Our predictions concerning the imminent triumph of the 
bourgeoisie* are in fact being fulfilled more rapidly than we could 
have expected. In less than a fortnight three absolute monarchies 
have been transformed into constitutional states: Denmark, Naples 
and Sardinia. 

The movement in Italy has developed with remarkable rapidity. 
The Papal State, Tuscany and Sardinia in succession took their place 
at its head; one country impelled the next further and further, one 
advance always brought another in its wake. The Italian Customs 
Union 2% was the first step towards constituting the Italian bourgeoi- 
sie, which decisively took the lead in the national movement and 
came daily more into collision with Austria. The bourgeoisie had 
achieved almost everything which could be achieved under an 
absolute monarchy, and a representative constitution daily became 
a more pressing necessity for it. But the winning of constitutional 
institutions—this was precisely the difficulty for the Italian bourgeoi- 
sie. The princes were reluctant; the bourgeoisie dared not confront 
them too threateningly as it did not want to throw them into the arms 
of Austria again. The Italians of the Customs Union might have 
gone on waiting for a long time, when help suddenly came to them 
from a quite unexpected quarter—Sicily rebelled; the people of 
Palermo drove the royal troops out of the city with unprecedented 
bravery,* the people of Abruzzi, Apulia and Calabria attempted a 
new insurrection, Naples itself prepared for battle, and Ferdinand 

* Palermo with 200,000 inhabitants defeated 13,000 men. Paris with a million 
inhabitants defeated 7,000 to 8,000 men in the July revolution. 

the bloodhound, pressed from all sides, with no hope of obtaining 
Austrian troops, was the first of all the Italian princes to have to 
grant a constitution and complete freedom of the press. The news 
reached Genoa and Turin; both cities demanded that Sardinia 
should not lag behind Naples; Charles Albert, too involved in the 
movement to withdraw, and also in need of money on account of 
armament against Austria—had to yield to the very emphatic 
representations of Turin and Genoa and similarly grant a constitu- 
tion. There is no doubt at all that Tuscany must follow, and that 
Pius IX himself will have to make new concessions. 

The Italian bourgeoisie has gained its decisive victory in the streets 
of Palermo. It is now victorious; what will ensue can only be the 
exploitation of this victory in all respects and the securing of its 
results against Austria. 

This victory of the Italian bourgeoisie is again a defeat for Austria. 
How old Metternich must have gnashed his teeth in rage—the man 
who saw the Neapolitan revolution coming from afar, who again and 
again begged the Pope and Tuscany for permission to march his 
troops across their territories, and who nonetheless had to hold back 
his Pandours and Croats on the Po! One courier after another came 
to him from Naples; Ferdinand, Cocle and Del Carretto were 
screaming for help, and Metternich, who in 1823 and 1831 297 had 
reigned so omnipotently in Italy, could do nothing. He had to look 
on quietly and see his last, his most reliable ally defeated and 
humiliated in Italy, and the whole weight of Naples placed on the 
scales against Austria thanks to a revolution. And he had a hundred 
and fifty thousand men waiting on the Po! But England was there, 
and had the Austrians crossed the Po, it would have been the signal 
for the occupation of Venice and the bombardment of Trieste—and 
so Metternich’s hangmen had to stand still and watch with their rifles 
in their hands while Naples was snatched from them. 

England’s conduct in the whole Italian affair has been very proper. 
While the other great powers, France as much as Russia, have done 
everything to support Metternich, England has taken its place, quite 
alone, on the side of the Italian movement. The English bourgeoisie 
has the greatest interest in thwarting an Austro-Italian protective . 
customs union and conversely in bringing about an anti-Austrian 
customs union in Italy based on free trade. For this reason it 
supports the Italian bourgeoisie, which for the time being itself still 
needs free trade for its development, and which is therefore the 
natural ally of the English bourgeoisie. 

In the meantime Austria is arming. These armaments are 
completely ruining its finances. Austria has no money, and it has 

turned to Rothschild for a loan; Rothschild has declared that he does 
not want a war and will not, therefore, provide any money in support 
of war. Indeed, is there any banker who will still advance money to 
the rotten Austrian monarchy for a war in which a country like 
England may involve itself? Metternich can thus no longer count on 
the bourgeoisie. He turns to the Emperor of Russia who, in the last 
few years, has also become a great capitalist, thanks to the mines of 
the Ural and Altai regions and to the corn trade—to the white Tsar, 
who has already once helped Frederick William IV with 15 million 
silver rubles, and who in general seems to be turning into the 
Rothschild of all declining absolute monarchies. Tsar Nicholas is said 
to have granted 75 millions—in return for a Russian percentage, it 
goes without saying, and on good security. All the better. If the Tsar 
has to cover the expenses of the Prussian and Austrian monarchies in 
addition to his own, if his money is wasted on arming unsuccessfully 
against Italy, then his treasure will soon be exhausted. 

