The Dreyfus Affair: The Scandal That Tore France in Two
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Colonel Maximilian von Schwarzkoppen, the German military attaché in Paris. He suborned agents in co-operation with his lover, the Italian military attaché, Alessandro Panizzardi.
General Raoul le Mouton de Boisdeffre, Chief of the General Staff. Tall, distinguished-looking, refined, cunning and lazy, he was the architect of the French military alliance with Tsarist Russia. He and other senior army officers felt responsible for the security of France.
General Auguste Mercier, Minister of War in 1894. Curt, dry, authoritarian, he was mistrusted by La Libre Parole because of his Republican sympathies. He had an English wife and did not go to mass.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus. The youngest son of a Jewish textile manufacturer in Mulhouse, Dreyfus graduated with high marks from the École Polytechnique and the École de Guerre. He was shy, awkward and spoke in a monotonous voice. Serving as an intern on the General Staff , he was marked down for his awkward bearing which he ascribed to the anti-Semitism of senior officers.
Lucie Dreyfus, née Hadamard, with her husband and two children, Pierre and Jeanne. The youngest daughter of a diamond merchant, she married Alfred Dreyfus at the age of twenty-five. Despite learning of his infidelities in the course of his court-martial, she remained totally loyal to her husband and wanted to follow him to Devil’s Island.
Mathieu Dreyfus, Alfred’s older brother, was as open and easy-going as Alfred was reserved and retiring. He co-ordinated and financed the campaign for a re-trial.
Colonel Georges Picquart. From a Catholic background, he had a meteoric career in the French army and was appointed Chief of the Statistical Section on the death of Colonel Sandherr. The draft of a letter-telegram filched from Schwarzkoppen’s waste-paper basket led him to realise that Dreyfus was innocent. His discovery was ignored by his superiors who posted him abroad.
Major Armand du Paty de Clam. An officer on the General Staff, an amateur hand-writing expert, and a cousin of General de Boisdeffre, he was given the task of gathering evidence against Dreyfus. He was convinced of his guilt and hoped to extract a confession.
Commandant Charles-Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy, the man to whom the letter-telegram from Schwarzkoppen was addressed. A degenerate and embittered man, perennially short of money, it was believed on the Right that he had been chosen to replace Dreyfus by the Jewish ‘syndicate’. Picquart was said to be in its pay.
Commandant Joseph Henry, the son of a farmer who had risen from the ranks to be third in command at the Statistical Section, recruited agents from the Parisian low life and was adept in the dirty tricks department. He revered his superiors and liked to anticipate their unspoken orders.
Ritual degradation in front of serried ranks of soldiers at the École Militaire was part of the sentence handed down after the judges of his court-martial had unanimously found Dreyfus guilty of betraying military secrets to a foreign power.
Alfred Dreyfus at the time of his conviction and deportation from France.
Devil’s Island. When he first arrived in French Guiana, Dreyfus was held in the prison on the Île Royale while a hut and guard house were built on the smallest of the Salvation Islands, Devil’s Island. Until then it had housed convicts with leprosy. He would remain there in solitary confinement for more than four years.
Comte Albert de Mun. A great orator and liberal Catholic who abhorred anti-Semitism and accepted France’s republican form of government, he believed that the agitation to re-open the case against Dreyfus was the work of ‘a mysterious and hidden power strong enough to be able to cast suspicion at will on those who command our Army’.
Jules Guérin, founder of the Anti-Semitic League, joined Déroulède in his attempted coup and named his League after a Masonic Lodge to avoid legal restrictions imposed on unauthorised associations.
Henri Marquis de Rochefort. A Communard who had escaped from the penal settlement in New Caledonia, he had become an extreme nationalist and fanatic anti-Semite, convinced that the judges who re-opened the case against Dreyfus had been bought by the Jewish ‘syndicate’.
Maurice Barrès. An erudite journalist, essayist and politician, he believed that France was threatened by a coalition of Protestants and Jews whose first loyalties lay with their coreligionists abroad.
Marcel Proust described himself as ‘the first Dreyfusard’ because he persuaded the writer Anatole France to sign a petition in favour of Dreyfus. Proust’s mother was Jewish: his father, Dr Adrian Proust, when he learned that his two sons had become Dreyfusards, would not speak to them for a week.
Émile Zola. One of France’s leading novelists, he exposed the conspiracy against Dreyfus in his polemical article, J’Accuse. It led to anti-Semitic riots throughout France.
Edgar Demange, the eminent lawyer who was convinced of Dreyfus’s innocence and undertook his defence. He was a devout Catholic and married to the daughter of a general.
Jean Jaurès. Socialist firebrand and the finest orator in the National Assembly, he was a late convert to the Dreyfusard cause. He blamed the conspiracy on ‘Jesuit-spawned generals’ and exploited the Affair for an anti-clerical agenda.
Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, French prime minister in 1899. He persuaded President Loubet, after Dreyfus’s second conviction, to grant him a pardon. Dreyfus was freed but many of his supporters thought he ought to have returned to prison to fight on. Waldeck-Rousseau used the Affair to close down Catholic schools and disband religious orders.
