Marx-Engels Collected Works
1 In this article, the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung raised the important question of the relation between economic development and the course of the European revolution and of the influence of the economic factor on the revolutionary process. Subsequently, Marx and Engels dealt with this problem on several occasions, partirularly in the period when, in the pages of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-Okonomische Revue—the journal that continued the traditions of the periodical they had published during the revolution—they summed up the results of the revolutionary battles that had just ended. In the autumn of 1850, they elaborated the ideas expressed in this article when they wrote the following in the "Review [ May to October 1850]": "However, this much at least is certain, that the commercial crisis contributed infinitely more to the revolutions of 1848 than the revolution to commercial crisis" (present edition, Vol. 10).
The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was founded by Marx as a militant periodical intended to exert an effective influence upon the masses, to educate and unite them politically and ideologically and pave the way for the creation of the mass party of the German proletariat. The newspaper provided Marx and Engels with an opportunity to guide the activities of the Communist League founded by them in 1847, which they regarded as the nucleus of the future proletarian party. However, since the League was too weak and numerically small, it could not be directly transformed into the rallying centre of the proletarian forces at the time when the 1848 revolution was at its peak. As the underground activities of the League lost all sense under the conditions of revolution, Marx and Engels instructed its members, who were scattered throughout Germany, to avail themselves of every legal opportunity to join the emerging workers' associations and democratic societies. In this context, a revolutionary proletarian newspaper became the main instrument for directing and co-ordinating the activities of the Communist League members, of mobilising the masses to resolve the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
It was decided to publish the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne, the capital of the Rhine Province, which was more advanced economically and politically than the other regions of Germany (here the working class was fairly strong and the Code Napoleon was in operation, which provided for somewhat greater freedom of the press than did the Prussian Law). The name, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, was chosen in order to stress the intention to continue the revolutionary-democratic traditions of the Rheinische Zeitung, which was edited by Marx in 1842 and 1843. In view of the specific conditions and the absence of the mass workers' party in Germany, Marx, Engels and their followers entered the political scene as the Left, in fact the proletarian, wing of the democratic movement. This predetermined the stand adopted by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which was put out under the subtitle Organ der Demokratie (Organ of Democracy). Only after mid-April 1849, when the German workers' class consciousness underwent certain changes, did the newspaper's editors take steps to set up an independent mass political party of the German proletariat, organisationally separate from petty-bourgeois democracy.
The first issue came out in the evening of May 31, but was dated June 1, 1848. The editorial board consisted of Karl Marx (editor-in-chief). Heinrich Bürgers, Ernst Dronke, Georg Weerth, Wilhelm Wolff, Ferdinand Wolff and Frederick Engels. In October 1848, the poet Ferdinand Freiligrath became one of its editors. All the editors were members of the Communist League. Common views, a strict division of functions and good co-ordination were characteristic of the work of the editorial board. Besides reading and answering letters and assisting the editor-in-chief, every editor dealt with a specific range of problems. The editorial board had correspondents in various parts of Germany and abroad. It established contacts with a number of democratic periodicals in other countries.
As a rule, Marx and Engels wrote the editorials, formulating the paper's stand on the most important questions of the revolution. These articles were marked "*Köln" and "**Köln". Sometimes editorials marked with one asterisk were printed in other sections of the paper under the heading of News from Italy, France, Hungary, Switzerland and other countries. In addition to editorials, Engels wrote articles on other subjects, such as the progress of the revolutionary and liberation movement in Italy, the revolutionary war in Hungary, the political situation in Switzerland and so on. Wilhelm Wolff contributed articles on the agrarian question, on the condition of the peasants and their movement, particularly in Silesia. He was also responsible for the Current Events section. Georg Weerth wrote feuilletons, and Ernst Dronke contributed various reports (including reports from Paris). Heinrich Bürgers' contribution to the paper was limited to a single article, which was practically rewritten by Marx; he had more success speaking at various meetings as the paper's representative. Freiligrath published his revolutionary verses in the paper.
The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was a daily (from September 1848 it appeared every day except Monday); it aimed to give its readers prompt information on all the most significant revolutionary developments in Germany and Europe. Often a second edition was put out on the same day; supplements were printed when there was too much material to be squeezed into the four pages of the issue, while special supplements and special editions in the form of leaflets carried the latest and most important news.
The consistent revolutionary tendency of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, its militant internationalism, and articles that appeared in its columns containing political accusations against the Government, aroused the displeasure of its bourgeois shareholders in the first months of the paper's existence and led to the persecution of its editors by the Government and attacks in the feudal monarchist and liberal bourgeois press. It was particularly the paper's articles in defence of the June 1848 uprising of the Paris proletariat that frightened away the shareholders.
To make Marx's stay in the Rhine Province more difficult, the Cologne authorities, on instructions from Berlin, refused to restore his Prussian citizenship (which Marx had renounced in 1845), and on several occasions instituted legal proceedings against him and other editors of the paper. On September 26, 1848, when a state of siege was declared in Cologne, several democratic newspapers, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung among them, were suspended. To avoid arrest, Engels, Dronke and Ferdinand Wolff had to leave Germany for a time. Wilhelm Wolff stayed in Cologne, but for several months he 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 invested all his ready money in the paper. Until January 1849, the brunt of the work, including writing leading articles, fell to Marx, since Engels had to stay in France and later in Switzerland.
Persecution of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung editors by the judicial authorities and the police became particularly intense after the counter-revolutionary coup in Prussia in November-December 1848. On February 7, 1849, Marx, Engels and Hermann Korff, the responsible manager, had to appear before a jury in Cologne and, the next day, Marx was summoned to court as the leader of the Rhenish District Committee of Democrats, together with Schapper and the lawyer Schneider. In both cases, Marx and his associates were acquitted thanks to skilful defence.
The paper's highly unstable financial position led to Marx continually taking steps to raise the necessary funds for its publication. Towards the end of March 1849, he insisted that Korff, who had considerably entangled the paper's financial affairs, be replaced by Stephan Adolf Naut who was closely associated with the Cologne Communists. In mid-April Marx had to undertake a trip to North-West Germany and Westphalia to raise funds among Communist League members and German democrats. In his absence (he returned to Cologne about May 8), the newspaper was managed by Engels. At the time, in the context of a new rise of revolutionary developments caused by the conflict between the Frankfurt National Assembly and the German governments, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung intensified its campaign for the consolidation of the revolutionary forces by publishing reports on the course of the uprising in Rhenish Prussia, Saxony and South-West Germany in defence of the imperial Constitution drafted by the Assembly. The authorities used this as a fresh pretext to persecute the paper. The number of legal proceedings against its editors rose to 23. However, the authorities' failure to win previous cases induced them to resort to another means of suppressing the revolutionary periodical. In May 1849, under the conditions of the general counter-revolutionary offensive, the Prussian Government issued an order to expel Marx 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 resulted in the paper ceasing publication. The last issue, No. 301, printed in red ink, appeared on May 19, 1849. In their farewell address "To the Workers of Cologne", the editors wrote that "their last word everywhere and always will be: emancipation of the working class" (see this volume, p. 467).
2 An allusion to the Nanking Treaty concluded by Britain as a result of the 1840-42 war with China (the so-called First Opium War). It was the first of a series of unequal treaties China was forced to conclude with European powers, reducing it to the state of a semi-colony. Under this treaty, Hong Kong was placed under British rule and five Chinese sea ports, including Canton and Shanghai, were declared open sea ports for British commerce. The Treaty was signed by Sir Henry Pottinger, Commander of the British Expeditionary Corps in China.
3 The Corn Laws—a series of laws in England (the first dating back to the 15th century) that imposed high duties on imported corn with the aim of maintaining high prices for corn on the home market in the interests of the landowners. The struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy over the Corn Laws ended in the adoption of a Bill repealing them in June 1846.
4 The struggle between Britain and the USA for the Oregon region on the Pacific coast of North America ended in 1846 with its partition between the two powers.
In 1845-49 Britain waged wars of conquest in Northern India against the State of Sikhs, which resulted in the entire Punjab being annexed by the East India Company.
5 In 1847, along with other European countries, Italy went through an economic crisis. In an attempt to overcome it, Pope Plus IX proposed a programme of economic and political reforms including a project to set up a customs union of the Italian states. However, the Pope's proposals and measures, supported by the liberals, failed to prevent a revolutionary upheaval in Italy. The revolution started with a popular uprising in Palermo on January 12, 1848 against the absolutist regime of the Neapolitan Bourbons. The movement for a Constitution and liberation from foreign rule spread all over the country. As a result of the popular uprising in Milan in March 1848, the Austrian troops were driven out of the capital of Lombardy which, however, was recaptured by Austrians after the defeat of the Piedmontese troops. From November 1848, the centre of the revolutionary movement shifted to Central Italy, particularly to the Papal states where developments forced Pope Plus IX to flee from Rome. The Roman Republic was proclaimed on February 9, 1849.
6 The present and following articles on the course of the revolutionary war in Hungary against the Austrian monarchy are the continuation of a series oi reports by Engels on the subject which he began in February 1848 (see present edition. Vol. 8). He drew his information mainly from Austrian Command communiquis. i.e. army bulletins published in the official Wiener Zeitung and other Austrian newspapers. At the time Hungarian sources were almost unavailable in Germany. In spite of the biased and incomplete data contained in the Austrian bulletins, Engels managed to present a fairly exact overall picture of the hostilities Subsequently, in his work Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Gennany, Engels pointed out that, by reporting the true development of the revolutionary war in Hungary, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had contributed more than any other paper to making the Hungarians' cause popular in Germany. The paper had explained the character of the struggle between the Magyars and the Slavs and printed a series of articles on the Hungarian war which had the honour of being plagiarised in nearly every subsequent book on the subject, not excluding those by Hungarians themselves and by "eyewitnesses" (see present edition, Vol. 11).
Engels also mentions his reports about Hungary in his letters to Marx dated April 3, 1851 and July 6, 1852 and also in his letter to H.J. Lincoln, editor of the Daily News, dated March 30, 1854. At that time he took up a systematic study of military science and the art of war and began to collect additional material on the Hungarian campaign (Memoirs by the Hungarian Commander-in-Chief Görgey, biographies of Hungarian generals, periodicals put out by the Kossuth Government). He also planned to write a book on the history of the revolutionar) war in Hungary and Italy--but these plans did not materialise.
Engels started his military reports at a grievous moment for revolutionary Hungary. On December 16, 1848, the Austrian imperial army, under the command of Windischgrätz, started an offensive and at the beginning of January captured Buda and Pest (two neighbouring cities at the time). The Hungarian revolutionary Government (the Defence Council) headed by Kossuth and Parliament (National Assembly) moved to Debreczin. Simultaneously, counter-revolutionary forces launched an offensive in Galicia (the corps under General Schlick), Silesia, the Banat and other districts. Right-wing circles in Austria and Germany predicted a speedy and final defeat of revolutionary Hungary. However, from the very beginning Engels pointed to her reserves for building up her defences and possibilities for securing a turn in the war. In fact the Defence Council did take a number of energetic steps to strengthen the revolutionary army. Guerilla warfare spread in the enemy's rear. Volunteer detachments arrived from Austria to defend the Hungarian revolution and units consisting of national minorities were formed for the purpose. The Hungarian army was joined by many Polish revolutionary commanders (among them Bem, Dembinski). In February 1849, the Hungarians not only succeeded in stabilising the situation in the central area of hostilities (on the Theiss) and even in forcing the enemy to retreat along some other sectors of the front, but also in starting to concentrate forces for a counter-blow that was delivered early in April 1849.
