During the summer of 1894 there arrived at the Intelligence Office a document which was far more alarming than any which had preceded it, and which was credited to the German embassy. This was the anonymous letter which has since become celebrated under the name of the "bordereau." This letter, written on so-called "papier pelure" (thin foreign notepaper), ruled in squares and almost transparent, was torn from top to bottom in two places, but was otherwise intact. The writing was upon the two sides of the first page. According to the official version, which was long believed to be the true one, the paper had arrived by the usual means, through Madame Bastian; but the appearance of the document, which was hardly torn, makes this story unlikely. It would appear from other disclosures that the letter was taken intact from the letter-box of Colonel Schwarzkoppen in the porter's lodge at the embassy, and brought to the office by an agent named Brucker, who had formerly acted as a go-between for Madame Bastian and the Intelligence Office. The documents which the letter announced as being sent off did not reach the War Office; and the envelope of the letter has never been produced. Here is the text of this famous document:
"Being without information as to whether you desire to see me, I send you nevertheless, monsieur, some interesting information, viz.:
"1. A note concerning the hydraulic brake of the 120, and the way this gun has worked.[The reference is to the hydropneumatic brake of the gun called "120 court." It was a heavy field-piece, recently brought into use; the mechanism of the brake which overcame the recoil of the gun was a profound secret.]
"2. A note upon the 'troupes de couverture' (some modifications will be carried out, according to the new plan).[The troops called to the frontier at the commencement of mobilization are referred to. They were destined to "cover" the concentration of the rest of the army; hence their name. The "new plan" is the plan No. adopted in 1895.]
"3. A note concerning a modification in the formations of artillery.[Most likely the "formations de manœuvre," which were just about to be altered by the new regulations.]
"4. A note relative to Madagascar.[The War Office was preparing an expedition destined to conquer that island.]
"5. The proposed 'manuel de tir' of field-artillery (March 14, 1894)."This document is exceedingly difficult to get hold of, and I can only have it at my disposal for a very few days. The minister of war has distributed a certain number of copies among the troops, and the corps are held responsible for them."Each officer holding a copy is required to return it after the maneuvers."Therefore if you will glean from it whatever interests you, and let me have it again as soon as possible, I will manage to obtain possession of it. Unless you would prefer that I have it copied in extenso, and send you the copy."I am just starting for the maneuvers."
From the end of 1892 to September, 1894, Dreyfus went through his "stage" in the Staff Office, receiving excellent reports on all hands, except from Colonel Fabre. From Oct. 1, 1894, he went through a "stage" in a body of troops, the Thirty-ninth Regiment of the line, in Paris. His personal characteristics, little fitting him to command, and his slightly foreign accent, combined to prejudice people against him; he had also a rather haughty demeanor, associated little with his military companions, and appeared rather too self-confident. But his comrades and superiors, without being much attached to him, recognized his keen intelligence, his retentive memory, his remarkable capacity for work; he was known as a well-informed officer, a daring and vigorous horseman, with decided opinions, which he knew how to set forth skilfully and to uphold under discussion. In short, he was a brilliant and correct soldier, and seemed marked out for a glorious future. Added to all this, he possessed a comfortable private fortune (which brought him an income of $5,000 or $6,000 a year) soundly invested in his brothers' business; he was without any expensive vices, if not without failings, and was leading a settled life. It is difficult to imagine what motive could possibly have incited him to the vile traffic of which he was destined to be suspected.
His patriotic sentiments were those of a soldier and an Alsatian emigrant—that is to say, fervent almost to Jingoism. He had also come under the influence of the Boulangist movement, which, for many of his equals, meant revenge on Germany.
Only the most rabid anti-Semitism could have originated the idea that this Alsatian Jingo was a traitor. Even the wording of the bordereau, if read calmly, should have shown the absurdity of this supposition; for no artilleryman could have committed such gross blunders in expression. And how could Dreyfus in August or September, 1894, possibly have written, "I am just starting for the maneuvers," since that year none of the "stage" officers went to the maneuvers, having been officially advised by a circular on May 17 not to do so?
Things did not turn out quite as Du Paty had expected. Dreyfus, strange as the missive was, wrote tranquilly on under the major's dictation. There was a moment, however, when Du Paty, who was closely watching him, fancied he saw his hand tremble, and remarked sharply upon it to Dreyfus, who replied, "My fingers are cold." The facsimile of the letter which has since been published shows not the least sign of disturbance of any kind in the writing, hardly even a slight deviation of one line. After having dictated a few more lines, during which, he himself owns, "Dreyfus entirely regained his composure," he ceased the experiment, and placing his hand heavily on the captain's shoulder, he cried with a voice of thunder: "In the name of the law I arrest you; you are accused of the crime of high treason!" Dreyfus, in his stupefaction, hardly found articulate words to protest his innocence. He pushed away indignantly the revolver offered to him. He allowed himself to be searched without resistance, saying: "Take my keys, examine everything in my house; I am innocent." Du Paty and his associates then held a summary examination; without showing him a single document, they were content with assuring him that a "long inquiry" made against him had resulted in "incontestable proofs" which would be communicated to him later on. Then he was given into the hands of Major Henry, who had heard all that had taken place from the next room, and whose mission it was to deliver him over to the military prison of Cherche-Midi. In the cab that took them there, Dreyfus renewed his protestations of innocence, and asserted that he had not even been told what were the documents in question, or to whom he was accused of having given them.
At Cherche-Midi Dreyfus was turned over to the governor of the prison, Major Forzinetti, who had received orders to keep his incarceration a profound secret, even from his chief, General Saussier—an unheard-of measure. Apparently, the minister had still some doubts as to the guilt of Dreyfus, and did not wish to publish his arrest until the inquiry should have furnished some decisive proofs.
The Search for Proofs.
IV. The conduct of the inquiry was entrusted to Major Du Paty de Clam. Immediately after the arrest he went to the house of Madame Dreyfus, toldher of it, and ordered her, under the most terrible threats, to keep the matter secret, even from her brothers-in-law. He then devoted himself to a minute search of the rooms, which furnished no incriminating evidence whatever: no suspicious document, not a shred of "papier pelure" (foreign notepaper) was found—nothing but accounts regularly kept and testifying to a mode of life in accordance with the resources of the household. A similar search made in the house of M. Hadamard (Dreyfus' father-in-law) ended in the same failure.
Du Paty repeatedly visited Dreyfus in prison. He made him write standing up, seated, lying down, in gloves—all without obtaining any characteristics identical with those of the bordereau. He showed him loose fragments of a photograph of that document, mixed up with fragments and photographs of Dreyfus' own handwriting. The accused distinguished them with very little trouble. Du Paty questioned him without obtaining any other result than protestations of innocence broken by cries of despair. The suddenness of the catastrophe, and the uncertainty in which he was left as to its cause, reduced the wretched man to such a terrible state of mind that his reason was threatened. For several days he refused to take any food; his nights passed like a frightful nightmare. The governor of the prison, Forzinetti, warned the minister of the alarming state of his prisoner, and declared to General de Boisdeffre that he firmly believed he was innocent.
Not until Oct. 29 did Du Paty show the entire text of the bordereau to Dreyfus, and then he made him copy it.
The prisoner protested more forcibly than ever that it was not his writing, and regaining all the clearness of his intellect when faced by a definite accusation, tried to prove to his interlocutor that out of five documents mentioned in the bordereau, three were absolutely unknown to him.
He asked to see the minister: consent was given only on condition that "he start on the road to a confession!" In the mean time writing-experts had proceeded with further examinations. Bertillon, to whom the name of the prisoner had now been revealed, set to work again. To explain at the same time the resemblances and the differences between the writing of Dreyfus and that of the bordereau, he supposed a most intricate system: Dreyfus, he thought, must have imitated or traced his own handwriting, leaving in it enough of its natural character for his correspondent to recognize it, but introducing into it, for greater safety, alterations borrowed from the hands of his brother Matthew and his sister-in-law Alice, in one of whose letters they had discovered the double s made as in the bordereau! This is the hypothesis of "autoforgery," which he complicated later on by a supposed mechanism of "key-words," of "gabarits," of measurements by the "kutsch," of turns and twists.
Renewed Examination by Experts.
Bertillon's provisional report, submitted on Oct. 20, inferred "without any reservation whatever" that Dreyfus was guilty. Mercier, ill-satisfied with this lucubration, had the prefect of police appoint three new experts, Charavay, Pelletier, and Teyssonnières; Bertillon was put at their disposal to furnish them with photographic enlargements.
Pelletier simply studied the bordereau and the documents given for comparison, and concluded that the writing of the bordereau was in no way disguised, and that it was not that of the prisoner.
But at this moment General Mercier was no longer free to decide; the press had come upon the scene. On Oct. 28 Papillaud, a contributor to the "Libre Parole," received a note signed "Henry"—under which pseudonym he recognized without hesitation the major of that name; "Henry" revealed to him the name and address of the arrested officer, adding falsely, "All Israel is astir."
The very next day the "Libre Parole" narrated in carefully veiled words the secret arrest of an individual suspected of espionage. Other newspapers were more precise; on Nov. 1 Drumont's special edition announced in huge type the arrest of "the Jewish officer A. Dreyfus"; there was, it declared, "absolute proof that he had sold our secrets to Germany"; and what was more, he had "made full confession." All this was very awkward for General Mercier; he was in a corner. If ever he had had the idea of dropping the case, it was too late now; he would have hazarded his position as a minister by doing so. He summoned a council of the ministers, and, without revealing any other charge than that concerning the bordereau, declared that the documents mentioned in the memorandum could only have been procured by Dreyfus. The ministers, most of whom now heard the story for the first time, unanimously decided to institute proceedings. The papers were at once made over to the governor of Paris, who gave the order to investigate (Nov. 3).
