Dreyfus Affair: From penal servitude to general's stars, a chronology of a slow rehabilitation

"I was only an artillery officer, who was prevented from following his path by a tragic error," Alfred Dreyfus is said to have summed up to his grandson, shortly before his death in 1935. The officer, a polytechnician and brilliant trainee at the École de Guerre, saw his military career halted by the military-judicial conspiracy that wrongly convicted him in 1885. When he returned to the army, some twenty years later, the reserve lieutenant-colonel was a long way from the rank he could have aspired to at his age.

One hundred and forty years later, members of parliament want to right the wrong by finally elevating Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general posthumously. This is the purpose of the bill tabled by the leader of the Renaissance group, former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. Debated in the Assembly on Monday, June 2, its text aims to "posthumously redress Alfred Dreyfus's military career, an approach justified by the uniqueness of this case in the history of the Republic."

After a rigged investigation, Captain Dreyfus, an Alsatian officer of Jewish faith, was accused of spying for Prussia. Tried behind closed doors, he was sentenced on December 22, 1884, for intelligence with a foreign power, to the maximum penalty for political crimes: deportation for life to the penal colony of Guyana .

On January 5, 1895, after weeks of heightened anti-Semitism in the press , a crowd gathered outside the École Militaire to witness the degradation of the "traitor." Alfred Dreyfus proclaimed his innocence: "Soldiers, an innocent man is being degraded, soldiers, an innocent man is being dishonored. Long live France! Long live the army!" But his stripes were torn off, his saber broken. The dishonored officer had to parade slowly before his former companions.

The perseverance of his family and his supporters led to progress in the investigation, which became "The Affair" upon the publication of Émile Zola's "J'accuse" in L'Aurore . But it took many more twists and turns for Dreyfus to be sent before the court martial and then tried again in Rennes in August 1899. Unwilling to deny the court martial's decision, Alfred Dreyfus was again found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison, but with "mitigating circumstances" .

The officer was then offered a presidential pardon. Accepting it would mean admitting his guilt, but the captain agreed to return to his family. On September 19, 1899, Émile Loubet signed the decree pardoning the officer.

Re-elected as a member of parliament in 1902, Jean Jaurès relaunched the affair in a speech that once again listed all the forged documents undermining the Dreyfus case. In this context, Alfred Dreyfus wrote to the Minister of Justice in November 1903 to request a review of the Rennes trial.

From 1904 to 1906, the Court of Cassation therefore initiated proceedings and embarked on a meticulous investigation, which enabled it to affirm, on July 12, 1906, that the former officer had indeed been wrongly convicted. The court-martial's judgment was annulled.

The next day, the Chamber of Deputies passed a law allowing Dreyfus to rejoin the army with the rank of squadron leader. On July 21, he was made a knight of the Legion of Honor. The officer could have been eligible for the rank of lieutenant colonel, but his years of deportation were not counted toward his seniority. Alfred Dreyfus was nearly 50 years old, and this incomplete reinstatement hindered his desire to eventually reach the rank of general officer. In June 1907, he therefore reluctantly requested retirement.

A reserve officer, Dreyfus was nonetheless mobilized in 1914 at the Paris fortified camp, as head of an artillery park. He was then assigned to Chemin des Dames in 1917, then to Verdun in 1918.

His exploits allowed him to finish the First World War with the rank of lieutenant colonel and be elevated to the rank of officer of the Legion of Honor. He died about ten years later, on July 12, 1935.

Outside of specialists, his family, and historians, the political class has been late in considering the question of Alfred Dreyfus's complete rehabilitation. The subject was raised in 2006, a century after his legal rehabilitation . There was then talk of transferring his ashes to the Pantheon. But Jacques Chirac abandoned the idea on July 5, 2006, justifying that Dreyfus was a victim of the Affair, and that if there were to be a hero, it would be Émile Zola, already in the Pantheon. Robert Badinter, the CRIF (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France), and the Human Rights League also share this opinion.

On July 12, 2006, a solemn tribute ceremony was organized at the Military Academy, the very place where the captain was demoted. The President of the Republic, Jacques Chirac, recognized that "justice has not been completely done," depriving him of "the career reconstruction to which he was entitled."

The question of making the "captain" a general was raised again by the Minister of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly, in 2019. Two years later, President Emmanuel Macron followed suit, believing that it was "undoubtedly up to the military institution, in a dialogue with the representatives of the French people," to appoint Dreyfus a general posthumously.

On April 17, 2025, a column signed by the President of the Court of Auditors Pierre Moscovici, lawyer Frédéric Salat-Baroux and the president of the Zola-Alfred Dreyfus house, published in Le Figaro , advocates for a posthumous elevation to the rank of brigadier general. The text calls on "one or more parliamentary groups" to formulate legislative proposals.

A few weeks later, it was done. Gabriel Attal, president of the Ensemble pour la République group in the National Assembly, tabled a bill on May 7, 2025, the sole article of which proposed this posthumous elevation. Adopted unanimously by the National Assembly's Defense Committee on May 28, the bill was examined in public session on June 2.

More than an act of reparation, Gabriel Attal places the proposed law in a context of increasing anti-Semitic acts since the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, and the war in Gaza. "The anti-Semitism that struck Alfred Dreyfus is not a thing of the past. Today's acts of hatred are a reminder that this fight is still relevant," the former prime minister said, while centrist MPs warned of the risk of exploitation.