page_title: Dreyfus affair
section_title: Trial and acquittal of Esterhazy
hierarchical_section_title: Dreyfus affair / Truth on the march (1895–1897) / Trial and acquittal of Esterhazy
caption_attribution_description: Titre&#160;: L'Agitation antisémite à Paris Légende&#160;: A Montmartre, Mathieu Dreyfus est brûlé en effigie par des jeunes gens. Agitation antisémite - Affaire Dreyfus
context_page_description: The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal that divided the Third French 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.
  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 sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, and was imprisoned in Devil's Island in French Guiana, where he spent nearly five years.
  In 1896, evidence came to light—primarily through an investigation instigated 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.
context_section_description: 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!"
  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 Res judicata pro veritate habetur, 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.
  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.
  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". The army declared Esterhazy unfit for service. To avoid personal risk he went into exile in England, where he lived comfortably and ended his days in the 1920s. 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.
caption: Antisemitic riots in a print from Le Petit Parisien
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