The yellow press, which let loose its fury against Dreyfus, in the beginning did not spare the minister of war. It was looked upon as a crime that during a fortnight the arrest had been kept a secret, doubtless in the hope of being able to hush up the affair; he had been in league with "the Jews," he was still negotiating with them! Mercier was not the man to brave these attacks. In the same manner as the arraignment had been imposed upon him by "La Libre Parole," he understood now that the condemnation of Dreyfus was for him simply a question of political life or death; convinced or not, he determined to establish the man's guilt at any cost. On Nov. 28, in defiance of the most elementary usages, he declared in an interview with the "Figaro" that Dreyfus' guilt was "absolutely certain." Then, aware of the defects of D'Ormescheville's "proofs," he ordered that a secret dossier should be prepared by collecting from the drawers of the Intelligence Department whatever documents concerning spies could more or less be ascribed to Dreyfus. This dossier, revised and put into a sealed envelope by Mercier himself, with the cooperation of Boisdeffre and of Sandherr, was to be communicated only to the judges in the room where they held their deliberations, without either the accused or his counsel having been able to take cognizance of it or to inquire into the allegations—a procedure worthy of the Inquisition.
As soon as it had become known that Mercier had decided to go to the bitter end, there was a change in the language of the demagogues regarding him. "He has certainly done something for his country," they said. "One must be for Mercier or for Dreyfus," proclaimed General Riu. And Cassagnac, who, as a personal friend of Dreyfus' lawyer, maintained some doubts as to his guilt, summed up the situation in these words: "If Dreyfus is acquitted, no punishment would be too severe for Mercier!"
The Trial.
Thus stated, the question went beyond the intelligence and the courage of the military judges; there could be no doubt about the issue. The report of Major d'Ormescheville, handed in on Dec. 3, was prejudiced and illogical; out of a heap of "possibilities" and numberless insinuations, he vainly tried to deduce a proof of some sort. Edgar Demange, whom the Dreyfus family had chosen as their lawyer, accepted this task only on the condition that the perusal of the papers should convince him of the emptiness of the accusation; he was convinced. His absorbing idea was to obtain a public hearing; he promised on his honor not to raise, in that case, any delicate questions which might lead to a diplomatic contest. The brothers of Dreyfus and certain statesmen made urgent application in the same direction. All was in vain. The private hearing having been decided on in the minister's own mind, as being required by "state policy," he announced this conviction to the president of the court martial; such an announcement was equivalent to an order.
The last hearing (Dec. 22) was devoted to the public prosecutor's address and to the pleading of Demange, who strove for three hours to prove that the very contents of the bordereau showed that it could not be the work of Dreyfus. In his reply, Brisset, abandoning the moral proofs, was satisfied with asking the judges to take their "magnifying-glasses." A calm listener, Major Picquart, imagined then that the result was very doubtful unless help came from the secret dossier. This dossier was given up, still sealed, by Major Du Paty (who was ignorant of the exact contents) to Colonel Maurel, and the latter immediately entered the room where the judges were deliberating on the case, and communicated it to his colleagues. The recollections of the military judges being rather vague on the subject, it has not been possible to reconstitute with certainty the substance of the portfolio. It is known, however, that it included at least the document "canaille de D . . ." (a commonplace initial which it was absurd, after Panizzardi's telegram, to attribute to Dreyfus), and a sort of military biography of Dreyfus, based on, but not identical with, a memorandum from Du Paty, who had been told to make the various documents of the secret dossier coincide with one another. This biography represented Dreyfus as a traitor by birth, having commenced his abominable calling on his first entry into the service; at the school at Bourges it would appear that he had delivered up to the Germans the secret of the melinite shell!
Among the other papers of the secret dossier may be mentioned the fragments of Schwarzkoppen's note alluding to an informant who pretended to take his knowledge from the ministry, and, according to Commander Freystaetter, the first and false interpretation of Panizzardi's despatch! After judgment had been pronounced the dossier was given back to Mercier, who had it pulled to pieces, and later on destroyed the biographical notice. But, contrary to instructions, Major Henry reconstituted the secret dossier, added to it Du Paty's explanatory note (which last was destroyed by Mercier in 1897), and locked it in the iron chest where Picquart afterward found it. Allusion has been made several times (since 1894) to a second dossier, "ultra-secret," which was composed of photographs of papers stolen from, and then given up to, the German embassy; namely, seven letters from Dreyfus, and one said to be from the Emperor of Germany to Count MĂĽnster, naming Dreyfus. If such a dossier was ever in existence, it certainly contained nothing but a mass of ridiculous forgeries.
The conviction of the judges, already more than half decided by the experts and by Henry, could not withstand this new assault. Dreyfus was unanimously pronounced guilty; the sentence was transportation for life to a fortress, preceded by military degradation. Upon hearing this decision, which was communicated to him by the clerk of the court, the unhappy man, who firmly believed that he would be acquitted, stood as if struck by a thunderbolt. Taken back to prison, he was seized with a fit of despair, and begged for a revolver. Forzinetti, who had not lost faith in his innocence, succeeded with great difficulty in calming him. More than that, the heroic and touching letters from his wife made him accept life as a duty he owed to his own family.
V. The appeal of Dreyfus to the military court of revision—a simple formality—was rejected on Dec. 31. The same day the condemned man received a visit from Du Paty de Clam, who had been sent by the minister of war with the mission to declare to Dreyfus that if he would only begin to make a confession, and reveal exactly the nature of his indiscretions, he might obtain a mitigation of his sentence. Dreyfus answered that he had nothing to confess, nothing to reproach himself with, not even the smallest attempt at holding out a bait; he only asked that the investigations might be continued so as to discover the real criminal. Du Paty, somewhat moved, said to him on going out: "If you are innocent, you are the greatest martyr of all time." Dreyfus wrote an account of this interview to the minister; he finished with these words: "Once I am gone, let them go on searching; it is the only favor I ask."
The Degradation.
The military degradation took place on the Champ de Mars on Jan. 5. Dreyfus drank the cup of bitterness to its very dregs. During the parade of "execution" he preserved an attitude wholly military which shocked some of the onlookers. But when General Darras had pronounced the accustomed formula, he cried out in a loud voice: "You are degrading an innocent man! Long live France! Long live the army!" He repeated this cry while the adjutant on duty was tearing off his stripes and breaking his sword, and again while passing before the crowd, which was shrieking that he should be put to death, and before the journalists, who yelled at the new Judas.
If the unanimous verdict of seven judges dissipated the doubts that might have existed among a portion of the public, the reiterated protestations of the condemned man were of a nature to make them spring to life again. The report was then spread about that he had made a confession. While waiting for the parade, locked up with Lebrun Renault, the captain of gendarmerie on service, he was supposedto have said: "The minister knows that I am innocent; and that, if I have given up any documents to Germany, it was only to get more important ones in return; before three years are over the truth will be known." This tale had its origin in the obscure or unintelligent account which Lebrun Renault had rendered of his conversation with Dreyfus; in reality, the latter had merely related his interview with Du Paty and once more protested his innocence. Lebrun Renault himself, in an interview which he granted to some one at a ball at the Moulin Rouge, related, in the words of Dreyfus, the origin of the bordereau, but of confession not a word. However that may be, this idle talk, changing as it passed from lip to lip, greedily welcomed by the newspapers, made the staff uneasy, because it brought into the case the German embassy, which just at this time was showing signs of indignation. In short, General Gonse called on Lebrun Renault and took him successively to General Mercier and to the president of the republic, Casimir-Perier, who severely reprimanded him, and imposed upon him absolute silence for the future.
Germany Concerned.
In the mean time serious complications with Germany were expected. The German government, once assured by Schwarzkoppen and by the War Office at Berlin that Dreyfus was utterly unknown to them, had thought it a matter of honor to protest publicly against the statements in the newspapers which persisted in bringing Germany into the case. Several times after the arrest of Dreyfus semi-official notes of protest had been inserted in the different organs of the press; Count MĂĽnster, the German ambassador, denied to Hanotaux that Germany had taken any part in the affair. These declarations, politely received, left the French government absolutely skeptical, for it knew from a positive source the origin of the bordereau.
Capt. Alfred Dreyfus. (From the statuette by Caccia.)
A note from the Havas Agency (Nov. 30) put the foreign embassies out of the case; but the press continued to incriminate Germany, whereupon, at the beginning of December, MĂĽnster, by the express order of the German emperor, invited Hanotaux to call at the embassy and repeated his protestations. The report was spread abroad that Germany had demanded and obtained the restoration of the documents which established the traitor's guilt! Provoked by the persistence of these attacks, the German embassy inserted in the "Figaro" of Dec. 26 a fresh notice denying formally that it had had with Dreyfus "the least intercourse, either direct or indirect." And as this notice also seemed to have little or no effect, the emperor telegraphed to MĂĽnster on Jan. 5 to go personally to Casimir-Perier and say, "If it be proved that the German embassy has never been implicated in the Dreyfus case, I hope the government will not hesitate to declare the fact." Otherwise, it was given to be understood that the ambassador would leave Paris. This despatch, communicated by MĂĽnster to Dupuy, who was then temporarily engaged at the Foreign Office, had the appearance of an ultimatum. The president of the republic up to this time had known very little of the details of the case, and had been kept by Hanotaux in complete ignorance of MĂĽnster's previous communications; but now he had the contents of the legal documents shown to him. After having read them, he granted to MĂĽnster the audience which had been requested. Then, considering honesty to be the best policy, he asserted very frankly that the criminal letter had been takenfrom the German embassy, but that it was not an important document and that nothing proved that it had been "solicited."
