THE DREYFUS AFFAIR & THE THIRD REPUBLIC

This research paper traces the course of the Dreyfus Affair in the French Third Republic between 1894 and 1906 and examines the cardinal role played by anti-Semitism in its origin and development. Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), son of a wealthy Jewish-Alsatian textile millowner, and a member of the French Army's General Staff, was convicted in 1894 and again in 1899 of treason by military courts. He was originally given a life sentence. He was stripped of his rank and officially degraded. He served nearly five years' imprisonment on Devil's Island before he was pardoned by the President of the Republic in 1899. Even though the evidence against Dreyfus was insufficient to warrant his conviction, it took his family and other defenders (Dreyfusards) 12 years before France's highest civil court annulled his convictions in 1906.

French anti-Semitism played an important role in Dreyfus' original arrest and conviction. It helped prevent disclosure of the illegal methods secretly used by the French Army to fabricate evidence against Dreyfus and to coverup its misdeeds and to delay remedial action by the French government. In a broader sense, the Dreyfus Affair, the struggle for and against revision of the Dreyfus verdicts, shook the foundations of the Third Republic and represented the most divisive and passionate controversy of fin de siecle France. It exposed and accentuated deep schisms in the French body politic and s

. . .
spired plot to undermine the Republic were spread by the sensationalist Paris press. When the seven officers who comprised the in camera court martial convened near the Cherche-Midi prison on December 19-22, 1894 appeared to be unconvinced of the flimsy evidence against Dreyfus, Henry with the approval of his superiors put together a secret dossier on Dreyfus. It contained the D. letter and other spurious, tendentious and hearsay materials, which were withheld from Dreyfus' defense counsel Edgar Demange in violation of French law, but which persuaded the court to convict Dreyfus unanimously of treason. Dreyfus was sentenced to life imprisonment. In a humiliating ceremony, the Parade at the Ecole de Guerre of January 5, 1895, Dreyfus was publicly degraded and stripped of his decorations and rank. He was then shipped to Devil's Isle off the Coast of Guiana where he was held in solitary confinement, allowed to speak to no one and often manacled. En route, he was nearly lynched by an angry mob at the port of La Rochelle on January 18. Phase II: Uphill Struggle for Revision (1895-1897) Despite the determined efforts of his brother Mathieu, little headway was made to clear Dreyfus in 1895-96. Public opinion was solidly convinced of
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Third Republic, Dreyfus Affair, Canal Company, Meanwhile Mathieu, Dreyfus Mercier, Catholic Church, Hoffman Dreyfusards, Successive Republican, Colonel Max, L'Aurore Zola's, dreyfus affair, third republic, court martial, de boisdeffre, government army, evidence dreyfus, von schwartzkoppen, cour de cassation, cherche-midi prison, french anti-semitism, de cassation, la libre parole, attache paris colonel, military attache paris, military court martial,
Approximate Word count = 4114
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)

More Essays on THE DREYFUS AFFAIR & THE THIRD REPUBLIC