Letter to Karl Marx, January 3, 1864

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 3 January 1864


First published in Der Briejii'echsel z-anscken F. Engels und K. Marx, 1kl. 3, Stuttgart, 1913. Printed according to the original. Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41


ENGELS TO MARX

IN ZALT-BOMMEL

Manchester, 3 January 1864

Dear Moor,

The many CHRISTMAS drinking-sprees and consequent GENERAL UNFITNESS FOR BUSINESS have rendered me utterly incapable of replying any sooner. However, the affair is now happily over.

I am sending your wife the amount in question[1] For the rest, I'm delighted to hear that your second carbuncle has been operated on, and that you are thus over this latter crisis. You'll have got damned thin as a result of this tedious business.

The Schleswig-Holstein affair has come off the rails again good and proper. If, as I believe, there's war in the spring, we shall have Denmark, Sweden, France and Italy against us and, possibly, England. In Hungary and Poland Plonplonism,[2] to which Kossuth had already pointed the way, is in full swing.[3] I see only two ways out here: 1. either revolution in Berlin as soon as the troops have left and, in Vienna, a corresponding movement with concessions of an adequate kind to Hungary and, perhaps, also to Poland. That's what would be most favourable, and there would be nothing to fear in such a case. But it is also what is most improbable, in view of the confusion that prevails. Or, alternative- ly, 2. a restoration of the Holy Alliance[4] for which, as always, the partition of Poland would provide the cement (Russia has a greater interest in Poland than in Denmark and also the prospect, come the armistice, of having Austria and Prussia under her thumb, i.e. being able to impose her own conditions).

Then the Russians would take over from the Prussians in Berlin and play the policeman, whereat we would be done for, and Bonaparte cock of the walk.

The mock war in Schleswig under Wrangel can't last very long.[5] In the first place, the Danish fortifications will make even tlie initial encounters too bloody and, in the second, Boustrapa 167

is too much in need of a popular war not to seize this opportunity. What more could he ask than the restoration of the Holy Alliance and a war for both Poland and the Rhine with, for good measure, England and Italy and all the small states of Europe on his side?

Apropos. Our worthy Faucher, who shows himself a rabid Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg man in the Chamber,[6] is, at the same time, sending The Manchester Guardian anti-German articles in which he arse-licks to the English bastards of The Times. Shouldn't one do something to unmask this louse?

If the curs in the Prussian Chamber were now to take their courage in both hands, they could straighten things out to their own satisfaction within the space of 6 weeks. Handsome William's reply shows what a fix the government is in.[7] No one will fork out, not even the worthy von der Heydt, and they know they won't get any money [8]

Lupus has just come to pick me up and sends you his kindest regards.

Here's to a good recovery and a Happy New Year.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ See this volume, pp. 500-01.
  2. ↑ Plonplonism—from Plon-Plon, nickname of Napoleon Ill's cousin, Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte, who led a Bonapartist faction that sought to distract the masses from struggle against the existing regime by means of large-scale social demagoguery and ostensible opposition to the policy of Napoleon III. Plon-Plon took an equally demagogic stand on the national liberation struggle of the Hungarian, Italian and Polish peoples and acted, in effect, as a vehicle of Napoleon Ill's foreign policy, recruiting supporters for it among bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democratic émigrés.
  3. ↑ On Kossuth's ties with Plon-Plon see Marx's Herr Vogt (present edition, Vol. 17).
  4. ↑ Engels speaks about the possible revival of the Holy Alliance, the association of European monarchs founded at the Congress of Vienna on 26 September 1815 on the initiative of Emperor Alexander I of Russia and the Chancellor of Austria, Metternich, for protecting the 'legitimate' regimes restored after the victory over Napoleon and for suppressing revolutionary and national liberation movements.
  5. ↑ Two motions—one on the occupation of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, and another on the so-called execution—were tabled at the German Federal Diet on 7 December 1863 following the promulgation of the new Danish Constitution (see Note 557). The latter motion was proposed by Prussia and Austria, who wanted no open violation of the 1852 London Protocol (see Note 380). Under pressure from Austria and Prussia, their proposal was adopted, and by 31 December Saxon and Hanover troops had occupied the whole of Holstein, meeting with no resistance from the Danes. Friedrich of Augustenburg was proclaimed Duke of Schleswig and Holstein under the name of Frederick VIII (see Note 558).
  6. ↑ J. Faucher's speech in the Chamber of Deputies on 1 December 1863, reported in the Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 338, 4 December 1863.
  7. ↑ On December 1863 the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, in an address to n King William I, refused to allocate the emergency funds for the forthcoming war against Denmark. In his reply of 27 December William rejected the address. Engels probably knew the text of the reply from The Times, where it was published on 2 January 1864.
  8. ↑ by force