Attempted Assassination of Fernand Labori

The Attempted Assassination of Fernand Labori took place during the Rennes trial of Alfred Dreyfus, when the defence was preparing to question Mercier. The attack left Labori gravely incapacitated at a critical moment: although he survived the night, the court allowed the defence only a brief pause, and Edgar Demange had to return to the hearing. The assault therefore endangered a lawyer and disrupted the defence’s ability to pursue questions about the case’s contested evidence, even as the trial continued.

Background and Stakes

The attack came amid a trial in which access to evidence and the scope of questioning had already become central disputes. At Dreyfus’s earlier court-martial, the prosecutor requested a private hearing on the grounds that the case involved national defence; Demange objected that his client should be treated like any other accused person. The secrecy surrounding the case was not merely procedural background: it shaped what could be examined openly and what the defence could challenge.

Picquart had also encountered direct pressure to keep the bordereau out of his investigation. General Gonse told him to investigate Esterhazy if he wished, but not to connect that inquiry to the document at the centre of Dreyfus’s conviction. Later, when Picquart was questioned about the affair, he tried to raise the evidence that Esterhazy had written the bordereau and that the secret dossier used against Dreyfus contained falsified material. The inquiry ruled those matters outside its scope. These earlier confrontations do not establish who ordered the attack on Labori, but they clarify why the defence’s opportunity to question senior military witnesses carried particular weight.

The Attack and Picquart’s Pursuit

On the morning of the assault, Labori joined Picquart and Edmond on a walk beside the canal. In a purposeful, almost sporting mood, he asked Picquart for a last-minute detail about Mercier: whether Boisdeffre had been present when the Minister ordered Sandherr to disperse the secret file. Picquart was about to answer when a noise behind them drew his attention. A youngish, large-built man with red hair, a black jacket, and a white cap was pointing a revolver.

The attacker fired. Labori dropped, and Picquart reached out as he fell. The briefcase Labori had been carrying remained with him; it contained his notes, which soon became an object of concern in the confusion that followed. Picquart’s response shifted quickly from helping his colleague to pursuing the gunman. He told Edmond to stay with Labori and ran after the fugitive along the canal path.

The chase carried Picquart beyond the houses and factories into open country. The gunman left the towpath and ran towards woodland. Picquart, whose months in prison had diminished his physical stamina, was unable to catch him. He searched among the trees for about half an hour, aware that the fugitive might still be nearby, then returned to the canal. The police inspector later identified the wood as Cesson Forest and said it would be searched. The account records the attacker’s appearance and escape but does not identify him.

Labori’s Condition and the Defence’s Disruption

Picquart missed the immediate aftermath because he had walked back more than three kilometres. Edmond later told him that Labori had tried to protect his briefcase from people who recognized him and wanted to take his notes. Labori’s wife, Marguerite, had reached the scene and stayed beside him. Soldiers carried him to his lodgings, where a doctor judged his condition serious and considered it too dangerous to operate before a surgeon could assess him.

By the time Picquart returned, Labori had been taken to the home of Victor Basch, a Dreyfusard professor whose house was on the same street as Les Trois Marches. Journalists gathered outside, and gendarmes guarded the entrance. Labori lay unconscious in a downstairs room while his wife held his hand; the doctor said the next twenty-four hours would be crucial. Picquart described the attacker and indicated where he had fled, giving the police a basis for searching the nearby forest.

Picquart believed Labori had been targeted because the attacker wanted to prevent him from cross-examining Mercier. That was Picquart’s interpretation, not a proven identification of the assailant’s motive. The immediate consequence was nevertheless clear. Jouaust granted only a forty-five-minute adjournment, and Demange had to return to examine Mercier without the preparation Labori had been making. The court later rejected Demange’s request for a two-week postponement, despite Labori’s uncertain recovery and Albert Clemenceau’s agreement to take on the case if needed. The defence was left to proceed under pressure rather than wait for its original advocate to recover or for a successor to be fully briefed.

Meaning Within the Trial

The assault made physical danger part of the trial’s procedural reality. Labori’s planned questioning concerned the handling of the secret file and the conduct of senior officials; his removal from the courtroom interrupted that work at the moment it was due to proceed. The evidence does not establish a connection between the earlier efforts to restrict inquiry and the attack itself. It does show, however, that the defence faced both limits on what the court would hear and an immediate practical loss when its principal advocate could no longer appear.

The episode also exposes the difference between surviving an attack and being able to resume one’s role. Labori lived through the night, and his fever diminished, but the court did not wait for his recovery. The trial moved forward with Demange required to question Mercier and with Albert Clemenceau proposed as a possible replacement. In Picquart’s account, the assault is thus both a narrowly described act of violence and a turning point in the defence’s working conditions: the danger was not confined to Labori’s safety, because the attack also curtailed the preparation and continuity of the case against the military account of Dreyfus’s guilt.