Margen
In July 1870, the spark was Spanish: the throne of Spain was vacant and the candidate was a Prussian prince, something France could not tolerate. The French ambassador approached King Wilhelm of Prussia at the spa town of Ems to demand guarantees that the candidacy would never be revived.
The king declined, politely, and sent a summary of the encounter to his chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. And Bismarck, who had long been looking for a war with France that would unite the German states, saw his chance: he trimmed the text so the refusal sounded like a slammed door and the French demand like insolence, then leaked it to the press.
The effect was immediate in both countries. France, feeling humiliated, declared war in less than a week. It lost, and from that defeat the German Empire was born — proclaimed, no less, at Versailles.
A war decided with an editor's scissors.