Georges Picquart (6 September 1854-19 January 1914) was a French Army General de division who served as Minister of War of France from 1906 to 1909, succeeding Eugene Etienne and preceding Jean Brun. Picquart played a central role in the Dreyfus affair of 1894-1906, during which he overcame his initial anti-Semitism to defend the wrongfully accused Alfred Dreyfus against accusations of treason and find the true German mole in the French military, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, guilty. Picquart was transferred to Tunisia, dismissed from the army, and even arrested for his investigation into the Dreyfus affair, but he was ultimately exonerated alongside Dreyfus.
Biography[]
Picquart at Alfred Dreyfus' court-martial
Georges Picquart was born in Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine, France on 6 September 1854, and he graduated from Saint-Cyr in 1872 and served in the French Army in Indochina before becoming a lecturer at the War Academy, during which time Alfred Dreyfus was among his students. During this time, Picquart was the only of Dreyfus' professors to give him failing grades, and, when Dreyfus confronted Picquart and asked if he was giving him poor grades because he was Jewish, Picquart admitted that he did not like Jewish people, but insisted that he would never discriminate against his students. Picquart was later appointed to the General Staff in Paris, and he served as reporter of the debates during Dreyfus' first court-martial before being promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel on 6 April 1896 and chief of the army's intelligence section. In that position, Picquart discovered that the memorandum used to convict Dreyfus for espionage on behalf of Germany was actually authored by Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, and, while high-ranking officers (such as Auguste Mercier, Charles-Arthur Gonse, Raoul Le Mouton de Boisdeffre, Jean Sandherr, Georges-Gabriel de Pellieux, Armand du Paty de Clam, and Jean-Baptiste Billot) warned Picquart to conceal his discovery, his insistence on pressing on with the investigation led to his transfer to Sousse in Tunisia. Picquart worked with dissidents such as Georges Charpentier, Emile Zola, Joseph Reinach, Arthur Ranc, and Mathieu Dreyfus to find Alfred Dreyfus innocent, resulting in Zola naming several French generals and accusing them of covering up important details concerning Alfred Dreyfus' innocence. In 1898, Picquart was accused of forging the note, and he resigned from the army after Dreyfus' second court-martial, even after Picquart's subordinate Hubert-Joseph Henry was found to have forged the note himself. Dreyfus' exoneration in 1906 also cleared Picquart's record, and Picquart was then promoted to Brigadier-General and served as President Georges Clemenceau's War Minister from 1906 to 1909. He returned to the Army as a corps commander in 1909, and he died in Amiens from wounds sustained during a fall from a horse in 1914.