A House Divided

By February 23, 1898, three trials had evolved from the discovery that a traitor in the French Army was selling information to German diplomats; each had yielded a verdict that, backed by the full weight and influence of the General Staff, was inevitable yet problematic, as the reliability of the evidence became increasingly suspect.

December 23, 1894: Thirty-five year old Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, is convicted of having composed the telltale bordereau recovered from the German embassy and is sentenced to life imprisonment on a remote South American island.

January 12, 1898: Commandant Walsin Esterazy is acquitted of the same crime, despite an unsavory history of deceit, depravity, and indebtedness, and a handwriting, according to most observers, identical to that of the bordereau.

Six weeks later: A jury finds novelist Emile Zola guilty of libel, since he could never prove that Esterhazy's judges had exonerated "on command" a defendant whom they knew to be a spy; the accusation was as true as all the others Zola had fired from his explosive pen denouncing the government and the military establishment for malfeasance and miscarriage of justice.

Zola's J'Accuse ignited a civil war in the salons of Paris.

A cadre of journalists from La Revue Blanche began gathering signatures from well-known academics, writers, scientists, poets, and artists for petitions first condemning "the violation of judicial norms in the 1894 trial and the iniquities surrounding the Esterhazy affair" and second requesting "the preservation of legal guarantees for ordinary citizens." (Bredin, p. 276)

Publishing the former in L'Aurore under the title "Manifesto of the Intellectuals," Georges Clemenceau thus popularized what had been an obscure, pejorative term applied by their adversaries to men of letters and science who had the audacity to opine on public issues. One distinguished critic raged that "to designate as something in the order of a noble caste people living in laboratories and libraries is . . . one of the most ridiculous foibles of our era." (Bredin, pp. 276-277)

If the pro-Dreyfus faction ("Dreyfusards") were trumpeting their autonomy and defending justice and law, the anti-Dreyfusards had their own legion of intellectual mouthpieces who rallied in support of the established order, the Church, the Army, and res judicata. (Bredin, p. 278)

It was a house divided; almost everyone succumbed to the madness, certain in his heart that "France could be saved only by damning Dreyfus or rescuing him," and ultimately becoming so consumed by the battle that in time the fate of the victim faded into irrelevancy. (Lewis, p. 221)

"The struggle was now against institutions, against hierarchy, against military authority, and against the Catholics as much as it was for Alfred Dreyfus dying on Devil's Island . . . At stake was a moral cause, a society in which justice and equality would reign." (Bredin, p. 284)

Similarly, the anti-Dreyfusards had nearly forgotten their traitor, depersonalizing him into a symbol of all the social and intellectual types who threatened the stability and unity of their country: Jews, Protestants, socialists, liberal priests, emancipated women, and striking workers. (Bredin, p. 284)

Activism in the world of letters would reverberate far beyond the printing presses and Parisian parlors. If in February 1898 the bureaucrats and legislators were uniformly anti-Dreyfusard, by the end of the year they had begun to realign themselves. By elaborating for the first time in French history the role of intellectuals in the body politic, Zola had revealed their capacity to influence the nation's governors. (Bredin, p. 285)

The Dreyfusards' elation in June 1898 at the elevation to Prime Minister of Henri Brisson -- a distinguished republican whom his colleagues in the Chamber of Deputies regarded as an antidote to the reactionary right -- promptly vanished when he rewarded the Nationalists who had voted for him by appointing Godefroy Cavaignac Minister of War. Like one of his predecessors, Auguste Mercier, Cavaignac was tall, solemn, arrogant, and ambitious, passionately anti-Dreyfusard, steadfastly loyal to the Army, and domineering enough to rule the cabinet. (Lewis, pp. 238-239)

Cavaignac's rigorous examination of the Secret Dossier (which now housed three hundred documents) confirmed for him that the Army's case was ironclad. If he harbored doubts about the handwriting of the bordereau, which resembled that of Esterhazy, he resolved the dilemma by theorizing that, since the bordereau contained gunnery information which only Dreyfus would have been privy to, the pair had collaborated. (Chapman, p. 211)

Determined to bury the Affair forever, on July 7 Cavaignac strode to the rostrum and announced to the Chamber, "I am completely certain of Dreyfus's guilt" -- acknowledging, however, that an officer whom he did not mention by name, the true author of the bordereau, had been acquitted in error and would be "stricken tomorrow with the punishment he deserves." (Chapman, p. 212; Bredin, p. 309)

Then, attesting their "material and moral authenticity," he produced three documents: the April 1894 letter written from Schwarzkopppen to Panizzardi in which he spoke of receiving "master plans of Nice" from "scoundrel D"; the letter of 1896 in which Commandant Henry had changed the date to March 1894 and the identification of a person bringing Panizzardi "a number of interesting things" from P to D; and the decisive proof, the forgery to which Henry had attached Panizzardi's "My dear friend" salutation and "Alexandrine" signature. Finally, Cavaignac claimed possession of an affidavit from Captain Lebrun-Renault's verifying Dreyfus's confession. (Lewis, p. 232)

When he fell silent, the entire Chamber rose in acclamation. A motion was overwhelmingly ratified to have the speech printed at public expense and posted in the thirty thousand communes of France. (Lewis, p. 232)

Two days later the valiant Colonel Georges Picquart -- the former head of Counter-intelligence who had fingered Esterhazy as the real culprit and had been demeaned and demoted by his superiors for his efforts to bring the truth to light -- wrote to Prime Minister Brisson (and communicated to the press) that "the two documents dated 1894 cannot be applied to Dreyfus and the one dated 1896 has every appearance of being a forgery." (Bredin, p. 316)

Cavaignac was furious. He ordered Picquart arrested on the grounds of divulging official secrets, and stunned the Prime Minister's Cabinet by threatening to file suit before the High Court of the Senate against a host of prominent Dreyfusards -- among them Auguste Scheurer-Kestner, Socialist leader Jean Jaures (who had written his own open letter to the Minister of War refuting his evidence and conclusions), Georges Clemenceau, and Mathieu Dreyfus. The Cabinet, seeking to disprove Picquart and Jaures and to validate their War Minister, initiated an expert review of the Secret Dossier. (Lewis, p. 233)

Indeed, it was already in progress; as instructed by Cavaignac, Captain Louis Cuignet had been meticulously sifting through the file for the past month. On August 13, scrutinizing the faux Henry for the first time, Cuignet noticed two shocking peculiarities. "The heading and the signature appeared on paper whose lines were bluish gray; the body of the letter on fragments whose lines were pale violet." Nor did the measurement of the graph lines match. The principal piece condemning Dreyfus -- which Cuignet's friend, Commandant Henry, claimed to have obtained from the German embassy -- was a forgery, and it was placarded all over France. (Bredin, p. 324)

On August 30, Cavaignac summoned Henry to his office, and interrogated him in the presence of Chief of Staff Boisdeffre and Deputy Chief of Staff Gonse. Henry initial response was to lie, to deny any tampering or fabrication, until gradually his "remonstrations weakened, contradicted themselves, and finally collapsed." After an hour of intense badgering, when challenged with, "So this is what happened. You received in 1896 an envelope with a letter of no significance. You destroyed the letter and you manufactured the other," he weakly conceded, "Yes." (Lewis, p. 237; Chapman, p. 224)

