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174-610: The Dreyfus affair ( French : affaire Dreyfus , pronounced [afɛːʁ dʁɛfys] ) was a political scandal that divided the Third French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. The scandal began in December 1894 when Captain Alfred Dreyfus , a 35-year-old Alsatian French artillery officer of Jewish descent , was wrongfully convicted of treason for communicating French military secrets to

348-523: A French Army Major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy . High-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, and a military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy after a trial lasting only two days. The Army laid additional charges against Dreyfus, based on forged documents. Subsequently, writer Émile Zola 's open letter J'Accuse...! in the newspaper L'Aurore stoked a growing movement of political support for Dreyfus, putting pressure on

522-524: A revolution erupted and on 24 February Louis Philippe abdicated in favor to his grandson Philippe, Count of Paris , under regency of his mother Helene, Duchess of Orléans , who was quickly ousted out from the Chamber of Deputies during the regency's formalization, who was interrupted by republican deputies who instead proclaimed the Second Republic. After 18 years of reign, Louis Philippe left

696-744: A French official to teachers in the department of Finistère , in western Brittany, included the following: "And remember, Gents: you were given your position in order to kill the Breton language". The prefect of Basses-Pyrénées in the French Basque Country wrote in 1846: "Our schools in the Basque Country are particularly meant to replace the Basque language with French..." Students were taught that their ancestral languages were inferior and they should be ashamed of them; this process

870-536: A belief; it is the irresistible cavalier conviction which distorts the facts and beliefs. To condemn Dreyfus, the writing on the bordereau had to be compared to that of the Captain. There was nobody competent to analyse the writing on the General Staff. Then Major du Paty de Clam entered the scene: an eccentric man who prided himself on being an expert in graphology . On being shown some letters by Dreyfus and

1044-475: A cell awaiting transfer. On 17 January 1895, he was transferred to the prison on Île de Ré where he was held for over a month. He had the right to see his wife twice a week in a long room, each of them at one end, with the director of the prison in the middle. At the last minute, at the initiative of General Mercier, a law was passed on 9 February 1895, restoring the Îles du Salut in French Guiana , as

1218-596: A certain indifference to social issues, a willingness to break international isolation, the Russian alliance, and development of the colonial empire. These centrist policies resulted in cabinet instability, with some Republican members of the government sometimes aligning with the radicals and some Orléanists aligning with the Legitimists in five successive governments from 1893 to 1896. This instability coincided with an equally unstable presidency: President Sadi Carnot

1392-431: A comprehensive academic study entitled "The World's 10 most influential languages". In the article, Weber ranked French as, after English, the second-most influential language of the world, ahead of Spanish. His criteria were the numbers of native speakers, the number of secondary speakers (especially high for French among fellow world languages), the number of countries using the language and their respective populations,

1566-437: A compromise between Broglie and Chambord: the last will accept the tricolour flag while a future agreement about a new flag will be considered. In October the majority was shocked when the centre-right representative Charles Savary rashly misinformed the press of Chambord's full acceptance of the tricolour flag, . The pretender had to harshly clarify his position, causing the left of the centre-right, Orléanists disappointment and

1740-560: A conservative coalition. The monarchist majority, led by the Duke of Aumale (son of Louis Philippe), and the centre-left endorsed the centre-right candidate Thiers as president of the Republic, but due to the continued arguments between Legitimists and Orléanists and the memory of the dynastic divisions of the past 40 years, Thiers moved to support a "conservative republic" instead of a divided monarchy. Due to Chambord's dislike of Aumale,

1914-514: A considerable force, with over 60,000 members across France. In that year, they joined other far-right leagues on 6 February demonstrations against political corruption and the Parliament , causing the resignation of Prime Minister Édouard Daladier the day after and provoking fear of a nationalist coup d'état . The papal condemnation, the aggressive tactics, and Maurras's disrespectful attitude toward constitutional monarchists finally ended

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2088-483: A directly elected Chamber of Deputies and an indirectly-elected Senate was created, along with a ministry under the President of the council ( prime minister ), who was nominally answerable to both the President of the Republic and the legislature. Throughout the 1870s, the issue of whether a monarchy should replace the republic dominated public debate. On 16 May 1877, with public opinion swinging heavily in favour of

2262-425: A dozen defense witnesses. Finally, the absence of motive for the crime was a serious thorn in the prosecution case. Dreyfus was indeed a very patriotic officer highly rated by his superiors, very rich and with no tangible reason to betray France. The fact of Dreyfus's Jewishness, which was used extensively by the right-wing press, was not openly presented in court. Alphonse Bertillon , an eccentric criminologist who

2436-555: A foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050. French is the fastest growing language on the continent (in terms of either official or foreign languages). French is increasingly being spoken as a native language in Francophone Africa, especially in regions like Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Gabon, Madagascar , and

2610-463: A foreign power, to the maximum penalty under section 76 of the Criminal Code: permanent exile in a walled fortification ( prison ), the cancellation of his army rank and military degradation, also known as cashiering . Dreyfus was not sentenced to death , as it had been abolished for political crimes since 1848 . For the authorities, the press and the public, doubts had been dispelled by

2784-521: A minority. At the end, many monarchists accepted the republic, moving toward the centre. Some Orléanists, especially from their bourgeoise core base, accepted the republic even since the 1870s, like Thiers and press baron Émile de Girardin . In 1892, after Pope Leo XIII 's approval to the Third Republic, breaking the historical alliance between Church and Crown, some monarchists led by Orléanist Jacques Piou and Legitimist Albert de Mun formed

2958-705: A period of prosperity and prominence among European nations. Richelieu established the Académie française to protect the French language. By the early 1800s, Parisian French had become the primary language of the aristocracy in France. Near the beginning of the 19th century, the French government began to pursue policies with the end goal of eradicating the many minorities and regional languages ( patois ) spoken in France. This began in 1794 with Henri Grégoire 's "Report on

3132-406: A place of fortified deportation so that Dreyfus was not sent to Ducos, New Caledonia . Indeed, during the deportation of Adjutant Lucien Châtelain, sentenced for conspiring with the enemy in 1888, the facilities did not provide the required conditions of confinement and detention conditions were considered too soft. On 21 February 1895, Dreyfus embarked on the ship Ville de Saint-Nazaire. The next day

3306-494: A relic of the old nominal case system of Latin longer than most other Romance languages (with the notable exception of Romanian which still currently maintains a case distinction), differentiating between an oblique case and a nominative case. The phonology was characterized by heavy syllabic stress, which led to the emergence of various complicated diphthongs such as -eau which would later be leveled to monophthongs. The earliest evidence of what became Old French can be seen in

3480-475: A republic after the election of March , President MacMahon made one last desperate attempt to salvage the monarchical cause by dismissing the "conservative republican" prime minister Jules Simon and appointing the Duke of Broglie to office. He then dissolved parliament and called a general election for the following October. If his hope had been to halt the move towards republicanism, it backfired spectacularly, with

3654-587: A second language. French is the second most taught foreign language in the EU. All institutions of the EU use French as a working language along with English and German ; in some institutions, French is the sole working language (e.g. at the Court of Justice of the European Union ). French is also the 16th most natively spoken language in the world, the sixth most spoken language by total number of speakers , and

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3828-526: A second language. However it has also become a native language in a number of urban areas, especially in regions like Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Gabon, Madagascar , and the Democratic Republic of the Congo . In some North African countries, though not having official status, it is also a first language among some upper classes of the population alongside indigenous languages, but only

