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If there is any military question which the experience of the present war may be said to have finally settled, it is that of the expediency of fortifying the capital of a great State. Ever since the day when the fortification of Paris was resolved upon, the controversy as to the usefulness or otherwise, and even as to the possibility of defending such a vast fortress, has been going on in the military literature of all countries. Nothing could settle it but practical experience the actual siege of Paris, the only fortified capital in existence; and though the real siege of Paris has not yet begun, the fortifications of Paris have rendered such immense services to France already that the question is as good as decided in their favour. The dangerous proximity of Paris to the north-eastern frontier of France a frontier, moreover, entirely deprived of any defensible line either of river or mountains led, first, to the conquest of the nearest border-lands; secondly. to the construction of a triple belt of fortresses running from the Rhine to the North Sea; and, thirdly, to that continuous hankering after the whole of the left bank of the Rhine, which has at last brought France to her present position. The conquests were cut down and defined by the Treaties of 1814 and 1815, the fortresses were proved to be all but useless, and completely incapable of arresting large armies, by the two invasions of the same years; finally, the shouts for the Rhine were, in 1840, checked for a time by a European coalition against France.) Then it was that France, as became a great nation, attempted to counterbalance the dangerous position of Paris by the only means in her power by fortifying it. In this present war France was covered, on her most vulnerable side, by the neutrality of Belgium. Still, one short month sufficed to drive all her organized forces from the field. One half had surrendered themselves prisoners; the other was hopelessly shut up in Metz, their surrender but a question of weeks. Under ordinary circumstances, the war would have been at an end. The Germans would have occupied Paris and as much of the rest of France as they desired, and after the capitulation of Metz, if not before, peace would have been concluded. France has nearly all her fortresses close to the frontier: this belt of fortified towns once broken through on a front sufficiently wide for liberty of movement, the remaining fortresses on the border or the coast might be neglected, and the whole of the central country occupied; after which, the border fortresses would be easily brought to surrender one after another. Even for guerilla warfare fortresses in the interior, as safe centres of retreat, are necessary in cultivated countries. In the Peninsular War, the popular resistance of the Spaniards was rendered possible mainly by the fortresses. The French, in 1809, drove Sir John Moore s English troops out of Spain; they were victorious everywhere in the field, and yet never conquered the country. The comparatively small Anglo-Portuguese army, on its reappearance, could not have faced them had it not been for the innumerable Spanish armed bands which, easily beaten in open battle, infested the flanks and rear of every French column, and held fast by far the greater portion of the invading army. And these bands could not have held out for any length of time had it not been for the great number of fortresses in the country; fortresses, mostly small and antiquated, but still requiring a regular siege to reduce them, and therefore safe retreats for these bands when attacked in the open field. Such fortresses being absent in France, even a guerrilla war could never be very formidable there, unless there were some other circumstances to make up for their absence. And one such circumstance is the fortification of Paris. On the 2nd of September the last French army in the field capitulated. And to-day, on the 21st of November, nearly eleven weeks afterwards, almost one-half of all the German troops in France is still held fast around Paris, while the greater portion of the remainder are hurried forward from Metz to protect the investment of Paris against a newly-formed Army of the Loire, an army which, whatever its value may be, could not have even come into existence had it not been for the fortifications of Paris. These fortifications have been invested for just two months, and the preparations for the opening of the regular siege are not yet complete; that is to say, the siege of a fortress of the size of Paris, even if defended by none but new levies and a determined population, can begin only when that of a common fortress would have been long brought to a successful close. The event has proved that a town holding two millions of inhabitants can be provisioned almost easier than a smaller fortress exercising less central attraction upon the produce of the surrounding country; for although the provisioning of Paris was taken seriously in hand after the 4th of September, or a fortnight only before the investment was complete, Paris is not yet starved into submission after nine weeks blockading. In fact, the armies of France resisted but for one month; Paris has, already now, resisted for two months and still holds fast the main body of the invaders. Surely this is more than ever a fortress did before, and repays in full the outlay upon the works. And we must not forget, what we have more than once pointed out already, that the defence of Paris this time is carried on under quite abnormal conditions, because it has to do without an active field army. What would that resistance be, how would it have delayed, if not altogether prevented, the investment, how many more men of the invading armies would it have fettered around Paris, if MacMahon s army had gone to the capital instead of to Sedan? But this is not all. Not only has the defence of Paris given to France two months of breathing time, which, under less disastrous circumstances, would have been invaluable and may even now turn out so, but it has also given her the benefit of whatever chances political changes may bring on during the siege. We may say as long as we like that Paris is a fortress like any other, yet the fact remains that the actual siege of a place like Paris will produce far more excitement all over the world than a hundred sieges of minor places. The laws of warfare may be what they may, our modern consciousness refuses to acquiesce in having Paris treated as Strasbourg was. The neutrals, under such circumstances, may pretty safely be counted on for trying mediation; political jealousies against the conqueror are almost certain to crop up before the place is completely reduced; in fact, an operation of the magnitude and duration of the siege of Paris is as likely to be decided in the Cabinet of some non-combatant Power, by alliances and counter-alliances, as in the trenches by dismounting and breaching batteries. Of this we are about to witness an example perhaps. It is just possible that the sudden irruption upon Europe of the Eastern question may do for Paris what the Army of the Loire cannot do save it from surrender and free it from blockade. If, as is but too probable, Prussia should be unable to clear herself from complicity of whatever degree with Russia, and if Europe be determined not to tolerate the Russian breach of faith, then it is of the utmost importance that France should not be completely prostrated and Paris not be held by the Prussians. It is therefore absolutely necessary that Prussia should be compelled at once to declare herself categorically, and that if she attempt to prevaricate, steps should be taken at once to strengthen the hopes and the resistance of Paris. Thirty thousand British soldiers landed at Cherbourg or Brest would form an ingredient which, added to the Army of the Loire, would give it a degree of steadiness unknown to it heretofore. The British infantry, by its uncommon solidity, even by its corresponding fault, its clumsiness in light infantry movements, is peculiarly adapted thus to steady newly-formed levies; it performed that duty admirably in Spain, under Wellington; it did a similar duty in all Indian wars as regards the less trustworthy native troops. Under such circumstances the influence of such a British army corps would far exceed that due to its mere numbers, as, indeed, has always been the case when a British army corps was thus employed. A couple of Italian divisions thrown towards Lyons and the Sa ne Valley, as the advanced guard of an Italian army, would soon attract Prince Frederick Charles, there is Austria; there are the Scandinavian kingdoms to menace Prussia on other fronts and attract her troops; Paris itself, on receiving such news, would certainly undergo almost any degree of starvation rather than surrender and bread there seems to be plenty and thus the fortifications of the town might actually, even in its present distress, save the country by having enabled it to hold out until help arrived.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/11/21.htm

If ever there was a chance of relief for Paris that chance existed during the last eight days. A resolute advance of the Army of the Loire, reinforced by all troops that could be brought up from the East of France, against Mecklenburg s army of observation, combined with a sortie en masse made by the whole of Trochu s disciplined forces, both attacks carried out at the same time and before Prince Frederick Charles could come up with the Second Army this was the only plan which promised success. And if we look at the counter-dispositions of the Germans we can hardly help concluding that it had more chances of success than could be expected at first sight. Before Paris there were last week seventeen German infantry divisions, including the W rttembergers. who had not left their post between the Seine arid the Marne, as has been erroneously reported at first. The army of observation, under Mecklenburg, counted two North German and two Bavarian divisions, besides cavalry. After the battle of Coulmiers, D'Aurelle, instead of following up the Bavarian rear, marched north and west in the direction of Chartres, where, for the present, he became lost to our eyes. The Germans followed this movement by a change of front towards the west, von der Tann s Bavarians holding the country from Etampes to Ablis, while the 17th and 22nd divisions marched towards Chartres and Dreux. The latter town had, in the meantime, been reoccupied by French troops; it was supposed that D'Aurelle, reinforced by K ratry and other forces, was trying to turn the army of observation and to arrive suddenly upon the army blockading Paris. So serious did this attempt appear to Count Moltke that he despatched at once the nearest troops, portions of the 5th and 12th Corps, to the support of Mecklenburg, and ordered the 2nd Bavarian and 6th North German Corps, the 21st, and the W rttemberg divisions to hold themselves in readiness to march south if required. The reinforcements already sent enabled Mecklenburg to retake Dreux on the 17th, and to follow the enemy up, on the 18th, beyond Ch teauneuf. What French troops they were who were here defeated it is impossible to tell. They may have been portions of the Army of the Loire, but they certainly were not the Army of the Loire itself. Since then there is no news whatever of further French movements; while time runs on and Prince Frederick Charles draws nearer and nearer, and ought, by now, to be within supporting distance of Mecklenburg s left wing. There seems to be little doubt that a great opportunity has been missed by the French. The advance of the Army of the Loire made such a powerful impression upon Moltke that lie did not hesitate a moment to give orders which implied, if it became necessary to execute them, nothing less than the raising of the investment of Paris. The portions of the 5th and 12th Corps, which advanced towards Dreux, we will set down at not more than a brigade each, or a division in all; but besides them, two Bavarian, three North German and the W rttemberg divisions were told off to hold themselves ready to march against D'Aurelle at the first notice. Thus, out of the seventeen divisions before Paris, seven at least were to march against the relieving army in case of need, and these seven just those which occupied the ground to the south of Paris. The Crown Prince would have retained but the 2nd and greater part of the 5th Corps, wherewith to guard the long extent of ground from the Seine at Choisy, by Versailles, to St. Germain; while the Guards, the 4th, and greater part of the 12th Corps would have had to hold the whole of the northern line from St. Germain round by Gonesse and St. Brice, across the Marne, again to the Seine above Paris. Thus ten divisions of infantry would have held a line of investment of forty miles, or four miles of front for each division. Such a scattering of forces would have reduced the investment to a mere line of observation; and Trochu, with eight divisions under Ducrot and seven more, in his Third Army, under his own immediate, command, could have outnumbered his opponents at least three to one on any point he might have chosen for an attack. With such odds victory ought to have been certain to him. He could have pierced the lines of the Germans, seized upon and destroyed their siege parks, ammunitions, and stores, and caused them such losses in men that a close investment, much less a siege, of Paris would have been rendered impossible for some time to come. So far, we have merely considered Trochu s chances, independent of those of the Army of the Loire. It is as good as certain that the latter would have been no match for the eleven German divisions told off against it, in case these eleven divisions were all concentrated. But the chances were much against that eventuality. It is likely enough that a bold and quick attack by D'Aurelle, combined with a large sortie made by Trochu at the same time, would have carried disorder into Moltke s arrangements. None of the corps which Trochu happened to attack could have been spared to march off against D'Aurelle. Thus it might remain a matter of accident which of the two French chiefs might have to fight the bulk of the Germans; but the fact remained that their forces together were far superior in numbers to anything the Germans could bring against them. From Paris to Dreux the distance is less than fifty miles. A simultaneous attack upon the Germans from both ends, and with all available forces, would, in all probability, find some of their divisions on the march between the two end-points, and therefore not immediately available. If the attack were really simultaneous, an almost crushing numerical superiority on the French side, either at the Dreux end or at the Paris end, was a positive certainty; and therefore it was almost impossible to miss at least one victory. We know very well what great drawbacks and difficulties attach to combined movements, and how often they miscarry. But in this case it is to be observed that no other condition of success was necessary than that both attacks should be made at exactly the same time. And, further, it is clear that with a distance of forty miles from one army to the other, the Prussians had to combine their movements too. It is impossible to explain why neither D'Aurelle nor Trochu has done anything to take advantage of the chance thus offered to them. The slight engagements near Dreux and Ch teauneuf were certainly not of a nature to drive back the Army of the Loire; there were not more than three German divisions engaged in them, while the Army of the Loire counts at least eight. Whether D'Aurelle is awaiting further reinforcements; whether his pigeon-messages have miscarried; whether there are differences between him and Trochu, we cannot tell. Anyhow, this delay is fatal to their cause. Prince Frederick Charles keeps marching on, and may be by this time so near to the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg s army that he can co-operate, and the six divisions from before Paris can be spared. And from the day when that takes place, the two French generals will have lost another chance of victory may be, their last one.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/11/23.htm

Yesterday we called attention to the fact that since the surrender at Sedan the prospects of France had much improved, and that even the fall of Metz, and the setting free thereby of some 150,000 German soldiers, does not now look the crushing disaster it appeared to be at first. If we recur to the same subject to-day, it is in order to prove still more, by a few military details, the correctness of this view. The positions of the German armies on the 24th of November, as far as they can be made out, were as follows: Investing Paris: The Third Army (2nd, 5th, 6th, and 2nd Bavarian corps, the 21st, the W rttemberg, and Landwehr Guard divisions) and the Fourth Army (4th, 12th, and Guards corps); in all seventeen divisions. Army of Observation, protecting this investment: To the north, the First Army (1st and 8th corps); to the west and south-west, Duke of Mecklenburg s army (17th and 22nd divisions, and 1st Bavarian Corps); to the south, the Second Army (3rd, 9th, and 10th corps, and a division of landwehr, a detachment of which was so severely handled at Chatillon by Ricciotti Garibaldi) 104; in all fifteen divisions. On special duty, in the south-east of France, the 14th Corps (Werder s, consisting of two divisions and a half), and 15th Corps; in Metz and about Thionville, the 7th Corps; on the line of communication, at least a division and a half of landwehr; in all eight divisions at least. Of these forty divisions of infantry, the first seventeen are at present fully engaged before Paris; the last eight show by their immobility that they have as much work cut out for them as they can manage. There remain disposable for the field the fifteen divisions composing the three armies of observation, and representing with cavalry and artillery a total force of some 200,000 combatants at most. Now, before the 9th of November, there appeared to be no serious obstacle to prevent this mass of men from overrunning the greater part of central and even southern France. But since then things have changed considerably. And it is not so much the fact of von der Tann having been beaten and compelled to retreat, or that of D'Aurelle having shown his ability to handle his troops well, which has inspired us with a greater respect for the Army of the Loire than we confess we had up to that day; it is chiefly the energetic measures which Moltke took to meet its expected march on Paris which have made that army appear in quite a different light. Not only did he find it necessary to hold in readiness against it, even at the risk of raising de facto the investment of Paris, the greater portion of the blockading forces on the south side of the town, but he also changed at once the direction of march of the two armies arriving from Metz, so as to draw them closer to Paris, and to have the whole of the German forces concentrated around that city; and we now hear that, moreover, steps were taken to surround the siege park with defensive works. Whatever other people may think, Moltke evidently does not consider the Army of the Loire an armed rabble, but a real, serious, redoubtable army. The previous uncertainty as to the character of that army resulted to a great extent from the reports of the English correspondents at Tours. There appears to be not one military man among them capable of distinguishing the characteristics by which an army differs from a mob of armed men. The reports varied from day to day regarding discipline, proficiency in drill, numbers, armament, equipment, artillery, transport in short, regarding everything essential to form an opinion. We all know the immense difficulties under which the new army had to be formed: the want of officers, of arms, of horses, of all kinds of Mat riel, and especially the want of time. The reports which came to hand, principally dwelt upon these difficulties; and thus, the Army of the Loire was generally underrated by people whose sympathies do not run away, with their judgment. Now the same correspondents are unanimous in its praise. It is sale, to be better officered and better disciplined than the armies which succumbed at Sedan and ill Metz. This is no doubt the case to a certain extent. There is evidently a far better spirit pervading it than ever was to be found in the Bonapartist armies; a determination to do the best for the country, to co-operate, to obey orders on that account. Then this army has learned again one very important thing which Louis Napoleon s army had quite forgotten light infantry duty, the art of protecting flanks and rear from surprise, of feeling for the enemy, surprising his detachments, procuring information and prisoners. The Times correspondent with the Duke of Mecklenburg gives proofs of that. it is now the Prussians who cannot learn the whereabouts of their enemy. and have to grope in the dark; formerly it was quite the, reverse. An army which has learned that has learned a great deal. Still, we must not forget that the Army of the Loire as well as its sister Armies of the West and North has still to prove its mettle in a general engagement and against something like equal numbers. But, upon the whole, it promises well, and there are Circumstances which make it probable that even a great defeat will not affect it as seriously as such an event does most young armies. The fact is that the brutalities and cruelties of the Prussians, instead of stamping out popular resistance, have redoubled its energies; so much so that the Prussians seem to have found out their mistake, and these burnings of villages and massacres of peasants are now scarcely ever heard of. But this treatment has had its effect, and every day the guerilla warfare takes larger dimensions. When we read in The Times the reports about Mecklenburg s advance towards Le Mans, with no enemy in sight, no regular force offering resistance in the field, but cavalry and francs-tireurs hovering about the flanks, no news as to the whereabouts of the French troops, and the Prussian troops kept close together in pretty large bodies, we cannot help being reminded of the marches of Napoleon s marshals in Spain, or of Bazaine s troops in Mexico. And, that spirit of popular resistance once roused, even armies of 200,000 men do not go very far towards the occupation of a hostile country. They soon arrive at the point beyond which their detachments become weaker than what the defence can oppose to them; and it depends entirely upon the energy of popular resistance how soon that line shall be reached. Thus even a defeated army soon finds a safe place from the pursuit of an enemy if only the people of the country arise; and this may turn out to be the case now in France. And if the population in the districts occupied by the enemy should rise, or merely his lines of communication be repeatedly broken, the limit beyond which the invasion becomes powerless will be still more contracted. We should not wonder, for instance, if Mecklenburg s advance, unless powerfully supported by Prince Frederick Charles, turned out to have been pushed too far even now. For the present everything of course hinges upon Paris. If Paris hold out another month and the reports on the state of provisions inside do not at all exclude that chance France may possibly have an army in the field large enough, with the aid of popular resistance, to raise the investment by a successful attack upon the Prussian communications. The machinery for organizing armies appears to be working pretty well in France by this time. There are more men than are wanted; thanks to the resources of modern industry and the rapidity of modern communications, arms are forthcoming in unexpectedly large quantities; 400,000 rifles have arrived from America alone; artillery is manufactured in France with a rapidity hitherto quite unknown. Even officers are found, or trained, somehow. Altogether, the efforts which France has made since Sedan to reorganize her national defence are unexampled in history, and require but one element for almost certain success time. If Paris holds out but one month more, that will go much towards it. And if Paris should not be provisioned for that length of time, Trochu may attempt to break through the investing lines with such of his troops as may be fit for the work; and it would be bold to say, now, that he cannot possibly succeed in it. If he should succeed, Paris would still absorb a garrison of at least three Prussian army corps to keep it quiet, so that Trochu might have set free more Frenchmen than the surrender of Paris would set free Germans. And, whatever the fortress of Paris can do if defended by Frenchmen, it is evident that it could never be successfully held by a Gerinan force against French besiegers. There would be as many men required to keep the people down within as to man the ramparts to keep off the attack from without. Thus the fall of Paris may, but does not of necessity, imply the fall of France. It is a bad time just now for speculating on the probability of this or that event in the war. We have an approximative knowledge of one fact only the strength of the Prussian armies. Of another, the strength, numerical and intrinsic, of the French forces, we know but little. And, moreover, there are now moral factors at work which are beyond all calculation, and of which we can only say that they are all of them favourable to France and unfavourable to Germany. But this much appears certain, that the contending forces are more equally balanced just now than they ever have been since Sedan, and that a comparatively weak reinforcement of trained troops to the French might restore the balance altogether.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/11/26.htm

The long-expected storm has broken out at last. After a prolonged period of marching and manoeuvring on both sides, varied by skirmishes and guerilla fighting only, the war has entered upon another of those critical periods in which blow follows blow. On the 27th of November the French Army of the North was defeated before Amiens; on the 28th a considerable portion of the Army of the Loire was beaten by Prince Frederick Charles at Beaune-la-Rolande; on the 29th Trochu made an unsuccessful sortie on the south side of Paris, and on the 30th he appears to have attacked with all his available forces the Saxons and W rttembergers investing Paris on the north-east side. These different actions are the result of combined operations, such as we repeatedly pointed out as offering the only chance of success to the French. If the Army of the North, with inferior numbers, could hold Manteuffel s two corps in check so as to prevent him from reinforcing the Crown Prince of Saxony in his lines round the north side of Paris, then that army would have been well employed. But this was not the case. Its advance in the open country was soon stopped by inferior numbers of Prussians; for it appears all but certain, on a comparison of the various reports, that Manteuffel had only one of his corps engaged in the battle. The Army of the North would have been better employed either by sending its field troops down south to Le Mans by rail, or by constantly harassing Manteuffel s outposts and detachments, but refusing battle except under the walls of one of the numerous fortresses in the North which form its base of operations. But in the present state of France, and with the young soldiers that form her armies, a General cannot always enter upon a retreat even if that be strategically necessary: such a course might demoralize his troops even more than a thorough defeat. In the present case, the Army of the North finds a safe retreat in its fortresses, where it can re-form, and where it would scarcely suit Moltke to send Manteuffel after it just now. But, at the same time, Manteuffel is now free to move in any other direction, and if, as is reported from Lille (though the report is denied ), he has again evacuated Amiens and turned in haste towards Paris, we cannot but confess that the Army of the North has failed in its mission. On the west, the 21st French Corps at Le Mans, and the 22nd (late K ratry s) in the camp of Conlie, have so far succeeded in drawing the troops of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg a long way from Paris without exposing themselves to any serious defeat. Our supposition that the advance of these German troops had been pushed almost too far seems confirmed by the unanimous French reports that they have again evacuated the positions lately taken up east and south-east of Le Mans, which have been reoccupied by the French. The latter, however, do not appear to have used their regular forces in a very energetic pursuit of the enemy, as we do not hear of any engagements of importance; and thus the Army of the West has not succeeded any more than that of the North in holding fast the troops opposed to it. Where it is, and what it is doing, we are not told; it may be that the sudden quarrel between K ratry and Gambetta had lamed its movements just at the most decisive moment. At all events, if it could neither beat Mecklenburg s troops nor keep them engaged, it would have acted more wisely in sending such of its troops as are equipped and organized for a campaign by rail towards the Army of the Loire, so as to make the chief attack with concentrated forces. This chief attack could only be made by the Army of the Loire, being the main body of all the French troops now in the field, and could only be directed against Prince Frederick Charles, his army being the most numerous of the three which cover the investment of Paris. The Army of the Loire is reported to consist of the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 19th French corps which had been in front of Orl ans for some time and the 18th (now Bourbaki s) and 20th in reserve behind the Loire. As the 18th and 20th were both engaged wholly or in part on the 28th, they must have passed the Loire before that day, and thus the whole of these six corps must have been available for an attack upon the Second German Army. A French corps, in this war, has always been composed of from three to four divisions of infantry. According to an ordre de bataille published by a Vienna military paper, the Kamerad, about a fortnight ago, the 15th Corps numbered five brigades in two divisions; the 16th, four brigades in two divisions; the 18th, ten brigades in three divisions. Even if we do not go by the report of the Journal de Bruxelles, which gives to the Army of the Loire the full complement of eighteen divisions of infantry (or three per corps), as a good many of these must still be in course of formation, there is no doubt that the attack on the 28th might have been made with twelve or fifteen divisions instead of five or six at most. It is characteristic of the troops composing the Army of the Loire that they were defeated by greatly inferior numbers, only three divisions (the two of the 10th Corps and the 5th) of infantry, or less than one-half of the Second Army, having been engaged against them. Anyhow their defeat must have been very severe; not only the German reports tend to show it, but also the fact that the Army of the Loire has not since attempted a fresh attack with more concentrated forces. From these various transactions it results that the attempt to relieve Paris from without has for the present failed. It failed, firstly, because the inestimable chances of the week preceding the arrival of the First and Second German Armies were allowed to pass away; and, secondly, because the attacks, when they were made, were made without the necessary energy and concentration of forces. The young troops forming the new armies of France cannot, at first, expect success against the seasoned soldiers who oppose them, unless they are matched two against one; and it is therefore doubly faulty to lead them to battle without having taken care that every man, horse, and gun that can be had is actually sent on to the battle-field. On the other hand, we do not expect that the defeats of Amiens and Beaune-la-Rolande will have any other great effect than that of frustrating the relief of Paris. The lines of retreat of the Armies of the West and of the Loire are perfectly safe, unless the grossest blunders are committed. By far the greater portion of these two armies has not taken part in the defeat. The extent to which the German troops opposing them can follow them up depends upon the energy of popular resistance and guerilla warfare an element which the Prussians have a peculiar knack of arousing wherever they go. There is no fear now of Prince Frederick Charles marching as unopposed from Orl ans to Bordeaux as the Crown Prince marched from Metz to Reims. With the broad extent of ground which must now be securely occupied before any further advance southward (other than by large flying columns) can be made, the seven divisions of Prince Frederick Charles will soon be spread out far and wide, and their invading force completely spent. What France requires is time, and, with the spirit of popular resistance once roused, she may yet get that time. The armaments carried on during the last three months must be everywhere approaching completion, and the additional number of fighting men which every fresh week renders disposable must be constantly increasing for some time. As to the two sorties from Paris, the news received up to the moment of writing are too contradictory and too vague for any definite opinion to be formed. It appears, however, upon Trochu s own showing, that the results obtained up to the evening of the 30th were not at all of a kind to justify the shouts of victory raised at Tours. The points, then, still held by the French south of the Marne are all protected by the fire of the Paris forts; and the only place which they at one time held outside the range of these forts Mont Mesly they had to abandon again. It is more than probable that fighting will have been renewed yesterday before Paris, and to-day, perhaps, near Orl ans and Le Mans; at all events, a very few days must now decide this second crisis of the war which, in all probability, will settle the fate of Paris.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/12/02.htm

The Second Army of Paris began its offensive movements on the 29th of November by a sortie from the southern front of the town, in the direction of L'Hay and Choisy-le-Roi. According to the Prussian accounts, it was the First Corps of Ducrot s army, under Vinoy, which here attacked the Sixth Prussian Corps under T mpling. This attack appears to have been a mere feint to alarm the Prussians, and to induce them to strengthen this side by which the besieged could, if successful, join the Army of the Loire on the shortest road. Otherwise, Vinoy would, no doubt, have been supported by other corps, and would have lost more than a couple of hundred in killed and wounded, and a hundred men in prisoners. The real attack was opened on the following morning. Ducrot this time advanced on the right bank of the Seine, near its junction with the Marne, while a second sortie on the left bank was directed against T mpling, and false attacks west of Saint Denis against the 4th and Guard Corps. What troops were used for these false attacks we do not know; but an official French account says that the sortie against T mpling was made by Admiral De La Ronciere Le Noury. This officer commands one of the seven divisions of the Third Army of Paris which remains under Trochu s direct command; it is therefore likely that all the secondary attacks were entrusted to this army, so as to leave the whole of Ducrot s right divisions available for the real attack on the Marne. This attack again had to be made in two divergent directions. One portion of the troops necessarily was directed eastwards towards Chelles, along the right bank of the Marne, in order to keep off the 12th or Saxon Corps which invests the east side of Paris. This was another subordinate attack; we hear very little of its history except that the Saxons profess to have maintained their position, which they probably did. The main body of Ducrot s troops, however, Renault s Second Corps in front, passed the Marne on eight bridges, and attacked the three W rttemberg brigades which held the space between the Marne and Seine. As has been already pointed out, the Marne, before joining the Seine, forms by its course an immense S, the upper or northern bend approaching Paris and the lower receding from it. Both these bends are commanded by the fire of the forts; but, while the upper or advancing one favours a sortie by its configuration, the lower or receding one is completely commanded by the ground on the left bank as well as by the forts, and the river moreover, both from the line it takes and from its many branches, is unfavourable to the construction of bridges under fire. The greater part of this bend appears to have remained, on that account, a kind of neutral ground, on each side of which the real fighting took place. The troops intended for the western attack advanced under the protection of the fire of Fort Charenton and the redoubt of La Gravelle, in the direction of Mesly and Bonneuil. Between these two places there is a solitary hill, commanding the surrounding plain by fully a hundred feet, called Mont Mesly, and necessarily the first object of the French advance. The force told off for this purpose is put down in a telegram from General Obernitz, commanding the W rttemberg division, as a division; but as it at first drove in the 2nd and 3rd W rtemberg brigades who opposed it and could not be repelled until reinforcements had come to hand, and as it is moreover evident that Ducrot, who had troops enough in hand, would not make such an important attack with two brigades only, we may safely assume that this is another of the too many cases where the word Abtheilung which means any subdivision of an army, is mistranslated by division, which means a particular subdivision consisting of two or at most three brigades. Anyhow, the French carried Mont Mesly and with it the villages at its foot, and if they could have held and entrenched it, they would have obtained a result worth the day s fighting. But reinforcements arrived in the shape of Prussian troops from the Second Corps, namely the seventh brigade; the lost positions were reconquered and the French driven back under the shelter of Fort Charenton. Further to their left the French attempted the second attack. Covered by the fire of the Redoute de la Faisanderie and of Fort Nogent, they passed the Marne at the upper bend of the S, and took the villages of Brie and Champigny, which mark its two open ends. The real position of the 1st W rttemberg Brigade, which held this district, lay a little to the rear, on the edge of the high ground stretching from Villiers to Coeuilly. Whether the French ever took Villiers is doubtful; King William says yes, General Obernitz says no. Certain it is that they did not hold it, and that the advance beyond the immediate range of the forts was repelled. The result of this day s fighting of Ducrot s army, with its back to the Marne, that is, south of it, is thus summed up in the French official despatch: That is to say, it retreated again to the right or northern bank of the river, where it maintained some positions or other, which were, of course, taken by it, but not from the enemy. Evidently, the men who manufacture bulletins for Gambetta are still the same who did that kind of work for Napoleon. On the 1st of December the French gave another sign that they considered the sortie as defeated. Although the Moniteur announced that on that day the attack from the south was to be made under the command of General Vinoy, we hear from Versailles, December 1 (time of day not stated), that no movement had been made by the French on that day; on the contrary, they had asked for an armistice to allow them to attend to the killed and wounded on the battlefield between the positions of both armies. Had they considered themselves in a position to reconquer that battlefield, they would no doubt have renewed the struggle at once. There can be, then, no reasonable doubt that this first sortie of Trochu s has been beaten off, and by considerably inferior numbers too. We may assume that he will soon renew his efforts. We know too little of the way in which this first attempt was managed to be able to judge whether he may then have a better chance; but if he be again driven back, the effect upon both the troops and the population of Paris must be very demoralizing. In the meantime the Army of the Loire, as we expected, has been stirring again. The engagements near Loigny and Patay, reported from Tours, are evidently the same as referred to in a telegram from Munich, according to which von der Tann was successful west of Orleans. In this case, too, both parties claim the victory. We shall probably hear more from this quarter in a day or two; and as we are still in the dark about the relative positions of the combatants, it would be idle to prognosticate.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/12/03.htm

The last defeat of the French Army of the Loire and the retreat of Ducrot behind the Marne supposing that movement to be as decisive as was represented on Saturday finally settle the fate of the first combined operation for the relief of Paris. It has completely miscarried, and people begin again to ask whether this new series of misfortunes does not prove the inability of the French for further successful resistance whether it would not be better to give up the game at once, surrender Paris, and sign the cession of Alsace and Lorraine. The fact is, people have lost all remembrance of a real war. The Crimean, the Italian, and the Austro-Prussian war were all of them mere conventional wars wars of Governments which made peace as soon as their military machinery had broken down or become worn out. A real war, one in which the nation itself participates, we have not seen in the heart of Europe for a couple of generations. We have seen it in the Caucasus, in Algeria, where fighting lasted more than twenty years with scarcely any interruption; we should have seen it in Turkey if the Turks had been allowed, by their allies, to defend themselves in their own home spun way. But the fact is, our conventionalities allow to barbarians only the right of actual self-defence; we expect that civilized States will fight according to etiquette, and that the real nation will not be guilty of such rudeness as to go on fighting after the official nation has had to give in. The French are actually committing this piece of rudeness. To the disgust of the Prussians, who consider themselves the best judges in military etiquette, they have been positively fighting for three months after the official army of France was driven from the field; and they have even done what their official army never could do in tins campaign. They have obtained one important success and numerous small ones; and have taken guns, convoys, prisoners from their enemies. It is true they have just suffered a series of severe reverses; but these are as nothing when compared with the fate their late official army was in the habit of meeting with at the hands of the same opponents. It is true their first attempt to free Paris from the investing army, by an attack from within and from without at the same time, has signally failed; but is it a necessary sequel that there are no chances left for a second attempt? The two French armies, that of Paris as well as that of the Loire, have both fought well, according to the testimony of the Germans themselves. They have certainly been beaten by inferior numbers, but that is what was to be expected from young and newly organized troops confronting veterans. Their tactical movements under fire, according to a correspondent in The Daily News, who knows what he writes about, were rapid and steady; if they lacked precision that was a fault which they had in common with many a victorious French army. There is no mistake about it: these armies have proved that they are armies, and will have to be treated with due respect by their opponents. They are no doubt composed of very different elements. There are battalions of the line, containing old soldiers in various proportions; there are Mobiles of all degrees of military efficiency, from battalions well officered, drilled, and equipped to battalions of raw recruits, still ignorant of the elements of the manual and platoon; there are francs-tireurs of all sorts, good, bad, and indifferent probably most of them the latter. But there is, at all events, a nucleus of good fighting battalions, around which the others may be grouped; and a month of desultory fighting, with avoidance of crushing defeats, will make capital soldiers out of the whole of them. With better strategy, they might even now have been successful; and all the strategy required for the moment is to delay all decisive fighting, and that, we think, can be done. But the troops concentrated at Le Mans and near the Loire are far from representing the whole armed force of France. There are at least 200,000 to 300,000 more men undergoing the process of organization at points farther away to the rear. Every day brings these nearer to the fighting standard. Every day must send, for a time at least, constantly increasing numbers of fresh soldiers to the front. And there are plenty more men behind them to take their places. Arms and ammunition are coming in every day in large quantities: with modern gun factories and cannon foundries, with telegraphs and steamers, and the command of the sea, there is no fear of their falling short. A month s time will also make an immense difference in the efficiency of these men; and if two months were allowed them, they would represent armies which might well trouble Moltke s repose. Behind all these more or less regular forces there is the great landsturm, the mass of the people whom the Prussians have driven to that war of self-defence which, according to the father of King William, sanctions every means. When Fritz marched from Metz to Reims, from Reims to Sedan, and thence to Paris, there was not a word said about a rising of the people. The defeats of the Imperial armies were accepted with a kind of stupor; twenty years of Imperial r gime had used the mass of the people to dull and passive dependence upon official leadership. There were here and there peasants who participated in actual fighting, as at Bazeilles, but they were the exception. But no sooner had the Prussians settled down round Paris, and placed the surrounding country under a crushing system of requisitions, carried out with no consideration whatever no sooner had they begun to shoot francs-tireurs and burn villages which had given aid to the latter and no sooner had they refused the French offers of peace and declared their intention to carry on a war of conquest, when all this changed. The guerilla war broke out all around them, thanks to their own severities, and they have now but to advance into a new department in order to raise the landsturm far and wide. Whoever reads in the German papers the reports of the advance of Mecklenburg s and Frederick Charles s armies will see at a glance what an extraordinary effect this impalpable, ever disappearing and reappearing, but ever impeding insurrection of the people has upon the movements of these armies. Even their numerous cavalry, to which the French have scarcely any to oppose, is neutralized to a great extent by this general active and passive hostility of the inhabitants. Now let us examine the position of the Prussians. Of the seventeen divisions before Paris, they certainly cannot spare a single one while Trochu may repeat any day his sorties en masse. Manteuffel s four divisions will have more work than they can execute in Normandy and Picardy for some time to come, and they may even be called away from them. Werder s two divisions and a half cannot get on beyond Dijon, except on raids, and this will last until at least Belfort shall have been reduced. The long thin line of communication marked by the railway from Nancy to Paris cannot send a single man out of those told off to guard it. The 7th Corps has plenty to do with garrisoning the Lorraine fortresses and besieging Longwy and Montm dy. There remain for field operations against the bulk of central and southern France the eleven infantry divisions of Frederick Charles and Mecklenburg, certainly not more than 150,000 men, including cavalry. The Prussians thus employ about six-and-twenty divisions in holding Alsace, Lorraine, and the two long lines of communication to Paris and Dijon, and in investing Paris, and still they hold directly perhaps not one-eighth, and indirectly certainly not more than one-fourth, of France. For the rest of the country they have fifteen divisions left, four of which are under Manteuffel. How far these will be able to go depends entirely upon the energy of the popular resistance they may find. But with all their communications going by way of Versailles for the march of Frederick Charles has not opened to him a new line vi Troyes and in the midst of an insurgent country, these troops will have to spread out on a broad front, to leave detachments behind to secure the roads and keep down the people; and thus they will soon arrive at a point where their forces become so reduced as to be balanced by the French forces opposing them, and then the chances are again favourable to the French; or else these German armies will have to act as large flying columns, marching up and down the country without definitely occupying it; and in that case the French regulars can give way before them for a time, and will find plenty of opportunities to fall on their flanks and rear. A few flying corps, such as Bl cher sent in 1813 round the flanks of the French, would be very effective if employed to interrupt the line of communication of the Germans. That line is vulnerable almost the whole of its length from Paris to Nancy. A few corps, each consisting of one or two squadrons of cavalry and some sharpshooters, falling upon that line, destroying the rails, tunnels, and bridges, attacking trains, &c., would go far to recall the German cavalry from the front where it is most dangerous. But the regular Hussar dash does certainly not belong to the French. All this is on the supposition that Paris continues to hold out. There is nothing to compel Paris to give in, so far, except starvation. But the news we had in yesterday s Daily News from a correspondent inside that city would dispel many apprehensions if correct. There are still 25,000 horses besides those of the army in Paris, which at 500 kilos each would give 6 kilo, or 14lb. of meat for every inhabitant, or nearly a lb. per day for two months. With that, bread and wine ad libitum, and a good quantity of salt meat and other eatables, Paris may well hold out until the beginning of February. And that would give to France two months, worth more to her, now, than two years in time of peace. With anything like intelligent and energetic direction, both central and local, France, by then, ought to be in a position to relieve Paris and to right herself. And if Paris should fall? It will be time enough to consider this chance when it becomes more probable. Anyhow, France has managed to do without Paris for more than two months, and may fight on without her. Of course, the fall of Paris may demoralize the spirit of resistance, but so may, even now, the unlucky news of the last seven days. Neither the one nor the other need do so. If the French entrench a few good manoeuvring positions, such as Nevers, near the junction of the Loire and Allier if they throw up advanced works round Lyons so as to make it as strong as Paris, the war may be carried on even after the fall of Paris; but it is not yet time to talk of that. Thus we make bold to say that, if the spirit of resistance among the people does not flag, the position of the French, even after their recent defeats, is a very strong one. With the command of the sea to import arms, with plenty of men to make soldiers of, with three months the first and worst three months of the work of organization behind them, and with a fair chance of having one month more, if not two, of breathing-time allowed them and that at a time when the Prussians show signs of exhaustion with all that, to give in now would be rank treason. And who knows what accidents may happen, what further European complications may occur, in the meantime? Let them fight on, by all means.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/12/08.htm

For some time past the reports of village-burning by the Prussians in France had pretty nearly disappeared from the press. We began to hope that the Prussian authorities had discovered their mistake and stopped such proceedings in the interest of their own troops. We were mistaken. The papers again teem with news about the shooting of prisoners and the destroying of villages. The Berlin Borsen Courier reports, under date Versailles, Nov. 20: Again, the Vienna Tages-Presse says, under the same date: An official report dated Versailles, the 26th of November, states that the country people all around Orl ans, instigated to fight by the priests, who have been ordered by Bishop Dupanloup to preach a crusade, have begun a guerilla warfare against the Germans; patrols are fired at, officers carrying orders shot down by labourers seemingly working in the field: to avenge which assassinations all non-soldiers carrying arms are immediately executed. Not a few priests are now awaiting trial seventy-seven. These are but a few instances, which might be multiplied almost infinitely, so that it appears a settled purpose with the Prussians to carry on these brutalities up to the end of the war. Under these circumstances, it may be as well to call their attention once more to some facts in modern Prussian history. The present King of Prussia can perfectly recollect the time of his country s deepest degradation, the Battle of Jena, the long flight to the Oder, the successive capitulations of almost the whole of the Prussian troops, the retreat of the remainder behind the Vistula, the complete downbreak of the whole military and political system of the country. Then it was that, under the shelter of a Pomeranian coast fortress, private initiative, private patriotism, commenced a new active resistance against the enemy. A simple cornet of dragoons, Schill, began at Kolberg to form a free corps (Gallice, francs-tireurs), with which, assisted by the inhabitants, he surprised patrols, detachments, and field-posts, secured public moneys, provisions, war Mat riel, took the French General Victor prisoner, prepared a general insurrection of the country in the rear of the French and on their line of communication, and generally did all those things which are now laid to the charge of the French francs-tireurs, and which are visited on the part of the Prussians by the titles of brigands and ragamuffins, and by a bullet through the head of disarmed prisoners. But the father of the present King of Prussia d sanctioned them expressly and promoted Schill. It is well known that this same Schill in 1809, when Prussia was at peace but Austria at war with France, led his regiment out on a campaign of his own against Napoleon, quite Garibaldi-like; that he was killed at Stralsund and his men taken prisoner. Out of these, all of whom Napoleon, according to Prussian war rules, had a perfect right to shoot, he merely had eleven officers shot at Wesel. Over the graves of these eleven francs-tireurs the father of the present King of Prussia, much against his will, but compelled by public feeling in the army and out of it, had to erect a memorial in their honour. No sooner had there been a practical beginning of freeshooting among the Prussians than they, as becomes a nation of thinkers, proceeded to bring the thing into a system and work out the theory of it. The theorist of freeshooting, the great philosophical franc-tireur among them, was no other than Anton Neithardt von Gneisenau, some time field marshal in the service of his Prussian Majesty. Gneisenau had defended Kolberg in 1807; he had had some of Schill s francs-tireurs under him; he had been assisted vigorously in his defence by the inhabitants of the place, who could not even lay claim to the title of national guards, mobile or sedentary, and who therefore, according to recent Prussian notions, clearly deserved to be immediately executed. But Gneisenau was so impressed by the greatness of the resources which an invaded country possessed in an energetic popular resistance that he made it his study for a series of years how this resistance could be best organized. The guerilla war in Spain, the rising of the Russian peasants on the line of the French retreat from Moscow, gave him fresh examples; and in 1813 he could proceed to put his theory in practice. In August, 1811, already Gneisenau had formed a plan for the preparation of a popular insurrection. A militia is to be organized which is to have no uniform but a military cap (Gallice, k pi) and black and white belt, perhaps a military great-coat; in short, as near as can be, the uniform of the present French francs-tireurs. The very thing which the Prussians now consider a crime to be punished by a bullet or a rope. These militia troops are to harass the enemy, to interrupt his communications, to take or destroy his convoys of supplies, to avoid regular attacks, and to retire into woods or bogs before masses of regular soldiers. in fact, they are to preach the same crusade which the Bishop of Orleans has ordered his priests to preach, and for which not a few French priests are now awaiting their trial. Whoever will take up the second volume of Professor Pertz s Life of Gneisenau, will find, facing the title-page of the second volume, a reproduction of part of the above passage as a facsimile of Gneisenau s handwriting. Facing it is the facsimile of King Frederick William s marginal note to it: Evidently the King had no great faith in the heroism of his clergy. But this did not prevent him from expressly sanctioning Gneisenau s plans; nor did it prevent, a few years later, when the very men who had driven out the French were arrested and prosecuted as demagogues, one of the intelligent demagogue-hunters of the time, into whose hands the original document had fallen, from instituting proceedings against the unknown author of this attempt to excite people to the shooting of the clergy! Up to 1813 Gneisenau never tired in preparing not only the regular army but also popular insurrection as a means to shake off the French yoke. When at last the war came, it was at once accompanied by insurrection, peasant resistance, and francs-tireurs. The country between the Weser and Elbe rose to arms in April; a little later on the people about Magdeburg rose; Gneisenau himself wrote to friends in Franconia the letter is published by Pertz calling on them to rise upon the enemy s line of communications. Then at last came the official recognition of this popular warfare, the Landsturm-Ordnung of the 21st of April, 1813 (published in July only), in which every able-bodied man who is not in the ranks of either line or landwehr is called upon to join his landsturm battalion, to prepare for the sacred struggle of self-defence which sanctions every means. The landsturm is to harass both the advance and the retreat of the enemy, to keep him constantly on the alert, to fall upon his trains of ammunition and provisions, his couriers, recruits, and hospitals, to surprise him at nights, to annihilate his stragglers and detachments, to lame and to bring insecurity into his every movement; on the other hand, to assist the Prussian army, to escort money, provisions, ammunition, prisoners, &c. In fact, this law may be called a complete vade-mecum for the franc-tireur, and, drawn up as it is by no mean strategist, it is as applicable to-day in France as it was at that time in Germany. Fortunately for Napoleon, it was but very imperfectly carried out. The King was frightened by his own handiwork. To allow the people to fight for themselves, without the King s command, was too anti-Prussian. Thus the landsturm was suspended until the King was to call upon it, which he never did. Gneisenau chafed, but managed finally to do without the landsturm. If he were alive now, with all his Prussian after-experiences, perhaps he would see his beau-ideal of popular resistance approached, if not realized, in the French francs-tireurs. For Gneisenau was a man and a man of genius.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/12/09.htm

The campaign on the Loire appears to have come to a momentary standstill, which allows us time to compare reports and dates, and to form the very confused and contradictory materials into as clear a narrative of actual events as can be expected under the circumstances. The Army of the Loire began to exist as a distinct body on the 15th of November, when D'Aurelle de Paladines, hitherto commander of the 15th and 16th Corps, obtained command of the new organization formed under this name. What other troops entered into its composition at that date we cannot tell; in fact, this army received constant reinforcements, at least up to the end of November, when it consisted nominally of the following corps: 15th (Palli res), 16th (Chanzy), 17th (Sonis), 18th (Bourbaki), 19th (Barral, according to Prussian accounts), and 20th (Crouzat). Of these the 19th Corps never appeared either in the French or Prussian reports, and cannot therefore be supposed to have been engaged. Besides these, there were at Le Mans and the neighbouring camp of Conlie, the 21st Army Corps (Jaur s) arid the Army of Brittany, which, on the resignation of K ratry, was attached to Jaur s command. A 22nd Corps, we may add, is commanded by General Faidherbe in the North, with Lille for its base of operations. In the above we have omitted General Michel s corps of cavalry attached to the Army of the Loire: this body of horse, though said to be very numerous, cannot rank, from its recent formation and crude material, otherwise than as volunteer or amateur cavalry. The elements of which this army was composed were of the most varied kinds, from old troopers recalled to the ranks, to raw recruits and volunteers averse to all discipline; from solid battalions such as the Papal Zouaves to crowds which were battalions only in name. Some kind of discipline, however, had been established, but the whole still bore the stamp of the great hurry which had presided at its formation. Had this army been allowed four weeks more for preparation, it would have been a formidable opponent, said the German officers who had made its acquaintance on the field of battle. Deducting all those quite raw levies which were only in the way, we may set down the whole of D'Aurelle s five fighting corps (omitting the 19th) at somewhere about 120,000 to 130,000 men fit to be called combatants. The troops at Le Mans may have furnished about 40,000 more. Against these we find pitted the army of Prince Frederick Charles, including the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg s command; their numbers we now know, through Capt. Hozier, to have been rather less than 90,000 all told. But these 90,000 were, by their experience of war, their organization, and the proved generalship of their leaders, quite competent to engage twice their number of such troops as were opposed to them. Thus, the chances were about even; and that they were so is immensely to the credit of the French people, who created this new army out of nothing in three months. The campaign began, on the part of the French, with the attack on von der Tann at Coulmiers and the reconquest of Orl ans, on November 9; the march of Mecklenburg to the aid of von der Tann; the manoeuvring of D'Aurelle in the direction of Dreux, which drew off Mecklenburg s whole force in that direction, and made him enter upon a march towards Le Mans. This march was harassed by the French irregular troops in a degree hitherto unknown in the present war; the population showed a most determined resistance, francs-tireurs hovered round the flanks of the invaders; but the regular troops confined themselves to demonstrations, and could not be brought to bay. The letters of the German correspondents with Mecklenburg s army, their rage and indignation at those wicked French who insist upon fighting in the way most convenient to themselves and most inconvenient to the enemy, are the best proof that this short campaign about Le Mans was conducted exceedingly well by the defence. The French led Mecklenburg a perfect wild-goose chase after an invisible army up to about twenty-five miles from Le Mans: arrived thus far, he hesitated to go any farther, and turned south. The original plan had evidently been to deal a crushing blow at the Army of Le Mans, then to turn south upon Blois, and turn the left of the Army of the Loire; while Frederick Charles, just then coming up, attacked its front and rear. But this plan, and many others since, miscarried. D'Aurelle left Mecklenburg to his fate, marched against Frederick Charles, and attacked the 10th Prussian Corps on the 24th November at Ladon and M zier s, and a large body of Prussians on the 28th at Beaune-la-Rolande. It is evident that here he handled his troops badly. He had but a small portion of them in readiness, though this was his first attempt to break through the Prussian army and force his way to Paris. All he did was to inspire the enemy with respect for his troops. He fell back into entrenched positions in front of Orl ans, where he concentrated all his forces. These he disposed, from right to left, as follows: the 18th Corps on the extreme right; then the 20th and 15th, all of them east of the Paris-Orl ans railway; west of it the 16th; and on the extreme left the 17th. Had these masses been brought together in time, there is scarcely any doubt that they might have crushed Frederick Charles s army, then under 50,000 men. But by the time D'Aurelle was well established in his work, Mecklenburg had marched south again, and joined the right wing of his cousin, who now took the supreme command. Thus Mecklenburg s 40,000 men had now come up to join in the attack against D'Aurelle, while the French army of Le Mans, satisfied with the glory of having repulsed its opponent, quietly remained in its quarters, some sixty miles away from the point where the campaign was decided. Then all of a sudden came the news of Trochu s sortie of the 30th of November. A fresh effort had to be made to support him. On the 1st D'Aurelle commenced a general advance against the Prussians, but it was too late. While the Germans met him with all their forces, his 18th Corps on the extreme right appeared to have been sent astray, and never to have been engaged. Thus he fought with but four corps, that is to say, with numbers (of actual combatants) probably little superior to those of his opponents. He was beaten; he appears to have felt himself beaten even before he was so. Hence the irresolution he displayed when, after having on the evening of the 3rd of December ordered a retreat across the Loire, he countermanded it next morning and resolved to defend Orleans. The usual result followed: order, counter-order, disorder. The Prussian attack being concentrated on his left and centre, his two right corps, evidently in consequence of the contradictory orders they had received, lost their line of retreat upon Orl ans, and had to cross the river, the 20th at Jargeau and the 18th still further east, at Sully. A small portion of the latter appears to have been driven still more eastward, as it was found by the 3rd Prussian Corps on the 7th of December at Nevoy, near (;ten, and thence pursued in the direction of Briare, always on the right bank of the river. Orl ans fell into the hands of the Germans on the evening of the 4th, and the pursuit was at once organized. While the 3rd Corps was to skirt the upper course of the Loire on the right bank, the 10th was sent to Vierzon, and the Mecklenburg command on the right bank towards Blois. Before reaching that place, this latter force was met at Beaugency by at least a portion of the army of Le Mans, which now at last had joined Chanzy s command, and offered a pertinacious and partly successful resistance. But this was soon broken, for the 9th Prussian Corps was marching, on the left bank of the river, towards Blois, where it would have cut off Chanzy s retreat towards Tours. This turning movement had its effect. Chanzy retired out of harm s way, and Blois fell into the hands of the invaders. The thaw and heavy rains about this time broke up the roads, and thus stopped further pursuit. Prince Frederick Charles has telegraphed to headquarters that the Army of the Loire is totally dispersed in various directions, that its centre is broken, and that it has ceased to exist as an army. All this sounds well, but it is far from being correct. There can be no doubt, even from the German accounts, that the seventy-seven guns taken before Orleans were almost all naval guns abandoned in the entrenchments. There may be 10,000, and, including the wounded, 14,000 prisoners, most of them very much demoralized; but the state of the Bavarians who on the 5th of December thronged the road from Artenay to Chartres, utterly disorganized, without arms or knapsacks, was not so much better. There is an utter absence of trophies gathered during the pursuit on and after the 5th; and if an army has broken up, its soldiery cannot fail to be brought in wholesale by an active and numerous cavalry such as we know the Prussians to possess. There is extreme inaccuracy here, to say the least of it. The thaw is no excuse; that set in about the 9th, and would leave four or five days of fine frozen roads and fields for active pursuit. It is not so much the thaw which stops the advance of the Prussians; it is the consciousness that the force of these 90,000 men, now reduced to about 60,000 by losses and garrisons left behind, is nearly spent. The point beyond which it is imprudent to follow up even a beaten enemy has very nearly been reached. There may be raids on a large scale further south, but there will be scarcely any further occupation of territory. The Army of the Loire, now divided into two armies under Bourbaki and Chanzy, will have plenty of time and room to re-form, and to draw towards it newly formed battalions. By its division it has ceased to exist as an army, but it is the first French army in this campaign which has done so not ingloriously. We shall probably hear of its two successors again. In the meantime, Prussia shows signs of exhaustion. The men of the landwehr up to forty years and more legally free from service after their thirty-second year are called in. The drilled reserves of the country are exhausted. In January the recruits about 90,000 from North Germany will be sent out to France. This may give altogether the 150,000 men of whom we hear so much, but they are not yet there; and when they do come they will alter the character of the army materially. The wear and tear of the campaign has been terrible, and is becoming more so every (lay. I lie melancholy tone of the letters from the army shows it, as well as the lists of losses. It is no longer the great battles which make up the bulk of these lists, it is the small encounters where one, two, five men are shot down. This constant erosion by the waves of popular warfare in the long run melts down or washes away the largest army in detail, and, what is the chief point, without any visible equivalent. While Paris holds out, every day improves the position of the French, and the impatience at Versailles about the surrender of Paris shows best that that city may yet become dangerous to the besiegers.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/12/17.htm

The last week s fighting has proved how correctly we judged the relative positions of the combatants when we said that the armies arrived from Metz on the Loire and in Normandy had then already expended the greater part of their capability for occupying fresh territory. The extent of ground occupied by the German forces has scarcely received any addition since. The Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, with von der Tann s Bavarians (who, in spite of their disorganization and want of shoes, cannot be spared at the front), with the 10th Corps and 17th and 22nd divisions, has followed up Chanzy s slowly retreating and constantly fighting troops from Beaugency to Blois, from Blois to Vend me, and Epuisay and beyond. Chanzy defended every position offered by the rivulets falling from the north into the Loire; and when the 9th Corps (or at least its Hessian division) turned his right at Blois. arriving from the left bank of the river, he retreated upon Vend me, and took up a position on the line of the Loire. This he field on the 14th and 15th against the attacks of the enemy, but abandoned it on the evening of the latter day, and retreated slowly, and still showing a bold front, towards Le Mans. On the 17th he had another rear-guard affair with von der Tann at Epuisay; where the roads from Vend me and Mor e to Saint-Calais unite, and then withdrew, apparently without being followed up much farther. The whole of this retreat appears to have been conducted with great discretion. After it was once settled that the old Army of the Loire was to be split up into two bodies, one of which, under Bourbaki, was to act south of Orl ans, and the other, under Chanzy, to whom also the troops near Le Mans were given, to defend Western France north of the Loire after this arrangement was once made, it could not be Chanzy s object to provoke decisive actions. On the contrary, his plan necessarily was to dispute every inch of ground as long as he safely could without being entangled into such; to inflict thereby as heavy losses as he could upon the enemy, and break in his own young troops to order and steadiness under fire. He would naturally lose more men than the enemy in this retreat, especially in stragglers; but these would be the worst men of his battalions, which he could well do without. He would keep up the morale of his troops, while he maintained on the part of the enemy that respect which the Army of the Loire had already conquered for the Republican troops. And he would soon arrive at a point where the pursuers, weakened by losses in battle, by sickness, and by detachments left behind on their line of supply, must give up the pursuit or risk defeat in their turn. That point, in all probability, would be Le Mans; here were the two camps of instruction at Yvre-l'Eveque and at Conlie, with troops in various states of organization and armament, and of unknown numbers; but there must have certainly been more organized battalions there than Chanzy would require to repel any attack Mecklenburg could make on him. This appears to have been felt by the Prussian commander, or rather his chief of the staff, General Stosch, who actually directs the movements of Mecklenburg s army. For after having learned that the 10th North German Corps, on the 18th, pursued Chanzy beyond Epuisay, we hear now that General Voigts-Rhetz (who commands this same 10th Corps) on the 21st has defeated a body of French near Monnaie, and driven them beyond Notre Dame d'O . Now, Monnaie is about five-and-thirty miles south of Epuisay, on the road from Vend me to Tours, and Notre Dame d'O is a few miles nearer Tours. So that after following up Chanzy s principal forces towards and close to Le Mans, Mecklenburg s troops appear now to be directed at least in part towards Tours, which they probably will have reached ere now, but which it is not likely that they will be able to occupy, permanently. Prussian critics blamed the eccentric retreat of the Army of the Loire after the battles before Orl ans, and pretended that such a faulty step could only have been forced on the French by the vigorous action of Prince Frederick Charles, by which he broke their centre. That the mismanagement of D'Aurelle, at the very moment when he received the shock of the enemy, had a good deal to do with this eccentric retreat, and even with the subsequent division of the army into two distinct commands, we may readily believe. But there was another motive for it. France, above all things, wants time to organize forces, and space that is to say, as much territory as possible from which to collect the means of organization in men and Mat riel. Not being as yet in a position to court decisive battles, she must attempt to save as much territory as possible from the occupation of the enemy. And as the invasion has now reached that line where the forces of the attack and those of the defence are nearly balanced, there is no necessity to concentrate the troops of the defence as for a decisive action. On the contrary, they may without great risk be divided into several large masses, so as to cover as much territory as possible, and so as to oppose to the enemy, in whatever direction he may advance, a force large enough to prevent permanent occupation. And as there are still some 60,000, or perhaps 100,000, men near Le Mans (in a very backward state of equipment, drill, and discipline, it is true, but yet improving daily), and as the means to equip, arm, and supply them have been organized and are being brought together in western France it would be a great blunder to abandon these merely because strategic theory demands that under ordinary circumstances a defeated army should withdraw in one body; which could in this case have been done only by going south and leaving the west unprotected. On the contrary, the camps near Le Mans contain in themselves the stuff to render the new Army of the West, in course of time, stronger than even the old Army of the Loire was, while the whole south is organizing reinforcements for Bourbaki s command. Thus, what at the first glance appears as a mistake, was in reality a very proper and necessary measure, which does not in any way preclude the possibility of having the whole of the French forces, at some later time, in a position to co-operate for decisive action. The importance of Tours is in the fact that it forms the most westerly railway junction between the north-west and the south of France. If Tours be permanently held by the Prussians, Chanzy has no longer any railway communication with either the Government at Bordeaux or Bourbaki at Bourges. But with their present forces, the Prussians have no chance of holding it. They would be weaker there than von der Tann was at Orl ans early in November. And a temporary loss of Tours, though inconvenient, may be borne. There is not much news from the other German columns. Prince Frederick Charles, with the Third Corps, and perhaps half of the Ninth, has completely disappeared from sight, which does not prove much for his powers to advance. Manteuffel is reduced to play the part of a huge flying column for requisitions; his force of permanent occupation does not appear to go beyond Rouen. Werder is surrounded by petty warfare on all sides, and while he can hold out at Dijon by sheer activity only, now finds out that he has to blockade Langres too if he wants his rear secured. Where he is to find the troops for this work we do not learn; he himself has none to spare, and the landwehr about Belfort and in Alsace have fully as much on their hands as they can manage. Thus everywhere the forces appear to be nearly balanced. It is now a race of reinforcements, but a race in which the chances are immensely more favourable to France than they were three months ago. If we could say with safety that Paris will hold out till the end of February, we might almost believe that France would win the race.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/12/23.htm

The wear and tear of this war is beginning to tell upon Germany. The first army of invasion, comprising the whole of the line troops of both North and South, was of the strength of about 640,000 men. Two months of campaigning had reduced that army so much that the first batch of men from the dep t battalions and squadrons about one-third of the original strength had to be ordered forward. They arrived towards the end of September and beginning of October, and though they must have amounted to some 200,000 men, yet the field battalions were far from being again raised to their original strength of 1,000 men each. Those before Paris counted from 700 to 800 men, while those before Metz were weaker still. Sickness and fighting soon made further inroads, and when Prince Frederick Charles reached the Loire, his three corps were reduced to less than half their normal strength, averaging 450 men per battalion. The fighting of this month and the severe and changeable weather must have told severely upon the troops both before Paris and in the armies covering the investment; so that the battalions must now certainly average below 400 men. Early in January the recruits of the levy of 1870 will be ready to be sent into the field, after three months drill. These would number about 110,000, and give rather less than 300 men per battalion. We now hear that part of these have already passed Nancy, and that new bodies are arriving daily; thus the battalions may soon be again raised to about 650 men. If, indeed, as is probable from several indications, the disposable remainder of the younger undrilled men of the dep t-reserve (Ersatz Reserve) have been drilled along with the recruits of the regular levy, this reinforcement would be increased by some 100 men per battalion more, making in all 750 men per battalion. This would be about three-fourths of the original strength, giving an army of 480,000 effectives, out of one million of men sent out from Germany to the front. Thus, rather more than one-half of the men who left Germany with the line regiments or joined them since, have been killed or invalided in less than four months. If this should appear incredible to any one, let him compare the wear and tear of former campaigns, that of 1813 and 1814 for instance, and consider that the continued long and rapid marches of the Prussians during this war must have told terribly upon their troops. So far we have dealt with the line only. Besides them, nearly the whole of the landwehr has been marched off into France. The landwehr battalions had originally 800 men for the Guards and 500 men for the other battalions; but they were gradually raised to the strength of 1,000 men all round. This would make a grand total of 240,000 men, including cavalry and artillery. By far the greater part of these have been in France for some time, keeping up the communications, blockading fortresses, &c. And even for this they are not numerous enough; for there are at present in process of organization four more landwehr divisions (probably by forming a third battalion to every landwehr regiment), comprising at least fifty battalions, or 50,000 men more. All these are now to be sent into France; those that were still in Germany, guarding the French prisoners, are to be relieved in that duty by newly formed garrison battalions. What these may be composed of we cannot positively tell before we receive the full text of the order creating them, the of which, so far, are by a telegraphic summary only. But if, as we know to be the fact, the above four new landwehr divisions cannot be raised without calling out men of forty and even above, then what remains for the garrison battalions of drilled soldiers but men from forty to fifty years of age? There is no doubt the reserve of drilled men in Germany is by this measure fully exhausted, arid, beyond that, a whole year s levy of recruits. The landwehr force In France has had far less marching, bivouacking, and fighting than the line. It has mostly had decent quarters, fair feeding, and moderate duty; so that the whole of its losses may be put down at about 40,000 men, dead or invalided. This would leave, including the new battalions now forming, 250,000 men; but it is very uncertain how soon, even if ever, the whole of these can be set free for service abroad. For the next two months we should say 200,000 would be a high estimate of the effective landwehr force in France. Line and landwehr together, we shall thus have in the second half of January a force of some 650,000 to 680,000 Germans under arms in France, of which from 150,000 to 200,000 are now on the road or preparing for it. But this force will be of a far different character from that which has hitherto been employed there. Fully one-half of the line battalions will consist of young men of twenty or twenty-one years untried men of an age at which the hardships of a winter campaign tell most fearfully upon the constitution. These men will soon fill the hospitals, while the battalions will again melt down in strength. On the other hand, the landwehr will consist more and more of men above thirty-two, married men and fathers of families almost without exception, and of an age at which open-air camping in cold or wet weather is almost sure to produce rheumatism rapidly and by wholesale. And there can be no doubt that the greater portion of this landwehr will have to do a deal more marching and fighting than hitherto, in consequence of the extension of the territory which is to be given into its keeping. The line is getting considerably younger, the landwehr considerably older than hitherto; the recruits sent to the line have barely had time to learn their drill and discipline, the new reinforcements for the landwehr have had plenty of time to forget both. Thus the German army is receiving elements which bring its character much nearer than heretofore to the new French levies opposed to it; with this advantage, however, on the side of the Germans that. these elements are being incorporated into the strong and solid cadres of the old army. After these, what resources in men remain to Prussia? The recruits attaining their twentieth year in 1871, and the older men of the Ersatz Reserve, the latter all undrilled, almost all of them married, and at an age when people have little inclination or ability to begin soldiering. To call these out, men who have been induced by long precedent to consider their relation to the army an all but nominal one, would be very unpopular. Still more unpopular would it be if those able-bodied men were called out who for one reason or another have escaped the liability to service altogether. In a purely defensive war all these would march unhesitatingly; but in a war of conquest, and at a time when the success of that policy of conquest is becoming doubtful, they cannot be expected to do so. A war of conquest, with anything like varying fortunes, cannot be carried out, in the long run, by an army consisting chiefly of married men; one or two great reverses must demoralize such troops on such an errand. The more the Prussian army, by the lengthening out of the war, becomes in reality a nation in arms, the more incapable does it become for conquest. Let the Gerinan Philistine shout ever so boisterously about Alsace and Lorraine, it still remains certain that Germany cannot for the sake of their conquest undergo the same privations, the same social disorganization, the same suspension of national production, that France willingly suffers in her own self-defence. That same German Philistine, once put in uniform and marched off, may come to his cool senses again on some French battlefield or in some frozen bivouac. And thus it may be, in the end, for the best if both nations are, in reality, placed face to face with each other in full armour.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/12/24.htm

The writers of ancient Greece and Rome, and also the fathers of the Church, give very little information about Ireland. Instead there still exists an abundant native literature, in spite of le many Irish manuscripts lost in the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It includes poems, grammars, glossaries, annals and other historical writings and law-books. With very few exceptions, however, this whole literature, which embraces the period at least from the eighth to the seventeenth century, exists only in manuscript. For the Irish language printing has existed only for a few years, only from the time when the language began to die out. Of this rich material, therefore, only a small part is available. Amongst the most important of these annals are those of Abbot Tigernach (died 1088), those of Ulster, and above all, those of the Four Masters. These last were collected in 1632-36 in a monastery in Donegal under the direction of Michael O'Clery, a Franciscan monk, who was helped by three other Seanchaidhes (antiquarians), from materials which now are almost all lost. They were published in 1856 from the original Donegal manuscript which still exists, having been edited and provided with an English translation by O'Donovan. The earlier editions by Dr. Charles O'Connor (the first part of the Four Masters, and the Annals of Ulster) are untrustworthy in text and translation. The beginning of most of these annals presents the mythical prehistory of Ireland. Its base was formed by old folk legends, which were spun out endlessly by poets in the 9th and 10th centuries and were then brought into suitable chronological order by the monk-chroniclers. The Annals of the Four Masters begins with the year of the world 2242, when Caesair, a granddaughter of Noah, landed in Ireland forty days before the Flood; other annals have the ancestors of the Scots, the last immigrants to Ireland, descend in direct line from Japheth and bring them into connection with Moses, the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, as the German chroniclers of the Middle Ages connected the ancestors of the Germans with Troy, Aeneas or Alexander the Great. The Four Masters devote only a few pages to this legend (in which the only valuable element, the original folk-legend, is not distinguishable even now); the Annals of Ulster leave it out altogether; and Tigernach, with a critical boldness wonderful for his time, explains that all the written records of the Scots before King Cimbaoth (approximately 300 B.C.) are uncertain. But when new national life awoke in Ireland at the end of the last century, and with it new interest in Irish literature and history, just these monks legends were counted to be their most valuable constituent. With true Celtic enthusiasm and specifically Irish naivete, belief in these stories was declared an intrinsic part of national patriotism, and. this offered the supercunning world of English scholarship whose own efforts in the field of philological. and historical criticism are gloriously enough well known to the rest of the world the desired pretext for throwing everything Irish aside as arrant nonsense. [One of the most naive products of that time is The Chronicles of Eri, being the History of the Gaal Sciot Iber, or the Irish People, translated from the original manuscripts in the Phoenician dialect of the Scythian Language by O'Connor, London, 1822, 2 volumes. The Phoenician dialect of the Scythian language is naturally Celtic Irish, and the original manuscript is a verse chronicle chosen at will. The publisher is Arthur O'Connor, exile of 1798,96 uncle of Feargus O'Connor who was later leader of the English Chartists, an ostensible descendant of the ancient O'Connors, Kings of Connaught, and, after a fashion, the Irish Pretender to the throne. His portrait appears in front of the title, a man with a handsome, jovial Irish face, strikingly resembling his nephew Feargus, grasping a crown with his right hand. Underneath is the caption: O'Connor cear-rige, head of his race, and O'Connor, chief of the prostrate people of his nation: Soumis, pas vaincus [Subdued, not conquered]."]

