Letter to Karl Marx, about July 23, 1860

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 23 July 1860


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
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

[Manchester, about 23 July 1860]

Dear Moor,

You shall have the article on FORTIFICATION if I can possibly manage it, but under no circumstances will you be able to get it by the first post.

What do you make of Kinglake's REVELATIONS? It wouldn't be a bad thing at all if the magnificent magnanimity of the Prince Regent in Baden-Baden[1] turned out to be nothing more than a pauvre stereotype of the Villafranca affair and Francis Joseph to be the genuinely 'magnanimous man'. Your princes, by the way, would seem after all to have realised that this time their heads are at stake; not that that is going to save them.

Just now I am reading Ulloa's Guerre d'indépendance de l'Italie 1848/49. Of all the military scribblings that have come my way (by PROFESSIONAL WRITERS) this is the most idiotic and slovenly. His criticism is so much hot air, the facts are distorted or not properly known and invariably flung together in a jumble. This Ulloa, who was a captain in the Neapolitan artillery in 1848, has called himself 'general' ever since Plon-Plon took him under his wing. This gang pullulates with mysterious generals. Moreover, if this SPECIMEN is anything to go by, the Neapolitan officers must really be a rotten lot.

If Garibaldi doesn't make a move soon,[2] things may turn out badly for him, unless the business in Naples goes well, which doesn't seem likely by the look of it. No doubt there'll be a few more defections before Milazzo and Messina, but the prospects for an expedition to the Continent may deteriorate. The navy won't place any obstacles in his way for, after all, they have no wish to fight Italians, but there certainly seems to be a rabid gang within the Neapolitan army who might resist along with the foreigners, nor can G. afford a defeat. If he had 10,000 reliable men he could, of course, finish the whole thing off in three days. He must now have between 5,000 and 6,000 men, not counting the Sicilians, of course.

Enclosed five pounds; it may enable you to give poor Eccarius a bit of extra help.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ An allusion to the fact that Napoleon III's negotiations with Prince Regent William of Prussia in Baden-Baden (see Note 183) could involve a betrayal of Austria's interests, just as the treaty concluded by Napoleon III with Francis Joseph in Villafranca in July 1859 (see Note 161) involved a betrayal of Italy's interests. In the course of the latter talks Napoleon III proposed leaving Lombardy to Austria in exchange for an Austrian undertaking to maintain neutrality in the event of France's attempting to seize the German territories on the left bank of the Rhine. Kinglake touched on the matter in the House of Commons speech mentioned by Engels. See also Marx's Herr Vogt, present edition, Vol. 17, p. 172.
  2. ↑ Garibaldi's army crossed over from Sicily to the mainland on 19 August 1860.