I Was Obeying My Conscience

Present almost at the creation, he hovered on the fringes of the Affair until fate would hurl him into the vortex: an instructor at the War College, where he was not impressed by Alfred Dreyfus and scored him mediocre in cartography and field maneuver; Dreyfus's escort to the office of Army Chief of Staff Raoul de Boisdeffre on October 15, 1894, where the thirty-five-year-old captain would be stunned by an accusation of treason; and Boisdeffre's designated witness at Dreyfus's court-martial, where he was convicted, and at his subsequent ceremony of degradation, where he was shorn of his uniform and rank. (Lewis, p. 13)

A native of Alsace, a graduate of the prestigious St. Cyr Military Academy, a distinguished commander in the Algerian and Tonkin campaigns, the director of intelligence on General Gaston de Galliffet's staff, Major Georges Picquart had no peer in the European theater in languages or general military knowledge. "He spoke and wrote Italian, German, English, and Russian fluently. His familiarity with the materiel and organization of foreign armies was dazzling." (Lewis, pp. 134-135)

If he was not a virulent anti-Semite, he harbored typical Alsatian prejudices, disdaining Jews for their lack of social refinement. Observing Dreyfus's braids, epaulettes, and stripes hanging in tatters, he remarked to another officer, "He looks like a Jewish tailor estimating the value of the cloth." (Lewis, p. 133)

But that he was, and always had been, a man of integrity was beyond dispute. When Dreyfus blamed his low mark on his religion, Picquart's response was, "If you are asking, Captain, whether I like Jews, the honest answer, I suppose, would be no. But if you are implying that because of that I might discriminate against you in a professional manner, I can assure you -- never!" (Green, Haaretz)

Comfortably ensconced in the General Staff's Third Bureau of Operations and Training, Picquart had no particular appetite for Counter-intelligence. Yet his stature and reputation made him Boisdeffre's choice to head the Army's Statistical Section in July 1895 when the retirement of the incumbent, Colonel Jean-Conrad Sandherr, the victim of a paralyzing nerve disease, could no longer be postponed. (Bredin, p. 141)

Boisdeffre was concerned that "the Dreyfus Affair was not over. It is only beginning," he told Picquart. "A new offensive by the Jews is to be feared." It was necessary to discover a motive and to keep feeding the file -- the Secret Dossier which had been shown to the judges during the trial and which, Sandherr advised Picquart, could be obtained from Sandherr's assistant, Commandant Hubert-Joseph Henry. (Bredin, p. 141)

Quickly imposing his authority, Picquart initiated a number of reforms that would earn him the approbation of former War Ministers Zurlinden and Cavignac, and of the sitting one, Jean-Baptiste Billot (Mercier had been dismissed by President Felix Faure in January 1895), and a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel. (Chapman, pp. 118-119). Among them was the elimination of subordinate discretion in the handling of incoming documents, including those collected by Madame Bastian from the German Embassy trash bins and passed clandestinely to Major Henry. Henceforth Picquart would examine these materials before anyone else, and then confide them to Captain Jules Lauth for reconstitution and deciphering. (Bredin, p. 142; Lewis, p. 135)

On or around March 15, 1896, Lauth came to his superior with a petit bleu, an express letter issued by the Paris postal department. It was not stamped. Thus the addressee -- Monsieur le Commandant Esterhazy, 27 Rue de la Bienfaisance -- had not received it. The author had ripped it into shreds and tossed into the embassy wastebasket thirty-seven fingernail-size fragments which Lauth had painstakingly reassembled. (Lewis, p. 137)

"It's frightening. Is there still another one?" exclaimed Lauth, aghast at the words he held in his hand. (Bredin, p. 143)

"Sir, Above all I await a more detailed explanation than the one you gave me the other day on the question in abeyance. Consequently, I am requesting you to give it to me in writing so I may judge if I can continue my relations with the R. house or not. Signed, C." (Bredin, p. 143)

The initial "C" was one of the conventional signatures of Maximilien von Schwarzkoppen, military attache to the German Embassy and already known to the Statistical Section as a recipient of classified information from a traitor in the French Army, presumably Alfred Dreyfus. But both Lauth and Picquart recognized that the handwriting was not Schwarzkoppen's; they later deduced that the petit bleu had been written either by another employee at the embassy or by a mistress of Schwarzkoppen who happened to be with him when he decided to sever this sub rosa relationship. (Bredin, pp. 143, 145)

More importantly, just who was this person with whom Schwarzkoppen had been colluding?

