Marx-Engels Collected Works
1 This letter was first published in an abridged English translation in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Correspondence. 1846-1895. A Selection with Commentary and Notes, Martin Lawrence Ltd., London [1934]. — 3, 8, 19, 34, 37, 85, 208, 258, 296, 325, 343, 345, 374, 391, 393, 434
2 This refers to Robert Cobden’s pamphlet What Next and Next? published in London in early 1856. It attacked Britain’s foreign policy during the Crimean War waged by Britain, France, Turkey and Piedmont against Russia (1853-56). In particular, Cobden condemned the draft peace treaty with Russia as failing to guarantee stable peace. — 3
3 This presumably refers to Marx’s articles on the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia written for the New-York Daily Tribune. As can be seen from Marx’s letter to Engels of 22 September 1856 (this volume, p. 68), they were not published, and have never been found. The articles touched on Swedish history, probably in connection with the conclusion on 21 November 1855 of a defence treaty aimed at Russia between the Kingdom of Sweden and Norway on the one hand, and Britain and France on the other.
Marx contributed to the New-York Daily Tribune from August 1851 to March 1862. At his request many of the articles for the Tribune were written by Engels. In fact it was not until August 1852 that Marx began sending his own articles. By agreement with the editors some of the articles dealing with individual European countries were datelined Paris, Berlin or Vienna (see this volume, pp. 352, 361, 368 and 410).
Marx’s and Engels’ articles in the New-York Daily Tribune dealt with key issues of foreign and domestic policy, the working-class movement, the economic development of European countries, colonial expansion, and the national liberation movement in colonial and dependent countries. Many of them were reprinted in the Tribune’s special editions — the New-York Weekly Tribune and the New-York Semi-Weekly Tribune — and were quoted by other American newspapers, in particular by The New-York Times. Some were reproduced in the Chartist People’s Paper, London. The Tribune editors sometimes took liberties with the articles, printing them unsigned in the form of editorials, and making insertions, some of which were in direct contradiction to the content of the articles (see, e.g., this volume, pp. 81 and 100-01). A number of articles were not printed at all. Marx repeatedly protested against these practices. In the autumn of 1857 he was forced to reduce the number of his contributions in view of the Tribunes financial difficulties resulting from the economic crisis in the USA. After the outbreak of the American Civil War, he ceased contributing altogether, mainly because the Tribune had come under the sway of people who advocated a compromise with the slave-owning states and abandoned its initial progressive stand. — 3, 68, 73, 81
4 Marx quotes a leading article from The Times, No. 22267, of 18 January 1856, which discussed the preliminary conditions for a peace treaty with Russia. The paper commented on the report, received the day before, about Russia’s acceptance of the peace proposals put to her by her opponents in the Crimean war, and urged extensive military preparations to force Russia into ‘uncondi- tional acceptance’ of the demands made on her. — 3
5 A congress held at the Romanian town of Focşani in July and August 1772 aimed at ending the Russo-Turkish war started by Turkey in 1768. The Russian delegation proposed, in particular, that Wallachia and Moldavia should be granted independence under the joint protection of the European powers. No agreement having been reached at the congress, hostilities were resumed and continued until 1774. — 3
6 This refers to an episode in the Russo-Turkish war of 1735-39, which had been provoked by incursions, in 1735, of the Crimean Tartars into the Ukraine and the invasion of the Caucasus by the Crimean Khan, a vassal of the Sultan. In May-June 1736, a Russian army under Field Marshal B. G. Münnich entered the Crimea and occupied the Western part of the peninsula, including Bakhchisarai, the Khan’s capital. However, a shortage of provisions, forage and water and the outbreak of epidemics forced Miinnich to withdraw to the Ukraine.— 3
7 The principal works of Adam Müller, who belonged to the romantic school in political economy, are Die Elemente der Staatskunst. Theile I-III, Berlin, 1809 and Versuche einer neuen Theorie des Geldes mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Grossbritannien, Leipzig und Altenburg, 1816. Marx discussed Müller’s views in Vols. I and III of Capital (present edition, Vols. 31 and 33). — 4
8 Synoptics — the writers of the first three Gospels. Marx refers to Bruno Bauer’s book Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker. Bd. 1-2, Leipzig, 1841; Bd. 3, Braunschweig, 1842. — 4
9 On 19 January 1856, David Urquhart’s Free Press (No. 15) published under the heading ‘The Chartist Correspondence’ a number of documents on the Chartists’ activities in 1839-41, including Urquhart’s correspondence with the then British Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, Home Secretary Normanby and others. The letters show that Urquhart had abused the Chartist leaders’ trust by giving the British government detailed information of Chartist plans and intentions.
While publishing some works attacking the foreign policy of the British ruling circles, in particular that of Lord Palmerston, leader of the Whig oligarchy, in The Free Press and other Urquhartite publications, Marx emphatically dissociated himself from Urquhart’s conservative views and criticised them in the press. — 4
10 This refers to Engels’ duties as corresponding clerk and general assistant in the Ermen 8c Engels firm in Manchester, of which his father was co-owner. He assumed the post in the early 1850s, largely because he wanted to be able to give material aid to the Marx family, and kept it until 1870. Engels’ confidential business reports to his father mentioned in the letter have not come down to us. — 5
11 Between January and May 1856 Engels wrote a series of articles on Pan-Slavism for the New-York Daily Tribune, which did not print them. The manuscripts have not been preserved. — 5, 14, 51, 68, 73, 81, 100
12 Further in his letter Engels cites facts showing that opposition to Napoleon Ill’s regime in France was mounting. Marx used them in his article ‘The American Difficulty. — Affairs of France’, published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 25 February 1856 (present edition, Vol. 14, pp. 602-04).— 5
13 Sire de Franc Boissy — a French song containing satirical allusions to royalty and the government. — 6
14 A reference to the repressions that were part of the Bonapartist coup d’état of 2 December 1851 in France. — 6
15 Engels here refers to the discussion of the so-called Five Points or preliminary terms for peace between Russia and the coalition that fought Russia in the Crimean war (Britain, France, Turkey and Piedmont). The Five Points were presented to the Russian government through Austria in the form of an ultimatum by the Allied Powers in December 1855. They called for replacement of the Russian protectorate over the Danubian principalities by a protectorate of all the contracting parties, a revision of the Bessarabian border involving Russia’s relinquishment of the territory along the Danube, neutralisa- tion of the Black Sea, closure of the Straits to warships, a ban on the maintenance by Russia and Turkey of arsenals and navies in the Black Sea, and collective protection of the Sultan’s Christian subjects by the Great Powers. The Allied Powers also reserved themselves the right to impose additional demands. The terms were accepted by the Russian government and provided the basis for the Paris peace talks.
The Turkish fortress of Kars in Transcaucasia was captured, after a long siege, by the Russians on 28 November 1855. The fall of Kars, the last major event of the Crimean war, speeded up the termination of hostilities. Under the Paris peace treaty (March 1856) Kars was returned to Turkey in exchange for the evacuation of Sevastopol and the other Russian towns held by the Allies.— 7, 21
16 The Aliens Bill authorised the deportation of aliens from England at any time by decision of the British government. Enacted by Parliament in 1793, it was valid for one year and was renewed in 1802, 1803, 1816, 1818 and, in connection with revolutionary events on the Continent and Chartist demonstra- tions in England, in 1848. In later years too, conservative circles repeatedly sought its renewal. In particular, the question was discussed for several months from the autumn of 1855, following the publication on 10 October by L’Homme, a refugee newspaper appearing in Jersey, of an open letter by the French petty-bourgeois democrat Félix Pyat to Queen Victoria on the occasion of her visit to France in August of that year. The letter sharply attacked Britain’s alliance with the Second Empire and was used as a pretext for the expulsion of the publisher of L’Homme and some other French refugees from the island and for press attacks on refugees in general. However, protests by progressive circles forces the authorities to refrain from further steps. On 1 February 1856 Palmerston declared in the House of Commons that the government would not seek renewal of the Aliens Bill. — 7, 38
17 This may be an ironic reference to Richard Wagner, who — in his Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (1856) and other writings — called his works the ‘music of the future’. — 8
18 Marx refers to the diplomatic correspondence between Pozzo di Borgo, the Russian Ambassador to France, and Count Nesselrode, the Russian Chancellor of State. Marx knew of it from diplomatic documents published under the tide The Portfolio, or a Collection of State Papers by David Urquhart in London from 1835 to 1837, and from the book Recueil des documents relatifs à la Russie pour la plupart secrets et inédits utiles à consulter dans la crise actuelle, Paris, 1854. — 9
19 This work, intended by Engels for Putnam’s Monthly, which published his series The Armies of Europe in the second half of 1855, was presumably never written. — 11
20 This letter was first published in an abridged English translation in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, 1979.— 12, 30, 45, 54, 61, 67, 70, 93, 110, 128, 132, 224, 227, 254, 265, 319, 333, 359, 407, 430, 448, 459, 461, 518, 524
21 Queen’s Bench — here the reference is to a London jail intended mainly for insolvent debtors. — 13
22 Marx means The Lay of Igor's Host, a monument of old Russian literature describing the ill-starred campaign undertaken by Igor, Prince of Novgorod Severski, against the nomadic Polovtsians in 1185. The work was published in German several times. One edition appeared in Berlin in 1854 under the title Lied vom Heerzuge Igors. As follows from Marx’s later letters to Engels, he found the Lay, in the language of the original and in French translation, in F. G. Eichhoff’s book Histoire de la langue et de la littérature des slaves..., and later also a bilingual German edition, which he sent to Engels in Manchester. — 15, 19, 26, 31, 37
23 Acta litteraria Bohemiae et Moraviae, Pragae, 1774-1783, were literary and historical collections published by the Czech Enlightenment historian Mikuláš (Adauctus) Voigt. — 16
24 Marx means Schlözer’s recommendations, quoted on p. 261 of Dobrovsky’s book, for the study of the Slavonic languages and the compilation of Slavonic dictionaries. The recommendations are contained in Schlözer’s book Allgemeine Nordische Geschichte, p. 330. — 16
25 Dobrovský’s words, taken from his book Slavin (p. 419), actually refer to Acta litteraria Bohemiae et Moraviae published by Mikuláš (Adauctus) Voigt, not to Johannes Voigt’s Geschichte Preußens. — 16
26 Archdeacon William Coxe, traveller, historian and writer, left his vast collection of manuscripts and books to the British Museum. Marx made excerpts from the following manuscript letters and reports of British diplomats in Russia: Various Papers on the Genius and Character of the Russians, Rondeau to Walpole, Dispatch from Mr. Fuch (Finch) to Lord Harrington, Sir George Macartney to the Earl of Sandwich, and Sir James Harris to Lord Grantham. He made ample use of them in his Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century (see present edition, Vol. 15).— 17
27 Polovtsians (Kipchaks or Cumans) — Turkic nomadic tribes who inhabited the South-Russian steppes from the eleventh to the thirteenth century. Following the Mongol invasion in the mid-thirteenth century some of them fled to Hungary and the Balkans, where they were absorbed, while those remaining were subjugated by the conquerors and merged with the peoples inhabiting the Golden Horde, the medieval Tartar-Mongol state. — 19
28 This refers to the so-called Königinhof manuscript, a collection of patriotic poems glorifying Bohemian antiquity, which the Czech philologist and poet Vaclav Hanka claimed to have discovered in a church in the village of Králowé Dwoře (in German: Königinhof) in 1817. It was published in Czech under the title Kralodvorský Rukopis in 1819, and in 1829 in Czech and in German, translated by the Czech poet Vaclav Alois Swoboda. Marx probably had the latter edition in mind.
In the 1880s the manuscript was revealed to be a recent imitation. — 19, 26
29 This apparently refers to ‘Bogarodzica’, a medieval Polish hymn to the Virgin first recorded in 1407. It is attributed to Adalbert (Wojciech), Bishop of Prague (957-997).— 19
30 Chambre introuvable was the name given by King Louis XVIII to the French Chamber of Deputies, which in 1815-16 consisted of extreme conservatives. It attacked the government from the right and was eventually disbanded by the King because of its arch-reactionary views.
Here Marx calls the Prussian Chamber of Representatives Chambre introuvable because it was dominated by the Junkers, whose extreme reactionary attitudes were worrying the government which feared they might provoke revolutionary tendencies. — 20
31 The expression ‘the crazy year’ (‘das tolle Jahr’) was first used by Johann Heinrich von Falkenstein in a chronicle published in 1739 to describe the popular unrest in Erfurt in 1509. Later it was widely used in literature to designate the revolutionary year 1848. — 20
32 This refers to the struggle in the French National Convention (which met on 20 September 1792) between the Girondists, i.e. the party of the big bourgeoisie (a number of whose leaders came from the department of Gironde), and the Montagnards, commonly referred to as the Mountain, who occupied the upper seats in the Convention, i.e. the Jacobins, which represented the progressive bourgeoisie and the masses. As a result of the popular uprising of 31 May-2 June 1793, the Girondist government was overthrown and the Jacobin revolutionary democratic dictatorship was established. — 21
33 The words ‘take- care of Dowb’ were originally used by, and then popularly added to the name of, the British Secretary of War Panmure who, in an official dispatch of June 1855 informing General Simpson of his appointment as commander-in-chief in the Crimea, asked him to look after Panmure’s nephew, the young officer Dowbiggin. — 21
34 At the battle of Inkerman in the Crimea (5 November 1854) the Anglo-French forces defeated the Russian army, but the latter’s vigorous action prevented the Allies from storming Sevastopol, to which they lay siege instead. Engels describes the battle in detail in his article ‘The Battle of Inkerman’ (see present edition, Vol. 13, pp. 528-35).— 21, 178, 297
35 From 1846 to 1854 Ferdinand Lassalle handled Countess Sophie von Hatzfeldt’s divorce suit against Count Edmund Hatzfeldt-Wildenburg. The divorce was agreed to in July 1851. Later, the countess received 300,000 talers under the property settlement. — 23, 27, 227
36 Gustav Levy’s visit to Marx in London in late February 1856 was preceded by another, in the second half of December 1853, when he also came with a message from Düsseldorf workers. This shows that after the 1848-49 revolution the proletarian circles in the Rhine Province continued to regard Marx and Engels as their leaders. Already during his first visit Levy maintained that an uprising was needed in Germany and that the factory workers were ready for it. Marx, then too, argued that, with reaction rampant in Germany, an uprising would be premature, as would a resumption of the activities of the Communist League in Germany urged by Levy. — 25
37 The letter is only dated ‘Tuesday’, but Marx’s intention, mentioned in the letter, to send an article on Kars to New York on Friday is evidence that the letter was written on Tuesday, 25 March, since the article appeared in the New-York Daily Tribune on 8 April 1856 and had to be mailed in London not later than Friday, 28 March, to arrive in time for that issue.— 28
38 Blue Books — periodically published collections of documents of the British Parliament and Foreign Office. Their publication began in the seventeenth century. — 28, 120, 431, 561
39 ‘Enclosure 2’ has been preserved. Written in Jenny Marx’s hand, it is the record of a talk she had with Colonel Touroute, who related a number of facts compromising Lassalle. He pointed out, in particular, that the extravagant life Lassalle led in Countess Hatzfeldt’s house, his use of her money for stock-exchange speculation, his arrogance towards workers, his self-assurance and dictatorial demeanour roused the indignation of the Düsseldorf workers. — 31, 36
40 Boustrapa — nickname of Louis Bonaparte, composed of the first syllables of the names of the places where he and his supporters staged Bonapartist putsches: Boulogne (August 1840), Strasbourg (October 1846) and Paris (coup d’état of 2 December 1851).— 31, 94, 170, 230, 256, 290, 336, 425, 435
41 Marx drew on Tassilier’s letter for his article ‘The France of Bonaparte the Little’ (present edition, Vol. 14, pp. 615-20). Cayenne, in French Guiana, South America, a place of penal servitude for political prisoners, was dubbed the ‘Dry Guillotine’ on account of the high mortality among convicts caused by the harsh prison regulations and the unhealthy tropical climate. A translation of Tassilier’s letter, sent by Marx to the Chartist People’s Paper, was published on 12 April 1856.— 31
42 Marx means the polemics between the Chartists and the Urquhartites, which had been exacerbated by the publication in Urquhart’s Free Press (19 January 1856) of ‘The Chartist Correspondence’ (see Note 9). The Urquhartites’ hostility towards the revolutionary trend in the British working-class movement found expression in attempts to represent the Chartists as demagogues and agents of the Russian Tsar. The Chartists, for their part, described the Urquhartites as reactionaries advocating a restoration of the customs and practices of the Middle Ages. A sharp controversy developed, in particular, over the future of Parliament. The Chartists held that it should be reformed on democratic principles and used as an instrument of social change, whereas the Urquhartites advocated total abolition of the representative system and a return to patriarchal forms of government. — 32, 44
43 In February and March 1856 Ernest Jones, the Chartist leader, attempted to reorganise the activities of the National Charter Association. Writing in The People's Paper, he suggested that the Association should no longer hold conferences or elect leaders, but that he, Jones, and James Finlen should be recognised for life as the only members of its Executive. Jones believed that this form of centralisation would make for greater efficiency. His proposals were endorsed by the majority of the Chartist members, but led only to a temporary increase in membership (to about 2,000 by the beginning of March 1856) and local activation of Chartist propaganda. At the same time, Jones’ attempts to act as the Association’s only leader caused serious discontent among Manchester Chartists.
Marx and Engels, who maintained close ties with revolutionary Chartists, criticised Jones’ efforts to galvanise the Chartist movement by such artificial measures, which, they predicted, could not ensure lasting success. — 32, 34
44 This refers to the German National Assembly convened in Frankfurt am Main in May 1848 for the purpose of unifying Germany and drawing up an Imperial Constitution. Its mostly liberal deputies turned the Assembly into a mere debating club. In early June 1849 the Right-wing deputies and the moderate liberals left the Assembly after the Prussian King and other German monarchs had rejected the Constitution it had drafted. What remained of the Assembly moved to Stuttgart, where it was dispersed by Württemberg troops on 18 June 1849.
The petty-bourgeois democrat Löwe von Calbe was a deputy to the Assembly in 1848-49. — 32, 63
45 Engels means the establishment of banks similar to the Société générale du Crédit mobilier, a big French joint-stock bank founded by the Péreire brothers in 1852. The Crédit mobilier was to mediate in credit transactions and help in setting up industrial concerns and building railways in France, Spain, Austria, Russia and other countries. It was closely associated with Napoleon Ill’s government and under its protection engaged in large-scale speculation. It went bankrupt in 1867 and was liquidated in 1871.— 34, 68, 119, 126, 128, 133, 142, 145, 216, 225, 231, 240, 244, 291, 296, 349, 360, 437
46 At the battle of Jena (14 October 1806) the French army, commanded by Napoleon, routed the Prussian army, thus forcing Prussia to surrender.
At Austerlitz (Czech name: Slavkov) Napoleon’s army defeated the Austrians and Russians on 2 December 1805. — 37, 170, 180, 461
47 Marianne, founded in 1850, was a secret republican society which opposed Napoleon III during the Second Empire. — 37, 42
48 On 14 April 1856 Marx was invited as an official representative of the revolutionary refugees in London to a banquet commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Chartist People's Paper. In his address he spoke of the German and other proletarian revolutionaries’ solidarity with the revolutionary wing of the Chartist movement, concentrating in particular on the historic role of the proletariat. The banquet was also addressed by the German Communist Wilhelm Pieper. The other speakers were mosdy Chartists (James Finlen, Ernest Jones and others). Marx did not intend to publish his speech, but it was included in the newspaper report that appeared on 19 April 1856 under the heading ‘Fourth Anniversary Banquet of The People's Paper’ (present edition, Vol. 14, pp. 655-56).— 38
49 Straubingers — German travelling journeymen. Marx and Engels often ironically gave the name to backward elements of the German working-class movement who were still influenced by guild prejudices and mistrusted the revolutionary intelligentsia. — 38
50 A reference to the German Workers’ Educational Society in London, which was founded in February 1840 by Karl Schapper, Joseph Moll and other leaders of the League of the Just (in the 1850s the Society had its premises in Windmill Street, Soho). After the reorganisation of the League of the Just in the summer of 1847 and the founding of the Communist League, the latter’s local communities played a leading role in the Society. In 1847 and 1849-50 Marx and Engels took an active part in the Society’s work, but on 17 September 1850 they and a number of their followers withdrew because the Willich-Schapper sectarian and adventurist faction had temporarily increased its influence in the Society and caused a split in the Communist League. Later Schapper realised the faultiness of his position and took steps towards a reconciliation with Marx. The resultant weakening of the sectarians’ influence made it possible for Marx and Engels to resume their work in the Educational Society in the late 1850. In 1918, the Society was closed down by the British government. — 41, 363, 451, 520
51 This refers to the German republican democrats who, following the capture of the fortress of Mainz by the French army in October 1792, formed the Friends of Liberty and Equality Society on the pattern of the Jacobin Club. The Mainz Clubbists joined the new administration (the Mainz Commune) and carried out a number of progressive reforms (abolition of feudal obligations, social-estate privileges and the guild system). Under the Clubbists’ influence, the Rhenish German National Convention, convoked in Mainz in March 1793, proclaimed the merger of Mainz with the French Republic. The Clubbists’ activity was violently terminated in July 1793, when the French army was driven out by the forces of the counter-revolutionary European coalition.— 41
52 In his letter of 6 April 1856 Johannes von Miquel, a former member of the Communist League, asked Marx to state his views on the attitude the proletariat should take to bourgeois parties in the event of a revolution in Germany. Miquel’s own statements on this question testified to a retreat from the consistently revolutionary standpoint. He limited the tasks of the revolution to establishing a united centralised state and ignored the need for social change. He maintained that the proletariat should ally itself not only with the petty-bourgeois democrats but also with the bourgeois liberals and refrain from such revolutionary measures as might frighten the bourgeoisie away from the revolution.
No answer by Marx to Miquel is extant. — 42, 44
53 On 8 April 1856 Count Walewski, Foreign Minister of France, made a counter-revolutionary speech at a plenary session of the Congress of Paris convened to work out the peace terms following the Crimean war. He declared that British and French troops would continue to occupy Greece, while French and Austrian troops would remain in the Papal states to combat ‘anarchy’ (i. e. the national liberation movement). He attacked the Belgian press, describing its support for the French republicans and criticism of Napoleon III as incitement to ‘insurrection and murder’. — 42
54 An excerpt from this letter was first published in English in K. Marx and F. Engels, Literature and Art, New York, 1947.— 43
55 This letter of Engels to Marx has not been found. — 43
56 The reference is to a letter of 25 April 1856 in which A. Hamacher conveyed greetings from Cologne, Elberfeld and Solingen workers and expressed their desire to maintain contact with Marx. — 44
57 The Foreign Affairs Committees were public organisations set up by the Urquhartites in a number of English cities between the 1840s and 1860s, mainly with the aim of opposing Palmerston’s policy. — 44
58 In 1856 Marx’s series of articles Lord Palmerston, originally intended for and partly published in the New-York Daily Tribune (see present edition, Vol. 12), appeared in Sheffield under the title The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston (The Free Press Serials, No. 5, 1856). This was a reproduction of the series as published under the same title between December 1855 and February 1856 in several issues of The Free Press, the Urquhartites’ London paper. Apart from this, one of the articles, published in The Sheffield Free Press in November 1855, appeared as a pamphlet in Sheffield in 1856 (The Free Press Serials, No. 4a).— 44, 58
59 This refers to Heine’s third will, which he dictated to notaries F. L. Ducloux and Ch. L. E. Rousse on 13 November 1851. — 45
60 Engels made excerpts from Bazancourt’s book between June and September 1856. In the autumn of that year he summed up the results of his critical analysis in an article entitled ‘Saint-Arnaud’. Marx sent the article to the American journal Putnam's Monthly, but the editors returned it unpublished.— 45, 51, 71, 73, 80, 93, 106, 124, 126, 128
61 This refers to a work planned by Marx on the history of- British and Russian diplomacy in the eighteenth century, of which he only completed five chapters of the Introduction. For these he made use of pamphlets, diplomatic documents and unpublished manuscripts, mostly of the period of the Northern War (the Russo-Swedish war of 1700-21), which he found in the British Museum Library. His negotiations with Nikolaus Trtibner for publication of the work ended in failure. The chapters of the Introduction appeared by instalments in Urquhart’s Sheffield Free Press from late June to early August 1856 as they were sent in by Marx. Eventually publication was stopped because of arbitrary editorial abridgements and printing errors. In June 1856 the London Free Press began reprinting the text from the Sheffield paper, and on 16 August 1856 it started reproducing the chapters from the beginning, with publication continuing until 1 April 1857. In both papers the unfinished work was printed under the title Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century (see present edition, Vol. 15).
