1 Marx’s article “The Crisis in Berlin” and his series of articles “Counter-Revolution in Berlin” were written in response to the first moves in the counter-revolutionary coup d'état in Prussia. On November 1, 1848, Frederick William IV dismissed the moderate liberal Pfuel Ministry, and an openly counter-revolutionary Ministry headed by Brandenburg and Manteuffel was formed. On November 9 a royal decree transferred the Prussian National Assembly from Berlin to Brandenburg, a small provincial town. This was the beginning of the coup d'état which ended with the dissolution of the Assembly on December 5, 1848. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung, under Marx’s editorship, started a campaign to mobilise the people against the counter-revolution.
In English this article was first published in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was founded by Marx as a militant organ intended to reach and to influence the masses and, by their ideological and political education and consolidation, to prepare the ground for a mass party of the German proletariat. At the same time, it served to direct the activities of the Communist League which Marx and Engels founded in 1847 and regarded as the embryo of the future proletarian party. At the peak of the 1848 revolution, the League itself was too weak and numerically small to immediately rally the workers. There was no point in secret activity during the revolution, and Marx and Engels instructed League members throughout Germany to use the legal opportunities afforded by joining the workers’ associations and democratic societies which were being formed. In the situation that had arisen only a proletarian revolutionary newspaper could direct and co-ordinate the activities of Communist League members and mobilise the masses to carry through the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
It was decided to publish the newspaper in Cologne, the capital of the Rhine Province, one of the most economically and politically advanced regions in Germany (here there were considerable cadres of the proletariat, and the Code Napoléon which was in force provided for greater freedom of the press than Prussian Law). The newspaper was given the name of Neue Rheinische Zeitung to emphasise that it was to continue the revolutionary-democratic traditions of the Rheinische Zeitung edited by Marx in 1842 and 1843. Taking account of the specific circumstances, with no independent mass workers’ party in Germany, Marx, Engels and their followers entered the political scene as the Left, actually proletarian, wing of the democratic movement. This determined the stand of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which began to appear under the subtitle Organ der Demokratie (Organ of Democracy).
The first issue of the newspaper appeared in the evening of May 31, 1848, and was dated June 1. The editorial board consisted of Karl Marx (editor-in-chief), Heinrich Bürgers. Ernst Dronke, Georg Weerth, Ferdinand and Wilhelm Wolff and Frederick Engels, joined in October 1848 by the poet Ferdinand Freiligrath. All the editors were members of the Communist League. The editorial board was known for its unanimity of views, smooth working and precise division of functions. Besides reading and answering letters and helping the editor-in-chief, each member had to deal with a definite range of questions. The editorial board had its correspondents in different parts of Germany and abroad. It established regular contacts with a number of democratic periodicals in other countries.
As a rule, Marx and Engels wrote the editorials formulating the newspaper’s stand on the most important questions of the revolution. These were marked “*Köln” or “**Köln”. Sometimes editorial articles marked with one asterisk were printed in other sections under the heading of News from Italy, France, Hungary, Switzerland and other countries. In addition to editorials, Engels wrote articles on other subjects, including the course of the revolutionary liberation movement in Italy, the revolutionary war in Hungary, the political life of Switzerland, and so on. Wilhelm Wolff contributed articles on the agrarian question, on the condition of the peasants and the peasant movement, particularly in Silesia. He was also responsible for the current events section. Georg Weerth wrote feuilletons and Ernst Dronke contributed various reports (including reports from Paris). The only article which Heinrich Bürgers wrote for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was practically rewritten by Marx. He was more successful as the newspaper’s representative at workers’ meetings. Freiligrath published his revolutionary poems in the newspaper.
The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was a daily (from September 1848 it appeared every day except Monday). On some days a second edition was put out in order to supply the readers with prompt information on all the most important revolutionary developments in Germany and Europe; supplements were printed when there was too much material for the four pages of the issue, and special supplements and special editions in the form of leaflets carried the latest and most important news.
Even in the first months of the newspaper’s existence the bourgeois shareholders started to complain of the consistent revolutionary line of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, its militant internationalism and political denunciations of the Government. Its editors were persecuted by the Government and attacked in the feudal monarchist and liberal bourgeois press. Shareholders were especially scared off by articles in defence of the June 1848 uprising of the Paris proletariat.
To make Marx’s stay in the Rhine Province more difficult, the Cologne authorities, on instructions from Berlin, refused to reinstate him in his rights as a Prussian citizen (which Marx had renounced in 1845), and on several occasions instituted legal proceedings against him and other editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. On September 26, 1848, when a state of siege was declared in Cologne, several democratic newspapers, including the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, were suspended. To avoid arrest, Engels, Dronke and Ferdinand Wolff had to leave Germany for a time. Wilhelm Wolff stayed in Cologne but for several months lived in hiding. When the state of siege was lifted the paper resumed publication on October 12, thanks to the great efforts of Marx who contributed all his ready money to the paper. Until January 1849, the main 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 particularly intensified after the counter-revolutionary coup in Prussia in November-December 1848. On February 7, 1849, Marx, Engels and Hermann Korff, the responsible publisher, were summoned to appear before a jury in Cologne, and the next day Marx, together with Schapper and lawyer Schneider, was brought to trial as the leader of the Rhenish District Committee of Democrats. But in both cases Marx and his associates were acquitted thanks to skilful defence.
The failure of these prosecutions compelled the authorities to resort to other means for the prohibition of the revolutionary periodical. 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 new repressions against other editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung put an end to the publication of the newspaper. Its last issue (No. 301), 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, “Their last word everywhere and always will be: emancipation of the working class!”
2 By the “theory of agreement” (Vereinbarungstheorie) the Prussian liberal bourgeoisie sought to justify its policy of compromise in the revolution. The “agreement theory” meant that the Prussian National Assembly convened in May 1848 was to draft a Constitution and introduce a constitutional system, not on the basis of its sovereign and constitutive rights, but “by agreement with the Crown”. By accepting this formula, which was advanced by the Camphausen-Hansemann Government, the Assembly’s liberal majority in fact abandoned the principle of popular sovereignty and gave freedom of action, to the counter-revolutionaries who wanted to restore the absolute power of the King. Beginning with the early issues of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Marx and Engels sharply criticised the “theory of agreement” calling its supporters “agreers” and the Berlin Assembly — the “Agreement Assembly”. They warned that this theory would only serve the King as a screen for preparing a counter-revolutionary coup d'état and the forcible dissolution of the Assembly.
3 This article, as well as a number of other reports below, was written by Engels during his forced stay in Switzerland. On September 26, 1848, a state of siege was declared in Cologne and an order was issued for the arrest of some of the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, including Engels. Engels emigrated from Prussia to Belgium, where he was arrested by the Brussels police and on October 4 deported to France. After a short stay in Paris Engels went on foot to Switzerland (see his travel notes “From Paris to Berne” in Vol. 7 of the present edition, pp. 507-29). About November 9 Engels arrived in Berne via Geneva and Lausanne and remained there until January 1849. While in emigration he regularly sent to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung articles and various items of information.
4 In 1707-1806 the principality of Neuenburg and Vallondis (the German names for Neuchâtel and Valangin) was a dwarf state under the rule of Prussia. In 1806, during the Napoleonic wars, Neuchâtel was ceded to France. In 1815, by decision of the Vienna Congress, it was incorporated into the Swiss Confederation as its 21st canton but at the same time retained its vassal dependence on Prussia. On February 29, 1848. a bourgeois revolution in Neuchâtel put an end to Prussian rule and a republic was proclaimed. However, up to 1857 Prussia constantly laid claim to Neuchâtel and was forced to renounce it officially only under pressure from France.
5 An allusion to General Pfuel’s participation in the suppression of the national liberation uprising in Posen, a duchy under Prussia’s rule, which took place in the spring of 1848. On his orders the insurgents who had been taken prisoner had their heads shaved and their hands and ears branded with lunar caustic (in German Höllenstein i.e. stone of hell); hence his nickname “von Höllenstein”. p. 7 6
6 The Holy Hermandad (Holy Brotherhood) — a league of Spanish towns set up at the end of the fifteenth century with the approbation of the King to fight against the powerful feudal lords. From the middle of the sixteenth century the armed detachments of the Holy Hermandad performed police duties. Thus. the police in general was often ironically labelled the “Holy Hermandad”.
7 In accordance with the Constitution of the Swiss Confederation adopted on September 12, 1848, the National Council (Nationalrat) consisted of deputies elected every three years by universal suffrage. The Constitution also provided for the existence of the Council of States (Ständerat) made up of two deputies from each canton. The two Councils constituted the Federal Assembly (Bundesversammlung), the supreme legislative body in Switzerland.
Great Councils (Gross Räte) — legislatures of urban cantons set up under the Swiss Constitution of 1803.
8 In English this article was first published in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung” 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
9 Demi-cantons — out of the 22 Swiss cantons three — Appenzell, Basle and Unterwalden — were for various reasons (geographical, religious etc.) divided into demi-cantons: Appenzell into Innerrhoden and Ausserrhoden, Basle into Basle and Baselland, and Unterwalden into Obwalden and Nidwalden.
Diet (Tagsatzung) — supreme organ of the Swiss Confederation which existed until the latter was reorganised and transformed from a union of states into a federal state in 1848. The Diet consisted of representatives of the separate cantons. In 1848 it adopted a new Constitution and yielded place to the Federal Assembly consisting of two Chambers (the National Council and the Council of States).
10 The Ur-cantons (Urkantönli) are the mountain cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden which in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries formed the nucleus of the Swiss Confederation. During the civil war of 1847 these cantons, as members of the Sonderbund, opposed the progressive forces of Switzerland.
Separatists — members of the Sonderbund, a separatist union formed by the seven economically backward Catholic cantons of Switzerland in 1843 to resist progressive bourgeois reforms and defend the privileges of the Church and the Jesuits. The decree of the Swiss Diet of July 1847 on the dissolution of the Sonderbund served as a pretext for the latter to start hostilities against the other cantons early in November. On November 23, 1847, the Sonderbund army was defeated by the federal forces.
11 During the bourgeois revolution of 1820-23 in Spain, the liberal party split into a Right wing, the Moderados, and a Left wing, the Exaltados.
12 On May 21, 1847, the canton of Geneva adopted a new bourgeois-democratic Constitution. Among other things, it legalised freedom of faith and the election of the State Council (the cantonal Government) directly by the people, granted suffrage to persons living on allowances, introduced free primary instruction etc. The canton’s previous Constitution was abolished by its Great Council as a result of a popular uprising in October 1846 in which a decisive role was played by the workers of Saint-Gervais.
