Dreyfus Affair

Dreyfus Affair, controversy involving the French army officer Alfred Dreyfus, who was convicted on a charge of treason in 1894. His conviction precipitated a national conflict that advanced the progressive republican wing to a dominant position in French political life, and that eventually led to the separation of church and state in France.

In 1893 Dreyfus, an artillery captain of Jewish origin, assigned to the general staff in Paris, was charged with treason. He was accused specifically of having written an anonymous bordereau (French for “schedule”) containing a list of secret French military documents that were scheduled for delivery to the German Embassy in Paris. In 1894 Dreyfus was found guilty by a court-martial, reduced in rank, and transported to Devil's Island, where he was to be imprisoned for the rest of his life. In 1896, two years after the trial, Lieutenant Colonel George Picquart, then head of French military intelligence, uncovered evidence indicating that a French infantry officer, Major Marie Charles Esterhazy, was actually the writer of the treasonable bordereau ascribed to Dreyfus. Picquart was silenced by his superiors and dismissed from the service. About the same time, similar evidence implicating Esterhazy was uncovered by relatives and friends of Dreyfus. The army, in order to save face, had to court-martial Esterhazy, but early in 1898 he was acquitted. Then in August of that year Lieutenant Colonel Hubert Joseph Henry confessed that as Picquart's successor as head of intelligence he had forged documents implicating Dreyfus; he was arrested and committed suicide in his cell. Esterhazy was dismissed from the army and left France, settling in England.

In 1899 the Dreyfus case was brought before the Cour de cassation (Supreme Court of Appeal), which ordered a new trial. The resultant second court-martial again pronounced Dreyfus guilty, but reduced his sentence to ten years' imprisonment. Ten days after the trial, a new, more progressive government, under Premier Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau and President Émile Loubet, nullified the verdict and pardoned Dreyfus. Seven years later, in 1906, Dreyfus was fully rehabilitated by a judgment of the Cour de cassation, restored to the army with the rank of major, and decorated with the Legion of Honour. He went on to serve in World War I with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Of the other figures in the case, Esterhazy remained in England and late in 1899 confessed to having been the German spy. His accuser, Picquart, was reinstated, promoted to general, and served as minister of war in the Cabinet of Premier Georges Clemenceau.

In the volatile France of the 1890s, the Dreyfus case provided the spark for an inevitable political and social flare-up. Extremists of the right and left used the affair to illustrate their disillusionment with the prevailing order. When Dreyfus was found guilty at his first court-martial, a storm of anti-Jewish propaganda was unleashed by the powerful anti-Semitic forces that existed at the time, particularly in the French army. Liberal French people, in view of Dreyfus's apparent guilt, initially remained silent. They did not remain silent, however, after the discovery of the evidence against Esterhazy, the dismissal of his accuser Picquart, and the subsequent acquittal of Esterhazy. These apparent injustices provoked widespread protests, and the Dreyfus case soon became the most important public issue in France. Right-wing political elements, the army, and the Roman Catholic Church upheld the verdict of the court-martial. Liberals and many intellectuals, led by the novelist Anatole France and the poet and essayist Charles Péguy, denounced them.

The novelist Émile Zola wrote an impassioned letter, printed in the Paris newspaper L'Aurore in January 1898, under the heading J'accuse (“I accuse”). Zola's courageous denunciation of both military and civil authorities, whom he accused of lying, resulted in his being tried for libel and sentenced to a fine and a year in prison. Zola fled to England, however, and during his brief, self-imposed exile there, his trial and his widely publicized polemic made the Dreyfus case a subject of worldwide concern.

In France, public demand for a retrial of Dreyfus was omnipresent and vociferous. The verdict of the second court-martial, again pronouncing Dreyfus guilty, proved so unpopular that a liberal-oriented government was voted into power in the national elections of 1899. After 1900 the power and prestige of the army declined in France, and anticlerical legislation was introduced in the assembly, leading in 1905 to the separation of church and state.