In 1899 Eleanor Aveling, Marx’s daughter, published it in London in book form under the heading Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century. — 46, 56, 73, 81, 94, 110, 112, 120
62 This letter was first published in English in Labour Monthly, No. 10, 1932, London. — 49
63 Engels and his wife, Mary Burns, made a trip to Ireland in mid-May 1856. — 49
64 Between 1845 and 1847 potato blight caused widespread famine in Ireland. The poverty of the small tenants ruthlessly exploited by the big landowners had made the bulk of the population almost entirely dependent on a diet of potatoes grown on their own small patches. About one million people starved to death, and the wave of emigration caused by the famine swept away another million. Large areas of Ireland were depopulated. The abandoned land was turned into pastures by the English and Irish landlords. — 49
65 This refers to the mass eviction of Irish tenants, a policy pursued by the English and Irish landlords since the late 1840s to turn ploughland into pasture. It was stimulated by the falling demand for Irish corn owing to the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, and by England’s growing need for Irish cattle and animal produce. — 50
66 The Encumbered Estates Court was to enforce the Encumbered Estates Act for Ireland, passed by Parliament in 1849. This act was supplemented by a series of other acts in 1852 and 1853. The 1849 Act provided for the sale of mortgaged estates by auction if their owners were proved insolvent. As a result, the land of many ruined landlords passed into the hands of usurers, middlemen and rich tenants. — 51
67 Engels compares Bazancourt’s description of the Crimean war to Batrachomyomachia (The Battle of the Frogs and Mice), an Ancient Greek anonymous mock-heroic poem parodying Homer’s Iliad. — 51
68 Marx and Wilhelm Pieper travelled to Hull on 7 June 1856. From there Marx went to see Engels in Manchester, while Pieper returned to London to carry out a number of commissions for Marx, who returned to London about 20 July 1856.-54
69 Marx’s wife Jenny and their three daughters stayed in Trier from 22 May to about 10 September 1856. She went there to visit her sick mother, Caroline von Westphalen, who died on 23 July. Marx’s letter was sent from Manchester, where he was staying with Engels. — 54
70 Black Madonna — a name given by some art specialists to early wood carvings of the Virgin Mary. It was used, in particular, by Karl Friedrich von Rumohr in his book Italienische Forschungen (Berlin, 1827), from which Marx made excerpts in Bonn in 1842 for his planned treatise on Christian art. — 54
71 The Cologne Communist Trial (4 October- 12 November 1852) was a trial of a group of Communist League members charged with ‘treasonable conspiracy’. It was rigged by the Prussian police on the basis of forged documents and fabricated evidence, which were used not only against the accused but also to discredit the whole proletarian organisation. Seven of the twelve defendants were sentenced to prison terms of three to six years. Marx directed the defence from London, sending material revealing the provocative methods used by the prosecution. After the trial he and Engels exposed its organisers (see Engels’ article ‘The Late Trial at Cologne’, published in the New-York Daily Tribune, and Marx’s pamphlet Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne, present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 388-93 and 395-457).— 56, 69, 376, 477, 552
72 The Allgemeine Zeitung did not publish this counter-statement. — 56
73 Only part of the draft of Marx’s letter to Isaac Ironside, editor of The Sheffield Free Press, has reached us. The beginning, up to and including the words ‘I shall consider myself obliged to stop the publication’, is written in pencil in Engels’ hand with changes in ink by Marx. The rest of the text, with much struck out, is in Marx’s writing. That the draft was written on 21 June 1856 can be seen from Marx’s letter to his wife written on the same day. Ironside answered the letter on 23 June 1856. — 57
74 This refers to the publication of Marx’s Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century in The Sheffield Free Press (see Note 61). Further on Marx speaks of Ironside’s intention to publish this work in the Urquhartites’ Free Press Serials, an intention which failed to materialise. — 57
75 This letter was written in reply to one from William Cyples, a member of the Sheffield Free Press staff, which Marx reproduced, together with his reply, in a letter to Engels on 28 July 1856. Marx’s relations with the newspaper had been complicated by the arbitrary changes made by the editors in his Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century, which soon led him to stop publication of the work in this paper (see Note 61).
The letter was first published in English as part of Marx’s letter to Engels of 28 July 1856 in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx. 1844 bis 1883. Herausgegeben von A. Bebel und Ed. Bernstein. Verlag von J. H. W. Dietz, Bd. II, Stuttgart, 1913.— 58, 62
76 The Friendly Societies were workers’ organisations whose main purpose was to provide material aid to their members in the event of disability and old age, pay funeral expenses and the like. This was done out of membership dues. — 59
77 This refers to Marx’s conflict with The Sheffield Free Press over the publication of his Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century (see Note 61). The following draft of a letter by Wilhelm Pieper to William Cyples has survived:
‘28 Dean Street, Soho London, 17 July 1856
‘Sir,
‘I am directed by Dr. Marx to inform you that he cannot congratulate you on the emendations you have thought fit to introduce in the copy destined for Saturday’s publication.
‘Passages that might safely have been omitted — for the sake of space — have been carefully preserved, while the most characteristic portions analyzing the policy of Peter I have been suppressed. This explains why he has interpolated about three lines of absolute importance for the understanding of the reader, in substitution for the same number of lines suppressed in another place, out of consideration for the pressure of space you allege in your letter to Dr. Marx.’ — 60
78 Marx means the concluding events of the fourth bourgeois revolution in Spain (1854-56): the resignation of Espartero’s liberal government on 14 July 1856, the coming to power of the counter-revolutionary General O’Donnell, and the popular uprising, led by the ex-toreador Pucheta, against the new government in Madrid and a number of other cities. Espartero’s refusal to support the insurgents and the weakness of their leaders contributed to the defeat of the movement. On 17 July the uprising was suppressed in Madrid and soon after in the other cities too. Marx described these events in his articles ‘The Revolution in Spain’ (see present edition, Vol. 15). — 61
79 The Grand Cophta was the name of an omnipotent and omniscient priest who headed the non-existent Masonic ‘Egyptian Lodge’ which the famous eigh- teenth-century impostor ‘Count’ Cagliostro (Giuseppe Balsamo) claimed to have founded. — 61
80 Contrary to Urquhart’s intention to reserve the new publication of Marx’s Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century for his projected journal, the five chapters of the Introduction that had been written were republished in The Free Press, the Urquhartites’ London paper (see Note 61). — 62
81 Crapauds (literally: toads) was the nickname of a group of opportunist deputies (the ‘Bog’) in the French Convention (1793-95) who vacillated between the Right and the Left wing. Marx and Engels in their letters often used the name in reference to French philistines, in particular French petty-bourgeois refugees, some of whom lived in Jersey until 1855 and later in Guernsey. — 65, 225, 229, 249, 264, 268, 309
82 This letter was first published in English in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, 1979. — 66, 97, 122, 143, 225, 315, 321, 328, 369, 378, 429
83 In the second half of August Engels went to London to meet his mother, who was visiting England. — 66, 72
84 This refers to the legacy left to Jenny Marx by her mother, Caroline von Westphalen. Part of it consisted in shares which, at the time of the mother’s death, were in the hands of her step-son, the Prussian Minister of the Interior Ferdinand von Westphalen. — 68
85 Georg Weerth died of jungle fever on 30 July 1856 in Havana while on a tour of West Indian countries as agent of a German commercial firm. Marx and Engels did not learn of their friend’s death until much later. — 68, 72
86 Marx’s information was inaccurate. The book on England, Englische Freiheit, was written not by Bruno, but by Edgar Bauer, Marx referred to it later in his letters to Engels of 18 March and 21 April 1857 (see this volume, pp. 106 and 122 ). — 68 , 122
87 The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street — a name for the Bank of England situated in Threadneedle Street, London.
By the Paris concern Marx means the Banque de France. — 71
88 An allusion to the French bankers Isaac and Emile Péreire, who in the 1820s and 1830s adhered to the Saint-Simonist school. In 1852 they set up the joint-stock bank, Crédit mobilier (see Note 45), which they falsely claimed gave effect to the Saint-Simonist idea of overcoming class contradictions and achieving prosperity for all by introducing a new, rational system of public credit. The practical application of the scheme, which had the support of Napoleon III and was called ironically ‘Bonapartist socialism’ by Marx, led to an orgy of stock-exchange speculation and corruption in France.
Marx uses the term ‘imperialism’ further on in the sense of ‘Bonapartism’. — 72
89 The Crystal Palace — a structure of metal and glass in London’s Hyde Park built for the 1851 Great Exhibition and used for various displays and shows later. — 72
90 Marx used the data on the state of the European money market cited in this letter in a number of articles on the approaching economic crisis in Europe which he wrote for the New-York Daily Tribune in late September and the first half of October 1856 (see present edition, Vol. 15). These articles opened the long series of his contributions on the 1857 world crisis. — 72
91 This refers to Marx’s private library which he had built up in the 1840s and left in Cologne in May 1849 in the care of his friend Roland Daniels, a member of the Communist League, when Marx was expelled by the Prussian authorities. Shortly before his arrest in 1851, Daniels hid the books in the storehouse of his brother, a wine merchant. Acquitted at the Cologne Communist trial at the end of 1852, Roland Daniels came out of prison a sick man and died of tuberculosis in August 1855. In early 1856 his widow undertook to send the books to Marx but, owing to the high carriage costs and other difficulties, Marx did not receive his library until December 1860 after some books had got lost. — 72
92 The beginning of this letter has been torn off, the manuscript is damaged in a number of places (indicated by three dots in square brackets). Written in an unknown hand in the upper left corner is the date ‘27/28 Sept. 1856’. Being a reply to Marx’s letters of 22 September and 26 September, the letter could not have been written before 27 September 1856. — 72
93 An allusion to Ewerbeck’s inordinate literary vanity, on which Engels also commented in a letter to Marx of 15 October 1851 in connection with the publication of Ewerbeck’s book L’Allemagne et les Allemands, Paris, 1851 (cf. present edition, Vol. 38, p. 478).
The Père-Lachaise is a cemetery in Paris where many famous writers and artists are buried. — 73
94 Engels means the regular reviews of the Crimean war which he wrote for the New-York Daily Tribune in 1855 and 1856 (see present edition, Vols. 12-14). Since Engels was not an official correspondent of the Tribune, the reviews were sent to New York by Marx. Most of them were published as leaders. Engels made no copies of the manuscripts he sent to Marx, while issues of the Tribune carrying his articles could not always be obtained in Manchester. — 73
95 In the period immediately preceding the 1848 revolution in France the Constitutionnel newspaper announced almost daily: ‘L’horizon politique s’obscurcit’ (‘The political horizon is darkening’). Marx cited this cliché in his article ‘Bonaparte’s Present Position’, published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 1 April 1858 (see present edition, Vol. 15). — 73, 290
96 The Marx family moved to 9 Grafton Terrace, London, about 1 October
1856. — 74
97 An allusion to Mieroslawski’s theory that the Poles had a special mission of liberation and were called upon to serve as an instrument of universal social change (Marx plays on Archimedes’ famous words: ‘Give me a fulcrum and I will move the earth’). — 75
98 Marx means the republication in the London Free Press of the part of the Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century which had earlier been published with abridgments and numerous misprints in The Sheffield Free Press, and in the same form in The Free Press (see Note 61). — 75
99 This refers to the continued publication of Marx’s Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century in The Free Press (see Note 61). From 16 August 1856 the paper was increased from four pages to eight. Marx and Engels called the enlarged edition the new Free Press (see, e.g., Engels’ letter to Marx of 31 March 1857, this volume, p. 117). — 76, 117
100 Part of this letter was first published in English in Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1955. — 80, 380
101 The ordre équestre (literally: the order of horsemen) — the social estate of the knights. In medieval Poland peasants who turned up for military service with a warhorse and arms of their own were enlisted in the cavalry, which entitled them to be elevated to knightly status. — 80
102 In November 1847 Switzerland was plunged into a civil war unleashed by the Sonderbund, a separatist union of seven economically backward Catholic cantons which resisted progressive bourgeois reforms. The Guizot government of France, supported by the governments of Austria and Russia, came out in support of the Sonderbund and the Catholic Church. However, Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, seeking to weaken France, prevented her direct intervention in Swiss affairs and thereby contributed to her further rapprochement with Russia. The rout of the Sonderbund army by the Federal forces on 23 November deprived the European powers of a pretext for further diplomatic moves in the Swiss conflict. — 81
103 In October 1856 France and Britain, fearing that the reign of reaction and terror in the Kingdom of Naples (the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) might set off a revolutionary explosion, demanded that Ferdinand II, the Neapolitan King, should pursue a more flexible policy. Ferdinand II, confident of Austria’s backing, refused to comply, whereupon France and Britain put their naval squadrons in the Mediterranean on the alert. However, the planned expedition against Naples did not take place owing to differences caused by Napoleon Ill’s intention to instal a prince of the Bonaparte dynasty on the Neapolitan throne.
By the autumn of 1856, the struggle had intensified for the union of the Danubian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia and for an end to their dependence on the Ottoman Empire. The British government, apprehensive of France’s intention to instal a member of the Bonaparte dynasty as head of the united state, and fearing the growth of Russian influence in the principalities, actively supported Austria’s and Turkey’s opposition to the movement for unification (this is what Marx had in mind speaking about Palmerston’s alliance with Austria on the Turkish issue). However, despite the diplomatic complica- tions and the resistance of the reactionary aristocrats, the principalities merged in 1862 to form the single state of Romania. — 81, 107, 243
104 This refers to the Crystal Palace in London (see Note 89). — 81
105 The symptoms of economic crisis, the rise in unemployment and in the cost of living, the shortage of housing and food, and the increased taxation led to more frequent manifestations of the workers’ discontent in Paris and other French cities, to which the government responded with mass arrests. Those arrested were accused of putting up posters in the streets threatening property owners, landlords, usurers and even Emperor Napoleon III.
The article in the Moniteur mentioned by Engels (it appeared on 24 October 1856) protested against attacks in English newspapers on the French government and some of Napoleon Ill’s entourage. It had broad repercussions in the British press. — 82
106 Banks patterned on the French Crédit mobilier (see Note 45) were established with the latter’s participation in a number of Central European countries. — 83
107 Marx used the data contained in Engels’ letter and in The Manchester Guardian of 17 November 1856, also sent by Engels, in his article ‘The Crisis in Europe’ published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 6 December 1856 (see present edition, Vol. 15).— 83
108 Engels means the wars Britain waged almost incessantly as a member of various anti-French coalitions against revolutionary and Napoleonic France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (from 1793, when the French Republic officially declared war on it, up to the final fall of Napoleon’s empire in 1815). Spain, which originally fought against France and suffered a number of defeats, concluded a separate peace with the French in 1795 and, under pressure from the French Directory, and later from Napoleon, twice sided with France in the war against Britain (1796-1802 and 1804-08). — 84
109 Le Comité du saint public (the Committee of Public Safety) — the central body of revolutionary government in France during the jacobin dictatorship (2 June 1793-27 July 1794).— 85
110 In September 1856 there was a royalist uprising in Neuchâtel. Many of the insurgents were arrested by the Swiss authorities. The King of Prussia insisted on their release. In reply, Switzerland demanded that he should relinquish his tide to Neuchâtel. Under the pressure of France, on whose initiative a European conference on the issue was held in March 1857, Prussia was forced to renounce her claims.
In the eighteenth century the principality of Neuchâtel and Valangin (in German: Neuenburg and Vallendis) was under Prussian rule. It was ceded to France in 1806, during the Napoleonic wars. In 1815, by a decision of the Vienna Congress, it was incorporated into the Swiss Confederation as its 21st canton, while remaining a vassal of Prussia. On 29 February 1848 a bourgeois revolution in Neuchâtel put an end to Prussian rule and a republic was proclaimed. Prussia, however, laid constant claims to Neuchâtel up to 1857, thus causing an acute conflict with the Swiss Republic. — 86, 88, 89
111 Marx presumably alludes to the fact that under the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna (1815) Prussia received what was known as Swedish Pomerania from Denmark. Denmark received in compensation the duchy of Lauenburg from Prussia. — 86
112 The Polish region of Silesia, part of the Austrian Empire from 1526, was seized by Prussia during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48) caused by the claims of several European powers, above all King Frederick II of Prussia, to the Habsburg domains, which, in default of a male heir at the death of Emperor Charles VI, went to his daughter, Maria Theresa. — 86
113 Pietism was a trend in the Lutheran Church that emerged in Germany in the seventeenth century. Distinguished by extreme mysticism, it rejected rites and attached special importance to personal religious experience. — 86, 575
114 Marx developed these ideas on Prussia’s history in his article ‘The Right Divine of the Hohenzollerns’ (see present edition, Vol. 15). — 87
115 An allusion to the fact that in 1848 Valdenaire was a deputy to the Prussian National Assembly, in which the liberal majority favoured a constitution ‘by agreement (Vereinbarung) with the Crown’. Marx and Engels ironically called the members of the Berlin Assembly ‘agreers’. — 87
116 Marx means the Imperial Constitution adopted by the Frankfurt National Assembly on 28 March 1849, but rejected by most of the German governments and in the first place by the King of Prussia. In May 1849 uprisings in defence of the Constitution flared up in Saxony, Rhenish Prussia and the South German states of Baden and Palatinate. In the last two a united insurgent army was formed, in which Frederick Engels fought. The movement was led by petty-bourgeois democrats, whose vacillation and passive defence tactics doomed it to defeat. The movement was finally suppressed in July 1849. Engels described it in The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution and Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (see present edition, Vols. 10 and 11). — 90
117 On the eve o£ and during the Crimean war Bruno Bauer published the following pamphlets: Rußland und das Germanenthum, Charlottenburg, 1853; Rußland und das Germanenthum. Zweite Abtheilung. Die deutsche und die orientalische Frage, Charlottenburg, 1853; Deutschland und das Russenthum, Charlottenburg, 1854; Die jetzige Stellung Rußlands, Charlottenburg, 1854; Rußland und England, Charlottenburg, 1854 (French edition: La Russie et l’Angleterre, Charlottenburg, 1854). These works, particularly the last two, were criticised in Marx’s unfinished draft ‘Pamphlets über die russische Kollision von B. Bauer, written in January 1857 (see present edition, Vol. 15). — 90
118 This study by Bauer was first published in Berlin in 1874 under the title Philo, Strauss und Renan und das Urchristentkum. — 91
119 In the spring of 1856 floods occurred in the valleys of the Rhône and the Loire. Feigning concern for the victims, Napoleon III visited a number of the affected towns and villages in a boat and personally handed out money. He also directed a message to the Minister of Public Works recommending measures to prevent such calamities. — 92
120 The Marx family lived in Dean Street, Soho, an overcrowded and unhealthy London district where poorer refugees lived, from December 1850 to the autumn of 1856. — 94
121 Marx means the concessions made by Switzerland to Prussia in the conflict over Neuchâtel (see Note 110).
Initially, the Swiss government had flatly refused to comply with Prussia’s demand for the release of the arrested royalists who had rebelled in Neuchâtel in September 1856, and declared it was prepared to resist the threatened Prussian invasion. However, under pressure from Napoleon III, who did not want a war near the French frontier, the Swiss government released those arrested on 16 January 1857. The King of Prussia replied by rescinding the mobilisation order. The conflict was settled through diplomatic channels. — 94
122 Marx presumably means the Swiss government’s official report to the Federal Diet on the Prusso-Swiss conflict over Neuchâtel (see Note 110) published in the Neue Preussische Zeitung on 1 January 1857. It maintained, in particular, that contrary to the assurances of the French government, the King of Prussia had assumed no commitments vis-à-vis the Emperor of France concerning renunciation of his claims to Neuchâtel and Valangin. — 94
123 The Corps législatif was established, alongside the State Council and the Senate, under the Constitution of 14 February 1852, following the Bonapartist coup d’état of 1851. The members of the State Council and the Senate were appointed by the head of state, while the Corps législatif was an elected body, the elections being supervised by state officials and the police, so that a docile majority was always ensured. As its powers were confined to endorsing bills drawn up by the State Council, the Corps législatif was, in effect, a screen for Napoleon Ill’s unlimited rule. — 94, 109
124 The Orleanists were supporters of the Orleans dynasty which held power in France during the July monarchy (1830-48). They upheld the interests of the financial aristocracy and the big industrial bourgeoisie. — -95, 291, 552
125 Marx means the second of Engels’ articles entided ‘Mountain Warfare in the Past and Present’ (see present edition, Vol. 15). The New-York Daily Tribune did not publish it. A copy of the article, written in Marx’s hand, has reached us. Engels discusses the possibility of hostilities breaking out in the Swiss Alps, particularly in the area between the city of Constance, near the Lake Constance, and Basle, in the event of the Prusso-Swiss conflict over Neuchâtel (see Note 121) growing into war. — 95
126 The letter is undated. But since it is Engels’ reply to a letter from Marx of 20 January 1857 and was answered by Marx on 23 January, it was presumably written on 21 or 22 January. — 96
127 Marx alludes to the influence exerted on the New-York Daily Tribune editors by Count Gurowski, a Polish pan-Slavist journalist, of which he had been informed by Olmsted, an agent of Putnam’s Monthly. Marx attributed to his influence the Tribune editors’ rejection of some of his own and Engels’ articles, and the delay in publishing others (see this volume, p. 81). — 98
128 The New-York Daily Tribune did not publish the article. — 98
129 This refers to the colonial war Britain was waging against Persia (Iran) in 1856-57. In October 1856 Persian troops seized the city of Herat, the centre of the principality of Herat, claimed by Persia and Afghanistan. Britain took advantage of this to declare war on Persia with a view to further expansion in the Middle East, directed against both Persia and Afghanistan. In November a British naval force captured several Persian strong points on the coast of the Persian Gulf. However, growing popular discontent in India compelled the British to hasten the conclusion of a peace treaty in March 1857, under which Persia relinquished her claims to Herat (later annexed to Afghanistan), while Britain withdrew her forces from the area. — 98, 107, 134
130 Marx probably means the formation, in 1854, of the US Republican Party, which put forward a programme to limit Negro slavery in the Southern states, and the considerable success it scored in the 1856 Presidential election, its candidate getting over 300,000 votes, one-third of the total. Howard Greeley, the publisher of the New-York Daily Tribune, was one of the party’s leaders. — 98
131 A reference to the article ‘Saint-Arnaud’, which Engels wrote on the basis of C. L. Bazancourt’s book L’expédition de Crimée (see Note 60). — 100
132 Marx means the supporters of the currency principle, one of the schools of the quantity theory of money widely subscribed to in Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century. According to this theory, the value and price of commodities are determined by the quantity of money in circulation, and economic crises are caused mainly by violations of the laws of money circulation. The proponents of the quantity theory sought to maintain the stability of money circulation by means of obligatory gold backing of bank notes. The theory provided the economic justification for Peel’s Bank Acts (introduced in England in 1844, and in Scotland in 1845). Under the 1844 Act, the Bank of England was divided into a Banking Department and an Issue Department and fixed proportions were laid down between the amount of bank notes issued and the bullion required to back them. However, the actual demand for currency forced the government to suspend the Act in 1847 and 1857 and to issue paper money in excess of the fixed limit.