13 For the proletarian uprising ‘ Paris on June 23-26, 1848, see present edition, in Vol. 7, pp. 124-28 and 130-64.
The popular uprising in Vienna on October 6-7, 1848, flared up in response to the Austrian Government’s order to dissolve the Hungarian Sejm and to dispatch Austrian troops to aid the Croatian Ban Jellachich who, supported by the Emperor’s court, had started a counter-revolutionary campaign against Hungary and been defeated by the Hungarian revolutionary forces on September 29. Headed by the petty-bourgeois democrats, the masses prevented the Vienna garrison from marching to Hungary and seized control of the city after a fierce struggle. However, the insurgents did not receive the necessary support from other revolutionary forces in Austria and Germany and revolutionary measures were sabotaged by the Vienna bourgeoisie. The Hungarian troops were not energetic enough in their march to the aid of the insurgents and were halted by Jellachich on October 29 while the counter-revolutionary army of Windischgrätz had already been fighting in the city itself from October 26. On November 1 the resistance of the insurgents was broken. The restoration of the Habsburgs to power was accompanied by savage counter-revolutionary terror.
14 In the spring of 1798, after the troops of the French Directory entered Switzerland, the one and indivisible Helvetian Republic was proclaimed there and a Constitution adopted on the pattern of the French Constitution of 1795. For the first time in the history of the country a central government was created, the equality of the cantons declared, the privileges of the estates and feudal dependence of the peasants abolished, the medieval guilds liquidated etc. Swiss participation in France’s wars against the forces of the anti-French coalition was accompanied by a struggle between the progressive and reactionary forces within the country for preserving or abolishing the Helvetian Republic. The latter was abolished in 1803 by Napoleon, who restored, with certain modifications, the previous decentralised state system of the Swiss Confederation. In 1815 the Vienna Congress acknowledged Switzerland’s permanent neutrality and approved the Federal Act adopted by the Swiss Diet in 1814, which limited the powers of the central Government still more. Though particularism was restored, on the whole the anti-feudal measures of the Helvetian Republic remained in force.
15 The riot which took place on October 24, 1848, in Freiburg (Fribourg) was f organised by the Catholic priests led by Bishop Marilley, and aimed at overthrowing the democratic Government of the canton. It was quickly suppressed.
16 In English this article was first published in full in the collection: Kart Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972. Prior to this, an excerpt from the article published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung on November 12, 1848, appeared under the title “We Refuse to Pay Taxes” in the book: Karl Marx, On Revolution, ed. by S. K. Padover, New York, 1971 (“The Karl Marx Library” series).
17 Speaking of the Brandenburg Ministry, Frederick William IV said: “Either Brandenburg in the Assembly or the Assembly in Brandenburg.” In its issue Of November 9, 1848, the Neue Preussische Zeitung changed this to: “Brandenburg in the Assembly and the Assembly in Brandenburg.”
18 The Emperor Charles V is said to have ordered his own funeral to be performed and to have taken part in the burial service shortly before his death.
19 The criminal code of Charles V (Constitutio criminalis carolina), adopted by the Imperial Diet in Regensburg in 1532, was notorious for its extremely cruel penalties.
20 During the uprising of August 10, 1792, which overthrew the French monarchy, Louis XVI (of the Bourbon dynasty originating from the Capet dynasty) sought protection in the National Assembly. The next day he was arrested. The Convention which tried him found him guilty of conspiring against the freedom of the nation and the state security and sentenced him to death. On January 2 1, 1793, Louis XVI was guillotined. In its issues Nos. 19, 21, 22. 26 and 98 for June 19, 21, 22, 26 and September 9, 1848, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung published a series of articles under the title “Die Verhandlungen des National-Konvents über Louis Capet, Ex-König von Frankreich” describing the trial of Louis XVI.
21 Marx is speaking here about the Austrian Imperial Diet which was in session in Vienna from July 1848. The majority of its Slav deputies were associated with the bourgeoisie or the landowners and sought to set up a Slav federal constitutional-monarchic state under the supremacy of Austria and its Emperor. During the Vienna uprising of October 6-7, 1848, the deputies belonging to the Czech national-liberal party urgently left Vienna for Prague, where they continued to provide assistance to the fugitive Emperor in Olmütz (Olomouc) in his struggle against the Vienna insurgents.
22 When on November 9, 1848, the Prussian National Assembly was informed of the royal decree transferring it from Berlin to Brandenburg the majority of the Right-wing deputies obediently left the building.
23 On June 28, 1848, the Frankfurt National Assembly decided to set up a provisional Central Authority (Zentralgewalt) consisting of the Imperial Regent (Archduke John of Austria) and an Imperial Ministry. This provisional Central Authority had neither a budget nor an army of its own, possessed no real power, and was an instrument of the counter-revolutionary policy of the German princes.
24 In the preface to his book Kahldorf über den Adel in Briefen an den Grafen M. von Moltke, which Heine published in March 1831, he says with reference to the French revolution of 1830: “The Gallic cock has now crowed a second time, and in Germany, too, day is breaking.”
25 Lazzaroni — a contemptuous nickname for declassed proletarians, primarily in the Kingdom of Naples. They were repeatedly used by the Government in the struggle against liberal and democratic movements.
26 The Academic Legion — a student militarised organisation founded in Vienna in March 1848. Each faculty of the University formed a detachment divided into companies. The Legion consisted mostly of radical democrats. It also included University lecturers and professors as well as writers, poets, journalists and physicians. The Academic Legion played a significant role in the Austrian revolutionary movement in 1848. It was dissolved after the suppression of the October uprising in Vienna.
The civic militia (Bürgerwehr) — the Vienna national guard formed after the March events: it was in its social composition a motley organisation: besides artisans and small shopkeepers, it included representatives of the bourgeoisie. Its bourgeois units took part in firing on the workers’ demonstration already in August 1848. During the October uprising in Vienna the bourgeois elements of the national guard were pushed into the background and the artisans and small shopkeepers had the upper hand.
27 This refers to the speech made by Brandenburg in the Prussian National Assembly on November 9, 1848. In this and other articles that follow, when speaking of events and debates in the Prussian National Assembly, use has been made as a rule of the shorthand reports subsequently published as a separate book: Verhandlungen der constituirenden Versammlung für Preussen, Berlin, 1848.
28 In its issue of November 3, 1848, the Kölnische Zeitung carried an article about an imaginary African tribe, the Hyghlans, an intermediate form between man and ape. “Many of them,” it said, “learn Arabic.” On November 5, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung ridiculed the report, adding: “This discovery is at any rate of the greatest importance for the party of the wailers for whom the Hyghlans will provide a fitting reinforcement.”
For the wailers see Note 127.
29 According to the French Constitution adopted on November 4, 1848, the presidential elections had to take place in December 1848. The President, as head of the executive, was given wide powers by the Constitution, which reflected the growing counter-revolutionary trend among the ruling bourgeoisie, which had been frightened by the June uprising of the workers in Paris. As a result of the December 10 elections Louis Bonaparte became President of the Republic. Three years later he carried out a coup d'état.
30 Marx draws an analogy between the events in Versailles on June 20, 1789 (when the delegates of the States General, which on June 17 declared themselves to be the National Assembly, took an oath in the tennis-court not to disperse until a Constitution had been drawn up), and the events in Berlin on November 11, 1848. On November 9, 1848, a royal decree was read to the delegates transferring the sittings of the Prussian National Assembly from Berlin to Brandenburg but the majority decided to continue their deliberations in Berlin. The next day they were expelled from the building (the playhouse) where their sittings had been held hitherto; from November 11 to 13 the delegates met in the Berlin shooting-gallery , which was occupied by soldiers in the evening of November 13.
31 This decision was adopted by the Prussian National Assembly on November 11, 1848, at a sitting in the Berlin shooting-gallery (see Verhandlungen der constituirenden Versammlung für Preussen. 1848, Bd. 9, Suppl. — Bd.).
32 The Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 142 (second edition) and No. 143, for November 14 and 15, 1848, carried an article by Georg Weerth under the heading “Die Steuerverweigerung in England bei Gelegenheit der Reform-Bill im Jahre 1832”
33 This article is a report from .Berlin worked up by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung editorial board. The most important information was as in this volume printed in larger type and worded by the editors accordingly. The entire conclusion was written by Marx. The rest of the text (published here in small type) contains emphasis by the editors.
This was the first time that the Neue Rheinische Zeitung called on the population to refuse to pay taxes in reply to the coup d'état begun by the Prussian counter-revolutionary forces.
34 The Kölnische Rathaus (Cologne Town Hall) was situated in the centre of Berlin which in the middle of the nineteenth century was still called Kölln or Altkölln (Old Cologne).
35 In the Freiburg (Fribourg) and other Swiss cantons the Government made recognition of the cantonal Constitution one of the conditions for voting at the elections to the Federal Assembly. In Freiburg this measure was directed against clergymen who tried to get their deputies elected to the National Council.
Many members of the National Council, however, regarded this as a violation of the universal suffrage introduced by the 1848 Constitution and managed to have the elections in the Freiburg canton annulled (for details see this volume, pp. 42-43). Subsequently this decision was reviewed and the annulment of the Freiburg elections reversed (see this volume, pp. 57-58).
36 Under pressure from Radetzky, commander-in-chief of the Austrian army in North Italy, the Vorort Berne sent its representatives and a military detachment to Tessin, a canton bordering on Italy, where Italian refugees who supported the insurgent movement against Austria had found asylum. The representatives demanded that all the Italian refugees should he deported from Tessin into the interior of the country. The Tessin Government refused to fulfil this demand and agreed to deport only those Italians who had taken a direct part in the insurgents’ movement. The conflict was discussed in the columns of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung for several months. Engels gave details of the debate on it in the new Swiss Federal Assembly in his article “The National Council” (see this volume, pp. 138-53).
The Vorort (the main canton) — the name given to a Swiss canton in whose capital the Diet, and later the Federal Assembly, held its sittings before Berne was proclaimed the Swiss capital. In 1803-09, there were six main cantons — Freiburg, Berne, Solothurn, Basle, Zurich and Lucerne; in 18 1 5 their number was reduced to three: Zurich, Berne and Lucerne, and the seat of the Diet changed every two years.
Until the Constitution of 1848, the Vorort authorities to a certain extent fulfilled the functions of the country’s Government and its representative was President of the Diet.
37 Marx wrote “Cavaignac and the June Revolution” as an editorial introduction to a series of articles published under the tide “Herr Cavaignac” in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 142 (second edition), No. 145 (special supplement), No. 146, No. 147 (second edition), No. 157 (supplement) and No. 158, November 14, 17, 18 and 19, December 1 and 2, 1848. These articles were reprinted (with certain changes) from the newspaper La Presse where they were published from November 7 to 11, 1848, under the general title: “M. Cavaignac devant la Commission d'Enquête sur l'insurrection du 23 Juin”, their author being smile Girardin, editor of the newspaper, republican and later follower of Bonaparte.
38 “Little constable” (kleiner Konstabler) — an ironical paraphrase of “little corporal”, a nickname given to Napoleon 1 by the French soldiers in allusion to the fact that, while in emigration in England, Louis Bonaparte joined the detachments of special constables used to break up the Chartist demonstration of April 10, 1848.