A law passed ad hoc had just instituted as the place of transportation for political crimes the Iles du Salut off French Guiana, instead of the peninsula of Ducos (New Caledonia), where, it was said, supervision was difficult; it has been suggested that in reality vengeance was being taken upon Dreyfus for his obstinate refusal to confess his crime. The notice drawn up by the War Office for the use of his guardians denounced him as "a hardened malefactor, quite unworthy of pity." This word to the wise was to be only too well understood and carried out. On the evening of Feb. 21 the unhappy man, taken hurriedly from his cell, was embarked on the "Ville de St. Nazaire," which was to carry him across the Atlantic to a place of exile.
Devil's Island.
VI. The Iles du Salut, where Dreyfus was landed on March 15, compose a small archipelago situated twenty-seven miles off Cayenne, opposite the mouth of the River Kuru. Notwithstanding its name ("salus," health) it is a most unhealthy region. Incessant heat, continuous rain for five months of the year, the effluvia arising from the marshy land are sufficient to undermine the strongest constitution. The smallest island of the group, Devil's Island, which had until Dreyfus' arrival been occupied by a leper hospital, was destined to be his abode. On the summit of a desolate rock, far from the few palm-trees on the shore, a small hut of four cubic yards was built for him; night and day an inspector stood guard at the door, with strict orders not to address a word to him. In the daytime the prisoner was permitted to exercise until sunset in a small rectangular space of about two hundred yards, near his hut.
The poor victim was now utterly depressed. On Sept. 10, 1896, he stopped keeping his diary, writing that he could not foresee on what day his brain would burst! His family was no longer allowed to send him books. The letters of his wife were forwarded to him no longer in the original hand, but in copies only. On June 6, 1897, a sail having been sighted during the night, alarm-guns were fired, and Dreyfus, startled in his sleep, saw his keepers with loaded rifles ready to shoot him down if he made one suspicious movement. In August the authorities ascertained that the heat and moisture in his stifling hut were really unbearable, and had the man transferred to a new cabin, larger than the first, but quite as dismal. A signal-tower was erected close by mounted with a Hotchkiss gun. Happily for Dreyfus his moral fortitude, after a temporary eclipse, had recovered its strength; and from Jan., 1898, the letters of his wife, although containing no particulars, roused his hopes by a tone of confidence which could not be mistaken. Eventful incidents had taken place during those three awful years.
Not long after the condemnation of Dreyfus the Intelligence Office had changed its chief. Sandherr, incapacitated by general paralysis, had resigned his post simultaneously with his assistant, Cordier (July 1, 1895); Major Henry, who aspired to the position although he did not speak a single foreign language, was not appointed Sandherr's successor; but in his stead Major Picquart, who had been ordered to report the debates in the Dreyfus case in order to send an account of the proceedings to the minister and to the chief of the staff, received the appointment. He was a young and brilliant officer, of Alsatian origin, hard-working, well-informed, with a clear intellect, a ready speech, and who, moreover, appeared to share all the prejudices of his surroundings; he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel on April 6, 1896, and was the youngest officer of that grade in the army. Immediately upon his arrival at the office he reorganized the service, which the prolonged illness of Sandherr had caused to be neglected. He required in particular that the paper bags in which Madame Bastian continued to collect the waste papers from the German embassy, and which she brought to Major Henry, should pass through his hands before being confided to Captain Lauth, whose work it was to piece and paste them together. These bags, however, never brought anything of importance to light, though they showed that the leakage of secret information had not ceased since the condemnation of Dreyfus.
The chief of the staff, Boisdeffre, on transferring the service into Picquart's hands, had declared to him that in his opinion the Dreyfus affair was not definitely settled. They must be on the lookout for a counter-attack from the Jews. In 1894 they had not been able to discover a motive for the treason; there was therefore every reason for continuing the researches to "strengthen the dossier."
The "Petit Bleu."
In the month of March, 1896, Henry, much occupied by the state of his mother's health and by different matters he had to attend to in the country, made only short and infrequent visits to Paris.One day he sent Madame Bastian's paper bag—particularly bulky on this occasion—to Picquart without even having had time to glance at it. Picquart, likewise without inspecting it, passed it on to Lauth. Some hours afterward the latter came back much affected, bringing to his chief a pneumatic-tube telegram (commonly known as a "petit bleu"), the fragments of which he had found in the bag; pasted together, they contained the following words:
To Major Esterhazy, 27 Rue de la Bienfaisance,
Paris.
Sir: I am awaiting first of all a more detailed explanation [than] that which you gave me the other day on the subject in question. Consequently I beg you to send it to me in writing that I may judge whether I can continue my relations with the firm R. or not. C.
The writing of this note was disguised, but the place it came from left no room for doubting that it emanated from Colonel Schwarzkoppen; the office possessed another document, known to have been written by him, and signed with the same initial "C." The "petit bleu" had not been sent by mail; apparently, after having written or dictated it, Schwarzkoppen reconsidered his determination and had thrown the note into the waste-paper basket, taking care to tear it up into very small pieces—there were more than fifty of them; he had foreseen neither the tricks of Madame Bastian nor the patient industry of the Intelligence Department.
"It is fearful," said Captain Lauth on delivering it. "Can there possibly be another one?"—meaning another traitor among the officers. Picquart could share only the same impression; but determined upon avoiding the indiscretions and the blunders which had been committed in 1894, he resolved to undertake personally a secret inquiry before spreading abroad the news of his discovery. He put the "petit bleu" away in his strong-box, and shortly afterward had photographs of it taken by Lauth, in which he strove to remove the traces of the rents.
The object of this precaution, which was afterward laid to Picquart's charge as a crime, was both to render the reading of the photograph more easy and to prevent the officers (necessarily numerous) who would handle these photographs later on, from guessing immediately the origin of the document.
Picquart acquainted General de Boisdeffre with his discovery, and upon the order of the general and of the minister of war, General Billot, he was directed to continue his inquiry as quietly as possible; still, Boisdeffre seemed from that time little disposed to recommend judicial proceedings. If Esterhazy were really a traitor, he would be dismissed from the army quietly; another Dreyfus affair was to be avoided. Picquart now set to work in earnest to get samples of Esterhazy's handwriting, and he succeeded in obtaining two letters which the major had written to the chiefs of Billot's cabinet. On looking at them Picquart was startled; the writing was identical with that of the bordereau attributed to Dreyfus. He wished to make sure of his impression, so he showed some photographs of these letters (from which he had removed the proper names) to Du Paty and Bertillon. Du Paty declared: "They are from Matthew Dreyfus"; Bertillon said: "It is the writing of the bordereau." And when Picquart assured him that these letters were of recent date, he declared:" The Jews have, for the past year, been training some one to imitate the writing; he has succeded in making a perfect reproduction." The connection between the letters and the bordereau flashed across the mind of the colonel in all its terrible certainty. If Esterhazy, as the handwriting seemed to indicate, were the author of the latter, Dreyfus must be the victim of a judicial error. For a moment he clung to the idea that he must have further proofs of Esterhazy's guilt; where could they be if not in the secret dossier, communicated to the judges in 1894, and in which he had also placed blind confidence, without the least knowledge of its contents? This dossier, notwithstanding Mercier's orders, had not been destroyed; it was still in Henry's safe. During the latter's absence Picquart had the dossier brought to him by Gribelin, the keeper of the records; he turned it over in feverish haste, but this masterpiece of the "bureau" contained absolutely nothing that applied, or could be made to apply, to Dreyfus. Of the only two papers that were of any importance, one, the document "canaille de D . . . ," did not in any way concern any officer, but only a poor scribbler who had assumed the name of Dubois, while the other, the memorandumof Schwarzkoppen, almost certainly pointed to Esterhazy. As to Du Paty's commentary, this was a mass of wild suppositions. Later this commentary was claimed by General Mercier as his private property and quietly destroyed by him.
Much concerned, but still confident of the honesty of his chiefs, Picquart immediately drew up a report and brought it to Boisdeffre, who ordered Picquart to go and relate his story to the deputy-chief of the staff, General Gonse. The general received the colonel, listened without flinching to his revelations, and concluded that they must "separate the two affairs," that of Dreyfus and that of Esterhazy. These instructions, confirmed by Boisdeffre, seemed absurd to Picquart, since the bordereau established an indissoluble bond between the two cases; he should have understood from that moment that his superiors had determined not to permit at any cost the reopening of the Dreyfus affair.
Father Du Lac.