Marx showed the untenability of the currency principle in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (present edition, Vol. 30). He discussed the 1844 Bank Act in a number of articles (present edition, Vols. 12, 15 and 16).— 102, 126, 135, 202, 208, 215
133 The original of the letter has not been found. Only an excerpt reproduced in Freiligrath’s letter of 26 February 1857 to Karl Weerth, a high school teacher in Detmold and brother of Georg Weerth, who died in Havana in July 1856, has reached us. Engels’ letter was written in reply to Freiligrath’s request of 1 1 February for enquiries to be made about Georg Weerth’s papers, including his diaries, which his relatives wanted to publish in Germany. In a letter to Engels on 16 February Marx also mentioned Freiligrath’s request (see this volume, pp. 100-01). On receipt of Engels’ reply, Freiligrath, as he said in his letter to Karl Weerth, at once wrote to Detmold. It may therefore be assumed that Engels’ letter was posted shortly before, probably about 25 February. — 103
134 Engels means the vote of no confidence in Palmerston’s government after a debate on the Anglo-Chinese conflict in the House of Commons lasting from 26 February to 3 March 1857. The conflict has been provoked by the bombardment of Canton in October 1856 in retaliation for the Chinese authorities’ arrest of a contraband vessel sailing under the British flag. The bombardment was the prelude to another colonial war by Britain — later in alliance with France — against China, the Second Opium War (1856-60). After the vote Palmerston dissolved Parliament, and in the new election his candidates, who supported the aggression against China, beat the Opposition even in their stronghold, Manchester, securing a majority for Palmerston in the House of Commons. Marx dealt with these events in several articles published in the New-York Daily Tribune in March and April 1857 (see present edition, Vol. 15).
The Free Traders advocated non-interference of the state in the economy. Their stronghold was Manchester (hence the Manchester School and the Manchester Party). In the 1840s and 1850s the Free Traders were an independent political group which later formed the Left wing of the Liberal Party.
The Peelites were moderate Tories advocating concessions to the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 by their leader, Robert Peel, caused a split in the Tory party, with the Peelites forming an independent group that allied itself with the Whigs. In the late 1850s they joined the Liberal Party. — 104, 107, 109, 111, 113, 115
135 Aldermen — members of local government in Britain chosen by borough and county councils. — 104
136 -fhe f ac ts connected with the election campaign in Manchester and some data concerning Robert Lowe, John Potter and other candidates for Parliament related by Engels in this letter and those of 11, 20 and 31 March were used by Marx in his article ‘The Defeat of Cobden, Bright and Gibson’ (present edition, Vol. 15).— 104, 110, 117
137 The fraudulent machinations of the Docks Napoléon joint-stock company and the breach by Napoleon Ill’s government of its promise to keep young Arthur Berryer, who was implicated in the machinations, out of trouble if his father, the well-known lawyer Pierre Antoine Berryer, refrained from denunciations embarrassing to the ruling quarters, were later discussed by Marx in his article ‘Portents of the Day’ (present edition, Vol. 15). — 105
138 The Société du dix Décembre (Society of December 10) was a secret Bonapartist society consisting mainly of declasse elements and political adventurists. Set up in 1849, it owed its name to the election of Louis Napoleon to the Presidency of the French Republic on 10 December 1848. Marx gives a detailed description of the Society in The Eighteenth Bnimaire of Louis Bonaparte (see present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 149-51, 180-82, 186, 193-96).— 107, 157, 436
139 The secret treaty guaranteeing Turkey’s frontiers was signed by Britain, France and Austria in Paris on 15 April 1856. — 107
140 p ro m 1806 to 1808 the King of Naples was Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon I, and from 1808 to 1815 Joachim Murat, one of Napoleon’s marshals. — 107
141 “Truly British Minister” — an allusion to Lord Russell’s description of Palmerston as a champion of British interests in his House of Commons speech of 20 June 1850, in which he sought to justify Palmerston’s military and diplomatic moves against Greece in connection with the burning in Athens in 1847 of the house of the merchant Pacifico, a Portuguese Jew and British subject. Lord Russell argued that Palmerston was motivated by the need to uphold the prestige of British citizens. The actual aim of Palmerston’s moves was to make Greece surrender several strategic islands in the Aegean. — 107, 116, 276, 431
142 Marx means the policy of Britain’s ruling quarters towards Persia, Afghanistan, China and other Asian countries during Palmerston’s first term as Foreign Secretary (1830-41). Thus the British government declared the siege of Herat in November 1837 by Persian troops an act of hostility towards Britain and took advantage of it to send a naval squadron to the Persian Gulf. The Shah of Persia was forced to lift the siege in August 1838 and later to conclude a trade agreement with Britain advantageous to the latter.
Palmerston was also Foreign Secretary when Britain unleashed what came to be known as the First Opium War (1840-42), which marked the first stage in turning China into a semi-colony of West European capitalist states. — 107
143 The Aberdeen coalition ministry (1852-55) consisted mainly of Peelites (break-a way . group of Tories) and Whigs. Junior posts were held by Radicals and leaders of the Irish faction in the House of Commons. Marx and Engels described the bankruptcy of this government of ‘All the Talents’ in the article ‘The Late British Government’ (present edition, Vol. 13, pp. 620-26). — 108
144 Marx means the massacre by government troops of participants in a mass meeting for electoral reform in St. Peter’s Field near Manchester on 16 August 1819. By analogy with the battle of Waterloo it was called Peterloo.
The 6 gagging acts — the six exceptional laws passed by the British Parliament in 1819 after the massacre in St. Peter’s Field. Introduced by the Tory ministry, of which Palmerston was a member, they virtually abolished habeas corpus and freedom of the press and of assembly. — 108
145 An allusion to the power struggle in France that preceded the Bonapartist coup d’état of 2 December 1851. Louis Bonaparte, President of the Second Republic, was in conflict with the party of Order, the bloc of the two monarchist factions — the Legitimists, supporters of the Bourbons overthrown in 1830, and the Orleanists (see Note 124), who supported the junior (Orleans) branch of the Bourbon dynasty. The party of Order was the strongest force in the French Legislative Assembly which was disbanded by Bonaparte’s supporters on 2 December 1851 — 108
146 Engels ironically compares the Polish émigrés in the Turkish service who fought on the side of the North Caucasian mountaineers against Russia to the 300 Spartans who, headed by King Leonidas, defended the Pass of Thermopylae against the army of the Persian King Xerxes I in 480 B.C. — 109
147 Engels means Tucker’s Political Fly-Sheets, a series of 12 issues published by the Urquhartite Tucker in London in 1853 and 1854 and republished in 1855. Issues 1 and 2 contained the pamphlets ‘Palmerston and Russia’ and ‘Palmerston and the Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessy’, reproducing the content of articles 3, 4 and 5 of Marx’s 8-article series on Palmerston published in The People’s Paper in 1853 (see present edition, Vol. 12, pp. 341-406). The other issues carried mostly articles by David Urquhart also attacking Palmerston’s foreign policy. — 110, 111, 115
148 This refers to those articles of Marx’s series Lord Palmerston which appeared in the New-York Daily Tribune. In contrast to The People’s Paper, which published all eight articles and as a consecutive whole (see present edition, Vol. 12, pp. 341-406) , the Tribune carried only six articles, in the form of four separate leaders under different titles: ‘Palmerston’, corresponding to articles 1 and 2 in The People’s Paper (NYDT, 19 October 1853), ‘Palmerston and Russia’, corresponding to article 3 (NYDT, 4 November 1853), ‘A Chapter of Modern History’, corresponding to articles 4 and 5 (NYDT, 21 November 1853), and ‘England and Russia’, corresponding to article 7 (NYDT, 11 January 1854). — 111, 115
149 Marx means the seizure by British naval forces of the Iranian port of Bushire in the Persian Gulf during the 1856-57 Anglo-Persian war (see Note 129). — 111
150 The Anti-Corn Law League was founded in 1838 by the Manchester manufacturers and Free Trade leaders Richard Cobden and John Bright. It advocated the abolition of the high import duties on agricultural produce imposed — in the interests of the landed aristocracy — by a series of Corn Laws to maintain high prices for that produce on the home market. The struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landowners over the Corn Laws ended in their repeal (June 1846), after which the League announced its dissolution. Some of its branches, however, continued in existence for several years. — 113, 116, 215, 305
151 Marx means the June 1848 uprising of Paris workers, whose defeat largely
predetermined the failure of the 1848-49 revolution and the
subsequent period of political reaction in Europe in the 1850s. — 113
152 In his letter of 5 March 1857 Charles Dana wrote that of all of Marx’s articles only the second instalment of the article on mountain warfare had not been published, and this because interest in the Swiss question had subsided. The two articles on Persia, he wrote, had been merged into one and published, while the second article on Austria’s trade had been set and would be published as soon as space permitted. However, it was not until 4 August 1857 that this article entitled, like the first, ‘The Maritime Commerce of Austria’ actually appeared in print. — 114
153 ‘Geniality leaves off where money matters begin’ — this remark was addressed to the King of Prussia by David Hansemann, a leader of the liberal Rhenish bourgeoisie, on 8 June 1847 at a sitting of the First United Diet, from which the government was vainly trying to obtain endorsement of a fresh loan. — 114
154 In a speech in the House of Commons on 23 February 1848 Anstey presented the facts relating to the publication in 1835, in Urquhart’s series The Portfolio, of secret documents from the archives of the Grand Duke Constantine, Viceroy of Poland. The documents had been seized by Polish insurgents in 1830 and were later handed over by Polish refugees to Palmerston. It was only at the insistence of King William IV that Palmerston made them available for publication (for details see present edition, Vol. 12, pp. 386-87). — 115
155 The Peace Party or the Peace Society (Society for Promoting Permanent and Universal Peace) was an organisation founded by the Quakers in London in 1816. It was strongly supported by the Free Traders, who held that, given peace, free trade would enable Britain to make full use of her industrial superiority and thus gain economic and political supremacy. — 115
156 The Quakers (or Society of Friends) — a religious sect founded in England during the seventeenth-century revolution and later widespread in North America. The Quakers rejected the Established Church with its rites, and preached peace. — 116
157 Newalls Buildings — premises in Manchester where the Anti-Corn Law League met from 1838 onwards. — 116
158 The information contained in this letter of Engels and in those of 11, 20 and 31 March 1857 was intended for use by Marx in his articles for the New-York Daily Tribune. — 118
159 The rumour about Schramm’s death proved to be false. — 119
160 The bombardment of Odessa by an Anglo-French squadron took place on 22 April 1854, soon after Britain and France joined Turkey in the war against Russia (the Crimean war, 1853-56). It was essentially a military demonstration. — 119
161 Marx refers to the Vienna Conference of 1855, which was to work out the terms for peace between the participants in the Crimean war (1853-56). It was attended by representatives of Russia, Britain, France, Austria and Turkey and lasted, with intervals, from 15 March to 4 June 1855. The conference was preceded by several rounds of talks between the Ambassadors held in 1853 and 1854 on the initiative of Austrian Foreign Minister Buol, who sought to mediate between the belligerents. The conference produced no results.
Britain was represented by its Special Envoy Lord John Russell. — 119
162 The facts mentioned in this paragraph were dealt with in greater detail by Marx in his article ‘Result of the Election’, published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 22 April 1857. — 119
163 Marx probably means one of the articles on Pan- Slavism written by Engels for the New-York Daily Tribune but not published (see Note 11). — 120
164 Engels wrote this letter in reply to Jenny Marx’s of 12 April (see this volume, p. 563). The manuscript is not dated. However, the article ‘Changes in the Russian Army’, which was enclosed in the letter and was published in the New York Daily Tribune on 6 May 1857, was presumably sent to New York from London not later than Friday, 17 April, so the letter was probably written on about 16 April. — 121
165 A reference to Dana’s letter to Marx of 6 April 1857 inviting him to contribute to The New American Cyclopaedia, ‘a popular dictionary of general knowledge’ prepared by a group of progressive bourgeois journalists and publishers on the New-York Daily Tribune editorial staff and edited by Charles Dana and George Ripley. It was published in 16 volumes by D. Appleton and Company, New York, in 1858-63 and reprinted in 1868-69. A number of prominent US and European scholars wrote for it. On Engels’ advice Marx agreed to contribute a number of articles. But Engels wrote most of them himself so that Marx could complete his economic research. Marx wrote mainly biographical essays on military and political figures with help from Engels in dealing with the military aspect. Marx and Engels wrote their articles from revolutionary-proletarian, materialist positions notwithstanding the condition laid down by the editors that they should not express their party point of view. Because of this condition Maix limited the range of his subjects mainly to military matters and to studies on different countries, renouncing his initial intention of writing essays on the history of German philosophy, the Napoleonic Code, Chartism, socialism and communism. He held that these subjects could not be dealt with in a spirit of even apparent neutrality. It may have been for this reason also that Marx did not contribute the article ‘Aesthetics’, as originally planned.
The articles in The New American Cyclopaedia were published anonymously, and only volumes II, V and XVI contained lists of the authors of major articles. Marx was mentioned as the author of the articles ‘Army’, ‘Artillery’, ‘Bernadotte’, ‘Bolivar’, ‘Cavalry’, ‘Fortification’, ‘Infantry’, and ‘Navy’ (actually these articles, except for ‘Bernadotte’ and ‘Bolivar’, were written by Engels). Marx’s and Engels* authorship of other articles has been established on the basis of the Marx-Engels correspondence, Charles Dana’s letters to Marx, Marx's notebooks, which recorded the despatch of articles to New York, and of other archive material (conspectuses, extracts for articles, etc.). In all, the authorship of 81 articles has been established.
Marx and Engels contributed to The New American Cyclopaedia from July 1857 to November 1860, their articles (those we know of) appearing in volumes I-V, VII, IX and XII. They were also included, unchanged, in the 1868-69 edition of the Cyclopaedia but were not reprinted any more during the authors’ lifetime. They were collected and published in 1933 in the Soviet Union in Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XI, Part II. The most complete publications of these articles are to be found in Volumes 14 (1959) and 44 (1977) of the Second Russian Edition of the Works of Marx and Engels and in Vol. 18 of the present edition (1982). However, these publications did not include the articles ‘Austerlitz’, ‘Augereau’ and ‘Badajos’, of which Engels was erroneously regarded as the author. When preparing the Russian edition, the editors established the true authors of a number of articles wrongly attributed to Marx and Engels by some bibliographers. Thus the articles ‘Abd-el-Kader’ and ‘Chartism’ were written by William Humphrey, ‘Austerlitz’ by Henry W. Herbert, ‘Epicurus’ by Hermann Raster, ‘Socialism’ by Parke Godwin, and ‘Hegel’ by Henry Smith. The article ‘Aesthetics’ cannot be by Marx either, for it conflicts with the views on the subject expressed in his works. — 122, 134
166 The letter is not dated. Since it was in reply to Marx’s letter of 21 April 1857 and Marx answered it on 23 April, Engels must have written it between these dates. — 122
167 On 26 February 1857, speaking in the House of Commons about the British government’s unlawful actions in the Anglo-Chinese conflict, Cobden tabled a resolution condemning Britain’s military operations in China. After a long debate the motion was adopted, resulting in a vote of no confidence in Palmerston’s government (see Note 134). — 127
168 While working on Die Philosophic Herakleitos des Dunklen von Ephesos, Lassalle was also writing a historical drama, Franz von Sickingen. In a letter to Marx on 26 April 1857 he said that it would in a sense ‘set things alight’. — 129
169 Engels arrived in London early in June 1857 and returned to Manchester at the end of the month. — 131, 136, 141, 154
170 Marx analysed this report in two articles (‘Crédit mobilier’) published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 30 May and 1 June 1857 (present edition, Vol. 15).— 133
171 ‘Social philosophy’ (‘Sozialphilosophie’) was the term Moses Hess used in his works of the 1840s to denote the teachings of the French Utopian socialists (Saint-Simon, Fourier and others) and the petty-bourgeois social doctrines of Proudhon. — 133
172 Most of these articles were soon written and published in The New American Cyclopaedia (in the present edition they are in Vol. 18). In addition, Engels undertook to write other ‘A* articles (‘Alma\ ‘Ammunition’, ‘Airey’ and ‘Army’ — all ordered by Dana in his letter to Mark of 8 May 1857). Some articles mentioned in- the list (‘Axle’, ‘Approaches’, ‘Advanced Guard*) were not published in the Cyclopaedia and probably not written by Engels. The articles ‘Abukir’, ‘Anglesey’ and ‘Augereau’ were in all probability written by other authors. — 137
173 On coming to London in early June 1857, Engels had a relapse of the ailment about which he wrote to Marx on 20 May (this volume, pp. 130-31). He probably stayed with his brother-in-law Emil Blank, husband of his sister Marie.
Engels gives only ‘Friday morning* as the date of this letter. In earlier editions it was dated 12 June 1857. But since it was written in early June and not later than 10 June (as can be seen from the fact that Marx wrote the draft of his letter to Collet on the back of this letter not later than 10 June — see Note 174), and moreover on a Friday, the letter can only have been written on 5 June.— 137
174 The extant draft of the letter (on the back of Engels’ letter to Marx of 5 June 1857) is not dated. However, since Collet replied to Marx on 10 June 1857, it may be assumed that the letter was written about 10 June. — 138
175 The draft letter is not dated. It was written in reply to Collet’s letter to Marx of 10 June, presumably immediately after it was received. — 138
176 This letter is written on Dana’s letter to Marx of 11 June 1857, which Marx mentions in the first lines. Dana wrote telling Marx that he was returning the manuscript of the article ‘Saint-Arnaud’ (see Note 60) rejected by Putnam’s Monthly; Dana did not advise him to write the article ‘Ships against Walls’ because the editors refused to guarantee its publication. He also wrote that he hoped to be receiving articles for The New American Cyclopaedia soon. — 140
177 Marx means the list of articles for The New American Cyclopaedia which he sent to Dana following the one drawn up by Engels on 28 May 1857 (see this volume, pp. 136-37). This list is not extant. — 142
178 Marx refers to the Indian uprising of 1857-59 against British rule. It flared up in May 1857 among the Sepoy units of the Bengal army and spread to large areas of Northern and Central India. (Sepoys were mercenary soldiers recruited from among the Indians and serving under British officers.) Its main strength was provided by the peasants and the poor artisans. Directed by local feudal lords, the uprising was put down owing to the country’s disunity, religious and caste differences, and the military and technical superiority of the colonialists. — 142, 146, 413, 566
179 Mazzini, who secretly arrived in Genoa at the end of June 1857, and other supporters of revolutionary action, attempted to start an uprising in Italy with a view to liberating and uniting the country. A detachment of revolutionaries led by Pizacono seized a ship bound for Tunis from Genoa and landed in the Kingdom of Naples. Attempts were also made to start uprisings in Leghorn and Genoa but, like the expedition to the South, they also failed. Pizacono and many of his associates perished in clashes with Neapolitan troops. Mazzini managed to avoid arrest and return to London. — 142
180 This refers to excerpts which Marx made from the various sources on the military history of antiquity for Engels, who was working on the article ‘Army’ for The New American Cyclopaedia. The notes from the encyclopaedias of Ersch-Gruber and Pauly mentioned below in the text are extant. Marx also made excerpts, probably later, from Wilkinson’s three-volume Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, London, 1837. — 147, 565
181 A reference to the second batch of ‘A’ articles which Engels wrote for The New American Cyclopaedia in accordance with his list (see this volume, pp. 136-37). Judging by an entry in Marx’s notebook made on 24 July 1857, Marx sent these articles to New York with the first batch of ‘A’ articles received from Engels on 14 July (see this volume, p. 146). — 148, 159
182 The Loan Societies — a variety of the Friendly Societies in England (see Note 76) — granted workers low-interest loans repayable in instalments. Their funds, like those of the Friendly Societies, consisted of membership dues. Loans could be made to non-members, provided they had two reliable guarantors. — 148, 328
183 From 27 July to 8 November 1857 Engels underwent medical treatment at the seaside: at Waterloo near Liverpool (until the end of August, when he returned to Manchester for a fortnight in view of his father’s arrival there), at Ryde on the Isle of Wight (from the 8th to the end of September), and in Jersey (until 8 November), whence he returned to Manchester. — 149, 154, 160, 195
184 An excerpt from this letter was first published in English in K. Marx and F. Engels, The First Indian War of Independence 1857-1859, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow [1959]. — 151, 233
185 The letter Engels sent to Jenny Marx from Waterloo, presumably about 11 August 1857, has not been found. It was written in reply to Marx’s letter to Engels of 9 August. — 151
186 Marx based his assumption of the possible retreat of the British troops from Delhi on the numerical superiority of the insurgents, who had captured this important fortress in the middle of May 1857, soon after the beginning of the Indian uprising (see Note 178). But the insurgents, who adhered to the tactics of passive defence and were demoralised by the treacherous behaviour of the local feudal lords, failed to take advantage of their superiority. This enabled the British to hold out until they received reinforcements. In mid-September they took Delhi. — 152
187 The reference is presumably to articles for The New American Cyclopaedia or to material for articles which Marx intended to write for it with Engels’ help on military questions. — 153
188 Conrad Schramm, a member of the Communist League and a close friend of Marx and Engels, was ill with tuberculosis. In 1852 he went to the USA hoping to earn a living and improve his health. In the summer of 1857 he returned to London and, his condition having worsened, he was immediately placed in a hospital for German refugees. On 20 September he moved to Jersey where Engels too soon came for treatment. Schramm died on 15 January 1858. — 158, 171, 312
189 The letter, written presumably on 11 August 1857, when Marx despatched articles for The New American Cyclopaedia, has not been found. — 159
190 This letter was published in earlier editions without the notes on Bennigsen and Barclay which Engels made for Marx’s biographical articles for The New American Cyclopaedia (see Note 165). The notes were first published — separately from the letter — in 1977, in Vol. 44 of the Second Russian Edition of the Works of Marx and Engels, under the editorial heading ‘Bennigsen and Barclay’. In the present edition the letter is published in full with the notes for the first time. — 162
191 Here and below Engels describes events during the war of the Fourth Coalition (Britain, Russia, Prussia and Sweden) against Napoleonic France. After the defeat of the Prussian army by Napoleon in the spring of 1806 the main theatre of war shifted to East Prussia, where Napoleon encountered stubborn resistance from the allied army of Russia and Prussia.
The battle of Prenssisch-Eylau on 7-8 February 1807 between the French army and Russian and Prussian forces was indecisive. — 162, 170, 175
192 The French laid siege to Danzig (Gdansk) in March 1807. The garrison, consisting of Prussian troops and a Russian detachment, offered stubborn resistance. The fortress surrendered to superior enemy forces at the end of May 1807. — 162
193 The battle of Smolensk, during the Patriotic War of Russia against Napoleon, took place on 16-18 August 1812. Units of the First and Second Russian armies (commanded by Barclay de Tolly and Bagration) which had joined up on 3 August rebuffed the attacks of Napoleon’s troops to cover the withdrawal of the main forces. At the cost of heavy losses Napoleon captured the city, which was abandoned by the Russian rearguard after the main forces had withdrawn. — 163
194 This passage reflects the tendentious presentation of the events of the Patriotic War of Russia, 1812, in Jomini’s Vie politique et militaire de Napoléon (Vols. 1-4, Paris, 1827) and other books (e.g. Bernhardi’s Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben ... des Grafen von Toll, Vols. 1-4, Leipzig, 1856), which Engels used as sources. In particular, they contain inaccuracies in explaining why Mikhail Kutuzov, newly appointed commander-in-chief of the Russian army, abandoned the position at Gzhatsk (more precisely at Tsarevo-Zaimishche), which it had occupied since 29 August 1812, and withdrew to Borodino. Kutuzov did so because he intended to give decisive battle with a more favourable balance of forces, for which it was necessary to win time and bring up reinforcements. The battle of Borodino was fought on 7 September. It brought about a turn in the war in Russia’s favour, despite the forced but expedient abandonment of Moscow. — 164
195 In the final version of their article ‘Barclay de Tolly’ Marx and Engels gave a more accurate description of Barclay’s role. There the remark concerning the predominance of administrative and diplomatic functions in Barclay’s activities during the war of the Sixth Coalition (Russia, Austria, Prussia, Britain, Spain, Sweden and other countries) against Napoleonic France, applied only to the 1814 campaign, and Barclay’s role as military commander in a number of battles during the 1813 campaign is noted. — 164
196 Published here are three short texts by Engels, probably fragments of a letter to Marx of 11 or 12 September 1857 which has not been preserved in full. Like other letters written at the time, they reflect Engels’ help to Marx in writing biographical articles for The New American Cyclopaedia.
