--- title: The Dreyfus Affair:press, forgery and J'accuse, 1894-1906 url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/dreyfus-affair-1894-1906/ description: From 1894 to 1906 France's daily and illustrated press fought over one army captain, Alfred Dreyfus, convicted of treason on evidence that included section: Case studies --- ![Illustration: a pre-1914 imperial intelligence-dossier collage of colonial telegraph logs, sepia field photography and empire maps.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-pre1914.jpg) Case studies # The Dreyfus Affair:press, forgery and J'accuse, 1894-1906 1. [Home](https://propagandaarchive.org/) 2. [Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/) 3. The Dreyfus Affair: press, forgery and J'accuse, 1894-1906 At a glance From 1894 to 1906 France's daily and illustrated press fought over one army captain, Alfred Dreyfus, convicted of treason on evidence that included a secret file shown to the judges but not to his defence… - **When:** 1894–1906 - **Actor:** La Libre Parole… - **Target:** French newspaper readers and voters… - **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are - **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures - **Techniques:** [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/) [Dehumanization](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/dehumanization/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) Full details - **Actor:** La Libre Parole (Édouard Drumont), Le Petit Journal and Psst...! on the anti-Dreyfus side; L'Aurore (with Émile Zola's J'accuse) and Le Sifflet on the Dreyfusard side; the French General Staff (the Henry forgery) - **Target:** French newspaper readers and voters; the Chamber of Deputies and the courts; Captain Alfred Dreyfus and French Jews; the army and the Republic On this page - [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/dreyfus-affair-1894-1906/#what-happened) - [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/dreyfus-affair-1894-1906/#how-it-works) - [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/dreyfus-affair-1894-1906/#then-and-now) - [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/dreyfus-affair-1894-1906/#positions-on-the-record) - [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/dreyfus-affair-1894-1906/#same-method-test) - [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/dreyfus-affair-1894-1906/#how-to-spot-it) - [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/dreyfus-affair-1894-1906/#images) - [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/dreyfus-affair-1894-1906/#sources) On this page **Content note:** this page shows antisemitic front pages and cartoons from the French press of 1894 and 1898, including drawings of Jews as animals or as a hooked-nosed type, exactly as printed, and quotes the slurs they carry. **In one line:** from 1894 to 1906 France's daily and illustrated press fought over one army captain, Alfred Dreyfus, convicted of treason on evidence that included a secret file shown to the judges but not to his defence, and later on a document that a staff officer forged; the anti-Dreyfus papers ran a Jewish-conspiracy story with "traitor" as his title, the Dreyfusard papers ran Zola's open letter and allegorical covers, and the courts finally overturned the conviction in 1906. ![Cover of Le Petit Journal Supplément illustré: Dreyfus's degradation, a mounted officer breaking a sword, with the caption Le Traitre](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/le-traitre-petit-journal-dreyfus-1895.jpg) *"Le Traître: Dégradation d'Alfred Dreyfus",* Le Petit Journal, *Supplément illustré, 13 January 1895. See [Le Traître: Dégradation d'Alfred Dreyfus (The Traitor: Degradation of Alfred Dreyfus), Le Petit Journal, 13 January 1895](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/le-traitre-petit-journal-dreyfus-1895/). Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.* ## What happened - **September to 15 October 1894.** A torn, unsigned list of documents offered to the German military attaché (the *bordereau*) is found in the German embassy's waste. Army counter-intelligence attributes the handwriting to Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jewish artillery officer on the General Staff, who is arrested on 15 October ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair)). - **29 October and 1 November 1894.