Introduction
Hecker, Struve, Blenker, Zitz und Blum,
Bringt die deutschen Fürsten um!
This refrain [Hecker, Struve, Blenker, Zitz and Blum, slay the German princes!– Ed.]  which on
every highway and in every tavern from the Palatinate to the Swiss frontier rang out on the lips of
the South German “people's militia” to the well-known tune of “Surrounded by the Sea”, a
mixture of chorale and barrel-organ–this refrain sums up the whole character of the “magnificent
uprising for the Imperial Constitution”.1 Here you have in two lines their great men, their ultimate
aims, their admirable staunchness, their noble hatred for the “tyrants” and at the same time their
entire insight into the social and political situation.
Amidst  all the movements  and convulsions in Germany which followed in the wake of the
February Revolution and its subsequent development, the campaign for the Imperial Constitution
stands out owing to its classically German character. Its occasion, its appearance, the way it
conducted itself, its whole course, were through and through German. In the same way as the
June days of 1848 mark the degree of the social and political development of France, so the
campaign for the Imperial Constitution marks the degree of the social and political development
of Germany, and especially of South Germany.
The soul of the whole movement was the class of the  petty bourgeoisie, usually known as the
burghers, and it is precisely in Germany, and especially in South Germany, that this class is in
preponderance.  It  was  the  petty  bourgeoisie  which,  in  the  “March  Clubs”, 2 the  democratic
constitutional clubs, the patriotic clubs, the multitude of so-called democratic press, swore to the
Imperial Constitution its Grutli oaths, 3 as widespread as they were innocuous, and carried on its
fight against the “refractory”  princes of which the only immediate result was admittedly the
elevating  consciousness  of  having  fulfilled  one's  civic  duty.  It  was  the  petty  bourgeoisie,
represented  by  the  resolute  and  so-called  extreme  Left  of  the  Frankfurt  Assembly,  i.e.  in
particular by the Stuttgart Parliament and the “Imperial Regency”, 4 which furnished the entire
movement with its official leadership; lastly, the petty bourgeoisie was dominant in the local
committees of the provincial diets, committees of public safety, provisional governments and
constituent assemblies which in Saxony, on the Rhine and in South Germany won greater or
lesser credit in the cause of the Imperial Constitution.
It is most unlikely that the petty bourgeoisie, if left to its own devices, would have gone outside
the legal framework of lawful, peaceful and virtuous struggle and taken up the musket and the
paving-stone  in  place  of  the  so-called  weapons  of  the  spirit.  The  history  of  all  political
movements since 1830 in Germany, as in France and England, shows that this class is invariably
full of bluster and loud protestations, at times even extreme as far as talking goes, as long as it
perceives  no  danger;  faint-hearted,  cautious  and  calculating  as  soon  as  the  slightest  danger
approaches; aghast, alarmed and wavering as soon as the movement it provoked is seized upon
and taken up seriously by other classes; treacherous to the whole movement for the sake of its
petty-bourgeois existence as soon as there is any question of a struggle with weapons in hand –
and in the end, as a result of its indecisiveness, more often than not cheated and ill-treated as soon
as the reactionary side has achieved victory.
Standing everywhere behind the petty bourgeoisie, however, are other classes who take up the
movement provoked by it and in its interest, give it a more defined and energetic character and
wherever possible seek to take it over: the proletariat and a large part of the peasantry, to whom
moreover the more advanced section of the petty bourgeoisie usually attaches itself for a while.

3 Introduction
These classes, headed by the proletariat of the larger towns, took the loudly protested assurances
in favour of the Imperial Constitution more seriously than was to the liking of the petty-bourgeois
agitators. If the petty bourgeois were prepared, as they swore at every moment, to stake “property
and life” [In the German original a paraphrase of “mit Gut und Blut fur des Reichsgrundgesetz
einzustehen” in the proclamation issued by the Bavarian petty-bourgeois deputies in reply to the
Bavarian King's refusal to recognise the Imperial Constitution; the proclamation was published in
the Kolnische Zeitung No. 109, May 8, 1849.–Ed.] for the Imperial Constitution, the workers, and
in many districts the peasants too, were ready to do the same, but under the condition, admittedly
unspoken but perfectly understood by all parties, that after victory the petty bourgeoisie would
have to defend this same Imperial Constitution against these same workers and peasants. These
classes drove the petty bourgeoisie to an open break with the existing state power. If they could
not prevent their allies, with their shopkeepers mentality, from betraying them even while the
battle was still going on, they at least had the satisfaction of seeing this treachery punished after
the victory of the counter-revolution by the counter-revolutionaries themselves.
On the other hand at the beginning of the movement, the more resolute section of the bigger and
middle bourgeoisie likewise attached itself to the petty bourgeoisie, just as we find in all earlier
petty-bourgeois movements in England and France. The bourgeoisie never rules in its entirety;
apart from the feudal castes which have still retained some degree of the political power, even the
big bourgeoisie itself splits, as soon as it has vanquished feudalism, into a governing and an
opposing party usually represented by the banks on the one hand and the manufacturers on the
other. The opposing, progressive section of the big and middle bourgeoisie then has, against the
ruling section, common interests with the petty bourgeoisie and unites with it for a joint struggle.
In Germany, where the armed counter-revolution has restored the almost exclusive rule of the
army, the bureaucracy and the feudal nobility and where the bourgeoisie, in spite of the continued
existence of constitutional forms, only plays a very subordinate and modest role, there are many
more motives for this alliance. For all that, however, the German bourgeoisie is also infinitely
more irresolute than its English and French counterparts and as soon as there is the slightest
chance of a return to anarchy, i.e. of the real, decisive struggle, it retreats from the scene in fear
and trembling. So also this time.
Incidentally, the moment was not at all unfavourable for battle. In France elections were at hand;
whether they gave the majority to the monarchists or the reds, they were bound to oust the centre
parties of the Constituent Assembly, strengthen the extreme parties and bring about through a
popular movement a speedy resolution of the intensified parliamentary struggle: in a word, they
were bound to bring about a ”journee”. [An “historic day”.–Ed]  In Italy fighting was going on
under the walls of Rome, and the Roman Republic was holding out against the French army of
invasion. In Hungary the Magyars were pushing on irresistibly; the imperial troops had been
chased over the Waag and the Leitha; in Vienna, where every day people imagined they could
hear the roar of cannon, the Hungarian revolutionary army was expected at any moment; in
Galicia the arrival of Dembinski with a Polish-Magyar  army was imminent and the Russian
intervention,  far  from  becoming  dangerous  to  the  Magyars,  seemed  much  more  likely  to
transform  the  Hungarian struggle  into a  European one.  Finally,  Germany  was  in a  state  of
extreme ferment; the advances of the counter-revolution, the growing insolence of the soldiery,
the bureaucracy and the nobility, the continually renewed betrayals by the old liberals in the
ministries and the rapid succession of broken promises on the part of the princes precipitated into
the arms of the active party whole sections of former supporters of order.
In these circumstances the struggle broke out which we are about to describe in the following
passages.
The incompleteness and confusion that still prevails in the material, the total unreliability of
almost all the oral information that can be collected and the purely personal designs that underlie
every piece of writing so far published about this struggle make it impossible to give a critical

4 Introduction
picture of the whole course of events. In these circumstances we have no choice but to restrict
ourselves purely to recounting what we ourselves have seen and heard. Fortunately this is quite
enough to allow the character of the whole campaign to emerge; and if, besides the movement in
Saxony, we also lack personal observation of Mieroslawski's campaign on the Neckar, perhaps
the Neue Rheinische Zeitung will soon find an opportunity of giving us the necessary information
at least as regards the latter.5
Many of the participants in the campaign for the Imperial Constitution are still in prison. Some
have managed to return home, others, still abroad, are daily awaiting such an opportunity – and
among them are by no means the worst. The reader will understand the consideration we owe our
comrades-in-arms and find it natural if we remain silent about certain things; and many a one
who is now safely back home will not take it amiss if we also do not wish to compromise him by
narrating events in which he displayed truly magnificent courage.

I. Rhenish Prussia
It will he remembered how the armed uprising for the Imperial Constitution first broke out in
Dresden[6 at  the  beginning  of  May.  It  is  well  known  how  the  Dresden  barricade-fighters,
supported by the rural population and betrayed  by the Leipzig philistines, were defeated by
superior forces after six days' fighting. They at no time had more than 2,500 combatants with a
motley collection of weapons and for their whole artillery two or three small mortars. The royal
troops  consisted,  apart  from the  Saxon battalions,  of  two regiments  of  Prussians.  They had
cavalry, artillery, riflemen and a battalion equipped with needle-guns  [Dreyse Needle-gun, first
breach loading bolt-action rifle, introduced 1848] . The royal troops appear to have conducted
themselves in an even more cowardly way in Dresden than elsewhere; at the same time, however,
it is clear that the men of Dresden fought more courageously against these superior forces than
was probably the case elsewhere in the campaign for the Imperial Constitution. It must be added,
however, that street-fighting is something quite different from an engagement in the field.
Berlin, disarmed and in a state of siege, remained quiet. Not once was the railway torn up to hold
up the Prussian reinforcements at Berlin. Breslau [The Polish name is Wroclaw.–Ed.] attempted a
feeble barricade-fight 7 for which the government had long been prepared, and as a result the city
only ended up the more certainly under the dictatorship of the sabre. The rest of North Germany,
having no revolutionary centres, was paralysed. Only Rhenish Prussia and South Germany could
still be reckoned on, and in South Germany the Palatinate already started to move just at that
moment.
Since  1815  Rhenish  Prussia  has  been  considered  one  of  the  most  progressive  provinces  in
Germany, and rightly so. It combines two advantages which are not to be found in combination in
any other part of Germany.
Rhenish Prussia shares with Luxembourg, Rhenish Hesse and the Palatinate the advantage of
having  experienced  since  1795  the  French  Revolution  and  the  social,  administrative  and
legislative consolidation of its results under Napoleon. When the revolutionary party in Paris
succumbed,  the  armies  carried  the  revolution  across  the  frontiers.  Before  these  so  recently
liberated sons of peasants not only the armies of the Holy Roman Empire 8 but also the feudal rule
of the nobility and the priests fell to pieces. For two generations the left bank of the Rhine has no
longer  known  feudalism;  the  nobleman  has  been  deprived  of  his  privileges  and  the  landed
property has passed from his hands and those of the church into the hands of the peasants; the
land has been divided up and the peasant is a free landed proprietor as in France. In the towns, the
guilds and the patriarchal rule of the patricians disappeared ten years earlier than anywhere else in
Germany in the face of free competition, and the Napoleonic Code 9 finally sanctioned the whole
changed situation by summing up all the revolutionary institutions.
Secondly, however, Rhenish Prussia possesses – and herein lies its main advantage over the rest
of the states on the left bank of the Rhine – the most developed and diversified industry in the
whole of Germany.  In the three administrative districts of Aachen, Cologne and Dusseldorf,
almost all branches of industry are represented: cotton, wool and silk industries of all kinds,
together with those branches dependent upon them such as bleaching, textile printing and dyeing,
iron-founding and engineering, are to be found concentrated here, alongside mining, armaments
manufacture and other metal industries, within an area of a few square miles and employ a
population of a density unheard of in Germany. Directly adjoining the Rhine Province is the iron
and coal district of the Mark which provides it with a part of its raw materials and from the
industrial point of view belongs to it. The best waterway in Germany, the proximity of the sea

6 I. Rhenish Prussia
and the mineral wealth of the region favour industry, which has also built numerous railways and
is even now daily further integrating its railway network. There is a mutual interaction between
this industry and an import and export trade, for Germany very extensive, with all parts of the
world, a considerable direct traffic with all the great trading centres of the world market and a
commensurate degree of speculation in raw materials and railway shares. To sum up, the level of
industrial and commercial development in the Rhine Province is for Germany unique, even if in
world terms it is fairly insignificant.
The consequence of this industry – which also burgeoned under the revolutionary rule of the
French – and the trade connected with it is the creation in Rhenish Prussia of a mighty industrial
and commercial big  bourgeoisie and, in opposition to it, of a large industrial  proletariat, two
classes which in the rest of Germany only exist in isolated areas and in embryonic form but which
almost exclusively dominate the distinct political development of the Rhine Province.
Over  the  rest  of  the  German  states  revolutionised  by  the  French  Rhenish  Prussia  has  the
advantage of industry and over the rest of the German industrial areas (Saxony and Silesia) the
advantage of the French Revolution. It is the only part of Germany whose social development has
almost  reached  the  level  of  modern  bourgeois  society:  developed  industry,  extensive  trade,
accumulation of capital and free ownership of land; the predominance in the towns of a strong
bourgeoisie and a numerous proletariat and in the countryside  of a multitude of debt-ridden
allotment peasants; rule of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat by means of the wages system,
over  the  peasantry by means  of  the  mortgage  and  over  the  petty bourgeoisie  by means  of
competition, and finally the sanctioning of bourgeois rule through the courts of trade, the factory
courts, the bourgeois jury and the entire body of material legislation.
Is it easier now to understand the Rhinelander's hatred for everything that is Prussian? Along with
the Rhine Province Prussia incorporated the French Revolution into its states and treated the
Rhinelanders not only as a subjugated and alien people but even as vanquished rebels. Far from
developing the Rhenish legislation in the spirit of the ever growing modern bourgeois society,
Prussia intended saddling the Rhinelanders with the pedantic, feudal, philistine hotchpotch of
Prussian Law,10 which was barely suitable any longer even for Farther Pomerania.
The revolutionary change after February 1848 clearly showed the exceptional position of the
Rhine Province. It provided not only the Prussian but the whole of the German bourgeoisie with
its classical representatives,  Camphausen and Hansemann, and provided the German proletariat
with the sole organ in which it was championed not only in terms of fine words or good will, but
according to its true interests: the  Neue Rheinische Zeitung. How is it, then, that Rhenish Prussia
for all that took so little part in Germany's revolutionary movements?
It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  1830  movement  in  favour  of  a  hollow  pettifogger's
constitutionalism could not hope to interest Germany's Rhenish bourgeoisie, who were busily
engaged in much more real, industrial enterprises; that, whereas people in the petty German states
were still dreaming of a German Empire, in Rhenish Prussia the proletariat was already beginning
to come out openly against the bourgeoisie; that from 1840 to 1847, at the time of the bourgeois,
truly constitutional movement,  the Rhenish bourgeoisie stood in the forefront and decisively
tipped the balance in Berlin in March 1848. The reason, however, why Rhenish Prussia could
never achieve anything in an open insurrection or even bring about a general insurrection of the
whole province is best explained by a straightforward account of the campaign for the Imperial
Constitution in the Rhineland.
The struggle had just broken out in Dresden; it might break out at any moment in the Palatinate.
In  Baden,  in  Wurttemberg  and  in  Franconia  mass  rallies  were  launched  and  people  barely
concealed their determination to settle the question by force of arms. In the whole of South
Germany the troops were wavering. Prussia was no less roused. The proletariat was only waiting
for an opportunity of revenging itself for having been tricked of the gains it believed it had won

