The Dreyfus Affair (32 page)

4: General de Pellieux

General Georges de Pellieux’s inquiry into Mathieu Dreyfus’s allegations against Esterhazy, ordered by General Saussier, opened on 17 November 1897. Mathieu Dreyfus was the first witness. He pointed out not just that Esterhazy’s handwriting was identical to that of the
bordereau
– a judgement confirmed by a number of graphologists – but also that Esterhazy had been in a position to deliver what was promised on the list. He also referred to Esterhazy’s notoriously bad character. General de Pellieux next took evidence from Scheurer-Kestner, who referred him to Leblois and Picquart. On the morning of 18 November, Esterhazy gave evidence. He admitted the similarity of his handwriting to that of the
bordereau
, but this was because Dreyfus had received samples of his handwriting from a Colonel Bro and had no doubt copied it to divert suspicion on to an innocent man.

On 19 November, Pellieux heard the evidence of Leblois, who conceded that he had occasionally been consulted by Picquart on questions that arose in the course of his duties. It was a dangerous admission. General de Boisdeffre, whom Pellieux consulted in the course of his inquiry, showed him some of the forged telegrams which suggested collusion between Picquart and the Dreyfusards. As a result, Pellieux concluded in his preliminary report delivered on 20 November that Esterhazy, despite irregularities in his private life, ‘cannot, in my opinion, be accused of treason’, whereas Picquart ‘seems guilty’.
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After reading this report, the Council of Ministers ordered him to proceed with a full inquiry.

On 26 and 27 November Pellieux questioned Picquart for the first time; his tone, ‘paternalistic and familiar’ with Esterhazy, was cold and brutal with Picquart. Everything appeared to be going as Esterhazy’s protectors had wished when there came a bolt from the blue. Mme de Boulancy, the woman who had been Esterhazy’s mistress in the 1880s, still aggrieved that he had cheated her out of all her money, had shown her lawyer the letters she had received from her lover, among them the one which stated that ‘If someone were to come to tell me this evening that I would be killed tomorrow as an Uhlan captain running through Frenchmen with my sabre, I would certainly be perfectly happy . . . Paris taken by storm and given over to the pillage of 100,000 drunken soldiers! That is a celebration I dream of!’ (
see here
).

Mme de Boulancy’s lawyer gave facsimiles of some of the letters to Scheurer-Kestner who in turn showed them to General de Pellieux, urging him to seize Esterhazy’s full correspondence with Mme de Boulancy. Pellieux was unsure of his powers and so consulted a young examining magistrate recommended by Commandant Henry, Paul Bertulus. This move did not seem significant at the time, but it was the first time that a civilian legal officer had been drawn into the Dreyfus Affair. Bertulus, with authorisation from the Ministry of Justice, sent the police to Mme de Boulancy’s flat where she happily handed over all the letters she had received from Esterhazy.

On 27 November,
Le Figaro
published the infamous ‘Uhlan’ letter which the editor had received from Mathieu Dreyfus and Joseph Reinach. For a second time (the first was when he had received the anonymous letter from ‘Espérance’) Esterhazy panicked and thought of fleeing abroad. His only recourse was to claim that the letters were forgeries, an explanation which the right-wing papers readily accepted: ‘The letters are fake,’ Henri Rochefort assured the readers of
L’Intransigeant
.
They had been forged by the Jew Reinach, ‘the dispenser of the syndicate’s millions’. However, when faced with Mme de Boulancy, Esterhazy had to admit that the letters had indeed been written by him: it was only the ‘Uhlan’ letter that he said had been touched up. But even if that were not the case – even if the ‘Uhlan’ letter was genuine – Esterhazy’s supporters refused to be dismayed. What had the letters to do with the Dreyfus Affair? They revealed ‘an embittered or an exalted man’, but not a traitor. Don’t we all have black moods? Wasn’t the culprit here not Esterhazy but Mathieu Dreyfus who had dug up dirt from thirteen years before to disparage Esterhazy in the hope that this might somehow distract the world from his brother’s guilt?