39 An allusion to General Cavaignac’s part in the conquest of Algeria and his behaviour as Governor there in 1848 when he brutally suppressed the Arab national liberation movement. It was these “exploits” of Cavaignac that gave him the reputation of a reliable “limb of the law” in the eyes of the French bourgeoisie.
40 The Central Commission of representatives of the three democratic organisations of Cologne — the Democratic Society, the Workers’ Association and the Association for Workers and Employers — was set up at the end of June 1848 by decision of the First Democratic Congress in Frankfurt am Main; Marx was a member of the Corn mission. Until the convocation of the Rhenish Congress of Democrats, — this Commission functioned temporarily as the District Committee. The First Rhenish Congress of Democrats, which was held in Cologne on August 13 and 14, 1848, with the participation of Marx and Engels, confirmed the composition of the Central Commission of these three Cologne democratic associations as Rhenish District Committee of Democrats. Besides the President, lawyer Schneider If, it included Marx, Schapper and Moll. The activities of the Committee covered not only the Rhine Province but also Westphalia. The Congress adopted a decision on the necessity to carry on work among factory workers and peasants.
On November 14, 1848, at the beginning of the counter-revolutionary coup d'état in Prussia, the Rhenish District Committee of Democrats called on the population to refuse to pay taxes, even before the Prussian National Assembly had adopted a decision to this effect. Until the Assembly recognised this slogan and the campaign for the refusal to pay taxes developed in other provinces, Marx judged it necessary to temporarily restrain. the people from forcible resistance to the collection of taxes. However, he put the slogan of armed resistance on the agenda when, on November 15, the Assembly at last adopted a decision on the refusal to pay taxes as of November 17. From November 19 to December 17 the Neue Rheinische Zeitung carried the slogan “No More Taxes!!!” on its front page.
There was a wide response to the appeal in the Rhine Province (see this volume, pp. 39-40).
In English the text of the appeal was first published in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
41 At its sitting on November 13, 1848, held in the Berlin shooting-gallery, the Prussian National Assembly approved the report of a special commission describing the Brandenburg Ministry’s actions as acts of high treason. The Assembly decided to publish the report and convey it to the Public Prosecutor for him to take action (see Verhandlungen der constituirenden Versammlung für Preussen. 1849, Bd. 9, Suppl. — Bd.).
This article was published in English for the first time in the collection: Karl Marx, On Revolution, ed. by S. K. Padover, New York, 1971, and then in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
42 The reference is to the law safeguarding personal freedom passed by the Prussian National Assembly on August 28, 1848, and signed by the King on September 24.
It was called the Habeas Corpus Act by analogy with the English Writ of Habeas Corpus. The law was published in the Preussischer Staats-Anzeiger No. 148, September 29, 1848.
A Writ of Habeas Corpus is the name given in English judicial procedure to a document enjoining the relevant authorities to present an arrested person before a court on the demand of persons interested to check the legitimacy of the arrest. Having considered the reasons for the arrest, the court either frees the person arrested, sends him back to prison or releases him on bail or guarantee. The procedure, laid down by an Act of Parliament of 1679, does not apply to persons accused of high treason and can be suspended by decision of Parliament.
43 This refers to the editors’ introduction to the “Appeal of the Rhenish District Committee of Democrats” published in the Kölnische Zeitung No. 308 on November 16, 1848.
44 An allusion to the similarity between the measures proposed by Hansemann, the Prussian Minister of Finance (i.e. a compulsory loan as a means to stimulate money circulation), and the views of Pinto, the eighteenth-century Dutch stockjobber, who regarded stockjobbing as a factor speeding up money circulation. Cf. the article “The Bill on the Compulsory Loan and Its Motivation” (present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 278-86).
45 The Auerswald-Hansemann Government (the so-called Government of Action) was in power from June 25 to September 21, ‘ 1848 (see Note 153).
Besides the ordinary police, a body of armed civilians was set up in Berlin in the summer of 1848 for use against street gatherings and mass demonstrations and for spying. These policemen were called constables by analogy with the special constables in England who played an important part in breaking up the Chartist demonstration of April 10, 1848.
46 Santa Casa (the Sacred House) — headquarters of the Inquisition in Madrid.
47 The Prussian Brumaire of 1848 — an ironical comparison of the counter-revolutionary coup d'état in Prussia with that in France on the 18th Brumaire (November 9), 1799, as a result of which the dictatorship of General Bonaparte was established in the country.
In the Middle Ages people used to believe that there was special wisdom in the works of the Roman poet Virgil. They regarded his poems as divinely inspired and treated him as an oracle.
48 Dissenters or dissidents — members of religious trends and sects not belonging to the established church; in this particular case adherents of various Protestant sects who did riot recognise orthodox Lutheranism.
49 Potsdam — a town near Berlin, the residence of the Prussian kings where military parades and reviews of the Prussian army were held.
50 In English this article was published in the collection: Karl Marx, On Revolution, ed. by S. K. Padover, New York, 1971, and in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”, 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
51 The Privy Councillors’ quarter (Geheimsratverteil) — a district in the south-west of Berlin inhabited mainly by Prussian officials.
52 On October 31, 1848, a mass demonstration was held in Berlin in protest against the cruelty with which the Austrian counter-revolution crushed the Vienna uprising. The demonstration ended when unarmed engineering workers were attacked by the 8th Battalion of the bourgeois civic militia. This incident provided the Prussian reaction with an excuse for replacing the Pfuel Government by the openly counter-revolutionary Brandenburg Government.
53 The majority of the National Assembly adhered to the tactics of passive resistance in their struggle against the counter-revolutionary actions of the Brandenhurg Government when it began the coup d'état. These tactics amounted to not obeying the Government’s orders, including the one on the transfer of the Assembly from Berlin to Brandenburg. The Assembly refrained from more effective forms of resistance to the counter-revolutionary forces, and only after much procrastination did it adopt the decision on the refusal to pay taxes, interpreting it, moreover, in the spirit of passive disobedience to the authorities. Even the Left-wing deputies did not dare call on the people to arm and deal an open blow against reaction, which the Neue Rheinische Zeitung saw as the real means of struggle against the coup d'état. As a result of the tactics of passive resistance the Government — which on November 10 brought the troops of General Wrangel into Berlin and declared a state of siege there — managed, by force, arrests and intimidation, to make the Assembly cease its work in Berlin. Then, on December 5, after the resumption of its sittings in Brandenburg in early December 1848, the Government issued orders dissolving it altogether and introducing a Constitution imposed by the King.
54 The Neue Rheinische Zeitung published the messages of support for the National Assembly in Berlin on November 21, 25 and 26 (Nos. 148, 152 and 153).
55 This appeal gave the Prussian authorities a pretext for instituting legal proceedings against Marx, Schapper and Schneider 11, who were members of the Rhenish District Committee of Democrats. The trial took place on February 8, 1848, and ended with the jury returning a verdict of not guilty (see this volume, p. 520).
In English the appeal was first published in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
56 This report did not appear in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
In accordance with the new Constitution of the Swiss Confederation adopted on September 12, 1848, members of the Federal Court were elected at a joint sitting of the two Chambers of the Federal Assembly: the National Council and the Council of States. The eight members elected earlier were: Johann Kern (canton of Thurgau), Kasimir Pfyffer (Lucerne), Migy (Berne), Rüttimann (Zurich), Brosi (Graubünden), Zenrufinen (Wallis), Favre (Neuenburg) and Blumer (Glarus).
The Federal Court was responsible for the speedy settlement of conflicts which the Diet (see Note 9) had formerly taken years over, and for passing sentence on persons who were charged with high treason but still remained unpunished.
57 See Note 35.
58 For the rebellion of the Bishop of Freiburg see Note 15.
For the Sonderbund see Note 10.
59 On October 25, 1848, Bishop Marilley was arrested. On October 30, a diocesan conference of representatives of the Freiburg, Berne, Vaud, Neuchâtel and Geneva canton governments was held in Freiburg (Fribourg). It decided to set the bishop free but to prohibit his stay and activities on the territory of these five cantons. The opening of this conference was announced in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 136, November 7, 1848. Possibly Engels wrote about the conference decision in the above-mentioned report, which did not appear in the newspaper (see Note 56).
60 The reference is to the Second Rhenish Congress of Democrats, which was held in Cologne on November 23, 1848. It discussed questions connected with the tax-refusal campaign and also the question of drawing the peasants into the struggle against the counter-revolution. Marx took part in the deliberations of the Congress, which approved his slogans of action and the tactics of active struggle against the coup d'état in Prussia. For reasons of security the newspaper did not cover the sessions of the Congress and gave only extremely laconic reports on its decisions. Thus, the second edition of the N~ Rheinische Zeitung No. 153, November 26, 1848, carried the following item: “The Congress of Rhenish democrats, held on November 23, approved the decisions adopted by the District Committee. — Detailed instructions will he communicated by the delegates to their associations.
61 On July 5, 1848, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 35 published the article “Arrests” giving details of the arrest of Gottschalk and Anneke, then leaders of the Cologne Workers’ Association (see present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 177-79). This article served as a pretext for charging the editors with insulting Chief Public Prosecutor Zweiffel and the police officers who made the arrests. Public Prosecutor Hecker sent a letter to the newspaper refuting the article “Arrests” and threatening the editors. Marx published the letter in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and called the Cologne Public Prosecutor’s office a “new, promising contributor” to that newspaper (see the article “Legal Proceedings against the Neue Rheinische Zeitung”, present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 186-88).
62 The German National Assembly which opened on May 18, 1848, in St. Paul’s Church, in the free city of Frankfurt am Main, was convened to effect the unification of the country and to draw up its Constitution. 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 professors, 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. At the decisive moments of the revolution — during the September crisis connected with the signing of Prussia’s armistice with Denmark to the detriment of Germany’s national interests, during the October uprising in Vienna and the coup d'état in Prussia — the liberal majority helped the counter-revolutionary forces. Thus, the German National Assembly disavowed the decision of the Prussian National Assembly on refusal to pay taxes by 275 votes to 150. The decision referred to in this article was adopted by the Frankfurt National Assembly on November 20, 1848.
In writing this and other articles on the debates in the Frankfurt National Assembly, Marx and Engels made use of the shorthand reports of its sittings which later appeared as a separate publication, Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen der deutschen constituirenden Nationalversammlung zu Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main, 1848-49.
63 The Federal Diet — the representative body of the German Confederation, that ephemeral union of German states founded by decision of the Vienna Congress in 1815. Consisting of representatives of the German states, the Federal Diet had no real power and served as a vehicle of feudal and monarchist reaction. After the March 1848 revolution in Germany the Right-wing circles tried in vain to revive the Federal Diet and use it to undermine the principle of popular sovereignty and prevent the democratic unification of Germany.
64 Marx refers to the rejection by Prime Minister Brandenburg of the petition presented by a delegation from the Cologne Municipal Council and other Rhenish delegations asking to be given an audience by the King. When the delegates said that in case of refusal they would suspend payment of taxes, the Prime Minister threatened to resort to bayonets.
