My best thanks (ditto from Mrs Marx for the letter to her) for the pains you took under such aggravating circumstances. Your letter tallies completely with the plan of the answer which I have already worked out in my mind. ... I have not slept a wink the fourth night running because of the rheumatism, and all that time fantastic ideas about Paris, etc, occur to me. I shall have Gumpert s sleeping potion prepared for me this evening. ... Wilhelm infers his agreement with me: The lust for Alsace and Lorraine seems to predominate in two circles, the Prussian camarilla and the South German beer-patriots. It would be the greatest misfortune which could befall Europe and above all Germany. You will have seen that most of the Russian newspapers are already talking of the necessity of European diplomatic intervention in order to maintain the balance of power in Europe. Kugelmann confuses a defensive war with defensive military operations. So if a fellow falls upon me in the street I may only parry his blow, but not knock him down, because then I should turn into an aggressor! The want of dialectic comes out in every word these people utter.... With the death knell of the Second Empire, that will end as it began, by a parody, I hit off my Bonaparte after all! Can one imagine a finer parody of Napoleon's 1814 campaign? I believe we two are the only people who grasped the whole mediocrity of Boustrapa from the beginning, regarded him as a mere showman and never allowed ourselves to be misled by momentary successes. ... By the way, the bourgeois Peace Society  has sent the General Council of the International 20 for printing the Manifesto in the French and German languages.
Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870