Raoul Le Mouton de Boisdeffre

Raoul François Charles Le Mouton de Boisdeffre, or more commonly Raoul de Boisdeffre (6 February 1839, Alençon – 24 August 1919, Paris) was a French Army general.

During the Franco-Prussian War he was a major of cavalry and aide-de-camp of General Antoine Chanzy, and in 1882 was promoted to colonel.

[1] He was consulted on the 1894 French Military Treaty with Russia and had met both Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II.

At the trial of Émile Zola (1898), during the Dreyfus affair, he appeared full-uniformed in court, and in a much-applauded address to the jury, affirmed the existence of a third secret document incriminating the accused officer.

When subsequently it transpired, through the confession of Lieutenant Colonel Hubert-Joseph Henry, that the document to which he had referred in good faith was a forgery, he tendered his resignation and retired from public life.