7 On February 26 and 27, 1849, a battle between the Hungarian revolutionary army and Austrian troops took place at Kapolna (in Central Hungary between Pest and Debreczin) which, despite the retreat of the Hungarian troops beyond the Theiss, was nor a victory for either side. Having received Windischgrätz's report on the victory at Kapolna, Francis Joseph abrogated Hungary's autonomy, which had up to that point been recognised by the Austrian ruling circles, and incorporated her into "the lands of the Austrian Empire" by the Olmiitz Manifesto of March 4, 1849 (Olmütz was the seat of the Austrian Court since the people's uprising in Vienna in October 1848).
8 The 1848-49 struggle between revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces was accompanied by an exacerbation of national contradictions in Transylvania and in other districts belonging administratively to Hungary but inhabited by other nationalities. The predominant part of the motley population of the region (Romanians, Hungarians and Szeklers, who are their off-shoot, and Germans, mainly settlers from Saxony) consisted of Romanian peasants, who were exploited by Hungarian landowners and Austrian officials. Although the advanced sections of the Romanian bourgeoisie and intelligentsia welcomed the Hungarian 1848 revolution, the erroneous policy of the Hungarian Government in the national question allowed the feudal clerical circles to use social and national antagonisms and stir up Romanians to revolt against Hungary in September 1848. The Romanian legions under the command of Colonel Urban, aided by Austrian troops under Baron Puchner, fought against the Hungarians. However, the Polish emigrant Bem, who was appointed Commander of the Hungarian army in Transylvania in December 1848, succeeded in preventing Puchner from invading Hungary from Transylvania and dealt crushing blows to the counterrevolutionary forces in Transylvania proper during January-March 1849.
A small detachment of Russian troops sent to Puchner's aid by Lüders, commander of the Tsarist expeditionary corps in Wallachia, failed to stop Bem's advance and by the end of March the latter had cleared nearly all enemy troops out of Transylvania. Bem owed his success to his policy of reconciliation of national contradictions between the Hungarians and the Romanians, in spite of the resistance of Hungarian government representatives, who were spokesmen of the Hungarian nobility (later Marx and Engels stressed this in the article "Bem" written for the New American Cyclopaedia). Calls for joint actions of the Romanians and Hungarians against the Habsburgs were also issued by Balcescu, a Romanian democrat; Janku, the leader of the Romanian poor peasants' guerilla movement, supported this idea.
The Hungarian revolutionaries from among the bourgeoisie and nobility were, however, too late in realising the necessity of co-operation with the oppressed nationalities and this enabled the Austrian ruling circles in general to use the Romanian national movement in Transylvania, led by the clerical-aristocratic upper sections, as a tool in the struggle against revolutionary Hungary. After the defeat of the Hungarian revolution, the Austrians established a rule of brutal national oppression in Transylvania, despite their demagogic promises to the contrary.
9 Szeklers(from szek—settlements)—an ethnic group of Hungarians, mostly free pe~nts. In the 13th century their forefathers were settled by Hungarian kings in the mountain regions of Transylvania to protect the frontiers. The majority of Szeklers sided with the Hungarian revolution.
10 The reference is to the paper money issued in 1848-49 by the Hungarian revolutionary Government. The notes were first issued in May 1848. Despite the Austrian authorities' repeated ban on the "Kossuth notes", the Hungarian paper money was a serious competitor to Austrian money, not only within Hungary but also in Austria proper. The "Kossuth notes" were in circulation until almost the end of 1849.
11 The reference is to the Chief Administrative Committee of the Serbian Voivodeship or the Chief Odbor in Karlowitz—an executive body elected by the Assembly (Skupstina) of representatives of the Serbian communities in the South-Slav border regions of the Austrian Empire in May 1848. The Skupstina proclaimed the Voivodina an autonomous region within the Empire. In the autumn of 1848, a number of Serbian cities formed Local Odbors which were patterned on the Chief Odbor and concentrated all civil and military authority in their hands.
The Chief Odbor became the scene of struggle between the liberals headed by Stratimirovich (who was elected President) and clerical and feudal group, who professed loyalty to the Habsburgs and opposed liberal reforms. At the beginning of 1849, this group led by Patriarch Rajachich took the upper hand. They directed the Serbian national movement in the Voivodina towards still closer collaboration with the Austrian counter-revolutionary Government which,having made use of the Serbs in the struggle against revolutionary Hungary, broke its promise and, in March 1849, refused to grant them autonomy.
12 This refers to the southern part of the Austrian-Turkish border (the Military Border area—see notes 22 and 68).
13 An allusion to the new Constitution of the Austrian united monarchy (Gesamtmonarchie) introduced by Francis Joseph on March 4, 1849. According to the Constitution, the Emperor and his Ministers were vested with full executive authority and the bureaucratic centralisation principle was strictly implemented in the administration of the Empire. Lombardy, Venice, Hungary and Bohemia were proclaimed Austrian crown lands and the autonomous estate institutions that existed in some national regions even before the 1848 revolution were abolished Croatia, Serbian Voivodina and Transylvania likewise did not receive autonomy, repeated promises notwithstanding; they separated from Hungary administratively and a system of administration similar to that in other crown lands was established there. The Constitution of March 4, 1849, was a step towards the restoration of absolutism (it was finally restored by the imperial patent of December 31. 1851, which repealed constitutional rule) and was unpopular even among the Right-wing elements in the Slav national movement in Austria, who cherished the hope that the Habsburgs would satisfy their national demands.
14 The reference is to the Hungarian National Assembly which moved to Debreczin early in January 1849 because of the advance of the Austrian troops on Pest. Some of the Right-wing deputies refused to leave for Debreczin and went over to the side of Windischgräz who captured the capital of Hungary.
15 The fortified camp and fortress of Komorn in North-Western Hungary remained in the hands of the Hungarians in the rear of the Austrian army during its offensive in late 1848 and early 1849. Later on the fortress, which withstood several sieges by Austrian troops, played an important role in the operations of the Hungarian revolutionary army.
16 The reference is to the final stage in the suppression of the 1830-31 Polish national liberation uprising by Tsarist troops supported by Prussia and Austria. After Warsaw was outflanked from the west and on September 6 its western suburb seized, the Tsarist command succeeded in forcing the city to capitulate on the night of September 7, 1851. Early in October, the remnants of the Polish insurgent army crossed the border for Prussia and Austria, where they were interned.
17 By the autumn of 1848, a democratic movement had spread among the Polish population of Galicia that aimed at preparing a national uprising and uniting with revolutionary Hungary. However, the Polish revolutionaries failed to rally adequate forces for an uprising.
In connection with the victories of the Hungarian troops under Bem in Transylvania in the first months of 1849, in particular with his march on January 5 to South Bukovina, rumours spread in Galicia of an impending advance over the Carpathians by the revolutionary Hungarian army and the Polish legion, and this intensified the revolutionary ferment among the Poles. Many young Polish democrats went secretly to Hungary to serve in the Polish legion.
18 Petty sessions—a court of the Justices of the Peace in England, tries minor offences according to a simplified legal procedure.
Quarter sessions—a court held quarterly by Justices of the Peace.
The expressions "petty sessions" and "quarter sessions" are given in English in the original.
19 An allusion to the New Year's message of greetings from King Frederick William IV "To My Army" ("An mein Heer") which he signed in Potsdam on January 1, 1849; it was published in the Preußischer Staats-Anzeiger on January 3, 1849. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung used this to expose the counter-revolutionary actions of the Prussian military (see Marx's article "A New Year Greeting", present edition, Vol. 8, pp. 222-26).
21 A considerable section of the population of Transylvania (over 200,000) were German colonists who had come from Saxony, Flanders and the Rhine lands (known as Teutons, Flemings, Saxons, later all German colonists came to be known as Saxons); they had been settled there by the Hungarian kings and Austrian emperors.
The majority of the Saxons, who were well-to-do townspeople, came out agaillst the Hungarian revolution and sided with the imperial troops in the armed struggle.
22 Peterwardein borderers as well as Serezhans and other South-Slav army formations mentioned below performed compulsory military service on the Austro-Turkish border (in the so-called Military Border area). They were named after their regimental or company districts or communities from which the soldiers came. In 1848-49 the Austrian authorities and the Right-wing bourgeois-landowning nationalist elements drew them into the war against revolutionary Hungary.
23 This refers to the Transylvanian Saxons (see Note 21).
24 The war between the Serbs and the Hungarians broke out as far back as May 1848, as a result of the conflict between the Hungarian Government and the Serbian national movement which demanded autonomy for the Voivodina. The movement was socially and politically heterogeneous. Liberal bourgeois elements (Stratimirovich and others) and Right-wing conservative landowning elements prevailed in the movement and thus allowed the Austrian ruling circles to make use of it in the struggle against the Hungarian revolution. On the other hand, the Hungarian revolutionaries, who refused to recognise the national demands of the Serbs and other Slav peoples incorporated in the Hungarian state prompted them to side with.the Habsburgs. It was only on July 28, 1849, i. e. on the eve of its downfall, that revolutionary Hungary officially declared equality for all nationalities in the country. Having consolidated their domination largely with the help of the Croats, the Serbs of the Voivodina and so on, the ruling circles of the Austrian Empire went back on their promises and not only refused to grant autonomy to the Slav and other peoples of the multinational state, but abolished even the remnants of self-government in the national regions.
26 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 Democrats mentioned below was elected at the First Democratic Congress held in Frankfurt am Main from June 14 to 17, 1848. Fröbel, Rau and Kriege were elected to the first Central Committee and Bairhoffer, Schütte and Anneke were their deputies. The Committee had its headquarters in Berlin. However, despite the decision of the Frankfurt am Main Congress to unite all democratic associations and set up the Central and district committees of German Democrats; the democratic movement in Germany still lacked unity and organisation owing to the weakness and vacillation of it's petty-bourgeois leaders.
27 This refers to the Prussian National Assembly convened in Berlin on May 22, 1848, to work out a Constitution and introduce a constitutional system on the basis of an "agreement with the Crown". It was dissolved on December 5 as a result of the coup d'etat in Prussia. The causes behind the coup d'etat were the formation of the Brandenburg-Manteuffel counter-revolutionary Government and the publication on November 9 of a decree transferring the Assembly to the provincial town of Brandenburg. Liberal and democratic (Left) deputies failed to offer any real resistance to the instigators of the coup d'etat and confined themselves to passive resistance. The introduction of a Constitution "granted" hy the King was announced simultaneously with the dissolution of the Assembly.
28 An allusion to the Wahl-Manifest der radicalen Reformpartei für Deutschland (Election Manifesto of the Radical Reform Party of Germany) written by Ruge not long before the elections to the Frankfurt National Assembly. It proclaimed "editing of the rationale of events" to be the chief task of the Assembly. The Election Manifesto was published by Ruge in Leipzig in his newspaper Die Reform on April 16, 1848.
29 The Central March Association which had branches in different cities of Germany was set up at the end of November 1848 in Frankfurt am Main by the Left-wing deputies to the Frankfurt National Assembly. The leaders of the March associations, which derived their name from the March 1848 revolution in Germany, were petty-bourgeois democrats including Fröbel, Simon and Vogt. These confined themselves to revolutionary phrase-mongering, were both indecisive and inconsistent in the struggle against the counter-revolution and were sharply criticised by Marx and Engels on this account.