65 This rumour was based on the conflict between the German Central Authority, or the so-called Imperial Government (see Note 23), which acted in the name of the Frankfurt National Assembly, and the Swiss authorities. Early in October the Imperial Government sent a Note to Berne demanding the cessation of the actions of the German republican refugees and their expulsion from the cantons bordering on Germany. This and the next Note, of October 23, contained both demands and threats, which, however, were rejected by the Swiss Government. The conflict accompanied by frontier incidents continued. Its essence was revealed by Engels in his article “The German Central Authority and Switzerland” (see this volume, pp. 66-74).
66 See Note 36.
67 A few days before the publication of this report, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 198 of November 21, 1848, carried the following report marked with two asterisks:
“Berne, November 16. I hasten to inform you of the results of the elections to the executive Federal Council held at today’s joint sitting of the National Council and the Council of States. The following were elected:
"President: Burgomaster Furrer, of Zurich;
"Vice-President: State Councillor Druey, of Waadt;
"Members: Colonel Ochsenbein, of Berne;
Colonel Franscini, of Tessin;
Herr Munzinger, of Solothurn;
Herr Näff, of St. GaHen;
Herr Steiger, of Lucerne.
“The moderate. party which has an overwhelming majority in both Councils also had its candidates elected against the candidates of the radical party: Eytel, Stämpfli, Luvini etc.”
This information, probably supplied by Engels, contained certain inaccuracies which can be explained by the fact that the Federal Council had not finally constituted itself by that time. Instead of Ochsenbein, Steiger was elected President of the National Council; and the seventh member of the Federal Council was Frey-Hérosé of Aargau. For the details see Engels’ article “Personalities of the Federal Council” (this volume, pp. 83-87).
The Federal Council was the supreme executive body of the Swiss Republic. The President of the Republic, elected from among the Council members, was also President of the Federal Council.
68 See Note 35.
69 See Note 10.
70 See Note 36.
71 According to the Constitution of the Swiss Confederation of 1848, Swiss citizens had the right to vote after three months’ permanent residence.
72 The following report from Berne, dated November 23, 1848, appeared in the supplement to No. 154 of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung but it elucidated other questions (“Raveaux’s Resignation — Violation of the Swiss Frontier”, see this volume, pp. 63-64). Engels gave detailed information about the debates in the National Council on the Tessin conflict in his article “The National Council”, published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung on December 10, 1848 (see this volume, pp. 138-53).
73 The Barataria’s Reich — an ironical name which Engels gave to the future united German state for which the members of the Frankfurt parliament were drafting a Constitution; an allusion to the imaginary island of Barataria of which Sancho Panza was made Governor in Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote.
74 During the coup d'état in Prussia the Frankfurt National Assembly undertook to settle the conflict between the Prussian National Assembly and the Crown. For this purpose, first Bassermann (one of the liberal leaders) and then Simson and Hergenhahn went to Berlin as imperial commissioners. In mid-November the Frankfurt National Assembly adopted a decision calling on the Central Authority to help, through the imperial commissioners in Berlin, to form a Ministry which would enjoy the confidence of the country, that is a Ministry more acceptable to the Prussian bourgeoisie than the obviously counter-revolutionary Brandenburg-Manteuffel Ministry. However, this decision proved ineffective because the Frankfurt Assembly’s liberal majority openly disapproved of the campaign for refusal to pay taxes as a means of struggle against the coup d'état. The mediation of the imperial commissioners proved to be helpful to the counter-revolutionaries since it diverted the democratic forces in the German states from real support of the Prussian National Assembly in its struggle against the Brandenburg-Manteuffel Ministry.
75 The reference is to the armistice between Denmark and Prussia concluded in the Swedish city of Ma]m5 on August 26, 1848. Though the Prussian ruling circles waged the war against Denmark over Schleswig and Holstein in the name of the German Confederation, they sacrificed general German interests to dynastic and counter-revolutionary interests when they concluded the armistice. They were moved by the desire to release troops for the suppression of the revolution in Prussia, and also by pressure from Russia and Britain, which supported Denmark. Besides a cease-fire between Prussia and Denmark, the armistice provided for the replacement of the provisional authorities in Schleswig with a new government, to be formed by the two, contracting parties (representatives of the Danish monarchy were dominant in it), separation of the Schleswig and Holstein armed forces and other harsh terms for the national liberation movement in the duchies. The revolutionary-democratic reforms which had been introduced were now virtually eliminated.
The Malmö armistice and its ratification by the Frankfurt National Assembly caused popular dissatisfaction and protests in Germany.
76 The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was founded in 962 and lasted till 1806. At different times it included 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.
77 Maximilian Gagern’s journey to Berlin and Schleswig, made on instructions from the Government of the Imperial Regent John to take part in the armistice negotiations with Denmark in the summer of 1848, ended in a complete failure since both Prussia and Denmark ignored the representative of the impotent Central Authority.
Engels compares this fruitless journey of Gagern’s with that of the heroine in Johann Hermes’ novel Sophiens Reise von Memel nach Sachsen which was popular in Germany at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century: after spending more than ten years on her journey she failed to reach her destination.
78 In April 1848 Baden was the scene of a republican uprising led by the petty-bourgeois democrats Friedrich Hecker and Gustav Struve. It started with republican detachments invading Baden from the Swiss border. But this poorly prepared and poorly organised uprising was crushed by the end of April.
79 The first Note to the Vorort (main canton) Berne (see Note 36), dated October 4, 1848, and signed by Franz Raveaux, an imperial commissioner in Switzerland, was published in several German newspapers including the Preussischer Staats-Anzeiger No. 163 of October 14, 1848. The same day, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (in the supplement to issue No. 116) carried a report from Berne dated October 8 setting forth the content of the Note from the main canton Berne written in reply to the imperial Note. The full text of the Note, dated October 5, was reproduced in the Frankfurter Oberpostamts-Zeitung on October 10 (No. 275, second supplement) and October 11, 1848 (No. 276).
A new Note of the German Central Authority, dated October 23 and also signed by Raveaux, was published in the Frankfurt Oberpostamts-Zeitung No. 298 on November 6, 1848. An announcement about its delivery to the Berne authorities appeared in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 140, November 11. The main canton Berne’s reply of November 4 was published in the Frankfurter Oberpostamts-Zeitung No. 304 and in the first supplement to it on November 13, 1848. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung likewise published the text of this Note in its issue No. 143, November 15, 1848. p. 68
80 See Note 73.
81 An allusion to the special troops. supplied by the so-called Military Border Area — i.e., military settlements formed in the southern border regions of the Austrian Empire between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The inhabitants of these regions — Serbs, Croats, Rumanians, Szeklers, Saxons, and others — were allotted plots of land by the state, for which they had to serve in the army, pay taxes and fulfil certain public duties. While serving in the army they wore red coats and caps. In 1848 they formed part of the counter-revolutionary army of the Croatian Ban Jellachich deployed against revolutionary Vienna and Hungary.
The names of these border regiments and battalions derived either from the names of the regions where they were formed, the names of the central towns of the corresponding border areas, or the nationality making up the majority of the military unit.
82 See Note 9. p, 68
83 After the defeat of the Baden republican uprising in April 1848 (see Note 78), oil(, of its leaders, Friedrich Hecker, emigrated to Switzerland and lived in Muttenz (Basle canton) until September 1848, when he left for America.
84 The reference is to the invasion of Baden from Swiss territory by detachments of German republican refugees led by Gustav Struve on September 21, 1848, following the news of the ratification by the Frankfurt National Assembly of the armistice in Malmö and the popular uprising in Frankfurt in reply to it. Supported by the local republicans, Struve proclaimed a German Republic in the frontier town of Lörrach and formed a provisional government. However, the insurgent detachments were shortly afterwards scattered by the troops, and Struve, Blind and other leaders of the uprising were imprisoned by decision of a court martial (they were released during another republican uprising in Baden in May 1849).
85 The words “citizen and communist” were taken by Marx from the address of General Drigalski, commander of a division quartered in Düsseldorf, to the population. The address was published in the Düsseldorfer Zeitung No. 311, November 24, 1848. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung reprinted it immediately after this article. Drigalski said in the address:
“As a communist truly devoted to God and my King, I declare hereby that for the benefit of my poor brothers of the Düsseldorf commune I shall, as long as I live here, pay yearly the sum of thousand talers by monthly instalments to the city poor fund through the Government’s central treasury.... Fellow citizens, follow this example and be communists in the noble sense of this word and soon here, as everywhere else, there will he calm, peace and confidence.
"Düsseldorf, November 23, 1848
Citizen von Drigalski”
86 The state of siege in Düsseldorf was declared on November 22, 1848, the order of Spiegel and Drigalski to that effect being published in the Kölnische Zeitung No. 314 (second edition), November 23, 1848.
87 Pfuel’s speech in the Prussian National Assembly on September 29, 1848, was connected with the declaration of a state of siege in Cologne on September 26. The Cologne authorities had been scared by the growing revolutionary-democratic movement and the campaign of protest against the Prussian-Danish armistice concluded in Malmö and ratified by the Frankfurt Assembly. Pfuel tried to justify this measure, but general indignation against the actions of the Cologne authorities and their condemnation by the Left deputies in the Assembly compelled the Government to issue an order lifting the state of siege in Cologne as of November 2, 1848.
88 The Penal Code (Code pénal), adopted in France in 1810 and introduced into the regions of West and South-West Germany conquered by the French, remained in effect in the Rhine Province even after its incorporation into Prussia in 1815. The Prussian Government attempted to reduce the sphere of its application and by a whole series of laws and orders to reintroduce in this province Prussian Law designed to guarantee feudal privileges. These measures, which met with great opposition in the Rhine Province, were annulled after the March revolution by the decree of April 15, 1848.
89 The law of April 6 — “Decision on Some Principles of the Future Prussian. Constitution” (“Verordnung über einige Grundlagen der künftigen Preussischen Verlassung”) — was adopted by the Second United Diet an assembly of representatives from the eight provincial diets of Prussia. Like the provincial diets, the United Diet was based on the estate principle. It sanctioned new taxes and loans, discussed new Bills and had the right to petition the King.
The First United Diet opened on April 11, 1847, but was dissolved in June because it refused to grant a new loan. The Second United Diet met on April 2, 1848, after the revolution of March 18-19 in Prussia. It adopted decrees, decisions and a law on the elections to the Prussian National Assembly, and sanctioned the loan, following which its session was closed.
90 The Civic Militia Law was adopted on the basis of the Bill introduced in mid-July of 1848 by the Auerswald-Hansemann Ministry. It reflected the desire of the Prussian liberals to prevent the masses from joining the civic militia formed after the March revolution in Prussia, and to convert it into a purely bourgeois military organisation. (For the criticism of it by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung see the article “The Civic Militia Bill”, present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 256-65.) The law in effect abolished the militia as an autonomous armed organisation and subordinated it to the King and the Minister of the Interior. This dependence of the civic militia on the Government was utilised by the counter-revolutionary forces during the coup d'état in Prussia.
