Memorial stone on the occasion of the famous "Emser Depesche"
A stone in the flower bed serves as a reminder that at this location, a chapter from the European history of the spa town found its eternal place in the history books. This event has become known as the "Emser Depesche." It was here that the events unfolded that led to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, triggered by a message that Otto von Bismarck in distant Berlin had altered and intensified in tone, which reported on the meeting of King Wilhelm I with the French ambassador Benedetti at this very spot.
The whole story
As in every year, King Wilhelm I of Prussia traveled to Ems for his spa treatment in July 1870, soon after, his adversary, the French ambassador Benedetti, arrived. However, the true directors of the impending drama remained in the background: the Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck in distant Berlin and the French Foreign Minister Gramont in equally distant Paris.
The latter had instructed Ambassador Benedetti to extract from King Wilhelm I of Prussia the guarantee that he would not agree to the candidacy of a German monarch for the vacant Spanish throne. France felt its dominance in Europe threatened if its southern neighbor were to become a Hohenzollern monarchy.
Knowing well that this was not a wise policy, Benedetti made his way to the spa promenade, where he arranged a meeting with the king and appropriately presented the French demand for a guarantee. And Wilhelm, as expected, rejected it. After the encounter, Bismarck received a telegraphic report from Bad Ems in the afternoon. The core of the telegram was that Wilhelm had rejected the French demand for a guarantee and had refused to negotiate further with the ambassador about it. Bismarck then revised the dispatch, not, as he himself claimed, merely by deletions and without adding or changing any words, but he wrote a new, shorter, and more intensified text, which he forwarded to the press that evening, thus turning it into the famous "Emser Depesche." In Bismarck's version, Benedetti had too impudently pressed the king on the spa promenade and was curtly dismissed by him. This stirred emotions in Germany and France alike when they read it in the newspaper the next morning. The French declaration of war a few days later led to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. However, this was less a consequence of the "Emser Depesche" than of the entire diplomatic entanglements of those days. The Emser Depesche was at best the famous spark that ignited the already open powder keg.