30 The phrase "Imperial Assembly" refers to the German National Assembly which opened on May 18, 1848 in St. Paul's Church, in the free town of Frankfurt am Main. It 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 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, the liberal majority in fact condoned the counter-revolution.
When writing this and other articles on 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.
31 An allusion to the Left wing of the Frankfurt National Assembly which consisted of two factions: the Left (Fröbel, Vogt, Venedey and others) and the extreme Left known as the Radical-Democratic Party (Ruge, Schlöffel, Zitz, Trüzschler, Simon and others). Though the Neue Rheinische Zeitung supported the extreme Left rather than the more moderate groups of democrats, it criticised the former for their vacillations and halfway stand on the basic problems of the German revolution -- abolition of feudal survivals and unification of the country.
32 The toleration tax was levied on the Jewish population of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1749. The arrears grew from year to year, and the 1840s witnessed the intensified struggle for the abolition of this humiliating tax. In June 1846 it was repealed on condition that all the arrears, which amounted to 1,200,000 florins, were paid off during the next five years.
This measure was a certain step towards the emancipation of the country's Jews.
33 On September 7, 1848 the Emperor sanctioned the law drawn up by the Austrian Imperial Diet (Reichstag) repealing the personal bondage of the peasants and making labour and other services connected with land tenure subject to redemption. The redemption sum was fixed at twenty times the amount of the peasants' annual duties. Two-thirds of this was to be paid by the peasants and one-third by the state (from taxes). Despite the halfway nature of this agrarian reform, which did not satisfy the peasants who continued to fight for the abolition of feudal obligations without redemption, it nevertheless opened the way for the development of capitalist relations in agriculture.
34 This article is complementary to the series of articles and reports on Switzerland written by Engels during his forced stay there (because of the order for his arrest issued by the Cologne authorities) from November 1848 to January 1849. The series started with the article "The Ex-Principality" and ended with two reports on the foreign policy of the Swiss ruling circles (see preseni edition, Vol. 8, pp. 7-8, 251-53). Engels ceased his writings on Swiss affairs in mid-January 1849, when he returnehto Germany. Later on, however, he occasionally wrote on the subject, as this article shows. It is based on data from Swiss and German papers, but the editors of the volume are not in possession of the actual material used by Engels.
35 Sonderbund—a separatist union formed by the seven economically backward Catholic cantons of Switzerland in 1845 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 25, 1847, the Sonderbund army was defeated by federal forces.
36 The reference is to the Constitution of the Swiss Republic adapted on Sepember 12, 1848. The Constitution legalised the results of the victory won by the progressive forces over the Sonderbund and turned Switzerland from a union of individual cantons into a united federativestate. In place of the former Swiss Diet, the members of which functioned as representatives of cantons, an all-Swiss Federal Assembly was set up consisting of two chambers—the National Council and the Council of States. The executive power was vested in the Federal Council (the Government of Switzerland) and the chairman of the Federal Council acted as President of the Republic. The Constitution provided for the organisation of a single post and customs department, the introduction of a unified monetary system, and a system of weights and measures. At the same time, cantons retained broad autonomous rights.
37 In the period from the fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries agreements were concluded between Swiss cantons and European states for the supply of Swiss mercenaries. In many countries they were used by counter-revolutionary monarchist forces.
In this case, the reference is to the agreements concluded in 1848 by the canton of Berne and some other cantons with the counter-revolutionary Government of Ferdinand II, King of Naples. The use of Swiss troops against the revolutionary movement in Italy aroused profound indignation among the Swiss progressive public, and this eventually led to the annulment of these agreements.
38 An allusion to the invitation to Berne extended by the Federal Council to Professor of Military Sciences Rudolf Lohbauer, formerly a radical journalist who contributed to Prussian government periodicals. See Engels' article "Herr Müller.— Radetzky's Chicanery towards Tessin.—The Federal Council-Lohbauer" (Vol. 8, pp. 259-41).
39 The reference is to the dissolution of the Austrian Constituent Imperial Diet (Reichstag) by Emperor Francis Joseph on March 7, 1849. He was prompted to do this by his mother Archduchess Sophia and the Court camarilla. The Imperial Diet opened in Vienna on July 22, 1848. Prior to this, on May 15, as a result of the mass revolutionary actions, the Government was forced to recognise the constituent rights of the Imperial Diet to be convened. The majority of its deputies, however, representing the liberal bourgeoisie and landowners (including deputies from the Slav national districts), opposed any extension of the revolution. During the Vienna popular uprising in October 1848, the Imperial Diet transferred its seat to the Moravian town of Kremsier. There, on March 4, 1849 the consultative commission it had set up completed a Draft of Fundamental Rights providing for people's sovereignty, freedom of assembly and the press, equality of estates and nationalities, while retaining the monarchy. The draft, however, was not approved because the coup d'etat took place the same day and the new, anti-democratic Constitution (see Note 13) was introduced by royal decree. Three days later the Diet itself was dissolved.
40 The reference is to the October-November 1848 counter-revolutionary coup d'etat in Prussia which resulted in the dissolution of the Prussian National Assembly and the introduction of the Constitution imposed by King Frederick William IV (see Note 27).
The Holy Alliance—an association of European monarchs founded on September 26, 1815, on the initiative of the Russian Tsar Alexander I and the Austrian Chancellor Metternich, to suppress revolutionary movements and preserve feudal monarchies in European countries. During the 1848-49 revolution and subsequent years, counter-revolutionary circles in Austria, Prussia and Tsarist Russia attempted to revive the Holy Alliance's activities in a modified form.
41 During the popular uprising in Vienna in October 1848, Welcker and Mosle, liberal deputies of the Frankfurt National Assembly (see Note 30), were sent to Vienna to negotiate with the insurgents and the Austrian Court and Government, which moved from the capital to Olmütz. Both of them acted as commissioners of the so-called Central Authority (Zentralgewalt) set up by the Frankfurt Assembly on June 28, 1848 and consisting of the Imperial Regent (Archduke Johann 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 in fact an instrument of the counter-revolutionary German princes. However, Welcker and Mosle never turned up in revolutionary Vienna and confined themselves to fruitless talks with the Austrian Ministers and audiences granted by Emperor Ferdinand and Commander-in-Chief of the counter-revolutionary army Windischgrätz. The mediatory mission of the imperial commissioners was in fact a cover for the treacherous refusal by the liberal majority of the Frankfurt Assembly to support the Viennese insurgents.
Robert Blum, who represented the Left wing of the Frankfurt Assembly, sided with the insurgents and, despite his parliamentary immunity, was shot on November 9 by an Austrian firing-squad after the uprising was suppressed.
The correspondence between Welcker and Mosle and the Austrian Ministers was published in the Appendices to the Report of the Committee of the Frankfurt Assembly for investigating Austrian affairs (see Verhandlungen der detschen verfassunggebenden Reichsversammlung zu Frankfurt am Main, Ed. 2, Frankfurt am Main, 1849, S. 602-19).
The Neue Rheinische Zeitung responded to the Welcker-Mosle mission with a critical article "Report of the Frankfurt Committee on Austrian Affairs" (see present edition, Vol. 8, pp. 88-93).
42 At the time when the coup d'etat was being hatched and implemented in Prussia, the Frankfurt National Assembly undertook to settle the conflict between the Prussian National Assembly and the Crown. To fulfil this mission, first Bassermann (a liberal leader) and later Simson and Hergenhahn arrived in Berlin as imperial commissioners. Gagern, Chairman of the Frankfurt Assembly, also went to the capital of Prussia to render assistance. The mediation of the imperial commissioners and Gagern proved to be helpful to the counter-revolutionaries, because it diverted the democratic forces in the German state from offering real support to the Prussian National Assembly in its struggle against the Brandenburg-Manteuffel Ministry.
43 Serezhans — see Note 22.
Huzuls — Ukrainians living in the Carpathian mountains which formed part of Austrian Hungary. In the first half of the 19th century, up to 1918, they were subjects of the Habsburg Empire.
44 The reference is to the Grundrechte des deutschen Volkes a document passed by the Frankfurt National Assembly in December 1848 in the course of drawing up an all-German imperial Constitution (“Verfassung des deutschen Reiches vom 28. März 1849”). It was regarded by the Assembly as a component part of the Constitution and was included in it as Chapter Vi.
45 An allusion to the Austrian special border troops who wore red-coats and caps and were recruited mainly from among the inhabitants of the Empire’s Slav provinces (Croats, Serbs of the Voivodina etc.). In 1848 and 1849, they were used by the counter-revolution against the revolutionary movement.
46 An allusion to Frederick William IV’s statement in his speech at the opening of the United Diet on April 11, 1847, that he was “heir to the unweakened crown and must hand it over to his successors in an unweakened state” (see Der Erste Vereinigte Landtag in Berlin 1847, erster Teil).
47 In the first half of the 19th century the word poster was used to denote any appeal, announcement or notice posted in the streets for the public to see.
The September Laws promulgated by the French Government in September 1835 restricted the rights of jury courts and introduced severe measures against the press. They provided for increased money deposits for periodical publications and introduced imprisonment and large fines for publishing attacks on private property and the existing political system.
48 The Prussian National Assembly dissolved by King Frederick William IV on December 5, 1848 (see Note 27), was ironically referred to by Marx and Engels as the “Agreement Assembly” (“Vereinbarungsversammlung”), because it was guided by the “theory of agreement”. According to this, the Assembly was to draw up a Constitution not on the basis of sovereign and constituent rights, but by “agreement with the Crown” (the principle formulated by the Camphausen-Hansemann Government and adopted by the majority of the Assembly). The Crown used this theory of agreement as a screen to cover up preparations for a counter-revolutionary coup d'état.
49 The so-called law on crieurs publics (street newspaper-sellers) adopted by the Louis Philippe Government in 1834 was intended to restrict the distribution of opposition periodicals.
50 Code Napoléon (Code civil) — French code of civil law promulgated in 1804. It was introduced by Napoleon in the conquered regions of West and South-West Germany and remained in operation in the Rhine Province even after its incorporation into Prussia in 1815.
The expression Prussian Law refers to the Allgemeines Landrecht für die Preussischen Staaten approved and published in 1794. It included the criminal, state, civil, administrative and ecclesiastical law and was strongly influenced by backward feudal juridical standards.
51 After the Rhineland’s union with Prussia in 1815, the Prussian Government strove to introduce Prussian Law standards into various spheres of jurisdiction, in place of the existing French civil code. This was being done through a series of laws, edicts and instructions aimed at restoring the feudal privileges of the nobility (the right of primogeniture), introduction of the Prussian penal code, marriage laws etc. These measures, which met with great opposition in the Rhineland, were repealed after the March revolution by the decree of April 15, 1848.
52 The Constitution imposed (“granted”) by King Frederick William IV on December 5, 1848, dissolved the Prussian National Assembly and introduced a two-chamber system; the First Chamber was transformed by age and property qualifications into a privileged chamber of the nobility. According to the electoral law of December 6, 1848, the right to vote in the two-stage elections to the Second Chamber was granted only to so-called independent Prussians. The Constitution provided for the suspension, in case of war or disorder, of freedom of the individual, inviolability of the dwelling, freedom of the press, assembly, association and so forth. The royal authority was vested with very wide powers — the King was authorised to convene or dissolve the Chambers, to appoint Ministers, declare war or conclude a peace treaty. He was vested with full executive power, while he exercised legislative power together with the Chambers. Later on, anti-democratic revisions of the Constitution were repeatedly made on the initiative of Prussian ruling circles.