91 The reference is to a statement made by the Düsseldorf Chief Postmaster (Oberpostdirector) Maurenbrecher on November 21, 1848, and published in the Kölnische Zeitung No. 314 (second edition) on November 23. This statement accused a group of officers of the Düsseldorf civic militia of “sacrilegiously” violating the secrecy of the postal service and correspondence because they tried to find out at the post-office whether postal orders for large sums of money had arrived from the Regierungspräsident
92 For the law safeguarding personal freedom see Note 42. Below Marx quotes Paragraph 9 of this law.
93 In addition to the proceedings instituted earlier against the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, the Cologne Public Prosecutor Hecker gave instructions, in the autumn of 1848, to bring to court the editor-in-chief Karl Marx and the responsible publisher Hermann Korff, for publishing in their newspaper a number of items which were not to the liking of the authorities, including the proclamation “To the German People” by the republican Friedrich Hecker. Although the examining magistrate declared in October 1848 that there were no serious grounds for prosecution, the Public Prosecutor insisted on his former accusations and even advanced new ones.
In his article “Public Prosecutor ‘Hecker’ and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung” (see present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 485-89), Marx sharply criticised the Cologne Public Prosecutor’s office, using the coincidence of the names of the Public Prosecutor and the republican to call the former either “simple Hecker” (“tout bonnement”) (“C'est du Hecker tout pur” — “it’s genuine Hecker”, as he wrote in French) or “the dichotomous Hecker”. This was the “second crime” of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (see this volume, p. 82).
94 The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was accused by the Cologne authorities of insulting police officers and Public Prosecutor Zweiffel in the summer of 1848, by publishing the article “Arrests” exposing the repressive measures against Gottschalk and Anneke, leaders of the Cologne Workers’ Association (see present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 177-79). Later this accusation was made at the trial of Marx and Engels (see this volume, pp. 304-22, 511 and 517).
95 In partibus infidelium — literally: in parts inhabited by unbelievers. The words are added to the tide of Roman Catholic bishops appointed to purely nominal dioceses in non-Christian countries.
96 The Disch Hotel was in Cologne; the Mielentz Hotel — a hotel in Berlin where the Prussian National Assembly, driven out of its former premises, held its sitting on November 15, 1848.
97 At the end of September 1848, the Imperial Minister of Justice, Kisker, demanded that the Cologne Public Prosecutor should institute legal proceedings against the Neue Rheinische Zeitung editors for publishing a series of feature articles which ridiculed Prince Lichnowski, a reactionary deputy of the Frankfurt National Assembly, under the name of the knight Schnapphahnski. Written by Georg Weerth, the feature articles “Leben und Taten des berühmten Ritters Schnapphahnski” were published unsigned in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in August, September and December 1848 and in January 1849.
98 Concerning the Vorort see Note 36.
Concerning the Swiss Diet see Note 9.
99 On September 6, 1839, the canton of Zurich was the scene of a putsch organised by conservatives and clericals which led to the overthrow of the liberal Government formed on the basis of the 1831 Constitution and brought the conservatives to power. This conservative Government was in turn replaced when the liberals won the elections in 1845.
100 See Note 10.
101 The reference is to the party of moderate republicans headed by Armand Marrast which formed around the newspaper Le National in the 1840s; it was supported by the industrial bourgeoisie and a section of the liberal intellectuals connected with it.
102 The draft Constitution for Tessin was approved by the people of this canton on July 4, 1830, three weeks before the July revolution in France which led to the overthrow of the Bourbons and exerted a great influence on Switzerland.
December 1839 saw the revival of the liberal and radical movement in Tessin. As a result of the popular uprising on December 8 a provisional government was set up and the Great Council of Tessin was replaced by a new one with the radical Stefano Franscini at its head. The attempts of the conservative party to take the lead were finally defeated after the elections of November 15, 1840, which brought victory to the liberals.
103 Munzinger and Escher, the main canton Berne’s representatives in Tessin at the time of the so-called Tessin conflict (see Note 36), insisted that all Italian refugees in Tessin and their families should be removed into the interior of the country. Their demand was contrary to the principle of sovereignty of the cantons.
104 Commission du pouvoir exécutif (the Executive Commission) — 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 existed until June 24, 1848, when Cavaignac’s dictatorship was established during the June proletarian uprising. The majority in the Commission were moderate republicans, Ledru-Rollin being the only representative of the Left.
105 The reference is to an anonymous patriotic pamphlet, Deutschland in seiner tiefen Erniedrigung (Nuremberg, 1806), directed against Napoleon’s rule. For the publication of this pamphlet the bookseller Johann Philipp Palm was shot by the French authorities.
106 See Note 75.
107 The full title of this report in German is “Bericht des Ausschusses für die österreichischen Angelegenheiten über die Anträge der Abgeordneten Venedey, Heinrich Simon, Wiesner und Bauernschmied, sowie über mehrere die österreichischen Angelegenheiten betreffende Petitionen”. It was published in the book: Verhandlungen der deutschen verfassunggebenden Reichsversammlung zu Frankfurt am Main Bd. 2, Frankfurt am Main, 1848-49, S. 602- 19. The report was read out by Deputy H. Löwe, of Posen, at the 119th sitting of the Frankfurt National Assembly on November 20, 1848. Appended to it were letters of the two imperial commissioners Welcker and Mosle to the Imperial Minister Schmerling and the Austrian Prime Minister Wessenberg; these letters are repeatedly quoted in this article. Subsequently, touching on Welcker and Mosle’s mission when dealing with the October uprising in Vienna in his work Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, Engels wrote: “The travels of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza form matter for an Odyssey in comparison to the heroic feats and wonderful adventures of these two knights-errant of German Unity.... Their dispatches and reports are perhaps the only portion of the Frankfurt transactions that will retain a place in German literature; they are a perfect satirical romance, ready cut and dried, and an eternal monument of disgrace for the Frankfurt Assembly and its government” (see present edition, Vol. 11).
108 Eisele and Beisele, here nicknames for Welcker and Mosle, are comic characters from a pamphlet by Johann Wilhelm Christern published anonymously, Doctor Eisele’s und Baron van Beisele’s Landtagsreise im April 1847. Genrebilder aus der neuesten Zeitgeschichte, Leipzig, 1847. These names also appeared in the Munich Fliegenden Blättern in 1848.
109 Die Jobsiade. Ein komisches Heldengedicht — satirical poem by Karl Arnold Kortum published in 1784 and repeatedly reprinted in the nineteenth century. The comic travel map attached to it was a closed labyrinth.
110 An allusion to the uprising in Frankfurt am Main which broke out following the ratification of the Malmö armistice by the majority of the National Assembly on September 16, 1848. Next day, there was a mass meeting of protest in the suburbs of Frankfurt attended by the inhabitants of the city and the neighbouring towns and localities who demanded the dissolution of the Assembly and the formation of a new representative body. The Imperial Government called in Prussian and Austrian troops. When an uprising flared up on the following day, the poorly armed people were defeated after stubborn barricade fighting. There was popular unrest in many parts of Germany in response to the Frankfurt events.
111 See Note 81.
112 The Austrian troops of Windischgrätz and Jellachich which suppressed the Vienna uprising were mostly recruited from the South-Slav peoples.
Serezhans — special units in border regiments (200 men per regiment) recruited in the Serbian and Croatian regions of the Military Border Area (see Note 81). In peacetime they protected the frontier and in wartime fulfilled vanguard, outpost and patrol duties.
Raizes (Raizen, Razen, Rascier) — the name given to the Orthodox Serbs and often used for Serbs in general. It is apparendy derived from the name of one of the first settlements of Serbian tribes, the ancient town Rassa, centre of the Raschka region.
113 A reference to the documents relating to the activities of the German refugees in the border cantons of Switzerland published in the Frankfurter Oberpostamts-Zeitung No. 301 (special supplement), November 9, 1848.
114 See Note 74.
115 By decision of the Vienna Congress (1814-15) the lands on the left and the right banks of the Rhine were incorporated into Prussia, and among other tides bestowed on the King of Prussia was that of Archduke of the Lower Rhine. In his manifesto of April 5, 1815, issued on the occasion of the incorporation of this territory into Prussia, Frederick William III promised to introduce representative institutions in the Rhine Province and throughout the country.
116 An English translation of this article was first published in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
117 On April 10, 1848, a Chartist demonstration in London was broken up by troops and. special constables; the purpose of the demonstration was to present the third Chartist Petition to Parliament.
On May 15, 1848, the bourgeois national guard suppressed the revolutionary actions of the Paris workers.
On June 25, 1848, the rising of the workers of Paris was crushed.
On August 6, 1848, Milan was occupied by Austrian troops, who suppressed the national liberation movement in North Italy.
On November 1, 1848, the troops of Windischgrätz took Vienna.
118 As a result of the revolutionary actions of the masses in Vienna, primarily of the workers and students, on May 15 and 16, the Imperial Government was forced to give up the idea of creating an elective two-Chamber parliament and to introduce changes into the electoral law, adopted shortly before that, by extending the franchise. The armed people also secured the abrogation of the order of May 14 dissolving the Central Committee of the national guard and the Academic Legion (see Note 26).
On May 15, 1848, a popular uprising in Naples caused by King Ferdinand’s infringement of constitutional rights was brutally crushed, the lazzarani (see Note 25) taking an active part in its suppression.
119 This refers to the suppression of the popular uprising in Frankfurt am Main on September 18, 1848 (see Note 110).
120 On July 25, 1848, at Custozza (North Italy), the Austrian army under Radetzky defeated the Piedmont troops. This was followed by the capture of Milan on August 6 and the conclusion on August 9 of an armistice between Austria and the Kingdom of Sardinia under which the latter was to withdraw its troops from the towns and fortresses of Lombardy and Venice and to hand them over to the Austrians.
121 The uprising in Leghorn (Grand Duchy of Tuscany) began at the end of August 1848 and ended on September 2 with the rout of the government troops. Fearing that the uprising might spread all over Tuscany, the Grand Duke Leopold II dismissed the moderate liberal Government of Capponi. On October 27 a democratic government of Tuscany was formed headed by Montagnelli. It was he who put forward the slogan of convening an Italian Constituent Assembly (Guerazzi became a member of the Government).
The victory of the people in Tuscany called forth mass demonstrations in Rome (Papal states) demanding the convocation of an Italian Constituent Assembly, resumption of the war with Austria, formation of a provisional democratic government, and social reforms. On November 16, in response to the attempts of the Papal Swiss Guard to disperse the demonstration, the people erected barricades near the Vatican and attacked it. Pins IX yielded, and a new government was set up in Rome with the participation of Left liberals and democrats.
122 “Troppo tardi, santo padre, troop tardi!” (“Too late, Holy Father, too late!”) cried he revolutionary-minded people of Rome when Pius IX, after much procrastination, issued an edict on March 15, 1848, introducing a watered-down Constitution of the Papal states.
