The Dreyfus Affair by Piers Paul Read

Author:Piers Paul Read
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Press
Published: 2011-12-19T21:00:00+00:00

After the scare of Castelin’s questioning of Billot in the Chamber of Deputies in November 1896, the immediate danger that Esterhazy might be named as the traitor had receded but, because the handwriting of the bordereau was in the public domain, it could only be a matter of time before someone other than Picquart made the connection, as was to be the case with the South American stockbroker Jacques de Castro. Therefore Commandant Henry continued to manufacture evidence against both Picquart and Dreyfus: the Statistical Section became, in the words of Hannah Arendt, ‘a common fake factory’.23 He tampered with the petit bleu to make it seem that Picquart had altered its contents; and, encouraged by the success of his first forgery, a letter was sent to Dreyfus on Devil’s Island from a certain ‘Weiss’ with a cryptic message written in invisible ink between the lines.24 This was intercepted by the prison authorities and stimulated their suspicions that Dreyfus’s friends were planning an escape. Henry also forged a letter to Picquart from the private secretary of his friend the Comtesse de Comminges that seemed to suggest that he was in cahoots with the Dreyfusards. This was ‘inadvertently opened’ at the War Ministry and shown to Billot to convince him that Picquart’s mission abroad should be extended. Faked telegrams were sent to Picquart to compromise him, and Picquart himself indulged in subterfuge in his correspondence – not to conceal any contacts with the Dreyfusards but to protect the reputation of a married woman, the wife of a diplomat, Pauline Monnier, with whom, before leaving Paris, he had embarked upon an affair.25

With Picquart out of the way and the Minister of War, Billot, reassured of Dreyfus’s guilt by the letter forged by Henry, Generals Gonse and de Boisdeffre felt they had matters under control. It was only in the summer of 1897, when Auguste Scheurer-Kestner began lobbying ministers and the President himself, that they again became alarmed. Esterhazy was being named as the real traitor and all the precautions taken to protect him would prove futile if Esterhazy himself was to panic and do something rash.

On 16 October 1897, after consulting Boisdeffre, Gonse called in the chief architect of the original case against Dreyfus, the monocled, moustachioed Major du Paty de Clam, to take charge. It was difficult to know how to proceed. Esterhazy was under surveillance and so any meeting would be noted by the police. A letter from an identifiable correspondent, even if not intercepted, would be compromising, so du Paty, with Henry’s help, composed an anonymous letter to Esterhazy warning him that the Dreyfus family in collusion with Colonel Picquart intended to make him the scapegoat for Dreyfus’s crime. ‘You are hereby forewarned of what these scoundrels plan to do to ruin you. It is now up to you to defend your name and the honour of your children. Act quickly, for the family is about to act to assure your doom.’26 The letter, signed ‘Espérance’, was sent to Esterhazy at his country house, the Château de Dommartin near Sainte-Ménehould in the Marne.

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