7 I. Rhenish Prussia
for itself in March 1848. Everywhere the petty bourgeois were busy welding together all the
discontented elements into a great Imperial Constitution party whose leadership they hoped to
secure for themselves. Their sworn promises to stand or fall with the Frankfurt Assembly and
stake property and life for the Imperial Constitution filled all the newspapers and rang out in
every club-room and every beer-house.
It was at this point that the Prussian Government opened hostilities by calling up a large part of
the army reserve,11 particularly in Westphalia and on the Rhine. To order a call-up during a period
of peace was illegal and not only the petty bourgeoisie but also the bigger bourgeoisie rose up
against it.
The Cologne municipal council proclaimed a congress of deputies of the Rhenish municipal
councils. The government banned it; conventions were disregarded and the congress held in spite
of the ban. The municipal councils, representing the big and middle bourgeoisie, declared their
recognition of the Imperial Constitution, demanded its acceptance by the Prussian Government
and the dismissal of the ministry as well as the repeal of the order calling up the army reserve,
and threatened unambiguously enough that the Rhine Provinces would secede from Prussia if
these demands were not met.12
“Since the Prussian Government has dissolved the Second Chamber following on the
latter's pronouncement in favour of unconditional acceptance of the German
Constitution of March 28 of this year and has thereby deprived the people of its
representation and voice in the present critical moment, the undersigned delegates of
the towns and municipalities of the Rhine Province have assembled to discuss the need
of the fatherland.
“The meeting, chaired by Councillors Zell of Trier and Werner of Coblenz and assisted
by the clerks of the minutes, Councillors Boecker of Cologne and Bloem II of
Dusseldorf,
has resolved as follows:
“1. This meeting declares that it recognises the Constitution of the German Empire, as
promulgated by the Reich Assembly on March 28 of this year, as a definitive law and
that in the conflict brought about by the Prussian Government it stands on the side of
the German Reich Assembly.
“2. The meeting calls upon the entire people of the Rhineland, and in particular all men
capable of bearing arms, to make collective declarations in smaller or larger gatherings
of its commitment and steadfast intent to uphold the German Imperial Constitution and
comply with the ordinances of the Imperial Constitution.
“3. The meeting calls on the German Reich Assembly henceforth and with the utmost
dispatch to make greater efforts to give to the resistance of the people in the separate
German states and in particular in the Rhine Province that unity and strength which
alone is capable of thwarting the well-organised counter-revolution.
“4. It calls on the imperial authorities to take steps as soon as possible to tender to the
imperial troops an oath of loyalty to the Constitution and to decree a concentration of
these troops.
“5. The undersigned pledge themselves to secure recognition of the Imperial
Constitution by all means at their disposal in the area of their municipalities.
“6. The meeting considers the dismissal of the Brandenburg-Manteuffel Ministry and
the summoning of the Chambers, without change in the existing system of voting, to be
absolutely necessary.
“7. In particular it considers the recent partial call-up of the army reserve to be an
unnecessary measure which highly endangers the internal peace, and experts its
immediate repeal.

8 I. Rhenish Prussia
“8. Lastly the undersigned express their conviction that if the content of this declaration
is disregarded the fatherland is threatened by the greatest dangers which could even
jeopardise the continued existence of Prussia as at present constituted. “Resolved on
May 8, 1849, at Cologne.”
(Signatures follow.)[Published in the Kolnische Zeitung No. 110, May 9, 1849,
second edition.– Ed]
We would only add that the same Herr Zell who presided over this meeting went a few weeks
later as imperial commissioner of the Frankfurt imperial ministry [146] to Baden, not only for the
purpose of appeasement, but also to plot with the local reactionaries those counter-revolultionary
coups which later broke out in Mannheim and Karlsruhe. It is at least probable that at the same
time he served imperial General Peucker as a military spy.
We insist on firmly establishing this fact. The big bourgeoisie, the flower of the pre-March
liberalism of the Rhineland, sought from the very beginning to place themselves at the head of the
movement for the Imperial Constitution in Rhenish Prussia. Their speeches, their resolutions,
their whole demeanour demonstrated their solidarity for the subsequent events. There were plenty
of people who took the words of the municipal councillors seriously, especially the threat that the
Rhine Province would secede. If the big bourgeoisie went along with the movement, then the
cause was as good as won from the beginning; it would mean that every class of the population
was taking part, and that one could afford to take a risk. The petty bourgeois calculated along
these lines and hastened to strike a heroic pose, It goes without saying that his supposed  associe
the big bourgeois, did not let this in any way deter him from betraying the petty bourgeois at the
first opportunity and afterwards, when the whole affair had come to a truly miserable end, from
ridiculing him for his stupidity to boot.
In  the  meantime  the  excitement  continually mounted;  the  news  from  all  areas  of  Germany
sounded extremely warlike. At last steps were to be taken to fit out the army reserve. The
battalions met and declared categorically that they would not let themselves be fitted out. The
majors, in the absence of sufficient military support, could do nothing and were happy if they
escaped without threats or actual attacks. They dismissed their men and set a new date for fitting-
out.
The government, which could easily have given the officers of the army reserve the necessary
backing, was purposely allowing things to go so far. It now immediately used force.
The refractory army reserve units came in particular from the industrial region of Berg and the
Mark. Elberfeld and Iserlohn, Solingen and the Ennepe valley were the centres of resistance.
Troops were ordered at once to the first two towns.13
A battalion of the 16th Regiment, a squadron of lancers and two pieces of artillery moved to
Elberfeld. The town was in a state of great confusion. The army reserve had found on mature
reflection  that  they  were  after  all  playing  a  risky game.  Many peasants  and  workers  were
politically apathetic and had merely been unwilling to absent themselves from their homes for an
indefinite period to comply with some chance whim of the government. The consequences of
insubordination weighed heavily upon them:  species facti, martial law, confinement in irons and
perhaps even the firing-squad! Suffice it to say, the number of army reserve men up in arms (they
had their weapons) dwindled and dwindled, and in the end there were only about forty left. They
had set up their headquarters in an inn outside the town and were awaiting the Prussians there.
Around  the  town  hall  stood  the  civic  militia  and  two  citizens'  rifle  corps,  vacillating  and
negotiating with the army reserve but at all events determined to protect their property. The
people  were  thronging  the  streets:  petty  bourgeois  who  had  sworn  loyalty  to  the  Imperial
Constitution in the political club and proletarians of all levels, from the resolute, revolutionary
worker to the gin-swilling drayman. Nobody knew what to do or what would happen.

9 I. Rhenish Prussia
The town council wanted to negotiate with the troops. The commander rejected all overtures and
marched into the town. The troops paraded through the streets and drew up in front of the town
hall, opposite the civic militia. There were negotiations. Stones were thrown at the troops from
the crowd. The army reserve, about forty strong as earlier indicated, after lengthy discussions also
marched over from the other side of the town towards the troops.
Suddenly a cry was raised among the people for the freeing of the prisoners. In the prison close to
the town hall, sixty-nine Solingen workers had been in custody for a year for demolishing the
cast-steel works near the castle. They were to be tried in a few days' time. Intent on freeing these
men, the people made a rush for the prison. The doors gave way, the people broke in and the
prisoners were free. At the same time, however, the troops advanced, a volley rang out and the
last prisoner, hurrying through the door, dropped to the ground with a shattered skull.
The people fell back, but with the cry: “To the barricades!” In a trice the approaches to the inner
city were secured. Unarmed workers were there in plenty, but there were at most only fifty men
with arms behind the barricades.
The artillery advanced. Like the infantry before it, it fired too high, probably on purpose. Both
bodies of troops were made up of Rhinelanders or Westphalians, and were good. Eventually
Captain von Uttenhoven advanced at the head of the 8th Company of the 16th Regiment.
Three armed men were behind the first barricade. “Don't shoot at us,” they cried, “we only shoot
at officers!” The captain ordered halt. “Just order ready and there you'll lie,” one of the riflemen
behind the barricade shouted at him. “Ready! Present! Fire!” A salvo rang out, but at the very
same moment the captain slumped to the ground. The bullet had hit him through the heart.
The platoon retreated in all haste, not even taking back the captain's body. A few more shots rang
out,  a  few soldiers  were  wounded and the  commanding  officer,  who did not  relish staying
overnight in the rebellious town, pulled out again and bivouacked with his troops an hour's march
outside the town. As the soldiers withdrew, barricades were at once raised on all sides.
The same evening the news of the retreat of the Prussians reached Dusseldorf. Numerous groups
formed in the streets; the petty bourgeois and the workers were in a state of extreme excitement.
Then the rumour that fresh troops were to be sent to Elberfeld gave the signal for action. Without
giving a thought to the lack of weapons (the civic militia had been disarmed since November
1848), the relatively strong garrison and the disadvantage posed by the broad, straight streets of
the little ex-capital, some workers raised a call to the barricades. In Neustrasse and Bolkerstrasse
a few fortifications were thrown up; the other parts of the town were kept free partly by the troops
who had already been consigned there beforehand and partly by the fear of the big and petty
bourgeoisie.
Towards evening the fighting began. Here, as elsewhere, there were only a few fighters on the
barricades. And where were they to get weapons and ammunition! Suffice it to say that they
fought back bravely for a long time against superior odds and only after extensive use of artillery,
towards morning, were the half-dozen barricades that could be defended in the hands of the
Prussians. As we know, on the following day these cautious heroes took their bloody revenge on
servant girls, old folk and other peaceful people.
On the same day that the Prussians were beaten back from Elberfeld, another battalion, from the
13th Regiment if I am not mistaken, was to enter Iserlohn and bring the army reserve there to
reason. But here too the plan was frustrated; as soon as the news of the advance of the troops
became known, the army reserve and the people fortified all the approaches to the town and
awaited the enemy with rifles at the ready. The battalion did not dare to make an attack and
withdrew again.
The fighting in Elberfeld and Dusseldorf and the barricading of Iserlohn gave the signal for the
uprising of the greater part of the industrial region of Berg and the Mark. The people of Solingen
stormed the Grafrath arsenal and armed themselves with the rifles and cartridges they took from

10 I. Rhenish Prussia
it;  the  people  of  Hagen  joined  the  movement  en  masse,  armed  themselves,  occupied  the
approaches to the Ruhr and sent out reconnaissance patrols; Solingen, Ronsdorf, Remscheid,
Barmen, etc., sent their contingents to Elberfeld. In the other localities of the region the army
reserve  declared  itself  for  the  movement  and  placed  itself  at  the  disposal  of  the  Frankfurt
Assembly. Elberfeld, Solingen, Hagen and Iserlohn replaced the district and the local authorities,
who had been driven out, with committees of public safety.
Needless to say the news of these events was monstrously exaggerated. The whole of the Wupper
and Ruhr area was pictured as one huge, organised camp of insurrection. There were said to be
15,000 armed men in Elberfeld and as many in Iserlohn and Hagen. The panic which suddenly
seized the government and at one blow paralysed all its measures to deal with this uprising in the
most loyal districts played no small part in making these exaggerations credible.
After making all reasonable allowances for probable exaggerations, the undeniable fact remained
that the main centres of the industrial region of Berg and the Mark were engaged in an open and
so far victorious uprising. That was a fact. There was further the news that Dresden was still
holding out, that Silesia was in a state of ferment, that the movement in the Palatinate was
consolidating, that in Baden a victorious military revolt had broken out and the Grand Duke
[Leopold–Ed.] had fled and that the Magyars stood on the banks of the Jablunka and the Leitha.
To sum up, of all the revolutionary opportunities that had presented themselves to the democratic
and workers' party since March 1848 this was by far the most favourable, and of course it had to
be seized. The left bank of the Rhine could not leave the right bank in the lurch.
What should be done now?
All the larger towns of the Rhine Province are either fortress towns like Cologne and Coblenz,
dominated by strong citadels and forts, or they have numerous garrisons like Aachen, Dusseldorf
and  Trier.  In  addition  to  this  the  province  is  further  kept  in  check  by  the  Wesel,  Julich,
Luxembourg,  Saarlouis  and  even  the  Mainz  and  Minden  fortresses.  In  these  fortresses  and
garrisons there were altogether at least 30,000 men. Finally, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Aachen and
Trier  had been disarmed  for  some  time.  So  the  revolutionary centres  of  the  province  were
paralysed. Here every attempt at an uprising, as had already been demonstrated in Dusseldorf,
would inevitably end in a victory for the military; another such victory, e.g. in Cologne, would
mean  the  moral  crushing  of  the  uprising  in  Berg  and  the  Mark,  in  spite  of  the  otherwise
favourable news. On the left bank of the Rhine a movement was possible on the Moselle, in the
Eifel and the Krefeld industrial district; but this region was encircled by six fortresses and three
garrison towns. On the other hand, those districts on the right bank of the Rhine which were
already in insurrection offered a densely populated, extensive terrain which with its woods an
mountains seemed to be made for an insurrectionary war.
If the intention was to support the insurgent districts, then there was only one course open:
above all things avoid unnecessary disorders in the fortresses and garrison towns;
make a diversion on the left bank of the Rhine in the smaller towns, in the factory areas and in the
countryside in order to hold the Rhine garrisons in check;
finally, throw all available forces into the insurgent district on the right bank of the Rhine, spread
the insurrection further and attempt to organise here the nucleus of a revolutionary army around
the army reserve.
Prussia's  new  heroes,  who  specialise  in  revelations,  should  not  rejoice  too  soon  over  the
treasonable  conspiracy here  revealed.  Unfortunately no  conspiracy existed.  The  above  three
measures are no conspiratorial plan but a simple suggestion put forward by the writer of these
lines when he himself left for Elberfeld to see to the execution of the third point. 14 Thanks to the
dilapidated  organisation  of  the  democratic  and  workers'  party,  thanks  to  the  indecision  and
shrewd cautiousness of most of the local leaders who had come from the petty bourgeoisie, and
finally thanks to the lack of time, it never came to a conspiracy. Therefore if the beginnings of a

