The Dreyfus Affair (58 page)

Colonel Georges Picquart. From a Catholic background, he had a meteoric career in the French army and was appointed Chief of the Statistical Section on the death of Colonel Sandherr. The draft of a letter-telegram filched from Schwarzkoppen's waste-paper basket led him to realise that Dreyfus was innocent. His discovery was ignored by his superiors who posted him abroad.

Major Armand du Paty de Clam. An officer on the General Staff, an amateur hand-writing expert, and a cousin of General de Boisdeffre, he was given the task of gathering evidence against Dreyfus. He was convinced of his guilt and hoped to extract a confession.

Commandant Charles-Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy, the man to whom the letter-telegram from Schwarzkoppen was addressed. A degenerate and embittered man, perennially short of money, it was believed on the Right that he had been chosen to replace Dreyfus by the Jewish ‘syndicate'. Picquart was said to be in its pay.

Commandant Joseph Henry, the son of a farmer who had risen from the ranks to be third in command at the Statistical Section, recruited agents from the Parisian low life and was adept in the dirty tricks department. He revered his superiors and liked to anticipate their unspoken orders.

Ritual degradation in front of serried ranks of soldiers at the École Militaire was part of the sentence handed down after the judges of his court-martial had unanimously found Dreyfus guilty of betraying military secrets to a foreign power.

Alfred Dreyfus at the time of his conviction and deportation from France.

Devil's Island. When he first arrived in French Guiana, Dreyfus was held in the prison on the Île Royale while a hut and guard house were built on the smallest of the Salvation Islands, Devil's Island. Until then it had housed convicts with leprosy. He would remain there in solitary confinement for more than four years.

Comte Albert de Mun. A great orator and liberal Catholic who abhorred anti-Semitism and accepted France's republican form of government, he believed that the agitation to re-open the case against Dreyfus was the work of ‘a mysterious and hidden power strong enough to be able to cast suspicion at will on those who command our Army'.

Jules Guérin, founder of the Anti-Semitic League, joined Déroulède in his attempted coup and named his League after a Masonic Lodge to avoid legal restrictions imposed on unauthorised associations.

Henri Marquis de Rochefort. A Communard who had escaped from the penal settlement in New Caledonia, he had become an extreme nationalist and fanatic anti-Semite, convinced that the judges who re-opened the case against Dreyfus had been bought by the Jewish ‘syndicate'.

Maurice Barrès. An erudite journalist, essayist and politician, he believed that France was threatened by a coalition of Protestants and Jews whose first loyalties lay with their coreligionists abroad.