From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The
Dreyfus Affair
was one of the biggest
scandals
in the history of
France
. It happened at the end of the
19th century
. It was about
Alfred Dreyfus
, a
Jewish
officer
in the French
army
.
In
1894
, Dreyfus was accused of being a
spy
, and accused of crimes against France. People thought he wrote letters to the
Germans
telling them about secrets of the French army.
His punishment was to be sent to a
prison
island
in
South America
for the rest of his life.
When he was in prison, people (mostly his brother Mathieu and a high-ranking officer called Picquart) thought he was
innocent
. They proved that another soldier, Major Esterhazy, was
guilty
. But the army did not want to admit that it had been wrong. They refused to free him. Finally, the evidence that Dreyfus was innocent became so strong that the
government
had to demand a new
trial
. At the new trial, the army again found him guilty. The
President of France
, who did not want an innocent man to suffer any more,
pardoned
Dreyfus in 1899.
Dreyfus was released. Seven years later, he was officially declared innocent, and allowed back into the army.
The affair divided France into people who thought Dreyfus really was a spy and people who thought he was innocent. Many of those who thought Dreyfus was a spy hated Jews and believed that he was a criminal because he was a Jew, and that a Jew could not be a good Frenchman; this belief is called
anti-Semitism
. Others thought that the army could not be questioned. The other side believed that an innocent man should not be imprisoned, and feared that Dreyfus's enemies were also enemies of France.