** *La Libre Parole*, the daily of Édouard Drumont (author of *La France juive*, 1886), reports the secret arrest and runs the banner "Haute trahison. Arrestation de l'officier juif A. Dreyfus" on 1 November ([Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme](https://www.mahj.org/en/decouvrir-collections-betsalel/haute-trahison-arrestation-de-lofficier-juif-dreyfus-la-libre-parole)). Historians treat the piece as the opening of a sustained campaign linking the case to Jewish officers. - **10 November 1894.** The paper's illustrated weekly puts Drumont on its cover over the line "A propos de Judas Dreyfus", with the officer drawn as a small figure in a spiked helmet labelled "Traitre" (below). Show all 15Show fewer - **19-22 December 1894.** Dreyfus is tried behind closed doors and found guilty by the seven judges unanimously. Before deliberation a secret file was passed to the judges without the defence seeing it; this was done illegally, and its contents were uncertain until the French Defence Ministry released the file in 2013 ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair)). - **5 January 1895.** Dreyfus is publicly degraded in the courtyard of the École militaire. *Le Petit Journal*'s Sunday supplement runs the scene on 13 January with "LE TRAITRE" as the caption. He is deported to Devil's Island. - **1896.** Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart, the new head of army intelligence, finds an intercepted message (the *petit bleu*) addressed to Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy and concludes that the bordereau is Esterhazy's handwriting. Picquart is moved to Tunisia "in the interest of the service". In early November Major Hubert-Joseph Henry hands his superiors a letter, said to be from the Italian attaché Panizzardi to his German counterpart, in which the writer says he will deny ever having had dealings with "that Jew" Dreyfus. Henry had altered a genuine Panizzardi letter, keeping its header and signature and writing the central text himself ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair)). - **10-11 January 1898.** Esterhazy is court-martialled and acquitted after about three minutes of deliberation. - **13 January 1898.** *L'Aurore* prints Émile Zola's open letter to the President of the Republic, "J'accuse...!", across its front page. The headline is generally credited to Georges Clemenceau. The paper normally sold about 30,000 copies; nearly 300,000 went out that day ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair)). It accuses named generals and handwriting experts, says the first court-martial convicted on secret evidence and that the second acquitted Esterhazy knowingly ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J'Accuse...!)). - **January-February 1898.** Anti-Jewish riots break out: 69 disturbances across 55 French localities, mostly in these two months, and in Algeria from 18 to 25 January ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair)). - **23 February 1898.** Zola is convicted of libel and sentenced to the maximum of one year and 3,000 francs. He leaves for England and returns in June 1899. - **7 July 1898.** War Minister Godefroy Cavaignac reads three documents to the Chamber as proof of Dreyfus's guilt, including the Henry letter. The Chamber votes to have his speech posted in every commune; a week later *Le Sifflet*'s cover answers him. - **30-31 August 1898.** Questioned by Cavaignac, Henry admits the forgery; he is arrested on 30 August and dies by suicide at Mont-Valérien the next day. Esterhazy leaves for England and gives interviews acknowledging that he wrote the bordereau; his claim that he did so on superiors' orders is unproven. - **14 December 1898.** *La Libre Parole* opens a subscription for Henry's widow. About 14,000 subscribers, including 53 deputies, send 131,000 francs; many donors' messages are printed ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair)). On 31 December *Psst...!*, the weekly of Forain and Caran d'Ache, puts the Dreyfusard deputy Joseph Reinach in the Parc Monceau under a *Libre Parole* "100,000 francs" banner. - **7 August to 9 September 1899.** At Rennes, a second court-martial again finds Dreyfus guilty, "with extenuating circumstances", by five votes to two. The President pardons him on 19 September. *Le Petit Journal* covers the trial with a cover of the military prison (below), its caption saying only "L'affaire Dreyfus: La prison militaire de Rennes". - **12 July 1906.