Jean-Marie-Auguste, known as Walsin, Esterhazy was the son of one general and the nephew of another, both of whom had been appointed to their commands by Napoleon III. He studied at the Lycee Bonaparte, but withdrew after the fifth form and never received his baccalaureate. By the age of twenty-two, having misspent several years frequenting casinos, music halls, race tracks, and men's clubs, the Count, as he styled himself, drawing on his Hungarian noble ancestry, "was impoverished and without prospect of finding himself a suitable position." (Lewis, pp. 64-65)

He sought respectability in the Army. He began his career in the Papal Legion in 1869, served in the French Foreign Legion, and rose to the rank of captain in the 1870 Loire campaign against the Germans before being demoted -- a lingering source of bitterness. (Bredin, p. 135)

In 1875 he joined the staff of Reunion des Officiers, where he demonstrated considerable literary talent writing articles on all sorts of military subjects and came to fancy himself an expert in the science. The contacts he made there led to an assignment to the General Staff's Second Bureau of Intelligence as a German translator. (Lewis, p. 67)

In 1880 Esterhazy was promoted again to captain and transferred to the 135th Infantry at Cholet, a rather dreary outpost miles from Paris. To further his prospects, he secured a position in the Tunisian expeditionary force where, inserting himself on the secretarial staff, he arranged to be decorated for heroism in a battle at which he had not been present. (Lewis, p. 68)

Everywhere he went, he accumulated debt -- including 36,500 francs borrowed from a cousin and mistress, Madame de Boulancy. Desperate for relief, in 1886 he married Anne de Nettancourt-Vaubecourt, whose 200,000 franc dowry was at least some compensation for her unattractiveness, obtuseness, and base sensuality. She did possess enough sense to obtain a court order in 1888 separating her account from her husband's in order to preserve what little principal had not been dissipated by his reckless profligacy. (Bredin, pp. 154-155)

"Esterhazy was an adventurer without purpose." (Chapman, p. 120) "He did not distinguish truth from lies, and believed everything he said. He would betray whenever it became necessary, and always remained convinced that he was innocent . . . In love with appearances, avid for luxury and even ostentation, perpetually in search of new pleasure, he squandered the money he had and the money he didn't have, the funds of all the women and men on whom he could lean. He lived out of cleverness, schemes, gimmicks, and blackmail, but also out of dreams." (Bredin, p. 157)

By the middle of 1894, shortly before the incident of Dreyfus bordereau, this man of a thousand intrigues had exhausted all his resources.

Consulting the Army Directory, Lieutenant Colonel Picquart learned that Esterhazy belonged to the 74th Infantry Regiment, then stationed in Paris. He asked an old friend in the regiment, Major Cure, his opinion of the fellow.

"Cure replied that Esterhazy was a thoroughly bad officer, a dissolute, a stock market gambler; on the one hand paying little attention to his duties, on the other always trying to get hold of confidential information on guns and gunnery, adding that he had twice gone to firing practices, and a third time at his own expense, and finally that he employed soldiers in his battalion to copy documents. Cure, however, refused to help Picquart procure an example of Esterhazy's handwriting." (Chapman, p. 121)

Meanwhile, Esterhazy was contriving to have himself appointed to the War Ministry, either in the technical division or the intelligence section, and had launched a barrage of correspondence advocating his cause to government and military officials. Although both Chief of Staff Boisdeffre and Minister of War Billot blanched at the thought of another traitor when Picquart disclosed his suspicions -- "I do not want another Dreyfus Affair," said Boisdeffre -- Billot did order his cabinet to transmit all letters received from or on the subject of Esterhazy to the Statistical Section. (Bredin, pp. 150-151)

