Zola's 'J'Accuse…!' and the Dreyfus Affair
On 13 January 1898, novelist Emile Zola published an open letter — 'J'Accuse...!' — on the front page of the newspaper L'Aurore, addressed to President Felix Faure. The letter, occupying the entire front page, systematically accused the Army, the Minister of War, and named generals of deliberately framing Dreyfus and then covering up the fraud when the real spy — Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy — was identified. Zola had been carefully briefed by the Dreyfusard circle, including politician Georges Clemenceau, who wrote the title. The letter sold 300,000 copies in a single day and ignited a national crisis. France split into Dreyfusard and anti-Dreyfusard camps: republicans, socialists, Protestants, and most Jewish citizens against nationalists, monarchists, and the Catholic hierarchy. Street demonstrations, antisemitic riots in several cities, and duels followed. Zola was convicted of libel in February 1898 and fled to England to avoid prison. His intervention forced the case back into public debate, made the cover-up impossible to sustain, and accelerated the political realignment that culminated in Dreyfus's full exoneration in 1906 and the Law on the Separation of Churches and State in 1905.
- Year: 1898 CE
