Divided France? The Dreyfus Affair

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Divided France? The Dreyfus Affair

• Dr Chris Pearson

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The Dreyfus Affair

• Causes
• Consequences
• Historians interpretations

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The beginnings of the affair

• Discovery of the bordereau in the Germany
  embassy (25 September 1894)
• Statistics Section concludes that Dreyfus is the
  culprit, after a rapid investigation and
  comparison of handwriting
• Dreyfus arrested on 15 October 1894 and held at
  in military prison

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• I am totally innocent and protest vehemently
  against the rigorous measures taken against me.
  Never have I communicated to anyone at all even
  the briefest note relating to my service at the
  General Staff .
• It is my honour as an officer that I am
  defending and however painful my situation might
  be, I will defend myself to the end.
• I sense, however, that an appalling plan has
  been prepared against me, for a purpose I do not
  understand, but I want to live to establish my
  innocence.
• Dreyfus during his initial interrogation, quoted
  in Whyte, The Dreyfus Affair (2005), 346

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The traitor drawing by Henri Meyer, Le Petit
Journal illustré, n 217, 13 January 1895
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• As he came towards us, his kepi pulled down
  over his forehead, his pince-nez on his ethnic
  nose, his eyes furious and dry, his whole face
  hard and defiant, he cried out what am I
  saying? he ordered in his unbearable voice,
  You will tell all of France that I am innocent
  His face of foreign race, his impassive
  uprightness, his whole being revolted even the
  most self-controlled of spectators.
• Maurice Barrès, quoted in Whyte, The Dreyfus
  Affair (2005), 353

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• I was suffering agonies, but steeled myself to
  concentrate all my strength. To sustain myself, I
  evoked the memory of my wife and children.
• As soon as the sentence had been read out, I
  called out, addressing myself to the troops
  Soldiers, you are degrading an innocent man
  soldiers, you are dishonouring an innocent man.
  Long live France, long the army.
• Dreyfus, quoted in Whyte, The Dreyfus Affair
  (2005), 354

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The case refuses to go away

• Dreyfus on Devils Island continues to declare
  his innocence
• His brother Mathieu and wife Lucie protest his
  innocence
• Lucien Herr, the librarian at the prestigious
  Ecole normale supérieure, convinces Clemenceau
  and Jaurès of Dreyfus innocence

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Judas defended by his brothers La Libre parole
attacks Bernard Lazares A Judicial Error The
Truth about the Dreyfus Affair (1896)
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Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy a swindler and
incorrigible liar and intriguer.
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Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart discovers
evidence proving Dreyfus innocence which is
eventually picked up by Auguste Scheurer-Kestner,
Vice-President of the Senate
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Intellectuals wade in

• Zola accuses the military of a cover up and names
  key officers
• Furthers the efforts of Bernard Lazare
• Zola backed by other intellectuals, including
  Marcel Proust and Charles Péguy
• Small but vocal minority

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• I have raised a cry of alarm, and I leave
  history to judge me and to appreciate my acts
  . I am not defending my liberty, gentlemen in
  presenting myself before you. I am defending the
  truth. Look me in the face, gentlemen. Have I
  been bought, or am I a traitor? I am a free
  writer, who intends to resume his vocation and
  again take up his interrupted labourers.
• Zola at his trial, quoted in Whyte, The Dreyfus
  Affair (2005), 378

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Charles Maurras royalist, nationalist,
anti-Semite, anti-Dreyfus, and founder of Action
française in 1899
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An anti-Dreyfusard politician minister for war
Godefroy Cavaignac
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Joseph Henry- forger of documents, who commits
suicide
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The Republic under attack

• Jules Guérin meets royalist pretender
• Paul Déroulède leads botched coup détat (Feb
  1899)
• Right-wing protesters knock off President
  Loubets top-hat at Auteuil races (right)

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Defending the Republic

• Waldeck-Rousseaus government of republican
  defence
• Arrests Jules Guérin and his royalist backers
• Retrial of Dreyfus at Rennes found guilty with
  extenuating circumstances by 5 votes to 2
• Dreyfus receives presidential pardon on 19
  September 1899

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The end of the Affair?

