Agénor de Gramont

France state institutions Monarchy and royalism 1819–1880 ○ Natural causes

Foreign minister of the Second Empire whose demand for a Prussian guarantee in July 1870 led to the Ems Dispatch and war

Born in Paris in 1819 into the illustrious Gramont family, he studied at the École Polytechnique. His grandfather had been an émigré, but he owed his career to an early friendship with Louis Napoleon: after the coup of 1851 he was minister at Cassel, Stuttgart and Turin and ambassador at Washington, Rome and Vienna. Appointed foreign minister in the Ollivier cabinet in May 1870, he handled the Hohenzollern candidature, and on the night of 12 July, without telling Ollivier, sent Benedetti at Ems the telegram demanding the Prussian king’s guarantee. He called the Bismarck-edited Ems Dispatch a “slap in the face” in the Chamber, and France declared war on the 19th. He resigned with the rest of the ministry on 9 August after the first defeats, went to England after the September revolution, and later published apologies for his policy.

Also known as: Antoine Alfred Agénor de Gramont · Duc de Gramont · Duke of Gramont