Kelsey Rector

Week 23: Emergence of Industrial Society IDs

The Dreyfus Affair what a scandal!

*This was a political scandal which divided France during the 1890s and early 1900s. It involved the wrongful conviction for treason of a promising young French artillery officer of Jewish faith and ethnicity, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, and the political and judicial scandal that followed until his full rehabilitation. He ended his career as a Lieutenant-Colonel and actively served during World War I at the end of which he was raised to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor.

In October 1894, in a very abrupt manner, Alfred Dreyfus was arrested and later charged with passing military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris. He was convicted of treason by a military tribunal in December 1894 and promptly imprisoned on Devil's Island, a life time sentence in prison on an island in French Guyana.

He was subsequently pardoned and freed though French government never took blame, and finally exonerated when they annulled his conviction.  He then readmitted to the army, was made a knight in the Légion d’Honneur, recalled to active duty, and served behind the lines of the Western Front during World War I.  Yay!

Pictures!!:

Dreyfus3.jpg   (click on em)

--Alfred Dreyfus

Degradation_alfred_dreyfus.jpg

--Dreyfus cashiered in a public ceremony

Sources:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_Affair, http://www.bartleby.com/65/dr/DreyfusA.html