1-157-113 - Ann Ronan Picture Library/Heritage-Images

Retrial of Albert Dreyfus, Rennes, France, 1899. A French army officer of Jewish extraction, Dreyfus (c1859-1935) was wrongly accused of handing secret documents to a German agent. He was court-martialled and disgraced, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island as a traitor. Although the legal proceedings were irregular, the verdict was widely approved of in French society and the press, where anti-Semitism was rife. The case, which became known as 'l'Affaire Dreyfus' continued to divide France, with the author Emile Zola writing a famous open letter accusing the army of a cover-up. A retrial, at Rennes in 1899, again found Dreyfus guilty, although the sentence was reduced to 10 years. Eventually, in 1906, Dreyfus received a full pardon from the President of France, and he went on to serve with distinction in the French army in the First World War. From Vanity Fair. (London, 23 November 1899).