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Dreyfus Affair

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | Date: 2008

Dreyfus Affair , the controversy that occurred with the treason conviction (1894) of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), a French general staff officer.

The Case

The case arose when a French spy in the German embassy discovered a handwritten bordereau [schedule], received by Major Max von Schwartzkoppen, German military attaché in Paris, which listed secret French documents. The French army, at this time the stronghold of monarchists and Catholics and permeated by anti-Semitism, attempted to ferret out the traitor. Suspicion fell on Dreyfus, a wealthy Alsatian Jew, while the press raised accusations of Jewish treason. He was tried in camera by a French court-martial, convicted, and sentenced to degradation and deportation for life. He was sent to Devils Island, off the coast of French Guiana, for solitary confinement. Dreyfus protested his innocence, but public opinion generally applauded the conviction, and interest in the case lapsed.

The Controversy

The matter flared up again in 1896 and soon divided Frenchmen into two irreconcilable factions. In 1896 Col. Georges Picquart , chief of the intelligence section, discovered evidence indicating Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy , who was deep in debt, as the real author of the bordereau. Picquart was silenced by army authorities, but in 1897 Dreyfus's brother, Mathieu, made the same discovery and increased pressure to reopen the case. Esterhazy was tried (Jan., 1898) by a court-martial and acquitted in a matter of minutes.

Émile Zola , a leading supporter of Dreyfus, promptly published an open letter ( J'accuse ) to the president of the French republic, Félix Faure, accusing the judges of having obeyed orders from the war office in their acquittal of Esterhazy. Zola was tried for libel and sentenced to jail, but he escaped to England. By this time the case had become a major political issue and was fully exploited by royalist, militarist, and nationalist elements on the one hand and by republican, socialist, and anticlerical elements on the other.

The violent partisanship dominated French life for a decade. Among the anti-Dreyfusards were the anti-Semite Édouard Drumont ; Paul Déroulède, who founded a patriotic league; and Maurice Barrès . The pro-Dreyfus faction, which steadily gained strength, came to include Georges Clemenceau , in whose paper Zola's letter appeared, Jean Jaurès , René Waldeck-Rousseau , Anatole France , Charles Péguy , and Joseph Reinach . They were, in part, less personally concerned with Dreyfus, who remained in solitary confinement on Devils Island, than with discrediting the rightist government.

Pardon and Aftermath

Later in 1898 it was discovered that much of the evidence against Dreyfus had been forged by Colonel Henry of army intelligence. Henry committed suicide (Aug., 1898), and Esterhazy fled to England. At this point revision of Dreyfus's sentence had become imperative. The case was referred to an appeals court in September and after Waldeck-Rousseau became premier in 1899, the court of appeals ordered a new court-martial. There was worldwide indignation when the military court, unable to admit error, found Dreyfus guilty with extenuating circumstances and sentenced him to 10 years in prison.

Nonetheless, a pardon was issued by President Émile Loubet, and in 1906 the supreme court of appeals exonerated Dreyfus, who was reinstated as a major and decorated with the Legion of Honor. In 1930 his innocence was reaffirmed by the publication of Schwartzkoppen's papers. The immediate result of the Dreyfus Affair was to unite and bring to power the French political left wing. Widespread antimilitarism and anticlericalism also ensued; army influence declined, and in 1905 Church and state were separated in France.

Bibliography

See J. Reinach, Histoire de l'affaire Dreyfus (7 vol., 1901-11); A. Dreyfus and P. Dreyfus, The Dreyfus Case (tr. 1937); studies by G. Chapman (1955 and 1972), D. W. Johnson (1966), L. L. Snyder (1972), D. L. Lewis (1973), J.-D. Bredin (tr., 1986), and N. L. Kleeblatt (1987).

Author not available, DREYFUS AFFAIR., The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition 2008

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press