You are sufficiently acquainted with the Paris population to realise 
a priori the absurdity of the accusation of cowardice. Nevertheless, I 
remains completely enigmatic and is bound to give rise to all kinds of 
malicious misinterpretations. 

The chief actor in the drama of June 13 was not the people, but the 
“Mountain”. Behind the “Mountain”, it is true, there was in turn a 
secret committee,**> which pushed matters forward and more or less 
compelled Ledru-Rollin to play that particular role. 

The chief error of the “Mountain” was its certainty of being 
victorious. It was so sure of this that it believed everything could be 
achieved by a peaceful demonstration. Thus it afforded the 
Government the opportunity of defeating it without having to strike 
a blow against it. The procession which made its way from Chateau 
d’eau through the boulevards was entirely unarmed. The Government, for its part, being fully informed on all details by its spies, had 
quietly and unnoticed arranged for all important points to be 
occupied by the National Guard, sharpshooters from Vincennes and 
other troops. The procession was completely encircled and even if it 
had been armed could not have offered any resistance. How much 
less could it do so, being unarmed! Changarnier, who had taken all 
necessary measures, was clever enough not to allow the alarm to be 
sounded. As if by magic, it was suddenly seen that all decisive points 

478 . | Karl Marx 

were occupied by troops. You can therefore understand that the 
unarmed masses quickly dispersed in order to get weapons, but even 
the arms depots which had been prepared in advance for the 
eventuality of an uprising were found to have been seized by the 
Government and put under military guard. The uprising was thus 
outwitted. 

That is the whole secret of this unprecedented day in the history of 
the French revolution. You may perhaps have read in the German 
newspapers of barricades which were said to have been easily 
captured. These barricades consisted of nothing but a few chairs 
which were thrown on to the street in order to halt for a moment the 
cavalry which were attacking unarmed people with their sabres. 

In addition, there were some other circumstances which made the 
shameful outcome of June 13 inevitable. 

At the very moment when Ledru-Rollin and his colleagues in the 
Conservatoire des Arts*% were occupied with constituting themselves as the Provisional Government, the secret socialist committee 
was engaged on the same task. It wanted to constitute itself as the 
Commune. Hence, even before the existing power was overthrown, 
the uprising had already split into two camps, and the important 
thing is that the People’s Party was not the party of the “Mountain”. 
This fact alone explains a great deal. The secret committee had 
wanted to start the outbreak already some days previously and by 
night. In that way the Government would have been taken by 
surprise. But the “Mountain” and the “Friends of the Constitution” 
(the party of the National)*” allied with it were opposed to this. 
They wanted to have the initiative in their hands. Ledru-Rollin’s 
speech in the Chamber was to be the pledge that the “Mountain” 
had decided on serious action. Thus on the one hand, those 
advocating immediate vigorous action were frustrated and preparations were made for a peaceful demonstration. On the other hand, 
the people who saw that Ledru-Rollin had so strikingly committed 
himself in the National Assembly, believed he possessed immense 
connections within the army and a profoundly conceived and 
far-reaching plan etc. How surprised, therefore, they must have 
been when it became obvious that Ledru-Rollin’s power was a mere 
illusion and that precautionary measures and preparations for an 
attack had been taken only by the Government. Thus you see how 
the two revolutionary parties paralysed and deluded each other. The 
people’s recollections of the more than ambiguous behaviour of the 
“Mountain” and of Ledru-Rollin in particular during May and 
June,*” and finally the cholera, which raged especially in the 
working-class districts, did the rest. Taken as a whole, June 13, 1849 

is only the retaliation for June 1848. On that occasion the proletariat 
was deserted by the “Mountain”, this time the “Mountain” was 
deserted by the proletariat. 

However grievous June 13 is bound to be for our party 
throughout Europe, the good thing about that day is that, with the 
exception of Lyons,*° the counter-revolutionary party in the 
National Assembly arrived at sole power without much bloodshed. 
That party will not only disintegrate, its extreme faction will soon 
reach a point when it will seek to discard even the irksome semblance 
of the Republic, and then you will see how it will be blown away with a 
single breath and there will be a repetition of the February, but on a higher 
level. 

K. M.x.