53 See Note 19.
54 Raizen (Rascians, Rascier) is the name for Serbs of the Orthodox denomination, often used to denote Serbs in general; it probably derives from the ancient town of Rassa, the centre of the Raschka district where the first Serbian tribes settled.
55 Honved — literally: defender of the homeland; the name given to the Hungarian revolutionary army of 1848-49, which was set up by the decision of the Hungarian revolutionary Government on May 16, 1848, to form ten battalions of Honveds.
56 See Note 9.
57 The Slovanská Lipa — a Czech national society founded in Prague at the end of April 1848. The society was. under the leadership of moderate liberals (Shafarik, Gauch), who joined the counter-revolution after the Prague uprising was suppressed in June 1848, whereas the provincial branches were mostly led by representatives of the radical Czech bourgeoisie.
58 The reference is to the Bills on associations and assemblies, and on posters and the press prepared by the Prussian Government.
The September Laws — see Note 47.
The Prussian Law — see Note 50.
59 See Note 46.
60 After Napoleon was proclaimed “Emperor of the French” in 1804, he assumed the title of king of the vassal Italian state formed from the Cisalpine Republic (Northern Italy), a dependency of France. After being crowned in Milan Cathedral on May 26, 1805 with the traditional iron crown of the Lombard kings who conquered Northern Italy in the sixth century, he uttered the following phrase, “God has given it to me, woe to him who will touch it” (“Dio mi la diede, guai a chi la tocca”).
61 See Note 19.
62 An allusion to Camphausen who was formerly an oil and corn dealer.
63 In the Neue Rheinische Zeitung this ironical expression was used of the commander of a division billeted in Düsseldorf, the reactionary Prussian general Drigalski (see Marx’s article “Drigalski — Legislator, Citizen and Communist”, present edition, Vol. 8, pp. 75-80) who in November 1848 proclaimed a state of siege in the town and appealed to the citizens to be “communists in the noble sense of the word” and make donations to the poor. The appeal signed “Citizen Drigalski” was published in the Düsseldorfer Zeitung No. 311, November 24, 1848.
64 The reference is to the eastern provinces of the Kingdom of Prussia (with the exception of Posen) which historically formed its basis. They were known as the old provinces as distinct from the western (“new”) provinces — Rhineland and Westphalia, which were incorporated into Prussia in 1815 by decision of the Vienna Congress.
65 See Note 55.
66 See Note 45.
67 The reference is to the so-called party of Magyarisers, or the Croatian-Hungarian party, formed as far back as 1841 and consisting mainly of Croatian-Slavonian nobles and big landowners. The party aimed for a complete merger of Croatia and Slavonia (which administratively formed part of the Hungarian Kingdom within the Austrian Empire) with Hungary as a means to counteract bourgeois reforms and to retain political and social privileges. its members waged a bitter struggle against the representatives of “Illyrism”, a national trend dominated mainly by liberal landowners and commercial bourgeoisie. The Illyrians aimed at uniting the South-Slav peoples and at securing broad autonomous rights for them within the framework of the Austrian Empire, on a federative basis.
During the 1848 revolution and the increasingly acute national conflict, many Magyarisers fled to Hungary. On June 5, 1848, the sittings of the Sabor of the Southern Slavs opened in Agrarp (Zagreb). Representatives of the liberal landowners and the top sections of the commercial bourgeoisie in Croatia and Slavonia who predominated at the Sabor (the Sabor was also attended by delegates from the Serbs of the Voivodina and the Czechs), professed their loyalty to the Habsburgs and restricted the national programme to the demand for autonomy for the united Slav territories within the Austrian Empire. General Jellachich, who was close to the Right-wing Illyrians, was appointed Ban of Croatia in March 1848. After a brief conflict with the Austrian Government, which led to his dismissal, he was reinstated in September 1848. Placing Croatian and Slavonian military units at the service of Austrian reaction, Jellachich took part in the counter-revolutionary campaign against Hungary and in the suppression of the popular uprising in Vienna.
The Banal Council — an administrative body, headed by the Ban, exercised the functions of the Government of Croatia.
68 The reference is to the inhabitants of the so-called Military Border area, i.e. the southern border region of the Austrian Empire under a military administration. The area included part of Croatia and southern Hungary. its population was made up of Serbs and Croats who were allotted land in return for military service, the fulfilment of state obligations and payment of duties. Borderers often rose in revolt against this system of military-feudal oppression (see also notes 22 and 45).
69 In this item, Engels apparently made use of the material published in the Breslauer Zeitung and reprinted in the Kölnische Zeitung No. 63 (second edition), March 15, 1849.
70 The reference is to the Defence Council set up on September 22, 1848 under the conditions of the intervention launched against revolutionary Hungary by the army of the Croatian Ban Jellachich. The Council, headed by Kossuth, exercised control over the Count Batthyiny liberal Government. After the victory over Jellachich and the resignation of the Batthyány Cabinet the Defence Council was entrusted with governmental functions on October 8. Kossuth, its chairman, was vested with full powers in accordance with war-time conditions. In January 1849, when Austrian troops seized Pest, the Defence Council and the National Assembly transferred their seat to Debreczin.
71 The reference is to the French Provisional Government formed on February 24, 1848, as a result of the overthrow of the July monarchy. The posts in this Government were mainly held by moderate republicans (Lamartine, Dupont de l'Eure, Crémieux, Arago, Marie and two men from the National-the opposition republican party — Marrast and Carnier-Pagès). In addition, the Government included three representatives of the petty-bourgeois party of democrat-socialists who grouped round the Réforme — Ledru-Rollin, Flocon and Louis Blanc, and a mechanic Albert (real name Martin). The Provisional Government stayed in power till May 10, 1848 when it was superseded by the Executive Commission formed by the National (Constituent) Assembly.
72 The reference is to the uprising of the Paris proletariat against the bourgeois regime of the Second Republic (June 23-26, 1848). It was the climax of the 1848 revolution in France and had an impact on revolutionary events in other European countries. Marx and Engels appraised the uprising and its historic’ significance in a series of articles published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (see present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 130-49).
73 The additional 45-centime tax for every franc of all direct taxes that was introduced by the French Provisional Government on March 16, 1848, became a heavy burden, above all for the peasants who made up the majority of France’s population. This measure caused the peasant masses to turn away from the revolution and to vote for Louis Napoleon Bonaparte at the presidential elections on December 10, 1848.
74 The legitimists — advocates of the Bourbon dynasty overthrown in 1830, who upheld the interests of the big hereditary landowners, and the claim to the throne by the grandson of King Charles X, Comte de Chambord, who took the name of Henry V.
75 The reference is to the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in France, first in May 1814 and later in July 1815. After the defeat of Napoleonic France in the war against the sixth coalition, Napoleon had to abdicate in April 1814 and the Bourbons were restored to power. Louis XVIII became King of France. In March 1815, Napoleon regained power but his rule did not 1 last long (the Hundred Days). After his defeat at Waterloo by British and Prussian troops he again abdicated on June 22, 1815 and Louis XVIII was again restored to the throne (July 8) with the help of the foreign armies.
76 Orleanists — supporters of the Orléans dynasty which held power in France during the July monarchy (1830-48). The Orleanists upheld the interests of the financial aristocracy and the big industrial bourgeoisie.
77 On May 15, 1848, there was a revolutionary uprising of Paris workers led by Blanqui, Barbès and others against the anti-labour and anti-democratic Policy pursued by the Constituent Assembly which opened on May 4. The participants in the mass demonstration forced their way into the Assembly’s premises, demanded the formation of a Ministry of Labour and presented a number of other demands. An attempt was made to form a revolutionary government. However, with the help of national guards from the bourgeois quarters and regular troops, the power of the Constituent Assembly was restored. The leaders of the movement were arrested and put on trial.
78 The trial of the leaders of the Paris workers’ revolutionary uprising of May 15, 1848 was held in Bourges from March 7 to April 3, 1849. They were accused of conspiring against the Government. The court sentenced Barbès and Albert to exile and Blanqui to ten-year solitary confinement. The other defendants (among them Sobrier, Raspail) were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment or exile.
79 The reference is to the article “Ein Aktenstück des Märzvereins” published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 181 of December 29, 1848, which exposed the half-hearted and inconsistent policy of a number of the Frankfurt Left leaders whose actions only helped the counter-revolution. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung called these leaders the “Girondists of our revolution”.
80 This refers to the counter-revolutionary Catholic Union attached to the Frankfurt National Assembly and headed by von Radowitz, an extreme Right-wing leader.
81 “Thinking friends of history” is a phrase which Marx and Engels ironically used of Camphausen and other liberals, alluding to the subtitle of the then well-known book by the liberal historian Kari von Rotteck, Allgemeine Geschichte vom Anfang der historischen Kenntniss bis auf unsere Zeiten. Für denkende Geschichtsfreunde bearb. van Karl von Rotteck, Bd. 1-9, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1834.
82 The Feuillants — moderate liberal constitutionalists who, during the French Revolution, withdrew from the Jacobin Club on July 16, 1791, after it had adopted a petition to dethrone the King. They formed their own political club which held meetings in the premises of the monastic order of the same name which was dissolved in 1789. The Feuillants upheld the interests of the big bourgeoisie and liberal nobility and did their utmost to prevent the revolution from developing further.
83 An allusion to the stand adopted by Karl Vogt and other leaders of the March Association over the future state structure of Germany. At the concluding stage of the debates in the Frankfurt National Assembly on the imperial Constitution, Vogt and other moderate democrats began to be inclined to agree with the pro-Prussian liberals (Gagern and others) who strove to unite Germany as an empire, with Frederick William IV, King of Prussia, at the head.
84 The Second Chamber of the Prussian Diet (Landtag) was convened on February 26, 1849, on the basis of the Constitution “granted” by Frederick William IV on December 5, 1848. Despite the fact that elections to it were held under conditions of virtual martial law, introduced in many provinces of Prussia and under the anti-democratic electoral law of December 6, 1848, a strong opposition was formed in the Chamber. It was made up of the majority of Left-Centre and Right-Centre deputies of the dissolved National Assembly. Though the opposition speeches of the Left were rather moderate, the Second Chamber was dissolved by the Government on April 27, 1849.
The text of the draft Address, as well as the minutes of the debates in the Chamber, were published in Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen der durch das Allerhöchste Patent vom 5. Dezember 1848 einberufenen Kammem. Zweite Kammer. Beilage zum “Preussischen Staats-Anzeiger”, Bd. 1-2, Berlin, 1849.
Marx apparently used newspaper reports.
85 See Note 52.
86 The reference is to “Verordnung über einige Grundlagen der künftigen Preussischen Verfassung” and to “Wahlgesetz für die zur Vereinbarung der Preussischen Staats-Verfassung zu berufende Versammlung”, adopted by the Second United Diet (the first document on April 6, the second on April 8, 1848). The dissolution of the National Assembly by the Prussian Government on December 5, 1848, was in blatant violation of the laws passed by the United Diet.
