belle Epoque (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).
2000 (in French) Francis Démier, The France of the Nineteenth
Century, Seuil, coll. "Points in History".
2006 (in French) Méhana Mouhou, Dreyfus Affair: conspiracy in the
Republic, Éd. L'Harmattan.
2012 (in French) Pierre Gervais, Pauline Peretz et Pierre Stutin,
The secret file of the Dreyfus Affair, Alma editor, (ISBN 978-2362790430)
Specialised works
1960 (in French) Patrice Boussel, The Dreyfus Affair and the Press,
Armand Colin, coll. "Kiosk", 272 pp.
1962 (in French) Henri Guillemin, The Esterházy Enigma, Gallimard
1994 (in French) Jean Doise, A Secret well guarded – Military
History of the Dreyfus Affair, Le Seuil, 225 pp. (ISBN 2-02-021100-9)
1998 (in French) Philippe-E. Landau, Jewish Opinion and the Dreyfus
Affair, Albin Michel, "The Presence of Judaism", paperback
2000 (in French) Armand Israël, The hidden truth of the Dreyfus
Affair, Albin Michel, (ISBN 2-226-11123-9)
2000 (in French) Collective, Intellectuals face the Dreyfus Affair,
then and now, L'Harmattan, (ISBN 978-2738460257)
2004 (in French) Général André Bach, The Army of Dreyfus. A
political history of the French army from Charles X to "The Affair",
Tallandier, (ISBN 2-84734-039-4)
2006 (in French) Thierry Lévy, Jean-Pierre Royer, Labori, a lawyer,
Louis Audibert Éditions, (ISBN 2-226-11123-9)
2006 (in French) Supreme Court, collective, Justice in the Dreyfus
Affair, Fayard, (ISBN 978-2213629520)
2006 (in French) Pierre Touzin et Francois Vauvillier, Guns of
Victory 1914–1918, Volume 1, The Artillery of the campaign. History and
Collections, Paris. ISBN 2-35250-022-2
2010 (in French) Georges Joumas, Echos of the Dreyfus Affair for an
Orléanais, Corsaire Éditions, (ISBN 978-2-910475-12-3)
2013 (in English) Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez, Math on trial.
How numbers get used and abused in the courtroom, Basic Books, 2013.
ISBN 978-0-465-03292-1. (Chapter 10: "Math error number 10: mathematical
madness. The Dreyfus affair: spy or scapegoat?").
Anti-Dreyfusard works
1909 (in French) Henri Dutrait-Crozon, Précis of the Dreyfus
Affair, Paris, New National Library, First Editionmière, Final Edition 1924.
Articles and newspapers
1978 (in French) Dreyfusards!: Memories from Mathieu Dreyfus and
other novelties (presented by Robert Gauthier). Gallimard & Julliard,
coll. Archives No. 16, Paris
1988 (in French) Max Guermann, "The terrible truth", Revue Les
Cahiers Naturalistes, No. 62.
1994 (in French) Revue in L'Histoire n o 173, Spécial Dreyfus,
January 1994
2005 (in French) Special edition of Le Figaro on 12 July 2005, The
centenary of the rehabilitation of Captain Dreyfus
2006 (in English) Kim Willsher (27 June 2006), "Calls for Dreyfus
to be buried in Panthéon", The Guardian
2006 (in English) Ronald Schechter (7 July 2006), "The Ghosts of
Alfred Dreyfus", The Forward.
2006 (in English) Stanley Meisler (9 July 2006), "Not just a Jew in
a French jail", Los Angeles Times
2006 (in English) Adam Kirsch (11 July 2006), "The Most Shameful of
Stains", The New York Sun
2007 (in French) Thomas Loué, "The Dreyfus Affair", in L. Boltanski
et alii éds., Affairs, scandals, and great causes, Paris, Stock, pp. 213–227
2012 (in English) Schultheiss, Katrin. "The Dreyfus Affair and
History", Journal of The Historical Society, 12 189–203.
doi:10.1111/j.1540-5923.2012.00362.x
Testimonials
1898 (in French) Jean Jaurès, The Evidence, Collection of Articles
appearing in La Petite République – available on Wikisource
1898 (in French) Alfred Dreyfus, Letters of an Innocent man, Stock
1935 (in French) Alfred Dreyfus, Five years of my life, Fasquelle,
Paris, 1935, reprinted 2006 (The Discovery) (ISBN 2707148067)
1898 (in French) Paschal Grousset, The Dreyfus Affair and its
secret remits: a historical summary, ed Godet et Cie, Paris, 240 p.
1899 (in French) Paschal Grousset, The Dreyfus Affair, the word of
an enigma. Paris, Stock.
1899 (in French) Georges Clemenceau, Towards Reparation, Tresse & Stock
1899 (in French) Georges Clemenceau, The Iniquity, Stock
1903 (in French) Georges Clemenceau, The Disgrace
1955 (in French) Maurice Paléologue, The Dreyfus Affair and the
Quai d'Orsay, Plon
1978 (in French) Mathieu Dreyfus, The Affair that I have lived,
Bernard Grasset, Paris. (ISBN 2-246-00668-6)
1991 (in French) Octave Mirbeau, The Dreyfus Affair, Librairie Séguier.
