The Ems Dispatch
Bismarck edited a telegram on 13 July 1870 and had France declare war within six days. The dispute was over the Spanish throne, vacant since a revolution in 1868. A Hohenzollern prince — a Catholic cousin of the Prussian king — had been offered it, which France regarded as encirclement, and the candidacy was withdrawn under French pressure. That should have ended it, and Bismarck was privately furious at the loss of a useful crisis. France then overreached. Its ambassador Benedetti approached Wilhelm I at the spa town of Ems and asked for an assurance that the candidacy would never be renewed. Wilhelm refused politely, declined a further audience, and had an account of the exchange telegraphed to Bismarck with permission to publish. Bismarck was at dinner with Moltke and Roon, both of whom told him the army was ready. He cut the text. Nothing was invented; the courtesies, the explanations and the conditional language were removed, so that what remained read as a French demand curtly refused and an ambassador dismissed — he said afterwards that it would have the effect of a red rag on the Gallic bull. He released it to the press on the anniversary of the Bastille. Both publics were enraged as intended. France declared war on 19 July, which made it the aggressor and brought the south German states in under their treaties. The empire was proclaimed at Versailles six months later. The dispatch is the textbook case of a document made to say something by subtraction rather than by invention.
- Year: 1870 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
