Major Hubert-Joseph Henry forged documents that made it seem that Dreyfus was guilty and then had Picquart assigned to duty in Africa.

Picquart was then sentenced to 60 days in prison.

In August 1896, the new chief of French military intelligence, Lt Colonel Picquart, reported to his superiors that he had found evidence to the effect that the real traitor was a Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy.

Picquart was silenced by being transferred to the southern desert of Tunisia in November 1896.

This was held in remembrance of the 1906 laws that had reintegrated and promoted both Dreyfus and Picquart at the end of the Dreyfus Affair.

Colonel Picquart was played by American actor Richard Dreyfuss, who " grew up thinking that Alfred Dreyfus and are of the same family.

In August 1896, the new chief of French military intelligence, Lt Colonel Picquart, reported to his superiors that he had found evidence to the effect that the real traitor was a Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy.

Picquart was silenced by being transferred to the southern desert of Tunisia in November 1896.

In the courtroom there remained, besides the judges, only the accused and his attorney, the prefect of police Louis Lépine and Major Georges Picquart, who was entrusted with the duty of giving an account of the proceedings to the head of the staff and to the minister.

A calm listener, Major Picquart, thought the result was very doubtful unless help came from the secret dossier.

But, contrary to instructions, Major Henry reconstituted the secret dossier, added to it Du Paty's explanatory note ( which last was destroyed by Mercier in 1897 ), and locked it in the iron chest where Picquart afterwards found it.

The most notable of these was Major Georges Picquart.

The chief of the staff, Raoul Le Mouton de Boisdeffre, told Picquart that in his opinion the Dreyfus affair was not definitely settled.

Picquart began by getting information about the personality of Major Esterhazy, to whom the " petit bleu " was addressed.

At first Picquart did not establish any connection in his own mind between the " petit bleu " and the bordereau ; he simply thought he was on the track of a fresh traitor, and hoped to catch him in the act.

Picquart told General de Boisdeffre about his discovery, and upon the order of the general and of the minister of war, Jean-Baptiste Billot, he was directed to continue his inquiry as quietly as possible.

On looking at them Picquart discovered that the writing was identical with that of the bordereau attributed to Dreyfus.

Picquart meanwhile was unaware that in his own office he was spied upon, opposed, and deceived by his fellow workers, Henry, Lauth, and Gribelin.

Picquart believed Castelin was working for the Dreyfus family.

This was probably the beginning of the plot to discredit Picquart.

Gonse answered by vaguely advising him to act with prudence, and was opposed to the " expertises " in handwriting that Picquart requested.

Meanwhile, Picquart was sent from Nancy to Marseille, and later on to Tunis, where he was attached to the Fourth Regiment of sharpshooters in garrison at Sousse.

Picquart recorded the history of his discovery in a codicil to his will, which he intended for the president of the republic ; in this way he was sure " not to take his secret with him to the grave.

::" Picquart " – published in The Century Magazine ( July 1902 ) and subsequently in Mine and Thine ( 1904 ) and Poems Vol II.

General Picquart subsequently entered Georges Clemenceau's first cabinet as Minister of War.

After the second court-martial-held as a consequence of the conclusions of the Supreme Court-Picquart resigned from the army but the exoneration of Alfred Dreyfus in 1906 also absolved Picquart, who was, by an act of the Chamber of Deputies, promoted to brigadier-general.

He wrote in the same strain to the president of the republic, claiming that a lady, afterward mysteriously referred to as the " veiled lady ", had given him a photograph of a very important document which Picquart had acquired from an embassy and which seriously compromised persons of high diplomatic rank.

* Prisoner of Honor, directed by Ken Russell, historical advisor George Whyte, focuses on the efforts of Colonel Picquart to have the sentence of Alfred Dreyfus overturned.

One day he sent Madame Bastian's paper bag, particularly bulky on this occasion, to Picquart without looking at the contents.

Picquart, also without inspecting it, passed it on to Lauth.

In this perplexity, born of the initial mistake of Picquart, Scheurer-Kestner pursued the most unlucky tactics imaginable ; instead of quietly gathering together all his documents and uniting his forces with those of Matthew Dreyfus, he allowed the rumor of his convictions to be spread abroad, and thus put the Staff Office on the alert, gave them time to prepare themselves, and allowed the hostile press to bring discredit upon him and to weaken beforehand by premature and mutilated revelations the force of his arguments.

This braggadocio was taken so seriously that General Leclerc received an order at Tunis to question Picquart on having given to an outsider-the " veiled lady "-the " document of deliverance.

By these barefaced stratagems Esterhazy and his defenders on the staff made certain of the complicity of the minister and of the president of the republic, while they compromised Picquart more deeply.

At the end of October Boisdeffre had ordered General Leclerc, commanding the corps of occupation in Tunis, to send Picquart to reconnoitre on the frontier of Tripoli, from which quarter pretended gatherings of the local tribes were reported.

As to Picquart, he was, to begin with, punished with sixty days ' imprisonment, being confined on Mont Valérien ; it was understood that he would be arraigned before a council of inquiry ( 13 January ).

While still a serving army officer, Picquart died on 18 January 1914 from injuries received in a fall from a horse.

Zurlinden, having become acquainted with his dossier, proposed to the council of ministers to arraign Picquart before a court martial on the charge of having falsified the note called " petit bleu.

The reason for this haste was that the keeper of seals had asked Picquart for a " mémoire " on the fitness of revision ; the military party was therefore eager to discredit his testimony by a charge of forgery.

On 21 September, the day on which the case of Picquart and Leblois was brought before the " tribunal correctionnel " the state attorney demanded the adjournment of the affair, first, on account of the Dreyfus revision, which might modify the charge against Picquart ; and secondly, on account of the new and serious accusation which had been brought against him.

) The next day Picquart was taken from the civil prison of La Santé and enrolled on the register at the Cherche-Midi, where he was put into the strictest solitary confinement.

Finally, after a fruitless attempt by Waldeck-Rousseau to pass a law allowing the Supreme Court to suspend the case of Picquart, the colonel, who was awaiting trial before both the " tribunal correctionnel " and the court-martial, applied to the Court of Cassation to rule on the case.

( After the close of the inquiry, on March 3, 1899, the court decided that the Civil Court alone was concerned with the chief accusations against Picquart, and he was transferred from the military prison at Cherche-Midi to the civil prison of La Santé.

Of the three most notable champions of revision, Scheurer-Kestner had died ; Zola returned to France, where he died from an accident on 29 September 1902 ; Colonel Picquart, indignant at the amnesty, abandoned the appeal he had lodged against the decision of the board of inquiry — very much open to criticism — which had struck him from the lists, and left the army by way of protest.