The Dreyfus Affair Read Free Page B

hypocritical creature, “an Italian, yes, an Italian”, he kept saying’. 20
    A competitive spirit in authors often leads them to an exaggerated disparagement of their confrères , and there was a widespread envy in the Goncourt circle of Zola’s immense success. However, the facts of Zola’s private life, the pornography of his novels and his dishonest portrayal of Lourdes led the very people whom the Dreyfusards should have tried to win over to decide that everything Zola wrote in ‘J’accuse’ must be lies.
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    The anger ignited by ‘J’accuse’, however, was deeper and more widespread than that felt by envious authors or devout ladies who believed in the miracles at Lourdes. For days after its publication, 3,000 youths went on the rampage in the streets of Nantes, smashing the windows of shops owned by Jews and assaulting the synagogue. In Rennes, the capital of Brittany, 2,000 rioters attacked the home of two Jewish academics. In Bordeaux, demonstrators shouted ‘Death to Zola!’, ‘Death to Dreyfus!’ and ‘Death to the Jews!’ There were demonstrations in Moulins, Montpellier, Poitiers, Tours, Angoulême and Toulouse. The army was called in to restore order in Angers and Rouen. In Saint-Malo, Dreyfus was burned in effigy. In Nancy, in eastern France, Jewish shops and the synagogue were attacked by demonstrators; and towards the end of January 1898 there were similar outbreaks in other cities in Lorraine. In Dijon and Châlons, police were called out to protect synagogues and shops owned by Jews.
    By and large, anti-Semitic agitation was found in the larger towns and cities – notably in the west of France where there were few Jews but where there remained folk memories of the persecution of Catholics during the French Revolution; and in the east where there were substantial Jewish communities, and age-old conflicts and commercial rivalries came into play. There were rural communes in which anti-Semitic sentiment intruded on traditional festivities: at Chapareillan in the Isère, a stuffed model representing Zola, ‘the impudent defender of the traitor Dreyfus’, was burned in the bonfire; and in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne in Savoy, a mannequin representing Zola and Judas was carried in the Mardi-Gras procession. 21 Even in the intimacy of an haut-bourgeois household in the Landes, outrage could be expressed with small, symbolic gestures: the French Catholic novelist François Mauriac, then a child, was told by his parents to call his chamber-pot ‘Zola’. 22
    The worst riots set off by Zola’s ‘J’accuse’ were in Algeria, where there remained a deep-seated resentment of the Crémieux decrees of 1871 which had given French citizenship to the entire Jewish community – seen ‘as an act of favouritism on the part of the nascent Republic’. 23 Between 18 and 24 January 1898, there was rioting in almost all Algeria’s towns and cities. In Algiers itself, rioting that started on 18 January went on for several days. The Jewish bazaar was destroyed and every day Zola was burned in effigy. In some cases, the Jewish proprietors defended their shops, and in the ensuing conflict there were casualties. A number of policemen were wounded and a demonstrator killed. ‘The Jews have dared to raise their heads,’ said a lawyer called Langlois. ‘We must crush them.’ During the funeral of the demonstrator, Jews were stoned and one beaten to death. There were more than 100 casualties and over 600 arrests. A young student, Max Régis Milano – like Zola, of Italian extraction, who dropped the Milano to become Max Régis and was described as ‘tall, handsome, strong and energetic’ – was the most charismatic of the street-fighters’ leaders. His adoring followers roamed the streets singing anti-Semitic songs and subscribed to the newspaper he founded, L’Antijuif .