4002-941: A second one among the general population. In 2015, approximately 40% of the Francophone population (including L2 and partial speakers) lived in Europe, 36% in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas, and 1% in Asia and Oceania. French is the second most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union . Of Europeans who speak other languages natively, approximately one-fifth are able to speak French as

4176-578: A similar comment. On 5 January 1895, the ceremony of degradation took place in the Morlan Court of the Military School in Paris. While the drums rolled, Dreyfus was accompanied by four artillery officers, who brought him before an officer of the state who read the judgment. A Republican Guard adjutant tore off his badges, thin strips of gold, his stripes, cuffs and sleeves of his jacket. As he

4350-449: A spy. Some of these forgeries referred to the real affair between the two officers; in one, Alessandro supposedly informed his lover that if "Dreyfus is brought in for questioning", they must both claim that they "never had any dealings with that Jew. ... Clearly, no one can ever know what happened with him." The letters, real and fake, provided a convenient excuse for placing the entire Dreyfus dossier under seal, given that exposure of

4524-547: A variant of Canadian French , is spoken in parts of New England . Missouri French was historically spoken in Missouri and Illinois (formerly known as Upper Louisiana ), but is nearly extinct today. French also survived in isolated pockets along the Gulf Coast of what was previously French Lower Louisiana , such as Mon Louis Island , Alabama and DeLisle, Mississippi (the latter only being discovered by linguists in

4698-501: A vengeful spirit remained. The military required considerable resources to prepare for the next conflict, and it was in this spirit that the Franco-Russian Alliance of 27 August 1892 was signed, although some opponents thought it "against nature". The army had recovered from the defeat, but many of its officers were aristocrats and monarchists. Cult of the flag and contempt for the parliamentary republic prevailed in

4872-437: Is 95%, and in the French collectivity of Wallis and Futuna , it is 84%. In French Polynesia and to a lesser extent Wallis and Futuna, where oral and written knowledge of the French language has become almost universal (95% and 84% respectively), French increasingly tends to displace the native Polynesian languages as the language most spoken at home. In French Polynesia, the percentage of the population who reported that French

5046-472: Is a widespread second language among the Lebanese people , and is taught in many schools along with Arabic and English. French is used on Lebanese pound banknotes, on road signs, on Lebanese license plates , and on official buildings (alongside Arabic). Today, French and English are secondary languages of Lebanon , with about 40% of the population being Francophone and 40% Anglophone. The use of English

5220-489: Is also a working language in nonprofit organisations such as the Red Cross (alongside English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian), Amnesty International (alongside 32 other languages of which English is the most used, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Italian), Médecins sans Frontières (used alongside English, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic), and Médecins du Monde (used alongside English). Given

5394-430: Is among the top five most studied languages worldwide, with about 120 million learners as of 2017. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 16th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. French has a long history as an international language of literature and scientific standards and is a primary or second language of many international organisations including

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5568-462: Is an official language in 27 countries , as well as one of the most geographically widespread languages in the world, with about 50 countries and territories having it as a de jure or de facto official, administrative, or cultural language. Most of these countries are members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the community of 54 member states which share

5742-652: Is enacted only in New Brunswick, where about one third of the population is Francophone. French is also an official language of all of the territories ( Northwest Territories , Nunavut , and Yukon ). Out of the three, Yukon has the most French speakers, making up just under 4% of the population. Furthermore, while French is not an official language in Ontario , the French Language Services Act ensures that provincial services are available in

5916-503: Is growing in the business and media environment. Out of about 900,000 students, about 500,000 are enrolled in Francophone schools, public or private, in which the teaching of mathematics and scientific subjects is provided in French. Actual usage of French varies depending on the region and social status. One-third of high school students educated in French go on to pursue higher education in English-speaking institutions. English

6090-404: Is known as Old French. The period of Old French spanned between the 8th and 14th centuries. Old French shared many characteristics with Latin. For example, Old French made use of different possible word orders just as Latin did because it had a case system that retained the difference between nominative subjects and oblique non-subjects . The period is marked by a heavy superstrate influence from

6264-605: Is necessary to avoid a casus belli "; while for Judet in Le Petit Journal of 18 December: "the closed court is our impregnable refuge against Germany"; or in La Croix the same day: it must be "the most absolute closed court". The trial opened on 19 December 1894 at one o'clock and a closed court was immediately pronounced. This closed court was not legally consistent since Major Picquart and Prefect Louis Lépine were present at certain proceedings in violation of

6438-469: Is often considered to be a useful skill by business owners in the United Kingdom; a 2014 study found that 50% of British managers considered French to be a valuable asset for their business, thus ranking French as the most sought-after foreign language there, ahead of German (49%) and Spanish (44%). MIT economist Albert Saiz calculated a 2.3% premium for those who have French as a foreign language in

6612-828: Is one of the official languages of such major international and regional courts, tribunals, and dispute-settlement bodies as the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights , the Caribbean Court of Justice , the Court of Justice for the Economic Community of West African States , the Inter-American Court of Human Rights , the International Court of Justice , the International Criminal Tribunal for

6786-576: Is taught in universities around the world, and is one of the world's most influential languages because of its wide use in the worlds of journalism, jurisprudence , education, and diplomacy. In diplomacy, French is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (and one of the UN Secretariat 's only two working languages ), one of twenty official and three procedural languages of the European Union , an official language of NATO ,

6960-553: Is the language of business and communication, with French being an element of social distinction, chosen for its emotional value. French is an official language of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu , where 31% of the population was estimated to speak it in 2023. In the French special collectivity of New Caledonia , 97% of the population can speak, read and write French while in French Polynesia this figure

7134-483: Is the native language of about 23% of the Swiss population, and is spoken by 50% of the population. Along with Luxembourgish and German, French is one of the three official languages of Luxembourg , where it is generally the preferred language of business as well as of the different public administrations. It is also the official language of Monaco . At a regional level, French is acknowledged as an official language in

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7308-492: Is the second-most spoken language (after English) in the states of Maine and New Hampshire . In Louisiana , it is tied with Spanish for second-most spoken if Louisiana French and all creoles such as Haitian are included. French is the third most spoken language (after English and Spanish) in the states of Connecticut , Rhode Island , and New Hampshire . Louisiana is home to many distinct French dialects, collectively known as Louisiana French . New England French , essentially

7482-424: Is the sole official language in the province of Quebec , where some 80% of the population speak it as a native language and 95% are capable of conducting a conversation in it. Quebec is also home to the city of Montreal , which is the world's fourth-largest French-speaking city, by number of first language speakers. New Brunswick and Manitoba are the only officially bilingual provinces, though full bilingualism

7656-452: The Action was joined by many Catholics and monarchists who were anti-Dreyfus, contributing to the move of the association toward the right. Particularly, the adhesion of Charles Maurras , considered a "pragmatic" anti-Dreyfusard rather than a true anti-Semite, contributed to the creation of the ideology of the Action , which rapidly became the main monarchist group. Maurras, despite becoming

7830-764: The Aosta Valley region of Italy where it is the first language of approximately 50% of the population, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands . It is also spoken in Andorra and is the main language after Catalan in El Pas de la Casa . The language is taught as the primary second language in the German state of Saarland , with French being taught from pre-school and over 43% of citizens being able to speak French. The majority of

8004-462: The Aosta Valley region of Italy; and various communities elsewhere. French is estimated to have about 310 million speakers, of which about 80 million are native speakers. According to the OIF, approximately 321 million people worldwide are "able to speak the language" as of 2022, without specifying the criteria for this estimation or whom it encompasses. In Francophone Africa, it is spoken mainly as

