and the Revolutionary Popular Rising

[Neue Rheinische Zeitung
No. 292, 8 May 1849,
Extraordinary Supplement]

* Cologne, 7 May. The fermenting elements in Germany are separating more and more each day; things are acquiring firmer outlines.

While the one centre of the German counter-revolution, Austria, is more than occupied by the Hungarians, the other, Prussia, is sending its armed hordes in all directions against the revolutionary popular rising.

In Dresden, long-suffering Dresden the city of art and luxury, the people take up arms and answer the treasonable proclamations of the royal government with barricades and musket shots. The military, for the most part, goes over to the side of the people; the struggle is all but decided; then Prussian battalions arrive and take the side of the royal traitor, against the people.

In the Palatinate, the people likewise take up arms against the Bavarian counter-revolution, which grows more insolent daily; here, too, Prussian battalions stand ready to break in at the opportune moment and to blow apart the Frankfurt Assembly together with the Palatinate uprising.

Wherever we turn in north and south-west Germany, Prussian battalions stand ready to push through the counter-revolution by force of arms.

And so that there may be no lack of Prussian battalions either in its own territory or in the neighbouring states, the Landwehr is being called up everywhere, in accordance with our splendid military constitution.

Thus the Austrian army is there, the Prussian army here, the centre of the counter-revolution. Daily, more sharply and more universally, the new revolution confronts the counter-revolution.

474 Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels * Neue Rheinische Zeitung

The Dresden provisional government still stands and is concentrating the forces of the people from the whole country.

The Palatinate Land Defence Committee still stands, and each day gathers the Palatinate people closer and closer around the banner of the revolution.

The Landwehr in Rhenish Prussia, finally, refuses to march. Even in Elberfeld, in the black-and-white Wuppertal, it refuses to go farther than its place of assembly.

And finally, in Austria, the main thing, the Magyar revolution, is pressing forward inexorably. The Vienna mail has failed to arrive – perhaps because the Magyars have torn up the Moravian railway. That they have broken into Moravia is certain. We are informed from Ratibor that as early as eight days ago the thunder of whole batteries of cannon was heard at Golkowitz on the Austrian border, and on 3 May at Loslau, likewise in Prussian Upper Silesia. The engagements must in any case have taken place on this side of the Jablunka.

Moreover, the victory of the Hungarians is more certain than ever. It is established that the Russians are not coming. A few more days, then, and the Hungarians will be in Vienna, the Magyar revolution will be finished, and the second German revolution will be opened in the grandest manner.