Chapter III: The Hohenzollern War
Chapter III, Part I: Casus Belli
As the Spanish government expected, the proclamation of Prince Leopold zu Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as the new King of Spain provoked many different reactions among the main nations of Europe.
Italy and Portugal welcomed the news with great relief. Both countries had been sounded out by Spain, and they hoped now that, with this announcement, Prim would stop pressuring them to get a member of their dynasties to accept the crown, in spite of the Portuguese Iberist supporters (one of which was the Duke of Saldanha, Portugal's Prime Minister) and of Vittorio Emanuele II's ambition to place his son Amedeo in the Spanish throne. They also hoped for Spain to become politically stable once more, as well as an improvement in their bilateral relations with Spain and its new King: the Portuguese Royal Family was related to Leopold's family twice over (besides Leopold's marriage to the current Portuguese king's sister, late Pedro V had married one of Leopold's younger sisters) and the Prussian Hohenzollerns had recently helped the Italians to gain the Veneto in the Seven Weeks War from an Imperial Austria that opposed the German and Italian unifications.
D. João Carlos de Saldanha Oliveira e Daun, Duke of Saldanha, and Vittorio Emanuele II, King of Italy
In London, William Gladstone's government also saw this new development as a good thing. The stabilization of the Spanish democracy meant that now Spain could become a prosperous, liberal and capitalist nation that might become a great trade partner for the United Kingdom. It also was a way to reduce France's influence in Spain, which was too great since Louis Philippe I imposed the marriage of his son Antoine to Isabel II's sister.
William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Great support also came from the Balcanic nations that had recently rebelled against the Ottoman yoke, like Romania, where Leopold's brother reigned as Carol I. Meanwhile, the Scandinavian monarchies took these news as acceptable, although Denmark would have probably preferred that it were someone other than a Hohenzollern, after being defeated by Prussia and Austria during the Second Schleswig War of 1864.
This was not to happen everywhere in Europe: the absolutist regimes of Russia and Austria-Hungary were worried about the replacement of Queen Isabel II with a constitutional monarchy of democratic features led by a Hohenzollern, as they were more sympathetic to the Carlist rebels. The presence of a Hohenzollern especially worried Emperor Franz Joseph I, because the Austrian defeat in the Seven Weeks War had meant the loss of main German nation to Prussia.
There was little surprise, however, in that the greatest opposition in Europe came from the Second French Empire. Napoleon III felt the greatest indignation when the news reached the Tuileries Palace, because he had not been told about this through diplomatic means, nor had he been told about it by his ambassadors in Berlin or Madrid. No, he had read it in the press!
The Tuileries Palace, official residence of the French Imperial Family
The French government was also surprised by the news: they had suspected that Spain might have made negotiations with several German princes, but they would have never guessed that the chosen one would have turned out to be one of the Prussian Hohenzollerns who were challenging France's predominance in Europe.
Once his angry rant had subsided, and he was able to think rationally, Napoleon III realized that this was even worse than what it looked like: if Leopold was crowned in the Royal Palace of Madrid, France would be surrounded by the Hohenzollerns, and his government would probably choose to declare war on Prussia to end the latter's continuous provocations, in spite of his personal opposition to a war that might destabilize his consolidation of the constitutional monarchy appeared after the recent referendum of May 8th. Thus, it was clear that France had to act now, in order to prevent worse things to happen.
Mercier de L'Ostende knew this as well, and when he received a telegram from Paris, ordering him to do anything in his hands to force the Spaniards to change their minds, he went to protest before President Prim, but Prim, perfectly knowing what the ambassador wanted to talk (or shout) about, he categorically refused to meet with him. L'Ostende would have to content himself with meeting with Home Affairs Minister Sagasta, who, although received him in conciliatory tones, finally lost any sympathy for him in a meeting that lasted a few minutes and whose minutes were never found. The version of the events held by historians as the most credible was, once more, that of the Spaniard in the meeting, Sagasta, who wrote about it in his memories:
That day had started calmly enough. I had started it with reviewing several documents related to the actions of the police, who had arrested a few gentlemen that had protested in a violent manner about our choice of King. I knew this would have happened, independently of who was chosen as the new King: at least, it had not brought outright riots.
I then picked some messages sent from Seville, speaking about the state of prisons in the region and requesting money to rebuild them to a better degree. I decided to write to Laureano about this when the door opened violently.
