French Army Officer. Born in Mulhouse, Alsace, France, the youngest of seven children of a Jewish textile manufacturer. In 1877 he entered the École Polytechnique, after which he entered the military. Promoted to Lieutenant in 1885, four year later he made Captain and was appointed as adjutant to the director of the pyrotechnical school in Bourges. In 1891, he was admitted to the Superior War College and graduated ninth in his class. He was then designated as a trainee at army headquarters. In 1894, he was accused of selling military secrets to Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen, Imperial German military attaché at the German Embassy in Paris. As a Jew, Dreyfus was a convenient scapegoat for the elitist officer corps, and little effort was made prove the case. After a court martial on January 1895, he was stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment at the Devil's Island penal colony in the Caribbean. In 1896, new evidenced surfaced that exonerated Captain Dreyfus. The French military, however, tried to suppress the information and failed. The Dreyfus issue polarized factions within French society. In broad terms, on the anti-Dreyfus side were royalists, anti-Semites, militarists, and Roman Catholics; those defending Dreyfus were republicans, socialists, and anti-clerics. Author Émile Zola exposed the affair to the general public in the newspaper, L'Aurore, in a famous open letter to the President, entitled "J'accuse!" (I Accuse!) in January 1898, and was then incarcerated for criticizing the government. The case eventually led to anti-Semitic riots throughout France, and the factions in the Dreyfus Affair remained in place for decades afterwards. In November 1897, with supporting evidence, Mathieu Dreyfus formally accused Major Ferdinand Esterhazy of the treason for which his brother had been convicted. In 1898, it was discovered that much of the evidence against Dreyfus had been forged by Colonel Henry of army intelligence, and by August of 1899, Henry confessed under interrogation to his forgeries and was placed under arrest. He committed suicide in his cell. Esterhazy fled to London, where he admitted his guilt. In September, a second trial was finally held, resulting in global indignation when the military court found Dreyfus guilty with extenuating circumstances and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. Dreyfus agreed not to appeal and was released, a pardon was then issued. In 1904, however, Dreyfus demanded a new investigation, and in 1906 the supreme court of appeals overturned the verdict in the second court martial, and Dreyfus was reinstated as a major, and made a knight in the Legion of Honor. He retired in October 1907 at the rank of major, and in 1908 he survived an assassination attempt. He was re-mobilized during World War I when he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. In 1930, his innocence was reaffirmed by the posthumous publication of Schwartzkoppen's memoirs. When Dreyfus died in Paris at 75, he was hailed as a hero by many; his funeral cortege passed the Place de la Concorde through ranks of assembled troops.