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The matter flared up again in 1896 and soon divided Frenchmen into two irreconcilable factions. In 1896 Col. Georges Picquart, chief of the intelligence section, discovered evidence indicating Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, who was deep in debt, as the real author of the bordereau. Picquart was silenced by army authorities, but in 1897 Dreyfus's brother, Mathieu, made the same discovery and increased pressure to reopen the case. Esterhazy was tried (Jan., 1898) by a court-martial and acquitted in a matter of minutes.
Emile Zola, a leading supporter of Dreyfus, promptly published an open letter (J'accuse) to the president of the French republic, FElix Faure, accusing the judges of having obeyed orders from the war office in their acquittal of Esterhazy. Zola was tried for libel and sentenced to jail, but he escaped to England. By this time the case had become a major political issue and was fully exploited by royalist, militarist, and nationalist elements on the one hand and by republican, socialist, and anticlerical elements on the other.
The violent partisanship dominated French life for a decade. Among the anti-Dreyfusards were the anti-Semite Edouard Drumont; Paul DEroulEde, who founded a patriotic league; and Maurice BarrEs. The pro-Dreyfus faction, which steadily gained strength, came to include Georges Clemenceau, in whose paper Zola's letter appeared, Jean JaurEs, RenE Waldeck-Rousseau, Anatole France, Charles PEguy, and Joseph Reinach. They were, in part, less personally concerned with Dreyfus, who remained in solitary confinement on Devils Island, than with discrediting the rightist government.
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