11 I. Rhenish Prussia
diversion did indeed materialise on the left bank of the Rhine and if in Kempen, Neuss and the
surrounding  country  disorders  did  break  out  and  the  arsenal  in  Prum  was  stormed, 15 these
incidents were by no means the outcome of a common plan but were merely a manifestation of
the revolutionary instinct of the people.
In the insurgent districts in the meantime things looked completely different from what the rest of
the province would lead one to suppose. It must be admitted that Elberfeld with its barricades
(which were, however, extremely unplanned and thrown together in a hurry),  with its many
sentinels, patrols and other armed men, with its whole population in the streets, only the big
bourgeoisie apparently missing, and with its red flags and tricolours 16 did not look at all bad, but
otherwise the greatest confusion reigned in the town. Through the Committee of Public Safety
formed in the first moments, the petty bourgeoisie had taken the direction of affairs into its hands.
It had scarcely got thus far when it took fright at its power, limited as it was. The first thing it did
was to get legitimation from the town council, i.e. from the big bourgeoisie, and out of gratitude
for the town council's kindness to take five of its members into the Committee of Public Safety.
Reinforced in this way, the Committee forthwith washed its hands of all dangerous activity by
transferring  the  responsibility  for  external  security  to  a  military  commission,  over  which,
however, it reserved for itself a moderating and restraining control. Secured in this fashion from
all contact with the uprising and transplanted by the fathers of the town onto the ground of
legality, the trembling petty bourgeois on the Committee of Public Safety were able to confine
themselves  to  calming  tempers,  looking  after  day-to-day  business,  clearing  up
“misunderstandings”,  quietening  people  down,  procrastinating  and  paralysing  every form  of
energetic activity under the pretext that it was first necessary to await the answers given to the
deputations sent to Berlin and Frankfurt. The rest of the petty bourgeoisie naturally went hand in
hand with the Committee of Public Safety, quietened things down everywhere, did all they could
to hinder the continuation of defence measures and distribution of arms and constantly wavered
as to how far they would go with the uprising. Only a small part of this class was determined to
defend itself weapons in hand in the event of an attack on the town. The great majority sought to
persuade themselves that their threats alone and aversion to the almost inevitable bombardment of
Elberfeld  would  move  the  government  to  make  concessions;  nevertheless  they  covered
themselves against all eventualities.
The big bourgeoisie, in the first moments after the battle, was as if thunderstruck. In its terror it
saw fantastic visions of arson, murder, looting and God knows what abominations rising up out of
the ground. Therefore the setting up of the Committee of Public Safety whose majority (town
councillors, lawyers, public prosecutors, sober people) suddenly offered it a guarantee for life and
property,  filled  it  with  more  than  fanatical  delight.  The  selfsame  big  merchants,  dyers  and
manufacturers  who  up  to  now  had  decried  Messrs.  Karl  Hecker,  Riotte,  Hochster,  etc.,as
bloodthirsty  terrorists,  now  hurried en  masse to  the  town  hall,  embraced  the  same  alleged
butchers with the most feverish passion and deposited thousands of talers on the table of the
Committee of Public Safety. It goes without saying that when the movement was ended these
same enthusiastic admirers and supporters of the Committee of Public Safety spread abroad the
most extravagant and basest lies not only about the movement itself but also about the Committee
of Public Safety and its members, and thanked the Prussians with a similar intensity of feeling for
liberation from a terror which had never existed. Innocent constitutional bourgeois, like Messrs.
Hecker, Hochster and Public Prosecutor Heintzmann, were once more depicted as bugbears and
man-eaters whose affinity to Robespierre and Danton stood written all over their faces. For our
part we consider it our duty completely to exonerate these honourable gentlemen from any such
accusation. For the rest, the greater portion of the big bourgeoisie placed themselves, their wives
and their children with the utmost dispatch under the protection of the Dusseldorf state of siege
and only the smaller, more courageous portion stayed behind to protect their property against any
eventuality.  The  Chief  Burgomaster  [Johann  Adolph  Carnap.–Ed.]  stayed  hidden  in  an

12 I. Rhenish Prussia
overturned, manure-covered cab for the duration of the uprising. The proletariat, united in the
heat of the struggle, split as soon as the Committee of Public Safety and the petty bourgeoisie
began to waver. The artisans, the actual factory workers and a section of the silk-weavers backed
the movement up to the hilt; but they, who formed the core of the proletariat, were almost entirely
without weapons. The dye-workers, a robust, well-paid working class, coarse and consequently
reactionary like all sections of workers whose occupation demands more physical strength than
skill, had lost all interest even during the first days. They alone of all the industrial workers
stayed at work while the barricades were up and did not allow themselves to be disturbed. Finally
the lumpenproletariat was here as elsewhere corruptible from the second day of the movement
onwards, demanding weapons and pay from the Committee of Public Safety in the morning and
selling itself to the big bourgeois in the afternoon to protect their buildings or rip down the
barricades when evening fell. On the whole it stood on the side of the bourgeoisie, which paid it
most and with whose money it led a gay life as long as the movement lasted.
The negligence and cowardice of the Committee of Public Safety and the discord in the military
commission, in which the party of inaction initially had the majority, prevented any decisive
action from the very beginning. From the second day onwards reaction set in. From the outset it
became evident that in Elberfeld the only chance of success was under the banner of the Imperial
Constitution and in agreement with the petty bourgeoisie. On the one hand, the proletariat had,
here in particular, only too recently freed itself from the slough of gin and pietism for even the
slightest notion of the conditions of its liberation to penetrate the masses, and on the other hand it
had  a  too  instinctive  hatred  for  the  bourgeoisie  and  was  much  too  indifferent  towards  the
bourgeois question of the Imperial Constitution to work up any enthusiasm for such tricolour
interests. This put the resolute party, the only one to consider the question of defence seriously, in
a false position. It declared itself for the Imperial Constitution. The petty bourgeoisie, however,
did not trust it, maligned it in every way to the people and impeded all the measures it took to
distribute arms and erect fortifications. Every order that could really serve to put the town in a
state of defence was immediately countermanded by the first member of the Committee of Public
Safety to come along. Every philistine in front of whose house a barricade was set up at once
hurried to the town hall and procured a reversal of the order. The funds for the payment of the
barricade-workers (and they asked for the very minimum to avoid starvation) could only be
squeezed out of the Committee of Public Safety with great effort and in paltry amounts. Wages
and rations for those bearing arms were provided irregularly and were often insufficient. For five
to six days there was neither roll-call nor muster of armed men, with the result that nobody knew
how many fighters could be reckoned on if an emergency arose. Not until the fifth day was an
attempt made to detail the armed men, but the attempt was never carried into effect and was based
on a total ignorance of the number of the fighting forces. Every member of the Committee of
Public Safety acted on his own. There was a clash of the most contradictory orders and the only
thing most of them had in common was to add to the easy-going confusion and prevent any
energetic steps being taken. As a result of this the proletariat became heartily sick of the whole
movement and after a few days the big bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie succeeded in their
aim of making the workers as apathetic as possible.
When I reached Elberfeld on May 11, the armed men numbered at least 2,500 to 3,000. Of these,
however, only the reinforcements from outside and the handful of armed Elberfeld workers were
reliable. The army reserve was vacillating; most of them had a mighty dread of imprisonment in
chains. At first there were not many of them, but they were reinforced by the admission of all the
shilly-shallying and faint-hearted elements from the other detachments. Finally the civic militia,
reactionary here from the very first and set up specifically to suppress the workers, declared itself
neutral and wanted nothing but merely to protect its property. All this only came to light in the
course of the next few days; in the meantime, however, a section of the reinforcements from
outside and the workers dispersed and the number of actual fighting forces dwindled as a result of

13 I. Rhenish Prussia
the stagnation of the movement, while the civic militia held together more and more and with
every day more openly expressed its reactionary desires. During the last few nights it was already
tearing down a number of the barricades. The armed reinforcements, who certainly numbered at
first more than a thousand men, were already reduced to half on the 12th or 13th, and when at
length there was a general roll-call it became evident that the entire armed force upon which one
could reckon by now numbered at the most 700 to 800 men. The army reserve and the civic
militia refused to appear at this roll-call.
That is not all. Insurgent Elberfeld was surrounded by places all of which were alleged to be
“neutral”. Barmen, Kronenberg, Lennep, Luttringhausen, etc., had not joined the movement. The
revolutionary workers of these places, insofar as they had weapons, had marched to Elberfeld.
The  civic  militia,  which  in  all  these  places  was  purely  an  instrument  in  the  hands  of  the
manufacturers for holding down the workers, and was composed of the manufacturers, their
factory overseers and the shopkeepers wholly dependent on the manufacturers, ruled here in the
interests  of  “order”  and  the  manufacturers.  The  workers  themselves,  who  because  of  their
dispersion in the more rural areas were rather out of touch with the political movement, had been
partially brought over to the side of the manufacturers by the familiar means of coercion and by
slanders  about  the  character  of  the  Elberfeld  movement;  among  the  peasants  these  slanders
always  worked  unfailingly.  In  addition,  the  movement  had  come  at  a  time  when  the
manufacturers, after a business crisis of fifteen months, at last had full order books again; and it is
common  knowledge  that  no  revolution  can  be  made  with  regularly employed  workers  –  a
circumstance which also had a very significant effect in Elberfeld. It is obvious that under all
these conditions the “neutral” neighbours were only so many covert enemies.
And there was still more to it than that. No links were established with the other insurgent
districts. From time to time odd individuals came over from Hagen; as good as nothing was
known of Iserlohn. Some individuals offered their services as commissaries, but none of them
was to be trusted. Several couriers between Elberfeld and Hagen were said to have been arrested
by the civic militia in Barmen and the surrounding area. The only place with which there was
regular communication was Solingen, and the situation there looked no different from that in
Elberfeld. That it looked no worse there was due only to the good organisation and determination
of the Solingen workers, who had sent 400 to 500 armed men to Elberfeld and yet were still
strong enough to keep their own bourgeoisie and civic militia in check. If the Elberfeld workers
had been as developed and as organised as the Solingen workers, the chances would have been
completely different.
Under these circumstances there was only one possibility left: to take swift, energetic measures to
inject new life into the movement, provide it with new fighting forces, cripple its internal enemies
and organise it as strongly as possible throughout the whole industrial area of Berg and the Mark.
The first step was to disarm the Elberfeld civic militia, distribute its weapons among the workers
and impose a compulsory tax for the maintenance of the workers thus armed. This step would
have broken decisively with all the slackness which had hitherto characterised the Committee of
Public Safety,  given the proletariat new life and crippled the “neutral” districts' capacity for
resistance.  How  then  to  go  about  getting  weapons  from  these  districts  too,  spreading  the
insurrection and regularly organising the defence of the whole region depended on the success of
this first step With an order from the Committee of Public Safety and with no more than the 400
Solingen workers the Elberfeld civic militia would have been disarmed in no time. Courage was
not their strong point.
For the safety of those Elberfelders charged in May and still in prison, I owe the declaration that I
alone was responsible for all these proposals. I began to call for the disarming of the civic militia
immediately when the Committee of Public Safety's funds began to run out.
But the commendable Committee of Public Safety did not at all consider that it was necessary to
take such “terroristic measures” The only thing I managed to get carried out, or rather, directed on

14 I. Rhenish Prussia
my own initiative together with a few corps leaders – who all got away safely and some of whom
are already in America, was to fetch some eighty rifles belonging to the Kronenberg civic militia
which were kept in the town hall there. And these rifles, distributed with extreme carelessness,
ended up for the most part in the hands of gin-happy lumpenproletarians, who sold them that very
evening to the bourgeoisie. These same bourgeois gentlemen were sending agents among the
people to buy up as many rifles as possible and they paid quite a high price for them. In this way
the Elberfeld lumpenproletarians delivered up to the bourgeoisie several hundred rifles, which
had got into their hands through the negligence and lack of order of the improvised authorities.
With these rifles the factory overseers, the most reliable dye-workers, etc., etc., were armed and
the ranks of the “well-disposed” civic militia strengthened from day to day.
The gentlemen of the Committee of Public Safety answered every proposal for improving the
town's defences by saying that there was no point, the Prussians would take care not to come
there, they would never venture into the mountains, and so on. They themselves were fully aware
that in saying this they were spreading the most barefaced lies, that the town could be bombarded
from all the heights even with field-guns, that no arrangements at all had been made for any at all
serious defence and that, the insurrection having come to a halt and the Prussians possessing a
colossal superiority, only really extraordinary events could now save the Elberfeld uprising.
The Prussian generals, however, did not seem to be particularly anxious to venture into a terrain
which was as good as totally unknown to them, at least not until they had assembled a truly
overwhelming force. The four unfortified towns of Elberfeld, Hagen, Iserlohn and Solingen made
such an impression on these cautious military heroes that they had an entire army of twenty
thousand men and large numbers of cavalry and artillery brought up, partly by rail, from Wesel,
Westphalia and the eastern provinces. Not daring to attack, they had a regular strategic formation
drawn up the  other  side  of  the  Ruhr.  High command  and general  staff,  right  flank,  centre.
everything was in the most beautiful order, just as if they were facing a colossal enemy army, as
if it were a question of giving battle to a Bem or a Dembiriski and not of an unequal fight against
a few hundred unorganised workers, badly armed, virtually leaderless and betrayed behind their
backs by those who had put the weapons into their hands.
We know how the insurrection ended. 17 We know how the workers, disgusted with the petty
bourgeoisie's constant procrastination, its faint-hearted shilly-shallying and its treacherous lulling
into a false sense of security, finally moved out of Elberfeld to fight their way through to the first
state they came to where the Imperial Constitution offered them the slightest refuge. We know
how they were hunted by Prussian lancers and by incited peasants. We know how immediately
after their departure the big bourgeoisie crawled out into the open again, had the barricades
carried off and built triumphal arches for the approaching Prussian heroes. We know how Haben
and  Solingen  were  played  into  the  hands  of  the  Prussians  through  direct  betrayal  by  the
bourgeoisie and how only Iserlohn put up a fight, unequal and lasting two hours, against the 24th
Regiment, the conquerors of Dresden, who were already laden with booty.
Some of the Elberfeld, Solingen and Mulheim workers got safely through to the Palatinate. Here
they met with their fellow-countrymen, the fugitives from the storming of the Prum arsenal.
Together with these they formed a company consisting almost exclusively of Rhinelanders in
Willich's volunteer corps. All their comrades will surely testify that whenever they came under
fire, and especially in the last decisive battle on the Murg, they fought very bravely.
The Elberfeld insurrection deserved this more detailed description because it was here that the
position  of  the  different  classes  in  the  Imperial  Constitution  movement  was  most  sharply
pronounced and furthest developed. In the other towns in Berg and the Mark the movement
resembled that in Elberfeld in every way, except that there the participation or non-participation
in the movement by the various classes was less clearly defined, the classes themselves not being
so sharply differentiated as in the industrial centre of the area. In the Palatinate and in Baden,
where concentrated large-scale industry and along with it a developed big bourgeoisie are almost

15 I. Rhenish Prussia
non-existent, where the class relationships merge into each other in a much more easy-going and
patriarchal way, the mixture of the classes that were the mainstay of the movement was even
more confused. We shall see this later, but we shall also see at the same time how all these
admixtures to the uprising likewise end up by grouping themselves around the petty bourgeoisie
as the core for the crystallisation of the whole splendour of the Imperial Constitution.
It is abundantly clear from the attempted uprisings in Rhenish Prussia in May of last year what
position this part of Germany is capable of occupying in a revolutionary movement. Surrounded
by seven fortresses, three of them first-class for Germany, constantly manned by almost a third of
the entire Prussian army,  intersected in all directions by railways  and with an entire fleet of
transport steamers at the disposal of the military authorities, a Rhineland uprising has no prospect
of succeeding except under quite exceptional circumstances. Only when the citadels are in the
hands of the people can the Rhinelanders hope to achieve anything by force of arms. And such an
eventuality can only arise either if the military authorities are terrorised by tremendous external
events  and  lose  their  heads,  or  if  the  military declare  themselves  wholly or  partly  for  the
movement. In every other case an uprising in the Rhine Province is doomed in advance. A swift
march on Frankfurt by the Badeners and on Trier by the Palatines would probably have led to the
uprising immediately breaking out on the Moselle and in the Eifel, in Nassau and in both parts of
Hesse,  and the  troops  of  the  central  Rhenish  states,  who  at  that  time  were  still  favourably
disposed, joining the movement. There is no doubt that all the Rhenish troops, and especially the
entire 7th and 8th artillery brigades, would have followed their example, that they would at least
have given loud enough vent to their feelings to cause the Prussian generals to lose their heads.
Probably several fortresses would have fallen into the hands of the people, and even if not
Elberfeld, at least most of the left bank of the Rhine would have been saved. All that, and perhaps
much  more,  was forfeited as a result of the shabby,  cowardly and philistine policies of the
wiseacres on the Baden Provincial Committee.
With the defeat of the Rhenish workers died the only newspaper in which they saw their interests
openly and resolutely championed: the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. The editor-in-chief,[Karl Marx–
ed.] though a native of Rhenish Prussia, was expelled from Prussia and the other editors had
either  direct  arrest  or  immediate  expulsion  hanging  over  their  heads.  The  Cologne  police
explained this with extreme naivete and went to great lengths to prove that they had enough
against each one of them to take proceedings along one or the other of these lines. In this way the
newspaper was forced to cease publication at the very moment when the unprecedentedly rapid
increase in its circulation more than secured its existence. The editors scattered across the various
German provinces where uprisings had taken place or were still to take place; several went to
Paris, where yet again a critical moment was impending.18 There is not one of them who during or
as a result of the movements of this summer was not arrested or expelled, so experiencing the fate
which the Cologne police were kind enough to prepare for him. A number of the compositors
went to the Palatinate and joined the army.
The Rhenish uprising too had to end tragically. After three-quarters of the Rhine Province had
been placed in a state of siege, after hundreds had been thrown into prison, it closed with the
shooting on the eve of Frederick William IV of Hohenzollern's birthday of three of the men who
had stormed the Prum arsenal.” Vae victis![Woe to the vanquished!–Ed.]