The first and third fragments (written on separate sheets) were published in the Second Russian Edition of the Works of Marx and Engels as the letter in question. The second fragment (written on two sheets) has never been published before. The approximate date of writing has been established on the basis of the previous letter of Engels to Marx, written on 10 September, and Marx’s replies written on 15 and 17 September 1857.
The order in which the fragments are presented in this volume is the order in which they are assumed to have been written. — 164
197 At the battle of Grossbeeren on 23 August and of Dennewitz on 6 September 1813, the Prussian corps under Billow defeated the French. Both battles took place during the war of the Sixth Coalition (Russia, Austria, Prussia, Britain, Spain, Sweden and other countries) against Napoleonic France. In the 1813 campaign Bernadotte commanded the allied Northern Army, which included Bulow’s corps. — 164, 274
198 At the battle of Leipzig (16-19 October 1813) the allied armies of Russia, Austria, Prussia and Sweden defeated Napoleon and his allies. This ‘battle of the nations’ led to Germany’s liberation from Napoleon’s rule. — 165, 179
199 The Directory (consisting of five directors of whom one was re-elected every year) was the leading executive body in France set up under the 1795 Constitution. It governed France until Bonaparte’s coup d’état of 1799 and expressed the interests of the big bourgeoisie. — 165
200 Engels refers to the military operations in Transylvania (then part of Hungary) of a revolutionary army against the Austrian forces, Romanian detachments, provoked into action against Hungary by the Austrian authorities, and a Russian detachment sent by the Tsarist government to help the Habsburg Empire. Started under Bern’s command in December 1848, during the 1848-49 revolution in Hungary, this campaign ended a few months later in the practically complete liberation of Transylvania from the counter-revolutionary forces. However, in the second Transylvanian campaign (mentioned below) called forth by a new concentration of counter-revolutionaries in the summer of 1849 and the arrival of fresh contingents of Tsarist troops, Bern’s entire army was routed at the end of July 1849 and he himself had to flee to Turkey. — 167
201 Bem’s march into the Banat (a region in the Serbian Voivodina, then part of Hungary) was undertaken in the spring of 1849 to put down the Serbian movement for autonomy incited by the Austrian authorities and influenced by the Serbian big bourgeoisie, nobility and clergy. As in Transylvania, the struggle in the Banat with its population of Hungarians, Germans and Romanians as well as Serbs, was complicated by clashes between Serbians and non-Serbians, and the erroneous stand adopted by the Hungarian bourgeois and aristocratic revolutionaries on the national question. Only on 28 July 1849, shortly before the fall of the Hungarian Republic, did they officially agree to recognise the equality of all nationalities inhabiting Hungary. — 167
202 The last two of these articles, ‘Blum’ and ‘Bourrienne’, were not ready for despatch to New York that day. As is seen from Marx’s notebook, they were sent off to Charles Dana on 22 September 1857. — 168
203 Here and below Marx writes about Bem’s participation in the Polish national liberation uprising of November 1830-October 1831. The majority of its participants were revolutionary gentry (szlachta) and its leaders came mostly from the aristocracy. It was suppressed by the Russian army with the support of Prussia and Austria.
At the battle of Iganin on 10 May 1831 the Polish insurgents were victorious in a clash with Russian troops.
At the battle of Ostrolenka on 26 May 1831 the Polish insurgents were defeated by Russian forces under Dibich. The final blow was delivered when the Russians captured Warsaw (see below) after storming its suburb Vola on 6 September. The remnants of the insurgent army fled to Prussia and Austria. — 169, 172
204 The battle of Austerlitz (see Note 46) was an important event in the war of the Third Coalition (Austria, Russia, Britain and Sweden) against Napoleonic France (1805).— 170, 174
205 On the battle of Jena on 14 October 1806 see Note 46. The same day Marshal Davout’s army defeated the main Prussian forces at Auerstädt The defeat of Prussia in these two battles led to the quick occupation of the Kingdom of Prussia by the French and to the retreat of the remnants of the Prussian army to the eastern frontier.
These battles occurred during the war of the Fourth Coalition against Napoleonic France (see Note 191).: — 174, 178
206 At the battle of Wagram (Austria) on 5-6 July 1809 during the war of the Fifth Coalition (Austria, Britain), Napoleon’s army defeated the Austrians. — 170, 175, 176
207 An entry in Marx’s notebook shows that he sent Engels’ articles ‘Algeria’ and ‘Ammunition’ to New York on 18 September 1857. — 173
208 a reference to the Treaty of the Tafna of 30 May 1837 between Bugeaud and Abd-el-Kader, the leader of the Algerian liberation war which lasted, with short intervals, from 1832 to 1847. The French had resumed operations against Abd-el-Kader in 1835 in violation of the peace treaty concluded a year earlier. Under the treaty of the Tafna France again recognised the independence of Abd-el-Kader’s state in Western Algeria, except for a few coastal towns. In 1839 the peace was again violated by the French, and the Algerian liberation struggle was resumed. When working on the article ‘Bugeaud’, Marx took into account Engels’ opinion of this general. In particular, enlarging upon Engels’ remark about Bugeaud’s venality, Marx wrote: ‘A secret article, not reduced to writing, stipulated that 30,000 boojoos (about $12,000) should be paid to Gen. Bugeaud’ (present edition, Vol. 18, p. 212). — 177
209 The battle of the Alma took place on 20 September 1854 between the Russian forces and the numerically superior allied forces of the French, British and Turks. It was the first battle after the Allies* landing in the Crimea (at Eupatoria) on 14 September. The defeat and withdrawal of the Russian forces left the road to Sevastopol open for the Allies.
The battle of Balaklava (mentioned below in the text) between the Russian and the allied Anglo-French and Turkish forces took place on 25 October 1854. Units of the Russian army tried to cut off the English and Turkish troops taking part in the siege of Sevastopol from their base in Balaklava. They succeeded in inflicting serious losses on the enemy, especially on the English cavalry, but failed to achieve their main objective. — 177, 297
210 A reference to the siege of Sevastopol by the French and British troops during the Crimean War (1853-56) which lasted from September 1854 to August 1855 (349 days).— 178
211 This campaign took place during the war of the European coalition (Austria, Prussia, Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Piedmont, Naples and other monar- chies) (1792-97) against the French Republic. Prussia, a member of the coalition from 1792, concluded a separate peace with France in Basle in 1795. — 178
212 The Tugendbund (Union of Virtue) — one of the patriotic societies founded in Prussia after its defeat by Napoleonic France in 1806-07. It united representa- tives of the liberal nobility and the bourgeois intelligentsia and aimed at spreading the idea of an anti- Napoleonic liberation war and supporting moderate liberal reforms in Prussia. The Tugendbund was banned on Napoleon’s demand on 31 December 1809 by Frederick William III, who also feared its activities. However, it continued to exist secretly until the end of the Napoleonic wars. — 178
213 An allusion to the 1848-49 revolutionary movement in Baden. The German petty-bourgeois democrat and journalist Blind took part in it, while the German republican Hecker was a military leader in the Baden uprising in April 1848.— 179
214 The battle of the Katzbach (Silesia) was fought on 26 August 1813 during the war of the Sixth Coalition (Russia, Prussia, Austria, Britain, Sweden, Spain and Portugal) against Napoleonic France. The Silesian army, commanded by Blücher and consisting of a Prussian corps under York and two Russian corps under Langeron and Sacken, defeated the French army of Marshal Mac- donald. — 179
215 At the battle of Dresden on 26-27 August 1813 Napoleon’s army routed the allied forces of Austria, Prussia and Russia (the Bohemian or chief army), commanded by the Austrian Field Marshal Schwarzenberg. — 179
216 In a number of battles in the Montmirail region (east of Paris) Napoleon defeated separate units of Bliicher’s Silesian army in mid- February 1814 by taking advantage of their isolation from one another. — 180
217 At the battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815 the Anglo-Dutch and Prussian forces commanded by the Duke of Wellington and Blücher defeated Napoleon’s army, thus deciding the allies’ final victory over Napoleonic France. The outcome of the battle of Waterloo is credited to Blücher’s army which was defeated by Napoleon at Ligny on 16 June but managed to escape French pursuit and join up with the Anglo-Dutch forces. — 180, 357
218 Marx’s notebook contains an entry of 29 September 1857 about the despatch to New York of his article ‘Bessieres’ and the articles ‘Bem’ and ‘Bosquet’ written jointly with Engels. — 181
219 As is seen from Marx’s notebook, in September and October 1857 he wrote for the New-York Daily Tribune a series of five articles on the state of the Second Empire’s finances and Napoleon Ill’s financial policy. The articles were not printed. The manuscripts have not been found. — 181, 297
220 The letter is written on notepaper bearing a picture of the ruins of a castle and the inscription: ‘Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight’.
On the first English publication of this letter see Note 184. — 182
221 The Mahratta principalities (the Mahrattas or Marathas inhabited a large territory in Western India) were formed on the territory of the Mahratta state, which arose in the latter half of the seventeenth century during the struggle against the Empire of the Great Moguls. Later, particularly in the 1730s and 1740s, it underwent a process of feudal decentralisation. The confederation of the Mahratta principalities thus formed disintegrated in the second half of the eighteenth century. Weakened by the struggle with the Afghans and internal strife the principalities fell prey to the British East India Company which annexed a considerable part of their territories in the three Anglo-Mahratta wars (1775-82, 1803-05 and 1817-18) and made the remaining princes its vassals. — 185
222 Marx used the contents of Engels’ letter for his two articles, ‘The Revolt in India’, written on 29 September and 6 October 1857 (see present edition, Vol. 15). The purely military evaluation of possible British operations intended by Engels for Marx’s information was supplemented with the political assessment of the aims of the Indian national liberation movement and the efforts of the British colonialists to preserve their rule in India. — 185
223 As is seen from entries in Marx’s notebook, on 29 September 1857 he sent to New York, besides ‘Battery’, three articles received from Engels: ‘Bivouac’, ‘Blindage’ and ‘Bonnet’; on 6 October, he despatched one more batch of ‘B’ articles: ‘Bomb’; ‘Bomb-Ketch’, ‘Bomb-Proof’, ‘Bomb Vessel’, ‘Bombardier’ and ‘Bombardment’. — 185
224 An abridged English translation of this letter was first published in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Correspondence. 1846-1895 . A Selection with Commentary and Notes, Martin Lawrence Ltd,, London [1934J. The letter was published in full in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice- Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, 1979. — 186
225 Peculium castrense (lit. camp property) (Roman law) — property given by fathers to sons during and for military service and which they could dispose of as they liked independently of their fathers’ will.
Fabri — craftsmen in the Roman army engaged in building bridges, putting up defence and siege works, making arms, etc. They were formed into special detachments. — 186
226 Condottieri — leaders of mercenary troops in the service of princes, city republics and Popes in Italy in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. Some of them usurped power in individual Italian states and founded new princely dynasties. — 187
227 Engels’ letter to Marx of 24 September 1857 shows that he proposed to stay in Brighton on 29-30 September, on his way to Jersey to complete his medical treatment (see Note 183). Available sources do not establish with certainty whether Engels and Marx met at the appointed time, but we know from Marx’s own words (see present edition, Vol. 17, p. 85) that he and Engels visited their sick friend Conrad Schramm in Jersey, most probably at the beginning of October 1857.— 187
228 The letter is written on notepaper bearing a view of the Gulf of St. Catherine in Jersey from the pier. — 187
229 Harney, the former leader of revolutionary Chartism, withdrew from the labour movement in the first half of the 1850s, when there was a general decline in the English proletariat’s political activity. In the autumn of 1855 he went to St. Helier, the capital of Jersey, to convey an address of solidarity from British radicals to Victor Hugo on the occasion of the British decision to expel him and other French emigrants from the island (see Note 16). Harney setded there and in mid- 1856 became editor of The Jersey Independent, whicn he devoted almost entirely to local problems, criticising the local system from bourgeois- radical positions. — 188
230 Hejira (or Hegira) — the flight of Mohammed and his followers from Mecca to Medina in 622, from which the Mohammedan era is dated.
Here Engels alludes to the expulsion of French petty-bourgeois democratic refugees from Jersey in the autumn of 1855 (see Note 16), and calls them crapauds (philistines) (see Note 81). — 188
231 Vendée — a department in the west of France. During the French Revolution it was the centre of a royalist revolt in March 1793 in which the local peasant masses took part. The revolt was suppressed in 1795 but attempts to revive it were made in 1799 and later. — 189
232 Engels refers to the list of articles beginning with ‘C’ for The New American Cyclopaedia which Dana sent Marx. Neither the list nor Engels’ comments on it have been preserved. — 189, 190
233 The letter is written on notepaper bearing a picture of a cave on the Grève au Lançon in Jersey. — 190
234 Engels refers to the preliminary draft of the article ‘Armada’ for The New American Cyclopaedia which he wrote on the basis of excerpts made by Marx from various sources. Marx put the finishing touches to Engels’ text. The material Engels sent for the Cyclopaedia presumably included also the article ‘Ayacucho’, to which Marx added a final paragraph before sending it and the article ‘Armada’ to New York on 23 October 1857, as an entry in his notebook shows (for these articles see present edition, Vol. 18). — 190
235 This refers to the article ‘Artillery’, which Charles Dana asked Marx to write for The New American Cyclopaedia early in May 1857. Engels undertook to write the article but, busy with ‘Army’ and smaller articles for the Cyclopaedia* he did not begin it till after 19 October. Marx and Engels did not expect that the article could still be included in the current volume with the ‘A’ articles and thought, as this and the following letters show, that it could be inserted in some other volume, under the title ‘Cannon’ or as a historical part of the corresponding article (‘The History of Cannon’). However, the article was finished by the end of November, despatched to New York on the 27th of that month, and included in Vol. II of the Cyclopaedia under the original title ‘Artillery’.— 190, 195, 198, 199, 200, 207, 251
236 The letter is written on notepaper with a picture of Princes Tower in Jersey.
On the first English publication of this letter see Note 184. — 195
237 Many remnants of feudalism still survived in Jersey at the time. Local big landowners, lawyers and bankers (François Godfrey in particular) controlled all administrative institutions and the Royal Court. The radical Reform League (consisting of local traders, small shipowners and bank clerks), founded by Harney in September 1857, and The Jersey Independent edited by him, came out against their arbitrary rule and encroachments on the interests of tenants. — 196, 264, 308
238 Further on Engels describes the siege and storming of the insurgent-held fortress of Delhi by British troops during the Indian uprising of 1857-59 (see Note 178). The city fell on 19-20 September 1857. Engels dealt with these events in his article ‘The Capture of Delhi’ published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 5 December 1857 (see present edition, Vol. 15). — 197
239 The New American Cyclopaedia carried the article ‘Blücher’ by Marx and Engels without any sub-titles (see present edition, Vol. 18). — 198
240 Marx proposed to meet Engels who was returning from Jersey to Manchester via London after his long stay at the seaside (see Note 183). The two friends did not meet, probably because of the ‘bad arrangements of the railway Company in Brighton’, as Engels wrote to Marx on 15 November 1857 (see p. 200). Marx may also have confused the date of Engels’ arrival in London: he was to be there on 9 November (Monday) and not on the 5th (Thursday). So Marx’s remark ‘a week ago on Thursday’ seems to be a mistake. Besides, from the above-mentioned letter of Engels it transpires that it was on the Monday that their meeting was to take place. — 199
241 Marx seems to refer to his two articles (‘The Revolt in India’) published as leaders in the New-York Daily Tribune on 13 and 23 October 1857. When Marx wrote them, at the end of September and the beginning of October, he did not have sufficient information on the British siege of Delhi (which was finally captured on 20 September) and assumed that a successful storm of Delhi was hardly possible. — 199
242 Engels’ information on the rapid increase in exports of English textile goods to India was used by Marx in his article ‘The Financial Crisis in Europe’, published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 22 December 1857 (see present edition, Vol. 15). — 202
243 The discovery of gold in California in 1848 and in Australia in 1851 helped to overcome the 1847 economic crisis and its aftermath. The temporary revival of industry and trade after the crisis was also due, to a certain extent, to European and American goods gaining access to the Chinese market as a result of the Anglo-Chinese war of 1840-42 (known as the first Opium War). In 1857, however, this access was hampered by a new military conflict of the European powers with China (see Note 134). — 203
244 Ruge’s intention to publish a new periodical to succeed to the Deutsche Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Kunst (published in 1841-43) did not materialise. — 209, 227
245 Ernest Jones proposed as early as April 1857 to hold such a conference and to invite bourgeois radicals. In calling for an alliance with the radicals in order to campaign jointly for electoral reform Jones hoped to revive the mass Chartist movement on this basis. However, he made serious political concessions to the radicals when working out a common platform for uniting with them. Of the six points of the People’s Charter (universal suffrage, annual Parliaments, vote by secret ballot, equal constituencies, abolition of property qualifications for candidates to Parliament, and payment of M.P.s) he retained only the demand for universal manhood suffrage. Jones’ conciliatory policy caused discontent among the rank-and-file of the National Charter Association. After repeated postponements a joint conference of Chartists and bourgeois radicals was convened in London on 8 February 1858. Marx and Engels regarded Jones’ conciliation with the radicals as a manifestation of his political vacillation and broke off their friendly relations with him until a few years later, when Jones again adopted a revolutionary stand. — 210, 249, 264, 375
246 George Peabody was a big American financier. Frpm 1851 onwards, he gave annual dinners in London to British aristocrats and American guests to mark the anniversary of US independence (proclaimed on 4 July 1776). — 212, 567
247 Engels’ information on Hamburg bankruptcies was reproduced almost word for word by Marx in his article ‘The Crisis in Europe’, published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 5 January 1858 (see present edition, Vol. 15). — 213
248 Marx dealt in greater detail with the consequences of the repeal of the Corn Laws during the crisis in his article ‘The Financial Crisis in Europe’, published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 22 December 1857 (see present edition, Vol. 15). — 215
249 This refers to the Hamburger Garantie-Diskonto-Verein founded at the end of November 1857 in connection with the money crisis in Hamburg, to facilitate the circulation of bills and banknotes bearing the stamp of this association. — 216
250 In the summer of 1857 Marx began to write a series of economic manuscripts in order to sum up and systematise the results of his extensive economic research started in the 1840s and continued most intensively in the 1850s. (In the first half of the 1850s he filled 24 paginated and several unpaginated notebooks with excerpts from the works of bourgeois economists, books of statistics, documents and periodicals.) These manuscripts were preliminary versions of an extensive economic work in which he intended to investigate the laws governing the development of capitalist production and to criticise bourgeois political economy. Marx outlined the main points of this treatise in an unfinished draft of the ‘Introduction’ (one of the first manuscripts of the series) and in letters to Engels, Lassalle and Weydemeyer (see pp. 298-304, 269-71, 286-87, 376-78). Further economic study prompted Marx to specify and change his original plan. The central place in the series is occupied by the extensive manuscript, Critique of Political Economy (widely known as the Grundrisse), on which Marx worked from October 1857 to May 1858. In this preliminary draft of his future Capital Marx expounded his theory of surplus value. After the first instalment had been prepared for publication in 1859 under the title A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx added several more manuscripts to the series in 1861.
The manuscripts of 1857-61 were first published in German by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU in 1939 under the editorial heading Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Rohentwurf). These manuscripts and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One are included in Vols. 29 and 30 of the present edition. — 217, 224, 226, 238, 244, 249, 256, 270, 287, 307, 499, 566.
251 This is a postscript to Mrs Marx’s letter of 8 December 1857 to Conrad Schramm (see pp. 566-68). — 217
252 Marx slightly changed the wording of this passage in his article ‘The Crisis in Europe’ published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 5 January 1858, quoting it as a passage from a private letter from Manchester (see present edition, Vol. 15).— 222
253 xhis idea did not materialise. — 224
254 In his letter of 17 December 1857 to Marx, Lassalle enclosed a letter from his cousin Max Friedländer to Marx inviting him to contribute to the Vienna newspaper, Die Presse. Friedländer became one of its editors in 1856. Previously he had taken part in publishing the democratic paper Neue Oder-Zeitung, to which Marx also contributed throughout 1855. Not knowing the political line of Die Presse at the time, Marx did not agree, one of the reasons being probably the condition imposed by Friedländer: to criticise Napoleon Ill’s policy and abstain from attacking Palmerston. In 1859 negotiations with Friedländer were resumed and lasted for a long time. Their success was hampered, on the one hand, by Lassalle’s pro-Bonapartist statements during the Italian war of 1859 which evoked dissatisfaction on the part of Friedländer, who for a time thought that Marx approved of these statements, and on the other hand, by the editors’ tendency to be duped by the pseudo-constitutional demagogy of the new Austrian government of Schmerling, which put Marx on the alert. Only in October 1861 when Die Presse criticised the government did Marx agree to be its London correspondent. — 226, 227, 269, 272, 416, 418, 455, 571
255 Crédit foncier (Land Credit) — a French joint-stock bank set up in 1852 on the basis of the former Paris Land Bank. It granted short- and long-term loans on the security of immovable property at a definite interest. The Credit foncier received considerable subsidies from the government.
Comptoir national d’Escompte de Paris (National Discount Bank of Paris) was founded in 1848 by the Provisional Government of the French Republic. Originally it discounted bills and granted credits on the security of goods stored in public warehouses. Under Napoleon III it became a joint-stock society (in 1853) and acquired the privilege of making advances on government bonds and shares of industrial and credit companies. — 230
256 The Zollverein, a union of German states which established a common customs frontier, was set up in 1834 under the aegis of Prussia. Brought into being by the need to create an all-German market, the Customs Union subsequendy embraced all the German states except Austria and a few of the smaller states. — 230
257 Some of the thoughts expressed by Marx in this letter were developed in his article ‘The Crisis in France’, published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 12 January 1858 (see present edition, Vol. 15). — 232
258 further Engels refers to an episode in the Indian uprising of 1857-59 (see Note 178). After the fall of Delhi and Cawnpore in the summer of 1857, the centre of resistance to the British shifted to Oudh. A British garrison was besieged in Lucknow, the capital of that state, by the remnants of the Sepoy army and Oudh insurgents. General Havelock’s force sent to relieve the garrison reached it in September but was compelled to remain besieged with it. It was not until November 1857 that the garrison was relieved by a force under General Colin Campbell from Cawnpore (Engels describes this episode). However, the insurgents’ successful operations in Campbell’s rear compelled him to leave Lucknow and return to Cawnpore. Campbell undertook another campaign to Lucknow three months later and captured the city on 19 March 1858. — 234
259 According to Marx’s notebook, on 27 November 1857 he sent two articles to The New American Cyclopaedia: Engels’ ‘Artillery’ and his own ‘Bugeaud’. — 238
260 Engels’ reply to Marx’s letter of 22 December 1857 (see this volume, pp. 227-28) has not been found. — 239, 242, 250
261 Engels’ article ‘Army’ for The New American Cyclopaedia (on Marx’s and Engels’ contribution to the Cyclopaedia see Note 165) was published not in Vol. I but in Vol. II, which appeared in 1858. — 239
262 On 7 January 1858 Engels sent Marx three ‘C’ articles: ‘Campaign’, ‘Cannonade’ and ‘Captain’, which, according to an entry in Marx’s notebook, were despatched to New York the next day with Marx’s articles ‘The Siege and Storm of Lucknow’ and ‘Bolivar y Ponte’. — 241, 244
283 The article ‘Caps (Percussion)’ was not printed in The New American Cyclopaedia.— 241, 257, 259
264 Marx refers to statistical data on England’s balance of trade and the cost of her imports and exports during the Crimean war, 1854-56. He obtained these figures from a report of the Manchester Foreign Affairs Committee (see Note 57), which was sent to him by the editors of the Urquhartite newspaper The Free Press before it was published. The Free Press itself did not publish it until 13 January 1858. Marx used these figures in his article ‘British Commerce’ (see present edition, Vol. 15). — 243
265 During the march of General Campbell’s troops from Cawnpore to Lucknow in November 1857 to relieve the garrison besieged by the Indian insurgents (see Note 258), General Windham’s force, left behind to protect Cawnpore, was defeated by the insurgents on 27 November. This forced Campbell to return hastily to retake Cawnpore instead of consolidating in Lucknow. Later Engels described these events in the article ‘Windham’s Defeat’, published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 20 February 1858 (see present edition, Vol. 15). — 244
266 The original letter is dated 14 January 1858, which is an obvious slip of the pen. In fact the letter could not have been written earlier than 16 January for in it Marx informed Engels of Conrad Schramm’s death on 15 January 1858, acknowledged receipt of Engels’ article ‘The Relief of Lucknow’ despatched from Manchester to London on 14 January, as we see from Engels’ letter of that date, and answered questions put to him in that same letter. Besides, in a letter to Engels on 23 January 1858 Marx mentioned this letter, saying it was ‘sent off a week ago today’, i. e., 16 January.
