The Dreyfus affair is a major political…
1888 CE to 1899 CE
The conduct of the affair will become a modern and universal symbol of injustice.
It remains one of the most striking examples of a complex miscarriage of justice in which a central role is played by the press and public opinion.
At issue is blatant anti-Semitism as practiced by the French Army and defended by conservatives and Catholic traditionalists against secular center-left, left and republican forces, including most Jews.
In the end, the latter will triumph.
The affair begins in November 1894 with the conviction for treason of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent.
He is sentenced to life imprisonment for communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris and sent to the penal colony at Devil's Island in French Guiana (nicknamed la guillotine sèche, the dry guillotine), where he will spend almost five years.
Two years later, evidence comes to light that identifies a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy as the real spy.
After high-ranking military officials suppress the new evidence, a military court unanimously acquits Esterhazy.
In response, the Army brings up additional charges against Dreyfus based on false documents.
Word of the military court's attempts to frame Dreyfus begin to spread, chiefly owing to the polemic J'accuse, a vehement open letter published in a Paris newspaper in January 1898 by the notable writer Émile Zola.
Activists put pressure on the government to re-open the case.
In 1899, Dreyfus is returned to France for another trial.
The intense political and judicial scandal that ensues divides French society between those who support Dreyfus (now called "Dreyfusards"), such as Anatole France, Henri Poincaré and Georges Clemenceau, and those who condemn him (the anti-Dreyfusards), such as Édouard Drumont, the director and publisher of the anti-Semitic newspaper La Libre Parole.
The new trial results in another conviction and a ten-year sentence, but Dreyfus is given a pardon and set free.
Eventually all the accusations against him will be demonstrated to be baseless, and in 1906, Dreyfus will be exonerated and re-instated as a major in the French Army.
From 1894 to 1906, the scandal divides France deeply and lastingly into two opposing camps: the pro-Army "anti-Dreyfusards" composed of conservatives, Catholic traditionalists and monarchists who generally lose the initiative to the anti-clerical, pro-republican "Dreyfusards", with strong support from intellectuals and teachers.
It embitters French politics and facilitates the increasing influence of radical politicians on both sides of the political spectrum.
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