The Prussian victory shocked the world, but it shocked the French most of all. A sorrowful Adolphe Thiers concluded that ‘it is France which has been beaten at Sadowa’, and his countrymen were now even more terrified of Prussian might than they had been after the Danish war. Their only hope of maintaining a dominant position in Europe was to keep the German states divided, but they knew that Bismarck wanted to unify Germany under Prussia and rule from Berlin. They also knew that to do this he had to win a decisive victory against France. Neither William of Prussia nor Napoleon III wanted war and it is testimony to Bismarck’s ingenuity, his cunning and his ruthlessness that, despite their own wishes, the two men would face one another on the battlefield in less than four years. Berlin’s new status was just within her grasp.
‘War’, said the General Helmuth von Moltke, ‘is a necessary part of God’s arrangement of the world.’16 Men could also arrange war, and that is precisely what Bismarck set out to do. In the days before all-consuming nationalism it was common for countries to invite foreign princes to take over their empty thrones, and when Walachia and Moldavia united to form Romania the kingdom was offered to a Swabian Hohenzollern, a distant cousin of the Prussian ruling family. Prince Carol I of Romania was crowned in 1866. At the same time the Spanish deposed their bumbling debauched Bourbon and were also in search of a new king. The crown was offered to another Hohenzollern prince and the French were furious. The loss of the first throne had been bad enough, but the Spanish offer was too much for a nation terrified that they would be boxed in by Prussia or her allies to the south and east without having fired a single shot. Napoleon III’s Foreign Minister, the duc de Gramont, declared that ‘The honour and interests of France are in peril’, and threatened that if the Hohenzollern accepted the Spanish throne France would go to war.17 William of Prussia was a peaceable man and encouraged his cousin to back down, but when Bismarck heard that war had been averted he went white with anger. War with France was essential to his plan, not least because he knew that only this would persuade the south German states to join the new Reich. Somehow he had to provoke conflict with France.18
William was confident that the crisis was over, and decided to recover at the elegant Ems Spa. But the duc de Gramont, who had apparently just achieved one of the great coups in diplomatic history, was not satisfied and was determined to get Prussia to promise to keep out of Spain for ever. A few days later he sent the ambassador Benedetti to Ems where, during a pleasant garden stroll, he contrived to bump into the king. On Gramont’s orders Benedetti demanded that Prussia not only renounce all present family claims to the Spanish throne, but that it should do so in perpetuity. The king politely refused and had his aide Abeken send a telegram to Bismarck outlining the conversation. Thinking no more of it, he went off to bed.
As it happened, Bismarck was dining at home in Berlin with Moltke and Roon that evening. The three men had spent their time complaining that war with France seemed further off than ever; Bismarck and Roon shared Moltke’s sentiment that God could ‘take my old bones’ if only he could only live long enough to go to war against France. Bismarck was contemplating resignation.19 Suddenly the telegram was delivered. Bismarck picked it up, read it, and gave a cry of joy. He began scribbling on the paper and, by cutting out some of William’s text, he made the bland wordy message look like a terse declaration of war.
The original telegram consisted of two long paragraphs filled with diplomatic protocol and inoffensive niceties. One phrase explained that the French ambassador had ‘presented to His Majesty the King at Ems the demand to authorize him to telegraph to Paris that His Majesty the King would obligate himself for all the future never again to give his consent should the Hohenzollerns revive their candidacy’. But it had continued in a gentler vein, in which the king had explained: ‘I refused to agree to this, the last time somewhat earnestly, telling him that such obligations dare not and cannot be assumed à tout jamais. Naturally I told him that I had not received any news as yet and since he had been informed earlier than I via Madrid and Paris he could see that my government was once again out of the affair.’ But Bismarck deleted the second part of the paragraph leaving a terse, provocative statement.
The original had included a long explanation of how the king was expecting a communication from the prince, and for this reason would not receive Count Benedetti again. Bismarck cut that out as well, and ended the telegram with the clipped phrase: ‘His Majesty the King thereupon refused to receive the French ambassador again and sent word to the latter through his Adjutant that His Majesty has nothing further to tell the ambassador.’ As a result Bismarck made the overall message much harsher and more abrupt than the king had ever intended while completely changing its meaning.20 Moltke gloated that the innocent note now ended like ‘a flourish in answer to a challenge’. Bismarck said, ‘If I not only publish this text … at once in the newspapers … but also transmit it by telegram to all our embassies, it will be known in Paris before midnight, and not only because of its contents but because of its mode of publication, it will have the effect of a red cloth upon the Gallic bull.’
Bismarck sent the telegram without consulting the king and, as he predicted, the story was printed in the Norddeutsche Zeitung in Berlin and picked up on both sides of the Rhine that night. Napoleon III was informed of the Prussian duplicity and was left with no honourable choice but to talk of war. When he saw the text, Count Waldersee, who was then in Paris, said that it was so ‘grob’ (rude) that ‘I could hardly believe it was possible’. The morning editions in Paris were filled with anti-Prussian venom and had TO THE RHINE and À BERLIN! printed across their front pages.21
When poor befuddled William awoke the next day he was shocked to hear the news. ‘This is war!’ he said sadly and left immediately for Berlin, determined to stop the terrible events from unfolding. But Bismarck was always a few steps ahead of his king. The Chancellor intercepted him at the train station and convinced him that total mobilization was the only sensible option for Prussia. He was a persuasive man. On 19 July France declared war on an expectant Prussia.
Berliners knew nothing of Bismarck’s manipulation of the Ems telegram, and rose up in a frenzy of patriotism and anti-French indignation. Thousands rushed to the palace singing, ‘I’m Proud to be a Prussian’, declaring their loyalty to the king and yelling insults at the French for forcing their innocent army into war. Baroness Spitzemberg reflected the popular mood when she wrote that ‘In Berlin they are in great excitement … The French could not have arranged things more unintelligently … instead of dividing us they have contrived to complete Germany’s unification.’ Sybel wrote: ‘the excited masses swayed to and fro; men embraced one another amid tears of joy and thunderous cheers for King William rent the air.’
Once again Europe watched as small Prussia took on a European giant; France had after all been the greatest power on the continent for 200 years and few believed Prussia could win a sustained war against her. They were wrong. Once again they had not counted on the deadly combination of Bismarck and Moltke, backed by an efficient, powerful and well-informed army. The Franco-Prussian war was a vicious and bloody affair; Theodor Fontane went to the front shortly after Napoleon’s surrender and was shocked by the horror and the bloodshed he found there; indeed he was almost shot as a spy while trying to find Joan of Arc’s village. Adolph Menzel, too, was appalled by the scenes on the battlefield and said that he now knew ‘from where Schlüter had got his masks of the Arsenal’.22 Napoleon III surrendered after the Battle of Sedan and the anniversary became a German national holiday. The French Republic, which was declared at the infamous Hôtel de Ville, faced the siege of Paris with inadequate supplies and a demoralized army.
Initially most Europeans had believed France to be the aggressor and had sympathized with Prussia, but opinion turned against the Germans during the four-month bombardment of Paris and it solidified further after the forced annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. The liberal Crown Prince Frederick warned that if Prussia was too belligerent it would ‘no longer be looked upon as an innocent victim of French