The Dreyfus compromise weakened both the Church and the army

Evidence

The motion for a further retrial was defeated 425 to 60, and not even Clemenceau’s own government in 1906 could change the situation; it did not dare to entrust the retrial to a normal court of law. The (illegal) acquittal through the Court of Appeals was a compromise. But defeat for Clemenceau did not mean victory for the Church and the army. The separation of Church and State and the ban on parochial education brought to an end the political influence of Catholicism in France. Similarly, the subjection of the intelligence service to the ministry of war, i.e., to the civil authority, robbed the army of its blackmailing influence on cabinet and Chamber and deprived it of any justification for conducting police inquiries on its own account. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 335

Categorization

• XREF: This is a concrete mechanism of how state compromise resolutions defang rival power blocs — echoes of the law-and-order versus rights tension in the Islamophobia readings.