The nineteenth century background

The nineteenth century had seen publication of many games of political significance. Mention has already been made, in Chapter 4, of the games associated with the Revolution, of the Jeu Royal de la vie d’Henri IV, published in 1815 to aid the re-establishment of the monarchy, and of the Jeu de l’oie parlementaire and the Jeu des Lois, both being satirical games appearing in the second half of the century. There was thus in France a considerable tradition of games which, though they might appear innocuous because of their similarity to the familiar Jeu de l’oie, in fact had messages to impart beyond the simple structure of the game. The same might be said of the Italian game mentioned in Chapter 9, L´Italia del Secolo Decimonono ossia il Nuovissimo Giuoco dell´Oca, which – though it is more celebratory than satirical – contains numerous coded messages. The Netherlands carried into the century not only Dutch editions of the Jansenist Unigenitus game described in Chapter 4 above but also various dice games of the Owl type, of which Pietro Aratino Secundo's Gedenkblad of 1786 is perhaps the forerunner: in words and pictures it agitates against William V, his Orange party, and ‘ill-intentioned England’. The stage was thus set for the considerable flowering of games of propaganda and influence that appeared across Europe in the 20th century.

Politics and prejudices at the turn of the century

In France, the years at the turn of the 19th century were animated by an intense political debate, triggered by the Dreyfus affair. This was reflected by the publication of the following highly-charged games.

The Jeu de l’Affaire Dreyfus et de la Vérité (1898)

The Dreyfus Affair and the Truth was a game published in 1898 by the French journal L’Aurore, highlighting the injustices of the Dreyfus Affair. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian and Jewish descent, had been sentenced in 1894 to life imprisonment for allegedly communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris. Proof of his innocence was discovered, the real traitor being a Major Ferdinand Esterhazy, but this was suppressed by the military authorities, so that it was not until 1906 that the judgment was overturned and the blame fixed on Esterhazy.