1993 (in French) Léon Blum, Memories of The Affair, Flammarion,
Folio Histoire, (ISBN 978-2070327522)
2006 (in French) Émile Zola, Fight for Dreyfus. Preface by Martine
Le Blond-Zola. Postscript by Jean-Louis Lévy. Presentation and notes
d'Alain Pagès. Dilecta Edition.
Other reference material
Literature
1898 (in English) Poems written by Philadelphia poet Florence Earle
Coates (1850–1927) about the affair:
"Dreyfus" – published in Poet Lore (September 1898) and
subsequently in Mine and Thine (1904).
"Dreyfus" – a fugitive poem published in The Independent (16
February 1899).
"Picquart" – published in The Century Magazine (July 1902) and
subsequently in Mine and Thine (1904) and Poems Vol II.
"Le Grand Salut" – published in The Living Age (25 August 1906)
and subsequently in Lyrics of Life (1909) and Poems Vol II.
1908 (in French) Anatole France: A satirical take on the Dreyfus
affair appears in Island of Penguins.
1913 (in French) Roger Martin du Gard: The Dreyfus affair occupies
most of Martin du Gard's novel Jean Barois.
1922 (in French) Marcel Proust, The Dreyfus affair plays an
important part in In Search of Lost Time, especially Vols. 3 and 4.
1994 (in English) The Dreyfus Centenary Committee, The Dreyfus
Centenary Bulletin, London/Bonn.
1994 (in French) George Whyte, The Affair in Song; Paris
Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine BDIC; Paris,
Flammarion.
1996 (in English) George Whyte, The Dreyfus Trilogy, Inter Nationes.
2006 (in English) George Whyte, The Dreyfus Affair, A Chronological
History, Palgrave Macmillan.
2007 (in English) George Whyte. Admission is not Acceptance –
Reflections on the Dreyfus Affair. Antisemitism. London Valentine
Mitchell, 2007; Paris Editions Le Manuscript/Unesco 2008, Buenos Aires
Lilmod 2009, Moscow Xonokoct 2010.
2009 (in English) A. S. Byatt, The Dreyfus Affair is mentioned
several times in The Children's Book.
2010 (in English) Kate Taylor, A Man in Uniform.
2010 (in Italian) Umberto Eco, The Dreyfus Affair is woven into the
plot of The Prague Cemetery.
2010 (in German) Peter Lang, Die Dreyfus Affäre – Die Macht des
Vorurteils, Frankfurt, ISBN 978-3-631-60218-8
2011 (in English) The Dreyfus Affair – A Trilogy of Plays, Oberon
Books, London, January 2011.
2013 (in English) Robert Harris, An Officer and a Spy, London:
Hutchinson. 2013. ISBN 978-0-09-194455-1
Filmography
News and stories
1899 (in French) Dereliction of Duty in the Trial at Rennes –
Sequence of images
1899 (in French) Mrs Dreyfus and her lawyer at the exit of the
prison at Rennes – Sequence of images
1899 (in French) The Dreyfus Affair (reconstructed scenes, 11
episodes, 15 min) by Georges Méliès (a Dreyfusard) – DVD 2008 par Studio
Canal
1899 (in French) The Dreyfus Affair (reconstructed scenes, 6
episodes) – Actualités Pathé
1902 (in French) The Dreyfus Affair – French film attributed to
Ferdinand Zecca produced by Pathé
1907 (in French) The Dreyfus Affair – French film by Lucien Nonguet
produced by Pathé
Documentaries
1965 (in French) The Dreyfus Affair, French film by Jean Vigne,
made for schools – Black and White – 18 min
1972 (in English) The Dreyfus Affair, American Documentary Film –
Black and White – 15 min
1974 (in French) Dreyfus or the Intolerable Truth, French
Documentary Film by Jean Chérasse – Colour – 90 min – DVD 2006 by
Alpamedia/Janus Diffusion
1994 (in French) Reasons of State: Chronicle of the Dreyfus Affair,
French film in two episodes by Pierre Sorlin – Colour – 26 min
Cinema films
1899 (in English) Trial of Captain Dreyfus, American film – Black
and White
1919 (in French) J'accuse, French silent film by Abel Gance – Black
and White
1930 (in German) The Dreyfus Case, German Film by Richard Oswald –
Black and White – 115 min
1931 (in English) The Dreyfus Case, English Film by F Kraemer and
Milton Rosmer – Black and White – 90 min
1937 (in English) The Life of Émile Zola, American Film by William
Dieterle – Black and White – 90 min
1958 (in English) I Accuse!, American film by José Ferrer – Black
and White – 90 min
1960 (in Greek) I am innocent, Greek film by Dinos Katsouridis –
Black and White – 90 min
2014 (in English) (in progress) : D, film by Roman
Polanski[242][243][244]
TV films
1964 (in English) In the first season episode "Rock-a-Bye Munster",
of the TV show The Munsters, Herman and Lilly mention meeting 'that
charming Captain Dreyfus' on their honeymoon at Devil's Island.
