The Dreyfus Affair (9 page)

The man who came closest to imposing an authoritarian form of government on the Third Republic, General Georges Boulanger, had served as Minister of War in 1886–7. Known as ‘Général Revanche’ for his bombastic speeches about the recovery of Alsace and Lorraine, he ordered a shake-up of counter-intelligence and the establishment of contingency plans for dealing with unreliable elements in the event of war. There was a national census in 1886 which Boulanger wanted to use to establish how many foreigners were living in the border zones of France.

The chief of the Statistical Section at the time was Colonel Jean Sandherr, an Alsatian from Mulhouse. His father had been a convert from Protestantism to Catholicism who, during the industrial unrest in 1870, had demonstrated against ‘the Prussians of the interior’ – that is, the Protestants and Jews. The son, Jean, was said to be the most handsome man in the French Army. He was a graduate of Saint-Cyr, served as a regimental officer until 1885 and subsequently taught at the École de Guerre. As an Alsatian, Sandherr was aware of the particular problems of security in the border areas of eastern France, and he diligently followed Boulanger’s instructions to form a register of aliens and potential spies.

When Boulanger fell from power, Sandherr pursued the project on his own initiative. He drew up lists of those whose loyalty to France was suspect. Carnet A contained the names of resident aliens, most of them Germans, and Carnet B of non-resident aliens and suspect French citizens. Corps commanders were instructed to prepare premises where, in the event of war, those on the lists could be interned. At a meeting of the High Council of War held on 1 April 1889, it was agreed that in the event of war Sandherr’s plan would be put into effect, with all enemy aliens of military age interned as prisoners of war and the women and children deported.

General Auguste Mercier, appointed Minister of War in December 1893, enthusiastically endorsed Sandherr’s plans for the mass internment of up to 100,000 people in the event of war. The civilian prefects and army regional commanders were warned that the enemy aliens listed on Carnet A as Germans would often claim to be ‘Alsatians, Lorrainers, Luxembourgeois, Swiss, Belgians, etc.’; and they were told that potential spies on Carnet B ‘should be considered as criminals’. Inevitably Alsatians ‘figured prominently’ in Sandherr’s list of suspects, his Carnet B.
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And ‘for Sandherr and Mercier . . . the distinction between indictment and conviction for spying was a mere legal formality. The assumption of guilt would hang heavily indeed on the accused.’
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Sandherr’s plans for mass internment without due process of law have been considered a sign of paranoia in the French High Command, as have the elaborate measures taken to weed out spies. Douglas Porch, in writing about the French secret services, states that ‘paranoia becomes an occupational hazard in counter-intelligence’ and that the Statistical Section at this time was ‘suffused with an atmosphere of exaggerated spy mania’; but Sandherr and his subordinates had to deal with the unique and complex questions of loyalties that followed the annexation by Germany of Alsace and Lorraine. With an ever increasing pitch in nationalistic rhetoric among the European powers, the ambivalent status of Frenchmen from these ‘amputated provinces’ made them either super-patriots or potential traitors. There was a disproportionate number of Alsatians in the Statistical Section not just because they spoke German but because they were thought best able to smoke out the traitors among those fellow Alsatians who had opted for French nationality.

