The Dreyfus Affair: Investigative Journalism vs State Power

The Dreyfus Affair began with an inept investigation by French military intelligence of a leakage of military secrets by an unidentified French officer to the German embassy in Paris in 1894. Suspicion readily fell on a thirty-five-year-old artillery officer, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who after a rushed and partisan interrogation was tried by court-martial, convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for life on Devil’s Island in French Guiana.

The complexities which developed from this beginning became known as L’Affaire Dreyfus: it involved two hearings, at both of which Dreyfus was convicted, a parliamentary inquiry, and most famously a searing denunciation by polemicist and writer Émile Zola (published as J’Accuse!) which attracted worldwide attention, causing the Dreyfus Case to be called then and later “the trial of the century”.

Born in 1859, the youngest of seven children of a prosperous French textile manufacturer, Alfred Dreyfus was an ardent French patriot. His family accepted exile to France after the Prussian/German takeover of their native province Alsace in consequence of the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1871. Although Jewish by birth, Dreyfus did not profess Judaism. It seems he was wholly devoted to furthering a career in the French army. He was intelligent, hard-working and ambitious. After education as a boarder in a private school he qualified for admission to the Ecole Polytechnique at the Ecole Sainte-Barbe in 1878, graduating two years later.

On graduation Dreyfus was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant and enrolled in the army’s School of Artillery at Fontainebleau.

Taking advantage of the reforms introduced by Charles de Freycinet as Minister of War in 1888 which opened progression in the army to candidates of proven merit (rather than as hitherto by birth and family connection), Dreyfus qualified by competitive examination for admission to the Ecole Superieure de Guerre, graduating in the top twelve of his year. This carried with it the offer of an internship in the army general staff. Dreyfus served as an intern in a number of bureaux but was not ultimately judged suitable for permanent recruitment to the general staff, in part because of his difficult personality. He was not a team player, he did not set out to ingratiate himself with his brother officers, he made little secret of his dislike of their company and unlike most of them he was independently wealthy.

On September 12, 1889, Dreyfus was promoted to captain and appointed adjutant to the army’s School of Pyrotechnics in Bourges. He married Lucie Hadamard, a Jewish diamond merchant’s daughter, on April 21, 1890. Her loyal support and that of his brother Mathieu carried him through the crisis which later engulfed him.

French security in 1894 came into possession of a discarded document (the “bordereau”), hand-written by an unknown spy and delivered to the German embassy offering French military secrets for sale. Officers of French security studied the document and decided, too readily, that its contents pointed to the artilleryman Captain Dreyfus as its author.

Arrested on October 15, 1894, Dreyfus was interrogated by the excitable Commandant du Paty de Clam, who was sufficiently convinced of Dreyfus’s guilt to offer him a pistol with which to shoot himself. Dreyfus refused, emphatically denying his guilt and pledging to clear his name.

An examining magistrate, Commandant Besson d’Ormescheville, held twelve investigative sessions between November 7 and 23. The partisan magistrate brought to his inquiry an absolute conviction of the prisoner’s guilt. Evidence in Dreyfus’s favour was disregarded, exculpatory reports were lost or mislaid, his military virtues were taken as suspicious, absence of incriminating evidence was taken as evidence of guilt. The magistrate’s inquiry was biased against Dreyfus and a judicial scandal in itself.

A trial of Dreyfus by court-martial was authorised on December 4, 1894, and opened on December 19 before seven officers sitting as judges in a small courtroom in the Cherche-Midi military prison. The court-martial was held in closed court.

Dreyfus was prosecuted by Commandant Andre Brissat and defended capably by Edgar Demange, who after studying the prosecution case had advised the family that Dreyfus had no case to answer.

If there was little doubt about the probable mindset of the seven officers who constituted the court-martial, the prosecution left nothing to chance. Even before the court-martial convened, the Minister for War, General August Mercier, provided a briefing to Charles Lesser, a journalist of Le Figaro, referring by name to Dreyfus and saying of him: “All that I can say is that his guilt is absolute, it is certain.”

