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In September 1894, an agent of the French Intelligence Bureau discovered alist of French military secrets in a wastebasket at the German Embassy in Paris.This document was quickly misattributed to a Jewish officer, Alfred Dreyfus,who was convicted in a hasty court martial and sentenced to deportation inperpetuity. Over the next four years, his sentence was challenged by allies,called "dreyfusards," who found in the effort to reopen the case a quasi-mysticalquest in defense of truth, justice, and liberal republican ideals. They were counteredby others, the "antidreyfusards," who saw truth as less important thanthe well-being of the nation or who believed that, being Jewish, Dreyfus wasnecessarily a traitor. In French history, memory, and culture, the Dreyfus Affairis a red-letter event – the cradle of the contemporary Left and Right and thebirthplace of the public intellectual. It is a daunting subject for a researcher, notonly because of the enormous body of literature around it but because its verysignificance has given it a degree of impenetrability. There is a certain difficultyin breaking through to the event itself, in asking different questions when faced with such familiar faces and texts.

I will be looking at female mobilization within the turn-of-the-century French antisemitic movement, which has traditionally posed a problem for historians. On the one hand, the movement itself was ideologically antifeminist, with stable and traditional gender roles seen as a crucial weapon against the decadence of the French state.1 At the same time, however, the movement actively sought out female participants. Women responded to these appeals by joining leagues, attending meetings, or contributing in other ways.2 This paradox, seen also in later right-wing movements in France and elsewhere, merits further study – why (and how) do women become involved in movements that ostensibly reject female political activity, and why do such movements seek out female members? In this paper, I will address the first of these questions by examining female mobilization in the Ligue Antisémitique Française (LAF), focusing in particular on female mobilization during the siege of the League's headquarters in the summer of 1899.