The Dreyfus affair

The Dreyfus affair is a huge miscarriage of justice, that involved sending an innocent man to, for a lack of a better word, hell, in the process exposing corruption and anti-semitism within the French army and government. Dreyfus was a Jewish captain in the French army, he was from Alsace, which is a Provence of France close to Germany. It is these factors that made him the perfect candidate for one of the most atrocious miss-uses of a justice system.

Firstly a bit of context is needed, to shed some light on how the Dreyfus affair come to be. Germany  was under the leadership of Bismarck, who wanted to unify the country. Bismarck was a good disciple of Machiavelli, he goaded France into a war. France was under the leadership of Napoleon III. Napoleon III was captured and eventually surrendered at Sedan in 1871, this was very embarrassing for the French, as the military was held in high esteem, and was apart of the identity of France, so they were disgraced. The temporary government, of France, officially surrendered at Versailles. The Germans, having defeated the French, marched into Paris; they added further insult to injury by, forcing France to pay huge reparations and demanding victory parades through the centre of Paris. France also lost the territories of Alsace and Lorraine to the Germans. During the time when the Germans, seized Paris the wealthy land owners and hierarchy of France fled. When they returned, the landowners, demanded that the people in their properties pay rent for the months they were living in Paris, suffering and struggling whilst the rich ran away. In a reaction to this The Paris commune was established in May 1871, they elected leaders and introduced social reforms, including the establishment of nurseries so woman could work and abolished night time working and separated the state and church. Marx called it "the dictatorship of the proletariat". The commune was slaughtered by the government, using the army to carry out the orders, and an estimated 20,000-30,000 people were killed, it is only an estimate because there was so much killing happening that no one could count it properly. The victims of the slaughter were mainly the working classes. Like the French revolution, the commune, although it did not last long, had a massive impact of European politics.


In the years that passed, since the Germans defeated and humiliated the French, the French wanted revenge and grew bitter towards Germany. In 1894, the French sought to make France great again, one way to do this was to build a vast overseas empire, similar to Britain's empire. During this period of revival the French were concerned about any threats to French greatness, like embarrassing scandals involving the government. They were convinced that a Jewish syndicate was conspiring against the French government; the authorities used this to deflect attention away from their mistakes. An example of this concern to French greatness is the Panama cannel scandal which involved bribes being exchanged to government officials to keep the fact that the company was in finical difficulty quiet. The bribes were handled by two Jewish business man. This was a small catalyst inflaming anti-semitism in  France. In 1894 a spy, working as a cleaning lady in the German embassy in Paris, found secret documents about the French army in a wastepaper basket, she gave them to the authorities, who looked for a Jew in the top ranks of the Military to blame it on, they chose Dreyfus because he was intelligent, a Jew and from the Alsace region. Dreyfus was tried and found guilty, in a secret trial, by the military court. He was publicly stripped of his military rank and his sword was snapped in half in front of his military colleges. No evidence from the trail saw the light of day because the army said it was to secret and could threaten national security. Dreyfus was sent to devils island, where he was chained twenty four hours a day, seven days a week; he was also in a cell in which he could only see the sky. He was not allowed to talk to anyone and after a while in this type of solitude he lost the ability to speak. After a while an officer went over the evidence and discovered the real spy was another officer called Esterhazy. The French military were so desperate to cover up the cover up that they conducted a trial for Esterhazy and he was acquitted in spite of the over whelming evidence against him, but again the military couldn't release the evidence because it was classified information, so no one could see it for themselves. At this stage of the affair Emile Zola wrote the famous article 'J'Acuse', exposing the real culprits behind the cover up. The affair split the right and the left, the right were against Dreyfus and the left were for Dreyfus. Zola became a hate figure for the fight and labelled a Jewish sympathiser, anti-Semites called for his blood; whilst people on the left praised him. Zola was tried and found guilty of libel, but he fled to London. Anti-Jewish riots erupted over France and the right called for Jews to lose their citizenship. The army started to panic a little bit, as they started to recognise the weakness in the case; so more documents were forged by an officer by the name Henry, who later slit his throat in prison when he was discovered.
A change in government brought Dreyfus back, for a second trial, because they wanted to make the right impression and differentiate themselves from the old regime. Dreyfus was a shell of a man, he was found guilty with "extenuating circumstances", which basically meant he was innocent with out admitting his was innocent, and he was sent back to Devils island. He was latter brought back and given a full pardon.

I had never heard of the Dreyfus affair before, naturally I was shocked. I could not believe this grave miscarriage of justice could of happened in modern times. But then I remember other miscarriages of Justice like the Derek Bentley case that streched from the 1950's to 1980's. Derek Bentley was a teenager who was wrongfully hanged in Britain in 1953, when capital punishment was allowed in Britain. He was later found innocent of the crime he was supposed to be guilty of and he was given a pardon in the 1980's. It was this miscarriage of justice, and the campaigning of his family, that lead to capital punishment being appolished in Britain. I was also surprised about how rife anti-semitism was in France, even to the extent that it could be argued it was worse than the Nazis. It was very interesting to learn the origin of the media becoming a recognisable force in society and becoming the fourth state. Zola used his tool of writing to stand up to the government and deny them and exposed the truth, which is arguable the truest and purest journalism there can be. Nowadays the media is always exposing scandals, the biggest one of recent times is probably the MP expenses scandal, which is something Zola probably would of been proud of.