page_title: Dreyfus affair
section_title: The enquiry and the first military court
hierarchical_section_title: Dreyfus affair / Origins of the case and the trial of 1894 / The enquiry and the first military court
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Image du Petit Journal - Affaire Dreyfus. «&#160;Alfred Dreyfus dans sa prison&#160;»
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: 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.
  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.
  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.
caption: Cover of Le Petit Journal, 20 January 1895 (illustration by Fortuné Méaulle after Lionel Royer).
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