87 Comité du salut public (Committee of Public Safety) — revolutionary government of France during the dictatorship of the Jacobins (1793-94).
88 The United Diet — an assembly of representatives from the eight Provincial Diets of Prussia and similarly based on the estate principle. The United Diet sanctioned new taxes and loans, took part in the discussion of new Bills and had the right to address petitions to the King.
The First United Diet, which opened on April 11, 1847, was dissolved in June, following its refusal to grant a new loan. The Second United Diet was convened on April 2, 1848, after the revolution of March 18-19 in Prussia. It passed a series of laws pertaining to the principles ‘of a future Constitution and on elections to the Prussian National Assembly, and also sanctioned the loan. The United Diet session was closed on April 10, 1848.
89 An allusion to the suppression of the Polish national liberation insurrection of 1830-31 by Tsarist troops.
90 The Danish campaign refers to the war between Prussia and Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein which broke out in April 1848. The national liberation movement against Danish rule arose in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein inhabited mainly by Germans under the influence of the March 1848 revolution in the German states. Fearful of a national uprising and an extension of the revolution, Prussian ruling circles strove to come to terms with the King of Denmark in the course of the war, at the expense of all-German interests, and this also affected the war manoeuvres of the Prussian army. Engels ironically compared them with the proceedings in the Imperial Court of Law which were marked by unprecedented red tape and confusion (the Imperial Court of Law was the supreme Judicial institution in Germany in the 15th-18th centuries). The Imperial Court of Law ceased to exist in 1806 when the so-called Holy Roman Empire of the German nation was abolished.
91 During the suppression of the national liberation uprising in Posen at the end of April and the beginning of May 1848, Prussian troops suffered a defeat at Miloslavl and shot the Polish insurgents at Wreschen (Wrzegnia) (see present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 104-05).
When speaking of the “victories” of the Prussian army, Engels is ironically referring to its savage reprisals against the popular movements in Anhalt-Bernburg in March 1848, in Mainz in May 1848 and its participation in suppressing the revolt in Frankfurt am Main in September 1848.
“My glorious army” — see Note 19.
92 The reference is to the armistice concluded on August 26, 1848, in the Swedish town of Malm6 between Denmark and Prussia for a term of seven months. The armistice actually preserved the Danish rule in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, provided for the replacement of provisional authorities in Schleswig by a new government (in which the puppets of the Danish monarchy prevailed), the separation of the Schleswig and Holstein troops and other terms unfavourable to the national liberation movement in the duchies. The revolutionary-democratic changes that had been introduced there came virtually to nothing.
Later on, the ruling circles of Prussia, hoping to raise the prestige of the Prussian monarchy by taking part in this popular war and to realise their aggressive plans, resumed hostilities in March 1849 which went on with changing success. However, under pressure from Denmark’s allies (England and Russia), Prussia signed a peace treaty with Denmark on July 2, 1850, temporarily abandoned its claims to Schleswig and Holstein and withdrew its military support in the war waged by the duchies. The Schleswig-Holstein troops sustained a defeat and had to give up resistance. As a result, the two duchies remained within the Kingdom of Denmark.
93 See Note 9.
94 This apparently refers to the Chief Odbor (see Note 11).
95 See Note 54.
96 See Note 68.
97 The reference is to the Hungarian National Assembly (Diet) convened in Pressburg before the 1848 revolution in the Austrian Empire. The Assembly, in which the liberal nobility predominated, put forward a demand for a Constitution. After the revolutionary demonstrations in Pest on March 15, 1848, the Assembly introduced a parliamentary system. Executive power was vested in the Hungarian Government, but the two states — Hungary and Austria — continued as monarchies under one crown.
The imperial government at first had to recognise this status of Hungary, but subsequently, as a result of the deepening conflict, tried to demolish it through armed intervention. At the same time, in the Hungarian National Assembly which held its sessions in Debreczin there was the “Party of Pacification” which consisted mainly of aristocratic elements and was striving to find a compromise with the Habsburgs and to secure recognition of the new Emperor Francis Joseph as the King of Hungary. The “Party of Pacification” was opposed by the radicals headed by Kossuth who came out for more resolute action against the Austrian monarchy.
The Pragmatic Sanction was a royal decree having the force of fundamental law on succession to the throne. Adopted in the Austrian Empire in 1713, it established the principle of the indivisibility of the Habsburg crown lands and the possibility of distaff succession if the Emperor had no sons.
98 This article was written by Engels for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung but was not published. It is extant in the manuscript form with slight corrections and deletions in the text made by the author. The most important versions that were crossed out are given in footnotes.
99 The reference is to the suppression of the popular uprising in Vienna by the counter-revolutionary army of Windischgrätz at the end of October and the beginning of November 1848, and also to the capture of Pest on January 5, 1849 by Austrian troops under his command in an attack on revolutionary Hungary.
100 Apparently Engels is here referring to the Slav group in the Imperial Diet and, in general, to the representatives of the Slav peoples’ national movement who were demanding the unification of the Slav lands and autonomy within the framework of the Austrian Empire. After the publication of the imposed (“granted”) Constitution on March 4, 1849, which destroyed all hopes that the national demands might be satisfied, opposition sentiments grew stronger among the Slavs.
101 The reference is to the conflict of the Austrian Government with the Constituent Imperial Diet and to the Constitution imposed by Emperor Francis Joseph on March 4, 1849 (see Note 39).
102 See Note 35.
103 The sittings of the Frankfurt National Assembly were held in St. Paul’s Church. Austrian ruling circles were hostile to the elaboration of an all-German Constitution by the Assembly and strove to restore the old German Confederation of 1815, in which Austria played . the leading role. Schwarzenberg, head of the Austrian Government, issued a Note imbued with this idea on March 9, 1849, after the dissolution of the Austrian Diet. On April 15, 1849, the Austrian Government officially rejected the imperial Constitution adopted by the Assembly as incompatible with the unity and nature of the Austrian Empire and recalled the Austrian deputies from Frankfurt.
104 The revolution in Austria began with the uprising of March 13, 1848 in Vienna. I was followed by the March 18-19 revolutionary events in Berlin which started the revolution in Prussia.
105 On June 25, 1849, the anniversary of the June 1848 uprising of the Paris workers was to he celebrated.
106 Camphausen was one of the shareholders of the oppositional Rheinische Zeitung which was published in Cologne in 1842 and 1843 and edited by Marx from October 1842 to March 1843.
107 The reference is to the appeal by Frederick William IV published on March 21, 1848 under the title “To My People and the German Nation” (“An mein Volk und an die deutsche Nation”). Under the impact of the revolutionary events, the King had to give a pledge to be loyal to the tricolour banner of the revolution and to contribute to the unification of Germany.
108 Friedrichshain — a park in Berlin where those killed in the barricade fighting during the March 18, 1848 uprising were buried.
109 The reference is to the cities of Buda (Ofen) and Pest which at the time were virtually twin capital cities of Hungary. After a successful counter-attack by the Hungarian revolutionary army and the liberation of the two capital cities from the Austrian invaders on June 24, 1849 the Hungarian authorities announced the unification of Buda and Pest into one city. However, subsequent events prevented this decree from being implemented. The official unification of Pest and Buda and the formation of a single city of Budapest took place on January 1, 1873.
110 See Note 10.
111 See Note 21.
112 Cavalry units of the Austrian army included not only squadrons but also larger tactical formations — divisions, which usually consisted of two squadrons.
113 The reference is to the armistice concluded between Austria and the Kingdom of Sardiniá (Piedmont) on August 9, 1848 after the defeat of the Piedmontese troops at Custozza. The Kingdom of Sardinia was to withdraw its troops from Lombardy, Parma and Venice and cede them to the Austrians.
On March 20, 1849, under pressure from the masses, King Charles Albert had to declare the armistice cancelled and to resume hostilities against Austria.
114 C.M. (conventional money, or 20-guiden coins) had existed in Austria since the eighteenth century and, under the respective convention, was also introduced in Bavaria. Its standard was silver (20 guldens were to contain 234 grams of silver). In the eighteenth century, paper money was issued which, from the early nineteenth century, was called “Vienna currency”. Transactions were quoted in conventional monetary units.
115 See Note 39.
116 The German term used here and elsewhere is Feldzeugmeister which is a higher rank in the Austrian army directly subordinate to Field Marshal. In some other armies it retained its original meaning of artillery commander.
117 See Note 67.
118 See Note 54.
119 The reference is to provincial diets (Landtags) introduced in Prussia in 1823. They consisted of representatives of four estates (princes, nobility, representatives of towns and rural communities). Property and other electoral qualifications secured the majority in the provincial diets for the nobility. The provincial diets were convened by the King and they were competent only to deal with questions of local economy and administration. As consultative bodies they could make proposals on Bills submitted by the Government for discussion. In 1843, under the pretext of introducing unified legislation for Prussia, King Frederick William IV submitted for discussion in the Rhenish Diet a new draft of the penal code which was to replace the more liberal French Code Pénal. The seventh Rhenish Diet (1 843) rejected the Bill, stating that the existing laws fully conformed to the moral standards, traditions and legal practices of the Rhine Province.
120 See Note 46.
The Rhenish legislation refers to the Code civil (see Note 50) and Code pénal — the penal code adopted in France in 1810 and introduced in the conquered regions of West and South-West Germany. It remained in operation in the Rhine Province even after its incorporation into Prussia in 1815.
121 An allusion to the rescripts (patents) of Frederick William IV of February 3, 1847, on the convocation of the United Diet (on which see Note 88).
122 At the June 2, 1847 sitting of the United Diet, Thadden-Triglaff, a Right-wing deputy, stated: “My proposal reads as follows: freedom of the press — really public proceedings for the gentlemen of the press and along with them the gallows! I would ask Messrs the stenographers to underline thoroughly both the words ‘really’ and ‘gallows’.” (Der Erste Vereinigte Landtag in Berlin 1847, vierter Theil, S. 224 I.)
123 Uckermark — a northern part of the Brandenburg Province (Prussia), the mainstay of the reactionary Prussian Junkers.
124 Holy Hermandad — a league of Spanish towns set up at the end of the fifteenth century with the approbation of the King, who sought to make use of the wealthy townspeople in their fight. against the feudal magnates in an attempt to establish royal absolutism. From the middle of the sixteenth century, the armed detachments of the Holy Hermandad performed police duties. Thus the police in general has often been ironically labelled the “Holy Hermandad”.
125 See Note 4.
126 The reference is to the Vienna Congress of European monarchs and their Ministers (September 1814 to June 1815) which set up a system of all-European treaties after the wars of the European powers against Napoleonic France. The decisions of the Congress helped to restore the feudal system and a number of former dynasties in the states that had been conquered by Napoleon, sanctioned the political disunity of Germany and Italy, the incorporation of Belgium into Holland and the partition of Poland and mapped out measures to combat the revolutionary movement.
127 See Note 50.
128 The reference is to the so-called. United Commissions of the representatives of the Provincial Diets which met on January 17, 1848 to discuss the Bill concerning penal law (“Entwurf des Strafgesetzbuchs für die preussischen Staaten...”). Convening these commissions, the Prussian Government hoped that the apparent preparations for reform would lessen the growing public unrest. The work of the commissions was interrupted by the revolutionary outbursts that swept through Germany at the beginning of March.
