Espionage—Charles Marie Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy

Affaire Esterhazy: identité absolue des écritures (Esterhazy Affair: The handwriting is an exact match). A broadside poster in support of Dreyfus, demonstrating that the handwriting on the bordereau matches Esterhazy's handwriting.

A spy was afoot in the French military. A torn up document, or bordereau, with military secrets, was retrieved from a waste paper basket at the German Embassy by a cleaning lady, who was in the employ of French military counter-intelligence. Who could have created the document and passed the information along to the Germans?

The most likely candidate was Esterhazy, who had many motives to commit treason. In serious debt, he was being pressed by his creditors to pay up. He had previously been employed to translate German at the French military counter-intelligence section, and he was a known liar and forger. But, instead, the military focused on Dreyfus, claiming his handwriting matched that on the bordereau. Despite a lack of real evidence, and in part on account of a secret dossier presented to the judges containing forged documents, Dreyfus was convicted of treason in a closed court, in December 1894.