The resolution of the Dreyfus Affair
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| This article is part of the Dreyfus Affair series. |
| Investigation and arrest |
| Trial and Conviction |
| Picquart's Investigations |
| Other Investigations |
| Public Scandal |
| Resolution |
| Alfred Dreyfus |
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| Contents |
Trial of Esterhazy for forgery
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 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 (August 12), and also declared that the complicity of Du Paty had not been sufficiently 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 (August 31).
The Henry forgery
But just at this time an incident of far greater importance occurred to change the aspect of affairs. Cavaignac, in spite of his assurance, had none the less been agitated by the doubts expressed on all sides as to the authenticity of certain documents in his dossier. In order to ease his mind he ordered a general revision and a reclassification of the secret dossier. In the course of this operation Major Cuignet, working by lamplight, noticed an alarming peculiarity in the "document Henry": the lines of the paper—which was ruled in squares—were not of the same color at the top and at the bottom as they were in the middle. When he looked at the document produced by Henry himself for comparison—an invitation to dinner (falsified) dating from 1894—he ascertained, by comparing the ruled squares, that the heading and the lower part of the latter document belonged in reality to the "document Henry," and vice versa. If the two papers had been contemporary, this inversion might have been attributed to a pardonable error in gumming them together; but such was not the case: one was supposed to have been put together in 1894, the other in 1896; therefore the documents had evidently been tampered with at this latter date. Much concerned by his discovery, Cuignet apprised the chief of the cabinet (General Roget) and the minister, who recognized the accuracy of it. Their conviction, which the nonsense and the improbability of the "Vercingétorix document"—as Esterhazy had called it—had not been able to shake, gave way before the divergence of the squares ruled on the paper. Cavaignac, for motives still unknown, kept the matter secret for a fortnight. Then, as Henry was passing through Paris, he summoned him to the War Office, and questioned him in the presence of Generals de Boisdeffre, Gonse, and Roget. Henry commenced by swearing that the document was authentic, then got entangled in confused explanations, then admitted that he had completed certain parts of it "from oral information" he had received; in the end, conquered by the evidence against him, he owned that he had invented the whole thing. But they knew well why and for whom; and he threw an anxious glance on Generals Boisdeffre and Gonse, who in 1896 had accepted this timely forgery without question; these generals kept frigid silence. Abandoned by the chiefs who had tacitly driven him to the crime, Henry gave way entirely.
Suicide of Henry
By order of the minister he was immediately put under arrest and confined in Mont Valérien. The next day he cut his throat with a razor left in his possession, taking with him to the grave his secret and that of a great part of the "affaire" (Aug. 31, 1898). On the same day Esterhazy prudently disappeared from Paris; it was known that he had taken refuge in Brussels, and then in London. Colonel Henry's avowal gravely affected General Boisdeffre's position, for he had publicly proclaimed and affirmed to the minister the authenticity of the document. He immediately tendered his resignation as head of the staff, and, despite Cavaignac's entreaties, insisted on its acceptance.
This double "coup de théâtre," at once made public, created a tremendous sensation at first. The enemies of revision were overwhelmed; it was several days before they had sufficiently recovered to rally round the theory of the "patriotic forgery" imagined by a contributor to the "Gazette de France," Charles Maurras. According to him, Henry had forged this document as a sort of résumé for the public, because the "real proofs" could not be revealed without danger. This absurd theory (for if ever a document were intended exclusively for "internal use," as Pressensé put it, it was that one!) was generally accepted by the Nationalists.
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 September 3 Madame Dreyfus had laid before him a request to take this initiative. She alleged two "new facts":
- The expert's examination of the bordereau, which she was informed had not given the same results as in 1894
- 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.
