The Ems Dispatch: Bismarck's Edited Telegram and the Fall of Napoleon III

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In 1870 France under Napoleon III watched Prussia, fresh from crushing Austria in 1866 and leading the North German Confederation, with alarm. When Spain offered its vacant throne to a Prussian prince, French pressure forced him to withdraw, but the French ambassador then demanded a permanent guarantee from King Wilhelm I at the spa town of Ems. Wilhelm refused and telegraphed an account to Berlin. Otto von Bismarck edited it to read like a mutual insult and released it on July 14, Bastille Day. France declared war, letting Bismarck bring Bavaria, Württemberg and the other southern German states in under defense treaties.

France had the superior Chassepot rifle and the Mitrailleuse, but chaotic mobilization. Helmuth von Moltke's general staff used railways and the telegraph to move over a million men. At Mars-la-Tour on August 16, 30,000 Prussians attacked 160,000 French and so unnerved Marshal Bazaine that he failed to break out. At Sedan on September 1 and 2, Krupp artillery shelled the encircled army, and Napoleon III surrendered with over 100,000 men. Paris declared a republic on September 4, Bazaine surrendered 173,000 men at Metz in October, and besieged Paris starved through winter. The German Empire was proclaimed at Versailles, and the Treaty of Frankfurt took Alsace and part of Lorraine.

• The breech-loading Chassepot used a rubber seal and reached up to 1,500 meters.
• Napoleon III, suffering from gallstones, was on the field at Sedan when the white flag went up.
• Trapped in Metz, Bazaine proposed marching his army on Paris to restore the empire, an offer Bismarck and Moltke laughed off.
• Starving Parisians ate animals from the Jardin des Plantes, including the elephants Castor and Pollux, and sent mail out by balloon.
• The five billion franc indemnity matched what Napoleon Bonaparte had once forced Prussia to pay.