The Dreyfus Affair (19 page)

The damage had been done. Already the German Chancellor, Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe, had written to the French Prime Minister, Charles Dupuy, asking for ‘a formal declaration’ by the French government that the German Embassy was not involved in the Dreyfus Affair. Gabriel Hanotaux, the Foreign Minister, who should have handled the matter, was now a sick man convalescing in Cannes, and Dupuy was ‘overwhelmed . . . by the course of events’,
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and so it was the President himself, Casimir-Perier, who undertook the task of assuaging the indignation of the German government. On 6 January 1895 he received Graf Münster von Derneburg at the Élysée Palace, hoping to match the truth of the matter to German sensitivities. He explained that, while the incriminating document had indeed come from the German Embassy, there was nothing to suggest that it had been solicited by anyone in the Embassy, nor could the Embassy be held responsible for anonymous material received through the post. The President and the Ambassador accepted that this formula should form the basis of a joint declaration, and the President promised to ask the editors of the leading French newspapers to put an end to a press campaign that sought to poison relations between Germany and France.

At this, the very highest level of government, there was an amicable understanding that Germany was in no way responsible for the traitorous behaviour of Captain Dreyfus. The press was not so easily tamed;
Le Soleil
called the Germans ‘the reptiles beyond the Rhine’. But the fear and loathing of the enemy had found a useful scapegoat in the man who had betrayed France. The public were baying for blood and Dupuy’s government were keen to appease it. The law would be changed to impose capital punishment for treason, but it could not be applied retrospectively. Yet to many it was intolerable that a traitor like Dreyfus should suffer the same punishment as the Communards who had been deported to New Caledonia.

New Caledonia, a large island less than 1,300 kilometres east of Australia in the South Pacific, had been named as such by Captain Cook because it reminded him of Scotland. Seized by the French during the early years of the Second Empire, it was used as a penal colony well into the twentieth century. Many Communards had been sent there in 1871, among them the polemical journalist Henri Rochefort – the Marquis de Rochefort-Luçay – once a Socialist, later a Boulangist and now a vociferous nationalist and scourge of the Jews. After only a year in New Caledonia, he had escaped on an American boat to San Francisco.

If Rochefort could escape, why not Dreyfus with the money and influence of ‘all Israel’ behind him? Already
La Libre Parole
had stated that it was only because ‘the Jews had had too little time’ that Dreyfus had not been kidnapped in Paris. It was beyond doubt that ‘an international “Jewish syndicate”’ would try to arrange his escape.
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To the government of Dupuy – to any French government – the political consequences of an abduction would be catastrophic. There was also the public lust for retribution. Dreyfus had to be sent somewhere not only more secure but also less agreeable than New Caledonia. On the very day of his degradation, 5 January, Dupuy’s cabinet met to consider an alternative. General Mercier, the Minister of War, proposed that the present law be modified to enable Dreyfus to be held on Devil’s Island, part of a penal colony on the Salvation Islands off the coast of French Guiana. It would be both more secure than New Caledonia and more acceptable to public opinion as a place of punishment because of its intense heat and torrid climate.

General Mercier’s proposal was accepted. The law re-establishing the Salvation Islands as a place of deportation was passed without a debate by the Chamber of Deputies on 12 February 1895. Vincent Duclert believes that Mercier changed the place for Dreyfus’s exile not merely to appease public opinion and ensure that Dreyfus did not escape, but also to punish him for his stubborn refusal to confess. ‘The idea of a law re-establishing the Salvation Islands was his response to Dreyfus’s defiance of the established truth’; and this change to the law was only one part of the ‘expiatory punishment’ that he planned for the guilty man. A whole raft of orders and directives particular to Dreyfus added up to a truly horrific regime.
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Mercier may also have borne in mind some statistics: of the 7,000 convicts sent to the Salvation Islands in 1856, some 2,500 had died before the year was out.
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The death penalty may have been abolished for political crimes, but for a man as enfeebled as Alfred Dreyfus already was, malaria would do the work of the guillotine.