When asked who had put the idea in his head, Henry explained: "My superiors were worried and I wanted to calm them. I said to myself: 'Let's add just a sentence; if we had a piece of evidence in this situation, we're in! Nobody knew anything about it . . . I acted solely in the interests of my country.' " (Lewis, p. 237)

Chief of Staff Boisdeffre took a sheet of paper from the Minister's desk and resigned, stating his trust in his Chief of Counter-intelligence was no longer justified. (Bredin, p. 328)

Imprisoned in Mont-Valerian, Henry took up his own pen. He solicited a visit from General Gonse, and protested disingenuously to his wife, "My letter is a copy and there is no touch of forgery." At three o'clock in the afternoon in the stifling heat he took off his clothes, stretched out on his bed, and slit his throat. Three hours later an orderly bringing his supper found the bloody corpse. (Chapman, p. 226)

Having risen from his peasant origins to the General Staff and earned the respect and confidence of gentlemen, perhaps Henry feared that, by living, he might cause irrevocable harm to the honor of the Army he loved. (Lewis, p. 240)

Upon hearing of Henry's suicide, Esterhazy shaved off his mustache, boarded a train for Mauberge, and crossed the Belgian border on foot. From Brussels he fled to London and settled under the name of de Becourt. (Bredin, p. 336)

The next domino to fall was Minister of War Cavaignac. Obstinately adhering to his warped paradigm, he was left with no choice but to step down when his colleagues in the Cabinet voted over his objections to consider Lucie Dreyfus's request for a reopening of her husband's case. (Lewis. p. 241)

The anti-Dreyfusards transformed Commandant Henry into a martyred patriot. In a series of articles entitled "The First Blood," Charles Maurras, an obscure poet and journalist, advanced the fanciful thesis that Henry had acted with "intellectual and moral nobility" for the public good and that his "unlucky forgery will be acclaimed as one of the finest deeds of war." (Chapman, p. 228)

La Libre Parole launched a national subscription campaign on behalf of Madame Henry and her children; its goal was to safeguard the reputation of the "French officer killed, murdered by the Jews." Week after week it published the names of the donors, who numbered 25,000 and filled a seven hundred page book, and the sums collected, which totaled 130,000 francs. (Bredin, p. 350)

Virulent anti-Semitic commentaries accompanied many contributions. Poverty, exploitation, and unemployment were blamed on the Jews. Lumped together with Protestants, Freemasons, republicans, and intellectuals, they were perceived as agents of social upheaval and polluters of moral values who ranked no higher on the biological ladder than insects, toads, reptiles, and monkeys. Among the remedies proposed for eradication of this scourge were vivisection, roasting, massacre, and "converting their flesh to mincemeat." (Bredin, pp. 352-353)

On September 26, Prime Minister Brisson's Cabinet voted (by a majority of two) to forward Lucie Dreyfus's application to the High Court of Appeals, specifically the Criminal Chamber (there were also a Civil Chamber and a Petitions Chamber), which was presided over by the courageous and incorruptible Justice Louis Loew. Four weeks later the jurist assigned to investigate, Maitre Alphonse Bard, presented his findings. In a masterly report that weighed every shred of available evidence and adduced the truth with inflexible logic, he concluded that revision was justified and that the Criminal Chamber should hear the case in plenary session. (Lewis, pp. 248, 253)

By now the country had a new Prime Minister and Minister of War. In Central Africa at Fashoda, futilely attempting to block access to the south, a French force of two hundred under Captain Jean Baptiste Marchand stood face-to-face with Lord Kitchener's 30,000-strong Anglo-Egyptian Army. In Paris an odor of insurrection permeated the streets as several hundred laborers walked off the site of the upcoming World's Fair; shortly they were joined by 20,000 construction workers and a union of railway employees. (Bredin, pp. 342-343)

To maintain order Cavaignac's successor, General Charles Chanoine, summoned to Paris 70,000 troops, whom militant nationalists and anti-Dreyfusards embraced as potential allies. On October 25, Chamoine marched to the Chamber, proclaimed Dreyfus's guilt, and abruptly resigned. With that, the majority center abandoned Prime Minister Brisson, and he followed suit. (Lewis, pp. 251-252)

If Chanoine had hoped his betrayal of Brisson would drive his panicked countrymen into the protective clutches of the Army and halt the revisionist movement, he was quickly disillusioned. With the Republicans in the Senate and the Chamber insistent on sustaining the supremacy of civilian government, President Felix Faures invited Charles Dupuy, who had been Prime Minister at the time of Dreyfus's conviction, to return to the office. Attuned to the political winds, Dupuy recalled a former Minister of War but a private citizen who had been in retirement for six years, Charles de Freycinet, to the post. (Bredin, p. 359)

Meanwhile, the parade of familiar figures before the Criminal Chamber of the High Court proceeded apace. Four War Ministers -- Mercier, Billot, Cavaignac, Chanoine -- all affirmed Dreyfus's guilt. Mercier attempted to prove it. "He admitted that he had secured no confession from Dreyfus through Du Paty, but he accepted Lebrun-Renault's statement. Asked why, in that case, he had not made a report, he answered, 'It was a closed case. It could not be foreseen that a whole race would later line up behind Dreyfus.' Asked about the communication of the Secret Dossier at the trial, he claimed that since Mme. Dreyfus's application had not mentioned this, the matter was irrelevant, and he refused to say yes or no." (Chapman, pp. 239-240)

"Colonel Picquart, removed from prison, told in detail all that he knew. His calmness, his precision, and his moderation, in contrast with the passions agitating the previous witnesses, made a deep impression on the magistrates." (Bredin, p. 360)

One of the seven judges in the 1894 court-martial, Martin Freystaetter, now believed the verdict was wrong; he testified that one of the critical documents, the scoundrel D letter, had never been discussed in open court. (Lewis, p. 262)

Esterhazy was granted safe-conduct to give his deposition. He lamented having been deserted by his cowardly and ungrateful superiors; as for the bordereau, since the first court-martial had attributed it to Dreyfus and the second had absolved him, he had nothing more to add. (Chapman, p. 251)

Anticipating defeat, the anti-Dreyfusards devised a daring strategy. Unofficial polling of the thirty-three members of the Civil and Petitions Chambers suggested that they strongly opposed revision and that, sitting with the Criminal Chamber, they would outvote its sixteen judges. The accusation by Civil Court Judge Quesnay de Beaurepaire that Justice Loew had interviewed and coached Colonel Picquart before his testimony, coupled with the nearness of national elections, gave the anti-Dreyfusards the wedge they needed. They pressured Dupuy into introducing a bill on January 28, 1899, requiring adjudication by the united branches of the High Court rather than the Criminal Chamber in cases of treason. (Lewis, p. 262)