Marx Engels on Art and Literature

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/history-ireland/ancient-irish-literature.htm

The channel between the two islands, 50-70 English miles wide at the narrowest points in the south, 13 miles wide at one point in the north and 22 miles wide at another, allowed the Irish Scots to emigrate from the north to the neighbouring island and to found the Kingdom of Scotland even before the fifth century. In the south it was too wide for Irish and British boats and a serious obstacle even for the flat-bottomed coastal vessels of the Romans. But when the Frisians, Angles and Saxons, and after them the Scandinavians, were able to venture beyond the sight of land on the open seas in their keeled vessels, this channel was an obstacle no longer; Ireland fell a victim to the raiding expeditions of the Scandinavians, and presented an easy booty for the English. As soon as the Normans had built up a powerful, unified government in England, the influence of the larger island made itself felt in those times this meant a war of conquest. If during the war a period set in when England gained control of the sea, this precluded the possibility of successful foreign intervention. When the larger island finally became unified into one state, the latter had to strive to assimilate Ireland completely. If this assimilation had been successful, its whole course would have become a matter of history. It would be subject to its judgement but could never be reversed. But if after 700 years of fighting this assimilation has not succeeded; if instead each new wave of invaders flooding Ireland is assimilated by the Irish; if, even today, the Irish are as far from being English, or West Britons, as they say, as the Poles are from being West Russians after only 100 years of oppression; if the fighting is not yet over and there is no prospect that it can be ended in any other way than by the extermination of the oppressed race then, all the geographical pretexts in the world are not enough to prove that it is England s mission to conquer Ireland. To understand the nature of the soil of present-day Ireland we have to return to the distant epoch when the so-called Carboniferous System was formed. The centre of Ireland, to the north and south of a line from Dublin to Galway, forms a wide plain rising to 100-300 feet above sea-level. This plain, the foundation so to say of the whole of Ireland, consists of the massive bed of limestone (carboniferous limestone), which forms the middle layer of the Carboniferous System, and immediately above which lie the coal-measures of England and other places. In the south and the north, this plain is encircled by a mountain chain which extends mainly along the coast, and consists almost entirely of older rock-formations which have broken through the limestone. These older rock-formations contain granite, mica-slate, Cambrian, Cambro-Silurian, Upper-Silurian, Devonian, together with argillaceous slate and sandstone, rich in copper and lead, found in the lowest layer of the Carboniferous System; apart from this they contain a little gold, silver, tin, zinc, iron, cobalt, antimony and manganese. The limestone itself rises to mountains only in a few places: it reaches 600 feet in the centre of the plain, in Queen s County, and a little over 1,000 feet in the west, on the southern shore of Galway Bay (Burren Hills). At several points in the southern half of the limestone plain there are to be found isolated coal-bearing mountain ridges of considerable extent and from 700 to 1,000 feet above sea-level. These rise from depressions in the limestone plain as plateaus with rather steep escarpments. Other circumstances, which are too detailed for us here and can be found in Jukes, pages 286-89, contribute to the certainty that the whole Irish central plain arose through denudation, as Jukes says, so that the lower layers of limestone were exposed after the coal-measures and the high limestone deposits of an average thickness of at least 2,000-3,000 and possibly 5,000-6,000 feet of stone had been washed away. Jukes even found another small coal-measure on the highest ridge of the Burren Hills, County Clare, which are pure limestone and 1,000 feet high (p. 513). Some fairly considerable areas containing coal-measures have survived in Southern Ireland; but only a few of these contain enough coal to justify mining. Moreover, the coal itself is anthracite, that is, it contains little hydrogen and cannot be used for all industrial purposes without some addition. There are also several not very extensive coal-fields in Northern Ireland in which the coal is bituminous, that is, ordinary coal rich in hydrogen. Their stratification does not coincide exactly with that of the southern coal deposits. But a similar washing away process did occur even here. This is shown by the fact that large fragments of coal, as well as sandstone and blue clay belonging to the same formation, are to be found on the surface of limestone valleys to the south-east of such a coal-field in the direction of Belturbet and Mohill. Large blocks of coal have been discovered by well-sinkers in this area of the drift; and in some cases the quantity of coal was so considerable that it was thought that deeper shafts must lead to a coal-bed. (Kane, The Industrial Resources of Ireland, 2nd edition, Dublin, 1845, p. 265.) It is obvious that Ireland s misfortune is of ancient origin; it begins directly after the carboniferous strata were deposited. A country whose coal deposits are eroded, placed near a larger country rich in coal, is condemned by nature to remain for a long time the farming country for the larger country when the latter is industrialised. That sentence, pronounced millions of years ago, was carried out in this century. We shall see later, moreover, how the English assisted nature by crushing almost every seed of Irish industry as soon as it appeared. More recent Secondary and Tertiary layers occur almost exclusively in the north-east; amongst these we are interested chiefly in the beds of red marl in the vicinity of Belfast, which contain almost pure rock-salt to a thickness of 200 feet (Jukes, p. 554), and the chalk overlaid with a layer of basalt which covers the whole of County Antrim. Generally speaking, there are no important geological developments in Ireland between the end of the Carboniferous Period and the Ice Age. It is known that after the Tertiary Epoch there was an era in which the low-lying lands of the medium latitudes of Europe were submerged by the sea, and in which such a low temperature prevailed in Europe that the valleys between the protruding island mountain tops were filled with glaciers which extended down to the sea. Icebergs used to separate themselves from these glaciers and carry rocks of all sizes which had been detached from the mountains, out to sea. When the ice melted, the rocks and other debris were deposited a process still daily occurring on coasts of the polar regions. During the Ice Age, Ireland too, with the exception of the mountain tops, was submerged by the sea. The degree of submergence may not have been the same everywhere, but an average of 1,000 feet below the present level can be accepted; the granite mountain chains south of Dublin must have been submerged by over 1,200 feet. If Ireland had been submerged by only 500 feet, only the mountain chains would have remained exposed. These would then have formed two semi-circular groups of islands around a wide strait extending from Dublin to Galway. A still greater submergence would have made these islands smaller and decreased their number, until, at a submergence of 2,000 feet, only the most extreme tips would have risen above the water. As the submersion slowly proceeded, the limestone plains and mountain slopes must have been swept clean of much of the older rock covering them; subsequently there followed the depositing of the drift peculiar to the Ice Age on the whole of the area covered by water. Pieces of rock eroded from the mountain islands and fine fragments of rock scraped away by the glaciers as they pushed their way slowly and powerfully through the valleys earth, sand, gravel, stones, rocks, worn smooth within the ice but sharp-edged above it all this was carried out to sea and gradually deposited on the sea-bed by icebergs which were detaching themselves from the shore. The layer formed in this way varies according to circumstances and contains loam (originating from argillaceous slate), sand (originating from quartz and granite), limestone gravel (derived from limestone formations), marl (where finely-crumbled limestone mixes with loam) or mixtures of all these components; but it always contains a mass of stones of all sizes, sometimes rounded, sometimes sharp, ranging up to colossal erratic boulders, which are commoner in Ireland than in the North-German Plain or between the Alps and the Jura. During the subsequent re-emergence of the land from the sea, this newly-formed surface was given roughly its present structure. In Ireland, little washing away appears to have taken place then; with few exceptions varying thicknesses of drift cover all the plains, extend into all the valleys, and are also often found high up on the mountain slopes. Limestone is the most frequently occurring stone in them, and for this reason the whole stratum is usually called limestone gravel here. Big blocks of limestone are also extensively strewn over all the lowlands, one or more in nearly every field; apart from limestone, a lot of other local rocks, especially granite, are naturally to be found near the mountains they originated from. From the northern side of Galway Bay granite appears commonly in the plain extending south-east as far as the Galty Mountains and more rarely as far as Mallow (County Cork). The north of the country is covered with drift to the same height above sea-level as the central plain; a similar deposit, originating from the local, mainly Silurian rocks, is to be found between the various more or less parallel mountain chains running through the south. This appears plentifully in Flesk and Laune valley near Killarney. The glacier tracks on the mountain slopes and valley bottoms are common and unmistakable, particularly in the south-west of Ireland. Only in Oberhasli and here and there in Sweden do I remember seeing more sharply-stamped ice-trails than in Killarney (in the Black Valley and the Gap of Dunloe). The emergence of the land during or after the Ice Age seems to have been so considerable that Britain was for a time connected by dry land not only with the Continent, but also with Ireland. At least this seems the only way the similarity between the fauna of these lands can be explained. Ireland has the following extinct large mammals in common with the Continent: the mammoth, the Irish giant stag, the cave-bear, a kind of reindeer, and so on. In fact, an emergence of less than 240 feet over the present level would be enough to connect Ireland with Scotland, and one of less than 360 feet would join Ireland and Wales with wide bridges of land. The fact that Ireland emerged to a higher level after the Ice Age than at present is proved by the underwater peat bogs with upright tree trunks and roots which occur all around the coast, and which are identical in every detail with the lowest layers of the neighbouring inland peat bogs. From an agricultural point of view, Ireland s soil is almost entirely formed from the drift of the Ice Age, which here, thanks to its slate and limestone origin, is not the barren sand with which the Scottish, Scandinavian and Finnish granites have covered such a large part of North Germany, but an extremely fertile, light loam. The variety in the rocks, whose decomposition contributed and is still contributing to this soil, provides it with a corresponding variety of the mineral elements required for vegetable life; and if one of these, say lime, is greatly lacking in the soil, plenty of pieces of limestone of all sizes are to be found everywhere quite apart from the underlying limestone bed so it can be added quite easily. When the well-known English agronomist, Arthur Young, toured Ireland in the 1770s, he did not know what amazed him more: the natural fertility of the soil or the barbaric manner in which the peasants cultivated it. A light, dry, soft, sandy, loam soil prevails where the land is good at all. In the Golden Vale of Tipperary and also elsewhere he found: Further: Further, near Castle Oliver, County Limerick, On the river Blackwater near Mallow, Young s judgement on the soil of Ireland is summarised in the following sentences: In 1808-10, Edward Wakefield, an Englishman likewise versed in agronomy, toured Ireland and recorded the result of his observations in a valuable work. [Edward Wakefield, An Account of Ireland, Statistical and Political, London, 1812, 2 vols.] His remarks are better-ordered, more extensive and fuller than those in Young s travel-book; on the whole, both agree. Wakefield found little disparity in the nature of the soil in Ireland on the whole. Sand occurs only on the coast (it is so seldom found inland that large quantities of sea sand are transported inland for improving the turf and loam soils); chalky soil is unknown (the chalk in Antrim is, as has already been mentioned, covered with a layer of basalt, the products of the decomposition of which produce a highly fertile soil. In England the chalky soils are the worst), . . . tenacious clays, such as those found in Oxfordshire, in some parts of Essex, and throughout High Suffolk, I could never meet with. ... The Irish call all loamy soils clay; there might be real clay in Ireland as well, but not on the surface as in several parts of England in any case. Limestone or limestone gravel is to be found everywhere. The former is a useful production, and is converted into a source of wealth that will always be employed with advantage. Mountains and peat bogs certainly reduce the fertile surface considerably. There is little fertile land in the north; yet even here there are highly luxuriant valleys in every county, and Wakefield unexpectedly found a highly fertile tract even in furthest Donegal amongst the wildest mountains. The extensive cultivation of flax in the north is in itself sufficient proof of fertility, as this plant does not thrive in poor soil. If a thinnish layer of heavy loam lies directly on limestone, the land is not suited to tillage and bears only a miserable crop of grain, but it makes excellent sheep-pastures. This improves it further by producing a thick grass mixed with white clover and. ... [There is an omission in the manuscript. According to Wakefield it is wild burnet"] (Vol. I, p. 80.) Dr. Beaufort [Beaufort, Revd. Dr., Memoir of a Map of Ireland, 1792, pp. 75-76. Quoted in Wakefield, Vol. I, p. 36.] states that there occur in the west, particularly in Mayo, many turloughs shallow depressions of different sizes, which fill with water in the winter, although not visibly connected with streams or rivers. In the summer this drains away through underground fissures in the limestone, leaving luxurious firm grazing-ground. The last observation, directed against Young, rests on a misunderstanding of Young s opinion, quoted above. Young does not say that Ireland s soil is more productive than England s, each taken in their present state of cultivation which is naturally far higher in England; Young merely states that the natural fertility of the soil is greater in Ireland than in England. This does not contradict Wakefield. After the last famine, in 1849, Sir.[The word Ministry appears above the Sir"] Robert Peel sent a Scottish agronomist, Mr. Caird, to Ireland to report on means of improving agriculture there. In a publication issued soon afterwards he said about the west of Ireland the worst stricken part of the country apart from the extreme north-west: Caird also confirms that County Westmeath consists of the finest pasture land. Of the region north of Lough Corrib (County Mayo) he writes: Finally we note a French authority [L once de Lavergne, Rural Economy of England, Scotland and Ireland. translated from the French, Edinburgh, 1855]: We see therefore that all authorities agree that Ireland s soil contains all the elements of fertility to an extraordinary degree. This, not only in its chemical ingredients but also in its structure. The two extremes of heavy impenetrable clay, completely impermeable, and loose sand, completely permeable, do not occur. But Ireland has another disadvantage. While the mountains are mainly along the coast, the watersheds between the inland river basins are mostly lowlying, and therefore the rivers are not capable of carrying all the rain water out to sea. Thus extensive peat bogs arise inland, especially on the watersheds. In the plain alone 1,576,000 acres are covered with peat bogs. These are largely depressions or troughs in the land, most of which were once shallow lake basins which were gradually overgrown with moss and marsh plants and were filled up with their decomposing remains. As with our north-German moors, their only use is for turf cutting. With the present system of agriculture cultivation can only gradually reclaim their edges. The soil in these former lake basins is mainly marl and its lime content (varying from 5 per cent to 90 per cent) is due to the shells of fresh-water mussels. Thus the material for their development into arable land exists within each of these peat bogs. Apart from this, most of them are rich in iron ore. Besides these low-lying peat bogs, there are 1,254,000 acres of mountain moor. These are the result of deforestation in a damp climate and are one of the peculiar beauties of the British Isles. Wherever flat or almost flat summits were deforested and this occurred extensively in the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century to provide the iron works with charcoal a layer of peat formed under the influence of rain and mist and gradually spread down the slopes where the conditions were favourable. Such moors cover the ridges of the mountain chain dividing Northern England from north to south almost as far as Derby; and are found in abundance wherever substantial mountain ranges are marked on the map of Ireland. Yet, the peat bogs of Ireland are by no means hopelessly lost to agriculture; on the contrary, in time we shall see what rich fruits some of these, and the two million hectares of the indifferent land contemptuously mentioned by Lavergne, can produce given correct management. Ireland s climate is determined by her position. The Gulf Stream and the prevailing south-west winds provide warmth and make for mild winters and cool summers. In the south-west the summer lasts far into October which, according to Wakefield (Vol. 1, p. 221), is there regarded as the best month for sea bathing. Frost is rare and of short duration, snow usually melts immediately on the low-lying land. Spring weather prevails throughout the winter in the inlets of Kerry and Cork, which are open to the south-west and protected from the north; here, and in certain other places, myrtle thrives in the open (Wakefield mentions a country-residence where it grows into trees 16 feet high and is used to make stable-brooms, Vol. 1, p. 55), and laurel, arbutus and other evergreen plants grow into substantial trees. In Wakefield s time, the peasants in the south were still leaving their potatoes in the open all winter and they had not been frost-bitten since 1740. On the other hand, Ireland also suffers the first powerful downpour of the heavy Atlantic rain clouds. Ireland s average rainfall is at least 35 inches, which is considerably more than England s average, yet is definitely lower than that of Lancashire and Cheshire and scarcely more than the average for the whole of the West of England. In spite of this the Irish climate is decidedly pleasanter than the English. The leaden sky which often causes days of continual drizzle in England is mostly replaced in Ireland by a continental April sky; the fresh sea-breezes bring on clouds quickly and unexpectedly, but drive them past equally quickly, if they do not come down immediately in sharp showers. And even when the rain lasts for days, as it does in late autumn, it does not have the chronic air it has in England. The weather, like the inhabitants, has a more acute character, it moves in sharper, more sudden contrasts; the sky is like an Irish woman s face: here also rain and sunshine succeed each other suddenly and unexpectedly and there is none of the grey English boredom. The Roman, Pomponius Mela, gives us the oldest report on the Irish climate (in De situ orbis) in the first century of our era: Coeli ad maturanda semina iniqui, verum adeo luxuriosa herbis non laetis modo sed etiam dulcibus! We find this part amongst others translated into modern English by Mr. Goldwin Smith, Professor of History formerly of Oxford and now in Cornell University, America. He reports that it is difficult to gather in the harvest of wheat in a large part of Ireland and continues: From Mela to Goldwin Smith and up to the present day, how often has this assertion been repeated since 1846, especially by a noisy chorus of Irish landowners that Ireland is condemned by her climate to provide not Irishmen with bread but Englishmen with meat and butter, and that the destiny of the Irish people is, therefore, to be brought over the ocean to make room in Ireland for cows and sheep! It can be seen that to establish the facts on the Irish climate is to unravel a topical political question. And indeed the climate only concerns us here insofar as it is important for agriculture. Rain measurements, at their present incomplete stage of observations, are only of secondary importance for our purpose; how much rain falls is not so important as how and when it falls. Here agronomical judgements are most important. Arthur Young considers that Ireland is considerably damper than England; this is the cause of the amazing grass-bearing qualities of the soil. He speaks of cases when turnip- and stubble-land, left unploughed, produced a rich harvest of hay in the next summer, a thing of which there is no example in England. He further mentions that the Irish wheat is much lighter than that grown in drier lands; weeds and grass spring up in abundance under even the best management, and the harvests are so wet and so troublesome to bring in that revenue suffers greatly. (Young s Tour, Vol. 2, p. 100) At the same time, however, he points out that the soil in Ireland counteracts this dampness of the climate. It is generally stony, and for this reason lets the water through more easily. The limestone is known to be full of cracks and fissures which let the excess water through quickly. Wakefield devotes to the climate a very comprehensive chapter in which he summarises all the earlier observations up to his own time. Dr. Boate (Natural History of Ireland, 1645) describes the winters as mild, with three or four periods of frost every year, each of which usually lasts for only two or three days; the Liffey in Dublin freezes over scarcely once in 10 to 12 years. March is usually dry and fine, but then the weather becomes rainy; there are seldom more than two or three consecutive dry days in summer; and in the late autumn it is fine again. Very dry summers are rare, and dearth never occurs because of drought, but mostly because of too much rain. It seldom snows on the plains, so cattle remain in the open all the year round. Yet years of heavy snow do occur, as in 1635, when the people had difficulty in providing shelter for the cattle. (Wakefield, Vol. 1, p. 216 and following.) In the beginning of the last century, Dr. Rutty (Natural History of the County of Dublin) made accurate meteorological observations which stretched over 50 years, from 1716 to 1765. During this whole period the proportion of south and west winds to north and east winds was 73:37 (10,878 south and west against 6,329 north and east). Prevailing winds were west and south-west, then came north-west and south-east, and most rarely north-east and east. In summer, autumn and winter west and south-west prevail. East is most frequent in spring and summer, when it occurs twice as frequently as in autumn and winter; north-east is most frequent in spring when, likewise, it is twice as frequent as in autumn and winter. As a result of this, the temperatures are more even, the winters milder and the summers cooler than in London, while on the other hand the air is damper. Even in summer, salt, sugar, flour, etc., soak dampness out of the air, and corn must be kiln-dried, a practice unknown in some parts of England. (Wakefield, Vol. I. pp. 172-81.) Rutty could at that time only compare Irish climate with that in London, which, as in all Eastern England, is drier, to be sure. If material on Western and especially North-Western England had been at his disposal, he would have found that his description of the Irish climate distribution of winds over the year, wet summers, in which sugar, salt, etc., are ruined in unheated rooms fits this area completely, except that Western England is colder in winter. Rutty also kept data on the meteorological aspect of the seasons. In the fifty years referred to, there were 16 cold, late or too dry springs: a little more than in London; further, 22 hot and dry, 24 wet, and 4 changeable summers: a little damper than in London, where the number of dry and wet summers is equal; further, 16 fine, 12 wet, 22 changeable autumns: again a little damper and more changeable than in London; and 13 frosty, 14 wet and 23 mild winters: which is considerably damper and milder than in London. According to measurements made in the Botanical Gardens in Dublin, the following total amount of rain fell each month in the ten years between 1802 and 1811 (in inches): December: 27.31; July: 24.15; November: 23.49; August: 22.47; September: 22.27; January: 21.67; October: 20.12; May: 19.50; March: 14.69; April: 13.54; February: 12.32; June: 12.07. Average for the year: 23.36 (Wakefield, Vol. I, p. 191). These ten years were unusually dry. Kane (Industrial Resources, p. 73) gives an average of 30.87 inches for 6 years in Dublin and Symons (English Rainfall) puts it at 29.79 inches for 1860-62. Because of the fleeting nature of local showers in Ireland, such measurements mean very little unless they extend over many years and are undertaken at many stations. This is proved among other things by the fact that, of the three stations measuring rainfall in Dublin in 1862, the first recorded 24.63, the second 28.04, and the third 30.18 inches as the average. The average amount of rainfall recorded by 12 stations in different parts of Ireland in the years 1860-62, was not quite 39 inches according to Symons (individual averages varied from 25.45 to 51.44 inches). In his book about Ireland s climate, Dr. Patterson says: In Londonderry the number of rain-free days each year between 1791 and 1802 varied from 113 to 148 the average for the period was over 126. In Belfast the same average emerged. In Dublin it varied from 168 to 205, average 179 (Patterson, ibid.). According to Wakefield, Irish harvests fall as follows: wheat mostly in September, more rarely in August, occasionally in October; barley usually a little later than wheat; and oats approximately a week after barley, therefore usually in October. After considerable research, Wakefield concluded that not nearly enough material existed for a scientific description of the Irish climate, but nowhere does he state that it provides a serious obstacle to the cultivation of corn. In fact he finds, as we shall see, that the losses incurred during wet harvest times are due to entirely different causes, and states so quite explicitly: At that time, of course 1812 England was at war with the whole of Europe and America, and it was much more difficult to import corn corn was the primary need. Now America, Rumania, Russia and Germany deliver sufficient corn, and the question now is rather one of cheap meat. And because of this Ireland s climate is no longer suited to tillage. Ireland has grown corn since ancient times. In her oldest laws, recorded long before the arrival of Englishmen, the sack of wheat is already a definite measurement of value. Fixed quantities of wheat, malt-barley and oatmeal are quite regularly mentioned in the tributes of inferiors to tribal and other chiefs [Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland Senchus Mor. Two volumes. Dublin, published in 1865 and 1869. See Vol. 2. The value of one sack of wheat was 1 screpall (denarius) or 20-24 grains of silver. The value of the screpall is fixed by Dr. Petrie in Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, anterior to the Anglo-Norman Invasion, Dublin, 1845.] After the English invasion, the cultivation of corn diminished because of the continual battles, without ever ceasing completely; it increased between 1660 and 1725 and decreased again from 1725 to about 1780; more corn as well as a greater quantity of potatoes was again sown between 1780 and 1846, and since then they have both given way to the steadily advancing cattle pastures. If Ireland were not suited to the cultivation of corn, would it have been grown for over a thousand years? Of course there are regions, in which because of the proximity of mountains the rainfall is always greater, and which are less suited to wheat-growing notably in the south and west. Besides the good years, a series of wet summers will often occur there, as between 1860-62, which do great harm to the wheat. Wheat, however, is not Ireland s principal grain, and Wakefield even complains that too little of it is grown for lack of a market the only one being the nearest mill. For the most part, barley is grown only for the secret distilleries (secret because of taxation). Ireland s principal grain was and still is oats. In 1810 no less than 10 times as much oats was grown as of all the other sorts of corn put together. As oats are harvested after wheat and barley, the harvest is usually in late September or October when the weather is usually fine, especially in the south. And in any case, oats can take a considerable amount of rain. We have already seen that Ireland s climate, as far as the amount and distribution of rain throughout the year is concerned, corresponds almost entirely with that of the North-West of England. The rainfall is much greater in the mountains of Cumberland, Westmorland, and North Lancashire (in Coniston 96.03, in Windermere 75.02 inches, average in the years 1860-62), than in certain stations in Ireland known to me, and yet hay is made and oats are grown there. In the same years the rainfall varied in South Lancashire from 25.11 in Liverpool to 59.13 in Bolton, the average being about 40 inches; in Cheshire it varied from 33.02 to 43.40 inches, the average being approximately 37 inches. In Ireland, as we saw, it was not quite 39 inches in the same years. (All figures from Symons.) In both counties corn of all kinds, and in particular wheat, is cultivated; Cheshire carried on mainly cattle-rearing and dairy farming until the last epidemic of cattle-plague, but since most of the cattle perished the climate suddenly became quite admirably suited for wheat-growing. If there had been an epidemic of cattle-plague in Ireland causing devastation similar to that in Cheshire, instead of preaching that Ireland s natural occupation is cattle-raising, they would point to the place in Wakefield which says that Ireland is destined to be England s granary. If one looks at the matter impartially and without being misled by the cries of the interested parties, the Irish landowners and the English bourgeois, one finds that Ireland, like all other places, has some parts which because of soil and climate are more suited to cattle-rearing, and others to tillage, and still others the vast majority which are suited to both. Compared with England, Ireland is more suited to cattle-rearing on the whole; but if England is compared with France, she too is more suited to cattle-rearing. Are we to conclude that the whole of England should be transformed into cattle pastures, and the whole agricultural population be sent into the factory towns or to America except for a few herdsmen to make room for cattle, which are to be exported to France in exchange for silk and wine? But that is exactly what the Irish landowners who want to put up their rents and the English bourgeoisie who want to decrease wages demand for Ireland: Goldwin Smith has said so plainly enough. And yet the social revolution inherent in this transformation from tillage to cattle-rearing would be far greater in Ireland than in England. In England, where large-scale agriculture prevails and where agricultural labourers have already been replaced by machinery to a large extent, it would mean the transplantation of at most one million; in Ireland, where small and even cottage-farming prevails, it would mean the transplantation of four million: the extermination of the Irish people. It can be seen that even the facts of nature become points of national controversy between England and Ireland. It can also be seen, however, how the public opinion of the ruling class in England and it is only this that is generally known on the Continent changes with the fashion and in its own interests. Today England needs grain quickly and dependably Ireland is just perfect for wheat-growing. Tomorrow England needs meat Ireland is only fit for cattle pastures. The existence of five million Irish is in itself a smack in the eye to all the laws of political economy, they have to get out but whereto is their worry!

History of Ireland. Frederick Engels 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/history-ireland/ch01.htm

Instead there still exists an abundant native literature, in spite of the many Irish manuscripts lost in the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It includes poems, grammars, glossaries, annals and other historical writings and law-books. With very few exceptions, however, this whole literature, which embraces the period at least from the eighth to the seventeenth centuries, exists only in manuscript. For the Irish language printing has existed only for a few years only from the time when the language began to die out. Of this rich material, therefore, only a small part is available. Amongst the most important of these annals are those of Abbot Tigernach (died 1088), those of Ulster, and above all, those of the Four Masters. These last were collected in 1632-36 in a monastery in Donegal under the direction of Michael O'Clery, a Franciscan monk, who was helped by three other Seanchaidhes (antiquarians), from materials which now are almost all lost. They were published in 1856 from the original Donegal manuscript which still exists, having been edited and provided with an English translation by O'Donovan. The earlier editions by Dr. Charles O'Conor (the first part of the Four Masters, and the Annals of Ulster) are untrustworthy in text and translation. The beginning of most of these annals presents the mythical prehistory of Ireland. Its base was formed by old folk legends, which were spun out endlessly by poets in the 9th and 10th centuries and were then brought into suitable chronological order by the monk-chroniclers. The Annals of the Four Masters begins with the year of the world 2242, when Caesair, a granddaughter of Noah, landed in Ireland forty days before the Flood; other annals have the ancestors of the Scots, the last immigrants to Ireland, descend in direct line from Japheth and bring them into connection with Moses, the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, as the German chroniclers of the Middle Ages connected the ancestors of the Germans with Troy, Aeneas or Alexander the Great. The Four Masters devote only a few pages to this legend (in which the only valuable element, the original folk-legend, is not distinguishable even now); the Annals of Ulster leave it out altogether; and Tigernach, with a critical boldness wonderful for his time, explains that all the written records of the Scots before King Cimbaoth (approximately 300 B.C.) are uncertain. But when new national life awoke in Ireland at the end of the last century, and with it new interest in Irish literature and history, just these monks legends were counted to be their most valuable constituent. With true Celtic enthusiasm and specifically Irish naivete, belief in these stories was declared an intrinsic part of national patriotism, and this offered the supercunning world of English scholarship whose own efforts in the field of philological and historical criticism are gloriously enough well known to the rest of the world the desired pretext for throwing everything Irish aside as arrant nonsense. Since the thirties of this century a far more critical spirit has come into being in Ireland, especially through Petrie and O'Donovan. Petrie s already-mentioned researches prove that the most complete agreement exists between the oldest surviving inscriptions, which date from the 6th and 7th centuries, and the annals, and O'Donovan is of the opinion that these begin to report historical facts as early as the second and third centuries of our era. It makes little difference to us whether the credibility of the annals begins several hundred years earlier or later since, unfortunately, during that period they are almost wholly fruitless for our purpose. They contain short, dry notices of deaths, accessions to the throne, wars, battles, earthquakes, plagues, Scandinavian raiding expeditions, but little that has reference to the social life of the people. If the whole juridical literature of Ireland were published, the annals would acquire a completely different meaning; many a dry notice would obtain new life through explanations found in the law-books. Almost all of these law-books, which are very numerous, still await the time when they will see the light of day. On the insistence of several Irish antiquarians, the English Government agreed in 1852 to appoint a commission for publishing the ancient laws and institutions of Ireland. But the commission consisted of three lords (who are never far away when there is state money to be spent), three lawyers of the highest rank, three Protestant clergymen, and Dr. Petrie and an official who is the chief surveyor in Ireland. Of these gentlemen only Dr. Petrie and two clergymen, Dr. Graves (now Protestant Bishop of Limerick) and Dr. Todd, could claim to understand anything at all about the tasks of the commission, and of these three Petrie and Todd have since died. The commission was instructed to arrange the transcription, translation and publication of the legal content of the ancient Irish manuscripts, and to employ the necessary , people for that purpose. It employed the two best people that were to be had, Dr. O'Donovan and Professor O'Curry, who copied, and made a rough translation of, a large number of manuscripts; both died, however, before anything was ready for publication. Their successors, Dr. Hancock and Professor O'Mahony, then took up the work, so that up to the present the two volumes already cited, containing the Senchus Mor, have appeared. According to the publishers acknowledgment only two of the members of the commission, Graves and Todd, have taken part in the work, through some annotations to the proofs. Sir Th. Larcom, a member of the commission, placed the original maps of the survey of Ireland at the disposal of the publishers for the verification of place names. Dr. Petrie soon died, and the other gentlemen confined their activities to drawing their salaries conscientiously for 18 years. That is how public works are carried out in England, and even more so in English-ruled Ireland. Without jobbery, they cannot begin. No public interest may be satisfied without a pretty sum or some fat sinecures being siphoned off for lords and government proteges. With the money that the wholly superfluous commission has wasted the entire unpublished historical literature could have been published in Germany and better. The Senchus Mor has until now been our main source for information about conditions in ancient Ireland. It is a collection of ancient legal decisions which, according to the later composed introduction, was compiled on the orders of St. Patrick, and with his assistance brought into harmony with Christianity, rapidly spreading in Ireland. The High King of Ireland, Laeghaire (428-458, according to the Annals of the Four Masters), the Vice-Kings, Corc of Munster and Daire, probably a prince of Ulster, and also three bishops: St. Patrick, St. Benignus and St. Cairnech, and three lawyers: Dubthach, Fergus and Rossa, are supposed to have formed the commission which compiled the book and there is no doubt that they did their work more cheaply than the present commission, who only had to publish it. The Four Masters give 438 as the year in which the book was written. The text itself is evidently based on very ancient heathen materials. The oldest legal formulas in it are written in verse with a precise metre and the so-called consonance, a kind of alliteration or rather consonant-assonance, which is peculiar to Irish poetry and frequently goes over to full rhyme. As it is certain that old Irish law-books were translated in the fourteenth century from the so-called Fenian dialect (Berla Feini), the language of the fifth century, into the then current Irish (Introduction (Vol. I), p. xxxvi and following) it emerges that in the Senchus Mor too the metre has been more or less smoothed out in places; but it appears often enough along with occasional rhymes and marked consonance to give the text a definite rhythmical cadence. It is generally sufficient to read the translation in order to find out the verse forms. But then there are also throughout it, especially in the latter half, numerous pieces of undoubted prose; and, whereas the verse is certainly very ancient and has been handed down by tradition, these prose insertions seem to originate with the compilers of the book. At any rate, the Senchus Mor is quoted frequently in the glossary composed in the ninth or tenth century, and attributed to the King and Bishop of Cashel, Cormac, and it was certainly written long before the English invasion. All the manuscripts (the oldest of which appears to date from the beginning of the 14th century or earlier) contain a series of mostly concordant annotations and longer commenting notes on this text. The annotations are in the spirit of old glossaries; quibbles take the place of etymology and the explanation of words, and comments are of varying quality, being often badly distorted or largely incomprehensible, at least without knowledge of the rest of the law-books. The age of the annotations and comments is uncertain. Most of them, however, probably date from after the English invasion. As at the same time they show only a very few traces of developments in the law outside the text itself, and these are only a more precise establishment of details, the greater part, which is purely explanatory, can certainly also be used with some discretion as a source concerning earlier times. The Senchus Mor contains: From this we obtain much valuable information on the social life of that time, but, as long as many of the expressions are unexplained and the rest of the manuscripts is not published, much remains dark. In addition to literature, the surviving architectural monuments, churches, round towers, fortifications and inscriptions also enlighten us about the condition of the people before the arrival of the English. From foreign sources we need only mention a few passages about Ireland in the Scandinavian sagas and the life of St. Malachy by St. Bernard, which are not fruitful sources, and then come immediately to the first Englishman to write about Ireland from his own experience. Sylvester Gerald Barry, known as Giraldus Cambrensis, Archdeacon of Brecknock, was a grandchild of the amorous Nesta, daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, Prince of South Wales, and mistress of Henry I of England and the ancestor of almost all the Norman leaders who took part in the first conquest of Ireland. In 1185 he went with John (later Lackland ) to Ireland and in the following years wrote, first, the Topographia Hibernica, a description of the land and the inhabitants, and then the Hibernia Expugnata, a highly-coloured history of the first invasion. It is mainly the first work which concerns us here. Written in highly pretentious Latin and filled with the wildest belief in miracles and with all the church and national prejudices of the time and the race of its vain author, the book is nevertheless of great importance as the first at all detailed report by a foreigner. From here on, Anglo-Norman sources about Ireland naturally become more abundant; however, little knowledge is gained about the social circumstances of the part of the island that remained independent, and it is from this that conclusions regarding ancient conditions could be drawn. It is only towards the end of the 16th century, when Ireland as a whole was first systematically subjugated, that we find more detailed reports about the actual living conditions of the Irish people, and these naturally contain a strong English bias. We shall find later that, in the course. of the 400 years which elapsed since the first invasion, the condition of the people changed little, and not for the better. But, precisely because of this, these newer writings Hanmer, Campion, Spenser, Davies, Camden, Moryson and others which we shall have to consult frequently, are one of our main sources of information on a period 500 years earlier, and a welcome and indispensable supplement to the poor original sources. The mythical prehistory of Ireland tells of a series of immigrations which took place one after the other and mostly ended with the subduing of the island by the new immigrants. The three last ones are: that of the Firbolgs, that of the Tuatha-de-Dananns, and that of the Milesians or Scots, the last supposed to have come from Spain. Popular writing of history changed Firbolgs (fir Irish fear, Latin vir, Gothic vair man) into Belgian without further ado; the Tuatha-de-Dananns (tuatha Irish people, tract of land, Gothic thiuda) into Greek Danai or German Danes as they felt the need. O'Donovan is of the opinion that something historical lies at the basis of at least the immigrations named above. According to the annals there occurred in the year 10 A.D. an insurrection of the aitheach tuatha (which Lynch, who is a good judge of the old language, translated in the seventeenth century as: plebeiorum hominum gens), that is, a plebeian revolution, in which the whole of the nobility (saorchlann) was slain. This points to the dominion of Scottish conquerors over the older inhabitants. O'Donovan draws the conclusion from the folk-tales that the Tuatha-de-Dananns, who were later transformed in folk-lore into elves of the mountain forest, survived up to the 2nd or 3rd century of our era in isolated mountain areas. There is no doubt that the Irish were a mixed people even before large numbers of English settled among them. As early as the twelfth century, the predominant type was fair-haired as it still is. Giraldus (Top. Hib. III, 26) says of two strangers, that they had long yellow hair like the Irish. But there are also even now, especially in the west, two quite different types of black-haired people. The one is tall and well-built with fine facial features and curly hair, people whom one thinks that one has already met in the Italian Alps or Lombardy; this type occurs most frequently in the south-west. The other, thickset and short in build, with coarse, lank, black hair and flattened, almost negroid faces, is more frequent in Connaught. Huxley attributes this darkhaired element in the originally light-haired Celtic population to an Iberian (that is, Basque) admixture, which would be correct in part at least. However, at the time when the Irish come clearly into the light of history, they have become a homogeneous people with Celtic speech and we do not find anywhere any other foreign elements, apart from the slaves acquired by conquest or barter, who were mostly Anglo-Saxons. The reports of the classical writers of antiquity about that people do not sound very flattering. Diodorus recounts that those Britons who inhabit the island called Iris (or Irin? it is in the accusative, Irin) eat people. Strabo gives a more detailed report: The patriotic Irish historians have been more than a little indignant over this alleged calumny. It was reserved to more recent investigation to prove that cannibalism, and especially the devouring of parents, was a stage in the development of probably all nations. Perhaps it will be a consolation to the Irish to know that the ancestors of the present Berliners were still honouring this custom a full thousand years later: And we shall see the consuming of human flesh reoccur more than once under English rule. As far as the phanerogamy (to use an expression of Fourier s), which the Irish are reproached with, is concerned: such things occurred amongst all the barbarous peoples, and much more amongst the quite unusually gallant Celts. It is interesting to note that even then the island carried the present native name: Iris, Irin and Jerne are identical with Eire and Erinn; and how even Ptolemy already knew the present name of the capital, Dublin, Eblana (with the right accent Eblana). This is all the more noteworthy since the Irish Celts have since ancient times given this city another name, Athcliath, and for them Duibhlinn the black pool is the name of a place on the River Liffey. Moreover we also find the following passage in Pliny s Historiae Naturalis, IV, 16: And later Solinus says of the Irish: In the year 1810, Wakefield found that on the whole west coast of Ireland no other boats occurred except ones which consisted of a wooden frame covered over with a horse- or ox-hide. The shape of these boats varies according to the district, but they are all distinguished by their extraordinary lightness, so that mishaps rarely occur on them. Naturally they are of no use on the open sea, for which reason fishing can only take place in the creeks and amongst the islands. Wakefield saw these boats in Malbay, County Clare. They were 15 feet long, 5 feet wide and 2 feet deep. Two cowhides with the hair on the inside and tarred on the outside were used for one of these, and they were arranged for two rowers. Such a boat cost about 30 shillings. (Wakefield, Vol. 2, p. 97.) Instead of woven willows a wooden frame! What an advance in 1,800 years and after nearly 700 years of the civilising influence of the foremost maritime nation in the world! As for the rest, several signs of progress can be seen. Under King Cormac Ulfadha, who was placed on the throne in the second half of the third century, his son-in-law, Finn McCumhal, is said to have reorganised the Irish militia the Fianna Eirionn [Feini, Fenier, is the name given to the Irish nation throughout the Senchus Mor. Feinechus, Fenchus, Law of the Fenians, often stands for the Senchus or for another lost law-book. Feine, grad feine also designates the plebs, the lowest free class of people] probably on the lines of the Roman legion with differentiation between light troops and troops of the line; all the later Irish armies on which we have detailed information have the following categories of troops: the kerne light troops and the galloglas heavy troops or troops of the line. Finn s heroic deeds are celebrated in many old songs, some of which still exist; these and perhaps a few Scottish-Gaelic traditions form the basis of Macpherson s Ossian (Irish Oisin, son of Finn), in which Finn appears as Fingal and the scene is transferred to Scotland. In Irish folk-lore Finn lives on as Finn Mac-Caul, a giant, to whom some wonderful feat of strength is ascribed in almost every locality of the island. Christianity must have penetrated Ireland quite early, at least the east coast of it. Otherwise the fact that so many Irishmen played an important part in Church-history even long before Patrick cannot be explained. Pelagius the Heretic is usually taken to be a Welsh monk from Bangor; but there was also an ancient Irish monastery, Bangor, or rather Banchor at Carrickfergus. That he comes from the Irish monastery is proved by Hieronymus, who describes him as being stupid and heavy with Scottish gruel ( scotorum pultibus praegravatus ). This is the first mention of Irish oatmeal gruel (Irish lite, Anglo-lrish stirabout), which even then, before the introduction of potatoes, was the staple food of the Irish people and after that continued to be so alongside with the latter. Pelagius s chief followers were Celest us and Albinus, also Scots, that is, Irishmen. According to Gennadius, Celestius wrote three detailed letters to his parents from the monastery, and from them it can be seen that alphabetical writing was known in Ireland in the fourth century. The Irish people are called Scots and the land Scotia in all the writings of the early Middle Ages; we find this term used by Claudianus, Isidorus, Beda, the geographer of Ravenna, Eginhard and even by Alfred the Great: Hibernia, which we call Scotland ( lgbernia the ve Scotland hatadh ). The present Scotland was called Caledonia by foreigners and Alba, Albania by the inhabitants; the transfer of the name Scotia, Scotland, to the northern area of the eastern isle did not occur until the eleventh century. The first substantial emigration of Irish Scots to Alba is taken to have been in the middle of the third century; Ammianus Marcellinus already knows them there in the year 360. The emigrants used the shortest sea-route, from Antrim to the peninsula of Kintyre; Nennius explicitly says that the Britons, who then occupied all the Scottish lowlands up to the Clyde and Forth, were attacked by the Scots from the west, by the Picts from the north. Further, the seventh of the ancient Welsh historical Triads reports that the gwyddyl ffichti (see below) came to Alba over the Norse Sea (Mor Llychlin) and settled on the coast. Incidentally, the fact that the sea between Scotland and the Hebrides is called the Norse Sea shows that this Triad was written after the Norse conquest of the Hebrides. Large numbers of Scots came over again at about the year 500, and they gradually formed a kingdom, independent of both Ireland and the Picts. They finally subdued the Picts in the ninth century under Kenneth MacAlpin and created the state to which the name Scotland, Scotia was transferred, probably first by the Norsemen about 150 years later. Invasions of Wales by the gwyddyl ffichti or Gaelic Picts are mentioned in ancient Welsh sources (Nennius, the Triads) of the fifth and sixth centuries. These are generally accepted as being invasions of Irish Scots. Gwyddyl is the Welsh form of gavidheal, as the Irish call themselves. The origin of the term Picts can be investigated by someone else. Patricius (Irish Patrick, Patraic, as the Celts always pronounce their c as k in the Ancient Roman way) brought Christianity to dominance in the second quarter of the fifth century without any violent convulsions. Trade with Britain, which had been of long standing, also became livelier at this time; architects and building workers came over and the Irish learned from them to build with mortar, while up to then they had only known dry-stone building. As mortar building occurs between the seventh and twelfth centuries, and then only in church buildings, that is proof enough that its introduction is connected with that of Christianity, and further, that from then on the clergy, as the representative of foreign culture, severed itself completely from the people in its intellectual development. Whilst the people made no, or only extremely slow, social advances, there soon developed amongst the clergy a literary learning which was extraordinary for the time and which, in accordance with the custom then, manifested itself mostly in zeal for converting heathens and founding monasteries. Columba converted the British Scots and the Picts; Gallus (founder of St. Gallen) and Fridolin the Allemanni, Kilian the Franks on the Main, Virgilius the city of Salzburg. All five were Irish. The Anglo-Saxons were also converted to Christianity mainly by Irish missionaries. Furthermore, Ireland was known throughout Europe as a nursery of learning, so much so that Charlemagne summoned an Irish monk, Albinus, to teach at Pavia, where another Irishman, Dungal, followed him later. The most important of the many Irish scholars, who were famous at that time but are now mostly forgotten, was the Father, or as Erdmann calls him, the Carolus Magnus [Charles the Great] of philosophy in the Middle Ages-Johannes Scotus Erigena. Hegel says of him, Real philosophy began first with him." He alone understood Greek in Western Europe in the ninth century, and by his translation of the writings attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, he restored the link with the last branch of the old philosophy, the Alexandrian Neoplatonic school. His teaching was very bold for the time. He denied the eternity of damnation, even for the devil, and brushed close to Pantheism. Contemporary orthodoxy, therefore, did not fail to slander him. It took a full two hundred years before the branch of learning founded by Erigena was developed by Anselm of Canterbury. Before this development of culture could have an effect on the people, it was interrupted by the raids of the Norsemen. The raids, which form the main staple product of Scandinavian, and particularly Danish, patriotism, occurred too late, and the nations from which they originated were too small for them to result in conquest, colonisation, and the forming of states on a large scale as had been the case with the earlier invasions of the Germans. Their advantage which they bequeathed on historical development is infinitesimal in comparison with the immense and fruitless (even for the Scandinavians themselves) disturbances they caused. Ireland was far from being inhabited by a single nation at the end of the eighth century. Supreme royal power over the whole island existed only in appearance, and by no means always at that. The provincial kings, whose number and territories were continually changing, fought amongst themselves, and the smaller territorial princes likewise carried on their private feuds. On the whole, however, these internal wars seem to have been governed by certain customs which held the ravages within definite limits, so that the country did not suffer too much. But this was not to last. In 795, a few years after the English had been first raided by the same plundering nation, Norsemen landed on the Isle of Rathlin, off the coast of Antrim, and burnt everything down; in 798, they landed near Dublin, and after this they are mentioned nearly every year in the annals as heathens, foreigners, pirates, and never without additional reports of the losccadh (burning down) of one or more places. Their colonies on the Orkneys, Shetlands and Hebrides (Southern Isles, Sudhreyjar in the old Norse sagas) served them as operational bases against Ireland, and against what was later known as Scotland, and against England. In the middle of the ninth century, they were in possession of Dublin, [the assertion of Snorri in the Haraldsaga, that Harald Harfagr s sons, Thorgils and Frodi, were the first of the Norsemen to occupy Dublin that is, at least 50 years later than stated is in direct contradiction with all Irish accounts which are unimpeachable for this period. Evidently Snorri is confusing Harald Harfagr s son Thorgils with the Thorgils (Turgesius) mentioned later] which, according to Giraldus, they rebuilt for the first time into a proper city. He also attributes the building of Limerick and Waterford to them. The name Waterford is only a nonsensical anglicisation of the ancient Norse Vedhrafi rdhr, which means either storm-bay [Welterf hrde] or ram-bay [Widderbucht]. Naturally, as soon as the Norsemen settled down in the land, their prime necessity was to have fortified harbour-towns. The population of these long remained Scandinavian, but in the twelfth century it had long since assimilated Irish speech and customs. The quarrelling of the Irish princes amongst themselves greatly simplified pillage and settlement for the Norsemen, and even the temporary conquest of the whole island. The extent to which the Scandinavians considered Ireland as one of their regular pillage grounds is shown by the so-called death-song of Ragnar Lodbr k, the Kr kum l, composed about the year 1000 in the snaketower of King Ella of Northumberland. In this song all the ancient pagan savagery is massed together, as if for the last time, and under the pretext of celebrating King Ragnar s heroic deeds in song, all the Nordic peoples raids in their own lands, on coasts from Dunamunde to Flanders, Scotland (here already called Skotland, perhaps for the first time) and Ireland are briefly pictured. About Ireland is said: By the first half of the ninth century, a Norse Viking Thorgils, called Turgesius by the Irish, had succeeded in submitting all Ireland to his rule. But, with fits death in 844, his kingdom fell apart, and the Norsemen were driven out. The invasions and battles continued with varying success. Finally, at the beginning of the eleventh century, Ireland s national hero, Brian Borumha, originally King of only a part of Munster, gained the kingship of all Ireland and gave the decisive battle to the concentrated force of the invading Norsemen on the 23rd April (Good Friday), 1014, at Clontarf, close to Dublin, as a result of which the power of the invaders was broken forever. The Norsemen who had settled in Ireland, and on whom Leinster was dependent (the King of Leinster, Maolmordha, had come to the throne in 999 with their help and was maintained there by it), had sent messengers to the Hebrides, the Orkneys, Denmark and Norway asking for reinforcements, in anticipation of the impending decisive battle. Help came to them in large numbers. The Ni lssaga recounts how Jarl Sigurd Laudrisson armed himself for the departure on the Orkneys, and how Thorstein Siduhallsson, Hrafn the Red and Erlinger of Straumey went with him, and how he arrived in Dublin (Durflin) with all his army on Palm Sunday. There are two versions of the battle itself, that of the Irish annals and the Scandinavian one of the Nialssaga. According to the latter: When the battle began Brodhir was driven into a wood by Ulf Hraeda where he found safety. Jarl Sigurd had a hard struggle against Kerthialfadh, who fought his way to the flag and slew the flag-bearer as well as the next man who seized the flag; then all refused to carry the flag and Jarl Sigurd took the flag from the staff and hid it in his clothing. Soon after he was pierced by a spear, and with this his part of the army appears to have been defeated. Meanwhile Ospak attacked the Norsemen in the rear and defeated Sigtrygg s wing after a hard fought battle. Brodhir now saw from his hiding-place that Brian s army was pursuing those who fled from the battle and that few people remained at the shield-burg. Then he ran out of the wood, broke through the shield-burg and slew the King. (Brian, who was 88, was obviously not capable of joining in the battle and had remained in the camp.) But the pursuers returned, surrounded Brodhir and seized him alive. According to the Annals of Inisfallen the Norse army was divided into three sections. The first consisted of the Dublin Norsemen and 1,000 Norwegian volunteers, who all wore long shirts of mail. The second was made up of the Irish auxiliary forces from Leinster under King Maolmordha. The third consisted of reinforcements from the Islands and Scandinavia under Bruadhair, the commander of the fleet that had brought them, and Lodar, the Jarl of the Orkneys. Against these Brian also placed his troops in three sections; but the names of the leaders given here do not correspond with those given in the Nialssaga, and the account of the battle is insignificant. The following account, given in the Four Masters, is shorter and clearer: The Ni lssaga was written in Iceland approximately 100 years after the battle; the Irish annals are based, at least in part, on contemporary information. The two are completely independent of each other. Yet not only do they correspond in all the main points, but they also complete each other. We can only find out who Brodhir and Sigtrygg were from the Irish annals. Sigurd Laudrisson is the name of Sichfrith, Lodar s son. Sichfrith is in fact the correct Anglo-Saxon form of the ancient Norse name, Sigurd. In Ireland, Scandinavian names appear on coins as well as in the annals mainly in their Anglo-Saxon forms, not in the ancient Norse. In the Ni lssaga the names of Brian s generals are adapted for easier pronunciation by the Scandinavians. One of the names, Ulf Hraeda, is, in fact, ancient Norse, but it would be risky as some do to conclude from this that Brian had Norsemen in his army too. Ospak and Kerthialfadh appear to be Celtic names; the latter might be a distortion of the Toirdhealbhach mentioned in the Four Masters. The date of the battle given as the Friday after Palm Sunday in the one, and as the Friday before Easter in the other is the same in both, as is also the place of the battle. Although this is given as Kantaraburg (otherwise Canterbury) in the Ni lssaga, it is also explicitly said to be close to the gates of Dublin. The course of the battle is reported more precisely in the Four Masters: The Norsemen attacked Brian s army on the Plain of Clontarf. From there they were thrown back beyond the Tolka, a little stream near the northern part of Dublin, towards the city. Both report that Brodhir slew King Brian, but more detailed accounts are given only in the Norse source. It can be seen that our reports on this battle are quite informative and authentic, considering the barbarity of that time. There are not many eleventh-century battles on which such reliable and corroborating accounts are available from both sides. This does not prevent Professor Goldwin Smith from describing it as a shadowy conflict (Ir. His., p. 48). Certainly, the most robust facts quite often take on a shadowy form in our Professor s head. After their defeat at Clontarf, the Norse raids became less frequent and less dangerous. The Dublin Norsemen soon came under the domination of the neighbouring Irish princes, and, after one or two generations, were assimilated by the native population . The only compensation the Irish got for the devastation caused by the Scandinavians was three or four cities and the beginnings of a trading bourgeoisie. The further back we go into history, the more the characteristics distinguishing different peoples of the same race disappear. This is partly because of the nature of the sources, which in the measure in which they are older become thinner and contain only the most essential information, and partly because of the development of the peoples themselves. The less remote the individual branches are from the original stock, the nearer they are to each other and the more they resemble each other. Jacob Grimm has always quite correctly treated the information given by Roman historians, who described the War of the Cimbri, Adam of Bremen and Saxo Grammaticus, all the literary written records from Beowulf and Hildebrandslied to the Eddas and the sagas, all the books of law from the Leges barbarorum to the ancient Danish and ancient Swedish laws and the old Germanic judicial procedures as equally valuable sources of information on the German national character, customs and legal conditions. A specific characteristic may be of purely local significance, but the character reflected in it is common to the whole race; and the older the sources used, the more local differences disappear. just as the Scandinavians and the Germans differed less in the seventh and eighth centuries than they do today, so also must the Irish Celts and the Gallic Celts have originally resembled each other more than present-day Irishmen and Frenchmen. Therefore we should not be surprised to find in Caesar s description of the Gauls many features which are ascribed to the Irish by Giraldus some twelve hundred years later, and which, furthermore, are discernible in the Irish national character even today, in spite of the admixture of Germanic blood. ...

History of Ireland. Frederick Engels 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/history-ireland/ch02.htm

This was the pattern [der ganze Grundriss] for all subsequent confiscations under Elizabeth and James. The Irish were denied all rights against the Anglo-Irish of the Pale, with resistance treated as rebellion. That sort of thing became usual. By Acts in the 3rd and 4th years of the reign of Philip and Mary, c. 1 and 2, the Lord Deputy, the Earl of Sussex, was endowed with full power and authority ... to give and to grant to all and every Their Majesties subjects, English or Irish ...at his election and pleasure, such estates in fee simple, fee tail,259 leases for term of years, life or lives in these two counties as for the more sure planting or strength of the countries with good subjects shall be thought unto his wisdom and discretion meet and convenient (Murphy, p. 256). Tyrone s rebellion, among other things, against religious persecution: he and other lords of Ulster entered into a secret combination, about this time, that they would defend the Roman Catholic religion ... that they would suffer no sheriffs nor garrisons to be within the compass of their territories, and that they would ... jointly resist all invasions of the English (Camden). The conduct of Deputy Mountjoy in this war is described by Camden: He made incursions on all sides, spoiled the corn, burnt all the houses and villages that could be found, and did so gall the rebels, that, pent in with garrisons and streightened more and more every day, they were reduced to live like wild beasts, skulking up and down the woods and deserts (Murphy, p. 251). See Holinshed Chronicles (p. 460) on how Ireland is laid waste in this war. Half the population is said to have been done in. According to the returns for 1602 by John Tyrrell, the Mayor of Dublin, prices there climbed: wheat from 36/- to 180/- the quarter, barley malt from 10/- to 43/- and oat malt from 5/- to 22/- the barrel, peas from 5/- to 40/- the peck, oats from 3/4 to 20/the barrel, beef from 26/8 to 160/- the carcass, mutton ditto from 3/- to 26/-, veal ditto from 10/- to 29/-, lamb from 1/- to 6/- , and a pig from 8/- to 30/- (Leland, Vol. II, p. 422). Desmond had estates confiscated in all counties of Munster except Clare, and also in Dublin. They were worth 7,000 per annum. Irish Parliament of 1586 expropriated 140 landowners by confiscation in Munster alone under the Act of the 28th year of Elizabeth s reign, c. 7 and 8. McGeoghegan lists the names of the grantees of Desmond s estates, with some families still nearly all in possession until 1847 (? probably cum grano salis). The annual Crown rent on these estates was 2d to 3d per acre, with no indigenous Irish admitted as tenants and the government undertaking to keep adequate garrisons. Neither provision was observed. Some estates were abandoned by the grantees and reoccupied by the Irish. Many of the undertakers stayed in England and appointed agents, who were ignorant, negligent, and corrupt (Leland, Vol. III). Surrenders of Estates and Regrants (see Davies, 7b260). These followed the pronouncement of tanistry and gavelkind as unlawful by the Court of King s Bench in the Hilary Term in the third year of the reign of James I. A Royal Proclamation stipulated surrender of estates and regrant under new valid titles. Most Irish chiefs came forward to receive incontestable title at last, but this was made conditional on their giving up the clan relationship in favour of the English landlord-tenant relationship (Murphy, p. 261). This in 1605 (see Chronology ). Plantation of Ulster. According to Leland, Irish undertenants and servants were tacitly exempted from the Oath of Supremacy, whereas all the other planters were compelled to take it. Carte says that all Irish settlers, especially natives, who were allowed part of their land, were exempted, but this was irrelevant because trial for refusing to take the Oath was impracticable. The Scottish Presbyterians in Ulster also resisted taking the Oath of Supremacy, and this was suffered by the authorities (Murphy, p. 266). That may have been useful for the Irish as well. Carte estimates the number of English settlers in Ulster in 1641 at 20,000 and of Scottish settlers at 100,000 (Life of Ormonde, Vol. I, p. 177). Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy, was rewarded for his services in this plantation with the territory of Innoshowen(?) and all the lands possessed by O'Dogherty, a tract of country far exceeding the allotments generally made to northern undertakers (Leland, Vol. II, p. 438). As early as 1633 these estates were valued at 10,000 per annum (Strafford s State Letters, Vol. II, p. 294). Chichester was the ancestor of Marquis of Donegal, who would have 300,000 per annum for his Belfast estate alone, if another of his ancestors had not surrendered it to others under long leases (Murphy, p. 265). The plantation of Ulster culminated the first period, with a new means discovered for confiscation: defective titles. This is effective under James and Charles, until Cromwell renews the invasion. See extracts from Carte, 2a,b. Another effective pretext for confiscation was that old Crown rents, long forgotten by Crown and landowners, were still due from many estates. These were now pulled out and, wherever unpaid, the estate was forfeited. No receipts existed, and that was enough (Murphy, p. 269). Concerning the attempt to confiscate Connaught (see Chronology, and O'Conor, The History of the Irish Catholics), recall James s dirty trick [sch ne Schweinerei]: When the people of Connaught surrendered their titles to a specially appointed Royal Commission in 1616 and had these reconveyed by new patents, they paying 3,000 for their enrolment in Chancery, the titles were not registered. A new commission was named on this pretext in 1623 to declare them null and void by reason of deliberate default, an oversight that depended not on the landowners but the government. (See Carte, Life of Ormonde, Vol. I, pp. 47 and 48.) In the meantime, James died. A Court of Wards for Ireland was established in 1614. Carte avers in The Life of Ormonde, Vol. I, p. 517, that no lawful basis existed for it as in England, being meant to bring up Catholic heirs in the Protestant religion and English customs. Its president was the good Sir William Parsons, who had helped plan it. Strafford wrote the English Secretary of State on December 16, 1634, that in his Irish Parliament the Protestants are the majority, and this may be of great use to confirm and settle His Majesty s title to the Plantations of Connaught and Ormond; for this you may be sure of, all the Protestants are for Plantations, all the others are against them; so as these, being the great number, you can want no help they can give you therein. Nay, in case there be no title to be made good to these countries in the Crown, yet should not I despair, forth of reasons of state, and for the strength and security of the Kingdom, to have them passed to the King by an immediate Act of Parliament (State Letters, Vol. I, p. 353). Outside Connaught, too, money was extorted continuously on pain of inquiry into titles. The O'Byrnes of Wicklow, for example, twice paid 15,000 to preserve a portion of their estates, while the City of London paid 70,000 to prevent confiscation of its plantations in Colrain and Derry for alleged breach of covenant (Leland, Vol. III, p. 40). The Court of High Commission [the Irish Star Chamber] established by Wentworth in the year 1633, after the English model, with the same formality and the same tremendous powers (Leland, Vol. III, p. 29), and this naturally without Parliament s consent in order to bring the people here to a conformity in religion, and, in the way to that, raise, perhaps, a good revenue to the Crown (January 31, 1633, State Letters, Vol. I, p. 188). The Court saw to it that all newly-appointed officials, doctors, barristers, etc., and all those who sued out livery of their estates should take the Oath of Supremacy, which, as McAuley observed, was a religious inquisition where that of the Star Chamber was political. . Then the Castle Chamber, called Star Chamber as in England, which, Lord Deputy Chichester said, was the proper court to punish jurors who will not find a verdict for the King upon good evidence (oft-quoted passage from Desiderata Curiosa Hibernicae, Vol. I, p. 262). It is said therein [(in the Remonstrance of Trim) the agents complain] that the penalties there employed consisted in imprisonment and loss of ears and fines, pillory, boring through the tongue, marking on the forehead with an iron and other infamous punishments, as this is also indicated in the indictment of Strafford (Murphy, p. 279). When Strafford went to Connaught in 1635, he took with him 4,000 horse as good lookers on, while the plantations were settling (Strafford, State Letters, Vol. I, p. 454). In Galway he imposed fines not only on the jury that would not find a verdict for the King, but also the sheriff for returning so insufficient, indeed, we conceive, so packed a jury, in 1,000 to His Majesty (August 1635, Vol. I, p. 451). As, by the 28th Act of Henry VIII, c. 5, 6 and 13, all recourse to the Pope s jurisdiction was prohibited and all Irish came under the Protestant ecclesiastical courts, whose verdict could be appealed against to the King alone. They took cognizance to all marriages, baptisms, burials, wills, and administrations, and punished recusants for not going to church under the 2nd Act of Elizabeth, c. 2, and also collected the tithes. Bishop Burnet (Life of Dr. Bedel, Bishop of Kilmore, p. 89) said these courts were often managed by a chancellor that bought his place and so thought he had a right to all the profits he could make out of it. And their whole business seemed to be nothing but oppression and extortion.... The officers of the court thought they had a sort of right to oppress the natives and that all was well got that was wrung from them ... they made it their business to draw people into trouble by vexatious suits, and to hold them so long in that, for 3d. worth of the tithe of turf, they would be put to a 5 charge. In the graces, which never materialised, Protestant clergymen were to have been forbidden to keep private prisons of their own for spiritual offences, so that offenders should be committed to the King s public gaols (Murphy, p. 281). See Spenser, excerpt 51 about the Protestant clergy. Borlase and Parsons encouraged the rebellion everywhere. According to Lord Castlehaven s Memoirs, they said: The more rebels, the more confiscations. Leland (Vol. III, p. 166), too, observes that, as before, extensive forfeitures were the favourite object of the chief governors and their friends. By that time, the Irish Royalist army was to have been 50,000 strong through reinforcement from England and Scotland. See Carte, The Life of Ormonde, Vol. III, p. 61, for the instructions to the army. The motto of the Kilkenny Confederates was: Pro deo, pro rege, et patria Hibernia unanimes (for God, King and Ireland unanimous); so that is where the Prussians lifted it from! (Borlase, Irish Rebellion, p. 128). Petty (Political Anatomy of Ireland, Dublin edition of Petty s tracts, 1769, pp. 312-15) estimates that 112,000 British and 504,000 Irish inhabitants of Ireland died in the war of 1641-52. In 1653, soldiers debentures were sold at 4/- to 5/- in the pound, so that with 20/being the price [nominal] of two acres of land, and there being 8 million acres of good land in Ireland, all Ireland was purchasable for 1 million, though in 1641 it was worth 8 million. Petty estimates the value of livestock in Ireland in 1641 at 4 million, and in 1652 at less than 500,000, so that Dublin had to get meat from Wales. Corn was 12/- per barrel in 1641 and 50/- in 1652. Houses in Ireland worth 2 million in 1641, were worth less than 500,000 in 1653. Leland, too, admits in Vol. III, p. 171, that the favourite idea of both the Irish Government and the English Parliament (from 1642 onwards) was the utter extermination of all the Catholics of Ireland. See Lingard (History of England, Vol. VII, 4th ed., p. 102, Note) on the transportation of Irish as slaves to the West Indies (figures vary from 6,000 to 100,000). Of the 1,000 boys and 1,000 girls to be sent to Jamaica, the commissioners wrote in 1655: Although we must use force in taking them up, yet it is so much for their own good and likely to be of such great advantage to the public, that you may have such number of them as you shall think fit (Thurloe s Papers, Vol. IV, p. 23). By the first Act of Settlement, the forfeiture of two-thirds of their estates had been pronounced against those who had borne arms against the Parliament and one-third of their estates against those who had resided in Ireland any time from October 1, 1649, to March 1, 1650, and had not manifested their constant good affection to Parliament. The Parliament had power to give them, in lieu thereof, other lands to the proportion of value thereof. The second Act concerned resettlement (see Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, Book of Excerpts VII, 1a). Distribution of land to soldiers was limited to those who had served under Cromwell from 1649 (Murphy, p. 302). See Carte, Life of Ormonde, Vol. II, p. 301, about some cases of land surveying, especially by adventurers. According to Leland (Vol. III, p. 410), the Commissioners in Dublin and Athlone kept considerable domains for themselves. A plantation acre is equal to 1 acre, 2 roods, 19 perches, 5 yards, and 2 1/4 feet imperial statute measure, or 121 plantation acres may be taken as equal to 196 statute acres (Murphy, p. 302). On Forty-Nine officers see O'Conor and Notes. The Duke of York received a grant of all the lands held by the regicides who had been attainted. Provisors were persons in whose favour provisoes had been made by the Acts of Settlement and of Explanation.273 Nominees were the Catholics named by the King restored to their mansions and 2,000 acres contiguous. At that time the profitable lands of Ireland were estimated at two-thirds of all land, or 12,500,000 statute acres. Of the rest, considerable tracts were occupied without title by soldiers and adventurers. In 1675, the twelve and a half million acres of arable were distributed as follows: This table was compiled by Murphy; the figure of 3,900,000 acres was taken from the Account published by the Cromwellian proprietors and the rest on the basis of the Grace Manuscript quoted by Lingard and the Report of the Commissioners to the English House of Commons, December 15, 1699. It accords with Petty (Political Anatomy), who wrote: Of the whole 7,500,000 plantation acres of good land (in Ireland) the English and Protestants and the Church have this Christmas (1672) 5,140,000 (= 8,352,500 statute acres and the Irish have near half as much (Murphy, pp. 314 and 315). Compiled by Murphy on the basis of the Report of the Commissioners of the House of Commons (English) in December 1699.

History of Ireland. Preparatory Work. Engels 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/history-ireland/confiscations.htm

Irish poems are all written in four-line verses. For this reason a four-line rhythm always lies at the basis of most, especially the ancient, Irish melodies, though sometimes it may be a little hidden, and frequently a refrain or conclusion on the harp follows it. Some of these ancient songs are even now, when in the largest part of Ireland Irish is understood only by the old people or even not at all, known only by their Irish names or first words. But the greater, more recent part has English names or texts. The melancholy dominating most of these songs is still the expression of the national. disposition today. How could it be otherwise amongst a people whose conquerors are always inventing new, up-to-date methods of oppression? The latest method, which was introduced forty years ago and pushed to the extreme in the last twenty years, consists in the mass eviction of Irishmen from their homes and farms which, in Ireland, is the same as eviction from the country. Since 1841 the population has dropped by two and a half million, and over three million Irishmen have emigrated. All this has been done for the profit of the big landowners of English descent, and on their instigation. If it goes on like this for another thirty years, there will be Irishmen only in America.

Marx Engels on Art and Literature

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/history-ireland/irish-songs.htm

The English knew how to reconcile people of the most diverse races with their rule. The Welsh, who held so tenaciously to their nationality and language, have fused completely with the British Empire. The Scottish Celts, though rebellious until 1745 and since almost completely exterminated first by the government and then by their own aristocracy, do not even think of rebellion. The French of the Channel Isles fought bitterly against France during the Great Revolution. Even the Frisians of Heligoland, which Denmark sold to Britain, are satisfied with their lot; and a long time will probably pass before the laurels of Sadowa and the conquests of the North German Confederation wrench from their throats a pained wail about unification with the great fatherland. Only with the Irish the English could not cope. The reason for this is the enormous resilience of the Irish race. After the most savage suppression, after every attempt to exterminate them, the Irish, following a short respite, stood stronger than ever before: it seemed they drew their main strength from the very foreign garrison forced on them in order to oppress them. Within two generations, often within one, the foreigners became more Irish than the Irish, Hiberniores ipsis Hibernis. The more the Irish accepted the English language and forgot their own, the more Irish they became. The bourgeoisie turns everything into a commodity, hence also the writing of history. It is part of its being, of its condition for existence, to falsify all goods: it falsified the writing of history. And the best paid historiography is that which is best falsified for the purposes of the bourgeoisie. Witness Macaulay, who, for that very reason, is the inept G. Smith s unequalled paragon. Queen s Evidence. Rewards for Evidence. England is the only country where the state openly dares to bribe witnesses, [be it] by an offer of exemption from punishment, be it by ready cash. That prices are fixed for the betrayal of the sojourn of a political persecutee is comprehensible, but that they say: who gives me evidence on grounds of which somebody can be sentenced as the contriver of some crime or another this infamy is something not only the Code, but also Pr[ussian] common law have left to Eng[lish] law. That collateral evidence is required alongside with that given by the informer is useless; generally there is suspicion of somebody, or else it is fabricated, and the informer only has to adjust his lies accordingly. Whether this pretty usage [saubere Usus] has its roots already in Eng[lish] legal proceedings is hard to say, but it is certain that it has received its development on Irish soil at the time of the Tories" and the penal laws. On March 15, 1870, when the government removed an Irish sheriff (Coote of Monaghan) on the plea that he had packed the jury panel, G. H. Moore, M. P. for Mayo, said in Parliament: As one instance out of many that might be cited, he would mention that though County Cork had a proportion of 500,000 Catholics against 50,000 Protestants, at the time of the Fenian trials in 1865, a jury Panel was called, composed of 360 Protestants and 40 Catholics! The German Legion of 1806-13 was also sent to Ireland. Thus, the good Hanoverians who refused to put up with French (bondage] rule, were used by the English to preserve the English rule in Ireland! The agrarian murders in Ireland cannot be suppressed because and as long as they are the only effective remedy against the extermination of the people by the landlords. They help, that is why they continue, and will continue, in spite of all the coercive laws. Their number varies, as it does with all social phenomena; they can even become epidemic in certain circumstances, when they occur at quite insignificant occasions. The epidemic can be suppressed, but the sickness itself cannot.

Preparatory Material for the 'History of Ireland' by Frederick Engels

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/history-ireland/notes.htm

Vedhrafi rdhr is, as we have said, Waterford; I do not know whether Lindiseyri has been discovered anywhere. On no account does it mean Leinster as Johnstone translates it; eyri (sandy neck of land, Danish re) points to a quite distinct locality. Valtafn can also mean falcon feed and is generally translated as such here, but as the raven is Odin s holy bird, the word obviously has both meanings.

