 |    |  |
keyword search:
 ~: NON-FICTION / HISTORICAL :~  Zola's Mysterious Death by Owen Carmichael On 13th January 1898 Emile Zola sat down at his desk and wrote an article in defence of an army officer who had been sent to Devil's Island. Zola wrote in a white heat of indignation, for he believed an injustice had been done. Four years before, in 1894, a French spy at the German Embassy had found six scraps of paper in the German military attache's wastepaper basket. French Army Intelligence officer, Major Henry, put these pieces together and was horrified to discover they listed five items of secret information about French artillery which the writer was willing to sell to the Germans. Treason! Major Henry's views were strongly anti-Semitic and it didn't take long for his suspicions to fall on 34 year-old Captain Albert Dreyfus, the first Jewish officer ever to serve on the General Staff. There was absolutely no evidence against Dreyfus, but that didn't stop Henry forging documents. Although neither Dreyfus nor his counsel was allowed to examine these papers, they formed the basis of the case against him. A court martial found Dreyfus guilty of treason and sentenced him to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. Six months later a new head of Army Intelligence was appointed, Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart. To his surprise the German military attache continued to receive French secret military papers. Picquart investigated the matter thoroughly and found evidence which pointed overwhelmingly at another officer. This included an incriminating telegram from the German military attaché to the culprit, Major Esterhazy, an aristocrat and the illegitimate son of a general. Picquart informed his superiors, who responded by promptly sending him off to fight in the Tunisian war and replacing him at Army Intelligence by Henry. It was clear the top brass were attempting to cover up a miscarriage of justice. At this stage Zola entered the fray. What was at stake for France was not only the innocence of Dreyfus and the way he had been used as a scapegoat, but the whole honour of the army and their claim to be above the law. Behind the army stood the full force of the conservative establishment, the aristocracy, the church, the ruling party in parliament, a large section of the press and, crucially for Zola, most of the judiciary. What was at stake for Zola was his own good name, his enormous popularity as a writer and his self-respect. Zola had fought long and hard through years of desperate poverty to be recognized as a creative artist. Now, at 58, he had succeeded and was living comfortably on the sales of his books, such as 'Nana' and 'Germinal.' As well as his Paris apartment near the Bois de Boulogne he owned a country house at Medan, where he could write undisturbed. All this he was prepared to risk for the sake of justice. Because of his early struggles to survive Zola was on the side of the underdog. He had already written three articles and two pamphlets in defence of Dreyfus. What outraged Zola was that on 11th January the army cover-up acquitted the real betrayer of the secrets to the Germans, Major Esterhazy. Two days later Zola published a furious letter to the President of France in the newspaper 'L'Aurore'. His letter named various high officers, charging them with outright lies and with suppressing the documents which Picquart had uncovered. The editor retitled the letter 'J'accuse' and printed it on the front page. It split France in two. Army supporters burned thousands of copies in the street. One week later the Minister for War formally charged Zola with libel. On Sunday sermons were preached against Zola in churches throughout France. This was followed by a series of street demonstrations, many led by paid agitators, shouting "Death to Dreyfus! Down with Zola!" In one town Zola's effigy was burnt. Zola got supportive letters from across Europe, but he also received piles of hate mail and death threats. To those who opposed a revision of Dreyfus sentence "J'accuse' undermined institutions that mattered more than the innocence of one man. Zola chose Fernand Labori, one of the finest lawyers in France, as his counsel. Labori, 39, handsome and idealistic, refused to accept any fee for his services from Zola. Zola's trial opened on February 7th and lasted 16 days. It was a stressful time for him. Although formidable when aroused, Zola was essentially a shy man, who suffered agonies of nervousness when he had to speak in public. He certainly did not relish being the centre of the most sensational court case in Paris. In addition he was constantly threatened. On the second day the police found themselves overwhelmed by five hundred hostile demonstrators, many armed with leaded canes, when Zola and Labori emerged at 5pm. Fists lashed out as these two ran the gauntlet across the Boulevarde du Palais to Zola's coach. The glass in his carriage windows was shattered. After that the police increased their guard and told Zola not to go directly home at the end of each day's session. They advised him to go to a friend's house for an hour or two, in order to give the mobs outside his apartment time to