8178-539: The Democratic Republic of Congo . There is not a single African French , but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages . Sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth. It is also where the language has evolved the most in recent years. Some vernacular forms of French in Africa can be difficult to understand for French speakers from other countries, but written forms of

8352-485: The European Union , French was the dominant language within all institutions until the 1990s. After several enlargements of the EU (1995, 2004), French significantly lost ground in favour of English, which is more widely spoken and taught in most EU countries. French currently remains one of the three working languages, or "procedural languages", of the EU, along with English and German. It is the second-most widely used language within EU institutions after English, but remains

8526-559: The Francien dialect is one that not only continued but also thrived during the Middle French period (14th–17th centuries). Modern French grew out of this Francien dialect. Grammatically, during the period of Middle French, noun declensions were lost and there began to be standardized rules. Robert Estienne published the first Latin-French dictionary, which included information about phonetics, etymology, and grammar. Politically,

8700-601: The French Ministry of Defence . Recent research indicates the existence of numbering which suggests the presence of a dozen documents. Among these letters were some of an erotic homosexual nature (the Davignon letter among others) raising the question of the tainted methods of the Statistics Section and the objective of their choice of documents. The secret file was illegally submitted at the beginning of

8874-608: The French Social Party , about the possibility of a restoration. In 1946, the Count of Paris (who succeeded his father in 1940) moved to Portugal due to the ban on former royals still present in France. As a result of the unstable situation of the Fourth Republic , characterized like its predecessor by short governments and a high number of political parties, the Count of Paris made a serious attempt to restore

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9048-877: The International Olympic Committee , the Council of Europe , the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development , Organization of American States (alongside Spanish, Portuguese and English), the Eurovision Song Contest , one of eighteen official languages of the European Space Agency , World Trade Organization and the least used of the three official languages in the North American Free Trade Agreement countries. It

9222-626: The Oaths of Strasbourg and the Sequence of Saint Eulalia , while Old French literature began to be produced in the eleventh century, with major early works often focusing on the lives of saints (such as the Vie de Saint Alexis ), or wars and royal courts, notably including the Chanson de Roland , epic cycles focused on King Arthur and his court , as well as a cycle focused on William of Orange . It

9396-588: The Third Republic . A National Assembly , composed by 638 on 778 seats, was formed and new elections were called for the 8 February of the same year, which resulted in a victory for the monarchist right: 396 seats won, divided to 214 Orléanists and 182 Legitimists, nicknamed "cavalrymen". Initially divided about the dynastic issue, the Orléanists found a compromise with the Legitimists, supporting

9570-1012: The United Nations , the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization , the World Trade Organization , the International Olympic Committee , the General Conference on Weights and Measures , and the International Committee of the Red Cross . French is a Romance language (meaning that it is descended primarily from Vulgar Latin ) that evolved out of the Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in northern France. The language's early forms include Old French and Middle French . Due to Roman rule, Latin

9744-458: The anarchist threat (reduced by the " villainous laws " of July 1894). The elections of 1893 were focused on the "social question" and resulted in a Republican victory (just under half the seats) against the conservative right, and the reinforcement of the Radicals (about 150 seats) and Socialists (about 50 seats). The opposition of the Radicals and Socialists resulted in a centrist government with policies oriented towards economic protectionism,

9918-405: The centre-right . Restoration appeared imminent when a parliamentary commission was established in October 1873 to adopt a monarchist constitution. But in the same month the majority was weakened by the refusal of Chambord to accept the French Tricolour , used since 1830, preferring instead the return of the royal white flag, symbol of the Ancien Régime . The question was apparently resolved with

10092-418: The election of 1965 , instead supporting the candidacy of the pretender that would promote a campaign to transform the republic into a constitutional monarchy. However, in 1963 De Gaulle confided to his minister Alain Peyrefitte that, despite his respect and esteem for the Count of Paris, he never considered him to be his successor as the head of state, stating that the idea of a monarchy was incompatible with

10266-452: The "Scoundrel D ...". It was a letter from the German military attaché, Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen , to the Italian military attaché, Lieutenant Colonel Alessandro Panizzardi, intercepted by the SR. The letter was supposed to accuse Dreyfus definitively since, according to his accusers, it was signed with the initial of his name. In reality, the Statistics Section knew that the letter could not be attributed to Dreyfus and if it was, it

10440-446: The "fusionists" rapidly passed under the leadership of the Duke of Broglie , who in 1873 successfully managed the election of President Patrice de MacMahon , former general and national hero who showed Legitimist sympathies, considering him as a kind of "lieutenant-general of the kingdom" before the fully restoration of Chambord on the throne. Broglie was shortly after awarded with the premiership by MacMahon, supported by monarchists and

10614-442: The 1880s Schwartzkoppen had begun an affair with an Italian military attaché, Lieutenant Colonel Count Alessandro Panizzardi . While neither had anything to do with Dreyfus, their intimate and erotic correspondence (e.g. "Don't exhaust yourself with too much buggery."), which was obtained by the authorities, lent an air of truth to other documents that were forged by prosecutors to lend retroactive credibility to Dreyfus's conviction as

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10788-455: The 1990s) but these varieties are severely endangered or presumed extinct. French is one of two official languages in Haiti alongside Haitian Creole . It is the principal language of education, administration, business, and public signage and is spoken by all educated Haitians. It is also used for ceremonial events such as weddings, graduations, and church masses. The vast majority of the population speaks Haitian Creole as their first language;

10962-474: The 20th century, when it was replaced by English as the United States became the dominant global power following the Second World War . Stanley Meisler of the Los Angeles Times said that the fact that the Treaty of Versailles was written in English as well as French was the "first diplomatic blow" against the language. During the Grand Siècle (17th century), France, under the rule of powerful leaders such as Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV , enjoyed

11136-510: The Canadian capital, is also effectively bilingual, as it has a large population of federal government workers, who are required to offer services in both French and English, and is just across the river from the Quebecois city of Gatineau . According to the United States Census Bureau (2011), French is the fourth most spoken language in the United States after English, Spanish, and Chinese, when all forms of French are considered together and all dialects of Chinese are similarly combined. French

11310-614: The Caribbean that are collectively referred to as the French West Indies , namely Guadeloupe , Saint Barthélemy , Saint Martin , and Martinique . French is the official language of both French Guiana on the South American continent, and of Saint Pierre and Miquelon , an archipelago off the coast of Newfoundland in North America. French was the official language of the colony of French Indochina , comprising modern-day Vietnam , Laos , and Cambodia . It continues to be an administrative language in Laos and Cambodia, although its influence has waned in recent decades. In colonial Vietnam,

11484-426: The Count of Paris expressed support for the policies of Mendès France, like the peace in Indochina , the refusal of a US-controlled European Defence Community (EDC) and decolonization of French Africa. Orléans' relationship with Charles de Gaulle was also promising, as the general and the pretender had similar political views and were both devout Roman Catholics. When De Gaulle became prime minister in 1958, it

11658-447: The Dreyfus affair. Lenepveu caricatured "prominent Jews, Dreyfus supporters, and Republican statesman". No. 35 Amnistie populaire depicts the corpse of Dreyfus himself as it dangles from a noose. Large noses, money, and Lenepveu's general tendency to illustrate subjects with bodies of animals likely contributed to the dissemination of antisemitism in French popular culture. The staff of the Military Intelligence Service (SR) worked around

