Dreyfus's Conviction at the Rennes Trial

Dreyfus's Conviction at the Rennes Trial was the 1899 court-martial verdict that again pronounced Alfred Dreyfus guilty, despite evidence challenging the case against him. The five-to-two decision, with the sentence reduced to ten years, prolonged the consequences of his wrongful conviction; it was eventually quashed, and Dreyfus was fully exonerated in 1906.

Causes and Earlier Proceedings

The Rennes verdict followed years in which military procedure had repeatedly restricted scrutiny of the case. During Dreyfus’s first trial, the prosecution sought a private hearing on the ground that the evidence involved national defence. His lawyer, Edgar Demange, objected that Dreyfus was entitled to the same treatment as any other accused person. The plea for secrecy made the conflict between an open defence and the military’s claim to sensitive evidence part of the proceedings themselves.

The initial conviction had already been transformed into a public spectacle. At the École Militaire, four gunners escorted Dreyfus across the parade ground as four thousand soldiers stood in formation. General Darras declared him unworthy to bear arms and announced his degradation. Dreyfus protested his innocence while marching before the assembled detachments; spectators answered him with jeers and anti-Semitic insults. The ceremony made the court’s judgment visible and memorable, but its theatrical certainty could not establish the truth of the accusation.

By the time of the later proceedings, the question of the bordereau and the evidence used against Dreyfus remained contested. General Gonse urged Georges Picquart to investigate Charles Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy if he wished, but to leave the bordereau out of the inquiry. Picquart later challenged the inquiry’s narrow scope directly, pointing to the handwriting match between Esterhazy and the bordereau and to falsified material in the dossier used to convict Dreyfus. He was told those matters fell outside the inquiry. His open letter to Prime Minister Henri Brisson likewise argued that the two documents dated 1894 could not be applied to Dreyfus and that the document dated 1896 showed evidence of forgery.

The Rennes Trial and Verdict

The courtroom’s reception of Dreyfus made the physical cost of the case apparent. When he entered, he appeared markedly aged and diminished: his tunic hung loosely on his shrunken frame, and he climbed the steps to the platform with difficulty. Georges Picquart was present in court, as were Mathieu Dreyfus and Lucie Dreyfus. The lawyers, including Fernand Labori and Demange, took their places before Colonel Jouaust called for the accused.

The decision came after an hour and a half of deliberation. Picquart watched from a house where people waited for news; when the judges returned to the courtroom, the result reached them by telephone. The verdict was guilty by five votes to two, with the sentence reduced to ten years’ imprisonment. The divided vote registered disagreement within the court, but it did not spare Dreyfus another conviction.

Consequences and Aftermath

The verdict placed Dreyfus’s supporters in a painful position when the government moved toward a pardon. Picquart objected that accepting one would amount, technically, to an admission of guilt. Mathieu Dreyfus showed him a statement drafted by Jean Jaurès for Alfred to issue upon his release: it said that freedom meant nothing without honour and affirmed his intention to continue seeking the reversal of the judicial error. The proposed pardon could secure release, but it could not itself clear Dreyfus’s name.

The Rennes judgment was not the final word. In 1903, after Jaurès set out the affair in a speech to the Chamber of Deputies, the new Minister of War, General André, agreed to review the evidence. The resulting inquiry led the Criminal Chamber to recommend review by the Supreme Court of Appeal. Political turmoil delayed the outcome, but on 12 July 1906 the court quashed the Rennes verdict and exonerated Dreyfus entirely.

The following day, the Chamber of Deputies voted to restore Dreyfus to the army as a major and award him the cross of the Legion of Honour, by 432 votes to 32. A separate resolution restored Picquart to the army, by 449 to 26. Picquart returned to the parade ground of the École Militaire for Dreyfus’s medal ceremony, now wearing a brigadier general’s uniform. The later ceremony reversed the public degradation in setting and effect, but it followed years of imprisonment and could not undo the verdict’s long reach.