Boisdeffre had for spiritual adviser Father Du Lac, an influential Jesuit, who appears to have played an important though secret part in all this story. Perhaps the officers would not admit even among themselves that under their pompous formulas was hidden, above everything, the fear of seeing their positions in the military world melt away if they publicly confessed the part they had taken in the error and illegal act of 1894; for the innocence of Dreyfus once established, the communication of the secret dossier would appear to everybody what it was in reality—an odious crime. As to General Billot, to whom Picquart, following Boisdeffre's orders, made a complete report of the case, he appeared deeply moved. He had not the same reasons as his companions to defend the judgment of 1894 at any cost, for he had had nothing to do with it, and learned for the first time the story of the secret dossier. But this soldier-politician lived in terror of his surroundings; he did not dare to see the affair clearly, and took for his motto the words of the comedy: "Je suis leur chef; il faut que je les suive" (I am their leader; I am bound to follow them).
Against the young chief of the Intelligence Office there was from this time forward on the part of his superiors secret strife which was bound to end in rupture, but of which Picquart was for a long time unconscious. He did not perceive that in his own office he was jealously spied upon, opposed, and deceived by his fellow workers, Henry, Lauth, and Gribelin. One of them, Henry, had some mysterious motives besides the desire to please his superiors. Since 1876, when they had served together at the Intelligence Office, he had been the comrade, the friend, and even the debtor of Esterhazy, although he pretended to know very little about him. Between these two men there existed a bond the exact nature of which has remained unknown, but which must have been very powerful to involve Henry in the falsehood, deceit, and forgeries which were unveiled later. If it is not certain that Henry was Esterhazy's accomplice, it seems very probable that from the end of 1894 he knew him to be the author of the bordereau, and knew also that the traitor had him in his power.
The Castelin Interpellation.
X. In Sept., 1896, the rumor of the prisoner's escape brought the case abruptly back to public notice. The anti-Jewish press inveighed against the accomplices, the protectors of the traitor; a member of the Chamber, Castelin, announced that at the opening of the next session he would interpellate the ministry on this subject. Moreover, it was known at the Staff Office that the Dreyfus family was pursuing an inquiry and was getting ready to publish a pamphlet demanding the revision of the case.
Picquart, now that his eyes had been opened, was much preoccupied with all these plots. He believed Castelin to be working for the Dreyfus family. He had also been affected by a strange forgery, quite inexplicable to him, which had come into his hands early in September: a letter in a feigned handwriting, and in the style of a German, pretending to be addressed to Dreyfus by a friend, Weiss or Weill, and referring to imaginary "interesting documents" written in sympathetic ink, easily legible to expert eyes. This was probably the beginning of the plot to discredit Picquart, who insisted to Gonse that the initiative should come from the Staff Office. Gonse answered by vaguely advising him to act with prudence, and was opposed to the "expertises" in handwriting that the colonel demanded. In the mean time the bombshell burst. On Sept. 14 "L'Eclair" published under the title "The Traitor" a retrospective article which pretended to bring to light the real motives for the judgment of 1894. The article revealed for the first time the fact of the communication to the judges of a secret document, but this document—the letter "canaille de D . . ."—now became a "letter in cipher" in which the following phrase was found: "This creature Dreyfus is becoming decidedly too exacting." This article had been brought to "L'Eclair" by a contributor to the "Petit Journal," where Henry had some acquaintances; nothing further is known concerning it. Picquart attributed it to the Dreyfus family, and desired to take proceedings, which his chiefs would not authorize. This only caused him to insist more firmly that immediate steps should be taken. Then took place between General Gonse and Picquart this memorable dialogue:
["Le Procès Dreyfus Devant le Conseil de Guerre de Rennes," I. 440, 441, Paris, 1900.]
"What can it matter to you," said the general, "whether this Jew remains at Devil's Island or not?"
"But he is innocent."
"That is an affair that can not be reopened; General Mercier and General Saussier are involved in it."
"Still, what would be our position if the family ever found out the real culprit?"
"If you say nothing, nobody will ever know it."
"What you have just said is abominable, general. I do not know yet what course I shall take, but in any case I will not carry this secret with me to the grave."
From that day Picquart's removal was decided. He was authorized for the sake of appearances to continue his investigations concerning Esterhazy, but he was forbidden to take any decisive step, or, above all, to have the man arrested. With an adversary so cunning, ordinary measures—secret searches in his rooms, opening of his correspondence, examination of his desks—were of no avail, and never would be. For Esterhazy had been warned. He went to Drumont some time before the appearance of Lazare'spamphlet, and said that they desired to reopen the Dreyfus affair, and to involve him in it in order to retard his promotion ("La Libre Parole," Dec. 3, 1902).
Henry's Confirmatory Letter.
Meanwhile, Henry insinuated to General Gonse that it would be well to put the secret dossier (of the Dreyfus case) out of the way, for indiscretions might arise—perhaps had already arisen—because of it (an allusion to the article in "L'Eclair," which he wished to be attributed to Picquart). Gonse did not need to be told twice, and removed the dossier (Oct. 30). A very few days later Henry triumphantly brought him a letter from Panizzardi, in blue pencil, which, he said, he had just found among some scraps in Madame Bastian's paper bag (Oct. 31). It was thus worded:
My dear friend: I have read that a deputy is going to ask several questions on the Dreyfus affair. If they request any new explanations at Rome, I shall say that I never had any dealings with this Jew. That is understood. If they question you make the same reply, for nobody must ever know what has happened to him. Alexandrine
The writing was apparently Panizzardi's, and in order to compare it Henry produced an earlier letter, supposed to have been taken from the waste of the secret dossier, written with the same pencil, on the same sort of paper ruled in squares, and containing the same signature. In reality, the letter brought for comparison contained fraudulent additions hinting at a Jewish traitor, while the new document was a forgery from beginning to end, executed by one of Henry's customary forgers, probably Leeman, called Lemercier-Picard, who later admitted to Count Tornielli that he had written it. Gonse and Boisdeffre believed or pretended to believe in its authenticity, and likewise convinced General Billot thereof. When Colonel Picquart expressed his doubts to Gonse the latter answered: "When a minister tells me anything I always believe it."
On Nov. 6 the memoir which had been prepared by the Dreyfus family, and which had been written by Bernard Lazare, appeared at Brussels. He laid bare the inconclusive character of the incriminating document (without, however, publishing it), confirmed the communication of the secret document, but affirmed, in opposition to "L'Eclair," that it bore only the initial "D" and not the name of "Dreyfus" in full. The pamphlet, distributed to the members of the Chamber, received from the press a cold welcome. But a few days later (Nov. 10) "Le Matin" published the facsimile of the famous bordereau attributed to Dreyfus. It became known later that it had been obtained from the expert Teyssonnières, who alone had kept the photograph of the bordereau confided to all the writing-experts in 1894. The publicity given to this facsimile would allow writing-experts all the world over to prove the differences that existed between the writing of the bordereau and that of Dreyfus; it might also meet the eyes of people who would recognize the writing of the true culprit, and that is exactly what happened. Esterhazy's handwriting was recognized particularly by Schwarzkoppen (who only then understood the drama of 1894), by Maurice Weil, and by a solicitor's clerk, the son of the chief rabbi Zadoc Kahn. The confusion at the Staff Office was now great; it grew worse confounded when Maurice Weil, one of Esterhazy's intimate friends, sent to the minister of war an anonymous letter which he had just received and which warned him that Castelin intended to denounce Esterhazy and Weil as accomplices of Dreyfus. The Staff Office pretended to recognize Picquart's hand in all these incidents, or at any rate to regard them as the result of his alleged indiscretions. His immediate departure was resolved upon. He had already been told that he would be sent to inspect the intelligence service in the east of France. Boisdeffre went with him to the minister, who rebuked Picquart soundly for having let information leak out and for having seized Esterhazy's correspondence without authorization. In recognition of his services in the past, he was not disgraced, but was ordered to set out immediately, and to resign his position to General Gonse. He did not protest, but started on Nov. 16. Two days later Castelin's interpellation, which had become a decided bugbear to the Staff Office, was made, but it failed of its purpose. Castelin demanded that proceedings should be instituted against the accomplices of the traitor, among whom he named Dreyfus' father-in-law Hadamard, the naval officer Emile Weyl, and Bernard Lazare. General Billot, who had addressed the Chamber before Castelin, affirmed the perfect regularity of the action of 1894, and made an appeal to the patriotism of the assembly to terminate a "dangerous debate." After a short and confused argument the Chamber voted an "ordre du jour" of confidence, inviting the government to inquire into the matter and to take proceedings if there were cause. A petition from Madame Dreyfus, invoking, with the support of the article in "L'Eclair," the communication of the secret document, was put aside by the judicial committee for want of sufficient proof.
Machi-nations Against Picquart.
XI. Meanwhile, under a pretext, Picquart was hurried off from Nancy to Marseilles, and later on to Tunis; and, to avoid notice, he was attached to the Fourth Regiment of sharpshooters in garrison at Susa. During the whole time General Gonse wrote to him upon the question of money, as if to suggest purchasing his silence. Picquart recorded in a codicil to his will the history of his discovery, which he intended for the president of the republic; in this way he was sure "not to take his secret with him to the grave."
Scheurer-Kestner's Inquiries.
