If you’ve never heard of him, that’s because it’s not his real name. In reality he was Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy - the real traitor in l’Affaire Dreyfus, the anti-Semitic scandal that rocked the French Army and State in the 1890s https://twitter.com/brynley_h/status/1344027331363549185

Esterhazy after selling, French military secrets to the Germans, produced story after story to ensure that captain Alfred Dreyfus would continue to be thought of as a traitor for passing military information to the German military attaché. It was actually Esterhazy

Dreyfus was sent to the Île du Diable (Devil’s Island) [Hence Steve McQueen ‘Papillon’] when found guilty. Meanwhile, when Esterhazy’s guilt was discovered, the Army would not admit to its mistake (It was easier to blame a Jew), so they tried to discredit Eszterhazy’s accuser

As the scandal developed, the French intellectual and author Emile Zola famously wrote his accusations of who was really guilty in the French press. [Zola wrote Germinal – a brilliant novel set in a mining community in the Nord Département]

Ultimately, the real traitor, Esterhazy, was allowed to flee France and spent the rest of his time under an assumed name living in England. In the #FWW he supposedly wrote several anti-Allied articles for the French Press

Le capitaine Dreyfus was only finally pardoned as late as 1906 and went on to serve with distinction in the First World War, as I have previously tweeted. His story is really important to an understanding of the French nation and army in the First World War.