Page 19 - HISTORY ANGKOR

The Real

Traitor

FERDINAND Esterhazy, an officer of
Hungarian origin, had begun selling
French army intelligence to Ger-
many in 1892 to pay off gambling
debts. Following Dreyfus’s convic-
tion, Esterhazy’s stockbroker saw
a reproduction of the bordereau in
the newspaper Le Figaro and recog-
nized the handwriting as Esterhazy’s.
Protected at his trial by military anti-
Dreyfusards, Esterhazy escaped
punishment, and went to England,
where he scraped a living as a trans-
lator and writer. He was interviewed
by the journalist Rachel Beer for the
London Observer, in the course of
which he confessed: “I wrote the
bordereau.” The author of several
anti-Semitic tracts, Esterhazy died
in England in 1923 and was buried
under a false name.

ESTERHAZY’S TRIAL, DEPICTED IN LE PETIT
JOURNAL, PARIS, IN JANUARY 1898
INTERFOTO/ALAMY

France. Zola was sentenced to jail for libel would appear before a new court-martial. degraded 11 years earlier. With the start
but fled to England. After four years on Devil’s Island, Dreyfus of World War I, he reenlisted and fought

Under renewed scrutiny, the lies and returned to France in July for the retrial. at the Battle of Verdun, then returned
falsifications surrounding the Dreyfus Despite the overwhelming evidence home to a quiet retirement. He would
case began to unravel. Esterhazy was of his innocence, the military court still die in Paris in 1935 at the age of 75. The
dismissed from the army for “habitu- found Dreyfus guilty in another show trial army did not publicly declare his inno-
al misconduct” and promptly fled the and sentenced him to 10 years in prison, cence until 1995.
country for England. The minister of reduced to five for time served. The ver- With its explosive combination of
war, Godefroy Cavaignac, who had pre- dict triggered an uproar. The weakened “state collaboration in the miscarriage of
viously been convinced of Dreyfus’s French government, fearing the conse- justice [and] the impact of the media on
guilt, proclaimed that the letter Henry quences of another trial, offered Dreyfus the public perception of events,”the Drey-
produced from the Italian military at- clemency. His health impaired by the fus affair, wrote the late Yale University
taché was a forgery. Henry was sent to jail, years on Devil’s Island, Dreyfus accepted historian Paula Hyman, “raises issues that
where he committed suicide. In January the pardon provided that he could con- still resonate today.” In November 2021
1899 a proposal to have the Dreyfus case tinue his fight to prove his innocence. Éric Zemmour, a prominent far-right
heard by a Supreme Court of Appeals was Shortly afterward, the government political journalist in France, argued that
approved. issued an amnesty on all crimes related Dreyfus’s innocence was “not obvious,” a
As the anti-Dreyfusards lost credi- to the case, except for Dreyfus to allow position criticized by France’s president,
bility, the right-wing and anti-Semitic him to pursue his exoneration, which Emmanuel Macron, among many others.
nationalist group Ligue des Patriotes he finally received in 1906. He was then The passion incited by Zemmour’s words
attemped a failed coup in February 1898. reinstated in the army as a lieutenant- across France shows that the affaire Drey-

With France in crisis, the Supreme Court colonel and made Chevalier of the Le- fus is far from over.
overturned the 1894 verdict against gion of Honor in the same courtyard of
Dreyfus in June 1899, and ruled that he the École Militaire where he had been —Ainhoa Campos

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 17