I raised my eyes, and saw Monsieur L'Ostende, the French ambassador, entering the office without asking for permission and really furious. Behind him ran Adolfo, my secretary, who seemed to be a bit dazed and was apologizing for not being able to advert me of L'Ostende's presence. I stood up and invited L'Ostende to take a seat, while I took Adolfo outside and told him that he had nothing to fear, since it was not his fault that L'Ostende was so angry, and to take some time off to calm down.
After closing the door, I returned to my seat and faced the ambassador. Despite his obvious anger, I did not step back, and instead tried to calm him down.
“What is it that brings you here, Monsieur Ambassador? It must be a very important matter for you to come here without even asking for a meeting,” I asked him as diplomatically as I could.
“Would you explain me what the hell this means, Sagasta?” L'Ostende asked angrily, dropping a newspaper over the table and hitting it with the palm of his hand. It was La Gaceta de Madrid, an issue from two days before, that proclaimed Leopold zu Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as the new King of Spain under the name of Leopold I.
“I would say that the article is quite clear. Spain has spoken through its representatives, and has made its choice about who it want as its King.”
“France will not tolerate this insult! We will never allow a Prussian to sit in the Throne of Spain!”
It was clear that nothing was going to stop L'Ostende in his attempt to do things his way, or rather, the way of Napoleon. However, he did not count on the fact that, this time, we would not step back.
“Monsieur, please, calm down, while I tell you the reasons why France has nothing to fear. In the first place, even if you dislike our king, at least he is not Montpensier, which I am quite sure His Imperial Majesty would have been horrified with. Our Constitution only gives the King a symbolic power, which I doubt he will be able to use to declare war on France, which Spain still regards as an ally. Finally, if I am not mistaken, His Imperial Majesty and our King are distant relatives through Joachim Murat, so, please, tell your government there is no need to get overexcited.”
“Believe me when I tell you that His Imperial Majesty would rather see that buffoon of Montpensier as your pathetic King before any Prussian in the world, whether he is kin or not!”
I am a patient man, but even I have my limits. And L'Ostende, with his arrogant attitude, had consumed most of my patience.
“Monsieur L'Ostende, you, your government and His Imperial Majesty may believe that Spain is France's playground, to do or undo at your wish, but that time is over. Spain has chosen its King, and we will not tolerate any more interferences in such an important affair. Please, leave, and advice your government to take things calmly before they reach the point of no return.”
If L'Ostende was angry before, now he seemed incensed. I have to say that, for a few seconds, I feared for my life.
“I have been allowed to tell you that, if Spain continues on this stubborn path and does not reject the Prussian, it will suffer the serious consequences of not following France's suggestions.”
At the moment, I thought that France had not only gone past the point of no return, but that it did not plan to find the way to go back. However, some time later I would learn that they were already planning to cut off the candidacy from its origin, but, fortunately, in the end it was not successful. Either way, I had to show L'Ostende that, in this matter, we cared not about their opinion and 'suggestions'.
“Let me tell you a bit about our common story. In 1808, the Emperor's uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte, thought the same as you, and invaded Spain to force us his brother Joseph as our King. Four years later, Joseph was out of Spain, Napoleon's empire was shattered, and his soldiers had already retreated from Spain and Russia. History tends to repeat itself, Monsieur Ambassador, so I can tell you without any problem that, if His Imperial Majesty orders an invasion of Spain, it will end up with his empire shattered, Napoleon III exiled to Cochinchina, and the Bonapartes finished forever. Now, please, leave this office.”
Without a word of goodbye, L'Ostende stood up and left. Independently of what the future brought to Spain, it was clear that the meeting, for good or bad, was the end of the friendship between Spain and France.
Right after the meeting, L'Ostende sent a telegram with a slightly edited summary of his meeting with Sagasta to Paris. There, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Duke Antoine de Gramont, took the telegram with him to an extraordinary meeting of the
Corps Législatif, the lower chamber of the Napoleonic Parliament, and claimed that the interests and the honor of the great French nation were in danger if something was not done soon to prevent what they regarded as an insult to France. The day after, the main newspapers of the Gaulish nation showed in their first pages a message from the French government:
We, the Government of France, wish to state our repulse and worry over the fact that the Prussian prince Leopold zu Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen has been proclaimed King of Spain by its government this past July 6th. We stand with the brave Spanish people, our allies, against those foreign dynasties that wish to meddle in Spain for their own benefit and upset the European political balance, and will do everything in our hand so that a proper king is crowned in Madrid.
Antoine Alfred Agénor, Duke of Gramont, French Minister of Foreign Affairs
Of course, when other nations pointed out the hypocrisy of that statement, since France was doing exactly what they were accusing Prussia of, the French government paid no attention to them, only to the many people that were claiming on mass demonstrations for a war against Bismarck and Prim, for their “audacity” in not following the suggestions of the leading European nation.