disperse. Even so, throughout the trial hooligans paraded outside his flat at night, yelling, "Down with Zola!" and threw stones which smashed his windows. The War Minister had severely restricted Zola's defence by limiting his complaint to just 15 lines of 'J'accuse'. This prevented Labori from referring to the Dreyfus case and as a result, most of the people on Labori's list of nearly 100 witnesses could not be called. Judge Delegorgue connived further with the army in the way he ran Zola's trial. He forbade Labori to ask crucial questions of several of the State's witnesses, but granted himself the right to interrupt Labori's witnesses and was party to the suppression of secret documents. All this was, of course, directly against correct legal procedure. In spite of all this, Labori's careful preparation and skill shone through and made it clear that an injustice had been done. For instance, even though the judge did not allow any reference to Dreyfus' trial as such, a series of experts confirmed that the handwriting on the original message was that of Esterhazy. Nevertheless, the jury found Zola guilty by seven to five, sentenced him to prison for a year and fined him 3,000 francs, the maximum penalty. Labori immediately appealed. Articles protesting against Zola's sentence appeared in many leading European papers. 'The Times' stated that, "Zola's true crime has been in daring to rise to defend truth and civil liberty... For that courageous defence of the primordial rights of the citizen, he will be honoured wherever men have souls that are free." On April 2nd the Court of Appeals quashed Zola's conviction, whereupon the court martial judges themselves filed a slander suit against him. Meanwhile Esterhazy's cousin had given Labori documents conclusively proving the major's guilt. When Zola's second trial opened in July at Versailles the judge refused to allow Labori to open up the case to include these documents. It was clear this court, like the first one, was stacked against Zola. Labori promptly walked out, followed by Zola. During the coach ride back to a friend's house Labori hastily persuaded Zola to flee France, pending a reopening of Dreyfus' case. Labori pointed out that if Zola remained in France the court would serve final papers on him the next day. He would then be thrown into prison, which would prevent him from either speaking or writing in defence of Dreyfus. A friend fetched Zola's wife, Alexandrine, who, knowing their apartment was constantly watched, dared only bring him a nightshirt and some toilet articles hidden in a newspaper. Zola wrote in his diary, 'This was the sum total of the luggage we took, she and I, in a hackney cab to the Gare du Nord. The suddenness of the event bowled us over. I grasped her hand, my heart went out to her, we exchanged only a few choked words.' Zola had to spend eleven months in England, which was virtually an exile for him, as he spoke almost no English. A month after he left France Colonel Henry, who had forged the letter on which Dreyfus was convicted, committed suicide. In June 1899 Esterhazy confessed to a newspaper reporter. Zola could now return to France. Dreyfus, a broken man, was recalled from Devil's Island and retried. Labori was his principal lawyer. Passions were still running high on both sides and on the sixth day of the trial Labori was shot in the back at close range just outside the courtroom. His would-be assassin, although seen by several witnesses, including police, was never arrested. The bullet narrowly missed paralyzing Labori for life. Although he gamely returned to the court eight days later he was unable to conclude his defence of Dreyfus. This dastardly incident graphically shows the kind of risk Zola endured and his bravery in facing it. Incredibly, in spite of all that had been revealed, Dreyfus was found guilty again and sentenced to ten more years in prison. Two days later he was pardoned, but unfortunately this was followed by a general amnesty, which whitewashed all the army officers involved in the affair. Zola protested fiercely in 'L'Aurore'. Where was the justice, he asked, in Dreyfus being pardonned for a crime he hadn't committed? Worse, the amnesty meant that Esterhazy and the generals would all go scot-free. "The amnesty is a fait accompli," he wrote, " the trials will not take place, we will no longer be able to pursue the guilty. But the fact remains that an innocent Dreyfus was twice condemned, and that this iniquity will continue to give France horrible nightmares ... Where no one is punished, no one is guilty, How can you expect our young to acquire moral discernment when they have been fed corrupting lies? They needed light, and you have given them darkness." His enemies did not forgive him for this outburst, any more than they had forgotten 'J'accuse'. At the end of September 1902 Zola, who had been quietly writing his novel, 'The Truth', in his country house at Medan, developed a raging toothache. He decided to return to Paris with his wife so he could visit his dentist. It was rainy and cool and so, when they reached their apartment at 21b rue de Bruxelles, their servant Jules lit a fire in the bedroom grate. The couple then retired for