On August 27, two such pieces crossed Picquart's desk: one written by Esterhazy to Billot's private secretary, the other to a cabinet member. "Picquart read them and grew deeply perturbed. That regular handwriting, with its slant and its precision, seemed familiar to him . . . He opened a drawer and took out a photo of the bordereau [which had been used to convict Dreyfus]. He placed it and the letter written by Esterhazy side by side . . . The handwritings were not similar; they were identical. The evidence struck him like lightening. The bordereau had not been written by Dreyfus; it was the work of Esterhazy . . . 'I was terrified,' he would later say." (Bredin, pp. 151-152)

Picquart asked the section archivist, Felix Gribelin, to bring him the Secret Dossier which had condemned Dreyfus in the eyes of the court-martial. The documents appeared to have little significance, hardly implicating Dreyfus, including the "scoundrel D" letter, which could be referring to someone else entirely. (Bredin, p. 160)

Picquart took his findings in turn to Boisdeffre, Billot, and his immediate superior, Deputy Chief of Staff General Charles-Arthur Gonse.

Rather than expressing indignation that an innocent man had suffered shame and imprisonment, as Picquart had expected, Boisdeffre listened impassively, agitated only by the news that the Secret Dossier had not been destroyed, as had been ordered. (Bredin, p. 167)

Billot initially shared Picquart's consternation, and was astounded to learn of the existence of the Secret Dossier. Upon further reflection (and possibly a visit from Boisdeffre), he retreated, and invoked the doctrine of "military solidarity." A full-scale review of the Dreyfus case, he contended, risked humiliating both the Chief of Staff and the Military Governor of Paris, the revered and "untouchable" General Felix Saussier, who had authorized the original investigation. (Lewis, pp. 145, 148)

As for Gonse, whom Picquart despised, his advice was to keep the Dreyfus and Esterhazy affairs separate. When the newspaper L'Eclair published an article summarizing the text of the bordereau and revealing that secret papers had been delivered to the judges, Picquart implored Gonse to act before the truth emerged and overwhelmed them all. (Bredin, p. 163; Chapman, p. 129)

"What is it to you if that Jew is on Devil's Island?" retorted Gonse. When Picquart, appalled, replied, "But General, he's innocent," Gonse insisted, "If you don't say anything, no one will know." (Bredin, p. 168)

Picquart lashed back, "What you are saying is abominable. I do not know what I will do. But in any event, I will not take this secret to the grave with me." Then he turned and left the room. (Bredin, p. 168)

Fearful of how Picquart's tenacity might be consummated, Boisdeffre, Gonse, and Commandant Henry, now Picquart's deputy in the Statistical Section, decided the time had come to discipline him. They convinced Billot that Picquart was the source of the poisonous leaks exploited by L'Eclair and that his obsession was causing him to neglect other important duties. On November 14, Billot summoned Picquart to his office, and dispatched him on an inspection tour of intelligence operations that would take him progressively to Chalons-sur-Marne, the Alps, Grenoble, Briancon, and, by March 1897, the Tunisan-Libyan border. (Lewis, pp. 156, 161-162)

Furthermore, Commandant Henry would not be leaving matters to chance. Anxious to win the approval of his superiors, apprehending a reopening of the case that would spell disaster for the General Staff, conscious of the flimsiness of the underpinnings, he undertook an imaginative reconstruction, if not fabrication, of key evidence. (Chapman, p. 131)

First, in a note sent in March 1894 from Italian attache Panizzardi to German attache Schwarzkoppen, he altered the phrase "Will you please come to me tomorrow morning, for P has brought me some interesting things" to read, "Will you please come to me tomorrow, for D has brought me some interesting things." (Chapman, p. 133)