Marx Engels on Art and Literature

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/history-ireland/scandanavian-epos.htm

The Senchus Mor has until now been our main source for information about conditions in ancient Ireland. It is a collection of ancient legal decisions which, according to the later composed introduction, was compiled on the orders of St. Patrick, and with his assistance brought into harmony with Christianity, rapidly spreading in Ireland. The High King of Ireland, Laeghaire (428-458, according to the Annals of the Four Masters), the Vice-Kings, Corc of Munster and Daire, probably a prince of Ulster, and also three bishops: St. Patrick, St. Benignus and St. Cairnech, and three lawyers: Dubthach, Fergus and Rossa, are supposed to have formed the commission which compiled the book and there is no doubt that they did their work more cheaply than the present commission, who only had to publish it. The Four Masters give 438 as the year in which the book was written. The text itself is evidently based on very ancient heathen materials. The oldest legal formulas in it are written in verse with a precise metre and the so-called consonance, a kind of alliteration or rather consonant assonance, which is peculiar to Irish poetry and frequently goes over to full rhyme. As it is certain that old Irish law-books were translated in the fourteenth century from the so-called Fenian dialect (Berla Feini), the language of the fifth century, into the then current Irish (Introduction (Vol. 1), p. xxxvi and following) it emerges that in the Senchus Mor too the metre has been more or less smoothed out in places; but it appears often enough along with occasional rhymes and marked consonance to give the text a definite rhythmical cadence. It is generally sufficient to read the translation in order to find out the verse forms. But then there are also throughout it, especially in the latter half, numerous pieces of undoubted prose; and, whereas the verse is certainly very ancient and has been handed down by tradition, these prose insertions seem to originate with the compilers of the book. At any rate, the Senchus Mor is quoted frequently in the glossary composed in the ninth or tenth century, and attributed to the King and Bishop of Cashel, Cormac, and it was certainly written long before the English invasion. All the manuscripts (the oldest of which appears to date from the beginning of the 14th century or earlier) contain a series of mostly concordant annotations and longer commenting notes on this text. The annotations are in the spirit of old glossaries; quibbles take the place of etymology and the explanation of words, and comments are of varying quality, being often badly distorted or largely incomprehensible, at least without knowledge of the rest of the law-books. The age of the annotations and comments is uncertain. Most of them, however, probably date from after the English invasion. As at the same time they show only a very few traces of developments in the. law outside the text itself, and these are only a more precise establishment of details, the greater part, which is purely explanatory, can certainly also be used with some discretion as a source concerning earlier times. The Senchus Mor contains: From this we obtain much valuable information on the social life of that time, but, as long as many of the expressions are unexplained and the rest of the manuscripts is not published, much remains dark. In addition to literature, the surviving architectural monuments, churches, round towers, fortifications and inscriptions also enlighten us about the condition of the people before the arrival of the English.

Marx Engels on Art and Literature

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/history-ireland/senchus-mor.htm

The General Council of the International Association believes this question is contained in Point 3.

The International Workingmen's Association, Program for the 5th Congress

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/iwma/program.htm

I have at last discovered a copy of Prendergast in a local library and hope that I shall be able to obtain it. To my good or bad fortune, the old Irish laws are also to appear soon, and I shall thus have to wade through those as well. The more I study the subject, the clearer it is to me that Ireland has been stunted in her development by the English invasion and thrown centuries back. And this ever since the 12th century; furthermore, it should be borne in mind, of course, that three centuries of Danish invasions and plunder had by then substantially drained the country. But these latter had ceased over a hundred years earlier. In recent years, research on Ireland has become somewhat more critical, particularly as far as Petrie s studies of antiquity are concerned; he impelled me also to read some Celtic-Irish (naturally with a parallel translation). It does not seem all that difficult, but I shall not delve deeper into the stuff, I have had enough philological nonsense. In the next few days, when I get the book, I'll see how the old laws have been dealt with.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_01_19.htm

I've at last received Prendergast and as it always happens two copies at once, namely, W. H. Smith and Sons have also got hold of one. I shall have finished with it tonight. The book is important because it contains many excerpts from imprinted Bills. No wonder it is out of print. Longman and Co. must have been furious at having to put their name on such a book, and since there certainly was little demand for it in England (Mudies have not a single copy) they shall sell the edition for pulping as soon as they can or, possibly, to a company of Irish landlords (for the same purpose) and certainly will not print a second. What Prendergast says about the Anglo-Norman period is correct inasmuch as the Irish and Anglo-Irish, who lived at some distance from the Pale, continued during that period the same lazy life as before the invasion, and inasmuch as the wars of that period too were more easy-going (with few exceptions), and did not have the distinctly devastating character they assumed in the 16th century and which afterwards became the rule. But his theory that the enormous amiability of the Irishmen, and especially the Irish women, immediately disarms even the most hostile immigrant, is just thoroughly Irish, since the Irish way of thinking lacks all sense of proportion. A new edition of Giraldus Cambrensis has appeared: Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. J. S. Brewer, London, Longman and Co., 1863, at least 3 volumes; could you find out the price for me and whether it would be possible to get cheaply, secondhand, the whole work or at least the volume containing Topographia Hibernica and perhaps also Hibernia expugnata"? In order not to make a fool of myself over Cromwell, I'll have to put in a lot more work on the English history of the period. That will do no harm, but it will take up a lot of time.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_01_25.htm

The method of presentation is quite original, at times it reminds one most of Monteil[b]. One can see that the man has travelled around everywhere and seen everything for himself. A glowing hatred of landlords, capitalists and officials. No socialist doctrine, no mysticism about the land (although in favour of the communal form of ownership), no nihilistic extravagance. Here and there a certain amount or well-meaning twaddle, which, however, is suited to the stage of development reached by the people for whom the book is intended. In any case this is the most important book which has appeared since your Condition of the Working Class. The family life of the Russian peasants--the awful beating to death of wives, the vodka and the concubines--is also well described. It will therefore come quite opportunely if you would now send me the imaginative lies of Citizen Herzen.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_02_10.htm

The title of N. Flerovsky's book is The Condition of the Working Class in Russia, Publishers, N. P. Polyakov, St. Petersburg, 1869. What amuses me very much among other things in Flerovsky is his polemic against the direct dues paid by the peasantry. It is a regular reproduction of Marshal Vauban and Boisguillebert. He feels too that the situation of the country people has its analogy in the period of the old French monarchy (after Louis XIV). Like Monteil, he has a great feeling for national characteristics--"the honest Kalmuck," "the Mordwin, poetical despite his dirt" (he compares him to the Irish), the "agile, lively, epicurean Tartar," "the talented Little Russian," etc. Like a good Russian he teaches his fellow countrymen what they should do to turn the hatred which all these races have for them into its opposite. As an example of this hatred he instances among other things a genuinely Russian colony which has emigrated from Poland to Siberia. These people only know Russian and not a word of Polish, but they regard themselves as Poles and devote a Polish hatred to the Russians, etc. From his book it follows irrefutably that the present conditions in Russia can no longer be maintained, that the emancipation of the serfs only, of course, hastened the process of disintegration and that a fearful social revolution is approaching. Here too one sees the real basis of the schoolboy nihilism which is at present the fashion among Russian students, etc. In Geneva, by the by, a new colony of exiled Russian students has been formed whose programme proclaims opposition to Pan-Slavism, which is to be replaced by the International. In a special section Flerovsky shows that the "Russification" of the alien races is a sheer optimistic delusion, even in the East.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_02_12.htm

And thus the mountain Gladstone has successfully given birth to his Irish mouse. I really don t know what the Tories could have against this Bill, which is so indulgent with the Irish landlords and finally places their interests in the tested hands of the Irish lawyers. Nevertheless, even this slight restriction of the eviction right will put an end to excessive emigration and the conversion of arable land into pastures. But it is very amusing if the brave Gladstone thinks he has settled the Irish question by means of this new prospect of endless lawsuits. Is it possible to get a copy of the Bill? It would be important for me to follow the debates on the individual clauses.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_02_17.htm

Yesterday, for the first time for a long time, I went out into the fresh air. First of all business. Be so kind as to send at once a copy of Vogt to Ascher and Co, Unter den Linden 11, Berlin. I should be glad if, in despatching the book, you would get a receipt from the post office and send it on to me. You would also oblige me if you could let me know when, roughly, K Hirsch wrote to you about the Vogt. The pamphlet which you sent me is one of the plaidoyers with which the privileged classes of the German-Russian-Baltic provinces are at the present time appealing to German sympathy. These canaille, who have always distinguished themselves by their zeal in the service of the Russian diplomats, army and police and who, since the transference of the provinces from Poland to Russia, have willingly bartered their nationality for the legal authorisation to exploit the peasantry, are now crying out because they see their privileged position endangered. The old system of estates, orthodox Lutheranism and the exploitation of the peasants is what they call German culture, the protection of which Europe is now to take in hand. Hence, too, the last word of this pamphlet landed property as the basis of civilisation, and landed property, moreover, as the wretched pamphleteer himself admits, mainly consisting of directly manorial estates or of peasant holdings subject to tribute. In his quotations in so far as they deal with Russian communal property the fellow shows his ignorance as well as the cloven hoof. Sch do Ferroti is one of the fellows who attribute (in the interest of landlordism, of course) the pitiful position of the Russian peasant to the existence of communal property, just as, formerly, the abolition of serfdom in Western Europe instead of the serf s loss of his land was decried as the cause of pauperism. The Russian book Land and Freedom is of the same calibre. Its author is a Baltic cabbage-junker called Von Lilienthal. What impoverishes the Russian peasantry is what impoverished the French under Louis XIV, etc state taxes and obrok to the great landowners. Instead of causing misery, communal property has been the only factor mitigating it. It is, moreover, historically false to say that communal property is Mongolian. As I have repeatedly indicated in my writings, it is of Indian origin and is therefore to be found among all civilised European peoples in the early stages of their development. The specifically Slavic (not Mongolian) form in Russia (which is also found among the non-Russian South Slavs) bears in fact greatest similarity, mutatis mutandis, to the old German modification of Indian communal property. That the Pole Duchinski in Paris should declare the Great Russian race to be not Slavic, but Mongolian, and should have tried to prove this with a great show of erudition, was to be expected from the standpoint of a Pole. Nevertheless, his contention is not correct. It is not the Russian peasantry, but the Russian nobility, which is strongly alloyed with Mongolian-Tartar elements. Henri Martin, the Frenchman, took the theory from Duchinski and the inspired Gottfried Kinkel has translated Martin and has thrust himself forward as an ardent friend of Poland, in order to make the democratic party forget his servile homage to Bismarck. That, on the other hand, the Russian state, as against Europe and America, in its policy represents Mongolism, is of course a truth that has by now become a commonplace and therefore accessible even to people like Gottfried and the Baltic cabbage-junkers, philistines, priests and professors. The Baltic-German outcry must, therefore, in spite of everything, be exploited, because it puts the great German power, Prussia, in a ticklish position. Everything that arouses antipathy on our part towards those representatives of German culture is, precisely on that account, deemed worthy of protection in the eyes of Prussia. Another example of the crass ignorance of the pamphleteer: in his opinion the abandonment of Russian possessions in North America was merely a diplomatic trick on the part of the Russian government, which, be it remarked in passing, was very hard pressed for costs. But the main point is this: the American Congress has recently published the documents relating to the transaction. These include, among other things, a report of the American envoy in which he writes explicitly to Washington: the acquisition is in the meantime not worth a cent economically, but but thereby England is cut off from the sea on one side through the Yankees and the reversion of the whole of British North America to the US is accelerated. That s the secret of the whole affair! I approved of the substance of your correspondence with Jacoby, but the exaggerated praises of my activities have really shocked me. Est modus in rebus! If you must praise, then old Jacoby himself is very praiseworthy. What other old radical in Europe possesses the sincerity and courage to place himself so decidedly on the side of the proletarian movement? That his transition measures and detailed proposals are of little value is an entirely unimportant matter. Between ourselves take all in all I expect more for the social movement from Germany than from France. I have had a big row with that intriguer Bakunin. But more about that in my next letter. My best compliments to Madame la Comtesse and Fr nzchen.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_02_17a.htm

The best part of Gladstone s speech is the long introduction, in which he says that even the beneficent laws of the English have always the reverse effect in practice. What better proof does that fellow need that England is not called upon to be the lawgiver and ruler of Ireland! His measures are a pretty piece of patchwork. The main thing in them is to lure the lawyers with the prospect of lawsuits and the landlords with the prospect of state assistance. Odger s election scandal was doubly useful: the pig-Whigs saw for the first time that they must let the workers into Parliament, or else the Tories will get in. Secondly, it is a lesson to Mr. Odger and his accomplices, He would have got in despite Waterlow if some of the Irish workers had not abstained from voting, because he had behaved so trimming during the debate in the General Council, which they knew of from Reynolds s. You'll receive the Irish Bill next week.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_02_19.htm

All sorts of things have happened in Fenian affairs in the meantime. A letter I wrote to the Internationale in Brussels, and in which I censured the French Republicans for their narrow national aims, has been printed, and the editors have announced that they will publish their remarks this week. You must know that in the letter of the Central Council to the Genevans which was conveyed also to the Brussels people and the main centres of the International in France I developed in detail the importance of the Irish question for the working-class movement in general (owing to its repercussion in England). Soon after, Jennychen was driven to anger by that disgusting article in the Daily News, the officious paper of the Gladstone Ministry, in which this bitchy publication turns to the liberal brothers in France and cautions them not to confuse the cases of Rochefort and O'Donovan Rossa. The Marseillaise has really fallen into the trap, it believes the Daily News and in addition has published a wretched article by that gossip-monger Talandier, in which this ex-procureur de la R publique, now a teacher of French at the military school in Woolwich (also ex-private tutor with Herzen, on whom he wrote a passionate obituary), attacks the Irish for their Catholic faith and accuses them of having brought about Odger s failure because of his participation in the Garibaldi committee. Besides, he adds, they support Mitchel despite his taking side with the slaveholders, as though Odger himself did not stick to Gladstone despite his even greater support for the slaveholders. So Jennychen ira facit poetam besides a private letter, wrote an article to the Marseillaise which was printed. In addition, she received a letter from the redacteur de la redaction, a copy of which I am enclosing. Today she sends another letter to the Marseillaise, which, in connection with Gladstone s reply (this week) to the interpellation about the treatment of the prisoners, contains excerpts from O'Donovan Rossa s letter (see Irishman, Feb. 5, 70). In it Gladstone is presented to the French not only as a monster by Rossa s letter, (inasmuch as Gladstone is in fact responsible for the entire treatment of the prisoners under the Tories too), but at the same time as a ridiculous hypocrite, being the author of the Prayers, The Propagation of the Gospel, The Functions of Laymen in the Church and Ecce Homo. With these two papers the Internationale and the Marseillaise we shall now unmask the English to the Continent. If you should happen, one day or the other, to find something suitable for one of these papers, you too should participate in our good work.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_03_05.htm

Here, at home, as you are fully aware, the Fenians sway is paramount. Tussy is one of their head centres. Jenny writes on their behalf in the Marseillaise under the pseudonym of J. Williams. I have not only treated the same theme in the Brussels Internationale, and caused resolutions of the Central Council to be passed against their gaolers. In a circular, addressed by the Council to our corresponding committees, I have explained the merits of the Irish Question. You understand at once that I am not only acted upon by feelings of humanity. There is something besides. To accelerate the social development in Europe, you must push on the catastrophe of official England. To do so, you must attack her in Ireland. That s her weakest point. Ireland lost, the British Empire is gone, and the class war in England, till now somnolent and chronic, will assume acute forms. But England is the metropolis of landlordism and capitalism all over the world.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_03_05a.htm

When I read that story about the Marseillaise in the Irishman in Paris on Saturday afternoon, I knew immediately in what part of the world this Mr. Williams could be found, but, silly as it may be of me, I couldn t account for the first name. It is a very good story, and the naive letter with Rochefort s naive demand that O'Donovan Rossa be asked for a contribution to the Marseillaise gives Jenny an excellent opportunity to raise the question of the treatment of prisoners and to open the eyes of the bons hommes over there. Why don t you have the letter of the General Council to the Genevans published? The central sections in Geneva, Brussels, etc., read these things, but so long as they are not published they do not penetrate into the masses. They should also appear in German in the relevant organs. You are publishing far too little. Please send me the relevant issues of the Marseillaise and Internationale for a few days. Jennychen s success has been met with a universal hurrah here and the health of Mr. J. Williams has been drunk with all due honours. I am very eager to hear how that story develops. The stupid correspondent of the Irishman in Paris should try some time if he can get such things into the newspapers of his friend Ollivier. A couple of days ago, my bookseller suddenly sent me the Senchus Mor, the old Irish laws, and what s more, not the new edition but the first. So, with a lot of pushing I have succeeded in that. And such difficulties with a book having Longmans as its London firm on the title page and published by the government! I haven t been able to look at the stuff yet, as I have in the meantime taken up various modern things (about the 19th century) and must finish with them first.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_03_07.htm

Enclosed is a Marseillaise, which should, however, be returned with the preceding one. I haven t read it myself yet. The article was written jointly by Jennychen and myself because she didn t have sufficient time. That is also why she hasn t answered your letter and sends Mrs. Lizzy her thanks for the shamrock provisionally through me. From the enclosed letter from Pigott to Jenny you ll see that Mrs. O Donovan, to whom Jenny sent a private letter together with 1 Marseillaise, took her for a gentleman, even though she signed it Jenny Marx. I answered Pigott today on behalf of Jennychen and took the opportunity to explain to him in short my views on the Irish question. ... The sensation caused by Jennychen s second letter (which contained the condensed translation of O Donovan s letter) in Paris and London has robbed the loathsome and importunate (but very fluent with gab and pen) Talandier of his sleep. He had denounced the Irish as Catholic idiots in the Marseillaise. Now he espouses their cause no less fullmouthed in a review of what has been said in the Times, Daily Telegraph and Daily News about O Donovan s letter. Since Jennychen s second letter was unsigned (by accident) he apparently flattered himself with the idea that he would be considered the secret sender. This has been frustrated by Jennychen s third letter. This fellow is du reste a teacher of French at the military school of Sandhurst.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_03_19.htm

I am only writing a few lines today because just at the moment when I get ready to write to you again after so long a time, there is a Frenchman coming whom I shall not get rid of this afternoon, and the post goes at 5:30. But tomorrow is Sunday and therefore a good Christian like myself is allowed to interrupt his work and to write you a long letter, particularly about the Russian case, which has taken a pretty turn. Jennychen, our illustrious J Williams, has a very good edition of father Goethe. By the by, she was invited a short time ago to Madame Vivanti s, the wife of a rich Italian merchant. There was a great assembl e, including a number of English people. Jennychen had a brilliant success with Shakespearean recitation. Will you please greet Madame la Comtesse from me and thank her for the kind words that she was good enough to write. She has not the least cause to regret having preferred Latin to French. That not only reveals a taste at once classic and highly cultivated, but also explains why Madame never reaches the end of her Latin. Best greetings to Fr nzchen.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

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As I have an abscess on the right thigh which makes sitting for any length of time impossible, I am sending you the enclosed letter for the Brunswick Comit , Bracke and Co, instead of writing twice. It would be best if, after reading it through, you could hand the letter over personally and remind them again that the information is confidential, not intended for the public.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_03_28.htm

Among the material sent you will also find several copies of the resolutions of the General Council of November 30 on the Irish amnesty, resolutions which you already know and which were initiated by me; likewise an Irish pamphlet on the treatment of the Fenian convicts. I had intended to submit further motions on the necessary transformation of the present Union (i.e., enslavement of Ireland into a free and equal federation with Great Britain. For the time being, further progress in this matter, as far as public resolutions go, has been suspended because of my enforced absence from the General Council. No other member of it has sufficient knowledge of Irish affairs and adequate prestige with the English members to be able to replace me in this respect. However time has not been wasted and I ask you to pay particular attention to the following: After studying the Irish question for many years I have come to the conclusion that the decisive blow against the English ruling classes (and it will be decisive for the workers movement all over the world) cannot be delivered in England but only in Ireland. On January 1, 1870,[b] the General Council issued a confidential circulare drawn up by me in French (for only the French journals, not the German ones produce important repercussions in England) on the relation of the Irish national struggle to the emancipation of the working class, and therefore on the attitude which the International Association should take towards the Irish question. I shall give you here only quite briefly the salient points. Ireland is the bulwark of the English landed aristocracy. The exploitation of that country is not only one of the main sources of their material wealth; it is their greatest moral strength. They, in fact, represent the domination over Ireland. Ireland is therefore the cardinal means by which the English aristocracy maintain their domination in England itself. If, on the other hand, the English army and police were to be withdrawn from Ireland tomorrow, you would at once have an agrarian revolution in Ireland. But the downfall of the English aristocracy in Ireland implies and has as a necessary consequence its downfall in England. And this would provide the preliminary condition for the proletarian revolution in England. The destruction of the English landed aristocracy in Ireland is an infinitely easier operation than in England herself, because in Ireland the land question has been up to now the exclusive form of the social question because it is a question of existence, of life and death, for the immense majority of the Irish people, and because it is at the same time inseparable from the national question. Quite apart from the fact that the Irish character is more passionate and revolutionary than that of the English. As for the English bourgeoisie, it has in the first place a common interest with the English aristocracy in turning Ireland into mere pasture land which provides the English market with meat and wool at the cheapest possible prices. It is likewise interested in reducing the Irish population by eviction and forcible emigration, to such a small number that English capital (capital invested in land leased for farming) can function there with security . It has the same interest in clearing the estates of Ireland as it had in the clearing of the agricultural districts of England and Scotland. The 6,000-10,000 absentee-landlord and other Irish revenues which at present flow annually to London have also to be taken into account. But the English bourgeoisie has also much more important interests in the present economy of Ireland. Owing to the constantly increasing concentration of leaseholds, Ireland constantly sends her own surplus to the English labour market, and thus forces down wages and lowers the material and moral position of the English working class. And most important of all! Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the poor whites to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A.. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland. This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this. But the evil does not stop here. It continues across the ocean. The antagonism between Englishmen and Irishmen is the hidden basis of the conflict between the United States and England. It makes any honest and serious co-operation between the working classes of the two countries impossible. It enables the governments of both countries, whenever they think fit, to break the edge off the social conflict by their mutual bullying, and, in case of need, by war between the two countries. England, the metropolis of capital, the power which has up to now ruled the world market, is at present the most important country for the workers revolution, and moreover the only country in which the material conditions for this revolution have reached a certain degree of maturity. It is consequently the most important object of the International Working Men s Association to hasten the social revolution in England. The sole means of hastening it is to make Ireland independent. Hence it is the task of the International everywhere to put the conflict between England and Ireland in the foreground, and everywhere to side openly with Ireland. It is the special task of the Central Council in London to make the English workers realise that for them the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first condition of their own social emancipation. These are roughly the main points of the circular letter, which thus at the same time give the raisons d tre of the resolutions passed by the Central Council on the Irish amnesty. A little later I sent a strongly-worded anonymous article[d] on the treatment of the Fenians by the English, etc., attacking Gladstone, etc., to the Internationale (organ of our Belgian Central Committee[e] in Brussels). In this article I have also denounced the French Republicans (the Marseillaise had printed some nonsense on Ireland written here by the wretched Talandier) because in their national egoism they are saving all their wrath for the Empire. That worked. My daughter Jenny wrote a series of articles to the Marseillaise, signing them J. Williams (she had called herself Jenny Williams in her private letter to the editorial board) and published, among other things, O Donovan Rossa s letter. Hence immense noise. After many years of cynical refusal Gladstone was thereby finally compelled to agree to a parliamentary enquiry into the treatment of the Fenian prisoners. Jenny is now the regular correspondent on Irish affairs for the Marseillaise. (This is naturally to be a secret between us.) The British Government and press are furious because the Irish question has thus now been placed on the agenda in France and that these rogues are now being watched and exposed via Paris on the whole Continent. We hit another bird with the same stone, we have forced the Irish leaders, journalists, etc., in Dublin to get into contact with us, which the General Council had been unable to achieve previously! You have wide field in America for work along the same lines. A coalition of the German workers with the Irish workers (and of course also with the English and American workers who are prepared to accede to it) is the greatest achievement you could bring about now. This must be done in the name of the International. The social significance of the Irish question must be made clear. Next time a few remarks dealing particularly with the position of the English workers.

Letters: Marx to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt 9 April 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm

Your conclusions from the Parliamentary Reports agree with my results. It should, however, be remembered that after 1846 the process of clearing 40-sh. freeholders was at first interspersed with clearing of labourers the reason being that, up to 1829, in order to produce freeholders, leases had to be made for 21 or 31 years and a life (if not longer), because a person became a freeholder only if he could not be turned out during his lifetime. These leases hardly ever excluded subdividing. These leases were partly still valid in 1846, resp. the consequences, that is, the peasants were still on the estate. The same was the case on the estates which were then in the hands of middlemen (who mostly held leases for 64 years and three lives or even for 99 years) and frequently their leases were revertible only between 1846 and 1860. Thus these processes were more or less interspersed so that the Irish landlord was never or seldom in a situation where he had to decide whether labourers in particular rather than other traditional small tenants should be ejected. Essentially it comes to the same thing in England and in Ireland: the land must be tilled by workers who live in other Poor Law Unions, so that the landlord and his tenant can remain exempted from the poor tax. This is also said by Senior or rather by his brother Edward, Poor Law Commissioner in Ireland: The great instrument which is clearing Ireland is the Poor Law. Land sold since the Encumbered Estate Court amounts according to my notes to as much as 1/5 of the total, the buyers were indeed largely usurers, speculators, etc., mainly Irish Catholics. Partly also enriched stock-breeders. Yet even now there are only about 8,000-9,000 landowners in Ireland.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_15.htm

But Bakunnine's programme was the theory . It consisted, in fact, of 3 points. ... 3) The working class must not occupy itself with politics. They must only organise themselves by trades-unions. One fine day, by means of the Internationale they will supplant the place of all existing states. You see what a caricature he [Bakunin] has made of my doctrines! As the transformation of the existing States into Associations is our last end, we must allow the governments, those great Trade-Unions of the ruling classes, to do as they like, because to occupy ourselves with them is to acknowledge them. Why! In the same way the old socialists said: You must not occupy yourselves with the wages question, because you want to abolish wages labour, and to struggle with the capitalist about the rate of wages is to acknowledge the wages system! The ass has not even seen that every class movement as a class movement, is necessarily and was always a political movement.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_19.htm

In what Parliamentary Paper could one find how much money is wasted every year on the Commissioners for the Publication of the Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland? This is a colossal job (in a small matter). It would also be important to know how much of that money is spent 1) as remuneration for idling commissioners, 2) as salaries for really working understrappers, printing costs, etc. This must surely be somewhere in a Parliamentary Paper. Those fellows have been drawing wages since 1852 and up to now only two volumes have been published! Three lords, three judges, three priests, one general, and one who professionally specialises on Ireland who died long ago.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_05_15.htm

In general the plebiscite dealt the final blow to the empire. Because so many voted aye for the empire wreathed in constitutional phrases Boustrapa believes he can now quite unceremoniously restore the empire sans phrase, that is to say, the December regime. According to all the information received privately the Society of 10 December has been fully restored in Paris and is teeming with activity.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_05_18.htm

Here things are going on pretty much in the old track. Fred is quite jolly since he has got rid of Wen verfluchten Commerce. His book on Ireland which by the by costs him a little more time than he had at first supposed will be highly interesting. The illustrious Doppelju who is so much up in the most recent Irish history and plays so prominent a part in it, will there find his archeological material ready cut.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_05_31.htm

Flerovsky is in a better position. He is simply in administrative exile in some miserable little place between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_07_05.htm

Finally, I am also enclosing the criticism of my book [Capital Vol I] in Hildebrand's Journal of Economy and Statistics. My physical state scarcely disposes me to merriment, but I have cried with laughter over this essay--bona fide tears of mirth. With the reaction and the downfall of the heroic age of philosophy in Germany the "petty bourgeois", inborn in every German citizen, has again asserted himself--in philosophic drivel worthy of Moses Mendelssohn, would-be clever and superior peevish nagging. And so now even political economy is to be dissolved into twaddle about "conceptions of justice!"

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_07_20.htm

... Last Tuesday the General Council ordered a thousand copies of the Address to be printed. Today I expect the proof-sheets. The singing of the Marseillaise in France is a parody just like all the Second Empire. But that scoundrel at least feels that Going off to Syria would not do. In Prussia, on the other hand, such buffoonery is not necessary. Lord, in Thee is all my trust! , sung by William I, with Bismarck on the right and Stieber on the left, is the German Marseillaise. Like in 1812 seqq, the German philistine seems to be really delighted because he can now give free vent to his innate servility. Who would have thought it possible that twenty-two years after 1848 a national war in Germany would be given such theoretical expression! It is fortunate that this whole demonstration originated with the middle class. The working class, with the exception of the direct adherents of Schweitzer, takes no part in it. The war of classes in both countries, France and Germany, has fortunately reached such an extent that no war abroad can seriously turn back the wheels of history...

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_07_28.htm

But now! If Alexander does not want to be poisoned, something must be done to appease the national party. Russia's prestige will obviously be even more "injured" by a German-Prussian Empire than the prestige of the Second Empire was by the North German Confederation. Russia therefore--just as Bonaparte did in 1866-70--will intrigue with Prussia in order to get concessions in relation to Turkey, and all this trickery, despite the Russian religion of the Hohenzollerns, will end in war between the tricksters. However silly German Michael may be, his newly fortified national sentiment will hardly allow him to be pressed into the service of Russia without any remaining reason whatever, or so much as a pretext (especially now when he can no longer be lectured into putting up with everything in order that German unity may first be achieved). Qui vivra.verra [who lives longest will see most]. If our Handsome William lives on for a bit we may yet witness his proclamations to the Poles. When God wants to do something especially great, says old Carlyle, he always chooses out the stupidest people for it. What troubles me at the moment is the state of affairs in France itself. The next great battle can hardly fail to turn against the French. And then? If the defeated army retreats to Paris, under the leadership of Boustrapa, the result will be a peace of the most humiliating kind, perhaps with the restoration of the Orleans. If a revolution breaks out in Paris, the question is whether they have the means and the leadership to offer a serious resistance to the Prussians. One cannot conceal from oneself that twenty years of the Bonapartist farce have produced enormous demoralisation. One is hardly justified in reckoning on revolutionary heroism. What do you think about it?

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_08_08.htm

If one has been afflicted by an attack of severe stomach trouble for three days, like me, with slight fever from time to time, it s no great pleasure at all, even when starting to feel better, to expatiate on Wilhelm s policy. But since you must get this stuff back, so be it. How far Bracke, certainly a very weak fellow, has allowed his national enthusiasm to run away with him I cannot tell and as I receive at most one issue of the Volksstaat every fortnight I am also unable to judge the position of the Committee in this regard except from Bonhorst s letter to Wilhelm, which on the whole is cool but betrays theoretical uncertainty. In contrast with this Liebknecht s narrow-minded self-confidence based on dogmatism does indeed show off, very favourably as usual. ... Added to this is the fact that Badinguet would never have been able to conduct this war without the chauvinism of the mass of the French population: the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, the peasants and the imperialistic, Haussmannist building workers proletariat derived from the peasants, which Bonaparte created in the big towns. Until this chauvinism is knocked on the head, and that properly, peace between Germany and France is impossible. One might have expected that a proletarian revolution would have undertaken this work, but since the war is already there, nothing remains for the Germans but to do it themselves and quickly. Now come the secondary considerations. For the fact that this war was ordered by Lehmann [Wilhelm I] Bismarck & Co., and must minister to their temporary glorification if they conduct it successfully, we have to thank the miserable state of the German bourgeoisie. It is certainly very unpleasant but cannot be altered. But to magnify anti-Bismarckism into the sole guiding principle on this account would be absurd. In the first place, Bismarck, as in 1866, is at present doing a bit of our work for us, in his own way and without meaning to, but all the same he is doing it. He is clearing the ground for us better than before. And then we are no longer at the year 1815. The South Germans are bound now to enter the Reichstag and this will develop a counterpoise to Prussianism. Then there are the national duties which will fall to Prussia and which, as you wrote, will from the outset forbid the Russian alliance. In general to try l Liebknecht to set the clock back on all that has happened since 1866 is senseless. But we know our model South Germans. There is nothing to be done with these fools. I think our people can: Wilhelm s assertion that because Bismarck is a former accomplice of Badinguet s the correct position is to remain neutral, is amusing. If that were the general opinion in Germany, we should soon have the Confederation of the Rhine again and the noble Wilhelm should just see what sort of a part he would play in that, and what would happen to the workers movement. A people that gets nothing but kicks and blows is indeed the right one to make a social revolution, and in Wilhelm s beloved X-petty states moreover!... How nice that the poor little fellow seeks to call me to account for something that was supposed to have been printed in the Elberfelder Zeitung! Poor creature! ...The debacle in France seems to be awful. Everything squandered, sold, swindled away. The chassepots are badly made and fail when brought into action, there are no more there, the old flintlocks have got to be hunted out again. Nevertheless a revolutionary government, if it comes soon, need not despair. But it must leave Paris to its fate and carry on the war from the South. There would then still be a possibility of its holding out until arms have been bought and new armies organised with which the enemy would be gradually forced back again to the frontier. This would really be the true end of the war, both countries reciprocally furnishing proof that they are unconquerable. But if this does not happen quickly the game is up. Moltke s operations are a model old Wilhelm seems to give him a perfectly free hand and the four battalions are already joining the main army, while the French ones are not yet in existence. If Badinguet is not out of Metz yet it may go badly with him. ... Wilhelm [Liebknecht] has obviously calculated on a victory for Bonaparte simply in order to get his Bismarck defeated. You remember how he was always threatening him with the French. You, of course, are on Wilhelm s side too!

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_08_15.htm

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

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_08_17.htm

What the Prussian fools do not see is that the present war is leading just as inevitably to a war between Germany and Russia as the war of 1866 led to the war between Prussia and France. That is the best result I expect from it for Germany. Typical "Prussianism" never has had and never can have any existence except in alliance with and subjection to Russia. And a war No. 2 of this kind will act as the midwife to the inevitable social revolution in Russia.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_09_01.htm

... The military camarilla, the professors, burghers and pot-house politicians claim that this is the means whereby Germany can be forever protected against war with France. Just the opposite. It is the best means of turning this war into a European institution. It is indeed the surest way of perpetuating military despotism in the rejuvenated Germany as essential to retaining possession of a western Poland of Alsace and Lorraine. It is an infallible means of turning the coming peace into a mere armistice until France has recovered sufficiently to demand back her lost territories. It is the most infallible method of ruining both Germany and France by internecine strife. The knaves and the fools who discovered these guarantees of eternal peace ought to know from Prussian history, and from the drastic treatment laid down by Napoleon in the Peace Treaties of Tilsit that such violent measures of pacifying a viable people produce an effect exactly opposite to that intended. Compare France, even after the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, with Prussia after the Tilsit Peace! If, as long as the old political conditions obtained, French chauvinism had a certain material justification in the fact that since 1815 a few lost battles meant that the capital, Paris, and with it France, were at the mercy of the invader, what new nourishment will chauvinism not imbibe when the boundary line will run along the Vosges in the East and at Metz in the North? That the Lorrainers and Alsatians desire the blessings of German government even the... Teuton does not dare to maintain. It is the principle of Pan-Germanism and of secure frontiers that is being proclaimed, which, if it were practised by the Eastern side, would lead to fine results for Germany and Europe. Anyone who has not been entirely overawed by the din and noise of the moment and has no interest in overawing the German people must realise that the War of 1870 will necessarily lead to a war between Germany and Russia just as the War of 1866 led to the War of 1870. I say necessarily, inevitably, except in the improbable event of a prior outbreak of a revolution in Russia. If this improbable case does not eventuate the war between Germany and Russia must already now be treated as an accomplished fact. It depends entirely upon the present conduct of the German victors whether this war is going to be useful or harmful. If they take Alsace and Lorraine France and Russia will make war upon Germany. Needless to point to the baneful consequences. If they conclude an honourable peace with France that war will liberate Europe from the Muscovite dictatorship, will dissolve Prussia in Germany, allow the western part of the Continent to develop in peace and finally will help the Russian social revolution the elements of which need only such an impetus from without for their development to erupt, from which the Russian people too will benefit. But I am afraid the knaves and the fools will continue their mad game unhindered unless the masses of the German working class raise their voice... The present war ushers in a new era in world history by the proof which Germany has given that even with the exclusion of German Austria she is capable of going her own way independently of the other countries. That she finds her unity at first in the Prussian barracks is a punishment she has amply merited. But even under these circumstances one result has been immediately achieved. Such trifling matters as for instance the conflict between the National-Liberal North Germans and the People s Party South Germans will no longer uselessly obstruct the way. Relations will develop on a grand scale and become simpler. If the German working class does not then play the historical role it is entitled to it will be its own fault. This war has shifted the centre of gravity of the working-class movement on the Continent from France to Germany. This places greater responsibility upon the German working class...

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_09_01a.htm

World history is surely the greatest of poets, it has even succeeded in parodying Heine. My Emperor, my Emperor a captive! And of the stinking Prussians, what is more. And poor William stands by and assures everybody for the hundredth time that he is really quite innocent of the whole business and that it is a pure act of God. William appears just like the schoolboy: Who created the world? Please teacher, I did but indeed I will never do it again. And then the miserable Jules Favre comes along with the proposal that Palikao, Trochu and a few Arcadians shall form the government. There never was such a lousy crew. But all the same it is to be expected now that when this becomes known in Paris something or other will happen. I cannot believe that this douche of news, which must surely be known to-day or to-morrow, will produce no effect. Perhaps a government of the Left, which after some show of resistance will conclude peace. The war is at an end. There is no more army in France. As soon as Bazaine has capitulated, which will no doubt happen this week, half the German army will move in front of Paris and the other half across the Loire to sweep the country of all armed detachments.... The Alsace swindle apart from its purely Teutonic features is mainly of a strategical nature and aims at getting the line of the Vosges and German Lorraine as border-country. (Language frontier: If you draw a straight line from Donon or Schirmeck in the Vosges to one hour east of Longwy, where the Belgian Luxemberg and French frontiers meet, it is almost exactly the language frontier; and from Donon down the Vosges to the Swiss frontier.) Northwards from Donon the Vosges are not so high and steep as in the South. Only the asses of the Staatsanzeiger and Brass and Co. could suppose that France will be throttled by the snipping off of this narrow strip with its one and a quarter million or so inhabitants. The screams of the philistines for guarantees are altogether absurd, but they tell because they suit the rubbish of the Court people.... In Saarbr cken the French did as much damage as they could. Of course the bombardment only lasted a few hours and not as in Strasbourg day and night for weeks. ... Herewith I return Cacadou s letter with thanks. Very interesting. ... The defence of Paris, if nothing extraordinary happens in the course of it, will be an entertaining episode. These perpetual little panics of the French which all arise from fear of the moment when they will really have to learn the truth give one a much better idea of the Reign of Terror. We think of this as the reign of people who inspire terror; on the contrary, it is the reign of people who are themselves terrified. Terror consists mostly of useless cruelties perpetrated by frightened people in order to reassure themselves. I am convinced that the blame for the Reign of Terror in 1793 lies almost exclusively with the over-nervous bourgeois, demeaning himself as a patriot, the small petty bourgeois beside themselves with fright and the mob of riff-raff who know how to profit from the terror. These are just the classes in the present minor terror too. ... Best regards to all of you from all of us, including Jollymeyer and Moore.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_09_04.htm

It is a damnably bad thing that in the present situation there are so few people in Paris who are ready to dare to see things as they really are. Where is one man there who even dares to think that France's active power of resistance is broken where this war is concerned, and that with it the prospects of repelling the invasion by a revolution fall to the ground too! Just because people do not want to hear the real truth I am afraid that things may still come to this. For the apathy of the workers before the fall of the Empire will no doubt have changed by now.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_09_12.htm

This would be a king?! And of the most cultured nation in the world! And his wife has it printed!

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_09_13.htm

The Address enclosed. My time is so taken up with International work that I do not get to bed before three in the morning. This to excuse my obstinate silence. Best greetings to Madame la Comtesse and Fr nzchen.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_09_14.htm

Now I believe you would do the greatest possible service to the International, and I should take good care to have your article reproduced in our journals in Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Hungary, Germany, France, and the United States if you in the Fortnightly Review would publish something on the International, the manifestoes of the General Council on the war and the treatment we have to undergo at the hands of that paragon press, that free English press! Those fellows are in fact more enslaved to the Prussian police than the Berlin papers.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_09_16.htm

De k is against the workmen. He is, in fact, a Hungarian edition of an English Whig. But the asses, Bakunin and Cluseret, arrived at Lyons and spoiled everything. Belonging both to the "International," they had, unfortunately, influence enough to mislead our friends. The Hotel de Ville was seized for a short time--a most foolish decree on the abolition de l'etat [abolition of the state] and similar nonsense were issued. You understand that the very fact of a Russian--represented by the middle class papers as an agent of Bismarck--pretending to impose himself as the leader of a Comite de Salut de la France [Committee for the Safety of France] was quite sufficient to turn the balance of public opinion. As to Cluseret, he behaved both as a fool and a coward. These two men have left Lyons after their failure. At Rouen, as in most industrial towns of France, the sections of the International, following the example of Lyons, have enforced the official admission into the "committees of defence" of the working-class element. Still, I must tell you that according to all information I receive from France, the middle class on the whole prefers Prussian conquest to the victory of a Republic with Socialist tendencies. ...

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_10_19.htm

The explanation for my long silence is the fact that during this war, which has caused most of the foreign correspondents of the General Council to go to France, I have had to conduct practically the entire international correspondence, which is no trifle. Besides, with the postal freedom now prevailing in Germany and particularly in the North German Confederation, and most particularly in Hanover, it is dangerous not for me, it is true, but for my German correspondents if I write them my opinion on the war, and what else can one write about at the present moment? For example, you ask me for our first Address on the war. I had sent it to you. It has obviously been confiscated. I am enclosing in this letter the two Addresses issued as a pamphlet as well as Professor Beesly s article in the Fortnightly Review and today s Daily News. Since this paper has a Prussian tinge, the things will probably get through. Professor Beesly is a Comtist and as such obliged to think up all sorts of crotchets, but otherwise he is a very capable and brave man. He is professor of history at London University. It seems that Germany has not only captured Bonaparte, his generals and his army but that the whole of imperialism, with all its infirmities, has likewise been acclimatised in the land of the oak and the linden tree. As to the German bourgeois, I am not at all surprised by his intoxication with conquest. First of all, rapacity is the vital principle of every bourgeoisie and to take foreign provinces is after all taking . The German middle classes moreover have most dutifully accepted so many kicks from their sovereigns, particularly the Hohenzollerns, that it must be a real pleasure to them when those kicks are administered for a change to a foreigner. In any case this war has freed us from the middle-class republicans . It has put a horrible end to that crew. And that is an important result. It has given our professors the best opportunity of discrediting themselves in the eyes of the whole world for being servile pedants. The conditions which result from the war will be the best propaganda of our principles. Here in England public opinion at the outbreak of war was ultra-Prussian; it has now turned into the opposite. In the caf s chantants, for example, German singers with their Wi-Wa-Wacht on the Rhine have been hissed off the floor while French singers with the Marseillaise have been accompanied in chorus. Apart from the decided sympathy of the popular masses for the Republic, from the vexation of the respectability at the alliance between Prussia and Russia, now clear as daylight, and from the shameless tone of Prussian diplomacy since Prussia s military successes, the manner in which the war has been conducted the requisitioning system, the burning down of villages, the shooting of francs-tireurs, the taking of hostages and similar acts reminiscent of the Thirty Years War has aroused universal indignation in this country. Of course, the English have done the same in India, Jamaica, etc, but the French are neither Hindus, nor Chinese, nor Negroes, and the Prussians are not heaven-born Englishmen! It is a truly Hohenzollern idea that a people commits a crime in continuing to defend itself once its regular army has ceased to exist. In fact, the war of the Prussian people against Napoleon I was a real thorn in the side of good old Frederick William III, as one can see from Professor Pertz s historical account of Gneisenau, who transformed the war of francs-tireurs into a system through his Landsturm Ordnung. The fact that the people fought on their own initiative and independently of orders from the highest quarters gave Frederick William III no peace. However, the last word has not yet been spoken. The war in France can still take a very unpleasant turn. The resistance put up by the Loire Army was beyond calculation, and the present scattering of the Prussian forces right and left is merely intended to instil fear, but in fact its only result is to call forth the defensive power at every point and weaken the offensive power. The threatened bombardment of Paris is likewise nothing but a trick. By all the rules of the theory of probability, it can have no serious effect on the city of Paris itself. If a few outworks are shot to pieces and a breach is made, what good is that when the besieged outnumber the besiegers? And if the besieged fought exceptionally well in the sorties when the enemy defended himself behind entrenchments, how much better will they fight when the roles are reversed? To starve Paris out is the only real way. But if that is dragged out long enough to allow armies to be formed and a people s war to develop in the provinces, nothing will be gained thereby except a shifting of the centre of gravity. Moreover, even after the surrender of Paris, which cannot be occupied and kept tranquil by a mere handful, would keep a large part of the invaders out of action. But however the war may end, it has given the French proletariat practice in arms, and that is the best guarantee of the future. The shameless tone which Russia and Prussia adopt towards England may have wholly unexpected and unpleasant results for them. The matter stands like this: by the Paris Peace Treaty of 1856 England disarmed herself. England is a sea power and can counterpose to the great Continental military powers only the weapon of naval warfare. The certain method is temporarily to destroy or bring to a standstill the overseas trade of the continental powers. This mainly depends on operating the principle of seizing enemy goods in neutral vessels. This maritime right (as well as other similar rights) was surrendered by England in the so-called Declaration attached to the Paris Treaty. Clarendon did this at the secret order of the Russian Palmerston. The Declaration, however, is not an integral part of the treaty itself and has never been legally ratified in England. The Russian and Prussian gentlemen are reckoning without their host if they imagine that the influence of the Queen, who is Prussianised from family interest, and the bourgeois weak-mindedness of a Gladstone, would at a decisive moment keep John Bull from throwing this self-created charming obstacle overboard. And he can always strangle Russian-German sea trade in a few weeks. We shall then have an opportunity of studying the long faces of the Petersburg and Berlin diplomats, and the still longer faces of the power patriots . Qui vivra verra. My best compliments to Madame la Comtesse and Fr nzchen. propos. Can you let me have Windthorst s various Reichstag Speeches?

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_12_13.htm

Christmas has ushered in the commencement of the real siege of Paris. Up to that time there had only been an investment of the giant fortress. Batteries had been constructed, it is true, for heavy siege guns; a siege park had been collected, but not a gun had been placed in position, not an embrasure cut, not a shot fired. All these preparations had been made on the southern and south-western front. On the other fronts there were breastworks thrown up as well, but these seem to have been intended for defensive purposes only, to check sorties, and to protect the infantry and field artillery of the besiegers. These entrenchments were naturally at a greater distance from the Paris forts than regular siege batteries would have to be; there was between them and the forts a larger belt of debatable ground on which sorties could take place. When Trochu s great sortie of the 30th of November had been repelled, he still remained master of a certain portion of this debatable ground on the eastern side of Paris, especially of the isolated plateau of Avron, in front of Fort Rosny. This he began to fortify; at what exact date we do not know, but we find it mentioned on the 17th of December that both Mont Avron and the heights of Varennes (in the loop of the Marne) had been fortified and armed with heavy guns. Barring a few advanced redoubts on the south front, near Vitry and Villejuif, which do not appear to be of much importance, we have here the first attempt, on a large scale, of the defenders to extend their positions by counter-approaches. And here we are naturally referred, for a comparison, to Sebastopol. More than four months after the opening of the trenches by the Allies, towards the end of February, 1855, when the besiegers had suffered terribly by the winter, Todleben began to construct advanced works at what were then considerable distances in front of his lines. On the 23rd of February he had constructed the redoubt Selenginsk, 1,100 yards from the main rampart; on the same day an assault of the Allies on the new work failed; on the 1st of March, another redoubt (Volynsk) was completed in a still more forward position, and 1,450 yards from the rampart. These two works were called by the Allies the ouvrages blancs. On the 12th of March, the Kamtschatka lunette, 800 yards from the ramparts, was completed, the Mamelon vert, of the Allies, and in front of all these works rifle-pits were dug out. An assault, on the 22nd of March, was beaten off, and the whole of the works, as well as another to the (proper) right of the Mamelon, the Quarry, was completed, and all these redoubts connected by a covered way. During the whole of April and May the Allies in vain attempted to recover the ground occupied by these works. They had to advance against them by regular siege approaches, and it was only on the 7th of June, when considerable reinforcements had arrived, that they were enabled to storm them. Thus, the fall of Sebastopol had been delayed fully three months by these advanced field works, attacked though they were by the most powerful naval guns of the period. The defence of Mont Avron looks very paltry side by side with this story. On the 17th, when the French had had above fourteen days for the construction of their works, the batteries are completed. The besiegers in the meantime sent for siege artillery, chiefly old guns already used in the previous sieges. On the 22nd the batteries against Mont Avron are completed, but no action is taken until every danger of a sortie en masse of the French has passed away, and the encampments of the Army of Paris, round Drancy, are broken up on the 26th. Then on the 27th the German batteries open their fire, which is continued on the 28th and 29th. The fire of the French works is soon silenced, and the works abandoned on the 29th, because, as the official French report says, there were no casemates in them to shelter the garrison. This is undoubtedly a poor defence and a still poorer excuse for it. The chief fault seems to rest with the construction of the works. From all descriptions we are led to conclude that there was not on the hill a single closed redoubt, but only batteries open to the rear, and even without efficient protection on the flanks. These batteries, moreover, appear to have been facing one way only, towards the south or south-east, while close by, to the north-east, lay the heights of Raincy and Montfermeil, the most eligible sites of all for batteries against Avron. The besiegers took advantage of these to surround Avron with a semicircle of batteries which soon silenced its fire and drove away its garrison. Then why was there no shelter for the garrison? The frost is but half an excuse, for the French had time enough; and what the Russians could do in a Crimean winter and on rocky soil must have been possible too this December before Paris. The artillery employed against Avron was certainly far more efficient than that of the Allies before Sebastopol; but it was the same as that used against the redoubts of D ppel, also field-works and they held out three weeks. It is surmised that the infantry garrison ran away and left the artillery uncovered. That may be so, but it would not excuse the engineers who constructed the works. The engineering staff inside Paris must be very badly organized if we are to judge it from this sample of its handiwork. The rapid demolition of Mont Avron has sharpened the appetite of the besiegers for more successes of a similar sort. Their fire has been opened upon the eastern forts, especially Noisy, Rosny, and Nogent. After two days bombardment these forts were all but silenced. What more there is being done against them we do not hear. Neither is there any mention of the fire of the entrenchments which had been constructed in the intervals between these forts. But we may be certain that the besiegers are doing their best to push forward approaches, if only in a rough way, against these forts, and to secure a firm lodgment on Mont Avron. We should not wonder if they succeeded better in this than the French, in spite of the weather. But what is the effect of all this upon the course of the siege? No doubt, if these three forts should fall into the hands of the Prussians, that would be an important success, and enable them to bring their batteries to within 3,000 or 4,000 yards of the enceinte. There is, however, no necessity that they should fall so soon. These forts all have bomb-proof casemates for their garrisons, and the besiegers, so far, have not got any rifled mortars, of which they altogether possess but a small stock. These mortars are the only sort of artillery which can destroy bomb-proof shelter in a very short time; the old mortars are too uncertain in their range to have a very rapid effect, and the 24-pounders (with 64lb. shell) cannot be sufficiently elevated to produce the effect of vertical fire. If the fire of these forts appears to be silenced, that signifies merely that the guns have been placed under shelter so as to keep them available for an assault. The Prussian batteries may demolish the parapets of the ramparts, but that will not constitute a breach. To breach the very well-covered masonry of the escarp, even by indirect fire, they will have to construct batteries within at least 1,000 yards from the forts, and that can be done by regular parallels and approaches only. The abridged process of besieging, of which the Prussians talk so much, consists in nothing but the silencing of the enemy s fire from a greater distance, so that the approaches can be made with less danger and loss of time; this is followed up by a violent bombardment, and a breaching of the rampart by indirect fire. If all this does not compel surrender and in the case of the Paris forts it is difficult to see how it could do so nothing remains but to push up the approaches in the usual way to the glacis and risk an assault. The assault of D ppel was undertaken after the approaches had been pushed to about 250 yards from the ruined works, and at Strasbourg the saps had to be driven quite in the old-fashioned way up to the crest of the glacis and beyond. With all this, we must recur again and again to the point so often urged in these columns, that the defence of Paris must be carried on actively, and not passively only. If ever there was a time for sorties, that time is now. It is not, at this moment, a question of breaking through the enemy s lines; it is this to accept a localized combat which the besieger forces upon the besieged. That the fire of the besieger can, under almost any circumstances, be made superior, on any given point, to that of the besieged, is an old and uncontested axiom; and unless the besieged make up for this his inherent deficiency by activity, boldness and energy in sorties, he gives up his best chance. Some say the troops inside Paris have lost heart; but there is no reason why they should. They may have lost confidence in their leader, but that is another thing altogether; and if Trochu persists in his inactivity, they may well do so. We may as well advert in a word or two to the ingenious hypothesis of some people that Trochu intends to withdraw, with his troops, to the fortified peninsula of Mont Valerien, as to a citadel, after the fall of Paris. This profound surmise has been concocted by some of the super-clever hangers-on of the staff at Versailles, and is based chiefly on the fact that a good many carts go backwards and forwards between Paris and that peninsula. He must certainly be an uncommonly clever general who chooses to construct for himself a citadel on a low alluvial peninsula, surrounded on all sides by commanding heights, from which the camps of his troops can be surveyed. like a panorama, and consequently fired into at easy ranges. But as long as the Prussian staff has existed, it has been troubled with the presence of some men of superhuman sharpness. With them the enemy is always most likely to do the very unlikeliest thing of all. As the German saying goes, they hear the grass growing. Whoever has occupied himself with Prussian military literature must have stumbled over this sort of people, and the only wonder is that they should find anybody to believe them.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/01/06.htm

Although there has been a fair amount of fighting since we last surveyed the relative positions of the combatants in the provinces, there has been very little change, thus proving the correctness of our view that the forces of both were nearly balanced for the time being. Chanzy s Army of the West has maintained itself in front of Le Mans; the army of Mecklenburg opposes it on a line stretching from Blois by Vend me to Verneuil. There has been a good deal of desultory fighting about Vend me, but nothing has been changed in the relative position of the armies. In the meantime Chanzy has drawn towards himself all the drilled and armed men from the camp of Conlie, which has been broken up; he is reported to have entrenched a strong position around Le Mans, as a stronghold to fall back upon, and is now again expected to assume the offensive. As M. Gambetta left Bordeaux on the 5th for Le Mans this may be quite correct. Of the actual strength and organisation of Chanzy s forces we have no knowledge whatever beyond the fact that he had, previous to his retreat upon Le Mans, three army corps. Nor are we much better informed as to the forces immediately opposed to him; the troops of Mecklenburg and those of Prince Frederick Charles s original army have been so much intermixed that the original ordre de bataille is no longer in force. We shall have to treat both as one army, which they indeed are, since Frederick Charles has the command of the whole; the only distinction is, that Mecklenburg commands those troops which cheval of the Loir, face west, while the Prince has under his immediate orders those which, along the Loire from Blois to Gien, face south and watch Bourbaki. The whole of both these bodies counts ten divisions of infantry and three of cavalry, but considerable detachments have been left on the line of march from Commercy, by Troyes, to the Loire; these are only gradually coming up, as they are being relieved by the new arrivals of landwehr. On the 11th of December Prince Frederick Charles had arrived at Briare, with intent to advance upon Nevers, in order to turn Bourbaki s right and to cut off his direct communication with the troops opposed to Werder. But we have only recently learned that on receiving the news of the resolute and unexpected resistance which Mecklenburg encountered on the part of Chanzy, he gave up his plan at once and turned back with the mass of his troops in the direction of Tours; which, as we know, his troops came in sight of but never entered. Thus we now learn that Chanzy s clever and gallant retreat was the cause not only of his own safety, but of Bourbaki s too. This latter general must still be in the neighbourhood of Bourges and Nevers. If, as has been presumed, he had marched off eastwards against Werder or against the Prussian line of communications, we should have heard of him ere now. Most probably he is reorganizing and reinforcing his army, and if Chanzy should advance we are sure to hear of him too. North of the Seine Manteuffel, with the 1st Corps, holds Rouen and neighbourhood, while he has sent the 8th Corps into Picardy. This latter corps has had a hard time of it. General Faidherbe does not allow his Northern Army much rest. The three northernmost departments of France, from the Somme to the Belgian frontier, hold about twenty fortresses of various sizes, which, though wholly useless nowadays against a large invasion from Belgium, yet form a most welcome and almost unattackable basis of operations in this case. When Vauban planned this triple belt of fortresses, nearly two hundred years ago, he surely never thought that they would serve as a great entrenched camp, a sort of multiplied quadrilateral, to a French army against an enemy advancing from the heart of France. But so it is, and, small as this piece of territory is, it is for the nonce impregnable, and an important piece of ground too, on account of its manufacturing resources and its dense population. Driven back into this safe retreat by the battle of Villers-Bretonneux (27th of November), Faidherbe reorganized and strengthened his army; towards the end of December he again advanced upon Amiens, and delivered on the 23rd an undecided battle to Manteuffel on the Hallue. In this battle he had four divisions (35,000 men as he counts them) against the two divisions of the 8th Prussian Corps (24,000 men by, Prussian accounts). That with such a proportion of forces, and against as renowned a general as von Goeben, he should have held his own, is a sign that his Mobiles and Mobilise s are improving. In consequence of the frost and of shortcomings of his commissariat and train, as he says, but probably also because he did not trust in the steadiness of his men for a second day s hard fighting, he retreated almost unmolested behind the Scarpe. Von Goeben followed, left the greater part of the 16th division to keep the communications and to invest P ronne, and advanced with only the 15th division and Prince Albert the younger s flying column (which at most was equivalent to a brigade) to Bapaume and beyond. Here, then, was a chance for Faidherbe s four divisions. Without hesitating a moment, he advanced from his. sheltered position and attacked the Prussians. After a preliminary engagement on the 2nd of January, the main bodies fought in front of Bapaume on the following day. The clear reports of Faidherbe, the great numerical superiority of the French (eight brigades or 33,000 men at least against three Prussian brigades, or 16,000 to 18,000 men, to calculate the numbers according to the data given above for the two armies), the indefinite language of Manteuffel, leave no doubt that in this battle the French had the best of it. Besides, Manteuffel s bragging is well known in Germany: everybody there recollects how as Governor of Sleswig, and being rather tall, he offered to cover every seven feet of the country with his body. His reports, even after censorship in Versailles, are certainly the least trustworthy of all Prussian accounts. On the other hand, Faidherbe did not follow up his success, but retired after the battle to a village some miles in rear of the battle-field, so that Peronne was not relieved and, as has already been pointed out in these columns, the fruits of the fighting were all for the Prussians. It is impossible to take Faidherbe s excuses for his retreat as being meant seriously. But, whatever his reasons may have been, unless he can do more with his troops than beat three Prussian brigades and then retire, he will not relieve Paris. In the meantime, Manteuffel has an important reinforcement at hand. The 14th division (Kameke) of the 7th Corps, after reducing Montm dy and M zier s, is approaching his fighting-ground accompanied by its siege train. The fighting near Guise seems to mark a stage in this advance; Guise is on the direct road from M zier s to P ronne, which naturally seems to be the next fortress set down for bombardment. After P ronne, probably Cambrai, if all be well with the Prussians. In the south-east, Werder has been in full retreat since the 27th of December, when he evacuated Dijon. It took some time before the Germans mentioned a word about this, and then the Prussians were quite silent; it leaked out in a quiet corner of the KarIsruher Zeitung. On the 31st he evacuated Gray also, after an engagement, and is now covering the siege of Belfort at Vesoul. The Army of Lyons, under Cr mer (said to be an emigrated Hanoverian officer) is following him up, while Garibaldi seems to be acting more westward against the Prussian chief line of communications. Werder, who is said to expect a reinforcement of 36,000 men, will be pretty safe at Vesoul, but the line of communications appears anything but secure. We now learn that General Zastrow, commander of the 7th Corps, has been sent thither, and is in communication with Werder. Unless he is appointed to quite a new command, he will have the 13th division with him, which has been relieved, in Metz, by landwehr, and he will also dispose of other forces for active operations. It must he one of his battalions which has been attacked, and is said to have been routed, near Saulieu, on the road from Auxerre to Chalon-sur-Sa ne. What the state of the communications is on the secondary lines of railway (always excepting the main line from Nancy to Paris, which is well guarded and so far safe) is shown by a letter from Chaumont (Haute-Marne) to the Cologne Gazette, complaining that now for the third time the francs-tireurs have broken up the railway between Chaumont and Troyes; the last time, on the 24th of December, they replaced the rails loosely, so that a train with 500 landwehr got off the rails and was stopped, upon which the francs-tireurs opened fire from a wood, but were beaten off. The correspondent considers this not only unfair but infamous. Just like the Austrian cuirassier in Hungary in 1849: Are not these hussars infamous scoundrels? They see my cuirass, and yet they cut me across the face. The state of these communications is a matter of life and death to the army besieging Paris. A few days interruption would affect it for weeks. The Prussians know this, and are now concentrating all their landwelir in north-western France to hold in subjection a belt of country sufficiently broad to ensure safety to their railways. The fall of M zier s opens them a second line of rails from the frontier by Thionville, M zier s, and Reims; but this line dangerously offers its flank to the Army of the North. If Paris is to be relieved, it might perhaps be done easiest by breaking this line of communications.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/01/07.htm

The armies in the field have entered upon two operations which might easily bring on a crisis of the war. The first of these is Bourbaki s march against Werder; the second, Prince Frederick Charles s march against Chanzy. The rumour of Bourbaki s march eastward has been current for nearly a week, but there was nothing in it to distinguish it from the rest of the rumours which are now flying about so plentifully. That the movement might be good in itself was no reason to believe in its reality. However, there can be now no doubt that Bourbaki, with at least the 18th and 20th Corps, and the 24th, a new corps, has arrived in the East of France, and has turned Werder s position at Vesoul by a movement vi Besan on upon Lure, between Vesoul and Belfort. Near Lure, Werder attacked him at Villersexel on the 9th, and an engagement ensued, in which both parties claim the victory. It was evidently a rearguard-engagement, in which Werder apparently has made good his retreat. Whichever may have won in this first encounter, other and more general battles are sure to follow in a day or two, and to bring matters here to a crisis. If this movement of Bourbaki be undertaken with sufficient forces that is to say, with every man, horse, and gun that was not absolutely required elsewhere and if it be carried out with the necessary vigour, it may prove the turning point of the war. We have before now pointed out the weakness of the long line of the German communications, and the possibility of Paris being relieved by an attack in force upon that line. This is now upon the cards, and it will depend on the playing of them whether it is really to come off. Of the forces now invading France, nearly the whole of the troops of the line are engaged either in the siege of Paris or in the covering of that siege. Out of thirty-five divisions (Including the landwehr of the Guard, who have all the time been used as line troops), thirty-two are thus employed. Two are with Werder (three Baden and one Prussian brigade), and one, under Zastrow, has gone to join him. Besides these, Werder has at least two divisions of landwehr to carry on the siege of Belfort and to occupy the fortresses in Southern Alsace. Thus the whole length and breadth of country north-east of the line from M zier s by Laon and Soissons to Paris, and thence by Auxerre and Ch tillon to H ningen, near Basel, with all its reduced fortresses, has to be held by the remainder of the landwehr, as far as it has been made disposable. And when we consider that there are also the prisoners of war in Germany to be watched and the fortresses at home to be garrisoned; that only nine Prussian army corps (those existing before 1866) had old soldiers enough to fill up the landwehr battalions, while the others will have to wait five years yet before they can do this we may imagine that the forces remaining disposable for the occupation of this part of France cannot have been over-numerous. True, eighteen dep t battalions are now being sent to garrison the fortresses in Alsace and Lorraine, and the newly forming garrison battalions are to relieve the landwehr in the interior of Prussia. But the formation of these garrison battalions is reported in the German press to proceed but slowly, and thus the army of occupation will still for some time be comparatively weak and barely able to hold in check the population of the provinces it has to guard. It is against this portion of the German army that Bourbaki is moving. He evidently attempted to interpose his troops between Vesoul and Belfort, whereby he would isolate Werder, whom he might beat singly, driving him in a north-westerly direction. But as Werder now probably is before Belfort and united with Tresckow, Bourbaki has to defeat both in order to raise the siege; to drive the besiegers back into the Rhine valley, after which he might advance on the eastern side of the Vosges towards Lun ville, where he would be on the main line of the German communications. The destruction of the railway tunnels near PhaIsbourg would block up the Strasbourg line for a considerable period; that of the Frouard Junction would stop the line from Saarbr cken and Metz; and it might even be possible to send a flying column towards Thionville to destroy the line near that place too, so as to break the last through line the Germans have. That column could always retire into Luxembourg or Belgium and lay down its arms; it would have amply repaid itself. These are the objects which Bourbaki must have in view. With the neighbourhood of Paris exhausted, the interruption of the communications from Paris to Germany even for a few days would be a very serious matter for the 240,000 Germans before Paris, and the presence of 120,000 to 150,000 French soldiers in Lorraine might be a more effective means of raising the siege than even a victory of Chanzy over Frederick Charles, by which the latter would after all be driven back upon the besieging forces, to be backed up by them. True, the Germans have another line of railway communication by Thionville, M zier s, and Reims, which Bourbaki might probably not be able to reach even with flying columns; but then there is the absolute certainty of a general rising of the people in the occupied districts as soon as Bourbaki would have succeeded in penetrating into Lorraine; and what the safety for traffic of that second line of railway would be under such circumstances we need not explain any further. Besides, Bourbaki s success would, as a first consequence, compel Goeben to fall back, and thus the Army of the North might find a chance of cutting off this line between Soissons and M zier s. We consider this movement of Bourbaki as the most important and the most promising one which has been made by any French general in this war. But, we repeat, it must be carried out adequately. The best plans are worthless if they be executed feebly and irresolutely; and we shall probably not learn anything positive about Bourbaki s forces or the way he handles them until his struggles with Werder have been decided. But we are informed that in view of some such contingency, the Corps of Werder is to be enlarged into a great fifth army, under Manteuffel, who is to hand over his first army to Goeben, and to bring to Werder s assistance the 2nd, 7th, and 14th Corps. Now, of the 7th Corps, the 13th division has already been sent towards Vesoul, under Zastrow; the 14th division has only just taken M zier s and Rocroi, and cannot, therefore, be expected at Vesoul so very soon; the 14th Corps is the very one which Werder has had all along (the Baden division and the 30th and 34th Prussian regiments, under Goltz); and, as to the 2nd Corps, which is before Paris, we expect that it will not start before that city shall have surrendered, because it cannot be well spared there. But even if it were sent off now it would only arrive after Werder s decisive action with Bourbaki had taken place. As to other reinforcements for Werder from reserves which may be supposed to exist in Germany, we have to consider, firstly, that whatever landwehr can be made disposable has already been, or is being, forwarded now; and, secondly, that the dep t battalions, the only other reserve force in existence, have just been emptied of their drilled men, and are at this moment mere cadres. Thus, Bourbaki will at all events have to fight his first and most decisive actions before the intended reinforcements can have arrived; and, if victorious, he will be in the favourable position to deal with these reinforcements one after another as they arrive successively and from very different directions. On the other hand, Prince Frederick Charles, in spite of his victorious march to Le Mans, may yet have made the first mistake committed by the Germans in this war, when he left Bourbaki entirely free, in order to concentrate all his forces against Chanzy. Now, Chanzy was no doubt his more immediate opponent, and for the moment the most dangerous one too. But Chanzy s country is not the one where decisive successes can be had over the French. Chanzy has just suffered a severe defeat; that settles his attempts for the relief of Paris for the present. But it so far settles nothing else. Chanzy may withdraw if he likes either towards Brittany or towards the Calvados. In either case he finds at the extreme end of his retreat a great naval arsenal, Brest or Cherbourg, with detached forts to shelter him until the French fleet can transport his men south of the Loire or north of the Somme. In consequence, the West of France is a country where the French can carry on a war to amuse the enemy a war of alternate advances and retreats without ever being brought to bay against their will. We should not wonder if Chanzy had been urged on to fight by Gambetta, who was reported to have joined him, and who would be sure to subordinate military to political considerations. After his reverse, and the loss of Le Mans. Chanzy could do nothing better than draw off Frederick Charles as far away to the westward as possible, so that this portion of the Prussian forces may be quite out of harm s way when Bourbaki s campaign begins to develop itself. Faidherbe, in the north, is evidently too weak to do anything decisive against Goeben. As it appears that Chanzy cannot defeat Frederick Charles and thereby relieve Paris, it would be better to send plenty of men to the north, to get rid of Goeben both at Amiens and Rouen, and to attempt with concentrated forces an advance upon the railway line from M zier s to Paris; especially now, while Bourbaki is threatening the other German line of railway. The communications are the tenderest part of an army s position; and if the northern line, which lies so much exposed to an attack from the north both at Soissons and Rethel, should once be seriously menaced while Bourbaki is at work on the southern edge of Lorraine, we might see all of a sudden a very pretty commotion in Versailles.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/01/14.htm