** The Cour de cassation annuls the Rennes judgment without sending the case to another military court. Dreyfus is reinstated as a major on 13 July, and Picquart as brigadier general. **Content note:** An antisemitic 1894 cover from Édouard Drumont's weekly that labels the Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus "Judas" and "Traitre" before his trial, shown uncropped as printed. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![La Libre Parole illustrée cover: Édouard Drumont, huge, holds a small figure labelled Traitre by the seat of his trousers with a pair of tongs, beside a stack of his own books](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/la-libre-parole-illustree-drumont-judas-dreyfus-1894.jpg) ![L'Aurore, front page, 13 January 1898, with the headline J'Accuse...! and the letter to the President of the Republic](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/jaccuse-laurore-front-page-1898.jpg) Explain moreShow less *"A propos de Judas Dreyfus", J. Chanteclair (Lucien Émery),* La Libre Parole illustrée, *no. 70, 10 November 1894. Drumont (left, beside a stack of his books headed* La France juive*) says: "Français, voilà huit années que je vous le répète chaque jour !!!" Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.* *[L'Aurore, no. 87, front page (Paris, 13 January 1898): "J'Accuse...! Lettre au Président de la République" (J'Accuse...! Letter to the President of the Republic)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/jaccuse-laurore-front-page-1898/),* L'Aurore, *13 January 1898. Via Gallica / Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.* ## How it works - [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/): *Le Petit Journal*'s caption "LE TRAITRE" went above his name on a degradation scene eight days after a verdict; *La Libre Parole illustrée* wrote "Judas Dreyfus" and "Traitre" onto a drawing before any trial. Under the working definition the 1895 label restates a court's finding (later annulled), so it is scored as a verdict used as a title, with the case that follows it ending in reversal. The "Judas" label of November 1894 preceded any verdict. - [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/): *La Libre Parole* named Dreyfus as "the Jewish officer" in the first headline, so a charge against one man was filed against a group. Drumont's *La France juive* (about 150,000 copies in its first year) had made a case against Jews as a group eight years earlier, and the cartoon's own line says "voilà huit années que je vous le répète" (for eight years I have been telling you). Drumont and Rochefort also alleged a "syndicate" working to free Dreyfus ([Jewish Encyclopedia](https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5322-dreyfus-case-l-affaire-dreyfus)); that is their claim, and no source consulted documents it. - [Dehumanization](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/dehumanization/): *Psst...!* drew Reinach with ape-like proportions and a stereotyped face; the drawing applies a type, not an argument, to a named deputy. Show all 6Show fewer - [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): the secret file was withheld from the defence; Cavaignac read the Henry letter to the Chamber as proof and the Chamber ordered it posted in every commune; the document was a forgery, and the posting made it a public exhibit. In the other direction, the Dreyfusard weeklies printed the cases against the General Staff and left the army's own side of the argument, honour and institutional trust, to its defenders. - [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/): *L'Aurore* put the famous novelist's name in headline type as the voucher for the charges beneath. Zola's letter is also a documented set of accusations of named officers, and the court's verdict on it was a libel conviction, so the page scores the method, not whether the charges were right. - [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/): Ibels's *Le Sifflet* cover of July 1898 sets the classical figure of Truth, nude with a mirror, in front of a cowering uniformed officer, so the virtue of an allegory is carried onto one side. The anti-Dreyfus papers used flag and uniform the same way: the army as "the nation", the accused as its enemy. ![Le Sifflet cover: a nude figure of Truth at a well holds up a mirror to a slumped uniformed officer who covers his face](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/le-sifflet-verite-esterhazy-1898.jpg) ![Psst...! page: a park keeper holds up a Libre Parole newspaper marked 100000 francs while a stooped bearded figure in a top hat named as M'sieu Reinach walks by](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/psst-au-parc-monceau-reinach-1898.jpg) ![Illustration: overlapping newspaper front pages with unreadable headlines, red grease-pencil circles and clippings.