1 “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” were written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in Paris between March 21 (when Engels arrived in Paris from Brussels) and March 24, 1848. This document was discussed by members of the Central Authority, who approved and signed it as the. political programme of the Communist League in the revolution that broke out in Germany. In March it was printed as a leaflet, for distribution among revolutionary German emigrant workers who were about to return home. Austrian and German diplomats in Paris informed their respective governments about this as early as March 27, 28 and 29. (The Austrian Ambassador enclosed in his letter a copy of the leaflet which he dated “March 25”.) The leaflet soon reached members of the Communist League in other countries, in particular, German emigrant workers in London.
Early in April, the “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” were published in such German democratic papers as Berliner Zeitungs-Halle (special supplement to No. 82, April 5, 1848), Düsseldorfer Zeitung (No. 96, April 5, 1848), Mannheimer Abendzeitung (No. 96, April 6, 1848), Trier’sche Zeitung (No. 97, April 6, 1848, supplement), Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (No. 100, April 9, 1848, supplement), and Zeitung für das deutsche Volk (No. 2 1, April 9, 1848).
Marx and Engels, who left for Germany round about April 6 and some time later settled in Cologne, did their best along with their followers to popularise this programme document during the revolution. In 1848 and 1849 it was repeatedly published in the periodical press and in leaflet form. Not later than September 10, 1848, the “Demands” were printed in Cologne as a leaflet for circulation by the Cologne Workers’ Association both in the town itself and in a number of districts of Rhenish Prussia. In addition to minor stylistic changes, point 10 in the text of the leaflet was worded differently from that published in March-April 1848. At the Second Democratic Congress held in Berlin in October 1848, Friedrich Beust, delegate from the Cologne Workers’ Association, spoke, on behalf of the social question commission, in favour of adopting a programme of action closely following the “Demands”. In November and December 1848, various points of the “Demands” were discussed at meetings of the Cologne Workers’ Association.
Many editions of the “Demands” published during the revolution and after its defeat have survived to this day in their original form, some of them as copies kept in the police archives.
At the end of 1848 or the beginning of 1849 an abridged version of the “Demands” was published in pamphlet form by Weller Publishers in Leipzig. The slogan at the beginning of the document, the second paragraph of point 9 and the last sentence of point 10 were omitted, and the words “The Committee” were not included among the signatories.
In 1853, an abridged version of the “Demands” was printed, together with other documents of the Communist League, in the first part of the book Die Communisten-Verschworungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts published in Berlin for purposes of information by Wermuth and Stieber, two police officials, who staged a trial against the Communists in Cologne in 1852.
Later Engels reproduced the main points of the “Demands” in his essay On the History of the Communist League, published in November 1885 in the newspaper Sozialdemokrat, and as an introduction to the pamphlet: K. Marx, Enthüllungen über den Kommunisten Prozess zu Köln, Hottingen-Zürich, 1885.
English translations of the “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” appeared in the collections: The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with an introduction and explanatory notes by D. Ryazanoff, Martin Lawrence, London (1930); K. Marx, Selected Works, Vol. II, ed. V. Adoratsky, Moscow-Leningrad, Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR (1936); ibid., New York (1 936); Birth of the Communist Manifesto, edited and annotated, with an Introduction by D. J. Struik, International Publishers, New York, 197 1, and in other publications.
2 The letter to the editor of the Populaire and the Declaration are in Engels’ handwriting. Both documents were drawn up at the end of March 1848 after Engels’ arrival in Paris and reflect the struggle which the leaders of the Communist League were waging against those German petty-bourgeois emigrant leaders in Paris, Herwegh and Bornstedt among others, who intended to speed up revolution in Germany by moving in a volunteer legion organised by using private donations and subsidies from the Provisional Government of the French Republic. Appeals to enlist were accompanied by demagogic appeals to the patriotic and revolutionary sentiments of German emigrants. Marx, Engels and other members of the Central Authority of the Communist League spoke out against the adventurist nature of such plans to “export revolution” and advised German workers instead to return to their home country individually in order to take part in the revolutionary events that were brewing there. “We opposed this playing with revolution in the most decisive fashion,” Engels later wrote in his work On the History of the Communist League. “To carry out an invasion, which was to import the revolution forcibly from outside, into the midst of the ferment then going on in Germany, meant to undermine the revolution in Germany itself, to strengthen the governments and to deliver the legionaries ... defenceless into the hands of the German troops.”
The letter and the Declaration were first published in English in the journal Science and Society, 1940, Vol. IV, No. 2. The first publication in the language of the original appeared in the collection Der Bund der Kommunisten. Dokumente und Materialien, Bd. 1, 1836-1849, Berlin, 1970.
3 The German Democratic Society (below it is called the Society of German Democrats) was formed in Paris after the February revolution of 1848. The society was headed by petty-bourgeois democrats, Herwegh, Bornstedt (the latter expelled from the Communist League) and others, who campaigned to raise a volunteer legion of German emigrants with the intention of marching into Germany. In this way they hoped to carry out a revolution in Germany and establish a republic there. Late in April 1848 the volunteer legion moved to Baden where it was dispersed by government troops.
4 The German Workers’ Club was founded in Paris on March 8 and 9, 1848, on the initiative of Communist League leaders. The club’s aim was to unite German emigrant workers in Paris, to explain to them the tactics of the proletariat in a bourgeois-democratic revolution, and also to counter the attempts of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democrats to stir up the German workers by nationalist propaganda and enlist them into the adventurist invasion of Germany by volunteer legions. The club successfully arranged the return of German workers one by one to their home country to take part in the revolutionary struggle there.
5 On March 29, 1848, the supplement to No. 89 of the Trier’sche Zeitung carried a report from Paris, dated March 24, in which the activity of the German Democratic Society (see Note 3) was criticised. This article was apparently written by one of Marx’s followers in the Communist League, probably with Marx’s help.
The author vehemently denounced the idea of an armed invasion of Germany by the volunteer legion and stated that the German Workers’ Club associated with the Communist League had nothing to do with this venture.
Deeply hurt by this article, the leaders of the German Democratic Society sent Marx a note signed by Bornstedt, Löwenfels, Börnstein, Volk and Mayer in which they demanded the author’s name. The reply is published here from a copy made by Engels. After Marx had rejected their demand, one of the society’s leaders, Herwegh, wrote a memorandum for the German periodicals (on April 3,1848), in which he justified the idea of a volunteer legion and venomously attacked communists.
6 Marx’s letter was published in L'Alba on June 29, 1848, with the following introductory note by the editors: “We publish the following letter received from Cologne to show what feelings the noble-minded Germans entertain towards Italy; they ardently wish to establish fraternal relations between the Italian and German peoples, whom European despots have tried to set against each other.”
The reply by the editors of L'Alba signed by L. Alinari, is quoted in Engels’ article “Germany’s Foreign Policy” (see this volume, p. 167).
An English translation of this letter was published in the magazine Labour Monthly No. 5, 1948, and in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence (Moscow, 1955, London, 1956). P. 11
7 This statement of the editorial board was printed in the first number of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which appeared in the evening of May 31, but was dated June 1, 1848. (In English the statement was published in the magazine Labour Monthly No. 5, 1948, and in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.)
Marx and Engels began to plan the publication of a German revolutionary paper as far back as March 1848 when they were still living in Paris. On March 26 and 28, 1848, Engels wrote about this plan to his brother-in-law Emil Blank.
The publication of a proletarian newspaper was regarded by Marx and Engels as an important step towards a mass party of the German proletariat, which, they believed, should be founded on the basis of the Communist League. On their arrival in Germany, they realised that the conditions for creating such a party were not yet ripe: the German workers were disunited; their immaturity and lack of organisation made them easy prey to narrow craft and petty-bourgeois influences and particularise moods, while the Communist League, for which there was no sense in continuing secret activities during the revolution, was too weak and small in number to be instrumental in consolidating the workers. Marx and Engels realised this after studying the reports submitted by the Central Authority emissaries on the situation in the League’s local communities. In this context, the role of a newspaper in influencing the masses, in their ideological and political education and consolidation, seemed peculiarly important. The paper could be used for political guidance of the activities of Communist League members, who were instructed by Marx and Engels to avail themselves of every legal opportunity and join the emerging workers’ associations and democratic societies.
Marx and Engels decided to publish the paper in Cologne, the capital of the Rhine Province, one of the most economically and politically advanced regions in Germany. The new paper was given the name of the New Rheinische Zeitung to emphasise that it was to continue the revolutionary-democratic traditions of the Rheinische Zeitung, which Marx had edited in 1842 and 1843. Taking account of the specific circumstances, with the absence of an independent mass workers’ party in Germany, Marx, Engels and their followers entered the political scene as a Left, actually proletarian, wing of the democratic movement. This determined the stand of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which began to appear under the subtitle “The Organ of Democracy”.
When they started the paper, Marx and Engels had to cope with serious financial difficulties as well as with the opposition from sectarian elements in the Communist League (Hess, Anneke and others), who intended to publish a purely local sheet under a similar title. In April and May 1848, Marx and Engels worked hard selling shares in the paper, finding contributors and establishing regular contacts with democratic periodicals in other countries. The editorial committee was known for its unanimity of views, well-co-ordinated work and strict division of functions.
As a rule, Marx and Engels wrote the editorials formulating the paper’s stand on the most important questions of the revolution. These were usually marked “*Köln” and “**Köln”. Sometimes editorial articles marked with one asterisk were printed in other sections under the heading of news from Italy, France, England, Hungary and other countries. In the early months of the paper’s existence Marx was fully occupied with administrative and organisational matters and most of the leading articles were written by Engels. In addition to this, Engels also contributed critical reviews of debates in the Berlin and Frankfurt National Assemblies, articles on the national liberation movements in Bohemia, Posen and Italy, and on the war in Schleswig-Holstein, revolutionary developments in Hungary and political life in Switzerland. Wilhelm Wolff contributed articles on the agrarian question, on the condition of the peasants and their movement, particularly in Silesia. He was also responsible for the current events section. Georg Weerth wrote feuilletons in verse and prose. Ernst Dronke was for some time the Neue Rheinische Zeitung correspondent in Frankfurt am Main and wrote several articles on Poland. Ferdinand Wolf f was for a long time one of the paper’s correspondents in Paris. The only article which Heinrich Bürgers wrote for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was almost entirely rewritten by Marx. Ferdinand Freiligrath, who became one of the paper’s editors in October 1848, published his own verses.
The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was a daily paper (from September 1848 it appeared every day except Monday). Its editors often published a second edition on one day in order to supply their readers with prompt information on all the most significant revolutionary developments in Germany and Europe; supplements were printed when there was too much material to be squeezed into the four pages of the number, while special supplements and special editions printed in the form of leaflets carried the latest and most important news.
