Page 16 - HISTORY ANGKOR

DEGRADATION
Alfred Dreyfus, convicted of treason,
is stripped of his rank and military
insignia before soldiers at the École
Militaire in Paris in January 1895.
BIANCHETT/LEEMAGE/PRISM ARCHIVO

The Dreyfus Affair:

France’s Battle for the Truth

Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, was wrongly convicted of selling military secrets to France’s

enemies. The controversial case caused a devastating split in France that lingers today.

hen Alfred Dreyfus his behalf—a ploy to obtain a sample of War of 1870-71. Suspicions that someone
was summoned to Dreyfus’s handwriting without arous- in their ranks was still passing secrets
the French Ministry ing any suspicion. After examining the to the Germans hardened into certain-
of War on October 15, note, du Paty, an amateur graphologist, ty when the bordereau came to light;
W1894, he had no in- concluded that Dreyfus’s handwriting whoever had written it was offering to
kling that his life, and French society as matched that on a bordereau, or memo, sell reports on French artillery to the
a whole, was about to be turned upside that had recently been recovered from Germans. On the basis of his so-called
down. the wastebasket of the German Embas- expertise in handwriting analysis, du Paty
Dreyfus was a promising officer who sy in Paris. accused Dreyfus of betraying France and
believed he had a bright career ahead In 1894 the French military believed arrested him for high treason.

of him. Gen. Armand du Paty de Clam a spy was in their midst. France was still The unsigned bordereau was the on-
greeted him and, due to a bandaged right reeling from its humiliating defeat by ly evidence against Dreyfus, but two
hand, asked Dreyfus to write a note on German forces in the Franco-Prussian other factors put him squarely in the

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