1966 (in English) The Time Tunnel, episode "Devil's Island". Story
in which Drs. Newman & Phillips encounter Captain Dreyfus, newly arrived
on Devil's Island. ABC, broadcast on 11 November 1966.
1968 (in German) Affaire Dreyfus, German film in 3 episodes by ZDF[245]
1978 (in French) Zola or the Human Conscience, French film in four
episodes by Stellio Lorenzi – Produced by Antenne 2 – Colour
1991 (in English) Can a Jew Be innocent?, English film in four
episodes by Jack Emery – Produced by the BBC – Colour – 30 min (X4)
1991 (in English) Prisoner of Honour, American Film by Ken Russell
– Colour – 88 min
1994 (in French) The Dreyfus Affair, French film in two episodes by
Yves Boisset – Produced by France 2 – Colour
1994 (in French) Rage and Outrage, by George Whyte, French film –
Produced by ARTE – Colour
1995 (in English) Dreyfus in Opera and Ballet, German and English
film by arte – Produced by WDR – Colour
1995 (in German) Die Affäre Dreyfus, German film in two episodes by
arte.[246]
Theatre
1895 (in English) Seymour Hicks wrote a drama titled One of the
Best, based on the Dreyfus trial, starring William Terriss. It played at
the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1895. The idea was suggested to Hicks
by W. S. Gilbert.
1992 (in English) AJIOM/Captain Dreyfus, Musical. Music and text by
George Whyte.
1994 (De En) The Dreyfus Trilogy by George Whyte (in collaboration
with Luciano Berio, Jost Meier and Alfred Schnittke) comprising the
opera Dreyfus-Die Affäre (Deutsche Oper Berlin, 8 May 1994; Theater
Basle, 16 October 1994; The Dreyfus Affair New York City Opera, April
1996); the dance drama Dreyfus-J'accuse (Oper der Stadt Bonn, 4
September 1994) and the musical satire Rage et Outrage (Arte, April
1994; Zorn und Schande, Arte 1994; Rage and Outrage Channel 4, May 1994).
1998 (in English) Dreyfus: Prisoner of Devil's Island – Music
Theatre piece – Music and Lyrics by Bryan Kesselman, St Giles
Cripplegate, London, November 1998; Part of the 9th London international
Jewish Music Festival.
2008 Dreyfus In time by George Whyte, Opernhaus Zurich, December
2008; Jüdisches Museum Berlin, May 2009. Also in German, English,
French, Hungarian, Hebrew and Czech.
Radio
1995 (in French) The Dreyfus Affair, interview with George Whyte,
France Culture, 25 March 1995.
1998 (in French) J'accuse, George Whyte, Canadian Broadcasting
Service (CBS), 10 October 1998.
2005 (in English) The Dreyfus Affair, interview with George Whyte,
BBC Radio 3. By John Pilgrim, 28 October 2005.
2009 (in English) BBC Radio, J'Accuse, UK, Hattie Naylor. Radio
dramatisation inspired by a newspaper article written by Émile Zola in
response to the Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s. BBC Radio 4, broadcast on
13 June 2009.
2009 (in English) "In Our Time, The Dreyfus Affair" Downloadable
discussion on BBC Radio 4. Melvyn Bragg; Robert Gildea, Professor of
Modern History at Oxford University; Ruth Harris, Lecturer in Modern
History at Oxford University; Robert Tombs, Professor of French History
at Cambridge University.[247]
2010 (in English) Interview with Ruth Harris about her book
Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, And the Scandal of the Century (2010).[248]
References
Guy Canivet, first President of the Supreme Court, Justice from the
Dreyfus Affair, p. 15.
"Judgment of the Supreme Court on 12 July 1906" (PDF). Retrieved 2014-08-05.
Michel Winock, "The Dreyfus Affair as a founding myth," in La France
politique, Éditions du Seuil, coll. Points History, 2003, pp. 151–165.
(in French)
For these three paragraphs, cf. Jean-Marie Mayeur, The Beginnings of the
Third Republic, Éditions du Seuil, 1973, pp. 209–217. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 5. (in French)
On the appearance of the 75 mm gun see: Doise, A Secret well guarded, p.
9. (in French)
"Gay love sheds light on l'affaire Dreyfus | The Times". Retrieved
2016-08-17.
"Trial of the Century". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2016-08-17.
Weber, Caroline (2013-03-13). "Dreyfus, Proust and the Crimes of the
Belle Epoque". Bloomberg View. Retrieved 2016-08-17.
Idier, Antoine (2012-10-23). "Pierre Gervais, Pauline Peretz, Pierre
Stutin, Le dossier secret de l'affaire Dreyfus". Lectures (in French).
