title: The Abyss

text: The breathing fluid used in the film actually exists but has only been thoroughly investigated in animals. Over the previous 20 years it had been tested on several animals, who survived. The rat shown in the film was actually breathing fluid and survived unharmed. Production consulted with Dr. Kylstra on the proper use of the breathing fluid for the film. Ed Harris did not actually breathe the fluid. He held his breath inside a helmet full of liquid while being towed 30 feet (10 m) below the surface of the large tank. He recalled that the worst moments were being towed with fluid rushing up his nose and his eyes swelling up.


title: The Abyss

text: Actors played their scenes at 33 feet (11 m), too shallow a depth for them to need decompression, and rarely stayed down for more than an hour at a time. Cameron and the 26-person underwater diving crew sank to 50 feet (17 m) and stayed down for five hours at a time. To avoid decompression sickness, they would have to hang from hoses halfway up the tank for as long as two hours, breathing pure oxygen.


title: The Abyss

text: The cast and crew endured over six months of grueling six-day, 70-hour weeks on an isolated set. At one point, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio had a physical and emotional breakdown on the set and on another occasion, Ed Harris burst into spontaneous sobbing while driving home. Cameron himself admitted, "I knew this was going to be a hard shoot, but even I had no idea just how hard. I don't "ever" want to go through this again".


title: The Abyss

text: For example, for the scene where portions of the rig are flooded with water, he realized that he initially did not know how to minimize the sequence's inherent danger. It took him more than four hours to set up the shot safely. Actor Leo Burmester said, "Shooting "The Abyss" has been the hardest thing I've ever done. Jim Cameron is the type of director who pushes you to the edge, but he doesn't make you do anything he wouldn't do himself." A lightning storm caused a 200-foot (65 m) tear in the black tarpaulin covering the main tank. Repairing it would have taken too much time, so the production began shooting at night. In addition, blooming algae often reduced visibility to 20 feet (6 m) within hours. Over-chlorination led to divers' skin burning and exposed hair being stripped off or turning white.


title: The Abyss

text: As production went on, the slow pace and daily mental and physical strain of filming began to wear on the cast and crew. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio remembered, "We never started and finished any one scene in any one day". At one point, Cameron told the actors to relieve themselves in their wetsuits to save time between takes. While filming one of many takes of Mastrantonio's character's resuscitation scene—in which she was soaking wet, topless and repeatedly being slapped and pounded on the chest—the camera ran out of film, prompting Mastrantonio to storm off the set yelling, "We are not animals!"


title: The Abyss

text: For some shots in the scene that focus on Ed Harris, he was yelling at thin air because Mastrantonio refused to film the scene again. Michael Biehn also grew frustrated by the waiting. He claimed that he was in South Carolina for five months and only acted for three to four weeks. He remembered one day being ten meters underwater and "suddenly the lights went out. It was so black I couldn't see my hand. I couldn't surface. I realized I might not get out of there." Harris recalled: "One day we were all in our dressing rooms and people began throwing couches out the windows and smashing the walls. We just had to get our frustrations out."


title: The Abyss

text: Cameron responded to these complaints, saying, "For every hour they spent trying to figure out what magazine to read, we spent an hour at the bottom of the tank breathing compressed air." After 140 days and $4 million over budget, filming finally wrapped on December 8, 1988. Before the film's release, there were reports from South Carolina that Ed Harris was so upset by the physical demands of the film and Cameron's dictatorial directing style that he said he would refuse to help promote the motion picture. Harris later denied this rumor and helped promote the film. However, after its release and initial promotion, Harris publicly disowned the film, saying "I'm never talking about it and never will." Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio also disowned the film, saying, ""The Abyss" was a lot of things. Fun to make is not one of them."


title: The Abyss

text: To create the alien water tentacle, Cameron initially considered cel animation or a tentacle sculpted in clay and then animated via stop-motion techniques with water reflections projected onto it. Phil Tippett suggested Cameron contact Industrial Light & Magic. The special visual effects work was divided up among seven FX divisions with motion control work by Dream Quest Images and computer graphics and opticals by ILM. ILM designed a program to produce surface waves of differing sizes and kinetic properties for the pseudopod which was referred to by ILM informally as the "water weenie." For the moment where it mimics Bud and Lindsey's faces, Ed Harris had eight of his facial expressions scanned while twelve of Mastrantonio's were scanned via software used to create computer-generated sculptures. The set was photographed from every angle and digitally recreated so that the pseudopod could be accurately composited into the live-action footage. For the sequence where Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio touches the surface of the pseudopod, then-ILM receptionist Alia Agha stood in as a hand model. The company spent six months to create 75 seconds of computer graphics needed for the creature. The film was to have opened on July 4, 1989, but its release was delayed for more than a month by production and special effects problems. The animated sequences were supervised by ILM animation director Wes Takahashi.


title: The Abyss

text: Studio executives were nervous about the film's commercial prospects when preview audiences laughed at scenes of serious intent. Industry insiders said that the release delay was because nervous executives ordered the film's ending completely re-shot. There was also the question of the size of the film's budget: 20th Century Fox stated that the budget was $43 million, a figure Cameron himself has reiterated. However, estimates put the figure higher with "The New York Times" estimating the cost at $45 million and one executive claiming it cost $47 million, while box office revenue tracker website "The Numbers" lists the production budget at $70 million.


title: The Abyss

text: "The Abyss" was released on August 9, 1989, in 1,533 theaters, where it grossed $9.3 million on its opening weekend and ranked #2 at the box office behind "Parenthood". It went on to make $54.2 million in North America and $35.5 million throughout the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $89.8 million.


title: The Abyss

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, "The Abyss" has an 88% approval rating based on 48 reviews and an average rating of 7.30/10. The critical consensus states: "The utterly gorgeous special effects frequently overshadow the fact that "The Abyss" is also a totally gripping, claustrophobic thriller, complete with an interesting crew of characters." On Metacritic, the film has an average score of 62 out of 100, based on 14 critics indicating "generally favorable reviews". The reviews tallied therein are for both the theatrical release and the Special Edition. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Abyss

text: David Ansen of "Newsweek", summarizing the theatrical release, wrote, "The payoff to "The Abyss" is pretty damn silly — a portentous "deus ex machina" that leaves too many questions unanswered and evokes too many other films." In her review for "The New York Times", Caryn James wrote that the film had "at least four endings," and "by the time the last ending of this two-and-a-quarter-hour film comes along, the effect is like getting off a demon roller coaster that has kept racing several laps after you were ready to get off." Chris Dafoe, in his review for "The Globe and Mail", wrote, "At its best, "The Abyss" offers a harrowing, thrilling journey through inky waters and high tension. In the end, however, this torpedo turns out to be a dud—it swerves at the last minute, missing its target and exploding ineffectually in a flash of fantasy and fairy-tale schtick." While praising the film's first two hours as "compelling", the "Toronto Star" remarked, "But when Cameron takes the adventure to the next step, deep into the heart of fantasy, it all becomes one great big deja boo. If we are to believe what Cameron finds way down there, E.T. didn't really phone home, he went surfing and fell off his board." Mike Clark of "USA Today" gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "Most of this underwater blockbuster is 'good,' and at least two action set pieces are great. But the dopey wrap-up sinks the rest 20,000 leagues."


title: The Abyss

text: In her review for "The Washington Post", Rita Kempley wrote that the film "asks us to believe that the drowned return to life, that the comatose come to the rescue, that driven women become doting wives, that Neptune cares about landlubbers. I'd sooner believe that Moby Dick could swim up the drainpipe." "Halliwell's Film Guide" stated the film was, "despite some clever special effects, a tedious, overlong fantasy that is more excited by machinery than people." Conversely, Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" enthused, "["The Abyss" is] the greatest underwater adventure ever filmed, the most consistently enthralling of the summer blockbusters…one of the best pictures of the year." John Ferguson of "Radio Times" awarded it three stars out of five, stating "For some, this was James Cameron's "Waterworld", a bloated, sentimental epic from the king of hi-tech thrillers. Some of the criticism was deserved, but it remains a fascinating folly, a spectacular and often thrilling voyage to the bottom of the sea [...] Cameron excels in cranking up the tension within the cramped quarters and the effects are awe-inspiring and deservedly won an Oscar. It's only marred by being overlong and by its sentimental attachment to aliens."


title: The Abyss

text: The release of the Special Edition in 1993 garnered much praise. Each giving it thumbs up, Gene Siskel remarked, ""The Abyss" has been improved," and Roger Ebert added, "It makes the film seem more well rounded." In the book "Reel Views 2", James Berardinelli comments, "James Cameron's "The Abyss" may be the most extreme example of an available movie that demonstrates how the vision of a director, once fully realized on screen, can transform a good motion picture into a great one."


title: The Abyss

text: "The Abyss" won the 1990 Oscar for Best Visual Effects (John Bruno, Dennis Muren, Hoyt Yeatman, and Dennis Skotak). It was also nominated for:


title: The Abyss

text: Many other film organizations, such as the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, and the American Society of Cinematographers, also nominated "The Abyss". The film ended up winning a total of three other awards from these organizations.


title: The Abyss

text: The soundtrack to "The Abyss" was written by Alan Silvestri and released by Varèse Sarabande on August 22, 1989. In 2014, they issued a limited-edition (3,000 copies), two-disc album featuring the complete score minus the end credits medley, which is absent from both releases.


