Resolution of The Dreyfus Affair - Trial Before The Court of Cassation

Trial Before The Court of Cassation

The government was replaced on 3 November by a cabinet of "republican union" presided over by Charles Dupuy, with Freycinet at the War Office and Lebret as keeper of the seals. The Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation, having the demand for a revision laid before it, held public hearings on October 27 and 28 to decide upon the admissibility of the demand. State attorney Manau and councilor Bard, the latter in a very remarkable report, both pronounced themselves in favor of revision. They adopted the two motives for the request presented by Madame Dreyfus: the admitted forgery by Colonel Henry, and the report of the handwriting experts of 1897, tending to show that the bordereau was not in Dreyfus's handwriting, as had been claimed in 1894, but was "a tracing by Esterhazy." The state attorney, an old republican, was in favor of immediately annulling the sentence of 1894 and suspending the punishment of Dreyfus; the councilor Bard, mindful of the resistance of the military as expressed in Zurlinden's letter, proposed that the Criminal Chamber simply declare the claim "formally admissible" and proceed to a further inquiry which would set people's minds at rest. It was this last expedient that commended itself to the Criminal Chamber (29 October); it was further decided (3 November) that instead of appointing a special commission, the court as a whole should hold this supplementary inquiry. They began at once and heard, in greatest secrecy, a long series of witnesses, including Esterhazy, who, under indictment for swindling his cousin Christian Esterhazy, obtained a safe-conduct to Paris. On 15 November the Criminal Chamber decided that Dreyfus be informed of the commencement of proceedings for the revision and returned to France to present his defense. This was the first news that the unhappy man had heard of the campaign begun in his behalf.

Before the Court of Cassation, as in the actions against both Esterhazy and Zola, the principal witness for the revision was to be Colonel Picquart. To weaken the importance of his evidence and to retaliate for the revision, the military party wished to force the colonel's condemnation beforehand. The inquiry into his case, entrusted to Captain Tavernier, was quickly ended. On 24 November General Zurlinden, governor of Paris, signed the order demanding his trial before the court martial; he was charged with forging the "petit bleu," with using other forgeries, and with communicating secret documents concerning national defense. Numerous petitions from "intellectuals" protested against these hasty measures and demanded that the judgment of Picquart should be delayed until the result of the inquiry in the Court of Cassation should have put in its true light the part he had played in all this affair. The same opinion was expressed in the Chamber of Deputies by the deputies Bos, Millerand, and Poincaré, the latter being one of the ministers of 1894 who took advantage of this opportunity to "unburden his conscience."

Freycinet and Dupuy refused to postpone the court-martial but were willing to hamper it by allowing the Court of Cassation to claim the Picquart dossier. Finally, after a fruitless attempt by Waldeck-Rousseau to pass a law allowing the Supreme Court to suspend the case of Picquart, the colonel, who was awaiting trial before both the "tribunal correctionnel" and the court-martial, applied to the Court of Cassation to rule on the case. The court ordered that the two dossiers should be communicated to it, thus indefinitely postponing the meeting of the court-martial. (After the close of the inquiry, on March 3, 1899, the court decided that the Civil Court alone was concerned with the chief accusations against Picquart, and he was transferred from the military prison at Cherche-Midi to the civil prison of La Santé.)

After having almost terminated the hearing of the witnesses, the Criminal Chamber insisted upon having the secret dossier, withheld by military authority, communicated to it. This request met with strenuous opposition; the matter was even taken up before the Chamber of Deputies (19 December). The government, however, before deciding, required safeguards against indiscreet publication; the measure, accepted by the Court of Cassation (27 December), consisted of an officer of the War Office carrying the dossier every day to court and to bringing it back to the War Office in the evening.