Picquart's Investigations of The Dreyfus Affair - The Secret Dossier

The Secret Dossier

Picquart told General de Boisdeffre about his discovery, and upon the order of the general and of the minister of war, Jean-Baptiste Billot, he was directed to continue his inquiry as quietly as possible. Boisdeffre did not seem to be interested in pursuing the case. If Esterhazy were really a traitor, he would be dismissed from the army quietly; another Dreyfus affair was to be avoided. Picquart now set to work in earnest to get samples of Esterhazy's handwriting, and he succeeded in obtaining two letters which the major had written. On looking at them Picquart discovered that the writing was identical with that of the bordereau attributed to Dreyfus. He wished to make sure of his impression, so he showed some photographs of these letters to Armand du Paty de Clam and Alphonse Bertillon.

Du Paty declared: "They are from Matthew Dreyfus"; Bertillon said: "It is the writing of the bordereau." And when Picquart told him the letters were of recent date, he declared: "The Jews have, for the past year, been training some one to imitate the writing; he has succeeded in making a perfect reproduction."

Picquart realised that if Esterhazy, as the handwriting seemed to indicate, were the author of the bordereau, Dreyfus must be the victim of a judicial error. He obtained the secret dossier communicated to the judges in 1894, and which had been stored since then in Henry's safe. He discovered that the documents in the dossier contained absolutely nothing that applied, or could be made to apply, to Dreyfus. Of the only two papers that were of any importance, one, the document "canaille de D . . .," did not in any way concern any officer, but only someone who had assumed the name of Dubois, while the other, the memorandum of Schwartzkoppen, almost certainly pointed to Esterhazy. Du Paty's commentary was a mass of wild suppositions. Later this commentary was claimed by General Mercier as his private property and quietly destroyed by him.

Picquart immediately drew up a report and brought it to Boisdeffre, who ordered Picquart to relate his story to the deputy-chief of the staff, Charles Arthur Gonse. The general received Picquart, listened to his revelations, and concluded that they must "separate the two affairs," that of Dreyfus and that of Esterhazy. These instructions, confirmed by Boisdeffre, seemed absurd to Picquart, since the bordereau established an indissoluble bond between the two cases; he should have understood from that moment that his superiors had determined not to permit the reopening of the Dreyfus affair.