Henry, though under the nominal direction of Gonse, had become the real head of the Intelligence Office, where he quietly prepared a whole series of forgeries, designed, when the opportunity presented itself, to crush Picquart if he ever attempted to cause trouble. After having put at rest the mistrust of his former chief by pretended protestations of devotion, in June, 1897, he suddenly flung off his mask. Picquart, irritated at continually receiving missives from the agents of his former service, wrote a rather hasty note to Henry, in which he denounced "the lies and the mysteries" with which his pretended mission had been surrounded during the past six months. Henry, after having consulted his superiors, answered, declaring that as far as "mysteries" were concerned he knew only that the following facts had been established against Picquartby an "inquiry": (1) The opening of correspondence unconnected with the service. (2) A proposal to two officers to testify, should such action be necessary, that a paper, registered as belonging to the service, and emanating from a well-known person, had been seized in the mails—a reference to a remark made by Lauth to Picquart, that the "petit bleu" addressed to Esterhazy was deficient of the regular stamp of the post-office. (3) The opening of a secret dossier, followed by disclosures. This letter, to which Picquart replied by a brief protest, opened his eyes; he understood the plot that was being hatched against him, the dangers which threatened him for having been too discerning. He asked for leave, went to Paris, and disclosed his affair to his old friend and comrade Leblois, a lawyer. Without revealing to Leblois any secret document, even the "petit bleu," he told him that he had discovered Esterhazy's crime and the innocence of Dreyfus; he authorized him, in case of necessity, to inform the government, but absolutely forbade him to apprise either the brother or the lawyer of Dreyfus. Leblois did not long remain the only recipient of the secret. A few days later chance brought him in contact with one of the few statesmen who had shown any sympathy with the researches of Matthew Dreyfus—the Alsatian Scheurer-Kestner, former member of the Chamber of Deputies for Alsace and coworker with Gambetta, and now vice-president of the Senate and one of the most justly esteemed men of the Republican party. Since 1895 Scheurer-Kestner, induced by the deputy Ranc and by Matthew Dreyfus, had made some inquiries. In 1897 the friends of Dreyfus returned to the charge. Scheurer-Kestner was surprised to find that all the so-called moral proofs, the tales that were brought forward to explain the crime of Dreyfus, did not bear investigation. The expert Teyssonnières, sent to him by his friend and colleague Trarieux, former minister of justice, did not succeed in convincing him that the bordereau was in the writing of Dreyfus. In great distress, he went to tell his old comrade Billot of his suspicions; the general reassured him: a secret document discovered since the condemnation, at the moment of Castelin's interpellation, had removed all doubts; Billot related the substance of it to him without letting him see it. This "crushing blow," which he kept in reserve for the partizans of Dreyfus, was Major Henry's forgery.
Scheurer-Kestner was at this point of his inquiry when Leblois, who had met him at dinner one evening, conceived the idea of having recourse to him as the medium by which to save Dreyfus and, through Dreyfus, Picquart. Going to Scheurer-Kestner's house, Leblois told all he knew, and showed him Gonse's letters. Scheurer-Kestner was finally convinced, and swore to devote himself to the defense of the innocent (July 13, 1897). But he was much puzzled as to what course to pursue. Leblois had forbidden him to mention Picquart's name, and Picquart had forbidden that the Dreyfus family should be told. In this perplexity, born of the initial mistake of Picquart, Scheurer-Kestner pursued the most unlucky tactics imaginable; instead of quietly gathering together all his documents and uniting his forces with those of Matthew Dreyfus, he allowed the rumor of his convictions to be spread abroad, and thus put the Staff Office on the alert, gave them time to prepare themselves, and allowed the hostile press to bring discredit upon him and to weaken beforehand by premature and mutilated revelations the force of his arguments.
Following instructions, Esterhazy wrote to Billot, ending his letter with the threat that if he were not defended he would apply to the German emperor. He wrote in the same strain to the president of the republic, claiming that a lady—afterward mysteriously referred to as the "veiled lady"—had given him a photograph of a very important document which Picquart had acquired from an embassy and which seriously compromised persons of high diplomatic rank. This braggadocio was taken so seriously that General Leclerc received an order at Tunis to question Picquart on having given to an outsider—the "veiled lady"—the "document of deliverance." Receiving no answer, Esterhazy, in his third letter (Nov. 5), virtually held the knife at the president's throat: the stolen document proved the rascality of Dreyfus; if he should publish it, it would be war or humiliation for France. This time they made up their minds to listen to him. General Saussier was charged with interrogating Esterhazy in regard to the "document of deliverance"; he obtained no details from him, but made him promise to send back the document to the minister. On Nov. 15 (the day when Matthew Dreyfus wrote his denunciation) it was "restored" to Saussier in a triple envelope, sealed with Esterhazy's arms: the "document of deliverance," as Esterhazy called it, was a photograph of the document "canaille de D . . ." There is nothing to prove that Esterhazy had ever had it in his hands. Billot acknowledged the receipt by the hand of his "chef de cabinet," General Torcy. By these barefaced stratagems Esterhazy and his defenders on the staff made certain of the complicity of the minister and of the president of the republic, while they compromised Picquart more deeply.
During this time Scheurer-Kestner was being deceived by his "old friend" Billot. On Oct. 30 he had a long conference with Billot, at which he accused Esterhazy. Billot declared that in spite of persistent investigations nobody had been able to find any proofs against Esterhazy, but that there were positive proofs against Dreyfus. Scheurer-Kestner implored him to distrust suspicious documents, and finally gave him a fortnight in which to make an honest and thorough investigation, promising that he himself would not speak during that time.
For four days they hesitated as to the course to pursue, Scheurer-Kestner still persisting in keeping the fortnight's silence promised to Billot on Oct. 31. In the interim, by means of the press the public mind had been influenced by indications as to the real traitor and by counter-declarations by Esterhazy in "La Libre Parole" concerning the conspiracy of the Jews and of "X. Y." (Picquart).
On the night of Nov. 15, in a letter to the minister of war which was published at once, Matthew Dreyfus denounced "Count" Walsin Esterhazy as the writer of the bordereau and as the author of the treason for which his brother had been condemned.
Trial of Esterhazy.
XII. The hasty denunciation of Esterhazy by Matthew Dreyfus was a tactical though perhaps an unavoidable blunder. To accuse Esterhazy formally of the treason imputed to Dreyfus—and not simply of having written the bordereau (perhaps as a hoax or a swindle)—was to subject the revision of the case of 1894 to the preliminary condemnation of Esterhazy. With the staff and the War Office fully enlisted against Dreyfus, the court martial which Esterhazy himself at once demanded was of necessity a veritable comedy. Not only was the accused allowed his liberty until the last day but one, not only did his protectors in the Staff Office continue to communicate indirectly with him and to dictate the answers he should make, but the general entrusted with the preliminary as well as with the judicial inquiry, M. de Pellieux, showed him an unchanging friendliness and accepted without examination all his inventions.
Against this "odious campaign" was set in motion a whole band of newspapers connected with the Staff Office, and which received from it either subsidies or communications. Among the most violent are to be noted "La Libre Parole" (Drumont), "L'Intransigeant" (Rochefort), "L'Echo de Paris" (Lepelletier), "Le Jour" (Vervoort), "La Patrie" (Millevoye), "Le Petit Journal" (Judet), "L'Eclair" (Alphonse Humbert). Two Jews, Arthur Meyer in "Le Gaulois" and G. Pollonnais in "Le Soir," also took part in this concert. Boisdeffre's orderly officer, Pauffin de St. Morel, was even caught one day bearing the "staff gospel" to Henry Rochefort (Nov. 16); nobody was deceived by the punishment for breach of discipline which he had to undergo for the sake of appearances.
An extraordinary piece of information—which was immediately contradicted—was printed by "L'Intransigeant" (Dec. 12-14); it was attributed to the confidences of Pauffin, and it dealt with the "ultra-secret" dossier (the photographs of letters from and to Emperor William about Dreyfus).
"If some one came to me this evening," it ran, "and told me that I should be killed to-morrow as captain of Uhlans, while hewing down Frenchmen, I should be perfectly happy. . . . What a sad figure these people would make under a blood-red sun over the battle-field, Paris taken by storm and given up to the pillage of a hundred thousand drunken soldiers! That is the fĂŞte that I long for!"
Esterhazy hastened to deny the authorship of the letter, which was submitted to examination by experts. While silence was imposed on the officers of Esterhazy's regiment, suspicions were thrown on the defenders of Dreyfus. The director of the prison of Cherche-Midi, Forzinetti, who persisted in proclaiming his prisoner's innocence, was dismissed. But, above all, the Staff Office struggled to bring Picquart into disrepute. Scheurer-Kestner insisted on having his evidence; they were forced to bring him back from Tunis. The day before his arrival a search was instituted among his belongings, which was as fruitless as it was unusual; an officer escorted him from Marscilles to Paris (Nov. 25). General de Pellieux, who had been made to believe by a series of forgeries that Picquart had for some time been the moving spirit of the "syndicate," treated him more as the accused than as a witness; it was understood that he would soon be behind bolts and bars.
Ravary's Report.
The general entrusted with the investigation concluded that there was no evidence against Esterhazy. However, Esterhazy was instructed to write a letter asking as a favor to be brought up for trial, the rough copy of which was corrected by Pellieux himself. Accordingly General Saussier, governor of Paris, instituted a regular inquiry (Dec. 4). But the officer empowered to conduct it, Major Ravary, did so in the same spirit as Pellieux. Esterhazy's system of defense was a mixture of audacious avowals and ridiculous inventions. He acknowledged his relations with Schwarzkoppen, but gave to them a purely social character. The "petit bleu" was, according to him, an absurd forgery, highly improbable, and most likely the work of Picquart himself. He did not deny the striking resemblance between his writing and that of the bordereau, but explained it by alleging that Dreyfus must have fraudulently obtained one of his letters to imitate his handwriting and so incriminate him. As for the documents enumerated in the bordereau, Esterhazy denied that he could possibly have known them, especially at the time to which they now had agreed to assign the bordereau (April, 1894). He certainly had borrowed the "manuel de tir" from Lieutenant Bernheim of Le Mans, whom he had met at Rouen, but in the month of September; later on, he retracted and said, in agreement with Bernheim, that it was not the real manual, but a similar regulation already available in the bookstores.