11832-408: The Empire, this local elite had been slowly abandoning Gaulish entirely, but the rural and lower class populations remained Gaulish speakers who could sometimes also speak Latin or Greek. The final language shift from Gaulish to Vulgar Latin among rural and lower class populations occurred later, when both they and the incoming Frankish ruler/military class adopted the Gallo-Roman Vulgar Latin speech of

12006-419: The Francophone world; it remains one of the most notable examples of a miscarriage of justice and of antisemitism . The affair divided France into pro-republican, anticlerical Dreyfusards and pro-Army, mostly Catholic anti-Dreyfusards, embittering French politics and encouraging radicalisation. The press played a crucial role in exposing information and in shaping and expressing public opinion on both sides of

12180-467: The French monarchy. He endorsed the Christian Democratic Popular Republican Movement (MPR), and formed a kind of political committee composed of the academics Bertrand de Jouvenel , Gustave Thibon and Michel de Saint Pierre, publishing on 5 February 1948 the manifesto Esquisse d'une constitution monarchique et démocratique , that promoted the idea of a constitutional monarchy. Thanks to the MPR deputy Paul Hutin-Desgrées (co-founder of Ouest-France ),

12354-445: The General Staff still had a card in hand to tip the balance decisively against Dreyfus. Military witnesses at the trial alerted high command about the risk of acquittal. For this eventuality the Statistics Section had prepared a file containing, in principle, four "absolute" proofs of the guilt of Captain Dreyfus accompanied by an explanatory note. The contents of this secret file remained uncertain until 2013, when they were released by

12528-487: The General Staff to prepare public opinion and to put indirect pressure on the judges. On 8 November 1894, General Mercier declared Dreyfus guilty in an interview with Le Figaro . He repeated himself on 29 November 1894 in an article by Arthur Meyer in Le Gaulois , which in fact condemned the indictment against Dreyfus and asked, "How much freedom will the military court have to judge the defendant?" The jousting of

12702-464: The German Embassy in Paris. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent overseas to the penal colony on Devil's Island in French Guiana , where he spent the following five years imprisoned in very harsh conditions. In 1896, evidence came to light—primarily through the investigations of Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart , head of counter-espionage—which identified the real culprit as

12876-484: The Germanic Frankish language , which non-exhaustively included the use in upper-class speech and higher registers of V2 word order , a large percentage of the vocabulary (now at around 15% of modern French vocabulary ) including the impersonal singular pronoun on (a calque of Germanic man ), and the name of the language itself. Up until its later stages, Old French , alongside Old Occitan , maintained

13050-492: The Germans. This was especially critical since several cases of espionage had already been featured in the headlines of newspapers, which were fond of sensationalism . In 1890, the archivist Boutonnet was convicted for selling plans of shells that used melinite . The German military attaché in Paris in 1894 was Count Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen , who developed a policy of infiltration that appears to have been effective. In

13224-508: The Jewish presence in France. Jews in metropolitan France in 1895 numbered about 80,000 (40,000 in Paris alone), who were highly integrated into society; an additional 45,000 Jews lived in Algeria . The launch of La Libre Parole with a circulation estimated at 200,000 copies in 1892, allowed Drumont to expand his audience to a popular readership already enticed by the boulangiste adventure in

13398-596: The Meuse conducted by an officer whom the Germans and Italians nicknamed Dubois. This is what led to the origins of the Dreyfus affair. The social context was marked by the rise of nationalism and antisemitism. The growth of antisemitism, virulent since the publication of Jewish France by Édouard Drumont in 1886 (150,000 copies in the first year), went hand in hand with the rise of clericalism . Tensions were high in all strata of society, fueled by an influential press, which

13572-538: The Minister of War, General Auguste Mercier . In fact the SR suspected that there had been leaks since the beginning of 1894 and had been trying to find the perpetrator. The minister had been harshly attacked in the press for his actions, which were deemed incompetent, and appears to have sought an opportunity to enhance his image. He immediately initiated two secret investigations, one administrative and one judicial. To find

13746-635: The Orléanist base well-defined inside the magistrature, the press, universities and academies, especially the Académie française . However, also some great aristocratic families joined the court, like the Dukes of Broglie , as well former Bonapartist officers like the Marshal Soult and Édouard Mortier . This establishment constituted the majority of the Party of Order , led by Thiers, who represented

13920-607: The Republicans gained control of the Senate, formerly monopolized by monarchists. MacMahon himself resigned on 30 January 1879, leaving a seriously weakened presidency in the hands of Jules Grévy , leader of the Republican Left . The end of the presidency of MacMahon and the Senate's loss caused the end of the monarchist bloc. Although there were Orléanist deputies in the Chamber for all the 19th century, they were only

14094-480: The affair was revealed in an article in La Libre Parole , the antisemitic newspaper owned by Édouard Drumont . This marked the beginning of a very brutal press campaign until the trial. This event put the affair in the field of antisemitism where it remained until its conclusion. On 1 November 1894, Alfred's brother, Mathieu Dreyfus, became aware of the arrest after being called urgently to Paris. He became

14268-502: The architect of the arduous fight for the liberation of his brother. Without hesitation, he began looking for a lawyer, and retained the distinguished criminal lawyer Edgar Demange . On 3 November 1894, General Saussier, the Military governor of Paris , reluctantly gave the order for an enquiry. He had the power to stop the process but did not, perhaps because of an exaggerated confidence in military justice. Major Besson d'Ormescheville,

14442-433: The army. The Republic celebrated its army; the army ignored the Republic. Over the previous ten years the army had undergone a significant shift resulting from its twofold aim to democratize and modernize. The graduates of the École Polytechnique now competed effectively with officers from the main career path of Saint-Cyr , which caused strife, bitterness, and jealousy among junior officers expecting promotions. The period

14616-407: The arrest of her husband secret and even said, "One word, one single word and it will be a European war!" Illegally, Dreyfus was placed in solitary confinement in prison, where Du Paty interrogated him day and night in order to obtain a confession, which failed. The captain was morally supported by the first Dreyfusard, Major Forzinetti, commandant of the military prisons of Paris. On 29 October 1894,

14790-410: The basis for a constitutional monarchy with a central Parliament. The Orléanism, became the dominant tendency within political life, easily divided inside the Chamber of Deputies between the centre-left of Adolphe Thiers and the centre-right of François Guizot . Louis Philippe showed himself more aligned with Guizot, entrusted to the higher offices of government, and rapidly became associated with

14964-455: The beginning of the case, the emphasis was rather on the Alsatian origins of Dreyfus than on his religion. These origins were not, however, exceptional because these officers were favoured by France for their knowledge of the German language and culture. There was also antisemitism in the offices of the General Staff, and it fast became central to the affair by filling in the credibility gaps in

15138-403: The bordereau on 5 October, du Paty concluded immediately who had written the two writings. After a day of additional work he provided a report that, despite some differences, the similarities were sufficient to warrant an investigation. Dreyfus was therefore "the probable author" of the bordereau in the eyes of the General Staff. General Mercier believed he had the guilty party, but he exaggerated

15312-495: The clock to spy on the German Embassy in Paris. They had managed to get a French housekeeper named "Madame Bastian" hired to work in the building and spy on the Germans. In September 1894, she found a torn-up note which she handed over to her employers at the Military Intelligence Service. This note later became known as "the bordereau". This piece of paper, torn into six large pieces, unsigned and undated,