*
The same argument was advanced, and was accepted by the courts, by the British intelligence service in the twenty-first century.

7

The Salvation Islands

1: Transportation

Awaiting deportation in a cell in the Santé prison, Dreyfus was without the modest solace of a governor who believed him innocent, as had Forzinetti at the Cherche-Midi. He could receive visits and enter into correspondence; together with an English grammar which Alfred had requested to help pass the time by learning the language, Lucie had sent into the prison ‘a sturdy portable inkwell’. Her visits were severely circumscribed; they had to be in the presence of the Governor who would place himself between Dreyfus and his wife, and Dreyfus was not allowed to approach her, let alone embrace her.
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Lucie asked if she could be allowed to kiss her husband if her hands were tied behind her back. Her request was refused.

It was therefore easier for them to express their feelings in their correspondence, and Lucie’s letters, sent to Dreyfus while he was in prison both before and after his degradation, reveal a remarkable devotion unaffected by what she must have learned about Alfred’s philandering in the course of his trial, and it was this devotion that saved him from despair. ‘You are the single thread that attaches me to life,’ he wrote to her from Cherche-Midi prison on Christmas Eve of 1894. ‘I am proud of you and will try to be worthy of you.’
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Vincent Duclert describes their exchange of letters as ‘one of the most beautiful love correspondences of all time’,
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and it is notable that, even though others had not read her letters,
*
Lucie’s devotion to her husband inspired respect in even his most vociferous detractors. Ruth Harris points out that ‘as the daughter of a wealthy diamond merchant, and an Alsatian Jewess, Lucie . . . could have made an irresistible target for anti-Semitism and envy. However, despite its savagery,
La Croix
never once attacked her; she was a model of motherly and wifely virtue utterly beyond reproach . . .’
4

‘Mon trésor chéri’, ‘Poor dear Freddy’, ‘Je t’embrasse comme je t’aime’, ‘Bon soir et bonne nuit’, ‘Je t’embrasse de toutes mes forces’.
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In the same way as a sailor fished out of a freezing ocean is revived by the warmth of another human body, so Lucie’s letters, imbued with conjugal passion, sustained her husband. She was still only twenty-five, ten years younger than Dreyfus, but she now revealed a strength of character all the more remarkable given her sheltered upbringing. She made Alfred promise not to take his own life and fortified him with her own fervent belief in his rehabilitation. ‘My line of conduct is clear. I will never leave you. Never. I do not want to live, I cannot live, except for you.’
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‘God will make up to you for it all and will recompense you a hundredfold for your suffering.’
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‘You are strong in your innocence; imagine that it is someone other than yourself who is being dishonoured; accept the unmerited punishment; do it for me, for the wife who loves you. Give this proof of affection, do it for your children; they will be grateful to you one day.’
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Like the wives of the Russian Decembrists who accompanied their husbands to exile in Siberia, Lucie was determined to join Alfred in New Caledonia, his presumed destination. ‘The law allows the wives and children of convicts to follow them. I don’t see what objection there could be to that.’ When Alfred tried to deter her, she rounded on him:

Do you not wish me to join you? No, my treasure, you won’t make me change my mind. By refusing me the happiness of living with you out there you are demanding a sacrifice which is beyond me. I am ready to support anything, but I want to suffer with you, at your side, I want to fight with you. I will not abandon you. Our children will be well brought up by my parents and your brothers, until we are able to look after them ourselves. I have already said it, my darling, far from you I cannot win, I would suffer too much.
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Even when she learned that Alfred was to be deported not to New Caledonia but to the inhospitable Salvation Islands, Lucie was determined to join him. ‘I suffer so much from being separated from you that I have made another appeal to go and share your exile. I shall at least have the happiness of living the same life as you, of being near you, and showing you how much I love you.’
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Her family, however, knew better than she did what the living conditions were likely to be on the Salvation Islands, as did the French authorities. When the Minister for the Colonies asked the Governor of French Guiana about the possibility of Lucie joining ‘the convict’ in October 1895, he received the answer: ‘Just returned from a tour of Devil’s Island. Judge it impossible to introduce a woman convict.’
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Alfred himself must have realised that the Salvation Islands would be a less pleasant place to serve his sentence than New Caledonia, but this did not unduly upset him because he was confident that it would not be long before the grotesque judicial error of which he was a victim was revealed. Such was his respect for the army hierarchy, he could not conceive of any bad faith behind his prosecution; he had particular confidence in General de Boisdeffre, the Chief of the General Staff, who had once taken him aside on an army inspection and shown great interest in what he had to say. His hopes were also pinned on promises made to him by Commandant du Paty de Clam on that final visit to the Cherche-Midi prison when du Paty had tried to get Dreyfus to admit that he had given documents to the Germans in an attempt to obtain secrets from them in return.