The consistent revolutionary tendency of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, its militant internationalism and political accusations against the Government displeased its bourgeois shareholders in the very first months of the paper’s existence; its editors were persecuted by the Government and attacked in the feudal-monarchist and liberal-bourgeois press. Following the appearance of the paper’s first number, which carried Engels’ article “The Assembly at Frankfurt” (see this volume, pp. 16-19), a large number of the shareholders withdrew their financial support, and articles in defence of the June uprising of the Paris proletariat frightened away most of the rest. The editors now had to rely on German and Polish revolutionary circles for funds.
To make Marx’s stay in the Rhine Province more difficult, the Cologne authorities, on instructions from Berlin, refused to reinstate him with the rights of Prussian citizenship (which Marx had renounced in 1845); on several occasions he and other editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung were summoned to court. On September 26, 1848, when a state of siege was introduced in Cologne, several democratic newspapers, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung among them, were suspended. To avoid arrest, Engels, Dronke and Ferdinand Wolff had to leave Germany for a time. Wilhelm Wolf I stayed in Cologne but for several months lived illegally. When the state of siege was lifted, the paper resumed publication on October 12, thanks to the great efforts of Marx who sank all his ready money into the paper. Until January 1849, the whole burden of the work, including editorial articles, lay on Marx’s shoulders since Engels had to stay out of Germany (in France and Switzerland).
Persecution of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung editors by the legal authorities and the police was intensified, particularly after the counter-revolutionary coup in Prussia in November-December 1848.
In May 1849, when the counter-revolution went into the offensive all over Germany, the Prussian Government issued an order for Marx’s expulsion from Prussia on the grounds that he had not been granted Prussian citizenship. Marx’s expulsion and repressions against other editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung caused publication of the paper to be ceased. Its last issue (No. 30 1), printed in red ink, came out on May 19, 1849. In their farewell address to the workers, the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung said that “their last word will everywhere and always be: emancipation of the working class!”
8 The September Laws, promulgated by the French Government in September 1835, restricted the rights of jury courts and introduced severe measures against the press. They provided for increased money deposits (caution money) for periodical publications and introduced imprisonment and large fines for publication of attacks on private property and the existing political system.
9 The opening session of the all-German National Assembly, the purpose of which was to unite the country and draft a Constitution, took place on May 18, 1848, in Frankfurt am Main at St. Paul’s Church. Among the deputies elected in various German states late in April and early in May, there were 122 government officials, 95 judges, 81 lawyers, 103 teachers, 17 manufacturers and wholesale dealers, 15 physicians and 40 landowners. The liberal deputies, who were in the majority, turned the Assembly into a mere debating club, incapable of taking any resolute decisions.
In writing this and the following articles concerning the debates in the Frankfurt National Assembly, Marx and Engels made use of the stenographic reports which later appeared as a separate publication, Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen der deutschen constituirenden Nationalversammiung zu Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig, 1848-1849.
Engels’ article was first published in English in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “New Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
10 At the sitting of the Frankfurt National Assembly on May 19, 1848, the liberal Deputy Raveaux proposed that Prussian deputies elected to both the Berlin and Frankfurt Assemblies should have the right to be members of both. The Berlin Assembly, i. e. the Prussian National Assembly, was convened on May 22, 1848, to draft a Constitution “by agreement with the Crown”. The Assembly was elected under the electoral law of April 8, 1848, by universal suffrage and an indirect (two-stage) voting system. Most of the deputies belonged to the bourgeoisie or liberal bureaucracy.
11 The limited understanding of a loyal subject — an expression used by the Prussian Minister of the Interior von Rochow. In his letter of January 15, 1838, addressed to the citizens of Elbin who expressed their dissatisfaction at the expulsion of seven oppositional professors from the Hanover Diet, Rochow wrote: “Loyal subjects are expected to exhibit due obedience to their king and sovereign, but their limited understanding should keep them from interfering in affairs of heads of state.”
12 The Pre-parliament which met in Frankfurt am Main from March 31 to April 4, 1848, consisted of representatives from the German states, most of its delegates being constitutional monarchists. The Pre-parliament passed a resolution to convoke an all-German National Assembly and produced a draft of the “Fundamental Rights and Demands of the German People”. Although this document proclaimed certain rights and liberties, including the right of all-German citizenship for the residents of any German state, it did not touch the basis of the semi-feudal absolutist system prevalent in Germany at the time.
13 The seventeen “treated men” who represented the German governments were summoned after the March revolution in Germany by the Federal Diet, the central body of the German Confederation (which was founded in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna). The “trusted men”, among them Dahlmann, von Schmerling, Uhland and Bassermann, met in Frankfurt am Main from March 30 to May 8, 1848, and drafted an all-German Imperial Constitution based on constitutional-monarchical principles.
The Federal Diet consisted of representatives of the German states. Though it had no real power, it was nevertheless a vehicle of feudal and monarchical reaction. After the March revolution of 1848, reactionary circles in the German states tried to revive the Federal Diet and use it to undermine the principle of popular sovereignty and prevent the democratic unification of Germany.
14 Auerswald’s decree, dated May 22, 1848, and published on May 23, 1848, in the Preussische Staats-Anzeiger No. 21, p. 215, included Raveaux’s proposal (see Note 10).
15 The article was first published in English in the collection: Karl Marx, On Revolution, ed. by S. K. Padover, New York, 1971 (“The Karl Marx Library” series), Vol. 1.
16 On May 22, 1815, Frederick William Ill who, during the war with Napoleonic France, had to respond to the demand for a Constitution, issued a decree in which he promised “popular representation”, that is, to set up Provincial Assemblies of the Estates in Prussia and to convoke an all-Prussia representative body. All that ever resulted from these promises, however, was the law of June 5, 1823, which created Provincial Assemblies of the Estates with limited, advisory functions.
The German Confederation — see Note 13.
17 Lazzaroni — a contemptuous nickname for declassed proletarians, primarily in the Kingdom of Naples. They were repeatedly used by the absolutist Government in the struggle against liberal and democratic movements.
18 The reference is to the “cordial agreement” (entente cordiale) between France and England in the early period of the July monarchy (1830-35). The “agreement”, however, proved unstable and was soon followed by intensified contradictions.
19 Sanfedists (from santa fede — holy faith) — supporters of the papacy who joined terrorist gangs to fight against the Italian national liberation movement.
20 On August 10, 1792, the monarchy in France was overthrown by a popular uprising in Paris. The sculpture of a dying lion by Thorwaldsen was installed in Lucerne some time later, to commemorate the Swiss guards who were killed defending the royal palace.
On July 29, 1830, the Bourbons were overthrown in France.
In July 1820, the Carbonari, aristocratic and bourgeois revolutionaries, rose in revolt against the absolutist regime in the Kingdom of Naples and succeeded in having a moderate liberal Constitution introduced. Intervention by the powers of the Holy Alliance, however, led to the restoration of the absolutist regime in Naples.
On all these occasions Swiss mercenaries were used by the counter-revolutionary forces.
21 The reference is to treaties concluded between the middle of the fifteenth and the middle of the nineteenth centuries between Swiss cantons and European states for the supply of Swiss mercenaries.
22 An article dealing with this subject was originally written by Heinrich Bürgers, but Marx editorially deleted half of it and rewrote the rest (see Marx’s letter to Ferdinand Lassalle of September 15, 1860).
An English translation of this article was first published in the collections: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, and Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848. Political Writings, Vol. 1, London, Penguin Books, 1973.
23 In 1848-49 the advocates of a bourgeois constitutional system in Germany called the republican democrats “agitators” (Wühler) and these in turn called their opponents “wailers” (Heuler).
24 On March 29, 1848, the Camphausen Government in which Hansemann held the post of the Minister of Finance replaced the Government of Count ArhimBoitzenburg, which had been formed on March 19, 1848, when revolution broke out in Prussia.
In writing this and other articles concerning the Prussian National Assembly, the authors made use of the stenographic reports, which later came out as a separate edition entitled Verhandlungen der constituirenden Versammlung für Preussen 1848, Berlin, 1848.
The article was first published in English in the collection: Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848. Political Writings, Vol. 1, London, Penguin Books, 1973.
25 The United Diet — an assembly of representatives from the eight Provincial Diets of Prussia, similarly based on the estate principle. The United Diet sanctioned new taxes and loans, discussed new Bills and had the right to petition the King.
The First United Diet, which opened on April 11, 1847, was dissolved in June, following its refusal to grant a new loan. The Second United Diet met on April 2, 1848, when the Camphausen Ministry was in office. It passed a law on the elections to a Prussian National Assembly and sanctioned the loan. The United Diet session was closed on April 10, 1848.
26 See Note 10.
27 According to tradition, around 390 B. C. the Gauls captured Rome with the exception of the Capitol, whose defenders were warned of the approaching enemy by the cackling of the geese from the Temple of Juno.
28 In this article Engels describes one of the episodes in the war between Germany and Denmark over Schleswig and Holstein.
By the decision of the Congress of Vienna (1815) the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were incorporated into the Kingdom of Denmark in spite of the fact that Germans constituted the majority of the population in Holstein and in Southern Schleswig. Under the impact of the March revolution, the national liberation movement of the German population grew in strength and assumed a radical and democratic nature, becoming part of the struggle for the unification of Germany. Volunteers from all over the country rushed to the aid of the local population when it rose up against Danish rule arms in hand. Prussia, Hanover and other states of the German Confederation sent to the duchies federal troops, under the command of the Prussian General Wrangel, who entered Jutland on May 2. The Prussian Government, however, declined to take a firm stand on the Schleswig-Holstein issue, for it feared a popular outbreak and an intensification of the revolution. The liberal majority of the Frankfurt National Assembly also cherished secret hopes of an agreement with the Danish ruling circles, at the expense of national unity. Things were complicated by the intervention of Britain, Sweden and Russia in favour of Denmark, and their demand that federal troops be withdrawn from the duchies. (In this connection, Engels alludes to the Note of May 8, 1848, which Chancellor Nesselrode handed in to the Berlin Cabinet and in which this demand was accompanied by the threat of a break between Russia and Prussia.)
All these circumstances had a negative effect on the military operations against Denmark undertaken by the German federal troops and volunteer detachments.
The report on the defeat of the German federal troops appeared on May 30, 1848, in No. 11179 of the Börsen-Halle, and was then reprinted in most of the German papers. In English it appeared on June 3 in The Times No. 19880.
29 The reference is to the presidents of the Provincial Diets of the Estates, which were formed in 1823 and consisted of heads of princely families, representatives of the nobility (the latter enjoying the greatest influence), and representatives of towns and rural communities. The competence of the Diets was limited to local economic and administrative problems. They could also express opinions on government Bills submitted for discussion.
30 See Note 25.
31 The article was first published in English in the collection: Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848. Political Writings, Vol. 1, London, Penguin Books, 1973.
32 An allusion to the speech which the French lawyer André Dupin addressed to the Duke of Orleans (representative of the younger branch of the Bourbons), made King of the French by the July revolution of 1830. In his speech, Dupin emphasised that the Duke of Orléans was elected “not because he was a Bourbon but although he was a Bourbon”. This was an answer to the question whether the King should adopt the name of Philippe VII or Louis Philippe.