This mass of deceptions, to which was added the romance of the "veiled lady"—supposed to be a mistress of Picquart—was taken seriously by Ravary. Three experts were found (Couard, Belhomme, Varinard) who swore that the bordereau was not in Esterhazy's hand, though apparently traced in part over his writing (Dec. 26). These men had to be coached by the staff. Du Paty writes to Esterhazy: "The experts have been appointed. You will have their names to-morrow. They shall be spoken to; be quiet!" Thereupon Ravary wrote out, or signed, a long report in which, after having given an exact summary of the charges set forth against Esterhazy, he concluded by saying that, while the private life of the major was not a model to be recommended "to our young officers," there was nothing to prove that he was guilty of treason. The bordereau was not in his writing; the "petit bleu" was not genuine. He stigmatized Picquart as the instigator of the whole campaign, and denounced his subterfuges and indiscretions to his superiors.
The Esterhazy Court Martial.
Ravary concluded that the case should be dismissed at once (Jan. 1). However, Saussier ordered the affair to be thoroughly cleared up before a court martial presided over by General Luxer. The hearing took place at the Cherche-Midi on Jan. 10 and 11, 1898. From the commencement the Dreyfus family, who had appointed two lawyers (Fernand Labori and Demange), were refused the right of being represented in court. The reading of the indictment, the superficial examination of Esterhazy (who contradicted himself several times), the testimony of the civil witnesses (Matthew Dreyfus, Scheurer-Kestner, etc.), were conducted in public; then a hearing behind closed doors was ordered, doubtless to stifle Colonel Picquart's evidence. The public knew nothing of Picquart's deposition, or of that of the other military witnesses, of Leblois, or of the experts, and nothing of the Revisionists' case in general. General de Pellieux, seated behind the judges, interfered more than once in the debates, and whispered to the president. Picquart was so harshly treated that one judge exclaimed: "I see that the real accused is Colonel Picquart!"
XIII. Esterhazy's acquittal closed the door on revision for the time being; but the Revisionists did not consider themselves defeated. For two months their ranks had been increased by a large number of literary men, professors, and scholars who had been convinced by the evidence given; it was one of these "intellectuels," the novelist Emile Zola, who took up the gauntlet. Almostfrom the first he had enlisted among the advocates of revision. He had written in the "Figaro" brilliant articles against the anti-Semites and in favor of Scheurer-Kestner, whom he termed "a soul of crystal." "Truth is afoot," he said; "nothing will stop her." On Jan. 13 he published in "L'Aurore," under the title "J'Accuse," an open letter to the president of the republic, an eloquent philippic against the enemies "of truth and justice." Gathering together with the prophetic imagination of the novelist all the details of a story of which up to then the outlines had hardly been discerned, he threw into relief, not without a good deal of exaggeration, the "diabolical rĂ´le" of Colonel Du Paty. He charged the generals with a "crime of high treason against humanity," Pellieux and Ravary with "villainous inquiry," the experts with "lying and fraudulent reports." The acquittal of Esterhazy was "a supreme blow ["soufflet"] to all truth, to all justice"; the court of justice which had pronounced it was "necessarily criminal"; and he finished the long recital of his accusations with these words:
"I accuse the first court martial of having violated the law in condemning the accused upon the evidence of a document which remained secret. And I accuse the second court martial of having screened this illegality by order, committing in its turn the judicial crime of wilfully and knowingly acquitting a guilty person."
Zola's audacious action created a tremendous stir. It was, he owned himself, a revolutionary deed destined to provoke proceedings which would hasten "an outburst of truth and justice," and in that respect he was not deceived. His philippic raised such an outcry in the press and in the Chamber of Deputies that the War Office was forced to enter upon proceedings. A complaint was lodged against the defamatory phrases with regard to the court martial which had acquitted Esterhazy. The case was tried before the jury of the Seine, and lasted from Feb. 7 to 23, 1898.
The president, Delegorgue, in applying this principle, observed a subtle, almost absurd, distinction; he admitted all that could prove Esterhazy's guilt but not Dreyfus' innocence or the irregularity of his condemnation; his formula, "The question will not be admitted," soon became proverbial. In reality, it was exceedingly difficult to trace a dividing-line between the two classes of facts; and the line was constantly overstepped, now under the pretext of establishing the "good faith" of the accused, now to justify the incriminating phrase that the second court martial had covered by order the illegality committed by the first. It was thus that Demange was able to bring out, in a rapid sentence, the fact of the communication of the secret document, which fact he learned from his fellow advocate, Salles.
Picquart's Evidence.
Concerning the Dreyfus affair, the most important testimony was that of Colonel Picquart, who appeared for the first time in public, and gained numerous sympathizers by his calm, dignified, and reserved attitude. Without letting himself be either intimidated or flattered, he related clearly and sincerely, but avoiding all unnecessary disclosures, the story of his discovery. His adversaries, Gonse, Henry, Lauth, Gribelin, did not leave a stone unturned to weaken the force of his evidence and to assert that from the very commencement he had been haunted by the idea of substituting Esterhazy for Dreyfus. There was a long dispute over his supposed plan of having the "petit bleu" stamped during the suspicious visits that Leblois had paid him at the ministry. Gribelin pretended that he had seen them seated at a table with two secret dossiers in front of them, one concerning carrier-pigeons, the other concerning the Dreyfus affair. Henry (appointed lieutenant-colonel for the occasion) declared that he had seen, in the presence of Leblois, the document" canaille de D . . ." taken from its envelope. Picquart denied the truth of this statement, which the dates contradicted; Henry thereupon replied: "Colonel Picquart has told a lie." Picquart kept his temper, but at the end of the trial sent his seconds to Henry, and fought a duel with him, in which Henry was slightly wounded. As to Esterhazy, who also tried to pick a quarrel with him, Picquart refused to grant him the honor of a meeting. "That man," said he, "belongs to the justice of his country." In this trial the important part played by Henry began to appear; till then he had purposely kept in the background, and concealed a deep cunning beneath the blunt appearance of a peasant-soldier. One day (Feb. 13), as if to warn his chiefs that he had the upper hand of them, he revealed the formation of the secret dossier; he also spoke, but vaguely, of a supposed ultra-secret dossier, two letters which (he pretended) had been shown him by Colonel Sandherr. These were apparently two of the forged letters attributed to the German emperor, which were whispered about sub rosa in order to convince refractory opinions.
Among the civil witnesses, the experts in handwriting occupied the longest time before the court. Besides the professional experts, savants such as Paul Meyer, A. Giry, Louis Havet, and Auguste Molinier, affirmed and proved that the writing and thestyle of the bordereau were those of Esterhazy. Their adversaries refused to admit this evidence on the ground of the supposed difference between the original and the published facsimiles, of which many, according to Pellieux, resembled forgeries. The lawyers then asked that the original bordereau might be produced, but the court refused to give the order.
The sentence was therefore annulled (April 2). Chambaraud, the judge-advocate, as well as Manau, the attorney-general, let it be understood that it would be better not to resume proceedings, at the same time allowing a discreet sympathy for the cause of revision to appear. But the War Office, urged on by the deputies, had gone too far to draw back. The court martial, immediately assembled, decided to lodge a civil complaint. This time only three lines from the article were retained as count of the indictment, and the case was deferred to the Court of Assizes of Seine and Oise at Versailles. Zola protested against the competence of this court, but the Court of Cassation overruled him. The case was not called until July 18, under a new ministry. At the last moment Zola declared he would not appear, and fled to England to avoid hearing the sentence, which would then become final. The court condemned him without debate to the maximum punishment, the same as had already been pronounced by the jury of the Seine. His name was also struck from the list of the Legion of Honor. The experts, on their part, slandered by him, brought an action against him which ended in his being condemned to pay 30,000 francs ($6,000) damages.
During the four months which followed the first verdict against Zola the cause of the Revisionists was at the lowest ebb. The only effect that their campaign seemed to have had was to divide French society. On the one side were the army, nearly all the leading classes, and the "social forces," without considering the rabble; on the other, a handful of intellectual men and of Socialists. Nationalism, another form of Boulangism, resumed its sway, associated with anti-Semitism, whose exploits resulted in filling the streets of Algiers with blood. The battle continued in the press, and the League of the Rights of Man (president, Senator Trarieux) concentrated the partizans of revision. But from a judicial point of view all the avenues seemed hence-forward barred. Apart from the epilogue of the Zola trial only two cases, which received scant notice, maintained a feeble spark of hope despite the darkness. On the one hand, Colonel Picquart, after having vainly knocked at all the doors of military justice, had decided to lay a complaint before a civil court against the unknown authors of the forged "Speranza" letter and of the forged telegrams which he had received in Tunis. On the other hand, a cousin of Major Esterhazy, Christian Esterhazy, lodged a complaint against his relative, who, under pretense of investing their money "with his friend Rothschild," had swindled Christian and his mother out of a considerable part of their small fortune. The same examining magistrate, Bertulus, was entrusted with the two cases; each one threw light upon the other. Christian had been one of the intermediate agents in the collusion between Esterhazy and his protectors in the Staff Office, and he divulged some edifying details on this subject.
