Alfred Dreyfus

Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry from Alsace whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most polarizing political dramas in modern French history. The incident has gone down in history as the Dreyfus affair, the reverberations from which were felt throughout Europe. It ultimately ended with Dreyfus' complete exoneration. Dreyfus was born in Mulhouse, Alsace in 1859, into a wealthy Jewish textile-manufacturing family. He decided on a career in the military after seeing his family uprooted by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. He graduated from the École Polytechnique in 1880 and became a sub-lieutenant in the French army. He specialized in artillery and was assigned to various units until he was appointed as a staff officer in 1893. In 1894, a French spy discovered a bordereau (a memorandum) addressed to the German military attaché in Paris, containing confidential information about the French army. The handwriting on the document was compared to that of several officers, and Dreyfus was identified as the most likely suspect. He was arrested on October 15, 1894, and subjected to a secret court-martial. The evidence against him was weak and circumstantial, but he was found guilty of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island, a penal colony off the coast of French Guiana. The case attracted widespread attention and controversy, as many people believed that Dreyfus was innocent and that he was being scapegoated because of his Jewish background. A campaign to free Dreyfus was led by his brother Mathieu, his wife Lucie, and several prominent intellectuals, journalists, and politicians, such as Émile Zola, Georges Clemenceau, Jean Jaurès, and Anatole France. They exposed the flaws and fabrications in the prosecution's case, and revealed that another officer, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, was the real traitor. They also accused the army and the government of covering up the truth and violating Dreyfus' rights. The Dreyfus affair divided France into two camps: the Dreyfusards, who supported Dreyfus and demanded a retrial; and the anti-Dreyfusards, who upheld his conviction and denounced his defenders as unpatriotic and subversive. The affair became a symbol of the struggle between justice and nationalism, democracy and authoritarianism, secularism and clericalism, progress and reaction. It also sparked a wave of anti-Semitism and violence against Jews in France and other countries. After years of legal battles and public protests, Dreyfus was finally granted a retrial in 1899. However, he was again found guilty by a military court, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence. He was offered a pardon by President Émile Loubet, which he accepted reluctantly. He was released from prison on September 19, 1899, after spending nearly five years in captivity. Dreyfus continued to fight for his exoneration until 1906, when the Supreme Court of France annulled his conviction and declared him innocent. He was reinstated in the army with the rank of lieutenant-colonel and awarded the Legion of Honour. He served in World War I as an artillery commander and retired in 1918. He died in Paris in 1935, at the age of 75. He was buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, where his tombstone bears the inscription: "Victime de l'erreur judiciaire du siècle" (Victim of the judicial error of the century).