title: The Abyss

text: Even as the film was in the first weeks of its 1989 theatrical release, rumors were circulating of a wave sequence missing from the film's end. As chronicled in the 1993 LaserDisc Special Edition release and later in the 2000 DVD, the pressure to cut the film's running time stemmed from both distribution concerns and Industrial Light & Magic's then-inability to complete the required sequences. From the distributor's perspective, the looming three-hour length limited the number of times the film could be shown each day, assuming that audiences would be willing to sit through the entire film, though 1990's "Dances with Wolves" would shatter both industry-held notions. Further, test audience screenings revealed a surprisingly mixed reaction to the sequences as they appeared in their unfinished form; in post-screening surveys, they dominated both the "Scenes I liked most" and "Scenes I liked least" fields. Contrary to speculation, studio meddling was not the cause of the shortened length; Cameron held final cut as long as the film met a running time of roughly two hours and 15 minutes. He later noted, "Ironically, the studio brass were horrified when I said I was cutting the wave."


title: The Abyss

text: What emerges in the winnowing process is only the best stuff. And I think the overall caliber of the film is improved by that. I cut only two minutes of "Terminator". On "Aliens", we took out much more. I even reconstituted some of that in a special (TV) release version.


title: The Abyss

text: The sense of something being missing on "Aliens" was greater for me than on "The Abyss", where the film just got consistently better as the cut got along. The film must function as a dramatic, organic whole. When I cut the film together, things that read well on paper, on a conceptual level, didn't necessarily translate to the screen as well. I felt I was losing something by breaking my focus. Breaking the story's focus and coming off the main characters was a far greater detriment to the film than what was gained. The film keeps the same message intact at a thematic level, not at a really overt level, by working in a symbolic way.


title: The Abyss

text: Cameron elected to remove the sequences along with other, shorter scenes elsewhere in the film, reducing the running time from roughly two hours and 50 minutes to two hours and 20 minutes and diminishing his signature themes of nuclear peril and disarmament. Subsequent test audience screenings drew substantially better reactions.


title: The Abyss

text: Star Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio publicly expressed regret about some of the scenes selected for removal from the film's theatrical cut: "There were some beautiful scenes that were taken out. I just wish we hadn't shot so much that isn't in the film."


title: The Abyss

text: Shortly after the film's premiere, Cameron and video editor Ed Marsh created a longer video cut of "The Abyss" for their own use that incorporated dailies. With the tremendous success of Cameron's "" in 1991, Lightstorm Entertainment secured a five-year, $500 million financing deal with 20th Century Fox for films produced, directed or written by Cameron. The contract allocated roughly $500,000 of the amount to complete "The Abyss". ILM was commissioned to finish the work they had started three years earlier, with many of the same people who had worked on it originally.


title: The Abyss

text: The CGI tools developed for "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" allowed ILM to complete the rumored tidal wave sequence, as well as correcting flaws in rendering for all their other work done for the film.


title: The Abyss

text: The tidal wave sequence had originally been designed by ILM as a physical effect, using a plastic wave, but Cameron was dissatisfied with the end result, and the sequence was scrapped. By the time Cameron was ready to revisit "The Abyss", ILM's CGI prowess had finally progressed to an appropriate level, and the wave was rendered as a CGI effect. "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" screenwriter and frequent Cameron collaborator William Wisher had a cameo in the scene as a reporter in Santa Monica who catches the first tidal wave on camera.


title: The Abyss

text: When it was discovered that original production sound recordings had been lost, new dialogue and foley were recorded, but since Kidd Brewer had died before he could return to re-loop his dialog, producers and editors had to lift his original dialogue tracks from the remaining optical-sound prints of the dailies. The Special Edition was therefore dedicated to his memory as a result.


title: The Abyss

text: As Alan Silvestri was not available to compose new music for the restored scenes, Robert Garrett, who had composed temporary music for the film's initial cutting in 1989, was chosen to create new music. The Special Edition was completed in December 1992, with 28 minutes added to the film, and saw a limited theatrical release in New York City and Los Angeles on February 26, 1993, and expanded to key cities nationwide in the following weeks. Both versions of the film continue to receive public exhibitions, including a screening of an original 35mm print of the theatrical cut on August 20, 2019, in New York City.


title: The Abyss

text: The first THX-certified LaserDisc title of the Special Edition Box Set was released in May 1993, in both Widescreen and Full-Screen formats, and was a best-seller for the rest of the year. The Special Edition was released on VHS on August 20, 1996 as a part of Fox Video's Widescreen Series with a seven-minute behind-the-scenes featurette with footage that did not appear in the "Under Pressure: The Making of The Abyss" documentary that was included on the Laserdisc and DVD releases. The film was released on DVD in 2000 in both one and two-disc editions and featured animated menus, both the theatrical and Special Edition versions of the film via seamless branching along with—on the second disc—the Laserdisc's extensive text, artwork and photographic documentation of the film's production, a ten-minute featurette and the sixty minute documentary "Under Pressure: The Making of The Abyss."


title: The Abyss

text: In 2014 the pay cable channels Cinemax and HBO began broadcasting both versions of the film in 1080p. Netflix's UK service began offering the theatrical version in 1080p in 2017. At an October, 2014 event James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd were asked about a future Blu-ray release for the film. Cameron gestured to the head of Fox Home Entertainment, implying the decision lay with the studio. Five months later another article suggested a spat between Cameron and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment was responsible for the delay. While promoting the upcoming 30th-anniversary Blu-ray release of "Aliens" at Comic-Con in San Diego July 2016 James Cameron confirmed that he was working on a remastered 4K transfer of "The Abyss" and that it would be released on Blu-ray for the first time in early 2017. Cameron added, "We've done a wet-gate 4K scan of the original negative, and it's going to look insanely good. We're going to do an authoring pass in the DI for Blu-ray and HDR at the same time."


title: The Abyss

text: In March 2019 digital intermediate colorist Skip Kimball posted a photo to his Instagram suggesting that he was working on the film. In November 2018 Cameron told "Empire" magazine that a Blu-ray transfer was "complete for my review" and he hoped it would be ready before 2019. This was, however, before Disney's acquisition of Fox, so, as of 2020, there has been no information about the Blu-Ray release.


title: The Abyss

text: In December 2021, during a promotional interview for the new book "Tech Noir: The Art of James Cameron" with website Space.com, director Cameron made the following statement: "Yeah, we finished the transfer and I wanted to do it myself because Mikael [Salomon] did such a beautiful job with the cinematography on that film. It is truly, truly gorgeous cinematography. That was before I started to assert myself in terms of lighting and asking the cinematographer to do certain things. I'd compose with the camera and choose the lenses, but I left the lighting to him. He did a remarkable job on that movie that I appreciate better now than I did even as we were making it." "So I just recently finished the high-def transfer a couple of months ago so presumably there’ll be Blu-rays and it will stream with a proper transfer from now on. I appreciate what you said about the film. It didn't make much money in its day, but it does seem to be well-liked over time."


title: The Abyss

text: In December 2022, journalist Arthur Cios tweeted that during a interview for "Avatar: The Way of the Water", he ask Cameron about a 4K release of The Abyss and Cameron told him "he had a new master and it would be out by March 2023 max."


title: The Abyss

text: American science fiction author Orson Scott Card was hired to write a novelization of the film based on the screenplay and discussions with Cameron. He wrote back-stories for Bud, Lindsey, and Coffey as a means not only of helping the actors define their roles, but also to justify some of their behavior and mannerisms in the film. Card also wrote the aliens as a colonizing species which preferentially sought high-pressure deep-water worlds to build their ships as they traveled further into the galaxy (their mothership was in orbit on the far side of the moon). The NTIs' knowledge of neuroanatomy and nanoscale manipulation of biochemistry was responsible for many of the "deus ex machina" aspects of the film.