In the month of May the elections took place. The new Chamber was as mixed in its representation as had been its predecessor, with the addition of a few more Nationalists and anti-Semites. It did not include a single open Dreyfusard: some (Jaurès, J. Reinach) had not been returned; others had not even faced the struggle. Besides, during the electoral period the recognized attitude of all parties had been to keep silent on the "affaire" and to exaggerate the formulas of enthusiasm for the army; later on, a few provincial councils called for strong measures against the agitators.
On the same day as this arrest the examining magistrate Bertulus, disregarding the threats and entreaties of which he had been the object, on his own initiative (as an official note put it) sent Major Esterhazy and his mistress, Marguerite Pays, to prison, accused of the crime of forgery and of using forgeries; he had in fact become convinced that the "Speranza" telegram was the work of Madame Pays, and that they were not altogether innocent of the sending of the "Blanche" telegram. Then, when Bertulus had decided to send Esterhazy and his mistress before the Assize Court, the Chambre des Mises en Accusation interfered and gave them the benefit of insufficient evidence (Aug. 12), and also declared the complicity of Du Paty insufficiently proved.
After the decision pronounced in his favor, Esterhazy had been set at liberty; but he did not come out of this troublesome adventure unscathed. Already, in his speech of July 7, Cavaignac had announced that this officer would be "smitten with the disciplinary punishments that he had deserved," and he gave him into the hands of a council of inquiry. Before this council, presided over by General de St. Germain, Esterhazy, to avenge himself, made revelations which were most compromising for himself as well as for his protectors. He told of his collusion with the staff, and of his threatening letters to the president of the republic. Nevertheless, the council declined to find him guilty of having failed either in discipline or in matters of honor; they sustained only (and by a majority of one) the charge of "habitual misconduct." Notwithstanding a letter from General Zurlinden, military governor of Paris, recommending indulgent measures, Esterhazy's name was struck off the army lists by the minister of war (Aug. 31).
But public opinion had changed considerably, or was at least shaken. The revision of the Dreyfus case thenceforward seemed inevitable; the council of ministers investigated the matter. It was evident that if Colonel Henry had been obliged to forge a false proof of the guilt of Dreyfus in 1896, the dossier did not contain a single one that could be considered as decisive. Cavaignac refused to draw this inference—too honest to hush up Henry's forgery, he was too obstinate to retract his speech of July 7. He declared that he was more convinced than ever of Dreyfus' guilt, and tendered his resignation, led to this decision by Brisson's firmly expressed determination to take steps toward revision (Sept. 4).
Zurlinden Succeeds Cavaignac.
General Zurlinden, governor of Paris, accepted the vacant post in the War Office at the personal request of the president of the republic. He was an honest soldier, but narrow-minded; the press of the staff loaded him with insults, which did not fail to affect him. The revision founded upon the discovery of a "new fact" could only be demanded by the keeper of the seals. As early as Sept. 3 Madame Dreyfus had laid before him a request to take this initiative. She alleged two "new facts": (1) the expert's examination of the bordereau, which she was informed had not given the same results as in 1894; (2) the confession of Henry's crime, which consequently annulled his all-important evidence in the action against her husband. As a result of this claim the keeper of the seals, Sarrien, demanded that the secretary of war should communicate the Dreyfus dossier. To the general surprise, Zurlinden sent it to him with a long notice unfavorable to revision.
Some days after, the vote of the commission charged with giving a preliminary opinion upon the demand for a revision was made known: opinion was equally divided. This division legally inferred rejection; but the minister of war was not bound to accept the opinion of the commission. He wished, however, to shield himself behind a vote of the council of ministers. After four hours of deliberation it was decided, at the instance of Brisson, seconded by Bourgeois, that the keeper of the seals should lay the affair before the Court of Cassation.Thus the proceedings for revision were definitely inaugurated (Sept. 27).
Resignation of Brisson's Ministry.
XV. Now that, thanks to the manly resolution of Brisson, the obstinate defenders of the work of 1894 had been deprived of support, their only remaining hope lay in the revolutionary action of the army, of the people, or of the Chamber of Deputies. It will be seen how they used successively each of these three means. They found help, on the one hand, in the thoughtless violence of certain apostles of revision who persisted in including the whole army in the fault committed by some of its chiefs. The most extreme of these was Urbain Gohier, who was prosecuted (under Dupuy's ministry) for his collection of articles, "The Army Against the Nation," and acquitted by a jury of the Seine. On the other hand, the anti-Revisionists were encouraged by the strange inactivity of the president of the republic. The day before the reopening of the Chamber of Deputies, sudden and suspicious strikes, noisy public meetings, struggles in the streets, reports of a military conspiracy, all contributed to overexcite the temper of the public. The very day of the reopening of the Chamber of Deputies (Oct. 25) Brisson's ministry was defeated on a motion which virtually accused the government of permitting the attacks upon the army, and it resigned forthwith.
Trial Before the Court of Cassation.
It was replaced on Nov. 3 by a cabinet of "republican union" presided over by Charles Dupuy, with Freycinet at the War Office and Lebret keeper of the seals. The Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation, having the demand for a revision laid before it, held public audience on Oct. 27 and 28 to express its opinion upon the admissibility of the demand. The attorney-general Manau and the councilor Bard, the latter in a very remarkable report, both pronounced themselves in favor of the claim. They adopted the two motives for the request presented by Madame Dreyfus. The avowed forgery of Colonel Henry covered his evidence of 1894, and even the origin of the bordereau which had been through his hands, with justifiable suspicion; the report of the experts of 1897, the purport of which was revealed on this occasion, tended to establish the belief that the bordereau was not in Dreyfus' handwriting, as had been claimed in 1894, but was "a tracing of the writing of Esterhazy." The attorney-general, an old republican, was in favor of immediately annulling the sentence of 1894 and suspending the punishment of Dreyfus; the councilor Bard, taking into consideration the resistance of military authority, whose motives were enumerated in Zurlinden's letter, proposed simply that the Criminal Chamber should declare the claim "formally admissible" and should proceed to an inquiry which would throw further light on the matter and set people's minds at rest. It was this last expedient that commended itself to the Criminal Chamber (Oct. 29); and it was further decided (Nov. 3) that instead of appointing a special commission, the court as a whole should hold this supplementary examination. They began at once and heard, in greatest secrecy, a long series of witnesses, not excepting Esterhazy, who, having been threatened with an action for swindling his cousin Christian, obtained a safe-conduct to come to Paris without fear of being arrested. On Nov. 15 the Criminal Chamber decided that Dreyfus should be informed of the commencement of proceedings for the revision, and invited to present his means of defense. This was the first news that the unhappy man had heard of the campaign begun in his behalf.
After having almost terminated the hearing of the witnesses, the Criminal Chamber insisted upon having the secret dossier, withheld by military authority, communicated to it. This request met with strenuous opposition; the matter was even taken before the Chamber of Deputies (Dec. 19). The government, however, before deciding, required guaranties of such a nature as to insure it from indiscreet publication; these guaranties, accepted by the Court of Cassation (Dec. 27), consisted in an officer of the War Office being charged to carry the dossier every day to the court and to bring it back to the War Office in the evening.
The astonishment of the public was intensified when on Jan. 30 the government presented a bill demanding that the affair should be judged by the united sections of the whole Court of Cassation! Dupuy asserted that the bill was a measure of pacification; it was necessary that the decision—and why did the Revisionists fear that the whole Court of Cassation would disavow the Criminal Chamber?—should have such force that nobody but "fools or rebels" would be found to contest it. These arguments, and above all the fear of provoking a ministerial crisis, triumphed over the resistance of a part of the republicans. The "loi de dessaisissement" was passed by the Chamber of Deputies (Feb. 10), and a little later by the Senate (Feb. 28).
The Criminal Chamber had terminated its inquiry on Feb. 9; immediately after the vote for the "loi de dessaisissement" the whole proceeding was turned over to the Court of Cassation. This latter accepted without question the results obtained, heard several new witnesses, and had the secret dossiers, both military and diplomatic, laid before it. It was still engaged in studying them when the "Figaro" succeeded in obtaining, and published, beginning with March 31, the complete reports of the proceedings of the inquiry which had been put in print for the private use of the councilors. The effect of this publication was wide-spread. For the first time the general public had all the factors of the case before its eyes and could reason out an opinion for itself. The characteristic result of the inquiry was the melting away of all the pretended proofs of the guilt of Dreyfus, inferred from the secret dossier: not a single one had withstood an impartial examination, and in the course of the inquiry many documents had been recognized as false or as having been tampered with.
The spokesmen of the Staff Office, General Roget, Major Cuignet, and Cavaignac, now returned to the bordereau, and struggled to show that the documents enumerated therein could have been betrayed only by Dreyfus. But the attributing of the bordereau to Dreyfus clashed with the declaration of the new experts appointed by the Criminal Chamber (Paul Meyer, Giry, Molinier), who were unanimous in attributing it to Esterhazy. Charavay, one of the experts of 1894 who had decided against Dreyfus, retracted his previous decision when Esterhazy's writing was put before him. Lastly, a search, made as early as the month of November, put the court in possession of two letters acknowledged by Esterhazy, written on the same "pelure" paper (foreign note-paper) as the bordereau; a search had been made in vain for samples of this paper in Dreyfus' house, and in 1897 Esterhazy had denied that he had ever used it.