123 See Note 59.
124 Fearing the growth of the revolutionary movement in Rome (see Note 12 1), Pius IX fled from Rome on the night of November 24, 1848, and took up residence in the Neapolitan fortress of Gaeta. Meanwhile a struggle flared up in the Papal states between the revolutionary democrats who stood for the proclamation of a republic and the liberals who sought to bring back the Pope to Rome and get his sanction for certain constitutional concessions. In the course of this struggle the liberals were defeated and on February 9, 1849, a Roman Republic was founded.
125 The reference is to the treaty (drawn up by the Swiss Diet in 1814 and approved by the Vienna Congress in 1815) which acknowledged Switzerland’s permanent neutrality. Under this treaty the Swiss Confederation was defined as a federation of 22 cantons. When a Constitution was introduced in 1848, this treaty became invalid.
126 Concerning the position of Escher and Munzinger as the representatives of the Berne canton in Tessin during the so-called Tessin conflict, see Note 36.
127 In 1848-49 moderate bourgeois constitutionalists in Germany called the republican democrats “agitators” (Wühler) and these in turn called their opponents “wailers” (Heuler).
128 The articles “The French Working-Class and the Presidential Elections” and “Proudhon” were written by Engels in early December 1848 during his stay in Switzerland and were intended for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. However, they were not published and came down to us in manuscript form.
129 In view of the presidential elections in France scheduled for December 10, 1848, the party of the petty-bourgeois democrats, which had formed a bloc for a time with the petty-bourgeois socialists (Louis Blanc and others) and grouped round the newspaper La Réforme (its representatives in the Constituent and later in the Legislative Assembly called themselves Montagnards or the Mountain by analogy with the Montagnards in the Convention of 1792-94), nominated its leader, Ledru-Rollin, as a candidate for the presidency. The proletarian socialists, however, preferred their own candidate, Raspail, a well-known scientist and revolutionary with communist views. Proudhon’s followers, grouped round his newspaper Le Peuple, also supported Raspail.
The differences between the supporters of these two candidates revealed the internal contradictions among the revolutionary democrats. To characterise these differences Engels made use of the material published in the French democratic and socialist periodicals, in particular, the article “Encore et toujours la présidence” in La Réforme, November 14, 1848, and the leading article in La Révolution démocratique et sociale No. 10, November 10, 1848.
130 By the “pure” (or tricolour) republicans are meant members of the National party (see Note 101).
131 See Note 104.
132 For the revolutionary events in Paris on May 15, 1848, see Note 117.
The June insurrection — the proletarian uprising in Paris on June 23-26, 1848 (see present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 124-28 and 130-64).
133 Equitable Labour Exchange Bazaars or Offices (the name is given in English in the German original) were founded by the workers’ co-operative societies in various towns of England in 1832. This movement was headed by Robert Owen, who founded such a bazaar in London. The products of labour at these bazaars were exchanged for a kind of paper “money” issued as labour “tickets”, a working hour being the unit. These bazaars were an attempt by the utopians to organise exchange without money in the conditions of capitalist commodity production and soon proved to be a failure.
134 Concerning this speech of Proudhon’s in the French National (Constituent) Assembly on July 31, 1848, see the article “Proudhon’s Speech against Thiers” published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 321-24).
135 The royal order dissolving the Prussian National Assembly was issued on December 5, 1848. In the Ministry’s explanation accompanying the order the Assembly was accused of having disregarded the royal decree of November 8 ordering it to move from Berlin to Brandenburg, a measure allegedly designed “to protect the deputies’ freedom of deliberation from the anarchistic movements in the capital and their terroristic influences”.
The imposed Constitution came into force on December 5, 1848, simultaneously with the dissolution of the Assembly. This Constitution provided for a two-Chamber parliament. By means of age and property qualifications the First Chamber was made a privileged “Chamber of the Gentry”, while under the electoral law of December 6, 1848, a considerable part of the working people was excluded from the two-stage election to the Second Chamber. According to this Constitution, in case of war or “disorders” “guarantees” of personal freedom, inviolability of the home, freedom of the press, assembly and association etc. were suspended. Wide powers were assumed by the King: he had the right to convene or dissolve the Chambers, to appoint Ministers, to declare war or conclude peace; he had the executive power entirely in his hands, while sharing the legislative power with the Chambers. All this, together with the direct proviso that the King could review the Constitution on his own initiative, played into the hands of the counter-revolutionaries.
136 See Note 2.
137 An English translation of this article first appeared in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
138 See Note 135.
139 The Vorort — see Note 36.
Concerning the Struve campaign see Note 84.
140 See Note 9.
141 See Note 10.
142 See Note 1 0.
143 The reference is to the anti-constitutional coup d'état in the Wallis (Valais) canton in May 1844, when the Upper Wallis opponents of bourgeois reforms, instigated by the Jesuits and the clergy, overthrew the liberal Government and annulled the cantonal Constitution of 1840. In a battle at Pont-de-Trient on May 21, 1,500 men of Lower Wallis headed by Maurice Barman were defeated by the 8,000-strong army of General Kalbermatten. With the change of government the Wallis canton joined the Sonderbund (see Note 10) in June 1844.
144 In October 1848 there was an uprising in North Lombardy (Veltlin and other places) against the Austrian occupation troops of Radetzky. Giuseppe Mazzini, who had emigrated to Switzerland after Milan was occupied by the Austrians in September 1848, issued an appeal to the insurgents and tried to help them by organising an expedition of Italian refugees who had settled in the Swiss frontier canton of Tessin.
Crossing the frontier at Valle Intelvi the members of the expedition joined the insurgents, but the uprising was soon crushed and the surviving refugees returned to Switzerland. This provided Radetzky with a pretext for demanding from the Swiss Government the deportation of all Italian refugees, but the Tessin authorities refused to satisfy this demand. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung published. a number of reports on the course of the uprising in Lombardy (in the section “Italy”). p. 152
145 The second article in the series “The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution” (of December 11, 1848) was first published in English in the book: Marx and Engels, Selected Works in two volumes, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Vol. I, Moscow, 1950. The series was first published in full in English in the collection: Karl Marx, On Revolution, ed. by S. K. Padover, New York, 197 1, and then in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung” 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972. p. 154
146 Below Marx quotes “Decision on Some Principles of the Future Prussian Constitution” (“Verordnung über einige Grundlagen der künftigen Preussischen Verfassung”) and the electoral law for the convocation of the National Assembly adopted by the Second United Diet (see Note 89) on April 6 and 8, 1848. Both documents were published in the book Verhandlungen des zum 2. April 1848 zusammenberufenen Vereinigten Landtages, zusammengestellt von E. Bleich, Berlin, 1848.
147 This refers to the Constitution imposed by the Prussian King on December 5, 1848, simultaneously with the publication of the order dissolving the Prussian National Assembly (see Note 135).
148 See Note 109.
149 Trop tard! (too late!) — apparently by analogy with Tropo tardi! Cf. Note 122.
150 During the March revolution of 1848 the Prince of Prussia fled to England, but on June 4, aided by the Camphausen Ministry, he returned to Berlin. At the sitting of the Prussian National Assembly on June 6 Camphausen sought to present this cowardly flight of the Prince as a journey undertaken for educational purposes.
151 After the March revolution of 1848 in Germany an insurrection of the Poles broke out in the Duchy of Posen for their liberation from the Prussian yoke. The mass of the Polish peasants and artisans took part in it together with members of the lesser nobility. The Prussian Government was forced to promise that a commission would be set up to carry out the reorganisation of Posen: creation of a Polish army, appointment of Poles to administrative and other posts, recognition of Polish as the official language etc. On April 14, 1848, however, the King ordered the division of the Duchy of Posen into an eastern Polish part and a western “German” part, which was not to be “reorganised”. During the months following the suppression of the Polish insurrection by the Prussian military, in violation of all agreements with the Poles, the demarcation line was pushed further and further east and the promised “reorganisation” was never carried out.
Under the impact of the March revolution, the national liberation movement of the German population in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which had been incorporated into the Kingdom of Denmark by decision of the Vienna Congress (1815), grew in strength and became radical and democratic, forming 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 in arms against Danish rule. Prussia, Hanover and other states of the German Confederation sent to the duchies federal troops under the command of the Prussian General Wrangel. However, the Prussian Government which feared a popular outbreak and an intensification of the revolution sought an agreement with Denmark at the expense of the general German interests. The situation was complicated by the intervention of Britain, Sweden and Tsarist Russia in favour of the Kingdom of Denmark. The seven months armistice concluded between Prussia and Denmark at Malmö on August 26, 1848 (see Note 75), in fact preserved Danish rule in Schleswig and Holstein. The war, resumed at the end of March 1849, ended in 1850 with the victory of the Danes and the two duchies remained part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
152 On September 15, 1848, General Wrangel, who was associated with the reactionary Court clique, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Brandenburg military district, which included Berlin. The Markgrafschaft (Marches) of Brandenburg, the original core of Prussia, consisted in the Middle Ages of two parts, the Kurmark and the Neumark, hence the tide of the general: “Commander-in-Chief of the two Marches.”
153 Concerning Hansemann-Pinto — see Note 44.
The “Government of Action” which succeeded the Camphausen Government was in power from June 25 to September 21, 1848, Auerswald being formally its head. Hansemann, Finance Minister as in the Camphausen Ministry, actually directed the Ministry’s activity.
154 Marx refers to the revolution in the Netherlands in 1566-1609 which was a combination of the national liberation war against absolutist Spain and the anti-feudal struggle of the progressive forces. The revolution ended with the victory of the north, where Europe’s first bourgeois republic — the United Provinces (the Dutch Republic) — was established, and with the defeat of the southern provinces, which remained under Spanish rule.
155 An allusion to Camphausen, who was formerly an oil and corn dealer, and to Hansemann, who started as a wool merchant.
156 Early in June 1848, the Prussian National Assembly, under pressure from the Government and the moderate constitutionalists, rejected a resolution giving due credit to the participants in the revolution of March 18-19, 1848, in Prussia. After long debates (described by Engels in his article “The Berlin Debate on the Revolution”, present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 73-86), the Assembly decided by a majority vote to proceed to the next items on the agenda. The Assembly’s renunciation of the March revolution aroused the indignation of the Berlin workers and artisans who, on June 14, took the arsenal by storm to arm themselves and defend their revolutionary gains. The uprising was put down by the army and the bourgeois civic militia.
157 Marx refers here to the numerous promises of the kings of Prussia to introduce a constitution and representative bodies in the country. On May 22, 1815, a decree as issued by the King in which he promised the setting up of provincial diets of estates, the convocation of an all-Prussia representative body, and a Constitution. Under the National Debt Law of January 17, 1820, state loans could only be issued with the consent of the provincial diets. But these promises made under pressure from the bourgeois opposition movement remained a dead letter. All that happened was that a law of June 5, 1823, established provincial diets with restricted advisory functions.