the night and Zola, as usual, locked the door from the inside to guard against burglars. Although the flue was not drawing well, they did not suspect anything because the fire had been made with coal briquettes. At 3am Alexandrine, feeling nauseous, got up and went to the ensuite bathroom, where she vomited. She then returned to bed. Zola had also awoken feeling ill, but put it down to an attack of indigestion, so he told his wife not to wake Jules. Alexandrine was vaguely aware that her husband got out of bed later and fell to the floor. She called out to him but was unable to summon the strength to help him. At nine o'clock on the morning of the 29th Jules was unable to raise his employers so, with the help of another servant, he broke the door open. Alexandrine was lying unconscious on the bed. Zola had collapsed on the floor halfway towards the window, which he had probably intended to open. Jules immediately summoned a doctor, who attempted to revive Zola, first by artificial respiration and then with bottled oxygen, but had no success. Zola's body was still warm, so he had probably died only an hour earlier. His wife was rushed to a clinic, where she eventually recovered. She survived because she had been lying on top of the bed, whereas the toxic fumes had collected at floor level. Their dog, Fanfan, which had fallen asleep in the armchair, also survived. Analysis of Zola's blood showed he had died from carbon monoxide poisoning, and an autopsy confirmed this. Amid rumours that a fanatical right-winger had murdered him an inquest was launched. All this, of course, took time. Ten days after Zola's death two chemists tested a coal fire in his bedroom fireplace and found only very small concentrations of carbon monoxide. Six days later still two architects examined the flue, which angled across Zola's roof and ran up the wall of No.19, next door. The only flaw they found was some soot jammed in a bend. As a result the coroner found that death was due to accidental causes. The situation stayed like that for over 50 years, until in 1953 an elderly man called M. Hacquin wrote to the newspaper 'Liberation' saying he knew how Zola had died. He quoted the deathbed confession, 26 years earlier, by a friend of his, a stove-fitter who was strongly anti-Dreyfus in his opinions. "Hacquin, I'll tell you how Zola died. I trust you. Zola was deliberately suffocated. My men and I blocked his chimney while doing repairs on the roof next door. There was a lot of coming and going and we took advantage of the hubbub to locate Zola's chimney and stop it. We unstopped it very early the next day. No one noticed us." The story leaves questions unanswered. For instance why did M. Hacquin leave it so long to make his revelation? Precisely who or what caused Zola's death remains officially an unsolved mystery to this day. As Professor F.W.J. Hemmings put it, "it seems prudent to conclude that Zola might have had to pay with his life for his audacity in publishing 'J'accuse', but we shall probably never be able to say with certainty that he did die a political martyr." Zola's funeral was attended by 50,000 people from all walks of life. Anatole France delivered the eulogy. "At ease and famous, Zola was enjoying the fruits of his labour when suddenly he sacrificed it all: his repose, the work he loved, the quiet pleasures of his life. I recall the dark days when egotism and fear held sway in the highest councils of government. Then it was that Zola wrote to the President of the Republic his measured and formidable letter denouncing the forgery and the abuse of power. Zola deserves well of his country for not having lost faith in its ability to rule by law. His destiny and his heart have earnt him the highest distinction of all. He was moment in the history of human conscience." In July 1906 Dreyfus was completely exonerated. Further reading: Brown, Frederick: Zola, a Life (1996) Hemmings, F.W.J.: The Life and Times of Emile Zola ( Paul Elek, 1977) Schom, Alan: Emile Zola, a Bourgeois Rebel (Macdonald Queen Anne Press, 1987) |
|
| ||
|  Book Reviews Culture Environmental Exploration Food Historical Life Writing Politics Science & Technology Travel War | |
| ||
 | ||
 | ||
| Owen Carmichael | |
| ||
| I am a writer whose work has been published in "Quadrant", "Idiom 23", "The Canberra Times", "Austra...>> | |
| ||
| ||
| ||
| ||
| More by author: Balzac and His Region Life Writing Making Batik Modern | |
| ||
| ||
| ||
| More Historical: The Charge Of Beersheba ... Another Perspective by Linda Maclay Needless to say it was hot. Damn hot, and we had not been offered so much as a slurp of water in almost forty-eight hours. Our mounted regiments had endured several nights of forced marching through Palestine's harsh, inhospitable terrain, and a particularly unpleasant sandstorm had hit us in the no... >> Sense and Nonsense in Australian History (Excerpt) by John Hirst Democracy – manhood suffrage for the Legislative Assemblies – was established rapidly in the 1850s immediately after the grant of self-government. There was no largescale movement in support of it. British thinking on constitutional matters was orthodoxy with that extra tightness produced in a de... >> | |