• When disagreements have divided and torn apart
  a country all men of political wisdom understand
  that the time comes when these need to be
  forgotten.
• Waldeck-Rousseau

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• Either way, at the end of the argument
  concerning details, there lies a grand theory, an
  interpretation with the widest implications. It
  is as if the facts are not enough in themselves,
  or as if their complexity is unbearable. The
  historian, like the poet, aspires to achieve
  order amid chaos and meaning in the middle of
  confusion. The facts have to be placed in some
  sort of pattern.
• Douglas Johnson, France and the Dreyfus Affair
  (1961), 199

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The affairs political dimensions

• The Affair ripped apart the anti-socialist
  alliance of republicans and conservatives
• Republic seemed under threat its partisans
  united to defend it
• The Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist
  Party was founded in 1901 to rally all the sons
  of the Revolution, whatever their differences,
  against all the partisans of counter-revolution.

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Dreyfus Affair as part of the guerre
franco-française

• Revolutionaries
• Republicans
• Secular
• Dreyfusard
• Resistance (1940-44)

• Counter-revolutionaries
• Royalists
• Catholic
• Anti-Dreyfusard
• Vichy Regime (1940-44)

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• Two concepts of legitimacy clashed one based
  on the idea of a rational, secular, Jacobin state
  open to all citizens, the other based on an idea
  of Frenchness understood in terms of local
  roots, of an organicist localism said to foster a
  virility capable of overcoming the decadence
  brought on by effeminate, cosmopolitan humanism.
  
• Pierre Birnbaum, Grégoire, Dreyfus, Drancy and
  the Rue Copernic, in Nora, Realms of Memory
  (1996), 409

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True France

• Emergence of right-wing, exclusionary nationalism
  after the Affair
• The discourse of True France employs the
  essentialist, determinist language of a lost
  hidden authenticity that, once uncovered, yields
  a single, immutable national identity. Herman
  Lebovics, True France (1992), 9
• Forerunner of French fascism, according to Robert
  Soucy, Zeev Sternhall

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The Jewish community in France before the Dreyfus
Affair

• Emancipation during the Revolution, led by
  Grégoire Jews granted civic equality
• But anti-Semitism continued pogroms in Alsace,
  Napoleons 1808 decree
• Distinction made between highly assimilated
  Israélites and Juifs - Yiddish speaking new
  arrivals from Russia and Eastern Europe

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The Jewish Community during the Dreyfus Affair

• Dreyfus Affair- high tide of anti-Semitic feeling
  in 19C France (Marras, Politics of Assimilation
  1971)
• Tested assimilated Jews faith in the Republic
• But majority of Jewish Dreyfusards saw defence of
  Dreyfus as a defence of the republic

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• It is we who are defending the honour of the
  army. Dreyfusard Joseph Reinach

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In the light of the Dreyfus case, the whole of
the gentile world seemed to him hostile there
were only Jews and antisemites. Hannah
Ardendt, From the Dreyfus Affair to France
Today, Jewish Social Studies 4/3 (1942)
Theodore Herzl
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Stripping away Dreyfus honour and manhood? See
Venita Detta From Devils Island to the
Pantheon? in Forth and Accampo (eds) Confronting
modernity in Fin-de-Siecle France (2009)
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Gender and the Dreyfus Affair

• Both sides attacked the others manhood
• Anti-Dreyfusards mocked the supposedly weak and
  unhealthy bodies of the intellectual Dreyfusards
• They also portrayed Dreyfus himself as weak and
  effeminate (stereotype of Jewish men)
• See Christopher Forth, The Dreyfus Affair and the
  Crisis of French Manhood (2004)

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Zola aux outrages by Henri Degroux
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La Vérité sortant du puits, by Édouard
Debat-Ponsan
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