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/graphics/front-pages.jpg) Illustration, not an archive object Explain moreShow less *[Le Sifflet, cover (Paris, 14 July 1898): "Après les fameuses révélations de M. Cavaignac" (After M. Cavaignac's Famous Revelations)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/le-sifflet-verite-esterhazy-1898/), Henri-Gabriel Ibels,* Le Sifflet, *14 July 1898. Via Gallica / Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.* *[Psst...!, page (Paris, 31 December 1898): "Au parc Monceau" (In the Parc Monceau)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/psst-au-parc-monceau-reinach-1898/), Caran d'Ache (per Commons),* Psst...!, *31 December 1898. Via Gallica / Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.* ## Then and now "L'affaire Dreyfus: La prison militaire de Rennes", Le Petit Journal, Supplément illustré, 9 July 1899, a few weeks before the… ![Le Petit Journal cover: a mounted gendarme and a crowd outside the gate of the military prison at Rennes, one man holding a copy of Le Petit Journal](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/petit-journal-prison-militaire-rennes-1899.jpg) *"L'affaire Dreyfus: La prison militaire de Rennes",* Le Petit Journal, *Supplément illustré, 9 July 1899, a few weeks before the Rennes trial (author unknown on Commons). Archives municipales de Rennes via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.* The same paper's 1895 cover said "LE TRAITRE"; the 1899 cover, carrying no label, shows the crowd outside the prison. The paper's editorial line stayed against Dreyfus (see below), but a caption can name a place without ruling on a person. The secret file went to the judges and the Henry letter to the Chamber; the accused saw neither. For a press racing to a verdict, compare [Remember the Maine: the yellow press and Spain, 1895-1898](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/yellow-press-1898/): that was a circulation contest between two New York dailies with no state file behind it, whereas here an army officer supplied the document. For the label in a caption, compare this cover with [Le Traître: Dégradation d'Alfred Dreyfus (The Traitor: Degradation of Alfred Dreyfus), Le Petit Journal, 13 January 1895](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/le-traitre-petit-journal-dreyfus-1895/). ## Positions on the record 5 items · Anti-Dreyfus press and camp: La Libre Parole (Drumont), L'Intransigeant , Le Petit… - **Anti-Dreyfus press and camp:** *La Libre Parole* (Drumont), *L'Intransigeant*, *Le Petit Journal* (editor Ernest Judet) and the Assumptionist daily *La Croix* held that the army's honour and the verdict of two courts-martial could not be reopened by civilians. *Le Petit Journal* had reached about one million copies a day in 1890 and about a million weekly for its illustrated supplement by 1895 ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Petit_Journal_(newspaper))). After Henry's confession *La Libre Parole* ran a public subscription for his widow. - **Dreyfusard press and camp:** *L'Aurore* (Clemenceau, Zola), *Le Siècle*, *Le Sifflet* and the Ligue des droits de l'homme held that the verdict rested on a secret file and a bordereau that was Esterhazy's, and that the army had protected Esterhazy. Their cartoons also targeted named people: *Le Sifflet* shows an uniformed officer, identified on Commons as Esterhazy, cowering before an allegory of Truth, as the other side's covers drew Dreyfus as a traitor. - **The army and the government:** the General Staff held the verdict and the secret file as sound until Henry's confession; the Brisson government's War Minister, Cavaignac, did the reading to the Chamber before the confession and resigned after it. - **Historians:** Jean-Denis Bredin's *L'Affaire* (1983) and Stephen Wilson's *Ideology and Experience* (1982) (on the antisemitic ideology around the case) are the standard studies behind the documents: the bordereau was Esterhazy's, the secret file was kept from the defence, and the Henry letter was forged. - **This archive's reading:** documented are the headlines, the covers, the secret file, the Henry forgery and its admission, the Zola conviction, the riots, the Rennes verdict and the 1906 annulment. **Not shown:** that the press alone caused the verdict or the riots, or that every