AFFAIRS IN PRUSSIA. 
[—PRUSSIA, FRANCE AND ITALY] 

Berlin, September 27, 1860 

The Prince Regent* who, as I have already told your readers, 
since his accession to supreme power, is a sullen and dogged 
Legitimist at the core of his heart, despite the gaudy insignia of 
liberalism he has been decked out with by the official oracles of 
the Prussian fool’s paradise, has just caught an occasion of publicly 
giving vent to his long compressed feelings. It is a strange fact, but 
nevertheless it is a fact, that the Prince Regent of Prussia has for 
the nonce shut out the Garibaldians from the fortress of Messina, 
and saved that important military stronghold for his beloved 
brother, King Bombalino? of Naples. The Prussian Ambassador at 
Naples, Count of Perponcher, a personage as notorious for his 
staunch Legitimism as Baron of Canitz, the Prussian Ambassador 
at Rome, had, like most of his colleagues, followed King 
Bombalino to Gaeta, where the Prussian war corvette Loreley was 
placed for the protection of German subjects. Now on the 15th of 
September, the citadel of Messina was on the point of capitulating. 
The officers had declared for Victor Emmanuel, and sent a 
deputation to Gaeta in order to tell the King that the place was no 
longer tenable. On the following day that deputation was shipped 
back to Messina by the war corvette Loreley, with a Prussian 
Commissary on board, who, on the arrival of the vessel, proceeded 
immediately to the citadel, where he had a long conversation with 
the Neapolitan commander. Beside his personal eloquence, the 
Prussian agent exhibited a bundle of dispatches on the part of the 
King, encouraging the General to resistance, and strongly inveigh- 

a William, Prince of Prussia.— Ed. 
b Francis I].— Ed. 

Affairs in Prussia 489 

ing against every proposition of giving up, even under the most 
favorable conditions, the forts still sufficiently provisioned for 
several months. During the stay of the Prussian Commissary, cries 
of “Evviva il Re!”* were heard ringing from the citadel, and when 
he left, the transactions entered into, with a view to stipulate the 
terms of the capitulation, were at once broken off. On the arrival 
of this news, Count Cavour hastened to lodge a complaint at 
Berlin because of “the abuse of the Prussian flag,” and the 
violation of the promise to preserve perfect neutrality in the 
revolutionary war of Italy. Despite the justness of the complaint, 
Count Cavour of all men was the man least fitted to prefer it. 
Herr von Schleinitz, whose dispatches had, during the war of 
1859,**° obtained some notoriety for their soft-sawder style, their 
seesaw reasonings, and the incomparable art of drawing out the 
thread of their verbosity finer than the staple of their argument— 
Herr von Schleinitz eagerly improved the opportunity to insinuate 
himself with the Prince Regent, and to change for once his 
humble sotto voce? for the shrill tones of haughtiness. He 
administered a peremptory rebuke to Count Cavour, who was 
plainly told that Sicily had not yet become a Sardinian province, 
that the treaty obligations were daily violated by the Court of 
Turin, and that if Cavour wanted to protest against foreign 
intervention in Italy, he had better lodge his protest at the 
Tuileries. 

The withdrawal of the French Embassador from Turin is here 
considered a transparent dodge, since it is perfectly known that 
immediately after the meeting at Chambéry between Louis 
Bonaparte and Messrs. Farini and Cialdini, the latter was intrusted 
with the command of the Piedmontese invasion of the Papal 
States. That invasion was planned at Chambéry with a view to 
taking the game out of the hands of Garibaldi and replacing it 
into the hands of Cavour, the French Emperor’s most pliant 
servant. The revolutionary war in Southern Italy is known to be 
considered at the Tuileries not as a fortuitous avalanche of a ball 
once set rolling, but as the deliberate act of the independent 
Italian party who, ever since Louis Napoleon’s ingress of the via 
sacra,” had proclaimed the rising of the South as the only means 
of taking off the nightmare of French protection. In point of fact, 
Mazzini in his proclamation to the Italian people, dated May 16, 
1859, stated plainly: 

4 “Long Live the King!”— Ed. 
b Undertone.— Ed. 

17* 

“With due reserve the people of the North may rally round the banners of 
Victor Emmanuel, wherever the Austrian is encamped or neighboring; the 
insurrection of the South must take a different and more independent course. 
Rising, rising united, installing a Provisional Government, arming, selecting a 
strategical point where it may keep its ground and attract the volunteers of the 
North, Naples and Sicily may still save the cause of Italy, and constitute its power, 
represented by a national camp. Thanks to that camp and the Northern volunteers, 
Italy, at the end of the war, whatever be the intentions of its initiators, may still 
become the supreme arbiter of its own destinies.... Such a popular manifestation 
would exclude every new division of Italy, every importation of new dynasties, 
every peace of the Adige or the Mincio, every abandonment of every part of the 
Italian soil. And the name of Rome is inseparable from the name of Italy. There, 
in the sacred city, stands the palladium of our national unity. It is the duty of 
Rome not to swell the Sardinian army by a mob of volunteers, but to prove to 
Imperial France that the prop of the Papal despotism at Rome will never be 
acknowledged the sword-bearer of Italian independence.... If Rome forgets its 
duties, we must act for the Romans. Rome represents the unity of the fatherland. 
Sicily, Naples, and the volunteers of the North must constitute its army.” 

