Auguste Mercier

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Auguste Mercier

Auguste Mercier (born December 8, 1833 in Arras , † March 3, 1921 in Paris ) was a French professional soldier and from December 3, 1893 to January 24, 1895 French Minister of War. Posterity will remember him primarily for his role in the Dreyfus Affair , of which he is one of the main protagonists.

Life

Auguste Mercier was trained at the École polytechnique , where many French officers began their training. He graduated from this renowned school as the second best of his class. He later took part in the Mexico campaign and then in the Franco-German War of 1870/71 . In 1883 he was made a colonel and in 1885 a general. In 1889 he became administrative director of the army. On December 3, 1893, he was then Minister of War. His appointment as Minister of War was welcomed by the military because of his military experience. Auguste Mercier was one of the Republicans, which earned him a lot of criticism, especially in the nationalist press.

During Mercier's tenure, he discovered an unsigned letter to the German military attaché Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen , the so-called Borderaus, from which it emerged that an officer of the French general staff was selling information to the German intelligence service. In the French General Staff, on the basis of a dubious comparison of manuscripts, the Jewish artillery captain Alfred Dreyfus was accused of being the traitor. Mercier's decision to press ahead with the investigation against Dreyfus was not unanimously approved by either higher government or army circles. General Félix Saussier , the most senior French officer as military governor of Paris and vice-president of the Conseil Supérieur de Guerre , questioned Dreyfus' guilt and feared the repercussions for the French army if one of its officers were to be charged with treason. Mercier was finally able to persuade him to sign the necessary papers to open the procedure. Foreign Minister Gabriel Hanotaux was concerned about the haste with which the investigation was being carried out by the General Staff and pointed to the diplomatic consequences if it were discovered that the French intelligence service had stolen documents from the German embassy. President Jean Casimir-Perier urged caution as he doubted that the Borderau was a sufficient basis for a conviction. Prime Minister Charles Dupuy , who was divided on the trial, made Mercier promise not to start the trial unless there was other evidence of guilt in addition to the bordereau. Mercier, who relied on the evaluations of his officers, saw no reason to change the path he had taken, and on October 14, 1894, he signed the arrest warrant for Alfred Dreyfus. Mercier entrusted the further investigations to Major Armand du Paty de Clam .

Dreyfus was then arrested. The arrest was initially kept secret. Dreyfus' wife, Lucie Dreyfus , was threatened with grave consequences for her husband if she made anything known. Neither the house search of the Dreyfus family nor further research into his private life indicated any espionage activity by Dreyfus. There was also no motive for such an activity. The classic motive for espionage - lack of money - did not apply to Dreyfus. Both Dreyfus and his wife, Lucie, came from wealthy families, Dreyfus's fortune alone generated an annual income of 40,000 francs, and after the death of his father he had inherited an additional 110,000 francs.

Just two days after Paty de Clam informed Chief of Staff Raoul de Boisdeffre that he had doubts that an indictment against Dreyfus would be successful, an informant from the War Department leaked details of the case to the press. On October 31, the daily newspaper L'Eclair reported the arrest of an officer, La Patrie had already mentioned the arrest of a Jewish officer in the War Department, and Le Soir announced Dreyfus' name, age and rank. On the same day, the Havas News Agency published a communiqué from the War Department that an officer had been arrested for disclosing confidential but not very important documents to a foreigner. War Minister Mercier was now in a difficult position. Had he ordered Dreyfus to be released, the nationalist and anti-Semitic press would have accused him of failure and a lack of hardship towards a Jew. If, on the other hand, Dreyfus were acquitted in a trial, Mercier would have been accused of having made careless and dishonorable accusations against an officer in the French army and of risking a crisis with Germany. Mercier would then probably have had to resign. At a special session of the Cabinet, Mercier showed the ministers a copy of the bordereau, which he claimed was clearly written by Dreyfus. The ministers agreed to initiate an investigation into Dreyfus. The case was thus handed over to General Saussier, who on November 3rd entrusted Captain Bexon d'Ormescheville with the further preliminary investigation. He was an exam judge at the Premier conseil de guerre in Paris.

When it became apparent that the court martial would not be convinced by the scant evidence, Mercier gave the instruction to compile a corresponding secret dossier and to hand it over secretly, without knowledge of the defendant Dreyfus and his lawyer. This illegal behavior invalidated the military trial, but Dreyfus was sentenced to public demotion and life imprisonment.

The number of people who tried to have the trial resumed grew larger and larger in the months that followed. One of the decisive turning points was the discovery of the real traitor, Ferdinand Walsin-Esterházy, by the intelligence chief, Marie-Georges Picquart, in the course of 1896. In order to avert damage to the General Staff and the high military, several people on the General Staff tried to do this against Picquart's will suppress. Du Paty and Major Hubert Henry played a key role in the cover-up . Auguste Mercier retired from the army in 1898 shortly before the trial against Dreyfus was resumed. He became a senator in 1900 and opposed the rehabilitation of Alfred Dreyfus in 1906. In 1907 he was awarded a gold medal by the right-wing extremist group Action française for his position on the Dreyfus affair.

literature

Single receipts

  1. ^ Harris, p. 20
  2. ↑ Whyte, p. 571
  3. ↑ Begley, p. 21
  4. ↑ Harris, pp. 21-22
  5. ↑ Begley, p. 22
  6. ↑ Harris, pp. 21-22
  7. ↑ Kotowski et al., P. 30
  8. ↑ Harris, pp. 22-23
  9. ↑ Whyte, p. 45
  10. ↑ Whyte, p. 45
  11. ↑ Begley, p. 25
  12. ↑ Whyte, pp. 45-47
personal data
SURNAME Mercier, Auguste
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French professional soldier and French Minister of War (1893–1895)
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1833
PLACE OF BIRTH Arras
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 1921
Place of death Paris