Dreyfus affair

Dreyfus affair, political crisis, beginning in 1894 and continuing through 1906, in France during the Third Republic. The controversy centred on the question of the guilt or innocence of army captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had been convicted of treason for allegedly selling military secrets to the Germans in December 1894. At first the public supported the conviction; it was willing to believe in the guilt of Dreyfus, who was Jewish. Much of the early publicity surrounding the case came from anti-Semitic groups (especially the newspaper La Libre Parole, edited by Édouard Drumont), to whom Dreyfus symbolized the supposed disloyalty of French Jews.

The effort to reverse the sentence was at first limited to members of the Dreyfus family, but, as evidence pointing to the guilt of another French officer, Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy, came to light from 1896, the pro-Dreyfus side slowly gained adherents (among them journalists Joseph Reinach and Georges Clemenceau—the future World War I premier—and a senator, Auguste Scheurer-Kestner). The accusations against Esterhazy resulted in a court-martial that acquitted him of treason (January 1898). To protest against the verdict, the novelist Émile Zola wrote a letter titled “J’accuse,” published in Clemenceau’s newspaper L’Aurore. In it he attacked the army for covering up its mistaken conviction of Dreyfus, an action for which Zola was found guilty of libel.

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France: The Dreyfus Affair

By the time of the Zola letter, the Dreyfus case had attracted widespread public attention and had split France into two opposing camps. The anti-Dreyfusards (those against reopening the case) viewed the controversy as an attempt by the nation’s enemies to discredit the army and weaken France. The Dreyfusards (those seeking exoneration of Captain Dreyfus) saw the issue as the principle of the freedom of the individual subordinated to that of national security. They wanted to republicanize the army and put it under parliamentary control.

From 1898 to 1899 the Dreyfusard cause gained in strength. In August 1898 an important document implicating Dreyfus was found to be a forgery. After Maj. Hubert-Joseph Henry of the intelligence section confessed to fabricating the document in order to strengthen the army’s position, revision was made almost certain. At the same time, the affair was becoming a question of vital concern to politicians. The republican parties in the Chamber of Deputies recognized that the increasingly vocal nationalist right posed a threat to the parliamentary regime. Led by the Radicals, a left-wing coalition was formed. In response to continuing disorders and demonstrations, a cabinet headed by the Radical René Waldeck-Rousseau was set up in June 1899 with the express purpose of defending the republic and with the hope of settling the judicial side of the Dreyfus case as soon as possible. When a new court-martial, held at Rennes, found Dreyfus guilty in September 1899, the president of the republic, in order to resolve the issue, pardoned him. In July 1906 a civilian court of appeals (the Cour d’Appel) set aside the judgment of the Rennes court and rehabilitated Dreyfus. The army, however, did not publicly declare his innocence until 1995.

With the Dreyfusards in the ascendant, the affair marked the start of a new phase in the history of the Third Republic, a phase in which a series of Radical-led governments pursued an anticlerical policy that culminated in the formal separation of church and state (1905). By intensifying antagonisms between right and left and by forcing individuals to choose sides, the case made a lasting impact on the consciousness of the French nation.