II. Karlsruhe
The uprising in Baden took place under the most favourable circumstances that an insurrection
could possibly hope for. The entire people were united in their hatred for a government that broke
its word, engaged in duplicity and cruelly persecuted its political adversaries. The reactionary
classes, the nobility, the bureaucracy and the big bourgeoisie, were few in numbers. Anyhow a
big bourgeoisie exists only embryonically in Baden. With the exception of this handful of nobles,
civil servants and bourgeois, with the exception of the Karlsruhe and Baden-Baden shopkeepers
who made their living from the Court and from rich foreigners, with the exception of a few
Heidelberg professors and a half-dozen peasant villages around Karlsruhe, the whole state was
unanimously for  the  movement.  In other  uprisings the  army had first  to be defeated. Here,
however, it had been harassed more than anywhere else by its aristocratic officers, worked on for
a year by the democratic party and recently permeated even more with rebellious elements by the
introduction of a kind of compulsory military service, with the result that it placed itself at the
head of the movement and even drove the movement further than the bourgeois leaders of the
Offenburg Assembly 19 cared  for.  It  was  precisely the  army  which  in Rastatt  and  Karlsruhe
transformed the “movement” into an insurrection.
The insurrectionary government therefore found on acceding to office a ready army, abundantly
supplied arsenals, a fully organised state machine, a full exchequer and a virtually unanimous
population. What is more, on the left bank of the Rhine, in the Palatinate, it found an insurrection
already  effectuated  covering  its  left  flank;  in  Rhenish  Prussia  an  insurrection  which  was
admittedly seriously threatened but not yet defeated; and in Wurttemberg, in Franconia, in both
parts of Hesse and in Nassau a general mood of unrest, even among the army, which only needed
a spark to repeat the Baden uprising in the whole of South and Central Germany and put at least
50,000 to 60,000 regular troops at the disposal of the revolt.
It is so simple  and so obvious what should have been done under these circumstances  that
everybody knows it now, after the suppression of the uprising, and everybody claims to have
been saying it from the very start. It was a question of immediately and without a moment's
hesitation  spreading  the  uprising  to  Hesse,  Darmstadt,  Frankfurt,  Nassau  and  Wurttemberg,
immediately mustering 8,000 to 10,000 of the available regular troops – by rail that could have
been  done  in  two  days  –  and  sending  them  to  Frankfurt  “for  the  defence  of  the  National
Assembly”. The alarmed Hessian government was as if rooted to the spot by the rapid succession
of advances made by the uprising; its troops were notoriously well disposed to the people of
Baden; it was no more capable than the Frankfurt Senate20 of offering the slightest resistance. The
troops of the electorate of Hesse, Wurttemberg and Darmstadt stationed in Frankfurt were for the
movement;  the  Prussians  there  (mostly  Rhinelanders)  were  wavering;  the  Austrians  were
numerically few. The arrival of the Badeners, whether or not any attempt was made to stop them,
would inevitably have carried the insurrection into the heart of both parts of Hesse and Nassau,
compelled the Prussians and Austrians to retreat to Mainz, and placed the trembling German so-
called National Assembly under the terrorising influence of an insurgent people and an insurgent
army. If the insurrection had not then immediately broken out on the Moselle, in the Eifel, in
Wurttemberg and in Franconia then there would have been means enough at hand to carry it into
these provinces too.
Further, the power of the insurrection should have been centralised, the necessary funds placed at
its disposal and through the immediate abolition of all feudal burdens that great majority of the
population  which  tills  the  soil  should  have  been  given  a  stake  in  the  insurrection.  The

17 II. Karlsruhe
establishment of a common central authority for war and finance with full powers to issue paper
money,[The Baden Chambers had earlier already approved the issue of two million in bank-notes,
of which not a penny had been issued.– Note by Engels.]  to begin with for Baden and the
Palatinate, and the abolition of all feudal burdens in Baden and every area occupied by the
insurgent  army  would  for  the  moment  have  sufficed  to  give  the  uprising  quite  a  different
energetic character.
All that had, however, to happen in the first moment if it were to he carried out with the swiftness
which alone could guarantee success. A week after the appointment of the provincial committee it
was already too late. The Rhenish insurrection was suppressed, Wurttemberg and Hesse did not
stir,  and those  military units  which  at  the  beginning had been  favourably disposed became
unreliable and ended up by once more completely obeying their reactionary officers. The uprising
had lost its all-German character and had become a purely local uprising restricted to Baden or to
Baden and the Palatinate.
As I learnt after the fighting, the former Baden Second Lieutenant F. Sigel, who during the
uprising won more or less equivocal dwarf-laurels as “colonel” and later as “general-in-chief”,
had  at  the  very outset  laid  before  the  provincial  committee  a  plan  according  to  which  the
offensive was to be assumed. This plan has the merit of containing the correct notion that under
all  circumstances  it  is  necessary to  go  over  to  the  attack;  in  other  respects,  it  is  the  most
adventurist  plan  that  could  possibly have  been  proposed.  Sigel  wanted  first  to  advance  on
Hohenzollern with a Baden corps and proclaim the Hohenzollern Republic, then take Stuttgart
and from there, after having incited Wurttemberg to revolt, march on Nuremberg and set up a
large  camp  in  the  heart  of  a  likewise  insurgent  Franconia.  It  is  easy to  see  that  this  plan
completely left out of account the moral importance of Frankfurt, without which the insurrection
could have no all-German character, and the strategic importance of the Main line. It is also easy
to see that it presupposed completely different military forces than were actually available and
that in the end, after a completely Quixotic or Schill-like raid,21  it fizzled out and immediately set
the strongest of all the South German armies and the only definitely hostile one, the  Bavarian
army, in hot pursuit of the insurgents, even before they could procure reinforcements through the
defection of the troops of Hesse and Nassau.
The new government undertook no offensive under the pretext that the soldiers had almost all
dispersed and gone home. Apart from the fact that this was true only in respect of a few isolated
units, in particular the Prince's own regiment, even the soldiers who had dispersed were almost all
back with their colours within three days.
Furthermore, the government had quite different reasons for opposing any offensive.
At the head of the agitation for the Imperial Constitution throughout Baden stood Herr Brentano a
lawyer, who with the invariably rather  mesquin ambition of a man of the people from some petty
German state and the seeming political staunchness which in South Germany is the very first
condition of all popularity, combined a dash of diplomatic cunning which sufficed to give him
full mastery of all around him, with the possible exception of a single person. Herr Brentano (this
sounds trivial now, but it is true), Herr Brentano and his party, the strongest in the province,
demanded nothing more at the Offenburg Assembly than changes in the policies of the Grand
Duke, which were only possible with a  Brentano Ministry . The Grand Duke's reply and the
general agitation gave rise to the Rastatt military revolt – against the will and the intentions of
Brentano. At the very moment  that Herr Brentano was placed at the head of the provincial
committee he had already been overtaken by the movement and was forced to try and hold it
back. Then came the riot in Karlsruhe; the Grand Duke fled, and the same circumstance that had
summoned  Herr  Brentano  to  the  head  of  the  administration,  that  had  furnished  him  with
dictatorial powers as it were, now thwarted all his designs and induced him to use this power
against the very movement that had procured it for him. While the people were celebrating the

18 II. Karlsruhe
departure of the Grand Duke, Herr Brentano and his faithful provincial committee were sitting
upon thorns.
The said committee, consisting almost  exclusively of Baden worthies with the staunchest of
convictions and the most muddled of heads, of “pure republicans” who trembled with fear at the
idea of proclaiming the republic or crossed themselves at the slightest energetic measure, this
unadulterated philistine committee was needless to say wholly dependent on Brentano. The role
which the lawyer Hochster assumed in Elberfeld was here assumed on a somewhat larger terrain
by the lawyer Brentano. Of the three outside elements, Blind, Fickler and Struve, who joined the
provincial committee straight from prison, Blind was so ensnared by Brentano's intrigues that he
had no other choice, isolated as he was, but to go into exile in Paris as a representative of Baden;
Fickler had to undertake a dangerous mission to Stuttgart 22; and Struve seemed to Herr Brentano
to be so harmless that he tolerated him in the provincial committee, kept an eye on him and did
his best to make him unpopular, in which he was completely successful. It is well known how
Struve with several others founded a “Club of Resolute (or rather, cautious) Progress”, which was
disbanded after an unsuccessful demonstration. 23 A few days later Struve was in the Palatinate,
more or less a “fugitive”, and there attempted yet again to publish his  Deutscher Zuschauer. The
specimen number was scarcely off the press when the Prussians marched in.
The provincial committee, from the very first nothing more than a tool of Brentano, elected an
executive committee once again headed by Brentano. This executive committee very soon almost
completely  replaced  the  provincial  committee,  using  it  at  the  most  to  confirm  credits  and
measures taken and getting rid of any of the larger committee's members  who looked at all
unreliable by sending them on all kinds of minor missions to the districts or the army. Finally it
abolished the provincial committee altogether, replacing it with a “constituent assembly”, elected
completely under Brentano's influence, and transformed itself into a “provisional government”,
whose  leader  was  needless  to say once  again Herr  Brentano.  It  was  he  who appointed the
ministers. And what ministers – Florian Mordes and Mayerhofer!
Herr Brentano was the most  consummate  representative of the Baden petty bourgeoisie. He
distinguished himself from the mass of the petty bourgeois and their other representatives only by
being too discerning to share all their illusions. Herr Brentano betrayed the insurrection in Baden
from the very first. He did so precisely because from the very first he grasped the state of affairs
more correctly than any other official person in Baden and because he took the only measures
which would uphold the hegemony of the petty bourgeoisie and yet for that very reason meant the
inevitable destruction of the insurrection. This is the key to Brentano's unbounded popularity at
that time but also the key to the curses which have been heaped on him since July by his former
admirers. The petty bourgeoisie of Baden were as a body just as much traitors as Brentano; but at
the same time they were duped, which he was not. They betrayed out of cowardice and they
allowed themselves to be duped out of stupidity.
In Baden, as in the whole of South Germany, there is hardly any big bourgeoisie at all. The
province's industry and trade are of no significance. It follows that the proletariat is not at all
numerous, very fragmented and scarcely developed. The mass of the population is divided into
peasants (the majority), petty bourgeois and journeymen. These last, the urban workers, scattered
in little towns without any big centre where an independent workers' party could develop, are or
at least were until now under the dominant social and political influence of the petty bourgeoisie.
The peasants, even more scattered over the province and lacking the means of instruction, have
interests which partly coincide with and partly run parallel, so to speak, to those of the petty
bourgeoisie and for that reason were likewise under the petty bourgeoisie's political tutelage. The
petty  bourgeoisie,  represented  by  lawyers,  doctors,  schoolmasters,  individual  merchants  and
book-sellers, thus held sway over the entire political movement in Baden, since March 1848,
partly directly, partly through its representatives.

19 II. Karlsruhe
It is owing to the absence of an antithesis of bourgeoisie and proletariat and the consequent
political  domination  of  the  petty  bourgeoisie  that  there  has  never  really  been  in  Baden  a
movement agitating for socialism. The elements of socialism which came in from outside, either
through workers who had been to more developed countries or through the influence of French or
German socialist and communist literature, never managed to make any headway in Baden. The
red  riband  and  the  red  flag  meant  nothing  more  in  Baden  than  the  bourgeois  republic,
compounded at the most with a little terrorism, and the “six scourges of humanity” 24 discovered
by Herr Struve were, for all their bourgeois inoffensiveness, the limit to which one could go
without losing the sympathy of the masses. The highest ideal of the Baden petty bourgeois and
peasant  always  remained  the  little  republic  of  burghers  and  peasants  as  it  has  existed  in
Switzerland since 1830. A small field of activity for small, modest people, where the state is a
somewhat enlarged parish, a “canton”; a small, stable industry, based on handicrafts, which gives
rise to an equally stable and sleepy social condition; no great wealth, no great poverty, nothing
but middle class and mediocrity; no prince, no civil list, no standing army, next to no taxes; no
active participation in history, no foreign policy, nothing but Petty domestic gossip and petty
squabbling en famille; no big industry, no railways, no world trade, no social collisions between
millionaires and proletarians, but  a  quiet, cosy life in all godliness  and respectability,in  the
humble unobtrusiveness without a history, of satisfied souls–this is the gentle Arcadia which
exists in the greater part of Switzerland and which the Baden petty bourgeois and peasants have
been longing for years to see established. And if in moments of more ardent enthusiasm the
thoughts of the Baden and, let us say it, of the South German petty bourgeois in general are
stretched as far as the notion of the whole of Germany, then the ideal of Germany's future which
flickers before their eyes takes the shape of an enlarged Switzerland, a federal republic. Thus
Herr Struve has already published a pamphlet” which divides Germany up into twenty-four
cantons, each with its own  landamman[The highest official in some Swiss cantons.–Ed]  and its
big and little councils. He even goes so far as to append a map which shows the ready-made
boundary lines. If Germany were ever in a position to transform itself into such an Arcadia, then
it would thereby have descended to a depth of degradation of which it hitherto had no inkling,
even in the times of its greatest humiliations.
The South German petty bourgeoisie had in the meantime more than once experienced that a
revolution, even one under their own bourgeois republican banner, can quite easily carry away
their beloved and peaceful Arcadia in the vortex of far more colossal conflicts, of real class
struggles. Hence the petty-bourgeois fear not only of any sort of revolutionary convulsion but
also of their own ideal of a federal tobacco-and-beer republic. Hence their enthusiasm for the
Imperial Constitution, which at least satisfied their immediate interests and held out to them the
hope, considering the purely suspensive nature of the Kaiser's veto, of ushering in the republic at
some opportune moment by means within the bounds of the law. Hence their surprise when the
Baden military without being asked handed over to them on a salver a ready-made insurrection,
and hence their fear of spreading the insurrection over the frontiers of the future canton of Baden.
The conflagration might well have taken hold of regions in which there was a big bourgeoisie and
a numerous proletariat, regions in which it would have given power to the proletariat, and then
woe to their property!
What did Herr Brentano do in these circumstances?
What  the  petty bourgeoisie  in  Rhenish  Prussia  had  done  consciously,  he  did  for the  petty
bourgeoisie in Baden: he betrayed the insurrection, but he saved the petty bourgeoisie.
Brentano did not betray the insurrection by his last actions, by his flight after the defeat on the
Murg,25 as the finally disillusioned petty bourgeoisie of Baden imagined; he had betrayed it from
the very first. It was precisely those measures that the Baden philistines, and with them sections
of the peasants and even the artisans, cheered most loudly, which betrayed the movement to
Prussia. It was precisely by his betrayal  that Brentano became  so popular and shackled the