Such a dispossession of a high court just days before its expected judgment was unheard of and in defiance of the law. In the Chamber of Deputies, Renault-Morliere, a former appellate attorney, charged his colleagues, "You are killing in this nation the very idea of justice." In the Senate, celebrated sage Rene Waldeck-Rousseau attacked "the suspect and feeble measure as a violation of legal principle and an outrage to conscience." (Bredin, pp. 371-372, 377)

The bill became law on March 1, and effectively canceled the Criminal Court's February 9th nullification of Dreyfus's 1894 conviction. The legal drama now had to replayed before the entire High Court of Appeals. (Lewis, p. 262)

It took three months. On May 29, the Court heard the arguments of counsel: Manau, the Procureur-General; Ballot-Beaupre, the rapporteur; and Henri Mornard, for Lucie Dreyfus. All three concluded that the bordereau had been written not by Dreyfus but by Esterhazy, but, bowing to the wishes of the Dreyfuses -- who wanted Alfred's name cleared by his peers -- and a majority of the judges, conceded that a new element had emerged -- the secret transmittal of the "scoundrel D" letter -- which mandated a retrial. (Chapman, pp. 262-264)

Thus, on June 3, the Chief Justice read to a silent assemblage: "The Court hereby rescinds and annuls the verdict rendered on December 28, 1894, against Alfred Dreyfus, and sends the accused before the Court-Martial at Rennes." A special ship, the Sjax, was dispatched to bring home to France the man who had been imprisoned on Devil's Island for more than four years. (Lewis, p. 267)

En route he would topple yet another administration. The death of Felix Faure on February 16 had enabled Dreyfus sympathizer Emile Loubet to ascend to the presidency. One day after the High Court's decision, while attending the steeplechase at Auteil, he was loudly derided by a crowd of rowdy royalists, then physically assaulted by one brandishing a walking stick. A week later, as thousands of citizens marched in homage to Loubet, the Chamber of Deputies "resolved to support only those governments intent on defending vigorously the institutions of the Republic and maintaining public order." By a vote of 296 to 159, Charles Dupuy was repudiated. (Bredin, p. 387)

Hoping to unite the disparate sects of republicanism -- Socialists, Progressives, and Radicals who were now bereft of leaders and policies -- Loubet appealed to the soft-spoken yet prestigious Rene Waldeck-Rousseau, "a parliamentarian whose intelligence, seriousness, and integrity were widely recognized." He would govern for three years, "almost by himself, keeping his president . . . at a distance and demanding of his ministers an unprecedented degree of submission." (Bredin, pp. 391, 393)

He made an exception only for his old friend General Gaston de Galliffet, whom he named Minister of War in order mollify the Army. Galliffet was tall, haughty, flamboyant, and caustic. If the republicans loathed him for his bloody suppression of the Paris communes in 1871, their fears were assuaged by his commitment to Dreyfus's innocence and his scorn for "conspiring generals." (Chapman, p. 272; Bredin, p. 396)

After three weeks at sea, the debilitated, emaciated Alfred Dreyfus arrived at the military prison at Rennes, where he was reunited with his loyal wife Lucie. "Hands entwined, mute, they cried. 'Their feelings were too intense to be expressed by human speech,' Dreyfus said simply." (Lewis, p. 274)

His team of attorneys -- the elderly, tactful, conservative Edgar Demange and the youthful, fiery, aggressive Fernand Labori -- came to prepare him for his trial. "Of all the literate persons on the planet, Dreyfus was probably the most ignorant of the Affair. From Demange he heard the name Esterhazy for the first time. He learned of Picquart's discovery of the petit bleu and of the Army's attempt to conceal the document. He strained to comprehend Zola's tempestuous intervention, Henry's suicide, Boisdeffre's resignation . . . the mustering of the intellectuals and politicians for and against him, and the worldwide passion aroused by his plight." (Lewis, p. 274)

The court convened on August 7, Colonel Albert Jouast presiding. The entrance of the accused evoked a gasp from the spectators; in his decrepit condition, he was a disappointing icon for the tumultuous firestorm that had rent the nation's fabric: "a little old man -- an old, old man of thirty-nine, a small-statured, thick-set old man in the black uniform of the artillery" who had the "gait of an Egyptian mummy," wrote one journalist. (Chapman, p. 288; Lewis, p. 281)

Colonel Jouast's opening interrogation was brutal, harsh, and adversarial. If Dreyfus tried to expound upon his one-word "No" or "Never" replies, Joust sharply reprimanded him: "That is unnecessary talk. Do you deny or don't you?" (Bredin, pp. 405-406)

When handed the bordereau, Dreyfus spurned it and insisted, "I am innocent. I have tolerated so much for five years, my Colonel, but one more time, for the honor of my name and that of my children, I am innocent." He lost his composure only once. When confronted with his putative confession, he lashed out: "It's iniquitous to condemn an innocent man! I never confessed anything! Never!" (Bredin, p.405, Lewis,p. 283)

In fact, his stoicism provoked one partisan to complain, "What was needed was an actor, and he was a soldier." (Bredin, p. 406)

For four days the court studied the Secret Dossier in closed session, and found, as had so many who preceded them, no proof of treason, but merely "innuendo, abuse, irrelevance, duplication, and one or two forgeries." (Lewis, p. 283)

The spectacle wore on, as a marathon of witnesses repeated their tired war stories. Former President Casimir-Perier disputed the vicious rumor that he had promised the Dreyfus family an open trial. Cavaignac reiterated the alleged confession. Billot castigated Picquart for wasting secret service funds on frivolous projects. Freycinet was outraged by the thirty-five million francs the Dreyfusard syndicate had imported into France. Gonse refused responsibility for anything, lied to cover his errors, betrayed his associates, and finally admitted he had falsified testimony. Picquart, the defrocked soldier who had been released from prison, "without hesitation or confusion, explained the case for seven hours and a half." Ten handwriting experts contradicted themselves. (Chapman, pp. 289-291)

Two well-known personages did not appear. Esterhazy pled poverty from his London asylum, while Du Paty, armed with medical certificates, stuck to his sickbed. (Chapman, p. 292)

The most dominating presence -- and the most devastating to Dreyfus -- was Minister of War Mercier. He now regarded himself as the nation's savior by virtue of his resourceful conduct back in 1894. He titillated his listeners with gossip implying that the Kaiser himself was actively involved in espionage and had personally corresponded with his master spy, Captain Dreyfus. His most sensational revelation was that on the evening of January 6, 1895, he, the President of the Republic (Casimir-Perier, who ridiculed the tale), and the Prime Minister had waited four and a half hours at the Elysee in excruciating suspense to learn if peace or war would ensue from an exchange of notes. (Chapman, p. 292)

"Mercier droned on, mechanically removing document after document from his leather portfolio for the clerk to read to the court," acknowledging and justifying the Secret Dossier passed to the judges in 1894 while shifting the blame to the deceased Sandherr, obfuscating, distorting, and inventing facts to reinforce his entrenchment -- until finally, after four hours, he turned to Dreyfus and said: "I am an honest man and the son of an honest man. If the slightest doubt had crossed my mind, I would be the first to declare and to say before you, to Captain Dreyfus, that I was mistaken in good faith." Dreyfus rose and cried, "That's what you ought to do. It's your duty." (Lewis, p. 287; Chapman, p. 294)

