Resolution of The Dreyfus Affair - Defeat of Dupuy Ministry

Defeat of Dupuy Ministry

The Dupuy cabinet was finally overthrown (June 12), and the groups on the Left, facing the danger of a threatening military pronouncement, decided to uphold nothing but a ministry of "Republican defense." On June 22 Waldeck-Rousseau succeeded in forming a cabinet, in which General Marquis de Galliffet was Minister of War.

The Sfax, with Dreyfus on board, arrived on July 1 at Port Houliguen, near Quiberon. Hurriedly disembarked on a stormy night, he was immediately transferred to the military prison of Rennes. After five years of physical and moral torture, which he had survived only by a miracle of will-power, the unhappy man had been reduced to a pitiable state of bodily and mental exhaustion. For five weeks the attorneys chosen by his family, Demange and Labori, were busy acquainting him as far as possible with the remarkable events that had occurred during his absence; his attitude while the trial was progressing proved he had difficulty realizing the situation.

The trial began on 7 August, in one of the rooms of the lycée at Rennes. The court-martial was composed entirely of artillery officers, except the president, Colonel Jouaust, who belonged to the corps of engineers. The public prosecutor was Major Carrière, a retired gendarme, who had begun to study law at the age of sixty. In accordance with legal requirements, the indictment was in substance the same as at the previous trial; the only question put to the court was whether Dreyfus had delivered up the documents enumerated in the bordereau. It appeared, therefore, that only witnesses who could give evidence on this point would be heard, and such, in fact, were the instructions issued by the Ministry of War, but these directives were respected neither by the prosecution, nor by the defense. Hence the Rennes trial was but a repetition of the interminable string of witnesses who had already been heard at Zola's trial and in the Court of Cassation, most of whom only brought forward opinions, suppositions, or tales absolutely foreign to the question. The generals, forming a compact group which this time worked under Mercier's personal direction, delivered regular harangues and continually interfered in the debate; the president, a mere Colonel overawed by his superior officers, exhibited as much deference to them as he showed harshness and sharpness to Dreyfus. From the beginning to end of the trial he made no pretence of keeping account of the facts duly established by the Court of Cassation. Esterhazy's admissions, intermixed, it is true, with lies, were held as being null and void. The voluminous correspondence he addressed to Jouaust and Carrière was discarded. The questions asked by one of the judges indicated that someone had told him the pretended "original bordereau" had been annotated by the Emperor Wilhelm himself, and merely copied by Esterhazy.

The examination of Dreyfus himself was without interest; he confined himself to denials, and preserved an entirely military attitude, the exaggerated correctness of which did not win much sympathy. Several hearings behind closed doors were devoted to the examination of the military and diplomatic secret dossiers. General Chanoine, delegate of the War Office, had (as explained by him later, through inadvertence) again incorporated in them the false version of the Panizzardi telegram, together with a commentary from Du Paty.

General Mercier's evidence (12 August), announced with much parade and bustle, was put forward in a clever speech, but brought out nothing new, unless it were a note from the Austrian military attaché, Schneider, which Mercier had procured by undisclosed means. In this note the Austrian diplomat declared that he persisted in "believing" in the guilt of Dreyfus. The note was of the year 1895 or 1896; but a false date had been written on the copy, "30 November 1897" — a date later than the discovery of Esterhazy's handwriting, and by which, as a matter of fact, Schneider had completely changed his opinion. Called upon to explain the part he played in 1894, Mercier admitted, this time without hesitation, the communication of the secret dossier, took credit for it himself, and declared that if necessary he was ready to do it again.