![]() With their approval, he accepted Esterhazy's offer. Schwartzkoppen had hesitated about the wisdom of employing a French officer as a spy, but, concerned about important opportunities he might otherwise miss, he had consulted his superiors in Berlin. He was chronically in debt his wife, a French aristocrat who had married him over the vehement objections of her family, had found it necessary to take legal measures to protect her small personal fortune from his depredations. An amoral sociopath, Esterhazy lied, intrigued, and swindled obsessively. Esterhazy was a descendant of the illegitimate French branch of the ancient and illustrious Austro-Hungarian family, which had never acknowledged the French offshoot. On July 24, 1894, Major Esterhazy, a French officer, offered to sell important French military secrets to the German military attaché in Paris, Lieutenant Colonel Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen. The events leading up to the arrest have been related many times. Over the course of the next five years, the three generals would inspire, encourage, dictate, and sanction by their authority the illegal and often bizarre actions of their subordinates. Also off-stage, but waiting in the wings, were the top brass: General Auguste Mercier, the minister of war Boisdeffre Arthur Gonse, deputy chief of staff and Lieutenant Colonel Jean Sandherr, chief of the Statistics Section, who reported to Gonse. Missing was Major Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy. So it happened that with only one exception the principal actors of the drama about to commence were all onstage for its first act. Henry took over after the arrest and escorted Dreyfus to the military prison on rue du Cherche-midi, a very long street on the Left Bank that stretches from the sixth to the fifteenth arrondissement. ![]() Concealed behind a curtain and watching the proceedings was Major Joseph Henry, also of the Statistics Section. The three civilians were the chief of Sûreté générale, the police attached to the Ministry of the Interior, which was often entrusted with political tasks his secretary and Félix Gribelin, the archivist at the Section de statistique (Statistics Section), the intelligence and counterintelligence unit of the General Staff. The artillery officer was, of course, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who became in the decade that followed one of the best-known men in Europe, if not in the world. ![]() The letter finished, du Paty drew himself up to his considerable full height, put his hand on the officer's shoulder, and bellowed: "In the name of the law, I put you under arrest you are accused of high treason." The civilians pounced on the officer and searched him. Du Paty explained that the generalwould be back shortly and, pleading injury to his right hand, asked the officer to take down a letter, which he dictated from a document that would soon become infamous as the bordereau (account). Instead, he saw an officer who introduced himself as Major Armand Mercier du Paty de Clam and three unknown civilians. The officer's surprise was compounded when he realized that neither the general nor any other officer trainee was present. To his surprise, on arrival he was met by Major Georges Picquart, who said he would escort him to the office of the chief, General Charles Le Mouton de Boisdeffre. So was the requirement that the officer be in mufti. The morning hour was unusual inspections routinely took place in the evening. It had summoned officer trainees to an inspection by the General Staff. Chapter One "if they haven't been ordered to convict him, he will be acquitted this evening"Īt nine o'clock on Monday morning, October 15,1894, a French artillery officer serving as a trainee with the army's General Staff reported to the Ministry of War building on rue Saint-Dominique, in the aristocratic faubourg Saint-Germain of Paris, obeying an order delivered to his apartment the preceding Saturday.
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