129 The reference is to the edict issued by the King of Prussia on March 6, 1821 under the title “Allerhöchste Kabinetsorder vom 6ten März 1821, betreffend die Strafgesetze und das Verfahren in den Rheinprovinzen bei Verbrechen und Vergehungen gegen den Staat und dessen Oberhaupt..”. It introduced the Prussian penal code into the Rhine Province with respect to high treason. This was one of the first attempts made by the Prussian Government to limit the jurisdiction of the Code pénal operating in the Rhine Province and introduce the old-Prussian feudal-type penal code.
130 See Note 55.
131 The debates in the Second Chamber of the Prussian Provincial Diet (see Note 84) were published in Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen der durch das Allerhöcchste Patent vom 5. Dezember 1848 einberufenen Kammern. Zweite Kammer. Beilage zum “Preussischen Staats-Anzeiger”, Bd. 1-2, Berlin, 1849. The discussion of the draft Address in reply to the speech from the throne was held on March 13, 1849.
132 The minutes of the Prussian National Assembly (ironically referred to here as the “Agreement Assembly” — see Note 48) were published in the Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen der durch das Allerhöcchste Patent vom 5. Dezember 1848 einberufenen Kammern. Zweite Kammer. Beilage zum “Preussischen Staats-Anzeiger”, Bd. 1-3, Berlin, 1848. Later they were published as a separate edition under the title Verhandlungen der constituirenden Versammlung für Preussen. 1848, Bd. 1-8, Berlin, 1848; Bd. 9 (Suppl.-Bd.), Leipzig, 1849.
133 The reference is to the period between the dissolution of the Prussian National Assembly (December 5, 1848) and the convocation of the Chambers of the Prussian Provincial Diet (February 26, 1849).
134 See Note 52.
135 During the coup d'état in Prussia, after a series of delays, the National Assembly adopted on November 15, 1848 a decision to refuse to pay taxes from November 17 onwards in protest against government policy. However, the decision taken under the pressure of the Left deputies and democratic circles was interpreted by the majority of deputies in the spirit of passive resistance, which could hardly be effective measure in the struggle against the counter-revolutionary offensive.
136 Wailers (Heuler) — the name the republican democrats in Germany in 1848-49 applied to the moderate constitutionalists who, in turn, called their opponents “agitators” (Wühler). See also Note 245).
137 In January and February 1814, during the war against Napoleonic France, the Prussian and other coalition armies suffered a number of defeats in Champagne (including the battles at Bar-Sur-Aube, Saint Dizier, and Montmirail).
In the battle at Jena on October 14, 1806, the Prussian army was defeated by the French; the defeat was followed by the surrender of feudal Prussia to Napoleonic France.
On March 18 and 19, 1848, the imperial troops had to withdraw from Berlin as a result of the victorious uprising of the masses.
138 The question of electing the King of Prussia to the throne of the German Empire was discussed in the Frankfurt National Assembly on its completion of the draft for an imperial Constitution which, though it proclaimed some civil liberties and introduced all-German central institutions, nevertheless attributed to the united German state the form of a monarchy. The liberal deputies of the Assembly who held pro-Prussian views were particularly insistent on handing over the imperial crown to the Hohenzollerns. They were opposed by the democratic wing, but pro-Prussian tendencies took the upper hand as a result of a compromise between the moderate democrats and the liberals. On March 27, 1849, the imperial Constitution was passed on second reading. On March 28, the Frankfurt Assembly elected the Prussian King. Frederick William IV “Emperor of the Germans”. Frederick William IV, however, rejected the imperial crown. On the causes of his refusal to accept the crown from the Frankfurt Assembly see Engels’ article “The Comedy with the Imperial Crown” (this volume, pp. 193-94).
139 According to the electoral law of December 6, 1848 (see Note 52) only “independent Prussians” had the right to elect to the Second Chamber. This qualification in fact deprived the poor and the dispossessed sections of the population of all electoral rights.
140 The imposed Constitution of December 5, 1848, contained reservations which contravened the principle of the immunity of deputies. Article 83 in particular stated that members of both Chambers “may he called to account both for their voting in the Chamber and for the statement of their views there”.
141 St. Stephen’s Chapel — part of Westminster Palace, where the House of Commons sat since 1547.
Chambre introuvable, the name given by King Louis XVIII to the Chamber of Deputies in France which in 1815-16 consisted of extreme conservatives.
The Chamber of February 24, 1848 — the Chamber of Deputies in France which tried in vain to restrain the growing revolution and preserve the monarchy by replacing Louis Philippe by his grandson — the Count of Paris — in whose favour Louis Philippe abdicated on February 24, 1848.
142 See Note 88.
143 See Note 26.
144 An allusion to the Catholic Easter rites practised at the Viennese, Munich, Madrid and other courts. On the Thursday of Passion Week a religious ceremony of the ablution of the sovereign’s feet used to he held in the cathedrals before the liturgy.
145 On March 12, 1849, the King of Sardinia cancelled the armistice with Austria that had been concluded on August 9, 1848, and hostilities were resumed on March 20. However, the seven-month armistice had not been used by the ruling circles of Piedmont to reorganise and strengthen the army; the key posts were left in the hands of mediocre and counter-revolutionary-minded generals. Despite the national enthusiasm with which the resumption of hostilities was met in Piedmont, in Austrian-ridden Lombardy and all over Italy, the Piedmontese army was defeated by March 23. Charles Albert abdicated. Victor-Emmanuel II, the new king, concluded an armistice with the Austrians on March 26, and on August 6, 1849, a peace treaty was signed on very onerous terms for Piedmont. It sanctioned the restoration of Austrian rule in Northern Italy and the Austrian protectorate over a number of states of Central Italy (Tuscany, Parma).
146 The reference is to the main battle during the first stage of the Austro-Italian war (which broke out on March 25, 1848, as a result of the national liberation uprising in Lombardy and Venice against Austrian rule) — the battle at Custozza (on the River Mincio) on July 25 and 26,1848, in which the Austrian army under the command of Radetzky defeated the Piedmontese troops. Then, on August 6, the Austrians captured Milan and on August 9, 1848, an armistice was concluded between Austria and the Kingdom of Sardinia, under which the latter undertook to withdraw its troops from the cities and fortresses of Lombardy and Venice and cede them to the Austrians. At the beginning, some of the states of Southern and Central Italy (including the Kingdom of Naples, Rome and Tuscany) were forced by the patriots to take part in the war against Austria, but right from the start the counter-revolutionary ruling circles of these states sabotaged the dispatch of army detachments to the front and soon managed either to recall their troops or make them surrender to the Austrians.
147 See Note 13.
148 Apparently an allusion to the actions of General Bonaparte (the future Emperor Napoleon) during his Italian campaign of 1796-97. At the beginning of the war, as a result of his hold manoeuvring of large military contingents, Bonaparte succeeded in defeating first the Austrian troops and then their allies, the Piedmontese, in the area of the Gulf of Genoa and, by threatening to march against Turin, in forcing the Kingdom of Sardinia to dissociate itself from the anti-French coalition and sign an armistice on April 28 and a peace treaty with France on May 5, 1796.
149 In the summer of 1848, during the initial period of the Austro-Italian war, Garibaldi offered help to Charles Albert who, however, rejected it. The command of the Piedmontese army and the provisional government of Lombardy controlled by Charles Albert in no way assisted the volunteer corps formed by Garibaldi, who was left to fight the Austrian troops alone. Though Garibaldi and his corps continued to offer heroic resistance to the Austrians, even after the Austrian-Piedmontese armistice was signed on August 9, 1848, they were compelled by superior enemy forces to retreat to Switzerland.
150 See Note 9.
151 Pusztas — the Hungarian plains between the Danube and Theiss.
152 Engels refers to the liberation war of the Algerians under the command of Emir Abd-el-Kader against the French colonialists who had occupied Algeria in 1830.
The war continued from 1832 to 1847 with short intervals.
153 Several items written by Engels on the war in Northern Italy were published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung under the title “From the Theatre of War” which headed the majority of his reports on the revolutionary war in Hungary. However, the former were printed in the section entitled “Italy” and the latter in the “Hungary” section. To distinguish the Italian items from his Hungarian reports, the former are published in this edition with the subtitle “Italy” supplied by the editors.
154 During the national liberation insurrection of 1830-31 in Poland, Ramorino, who had emigrated from Italy, was appointed commander of one of the insurgents’ corps. After Warsaw was stormed by tsarist troops early in September 1831, Ramorino withdrew his corps to Austria, where it was interned.
In 1833, Italian revolutionary emigrants, members of the “Young Italy” association headed by Mazzini, proposed to Ramorino that he should lead the military expedition to Savoy intended to instigate a republican uprising in, Piedmont. However, Ramorino embezzled part of the money given him by Mazzini to enlist volunteers and in fact helped to frustrate the insurgents’ plan. Instead of a simultaneous entry into Savoy from Switzerland and France, only one group of patriots penetrated Savoy from Grenoble in February 1834, and was dispersed by the Piedmontese carabinieri.
At the second stage of the Austro-Italian war, Ramorino commanded one of the Piedmontese divisions made up of Lombards. On March 20, 1849, he ordered his troops to retreat from the.Ticino lowlands and thus enabled the Austrians not only to enter Piedmont, but even to cut off part of the army from the main forces. After the war, Ramorino was court-martialled and executed.
155 The reference is to the German section of the population of Transylvania (see Note 2 1).
156 On March 20, 1849, the Slovak deputation consisting mainly of Right-wing leaders of the Slovak national movement was received by Emperor Francis Joseph. The visit to Olmütz was prompted by the fact that Slovakia was still deprived of language equality and of other national rights, even after the imposed Constitution was proclaimed on March 4, 1849. The Slovak deputation again demanded the separation of Slovakia from Hungary and autonomy within the framework of the Austrian Empire. The Austrian Court deliberately adopted a delaying policy with the aim of using the Slovaks to fight the Hungarian revolution. However, all their national demands were subsequently rejected.
157 Venice, where the masses had proclaimed independence and restored the “Republic of St. Mark” as early as March 1848, took an active part in the national liberation struggle against Austrian rule. The Venetians continued to offer resistance to the Austrians even after the armistice was concluded on August 9, 1848, between Austria and Piedmont, and withstood for many months a severe blockade by sea and land. After scoring a new victory over the Piedmontese army in March 1849, the Austrians reinforced their troops besieging Venice, which was finally forced to surrender. On August 22, 1849, the Republic of Venice, the last bulwark of the revolution in Italy, collapsed.
158 See Note 55.
159 The battle at Novara between Piedmontese and Austrian troops lasted the whole day of March 22 and ended at dawn on March 23, 1849, in the defeat and retreat of the Piedmontese army.
160 On Ramorino’s part in the Polish national liberation movement and the Savoy campaign of the Italian republicans in 1834, see Note 154.
161 As Engels expected, the defeat at Novara and the conclusion of a new armistice between Austria and Piedmont cardinally changed the balance of forces in Italy. in favour of the home and foreign counter-revolution. In Florence, the revolutionary events in January and February 1849 led to the overthrow of Grand Duke Leopold If and the proclamation of a republic in Tuscany (the official inauguration of a republic did not take place owing to sabotage by moderate liberals). On April 11, a counter-revolutionary coup d'état took place, the democratic provisional government of Guerazzi was overthrown, and the Grand Duke returned to power. He entered the city on May 25, 1849, together with Austrian troops.
