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Originally Posted by Tchocky
They started the war after Bismarck doctored telegrams and released them, with the intention:
"The Ems Telegram should have the desired effect of waving a red cape in front of the face of the Gallic Bull".
France started it, technically.
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It contributed to it definitely, but i'd say the war was made inevitable with the French ultimatum to William:
From Wiki:
The
Franco-Prussian War (July 19, 1870 – May 10, 1871) was declared by France on Prussia, which was backed by the North German Confederation and the south German states of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria. The conflict marked the culmination of tension between the two powers following Prussia's rise to dominance in Germany, which before 1866 was still a loose federation of quasi-independent territories.
The war began over the ascension of a candidate from the Sigmaringen branch of the Hohenzollern royal family to the vacant Spanish throne as Isabella II had abdicated in 1868. This was strongly opposed by
France who issued an ultimatum to King William I of Prussia to have the candidacy withdrawn, which was done. Aiming to humiliate Prussia, Emperor Napoleon III of France then required William to apologize and renounce any possible further Hohenzollern candidature to the Spanish throne. King William, surprised at his holiday resort by the French ambassador, denied the French request. Prussia's prime minister Otto von Bismarck edited the King's account of his meeting with the French ambassador to make the encounter more heated than it really was. Known as the Ems Dispatch, it was released to the press. It was designed to give the French the impression that King Wilhelm I had insulted the French Count Benedetti, and to give the German people the impression that the Count had insulted the King. It succeeded in both of its aims.
The French people and their parliament reacted with outrage; Napoleon III mobilized and declared war on Prussia only, but effectively also on the states of southern Germany. The German armies quickly mobilized and within a few weeks controlled large amounts of land in eastern France. Their success was due in part to rapid mobilization by train, to Prussian General Staff leadership and to innovative Krupp artillery. Napoleon III was captured with his whole army at the Battle of Sedan, yet this did not end the war, as a republic was declared in Paris on September 4, 1870, marking the creation of the Third Republic of France under the Government of National Defense and later the "Versaillais government" of Adolphe Thiers. The immediate result was an extension to the war as the Republic proclaimed a continuation of the fight.
Over a five-month campaign, the German armies defeated the newly recruited French armies in a series of battles fought across northern France. Following a prolonged siege, the French capital Paris fell on January 28, 1871. Ten days earlier, the German states had proclaimed their union under the Prussian King, uniting Germany as a nation-state, the German Empire. The final peace Treaty of Frankfurt was signed May 10, 1871, during the time of the bloody Paris Commune of 1871.