Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
No. 190, January 9, 1849.

* Cologne, January 8. That pastor and cantor, sexton and bellows-treader, barber and night watchman, field-keeper, grave-digger, etc., should wish us a happy New Year, is a custom as old as it is ever-recurring, which leaves us indifferent.

But the year 1849 does not content itself with the traditional. It marked its entry with something unprecedented—with a New Year greeting from the King of Prussia. It is a New Year’s wish that has come to pass, not to the Prussian people, nor “To My dear Berliners”, but “To My Army”. This royal New Year missive looks back “with pride” on the army because it remained loyal “when (the March) insurrection disturbed the peaceful development of the liberal institutions towards which I was resolved to lead My people with deliberation.”

Formerly people spoke of March events, of “misunderstandings”, and the like. Now no more disguise is needed: the March “misunderstandings” are flung in our faces as “insurrection”.

The same spirit that blows towards us from the royal New Year greeting also blows from the columns of the Female Crusader. Just as the former speaks of “insurrection”, so the latter speaks of ignominious “March criminals”, of criminal riff-raff who in March disturbed the tranquillity of Berlin palace life.

If we ask why the March “insurrection” is so utterly outrageous, the reply is: “because it disturbed the peaceful development of liberal (!!) institutions”, etc.—

If you were not sleeping in Friedrichshain, you insurgents of March, you would now have to be pardoned with “powder and lead” or life-long hard labour. In your wickedness you have, after all, disturbed “the peaceful development of liberal institutions”! Is there any need to recall that royal-Prussian development of “liberal institutions”, the most liberal development of squandering money, the “peaceful” expansion of bigotry and royal-Prussian Jesuitry, the peaceful development of the police and garrison system, of espionage, of fraud, of hypocrisy, of arrogance, and finally of the most disgusting bestialisation of the people alongside the most shameless corruption in the so-called higher classes? This recollection is all the less necessary since we need only look around us, only stretch out our hands, to see that “disturbed development” once more in fullest bloom before us and to refresh ourselves with the doubled edition of the aforesaid “liberal institutions”.

“My army”, the royal letter of congratulation continues, “has proved its ancient renown and reaped new glory.”

Indeed! It has reaped so much glory that at most only the Croatians could lay claim to greater.

But where and how was it reaped? First, “it decked its colours with fresh laurels when Germany stood in need of Our arms in Schleswig.” Major Wildenbruch’s Prussian note to the Danish government is the foundation on which the new Prussian glory has been piled up. The whole conduct of the war fitted excellently with that note, which assured the Danish Mr. Cousin that the Prussian government was by no means in earnest, that it was only throwing a bait to the republicans and dust in the eyes of the rest, just to gain time. And once time is gained, all is gained. Later on, one could reach a cosy understanding.

Herr Wrangel, about whom public opinion was for a long time misled, Herr Wrangel left Schleswig-Holstein secretly, like a thief in the night. He travelled in civilian clothes so as not to be recognised. In Hamburg all the innkeepers declared that they could not give him lodging. They set far more store by their houses, and the windows and doors therein, than by the laurels of the Prussian army, which, despised by the people, were embodied in this glorious gentleman. Nor let us forget that the only success of this campaign of useless and senseless marching to and fro, which was entirely reminiscent of the procedure of the old imperial courts (see our issues of that time), was a strategic blunder.

The only astonishing thing about this campaign is the nameless audacity of the Danes, who wantonly teased the Prussian army and completely cut Prussia off from the world market.

To round off Prussian glory on this side, there are also the peace negotiations with Denmark and the resulting Malmö armistice.

If the Roman emperor, smelling a coin paid in as urine tax, could say “non olet” (it does not stink), then the Prussian laurels reaped in Schleswig-Holstein, on the contrary, bear the indelible inscription: “Olet!” (It stinks!)

Secondly, “my army victoriously endured hardships and dangers when the insurrection in the Grand Duchy of Posen had to be combated.”

As far as “victorious hardships” are concerned, they are as follows: Prussia first of all exploited the noble-minded illusion of the Poles, fed from Berlin on smooth words, who saw in the “Pomeranians” German comrades-in-arms against Russia, and therefore quietly disbanded their own army, let the Pomeranians march in, and began to reassemble their scattered cadres only when the Prussians had most foully brutalised unresisting people. And then the Prussian heroic deeds! Not during the war, but after the war, the heroic deeds of the “glorious” Prussian army play out. When Mieroslawski was presented to the victor of June, Cavaignac’s first question was how the Prussians had managed to be defeated at Miloslaw? (We can prove this by ear-witnesses.) Three thousand Poles, barely armed with scythes and pikes, twice defeated and twice forced to retreat 20,000 well-organised and amply equipped Prussians. The Prussian cavalry, in wild flight, even rode down its own infantry. The Polish insurrection maintained Miloslaw after twice driving the counter-revolution out of the town.

