A carte-de-visite portrait of Prince Leopold von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (1835-1905), whose candidacy for the Spanish throne triggered the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. Initially offered the Spanish throne in February 1870, French opposition to his candidacy led to its withdrawal. However, France’s insistence in the Bad Ems telegram [so-called because it was forwarded to Kaiser Wilhelm at the spa town of that name] that his candidacy would never be resumed was undiplomatically worded. This was manipulated by Bismarck into a diplomatic incident that led directly to the Franco-Prussian War, which in turn led to the fall of the Second Empire. The British Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville, commented that it was ‘inconceivable’ that in a civilized world ‘hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen should be hurled against like numbers of Germans, on a point limited to a matter of etiquette’.

Prince Leopold was married to Princess Antonia of Portugal (1845-1913), daughter of Queen Maria II. The couple were married at Lisbon on 12 September 1861. He died at Berlin on 8 June 1905; she died at Sigmaringen on 27 December 1913.

Photographed by Hugo Danz of Berlin.