33 Concerning the German-Danish war over Schleswig-Holstein see Note 28.
34 The army of the anti-French coalition, in which Prussian forces participated, defeated Napoleon’s army in the vicinity of Berlin at the battles of Grossbeeren (August 23, 1813) and Dennewitz (September 6, 1813).
35 Excerpts from an announcement published in the supplement to the Berliner Zeitungs-Halle No. 128, June 4, 1848, under the title “Berliner Tagesgeschichte” [Sicherheits-Ausschutz], are quoted in this article with some digressions.
36 In February 1846, the Prussian police in Posen tracked down the leaders of preparations for a national liberation uprising in Poland and carried out wholesale arrests. As a result, a general uprising aimed at restoring Poland’s independence was staved off and only sporadic outbursts occurred (among them an unsuccessful attempt b.,. a group of Polish revolutionaries to capture the Posen fortress on March 3). Only in the Republic of Cracow, which since the Congress of Vienna had been under the joint control of Austria, Russia and Prussia, did the insurgents gain power on February 22 and create a National Government of the Polish Republic, which issued a manifesto abrogating all feudal obligations. The Cracow uprising was suppressed in early March 1846 and, in November, Austria, Prussia and Russia signed a treaty incorporating the free city of Cracow into the Austrian Empire.
37 In late April and early May 1848, Berlin was the scene of a compositors’ strike for higher wages and shorter working hours. The workers disregarded the threat of deportation, and succeeded in forcing their employers to abandon an attempt to make them sign, as a condition of agreement, a statement in which the workers would acknowledge their “errors” and repent.
38 The article was first published in English in the collections: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, and Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848. Political Writings Vol. 1, London, Penguin Books, 1973. Excerpts from it appeared earlier in the collection: Karl Marx, On Revolution ed. by S. K. Padover, New York, 197 1, under the title “A United German State”, which was supplied by the editors.
39 The Left wing of the Frankfurt National Assembly consisted of two factions: the Left (Robert Blum, Karl Vogt and others), and the extreme Left known as the radical-democratic party (Arnold Ruge, Friedrich Wilhelm Schlöffel, Franz Zitz and others). Though the sympathies of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung were with the extreme Left wing rather than with more moderate groups of democrats, it criticised the former for their vacillations and halfway stand on the basic problems of the German revolution — abolition of feudal survivals and unification of the country.
40 See Note 13.
41 The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was founded in 962 and lasted till 1806. At different times, it included the German, Italian, Austrian, Hungarian and Bohemian lands, Switzerland and the Netherlands, forming a motley conglomeration of feudal kingdoms and principalities, church lands and free cities with different political structures, legal standards and customs.
42 The agreement debates (Vereinbarungsdebatten) was the name given by Marx and Engels to the debates in the Prussian National Assembly, which met in Berlin in May 1848 to draft a Constitution “by agreement with the Crown” according to the formula proposed by the Hansemann-Camphausen Government. Marx and Engels labelled the Berlin Assembly, which adopted this formula and thereby rejected the principle of popular sovereignty, the “Agreement Assembly” and its deputies “the agreers”.
43 The reference is to the treaty signed by Russia and Prussia on March 29, 1830, on the extradition of deserters, prisoners of war and criminals. A secret declaration adopted simultaneously with the agreement made persons guilty of political offences also subject to extradition. The governments of both countries used this convention in their struggle against the Polish national liberation movement.
44 Abbreviation for Preussiche Seehandlungsgesellschaft (Prussian Sea Trade Society). This trade credit society, founded in 1772, enjoyed a number of important state privileges. It offered large credits to the Government and actually played the part of banker and broker. In 1904 it was made the Prussian State Bank.
45 According to the Verordnung wegen der künftigen Behandlung des gesammten Staatsschulden-Wesens (Decree on the Future Handling of All Government Debts), issued in Prussia on January 17, 1820, new loans and government debts had to he guaranteed by the forthcoming Prussian Assembly of the Estates, as well as by the Government.
46 After the March revolution of 1848, an insurrection of the Poles broke out in the Duchy of Posen for liberation from the Prussian yoke. The Polish peasants and artisans took an active part in this together with members of the lesser nobility.
The Prussian Government was forced to promise that a committee would be set up to carry through the reorganisation of Posen (creation of a Polish army, appointment of Poles to administrative and other posts, recognition of Polish as an official language etc.). Similar promises wore given in the Convention of April 11, 1848, signed by the Posen Committee and the Prussian Commissioner. On April 14, 1848, however, the King of Prussia ordered that the Duchy of Posen be divided into an eastern Polish part and a western “German” part, which was not to be “reorganised”. During the months following the suppression of the Poles by Prussian troops that broke the Convention, the demarcation line was pushed further and further east and the promised “reorganisation” was never carried out.
47 In the table of contents of this issue of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, the article is listed under the title “A New Partition of Poland”, but the text itself begins with the heading “The Seventh Partition of Poland”. This refers to the decree issued on June 4, 1848, by General Pfuel, the commander of Prussian troops in Posen, which further extended the territory of the western “German” part of the duchy at the expense of its eastern “Polish” part, which was to be “reorganised” as promised by the Government, but never was (see Note 46). This was the fourth time that the line of demarcation was pushed further cast to the detriment of the Polish population (the three previous occasions were April 14, April 22 and May 2, 1848). Ironically calling this the “seventh partition of Poland”, Engels shows it to be a continuation of the policy of appropriation of Polish lands by the European powers. This found reflection in the three partitions of Poland (by Prussia, Austria and Russia) at the end of the eighteenth century (1772, 1793, 1794-95); in the transfer to Russia (by Napoleon, under the Peace Treaty of Tilsit concluded in 1807) of a part of Polish territory in exchange for recognition of the Duchy of Warsaw, created by Napoleon as a vassal state; in the decision of the Congress of Vienna (1815), which abolished the Duchy of Warsaw and once again sanctioned the annexation of the Polish lands by Prussia, Russia and Austria, and also in Austria’s annexation of the free city of Cracow in 1846.
48 The reference is to the return of the Prince of Prussia to Berlin (on June 4, 1848) from England, where he had fled during the March revolution.
49 Following the unsuccessful revolutionary action of the Paris workers on May 15, 1848, the Constituent Assembly adopted a decree on the reorganisation of national workshops, and steps were taken to abolish them altogether; a law was passed banning gatherings in the streets, a number of democratic clubs were closed and other police measures taken.
50 Repealers — supporters of the repeal of the Anglo-Irish Union of 1801, which abrogated the autonomy of the Irish Parliament. Ever since the 1820s, the demand for the repeal of the Union became a mass issue in Ireland. In 1840, a Repeal Association was founded whose leader, Daniel O'Connell, proposed a compromise with the English ruling circles. In January 1847 its radical elements broke away from the Association and formed an Irish Confederation; representatives of its Left revolutionary wing stood at the head of the national liberation movement and in 1848 were subjected to severe repression.
51 The Committee of Fifty was elected by the Pre-parliament (see Note 12) in April 1848, mainly from among the representatives of its constitutional-monarchist majority, with moderate republicans receiving only 12 seats. The Committee rejected the proposal of the Federal Diet (see Note 13) to create a directory of three men to constitute a provisional Central Authority of the German Confederation.
At the beginning of June 1848, a similar proposal was submitted to the Frankfurt National Assembly. As a result of the debate, the Assembly decided on June 28 to form a provisional Central Authority composed of an Imperial Regent and an Imperial Ministry.
52 The “property of the entire nation” — the words inscribed by armed workers in Berlin on the walls of the palace of the Prince of Prussia, who had fled to England during the March revolution of 1848.
53 The reference is to the republican insurrection in Baden, led by the petty-bourgeois democrats Friedrich Hecker and Gustav Struve, which was crushed in April 1848. The main regions of the insurrection were the Lake district (Seekreis) and the Black Forest (Schwarzwald).
54 See Note 23.
55 On June 9, 1848, the Frankfurt National Assembly rejected a Bill bringing the approval of any future peace treaty with Denmark within the Assembly’s jurisdiction. The Assembly thus avoided taking any responsibility for the final settlement of the Schleswig-Holstein question and allowed the Federal Diet complete freedom of action on this issue.
56 Part of this article was first published in English in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
57 The decree on the press, by Frederick William IV, published on March 18, 1848, cancelled the censorship of periodicals and introduced caution money (from 500 to 2,000 talers) instead as a guarantee against the publication of anti-government articles; this system existed in Prussia until the adoption of the 1874 press law.
58 This was how the conflict between the King and the United Diet (see Note 25) in 1847 was described in government circles.
59 On March 24, 1848, soldiers and non-commissioned officers killed on the night of March 18 during the popular insurrection were buried at the Invaliden Cemetery in Berlin. In their public announcements the authorities deliberately underestimated the number of casualties in order to disguise the extent of the fighting and to cover up the fact that the troops had been beaten by the people.
60 Among the Left deputies of the Prussian National Assembly were Johann Jacoby, Georg Jung, Karl d'Ester and Benedikt Waldeck.
61 On June 3, 1848, the Berlin National Assembly debated a motion that members of the Assembly should join the march, organised by students, to the grave of the revolutionary fighters who had fallen in March; the motion was rejected by a majority vote.
62 On May 15 and 26, 1848, there was a popular armed uprising in Vienna to defend the gains achieved during the March revolution. This forced the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I to proclaim the manifestos of May 16 and June 3, in which he made a number of new concessions; among other things, he gave the status of Constituent Assembly to the Imperial Diet, which was about to be convened.
63 Wends — the German name for the Labe Slavs who, in the early Middle Ages, occupied the territory between the Elbe (Labe) and the Oder (Odra). In the middle of the eleventh century, while fighting against German and Danish expansion, they formed an early feudal confederation, which existed till the first third of the twelfth century; it also comprised a group of West-Slavonian tribes living on the Baltic coast (future Pomerania), who were ethnically close to the Wends.
64 In this article the outcome of the Cologne by-election of June 14, 1848, is compared with that of the general election that had taken place on May 10, 1848. Both were elections of deputies to the Frankfurt National Assembly.
The article was first published in English in the collection: Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848. Political Writings, Vol. 1, London, Penguin Books, 1973.
65 Citizens’ associations (Bürgervereine), consisting of moderate liberal elements, arose in Prussia after the March revolution. Their aim was to preserve “law and order” within the framework of a constitutional monarchy, and to combat “anarchy”, i. e. the revolutionary-democratic movement.
66 The Democratic Society in Cologne, which met in Franz Stollwerk’s Café, was founded in April 1848. Among its members were small proprietors, workers and artisans. Marx and Engels took an active part in the management of the Society. At the meetings, Marx, Engels and other members of the editorial staff of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung managed to get certain resolutions adopted which unmasked the anti-revolutionary policy of the Prussian Government and condemned the irresolute conduct of the Berlin and Frankfurt Assemblies. A year later, when Marx and his followers took practical steps to create . an independent mass party of the proletariat, they decided to sever all organisational links with petty-bourgeois democrats, and withdrew from the Democratic Society. Nevertheless they continued to give support to the revolutionary actions of democratic forces in Germany.
