I am returning herewith the Neue Zeit article with cursory marginal comments. Main shortcoming: lack of good material Taine and Tocqueville, idolized by the philistines, are inadequate here. If you had done the job here you would have found quite different material a better kind second-hand and loads of it first-hand. Besides, the best work on the peasants is by N. Kareyev [The Peasants and the Peasant Question in France during the Last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century Ed.] in Russian. However if you can get there Moreau de Jonn s, The Economic and Social System of France from Henry IV to Louis XIV, Paris 1868, you will find it useful reading. Section II, p. 3. Here there is missing a lucid exposition of how the absolute monarchy came into existence as a naturally evolved compromise between nobility and bourgeoisie and how it therefore had to protect certain interests of both sides and distribute favours to them. In this process the nobility retired politically got as its share the plundering of the peasantry and of the state treasury and indirect political influence through the court, the army, the church, and the higher administrative authorities, while the bourgeoisie received protection through tariffs, monopolies and a relatively orderly administration of public affairs and justice. If you start with these things much will become clearer and easier. Another thing missing in this section is mention of the judicial nobility (noblesse de robe) and the jurists la robe in general, who actually also formed a privileged estate and possessed great power in the parliaments vis- -vis the Crown. In their political capacity they acted as the defenders of the institutions that limited the authority of the Crown, hence sided with the people, but in their judicial capacity they were corruption incarnate (cf. the M moirs of Beaumarchais). What you say later on about this gang is not enough. On p. 50 this kind of bourgeois suddenly transforms himself into the bourgeois par excellence, which sharply contravenes the stratification of the bourgeois class, the subject under discussion. You generalize altogether too much, on account of which you often become absolute where the greatest relativity is imperative. I would say much less about the new mode of production. An enormous gulf always separates it from the facts you speak of, and presented in this direct form it appears as a pure abstraction which does not make the thing clearer but rather more obscure. As for the terror it was essentially a war measure so long as there was any sense to it. The class or the factional group of the class which alone could safeguard the victory of the revolution not only maintained itself in power by this means (that was the least after victory over the revolts) but ensured itself freedom of motion, elbow-room, the possibility of concentrating forces at the decisive spot, the border. At the end of 1793 that was already fairly secure; 1794 started well. French armies scored progress almost everywhere. The Commune with its extreme course became superfluous. Its propagation of revolution became a hindrance to Robespierre as well as to Danton both of whom, but each in his own way, wanted peace. From this conflict of three elements Robespierre emerged victorious, but now terror became in his hands a means of self-preservation and thus absurd. On June 26 Jourdan at Fleurus laid the whole of Belgium at the feet of the republic. Thereby terror became untenable. On July 27 Robespierre fell and the bourgeois orgy began. Well-being for all on the basis of labour still expresses much too definitely the aspirations of the plebeian fraternit of that time. No one could tell what they wanted until long after the fall of the Commune Babeuf gave the thing definite shape. Whereas the Commune with its aspirations for fraternity came too early, Babeuf in his turn came too late. The section on the peasantry suffers most because of the lack of all but the most ordinary sources. The blunders made by Ranke you showed up well. [In the above article Kautsky criticized Ranke s work Epochs of Modern History. Ed.] Unfortunately you did not make use of the Austrian publications with their objections, which are given by Sybel. Much relating to the second partition of Poland, etc. could still be dug up out of them and as they are based on archive material they are absolutely fit to use.... The conception of a fourth estate alongside the first, second, and third arose very early in the revolution. At the very beginning appeared Dufourny de Villiers, Mandate of the 4th estate, that of poor day labourers, invalids, indigents, etc., the estate of the disinherited, April 25, 1789. But the fourth estate is mostly taken to mean the peasants. For example Noilliac, The strongest of the pamphlets. The estate of the peasants in the States General, February 26, 1789, p. 9: Let us take the four estates from the Swedish constitution. Vertout, Letter of a peasant to his priest on a new way of summoning the States General. Sartrouville, 1789, p. 7: I heard it said that in a certain northern country ... the estate of the peasantry is admitted to the States-Assembled. One also comes across other interpretations of the fourth estate. One pamphlet argues for a fourth estate of the merchants, another pleads for one of the judiciary, etc. Kareyev, The Peasants and the Peasant Question in France in the Last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century, Moscow 1879, p. 327. It is significant that the number of impoverished persons (nischich, nischyi means poorest of the poor) was greatest in the provinces which were considered the most fertile, because in these localities there were very few peasants who owned land. But let the figures speak for themselves. In Argentr (Brittany) more than half of the population of 2,300 not earning a living in industry or trade can hardly keep the wolf from the door and over 500 people have been reduced to mendicancy. In Dainville (Artois) 60 out of 130 families are impoverished. Paule 200 farms, most of which should by rights be called refuges for beggars (National Archives, Vol. IV, p. 17). The mandate of Marboeuf parish bewails the fact that of the 500 inhabitants about 100 are beggars (Boivin-Champeaux, Historical Notes on the Revolution in the Eure Department, 1872, p. 83). The peasants of the village of Harville relate that on account of unemployment a full third of them are utterly destitute (Petition of the inhabitants of the Harville commune, National Archives). Nor were things any better in the towns. In 1787 Lyons had 30,000 pauperized workers. In Paris the population of 650,000 included 118,784 indigents (Taine, Vol. I, p. 507). In Rennes one out of three begged alms for a living and another third was constantly threatened with pauperization (Du Chatellier, Agriculture in Brittany, Paris 1863, p. 178). The little Jura town of Lons-de-Saunier was so pauperized that when the Constituent Assembly introduced qualifications for voters only 728 of its 6,518 inhabitants could be listed as active citizens (Sommier, History of the Revolution in the Jura, Paris 1846, p. 33). No wonder then that at the time of revolution charity cases were counted by the million. Thus a clerical pamphlet of 1791 stated that there were 6 million paupers in France ( Counsel to the Poor on the Present Revolution and on the Property of the Clergy, p. 15), which however is somewhat exaggerated; but the figure of 1,200,000 paupers given for 1774 is perhaps not underrated (Duval, Mandates of the Marche, Paris 1873, p. 116). (I thought you might like to have a few real illustrations.) If my remarks sound curt please consider that as being due solely to lack of time and marginal space on the paper. I had no time to compare sources, had to rely in everything on my memory hence many things are not as definite as I would have liked them to be.
Letters: Engels To Karl Kautsky February 20, 1889