![]() ![]() Through their friends in the press they secured the publication of a facsimile of a document known as the Bordereau-a list of documents supposed to be in Dreyfus's handwriting and addressed apparently to the military attaché of a foreign power, which was alleged to constitute the chief evidence against the convict. Had the latter known how to preserve silence the mystery would perhaps have been yet unsolved but in their anxiety to allay all suspicions they made one false step, which proved the bcgin- ningoftheirruin. They were wealthy, and their activity unsettled the public mind and aroused the apprehensions of the conspirators. Meanwhile the family of Dreyfus, absolutely convinced of his innocence, were casting about for the means of clearing his character and securing his liberation. For a few months after the Dreyfus court-martial there was a comparative lull but the highly strung condition of popular passion was illustrated by a violent debate on "The Jewish Peril" in the Chamber of Deputies (25th April 1893), and by two outrages with explosives at the Rothschild bank in Paris. It was the most ambitious and most unscrupulous attempt yet made to prove the nationalist hypothesis of the anti-Semites, and in its' failure it afforded the most striking illustration of the dangers of the whole movement by bringing France to the verge of revolution. The Dreyfus Case registerd the climax not only of French, but of European anti-Semitism. Dreyfus was degraded and transported for life amid unparalleled scenes of public excitement. Panama had prepared the people to believe anything and when it was announced that a court-martial, sitting in secret, had convicted Dreyfus, there was a howl of execration against the Jews from one end of the country to the other, although the alleged crime of the convict and the evidence by which it was supported were quite unknown. Anti-Semitic feeling was now thoroughly aroused. The first hint of the arrest appeared in the Libre Parole and before the facts had been officially communicated to the public that journal was busy with a campaign against the war minister, based on the apprehension that, in conspiracy with the Juixríe and his republican colleagues, he might exert himself to shield the traitor. From the beginning the hand of the anti-Semite was flagrant in the new sensation. In 1894 the military side of the agitation was revived by the arrest of a prominent Jewish staff officer, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, on a charge of treason. He resigned the next year, and Felix Faure was elected (1895) to fill his place. Casimir-Perier quietly succeeded (1894) to the office left vacant by the death of Carnot. Dreyfus was sentenced to be publicly degraded, to be expelled from the army, and to be imprisoned for life on Devil's Island.Īnarchist attacks on society and government culminated in the summer of 1894, when an Italian anarchist fatally stabbed President Carnot as he was driving through the streets of Lyons. He was arrested in 1894 and charged with treasonable correspondence with a foreign power - presumably with Germany. Churchmen attacked him as a Jew and as an enemy of Christian France. Suspicion fell upon Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer. For some time there had been a "leakage" in the military secret-service department. In the midst of these attacks, a series of abusive articles entitled "The Jews in the Army" appeared in the Paris Litre Parole in May, 1892. Of the population of France, over 30,000,000 were Catholics, 700,000 Protestants, 54,000 Jews, and 7,000,000 of no declared religion. He was, they declared, "a man without a country," who was moved by avarice, but never by patriotism. They violently denounced him as an intriguer, a usurer, and an extortioner. Edouard Drumont's book "Jewish France" signaled the rise of modern anti-Semitism, attacking Jews for capitalism, radicalism, and other "modern problems." The French socialists hated the capitalist wherever found, but most of all they hated the Jewish capitalist. It did not spring directly, as of old, from religious antipathy to the Hebrew people, but rather from jealousy of their commercial success. Late in the nineteenth century the bitter anti-Semitic prejudice, which was so marked in mediaeval times, again broke out in Europe. ![]() Third Republic 1892-1906 - The Dreyfus Affair ![]()
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