The receipt of this telegram by Bismarck was the culminating
incident in the crisis that had
developed between France and Prussia over the candidacy of Prince Leopold of the
Hohenzollern
family (of which King William of Prussia was the head) for the throne of Spain.
The prospect of a
German prince becoming King of Spain was intolerable to the French cabinet and
its anti-
Prussian foreign minister, the Duc de Gramont. Thus the crisis began when on
July 6, 1870
Gramont, in a speech in the French Chamber of Deputies, warned that failing the
resolution of the
candidacy in a manner satisfactory to the French government, "...we shall know
and do our duty
without weakness or hesitation." The issue now became more inflamed as it was
taken up by the
French press.
At this time King William was on holiday at Bad Ems, a German resort town by the River Rhine. It was there on July 7 that the French ambassador was now sent to exact from the King the promise that he would secure the withdrawal of Leopold, an assurance the King felt he could not give, since he had nothing to do with the offer in the first place. Benedetti, the ambassador was sent again on July 11 to confront William only to find that meanwhile Leopold, anxious to avoid being the cause of a diplomatic rupture, had withdrawn his candidacy. What had now appeared to be a French diplomatic victory was destroyed immediately by the intemperate decision of Gramont to exact further conditions from the Prussian king. Accordingly, Benedetti was sent back a third time to obtain from the King his formal agreement to Leopold's renunciation and an undertaking that he would never in the future endorse the candidacy of a Hohenzollern prince to the throne of Spain.
Bismarck’s role in the candidacy (secretly encouraging it for a year or more) was not publicly known and Leopold's withdrawal was a bitter pill for him to swallow. Bismarck's intentions, after all, had been other than innocent--a German as king of Spain might give the French pause in any designs they might have against Prussia. Thus the crucial part played by the telegram from Ems which, in the edited version released to the press, caused the crisis to flare up again to precipitate the Franco-Prussian war and directly lead to the unification under Prussia of all the German states.
The Ems telegram (a report of the King's last meeting with Benedetti sent to Bismarck by the foreign office official accompanying the monarch) is as follows. Note the King's irritation (line 4 ) and his fateful recommendation that the matter be made public:
His Majesty the King has written to me(namely, Heinrich Abeken, of
the Foreign office)
"Count Benedetti intercepted me on the promenade and ended by demanding
of me in a
very importunate manner that I should authorize him to telegraph at once that I
bound myself in
perpetuity never again to give my consent if the Hohenzollerns renewed their
candidature. I
rejected this demand somewhat sternly as it is neither right nor possible to
undertake
engagements of this kind [for ever and ever]. Naturally I told him that I had
not yet received
any news and since he had been better informed via Paris and Madrid than I was,
he must surely
see that my government was not concerned in the matter."
[The King, on the advice of one of his ministers] "decided in view of the
above-mentioned
demands not to receive Count Benedetti any more, but to have him informed by an
adjutant that
His Majesty had now received from [Leopold] confirmation of the news which
Benedetti had
already had from Paris and had nothing further to say to the ambassador. His
Majesty suggests
to Your Excellency that Benedetti's new demand and its rejection might well be
communicated
both to our ambassadors and to the Press."
The edited version Bismarck released to the press without first informing the French government) was clearly designed to goad the French to war by the almost contemptuous tone the telegram inferred the King had adopted toward the ambassador. Its effect, as Bismarck noted, was like "a red rag to the Gallic bull."
"After the news of the renunciation of the Prince von Hohenzollern had been communicated to the Imperial French government by the Royal Spanish government, the French Ambassador in Ems made a further demand on His Majesty the King that he should authorize him to telegraph to Paris that His Majesty the King undertook for all time never again to give his assent should the Hohenzollerns once more take up their candidature. His Majesty the King thereupon refused to receive the Ambassador again and had the latter informed by the adjutant of the day that His Majesty had no further communication to make to the Ambassador."
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