title: The Abyss

text: A licensed interactive fiction video game based on the script was being developed for Infocom by Bob Bates, but was cancelled when Infocom was shut down by its then-parent company Activision. Sound Source Interactive later created an action video game entitled "The Abyss: Incident at Europa". The game takes place a few years after the film, where the player must find a cure for a deadly virus.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Sergei Kuzhugetovich Shoigu (; born 21 May 1955) is a Russian politician who has served as the minister of defence of Russia since 2012. Shoigu has served as the chairman of the Council of Ministers of Defense of the Commonwealth of Independent States since 2012.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Shoigu was the minister of emergency situations from 1991 to 2012. He briefly served as the governor of Moscow Oblast in 2012. A close confidant and ally of Vladimir Putin, Shoigu belongs to the "siloviki" of Putin's inner circle.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Shoigu was born on 21 May 1955 in Chadan in the remote and impoverished Tuvan Autonomous Oblast to an ethnic Tuvan father, newspaper editor (1921–2010) and a Ukrainian-born Russian mother, Alexandra Yakovlevna Shoigu (1924–2011). Alexandra Shoigu grew up in the Donbas town of Stakhanov and had traumatizing experiences while under detention of the occupation forces during World War II. Later in her career she became member of the Tuva Regional Council of People's Deputies. Kuzhuget Shoigu rose to secretary of the Tuvan Regional Committee of the Communist Party, becoming a major figure in the Communist power structure of the republic.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: After graduating from School No. 1 of Kyzyl city in the Tuvan ASSR, Shoigu studied at the Krasnoyarsk Polytechnic Institute. Shoigu graduated in 1977 with a degree in civil engineering.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Shoigu worked in construction projects nationwide for the next decade, advancing from low levels to become an executive. In 1988, Shoigu became a minor functionary in the Abakan branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and then in the Komsomol for a few years. In 1990, Shoigu moved to Moscow from Siberia, and was appointed deputy chairman of the State Architecture and Construction Committee of the Russian Federation, assisted by his father's connections. Future president Boris Yeltsin had held a similar position in the Construction Committee, and also come from a civil engineering and party background, and Shoigu thus gained Yeltsin's trust.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: In 1991, Yeltsin appointed him head of the newly established Russian Rescue Corps, responsible for the rescue and disaster response system. The Rescue Corps replaced the previous Soviet civil defense system and soon absorbed the 20,000-strong militarized Civil Defense Troops of the Ministry of Defense, with Shoigu being appointed chairman of the State Committee of the Russian Federation for Civil Defense, Emergency Situations, and Disaster Response. Civil Defense remained a quasi-military organization in continuation of Soviet practice and Shoigu was politically involved, such as an unsuccessful attempt to evacuate Russian-backed Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah in 1992 and the intended distribution of weapons from the Civil Defense stocks to Yeltsin supporters during the October 1993 coup. In keeping with the militarized nature of Russian civil defense, Shoigu received the rank of major general in 1993, and was promoted swiftly to lieutenant general in 1995, colonel general in 1998, and to army general, in practice the highest Russian military rank, in 2003. The committee was renamed the Ministry of Emergency Situations ("MChS") in 1994, making Shoigu a government minister. He became popular because of his hands-on management style and high visibility during emergency situations, such as floods, earthquakes and acts of terrorism. Under Shoigu, the responsibilities of the ministry were expanded to take over the Russian State Fire Service in 2002, making the "MChS" Russia's third-largest force structure.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: In 1999 he became one of the leaders of the Russian pro-government party Unity, created by the Kremlin in opposition to the anti-Yeltsin elites of the Fatherland – All Russia alliance. Unity allowed for the rise of Vladimir Putin to President and in 2001 was combined into the ruling United Russia party, although Shoigu was the only delegate to vote against the merger. In 1999, Shoigu was awarded Russia's most prestigious state award: Hero of the Russian Federation.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: With over twenty years of service as Minister of Emergency Situations, Shoigu established a close relationship with Vladimir Putin, and was rewarded by being appointed Governor of Moscow Oblast in 2012, taking office on 11 May of that year.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 6 November 2012, Shoigu was appointed Minister of Defence by Putin, succeeding Anatoly Serdyukov, who had implemented sweeping reforms of the Russian Armed Forces in response to performance in the Russo-Georgian War. According to expert Sergey Smirnov, the so called "Petersburg group" of siloviki (Sergei Ivanov, Sergey Chemezov and Viktor Ivanov) had wanted one of its associates to succeed Serdyukov, but Putin was reluctant to strengthen the clan and opted for the neutral Shoigu. As defence minister, Shoigu on multiple occasions has accompanied Putin during weekend breaks that the pair would spend at undisclosed locations in the Siberian countryside.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Serdyukov was unpopular with senior military leaders and seen by them as a civilian with no military background, something that Shoigu attempted to address by symbolically tying himself to the military through wearing an army general's uniform, reviving historical units dissolved under the reforms, and reinstating officials dismissed by Serdyukov. Furthermore, Shoigu appealed for support for reform within the army rather than taking a confrontational stance, appointed deputy ministers of defense from the military, and removed Serdyukov-appointed civilian tax service officials from the top echelons of the Ministry of Defense.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: As defence minister, Shoigu continued aspects of Serdyukov's attempts at modernizing the Russian Armed Forces through reform. This included the creation of the Special Operations Forces Command to facilitate rapid intervention in conflicts within the perceived Russian sphere of influence and counterterrorism efforts. Serdyukov's goals of increasing the share of the Russian Armed Forces made up of professional contract servicemen rather than conscripts continued under Shoigu. However, the demographic challenge of a decreasing pool of military-aged and -eligible males forced him to increase national conscription quotas in early 2013, including even North Caucasians perceived as a security risk by authorities such as Chechens. This followed on from Serdyukov's initiatives of reducing available draft exemptions.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: In November 2012, Shoigu decided to resurrect the tradition of Suvorov and Nakhimov cadets participating in the 9 May parade.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: In July 2013 Shoigu ordered commanders to begin every morning in the barracks with a rendition of the Russian anthem, to compile an obligatory military-patriotic book reading list and take the preparation of demob albums under their control. In August 2013 he ordered all Defense Ministry civilian workers, other staff and management employees to wear uniforms.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: In February 2014, Shoigu said Russia was planning to sign agreements with Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Seychelles, Singapore, and several other countries either to house permanent military bases and/or to house airplane refueling stations in those countries. Over the next year, only an agreement with Vietnam was effectively signed.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: From early 2013 the Shoigu ministry made use of snap exercises as a means to ensure combat readiness of the Eastern Military District, the Western Military District, and the Central Military District. Already in 2015 western observers mentioned the Vienna Document while they spoke of "the deteriorating European security environment.. producing an action-reaction cycle involving Russia, NATO and other European countries, all seeking to demonstrate the readiness of their armed forces."


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: In March 2015 Russia under Shoigu's defence ministry halted all activities related to the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: In October 2016 Shoigu hosted 56 representatives from 31 different OSCE nations, with Shoigu stating that the observers "had a chance to see with their own eyes that Russia had fully implemented its obligations on ensuring confidence and security in Europe". The observers were also shown new weapons deployed to the Russian Aerospace Force, Ground and Airborne Forces. The previous visit of the OSCE observers took place in 2011.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: In July 2014, Ukraine opened a criminal case against Shoigu. He was accused of helping to form "illegal military groups" in Eastern Ukraine who at the time fought against the Ukrainian army. The Ukrainian authorities alleged that Shoigu coordinated all of DPR Supreme Commander Igor Girkin's actions, supplying him and "other terrorist leaders" with "the most destructive weapons" since May and instructing him directly, with Putin's approval.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: In July 2016 Shoigu said that he had "deployed more air defense systems in the southwest [of Russia]" and "also deployed a 'self-sufficient' contingent of troops in Crimea", adding "Since 2013 ... we have formed four divisions, nine brigades and 22 regiments. They include two missile brigades armed with Iskander missile complexes, which has allowed to boost fire power to destroy the potential adversary."


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: In July 2018 Shoigu warned that the Poroshenko administration of Ukraine was not fulfilling the Minsk agreements which were signed in order to end the war in Donbas.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 30 September 2015, Russia began a military operation in Syria. The operation was carried out by the Russian Aerospace Forces, with the support of the Russian Navy and Bashar al-Assad's Syrian Armed Forces.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 16 December 2015, speaking to the members of the State Duma behind closed doors, Shoigu mentioned the possibility of the Russian forces "reaching the Euphrates" in Syria.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: In June 2016, Russia Today, while reporting minister Shoigu's visit to Hmeymim air base, showed RBK-500 ZAB-2.5SM incendiary cluster bombs being loaded onto Russian airplanes. After this information was discovered to be inconsistent with official Russian statements, the video was removed. It was later reinstated. An editorial note below the video made no mention of the weapon, saying a frame in the video has caused "concern for personnel safety" because of a pilot's close-up. "Upon re-evaluation it was deemed that the frame did not pose any risks; it had since been restored and the video is up in its original cut," the RT statement said.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 11 December 2017, days after declaring Syria had been "completely liberated" from ISIL and with the campaign liberating the western bank of the Euphrates in its final days, Putin visited the Russian base in Syria, where he announced that he had ordered the partial withdrawal of the forces deployed to Syria. Several hours later, Shoigu said the troops had already begun to return.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 26 December 2017, Shoigu said that Russia had set about "forming a permanent grouping" at the Tartus naval facility and the Hmeymim airbase, after Putin approved their structure and personnel strength. On the same day, the upper chamber of parliament approved the ratification of an agreement between Russia and Syria on expanding the Tartus naval facility, which envisages turning it into a full-fledged naval base.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 17 September 2018, during multiple missile strikes by Israeli F-16 jets at targets in western Syria, Russia′s Il-20 ELINT reconnaissance plane returning to Khmeimim Air Base, with 15 Russian servicemen on board, was inadvertently downed by a Syrian S-200 surface-to-air missile. Russia′s defence minister the following day blamed Israel′s military for the accident and re-affirmed its stance in a minute-by-minute report presented on 23 September. Early on 20 September, Russia′s government-run news agency reported Russia had announced multiple areas of eastern Mediterranean ″near Syria, Lebanon, and Cyprus" shut for air and sea traffic until 26 September, due to the Russian Navy′s drills in the area. Following the shoot down incident, Shoigu on 24 September said that within two weeks, the Syrian army would receive S-300 air-defense missile systems to strengthen Syria′s combat air defence capabilities; a series of other military measures were announced such as radio-electronic jamming of "satellite navigation, onboard radars and communications systems used by military aircraft attacking targets in Syrian territory", in the areas of the Mediterranean off the Syrian coast.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Shoigu said in August 2021 that Russia had tested 320 new weapons over the course of its campaign in Syria.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: In an August 2021 "Solovyov Live" YouTube channel interview, Shoigu said referring to his tenure in the Ministry that "The requirements for fulfilling the defense procurement plan have risen dramatically. Over the past nine years, we have received 15,500 weapon systems for the ground forces. In 1999–2002, we had gotten 10 or 19 aircraft at best, that is, fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft all together. That's why now that we receive 140–150 aircraft annually, this is quite a different story."


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 29 August 2021, Shoigu was recorded as saying that "Russia doesn't consider Ukraine as threat," while he expressed the hope that the situation in Ukraine would ultimately change and the "nationalist mayhem" would be stopped. Shoigu said that the Ukrainians "are not just our neighbors, we are a single people."


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 11 February 2022, Shoigu met UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace. Shoigu denied that Russia was planning an invasion of Ukraine. Wallace agreed at the meeting which also included General Valery Gerasimov that it was important to implement the Minsk agreements "as a clear way forward".


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 24 February 2022, Russia launched a large-scale military invasion of Ukraine. Shoigu said the purpose of the invasion "is to protect the Russian Federation from the military threat posed by Western countries, who are trying to use the Ukrainian people in the fight against our country." The sources say the decision to invade Ukraine was made by Putin and a small group of war hawks in Putin's inner circle, including Sergei Shoigu and Putin's national security adviser Nikolai Patrushev. In a 11 March video conference with Putin, Shoigu claimed that "everything is going to plan."


