River Loire at Nantes. This persecution, âtantamount to genocideâ, alienated French Catholics from republicanism.
The German nations united behind the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to wage war against Napoleonâs nephew, Napoleon III. The French were quickly defeated. Napoleon III was taken prisoner at Sedan. Here he sits looking disconsolate with his captor, Bismarck.
Under Duress (1871) by Smeeton after Janet Lange. With a knife at her breast France signs the preliminaries of the peace treaty which ceded the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the new German Reich.
Execution of the Archbishop of Paris (1871). The anti-clerical Communards executed the Archbishop of Paris, Monsignor Darboy, and fifty Catholic priests. This reinforced the association in the minds of French Catholics of radical republicanism and persecution.
The citizens of Paris, besieged by the Prussians, refused to accept the armistice negotiated by the government in Versailles and established a Commune. It was brutally repressed by French troops. In a single week in May, between twenty and thirty thousand Communards were killed.
Jules Ferry, French Prime Minister in 1881. His government, with six Protestant ministers, abolished Catholic primary schools in France. Catholic magistrates who resigned rather than enforce the law were often replaced by Protestants and Jews.
Ãdouard Drumontâs La France Juive ( Jewish France ), which described Franceâs Jews as âa ruling casteâ and France âa conquered nationâ, sold over a million copies. Drumontâs newspaper, La Libre Parole , exposed widespread corruption involving Jewish bankers and republican politicians in the Panama Canal Scandal. It campaigned against giving Jews commissions in the French army.
The Rothschild estate at Ferriéres. Jewish bankers and entrepreneurs amassed great fortunes and bought estates previously owned by the Catholic aristocracy. The increase of power and influence of Jews in France was widely resented.
This portrait of Baron James de Rothschild, titled âJews Take over the Worldâ, offers a sense of the perceived threat posed by the rise of the Jews. Rothschild was said to be the model for Gunderman in Emile Zolaâs novel LâArgent .
It was widely believed by French Catholics that freemasons worked with Protestants and Jews to undermine Catholicism, Franceâs established religion. Here the Grand Orient masonic lodge celebrates the anniversary of the 1789 revolution.
General Saussier. A rotund bon viveur with a Jewish mistress, the wife of Major Maurice Weil. He was subordinate to the Minister of War, General Mercier, only while Mercier held office. A mutual antipathy meant that what one proposed the other rejected.
Colonel Maximilian von Schwarzkoppen, the German military attaché in Paris. He suborned agents in co-operation with his lover, the Italian military attaché, Alessandro Panizzardi.
General Raoul le Mouton de Boisdeffre, Chief of the General Staff. Tall, distinguished-looking, refined, cunning and lazy, he was the architect of the French military alliance with Tsarist Russia. He and other senior army officers felt responsible for the security of France.
General Auguste Mercier, Minister of War in 1894. Curt, dry, authoritarian, he was mistrusted by La Libre Parole because of his Republican sympathies. He had an English wife and did not go to mass.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus. The youngest son of a Jewish textile manufacturer in Mulhouse, Dreyfus graduated with high marks from the Ãcole Polytechnique and the Ãcole de Guerre. He was shy, awkward and spoke in a monotonous voice. Serving as an intern on the General Staff , he was marked down for his awkward bearing which he ascribed to the anti-Semitism of senior officers.
Lucie Dreyfus, née Hadamard, with her husband and two children, Pierre and Jeanne. The youngest daughter of a diamond merchant, she married Alfred