The French position, apart from sparking the reappearance of the Republicans, who had remained quiet after the voting and were now demanding that all votes in favor of Leopold were declared null and that the second most popular option, the formation of a Federal Republic, was accepted and applied as soon as possible, it only helped to reinforce General Prim's resolve to bring Leopold to Spain. Prim, a fervent Spanish nationalist, had wanted to eliminate all foreign interference in Spain, especially the French influence, so one of the factors that had become part of the search for a King was that the candidate was one disliked by Napoleon III (the only exception to that was Fernando de Coburgo). His anti-French stance was influenced by many factors, among them Prim's personal experience: the general had led the Spanish expedition to Mexico, in collaboration with France and the United Kingdom, to force the Aztec nation to pay its debts. However, the French had taken advantage of the situation to attempt to place Maximilian of Habsburg as the Mexican Emperor, a move Prim never supported, getting his troops out of Mexico as soon as all debts to Spain were paid (a choice, undoubtedly, also influenced by Francisca Agüero, his Mexican-born wife, who had important contacts in the Republic of Mexico).
Thus, on a secret session of the Spanish courts celebrated on July 9th, Prim's government announced that a general mobilization would be decreed, in order to help prepare the defenses of the Spanish nation in the case that France declared war, bringing out the continuous French insults towards Spain as a way to rile them up and bring them to his position.
In Prussia, the French demands sparked the reemergence of Leopold's and King William's doubts about putting the former in the Spanish throne, since they were not very willing to go to war over it. Leopold even thought about the possibility of immediately renouncing to the Spanish throne in order to prevent a war with France. However, he was prevented from doing by Chancellor Bismarck. The Chancellor knew that Leopold's accession to the throne would mean taking a faithful ally from the vain French, and Bismarck intended to use this to needle the French into declaring war and eventually give the definite impulse to German unification, the last step in a road that started in 1864 after the victory in the Second Schleswig War, and continued with the Seven Weeks War of 1866, that had allowed the formation of the Northern German Federation in replacement of the German Confederation.
However, the southern Catholic states (Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden and Hesse) still distrusted Protestant Prussia and did not want to join the NGF, although they felt free from the Austrian imperialism that had dominated them since the Vienna Congress.
Bismarck needed France to be the aggressor in a potential Franco-Prussian War because he had signed secret defensive pacts with the four southern German states, and only a French attack would get the Catholic states to help. Besides, he also expected that their inhabitants, on whom the memories of the Napoleonic hordes' brutalities were still heavily weighing, would trigger a wave of popular Pan-Germanic euphoria after a victory in such a war, and the people would push for integration in Bismarck's project for German unification, independently of the individual rulers' feelings.
The French reaction had been the one Bismarck expected, which he was glad for. When it became clear that the Spanish government would not follow the request to drop Leopold and choose a more acceptable candidate, Gramont decided that the best way to end such claims was at its origin, Prussia. While the different Bourbon branches pressured the French government (the most vocal being Isabel II and Carlos María de Borbón) to intervene in their favor and place their own candidate in the Spanish throne, Gramont ordered the French Ambassador in Berlin, Count Vincent Benedetti, to speak with King Wilhelm I and get verbal and written guarantees that he would vet Leopold's candidacy to the Spanish throne and would never allow it, since, as King of Prussia, he had to give his permission for any of his subjects to accept foreign commitments.
Count Vincent Benedetti, French Ambassador to Prussia
With this objective in mind, the French diplomat left for Bad Ems' spa, where the Prussian Royal Family was resting for the summer. On July 12th, the count met with Wilhelm I, told him that the only way to avoid war with France was for Leopold to renounce to the Spanish crown, and urged him to speak with his relative and convince him to change his opinion. Three days later, Prince Karl Anton told the Ambassador that his son, although he would have liked to become a good king for the Spanish people, he renounced the Spanish crown if that was the only way to avoid war. When they received the news, Bismarck and Count Rascón felt upset, but after speaking in a meeting on the 16th, they decided to wait for France's reaction and the eventual official answer by Wilhelm I before informing the Spanish government of the events, because there was yet a possibility of saving the candidacy. By awaiting, they struck gold.