Ministerial changes
However, after a prolonged discussion, the ministry decided to proceed and to lay the matter before the judicial commission, which they were bound to consult in such a case. Thereupon Zurlinden tendered his resignation, and was followed in his retirement by the minister of public works, Tillaye (Sept. 17). Zurlinden was reinstated as governor of Paris; General Chanoine inherited his position in the War Office, as well as the insults of the anti-Revisionist press. During his short term of office Zurlinden, with an impartiality that showed more uprightness than discretion, had smitten two of the principal actors of the drama. It resulted from Esterhazy's declarations before his council of discipline, and from an inquiry opened in consequence, that Colonel Du Paty de Clam had sided with Esterhazy before and during his action. Du Paty took upon himself all the responsibility for his conduct, and asserted that he had acted without reference to his chiefs; this was chivalrous, but only half true. However that may be, the assistance thus given to Esterhazy was judged "reprehensible from a military point of view": Du Paty was retired and put on half-pay for punishment (Sept. 12). After Du Paty came Picquart. Zurlinden, having become acquainted with his dossier, proposed to the council of ministers to arraign Picquart before a court martial on the charge, already drawn up by Esterhazy, of having fabricated the "petit bleu." The only possible basis for such an accusation consisted in certain signs of erasure in the document which had not existed in the photographs taken of it in 1896. The council appeared little in favor of these proceedings, but Zurlinden, acting as governor of Paris, almost immediately after tendering his resignation, presented to his successor a warrant of inquiry, which the latter signed without paying much attention to it. The reason of this haste was that the keeper of seals had asked Picquart for a "mémoir" on the fitness of revision; the military party was therefore eager to discredit his testimony by a charge of forgery. On Sept. 21, the day on which the case of Picquart and Leblois was brought before the "tribunal correctionnel," the government attorney demanded the adjournment of the affair, first, on account of the Dreyfus revision, which might modify the aspect of the deeds with which Picquart was charged; and secondly, on account of the new and serious accusation which had been brought against the latter. Picquart then rose and warned his judges and the public, saying: "To-night perhaps I shall go to the Cherche-Midi, and this is probably the last time that I will be able to speak in public. I would have the world know that if there be found in my cell the rope of Lemercier-Picard or the razor of Henry, I shall have been assassinated. No man like myself can for a moment think of suicide." Lemercier-Picard was one of Henry's agents, whose real name was Leeman, and who had probably been concerned in the forgery of 1896; he had afterward hanged himself under mysterious circumstances from the window-fastening of a furnished house. The next day Picquart was taken from the civil prison of La Santé and enrolled on the register at the Cherche-Midi, where he was put into the strictest solitary confinement.
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 (Sep 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.
Before the Court of Cassation, as in the actions against both Esterhazy and Zola, the principal witness for the revision was to be Colonel Picquart. To weaken the importance of his evidence and to retaliate for the revision, the military party wished to force the colonel's condemnation beforehand. The inquiry into his case, entrusted to Captain Tavernier, was quickly ended. On Nov. 24 General Zurlinden, governor of Paris, signed the order demanding his trial before the court martial; he was charged with forging the "petit bleu," with using other forgeries, and with communicating secret documents concerning national defense. Numerous petitions from "intellectuels" protested against these hasty measures, and demanded that the judgment of Picquart should be delayed until the result of the inquiry in the Court of Cassation should have put in its true light the part he had played in all this affair. The same opinion was expressed in the Chamber of Deputies by the deputies Bos, Milleraud, and Poincaré, one of the ministers of 1894, who took advantage of this opportunity to "unburden his conscience."
Freycinet and Dupuy refused to postpone the court martial, but were willing to hamper it by allowing the Court of Cassation to claim the Picquart dossier. Finally, after a fruitless attempt by Waldeck-Rousseau to pass a law allowing the Supreme Court to suspend the case of Picquart, the colonel, who was awaiting trial before both the "tribunal correctionnel" and the court martial, applied to the Court of Cassation to rule the case. The court ordered that the two dossiers should be communicated to it, thus indefinitely postponing the meeting of the court martial. (After the close of the inquiry, on March 3, 1899, the court decided that the Civil Court alone was concerned with the chief accusations against Picquart, and he was transferred from the military prison at Cherche-Midi to the civil prison of La Santé.)
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.
Attacks on the court
While the Criminal Court was proceeding with its inquiry, notwithstanding the secrecy with which all its movements were surrounded, the report was spread abroad that the decision would be favorable to the claim for revision. To avoid this catastrophe at any price, the enemies of revision commenced a violent campaign in the newspapers, defaming the magistrates of the Criminal Chamber, who were represented as having been required to sell themselves to the cause of Dreyfus. The Ligue de la Patrie Française, founded in Jan., 1899, under the auspices of the academicians François Coppée and Jules Lemaitre, energetically seconded this campaign and demanded that these "disqualified" judges should be discharged from the cognizance of the case. The president of the Civil Chamber of the court, Quesnay de Beaurepaire, was found ready to lend the support of his high dignity to these calumnies; he tendered his resignation as a judge (Jan. 8, 1899), and began in "L'Echo de Paris" a series of articles against his colleagues. His most serious charge was that President Loew, at the end of a long and tiring sitting, had sent Picquart a glass of hot grog.