67 Enraged by the disavowal of the March revolution by the Prussian National Assembly (see this volume, pp. 73-86), workers and artisans from Berlin stormed the arsenal on June 14, 1848 in order to arm the people in readiness to defend the gains of the revolution. This was, however, a spontaneous and unorganised action and military reinforcements as well as civic militia detachments quickly dispersed and disarmed the people.
68 Influenced by the revolutionary action of the working people of Berlin, the Prussian National Assembly adopted a resolution of June 15, 1848, which declared that the Assembly “does not need the protection of the armed forces but instead places itself under the protection of the people of Berlin”.
69 During the night of August 4, 1789, the French Constituent Assembly, under the impact of the growing peasant unrest, announced the abrogation of a number of feudal obligations which had already been abolished by the insurgent peasants.
70 On March 21, 1848, Frederick William IV, frightened by the barricade fighting in Berlin, issued an appeal “To My People, and the German Nation” in which he promised to set up a representative institution based on the estate principle, and to introduce a Constitution, ministerial responsibility, public trials, juries etc.
71 This article was first published in English in the magazine Labour Monthly, 1948, Vol. XXX, No. 4, and also in the collections: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, and Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848. Political Writings, Vol. 1, London, Penguin Books, 1973.
72 See Note 46.
73 The Slav Congress met in Prague on June 2, 1848. It was attended by representatives of the Slav countries forming part of the Austrian Empire. The Right, moderately liberal wing, to which Palacký and Safarik, the leaders of the Congress, belonged, sought to solve the national problem through autonomy of the Slav countries within the framework of the Habsburg monarchy. The Left, radical wing (Sabina, Frich, Libelt and others) wanted to act in alliance with the revolutionary-democratic movement in Germany and Hungary. Radical delegates took an active part in the popular uprising in Prague (June 12-17, 1848), which was directed against the arbitrary rule of the Austrian authorities, and were subjected to cruel reprisals. On June 16, the moderate liberal delegates declared the Congress adjourned for an indefinite period.
74 After the suppression of the Prague uprising, the Czech liberals took the lead of the national movement, which they turned into an instrument against the revolutionary-democratic forces of Germany and Hungary, and into a prop for the Habsburg monarchy and, indirectly, for Russian Tsarism. This was the reason why the Neue Rheinische Zeitung denounced this movement in the months that followed.
75 See Note 59.
76 The reference is to the wars waged by the peoples of Europe against Napoleonic France in 1813-14 and 1815, following the defeat of Napoleon’s army in Russia in 1812. These were, indeed, of a contradictory nature and their character was affected by the counter-revolutionary aims and expansionist policy of the ruling circles in the feudal monarchical states fighting on the side of the anti-French coalition. But especially in 1813, when the struggle was aimed at liberating German territory from French occupation, they turned into a genuinely popular national liberation war against foreign oppression. In this passage, Engels ridicules the over-patriotic zeal with which the representatives of Germany’s ruling classes speak of the 1813-14 and 1815 wars. Later, when once again considering that period of the history of Germany, Engels in a series of articles entitled “Notes on the War” (1870) stressed the progressive nature of the people’s resistance to Napoleon’s rule and in his work The Role of Force in History (1888) wrote: “The peoples’ war against Napoleon was the reaction of the national feeling of all the peoples, which Napoleon had trampled on.”
The battle of the nations at Leipzig (October 16-19, 1813) ended with victory for the Russian, Prussian, Austrian and Swedish troops over Napoleon’s forces.
At the battle of Waterloo (June 18, 1815) Napoleon’s forces were defeated by British and Prussian troops commanded by Wellington and Blücher.
77 Most Prussian fortresses capitulated to the French without a fight after the defeat of the Prussian troops at Jena and Auerstedt (October 14, 1806). The fortress of Cüstrin, for instance, surrendered to a small French detachment on November 1 0, 1806, and Magdeburg, with its many-thousand-strong garrison and artillery, was surrendered by General Kleist on November 8, 1806, after the first salvo fired by the French from light field mortars.
78 Code civil — French code of civil law of 1804 known as the Code Napoléon. This Code was introduced by Napoleon into the conquered regions of Western and South-Western Germany and remained the official law of the Rhineland even after that region’s union with Prussia.
79 The Prussian General Pfuel ordered the heads of captured insurrectionists in Posen in 1848 to he shaved and their arms and cars branded with lunar caustic (in German Höllenstein, i. e. stone of hell). This was how he got the nickname “von Hollenstein”.
80 The assault upon the arsenal on June 14, 1848 (see Note 67) led to a ministerial crisis in Prussia and the downfall of the Camphausen Government. The conservative and aristocratic members of the Government, Kanitz, Schwerin and Arnim, resigned on June 17. An attempt to reorganise the Government failed and on June 20 the entire Ministry resigned.
The article was first published in English in the collections: Karl Marx, On Revolution ed. by S. K. Padover, New York, 1971 (“The Karl Marx library” series), and Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848. Political Writings, Vol. 1, London, Penguin Books, 1973.
81 The Camphausen Government began its activities on March 30, 1848. At about the same time, a national liberation uprising broke out in Posen and was cruelly suppressed by this Government (see Note 46).
82 The reference is to the national liberation war against Austrian domination. On March 18, 1848, a popular armed uprising broke out in Milan, the capital of Lombardy; and after five days of bitter fighting the Austrian troops were driven out. The Austrians were also driven out of the Venice region, where a republic was proclaimed. On March 25, Charles Albert, King of Sardinia (Piedmont), declared war on Austria in the hope of exploiting the patriotic movement in his own dynastic interests. In April, the Italian army won a number of minor victories in the vicinity of Verona, but the hesitant policy of Charles Albert resulted in a serious defeat for the Italians at Custozza on July 25, 1848, and the Austrian army under the command of Field Marshal Radetzky reoccupied Milan on August 6. On August 9, Charles Albert concluded an armistice, which aroused vehement popular protests. Once again Lombardy found itself under the yoke of the Austrian Empire.
Fighting was resumed in March 1849, but the Sardinian forces were routed on March 21-23 at the battles of Mortara and Novara.
83 The Provisional Government of Lombardy was formed on March 22, 1848, after the Austrian troops had been driven out of Milan; its members were mainly moderate liberals.
84 Pandours — soldiers of the Austrian army, whose irregular infantry units were recruited mainly in the South-Slav provinces of the Austrian Empire.
85 The article was written a few days before a new Government which replaced the Camphausen Ministry was finally formed. The formal head of the new Government — the so-called Government of Action (June 26-September 21, 1848) — was Rudolf von Auerswald, a dignitary close to the Court; Hansemann, one of the candidates for the post of Prime Minister, remained the Minister of Finance just as he had been under Camphausen, but was the actual leader of the Government. Representatives of the Right groups, such as Milde and Gierke, entered the Ministry together with some of the former Ministers. Karl Rodbertus, one of the leaders of the Left Centre, was also a member of the Government, but he soon resigned from his post.
86 An allusion to the speech from the throne made by Frederick William IV at the opening of the United Diet o ‘ n April 11, 1847. The King said he would never agree to grant a Constitution which he described as a “written scrap of paper”. The words “bourgeois grain and wool merchants” refer to Camphausen who, in his youth, engaged in oil and corn trading, and to Hansemann who started his commercial career as a wool merchant.
87 An English translation of this article was first published in the collection: Karl Marx, On Revolution, ed. by S. K. Padover, New York, 1971 (“The Karl Marx Library” series), under the title “Prussia’s Feudal Reforms”.
88 Liege money — dues which the feudal lord was entitled to receive on the selling of a vassal estate.
89 See Note 69.
90 Patrimonial jurisdiction — the right of landlords to pass judgment upon their peasants and to fine them; limited in Germany in 1848 and abolished in 1877.
91 The Bill on the establishment of mortgage banks envisaged the founding of annuity — offices for the realisation of the redemption of peasant obligations under terms extremely favourable to the landlords. The bank was to advance compensation to the landlords amounting to eighteen times the value of the annual obligations of the peasants, the latter having to pay back this sum within 41 years.
92 Between 1807 and 181 1, the Ministers Stein and Hardenberg carried out certain agrarian reforms in Prussia. In October 1807, serfdom was abolished but all the ‘feudal obligations of the peasants remained. In September 181 1, the peasants received the right to redeem their obligations on the condition that they surrendered up to half of their land to the landlord or paid a corresponding sum of money. In 1845, the amount of the redemption payment was established at twenty-five times the value of annual feudal dues.
93 The article was first published in English in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
94 Following the revolutionary action of the Viennese masses on May 15, 1848, Emperor Ferdinand and his Court fled to Innsbruck, a small town in Tyrol, which became the mainstay of feudal aristocratic counter-revolution.
Engels is referring to the spontaneous rising of textile workers in Prague towards the end of June 1844. The revolt, in the course of which mills were destroyed and machines smashed, was brutally crushed by Austrian troops.
95 The full title of this Committee, which was set up in Vienna during the revolutionary events of May 1848, was the Committee of Citizens, the National Guard and Students for Maintaining Safety and Order and Defending the Right, of the People.
96 By referring to Windischgrätz as the Tilly of Prague Engels is comparing him with Johann Tilly, the army commander of the Catholic League during the Thirty Years’ War, famous for the savage way he dealt with the Protestant population of conquered towns as well as for his military pillage.
97 The national guard — an armed civic militia that was formed in Paris at the beginning of the French revolution of 1789-93 and existed, with intervals, till August 1871. During the February revolution of 1848, a considerable section of the national guard took the side of the insurgents, but in the course of the Paris uprising in June 1848 the Provisional Government employed the national guards of bourgeois districts in the fight against the workers.
98 In the Neue Rheinische Zeitung this item was followed by a report on the events in Paris printed in smaller type and based, apparently, on the French newspapers which had just arrived. Part of it read: “The immediate cause of the new uprising was measures directed at abolishing the national workshops — censuses of the workers, expulsion of workers who were not born in Paris to their native parts or to Sologne to build canals, introduction of piecework in the remaining workshops etc. — as well as the law on reintroduction of caution money for journals, open attacks (see today’s issue of our paper, ‘Paris’, June 22) on the popular press, debates in the National Assembly so closely resembling those in the Chamber of Peers under Louis Philippe that even the noble knight Montalembert, in his speech at the session on the 22nd, said the same things, in a somewhat different form, which he had said shortly before the February revolution in defence of money-bags, the law against street gatherings etc.”