Next he lifted from the file two innocuous letters from Panizzardi to Schwarzkoppen which both contained the salutation "My dear friend" and the signature "Alexandrine." He removed the blank portion on each letter below the signature and with the help of a forger wrote a message on each in Panizzardi's hand. (Chapman, p. 134)

The first composition read: "Here is the material. I paid as arranged (180) on your account. It is agreed for Wednesday at 8:00 PM at Laurent's. I have invited three from the Embassy, but only one is a Jew. Don't fail to show up." (Chapman, p. 134)

The second, and most incriminating, read: "I have read that a Deputy is going to pursue questioning about Dreyfus. If Rome is asked for new explanations, I will say that I never had any relations with the Jew. If they ask you, say the same, for no one must ever know what happened to him." (Bredin, p. 172)

Using transparent adhesive, Henry then attached to each forgery one of the two salutations and signatures he had snipped from the original letters. But he made two mistakes. (Chapman, p. 134)

First, there were no Jews in the Italian Embassy in June 1894, the spurious date he assigned to the first note. (Lewis, p. 158)

Second, although the papers on which the original letters had been written appeared identical, the first was imprinted with blue graph lines, the second with mauve graph lines. Not observing this, Henry transposed his forgeries, taping the blue body to the mauve salutation and signature and the mauve body to the blue salutation and signature. Moreover, the size of the graph squares was not exactly the same. The second forgery, because of both its egregious content and fatal flaw, became known as the faux Henry. (Chapman, p. 134; Bredin, p. 173)

When, from his African exile, Picquart protested to Henry that his mail from France was being opened, he was rebuked for prejudice against Esterhazy and disloyalty to Counter-intelligence. Anticipating that his days on the General Staff were numbered, he prepared a detailed report on everything he knew, and, on a visit home in June, entrusted it to his attorney Louis Leblois under the proviso that it be divulged only upon his specific instructions or his death. (Lewis, p. 164)

But Leblois could not abide by his promise. Acquainted with Auguste Scheurer-Kestner, the vice-president of the Senate, and his doubts about Dreyfus's guilt, on July 13 he visited the senator at his home and showed him Picquart's affidavit, swearing him to secrecy. Scheurer-Kestner insisted that Picquart must reconsider. "Your friend is plainly an honest man," he said. "But his honesty must not stop midway." (Bredin, p. 183-185)

Leblois refused, cautioning, "All these people will defend themselves, and we know that they have no scruples." (Bredin, p. 185)

While bound by his pledge, Scheurer-Kestner would not be intimidated or restrained. He publicly reiterated his misgivings about the case, and hinted that he had proof of Dreyfus's innocence -- an assertion that nudged the General Staff conspirators further down their path of deceit. (Bredin, p. 186)

Gonse pressured Captain Lebrun-Renault of the Garde Republicaine into repeating his account of Dreyfus's confession to him an hour before his degradation, which had never been confirmed, nor had Lebrun-Renault ever entered it in his logbook. (Lewis, p. 167)

In order to substantiate further the dogma of Dreyfus's guilt, Gonse and Henry then took the ill-advised step of enlisting as an accomplice the very person whom Picquart had fingered as the true culprit. Keeping their own hands clean, they called on their dependable servant, the architect of Dreyfus's arrest, Major Du Paty de Clam, to draft a letter to Esterhazy over the pseudonym "Esperance," alerting him that the Dreyfus family had obtained through Picquart letters denouncing him as the author of the bordereau. (Lewis, p. 168)

It was rank treachery: the Deputy Chief of Staff and the head of the Intelligence Service, assisted by a superior officer, informing a German spy that he was in danger of being exposed. (Lewis, p. 168; Bredin, p. 190)

Du Paty, acting under direction from Gonse and Henry, met with Esterhazy several times over the next few months. He told Esterhazy that Dreyfus's guilt was certain and that he would have resolute defenders against any accusations as long as he obeyed their orders. (Chapman, p. 150)