The Roman Republic, proclaimed on February 9, 1849, had to wage a grim struggle against counter-revolutionary insurgents instigated by the Catholic clergy, against Neapolitan troops, Austrians and the French expeditionary corps sent to Italy on April 6, 1849 to restore the power of Pope Pins I X over Rome. On July 3, 1849 the Republic fell under the blows of the foreign interventionists.
162 On January 26, 1849, Faucher, Minister of Public Works in the Government of the liberal monarchist Odilon Barrot, submitted a Bill on the right of association to the Constituent Assembly. Its first clause ran as follows: “Clubs are prohibited”. The Bill on the right of association (better known as the Bill on clubs) was adopted on March 21, 1849, by the votes of the monarchists and moderate republicans, despite opposition from Left deputies who accused the Government of a breach of the Constitution and demanded its resignation. This decision dealt a heavy blow to freedom of assembly and association, and primarily to the workers’ associations.
163 See Note 19.
164 The reference is to the liberation war waged by the Spanish people against Napoleonic rule; a prominent part in this war was played by guerilla fighters.
165 See Note 40.
166 During the 1815 campaign in Belgium, Napoleon, after defeating the Prussian army under Blücher at Ligny, ordered Marshal Grouchy to pursue the routed Prussians and prevent them from joining the Anglo-Dutch troops under Wellington. Grouchy, however, could not prevent Blücher’s army from appearing, on June 18, on the battlefield of Waterloo at the most crucial moment of the battle. Grouchy with his troops failed to provide support for the French Emperor in time, and this lost them the entire campaign.
167 The reference is to the march of the Austrian auxiliary army under General Nugent from Triest to help the troops under Field Marshal Radetzky who were in a difficult position as a result of a popular uprising in Lombardy and Venice against Austrian rule in March 1848. Nugent’s army left Triest in the second half of April 1848. Moving through the Venetian region, particularly the mountainous district of Friuli, and only meeting resistance from weak volunteer detachments, it plundered everything on its way. On April 21 Nugent barbarously shelled Udine, the main city of Friuli. At the end of May his army joined Radetzky’s troops in Verona.
Master of Ordnance — see Note 116.
168 Direct-fire batteries (Demontir-Batterien) were intended for demolishing gun emplacements and guns in besieged fortresses.
Palatine line (Palatine — Hungarian title for a representative of the Emperor) outer earthwork north-west of the Komorn fortress, between the Waag and the Danube; its construction was started in 1809 by order of the Hungarian Palatine, Archduke Joseph, and continued up to 1848.
169 The German term used here is Feuerwerker — a rank in the artillery corresponding to that of non-commissioned officer in other arms.
170 On the recognition of Francis Joseph as King of Hungary on the basis of the Pragmatic Sanction, see Note 97.
On the Debreczin National Assembly, see Note 14.
171 See Note 54.
172 Chaikists — Austro-Hungarian infantrymen who served on small sailing vessels and rowing boats (chaikas) in the Military Border area. They built pontoon bridges and transported troops along the Danube, Theiss and Sava. Recruited mainly from among the Serbs, inhabiting the Chaikist Area in Slavonia, from 1764 onwards they formed a special battalion.
173 See Note 11.
174 The reference is to Pest and Buda (see Note 109).
175 An allusion to the important part Saragossa played in the Spanish national liberation war against Napoleon’s rule, when the city was twice besieged by the French (in June-August 1808 and December 1808-February 1809) and won fame for its heroic defence.
176 The reference is to the decisions of the Vienna Congress of 1814-15 (see Note 126).
177 See Note 71
178 An allusion to the predominance of monarchists in the Government of Odilon Barrot, set up after the election of Louis Bonaparte as President of the Republic on December 10, 1848. Republican officials in the state apparatus were replaced by monarchists. Monarchist factions of legitimists (supporters of the Bourbon dynasty), Orleanists (followers of Louis Philippe) and Bonapartists formed a coalition in the Constituent Assembly, launched a struggle against the moderate republicans for political influence and strove to strengthen counter-revolutionary policy. In the Legislative Assembly convoked on May 28, 1849, this joint “party of order” was in the majority.
The Holy Alliance — see Note 40.
179 An allusion to the composition of the Frankfurt National Assembly which on March 28, 1849 resolved to elect the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV, “Emperor of the Germans”. The overwhelming majority of the Assembly’s deputies were government and state officials, professors and lawyers (see Note 30)
At first Frederick William IV agreed to accept the imperial crown proffered by the National Assembly on the condition that the other German states agreed, but on April 25, 1849, he finally rejected the proposal of the Frankfurt National Assembly and the imperial Constitution it had drawn up.
The phrase “By the grace of God do I have this crown” was pronounced by Frederick William IV on October 15, 1840 when he was crowned King of Prussia.
180 This article written by Engels for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was not published and has survived as an unfinished manuscript.
The article was occasioned by the Prussian Government’s measures to call tip the army reserve. Among the pretexts for this was the war with Denmark resumed in Schleswig-Holstein. The Prussian ruling circles were obviously preparing the armed suppression of the revolutionary-democratic movement in Prussia and the rest of Germany.
The army reserve (Landwehr) appeared in Prussia during the struggle against Napoleon. “Landwehr-Ordnung” defining the rules of enrolment, recruitment and service was adopted on November 21, 1815. In the 1840s, those to be enrolled in the army reserve had to he under 40 and go through three-years active service and be not less than two years in reserve. In contrast to the regular army, enlistment to the army reserve took place only in case of extreme necessity (war, or threat of war).
181 On the resumption of war between Prussia and Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein, after the expiry of the truce between them at the end of March 1849, see Note 92.
182 The reference is to the brutal suppression by Prussian soldiers of the national liberation insurrection in Posen in March-May 1848.
183 In the second half of December 1847, Marx delivered several lectures on political economy in the German Workers’ Society in Brussels and intended to prepare them for publication. A manuscript of the pamphlet prepared at the time and entitled Wages has survived. It is written in Joseph Weydemeyer’s hand and its text is almost identical to that published later in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. A draft outline of Marx’s concluding lectures, which he had no time to prepare for publication, is extant as a manuscript written in his own hand and also bearing the heading Wages (see present edition, Vol. 6). As regards its contents, it supplements the work Wage Labour and Capital Later, in the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) (see present edition, Vol. 30), Marx pointed out that he did not manage to publish the work on “Wage Labour” based on his lectures because of the February revolution of 1848 in France and his expulsion from Belgium.
This work first appeared as a series of leading articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung of April 5-8 and 11, 1849 under the tide of Wage Labour and Capital When undertaking this publication, Marx edited the former text once more and wrote an introduction giving the reasons why it was necessary to discuss economic problems in a newspaper, and primarily to reveal the economic relations on which bourgeois rule and the actual slavery of wage workers were founded.
By publishing this work, Marx wished to prepare the proletarian readers of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung for the solution of the tasks that had become urgent by that time — the creation of the mass workers’ party, and also to define the social aims set by the revolutionary organ which he edited. Marx’s work helped to spread the ideas of scientific communism among the advanced section of the German proletariat. On April 11, 1849 the Committee of the Cologne Workers’ Association recommended that all its branches should start discussing social problems on the basis of the articles on wage labour and capital published in the newspaper, and called upon other workers’ associations in Germany to discuss these articles.
The work was not published in the newspaper in full. Issue No. 269 announced that there was to be a sequel, but this never appeared because Marx had to leave Cologne for a time on financial and other business connected with the newspaper. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 277 of April 20 carried the following note: “Cologne, April 19. Owing to the temporary absence of the author, the exposition of the relationship between wage labour and capital has had to be interrupted. It will, however, be resumed shortly and then continued to the end without interruption. “ This was never done, however, because the Neue Rheinische Zeitung ceased publication. Marx’s subsequent intention to put out the work as a separate pamphlet did not materialise either.
The first separate edition in the language of the original appeared in Breslau in 1880 without Marx’s knowledge. In 1881 the pamphlet was republished there. A Russian translation (the first translation into a foreign language) appeared in Geneva in 1883. It was made from the Breslau edition and repeatedly republished illegally.
After Marx’s death, Wage Labour and Capital was published in 1884 in Hottingen-Zurich as a pamphlet with a short introductory note by Engels, dated June of that year. From December 1884 to February 1885, the London newspaper Justice, the organ of the Social-Democratic Federation, published the first English translation made by J.L.Joynes. In March 1885 it appeared as a separate pamphlet and later was repeatedly republished. J. L. Joynes’ translation was used in the workers’ press of the USA, in particular by the Workmen’s Advocate, New Haven (Connecticut), in November 1886-January 1887.
In 1891 a new edition of the am hict a ared in Berlin: Lohnarbeit und Kapital Von Karl Marx, Separat-Abdruck aus der Neuen Rheinische Zeitung vom jahre 1849. Berlin, Verlag der Expedition des Vorwärts Berliner Volksblatt, 1891. It was edited by Engels who wrote the introduction and made certain changes and amendments in order to bring the presentation and terminology into harmony with the further development of Marx’s economic teaching after 1849. Engels wrote about this in his introduction:
“In the forties, Marx had not yet finished his critique of political economy. This took place only towards the end of the fifties. Consequently, his works that appeared before the first part of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) differ in some points from those written after 1859, and contain expressions and whole sentences which, from the point of view of the later works, appear unfortunate and even incorrect. Now, it is self-evident that in ordinary editions intended for the general public this earlier point of view also has its place, as a part of the intellectual development of the author, and that both author and public have an indisputable right to the unaltered reproduction of these older works. And 1 should not have dreamed of altering a word of them.
“It is another thing when the new edition is intended practically exclusively for propaganda among workers.
“In such a case Marx would certainly have brought the old presentation dating from 1849 into harmony with his new point of view....
“My alterations all turn on one point. According to the original, the worker sells his labour to the capitalist for wages; according to the present text he sells his labour power.”
The 1891 edition, intended by Engels for popular propaganda, was used as the basis for many publications of this work in different languages, in particular for the English translation of 1891 printed in Glasgow by the Socialist Labour Party publishers.
In this volume, the work is reproduced in a form which was in keeping with the level of Marx’s economic teaching in 1849 and in accordance with the text in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. At the same time, all the major amendments made by Engels in the 1891 edition are given in footnotes. The division of the work into sections follows the sequence in which it was published in separate issues of the newspaper. The sections are numbered by the editors of the present edition. The list of misprints given in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 270, April 12,1849, is also taken into account.
184 The reference is to the major events of 1848 and 1849: the insurrection of the Paris proletariat on June 23-26; the suppression of the Vienna October popular revolt by Austrian soldiers and the capture of the capital on November 1 by troops under Windischgrätz; the counter-revolutionary coup in Prussia in November, which brought about the dissolution of the Prussian National Assembly on December 5; and the rise of the revolutionary national liberation movement in Poland, Italy and Hungary. ..
In 1845-47, Ireland experienced a terrible famine, after continual failure of the potato crop. The real reason for this social calamity was the cruel exploitation of the Irish people under English rule, reduced to destitution by the ruling classes through the enslaving lease system imposed on the Irish peasants by the landlords. About a million died of hunger, and as many were compelled to emigrate. The effects of the famine were felt to the full in subsequent years.