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 24 April, Putin decided to broadcast with English subtitles an 11-minute long Siege of Mariupol situation report meeting with Shoigu.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 13 May, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin initiated a telephone conversation with Shoigu, the first call since 18 February. The call lasted about an hour with Austin urging an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Also on 13 May, former FSB officer and former DPR Supreme Commander Igor Girkin harshly criticized Shoigu, accusing him of "criminal negligence" in conducting the invasion.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 16 August, Shoigu said that Russia does not need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, as "its main purpose is to deter a nuclear attack. Its use is limited to extraordinary circumstances."


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: After large Ukrainian counteroffensives in September 2022, Igor Girkin said that Shoigu should be executed by firing squad. The Russia-installed governor of Ukraine's Kherson region Kirill Stremousov said in a video shared on social media that "Many are saying that the Defense Minister — who allowed things to come to this — should simply shoot himself like a [real] officer."


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 21 September 2022, Shoigu said in a televised speech that Russia was not so much at war with Ukraine and the Ukrainian army as with the "collective West" and NATO.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: In September 2022, Shoigu claimed that 5,397 Russian soldiers had been killed in the war in Ukraine. He said that the 2022 Russian mobilization is being carried out to control "already liberated territories" in Ukraine. According to Shoigu, it is planned to mobilize 300,000 reservists. Shoigu said the mobilized people could only be sent to combat zones after "training and combat coordination." However, some of the mobilized Russian men were killed less than two weeks after being drafted, meaning conscripted civilians are being sent to a combat zone without basic military training. On 28 October, Shoigu said that 82,000 mobilized reservists had already been deployed in the combat zone.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 12 October 2022, the independent Russian media project iStories reported that more than 90,000 Russian soldiers had been killed, seriously wounded or gone missing in Ukraine, citing sources close to the Kremlin.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 23 October 2022, Shoigu said, without providing evidence, that Ukraine could escalate the war with a dirty bomb—or an explosive that contains radioactive waste material. The UK, US and French governments rejected what they called "Russia's transparently false allegations" against Ukraine, adding: "The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation."


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 23 February 2022, the European Union considered Shoigu responsible for actively supporting and implementing actions and policies that undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine as well as the stability or security in Ukraine. Therefore the European Union added Shoigu to the list of natural and legal persons, entities and bodies set out in Annex I to Regulation (EU) No 269/2014.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 25 February 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the United States added Shoigu to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: On 28 February 2022, the Government of Canada "further amended its Special Economic Measures (Russia) Regulations to add eighteen members of the Security Council of the Russian Federation responsible for" Russian actions in the Ukraine, "including President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu, Minister of Justice Konstantin Chuychenko, and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov."


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: According to "The Siberian Times", Shoigu is a polyglot who is known to speak eight languages other than Russian fluently, including English, Japanese, Chinese, Tuvan, and Turkish.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Sergei Shoigu was born to Kuzhuget Sereevich Shoigu (1921–2010) and Alexandra Yakovlevna Shoigu (née Kudryavtseva, 1924–2011). His father was born Shoigu Seree oglu Kuzhuget. His name order was changed because of a passport error, according to the Tuva official line. More likely, he Russified the name from the Turkic oglu "son of..."). Kuzhuget was an editor of a regional newspaper. He later worked in the Communist Party and for the Soviet authorities. He was the secretary of the Tuva Party Committee. He retired with the rank of first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Tuva ASSR.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Shoigu's father led the Tuvan State Archives. He spent six years as the editor of the newspaper "Pravda". He wrote the novels "Time and People", "Feather of the Black Vulture" (2001), "Tannu Tuva: the Country of Lakes and Blue Rivers" (2004).


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Shoigu's mother Alexandra was born in the village of Yakovlev in the Oryol Oblast. From there, shortly before the Great Patriotic War, her family moved to Kadievka (now Stakhanov) in the Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine. A zootechnician, Alexandra was an Honored Worker of Agriculture of the Republic of Tuva. From 1979 she was the head of the Planning Department of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic. She was repeatedly elected deputy of the Supreme Soviet (parliament) of the Tuva ASSR. Sergei's great uncle, Seren Kuzhuget, was the commander of the Tuvan People's Revolutionary Army from 1929 to 1938.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Sergei has two sisters: Larisa Kuzhugetovna Shoigu (1953–2021), who was a deputy of the State Duma; and Irina Zakharova (born 1960), a psychiatrist.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Shoigu married Irina Alexandrovna Shoigu (née Antipina). She is president of the business tourism company Expo-EM. They have two daughters, Yulia (1977) and Kseniya (1991). According to Alexei Navalny, Kseniya is suspected to be a figurehead of her father in the ownership of a palace in the outskirts of Moscow, valued at about £12 million. In 2012, the estate was transferred to the formal ownership of Yelena Antipina. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kseniya posted a video on social media of her daughter and herself wearing the colours of the Ukrainian flag.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Shoigu enjoys studying the history of Russia, especially Peter the Great's time and the era between 1812 and 1825 (which includes the French invasion of Russia and the Decembrist revolt).


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Shoigu is fond of sports and is a fan of the CSKA Moscow hockey team. He enjoys football and is a fan of Spartak Moscow. In March 2016, together with Sergey Lavrov, Shoigu presented the Russia People's Soccer League, with aims to unite fans of the sport from all over Russia.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Shoigu collects Indian, Chinese, and Japanese swords and daggers. He enjoys bard songs and plays the guitar. He does water color paintings and graphics. He enjoys carpentry, and has shown some of his work to Putin.


title: Sergei Shoigu

text: Shoigu stated in 2008 that he was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church at the age of five, rebutting rumors that he was a practitioner of shamanism or Buddhism like many Tuvans.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The Dreyfus affair (, ) was a political scandal that divided the French Third Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. "L'Affaire", as it is known in French, has come to symbolise modern injustice in the Francophone world, and it remains one of the most notable examples of a complex miscarriage of justice and antisemitism. The role played by the press and public opinion proved influential in the conflict.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The scandal began in December 1894 when Captain Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason. Dreyfus was a 35-year-old Alsatian French artillery officer of Jewish descent. He was falsely convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, and was imprisoned on Devil's Island in French Guiana, where he spent nearly five years.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: In 1896, evidence came to light—primarily through an investigation made by Georges Picquart, head of counter-espionage—which identified the real culprit as a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. When high-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, a military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy after a trial lasting only two days. The Army laid additional charges against Dreyfus, based on forged documents. Subsequently, Émile Zola's open letter "J'Accuse...!" on the newspaper "L'Aurore" stoked a growing movement of support for Dreyfus, putting pressure on the government to reopen the case.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: In 1899, Dreyfus was returned to France for another trial. The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (now called "Dreyfusards"), such as Sarah Bernhardt, Anatole France, Charles Péguy, Henri Poincaré, and Georges Clemenceau, and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards), such as Édouard Drumont, the director and publisher of the antisemitic newspaper "La Libre Parole". The new trial resulted in another conviction and a 10-year sentence, but Dreyfus was pardoned and released. In 1906, Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army. He served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He died in 1935.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The affair from 1894 to 1906 divided France into pro-republican, anticlerical Dreyfusards and pro-Army, mostly Catholic "anti-Dreyfusards". It embittered French politics and encouraged radicalisation.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: At the end of 1894, French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a graduate of the École Polytechnique, a Jew of Alsatian origin, was accused of handing secret documents to the Imperial German military. After a closed trial, he was found guilty of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was deported to Devil's Island. At that time, the opinion of the French political class was unanimously unfavourable towards Dreyfus.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The Dreyfus family, particularly his brother Mathieu, remained convinced of his innocence and worked with journalist Bernard Lazare to prove it. In March 1896, Colonel Georges Picquart, head of counter-espionage, found evidence that the real traitor was Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. The General Staff refused to reconsider its judgment and transferred Picquart to North Africa.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: In July 1897, Dreyfus's family contacted the President of the Senate Auguste Scheurer-Kestner to draw attention to the tenuousness of the evidence against Dreyfus. Scheurer-Kestner reported three months later that he was convinced Dreyfus was innocent, and persuaded Georges Clemenceau, a newspaper reporter and former member of the Chamber of Deputies. In the same month, Mathieu Dreyfus made a complaint about Esterhazy to the Ministry of War. In January 1898 two events raised the case to national prominence: Esterhazy was acquitted of treason charges (subsequently shaving his moustache and fleeing France), and Émile Zola published his "J'accuse...!", a Dreyfusard declaration that rallied many intellectuals to Dreyfus's cause. France became increasingly divided over the case, and the issue continued to be hotly debated until the end of the century. Antisemitic riots erupted in more than twenty French cities and there were several deaths in Algiers.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Despite covert attempts by the army to quash the case, the initial conviction was annulled by the Supreme Court after a thorough investigation. A new court-martial was held at Rennes in 1899. Dreyfus was convicted again and sentenced to ten years of hard labour, though the sentence was commuted due to extenuating circumstances. Dreyfus accepted the presidential pardon granted by President Émile Loubet. In 1906 his innocence was officially established by an irrevocable judgement of the Supreme Court. Dreyfus was reinstated in the army with the rank of Major and participated in the First World War. He died in 1935.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The implications of this case were numerous and affected all aspects of French public life. It was regarded as a vindication of the Third Republic (and became a founding myth), but it led to a renewal of nationalism in the military. It slowed the reform of French Catholicism and republican integration of Catholics. It was during The Affair that the term, "intellectual", was coined in France. The Affair engendered numerous antisemitic demonstrations, which in turn affected sentiment within the Jewish communities of Central and Western Europe. This persuaded Theodor Herzl, one of the founding fathers of Zionism, that the Jews must leave Europe and establish their own state.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: In 1894, the Third Republic was twenty-four years old. Although the 16 May Crisis in 1877 had crippled the political influence of both the Bourbon and Orléanist royalists, its ministries continued to be short-lived as the country lurched from crisis to crisis: three years immediately preceding the Dreyfus Affair were the near-coup of Georges Boulanger in 1889, the Panama scandals in 1892, and the anarchist threat (reduced by the "villainous laws" of July 1894). The elections of 1893 were focused on the "social question" and resulted in a Republican victory (just under half the seats) against the conservative right and the reinforcement of the Radicals (about 150 seats) and Socialists (about 50 seats).