Commandant du Paty de Clam and Lieutenant-Colonel Hubert Joseph Henry of French Security provided members of the court for their private consideration a sealed envelope of documents and a commentary whose existence was not disclosed to Dreyfus or the defence. This course was said to the President of the court-martial to have been authorised by the Minister for War.

A prosecution handwriting expert, Bertillon, caused derision by testifying that the unknown spy’s handwriting bore so little resemblance to that of Dreyfus that this conclusively pointed to Dreyfus as the author. Henry gave dramatic but, as it later transpired, perjured evidence that an unnamed but “honourable” informant had identified Dreyfus as the treasonous officer. The alleged informant was never identified to Dreyfus or his counsel.

But Dreyfus’s demeanour, then and later, did not assist his cause. He was not an actor, he had a wooden manner and was temperamentally unable or unwilling to perform as might be expected of an innocent man. A police observer present at the court-martial wrote of Dreyfus giving evidence: “His voice was atonal, lazy, his face white … Nothing in his attitude was of a kind to evoke sympathy … there was no expression of indignation, no cri de coeur, no expression of feeling.”

The court-martial deliberated for less than an hour before returning to pronounce Dreyfus guilty, sentencing him to be degraded as an officer and then to be deported to serve imprisonment for life on Devil’s Island, a French penal colony and former leprosarium in the Atlantic off French Guiana.

Ritual degradation was possibly the greater punishment. On January 5, 1895, Dreyfus was paraded in uniform in front of French soldiers, his uniform insignia and epaulettes were torn off and his sabre, pre-scored to facilitate its destruction, was broken over the knee of a non-commissioned officer. He was marched off before jeering and spitting onlookers.

The decision was immediately popular with all sides of politics. The accused was Jewish and had been found by his peers to be a traitor to France. As a convicted spy he had served the interests of Germany, whose conquest of France in the Franco-Prussia War of 1870-71 was still a raw memory. Dreyfus was universally despised by all except for the small handful who believed him to be innocent.

Between February 22 and April 13, 1895, Dreyfus was deported to Devil’s Island. Two of his jailers during his period of custody in France advised Dreyfus’s brother Mathieu that the prisoner in their observation had the reactions of a man who was unjustly accused and one of them provided Mathieu with a copy of the investigating magistrate’s partisan report annotated by Dreyfus. Mathieu told Colonel Sandherr, the head of Military Intelligence, that he would devote his life and family fortune to uncovering the truth. And in painfully slow stages the truth began to emerge.

On July 1, 1895, in a move of immense significance for Dreyfus, Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart replaced the ailing Sandherr as head of Military Intelligence. In March 1896 Picquart was advised that a new communication had been intercepted from the German embassy to a French military officer, Major Esterhazy. By July 30, 1896, Picquart became convinced that Esterhazy was the spy in whose place Dreyfus had been unjustly condemned. On September 14, 1896, it was disclosed in the newspaper L’Éclair that a secret dossier had been provided to the members of the court-martial without disclosure to Dreyfus or the defence. Lucie Dreyfus, wife of Alfred and advised by Mathieu, immediately petitioned the Chamber of Deputies for a new trial. Alarmed, military intelligence led by Lieutenant-Colonel Henry produced a falsified document to convince sceptics of Dreyfus’s guilt and added this to the documents assembled against Dreyfus.

In a bid to create a better climate of opinion, Mathieu commissioned a polemicist, Bernard Lazare, to publish a pamphlet, Une Erreur Judiciare. The newspaper Le Matin independently published a facsimile of the bordereau. It was not intended to help Dreyfus but inadvertently did so, putting the handwriting of the real spy in the public domain but not his identity, which remained unknown. Picquart, suspected of being responsible for the Le Matin story, was sent abroad by his superiors.

On June 26, 1897, Picquart, feeling that his life was at risk, told his lawyer Leblois that Esterhazy was the spy for whom Dreyfus had been condemned but swore him to silence. Leblois met Senator August Scheurer-Kestner, Vice-President of the Senate, and on a basis of confidence told him Esterhazy was the spy but forbade this disclosure to anyone else.

