A quiz question · medium
Who actually wrote the *bordereau* for which Alfred Dreyfus was convicted in 1894?
The actual author of the secret-document handover note was Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, identified by Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart in 1896 but protected by the Army's General Staff. Esterhazy was eventually court-martialled in 1898 and acquitted in a managed verdict that triggered Zola's *J'accuse...!*. He fled to England, lived under the name Count Jean de Voilemont, and died in Harpenden in 1923.
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The Bordereau That Tore France in Half A torn-up scrap of paper from a German embassy wastebasket convicted the wrong man in 1894. France spent the next twelve years arguing about it.
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