15486-521: The columnists took place within a broader debate about the issue of a closed court. For Ranc and Cassagnac, who represented the majority of the press, the closed court was a low manoeuvre to enable the acquittal of Dreyfus, "because the minister is a coward". The proof was "that he grovels before the Prussians" by agreeing to publish the denials of the German ambassador in Paris. In other newspapers, such as L'Éclair on 13 December 1894: "the closed court

15660-555: The confession" took place before the degradation. In the van that brought him to the military school, Dreyfus is said to have confided his treachery to Captain Lebrun-Renault. It appears that this was merely self-promotion by the captain of the Republican Guard, and that in reality Dreyfus had made no admission. Due to the affair's being related to national security, the prisoner was then held in solitary confinement in

15834-547: The confines of the General Staff, the French Army as a whole was relatively open to individual talent. At the time of the Dreyfus affair there were an estimated 300 Jewish officers in the army (about 3 per cent of the total), of whom ten were generals. The popularity of the duel using sword or small pistol, sometimes causing death, bore witness to the tensions of the period. When a series of press articles in La Libre Parole accused Jewish officers of "betraying their birth",

16008-531: The conflict. In 1894, the Third Republic was twenty-four years old. Although the 16 May Crisis in 1877 had crippled the political influence of both the Bourbon and Orléanist royalists , its ministries continued to be short-lived as the country lurched from crisis to crisis: three years immediately preceding the Dreyfus affair were the near-coup of Georges Boulanger in 1889, the Panama scandals in 1892, and

16182-548: The conservatives and monarchists under the Second Republic. Orléanism revived after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 which caused the fall of the Second Empire which had succeeded to the Second Republic under Emperor Napoleon III , the former president of France who had been enthroned after the coup d'état of 1851 . The Second Empire was succeeded itself officially in 1871 by

16356-506: The constitutional system. It was only after the establishment of the Second French Republic in 1848 and the division inside right-wing factions over the monarchy that the Orléanist party found unity, supporting a parliamentary system instead of an executive one. In the early 20th century, the majority of Orléanists accepted the republican institutions, approving the parliamentary system and pro-business policy realized by

16530-606: The country near French-speaking Quebec, however, it is the foreign language more commonly taught. Vowel phonemes in French Orl%C3%A9anists Orleanism was opposed by the two other monarchist trends: the more conservative Legitimism that was loyal to the eldest branch of the House of Bourbon after 1830, and the Bonapartism that supported Napoleon ’s legacy and heirs. On 26 July 1830,

16704-450: The court. Dreyfus was apoplectic with rage and demanded to be confronted with his anonymous accuser, which was rejected by the General Staff. The incident had an undeniable effect on the court, which was composed of seven officers who were both judges and jury. However, the outcome of the trial remained uncertain. The conviction of the judges had been shaken by the firm and logical answers of the accused. The judges took leave to deliberate, but

16878-486: The culprit, using simple though crude reasoning, the circle of the search was arbitrarily restricted to suspects posted to, or former employees of, the General Staff – necessarily a trainee artillery officer. The ideal culprit was identified: Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a graduate of the École polytechnique and an artillery officer, of the Jewish faith and of Alsatian origin, coming from the republican meritocracy. At

17052-588: The defection of many Catholic sympathizers. The Pope judged that it was folly for the French Church to continue to tie its fortunes to the unlikely dream of a monarchist restoration, and distrusted the movement's tendency to defend the Catholic religion in merely utilitarian and nationalistic terms, and the Action Française never recovered from the condemnation. By 1934, the Action was still

17226-518: The deliberations by the President of the Military Court, Colonel Émilien Maurel, by order of the Minister of War, General Mercier. Later at the Rennes trial of 1899, General Mercier explained (falsely) the nature of the prohibited disclosure of the documents submitted in the courtroom. This file contained, in addition to letters without much interest, some of which were falsified, a piece known as

17400-519: The demographic prospects of the French-speaking nations of Africa, researcher Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote in 2014 that French "could be the language of the future". However, some African countries such as Algeria intermittently attempted to eradicate the use of French, and as of 2024 it was removed as an official language in Mali and Burkina Faso . Significant as a judicial language, French

17574-420: The different regimes, maintained its bourgeois platform, constituted by those academics, journalists and financiers who backed Louis Philippe during his reign, and was intended as the liberal centre of politics, far from reactionary Legitimists and revolutionary republicans. However, for all the span of Louis Philippe's reign, the Orléanists were not a homogeneous party, but simply the majority who supported

17748-453: The director and publisher of the antisemitic newspaper La Libre Parole . The new trial resulted in another conviction and a 10-year sentence, but Dreyfus was pardoned and released. In 1906, Dreyfus was exonerated . After being reinstated as a major in the French Army, he served during the whole of World War I , ending his service with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He died in 1935. The Dreyfus affair came to symbolise modern injustice in

17922-499: The dissolution of the "restoration" commission on 31 October 1873. A last attempt by Chambord was made on 12 November, when he asked President MacMahon via the Duke of Blacas to join with him into the National Assembly and spoke toward the representatives, hoping to convince them to restore the monarchy, but MacMahon refused due to his institutional position, toward he was formally even if not ideologically attached, causing

18096-448: The economic power of the countries using the language, the number of major areas in which the language is used, and the linguistic prestige associated with the mastery of the language (Weber highlighted that French in particular enjoys considerable linguistic prestige). In a 2008 reassessment of his article, Weber concluded that his findings were still correct since "the situation among the top ten remains unchanged." Knowledge of French

18270-594: The elites primarily spoke French, while many servants who worked in French households spoke a French pidgin known as " Tây Bồi " (now extinct). After French rule ended, South Vietnam continued to use French in administration, education, and trade. However, since the Fall of Saigon and the opening of a unified Vietnam's economy, French has gradually been effectively displaced as the first foreign language of choice by English in Vietnam. Nevertheless, it continues to be taught as

18444-646: The exile law was abrogated on 24 June 1950, permitting the return of the Count of Paris to the capital, where he met with President Vincent Auriol . The count and his family made their home in the Parisian suburbs of Louveciennes , and quickly became media darlings. Orléans frequently went to parties and meetings which were attended by prominent French politicians of the Fourth Republic, such as Antoine Pinay , Jacques Soustelle , Pierre Mendès France and Maurice Schumann . Through his newsletter Courier 50 ,

18618-516: The first government authority to adopt Modern French as official was the Aosta Valley in 1536, while the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (1539) named French the language of law in the Kingdom of France . During the 17th century, French replaced Latin as the most important language of diplomacy and international relations ( lingua franca ). It retained this role until approximately the middle of

18792-915: The former Yugoslavia , International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda , the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea the International Criminal Court and the World Trade Organization Appellate Body . It is the sole internal working language of the Court of Justice of the European Union , and makes with English the European Court of Human Rights 's two working languages. In 1997, George Weber published, in Language Today ,

18966-829: The gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish. The estimated number of French words that can be attributed to Gaulish is placed at 154 by the Petit Robert , which is often viewed as representing standardized French, while if non-standard dialects are included, the number increases to 240. Known Gaulish loans are skewed toward certain semantic fields, such as plant life ( chêne , bille , etc.), animals ( mouton , cheval , etc.), nature ( boue , etc.), domestic activities (ex. berceau ), farming and rural units of measure ( arpent , lieue , borne , boisseau ), weapons, and products traded regionally rather than further afield. This semantic distribution has been attributed to peasants being