Ever since, after Sedan, Paris was first seriously menaced by hostile attack, we have insisted upon the great strength of a fortified capital like Paris; but we have never omitted to add that, for the full development of its defensive powers, it required a large regular army to defend it'; an army too powerful to be shut up in the works of the place, or to be prevented from manoeuvring in the open around the fortress, which would serve as its pivot and partly as its base of operations. Under normal conditions, this army would almost always be at hand, as a matter of course. The French armies, defeated near the frontier, would fall back upon Paris as their last and chief stronghold; they would under ordinary circumstances arrive here in sufficient strength, and find sufficient reinforcements to be able to fulfil the task assigned to them. But this time the strategy of the Second Empire had caused the whole of the French armies to disappear from the field. One of them it had managed to get shut up, to all appearance hopelessly, in Metz; the other had just surrendered at Sedan. When the Prussians arrived before Paris, a few half-filled dep ts, a number of provincial Mobiles (just levied), and the local National Guard (not half formed), were all the forces ready for its defence. Even under these circumstances the intrinsic strength of the place proved so formidable to the invaders, the task of attacking lege artis this immense city and its outworks appeared so gigantic to them, that they abandoned it at once, and chose to reduce the place by famine. At that time Henri Rochefort and others were formed into a Commission of Barricades, charged with the construction of a third interior line of defence, which should prepare the ground for that line of fighting so peculiarly Parisian the defence of barricades and the struggle from house to house. The press at the time made great fun of this commission; but the semi-official publications of the Prussian staff leave no doubt that it was above all the certainty of having to encounter a determined struggle at the barricades which caused them to decide in favour of reduction by famine. The Prussians knew very well that the forts, and after them the enceinte, if defended by artillery alone, must fall within a certain time; but then would come a stage of the struggle in which new levies and even civilians would be a match for veterans; in which house after house, street after street, would have to be conquered, and, considering the great number of the defenders, with the certainty of an immense loss of life. Whoever will refer to the papers on the subject in the Prussian Staats-Anzeiger will find this reason to be stated as the decisive one against a regular siege. The investment began on September 19, exactly four months ago to-day. On the following day General Ducrot, who commanded the regular troops in Paris, made a sortie with three divisions in the direction of Clamart, and lost seven guns and 3,000 prisoners. This was followed by similar sorties on the 23rd and 30th of September, 13th and 21st of October, all of which resulted in considerable loss to the French without other advantages than, perhaps, accustoming the young troops to the enemy s fire. On the 28th another sortie was made against Le Bourget with better success. the village was taken and held 1()1 two days; but on the 30th the second division of the Prussian guards thirteen battalions, then less than 10,000 men retook the village. The French had evidently made very poor use of the two days, during which they might have converted the massively built village into a fortress, and neglected to keep reserves at hand to support the defenders in time, otherwise such a moderate force could not have wrested the place from them. After this effort there followed a month of quietness. Trochu evidently intended to improve the drill and discipline of his men before again risking great sorties, and very properly so. But, at the same time, he neglected to carry on that war of outposts, reconnaissances and patrols, of ambushes and surprises, which is now the regular occupation of the men on the French front round Paris a kind of warfare than which none is more adapted to give young troops confidence in their officers and in themselves, and the habit of meeting the enemy with composure. Troops which have found out that in small bodies, in single sections, half companies, or companies, they can surprise, defeat, or take prisoner similar small bodies of the enemy will soon learn to meet him battalion against battalion. Besides, they will thus learn what outpost duty really is, which many of them appeared to be ignorant of as late as December. On the 28th of November, at last, was inaugurated that series of sorties which culminated in the grand sortie of the 30th of November across the Marne, and the advance of the whole eastern front of Paris. On the 2nd of December the Germans retook Briey and part of Champigny, and on the following day the French recrossed the Marne. As an attempt to break through the entrenched lines of circumvallation which the besiegers had thrown up, the attack completely failed; it had been carried out without the necessary energy. But it left in the hands of the French a considerable portion of hitherto debatable ground in front of their lines. A strip of ground about two miles in width. from Drancy to the Marne, near Neuilly, came into their possession; a country completely commanded by the fire of the forts, covered with massively built villages easy of defence, and possessing a fresh commanding position in the plateau of Avron. Here, then, was a chance of permanently enlarging the circle of defence; from this ground, once well secured, a further advance might have been attempted, and either the line of the besiegers so much bulged in that a successful attack on their lines became possible, or that, by concentrating a strong force here, they were compelled to weaken their line at other points, and thus facilitate a French attack. Well, this ground remained in the hands of the French for a full month. The Germans were compelled to erect siege batteries against Avron, and yet two days fire from these batteries sufficed to drive the French from it; and, Avron once lost, the other positions were also abandoned. Fresh attacks had indeed been made on the whole north-east and east front on the 21st; Le Bourget was half-carried, Maison Blanche and Ville-Evrard were taken; but all this vantage-ground was lost again the same night. The troops were left on the ground outside the forts, where they bivouacked at a temperature varying from nine to twenty-one degrees below freezing point, and were at last withdrawn under shelter because they naturally could not stand the exposure. The whole of this episode is more characteristic than any other of the want of decision and energy the mollesse, we might almost say the drowsiness with which this defence of Paris is conducted. The Avron incident at last induced the Prussians to turn the investment into a real siege, and to make use of the siege artillery which, for unforeseen cases, had been provided. On the 30th of December the regular bombardment of the north-eastern and eastern forts commenced; on the 5th of January that of the southern forts. Both have been continued without interruption, and of late have been accompanied by a bombardment of the town itself, which is a wanton piece of cruelty. Nobody knows better than the staff at Versailles, and nobody has caused it oftener to be asserted in the press, that the bombardment of a town as extensive as Paris cannot hasten its surrender by one moment. The cannonade of the forts is being followed up by the opening of regular parallels, at least against Issy; we hear of the guns being moved into batteries nearer to the forts, and unless the defence acts on the offensive more unhesitatingly than hitherto, we may soon hear of actual damage being done to one or more forts. Trochu, however. continues in his inactivity, masterly or otherwise. The few sorties made during the last few days appear to have been but too platonic, as Trochu s accuser in the Si cle calls the whole of them. We are told the soldiers refused to follow their officers. If so, this proves nothing but that they have lost all confidence in the supreme direction. And, indeed, we cannot resist the conclusion that a change in the chief command in Paris has become a necessity. There is an indecision, a lethargy, a want of sustained energy in all the proceedings of this defence which cannot entirely be laid to the charge of the quality of the troops. That the positions, held for a month, during which there occurred only about ten days of severe frost, were not properly entrenched, cannot be blamed upon any one but Trochu, whose business it was to see to its being done. And that month, too, was the critical period of the siege; at its close the question was to be decided which party, besiegers or besieged, would gain ground. Inactivity and indecision, not of the troops but of the commander-in-chief, have turned the scale against the besieged. And why is this inactivity and indecision continued even now? The forts are under the enemy s fire, the besiegers batteries are being brought nearer and nearer; the French artillery, as is owned by Trochu himself, is inferior to that of the attack. Defended by artillery alone, the very day may be calculated when, under these circumstances, the ramparts masonry and all of the forts will give way. Inactivity and indecision cannot save them. Something must be done; and if Trochu cannot do it, he had better let some one else try. Kinglake has preserved a transaction in which Trochu s character appears in the same light as in this defence of Paris. When the advance to Varna had been resolved upon by both Lord Raglan and Saint-Arnaud, and the British Light Division had already been despatched, Colonel Trochu a cautious thinking man, well versed in strategic science, of whom Colonel Trochu called upon Lord Raglan, and entered upon negotiations, the upshot of which was that Saint-Arnaud declared he had resolved to send to and invited Lord Raglan to follow his example. And that at a moment when the Turks were all but victorious on the Danube without foreign aid! It may be said that the troops in Paris have lost heart, and are no longer fit for great sorties, that it is too late to sally forth against the Prussian siege works, that Trochu may save his troops for one great effort at the last moment, and so forth. But if the 500,000 armed men in Paris are to surrender to an enemy not half their number, placed moreover in a position most unfavourable for defence, they will surely not do so until their inferiority is brought home to all the world and to themselves. Surely they are not to sit down, eat up the last meal of their provisions, and then surrender! And if they have lost heart, is it because they acknowledge themselves hopelessly beaten, or because they have no longer any trust in Trochu? If it is too late to make sorties now, in another month they will be still more impracticable. And as to Trochu s grand finale, the sooner it is made the better; at present the men are still tolerably fed and strong, and there is no telling what they will be in February.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/01/19.htm

This has been a most unfortunate week for the French arms. After Chanzy s defeat came the repulse of Bourbaki before Belfort, and now comes the check which, according to Prussian accounts, Faidherbe has just suffered in front of St. Quentin. There can be no mistake about Bourbaki s failure. Ever since the affair at Villersexel on the 9th, he has displayed a slowness of movement which indicated either indecision on the part of the General or insufficient strength on the part of the troops. The attack upon the entrenched positions which Werder had prepared for the protection of the siege of Belfort beyond the Lisaine (or Isel on other maps) was not commenced before the 15th, and on the evening of the 17th Bourbaki gave it up in despair. There can be no doubt now that the expedition had been undertaken with insufficient forces. The 15th Corps had been left near Nevers; of the 19th we have not heard for a month; the troops brought up from Lyons reduce themselves to one army corps, the 24th. We now hear of considerable reinforcements being hurried up to Dijon, but, in the face of the strong reinforcements rapidly arriving on the other side, they will not enable Bourbaki at once to resume the offensive. It may be questioned whether Bourbaki ought to have led his young troops to the assault of entrenched positions defended by breech-loaders; but we know little as yet of the tactical conditions under which the three days fight took place: he may have been unable to act otherwise. That the Prussian headquarters did not look upon Bourbaki s expedition with the same contemptuous shrug as most people did here in London is shown by the extreme eagerness with which they took steps to meet it. From these steps there can be no doubt that Bourbaki s move was known in Versailles as soon as he began his eastward march, if not before. On the 2nd of January the 2nd Corps received orders to march from Paris in a south-easterly direction, towards the basin of the Upper Seine. About the same time Zastrow left the neighbourhood of Metz with the 13th division for Ch tillon. Immediately after the reduction of Rocroi, on the 9th, the 14th division (the remaining one of Zastrow s 7th Corps) was ordered from Charleville towards Paris, thence to follow the 2nd Corps; and on the 15th already we find its advance (a battalion of the 77th regiment) engaged near Langres. At the same time landwehr troops were hurried on towards southern Alsace from Germany, and Manteuffel evidently owes his new command to no other cause than this first serious movement against the weakest point of the whole German line. Had Bourbaki brought sufficient forces to overthrow Werder, he might have cast him back into the Rhine valley, placed the chain of the Vosges between Werder and his own troops, and marched with the greater part of his forces against these reinforcements, which he might have attacked in detail as they arrived from different directions. He might have penetrated as far as the Paris Strasbourg Railway, In which case it is very doubtful whether the investment of Paris could have been continued. His defeat proves nothing against the strategy of his movement: it proves merely that it was carried on with insufficient forces. The writer of these Notes is still of opinion that the shortest and safest plan to relieve Paris is an attack upon the Strasbourg-Paris Railway, the only through line of rail the Germans have, for we know now that the other line, vi -Thionville and M zier s, is still impracticable, and will remain so for some time vet, on account of the blowing-up of a tunnel in the Ardennes. This, by the way, is the second instance in this war in which the demolition of a tunnel stops a railway for months, while the destruction of bridges and viaducts has been in every case repaired in an incredibly short time. As to Chanzy, he evidently made a very great mistake in accepting a pitched battle at all. He must have been aware of Bourbaki s move for nearly a month; he must have known that this was the real move for the relief of Paris, and that in the meantime he might have the whole weight of Frederick Charles s army brought to bear against himself. He was not compelled to accept battle; on the contrary, he might have drawn on his opponent farther than was safe for the latter, by a slow retreat under continuous rear-guard engagements, such as those by which he first established his reputation in December. He had plenty of time to get his stores sent off to places of safety, and he had the choice of retiring either upon Brittany with its fortified naval ports, or by Nantes to the south of the Loire. Moreover, Frederick Charles, with all his forces, could not have followed him very far. Such a military retreat would be more in keeping with our previous experience of Chanzy; and as he must have known that the new reinforcements he had received were not yet fit for a general action either by equipment, armament, or discipline, we cannot but come to the conclusion that the battle before Le Mans was fought not for military but for political reasons, and that the man responsible for it is not Chanzy but Gambetta. As to Chanzy s retreat now, it is, of course, rendered far more difficult by the preceding defeat; but Chanzy excels in retreats, and, so far, the victors do not appear to have materially damaged the cohesion of his army. Otherwise they would have substantial proofs to show for their assertion that this army shows signs of dissolution. Whether the retreat of Chanzy s army is really an eccentric one is not certain. At all events, from the fact that part of his troops retreated towards Alen on, and another part towards Laval, it does not necessarily follow that the first portion will be driven into the peninsula of the Cotentin towards Cherbourg, and the other into that of Brittany towards Brest. As the French fleet can steam from the one port to the other in a few hours, even this would be no severe disaster. In Brittany, the country, by its numerous thickset hedges as thick as those in the Isle of Wight, only far more plentiful is eminently adapted for defence, especially by raw troops, whose inferiority almost disappears there. Frederick Charles is not likely to entangle himself in a labyrinth where the armies of the first Republic fought for years against a mere peasant insurrection. The conclusion we must come to upon the whole of the campaign of January is this that the French lost it everywhere by trying to do too many different things at the same time. They can hope to win only by concentrating their masses upon one point, at the risk of being temporarily driven back on the other points, where, of course, they should avoid pitched battles. Unless they do this, and soon, Paris may be considered doomed. But if they act on this old-established principle they may still win however black things may look for them to-day. The Germans now have received all the reinforcements they can expect for three months to come; while the French must have in their camps of instruction at least from two to three hundred thousand men, who during that time will be got ready to meet the enemy.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/01/21.htm

We are again in a critical period of the war, which may turn out to be the critical period. From the moment we heard that bread had been rationed out in Paris by the Government, there could be no longer any doubt that the beginning of the end had come. How soon after that the offer of surrender would follow was a mere question of detail. We suppose, then, that it is intended to surrender to some 220,000 besiegers a besieged force of some 500,000 armed men on any terms the besiegers choose to impose. Whether it will be possible to carry this out without another struggle remains to be seen; at all events, any such struggle could not materially alter the state of things. Whether Paris holds out another fortnight, or whether a portion of these 500,000 armed men succeed in forcing a road across the lines of investment, will not much affect the ulterior course of the war. We cannot but hold General Trochu mainly responsible for this result of the siege. He certainly was not the man to form an army out of the undoubtedly excellent material under his hands. He had nearly five months time to make soldiers out of his men; yet at the end they appear to fight no better than at the beginning of the siege. The final sortie from Val rien was carried out with far less dash than the previous one across the Marne; there appears a good deal of theatrical display in it little of the rage of despair. It will not do to say that the troops were not fit to be sent out to storm breastworks manned by the German veterans. Why were they not? Five months are a sufficient time to make very respectable soldiers out of the men Trochu had at his command, and there are no circumstances better adapted for that purpose than those of the siege of a large entrenched camp. No doubt the men after the sorties of November and December had lost heart; but was it because they knew their inferiority with regard to their opponents, or because they had lost all faith in the pretended determination of Trochu to fight the matter out? All reports from Paris agree in ascribing the want of success to the absence of confidence of the soldiers in the supreme command. And rightly so. Trochu, we must not forget, is an Orleanist, and, as such, lives in bodily fear of La Villette, Belleville, and the other revolutionary quarters of Paris. He feared them more than the Prussians. This is not a mere supposition or deduction on our part. We know, from a source which admits of no doubt, of a letter sent out of Paris by a member of the Government in which it is stated that Trochu was on every side urged on to take the offensive energetically, but that he constantly refused, because such a course might hand over Paris to the demagogues. The fall of Paris, then, appears now all but certain. It will be a hard blow to the French nation, immediately after St. Quentin, Le Mans, and H ricourt, and its moral effect under these circumstances will be very great. Moreover, there are events impending in the south-east which may render this blow morally crushing. Bourbaki appears to be tarrying in the neighbourhood of Belfort in a way which seems to imply that he does not at all comprehend his situation. The 24th Corps, under Bressolles, on the 24th was still at Bl mont, about twelve miles south of Montb liard, and close to the Swiss frontier; and even supposing that this was Bourbaki s rearguard, it is not to be expected that the other two corps he had with him would be far away. In the meantime, we find that Prussian detachments, as early as the 21st, had cut, at D le, the railway between Besan on and Dijon; that they have since occupied St. Vith, another station on the same line nearer to Besan on; and that they are thus confining Bourbaki s retreat, towards Lyons, to the narrow strip between the Doubs and the Swiss frontier, a country of parallel longitudinal mountain chains and valleys where a comparatively small force may find plenty of positions in which it can stop the retreat of an army such as Bourbaki s has shown itself to be. These detachments on the Doubs we take to be the 13th Division of Zastrow s 7th Corps, or perhaps a portion of Fransecky s 2nd Corps, which has turned up on the 23rd at Dijon. The 60th regiment, which with the 21st forms the 8th Brigade (or 4th brigade of the 2nd Corps), was repulsed before that town by Garibaldi, and lost its colours. As Garibaldi has but 15,000 men at the utmost, he will not be able to hold the town against the superior forces which are sure to have arrived before it in the meantime. He will be driven back, and the Prussian advance will be continued towards and beyond the Doubs. Unless Bourbaki has in the meantime used the legs of his men to good advantage, he may be driven, with all his army, into the fortress of Besan on to play Metz over again, or into a corner of the Jura abutting on Swiss territory, and compelled to lay down his arms either on this side or on the other of the frontier. And if he should escape with the greater portion of his troops, it is almost certain that large numbers of stragglers, much baggage, and perhaps artillery, will have to be sacrificed. After the three days fighting at H ricourt, Bourbaki had no business to remain a day longer in his exposed position near the frontier, with Prussian reinforcements marching towards his communications. His attempts to relieve Belfort had failed; every chance of a further offensive movement in that direction had disappeared; his position became every day more dangerous, and nothing but rapid retreat could save him. By all appearances he has neglected that too, and if his imprudence should lead to a second Sedan, the blow to the French people might be morally overwhelming. Morally, we say, for materially it need not be. Germany is certainly not so exhausted as Gambetta pretends, but Germany is at this very moment displaying a greater absolute and relative strength than she will again display for months to come. For some time the German forces must decline, while nothing prevents the French forces, even after the surrender of the Paris garrison and Bourbaki, should it come to that, from again increasing. The Prussians themselves appear to have given up all hopes of being able to conquer and occupy the whole of France; and as long as the compact block of territory in the South remains free, and as long as resistance, passive and occasionally active (like the blowing up of the Moselle bridge near Toul), is not given up in the North, we do not see how France can be compelled to give in unless she be tired of the war.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/01/26.htm

Twice only since Sedan have the operations of a French army caused serious uneasiness to General Moltke. The first instance occurred about the middle of November, when the Army of the Loire, after the defeat of von der Tann at Coulmiers, filed off to the left in order to approach Paris from the west, and advanced to Dreux. Then Moltke, with a resolution worthy of such a crisis, prepared for the immediate raising of the siege in case Mecklenburg, even with all the temporary reinforcements detached to his aid, should not be strong enough to stem the enemy s advance. That advance was stemmed, and the siege could continue. The second time it was Bourbaki s march towards the east which troubled the repose of the headquarters at Versailles. How serious this move was considered to be was shown by the steps taken at once to meet it. Werder s troops the 14th Corps and the reserve divisions of Tresckow and Schmeling were at once reinforced by two more corps, of which one, the second, marched off from Paris as early as the 2nd of January. The language of the semi-official communications became guarded; on the 11th the Provinzial-Correspondenz calls attention to the fact that in the east of France important and decisive battles are impending, and that Bourbaki intends, after relieving Belfort, to break through the Prussian line of communication at Nancy. Non-official correspondents, though still guarded, speak more plainly; we will only quote one of them, Wickede, of the Cologne Gazette. Immediately after the engagement of Villersexel, by which Werder had secured his communications with and retreat upon Tresckow s troops before Belfort, he says, And on the 16th of January, from Nancy, he writes that, after the arrival of Manteuffel with three divisions beyond Ch tillon, But Herr Wickede was doomed to further apprehensions, for on the following day he had to communicate that news had arrived of the occupation of Flavigny (eleven miles from Nancy) by French troops. Immediately the guards were reinforced, strong patrols were sent out, the whole of the twenty engines at the station got their steam up, officers, Government employ s and other Germans packed their trunks, and got ready for immediate departure. The men at Flavigny were expected to be Garibaldi s advanced guard; they turned out to be some twenty francs-tireurs from the Vosges, and soon disappeared again. But the Prussian garrison of Nancy was not completely tranquillized until the 19th, when the news of Bourbaki s final repulse on the Lisaine came to hand, and then at last Wickede could again resume his former strain. Ought not the French, after all these defeats, to arrive at the conviction that further resistance is hopeless? Such was the opinion of those most directly concerned about an operation which, after its failure, The Times classifies as simply absurd. There might have been a difference of opinion as to whether the operation was likely to have been undertaken with sufficient forces; or whether, in case of success, its consequences could be developed in time to save Paris before starvation compelled surrender; or whether or not this was the best direction for a move against the German communications. But to put down such a move, the most effective one known to strategy, as simply absurd was left to the Moltkes of The Times. In the meantime Count Moltke has operated with his usual mastery. He was too late to reinforce Werder before the arrival of Bourbaki; he chose the next best thing, and concentrated his reinforcements at Ch tillon, where Manteuffel had three divisions (3rd, 4th, and 13th) on or before the 15th, and where they were joined by the 60th regiment (of the 3rd Corps), left in the neighbourhood by Prince Frederick Charles. We may expect that, by this time, he will have been joined by the 14th division too. At all events, on his advance south, he had at least forty-one if not fifty-three, battalions with him. With these troops he marched upon the river Doubs, leaving to the south the town of Dijon, where he merely occupied Garibaldi by the attack on the 23rd, but evidently without any intention to delay his advance by seriously engaging him or carrying the town. On the contrary, he steadily pursued the main object the cutting off of Bourbaki s retreat. According to the latest telegrams that object was nearly attained. His troops were across the Doubs, at Quingey and Mouchard, at which latter place the railway from Dijon to Pontarlier and Switzerland crosses that from Besan on to Lyons. There still remains one good road by which Bourbaki might escape, but that road is, at Champagnole, not more than twenty-five miles from Mouchard, and may be occupied by this time. In that case there would only remain to Bourbaki the country road passing by the source of the Doubs, where he could scarcely get on with his artillery; and even that road may be cut off before he is out of harm s way. And if he does not succeed in breaking through the opposing troops in a country very favourable to the defence, he has but the choice of withdrawing under the shelter of the forts of Besan on or of surrendering In the open the choice between Metz and Sedan, unless he surrenders to the Swiss. It is inconceivable that he should have tarried so long near Belfort, for the latest Prussian telegrams represent him still to be north-east of Besan on. If he could not defeat Werder before Manteuffel s arrival, how much less could he expect to do so afterwards? Bourbaki s duty evidently was to withdraw at once to a position of safety after his final repulse before Belfort. Why he has not done so is totally inexplicable. But if the worst should befall him, after his mysterious journey from Metz to Chiselhurst, after his refusal to salute the Republic at Lille, the late commander of the Imperial Guard is sure to have doubts raised as to his loyalty.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/01/28.htm

If we are to believe the latest telegram from Berne and there is now no room to discredit it our anticipations regarding the fate of Bourbaki s army have been realized. The Swiss Federal Council is reported to have received the official news that this army, about 80,000 strong, had passed upon Swiss territory, where, of course, it would have to lay down its arms. The exact points at which this took place have not been stated, but it must have been somewhere south of Bl mont and not more south than Pontarlier. The various detachments would pass the frontier at different points, the greatest mass of the troops probably at Les Brenets, where the road from Besan on to Neuch tel enters Swiss territory. Thus another French army has passed away, through to use the mildest phrase the irresolution of its chief. Bourbaki may be a dashing officer at the head of a division; but the nerve required to brace oneself up to a bold resolution in a decisive moment is quite a different thing from the nerve which enables a man to command a division with clat under fire; and like many men of undoubted and brilliant personal courage, Bourbaki seems deficient in the moral courage necessary to come to a decisive resolution. On the evening of the 17th at latest, when his inability to pierce Werder s lines became fully evident to himself, his mind ought to have been made up at once as to his line of conduct. He must have known that Prussian reinforcements were approaching his line of retreat from the north-west; that his position with a victorious enemy in his front, and a long line of retreat, close to a neutral frontier, in his rear, was extremely dangerous; that the object of his expedition had irretrievably failed; and that his most pressing, nay, his only duty, under the circumstances, was to save his army. In other words, that he must retire as hastily as the state of his army would allow. But this resolution to retire, to confess by deeds that he had failed in his expedition, appears to have been too much for him. He dallied about the scene of his last battles, unable to advance, unwilling to retire, and thus gave Manteuffel the time to cut off his retreat. Had he marched off at once, and only done fifteen miles a day, he could have reached Besan on on the 20th, and the neighbourhood of D le on the 21st, just about the time when the first Prussians made their appearance there. These Prussians could not be very strong; and even Bourbaki s advanced guard must have been sufficient if not to drive them off entirely, still to confine them to the right or western bank of the Doubs, which would have been quite sufficient to secure Bourbaki s line of retreat, especially with an adversary of the force of Manteuffel, who will act correctly enough so long as the execution of Moltke s orders meets with no resistance, but who sinks below the level of mediocrity as soon as that resistance calls into play his own mental powers. It is one of the most curious points in the document agreed to between Bismarck and Jules Favre, that the four departments where Bourbaki and Garibaldi are acting are not included in the general armistice, but that the Prussians virtually reserve to themselves the power of continuing to fight there as long as they please. It is an unprecedented stipulation, which shows more than any other that the conqueror, in the true Prussian fashion, exacted to the full every concession his momentary superiority enabled him to impose. The armistice is to extend to the West, where Frederick Charles finds that he had better not advance beyond Le Mans; to the North, where Goeben is arrested by the fortresses; but not to the south-east, where Manteuffel s advance promised a second Sedan. Jules Favre, in consenting to this clause, virtually consented to the surrender of Bourbaki, either to the Prussians or to the Swiss; the only difference in his favour being that he shifted the responsibility of the act from his shoulders to those of Bourbaki. Altogether, the capitulation of Paris is an unprecedented document. When Napoleon surrendered at Sedan he declined entering on negotiations beyond those for the surrender of himself and army; he, as a prisoner, being disabled from binding the Government and France. When M. Jules Favre surrenders Paris and its army he enters upon stipulations binding the rest of France, though exactly in the same position as Napoleon at Sedan. Nay, worse. Napoleon, almost up to the day of his capitulation, had been in free communication with the rest of France; M. Jules Favre, for five or six weeks, has enjoyed but rare and fragmentary opportunities of learning what was going on outside Paris. His information as to the military situation outside the forts could be supplied to him by Bismarck only; and upon this one-sided statement, furnished by the enemy, he ventured to act. M. Jules Favre had a choice between two evils. He could do as he has done, secure a three weeks armistice on the enemy s terms, and bind the real Government of France, that of Bordeaux to it . Or he could refuse to act for the rest of France, offer to treat for Paris alone, and in case of difficulties raised by the besiegers, do as the commandant of PhaIsbourg did throw open the gates and invite the conquerors to enter. The latter course would have been more in the interest of his dignity and of his political future. As to the Bordeaux Government, it will have to adhere to the armistice and to the election of a National Assembly. It has no means to compel the generals to repudiate the armistice, it will hesitate to create divisions among the people. The surrender of Bourbaki to the Swiss adds another crushing blow to the many the French have lately received; and, as we stated in anticipation of the event we believe that this blow, following immediately upon the surrender of Paris, will so much depress the spirits of the nation that peace will be made. As to the material resources of France, they are so far from being exhausted that the struggle might be continued for months. There is one striking fact which shows how immense are the difficulties in the way of a complete conquest of France. Prince Frederick Charles, after seven days fighting, had driven back Chanzy s army, in a state of utter dissolution. With the exception of a few brigades, there were positively no troops left to oppose him. The country in his front was rich and comparatively unexhausted. Yet he stops his march at Le Mans, pursuing beyond with his advanced guard only, and not beyond short distances. Our readers will recollect that we were prepared for no other result'; for it may be said, with a certain amount of truth that in conquering a large country, while the extent to be occupied increases arithmetically, the difficulties of occupation increase geometrically. Still we think that the repeated disasters of the January campaign must have shaken the morale of the nation to such an extent that the proposed National Assembly will not only meet, but also probably make peace; and thus, along with the war, these Notes upon it will come to a close.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/02/02.htm

If the series of disasters to the French arms which mark the January campaign the defeats of Faidherbe and Chanzy, the fall of Paris, the defeat and surrender to the Swiss of Bourbaki if all these crushing events, concentrated in the short period of three weeks, may well be considered to have broken the spirit of resistance in France, it now seems not improbable that the Germans, by their extravagant demands, may rouse that spirit again. If the country is to be thoroughly ruined by peace as well as by war, why make peace at all? The propertied classes, the middle class of the towns and the larger landed proprietors, with part of the smaller peasantry, hitherto formed the peace party; they might have been reckoned upon to elect peace deputies for the National Assembly; but if such unheard-of demands are persisted in, the cry of war to the knife may rise from their ranks as well as from those of the workmen of the large towns. At any rate, it is well not to neglect whatever chance there may be that the war may be resumed after the 19th of February ... ; especially since the Germans themselves, if we may trust The Daily News of to-day, are not so satisfied with the prospect of affairs as to abstain from serious preparations for the resumption of hostilities. Let us, therefore, cast another glance at the military aspect of affairs. The twenty-seven departments of France now occupied by the Prussians contain an area of 15,800,000 hectares, with a population (allowing for the fortresses still unsurrendered) of rather less than 12,500,000. The extent of all France comprises 54,240,000 hectares, and its population is 37,382,000. It thus appears that, in round numbers, thirty-eight and a half millions of hectares, with a population of 25,000,000, remain still unconquered, fully two-thirds of the people, considerably more than two-thirds of the soil. Paris and Metz, the resistance of which so long retarded further hostile advance, have certainly fallen. The interior of the unconquered country contains no other entrenched camp Lyons excepted capable of playing the same part which these two fortresses have played. Rather less than 700,000 Frenchmen (not counting the National Guard of Paris) are prisoners of war or interned in Switzerland. But there are other circumstances which may make up for this deficiency, even if the three weeks armistice should not be used for the creation of new camps, surrounded by field works; for which there is ample time. The great bulk of unconquered France lies south of the line Nantes-Besan on; it forms a compact block, covered on three sides by the sea or by neutral frontiers, with only its northern boundary line open to the enemy s attack. Here is the strength of the national resistance; here are to be found the men and the material to carry on the war if it is resumed. To conquer and occupy this immense rectangle of 450 miles by 250 against a desperate resistance regular and irregular of the inhabitants, the present forces of the Prussians would not suffice. The surrender of Paris, leaving four corps for the garrison of that capital, will set free nine divisions; Bourbaki s surrender sets free Manteuffel s six line divisions; in all, fifteen divisions, or 150,000 to 170,000 additional soldiers for operations in the field, added to Goeben s four and Frederick Charles s eight divisions. But Goeben has plenty on his hands in the north, and Frederick Charles has shown by his halt at Tours and Le Mans that his offensive powers are exhausted to the full, so that for the conquest of the South there remain but the above fifteen divisions; and for some months to come no further reinforcements can arrive. To these fifteen divisions the French will have to oppose in the beginning mostly new formations. There were about Nevers and Bourges the 15th and 25th Corps; there must have been in the same neighbourhood the 19th Corps, of which we have heard nothing since the beginning of December. Then there is the 24th Corps, escaped from Bourbaki s shipwreck, and Garibaldi s troops, recently reinforced to 50,000 men, but by what bodies and from what quarters we do not know. The whole comprises some thirteen or fourteen divisions, perhaps even sixteen, but quite insufficient as to quantity and quality to arrest the progress of the new armies which are sure to be sent against them if the armistice should expire without peace having been made. But the three weeks armistice will not only give these French divisions time to consolidate themselves; it will also permit the more or less raw levies now in the camps of instruction, and estimated by Gambetta at 250,000 men, to transform at least the best of their battalions into useful corps fit to meet the enemy; and thus, if the war should be renewed, the French may be in a position to ward off any serious invasion of the South, not perhaps at the boundary line of the Loire or much north of Lyons, but yet at points where the presence of the enemy will not efficiently impair their force of resistance. As a matter of course, the armistice gives ample time to restore the equipment, the discipline, and the morale of Faidherbe s and Chanzy s armies, as well as of all the other troops in Cherbourg, Havre, & The question is whether the time will be so employed. While thus the strength of the French will be considerably increased, both as to numbers and quality, that of the Germans will scarcely receive any increment at all. So far, the armistice will be a boon to the French side. But beside the compact block of southern France, there remain unconquered the two peninsulas of the Bretagne with Brest, and of the Cotentin with Cherbourg, and, moreover, the two northern departments with their fortresses. Havre, too, forms an unconquered, well-fortified spot on the coast. Every one of these four districts is provided with at least one well-fortified place of safety on the coast for a retreating army; so that the fleet, which at this moment has nothing, absolutely nothing, else to do, can keep up the communications between the South and all of them, transport troops from one place to another, as the case may require, and thereby all of a sudden enable a beaten army to resume the offensive with superior forces. Thus while these four western and northern districts are in a measure unassailable, they form so many weak points on the flanks of the Prussians. The line of actual danger for the French extends from Angers to Besans on; for the Germans it extends, in addition to this, from Angers by Le Mans, Rouen, and Amiens to the Belgian frontier. Advantages on this latter line gained over the French can never become decisive if moderate common sense be used by them; but those gained over the Germans may, under certain conditions, become so. Such is the strategical situation. By using the fleet to advantage the French might move their men in the West and North, so as to compel the Germans to keep largely superior forces in that neighbourhood, and to weaken the forces sent out for the conquest of the South, which it would be their chief object to prevent. By concentrating their armies more than they have hitherto done, and, on the other hand, by sending out more numerous small partisan bands, they might increase the effect to be obtained by the forces on hand. There appear to have been many more troops at Cherbourg and Havre than were necessary for the defence; and the well executed destruction of the bridge of Fontenoy, near Toul, in the centre of the country occupied by the conquerors, shows what may be done by bold partisans. For, if the war is to be resumed at all after the 19th of February, it must be in reality a war to the knife, a war like that of Spain against Napoleon; a war in which no amount of shootings and burnings will prove sufficient to break the spirit of resistance.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/02/08.htm

By the correspondent of The Standard we are at last furnished with an eyewitness s report of what took place in Bourbaki s army during its disastrous January campaign. The correspondent was with General Cr mer s division, which formed the extreme left during the advance, and the rearguard during the retreat. His account, though naturally one-sided and full of inaccuracies in matters which did not occur under his eyes, is very valuable because it furnishes facts and dates hitherto unknown, and thus throws much light upon this phase of the war. Bourbaki s army, 133,000 men with 330 guns, was, it appears, scarcely deserving the name of an army. The linesmen, with passable officers, were inferior in physique to the Mobiles, but the latter had scarcely any officers acquainted even with the rudiments of their duties. The accounts received from Switzerland confirm this; if they give a worse account of the physique of the men, we must not forget the effect of a month s campaigning under hunger and cold. The equipment as to clothing and shoes appears to have been by all accounts miserable. A commissariat or even a mere organization for carrying out with some order and regularity the levying of requisitions and the distribution of the food thus procured, appears to have been as good as totally absent. Now of the four-and-a-half corps employed, three (the 15th, 18th, and 20th) had been handed over to Bourbaki as early as the 5th of December; and very soon after that date the plan to march eastwards must have been resolved upon. All his movements, up to the 5th of January, were mere marches for concentration, undisturbed by the enemy; they therefore were no obstacle in the way of improving the organization of this army quite the contrary. Napoleon, in 1813, formed his raw levies into soldiers on the march to Germany. Thus Bourbaki had a full month to work in; and when after the time thus given him his troops arrived in presence of the enemy in the state described, he cannot possibly be considered free from blame. He does not appear to advantage as an organizer. The original plan is said to have been to march upon Belfort in four columns one on the eastern side of the Doubs through the Jura, to take or turn Montb liard and the Prussian left; a second column along the valley of the river, for the front attack; a third column by a more westerly route, through Rougemont and Villersexel, against the enemy s right; and Cr mer s division to arrive from Dijon by Lure beyond the Prussian right. But this was altered. The whole of the first three columns advanced on the one road through the valley, by which it is asserted that five days were lost, during which Werder was reinforced, and that the whole army being thrown upon one line of retreat, again lost time, and thus was cut off from Lyons and forced upon the Swiss frontier. Now, it is quite evident that throwing some 120,000 men and men so loosely organized as these in one column on one single line of march, would cause confusion and delay; but it is not so certain that this blunder was actually committed to the extent here implied. From all previous reports, Bourbaki s troops arrived before Belfort in a broad front, extending from Villersexel to the Swiss boundary line, which implies the use of the various roads mentioned in the original plan. But whatever may have been the cause, the delay did occur, and was the chief cause of the loss of the battle at H ricourt. The engagement of Villersexel took place on the 9th. Villersexel is about twenty miles from the Prussian position at H ricourt, and it took Bourbaki five days up to the evening of the 14th to bring his troops up in front of that position so as to be able to attack it next morning! This we pointed out in a previous article as the first great mistake in the campaign. and we now see from the correspondent s report that it was felt to be so by Cr mer s officers even before the battle of H ricourt began. In that three days battle 130,000 Frenchmen fought against, 35,000 to 40,000 Germans, and could not force their entrenched position. With such a numerical superiority, the boldest flank movements were possible. Forty or fifty thousand men thrown resolutely upon the rear of the Germans while the rest occupied them in front could scarcely have failed to force them from their position. But instead of that merely the front, the entrenched front, of the position was attacked, and thus an immense and barren loss was caused. The flank attacks were carried out so weakly that a single German brigade (Keller s) not only sufficed to repel that on the German right, but was enabled to hold Frahier and Chenebier so as in turn to outflank the French. Bourbaki s young troops were thus put to the severest task which can be found for a soldier in battle, while their own superior numbers would have rendered it easier to carry the position by manoeuvring. But probably the last five days experience had proved to Bourbaki that it was useless to expect mobility from his army. After the final repulse on the 17th of January followed the retreat to Besan on. That this retreat may have taken place mainly by the one road in the Doubs valley is probable; but we know that large bodies retreated by other roads nearer the Swiss frontier. Anyhow, on the afternoon of the 22nd the rearguard, under Cr mer, arrived in Besan on. Thus the advanced guard must have arrived there as early as the 20th, and have been ready to march on the 21st against the Prussians, who on that day reached D le. But no. No notice is taken of them until after Cr mer s arrival, who all at once, changing his place from the rear to the vanguard, is sent out to meet them on the 23rd towards Saint Vit. On the following day Cr mer is ordered back to Besan on; two days are wasted in indecision and inactivity, until, on the 26th, Bourbaki, after passing in review the 18th Corps, attempts suicide. Then a disorderly retreat commences in the direction of Pontarlier. But on that day the Germans at Mouchard and Salins were nearer the Swiss frontier than the fugitives, and their retreat was virtually cut off. It was no longer a race; the Germans could occupy leisurely the outlets of all the longitudinal valleys by which escape was still possible; while other troops pressed on the French rear. Then followed the engagements around Pontarlier, which brought this fact home to the defeated army; the result of which was the Convention of Les Verrieres and the surrender of the whole body to the Swiss. The whole behaviour of Bourbaki, from the 15th to the 26th, seems to prove that he had lost all confidence in his men, and that consequently he also lost all confidence in himself. Why he suspended the march of his columns at Besan on until Cr mers arrival, thus throwing away every chance of escape; why he recalled Cr mer s division, the best in the army, immediately after sending it out of Besan on to meet the Prussians, who blocked the direct road to Lyons; why after that he dallied another two days, which brings the time lost in Besan on to fully six days it is impossible to explain unless by supposing that Bourbaki was eminently deficient in that resolution which is the very first quality of an independent commander. It is the old tale of the August campaign over again and it is curious that this singular hesitation should again show itself in a general inherited from the Empire, while none of the generals of the Republic whatever else may have been their faults have shown such indecision, or suffered such punishment for it.

Notes on the War. Engels 1870-71.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/02/18.htm

Sir, Will you allow me to again intrude upon your columns in order to contradict widely-spread falsehoods? A Lombard telegram, dated Paris, March 30, contains an extract from the Gaulois which, under the sensational heading, Alleged Organization of the Paris Revolution in London, has adorned the London papers of Saturday last. Having during the late war successfully rivalled the Figaro and the Paris-journal in the concoction of Munchausiades that made the Paris petite Presse a byword all over the world, the Gaulois seems more than ever convinced that the news-reading public will always cling to the tenet, Credo quia absurdum est. Baron Munchausen himself, would he have undertaken to organize at London in the early part of February, when M. Thiers did not yet hold any official post, the insurrection of the 18th of March, called into life by the attempt of the same M. Thiers to disarm the Paris National Guard? Not content to send MM. Assi and Blanqui on an imaginary voyage to London, there to conspire with myself in secret conclave, the Gaulois adds to that conclave two imaginary persons one Bentini, general agent for Italy, and one Dermott, general agent for England. It also graciously confirms the dignity of supreme chief of the Internationale, first bestowed upon me by the Paris-journal. These two worthies notwithstanding, the General Council of the International Working Men s Association will, I am afraid, continue to transact its business without the incumbrance of either chief or president. I have the honour to be, Sir, your obediently, London, April 3

Karl Marx in The Times 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/04/04.htm

My dear Sir, Would you oblige me by inserting the following few lines in your next publication? Yours faithfully, To the Editor of The Pall Mall Gazette Sir, From the Paris correspondence of your yesterday s publication, I see that while fancying to live at London, I was, in reality, arrested in Holland on the request of Bismarck-Favre. But, maybe, this is but one of the innumerable sensational stories about the International which for the last two months the Franco-Prussian police has never tired of fabricating, the Versailles press of publishing, and the rest of the European press of reproducing. I have the honour, Sir, to be Yours obediently, 1, Modena Villas, Maitland Park. June 8, 1871

Karl Marx in The Pall Mall Gazette 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/06/09.htm

Sir, A Council consisting of more than thirty members cannot, of course, draw up its own documents. It must entrust that task to some one or other of its members, reserving to itself the right of rejecting or amending. The address on the Civil War in France, drawn up by myself, was unanimously adopted by the General Council of the International, and is therefore the official embodiment of its own views. With regard, however, to the personal charges brought forward against Jules Favre and Co., the case stands otherwise. On this point the great majority of the Council had to rely upon my trustworthiness. This was the very reason why I supported the motion of another member of the Council that Mr. John Hales, in his answer to Mr. Holyoake should name me as the author of the address. I hold myself alone responsible for those charges, and hereby challenge Jules Favre and Co. to prosecute me for libel. In his letter Mr. Llewellyn Davies says, Does this sentence not somewhat smack of that pharisaical self-righteousness with which William Cobbett had so often taunted the British mind? Let me ask Mr. Llewellyn Davies which was worse, the French petite Presse, fabricating in the service of the police the most infamous slanders against the Communals, dead, captive, or hidden, or the English press reproducing them to this day, despite its professed contempt for the Petite Presse. I do not consider it a French inferiority that such serious charges for instance as those brought forward against the late Lord Palmerston, during a quarter of a century, by a man like Mr. David Urquhart, could have been burked in England but not in France.

Karl Marx in The Eastern Post 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/07/01.htm

Haverstock-hill, N.W. June 30, 1871 Sir, I have declared in The Daily News and you have reprinted in The Pall Mall that I hold myself alone responsible for the charges brought forward against Jules Favre and Co.. In your yesterday s publication you declare these charges to be libels. I declare you to be a libeller. It is no fault of mine that you are as ignorant as arrogant. If we lived on the Continent, I should call you to account in another way. Obediently,

Karl Marx in The Pall Mall Gazette 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/07/03.htm

Sir, In one of your leading articles of to-day you quote a string of phrases, such as, London, Liverpool, and Manchester in revolt against odious capital, etc., with the authorship of which you are kind enough to credit me. Permit me to state that the whole of the quotationsb upon which you base your article are forgeries from beginning to end. You have probably been misled by some of the fabrications which the Paris police are in the habit of issuing almost daily in my name, in order to procure evidence against the captive Internationals at Versailles. I am, Sir, yours, etc., 1, Modena-villas, Maitland Park, Haverstock-hill, N.W., July 11, 1871

Karl Marx in The Morning Advertiser 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/07/13.htm

Sir, I am, Sir, your obedient servant, London, July 13

Karl Marx in The Standard 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/07/17.htm

It is necessary that our aims should be thus comprehensive to include every form of working-class activity. To have made them of a special character would have been to adapt them to the needs of one section one nation of workmen alone. But how could all men be asked to unite to further the objects of a few? To have done that the Association must have forfeited its title to International. The Association does not dictate the form of political movements; it only requires a pledge as to their end. It is a network of affiliated societies spreading all over the world of labor. In each part of the world some special aspect of the problem presents itself, and the workmen there address themselves to its consideration in their own way. Combinations among workmen cannot be absolutely identical in detail in Newcastle and Barcelona, in London and Berlin. ... But to every movement it accords its sympathy and its aid within the limits assigned by its own laws. To give an example, one of the commonest forms of the movement for emancipation is that of strikes. Formerly, when a strike took place in one country it was defeated by the importation of workmen from another. The International has nearly stopped all that. It receives information of the intended strike , it spreads that information among its members, who at once see that for them the seat of the struggle must be forbidden ground. The masters are thus left alone to reckon with their men. In most cases the men require no other aid than that. Their own subscriptions or those of the societies to which they are more immediately affiliated supply them with funds, but should the pressure upon them become too heavy and the strike be one of which the Association approves, their necessities are supplied out of the common purse. By these means a strike of the cigar makers of Barcelona was brought to a victorious issue the other day.

Works of Karl Marx 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/07/18.htm

Sir, In your publication of to-day you translate from the Berlin National-Zeitung, a notorious organ of Bismarck s, most atrocious libel against the International Working Men s Association, in which the following passage occurs: In reply to the venal writers of the National-Zeitung, I consider it quite sufficient to declare that I have never asked or received one single farthing from the working class of this or any other country. Save the general Secretary, who receives a weekly salary of ten shillings, all the members of the General Council of the International do their work gratuitously. The financial accounts of the General Council, annually laid before the General Congresses of the Association, have always been sanctioned unanimously without provoking any discussion whatever. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, Haverstock Hill, Aug. 19, 1871

Karl Marx in Public Opinion 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/08/26.htm

Sir, The passage of the Address of the General Council of the International Working Men s Association, On the Civil War in France, which gave the signal to shouts of moral indignation on the part of the London press, was this: The real murderer of the Archbishop is Thiers. From the enclosed letter, addressed to M. Bigot, the counsel for M. Assi at the Versailles Court-martial, by M. Eugene Fondeville, who is ready to confirm his statements by affidavit, you will see that the Archbishop himself actually shared my view of the case. At the time of the publication of the Address, I was not yet informed of the interview of M. Fondeville with M. Darboy, but even then the correspondence of the Archbishop with M. Thiers revealed his strange misgivings as to the good faith of the Chief of the French Executive. Another fact has now been placed beyond doubt viz., that at the time of the execution of the hostages the Communal government had already ceased to exist, and ought, therefore, no longer be held responsible for that event. I am, etc., London, August 29

Karl Marx in The Examiner 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/09/02.htm

To The Editor Sir, In your number of the 2nd September, your Berlin correspondent publishes the translation of an interesting article on the international, which has appeared in the Cologne Gazette, which article charges me with living at the expense of the working classes. Up to the 30th August, the date of your correspondent s letter, no such article appeared in the Cologne Gazette, from which paper, therefore, your correspondent could not translate it. On the contrary, the article in question appeared, more than a fortnight ago, in the Berlin National Zeitung; and an English translation of it, literally identical with the one given by your correspondent, figured in the London weekly paper, Public Opinion, as far back as the 19th August. The next number of Public Opinion contained my reply to these slanders, and I hereby summon you to insert that reply, of which I enclose a copy, in the next number of your paper. The Prussian government have reasons of their own why they push, by every means in their power, the spreading of such infamous calumnies through the English press. These articles are but the harbingers of impending government prosecutions against the International. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, Haverstock-hill, Sept. 4, 1871

Karl Marx in The Evening Standard 1871

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Brighton, August 25, 1871 My dear Sir: In the first instance I must beg you to excuse my prolonged silence. I should have answered your letter long ago if I had not been quite overburdened with work, so much so that my health broke down, and my doctor found it necessary to banish me for a few months to this sea-bathing place, with the strict injunction to do nothing. I shall comply with your wish after my return to London when a favorable occasion occurs for rushing into print. I have sent a declaration to The New York Herald in which I decline all and every responsibility for the trash and positive falsehoods with which its correspondent burdens me. I do not know whether the Herald has printed it. The number of the Communal refugees arriving in London is on the increase, while our means of supporting them is daily on the decrease, so that many find themselves in a very deplorable state. We shall make an appeal for assistance to the Americans. To give you an inkling of the state of things that under the R publique Thiers prevails in France, I will tell you what has happened to my own daughters. My second daughter, Laura, is married to Monsieur Lafargue, a medical man. They left Paris a few days before the commencement of the first siege for Bordeaux, where Lafargue s father lived. The latter, having fallen very ill, wanted to see his son, who attended him. indeed was at his sick bed until the time of his death. Lafargue and my daughter then continued to stay at Bordeaux, where the former possesses a house. During the time of the Commune, Lafargue acted as Secretary to the Bordeaux branches of the International, and was also sent as a delegate to Paris, where he stayed six days to make himself acquainted with the state of things there. During all the time he was not molested by the Bordeaux police. Toward the middle of May my two unmarried daughters set out for Bordeaux, and thence together with the family Lafargue to Bagneres de Luchon, in the Pyrenees, near the Spanish frontier. ... There the eldest daughter, who had suffered from a severe attack of pleurisy, took the mineral waters and underwent regular medical treatment. Lafargue and his wife had to attend to a dying baby, and my youngest daughter amused herself as much in the charming environs of Luchon as the family afflictions permitted. Luchon is a place of resort for patients and for the beau monde, and above all places the least fitted for political intrigue. My daughter Madame Lafargue had, moreover, the misfortune to lose her child, and shortly after its burial in the second week of August who should appear at the dwelling place? The illustrious K ratry, well known by the infamies he committed during the Mexican war, and the equivocal part he played during the Franco-Prussian war, first as Prefect of Police at Paris, and later as a soi-disant General in Brittany, and now Prefect of the Haute-Garonne, and M. Delpech, Procureur General of Toulouse both these worthies being accompanied by gendarmes. Lafargue had received a hint the evening before, and had crossed the Spanish frontier. having provided himself with a Spanish passport at Bordeaux. Although the son of French parents, he was born in Cuba, and is therefore a Spaniard. A domiciliary visit was made at the dwelling place of my daughters, and they themselves were subjected to a severe cross examination by the two mighty representatives of the R publique Thiers. They were charged with carrying on an insurrectional correspondence. That correspondence consisted simply in letters to their mother, the contents of which were of course not flattering to the French Government, and in copies of some London newspapers! For about a week their house was watched by gendarmes. They had to promise to leave France, where their presence was too dangerous, as soon as they could make the preparations necessary for their departure, and in the mean time they were to consider themselves as people placed under the haute surveillance of the police. K ratry and Delpech had flattered themselves with the hope of finding them unprovided with passports, but fortunately they were possessed of regular English passports. Otherwise they would have had to share the infamous treatment of the sister of Delescluze and other French ladies as innocent as themselves. They have not yet returned, and are probably waiting for news from Lafargue. Meanwhile the Paris papers told the most incredible lies; the Gaulois, for instance, transforming my three daughters into three brothers of mine, well known and dangerous agents of the International Propaganda, though I have no brothers. At the same time that La France, a Paris organ of Thiers, gave a most varnished tale of the events at Luchon, and asserted that Monsieur Lafargue might quietly return to France without incurring any danger, the French Government requested the Spanish Government to arrest Lafargue as a member of the Paris Commune! to which he had never belonged, and to which, as a resident of Bordeaux, he could not belong. Lafargue was in fact arrested, and under the escort of gendarmes marched to Barbastro, where he had to take his night quarters in the town prison, thence to Huesca, whence the Governor, on telegraphic order from the Spanish Minister of the Interior, had to forward him to Madrid. According to The Daily News of the 24th August, he has at last been set free. The whole proceedings at Luchon and in the papers were nothing but shabby attempts of Mr. Thiers & Co. to revenge themselves upon me as the author of the address of the General Council of the International on the Civil War. Between their revenge and my daughters stood the English passport, and Mr. Thiers is as cowardly in his relations to foreign powers as he is unscrupulous in regard to his disarmed countrymen. As to Cluseret, I do not think that he was a traitor, but certainly he undertook to play a part for which he lacked the mettle, and thus he did great harm to the Commune. I know nothing as to his whereabouts. And now addio! Your old friend,

Karl Marx in The Sun 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/09/09.htm

We want the abolition of classes. What is the means of achieving it? The only means is political domination of the proletariat. For all this, now that it is acknowledged by one and all, we are told not to meddle with politics. The abstentionists say they are revolutionaries, even revolutionaries par excellence. Yet revolution is a supreme political act and those who want revolution must also want the means of achieving it, that is, political action, which prepares the ground for revolution and provides the workers with the revolutionary training without which they are sure to become the dupes of the Favres and Pyats the morning after the battle. However, our politics must be working-class politics. The workers' party must never be the tagtail of any bourgeois party; it must be independent and have its goal and its own policy. The political freedoms, the right of assembly and association, and the freedom of the press those are our weapons. Are we to sit back and abstain while somebody tries to rob us of them? It is said that a political act on our part implies that we accept the exiting state of affairs. On the contrary, so long as this state of affairs offers us the means of protesting against it, our use of these means does not signify that we recognise the prevailing order.

Apropos Of Working-Class Political Action

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That the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association (1864) states: That the Congress of Lausanne (1867) has passed this resolution: That the declaration of the General Council relative to the pretended plot of the French Internationalists on the eve of the plebiscite (1870) says: That false translations of the original Statutes have given rise to various interpretations which were mischievous to the development and action of the International Working Men's Association; In presence of an unbridled reaction which violently crushes every effort at emancipation on the part of the working men, and pretends to maintain by brute force the distinction of classes and the political domination of the propertied classes resulting from it; Considering, that against this collective power of the propertied classes the working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes; That this constitution of the working class into a political party is indispensable in order to ensure the triumph of the social revolution and its ultimate end the abolition of classes; That the combination of forces which the working class has already effected by its economical struggles ought at the same time to serve as a lever for its struggles against the political power of landlords and capitalists The Conference recalls to the members of the International: That in the militant state of the working class, its economical movement and its political action are indissolubly united.

Resolution of the London Conference on Political Action

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In virtually all countries, certain members of the International, invoking the mutilated conception of the Statutes adopted at the Geneva Congress, have made propaganda in favor of abstention from politics; and the governments have been quite careful not to impede this restraint. In Germany, Schweitzer and others in the pay of Bismarck even attempted to harness the cart to government policy. In France, this criminal abstention allowed Favre, Picard, and others, to seize power on September 4; this abstention made it possible, on March 18, to set up a dictatorial committee composed largely of Bonapartists and intrigants, who, in the first days, lost the Revolution by inactivity, days which they should have devoted to strengthening the Revolution. In America, a recently held workers' congress [National Labor Union, August 7-10, 1871, Baltimore] resolved to occupy itself with political questions and to replace professional politicians with workers like themselves, who were authorized to defend the interests of their class. In England, it is not so easy for a worker to get to Parliament. Since members of Parliament do not receive any compensation, and the worker has to work to support himself, Parliament becomes unattainable for him, and the bourgeoisie knows very well that its stubborn refusal to allow salaries for members of Parliament is a means of preventing the working class from being represented in it. One should never believe that it is of small significance to have workers in Parliament. If one stifles their voices, as in the case of De Potter and Castian, or if one ejects them, as in the case of Manuel -- the reprisals and oppressions exercise a deep effect on the people. If, on the other hand, they can speak from the parliamentary tribune, as do Bebel and Liebknecht, the whole world listens to them. In the one case or the other, great publicity is provided for our principles. To give but one examples: when during the [Franco-Prussian] war, which was fought in France, Bebel and Liebknecht undertook to point out the responsibility of the working class in the face of those events, all of Germany was shaken; and even in Munich, the city where revolutions take place only over the price of beet, great demonstrations took place demanding an end to the war. The governments are hostile to us, one must respond to them with all the means at out disposal. To get workers into Parliament is synonymous with a victory over the governments, but one must choose the right men, not Tolains. Marx supports the proposal of Citizen Vaillant, as well as Frankel's amendment, to state it as a premise, and thus strengthen it, that the Association has always demanded, and not merely from today, that the workers must occupy themselves with politics. He explained the history of abstention from politics and said that one ought not to let himself be irritated by this question. The men who propagated this doctrine were well-meaning utopians, but those who want to take such a road today are not. They reject politics until after a violent struggle, and thereby drive the people into a formal, bourgeois opposition, which we must battle against at the same time we fight against the governments. We must unmask Gambetta, so that the people are no longer hoodwinked. Marx shares Vaillant's opinion. We must reply with a challenge to all the governments that are subjecting the International to persecutions. Reaction exists on the whole Continent; it is general and permanent -- even in the United States and England -- in one form or another. We must announce to the governments: We know you are the armed power which is directed against the proletarians; we will move against you in peaceful way where it is possible, and with arms if it should become necessary. Marx is of the opinion that Vaillant's proposal requires some changes, and he therefore supports Outine's motion.

The International Workingmen's Association, Political action and the working class

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I have the honor to send you, for insertion in your Weekly if you judge the contribution sufficiently interesting for your readers a short relation of my daughter Jenny on the persecutions she and her sisters, during their stay at Bagneres de Luchon (Pyrenees), had to undergo at the hands of the French Government. This tragico-comical episode seems to me characteristic of the Republic-Thiers. The news of my death was concocted at Paris by the Avenir lib ral, a Bonapartist paper. Since Sunday last a private Conference of the delegates of the International Workingmen s Association is sitting at London. The proceedings will terminate to-day. With my best thanks for the highly interesting papers you had the kindness to send me, I have the honor, Mesdames, to remain, Yours most sincerely.

Karl Marx in Claflin's Weekly 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/10/21.htm

Sir, In his last epistle to you, Mr. Charles Bradlaugh makes the report of the sitting of the General Council of December 12th a sitting from which I was absent in consequence of illness the pretext for discharging upon me his ruffianism. He says, My enmity to Mr. Charles Bradlaugh! Ever since the publication of the Address on the Civil War in France, Mr. Bradlaugh s voice has chimed in with the world-wide chorus of slander against the International and myself. I treated him, like the other revilers, with contemptuous silence. This was more than the grotesque vanity of that huge self-idolater could stand. I calumniated him because I took no notice of his calumnies. My silence drove him mad; in a public meeting he denounced, me as a Bonapartist because, in the Address on the Civil War, I had, forsooth, laid bare the historic circumstances that gave birth to the Second Empire. He now goes a step further and transforms me into a police agent of Bismarck. Poor man! He must needs show that the lessons he has recently received at Paris from the infamous Emile de Girardin and his clique are not lost upon him. For the present, I shall betray him to the German public by giving the greatest possible circulation to his epistle. If he be kind enough to clothe his libels in a more tangible shape, I shall betray him to an English law-court. I am, Sir, Yours obediently, London, December 20th

Works Frederick Engels 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/12/23.htm

In the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men s Association, of November 1864, we said: We defined the foreign policy aimed at by the International in these words: No wonder that Louis Bonaparte, who usurped power by exploiting the war of classes in France, and perpetuated it by periodical wars abroad, should, from the first, have treated the International as a dangerous foe. On the eve of the plebiscite[A] he ordered a raid on the members of the Administrative Committee of the International Working Men s Association throughout France, at Paris, Lyons, Rouen, Marseilles, Brest, etc., on the pretext that the International was a secret society dabbling in a complot for his assassination, a pretext soon after exposed in its full absurdity by his own judges. What was the real crime of the French branches of the International? They told the French people publicly and emphatically that voting the plebiscite was voting despotism at home and war abroad. It has been, in fact, their work that in all the great towns, in all the industrial centres of France, the working class rose like one man to reject the plebiscite. Unfortunately, the balance was turned by the heavy ignorance of the rural districts. The stock exchanges, the cabinets, the ruling classes, and the press of Europe celebrated the plebiscite as a signal victory of the French emperor over the French working class; and it was the signal for the assassination, not of an individual, but of nations. The war plot of July 1870[B] is but an amended edition of the coup d etat of December 1851. At first view, the thing seemed so absurd that France would not believe in its real good earnest. It rather believed the deputy denouncing the ministerial war talk as a mere stock-jobbing trick. When, on July 15, war was at last officially announced to the Corps Legislatif, the whole Opposition refused to vote the preliminary subsidies even Thiers branded it as detestable ; all the independent journals of Paris condemned it, and, wonderful to relate, the provincial press joined in almost unanimously. Meanwhile, the Paris members of the International had again set to work. In the Reveil of July 12, they published their manifesto to the Workmen of all Nations, from which we extract the following few passages: This manifesto of our Paris section was followed by numerous similar French addresses, of which we can here only quote the declaration of Neuilly-sur-Seine, published in the Marseillaise of July 22: These protestations expressed the true sentiments of the French working people, as was soon shown by a curious incident. The Band of the 10th of December, first organized under the presidency of Louis Bonaparte, having been masqueraded into blouses [i.e., to appear as common workers] and let loose on the streets of Paris, there to perform the contortions of war fever, the real workmen of the Faubourgs [suburbs, workers districts] came forward with public peace demonstrations so overwhelming that Pietri, the Prefect of Police, thought it prudent to stop at once all further street politics, on the plea that the real Paris people had given sufficient vent to their pent-up patriotism and exuberant war enthusiasm. Whatever may be the incidents of Louis Bonaparte s war with Prussia, the death-knell of the Second Empire has already sounded at Paris. It will end, as it began, by a parody. But let us not forget that it is the governments and the ruling classes of Europe who enabled Louis Bonaparte to play during 18 years the ferocious farce of the Restored Empire. On the German side, the war is a war of defence; but who put Germany to the necessity of defending herself? Who enabled Louis Bonaparte to wage war upon her? Prussia! It was Bismarck who conspired with that very same Louis Bonaparte for the purpose of crushing popular opposition at home, and annexing Germany to the Hohenzollern dynasty. If the battle of Sadowa had been lost instead of being won, French battalions would have overrun Germany as the allies of Prussia. After her victory, did Prussia dream one moment of opposing a free Germany to an enslaved France? Just the contrary. While carefully preserving all the native beauties of her old system, she super-added all the tricks of the Second Empire, its real despotism, and its mock democratism, its political shams and its financial jobs, its high-flown talk and its low legerdemains. The Bonapartist regime, which till then only flourished on one side of the Rhine, had now got its counterfeit on the other. From such a state of things, what else could result but war? If the German working class allows the present war to lose its strictly defensive character and to degenerate into a war against the French people, victory of defeat will prove alike disastrous. All the miseries that befell Germany after her wars of independence will revive with accumulated intensity. The principles of the International are, however, too widely spread and too firmly rooted amongst the German working class to apprehend such a sad consummation. The voices of the French workmen had re-echoed from Germany. A mass meeting of workmen, held at Brunswick on July 16, expressed its full concurrence with the Paris manifesto, spurned the idea of national antagonism to France, and wound up its resolutions with these words: At Chemnitz, a meeting of delegates, representing 50,000 Saxon workmen, adopted unanimously a resolution to this effect: The Berlin branch of the International has also replied to the Paris manifesto: Be it so! In the background of this suicidal strike looms the dark figure of Russia. It is an ominous sign that the signal for the present war should have been given at the moment when the Moscovite government had just finished its strategic lines of railway and was already massing troops in the direction of the Prut.[C] Whatever sympathy the Germans may justly claim in a war of defense against Bonapartist aggression, they would forfeit at once by allowing the Prussian government to call for, or accept the help of, the Cossack. Let them remember that after their war of independence against the first Napoleon, Germany lay for generations prostrate at the feet of the tsar. The English working class stretch the hand of fellowship to the French and German working people. They feel deeply convinced that whatever turn the impending horrid war may take, the alliance of the working classes of all countries will ultimately kill war. The very fact that while official France and Germany are rushing into a fratricidal feud, the workmen of France and Germany send each other messages of peace and goodwill; this great fact, unparalleled in the history of the past, opens the vista of a brighter future. It proves that in contrast to old society, with its economical miseries and its political delirium, a new society is springing up, whose International rule will be Peace, because its national ruler will be everywhere the same Labour! The pioneer of that new society is the International Working Men s Association.

The Civil War in France

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch01.htm

In our first manifesto of the 23rd of July, we said: Thus, even before war operations had actually set in, we treated the Bonapartist bubble as a thing of the past. If we were not mistaken as to the vitality of the Second Empire, we were not wrong in our apprehension lest the German war should lose its strictly defensive character and degenerate into a war against the French people. The war of defense ended, in point of fact, with the surrender of Louis Bonaparte, the Sedan capitulation, and the proclamation of the republic at Paris. But long before these events, the very moment that the utter rottenness of the imperialist arms became evident, the Prussian military camarilla had resolved upon conquest. There lay an ugly obstacle in their way [Prussian] King William s own proclamations at the commencement of the war. In a speech from the throne to the North German Diet, he had solemnly declared to make war upon the emperor of the French and not upon the French nation, where he said: Not content to assert the defensive character of the war by the statement that he only assumed the command of the German armies to repel aggression", he added that he was only led by military events to cross the frontiers of France. A defensive war does, of course, not exclude offensive operations, dictated by military events. Thus, the pious king stood pledged before France and the world to a strictly defensive war. How to release him from his solemn pledge? The stage managers had to exhibit him as reluctantly yielding to the irresistible behest of the German nation. They at once gave the cue to the liberal German middle class, with its professors, its capitalists, its aldermen, and its penmen. That middle class, which, in its struggles for civil liberty, had, from 1846 to 1870, been exhibiting an unexampled spectacle of irresolution, incapacity and cowardice, felt, of course, highly delighted to bestride the European scene as the roaring lion of German patriotism. It re-vindicated its civic independence by affecting to force upon the Prussian government the secret designs of that same government. It does penance for its long-continued, and almost religious, faith in Louis Bonaparte s infallibility, but shouting for the dismemberment of the French republic. Let us, for a moment, listen to the special pleadings of those stout-hearted patriots! They dare not pretend that the people of Alsace and Lorraine pant for the German embrace; quite the contrary. To punish their French patriotism, Strasbourg, a town with an independent citadel commanding it, has for six days been wantonly and fiendishly bombarded by German explosive shells, setting it on fire, and killing great numbers of its defenceless inhabitants! Yet, the soil of those provinces once upon a time belonged to the whilom German empire.[A] Hence, it seems, the soil and the human beings grown on it must be confiscated as imprescriptible German property. If the map of Europe is to be re-made in the antiquary s vein, let us by no means forget that the Elector of Brandenburg, for his Prussian dominions, was the vassal of the Polish republic.[B] The more knowing patriots, however, require Alsace and the German-speaking Lorraine as a material guarantee against French aggression. As this contemptible plea has bewildered many weak-minded people, we are bound to enter more fully upon it. There is no doubt that the general configuration of Alsace, as compared with the opposite bank of the Rhine, and the presence of a large fortified town like Strasbourg, about halfway between Basle and Germersheim, very much favour a French invasion of South Germany, while they offer peculiar difficulties to an invasion of France from South Germany. There is, further, no doubt that the addition of Alsace and German-speaking Lorraine would give South Germany a much stronger frontier, inasmuch as she would then be the master of the crest of the Vosges mountains in its whole length, and of the fortresses which cover its northern passes. If Metz were annexed as well, France would certainly for the moment be deprived of her two principal bases of operation against Germany, but that would not prevent her from concentrating a fresh one at Nancy or Verdun. While Germany owns Coblenz, Mayence [i.e., Mainz], Germersheim, Rastatt, and Ulm, all bases of operation against France, and plentifully made use of in this war, with what show of fair play can she begrudge France Strasbourg and Metz, the only two fortresses of any importance she has on that side? Moreover, Strasbourg endangers South Germany only while South Germany is a separate power from North Germany. From 1792 to 1795, South Germany was never invaded from that direction, because Prussia was a party to the war against the French Revolution; but as soon as Prussia made a peace of her own[C] in 1795, and left the South to shift for itself, the invasions of South Germany with Strasbourg as a base began and continued till 1809. The fact is, a united Germany can always render Strasbourg and any French army in Alsace innocuous by concentrating all her troops, as was done in the present war, between Saarlouis and Landau, and advancing, or accepting battle, on the line of road between Mayence and Metz. While the mass of the German troops is stationed there, any French army advancing from Strasbourg into South Germany would be outflanked, and have its communication threatened. If the present campaign has proved anything, it is the facility of invading France from Germany. But, in good faith, is it not altogether an absurdity and an anachronism to make military considerations the principle by which the boundaries of nations are to be fixed? If this rule were to prevail, Austria would still be entitled to Venetia and the line of the Minicio, and France to the line of the Rhine, in order to protect Paris, which lies certainly more open to an attack from the northeast than Berlin does from the southwest. If limits are to be fixed by military interests, there will be no end to claims, because every military line is necessarily faulty, and may be improved by annexing some more outlying territory; and, moreover, they can never be fixed finally and fairly, because they always must be imposed by the conqueror upon the conquered, and consequently carry within them the seed of fresh wars. Such is the lesson of all history. Thus with nations as with individuals. To deprive them of the power of offence, you must deprive them of the means of defence. You must not only garrote, but murder. If every conqueror took material guarantees" for breaking the sinews of a nation, the first Napoleon did so by the Tilsit Treaty, and the way he executed it against Prussia and the rest of Germany. Yet, a few years later, his gigantic power split like a rotten reed upon the German people. What are the material guarantees Prussia, in her wildest dreams, can or dare imposes upon France, compared to the material guarantees the first Napoleon had wrenched from herself? The result will not prove the less disastrous. History will measure its retribution, not by the intensity of the square miles conquered from France, but by the intensity of the crime of reviving, in the second half of the 19th century, the policy of conquest! But, say the mouthpieces of Teutonic [German] patriotism, you must not confound Germans with Frenchmen. What we want is not glory, but safety. The Germans are an essentially peaceful people. In their sober guardianship, conquest itself changes from a condition of future war into a pledge of perpetual peace. Of course, it is not Germans that invaded France in 1792, for the sublime purpose of bayonetting the revolution of the 18th century. It is not Germans that befouled their hands by the subjugation of Italy, the oppressions of Hungary, and the dismemberment of Poland. Their present military system, which divides the whole able-bodied male population into two parts one standing army on service, and another standing army on furlough, both equally bound in passive obedience to rulers by divine right such a military system is, of course, a material guarantee, for keeping the peace and the ultimate goal of civilizing tendencies! In Germany, as everywhere else, the sycophants of the powers that be poison the popular mind by the incense of mendacious self-praise. Indignant as they pretend to be at the sight of French fortresses in Metz and Strasbourg, those German patriots see no harm in the vast system of Moscovite fortifications at Warsaw, Modlin, and Ivangorod [All strongholds of the Russian Empire] . While gloating at the terrors of imperialist invasion, they blink at the infamy of autocratic tutelage. As in 1865, promises were exchanged between Gorchakov and Bismarck. As Louis Bonaparte flattered himself that the War of 1866, resulting in the common exhaustion of Austria and Prussia, would make him the supreme arbiter of Germany, so Alexander [II of Russia] flattered himself that the War of 1870, resulting in the common exhaustion of Germany and France, would make him the supreme arbiter of the Western continent. As the Second Empire thought the North German Confederation incompatible with its existence, so autocratic Russia must think herself endangered by a German empire under Prussian leadership. Such is the law of the old political system. Within its pale the gain of one state is the loss of the other. The tsar s paramount influence over Europe roots in his traditional hold on Germany. At a moment when in Russia herself volcanic social agencies threaten to shake the very base of autocracy, could the tsar afford to bear with such a loss of foreign prestige? Already the Moscovite journals repeat the language of the Bonapartist journals of the War of 1866. Do the Teuton patriots really believe that liberty and peace will be guaranteed to Germany by forcing France into the arms of Russia? If the fortune of her arms, the arrogance of success, and dynastic intrigue lead Germany to a dismemberment of French territory, there will then only remain two courses open to her. She must at all risks become the avowed tool of Russian aggrandizement, or, after some short respite, make again ready for another defensive war, not one of those new-fangled localized wars, but a war of races a war with the Slavonic and Roman races.[D] The German working class have resolutely supported the war, which it was not in their power to prevent, as a war for German independence and the liberation of France and Europe from that pestilential incubus, the Second Empire. It was the German workmen who, together with the rural laborers, furnished the sinews and muscles of heroic hosts, leaving behind their half-starved families. Decimated by the battles abroad, they will be once more decimated by misery at home. In their turn, they are now coming forward to ask for guarantees guarantees that their immense sacrifices have not been bought in vain, that they have conquered liberty, that the victory over the imperialist armies will not, as in 1815, be turned into the defeat of the German people[E]; and, as the first of these guarantees, they claim an honorable peace for France, and the recognition of the French republic. The Central Committee of the German Social-Democratic Workmen s Party issued, on September 5, a manifesto, energetically insisting upon these guarantees. Unfortunately, we cannot feel sanguine of their immediate success. If the French workmen amidst peace failed to stop the aggressor, are the German workmen more likely to stop the victor amidst the clamour of arms? The German workmen s manifesto demands the extradition of Louis Bonaparte as a common felon to the French republic. Their rulers are, on the contrary, already trying hard to restore him to the Tuileries[F] as the best man to ruin France. However that may be, history will prove that the German working class are not made of the same malleable stuff as the German middle class. They will do their duty. Like them, we hail the advent of the republic in France, but at the same time we labor under misgivings which we hope will prove groundless. That republic has not subverted the throne, but only taken its place, become vacant. It has been proclaimed, not as a social conquest, but as a national measure of defence. It is in the hands of a Provisional Government composed partly of notorious Orleanists, partly of middle class republicans, upon some of whom the insurrection of June 1848 has left its indelible stigma. The division of labor amongst the members of that government looks awkward. The Orleanists have seized the strongholds of the army and the police, while to the professed republicans have fallen the talking departments. Some of their acts go far to show that they have inherited from the empire, not only ruins, but also its dread of the working class. If eventual impossibilities are, in wild phraseology, promised in the name of the republic, is it not with a view to prepare the cry for a possible government? Is the republic, by some of its middle class undertakers, not intended to serve as a mere stop-gap and bridge over an Orleanist restoration? The French working class moves, therefore, under circumstances of extreme difficulty. Any attempt at upsetting the new government in the present crisis, when the enemy is almost knocking at the doors of Paris, would be a desperate folly. The French workmen must perform their duties as citizens; but, at the same time, they must not allow themselves to be swayed by the national souvenirs of 1792, as the French peasant allowed themselves to be deluded by the national souvenirs of the First Empire. They have not to recapitulate the past, but to build up the future. Let them calmly and resolutely improve the opportunities of republican liberty, for the work of their own class organization. It will gift them with fresh herculean powers for the regeneration of France, and our common task the emancipation of labor. Upon their energies and wisdom hinges the fate of the republic. The English workmen have already taken measures to overcome, by a wholesome pressure from without, the reluctance of their government to recognize the French republic.[G] The present dilatoriness of the British government is probably intended to atone for the Anti-Jacobin war and the former indecent haste in sanctioning the coup d etat.[H] The English workmen call also upon their government to oppose by all its power the dismemberment of France, which a part of the English press is shameless enough to howl for. It is the same press that for 20 years deified Louis Bonaparte as the providence of Europe, that frantically cheered on the slaveholders rebellion.[I] Now, as then, it drudges for the slaveholder. Let the sections of the International Working Men s Association in every country stir the working classes to action. If they forsake their duty, if they remain passive, the present tremendous war will be but the harbinger of still deadlier international feuds, and lead in every nation to a renewed triumph over the workman by the lords of the sword, of the soil, and of capital.

