--- title: The Ems Dispatch:how Bismarck edited a telegram into a war, 1870 url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ems-dispatch-1870/ description: On 13 July 1870 Bismarck cut a telegram from King Wilhelm's secretary at Bad Ems, then gave the shortened text to the Berlin press and to Prussian section: Case studies --- ![Illustration: a pre-1914 imperial intelligence-dossier collage of colonial telegraph logs, sepia field photography and empire maps.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-pre1914.jpg) Case studies # The Ems Dispatch:how Bismarck edited a telegram into a war, 1870 1. [Home](https://propagandaarchive.org/) 2. [Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/) 3. The Ems Dispatch: how Bismarck edited a telegram into a war, 1870 At a glance On 13 July 1870 Bismarck cut a telegram from King Wilhelm's secretary at Bad Ems, then gave the shortened text to the Berlin press and to Prussian missions… - **When:** 1870 - **Actor:** Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of the North German Confederation, with King Wilhelm I of Prussia and… - **Target:** German and French newspaper readers… - **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures - **Techniques:** [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/) [Appeal to emotion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/appeal-to-emotion/) [Bandwagon](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/bandwagon/) Full details - **Actor:** Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of the North German Confederation, with King Wilhelm I of Prussia and his secretary Heinrich Abeken at Bad Ems; the French government of Napoleon III (Foreign Minister Antoine de Gramont, premier Émile Ollivier) and the Paris press - **Target:** German and French newspaper readers; the Prussian missions and foreign courts that received Bismarck's circular; the French Corps législatif; the south German states On this page - [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ems-dispatch-1870/#what-happened) - [The two texts](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ems-dispatch-1870/#the-two-texts) - [Bismarck's own account](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ems-dispatch-1870/#bismarck-s-own-account) - [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ems-dispatch-1870/#how-it-works) - [Gramont and the French side](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ems-dispatch-1870/#gramont-and-the-french-side) - [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ems-dispatch-1870/#then-and-now) - [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ems-dispatch-1870/#positions-on-the-record) - [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ems-dispatch-1870/#same-method-test) - [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ems-dispatch-1870/#how-to-spot-it) - [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ems-dispatch-1870/#images) - [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ems-dispatch-1870/#sources) On this page **In one line:** on 13 July 1870 Bismarck cut a telegram from King Wilhelm's secretary at Bad Ems, then gave the shortened text to the Berlin press and to Prussian missions, so that a courteous refusal read as a final rebuff to France's ambassador; France declared war six days later, but Paris had been pressing the Hohenzollern question in public for a week and historians still argue how much the edit changed the outcome. ![Page from a German booklet of 1870: King Wilhelm I sits on a garden bench drinking from a glass, with a four-line verse beginning "König Wilhelm saß ganz heiter / Jüngst zu Ems"](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/ems-dispatch-booklet-wilhelm-on-bench-1870.jpg) *"König Wilhelm saß ganz heiter" ("King Wilhelm sat quite cheerfully"), page 1 of a 14-page satirical booklet on the Ems affair, Christian Förster (print), Boyes & Geisler (publisher), 1870. The verse has the king at Ems, thinking nothing of "the quarrels of this world", drinking his spa water "as a king and a hero". British Museum, 1871,1209.4588, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain (the British Museum's separate CC BY-NC-SA release does not alter the expired copyright).* ## What happened - **1868 to June 1870.** Spain's queen Isabella II is deposed in 1868 and the throne stays empty. Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a Catholic cousin of the Prussian king, is among the candidates. In February 1870 a Spanish envoy offers him the crown, and Spain's prime minister Juan Prim backs him. Bismarck supports the candidacy; whether he meant it as a trap for France is argued below. Leopold accepts in June. - **2-3 July.** The candidacy becomes public. The Paris press erupts, and on 3 July Prim tells the French ambassador in Madrid. - **6 July.