The main danger posed to Esterhazy and his protectors was that Pellieux might ask for a handwriting expert to study the letters to Mme de Boulancy and compare the handwriting to that of the
bordereau
. Pellieux also had in his possession the file of fake telegrams that they knew would not bear close scrutiny. To compound this danger, the Italian Foreign Minister now wrote to his French counterpart, Hanotaux, to say that the Italian military attaché, Alessandro Panizzardi, was prepared to appear as a witness and attest that the sentences alleged to have been written by him mentioning Dreyfus either by name or initial ‘were inauthentic’.

General de Boisdeffre quickly wrote to the Council of Ministers pointing out that Panizzardi’s evidence, if heard, would be ‘necessarily suspect’ and therefore of no value. He also asserted, on his own authority, that the documents referred to
were
authentic. He attached three letters, the first two of which referred only to ‘D.’ but the third – the Henry forgery – spelt out the name Dreyfus ‘letter by letter’. These convinced the ministers who then rejected the offer made by the Italians. The letters were returned to their file in the Ministry of War.

As Pellieux prepared his report, Boisdeffre and Gonse could feel that they had manipulated him to their satisfaction: Pellieux would exonerate Esterhazy. The only remaining danger was that such an exoneration would mean a
prima facie
libel of Esterhazy by Mathieu Dreyfus. Should Esterhazy sue? A civil action, out of the control of the army, with lay judges able to subpoena documents and subject them to scrutiny and a lay jury to deliver a verdict, was too hazardous to be allowed. But what reason could be given for Esterhazy to desist? A court martial. Esterhazy himself would demand a full court martial to re-establish his honour. He would be acquitted and through his acquittal the guilt of Dreyfus would be established once and for all.

After some initial hesitation, Esterhazy fell in with the plan. On 2 December, Pellieux received a letter from Esterhazy – a letter he had already seen in draft, and which he himself had amended – demanding to be tried by court martial. ‘As an innocent man, the torture I have been enduring for fifteen days is superhuman . . . Neither a refusal to prosecute, nor a dismissal of charges, is enough to assure me the reparation I feel is my due. As an officer accused of high treason, I have a right to a court martial, which is the highest form of military justice. Only a decision reached there will refute . . . the most cowardly of slanders.’

The next day, General de Pellieux delivered his final report to General Saussier. It exonerated Esterhazy, finding no evidence for a prosecution, but found that Picquart had come ‘very close to dishonour’ and should be subject to an inquiry into his ‘infringements against honour and grave errors committed while in service’. General Saussier, with the concurrence of the Minister of War, General Billot, and the Chief of the General Staff, General de Boisdeffre, rejected General de Pellieux’s recommendation that Esterhazy should not be prosecuted. Acceding to the request of Esterhazy himself, they ruled that he should be tried by court martial on a charge of treason. Esterhazy was arrested and sent to the Cherche-Midi prison.

5: Comte Albert de Mun

On 3 December 1897, a debate on the Dreyfus Affair was scheduled in the Chamber of Deputies. The Deputy for the Aisne, André Castelin – the same man whose proposed questions to General Billot had caused so much alarm the previous year – had tabled questions for the Prime Minister, Jules Méline. Also scheduled to speak was the Deputy for Morbihan department, the distinguished Catholic statesman Comte Albert de Mun.

De Mun’s intervention was of some significance because, although a royalist, he had accepted the
ralliement
– the advice of Pope Leo XIII to French Catholics that they should dissociate themselves from the royalist cause and rally to the Republic. He had founded a Catholic workers’ association, L’Oeuvre des Cercles Catholiques d’Ouvriers, which had shunned the Congress of Christian Democracy held in Lyon the year before because of its anti-Semitic tone.
30
So too had Monsignor Coullié, the Archbishop of Lyon, ‘because of the part played in it by anti-Semitism and leading anti-Semites’.
31
De Mun had also founded a youth movement, L’Association Catholique de la Jeunesse Française, and on social questions was to the left of the Radical government. ‘The Church’, he said, ‘is not a policeman in the service of bourgeois society.’
32