The Civil War in France

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch02.htm

In September 4, 1870, when the working men of Paris proclaimed the republic, which was almost instantaneously acclaimed throughout France, without a single voice of dissent, a cabal of place-hunting barristers, with Thiers for their statesman, and Trochu for their general, took hold of the Hotel de Ville. At that time they were imbued with so fanatical a faith in the mission of Paris to represent France in all epochs of historical crisis that, to legitimate their usurped titles as governors of France, they thought it quite sufficient to produce their lapsed mandates as representatives of Paris. In our second address on the late war, five days after the rise of these men, we told you who they were. Yet, in the turmoil of surprise, with the real leaders of the working class still shut up in Bonapartist prisons and the Prussians already marching on Paris, Paris bore with their assumption of power, on the express condition that it was to be wielded for the single purpose of national defence. Paris, however, was not to be defended without arming its working class, organizing them into an effective force, and training their ranks by the war itself. But Paris armed was the revolution armed. A victory of Paris over the Prussian aggressor would have been a victory of the French workmen over the French capitalist and his state parasites. In this conflict between national duty and class interest, the Government of National Defence did not hesitate one moment to turn into a Government of National Defection. The first step they took was to send Thiers on a roving tour to all the courts of Europe, there to beg mediation by offering the barter of the republic for a king. Four months after the commencement of the siege [of Paris], when they thought the opportune moment came for breaking the first word of capitulation, Trochu, in the presence of Jules Favre, and others of his colleagues, addressed the assembled mayors of Paris in these terms: This nice little speech of Trochu was afterwards published by M. Carbon, one of the mayors present. Thus, on the very evening of the proclamation of the republic, Trochu s plan was known to his colleagues to be the capitulation of Paris. If national defence has been more than a pretext for the personal government of Thiers, Favre, and Co., the upstarts of September 4 would have abdicated on the 5th would have initiated the Paris people into Trochu s plan, and called upon them to surrender at once, or to take their own fate into their own hands. Instead of this, the infamous impostors resolved upon curing the heroic folly of Paris by a regimen of famine and broken heads, and to dupe her in the meanwhile by ranting manifestos, holding forth that Trochu, the governor of Paris, will never capitulate", and Jules Favre, the foreign minister, will not cede an inch of our territory, nor a stone of our fortresses. In a letter to Gambetta, the very same Jules Favre avows that what they were defending against were not the Prussian soldiers, but the working men of Paris. During the whole continuance of the siege, the Bonapartist cut-throats, whom Trochu had wisely entrusted with the command of the Paris army, exchanged, in their intimate correspondence, ribald jokes at the well-understood mockery of defence. (See, for instance, the correspondence of Alphonse Simon Guiod, supreme commander of the artillery of the Army of Defence of Paris and Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, to Suzanne, general of division of artillery, a correspondence published by the Journal officiel of the Commune.) The mask of the true heroism was at last dropped on January 28, 1871. With the true heroism of utter self-debasement, the Government of National Defence, in their capitulation, came out as the government of France by Bismarck s prisoners a part so base that Louis Bonaparte himself had, at Sedan, shrunk from accepting it. After the events of March 18 on their wild flight to Versailles, the capitulards left in the hands of Paris the documentary evidence of their treason, to destroy which, as the Commune says in its manifesto to the provinces, those men would not recoil from battering Paris into a heap of ruins washed by a sea of blood." To be eagerly bent upon such a consummation, some of the leading members of the Government of Defence had, besides, most peculiar reasons of their own. Shortly after the conclusion of the armistice, M. Milliere, one of the representatives of Paris to the National Assembly, now shot by express orders of Jules Favre, published a series of authentic legal documents in proof that Jules Favre, living in concubinage with the wife of a drunken resident at Algiers, had, by a most daring concoction of forgeries, spread over many years, contrived to grasp, in the name of the children of his adultery, a large succession, which made him a rich man, and that, in a lawsuit undertaken by the legitimate heirs, he only escaped exposure by the connivance of the Bonapartist tribunals. As these dry legal documents were not to be got rid of by any amount of rhetorical horse-power, Jules Favre, for the first time in his life, held his tongue, quietly awaiting the outbreak of the civil war, in order, then, frantically to denounce the people of Paris as a band of escaped convicts in utter revolt against family, religion, order, and property. This same forger had hardly got into power, after September 4, when he sympathetically let loose upon society Pic and Taillefer, convicted, even under the empire, of forgery in the scandalous affair of Etendard. One of these men, Taillefer, having dared to return to Paris under the Commune, was at once reinstated in prison; and then Jules Favre exclaimed, from the tribune of the National Assembly, that Paris was setting free all her jailbirds! Ernest Picard, the Joe Miller of the Government of National Defence, who appointed himself Finance Minister of the republic after having in vain striven to become home minister of the empire, is the brother of one Arthur Picard, an individual expelled from the Paris Bourse as a blackleg (see report of the Prefecture of Police, dated July 13, 1867), and convicted, on his own confession, of theft of 300,000 francs, while manager of one of the branches of the Societe Generale,[A] Rue Palestro, No.5 (see report of the Prefecture of Police, dated December 11, 1868). This Arthur Picard was made by Ernest Picard the editor of his paper, l Electeur Libre. While the common run of stockjobbers were led astray by the official lies of this finance office paper, Arthur was running backwards and forwards between the finance office and the Bourse, there to discount the disasters of the French army. The whole financial correspondence of that worthy pair of brothers fell into the hands of the Commune. Jules Ferry, a penniless barrister before September 4, contrived, as mayor of Paris during the siege, to job a fortune out of famine. The day on which he would have to give an account of his maladministration would be the day of his conviction. These men, then, could find in the ruins of Paris only their tickets-of-leave; they were the very men Bismarck wanted. With the help of some shuffling of cards, Thiers, hitherto the secret prompter of the government, now appeared at its head, with the tickets-of-leave men for his ministers. Theirs, that monstrous gnome, has charmed the French bourgeoisie for almost half a century, because he is the most consummate intellectual expression of their own class corruption. Before he became a statesman, he had already proved his lying powers as an historian. The chronicle of his public life is the record of the misfortunes of France. Banded, before 1830, with the republicans, he slipped into office under Louis Philippe by betraying his protector Lafitte, ingratiating himself with the king by exciting mob riots against the clergy, during which the church of Saint Germain l Auxerrois and the Archbishop s palace were plundered, and by acting the minister-spy upon, and the jail-accoucheur of the Duchess de Berry.[B] The massacre of the republicans in the Rue Transnonian, and the subsequent infamous laws of September against the press and the right of association, were his work.[C] Reappearing as the chief of the cabinet in March 1840, he astonished France with his plan for fortifying France.[D] To the republicans, who denounced this plan as a sinister plot against the liberty of Paris, he replied from the tribune of the Chamber of Deputies: Indeed, no government would ever have dared to bombard Paris from the forts, save that government which had previously surrendered these forts to the Prussians. When King Bomba [Ferdinand II of Spain] tried his hand at Palermo, in January 1848, Thiers, then long since out of office, again rose in the Chamber of Deputies: Eighteen months afterwards, M. Thiers was amongst the fiercest defenders of the bombardment of Rome by a French army.[E] In fact, the fault of King Bomba seems to have consisted in this only that he limited his bombardment to 48 hours. A few days before the February Revolution, fretting at the long exile from place and pelf to which Guizot had condemned him, and sniffing in the air the scent of an approaching popular commotion, Thiers, in that pseudo-heroic style which won him the nickname Mirabeau-mouche [Mirabeau the fly], declared, to the Chamber of Deputies: The February Revolution came. Instead of displacing the Guizot Cabinet by the Thiers Cabinet, as the little man had dreamt, it superseded Louis Philippe by the republic. On the first day of the popular victory, he carefully hid himself, forgetting that the contempt of the working men screened him from their hatred. Still, with his legendary courage, he continued to shy the public stage, until the June massacres had cleared it for his sort of action. Then he became the leading mind of the Party of Order [F] and its parliamentary republic, that anonymous interregnum, in which all the rival factions of the ruling class conspired together to crush the people, and conspired against each other to restore to each of them its own monarchy. Then, as now, Thiers denounced the republicans as the only obstacle to the consolidation of the republic; then, as now, he spoke to the republic as the hangman spoke to Don Carlos: I shall assassinate thee, but for thy own good. Now, as then, he will have to exclaim on the day after his victory: L Empire est fait the empire is consummated. Despite his hypocritical homilies about the necessary liberties and his personal grudge against Louis Bonaparte, who had made a dupe of him, and kicked out parliamentarism and, outside of its factitious atmosphere, the little man is conscious of withering into nothingness he had a hand in all the infamies of the Second Empire, from the occupation of Rome by French troops to the war with Prussia, which he incited by his fierce invective against German unity not as a cloak of Prussian despotism, but as an encroachment upon the vested right of France in German disunion. Fond of brandishing, with his dwarfish arms in the face of Europe, the sword of the first Napoleon, whose historical shoeblack he had become, his foreign policy always culminated in the utter humiliation of France from the London convention[G] of 1840 to the Paris capitulation of 1871, and the present civil war, where he hounds on the prisoners of Sedan and Metz[H] against Paris by special permission of Bismarck. Despite his versatility of talent and shiftiness of purpose, this man has his whole lifetime been wedded to the most fossil routine. It is self-evident that to him the deeper undercurrents of modern society remained forever hidden; but even the most palpable changes on its surface were abhorrent to a brain (all the vitality of which) had fled to the tongue. Thus, he never tired of denouncing as a sacrilege any deviation from the old French protective system. When a minister of Louis Philippe, he railed at railways as a wild chimera; and when in opposition under Louis Bonaparte, he branded as a profanation every attempt to reform the rotten French army system. Never in his long political career has he been guilty of a single even the smallest measure of any practical use. Thiers was consistent only in his greed for wealth and his hatred of the men that produce it. Having entered his first ministry, under Louis Philippe, poor as Job, he left it a millionaire. His last ministry under the same king (of March 1, 1840) exposed him to public taunts of peculation in the Chamber of Deputies, to which he was content to reply by tears a commodity he deals in as freely as Jules Favre, or any other crocodile. At Bordeaux, his first measure for saving France from impending financial ruin was to endow himself with three millions a year, the first and the last word of the Economical Republic, the vista of which he had opened to his Paris electors in 1869. One of his former colleagues of the Chamber of Deputies of 1830, himself a capitalist and, nevertheless, a devoted member of the Paris Commune, M. Beslay, lately addressed Thiers thus in a public placard: A master in small state roguery, a virtuoso in perjury and treason, a craftsman in all the petty strategems, cunning devices, and base perfidies of parliamentary warfare; never scrupling, when out of office, to fan a revolution, and to stifle it in blood when at the helm of the state; with class prejudices standing him in the place of ideas, and vanity in the place of a heart; his private life as infamous as his public life is odious even now, when playing the part of a French Sulla, he cannot help setting off the abomination of his deeds by the ridicule of his ostentation. The capitulation of Paris, by surrendering to Prussia not only Paris, but all France, closed the long-continued intrigues of treason with the enemy, which the usurpers of September 4 had begun, as Trochu himself said, on the very same day. On the other hand, it initiated the civil war they were now to wage, with the assistance of Prussia, against the republic and Paris. The trap was laid in the very terms of the capitulation. At that time, above one-third of the territory was in the hands of the enemy, the capital was cut off from the provinces, all communications were disorganized. To elect, under such circumstances, a real representation of France was impossible, unless ample time were given for preparation. In view of this, the capitulation stipulated that a National Assembly must be elected within eight days; so that in many parts of France the news of the impending election arrived on its eve only. This assembly, moreover, was, by an express clause of the capitulation, to be elected for the sole purpose of deciding on peace or war, and, eventually, to conclude a treaty of peace. The population could not but feel that the terms of the armistice rendered the continuation of the war impossible, and that for sanctioning the peace imposed by Bismarck, the worst men in France were the best. But not content with these precautions, Thiers even before the secret of the armistice had been broached to Paris, set out for an electioneering tour through the provinces, there to galvanize back into life the Legitimist party, which now, along with the Orleanists, had to take the place of the then impossible Bonapartists. He was not afraid of them. Impossible as a government of modern France, and, therefore, contemptible as rivals, what party were more eligible as tools of counter-revolution than the party whose action, in the words of Thiers himself (Chamber of Deputies, January 5, 1833), Had always been confined to the three resources of foreign invasion, civil war, and anarchy ? They verily believed in the advent of their long-expected retrospective millennium. There were the heels of foreign invasion trampling upon France; there was the downfall of an empire, and the captivity of Bonaparte; and there they were themselves. The wheel of history had evidently rolled back to stop at the Chambers introuvable of 1816.[I] In the assemblies of the republic, 1848 to 1851, they had been represented by their educated and trained parliamentary champions; it was the rank-and-file of the party which now rushed in all the Pourceaugnacs of France. [a character in one of Moli re s comedies, typifying the dull-witted, narrow-minded petty landed gentry.] As soon as this Assembly of Rurals"[J] had met at Bordeaux, Thiers made it clear to them that the peace preliminaries must be assented to at once, without even the honors of a parliamentary debate, as the only conditions on which Prussia would permit them to open the war against the republic and Paris, its stronghold. The counter-revolution had, in fact, no time to lose. The Second Empire had more than doubled the national debt, and plunged all the large towns into heavy municipal debts. The war had fearfully swelled the liabilities, and mercilessly ravaged the resources of the nation. To complete the ruin, the Prussian Shylock was there with his bond for the keep of half a million of his soldiers on French soil, his indemnity for five milliards[K], and interest at 5 per cent on the unpaid instalments thereof. Who was to pay this bill? It was only by the violent overthrow of the republic that the appropriators of wealth could hope to shift onto the shoulders of its producers the cost of a war which they, the appropriators, had themselves originated. Thus, the immense ruin of France spurred on these patriotic representatives of land and capital, under the very eyes and patronage of the invader, to graft upon the foreign war a civil war a slaveholders rebellion. There stood in the way of this conspiracy one great obstacle Paris. To disarm Paris was the first condition of success. Paris was therefore summoned by Thiers to surrender its arms. Then Paris was exasperated by the frantic anti-republican demonstrations of the Rural Assembly and by Thiers own equivocations about the legal status of the republic; by the threat to decapitate and decapitalize Paris; the appointment of Orleanist ambassadors; Dufaure s laws on over-due commercial bills and house rents[L], inflicting ruin on the commerce and industry of Paris; Pouyer-Quertier s tax of two centimes upon every copy of every imaginable publication; the sentences of death against Blanqui and Flourens; the suppression of the republican journals; the transfer of the National Assembly to Versailles; the renewal of the state of siege declared by Palikao, and expired on September 4; the appointment of Vinoy, the D cembriseur[M], as governor of Paris of Valentin, the imperialist gendarme, as its prefect of police and of D Aurelles de Paladine, the Jesuit general, as the commander-in-chief of its National Guard. And now we have to address a question to M. Thiers and the men of national defence, his under-strappers. It is known that, through the agency of M. Pouyer-Quertier, his finance ministers, Thiers had contracted a loan of two milliards. Now, is it true or not At all events, there must have been something very pressing in the matter, for Thiers and Jules Favre, in the name of the majority of the Bordeaux Assembly, unblushingly solicited the immediate occupation of Paris by Prussian troops. Such, however, was not the game of Bismarck, as he sneeringly, and in public, told the admiring Frankfort philistines on his return to Germany.

The Civil War in France

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch03.htm

Armed Paris was the only serious obstacle in the way of the counter-revolutionary conspiracy. Paris was, therefore, to be disarmed. On this point, the Bordeaux Assembly [National Assembly] was sincerity itself. If the roaring rant of its Rurals had not been audible enough, the surrender of Paris by Thiers to the tender mercies of the triumvirate of Vinoy the Decembriseur, Valentin the Bonapartist gendarme, and Aurelles de Paladine the Jesuit general, would have cut off even the last subterfuge of doubt. But while insultingly exhibiting the true purpose of the disarmament of Paris, the conspirators asked her to lay down her arms on a pretext which was the most glaring, the most barefaced of lies. The artillery of the Paris National Guard, said Thiers, belonged to the state, and to the state it must be returned. The fact was this: From the very day of the capitulation, by which Bismarck s prisoners had signed the surrender of France, but reserved to themselves a numerous bodyguard for the express purpose of cowing Paris, Paris stood on the watch. The National Guard reorganized themselves and entrusted their supreme control to a Central Committee elected by their whole body, save some fragments of the old Bonapartist formations. On the eve of the entrance of the Prussians into Paris, the Central Committee took measures for the removal to Montmartre, Belleville, and La Villette, of the cannon and mitrailleuses treacherously abandoned by the capitulards in and about the very quarters the Prussians were to occupy. That artillery had been furnished by the subscriptions of the National Guard. As their private property, it was officially recognized in the capitulation of January 28, and on that very title exempted from the general surrender, into the hands of the conqueror, or arms belonging to the government. And Thiers was so utterly destitute of even the flimsiest pretext for initiating the war against Paris, that he had to resort to the flagrant lie of the artillery of the National Guard being state property! The seizure of her artillery was evidently but to serve as the preliminary to the general disarmament of Paris, and, therefore, of the Revolution of September 4. But that revolution had become the legal status of France. The republic, its work, was recognized by the conqueror in the terms of the capitulation. After the capitulation, it was acknowledged by all foreign powers, and in its name, the National Assembly had been summoned. The Paris working men s revolution of September 4 was the only legal title of the National Assembly seated at Bordeaux, and of its executive. Without it, the National Assembly would at once have to give way to the Corps Legislatif elected in 1869 by universal suffrage under French, not under Prussian, rule, and forcibly dispersed by the arm of the revolution. Thiers and his ticket-of-leave men would have had to capitulate for safe conducts signed by Louis Bonaparte, to save them from a voyage to Cayenne[A]. The National Assembly, with its power of attorney to settle the terms of peace with Prussia, was but an incident of that revolution, the true embodiment of which was still armed Paris, which had initiated it, undergone for it a five-months siege, with its horrors of famine, and made her prolonged resistance, despite Trochu s plan, the basis of an obstinate war of defence in the provinces. And Paris was now either to lay down her arms at the insulting behest of the rebellious slaveholders of Bordeaux, and acknowledge that her Revolution of September 4 meant nothing but a simple transfer of power from Louis Bonaparte to his royal rivals; or she had to stand forward as the self-sacrificing champion of France, whose salvation from ruin and whose regeneration were impossible without the revolutionary overthrow of the political and social conditions that had engendered the Second Empire, and under its fostering care, matured into utter rottenness. Paris, emaciated by a five-months famine, did not hesitate one moment. She heroically resolved to run all the hazards of a resistance against French conspirators, even with Prussian cannon frowning upon her from her own forts. Still, in its abhorrence of the civil war into which Paris was to be goaded, the Central Committee continued to persist in a merely defensive attitude, despite the provocations of the Assembly, the usurpations of the Executive, and the menacing concentration of troops in and around Paris. Thiers opened the civil war by sending Vinoy, at the head of a multitude of sergents-de-ville, and some regiments of the line, upon a nocturnal expedition against Montmartre, there to seize, by surprise, the artillery of the National Guard. It is well known how this attempt broke down before the resistance of the National Guard and the fraternization of the line with the people. Aurelles de Paldine had printed beforehand his bulletin of victory, and Thiers held ready the placards announcing his measures of coup d etat. Now these had to be replaced by Thiers appeals, imparting his magnanimous resolve to leave the National Guard in the possession of their arms, with which, he said, he felt sure they would rally round the government against the rebels. Out of 300,000 National guards, only 300 responded to this summons to rally around little Thiers against themselves. The glorious working men s Revolution of March 18 took undisputed sway of Paris. The Central Committee was its provisional government. Europe seemed, for a moment, to doubt whether its recent sensational performances of state and war had any reality in them, or whether they were the dreams of a long bygone past. From March 18 to the entrance of the Versailles troops into Paris, the proletarian revolution remained so free from the acts of violence in which the revolutions and still more the counter-revolutions of the better classes abound, that no facts were left to its opponents to cry out about, but the executions of Generals Lecomte and Clement Thomas, and the affair of the Place Vendome. One of the Bonapartist officers engaged in the nocturnal attempt against Montmartre, General Lecomte, had four times ordered the 81st line regiment to fire at an unarmed gathering in the Place Pigalle, and on their refusal fiercely insulted them. Instead of shooting women and children, his own men shot him. The inveterate habits acquired by the soldiery under the training of the enemies of the working class are, of course, not likely to change the very moment these soldiers change sides. The same men executed Clement Thomas. General Clement Thomas, a malcontent ex-quartermaster-sergeant, had, in the latter times of Louis Philippe s reign, enlisted at the office of the republican newspaper Le National, there to serve in the double capacity of responsible man-of-straw (gerant responsable) and of duelling bully to that very combative journal. After the February Revolution, the men of the National having got into power, they metamorphosed this old quarter-master-sergeant into a general on the eve of the butchery of June of which he, like Jules Favre, was one of the sinister plotters, and became one of the most dastardly executioners. Then he and his generalship disappeared for a long time, to again rise to the surface on November 1, 1870. The day before, the Government of National Defence, caught at the Hotel de Ville, had solemnly pledged their parole to Blanqui, Flourens, and other representatives of the working class, to abdicate their usurped power into the hands of a commune to be freely elected by Paris.[B] Instead of keeping their word, they let loose on Paris the Bretons of Trochu, who now replaced the Corsicans of Bonaparte.[C] General Tamisier alone, refusing to sully his name by such a breach of faith, resigned the commandership-in-chief of the National Guard, and in his place Clement Thomas for once became again a general. During the whole of his tenure of command, he made war, not upon the Prussians, but upon the Paris National Guard. He prevented their general armament, pitted the bourgeois battalions against the working men s battalions, weeded out officers hostile to Trochu s plan, and disbanded, under the stigma of cowardice, the very same proletarian battalions whose heroism has now astonished their most inveterate enemies. Clement Thomas felt quite proud of having reconquered his June pre-eminence as the personal enemy of the working class of Paris. Only a few days before March 18, he laid before the War Minister, Leflo, a plan of his own for finishing off la fine fleur [the cream] of the Paris canaille. After Vinoy s rout, he must needs appear upon the scene of action in the quality of an amateur spy. The Central Committee and the Paris working men were as much responsible for the killing of Clement Thomas and Lecomte as the Princess of Wales for the fate of the people crushed to death on the day of her entrance into London. The massacre of unarmed citizens in Place Vendome is a myth which M. Thiers and the Rurals persistently ignored in the Assembly, entrusting its propagation exclusively to the servants hall of European journalism. The men of order, the reactionists of Paris, trembled at the victory of March 18. To them, it was the signal of popular retribution at last arriving. The ghosts of the victims assassinated at their hands from the days of June 1848, down to January 22, 1871,[D] arose before their faces. Their panic was their only punishment. Even the sergents-de-ville, instead of being disarmed and locked up, as ought to have been done, had the gates of Paris flung open wide for their safe retreat to Versailles. The men of order were left not only unharmed, but allowed to rally and quietly seize more than one stronghold in the very centre of Paris. This indulgence of the Central Committee this magnanimity of the armed working men so strangely at variance with the habits of the Party of Order, the latter misinterpreted as mere symptoms of conscious weakness. Hence their silly plan to try, under the cloak of an unarmed demonstration, what Vinoy had failed to perform with his cannon and mitrailleuses. On March 22, a riotous mob of swells started from the quarters of luxury, all the petits creves in their ranks, and at their head the notorious familiars of the empire the Heeckeren, Coetlogon, Henri de Pene, etc. Under the cowardly pretence of a pacific demonstration, this rabble, secretly armed with the weapons of the bravo [i.e. hired assassin], fell into marching order, ill-treated and disarmed the detached patrols and sentries of the National Guard they met with on their progress, and, on debouching from the Rue de la Paix, with the cry of Down with the Central Committee! Down with the assassins! The National Assembly forever! attempted to break through the line drawn up there, and thus to carry by surprise the headquarters of the National Guard in the Place Vendome. In reply to their pistol-shots, the regular sommations (the French equivalent of the English Riot Act)[E] were made, and, proving ineffective, fire was commanded by the general [Bergeret] of the National Guard. One volley dispersed into wild flight the silly coxcombs, who expected that the mere exhibition of their respectability would have the same effect upon the Revolution of Paris as Joshua s trumpets upon the walls of Jericho. The runaways left behind them two National Guards killed, nine severely wounded (among them a member of the Central Committee [Maljournal]), and the whole scene of their exploit strewn with revolvers, daggers, and sword-canes, in evidence of the unarmed character of their pacific demonstration. When, on June 13, 1849, the National Guard made a really pacific demonstration in protest against the felonious assault of French troops upon Rome, Changarnier, then general of the Party of Order, was acclaimed by the National Assembly, and especially by M. Thiers, as the savior of society, for having launched his troops from all sides upon these unarmed men, to shoot and sabre them down, and to trample them under their horses feet. Paris, then was placed under a state of siege. Dufaure hurried through the Assembly new laws of repression. New arrests, new proscriptions a new reign of terror set in. But the lower orders manage these things otherwise. The Central Committee of 1871 simply ignored the heroes of the pacific demonstration"; so much so, that only two days later, they were enabled to muster under Admiral Saisset, for that armed demonstration, crowned by the famous stampede to Versailles. In their reluctance to continue the civil war opened by Thiers burglarious attempt on Montmartre, the Central Committee made themselves, this time, guilty of a decisive mistake in not at once marching upon Versailles, then completely helpless, and thus putting an end to the conspiracies of Thiers and his Rurals. Instead of this, the Party of Order was again allowed to try its strength at the ballot box, on March 26, the day of the election of the Commune. Then, in the mairies of Paris, they exchanged bland words of conciliation with their too generous conquerors, muttering in their hearts solemn vows to exterminate them in due time. Now, look at the reverse of the medal. Thiers opened his second campaign against Paris in the beginning of April. The first batch of Parisian prisoners brought into Versailles was subjected to revolting atrocities, while Ernest Picard, with his hands in his trousers pockets, strolled about jeering them, and while Mesdames Thiers and Favre, in the midst of their ladies of honor (?) applauded, from the balcony, the outrages of the Versailles mob. The captured soldiers of the line were massacred in cold blood; our brave friend, General Duval, the iron-founder, was shot without any form of trial. Galifet, the kept man of his wife, so notorious for her shameless exhibitions at the orgies of the Second Empire, boasted in a proclamation of having commanded the murder of a small troop of National Guards, with their captain and lieutenant, surprised and disarmed by his Chasseurs. Vinoy, the runaway, was appointed by Thiers, Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, for his general order to shoot down every soldier of the line taken in the ranks of the Federals. Desmaret, the Gendarme, was decorated for the treacherous butcher-like chopping in pieces of the high-souled and chivalrous Flourens, who had saved the heads of the Government of Defence on October 31, 1870.[F] The encouraging particulars of his assassination were triumphantly expatiated upon by Thiers in the National Assembly. With the elated vanity of a parliamentary Tom Thumb permitted to play the part of a Tamerlane, he denied the rebels the right of neutrality for ambulances. Nothing more horrid than that monkey allowed for a time to give full fling to his tigerish instincts, as foreseen by Voltaire.[Candide, Ch. 22](See news articles) After the decree of the Commune of April 7, ordering reprisals and declaring it to be the duty to protect Paris against the cannibal exploits of the Versailles banditti, and to demand an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, [G] Thiers did not stop the barbarous treatment of prisoners, moreover, insulting them in his bulletins as follows: Never have more degraded countenances of a degraded democracy met the afflicted gazes of honest men honest, like Thiers himself and his ministerial ticket-of-leave men. Still, the shooting of prisoners was suspended for a time. Hardly, however, had Thiers and his Decembrist generals [of the December 2, 1851 coup by Louis Bonaparte] become aware that the Communal decree of reprisals was but an empty threat, that even their gendarme spies caught in Paris under the disguise of National Guards, that even sergents-de-ville, taken with incendiary shells upon them, were spared when the wholesale shooting of prisoners was resumed and carried on uninterruptedly to the end. Houses to which National Guards had fled were surrounded by gendarmes, inundated with petroleum (which here occurs for the first time in this war), and then set fire to, the charred corpses being afterwards brought out by the ambulance of the Press at the Ternes. Four National Guards having surrendered to a troop of mounted Chasseurs at Belle Epine, on April 25, were afterwards shot down, one after another, by the captain, a worthy man of Gallifet s. One of his four victims, left for dead, Scheffer, crawled back to the Parisian outposts, and deposed to this fact before a commission of the Commune. When Tolain interpellated the War Minister upon the report of this commission, the Rurals drowned his voice and forbade Leflo to answer. It would be an insult to their glorious army to speak of its deeds. The flippant tone in which Thiers bulletin announced the bayoneting of the Federals, surprised asleep at Moulin Saquet, and the wholesale fusillades at Clamart shocked the nerves even of the not over-sensitive London Times. But it would be ludicrous today to attempt recounting the merely preliminary atrocities committed by the bombarders of Paris and the fomenters of a slaveholders rebellion protected by foreign invasion. Amidst all these horrors, Thiers, forgetful of his parliamentary laments on the terrible responsibility weighing down his dwarfish shoulders, boasts in his bulletins that l Assemblee siege paisiblement (the Assembly continues meeting in peace), and proves by his constant carousals, now with Decembrist generals, now with German princes, that his digestion is not troubled in the least, not even by the ghosts of Lecomte and Clement Thomas.

The Civil War in France

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch04.htm

On the dawn of March 18, Paris arose to the thunder-burst of Vive la Commune! What is the Commune, that sphinx so tantalizing to the bourgeois mind? But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes. The centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labor originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving nascent middle class society as a mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism. Still, its development remained clogged by all manner of medieval rubbish, seignorial rights, local privileges, municipal and guild monopolies, and provincial constitutions. The gigantic broom of the French Revolution of the 18th century swept away all these relics of bygone times, thus clearing simultaneously the social soil of its last hinderances to the superstructure of the modern state edifice raised under the First Empire, itself the offspring of the coalition wars of old semi-feudal Europe against modern France. During the subsequent regimes, the government, placed under parliamentary control that is, under the direct control of the propertied classes became not only a hotbed of huge national debts and crushing taxes; with its irresistible allurements of place, pelf, and patronage, it became not only the bone of contention between the rival factions and adventurers of the ruling classes; but its political character changed simultaneously with the economic changes of society. At the same pace at which the progress of modern industry developed, widened, intensified the class antagonism between capital and labor, the state power assumed more and more the character of the national power of capital over labor, of a public force organized for social enslavement, of an engine of class despotism. After every revolution marking a progressive phase in the class struggle, the purely repressive character of the state power stands out in bolder and bolder relief. The Revolution of 1830, resulting in the transfer of government from the landlords to the capitalists, transferred it from the more remote to the more direct antagonists of the working men. The bourgeois republicans, who, in the name of the February Revolution, took the state power, used it for the June massacres, in order to convince the working class that social republic means the republic entrusting their social subjection, and in order to convince the royalist bulk of the bourgeois and landlord class that they might safely leave the cares and emoluments of government to the bourgeois republicans. However, after their one heroic exploit of June, the bourgeois republicans had, from the front, to fall back to the rear of the Party of Order a combination formed by all the rival fractions and factions of the appropriating classes. The proper form of their joint-stock government was the parliamentary republic, with Louis Bonaparte for its president. Theirs was a regime of avowed class terrorism and deliberate insult towards the vile multitude. If the parliamentary republic, as M. Thiers said, divided them [the different fractions of the ruling class] least", it opened an abyss between that class and the whole body of society outside their spare ranks. The restraints by which their own divisions had under former regimes still checked the state power, were removed by their union; and in view of the threatening upheaval of the proletariat, they now used that state power mercilessly and ostentatiously as the national war engine of capital against labor. In their uninterrupted crusade against the producing masses, they were, however, bound not only to invest the executive with continually increased powers of repression, but at the same time to divest their own parliamentary stronghold the National Assembly one by one, of all its own means of defence against the Executive. The Executive, in the person of Louis Bonaparte, turned them out. The natural offspring of the Party of Order republic was the Second Empire. The empire, with the coup d etat for its birth certificate, universal suffrage for its sanction, and the sword for its sceptre, professed to rest upon the peasantry, the large mass of producers not directly involved in the struggle of capital and labor. It professed to save the working class by breaking down parliamentarism, and, with it, the undisguised subserviency of government to the propertied classes. It professed to save the propertied classes by upholding their economic supremacy over the working class; and, finally, it professed to unite all classes by reviving for all the chimera of national glory. In reality, it was the only form of government possible at a time when the bourgeoisie had already lost, and the working class had not yet acquired, the faculty of ruling the nation. It was acclaimed throughout the world as the savior of society. Under its sway, bourgeois society, freed from political cares, attained a development unexpected even by itself. Its industry and commerce expanded to colossal dimensions; financial swindling celebrated cosmopolitan orgies; the misery of the masses was set off by a shameless display of gorgeous, meretricious and debased luxury. The state power, apparently soaring high above society and the very hotbed of all its corruptions. Its own rottenness, and the rottenness of the society it had saved, were laid bare by the bayonet of Prussia, herself eagerly bent upon transferring the supreme seat of that regime from Paris to Berlin. Imperialism is, at the same time, the most prostitute and the ultimate form of the state power which nascent middle class society had commenced to elaborate as a means of its own emancipation from feudalism, and which full-grown bourgeois society had finally transformed into a means for the enslavement of labor by capital. The direct antithesis to the empire was the Commune. The cry of social republic, with which the February Revolution was ushered in by the Paris proletariat, did but express a vague aspiration after a republic that was not only to supercede the monarchical form of class rule, but class rule itself. The Commune was the positive form of that republic. Paris, the central seat of the old governmental power, and, at the same time, the social stronghold of the French working class, had risen in arms against the attempt of Thiers and the Rurals to restore and perpetuate that old governmental power bequeathed to them by the empire. Paris could resist only because, in consequence of the siege, it had got rid of the army, and replaced it by a National Guard, the bulk of which consisted of working men. This fact was now to be transformed into an institution. The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people. The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time. Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workman s wage. The vested interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of the Central Government. Not only municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the state was laid into the hands of the Commune. Having once got rid of the standing army and the police the physical force elements of the old government the Commune was anxious to break the spiritual force of repression, the parson-power", by the disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies. The priests were sent back to the recesses of private life, there to feed upon the alms of the faithful in imitation of their predecessors, the apostles. The whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of church and state. Thus, not only was education made accessible to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it. The judicial functionaries were to be divested of that sham independence which had but served to mask their abject subserviency to all succeeding governments to which, in turn, they had taken, and broken, the oaths of allegiance. Like the rest of public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible, and revocable. The Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all the great industrial centres of France. The communal regime once established in Paris and the secondary centres, the old centralized government would in the provinces, too, have to give way to the self-government of the producers. In a rough sketch of national organization, which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communities of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents. The few but important functions which would still remain for a central government were not to be suppressed, as has been intentionally misstated, but were to be discharged by Communal and thereafter responsible agents. The unity of the nation was not to be broken, but, on the contrary, to be organized by Communal Constitution, and to become a reality by the destruction of the state power which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excresence. While the merely repressive organs of the old governmental power were to be amputated, its legitimate functions were to be wrested from an authority usurping pre-eminence over society itself, and restored to the responsible agents of society. Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business. And it is well-known that companies, like individuals, in matters of real business generally know how to put the right man in the right place, and, if they for once make a mistake, to redress it promptly. On the other hand, nothing could be more foreign to the spirit of the Commune than to supercede universal suffrage by hierarchical investiture.[A] It is generally the fate of completely new historical creations to be mistaken for the counterparts of older, and even defunct, forms of social life, to which they may bear a certain likeness. Thus, this new Commune, which breaks with the modern state power, has been mistaken for a reproduction of the medieval Communes, which first preceded, and afterward became the substratum of, that very state power. The Communal Constitution has been mistaken for an attempt to break up into the federation of small states, as dreamt of by Montesquieu and the Girondins,[B] that unity of great nations which, if originally brought about by political force, has now become a powerful coefficient of social production. The antagonism of the Commune against the state power has been mistaken for an exaggerated form of the ancient struggle against over-centralization. Peculiar historical circumstances may have prevented the classical development, as in France, of the bourgeois form of government, and may have allowed, as in England, to complete the great central state organs by corrupt vestries, jobbing councillors, and ferocious poor-law guardians in the towns, and virtually hereditary magistrates in the counties. The Communal Constitution would have restored to the social body all the forces hitherto absorbed by the state parasite feeding upon, and clogging the free movement of, society. By this one act, it would have initiated the regeneration of France. The provincial French middle class saw in the Commune an attempt to restore the sway their order had held over the country under Louis Philippe, and which, under Louis Napoleon, was supplanted by the pretended rule of the country over the towns. In reality, the Communal Constitution brought the rural producers under the intellectual lead of the central towns of their districts, and there secured to them, in the working men, the natural trustees of their interests. The very existence of the Commune involved, as a matter of course, local municipal liberty, but no longer as a check upon the now superseded state power. It could only enter into the head of a Bismarck who, when not engaged on his intrigues of blood and iron, always likes to resume his old trade, so befitting his mental calibre, of contributor to Kladderadatsch (the Berlin Punch)[C] it could only enter into such a head to ascribe to the Paris Commune aspirations after the caricature of the old French municipal organization of 1791, the Prussian municipal constitution which degrades the town governments to mere secondary wheels in the police machinery of the Prussian state. The Commune made that catchword of bourgeois revolutions cheap government a reality by destroying the two greatest sources of expenditure: the standing army and state functionarism. Its very existence presupposed the non-existence of monarchy, which, in Europe at least, is the normal incumbrance and indispensable cloak of class rule. It supplied the republic with the basis of really democratic institutions. But neither cheap government nor the true republic was its ultimate aim; they were its mere concomitants. The multiplicity of interpretations to which the Commune has been subjected, and the multiplicity of interests which construed it in their favor, show that it was a thoroughly expansive political form, while all the previous forms of government had been emphatically repressive. Its true secret was this: Except on this last condition, the Communal Constitution would have been an impossibility and a delusion. The political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery. The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundation upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class rule. With labor emancipated, every man becomes a working man, and productive labor ceases to be a class attribute. It is a strange fact. In spite of all the tall talk and all the immense literature, for the last 60 years, about emancipation of labor, no sooner do the working men anywhere take the subject into their own hands with a will, than uprises at once all the apologetic phraseology of the mouthpieces of present society with its two poles of capital and wages-slavery (the landlord now is but the sleeping partner of the capitalist), as if the capitalist society was still in its purest state of virgin innocence, with its antagonisms still undeveloped, with its delusions still unexploded, with its prostitute realities not yet laid bare. The Commune, they exclaim, intends to abolish property, the basis of all civilization! Yes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class property which makes the labor of the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropriation of the expropriators. It wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the means of production, land, and capital, now chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labor, into mere instruments of free and associated labor. But this is communism, impossible communism! Why, those members of the ruling classes who are intelligent enough to perceive the impossibility of continuing the present system and they are many have become the obtrusive and full-mouthed apostles of co-operative production. If co-operative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the capitalist system; if united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon common plan, thus taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist production what else, gentlemen, would it be but communism, possible communism? The working class did not expect miracles from the Commune. They have no ready-made utopias to introduce par d cret du peuple. They know that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistably tending by its own economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men. They have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant. In the full consciousness of their historic mission, and with the heroic resolve to act up to it, the working class can afford to smile at the coarse invective of the gentlemen s gentlemen with pen and inkhorn, and at the didactic patronage of well-wishing bourgeois-doctrinaires, pouring forth their ignorant platitudes and sectarian crotchets in the oracular tone of scientific infallibility. When the Paris Commune took the management of the revolution in its own hands; when plain working men for the first time dared to infringe upon the governmental privilege of their natural superiors, and, under circumstances of unexampled difficulty, performed it at salaries the highest of which barely amounted to one-fifth of what, according to high scientific authority,(1) is the minimum required for a secretary to a certain metropolitan school-board the old world writhed in convulsions of rage at the sight of the Red Flag, the symbol of the Republic of Labor, floating over the H tel de Ville. And yet, this was the first revolution in which the working class was openly acknowledged as the only class capable of social initiative, even by the great bulk of the Paris middle class shopkeepers, tradesmen, merchants the wealthy capitalist alone excepted. The Commune had saved them by a sagacious settlement of that ever recurring cause of dispute among the middle class themselves the debtor and creditor accounts.[D] The same portion of the middle class, after they had assisted in putting down the working men s insurrection of June 1848, had been at once unceremoniously sacrificed to their creditors[E] by the then Constituent Assembly. But this was not their only motive for now rallying around the working class. They felt there was but one alternative the Commune, or the empire under whatever name it might reappear. The empire had ruined them economically by the havoc it made of public wealth, by the wholesale financial swindling it fostered, by the props it lent to the artificially accelerated centralization of capital, and the concomitant expropriation of their own ranks. It had suppressed them politically, it had shocked them morally by its orgies, it had insulted their Voltairianism by handing over the education of their children to the fr res Ignorantins,[F] it had revolted their national feeling as Frenchmen by precipitating them headlong into a war which left only one equivalent for the ruins it made the disappearance of the empire. In fact, after the exodus from Paris of the high Bonapartist and capitalist boh me, the true middle class Party of Order came out in the shape of the Union Republicaine, [G] enrolling themselves under the colors of the Commune and defending it against the wilful misconstructions of Thiers. Whether the gratitude of this great body of the middle class will stand the present severe trial, time must show. The Commune was perfectly right in telling the peasants that its victory was their only hope. Of all the lies hatched at Versailles and re-echoed by the glorious European penny-a-liner, one of the most tremendous was that the Rurals represented the French peasantry. Think only of the love of the French peasant for the men to whom, after 1815, he had to pay the milliard indemnity.[H] In the eyes of the French peasant, the very existence of a great landed proprietor is in itself an encroachment on his conquests of 1789. The bourgeois, in 1848, had burdened his plot of land with the additional tax of 45 cents in the franc; but then he did so in the name of the revolution; while now he had fomented a civil war against revolution, to shift on to the peasant s shoulders the chief load of the 5 milliards of indemnity to be paid to the Prussian. The Commune, on the other hand, in one of its first proclamations, declared that the true originators of the war would be made to pay its cost. The Commune would have delivered the peasant of the blood tax would have given him a cheap government transformed his present blood-suckers, the notary, advocate, executor, and other judicial vampires, into salaried communal agents, elected by, and responsible to, himself. It would have freed him of the tyranny of the garde champ tre, the gendarme, and the prefect; would have put enlightenment by the schoolmaster in the place of stultification by the priest. And the French peasant is, above all, a man of reckoning. He would find it extremely reasonable that the pay of the priest, instead of being extorted by the tax-gatherer, should only depend upon the spontaneous action of the parishioners religious instinct. Such were the great immediate boons which the rule of the Commune and that rule alone held out to the French peasantry. It is, therefore, quite superfluous here to expatiate upon the more complicated but vital problems which the Commune alone was able, and at the same time compelled, to solve in favor of the peasant viz., the hypothecary debt, lying like an incubus upon his parcel of soil, the prol tariat foncier (the rural proletariat), daily growing upon it, and his expropriation from it enforced, at a more and more rapid rate, by the very development of modern agriculture and the competition of capitalist farming. The French peasant had elected Louis Bonaparte president of the Republic; but the Party of Order created the empire. What the French peasant really wants he commenced to show in 1849 and 1850, by opposing his maire to the government s prefect, his school-master to the government s priest, and himself to the government s gendarme. All the laws made by the Party of Order in January and February 1850 were avowed measures of repression against the peasant. The peasant was a Bonapartist, because the Great Revolution, with all its benefits to him, was, in his eyes, personified in Napoleon. This delusion, rapidly breaking down under the Second Empire (and in its very nature hostile to the Rurals), this prejudice of the past, how could it have withstood the appeal of the Commune to the living interests and urgent wants of the peasantry? The Rurals this was, in fact, their chief apprehension knew that three months free communication of Communal Paris with the provinces would bring about a general rising of the peasants, and hence their anxiety to establish a police blockade around Paris, so as to stop the spread of the rinderpest [cattle pest contagious disease]. If the Commune was thus the true representative of all the healthy elements of French society, and therefore the truly national government, it was, at the same time, as a working men s government, as the bold champion of the emancipation of labor, emphatically international. Within sight of that Prussian army, that had annexed to Germany two French provinces, the Commune annexed to France the working people all over the world. The Second Empire had been the jubilee of cosmopolitan blackleggism, the rakes of all countries rushing in at its call for a share in its orgies and in the plunder of the French people. Even at this moment, the right hand of Thiers is Ganessco, the foul Wallachian, and his left hand is Markovsky, the Russian spy. The Commune admitted all foreigners to the honor of dying for an immortal cause. Between the foreign war lost by their treason, and the civil war fomented by their conspiracy with the foreign invader, the bourgeoisie had found the time to display their patriotism by organizing police hunts upon the Germans in France. The Commune made a German working man [Leo Frankel] its Minister of Labor. Thiers, the bourgeoisie, the Second Empire, had continually deluded Poland by loud professions of sympathy, while in reality betraying her to, and doing the dirty work of, Russia. The Commune honored the heroic sons of Poland [J. Dabrowski and W. Wr blewski] by placing them at the head of the defenders of Paris. And, to broadly mark the new era of history it was conscious of initiating, under the eyes of the conquering Prussians on one side, and the Bonapartist army, led by Bonapartist generals, on the other, the Commune pulled down that colossal symbol of martial glory, the Vend me Column.[I] The great social measure of the Commune was its own working existence. Its special measures could but betoken the tendency of a government of the people by the people. Such were the abolition of the nightwork of journeymen bakers; the prohibition, under penalty, of the employers practice to reduce wages by levying upon their workpeople fines under manifold pretexts a process in which the employer combines in his own person the parts of legislator, judge, and executor, and filches the money to boot. Another measure of this class was the surrender to associations of workmen, under reserve of compensation, of all closed workshops and factories, no matter whether the respective capitalists had absconded or preferred to strike work. The financial measures of the Commune, remarkable for their sagacity and moderation, could only be such as were compatible with the state of a besieged town. Considering the colossal robberies committed upon the city of Paris by the great financial companies and contractors, under the protection of Haussman,[J] the Commune would have had an incomparably better title to confiscate their property than Louis Napoleon had against the Orleans family. The Hohenzollern and the English oligarchs, who both have derived a good deal of their estates from church plunders, were, of course, greatly shocked at the Commune clearing but 8,000F out of secularization. While the Versailles government, as soon as it had recovered some spirit and strength, used the most violent means against the Commune; while it put down the free expression of opinion all over France, even to the forbidding of meetings of delegates from the large towns; while it subjected Versailles and the rest of France to an espionage far surpassing that of the Second Empire; while it burned by its gendarme inquisitors all papers printed at Paris, and sifted all correspondence from and to Paris; while in the National Assembly the most timid attempts to put in a word for Paris were howled down in a manner unknown even to the Chambre introuvable of 1816; with the savage warfare of Versailles outside, and its attempts at corruption and conspiracy inside Paris would the Commune not have shamefully betrayed its trust by affecting to keep all the decencies and appearances of liberalism as in a time of profound peace? Had the government of the Commune been akin to that of M. Thiers, there would have been no more occasion to suppress Party of Order papers at Paris that there was to suppress Communal papers at Versailles. It was irritating indeed to the Rurals that at the very same time they declared the return to the church to be the only means of salvation for France, the infidel Commune unearthed the peculiar mysteries of the Picpus nunnery, and of the Church of St. Laurent.[K] It was a satire upon M. Thiers that, while he showered grand crosses upon the Bonapartist generals in acknowledgment of their mastery in losing battles, signing capitulations, and turning cigarettes at Wilhelmsh he,[L] the Commune dismissed and arrested its generals whenever they were suspected of neglecting their duties. The expulsion from, and arrest by, the Commune of one of its members [Blanchet] who had slipped in under a false name, and had undergone at Lyons six days imprisonment for simple bankruptcy, was it not a deliberate insult hurled at the forger, Jules Favre, then still the foreign minister of France, still selling France to Bismarck, and still dictating his orders to that paragon government of Belgium? But indeed the Commune did not pretend to infallibility, the invariable attribute of all governments of the old stamp. It published its doings and sayings, it initiated the public into all its shortcomings. In every revolution there intrude, at the side of its true agents, men of different stamp; some of them survivors of and devotees to past revolutions, without insight into the present movement, but preserving popular influence by their known honesty and courage, or by the sheer force of tradition; others mere brawlers who, by dint of repeating year after year the same set of stereotyped declarations against the government of the day, have sneaked into the reputation of revolutionists of the first water. After March 18, some such men did also turn up, and in some cases contrived to play pre-eminent parts. As far as their power went, they hampered the real action of the working class, exactly as men of that sort have hampered the full development of every previous revolution. They are an unavoidable evil: with time they are shaken off; but time was not allowed to the Commune. Wonderful, indeed, was the change the Commune had wrought in Paris! No longer any trace of the meretricious Paris of the Second Empire! No longer was Paris the rendezvous of British landlords, Irish absentees,[M] American ex-slaveholders and shoddy men, Russian ex-serfowners, and Wallachian boyards. No more corpses at the morgue, no nocturnal burglaries, scarcely any robberies; in fact, for the first time since the days of February 1848, the streets of Paris were safe, and that without any police of any kind. The cocottes [ chickens prostitutes] had refound the scent of their protectors the absconding men of family, religion, and, above all, of property. In their stead, the real women of Paris showed again at the surface heroic, noble, and devoted, like the women of antiquity. Working, thinking fighting, bleeding Paris almost forgetful, in its incubation of a new society, of the Cannibals at its gates radiant in the enthusiasm of its historic initiative! Opposed to this new world at Paris, behold the old world at Versailles that assembly of the ghouls of all defunct regimes, Legitimists and Orleanists, eager to feed upon the carcass of the nation with a tail of antediluvian republicans, sanctioning, by their presence in the Assembly, the slaveholders rebellion, relying for the maintenance of their parliamentary republic upon the vanity of the senile mountebank at its head, and caricaturing 1789 by holding their ghastly meetings in the Jeu de Paume.(2) There it was, this Assembly, the representative of everything dead in France, propped up to the semblance of life by nothing but the swords of the generals of Louis Bonaparte. Paris all truth, Versailles all lie; and that lie vented through the mouth of Thiers. Thiers tells a deputation of the mayors of the Seine-et-Oise You may rely upon my word, which I have never broken! He tells the Assembly itself that it was the most freely elected and most liberal Assembly France ever possessed"; he tells his motley soldiery that it was the admiration of the world, and the finest army France ever possessed ; he tells the provinces that the bombardment of Paris by him was a myth: If some cannon-shots have been fired, it was not the deed of the army of Versailles, but of some insurgents trying to make believe that they are fighting, while they dare not show their faces. He again tells the provinces that the artillery of Versailles does not bombard Paris, but only cannonades it". He tells the Archbishop of Paris that the pretended executions and reprisals (!) attributed to the Versailles troops were all moonshine. He tells Paris that he was only anxious to free it from the hideous tyrants who oppress it, and that, in fact, the Paris of the Commune was but a handful of criminals. The Paris of M. Thiers was not the real Paris of the vile multitude, but a phantom Paris, the Paris of the francs-fileurs,[N] the Paris of the Boulevards, male and female the rich, the capitalist, the gilded, the idle Paris, now thronging with its lackeys, its blacklegs, its literary bonhome, and its cocottes at Versailles, Saint-Denis, Rueil, and Saint-Germain; considering the civil war but an agreeable diversion, eyeing the battle going on through telescopes, counting the rounds of cannon, swearing by their own honor and that of their prostitutes, that the performance was far better got up than it used to be at the Porte St. Martin. The men who fell were really dead; the cries of the wounded were cries in good earnest; and, besides, the whole thing was so intensely historical. This is the Paris of M. Thiers, as the emigration of Coblenz was the France of M. de Calonne.[O]

The Civil War in France

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

The first attempt of the slaveholders conspiracy to put down Paris by getting the Prussians to occupy it was frustrated by Bismarck s refusal. The second attempt, that of March 18, ended in the rout of the army and the flight to Versailles of the government, which ordered the whole administration to break up and follow in its track. By the semblance of peace negotiations with Paris, Thiers found the time to prepare for war against it. But where to find an army? The remnants of the line regiments were weak in number and unsafe in character. His urgent appeal to the provinces to succour Versailles, by their National Guards and volunteers, met with a flat refusal. Brittany alone furnished a handful of Chouans[A] fighting under a white flag, every one of them wearing on his breast the heart of Jesus in white cloth, and shouting Vive le Roi! (Long live the King!) Thiers was, therefore, compelled to collect, in hot haste, a motley crew, composed of sailors, marines, Pontifical Zouaves, Valentin s gendarmes, and Pietri s sergents-de-ville and mouchards. This army, however, would have been ridiculously ineffective without the instalments of imperialist war prisoners, which Bismarck granted in numbers just sufficient to keep the civil war a-going, and keep the Versailles government in abject dependence on Prussia. During the war itself, the Versailles police had to look after the Versailles army, while the gendarmes had to drag it on by exposing themselves at all posts of danger. The forts which fell were not taken, but bought. The heroism of the Federals convinced Thiers that the resistance of Paris was not to be broken by his own strategic genius and the bayonets at his disposal. Meanwhile, his relations with the provinces became more and more difficult. Not one single address of approval came in to gladden Thiers and his Rurals. Quite the contrary. Deputations and addresses demanding, in a tone anything but respectful, conciliation with Paris on the basis of the unequivocal recognition of the republic, the acknowledgment of the Communal liberties, and the dissolution of the National Assembly, whose mandate was extinct, poured in from all sides, and in such numbers that Dufaure, Thiers Minister of Justice, in his circular of April 23 to the public prosecutors, commanded them to treat the cry of conciliation as a crime! In regard, however, of the hopeless prospect held out by his campaign, Thiers resolved to shift his tactics by ordering, all over the country, municipal elections to take place on April 30, on the basis of the new municipal law dictated by himself to the National Assembly. What with the intrigues of his prefects, what with police intimidation, he felt quite sanguine of imparting, by the verdict of the provinces, to the National Assembly that moral power it had never possessed, and of getting at last from the provinces the physical force required for the conquest of Paris. His bandit-warfare against Paris, exalted in his own bulletins, and the attempts of his ministers at the establishment, throughout France, of a reign of terror, Thiers was from the beginning anxious to accompany with a little by-play of conciliation, which had to serve more than one purpose. It was to dupe the provinces, to inveigle the middle class elements in Paris, and above all, to afford the professed republicans in the National Assembly the opportunity of hiding their treason against Paris behind their faith in Thiers. On March 21, when still without an army, he had declared to the Assembly: Come what may, I will not send an army to Paris. On March 27, he rose again: I have found the republic an accomplished fact, and I am firmly resolved to maintain it. In reality, he put down the revolution at Lyons and Marseilles[B] in the name of the republic, while the roars of his Rurals drowned the very mention of his name at Versailles. After this exploit, he toned down the accomplished fact into a hypothetical fact. The Orleans princes, whom he had cautiously warned off Bordeaux, were now, in flagrant breach of the law, permitted to intrigue at Dreux. The concessions held out by Thiers in his interminable interviews with the delegates from Paris and the provinces, although constantly varied in tone and color, according to time and circumstances, did in fact never come to more than the prospective restriction of revenge to the handful of criminals implicated in the murder of Lecomte and Clement Thomas, on the well-understood premise that Paris and France were unreservedly to accept M. Thiers himself as the best of possible Republics, as he, in 1830, had done with Louis Philippe, and in 1849 under Louis Bonaparte s presidency. While out of office, he made a fortune by pleading for the Paris capitalists, and made political capital by pleading against the laws he had himself originated. He now hurried through the National Assembly not only a set of repressive laws which were, after the fall of Paris, to extirpate the last remnants of republican liberty in France; he foreshadowed the fate of Paris by abridging what was for him the too slow procedure of courts-martial,[C] and by a new-fangled, Draconic code of deportation. The Revolution of 1848, abolishing the penalty of death for political crimes, had replaced it by deportation. Louis Bonaparte did not dare, at least not in theory, to re-establish the regime of the guillotine. The Rural Assembly, not yet bold enough even to hint that the Parisians were not rebels, but assassins, had therefore to confine its prospective vengeance against Paris to Dufaure s new code of deportation. Under all these circumstances, Thiers himself could not have gone on with his comedy of conciliation, had it not, as he intended it to do, drawn forth shrieks of rage from the Rurals, whose ruminating mind did neither understand the play, nor its necessities of hypocrisy, tergiversation, and procrastination. In sight of the impending municipal elections of April 30, Thiers enacted one of his great conciliation scenes on April 27. Amidst a flood of sentiment rhetoric, he exclaimed from the tribune of the Assembly: To the violent interruption of the Rurals, he replied: France, however, turned a deaf ear to what Thiers flattered himself to be a parliamentary siren s song. Out of 700,000 municipal councillors returned by the 35,000 communes still left to France, the united Legitimists, Orleanists, and Bonapartists did not carry 8,000. The supplementary elections which followed were still more decidedly hostile. Thus, instead of getting from the provinces the badly-needed physical force, the National Assembly lost even its last claim to moral force, that of being the expression of the universal suffrage of the country. To complete the discomfiture, the newly-chosen municipal councils of all the cities of France openly threatened the usurping Assembly at Versailles with a counter assembly at Bordeaux. Then the long-expected moment of decisive action had at last come for Bismarck. He peremptorily summoned Thiers to send to Frankfort plenipotentiaries for the definitive settlement of peace. In humble obedience to the call of his master, Thiers hastened to despatch his trusty Jules Favre, backed by Pouyer-Quertier. Pouyer-Quertier, an eminent Rouen cotton-spinner, a fervent and even servile partisan of the Second Empire, had never found any fault with it save its commercial treaty with England,[D] prejudicial to his own shop-interest. Hardly installed at Bordeaux as Thiers Minister of Finance, he denounced that unholy treaty, hinted at its near abrogation, and had even the effrontery to try, although in vain (having counted without Bismarck), the immediate enforcement of the old protective duties against Alsace, where, he said, no previous international treaties stood in the way. This man who considered counter-revolution as a means to put down wages at Rouen, and the surrender of French provinces as a means to bring up the price of his wares in France, was he not the one predestined to be picked out by Thiers as the helpmate of Jules Favre in his last and crowning treason? On the arrival at Frankfurt of this exquisite pair of plenipotentiaries, bully Bismarck at once met them with the imperious alternative: Either the restoration of the empire or the unconditional acceptance of my own peace terms! These terms included a shortening of the intervals in which war indemnity was to be paid and the continued occupation of the Paris forts by Prussian troops until Bismarck should feel satisfied with the state of things in France; Prussia thus being recognized as the supreme arbiter in internal French politics! In return for this, he offered to let loose for the extermination of Paris the Bonapartist army, and to lend them the direct assistance of Emperor William s troops. He pledged his good faith by making payment of the first installment of the indemnity dependent on the pacification of Paris. Such bait was, of course, eagerly swallowed by Thiers and his plenipotentiaries. They signed the treaty of peace on May 10 and had it endorsed by the Versailles Assembly on the 18th. In the interval between the conclusion of peace and the arrival of the Bonapartist prisoners, Thiers felt the more bound to resume his comedy of conciliation, as his republican tools stood in sore need of a pretext for blinking their eyes at the preparations for the carnage of Paris. As late as May 18, he replied to a deputation of middle-class conciliators A few days afterwards, when violently interpellated on these promises by the Rurals, he refused to enter into any explanations; not, however, without giving them this significant hint: As soon as MacMahon was able to assure him, that he could shortly enter Paris, Thiers declared to the Assembly that As the moment of decision drew near, he said to the Assembly, I shall be pitiless! to Paris, that it was doomed; and to his Bonapartist bandits, that they had state licence to wreak vengeance upon Paris to their hearts content. At last, when treachery had opened the gates of Paris to General Douai, on May 21, Thiers, on the 22nd, revealed to the Rurals the goal of his conciliation comedy, which they had so obstinately persisted in not understanding. So it was. The civilization and justice of bourgeois order comes out in its lurid light whenever the slaves and drudges of that order rise against their masters. Then this civilization and justice stand forth as undisguised savagery and lawless revenge. Each new crisis in the class struggle between the appropriator and the producer brings out this fact more glaringly. Even the atrocities of the bourgeois in June 1848 vanish before the infamy of 1871. The self-sacrificing heroism with which the population of Paris men, women, and children fought for eight days after the entrance of the Versaillese, reflects as much the grandeur of their cause, as the infernal deeds of the soldiery reflect the innate spirit of that civilization, indeed, the great problem of which is how to get rid of the heaps of corpses it made after the battle was over! To find a parallel for the conduct of Thiers and his bloodhounds we must go back to the times of Sulla and the two Triumvirates of Rome.[E] The same wholesale slaughter in cold blood; the same disregard, in massacre, of age and sex, the same system of torturing prisoners; the same proscriptions, but this time of a whole class; the same savage hunt after concealed leaders, lest one might escape; the same denunciations of political and private enemies; the same indifference for the butchery of entire strangers to the feud. There is but this difference: that the Romans had no mitrailleuses for the despatch, in the lump, of the proscribed, and that they had not the law in their hands, nor on their lips the cry of civilization. And after those horrors look upon the other still more hideous face of the bourgeois civilization as described by its own press! M. Edouard Herve writes in the Journal de Paris, a Versaillist journal pressed by the Commune: And then he quotes the passage from Tacitus: M. Herve only forgets to say that the population of Paris he speaks of is but the population of the Paris of M. Thiers the francs-fileurs returning in throngs from Versailles, Saint-Denis, Rueil, and Saint Germain the Paris of the Decline. In all its bloody triumphs over the self-sacrificing champions of a new and better society, that nefarious civilization, based upon the enslavement of labor, drowns the moans of its victims in a hue-and-cry of calumny, reverberated by a world-wide echo. The serene working men s Paris of the Commune is suddenly changed into a pandemonium by the bloodhounds of order. And what does this tremendous change prove to the bourgeois mind of all countries? Why, that the Commune has conspired against civilization! The Paris people die enthusiastically for the Commune in numbers unequally in any battle known to history. What does that prove? Why, that the Commune was not the people s own government but the usurpation of a handful of criminals! The women of Paris joyfully give up their lives at the barricades and on the place of execution. What does this prove? Why, that the demon of the Commune has changed them into Megaera and Hecates! The moderation of the Commune during the two months of undisputed sway is equalled only by the heroism of its defence. What does that prove? Why, that for months the Commune carefully hid, under a mask of moderation and humanity, the bloodthirstiness of its fiendish instincts to be let loose in the hour of its agony! The working men s Paris, in the act of its heroic self-holocaust, involved in its flames buildings and monuments. While tearing to pieces the living body of the proletariat, its rulers must no longer expect to return triumphantly into the intact architecture of their abodes. The government of Versailles cries, Incendiarism! and whispers this cue to all its agents, down to the remotest hamlet, to hunt up its enemies everywhere as suspect of professional incendiarism. The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle, is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar! When governments give state licences to their navies to kill, burn, and destroy, is that licence for incendiarism? When the British troops wantonly set fire to the Capitol at Washington and to the summer palace of the Chinese emperor,[F] was that incendiarism? When the Prussians not for military reasons, but out of the mere spite of revenge, burned down, by the help of petroleum, towns like Chateaudun and innumerable villages, was that incendiarism? When Thiers, during six weeks, bombarded Paris, under the pretext that he wanted to set fire to those houses only in which there were people, was that incendiarism? In war, fire is an arm as legitimate as any. Buildings held by the enemy are shelled to set them on fire. If their defenders have to retire, they themselves light the flames to prevent the attack from making use of the buildings. To be burned down has always been the inevitable fate of all buildings situated in the front of battle of all the regular armies of the world. But in the war of the enslaved against their enslavers, the only justifiable war in history, this is by no means to hold good! The Commune used fire strictly as a means of defence. They used it to stop up to the Versailles troops those long, straight avenues which Haussman had expressly opened to artillery-fire; they used it to cover their retreat, in the same way as the Versaillese, in their advance, used their shells which destroyed at least as many buildings as the fire of the Commune. It is a matter of dispute, even now, which buildings were set fire to by the defence, and which by the attack. And the defence resorted to fire only then when the Versailles troops had already commenced their wholesale murdering of prisoners. Besides, the Commune had, long before, given full public notice that if driven to extremities, they would bury themselves under the ruins of Paris, and make Paris a second Moscow, as the Government of National Defence, but only as a cloak for its treason, had promised to do. For this purpose Trochu had found them the petroleum. The Commune knew that its opponents cared nothing for the lives of the Paris people, but cared much for their own Paris buildings. And Thiers, on the other hand, had given them notice that he would be implacable in his vengeance. No sooner had he got his army ready on one side, and the Prussians shutting the trap on the other, than he proclaimed: I shall be pitiless! The expiation will be complete, and justice will be stern! If the acts of the Paris working men were vandalism, it was the vandalism of defence in despair, not the vandalism of triumph, like that which the Christians perpetrated upon the really priceless art treasures of heathen antiquity; and even that vandalism has been justified by the historian as an unavoidable and comparatively trifling concomitant to the titanic struggle between a new society arising and an old one breaking down. It was still less the vandalism of Haussman, razing historic Paris to make place for the Paris of the sightseer! But the execution by the Commune of the 64 hostages, with the Archbishop of Paris at their head! The bourgeoisie and its army, in June 1848, re-established a custom which had long disappeared from the practice of war the shooting of their defenceless prisoners. This brutal custom has since been more or less strictly adhered to by the suppressors of all popular commotions in Europe and India; thus proving that it constitutes a real progress of civilization ! On the other hand, the Prussians in France, had re-established the practice of taking hostages innocent men, who, with their lives, were to answer to them for the acts of others. When Thiers, as we have seen, from the very beginning of the conflict, enforced the human practice of shooting down the Communal prisoners, the Commune, to protect their lives, was obliged to resort to the Prussian practice of securing hostages. The lives of the hostages have been forfeited over and over again by the continued shooting of prisoners on the part of the Versaillese. How could they be spared any longer after the carnage with which MacMahon s praetorians[G] celebrated their entrance into Paris? Was even the last check upon the unscrupulous ferocity of bourgeois governments the taking of hostages to be made a mere sham of? The real murderer of Archbishop Darboy is Thiers. The Commune again and again had offered to exchange the archbishop, and ever so many priests in the bargain, against the single Blanqui, then in the hands of Thiers. Thiers obstinately refused. He knew that with Blanqui he would give the Commune a head; while the archbishop would serve his purpose best in the shape of a corpse. Thiers acted upon the precedent of Cavaignac. How, in June 1848, did not Cavaignac and his men of order raise shouts of horror by stigmatizing the insurgents as the assassins of Archbishop Affre! They knew perfectly well that the archbishop had been shot by the soldiers of order. M. Jacquemet, the archbishop s vicar-general, present on the spot, had immediately afterwards handed them in his evidence to that effect. All the chorus of calumny, which the Party of Order never fail, in their orgies of blood, to raise against their victims, only proves that the bourgeois of our days considers himself the legitimate successor to the baron of old, who thought every weapon in his own hand fair against the plebeian, while in the hands of the plebeian a weapon of any kind constituted in itself a crime. The conspiracy of the ruling class to break down the revolution by a civil war carried on under the patronage of the foreign invader a conspiracy which we have traced from the very 4th of September down to the entrance of MacMahon s praetorians through the gate of St. Cloud culminated in the carnage of Paris. Bismarck gloats over the ruins of Paris, in which he saw perhaps the first installment of that general destruction of great cities he had prayed for when still a simple Rural in the Prussian Chambre introuvable of 1849.[H] He gloats over the cadavers of the Paris proletariat. For him, this is not only the extermination of revolution, but the extinction of France, now decapitated in reality, and by the French government itself. With the shallowness characteristic of all successful statesmen, he sees but the surface of this tremendous historic event. Whenever before has history exhibited the spectacle of a conqueror crowning his victory by turning into, not only the gendarme, but the hired bravo of the conquered government? There existed no war between Prussia and the Commune of Paris. On the contrary, the Commune had accepted the peace preliminaries, and Prussia had announced her neutrality. Prussia was, therefore, no belligerent. She acted the part of a bravo, a cowardly bravo, because incurring no danger; a hired bravo, because stipulating beforehand the payment of her blood-money of 500 millions on the fall of Paris. And thus, at last, came out the true character of the war, ordained by Providence, as a chastisement of godless and debauched France by pious and moral Germany! And this unparalleled breach of the law of nations, even as understood by the old-world lawyers, instead of arousing the civilized governments of Europe to declare the felonious Prussian government, the mere tool of the St. Petersburg Cabinet, an outlaw amongst nations, only incites them to consider whether the few victims who escape the double cordon around Paris are not to be given up to the hangman of Versailles! That, after the most tremendous war of modern times, the conquering and the conquered hosts should fraternize for the common massacre of the proletariat this unparalleled event does indicate, not, as Bismarck thinks, the final repression of a new society up heaving, but the crumbling into dust of bourgeois society. The highest heroic effort of which old society is still capable is national war; and this is now proved to be a mere governmental humbug, intended to defer the struggle of classes, and to be thrown aside as soon as that class struggle bursts out into civil war. Class rule is no longer able to disguise itself in a national uniform; the national governments are one as against the proletariat! After Whit-Sunday, 1871, there can be neither peace nor truce possible between the working men of France and the appropriators of their produce. The iron hand of a mercenary soldiery may keep for a time both classes tied down in common oppression. But the battle must break out again and again in ever-growing dimensions, and there can be no doubt as to who will be the victor in the end the appropriating few, or the immense working majority. And the French working class is only the advanced guard of the modern proletariat. While the European governments thus testify, before Paris, to the international character of class rule, they cry down the International Working Men s Association the international counter-organization of labor against the cosmopolitan conspiracy of capital as the head fountain of all these disasters. Thiers denounced it as the despot of labor, pretending to be its liberator. Picard ordered that all communications between the French Internationals and those abroad be cut off; Count Jaubert, Thiers mummified accomplice of 1835, declares it the great problem of all civilized governments to weed it out. The Rurals roar against it, and the whole European press joins the chorus. An honorable French writer [Robinet], completely foreign to our Association, speaks as follows: The police-tinged bourgeois mind naturally figures to itself the International Working Men s Association as acting in the manner of a secret conspiracy, its central body ordering, from time to time, explosions in different countries. Our Association is, in fact, nothing but the international bond between the most advanced working men in the various countries of the civilized world. Wherever, in whatever shape, and under whatever conditions the class struggle obtains any consistency, it is but natural that members of our Association, should stand in the foreground. The soil out of which it grows is modern society itself. It cannot be stamped out by any amount of carnage. To stamp it out, the governments would have to stamp out the despotism of capital over labor the condition of their own parasitical existence. Working men s Paris, with its Commune, will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators history has already nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priest will not avail to redeem them.