Alfred Dreyfus leaving the courthouse during his second court martial, at Rennes in 1899. The soldiers have their backs turned – considered by the Dreyfusards to be a calculated insult.
Georges Clemenceau. A Socialist politician tarnished by the Panama Canal Scandal, he became a leading Dreyfusard and fought duels with both Edouard Drumont and Paul Déroulède.
The anticlerical governments of Waldeck-Rousseau and Émile Combes closed all Catholic schools in France and dissolved Catholic religious orders. Dreyfus believed that his Affair had prepared public opinion for this legislation. Here Carthusian monks are evicted from their mother house, La Grande Chartreuse.
In 1906, Dreyfus was declared innocent by the joint Courts of Appeal and reinstated in the army with the rank of Major. Here he receives the cross of the Legion of Honour at a ceremony at the École Militaire where he had suffered ritual degradation eleven years before.
Acknowledgements
My thanks are due to the many historians of nineteenth-century France and the Dreyfus Affair whose works have furnished material for this book. I am particularly grateful to Dr Ruth Harris, who generously answered my queries over lunch at New College, Oxford; and to Professor Jeremy Jennings, who kindly gave me a preview of a chapter of his Revolution and the Republic: A History of Political Thought in France since the Eighteenth Century. I should like to acknowledge the help of the staff at the London Library whose comprehensive collection of books on the Dreyfus Affair proved invaluable.
I should also like to thank my wife Emily for her help in translating difficult passages from French sources; my agent, Gillon Aitken, who encouraged me to write about the Dreyfus Affair; and Michael Fishwick, my editor at Bloomsbury, who commissioned this book and gave sound advice on the revision of my first draft. I am grateful to Anna Simpson for shepherding my manuscript through its different stages; to Peter James for his superb copy-editing, Catherine Best for reading the proofs and Alan Rutter for the index. I should like to thank Henry Jeffreys, Alexa von Hirschberg, Tess Viljoen, Paul Nash, Polly Napper and all at Bloomsbury who helped in the publication of this book. My thanks also go to Peter Ginna and Pete Beatty of Bloomsbury Press in New York.
I am grateful for permission to quote from the following works by other authors: Ralph Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789–1914 (Routledge, 1989); Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Pages from the Goncourt Journal, ed. and trans. Robert Baldick (New York Review Books, 1962); Albert S. Lindemann, The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs (Dreyfus, Beilis, Frank), 1894–1915 (Cambridge University Pres
s, 1991); Maurice Paléologue, My Secret Diary of the Dreyfus Case, 1894–1899, trans. Eric Mosbacher (Secker & Warburg, 1957), reprinted by permission of The Random House Group; Ruth Harris, The Man on Devil’s Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that Divided France (Allen Lane), by permission of the Penguin Group; and Vincent Duclert, Alfred Dreyfus: L’honneur d’un patriote, reprinted by permission of Libraire Arthème Fayard.
Principal Characters
Aboville, Commandant Albert d’
Second-in-command of the Fourth Bureau of the General Staff. Suggested that the author of the incriminating bordereau may have been one of the interns (stagiaires).
André, General Louis
Minister of War, 1900–November 1904.
Arconati-Visconti, Marquise Marie (née Peyrat)
Dreyfusard salonnière who befriended Dreyfus after his pardon. Both Joseph Reinach and Émile Combes belonged to her circle.
Barrès, Maurice
Anti-Dreyfusard journalist and intellectual. Covered the Rennes court martial for Le Journal. One of the founders in 1899 of the Ligue de la Patrie Française to oppose the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme.
Bastian, Mme Marie-Caudron
Cleaning lady at the German Embassy on the rue de Lille. Recruited by Martin-Joseph Brücker as an agent for the French secret service. Delivered the contents of the Embassy’s waste-paper baskets to Commandant Joseph Henry.
Beauvais, Captain Charles
Judge at the Rennes court martial.
Bertillon, Alphonse
Chief of the Judicial Identification Department at the Paris Prefecture of Police. Judged the bordereau to have been written by Alfred Dreyfus.
Bertulus, Judge Paul
A civilian examining magistrate. Consulted by General de Pellieux on the legality of seizing Esterhazy’s letters to Mme de Boulancy, and the first civilian legal officer to be drawn into the Affair.
Billot, General Jean-Baptiste
Minister of War, April 1896–June 1898. Friend of Auguste Scheurer-Kestner. Anti-Dreyfusard.
Biot, Commandant Octave
Former officer in the territorial army who wrote for La Libre Parole on military matters under the pseudonym Commandant Z, often in collaboration with Esterhazy.
Boisdeffre, General Raoul François Charles le Mouton de
Chief of the Army General Staff, September 1893–September 1898. Architect of the Franco-Russian alliance.
Boulancy, Mme de
One-time mistress of Charles Esterhazy.
Bréon, Major Lancrau de
A judge at the Rennes court martial. Devout Catholic.
Brogniart, Lieutenant-Colonel François
A judge at the Rennes court martial.
Brücker, Martin-Joseph
Low-life agent working for Commandant Henry. He recruited Mme Bastian.
