Espionage has been going on for as long as people have sought to gain an advantage over their rivals. Britain had the Profumo spy scandal in 1961 when the Secretary of State for War was compromised by his affair with a 19 year old model, who at the same time was involved with a Soviet naval attaché. Meanwhile the Cambridge Spy Ring of former students of the university had been passing secrets to the Russians from the 1930s and throughout the Second World War, with Donald McClean, Guy Burgess and Kim Philby among the notorious group of traitors.
France had its own high-level spy scandal at the turn of the 20th century, known as the Dreyfus Affair. This scandal added a gross miscarriage of justice as well as antisemitism to the story and caused uproar across French society. The Affair centred on a French artillery officer of Jewish descent, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who in 1894 was found guilty of passing military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris. Dreyfus was sentenced to life imprisonment on the infamous Devil’s Island in French Guiana.
Two years later new evidence identified the real culprit as a colourful fantasist in the French Army named Major Ferdinand Esterhazy. However, the new information was suppressed by military officials and Esterhazy was acquitted by a military court, with his trial lasting just two days. Forged documents led to additional charges against Dreyfus, but after 5 years in prison in 1899 public pressure saw him returned to France for a retrial.
French society was bitterly divided by the political and legal scandal, with politicians and intellectuals lining up on either side of the debate. After Dreyfus was again convicted and given a further 10 year sentence public opinion and pressure from the press led to a Presidential pardon. Dreyfus was finally exonerated by the French Supreme Court in 1906 and he returned to the Army, served throughout World War One and achieved the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel by the time he died in 1935.
The Dreyfus Affair’s connection with Harpenden began once it became clear that Major Esterhazy was the real spy and that a military cover-up had led to the forged evidence against Dreyfus. Esterhazy was now an embarrassment to the French government and military and he was allowed to quietly flee to exile in London, where he became widely known as a glamorous charmer and womaniser. Disgraced and in debt, Esterhazy abandoned his wife and in 1909 moved to Harpenden with his young mistress, Alsace Mathey.
Calling themselves Mr and Mrs Fitzgerald they lodged at 46 Tennyson Road in the town, from where Esterhazy sent anti-Semitic and pro-German articles to French newspapers. In 1910 the Fitzgeralds moved to a large rented house at number 140, Station Road, where they stayed for the next three years. Using the invented alias Count de Voilement, Esterhazy then bought a house at 21 Milton Road in Harpenden. Locals later recalled how he could be seen walking to the post office wearing a long black cloak or occasionally riding on Harpenden Common.
The Count and Countess remained at the Milton Road address until his death in 1923 from pneumonia, aged 74. Esterhazy’s papers were given to the French government and he was buried in St Nicholas’ churchyard in Harpenden, where his headstone bearing the name Count de Voilement can still be seen. The Countess left Harpenden soon after and nothing more is known of her. The true identities of the Count and Countess were revealed in the Herts Advertiser a few months after Esterhazy’s death, much to the surprise of Harpenden residents, the majority of whom had been unaware of the colourful foreigner in their midst.