The Prussian concessions, although they may have been enough in the past, now were insufficient for the French, who felt inflamed with the idea of a war with the upstart Prussians and had felt that the latter backing down was a let down. The more hawkish and anti-liberal elements of the Imperial government (led by Gramont and the Consort Empress, who were trying to raise the Emperor's falling popularity) decided that this was not enough and decided to push the Prussians even further, so on July 16th they ordered Benedetti to ask for a written confirmation, with Wilhelm I's Royal Seal on it, that the Prussian candidacy would be dropped and never be taken up again. In case this was not enough, the French Minister of War, Marshal Edmond LeBoeuf, ordered a general mobilization of the French Imperial Army, for their deployment if there was war with Prussia.
Marshal Edmond Leboeuf, French Minister of War
The next day, July 17th, the French ambassador, who had remained in the city of Bad Ems, met again with Wilhelm I and presented him the request from the government, but the old King answered that he had nothing else to say to the ambassador, as everything had been done already, and politely ended the meeting. That afternoon, Wilhelm I sent, through his diplomatic advisor Heinrich Abeken, a telegram retelling the encounter with Count Benedetti, to Chancellor Bismarck, who was in Berlin. The telegram arrived that night to the Berliner Wilhelmstrasse Palast, where Bismarck was dining with General Helmuth von Moltke.
As soon as he read the telegram, Bismarck shrewdly saw it as the thing that could finally provoke the French into declaring war, so he took his quill and wrote a communication in regards to the telegram. He did not transcribe it entirely, though: he condensed the telegram's text into a few words. Only then did he send it so that it could be published on the newspapers.
On July 18th, the main Prussian newspapers showed in their first pages the communication sent by Bismarck:
After the news of the renunciation of the Prince von Hohenzollern had been communicated to the Imperial French government, the French Ambassador in Ems made a further demand on His Majesty the King that he should authorize him to telegraph to Paris that His Majesty the King undertook for all time never again to give his assent should the Hohenzollerns once more take up their candidature. His Majesty the King thereupon refused to receive the Ambassador again and had the latter informed by the Adjutant of the day that His Majesty had no further communication to make to the Ambassador.
The actual text, as sent by Abeken, was far longer, and contained things that would have changed everything if they had become known, but Bismarck had seen the chance and taken it by the horns: this telegram, which would be known by posterity as
the Ems telegram, turned what had been a polite meeting between Wilhelm I and Count Benedetti into an arrogant order of the French ambassador and a blunt royal answer before the ambassador's offensive manners.
Memorial stone to the Ems Telegram in Bad Ems
His genial maneuver had the rewards Bismarck anticipated: in Prussia, people were angry at the arrogance the French were displaying when treating with their emergent nation, and thus did not bat an eye when the Prussian order of mobilization was given on July 19th, while the French went volcanic. Upon receiving the news about the communication, Napoleon III, incensed, gave a blunt ultimatum to the Prussian government in which he demanded immediate apologies from the Prussian King and Government for the falsities stated in the telegram, and the conformation that a Prussian would not be allowed to be candidate to the Spanish crown,
ever: the alternative was war, a war the French expected to win.
Other news also appeared in Spanish newspapers, mostly because their transcendence would only affect these people: the Carlist pretender, Carlos María de Borbón y Austria-Este, had managed to meet with Duke Gramont and had asked him to support an invasion of Spain in order to reestablish the absolutist monarchy around his person, which he promised would always be a faithful ally of France. In the end, however, Napoleon III decided to show his support for Alfonso, son of Isabel II (who had, just recently, renounced to her dynastic rights in her son's favor), both because of the great friendship between Empress Eugénie and the exiled queen (so great it was, they were already planning to join their families by marrying Napoleon Eugéne, the French heir, with one of Isabel II's daughters) and the personal and political affinities Napoleon had with young Alfonso. These two political moves, although they could have worked in other circumstances, instead caused far-reaching consequences that neither the Carlist pretender nor Alfonso could have guessed.
Of course, both the Prussian and the Spanish government rejected the French ultimatum: the Prussians were not going to stand down against what was described by Prussian newspapers as the second round of the Napoleonic invasions, while Spain was also encouraging the people by both keeping legitimizing Leopold's appointment as the King (since they had not been officially notified of Leopold's renounce to the throne, which Prim had classed as pure French lies) and reminding everyone of the heroic deeds of Generals Castaños and Reding, of the Battle of Bailén, of Agustina de Aragón and the Sieges of Zaragoza, of the Siege of Cádiz and of the
guerrilleros who had made the French invaders' lives an absolute hell, all to remind the people that the French could be beaten and would be beaten once more.
The French government, thinking that this was the end of the rope, issued, on July 20th 1870, a declaration of war against the Kingdoms of Prussia and Spain, with the objectives of teaching the Prussians a lesson on war, annexing the Rhineland and reestablish the Bourbon monarchy in Spain.