In order to impugn Picquart -- to establish that he was nothing more than an agent of the "syndicate" dedicating to reversing the Dreyfus conviction and embarrassing the General Staff -- Henry, through Du Paty, suggested to Esterhazy that he send two telegrams to Picquart. The first, signed "Speranza," read in part: "To be feared that the whole works is discovered. Take the document back; don't write anything." The second was more explicit: "They have proof that the [petit] bleu was fabricated by Georges." It was signed "Blanche," referring to Blanche de Comminges, a cousin of Picquart's, whose salon he frequented. (Lewis, p. 173)

After concocting the telegrams, Henry of course had them intercepted. They were evidence that Picquart's friends were seeking to warn him that his deceptions had been discovered. (Bredin, p. 208)

At this point, chance intervened, spoiling the General Staff's clever machinations. On November 7, while strolling the boulevard, a banker named De Castro purchased a facsimile of the bordereau -- one of thousands printed and plastered throughout Paris by Mathieu Dreyfus as part of his ongoing crusade to clear his brother's name. De Castro recognized the handwriting as that of one of his consistently overdrawn depositors, which he promptly reported to Mathieu. (Lewis, p. 175)

On November 17, Mathieu wrote to Minister of War Billot identifying Esterhazy as the author of the "unsigned, undated" document which was the "sole basis for the indictment against his unfortunate brother." When the newspaper Le Figaro, having been provided a copy by Mathieu, published the text, Billot, while staunchly adhering to the court-martial's verdict before the Chamber of Deputies, had no choice but to order an investigation of Esterhazy. (Lewis, p. 177)

The officer commissioned to whitewash Esterhazy, General Georges de Pellieux, chief of the Paris Military Police, did not disappoint. After interviewing all the interested parties -- Senator Scheurer-Kestner; Mathieu Dreyfus; General Boisdeffre, who produced the bogus "telegrams" damning Picquart; General Gonse, who flourished the faux Henry; and Esterhazy, who floated the idea that Picquart had forged the bordereau by tracing his handwriting -- Pellieux concluded that there were no grounds to prosecute Esterhazy. (Lewis, p. 178)

The Council of Ministers was not satisfied; it wanted Picquart -- who had been recalled to Paris -- interviewed. Pellieux's subsequent interrogation was so malevolent and accusatory -- he spoke of Picquart's "grave errors" and refused to allow him to discuss the bordereau -- that Picquart left the encounter fully expecting to land in jail before he reached home. (Lewis, p. 179)

Pellieux could not even be swayed from his prescribed course by the surfacing of a packet of correspondence, over a decade old, between Esterhazy and his spurned mistress, Madame de Boulancy.

In one letter, Esterhazy's acrid pen had confessed "that these people [i.e., the French] are not worth the bullets to kill them, and all the little despicableness of the drunken women which the men give themselves up to confirms me deep down in my opinion . . . If someone came to me this evening to tell me that I am going to be killed as a captain in the Uhlans tomorrow while sabering the French, I should be perfectly happy." (Lewis, p. 179)

Pellieux was unshaken. Either accepting Esterhazy's contention that the scribblings were Jewish forgeries or excusing them as the typical rantings of an embittered career soldier, he ruled him culpable of nothing more dastardly than puerile rascality. (Lewis, p. 182)

In view of the publicity emanating from the controversy, the General Staff officers now feared that Esterhazy's exoneration would provoke widespread outrage and not accomplish their ultimate goal: to put the whole matter behind them once and for all. They embraced a plan broached by Esterhazy's lawyer, Maurice Tezenas; observing the damage the Boulancy scandal was inflicting on his client, he recommended to Esterhazy that he apply to Billot for a court-martial. Based on Pellieux's report, he would certainly be acquitted, as well as rehabilitated and safe. (Chapman, p. 164)

On December 4, Pellieux's second finding of "No Case" was duly rejected, and the government, in the person of President Felix Faure, ordered a military inquiry into the evidence against Dreyfus and Esterhazy. (Chapman, p. 165)

