Georges Picquart
French general (1854-1914)
Marie-Georges Picquart (6 September 1854 – 19 January 1914) was a French Army officer and Minister of War. He is best known for his role in the Dreyfus affair, in which he played a key role in uncovering the real culprit.
Early career
Picquart was born in Strasbourg. He began his military career in 1872, graduating from the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr as fifth in his year. Picquart served as an infantry officer in France before undertaking staff duties in Indochina. He saw service with the 4th Zouaves in Algeria as well as with several regiments of line infantry and chasseurs à pied (light infantry) in Metropolitan France. He subsequently studied at the General Staff Academy (École d'état-major) where he was second in his class, after which he became a lecturer at the War Academy (École supérieure de guerre). One of his students at the latter institute was Alfred Dreyfus.
Picquart and the Dreyfus affair
Picquart was then appointed to the General Staff in Paris. As a staff officer he acted as reporter of the debates in the first Dreyfus court-martial for the then Minister of War, Auguste Mercier, and the Chief of the Army General Staff, Raoul Le Mouton de Boisdeffre.
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This entry incorporates text from “Georges Picquart” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.