Mercier had thrown down the gauntlet. The court-martial must choose either him or Dreyfus. (Chapman, p. 294)

When it came time for each side to give its summation, the Dreyfusards believed that their best chance for an acquittal was to muzzle the irrepressible Labori. Three weeks earlier he had narrowly escaped death from an assassin's bullet -- it had missed his spine by a millimeter and stopped just short of a lung -- but was now prepared to deploy his considerable theatrical talents to emphasize the travesty of Zola's trial, to elucidate the motive of Henry's suicide, and to flourish the incontrovertible proof of Esterhazy's guilt. (Lewis, p. 296)

But he acquiesced to the wishes of his client, and deferred to his partner. Demange spoke for seven hours, persuasively, respectfully, eloquently. His plea was "a masterpiece of logic and clarity . . . solid, clear, prudent, moderate, imbued with honesty, common sense, and compassion," wrote two observers, yet perhaps too patronizing for Labori, who cringed at the words, "I am sure doubt will at least have entered your minds, and doubt is enough for you to acquit Dreyfus," because, for him, there could be no doubt. (Bredin, p. 425)

That same day, September 9, after deliberating ninety minutes, the tribunal returned to the courtroom. "Scarcely able to master his voice," Colonel Jouast delivered the verdict -- by a majority of five to two, guilty of treason with extenuating circumstances. Instead of life, Dreyfus was sentenced to ten years confinement, five of which he had already served. (Chapman, p. 298; Lewis, p. 297)

Prime Minister Waldeck-Rousseau may not have been surprised, but he was surely distressed. He yearned for a resolution that would put an end to the Affair, satisfy justice, reconcile Frenchmen, and restore public tranquility. Even if Dreyfus's petition for an appeal were accepted, a third court-martial, in the words of Galliffet, "would condemn him six to one, a fourth unanimously," so intransigent was the Army. (Bredin, pp. 429-430)

 The only means of extrication was a pardon, and an immediate one, so as to avoid its being perceived as an act of pity. But would Dreyfus even accept a pardon which would entail a dual sacrifice: his personal honor for his freedom and his advocates' universal principles for expediency? And would not his own clemency predestine a general amnesty for all the military officials who had been embroiled in the controversy? (Bredin, pp. 430-431)

In the end he yielded -- sensitive to the anxieties of his wife and children and recognizing that the precarious state of his health might prevent his surviving further incarceration. Granted his freedom on September 19, 1899, he pledged, "Liberty is nothing without honor. From this day forward I will continue to seek amends for the shocking judicial wrong of which I am still a victim." (Lewis, p. 303)

"As a deportee Dreyfus could cause displeasure to no one. As a free man, he accumulated the rancor of many." For most Dreyfusards, he was at best a neutral, emotionless hero, at worst an egocentric, aloof ingrate. (Bredin, p. 436; Lewis, p. 304)

The idealist Charles Peguy wrote bitterly, "We might have died for Dreyfus, but Dreyfus would not have died for Dreyfus" -- which was a variation of Theodore Herzl's "One can't even guarantee that he would have been on the side of the victim if someone else had suffered the same fate in his place." (Lewis, p. 304)

Labori was even more vituperative, excoriating his client as beneath the cause he embodied and incapable of fulfilling the role to which he was destined. He wrote: "Alfred Dreyfus . . . may . . . prefer his freedom to his legal honor. But in doing so . . . he is acting purely as an individual, not as a member of the human collective, in solidarity with his fellow men. However great the role he may have played, he is no longer representative of anything." (Bredin, pp. 436, 448-449)

Georges Picquart never forgave Dreyfus for the pardon which facilitated amnesty for Mercier and other criminals. Waldeck-Rousseau introduced the bill in the Chamber in January 1900 and nurtured it to passage almost twelve months later. In nullifying charges against Du Paty, Esterhazy, and Mercier, it denied Picquart, who had been disgraced by accusations of forgery and dereliction of duty, any opportunity of judicial exoneration. (Lewis, p. 309)

On April 6, 1903, Socialist leader Jean Jaures rose in the Chamber of Deputies, ostensibly to argue against the seating of a young Nationalist. Within minutes the Affair was rekindled, as Jaures recounted the cabals of generals, ministers, leagues, and clerics, and unveiled startling new evidence that might allow the case to be reopened: the photograph of a bordereau referring to Dreyfus and annotated by Kaiser Wilhelm himself which Mercier at Rennes had claimed to have in his possession. The Chamber declined to take action, but the Minister of War, Louis Andre, ordered an administrative inquest. (Bredin, p. 461)

Assisted by his aide-de-camp, Major A. L. Targe, Andre embarked upon his task with resolute thoroughness. The two immediately confirmed two forgeries: (1) the letter by Panizzardi in which Henry had changed "P . . . had brought him many interesting things" to "D . . . had brought him many interesting things"; and (2) another letter discussing railroad information in which Henry had torn off the original date (March 28, 1895, when Dreyfus was already on Devil's Island) and replaced it with August 1894. Archivist Gribelin, who worshiped Henry, nonetheless confessed how his boss augmented Picquart's expense account in order to implicate him for squandering funds. (Bredin, pp. 461-462)

Based on Andre's report, which was submitted on October 19, the Minister of Justice solicited from Alfred Dreyfus and his attorney, Henri Mornard, a request for a revision of the Rennes court-martial. On December 25, Public Prosecutor Manuel Baudouin was assigned to present the case to the Criminal Chamber of the High Court of Appeals. "Baudouin worked with extreme diligence, became fully acquainted with the immense file, and was gradually persuaded of Dreyfus's innocence." (Bredin, pp. 462-465)

For eight months, from March to November 1904, the Criminal Chamber plodded through the mountain of paper, then summoned once more to the stage all the veterans of the drama -- those who were still alive -- and a few ingenues. Nearly all recited verbatim their well-rehearsed scripts, although for some the fire was diminished. (Lewis, pp. 315-316, Bredin, p. 467)

Mercier clung to Dreyfus's guilt and dismissed the annotated bordereau as "a completely inexact fable." Gonse denied everything and sought refuge in amnesia. Du Paty, clearly unstable, finally surrendered the original draft of the commentary he had prepared in 1894. Picquart's deposition was his usual precise mastery of the facts. Madame Bastian -- half-witted, illiterate, anti-Semitic -- added comic relief as she bemoaned the loss of her job at the German embassy and her livelihood. (Lewis. p. 316; Bredin, p. 467)

Finally, a committee of artillery experts swore that no gunner could have written the bordereau and that the famous secret manual was in fact not confidential. And two mathematicians and a scientist debunked Alphonse Bertillon's system of handwriting analysis and established Esterhazy as the author of the bordereau. (Chapman, p. 347)

On November 19, 1904, in accordance with the dispossession law of 1899, the Criminal Chamber forwarded the case to the Combined Chambers of the High Court. Beset by international and domestic crises that would eventually turn him out of office -- a conflict with Germany over Morocco, protests by peasants and the Army over implementation of Separation of Church and State laws, worker strikes -- Prime Minister Maurice Rouvier prevailed upon the Court to delay its session -- for nineteen months. (Lewis, pp. 316-317)