Casimir-Perier, Jean
Prime Minister, April–December 1893. Chosen as President in June 1894 after assassination of Sadi Carnot. Resigned in January 1895, disillusioned by his inability to control or influence government.
Cassagnac, Paul de
Editor of L’Autorité. Member of anti-Semitic faction in the Chamber of Deputies.
Castro, Jacques de
Parisian stockbroker of South American origin.
Cavaignac, Godefroy
Minister of War, November 1895–April 1896. Anti-Dreyfusard.
Chamoin, General Eugène
Representative of the Ministry of War at Dreyfus’s second court martial in Rennes.
Chanoine, General Charles
Minister of War, September–October 1898.
Clemenceau, Georges
Radical politician. Compromised by the Panama Canal scandal. Founder of L’Aurore. Prominent Dreyfusard.
Cochefert, Commissaire Armand
Head of CID at the Sûreté Générale seconded to the Statistical Section.
Combes, Émile
Prime Minister, June 1902–January 1905. Militant anti-clerical.
Cordier, Commandant Albert
Deputy Commander of the Statistical Section at the time of Dreyfus’s arrest.
Cuers, Richard
French spy working for German military intelligence, the Nachrichtenbureau.
Cuignet, Captain Louis
Officer who collated the secret dossier for the Ministers of War Billot and Cavaignac. Anti-Dreyfusard.
Demange, Edgar
Dreyfus’s first lawyer.
Déroulède, Paul
Poet and politician. Founded the Ligue des Patriotes. Anti-Dreyfusard but not anti-Semitic.
Dreyfus, Alfred
Captain in the artillery. Candidate for the General Staff.
Dreyfus, Camille
Radical Deputy. Fought a duel with Marquis de Morès. Founded Le Matin.
Dreyfus, Jacques
Eldest brother of Albert Dreyfus.
Dreyfus, Jeanne
Daughter of Alfred Dreyfus, born 1893.
Dreyfus, Lucie
Née Hadamard. Wife of Alfred Dreyfus.
Dreyfus, Mathieu
Elder brother of Alfred Dreyfus.
Dreyfus, Pierre
Son of Alfred Dreyfus, born 1891.
Dreyfus, Raphaël
Father of Alfred Dreyfus.
Drumont, Édouard
Author of La France juive. Founder of anti-Semitic newspaper La Libre Parole.
Dupuy, Charles
Prime Minister, May 1894–January 1895.
Esterhazy, Commandant Marie-Charles-Ferdinand Walsin
Infantry officer, son of a French general of remote Hungarian descent. Acted as second to André Crémieu-Foa in his duel with Édouard Drumont.
Faure, Félix
President of France, January 1895–February 1899.
Forzinetti, Commandant Ferdinand
Governor of the Cherche-Midi military prison.
Freycinet, Charles de
Reforming Minister of War, April 1888–January 1893 and November 1898–May 1899.
Freystaetter, Captain Martin
Judge at the first court martial.
Galliffet, General le Marquis de
Minister of War, June 1899–May 1900. Succeeded by General André.
Gambetta, Léon
Radical politician. Proclaimed a republic after the defeat of Napoleon III at Sedan. Escaped from Paris besieged by the Prussians in 1869 in a hot-air balloon. Anti-clerical.
Gobert, Alfred
Handwriting expert from the Banque de France. Judged that the handwriting of the bordereau was not that of Alfred Dreyfus.
Gonse, General Charles-Arthur
Deputy Chief of the General Staff, 1893–1899.
Gribelin, Félix
Archivist at the Statistical Section. Served as clerk to Commandant du Paty de Clam during his investigations.
Guénée, François
Former undercover police officer working for the Statistical Section. Controller of the French agent in the Spanish Embassy, the Marquis de Val Carlos.
Guérin, Jules
Active anti-Semite. Supported by the royalist pretender, the Duc d’Orléans; founded the Ligue Antisémitique in 1897 and the newspaper, L’Antijuif.
Hanotaux, Gabriel
Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1894. Retired from politics after Fashoda crisis in 1898. Friend of Dr Adrien Proust, father of Marcel.
Henry, Commandant Hubert Joseph
Third-in-command at the Statistical Section, the only officer who had risen from the ranks.
Jaurès, Jean
Leader of the Socialist Party.
Jouaust, Colonel Albert
Presiding judge at the second court martial.
Lac de Fugères, Père Stanislas du
French Jesuit, Rector of the École Sainte-Geneviève on the rue des Postes between 1872 and 1881.
Lauth, Captain Jules
Officer serving in the Statistical Section. Protestant from Alsace.
Lazare, Bernard
J
ewish journalist recruited by Mathieu Dreyfus to promote the case of his brother Alfred. Author of L’Antisémitisme, son histoire et ses causes (Anti-Semitism: Its History and Causes).
Leblois, Louis
Lawyer. Friend of Georges Picquart from their schooldays in Alsace.
Lebrun-Renault, Captain Charles-Gustave
Officer in charge of Alfred Dreyfus prior to his degradation who later claimed that he had confessed.
Lépine, Commissaire Louis
Prefect of the Paris Police.
Loubet, Émile