Such were the words of Mazzini in May, 1859, reechoed by 
Garibaldi* when, at the head of the popular army created in Sicily 
and Naples, he promised to proclaim the Unity of Italy from the 
top of the Quirinal.** 

You will remember how Cavour, from the beginning, did 
everything in his power to beset Garibaldi’s expedition with 
difficulties; how, after the first success won by the popular hero, 
he sent La Farina, in company with two Bonapartist agents, over 
to Palermo, in order to deprive the conqueror of his dictatorship; 
how, later on, every military move of Garibaldi was met, on the 
part of Cavour, first by diplomatic and at last by military 
countermoves.” After the fall of Palermo and the progress to 
Messina, Garibaldi’s popularity towered so high among the people 
and the army of Paris, that Louis Napoleon considered it prudent 
to try the wheedling method. When Gen. Turr, at that time 
disabled from active service, had repaired to Paris, he became 
quite overwhelmed with Imperial flatteries. He was not only an 
honored guest at the Palais Royal, but was even admitted to the 
Tuileries,’ initiated into the Emperor’s unbounded enthusiasm 
for his “annexed” subject, the Nizzard hero, and laden with 
tokens of good will, such as rifled cannon, and so forth. At the 
same tume YTurr’s mind was impressed with the Emperor’s 

a Giuseppe Mazzini, “La Guerra”, Pensiero ed Azione, No. 17, May 2-16, 1859; 
Giuseppe Garibaldi’s address to the people of Palermo on September 10, 1860, 
L’Indépendance belge, No. 261, September 17, 1860; see also The Times, No. 23728, 
September 18, 1860.— Ed. 

b See this volume, pp. 421-24.— Ed. 

Affairs in Prussia 49] 

conviction that Garibaldi, after he had made sure of Naples and 
the Neapolitan Navy, could do nothing better than to try, in 
unison with the Hungarian refugees, a landing at Fiume, there to 
plant the banner of a Hungarian revolution. But Louis Napoleon 
proceeded from altogether false premises when he supposed that 
Turr was the man, or even fancied himself to be the man, to 
exercise the least control over Garibaldi’s course of action. Turr, 
whom I know personally, is a brave soldier and an intelligent 
officer, but beyond the sphere of military activity he is a mere 
zero, below the average of common mortals, lacking not only 
training of mind and a cultivated intellect, but that natural 
shrewdness and instinct which may stand in place of education, 
learning, and experience. He is, in one word, an easy-going jolly 
good fellow, gifted with an extraordinary degree of credulity, but 
certainly not the man to politically control anybody, not to speak 
of Garibaldi, who, with a fire of soul, still owns his grain of that 
subtle Italian genius you may trace in Dante no less than in 
Machiavelli. Turr, then, having proved a miscalculation, such at 
least he is spoken of in the entourage of the Tuileries. Kossuth 
was tried and dispatched to Garibaldi to bring him round to the 
views of the Emperor, and to bring him off his true scent, which 
points to Rome. Garibaldi used Kossuth as a means of stirring the 
revolutionary enthusiasm, and had him consequently feasted with 
popular ovations, but knew wisely how to distinguish between his 
name, representing a popular cause, and his mission, hiding a 
Bonapartist snare. Kossuth returned to Paris quite chopfallen; but, 
to give an earnest of his fidelity to the Imperialist interests, has 
now, as reported by the Opinion nationale, the Plon-Plon Moniteur, 
addressed a letter to Garibaldi, wherein he calls upon the latter to 
conciliate himself with Cavour, to abstain from every attempt at 
Rome, in order to not estrange France, the true hope of the 
oppressed nationalities, and even to let Hungary alone, the latter 
country being not yet ripe for an insurrection. 

I need not tell you that here, at Berlin, the shares of ministerial 
liberalisnf have experienced a heavy fall, consequent upon the 
impending Warsaw Congress; where, not only the rulers by the 
grace of God are to shake hands, but their respective Ministers of 
Foreign Affairs: Prince Gorchakoff, Count Rechberg, and our own 
Herr von Schleinitz, are to meet in the snug corner of a gilded 
antechamber, there to give an orthodox turn to the coming history 
of mankind. 

The transactions of Prussia with Austria, as to a new commercial 
treaty between the Zollverein and Austria, such as foreshadowed 

492 . Karl Marx 

by the treaty of February 19, 1853,°°° may now be considered to 
be broken off, since the Prussian Cabinet has positively declared 
that any assimilation, or even approximation of tariffs was out of 
the question.