CHAPTER VII
THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF JEAN CASIMIR-PERIER
June, 1894, to January, 1895
AND OF FÉLIX FAURE
January, 1895, to February, 1899
The customary promptness in the choice of a President, so unfamiliar to American campaigns, was observed in the election of Carnot's successor. The historic name and the social and financial position of the new chief magistrate, Jean Casimir-Perier, seemed to the monarchical sister-nations a guarantee of national stability and dignity. In reality the election brought about a more definite cleavage between rival political tendencies. Casimir-Perier, grandson of Louis-Philippe's great minister, obviously represented the Moderates, most of whom tried in all sincerity to carry out the esprit nouveau and a policy of good-will toward the Catholic Church. The Radicals said that this was playing into the hands of the Clericals, and to the Socialists Casimir-Perier was merely a hated capitalist. He was, moreover, unfortunately unfit for the acrimonies of political life. High-strung and emotional, he writhed under misinterpretation and abuse, and rebelled against the constitutional powerlessness of his office. He had never really wanted the Presidency and had accepted it chiefly through the personal persuasion of his friend the statesman Burdeau, who unfortunately died soon after his election. The brief Presidency of Casimir-Perier, lasting less than a year, was destined to see the beginning of the worst trial the French Republic had yet experienced, the famous Dreyfus case.
The Administration, in which Dupuy remained Prime Minister, began by repressive measures, laws directed against the anarchists and the trial en masse of thirty defendants ranging from utopian theorists to actual criminals. Most of them were acquitted, but the procedure did not ingratiate the Government with the advanced parties. Toward the end of 1894 the Dreyfus case began to be talked of, an affair which was destined to develop into a tremendous struggle of the leaders of the army and the Church to obtain control of the nation.
In September, 1894, an officer named Henry, of the spy service of the French army, came into possession of a document pieced together from fragments stolen from a waste-paper basket in the German Embassy. This document, containing a bordereau or memorandum of information largely about the French artillery offered to the German military attaché, Schwartzkoppen, was anonymous, but Henry undoubtedly recognized, sooner or later, the handwriting of a friend, Major Esterhazy, a soldier of fortune in the French army, of bad reputation and shady character. Unable to destroy the document, which had been seen by others, Henry tried to fasten it on somebody else. Indeed, many people believe that Henry was an accomplice of Esterhazy in German pay. By a strange coincidence it happened that the handwriting of the bordereau somewhat resembled that of a brilliant young Jewish officer of the General Staff named Alfred Dreyfus. He belonged to a wealthy Alsatian family, and from antecedent probability would not seem to need to play a traitor's part, but he was intensely unpopular among his fellows because of many disagreeable traits of character. Moreover, anti-Semitism, formerly non-existent in France, was now rife. It had been largely fomented by the anti-Jewish agitator Edouard Drumont, with his book la France juive (1886) and his newspaper the Libre Parole (1892). Prejudice against the Jews as tricky financiers had been prepared and encouraged by the sensational failure of the great bank, the Union générale, a Catholic rival of the Rothschilds, in 1882, and by the Panama scandals with the doings of Jacques de Reinach, Cornelius Herz, and Arton. The Libre Parole had worked against Jewish officers in the army, an activity which culminated in some sensational duels, particularly one between Captain Mayer and the marquis de Morès (1892), in which the Jew was killed.