On January 10, 1898, some three years after the secret trial and conviction, by a council of war, of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, then a staff officer of the French army, of having sold French military secrets to a foreign power, in consequence of which he was stripped of his uniform in a degrading public ceremony and sent for life to Devil’s Island, a French penal settlement situated off the coast of French Guiana, where he is now confined under guard, a second council of war convened in Paris for the trial of Major Marie Charles Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy, a French infantry officer temporarily relieved from active service on account of poor health, the charge against him—preferred by Mathieu Dreyfus, brother of Captain Alfred Dreyfus—being that he was the real author of the bordereau, or itemized memorandum, supposed to have been written by Captain Dreyfus, and on the strength of which the latter was convicted.
The trial was conducted publicly until the most important witness, Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart, of the Fourth Algerian Sharpshooters, was reached, when the council went into secret session, remaining behind closed doors until the evening of January 11, when the doors were thrown open and General de Luxer, the president of the council, announced a unanimous vote in acquittal of the defendant.
Two days later—January 13—“L’Aurore,” a daily paper published in Paris under the directorship of Ernest Vaughan and the editorship of Georges Clemenceau, and having as its gérant, or legally responsible editor, J. A. Perrenx, published the following letter from Emile Zola, man of letters, to Félix Faure, president of France:
I ACCUSE...!
LETTER TO M. FELIX FAURE, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC.
Monsieur le Président:
Will you permit me, in my gratitude for the kindly welcome that you once extended to me, to have a care for the glory that belongs to you, and to say to you that your star, so lucky hitherto, is threatened with the most shameful, the most ineffaceable, of stains?
You have emerged from base calumnies safe and sound; you have conquered hearts. You seem radiant in the apotheosis of that patriotic fête which the Russian alliance has been for France, and you are preparing to preside at the solemn triumph of our Universal Exposition, which will crown our great century of labor, truth, and liberty. But what a mud-stain on your name—I was going to say on your reign—is this abominable Dreyfus affair! A council of war has just dared to acquit an Esterhazy in obedience to orders, a final blow at all truth, at all justice. And now it is done! France has this stain upon her cheek; it will be written in history that under your presidency it was possible for this social crime to be committed.