Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy
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Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy | |
|---|---|
| Allegiance | France, Germany |
| Service/ | French Army |
| Years of service | 1870-1898 |
| Rank | Major |
Charles Marie Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy (16 December 1847–21 May 1923) was a commissioned officer in the French armed forces during the second half of the 19th century who has gained notoriety as a spy for the German Empire and the alleged actual perpetrator of the act of treason, for which Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully accused and convicted in 1894 (see Dreyfus affair). Esterhazy was never formally charged or convicted during his lifetime, despite the existence of persuasive evidence against him as early as 1896. Esterhazy retired from the military in 1898 with the rank of Major, presumably under public pressure and fled, via Brussels, to the United Kingdom where he lived in the village of Harpenden until his death.
Biography
Ancestry
Charles Marie Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy was born in Paris, the son of General Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy who distinguished himself as division commander in the Crimean War. Esterhazy inherited his illustrious Hungarian family name through his paternal grandfather (a Nîmes merchant) who was born out of wedlock and brought up under the name of Walsin, but later acknowledged by his mother after the French Revolution. This branch of the Esterházys settled in France at the end of the 17th century and was involved in the military, namely in the organisation of Hussar regiments.
Early life and military career
Charles Ferdinand was left an orphan at an early age, after some schooling at the Lycée Bonaparte in Paris, he attempted vainly to enter the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr. He disappeared in 1865. In 1869 he was found engaged in the Roman legion, in the service of Pope Pius IX.
Franco-Prussian War
In June 1870, his uncle's influence enabled him to be commissioned in the French Foreign Legion. It was an irregular commission as he had not been an enlisted soldier before[1]. However the start of the Franco-Prussian War in July prevented actions against him. He then assumed the title of count, to which he was not entitled[2].
There being a dearth of officers after the catastrophe of Sedan, Esterhazy was able to pass muster as a French lieutenant, then as a captain, and went through the campaigns of the Loire and of the Jura. Though set back after peace was declared, he still remained in the army.
Post-war career
Between 1880 and 1882 he was employed to translate German at the French military counter-intelligence section - where he became acquainted with Major Henry and Lieutenant Colonel Sandherr, both to become major actors involved in the Dreyfus case. Then, under various pretexts, he was employed at the French War Ministry. He never appeared in his regiment at Beauvais, and for about five years led a life of dissipation in Paris, as a result of which his small fortune was soon squandered.
In 1882 he was attached to the expedition sent to Tunis, during which he did nothing to distinguish himself; employed later in the Intelligence Department, then in the native affairs of the regency. On his own authority he inserted in the official records a citation of his "exploits in war", the falseness of which was recognized later.
Returning to France in 1885, he remained in garrison at Marseille for a long time. Having come to the end of his resources, he married in 1886; but he soon spent his wife's dowry, and in 1888 she was forced to demand a separation.
In 1892, through the influence of General Saussier, Esterhazy succeeded in getting a nomination as garrison-major in the Seventy-fourth Regiment of the line at Rouen. Being thus in the neighborhood of Paris, he plunged afresh into a life of speculation and excess, which soon completed his ruin.
His inheritance squandered, Esterhazy had tried to retrieve his fortune in gambling-houses and on the stock-exchange; hard pressed by his creditors, he had recourse to the most desperate measures.
Having seconded Crémieu-Foa in his duel with Drumont in 1892, he pretended that this chivalrous role had made his family, as well as his chiefs, quarrel with him. He produced false letters to support his words, threatened to kill both himself and his children, and thus obtained, through the medium of Zadoc Kahn, chief rabbi of France, assistance from the Rothschilds (June, 1894).
This did not prevent him from being on the best of terms with the editors of the anti-Semitic newspaper La Libre Parole, even to the extent of supplying them with information.
For an officer whose original commission was illegitimate, Esterhazy's military advancement had been unusually rapid: lieutenant in 1874, captain in 1880, decorated in 1882, major in 1892. The reports on him were generally excellent.
Nevertheless, he considered himself wronged. In his letters he continually launched into recrimination and abuse against his chiefs. He went still further, bespattering with mud the whole French army, and even France herself, for which he predicted and hoped that new disasters were in store.
Spy for Germany
Esterhazy's bitterness and utter lack of patriotic feeling, along with his fluency in German, were qualities which helped him to become an effective and unrepentant traitor.
In Tunis he was judged to have become too intimate with the German military attaché. In 1892 he was the object of an accusation made to the head of the staff, General Brault. In 1893 he entered the service of Max von Schwarzkoppen, the German military attaché in Paris.
According to later disclosures he received from the German attaché a monthly pension of 2,000 marks ($480). In return, Esterhazy furnished him in the first place with some interesting information about artillery.
Esterhazy pretended that he got his information from Major Henry, who had been his comrade in the French military counter-intelligence section of the War Ministry, in 1876. But Henry, limited to a very special branch of the service, was hardly in a position to furnish details on technical questions.
Esterhazy must have had other informants, who were not necessarily his accomplices. For example, his intimate friend Maurice Weil, district orderly officer to General Saussier, and a distinguished military writer and a regular news-hunter.
The information furnished by Esterhazy soon became of so little importance that Panizzardi, the Italian military attaché, (to whom Schwarzkoppen communicated it without divulging the name of his informant) began to doubt his qualifications as an officer. To convince the attaché it was necessary for Esterhazy to show himself one day in uniform, galloping behind a well-known general.
The garrison-major, being entrusted with the duties of mobilization, is always well informed in regard to the details of this subject. But, as far as artillery is concerned (the improvements in which especially interested the German officials), the difficulties which Esterhazy experienced in getting information were very apparent in the text of the bordereau, and in the attempt which he made (in August 1894) to borrow the manuel de tir from Lieutenant Bernheim (of Le Mans), whose acquaintance he had made by chance. However it is troubling that he could have correctly quoted, in the famous "bordereau" which sparked the Dreyfus Affair, a new 120 mm French artillery model ( "Canon de 120C Modele 1890 Baquet" ) and its advanced hydraulic recoil mechanism.
Dreyfus Affair
Captain Alfred Dreyfus was picked by the Army as the traitor in 1894, mainly because he was a Jew, Alsatian, and Republican, on the evidence of the bordereau. Convicted, he was deported to Devil's Island (l'Île du Diable) off the coast of French Guiana.
In 1896, Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart, new head of the Intelligence Service, uncovered a letter sent by Schwarzkoppen to Esterhazy. After comparison of Esterhazy's handwriting with that of the bordereau, he became sure of Esterhazy's culpability.
In 1897, Picquart gave the evidence to Dreyfus' lawyers. They started a campaign to bring Esterhazy to justice. In 1898 an ex-lover of Esterhazy made public letters of his in which he expressed his hatred of France and his contempt for the army. However, Esterhazy was still protected by the High staff, who did not want to see the judgment of 1895 put into doubt.
In order to clear his name, Esterhazy asked for a trial behind closed doors by French Military Justice (10–11 January 1898). He was acquitted, a judgment which ignited antisemitic riots in Paris.
On January 13, 1898, Emile Zola published his famous J’accuse, which accused the French government of anti-Semitism and especially focused on the court-martial and jailing of Dreyfus.
Flight to Britain and later years
Esterhazy was discreetly put on military pension with the rank of Major and fled, via Brussels, to the relative safety of the United Kingdom in September 1898. From 'Milton Road' in the village of Harpenden, he continued to write in anti-Semitic papers such as La Libre Parole until his death in 1923. He is buried in St Nicholas' churchyard, Harpenden.
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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