Sensing the net was closing in on Esterhazy, the army “retired” Esterhazy for infirmity on August 17, 1897, and on October 16 General Billot, the new Minister for War, met with intelligence officers Gonse, Henry and du Paty de Clam and the trio resolved to warn Esterhazy. This du Paty de Clam did on October 23.

Meanwhile, at Mathieu’s urging, Senator Scheurer-Kestner met President Felix Faure on October 29, then General Billot on October 30, and then Prime Minister Meline on November 3, and strongly asserted to each the innocence of Dreyfus. But the senator, bound by his promise to Picquart, was not free to disclose the identity of the real spy.

Mathieu Dreyfus, a wealthy man, flooded Paris with leaflets depicting the handwritten bordereau and asking if readers recognised the handwriting. On November 11 one reader did: an out-of-town stockbroker who recognised the handwriting as that of his client, Major Walsin Esterhazy, a memorably unlucky investor, and informed Mathieu. Senator Scheurer-Kestner, released by this, informed Mathieu that Esterhazy was the spy and repeated this at a meeting with Mathieu, Leblois and Émile Zola. Senator Scheurer-Kestner on the same day wrote an open letter to Le Temps asserting confidently that Dreyfus was innocent.

On November 16 Mathieu Dreyfus denounced Esterhazy to the Minister for Justice and sued Esterhazy. An inquiry was ordered on November 17, to be conducted by General de Pellieux. Émile Zola, one of France’s most successful novelists, started a public campaign for Dreyfus in Le Figaro on November 25, and on November 28 Le Figaro published letters discreditable to Esterhazy, supplied by a discarded mistress.

On December 3 General de Pellieux’s report purportedly exonerated Esterhazy and on December 4 Prime Minister Meline adamantly declared: “There is no L’Affaire Dreyfus.” Senator Scheurer-Kestner could find no support in the Senate to reopen the Dreyfus Case.

On December 26 three handwriting experts declared the bordereau’s handwriting was not that of Esterhazy. On January 1, 1898, a Major Ravary, acting as an investigating magistrate, ruled that there was insufficient evidence against Esterhazy for him to stand trial. On January 4 Zola published a “Letter to France”, a low-key argument for open minds, but Esterhazy shrewdly demanded his own trial by court-martial, which met on January 10-11 and cleared him.

Supporters of Dreyfus reacted with anger and exasperation. Then on January 13, on the front page of the newspaper L’Aurore, Zola published the now historic J’Accuse! It was a strongly worded and scornful denunciation of the multiple abuses of process that had convicted Dreyfus and had then sought to cover up a miscarriage of justice.

Zola’s account was not restrained. It named the principal characters responsible for a miscarriage of justice (Commandant du Paty de Clam, the former Minister of War, General Mercier, the Chief of the General Staff, General de Boisdeffre, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, General Gonse, and the new Minister of War, General Billot), mocked the absurdities and denial of due process in intemperate but undeniably effective terms, and identified those involved in the pro-Esterhazy cover-up.

Zola’s piece boldly concluded by pointing out to his readership (300,000 copies of J’Accuse! were printed and distributed on the day of publication) that he was making himself liable to proceedings for criminal libel but would willingly accept that risk. The challenge to sue was accepted but on a narrow issue which avoided a review of the hearing of the original Dreyfus court-martial which Zola had hoped for.

On February 7, 1898, Zola was put on trial for criminal libel for defaming the members of the court-martial who had acquitted Esterhazy at the latter’s sham court-martial in January. The Zola piece implied they had acted under orders. This was not likely to be true: orders were not necessary. The civil trial of Zola for criminal libel was well attended by the public but given the limited side issue before the court and the refusal of Esterhazy and others to answer questions, it did not carry matters forward on the issue of the guilt or innocence of Dreyfus.

Zola was found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison and a fine of 3000 francs, with the sentence suspended pending an appeal. The outcome on appeal was adverse to Zola but was itself later set aside on jurisdictional grounds and replaced by other proceedings by the individual members of the court-martial against Zola, in which Zola declined to participate, taking refuge abroad. His property in France was sequestrated to pay the fine and damages.

