*Includes pictures
*Includes the spies' quotes about their lives
*Includes a bibliography for further reading

“What a jolly thing military surveillance is!” – Belle Boyd

“I am a woman who enjoys herself very much; sometimes I lose, sometimes I win.” – Mata Hari

Americans have long been fascinated by the Civil War, marveling at the size of the battles, the leadership of the generals, and the courage of the soldiers. Since the war's start over 150 years ago, the events have been subjected to endless debate among historians and the generals themselves. The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in American history, and had the two sides realized it would take 4 years and inflict over a million casualties, it might not have been fought. Since it did, however, historians and history buffs alike have been studying and analyzing the people and places that shaped the course of the conflict ever since.

Much about the war remains controversial over 150 years later, and that includes the extent and nature of the spying that took place on both sides.
Thus, it is only fitting that the war’s most famous spy, the Confederate sympathizer Isabella Maria Boyd, is one of those people in American history who is as much myth as reality. Part of this is because she lived in an era that is still heavily imbued with a sense of nostalgia and myth, but her own personality is also heavily to blame, for she was what might in modern parlance be called a drama queen; since she was known for serial exaggerations in her work, historians are still trying to separate fact from fiction when it comes to her exploits. In the same vein, there was the matter of the people she surrounded herself with, many of whom needed a mythical figure to attach their last fading hopes for a Confederate victory to. They found such a person in Belle Boyd.

Margeretha Geertruida Zelle, better known to history by the exotic, glamorous name of Mata Hari, was a woman who profited greatly from the power of illusion during much of her brief life. Born to a hatter named Adam Zelle and his wife Antje van der Meulen, Mata Hari moved from a financially rewarding but miserable marriage to circus performances to exotic dancing and celebrity to the role of ostensible international spy in an arc that ended tragically in front of a French firing squad.

To a certain degree, Mata Hari’s entire adult life represented a triumph of advertising. Just as advertising depicts products in such a way that they are associated with other desirable things that have little or nothing to do with the items themselves – romantic or sexual success, beautiful landscapes or exotic locations, excitement, financial success, youth and attractiveness, and so on – Mata Hari created an aura of mysterious glamour around herself to sell to the public, something that would never have happened had she merely been seen for what she was, a Dutch courtesan with elaborate costumes.

Executed by firing squad and subjected to the macabre ritual of having her severed, preserved head retained for decades at a French medical school as a kind of bizarre trophy, Mata Hari ironically won the everlasting fame she craved. She also tragically contributed one final legend to the shared mythology of humanity: that of the seductive female super-spy who uses both a keenly devious intellect and irresistible feminine wiles to change the fate of nations and empires. It’s still a powerful archetype, despite being a far cry from the reality of the actual Mata Hari. The French Army itself also contributed strongly to the legend of Mata Hari. To protect state secrets, and perhaps to conceal their own judicial wrongdoing, the French military court sealed all of the trial records for 100 years – until late 2017, when all involved would assuredly be dead.