page_title: Dreyfus affair
section_title: The discovery of the real culprit: Picquart "going to the enemy"
hierarchical_section_title: Dreyfus affair / Truth on the march (1895–1897) / The discovery of the real culprit: Picquart "going to the enemy"
caption_attribution_description: Photo du colonel Piquart - 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: 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.
  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.
  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.
caption: Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart dressed in the uniform of the 4th Algerian Tirailleurs
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