Vincent Benedetti

Benedetti, Vincent (văNsäNˈ bānādĕtˈtē) [key], 1817–1900, French diplomat, b. Corsica, made a count by Napoleon III. He was ambassador to Prussia from 1864 to 1870. In an interview (1870) at Ems with King William I (later German emperor), he asked the king to disapprove formally and permanently the candidacy of a Hohenzollern prince for the Spanish throne. The episode was so altered in Bismarck's version of the Ems dispatch that it became an immediate cause of the Franco-Prussian War.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.