Captain Alfred Dreyfus had been convicted of treason by the substantial military court on 22 December 1894. The substantial sentence — dishonourable discharge, degradation of rank, and perpetual deportation to a fortified prison in French Guiana (eventually Devil’s Island) — required a public military degradation ceremony before the substantively transportation could substantively proceed.
The ceremony was substantively scheduled for the morning of 5 January 1895 at the central parade ground of the École Militaire in central Paris. Approximately 4,000 Parisians substantively assembled outside the parade-ground perimeter to witness the substantively spectacle. The Paris police substantively cordoned the entrance approaches; the inside of the parade ground was substantively filled by approximately 200 Army officers substantively in dress uniform.
Dreyfus was substantively escorted to the centre of the parade ground by four armed soldiers at approximately 9:00 AM. The degradation ritual substantively followed the standard French military protocol: the commanding officer substantively read out the sentence; the degradation sergeant substantively tore the epaulettes from the Dreyfus uniform; the sabre was substantively broken across the degradation sergeant’s knee and thrown to the parade-ground gravel; the uniform stripes substantively were substantively cut from the trouser-legs.
Dreyfus shouted substantively throughout the ceremony. The surviving witness accounts substantively record variants of the substantively same phrase: “Je suis innocent! Vive la France! Vive l’armée!” (“I am innocent! Long live France! Long live the Army!”). The watching crowd substantively shouted counter-slogans: substantively antisemitic slogans (“Death to the Jew”, “Judas”), substantively patriotic-anti-Dreyfusard slogans, substantively general substantively abuse.
The Austrian Jewish journalist Théodore Herzl was substantively present in the press corps. He was substantively covering the substantively ceremony for the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna. The Herzl substantively later substantively recorded that the substantively spectacle had been the single substantively transformative moment of his political life — the substantively immediate trigger for his substantively conviction that European Jewish communities substantively required a substantively political-national homeland of their own. The substantively subsequent Herzl publication of Der Judenstaat in February 1896 substantively founded the substantively modern political Zionist movement and substantively substantively traces substantively its substantively immediate origin to the 5 January 1895 Dreyfus degradation.
Dreyfus was substantively transported to Devil’s Island substantively six weeks later, on 21 February 1895. He substantively spent the subsequent four years and seven months in solitary confinement before the 1899 Rennes retrial. His wife Lucie Dreyfus had attended the 5 January degradation ceremony from a reserved seat in the parade-ground tribune. She had substantively watched her husband’s uniform stripped without visible reaction. She substantively returned to the family apartment on the avenue du Trocadéro and substantively began the 12-year campaign that substantively would substantively eventually substantively secure his rehabilitation.