ISSN 2116-5289.
"L'affaire Dreyfus est aussi une affaire d'homophobie" (in French).
Retrieved 2016-08-30.
Bach, The Army of Dreyfus, p. 534. (in French)
Reid, Piers Paul. The Dreyfus Affair. p. 83. ISBN 978-1-4088-3057-4.
The Jews in the army
Frederick Viey Anti-Semitism in the Army: the Coblentz Affair at
Fontainebleau. (in French)
Miquel, The Third Republic, p. 391. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 8. (in French)
Marcel Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus (in French)
See especially Reinach, History of the Dreyfus Affair, Volume 1, pp.
40–42. (in French)
"usual way" jargon of the SR meaning: documents retrieved by the
housekeeper of the German Embassy: Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus,
p. 140 et seq. (in French)
Not small pieces. In addition the paper was not wrinkled. Bredin, The
Affair, p. 67. (in French)
The only important information in the document was a note on the 120 C
Baquet gun, an artillery piece that represented only 1.4% of modern
French artillery in 1914 and 0.6% of all artillery. Doise, A well kept
secret, p. 55 et seq. (in French)
On the Statistics Section, see Bredin, pp. 49–50; Doise, pp. 42–43 and
Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus, pp. 60–70. (in French)
Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus, p. 67. (in French) Alfred Dreyfus
was also from Mulhouse.
"This wimp Mercier" said Rochefort [Tr. Note: a much stronger obscenity
was used graphically describing a wimp] in Intransigeant, Boussel, The
Dreyfus Affair and the Press, pp. 43–44. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 65. (in French)
Reinach, History of the Dreyfus Affair, Volume 1, p. 39. (in French)
Birnbaum, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 40. (in French)
Birnbaum, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 48. (in French)
Burns, a family...., p. 139. (in French)
Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus, p. 260. (in French)
Sandherr was a fanatical antisemite. Maurice Paléologue, The Dreyfus
Affair and the Quai d'Orsay (in French)
It has been argued in many books that Dreyfus was unemotional and
indifferent to his fate: that was ultimately refuted by many
testimonies. V. Duclert, Biography of Alfred Dreyfus, p. 115 et seq. (in
French)
Birnbaum, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 38. (in French)
General Mercier to his subordinates: Bredin, The Affair, p. 69. (in
French) Also reported elsewhere.
On the personalities of Mercier and du Paty de Clam, see: Palaeologue,
The Dreyfus Affair and the Quai d'Orsay, pp. 111 et seq. (in French)
Guillemin, The enigma Esterházy, Volume 1, p. 99. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 0. (in French)
The General met with the President of the Republic, Casimir-Perier, to
minimize the importance of the documents submitted, this Mercier later
denied, which made the two men implacable enemies. See The Trial at
Rennes Volume 1, pp. 60, 149 and 157 (in French)
Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus, p. 141. (in French) Hanotaux did
obtain a promise from Mercier to drop the charges if other evidence was
not found. This is most likely the origin of the secret file.
Bredin, The Affair, p. 72. (in French)
Reinach, History of the Dreyfus Affair, Volume 1, p. 92. (in French)
Gobert said that the text was written quickly and excluded it from being
copied.
Trial at Rennes Volume 2, p. 322. (in French) An idea supported by the
transparency of the paper.
Bredin, The Affair, p. 87. (in French)
Reinach, History of the Dreyfus Affair, Volume 1, p. 107. (in French)
Report of the Supreme Court, Volume 1, p. 127. (in French)
The arrest order had been signed in advance, v. Thomas, The Affair
without Dreyfus, p. 208. (in French)
Duclert, Biography of Alfred Dreyfus, p. 118. (in French)
Mathieu Dreyfus The Affair that I lived, p. 20 and s. (in French)
No defendant could be held incommunicado under any law of the time. The
risk of leakage was limited by the fact that lawyers are subject to
professional secrecy. Supreme Court, On Justice in the Dreyfus Affair,
Duclert, p. 51. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 80. (in French)
Mathieu Dreyfus, The Affair that I lived (in French).
Edgar Demange, winner of a national eloquence competition, obtained the
acquittal of Prince Pierre Bonaparte, who killed the Republican Victor
Noir in 1870. A specialist in criminal law, he was recognized by his
peers and elected member of the Council of the Bar from 1888 to 1892. In
an historical irony, it was Demange who obtained the acquittal of the
Marquis de Mores, assassin of the Jewish Captain Mayer in a duel. Y.