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The opposition of the Radicals and Socialists resulted in a centrist government with policies oriented towards economic protectionism, a certain indifference to social issues, a willingness to break international isolation, the Russian alliance, and development of the colonial empire. These centrist policies resulted in cabinet instability, with some Republican members of the government sometimes aligning with the radicals and some Orléanists aligning with the Legitimists in five successive governments from 1893 to 1896. This instability coincided with an equally unstable presidency: President Sadi Carnot was assassinated on 24 June 1894, his moderate successor Jean Casimir-Perier resigned on 15 January 1895 and was replaced by Félix Faure.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Following the failure of the radical government of Léon Bourgeois in 1896, the president appointed Jules Méline as prime minister. His government faced the opposition of the left and of some Republicans (including the Progressive Union) and made sure to keep the support of the right. He sought to appease religious, social, and economic tensions and conducted a fairly conservative policy. He succeeded in improving stability, and it was under this stable government that the Dreyfus affair occurred.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The Dreyfus affair occurred in the context of the annexation of Alsace and Moselle by the Germans, an event that fed the most extreme nationalism. The traumatic defeat in 1870 seemed far away, but a vengeful spirit remained. Many participants in the Dreyfus affair were Alsatian.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The military required considerable resources to prepare for the next conflict, and it was in this spirit that the Franco-Russian Alliance, which some saw as "against nature", of 27 August 1892 was signed. The army had recovered from the defeat but many of its officers were aristocrats and monarchists. Cult of the flag and contempt for the parliamentary republic prevailed in the army. The Republic celebrated its army; the army ignored the Republic.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Over the previous ten years the army had experienced a significant shift in its twofold aim to democratize and modernize. The graduates of the École Polytechnique competed effectively with officers from the main career path of Saint-Cyr, which caused strife, bitterness, and jealousy among junior officers expecting promotions. The period was also marked by an arms race that primarily affected artillery. There were improvements in heavy artillery (guns of 120 mm and 155 mm, Models 1890 Baquet, new hydropneumatic brakes), but also and especially the development of the ultra-secret 75mm gun.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The operation of military counterintelligence, alias the "Statistics Section" (SR), should be noted. Spying as a tool for secret war was a novelty as an organised activity in the late 19th century. The Statistics Section was created in 1871 but consisted of only a handful of officers and civilians. Its head in 1894 was Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Sandherr, a graduate of Saint-Cyr, an Alsatian from Mulhouse, and a convinced anti-Semite. Its military mission was clear: to retrieve information about potential enemies of France and to feed them false information. The Statistics Section was supported by the "Secret Affairs" of the Quai d'Orsay at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was headed by a young diplomat, Maurice Paléologue. The arms race created an acute atmosphere of intrigue in French counter-espionage from 1890. One of the missions of the section was to spy on the German Embassy at Rue de Lille in Paris to thwart any attempt to transmit important information to the Germans. This was especially critical since several cases of espionage had already hit the headlines of newspapers, which were fond of sensationalism. Thus in 1890, the archivist Boutonnet was convicted for selling plans of shells that used melinite.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The German military attaché in Paris in 1894 was Count Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen, who developed a policy of infiltration which appears to have been effective. In the 1880s Schwartzkoppen had begun an affair with an Italian military attaché, Lieutenant Colonel Count Alessandro Panizzardi. While neither had anything to do with Dreyfus, their intimate and erotic correspondence (e.g. "Don't exhaust yourself with too much buggery."), which was obtained by the authorities, lent an air of truth to other documents that were forged by prosecutors to lend retroactive credibility to Dreyfus's conviction as a spy. Some of these forgeries even referenced the real affair between the two officers; in one, Alessandro supposedly informed his lover that if "Dreyfus is brought in for questioning", they must both claim that they "never had any dealings with that Jew. ... Clearly, no one can ever know what happened with him." The letters, real and fake, provided a convenient excuse for placing the entire Dreyfus dossier under seal, given that exposure of the liaison would have 'dishonoured' Germany and Italy's military and compromised diplomatic relations. As homosexuality was, like Judaism, then often perceived as a sign of national degeneration, recent historians have suggested that combining them to inflate the scandal may have shaped the prosecution strategy.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Since early 1894, the Statistics Section had investigated traffic in master plans for Nice and the Meuse conducted by an officer whom the Germans and Italians nicknamed Dubois. This is what led to the origins of the Dreyfus affair.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The social context was marked by the rise of nationalism and antisemitism. The growth of antisemitism, virulent since the publication of "Jewish France" by Édouard Drumont in 1886 (150,000 copies in the first year), went hand in hand with the rise of clericalism. Tensions were high in all strata of society, fueled by an influential press, which was virtually free to write and disseminate any information even if offensive or defamatory. Legal risks were limited if the target was a private person.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Antisemitism did not spare the military, which practised hidden discrimination with the "cote d'amour" (a subjective assessment of personal acceptability) system of irrational grading, encountered by Dreyfus in his application to the Bourges School. However, while prejudices of this nature undoubtedly existed within the confines of the General Staff, the French Army as a whole was relatively open to individual talent. At the time of the Dreyfus affair there were an estimated 300 Jewish officers in the army (about 3 per cent of the total), of whom ten were generals.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The popularity of the duel using sword or small pistol, sometimes causing death, bore witness to the tensions of the period. When a series of press articles in "La Libre Parole" accused Jewish officers of "betraying their birth", the officers challenged the editors. Captain Crémieu-Foa, a Jewish Alsatian graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique, fought unsuccessfully against Drumont and against M. de Lamase, who was the author of the articles. Captain Mayer, another Jewish officer, was killed by the Marquis de Morès, a friend of Drumont, in another duel.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Hatred of Jews was now public and violent, driven by a firebrand (Drumont) who demonized the Jewish presence in France. Jews in metropolitan France in 1895 numbered about 80,000 (40,000 in Paris alone), who were highly integrated into society; an additional 45,000 Jews lived in Algeria. The launch of "La Libre Parole" with a circulation estimated at 200,000 copies in 1892, allowed Drumont to expand his audience to a popular readership already enticed by the boulangiste adventure in the past. The antisemitism circulated by "La Libre Parole", as well as by "L'Éclair", "Le Petit Journal", "La Patrie", "L'Intransigeant" and "La Croix", drew on antisemitic roots in certain Catholic circles.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Publications remarking on the Dreyfus Affair often reinforced antisemitic sentiments, language and imagery. The "" was a collection of anti-Dreyfus posters illustrated by Victor Lenepveu during the Dreyfus Affair. Lenepveu caricatured "prominent Jews, Dreyfus supporters, and Republican statesman." "No. 35 Amnistie populaire" depicts the corpse of Dreyfus himself as it dangles from a noose. Large noses, money, and Lenepveu's general tendency to illustrate subjects with bodies of animals likely contributed to the dissemination of antisemitism in French popular culture.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The origin of the Dreyfus affair, although fully clarified since the 1960s, has aroused much controversy for nearly a century. The intentions remain unclear. Many eminent historians express different hypotheses about the affair but all arrive at the same conclusion: Dreyfus was innocent of any crime or offence.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The staff of the Military Intelligence Service (SR) worked around the clock to spy on the German Embassy in Paris. They had managed to get a French housekeeper named "Madame Bastian" hired to work in the building and spy on the Germans. In September 1894, she found a torn-up note which she handed over to her employers at the Military Intelligence Service. This note later became known as "the bordereau". This piece of paper, torn into six large pieces, unsigned and undated, was addressed to the German military attaché stationed at the German Embassy, Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen. It stated that confidential French military documents regarding the newly developed "hydraulic brake of 120, and the way this gun has worked" were about to be sent to a foreign power.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: This catch seemed of sufficient importance for the head of the "Statistical Section", the Mulhousian Jean Sandherr, to inform the Minister of War, General Auguste Mercier. In fact the SR suspected that there had been leaks since the beginning of 1894 and had been trying to find the perpetrator. The minister had been harshly attacked in the press for his actions, which were deemed incompetent, and appears to have sought an opportunity to enhance his image. He immediately initiated two secret investigations, one administrative and one judicial. To find the culprit, using simple though crude reasoning, the circle of the search was arbitrarily restricted to suspects posted to, or former employees of, the General Staff – necessarily a trainee artillery officer.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The ideal culprit was identified: Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a graduate of the École polytechnique and an artillery officer, of the Jewish faith and of Alsatian origin, coming from the republican meritocracy. At the beginning of the case the emphasis was rather on the Alsatian origins of Dreyfus than on his religion. These origins were not, however, exceptional because these officers were favoured by France for their knowledge of the German language and culture. There was also antisemitism in the offices of the General Staff, and it fast became central to the affair by filling in the credibility gaps in the preliminary enquiry. In particular, Dreyfus was at that time the only Jewish officer to be recently passed by the General Staff.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: In fact, the reputation of Dreyfus as a cold and withdrawn or even haughty character, as well as his "curiosity", worked strongly against him. These traits of character, some false, others natural, made the charges plausible by turning the most ordinary acts of everyday life in the ministry into proof of espionage. From the beginning a biased and one-sided multiplication of errors led the State to a false position. This was present throughout the affair, where irrationality prevailed over the positivism in vogue in that period:


title: Dreyfus affair

text: To condemn Dreyfus, the writing on the bordereau had to be compared to that of the Captain. There was nobody competent to analyse the writing on the General Staff. Then Major du Paty de Clam entered the scene: an eccentric man who prided himself on being an expert in graphology. On being shown some letters by Dreyfus and the bordereau on 5 October, du Paty concluded immediately who had written the two writings. After a day of additional work he provided a report that, despite some differences, the similarities were sufficient to warrant an investigation. Dreyfus was therefore "the probable author" of the bordereau in the eyes of the General Staff.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: General Mercier believed he had the guilty party, but he exaggerated the value of the affair, which took on the status of an affair of state during the week preceding the arrest of Dreyfus. The Minister did consult and inform all the authorities of the State, yet despite prudent counsel and courageous objections expressed by Gabriel Hanotaux in the Council of Ministers he decided to pursue it. Du Paty de Clam was appointed Judicial Police Officer to lead an official investigation.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Meanwhile, several parallel sources of information were opening up, some on the personality of Dreyfus, others to ensure the truth of the identity of the author of the bordereau. The expert Gobert was not convinced and found many differences. He even wrote that "the nature of the writing on the bordereau excludes disguised handwriting". Disappointed, Mercier then called in Alphonse Bertillon, the inventor of forensic anthropometry but no handwriting expert. He was initially no more positive than Gobert but he did not exclude the possibility of its being the writing of Dreyfus. Later, under pressure from the military, he argued that Dreyfus had autocopied it and developed his theory of "autoforgery".


title: Dreyfus affair

text: On 13 October 1894, without any tangible evidence and with an empty file, General Mercier summoned Captain Dreyfus for a general inspection in "bourgeois clothing", i.e. in civilian clothes. The purpose of the General Staff was to obtain the perfect proof under French law: a confession. That confession was to be obtained by surprise – by dictating a letter based on the bordereau to reveal his guilt.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: On the morning of 15 October 1894, Captain Dreyfus underwent this ordeal but admitted nothing. Du Paty even tried to suggest suicide by placing a revolver in front of Dreyfus, but he refused to take his life, saying he "wanted to live to establish his innocence". The hopes of the military were crushed. Nevertheless Du Paty de Clam still arrested the captain, accused him of conspiring with the enemy, and told him that he would be brought before a court-martial. Dreyfus was imprisoned at the Cherche-Midi prison in Paris.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Mrs. Dreyfus was informed of the arrest the same day by a police raid to search their apartment. She was terrorized by Du Paty, who ordered her to keep the arrest of her husband secret and even said, "One word, one single word and it will be a European war!" Totally illegally, Dreyfus was placed in solitary confinement in prison, where Du Paty interrogated him day and night in order to obtain a confession, which failed. The captain was morally supported by the first Dreyfusard, Major Forzinetti, commandant of the military prisons of Paris.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: On 29 October 1894, the affair was revealed in an article in "La Libre Parole", the antisemitic newspaper owned by Édouard Drumont. This marked the beginning of a very brutal press campaign until the trial. This event put the affair in the field of antisemitism where it remained until its conclusion.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: On 1 November 1894, Alfred's brother, Mathieu Dreyfus, became aware of the arrest after being called urgently to Paris. He became the architect of the arduous fight for the liberation of his brother. Without hesitation, he began looking for a lawyer, and retained the distinguished criminal lawyer Edgar Demange.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: On 3 November 1894, General Saussier, the Military governor of Paris, reluctantly gave the order for an enquiry. He had the power to stop the process but did not, perhaps because of an exaggerated confidence in military justice. Major Besson d'Ormescheville, the recorder for the Military Court, wrote an indictment in which "moral elements" of the charge (which gossiped about the habits of Dreyfus and his alleged attendance at "gambling circles", his knowledge of German, and his "remarkable memory") were developed more extensively than the "material elements", which are rarely seen in the charge:


title: Dreyfus affair

text: After the news broke on Dreyfus' arrest, many journalists flocked to the story and flooded the story with speculations and accusations. The renowned journalist and antisemitic agitator Edouard Drumont wrote in his publication on November 3, 1894, "What a terrible lesson, this disgraceful treason of the Jew Dreyfus."


title: Dreyfus affair

text: On 4 December 1894, Dreyfus was referred to the first Military Court with this dossier. The secrecy was lifted and Demange could access the file for the first time. After reading it the lawyer had absolute confidence, as he saw the emptiness of the prosecution's case. The prosecution rested completely on the writing on a single piece of paper, the bordereau, on which experts disagreed, and on vague indirect testimonies.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: During the two months before the trial, the press went wild. "La Libre Parole", "L'Autorité", "Le Journal", and "Le Temps" described the supposed life of Dreyfus through lies and bad fiction.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: This was also an opportunity for extreme headlines from "La Libre Parole" and "La Croix" to justify their previous campaigns against the presence of Jews in the army on the theme "You have been told!" This long delay above all enabled the General Staff to prepare public opinion and to put indirect pressure on the judges. On 8 November 1894, General Mercier declared Dreyfus guilty in an interview with "Le Figaro". He repeated himself on 29 November 1894 in an article by Arthur Meyer in "Le Gaulois", which in fact condemned the indictment against Dreyfus and asked, "How much freedom will the military court have to judge the defendant?"


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The jousting of the columnists took place within a broader debate about the issue of a closed court. For Ranc and Cassagnac, who represented the majority of the press, the closed court was a low manoeuvre to enable the acquittal of Dreyfus, "because the minister is a coward". The proof was "that he "grovels" before the Prussians" by agreeing to publish the denials of the German ambassador in Paris. In other newspapers, such as "L'Éclair" on 13 December 1894: "the closed court is necessary to avoid a "casus belli""; while for Judet in "Le Petit Journal" of 18 December: "the closed court is our impregnable refuge against Germany"; or in "La Croix" the same day: it must be "the most absolute closed court".


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The trial opened on 19 December 1894 at one o'clock and a closed court was immediately pronounced. This closed court was not legally consistent since Major Picquart and Prefect Louis Lépine were present at certain proceedings in violation of the law. The closed court allowed the military to still not disclose the emptiness of their evidence to the public and to stifle debate. As expected, the emptiness of their case appeared clearly during the hearings. Detailed discussions on the bordereau showed that Captain Dreyfus could not be the author. At the same time the accused himself protested his innocence and defended himself point by point with energy and logic. Moreover, his statements were supported by a dozen defence witnesses. Finally, the absence of motive for the crime was a serious thorn in the prosecution case. Dreyfus was indeed a very patriotic officer highly rated by his superiors, very rich and with no tangible reason to betray France. The fact of Dreyfus's Jewishness was used only by the right-wing press and was not presented in court.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Alphonse Bertillon, who was not an expert in handwriting, was presented as a scholar of the first importance. He advanced the theory of "autoforgery" during the trial and accused Dreyfus of imitating his own handwriting, explaining the differences in writing by using extracts of writing from his brother Matthieu and his wife Lucie. This theory, although later regarded as bizarre and astonishing, seems to have had some effect on the judges. In addition, Major Hubert-Joseph Henry made a theatrical statement in open court. He argued that leaks betraying the General Staff had been suspected to exist since February 1894 and that "a respectable person" accused Captain Dreyfus. He swore on oath that the traitor was Dreyfus, pointing to the crucifix hanging on the wall of the court. Dreyfus was apoplectic with rage and demanded to be confronted with his anonymous accuser, which was rejected by the General Staff. The incident had an undeniable effect on the court, which was composed of seven officers who were both judges and jury. However, the outcome of the trial remained uncertain. The conviction of the judges had been shaken by the firm and logical answers of the accused. The judges took leave to deliberate, but the General Staff still had a card in hand to tip the balance decisively against Dreyfus.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Military witnesses at the trial alerted high command about the risk of acquittal. For this eventuality the Statistics Section had prepared a file containing, in principle, four "absolute" proofs of the guilt of Captain Dreyfus accompanied by an explanatory note. The contents of this secret file remained uncertain until 2013, when they were released by the French Ministry of Defence. Recent research indicates the existence of numbering which suggests the presence of a dozen documents. Among these letters were some of an erotic homosexual nature (the Davignon letter among others) raising the question of the tainted methods of the Statistics Section and the objective of their choice of documents.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The secret file was illegally submitted at the beginning of the deliberations by the President of the Military Court, Colonel Émilien Maurel, by order of the Minister of War, General Mercier. Later at the Rennes trial of 1899, General Mercier explained the nature of the prohibited disclosure of the documents submitted in the courtroom. This file contained, in addition to letters without much interest, some of which were falsified, a piece known as the "Scoundrel D ...".


title: Dreyfus affair

text: It was a letter from the German military attaché, Max von Schwarzkoppen, to the Italian military attaché, Alessandro Panizzardi, intercepted by the SR. The letter was supposed to accuse Dreyfus definitively since, according to his accusers, it was signed with the initial of his name. In reality, the Statistics Section knew that the letter could not be attributed to Dreyfus and if it was, it was with criminal intent. Colonel Maurel confirmed in the second Dreyfus trial that the secret documents were not used to win the support of the judges of the Military Court. He contradicted himself, however, by saying that he read only one document, "which was enough".