On the first English publication of this letter (datelined 14 January 1858) see Note 1. — 248
267 Marx refers to the Great Redan, Bastion No. 3 of the Sevastopol fortifications, which was attacked by the British at the time of the allies’ decisive storm of the fortress on 8 September 1855, during the Crimean war (1853-56) of Britain, France, Turkey and Piedmont against Russia. The storm was repulsed by Sevastopol defenders. On this episode and Windham’s role in it see Engels’ article ‘The Great Event of the War’ (present edition, Vol. 14).
On Windham’s defeat by the Indian insurgents in November 1857 see Note 265.-249
268 Marx wrote about this in his articles on the Indian national liberation uprising, in particular in those published in the New-York Daily Tribune: ‘The Revolt in India’ (4 August 1857), ‘Indian News’ (14 August 1857), ‘State of the Indian Insurrection’ (18 August 1857), etc. (present edition, Vol. 15). — 249
269 On 22 January 1858 Marx made an entry in his notebook about the receipt from Engels and the despatch to New York of the second batch of ‘C’ articles for The New American Cyclopaedia* in particular 'Carabine’, ‘Carabineers’, ‘Carcass’, ‘Carronade’, ‘Cartouche’, ‘Cartridge’ and ‘Case Shot’ (see present edition, Vol. 18). The article ‘Carabineers’ was not published in the Cyclopaedia nor has the manuscript been preserved. — 251
270 At the end of his article ‘Albuera’ Engels noted that the siege of the French-held fortress of Badajos (Southwestern Spain) by the allied forces of Britain, Spain and Portugal was raised the day after their victory over the French at Albuera on 16 May 1811 (see present edition, Vol. 18, pp. 10-11). In fact the fortress was besieged by the allies three times during the Peninsular War between Britain and Napoleonic France. The first siege in May 1811 was lifted before the battle of Albuera because of the approaching French reserves. On 25 May, following the victory at Albuera, the allies resumed the siege but they were forced to raise it on 17 June. The allies laid siege to Badajos for the third time in March 1812 and took it on 6 April. As Engels pointed out in his letter to Marx on 18 February 1858 (see this volume, p. 267), the inaccuracy in the article ‘Albuera’ is accounted for by a mistake in one of the sources he used.— 251, 252, 267
271 Marx refers to an attempt on the life of Napoleon III by the Italian revolutionary Felice Orsini on 14 January 1858. Orsini hoped thus to give an impetus to revolutionary actions in Europe and activate the struggle for Italy’s unification. The attempt failed and Orsini was executed on 13 March of that year.— 251, 255, 256, 257, 266, 271, 289
272 No special article on the 1857 national liberation uprising in India was written for The New American Cyclopaedia. Later the description of this uprising was included in the article ‘Hindoostan’ published in the Cyclopaedia — 252
273 Engels’ letter to Harney has not been found. — 253
274 As can be seen from an entry in Marx’s notebook, on 29 January 1858 he sent to New York the following articles received from Engels together with this letter: ‘Berme’, ‘Blenheim’ and ‘Borodino’. In view of a new request from Dana for ‘B’ articles, which Marx forwarded to Engels on 23 January (see this volume, p. 251), Engels put off ‘C’ articles and began fulfilling this request. — 254
275 The amnesty of political emigrants who had taken part in the 1848-49 revolution in Germany was not proclaimed by the Prussian government until early 1861.— 255, 266
276 Marx refers to the position of Louis Bonaparte as President of the French Republic before the coup d’état of 2 December 1851. His term as president was to expire early in May 1852, and according to the republic’s Constitution a person could be elected to the post a second time only after a four-year interval. So Louis Bonaparte was in danger not only of losing his power and salary but also of being prosecuted for numerous debts. — 256
277 Marx developed these ideas in his article ‘An Attempt on Bonaparte’ published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 22 February 1858 (see present edition, Vol, 15).— 256
278 Lassalle’s book on political economy was published in Berlin only in 1864 under the title Herr Bastiat-Sckulze von Delitzsch, der Ökonomische Julian, oder: Capital und Arbeit— 261, 355, 396, 542, 547
279 Marx alludes to the peak of the 1857-58 economic crisis experienced by the Manchester businessmen. He calls it the ‘Sturm- und Drangperiode’ by analogy with the well-known literary movement in Germany in the last three decades of the 18th century, which reflected the discontent of progressive sections of society with the feudal absolutist systems in German states. — 263
280 In 1842 bourgeois radical Free Traders made attempts to obtain control of the Chartist movement. To divert the workers from the Chartists’ social and political programme they put forward a vague demand for what they called ‘complete suffrage’. Joseph Sturge, Edward Miall, Joseph Livesay and other radicals, supported by some conciliatory-minded Chartist leaders (Lovett and others), managed to convoke two conferences of bourgeois radicals and Chartists in Birmingham in 1842 to discuss a joint campaign for electoral reform. However, the Chartist majority at the conferences rejected the proposal to substitute a new ‘Bill of Rights’ and the ‘complete suffrage’ demand for the People’s Charter, which led to a break between the Chartists and radicals. — 264
281 After Orsini’s attempt on the life of Napoleon III on 14 January 1858, Le Moniteur universel and other official newspapers began publishing chauvinistic addresses of loyalty by higher social and military circles. Many of them accused Britain of granting asylum to terrorists and assassins like Orsini and demanded that they be persecuted in their ‘den’. The publication of these addresses was regarded in Britain as an indirect threat and caused an aggravation of Anglo-French relations in 1858. — 264
282 When Marx wrote the article ‘Bolivar y Ponte’, the history of the Latin American countries’ war for independence (1810-26) had not yet been adequately studied. Books and memoirs by European adventurers who had taken part in the war out of mercenary motives were widely read at the time (among them Ducoudray Holstein, a Frenchman who had become Bolivar’s personal enemy, and the Englishman G. Hippisley). The authors of these books attributed numerous vices to Bolivar (perfidity, arrogance, cowardice) and presented his struggle against federalist and separatist elements for the unification of the Latin American republics as a striving for dictatorship. In reality, Simon Bolivar played an outstanding role in the struggle of several Latin American countries for liberation from the Spanish yoke, the establish- ment of republican forms of government and for progressive bourgeois reforms.
Marx had only the above-mentioned biassed sources at his disposal. Hence his inevitably one-sided view of Bolivar’s personality in his article, in this letter and in Herr Vogt written later (see present edition, Vol. 17).- His attitude to Bolivar was to a certain extent determined by the fact that the sources he used exaggerated Bolivar’s striving for personal power, and over-emphasised the Bonapartist features against which Marx and Engels were then waging a relentless struggle. Nevertheless, Marx pointed out the progressive aspects of Bolivar’s activity, such as his emancipation of Negro slaves, and on the whole appreciated the revolutionary anti-colonial struggle for national liberation in Latin America. — 266
28S Marx alludes to the rumours about the illegitimate birth of Napoleon III, whose official father was Napoleon I’s brother Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland in 1806-10.— 266
284 Marx refers to an article in Cobbett's Annual Register. From July to December, 1802 (Vol. II, London, 1810, columns 128-33) on the aggravation of Anglo-French relations during Napoleon’s consulate because of the anti-Napoleonic statements in the press by French political refugees in England. Later Marx used this article and passages quoted in it from Le Moniteur universel. No. 320, 9 August 1802, for his article ‘The French Trials in London’ published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 27 April 1858 (see present edition, Vol. 15). — 266
285 Engels presumably refers to his articles ‘Camp’ and ‘Catapult’ for The New American Cyclopaedia. Marx helped Engels to collect material for them (see, for example, Marx’s letter to Engels of 1 February 1858). There is no entry in Marx’s notebook about their despatch to New York. It is quite possible that Engels sent Marx the article ‘Coehorn’ with ‘Camp’ and ‘Catapult’. — 267
286 An excerpt from this letter was first published in English in Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1955 and in full in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice- Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, 1979. — 268
287 After Orsini’s attempt on the life of Napoleon III, Count Walewski, Foreign Minister of France, sent the British government a despatch on 20 January 1858 expressing his discontent at Britain’s granting asylum to French political refugees. The despatch served as a pretext for Palmerston to introduce a new Aliens Bill, also called Conspiracy to Murder Bill (see Note 16), on 8 February 1858. According to this Bill, anyone living in the United Kingdom, an Englishman or a foreigner, who took part in a conspiracy to murder a person in Britain or any other country, was to be tried by an English court and severely punished. During the second reading of the new Aliens Bill the radicals Milner Gibson and John Bright, who had been defeated at the parliamentary elections in March 1857, when the Whigs, Palmerston’s adherents, came to power, but were re-elected in the autumn of that year, moved an amendment censuring Palmerston’s government for failing to give a fitting reply to Walewski’s despatch. The House of Commons adopted the amendment by a majority vote, rejected the Bill and compelled Palmerston’s government to resign. — 273, 275
288 Marx analyses the state of France’s economy, including agriculture, in early 1858 in his article ‘The Economic Crisis in France’ published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 12 March 1858 (see present edition, Vol. 15). — 273
289 A reference to the second Anglo-Burmese war (1852) which resulted in the British capture of the Province of Pegu. — 274
290 By ‘2 cives romani [Roman citizens]’ Engels means the British Prime Minister Palmerston and Napoleon III. (He alludes here to the Latin expression ‘civis Romanus sum’ — ‘I am a Roman citizen’ cited by Palmerston in his speech in the House of Commons on 25 June 1850.) Engels has in mind in particular their intention to send an English and a French squadron to the shores of Naples at the end of 1856 under the pretext of bringing pressure to bear on the reactionary regime there (see Note 103), and their repressive measures against democrats in France and Britain after Orsini’s attempt on the life of Napoleon III. — 276
291 Neither this letter, sent off apparently at the end of February 1858, nor Marx’s letter to Collet mentioned below have been found. — 277
292 A cabinet noir (black bureau) — a secret Post Office institution in France, Prussia, Austria and other states to inspect private correspondence. It existed at the time of absolute monarchies in Europe. — 277, 279
293 In their ‘Letter to the Parliament and the Press’ of 24 February 1858 (an English translation was published in London as a separate booklet), Pyat, Besson and Talandier stated that the crowned personages who usurped political power as Napoleon III had done, deserved to die a violent death and that their assassination would be a justified historical act. The letter caused excitement among British ruling circles and in the British press. Marx sharply criticised such adventurist statements by French petty-bourgeois refugees and their terroristic ideas. — 278, 279
294 An allusion to Félix Pyat, who contributed to the French satirical journal Le Charivari in the 1830s and 1840s and wrote a number of plays for the Théâtre du Port Saint-Martin (Paris). — 278
295 The Honourable Gentleman opposite — a form of address used in the British Parliament in respect of an M.P. in the opposition. — 278
296 Engels means the German liberals and petty-bourgeois democrats who supported the German Imperial Constitution of 1849 (see Note 116). — 279
297 Marx refers to a letter he received from Friedrich Kamm dated 19 December 1857. Kamm, a German refugee in America, wrote that he and his friends had set up a Communist Club in New York and asked Marx to send him information about the communist movement in Europe, certain theoretical works and Communist League documents. He also asked for practical advice in organising the work of a newly founded club. Marx’s reply has not been found, but his letter to Joseph Weydemeyer of 1 February 1859 shows that he corresponded with Albrecht Komp, another leader of the New York Communist Club (see this volume, p. 376). — 282, 288, 293, 469
298 In 1806, an English expedition under Captain Popam and General Beresford was sent to capture Buenos Aires, which belonged to Spain, then an ally of Napoleonic France. Meeting with no serious resistance from the Spanish colonial authorities, Beresford’s force seized Buenos Aires but was surrounded and compelled to surrender by the Argentine patriots. — 285
299 This letter is Marx’s reply to Lassalle’s letter of 3 March 1858, containing a number of questions regarding the publication of Marx’s economic work (see this volume, pp. 269-71).
On the first English publication of Marx’s letter see Note 82. — 286
300 The Seven Years War (1756-63) — a war of Britain and Prussia against Austria, France, Russia, Saxony and Sweden. As a result of it France ceded many of its colonies (including Canada and almost all its possessions in the East Indies) to Britain, while Prussia, Austria and Saxony were obliged to recognise in the main its pre-war frontiers. — 289, 294, 561
301 Engels refers to the underground gallery connecting the Tuileries Palace with the Seine embankment, where some participants in the June 1848 uprising in Paris were detained after its defeat. — 290
302 In his letter to the Editor of The Times, published in the newspaper on 17 March 1858 (issue No. 22943), the English poet W. S. Landor refuted the evidence of some witnesses concerning his participation in Orsini’s attempt on the life of Napoleon III, expressed indignation at this, ‘the basest of crimes’, called the Emperor ‘the most legitimate sovran in the universe’, and declared that he ‘detests and abominates democracy’. — 290
303 The Legitimists — supporters of the Bourbon dynasty overthrown in 1830. They upheld the interests of the big hereditary landowners.
During the Second Republic the Orleanists (see Note 124) and the Legitimists formed the ‘party of Order’, an influential conservative bloc in the Legislative Assembly (1849-51), which Engels has in mind when he speaks, further on in the text, about the joint rule of these groups under the constitutional-republican system. — 291, 552
304 A reference to La loi relatif à des mesures de sûreté générale (Law on Public Security Measures) known as La loi des suspects (Suspects Law) adopted by the Corps législatif (see Note 123) on 19 February and promulgated on 28 February 1858. It gave the Emperor and his government unlimited power to exile to different parts of France or Algeria or to banish altogether from French ter- ritory any person suspected of hostility to the Second Empire. — 291
305 Engels refers to the marriage in London on 25 January 1858 of Frederick William, the son of Prince William of Prussia (later King and Emperor William I), and the English Princess Victoria Adelaide Marie Louise, Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter. — 292
306 In 1848, during the Second Republic, the monarchist Louis Adolphe Thiers actively supported Louis Bonaparte’s candidature for the presidency. But later, as a leader of the Orleanist wing of the ‘party of Order’ plotting the restoration of the Orleans dynasty, he and other members of the party entered into conflict with Louis Bonaparte and his entourage. During the Bonapartist coup d’état of 2 December 1851 Thiers was arrested and, after a short detention in the Mazas prison in Paris, was banished from France. Upon his return in August 1852 he became a member of the ‘society opposition’. — 292
307 Marx refers to a conference of the delegates of the Italian National Constitutional League, the liberal-minded big bourgeoisie and nobility, held in London on 1 March 1858. It adopted a number of mainly declarative resolutions, proclaiming the necessity to form a federation of Italian states, introduce a Constitution preserving the monarchic government, and carry out a number of liberal reforms. A special resolution condemned Orsini’s attempt on the life of Napoleon III. — 294
308 Under Napoleon Ill’s decree of 27 January 1858 the whole of French territory was divided into five military districts, with Paris, Nancy, Lyons, Toulouse and Tours as their centres and Marshals Magnan, Baraguay d’Hilliers, Bosquet, Castellane and Canrobert as their commanders. Marx calls these districts pashaliks (a comparison earlier used by the French republican press), to emphasise the similarity of the unlimited powers of the reactionary Marshals and the despotic power of the Turkish pashas. — 296
309 Captain-generalships — administrative districts set up in Spain and its colonies in the sixteenth century, during the period of absolute monarchy. Civil and military power in these districts was concentrated in the hands of captain- generals, who acted as royal governors. — 296
310 Thomas Attwood’s views on the ideal unit of money were set forth in the book The Currency Question. The Gemini Letters, London, 1844, written anonymously by T. B. Wright and J. Harlow who called themselves ‘Gemini’. — 301
311 The Cotton Supply Association — a Free Trade organisation founded in Manches- ter in 1857 to promote the import of cotton from India, Africa and other countries. — 305
312 Laissez-faire, laissez-aller — the formula of economists who advocated Free Trade and non-intervention by the state in economic relations. — 305
313 This is the reply to Mrs Marx’s letter to Engels of 9 April 1858 (see this volume, pp. 569). — 307
314 Surgeon Simon Bernard, a Frenchman living in London, was tried as an accomplice in Felice Orsini’s attempt on the life of Napoleon III (manufacture of bombs and so on). The trial took place in London from 12 to 17 April 1858. Bernard was acquitted by the Central Criminal Court on 17 April. — 307, 309
315 In April 1858 the Chamber of Representatives of the Kingdom of Piedmont discussed a conspiracy bill. Introduced at the request of Napoleon Ill's government, it envisaged measures against attempts on the life of foreign monarchs. During the debate on 16 and 17 April, Prime Minister Cavour and General La Marmora recalled the summer 1848 events and exposed the policy of the bourgeois republican general Cavaignac, then head of the executive in France, who refused to support revolutionary Italy in her struggle against Austria. — 309
316 Marx refers to the Government Commission on the Workers’ Question which met at the Palais du Luxembourg and was presided over by Louis Blanc. The Commission was set up on 28 February 1848 by the Provisional Government of the French Republic under pressure from workers who demanded a Ministry of Labour. It consisted of workers and employers and acted as a mediator in labour conflicts, often taking the side of the employers. On the very next day after the mass actions of 15 May 1848, the government disbanded the Luxembourg Commission. — 310
317 Later Marx wrote two articles on this subject: ‘A Curious Piece of History’ and ‘Another Strange Chapter of Modern History’, published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 16 June and 23 September 1858. — 310
318 Marx stayed with Engels in Manchester from 6 to about 24 May. To recover his health he practised sport, riding, etc. While in Manchester Marx continued working on the economic manuscript of 1857-58 (see Note 250), intending to complete his research and begin preparations for publication of the first part of his work, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. — 312, 315, 368
319 Marx refers to Napoleon III's representation to the Council of State on the introduction of a law on confiscation of landed property of philanthropic institutions and converting it into state interest-bearing securities.
Marx discussed this problem at length in his article ‘Bonaparte’s Financial Manoeuvres. — Military Despotism’ (present edition, Vol. 15). — 317
320 Marx received Engels’ article ‘Cavalry’, written for The New American Cyclopaedia, by 22 June 1858 and, as seen from an entry in his notebook, sent it off to New York the same day.— 323
321 Marx means J. Weydemeyer’s letter of 28 February 1858 from Milwaukee and A. Komp’s letter of 15. June 1858 from New York, both written to him. Marx did not enclose them in his letter to Engels and they were mislaid among his papers. Some time later, Marx found them and replied to Weydemeyer on 1 February 1859 (see this volume, pp. 374-78). His letter to Komp has not been found but we may judge of its contents by the above-mentioned letter to Weydemeyer. Komp was a leader of the New York Communist Club, and his letter to Marx contained information and requests similar to those contained in a letter from Friedrich Kamm, another leader of the Club, written on 19 December 1 857 (see Note 297). After replying to his American correspondents, Marx forwarded their letters to Engels on 9 February 1859 (see this volume, pp. 384-85).— 324, 326, 337, 339, 374, 384
322 Whitechapel — a working class district in London’s East End. — 331, 449
323 The People's Provident Assurance Society was founded by John Watts, an English reformer and Owenite, in London in 1853. In 1857 a branch-office was opened in Manchester. — 332
324 Marx’s letter to his mother has not been found. — 334
325 This presumably refers to Engels’ article written between 16 and 20 July 1858 and published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 13 August. Marx made an entry in his notebook on 27 July about the despatch of the article to New York, giving its heading as ‘Transport of Troops to India’ (see present edition, Vol. 15). The Tribune editors introduced changes into the article and printed it under the heading ‘How the Indian War has been Mismanaged’. — 334
326 The original letter is dated 4 August 1858, which is presumably a slip of the pen, for in it Marx mentions events about which he could have learned from the newspapers only later: the opening of the Cherbourg naval port after its reconstruction and the actions of Napoleon Ill’s government in connection with this. Engels’ reply of 10 August 1858 warrants the assumption that Marx wrote the letter on 8 August.
On the first English publication of the letter see Note 20. — 335
327 This seems to refer to Engels’ letter in reply to Marx’s letter of 25 July 1858 (see this volume, p. 334). The letter has not been found. — 335
328 Marx refers to the festivities on the occasion of the opening, on 4 August 1858, of the Cherbourg naval port after its reconstruction.
On the invitation of the French government, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and the Prince Consort Albert attended the ceremony. According to Napoleon Ill’s plans, the reception given them was to relax the tension in Anglo-French relations after Orsini’s attempt on the life of Napoleon III (see Note 271). However, the demonstration of France’s naval strength in Cherbourg aroused new British apprehensions. In this connection Napoleon declared in a Note of 7 August 1858 that the reconstruction of the naval port did not pursue any hostile aims towards Britain. — 336, 339, 340
329 Félix Pyat’s letter was written on 14 July 1858 and published separately under the title Lettre au jury. Défence de la lettre au Parlement et à la Presse. It supplemented the letter of 24 February 1858 by Pyat, Besson and Talandier (see Note 293).— 339, 345
330 The article on the slave trade in Cuba written by Marx for the New-York Daily Tribune was not published. — 340
331 Marx refers to his articles ‘The English Bank Act of 1844’ and ‘Commercial Crises and Currency in Britain’, printed in the New-York Daily Tribune on 23 and 28 August 1858 as leaders, and ‘British Commerce and Finance’, published on 4 October. — 342
332 Marx refers to the unequal treaties signed in Tientsin in June 1858 by Britain and France with China during the second Opium War (1856-60). The treaties made new ports available to foreign trade; foreign diplomatic representatives were authorised in Peking; foreigners were allowed to travel freely in the country for commercial or other purposes; Britain and France received economic privileges through the introduction of new commercial rules legalising the opium trade, and were paid indemnities.
Marx discussed these treaties in his articles written in August and early September for the New-York Daily Tribune : ‘History of the Opium Trade’ and ‘The Anglo-Chinese Treaty’ (see present edition, Vol. 16). However, the article mentioned in this letter was not published in the Tribune . — 342, 347, 362, 387
333 Engels refers to the official despatches of Lord Canning, Governor General of India, of 17 June and 4 July 1858 to the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors of the British East India Company (they were published in The Times , No. 23117, 6 October 1858).
In these despatches Canning defended his proclamation of 3 March 1858 on the confiscation, in favour of Britain, of the lands of Oudh, including the estates of the local feudal lords who had joined the Indian uprising. (Marx assessed this proclamation in his article ‘The Annexation of Oudh’ published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 28 May 1858; see present edition, Vol. 15.) Canning’s point of view was not shared by a number of prominent colonial officials and M.P.s who favoured a more flexible policy towards the Indian feudal lords and hoped to win them over with promises to leave their domains intact.