Much was at stake. One of the lessons learned from the Franco-Prussian war was that superior weapons such as the breech-loading, steel-tubed Krupp guns could tip the balance in armed engagements. France had made significant advances in the design of weaponry: in 1892, the artillery had been revolutionised by the advent of the new 120mm howitzers and 155mm cannon; in 1893, the Lebel rifle was modified; and finally, from 1894 onwards, a rapid-firing breech-loading cannon, the 75, with revolutionary recoil mechanism, was brought into service: it could fire twenty rounds a minute instead of the seven of the cannon it replaced.
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Keeping such advances in weaponry from the Germans was of paramount importance and there were Frenchmen who were venal. In 1888 the Paris correspondent of the London
Daily Telegraph
reported that ‘traitors seem to abound in the French army. The War Office authorities are at their wits’ end.’
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In 1890, a senior civil servant working in the technical section dealing with artillery in the Ministry of War was caught passing secret information to the then German military attaché, Hühne, on a park bench on the avenue Friedland in Paris. Boutonnet, the civil servant, was sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of 5,000 francs, and Hühne, at the request of the French government, was recalled to Berlin. Two years later, in 1892, a civil servant in the Naval Ministry, Greiner, was charged with selling documents to the American military attaché, Borup, who had passed them on to the Germans.
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The network of German agents was directed by the military attaché in the German Embassy in Paris. In 1894, this post was occupied by a charming and cultivated officer, Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen. Schwartzkoppen was already known to the French: he had done a previous tour of duty in the Paris Embassy, and Colonel de Sancy, director of the General Staff’s Second Bureau, had got to know him when serving in the French Embassy in Berlin. It was accepted that, as the German military attaché, Schwartzkoppen would seek to inform himself on the French Army’s potential; he was invited to attend manoeuvres, but suborning traitors was considered dishonourable, not just by the French Foreign Office, but also by the German Ambassador, a veteran diplomat, Georges-Herbert, Graf Münster von Derneburg. After the embarrassment of the Hühne affair, Münster gave strict instructions to Schwartzkoppen that he was not to indulge in espionage, and felt able to reassure the French government apropos of the new attaché: ‘You won’t have any trouble with him.’
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Schwartzkoppen had indeed promised Münster that he would conform to the code of conduct that the ancient and distinguished Ambassador felt proper, but there were higher powers than the Ambassador, notably the Director of Military Intelligence in Berlin who, with the Kaiser’s approval, instructed Schwartzkoppen to ignore Münster’s scruples. The interests of the German Empire were paramount, and Schwartzkoppen was to proceed on that assumption.

Schwartzkoppen was flexible when it came to matters of honour. The Statistical Section intercepted eighty of the letters in his correspondence with his mistress, Hermance de Weede, the wife of the Counsellor at the Dutch Embassy, described by Maurice Paléologue as a ‘charming Dutchwoman, with feline movements and big, passionate eyes’.
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They also intercepted the correspondence of Schwartzkoppen and his Italian opposite number in the Italian Embassy, Major Alessandro Panizzardi, which seemed to confirm the rumour picked up by a French agent working in the Spanish Embassy, the Marquis de Val Carlos, that the two men were lovers.

Dear Maximilienne, am I still your Alexandrine? When will you come to bugger me? A thousand salutations from the girl who loves you so. Alexandrine

My darling . . . all yours and on the mouth . . . Maximilienne

Yes little red dog, I shall come to your pleasure. I would be capable of stuffing a metre of swaddling in you and all the fourteen-year-old commandants if needed. Oh, the filthy beast. All yours, still coming. Maximilienne
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Other exchanges between the two military attachés intercepted by the Statistical Section were of a less personal nature. In April 1894, Panizzardi sent Schwartzkoppen the blueprints of the fortifications of Nice close to the border with Italy, apparently supplied by a spy he had recently spurned. ‘Attached are 12 master plans of Nice which that scoundrel D. gave me in the hope of restoring relations.’ Who was D? Two suspects, one named Dacher, the other Dubois, were investigated but both were cleared of suspicion.

Given the importance attached to counter-espionage by the French General Staff, it is remarkable that the number of officers serving in the Statistical Section was so small. Colonel Sandherr’s second-in-command was Commandant Albert Cordier, who, had he not been an old friend and protégé of Sandherr’s, would almost certainly not have remained in such a demanding post. Father Josué, as he was known in the office, was lazy, sloppy and fond of a tipple. Beneath Commandant Cordier came Lieutenant-Colonel Hubert Joseph Henry,
*
who, as an officer who had risen from the ranks, was an anomaly in such an elite group.

Henry was the son of a farmer in the Tourenne and his appearance, according to Maurice Paléologue, betrayed his origins: he was stolid, sturdy, thickset, with a fine moustache, florid cheeks and a look of gruff candour that concealed his peasant cunning. He had an impressive record. As a sergeant-major in the Franco-Prussian war, he had twice been taken prisoner, had twice escaped, and his brave conduct under fire had led him to be commissioned in the field. In 1876 he had served as aide to the reforming Minister of War, General de Miribel, and it was Miribel who first appointed him to the Statistical Section at the time when Charles Ferdinand Esterhazy, who had acted as second to André Crémieu-Foa, was serving there as a translator.