Those such as Joseph Reinach who saw a Jesuit conspiracy behind the anti-Dreyfusard campaign noted that de Mun was a friend of the Jesuit priest Père du Lac, who in turn knew General de Boisdeffre and had brought Édouard Drumont back to the practice of his faith. But many of de Mun’s writings and public statements had made clear his distaste for radical anti-Semitism. At the time of Dreyfus’s arrest, he had written a letter condemning the Assumptionist paper
La Croix
for attacking ‘Jews
en bloc
, simply to flatter the taste of the Drumontists and go one better than
La Libre Parole
.’
33
The contempt he expressed for Drumont had led to attacks on de Mun in
La Libre Parole
. ‘Anti-Semitism, in practice,’ he wrote to Père du Lac, ‘leads to violent acts and injustices with which the Catholics cannot be associated, and which would gravely compromise them.’
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Was the case of Alfred Dreyfus just such an act of injustice? De Mun’s speech was awaited with a certain trepidation by the government, but first the Prime Minister, Jules Méline, had to answer the question of the Deputy from the Aisne, André Castelin. What could the Prime Minister say to reassure the army, public opinion and the Chamber in the light of recent events?

‘I will say at once what matters in this debate,’ said Méline. ‘This is not about Dreyfus. At this moment, there is not and cannot be a Dreyfus Affair. A charge of treason has been made against an army officer, and this question bears no relation to the other.’

Now the tall, aristocratic former cavalry officer, Comte Albert de Mun, mounted the podium. The deputies gathered to listen to him, not just to hear what he had to say, but to appreciate the manner in which he would say it: he was considered, after Jean Jaurès, the most eloquent speaker in the Chamber. De Mun opened by professing his love of his country, and of its army, and asserting his determination to defend both,
coûte que coûte
.
And what was the threat facing the army now? The Jewish syndicate that was ‘working for German wages’. He called upon the Minister of War, General Billot, to come before the Chamber because ‘it is to the Minister that my question is addressed, for it is he, the head of the War department, whom I want to come here to avenge, in a solemn address, the chiefs of the Army and, in particular, the chief of the General Staff’. He went on:

We must know whether it is true that there is, in this country, a mysterious and hidden power strong enough to be able to cast suspicion at will on those who command our Army, those who, on the day when great duties will befall it, will have the task of leading our Army against the enemy and waging a war. We must know whether such a hidden power is strong enough to overwhelm the entire country, as it has been for more than fifteen days, putting doubts and suspicions in our minds about certain officers . . .

Interrupted by rapturous applause from the right, centre and also the left of the Chamber, de Mun declared:

Ah, you asked that there be no political questions raised here! No, there are none. There are assembled here neither friends, nor adversaries, neither ministers nor enemies of the cabinet; there are only representatives of the country; there are only Frenchmen concerned to preserve intact what is most precious to us all, what remains, in the midst of our partisan discord and struggles, the common domain of our invincible homes – the honour of the Army!
35

Almost the entire Chamber now rose to applaud de Mun. Ferocious glances were directed at Joseph Reinach who sat, his arms folded, not saying a word – afraid that were he to open his mouth he would be set upon by the incensed deputies.

The Minister of War, Jean-Baptiste Billot, who had not been present to hear de Mun’s speech, was found in another part of the building and brought to the Chamber. ‘The case of Alfred Dreyfus’, he told the deputies, ‘was judged fairly and without any judicial irregularity. For my part, in my soul and conscience, I consider the verdict to have been just, and Dreyfus to be guilty.’

Again, there was applause from the deputies. The Socialist Alexandre Millerand mounted the podium and laid into the government for its pusillanimity in the face of those who were advocating a reopening of the case against Dreyfus. He also singled out Joseph Reinach ‘who is conducting his own campaign right here, whereas . . . he should be better advised to rehabilitate members of his own family’. The reference was to Reinach’s uncle, Baron Jacques de Reinach, implicated in the Panama Canal scandal, an issue on which both the left and right could unite.

A motion was now put before the Chamber which supported the Minister’s ‘homage’ to the army and his respect for the verdict on Dreyfus, and condemned ‘the leaders of the odious campaign undertaken to trouble the public conscience’. It was carried by a large majority.