185 Engels points out in the introduction to the 1891 edition that Marx failed to prepare his lectures on wage labour and capital for the press mainly because of the rapid pace of political events at the time: popular uprisings in response to the refusal by the ruling circles of Prussia and other states to recognise the imperial Constitution (Dresden, Iserlohn, Elberfeld, the Palatinate, Baden) and a new counter-revolutionary advance which led to the suppression of the New Rheinische Zeitung.
186 The reference is to the draft Constitution drawn up in Kremsier by the Austrian Constituent Imperial Diet. In early March 1849 it was dissolved by the Austrian Government which countered this draft with the Constitution imposed by the Emperor (see notes 13 and 39). The Kremsier draft, though it contained some concessions to the great-power and centralising tendencies of the German aristocratic ruling circles, envisaged a certain administrative independence for a number of national regions of the Empire and introduced provincial diets as representative institutions there.
187 See Note 55.
188 See Note 10.
189 See Note 9.
190 On March 15, 1848, a popular uprising broke out in Pest. In the middle of the day, the insurgents — craftsmen, workers, students, and peasants who had come to the fair — captured the town, crossed the Danube by the bridge and broke into Buda, where they set political prisoners free. The Austrian garrison was paralysed. The insurgents elected a Committee of Public Safety which provisionally concentrated power in its own hands. A popular meeting adopted the “12 points” drawn up by the radical opposition and demanding administration by parliament and civil liberties. The events of March 15 started the revolution in Hungary against the feudal serf-owning system and for national independence.
191 The Austrian Archduke Stephan was appointed Palatine of Hungary in 1847. From the very first days of the Hungarian revolution he strove to restore the Habsburgs’ rule, disguising his counter-revolutionary designs by concessions to the Hungarian national liberation movement, and aiming at collusion with Hungarian magnates. In September 1848, when the Ban Jellachich, inspired by Austrian court circles, entered Hungary causing a government crisis there, Stephan made an unsuccessful attempt to seize power. On the proposal of Hungarian right-wing leaders, the National Assembly appointed him Commander-in-Chief of the Hungarian troops. However, Archduke Stephan delayed military action and tried to come to an agreement with the Croatian Ban. Shortly afterwards, feeling himself insecure, he fled from Hungary. on September 29, 1848, Hungarian revolutionary troops defeated Jallachich’s army.
192 The reference is to the “independent and responsible government” of Hungary formed as a result of the March uprising of 1848 and headed by Count Batthyány. The Government was dominated by representatives of the landed aristocracy and nobility, who were afraid that the revolution would he carried further and strove to compromise with the Austrian ruling circles. The radicals were represented in the Government by Lajos Kossuth (Finance Minister) and Bertalan Szemere (Minister of the Interior). The Batthyány Government (its composition was made public on March 25) held power up to October 1, 1848. Early in October, the National Assembly transferred governmental functions to the Defence Council (see Note 70) headed by Kossuth.
193 An allusion to the debate on a number of Bills in the National Assembly (Diet) then in session in Pressburg: on the abolition of labour services and tithe. On March 18, 1848, the Assembly promulgated an agrarian law annulling some of the peasants’ feudal services, and passed laws on representation of the people, national independence, the press etc. These Bills were proposed under the impact of the growing revolutionary movement in the country.
194 The march of Bem’s army to the Banat (a district in the Serbian Voivodina, then administratively included in Hungary) took place in April 1849 after his troops had routed the Austrian army and Russian auxiliary detachments and occupied almost the whole of Transylvania. In the Banat, the troops under Bem and the Hungarian General Perczel inflicted a number of defeats on the Austrians and the Serbs of the Voivodina, whom the Austrian Government and pro-Austrian circles of the Serbian nobility and clergy had involved in the war with revolutionary Hungary (see Note 24); but they were unable to achieve any decisive successes. At the end of June 1849, large army contingents from tsarist Russia entered Transylvania to assist the Austrian counter-revolution and this again made the presence of Bem’s troops necessary in the Transylvanian theatre of war. This time he was defeated by the superior Russian troops.
Later Marx and Engels drew attention to Bem’s expedition in the Banat in the article “Bem” written for the New American Cyclopaedia in September 1857.
195 Up to 1868, regiments and other independent military units in the Austrian imperial army were named after their “patrons” or chiefs (Inhaber). This custom dated back to the mercenary armies when commanders maintained regiments at their own expense and therefore had the right to appoint officers. Later the commanders retained the right, to give their names to the regiments, but the state assumed the responsibility of maintaining them.
196 The Palatine redoubts, direct-fire batteries — see Note 168.
Breach batteries were installed at the concluding stages of a siege to destroy the bastions and other fortifications of a besieged fortress.
197 The Debreczin National Assembly — see Note 14.
This session of the National Assembly was held in Debreczin because only on April 24, 1849 did the Hungarian troops liberate Pest.
198 See Note 68.
199 “World-historic Diet” — the reference is to the Sabor of the Southern Slavs in Agram (Zagreb) on June 5, 1848 (see Note 67). Though the Sabor came out in favour of uniting Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia and of certain reforms there, on the whole, it sought compromise with the Austrian monarchy and did little to modify the former military feudal order in these regions and the enslaved position of their population. Only a small group of democratic delegates connected the struggle for the national cause with the revolutionary struggle against feudal monarchist regimes.
200 Observation corps were assigned to watch the enemy on the flanks of the main theatre of military operations.
201 See Note 1 90.
202 The reference is evidently to the Odhor then in session in the town of Karlowitz (see Note 11).
203 In the suinmer of 1848, the anti-feudal movement and the struggle for complete liberation from the Turkish Sultan’s yoke gained strength in the Danube principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia), which were formally still 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 the country.
On June 28, 1848, a 12,000-strong Russian army corps entered Moldavia and, in July, Turkish troops also invaded the country. In September 1848 the Turkish army, supported by the Tsarist Government, occupied Wallachia and perpetrated a massacre in Bucharest. A proclamation of the Turkish government commissioner Fuad-Effendi declared the need to establish “law and order” and “eliminate all traces of the revolution”. Intervention by Russia and Turkey led to the restoration of the feudal system in the Danube principalities and the defeat of the bourgeois revolution in Wallachia. The desire to completely suppress the revolutionary movement made the two governments, despite acute Russo-Turkish contradictions, conclude a convention in Balta-Liman on May 1, 1849. This cancelled the system of the election of rulers and other progressive reforms introduced in the Danube principalities in 1848, and sanctioned the occupation of their territories by Turkish and Russian troops. The military occupation of the principalities lasted until 1851.
204 The bombardment of Hatvan on April 2, 1849 opened a new stage in the Hungarian offensive against the Austrian troops. It was prepared for by successful movements in the centre of military operations at the Theiss, Bem’s victories in Transylvania, guerilla warfare in areas occupied by the Austrians, and vigorous measures taken by the Kossuth Government (the Defence Council) to strengthen the army and mobilise all its resources for the struggle against the enemy. When Engels wrote this report he had not yet received the news of the battle at Hatvan. Meanwhile, the victory scored by the Hungarian army there and the subsequent blows inflicted by it on the Austrians at Tapio-Bicske (April 4), Isaczeg and Gödöllö (April 5-7), Waitzen (April 10), etc. brought about it radical change in the war in favour of revolutionary Hungary. On April 19, 1849 the Hungarians routed the Austrians in a decisive battle at Nagy-Sallo, advanced further, relieved Komorn on April 22, and liberated Pest on April 24. The defeated Austrian army retreated to the western border.
The Hungarian command faced the prospect of spreading the revolutionary war into Austrian and German territory. However, because of anti-revolutionary sentiments among a number of high commanders, Görgey in particular, and the fear of diplomatic complications, it was decided to cease the pursuit of the Austrians and to turn the main forces towards the fortress of Buda, which was still held by an Austrian garrison. The siege of Buda was time-consuming (it was captured only on May 21) and this gave the Austrians the respite they needed to bring up new reserves and complete their talks with tsarist Russia about help in suppressing revolutionary Hungary (the final agreement was reached at the meeting of Francis Joseph and Nicholas 1 in Warsaw on May 2 1). All this had fatal consequences for the Hungarian revolution.
205 See Note 10.
206 Potsdam — a town near Berlin, the residence of the Prussian kings, where military parades and reviews of the Prussian army were held.
Olmütz (Olomouc) — a town in Moravia, from October 7, 1848, temporary residence of the Austrian Court which fled from Vienna where the people rose in revolt; centre of counter-revolutionary forces.
207 An allusion to the shooting of Robert Blum, a German democrat and deputy to the Frankfurt National Assembly, by sentence of an Austrian court martial (see Note 41). This crudely arbitrary act on the part of the Austrian military clique was approved by reactionary circles in Prussia.
208 The reference is to the conventions concerning extradition of criminals, deserters, vagabonds etc. concluded by Prussia with a number of German states (Austria, Bavaria, Württemberg, Saxony, Grand Duchy of Baden etc.) and also with Russia in 1816-20. In practice, these conventions applied to persons accused of political crimes in accordance with the policy of the Holy Alliance powers (see Note 40) which strove for an international union of counter-revolutionary forces in the struggle against the revolutionary movement.
209 In the initial period of the European revolution of 1848, various reactionary sovereigns and public figures, deprived of throne and power and seeking safety from the people’s wrath, found refuge in England. Among them were: ex-King of the French, Louis Philippe (February); ex-Chancellor of the Austrian Empire, Metternich; the Prince of Prussia, Wilhelm (March); and later Lola Montez, an influential favourite of Ludwig I, King of Bavaria who was compelled to abdicate, and others.
210 The war with Denmark over the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein renewed by Prussia at the end of March 1849 (see notes 90 and 92) was waged in the name of all the states of the German Confederation. Owing to this, military and naval contingents from., Schleswig-Holstein were regarded as the nucleus of an all-German imperial army and navy, their formation being stipulated by the imperial Constitution drawn up by the Frankfurt National Assembly. pi 259
211 On April 5, 1849 a German coastal battery fired on the Danish squadron at the harbour of Eckernförde (Schleswig); two damaged Danish ships were captured. This event, which made no essential difference to the course of war with Denmark, was claimed by the official Prussian press as a major victory.
212 Black-red-and-gold — a symbolic combination of colours signifying the unity of Germany. The Belgian state flag, introduced during the revolution of 1830-31, after the separation of Belgium from Holland, included the same colours but arranged differently (vertical black, gold and red stripes).
213 An ironical allusion to the strivings of the liberal majority of the Frankfurt National Assembly to place the Prussian King (black-and-white — state colours of the Prussian monarchy) at the head of united Germany (black-red-and-gold — symbol of its unity) as the “Emperor of the Germans” (see Note 138).
214 See Note 151.
215 In the battle of Leipzig on October 16-19, 1813 troops from Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden won a victory over the army of Napoleon and the states dependent on him. This victory decided the outcome of the 1813 campaign in favour of the sixth anti-Napoleon coalition (England, Spain and some other states also participated in it). As a result, Napoleon’s troops were driven out of Germany and military operations moved over into France.
216 The reference is to the Constitution imposed by Francis Joseph on March 4, 1849 (see Note 13).
217 See Note 97.
218 On the battle at Novara between the Austrian and Piedmontese armies, see Note 159.
219 Here and in the two reports given below, “A Magyar Victory” and “An Austrian Defeat”, Engels writes about the military events in Hungary early in April: the victory won by the Hungarian troops at Hatvan on April 2 and the subsequent blows they inflicted on the Austrian army (see Note 204).