Beginning June 18, 1906, the united courts met to hear the three reporting judges. On this occasion there was no first-night crowd, only a few family members, lawyers, and journalists. The police were conspicuously absent. (Chapman, p. 350)

Rapporteur Claude Moras asserted that Dreyfus had not written the bordereau and had not confessed, that the annotated bordereau was a myth, and that the Foreign Office version of the Panizzardi telegram (which Henry had doctored) was authentic. Thus revision was justified. (Chapman, p. 350)

Public Prosecutor Baudouin, speaking with passion and vehemence, indicted all who had impeded the work of truth, and asked for annulment without further adjudication. (Bredin, pp. 476-477)

Attorney Mornand was appearing before the High Court on behalf of his client for the fourth time. He argued that, the bordereau having been invalidated, the confession discredited, and the forgeries exposed, no criminal charges remained pending against Dreyfus and thus the prescribed condition for forgoing a new trial had been fulfilled. (Bredin, p. 478)

"On July 12, 1906, Chief Justice Ballot-Beaupre announced the Court's decision: the Rennes verdict was annulled and Dreyfus absolved of all charges by unanimous vote; by majority vote there was to be no referral of the case to a military tribunal." (Lewis, p. 317)

"It had taken twelve years for France to vindicate an innocent man." (Bredin, p. 481)

The following day the Chamber passed two bills reintegrating Dreyfus and Picquart into the Army. Picquart regained all his seniority and became a brigadier general retroactively as of 1903. Dreyfus was awarded the cross of the Legion of Honor and promoted to major and squadron chief, effective on the date of the promulgation of the law. Hence he was deprived of any chance of attaining those higher ranks to which he had always aspired. (Bredin, p. 482)

When, during the debate, Minister of War Mercier, now a Senator, professed that his conscience did not allow an affirmative vote, he was riposted by an early Dreyfusard: "If we desired to extend our need for justice, there is one man who should take the prison cell of the honorable victim whose innocence, after long and terrible sufferings, was yesterday confirmed. That man, sir, is you." (Chapman, p. 353)

Dreyfus left the Army in 1907. He returned to active duty as a lieutenant colonel in 1914, served on the same front at Verdun as his officer son, and retired after the war as a colonel in the reserves. He spent the last years of his life in quiet seclusion writing his memoirs, almost reliving his captivity. His ordeals had ruined his health, shrinking a diligent, ambitious officer into a withdrawn and unoccupied old man. "He retreated into himself," wrote his son, ". . . and scarcely knew any longer how to communicate his emotions to others. He had simply lost the habit of expressing them." He died after a long illness following surgery on July 12, 1935. (Lewis, pp. 319-320)

Dreyfus the man declined to assume the mantle of a Dreyfusard. He never saw or described himself as a hero or martyr. "I was only an artillery officer whom a tragic error prevented from following his course," he told a friend. "Dreyfus as a symbol of justice is not me; that Dreyfus was created by you." (Bredin, pp. 489-491)

His heroism consisted solely of enduring the terrible conditions to which he was subjected, fortified by courage and the invincibility of his convictions: a passionate patriotism, a quasi-religious faith in the virtues of his country, and a belief in the ultimate triumph of truth and justice. (Bredin, p. 495)

If the Affair can be explained as accentuating differences between Dreyfusard and anti-Dreyfusard; between two schools of thought, two systems of values, two ethics; between those who do battle for justice, truth, and freedom and those who fight on behalf of prejudices, established order, recognized organizations, and prior verdicts; between those who make the individual the measure of all things and those who revere entities higher than the individual, such as the Nation, the Army, the Party -- differences that also perpetually agitate human consciousness -- Alfred Dreyfus may have been one of those rare persons in whom such internal contradictions cannot be detected. (Bredin, pp. 532, 541, 543-544)

By his natural disposition, he seamlessly melded both traditions. He was content in every hierarchy in which he found himself. Similarly, without any discord, he made freedom and truth, the virtues of republicanism, his honor and his ideal. "The patriot's nation and the rights of man converged for him, and in him." (Bredin, p. 544)

His unified soul enabled him to mobilize the incredible resources necessary for his survival. Yet, upon his return to civilization and a house divided, the clash of the values he cherished and their bifurcation into irreconcilable hostile forces would enfeeble his body and darken his spirit. They were afflictions from which he would never recover. (Bredin, p. 544)

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 and Company, 1956.

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

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.

Long Live the Army!

This is a strange and convoluted tale, over one hundred years old, yet replete with familiar themes: justice gone awry; deceit and corruption permeating the highest echelons of government; obscure criminal acts precipitating a transformational political crisis.

Saturday, January 5, 1895, the Jewish sabbath, dawns clear, cold, and crisp as an early morning crowd estimated at 20,000 packs the Place Fontenoy and the streets surrounding it near the entrance to Paris's Ecole Militaire. Inside five thousand troops from the city's garrisons and three hundred journalists await the commencement of a macabre ceremony. (Lewis, pp. 56-57)

At precisely 9:00 AM, flanked by four artillery officers and a lieutenant of the Garde Republicaine, his filed sword at "present arms," a uniformed man marches into the courtyard and approaches a mounted general, Paul Darras. (Lewis, p. 57)

He has been in a holding cell for about an hour, and later that evening, while hoisting drinks with reporters at the Moulin Rouge, his escort, Captain Lebrun-Renault, will either misconstrue or deliberately twist their conversation into an admission of guilt. (Lewis, p. 55)

Upon the clerk of the Court Martial reading the verdict, Darras rises in his stirrups and proclaims, "Alfred Dreyfus, you are no longer worth of bearing arms. In the name of the people of France, we degrade you." (Lewis, p. 57)

Seven-foot Sergeant-Major Bouxin steps forward, yanks the epaulettes from Dreyfus's shoulders, wrenches all the buttons from his tunic and the gold braid from his sleeves, rips the red stripes from his trousers, and, drawing Dreyfus's sword from his scabbard and planting its tip in the mud, snaps it with a thrust of his boot. (Harris, pp. 10-11)

Obliged to parade before the restless assemblage, his clothes in rags, the disgraced pariah confounds them all by exclaiming, "You have no right to insult me . . . On the heads of my wife and children, I swear I am innocent . . . Long Live France! Long Live the Army!" (Bredin, p. 5; Lewis, p. 58)

The troops, the press, the frenzied mob erupt with jeers of scorn: "Coward. Judas. Death to the traitor. Death to the Jew." (Bredin, p. 5; Lewis, p. 58)

The sobering truth is that once Alfred Dreyfus was targeted for selling information to German diplomats, his religious ethnicity became a flashpoint for the anti-Republican, militaristic, and anti-Semitic strata which were both embedded in late nineteenth-century French society and symptomatic of the general malaise which afflicted it.

