Ems Dispatch
엠스 전보
The telegram of 13 July 1870 reporting to Berlin that King Wilhelm I of Prussia had refused the demand of the French ambassador Benedetti at Bad Ems, and the shortened version Bismarck released to the press that evening. By suggesting that the king had insulted the ambassador it provoked the French declaration of war on 19 July and the Franco-Prussian War.
In depth
After the war of 1866 France cried for "revenge for Sadowa", and when the Spanish throne fell vacant in 1868 Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen emerged as a candidate. When Leopold withdrew on 11 July under French protest, the foreign minister Gramont went further and demanded that the Prussian king guarantee that no Hohenzollern would ever be a candidate again, and send Napoleon III a letter of apology. On the morning of 13 July Benedetti stopped the king on the promenade of the Kursaal at Bad Ems and presented the demand; the king refused politely, saying he could not bind himself "à tout jamais", and later that day declined to receive the ambassador again, informing him through an adjutant that he had nothing further to say. The foreign-office councillor Heinrich Abeken reported the episode by telegram to Bismarck in Berlin on the king's instructions, and the king added that the demand and its rejection might be communicated to the embassies and the press.
Bismarck struck the king's conciliatory phrases from Abeken's text, left only the statement that France had made demands under threat of war and the king had refused, and circulated the result to the press and the foreign embassies that evening. The communiqué made Benedetti seem more demanding and the king more abrupt than either had been. The French translation by the Havas agency turned "Adjutant", a high-ranking aide, into "adjudant", a non-commissioned officer, heightening the impression of an insult, and this version appeared in the papers on the morning of 14 July, the national holiday. Bismarck said his release would have "the effect of a red rag on the Gallic bull". Crowds in Paris demanded war, mobilisation followed on the 15th and the declaration of war on the 19th. The English Wikipedia judges the dispatch "rather irrelevant" to the French declaration, since Napoleon III had already decided on war to stabilise his regime, but holds Bismarck responsible in that he kept several options open and, when the opportunity came, published the message with the intention of stirring up emotions. Bismarck later wrote that the document "was then to be presented as the cause of the war", and Benedetti defended himself in Ma mission en Prusse in 1871.