LOS ANGELES, CA.- World War I French spy Mata Hari’s series of love letters will be auctioned by Nate D. Sanders Auctions on August 30, 2018.

Hari was accused and killed for being a double agent, though many historians now believe she was scapegoated by the French to shift blame for their military blunders during World War I.

Hari was born in 1876 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. She received acclaim as a circus performer and exotic dancer around the turn of the century. She was recruited by France to spy on Germany during World War I. In December 1916, Hari was given permission from the French Second Bureau of the French War Ministry to obtain the identity of six Belgian agents. Five agents were accused of submitting false material and collaborating with the Germans. The sixth agent was accused of being a dual spy for France and Germany and was executed. The other five agents continued their operations, which led the Second Bureau to believe that Hari communicated the identities of the spies to the Germans. She was arrested on February 13, 1917, in Paris and was placed on trial on July 24, 1917, on charges of spying for Germany and causing the deaths of at least 50,000 soldiers. Hari was found guilty and was executed on October 15, 1917, in Vincennes, France by a French firing squad.

Being offered at auction are 10 letters Hari wrote to her lover, the then unknown artist Piet van der Hem. Van der Ham’s portrait of Hari hangs at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, Netherlands.

The majority of the letters aren’t dated, but likely range from late 1914 to early 1915. Hari wrote all of her notes from the Victoria Hotel in Amsterdam, where she resided in neutral Holland after fleeing from Berlin at the start of the war.

Hari wrote about finding employment as a dancer, the Dutch reaction to her dancing style, ''journalist pigs'' who criticized her and having van der Hem paint her portrait and design costumes for her. She also mentioned Will van der Schalk, the wealthy banker who paid her expenses at the hotel.

Seven of the letters were written in French, and the remaining three are in Dutch. Hari proclaimed she loved van der Hem ''only for who you are'' and therefore would forgive him for having ''your fun'' with her; she also wrote in the same letter that she wouldn't ''take revenge'' on him, as she would with an otherwise important man who had wronged her.

Bidding for the letters begins at $12,000.