Even more shameful than the defeat of the Prussians at Miloslaw was their final victory at Wreschen, prepared by a defeat. When an unarmed but herculean opponent confronts a coward armed with pistols, the coward flees and fires his pistols from a safe distance. That is what the Prussians did at Wreschen. They fled to a distance from which they could fire case-shot, grenades filled with 150 balls, and shrapnel, at pikes and scythes which, as everyone knows, cannot reach that far. Hitherto, shrapnel had been fired only by the English against the semi-barbarians of East India. It was the brave Prussians, in fanatical fear of Polish valour and aware of their own weakness, who first used shrapnel against so-called fellow-citizens. They naturally had to seek a means of killing Poles en masse from a distance. The Poles at close quarters were too frightful. That was the glorious victory of Wreschen.

But, as we have said, the heroic deeds of the Prussian army only begin after the war, just as the heroic deeds of the gaolers begin after the passing of sentence.

That this renown of the Prussian army will live on in history is guaranteed by the thousands of Poles who were butchered by Prussian treachery and black-and-white cunning with shrapnel, pointed bullets, etc., and later pilloried.

This second bundle of laurels of the counter-revolutionary army has been sufficiently attested by the villages and towns set ablaze by Prussian heroes, the Polish inhabitants beaten and massacred in their houses with rifle butts and bayonets, the looting and Prussian brutalities of every kind.

Immortal glory to these Prussian warriors in Posen, who paved the way along which the Neapolitan hangman’s lackey soon afterwards strode when he shot up his faithful capital and handed it over to the soldiery for 24 hours’ looting. Hail and glory to the Prussian army from the Posen campaign! For it gave a shining example to the Croatians, Sereczaners, Ortochaners and other hordes of Windischgrätz and Co., an example which, as Prague (in June), Vienna, Pressburg, etc., prove, has spurred them on to most worthy emulation.

And finally, even this courage of the Prussians against the Poles took place only out of fear of the Russians.

“All good things go in threes.” Hence “My army” also had to reap threefold glory. The opportunity for this was not long in coming. For “its co-operation in the maintenance of order (!) in Southern Germany earned fresh recognition for the Prussian name.”

Only malice or a mania for belittlement could deny that “My army” has rendered the most excellent beadle and gendarme services to the Federal Diet—which modernised itself by a change of name and had itself called the Central Power. It is equally undeniable that the Prussian name has earned full recognition in the consuming of southern German wine, meat, cider, etc. The half-starved men of the March, Pomerania, etc., have fattened themselves a patriotic little paunch; the thirsty have refreshed themselves, and everything their southern German quartermasters set before them was removed with such heroic courage that everywhere the Prussian name meets with the loudest recognition. It is a pity that the quartering bills have not yet been paid: the recognition would be even louder.

The renown of “My army” is actually inexhaustible; yet it must not be passed over that “where I called, it stood ready, in full loyalty, in full discipline”, and it is equally remarkable to impart to posterity that “My army set its excellent spirit and noble manliness against abominable calumnies”.

How flattering is the greeting for “My army”, since it brings to its pleasant recollection “full discipline” and “noble manliness” and thereby once more its heroic deeds in the Grand Duchy, and moreover the laurels in Mainz, Schweidnitz, Trier, Erfurt, Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Aachen, Coblenz, Münster, Minden, etc. For our part, however, we who do not belong to “My army”, we take the opportunity to broaden our limited notions of subjecthood. Shooting down old men and pregnant women, stealing (officially recorded in the neighbourhood of Ostrowo), ill-treating peaceful citizens with rifle butts and sabres, demolishing houses, going out at night with weapons concealed under coats against unarmed people, highway robbery (remember the adventure near Neuwied); this and similar heroism is called, in Christian-Germanic fashion: “full discipline”, “noble manliness”! Long live manliness and discipline, since those murdered under this firm are dead and gone anyway.

The few passages we have touched upon from the royal-Prussian New Year greeting show us that this document, in its significance and its spirit, stands on the same level as the manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick of 1792.