** Gramont reads the government's declaration to the Corps législatif: France does not believe that respect for a neighbouring people "obliges us to suffer" a foreign power to place a prince on Charles V's throne and so "upset to our detriment the present balance of forces in Europe and put in peril the interests and the honour of France". If it came to that, "strong in your support, Gentlemen, and that of the Nation, we would know how to do our duty, without hesitation and without weakness" ([Assemblée nationale chronology](https://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/15/evenements/2020/1870-2020/page/chronologie)). The French historian Albert Sorel called it an ultimatum. More than ten Paris papers, including *Le Figaro*, *Le Gaulois* and *Le Constitutionnel*, backed it; *Le Temps* lamented a "sort of fury" in the press, and *Le Siècle* and *Le Rappel* were among the papers that called the declaration ill-timed ([French Wikipedia, citing Audoin-Rouzeau](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9p%C3%AAche_d%27Ems)). Show all 8Show fewer - **9-12 July.** Gramont sends the ambassador, Vincent Benedetti, to the king, who is taking the waters at Ems; Benedetti reaches him on 9 July and is received several times. On 12 July Leopold's father, Karl Anton, announces the withdrawal in his son's name, and the news reaches Paris from Madrid before it reaches the king. That evening Gramont telegraphs Benedetti to ask the king for a further step: a promise that the candidacy would never be renewed ([German Wikipedia](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emser_Depesche), citing Benedetti's *Ma mission en Prusse*). - **13 July, morning.** Benedetti finds the king on the Kurpromenade and puts the request. Wilhelm refuses to bind himself "for all time". Benedetti's own report has the king ending the talk by saying he "could neither, nor would, enter such an undertaking". Later that day the king sends an adjutant, Prince Radziwill, to say he has now had the prince's confirmation and has nothing more to tell the ambassador. - **13 July, evening.** Abeken, at the king's order, telegraphs a full account to Bismarck in Berlin. It ends by leaving it to Bismarck whether "the new demand of Benedetti and its rejection" should be communicated "both to our ambassadors and to the press". Bismarck cuts the text and releases it. The shortened version appears the same night in Berlin special editions, goes by wire to the Prussian missions (the first circular is stamped 23:15), and runs in the official *Staats-Anzeiger* on 14 July. - **14-15 July.** In France the text is printed under the Bastille Day date. Crowds fill the Paris boulevards and the ministers meet; on 15 July Ollivier tells the chamber that the government accepts the responsibility of war "le cœur léger" (with a light heart), and the Corps législatif votes the credits. - **19 July.** France's chargé d'affaires hands the declaration of war to the Foreign Office in Berlin. The south German states, bound to Prussia by secret treaties, join the war. Napoleon III is captured at Sedan on 2 September; the German Empire is proclaimed at Versailles on 18 January 1871. ## The two texts Abeken's telegram, in the king's words as Abeken recorded them (FRAME translation; German text in Bismarck's *Gesammelte Werke* 6b, no. 1612, reprinted by [German History in Documents and Images](https://germanhistorydocs.org/de/reichsgruendung-bismarcks-deutschland-1866-1890/die-urspruengliche-und-bearbeitete-fassung-der-emser-depesche-13-juli-1870)): ![Page from the booklet: a caricatured Benedetti bows towards the king's door, a quill in one hand and a paper in the other](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/ems-dispatch-booklet-benedetti-at-the-door-1870.jpg) Explain moreShow less > His Majesty the King writes to me: Count Benedetti intercepted me on the promenade and demanded of me, in the end in a very importunate manner, that I should authorise him to telegraph at once that I bound myself for all future time never again to give my consent if the Hohenzollerns returned to their candidacy. I turned him away, somewhat sternly, since one may not and cannot take on such commitments *à tout jamais*. Naturally I told him that I had received nothing yet and that, since he was informed earlier than I through Paris and Madrid, he would see that my government was once more out of the game. His Majesty has since received a letter from the Prince. As His Majesty had told Count Benedetti that he expected word from the Prince, His Majesty, in view of the above demand [*Zumuthung*], on the advice of Count Eulenburg and myself, decided not to receive Count Benedetti again, but only to have him told through an adjutant that His Majesty had now received from the Prince the confirmation of the news Benedetti had already had from Paris, and had nothing further to say to the ambassador. His Majesty leaves it to Your Excellency whether Benedetti's new demand and its rejection should not be communicated at once both to our ambassadors and to the press. Bismarck's release (FRAME translation): > After the news of the renunciation of the Hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern had been officially communicated to the Imperial French Government by the Royal Spanish Government, the French ambassador in Ems made the further demand on His Majesty the King that he authorise him to telegraph to Paris that His Majesty the King bound himself for all future time never again to give his consent should the Hohenzollerns return to their candidacy. His Majesty the King thereupon declined to receive the ambassador again, and had him told by the adjutant on duty that His