Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy (December 16, 1847–May 21, 1923 ) was French traitor, who served as a spy for Germany. Esterhazy was the perpetrator of the crime of which Alfred Dreyfus had been wrongly accused and convicted. See Dreyfus affair. December 16 is the 350th day of the year (351st in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1847 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... May 21 is the 141st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (142nd in leap years). ... 1923 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... In law, treason is the crime of disloyalty to ones nation. ... Spy and secret agent redirect here; for alternate use, see Spy (disambiguation) and Secret agent (disambiguation). ... Alfred Dreyfus in an army uniform, wearing a mustache. ... Alfred Dreyfus in an army uniform, wearing a mustache. ...

Born in Paris, Esterhazy belonged to an illustrious Hungarian family, a branch of which had established itself in France at the end of the 17th century, and the head of which had organized there a regiment of hussars. His great-grandmother had an illegitimate son, who was brought up under the name of Walsin, but who, after she had acknowledged him during the Revolution, took the name of Esterhazy and settled as a merchant at Nimes. Two of the sons of this man followed a military career with distinction, and both became generals of division during the Crimean war. One of these two (Ferdinand) was the father of Major Esterhazy. Left an orphan at an early age, after some schooling at the Lycée Bonaparte in Paris, Ferdinand Esterhazy disappeared in 1865. In 1869 he was found engaged in the Roman legion, in the service of the pope; in 1870, in the foreign legion, which his uncle's influence enabled him to enter with the rank of ensign; he then assumed the title of count, to which it is claimed he was not entitled. At this time came the war with Germany. 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. In 1876 he was employed to translate German at the Intelligence Office; then, under various pretexts, at the War Office. 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 1881 he was attached to the expedition sent to Tunis, and did nothing whatever to distinguish himself in it; 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. The Eiffel Tower has become a symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... The House of Esterházy (- German, in Hungarian: Eszterházy, in Slovak: Esterházi) was a noble family in the Kingdom of Hungary since the Middle Ages, which was among the great territorial magnates of the Kingdom of Hungary, during the time it was part of the Austrian Habsburg Empire. ... Nîmes is a city and commune of southern France, préfecture (capital) of the Gard département. ... Loire is a département in the east-central part of France occupying the Loire Rivers upper reaches. ... The Jura folds are located North of the main Alpine orogenic front, and are being continually deformed, accommodating the northwards compression due to Alpine folding. ... City motto: Actibus immensis urbs fulget Massiliensis. ...

His Career

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 rôle 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 "La Libre Parole," even to the extent of supplying them with information. Édouard Drumont (1844-1917) was a French antisemite and proto-fascist. ... Rabbi (Classical Hebrew רִבִּי ribbÄ«;; modern Ashkenazi and Israeli רַבִּי rabbÄ«) in Judaism, means teacher, or more literally great one. The word Rabbi is derived from the Hebrew root-word RaV, which in biblical Hebrew means great or distinguished,. In the ancient Judean schools the sages were addressed as רִבִּי (Ribbi or Rebbi... Rothschild Coat of Arms The Mayer Amschel Rothschild family is a successful banking and finance dynasty of German Jewish origin that established operations across Europe, and was ennobled by the Austro-Hungarian and British governments. ...

For an officer who had come from the ranks Esterhazy's military advancement had been unusually rapid: lieutenant in 1874, captain in 1880, decorated in 1882, major in 1892, his reports 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. Such a man, a regular landsknecht of yore, without a single spark of patriotism, was destined to become the prey of treason. Fate decreed that he should sink to the degradation of a paid spy; he sank. 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 Schwarzkoppen's service.

According to later disclosures he received from the German attaché a monthly pension of 2,000 marks ($480). He furnished him in the first place with some interesting information about the artillery; he pretended that he got his information from Major Henry, who had been his comrade in the Intelligence Office 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 (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 the artillery is concerned (the improvements in which department 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 Aug., 1894) to borrow the "manuel de tir" from Lieutenant Bernheim (of Le Mans), whose acquaintance he had made by chance. Le Mans is a city in France, located at the Sarthe River. ...

This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain. Supporters contend that the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) represents, in many ways, the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...