Repiquet, president of the bar, in Edgar Demange and Fernand Labori,
Supreme Court, Justice From the Dreyfus Affair, p. 274. (in French)
He characterised the report by du Paty as "rantings" Bredin, The Affair,
p. 88. (in French)
Supreme Court, Justice From the Dreyfus Affair, Duclert, p. 103. (in French)
Zola, "J'accuse...!" (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 89. (in French)
Mathieu Dreyfus The Affair that I lived, p. 24. (in French)
v. The press, publications on the Dreyfus Affair, and Bredin, The
Affair, p. 83. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 85. (in French)
Boussel, The Dreyfus Affair and the Press, p. 55 (in French)
Boussel, The Dreyfus Affair and the Press, p. 58. (in French)
Three denials, very brief and ambiguous, were published by the Havas
agency in November and December 1894 in order to clarify the
responsibility of the German embassy. Bredin, The Affair, p. 85. (in French)
Boussel, The Dreyfus Affair and the Press, p. 60. (in French)
On the details of proceedings see: Duclert, Biography of Alfred Dreyfus,
p. 147 (in French)
Reinach, History of the Dreyfus Affair, Volume 1, p. 394. (in French)
Supreme Court, Justice From the Dreyfus Affair, Duclert, p. 107. (in French)
Reinach, History of the Dreyfus Affair, Volume 1, p. 409. (in French)
Doise, A well kept secret p. 87. (in French)
Duclert, Biography of Alfred Dreyfus, p. 151. (in French)
Although he was only a captain, he earned a personal income from his
father's legacy and his wife's dowry equivalent to that of a commanding
general of a region: Doise, A well kept secret, p. 38. (in French)
See the demonstrations of Meyer, Giry, Henri Poincaré, Appel, and
Darboux, handwriting experts and mathematicians, during their testimony
at the second review in 1904. They destroyed forever the Bertillon
system. Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus, p. 189. (in French)
Picquart Revisions 1898–1899, Instruction, Volume I, p. 129. (in French)
Reinach, History of the Dreyfus Affair, Volume 1, p. 411. (in French)
The crucifix had disappeared from civil courtrooms during the government
of Jules Ferry, but not from military tribunals.
Duclert, Biography of Alfred Dreyfus, p. 164. (in French)
"Secret military file – Digitized". L'Affaire Dreyfus. Retrieved 17
January 2017.
"French Ministry Posts Online Full File on 'Dreyfus Affair'". The New
York Times. 7 March 2013.
Pierre Gervais, Romain Huret and Pauline Peretz, "A review of the
'secret file': homosexuality and antisemitism in the Dreyfus Affair",
Journal of Modern History, Editions Berlin, Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. 125–160.
(in French)
In French military law at the time, all the evidence of guilt must be
available to the defence in order to be subject to examination. This was
not required for ordinary justice. Doise, A well kept secret, p. 132.
(in French)
Birnbaum, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 43. (in French)
It was actually a man named Dubois who had already been identified by
the Statistics Section for a year. See also Pierre Milza, "The Dreyfus
Affair nelle relazioni Franco-Italiane", in: Comune di Forlì – Comune di
Roma, Dreyfus. The Affair e la Parigi fin de siècle nelle carta di un
diplomatico italiano, Edizioni Lavoro, Roma 1994, pp. 23–36. (It)
Supreme Court, Justice in the Dreyfus Affair, Duclert, p. 92. (in French)
Trial at Rennes Volume 2 p. 191 et seq. It especially aggravated his
case in not admitting that the transmission of a secret file was a
criminal manoeuvre.
See the complete copy on Gallica.
Reinach, History of the Dreyfus Affair, Volume 1, p. 468. (in French)
Clemenceau wrote on 25 December 1894, in La Justice: "Without doubt, I
am also more firmly than ever the enemy of the death penalty. But it can
never be understood by the public that the state a few weeks ago has
shot an unfortunate child 20 years old who was guilty of throwing a
button of his tunic at the head of the President of a Military Court,
while the traitor Dreyfus will soon leave for l'île de Nou (sic) New
Caledonia, where he will wait in the garden of Candide (sic)." Quoted by
Michel Winock, Clemenceau, ed. Perrin, 2007, chap. XV, "The Start of the
Affair", p. 244. (in French)
Méhana Mouhou, Dreyfus Affair: conspiracy in the Républic, Éd.
L'Harmattan, 2006, p. 40. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 107. (in French)
It seems that the correct spelling is Captain Lebrun Renaud, but all of
the historical literature takes the form of the text, and it is
therefore the most common. See the testimony from Trial at Rennes Volume
3, p. 73. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 103. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 125. (in French)
Alfred Dreyfus, Five Years of my life. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 132. (in French)
See in this regard the memoirs of Mathieu Dreyfus, The Affair that I
have lived, which remained unedited until 1978, except a few extracts.
(in French)
Mathieu Dreyfus The Affair that I lived, Fayard, p. 47. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 117.
Mathieu Dreyfus, The Affair that I have lived[permanent dead link] p. 48
et s. (in French)
Mathieu Dreyfus, The Affair that I have lived p. 54 et s. (in French)
Lazare, A miscarriage of justice. The truth of the Dreyfus Affair,
Brussels, November 1896 (in French)
Boussel, The Dreyfus Affair and the Press, p. 82. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 117. (in French)
Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus, p. 276. (in French)
On the personality and life of Walsin-Esterhazy, see: Reinach, History
of the Dreyfus Affair Volume 2, chapter 1 and all of the first part of
The Affair without Dreyfus by Marcel Thomas. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 142. (in French) It was Marcel Thomas who
discovered this letter at the beginning of the 1970s. V. the annexes in
The Affair without Dreyfus. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 144. (in French). This lack of consent allowed
the General Staff to contest openly the quality of the evidence and to
go hard on Picquart to discredit him.
