Raoul Le Mouton de Boisdeffre

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Raoul de Boisdeffre

Raoul François Charles Le Mouton de Boisdeffre (born February 6, 1839 in Alençon , † August 24, 1919 in Paris) was a French Général de division . During the Dreyfus affair he was chief of the French general staff.

Raoul de Boisdeffre was a French military attaché in Russia from 1879 to 1880 . In 1887 he was promoted to Général de brigade and in 1892 to Général de division . In 1892 he played a key role in the first alliance between the French Third Republic and Tsarist Russia . It was an essential step to free the Third French Republic from its political isolation in an otherwise monarchist-ruled Europe.

Role in the Dreyfus affair

Raoul de Boisdeffre became head of the French General Staff in 1893; His responsibility also included the investigation into the Jewish artillery captain Alfred Dreyfus , who served on the general staff. Alfred Dreyfus was sentenced to life imprisonment , military degradation and deportation by a court martial on December 22, 1894 for treason . However, the verdict was based on questionable manuscript comparisons and unlawful evidence. Initially, only family members and a few people who had doubts about the guilt of the defendant in the course of the trial campaigned for the reopening of the trial and Dreyfus' acquittal. The miscarriage of justice escalated into an affair when the new head of the French intelligence service, Lieutenant Colonel Marie-Georges Picquart , was able to identify the actual traitor Ferdinand Walsin-Esterházy and defied the demands of his superiors, including Boisdeffre, to pass the misjudgment against Dreyfus allow. Picquart was removed from his position as head of the intelligence service, first transferred to the province and then to North Africa, Esterhazy was acquitted on January 11, 1898 in a court martial on the basis of falsified evidence. The trial was accompanied by hate speech from the anti-Semitic section of the French press accusing Dreyfus' defense lawyers of indicting an honorable officer in the service of a "Jewish syndicate" in order to exchange him for a Jewish traitor.

Zola's open letter J'accuse ...!

In response to Esterhazy's acquittal, the French author Émile Zola published the article J'accuse…! On January 13, 1898 . who denounced this misjudgment. The article put the Dreyfus case at the center of public discussion and attracted a lot of attention far beyond the borders of France. As a result, anti-Semitic riots broke out in France and Algeria . Picquart was discharged from the army and arrested for treason. Zola was tried for defamation. The trial of Zola stretched over two weeks. In the courtroom, the two Zola lawyers Fernand Labori and Albert Clemenceau succeeded in repeatedly eliciting statements from the witnesses about the Dreyfus affair through their skilful questioning, although the presiding judge constantly tried to limit their questions to facts relating to the prosecution. Cornered, General Pellieux brought up another document allegedly clearly proving Dreyfus's guilt and then quoted the wording of Le faux Henry . When Labori asked for the document to be presented to the court, General Gonse intervened, who, unlike Pellieux, was aware that Le faux henry was one of the forgeries in the secret file . He confirmed the existence of the document, but claimed it could not be made public. The court then had the Chief of Staff Boisdeffre appear as a witness. Boisdeffre confirmed Pellieux's statements and then turned to the court as a warning:

“You are the judgment, you are the nation; if the nation has no confidence in the leaders of its army, in the men who are responsible for national defense, then those men are ready to leave their heavy duty to others, you just have to tell. This is my last word."

In Léon Blum's view, the trial made it clear that Zola's allegations were correct. However, Boisdeffre's words demanding a decision between the army and Zola and the Dreyfus defenders had made a strong impression in public and in the courtroom. On February 23, Zola was sentenced to a fine of 3,000 francs and a year in prison. Prime Minister Méline described the Zola and Dreyfus cases as closed the next day in the Chamber of Deputies. Two days later, Picquart was dishonorably discharged from the army.

The new War Minister Godefroy Cavaignac had the evidence re-examined months later. It emerged that parts of the secret dossier were forged. Captain Hubert Henry and the deputy head of the general staff, Charles Arthur Gonse , played a key role in this. Hubert Henry committed suicide on August 31, 1898, and Boisdeffre then resigned from his position as head of the general staff. The discovery of the forgery led to a new court martial against Dreyfus, in which he was found guilty a second time. The French government then pardoned Dreyfus. Boisdeffre was one of Dreyfus' staunch opponents and remained convinced of his guilt. Dreyfus was not fully rehabilitated until 1906.

literature

Web links

Commons : Raoul Le Mouton de Boisdeffre  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Harris, p: 61
  2. ↑ Begley, p. 151
  3. ↑ quoted from Begley, p. 152
  4. ↑ Blum, p. 82
  5. ↑ Begley, pp. 152-153
personal data
SURNAME Boisdeffre, Raoul Le Mouton de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Boisdeffre, Raoul François Charles Le Mouton de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French professional soldier
DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1839
PLACE OF BIRTH Alencon
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1919
Place of death Paris