Letter to Friedrich Engels, July 3, 1855

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 3 July 1855


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 3 July 1855 28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Frederic,

The £5 received on Monday. For 3 days I have been rummaging through a mass of stuff at the Museum[1] without finding anything about the Neapolitan army save for the following, which may also be found in MacCulloch's Dictionary Geographical, Statistical etc.

In 1848 the army NEARLY 49,000 strong (this seems to be its war footing, as I find it given {in a Dizionario Politico, Turin} as 26-27,000 strong in 1840). Of these, 32,000 INFANTRY OF THE LINE, 5,000 CAVALRY, 4,000 ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS, and 8,000 gendarmes. They claim to be able to increase their army to 64,237 and this is given as the official war footing.

I discovered from Ricciardi that the son of Ferdinand I[2] and father of King Bomba[3] first engaged the Swiss—in 1824 or 1825—for 30 years (the Neapolitan army having aped the Spanish and mutinied) at 3 times the pay of the NATIVE ARMY. Since the government of the Two Sicilies relies on Swiss and lazzaroni at home and on the Austrian army abroad, and itself estimates at zero its badly paid, undisciplined, demoralised, cowardly army, I believe that in any survey of the European armies, this estimate made by its own government could be accepted, the army put at zero, and its strength mentioned only en passant.

There might be something more detailed in Mariotti. But I couldn't get hold of it as it was always 'IN HAND' whenever I asked for it.

Our family life here is still melancholy. My wife still very unwell. The memory of our poor, dear child[4] torments us, and even interposes itself in his sisters' play. Such blows can only be mitigated slowly, with the passage of time. To me the loss is as poignant as on the first day and hence I can tell how much my wife is suffering. Should the Scotch money[5] arrive in time I shall spend a few weeks in Kent, where plenty of cheap and pleasantly situated places are said to be available.

The scenes in Hyde Park last Sunday were DISGUSTING, firstly because of the CONSTABLES' brutality, and secondly because of the purely passive resistance put up by the huge crowds.[6] However, things are clearly seething and fermenting and we can only hope that great disasters in the Crimea will bring them to a head.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ Engels wrote the survey 'The Armies of Europe' (see present edition, Vol. 14) from June to September 1855. He was helped in this work by Marx, who collected material for him on various European armies, the Spanish and the Neapolitan in particular, at the British Museum library. The survey was published unsigned in Putnam's Monthly in August, September and December
  2. ↑ Francis I
  3. ↑ Ferdinand II
  4. ↑ Edgar (see this volume, p. 530)
  5. ↑ an allusion to the Scottish origin of the Westphalens; see also p. 526.
  6. ↑ Marx has in mind the police reprisals against the participants in the second mass demonstration held, despite the police prohibition, in Hyde Park on Sunday, 1 July 1855, in protest against Sunday Trading Bill (on the first demonstration see Note 654). Marx describes the events in which he took part in 'Agitation over the Tightening-up of Sunday Observance' (see present edition, Vol. 14)