Marx did not write any article about Canning’s despatches. — 343
334 Engels seems to refer to Jones’ speech at a Chartist meeting in Manchester on 4 October 1858, a brief account of which was published in The Leader, No. 446, 9 October 1858, in the ‘Political Foreshadowings’ section.
About Jones’ temporary vacillations and his policy of compromise with bourgeois radicals see Note 245. — 344, 345
335 Marx writes here about the revolutionary situation in Russia after her defeat in the Crimean war (1853-56). Fearing the growing peasant unrest, Alexan- der II’s government was forced to start preparations for the abolition of serfdom. On 3 January 1857 a Secret Committee consisting of high government officials and headed by the Emperor was formed to discuss the peasant question. In January 1858 the Committee was made public and renamed the Chief Peasant Question Committee.
To discuss the draft peasant reform, it was proposed to hold in St. Petersburg a congress of deputies of the Gubernia Landowners’ Commit- tees, called by Marx the convocation of notables’ by analogy with the convocation of notables in France on the eve of the French Revolution. The congress took place in the autumn of 1859. — 346, 349
336 In view of the insanity of Frederick William IV of Prussia the question arose of appointing Regent his brother. Prince William of Prussia (later King and Emperor William I). The Prussian bourgeoisie hoped that the Regency would lead to liberal reforms and remove Manteuffel’s reactionary ministry, although the reactionary measures taken by the Prince of Prussia in 1848 gave little ground for such hopes. Nevertheless, similar illusions about the advent of ‘a new era’ were widespread among liberal monarchist circles. Prince William was appointed Regent on 7 October 1858. — 346, 348, 410, 470, 571
337 In his book Studien über die innem Zustände, Das Volksleben und insbesondere die ländlichen Einrichtungen Russlands (Th. 1-3, Hannover-Berlin, 1847-52), the Prussian official and writer August Haxthausen who toured Russia in the 1840s, gave a false idea of the material well-being of the Russian peasantry. He advocated preservation of the peasant commune arguing that this was the only way to save Russia from the revolutionary consequences of its toiling people becoming proletarian. He thought that the abolition of serfdom should be carried out gradually because, he wrote, the necessary conditions for the wage labour system did not exist in Russia. — 346
338 This refers to one of the main provisions of the Nanking Treaty Britain concluded with China as a result of the Anglo-Chinese war of 1840-42 (known as the first Opium War). It was the first of a series of unequal treaties imposed on China by the Western powers, treaties that reduced it to the status of a semi-colony. Under the Nanking Treaty five Chinese cities — Canton, Shanghai, Amoy, Ninbo and Fuchon — were opened to English trade. — 347
339 Under the Aigun Treaty of 28(16) May 1858, the left bank of the Amur, from the confluence of the Shilka and the Argun to the sea, was recognised as Russian territory, while the question of the Ussuri Area, from the confluence of the Ussuri and the Amur to "the sea, was left open until the final fixing of the frontier between Russia and China. Navigation on the Amur, Sungari and Ussuri was prohibited to all states except Russia and Ching China. The treaty thus returned to Russia the left bank of the Amur developed by the Russians in the seventeenth century and taken from it under the Nerchinsk Treaty of 1689. Besides, it thwarted the British diplomats’ attempt to exacerbate Russo-Chinese relations and closed the Amur to West-European shipping. The treaty was ratified by Russia on 8 June 1858. — 349
340 This letter is dated only ‘Friday’. The exact date of its writing was established on the basis of facts mentioned in it, in particular Marx’s reference to an article on rifled cannon published in The Times on 22 October 1858. — 350
341 Marx seems to refer to his article ‘Mr. John Bright’ printed in the New-York Daily Tribune on 12 November 1858 as a leader, without any heading. It bears signs of the editors’ interference (see present edition, Vol. 16). — 350
342 A reference to the conflict between France and Portugal caused by the seizure of the French merchant vessel Charles et Georges by the Portuguese authorities in Mozambique on 29 November 1857. The vessel had on board a number of East- African Negroes who were to be shipped, allegedly as free emigrants, to the French island of Reunion.
The Franco-Portuguese talks continued for almost a year but brought no results. On 13 October 1858 Napoleon III, whom Marx calls here Quasimodo (a character from Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris), sent a special Note to the Portuguese Government demanding the return of the confiscated vessel and the release of its captain. The demand was backed by the despatch of two French warships to the Portuguese capital. Portugal was compelled to yield.
Marx touches on the subject in his article ‘The French Slave Trade’ published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 1 December 1858 with considerable editorial changes (see present edition, Vol. 16, pp. 621-23). — 351, 357
343 This presumably refers to Blind’s articles published anonymously in 1858 under the general heading Flügblätter des Vereins ‘Deutsche Einheit und Freiheit’ in England.— 351, 353
344 John Bright, a British radical and Free Trade leader, put forward a programme for electoral reform. Of the six points of the People’s Charter (universal suffrage, annual Parliaments, vote by secret ballot, equal constituencies, abolition of property qualifications for candidates to Parliament, and payment of M.P.s), he retained only the demand for vote by secret ballot. The other demands were either omitted altogether or drastically moderated. Thus Bright suggested that suffrage should be granted only to persons paying property tax; in place of equal constituencies he suggested fairer representation for the existing constituencies. — 358
345 Marx refers to Freiligrath’s letter to him of 6 December 1858 and Freiligrath’s poem ‘Nach Johanna Kinkels Begrabnis’ (written on 20 November 1858 on the occasion of the death of Cottfried Kinkel’s wife, Johanna Kinkel, and published in Die Neue Zeit, No. 24, 11 December 1859). — 359
346 Cayenne — a place in French Guiana where political prisoners were sent for penal servitude. The high mortality caused by the hard prison conditions and the unhealthy tropical climate earned it the nickname of the ‘Dry Guillotine’. — 359
347 Marx is mistaken here. Fitzgerald and Stanley could not have spoken in the House of Commons on Monday, 13 December, for Parliament did not meet from 2 August 1858 to early January 1859. On 14 December The Times (No. 23176) reprinted excerpts from Lord Stanley’s speech of 13 December 1858 before the young cadets of the Manchester military school, one of the topics being the situation in India. (The speech was reported in greater detail in The Manchester Guardian.) Fitzgerald too may have spoken at this meeting. This warrants the assumption that Marx actually meant these speeches. — 363
348 Marx means his new article on the Anglo-Chinese Treaty. It was not published by the New-York Daily Tribune. — 363
349 In his Message to the XXXVth Congress of 6 December 1858, President James Buchanan expressed US aggressive intentions as regards Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Brazil, Paraguay and other countries of Central and South America and US strivings for supremacy on the American continent. In the sphere of home policy, Buchanan asked Congress to increase allocations for the navy and the Postal Department in 1858 and urged the construction of a Pacific railroad.
Marx’s article about Buchanan’s message was not published by the New-York Daily Tribune. — 364
350 Marx had asked Engels to write an article for the New-York Daily Tribune about the events in the principality of Serbia. On 30 November 1858 the so-called St. Andrew Skupstina met after a long interval. At the session, the liberals, who had joined forces with the supporters of the Obrenovic dynasty, clashed with the ruling Ustavobranitelji (Defenders of Constitution) group representing the big landowners, traders and the top officialdom. The conflict led to the deposition of Alexander Karageorgiević and the reinstatement of Milos Obrenović, who agreed to carry out a number of liberal reforms. The St. Andrew Skupština abolished the oligarchic council set up under the 1838 Constitution, restored the Skupstina as a permanent legislative body, and declared freedom of the press. Though the liberal reforms were moderate and short-lived, the fall of the Ustavobranitelji regime gave an impulse to Serbia’s economic and cultural development.
It is unknown whether Engels wrote the article on Serbia. — 364, 366
351 Presumably Engels did not write any article on the proposed changes in the Prussian army. Later, when France and Piedmont were on a collision course with Austria, he wrote the article ‘German Resources for War’ (on 10 February 1859) in which he also described the state of Prussia’s armed forces (see present edition, Vol. 16).— 366, 368
352 Gottfried Kinkei called his weekly after Arminius (Hermann), the leader of the Germanic tribes’ struggle against Roman rule in the first century A. D. Marx hints at the coincidence of this title with the name of the hero of Goethe’s poem ‘Hermann und Dorothea’, a simple, pat riarchally- minded man striving for peace and a domestic idyll. — 366
353 The prospectus for the Hermann was an advertisement announcing the forthcoming publication of the weekly, dated 24 December 1858 and signed by Kinkei.
Marx’s letter to Freiligrath about ‘the Kinkel affair’ has not been found. — 367
354 The letter is not dated. The approximate time of its writing has been established on the basis of the facts mentioned in it, in particular the reference to Marx’s rewriting of Engels’ article on Napoleon Ill’s policy, as a result of which the article ‘The Money Panic in Europe’ virtually written by them both, was sent to New York, its final version having been written on 13 January 1859 (see present edition, Vol. 16). The letter could hardly have been sent off to Manchester later than 15 January because, judging by its opening lines, Marx was expecting a new article for the New-York Daily Tribune from Engels by Tuesday, 18 January. — 367
355 Marx means the ‘Chapter on Capital’, which constitutes the bulk of his economic manuscripts of 1857-58 (see Note 250) and was written from October 1857 to May 1858 (see present edition, Vols. 29 and 30). — 368, 389
356 In the autumn of 1858, Palmerston, then head of the Whig opposition to the Derby-Disraeli Tory Cabinet, was invited by Napoleon III to Compiegne in order to clarify his position on the impending Franco- Austrian war. At the meeting Palmerston did not object to the Austrians being expelled from Italy, but in his speech at the opening of Parliament on 3 February 1859 he condemned France’s action.
On Russia’s influence on Napoleon Ill’s policy see Marx’s article ‘The War Prospect in France’ (present edition, Vol. 16).
The Peace Treaty of Paris concluded the Crimean war (1853-56). It was signed at the Congress of Paris on 30 March 1856 by Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, Sardinia and Turkey, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other. Under the treaty, Russia ceded the mouth of the Danube and part of Bessarabia, renounced its protectorate over the Danubian principalities and its protection of Christians in Turkey, agreed to the neutralisation of the Black Sea and returned the fortress of Kars to Turkey in exchange for Sevastopol and other Russian towns held by the Allies. By skilfully exploiting the differences between Britain and France the Russian diplomats at the Congress blocked the attempts to impose even more onerous peace terms on Russia.— 368, 411, 431
357 This draft of Engels’ letter to Freiligrath was enclosed by Engels in his letter to Marx of 27 January 1859 (see this volume, p. 373). As follows from that letter, a three-page fair copy was sent to Freiligrath on 26 January. Neither the fair copy nor the other draft versions which Engels made while writing the letter have been preserved. — 370
358 In a letter to Engels that has not reached us Freiligrath probably wrote about the projected publication of a new revolutionary newspaper which was to be a sequel to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, organ of the proletarian wing of the democratic movement during the 1848-49 revolution in Germany. Freiligrath seems to have given an incorrect interpretation of the trend of the future newspaper as against that of the petty-bourgeois weekly Hermann which Gottfried Kinkel began to publish on 1 January 1859. — 370, 372
359 Engels paraphrases the dictum ‘They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing’, which during the restoration of the Bourbons (1815-30) was often applied to their conservative supporters who had failed to draw any lessons from the French Revolution. The dictum was first used, also in referring to the French extreme royalists, by Rear Admiral Chevalier de Panat in a letter to the journalist Mallet du Pan in 1796. In later years it was often attributed to Charles Talleyrand. — 370
360 The handwritten weekly Der Maikäfer, eine Zeitschrift für Nicht-Philister (May-Bug, a Journal for Non-Philistines) was founded by Gottfried Kinkel and Johanna Mockel in Bonn in 1840, at the time when the literary May-Bug Club was set up. With the outbreak of the revolution in Germany in 1848, both the journal and the club ceased to exist. Marx and Engels gave an ironic characterisation of the periodical and the club in the pamphlet The Great Men of the Exile (see present edition, Vol. 11, p. 244). — 370
361 The letter is not dated. The approximate time of its writing has been established on the basis of a reply letter from Engels. The article mentioned below was not published by the editors of the New-York Daily Tribune. — 371, 373
362 Between September 1851 and March 1852 Gottfried Kinkel toured America in an attempt to raise a so-called Germ an- American revolutionary loan. It was to be floated among German refugees and Americans of German extraction and used to begin an immediate revolution in Germany. During the tour Kinkel conducted a slanderous campaign against Marx and Engels. The attempt to distribute the ‘revolutionary loan’ failed. Marx and Engels in a number of works and letters denounced the undertaking as an adventurist attempt to produce a revolution artificially during a period when the revolutionary movement was on the wane. — 372
363 Marx’s description of Princess Clotilde, daughter of King Victor Emmanuel of Piedmont (Sardinia), as a ‘mild, angelic child’ is clearly ironic. When writing about her forthcoming marriage to Napoleon Ill’s cousin, Jerôme Bonaparte (nicknamed Plon-Plon), in his article ‘Louis Napoleon’s Position’ mentioned in this letter, Marx notes that Clotilde, ‘despite her young years, is very strong-minded’ (Vol. 16, p. 169). — 373
364 See Note 45.-374, 567
365 Marx is mistaken here: Georg Weerth died in Havana, Cuba (see Note 85).— 374
366 In 1751 J. Ch. Gottsched published in Leipzig an epic poem by Ch. O. von Schönaich devoted to Arminius (Hermann), the leader of the Germanic tribes that had revolted against Roman rule. Gottsched supplied the poem with a laudatory preface, and on his recommendation the Leipzig University crowned Schonaich with the laurels of a poet in 1752. — 375
367 The ‘great men’ (die ‘großen Manner’) was the nickname Marx and Engels applied to German and other refugees, primarily petty-bourgeois democrats, who after the 1848-49 revolution engaged in pseudo-revolutionary activities, organised plots, raised ‘revolutionary loans’, formed governments in exile, and the like. In their joint work The Great Men of the Exile (present edition, Vol. 11) Marx and Engels gave a satirical description of some of them. — 376, 500, 502
368 In its issue of 19 October 1711, The Spectator propounded the idea that the price of commodities depended on the mass of money in circulation, a view shared by Montesquieu and Hume. In criticising this view in his A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx referred to this issue of the journal (present edition, Vol. 30). — 377
369 In his article ‘The French Army’ sent to the New-York Daily Tribune on 31 January 1859, Engels opposed his calculations concerning the strength of the forces France could field in Italy in case of war to the exaggerated figures contained in Louis Boniface’s article datelined Paris, 29 January 1859, which appeared in the Constitutionnel, No. 30, on 30 January 1859. Engels pointed out that the Constitutionnel data had been furnished by the Emperor himself (see present edition, Vol. 16, p. 171). A report of 31 January from Paris, published in The Times , No. 23219, on 2 February 1859, stated outright that Napoleon III, whom Marx calls in this letter Mr Boustrapa (see Note 40), was the author of the article in the Constitutionnel. — 379
370 This refers to the war preparations of the Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont) and France against Austria. The war (29 April to 8 July 1859) was launched by Napoleon III, who under the banner of the ‘liberation of Italy’ strove for aggrandizement and needed a successful military campaign to shore up the Bonapartist regime in France. Piedmont ruling circles hoped that French support would enable them to unite Italy under the aegis of the Savoy dynasty. The war caused an upsurge of the national liberation movement in Italy. The Austrian army suffered a series of defeats. However Napoleon III, frightened by the scale of the liberation movement in Italy, abruptly ceased hostilities. On 1 1 July, the French and Austrian emperors concluded a separate preliminary peace in Villafranca. France received Savoy and Nice; Lombardy was annexed to Sardinia; the Venetian Region remained under the Austrians. — 380, 399, 401, 405, 462, 537
371 Marx refers here to the Carbonari, members of secret political societies in Italy and France in the first half of the nineteenth century. In Italy they fought for national independence, unification of the country and liberal constitutional reforms.
In the latter half of the 1850s a number of attempts were made on the life of Napoleon III, including one by the Italian revolutionary Orsini (see Note 271). Some of these attempts were attributed to the desire to teach Napoleon III a lesson for the breach of his commitments to the Carbonari organisation, of which he was a member in 1831. Part of the questions touched upon in this letter are discussed in the articles ‘The Money Panic in Europe’ by Marx and Engels, ‘Louis Napoleon’s Position’ by Marx and ‘The French Army’ by Engels (all three are in Vol. 16 of the present edition). — 380
372 The Rubicon — the name of a river in Northern Italy, on the boundary between Umbria and Cisalpine Gaul, which Caesar crossed with his army in 49 B.C. thereby starting a civil war with Pompey. To cross (or pass) the Rubicon — to embark on an undertaking from which one cannot turn back. — 381
373 Marx refers to the abortive Bonapartist coups in Boulogne on 6 August 1840 and Strasbourg on 30 October 1836, and to the coup d’état in Paris on f 2 December 1851 which led to the establishment of Napoleon Ill’s dictatorship and the proclamation of the Second Empire in 1852. — 381
374 Marx probably means the tribute to Johanna Mockel, Gottfried Kinkel’s wife, published in The Daily Telegraph by the German writer Fanny Lewald (Stahr). Marx mentions it in his letter to Lassalle of 3 March 1860 (see present edition, Vol. 41). — 383
375 The New-York Daily Tribune did not publish this article by Marx. — 384
376 On 8 February 1859 Georg Eccarius wrote to Marx saying it had been definitely established that he had consumption. While expressing his readiness to endure his misfortune with fortitude, he wrote about his apprehensions concerning the possible consequences of his disease for his family. In conclusion he asked Marx to send him books for self-education. — 386
377 The letter has not been found. — 388
378 The letter is not dated. The approximate time of its writing can be deduced from Marx’s mentioning that his brother-in-law, Johann Carl Juta, would be travelling to Manchester, and from the fact that on 22 February 1859 Marx wrote a letter of recommendation to Engels for him. — 389
379 Engels informed Marx of his intention to write the pamphlet Po and Phine (see present edition, Vol. 16) in a letter written in the second half of February 1859 (it has not reached us). In the same letter he obviously outlined the content of the planned work, which Marx then set forth in this letter to Lassalle. Engels finished the pamphlet by 9 March 1859. — 391, 393
380 Engels took part in the Baden-Palatinate uprising in June-July 1849 with the detachment of August Willich, whose adjutant he was. He participated in four battles, including the big one at Rastatt. — 392
381 Marx refers to the fact that Ferdinand Lassalle was close to the opposition elements of the Prussian liberal bourgeoisie grouped round the Berlin Volks-Zeitung. On 31 January 1859 Lassalle, who became disappointed in the newspaper, wrote to Marx as follows: ‘The Volks-Zeitung, the only halfway democratic newspaper in Berlin, has rushed over to the ministerial camp and plays a role unique for its unworthiness in the history of the democratic press.’ — 396
382 In this letter, written at the end of February 1859, Lassalle informed Marx that he had reached an agreement with Franz Duncker regarding the publication of Engels’ Po and Rhine. He stated the terms and suggested that the pamphlet should be published in French translation too. — 398
383 In his speech in the Frankfurt National Assembly on 12 August 1848 General Radowitz asserted that Austria’s boundary along the Mincio (in other words, continued Austrian rule in Northern Italy) guaranteed Germany against French invasion. This doctrine was refuted in Engels’ pamphlet Po and Rhine and in Marx’s article ‘The War Prospect in Prussia’ (see present edition, Vol. 16, pp. 216, 235 and 270).— 398
384 A reference to the national liberation and anti-feudal uprising in the city of Cracow, which had been under the joint control of Austria, Russia and Prussia from 1815. The insurgents seized power on 22 February 1846 and set up a National Government, which issued a manifesto abolishing feudal services. The uprising was put down in early March 1846. In November 1846, Austria, Prussia and Russia signed a treaty incorporating Cracow in the Austrian Empire. — 401
385 Further events showed that Marx’s forecast was true. In April 1859 the British Parliament was dissolved and new elections in June 1859 brought to power a government headed by Palmerston, who had been in opposition until then.
The ideas expressed by Marx in this and other letters of that period concerning the situation in Europe in view of the maturing military crisis, were developed in his article ‘The War Prospect in France’ written for the New-York Daily Tribune (see present edition, Vol. 16). — 401, 405, 429
386 Engels means one of the three annual fairs in Leipzig, the spring fair, at which all German publishing houses used to exhibit their books. — 402
387 After a long imprisonment, the Italian liberal Carlo Poerio and his associates, participants in the 1848-49 revolution, were expelled by the Neapolitan authorities and placed on a ship bound for America. On the way, the captain set them free at a British port. On 12 March 1859 The Times (No. 23252) published a letter to the editor by Lord Shaftesbury hailing Poerio and his friends as ‘honest and heroic men’. To support them a committee was set up in London with Lord Shaftesbury as President. Palmerston, too, was a member. — 405
388 The letter is not dated. The time of its writing is clear from the enclosed letter of Eccarius to Marx, written on 20 March 1859, and from Marx mentioning his article on the Reform Bill, which was presumably sent to New York on 22 March, Tuesday, one of the two weekdays when articles were despatched to America. — 406
389 Besides ‘The New British Reform Bill’ (see present edition, Vol. 16), Marx wrote two more articles on the 1859 Reform Bill, on 22 March and 1 April 1859, but they were not published in the New-York Daily Tribune and have not reached us. — 406, 411
390 Marx has in mind cases when the New-York Daily Tribune reprinted articles from the London Times. — 406
391 From 1693 to 1806 Wetzlar was the seat of the Reichskammergeriecht (Imperial Court of Justice) which examined disputes between the lands, complaints connected with taxation, and other questions. It was also the highest court of appeal for the lands and cities comprising the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. It was notorious for procrastination and red tape.— -408
392 Marx means the new proposal Max Friedländer had made to him in the course of negotiations on Marx’s work for the Vienna newspaper Die Presse (see also Note 254). It was forwarded to him by Lassalle in a letter written at the end of March 1859, and Marx’s letter is the reply to it. This time Friedländer did not stipulate that Marx should abstain from criticising Palmerston and proposed that, besides articles, Marx should send telegraphic despatches on current events. In his letter Lassalle also asked Marx for advice concerning his own work for the paper. Marx wrote about the negotiations also in. his letter to Engels of 16 April 1859 (see this volume, p. 416). — 408
393 On the letter from Lassalle see Note 392. J
In his letter of 15 March 1859 Charles Dana informed Marx that it was impossible to find a publisher in America for the English translation of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and offered his help in selling 50-100 copies of the German edition of the book in America. Dana also requested Marx to write articles on ‘Fortification’ and ‘Infantry’ for The New American Cyclopaedia. Both articles were written by Engels (see present edition, Vol. 18).— 410
394 In 1852 the Tory government of Derby was brought down by the Free Traders led by Bright, and Palmerston became Home Secretary in the new coalition government of Aberdeen. The fall of the Aberdeen government in 1855, caused by setbacks in the Crimean War, cost Russell the post of Foreign Secretary, while Palmerston headed the new. Whig government. During the second Derby ministry (1858-59), opposition by Bright and Russell contributed to the government’s resignation, clearing the field for Palmerston’s second cabinet. — 411
395 On 31 March 1859 the House of Commons rejected, after a second reading, the Reform Bill proposed by the Tory government of Der by-Disraeli, which led to the government’s fall. In the preceding debate, on 24 March, Bright and Gibson spoke against the Bill. Gibson quoted Bright, who said in one of his earlier speeches that ‘there was no Bill so revolutionary as a bad Bill’. While favouring the preservation of some elements of the obsolete system |of ‘rotten boroughs’, Gibson opposed the new distribution of electoral districts) proposed by the government.