That same day, armed with Pellieux's double-barreled artillery, Prime Minister Jules Meline rose to address the Chamber of Deputies. "His Esprit Nouveau program -- a program appeasing the Right and favoring the rich -- was succeeding because of the support of the Catholics, Nationalists, and powerful agriculturalists and industrialists in the Chamber, none of whom cared anything about one Jew clinging to life on a tropical island -- especially when his case imperiled the Army . . . The Prime Minister was convinced that he had to defend the hope and glory of France -- the Army -- or risk being driven from power." Not to do so "would be an act of treason more heinous than that alleged against Esterhazy." (Lewis, pp. 183-184)

"From the tribune, the Prime Minister ridiculed the misinformation of Senator Scheurer-Kestner, spoke of secret documents justifying Dreyfus's condemnation, explained . . . that after two meticulous investigations, not one shred of proof against Esterhazy existed," and declared that a third "would undoubtedly provide irrefutable confirmation in the near future." (Lewis, p. 185)

He then committed one of the more memorable blunders in the annals of the Palais Bourbon, proclaiming "il n'y a pas d'affaire Dreyfus" (there is no Dreyfus Affair). There was one, of course, and in a few weeks it would achieve such notoriety as to be abbreviated simply as "The Affair." (Lewis, p. 185)

The responsibility for preparing the government's summary of evidence devolved upon retired Major A. Ravary, who perfunctorily emulated his predecessor. There was some minor suspense as four experts pored over the bordereau and the Boulancy letters before concluding that "the former was a poor copy of Esterhazy's handwriting and the latter might equally be the work of a forger." (Chapman, p. 175)

Now Esterhazy and the government could safely enact the charade of a court-martial which would cleanse him of any stain of dishonor. (Lewis, p. 191)

The court of seven officers presided over by General Luxer convened on January 10, 1898, in the same room where Dreyfus had been tried. Acceding to the War Office's argument that national security demanded a closed session, the judges ruled that military witnesses and handwriting experts would be heard in camera. (Chapman, pp. 175-176)

Thus the public was excused during the testimony of the one person capable of fitting together all the puzzling pieces of the bordereau and the petit bleu. As soon as Picquart implicated Mercier, Boisdeffre, and Billot, General Pellieux rudely violated protocol by interrupting and reprimanding him. Luxer treated Picquart with such contempt that one of the other magistrates remarked, "I see that Colonel Picquart is the true defendant. I request that he be permitted to present all the explanations necessary to his defense." (Bredin, p. 240)

Afterward, accosted by Mathieu Dreyfus, Picquart succinctly elucidated the basis of his heroism. "You have no reason to thank me," he said. "I was obeying my conscience." (Bredin, p. 241)

During his interrogation, Esterhazy was perfectly at ease, relishing his role as a "slandered warrior," although intermittently his bravura faltered under weight of irrelevant verbosity. "The ladies, the soldiers, the hirelings of Counter-intelligence who had packed the courtroom applauded as he stepped down." (Bredin, p. 240; Lewis, p. 194)

The Minister of War having made his feelings known on three occasions, the verdict was never in doubt. While a five-hour plea by Maitre Tezenas on behalf of his client lent substance to the illusion of impartiality, it took the judges only three minutes to absolve Esterhazy of all wrongdoing by a vote of 7-0. Their decision was greeted with cries of "Long live the Army" and "Death to the Jews." (Bredin, p. 240)

The next day Colonel Picquart was arrested and imprisoned at Mont-Valerian. In the Senate, Scheurer-Kestner was stripped of his vice-presidency. (Bredin, p. 242)

Too confident of a favorable outcome, Dreyfus's supporters -- now so numerous and vocal they were christened "Dreyfusards" -- were despondent. They would be reinvigorated by a ferocious outcry from the powerful voice which Scheurer-Kestner had recruited to their cause back in November: that of the renowned novelist Emile Zola. Once he learned all the improbable details, Zola imagined the Affair as literature with stupendous possibilities -- "a trilogy of types: the innocent victim over there with a tempest in his skull; the scot-free traitor here with his own internal tempest while another man pays for his crime; and the genius of truth, Scheurer-Kestner, silent but active." (Lewis, pp. 188-189)