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 death of Félix Faure
In the interval between the taking of these two votes an important event had occurred—the sudden death of the president, Félix Faure (Feb. 16). The congress which immediately assembled set aside the candidateship of all those who had been to a greater or less degree involved in the Dreyfus affair (Méline, Brisson, Dupuy), and fixed its choice on the president of the Senate, Emile Loubet, who had preserved up to that time, and who continued to preserve, a consistently neutral attitude. Nevertheless, as he was the choice of the Senate and of the Revisionists in the Chamber, his nomination awakened the fury of the Nationalists, anti-Semites, and reactionists. On different sides conspirators tried to take advantage of the general disorder and attempted a decisive stroke. The Orleanist pretender advanced closer to the frontier. At Félix Faure's funeral (Feb. 23) the leaders of the League of Patriots, Déroulède and Marcel Habert, tried to induce General Roget's brigade to proceed to the Elysée. The two agitators were arrested, brought before the jury of the Seine for "misdemeanor in the press," and acquitted (May 31).
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 Panizzardi telegram
Before the united courts the most remarkable incident was that of the Panizzardi telegram of Nov. 2, 1894. Instead of the true interpretation of this telegram, which quite exonerated Dreyfus, the secret military dossier communicated to the Court of Cassation contained only a false version of it, put together from memory in 1898 by Colonel Henry. In the course of his deposition Major Cuignet tried to justify this false version, and accused the Foreign Office of want of faith. A somewhat animated correspondence took place between the two ministries on this subject. However, the delegate of the Foreign Office, Paléologue, had no trouble in confounding his opponent, and on April 27 Cuignet and General Chamoin, in the name of the War Office, signed a warrant recognizing the accuracy of the official interpretation. This incident had a parliamentary echo. On May 5 De Freycinet tendered his resignation from the War Office rather abruptly. He was replaced by Krantz, until then minister of public works.
Notwithstanding the remarkable prejudices of a considerable number of the councilors who were charged with the examination of the case, the inquiry of the united courts only confirmed in a striking manner the results of the inquiry of the Criminal Chamber. The president of the Civil Chamber, Ballot-Beaupré, was entrusted with the report, which he read in the open court on May 29. Visibly affected, he declared that the bordereau was the work of Esterhazy: this fact being proved, even if it did not allow of Esterhazy's acquittal being overthrown, was sufficient to demonstrate Dreyfus' innocence; and this was, according to Ballot-Beaupré, the new fact required by the law. Manau, the attorney-general, in his address to the court brought forward a second "new fact"—Henry's forgery. After a masterly speech by Mornard, acting on behalf of the Dreyfus family, the Court of Cassation retired for deliberation. In their decision, rendered June 3, they set aside the "fins de non recevoir" (refusal to admittance) inferred either from the secret dossier or from the pretended confessions of Dreyfus, which they judged not proved and improbable. They retained two "new facts": one, recognized by all, the fresh attribution of the bordereau; the other, the secret communication made to the judges of Dreyfus, of the document "canaille de D . . .," now considered by every one as inapplicable to the prisoner. Accordingly, the Court of Cassation annulled the sentence of 1894, and ordered that Dreyfus be tried again before a court martial at Rennes.
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 pronouncement 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.
His trial began on Aug. 7, in one of the rooms of the lycée at Rennes. The court martial was composed entirely of artillery officers, except the president, Colonel Jouaust, who belonged to the corps of engineers. The public prosecutor was Major Carrière, a retired gendarme, who at the age of sixty had begun to study law. In accordance with legal requirements, the indictment was in substance the same as at the previous trial; but the only question put to the court was whether Dreyfus had delivered up the documents enumerated in the bordereau. It appeared, therefore, that only witnesses who could give evidence on this point would be heard, and such, in fact, were the instructions given by the War Office to the government commissary; but these directions were not respected by him nor by the defense. Hence the Rennes trial was but a repetition of the interminable string of witnesses who had already been heard at Zola's trial and in the Court of Cassation, the greater part of whom only brought forward opinions, suppositions, or tales absolutely foreign to the question. The generals, forming a compact group which this time worked under Mercier's personal direction, delivered regular harangues and interfered in the debate continually; the president, overawed by his superior officers, exhibited as much deference to them as he showed harshness and sharpness to Dreyfus. From beginning to end of the trial he made no pretence of keeping account of the facts duly established by the Court of Cassation. Esterhazy's avowals, intermixed, it is true, with lies, were held as being null and void. The voluminous correspondence which he addressed to Jouaust and to Carrière was thrown into the waste-paper basket. The questions asked by one of the judges indicated that some one had spoken to him of the pretended "original bordereau," said to have been annotated by the Emperor William, and of which the bordereau was simply a copy by Esterhazy.
