Zola convicted and driven into exile
1898 · Event
For J'Accuse, France's most famous novelist is convicted of criminal libel amid courtroom mobs; when the case is retried in July he flees to England rather than await the verdict. The trial he engineered has done its work: the evidence aired in it cannot be un-heard, and within months the 'absolute proof' against Dreyfus is exposed as a forgery whose author cuts his own throat in a cell.
On these timelines: The Dreyfus Affair, France, Arts and Thoughts, Master
More from The Dreyfus Affair
- Dreyfus Affair (1894)
- Émile Zola's J'Accuse...! (1898)
- The degradation of Captain Dreyfus (1895)
- Dreyfus exonerated and reinstated (1906)
- Picquart finds the real traitor (1896)
- The Rennes verdict (1899)
- Dreyfus on Devil's Island (1895)
- Esterhazy acquitted in three minutes (1898)
Around 1898
- Russo-Japanese War (1904)
- Boxer Rebellion (1899)
- Adolf Hitler (1889)
- Pop music: the 1900s (1900)
- Van Gogh's The Starry Night (1889)
- Mao Zedong (1893)
- Federation of Australia (1901)
- Einstein's miracle year (Annus Mirabilis) (1905)
- Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907)
- Reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II (1888)