The Dreyfus Affair (56 page)
Read The Dreyfus Affair Online
Authors: Piers Paul Read
In March 1941, the Vichy government set up a Commissariat Général
to administer Jewish affairs in France. Its first director was Xavier Vallat; the second Louis Darquier; the third Charles du Paty de Clam, the son of Commandant Ferdinand du Paty de Clam. Among the tasks of the Commissariat was the sequestration of funds and property belonging to Jews. Twenty thousand francs was taken from a bank account held by Lucie Dreyfus.
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Lucie lived with her daughter Jeanne in Toulouse until the Germans moved into the unoccupied zone in November 1942. She then went to her younger sister Alice in Valence, adopted Alice’s married name, Duteil, and was hidden for the rest of the war by a community of retired nuns in a convent in Valence;
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only the Mother Superior knew who she was.
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At the Liberation, Lucie left the convent and returned to her flat in Paris where she died on 14 December 1945.
The Taking of the Bastille
by Jean-Pierre Houel. The storming of the Bastille by 60,000 Parisians on 14 July 1789 liberated four forgers, an Irish lunatic and an incestuous aristocrat. However, the Bastille symbolised the arbitrary powers of the absolute monarch and this was the first act of defiance against King Louis XVI.
The Tennis Court Oath
(1791) by Jacques Louis David. Locked out of their usual meeting place, the delegates of the Third Estate gathered in an indoor tennis court and proclaimed themselves a National Assembly. They were joined by most members of the Fourth Estate, the Catholic clergy.
Le prêtre refractaire
, engraving by Léopold Massard, based on Henri Baron. On 12 July 1790, the National Assembly passed a law demanding an oath of loyalty to a Civil Constitution for the clergy. This entailed the election of priests and bishops and a breach with the Pope in Rome. Here a priest refuses to take the oath. Most of the clergy followed suit which led to a brutal persecution of Catholics.
Napoléon le Grand rétablit le culte des Israélites
, engraving, by François Louis Couché. On 21 September 1791 the National Assembly gave full civil rights to French Jews. Most, like the Dreyfus family, were from Alsace. Napoleon's conquests extended these rights throughout Europe. Here grateful Jews thank their liberator.
Maximilien de Robespierre
(1791) by Pierre Roch Vigneron. In the place of Catholicism, French revolutionaries such as Robespierre initiated a cult of Reason.
The Procession of the Goddess of Reason
by Louis Blanc, engraved by Meyer-Heine. A woman dressed as the Goddess of Reason is carried through the streets of Paris to the cathedral of Notre Dame, converted into a Temple of Reason.
The Drowning in the Loire During the Reign of Terror
(1793) by H. de la Charlerie. An uprising of Catholics and Royalists against the Revolution in the West of France led to atrocious reprisals. Men and women are drowned off scuttled barges in the River Loire at Nantes. This persecution, âtantamount to genocide', alienated French Catholics from republicanism.
The German nations united behind the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to wage war against Napoleon's nephew, Napoleon III. The French were quickly defeated. Napoleon III was taken prisoner at Sedan. Here he sits looking disconsolate with his captor, Bismarck.
Under Duress
(1871) by Smeeton after Janet Lange. With a knife at her breast France signs the preliminaries of the peace treaty which ceded the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the new German Reich.
Execution of the Archbishop of Paris
(1871). The anti-clerical Communards executed the Archbishop of Paris, Monsignor Darboy, and fifty Catholic priests. This reinforced the association in the minds of French Catholics of radical republicanism and persecution.
The citizens of Paris, besieged by the Prussians, refused to accept the armistice negotiated by the government in Versailles and established a Commune. It was brutally repressed by French troops. In a single week in May, between twenty and thirty thousand Communards were killed.