19140-412: The government to reopen the case. In 1899, Dreyfus was returned to France for another trial. The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus, the "Dreyfusards" such as Sarah Bernhardt , Anatole France , Charles Péguy , Henri Poincaré and Georges Clemenceau ; and those who condemned him, the "anti-Dreyfusards" such as Édouard Drumont ,

19314-585: The group of the " ralliés " ("supporters"), that in 1901 constituted the base of the first Christian Democratic party in France, the Liberal Action , while many other royalists were still attached to the Crown. Defunct Defunct The elections of 1898 confirmed the exclusion of the monarchists from any possible government. However, 4 years earlier, the Dreyfus affair shook public opinion, dividing

19488-477: The indictment led to Émile Zola calling it a "monument of bias". After the news broke on Dreyfus' arrest, many journalists flocked to the story and flooded the story with speculations and accusations. The renowned journalist and antisemitic agitator Edouard Drumont wrote in his publication on November 3, 1894, "What a terrible lesson, this disgraceful treason of the Jew Dreyfus." On 4 December 1894, Dreyfus

19662-402: The judges. In addition, Major Hubert-Joseph Henry , deputy head of the SR and discoverer of the bordereau , made a theatrical statement in open court. He argued that leaks betraying the General Staff had been suspected to exist since February 1894 and that "a respectable person" accused Captain Dreyfus. He swore on oath that the traitor was Dreyfus, pointing to the crucifix hanging on the wall of

19836-454: The language are very closely related to those of the rest of the French-speaking world. French is the second most commonly spoken language in Canada and one of two federal official languages alongside English. As of the 2021 Canadian census , it was the native language of 7.7 million people (21% of the population) and the second language of 2.9 million (8% of the population). French

20010-479: The language, although it has now given way to Tamil and English. A former French mandate , Lebanon designates Arabic as the sole official language, while a special law regulates cases when French can be publicly used. Article 11 of Lebanon's Constitution states that "Arabic is the official national language. A law determines the cases in which the French language is to be used". The French language in Lebanon

20184-612: The language. The Act applies to areas of the province where there are significant Francophone communities, namely Eastern Ontario and Northern Ontario . Elsewhere, sizable French-speaking minorities are found in southern Manitoba, Nova Scotia , Prince Edward Island and the Port au Port Peninsula in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the unique Newfoundland French dialect was historically spoken. Smaller pockets of French speakers exist in all other provinces. The Ontarian city of Ottawa ,

20358-479: The last to hold onto Gaulish. The beginning of French in Gaul was greatly influenced by Germanic invasions into the country. These invasions had the greatest impact on the northern part of the country and on the language there. A language divide began to grow across the country. The population in the north spoke langue d'oïl while the population in the south spoke langue d'oc . Langue d'oïl grew into what

20532-467: The law. The closed court allowed the military to avoid disclosing the emptiness of their evidence to the public and to stifle debate. As expected, the emptiness of their case appeared clearly during the hearings. Detailed discussions on the bordereau showed that Captain Dreyfus could not be the author. At the same time the accused himself protested his innocence and defended himself point by point with energy and logic. Moreover, his statements were supported by

20706-411: The liaison would have 'dishonoured' Germany and Italy's military and compromised diplomatic relations. As homosexuality was, like Judaism, then often perceived as a sign of national degeneration, recent historians have suggested that combining them to inflate the scandal may have shaped the prosecution strategy. Since early 1894, the Statistics Section had investigated traffic in master plans for Nice and

20880-516: The military were crushed. Nevertheless Du Paty de Clam still arrested the captain, accused him of conspiring with the enemy, and told him that he would be brought before a court-martial. Dreyfus was imprisoned at the Cherche-Midi prison in Paris . Mrs. Dreyfus was informed of the arrest the same day by a police raid to search their apartment. She was terrorized by Du Paty, who ordered her to keep

21054-485: The ministry into proof of espionage. From the beginning a biased and one-sided multiplication of errors led the State to a false position. This was present throughout the affair, where irrationality prevailed over the positivism in vogue in that period: From this first hour the phenomenon occurred that will dominate the whole affair. It is no longer controlled by facts and circumstances carefully examined which will constitute

21228-715: The modern world. Disappointed by the false hopes and unfulfilled promises, the Count of Paris retired from French political life in 1967, ending also the publications of his newsletter. Orléanist pretenders from 1883 to the present follow these principles: The Duchess of Montpensier The Duke of Orléans The Duchess of Orléans The Count of Évreux The Countess of Évreux Princess Béatrice The Dowager Countess of La Marche The Countess of Schönborn-Buchheim Princess Hélène, Countess of Limburg Stirum The Dowager Duchess of Calabria The Dowager Duchess of Württemberg Princess Claude, Mrs. Gandolfi Princess Chantal, Baroness of Sambucy de Sorgue The Orléanist party, despite

21402-410: The movement's ideologist, supported not a classical monarchy on religious term ( divine right ) but a positivist one, stating that a monarchy would grant more order and stability than a parliamentary republic. The largest group of French monarchists, after the death of Chambord in 1883, endorsed the Count of Paris until his death in 1894, recognizing the claim of his son Philippe, Duke of Orléans , who

21576-420: The necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalize the use of the French language". When public education was made compulsory , only French was taught and the use of any other ( patois ) language was punished. The goals of the public school system were made especially clear to the French-speaking teachers sent to teach students in regions such as Occitania and Brittany . Instructions given by

21750-658: The officers challenged the editors. Captain Crémieu-Foa, a Jewish Alsatian graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique, fought unsuccessfully against Drumont and against M. de Lamase, who was the author of the articles. Captain Mayer, another Jewish officer, was killed by the Marquis de Morès , a friend of Drumont, in another duel. Hatred of Jews was now public and violent, driven by a firebrand (Drumont) who demonized

21924-652: The official use or teaching of French. It is spoken as a first language (in descending order of the number of speakers) in France; Canada (especially in the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick); Belgium ( Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region ); western Switzerland (specifically the cantons forming the Romandy region); parts of Luxembourg; parts of the United States (the states of Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont); Monaco;

22098-431: The organization as a major power. The Orléanist pretender Jean, Duke of Guise , who in 1937 broken ties with the Action , also lost many supporters. From this moment, Orléanism ceased to be associated with the Action or the far-right. Instead, the Duke of Guise's son and heir Henri, Count of Paris , launched his own magazine Courier Royale and secretly dealt with anti-fascist conservative General La Rocque , leader of

22272-570: The other langues d'oïl —languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French ( Francien ) largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the ( Germanic ) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to the French colonial empire , there are numerous French-based creole languages , most notably Haitian Creole . A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French

22446-534: The other main foreign language in the Vietnamese educational system and is regarded as a cultural language. All three countries are full members of La Francophonie (OIF). French was the official language of French India , consisting of the geographically separate enclaves referred to as Puducherry . It continued to be an official language of the territory even after its cession to India in 1956 until 1965. A small number of older locals still retain knowledge of

22620-449: The past. The antisemitism circulated by La Libre Parole , as well as by L'Éclair , Le Petit Journal , La Patrie , L'Intransigeant and La Croix , drew on antisemitic roots in certain Catholic circles. Publications remarking on the Dreyfus affair often reinforced antisemitic sentiments, language and imagery. The Musée des Horreurs  [ fr ] was a collection of anti-Dreyfus posters illustrated by Victor Lenepveu during