Financial difficulties compelled Frederick William IV on February 3, 1847, to. issue an edict convening the United Diet (Vereinigte Landtag), a body consisting of representatives of all the provincial diets of Prussia. The United Diet refused to grant a loan to the Government and was soon dissolved. The electoral law of April 8, 1848 (Marx quotes it above, on p. 154 of this volume), promulgated as a result the March revolution, provided for the convocation of an Assembly to draft a Constitution by “agreement with the Crown”. The two-stage system of voting established by this law secured the majority for the representatives of the bourgeoisie and the Prussian officials.
158 By Prussian Law is meant the Allgemeines Landrecht für die Preussischen Staaten approved and published in 1794. It included the criminal, constitutional, civil, administrative and ecclesiastical law and was strongly influenced by feudal ideas in the sphere of jurisdiction.
Code pénal — see Note 88.
Constables — see Note 45.
159 On August 21, 1848, Berlin was the scene of mass meetings and demonstrations in protest against attacks on members of the Democratic Club by reactionaries in Charlottenburg, a Berlin suburb. The demonstrators, who demanded the resignation of the Auerswald-Hansemann Ministry, threw stones at the building where Auerswald and other Ministers were staying. The Government replied to the August events with fresh repressive measures.
160 The Belgian Constitution of 1831 adopted after the victory of the bourgeois revolution of 1830 established a high property qualification, thus depriving a considerable part of the population of the suffrage.
161 The reference is to the Preussische Seehandlungsgesellschaft (the Prussian Maritime Trading Company) — a trade and credit society, founded in 1772 and enjoying a number of important state privileges. It granted large credits to the Government and actually played the part of its banker and broker. In 1904 it was made the official Prussian state bank.
162 A Bill abrogating exemption from graduated tax payments for the nobility, officers, teachers and the clergy was submitted by Hansemann to the Prussian National Assembly on July 12, 1848. A Bill abrogating exemption from the land tax was tabled on July 21, 1848.
163 At the sitting of the Prussian National Assembly on July 21, 1848, the Bill introduced on the basis of Deputy Hanow’s motion of June 3, 1848, was voted down and considered for the second time on September 30. Accepted this time, the Bill was approved by the King on October 9.
164 Nenstiel’s motion was introduced as early as June 2, 1848, and the decision mentioned by Marx, which in effect postponed indefinitely the abolition of peasant labour services, was adopted on September 1, 1848.
165 The reference is to the Congress of big landowners which met in Berlin on August 18, 1848. It was convoked by the leaders of the Association for the Protection of Property and the Advancement of the Well-Being of All Classes of the Prussian People. The Congress changed the name of the Association to: Association for the Protection of the Interests of Landowners; the Congress became known as the “Landowners’ Parliament”.
166 On July 31, 1848, the garrison of the Silesian fortress of Schweidnitz fired at a demonstration of the civic militia and local population protesting against the provocative actions of the military; 14 people were killed and 32 seriously wounded.
The Schweidnitz events served as a pretext for a discussion of the situation in the army by the Prussian National Assembly.
On August 9, 1848, the Assembly adopted the proposal of Deputy Stein, with amendments by Deputy Schultze, requesting the Minister of War to issue an army order to the effect that officers opposed to the constitutional system were bound in honour to resign from the army. Despite the Assembly’s decision Schreckenstein, the Minister of War, did not issue any such order. Stein therefore tabled his motion for the second time at the sitting of the National Assembly on September 7, 1848. As a result of the voting, the Auerswald-Hansemann Ministry had to resign. Under the Pfuel Ministry which followed, the order, though in a milder form, was at last issued on September 26, but this also remained a dead letter. Earlier, on September 17, General Wrangel issued an army order which made it clear that the military intended to launch an open offensive against the revolution. It urged the maintenance of “public order”, threatened those “who were trying to entice the people to commit unlawful acts”, and called upon the soldiers to rally round their officers and the King.
167 A reference to the speech from the throne made by Frederick William IV at the opening of the United Diet on April 11, 1847. The King said he would never agree to grant a Constitution which he described as a “written scrap of paper”.
168 Article 14 of the Constitutional Charter Louis XVIII granted in 1814 read: “The King is the head of the state.”
169 Magna Charta Libertatum — the charter which the insurgent barons forced King John of England to sign in 1215. It limited the powers of the King in the interests of the feudal lords, and also contained some concessions to the knights and burghers.
170 An allusion to the attempts made by the European counter-revolutionary forces in 1848-49 to restore the Holy Alliance, a league of European monarchs set up in 1815 on the initiative of Austrian Chancellor Metternich and Russian Tsar Alexander I, to put down the revolutionary movement.
171 See Note 84.
172 The reference is to the agreements concluded from the fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century between Swiss cantons and European states for the supply of Swiss mercenaries. In many West-European countries the mercenaries were used by the counter-revolutionary monarchist forces.
173 The King’s guard consisting of Swiss mercenaries and lazzaroni (see Note 25) took an active part in suppressing the popular uprising in Naples on May 15, 1848 (see Note 1 18). Lazzaroni and soldiers broke into the houses of the people of Naples, including foreigners, looted them and committed violence.
174 Burghers’ communes (Bürgergemeinden) came into being at the end of the Middle Ages. They granted their members certain economic and political privileges including exemption from a number of duties and tax payments, the right to use the commune’s property and advantages in filling lucrative government offices. One became a member of the commune either by birth or by living in a given place for a definite period of time and possessing immovable property, or by paying an admission fee.
In the course of time it became more and more difficult to enter a commune, which led to the division of the Swiss population into citizens (Bürger) and residents (Einwohner), the latter being deprived of the above-named privileges. Within the burghers’ commune there appeared a still closer corporation of representatives of the old patrician families who in fact established a monopoly of practically all the major government posts. Abolition of the privileges of the burghers’ commune began during the Helvetian Republic in 1798-99, when all the Swiss were made equal in rights and political power was transferred to the residents’ commune (Einwohnergemeinde), which was declared to be the holder of sovereignty in the name of the entire nation. The Federal Constitution adopted in 1848 enlarged still more the rights of the residents’ commune while the burghers’ commune only retained philanthropic functions and power over its own property.
175 This address was written by Engels, as a member of the Central Commission, on the instructions of the First Congress of the German Workers’ Associations in Switzerland which took place in Berne between December 9 and 11, 1848. The Congress was attended by representatives from democratic and workers’ associations in a number of Swiss towns. It adopted the rules of the Union of German Associations of Switzerland. In accordance with these rules, a Central Association (the Berne Workers’ Association was elected as such) was to he at the head of the Union, and current leadership was to be exercised by a Central Commission consisting of five members. Engels was a member of the Commission elected on December 14.
Differences arose at the sitting on December 10 when the Congress discussed the question of the attitude towards the March Association. A delegate of the Berne Association spoke against establishing contacts with this non-republican organisation. Nevertheless, the majority of delegates were in favour of an address proposing to the March Association to keep up correspondence. The text of the address was approved by the Congress on December 11. When Engels compiled it he had to take into account the Congress decision. However, in the text of the address written in the name of the Central Commission he managed to reflect the views of the proletarian revolutionaries who regarded this Association only as a fellow traveller in the German revolution and thought that co-operation with it was possible only within strict limits.
The March Association, which had branches in various towns of Germany, was founded in Frankfurt am Main at the end of November 1848 by the Left-wing deputies of the Frankfurt National Assembly. Fröbel, Simon, Ruge, Vogt and other petty-bourgeois democratic leaders of the March associations, thus named after the March 1848 revolution in Germany, confined themselves to revolutionary phrase-mongering and showed indecision and inconsistency in the struggle against the counter-revolutionaries, for which Marx and Engels sharply criticised them.
176 By 1848, the Berne Association became one of the biggest and most influential German workers’ associations in Switzerland. Its members held democratic republican views and were considerably. influenced by Weitling and Stephan Born. It disintegrated in the spring of 1849.
177 According to Article 1 of the Rules of the Union of German Associations in Switzerland adopted at the Berne Congress, the aim of the new organisation was “to educate members of the Union in the socio-democratic and republican spirit and use all legal means at its disposal so that socio-democratic and republican principles and institutions would be acknowledged by the Germans and put into practice”.
178 The so-called Risquons-Tout trial, held in Antwerp from August 9 to 30, 1848, was a fabrication of the Government of Leopold, King of the Belgians, against the democrats. The pretext was a clash which took place on March 29, 1848, between the Belgian republican legion bound for home from France and a detachment of soldiers near the village of Risquons-Tout not far from the French border. The bill of indictment was published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 45, July 15, 1848, No. 47, July 17, 1848, No. 49 and in the supplement to this issue, July 19, 1848. Mellinet, Ballin, Tedesco and other main accused were sentenced to death, but this was commuted to 30 years imprisonment; later they were pardoned.
See Engels’ article “The Antwerp Death Sentences” in Vol. 7 of the present 180 edition, pp. 404-06.
179 The Cologne Workers’ Association (Kölner Arbeitesverein) — a workers’ organisation founded by Andreas Gottschalk on April 13, 1848. The initial membership of 300 had increased to 5,000 by early May, the majority being workers and artisans. The Association was headed by a President and a committee consisting of representatives of various trades. The Zeitung des Arbeiter-Vereines zu Köln was the Association’s newspaper, but on October 26 it was replaced by the Freiheit, Brüderlichkeit, Arbeit. There were a number of branches. 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 temporary presidency at the request of the Association members. In November Röser began to fulfil the duties of President, and on February 28, 1849, Schapper was elected to the post and remained in it 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 shared many of the views of the “true socialists”, ignored the historical tasks of the proletariat in the democratic revolution, pursued sectarian tactics of boycotting indirect elections to the German and Prussian National Assemblies and came out against support of democratic candidates in elections. He combined ultra-Left phrases with very moderate methods of struggle (workers’ petitions to the Government and the City Council etc.), and supported the demands of the workers affected by artisan prejudices etc. From the very beginning, Gottschalk’s sectarian tactics were resisted by the supporters of Marx and Engels. At the end of June under their influence a change took place in the activities of the Workers’ Association, which became a centre of revolutionary agitation among the workers, and from the autumn of 1848, also among the peasants. Members of the Association organised democratic and workers’ associations in the vicinity of Cologne and disseminated revolutionary publications, including the “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany”. They 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.
With a view to strengthening the Association Marx, Schapper and other leaders reorganised it in January and February 1849. On February 25, new Rules were adopted according to which the main task of the Association was to raise the workers’ class and political consciousness.
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.
180 The reference is to the trial of A. Brocker-Evererts, owner of the printshop which printed the Zeitung des Arbeiter-Vereines zu Köln (published from April to October 1848 and edited first by Andreas Gottschalk and from July to September by Joseph Moll). The trial took place on October 24, 1848. Brocker-Evererts was accused of printing in issues 12 and 13 of the newspaper (July 6 and 9, 1848) the articles “Arrest of Dr. Gottschalk and Anneke” and “Arrests in Cologne” insulting Chief Public Prosecutor Zweiffel and the police. The jury sentenced him to a month’s imprisonment and laid down that if the newspaper resumed publication he would have to pay a big fine. Beginning from October 26 the Cologne Workers’ Association published the newspaper Freiheit, Brüderlichkeit, Arbeit.