The ideas expressed in this letter were probably discussed in greater detail in Marx’s article on the Reform Bill written on 1 April 1859, which was not published by the New-York Daily Tribune editors. — 411
396 The letter was first published in an abridged English translation in K. Marx, On Colonialism and Modernization, New York, 1969. — 412
397 This letter to Charles Dana has not been found. — 412
398 while a member of the House of Commons, Thomas Chisholm Anstey, together with David Urquhart, repeatedly criticised Palmerston’s foreign policy. As Attorney-General of Hong Kong in 1854-58, he came out against corruption and abuses by the British colonial administration, for which he was virtually removed from office. Upon his return to England in 1859, The Times printed, on 9 April, a statement by M.P. Edwin James announcing his intention to publish documents bearing on Anstey’s dismissal. — 412
399 Marx refers to the India Loan Bill introduced in the British House of Commons on 14 February 1859 by Secretary of State for the Affairs of India Stanley. The loan of £7,000,000 was required to cover the extra expenses of the British administration in India. Marx wrote about the Bill and India’s financial position in general in his article ‘Great Trouble in Indian Finances’ (present edition, Vol. 16). — 413
400 Marx means the Shanghai Anglo-Chinese trade agreement of 8 November 1858, which supplemented the Tientsin Anglo-Chinese Treaty of 1858. It established general rules of trade and listed goods free from export and import duties (articles of consumption intended for foreigners) and those subject to duties. The import of opium into China was formally allowed only in the form of foreign medicine which, however, was tantamount to the legalisation of the opium trade, though on a restricted scale. — 413
401 On 5 April 1859 the New-York Daily Tribune , No. 5602, printed a reader’s letter signed ‘Asbóth’ with comments on Engels’ article ‘Chances of the Impending War’ (see present edition, Vol. 16). The author referred to an earlier letter of his, about Engels’ article ‘The Austrian Hold on Italy’ (see Vol. 16). That other letter, signed ‘A’, appeared in the Tribune, No. 5581, on 11 March 1859 (in Asbóth’s second letter the date was given incorrectly as ‘14th inst’). The later letter largely repeated the first. Asbóth considered the assessment of Austria’s possibilities in the impending war given by Engels in his two articles insufficiently thorough and exaggerated. — 417
402 In a letter which has not reached us, Engels may have informed Marx of a review of American newspapers published in a supplement to the Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 102, on 12 April 1859. Much space in the review was devoted to the New-York Daily Tribune which, in the words of the author, had published ‘a number of interesting military-scientific articles on the North Italian theatre of war’. The review stressed that the Tribune editors were strongly influenced by the ideas of German revolutionaries. — 417
403 Marx wrote this letter in reply to one from Lassalle of 8 April 1859. In his letter Lassalle forwarded a postal order to Marx, informed him of the publication of Engels’ pamphlet Po and Rhine and asked for Marx’s opinion on his drama Franz von Sickingen. He had sent Marx three copies of his drama (for Marx, Engels and Freiligrath) on 6 March 1859, together with a note explaining the ‘tragic idea’ of the drama. The aesthetic principles formulated in the note and in the preface to Sickingen, and embodied in the drama, were at variance with the demands Marx and Engels made upon realistic art, namely, truthfully to depict in the idiom specific to it the concrete reality of a definite social environment at a given period of history. Lassalle saw the essence of drama in the tragic conflict of the hero — the bearer of a certain abstract idea, in this case a revolutionary one — with the masses, who are incapable of grasping this idea in an adequate form owing to their backwardness and ignorance. This compells the hero to deviate from his ideals in practice and resort to ‘cunning’ (Pfiffigkeit), and ultimately dooms him to defeat.
In his reply Marx gave a critical analysis of Sickingen from a dialectical-materialist standpoint and, in effect, argued against Lassalle’s principles and the political tendency of the drama.
In English this letter was published, abridged, in Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1955, and in full in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice- Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, 1979. — 418
404 This refers to the Polish national liberation uprising of November 1830- October 1831. Its participants belonged mostly to the revolutionary gentry, and its leaders to the aristocracy. The uprising was crushed by Tsarist Russia aided by Prussia and Austria. Lack of support by the peasants, due to the leaders’ refusal to abolish serfdom, contributed to its defeat. See also Engels’ speech ‘On the Polish Question’ (present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 549-52), and his The Peasant War in Germany, where he writes about the failure of the nobility to win over the peasants in Germany in 1522 and in Poland in 1830 (Vol. 10, p. 444). — 420
405 This refers to the withdrawal of the French troops that had occupied Rome during the suppression of the Roman Republic in 1849 and stayed on in subsequent years, as did the Austrians, who in 1849 had occupied the territory of the Legations, Marke and part of Umbria, belonging to the Roman Republic. — 425
406 At a reception of the diplomatic corps in the Tuileries on 1 January 1859, Napoleon III said to the Austrian Ambassador J. A. Hübner: ‘I regret that our relations with your Government are not as good as formerly.’ This statement led to a diplomatic conflict with Austria, war against which had been decided on much earlier: in July 1858, in Plombieres, a secret agreement had been reached between France and Piedmont, under which France was promised Savoy and Nice in exchange for participation in the forthcoming war against Austria. — 425
407 A reference to the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna held by European monarchs in 1814-15. Signed on 9 June 1815, it laid down the frontiers of European states and their regimes — based on the principle of legitimism — as decreed by the victor powers. The Final Act sealed the political fragmentation of Germany and Italy. — 426
408 Marx refers to the ultimatum the Austrian government presented to Piedmont on 19 April 1859 in a letter by Count K. Buol-Schauenstein, Austria’s Foreign Minister, to Count Cavour, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Piedmont (published in the Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 116, supplement, 26 April 1859). It demanded that Piedmont should disarm within three days and disband the detachments of Italian volunteers. Refusal to comply with these demands would be regarded as a casus belli. On 29 April the Austrian army under Field Marshal Gyulay crossed the frontier river Ticino, thus starting the Austro-Italo-French war of 1859. — 427
409 Louis Auguste Blanqui was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for his part in the 1848 revolution. In the spring of 1859, having served his term in Belle-Île and Corsica, he was deported to Algeria. Following the amnesty of 16 August 1859, he returned to Paris. — 427
410 Ridiculing Karl Vogt, Marx often puns on his name. Vogt or Landvogt was the name of provincial governors or other officials in the German Empire in the Middle Ages.
By calling him ‘the great imperial Vogt’, Marx alludes to the fact that he was one of the five members of the Regency of the Empire (Reichsregentschaft) formed in Stuttgart in early June 1849 by the ‘Rump’ of the Frankfurt National Assembly. The Regency’s attempts to enforce the Imperial Constitution (see Note 116) by parliamentary means ended in failure. — 428, 434, 436, 450, 460, 488, 521
411 Vogt and his followers intended to publish a weekly. Die Neue Schweiz, in Geneva. Later that title was dropped in favour of Neue Schweizer Zeitung.
On Vogt’s letter to Freiligrath and the ‘Programme’ appended to it see Marx’s exposé Herr Vogt (present edition, Vol. 17, p. 115). — 428
412 Marx alludes to Blind’s call for the union of ‘the leaders of all German popular parties’ contained in his article published in the Hermann on 16 April 1859. According to Blind, this was to put an end to the confusion of opinions on the Italian crisis. Blind himself pronounced against both the pro- Austrian and pro-Bonapartist stand in this article. — 428
413 Marx’s reply to Friedländer’s letter of 12 April 1859 has not been found. — 429, 433
414 The New-York Daily Tribune did not publish this article by Engels, which presumably dealt with the Austro-Italo-French war, then in its early days. — 430
415 The reference is to the secret Paris treaty of 19 February (3 March) 1859 concluded between France and Russia. Russia undertook to adopt a ‘political and military stand which most easily proves its favourable neutrality towards France* and not to object to the enlargement of the Kingdom of Sardinia in the event of a war between France and Sardinia on the one hand and Austria on the other. Information about this secret treaty leaked into the press but the Russian Foreign Minister Gorchakov officially denied the existence of any written obligations to France. Marx refers to this treaty in his article ‘The Financial Panic* (present edition, Vol. 16). — 430, 537
416 The Holy Alliance — an association of European monarchs founded in September 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 in a modified form. — 430
417 Marx refers to the commercial panic in Vienna started by the bankruptcy on 5 May 1859 of the big firm of Amstein Sc Eskeles. Marx deals in detail with this subject in the article ‘Highly Important from Vienna* (present edition, Vol. 16).— 433
418 A reference to Lassalle’s undated letter to Marx written in all probability in mid-May 1859. Marx discusses it in this letter and in one to Engels dated 18 May 1859.— 433, 434
419 Marx compares the commercial panic in Vienna in the spring of 1859 (see Note 417) to that in Hamburg during the economic crisis in the autumn of 1857.-434
420 On 9 May 1859 Marx, while attending a public meeting organised by Urquhart in connection with the Italian war, was told by the German democrat Karl Blind that Vogt was in receipt of subsidies from the French government for Bonapartist propaganda and had offered bribes to some writers to induce them to come out in support of Napoleon III (see present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 116-17).— 434, 436, 460, 468, 533, 539, 543
421 In his anonymous pamphlet Der italienische Krieg und die Aufgabe Preußens. Eine Stimme aits der Demokratie, published in May 1859, Lassalle advocated the dynastic unification of Germany under the aegis of the Prussian monarchy, as against the idea of Germany’s unification as a democratic republic put forward by Marx and Engels in 1848. Lassalle also tried to justify the neutrality of Prussia and other German states in the Austro-Italo-French war of 1859, an attitude which, he argued, contributed to the weakening of Austria, Prussia’s rival, and the establishment of Prussian hegemony. At the same time he justified the policy of Napoleon III, in particular his demagogy on the nationalities question (the so-called principle of nationalities), and hailed the Bonapartist Second Empire as the potential ‘liberator’ of Italy. — 435
422 Marx uses Lassalle’s words here. In a letter to him Lassalle described his work on the pamphlet about the Italian war as follows: ‘In the last few days, writing nights through, I have tried to weave from logic and fire something ... which will not be lost on >*he people in any case...” — 436, 458 , V
423 The Federal Diet — a representative body of the German Confederation, an ephemeral union of German states, founded in 1815 by decision of the Congress of Vienna. Though it had no real power, it was nevertheless a vehicle for feudal and monarchical reaction. During the 1848-49 revolution in Germany, reactionary circles made vain attempts to revive the Federal Diet, intending to use it to prevent the democratic unification of Germany. After the defeat of the revolution, the Federal Diet received its former rights in 1850 and survived till 1866. — 436
424 The Peace of Basle was concluded on 5 April 1795 separately between France and Prussia, the latter being a member of the first anti-French coalition. The treaty was the consequence of the French victories as well as of the differences between the members of the coalition, in particular between Prussia and Austria. — 437
425 No manifesto was issued. — 437, 447, 449
426 Marx refers to the German Workers’ Educational Society in London (see Note 50).— 437
427 The International Committee was set up in London on 25 January 1855 on the initiative of Ernest Jones. On 6 May 1856 it was renamed the International Association. It included English Chartists and French, German, Polish, Italian, Hungarian, Spanish and Russian political refugees in London. The Associa- tion’s political and ideological heterogeneity hampered the performance of its main function, promotion of the international cooperation of democratic forces. The Association ceased to exist in 1859. — 437
428 The last two issues of the weekly Die Neue Zeit — Nos. 41 and 42 of 10 and 16 April 1859 — had only two pages instead of the usual four. It was one of these issues that Marx sent Engels.
The meeting mentioned by Marx was held at the London hotel Germania on 1 May 1859 on Liebknecht’s initiative. Attended by members of German workers’ societies in London, it decided to start publication of Das Volk, a weekly representing the views and interests of the German workers in Britain. — 437
429 Early in October 1856 the Marx family moved to a London suburb. — 438, 464
430 Das Volk — a German-language weekly published in London from 7 May to 20 August 1859 — was founded as the official organ of the German Workers’ Educational Society in London. Its first issue appeared under the editorship of the German journalist and petty-bourgeois democrat Elard Biskamp. Beginning with issue No. 2 Marx took an active part in its publication: he offered advice, edited articles, organised material support, and so on. In issue No. 6 of 1 1 June, the Editorial Board officially named Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Ferdinand Freiligrath, Wilhelm Wolff and Heinrich Heise as its contributors (see present edition, Vol. 16).
Marx’s first article in the paper — ‘Spree and Mincio’ — was printed on 25 June. Under Marx’s influence Das Volk began to turn into a militant revolutionary working-class newspaper. In the beginning of July Marx became its virtual editor and manager.
Das Volk carried Marx’s preface to his work A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, six of his articles, seven articles by Engels and his review of Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
Das Volk reflected the elaboration by Marx and Engels of questions concerning the revolutionary theory and tactics of the working-class struggle, described the class struggles of the proletariat, and relentlessly fought the exponents of petty-bourgeois ideology. It analysed from the standpoint of proletarian internationalism the events of the Austro-Italo-French war of 1859 and the questions of German and Italian unification, exposed the foreign policy of Britain, Prussia, France, Russia and other states, and consistently opposed Bonapartism and its overt and covert supporters.
In all, sixteen issues appeared. The newspaper ceased publication for lack of money. — 438, 447
431 This refers to a branch of the German Workers’ Educational Society in London and to an association, dose to it, formed by German refugee workers in London’s East End in November 1858. — 440
432 In his letter of 24 April 1859 from New YoTk, Albrecht Romp told Marx that there were favourable opportunities for selling copies of the first instalment of his book, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in the USA. Enclosed was a Jetter from Joseph Weydemeyer of 27 March 1859 confirming Romp’s information. — 440, 446, 454
433 On 21 March 1859 Lassalle wrote to Engels telling him that he had sent copies of his drama Franz von Sickingen to England for him, Marx and Freiligrath. In this connection Lassalle referred to his letter to Marx of 6 March where he had explained his motives for writing the drama, and the aesthetic prindples underlying it. He probably meant the note — appended to that letter — in which he eluddated his concept of the ‘tragic idea’ (see Note 403).
This letter of Engels’, with the critical analysis of Lassalle’s play, continued the polemic, started by Marx in his letter to Lassklle of 19 April 1859 (see this volume, pp. 418-21), on the evaluation of the historical events and characters presented in the drama, on its political message and on problems of aesthetics and art.
On the first English publication of Engels’ letter see Note 100. — 441
434 In early 1858 Lassalle published anonymously a stage version of his drama Franz von Sickingen. But when the Royal Court Theatre refused to put it on, Lassalle published it as a literary drama (at the beginning of 1859). — 442
435 Here and below Engels refers to ideas Lassalle put forward in the preface to his Franz von Sickingen. Engels argues against them in one form or another. — 442
436 Engels refers to the trial of Lassalle on 3-4 May 1849. He was arrested in Düsseldorf on 22 November 1848 on a charge of mating people to offer armed resistance to the government in his speech at a popular meeting in Neuss (near Düsseldorf). The proceedings against him were delayed by the legal authorities in every possible way. At Lassalle’s request, expressed in his letters to Marx and Engels, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung came out in defence of him and of other persecuted Düsseldorf democrats (see present edition, Vol. 8, pp. 344-46, 463-65, 474-76; Vol. 9, pp. 339-41, 377-78, 383-88). Marx and Engels also took part in the efforts of democratic organisations to speed up the investigation. The jury acquitted Lassalle. — 442
437 Engels calls the leader of the peasant movement of the early 16th century an “agitator” (Wühler), the name moderate constitutionalists in Germany in 1848-49 applied to republican democrats. — 444
438 The Bundschuh and the Poor Konrad were secret peasant associations whose activities prepared the Peasant War in Germany in 1525 (see Engels’ The Peasant War in Germany, present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 431-38, 440 and 441). — 445
439 A reference to the German Republicans and petty-bourgeois democrats, the names of whose leaders occur in the refrain of a song popular in South Germany during the 1848-49 revolution:
‘Hecker, Struve, Blenker, Zitz und Blum,
Bringt die deutschen Fursten uml’
(‘Hecker, Struve, Blenker, Zitz and Blum,
Slay the German princes*’).
With these lines Engels opens his work The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution, in which he criticises the petty-bourgeois democrats’ attitude during the revolution (see present edition, Vol. 10, p. 149). — 446
440 The Free Press, No. 5, of 27 May 1859 carried Karl Blind’s anonymous note ‘The Grand Duke Constantine to Be King of Hungary’ exposing the plans for giving the Hungarian throne to the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia. Marx mentioned this article in his Herr Vogt (see Vol. 17, pp. 122-24). Blind also hinted at the possibility of some refugee German democrats and liberals being bribed by the Bonapartists.
The same issue of the journal carried an excerpt from a private letter comparing Kossuth’s tendency to yield to Bonapartist demagogy in the nationalities question with Mazzini’s critical attitude to it. Marx may have drawn on the two items for the facts he relates to Engels. — 452, 504, 521
441 This refers to the proclamation which Garibaldi addressed to the local population upon the entry of his volunteer corps into Lombardy in May 1859 (see ‘Garibaldi’s Proclamation to the Lombards’, The Times, No. 23319, 30 May 1859). — 455
442 The reference is probably to the workers’ demonstrations for better living conditions held in Berlin on 1 and 4 June 1859. Some of the participants were arrested. — 458
443 On 14 May 1859 Das Volk (issue No. 2) announced the publication of the pamphlet Po and Rhine. On Marx’s initiative, the announcement suggested that the author of the pamphlet was a prominent member of the proletarian party. In its issue No. 5 of 4 June Das Volk carried an editorial on the publication of Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. It contained extracts from the Preface to the book and for the first time named Engels as the author of Po and Rhine . — 458
444 Marx came to Engels in Manchester approximately on 12 June 1859 to discuss questions connected with the publication of Das Volk. From Manchester he went to Scotland to visit former members of the Communist League Peter Imandt and Heinrich Heise, with whom he discussed the financing of the paper. Marx returned to London about 2 July, — 459, 462, 470, 472, 497, 520, 538
445 This refers to Lassalle’s letter to Marx and Engels of 27 May 1859, in which he replied to the criticism of his drama Franz von Sickingen contained in Marx’s letter of 19 April and Engels’ letter of 18 May 1859 (see this volume, pp. 418-21 and 441-46). In essence Lassalle argued against Marx’s and Engels’ view of the principles of drama and artistic creation and ’against their conception of the historical events presented in his drama. Lassalle tried to justify his attempts to glorify the German nobility and play down the historical role of peasant uprisings, describing the peasantry as class with reactionary tendencies, and Thomas Münzer, the ideologist of the plebeian peasant masses, as a religious fanatic. — 460, 461
446 Marx and Engels refrained from openly attacking Lassalle’s pamphlet in the press. However, indirect polemic against him could be found in their newspaper articles, in Engels’ pamphlet Savoy, Nice and the Rhine and in Marx’s Herr Vogt (see present edition, Vols. 16 and 17). It concerned the appraisal of the Austro-Italo-French war of 1859, the policy of the ruling classes of France and Prussia and the ways of unifying Italy and Germany. — 462
447 Marx did not have to issue a public statement because his book, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (see present edition, Vol. 30), had appeared, as he soon learned, on 11 June 1859. — 463
448 Marx means the first week after his return to London. He came back about 2 July 1859 (see Note 444). — 463
449 Das Volk regularly published ‘Gatherings from the Press’, a column with quotations from and critical comments on Kinkel’s weekly Hermann. Besides Marx, Elard Biskamp took part in writing it (see present edition, Vol. 16, pp. 625-34). Marx’s biting ‘Gatherings’ forced Kinkel to resign from the editorial board of the weekly. He announced his resignation in the Hermann, No. 26, 2 July 1859. — 463, 468
450 On 8 July 1859 the emperors of France and Austria held a separate meeting— without the King of Piedmont — in Villafranca, at which they reached an agreement on an armistice. The meeting was initiated by Napoleon III, who feared that the protracted war might give a fresh impulse to the revolutionary and national liberation movements in Italy and other European states. On 11 July France and Austria signed a preliminary peace under which Austria was to cede to France its rights to Lombardy and France was to transfer this territory to Piedmont. Venice was to remain under the supreme power of Austria, and the rulers of the states of Central Italy were to be restored to their thrones. It was intended to create a confederation of Italian states under the honorary chairmanship of the Pope.
The Villafranca preliminaries formed the basis of the peace treaty concluded by France, Austria and Piedmont in Zurich on 10 November 1859. — 464, 465
451 Presumably an allusion to Lassalle’s letter to Marx and Engels of 27 May 1859 (see Note 445), in which he asserted that ‘a collision ... that constantly recurred in all or almost all the past revolutions, and is bound to recur in future ones, is the tragic collision of the revolutionary situation itself’. — 465
452 In publishing the ‘Memoir on Russia’ on 13 July 1859 the editors of The Free Press wrote that the document had been discovered during the ‘Prussian ministerial crisis’. This put Engels on his guard and made him, like Marx (see his letter to Engels of 19 July 1859, this volume, p. 470), doubt the authenticity of some of the passages.
And indeed, from subsequent issues of The Free Press (of 27 and 31 July 1859) it appeared that the publication was based not on the original document but on material published in the German conservative newspaper Preussisches Wochenblatt zur Besprechung politischer Tagesfragen, Nos. 23, 24 and 25, June 9, 16 and 23, 1855. This publication quoted neither the source from which the document had been taken nor its title or the full text. Later Bismarck in his memoirs (Gedanken und Erinnerungen, Stuttgart, 1898, Bd. 1, S. 111-112) stated outright that the publication had been a forgery.
Though Marx and Engels were sceptical about the document, they did not know that it was completely false. Therefore Marx had it reprinted, from The Free Press, in the New-York Daily Tribune (early August) and in Das Volk (late July-early August 1859) prefacing it with an ‘Introductory Note* (see present edition, Vol. 16, p. 415).— 468, 470, 476
453 The ‘Memoir on Russia, for the Instruction of the Present Emperor’, published in The Free Press, said that Russia’s interests demanded the murder of Prince Alexei (son of Peter I) and Peter of Holstein, i. e., Peter III. — 469
454 Marx means his series of articles “Quid pro Quo”, which he began publishing in Das Volk (see present edition, Vol. 16, pp. 445-64). The series remained unfinished as the newspaper ceased publication. In the published instalments the ‘Memoir on Russia’ was not dealt with. — 470
455 The letter has no date. It was written in reply to Marx’s letter of 19 July 1859 (this volume, pp. 469-71) and answered by Marx on 22 July (pp. 472-74). So the letter must have been written between these dates. — 471
456 Engels’ letter to Duncker has not been found. — 474
457 From late June to 20 August 1859 Das Volk published a series of articles entitled ‘Feierstunden- Arbeit eines Arbeiters’ (‘Spare-Time Work of a Worker’). The author advocated schools for workers and disparaged the bourgeois phrases about the sanctity of private property, the need for forgiveness and conciliation with one’s enemies.
The earlier instalments appeared unsigned but the last three were marked by the letter ‘P\ The series was written by the Danish refugee N. Petersen. — 476
458 In its ‘Feuilleton* column. Das Volk , No. 13, 30 July 1859, carried a poem by a Landwehr soldier from Frankfort on the Oder describing the mechanism of the needle gun. The editors supplied it with ironical comments. — 477
459 Early in May 1851 Peter Nothjung was sent on a tour of Germany as an emissary of the Cologne Central Committee of the Communist League. On 10 May he was arrested in Leipzig. The documents seized from him enabled the authorities of Prussia and other German states to arrest more League members. — 478
460 Crawshay’s letter, published in The Free Press , No. 8, 27 July 1859, stated that the ‘Russian Memoir* had been published in 1855 in a German newspaper (it was the Preussisches Wochenblott zur Besprechung politischer Tagesfragen — see Note 452) and that it had been translated for The Free Press by ‘a German’. The letter gave no indication as to the identity of that ‘German’. — 479
461 About the middle of July 1859 Marx talked with Blind, Liebknecht and Hollinger, the owner of the print-shop in which Das Volk was printed, about the anti- Vogt anonymous pamphlet Zur Warnung (A Warning) which had been reprinted in Das Volk, No. 7, 18 June and the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 173, 22 June, The pamphlet exposed Vogt as a bribed Bonapartist agent. During the conversation, Marx gave it as his opinion that the pamphlet had been written by Blind as it contained facts which the latter had related to him at a public meeting on 9 May 1859 (see Note 420); Marx also pointed out that the proofs of the pamphlet, discovered by Liebknecht in Hollinger’s print-shop in mid-June and sent by him to the Allgemeine Zeitung contained corrections in Blind’s handwriting. However, Blind, unwilling openly to attack Vogt, denied his authorship. His attitude was later condemned by Marx in his polemi- cal work Herr Vogt (present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 122-32). — 479, 486, 498. 503, 539
462 The project to publish the Union Républicaine did not materialise. Se- this volume, p. 484. — 480
463 Engels means Duncker’s letter of 3 August 1859, which was in reply to Engels letter, no longer extant, of 25 July. Duncker wrote that he had sent six copies of Engels’ pamphlet Po and Rhine , and would advertise Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in German papers several weeks after its publication because, he maintained, this would make for better sales. — 481
464 The Urquhartite Free Press had been suggesting that Mazzini was a ‘Russian agent’. This idea had been expressed, in particular, in the note ‘Kossuth and Mazzini’ published in The Free Press , No. 5, 27 May 1859.