The report quoted at length the French newspaper Journal des Dibats politiques et littéraires’s account of the events of June 22 in Paris. It was hostile towards the insurgents and misrepresented their conflict with the Minister of Public Works, Marie, a moderate republican and spokesman of the Government. For this reason the Neue Rheinische Zeitung’s report ended with a warning: “It should not he forgotten that the Journal des Débats, which printed this report, is an old Court sheet and Marie is an advocate of the law against street gatherings and the man of the National”
99 This refers to the address sent by the electors of Berncastel to August Reichensperger, their deputy in the Prussian National Assembly, expressing their indignation at his conduct, and that of other deputies from the Rhine Province, during the debate on the revolution: their vote to pass on to the agenda was considered repudiation of the revolution.
100 The reference is to the Labour Commission that met at the Luxembourg Palace under the chairmanship of Louis Blanc. This was set up on February 28, 1848, by the Provisional Government under pressure from the workers, who demanded a Ministry of Labour. The Commission, in which both workers and employers were represented, acted as mediator in labour conflicts, often taking the side of the employers. The revolutionary action of Paris workers on May 15, 1848, led to the end of the Luxembourg Commission, since the Government disbanded it next day.
National workshops were instituted by a government decree immediately after Louis the February revolution of 1849. The Government thus sought to discredit Blanc’s ideas on the organisation of labour in the eyes of the workers and, at the same time, to utilise the workers of the national workshops organised on military lines in the struggle against the revolutionary proletariat. Revolutionary ideas, however, continued to gain ground among workers employed in the national workshops, and the Government took steps accordingly to limit the number of workers employed in them to send some off to public works in the provinces etc. This caused great indignation among the Paris proletariat and was one of the reasons for the June uprising. After its suppression, the Cavaignac Government issued a decree disbanding the national workshops (July 3, 1848).
On June 7, 1848, the Constituent Assembly passed a law against gatherings. Any violation of this law was punishable by imprisonment of up to ten years.
101 The mobile guard was set up by a decree of the Provisional Government on February 25, 1848, to fight against the revolutionary masses. These armed units consisted mainly of lumpen-proletarians and were used to crush the June uprising in Paris.
102 The Palais Royal was the residence of Louis XIV from 1643; in 1692 it became property of the Orléans branch of the Bourbons. Following the February revolution of 1848 it was proclaimed state property and its name was changed to Palais National.
103 The reference is to the Café Toftoni on the boulevard des Italiens; when the Stock Exchange was closed, business transactions were carried on in this café and its vicinity As distinct from the official Stock Exchange, the Café Tortoni and the adjacent district became known as the ‘,small Stock Exchange”.
104 The municipal guard of the republic (also known as the republican guard) — a detachment of 2,600 men subordinated to the prefect of Police — was formed on May 16, 1848, by decree of the French Government, frightened by the revolutionary action of the Paris workers on May 15. The republican guard fulfilled police functions in Paris.
105 This article was first published in English in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
106 An article published in The Northern Star No. 557, June 24, 1848, under the title “The New Rhenish Gazette” stated: “New Rheinische Zeitung is the title of a new daily journal lately started at Cologne. This journal, which announces itself ‘the organ of the democracy’, is conducted with singular ability and extraordinary boldness; and we hail it as a worthy, able, and valiant comrade in the grand crusade against tyranny and injustice in every shape and form. The principal editor is Dr. Marx one of the ablest of the defenders of Labour’s rights in Europe. The assistant editors include W. Wolff, of Breslaw, a sterling democrat: Dr. Dronke, of Coblentz, ex-state prisoner; F. Wolff, of Cologne (was ten years in Paris); H. Bürgers (of Cologne, a favourite popular orator, and member of the first Popular assembly at Frankfort); Frederick Engels, whose able writings have often graced the columns of the Star and George Weerth, a name honourably known to our readers as the unmasker of the Freetrade delusionists at the celebrated Brussels Conference. We wish our contemporary a long career of usefulness and victory.”
107 Words from the French patriotic song based on the Song of the Girondists from Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, a play by Alexandre Dumas (father) and Auguste Maquet which was staged in 1847. The words and music of the refrain are taken from Rouget de Lisle. The song won wide popularity not long before the 1848 revolution and was known as “the second Marseillaise”.
108 See Note 76.
109 The Society of the Rights of Man and the Citizen was a democratic organisation that arose during the July monarchy. Led by Armand Barbès, Aloysius Huber and others, the Society united a number of clubs in the capital and the provinces and fought for the implementation of the Jacobin Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen adopted in 1793. Some of the members of this Society were leaders of the June uprising. For instance, the retired officer Kersausie, Chairman of the Society’s Committee of Action, drew up a plan for an armed uprising which was partially carried out during the June events in Paris.
110 The reference is to the heroic defence of Saragossa during the Spanish people’s war of liberation against Napoleon’s rule. The city was twice besieged by the French (from June to August 1808 and from December 1808 to February 1809) and it was only after the second siege, during which over 40,000 of its defenders perished, that Saragossa surrendered to the superior forces of the French.
111 The municipal guard of Paris formed after the July revolution of 1830, was subordinate to the Prefect of Police and used to suppress popular uprisings. Following the February revolution of 1848, the municipal guard was disbanded.
112 The Île Louvier, separated from the right bank by a narrow branch of the Seine, was connected with the mainland in 1844, forming a stretch between the boulevard Morland and the Henry IV embankment.
113 An allusion to the fact that, in suppressing the proletarian uprising, the republican guard undertook police functions similar to those of the monarchist municipal guard.
114 A passage from this article by Marx was later included in the first article of the series “From 1848 to 1849” (subsequently published by Engels under the title The Class Struggles in France), printed in the journal Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-Ökonomische Revue in 1850.
An English translation of this article was first published in 1851 under the title “June 29, 1848” in No. 16 of the Chartist weekly Notes to the People which was edited by Ernest Jones. Later translations appeared in England and the United States between the 1920s and the 1940s. In 1972 the article was published in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, and in 1973 in the collection Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848. Political Writings Vol. 1, London, Penguin Books.
115 The party which formed around the daily paper Le National in the 1840s was composed of moderate republicans headed by Armand Marrast; it was supported by the industrial bourgeoisie and a section of the liberal intellectuals.
The party that supported the French daily La Réforme consisted of democrats and republicans headed by Ledru-Rollin; petty-bourgeois socialists led by Louis Blanc were also associated with it.
116 The Executive Committee (the Commission of the Executive Government) — the Government of the French Republic set up by the Constituent Assembly on May 10, 1848, to replace the Provisional Government which had resigned. It survived until June 24, 1848, when Cavaignac’s dictatorship was established.
117 The dynastic opposition — an oppositional group in the French Chamber of Deputies during the July monarchy (1830-48). The group headed by Odilon Barrot represented the views of the liberal industrial and commercial bourgeoisie, and favoured a moderate electoral reform, which they regarded as a means of preventing revolution and preserving the Orléans dynasty.
118 The legitimists were supporters of the Bourbon dynasty, which was overthrown in 1830. They upheld the interests of the big hereditary landowners.
119 See Note 49.
120 The reference is to an official poster which appeared in the streets of Paris on June 26 announcing that “the insurgents have been defeated, the struggle has ceased, and order has triumphed over anarchy”.
121 This article was first published in English in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
122 The reference is to the Paris uprising of June 5-6, 1832, prepared by the Left wing of the republicans as well as by members of secret societies including the Society of the Friends of the People. The uprising flared up during the funeral of General Lamarque, an opponent of Louis Philippe’s Government. The insurgent workers threw up barricades which they defended with great courage and persistence.
123 The royalist uprising in Paris on 12 and 13 Vendoemiaire (October 4 and 5), 1795, was suppressed by the republican troops under the command of General Bonaparte.
124 An abridged English translation of this article was first published in the magazine Labour Monthly, London, 1923, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 32-33. The article was published in full in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “New Rheinische Zeitung”, 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
125 On July 25, 1792, the Duke of Brunswick, commander-in-chief of the Austro-Prussian army fighting against revolutionary France, issued a manifest,, in which he threatened to raze the whole of Paris to the ground.
126 In 1785 an uprising against the rule of the aristocracy and the Catholic clergy who supported William of Orange broke out in the Netherlands. The uprising, which was led by the republican bourgeoisie, deposed William of Orange. Two years later, however, with the help of Prussian troops, he again became the Stadholder of the Netherlands.
127 Under an agreement between Britain, France and Russia concluded at the London Conference of 1830, Greece, whose people rose in revolt against Turkish rule in 1821 and won national independence, was to become a monarchy. The Bavarian Prince Otto was made King of Greece in 1832 while till a minor. He arrived in Greece accompanied by Bavarian troops and high officials and ruled as Otto I. This rule was strongly opposed by the Greek people.
128 At the Congress of the Holy Alliance (a covenant of European monarchs founded on September 26, 1815, on the initiative of the Russian Emperor Alexander I and the Austrian Chancellor Metternich), which began in Troppau in October 1820 and ended in Laibach in May 1821, the principle of intervention in the internal affairs of other states was officially proclaimed. Accordingly, the Laibach Congress decided to send Austrian troops into Italy to crush the revolutionary and national liberation movements there. French intervention in Spain with similar aims was decided at the Congress of Verona in 1822.
Ypsilanti was a Greek patriot who made an unsuccessful attempt to raise a revolt against Turkish rule in March 1821. He fled to Austria, was arrested and imprisoned until 1827.
129 In the 1820s and 1830s Austria and Prussia supported the clerical and feudal party headed by Dom Miguel, which opposed any measures designed to restrict absolutism in Portugal.
130 Austria and Prussia supported Don Carlos, who in 1833 started a civil war in Spain in order to win the throne with the help of the clerical and feudal party.
131 See Note 36.
132 See Note 83.
133 The party of the National — see Note 115.
The Party of Thiers united bourgeois politicians with royalist tendencies supporting the Orléans dynasty and voicing their opinions in the newspaper La Constitutionnel. Before February 1848, they upheld a monarchy with republican institutions and thereafter a republic with monarchical institutions.
The dynastic opposition — see Note 117.
134 The Executive Committee — see Note 116.
The September Laws — see Note 8.
135 The reference is to the clashes between Prussian troops stationed at Trier and its citizens on May 2, 3 and 4, 1848, provoked by the authorities. On the order of Schreckenstein, commander of the 2nd Army Corps, the civic militia of Trier was disbanded.
136 See Note 8.
137 The Holy Hermandad — a league of Spanish cities founded at the end of the fifteenth century with the co-operation of the royal authorities who wanted to make use of wealthy townspeople in their fight against the feudal magnates in an attempt to establish royal absolutism. From the middle of the sixteenth century the armed forces of the Holy Hermandad carried out police functions. Thus the police in general has often been ironically labelled the “Holy Hermandad”.
138 Anneke spoke at the meeting of the Cologne Workers’ Association (see Note 245) which took place at the Gürzenich Hall on June 25, 1848, to debate the setting up of a united commission which was to consist of representatives from the three democratic organisations of Cologne: the Democratic Society, the Workers’ Association and the Association for Workers and Employers.