Birnbaum, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 56. (in French)
It was at this point that von Schwartzkoppen terminated his relationship
with Esterházy at the beginning of 1896. Thomas, The Affair without
Dreyfus, p. 145. (in French)
Reinach, History of the Dreyfus affair, Volume 2, p. 26. (in French)
This raised the question of whether there was complicity between the two
men. Bredin, The Affair, p. 144 and Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus
p. 231, are sceptical.
see: Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus, Chap. 1, The romance of a
cheat. (in French)
Doise, A secret well guarded, p. 24 et seq. (in French)
v. articles in L'Éclair of 10 and 14 September 1896, which were opposed
to Dreyfus and revealed the existence of the "secret file". Bredin, The
Affair, p. 163. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 167. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 168. (in French)
History of the Dreyfus Affair Volume 2 p. 517 et seq. (in French)
Doise, A well kept secret, p. 109 et seq. (in French)
Henry aspired to be Sandherr's successor, having been his assistant for
many years, but Picquart was appointed head of the SR. The dismissal of
Picquart would allow Henry to satisfy his ambition (Bredin, The Affair
p. 262).
Bredin, The Affair, p. 200. (in French)
Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus, p. 475. (in French)
History of the Dreyfus Affair Volume 2, p. 603 and 644. (in French)
For all this paragraph, excluding additional details: Winock, The
Century of Intellectuals, pp. 11–19.
Zola, Fight for Dreyfus, p. 44. (in French)
See Chez L'Illustre Ecrivain, published in Le Journal of 28 November
1897, collected in Octave Mirbeau, The Dreyfus Affair, 1991, pp. 43–49.
(in French)
The concept began in a deeply pejorative sense, to denounce, wrote
Ferdinand Brunetière "there is a pretension to raise writers, scholars,
teachers, philologists to the rank of supermen" (Michel Winock, The Age
of intellectuals, p. 29). (in French)
Excerpts from the meeting of 4 December 1897, at the website of the
National Assembly. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 207. (in French)
Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus, Volume 2, p. 244. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 39. (in French)
Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus, Volume 2, p. 245. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 227. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 40. (in French)
Dictionary of the Dreyfus Affair, Thomas, entry "Esterházy in England".
(in French)
Zola trial, Volume 1, p. 268. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 234. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 42. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 236. (in French)
Except supplements, for this paragraph see: Winock, The Century of
Intellectuals, p. 29–31. (in French)
Michel Winock Clemenceau, Editions Perrin, 2007, p. 254. (in French)
Winock, The Century of Intellectuals, p. 35. (in French)
Miquel, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 45. (in French)
Supreme Court, Justice from the Dreyfus Affair, Pages, p. 143. (in French)
through a side door of the Quai des Orfevres. Winock, The Century of
intellectuals, p. 36. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 44. (in French)
Repiquet, president of the bar, in Edgar Demange and Fernand Labori,
Supreme Court, Justice From the Dreyfus Affair, p. 273 et seq. (in French)
See the whole debate of 1898. (in French)
The Zola Trial pp. 503–505. (in French)
According to the recollections of anti-Dreyfusard Arthur Meyer, What my
eyes saw, Plon, 1912, p. 149. (in French)
From this sentence to the end of the following paragraph: Winock, The
Century of intellectuals, p. 39–41. (in French)
F. Brown, Zola, a life, Belfond, 1996. 779. (in French)
Jules Renard, Journal 1887–1910, Gallimard, 1965, p. 472. (in French)
V. Reception of the affair in Britain, United States and Germany in
Drouin, Dictionary of the Dreyfus Affair. (in French)
This sentence to the end of the next paragraph, unless otherwise
specified: Winock, The Century of intellectuals, p. 50–51.
Bredin, The Affair, p. 287. (in French)
Reinach, History of the Dreyfus affair, Volume 4, p. 5. (in French)
Thomas, The Affair without Dreyfus, Volume 2, p. 262. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 279. (in French) In 1894 there were only four.
Maguire, Robert Ceremonies of Bravery: Oscar Wilde, Carlos Blacker and
the Dreyfus Affair, Oxford University Press, 2013, p124
"Wilde_&_Dreyfus". www.oscholars.com. Archived from the original on 4
March 2016. Retrieved 31 August 2016.
For this and the following paragraph: Winock, The Century of
intellectuals, p. 49–51. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 288. (in French)
Duclert, the Dreyfus Affair, p. 48. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 301.
Reinach, History of the Dreyfus affair, Volume 4, p. 183 et seq. (in French)
The circumstances of the death of Henry are still not clarified and have
fed some fantasies. Murder is unlikely. Miquel, the Dreyfus Affair, p.