By Mazzini’s ‘diplomatic revelations’ Engels means his assertions in The Times (No. 23381, 10 August 1859) about the existence of a secret agreement between Bonapartist France, Tsarist Russia and the Austrian Empire on combating national liberation movements in Europe. — 482
465 Marx means the Union Républicaine, which was to be published by Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc (see this volume, p. 480).
Napoleon Ill’s amnesty for political offenders (16 August 1859) was to ensure his government the support of liberal circles. — 484
466 The letter is not dated. The time of its writing may be established by reference to Marx’s mentioning his article about Italy and Hungary. He probably means the article ‘Kossuth and Louis Napoleon’ published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 24 September (No. 5748) and dated 5 September 1859. It is quite possible that Marx sent Engels the letter on the same day. — 485
467 The letter is not dated. But since it was in reply to Marx’s letter presumably written on 5 September 1859 (see Note 466), the time of its writing can be approximately established by comparing the two letters. Marx asked Engels to send him by Friday (i. e., 9 September) ‘a military piece on China’ (probably in connection with the resumption of the Western powers’ second Opium War against China). Being unable to supply the article by the appointed day, Engels informed Marx of this on the eve, i. e., on 8 September. — 486
468 Blind’s letter to Liebknecht of 8 September 1859 is quoted in full in Marx’s Herr Vogt (see present edition, Vol. 17, p. 122). — 486
469 Marx means the written declaration given to him on 17 September 1859 by August Vögele, the compositor, testifying that the pamphlet Zur Warnung had been set in Fidelio Hollinger’s print-shop, that the manuscript was in Blind’s hand and that Hollinger had named Blind as the author of the pamphlet (see present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 123, 124-25 and 319). — 488, 498
470 On 22 June 1859 the Allgemeine Zeitung reprinted the pamphlet Zur Warnung, which induced Vogt, in July, to bring an action for libel against the paper. The case was heard on 24 October 1859. In early August the editors of the Allgemeine Zeitung had asked Liebknecht for proof of the accusations against Vogt contained in Zur Warnung. Liebknecht requested Marx to help him obtain Blind’s admission that he, Blind, was the author of the anonymous pamphlet. Marx considered such an admission necessary also because Vogt had declared Marx to be the author of the pamphlet. Besides, Marx wanted to expose the cowardice of this petty-bourgeois democrat who dared not challenge Bonaparte’s agents openly and was, as it were, aiding and abetting Vogt in his dispute with the Allgemeine Zeitung. Though Marx emphatically condemned the paper’s conservative views, in this case he assisted it in the interests of the common struggle against Bonapartism. The court dismissed Vogt’s action (see present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 111-32, also pp. 3 and 8-9). — 488, 503, 507, 514, 519, 520
471 Marx refers to the Friends of the Fatherland Society (Vaterlandsfreundegesellschaft) — a republican association of German refugees in London that existed in the 1850s and 60s. Karl Blind, Ferdinand Freiligrath and Fidelio Hollinger were among its members. — 488
472 The letter has not been found. — 489
473 After the publication, in June 1859, of the first instalment of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (see present edition, Vol. 30), Marx intended, as previously agreed with the Berlin publisher Duncker, to prepare for the press and publish as the second instalment the ‘Chapter on Capital’, which constitutes the bulk of his main economic manuscript of 1857-58; and then publish the remaining parts of his economic work (see Notes 250 and 355).
As he proceeded with his plan, however, he realised that he would have to do more research to formulate the basic propositions of his economic theory. But his journalistic activity and other party obligations, above all the need to refute publicly Vogt’s slanderous allegations against proletarian revolutionaries, temporarily diverted him from his economic studies. It was not until 1861 that he resumed them in earnest. Later Marx decided to publish his researches not as the second and further instalments of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy but as a large independent work. — 489, 498, 502, 508, 511, 522, 523, 542, 574
474 The letter has not been found.— 489
475 Marx means Engels’ return to Manchester on 20 September 1859, after accompanying his parents on a short tour of Scotland (see this volume, p. 490).— 491
476 Speculation of this kind probably stemmed from the amnesty for political offenders demagogically granted by Napoleon III on 16 August 1859 (see Note 465) and from the expectations of a similar amnesty in Prussia in connection with the forthcoming enthronement of William I. — 491
477 The letter is not dated. It was written in reply to Marx’s letter of 23 September 1859. Marx answered it, presumably, on 27 September (see Note 480). So this letter seems to have been written between these two dates. — 492
478 Marx’s letters of 26 September and 8 October 1859 to Bertalan Szemere, the former Prime Minister of the Hungarian revolutionary government, is evidence of his desire to strengthen contacts with refugee Hungarian revolutionary democrats. In the.se letters Marx criticises Kossuth’s attitude in the years of emigration, in particular his tendency to take Napoleon Ill’s demagogy in the nationalities question at face value, and his allusions concerning the possibility of using the French Emperor as an ally in the struggle for Hungary’s liberation. This criticism docs not extend to Kossuth’s activity during the 1848-49 revolution, when he headed the revolutionary forces fighting for Hungary’s national independence and, in the words of Engels, was ‘a truly revolutionary figure, a man who in the name of his people dares to accept the challenge of a desperate struggle’ (Vol. 8, p. 227). — 493, 504
479 On 23 August 1859 the New-York Daily Tribune published an anonymous item marked ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ (written by the Hungarian emigrant Ferenc Pulszky) which was an attempt to justify Kossuth’s ties with Napoleon III. Early in September Marx sent two articles to the paper exposing the ties of both Kossuth and his followers, including Pulszky, with Bonapartist circles. The facts testifying to Kossuth’s dealings with Napoleon III, which Marx cited in the two articles were given to him by Bertalan Szemere on 1 September 1859 when the latter visited him in London. The Tribune published, on 24 September, one article by Marx on the subject, ‘Kossuth and Louis Napoleon’ (present edition, Vol. 16), possibly combining the two he had sent. Whether Marx’s private letter to the Tribune editor, Charles Dana, was used in it is not known, for the letter has not been found. On 28 September the London Free Press published Marx’s article ‘Particulars of Kossuth’s Transaction with Louis Napoleon’, which was a condensed version of the Tribune article. — 494, 497, 507, 525
480 The letter has no date. The approximate date of its writing has been deduced from Marx’s acknowledgment of the money Engels sent him in a letter written between 24 and 26 September (see Nbte 477), and from the fact that Marx wrote it on an ‘article day’, i. e., a day when he sent material to the New-York Daily Tribune. In this case it was, most likely, Tuesday, 27 September. It has also been taken into account that this letter preceded the one Marx wrote to Engels on 28 September 1859. — 495
481 The letter is not dated. It is the reply to Lassalle’s letter of 30 September 1859. In sending the latter on to Engels on 5 October 1859, Marx wrote that he had answered it ‘by return’ (see this volume, p. 502). Taking into account the time letters took to get from Berlin to London, it may be assumed that Marx received Lassalle’s not earlier than 2 October.
On the first English publication of Marx’s letter see Note 20. — 497
482 The article ‘The New Portfolio’ published in The Free Press, No. 9, 31 August 1859 reported the forthcoming publication in Berlin of a collection of diplomatic documents and materials corresponding to the Portfolio series published by David Urquhart in London (see Note 18). The German series, edited by Eduard Fischel, appeared in Berlin in 1859-60 under the title Das Neue Portfolio. Eine Sammlung wichtiger Dokumente und Aktenstücke zur Zeitgeschichte. The above-mentioned article also said that the ‘Memoir on Russia* first appeared, in German, in the Preussisches Wochenblatt and that the publica- tion in The Free Press was a translation from the German (see Note 452). — 500, 547
483 Marx means the lectures on political economy he gave in the German Workers’ Educational Society in London in the autumn of 1859, after the publication of his A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. The draft of one of the lectures has been published in the present edition under the title ‘On the Division of Labour’ (Vol. 16, pp. 617-18). — 502, 520
484 This communication has not been found. — 503
485 In a letter to Marx written in October 1859 Lassalle again tried to prove the correctness of the tactics he had advocated in his pamphlet Der italienische Krieg und die Aufgabe Preußens (see Note 421). Marx replied to him on 22 November, supplementing his criticism of Lassalle’s anti-proletarian, pro-Bonapartist position on this question with fresh arguments (see this volume, pp. 536-39).— 508, 522
486 Marx refers to the festivities to mark the centenary of Schiller’s birth on 10 November 1859. The preparations in London were handled by a jubilee committee consisting of petty-bourgeois refugees headed by Gottfried Kink el, who hoped to use the festival for his own publicity purposes. — 508, 511, 514, 525
487 This refers to August Vögele’s written declaration (see Note 469), which Marx sent to the editor of the Allgemeine Zeitung on 19 October 1859 in connection with Vogt’s law-suit against the paper (see Note 470). — 508, 513, 515, 521
488 Marx’s letter to Ferdinand Freiligrath has not been found. — 511
489 Engels seems to refer to the planned march of Romagnese and Tuscan volunteers under Garibaldi to Central and South Italy with a view to reactivating the struggle for Italy’s unification. The plan had been put forward by Italy’s democrats headed by Mazzini, who were not satisfied with the Villafranca treaty (see Note 370). The march was to take place in late October or early November 1859.
Victor Emmanuel, King of Sardinia, and his liberal following at first sought to exploit Garibaldi for the unification of Italy under the aegis of the Sardinian dynasty, but fearing an outbreak of popular unrest in Central Italy they succeeded in having the expedition cancelled. — 515
490 In the summer of 1859 hostilities resumed in the second Opium War in China (1856-60).
In October 1859 Spain declared war on Morocco and invaded the country. This colonial incursion met with stubborn resistance and brought the Spaniards no success. The fighting continued until March 1860. In April a peace treaty was concluded under which Spain received indemnities and insignificant territorial concessions. — 515, 523
491 At the time, Engels was studying the Gothic translation of the Bible made by the Visigothic bishop Ulfilas. The extant fragments of Ulfilas’ Bible, the main written monument of the Gothic language, were available in a number of editions prepared by different German scholars. — 516
492 The Schiller society, founded in Manchester in November 1859 in connection with the centenary of Schiller’s birth, was conceived as a cultural and social centre of the city’s German colony. At first Engels was critical of the society and kept aloof from it. But after certain amendments were made in the Rules, he became a member of its board, in 1864, and later President of the society, devoting much time to it and exercising a considerable influence on its activities. — 517, 531
493 Marx means Lassalle’s negotiations with the Berlin publisher Duncker on the publication of the second instalment of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (see also Note 473). — 518
494 The Communist League — the first German and international communist organisation of the proletariat formed under the leadership of Marx and Engels in London early in June 1847, as a result of the reorganisation of the League of the Just (a secret association of workers and artisans that appeared in the 1830s and had communities in Germany, France, Switzerland and England). The League’s members took an active part in the bourgeois- democratic revolution in Germany in 1848-49. In 1849 and 1850, after the defeat of the revolution, it was reorganised and continued its activities. In the summer of 1850 disagreements arose between the supporters of Marx and Engels and the sectarian Willich-Schapper group, which resulted in a split within the League. Owing to police persecutions and arrests of League members in May 1851, the activities of the Communist League as an organisation practically ceased in Germany. On 17 November 1852, on a motion by Marx, the London District announced the dissolution of the League.
The Communist League played an important historical role as the first proletarian party based on the principles of scientific communism, as a school of proletarian revolutionaries, and as the historical forerunner of the International Working Men’s Association. — 519
495 Marx refers to the war waged by the mountaineers of Daghestan and Chechnya under Shamil against Tsarist Russia. Having defeated Shamil’s main forces and taken him prisoner (August 1859), the Russians were breaking the resistance of separate detachments of Shamil’s followers. — 523
496 During the Italian war of 1859 Kossuth was in Italy where, on his initiative, a Hungarian legion has been formed to fight against Austria on the side of Piedmont and Bonapartist France. He hoped to win independence for Hungary with the help of the latter.
On the Villafranca peace see Note 450. — 524, 532
497 On 26 May 1849 Wilhelm Wolff, who shortly before had taken over the seat of a moderate deputy in the Frankfurt National Assembly, spoke in the Assembly against the adoption of an address to the German people drawn up by the poet Uhland in the name of moderate democrats, and proposed declaring the Imperial Regent of Germany, Archduke John of Austria, and his ministers traitors to the people. His speech was sharply criticised by bourgeois deputies, Karl Vogt in particular. — 525
498 Marx puns on the phrase abgerundete Natur (‘an intellectually mature character’) used by barrister K. Hermann, who represented Vogt in his lawsuit against the Allgemeine Zeitung (see Note 470). The phrase can also mean ‘well-rounded character’ (in the physical sense), and it is in this sense that Marx later used it in his polemical work Herr Vogt (see present edition, Vol. 17, p. 28). — 525
499 Marx and Engels ridiculed these attributes of Kinkel in their satire The Great Men of the Exile (see present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 252-55).
Black, red and gold symbolise the unity of Germany; petty-bourgeois democrats associated the colours with the idea of a union of autonomous lands in the manner of the Swiss Confederation. — 526
500 The letter is not dated. By its contents it is close to Marx’s letter to Engels of 16 November 1859. Marx’s mentioning that he wanted an article about the war in Morocco ‘by tomorrow’, and that he was writing an article about the Suez question, ‘not having written on Tuesday’, suggests that ‘tomorrow’ means Friday (Tuesday and Friday being the days when Marx sent articles to the New-York Daily Tribune), and that this letter was written on Thursday, 17 November. — 529
501 Marx’s article about the events connected with the building of the Suez Canal, which had aggravated the contradictions between Britain and France, was not published by the New-York Daily Tribune . — 529
502 The rifle volunteer movement started in Britain at the end of 1850 as a reaction to Napoleon Ill’s aggressive policy, which was seen as holding the threat of a French invasion of the British Isles. Progressive circles believed that the movement could also help reform the extremely conservative British military system.
An article by Engels on the volunteer movement in Britain appeared in the New-York Daily Tribune later (see F. Engels, ‘The British Volunteer Force’, present edition, Vol. 17). Engels also wrote a series of articles on the subject for the Manchester weekly The Volunteer Journal, for Lancashire and Cheshire (present edition, Vol. 18).— 550, 544, 546
503 On 10 November 1859 the Crystal Palace (see Note 89) was the scene of festivities to mark the centenary of Schiller’s birth, with German petty- bourgeois refugees, above all Kinkel, playing the main role. — 531, 534
504 The cutting from the Volksblatt presumably was a report on Vogt’s lawsuit against the Allgemeine Zeitung (see Note 470) containing slanderous attacks on Marx and his followers. — 532
505 Marx alludes to Batrachomyomachia (The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice), an old anonymous Greek parody of Homer’s Iliad. — 532
506 This letter is the reply to two letters by Lassalle, dated mid-November and 20 November 1859. Marx reverts to the disagreements with Lassalle over the assessment of Napoleon Ill’s policy and the tactical line on the question of Italy’s and Germany’s unification, and answers Lassalle’s attempts to prove the correctness of his stand formulated in a letter written in October 1859 (see Note 485).— 536
507 In a letter to Marx written in mid-November 1859 Lassalle praised Freiligrath’s poem ‘Zur Schillerfeier. 10. November 1859. Fesdied der Deutschen in London’ and at the same time expressed offence at Freiligrath’s failing to acknowledge his drama Franz von Sickingen, which Lassalle had sent him for comment. — 537
508 At the beginning of April 1859 Vogt sent Freiligrath and others his political ‘Programme’ calling on the states of the German Confederation to maintain neutrality in the war France and Piedmont were preparing against Austria. Vogt urged political leaders to support his ‘Programme’ in the press (see present edition, Vol. 17, p. 115). — 539, 543
509 On 19 August 1851 Marx, accompanied by Ferdinand Freiligrath and Wilhelm Wolff, visited the offices of the London German weekly How Do You Do? and demanded satisfaction of the publisher Louis Drucker and the editor Heinrich Beta, who had printed an item containing insulting allusions to Marx’s connection with the Prussian Minister of the Interior, Ferdinand von Westphalen (Jenny Marx’s stepbrother). — 540, 545
510 Marx decided against making his statement (see this volume, p. 535). — 541
511 On 15 November 1859 the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung published Freiligrath’s statement (see this volume, p. 533) appending to it a note by Gustav Kolb, the Editor-in-Chief, claiming that in his letter to the newspaper Liebknecht had named Freiligrath among the persons who could come forward with charges against Vogt. Actually, Liebknecht had only written that Freiligrath could, together with Marx, confirm that Blind was the author of the pamphlet Zur Warnung (see Note 461).
Cotta was the publisher of the Allgemeine Zeitung. — 543
512 The long letter mentioned by Marx has probably not been preserved. Another letter containing the Gartenlaube and Beta’s article was sent, most likely, on 19 November 1859 though that was a Saturday, not a Tuesday (see this volume, pp. 532-36).— 542
513 This refers to Lassalle’s letter of 20 November 1859, written in reply to Marx’s letter of 15 November (see this volume, p. 526). In this letter Lassalle tried to persuade Marx not to publish his declaration against Vogt and Blind in the Volks-Zeitung (see present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 8-9). — 542
514 This letter to Freiligrath is quoted in full in Marx’s letter to Engels of 10 December 1859 (see this volume, pp. 548-49) and has come down to us only in this form. When reproducing the letter Marx did not date it, but he wrote it, as he informed Engels, immediately upon receiving Freiligrath’s reply to his letter of 23 November. Freiligrath’s reply is also quoted in full in the above- mentioned letter to Engels. Freiligrath, however, had not answered Marx’s letter at once but, as Marx wrote, had done so after ‘having waited a week’, i. e., on 30 November. Marx’s letter to Freiligrath quoted in his letter to Engels was written at about this time too. — 546
515 The letter is not dated, but it may be assumed from its contents that it was written in reply to Marx’s letter of 10 December 1859. Marx answered on 13 December. So Engels must have written his letter between these two dates. — 550
516 This letter was first published in English in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Correspondence. 1846-1895. A Selection with Commentary and Notes, Martin Lawrence Ltd., London [1934]. — 551
517 The note mentioned is a letter to Marx from A. Peza, a London bookseller, of 11 December 1859, communicating Hermann Juch’s request to appoint the place and time for a meeting. Juch, the proprietor of the London weekly Hermann, wished to see Marx in order to get information on the Cologne Communist trial (see Note 71) which he needed because Wilhelm Stieber, the chief of the Prussian political police and the central figure in that trial, had lodged a complaint in a Berlin court against Karl Eichhoff, the Berlin correspondent of the Hermann , who had denounced Stieber on its pages (see this volume, p. 536).
In May 1860 Eichhoff was sentenced to 14 months’ imprisonment. — 552, 554
518 The letter is not dated, but since Marx answered it on 20 December 1859, it may be assumed that it wajwritten the day before. This is confirmed by Engels’ mentioning that he had been unable to write the article on Morocco for the day when material was usually despatched from London to New York, in this case Tuesday, 20 December. The last day when an article due to get to London from Manchester by December 20 ought to have been written was December 19, and that was the day when Engels wrote this letter. — 553
519 Engels refers to the events of the Spanish-Moroccan war of 1859-60 (see Note 490). His next article on the subject published in the New-York Daily Tribune — ‘The Moorish War’ — was written in mid-January 1860 (see present edition, Vol. 16). — 553
520 In a letter published in the Hermann on 17 December, Borkheim maintained that Blind enjoyed the same prestige in Baden and Wiirttemberg as Kinkel in Prussia. — 555
521 The letter is not dated, but it has much in common in content with Marx’s letter to Engels of 25 March 1856. Mrs Marx’s mentioning of the report ‘from the Berlin correspondent in to-day’s Times’ is evidence that she wrote the letter on 28 March. — 561
522 Probably one of Engels’ articles on Pan-Slavism for the New-York Daily Tribune not published by the editors (see Note 11).— 561
523 The letter is not dated. Jenny Marx’s asking whether the eye lotion had helped Engels, and the fact that Marx had notified him of the despatch of the lotion in a letter of 9 April 1857 warrant the assumption that Jenny was writing a few days after 9 April. Engels answered her letter about 16 April 1857 (see this volume, p. 121). — 563
524 The letter is not dated. Judging by its contents, it was in reply to Engels’ letter to Marx of 29 July 1857 and the parcel he had sent the Marx family in London (see this volume, pp. 149-50). Of great help in dating the letter is Jenny’s mentioning that Marx was busy ‘shaping the Indian news into an article’. Judging by an entry in Marx’s notebook, the article was despatched to the New-York Daily Tribune on 31 July 1857. — 563
525 The letter is not dated. It is the reply to Engels’ letter to Mrs Marx of about 1 1 August 1857, which has not been found. Marx mentions Engels’ letter to Jenny in his letter to him of 15 August (see this volume, p. 151). Mrs Marx presumably answered Engels’ letter shortly before that date. — 565
526 Jenny Marx means Jones’ statement in the press in support of the popular uprising in India (see Note 178). — 565
527 The letter is not dated. But since Jenny Marx mentions her intention ‘to write straight away’ to Lassalle, and her letter to him is dated 9 April 1858, there is good reason to believe that her letter to Engels was written on the same day. This assumption is corroborated by Jenny’s mentioning the arrival of the Manchester Guardians sent by Engels to London on 8 April, of which he informed Marx the next day (see this volume, pp. 304-05). — 569
528 This is the reply to Lassalle’s letter to Marx of 26 March 1858, in which Lassalle wrote that he had come to terms with the Berlin publisher Duncker on the publication of Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. — 570
529 The letter is not dated. As can be seen from its contents, it was written during Marx’s stay with Engels in Manchester in May 1858 (see Note 318). Jenny probably wrote a few days after Marx’s arrival there (6 May), since she mentions the enclosure of Cluss’ letter to Marx which she had received after Cluss had visited her. On 1 1 May Engels communicated to Jenny a request by Marx concerning Cluss which probably had something to do with Cluss’ letter which Jenny had forwarded to Marx (see this volume, p. 313). — 571
530 The letter is not dated. It was obviously written after 13 August 1859 since Jenny mentions the receipt by Marx of six copies of Engels’ pamphlet Po and Rhine and Marx’s intention to send some of them to Manchester the following week. Marx had promised to send copies of the pamphlet in a letter to Engels of 13 August 1859 (see this volume, p. 483). — 572
531 The letter is not dated. It may be assumed that it was written on 4 November 1859, because Engels answered it on 5 November 1859 (see this volume, p. 518) and because Jenny writes about Marx’s ‘struggling with Friday’s article’. 4 November was a Friday, one of the two days when Marx sent articles to the New-York Daily Tribune. — 573
532 This letter, written in reply to Engels’ letter of 22 December 1859, is not dated. As can be seen from its contents, Jenny wrote it a day or two before Christmas, i. e., on 23 or 24 December 1859. — 573
533 This article of Marx’s for the New-York Daily Tribune has not been found. — 575