20 II. Karlsruhe
fanatical enthusiasm of the philistines to his heels. The petty burgher was too taken up with the
swift restoration of order and public safety and the immediate suppression of the movement itself
to notice the betrayal of the movement; and when it was too late, when, compromised in the
movement, he saw that the movement was lost, and himself with it, he cried treason and with all
the indignation of cheated respectability fell upon his most faithful servant.
Herr Brentano was cheated, too, of course. He hoped to emerge from the movement as the great
man of the “moderate” party,  i.e. of none other than the petty bourgeoisie, and instead was
ignominiously forced to bolt under cover of darkness from his own party and from his best
friends, on whom the terrible truth had suddenly dawned. He even hoped to keep open for himself
the possibility of a grand-ducal ministry and instead received by way of thanks for his wisdom a
good kicking from all parties and the impossibility of ever again playing even the smallest of
roles. But in truth one can be shrewder than the entire petty bourgeoisie of any German robber-
state [Raubstaat] and still see one's finest hopes dashed and one's most noble intentions pelted
with mud!
From the first day of his government Herr Brentano did everything to keep the movement on the
narrow, philistine course which it had scarcely attempted to overstep. Under the protection of the
Karlsruhe  civic  militia,  which  was  devoted  to  the  Grand  Duke  and  had  fought  against  the
movement only the day before, he moved into the Standehaus 26 to curb the movement from there.
The  recall  of  the  deserted  soldiers  could  not  have  been  carried  out  more  sluggishly;  the
reorganisation of the battalions was pursued with just as little urgency. On the other hand, the
Mannheim unarmed philistines, who everyone knew would not fight, and who after the battle of
Waghausel27 even collaborated for the most part with a regiment of dragoons in the betrayal of
Mannheim, were immediately armed. There was no question of a march on Frankfurt or Stuttgart
or of spreading the insurrection to Nassau or Hesse. If a proposal were made to this effect, it was
immediately  brushed  aside,  like  Sigel's.  To  speak  of  issuing  bank-notes  would  have  been
considered a crime against the state, tantamount to communism. The Palatinate sent envoy after
envoy to say that they were unarmed, that they had no rifles let alone artillery, that they had no
ammunition and were without everything needed to carry out an insurrection and in particular to
seize the Landau and Germersheim fortresses; but nothing was to be got out of Herr Brentano.
The Palatinate proposed the immediate setting up of a joint military command, and even the
unification of  both provinces  under  a  single  joint  government.  Everything  was  delayed  and
deferred. I believe that a small financial contribution is all the Palatinate managed to get; later,
when it was too late, eight cannon arrived with a little ammunition but no crew or draught-team,
and finally, on a direct order from Mieroslawski, came a Baden battalion and two mortars, only
one of which, if I remember rightly, fired a shot.
Because of this policy of delaying and brushing aside those measures most necessary to spread
the  insurrection,  the  whole  movement  was  already  betrayed.  The  same  nonchalance  was
displayed  in  internal  matters.  There  was  not  a  word  about  abolishing  feudal  burdens;  Herr
Brentano  knew  full  well  that  among  the  peasantry,  especially in  Upper  Baden,  there  were
elements more revolutionary than he cared for and that he must therefore hold them back rather
than hurl them even more  deeply into the movement. The new officials were mostly either
creatures of Brentano or completely incompetent; the old officials, with the exception of those
who had compromised themselves too directly in the reaction of the last twelve months and had
hence deserted of themselves, all kept their positions, to the great delight of all the peaceful
burghers. Even Herr Struve thought in the last days  of May that the “revolution” should be
commended for the fact that everything had passed off so very calmly and almost all the officials
had been able to remain at their posts. As to the rest, Herr Brentano and his agents worked for the
restoration, wherever possible, of the old routine, for a minimum of unrest and agitation and for a
speedy removal of the trappings of revolution from the province.

21 II. Karlsruhe
In the military organisation the same routine prevailed. Only that was done which could not
possibly remain undone. The troops were left without leaders, without anything to occupy them
and without order; the incompetent “Minister of War” Eichfeld and his successor, the traitor
Mayerhofer, did not even know how to deploy them properly. The convoys of troops crossed one
another aimlessly and futilely on the railway. The battalions were led to one place one day and
back the next, nobody could say why. In the garrisons the men went from one tavern to the next
because they had nothing else to do. It seemed as if they were being demoralised on purpose, as if
the government really wanted to drive out the last remnants of discipline. The organisation of the
first call-up of the so-called people's militia, i.e. all men up to thirty years old capable of bearing
arms, was assigned to the well-known Joh. Ph. Becker, a naturalised Swiss and an officer of the
confederate army. I do not know to what extent Becker was obstructed in the execution of his
mission by Brentano. I do know, however, that after the retreat of the Palatinate army onto Baden
territory, when the peremptory demands of the badly clothed and badly armed Palatinate forces
could no longer be rejected, Brentano washed his hands in innocence and said: “As far as I'm
concerned, give them whatever you want; but when the Grand Duke comes back he should at
least know who squandered his stores in this manner!” So if the Baden people's militia was
organised in part badly and in part not at all, there is no doubt that the main responsibility for this
too lies with Brentano and the ill will or ineptitude of his commissaries in the various districts.
When Marx and I first set foot on Baden territory after the suppression of the  Neue Rheinische
Zeitung (it must have been May 20 or 21, that is, more than a week after the flight of the Grand
Duke) we were astonished to see how carelessly the border was guarded, or rather not guarded.
From Frankfurt to Heppenheim the entire railway was in the hands of Wurttemberg and Hessian
imperial troops; Frankfurt and Darmstadt themselves were full of soldiers; all the stations and all
the villages were occupied by strong detachments; regular outposts were advanced right up to the
border. From the border to Weinheim, by contrast, there was not a single man to be seen; the
same was true of Weinheim. The one and only precaution was the demolition of a short stretch of
railway between Heppenheim and Weinheim. Only while we were there did a weak detachment
of the Prince's own regiment, at the most twenty-five men, arrive at Weinheim. From Weinheim
to Mannheim the deepest peace prevailed; at the most there was here and there an odd, more than
merry people's militiaman, who looked more like a straggler or a deserter than a soldier on duty.
Needless to say, there was no question at all of border control. One went in or out, at will.
Mannheim, however, gave more the impression of being on a war footing. Crowds of soldiers
stood around in the streets or sat in the taverns. The people's militia and the civic militia were
drilling in the park, although for the most part in a very clumsy fashion and with bad instructors.
At the town hall were sitting any number of committees, old and new officers, uniforms and
tunics.  The  people  mingled  with  the  soldiers  and  volunteers  and  there  was  a  great  deal  of
drinking, laughing and embracing. But it was at once apparent that the initial impetus was spent
and  that  many  were  unpleasantly  disillusioned.  The  soldiers  were  discontented;  we  carried
through the insurrection, they said, and now that it is the turn of the civilians to take over the
leadership they let everything come to a standstill and go to pieces! The soldiers were also far
from satisfied with their new officers; the new officers were on bad terms with those who had
previously served the Grand Duke – at that time there were still many of them, although every
day some deserted; the old officers found themselves against their will in an awkward situation,
from which they did not know how to extricate themselves. Finally, everyone was bemoaning the
lack of energetic and competent leadership.
On the other side of the Rhine, in Ludwigshafen, the movement seemed to us to be a much more
cheerful affair. Whereas in Mannheim a great many young men who should clearly have been in
the first call-up were quietly going about their business as if nothing had happened, here everyone
was armed. Admittedly it was not so everywhere in the Palatinate, as later became evident, in
Ludwigshafen the greatest unanimity prevailed between volunteers and military. In the taverns,

22 II. Karlsruhe
which here too were, of course, overcrowded, the Marseillaise and other such songs rang out.
There was no complaining and no grumbling, people were laughing and were body and soul with
the  movement,  and  at  that  time,  especially  amongst  the  fusiliers  and  volunteers,  very
understandable and innocent illusions prevailed about their own invincibility.
In Karlsruhe things took on a more  solemn tone. In the  Pariser Hof table d'hote  had been
announced for one o'clock. But it did not start until “the gentlemen of the provincial committee”
had arrived. Little marks of respect of this sort were already giving the movement a reassuring
bureaucratic veneer.
In  opposition  to  various  gentlemen  from  the  provincial  committee  we  expressed  the  views
developed above, namely, that at the outset a march should have been made on Frankfurt and the
insurrection thus extended, that it was most probably by now too late and that unless there were
decisive  blows  in  Hungary or  a  new  revolution  in  Paris  the  whole  movement  was  already
irretrievably lost. It is impossible to imagine the outburst of indignation amongst these burghers
of the provincial committee at such heresies. Only Blind and Goegg were on our side. Now that
we have been proved right by events these same gentlemen naturally claim that they had all along
been pressing for the offensive.
In Karlsruhe at that time there were already the first beginnings of that pretentious place-hunting
which,  under  the  equally pretentious  title  of  “concentration  of  all  the  democratic  forces  of
Germany”, masqueraded as coming to the aid of the fatherland. Anyone who had ever held forth,
however confusedly, in some club or other or had once called for hatred of tyrants in some
democratic local paper hurried to Karlsruhe or Kaiserslautern, there to become at once a great
man. As there is hardly need to emphasise, the performances were fully in keeping with the
forces  here  concentrated.  Thus  there  was  in  Karlsruhe  a  certain  well-known,  allegedly
philosophical Atta Troll,[An ironical allusion to Arnold Ruge, an epic poem by Heinrich Heine. –
Ed] ex-member of the Frankfurt Assembly and ex-editor of an allegedly democratic paper, [Die
Reform. –Ed]  suppressed by Manteuffel despite the tenders of our Atta Troll. Atta Troll was
angling most assiduously for the little post of Baden envoy to Paris, for which he felt he had a
special vocation because he had spent two years there at one time and learnt no French. Having
been lucky enough actually to wheedle the credentials out of Herr Brentano, he was just packing
his bags when Brentano unexpectedly summoned him and removed the accreditation papers from
his pocket. It goes without saying that Atta Troll now made a point of going to Paris in order to
spite Herr Brentano. Another staunch burgher who had been threatening Germany for years with
revolution and the republic, Herr Heinzen, was also in Karlsruhe. This honourable gentleman was
notorious before the February Revolution for calling on people everywhere and at all times to “go
at them tooth and nail”, and yet, after this revolution, he considered it more discreet to watch the
various German insurrections from the neutral mountains of Switzerland. Now, at long last, he
appeared to have got the urge to go tooth and nail himself at the “oppressors”. After his earlier
declared opinion that “Kossuth is a great man, but Kossuth has forgotten about  fulminate of
silver[A highly volatile explosive compound]  it was to be expected that he would immediately
organise the most colossal and hitherto unsuspected forces of destruction against the Prussians.
He did no such thing. Since more ambitious plans did not appear to be appropriate, our hater of
tyrants, as the saying goes, contented himself with setting up a republican elite corps, in the
meantime writing articles in favour of Brentano in the Karlsruher Zeitung  and frequenting the
Club of Resolute Progress.  The  club was wound up, the  republican elite did not  put in an
appearance and Herr Heinzen finally realised that not even he could defend Brentano's policies
any longer. Misunderstood, exhausted and peeved, he first went to Upper Baden and from there
to Switzerland, without having struck dead a single “oppressor”. He is now taking his revenge on
them from London, guillotining them in effigy in their millions.
We left Karlsruhe the next morning to visit the Palatinate.

23 II. Karlsruhe
As far as the conduct of general political matters and civil administration is concerned, there is
little that remains to be said about the further course of the Baden insurrection. When Brentano
felt strong enough he wiped out in one fell blow the tame opposition presented by the Club of
Resolute Progress. The “Constituent Assembly”,  elected under the influence of the immense
popularity of Brentano and the all-ruling petty bourgeoisie, gave its assent and blessing to every
measure he took. The “Provisional Government with dictatorial power” (a dictatorship under an
alleged convention!) was wholly under his control. Thus he continued to rule, obstructed the
revolutionary and military development of the insurrection, had the day-to-day affairs discharged
tant bien que mal[After a fashion.–Ed.] and jealously looked after the stores and private property
of the Grand Duke, whom he continued to treat as his legitimate sovereign by the grace of God.
In the Karlsruher Zeitung he declared that the Grand Duke could return at any time, and indeed
the castle remained closed during this whole period, as if its occupant were merely away on a
journey. He put off the emissaries from the Palatinate from day to day with vague answers; the
most that could be achieved was the joint military command under Mieroslawski and a treaty
abolishing the Mannheim-Ludwigshafen bridge-toll, which still did not prevent Herr Brentano
from continuing to levy this toll on the Mannheim side.
When Mieroslawski was finally forced after the battle of Waghaeusel and Ubstadt to withdraw
the remnants of his army through the mountains to the other side of the Murg, when Karlsruhe
had to be abandoned with a mass of provisions, and when the defeat on the Murg settled the fate
of the movement, the illusions of the Baden burghers, peasants and soldiers were dispelled and a
universal cry went up accusing Brentano of treason. With one fell blow the whole edifice of
Brentano's popularity, based on the cowardice of the petty bourgeois, the helplessness of the
peasants  and  the  lack  of  a  concentrated  working  class,  was  demolished.  Brentano  fled  to
Switzerland under cover of darkness, pursued by the accusation of national betrayal with which
his own “Constituent Assembly”  stigmatised him,  and went to ground in Feuerthalen in the
canton of Zurich.
One could draw comfort from the thought that Herr Brentano has been punished enough by the
total ruin of his political position and the universal contempt of all parties for his betrayal. The
collapse of the Baden movement is of little consequence. The 13th June in Paris and Gorgey's
refusal to march on Vienna28 put an end to any hopes that Baden and the Palatinate still had, even
if the movement had been successfully transplanted to Hesse, Wurttemberg and Franconia. One
would have fallen more honourably, but one would still have fallen. But what the revolutionary
party will never forgive Herr Brentano, what it will always remember against the cowardly Baden
petty bourgeoisie which supported him, is their direct responsibility for the death of those shot in
Karlsruhe, in Freiburg and in Rastatt and of the countless and nameless victims silently executed
by the Prussians with the help of typhus in the Rastatt casemates.
In the second issue of this  Revue I will describe the conditions in the Palatinate and, to conclude,
the Baden-Palatinate campaign.