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.
General Mercier's evidence (Aug. 12), which had been announced with much parade and bustle, was put forward in a clever speech, but brought out nothing new, unless it were a note from the Austrian military attaché, Schneider, which Mercier had procured by unavowed means. In this note the Austrian diplomat declared that he persisted in "believing" in the guilt of Dreyfus. The note was of the year 1895 or 1896; but a false date had been written on the copy, "Nov. 30, 1897"—a date later than the discovery of Esterhazy's handwriting, and at which, as a matter of fact, Schneider had completely changed his opinion! Called upon to explain the part he played in 1894, Mercier admitted, this time without hesitation, the communication of the secret dossier, took the credit of it to himself, and declared that if necessary he was ready to do it again.
Labori shot
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."
The verdict
An hour later he heard the verdict that ruined all his hopes and those of justice: by five votes to two the court martial declared him guilty. It was asserted that the two votes were those of Colonel Jouaust (who throughout the trial had carefully concealed his opinion) and of Lieutenant-Colonel de Bréon, a fervent Catholic, the brother of a Paris curate. As if, however, to acknowledge its doubts, the court admitted that there were "extenuating circumstances"—a thing unheard of and incomprehensible in a matter of treason. The sentence pronounced was detention for ten years: it was known that the judges had recommended the condemned man to the indulgence of the War Office (Sept. 9, 1899).
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 was forced 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.
On Sept. 20 Dreyfus was set at liberty. He immediately wrote to the president of the republic a letter in which he declared anew his innocence, together with his resolve to know no rest or peace until his honor was restored. He retired with his family to Carpentras, then to Geneva, and finally went back to settle in Paris, without causing the slightest public demonstration. Thus ended in a paradoxical result this long struggle for right. Dreyfus, liberated and restored to his family, innocent in the eyes of the world, remained excluded from the army and legally dishonored. In the senatorial elections of 1900 all the notable "Dreyfusards" (Ranc, Siegfried, Thévenet) remained unelected; it was only at the legislative elections of 1902 that the tide began to turn and some of the champions of revision (Pressensé, Jaurès, Buisson) were returned to the Chamber of Deputies.
Pardon and amnesty
The sentence of Rennes left unsettled several actions which were more or less connected with the Dreyfus case: proceedings against Picquart for infraction of the law against espionage; an action for libel by Henry's widow against Joseph Reinach; an action against Zola (whose condemnation by default was not definitive); eventual proceedings against General Mercier, etc. Waldeck-Rousseau's ministry considered that the people were tired of an "affaire" that had paralyzed the business of the country, and had brought it to the brink of a civil war; for it had become known that if Dreyfus had been acquitted the leaders of the anti-Revisionists—Déroulède, Marcel Habert, Jules Guérin—had determined on a "coup." To prevent this they had been arrested (Aug. 12) for conspiracy against the state, and condemned to banishment or prison. The ministry reported a bill which declared that all actions for matters connected with the Dreyfus affair, excepting those for the crimes of murder and treason, were canceled. It was the "policy of the sponge" praised by the journalist Cornély. It met with keen opposition from the convinced adherents of Dreyfus; they saw in it an immoral stifling of justice, and they succeeded in protracting the discussion of the bill. In the mean time all the actions remained unsettled. But events convinced Waldeck-Rousseau still further of the necessity for the pacific measure. In the month of May, 1900, the mere insinuation of a revival of the "affaire" had favored the success of the Nationalist candidates in the municipal elections of Paris. The resignation of General Galliffet, May 30, 1900, on a side issue of the "affaire" and the almost unanimous vote by the Chamber of an "ordre du jour" against the reopening of the case, encouraged the government to insist on the voting for the bill. After long debate it was definitely adopted on Dec. 24, 1900.
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.