The Civil War in France

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch06.htm

Four months after the commencement of the war, when the Government of Defence had thrown a sop to [the] Paris National Guard by allowing them to show their fighting capabilities at Buzenvall, the Government considered the opportune moment come to prepare Paris for capitulation. To the assembly of the maires of Paris for capitulation, Trochu in presence of and supported by Jules Favre and some others of his colleagues, revealed at last his plan. He said literally: Trochu s plan, from the very day of the proclamation of the Republic, was the capitulation of Paris and of France. In point of fact he was the commander-in-chief of the Prussians. In a letter to Gambetta, Jules Favre himself confessed so much that the enemy to be put down, was not the Prussian soldier, but the Paris (revolutionary) demagogue. The high-sounding promises to the people by the Government of Defence were therefore as many deliberate lies. The plan they systematically carried out by entrusting the defence of Paris to Bonapartist generals, by disorganizing the National Guard and by organizing famine under the maladministration of Jules Ferry. The attempts of the Paris workmen on the 5th of October, the 31st of October, etc., to supplant these traitors by the Commune, were put down as conspiracies with the Prussian! After the capitulation the mask was thrown off (cast aside). The capitulards became a government by the grace of Bismarck. Being his prisoners, they stipulated with him a general armistice, the conditions of which disarmed France and rendered all further resistance impossible. Resuscitated at Bordeaux as the Government of the Republic, these very same capitulards through Thiers, their ex-Ambassador, and Jules Favre, their Foreign Minister, fervently implored Bismarck in the name of the majority of the so-called National Assembly, and long before the rise of Paris, to disarm, and occupy Paris, and put down its canaille, as Bismarck himself on his return from France to Berlin sneeringly told his admirers at Frankfurt. This occupation of Paris by the Prussians such was the last word of the plan of the Government of Defence. The cynical effrontery with which, since their instalment at Versailles, the same men fawn upon and appeal to the armed intervention of Prussia, has dumbfounded even the venal press of Europe. The heroic exploits of the Paris National Guard, since they fight no longer under but against the capitulards, has forced even the most sceptical to brand the word traitor on the brazen fronts of the Trochu, Jules Favre et Co. The documents seized by the Commune, have, at last, furnished the juridical proofs of their high treason. Amongst these papers there are letters of the Bonapartist sabreurs, to whom the execution of Trochu s plan had been confided, in which these infamous wretches crack jokes at and make fun of their own defence of Paris (cf., for instance, the letter of Alphonse Simon Guiod, supreme commander of the artillery of the army of defence of Paris and Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, to Suzanne, General of division of artillery, published by the Journal officiel of the Commune). It is, therefore evident, that the men who now form the government of Versailles, can only be saved from the fate of convicted traitors by civil war, the death of the Republic and a monarchical restauration [restoration] under the shelter of Prussian bayonets. But and this is most characteristic of the men of the Empire, as well as of the men who but on its soil and within its atmosphere could grow into mock-tribunes of the people the victorious Republic would not only brand them as traitors, it would have to surrender them as common felons to the criminal court. Look only at Jules Favre, Ernest Picard, and Jules Ferry, the great men, under Thiers, of the Government of Defence! A series of authenticated judiciary documents spreading over about 20 years, and published by M. Milli re, a representative to the National Assembly, proves that Jules Favre, living in adulterous concubinage with the wife of a drunkard resident at Algiers, had, by a most complicated concatenation of daring forgeries, contrived to grasp in the name of his bastards, a large succession that made him a rich man and that the connivance only of the Bonapartist tribunals saved him from exposure in a law-suit undertaken by the legitimate claimants. Jules Favre, then, this unctuous mouthpiece of family, religion, property, and order, has long since been forfeited to the Code p nal. Lifelong penal servitude would be his unavoidable lot under every honest government. The whole financial correspondence between Ernest and Arthur has fallen into the hands of the Commune. Like the lachrymose Jules Favre, Ernest Picard, the Joe Miller of the Versailles Government, is a man forfeited to the Code p nal and the galleys. To make up this trio, Jules Ferry, a poor breadless barrister before 4 September, not content to organize the famine of Paris, had contrived to job a fortune out of this famine. The day on which he would have to give an account of his peculations during the Paris siege would be his day of judgment! No wonder then that these men who can only hope to escape from the hulks in a monarchy, protected by Prussian bayonets, who but in the turmoil of civil war can win their ticket of leave, that these desperadoes were at once chosen by Thiers and accepted by the Rurals as the safest tools of the counter-revolution! No wonder that when in the beginning of April captured National Guards were exposed at Versailles to the ferocious outrages of Pi tri s lambs and the Versailles mob, M. Ernest Picard, with his hands in his trousers pockets, walked from group to group cracking jokes, while on the balcony of the Prefecture Madame Thiers, Madame Jules Favre and a bevy of similar dames, looking in excellent health and spirits, exulted in that disgusting scene. No wonder then, that while one part of France winces under the heels of the conquerors, while Paris, the heart and head of France, daily sheds streams of its best blood in self-defence against the home traitors ... , the Thiers, Favres et Co. indulge in revelries at the Palace of Louis XIV, such, for instance, as the grand f te given by Thiers in honour of Jules Favre on his return from Rouen (whither he had been sent to conspire with (fawn upon) the Prussians). It is the cynical orgy of evaded felons. If the Government of Defence first made Thiers their Foreign Ambassador, going a-begging at all courts of Europe, there to barter a king for France for their intervention against Prussia, if, later on, they sent him on a travelling tour through out the French provinces, there to conspire with the Ch teaux and secretly prepare the general elections which, together with the capitulation, would take France by surprise Thiers, on his side, made them his ministers and high functionaries. They were safe men. There is one thing rather mysterious in the proceedings of Thiers, his recklessness in precipitating the revolution of Paris. Not content to goad Paris by the anti-Republican demonstrations of his Rurals, by the threats to decapitate and decapitalize Paris, by Dufaure s (Thiers Minister of Justice) law of the 10th of March on the ch ances of bills [bills falling due] which impended bankruptcy on the Paris commerce, by appointing Orleanist ambassadors, by the transfer of the Assembl e to Versailles, by an imposition of a new tax on newspapers, by the confiscation of the Republican Paris journals, by the revival of the state of siege, first proclaimed by Palikao and annulled with the downfall of the imperialist government on the 4th of September, by appointing Vinoy, the D cembriseur and ex-senator, Governor of Paris, Valentin, the imperialist gendarme, Prefect of Police, and Aurelle de Paladines, the Jesuit general, commander-in-chief of the Paris National Guard he opened the civil war with feeble forces, by Vinoy s attack on the buttes Montmartre, by the attempt first to rob the National Guards of cannon which belonged to them and which were only left to them by the Paris convention, because they were their property, and thus to disarm Paris. Whence this feverish eagerness d en finir [to finish it off]? To disarm and put down Paris was of course the first condition of a monarchical counter-revolution, but an astute intriguer like Thiers could only risk the future of the difficult enterprise in undertaking it without due preparation, with ridiculously insufficient means, except under the sway of some overwhelmingly urgent wave. The motive was this. By the agency of Pouyer-Quertier, his Finance Minister, Thiers had concluded a loan of two milliards to be paid immediately down, and some more milliards to follow at certain terms. In this loan transaction a truly royal pot de vin (drink money) was reserved for those grand citizens Thiers, Jules Favre, Ernest Picard, Jules Simon, Pouyer-Quertier, etc. But there was one hitch in the transaction. Before definitively sealing the treaty, the contractors wanted one guarantee the tranquillization of Paris. Hence the reckless proceedings of Thiers. Hence the savage hatred against the Paris workmen, perverse enough to interfere with this fine job. As to the Jules Favres, Picards, etc., we have said enough to prove them the worthy accomplices of such a jobbery. As to Thiers himself, it is notorious that during his two ministries under Louis Philippe he realized 2 millions, and that during his premiership (dating March 1840) he was taunted from the tribune of the Chamber of Deputies with his Bourse peculations, in answer to which he shed tears, a commodity he disposes of as free]y as Jules Favre and the celebrated comedian Fr d rick Lema tre. It is no less notorious that the first measure taken by M. Thiers to save France from the financial ruin, fastened upon her by the war, was to endow himself with a yearly salary of 3 millions of francs, exactly the sum Louis Bonaparte got in 1850 as an equivalent from M. Thiers and his troop in the Legislative Assembly for allowing them to abolish the general suffrage. This endowment of M. Thiers with 3 millions was the first word of the economic republic, the vista of which he had opened to his Paris electors in 1869. As to Pouyer-Quertier, he is a cotton-spinner at Rouen. In 1869, he was the leader of the millowners conclave that proclaimed a general reduction of wages necessary for the conquest of the English market an intrigue, then baffled by the International. Pouyer-Quertier, otherwise a fervent and even servile partisan of the Empire, found only one fault with it, its commercial treaty with England damaging to his own shop interests. His first step, as M. Thiers Finance Minister, was to denounce that hateful treaty and to pronounce the necessity of re-establishing the old protective duties for his own shop. His second step was the patriotic attempt to strike Alsace by the re-established old protective duties on the pretext that in this case no international treaty stood in the way of their re-introduction. By this master-stroke his own shop at Rouen would have got rid of the dangerous competition of the rival shops at M lhausen. His last step was to make a present to his son-in-law, M. Roche-Lambert, of the receveur-generalship [general tax-collector s office] of the Loiret, one of the rich booties falling into the lap of the governing bourgeois, and which Pouyer-Quertier had found so much fault with his imperialist predecessor, M. Magne, endowing his own son with that big jobbing place. This Pouyer-Quertier was then exactly the man for the perpetration of the above said job. Small state rogueries, a little character ... cankering conscience ... everlasting suggester of parliamentary intrigue ... petty expedients and devices ... rehearsing his homilies of liberalism, of the liberat s n cessaries ... eagerly bent on ... strong reasons to weigh against the chances of failure ... cogent arguments which counterpoise ... kind of heroism in exaggerated baseness ... lucky parliamentary stratagems. ... M. E. Picard est un malandrin, qui pendant toute la dur e du si ge a tripot la Bourse sur les d faites de nos arm es. [M. E. Picard is a robber, who speculated at the Bourse on our army s defeats throughout the period of the Siege.] In his speech to the assembly of maires, etc. (25th April), Thiers says himself that the assassins of Clement Thomas and Lecomte [are] a handful of criminals et ceux qui pourront juste titre tre consid r s comme complices de ces crimes par conspiration ou assistance, c est- -dire un tr s petit nombre d individus. [ and those who can rightly be considered as accomplices of these crimes by conspiracy or assistance, that is to say, a very small number of individuals. ] Dufaure wants to put down Paris by press prosecutions in the provinces. Monstrous to bring journals before a jury because preaching conciliation. Dufaure plays a great part in the Thiers intrigue. By his law of the 10th of March, he roused all the indebted commerce of Paris. By his law on Paris house rents, he menanced all Paris. Both laws were to punish Paris for having saved the honour of France and delayed the surrender to Bismarck for 6 months. Dufaure is an Orleanist, and a Liberal, in the parliamentary sense of the word. Consequently, he has always been the minister of repression and of the state of siege. He accepted his first portefeuille on the 13 May, 1839, after the defeat of the d rni re prise d armes [latest armed uprising] Of the Republican party, was therefore the minister of the pitiless repression of the July government of that day. On the 2nd June 1849, Cavaignac, forced on the October (1848) to raise the state of siege, called into his ministry two ministers of Louis Philippe (Dufaure, for the Interior, and Vivien ). He appointed them on the demand of the Rue [de] Poitiers (Thiers), which demanded guarantees. He thus hoped to secure the support of the dynastics for the impending election of president. Dufaure employed the most illegal means to secure Cavaignac s candidature. Intimidation and electoral corruption had never been exercised on a larger scale. Dufaure inundated France with defamatory prints against the other candidates, and especially of Louis Bonaparte, what [readwhich] did not prevent him to become later on Louis Bonaparte s minister. Dufaure became again the minister of the state of siege of 13 June 1849 (against the demonstration of the National Guard against the bombardment of Rome, etc., by the French army). He is now again the minister of the state of siege, proclaimed at Versailles (for department of Seine-et-Oise). Power given to Thiers to declare any department whatever in a state of siege. Dufaure, as in 1839, as in 1849, wants new repressive laws, new press laws, a law to abridge the formalities of the courts-martial. In a circular to the Procureurs g n raux [Attorney-Generals] he denounces the cry of conciliation as a press crime to be severely prosecuted. It is characteristic of the French magistrature that only one single Procureur g n ral (that of Mayenne)[c] wrote to Dufaure to He belonged to the Union lib rale in 1847 which conspired against Guizot, as he belonged to the Union lib rale of 1869 which conspired against Louis Bonaparte. With respect to the law of 10 March and the law of house rents, it ought to be remarked that both Dufaure s and Picard s (both advocates) best clients are amongst the house proprietors and the big bourses averse to losing anything by the siege of Paris. Now as after the Revolution of February 1848, these men tell the Republic, as the executioner told Don Carlos, Je vais t assassiner, mais c est pour ton bien. (I shall murder thee, but for thy own good.) After Vinoy s attempt to carry the buttes Montmartre (on the 18th March, they were shot in the gardens of the Chateau Rouge, 4 o clock, 18th), General Lecomte and Cl ment Thomas were taken prisoner and shot by the same excited soldiers of the 81st of the line. It was a summary act of Lynch justice performed despite the instances of some delegates of the Central Committee. Lecomte, an epauletted cut-throat, had four times commanded his troops, on the Place Pigalles, to charge an unarmed gathering of women and children. Instead of shooting the people, the soldiers shot him. Cl ment Thomas, an ex-quartermaster, a general, extemporized [on] the eve of the June massacres (1848) by the men of the National, whose g rant [manager] he had been, had never dipped his sword in the blood of any other enemy but that of the Paris working class. He was one of the sinister plotters who deliberately provoked the June insurrection and one of its most atrocious executioners. When, on the 31st October, 1870, the Paris proletarian National Guards surprised the Government of Defence at the H tel de Ville and took them prisoner, these men who had [been] appointed by themselves, these gens de paroles [men of their word ], as one of them, Picard, called them recently, gave their word of honour that they would make place to [read for] the Commune. Thus allowed to escape scot-free, they launched Trochu s Bretons on their too-confident captors. One of them, however, M. Tamisier, resigned his dignity as commander-in-chief of the National Guard. He refused to break his word of honour. Then the hour had again struck for Cl ment Thomas. He was appointed, in Tamisier s place, commander-in-chief of the National Guard. He was the true man for Trochu s plan. He never made war upon the Prussians, he made war upon the National Guard, whom he disorganized, disunited, calumniated, weeding out all its officers hostile to Trochu s plan, setting one set of National Guards against the other and whom he sacrificed in sorties, so planned as to cover them with ridicule. Haunted by the spectres of his June victims, this man, without any official charge, must needs again reappear on [the] theatre of war of the 18th of March, where he scented another massacre of the Paris people. He fell a victim of Lynch justice in the first moment of popular exasperation. The men who had surrendered Paris to the tender mercies of the D cembriseur Vinoy, in order to kill the Republic and pocket the pots de vin, [tips], stipulated by the Pouyer-Quertier contract, shouted now: Assassins, Assassins! Their howl was re-echoed by the press of Europe so eager for the blood of the proletarians. A farce of hysterical sensibleness was enacted in the rural Assembl e, and now as before, the corpses of their friends were most welcome weapons against their enemies. Paris and the Central Committee were made responsible for an accident out of their control. It is known, how in the days of June 1848, the men of Order shook Europe with the cry of indignation against the insurgents because of the assassination of the Archbishop of Paris.[d] Even at that time they knew perfectly well from the evidence of M. Jacquemet, the vicaire g n ral of the Archbishop, who had accompanied him to the barricades, that the Bishop had been shot by the troops of Cavaignac, and not by the insurged,[e] but his dead corpse served their turn. M. Darboy, the present Archbishop of Paris, one of the hostages taken by the Commune in self-defence against the savage atrocities of the Versailles Government, however, seems, as appears from his letter to Thiers, to have strange misgivings [that] Papa Transnonain be eager to speculate in his body, as an object of holy indignation. There passed hardly a day, in which the Versailles journals did not announce his execution, which the continued atrocities, and violation of the rules of war on the side of order, would have scaled on the part of every government but that of the Commune. The Versailles Government had hardly realized a first military success, when Captain Desmar t, who at the head of his gendarmes assassinated the chivalrous Flourens, has been decorated by Thiers. Flourens had saved the lives of the defence men on the 31st October. Vinoy the runaway (runagate), was appointed Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, because he had our brave comrade Duval when taken prisoner, shot inside the redoubts, because as a second instalment, he had shot some dozen captive troops of the line who had joined the Paris people, and inaugurated this civil war by the methods of December. General Galliffet the husband of that charming Marchioness whose costumes at the masked balls were one of the wonders of the Empire, as a London penny-a-liner delicately puts it, surprised near Rueil a captain, lieutenant, and private of National Guards, had them at once shot, and immediately published a proclamation to glorify himself on the deed. These are a few of the murders officially narrated and gloried in by the Versailles Government. 25 soldiers of the 80th Regiment of the line shot as rebels by the 75th. On the 6th of April, decree of the Commune on reprisals (and hostages): In his letter to Thiers, Darboy protests against the atrocious excesses which add to the horror of our fratricidal war. In the same strain writes Deguerry (cur de la Madeleine ) [(priest at the Madeleine)]: In midst of these horrors Thiers writes to the Prefects: L Assembl e si ge paisiblement. (Elle aussi a le coeur l ger.) [ The Assembly is sitting peacefully. (It is also light-hearted.)] Thiers and la commission des quinze of his Rurals had the cool impudence to deny officially the pretended summary executions and reprisals attributed to the troops of Versailles. But Papa Transnonain [said] in his circular of 16th April on the bombardment of Paris : Thiers has proved that he surpasses his hero, Napoleon I, at least in one thing lying bulletins. (Of course, Paris bombards itself, in order to be able to calumniate M. Thiers!) To these atrocious provocations of the Bonapartist black legs, the Commune has contented itself to take hostages and to threaten reprisals, but its threats have remained a dead letter! Not even the gendarmes masqueraded into [read as] officers, not even the captive sergents de ville, upon whom explosive bombs have been seized, were placed before a court-martial! The Commune has refused to soil its hands with the blood of these bloodhounds! A few days before the 18th March, Cl ment Thomas laid before the War Minister Le Fl a plan for the disarmament of trois quarts [three-quarters] of the National Garde. L Assembl e lue le 8 f vrier sous la pression de l ennemi aux mains desquels les hommes qui gouvernent Versailles avaient remis tous les forts et livr Paris sans d fense, l Assem- bl e de Versailles avait un but unique et clairement d termin par la convention m me sign e Versailles le 29 janvier de d cider si la guerre pouvait tre continu e ou traiter la paix; et, dans ce cas, fixer les conditions de cette paix et assurer le plus promptement possible l vacuation du territoire fran ais. [The Assembly elected on February 8 under the pressure of the enemy, to whom the men governing at Versailles had surrendered all the forts and handed over the defenceless Paris this Versailles Assembly had but one aim, clearly determined by the Convention signed at Versailles on January 29, that is, to decide whether the war could be continued or whether to treat for peace, and, in the latter case, to establish the conditions for such a peace and ensure the evacuation of French territory as quickly as possible.] Liberation of Chanzy took place almost simultaneously with the retreat of Saisset. The Royalist journalists were unanimous in decreeing the death of the General. They desired to fix that amiable proceeding on the Reds. Three times he had been ordered to execution, and now he was really going to be shot. On the 25th April, in his reception of the maires, adjuncts, and municipal councillors of the suburban communes of the Seine, Thiers said: The progress of France from 1830 to 1871, according to M. Thiers, consists in this: In 1830 Louis Philippe was the best of Republics. In 1871 the ministerial fossil of Louis Philippe s reign, little Thiers himself, is the best of Republics. M. Thiers commenced his r gime by an usurpation. By the National Assembly he was appointed chief of the ministry of the Assembly; he appointed himself Chief of the Executive of France. The Assembly, summoned at the dictate of the foreign invader, was, as is clearly laid down in the Versailles convention of the 29th January, but elected for one single purpose: To decide the continuation of war or settle the conditions of peace. In their calling the French people to electoral urns, the capitulards of Paris themselves plainly defined that specific mission of the Assembly and this accounts to a great part for its very constitution. The continuation of the war having become impossible through the very terms of the armistice humbly accepted by the capitulards, the Assembly had in fact but to register a disgraceful peace and for this specific performance the worst men of France were [the] best. The Republic was proclaimed on the 4th of September, not by the pettifoggers who installed themselves at the H tel de Ville as a Government of Defence, but by the Paris people. It was acclaimed throughout France without a single dissentient voice. It conquered its own existence by a five months war whose cornerstone was the prolonged resistance of Paris. Without this war, carried on by the Republic and in the name of the Republic, the Empire would have been restored by Bismarck after the capitulation of Sedan, the pettifoggers with M. Thiers at their head would have had to capitulate not for Paris, but for personal guarantees against a voyage to Cayenne, and the Rural Assembly would never have been heard of. It met only by the grace of the Republican revolution, inchoated at Paris. Being no constituent Assembly, as M. Thiers himself has repeated to nauseousness, it would, if not as a mere chronicler of the passed incidents of the Republican Revolution, not even have had the right to proclaim the destitution [removal] of the Bonaparte s dynasty. The only legitimate power, therefore, in France is the Revolution itself, centring in Paris. That Revolution was not made against Napoleon the Little, but against the social and political conditions, which engendered the Second Empire, which received their last finish under its sway, and which, as the war with Prussia glaringly revealed, would leave France a cadaver, if they were not superseded by the regenerating powers of the French working-class Revolution. The attempts of the Rural Assembly holding only an attorney s power to the Revolution to sign the disastrous bond handed over by its present Executive to the foreign invader, its attempt to treat the Revolution as its own capitulard is, therefore, a monstrous usurpation. Its war against Paris is nothing but a cowardly Chouannerie under the shelter of Prussian bayonets. It is a bare conspiracy to assassinate France, in order to save the privileges, the monopolies and the luxuries of the degenerate, effete, and putrefied classes that have dragged her to the abyss from which she can only be saved by the herculean hand of a truly Social Revolution. Even before he became a statesman, M. Thiers had proved his lying powers as a historian. But the vanity, so characteristic of dwarfish men, has this time betrayed him into the sublime of the ridiculous. His army of Order, the dregs of the Bonapartist soldatesca [soldiery] freshly reimported, by the grace of Bismarck, from Prussian prisons, the Pontifical Zouaves, the Chouans of Charette, the Vend ens of Cathelineau, the municipals of Valentin, the ex-sergents de ville of Pi tri and the Corsican gendarmes of Valentin, who under L. Bonaparte were only the spies of the army but under M. Thiers form its warlike flower, the whole under the supervision of epauletted mouchards and under the command of the runaway Decembrist marshals who had no honour to lose this motley, ungainly, hangdog lot M. Thiers dubs the finest army France ever possessed ! If he allows the Prussians still to quarter at St. Denis, it is only to frighten them by the sight of the finest army of Versailles. Small state rogueries. Everlasting suggester of parliamentary intrigues M. Thiers was never anything else but an able journalist and a clever word - fencer, a master of parliamentary roguery, a virtuoso in perjury, a craftsman in all the small stratagems, base perfidies, and subtle devices of parliamentary party-warfare. This mischievous gnome charmed the French bourgeoisie during half a century because he is the truest intellectual expression of their own class corruption. When in the ranks of the opposition, he over and over rehearsed his stale homily of the libert s n cessaires, to stamp them out when in power. When out of office, he used to threaten Europe with the sword of France. And what were his diplomatic performances in reality? To pocket in 1841 the humiliation of the London treaty, to hurry on the war with Prussia by his declamations against German unity, to compromise France in 1870 by his begging tour at all the courts of Europe, to sign in 1871 the Paris capitulation to accept a peace at any price and implore from Prussia a concession leave and means to get up a civil war in his own downtrodden country. To a man of his stamp the underground agencies of modern society remained of course always unknown; but even the palpable changes at its surface he failed to understand. For instance, any deviation from the old French protective system he denounced as a sacrilege and, as a minister of Louis Philippe, went the length of treating disdainfully the construction of railways as a foolish chimera and even under Louis Bonaparte he eagerly opposed every reform of the rotten French army organization. A man without ideas, without convictions, and without courage. A professional Revolutionist in that sense, that in his eagerness of display, of wielding power and putting his hands into the National Exchequer, he never scrupled, when banished to the banks[g] of the opposition, to stir the popular passions and provoke a catastrophe to displace a rival; he is at the same time a most shallow man of routine, etc. The working class he reviled as the vile multitude. One of his former colleagues in the legislative assemblies, a contemporary of his, a capitalist and however a member of the Paris Commune, M. Beslay thus addresses him in a public address: No wonder that M. Thiers has given orders by his Home Minister Ernest Picard to prevent the International Association from communicating with Paris (Sitting of Assembly, 28 March). Circulaire de Thiers aux pr fets et sous-pr fets [Thiers Circular to the Prefects and Sub-Prefects ]: Without the International. ... (Jetzt die Geldgeschichte.) (Er und Favre haben ihr Geld nach London bersiedelt.) [(Now about the money affair.) (He and Favre have sent their money to London.)] It is a proverb that if rogues fall out, truth comes out. We can therefore not better finish the picture of Thiers than by the words of the London Moniteur of the master of his Versailles generals. Says the Situation in the number of the 28 March: Banded with the Republicans before the Revolution of July, he slipped into his first ministry under Louis Philippe by thrusting Laffitte, his old protector. His first deed was to throw his old collaborator Armand Carrel into prison. He insinuated himself with Louis Philippe as a spy upon, and the gaol-accoucheur of, the Duchess of Berry, but his activity centred in the massacre of the insurgent Paris Republicans in the Rue Transnonain and the September Laws against the press, to be then cast aside as an instrument become blunted. Having intrigued himself again into power in 1840, he planned the Paris fortifications, opposed as an attempt on the liberty of Paris by the whole democratic party, except the bourgeois Republicans of the National. M. Thiers replied to their outcry from the tribune of the Chambre des d put s : d abord, c est calomnier un gouvernement quel qu il soit de supposer qu ll puisse un jour chercher se maintenir en bombardant la capitale. Quoi? Apr s avoir perce de ses bombes la voute des Invalides ou du Panth on, apr s avoir inond de ses feux la demeure de vos familles, il se pr senterait vous pour vous demander la confirmation de son existence! Mais il serait cent tois plus impossible apr s la victoire qu auparavant. [Chamber of Deputies: What? To fancy that any works of fortification could ever endanger liberty. ... That is to depart completely from reality. And first of all it is a slander on a government whatever it might be like to suppose that it could some day attempt to maintain itself by bombarding the capital. What? After having breached the vault of the H tel des Invalides or of the Panth on with its shells, after having inundated your houses with its fire, it would present itself before you to demand confirmation of its existence! But such a government would be a hundred times more impossible after the victory than before. ] Indeed, neither the government of Louis Philippe nor that of the Bonapartist Regency dared to withdraw from Paris and bombard it. This employment of the fortifications was reserved to M. Thiers, their original plotter. When King Bomba of Naples bombarded Palermo in January 1848, M. Thiers again declared in the Chamber of Deputies: Vous savez, Messieurs, ce qui se passe Palerme: vous avez tous tressailli d horreur en apprenant que, pendant 48 heures, une grande ville a t bombard e. Par qui? Etait-ce par un ennemi tranger, exer ant les droits de la guerre? Non, Messieurs, par son propre gouvernement. Et pourquoi? Parce que cette ville infortun e demandait des droits. Eh bien! pour la demande de ses droits il y a eu 48 heures de bombardement. Permettez-moi d en appeler l opinion europ enne. C est un service rendre l humanit que de venir, du haut de la plus grande tribune peut- tre de l Europe, faire retentir quelques paroles d indignation contre de tels actes. Messieurs, lorsque, il y a 50 ans, les Autrichiens, exer ant les droits de la guerre, pour s pargner les longueurs d un si ge, voulurent bombarder Lille, lorsque plus tard les Anglais, qui exer aient aussi les droits de la guerre, bombard rent Copenhague, et tout r cemment, quand le r gent Espartero, qui avait rendu des services son pays, pour r primet une insurrection, a voulu bombarder Barcelone, dans tous les partis, il y a eu une g n rale indignation. [ You know, gentlemen, what is happening at Palermo. You, all of you, shake with horror on hearing that a large town has been bombarded for 48 hours. By whom? Was it by a foreign enemy exercising the rights of war? No, gentlemen, it was by its own Government. And why? Because that unfortunate town demanded its rights. Well, then, for demanding its rights, it has got 48 hours of bombardment. Allow me to appeal to European public opinion. It is doing a service to mankind to stand up and make reverberate some words of indignation against such acts from perhaps the greatest tribune of Europe. Gentlemen, 50 years ago when the Austrians, exercising the rights of war, wanted to bombard Lille in order to spare it a long siege, when later the English, who also exercised the rights of war, bombarded Copenhagen, and recently, when the Regent Espartero, who had rendered services to his country, wanted to bombard Barcelona in order to suppress an insurrection, indignation was general in all political parties. ] Little more than a year later, Thiers acted the most fiery apologist of the bombardment of Rome by the troops of the French Republic, and exalted his friend, General Changarnier, for sabring down the Paris National Guards protesting against this breach of the French Constitution. A few days before the Revolution of February 1848, fretting at the long exile from place to which Guizot had condemned him, [and] scenting the growing commotion of the masses, which he hoped would enable him to oust his rival and impose himself upon Louis Philippe, Thiers exclaimed in the Chamber of Deputies: To put down the February Revolution was his exclusive occupation from the day when the Republic was proclaimed to the coup d tat. The first days after the February explosion he anxiously hid himself, but the Paris workmen despised him too much to hate him. Still, with his notorious cowardice, which made Armand Carrel answer to his boast he would one day die on [the] banks of the Rhine : Thou wilt die in a gutter he dared not play a part on the public stage before the popular forces were broken down through the massacre of the insurgents of June. He confined himself first to the secret direction of the conspiracy of the r union [party] of the Rue de Poitiers which resulted in the Restauration of the Empire, until the stage had become sufficiently clear to reappear publicly on it. During the siege of Paris, on the question whether Paris was about to capitulate, Jules Favre answered that, to utter the word capitulation, the bombardment of Paris was wanted! This explains his melodramatic protests against the Prussian bombardment, indicating the latter was a mock-bombardment, while the Thiers bombardment is a stern reality. Parliamentary mountebank. He is for 40 years on the stage. He has never initiated a single useful measure in any department of state or life. Vain, sceptical, epicurean, he has never written or spoken for things. In his eyes the things themselves are mere pretexts for the display of his pen or his tongue. Except his thirst for place and pelf and display there is nothing real about him, not even his chauvinism. In the true vein of vulgar professional journalists he now sneers in his bulletins [at] the bad looks of his Versailles prisoners, now communicates that the Rurals are leur aise [at their ease], now covers himself with ridicule by his bulletin on the taking of Moulin-Saquet (4 of May), where 300 prisoners were taken. Paris the Paris of the mass of the Paris people fighting against him is not Paris. Paris that is the rich, the capitalist, the idle (why not the cosmopolitan stew?). This is the Paris of M. Thiers. The real Paris, working, thinking, fighting Paris, the Paris of the people, the Paris of the Commune is a vile multitude. There is the whole case of M. Thiers, not only for Paris, but for France. The Paris that showed its courage in the pacific procession and Saisset s escapade, that throngs now at Versailles, at Rueil, at St. Denis, at St. Germain-en-Laye, followed by the cocottes sticking to the man of religion, family, order, and property (the Paris of the really dangerous, of the exploiting and lounging classes) ( the franc-fileurs ) and amusing itself by looking by the telescope at the battle going on, for whom the civil war is but an agreeable diversion that is the Paris of M. Thiers (as the emigration of Coblenz was the France of M. de Calonne). In his vulgar journalist vein he knows not even to observe sham dignity, but he murders the wives and girls and children, found under the ruins of Neuilly, not to swerve from the etiquette of legitimacy. He must needs illuminate the municipal elections he has ordered in France by the conflagration of Clamart, burnt by petroleum bombs. The Roman historians finish off Nero s character by telling us that the monster gloried in being a rhymester and a comedian. But lift a mere professional journalist and parliamentary mountebank like Thiers to power, and he will outnero Nero. He acts only his part as the blind tool of class interests in allowing the Bonapartist generals to revenge themselves on Paris; but he acts his personal part in the little byplay of bulletins, speeches, addresses, in which the vanity, vulgarity, and lowest taste of the journalist creep out. He compares himself with Lincoln and the Parisians with the rebellious slaveholders of the South. The Southerners fought for the slavery of labour and the territorial secession from the United States. Paris fights for the emancipation of labour and the secession from power of Thiers State parasites, of the would-be slaveholders of France! In his speech to the maires Er wird die Republik retten [He will save the Republic] In der Sitzung der Assembl e vom 27 April sagt er: L assembl e est plus lib rale que lui-m me! [He said at the April 27 session of the Assembly: The Assembly is more liberal than he himself is! ] He, whose rhetorical trump card was always the denunciation of the Vienna treaties, he signs the Paris treaty, not only the dismemberment of one part of France, (not only the occupation of almost 1/2 of it), but the milliards of indemnity, without even asking Bismarck to specify and prove his war expenses! He does not even allow the Assembly at Bordeaux to discuss the paragraphs of his capitulation! He who upbraided throughout his life the Bourbons because they came back in the rear of foreign armies and because of their undignified behaviour to the allies occupying France after the conclusion of peace, he asks nothing from Bismarck in the treaty but one concession: 40,000 troops to subdue Paris (as Bismarck stated in the Diet). Paris was for all purposes of internal defence and [opposing] foreign aggression fully secured by its armed National Guard, but Thiers superadded at once [to] the capitulation of Paris to the foreigner, the character of the capitulation of Paris to himself and Co. This stipulation was a stipulation for civil war. That war itself he opens not only with the passive permission of Prussia, but by the facilities she lends him, by the captive French troops she magnanimously despatches him from German dungeons! In his bulletins, in his and Favre s speeches in the Assembly, he crawls in the dust before Prussia and threatens Paris every eight days with her intervention, after having failed to get it, as stated by Bismarck himself. The Bourbons were dignity itself compared to this mountebank, this grand apostle of chauvinism! After the break-down of Prussia (Tilsit peace 1807), its government felt that it could only save itself and the country by a great social regeneration (revolution). It naturalized in Prussia on a small scale, within the limits of a feudal monarchy, the results of the French Revolution. It liberated the peasant, etc. After the Crimean defeat, which, however Russia might have saved her honour by the defence of Sevastopol and dazzled the foreigner by her diplomatic triumphs at Paris, laid open at home the rottenness of her social and administrative system, her government emancipated the serf and [reformed] her whole administrative and judicial system. In both countries the daring social reform was fettered and limited in its character because it was octroyed[h] from the throne and not (instead of being) conquered by the people. Still there were great social changes, doing away with the worst privileges of the ruling classes and changing the economical basis of the old society. They felt that the great malady could only be cured by heroic measures. They felt that they could only answer to the victors by social reforms, by calling into life elements of popular regeneration. The French catastrophe of 1870 stands unparalleled in the history of the modern world! It showed official France, the France of Louis Bonaparte, the France of the ruling classes and their State parasites a putrescent cadaver. And what is the first attempt of the infamous men, who had got at her government by a surprise of the people and who continue to hold it by a conspiracy with the foreign invader, what is [their] first attempt? To assassinate, under Prussian patronage, by L. Bonaparte s soldatesca and Pi tri s police, the glorious work of popular regeneration commenced at Paris, to summon all the old Legitimist spectres, beaten by the July Revolution, the fossil swindlers of Louis Philippe, beaten by the Revolution of February, and celebrate an orgy of counter-revolution! Such heroism in exaggerated self-debasement is unheard of in the annals of history! But, what is most characteristic, instead of arousing a general shout of indignation on the part of official Europe and America, it evokes a current of sympathy and of fierce denunciation of Paris! This proves that Paris, true to its historical antecedents, seeks the regeneration of the French people in making it the champion of the regeneration of old society, making the social regeneration of mankind the national business of France! It is the emancipation of the producing class from the exploiting classes, their retainers and their State parasites, who prove the truth of the French adage, that les valets du diable sont pires que le diable himself. [ the devil s valets are worse than the devil himself. ] Paris has hissed[i] the flag of mankind! The different fractions of the French bourgeoisie had successively their reigns, the great landed proprietors under the Restoration (the old Bourbons), the capitalists under the parliamentary monarchy of July (Louis Philippe), while its Bonapartist and Republican elements kept rankling in the background. Their party feuds and intrigues were of course carried on on pretexts of public welfare, and a popular revolution having got rid of these monarchies, the other set in. All this changed with the Republic (February). All the fractions of the bourgeoisie combined together in the Party of Order, that is the party of proprietors and capitalists, bound together to maintain the economic subjugation of labour and the repressive State machinery supporting it. Instead of a monarchy, whose very name signified the prevalence of one bourgeois fraction over the other, a victory on one side and a defeat on the other (the triumph of one side and the humiliation of the other), the Republic was the anonymous joint-stock company of the combined bourgeois fractions, of all the exploiteurs of the people clubbed together, and indeed, Legitimists, Bonapartists, Orleanists, bourgeois Republicans, Jesuits and Voltairiens, embraced each other no longer hidden by the shelter of the crown, no longer able to interest the people in their party feuds by masquerading them into [read as] struggles for popular interest, no longer subordinate the one to the other. Direct and confessed antagonism of their class rule to the emancipation of the producing masses order, the name for the economical and political conditions of their class rule and the servitude of labour, this anonymous or Republican form of the bourgeois r gime this bourgeois Republic, this Republic of the Party of Order is the most odious of all political r gimes. Its direct business, its only raison d tre is to crush down the people. It is the terrorism of class rule. The thing is done in this way. The people having fought and made the Revolution, proclaimed the Republic, and made room for a National Assembly, the bourgeois, whose known Republican professions are a guarantee for their Republic, are pushed on the foreground of the stage by the majority of the Assembly, composed of the vanquished and professed enemies of the Republic. The Republicans are entrusted with the task to goad the people into the trap of an insurrection, to be crushed by fire and sword. This part was performed by the party of the National with Cavaignac at their head after the Revolution of February (by the June Insurrection). By their crime against the masses, these Republicans lose then their sway. They have done their work and, if yet allowed to support the Party of Order in its general struggle against the proletariat, they are at the same time displaced from the government, forced to fall back in the last ranks, and only allowed on sufferance. The combined Royalist bourgeois then become the father of the Republic, the true rule of the Party of Order sets in. The material forces of the people being broken for the time being, the work of reaction the breaking down of all the concessions conquered in four revolutions begins piece by piece. The people is stung to madness not only by the deeds of the Party of Order, but by the cynical effrontery with which it is treated as the vanquished, with which in its own name, in the name of the Republic, that low lot rules it supreme. Of course, that spasmodic form of anonymous class despotism cannot last long, can only be a transitory phasis. It knows that it is seated on a revolutionary volcano. On the other hand, if the Party of Order is united in its war against the working class, in its capacity of the Party of Order, the play of intrigue of its different fractions, the one against the other, each for the prevalence of its peculiar interest in the old order of society, each for the restoration of its own pretender and personal ambitions, sets in in full force as soon as its rule seems secured (guaranteed) by the destruction of the material revolutionary forces. This combination of a common war against the people and a common conspiracy against the Republic, combined with the internal feuds of its rulers, and their play of intrigues, paralyses society, disgusts and bewilders the masses of the middle class* and troubles business, keeps them in a chronic state of disquietude. All the conditions of despotism are created (have been engendered) under this r gime, but despotism without quietude, despotism with parliamentary anarchy at its head. Then the hour has struck for a coup d tat, and the incapable lot has to make room for any lucky pretender, making [an] end of the anonymous form of class rule. In this way Louis Bonaparte made an end of the bourgeois Republic after its 4 years of existence. During all that time Thiers was the me damn e [tool] of the Party of Order, that in the name of the Republic made war upon the Republic, a class war upon the people, and, in reality, created the Empire. He played exactly the same part now as he played then, only then but as a parliamentary intriguer, now as the Chief of the Executive. Should he not be conquered by the Revolution, he will now as then be a baffled tool. Whatever counter-vailing government will set in, its first act will be to cast aside the man who surrendered France to Prussia and bombarded Paris. Thiers had many grievances against Louis Bonaparte. The latter had used him as a tool and a dupe. He had frightened him (shocked his nerves) by his arrest after the coup d tat. He had annulled him by putting down the parliamentary r gime, the only one under which a mere State parasite, like Thiers, a mere talker, can play a political part. Last [but] not least Thiers, having been the historic shoeblack of Napoleon, had so long described his deeds, as to fancy he had enacted them himself. The legitimate caricature of Napoleon I was in his eyes not Napoleon the Little, but little Thiers. With all that there was no infamy committed by L. Bonaparte which had not been backed by Thiers, from the occupation of Rome by the French troops to the war with Prussia. Only a man of his shallow head can fancy for one moment, that a Republic with his head on its shoulders, with a National Assembly half Legitimist, half Orleanist, with an army under Bonapartist leaders, will, if victorious, not push him aside. There is nothing more grotesquely horrid than a Tom Pouce affecting to play the (acting the part [of]) Timur Tamerlane. With him the deeds of cruelty are not only a matter of business, but a thing of theatrical display (stage effect) of phantastical vanity. To write his bulletins, to show his severity, to have his troops, his strategy, his bombardments, his petroleum bombs, to hide his cowardice under the cold-bloodedness with which he allows the Decembrist blacklegs to take their revenge on Paris! This kind of heroism in exaggerated baseness! He exults in the important part he plays and the noise he makes in the world! He quite fancies to be a great man: and how gigantic (titanic) he, the dwarf, the parliamentary dribbler, must look in the eyes of the world! In [the] midst [of] the horrid scenes of this war, one cannot help smiling at the ridiculous capers Thiers Vanity cuts! M. Thiers is a man of lively imagination, there runs an artist s vein through his blood, and an artist s vanity able to gull him into a belief in his own lies, and a belief in his own grandeur. Through all the speeches, bulletins, etc., of Thiers, runs a vein of elated vanity. Splendid bombardment (with petroleum bombs) from Mont-Val rien, zerst rt [destroyed] a part of the houses in the Ternes within the rampart (?), with a grandiose conflagration and a fearful thunder of cannon shaking all Paris. Bombs purposely thrown into [the] Ternes and the Champs-Elys es quarters. Explosive bombs, petroleum bombs. The glorious British penny-a-liner has made the splendid discovery that this is not what we used to understand by self-government. Of course, it is not. It is not the self-administration of the towns by turtle-soup guzzling aldermen, jobbing vestries, and ferocious workhouse guardians. It is not the self-administration of the counties by the holders of broad acres, long purses and empty heads. It is not the judicial abomination of the Great Unpaid. It is not political self-government of the country through the means of an oligarchic club and the reading of the Times newspaper. It is the people acting for itself by itself. Within this war of cannibals the most disgusting, the literary shrieks of the hideous gnome seated at the head of the government! The ferocious treatment of the Versailles prisoners was not interrupted one moment, and their cold-blooded assassination was resumed so soon as Versailles had convinced itself that the Commune was too humane to execute its decree of reprisals! The Paris Journal (at Versailles) says that 13 line soldiers made prisoners at the railway station of Clamart were shot off-hand, and all prisoners wearing the line uniforms who arrive in Versailles will be executed whenever doubts about their identity are cleared up! M. Alexandre Dumas, fils, tells that a young man exercising the functions, if not bearing the title, of a general, was shot when having marched (in custody) a few hundred yards along a road. D putation de [la] Commune Bic tre (27 April) pour faire une enqu te sur les 4 gardes nationaux du 185e bataillon de marche de la Garde nationale, o ils ont visit le survivant (gri vement bless ) Scheffer. [Deputation from the Commune went to Bic tre (April 27) where they visited the only survivor (seriously wounded) Scheffer to inquire about the four National Guards of the 185th Infantry Battalion of the National Guard.] M. Thiers most liberal and most freely elected National Assembly that ever existed in France is quite of a piece with his finest army that France ever possessed. This senile Chambre introuvable, chosen on a false pretext, consists almost exclusively of Legitimists and Orleanists. The municipal elections, carried on under Thiers himself on the 30th of April, show their relation to the French people! Of 700,000 councillors (in round numbers) returned by the 35,000 communes still left in mutilated France, 200 are Legitimists, 600 Orleanists, 7,000 avowed Bonapartists, and all the rest Republicans or Communists.[l] (Versailles Cor., Daily News, 5 May.) Is any other proof wanted that this Assembly with the Orleanist mummy Thiers at its head represent an usurpatory minority? M. Thiers represented again and again the Commune as the instrument of a handful of convicts and ticket-of-leave men, of the scum of Paris. And this handful of desperadoes holds in check since [read for] more than 6 weeks the finest army that France ever possessed led by the invincible MacMahon and inspired by the genius of Thiers himself! The exploits of the Parisians have not only refuted him. All elements of Paris have spoken. Who says this? The delegates of the Syndical chambers, men who speak in the name of 7-8,000 merchants and industrials. They have gone to tell it at Versailles. ... The Ligue de la r union r publicaine ... the manifestation of the francs- ma ons, etc. [The League of Republican Union ... the demonstration of the Freemasons, etc.] If Thiers fancied one moment that the provinces were really antagonistic to the Paris movement, he would do all in his power to give the provinces the greatest possible facilities to become acquainted with the movement and all its horrors. He would solicit them to look at it in its naked reality, to convince themselves with their own eyes and ears of what it is. Not he! He and his defence men try to keep the provinces down, to prevent their general rising for Paris, by a wall of lies, as they kept out the news from the provinces in Paris during the Prussian siege. The provinces are only allowed to look at Paris through the Versailles camera obscura (distorting glass). (Les mensonges et les calomnies des journaux de Versailles parviennent seuls aux d partements et y font loi.) [(Only the lies and slanders of the Versailles journals reach the departments and have any validity there.)] Pillages and murders of [read by] 20,000 ticket-of-leave men dishonour the capital. As they were, when besieged in Paris, thus they are now in besieging it in their turn. Thiers bulletins, Picard s circulaires, Dufaure s. ... The placards in the communes. The felon press of Versailles and the Germans. The petit moniteur.The reintroduction of passports for travelling from one place to another. An army of mouchards spread in every direction. Arrests (in Rouen, etc., under Prussian authority), etc. Les milliers de commissaires de police r pandus dans les environs de Paris ont re u du pr fet-gendarme Valentin l ordre de saisir tous les journaux, quelque nuance qu ils appartiennent, qui s impriment dans la ville insurg e, et de les br ler en place publique comme au meilleur temps de la Ste. Inquisition. [The thousands of police superintendents scattering round Paris received an order from the prefect-gendarme Valentin to seize all newspapers, whatever their shade, printed in this insurgent city and to burn them in public as was done at the height of the Holy Inquisition.] Thiers government first appealed to the provinces [m] to form battalions of National Guards and send them to Versailles against Paris. The Province, as the Journal de Limoges says, showed its discontent by refusing the bataillons of volontaires [volunteers] which were asked from it by Thiers and his Ruraux. The few Breton idiots, fighting under a white flag, every one of them wearing on his breast a Jesus heart in white cloth and shouting Vive le roi! are the only provincial army gathered round Thiers. M. Dufaure s press law (8 April ). Confessedly directed against the excesses of the provincial press. Then the numerous arrestations in the Province. It is placed under the Laws of Suspects. Adresse des d l gu s de Lon pr sent e a l Assembl e par Greppo [le] 24 avril. [Petition of the Lyons delegates presented to the Assembly by Greppo on April 24.] The municipalities of the provincial towns committed the great impudence to send their deputations to Versailles in order to call upon them to grant what [was] demanded by Paris; not one commune of France has sent an address approving of the acts of Thiers and the Rurals; the provincial papers, like these municipal councils, as Dufaure complains in his circular against conciliation to the procureur g n ral, and what is worse, these municipal councils, for instance, that of Auch, It ought to be remembered that these were the old municipal councils, not those elected on 30th April. Their delegations so numerous, that Thiers decided no longer to receive them personally but address them to a ministerial subaltern. It is most characteristic, that the same men (Thiers et Co.) who in May 1850 abolished by a parliamentary conspiracy (Bonaparte aided them, to get them into a snare, to have them at his mercy, and to proclaim himself after the coup d tat as the restorer of the universal suffrage against the Party of Order and its Assembly) the universal suffrage, because under the Republic it might still play them freaks, are now its fanatical adepts, make it their legitimate title against Paris, after it had received under Bonaparte such an organization as to be the mere plaything in the hand of the Executive, a mere machine of cheat, surprise, and forgery on the part of the Executive. (Congr s de la Ligue des villes ) (Rappel, 6 mai.) It may be asked how these superannuated parliamentary mountebanks and intriguers like Thiers, Favre, Dufaure, Garnier-Pag s (only strengthened by a few rascals of the same stamp) continue to reappear, after every revolution, on the surface, and usurp the executive power these men that always exploit and betray the Revolution, shoot down the people that made it, and sequester the few liberal concessions conquered from former governments (which they opposed themselves)? The thing is very simple. In the first instance, if very unpopular, like Thiers after the February Revolution, popular magnanimity spares them. After every successful rising of the people the cry of conciliation, raised by the implacable enemies of the people, is re-echoed by the people in the first moments of the enthusiasm at its own victory. After this first moment men like Thiers and Dufaure eclipse themselves as long as the people holds material power, and work in the dark. They reappear as soon as it is disarmed, and are acclaimed by the bourgeoisie as their chefs-de-file [file-leaders]. Or, like Favre, Garnier-Pag s, Jules Simon, etc. (recruited by a few younger ones of similar stamp) and Thiers himself after the 4th of September, [they] were the respectable Republican opposition under Louis Philippe; afterwards the parliamentary opposition under L. Bonaparte. The reactionary r gimes they have themselves initiated when raised to power by the Revolution, secure for them the ranks of the opposition, deporting, killing, exiling the true revolutionists. The people forget their past, the middle class look upon them as their men, their infamous past is forgotten, and thus they reappear to recommence their treason and their work of infamy. Troops under General Lacretelle took the redoubt of Moulin-Saquet situated betwixt Fort Issy and Montrouge, by a coup de main. The garrison was surprised by treachery on the part of the commandant Gallien, who had sold the password to the Versailles troops. 150 of the Federals bayoneted and over 300 of them made prisoners. M. Thiers, says the Times correspondent, was weak when he ought to have been firm (the coward is always weak as long as he has to apprehend danger for himself ), and firm when everything was to be gained by some concessions. (The rascal is always firm, when the employment of material force bleeds France, gives great airs to himself, but when he, personally, is safe. This is his whole cleverness. Like Anthony, Thiers is an honest man. ) A great lot of workshops and manufactories have been closed in Paris, their owners having run away. This is the old method of the industrial capitalists, who consider themselves entitled, by the spontaneous action of the laws of political economy, not only to make a profit out of labour, as the condition of labour, but to stop it altogether and throw the workmen on the pavement to produce an artificial crisis whenever a victorious revolution threatens the order of their system. The Commune, very wisely, has appointed a Communal commission which, in co-operation with delegates chosen by the different trades, will inquire into the ways of handing over the deserted workshops and manufactories to co-operative workmen societies with some indemnity for the capitalist deserters (16 April ); (this commission has also to make statistics of the abandoned workshops). Commune has given order to the mairies to make no distinction between the femmes called illegitimate, the mothers and widows of National Guards, as to the indemnity of 75 centimes. The public prostitutes till now kept for the men of Order at Paris, but for their safety kept in personal servitude under the arbitrary rule of the police; the Commune has liberated the prostitutes from this degrading slavery, but swept away the soil upon which, and the men by whom, prostitution flourishes. The higher prostitutes the cocottes were of course, under the rule of Order, not the slaves, but the masters of the police and the governors. There was, of course, no time to reorganize public instruction (education); but by removing the religious and clerical element from it, the Commune has taken the initiative in the mental emancipation of the people. It has appointed a commission for the organization de l enseignement [of education] (primary (elementary) and professional) (28 April ). It has ordered that all tools of instruction, like books, maps, paper, etc., be given gratuitously by the schoolmasters, who receive them in their turn from the respective mairies to which they belong. No schoolmaster is allowed on any pretext to ask payment from his pupils for these instruments of instruction (28 April ). et d instruments de travail nicht ber 20 frs. pourra tre d gag e gratuitement partir du 12 mai courant (7 May ). [Pawnshops : all pawn-tickets dated before April 25, 1871, for articles of clothing, furniture, linen, books, bedding and work tools worth no more than 20 francs may, beginning from May 12 of this year, be redeemed without a charge (7 May ).] ch ances (Payment of bills of exchange due) (expiration of bills ): all prosecutions for bills of exchange, fallen due, suspended (12 April ). All commercial papers of that sort to be repaid in (repayments spread over) two years, to begin next July 15, the debt being not chargeable with interest. The total amount of the sums due divided in 8 equal coupures [portions ] payable by trimester (first trimester to be dated from July 15). Only on these partial payments when fallen due judicial prosecutions permitted (16 April ). The Dufaure laws on leases and bills of exchange entailed the bankruptcy of the majority of the respectable shopkeepers of Paris. The notaries, huissiers, auctioneers, bumbailiffs and other judicial officers making till now a fortune of their functions, transformed into agents of the Commune receiving from it fixed salaries like other workmen. As the professors of the Ecole de m decine have run away, the Commune appointed a commission for the foundation of free universities no longer State parasites; given to the students that had passed their examination, means to practise independent of Doctor titles (titles to be conferred by the faculty). Since the judges of the Civil Tribunal of the Seine, like the other magistrates always ready to function under any class government, had run away, Commune appointed an advocate to do the most urgent business until the reorganization of tribunals on the basis of general suffrage (26 April ). Church separated from State; the religious budget suppressed; all clerical estates declared national properties (3 April ). The Commune, having made inquiries consequent upon private information, found that beside the old guillotine the government of order had commanded the construction of a new guillotine (more expeditious and portable) and paid in advance. The Commune ordered both the old and the new guillotines to be burned publicly on the 6th of April. The Versailles journals, re-echoed by the press of Order all over the world, narrated the Paris people, as a demonstration against the bloodthirstiness of the Communards, had burnt these guillotines! (6 April.) All political prisoners were set free at once after the Revolution of the 18th of March. But the Commune knew that under the r gime of L. Bonaparte and his worthy successor the Government of Defence, many people were simply incarcerated on no charge whatever as political suspects. Consequently it charged [one] of its members Protot to make inquiries. By him 150 people [were] set free who, being arrested since six months, had not yet under gone any judicial examination; many of them, already arrested under Bonaparte, had been for a year in prison without any charge or judicial examination (9 April ). This fact, so characteristic of the Government of Defence, enraged them. They asserted the Commune had liberated all felons. But who liberated convicted felons? The forger Jules Favre. Hardly got into power, he hastened to liberate Pic and Taillefer, condemn ed for theft and forgery in the affair of the Etendard. One of these men, Taillefer, daring to return to Paris, has been reinstated in his convenient abode. But this is not all. The Versailles Government has delivered, in the Maisons centrales [prisons] all over France, convicted thiefs on the condition of entering M. Thiers army. The Journal officiel has inaugurated the publicity of the sittings of the Commune (15 April ). Decree of Paschal Grousset for the protection of foreigners against requisitions. Never a government in Paris so courteous to foreigners (27 April ). The Commune has abolished political and professional oaths (27 April ). Disarmament of the loyal National Guards (30 March ); Commune declares incompatibility between seats in its ranks and at Versailles (29 March ). In regard to these decrees of reprisals to be remarked: In the first instance, men of all layers of the Paris society after the exodus of the capitalists, the idlers and the parasites have interposed at Versailles to stop the civil war except the Paris clergy. The Archbishop and the cure de [la] Madeleine have only written to Thiers because averse to the effusion of their own blood , in their quality as hostages. Secondly: After the publication by the Commune of the decree of reprisals, the taking of hostages, etc., the atrocious treatment of the Versailles prisoners by Pi tri s lambs and Valentin s gendarmes did not cease, but the assassination of the captive Paris soldiers and National Guards was stopped to set in with renewed fury so soon as the Versailles Government had convinced itself that the Commune was too humane to execute its decree of the 6th of April. Then the assassination set in again wholesale. The Commune did not execute one hostage, not one prisoner, not even some gendarme officers who under the disguise of National Guards had entered Paris as spies and were simply arrested. 