Minotaur: French Military Justice and the Aernoult-Rousset Affair

TWELVE—Marmande Agonistes

TWELVE Marmande Agonistes A fair number of successes could, in fact, be claimed by the political groupings that had invaded France’s military jurisdiction on behalf of Émile Rousset. The minotaur had not been slain; but it had been checked repeatedly, its aura of invulnerability dissipated. Political pressure, after all, had occasioned the reversal of two separate conseil de guerre judgments. Political pressure had forced the system’s custodians to indict officers they would otherwise not have indicted, to pardon an individual they were loathe to pardon, to reopen an investigation they had declared closed, and to permit confrontations they had wanted to avoid. Political pressure had forced the jurisdiction’s investigative modus operandi into the open,withthepublicationofanentirejudicialdossierassembled under the assumption of confidentiality. Political pressure may have affected even the jurisdiction’s penal practices. The law of April 11, 1910, which mandated repatriation of most military penal camps to the islands of Oleron, Cézembre, and other sites in metropolitan France, had in fact been fulfilled, perhaps more thoroughly than it otherwise would have been. 215 “The curtain is raised on the hell of Biribi,” La Bataille Syndicaliste, October 7, 1912. 216 Yet,asWarMinisterBerteauxhadrealizedduringavigorousinterpellation on the Aernoult-Rousset matter by Deputy Veber in March 1911, that hardly sufficed to slake antimilitarists’ rage.1 In fact, in the context of the broad struggle against the multifaceted pathology conjured to leftists by the term militarism, these amounted to no more than a set of successful skirmishes Rousset, Les Temps Nouveaux, August 24, 1912. Marmande Agonistes 217 with but one of that pathology’s many manifestations—the juridical one. Taken together, they comprised nothing more than a satisfying tactical victory. The question now was, would this tactical victory lead to larger, strategicgainsfortheantimilitaristmovement?Wouldthismarkthemoment when antimilitarists took the offensive against the massive, extremely dangerous enemy they confronted? The Dreyfus Affair had failed to ignite the sort of sustained, popular outrage against militarism in all its forms that leftists envisioned. Yet one might well emerge now—if the movement’s most visionary leaders could seize the moment and fan the flame sparked by the Aernoult-Rousset Affair into a roaring blaze. Officers of the CDS clearly counted themselves among that leadership cadre. They were convinced that it was they who had turned the tide in Rousset’s favor by securing recantations of vital testimony against him in Constantine. In their opinion, in fact, victory could not have been secured without the daring they alone had brought to the agitation, from the “Down with Biribi!” trial onward. Whatever political capital that victory conferred was rightly theirs—and that capital properly included Émile Rousset himself. Rousset was now an iconic figure on the left, where interest in his sufferings, bravery, and moral redemption was deepened by no less than three biographical treatments that emerged in 1912 (he was, in fact, already entertaining competing bids for publication rights to his own memoirs as well).2 He could be invaluable not only in drawing crowds to the series of large-scale rallies throughout the country that the CDS now envisioned itself conducting but also in educating those crowds to the mortal threat militarism really posed to proletarian France. Who better to stoke outrage against the Berry-Millerand Law than this shining hero, whose personal story so compellingly demonstrated that such legislation was “part of a long-gestating plan . . . one simple piece of the war machine forged against the workers’ emancipation?”3 Who better to press the fight on new and multiple fronts than this proletarian Theseus, before whom the minotaur had actually retreated? But to fully enlist Émile Rousset in the cause, the CDS would have to pry him away from his friend, mentor, and champion: the much despised René de Marmande. The resulting controversy would provide a dénouement to the Aernoult-Rousset Affair that was alternately poignant, perplexing, and faintly risible. The intrigue began while Rousset awaited General Leguay’s decision regarding the disposition of his case. Rousset was ill, and Marmande and 218 M I N O T A U R Louis Havet were trying to secure provisional liberty for him pending what seemed, after the confrontation with Pan-Lacroix, an inevitable non-lieu.4 Before they could attain that goal, however, CDS secretary Thuillier arrived in Constantine to inform the prisoner that the committee was in possession ofdamaginginformationregardingMarmande—andtoadviseMarmandeto quietly leave Rousset’s side lest that information be released. Thuillier urged Rousset to...