Arrest and Conviction of Alfred Dreyfus
In October 1894 Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the only Jewish officer on the French General Staff, was arrested on charges of passing military secrets to Germany. The evidence was a torn, unsigned bordereau found in the wastebasket of the German military attaché's office; handwriting examiners disagreed on its authorship, but Army counter-intelligence, headed by Colonel Sandherr, fixed on Dreyfus. He was tried in secret by a military tribunal in December 1894, convicted on the basis of a dossier never shown to the defence, stripped of his rank at a public degradation ceremony on 5 January 1895, and deported to solitary confinement on Devil's Island off French Guiana. The conviction rested in part on forged documents subsequently produced by Major Hubert Henry. The actual spy was Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, whose guilt was identified by the new head of counter-intelligence, Colonel Picquart, in 1896 — but when Picquart informed his superiors, he was transferred to Tunisia and later arrested. The affair became public when Esterhazy was tried and acquitted by a military court in January 1898, prompting Emile Zola to publish his open letter 'J'Accuse...!' three days later, directly accusing the army leadership of covering up a judicial crime. France split into Dreyfusard and anti-Dreyfusard camps, with the army, the Catholic Church, and nationalist right opposing reopening the case, and republican, secular, and universalist voices insisting on it.
- Year: 1894 CE