III. The Palatinate
From Karlsruhe we went to the Palatinate  [Marx and Engels left Karlsruhe for the Palatinate on
May 24, 1849.–Ed] first stopping at Speyer where d'Ester and the Provisional Government were
said to be. They had, however, already left for Kaiserslautern, where the government finally took
up its seat at what it considered to be the “strategically best located point in the Palatinate”. In its
stead we found Willich and his volunteers in Speyer. With a corps of a few hundred men he was
holding in check the garrisons of Landau and Germersheim, altogether over 4,000 men, cutting
their lines of supply and harassing them in every possible way. That very day he had attacked two
companies of the Germersheim garrison with about eighty riflemen and driven them back into the
fortress without firing a single shot. The next day we accompanied Willich to Kaiserslautern
where we met d'Ester, the Provisional Government, and the very flower of German democracy.
Here also there could, of course, be no question of official participation in the movement, which
was quite alien to our party. So after a few days we went back to Bingen, were arrested on the
way, in the company of several friends, by Hessian troops, on suspicion of being implicated in the
uprising, transported to Darmstadt and from there to Frankfurt, where we were finally set free.
Shortly after this we left Bingen and Marx went with a mandate from the Democratic Central
Committee  to Paris, where a crucial event was about to take place, as representative of the
German revolutionary party to the French social-democrats. 29 I returned to Kaiserslautern to live
there  for  the  time  being  as  a  simple  political  refugee  and  perhaps  later,  should  a  suitable
opportunity offer  itself,  take up at  the  outbreak of fighting the only position that  the  Neue
Rheinische Zeitung could take up in this movement: that of soldier.
Anyone who has seen the Palatinate even once will understand that in this wine-producing and
wine-loving  province  any  movement  inevitably  assumes  a  most  cheerful  character.  The
ponderous,  pedantic,  Old-Bavarian  beer-souls  had  at  long  last  been  shaken  off  and  merry
Palatinate wine-bibbers appointed in their place. One had finally seen the last of that pompous
pettifoggery practised by the Bavarian police which was so delightfully parodied in the otherwise
dull pages of the Fliegende Blätter and which lay more heavily than anything else on the hearts of
the gay people of the Palatinate. The first revolutionary act of the people of the Palatinate was to
restore the freedom of the taverns; the entire Palatinate was transformed into one enormous pot-
house and the quantities of strong drink which were consumed “in the name of the people of the
Palatinate” during those six weeks were beyond all calculation. Even though active participation
in the movement in the Palatinate was nowhere near as widespread as in Baden, and even though
there were many reactionary districts here, the entire population was as one in this general wine-
bibbing and even the most reactionary philistine and peasant was carried along on the general
wave of merriment.
One did not need an especially penetrating glance to recognise how bitterly the Prussian army
was to disillusion these cheerful Palatinate souls in a few weeks' time. And yet the number of
people in the Palatinate who did not revel in the most carefree manner could be counted on one's
fingers. Scarcely anyone believed that the Prussians would come, but everyone was quite sure
that if they did come they would be thrown out again with the greatest of ease. There was no trace
here of that staunch gloominess whose motto  ”Ernst ist der Mann”[Seriousness above all things.
–Ed] is engraved on the brow of every Baden people's militia officer and which still did not
prevent  all  those  wonderful  things  happening  which  I  shall  have  to  relate  presently  -  that
respectable solemnity which the philistine character of the movement in Baden had impressed on
the majority of its participants. In the Palatinate people were only “serious” by the way. Here

25 III. The Palatinate
“enthusiasm” and “seriousness” only served to gloss over the universal jollity. But people were
always “serious” and “enthusiastic” enough to believe themselves invincible before any power in
the world, and especially the Prussian army; and if in the quiet hours of reflection a faint doubt
raised its head, it was brushed aside with the irrefutable argument that even if it were true, one
still should not say it. The longer the movement dragged on and the more undeniable and massive
the concentration of Prussian battalions between Saarbrucken and Kreuznach, the more frequent
became these doubts, and the more vehement the bluster, precisely among the doubters and the
timid, about the invincibility of a “people enraptured with its freedom”, as the people of the
Palatinate were called. This bluster soon grew into a regular soporific system which, encouraged
only too readily by the government, had the effect of relaxing all work on defence measures and
exposing everyone who opposed it to the danger of arrest as a reactionary.
This carefree attitude, this bluster about “enthusiasm” carrying all before it, in view of its minute
material resources and the tiny corner of land where it asserted itself, provided the comic side of
the Palatinate “uprising”, and gave the handful of people whose advanced views and independent
position permitted a detached judgment more than enough cause for hilarity.
The whole outward appearance of the movement in the Palatinate was cheerful, carefree and
spontaneous. Whereas in Baden every newly appointed second lieutenant, in the regular army or
the people's militia, laced himself into a heavy uniform and paraded with silver epaulettes which
later, on the day of the battle, immediately found their way into his pockets, people in the
Palatinate were much more sensible. As soon as the great heat of the first days of June made itself
felt all the worsted coats, waistcoats and cravats disappeared to make way for a light tunic. It
seemed  as  if  all  the  old  unsociable  constraints  had  been  thrown  off  along  with  the  old
bureaucracy. People dressed in a completely free-and-easy fashion, dictated solely by comfort
and the season of the year; and together with differentiation in clothing disappeared in a moment
every other differentiation in social intercourse. All social classes came together in the same
public places and in this unrestrained intercourse a socialist dreamer would have glimpsed the
dawn of universal brotherhood.
As the Palatinate, so its Provisional Government. It consisted almost exclusively of genial wine-
bibbers, who were never so astonished as when they suddenly found themselves having to be the
Provisional Government of their Bacchus-beloved fatherland. And yet there is no denying that
these laughing regents conducted themselves better and accomplished relatively more than their
Baden neighbours under the leadership of the “staunch-minded” Brentano. They were at least
well-intentioned  and  in  spite  of  their  carousing  had  a  more  sober  understanding  than  the
philistine-serious gentlemen in Karlsruhe; and hardly any of them became angry if one laughed at
their easy-going fashion of making revolution and their impotent little decrees.
The Provisional Government of the Palatinate could not get anything done as long as it was left in
the lurch by the Baden government. And it completely fulfilled its obligations towards Baden. It
sent envoy after envoy and made one concession after another solely in order to come to an
understanding, but all in vain. Herr Brentano was obdurate.
While the Baden government found everything ready at hand, the Palatinate government found
nothing.  It  had  no  money,  no  weapons,  a  number  of  reactionary  districts  and  two  enemy
fortresses on its territory. France at once banned the export of arms to Baden and the Palatinate,
and all arms dispatched thither were impounded by Prussia and Hesse. The government of the
Palatinate sent agents forthwith to France and Belgium to buy up arms and send them back; the
arms  were  purchased  but  they  never  arrived.  The  government  can  be  reproached  with  not
proceeding with sufficient energy in the matter and in particular with failing to organise the
smuggling in of rifles through the large number of contrabandists along the frontier; the greater
blame, however, lies with its agents, who acted very negligently and in part allowed themselves
to be fobbed off with empty promises  instead of getting the French arms  at least as far as
Saargemund and Lauterburg.

26 III. The Palatinate
As far as funds were concerned, not much could be done with bank-notes in the little Palatinate.
When the government found itself in pecuniary embarrassment it at least had the courage to take
refuge in a forced loan on a progressive, albeit gently graduated, scale.
The only reproaches which can be made against the Palatinate government are that in its feeling
of impotence it allowed itself to be too much infected by the universal light-heartedness and the
related illusions about its own security; and that therefore, instead of energetically setting in
motion the admittedly limited means of defending the state, it preferred to rely on the victory of
the Montagne in Paris, the taking of Vienna by the Hungarians or even on actual miracles which
were to happen somewhere or other to save the Palatinate –uprisings in the Prussian army, etc.
Hence the remissness in procuring arms in a country where even a thousand serviceable muskets
more or less would have made an infinite amount of difference and where finally, on the day the
Prussians marched in, the first and last consignment of  forty rifles arrived from abroad, namely
from  Switzerland.  Hence  the  frivolous  selection  of  civil  and  military  commissaries,  who
consisted mainly of the most incompetent and confused dreamers, and the retention of so many
old  officials  and  of  all  the  judges.  Hence  finally  the  neglect  of  all  the  means,  even  those
immediately at hand, of harassing and perhaps taking Landau. To this question I shall return later.
Behind the Provisional Government stood d'Ester, like a sort of secret General Secretary or, as
Herr  Brentano  put  it,  like  a  “red  camarilla  which  surrounded  the  moderate  government  of
Kaiserslautern”.  Moreover,  this  “red  camarilla”  included  other  German  democrats  too,  in
particular Dresden refugees. In d'Ester the Palatinate regents found that broad administrative
vision which they lacked, together with a revolutionary understanding which impressed them
because  it  always  confined  itself  to  what  was  immediately  at  hand,  to  that  which  was
unquestionably practicable, and was therefore never at a loss for detailed measures. Because of
this d'Ester acquired a significant influence and the unconditional confidence of the government.
If even he at times took the movement too seriously and thought for example that he could
achieve something worthwhile through the introduction of his for the moment totally unsuitable
municipal regulations, it is none the less certain that d'Ester impelled the Provisional Government
to each comparatively vigorous step and in particular always had appropriate solutions at hand
when it came to conflicts over details.
If in Rhenish Prussia reactionary and revolutionary classes stood facing each other from the very
outset and if in Baden a class which was initially in raptures about the movement, the petty
bourgeoisie,  gradually  allowed  itself  at  the  approach  of  danger  to  be  won  over  first  into
indifference and later into hostility towards the movement it itself had provoked, in the Palatinate
it was not so much particular classes of the population as particular districts which, governed by
local interests, declared themselves against the movement, some from the first and others little by
little. Certainly the townspeople of Speyer were reactionary from the start; in Kaiserslautern,
Neustadt, Zweibrucken, etc., they became so with the passage of time; but the main strength of
the reactionary party was  to be found in agricultural districts spread over  the  whole  of the
Palatinate. This confused configuration of the parties could only have been eliminated by one
measure: a direct attack on the private property invested in mortgages and mortgage-usury, in
favour of the debt-ridden peasants who had been sucked dry by the usurers. But this single
measure, which would immediately have given the whole of the rural population a stake in the
uprising, presupposes a much larger territory and much more developed social conditions in the
towns than is the case in the Palatinate. It was only feasible at the beginning of the insurrection,
simultaneously with an extension of the uprising to the Moselle and the Eifel, where the same
conditions obtain on the land and find their complement in the industrial development of the
Rhenish towns. And the movement was directed outwards just as little in the Palatinate as it was
in Baden.
Under these conditions the government had only limited means of combating the reactionary
districts:  isolated  military  expeditions  into  the  refractory  villages,  arrests,  especially  of  the

27 III. The Palatinate
Catholic priests, who placed themselves at the head of the resistance, and so on; appointment of
energetic civil and military commissaries, and last of all propaganda. The expeditions, mostly of a
very  comical  nature,  only  had  a  momentary  effect,  the  propaganda  none  at  all,  and  the
commissaries mostly committed blunder upon blunder in their pompous ineptitude or confined
themselves to the consumption of vast quantities of Palatinate wine and the inevitable bluster in
the taverns.
Amongst the propagandists, the commissaries and the officials of the central administration, the
democrats, of whom even more had gathered in the Palatinate than in Baden, played a very
considerable role. Here, in addition to the refugees from Dresden and from Rhenish Prussia, a
number of more or less enthusiastic “men of the people” had turned up to consecrate themselves
to the service of the fatherland. The government of the Palatinate, which unlike its Karlsruhe
counterpart understood instinctively that the resources of the Palatinate alone were not equal to
the demands even of this movement, received them gladly. It was impossible to spend more than
two hours in the Palatinate without being offered a dozen of the most varied and on the whole
very honourable posts. The democrats, who saw in the Palatinate-Baden movement not a local
uprising which was becoming daily more local and more insignificant, but the glorious dawn of
the glorious uprising of all Germany's democrats, and who everywhere in the movement saw their
more or less petty bourgeois tendency prevailing, fell over themselves to accept these offers. At
the same time, however, each felt he owed it to himself only to accept a post which satisfied his
naturally very lofty pretensions of the part he should play in an all-German movement. At first
this  was  possible.  Whoever  came  along was  at  once  put  in charge  of  an office  or  made  a
government commissary, a major or a lieutenant-colonel. Little by little, however, the number of
rivals increased, the positions became fewer and there started a petty, philistine place-hunting
which presented the disinterested spectator with a highly diverting spectacle. I imagine I do not
have to underline the fact that in this strange hotchpotch of industry and confusion, importunacy
and incompetence which the  Neue Rheinische Zeitung  has so often had occasion to wonder at
among the German democrats, the officials and propagandists of the Palatinate faithfully mirrored
the whole unpleasant medley.
As a matter of course I also was offered any number of civil and military positions, positions
which in a proletarian movement I would not have hesitated for a moment to accept. As things
were, I turned them all down. The only thing I agreed to was to write some agitational articles for
a  small  paper  of  which  the  Provisional  Government  had  large  quantities  distributed  in  the
Palatinate. I knew that this too would come to nothing, but I finally accepted the offer upon the
urgent request of d'Ester and several members of the government in order at least to demonstrate
my good will. Since I naturally felt few constraints, exception was taken to the very second
article I wrote because it was too “inflammatory”; I wasted no words, took the article back, tore it
up in d'Ester's presence and that was the end of the matter.
The best of the foreign democrats in the Palatinate were, incidentally, those who had come fresh
from the struggle in their home provinces: the Saxons and the Rhenish Prussians. The handful of
Saxons were mostly employed in the central offices, where they worked hard and distinguished
themselves by their administrative knowledge, their calm, clear understanding and their lack of
any pretensions or illusions. The Rhinelanders, mostly workers, joined the army  en masse; the
few who initially worked in the offices later also took up the musket.
In the offices of the central administration in the Fruchthalle 30 at Kaiserslautern there was a very
easy-going atmosphere. What with the general  laisser aller , the complete lack of any form of
active intervention in the movement and the uncommonly large number of officials, there was on
the  whole  little  to  do.  It  was  a  matter  of  hardly  more  than  the  day-to-day  business  of
administration,  and this  was  disposed of  tant  bien que mal . Unless a courier  arrived,  some
patriotic citizen came with a profound proposal concerning the salvation of the fatherland, some
peasant brought a complaint or some village sent a deputatlon, most of the offices had nothing to