22794-526: The personality of Dreyfus, others to ensure the truth of the identity of the author of the bordereau. The expert Gobert was not convinced and found many differences. He even wrote that "the nature of the writing on the bordereau excludes disguised handwriting". Disappointed, Mercier then called in Alphonse Bertillon , the inventor of forensic anthropometry but no handwriting expert. He was initially no more positive than Gobert but he did not exclude

22968-403: The possibility of its being the writing of Dreyfus. Later, under pressure from the military, he argued that Dreyfus had autocopied it and developed his theory of "autoforgery". On 13 October 1894, without any tangible evidence and with an empty file, General Mercier summoned Captain Dreyfus for a general inspection in "bourgeois clothing", i.e. in civilian clothes. The purpose of the General Staff

23142-471: The preferred language of certain institutions or administrations such as the Court of Justice of the European Union , where it is the sole internal working language, or the Directorate-General for Agriculture . Since 2016, Brexit has rekindled discussions on whether or not French should again hold greater role within the institutions of the European Union. A leading world language , French

23316-413: The preliminary enquiry. In particular, Dreyfus was at that time the only Jewish officer to be recently passed by the General Staff. In fact, the reputation of Dreyfus as a cold and withdrawn or even haughty character, as well as his "curiosity", worked strongly against him. These traits of character, some false, others natural, made the charges plausible by turning the most ordinary acts of everyday life in

23490-573: The president being accused of having staged a constitutional coup d'état known as " 16 May Crisis " after the date on which it happened. Republicans returned triumphantly after the October elections for the Chamber of Deputies. The crisis ultimately sealed the defeat of the royalist movement, and was instrumental in creating the conditions of the longevity of the Third Republic: in January 1879

23664-414: The project's failure. Due to the impossibility to restore the monarchy in a short time, the Orléanists waited the death of the sickly Chambord, occurred in 1883, but by that time, enthusiasm for a monarchy had faded, and as a result the Count of Paris was never offered the French throne. The monarchists, however, still controlled the National Assembly, and under MacMahon's partisan presidency they launched

23838-452: The recorder for the Military Court, wrote an indictment in which "moral elements" of the charge (which gossiped about the habits of Dreyfus and his alleged attendance at "gambling circles", his knowledge of German, and his "remarkable memory") were developed more extensively than the "material elements", which are rarely seen in the charge: "This is a proof of guilt because Dreyfus made everything disappear". The complete lack of neutrality of

24012-487: The republican camp: socialists , radicals and liberals defended the innocence of Dreyfus, while other republicans joined the nationalists and monarchists against Dreyfus. The election also introduced 10 overtly anti-Semitic representatives, led by Édouard Drumont . The following year, on 20 June 1899, the academic Henri Vaugeois and journalist Maurice Pujo founded the nationalist association Action française , initially absent of any specific ideology. However,

24186-449: The republican majority, who reflected the historical Orléanist purposes. French historian René Rémond included the presidency of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing as part of the Orléanist tradition, due to his liberal views and equidistance from the nationalist right (descending from Bonapartism ) and the conservative right (from Legitimism). The term "Orléanist parliamentarism" was also used by jurist and sociologist Maurice Duverger to define

24360-471: The rest largely speak French as a first language. As a French Creole language , Haitian Creole draws the large majority of its vocabulary from French, with influences from West African languages, as well as several European languages. It is closely related to Louisiana Creole and the creole from the Lesser Antilles . French is the sole official language of all the overseas territories of France in

24534-535: The revolution of the so-called Three Glorious Days (or July Revolution) erupted due to the authoritarian and anti- Gallican tendencies showed by Charles X and his Prime Minister Jules de Polignac , expressed by the recently approved Saint-Cloud Ordinances . Despite the abdication of Charles X and the Dauphin Louis in favor to Charles X's grandson Henri, Duke of Bordeaux , on 2 August 1830, only seven days later Louis Philippe I , still Duke of Orléans ,

24708-481: The rights of Henri, Count of Chambord (former Duke of Bordeaux, currently childless) in return of the recognition of the Count of Paris as his heir, echoing an 1862 statement of Chambord. Although Chambord never mentioned the Count of Paris as his heir, probably fearing the defection of his ultraconservative supporters, the informal agreement sanctioned the "fusion" of Legitimists and Orléanists, who quite easily formed

24882-436: The rising "new men" of the banks, industries and finance, gaining the epithet of " Roi bourgeois ". In the early 1840s, Louis Philippe's popularity decreased, due to his strong connection to upper classes and repression against workers' strikes, and showed few concerns for his weakened position, leading the writer Victor Hugo to describe him as "a man with many little qualities". The Orléanist regime finally fell in 1848, when

25056-808: The ship sailed for French Guiana . French language French ( français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] or langue française [lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛːz] ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family . Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . French evolved from Gallo-Romance , the Latin spoken in Gaul , and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are

25230-461: The so-called "moral order government", in reference to the Paris Commune , whose political and social innovations were viewed as morally degenerate by large conservative segments of the French population. In February 1875, a series of parliamentary acts established the constitutional laws of the new republic . At its head was a President of the Republic. A two-chamber parliament consisting of

25404-445: The support of the right. He sought to appease religious, social, and economic tensions and conducted a fairly conservative policy. He succeeded in improving stability, and it was under this stable government that the Dreyfus affair occurred. The Dreyfus affair occurred in the context of German annexation of Alsace and Moselle , an event that fed the most extreme nationalism. The traumatic defeat of France in 1870 seemed far away, but

25578-466: The total number of French speakers will reach approximately 500 million in 2025 and 650 million by 2050, largely due to rapid population growth in sub-Saharan Africa . OIF estimates 700 million French speakers by 2050, 80% of whom will be in Africa. In a study published in March 2014 by Forbes , the investment bank Natixis said that French could become the world's most spoken language by 2050. In

25752-631: The trial and his guilt was certain. Right and left regretted the abolition of the death penalty for such a crime. Antisemitism peaked in the press and occurred in areas so far spared. Socialist leader Jean Jaurès regretted the lightness of the sentence in an address to the Chamber of Deputies and wrote, "A soldier has been sentenced to death and executed for throwing a button in the face of his corporal. So why leave this miserable traitor alive?" Radical Republican Georges Clemenceau in La Justice made

25926-427: The two months before the trial, the press went wild. La Libre Parole , L'Autorité , Le Journal , and Le Temps described the supposed life of Dreyfus through lies and bad fiction. This was also an opportunity for extreme headlines from La Libre Parole and La Croix to justify their previous campaigns against the presence of Jews in the army on the theme "You have been told!" This long delay above all enabled

26100-679: The two official languages—along with Dutch —of the Brussels-Capital Region , where it is spoken by the majority of the population (approx. 80%), often as their primary language. French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian, and Romansh , and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland, called Romandy , of which Geneva is the largest city. The language divisions in Switzerland do not coincide with political subdivisions, and some cantons have bilingual status: for example, cities such as Biel/Bienne and cantons such as Valais , Fribourg and Bern . French

26274-508: The urban intellectual elite. The Gaulish language likely survived into the sixth century in France despite considerable Romanization . Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French contributing loanwords and calques (including oui , the word for "yes"), sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence, and influences in conjugation and word order. Recent computational studies suggest that early gender shifts may have been motivated by

26448-485: The use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, and legal contracts; advertisements must bear a translation of foreign words. In Belgium, French is an official language at the federal level along with Dutch and German. At the regional level, French is the sole official language of Wallonia (excluding a part of the East Cantons , which are German-speaking ) and one of