74. (in French)
Cavalry Major Walter, commander of Mont Valerian,"Announcement of the
suicide of Lieutenant Colonel Henry".
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 80. (in French)
Trial at Rennes, Volume 1, pp. 181 et seq. (in French)
Winock, The Century of intellectuals, p. 52. (in French)
Of whom Paul Valery, Pierre Louÿs, and ironically one Paul Léautaud
jointly messaged: "For order, against justice and truth". Winock, The
Century of intellectuals, p. 57. (in French)
Miquel, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 92. (in French)
Winock, The Century of intellectuals, p. 63–65. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 307. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 50. (in French)
Reinach,History of the Dreyfus affair, Volume 1, p. 137. (in French)
Reinach, History of the Dreyfus affair, Volume 4, p. 358 et seq. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 97. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 53. (in French)
For this paragraph: Francis Démier, France in the nineteenth century p.
384–5. (in French)
Robert L. Fuller, The Origins of the French Nationalist Movement,
1886–1914 (2011) pp. 113–14, 119, 121, 137.
Miquel, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 91. (in French)
Supreme Court, Justice From the Dreyfus Affair, Royer-Ozaman, p. 182.
(in French)
Reinach, History of the Dreyfus affair, Volume 4, p. 397 et seq. (in French)
Supreme Court, Justice From the Dreyfus Affair, the first revision, and
Royer Ozaman, p. 215. (in French)
Boussel, The Dreyfus Affair and the Press, p. 194. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 52. (in French)
v. Debates of the Supreme Court on the review.
v. judgment of the Court of 3 June 1899. (in French)
Supreme Court, Justice From the Dreyfus Affair, and Royer Ozaman, p. 210.
Supreme Court, Justice From the Dreyfus Affair, and Royer Ozaman, p.
211. (in French)
Duclert, Biography of Alfred Dreyfus, p. 543. (in French)
Jean Jaurès, in L'Humanité 4 July 1899. (in French)
Mathieu Dreyfus The Affair ..., p. 206 et seq. (in French)
Duclert, Biography of Alfred Dreyfus, p. 562. (in French)
Supreme Court, Justice From the Dreyfus Affair, Joly, p. 231. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 60. (in French)
Doise, A Well Kept secret, p. 159. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 395. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 404. (in French)
It was a matter for the Chairman of the Military Court Major Breon, a
Catholic who attended "every day at Mass" (J.-D. Bredin, Bernard Lazare,
the first of the Dreyfusards Published Fallois, Paris 1992, p. 263). (in
French)
Miquel, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 114. (in French)
http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2007/02/27/493382.html Grieg the Humanist
Brought to Light, article by Dagbladet
The Appeals Court in the Dreyfus Affair, Guy Carnivet, 2006 (in French),
Quoting from: Report to Queen Victoria, Lord Russell of Killowen, 16
September 1899
Bredin, The Affair, p. 411. (in French)
Five years of my life
Bredin, The Affair, p. 414. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 417. (in French)
Doise, A well kept secret, p. 160. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 104. (in French)
Supreme Court, Justice From the Dreyfus Affair, Becker, p. 262. (in French)
Supreme Court, Justice From the Dreyfus Affair, Becker, p. 267. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair p. 108. (in French)
Paul Read, Piers. The Dreyfus Affair. p. 343. ISBN 978-1-4088-3057-4.
Paul Read, Piers. The Dreyfus Affair. p. 345. ISBN 978-1-4088-3057-4.
Duclert, Biography of Alfred Dreyfus, p. 1009. (in French)
M. Drouin, Zola at the Pantheon: The Fourth Dreyfus Affair, Perrin,
2008, p. 287. (in French)
Du Paty de Clam died of wounds in 1916. The other senior officers had
either retired or died before the outbreak of World War I
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 111. (in French)
Drouin, Dictionary of the Dreyfus affair, entry "Picquart", p. 263. (in
French)
Jaurès, speech in the House 8 May 1903 (in French).
Katrin Schultheiss, "The Dreyfus Affair and History", Journal of The
Historical Society p. 203
Birnbaum, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 94. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 475. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 93. (in French)
Birnbaum, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 95. (in French)
Robert L. Fuller, The Origins of the French Nationalist Movement,
1886–1914 (2012).
"At the beginning of this great drama, they were revolutionary
socialists who encouraged me the most, who committed me the most to
enter the battle." Jean Jaurès The two methods, 26 November 1900.
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 67. (in French)
Duclert, The Dreyfus Affair, p. 95. (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 471. (in French)
Boussel, The Dreyfus Affair and the Press, p. 92 (in French)
Bredin, The Affair, p. 474. (in French)
Pierre Milza, "L’Áffaire Dreyfus nelle relazioni Franco-Italiane" (in
Italian), in: Comune di Forlì – Comune di Roma, Dreyfus. L’Áffaire e la
Parigi fin de siècle nelle carte di un diplomatico italiano, Edizioni
Lavoro, Roma 1994, pp. 23–36. (It)
Benny Morris, Victims: History revisits the Arab–Zionist conflict, 2003,
pp. 29 and 34.