title: Dreyfus affair

text: On 22 December 1894, after several hours of deliberation, the verdict was reached. Seven judges unanimously convicted Alfred Dreyfus of collusion with a foreign power, to the maximum penalty under section 76 of the Criminal Code: "permanent exile in a walled fortification" (prison), the cancellation of his army rank and military degradation. Dreyfus was not sentenced to death, as it had been abolished for political crimes since 1848.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: For the authorities, the press and the public, doubts had been dispelled by the trial and his guilt was certain. Right and left regretted the abolition of the death penalty for such a crime. Antisemitism peaked in the press and occurred in areas so far spared. Jean Jaurès regretted the lightness of the sentence in an address to the House and wrote, "A soldier has been sentenced to death and executed for throwing a button in the face of his corporal. So why leave this miserable traitor alive?" Clemenceau in "Justice" made a similar comment.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: On 5 January 1895, the ceremony of degradation took place in the Morlan Court of the Military School in Paris. While the drums rolled, Dreyfus was accompanied by four artillery officers, who brought him before an officer of the state who read the judgment. A Republican Guard adjutant tore off his badges, thin strips of gold, his stripes, cuffs and sleeves of his jacket. As he was paraded throughout the streets, the crowd chanted "Death to Judas, death to the Jew." Witnesses report the dignity of Dreyfus, who continued to maintain his innocence while raising his arms: "Innocent, Innocent! Vive la France! Long live the Army". The Adjutant broke his sword on his knee and then the condemned Dreyfus marched at a slow pace in front of his former companions. An event known as "the legend of the confession" took place before the degradation. In the van that brought him to the military school, Dreyfus is said to have confided his treachery to Captain Lebrun-Renault. It appears that this was merely self-promotion by the captain of the Republican Guard, and that in reality Dreyfus had made no admission. Due to the affair's being related to national security, the prisoner was then held in solitary confinement in a cell awaiting transfer. On 17 January 1895, he was transferred to the prison on Île de Ré where he was held for over a month. He had the right to see his wife twice a week in a long room, each of them at one end, with the director of the prison in the middle.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: At the last minute, at the initiative of General Mercier, a law was passed on 9 February 1895, restoring the Îles du Salut in French Guiana, as a place of fortified deportation so that Dreyfus was not sent to Ducos, New Caledonia. Indeed, during the deportation of Adjutant Lucien Châtelain, sentenced for conspiring with the enemy in 1888, the facilities did not provide the required conditions of confinement and detention conditions were considered too soft. On 21 February 1895, Dreyfus embarked on the ship Ville de Saint-Nazaire. The next day the ship sailed for French Guiana.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: On 12 March 1895, after a difficult voyage of fifteen days, the ship anchored off the Îles du Salut. Dreyfus stayed one month in prison on Île Royale and was transferred to Devil's Island on 14 April 1895. Apart from his guards, he was the only inhabitant of the island and he stayed in a stone hut . Haunted by the risk of escape, the commandant of the prison sentenced him to a hellish life, even though living conditions were already very painful. Dreyfus became sick and shaken by fevers that got worse every year.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Dreyfus was allowed to write on paper numbered and signed. He underwent censorship by the commandant even when he received mail from his wife Lucie, whereby they encouraged each other. On 6 September 1896, the conditions of life for Dreyfus worsened again; he was chained "double looped", forcing him to stay in bed motionless with his ankles shackled. This measure was the result of false information of his escape revealed by a British newspaper. For two long months, Dreyfus was plunged into deep despair, convinced that his life would end on this remote island.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Mathieu Dreyfus, the elder brother of Alfred, was convinced of his innocence. He was the chief architect of the rehabilitation of his brother and spent his time, energy and fortune to gather an increasingly powerful movement for a retrial in December 1894, despite the difficulties of the task:


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Mathieu tried all paths, even the most fantastic. Thanks to Dr. Gibert, a friend of President Félix Faure, he met at Le Havre a woman who spoke for the first time under hypnosis of a "secret file". This fact was confirmed by the President of the Republic to Dr. Gibert in a private conversation.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Little by little, despite threats of arrest for complicity, machinations and entrapment by the military, he managed to convince various moderates. Thus the anarchist journalist Bernard Lazare looked into the proceedings. In 1896, Lazare published the first Dreyfusard booklet in Brussels. This publication had little influence on the political and intellectual world, but it contained so much detail that the General Staff suspected that Picquart, the new head of SR, was responsible.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The campaign for the review, relayed little by little into the leftist anti-military press, triggered a return of a violent yet vague antisemitism. France was overwhelmingly anti-Dreyfusard; Major Henry from the Statistics Section in turn was aware of the thinness of the prosecution case. At the request of his superiors, General Boisdeffre, Chief of the General Staff and Major-General Gonse, he was charged with the task of enlarging the file to prevent any attempt at a review. Unable to find any evidence, he decided to build some after the fact.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Major Georges Picquart was assigned to be head of the staff of the Military Intelligence Service (SR) in July 1895, following the illness of Colonel Sandherr. In March 1896, Picquart, who had followed the Dreyfus Affair from the outset, now required to receive the documents stolen from the German Embassy directly without any intermediary. He discovered a document called the "petit bleu": a telegram that was never sent, written by von Schwarzkoppen and intercepted at the German Embassy at the beginning of March 1896. It was addressed to a French officer, Major Walsin-Esterhazy, 27 rue de la Bienfaisance – Paris. In another letter in black pencil, von Schwarzkoppen revealed the same clandestine relationship with Esterhazy.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: On seeing letters from Esterhazy, Picquart realized with amazement that his writing was exactly the same as that on the "bordereau", which had been used to incriminate Dreyfus. He procured the "secret file" given to the judges in 1894 and was astonished by the lack of evidence against Dreyfus, and became convinced of his innocence. Moved by his discovery, Picquart diligently conducted an enquiry in secret without the consent of his superiors. The enquiry demonstrated that Esterhazy had knowledge of the elements described by the "bordereau" and that he was in contact with the German Embassy. It was established that the officer sold the Germans many secret documents, whose value was quite low.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy was a former member of French counterespionage where he had served after the war of 1870. He had worked in the same office as Major Henry from 1877 to 1880. A man with a personality disorder, a sulphurous reputation and crippled by debt, he was considered by Picquart to be a traitor driven by monetary reasons to betray his country. Picquart communicated the results of his investigation to the General Staff, which opposed him under "the authority of the principle of "res judicata"". After this, everything was done to oust him from his position, with the help of his own deputy, Major Henry. It was primarily the upper echelons of the Army that did not want to admit that Dreyfus's conviction could be a grave miscarriage of justice. For Mercier, then Zurlinden and the General Staff, what was done was done and should never be returned to. They found it convenient to separate the Dreyfus and Esterhazy affairs.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The nationalist press launched a violent campaign against the burgeoning Dreyfusards. In counter-attack, the General Staff discovered and revealed the information hitherto ignored in the "secret file". Doubt began to surface, and figures in the artistic and political spheres asked questions. Picquart tried to convince his seniors to react in favour of Dreyfus, but the General Staff seemed deaf. An investigation was started against him, he was monitored when he was in the east, then transferred to Tunisia "in the interest of the service".


title: Dreyfus affair

text: At this moment Major Henry chose to take action. On 1 November 1896, he created a false document, subsequently called the "faux Henry" [Henry forgery], keeping the header and signature of an ordinary letter from Panizzardi, and wrote the central text himself:


title: Dreyfus affair

text: This was a rather crude forgery. Generals Gonse and Boisdeffre, however, without asking questions, brought the letter to their minister, General Billot. The doubts of the General Staff regarding the innocence of Dreyfus flew out the window. With this discovery the General Staff decided to protect Esterhazy and persecute Colonel Picquart, "who did not understand anything". Picquart, who knew nothing of the "faux Henry", quickly felt isolated from his fellow soldiers. Major Henry accused Picquart of embezzlement and sent him a letter full of innuendo. He protested in writing and returned to Paris.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Picquart confided in his friend, lawyer Louis Leblois, who promised secrecy. Leblois, however, spoke to the vice president of the Senate, the Alsatian Auguste Scheurer-Kestner (born in Mulhouse, like Dreyfus), who was in turn infected by doubts. Without citing Picquart, the senator revealed the affair to the highest people in the country. The General Staff, however, still suspected Picquart of causing leaks. This was the beginning of the Picquart affair, a new conspiracy by the General Staff against an officer.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Major Henry, although deputy to Picquart, was jealous and fostered his own malicious operation to compromise his superior. He engaged in various malpractices (making a letter and designating it as an instrument of a "Jewish syndicate", wanting to help Dreyfus to escape, rigging the "petit bleu" to create a belief that Picquart erased the name of the real recipient, drafting a letter naming Dreyfus in full).


