IT was a pleasant morning of July 13, 1870, at Ems in Rhineland Palatinate, the favourite vacation place of King William of Prussia. The picturesque beauty of Ems and its famous natural spas from the Roman times had a specific attraction for Hohenzollern kings.
At about 9am, the French ambassador Count Benedetti called upon the king to discuss an apparently trivial matter that would ultimately change the whole map of Europe. The issue was the question of Spanish succession. Queen Isabella of Spain had abdicated the throne and went into exile in June 1869. Since then, the throne was empty and Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a distant relative of King William of Prussia, was the candidate. Although the prince was first reluctant to accept this offer, he ultimately succumbed to the pressure from the ‘iron chancellor’ Otto Von Bismarck.
This was a great blow to the French government, which out of jealousy and fear, saw in this a matter of national humiliation. The brother of Prince Leopold had recently become the king of Romania and his accession to the Spanish throne would be a prestige and a great gain to Prussia, both politically and commercially. The French also saw this as a revival of the empire of Charles V, against which they had fought for two centuries.
Therefore, when the acceptance news was heard, French Foreign Minister De Gramont, became determined to resist it with all his power. Diplomatic channels were set in Berlin to protest against the situation. In a speech on July 6, in the French parliament he plainly said that if the candidature was not withdrawn, France would regard it as a cause of war. Apprehending the seriousness of the situation and under intense diplomatic pressure, Prince Leopold yielded to the French demands. On July 12, the welcome news was heard in France that prince had consented to withdraw his candidature. A wave of euphoria ran throughout France and the public considered this as a humiliating defeat for Prussia. The future premier said that ‘Sadowa was revenged’.
Guizot said that it was the greatest diplomatic triumph he had ever witnessed. But the megalomaniac French foreign office was not content with this. The French ambassador in Berlin, Benedetti, was asked to take formal recognition of this withdrawal from the King of Prussia himself and, secondly, to get a promise directly from the king that he would not support the candidature if it was ever raised again.
These two demands were presented to King Williams at Ems on the morning of July 13. The king received Benedetti courteously but politely refused to make any promises. In the afternoon, the official news of Leopold’s resignation was received. The king declared to the French ambassador that the matter was now closed forever. In the evening, he would send a telegram containing all the details of his meeting with Benedetti to his chancellor, Bismarck.
Away in Berlin, stupefied and disgusted, Bismarck was sitting with Roon and Von Moltke, his two close associates, at a dinner table. He was deeply shocked by the polite behaviour of the king and closure of the Spanish problem. He wanted war with France at all costs and it seemed that all his plans had failed. In this mood of melancholy and disgust, he prepared his resignation. It seemed that this would be his last dinner at the chancellery. But, at that eventful moment, a telegram arrived. After reading it, Bismarck observed that by slight ‘doctoring’ of the original telegram he could change its tone entirely.
He edited the telegram by taking out any language conveying the patience and propriety with which the king had in fact treated the French ambassador. The new version looked like as if the king had stubbornly resisted French demands in a humiliating way.
The Bismarck version was somewhat like this: “After the news of renunciation of the Prince Von Hohenzollern had been communicated to the Imperial French 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 the king had no further communication to make to the ambassador.”
As the telegram was published, it caused a storm of war hysteria and jingoism in both countries. On July 19, France declared war on Prussia. The rest of the events followed a familiar pattern. The highly mechanized Prussian army, under the brilliant command of Von Moltke, defeated the French.
At the decisive battle of Sedan, the entire French army surrendered and Napoleon fled to England. Although the peace treaty was signed on May 10, 1871, Bismarck used the defeat of France to complete the German unification. The southern states of Wurttemberg, Bavaria and Baden joined German confederation under nationalist sentiments. On Jan 18, 1871 in the Hall of Mirrors in the palace of Versailles, the king of Prussia was proclaimed German emperor, and Germany was unified.
The German unification was a step-by-step process completed in a very intricate way by the practitioner of realpolitik, Bismarck. The seeds of unification were sown in the 1830s with the creation of Zollverien, or the custom union between Prussia and neighbouring states. The turning point was ‘a seven-week war’ in 1866 in which Prussia defeated Austria, resulting in the formation of a Confederation of north German States. The final step was Franco-Prussian war which was not brought about by what had happened at Ems, but by a false and ‘engineered’ version of the events.
In this regard, it would be apt to mention what Von Moltke once commented: “The new version was not the signal for a parley, but a note of defiance in answer to a challenge.”