Majesty had nothing further to communicate to the ambassador. What the cut took out, in order: the king's own account that he had spoken with Benedetti and why he would not give a perpetual pledge; his remark that he had not yet heard from the prince; the fact that the prince's letter had arrived before the adjutant was sent; and the adjutant's message that the king had confirmation of the withdrawal. It also removed two words hostile to Benedetti, *zudringlich* ("importunate") and *Zumuthung* ("imposition"), which would have sharpened the text. What remains is a demand followed by a refusal to receive. Bismarck's memoir claims he reduced the telegram "by deletions, without adding or changing a word". The release is mostly deletion, but a word-by-word comparison shows small changes too: it turns the king's first person into the third, adds an opening clause on the Spanish government's notification, inserts "thereupon" (*darauf*) before the refusal, and has "the adjutant on duty" where Abeken has "an adjutant". The additions are small; the effect lies in what was cut. *Page 4 of the same booklet. The verse says the envoy "was still far from satisfied, because he cannot grasp it", and "fawns and dances round the king and would gladly have it in writing". A German satirical retelling of the Ems scene, made in 1870. British Museum, 1871,1209.4591, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.* ## Bismarck's own account In *Gedanken und Erinnerungen* (1898) Bismarck says that on 13 July he had resolved to resign because the king had received Benedetti on four days running, and had asked Roon and Moltke to dine. The cipher telegram arrived during the meal. When he read it out, "their dejection became so deep that they scorned food and drink." Noticing the king's permission to publish "wholly or in part", he asked Moltke about readiness; Moltke said he expected no gain from delay. Then, "in the presence of my two guests", he cut the text. Moltke's reaction: "That has a different ring; before, it sounded like a parley [*Chamade*], now like a fanfare in answer to a challenge." Bismarck replied that sent to the papers and by wire to every legation, the text would be known in Paris before midnight and "make the effect of a red rag on the Gallic bull". He gave his aim in the same passage: "It is important that we be the ones attacked." Explain moreShow less He also described the mechanism himself. The difference in effect, he wrote, "was not the result of stronger words, but of the form, which made the announcement appear conclusive, whereas Abeken's version would have looked like only a fragment of a pending negotiation to be continued in Berlin" ([Bismarck, *Gedanken und Erinnerungen*, vol. 2, ch. 11, at Zeno.org](http://www.zeno.org/Geschichte/M/Bismarck,+Otto+von/Gedanken+und+Erinnerungen/Zweites+Buch/Elftes+Kapitel)). ## How it works - [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): every sentence in the release is drawn from Abeken's telegram or a close paraphrase of it, and each is true to the record. What it leaves out is what made the scene a negotiation: that the king had spoken to the ambassador, explained himself, and was awaiting the prince's letter. Bismarck's own memoir names this as the point, "form" over "stronger words". The edit is scored as selective omission, not as invention. - [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/): the release went to the press and to every Prussian mission within hours, a distribution Bismarck says in the memoir was chosen for its effect on Paris. The dispatch gave readers on both sides a single image of an insult, a refused audience, to react to. In Berlin crowds gathered on the evening of 13 July. In Paris the *Havas* French text rendered the German *Adjutant* (an aide-de-camp) as *adjudant*, a non-commissioned rank, and the demand as *exigé* ("demanded") where another agency's translation had *a demandé* ("asked") ([French Wikipedia, summarising Jean Stengers, 1956](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9p%C3%AAche_d%27Ems)). - [Appeal to emotion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/appeal-to-emotion/): honour was the currency on both sides. Gramont's declaration of 6 July put "the honour of France" in the sentence that defined the red line, and Ollivier later described the government's declaration of 15 July as "only an answer to the *soufflet* of the Ems dispatch" (a slap in the face; see [*Notre réponse au soufflet de Bismarck*](https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Notre_R%C3%A9ponse_au_soufflet_de_Bismarck_-_D%C3%A9claration_du_15_juillet)). Bismarck's memoir likewise says Prussia's "national honour" forced the war. Show all 4Show fewer - [Bandwagon](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/bandwagon/): Bismarck's memoir reasons that a war in which Germans stood together against France would bridge the Main line between north and south, and the war song in the gallery below, with its line that "the whole of Germany shall be it", shows the same appeal in popular print. ![Facsimile of Bismarck's first circular telegram of 13 July 1870, the shortened Ems text](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/ems-dispatch-bismarck-circular-1870.jpg) ![Illustration: a teleprinter and telegraph office with paper tape strips and intercepted cable forms.