Unlike his compatriots, Zola understood that matters had reached a point where legal options were no longer viable and that the only recourse was an appeal to the citizenry at large. "With total scorn for considerations of prudence, without any ethical or judicial precautions, what was needed was to deliver to the public a striking text which would summarize the Affair at the risk of simplification and bring to light the crimes of the General Staff." (Bredin, p. 245)

Infuriated by Esterhazy's acquittal, Zola locked himself in his study at Medan, and spent two days composing a fiery screed to the President of the Republic, Felix Faure. On the morning of January 13, it appeared in a special edition of L'Aurore under a provocative title attributed to the newspaper's political editor, Georges Clemenceau: J'Accuse. By evening, 200,000 copies had been sold. (Bredin, p. 247)

"J'Accuse is a unique document. Like similar works of Spinoza, Milton, Voltaire, and Hugo, it pitted the man of letters against the prejudices of his society when government and public opinion were indifferent to morality and justice . . . and irrevocably altered his role in France and Western society." (Lewis, p. 197)

Zola began by charging that "a court-martial has but recently, by order, dared to acquit one Esterhazy -- a supreme slap at all truth, all justice!" He recalled the absurd and malign travesty against Dreyfus, convicted on one accusation, the bordereau, on which not all experts were in agreement. (Lewis, pp. 197-198)

He blamed Lieutenant Colonel Du Paty as the one "who is first and most of all guilty of the fearful miscarriage of justice." He praised the bravery and patriotism of Mathieu Dreyfus, Scheurer-Kestner, and Colonel Picquart. He assailed the generals who, in spite of what the researchers proved and wishing to avoid at all cost a revision of the Dreyfus verdict, refused to act to save an innocent man. (Lewis, pp. 198-199)

Now, however, he heralded, "truth is on the march," and, having been "buried underground" for so long, is set to erupt with explosive force. (Lewis, p. 200)

Zola concluded with this stirring peroration:

"I accuse Colonel Du Paty de Clam of being the diabolical agent of the judicial error . . . I accuse General Mercier of having made himself an accomplice in one of the greatest crimes in history . . . I accuse General Billot of having had in his hands the decisive proofs of innocence of Dreyfus and of having concealed them . . . I accuse General de Boisdeffre and General Gonse of being accomplices in the same crime, the former no doubt through religious prejudice, the latter out of esprit de corps . . .

"I accuse the War Office of having led a vile campaign in the press . . . in order to misdirect public opinion and cover up its sins . . . I accuse, lastly, the first court-martial of having violated all human rights in condemning a prisoner on testimony kept secret from him." (Lewis pp. 200-201)

Acknowledging himself liable to slander, Zola challenged the government to prosecute him. (Lewis, p. 201)

Turmoil in Parliament, rallies in the streets of Paris, a clamorous international press --  all demanded retaliation. On January 13, Billot delivered to the Minister of Justice his complaint against Zola and Monsieur Perrenx, the manager of L'Aurore. Shrewdly crafted, it confined the charge to a single sentence, and one patently impossible for Zola to prove: that the court-martial had acquitted "on command" a criminal whom they knew to be guilty. (Chapman, p. 180)

Zola's trial opened on February 7, 1898, in the Palais de Justice. The presiding judge was Jules Delegorgue, an obsequious civil servant who allowed a raucous crowd of  "magistrates, barristers, journalists, politicians, soldiers, and society women," to invade the courtroom and and cheer and agitate with impunity. (Lewis, pp. 202-203)

For four days the army brass paraded to the witness stand -- Boisdeffre, Mercier, Du Paty, Henry, Pellieux -- each one swearing to the same scripted message: Dreyfus was guilty; Esterhazy innocent. When pressed for details, however, they were evasive and reticent, and sought immunity behind pleas of "prior verdict" and state secrets. (Bredin, pp. 260-261)

