Rather than move to clear Dreyfus, the decision was made to protect Esterhazy and ensure the original verdict was not overturned.

Soon Senator August Scheurer-Kestner took up the case and announced in the Senate that Dreyfus was innocent and accused Esterhazy.

The right-wing government refused new evidence to be allowed and Esterhazy was tried and acquitted.

In August 1896, the new chief of French military intelligence, Lt Colonel Picquart, reported to his superiors that he had found evidence to the effect that the real traitor was a Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy.

In August 1896, the new chief of French military intelligence, Lt Colonel Picquart, reported to his superiors that he had found evidence to the effect that the real traitor was a Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy.

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 actual perpetrator of the act of treason of which Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully accused and convicted in 1894 ( see Dreyfus affair ).

After evidence against Esterhazy was discovered and made public, he was eventually subjected to a closed military trial in 1898, only to be officially found not guilty.

Charles Marie Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy was born in Hungary, the son of General Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy who distinguished himself as division commander in the Crimean War.

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.

However, Esterhazy was still protected by the High staff, who did not want to see the judgment of 1895 put into doubt.

Esterhazy was discreetly put on military pension with the rank of Major.

Doise was not the first writer to explore the hypothesis of Esterhazy as a double agent: earlier writings by Michel de Lombarès and Henri Giscard d ' Estaing, though differing in the details of their theories, also presented this line of argument.

Picquart began by getting information about the personality of Major Esterhazy, to whom the " petit bleu " was addressed.

He discovered that Esterhazy had been under suspicion of malversation in Tunis and of espionage ; he learned that Major Esterhazy was constantly absent from his garrison.

However, Esterhazy had been warned, and not only was it impossible to surprise him in any compromising visit, but he showed himself openly at the German embassy, to which he went to ask for a passport for his colonel.

If Esterhazy were really a traitor, he would be dismissed from the army quietly ; another Dreyfus affair was to be avoided.

He was authorized for the sake of appearances to continue his investigations concerning Esterhazy, but he was forbidden to take any decisive steps or to have Esterhazy arrested.

Picquart found that ordinary measures — secret searches in his rooms, opening of his correspondence, examination of his desks — were of no avail, because Esterhazy had been warned.

Esterhazy retired from the military with the rank of Major in 1898 — presumably under pressure — and fled by way of Brussels to the United Kingdom, where he lived in the village of Harpenden in Hertfordshire until his death in 1923.

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.

In 1896, Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart, the then-new head of the Intelligence Service, uncovered a letter sent by Schwartzkoppen to Esterhazy.

In order to clear his name, Esterhazy asked for a trial behind closed doors by French Military Justice ( 10 – 11 January 1898 ).

# A proposal to two officers to testify, should such action be necessary, that a paper, registered as belonging to the service, and emanating from a well-known person, had been seized in the mails-a reference to a remark made by Lauth to Picquart, that the " petit bleu " addressed to Esterhazy was lacking the regular stamp of the post-office.

Billot objected to this proceeding ; it seems, however, that somebody disregarded the objection, for Esterhazy received ( or pretended to have received ) a letter signed Espérance, warning him that the Dreyfus family, informed by a certain Colonel Picquart, intended to accuse him of treason.

There, while Henry ( fearing, as he said, recognition by his former comrade ) kept watch, Du Paty, who was also disguised, told Esterhazy that he was known to be innocent, and that he would be defended on condition that he conformed rigorously to the instructions that would be given to him.

In the interim, by means of the press the public mind had been influenced by indications as to the real traitor and by counter-declarations by Esterhazy in " La Libre Parole " concerning the conspiracy of the Jews and of " X.

The hasty denunciation of Esterhazy by Matthew Dreyfus was a tactical though perhaps an unavoidable blunder.

Public opinion was deeply moved by two publications: one, that of the indictment of Dreyfus ( in Le Siècle, 6 January 1898 ), which was absolutely remarkable for its lack of proof ; the other ( Le Figaro, 28 November 1897 ), that of letters written twelve years before by Esterhazy to his mistress, Madame de Boulancy, in which he launched furious invectives against his " cowardly and ignorant " chiefs, against " the fine army of France ," against the entire French nation.

Esterhazy hastened to deny having authored the letter, which was submitted to examination by experts.

However, Esterhazy was instructed to write a letter asking as a favor to be brought up for trial, the rough copy of which was corrected by Pellieux himself.

Finally, as everybody knew beforehand would be the case, Esterhazy was acquitted unanimously and acclaimed with frenzy by the " patriots " outside.

His adversaries, Gonse, Henry, Lauth and Gribelin, tried to weaken the force of his evidence and to assert that from the beginning he had been haunted by the idea of substituting Esterhazy for Dreyfus.

* Songs with baryton accompaniment by Prince Pal Esterhazy ( performance on YouTube )

They are assisted by, and become romantically involved with, two women, and pair up: Ozzie with Claire DeLoone ( an anthropologist ) and Chip with Hildy Esterhazy ( an amorous and aggressive taxi driver ).

The church is used by The Esterhazy Singers for rehearsals and some concerts.

The day before this memorable decree Esterhazy declared to a reporter of " Le Matin " that he was indeed the author of the bordereau ; but he asserted that he had written it " by order ," to furnish his friend, Colonel Sandherr ( whose secret agent he pretended to have been ), with a material proof against the traitor Dreyfus.

After high-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, a military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy after the second day of his trial.

With the staff and the War Office fully enlisted against Dreyfus, the court martial which Esterhazy himself at once demanded was of necessity a veritable comedy.

" The acquittal of Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy was " a supreme blow to all truth, to all justice "; the court of justice which had pronounced it was " necessarily criminal "; and he finished the long recital of his accusations with these words:

A complaint was lodged against the defamatory phrases with regard to the court martial which had acquitted Esterhazy.

From 1728 he worked in Bratislava at the court of count-bishop Emeric ( or Imrich ) Esterhazy, where he sculpted a gravestone for Bishop Esterhazy and a horse monument of St. Martin.

The story provoked an international outcry and led to the release and pardon of Dreyfus and court martial of Esterhazy.

Hummel was at the time the Kapellmeister, having been appointed Haydn's successor to the Esterhazy court.

Lastly, a search, made as early as November, put the court in possession of two letters acknowledged by Esterhazy, written on the same " pelure " paper ( foreign note-paper ) as the bordereau ; a search had been made in vain for samples of this paper in Dreyfus ' house, and in 1897 Esterhazy had denied that he had ever used it.