13 soldiers of the line made prisoners at the railway station of Clamart were shot off-hand, and all prisoners wearing the line uniforms who arrive in Versailles will be executed whenever doubts about their identity are cleared up. (Libert at Versailles.) Alexander Dumas, fils, now at Versailles, tells that a young man exercising the functions, if not bearing the title, of a general, was shot, by order of a Bonapartist general, after having marched in custody a few hundred yards along a road. Parisian troops and National Guards surrounded in houses by gendarmes, [who] inundate the house with petroleum and then fire it. Some cadavers of National Guards (calcin s ) [(calcined)] have been transported by the ambulance of the press of the Ternes. (Mot d ordre, 20 April.) They have no right to ambulances. See Daily News, 6 May. Principal outlay for war! Only 8928 frs. from saisies [seizures] all taken from ecclesiastics, etc. The Commune had been proclaimed at Lyons, then Marseilles, Toulouse, etc., after Sedan. Gambetta tried his best to break it down. The different movements at Paris in the beginning of October aimed at the establishment of the Commune, as a measure of defence against the foreign invasion, as the realization of the rise of the 4th of September. Its establishment by the movement of the 31 October failed only because Blanqui, Flourens and the other then leaders of the movement believed in the gens de paroles [men of their word] who had given their parole d honneur [word of honour] to abdicate and make room for a Commune freely elected by all the arrondissements of Paris. It failed because they saved the lives of those men so eager for the assassination of their saviours. Having allowed Trochu and Ferry to escape, they surprised them by Trochu s Bretons.[q] It ought to be remembered that on the 31st of October the self-imposed Government of Defence existed only on sufferance. It had not yet gone even through the farce of a plebiscite. Under the circumstances, there was of course nothing easier than to misrepresent the character of the movement, to decry it as a treasonable conspiracy with the Prussians, to improve the dismissal of the only man[r] amongst them who would not break his word, for strengthening Trochu s Bretons, who were for the Government of the Defence what the Corsican spadassins [desperadoes] had been for L. Bonaparte, by the appointment of Cl ment Thomas as commander-in-chief of the National Guard; there was nothing easier for these old panic-mongers [than] appealing to the cowardly fears of the middle class [in the presence of the] working bataillons who had taken the initiative, throwing distrust and dissension amongst the working bataillons themselves, by an appeal to patriotism to create one of those days of blind reaction and disastrous misunderstandings by which they have always contrived to maintain their usurped power. As they had slipt into power the 4th of September by a surprise, they were now enabled to give it a mock sanction by a plebiscite of the true Bonapartist pattern during days of reactionary terror. The victorious establishment at Paris of the Commune in the beginning of November 1870 (then already initiated in the great cities of the [country] and sure to be imitated all over France) would not only have taken the defence out of the hands of traitors, and imprinted its enthusiasm [on it] as the present heroic war of Paris shows, it would have altogether changed the character of the war. It would have become the war of Republican France, hissing[s] the flag of the Social Revolution of the 19th century, against Prussia, the banner bearer of the conquest and counter-revolution. Instead of sending the hackneyed old intriguer a-begging at all courts of Europe, it would have electrified the producing masses in the old and the new world. By the escamotage of the Commune on October 31, the Jules Favre et Co. secured the capitulation of France to Prussia and initiated the present civil war. But this much is shown: The Revolution of the 4th September was not only the reinstalment of the Republic because the place of the usurper had become vacant by his capitulation at Sedan it not only conquered that Republic from the foreign invader by the prolonged resistance of Paris although fighting under the leadership of its enemies that Revolution was working its way in[to] the heart of the working classes. The Republic had ceased to be a name for a thing of the past. It was impregnated with a new world. Its real tendency, veiled from the eye of the world through the deceptions, the lies and the vulgarizing of a pack of intriguing lawyers and word fencers, came again and again to the surface in the spasmodic movements of the Paris working classes (and the South of France) whose watchword was always the same, the Commune ! The Commune the positive form of the Revolution against the Empire and the conditions of its existence first essayed in the cities of Southern France, again and again proclaimed in spasmodic movements during the siege of Paris and escamot s [conjured away] by the sleights of hands of the Government of Defence and the Bretons of Trochu, the plan of capitulation hero was at last victoriously installed on the 26th March, but it had not suddenly sprung into life on that day. It was the unchangeable goal of the workmen s revolution. The capitulation of Paris, the open conspiracy against the Republic at Bordeaux, the coup d tat initiated by the nocturnal attack on Montmartre, rallied around it all the living elements of Paris, no longer allowing the defence men to limit it to the insulated efforts of the most conscious and revolutionary portions of the Paris working class. The Government of Defence was only undergone as a pis aller [makeshift] of the first surprise, a necessity of the war. The true answer of the Paris people to the Second Empire, the Empire of Lies, was the Commune. Thus also the rising of all living Paris with the exception of the pillars of Bonapartism and its official opposition, the great capitalists, the financial jobbers, the sharpers, the loungers, and the old State parasites against the Government of Defence does not date from the 18th of March, although it conquered on that day its first victory against the conspiration [conspiracy]; it dates from the 31 January[t], from the very day of the capitulation. The National Guard that is all the armed manhood of Paris organized itself and really ruled Paris from that day, independently of the usurpatory government of the capitulards installed by the grace of Bismarck. It refused to deliver its arms and artillery, which was its property and only left them in the capitulation[?] because its property.[u] It was not the magnanimity of Jules Favre that saved these arms from Bismarck, but the readiness of armed Paris to fight for its arms against Jules Favre and Bismarck. In view of the foreign invader and the peace negotiations Paris would not complicate the situation. It was afraid of civil war. It observed a mere attitude of defence and content with the de facto self-rule of Paris. But it organized itself quietly and steadfastly for resistance. (Even in the terms of the capitulation itself the capitulards had unmistakably shown their tendency to make the surrender to Prussia at the same time the means of their domination over Paris. The only concession of Prussia they insisted upon, a concession, which Bismarck would have imposed upon them as a condition, if they had not begged it as a concession was 40,000 soldiers for subduing Paris. In the face of its 300,000 National Guards more than sufficient for securing Paris from an attempt by the foreign enemy, and for the defence of its internal order the demand of these 40,000 men a thing which was besides avowed could have no other purpose.) On its existing military organization it grafted a political federation according to a very simple plan. It was the alliance of all the Guard nationale, put in connection the one with the other by the delegates of each company, appointing in their turn the delegates of the bataillons, who in their turn appointed general delegates, generals of legions, who were to represent an arrondissement and to co-operate with the delegates of the 19 other arrondissements. Those 20 delegates, chosen by the majority of the bataillons of the National Guard, composed the Central Committee, which on the 18th March initiated the greatest revolution of this century and still holds its post in the present glorious struggle of Paris. Never were elections more sifted, never delegates fuller representing the masses from which they had sprung. To the objection of the outsiders that they were unknown in point of fact, that they only were known to the working classes, but no old stagers, no men illustrious by the infamies of their past, by their chase after pelf and place they proudly answered: So were the 12 Apostles, and they answered by their deeds. The centralized State machinery which, with its ubiquitous and complicated military, bureaucratic, clerical and judiciary organs, entoils (inmeshes) the living civil society like a boa constrictor, was first forged in the days of absolute monarchy as a weapon of nascent modern society in its struggle of emancipation from feudalism. The seignorial privileges of the medieval lords and cities and clergy were transformed into the attributes of a unitary State power, displacing the feudal dignitaries by salaried State functionaries, transferring the arms from medieval retainers of the landlords and the corporations of townish citizens to a standing army, substituting for the checkered (party-coloured) anarchy of conflicting medieval powers the regulated plan of a State power, with a systematic and hierarchic division of labour. The first French Revolution with its task to found national unity (to create a nation) had to break down all local, territorial, townish and provincial independence. It was, therefore, forced to develop, what absolute monarchy had commenced, the centralization and organization of State power, and to expand the circumference and the attributes of the State power, the number of its tools, its independence, and its supernaturalist sway of real society, which in fact took the place of the medieval supernaturalist heaven, with its saints. Every minor solitary interest engendered by the relations of social groups was separated from society itself, fixed and made independent of it and opposed to it in the form of State interest, administered by State priests with exactly determined hierarchical functions. This parasitical [excrescence upon] civil society, pretending to be its ideal counterpart, grew to its full development under the sway of the first Bonaparte. The Restoration and the Monarchy of July added nothing to it but a greater division of labour, growing at the same measure in which the division of labour within civil society created new groups of interest, and, therefore, new material for State action. In their struggle against the Revolution of 1848, the Parliamentary Republic of France and the governments of all continental Europe, were forced to strengthen, with their measures of repression against the popular movement, the means of action and the centralization of that governmental power. All revolutions thus only perfected the State machinery instead of throwing off this deadening incubus. The fractions and parties of the ruling classes which alternately struggled for supremacy, considered the occupancy (control) (seizure) and the direction of this immense machinery of government as the main booty of the victor. It centred in the creation of immense standing armies, a host of State vermin, and huge national debts. During the time of the absolute monarchy it was a means of the struggle of modern society against feudalism, crowned by the French Revolution, and under the first Bonaparte it served not only to subjugate the Revolution and annihilate all popular liberties, it was an instrument of the French Revolution to strike abroad, to create for France on the Continent instead of feudal monarchies more or less States after the image of France. Under the Restoration and the Monarchy of July it became not only [a] means of the forcible class domination of the middle class, and [read but] a means of adding to the direct economic exploitation a second exploitation of the people by assuring to their [i.e., the middle class] families all the rich places of the State household. During the time of the revolutionary struggle of 1848 at last it served as a means of annihilating that Revolution and all aspirations at the emancipation of the popular masses. But the State parasite received only its last development during the Second Empire. The governmental power with its standing army, its all directing bureaucracy, its stultifying clergy and its servile tribunal hierarchy had grown so independent of society itself, that a grotesquely mediocre adventurer with a hungry band of desperadoes behind him sufficed to wield it. It did no longer want the pretext of an armed Coalition of old Europe against the modern world founded by the Revolution of 1789. It appeared no longer as a means of class domination, subordinate to its parliamentary ministry or legislature. Humbling under its sway even the interests of the ruling classes, whose parliamentary show work it supplanted by self-elected Corps l gislatifs and self-paid senates, sanctioned in its absolute sway by universal suffrage, the acknowledged necessity for keeping up order, that is the rule of the landowner and the capitalist over the producer, cloaking under the tatters of a masquerade of the past the orgies of the corruption of the present and the victory of the most parasite fraction, the financial swindler, the debauchery of all the reactionary influences of the past let loose a pandemonium of infamies the State power had received its last and supreme expression in the Second Empire. Apparently the final victory of this governmental power over society, it was in fact the orgy of all the corrupt elements of that society. To the eye of the uninitiated it appeared only as the victory of the Executive over the Legislative, of [read as] the final defeat of the form of class rule pretending to be the autocracy of society [by] its form pretending to be a superior power to society. But in fact it was only the last degraded and the only possible form of that class ruling, as humiliating to those classes themselves as to the working classes which they kept fettered by it. The 4th of September was only the revindication of the R publique against the grotesque adventurer that had assassinated it. The true antithesis to the Empire itself that is, to the State power, the centralized executive, of which the Second Empire was only the exhausting formula was the Commune. This State power forms in fact the creation of the middle class, first [as] a means to break down feudalism, then [as] a means to crush the emancipatory aspirations of the producers, of the working class. All reactions and all revolutions had only served to transfer that organized power that organized force of the slavery of labour from one hand to the other, from one fraction of the ruling classes to the other. It had served the ruling classes as a means of subjugation and of pelf. It had sucked new forces from every new change. It had served as the instrument of breaking down every popular rise[v] and served it to crush the working classes after they had fought and been ordered to secure its transfer from one part of its oppressors to the others. This was, therefore, a revolution not against this or that, legitimate, constitutional, republican or imperialist form of State power. It was a revolution against the State itself, of this supernaturalist abortion of society, a resumption by the people for the people of its own social life. It was not a revolution to transfer it from one fraction of the ruling classes to the other, but a revolution to break down this horrid machinery of class domination itself. It was not one of those dwarfish struggles between the executive and the parliamentary forms of class domination, but a revolt against both these forms, integrating each other, and of which the parliamentary form was only the deceitful bywork of the Executive. The Second Empire was the final form of this State usurpation. The Commune was its definite negation, and, therefore, the initiation of the Social Revolution of the 19th century. Whatever therefore its fate at Paris, it will make le tour du monde [a trip round the world]. It was at once acclaimed by the working class of Europe and the United States as the magic word of delivery. The glories and the antediluvian deeds of the Prussian conqueror seemed only hallucinations of a bygone past. But this one form of class rule had only broken down to make the Executive, the governmental State machinery the great and single object of attack to the revolution. Parliamentarism in France had come to an end. Its last term and fullest sway was the Parliamentary Republic from May 1848 to the coup d tat. The Empire that killed it, was its own creation. Under the Empire with its Corps l gislatif and its Senate in this form it has been reproduced in the military monarchies of Prussia and Austria it had been a mere farce, a mere bywork of despotism in its crudest form. Parliamentarism then was dead in France and the workmen s revolution certainly was not to awaken it from this death. The Commune the reabsorption of the State power by society as its own living forces instead of as forces controlling and subduing it, by the popular masses themselves, forming their own force instead of the organized force of their suppression the political form of their social emancipation, instead of the artificial force (appropriated by their oppressors) (their own force opposed to and organized against them) of society wielded for their oppression by their enemies. The form was simple like all great things. The reaction of former revolutions the time wanted for all historical developments, and in the past always lost in all revolutions, in the very days of popular triumph, whenever it had rendered its victorious arms, to be turned against itself first by displacing the army by the National Guard.[w] (The people had only to organize this militia on a national scale, to have done away with the standing armies; [this is] the first economical condition sine qua [non ] for all social improvements, discarding at once this source of taxes and State debt, and this constant danger to government usurpation of class rule of the regular class rule or an adventurer pretending to save all classes); at the same time the safest guarantee against foreign aggression and making in fact the costly military apparatus impossible in all other States; the emancipation of the peasant from the blood-tax and [from being] the most fertile source of all State taxation and State debts. Here [is] already the point in which the Commune is a luck for the peasant, the first word of his emancipation. With the independent police abolished, and its ruffians supplanted by servants of the Commune. The general suffrage, till now abused either for the parliamentary sanction of the Holy State Power, or a play[x] in the hands of the ruling classes, only employed by the people to sanction (choose the instruments of) parliamentary class rule once in many years, [is] adapted to its real purposes, to choose by the Communes their own functionaries of administration and initiation. [Dispelled is] the delusion as if administration and political governing were mysteries, transcendent functions only to be trusted to the hands of a trained caste State parasites, richly-paid sycophants and sinecurists in the higher posts, absorbing the intelligence of the masses and turning them against themselves in the lower places of the hierarchy. Doing away with the State hierarchy altogether and replacing the haughteous masters of the people into [read by] always removable servants, a mock responsibility by a real responsibility, as they act continuously under public supervision. Paid like skilled workmen, 12 pounds a month, the highest salary not exceeding 240 a year, a salary somewhat more than 1/5, according to a great scientific authority, Professor Huxley, to satisfy a clerk for the Metropolitan School Board. The whole sham of State mysteries and State pretensions was done away [with] by a Commune, mostly consisting of simple working men, organizing the defence of Paris, carrying war against the praetorians of Bonaparte, securing the approvisionnement [supply] of that immense town, filling all the posts hitherto divided between government, police, and prefecture, doing their work publicly, simply, under the most difficult and complicated circumstances, and doing it, as Milton did his Paradise Lost, for a few pounds, acting in bright daylight, with no pretensions to infallibility, not hiding itself behind circumlocution offices, not ashamed to confess blunders by correcting them. Making in one order the public functions military, administrative, political real workmen s functions, instead of the hidden attributes of a trained caste; (keeping order in the turbulence of civil war and revolution) (initiating measures of general regeneration). Whatever the merits of the single measures of the Commune, its greatest measure was its own organization, extemporized with the foreign enemy at one door, and the class enemy at the other, proving by its life its vitality, confirming its thesis by its action. Its appearance was a victory over the victors of France. Captive Paris resumed by one bold spring the leadership of Europe, not depending on brute force, but by taking the lead of the social movement, by giving body to the aspirations of the working class of all countries. With all the great towns organized into Communes after the model of Paris, no government could repress the movement by the surprise of sudden reaction. Even by this preparatory step the time of incubation, the guarantee of the movement, came. All France [would be] organized into self-working and self-governing Communes, the standing army replaced by the popular militias, the army of State parasites removed, the clerical hierarchy displaced by the schoolmaster, the State judge transformed into Communal organs, the suffrage for the national representation not a matter of sleight of hand for an all-powerful government but the deliberate expression of organized Communes, the State functions reduced to a few functions for general national purposes. Such is the Commune the political form of the social emancipation, of the liberation of labour from the usurpations (slaveholding) of the monopolists of the means of labour, created by the labourers themselves or forming the gift of nature. As the State machinery and parliamentarism are not the real life of the ruling classes, but only the organized general organs of their dominion, the political guarantees and forms and expressions of the old order of things, so the Commune is not the social movement of the working class and therefore of a general regeneration of mankind, but the organized means of action. The Commune does not [do] away with the class struggles, through which the working classes strive to [read for] the abolition of all classes and, therefore, of all classes [class rule] (because it does not represent a peculiar interest, it represents the liberation of labour, that is the fundamental and natural condition of individual and social life which only by usurpation, fraud, and artificial contrivances can be shifted from the few upon the many), but it affords the rational medium in which that class struggle can run through its different phases in the most rational and humane way. It could start violent reactions and as violent revolutions. It begins the emancipation of labour its great goal by doing away with the unproductive and mischievous work of the State parasites, by cutting away the springs which sacrifice an immense portion of the national produce to the feeding of the State monster on the one side, by doing, on the other, the real work of administration, local and national, for working men s wages. It begins therefore with an immense saving, with economical reform as well as political transformation. The Communal organization once firmly established on a national scale, the catastrophes it might still have to undergo, would be sporadic slaveholders insurrections, which, while for a moment interrupting the work of peaceful progress, would only accelerate the movement, by putting the sword into the hands of the Social Revolution. The working class know that they have to pass through different phases of class struggle. They know that the superseding of the economical conditions of the slavery of labour by the conditions of free and associated labour can only be the progressive work of time (that economical transformation), that they require not only a change of distribution, but a new organization of production, or rather the delivery (setting free) of the social forms of production in present organized labour (engendered by present industry), of [read from] the trammels of slavery, of [read from] their present class character, and their harmonious national and international co-ordination. They know that this work of regeneration will be again and again relented[y] and impeded by the resistance of vested interests and class egotisms. They know that the present spontaneous action of the natural laws of capital and landed property can only be superseded by the spontaneous action of the laws of the social economy of free and associated labour by a long process of development of new conditions, as was the spontaneous action of the economic laws of slavery and the spontaneous action of the economical laws of serfdom. But they know at the same time that great strides may be [made] at once through the Communal form of political organization and that the time has come to begin that movement for themselves and mankind. (War indemnity.) Even before the instalment of the Commune, the Central Committee had declared through its Journal officiel: The greater part of the war indemnity should be paid by the authors of war. This is the great conspiracy against civilization the men of Order are most afraid of. This [is] the most practical question. With the Commune victorious, the authors of the war will have to pay its indemnity; with Versailles victorious, the producing masses who have already paid in blood, ruin, and contribution, will have again to pay, and the financial dignitaries will even contrive to make a profit out of the transaction. The liquidation of the war costs is to be decided by the civil war. The Commune represents on this vital point not only the interests of the working class, the petty middle class, in fact, all the middle class with the exception of the bourgeoisie (the wealthy capitalists) (the rich landowners, and their State parasites). It represents above all the interest of the French peasantry. On them the greater part of the war taxes will be shifted, if Thiers and his Ruraux are victorious. And people are silly enough to repeat the cry of the Ruraux that they the great landed proprietors represent the peasant, who is of course, in the naivety of his soul, exceedingly anxious to pay for these good landowners the milliards of the war indemnity, who made him already pay the milliard of indemnity: the Revolution indemnity. The same men deliberately compromised the Republic of February by the additional 45 centimes tax on the peasant, but this they did in the name of the Revolution, in the name of the provisional government, created by it. It is now in their own name that they wage a civil war against the Communal Republic to shift the war indemnity from their own shoulders upon those of the peasant! He will of course be delighted by it! The Commune will abolish conscription, the Party of Order will fasten the blood-tax on the peasant. The Party of Order will fasten upon him the tax-collector for the payment of a parasitical and costly State machinery, the Commune will give him a cheap government. The Party of Order will continue [to] grind him down by the townish usurer, the Commune will free him of the incubus of the mortgages lasting upon his plot of land. The Commune will replace the parasitical judiciary body eating the heart of his income the notary, the huissier, etc. [by] Communal agents doing their work at workmen s salaries, instead of enriching himself out of the peasant s work. It will break down this whole judiciary cobweb which entangles the French peasant and gives abodes to the judiciary bench and maires of the bourgeois spiders that suck its blood! The Party of Order will keep him under the rule of the gendarme, the Commune will restore him to independent, social and political life! The Commune will enlighten him by the rule of the schoolmaster, the Party of Order force upon him the stultification by the rule of the priest! But the French peasant is above all a man of reckoning! He will find it exceedingly reasonable that the payment of the clergy will no longer [be] exacted from him by the tax-collector, but will be left to the spontaneous action of his religious instinct! The French peasant had elected Louis Bonaparte President of the Republic, but the Party of Order (during the anonymous r gime of the Republic under the assembly constituante and l gislative ) was the creator of the Empire! What the French peasant really wants, he commenced to show in 1849 and 1852 by opposing his maire to the government s prefect, his schoolmaster to the government s parson, himself to the government s gendarme! The nucleus of the reactionary laws of the Party of Order in 1849 and peculiarly in January and February 1850 were specifically directed against the French peasantry! If the French peasant had made Louis Bonaparte President of the Republic because in his tradition all the benefits he had derived from the first Revolution were phantastically transferred on the first Napoleon, the armed risings of peasants in some departments of France and the gendarme hunting upon them after the coup d tat proved that that delusion was rapidly breaking down! The Empire was founded on the delusions artificially nourished into power and [on] traditional prejudices, the Commune would be founded on his living interests and his real wants. The hatred of the French peasant is centring on the Rurals, the men of the Ch teau, the men of the milliard of indemnity and the townish capitalist, masqueraded into [read as] a landed proprietor, whose encroachment upon him marched never more rapidly than under the Second Empire, partly fostered by artificial State means, partly naturally growing out of the very development of modern agriculture. The Rurals know that three months rule of the Republican Empire in France would be the signal of the rising of the peasantry and the agricultural proletariat against them. Hence their ferocious hatred of the Commune! What they fear even more than the emancipation of the townish proletariat is the emancipation of the peasants. The peasants would soon acclaim the townish proletariat as their own leaders and seniors. There exists of course in France as in most continental countries a deep antagonism between the townish and rural producers, between the industrial proletariat and the peasantry. The aspirations of the proletariat, the material basis of its movement is labour organized on a grand scale, although now despotically organized, and the means of production centralized, although now centralized in the hands of the monopolist, not only as a means of production, but as a means of the exploitation and enslavement of the producteur [producers]. What the proletariat has to do is to transform the present capitalist character of that organized labour and those centralized means of labour, to transform them from the means of class rule and class exploitation into forms of free associated labour and social means of production. On the other hand, the labour of the peasant is insulated and the means of production are parcelled, dispersed. On these economical differences rests superconstructed[z] a whole world of different social and political views. But this peasantry proprietorship has long since outgrown its normal phase, that is, the phase in which it was a reality, a mode of production and a form of property which responded to the economical wants of society and placed the rural producers themselves into normal conditions of life. It has entered its period of decay. On the one side a large prol tariat foncier (rural proletariat) has grown out of it, whose interests are identical with those of the townish wages labourers. The mode of production itself has become superannuated by the modern progress of agronomy. Lastly the peasant proprietorship itself has become nominal, leaving to the peasant the delusion of proprietorship and expropriating him from the fruits of his own labour. The competition of the great farm producers, the blood-tax, the State tax, the usury of the townish mortgagee and the multitudinous pilfering of the judiciary system thrown around him, have degraded him to the position of a Hindoo ryot, while expropriation even expropriation from his nominal proprietorship and his degradation into a rural proletarian is an everyday fact. What separates the peasant from the proletarian is, therefore, no longer his real interest, but his delusive prejudice. If the Commune, as we have shown, is the only power that can give him immediate great loans even in its present economical conditions, it is the only form of government that can secure to him the transformation of his present economical conditions, rescue him from expropriation by the landlord on the one hand, save him from grinding, trudging[aa] and misery on the pretext of proprietorship on the other, that can convert his nominal proprietorship of the land into real proprietorship of the fruits of his labour, that can combine for him the profits of modern agronomy, dictated by social wants and every day now encroaching upon him as a hostile agency, without annihilating his position as a really independent producer. Being immediately benefited by the Communal Republic, he would soon confide in it. The party of disorder, whose r gime topped[ab] under the corruption of the Second Empire, has left Paris (exodus from Paris), followed by its appurtenances, its retainers, its menials, its State parasites, its mouchards, its cocottes, and the whole band of low boh me (the common criminals) that form the complement of that boh me of quality. But the true vital elements of the middle classes, delivered by the workmen s revolution from their sham representants, has for the first time in the history of French Revolutions, separated from it and come out in its true colours. It is the Ligue of Republican Liberty, acting the intermediary between Paris and the provinces, disavowing Versailles and marching under the banners of the Commune. We have seen that the Paris proletarian fights for the French peasant, and Versailles fights against him; that the greatest anxiety of the Ruraux is that Paris be heard by the peasant and no longer separated by [read from] him through the blockade; that at the bottom of its war upon Paris is the attempt to keep the peasantry as its bondman and treat him as before as its mati re taillable merci et mis ricorde [its object liable to pay taxes at its mercy and behest ]. For the first time in history the petty and moyenne middle class [petty and middle bourgeoisie] has openly rallied round the workmen s Revolution, and proclaimed it as the only means of their own salvation and that of France! It forms with them the bulk of the National Guard, it sits with them in the Commune, it mediates for them in the Union r publicaine! The principal measures taken by the Commune are taken for the salvation of the middle class the debtor class of Paris against the creditor class! That middle class had rallied in the June insurrection (1848) against the proletariat under the banners of the capitalist class, their generals, and their State parasites. It was punished at once on the 19 September 1848 by the rejection of the concordats l amiable. The victory over the June insurrection showed itself at once also as the victory of the creditor, the wealthy capitalist over the debtor, the middle class. It insisted mercilessly on its pound of flesh. On the 13th June, 1849 the National Guard of that middle class was disarmed and sabred down by the army of the bourgeoisie! During the Empire, [as a result of] the dilapidation of the State resources, upon which the wealthy capitalist fed, this middle class was delivered to the plunder of the stock-jobber, the railway kings, the swindling associations of the Cr dit mobilier, etc., and expropriated by capitalist association (joint-stock company). If lowered in its political position, attacked in its economical interests, it was morally revolted by the orgies of that r gime. The infamies of the war gave the last shock and roused its feelings as Frenchmen. [Considering] the disasters bestowed upon France by that war, its crisis of national breakdown and its financial ruin, this middle class feels that not the corrupt class of the would-be slaveholders of France, but only the manly aspirations and the herculean power of the working class can come to the rescue! They feel that only the working class can emancipate them from priest rule, convert science from an instrument of class rule into a popular force, convert the men of science themselves from the panderers to class prejudice, place-hunting State parasites, and allies of capital into free agents of thought! Science can only play its genuine part in the Republic of Labour. This civil war has destroyed the last delusions about [the] Republic, as the Empire [destroyed] the delusion of unorganized universal suffrage in the hands of the State gendarme and the parson. All vital elements of France acknowledge that a Republic is only in France and Europe possible as a Social Republic, that is a Republic which disowns the capital and landowner class of the State machinery to supersede it by the Commune, that frankly avows social emancipation as the great goal of the Republic and guarantees thus that social transformation by the Communal organization. The other Republic can be nothing but the anonymous terrorism of all monarchical fractions, of the combined Legitimists, Orleanists, and Bonapartists to land in an Empire quelconque [of any kind] as its final goal, the anonymous terror of class rule which having done its dirty work will always burst into an Empire! The professional Republicans of the Rural Assembly are men who really believe, despite the experiments of 1848-51, despite the civil war against Paris the Republican form of class despotism [to be] a possible, lasting form, while the Party of Order demands it only as a form of conspiracy for fighting the Republic and reintroducing its only adequate form, monarchy or rather imperialism, as the form of class despotism. In 1848 these voluntary dupes were pushed in the foreground till, by the insurrection of June, they had paved the way for the anonymous rule of all fractions of the would-be slaveholders in France. In 1871, at Versailles, they are from [the] beginning pushed in the background, there to figure as the Republican decoration of Thiers rule and sanction by their presence the war of the Bonapartist generals upon Paris! In unconscious self-irony these wretches hold their party meeting in the Salle des Paume (Tennis Court) to show how they have degenerated from their predecessors in 1789! By their Sch lchers, etc., they tried to coax Paris in[to] tendering its arms to Thiers and to force it into disarmament by the National Guard of Order under Saisset! We do not speak of the so-called socialist Paris deputies like Louis Blanc. They undergo meekly the insults of a Dufaure and the Ruraux, dote upon Thiers legal rights, and whining in [the] presence of the banditti cover themselves with infamy! If the workmen have outgrown the time of socialist sectarianism, it ought not be forgotten that they have never been in the leading strings of Comtism. This sect has never afforded the International but a branch of about half a dozen of men, whose programme was rejected by the General Council. Comte is known to the Parisian workmen as the prophet in politics of imperialism (of personal dictatorship ), of capitalist rule in political economy, of hierarchy in all spheres of human action, even in the sphere of science, and as the author of a new catechism with a new pope and new saints in place of the old ones. If his followers in England play a more popular part than those in France it is not by preaching their sectarian doctrines, but by their personal valour, and by the acceptance [... ? ...] of the forms of working-men class struggle created without them,[ad] as, f.i., the trade unions and strikes in England which by the by are denounced as heresy by their Paris co-religionists. That the workmen of Paris have taken the initiative of the present Revolution and in heroic self-sacrifice bear the brunt of this battle, is nothing new. It is the striking fact of all French Revolutions! It is only a repetition of the past! That the Revolution is made in the name and confessedly for the popular masses, that is, the producing masses, is a feature this Revolution has in common with all its predecessors. The new feature is that the people, after the first rise, have not disarmed themselves and surrendered their power into the hands of the Republican mountebanks of the ruling classes, that, by the constitution of the Commune, they have taken the actual management of their Revolution into their own hands and found at the same time, in the case of success, the means to hold it in the hands of the people itself, displacing the State machinery, the governmental machinery of the ruling classes by a governmental machinery of their own. This is their ineffable crime! Workmen infringing upon the governmental privilege of the upper 10,000 and proclaiming their will to break the economical basis of that class despotism which for its own sake wielded the organized State force of society! This is it that has thrown the respectable classes in Europe as in the United States into the paroxysm of convulsions and accounts for their shrieks of abomination [that] it is blasphemy, [and for] their fierce appeals to assassination of the people and the billingsgate of abuse and calumny from their parliamentary tribunes and their journalistic servants hall! The greatest measure of the Commune is its own existence, working, acting under circumstances of unheard-of difficulty! The red flag, hissed[ae] by the Paris Commune, crowns in reality only the government of workmen for Paris! They have clearly, consciously proclaimed the Emancipation of Labour, and the transformation of society, as their goal! But the actual social character of their Republic consists only in this, that workmen govern the Paris Commune! As to their measures, they must, by the nature of things, be principally confined to the military defence of Paris and its approvisionnement [supply]! Some patronizing friends of the working class, while hardly dissembling their disgust even at the few measures they consider as socialist, although there is nothing socialist in them except their tendency, express their satisfaction and try to coax genteel sympathies for the Paris Commune by the great discovery that, after all, workmen are rational men and whenever in power always resolutely turn their back upon socialist enterprises! They do in fact neither try to establish in Paris a phalanst re nor an Icarie. Wise men of their generation! These benevolent patronizers, profoundly ignorant of the real aspirations and the real movement of the working classes, forget one thing. All the socialist founders of sects belong to a period in which the working class themselves were neither sufficiently trained and organized by the march of capitalist society itself to enter as historical agents upon the world s stage, nor were the material conditions of their emancipation sufficiently matured in the old world itself. Their misery existed, but the conditions of their own movement did not yet exist. The utopian founders of sects, while in their criticism of present society clearly describing the goal of the social movement, the supersession of the wages system with all its economical conditions of class rule, found neither in society itself the material conditions of its transformation, nor in the working class the organized power and the conscience [consciousness] of the movement. They tried to compensate for the historical conditions of the movement by phantastic pictures and plans of a new society in whose propaganda they saw the true means of salvation. From the moment the working-men class movement became real, the phantastic utopias evanesced, not because the working class had given up the end aimed at by these Utopists, but because they had found the real means to realize them, but in their place came a real insight into the historic conditions of the movement and a more and more gathering force of the military organization of the working class. But the last 2 ends of the movement proclaimed by the Utopians are the last ends proclaimed by the Paris Revolution and by the International. Only the means are different and the real conditions of the movement are no longer clouded in utopian fables. These patronizing friends of the proletariat, in glossing over the loudly proclaimed socialist tendencies of this Revolution, are therefore but the dupes of their own ignorance. It is not the fault of the Paris proletariat, if for them the utopian creations of the prophets of the working-men movement are still the Social Revolution, that is to say, if the Social Revolution is for them still utopian. They denounce the political incapacity and the moral decrepitude of the bourgeoisie as the source of the misfortunes of France. It is here plainly stated that the government of the working class is, in the first instance, necessary to save France from the ruins and the corruption impended upon it by the ruling classes, that the dislodgment of these classes from power (of these classes who have lost the capacity of ruling France) is a necessity of national safety. But it is no less clearly stated that the government by the working class can only save France and do the national business, by working for its own emancipation, the conditions of that emancipation being at the same time the conditions of the regeneration of France. It is proclaimed as a war of labour upon the monopolists of the means of labour, upon capital. The chauvinism of the bourgeoisie is only a vanity, giving a national cloak to all their own pretensions. It is a means, by permanent armies, to perpetuate international struggles, to subjugate in each country the producers by pitching them against their brothers in each other country, a means to prevent the international co-operation of the working classes, the first condition of their emancipation. The true character of that chauvinism (long since become a mere phrase) has come out during the war of defence after Sedan, everywhere paralysed by the chauvinist bourgeoisie in the capitulation of France, in the civil war carried on under that high priest of chauvinism, Thiers, on Bismarck s sufferance! It came out in the petty police intrigue of the Anti-German League, [in the] foreigners hunting in Paris after the capitulation. It was hoped that the Paris people (and the French people) could be stultified into the passion of national hatred and by factitious outrages to the foreigner forget its real aspiration and its home betrayers! How has this factitious movement disappeared (vanished) before the breath of revolutionary Paris! Loudly proclaiming its international tendencies because the cause of the producer is every[where] the same and its enemy everywhere the same, whatever its nationality (in whatever national garb? it proclaimed as a principle the admission of foreigners into the Commune; it chose even a foreign workman[af] (a member of the International) into its Executive, it decreed [the destruction of] the symbol of French chauvinism the Vend me Column! And while their bourgeois chauvins have dismembered France, and act under the dictatorship of the foreign invasion, the Paris workmen have beaten the foreign enemy by striking at their own class rulers, have abolished fractions, in conquering the post as the vanguard of the workmen of all nations! The genuine patriotism of the bourgeoisie so natural for the real proprietors of the different national estates has faded into a mere sham consequent upon the cosmopolitan character imprinted upon their financial, commercial, and industrial enterprise. Under similar circumstances it would explode in all countries as it did in France. It has been said that Paris, and with it, the other French towns, were oppressed by the rule of the peasants, and that its present struggle is for its emancipation from the rule of the peasantry! Never was a more foolish lie uttered! Paris, as the central seat and the stronghold of the centralized government machinery, subjected the peasantry to the rule of the gendarme, the tax-collector, the Prefect, and the priest, and the rural magnates, that is, to the despotism of its enemies, and deprived it of all life (took the life out of it). It repressed all organs of independent life in the rural districts. On the other hand, the government, the rural magnate, the gendarme and the priest, into whose hands the whole influence of the provinces was thus thrown by the centralized State machinery centring at Paris, brought this influence to bear for the government and the classes whose government it was, not against [the] Paris [of] the government, the parasite, the capitalist, the idle, the cosmopolitan stew, but against the Paris of the workman and the thinker. In this way, by the government centralization with Paris as its base, the peasants were suppressed by the Paris of the government and the capitalist and the Paris of the workmen was suppressed by the provincial power handed over into the hands of the enemies of the peasants. Mr. Thiers, in his tour through the provinces, managed the elections, and above all, his own manifold elections. But there was one difficulty. The Bonapartist provincials had for the moment become impossible. (Besides, he did not want them, nor did they want him.) Many of the old Orleanist stagers had merged into the Bonapartist lot. It was, therefore, necessary, to appeal to the rusticated Legitimist landowners who had kept quite aloof from politics and were just the men to be duped. They have given the apparent character to the Versailles Assembly, its character of the Chambre introuvable of Louis XVIII, its Rural character. In their vanity, they believed, of course, that their time had at last come with the downfall of the Second Bonapartist Empire and under the shelter of foreign invasion, as it had come in 1814 and 1815. Still they are mere dupes. So far as they act, they can only act as elements of the Party of Order, and its anonymous terrorism as in 1848-1851. Their own party effusions lend only the comical character to that association. They are, therefore, forced to suffer as president the jail-accoucheur of the Duchess of Berry and as their ministers the pseudo-Republicans of the Government of Defence. They will be pushed aside as soon as they have done their service. But a trick of history by this curious combination of circumstances they are forced to attack Paris because of revolting against the R publique une et indivisible [the Republic, one and indivisible] (Louis Blanc expresses it so, Thiers calls it unity of France) while their very first exploit was to revolt against unity by declaring for the decapitation and decapitalization of Paris, by wanting the Assembly to throne in a provincial town. What they really want is to go back to what preceded the centralized State machinery, become more or less independent of its prefects and its ministers, and put into its place the provincial and local domainial influence of the Ch teaux. They want a reactionary decentralization of France. What Paris wants is to supplant that centralization which has done its service against feodality, but has become the mere unity of an artificial body, resting on gendarmes, red and black armies, repressing the life of real society, lasting as an incubus upon it, giving Paris an apparent omnipotence by enclosing it and leaving the provinces outdoor[ag] to supplant this unitarian France which exists besides the French society, by the political union of French society itself through the Communal organization. The true partisans of breaking up the unity of France are therefore the Rurals, opposed to the united State machinery so far as it interferes with their own local importance (seignorial rights), so far as it is the antagonist of feudalism. What Paris wants is to break up that factitious unitarian system, so far as it is the antagonist of the real living union of France and a mere means of Class rule. Men completely ignorant of the existing economical system are of course still less able to comprehend the workmen s negation to that system. They can of course not comprehend that the social transformation the working class aim at is the necessary, historical, unavoidable birth[ah] of the present system itself. They talk in deprecatory tones of the threatened abolition of property, because in their eyes their present class form of property a transitory historical form is property itself, and the abolition of that form would therefore be the abolition of property. As they now defend the charity of capital rule and the wages system, if they had lived in feudal times or in times of slavery they would have defended the feudal system and the slave system, as founded on the nature of things, as a spontaneous outgrowth[?] springing from nature; [they would have] fiercely declaimed against their abuses, but at the same time from the height of their ignorance answering to the prophecies of their abolition by the dogma of their charity weighed by moral checks ( constraints ). They are as right in their appreciation of the aims of the Paris working classes, as is M. Bismarck in declaring that what the Commune wants is the social property which makes property the attribute of labour; far from creating individual moral constraints [it] will emancipate the morals of the individual from its class constraints. Poor men! They do not even know that every social form of property has morals of its own, and that the form of [. ...][ai] How the breath of the popular revolution has changed Paris! The Revolution of February was called the revolution of moral contempt. It was proclaimed by the cries of the people, A bas les grands voleurs! A bas les assassins! [ Down with the big thieves! Down with the assassins! ] Such was the sentiment of the people. But as to the bourgeoisie, they wanted broader sway for corruption! They got it under Louis Bonaparte s (Napoleon the Little s) reign. Paris, the gigantic town, the town of historic initiative, was transformed in[to] the maison dor e [ gilded house brothel] of all the idlers and swindlers of the world, into a cosmopolitan stew! After the exodus of the better class of people, the Paris of the working class reappeared, heroic, self-sacrificing, enthusiastic in the sentiment of its herculean task! No cadavers in the Morgue, no insecurity of the streets. Paris was never more quiet within. Instead of the cocottes, the heroic women of Paris! Manly, stern, fighting, working, thinking Paris! Magnanimous Paris! In view of the cannibalism of their enemies, making their prisoners only dangerless![aj] ... What Paris will no longer stand is yet the existence of the cocottes and cocod s [dandies]. What it is resolved to drive away or transform is this useless, sceptical and egoistical race which has taken possession of the gigantic town, to use it as its own. No celebrity of the Empire shall have the right to say, Paris is very pleasant in the best quarters, but there are too many paupers in the others. (V rit , 23 April ): This party knows only to employ three means: foreign invasion, civil war and anarchy. ... Such a government will never be that of France. (Chambre des d put s of 5th janvier, 1833.) And this same Trochu said in his famous programme: The governor of Paris will never capitulate, and Jules Favre in his circular: Not a stone of our fortresses, nor a foot of our territories, same as Ducrot: I shall never return to Paris save dead or victorious. He found afterwards at Bordeaux that his life was necessary for keeping down the rebels of Paris. (These wretches know that in their flight to Versailles they have left behind the proofs of their crimes, and to destroy these proofs they would not recoil from making Paris a mountain of ruins bathed in a sea of blood.) (Manifeste la province, by balloon.) 20,000 gendarmes (drawn to Versailles from all France, im ganzen 30,000 untet dem Empire[ak]) and 12,000 Paris police agents basis of the finest army France ever had. The Republican Deputies of Paris have not protested either against the bombardment of Paris, or the summary executions of the prisoners, or the calumnies against the people of Paris. They have on the contrary, by their presence at the Assembly and their mutisme [mutism], given a consecration to all these acts supported by the notoriety the Republican Party has given those men. Have become the allies and conscious accomplices of the monarchical party. Declares them traitors to their mandate and the Republic. (Association g n rale des d fenseurs de la R publique.) (9 May.) Centralization leads to apoplexy in Paris and to absence of life everywhere else. (Lamennais.) The Central Committee of the National Guard, constituted by the nomination of a delegate of each company, on the entrance of the Prussians into Paris, transported to Montmartre, Belleville et La Villette the cannon and mitrailleuses found[ed] by the subscription of the National Guards themselves, which cannon and mitrailleuses were abandoned by the Government of National Defence, even in those quarters which were to be occupied by the Prussians. On the morning of the 18th March the Government made an energetic appeal to the National Guard, but out of 400,000 National Guards only 300 men answered. On the 18th March, at 3 o clock in the morning, the agents of police and some bataillons of the line were at Montmartre, Belleville, and La Villette to surprise the guardians of artillery and to take it away by force. The National Guard resisted, the soldiers of the line lev rent la crosse en l air [raised the butts of their guns in th air], despite the menaces and the orders of General Lecomte, shot the same day by his soldiers at the same time as Cl ment Thomas. (#8220;Troops of the line threw the butts of their muskets in the air, and fraternized with the insurgents. ) The bulletin of victory by Aurelle de Paladines was already printed; also papers found on the Decentralization[al] of Paris. On the 19 March the Central Committee declared the state of siege of Paris raised; on the 20[th] Picard proclaimed it for the department of the Seine-et-Oise. Late in the afternoon, the nocturnal surprise having failed, he appeals to the National Guards : He will only do away with the insurgent committee"... almost all unknown to the population. Late in the evening, a third proclamation to the National Guard, signed by Picard and Aurelle: (On the 17th Sch lcher tries to wheedle them into disarming.) They allowed the members of the Government to with draw quietly to Versailles (even such as they had in their hands like Ferry). The Communal elections convoked for the 22 March through the demonstration of the Party of Order, removed[am] to the 26th March. Le Comit central tait si peu s r de sa victoire qu il accepta avec empressement la m diation des maires et des d put s de Paris ... L ent tement de Thiers lui permit (au Comit ) de vivre un ou deux jours: il eut alors conscience de ses forces. Fautes sans nombre des r volutionnaires. Au lieu de mettre les sergents de ville hors d tat de nuire, on leur ouvrit les portes; ils all rent Versailles, o ils furent accueillis comme les sauveurs; on laissa partir le 43e de ligne; on renvoya dans leurs foyers tous les soldats qui avaient fraternis avec le peuple; on permit la r action de s organiser dans le centre m me de Paris; on laissa tranquille Versailles. Tridon, Jaclard, Varlin, Vaillant voulaient qu on all t imm diatement d busquer les royalistes ... Favre et Thiers faisaient des d marches pressantes aupr s des autorit s prussiennes dans le but d obtenir leurs concours ... pour r primer le mouvement insurrectionnel de Paris. [The Central Committee was so little sure of its own victory that it hastily accepted the mediation by the mayors and deputies of Paris. ... Thiers obstinacy permitted it (the committee) to subsist one or two days: it then became aware of its own strength. Countless mistakes by the revolutionaries. Instead of disarming the police, they opened the gates to them; the police went to Versailles, where they were welcomed as saviours; they let the 43rd Regiment of the line leave; they sent home all the soldiers who had fraternized with the people; they allowed the reactionaries to organize themselves in the very centre of Paris; they left Versailles undisturbed. Tridon, Jaclard, Varlin and Vaillant wanted to drive out the Royalists immediately. ... Favre and Thiers took immediate action to obtain the support of the Prussian authorities ... in order to suppress the insurrectional movement in Paris.] L occupation constante de Trochu et de Cl ment Thomas d entraver toutes les tentatives d armement et d organisation de la Garde nationale. La marche sur Versailles fut d cid e, pr par e et entreprise par le Comit central, l insu de la Commune et m me en opposition directe avec sa volont nettement manifest e ... [Trochu and Cl ment Thomas were constantly preoccupied with thwarting every attempt of the National Guard to arm and organize. The march on Versailles was decided on, prepared and undertaken by the Central Committee without the knowledge of the Commune and even in opposition to its expressed wish. ...] As M. Littr said in a letter (Daily News, 20 April): The expedition to Rome, the work of Cavaignac, Jules Favre, and Thiers. 78 ) Il y a dans chaque commune de In R publique une administration municipale. Dans chaque district, une administration interm diaire, dans chaque d partement une administration centrale. 79 ) les officiers municipaux sont lus par les assembl es de la Commune. 80 ) Les administrateurs sont nomm s par les assembl es lectorales de d partement et de district. 81 ) Les municipalites et les administrations sont renouvel es tous les ans par moiti . [ 78 ) Each commune of the Republic has a municipal administration; each district, an intermediate administration; each department, a central administration. 79 ) The municipal officials are elected by the assemblies of the commune. 80 ) The administrators are appointed by the electoral assemblies of the department and the district. 81 ) Half of the municipal and administration members are replaced every year.] Roused on the one hand by Jules Favre s call to civil war in the Assembly he told that the Prussians had threatened to interfere, if the Parisians did not give in at once encouraged by the forbearance of the people and the passive attitude towards them of the Central Committee, the Party of Order at Paris resolved on a coup de main, which came off on the 22 March under the etiquette of a Peaceful Procession, a peaceable demonstration against the Revolutionary Government. And it was a peaceful demonstration of a very peculiar character. The whole movement seemed a surprise. There were no preparations to meet it. A riotous mob of gentlemen, in their first rank the familiars of the Empire, the Heeckeren, Co tlogon, and H. de P ne, etc., ill-treating and disarming National Guards detached from advanced sentinels (sentries), who fled to the Place Vend me whence the National Guards march at once to the Rue Neuve-des- Petits-Champs. Meeting the rioters, they received order not to fire, but the rioters advance under the cry: Down with the Assassins! Down with the Committee! , insult the guards, grasp at their muskets, shoot with a revolver citizen Maljournal (lieutenant d tat-major de la place ) (membre du Comit central) [(lieutenant of the staff at the Place) (member of the Central Committee)]. General Bergeret calls upon them to withdraw (disband) (retire). During about 5 minutes the drums are beaten and the sommations (replacing the English reading of the Riot Act) made. They reply by cries of insult. Two National Guards fall severely wounded. Meanwhile their comrades hesitate and fire into the air. The rioters try to forcibly break through the lines and to disarm them. Bergeret commands fire and the cowards fly. The meute [riot] is at once dispersed and the fire ceases. Shots are fired from houses on the National Guards. Two of them, Wahlin and Fran ois are killed, eight are wounded. The streets through which the pacific disband are strewn with revolvers and sword-canes (many of them picked up in the Rue de la Paix). Vicomte de Molinet, killed from behind (by his own people), [is] found with a dagger fixed by a chain. This was then simply an attempt to do by the reactionists of Paris, armed with revolvers, cane-swords, and daggers, what Vinoy had failed to do with his sergents de ville, soldiers, cannon and mitrailleuse. That the lower orders of Paris allowed themselves not even to be disarmed by the gentlemen of Paris, was really too bad! When on the 13th June, 1849 the National Guards of Paris made a really unarmed and pacific procession to protest against a crime, the attack on Rome by the French troops, General Changarnier was praised by his intimate Thiers for sabring and shooting them down. The state of siege was declared, new laws of repression, new proscriptions, a new reign of terror! Instead of all that, the Central Committee and the workmen of Paris strictly kept on the defensive, during the encounter itself, allowed the assailers (the gentlemen of the dagger), to return quietly home, and, by their indulgence, by not calling them to account for this daring enterprise, encouraged them so much that two days later, under the leadership of Admiral Saisset, sent from Versailles, [they] rallied again and tried again their hands at civil war. And this Vend me Affair evoked at Versailles a cry of assassination of unarmed citizens, reverberating throughout the world. Be it remarked that even Thiers, while eternally reiterating the assassination of the two generals, has not once dared to remind the world of this assassination of unarmed citizens. As in the medieval times the knight may use any weapon whatever against the plebeian, but the latter must not dare even to defend himself. (27 March, Versailles. Thiers : After the second rising of the Party of Order, the Paris people took no reprisals whatever. The Central Committee even committed the great blunder, against the advice of its most energetic members, not to march at once at Versailles, where, after the flight of Adm. Saisset and the ridiculous collapse of the National Guard of Order, consternation ruled supreme, there being not yet any forces of resistance organized. After the election of the Commune, the Party of Order tried again their forces at the ballot-box, and, when again beaten, effected their exodus from Paris. During the election hand-shaking and fraternization of the bourgeois (in the courts of the Mayoralities) with the insurgent National Guards, while among themselves they talk of nothing but d cimation en masse, mitraille, frying at Cayenne, wholesale fusillades. Thiers commenced the armed attack on the National Guard for the second time in [the] Affair of April 2. Fighting between Courbevoie and Neuilly, close to Paris. National Guards beaten, bridge of Neuilly occupied by Thiers soldiers. Several thousands of National Guards having come out of Paris and occupied Courbevoie et Puteaux and the bridge of Neuilly, routed. Many prisoners taken. Many of the insurgents immediately shot as rebels. Versailles troops began the firing. On 2nd April the Versailles Government had sent forward a division chiefly consisting of gendarmes, marines, forest