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/graphics/teleprinter-office.jpg) Illustration, not an archive object Explain moreShow less *Copy of the first of Bismarck's three dispatches of 13 July 1870 (23:15), addressed to Prussian envoys at the courts of the North German Confederation and the south German states. It reuses wording from Abeken's text but is not identical to it. Bismarck-Museum Friedrichsruh, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain (document of 1870).* ## Gramont and the French side Gramont had been foreign minister only since mid-May 1870. On 6 July he went to the chamber with a statement the emperor had approved, and sent Benedetti to Ems the next day. After the withdrawal on 12 July he asked for more: his added request for a guarantee about the future is the "demand" the king turned down on the promenade. Ollivier's later defence was that France's declaration "was only an answer" to the Ems text, and that the refusal had become "a palpable outrage by the divulging of the telegram posted in the streets". Napoleon III said after Sedan that public opinion had forced him to war; the historian Jules Michelet called that a "base and unworthy lie" (as recalled in [Jean Stengers's 1956 article](https://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_1956_num_34_3_2000)). Adolphe Thiers opposed the war in the chamber ([napoleon.org](https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/articles/the-ems-dispatch-the-telegram-that-started-the-franco-prussian-war/)). ![Catalan cartoon: Bismarck, in a spiked helmet, pulls a cord to spin a top while a French figure in a képi stumbles, tangled in the cord](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/campana-de-gracia-baldufa-bismarck-1870.jpg) Explain moreShow less Part of the French press needed no German prompt. *Le Pays* wrote on 7 July: "Either Prussia will withdraw its pretensions, or it will fight." On 15 July *La Liberté* wrote that if Prussia would not fight, "we shall force it back across the Rhine with rifle-butts in its back" (both as quoted in French Wikipedia). *"Qüestió franco-hispano-prusiana: La baldufa de'n Bismark" ("The Franco-Spanish-Prussian question: Bismarck's top"), in* La Campana de Gràcia *(Barcelona), no. 324, 1870. Bismarck pulls a cord to spin a top with a bearded head (Commons identifies it as Prim) against Napoleon III, whose boot is tangled in the cord; the Pyrenees and "Aleman[ia]" are labelled. Commons gives the date as 17 August 1870; the war it shows had begun on 19 July, so the date needs checking against the issue. Spanish press collection (Biblioteca Virtual de Prensa Histórica), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.* ## Then and now Content note: Caricature of six German states spanking the bare buttocks of French leaders (Napoleon III's circle), with a… **Content note:** Caricature of six German states spanking the bare buttocks of French leaders (Napoleon III's circle), with a marching song urging soldiers to 'hit them'. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![German broadsheet song and cartoon with six German states spanking French figures](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/das-ganze-deutschland-soll-es-sein-chassepot-1870.jpg) *[Das ganze Deutschland soll es sein. Haut sie auf den Chassepot! (German broadsheet song and caricature, Franco-Prussian War)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/das-ganze-deutschland-soll-es-sein-chassepot-1870/), anonymous German broadsheet, 1870-71. Rijksmuseum. Public domain.* This war-song sheet names "Grammont" on a sash and ridicules France's leaders while claiming the unity of "all Germany", the sentiment Bismarck's memoir says the war was meant to produce. It dates from after the declaration of war, so it shows what the dispatch's story became in print. ![French caricature of a Prussian leader on a globe, by Draner](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/lhomme-a-la-boule-draner-1870.jpg) *[L'Homme a la boule (Draner), French caricature of a Prussian leader on a globe](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/lhomme-a-la-boule-draner-1870/), Draner, 1870. Library of Congress. Public domain.* French caricaturists answered in kind. This sheet draws a Prussian leader with a giant head, teetering on a globe and speaking in a mock German accent; its date, 1870 or 1871, is uncertain. The structure, a government text shaped to put the other side in the position of aggressor, recurs. [Remember the Maine: the yellow press and Spain, 1895-1898](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/yellow-press-1898/) shows the same push-pull between a government and the papers in another century, and [President Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin 'Midnight Address'](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gulf-of-tonkin-address-1964/) shows an official account that reached the public before the evidence was settled. The cases differ in what the record shows: in 1870 the king's refusal and Benedetti's request both happened and were reported by both men, and the edit changed their weight; in 1964 the second reported attack