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Parallel to the investigations of Picquart, the defenders of Dreyfus were informed in November 1897 that the identity of the writer of the "bordereau" was Esterhazy. Mathieu Dreyfus had a reproduction of the bordereau published by "Le Figaro". A banker, Castro, formally identified the writing as that of Esterhazy, who was his debtor, and told Mathieu. On 11 November 1897, the two paths of investigation met during a meeting between Scheurer-Kestner and Mathieu Dreyfus. The latter finally received confirmation that Esterhazy was the author of the note. Based on this, on 15 November 1897 Mathieu Dreyfus made a complaint to the minister of war against Esterhazy. The controversy was now public and the army had no choice but to open an investigation. At the end of 1897, Picquart returned to Paris and made public his doubts about the guilt of Dreyfus because of his discoveries. Collusion to eliminate Picquart seemed to have failed. The challenge was very strong and turned to confrontation. To discredit Picquart, Esterhazy sent, without effect, letters of complaint to the president of the republic.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The Dreyfusard movement, led by Bernard Lazare, Mathieu Dreyfus, Joseph Reinach and Auguste Scheurer-Kestner gained momentum. Émile Zola, informed in mid-November 1897 by Scheurer-Kestner with documents, was convinced of the innocence of Dreyfus and undertook to engage himself officially. On 25 November 1897 the novelist published "Mr. Scheurer-Kestner" in "Le Figaro", which was the first article in a series of three. Faced with threats of massive cancellations from its readers, the paper's editor stopped supporting Zola. Gradually, from late-November through early-December 1897, a number of prominent people got involved in the fight for retrial. These included the authors Octave Mirbeau (his first article was published three days after Zola) and Anatole France, academic Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, the librarian of the "École normale supérieure" Lucien Herr (who convinced Léon Blum and Jean Jaurès), the authors of "La Revue Blanche", (where Lazare knew the director Thadee Natanson), and the Clemenceau brothers Albert and Georges. Blum tried in late November 1897 to sign, with his friend Maurice Barrès, a petition calling for a retrial, but Barrès refused, broke with Zola and Blum in early-December, and began to popularize the term "intellectuals". This first break was the prelude to a division among the educated elite after 13 January 1898.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: The Dreyfus Affair occupied more and more discussions, something the political world did not always recognize. Jules Méline declared in the opening session of the National Assembly on 7 December 1897, "There is no Dreyfus affair. There is not now and there can be no Dreyfus affair."


title: Dreyfus affair

text: General Georges-Gabriel de Pellieux was responsible for conducting an investigation. It was brief, thanks to the General Staff's skillful manipulation of the investigator. The real culprit, they said, was Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart. The investigation was moving towards a predictable conclusion until Esterhazy's former mistress, Madame de Boulancy, published letters in "Le Figaro" in which ten years earlier Esterhazy had expressed violently his hatred for France and his contempt for the French army. The militarist press rushed to the rescue of Esterhazy with an unprecedented antisemitic campaign. The Dreyfusard press replied with strong new evidence in its possession. Georges Clemenceau, in the newspaper "L'Aurore", asked, "Who protects Major Esterhazy? The law must stop sucking up to this ineffectual Prussian disguised as a French officer. Why? Who trembles before Esterhazy? What occult power, why shamefully oppose the action of justice? What stands in the way? Why is Esterhazy, a character of depravity and more than doubtful morals, protected while the accused is not? Why is an honest soldier such as Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart discredited, overwhelmed, dishonoured? If this is the case we must speak out!"


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Although protected by the General Staff and therefore by the government, Esterhazy was obliged to admit authorship of the Francophobe letters published by "Le Figaro". This convinced the Office of the General Staff to find a way to stop the questions, doubts, and the beginnings of demands for justice. The idea was to require Esterhazy to demand a trial and be acquitted, to stop the noise and allow a return to order. Thus, to finally exonerate him, according to the old rule , Esterhazy was set to appear before a military court on 10 January 1898. A "delayed" closed court trial was pronounced. Esterhazy was notified of the matter on the following day, along with guidance on the defensive line to take. The trial was not normal: the civil trial Mathieu and Lucy Dreyfus requested was denied, and the three handwriting experts decided the writing in the bordereau was not Esterhazy's. The accused was applauded and the witnesses booed and jeered. Pellieux intervened to defend the General Staff without legal substance. The real accused was Picquart, who was dishonoured by all the military protagonists of the affair. Esterhazy was acquitted unanimously the next day after just three minutes of deliberation. With all the cheering, it was difficult for Esterhazy to make his way toward the exit, where some 1,500 people were waiting.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: By error an innocent person was convicted, but on order the guilty party was acquitted. For many moderate Republicans it was an intolerable infringement of the fundamental values they defended. The acquittal of Esterhazy therefore brought about a change of strategy for the Dreyfusards. Liberalism-friendly Scheurer-Kestner and Reinach, took more combative and rebellious action. In response to the acquittal, large and violent riots by anti-Dreyfusards and anti-Semites broke out across France.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Flush with victory, the General Staff arrested Picquart on charges of violation of professional secrecy following the disclosure of his investigation through his lawyer, who revealed it to Senator Scheurer-Kestner. The colonel, although placed under arrest at Fort Mont-Valérien, did not give up and involved himself further in the affair. When Mathieu thanked him, he replied curtly that he was "doing his duty". Esterhazy benefited from special treatment by the upper echelons of the army, which was inexplicable except for the General Staff's desire to stifle any inclination to challenge the verdict of the court martial that had convicted Dreyfus in 1894. The army declared Esterhazy unfit for service.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Rachel Beer, editor of "The Observer" and the "Sunday Times", English newspapers, knew that Esterhazy was in London because "The Observer" Paris correspondent had made a connection with him; she interviewed him twice, and he confessed to being the culprit: "I wrote the bordereau". She published the interviews in September 1898, reporting his confession and writing a leader column accusing the French military of antisemitism and calling for a retrial for Dreyfus. Esterhazy lived comfortably in England until his death in 1923.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: On 13 January 1898, Émile Zola touched off a new dimension in the Dreyfus Affair, which became known simply as "The Affair". The first great Dreyfusard intellectual, Zola was at the height of his glory: the twenty volumes of the Rougon-Macquart epic were being distributed in dozens of countries. He was a leader in the literary world and was fully conscious of it. To General Pellieux, he said at his trial, "I ask General Pellieux if there are not many ways to serve France? It can be served by the sword or by the pen. General Pellieux has probably won great victories! I have won mine, too. By my work the French language has been brought into the world. I have my victories! I bequeath to posterity the name of General Pellieux and that of Émile Zola: history will choose!


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Outraged by the acquittal of Esterhazy, Zola published a 4,500-word article on the front page of "L'Aurore" in the form of an open letter to President Félix Faure (Clemenceau thought up the headline "J'Accuse...!"). With a typical circulation of 30,000, the newspaper distributed nearly 300,000 copies that day. This article had the effect of an explosion. The article was a direct attack, explicit and clear, and named names. It denounced all those who had conspired against Dreyfus, including the minister of war and the General Staff. The article contained numerous errors, exaggerating or minimizing the roles of one or another of the figures involved (the role of General Mercier was greatly underestimated, for instance).


title: Dreyfus affair

text: "J'Accuse...!" provided for the first time a compilation of all existing data on the affair in one place. Zola's goal was to make himself a target, to force the authorities to prosecute him. His trial forced a new public review of both the Dreyfus and Esterhazy affairs. Here he went against the strategy of Scheurer-Kestner and Lazare, who advocated patience and reflection. Thanks to the national and international success of Zola's article, a trial became inevitable. From that critical moment the case followed two parallel paths. On one hand, the state used its apparatus to impose a limitation on the trial, restricting it to one of simple libel so as to separate the Dreyfus and Esterhazy cases, which had already been adjudicated. On the other hand, conflicting camps of opinion tried to influence judges and the government—one side pushed to obtain a review and the other to convict Zola. But Zola achieved his aim: the opening of a public debate at the Assize Court.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: On 15 January 1898, "Le Temps" published a petition calling for a retrial. It included the names of Émile Zola, Anatole France, director of the Pasteur Institute Émile Duclaux, Daniel Halévy, Fernand Gregh, Félix Fénéon, Marcel Proust, Lucien Herr, Charles Andler, Victor Bérard, François Simiand, Georges Sorel, the painter Claude Monet, the writer Jules Renard, the sociologist Émile Durkheim, and the historian Gabriel Monod.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: On 20 January 1898, after an anti-Zola speech by rightist politician Albert de Mun at the Chamber of Deputies, the chamber voted 312–22 to prosecute Zola. On 23 January 1898 Clemenceau, in the name of a "peaceful revolt of the French spirit", picked up the term "intellectuals" and used it in "L'Aurore", but in a positive sense. On 1 February 1898, Barres lambasted the intellectuals in "Le Journal". Anti-intellectualism became a major theme of right-wing intellectuals, who accused the Dreyfusards of failing to put the nation's interests first, an argument that continued throughout the years that followed and which became the basis of the public debate: a choice between justice and truth on the one hand, and the defense of the nation, preservation of society, and superiority of the state on the other. At first, the political left did not echo this mobilization of intellectuals—on 19 January 1898 Socialist Deputies distanced themselves from the "two rival bourgeois factions".


title: Dreyfus affair

text: General Billot, Minister of War, filed a complaint against Zola and Alexandre Perrenx, the manager of "L'Aurore", to be heard at the Assises of the Seine from 7 to 23 February 1898. Defamation of a public authority was liable to trial in the Cour d'Assises, while insults to private figures—such as journalists and intellectuals—uttered by the nationalist and antisemitic press were limited to the civil adversarial system. (The taxpayer is at risk in the first case, while only the plaintiff is at risk in the second.) The minister referred to only three passages of Zola's article, eighteen lines out of hundreds. He accused Zola of having written that the court martial had committed "unlawful acts [...] by order". The trial opened in an atmosphere of extreme violence—Zola had been the object of "the most shameful attacks" as well as important support and congratulations.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: Fernand Labori, Zola's lawyer, intended to call about 200 witnesses. The details of the Dreyfus Affair, unknown to most of the public, were published in the press. Several papers published shorthand notes verbatim of the debates every day to build support in the population. These notes were, for the Dreyfusards, an essential tool for later debates. The nationalists, behind Henri Rochefort, however, were more visible and organized riots, which forced the prefect of police to intervene to protect Zola whenever he left the facility after every hearing.


title: Dreyfus affair

text: This trial was also the scene of a real legal battle in which the rights of the defence were constantly violated. Many observers were aware of the collusion between France's political and military worlds. Evidently the court received instructions not to raise the subject of former judicial errors. President Delegorgue, on the pretext of the long duration of the hearings, juggled the law incessantly to ensure that the trial dealt only with the alleged defamation by Zola. Delegorgue's phrase "the question will not be put" was repeated dozens of times.