Dictionary of the Dreyfus affair, Nichol, entry "Theodor Herzl and
Zionism", p. 505. (in French)
"A Small Country with a Congress". Herzl Museum. Archived from the
original on 11 November 2013. Retrieved 2013-11-11.
Richarz, Monika. "The History of the Jews in Europe during the
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries" (PDF). un.org. Retrieved July
23, 2018.
Historiography based on that of Thomas in Dictionary of the Dreyfus
Affair, p. 586 and Duclert, Biography of Alfred Dreyfus, p. 1193.
View all 96 pages of general bibliography published in Drouin,
Dictionary of the Dreyfus Affair, p. 629. (in French)
Joseph Reinach, History of the Dreyfus Affair
See bibliographic recommendations from Bach, Birnbaum, Bredin, Doise,
Duclert, Drouin, Miquel.
The Island of Penguins
Roman Polanski, "D": The filmmaker has adapted the Dreyfus Affair into
an espionage film, The Huffington Post, 10 May 2012, accessed 11 January
2013.
"D" : The Dreyfus Affair according to Roman Polanski, AlloCiné, 10 May
2012, accessed 11 January 2013.
Roman Polanski throws himself into the Dreyfus Affair, Le Figaro, 10 May
2012, accessed 11 January 2013.
"Aiffaire Dreyfuss". (in German)
Die Affäre Dreyfus.
"In Our Time – The Dreyfus Affair" BBC Radio 4 (8 October 2009). Melvyn
Bragg; Robert Gildea, Professor of Modern History at Oxford University;
Ruth Harris, Lecturer in Modern History at Oxford University; Robert
Tombs, Professor of French History at Cambridge University
Podcast interview[permanent dead link] New Books in History (17
June 2010).
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(in English) (in French) Text of J'accuse!
1906 : Dreyfus site of the French Ministry of Culture
(in French) Dreyfus Site of the National Assembly
Jewish Library: Alfred Dreyfus and "The Affair"
Greatest Newspaper Article of all Time (Journalistic retrospective
of Zola's J'accuse!)
JewishEncyclopedia.com – Andre Cremieu-Foa
Temporal and Eternal by Charles Péguy, translated by Alexander Dru
The Rising Celebrity and Modern Politics – The Dreyfus Affair
Leslie Derfler, The Dreyfus Affair. A Tragedy of Errors?
Nicholas Halasz, Captain Dreyfus
Dreyfus Rehabilitated
Dreyfus Society for Human Rights
George R. Whyte and The Dreyfus Affair
Ephemera and Original Art Documenting the Dreyfus Affair
Fond Dreyfus (Musée d'art et d'histoire du judaïsme)
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Dreyfus affairMilitary scandals1894 in law1894 in FrancePolitical
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Post by David Von Peinadvance the plot forward in the weeks prior to November 22nd? Was letting
him stay at her house a few nights in October and November supposedly
furthering the plot along?
Depends on how kooky you need to get.
In tradecraft they call it babysitting. Keep your man out of trouble
until the time when you need to deploy him.
Post by David Von PeinTeaching him to drive? Was that what Ruth's CIA bosses used her for?
Well, you may not know it, but CIA people also have real lives outside
of the Agency. They play golf, go sailing, camping etc. Just like real
people. Sometimes is IS a cover to just to contact or surevil a source,
like James Bondd playying Bridge at the mens club.
But sometimes it's just for fun. Like the 3 KGB agenbtB agents who then
went to a VZolleyball game. I have play volleyball with intelligence
agents from many countries and they ar regular people having fun.
Post by David Von PeinFixing Lee potatoes and corn muffins on weekends? Was that her purpose?
AH ha! Maybe it's a signal. Maybe YOU aren't paranoid enough to get the
signal. Maybe there are secret messages inside the muffins!
Who would hide secret messages inside a pumpkin? Really, dude, this is a
quiz.
Post by David Von PeinJust WHAT supposedly was Ruth's role?
Babysitter?
Instructor.?
Cutout?
How about just friend?
Post by David Von Pein[...]
And I'd also like to know what MOTIVE Ruth Paine would have had for
participating in the evil DOUBLE plot of being part of a conspiracy to
assassinate the President AND to frame an innocent man named Lee Harvey
Oswald for that murder?
Say what? You need to understand people's motives for cooperating with
the CIA? What was Clay Shaw's motive?
Wait, you are not allowed to used those words due to McAdams silly
cockney filter. Put them in Danish.
Post by David Von PeinIn short, shouldn't a little more EVIDENCE be required before
conspiracists feed Ruth Paine to the lions?
Shouldn't you use real evidence to convict Oswald rather than just lies?
Post by David Von PeinMore....
http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2014/09/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-791.html