J'Accuse! Revolutionary Article by Émile Zola about the Dreyfus Affair Published in the L'Aurore Newspaper. France, 1898

J'accuse ...! Lettre au Président de la République [I Accuse ...! Letter to the President of the Republic] by Émile Zola on the front page of the L'Aurore newspaper. Paris, January 13, 1898, issue no. 87. French.
Émile Zola's original article published in Clemenceau's newspaper, in defense of Alfred Dreyfus - an open letter to the President of France, in which Zola accuses the heads of the army, the War Office, and the military courts of deliberately convicting Dreyfus of treason, and that he is actually totally innocent. Publication of this sensational letter reverberated across France and across all of Europe. The article which was so courageously published brought Zola himself to be prosecuted by the authorities for libel, and he was sentenced to a year in prison. He responded by fleeing to England to avoid this punishment. Zola stayed in London for a year, until he was permitted to return to France.
Writer and publicist Émile Zola [1840-1902] was one of Alfred Dreyfus's main supporters when the latter was accused of treason and espionage on behalf of Germany in 1895. The article before us was published in 1898, in which he details, one by one, the injustices done to Dreyfus by the authorities in France. He wrote: "May all my works be lost, if Dreyfus is not innocent ... I do not want my country to stay immersed in falsehood and injustice." This publication was a dramatic about-face in the affair which stirred up France and all of Europe. It brought about the "protest of intellectuals" which called for a retrial. This paved the way to Dreyfus's complete exoneration, which occurred in 1906 when the Court of Appeals declared Dreyfus innocent. Dreyfus was reinstated to the French army and promoted to the rank of major. He was awarded Knight of the Legion of Honor in a public ceremony [as a response by the French authorities proportionate to the public 'ceremony of disgrace' he underwent when he was convicted]. This article by Zola was very famous in its time and became one of the most widely read and recognized documents of the period among cultured people across the Western world.
[1] leaf 41x59 cm.
Fine condition. Professional restoration to complete the margins, with damage to the first letters on the left side of the leaf. Several lines are emphasized by an anonymous writer from the time.