139 The Code pénal — the penal code adopted in France in 1810 and introduced into the regions of Western and South-Western Germany conquered by the French. The Code pénal and the Code civil remained in effect in the Rhine Province even after the region was annexed by Prussia in 1815. The Prussian Government attempted to reduce the sphere of its application and reintroduce the Prussian Penal Code: a whole series of laws and decrees were promulgated designed to guarantee feudal privileges. These measures, which met great opposition in the Rhineland, were annulled after the March revolution by the decrees issued on April 15, 1848.
140 On March 3, 1848, Anneke was arrested together with Gottschalk and Willich because they had helped to organise a mass meeting in Cologne. All three were accused of “incitement to revolt and founding an illegal association”. They were released from prison on March 21, 1848, on the royal amnesty.
141 The Köslin address — on May 23, 1848, Junkers and officials of the town of Köslin (Pomerania) issued an appeal to the Prussian population to march on Berlin to crush the revolution.
142 These countries were the chief markets for Prussia’s spinning and weaving industry. They were lost even before the revolution of 1848 and 1849.
143 The Prussian General Pfuel ordered the heads of captured Polish insurgents in Posen to be shaved in order to humiliate them.
144 During the summer of 1848, a special detachment of armed men dressed in civilian clothes was set up in Berlin ‘ These persons were to be used in addition to the regular police to break up street gatherings and mass demonstrations. Another of their functions was to gather intelligence. These special policemen were called “constables” by analogy with the special constabulary employed in England to disperse the Chartist demonstration on April 10, 1848.
145 At the close of the session of July 4, 1848, the Prussian National Assembly decided to grant the committee investigating the events at Posen unlimited authority. Contrary to all parliamentary rules, representatives of the Right attempted to organise a vote on a motion to limit the powers of the committee. The deputies of the Left walked out of the Assembly in protest. The Right made use of this to pass the motion prohibiting the committee from travelling to Posen and interrogating witnesses and experts on the spot. Thus the Assembly’s original decision was illegally annulled. For debates on the Posen committee see this volume, pp. 57-61, 195-98 and 200-07.
146 On April 8, 1848, during a secret mission on behalf of the King of Prussia Major Wildenbruch handed a Note to the Danish Government. It stated that Prussia was not fighting in Schleswig-Holstein in order to rob Denmark of the duchy but merely in order to combat “radical and republican elements in Germany”, The Prussian Government tried every possible means to avoid official recognition of this compromising document.
147 The article was published in a special supplement to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 39, and also in No. 40 of this newspaper where it was dated “Cologne, July 9”.
148 See Note 145.
149 The Thirty Years’ War, 1618-48 — a European war, in which the Pope, the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs and the German Catholic princes rallied under the banner of Catholicism and fought against the Protestant countries: Bohemia, Denmark, Sweden, the Republic of the Netherlands and a number of German states. The rulers of Catholic France — rivals of the Habsburgs — supported the Protestant camp. Germany was the main arena for this struggle, the object of plunder and territorial claims. The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) scaled the political dismemberment of Germany.
150 The Long Parliament (1640-53) — the English Parliament which was convened by Charles I and became the constituent body of the English revolution.
151 On October 20, 1842, the Rheinische Zeitung published a Bill on divorce which was being secretly prepared in government quarters. This started a broad public discussion of the Bill in the newspapers. The publication of the Bill in the Rheinische Zeitung and the blunt refusal of its editors to name the person who had sent in the text of the Bill was one of the reasons for the suppression of the Rheinische Zeitung. For details see present edition, Vol. 1, pp. 274-76 and 307-10.
152 Kamptz — member of the Central Investigation Commission in Mainz (see Note 308), which was instituted in 1819 by decision of the conference of German states. He was one of the instigators of the campaign against the representatives of the opposition among students, intelligentsia and other liberal elements; known as the “demagogues”, they upheld Germany’s unity and constitutional reforms.
Black. red and gold — the colours of the national liberation movement in Germany. p. 208
153 See Note 139.
154 On the motion of the Democratic Society (see Note 66). the popular meeting that gathered in Cologne at the Gürzenich Hall on July 9, 1848, adopted an address to the Prussian National Assembly in which the activities of the Auerswald-Hansemann Government were denounced and the Prussian Assembly was asked to declare the Ministry “divested of the confidence of the country”.
155 See Note 149.
156 Svornost — the Czech national militia formed after the revolutionary events of March 1848 in the Austrian Empire. it was recruited mainly from among students. Its main detachment guarded the Czech Museum in Prague where the Slav Congress was in session (see Note 73). During the June uprising in Prague, this detachment was disarmed and arrested by government troops. The Austrian authorities disbanded the national militia even though it was commanded by moderate representatives of the Czech movement (Baron Karel Villiny) who disapproved of the insurgents.
157 Fictitious purchases — business transactions concluded for a definite period during which no transfer of goods or securities takes place. The speculative element arises from the difference between rates of exchange on the market and commodity prices.
158 See Note 44.
159 The first article, dated “Cologne, July 17”, from the cycle “The Debate on Jacoby’s Motion”, was first published in English in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972. All the other articles in this cycle are published in English for the first time.
160 On June 28, 1848, the Frankfurt National Assembly decided to set up a provisional Central Authority consisting of the Imperial Regent (Archduke John of Austria) and an Imperial Ministry. Since the Central Authority had neither a budget nor an army of its own, it possessed no real power.
In the Prussian National Assembly the formation of a provisional Central Authority was debated at the session of July 11, 1848, when Johann Jacoby tabled this motion on behalf of the Left deputies.
161 See Note 13.
162 See Note 12.
163 The Customs Union (Zollverein) of the German states, which established a common customs frontier, was founded in 1834 and headed by Prussia. Brought into being by the necessity for an all-German market, the Union embraced all the larger German states with the exception of Austria.
164 Vendée — a department in Western France; during the French Revolution the centre of a largely peasant-based royalist uprising. The word “Vendée” came to denote counter-revolutionary actions.
165 See Note 149.
166 The Anti-Corn Law League was founded in 1838 by the Manchester factory owners Cobden and Bright. By demanding unrestricted free trade, the League fought for the abolition of the Corn Laws, which established high tariffs on imported agricultural produce in order to maintain high prices on the home market. In this way, the League sought to weaken the economic and the political position of the landed aristocracy, as well as to cut workers’ wages. The struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landowning aristocracy over the Corn Laws culminated in their repeal in 1846.
167 On April 2, 1848, the republican minority headed by Friedrich Hecker and Gustav Struve walked out of the Pre-parliament (see Note 12), to show its opposition to the policy of compromises pursued by the liberal majority. They counted on support among broad circles of the revolutionary-minded population in Southern and Western Germany, particularly in Baden. Frightened by the growth of the republican movement, the Baden Government decided to increase its army, asked for military assistance from neighbouring German states and issued an order for the arrest of the republican Joseph Fickler, who was denounced by the liberal Karl Mathy. These measures led to the republican uprising on April 12, 1848, under the leadership of Hecker and Struve. Ill-prepared and lacking organisation, the uprising was crushed by the end of April.
168 In most German states elections to the Frankfurt National Assembly were indirect. Under the law of April 8, 1848, the Prussian National Assembly too was elected by two-stage voting.
169 See Note 13.
170 An English translation of this article was first published in the collection: Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848. Political Writings, Vol. 1, London, Penguin Books, 1973.
171 In June 1848, Danish and Prussian plenipotentiaries met at Malmö (Sweden) to negotiate an armistice in the war over Schleswig-Holstein (see Note 28). An agreement was reached on July 8 and approved by the King and the Prussian Government, but the commander-in-chief, General Wrangel, refused to sign it because it was obviously disadvantageous to the German side. The armistice was signed in a modified form on August 26, 1848 (see Note 271).
172 See Note 41.
173 An ironical allusion to the Magna Carta Libertatum — a deed which the insurgent barons of England forced King John to sign on June 15, 1215. Magna Carta introduced certain limitations on the royal prerogative, primarily to the advantage of the big feudal lords. Some concessions were also granted to the knights and the townspeople.
174 See Note 17.
175 On the armistice negotiations with Denmark see Note 171.
The article was first published in English in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
176 See Note 13.
177 The Sound tax was a toll which, from 1425 to 1857, Denmark collected from all foreign vessels passing through the Sound.
178 The Workers’ Congress met in Berlin between August 23 and September 3, 1848, on the initiative of several workers’ organisations. At this Congress, many workers’ associations united into the Workers’ Fraternity. The programme of the Congress was drawn up under the influence of Stephan Born and set the workers the task of implementing narrow craft-union demands, thereby diverting them from the revolutionary struggle. A number of its points bore the stamp of Louis Blanc’s and Proudhon’s utopian ideas. The editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung did not approve of the general stand taken by Born, but they refrained from criticising his views in the press, bearing in mind the progressive nature of the endeavour to unite workers’ associations. The programme of the Workers’ Congress was published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (No. 31, July 1, 1848) as a report from Berlin without editorial comment.
179 On April 6, 1848, the Posen Assembly of the Estates rejected the proposal of the Prussian Government to incorporate the Grand Duchy of Posen into the German Confederation (see Note 13).
180 The government Bill on the compulsory loan was submitted to the Prussian National Assembly on July 12, 1848.
181 Sliding scale — a way of regulating tariffs on imported grain products practised in England during the operation of the Corn Laws, a system of raising or lowering tariffs in proportion to the fall or rise of grain prices on the home market. One set of sliding-scale regulations was introduced by the Peel Ministry in 1842.
182 On special constables see Note 144.
On Fickler’s arrest see Note 167.
183 The First Democratic Congress in Frankfurt am Main was held between June 14 and 17, 1848; it was attended by delegates from 89 democratic and workers’ associations from different towns in Germany. The Congress decided to unite all democratic associations and to set up district committees headed by the Central Committee of German democrats, with headquarters in Berlin. Fröbel, Ran and Kriege were elected members of the Central Committee and Bayrhoffer, Schfitte and Anneke — their deputies. Even after this decision, the democratic movement in Germany still lacked unity and organisation because of the weakness and vacillations of its petty-bourgeois leaders.
The Congress discussed the political programme and organisational structure of the democratic party. A programme point that ran as follows was adopted:
“There is only one acceptable constitution for the German people: a democratic republic, i.e. a system under which the whole society is responsible for the freedom and welfare of its every member.” However, nothing definite was said about the ways to attain this aim.
184 Moderate liberal elements in Germany, adherents of the constitutional monarchy, began to unite into constitutional associations and clubs, headed by the Constitutional Club in Berlin, and into citizens’ associations (see Note 65). Associations of Right-wing forces sprang up alongside them, particularly in Prussia, such as the Prussian associations (Preussenvereine) and the counter-revolutionary Association for the Protection of Property and the Well-Being of All Classes. Catholic organisations in the Rhine Province — associations of Pius IX (Prusvereine) — which campaigned for a moderate constitutional programme resorting to demagogical phraseology, joined either the liberal or the reactionary camp.