On February 11, Colonel Picquart stood in the box, tall, thin, supple, and erect in his blue uniform braided in gold. "With tranquil courage and frequent intervals of silence, his voice at times choking, he related for more than an hour, amidst general fascination, how he had discovered Esterhazy's treason and all that had followed. He spoke with moderation of the subterfuges and then of the hatreds of which he had been a victim without voicing any complaint but expressing, nevertheless, his sadness at having been expelled from the Army." (Bredin, p. 263)

Thus Picquart burned his bridges; his former colleagues would show no mercy. Colonel Henry testified that while passing his open office door he had observed Picquart showing the Secret Dossier to his attorney with the "scoundrel D" letter protruding from the file. Picquart replied that to make that identification from such a distance was impossible. Henry stepped toward Picquart and stated forcefully, "This isn't open to discussion -- especially when a person is used to seeing a document. I maintain what has been said and still do. Colonel Picquart has lied about this!" (Lewis, pp. 205-206)

Pellieux appeared to score a triumph on the 17th. When Picquart pointed out errors in the bordereau that indicated it must have been written not by an officer of the General Staff but by someone unfamiliar with artillery terminology and unaware that apprentices had been relieved of attending maneuvers, Pellieux seized the floor. (Lewis, p. 206)

"You want to truth," he cried. "Then let's have it . . . At the Ministry of War . . . they have absolute proof of the guilt of Dreyfus! And I have seen this proof! A letter arrived at the Ministry of War whose origin cannot be contested and which says . . . 'There is going to be an interpellation concerning the Dreyfus Affair. Never disclose the relations we had with the Jew.' " (Bredin, p. 266)

But was not this revelation of the existence of the faux Henry forgery a dangerous indiscretion? "Boisdeffre and Gonse knew or suspected that the document . . . was not authentic. And their entire effort until then had consisted in making use of it in testimony without ever producing it," lest the defense have the opportunity to discredit it. "No doubt Pellieux was acting alone, carried away by his convictions" and irritated by the General Staff's refusal to exhibit the conclusive proof of Dreyfus's treason. (Bredin, p. 267)

The next morning, in order to justify the continued sequestration of that proof, Boisdeffre not only confirmed Pellieux's deposition, he raised the debate to a higher plane. He told the jury, "You gentlemen . . . are the nation. If the nation has no confidence in its Army's leaders, in those responsible for national defense, they are ready to leave the task to others." (Chapman, p. 195)

It was a significant moment. By casting into the turbulent waters the honor of the Army and the defense of the nation, the Chief of Staff was commanding his fellow Frenchmen to accept the military virtues of Order, Expediency, and Discipline as taking precedence over the republican ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Civilian Sovereignty. (Bredin, p. 269; Lewis, p. 207)

On February 23, the jury unanimously found Zola and Perrenx guilty as charged. They were fined three thousand francs each. Zola was sentenced to a year in prison, the maximum penalty, Perrenx to four months. (Lewis, p. 209)

Zola's electric entrance onto the stage and the impassioned trial, intensive press coverage, and spontaneous demonstrations that ensued signified a new direction for the Dreyfus Affair. Henceforth, as Zola had envisioned, it would be conducted in the court of public opinion. (Bredin, p. 275)

But would justice prevail, and, if so, would it happen soon enough to rescue the destitute convict languishing near death on Devil's Island?

REFERENCES

Bredin, Jean-Denis. The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus. Trans. by Jeffrey Mehlman. New York: George Braziler, Inc., 1986.

Chapman, Guy. The Dreyfus Case: A Reassessment. New York: Reynal & Company, 1956.

Green, David. "The Other Hero of the Dreyfus Affair." Haaretz, October 27, 2014.

Lewis, David L. Prisoners of Honor: The Dreyfus Affair. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1973.