28 III. The Palatinate
do. People yawned and chatted, told anecdotes and made bad jokes and strategic plans and went
from  one  office  to  another  trying  as  well  as  they  could  to  kill  time.  The  main  topics  of
conversation were naturally the political events of the day, about which the most contradictory
rumours were circulating. The intelligence service was greatly neglected. The old post-office
officials  had  almost  without  exception  stayed  at  their  posts  and  were  needless  to  say very
unreliable.  Alongside  them  a  “field-post”  was  set  up,  superintended  by  the  Palatinate
Chevaulegers31 who had come over to our side. The commandants and the commissaries of the
border areas paid not the slightest heed to what was happening on the other side of the border.
The  government  took  only  the Frankfurter  Journal and  the Karlsruher  Zeitung and  I  still
remember with delight the astonishment it gave rise to when I discovered in the officers' club, in
an  issue  of  the  Kolnische  Zeitungwhich  had  arrived  several  days  before,  the  news  of  the
concentration of 27 Prussian battalions, 9 batteries and 9 regiments of cavalry, together with their
exact location between Saarbrucken and Kreuznach.
At last I come  to the main point, the military organisation. About three thousand Palatinate
soldiers from the Bavarian army had defected with bag and baggage. At the same time a number
of volunteers, from the Palatinate and elsewhere, had placed themselves under arms. In addition
to that the Provisional Government issued a decree calling up the first age group, in the first
instance all unmarried men between the ages of eighteen and thirty. This call-up, however, only
took  place  on  paper,  owing  partly  to  the  incompetence  and  negligence  of  the  military
commissaries, partly to the lack of arms and partly to the indolence of the government itself.
Wherever the lack of arms was the main obstacle to the whole defence, as it was in the Palatinate,
every means had to be used to muster arms. If none were forthcoming from abroad, then it was
necessary to fetch out every musket, every rifle and every sporting-gun which could be unearthed
in the Palatinate and place them in the hands of the active fighters. However, there were not only
large numbers of private weapons at hand, but on top of that at least another 1,500 to 2,000 rifles,
not counting carbines, in the hands of the various civic militia units. One could at least have
demanded the handing over of private arms and rifles in the hands of those civic militiamen who
were not obliged to join the first call-up and did not intend to volunteer. But nothing of the sort
happened. After much insistence a resolution along these lines was finally adopted regarding the
arms held by the civic militia, but never put into effect the Kaiserslautern civic militia over three
hundred philistines strong, paraded at the Fruchthalle every day in uniform, shouldering their
arms, and the Prussians, when they marched in, had the pleasure of disarming these gentlemen.
And thus it was everywhere.
In the official newspaper an appeal was issued to the forestry officials and the keepers of the
woods, asking them to report to Kaiserslautern in order to form rifle corps; of these it was the
forestry officials who did not turn up.
Throughout the whole land scythes were forged, or at least a call went out to that effect; a few
scythes  were  actually produced.  In the  Rhenish Hessian  corps  at  Kirchheimbolanden  I  saw
several casks of scythe-blades being loaded and sent to Kaiserslautern. The journey takes roughly
seven to eight hours; four days later the government was forced to abandon Kaiserslautern to the
Prussians and the scythes  had still not arrived. If the scythes  had been given to those civic
militiamen not yet mobilised, the so-called second age group, as compensation for giving up their
guns,  then the  affair  would have  made  sense;  instead of  this  the  lazy philistines  kept  their
percussion-guns and the young recruits were expected to march against the Prussian cannon and
needle-muskets with scythes.
While there was a general lack of fire-arms, there was by contrast a just as remarkable profusion
of cavalry sabres; those who could not lay hands on a gun strapped on all the more eagerly a
clattering broadsword, believing that by merely so doing they stamped themselves as officers.
Precisely in Kaiserslautern these self-stamped officers were too numerous to count and the streets
rang day and night to the clatter of their fearful weapons. It was the students in particular who by

29 III. The Palatinate
this new manner of intimidating the enemy and by their pretension of forming an academic legion
entirely of cavalry on foot rendered great service for the saving of the fatherland.
In addition there was half a squadron of defected Chevaulegers at hand; however, they were so
scattered due to their work for the field-post, etc., that they never came to form a special combat
corps. The artillery, under the command of “Lieutenant-Colonel” Anneke, consisted of a few
three-pounders whose horses I do not recall having ever seen, and a number of mortars. Lying in
front of the Fruchthalle at Kaiserslautern was the most beautiful collection of old iron cannon-
barrels one could ever wish to see. Needless to say, most of them remained lying there unused.
The two biggest were laid on colossal home-made gun-carriages and carried off. The Baden
government  finally  sold  the  Palatinate  a  shot-out  six-pound  battery  together  with  some
ammunition; but without a team of horses, a crew of sufficient ammunition. The ammunition was
as far as possible manufactured; the team of horses and riders was made up  tant bien que mal
with  requisitioned  peasants  and  horses;  for  the  crew  a  few  old  Bavarian  artillerymen  were
gathered together to train men in the ponderous and complicated Bavarian drill.
The top leadership of military affairs was in the worst hands. Herr Reichardt, who had taken over
the  military  department  in  the  Provisional  Government,  was  active,  but  lacked  vigour  and
professional knowledge. The first commander-in-chief of the military forces of the Palatinate, the
enterprising Fenner von Fenneberg, was soon dismissed on account of his ambiguous conduct; he
was temporarily replaced by Raquilliet, a Polish officer. At last it was learnt that Mieroslawski
was to take over the supreme command of Baden and the Palatinate and that the command of the
troops of the Palatinate was to be entrusted to “General” Sznayde, also a Pole.
General Sznayde arrived. He was a small, fat man, who looked more like an elderly  bon vivant
than a “Menelaus, caller to battle”.” General Sznayde took over the command with a great deal of
gravity. He had a report made on the state of affairs and at once issued a whole series of orders of
the day. Most of these orders related to uniform (tunics and marks of rank for officers – tricolour
armbands  or  sashes),  or  appeals  to  veteran  cavalrymen  and  riflemen  to  come  forward  as
volunteers (appeals which had already been made ten times without success) and things of a
similar nature. He himself set a good example by immediately procuring a hussar tunic with
tricolour braid, in order to inspire the army with respect. The really practical and important things
in his orders of the day were merely repetitions of orders long since issued and proposals already
made earlier by the handful of good officers present, but never carried out, and which only now,
through the authority of a commanding general, could b be put into effect. As for the rest,
“General”  Sznayde  placed  his  trust  in  God  and  Mieroslawski  and  dedicated  himself  to  the
pleasures of the table, the only reasonable thing that a so totally incompetent individual could do.
Amongst the other officers in Kaiserslautern was the uniquely capable Techow, the same Techow
who as a Prussian first lieutenant with Natzmer and gave the Berlin arsenal over to the people
after having taken it by storm  32 and, sentenced to fifteen years detention in a fortress, escaped
from  Magdeburg.  Techow,  chief  of  the  Palatinate  general  staff,  proved  in  all  things  to  be
knowledgeable, circumspect and calm, perhaps a little too calm to be trusted to make the rapid
decisions on which everything often depends on the battlefield. “Lieutenant-Colonel” Anneke
proved to he  incompetent  and indolent in organising the artillery,  though he rendered good
services in the ordnance shops. At Ubstadt he won no laurels as commander-in-chief and from
Rastatt, where Mieroslawski had put him in charge of the materials for the siege, he escaped
across the Rhine under strange circumstances already before the investment, leaving his horses
behind.
There was not much to be said for the officers in the various districts either. A number of Poles
had appeared, some in advance of Sznayde and some with him. As the best of the Polish emigres
were already in Hungary, one may suspect that these Polish officers were a pretty mixed bunch.
Most of them made haste to obtain an appropriate number of saddle-horses and give out a few
orders, paying only scanty attention to their execution. They tended to lord it over people and

30 III. The Palatinate
wanted to treat the peasants of the Palatinate like cringing Polish serfs. They were not familiar
with the country, the language or the command, and hence accomplished little or nothing at all as
military commissaries, i.e. organisers of battalions. In the course of the campaign they soon
strayed  into Sznayde's  headquarters  and shortly afterwards,  when  Sznayde  was  assailed and
roughly handled by his soldiers, disappeared altogether. The better ones among them arrived too
late to be able to organise anything.
There was not much talent of any use among the German officers either. The Rhenish Hessian
corps, though it included elements who could have developed militarily, was under the leadership
of a certain Hausner, a completely useless man, and under the even more lamentable moral and
political influence of the two heroes Zitz and Bamberger, who later in Karlsruhe extricated
themselves so successfully from the situation. In the Palatinate hinterland a former Prussian
officer, Schimmelpfennig, organised a corps.
The only two officers who had already distinguished themselves in active service before the
Prussian invasion were Willich and Blenker.
With a small corps of volunteers Willich took over the observation and later the siege of Landau
and Germersheim. A company of students, a company of workers who had lived with him in
Besancon, three weak companies of gymnasts (from Landau, Nerrstadt and Kaiserlautern), two
companies  formed  from  volunteers  from  the  surrounding  villages  and  lastly  a  company  of
Rhenish Prussians armed with scythes, most  of them fugitives from the Prum and Elberfeld
uprisings, gradually mustered under his command. In the end they amounted to between 700 and
800 men, certainly the most reliable soldiers in the whole Palatinate; most of the N.C.O.s had
seen service and some of them had been familiarised in Algeria with guerrilla warfare. 33 With this
scanty force Willich took up a position halfway between Landau and Germersheim, organised the
civic militia in the villages, using them to guard the roads and do outpost duty, beat back all the
sorties from the two fortresses in spite of the superior forces, in particular of the Germersheim
garrison, blockaded Landau so effectively that almost all its supplies were intercepted, cut off its
water-supplies, dammed up the Queich so that all the fortress cellars were flooded, and yet there
was a lack of drinking-water, and harassed the garrison every night with patrols which not only
cleared out the abandoned outworks and auctioned the guardroom stoves they found there for five
guilders each, but also pushed forward even into the fortress trenches and frequently caused the
garrison to open fire on a corporal and two men with a cannonade of twenty-four-pounders which
was as intense as it was harmless. This was by far the most brilliant period during the existence of
Willich's volunteer corps. If only a few howitzers had been at his disposal at that time, or even
only field-guns, according to the reports of the spies who daily went in and out of Landau, the
fortress, with its demoralised, weak garrison and its rebellious inhabitants, would have been taken
in  a  few  days.  Even  without  artillery  a  continuation  of  the  siege  would  have  compelled
capitulation in a week. In Kaiserslautern were two seven-pound howitzers, good enough to set
fire to a few houses in Landau during the night. Had they been on the spot, then the unheard of,
the taking of a fortress like Landau with a few field-guns, would have become a probability.
Every day I preached to the general staff in Kaiserslautern the necessity of at least making the
attempt. To no avail. One of the howitzers stayed in Kaiserslautern and the other found its way to
Homburg, where it almost fell into the hands of the Prussians. Both came over the Rhine without
having fired a shot.
“Colonel” Blenker, however, distinguished himself even more than Willich. “Colonel” Blenker, a
former travelling salesman for a wine-firm, who had been in Greece as a philhellenist and later
set himself up as a wine-merchant in Worms, can in any case be numbered among the most
outstanding  military  personalities  of  the  whole  glorious  campaign.  Always  on  horseback,
surrounded by a numerous staff, big, strong, with a defiant face, an impressive Hecker-type
beard, a stentorian voice and all the other characteristics that go to make up a South German
“man  of the people”, and among  which, as everybody knows,  intelligence does not  exactly

31 III. The Palatinate
feature, “Colonel” Blenker gave the impression of a man at the mere sight of whom Napoleon
would have to sneak away, a man worthy to figure in that refrain with which we opened these
accounts. “Colonel” Blenker felt he had it in himself to overthrow the German princes even
without “Hecker, Struve, Zitz and Blum” and immediately set about the task. It was his intention
to fight the war not as a soldier but as a travelling wine-salesman, and to this end he resolved to
conquer Landau. Willich was not yet there at that time. Blenker got together everything at hand in
the  Palatinate,  both  regular  troops  and  people's  militia,  organised  foot-soldiers,  cavalry and
artillery that had all been jumbled up together, and moved off in the direction of Landau. A
council of war was held in front of the fortress, the assault columns formed up and the position of
the artillery fixed. The artillery, however, consisted of a few mortars whose calibre varied from
1/2 lb. to 1 3/8 lb., and was brought up on a hay-cart which at the same time served to carry the
ammunition. The ammunition for these various mortars consisted of  one, I repeat  one, 24 lb.
cannon-ball; there was no question of any gunpowder. After everything had been organised,
everyone moved forward full of contempt for death. The glacis was reached without meeting any
resistance; the march continued, right up to the gate. At the head were the soldiers who had
defected from Landau. A few soldiers appeared on the ramparts to parley. They were called upon
to open the gate. There began already a quite good-natured exchange and everything appeared to
be going according to wish. All at once a cannon-shot rang out from the ramparts, case-shot
whistled over the heads of the assailants and in no time the whole heroic army broke into wild
flight together with their Palatinate Prince Eugene. Everyone was running, running, running, with
such irresistible momentum that the couple of cannon-balls loosed off soon afterwards from the
ramparts were already no longer whistling over the heads of the fleeing men, but only over their
discarded guns, cartridge-pouches and knapsacks. A few hours away from Landau a halt was
finally made and the army was gathered together again and led home by Herr “Colonel” Blenker,
without the keys of Landau but none the less proud for that. Such is the story of the conquest, of
Landau with three mortars and a 24 lb. cannon-ball that never happened.
The case-shot was fired off in all haste by some Bavarian officers, when they saw that their
soldiers wanted to open the gate. The gun was brought off the target by soldiers themselves, and
it was because of this that nobody was hit. But when the Landau garrison saw what an effect this
random shot had, there was naturally no more talk of surrender.
Hero Blenker, however, was not the sort of man to take such a piece of bad luck lying down. He
now  resolved to conquer  Worms.  He  moved  up from Frankenthal,  where  he  commanded  a
battalion. The handful of Hessian soldiers stationed in Worms made themselves scarce and hero
Blenker marched  into his home  town with drums  beating and trumpets  sounding. After the
liberation of Worms had been celebrated with a solemn luncheon, the main ceremony began, that
is, the rendering of an oath of allegiance to the Imperial Constitution to twenty Hessian soldiers
who had stayed behind sick. During the night after this prodigious success, however, the imperial
troops under Peucker brought up artillery on the right bank of the Rhine and gave the victorious
conquerors a most violent awakening with the early thunder of cannon. There was no mistake
about it: the imperial troops were sending over round shot and shells. Without uttering a word
hero Blenker gathered together his brave men, and stole away from Worms back to Frankenthal.
The muse will report further particulars of his later heroic deeds in the appropriate place.
While in the districts the motliest collection of characters were each in their own way giving
themselves vent and the soldiers and people's militiamen, instead of drilling, sat in the taverns and
sang, the gallant officers were in Kaiserslautern busy thinking up the most profound strategic
plans. It was a question of nothing less than the possibility of holding a small province like the
Palatinate,  accessible  from  several  sides,  with  almost  wholly  imaginary  forces  against  an
extremely real army of over 30,000 men and 60 cannon. Precisely because in such a situation
every project was equally useless and equally absurd, and precisely because all the conditions for
any strategic plan were absent, precisely for those reasons these profound military men, these

