19th century
Dreyfus Affair
1894-1906·Paris
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus convicted of treason and publicly degraded (5 Jan. 1895), deported to Devil's Island, rehabilitated in 1906
Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jewish artillery officer, was sentenced to perpetual deportation for treason at the conclusion of a court-martial held behind closed doors. On January 5, 1895, he was publicly degraded in the courtyard of the École militaire in Paris, before a screaming crowd, then sent to Devil's Island, where he would remain in solitary confinement.
The establishment of doubt over the documents in the case, Émile Zola's letter to the President of the Republic, and the ensuing mobilization turned the affair into a political, moral, and religious crisis from which France would emerge transformed. A second court-martial, held in Rennes, again found him guilty before he was pardoned; the Cour de cassation rehabilitated him in 1906 and he was reinstated in the army. Theodor Herzl, a press correspondent at the degradation ceremony, would see in it the decisive argument for political Zionism.
- Period :
- 19th century
- Type :
- Trials and executions
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- France
Archives du procès et arrêts de la Cour de cassation ; presse française contemporaine et correspondance de Theodor Herzl.