The very day before this memorable decree Esterhazy declared to a reporter of "Le Matin" that he was indeed the author of the bordereau; but he asserted that he had written it "by order," to furnish his friend, Colonel Sandherr (whose secret agent he pretended to have been), with a material proof against the traitor Dreyfus.
The Court Martial at Rennes.
XVI. The presumptions that had been admitted by the Court of Cassation in favor of the innocence of Dreyfus, were so powerful that, according to general opinion, the judgment of the court martial at Rennes could be nothing but a mere formality, destined to procure for Dreyfus the supreme satisfaction of being rehabilitated by his peers. But after the lies, the hatred, the insults which had accumulated during the last two years, after the work of demoralization accomplished by the press of both parties, the overexcited army had now reached the point of identifying its own honor with the shame of Dreyfus. Its suspicions having been successfully roused against civil justice, it refused to bow down before the work of the latter, although it was so straightforward; and, as Renault Morlière had foretold, the only effect that the "loi de dessaisissement" had was to direct upon the whole Court of Cassation the suspicions and the invectives reserved up to this time for the Criminal Chamber alone.
The first victim of this fresh outburst of passion was the Dupuy ministry. This "ministère de bascule" (trimming ministry), after having done everything in its power to retard the work of justice, now seemed to accept it without any reserve, and to be ready to draw any inference from it. The cruiser "Sfax," stationed at La Martinique, had been ordered to bring Dreyfus back to France. Du Paty de Clam was arrested on the charge of having taken part in the Henry forgery, an accusation rashly made by Major Cuignet, and which was bound to be rejected for lack of evidence.
General Pellieux was brought before a council of inquiry for collusion with Esterhazy; Esterhazy himself was prosecuted for the affair of the "liberating document." The cabinet felt itself threatened by the indignation of all sections of the Republican party, and made fresh advances to the "Dreyfusards." On June 5 the Chamber of Deputies voted the public placarding of the decision of the Court of Cassation—a necessary step in view of similar action taken in the case of Cavaignac's speech. Still further, the cabinet proposed to the Chamber to bring before the Senate an action against General Mercier, on the ground of the secret communication made to the judges of 1894.
But the Chamber, which had acclaimed Cavaignac and overthrown Brisson, hesitated to start upon the course of retaliation into which Dupuy was urging it. It found a deputy (Ribot) to declare that the ministry was encroaching upon its prerogatives, and another (Pourquery de Boisserin) to propose the postponement of any decision until the court martial of Rennes had rendered its decree. This last proposition rallied the majority; nobody observed that, in thus connecting Mercier's safety with a fresh condemnation of Dreyfus, a false character was being given in advance to the trial at Rennes: out of a simple legal debate was being formed a duel between a captain and a general.
Defeat of Dupuy Ministry.
Dupuy's cabinet was finally overthrown (June 12), and the groups on the Left, in presence of the danger of a military pronunciamento that threatened them, decided to uphold nothing but a ministry of "Republican defense." On June 22 Waldeck-Rousseau succeeded in forming a cabinet, in which General the Marquis de Galliffet was minister of war.
The cruiser "Sfax" landed Dreyfus on July 1 at Port Houliguen, near Quiberon. Hurriedly disembarked on a stormy night, he was immediately transferred to the military prison of Rennes. After five years of physical and moral torture, which he had survived only by a miracle of will-power, the unhappy man had been reduced to a pitiable state of bodily and mental exhaustion. For five weeks the attorneys chosen by his family, Demange and Labori, were busy in acquainting him as far as was possible with the remarkable events that had occurred during his absence; his attitude while the trial was progressing proved the difficulty he had in realizing the situation.
The examination of Dreyfus himself was without interest; he confined himself to denials, and preserved an entirely military attitude, the exaggerated correctness of which did not arouse any sympathy. Several hearings with closed doors were devoted to the examination of the military and diplomatic secret dossiers. General Chamoin, delegate of the War Office, had (as explained by him later, through inadvertence) incorporated in them again the false rendering of the Panizzardi telegram, together with a commentary from Du Paty.
On Aug. 14 an unknown person, who succeeded in escaping, fired a revolver at Labori and wounded him severely in the back. For more than a week the intrepid advocate was prevented from attending the hearing.
One can not enter into the endless details of all the evidence, which continued for nearly a month longer at the rate of two sittings a day. The most notable witnesses were Casimir-Perier, Commander Freystaetter (one of the judges of 1894)—both in violent opposition to Mercier—Charavay, who, though seriously ill, came loyally forward to acknowledge his error of 1894, and Bertillon, who repeated his claims as to the "autoforgery" of the bordereau, together with fresh complications. At the last moment Colonel Jouaust, using his discretionary power, heard with closed doors, and without putting him on his oath, a Servian named Czernucki, formerly an Austrian officer. This man, who was generally considered to be half-mad, related in an obscure way that a civil official and an officer of the staff "of a power of central Europe" had certified to him that Dreyfus was a spy. Although this story was of no value, Labori took advantage of it to demand in turn that the evidence of Schwarzkoppen and Panizzardi should be received. This was refused. However, the German government inserted a notice in the official newspaper of Berlin (Sept. 8), repeating in formal terms the declaration made by the chancellor Von Bülow on Jan. 24, 1898 before a commission of the Reichstag, and proclaiming that the government had never had any dealings whatever with Dreyfus.
Major Carrière's address to the court assumed that Dreyfus was guilty. He affirmed that at the beginning of the trial he had hoped to be able to demonstrate his innocence, but "this mass of witnesses who have come to give us information and personal opinions" had destroyed that hope. Of Dreyfus' two attorneys only Demange addressed the court. His speech was long, well reasoned, and touching, but he weakened it by making it too polite and by speaking too gently of all the officers, not excepting the late Colonel Henry.
In his rejoinder Carrière asked the judges to group the witnesses into two divisions and to weigh them. Demange begged them not to raise to the dignity of proof such "possibilities of presumptions" as had been brought to them. Finally, Dreyfus uttered these simple words:
"I am absolutely sure, I affirm before my country and before the army, that I am innocent. It is with the sole aim of saving the honor of my name, and of the name that my children bear, that for five years I have undergone the most frightful tortures. I am convinced that I shall attain this aim to-day, thanks to your honesty and to your sense of justice."
XVII. The whole of the civilized world was amazed and indignant on the announcement of the sentence. In France itself nobody was satisfied, except General Mercier, who was delivered by this halting pronouncement from all fear of punishment. For several days the ministry hesitated as to what course to pursue. Finally, the idea of immediately pardoning Dreyfus, started by some of the prisoner's friends, who were alarmed at his state of health, prevailed in the government councils. They had some trouble in inducing the president of the republic to grant the pardon, and Dreyfus to accept it; for in order to avail himself of it the prisoner wasforced to withdraw the appeal he had laid before the council of revision. Later on, the disingenuousness of political parties saw in this relinquishment the avowal of his crime! On Sept. 19, the very day on which Scheurer-Kestner died, appeared the presidential decree remitting the whole of the punishment of Dreyfus, including the military degradation. The decree was preceded by a report from the minister of war, reciting various reasons for clemency. Then by an "ordre du jour," which he did not communicate even to the president of the council, General Galliffet announced to the army that the incident was closed.
In the course of the discussion Waldeck-Rousseau had stigmatized General Mercier's conduct in 1894, and consoled the defenders of Dreyfus by making appeal to the justice of history. Of the three most notable champions of revision, Scheurer-Kestner had already gone to the grave; Zola returned to France, where he died from an accident Sept. 29, 1902; as to Colonel Picquart, indignant at the law of amnesty, he abandoned the appeal that he had lodged against the decision—very much open to criticism—of the council of inquiry which had struck him from the lists, and definitely left the army by way of protestation.
The Dreyfus case has rendered one service to the French democracy by bringing into full light the danger of an alliance between anti-Semitism, nationalism, militarism, clericalism—different terms which express the various forms of the spirit of intolerance and counter-revolution. It has, besides, been a lesson to the whole world of the danger of letting religious prejudice interfere with the sacred prerogative of justice.
Michel Colline, P. Quillard (Le Monument Henry), all favorable to Dreyfus;
on the opposite side there are hardly any to name, except the collection of articles of Maurice Barrès. The work of E. de Haime (pseudonym), Les Faits Acquis à l'Histoire (Paris, 1898), contains letters and declarations from various publicists.
The histories of the affair which appeared during its course can not be much relied on. These are: in French, the volumes signed "Captain Paul Marin" and "Ch. Dubois" (translated into Italian); in English, those of F. Conybeare and of G. Barlow.
and Esterhazy, Les Dessous de l'Affaire Dreyfus (1899).
The standard work is the Histoire de l'Affaire Dreyfus, by Joseph Reinach, in course of publication (tome , Le Procès de 1894, 1901; tome , Esterhazy, Paris, 1903). The complete work will be in five volumes.
Copyright Statement These files are public domain.
Bibliography Information Singer, Isidore, Ph.D, Projector and Managing Editor. Entry for 'Dreyfus, Captain Alfred'. 1901 The Jewish Encyclopedia. https://www.studylight.org/​encyclopedias/​eng/​tje/​d/dreyfus-captain-alfred.html. 1901.