In 1882 Henry left the Statistical Section for a period of active service in Tunisia and Tonkin. He was promoted to the rank of major in 1891 and returned to the Statistical Section in 1897 as third-in-command. Henry knew no foreign languages and at first sight would seem unsuited to work in army intelligence, but his peasant cunning and familiarity with the kind of low-life that he had encountered in the ranks enabled him to pick up information and recruit agents in circles of society inaccessible to those born into the officer class. ‘In daily contact with venal servants, procuresses, former policemen and commercial travellers, he knew how to find the tone which would bring the reluctant into his confidence, bring the intractable to heel, persuade the reluctant to talk and terrorise as necessary those tempted to play a double game against the interests of the Section.’
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Despite the ease with which he moved among Parisian low-life, Major Henry was first and foremost a soldier, a strict disciplinarian with a profound respect for his superiors in the military hierarchy. He revered the senior officers of the High Command, and saw it as his duty not just to obey their direct orders ‘but to execute the orders he had been given obliquely’ with a nod and a wink, or even to anticipate orders that had yet to be given.
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Henry had a wife named Berthe who was to play a significant role in the Affair. According to Maurice Paléologue, he had fallen in love with this daughter of an innkeeper in his home village of Péronne. ‘Pretty and attractive with a beautiful complexion, she kept him dangling so skilfully that he ended up marrying her.’
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Once she had hooked her older husband and was installed in Paris, she had – so Commandant Cordier told Paléologue – taken up with another officer serving in the Statistical Section, Captain Jules Lauth.

Like his chief Sandherr, Lauth was handsome – a tall, trim, distinguished-looking ex-cavalry officer, always correctly dressed, highly intelligent, fluent in German, but cold, frigid, reticent. Again like Sandherr he was an Alsatian, born in Saverne north of Strasbourg, a Protestant though ‘he wished he was not’.
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His reticence helped to contain a short temper. He did not brook contradiction, which made his bond with the pig-headed Henry difficult to understand. Did Lauth’s liaison with his wife Berthe give Henry a hold over Lauth, or was it Lauth, as Cordier believed, who had a hold over Henry? ‘Be on your guard against Henry,’ he told Paléologue, ‘or rather be on your guard against Lauth, for he’s the one who holds all the strings.’
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Among the officers serving in the Statistical Section there was also a Captain Pierre Matton who dealt with the Italians, and an archivist, Félix Gribelin – described by Paléologue as ‘gentle, modest, self-effacing, the perfect servant, monastic in his docility’. Gribelin had an excellent memory and knowledge of the different dossiers, which was just as well because there was ‘chronic disorder in the Statistical Section with a failure to date items of intelligence as and when they came into the office’.
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2: The Bordereau

Among the agents recruited by Major Henry from the Parisian low-life was an Alsatian, Martin-Joseph Brücker. His task was to keep foreign diplomatic personnel under surveillance, and to suborn clerks, valets and chambermaids working in the embassies so that they would assist him. One of Brücker’s most useful recruits was a neighbour, Mme Marie-Caudron Bastian, who was employed on a daily basis by the German Embassy. Her job was to clean the offices, light the stoves and empty the waste-paper baskets, burning their contents in the boiler that fired the central heating. For a fee, she agreed not to burn the contents of the waste-paper baskets, but to smuggle them out of the Embassy and hand them over to Major Henry at a secret rendezvous, usually the church of Sainte-Clothilde or that of Saint-François-Xavier.

The codename given to Mme Bastian by the Statistical Section was ‘Auguste’, and thanks to her the traffic in waste-paper continued without a hitch along what came to be called the ‘normal route’ – the
voie ordinaire
. There were some dangerous moments: in 1893, a year before the arrest of Captain Dreyfus, a mistress discarded by Brücker informed the German Ambassador that both Brücker and Marie Bastian were spies. She was not taken seriously. Those responsible for security at the German Embassy reassessed the trustworthiness of their French staff, but cleared Brücker and considered it inconceivable that someone as apparently stupid as Mme Bastian could be a risk. She pretended to be illiterate and had been taken under the wing of the Ambassador’s daughter who was living in the Embassy at the time. A former military attaché, Funke, who had been transferred to Madrid, took the trouble to write to his successor, Süsskind, to say that he could have complete confidence in Mme Bastian, who also cleaned the flat of the military attaché. He was not to know that Mme Bastian had just received a bonus from the Statistical Section for purloining a bundle of Süsskind’s letters providing evidence of an adulterous affair.
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