26622-553: The value of the affair, which took on the status of an affair of state during the week preceding the arrest of Dreyfus. The Minister did consult and inform all the authorities of the State, yet despite prudent counsel and courageous objections expressed by Gabriel Hanotaux in the Council of Ministers he decided to pursue it. Du Paty de Clam was appointed Judicial Police Officer to lead an official investigation. Meanwhile, several parallel sources of information were opening up, some on

26796-536: The workplace. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese . In English-speaking Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, French is the first foreign language taught and in number of pupils is far ahead of other languages. In the United States, French is the second-most commonly taught foreign language in schools and universities, although well behind Spanish. In some areas of

26970-402: The world's French-speaking population lives in Africa. According to a 2023 estimate from the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie , an estimated 167 million African people spread across 35 countries and territories can speak French as either a first or a second language . This number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as

27144-471: Was a novelty as an organised activity by governments in the late 19th century. The Statistics Section was created in 1871 but consisted of only a handful of officers and civilians. Its head in 1894 was Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Sandherr , a graduate of Saint-Cyr , an Alsatian from Mulhouse , and a convinced antisemite. Its military mission was clear: to retrieve information about potential enemies of France and to feed them false information. The Statistics Section

27318-501: Was addressed to the German military attaché stationed at the German Embassy, Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen . It stated that confidential French military documents regarding the newly developed "hydraulic brake of 120, and the way this gun has worked" were about to be sent to a foreign power. This catch seemed of sufficient importance for the head of the "Statistical Section", the Mulhousian Jean Sandherr , to inform

27492-404: Was also marked by an arms race that primarily affected artillery. There were improvements in heavy artillery (guns of 120 mm and 155 mm, Models 1890 Baquet , new hydropneumatic brakes), but also, and especially, development of the ultra-secret 75mm gun . The operation of military counterintelligence, alias the "Statistics Section" (SR), should be noted. Spying as a tool for secret war

27666-412: Was also supported by the Action . However, monarchism inside the Action was always integrated secondary to its semi-official ideology of " integral nationalism " theorized by Maurras, and many Action activists were still republicans, like the founder Vaugeois. The movement grew to be one of the largest organizations in France, but in 1926 a condemnation from Pope Pius XI against the Action caused

27840-427: Was assassinated on 24 June 1894; his moderate successor Jean Casimir-Perier resigned several months later on 15 January 1895 and was replaced by Félix Faure . Following the failure of the radical government of Léon Bourgeois in 1896, the president appointed Jules Méline as prime minister. His government faced the opposition of the left and of some Republicans (including the Progressive Union) and made sure to keep

28014-531: Was during the period of the Crusades in which French became so dominant in the Mediterranean Sea that became a lingua franca ("Frankish language"), and because of increased contact with the Arabs during the Crusades who referred to them as Franj , numerous Arabic loanwords entered French, such as amiral (admiral), alcool (alcohol), coton (cotton) and sirop (syrop), as well as scientific terms such as algébre (algebra), alchimie (alchemy) and zéro (zero). Within Old French many dialects emerged but

28188-404: Was elected by the Chamber of Deputies as new "King of the French". The enthronement of Louis Philippe was strongly wanted by Doctrinaires , the liberal opposition to Charles X's ministries, under the concept "nationalize the monarchy and royalize France". On 14 August 1830, the Chamber approved a new Constitution , which became the de facto political manifesto for the Orléanists, containing

28362-408: Was expected by the Count of Paris that the general would move to restore the French monarchy, but instead De Gaulle preferred to strengthen the republican institutions, eventually becoming the driving force behind the establishment of the present-day Fifth Republic . De Gaulle was elected president of the new government in 1959, and seems to have promised the Count of Paris that he wouldn't run again in

28536-400: Was gradually adopted by the inhabitants of Gaul. As the language was learned by the common people, it developed a distinct local character, with grammatical differences from Latin as spoken elsewhere, some of which is attested in graffiti. This local variety evolved into the Gallo-Romance tongues, which include French and its closest relatives, such as Arpitan . The evolution of Latin in Gaul

28710-469: Was known in the Occitan-speaking region as Vergonha . Spoken by 19.71% of the European Union's population, French is the third most widely spoken language in the EU, after English and German and the second-most-widely taught language after English. Under the Constitution of France , French has been the official language of the Republic since 1992, although the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts made it mandatory for legal documents in 1539. France mandates

28884-407: Was not an expert in handwriting, was presented as a scholar of the first importance. He advanced the theory of "autoforgery" during the trial and accused Dreyfus of imitating his own handwriting, explaining the differences in writing by using extracts of writing from his brother Matthieu and his wife Lucie. This theory, although later regarded as bizarre and astonishing, seems to have had some effect on

29058-415: Was paraded throughout the streets, the crowd chanted "Death to Judas, death to the Jew." Witnesses report the dignity of Dreyfus, who continued to maintain his innocence while raising his arms: "Innocent, Innocent! Vive la France! Long live the Army". The Adjutant broke his sword on his knee and then the condemned Dreyfus marched at a slow pace in front of his former companions. An event known as "the legend of

29232-404: Was referred to the first Military Court with this dossier. The secrecy was lifted and Demange could access the file for the first time. After reading it the lawyer had absolute confidence, as he saw the emptiness of the prosecution's case. The prosecution rested completely on the writing on a single piece of paper, the bordereau, on which experts disagreed, and on vague indirect testimonies. During

29406-411: Was shaped by its coexistence for over half a millennium beside the native Celtic Gaulish language , which did not go extinct until the late sixth century, long after the fall of the Western Roman Empire . The population remained 90% indigenous in origin; the Romanizing class were the local native elite (not Roman settlers), whose children learned Latin in Roman schools. At the time of the collapse of

29580-416: Was supported by the "Secret Affairs" of the Quai d'Orsay at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was headed by a young diplomat, Maurice Paléologue . The arms race created an acute atmosphere of intrigue from 1890 in French counter-espionage . One of the missions of the section was to spy on the German Embassy at Rue de Lille in Paris to thwart any attempt by the French to transmit important information to

29754-437: Was the language they use the most at home rose from 67% at the 2007 census to 74% at the 2017 census. In Wallis and Futuna, the percentage of the population who reported that French was the language they use the most at home rose from 10% at the 2008 census to 13% at the 2018 census. According to a demographic projection led by the Université Laval and the Réseau Démographie de l'Agence universitaire de la Francophonie ,

29928-459: Was to obtain the perfect proof under French law: a confession . That confession was to be obtained by surprise – by dictating a letter based on the bordereau to reveal his guilt. On the morning of 15 October 1894, Captain Dreyfus underwent this ordeal but admitted nothing. Du Paty even tried to suggest suicide by placing a revolver in front of Dreyfus, but he refused to take his life, saying he "wanted to live to establish his innocence". The hopes of

30102-473: Was virtually free to write and disseminate any information even if offensive or defamatory. Legal risks were limited if the target was a private person. Antisemitism did not spare the military, which practised hidden discrimination with the "cote d'amour" (a subjective assessment of personal acceptability) system of irrational grading, encountered by Dreyfus in his application to the Bourges School. However, while prejudices of this nature undoubtedly existed within

30276-423: Was with criminal intent. Colonel Maurel confirmed in the second Dreyfus trial that the secret documents were not used to win the support of the judges of the Military Court. He contradicted himself, however, by saying that he read only one document, "which was enough". On 22 December 1894, after several hours of deliberation, the verdict was reached. Seven judges unanimously convicted Alfred Dreyfus of collusion with

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