London, 4 February 1859 
9 Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park, 
Haverstock Hill 

Dear Lassalle, 

I’ve not yet had an acknowledgment of receipt from Mr 
Duncker and am therefore still in doubt whether the manuscript * 
is yet out of the clutches of the authorities. You will see from the 
enclosed note that it left London on 26 January. 

Ad vocem bellum’: The general view here is that war in Italy is 
inevitable.*” This much is certain: Mr Emmanuel‘ is in earnest 
and Mr Bonaparte was in earnest. What has swayed the latter is 
1. Fear of Italian daggers*”’ Since Orsini’s death, he has been 
constantly engaged in secret “intrigues with the Carbonari, the 
go-between being Plon-Plon, the husband of ‘Clotilde’.4 2. An 
exceedingly bleak financial situation: it is, in fact, impossible to go on 
feeding the French army ‘in peacetime’; Lombardy is fat and 
fertile. Moreover a war would again make ‘war loans’ possible. Any 
other loan is ‘impossible’. 3. Over the last two years Bonaparte’s 
repute has dwindled daily amongst all parties in France, and his 
diplomatic Transactions have also been a succession of Failures. So 

a K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. -” As regards the 
war - © Victor Emmanuel I - ¢ Clotilde, the Princess of Savoy 

something has got to happen if his prestige is to be restored. Even 
in the rural areas there is a great deal of grumbling about the 
ruinously low price of grain and Mr Bonaparte has tried in vain to 
push up the price of wheat artificially by means of his decrees on 
granaries.* 4. The parvenu in the Tuileries is being egged on by 
Russia. Given the Pan-Slav movement in Bohemia, Moravia, 
Galicia, southern, northern and eastern Hungary, Illyria, etc., and 
a war in Italy, Russia would almost certainly break the resistance 
that Austria continues to offer her. (Russia regards the prospect of 
an internal agrarian revolution with horror, and war abroad might 
come as a welcome diversion to the government, quite apart from 
any diplomatic objectives.) 5. Mr Plon-Plon, son of the ex-King of 
Westphalia,” and his clique (headed by Girardin and a very mixed 
bag of Hungarian, Polish and Italian pseudo-revolutionaries) are 
doing all in their power to force the issue. 6. A war against Austria 
in Italy is the only one in which England, who cannot take a direct 
stand for the Pope, etc., and against so-called liberty, would remain 
neutral, at least at the start. Russia, however, would keep Prussia 
in check should the latter feel inclined, which I doubt, to intervene 
at the very outset of the campaign. 

On the other hand one may be perfectly sure that Mr Louis 
Bonaparte is devilishly afraid of a really serious war. 1. The man 
is always full of misgivings and, like all gamblers, is far from 
resolute. He has always inched his way to the Rubicon,*” but 
those standing behind him have invariably had to chuck him in. In 
every case— Boulogne, Strasbourg, December 1851°*”"—he was, in 
the end, forced to proceed in earnest with his plans. 2. The 
exceptionally cool reception accorded his scheme in France is not 
encouraging, of course. The masses appear to be indifferent. On 
the other hand there have been outright and earnest remonstra- 
tions against it on the part of high finance, trade and industry, the 
clerical party and, finally, the senior generals (Pélissier, for 
example, and Canrobert). Indeed, prospects on the military side 
are far from rosy, even if the braggadocio in the Constitutionnel* is 
taken at its face value. Assuming France can muster all in all 
700,000 men, 580,000 of these, at the very highest estimate, will 
be fit for military service. Deduct 50,000 for Algiers; 49,000 
gendarmes, etc.; 100,000 (minimum) for guarding the cities (Paris, 

a Napoleon III, Decree on grain reserves of 16 November 1858, Le Moniteur universel, 
No. 322, 18 November 1858. - > Jéréme Bonaparte - < This refers to the article 
marked ‘L. Boniface. Paris, le 29 janvier’ in Le Constitutionnel, No. 30, 30 January 
1859. 

382 . 210. Marx to Lassalle. 4 February 1859 

etc.) and fortresses of France; 181,000 at least for the army 
keeping watch on the Swiss, German and Belgian frontiers. This 
leaves 200,000 which, even if you add the minuscule Piedmontese 
army, is by no means an OVERWHELMING Force to employ against 
the Austrians in their fortified positions on the Mincio and the 
Adige. 

However that may be, if Mr Bonaparte draws back now, he will 
be done for so far as the bulk of the French army is concerned; 
and this might ultimately induce him to go ahead after all. 

You apparently believe that in the event of such a war Hungary 
would rise. I very much doubt it. Austria will, of course, place a 
corps on the Galician-Hungarian frontier to observe the Russians, 
and this will simultaneously keep the Hungarians in check. The 
Hungarian regiments (in so far as they have not—and many of 
them already have—been dispersed among their enemies, e.g. the 
Czechs, Serbs, Slovenes, etc.) will be stationed in German 
provinces. 

The war would, of course, have serious, and without doubt 
ultimately revolutionary consequences. But initially it will maintain 
Bonapartism in France, set back the internal movement within 
England and Russia, revive the pettiest nationalist passions in 
Germany, etc., and hence, in my view, its initial effect will 
everywhere be counter-revolutionary. 

Be that as it may, you should expect nothing of the émigrés here. 
Apart from Mazzini who, at least, is a fanatic, they’re a bunch of 
confidence tricksters whose one ambition is to extract money from 
the English. Mr Kossuth has positively sunk to the level of an 
itinerant lecturer who hawks the same old nonsense round the 
various provinces of England and Scotland and sells it over and 
over again to ever new audiences. * 

The scoundrels here have all become so conservative that they 
would indeed deserve to be amnestied. Mr Gottfried Kinkel, for 
example, is publishing a weekly here, Hermann by name, 
compared with which even the Kélnische Zeitung is a daring and 
witty paper. (By indulging in sundry flirtations with aesthetic 
Jewesses, the suave, melodramatic parson is said, amongst other 
things, to have driven his wife to fall out of the window and break 
her neck. Freiligrath, being a kind-hearted fellow, was so taken in 
by the scenes of grief that he wrote a poem about the late Johanna 
Mockel,”: only to discover a day or two later that the grief was 

4 Kossuth’s lectures were published in Brussels in 1859 under the title L’Europe, 
l’Autriche et la Hongrie. -» F. Freiligrath, ‘Nach Johanna Kinkels Begrabnis’. 

merely feigned and that never had Mr Gottfried felt so Free and 
EAsy as since the death of his spouse.) The fellow preaches 
‘optimism in a namby-pamby, hat-doffing, somewhat breathless 
manner. The paper should be called Gottfried. For my part I 
would rather write under Manteuffel’s yoke than under that of the 
German philistines i in the City of London. To Mr Kinkel, however, 
the yoke is all the sweeter and lighter for the fact of his being not 
one jot superior to the said philistines where character and insight. 
are concerned. The to-do made by the ‘Lewald’ woman, alias 
‘Stahr’, about the late Mockel has compromised the latter person 
still further. 2” 
Salut. 

Your 

It would be a great help to me if you could obtain in Breslau,* 
and let me have as soon as possible, particulars about a person of 
the female sex by the name (allegedly) of von Paula-Krécher, who 
used to live there and is now over here.