9. Alfred Dreyfus

Alfred Dreyfus, a French artillery captain of Jewish descent, was arrested in 1894 for passing secret information to the German government. The next year he was convicted of treason before a military court, and sentenced to life imprisonment.



This could easily have been the end of the story such things happened all the time in the modern world, and for more than a year it seemed that the case was closed.

But in 1896, the new chief of military intelligence discovered evidence that another officer – Major Esterhazy – could well be responsible for the treason. Dreyfus, it seemed, was innocent. The man who made this discovery was promptly transferred to Tunisia; the military, by maintaining a convenient silence, sought to save its own reputation.

But to Paris, the truth inexorably marched, and the awaited storm burst. When the media learned of the cover-up, the affair erupted into a scandal which polarised fin de siècle France, and which soon became the most hotly debated political event of the day.

Intellectuals were divided into Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards; counted among the former was the famous writer Èmile Zola, who published his timeless statement of the case, ‘J'accuse!', in 1898.

In this open letter to the President of the French Republic – necessary reading for any aspiring journalist – Zola, driven to the heights of indignation, demanded ‘truth and justice' for Dreyfus.

Zola, along with many other leading lights of liberalism, demanded a retrial for Dreyfus. Their efforts were resisted by the French government; Zola was convicted of criminal libel and fled to England to escape imprisonment. But the truth was on the march, and eventually, as Zola had predicted, Dreyfus was pardoned in 1902 and four years later completely exonerated, going on to serve France in the Great War.