DREYFUS ALFRED: (1859-1935) French Jewish Artillery Officer, the central figure in the Dreyfus Affair.

DREYFUS ALFRED: (1859-1935) French Jewish Artillery Officer, the central figure in the Dreyfus Affair.
A.L.S., A Dreyfus, one page, 8vo, n.p., n.d. ('Samedi soir', c.1910-20), to a lady [Éléonore-Alexandrine Meley], in French. Dreyfus writes a polite letter to his correspondent, in full, 'We were sorry to have been unable to spend some time with you yesterday afternoon, but my wife and my daughter were delayed by their visit and we were going to the comic opera in the evening. With all our regrets, please accept the expression of my respectful and very kind greetings'. With blank integral leaf. About EXÉléonore-Alexandrine Meley (1839-1925) French Seamstress, wife of Emile Zola from 1870.The Dreyfus Affair began in December 1894 with the treason conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus who was sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris. Dreyfus was imprisoned on Devil's Island in French Guiana, where he spent almost five years. In 1896 evidence came to light which identified a French Army Major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy as the real culprit, however various high-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence and a military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy at the conclusion of a trial which lasted just two days. The Army then presented Dreyfus with additional charges based on falsified documents. As a result of the vehement open letter entitled J'accuse which Emile Zola published in a Paris newspaper in January 1898 word of the military court's framing of Dreyfus and of an attempted cover-up began to spread and activists put pressure on the French government to reopen the case. Dreyfus was returned to France in 1899 for a further trial and the intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society. The new trial resulted in another conviction and a ten year sentence, however Dreyfus was granted a pardon and set free. Eventually all of the accusations against Dreyfus were proved to be baseless and in 1906 he was exonerated and reinstated as a Major in the French Army. He went on to serve his country during the whole of World War I and ended his service with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.The Dreyfus Affair represented one of the tensest political dramas in modern French history, with a wide echo in all of Europe.