Dreyfus Affair - Legion Of Honor Commander Lieutenant Colonel Albert Léon Bertin-mourot

DREYFUS CASE - Unique Legion of Honor at the rank of Commander of Lieutenant-Colonel Albert Léon Bertin-Mourot, with CV imprint As a preamble, depending on the sensitivity of the subject, we would like to point out that the information, the written elements were found on the Internet, they are extracts, they can be piecemeal and only commit those who have them. written, at the time or today, taken out of their contexts, they could suggest inaccurate interpretations or contrary to the original wishes of their authors... Antique dealer (without personal opinion) and not historian, no ambiguity on the subject, our desire is simply to find enlightened amateurs, collectors, or even a museum who will wish to acquire these unique objects. Our goal is purely for profit. Please note, regarding museums, an object is only delivered after full payment, no waiting for sponsorship or other agreements. If you do not immediately have funds for the purchase, please do not contact us. We do not need a second opinion or anything else, we provide our own sales expertise. A professional sales certificate may be issued.

Lieutenant Colonel Albert Léon Bertin-Mourot, commander at the time, had a decisive role in the early days of the Dreyfus Affair and was the first to put forward the name of Dreyfus as that of the possible traitor. As a reminder, Captain Drefus was suspected and at one time condemned for having provided information to the enemy. Lieutenant Colonel Albert Léon Bertin-Mourot kept his personal convictions until his last day, although he tried at one point to extricate himself from the debates and trials. During the investigation which was carried out after receipt of the "famous" slip, it was on his instructions, as Picquart testified, that the attention of his superiors (Colonel Fabre, Lt-Colonel d'Aboville) had been "drawn ) on the analogy of Dreyfus's writing with that of the bordereau and on Dreyfus' indiscreet appearances" (letter from Picquart to the Minister of Justice of September 14 1898). Bertin-Mourot had given as proof of Dreyfus's guilt the fact that two of his officers had one day found him "taking notes on secret documents". Labori, who had met him during a meal with mutual friends at the end of January 1895, remembered that Bertin-Mourot had told him "that he considered himself one of the main architects of the condemnation of Dreyfus” and “that he took honor from it”.

Albert Léon Bertin Mourot, born in Strasbourg (Alsace) on December 3, 1852, died at the beginning of October 1938. Son of Pierre-Augustin Bertin Mourot (professor at the Faculty of Sciences of Strasbourg) and Eugénie Albertine Dreyfus (daughter of Albert Dreyfus (trader)) - Commander of the Legion of Honor on July 12, 1917 - Officer of the Legion of Honor on July 10, 1907 - Knight of the Legion of Honor on December 30, 1890 Saint-Cyrien in 1870, lieutenant in 1874, captain in 1877, Bertin-Mourot was battalion commander since July 11, 1889. After being appointed to the staff of the 19th division, of the Government of Paris then to that of the minister (1882 then again 1886), this topographical officer had been assigned to the General Staff in 1889 while being the deputy of the military commissioner of the Eastern Railway Network Commission and as such placed in the 4th office. In 1881, he was part of the Tunisian expedition.

Attached and not for sale, only as an illustration of this sale - Court sketch, caricature signed Maurice Feuillet of Lieutenant Colonel Albert Léon Bertin-Mourot, produced during the Dreyfus trial between 08/7 and 09/9/1899 - Birth certificate - LH registration Following an inheritance, processed in Normandy in 2024, several objects were dispersed through auctions. Thus, we were able to acquire the imprint of the business card of the son of Lt Col Albert Léon Bertin-Mourot, René Bertin-Mourot as well as several Legions of Honor, other business card imprints and bracelets (curb bracelets). registered) in silver. The Bertin-Mourot family, from the Strasbourg bourgeoisie, in their successive generations, brought to France several officers and great state clerks, who were regularly decorated with the Legion of Honor. Thus, we have the sword of the controller of state expenditure, René Bertin Mourot, knight of the LH, we also have his LH; But also the LH and the silver bracelets of Guy Bertin-Mourot, officer of the 5th Spahis regiment, who died for France during the recent Algerian war.

The Legion of Honor at the rank of Commander was that of Lieutenant Colonel Albert Léon Bertin-Mourot, the imprint of the business card is that of René Bertin-Mourot. We are selling in this lot the Legion of Honor (commander) and the business card imprint. About the medal, it is made of 18K carat GOLD and it was awarded in 1917. Note the specific assembly and the transformation of the ring for wearing as a necklace, strictly original, LH found as well. The CV impression is made of copper. These objects are in very good condition, the LH has its buttonhole for a collar ribbon. More details about the Dreyfus affair, before reading see mentions in the preamble >>>
 Dreyfus and Bertin-Mourot had known each other since the second half of 1893, when Dreyfus had completed his internship under his orders in the 4th office. A collaboration which allowed Bertin-Mourot to become, at the trial of 1894, one of the main witnesses against Dreyfus. For Dreyfus, this testimony was explained by the affirmed and assumed antipathy which he felt for his former leader. Dreyfus would have written what Picquart would say of Bertin-Mourot later, judging him “light, superficial, always inclined to put himself forward” (letter from Picquart to the Minister of Justice of September 14, 1898). Dreyfus will do so moreover and, in his unpublished notes to Demange, written on the eve of the 1894 trial, he will explain that his boss “became perfectly unsympathetic to him shortly after his arrival at the 4th Bureau”:>>>

