Dreyfus Affair - Arrest, Trial and Cover-up

Arrest, Trial and Cover-up

In 1894, the French Army's counter-intelligence section, led by Lt. Col. Jean Conrad Sandherr, became aware that new artillery information was being passed to the German embassy in Paris by a highly placed spy likely to be posted in the French General Staff. Suspicion quickly fell upon Captain Alfred Dreyfus who was arrested for treason on 15 October 1894. On 5 January 1895, Dreyfus was summarily convicted in a secret court martial, publicly stripped of his army rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment in a penal colony on Devil's Island in French Guiana.

In August 1896, the new chief of French military intelligence, Lt. Col. Georges Picquart, reported to his superiors that he had found evidence to the effect that the real traitor was a Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. Picquart was silenced by being transferred to the southern desert of Tunisia in November 1896. When reports of an army cover-up and Dreyfus's possible innocence were leaked to the press, a heated debate ensued about anti-Semitism, France's identity as a Catholic nation and a republic founded on equal rights for all citizens. The influential writer Émile Zola wrote a famous open letter titled "J'accuse" ("I accuse") published in the newspaper L'Aurore on 13 January 1898. The letter was addressed to President of France Félix Faure, and accused the government of the unlawful jailing of Dreyfus while also accusing certain highly placed members of the Army's general staff of being guilty of a cover-up. Zola also pointed out judicial errors and the lack of serious evidence. The letter was printed on the front page of "L'Aurore" and caused a major commotion in France and abroad. Zola was prosecuted and found guilty of libel on 23 February 1898. To avoid imprisonment, he fled to Britain, eventually returning home in June 1899.

Other pamphlets proclaiming Dreyfus's innocence include Bernard Lazare's A Miscarriage of Justice: The Truth about the Dreyfus Affair (November 1896).

A second trial, in 1900, again resulted in a conviction. However, he was pardoned the same year. In 1906 Dreyfus was, at last, fully exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army.