185 This article was first published in English in the collections: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, and Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848. Political Writings Vol. 1, London, Penguin Books, 1973.
186 Feudalism was abolished, and juries and the Code Napoléon were introduced in the Rhine Province during the French Revolution and Napoleon’s Empire. Feudal relations were not restored in the Rhineland even after its incorporation into Prussia (1815) where remnants of feudalism survived in spite of the reforms of 1807-11, allowing redemption of feudal obligations.
The Bill abolishing feudal obligations was submitted to the Prussian National Assembly by the Minister of Agriculture Gierke on July 11, 1848, and discussed on July 18.
187 See Note 88.
188 See Note 69.
189 This article was first published in English in the magazine Labour Monthly, 1948, Vol. XXX, No. 8, and later in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
190 Under the Poor Law of 1834 the only relief available to the poor who were fit for work was admission to a workhouse. These were dubbed “Poor Law Bastilles”.
191 In 1824, under mass pressure the English Parliament repealed the ban on trade unions. However, in 1825 it passed a Bill on workers’ associations confirming the repeal of the ban on the trade unions but vigorously limiting their activities.
Merely to urge workers to join a union and take part in a strike was considered, for example, as “coercion” and “violence” and was liable to criminal prosecution.
192 This refers to bloody clashes between workers and police in Birmingham, Glasgow, Newcastle and Sunderland in 1839. The most significant event was the Newport rising in November 1839, due to the deplorable conditions of the South-Wales miners and growing discontent after Parliament had turned down the Chartist petition and a number of popular Chartist agitators (Henry Vincent and others) were arrested. The leaders of the insurrection intended it to lead to a general armed struggle for the People’s Charter. Three poorly armed insurgent detachments (numbering 3,000 men) entered Newport at dawn on November 4 but were dispersed by troops and police who had been brought in advance. On January 13, 1840, the leaders of the insurgents were sentenced to capital punishment which was commuted to transportation as a result of a protest campaign.
When Parliament rejected the second Chartist petition in August 1842 ill conditions of economic crisis and growing poverty, disturbances broke out in some of the industrial districts in England. In Lancashire and in a considerable part of Cheshire and Yorkshire strikes assumed a general nature and in some places (Stockport, Preston and others) they turned into spontaneous revolts. The Government responded with mass arrests and severe sentences for Chartist leaders.
193 See Note 166.
194 The fight for legislative restriction of the working day to ten hours began in England as early as the end of the eighteenth century, and from the 1830s on large sections of the workers became involved in it. In an attempt to use this popular slogan against the industrial bourgeoisie, representatives of the landed aristocracy supported the Ten Hours’ Bill in Parliament. The Bill limiting working hours for women and young children was passed by Parliament on June 8, 1847.
195 This refers to the battle of Custozza, near Verona, between the Austrian army, under the command of Radetzky, and Piedmont troops under the command of King Charles Albert. The fighting went on for three days, from July 23 to 25, without bringing decisive victory to either side. Eventually the Austrian command mustered superior forces and dealt a heavy blow at the Piedmont troops, who were scattered largely due to poor generalship which doomed them to inaction at the decisive moment.
196 In the battle of Curtatone (five kilometres from Mantua) on May 29, 1848, the Austrian troops forced the Tuscany corps, which fought on the side of the Piedmont army, to retreat. The resistance offered by this corps, however, enabled the Piedmont troops to regroup their forces and on May 30, in the battle of Goito, to hurl back the Austrians to their former positions. Nevertheless, the Piedmont command failed to make rise of this success.
197 This article was first published in English in the collection: Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848. Political Writings, Vol. 1, London, Penguin Books, 1973.
In this article the phrase “secret treaties with Napoleon” refers to the Treaty of Tilsit signed in July 1807 by France, Russia and Prussia. In an attempt to split the defeated powers, Napoleon made no territorial claims on Russia and even managed the transfer of part of the Prussian monarchy’s eastern land to Russia. He consolidated an alliance with Alexander I when the two emperors met in Erfurt in the autumn of 1808. At the same time, this treaty imposed harsh terms on Prussia, which lost nearly half its territory to the German states dependent on France, had to pay indemnifies, had its army limited etc. However, Russia, as well as Prussia, had to sever alliance with England and, to her disadvantage, join Napoleon’s Continental System. Napoleon formed the vassal Duchy of Warsaw on Polish territory seized by Prussia during the partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century, and planned to use the duchy as a springboard in the event of war with Russia. Sharp contradictions between France and Russia led to Napoleon’s campaign against Russia in 1812.
198 This refers to the “Appeal to the Germans” issued on March 25, 1813, in Kalisch after the defeat of Napoleon’s Grand Army in Russia in 1812. The Russian Tsar and the King of Prussia called upon the Germans to fight Napoleon and demagogically promised them freedom and independence. It later transpired that the monarchs’ intention was to use the national liberation movements to strengthen the feudal monarchies and privileges of the nobility.
199 For the congresses of the Holy Alliance held in Laibach and Verona, see Note 128.
The delegates of the states forming the German Confederation held a conference in Carlsbad in August 1819. On the initiative of the Austrian Chancellor Metternich and with the approval of the Russian Tsar, measures of struggle against the opposition movement were worked out. The decisions of the conference were approved by the Federal Diet (see Note 13) on September 20, 1819. The Carlsbad decisions envisaged the introduction of preliminary censorship in all German states, strict supervision of universities, prohibition of students’ societies, establishment of an investigation commission to suppress so-called demagogues.
200 See Note 164.
201 See Note 12.
202 The first partition of Poland took place in 1772 between Prussia, Austria and Russia.
203 See Note 146.
204 This refers to the Polish national liberation uprising of November 1830-October 1831. The majority of its participants were revolutionary nobles (the szlachcics) and its leaders came from the ranks of the aristocracy. It was suppressed by Russian troops, with the support of Prussia and Austria. In spite of its defeat, the uprising was of major international significance because it diverted the forces of counter-revolution and thwarted their plans regarding the bourgeois revolution of 1830 in France and the 1830-31 revolution in Belgium.
205 This refers to the rescripts by Frederick William IV of February 3, 1847, convening the United Diet, in which the King referred to the laws on estates representation promulgated in Prussia between the 1820s and the 1840s. The convocation of the United Diet (see Note 25) was presented by the King as implementation of his earlier promises to introduce a Constitution.
206 An allusion to the suppression of the Cracow national liberation uprising in 1846 by Austrian troops and the abolition of the status of the free city of Cracow (“the Cracow Republic”) by decision of the three powers — Austria, Prussia and Russia (see Notes 36 and 47).
207 In the summer of 1848, the anti-feudal movement and the struggle for complete liberation from the yoke of the Turkish Sultan grew in intensity in the Danube principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia), which formally remained autonomous possessions of Turkey. The movement in Wallachia grew into a bourgeois revolution. In June 1848, a Constitution was promulgated, a liberal Provisional Government was formed and George Bibesco, the ruler of Wallachia, abdicated and fled from the country.
On June 28, 1848, twelve-thousand Russian troops entered Moldavia and in July of the same year, Turkish troops also invaded the country. Intervention helped to restore the feudal system and the subsequent entry of Turkish troops into Wallachia, with the consent of the Tsarist Government, brought about the defeat of the bourgeois revolution.
208 Grave economic difficulties (almost universal crop failure) and natural calamities (chosen epidemics and devastating fires) exacerbated the class contradictions in Russia in the spring and summer of 1848. This year witnessed the rise of the peasant movement, cholera “riots” in St. Petersburg and Riga and popular revolts in some gubernias, for example, in Vladimir Gubernia. An important seat of revolutionary ferment was the Kingdom of Poland.
209 The item was printed in the column “French Republic”. It deals with the Press Bill submitted to the French Constituent Assembly at the end of July 1848 and widely discussed in the German press. The Bill provided for severe punishment for insult, in the press, of the authorities, attacks on property, religion and family principles. It was passed by the Assembly on August 9-11, 1848.
210 The New Rheinische Zeitung of July 6, 1848, carried a report received from Ewerbeck, its Paris correspondent, under the heading “Bakunin”. The author reported the current rumour that Mikhail Bakunin was in the secret service of Nicholas I and that George Sand was in possession of evidence to this effect. Such rumours circulated among Polish emigrants even before the 1848 revolution. On July 16, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung reprinted Bakunin’s statement to the editors of the Allgemeine Oder Zeitung in which he refuted these accusations. It also carried Bakunin’s letter to George Sand asking her to make a public statement testifying to the falsity of the rumour, which discredited him as a revolutionary. On August 3, Marx received George Sand’s letter to the New Rheinische Zeitung through the Polish democrat Kokielski and immediately published it with an introductory note from the editors.
In 1853 certain English newspapers accused Marx of having used the Neue Rheinische Zeitung to spread insinuations against Bakunin. Early in September 1853 Marx refuted these charges — the authors of which were emigrants hostile to proletarian revolutionaries — in statements to the editors of the Morning Advertiser and the People’s Paper (see present edition, Vol. 12). In the statement to the Morning Advertiser he recalled that the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had published Bakunin’s letters of self-acquittal and the relevant letter of George Sand; he also quoted the editors’ introductory note to this letter.
Subsequently, in his letter to Lassalle written on March 3, 1860, Marx gave the following description of this episode: “I printed in the New Rheinische Zeitung a denunciation of Bakunin received from two different sources in Paris, the one being a Pole I knew and the other — the Paris lithographic bulletin which would anyway have circulated this denunciation to al(papers even if I had not printed it. The fact that the accusation was made publicly was in the interest of the cause as well as of Bakunin himself. I reprinted immediately Bakunin’s refutation which appeared in the Neue Oder Zeitung. Koshkielski, whom Bakunin sent to Cologne in order to challenge me to a duel, examined the letters from Paris and became convinced that as an editor I was in duty bound to have the denunciation printed (it appeared as a report with no comments). Coupon he wrote to Bakunin informing him that he could no longer represent his interests. Koshkielski became one of the best and most treasured friends of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. 1 gave public satisfaction to Bakunin in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and made it up with him when we met in Berlin in August 1848. Subsequently (in 1851) I broke a lance defending him in the Tribune.” (This refers to “Revolution and Counter Revolution in Germany”, an article which Engels wrote for Marx and in which he highly praised Bakunin as a participant in the Dresden uprising of May 1849.)
211 An allusion to the closest entourage of Frederick William IV (the Gerlach brothers, Radowitz and other prominent figures with counter-revolutionary aspirations).
212 Proudhon’s speech is set forth and quoted in this article according to newspaper reports. The full text of Proudhon’s speech at the session of the French National Assembly on July 31, 1848, was published in Compte rendu des séances de l'Assemblée national, Vol. II, Paris, 1849, pp. 770-82.