"" Imbued with his high value, mocking everyone, he only wanted to have around him servants who drank his word like that of an idol. Moreover, I had judged in very strong terms his conduct towards Cdt Vidal de la Blache, commissioner of the Northern network, who occupies the room next to that of Cdt Bertin. The two commanders never speak to each other, do not even greet each other. I had been told the reasons for this complete quarrel and I had given all the blame to Commt Bertin. Finally, in the same office, one day they spoke in front of me about the conduct of Captain Ferry, guilty of an indiscretion. I judged the conduct of this officer very severely; Unfortunately, I did not know that Captain Ferry was a friend and protégé of Cdt Bertin, a new reason for the coldness between us. In summary, I left the 4th Office being on very bad terms with Commt Bertin.”

Anti-Semitism? Bertin-Mourot always denied being anti-Semitic, even if the anecdote he was obliged to tell, after Mercier had revealed it, indicates, by everything he wanted to put there about the “singular day” which she threw "on Captain Dreyfus's conception of the idea of ​​homeland" and which is not there, that the prejudice was not entirely foreign to her. In Rennes, he recounted the discomfort he felt when Dreyfus told him, in response to the sad thought he expressed of seeing a line drawn on Alsatian soil, “with a different God of armies on each side”: “ For us Jews, wherever we are, our God is with us! ". For Reinach, this anti-Semitism of Bertin-Mourot was a certainty and was explained by the fact that, of Jewish origin on his mother's side, he "worked to make people forget this origin." If he was indeed the son of an Albertine Dreyfus, Bertin-Mourot always made it clear that he was not Jewish, came from a Catholic family and remembered that his maternal grandfather, Albert Dreyfus, had before him received extreme unction on one's deathbed (conversion among the Strasbourg Jewish elite under the Restoration)

According to Bertin, it could be that Dreyfus, who had heard Sandherr recount how in order to obtain true information the service, replacing an agent recognized as unfaithful after his death, sent worthless documents to Germany, could have, by ambition, wanting to play the same game. Hence this admission: “If I delivered some documents, it was to obtain others”, an admission confirmed by the gendarmerie captain Datel to the senior doctor Strauss who did not believe it necessary to testify to it in Rennes. Weill, whose betrayal is not in doubt either for General de Galliffet, nor for Bertin, nor for General Millot, nor even for the lawyers of Dreyfus, Labori and Demange, nor perhaps for Picquart, walks freely in Paris. Neither before the Court of Cassation nor in Rennes, although his name was mentioned and it seemed close to the truth, was the Weill question asked clearly. Some were held back by the fear of dishonoring Saussier, others, the Dreyfusards, by their reluctance to hand over a second Jew.

In 1906, Bertin-Mourot requested retirement. Having the feeling of being "suspicious" of the Boisdeffre clan", considering himself an "object of the hatred of the Dreyfus clan" and "designated for Masonic persecution and victim of the despicable regime", failing to become colonel, also refusing to serving a government of which Clemenceau was President of the Council and Picquart the Minister of War, his "affection for the army no longer existed" and only the desire to "regain his independence" animated him. Removed from inspection on March 20, 1907, he was retired by decree on April 30. Bertin-Mourot, who considered himself to have only ever "obeyed his conscience, told the truth without worrying about the consequences, was part of no clan", he wrote, in 1930, his memories which remain to this day unpublished.

Bertin-Mourot says that the minister he was close to, who had been a witness at his wedding and whom he saw very often at that time, had made a terrible confession to him. On November 22, during a visit he made to him at the ministry, Billot, at the end of his strength, with a "wax-white complexion", invited him to sit next to him and, in a tone of confession, said to him: “I'm having cruel hours right now, sleepless nights. But that night my decision was made. Having to choose between Justice and the superior interests of the State, I obeyed the superior interests of the State.” Bertin-Mourot reproduces in his memoirs the long exchange he had with General André in 1904 and at the end of which the minister asked him to testify once again before the Court.

André, whom he hated, whom he described as a "miserable puppet", a "criminal, brought out of nothingness by the Lodges", would have told him that he considered Dreyfus as "a liar", as "the man who lies , who cannot help lying" and who had always lied to hide a "marital fault": Dreyfus would have been the victim of a mistress who would have “enrobed” him and would have transmitted to the Germans the secret papers he had on him and which she would have stolen from him. Regarding Dreyfus and the Affair, nothing had changed for him in 1930 when he wrote his memories. He had “always believed Dreyfus guilty and with the result of reversing the roles by making Dreyfus innocent, and the great leaders of the army guilty or blind”. For Bertin Mourot “the politics of the triumphant party imposed on us this judged fact that Dreyfus is innocent of everything”