DREYFUS, ALFRED French soldier, was born on Oct. 9, 1859, the son of a Mulhouse manufacturer. After studying at the ecole polytechnique, he entered the army as a lieutenant of artillery. He became a captain in 1889, passed through the ecole superieure de la guerre (staff college), and re ceived an appointment in the Ministry of War. His name is famous because of the judicial error of which he was the victim, which was repaired only after an agitation which disturbed France for many years and aroused deep feeling all over the world. Dur ing the summer of 1894, an anonymous letter abstracted from the German embassy was communicated to the Ministry of War. It had been addressed to the military attaché, Col. von Schwarzkop pen. This letter known as the bordereau, or schedule, because it had originally been written as a covering letter to certain mili tary memoranda, enumerated the documents which its writer hoped to send to Schwarzkoppen. A French officer was evidently betraying his country. It happened unfortunately that the writ ing of the bordereau was like that of Dreyfus. Suspicion fell upon him, and he was arrested on Oct. 15. He always maintained his innocence, but by reason of the similarity of the hand-writing, appearances were against him. Actual evidence was, however, extremely scanty. For this reason, Gen. Mercier, the minister of war, placed bef ore the members of the court-martial secret docu ments, utterly valueless as evidence, but which could not fail to impress them. This was done unknown to the prisoner and his counsel, the famous M. Demange, and the fact did not leak out until several years later. On Dec. 22, 1894, Alfred Dreyfus was unanimously found guilty and condemned to detention for life in a fortified area. On March 15, 1895, he was interned on Devil's island, one of the archipelago of the Safety islands off the coast of Guiana. His family never ceased to believe in his innocence. His brother, Mathieu Dreyfus, convinced a terrible judicial error had been committed, strove incessantly to have the case reviewed. This could not be done, however, unless some new facts were brought to light.
An official at the Ministry of War, entirely unconnected with the Dreyfus family, made the necessary discovery. Col. Picquart was the head of the information branch which had to do with the affairs of the secret service. In March 1896 he became possessed of the fragments of an express letter which Col. von Schwarz koppen, the German military attaché, had torn up unsent, and thrown into the waste-paper basket. It had been found by a French agent. This express letter, known as the "petit bleu" was addressed to a French officer, Maj. Esterhazy, and proved that he was in the pay of Schwarzkoppen. On making enquiry Picquart found that Esterhazy led a dissipated life and was heavily in debt. He then discovered that the bordereau, wrongly attributed to Dreyfus, was in Esterhazy's hand-writing. Convinced that Drey fus was innocent and Esterhazy guilty, he laid his information before his superior officers, Gen. de Boisdeffre and Gen. Gonse, the chief and deputy chief of the general staff. They, however, still convinced of Dreyfus' guilt, and unwilling to have the matter reopened, forbade him to pursue his enquiries, and when he said he could not die with such information undisclosed, had him transferred to a distant part of Tunisia. About that time, Col. Henry, the deputy director of the information branch, brought forward a letter apparently from Col. Panizzardi, the Italian mil itary attaché. Dreyfus was referred to in it in terms which, had it been genuine, would have left no doubt of his guilt. The letter was, however, a forgery, and the discovery of this fact led to the first revision of the case. Col. Picquart, bef ore starting for Africa, had told the whole story to his friend the lawyer, M. Leblois. Leblois discussed it with Scheurer-Kestner, a well known politi cian who was vice president of the senate. He became convinced of Dreyfus's innocence, and began to agitate in his favour. At the same time (Nov. 1897) Mathieu Dreyfus had by the merest chance come to realize that the writing of the bordereau was that of Esterhazy. On Nov. 15, 1897, he wrote to the minister of war accusing Esterhazy of the crime for which his brother had been condemned. The general staff was unwilling to own that a mistake had been made. Esterhazy was formally court-martialled, but his acquittal was secured. At the same time a press campaign of extraordinary violence broke out against those who were working for the revision of the 1894 sentence. They were repre sented as traitors to their country. Col. Picquart was thrown into prison on the pretext that he had communicated confidential papers to a civilian (M. Leblois). The cause of Dreyfus had, nevertheless, gained many supporters, especially in intellectual circles. Georges Clemenceau and Francis H. Pressense in the newly founded l'Aurore, and Yves Guyot, Joseph Reinach and others in the Siecle set on foot an agitation which did not cease till justice had been done. On Jan. 13, 1898, two days after Ester hazy's acquittal, Zola published in l'Aurore under the title "J'accuse" the famous open letter to the president of the republic, in which he denounced the efforts which were being made to stifle the truth. At the instance of the Ministry of War, proceedings were taken against him. The case was heard in February. His lawyers, Labori and Albert Clemenceau, brother of the statesman, called many witnesses to the innocence of Dreyfus and convinced a large section of the public. But opinion on the whole was still unfavourable. Zola was condemned to a year's imprisonment. He later took refuge in England for a time.
As the call for revision grew more and more insistent, Cavai gnac, minister for war in Brisson's cabinet, tried to arrest it by reading aloud in the chamber on July 7, 1898, the alleged letter from Panizzardi which had been brought forward by Col. Henry some months before. Soon after, however, on Aug. 30, it was made clear that it had been forged by its seeming discoverer, who was arrested and committed suicide in his cell at Mt. Valerien. This decided the Government to lay the demand made by Mme. Dreyfus for revision of the original sentence before the court of appeal. After months of enquiry, the court annulled the sentence of 1894 and ordered a new trial before a court-martial at Rennes. Little by little the cause of Dreyfus was gaining ground. Loubet, who became president of the republic on the death of Felix Faure in Feb. 1899, was favourably inclined to it, as was also the cab inet of Waldeck Rousseau, which came into power in June. But feeling still ran high, especially in military circles. Dreyfus was brought back from Guiana. The new trial lasted a month. On Sept. 9, 1899, the court-martial at Rennes by five votes to two delivered an incoherent judgment by which Dreyfus was found guilty with extenuating circumstances, and condemned to ten years' imprisonment. This amazed the general public. On Sept. 19 the Government decided to pardon Dreyfus. He was imme diately set at liberty, and after a short stay at Geneva, settled in Paris. At the end of 1903 further facts which came to light led to a demand for a second hearing by the court of appeal, and a further long and detailed enquiry. On July 12, 1906, the court of appeal finally quashed the sentence of 1894. Dreyfus was com pletely rehabilitated. A Government measure reinstating him in the army with the rank of major of artillery was immediately passed. He was employed for a year in a military office at St. Denis near Paris and resigned in July 1907. In June 1908, on the occasion of the transfer of the ashes of Zola in the Pantheon, an anti-Semite journalist, Gregori, fired two shots at him, one of which wounded him slightly. He re-entered the army during the World War, was promoted lieutenant-colonel in 1918, and shortly afterwards an officer of the Legion of Honour. After that he lived in retirement until his death in Paris, July 12, 1935.