Bismarck Edits the Ems Dispatch
Poet involved
What happened
After a meeting at Bad Ems in Germany, King Wilhelm I sent Otto von Bismarck a courteous report about a French diplomatic request. Bismarck shortened the telegram before publication so that both the French ambassador and the king appeared to have insulted one another. Public outrage helped provoke the Franco-Prussian War.
Literary impact
The war transformed French and German literary culture and supplied settings for poems by Victor Hugo, Arthur Rimbaud and others. Rimbaud's Le Dormeur du val stripped martial rhetoric from the dead soldier, while Hugo's L'Année terrible responded to invasion, siege and political collapse.
Source: Wikipedia
