Dreyfus Affair

From Paris Hotels Reviews

The Dreyfus Affair was one of the biggest crises to rock the Third Republic. It centred on Alfred Dreyfus, a captain in the French army and a Jew, who was arrested and convicted of spying for the Germans in 1894 on the flimsiest of evidence – his handwriting was said to resemble that on documents detailing French armaments found in the Germany embassy. In a humiliating public ceremony of “dègradation” in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire his epaulettes were torn from his uniform and his sword broken, while anti-Semitic slogans were chanted by crowds outside. He was then sent to the notorious penal colony of Devil’s Island, off Guyana. His family, convinced of his innocence, began campaigning for a retrial. Two newspapers, L’Eclair and Le Matin, questioned the evidence and in 1897 Colonel Georges Picquart, the new head of the Statistical Section, discovered a document which suggested that the true culprit was Major Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy. Esterhazy was perfunctorily tried by the Ministry of War, and let off. The government, keen to uphold the army’s authority ad reputation, acquiesced to the verdict, and Colonel Picquart was packed off to Tunisia. However, a storm broke out when shortly afterwards writer Emile Zola published his famous open letter, titled J’accuse...!, to the President of the Republic in the Aurore newspaper on January 13,1898. In it he denounced the army and authorities and accused them of a cover-up. Zola was convicted for libel and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, which he avoided by fleeing to England. The article triggered a major outery and suddenly the affaire was the chief topic of conversation in café in France. French society divided into two camps: Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards. The former, convinced the army was guilty of a cover-up, comprised republicans committed to equal rights and the primacy of parliament and included many prominent intellectuals and left-wing figures such as Jean Jaurès, Anatole France, Lèon Blum, Georges Clemenceau and Marcel Proust. Ranked among the anti-Dreyfusards were clerics, anti-Semitic newspapers such as La Libre Parole, monarchists and conservatives, all suspecting Jewish conspiracy to tarnish the army’s reputation. The former clamoured for justice, while the latter called for respect and order.

In June 1897, the secret dossier that convicted Dreyfus was finally re-examined; there was a retrial and, again, Dreyfus was convicted of treason, but was quickly pardoned by the president Loubet, desperate to draw a line under the whole affair. Finally, in 1906, Dreyfus his health broken by hard labour, was granted a full pardon and awarded the legion d’honneur. The matter was formally closed, but the repercussions of the affair were deep and long-lasting; it had revealed fundamental divisions in French society, and split the country along line that would determine France’s development in the twentieth century.