Although presumptive dictator Georges Boulanger had been discredited and exiled in 1891, his ability to rally a critical mass of nostalgic Royalists, distrustful Catholics, xenophobic generals, and disaffected populists -- all those who detested the parliamentary system -- signified that bourgeois liberalism was hardly secure. (Bredin, pp. 32-33)

While Pope Leo XIII's encyclical, Amid Solicitudes, published in February 1882, may have invited Catholics to accept the Republic, bishops remained hostile, priests promoted the rehabilitation of the monarchy, and ecclesiastics aggressively opposed state-sponsored secular education. (Bredin, p. 35)

On the extreme left, anarchist bombers aroused an occasional panic, answering the call to action delivered by the martyr Ravachol at the Court of Assizes: "Society is rotting. In factories, mines, and fields, there are human beings working without hope of acquiring a thousandth part of their labor." (Bredin, p. 36)

In August 1892 at Carmaux, three thousand marched off their jobs to affirm their right to the free exercise of public functions. By 1893, six hundred thirty-four strikes would implicate 170,000 workers, and the established order could no longer ignore the peril. Although Parliament did make concessions -- implementing optional arbitration to resolve differences with management, limiting the workday for women and children to eleven hours -- the labor movement and the Socialist Party had been launched. (Bredin, pp. 36-37)

Humiliated by the Germans in 1870, the French Army had committed itself to a vigorous revitalization -- revising and streamlining antiquated regulations; establishing the Ecole Superieure de Guerre, where the critical study of modern warfare would be the focus; developing a comprehensive plan of mobilization, concentration, requisition, and transportation; adopting improved tools, caissons, boats, rifles, powder, and cannon; and organizing a powerful defensive network on its northern and eastern frontiers. (Bredin, pp. 14-15)

Relishing revenge and glory, manifesting traditional virtues -- obedience, hierarchy, and respect for authority -- starkly contradictory to the liberty, equality, and fraternity espoused by the Republic, this re-imagined Army, particularly its officer corps, emerged as a magnet for young men from the aristocracy and the conservative and Catholic bourgeoise. (Bredin, pp. 17-18)

Isolated by its culture and mission, the Army envisioned itself as the protector of French pride and religion, the preserver of male devotion, daring, and bravery, the incarnation of the concept of nationhood, and, quite possibly, the arbiter of the rule of law. (Bredin, pp. 18-19)

Although Jews had been emancipated and granted full citizenship in 1791, Christian anti-Judaic prejudices persisted. For numerous Catholics, Jews bore the cross of god-slayers. By 1880 this theological hostility had evolved into a more complex political and moral doctrine by which Jews were maligned not only for their anomalous religious beliefs but also as indolent, greedy moneygrubbers and as racially inferior non-Indo-Europeans. (Bredin, pp. 23-24, 29)

While some of this intolerance can be attributed to a surge in immigration -- between 1870 and 1886, fifty thousand Jews made their way from Alsace-Lorraine to Paris -- its real strength derived from a burgeoning resentment against the perceived evils of capitalism, secularism, industrialism, and liberal democracy and a gnawing hunger to identify a responsible agent. (Bredin, pp. 26-27)

The Jew was the logical scapegoat. He was a wanderer without a homeland, an international without French ancestry or property, a merchant enamored of profit, and the epitome of the decadence, materialism, and corruption of the era. (Bredin, pp. 27-28)

Two of the most articulate, anti-Semitic ideologues were Edouard Drumont, author of La France Juivre, published in 1886, and founder of La Libre Parole in 1892, and Leon Bloy, whose La Salut par les Juifs appeared the same year. (Bredin, pp. 28-30)

To them and others, the Jew was "evil" itself: a dangerous revolutionary, a ruthless capitalist, a devious German, a miser, a usurer, a speculator. He was hypocritical, obsequious, spineless, and cunning. He hated Christians and sought only to despoil them. He could be detected at once by his physiognomy -- his hooked nose and fingers, protruding ears, elongated torso, and square fingernails -- and by an inhuman voice that whined, barked, and screeched. His women were sensual, perverted, and debauched. (Bredin, p. 30)

In May 1892, La Libre Parole, along with La Croix, the self-proclaimed "most anti-Jewish newspaper in France," embarked on a virulent campaign to root out from the Army the large number of potentially treasonous Jewish officers, one of whom was Alfred Dreyfus, whose career was flourishing. (Bredin, p. 29)

He was a native of Alsace, the youngest of thirteen children (seven of whom would survive infancy), born in 1859 to a household prosperous and well-entrenched until its domestic tranquility was shattered twelve years later by the German annexation of the territory, which would force the family to emigrate. Young Alfred was shy, taciturn, and introspective, traits hardly predictable of his future course, yet, passionately loyal to his country and region, despising the foreign invader, and yearning for orderliness and security, he was drawn to the Army. (Bredin, pp. 12-13)

After earning his diploma from the College Chaptal in 1876 -- the last of several Parisian boarding schools he attended -- he applied and was accepted to, surprisingly, the Ecole Polytechnique, France's rigorous military engineering school. With a temperament well-suited to the institution's curriculum and ethos -- unemotional, mechanical, and logical -- he graduated 32nd in his class, and in 1880 entered the Army as a second lieutenant. (Lewis, pp. 7-8)

By 1890 Dreyfus had attained the rank of captain, earned praise for zealousness, spirit, conscientiousness, intelligence, and a thirst for knowledge, garnered a wife -- Lucie Hadamard -- and was emboldened to seek admission to the War College in Paris. His acceptance was a stupendous achievement. "Top graduates were guaranteed assignment to the Army General Staff on which no acknowledged Jew had ever served." (Lewis, pp. 9-11)

Maintaining a stellar record, Dreyfus was on track for third in his class until a negative evaluation by General Pierrre de Bonnefond, an unabashed anti-Semite, relegated him to ninth. He was appointed to the General Staff in January 1893. (Lewis, p. 19)

Like all trainees, Dreyfus entered a rotation through the Staff's four departments or bureaus. After receiving a superior rating in the Bureau of Organization and Mobilization, he moved on to Communications and Transport, where he encountered two anti-Semites. Chief officer Pierre-Elie Fabre described him as "incomplete . . . pretentious . . . and from the point of character, conscience, and service conduct, failing to fulfill the requirements of being employed by the General Staff." Assistant Bertin-Mourot reprimanded him for being "too aggressive with his intelligence." (Lewis, pp. 22-24)

The atmosphere at his next stop, Intelligence, was more congenial. Not only was he commended for excellence; after a day of special maneuvers, he was singled out by Chief of Staff Raoul de Boisdeffre for his brilliant commentary on the use of defensive artillery. In July 1894, when he assumed his duties in the Bureau of Operations and Training, eventual promotion to a generalship, which would be a rarity for a Jew, seemed not out of reach. (Lewis, pp. 25-26)

 

Realizing that future military success might hinge on competent intelligence, in 1876 the War Office had created a special Statistical Section to engage in espionage and counter-espionage. Shifty undercover characters drawing payments from a variety of sources were recruited for surveillance, shadowing, and thievery, and to distribute false information. The operation could hardly be deemed professional; there was no central registry or record of paper trails, and it is doubtful if officials knew which documents were bogus and which were genuine. (Chapman, pp. 48-49)

