The massacre at Leipzig,””” which you commented on in your 
last number, and of which you gave a more detailed account some 
weeks ago, is continuing to occupy the attention of the German 
papers. This massacre,— surpassed in infamy by that of Peterloo”” 
only,—is by far the most villainous act of scoundrelism that 
military despotism ever devised in this country. When the people 
were shouting, “Ronge for ever! down with Popery!” Prince John 
of Saxony, who, by-the-bye, is another of our many rhyming and 
book-writing princes, having published a very bad translation of 
the Italian poet Dante’s “Hell”; this “hellish” translator tried to 
add military glory to his literary fame by planning a most 
dastardly campaign against the unarmed masses. He ordered the 
battalion of rifles, called in by the authorities, to divide into several 
detachments and to block up the passages to the hotel in which his 
literary “royal highness” had taken up his quarters. The soldiers 
obeyed, and pressed the people by enclosing them in a narrow 
circle, and advancing upon them into the gateway of the hotel; 
and from this unavoidable entering of the people into the sacred 
gateway of the royal residence, brought on by the military acting 
under Prince John’s orders; from this very circumstance the 
pretext was taken to fire upon the people; by this very cir- 
‘cumstance the firing has been tried to be justified by the 
Government papers! Nor is this all; the people were taken 
between the several detachments, and the plan of his royal 
highness was executed by a cross fire upon the defenceless masses; 
wherever they turned they met with a repeated volley from the 

646 Frederick ‘Engels 

rifles, and had not the soldiers, more humane than Prince John, 
fired mostly over the heads of the people, the slaughter would 
have been terrible. The indignation created by this piece of 
scoundrelism is general; the most loyal subjects, the warmest 
supporters of the present order of things, share in it, and 
pronounce their utter disgust at such proceedings. The affair will 
do a great deal of good in Saxony, a part of Germany that before 
all others, has always evinced an inclination for talking, and where 
action was sadly wanted. The Saxons, with their little constitutional 
government, their talking houses of parliament, their liberal 
deputies, liberal and enlightened parsons, etc., were, in Northern 
Germany, the representatives of moderate Liberalism, of German 
Whiggery; and yet, with all that, greater slaves of the King of 
Prussia than the Prussians themselves. Whatever the Prussian 
Government resolved, the Saxon ministry had to execute; nay, of 
late, the Prussian Government did not even take the trouble to 
apply to the Saxon ministry, but direct to the Saxon inferior 
authorities, as if they were not Saxon, but their own employees! 
Saxony is governed in Berlin, not in Dresden! and with all their 
talking and boasting the Saxons know very well that the leaden 
hand of Prussia presses hard enough upon them. To all this 
talking and boasting, to all this self-conceit and contentment which 
would make the Saxons a peculiar nation opposed to the Prussian, 
etc., this Leipzig massacre will put an end. The Saxons must see, 
now, that they are under the same military rule as all other 
Germans, and that, with all their constitution, liberal laws, liberal 
censorship, and liberal king’s speeches, martial law is the only one 
that has any practical existence in their little country. And there is 
another thing to aid this Leipzig affair in spreading the spirit of 
rebellion in Saxony; notwithstanding all the talking of the Saxon 
Liberals, the great majority of the Saxon people are only begin- 
ning to talk; Saxony is a manufacturing country, and among her 
linen-weavers, frame-work-knitters, cotton-spinners, _ pillow- 
lace-makers, coal and metal-miners, there has been, from time 
immemorial, an appalling amount of distress. The proletarian 
movement, which, from the Silesian riots, the weavers’ battle as it 
is called, in June, 1844,”° has spread all over Germany, has not left 
Saxony untouched. There have been movements at several places 
among the railway constructing workmen, and also among the 
calico-printers some time ago, and it is more than likely, though 
positive evidence cannot now be given, that communism is making 

* Frederick Augustus II.— Ed. 

The Late Butchery at Leipzig 647 

its progress there as well as everywhere else, among the working 
people; and if the workers of Saxony enter the field, they are sure 
not to be satisfied with talking like their employers, the liberal 
“bourgeois”. 

Let me direct your attention somewhat more to the working 
class movement in Germany. In your paper of last week,? you 
predict a glorious revolution—not such a one as that of 
1688,°°— to this country. In this you are perfectly right—I only 
would beg to correct, or rather to more clearly define your 
expression, that it is the youth of Germany that will bring about 
such a change. This youth is not to be looked for among the 
middle classes. It is from the very heart of our working people 
that revolutionary action in Germany will commence. It is true, 
there are among our middle classes a considerable number of 
Republicans and even Communists, and young men too, who, if a 
general outbreak occurred now, would be very useful in the 
movement, but these men are “bourgeois”, profit-mongers, man- 
ufacturers by profession; and who will guarantee us that they will 
not be demoralised by their trade, by their social position, which 
forces them to live upon the toil of other people, to grow fat by 
being the leeches, the “exploiteurs” of the working classes? And if 
they remain proletarians in mind, though bourgeois in profession, 
their number will be infinitely small in comparison with the real 
number of the middle-class men, who stick to the existing order of 
things through interest, and care for nothing but the filling of 
their purses. Fortunately, we do not count on the middle classes at 
all. The movement of the proletarians has developed itself with 
such astonishing rapidity, that in another year or two we shall be 
able to muster a glorious array of working Democrats and 
Communists—for in this country Democracy and Communism 
are, as far as the working classes are concerned, quite synony- 
mous. The Silesian weavers, in 1844, gave the signal; the Bohemian 
and Saxon calico-printers and railway constructors, the Berlin 
calico-printers, and, indeed, the manufacturing classes of almost 
all parts of Germany, responded by turnouts and partial riots; the 
Jatter of which were almost always produced by the laws prohibit- 
ing combinations. The movement is now almost general through- 
out the country, and goes on quietly, but steadily, whilst the 
middle classes spend their time with agitating for “Constitutions”, 
“Liberty of the Press”, “Protective Duties”, “German Catholicity”, 
and “Protestant Church Reform”. All these middle-class move- 

* The Northern Star No. 408, September 6, 1845.— Ed. 

22* 

ments, although not without some merit, do not touch the working 
classes at all, who have a movement of their own—a knife-and- 
fork movement. In my next letter more on this subject.? 

The Northern Star No. 409, 

September 13, 1845