213 The Inquisition proceedings — a form of criminal proceedings under absolutism, which allowed extremely wide powers to judges, who combined the functions of prosecutor and examining magistrate, trial in camera, and the use of torture to obtain evidence. The Inquisition proceedings became particularly notorious in Catholic Church courts and especially those of the Holy Inquisition which examined crimes of heresy.
214 Lettres de cachet, i.e. warrants for arrest signed by the King of France at the time of the absolute monarchy. Any person could be imprisoned without investigation or court proceedings.
215 See Note 92.
216 The threshing gardeners (Dreschgärtner) — the name applied in some places ill Germany, particularly in Silesia, to dependent peasants who rented a plot of land with a house from the landowner and, in return, had to work for him (mainly harvesting) for a small payment in cash or in kind.
217 Banalities (the original has Zwangs- und Bannrechte) — feudal lords’ right to impose taxes on peasants for the obligatory use of flour mills, wine presses etc. owned by feudal lords.
218 Traditional holidays with carnivals in Belgium to celebrate its separation from Holland and its independence proclaimed at the time of the 1830 revolution.
219 The debates on the Grand Duchy of Posen were held in the Frankfurt National Assembly on July 24-27, 1848.
220 See Note 47.
221 Engels refers to the repeated promises of Frederick William III to introduce a Constitution in Prussia based on the estate principle.
222 This refers to the cowardly and servile conduct of the Prussian bureaucracy after Jena and Auerstedt in the defeat of Prussia by Napoleonic France in the battles of October 1806 (see also Note 77).
223 The treaties signed by Russia, Prussia and Austria in Vienna on May 3, 1815, and the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna signed on June 9, 1815, which legalised the abolition of the Duchy of Warsaw established in 1807 by Napoleon and a new partition of the Polish lands between Austria, Prussia and Russia, pledged that representative bodies and national political institutions would be set up in all Polish lands. In Posen this resulted in the convocation of an assembly of the estates endowed with advisory functions.
224 See Note 36.
225 The Convention of Jaroslawiec was concluded between the Posen Committee of Polish insurgents and the Prussian Commissioner General Willisen on April 11, 1848. It stipulated that the Polish insurgents were to lay down their arms and disband. In return, the Poles were promised the “national reorganisation” of Posen, i.e. the formation of a Polish army, the appointment of Poles to administrative and other posts and recognition of Polish as an official language.
However, the Convention was treacherously violated by the Prussian administration, and the national liberation movement in Posen was brutally suppressed by Prussian troops. The border between the western (“German”) part of the Duchy of Posen, which was not liable to reorganisation, and the eastern (Polish) one, was shifted further to the east. The promised “reorganisation” was never carried out.
226 See Note 149.
227 The chambers of reunion (chambres de réunion) were set up by Louis XIV in 1679-80 to justify and provide legal and historical grounds for France’s claims to certain lands in neighbouring states, primarily in the territory of Germany; these lands were subsequently occupied by French troops.
228 The Polish Constitution of 1791 expressed the aspirations of the progressive sections of the nobility and urban bourgeoisie. It abolished the liberum veto (the principle that resolutions of the Diet could only be passed unanimously) and the elective monarchy, provided for a Government responsible to the Diet and granted the urban bourgeoisie various political and economic rights. The Constitution was directed against feudal anarchy and aimed at strengthening the Central Authority; it also alleviated to some extent the position of peasant serfs by recognising the legal force of commutation agreements between landowners and peasants. As a result of the revolt of the nobility and the interference on the part of Catherine II of Russia and Frederick William II of Prussia, the Constitution was repealed in 1792-93 and a second partition of Poland between Russia and Prussia took place.
229 The majority of deputies to the Frankfurt National Assembly were members of the liberal Centre which, in its turn, was split into two factions — the Right Centre, (Dahlmann, Gagern, Bassermann, Mathy, Mevissen and others) and the Left Centre (including Mittermaier, Werner and Raveaux). The deputies of both centres were supporters of the constitutional monarchy.
230 On August 6, 1848, troops of all German states were, by an order issued by the Imperial Minister of War Peucker on July 16, 1848, to take the oath of allegiance to the Imperial Regent Archduke John at the celebration parade. Frederick William IV, who himself claimed to be the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the German Confederation, cancelled the parade in Prussia appointed for August 6.
231 Janiszewski apparently, quoted the following words by Jean Jacques Rousseau — addressed to the Poles: “If You cannot prevent the enemy from swallowing you up, try at least to prevent him from digesting you.” See also his work Considerations sur le gouvernement de Pologne, et sur so réformation Projette.
232 At a session of the Frankfurt National Assembly on August 7, 1848, Deputy Brentano spoke in favour of amnesty for the participants in the Baden republican uprising and for their leader Hecker. The Right-wing deputies kept interrupting Brentano and finally forced him to leave the rostrum.
233 Paragraph 6 of the Fundamental Rights of the German People worked out by the d on Frankfurt National Assembly as part of the future Constitution (it was adopted on August 2, 1848) abolished all estates privileges and all titles not connected with office.
234 Don Carlos who, in 1833, appeared as a pretender to the Spanish throne against Isabella, daughter of King Ferdinand VII, referred to the 1713 law prohibiting succession to the throne along the female line. In 1838-40, Lichnowski took part in the civil war unleashed by Don Carlos and was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general.
235 Wasserpolacken — original name of ferrymen on the Oder who were mainly natives of Upper Silesia; subsequently it became widespread in Germany as a nickname of Silesian Poles.
236 The Albigensian wars (1209-29) were waged by the feudal magnates of Northern France, together with the Pope, against the movement of townspeople and the lesser nobility, supported by peasants, in Languedoc, in the south, who were seeking independence from the north, This movement took the form of a “heresy”, being directed against the power and doctrine of the Catholic Church as well as against the secular power of the feudal state. And its adherents were called “Albigenses” from the city of Albi, one of their main centres. The Albigensian heresy was wiped out after twenty years of war, and a considerable part of Languedoc annexed to the lands of the French kings. The whole of Languedoc was annexed to France in 1271, retaining, however, a measure of self-government which was finally abolished at the time of the absolute monarchy.
237 See Note 73.
238 During the Cracow national liberation uprising in 1846 (see Note 36) the Austrian detachments of Polish insurgents. When the uprising was suppressed, the authorities provoked clashes in Galicia between Ukrainian peasants and participants in the peasant movement in Galicia were severely persecuted.
239 The Wahl-Manifest der radicalen Reformpartei für Deutschland written by Ruge and published in Die Reforme No. 16, April 16, 1848, proclaimed “the editing of the rationale of events” as the main task of the National Assembly.
240 The reference is to one of the legends woven round the foundation of the Swiss Confederation, the origin of which dates back to the agreement of the three mountain cantons of Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden in 1291. According to this legend, representatives of the three cantons met in 1307 in the Grütli (Rütli) meadow and took an oath of loyalty in the joint struggle against Austrian rule.
241 This refers to a system of general treaties set up by the Vienna Congress (September 1814-June 1815) which embraced the whole of Europe, with the exception of that part then incorporated in Turkey, The decisions of the Congress helped to restore feudal order, perpetuated the political fragmentation of Germany and Italy, sanctioned the incorporation of Belgium into Holland and the partitions of Poland and outlined measures to combat the revolutionary movement.
242 Lamartine’s manifesto (of March 4, 1848) — a circular of the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the foreign policy principles and goals of the Provisional Government of the French Republic.
243 On July 27, 1848, the Frankfurt National Assembly approved the decision passed earlier by the Federal Diet (see Note 13) to include a number of regions of the Grand Duchy of Posen into the German Confederation, sanctioned the powers vested in the twelve deputies elected from these regions (though the Polish population had refused to take part in elections to the Frankfurt Parliament), confirmed the demarcation line established by General Pfuel in Posen after the repeated transference of this line further east and obliged the Prussian Government “to guarantee the security of Germans residing in Posen”.
This decision aroused strong indignation in democratic circles in Germany. For example, on August 1 1, a general meeting of the Cologne Democratic Society, presided over by Marx, adopted a resolution of protest against the Frankfurt Assembly decisions on the Polish question and sent it to the Assembly (see this volume, pp. 564-65).
244 See Note 230.
245 For the Cologne Democratic Society, see Note 66.
The Cologne Workers’ Association — a workers’ organisation founded by Andreas Gottschalk on April 13, 1848. Its 300 members had increased to 5,000, the majority of whom were workers and artisans, by the beginning of May. The Association was led by the President and the committee, which consisted of representatives of various trades. The newspaper Zeitung des Arbeiter-Vereines zu Köln was the organ of the Association, but from October 26 it was replaced by the Freiheit, Brüderlichkeit, Arbeit. There were a number of branches of the Association. After Gottschalk’s arrest, Moll was elected President on July 6 and he held this post till the state of siege was proclaimed in Cologne in September 1848, when he had to emigrate under threat of arrest. On October 16, Marx agreed to assume this post temporarily at the request of Association members. In November Röser became acting President and on February 28, 1849, Schapper was elected President and remained in this post until the end of May 1849.
The majority of the leading members (Gottschalk, Anneke, Schapper, Moll, Lessner, Jansen, Röser, Nothjung, Bedorf) were members of the Communist League.
During the initial period of its existence, the Workers’ Association was influenced by Gottschalk who, sharing many of the views of the “true socialists “ ignored the historical tasks of the proletariat in the democratic revolution, carried on sectarian tactics of boycotting indirect elections to the Federal and Prussian National Assemblies and came out against support of democratic candidates in elections. He combined ultra-Left phrases with very legalistic methods Cf struggle (workers’ petitions to the Government and the City Council etc.) and supported the demands of the workers affected by craft prejudices etc. From the very beginning, Gottschalk’s tactics were resisted by the supporters of Marx an(i Engels. At the end of June a change-over took place under their influence in the activities of the Workers’ Association, which became a centre of revolutionary agitation among the workers, and from the autumn of 1848 onwards, also among the peasants. Members of the Association organised democratic and workers’ associations in the vicinity of Cologne, disseminated revolutionary literature, including the “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany”, and carried on among themselves education in scientific communism through the study of Marx’s writings. The Association maintained close contact with other workers’ and democratic organisations.
When, in the spring of 1849, Marx and Engels took steps to organise the advanced workers on a national scale and actually started preparing for the creation of a proletarian party, they relied to a considerable extent on the Cologne Workers’ Association.
The mounting counter-revolution and intensified police reprisals prevented further activities of the Cologne Workers’ Association to unite and organise the working masses. After the Neue Rheinische Zeitung ceased publication and Marx, Schapper and other leaders of the Association left Cologne, it gradually turned into an ordinary workers’ educational society.
246 Paragraph 1 of Article 1 of the Fundamental Rights of the German People worked out by the Frankfurt National Assembly was adopted at its session of July 21, 1848, with the following wording: “Every German possesses the general German right of citizenship from which it accrues that a citizen of every separate state enjoys all rights of a naturalised citizen of another state.”
247 After the battle of Custozza (see Note 195) the Piedmont troops retreated. On August 4, 1848, they were defea