The deal offered by du Paty was merely that, in return for a partial confession, Dreyfus would be subjected to a less rigorous regime when serving his sentence. When Dreyfus had repeated yet again that he had had no dealings with the Germans whatsoever, du Paty said: ‘If you are innocent, you are the greatest martyr of all time.’
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Dreyfus’s protestations of innocence, however, were not merely to avoid martyrdom; he was as horrified as were his accusers to think that there was a traitor at the heart of the High Command. Knowing that he was not that traitor, he tried to impress upon du Paty de Clam the need to continue his investigations. He extracted from du Paty a promise that they would continue, and that he personally would keep Dreyfus informed of their progress.

Once du Paty had left, Dreyfus wrote a letter to General Mercier to make the same point as he had made to du Paty – that the traitor was still at large. ‘I have been convicted, and have no special mercy or pardon to ask of you. But in the name of my honour, which I hope will be restored to me one day, I have the duty to implore you to continue your investigation. After I am gone, keep the search alive. This is the sole mercy that I request.’
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Of course neither du Paty nor Mercier was disposed to show mercy in this or any other way. They had found the traitor. Dreyfus was guilty. The case was closed.

Mercier also had other, more important matters on his mind. On 14 January 1895, while Dreyfus was still in the Santé prison, the Prime Minister, Charles Dupuy, resigned. The next day, the President of France, Jean Casimir-Perier, followed suit. He had been elected six months before following the assassination of President Carnot. Hitherto an active politician, he had been sidelined and ignored as President by ministers, while at the same time being vilified in the press because of his wealth and privileged background. This led to a rapid disenchantment and now his resignation.

Under the constitution of the Third Republic, the president was chosen by the deputies and senators of the National Assembly. These now dismissed Casimir-Perier’s resignation as the nervous tantrum of a spoiled dilettante too sensitive for the rough and tumble of political life,
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and looked for a man to replace him who was more likely to appreciate the perks and trappings that went with being France’s head of state. General Mercier’s name was put forward as ‘the patriot general’ who had unmasked the traitor Dreyfus, but the memory of Boulanger was too fresh in the minds of the politicians for them to consider a soldier, even a republican one, as head of state. In the first round of voting, he received only three votes. The final choice was a genial businessman, the deputy for the northern port of Le Havre, Félix Faure. Once elected President, Faure asked Léon Bourgeois to form a government and, when Bourgeois had failed to secure a majority, Alexandre Ribot. Ribot disliked Mercier and chose General Émile Zurlinden as his Minister of War. General Mercier, now out of government, returned to active service as Commander of the 16th Army Corps.

On the evening of Thursday, 17 January, Dreyfus was already asleep on his bunk in his cell in the Santé prison, looking forward to a visit from Lucie the next day, when the door was opened and an official of the Ministry of the Interior, accompanied by three deputies, entered the cell. The official told Dreyfus to get dressed at once and then ‘had me hurriedly handcuffed while I was scarcely dressed, and gave me no time even to pick up my eye-glasses’.
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With no overcoat to protect him from the cold, he was taken in a closed cab to the Gare d’Orsay. There he was locked into a narrow cage in a railway compartment fitted out for the transport of prisoners; handcuffed and shackled, he had space in which to sit down but not to stretch his legs.