Will Austria risk a war? We hardly think so. Its finances are 
chaotic; Hungary is in full ferment, Bohemia is not secure; on the 
battlefield itself, in Lombardy, guerillas would spring up every- 
where. And more than anything else the fear of England will restrain 
Metternich. At this moment Lord Palmerston is the most powerful 
man in Europe; his decision determines the issue, and this time his 
decision has been made known clearly enough. 

At quite the other end of Europe, in Denmark, a king? dies. His 
son,” a coarse, jovial schnapps-tippler, immediately convokes an 
assembly of notables, a committee of the estates, in order to 
deliberate upon a common constitution for the Duchies« and 
Denmark. And so that the Germans shall disgrace themselves 
everywhere, the Duchies have to declare that they do not want this 
constitution, because it would mean their being torn away from their 
common German homeland!2% 

It is really too ridiculous. The Duchies have a considerably smaller 
population than Denmark, and yet the number of their representa- 
tives is to be the same. Their language is to have equal rights in the 
assembly, in the official records, in everything. In short, the Danes 
make every possible concession to the Germans, and the Germans 
persist in their absurd national obstinacy. The Germans have never 
been national-minded where the interests of nationality and the 
interests of progress have coincided; they were always so where 

nationality has turned against progress. Where it was important to be 
national-minded, they played the cosmopolitans; where it was 
important not to be directly national-minded, they were so to the 
point of absurdity. In every case they made themselves ridiculous. 

Either the inhabitants of the Duchies are capable people, and more 
advanced than the Danes—in which case they will obtain preponder- 
ance over the Danes in the chamber of estate deputies and have no 
reason for complaint; or else they are German sluggards and lag 
behind the Danes in industrial and political development, in which 
case it is high time they were taken in tow by the Danes. But it is really 
too absurd for these upright Schleswig-Holsteiners to beg the 40 
million Germans to help them against the Danes and to refuse to take 
up their positions on a battlefield where they can fight with the same 
advantages as their opponents; it is too absurd that they should 
appeal to the police of the German Confederation?” against a 
constitution. 

The Danish constitution is as much a blow against Prussia as the 
Neapolitan against Austria, although in itself it is only a reaction to 
abortive Prussian constitutional experiment of February 3.°° As a 
further addition to its many embarrassments the Prussian govern- 
ment now has received a new constitutional state as neighbour; at 
the same time it loses a faithful protegé and ally. 

While Italy and Denmark have thus stepped into the ranks of the 
constitutional states, Germany lags behind. Every nation is moving 
forward, the smallest, weakest nations are always able to find a point 
in the European complications which enables them in spite of their 
big reactionary neighbours to win for themselves one modern 
institution after another. Only the 40 million Germans never bestir 
themselves. It is true that they are no longer asleep, but they still only 
talk and bluster, they have yet to act. 

But if the German governments were to set any great hopes on the 
bourgeoisie’s fear of action, then they would be very much deceiving 
themselves. The Germans are the last in line because their revolution 
will be quite different from the Sicilian. The German bourgeois and 
the philistines know very well that behind them stands a daily 
growing proletariat which on the day after the revolution will put 
forward quite different demands than they themselves desire. The 
German bourgeois and philistines therefore behave in a cowardly, 
indecisive and vacillating manner—they fear a conflict not less than 
they fear the government. 

A German revolution is far more serious than a Neapolitan 
revolution. In Naples there is a confrontation only between Austria 
and England; in a German revolution the whole of the East and the 

whole of the West will confront each other. A Neapolitan revolution 
will achieve its aim as soon as downright bourgeois institutions have 
been won; a German revolution will only really begin when it has got 
this far. 

For this reason the Germans must first of all be thoroughly 
compromised in the eyes of all other nations, they must become, 
more than they are already, the laughing-stock of all Europe, they 
must be compelled to make the revolution. But then they will really 
arise, not the cowardly German burghers but the German workers; 
they will rise up, put an end to the whole filthy, muddled official 
German rule and with a radical revolution restore the honour of 
Germany. 

Zeitung No. 15, February 20, 1848 time