181 The laws promulgated by the French Government in September 1835 restricted the rights of juries and introduced severe measures against the press: increased money deposits for periodicals and large fines and imprisonment for the authors of publications directed against property and the existing political system.
182 The First Democratic Congress was held in Frankfurt am Main from June 14 to 17, 1848. It was attended by delegates of 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 a Central Committee of German Democrats with its headquarters in Berlin. Fröbel, Rau and Kriege were elected to the Central Committee and Bairhoffer, Schütte and Anneke their deputies. However, due to the weakness and vacillations of the petty-bourgeois leaders, even after the Congress the democratic movement in Germany still lacked unity and organisation.
183 At the close of its sitting on July 4, 1848, the Prussian National Assembly decided to grant unlimited powers to the committee investigating the Posen events (see Note 151). In violation of parliamentary rules, the Right attempted to have a motion voted to limit the committee’s powers. The Left walked out of the Assembly in protest and the Right took advantage of this and carried a motion prohibiting the committee from travelling to Posen and interrogating witnesses and experts on the spot, thereby unlawfully annulling the Assembly’s original decision. This incident is described in Engels’ article “The Agreement Session of July 4” (present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 200-07).
184 Concerning the union of the three democratic associations in Cologne — the Democratic Society, the Workers’ Association and the Association for Workers and Employers — see Note 40.
185 After keeping Gottschalk and Anneke in prison for almost six months, the authorities were compelled to release them when the assizes acquitted them on December 23, 1848.
186 An excerpt from this article was first published in English under the title “The Prussian Counter-Revolution and the judiciary” in the collection: Karl Marx, On Revolution ed. by S. K. Padover, New York, 1971.
187 The report on the decisions of the Courts of Appeal in Ratibor (Racibórz), Bromberg (Bydgoszcz) and Münster and the decision of the Berlin Supreme Court were printed in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 174, December 21, 1848.
188 French parliaments — judicial institutions which arose in the Middle Ages. The Paris Parliament was the supreme appeal body and at the same time performed important executive and political functions, such as the registration of royal decrees, without which they had no legal force, etc. The parliaments enjoyed the right to remonstrate government decrees. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries their members were officials of high birth, representatives of the so-called silk gown nobility. The parliaments, which finally became the bulwark of Right opposition to absolutism and impeded the implementation of even moderate reforms, were abolished in 1790, during the French Revolution.
189 The reference is to the edict of the Berlin Supreme Court of December 16, 1848, signed by Mühler and published in the Preussischer Staats-Anzeiger No. 229 on December 19, 1848.
190 The reference is to the transfer of the sittings of the Prussian National Assembly from Berlin to Brandenburg. This was the beginning of a counter-revolutionary coup d'état in Prussia which ended with the dissolution of the National Assembly and imposition of a Constitution by the King.
191 An allusion to a German legend according to which the souls of the dead, led by the “wild hunter”, fly about shrieking fearfully at night. People who meet these ghosts are doomed to wander with them for ever.
192 See Note 89.
193 In December 1848, the counter-revolutionary Austrian Government was not supported by the Imperial Diet on the question of the compulsory loan and asked the bank for a loan. However, it succeeded in obtaining a loan only after threatening the bank with confiscation of all its ready cash.
194 The reference is to the attempt by Gustav Struve and other political refugees to organise an uprising in Baden in September 1848 (see Note 84).
The “Hilf Dir” military association was founded in the autumn of 1848 by Johann Philipp Becker, a leader of the democratic and working-class movement. With its Central Committee in Biel (canton of Berne), it united societies consisting mainly of artisans formed in various towns in Switzerland.
The “Hilf Dir” military association pursued a democratic policy and aimed at uniting all German volunteer units in Switzerland for the purpose of establishing a republic in Germany. It was organised as a secret conspiratorial society, on the lines of those in France and Italy. The Swiss authorities, under pressure from German counter-revolutionary circles and the Imperial Government in particular, instituted proceedings against Becker and other initiators of the military association. Becker was sentenced to expulsion from the Berne canton for twelve months.
195 The republican uprisings in Baden and April and September 1848 — see Notes 78 and 84.
The uprising in Val d'Intelvi (Lombardy) and the part played in it by refugees living in Switzerland — see Engels’ article “The National Council” (this volume, pp. 138-53) and Note 144.
The Lucerne campaigns were organised in response to the decision adopted by the reactionary Great Council of the Lucerne canton in October 1844, granting unlimited powers to the Order of Jesuits in matters of religion and public education. The liberal circles of the canton made an attempt to overthrow the Government, organising on December 8 a campaign of volunteer detachments against Lucerne. The insurgents were dispersed by government troops. The second campaign, organised for the same purpose from the territory of the neighbouring cantons on March 31, 1845, also proved a failure.
196 In its letter of December 7 to the forthcoming First Congress of the German Workers’ Associations in Berne (see Note 175), the Association in Vivis objected to a number of proposals advanced by the democratic German National Association in Zurich, suggesting in particular that the new Union should he headed by the “Hilf Dir” military association in Biel (see Note 194). The letter was discussed at the Congress sitting of December 10, 1848. The Congress directed the Central Commission, formed to exercise current leadership of the Union of Workers’ Associations in Switzerland (with Engels as its secretary), to answer the letter and persuade the Vivis Association to renounce its demands and join the Union.
197 The reference is to the German National Association in Zurich founded in April 1848, a democratic organisation of German intellectuals and workers living in Switzerland. It was influenced by petty-bourgeois democrats: Fröbel, Ruge and others. In the summer of 1848 the National Association joined the Union of Democratic German Associations founded by the First Democratic Congress in Frankfurt am Main (see Note 182). In August 1848 the National Association appealed to all the German associations in Switzerland to convene a congress and unite. Its representatives took an active part in the First Congress of German Associations in Switzerland held from December 9 to 11, 1848.
198 On December 8, 1848, the Lausanne Workers’ Association sent Engels a mandate, delegating him to the Congress (see this volume, pp. 505-06). The leaders of this Association, G. Schneeberger, Chr. Haaf and Bangert, wrote in this connection to the Berne Workers’ Association on December 8, 1848: “We cannot send a delegate because of the inactivity of the Vivis Association (which recognises only the Association in Biel as the central body). Therefore we have decided to authorise our friend Engels. If, however, he cannot attend, our friend Frost will act as our delegate.”
199 The Central Committee of German Democrats (d'Ester, Reichenbach, Hexamer) was elected at the Second Democratic Congress held in Berlin from October 26 to 30, 1848.
The Central Committee of German Workers in Leipzig, headed by Stephan Born, was elected at the Workers’ Congress held in Berlin from August 23 to September 3, 1848. At this Congress the Workers’ Fraternity, a union of workers’ associations, was founded. Its programme was drawn up under the influence of Born and was concerned only with narrow craft-union demands, thereby diverting the workers from the revolutionary struggle. A number of its points bore the stamp of Louis Blanc’s and Proudhon’s utopian ideas. Marx and Engels did not approve of the general stand taken by Born, but they refrained from publicly criticising his views, bearing in mind his endeavour to unite the workers’ associations.
200 See Note 170.
201 An excerpt from this article was first published in English in the journal Labour Monthly, London, 1923, Vol. 5, No. 1. Another excerpt appeared in the collection: Karl Marx, On Revolution, ed. by S. K. Padover, New York, 1971. An English translation was first published in full in the book: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972. p. 213 202
The reference is to the manifesto published on February 10, 1848, by Pins IX, who had previously carried out a number of liberal reforms and sanctioned the formation of a secular government. In the manifesto the Pope gave the blessing of the Church to the Italian people. Although the manifesto hinted that Pius IX disapproved of the demand for a Constitution, it was interpreted as an approval of the movement for constitutional reforms which had developed after the popular uprising in Sicily in January 1848 against the rule of the Bourbons of Naples.
Under the impact of the French revolution in February 1848 Pius IX was compelled to issue a decree on March 15, 1848, introducing a moderate Constitution in the Papal states.
203 After the popular uprising in Rome on November 16, 1848 (see Note 12 1), Pius IX fled on November 24 to the fortress of Gaeta in the Kingdom of Naples.
204 The Mountain — see Note 129.
The party of the “National” — see Note 101.
The dynastic opposition — an opposition group headed by Odilon Barrot in the French Chamber of Deputies during the July monarchy (1830-48). It expressed the views of the liberal industrial and commercial bourgeoisie and favoured a moderate electoral reform, regarding it as a means of preventing revolution and preserving the Orléans dynasty. The dynastic opposition was close to the monarchist pro-Orleanist bourgeois politicians headed by Thiers, whose mouthpiece was the newspaper Constitutionnel. Until February 1848 this group stood for a monarchy with republican institutions and subsequently for a republic with monarchical institutions.
The legitimists — supporters of the Bourbon dynasty, which was overthrown in 1830. They upheld the interests of the big hereditary landowners.
205 In the summer of 1848, the anti-feudal movement and the struggle for complete liberation from the rule of the Turkish Sultan gained strength in the Danube principalities of 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 proclaimed, a liberal Provisional Government was formed and George Bibesco, the ruler of Wallachia, abdicated and fled from the country.
On June 28, 1848, a 12,000-strong Russian army corps entered Moldavia and in July Turkish troops also invaded the country. The Russian and Turkish intervention helped restore the feudal system and the subsequent entry of Turkish troops into Wallachia with the consent of the Tsarist Government brought a bout the defeat of the bourgeois revolution there. There were bloody reprisals against the population in Bucharest. A proclamation of the Turkish government commissioner Fuad-Effendi declared it necessary to establish “law and order” and “eliminate all traces of the revolution”.
206 Pandours — irregular infantry units of the Austrian army recruited mainly in the South-Slav provinces of the Austrian Empire.
Serezhans — see Note 112.
207 See Note 172.
208 The reference is to the Swiss citizens living in the Kingdom of Naples who suffered maltreatment and material losses as a result of the suppression of the popular uprising in Naples on May 15, 1848 (see Note 118), and the fierce four-day bombardment and plunder of Messina early in September 1848, after it had been captured by the royal troops sent by Ferdinand If to crush the revolutionary movement in Sicily.
209 An English translation of this article was first published in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”. 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
210 “To my dear Berliners” — an appeal of Frederick William IV published in the morning of March 19, 1848, during the people’s uprising in Berlin.
“To my people and the German nation” — an appeal of Frederick William IV published on March 21, 1848.
“To my army” — a New-Year message of Frederick William IV signed by him in Potsdam on January 1, 1849, and published in the Preussischer Staats-Anzeiger No. 3, January 3, 1849.
211 Friedrichshain — a park in Berlin where the insurgents killed on the barricades during the uprising on March 18, 1848, were buried.
212 On April 8, 1848, during his secret missi