298 



FRANCE. 



for slander, and twice convicted, escaping to 

 England before the second trial because the com- 

 plaint was so drawn that he could not adduce 

 proofs of his accusations. M. Cavaignac, on be- 

 coming Minister of War, informed the Chamber 

 of the existence of a letter in the correspondence 

 between the two foreign attaches in which the 

 name of Dreyfus was mentioned. This letter 

 was soon afterward discovered to be a forgery. 

 Col. Henry, who had succeeded Col. Picquart in 

 the intelligence department, confessed to haying 

 forged it for the good of the country, he said 

 and a few days later he committed suicide in 

 prison. M. Cavaignac and Gen. De Boisdeffre 

 resigned, and the new ministry, headed by M. 

 Dupuy, when Madame Dreyfus petitioned once 

 more for a revision of the trial, on the ground 

 that new material evidence had been discovered, 

 referred the question to the criminal branch of 

 the Court of Cassation. While the case was 

 pending in the criminal chamber M. De Beaure- 

 paire, one of the magistrates of the Court of 

 Cassation, sought to impugn in advance the ex- 

 pected decision in favor of revision by accusing 

 the president and another judge of the criminal 

 branch of having shown partiality to Picquart 

 at the time of his trial and of having held pri- 

 vate communications with him and his lawyer. 

 These charges were investigated by order of the 

 Minister of Justice, and were declared to be base- 

 less. M. Quesnay de Beaurepaire resigned his 

 judgeship and published his accusations, adding 

 fresh ones to them. An inquiry was then insti- 

 tuted to ascertain whether the criminal cham- 

 ber had lost the public confidence. When the 

 " miserable and fastidious details,'' as M. Dupuy 

 designated them, were laid before the Chamber 

 of Deputies, the insinuations against judges that 

 M. De Beaurepaire had made being repeated in 

 reports that Gen. Zurlinden, the military gov- 

 ernor of Paris, had taken it upon himself to order 

 to be made of the proceedings of the civil court, 

 the Court of Cassation and the Government were 

 sustained by a vote of 423 to 124. The Senate 

 also vindicated the Court of Cassation and ap- 

 proved the separation of the judicial and execu- 

 tive powers. Without awaiting the result of the 

 inquiry, an attempt was made by the opponents 

 of revision to pass a special law taking the Drey- 

 fus appeal out of the hands of the criminal cham- 

 ber when it had already expended three months 

 on the investigation, requiring the whole work 

 to be done over again by the three chambers of 

 the Court of Cassation sitting together. A sub- 

 scription for the widow of Col. Henry, the sui- 

 cide, to aid her in bringing suit against Joseph 

 Reinach for defaming his memory by suggesting 

 in newspaper articles that he had supplied Ester- 

 hazy with the treasonable information mentioned 

 in the bordereau, was one of the means of agita- 

 tion adopted by the antirevisionists, the Anti- 

 Semites, Nationalists, Boulangists, and mon- 

 archistic revolutionists, who, forming the Patri- 

 otic League, the League of the French Father- 

 land, and other associations, which with the 

 active participation of Orleanists and the covert 

 aid of Bonapartists, under the pretext of defend- 

 ing the honor of the army, aimed at the subver- 

 sion of the republic. The League of Patriots was 

 frankly political, composed of Boulangists and 

 open enemies of the republic as at present consti- 

 tuted. The League of the French Fatherland 

 was joined by many men of the class called in- 

 tellectual, representatives of the finest French 

 culture, a large part of whom withdrew when 

 they found that its object was not to surmount 

 the prejudices awakened by the Dreyfus case, 



and instill respect for the decisions of the civil 

 courts, but to thwart revision and discredit the 

 courts. Attacks on President Loubet, in which 

 M. Coppee, the honorary vice-president of the 

 league, joined, caused the resignation of most of 

 the remaining academicians and distinguished 

 representatives of literature. At the same time 

 many officers of the army joined the league se- 

 cretly, the names of military adherents being 

 kept from the public. 



Yielding to public clamor, the Government, hop- 

 ing thereby to obviate all public distrust of the 

 decision of the court, introduced a bill providing 

 that the criminal chamber should conclude the 

 taking of evidence, but that all the chambers 

 united should then decide the question of annull- 

 ing the condemnation or sending Dreyfus before 

 a fresh court-martial. The bill was based on a 

 report of M. Mazeau, first president of the Court 

 of Cassation, who concluded that it would not 

 be well to leave the criminal chamber to judge 

 alone, although the result of the inquiry insti- 

 tuted by the Minister of Justice exonerated the 

 judges of the criminal chamber, and the other 

 members of the court besides M. Mazeau con- 

 demned the proposed law, as the commission of 

 the Chamber, which had not yet reported, was 

 also likely to do. The bill was offered by the 

 Government as a measure of appeasement, calcu- 

 lated to satisfy the public mind and remove all 

 doubts as to the justice of the verdict. The 

 ministry threatened to resign if the bill was not 

 passed as it stood, and it was passed on Feb. 

 10 by 332 to 216 votes. \Vhen the revision bill 

 was before the Senate a street mob, headed by 

 Deputies Deroulede, Marcel-Habert, Millevoye, 

 and Drumont, hooted the newly elected President 

 of the republic, calling him a Dreyfusard. The 

 prosecution of Joseph Reinach, the most promi- 

 nent and ardent of the Jewish defenders of Drey- 

 fus, who had insinuated that Henry was a trai- 

 tor, and was therefore charged by Mme. Henry 

 with defaming her dead husband, was the great- 

 est lawsuit ever seen at the Paris assizes, over 

 400 witnesses being summoned and a public sub- 

 scription raised among the anti-Dreyfusards to 

 defray the expenses of the prosecution. On Feb. 

 24 Paul Deroulede, president of the League of 

 Patriots, accompanied by its secretary, M. Mar- 

 cel-Habert, made a bold attempt to incite a mili- 

 tary insurrection. The two Deputies, at the head 

 of a few hundred followers, pushed themselves 

 into the ranks of Gen. Roget's brigade as it was 

 returning to the barracks from the funeral of 

 President Faure. They succeeded in entering the 

 barracks, and began to harangue the officers, 

 calling upon them to upset the parliamentary 

 republic in order to establish in its place a ple- 

 biscitary republic. Gen. Roget thereupon had 

 them arrested for the offense of provocation by 

 speeches and cries addressed in a public place to 

 soldiers with the object of seducing them from 

 their military duties and from the obedience 

 which they owe to their chiefs. After his arrest 

 M. Deroulede avowed that he had the revolu- 

 tionary intention of raising the army to rebel- 

 lion against the parliamentarians in order to abol- 

 ish limited suffrage and restore universal suffrage 

 for the good of the republic and the deliverance 

 of the nation. M. Millevoye was arrested for 

 inciting a street disturbance, but was released. 

 In consequence of the demonstrations of the 

 leagues, the Government instituted proceedings 

 for their suppression as unauthorized associa- 

 tions under the law of 1834. The first of the 

 prosecutions was directed against the pro-Drey- 

 fus association called the Rights of Man League, 





