The Riforma of Lucca has printed a reply to one of those 
well-known and vile articles which the Augsburger Zeitung’ is 
accustomed to publish on instructions from the Imperial Chancellery 
in Vienna.*!! 

That trashy rag from the Lech? had not only praised to the skies 
the loyalty of the 518,000 Austrian soldiers to their feeble-minded 
Ferdinand, but had also claimed that all these soldiers, Bohemians, 
Poles, Slovaks, Croats, Heyducks, Wallachians, Hungarians, Italians, 
etc., were burning with enthusiasm for German unity and would 
willingly part with their lives for it, as soon as it should be the will of the 
Emperor! 

As though this were not precisely the misfortune—that so long as 
Austria exists Germany has to risk seeing its unity defended by 
Heyducks, Croats and Wallachians, as though the unity of Germany 
so long as Austria survives could be anything else but the unity of 
Germany with Croats, Wallachians, Magyars and Italians! 

The Riforma replies very aptly to the lying claim of the All-Gemeine< 
that Austria is in fact defending the interests of the German nation in 
Lombardy, and concludes with an appeal to the Germans, drawing a 
parallel between the Italian movement of 1848 and the German wars 
of liberation in 1813 and 1815. 

The Riforma evidently thought that by doing so it was paying a 
compliment to the Germans, otherwise it would never have equated, 

against its better judgment, today’s progressive Italian movement 
with precisely those reactionary wars to which Italy directly owes its 
subjugation to Austria, to which Germany owes the restoration of as 
much as possible of the old confusion, fragmentation and tyranny, 
and to which the whole of Europe owes the infamous treaties of 
1815.5? 

The Riforma may take our word for it: Germany is fully 
enlightened as to the wars of liberation, both through the 
consequences of the wars themselves and through the ignominious 
end to which the heroes of that “glorious” age have come. Only the 
hired papers of the government still puff their cheeks and trumpet 
forth praise for that stupidity-intoxicated period, the public laughs 
and even the iron cross turns red with shame. 

Precisely these newspapers, precisely these enthusiastic French- 
eaters of 1813, are now raising the same outcry against the Italians as 
they did before against the French, who sing paeons of praise to 
Austria, to Christian-Germanic Austria, and who preach crusades 
against Romance knavery and Romance frippery—for indeed 
Italians are just as much Romance as the French. 

Would the Italians like an example of the sympathy they may 
expect from the worthy blusterers of the age of liberation, of the 
kind of ideas these red-headed visionaries entertain about the Italian 
nation? We shall merely quote the well-known song by A[ugust] 
A[dolf] L{udwig] Follen?: 

Yon land of marvels all may sing, 
Where mandolines and soft guitars do ring 
And, ’neath darkling leaf, the golden orange gleams; 

But I the purple German plum esteem 
And Borsdorf’s apple on its leafy beam, 

and how these poetic ravings of an ever cool-headed philistine drivel 
on. Then come the most ludicrous pictures of bandits, daggers, 
fire-belching mountains, Romance knavery, the infidelity of Italian 
women, bugs, scorpions, poison, vipers, assassins, etc., seen by this 
virtuous lover of plums running around in dozens on all the 
highways of Italy, and finally the gushing philistine thanks his God 
that he is in the land of Love and Friendship, of shindies with 
chair-legs, of faithful, blue-eyed pastors’ daughters, of probity and 
cosiness, in short in the land of German Loyalty. Such are the 
superstitious and novelettish ideas entertained by the heroes of 1813 
about Italy, which of course they have never seen. 

The Riforma and the men of the Italian movement in general can 
rest assured: public opinion in Germany is definitely on the side of 
the Italians. The German people have just as great an interest in the 
fall of Austria as the Italian people. They greet with undivided 
applause every step forward by the Italian people, and, we hope, 
they will not be missing from the battlefield at the right moment to 
put an end to all the Austrian magnificence once and for all. 

Signed: F. Engels