did not occur. ## Positions on the record 6 items · Bismarck: in memoirs published after his death in 1898, he says he cut the telegram and… - **Bismarck:** in memoirs published after his death in 1898, he says he cut the telegram and added nothing, that its effect lay in its form, and that war was needed to avoid losing the national position won in 1866. He argued that a common war against France would bind north and south Germany together. - **The king and Abeken:** the telegram says the king himself left publication to Bismarck, so the release was authorised in principle; the shortening was Bismarck's. - **Benedetti and Gramont:** Benedetti's *Ma mission en Prusse* (1871) gives an account of the promenade that the German Wikipedia summary calls broadly the same as Abeken's. Ollivier and others in France read the Prussian publicity, not the conversation, as the insult. After the defeat Gramont and Benedetti disputed who bore blame for French diplomacy (Gramont's *La France et la Prusse avant la guerre*, 1872). - **Historians, Bismarck as provoker:** Josef Becker's three-volume source edition (2003-2008) argues that the Spanish candidacy was Bismarck's device to provoke France ("Diversion"); Hans-Ulrich Wehler in *Die Zeit* wrote that it finally proves Bismarck's share in the conflict beyond doubt, and Johannes Willms in the *Süddeutsche Zeitung* that it destroys the myth of the peaceable chancellor ([Perlentaucher summary](https://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/josef-becker/bismarcks-spanische-diversion-1870-und-der-preussisch-deutsche-reichsgruendungskrieg-band-3.html)). Michael Stürmer calls Bismarck's dinner-table story a fable and says he had already taken steps that left France a choice between war and defeat; Heinrich August Winkler reads Bismarck as seeking a war with France (both as cited in the German Wikipedia). - **Historians, Paris already set on war:** Geoffrey Wawro (2003) describes a French imperial government looking for a success to steady the dynasty; Christopher Clark argues France went to war because it believed it would win; Georges Bordonove calls the dispatch rather irrelevant to the French decision (as cited in the English Wikipedia). Michael Howard (1961) is cited there for the crowds in Paris demanding war and for Bismarck's "red rag" remark. - **This archive's reading:** documented are the text of both versions, Bismarck's memoir account of the edit, the distribution to the press and missions, the *adjudant* mistranslation in the Havas text, the 6 July declaration, and French and German press excitement on both sides. **Not shown:** that the edit alone caused the French declaration, or that Bismarck planned the whole sequence from February. Whether Paris would have gone to war without the edit remains disputed. ## Same-method test Had a Paris minister cut Benedetti's report to its first and last lines, left out the king's explanation, and sent it to every… ![Illustration: typewriter keys and a half-typed page.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/graphics/spot-typewriter-keys.jpg) Illustration, not an archive object Had a Paris minister cut Benedetti's report to its first and last lines, left out the king's explanation, and sent it to every French embassy and the Paris papers within hours to show that France had been rebuffed, it would be scored the same: [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) and [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/). Gramont's 6 July sentence that France would not "suffer" a Hohenzollern in Madrid, with the honour of France in the same line, is [Appeal to emotion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/appeal-to-emotion/) exactly as Bismarck's "national honour" is. The Paris papers that urged the army on to the Rhine in the week before the dispatch earn the same tags as the Berlin papers that ran it. ![Page from the booklet: King Wilhelm turns his back on a stooped, hat-in-hand Benedetti](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/ems-dispatch-booklet-wilhelm-turns-his-back-1870.jpg) *Page 5 of the booklet. The verse has "our Wilhelm Rex" looking the "pitiful creature" over with royal eyes, saying nothing more and turning "so that the other can admire his back". The Prussian popular version of the Ems scene, with Benedetti caricatured as a cringing figure. British Museum, 1871,1209.4592, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.* ## How to spot it - Ask what the published text left out. The Ems release is accurate sentence by sentence; the question is which sentences are missing and what they said about whether the matter was closed. - Look at the route as well as the words. A text sent to every embassy and the press within hours reaches the opponent's public as well as its stated recipients. - Compare the two parties' own accounts. Here Benedetti's and Abeken's reports of the promenade broadly agree; the quarrel is about the publicity. Show all 5Show fewer - Check the translations. Havas's *adjudant* and *exigé* show how a rank or a verb can change what a foreign reader takes away. - Treat the later memoir as a source with a stake. Bismarck's 1898 dinner scene is vivid, and at least one historian doubts it. Sources and further reading ## Images 5 items · Abeken's original telegram (13 July 1870). The two-page facsimile is on German History in… | Image | Source | Licence | | --- | --- | --- | | "König Wilhelm saß ganz heiter", page 1, Förster / Boyes & Geisler, 1870 | [British Museum](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1871-1209-4588) via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:K%C3%B6nig_Wilhelm_sass_ganz_heiter_(BM_1871,1209.4588).jpg) | Public domain (Commons PD-scan, 1870; the museum's CC BY-NC-SA release is additional) | | Same booklet, page 4 | [British Museum](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1871-1209-4591) via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:K%C3%B6nig_Wilhelm_sass_ganz_heiter_(BM_1871,1209.4591).jpg) | Public domain (as above) | | Same booklet, page 5 | [British Museum](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1871-1209-4592) via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:K%C3%B6nig_Wilhelm_sass_ganz_heiter_(BM_1871,1209.4592).jpg) | Public domain (as above) | | Copy of Bismarck's first circular, 13 July 1870, 23:15 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Depesche.jpg) | Public domain (Commons PD-old-100, document of 1870) | | "La baldufa de'n Bismark", *La Campana de Gràcia*, no. 324, 1870 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_baldufa_de%27n_Bismark.jpg) | Public domain (published 1870) | | *Das ganze Deutschland soll es sein* (1870-71), Draner caricature (1870) | FRAME gallery | Public domain | ### Image gaps - **Abeken's original telegram (13 July 1870).** The two-page facsimile is on German History in Documents and Images, credited to bpk-Bildagentur and marked ©. **Held**: no open licence. **Fillable** from the holding archive or a free reproduction in a pre-1931 book. - **The Berlin special edition of 13 July and the *Staats-Anzeiger* of 14 July.** Public domain; no scan was found. **Fillable** from a German digitised newspaper archive. - **The Havas dispatch and Paris papers of 14-15 July 1870.** Public domain; not found in the searches run. **Fillable** from Gallica or Retronews. - **A photograph or engraving of the promenade scene.** One Commons file (*Bad Ems 001*) is a halftone rescan from a 1986 book with no stated original, so it is **held**. **Fillable** from an 1870-71 illustrated paper. - **A portrait of Benedetti or Gramont.** Not fetched in this pass. **Fillable** from the Library of Congress or Commons. ## Sources 12 items · Bismarck, Gedanken und Erinnerungen , vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1898), ch. 11, "Die Emser… - Bismarck, *Gedanken und Erinnerungen*, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1898), ch. 11, "Die Emser Depesche" ([Zeno.org](http://www.zeno.org/Geschichte/M/Bismarck,+Otto+von/Gedanken+und+Erinnerungen/Zweites+Buch/Elftes+Kapitel)). - Abeken's telegram and Bismarck's release: Bismarck, *Die gesammelten Werke* (Friedrichsruher Ausgabe), vol. 6b, no. 1612, as reprinted in Ernst Rudolf Huber, *Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte*, vol. 2, 3rd ed. (1986), pp. 324-25, and on [German History in Documents and Images](https://germanhistorydocs.org/de/reichsgruendung-bismarcks-deutschland-1866-1890/die-urspruengliche-und-bearbeitete-fassung-der-emser-depesche-13-juli-1870). - Vincent Benedetti, *Ma mission en Prusse* (Paris: Plon, 1871). - Émile Ollivier, *L'Empire libéral* (Paris: Garnier, 1895-1915), and *Notre réponse au soufflet de Bismarck* ([Wikisource](https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Notre_R%C3%A9ponse_au_soufflet_de_Bismarck_-_D%C3%A9claration_du_15_juillet)). - Duc de Gramont, *La France et la Prusse avant la guerre* (Paris, 1872). - Jean Stengers, "Aux origines de la guerre de 1870: gouvernement et opinion publique", *Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire* 34 (1956), pp. 701-ff. ([Persée](https://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_1956_num_34_3_2000)). - Josef Becker (ed.), *Bismarcks spanische "Diversion" 1870 und der preußisch-deutsche Reichsgründungskrieg*, 3 vols. (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003-2008). - Geoffrey Wawro, *The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870-1871* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). - Michael Howard, *The Franco-Prussian War* (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961). - Michael Stürmer, *Das ruhelose Reich: Deutschland 1866-1918* (Berlin: Siedler, 1994); Heinrich August Winkler, *Der lange Weg nach Westen*, vol. 1 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2000); Christopher Clark, *Preußen* (Munich: Pantheon, 2008). - Eberhard Kolb, *Der Kriegsausbruch 1870* (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970); David Wetzel, *A Duel of Giants* (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001). - Assemblée nationale, [chronology of 1870](https://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/15/evenements/2020/1870-2020/page/chronologie); [napoleon.org, "The Ems Dispatch"](https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/articles/the-ems-dispatch-the-telegram-that-started-the-franco-prussian-war/); German, French and English Wikipedia articles on the Ems dispatch, used for citations to the works above.