Although the titular head of the Section was Colonel Jean-Conrad Sandherr -- an Alsatian, a fanatic patriot, and an avowed anti-Semite -- the dominant personage, and the one responsible for fabricating reports and reconstructing and interpreting those supplied to him by his rakish network, was Commandant Hubert Joseph-Henry. A broad-shouldered giant with a heavy moustache, Henry was uneducated but cunning, courageous, energetic, ambitious, and infused with a blind respect for discipline and an unreserved admiration for his military superiors. (Bredin, p. 44)

Once or twice a month Henry rendezvoused at one of two nearby churches with "Auguste," actually Madame Marie Bastian, an elderly domestic working at the German Embassy, who would pass him trash bags full of torn or crumpled correspondence, bills, receipts, and miscellaneous documents, a few of which might turn out to be useful after they were pieced together and translated into French. (Bredin, p. 46)

Over time, this system, known as "the ordinary track," produced a revelatory series of letters between Colonel Maximilien von Schwarzkoppen and Major Alessandro Panizzardi, military attaches to their German and Italian embassies. Not only were the two dandies excessively fond of one another (penning such endearments as "dog, darling, bitch, and bugger"), someone was selling them large-scale plans of fortifications. (Bredin, pp. 46, 49-50)

For example, in April 1894, an intercepted letter from Schwarzkoppen to Panizzardi included "twelve master plans of Nice which that scoundrel D. gave me in the hope of restoring relations" -- which only confirmed what Henry had already heard second-hand from a retired attache to Spanish Embassy, Marquis del Val Carlos: that "an officer in one of the War Office departments was handing documents to a foreign power." (Chapman, pp. 52-53)

The identity of the traitor would remain elusive until September 26, when Madame Bastian delivered the celebrated bordereau -- the memorandum to Schwarzkoppen -- which stands at the heart of the Dreyfus Affair. It was unsigned, undated, torn partly across twice, and missing an envelope. Once repaired by Henry, it was easily deciphered:

"Without news indicating that you wish to see me, I am nevertheless sending you some interesting information, Monsieur: (1) A note on the hydraulic recoil of the 120 and the way it has behaved; (2) A note on the covering troops (some modifications will be introduced by the new plans); (3) A note on the modifications in the artillery formations; (4) A note concerning Madagascar; (5) The provisional Firing Manual for Field Artillery.

"This last document is extremely difficult to procure and I can only have it at my disposal for a few days. The Minister of War has sent out a fixed number to the corps and the corps are responsible for them. Each officer who has a copy has to send it back after the maneuvers . . . I am off to maneuvers." (Lewis, p. 79)

Within days the bordereau crossed the desk of Minister of War Auguste Mercier. Having recently come under fire for some grievous errors in judgment -- protecting a spy, releasing 60,000 conscripts without informing his president, spurning a weapons inventor, Eugene Turpin, who afterward threatened to sell his talents to Germany -- Mercier was in dire need of a notable triumph to redeem his reputation. (Lewis, pp. 86-87)

After a week of fruitless research by his Statistical Section, Sandherr in desperation transmitted copies of the bordereau to the General Staff's four departments. On October 6, newly appointed Deputy of Communications and Transport, Lieutenant-Colonel Albert d'Aboville, observed to his chief, Colonel Fabre, that only an artillery officer and a staff trainee would be privy to the classified material which had been enumerated. (Lewis, p. 87)

Among the short list of candidates who had passed through their bureau was Alfred Dreyfus, whose prejudicial assessment by Fabre was already a matter of record. After examining a sample of Dreyfus's handwriting, the two were convinced it matched that of the bordereau. They hurried down the hall to Sandherr's office; when shown the damning evidence, he slapped his forehead and exclaimed, "I ought to have thought of it." (Chapman, p. 59)

If Minister of War Mercier now had his spy, he at least understood that a more qualified analysis of the handwriting was imperative. Of the three individuals whose opinions were sought -- Major Armand du Paty de Clam, a frivolous and romantic-minded officer from the Bureau of Operations and Training; Alphonse Bertillon, head of the police department of Judiciary Identity and a notorious anti-Semite; and Albert Gobert, an expert from the Bank of France -- only Du Paty was confident that the samples were identical. (Bredin, p. 65)

Gobert concluded that "the anonymous letter could well be from some other person than the suspect," (Chapman, p. 70) while Bertillon concocted the bizarre theory that the bordereau might be a forgery, even a self-forgery, in which Dreyfus had imitated his own handwriting. (Bredin, p. 73)

Despite these inconsistencies and the advice of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gabriel Hanotaux, who feared the diplomatic consequences of a judicial procedure initiated on the basis of a document illegally obtained from an embassy, Mercier would not be deterred. On Saturday, October 13, Dreyfus was summoned by telegram to appear before Chief of Staff Boisdeffre two days hence and in civilian dress, an extraordinary violation of protocol. (Lewis, p. 27)

What transpired was a surrealistic Star Chamber. Du Paty, whose hand was bandaged to demonstrate that he could not write, asked Dreyfus to take down a letter for Boisdeffre's signature. He then recited some verbiage similar to that of the bordereau. After failing twice to provoke the amanuensis into indignation, Du Paty rose, clamped him by the shoulder, and shouted, "Captain Dreyfus, in the name of the law, I arrest you. You are accused of high treason." (Chapman, p. 72)

Now completely rattled, Dreyfus demanded proof. "The evidence is overwhelming," said Du Paty, but he refused to present it. Instead he placed a loaded revolver on the writing table, and announced that if Dreyfus would not confess, he must shoot himself. Dreyfus replied, "I won't do it. I am innocent," which he continued to assert as he was taken away to the Cherche-Midi prison, where he would be held in solitary confinement until his court-martial. (Chapman, pp. 72-73)

For the next two months Dreyfus's accusers scrambled to solidify their case. A search of his apartment turned up nothing of any value. During repeated interrogations, Du Paty harassed and threatened Dreyfus, ordering him to take dictation sitting, reclining, leaning, standing, and wearing a glove, trying to no avail to get him to acknowledge scraps of a photographed mystery document as his own handwriting. (Lewis, p. 33)

Francois Guenee, a civilian investigator employed by the General Staff, reported that Dreyfus was an inveterate gambler and womanizer; the claims were subsequently refuted by a police captain who clarified that Guenee had mistaken his subject for a well-known rogue of the same name. (Chapman, p. 83)

When a comprehensive review of Statistical Section records failed to yield any material of sufficient weight, Sandherr and Henry were stymied. How could they obtain a guilty verdict -- other than resorting to extreme measures?

