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“Dégradation du Capitaine,” (Degradation of the Captain)
After Dreyfus was stripped of his military honors, the degradation continued. Amato’s illustration captures his humiliating parade around the courtyard of the École Militaire, the the chorus of heckles from fellow soldiers. As Dreyfus recalled it: "I heard the howls of a deluded mob, I felt the thrill which I knew must be running through those people, since they believed that before them was a convicted traitor to France….The round of the square made, the torture would be over, I believed." But the agony of that long day was only beginning.
While Henri Meyer of Le Petit Journal chose to name his picture “Le Traître” and refuses Dreyfus his title, Amato refrains from such judgments and continues to use the rank of Captain in his captions. Do these subtle differences in almost identical scenes betray the political sympathies of each illustrator and their editors? Given how polarizing the Affair had been, it is safe to say that even those tasked with the most apparently objective depictions found themselves choosing sides. -
“Dernière culbute,” (Last Summersault)
Pierre René Waldeck-Rousseau, Prime Minister of the Republic (1899 – 1902) initiated Dreyfus’s pardon. Because of his initial doubts about the Captain, he is depicted as a flip-flopper, performing “a last summersault.” -
“Dreyfus à l’Ile du Diable,” (Dreyfus on Devil’s Island)
Devil’s Island was part of a French penal colony devoted primarily to political prisoners off the coast of French Guiana. Dreyfus was exiled there in 1894, and did not leave until 1899, when he returned to France for his retrial.
In this image, Dreyfus turns away from his book in frustration, lost in his thoughts, as a prison guard watches him. Here, Le Petit Journal satisfies the French public’s curiosity to imagine Dreyfus’ condition after his highly publicized trial. A year earlier, they expressed their outrage at the presence of his mustache, claiming that alongside his imprisonment, he should be stripped of such symbols of his nationality: "We were told that the traitor, upon imprisonment, was to have his mustache shaved, hair cut, and be forced to don a prison uniform. None of this has happened -
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“How to Study” pamphlet, ca. 1943.
From the Wartime at Duke Collection, 1917-[ongoing]. -
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“Journaleux,” (Journalists)
Journalists played a crucial role in forming the public’s opinions, as the immediate response to Émile Zola’s “j’Accuse” demonstrates. However, the chorus of intellectuals defending Zola threatened anti-Dreyfusard writers and journalists whose livelihood depended on slandering the Captain and his supporters. In this sketch by the famous anti-Dreyfusard Caran d’Ache, the bohemian journalist of the Left is depicted as a dandy opportunist, riding the wave of opinion. He confides that his crisp new shirt was bought not with an inheritance, but thanks to his investment in this new cause. You too, he tells his friend, can look this good, and all it takes is peppering your prose with words like “innocent,” “martyr,” and “hero.” -
“Judas défendu par ses frères,” (Judas defended by his brethren)
At the Impressionists’ fourth exhibition in 1879, Edgar Degas displayed his À la bourse which depicted two stockbrokers whispering conspiratorially—an allusion to stock-in-trade representations of Jewish financiers rapaciously feasting on the spoils of capitalist speculation. Degas’s anti-Semitism crystallized during the Affair that transformed friend into foe. Of the Impressionists, Pissarro and Monet supported the Captain’s acquittal -
“La France aux Français,” (France for the French)
"Though in April 1895 Dreyfus had been sentenced to solitary confinement on Devil’s Island (where he remained until his September 1899 retrial), the Affair continued to incense La Libre Parole’s anti-Semitic staff. This cover represents Drumont’s daily paper, La Libre Parole, and its weekly supplement, La Libre Parole Illustré, as two strapping Gallic farmhands laboring to uproot Jewish evil from French lands.
On the left, the anthropomorphized La Libre Parole digs up scandals, depicted as deep-seeded weeds that threaten to taint the nation’s soil (Jean-Jacques Souligoux was implicated in the Panama scandal; Barney Barnato was involved in a diamond mine collapse). Meanwhile, the figure on the right renders this “valiant” work in his sketch-book. Working en plein-air, this anti-Semitic artist quickly sketches the “Dreyfus image” for which Drumont’s publications were best known. His bespectacled leafy vegetable undoubtedly represents Dreyfus. " -
“La prison militaire de Rennes,” (The Military Prison at Rennes)
After a lull in press coverage, Dreyfus re-entered the news in 1899. By then, his authorship of the bordereau had been undermined by mounting evidence against Esterhazy, and Dreyfus was permitted to return to France for retrial. In this image, Dreyfus enters the military prison in Rennes as curious bystanders look on. Though he was stripped of military rank, he salutes as he enters into a new imprisonment.
Dreyfus’s trial at Rennes ended, once more, in his conviction, though several days later, he accepted a presidential pardon. He and his supporters advocated for a review of the Rennes verdict and a complete annulment of the charges against him. In 1904, the Criminal Chamber agreed to their pleas, and in 1906, Dreyfus’s name was cleared. Nevertheless, French anti-Semitism raged on: in 1908, Dreyfus was shot and wounded by a journalist, Louis Gregori, at a public ceremony where Zola’s ashes were placed in the Pantheon. -
“Le Roi des Porcs,” (King of the Pigs)
Dreyfus defender Émile Zola is shown as king of the pigs, a reference to Kosher prohibitions against pork. Lenepveu attempts scatological humor, casting Zola’s “oeuvre” and his defense of Jews as “caca international” (international excrement) sullying the French map.
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