The Dreyfus Affair: Honour and Politics in the Belle Époque

182 Pages·1999·21.35 MB·English

by  Martin P. Johnson (auth.)

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THE DREYFUS AFFAIR
Honour and Politics in the Belle Epoque
Martin P. Johnson
Northern Illinois University
MACMILlAN
© Martin P Johnson 1999
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First published 1999 by
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ISBN 978-0-333-68267-8 ISBN 978-1-349-27519-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-27519-9
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CONTENTS
Chronology Vll
Preface IX
1 In Search of a Traitor (1894) 1
2 A Trial, an Exile (1894-1895) 18
3 The Petit Bleu (1896-1897) 39
4 A Successful Collusion (Autumn 1897) 66
5 The Grand Affaire (1898) 87
6 In the Balance (1898-1899) llO
7 Rennes and Rehabilitation (1899-1906) 129
Conclusion 150
Notes 159
Guide for Further Reading 165
Index 167
v
CHRONOLOGY
1894 Late September: Henry brings the bordereau to the Statistical
Section.
15 October: Du Paty interrogates and arrests Dreyfus.
22 December: Dreyfus convicted.
1895 5 January: Ceremonial degradation of Dreyfus at the Ecole Militaire.
April: Dreyfus arrives at Devil's Island.
1896 Mid-March: Henry brings the petit bleu to the Statistical Section.
Late August: Investigating the petit bleu, Picquart determines that
Esterhazy wrote the bordereau.
September: Picquart informs Gonse and Boisdeffre of his discovery;
Mathieu plants a false story in the press that Dreyfus has escaped;
Dreyfus placed in chains.
October: Picquart sent from Paris; Henry begins wholesale
fabrications.
1897 June: Picquart confers with his lawyer Leblois.
13 July: Leblois convinces Scheurer-Kestner that Dreyfus is
innocent.
October: Scheurer-Kestner meets with high officials; Du Paty warns
Esterhazy, beginning the 'collusion'.
15 November: Mathieu publicly denounces Esterhazy as the author
of the bordereau.
1898 Mid-January: Esterhazy acquitted; Zola publishesj'arruse; riots and
demonstrations across France.
23 February: Zola found guilty of libel.
July: Minister of War Cavaignac reads the 'false Henry' to the
Chamber; Picquart denounces it as a forgery; Picquart arrested; Zola
flees to Britain.
13 August: The 'false Henry' is discovered to be a forgery.
Vll
Vlll The Dreyfus Affair
30 August: Cavaignac interrogates and arrests Henry who then
commits suicide.
1 September: Esterhazy flees to Britain.
September: Cavaignac resigns; Brisson government refers Lucy
Dreyfus's request for revision to the appeals court.
1899 23 February:. Deroule:de's attempted coup.
June: Appeals court annuls Dreyfus's conviction and remands him
for retrial; President Loubet attacked at Auteuil racetrack; Zola
returns to France; Picquart freed.
22 June: Waldeck-Rousseau forms government of 'Republican
defence'.
9 September: Dreyfus found guilty by court martial at Rennes.
19 September: Dreyfus pardoned.
1900 December: Amnesty law passed.
1903 April: Jaures revives the Affair in a speech to the Chamber;
Minister of War Andre begins a new investigation.
November: Dreyfus requests revision of the Rennes verdict.
1904 March: Appeals court undertakes review of the Rennes verdict.
1906 July: Rennes verdict annulled without remand for retrial; Dreyfus
reinstated to the army with promotion and awarded the Legion of
Honour.
PREFACE
In January 1998, at the centenary of Emile Zola's }'accuse, an article
that inaugurated the most turbulent period of the Dreyfus Affair,
Prime Minister Lionel Jospin upbraided his opponents in the
Chamber of Deputies for the historical misjudgements of their party.
'Everyone knows that the left was Dreyfusard', he chided, 'everyone
knows that the right was anti-Dreyfusard'. He similarly evoked the
right's alleged resistance to the abolition of slavery. Shouting 'Shame!'
and 'Resign!' several opposition deputies rushed towards the rostrum
with raised fists while ushers leapt forward to prevent an assault on
the prime minister. Most deputies of the right then walked out, while
those of the left applauded Jospin's scolding. One hundred years had
passed, yet the Affair sparked by the trial of an obscure army otlicer
could still provoke violence and conflict.
The Dreyfus Affair comprises attempted assassinations, suicides,
perjury, forgeries, invective, stunning reversals, and abortive coups
d'etat, involving the honour and destiny of an individual and of
France. It is also a fascinating detective story with profound political
and social consequences; little wonder, then, that participants,
observers, and scholars have often succumbed to the temptation of
trying to find some secret key to unlock the enigmas of the Affair.
Many contemporaries believed that the case exposed a vast Judaeo
Masonic syndicate responsible for the nation's ills; 1 others thought
Dreyfus was the casualty of a Jesuitical-military cabal determined to
return France to a past of superstition and oppression. In the years
since, some have found the key to the Affair in a French army oper
ation to mislead the Germans about a new artillery piece, or as a
grand hoax perpetrated to fend off a threatened progressive income
tax, or as the echo of treason by the highest ranking officer in France. 2
For all sides the Affair became a litmus test of patriotism or republi
canism, of rationality or morality. In current scholarship the Affair
IX
X The Dreyfus Affair
has attained the rank of those few historical events (Vichy, Vietnam)
about which it is not permitted to arrive at an erroneous conclusion:
the oflicer in charge of French army archives was forced from his post
in 1994 after writing that Dreyfus's innocence is the 'hypothesis'
accepted by most historians.
A tale of mysteries and secrets, the Affair reveals the preoccupa
tions and divisions of France and Europe at the turn of the century.
At the centre is the unjust imprisonment upon Devil's Island of
Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew convicted of a crime he did not commit,
who was in part the victim of an ancient prejudice. As the gravest
crisis of the Third Republic the Dreyfus Affair transformed French
politics, recasting the struggle between order and movement that has
characterized France since the Revolution. As a crucial episode in the
history of racial nationalism it marked the transition from traditional
to racial anti-Semitism, foreshadowing the horrors of the twentieth
century. And as a prolonged and explosive contest for human rights
and judicial equity it engaged academics, writers, and artists as self
conscious 'intellectuals' in French politics for the first time, opening
a new mode of involvement for those who claimed moral authority
by virtue of erudition or sensibility.
Over the twelve years from 1894 to 1906 the Affair acted as a kind
of X-ray, revealing (and aggravating) fractures in French politics and
society; it divided families, friends, political groups, and intellectuals.
Behind these fissures a set of larger tensions exacerbated the crisis:
national insecurity felt by many French when facing an increasingly
powerful Germany; economic and social dislocations largely respon
sible for the rising tide of anti-Semitism; the threat posed to the estab
lished order by 'cosmopolitan' groups such as Jews (held responsible
for corrupting France during the Panama scandal, 1892-93), anar
chists (who assassinated President Sadie Carnot in 1893), and social
ists (beneficiaries of unprecedented success in the 1893 elections).
Meanwhile, radical republicans implemented thoroughgoing anti
clericalism, culminating with the exclusion of clergy from schools and
the separation of church and state in 1905. Against this backdrop a
half-dozen spectacular trials associated with the Dreyfus Affair trans
fixed public opinion, while numerous duels between partisans
expressed the depth of personal identification with the affair. The
fundamental question was not in fact the guilt of one man, it was the
identity of France: its political form and dominant values. Republic
or authoritarian state? Secular liberalism or clerical traditionalism?