anti-Dreyfus reader held the antisemitic reading of the case. ## Same-method test Had a Dreyfusard weekly put the words "Judas" and "Menteur" above a named general and drawn him as a stooped animal, it would be… Had a Dreyfusard weekly put the words "Judas" and "Menteur" above a named general and drawn him as a stooped animal, it would be scored [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) and [Dehumanization](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/dehumanization/) exactly as Chanteclair's and Caran d'Ache's drawings are. A Dreyfusard front page that printed a forged document as proof would earn [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) on the same terms as the Cavaignac reading. In the actual record, the forgery came from an army officer who held the verdict sound; the Dreyfusard side's own comparable use of the method is Zola's testimonial and Ibels's transfer, and, where its covers made the army a villain, name-calling. ## How to spot it - Check what the headline puts first: a label ("traitor", "the Jewish officer") before a finding is a claim, not a result. - Look for what the accused was not shown. A document read out in an assembly that its target never saw is an exhibit, not evidence. - Treat a famous byline as a voucher, not a source: Zola's name sold the issue, and the evidence in the letter had to be checked on its own. Show all 5Show fewer - Read the rival paper for the same week, as with the cartoons above. *La Libre Parole illustrée*'s "Judas" and *Le Sifflet*'s mirror are both drawn arguments. - Watch the caption: "La prison militaire de Rennes" and "LE TRAITRE" sit on the same paper's covers, four years apart. Sources and further reading ## Images 5 items · La Libre Parole front page of 1 November 1894 ("Haute trahison"). Described by the Musée… | Image | Source | Licence | | --- | --- | --- | | "A propos de Judas Dreyfus", J. Chanteclair, *La Libre Parole illustrée*, 10 November 1894 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_Libre_Parole_illustr%C3%A9e_(1894-11-10).jpg) | Public domain (PD-old-1923, published 1894) | | "L'affaire Dreyfus: La prison militaire de Rennes", *Le Petit Journal*, 9 July 1899 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:L%27affaire_Dreyfus_le_temps_du_proc%C3%A8s,_couverture_de_%22Le_Petit_Journal%22,_suppl%C3%A9ment_illustr%C3%A9,_9_juillet_1899.jpg) | Public domain (PD-old-70, scan by Archives municipales de Rennes) | | *Le Traître*, *Le Sifflet*, *J'accuse*, *Au parc Monceau* | FRAME gallery | Public domain | ### Image gaps - **La Libre Parole front page of 1 November 1894 ("Haute trahison").** Described by the Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme; no openly licensed full-page scan was found in the searches run. **Fillable** from Gallica. - **A facsimile of the Henry forgery.** Reproduced in books of the 1900s; no verified open-licence scan was found. **Fillable** from the Archives nationales or Gallica. - **Photographs of the 1898 riots.** None checked. **Fillable.** - **The Libre Parole Henry-subscription pages and the *Petit Journal* Zola cover.** Not found. **Fillable.** - **Esterhazy's interviews and the Rennes courtroom.** Not examined; the page uses a prison cover only. ## Sources 9 items · Jean-Denis Bredin, L'Affaire (Paris: Julliard, 1983). - Jean-Denis Bredin, *L'Affaire* (Paris: Julliard, 1983). - Stephen Wilson, *Ideology and Experience: Antisemitism in France at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair* (London: Associated University Presses, 1982). - Émile Zola, "J'accuse...! Lettre au Président de la République", *L'Aurore*, 13 January 1898 (reproduced above). - *La Libre Parole*, 1 November 1894 and 14 December 1898; *La Libre Parole illustrée*, 10 November 1894. - Joseph Reinach, *Histoire de l'Affaire Dreyfus*, 7 vols. (Paris: Fasquelle, 1901-1911). - Cour de cassation, arrêt of 12 July 1906. - Édouard Drumont, *La France juive* (Paris: Marpon et Flammarion, 1886). - Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme, ["Haute Trahison", *La Libre Parole*](https://www.mahj.org/en/decouvrir-collections-betsalel/haute-trahison-arrestation-de-lofficier-juif-dreyfus-la-libre-parole). - English Wikipedia: [Dreyfus affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair), [J'Accuse...!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J'Accuse...!), [Le Petit Journal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Petit_Journal_(newspaper)), used for dates and figures and checked against the books above.