Drafts of The Civil War in France

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/drafts/ch01.htm

The Republic proclaimed on the 4th [of] September by the Paris workmen, was acclaimed through all France without a single voice of dissent. Its right of life was fought for by a 5 months defensive war (centring in) based upon the resistance of Paris. Without that war of defence waged in the name of the Republic, William the Conqueror[a] would have restored the Empire of his good brother Louis Bonaparte. The cabal of barristers, with Thiers for their statesman, and Trochu for their general,[b] installed themselves at the H tel de Ville at a moment of surprise, when the real leaders of [the] Paris working class were still shut up in Bonapartist prisons and the Prussian army was already marching upon Paris. So deeply were the Thiers, the Jules Favres, the Picards then imbued with the belief in the historical leadership of Paris that they founded their claim as the Government of National Defence upon their having been chosen in the elections to the Corps l gislatif in 1869. In our second address on the late war, five days after the advent of those men, we told you what they were.[c] If they had seized the government without consulting Paris, Paris had proclaimed the Republic in the teeth of their resistance. And their first step was to send Thiers begging about at all courts of Europe there to buy if possible foreign mediation, bartering the Republic for a king. Paris did bear with their r gime (assumption of power), because they highly professed on their solemn vow to wield that power for the single purpose of national defence. Paris, however, could not be (was not to be) seriously defended without arming the working class, organizing them into a National Guard, and training them through the war itself. But Paris armed was the Social Revolution armed. The victory of Paris over the Prussians would have been a victory of the Republic over French class rule. In this conflict between national duty and class interest the Government of National Defence did not hesitate one moment to turn into a Government of National Defection. In a letter to Gambetta, Jules Favre confessed that what Trochu stood in defence of [read against], was not the Prussian soldier, but the Paris workman. Four months after the commencement of the siege when they thought the opportune moment come for breaking the first word of capitulation, Trochu, in the presence of Jules Favre and others of his colleagues, addresses the r union [meeting] of the maires of Paris in these terms: (This little speech of Trochu was after the armistice, published by M. Corbon, one of the maires present. Thus on the very evening of the proclamation of the Republic, Trochu s plan, known to his colleagues, [was] nothing else but the capitulation of Paris and France. To cure Paris of its heroic folly, it had to undergo a treatment of decimation and famine, long enough to screen the usurpers of the 4th of September from the vengeance of the December men. If national defence had been more than a false pretence for government, its self-appointed members would have abdicated on the 5th of September, publicly revealed Trochu s plan and called upon the Paris people to at once surrender to the conqueror or take the work of defence in its own hands. Instead of this the imposters published high-sounding manifestoes wherein Trochu, the governor will never capitulate, and Jules Favre, the Foreign Minister, not cede a stone of our fortresses, nor a foot of our territory. Through the whole time of the siege Trochu s plan was systematically carried out. In fact the vile Bonapartist cut-throats, to whose trust they gave the generalship of Paris, cracked in their intimate correspondence ribald jokes at the well-understood farce of the defence. (See, f.i., the correspondence of Alphonse Simon Guiod, supreme commander of the artillery of the army of defence of Paris and Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, to Suzanne, general of division of artillery, published by the Journal officiel of the Commune.) The mask of imposture was dropped at the capitulation of Paris. The Government of National Defence unmasked (resurged) itself as the government of France by Bismarck s prisoners a part which Louis Bonaparte himself, at Sedan, had considered too infamous even for a man of his stamp. On their wild flight to Versailles, after the events of the 18th March, the capitulards have left in the hands of Paris the documentary evidence of their treason, to destroy which, as the Commune says in its Manifesto to the Provinces, they would not recoil from battering Paris into a heap of ruins washed in a sea of blood." Some of the most influential members of the Government of Defence had moreover urgent private reasons of their own to be passionately bent upon such a consummation. Look only at Jules Favre, Ernest Picard, and Jules Ferry! Shortly after the conclusion of the armistice, M. Milli re, one of the representatives of Paris to the National Assembly, published a series of authentic legal documents in proof that Jules Favre, living in concubinage with the wife of a drunkard, resident at Algiers, had by a most daring concoction of forgeries, spread over many years, contrived to grasp, in the name of the children of his adultery, a large succession which made him a rich man, and that, in a lawsuit undertaken by the legitimate heirs, he only escaped exposure through the connivance of the Bonapartist tribunals. Since those dry legal documents were not to be got rid of by any horsepower of rhetorics, Jules Favre, in the same heroism of self-abusement, remained for once tongue-tied until the turmoil of the civil war allowed him to brand the Paris people in the Versailles assembly as a band of escaped convicts in utter revolt against family, religion, order and property! ([The ] Pic Affair). This very forger had hardly got into power when he sympathetically hastened to liberate two brother forgers, Pic and Taillefer, who had been under the Empire itself convicted to the hulks for theft and forgery. One of these men, Taillefer, daring to return to Paris after the instalment of the Commune, was at once returned to a convenient abode; and then Jules Favre told all Europe that Paris was setting free all the felonious inhabitants of her prisons! Ernest Picard, appointed by himself the Home Minister[d] of the French Republic on the 4th of September, after having striven in vain to become the Home Minister of Louis Bonaparte, is the brother of one Arthur Picard, an individual, expulsed from the Paris Bourse as a blackleg (Report of the Prefecture of Police, d.d. 13 July,[e] 1867) and convicted on his own confession of a theft of 300,000 francs while a director of one of the branches of the Soci t g n rale (see Report of the Prefecture of Police, 11 December, 1868). Both these reports have been still published at the time of the Empire. This Arthur Picard was made by Ernest Picard the r dacteur en chef [chief editor] of his Electeur libre to act during the whole siege as his financial go-between, discounting at the Bourse the State secrets in the trust of Ernest and safely speculating on the disasters of the French army, while the common jobbers were misled by the false news, and official lies, published in the Electeur libre, the organ of the Home Minister. The whole financial correspondence between that worthy pair of brothers has fallen into the hands of the Commune. No wonder that Ernest Picard, the Joe Miller of the Versailles Government, with his hands in his trousers pockets, walked from group to group cracking jokes, at the first batch of Paris National Guards, made prisoners and exposed to the ferocious outrages of Pi tri s lambs. Jules Ferry, a penniless barrister before the 4th of September, contrived as the Maire of Paris, to job during the siege a fortune out of the famine which was to a great part the work of his maladministration. The documentary proofs are in the hands of the Commune. The day on which he would have to give an account of his maladministration would be his day of judgment. These men therefore are the deadly foes of the working men s Paris, not only as parasites of the ruling classes, not only as the betrayers of Paris during the siege, but above all as common felons who only in the ruins of Paris, this stronghold of the French Revolution, can hope to find their tickets of leave. These desperadoes were exactly the men to become the ministers of Thiers. In the parliamentary sense things are only a pretext for words, serving as a snare for the adversary, an embuscade [ambuscade] for the people, or a matter of artistic display for the speaker himself. Their master M. Thiers, the mischievous gnome, has charmed the French bourgeoisie for almost half a century, because he is the most consummate intellectual expression of their own class corruption. Even before he became a statesman, he had shown his lying powers as a historian. Eager of display, like all dwarfish men, greedy of place and pelf, with a barren intellect but lively fancy, epicurean, sceptical, of an encyclopedic facility for mastering (learning) the surface of things, and turning things into a mere pretext for talk, a word-fencer of rare conversational power, a writer of lucid shallowness, a master of small state roguery, a virtuoso in perjury, a craftsman in all the petty stratagems, cunning devices and base perfidies of parliamentary party-warfare, national and class prejudices standing him in the place of ideas, and vanity in the place of conscience, in order to displace a rival, and to shoot[?] the people, in order to stifle the Revolution, mischievous when in opposition, odious when in power, never scrupling to provoke revolutions, the history of his public life is the chronicle of the miseries of his country. Fond of brandishing with his dwarfish arms in the face of Europe the sword of the first Napoleon, whose historical shoeblack he had become, his foreign policy always culminated in the utter humiliation of France, from the London convention of 1841[f] to the Paris capitulation of 1871 and the present civil war he wages under the shelter of Prussian invasion. It need not be said that to such a man the deeper undercurrents of modern society remained a closed book, but even the most palpable changes at its surface were abhorrent to a brain all whose vitality had fled to the tongue. For instance, he never fatigued to denounce any deviation from the old French protective system as a sacrilege, railways he sneeringly derided, when a minister of Louis Philippe, as a wild chimera, and every reform of the rotten French army system he branded under Louis Bonaparte as a profanation. With all his versatility of talent and shiftiness of purpose, he was steadily wedded to the traditions of a fossilized routine, and never, during his long official career, became guilty of one single, even the smallest measure of practical use. Only the old world s edifice may be proud of being crowned by two such men as Napoleon the Little and little Thiers. The so-called accomplishments of culture appear in such a man only as the refinement of debauchery and the ... [g] of selfishness. Banded with the Republicans under the Restauration, Thiers insinuated himself with Louis Philippe as a spy upon and the jail-accoucheur of the Duchess of Berry, but his activity when he had first slipt into a ministry (1834-35) centred in the massacre of the insurgent Republicans at the Rue Transnonain and the incubation of the atrocious September laws against the press. Reappearing as the chief of the cabinet in March 1840 he came out with the plot of the Paris fortifications. To the [protest] of the Republican party against the sinister attempt on the liberty of Paris, he replied: Indeed no French government whatever save that of M. Thiers himself with his ticket-of-leave ministers and his Rural ruminants could have dared upon such a deed! And this too in the most classic form; one part of his fortifications in the hands of his Prussian conquerors and protectors. When King Bomba tried his hands at Palermo in January 1848, Thiers rose in the Chamber of Deputies: (If it had been by its own government, under the eyes and on the sufferance of the foreign enemy, all would, of course, have been right.) (If the bombardment had lasted 4 weeks and more, all would have been right.) Well, about a year later this fine-souled man became the sinister suggester and the most fierce defender (apologist) of the bombardment of Rome by the troops of the French Republic, under the command of the Legitimist Oudinot. A few days before the Revolution of February, fretting at the long exile from power to which Guizot had condemned him, smelling in the air the commotion, Thiers exclaimed again in the Chamber of Deputies: The Revolution of February came. Instead of displacing the cabinet [of] Guizot by the cabinet [of] Thiers, as the little man had dreamt, it displaced Louis Philippe by the Republic. To put down that Revolution was M. Thiers exclusive business from the proclamation of the Republic to the coup d tat. On the first day of the popular victory, he anxiously hid himself, forgetting that the contempt of the people rescued him from its hatred. Still, with his legendary courage, he continued to shy the public stage until after the bloody disruption of the material forces of the Paris proletariat by Cavaignac, the bourgeois Republican. Then the scene was cleared for his sort of action. His hour had again struck. He became the leading mind of the Party of Order and its Parliamentary Republic, that anonymous reign in which all the rival factions of the ruling classes conspired together to crush the working class and conspired against each other, each for the restoration of its own monarchy. (The Restoration had been the reign of aristocratic landed proprietors, the July Monarchy the reign of the capitalist, Cavaignac s republic the reign of the Republican fraction of the bourgeoisie, while during all these reigns the band of hungry adventurers forming the Bonapartist party had panted in vain for the plunder of France, that was to qualify them as the saviours of order and property, family and religion." That Republic was the anonymous reign of the coalesced Legitimists, Orleanists, and Bonapartists with the bourgeois Republicans for their tail.) If this Rural Assembly, meeting at Bordeaux, made this government, the Government of Defence men had before hand taken good care to make that Assembly. For that purpose they had dispatched Thiers on a travelling tour through the provinces, there to foreshadow coming events and make ready for the surprise of the general elections. Thiers had to overcome one difficulty. Quite apart from having become an abomination to the French people, the Bonapartists, if numerously elected, would at once have restored the Empire and embaled [h] M. Thiers and Co. for a voyage to Cayenne. The Orleanists were too sparsely scattered to fill their own places and those vacated by the Bonapartists. To galvanize the Legitimist party had therefore become unavoidable. Thiers was not afraid of his task. [The Legitimists were] impossible as a government of modern France, and therefore contemptible as rivals for place and pelf; who could be fitter to be handled as the blind tool of counter-revolution than the party whose action, in the words of Thiers, had always been confined to the three resources of foreign invasion, civil war, and anarchy"? (Speech of Thiers at the Chamber of Deputies of January 5, 1833.) A select set of the Legitimists, expropriated by the Revolution of 1789, had regained their estates by enlisting in the servant hall of the first Napoleon, [but] the bulk of them, by the milliard of indemnity and the private donations of the Restoration. Even their seclusion from participation in active politics under the successive reigns of Louis Philippe and Napoleon the Little served as a lever to the re-establishment of their wealth, as landed proprietors. Freed from court and representation costs at Paris, they had, out of the very corners of provincial France, only to gather the golden apples falling into their Ch teaux from the tree of modern industry, railways enhancing the price of their land, agronomy applied to it by capitalist farmers, increasing its produce, and the inexhaustible demand of a rapidly swollen town population securing the growth of markets for that produce. The very same social agencies which reconstituted their material wealth and remade their importance as partners of that joint-stock company of modern slaveholders, screened them from the infection of the modern ideas and allowed them, in rustic innocence, nothing to forget and nothing to learn. Such people furnished the mere passive material to be worked upon by a man like Thiers. While executing the mission entrusted to him by the Government of Defence, the mischievous imp overreached his mandataries in securing to himself that multitude of elections which was to convert the Defence men from his opponent masters into his avowed servants. The electoral traps being thus laid, the French people was suddenly summoned by the capitulards of Paris to choose, within 8 days, a National Assembly, with the exclusive task, by virtue of the terms of the convention of the 31st January, dictated by Bismarck, to decide on war or peace. Quite apart [from] the extraordinary circumstances, under which that election occurred, with no time for deliberation, with one half of France under the sway of Prussian bayonets, with its other half secretly worked upon by the government intrigue, with Paris secluded from the provinces, the French people felt instinctively that the very terms of the armistice, undergone by the capitulards left France no choice (alternative) but that of a peace outrance [at any price], and that for its sanction the worst men of France would be the best. Hence the Rural Assembly emerging at Bordeaux. Still we must distinguish between the old r gime orgies and the real historical business of the Rurals. Astonished to find themselves the strongest fraction of an immense majority composed of themselves and the Orleanists, with a contingent of bourgeois Republicans and a mere sprinkling of Bonapartists, they vainly believed in the long expected advent of their retrospective millennium. There were the heels of the foreign invasion, trampling upon France, there was the downfall of the Empire and the captivity of a Bonaparte, and there they were themselves. The wheel of history had evidently turned round to stop at the Chambre introuvable of 1816, with its deep and impassionate curses against the revolutionary deluge and its abominations, with its decapitation and decapitalization of Paris, its decentralization breaking through the network of State rule by the local influences of the Ch teaux and its religious homilies and its tenets of antediluvian politics, with [its] gentilhommerie [gentility], flippancy, its genealogic spite against the drudging masses, and its Oeil-de-Boeuf[i] views of the world. Still in point of fact they had only to act their part as joint-stock holders of the Party of Order, as monopolists of the means of production. From 1848 to 1851, they had only to form a fraction of the interregnum of the Parliamentary Republic, with this difference that then they were represented by the educated and trained parliamentary champions, the Berryer, the Falloux, the Larochejaquelein, while now they had to ask in their rustic rank and file, imparting thus a different tone and tune to the Assembly, masquerading its bourgeois reality under feudal colours. Their grotesque exaggerations (lies [?][j]) serve only to set off the liberalism of their banditti government. Ensnared into an usurpation of powers beyond their electoral mandates, they live only on the sufferance of their self-made rulers. The foreign invasion of 1814 and 1815 having been the deadly weapon wielded against them by the bourgeois parvenus, they have [in] injudicial blindness fastened upon themselves the responsibility of this unprecedented surrender of France to the foreigner by their bourgeois foes. The French people, astonished and insulted by the reappearance of all the noble Pourceaugnacs it believed buried long since, has become aware that beside making the Revolution of the 19th century it has to finish off[k] the Revolution of 1789 by driving the [... ? ...][l] to the last goal of all rustic criminals the shambles. The disarmament of Paris, as a mere necessity of the counter revolutionary plot, might have been undertaken in a more temporizing circumspect manner, but as a clause of the urgent financial treaty with its irresistible fascinations, it brooked no delay. Thiers had therefore to try his hands at a coup d tat. He opened the civil war by sending Vinoy, the D cembriseur, at the head of a multitude of sergents de ville and a few regiments of the line, upon the nocturnal expedition against the buttes Montmartre. His felonious attempt having broken down on the resistance of the National Guards and their fraternization with the soldiers, on the following day, in a manifesto stuck to the walls of Paris, Thiers told the National Guards of his magnanimous resolve to leave them their arms, with which he felt sure they would be eager to rally round the Government against the rebels. Out of 300,000 National Guards only 300 responded to his summons. The glorious workmen s Revolution of the 18th March had taken undisputed possession (sway) of Paris. The Central Committee, which directed the defence of Montmartre and emerged on the dawn of the 18th March as the leader of the Revolution, was neither an expedient of the moment nor the offspring of secret conspiracy. From the very day of the capitulation, by which the Government of National Defence had disarmed France but reserved to itself a bodyguard of 40,000 troops for the purpose of cowing Paris, Paris stood on the watch. The National Guard reformed its organization and entrusted its supreme control to a Central Committee, consisting of the delegates of the single companies, mostly workmen, with their main strength in the workmen s suburbs, but soon accepted by the whole body save its old Bonapartist formations. On the eve of the entrance of the Prussians into Paris, the Central Committee took measures for the removal to Montmartre, Belleville, and La Villette, of the cannon and mitrailleuses treacherously abandoned by the capitulards even in those quarters which the Prussians were about to occupy. It thus made safe of the artillery, furnished by the subscriptions of the National Guard, officially recognized as their private property in the convention of the 31st of January, and on that very title exempted from the general surrender of arms. During the whole interval from the meeting of the National Assembly at Bordeaux to the 18th of March, the Central Committee had been the people s government of the capital, strong enough to persist in its firm attitude of defence despite the provocations of the Assembly, the violent measures of the Executive, and the menacing concentration of troops. (The Revolution of the 4th of September had restored the Republic. The tenacious resistance of Paris during the siege, serving as the basis of a war of defence in the provinces, had wrung from the foreign invader the recognition of the Republic. Its true meaning and purpose were only revealed by the Revolution of the 18th March and that revelation was a Revolution. It was to supersede the social and political conditions of class rule which had engendered the Second Empire, and in their turn ripened under its tutelage into rottenness. Europe thrilled as under an electric shock. It seemed for a moment to doubt whether, in its recent sensational performances of State and war there was any reality and whether they were not the mere hallucination of a long bygone past, upon which the old world system rests.) The defeat of Vinoy by the National Guard was but a check given to the counter-revolution plotted by the ruling classes, but the Paris people turned at once that incident of their self-defence into the first act of a Social Revolution. The Revolution of the 4th September had restored the Republic after the throne of the usurper had become vacant. The tenacious re- sistance of Paris during its siege, serving as the basis for the defensive war in the provinces, had wrung from the foreign invader the recognition of that Republic, but its true meaning and purpose were only revealed on the 18th of March. It was to supersede the social and political conditions of class rule, upon which the old world s system rests, which had engendered the Second Empire and under its tutelage, ripened into rottenness. Europe thrilled as under an electric shock. It seemed for a moment to doubt whether its late sensational performances of State and war had any reality in them and were not the mere sanguinary dreams of a long bygone past. The traces of the long endured famine still upon their figures,[m] and under the very eyes of Prussian bayonets, the Paris working class conquered in one bound the championship of progress, etc. In the sublime enthusiasm of historic initiative, the Paris workmen s Revolution made it a point of honour to keep the proletarian clean of the crimes in which the Revolution and still more the counter-revolution of their natural superiors (betters) abound. But the horrid atrocities that have sullied this Revolution? So far as these atrocities imputed to them by their enemies are not the deliberate calumny of Versailles or the horrid spawn of the penny-a-liner s brain, they relate only to two facts the execution of the Generals Lecomte and Cl ment Thomas and the Vend me Affair, of which we shall dispose in a few words. One of the paid cut-throats selected for the (felonious handiwork) execution of the nocturnal coup de main on Montmartre, General Lecomte had on the Place Pigalles four times ordered his troops of the 81st of the line to charge an unarmed gathering, and on their refusal fiercely insulted them. Instead of shooting women and children, some of his own men shot him, when taken prisoner in the afternoon of the 18th March, in the gardens of the Ch teau-Rouge. The inveterate habits acquired by the French soldatesca under the training of the enemies of the working class, are of course not likely to change the very moment they change sides. The same soldiers executed Cl ment Thomas. The Central Commune[n] tried in vain to rescue these two criminals Lecomte and Cl ment Thomas from the soldiers wild Lynch justice, of which they themselves and the Paris workmen were as guilty as the Princess Alexandra of the people crushed to death on the day of her entrance in London. Jules Favre with his forged pathos, flung his curses upon Paris, the den of assassins. The Rural Assembly mimicked hysterical contortions of sensiblerie [sentimentality]. These men never shed their crocodile tears but as a pretext for shedding the blood of the people. To handle respectable cadavers as weapons of civil war has always been a favourite trick with the Party of Order. How did Europe ring in 1848 with their shouts of horror at the assassination of the Archbishop of Paris[o] by the insurgents of June, while they were fully aware from the evidence of an eyewitness, M. Jaquemet, the Archbishop s vicar, that the Bishop had been shot by Cavaignac s own soldiers! Through the letters to Thiers of the present Archbishop of Paris,[p] a man with no martyr s vein in him, there runs the shrewd suspicion that his Versailles friends were quite the men to console themselves of his prospective execution in the violent desire to fix that amiable proceeding on the Commune! However, when the cry of assassins had served its turn, Thiers coolly disposed of it by declaring from the tribune of the National Assembly, that the assassination was the private deed of a very few obscure individuals. The men of Order, the reactionists of Paris, trembling at the people s victory as the signal of retribution, were quite astonished by proceedings, strangely at variance with their own traditional methods of celebrating a defeat of the people. Even the sergents de ville, instead of being disarmed and locked up, had the doors of Paris flung wide open for their safe retreat to Versailles, while the men of Order, left not only unhurt, were allowed to rally quietly [and] lay hold on the strongholds in the very centre of Paris. They interpreted, of course, the indulgence of the Central Committee and the magnanimity of the armed workmen, as mere symptoms of conscious weakness. Hence their plan to try under the mask of an unarmed demonstration the work which four days before Vinoy s cannon and mitrailleuses had failed in. Starting from the quarters of luxury, a riotous mob of gentlemen with all the petits crev s [dandies] in their ranks and the familiars of the Empire, the Heeckeren, Co tlogon, H. de P ne, etc., at their head fell in marching order under the cries of Down with the Assassins! Down with the Central Committee! Vive l Assembl e nationale!", ill-treating and disarming the detached posts of National Guards they met with on their progress. When then at last debouching in[to] the Place Vend me, they tried, under shouts of ribald insults, to dislodge the National Guards from their headquarters, forcibly break through the lines. In answer to their pistol-shots the regular sommations (the French equivalent of the English reading of the Riot Act) were made, but proved ineffective to stop the aggressors. Then fire was commanded by the general of the National Guard[q] and these rioters dispersed in wild flight. Two National Guards killed, eight dangerously wounded and the streets, through which they [the rioters] disbanded, strewn with revolvers, daggers and cane-swords, gave clear evidence of the unarmed character of their pacific demonstration. When, on the 13th June 1849, the National Guards of Paris made a really unarmed demonstration of protest against the felonious assault on Rome by French troops, Changarnier, the general of the Party of Order had their ranks sabred, trampled down by cavalry, and shot down. The state of siege was at once proclaimed, new arrests, new proscriptions, a new reign of terror set in. But the lower orders manage these things otherwise. The runaways of the 22nd March, being neither followed nor harassed on their flight, nor afterwards called to account by the judge of instruction (juge d instruction), were able two days later to muster again an armed demonstration under Admiral Saisset. Even after the grotesque failure of this their second rising they were, like all other Paris citizens, allowed to try their hands at the ballot-box for the election of the Commune. When succumbing in this bloodless battle, they at last purged Paris from their presence by an unmolested exodus dragging along with them the cocottes, the lazzaroni and the other dangerous class[es] of the capital. The assassination of the unarmed citizens on the 22nd of March is a myth which even Thiers and his Rurals have never dared to harp upon entrusting it exclusively to the servants hall of European journalism. If there is to be found fault with in the conduct of the Central Committee and the Paris workmen towards these men of Order from 18th March to the time of their exodus, it is an excess of moderation bordering upon weakness. Look now to the other side of the medal! After the failure of their nocturnal surprise of Montmartre, the Party of Order began their regular campaign against Paris in the commencement of April. For inaugurating the civil war by the methods of December, the massacre in cold blood of the captured soldiers of the line and infamous murder of our brave friend Duval, Vinoy, the runaway, is appointed by Thiers Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour! Galliffet, the fancy man of that woman so notorious for her shameless masquerades at the orgies of the Second Empire, boasts in an official manifesto of the cowardly assassination of Paris National Guards with their lieutenant and their captain made by surprise and treason. Desmar t, the gendarme, is decorated for his butchery-like chopping of the high-souled and chivalrous Flourens, the encouraging particulars of whose death are triumphantly communicated to the Assembly of Thiers. In the horribly grotesque exultation of a Tom Pouce playing the part of Timur Tamerlane, Thiers denies the rebels against his littleness all the rights and customs of civilized warfare, even the right of ambulances." When the Commune had published on the 7 April the decree of reprisals, declaring it its duty to protect itself against the cannibal exploits of the Versailles banditti and to demand an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, the atrocious treatment of the Versailles prisoners, of whom Thiers says in one of his bulletins, never had more degraded countenances of a degraded democracy met the afflicted gazes of honest men, did not cease, but the fusillades of the captives were stopped. Hardly, however, had he and his Decembrist general become aware, that the Commune s decree was but an empty threat, that even their spying gendarmes caught in Paris under the disguise of National Guards, that even their sergents de ville captured with explosive bombs upon them were spared, when at once the old r gime set in again wholesale, and has continued to this day. The National Guards who had surrendered at Belle-Epine to an overwhelming force of Chasseurs were then shot down one after the other by the captain of the peloton [platoon] on horseback; houses to which Parisian troops and National Guards had fled, [were] surrounded by gendarmes, inundated with petroleum, and then set on fire, the calcinated corpses being afterwards transported by Paris ambulance; the bayoneting of the National Guards surprised by treason in their beds at the redoubt of Moulin-Saquet (the Federals surprised in their beds asleep), the massacre (fusillade) of Clamart, prisoners wearing the line uniform shot off-hand, all these high deeds flippantly told in Thiers bulletin are only a few incidents of this slaveholders rebellion! But would it not be ludicrous to quote single facts of ferocity in view of this civil war, fermented amidst the ruins of France, by the conspirators of Versailles, from the meanest motives of class interest, and [in view of] the bombardment of Paris under the patronage of Bismarck, in the sight of his soldiers! The flippant manner in which Thiers reports on these things in the bulletin has even shocked the not over-sensitive nerves of the Times. All this is, however, regular as the Spaniards say. The fights of the ruling classes against the producing classes menacing their privileges, are full of the same horrors, although none exhibits such an excess of tenacity on the part of the oppressed and bear such an abasement... .[r] Theirs has always been the old axiom of knight-errantry that every weapon is fair if used against the plebeian. The affair at Belle-Epine, near Villejuif [was like] this: On the 25th April four National Guards [were] being surrounded by a troop of mounted Chasseurs, who bid them to surrender and lay down their arms. Unable to resist, they obeyed and were left unhurt by the Chasseurs. Some time later their captain, a worthy officer of Galliffet s, arrived in full gallop and shot the prisoners down with his revolver, one after the other, and then trotted off with his troop. Three of the guards were dead, one, named Scheffer, grievously wounded, survived, and was afterwards brought to the Hospital of Bic tre. Thither the Commune sent a commission to take up the evidence of the dying man, which it published in its rapport [report]. When one of the Paris members of the Assembl e interpellated the War Minister upon that report, the Rurals drowned the voice of the deputy and forbid the minister to answer. It would be an insult to their glorious army not to commit murder, but to speak of it. The tranquillity of mind with which that Assembly bears with the horrors of civil war is told in one of Thiers bulletins to his Prefects: L Assembl e si ge paisiblement (has the coeur l ger like Ollivier), and the Executive with its ticket-of-leave men shows by its gastronomical feats, given by Thiers and at the table of German princes, that their digestion is not troubled even by the ghosts of Lecomte and Cl ment Thomas. The Commune had, after Sedan, been proclaimed by the workmen of Lyons, Marseilles and Toulouse. Gambetta did his best to destroy it. During the siege of Paris the ever recurrent workmen s commotions, again and again crushed on false pretences by Trochu s Bretons, those worthy substitutes of Louis Bonaparte s Corsicans, were as many attempts to dislodge the government of impostors by the Commune. The Commune then silently elaborated was the true secret of the Revolution of the 4th of September. Hence, on the very dawn of the 18th March, after the rout of the counter-revolution, drowsy Europe started up from its dreaming under the Paris thunderbursts of Vive la Commune! " What is the Commune, this sphinx so tantalizing to the bourgeois mind? In its most simple conception [it is] the form under which the working class assume the political power in their social strongholds, Paris and the other centres of industry. But the proletariat cannot, as the ruling classes and their different rival fractions have done in the successive hours of their triumph, simply lay hold on the existent State body and wield this ready-made agency for their own purpose. The first condition for the hold[ing] of political power, is to transform [the] working machinery and destroy it an instrument of class rule. That huge governmental machinery, entoiling like a boa constrictor the real social body in the ubiquitous meshes of a standing army, hierarchical bureaucracy, an obedient police, clergy and a servile magistrature, was first forged in the days of absolute monarchy as a weapon of nascent middle-class [bourgeois] society in its struggles of emancipation from feudalism. The first French Revolution with its task to give full scope to the free development of modern middle-class [bourgeois] society had to sweep away all the local, territorial, townish and provincial strongholds of feudalism, prepared the social soil for the superstructure of a centralized State power, with omnipresent organs ramified after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labour. But the working class cannot simply lay hold on the ready made State machinery and wield it for their own purpose. The political instrument of their enslavement cannot serve as the political instrument of their emancipation. The modern bourgeois State is embodied in two great organs, parliament and the government. Parliamentary omnipotence had, during the period of the Party of Order Republic, from 1848 to 1851, engendered its own negative the Second Empire and imperialism, with its mere mockery of parliament, is the r gime now flourishing in most of the great military States of the continent. At first view, apparently, the usurpatory dictatorship of the governmental body over society itself, rising alike above and humbling alike all classes; it has in fact, on the European continent at least, become the only possible State form in which the appropriating class can continue to sway it over the producing class. The assembly of the ghosts of all the defunct French parliaments which still haunts Versailles wields no real force save the governmental machinery as shaped by the Second Empire. The huge governmental parasite, entoiling the social body like a boa constrictor in the ubiquitous meshes of its bureaucracy, police, standing army, clergy and magistrature, dates its birth from the days of absolute monarchy. The centralized State power had at that time to serve nascent middle-class [bourgeois] society as a mighty weapon in its struggles of emancipation from feudalism. The French Revolution of the 18th century, with its task to sweep away the medieval rubbish of seigniorial, local, townish and provincial privileges, could not but simultaneously clear the social soil of the last obstacles hampering the full development of a centralized State power, with omnipresent organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labour. Such [read Thus] it burst into life under the First Empire, itself the offspring of the Coalition wars of old semi-feudal Europe against modern France. During the subsequent parliamentary r gimes of the Restauration, the July Monarchy, and the Party of Order Republic, the supreme management of that State machinery with its irresistible allurements of place, pelf and patronage became not only the butt of contest between the rival fractions of the ruling class, but at the same degree that [read as] the economic progress of modern society swelled the ranks of the working class, accumulated its miseries, organized its resistance and developed its tendencies at emancipation, in one word, that [read as] the modern struggle of classes, the struggle between labour and capital, assumed shape and form, the physiognomy and the character of the State power underwent a striking change. It had always been the power for the maintenance of order, i.e., the existing order of society, and therefore, of the subordination and exploitation of the producing class by the appropriating class. But as long as this order was accepted as an uncontrovertible and uncontested necessity, the State power could assume an aspect of impartiality. It kept up the existing subordination of the masses, which was the unalterable order of things and a social fact undergone without contest on the part of the masses, exercised by their natural superiors without solicitude. With the entrance of society itself into a new phase, the phase of class struggle, the character of its organized public force, the State power, could not but change also (but also undergo a marked change) and more and more develop its character as the instrument of class despotism, the political engine forcibly perpetuating the social enslavement of the producers of wealth by its appropriators, of the economic rule of capital over labour. After each new popular revolution, resulting in the transfer of the direction of the State machinery from one set of the ruling classes to another, the repressive character of the State power was more fully developed and more mercilessly used, because the promises made, and seemingly assured by the Revolution, could only be broken by the employment of force. Besides, the change worked by the successive revolutions sanctioned only politically the social fact, the growing power of capital, and, therefore, transferred the State power itself more and more directly into the hands of the direct antagonists of the working class. Thus the Revolution of July transferred the power from the hands of the landowners into those of the great manufacturers (the great capitalists), and the Revolution of February into those of the united fractions of the ruling class, united in their antagonism to the working class, united as the Party of Order, the order of their own class rule. During the period of the Parliamentary Republic the State power became at last the avowed instrument of war, wielded by the appropriating class against the productive mass of the people. But as an avowed instrument of civil war, it could only be wielded during a time of civil war, and the condition of life for the Parliamentary Republic was, therefore, the continuance of openly-declared civil war, the negative of that very order in the name of which the civil war was waged. This could only be a spasmodic, exceptional state of things. It was impossible as the normal political form of society, unbearable even to the mass of the middle classes. When therefore all elements of popular resistance were broken down, the Parliamentary Republic had to disappear before (give way to) the Second Empire. The Empire professing to rest upon the producing majority of the nation, the peasants, [who stayed] apparently out of the range of the class struggle between capital and labour (indifferent and hostile to both the contesting social powers), wielding the State power as a force superior to the ruling and ruled classes, imposing upon both an armistice (silencing the political, and therefore revolutionary form of the class struggle), divesting the State power from its direct form of class despotism by braking the parliamentary, and therefore directly political power of the appropriating classes was the only possible State form to secure the old social order a respite of life. It was, therefore, acclaimed throughout the world as the saviour of order and the object of admiration during 20 years on the part of the would-be slaveholders all over the world. Under its sway, coincident with the change brought upon the market of the world by California, Australia, and the wonderful development of the United States, an unsurpassed period of industrial activity set [in], an orgy of stock-jobbery, finance swindlings, joint-stock company adventure leading all to rapid centralization of capital by the expropriation of the middle class and widening the gulf between the capitalist class and the working class. The whole turpitude of the capitalist r gime, given full scope to its innate tendency, broke loose unfettered. At the same time, an orgy of luxurious debauch, meretricious splendour, a pandemonium of all the low passions of the higher classes. This ultimate form of the governmental power was at the same time its most prostitute, shameless plunder of the State resources by a band of adventurers, hotbed of huge State debts, the glory of prostitution, a fictitious life of false pretences. The governmental power with all its tinsel covering from top to bottom immerged in mud. The maturity of rottenness of the State machinery itself, and the putrescence of the whole social body, flourishing under it, were laid bare by the bayonets of Prussia, herself only eager to transfer the European seat of that r gime of gold, blood, and mud from Paris to Berlin. This was the State power in its ultimate and most prostitute shape, in its supreme and basest reality, which the Paris working class had to overcome, and of which this class alone could rid society. As to parliamentarism, it had been killed by its own charges[s] and by the Empire. All the working class had to do was not to revive it. What the workmen had to break down was not a more or less incomplete form of the governmental power of old society; it was that power itself in its ultimate and exhausting shape, the Empire. The direct opposite to the Empire was the Commune. In its most simple conception the Commune meant the preliminary destruction of the old governmental machinery at its central seats, Paris and the other great cities of France, and its superseding by real self-government which in Paris and the great cities, the social strongholds of the working class, was the government of the working class. Through the siege Paris had got rid of the army which was replaced by a National Guard, with its bulk formed by the workmen of Paris. It was only due to this state of things, that the rising of the 18th of March had become possible. This fact was to become an institution, and the National Guard of the great cities, the people armed against governmental usurpation, to supplant the standing army defending the government against the people. The Commune [was] to consist of the municipal councillors of the different arrondissements (as Paris was the initiator and the model, we have to refer to it), chosen by the suffrage of all citizens, responsible, and revocable in short terms. The majority of that body would naturally consist of workmen or acknowledged representatives of the working class. It was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time. The police agents, instead of being the agents of a central government, were to be the servants of the Commune, having, like the functionaries in all the other departments of administration, to be appointed and always revocable by the Commune; all the functionaries, like the members of the Commune itself, having to do their work at workmen s wages. The judges were also to be elected, revocable, and responsible. The initiative in all matters of social life to be reserved to the Commune. In one word, all public functions, even the few ones that would belong to the Central Government, were to be executed by Communal agents, and, therefore, under the control of the Commune. It is one of the absurdities to say that the Central functions, not of governmental authority over the people, but necessitated by the general and common wants of the country, would become impossible. These functions would exist, but the functionaries themselves could not, as in the old governmental machinery, raise themselves over real society, because the functions were to be executed by Communal agents, and, therefore, always under real control. The public functions would cease to be a private property bestowed by a central government upon its tools. With the standing army and the governmental police, the physical force of repression was to be broken. By the disestablishment of all churches as proprietary bodies and the banishment of religious instruction from all public schools (together with [the introduction of] gratuitous instruction) into the recesses of private life, there to live upon the alms of the faithful, [and by] the divestment of all educational institutes from governmental patronage and servitude, the mental force of repression was to be broken, [and] science made not only accessible to all, but freed from the fetters of government pressure and class prejudice. The municipal taxation to be determined and levied by the Commune, the taxation for general State purposes to be levied by Communal functionaries, and disbursed by the Commune itself for the general purposes (its disbursement for the general purposes to be supervised by the Commune itself). The governmental force of repression and authority over society was thus to be broken in its merely repressive organs, and where it had legitimate functions to fulfil, these functions were not to be exercised by a body superior to the society, but by the responsible agents of society itself. To [the] fighting, working, thinking Paris, electrified by the enthusiasm of historic initiative, full of heroic reality, the new society in its throes, there is opposed at Versailles the old society, a world of antiquated shams and accumulated lies. Its true representation is that Rural Assembly, peopled with the gibberish ghouls of all the defunct r gimes into [read in] which class rule had successively embodied itself in France, at their head a senile mountebank of parliamentarism, their sword in the hands of the imperialist capitulards, bombarding Paris under the eyes of their Prussian conquerors. The immense ruins which the Second Empire, in its fall, has heaped upon France, are for them only an opportunity to dig out and throw to the surface the rubbish of former ruins, of Legitimacy or Orleanism. The flame of life is to burn in an atmosphere of the sepulchral exhalation of all the bygone emigrations. (The very air they breathe is the sepulchral exhalation of all bygone emigrations.) There is nothing real about them but their common conspiracy against life, their egotism of class interest, their wish to feed upon the carcass of French society, their common slaveholders interests, their hatred of the present, and their war upon Paris. Everything about them is a caricature, from that old fossil of Louis Philippe s r gime, Count Jaubert, exclaiming in the National Assembly, in the palace of Louis XIV, We are the State ("The State, that is ourselves"), (they are in fact the State spectre in its secession from society), and [read to] the Republican fawners upon Thiers holding their r unions [meetings] in the Jeu de Paume (Tennis Court) to show their degeneracy from their predecessors in 1789. Thiers at the head, the bulk of the majority split into these two groups of Legitimists and Orleanists, in the tail the Republicans of [the] old style. Each of these fractions intrigues for a restoration of its own, the Republicans for that of the Parliamentary Republic building their hopes upon the senile vanity of Thiers, forming in the meantime [the] Republican decoration of his rule and sanctioning by their presence the war of the Bonapartist generals upon Paris, after having tried to coax it into the arms of Thiers and to disarm it under Saisset! Knights of the sad figure, the humiliations they voluntarily bear with, [show] what Republicanism, as a special form of class rule, has come down to. It was in view of them that Thiers said to the assembled maires of the Seine and Oise: What could they more want? Was not he, a simple citizen, at the head of the State? Progress from 1830 to 1870 [shows] that then Louis Philippe was the best of Republics, and that now Louis Philippe s Minister, little Thiers himself, is the best of Republics. Being forced to do their real work the war against Paris through the imperialist soldiers, gendarmes, and police, under the sway of the retired Bonapartist generals, they tremble in their shoes at the suspicion that as during their regime of 1848-51 they are only forging the instrument for a second restoration of the Empire. The Pontifical Zouaves and the Vend ens of Cathelineau and the Bretons of Charette are in fact their parliamentary army, the mere phantasms of an army compared with the imperial reality. While fuming with rage at the very name of the Republic, they accept Bismarck s dictates in its name, waste in its name the rest of French wealth upon the civil war, denounce Paris in its name, forge laws of prospective proscription against the rebels in its name, usurp dictation over France in its name. Their title [is] the general suffrage, which they had always opposed during their own regimes from 1815 to 1848, [and] abolished in May 1850, after it had been established against them by the Republic, and which they now accept as the prostitute of the Empire, forgetting that with it they accept the Empire of the plebiscites! They themselves are impossible even with the general suffrage. They reproach Paris to revolt [read for revolting] against national unity, and their first word was the decapitation of that unity by the decapitalization of Paris. Paris has done the thing they pretended to want, but it has done it, not as they wanted it, as a reactionary dream of the past, but as the revolutionary vindication of the future. Thiers, the Chauvin, threatens since the 18th March Paris with the intervention of Prussia, stood at Bordeaux for the intervention of Prussia, acts against Paris in fact only by the means accorded to him by Prussia. The Bourbons were dignity itself, compared to this mountebank of chauvinism. Whatever may be the name in case they are victorious of their Restoration, with whatever successful pretender at its head, its reality can only be the Empire, the ultimate and indispensable political form of the rule of their rotten classes. If they succeed to restore it, and they must restore it with any of their plans of restoration successful they succeed only to accelerate the putrefaction of the old society they represent and the maturity of the new one they combat. Their dim eyes see only the political outwork of the defunct r gimes and they dream of reviving them by placing a Henry the 5th or the Count of Paris at their head. They do not see that the social bodies which bore these political superstructures have withered away, that these r gimes were only possible under now outgrown conditions and past phases of French society, and that it can only yet bear with imperialism, in its putrescent state, and the Republic of Labour in its state of regeneration. They do not see that the cycles of political forms were only the political expression of the real changes society underwent. The Prussians, who in coarse war exultation of triumph look at the agonies of French society and exploit them with the sordid calculation of a Shylock, and the flippant coarseness of the [... ? ...],[u] are themselves already punished by the transplantation of the Empire to the German soil. They themselves are doomed to set free in France the subterranean agencies which will engulf them with the old order of things. The Paris Commune may fall, but the Social Revolution it has initiated, will triumph. Its birth-stead is everywhere. The immense sham of that Versailles, its lying character could not better be embodied and r sum ed than in Thiers, the professional liar, for whom the reality of things exists only in their parliamentary sense, that is, as a lie. In his answer to the Archbishop s letter he coolly denies the pretended executions and reprisals (!) attributed to the troops of Versailles, and has this impudent lie confirmed by a commission appointed for this very purpose by his Rurals. He knows of course their triumphant proclamations by the Bonapartist generals themselves. But in the parliamentary sense of the word they do not exist. In his circular of the 16th April on the bombardment of Paris : Of course, Paris bombards itself, in order to make the world believe that it fights! Later: Notre artillerie ne bombarde pas: elle canonne, il est vrai. [ Our artillery does not bombard: it s true it shells. ] Thiers bulletin on Moulin-Saquet (4 May): D livrance de Paris des affreux tyrans qui l oppriment [ Deliverance of Paris from the dreadful tyrants who oppress it ] (by killing the Paris National Guards asleep). The motley lot of an army the dregs of the Bonapartist soldatesca released from prison by the grace of Bismarck, with the gendarmes of Valentin and the sergents de ville of Pi tri for their nucleus, set off by the Pontifical Zouaves, the Chouans of Charette and the Vend ens of Cathelineau, the whole placed under the runaway Decembrist generals of capitulation he dubs the finest army France ever possessed. Of course, if the Prussians quarter still at St. Denis, it is because Thiers wants to frighten them by the sight of that finest of fine armies." If such is the finest army the Versailles anachronism is the most liberal and most freely elected assembly that ever existed in France. Thiers caps his eccentricity by telling the maires, etc., that he is a man, who has never broken his word, of course in the parliamentary sense of word-keeping. He is the truest of Republicans and (S ance vom [sitting of] 27 April): L assembl e est plus lib rale que lui-m me. [ The Assembly is more liberal than he himself. ] To the maires : On peut compter sur ma parole laquelle je n ai jamais manqu , [ You may rely upon my word, which I have never broken, ] in an unparliamentary sense, which I have never kept. He compares himself with Lincoln and the Parisians with the rebellious slaveholders of the South. The Southerners wanted territorial secession from the United States for the slavery of labour. Paris wants the secession of M. Thiers himself and the interests he represents from power for the emancipation of labour. The revenge which the Bonapartist generals, the gendarmes and the Chouans wreak upon Paris is a necessity of the class war against labour, but in the little byplay of his bulletins Thiers turns it into a pretext of caricaturing his idol, the first Napoleon, and make himself the laughing-stock of Europe by boldly affirming, that the French army through its war upon the Parisians has regained the renown it had lost in the war against the Prussians. The whole war thus appears as mere childplay to give vent to the childish vanity of a dwarf, elated at having to describe his own battles, fought by his own army, under his own secret commandership-in-chief. And his lies culminate in regard to Paris and the Province. Paris, which in reality holds in check for two months the finest army France ever possessed, despite the secret help of the Prussians, is in fact only anxious to be delivered from its atrocious tyrants, by Thiers, and therefore it fights against him, although a mere handful of criminals. He does not tire of representing the Commune as a handful of convicts, ticket-of-leave men, scum. Paris fights against him because it wants to be delivered by him from the affreux [frightful] tyrants that oppress it. And this handful of desperadoes holds in check since two months the finest army that France ever possessed, led by the invincible MacMahon and inspired by the Napoleonic genius of Thiers himself! The resistance of Paris is no reality, but Thiers lies about Paris are. Not content to refute him by its exploits, all the living elements of Paris have spoken to him, but in vain, to dislodge him out of his lying world. By whom was he told this? By the delegates of the Syndical Chambers, speaking in the name of 7-8,000 merchants and industrials. They went to tell it him personally at Versailles. Thus the Ligue of the Republican Union, thus the Masons lodges by their delegates and their demonstrations. But he sticks to it. In his bulletins of [read on] Moulin-Saquet (4 May): But the fighting Paris, the real Paris is not his Paris. His Paris is itself a parliamentary lie. The rich, the idle, the capitalist Paris, the cosmopolitan stew, this is his Paris. That is the Paris which wants to be restored to him; the real Paris, is the Paris of the vile multitude. The Paris that showed its courage in the pacific procession and Saisset s stampede, that throngs now at Versailles, at Rueil, at St. Denis, at St. Germain-en-Laye, followed by the cocottes, sticking to the man of family, religion, order, and above all, of property, the Paris of the lounging classes, the Paris of the francs-fileurs, amusing itself by looking through telescopes at the battles going on, treating the civil war [as] but an agreeable diversion, that is the Paris of M. Thiers, as the Emigration of Coblenz was the France of M. de Calonne and as the Emigration at Versailles is the France of M. Thiers. If the Paris, that wants to be delivered of the Commune by Thiers, his Rurals, D cembriseurs and gendarmes, is a lie, so is his Province which through him and his Rurals wants to be delivered from Paris. Before the definitive conclusion at Frankfort of the peace treaty, he appealed to the provinces to send their bataillons of National Guards and volunteers to Versailles to fight against Paris. The provinces refused point-blank. Only the Bretagne sent a handful of Chouans fighting under a white flag, every one of them wearing on his breast a Jesus heart in white cloth and shouting: Vive le roi! Thus is the provincial France listening to his summons so that he was forced to send captive French troops from Bismarck, lay hold on the Pontifical Zouaves (the real armed representatives of his provincial France) and make 20,000 gendarmes and 12,000 sergents de ville the nucleus of his army. Despite the wall of lies, the intellectual and police blockade, by which he tried to fence off (debar) Paris from the provinces, the provinces, instead of sending him bataillons to wage war upon Paris, inundated him with so many delegations insisting upon peace with Paris, that he refused to receive them any longer in person. The tone of the addresses sent up from the provinces, proposing most of them the immediate conclusion of an armistice with Paris, the dissolution of the Assembly, because its mandate had expired, and the grant of the municipal rights demanded by Paris, was so offensive that Dufaure denounces them in his circular against conciliation to the Prefects. On the other hand, the Rural Assembly and Thiers received not one single address of approval on the part of the provinces. But the grand d fi [challenge] the provinces gave to Thiers lie about the provinces were the municipal elections of the 30 April, carried on under his government, on the basis of a law of his Assembly. Out of 700,000 councillors (in round numbers) returned by the 30,000 communes still left in mutilated France, the united Legitimists, Orleanists and Bonapartists did not carry 8,000! The supplementary elections still more hostile! This showed plainly how far the National Assembly, chosen by surprise, and on false pretences, represents France, provincial France, France minus Paris! But the plan of an assembly of the municipal delegates of the great provincial towns at Bordeaux, forbidden by Thiers on the ground of his law of 1834 and an imperialist one of 1855, forced him to avow that his provinces are a lie, as his Paris is. He accuses them of resembling the false Paris, of being eagerly bent upon laying the fundaments of communism and rebellion. Again he has been answered by the late resolution of the municipal councils of Nantes, Vienne, Chamb ry, Limoux, Carcassone, Angers, Carpentras, Montpellier, Privas, Grenoble, etc., asking, insisting upon peace with Paris, (Just the contrary. The two provinces are not their private property, and as to the promissory note of 5 milliards, the thing is exactly that it shall be paid by the French people and not by them.) If, therefore, Paris may justly complain of the provinces that they limit themselves to pacific demonstrations, leaving it unaided against all the State forces ... , the province has in most unequivocal tones given the lie to Thiers and the Assembly to be represented there, has declared their Province a lie as is their whole existence, a sham, a false pretence. The General Council feels proud of the prominent part the Paris branches of the International have taken in the glorious revolution of Paris. Not, as the imbeciles fancy, as if the Paris, or any other branch of the International received its mot d ordre [order] from a centre. But the flower of the working class in all civilized countries belonging to the International, and being imbued with its ideas, they are sure everywhere in the working class movements to take the lead. From[v] the very day of the capitulation by which the government of Bismarck s prisoners had signed the surrender of France, but, in return, got leave to retain a bodyguard for the express purpose of cowing Paris, Paris stood on its watch. The National Guard reorganized itself and entrusted its supreme control to a Central Committee elected by all the companies, battalions and batteries of the capital, save some fragments of the old Bonapartist formations. On the eve of the entrance of the Prussians into Paris, the Central Committee took measures for the removal to Montmartre, Belleville, and La Villette, of the cannon and mitrailleuses treacherously abandoned by the capitulards in the very quarters the Prussians were about to occupy. Armed Paris was the only serious obstacle in the way of the counter-revolutionary conspiracy. Paris was, therefore, to be disarmed. On this point the Bordeaux Assembly was sincerity itself. If the roaring rant of its Rurals had not been audible enough, the surrender of Paris handed over by Thiers to the tender mercies of the triumvirate of Vinoy, the D cembriseur, Valentin, the Bonapartist gendarme, and Aurelle de Paladines, the Jesuit general, would have cut off even the last subterfuge of doubt as to the ultimate aim of the disarmament of Paris. But if their purpose was frankly avowed, the pretext on which these atrocious felons initiated the civil war was the most shameless, the most bare-faced (glaring) of lies. The artillery of the Paris National Guard, said Thiers, belonged to the State, and to the State it must be returned. The fact was this. From the very day of the capitulation by which Bismarck s prisoners had signed the surrender of France but reserved to themselves a numerous bodyguard for the express purpose of cowing Paris, Paris stood on its watch. The National Guard reorganized themselves and entrusted their supreme control to a Central Committee elected by their whole body, save some fragments of the old Bonapartist formations. On the eve of the entrance of the Prussians into Paris, their Central Committee took measures for the removal to Montmartre, Belleville, and La Villette of the cannon and mitrailleuses, treacherously abandoned by the capitulards in the very quarters the Prussians were about to occupy. That artillery had been furnished by the subscriptions of the National Guard. As their private property it was officially recognized in the convention of the 28th January, and on that very title exempted from the general surrender of arms, belonging to the government, into the hands of the conqueror. And Thiers dared initiate the civil war on the mendacious pretext that the artillery of the National Guard was State property! The seizure of this artillery was evidently but to serve as the preparatory measure for the general disarmament of the Paris National Guard, and therefore of the Revolution of the 4th of September. But that Revolution had become the legal status of France. Its Republic was recognized in the terms of the capitulation itself by the conqueror, it was after the capitulation acknowledged by the foreign powers, in its name the National Assembly had been summoned. The Revolution of the Paris workmen of the 4th of September was the only legal title of the National Assembly seated at Bordeaux and its Executive. Without it, the National Assembly had at once to give room to the Corps l gislatif, elected by general suffrage and dispersed by the arm of the Revolution. Thiers and his ticket-of-leave men would have had to capitulate for safe-conducts and securities against a voyage to Cayenne. The National Assembly, with its attorney s power to settle the terms of peace with Prussia, was only an incident of the Revolution. Its true embodiment was armed Paris, that had initiated the Revolution [and] undergone for it a five months siege with its horrors of famine, that had made its prolonged resistance, despite Trochu s plan, the basis of a tremendous war of defence in the provinces. And Paris was now summoned with coarse insult by the rebellious slaveholders at Bordeaux to lay down its arms and acknowledge that the popular revolution of the 4th September had had no other purpose but the simple transfer of power from the hands of Louis Bonaparte and his minions in [read to] those of his monarchical rivals, or to stand forward as the self-sacrificing champion of France, to be saved from her ruin and to be regenerated only through the revolutionary overthrow of the political and social conditions that had engendered the Empire and under its fostering care, matured into utter rottenness. Paris, emaciated by a five months famine, did not hesitate one moment. It heroically resolved to run all the hazards of a resistance against the French conspirators under the very eyes of the Prussian army quartered before its gates. But in its utter abhorrence of civil war, the popular government of Paris, the Central Committee of the National Guard, continued to persist in its merely defensive attitude, despite the provocations of the Assembly, the usurpations of the Executive, and the menacing concentration of troops in and around Paris. On the dawn of the 18th March Paris arose under thunder bursts of Vive la Commune! What is the Commune, that sphinx so tantalizing to the bourgeois mind? But the working class cannot, as the rival factions of the appropriating class have done in their hours of triumph, simply lay hold on the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes. The centralized State power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy and magistrature, organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labour, dates from the days of absolute monarchy when it served nascent middle-class society as a mighty weapon in its struggles for emancipation from feudalism. The French Revolution of the 18th century swept away the rubbish of seigniorial, local, townish and provincial privileges, thus clearing the social soil of its last medieval obstacles to the final superstructure of the State. It received its final shape under the First Empire, the offspring of the Coalition wars of old, semi-feudal Europe against modern France. Under the following parliamentary r gimes, the hold[ing] of the governmental power, with its irresistible allurements of place, pelf, and patronage, became not only the bone of contention between the rival factions of the ruling classes. Its political character changed simultaneously with the economic changes of society. At the same pace that the progress of industry developed, widened and intensified the class antagonism between capital and labour, the governmental power assumed more and more the character of the national power of capital over labour, of a political force organized to enforce social enslavement, of a mere engine of class despotism. On the heels of every popular revolution, marking a new progressive phase in the march (development) (course) of the struggle of classes (class struggle), the repressive character of the State power comes out more pitiless and more divested of disguise. The Revolution of July, by transferring the management of the State machinery from the landlord to the capitalist, transfers it from the distant to the immediate antagonist of the working men. Hence the State power assumes a more clearly defined attitude of hostility and repression in regard of the working class. The Revolution of February hoists the colours of the Social Republic, thus proving at its outset that the true meaning of State power is revealed, that its pretence of being the armed force of public welfare, the embodiment of the general interests of societies rising above and keeping in their respective spheres the warring private interests, is exploded, that its secret as an instrument of class despotism is laid open, that the work men do want the Republic, no longer as a political modification of the old system of class rule, but as the revolutionary means of breaking down class rule itself. In view of the menaces of the Social Republic the ruling class feel instinctively that the anonymous reign of the Parliamentary Republic can be turned into a joint-stock company of their conflicting factions, while the past monarchies by their very title signify the victory of one faction and the defeat of the other, the prevalence of one section s interest of that class over that of the other, land over capital or capital over land. In opposition to the working class the hitherto ruling class, in whatever specific forms it may appropriate the labour of the masses, has one and the same economic interest, to maintain the enslavement of labour and reap its fruits directly as landlord and capitalist, indirectly as the State parasites of the landlord and the capitalist, to enforce that order of things which makes the producing multitude, a vile multitude, serving [read serve] as a mere source of wealth and dominion to their betters. Hence Legitimists, Orleanists, bourgeois Republicans and the Bonapartist adventurers, eager to qualify themselves as defenders of property by first pilfering it, club together and merge into the Party of Order, the practical upshot of that Revolution made by the proletariat under enthusiastic shouts of the Social Republic. The Parliamentary Republic of the Party of Order is not only the reign of terror of the ruling class. The State power becomes in their hand the avowed instrument of the civil war in [the] hand of the capitalist and the landlord, their State parasites, against [the] revolutionary aspirations of the producer. Under the monarchical r gimes the repressive measures and the confessed principles of the day s government are denounced to the people by the fractions of the ruling classes that are out of power; the opposition ranks of the ruling class interest the people in their party feuds by appealing to its own interests, by their attitudes of [read as] tribunes of the people, by the revindication of popular liberties. But in the anonymous reign of the Republic, while amalgamating the modes of repression of old past r gimes (taking out of the arsenals of all past r gimes the arms of repression), and wielding them pitilessly, the different fractions of the ruling class celebrate an orgy of renegation. With cynical effrontery they deny the professions of their past, trample under foot their so-called principles, curse the revolutions they have provoked in their name, and curse the name of the Republic itself, although only its anonymous reign is wide enough to admit them into a common crusade against the people. Thus this most cruel is at the same time the most odious and revolting form of class rule. Wielding the State power only as an instrument of civil war, it can only hold it by perpetuating civil war. With parliamentary anarchy at its head, crowned by the uninterrupted intrigues of each of the fractions of the Order Party for the restoration of each own pet r gime, [and] in open war against the whole body of society out of its own narrow circle, the Party of Order rule becomes the most intolerable rule of disorder. Having, in its war against the mass of the people, broken all its means of resistance and laid it helplessly under the sword of the Executive, the Party of Order itself and its parliamentary r gime is warned off the stage by the sword of the Executive. That parliamentary Party of Order republic can therefore only be an interreign. Its natural upshot is imperialism, whatever the number of the Empire. Under the form of imperialism, the State power with the sword for its sceptre, professes to rest upon the peasantry, that large mass of producers apparently outside the class struggle of labour and capital, professes to save the working class by breaking down parliamentarism and therefore the direct subserviency of the State power to the ruling classes, professes to save the ruling classes themselves by subduing the working classes without insulting them, professes, if not public welfare, at least national glory. It is therefore proclaimed as the saviour of order. However galling to the political pride of the ruling class and its State parasites, it proves itself to be the really adequate regime of the bourgeois order by giving full scope to all the orgies of its industry, turpitudes of its speculation, and all the meretricious splendours of its life. The State thus seemingly lifted above civil society, becomes at the same time itself the hotbed of all the corruptions of that society. Its own utter rottenness, and the rottenness of the society to be saved of [read by] it, was laid bare by the bayonet of Prussia, but so much is this imperialism the unavoidable political form of order, that is, the order of bourgeois society, that Prussia herself seemed only to reverse[w] its central seat at Paris in order to transfer it to Berlin. The Empire is not[x] like its predecessors, the Legitimate monarchy, the Constitutional monarchy and the Parliamentary Republic, one of the political forms of bourgeois society, it is at the same time its most prostitute, its most complete, and its ultimate political form. It is the State power of modern class rule, at least on the European continent.

Drafts of The Civil War in France

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/drafts/ch02.htm

Written by Karl Marx as an address to the General Council of the International, with the aim of distributing to workers of all countries a clear understanding of the character and world-wide significance of the heroic struggle of the Communards and their historical experience to learn from. The book was widely circulated by 1872 it was translated into several languages and published throughout Europe and the United States. The first address was delivered on July 23rd, 1870, five days after the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War. The second address, delivered on September 9, 1870, gave a historical overview of the events a week after the army of Bonaparte was defeated. The third address, delivered on May 30, 1871, two days after the defeat of the Paris Commune detailed the significance and the underlining causes of the first workers government ever created. Thanks to the economic and political development of France since [the French Revolution of] 1789, for 50 years the position of Paris has been such that no revolutions could break out there without assuming a proletarian character, that is to say, the proletariat, which had bought victory with its blood, would advance its own demands after victory. These demands were more or less unclear and even confused, corresponding to the state of evolution reached by the workers of Paris at the particular period, but in the last resort they all amounted to the abolition of the class antagonism between capitalist and workers. It is true that no one knew how this was to be brought about. But the demand itself, however indefinite it still was in its formulation, contained a threat to the existing order of society; the workers who put it forward were still armed; therefore the disarming of the workers was the first commandment for the bourgeois at the helm of the state. Hence, after every revolution won by the workers, a new struggle, ending with the defeat of the workers. This happened for the first time in 1848. The liberal bourgeoisie of the parliamentary opposition held banquets for securing reform of the franchise, which was to ensure supremacy for their party. Forced more and more, in their struggle with the government, to appeal to the people, they had to allow the radical and republican strata of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie gradually to take the lead. But behind these stood the revolutionary workers, and since 1830,[A] these had acquired far more political independence than the bourgeoisie, and even the republicans, suspected. At the moment of the crisis between the government and the opposition, the workers opened battle on the streets; [King] Louis Philippe vanished, and with him the franchise reform; and in its place arose the republic, and indeed one which the victorious workers themselves designated as a social republic. No one, however, was clear as to what this social republic was to imply; not even the workers themselves. But they now had arms in their hands, and were a power in the state. Therefore, as soon as the bourgeois republicans in control felt something like firm ground under their feet, their first aim was to disarm the workers. This took place by driving them into the insurrection of June 1848 by direct breach of faith, by open defiance and the attempt to banish the unemployed to a distant province. The government had taken care to have an overwhelming superiority of force. After five days heroic struggle, the workers were defeated. And then followed a blood-bath of the defenceless prisoners, the likes of which as not been seen since the days of the civil wars which ushered in the downfall of the Roman republic. It was the first time that the bourgeoisie showed to what insane cruelties of revenge it will be goaded the moment the proletariat dares to take its stand against them as a separate class, with its own interests and demands. And yet 1848 was only child s play compared with their frenzy in 1871. Punishment followed hard at heel. If the proletariat was not yet able to rule France, the bourgeoisie could no longer do so. At least not at that period, when the greater part of it was still monarchically inclined, and it was divided into three dynastic parties [Legitimists, Orleanists and Bonapartists] and a fourth republican party. Its internal dissensions allowed the adventurer Louis Bonaparte to take possession of all the commanding points army, police, administrative machinery and, on December 2, 1851,[B] to explode the last stronghold of the bourgeoisie, the National Assembly. The Second Empire opened the exploitation of France by a gang of political and financial adventurers, but at the same time also an industrial development such as had never been possible under the narrow-minded and timorous system of Louis Philippe, with its exclusive domination by only a small section of the big bourgeoisie. Louis Bonaparte took the political power from the capitalists under the pretext of protecting them, the bourgeoisie, from the workers, and on the other hand the workers from them; but in return his rule encouraged speculation and industrial activity in a word the rise and enrichment of the whole bourgeoisie to an extent hitherto unknown. To an even greater extent, it is true, corruption and mass robbery developed, clustering around the imperial court, and drawing their heavy percentages from this enrichment. But the Second Empire was the appeal to the French chauvinism, the demand for the restoration of the frontiers of the First Empire, which had been lost in 1814, or at least those of the First Republic.[C] A French empire within the frontiers of the old monarchy and, in fact, within the even more amputated frontiers of 1815 such a thing was impossible for any long duration of time. Hence the necessity for brief wars and extension of frontiers. But no extension of frontiers was so dazzling to the imagination of the French chauvinists as the extension to the German left bank of the Rhine. One square mile on the Rhine was more to them than ten in the Alps or anywhere else. Given the Second Empire, the demand for the restoration to France of the left bank of the Rhine, either all at once or piecemeal, was merely a question of time. The time came with the Austro-Prussian War of 1866; cheated of the anticipated territorial compensation by Bismarck, and by his own over-cunning, hesitating policy, there was now nothing left for Napoleon but war, which broke out in 1870 and drove him first to Sedan, and then to Wilhelmshohe [prison]. The inevitable result was the Paris Revolution of September 4, 1870. The empire collapsed like a house of cards, and the republic was again proclaimed. But the enemy was standing at the gates [of Paris]; the armies of the empire were either hopelessly beleaguered in Metz or held captive in Germany. In this emergency the people allowed the Paris Deputies to the former legislative body to constitute themselves into a Government of National Defence. This was the more readily conceded, since, for the purpose of defence, all Parisians capable of bearing arms had enrolled in the National Guard and were armed, so that now the workers constituted a great majority. But almost at once the antagonism between the almost completely bourgeois government and the armed proletariat broke into open conflict. On October 31, workers battalions stormed the town hall, and captured some members of the government. Treachery, the government s direct breach of its undertakings, and the interventions of some petty-bourgeois battalions set them free again, and in order not to occasion the outbreak of civil war inside a city which was already beleaguered by a foreign power, the former government was left in office. At last on January 28, 1871, Paris, almost starving, capitulated but with honors unprecedented in the history of war. The forts were surrendered, the outer wall disarmed, the weapons of the regiments of the line and of the Mobile Guard were handed over, and they themselves considered prisoners of war. But the National Guard kept its weapons and guns, and only entered into an armistice with the victors, who themselves did not dare enter Paris in triumph. They only dared to occupy a tiny corner of Paris, which, into the bargain, consisted partly of public parks, and even this they only occupied for a few days! And during this time they, who had maintained their encirclement of Paris for 131 days, were themselves encircled by the armed workers of Paris, who kept a sharp watch that no Prussian should overstep the narrow bounds of the corner ceded to the foreign conquerors. Such was the respect which the Paris workers inspired in the army before which all the armies of the empire had laid down their arms; and the Prussian Junkers, who had come to take revenge at the very centre of the revolution, were compelled to stand by respectfully, and salute just precisely this armed revolution! During the war the Paris workers had confined themselves to demanding the vigorous prosecution of the fight. But now, when peace had come after the capitulation of Paris,[D] now, Thiers, the new head of government, was compelled to realize that the supremacy of the propertied classes large landowners and capitalists was in constant danger so long as the workers of Paris had arms in their hands. His first action was to attempt to disarm them. On March 18, he sent troops of the line with orders to rob the National Guard of the artillery belonging to it, which had been constructed during the siege of Paris and had been paid for by public subscription. The attempt failed; Paris mobilized as one man in defence of the guns, and war between Paris and the French government sitting at Versailles was declared. On March 26 the Paris Commune was elected and on March 28 it was proclaimed. The Central Committee of the National Guard, which up to then had carried on the government, handed in its resignation to the National Guard, after it had first decreed the abolition of the scandalous Paris Morality Police. On March 30 the Commune abolished conscription and the standing army, and declared that the National Guard, in which all citizens capable of bearing arms were to be enrolled, was to be the sole armed force. It remitted all payments of rent for dwelling houses from October 1870 until April, the amounts already paid to be reckoned to a future rental period, and stopped all sales of articles pledged in the municipal pawnshops. On the same day the foreigners elected to the Commune were confirmed in office, because the flag of the Commune is the flag of the World Republic. On April 1 it was decided that the highest salary received by any employee of the Commune, and therefore also by its members themselves, might not exceed 6,000 francs. On the following day the Commune decreed the separation of the Church from the State, and the abolition of all state payments for religious purposes as well as the transformation of all Church property into national property; as a result of which, on April 8, a decree excluding from the schools all religious symbols, pictures, dogmas, prayers in a word, all that belongs to the sphere of the individual s conscience was ordered to be excluded from the schools, and this decree was gradually applied. On the 5th, in reply to the shooting, day after day, of the Commune s fighters captured by the Versailles troops, a decree was issued for imprisonment of hostages, but it was never carried into effect. On the 6th, the guillotine was brought out by the 137th battalion of the National Guard, and publicly burnt, amid great popular rejoicing. On the 12th, the Commune decided that the Victory Column on the Place Vend me, which had been cast from guns captured by Napoleon after the war of 1809, should be demolished as a symbol of chauvinism and incitement to national hatred. This decree was carried out on May 16. On April 16 the Commune ordered a statistical tabulation of factories which had been closed down by the manufacturers, and the working out of plans for the carrying on of these factories by workers formerly employed in them, who were to be organized in co-operative societies, and also plans for the organization of these co-operatives in one great union. On the 20th the Commune abolished night work for bakers, and also the workers registration cards, which since the Second Empire had been run as a monopoly by police nominees exploiters of the first rank; the issuing of these registration cards was transferred to the mayors of the 20 arrondissements of Paris. On April 30, the Commune ordered the closing of the pawnshops, on the ground that they were a private exploitation of labor, and were in contradiction with the right of the workers to their instruments of labor and to credit. On May 5 it ordered the demolition of the Chapel of Atonement, which had been built in expiation of the execution of Louis XVI. Thus, from March 18 onwards the class character of the Paris movement, which had previously been pushed into the background by the fight against the foreign invaders, emerged sharply and clearly. As almost without exception, workers, or recognized representatives of the workers, sat in the Commune, its decision bore a decidedly proletarian character. Either they decreed reforms which the republican bourgeoisie had failed to pass solely out of cowardice, but which provided a necessary basis for the free activity of the working class such as the realization of the principle that in relation to the state, religion is a purely private matter or they promulgated decrees which were in the direct interests of the working class and to some extent cut deeply into the old order of society. In a beleaguered city, however, it was possible at most to make a start in the realization of all these measures. And from the beginning of May onwards all their energies were taken up by the fight against the ever-growing armies assembled by the Versailles government. On April 7, the Versailles troops had captured the Seine crossing at Neuilly, on the western front of Paris; on the other hand, in an attack on the southern front on the 11th they were repulsed with heavy losses by General Eudes. Paris was continually bombarded and, moreover, by the very people who had stigmatized as a sacrilege the bombardment of the same city by the Prussians. These same people now begged the Prussian government for the hasty return of the French soldiers taken prisoner at Sedan and Metz, in order that they might recapture Paris for them. From the beginning of May the gradual arrival of these troops gave the Versailles forces a decided ascendancy. This already became evident when, on April 23, Thiers broke off the negotiations for the exchange, proposed by Commune, of the Archbishop of Paris [Georges Darboy] and a whole number of other priests held hostages in Paris, for only one man, Blanqui, who had twice been elected to the Commune but was a prisoner in Clairvaux. And even more from the changed language of Thiers; previously procrastinating and equivocal, he now suddenly became insolent, threatening, brutal. The Versailles forces took the redoubt of Moulin Saquet on the southern front, on May 3; on the 9th, Fort Issy, which had been completely reduced to ruins by gunfire; and on the 14th, Fort Vanves. On the western front they advanced gradually, capturing the numerous villages and buildings which extended up to the city wall, until they reached the main wall itself; on the 21st, thanks to treachery and the carelessness of the National Guards stationed there, they succeeded in forcing their way into the city. The Prussians who held the northern and eastern forts allowed the Versailles troops to advance across the land north of the city, which was forbidden ground to them under the armistice, and thus to march forward and attack on a long front, which the Parisians naturally thought covered by the armistice, and therefore held only with weak forces. As a result of this, only a weak resistance was put up in the western half of Paris, in the luxury city proper; it grew stronger and more tenacious the nearer the incoming troops approached the eastern half, the real working class city. It was only after eight days fighting that the last defender of the Commune were overwhelmed on the heights of Belleville and Menilmontant; and then the massacre of defenceless men, women, and children, which had been raging all through the week on an increasing scale, reached its zenith. The breechloaders could no longer kill fast enough; the vanquished workers were shot down in hundred by mitrailleuse fire [over 30,000 citizens of Paris were massacred]. The Wall of the Federals [aka Wall of the Communards] at the Pere Lachaise cemetery, where the final mass murder was consummated, is still standing today, a mute but eloquent testimony to the savagery of which the ruling class is capable as soon as the working class dares to come out for its rights. Then came the mass arrests [38,000 workers arrested]; when the slaughter of them all proved to be impossible, the shooting of victims arbitrarily selected from the prisoners ranks, and the removal of the rest to great camps where they awaited trial by courts-martial. The Prussian troops surrounding the northern half of Paris had orders not to allow any fugitives to pass; but the officers often shut their eyes when the soldiers paid more obedience to the dictates of humanity than to those of the General Staff; particularly, honor is due to the Saxon army corps, which behaved very humanely and let through many workers who were obviously fighters for the Commune.

The Civil War in France

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/intro.htm

This Gallifet, the kept man of his wife, so notorious for her shameless exhibitions at the orgies of the Second Empire, went, during the war, by the name of the French Ensign Pistol. The following letter appeared in the [London] Times, June 13: In an article on The International Society and its aims, that pious informer, the London Spectator (June 24th), amongst other similar tricks, quotes, even more fully than Jules Favre has done, the above document of the Alliance as the work of the International, and that eleven days after the refutation had been published in The Times. We do not wonder at this. Frederick the Great used to say that of all Jesuits the worst are the Protestant ones.

The Civil War in France

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/news.htm

I did not anticipate that I would be asked to prepare a new edition of the Address of the General Council of the International on The Civil War in France, and to write an introduction to it. Therefore I can only touch briefly here on the most important points. I am prefacing the longer work mentioned above by the two shorter addresses of the General Council on the Franco-Prussian War. [Chapter 1 and Chapter 2] In the first place, because the second of these, which itself cannot be fully understood without the first, is referred to in The Civil War. But also because these two Addresses, likewise drafted by Marx, are, no less than The Civil War, outstanding examples of the author s remarkable gift, first proved in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, for grasping clearly the character, the import, and the necessary consequences of great historical events, at a time when these events are still in process before our eyes, or have only just taken place. And, finally, because we in Germany are still having to endure the consequences which Marx prophesied would follow from these events. Has that which was declared in the first Address not come to pass: that if Germany s defensive war against Louis Bonaparte degenerated into a war of conquest against the French people, all the misfortunes which befell Germany after the so-called wars of liberation[B] would revive again with renewed intensity? Have we not had a further 20 years of Bismarck s government, the Exceptional Law and the anti-socialist campaign taking the place of the prosecutions of demagogues,[C] with the same arbitrary police measures and with literally the same staggering interpretations of the law? And has not the prophecy been proved to the letter that the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine would "force France into the arms of Russia," and that after this annexation Germany must either become the avowed tool of Russia, or must, after some short respite, arm for a new war, and, moreover, "a race war against the combined Slavonic and Roman races"? Has not the annexation of the French provinces driven France into the arms of Russia? Has not Bismarck for fully 20 years vainly wooed the favor of the tsar, wooed it with services even more lowly than those which little Prussia, before it became the "first power in Europe," was wont to lay at Holy Russia s feet? And is there not every day hanging over our heads the Damocles sword of war, on the first day of which all the chartered covenants of princes will be scattered like chaff; a war of which nothing is certain but the absolute uncertainty of its outcome; a race war which will subject the whole of Europe to devastation by 15 or 20 million armed men, and is only not already raging because even the strongest of the great military states shrinks before the absolute incalculability of its final outcome? All the more is it our duty to make again accessible to the German workers these brilliant proofs, now half-forgotten, of the far-sightedness of the international working class policy in 1870. What is true of these two Addresses is also true of The Civil War in France. On May 28, the last fighters of the Commune succumbed to superior forces on the slopes of Belleville; and only two days later, on May 30, Marx read to the General Council the work in which the historical significance of the Paris Commune is delineated in short powerful strokes, but with such clearness, and above all such truth, as has never again been attained on all the mass of literature which has been written on this subject. If today, we look back at the activity and historical significance of the Paris Commune of 1871, we shall find it necessary to make a few additions to the account given in The Civil War in France. The members of the Commune were divided into a majority of the Blanquists, who had also been predominant in the Central Committee of the National Guard; and a minority, members of the International Working Men s Association, chiefly consisting of adherents of the Proudhon school of socialism. The great majority of the Blanquists at that time were socialist only by revolutionary and proletarian instinct; only a few had attained greater clarity on the essential principles, through Vaillant, who was familiar with German scientific socialism. It is therefore comprehensible that in the economic sphere much was left undone which, according to our view today, the Commune ought to have done. The hardest thing to understand is certainly the holy awe with which they remained standing respectfully outside the gates of the Bank of France. This was also a serious political mistake. The bank in the hands of the Commune this would have been worth more than 10,000 hostages. It would have meant the pressure of the whole of the French bourgeoisie on the Versailles government in favor of peace with the Commune, but what is still more wonderful is the correctness of so much that was actually done by the Commune, composed as it was of Blanquists and Proudhonists. Naturally, the Proudhonists were chiefly responsible for the economic decrees of the Commune, both for their praiseworthy and their unpraiseworthy aspects; as the Blanquists were for its political actions and omissions. And in both cases the irony of history willed as is usual when doctrinaires come to the helm that both did the opposite of what the doctrines of their school proscribed. Proudhon, the Socialist of the small peasant and master-craftsman, regarded association with positive hatred. He said of it that there was more bad than good in it; that it was by nature sterile, even harmful, because it was a fetter on the freedom of the workers; that it was a pure dogma, unproductive and burdensome, in conflict as much with the freedom of the workers as with economy of labor; that its disadvantages multiplied more swiftly than its advantages; that, as compared with it, competition, division of labor and private property were economic forces. Only for the exceptional cases as Proudhon called them of large-scale industry and large industrial units, such as railways, was there any place for the association of workers. (Cf. Idee Generale de la Revolution, 3 etude.) By 1871, even in Paris, the centre of handicrafts, large-scale industry had already so much ceased to be an exceptional case that by far the most important decree of the Commune instituted an organization of large-scale industry and even of manufacture which was not based only on the association of workers in each factory, but also aimed at combining all these associations in one great union; in short an organization which, as Marx quite rightly says in The Civil War, must necessarily have led in the end to communism, that is to say, the direct antithesis of the Proudhon doctrine. And, therefore, the Commune was also the grave of the Proudhon school of socialism. Today this school has vanished from French working class circles; among them now, among the Possibilists no less than among the Marxists , Marx s theory rules unchallenged. Only among the radical bourgeoisie are there still Proudhonists. The Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of conspiracy, and held together by the strict discipline which went with it, they started out from the viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organized men would be able, at a given favorable moment, not only seize the helm of state, but also by energetic and relentless action, to keep power until they succeeded in drawing the mass of the people into the revolution and ranging them round the small band of leaders. this conception involved, above all, the strictest dictatorship and centralization of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary government. And what did the Commune, with its majority of these same Blanquists, actually do? In all its proclamations to the French in the provinces, it appealed to them to form a free federation of all French Communes with Paris, a national organization, which for the first time was really to be created by the nation itself. It was precisely the oppressing power of the former centralized government, army, political police and bureaucracy, which Napoleon had created in 1798 and since then had been taken over by every new government as a welcome instrument and used against its opponents, it was precisely this power which was to fall everywhere, just as it had already fallen in Paris. From the outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the working class, once come to power, could not manage with the old state machine; that in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery previously used against it itself, and, on the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment. What had been the characteristic attribute of the former state? Society had created its own organs to look after its common interests, originally through simple division of labor. But these organs, at whose head was the state power, had in the course of time, in pursuance of their own special interests, transformed themselves from the servants of society into the masters of society, as can be seen, for example, not only in the hereditary monarchy, but equally also in the democratic republic. Nowhere do politicians form a more separate, powerful section of the nation than in North America. There, each of the two great parties which alternately succeed each other in power is itself in turn controlled by people who make a business of politics, who speculate on seats in the legislative assemblies of the Union as well as of the separate states, or who make a living by carrying on agitation for their party and on its victory are rewarded with positions. It is well known that the Americans have been striving for 30 years to shake off this yoke, which has become intolerable, and that in spite of all they can do they continue to sink ever deeper in this swamp of corruption. It is precisely in America that we see best how there takes place this process of the state power making itself independent in relation to society, whose mere instrument it was originally intended to be. Here there exists no dynasty, no nobility, no standing army, beyond the few men keeping watch on the Indians, no bureaucracy with permanent posts or the right to pensions. and nevertheless we find here two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality exploit and plunder it. Against this transformation of the state and the organs of the state from servants of society into masters of society an inevitable transformation in all previous states the Commune made use of two infallible expedients. In this first place, it filled all posts administrative, judicial, and educational by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, with the right of the same electors to recall their delegate at any time. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates to representative bodies which were also added in profusion. This shattering of the former state power and its replacement by a new and really democratic state is described in detail in the third section of The Civil War. But it was necessary to dwell briefly here once more on some of its features, because in Germany particularly the superstitious belief in the state has been carried over from philosophy into the general consciousness of the bourgeoisie and even to many workers. According to the philosophical notion, the state is the realization of the idea or the Kingdom of God on earth, translated into philosophical terms, the sphere in which eternal truth and justice is or should be realized. And from this follows a superstitious reverence for the state and everything connected with it, which takes roots the more readily as people from their childhood are accustomed to imagine that the affairs and interests common to the whole of society could not be looked after otherwise than as they have been looked after in the past, that is, through the state and its well-paid officials. And people think they have taken quite an extraordinary bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap. Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

The Civil War in France

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm

I am sorry to learn from your last letter that your state of health has again got worse. In the autumn and winter months mine was tolerable, although the cough which I contracted during my last stay in Hanover is still troubling me. I had sent you the Daily News containing my letter. It was obviously confiscated, like the other things I sent you. Today I am enclosing the cutting, as well as the first Address of the General Council. The letter actually contains nothing but facts, but was effective precisely because of that. You know my opinion of the middle-class heroes. Monsieur Jules Favre (notorious from the days of the Provisional Government and Cavaignac) & Co have however surpassed my expectations. First of all they allowed the sabre orthodox , the cr tin militaire , as Blanqui rightly dubs Trochu, to carry out his plan . This plan consisted simply in prolonging the passive resistance of Paris to the utmost limit, that is, to the starvation point, while confining the offensive to sham manoeuvres, to des sorties platoniques . What I am saying is not just supposition . I know the contents of a letter which Jules Favre himself wrote to Gambetta and in which he complains that he and other members of the part of the government cowering in Paris sought in vain to spur Trochu on to serious offensive measures. Trochu always answered that that would give the upper hand to Parisian demagogy. Gambetta replied: You have pronounced your own condemnation. Trochu considered it much more important to keep down the Reds in Paris with the help of his Breton bodyguard which rendered him the same services that the Corsicans rendered Louis Bonaparte than to defeat the Prussians. This is the real secret of the defeats not only at Paris but throughout France, where the bourgeoisie, in agreement with the majority of the local authorities, has acted on the same principle. After Trochu s plan had been carried out to its climax to the point where Paris had to surrender or starve Jules Favre & Co could simply follow the example of the commander of the fortress of Toul. He did not surrender. He merely explained to the Prussians that he was compelled through lack of food to abandon the defence and open the gates of the fortress. They were now free to act as they chose. But Jules Favre is not content with signing a formal capitulation. Having declared himself, his associates in the government, and Paris prisoners of war of the King of Prussia, he has the audacity to act in the name of the whole of France. What did he know of the situation in France outside Paris? Absolutely nothing except what Bismarck was gracious enough to tell him. More. These Messieurs les prisonniers du roi de Prusse go further and declare that the part of the French government still free in Bordeaux has forfeited its authority and can act only in agreement with them the prisoners of war of the Prussian king. Since they, as prisoners of war, can themselves act only at the dictate of their warlord, they thereby proclaimed the King of Prussia de facto the highest authority in France. Even Louis Bonaparte, after he surrendered and was taken prisoner at Sedan, was not so shameless. To Bismarck s proposals he replied that he could not enter upon negotiations because as a Prussian prisoner he had ceased to exercise any authority in France. At the most J Favre could have accepted a conditional armistice for the whole of France, namely, with the proviso that the agreement should be sanctioned by the Bordeaux government, which alone was entitled and competent to agree with the Prussians upon the clauses of such an armistice. That government, at any rate, would not have allowed the latter to exclude the eastern theatre of war from the armistice. They would not have allowed them to round off their line of occupation so advantageously for themselves. Rendered insolent by the usurpatory pretensions of his prisoners of war, who as such continue to play the part of the French government, Bismarck is now quite impudently interfering in internal French affairs. He protests, noble soul, against Gambetta s decree concerning the general elections to the Assembl e, because the decree, according to him, is prejudicial to the freedom of elections. Indeed! Gambetta should answer with a protest against the state of siege and other conditions prevailing in Germany, which annihilate the freedom of elections to the Reichstag. I hope that Bismarck sticks to his conditions of peace. Four hundred million pounds sterling as war indemnity half the English national debt! Even the French bourgeoisie will understand that. It will perhaps at last realise that by continuing the war they could at the worst only gain. The mob, high class and low, judges by appearances, the fa ade, the immediate result. During the last twenty years it has, all over the world, apotheosised Louis Bonaparte. I have always exposed him, even at his apogee, as a mediocre scoundrel. That is also my opinion of the Junker Bismarck. Nevertheless, I do not consider Bismarck so stupid as he would be if his diplomacy were voluntary. The man is caught by the Russian Chancellery in a net which only a lion could tear through, and he is no lion. For example, Bismarck s demand that France should hand over her twenty best ships and Pondicherry in India! Such an idea could not emanate from a really Prussian diplomat. He would know that a Prussian Pondicherry would be nothing but a Prussian hostage in English hands; that England, if she wanted to, could seize the twenty warships before they enter the Baltic Sea and that such demands could only have the object, absurd from the Prussian point of view, of making John Bull distrustful before the Prussians are out of the French wood. But Russia is interested precisely in such a result, in order to secure still more firmly Prussia s allegiance. In fact these demands have given rise to a complete change of feeling even in the peace-loving English middle class. Everybody is now calling for war. This provocative act and this danger to its interests are making even the bourgeois mad. It is more than probable that, thanks to the Prussian wisdom , Gladstone and Co will be kicked out of office and supplanted by a ministry declaring war against Prussia. On the other hand things look pretty bad in Russia. Since Wilhelm became an Emperor, the old Muscovite, anti-German party, with the heir to the throne at its head, has again won the upper hand completely. And it is supported by the sentiments of the people. Gorchakov s subtle policy is incomprehensible to them. It is therefore probable that the tsar will either have to change his foreign policy altogether, or be obliged to kick the bucket, like his predecessors Alexander I, Paul and Peter III. With a simultaneous convulsion in the politics of England and Russia, where would Prussia be, at a moment when its northern and south-eastern frontiers are left defenceless against invasion and Germany s defensive strength is exhausted? Not to forget that since the outbreak of war Prussia-Germany has sent 1,500,000 men to France, of whom only about 700,000 are still on their legs. Despite all appearance to the contrary, Prussia s position is anything but pleasant. If France holds out, uses the armistice to reorganise her army and finally gives the war a really revolutionary character and the artful Bismarck is doing his best to this end the new German, Borussian Empire may still get a quite unexpected thrashing as its baptism. My best compliments to the Countess and Fr nzchen. propos: You wrote me once about a book by Haxthausen on Westphalian (I think) conditions of landownership. I should be glad if you would send it to me. Be so good as to forward the enclosure to Dr Jacoby (K nigsberg) but stamp it by way of precaution. Get your wife to write on the enclosed letter the address of Dr Johann Jacoby, K nigsberg. Jennychen has just asked me to send her greetings to Trautchen, Fr nzchen and Wenzelchen , which I hereby do.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_02_04.htm

Your letter of 14 December has been received by the General Council with great pleasure. Your preceding letter dated 30 July has likewise reached us. It was passed on to Citizen Serraillier, Secretary for Spain, with instructions to forward our reply to you. But Citizen Serraillier shortly afterwards left for France to fight for the republic and was in Paris when the city was encircled. If you have therefore not yet received a reply to your letter of 30 July, which is still in his hands, it is due to these circumstances. The General Council at its meeting of the 7th instant has for the time being entrusted the correspondence with Spain to the undersigned FE and has passed your last letter on to him. We have regularly received the following Spanish working-class newspapers: the Barcelona La Federaci n, the Madrid La Solidaridad (until December 1870), the Palma El Obrero (until its suspension), and recently the Palma La Revoluci n Social (the first issue only). These newspapers have kept us posted on what is going on in the labour movement in Spain. We have seen with great satisfaction that the ideas of the social revolution are becoming more and more the common property of the working class of your country. As you say, the attention of the people has undoubtedly been attracted to a very large extent by the empty declamations of the old political parties, which have thus greatly obstructed our propaganda. That happened everywhere during the first few years of the proletarian movement. In France, in England and in Germany, the Socialists were compelled, and are still compelled, to combat the influence and activity of the old political parties, whether they be aristocratic or bourgeois, monarchist or even republican. Experience has shown everywhere that the best way to emancipate the workers from this domination of the old parties is to form in each country a proletarian party with a policy of its own, a policy which is manifestly different from that of the other parties, because it must express the conditions necessary for the emancipation of the working class. This policy may vary in details according to the specific circumstances of each country; but as the fundamental relations between labour and capital are the same everywhere and the political domination of the possessing classes over the exploited classes is an existing fact everywhere, the principles and aims of proletarian policy will be identical, at least in all western countries. The possessing classes the landed aristocracy and the bourgeoisie keep the working people in servitude not only by the power of their wealth, by the simple exploitation of labour by capital, but also by the power of the state by the army, the bureaucracy, the courts. To give up fighting our adversaries in the political field would mean to abandon one of the most powerful weapons, particularly in the sphere of organisation and propaganda. Universal suffrage provides us with an excellent means of struggle. In Germany, where the workers have a well organised political party, they have succeeded in sending six deputies to the so-called National Assembly; and the opposition which our friends Bebel and Liebknecht have been able to organise there against a war of conquest has worked more powerfully in the interest of our international propaganda than meetings and years of propaganda in the press would have. At present in France too workers representatives have been elected and will loudly proclaim our principles. At the next elections the same thing will happen in England. We learn with pleasure that it is your kind intention to remit to us the dues collected by the branches in your country. We shall receive them gratefully. Please make the remittance by cheque on any London banker payable to John Weston, our treasurer, or send it by registered letter addressed to the undersigned, either 256 High Holborn, London, the seat of our Council, or 122 Regent Park Road, his home address. We are awaiting with great interest the statistics concerning your federation which you promised to send us. As for the Congress of the International, it is useless to think of it while the present war lasts. But if peace, as it seems, is soon restored the Council will immediately take up this important question and consider your friendly invitation to convoke it in Barcelona. We have no sections yet in Portugal; it might perhaps be easier for you than for us to initiate relations with the workers of that country. If that is so be good enough to write to us once more on the subject. We likewise believe that it would be better, at least in the beginning, if you started relations with the Buenos Aires printers, provided you inform us later of the results obtained. Meanwhile you would do us a kind service and one useful to the cause if you would mail us an issue of the Anales de la Sociedad tipogr fica de Buenos Aires to get acquainted with it. As for the rest the international movement continues to march on in spite of all obstacles. In England the Central Trades Councils of Birmingham and Manchester, and through them the workers of the two most important manufacturing cities in the country, have just now directly affiliated to our Association. In Germany we are at present suffering government persecutions similar to those initiated by Louis Bonaparte in France a year ago. Our German friends, more than fifty of whom are in prison, are literally suffering for the international cause. They have been arrested and prosecuted because they opposed the policy of conquest with might and main and urged that the German people should fraternise with the French people. In Austria too many of our friends have been gaoled, but the movement is nevertheless making headway. In France our sections have everywhere been the soul of the resistance movement and constituted its strength against the invasion. They have seized power in the big cities of the South; and if Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux and Toulouse have acted with quite unprecedented energy, it was thanks to the efforts of the members of the International. Our organisation in Belgium is strong and our Belgian sections have just held their Sixth Regional Congress. In Switzerland the differences which arose some time ago among our sections seem to be on the wane. From America we have received the news of the affiliation of new French, German and Czech (Bohemian) sections and, besides, we continue to maintain fraternal relations with the Labour League, the big organisation of American workers. Hoping soon to receive further news from you we are sending you our fraternal greetings.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_02_13.htm

You must not believe a word of all the stuff you may see in the papers about the internal events in Paris. It is all lies and deception. Never has the vileness of bourgeois journalism displayed itself more brilliantly. It is highly characteristic that the German Unity-Emperor and Unity-Parliament in Berlin appear not to exist at all for the outside world. Every breath of wind that stirs in Paris excites more interest. You must carefully follow what is happening in the Danubian Principalities. If the revolution in France is temporarily defeated--the movement there can only be suppressed for a short time--there will be a new business of war for Europe beginning in the East, and Rumania will offer the orthodox tsar the first pretext for it. So look out on that side.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_04_06.htm

Your medical advice was effective in so far as I have consulted my Dr Maddison and have for the present put myself under his care. He says however that my lungs are in excellent condition and the cough is due to bronchitis, etc. It probably also affects the liver. Yesterday we received the by no means soothing news that Lafargue (not Laura) was at present in Paris. You can send me Haxthausen s book for lately I have been receiving undamaged various pamphlets, etc, not only from Germany but even from Petersburg. Thanks for the various newspapers you sent me. (Please let me have more of them, for I want to write something about Germany, the Reichstag, etc.) Best regards to the Countess and K uzchen. KM

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_04_12.htm

Your letter duly received. Just at present I have my hands full. Hence only a few words. Adieu!

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_04_17.htm

I have had meetings with the bearer. The Commune seems to me to be wasting too much time in trivialities and personal quarrels. One can see that there are other influences besides that of the workers. None of this would matter if you had time to make up for the time lost. It is absolutely necessary that whatever you want to do outside Paris, in England or elsewhere, you should do quickly. The Prussians will not hand over the forts to the Versailles government, but after the final conclusion of peace (May 26) will allow it to invest Paris with its gendarmes. Since Thiers and Co. had, as you know, stipulated for a large commission for themselves in the treaty they concluded by Pouyer Quertier, they refused to accept the help from the German bankers which Bismarck offered them. Had they accepted it they would have lost their commission. The preliminary condition for the realisation of their treaty being the subjugation of Paris, they have asked Bismarck to postpone their payment of the first instalment until after the occupation of Paris. Bismarck has accepted this condition. Prussia, being herself in very urgent need of this money, will therefore give the Versailles government every possible facility for hastening the occupation of Paris. So take care!

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_05_13.htm

Despite my admiration for your article in the Beehive, I am almost sorry to see your name in that paper. (And, by the way, you will allow me to observe that as a Party man I have a thoroughly hostile attitude towards Comte's philosophy, while as a scientific man I have a very poor opinion of it, but I regard you as the only Comtist, either in England or France, who deals with historical turning-points (crises) not as a sectarian but as an historian in the best sense of the word.) The Beehive calls itself a workers' paper but it is really the organ of the renegades, sold to Sam Morley and Co. During the last Franco-Prussian war the General Council of the International was obliged to sever all connection with this paper and publicly to declare that it was a sham workers' paper. The big London papers, however, with the exception of the London local paper, The Eastern Post, refused to print this declaration. In such circumstances your co-operation with the Beehive is a further sacrifice you are making to the good cause. A woman friend of mine will be going to Paris in three or four days. I am giving her the proper passes for some members of the Commune, who are still living hidden in Paris. If you or one of your friends have any commissions there please write to me. What comforts me is the nonsense which the Petite Presse publishes every day about my writings and my relations to the Commune; this is sent me each day from Paris. It shows that the Versailles police is very hard put to to get hold of genuine documents. My relations with the Commune were maintained through a German merchant who travels between Paris and London all the year round. Everything was settled verbally with the exception of two matters: First, through the same intermediary, I sent the members of the Commune a letter in answer to a question from them as to how they could handle certain securities on the London Exchange. Second, on May 11, ten days before the catastrophe, I sent them by the same method all the details of the secret agreement come to between Bismarck and Favre in Frankfort. I had this information from Bismarck's right hand--a man who had formerly (from 1848-53) belonged to the secret society of which I was the leader. This man knows that I have still got all the reports which he sent me from and about Germany. He is dependent on my discretion. Hence his continual efforts to prove his good intentions towards me. It was the same man who gave me the warning I told you about that Bismarck had decided to have me arrested if I visited Dr. Kugelmann in Hanover again this year. If only the Commune had listened to my warnings! I advised its members to fortify the northern side of the heights of Montmartre, the Prussian side, and they still had time to do this; I told them beforehand that they would otherwise be caught in a trap; I denounced Pyat, Grousset and Vesinier to them; I demanded that they should at once send to London all the documents compromising the members of the National Defence, so that by this means the savagery of the enemies of the Commune could to some extent be held in check--thus the plan of the Versailles people would have been brought to nothing. If these documents had been discovered by the Versailles people they would not have published forged ones. The address of the International [The Civil War in France, 1871] will not be published before Wednesday. I will then at once send you a copy. Material for four to five sheets has been compressed into two. Hence arose numerous corrections, revisions and misprints. Hence also the delay.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_06_12.htm

You must forgive my silence, even now I have only time to write a few lines. You know that throughout the period of the last Paris revolution I was denounced continuously as the grand chef de l'Internationale by the Versailles papers (Stieber collaborating) and par repercussion by the press here in England. And now the Address, which you will have received. It is making the devil of a noise and I have the honour to be at this moment the best calumniated and the most menaced man of London. That really does one good after a tedious twenty years idyll in my den. The government paper the Observer threatens me with a legal prosecution. Qu'ils osent! Je me moque bien de ces canailles l ! I am enclosing a cutting from the Eastern Post, because it has our answer to Jules Favre s circular. It appeared originally in the Times of 13 June. That honourable paper received a severe reprimand from Mr Bob Lowe (Chancellor of the Exchequer and member of the Supervisory Committee of the Times) for this indiscretion. My best thanks for the Reuters and my best compliments to Madame la Comtesse et ma ch re Fr nzchen.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_06_18.htm

The trade-union movement, among all the big, strong and rich trade unions, has become more an obstacle to the general movement than an instrument of its progress; and outside of the trade unions there are an immense mass of workers in London who have kept quite a distance away from the political movement for several years, and as a result are very ignorant. But on the other hand they are also free of the many traditional prejudices of the trade unions and the other old sects, and therefore form excellent material with which one can work.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_07_16.htm

Be so good as to send the enclosed note at once to Liebknecht. I find your silence very strange. I cannot think that the various packages of printed matter have all failed to reach you. On the other hand it would be very foolish, if you wanted to punish me in this way for not writing on the old principle of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Remember, mon cher, that if the day had 48 hours, in the last few months I would still not have finished my day s work. The work for the International is immense, and in addition London is overrun with refugees, whom we have to look after. Moreover, I am overrun by other people newspaper men and others of every description who want to see the monster with their own eyes. Up till now it has been thought that the growth of the Christian myths during the Roman Empire was possible only because printing was not yet invented. Precisely the contrary. The daily press and the telegraph, which in a moment spreads inventions over the whole earth, fabricate more myths (and the bourgeois cattle believe and enlarge upon them) in one day than could have formerly been done in a century. My daughters have been for some months in the Pyrenees. Jennychen, who was still suffering from the after-effects of pleurisy, is, she writes me, getting visibly better. Best thanks for your Germanic despatches. I hope that you, as well as your dear wife and Fr nzchen whom I ask you to greet cordially are well. propos! You were probably astonished to see that I made references to a duel in my missive to the Pall Mall. The matter was quite simple. Had I not given the editor this excuse for making a few cheap jokes, he would simply have suppressed the whole letter. As it was he fell into the trap and achieved my real purpose he published word for word the accusations against Jules Favre and Co contained in the Address.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_07_27.htm