In recommending a court-martial, military magistrate Major Bexon d'Ormescheville chose to ignore Dreyfus's affidavit in which he cited incompatibilities in the script of the bordereau and incongruities in the text itself, including incorrect artillery terminology and the impossibility of his "going off to maneuvers" which the General Staff had canceled. (Lewis, p. 43)

Acceding to Minister of War Mercier's expressed desire for a closed session -- ostensibly for security reasons, but perhaps also because of the flimsiness of the evidence -- the seven-judge panel so ordered it upon a request by prosecutor Commander Andre Brisset. (Chapman, pp. 91-92)

Dreyfus's attorney, Edgar Demange, was one of France's most distinguished, and he struggled mightily to justify his billing. Bertillon's bewildering explications prompted such objections as "If the handwriting was disguised, how could he be certain who was the author?" and "Indeed, since he was not really a graphologist, how could Bertillon be certain of anything?" And Du Paty was unconvincing when he spoke of Dreyfus's trembling as he wrote from dictation. (Lewis, pp. 49-50)

But when Demange challenged Major Henry to name the anonymous informant (it was del Val Carlos) who had warned of a traitor in the War Office ("who is sitting right there," he had shouted), Henry's stony response ("There are some secrets in an officer's head which his cap does well to ignore.") and his swearing to Dreyfus's guilt while pointing to a picture of Christ were hugely effective. (Bredin, p. 94)

On the final day of the trial, Demange argued for three hours that Dreyfus could not possibly have written the bordereau and that he had no motive for committing treason. If Dreyfus's own testimony was a "colorless, vacant, indolent" monotone, its lucidity and precision exposed the feebleness of the indictment. (Bredin, pp. 95, 93)

Shortly after the judges retired to deliberate, "a remarkable event occurred. Major Du Paty arrived with a small packet of papers. In the handwriting of the Minister of War himself, the packet bore the broadly scrawled message 'For the Officers of the Court Martial' " Could those persons be faulted for assuming they had been tendered some vital proof of treason, for believing they would be flouting the Minister of War if they found Dreyfus innocent? (Lewis, pp. 51-52)

What they did not know was that "the production of documents not shown to the defense was irregular and illegal in civil and military law." (Chapman, p. 95)

The so-called Secret Dossier contained, first, a biographical commentary authored by either Sandherr or Mercier revealing a history of suspicious behavior by the defendant, including a charge that Dreyfus had sold details of new explosive developed by Turpin and notes on troop mobilization to the Germans. (Lewis, p. 98)

Attached were five other incriminating documents: (1) The "scoundrel D" letter from Schwarzkoppen to Panizzardi; (2) A letter about securing information from un ami, written by Panizzardi; (3) A collection of fragments, "whose unintelligibility gave them an aura of malign significance"; (4) A summary of the warnings of del Val Carlos to the Statistical Section; and (5) The decoded text of a telegram sent from Panizzardi to his Italian Chief of Staff, which Henry had amended from "If Captain Dreyfus has never been in contact with you, it would be convenient to have the ambassador publish an official denial . . ." to "Dreyfus arrested, precautions taken, our emissary warned. It would be convenient to have the ambassador publish an official denial . . ." (Lewis, pp. 98, 93)

The verdict was now assured: guilty by unanimous consensus. After it was announced, Du Paty reclaimed the dossier and returned it to Mercier, who burned the commentary and ordered Sandherr to scatter the other pieces throughout the archives. But Sandherr disobeyed; he appended a copy of the original investigative report compiled by Du Paty, sealed the file, and locked it in his office safe. (Lewis, pp. 98-99)

The death penalty for political crimes had been abolished by Article Five of the Constitution of 1848. Dreyfus was therefore sentenced to forfeiture of his rank, public degradation, and deportation for life to a remote fortification. (Chapman, p. 96)

At this point the complications which had been foreseen by Foreign Minister Hanotaux materialized. (Chapman, p. 100) With the French press incensed over the Dreyfus-German connection, the German ambassador, Georg von Munster, delivered a cable from his chancellor demanding that the French government exonerate "the embassies and legations of Paris" of espionage. (Lewis, p. 99) After intense negotiations, the two governments agreed on the following communique: ". . . since certain newspapers persist in calling into question the foreign embassies of Paris, we are authorized, lest public opinion be led astray . . . to declare that the allegations concerning them are unfounded." (Bredin, pp. 109, 82)

The Dreyfus drama unleashed the anti-Semitic press, which seized upon it as the perfect vehicle to further its inflammatory agenda: hatred of the Jew; hatred of Germany; love of the homeland and the Army, which embodied it; and fear of treason. "The betrayal of the Jewish captain demonstrated the treachery of all Jews . . . He came into the Army with the intention of betrayal . . . As a German and a Jew, he detests the French . . . the Jews are vampires leading France into slavery . . . In every nasty affair, there are always Jews." These and other calumnies spewed forth from the pages of La Libre Parole, La Croix, and their ilk. (Bredin, pp. 78-79)

But they might have relented in their cries for Dreyfus's execution had they been aware of the fate that awaited him as he steamed across the Atlantic.

Devil's Island, a former leper colony thirty miles off the coast of French Guiana, was a desolate lump of rock four hundred yards wide and two miles long, baked by stupefying heat six months a year, drenched by malarial-breeding downpours the other six. Dreyfus was confined to a four-yard-square hut illuminated day and night and fronted by a booth from which a guard watched his every minute. (Chapman, p. 111)
 

"The chief warder had received instructions to shoot the prisoner down at the slightest movement to escape. He was permitted to exercise only on a narrow path two hundred yards in length. He was not allowed to communicate with the jailers." (Chapman, p. 111)

His food was scarcely adequate -- a serving of bread, occasionally a piece of raw meat, lard, dry vegetables -- and he had to prepare it himself, constructing a grill and pot from scraps of rusted sheet metal. (Bredin, pp. 130-131) As a result of poor nutrition, "his hair thinned, his teeth loosened, and his skin shriveled to little more than yellow membrane stretched over weakened bone." (Lewis, p. 108)

He suffered from headaches, colic, fever, and chronic insomnia. "Inside the clammy hut insects materialized as if by spontaneous combustion. During the day the hut was a miasma of smoke from the primitive stove, of decomposing insect carcasses, and of human excrescence. During the night the endless drubbing on the roof, the dampness, and the bugs made sleep impossible." (Lewis, p. 112)

In September 1896, by order of the Minister of Colonies, Dreyfus was chained indoors twenty-four hours a day -- and double-shackled at night -- not as a punishment, but as a security measure following an announcement by an English newspaper that he had escaped. (Bredin, p. 133)

Throughout his ordeal, in his journal and in correspondence to his wife Lucie, Dreyfus repeatedly emphasized his honor, his innocence, his loyalty, and his faith in justice and reason. On October 5, 1895, he addressed the president of the Republic: "Accused and convicted on the basis of my script of the most infamous crime a soldier can commit, I declare again that I did not write the letter attributed to me, that I have never betrayed my honor." (Bredin, pp. 127-128)

He asked his diary: "How can it be said that in our century and in a country like France, imbued with ideas of truth and justice, something as fundamentally unjust as this can happen?" He believed that the authorities must already suspect a terrible mistake had been made and were on the trail of the real spy. (Lewis, p. 109)

But of the powerful forces arrayed against him and determined to bury this affair in the footnotes of history, could anyone ferret out to truth, and, if he did, would he be courageous and honest enough to speak up?

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.

Harris, Robert. An Officer and A Spy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.

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