But the trial of Zola was productive for Dreyfus in an unintended way. A witness against Zola, General de Pellieux, incautiously referred to a document which he had seen which he said conclusively established the guilt of Dreyfus. He described the document and quoted its terms. This document, said to have been intercepted by French security, had been forged by Lieutenant-Colonel Henry. Its bogus nature was relatively easily established on critical examination and was eventually admitted, with Henry confessing to his role and committing suicide in custody on August 30, 1898.

At this point senior officers complicit in the trial of Dreyfus or the subsequent cover-up resigned their offices, beginning with General Boisdeffre. A request for a review of the main proceeding was lodged by Lucie Dreyfus and referred to the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation which ultimately resulted in a formal decision for Dreyfus’s vindication.

A second court-martial of Dreyfus, who had been repatriated from Devil’s Island for the hearing, was nonetheless held at Rennes before a military court constituted by seven officers. On September 8, 1898, by a majority of five to two, these officers again declared Dreyfus guilty of treason but with “extenuating circumstances”, reducing his sentence to ten years imprisonment in France.

An appeal was immediately lodged on behalf of Dreyfus, and now commercial considerations began to intervene. The French Exhibition (“Exposition Universelle”) was due to be held in Paris in 1900. Overseas interests, outraged by the injustice levied against Dreyfus, urged a boycott of the exhibition, circulating a picture of Dreyfus with the caption “French Exhibit ’99”. The American Ambassador to France, James B. Eustis, wrote in 1899:

No case has ever excited such universal and profound interest throughout the civilized world. Every government, every military officer, every judge … in every country has followed with intense interest … every stage of this trial.

A face-saving pardon for Dreyfus was therefore proposed by Presidential Decree on September 11, 1899, conditional on his abandonment of the appeal. On Dreyfus’s reluctant acceptance of this condition, the Decree was signed on September 19. There was an associated amnesty, including for Émile Zola, for the officers of the general staff, and for the officers of French military intelligence. The law passed by 271 votes to thirty-two.

The timidly expressed adverse finding of the second court-martial of Dreyfus at Rennes on September 1898 (“mitigating circumstances”) was struck down after review by the Court of Cassation, and after painfully slow processes, Dreyfus was finally and formally declared innocent on July 12, 1906, and the finding ordered to be published throughout France. He was retrospectively promoted to the rank of major and made a Knights Cross of the Legion of Honour with his honour restored and his innocence established.

The indispensable role of Zola in attaining that outcome is not in serious question although many others contributed, notably Dreyfus’s counsel, Edgar Demange, Dreyfus’s brother Mathieu, Dreyfus’s loyal wife Lucie, Senator Scheurer-Kestner and Commandant, later Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart who independently did his duty in the interests of justice at the risk of his employment, career and liberty.

Zola’s handiwork made history in its own right and was the first modern example of exposé-style journalism deployed successfully as a weapon of redress against an abuse of state power on behalf of an innocent and greatly wronged victim.

On January 13, 1998, one hundred years after its publication, J’Accuse! was saluted by Jacques Chirac, President of the French Republic:

In spite of the unyielding efforts by Captain Dreyfus’s family, his case could have been filed away forever. A dark stain, unworthy of our country and our history, a colossal judicial error and a shameful state compromise. But a man stood up against lies, malice and cowardice. Outraged by the injustice against Captain Dreyfus, whose only crime was to be a Jew, Émile Zola cried out his famous: “I Accuse!” Published on January 13, 1898, by L’Aurore, this text struck minds like lightning and changed the fate of the Affair within a few hours. Truth was on the march …

Let us never forget the courage of that great writer who, taking every risk, jeopardising his peace and quiet, his fame and even his own life, dared to take up his pen and put his talent to the service of truth. Émile Zola, high literary and moral character, had understood that his responsibility was to enlighten and his duty was to speak up when others kept silent. Like Voltaire before him, he has become since then the incarnation of the best of the intellectual tradition.

Tony Macken is an Australian lawyer and occasional historical writer.