32 III. The Palatinate
thinking heads of the Palatinate army,  were all the more resolved to concoct some  strategic
miracle  which would bar  to the  Prussians  the  way into the  Palatinate.  Every freshly baked
lieutenant, every sabre-trailer from the academic legion finally established under the auspices of
Herr Sznayde, with the rank of lieutenant for every member, every administrative pen-pusher,
stared pensively at the map of the Palatinate in the hope of finding the strategic philosophers
stone. It is easy to imagine the amusing results this had. The Hungarian method of warfare was
especially popular. From “General” Sznayde down to the as yet least recognised Napoleon in the
army one could constantly hear the phrase: “We must do as Kossuth did, we must give up a piece
of our territory and retreat, here or there, into the mountains or onto the plain according to the
situation.” “We must do as Kossuth did,” the cry went up in every tavern. “We must do as
Kossuth did,” echoed every corporal, every soldier and every street-urchin. “We must do as
Kossuth did,” echoed the Provisional  Government  goodnaturedly,  for  they knew better  than
anyone else that it was best not to meddle in these things, and in the long run it was all the same
to them how it was done. “We must do as Kossuth did, or we are lost.”– The Palatinate and
Kossuth!
Before I go on to describe the campaign itself, I must briefly mention a matter which has been
touched on in various newspapers: my momentary arrest in Kirchheim. A few days before the
Prussians  marched  in  I  accompanied  my  friend  Moll  on  a  mission  he  had  undertaken  to
Kirchheimbolanden, on the border. Here was stationed a part of the Rhenish Hessian corps, in
which  we  had  acquaintances.  We  were  sitting  in  the  evening  with  these  and  several  other
volunteers from the corps in an inn. Among the volunteers were a number of those serious,
enthusiastic “men of action” of whom mention has been made on more than one occasion and
who  foresaw  no  difficulties  in  beating  any  army  in  the  world,  with  few  arms  and  much
enthusiasm.  These  are  men  whose  experience  of  the  military  does  not  extend  beyond  the
changing of the guards, who never pay the slightest heed to the material means of attaining a
given purpose and who for this reason mostly experience such a shattering disillusion in their first
battle, as I was later to observe on more than one occasion, that they make off as fast as their legs
can carry them. I asked one such hero if he really intended to defeat the Prussians with the thirty
thousand cavalry sabres and three and a half thousand fire-arms, including several rusty carbines,
available in the Palatinate, and I was in proper train to enjoy the holy indignation of a man of
action wounded in his noblest enthusiasm when in stepped the guard and declared me under
arrest. At the same time I saw two men rush upon me from behind foaming with rage. One of
them announced that he was Civil Commissary Müller and the other was Herr Greiner, the only
member of the government with whom I had never entered into more intimate contact, on account
of  his  frequent  absence  from  Kaiserslautern  (he  had  been  turning  his  wealth  into  movable
property on the quiet) and his suspicious-looking, snivellingly sullen appearance. 34 At the same
time an old acquaintance of mine,  [Victor Schily.–Ed.] a captain in the Rhenish Hessian corps,
stood up and declared that if I were to be arrested, he, together with a considerable number of the
best men in the corps, would leave it at once. Moll and others were for defending me there and
then with force. Those present split into two parties, the scene promised to become interesting
and I declared I would naturally allow myself to be arrested with pleasure: it would finally be
clear for all to see what the colour of the Palatinate movement was. I went with the guard.
The next morning, after a comical interrogation which Herr Zitz put me through, I was handed
over to the civil commissary and by him to a gendarme. The gendarme, on whom it had been
impressed to treat me as a  spy, handcuffed me and led me on foot to Kaiserslautern, accused of
disparaging the uprising of the Palatinate people and inciting against the government, which, by
the way, I had not mentioned. On the way I succeeded in getting a carriage. In Kaiserslautern,
where Moll had hurried on ahead of me, I found the government highly bewildered at the valiant
Greiner's bevue and even more bewildered at the treatment meted out to me. Needless to say I
carried on quite a bit at the gentlemen in the presence of the gendarme. Since no report from Herr

33 III. The Palatinate
Greiner had yet arrived, I was offered freedom on parole. I refused to give my parole and went
into the cantonal gaol–without an escort, which condition was agreed to at d'Ester's request.
D'Ester declared that he could stay no longer after such treatment had been meted out to a party
comrade. Tzschirner, who arrived just at that time, also took a very resolute stand. The same
evening the news spread throughout the town and everyone who belonged to the resolute trend
immediately sided with me. On top of that, news arrived that disturbances had broken out in the
Rhenish Hessian corps on account of this affair and that a large part of the corps intended to
disband. It would have taken less than that to demonstrate to the provisional regents, in whose
company I had been daily, the necessity of giving me satisfaction. After I had spent 24 quite
amusing hours in gaol, d'Ester and Schmitt came to see me; Schmitt explained to me that I was
unconditionally free and that the government hoped that I would not be deterred from continuing
to take part in the movement. Besides this, I was told, the order had been given that in future no
political prisoner was to be brought in handcuffed, and the investigation against the investigator
of this  infamous  treatment  as well as of the arrest and its cause  was proceeding. After  the
government had taken these steps to give me all the satisfaction that it could for the moment,
since Herr Greiner had still not sent in a report, the solemn faces on both sides were discarded
and the company had a few drinks together in the Donnersberg. The next day Tzschirner departed
for the Rhenish Hessian corps in order to appease it and I gave him a short note to take with him.
When Herr Greiner returned he made such a snivelling exhibition of himself that his colleagues
gave him a doubly severe dressing-down.
At the same time the Prussians marched in from Homburg. Since things thus took an interesting
turn, since I had no intention of letting slip the opportunity of gaining some military education,
and lastly since the Neue Rheinische Zeitung also had to be represented honoris causa in the army
of Baden and the Palatinate, I too buckled on a broadsword and went off to join Willich.

IV. To Die for the Republic!
Nur im Sturz von sechsunddreissig Thronen
Kann die deutsche Republik gedeihn;
Darum, Bruder, sturzt sie ohne Schonen,
Setzet Gut und Blut und Leben ein.
Fur Republik zu sterben,
Ist ein Los, hehr und gross, ist das Ziel unsres Muts!
[Only through the overthrow of thirty-six thrones
Can the German republic prosper;
Therefore, brothers, overthrow them without mercy,
And stake property, life and limb.
To die for the Republic
Is a lofty and great destiny, the aim of our courage.]
Thus sang the volunteers on the train when I was on my way to Neustadt to seek out Willich's
temporary headquarters.
So from now on to die for the republic was the aim of my courage or at least was supposed to be.
It seemed strange to me to have this new aim. I looked at the volunteers, young, handsome, lively
lads. They did not at all look as if death for the republic was just now the aim of their courage.
From Neustadt I travelled on a requisitioned peasant's cart to Offenbach, between Landau and
Germersheim, where Willich was still to be found. Just the other side of Edenkoben I came across
the first sentries, posted by the peasants on his orders, who were from now on to be found at the
entrance and exit of every village and at every cross-road and who allowed nobody through
without a written authorisation of the insurgent authorities. It was clear that one was getting a
little nearer to war conditions. Late in the night I arrived at Offenbach and at once took up duties
as Willich's adjutant.
In the course of that day (it was June 13) a small part of Willich's corps had fought a brilliant
engagement. A few days previously Willich had got reinforcements for his volunteer corps in the
shape of a Baden people's militia battalion, the Dreher-Obermuller Battalion, and had moved up
some fifty men of this battalion to Bellheim against Germersheim. To their rear, in Knittelsheim,
there was still a company of volunteers together with a few scythe-men. A battalion of Bavarians
with two cannon and a squadron of Chevaulegers made a sortie. The Badeners fled without
putting up any resistance; only one of them, overtaken by three mounted gendarmes, defended
himself furiously until finally, hacked to pieces by sabre blows, he fell and was finished off by his
assailants. When the fugitives arrived at Knittelsheim the captain  [Loreck –Ed]stationed there set
out against the Bavarians with a little less than fifty men, some of whom were still armed with
scythes. He expertly divided up his men into several detachments and advanced in extended order
with such determination that after two hours' fighting the Bavarians, who were over ten times
more numerous, were driven back into the village abandoned by the Badeners and finally, when
some reinforcements arrived from Willich's corps, thrown out of the village again. They retreated
with a loss of some twenty dead and wounded to Germersheim. I am sorry to say that I cannot
give the name of this bold and talented young officer, since he is probably not yet in safety. His
men had only five wounded, none seriously. One of these five, a French volunteer, had been shot
in the upper arm before he himself had fired a shot. Nevertheless he fired all his sixteen cartridges
and when his wound prevented him from loading his gun he got one of the scythe-men to load it
for him so that he could just fire. The next day we went to Bellheim to look at the battlefield and
make new arrangements. The Bavarians had fired at our skirmishers with round shot and case-

35 IV. To Die For the Republic
shot but hit nothing except the twigs on the trees, with which the whole road was strewn, and the
tree behind which the captain was standing.
The  Dreher-Obermuller  Battalion  was  now  present  in  full  strength  with  the  intention  of
establishing itself firmly in Bellheim and the surrounding area. It was a splendid, well-armed
battalion and the officers especially, with their turned-up moustaches and their tanned faces full
of seriousness and enthusiasm, really did look like man-eaters endowed with reason. Fortunately,
they were not so dangerous, as we were to become more and more aware.
To my amazement I discovered that there was almost no ammunition whatever available, that
most men only had five or six cartridges, and in a few cases twenty, and that the stock in hand
would not be enough even to replenish the now completely empty cartridge-pouches of the men
who had been under fire the day before. I at once volunteered to go to Kaiserslautern and fetch
ammunition, and set out the same evening.
The  peasants'  carts  were  slow;  the  necessity  of  requisitioning  new  carts  at  regular  stages,
unfamiliarity with the roads, etc., also helped to slow things down. It was daybreak when I
arrived at Maikammer, about halfway to Neustadt. Here I came across a detachment of Pirmasens
people's militia with the four cannon sent to Homburg, which in Kaiserslautern were already
believed lost. By way of Zweibrucken and Pirmasens, and then by the most wretched mountain
tracks, they had succeeded in getting as far as here, where they at last came out into the plain. The
gentlemen  from Prussia were in no great hurry to pursue them,  even though our men  from
Pirmasens, excited by exertions, night marches and wine, believed they were right on their heels.
A few hours later (it was on June 15) I arrived at Neustadt. The whole population was on the
streets,  among  them  soldiers  and  volunteers,  as  all  people's  militiamen  in  tunics  were
indiscriminately called in the Palatinate. Carts, cannon and horses blocked every approach. In
short, I had landed up in the middle of the retreat of the entire Palatinate army. The Provisional
Government,  General  Sznayde,  the  general  staff,  the  office  staff,  everyone  was  there.
Kaiserslautern had been abandoned,  the  Fruchthalle,  the  “Donnersberg”,  the  beerhouses,  the
“strategically best located point in the Palatinate”, and for the moment Neustadt had become the
centre of the Palatinate's confusion, which reached its climax only now that it came to fighting.
Suffice it to say, I made myself acquainted with the facts, took as many kegs of gunpowder, lead-
shot and ready-made cartridges as I could (what further use was this ammunition to an army
which had gone to pieces without even a battle?), after countless vain attempts finally got hold of
a wain in a neighbouring village and left in the evening with my booty and a small escort.
But before doing so I went to Herr Sznayde and asked if he did not have any message for Willich.
The old gourmand gave me a few meaningless instructions and added with an air of importance:
“You see, we are now doing just as Kossuth did.”
How the Palatinate came to do just as Kossuth did, however, was to be explained as follows. In
the heyday of the “rebellion”, that is to say, on the day before the Prussians marched in, the
Palatinate had roughly 5,000 to 6,000 men armed with weapons of all sorts and about 1,000 to
1,500 scythe-men. These 5,000 to 6,000 possible combatants consisted firstly of Willich's and the
Rhenish Hessian volunteer  corps  and secondly of  the  so-called people's  militia.  In the  area
covered by each provincial commissariat was a military commissary whose task was to organise a
battalion.  The  defected  soldiers  belonging  to  each  district  were  to  serve  as  nucleus  and  as
instructors. This system of mixing regular troops with raw recruits, though it could have had
excellent results during an active campaign with strict discipline and continual military exercise,
ruined everything under the circumstances. The battalions did not materialise owing to lack of
arms; the soldiers, having nothing to do, neglected all discipline and military bearing and for the
most part melted away. Eventually a battalion of sorts came together in some districts but in the
others only armed crowds existed. There was absolutely nothing to be done with the scythe-men;
everywhere in the way and never really of any use, they were partly left with their respective

36 IV. To Die For the Republic
battalions as a provisional appendage until such a time as guns could be acquired for them, and
partly concentrated in a special corps under the half-crazy Captain Zinn. Citizen Zinn, the most
perfect Shakespearean Pistol  [character in Shakespeare's Henry V]  one could ever meet, who on
bolting from Landau under hero Blenker stumbled over his scabbard and broke it and afterwards
swore blind that a “fiery 24 lb. cannon-ball” had rent it asunder, this same invincible Pistol had
hitherto been employed in executions of fractionary villages. He had applied himself with great
zeal to this office, so that the peasants held him and his corps in very great respect, but they gave
him a sound thrashing every time they caught him by himself. On their way back from such trips
the men had to beat their scythes to smithereens and when he arrived in Kaiserslautern he would
relate murderous Falstaffiads about his fights with the peasants.
Since it was obvious that little could be accomplished with such forces, Mieroslawski, who only
arrived at the Baden headquarters on the 10th, ordered the Palatinate troops to make a fighting
withdrawal to the Rhine and if possible win the Rhine crossing at Mannheim; otherwise they
were to go over to the right bank of the Rhine at Speyer or Knielingen and then defend the Rhine
crossings from Baden. At the same time as this order, the news came in that the Prussians had
penetrated the Palatinate from Saarbrucken and after a few musket-shots driven back towards
Kaiserslautern the meagre forces we had drawn up at the border. At the same time all the more or
less  organised  units  were  concentrating  in  the  direction  of  Kaiserslautern  and  Neustadt;  an
unbounded confusion ensued and a large number of the recruits melted away. A young officer,
Rakow, from the 1848 Schleswig-Holstein volunteer corps, went out with thirty men to round up
the deserters and in the space of two days had rallied 1,400 of them. He formed them into a
“Kaiserslautern Battalion” and led them until the end of the campaign.
The Palatinate, strategically speaking, is such a straightforward terrain that not even the Prussians
could make any blunders here. Along the Rhine lies a valley four to five hours' journey across
and completely free from any natural obstacles. In a comfortable three days' march the Prussians
came from Kreuznach and Worms as far as Landau and Germersheim. The “Kaiserstrasse” leads
over the mountainous hinterland of the Palatinate from Saargemund to Mainz, mostly on the
mountain ridge or through a broad gully. Here too there are as good as no natural obstacles
behind which a numerically weak and tactically unschooled army could hold out to any extent.
Close by the Prussian border, near Homburg, there is at last an excellent road which leads from
the “Kaiserstrasse” to Landau via Zweibrücken and Pirmasens,  running partly through river
valleys  and  partly  over  the  ridge  of  the  Vosges.  It  is  true  that  this  route  presents  greater
difficulties, but it cannot be blocked with few troops and no artillery, especially when an enemy
corps manoeuvres on the plain and can cut off the retreat via Landau and Bergzabern.
In the light of this, the Prussians' offensive was a very straightforward matter. The first thrust was
from Saarbrucken against Homburg; from here one column marched directly on Kaiserslautern
and the other on Landau via Pirmasens. Thereupon a second corps immediately attacked in the
Rhine valley. In Kirchheimbolanden this corps met its first violent resistance from the Rhenish
Hessians stationed there. The Mainz riflemen defended the castle garden with great doggedness
and in spite of considerable losses. They were eventually outflanked and retreated. Seventeen of
them fell into the hands of the Prussians. They were forthwith put up against trees and shot
without further ado by these heroes of the “glorious army”, 35 who were drunk on schnaps. With
this piece of villainy the Prussians began their “short but glorious campaign” [From the order
issued by Frederick William IV on July 28, 1849, on the occasion of the end of the Baden-
Palatinate campaign (Preussischer Staats-Anzeiger, Berlin, No. 21).–Ed.] in the Palatinate.
This meant  that the whole northern half of the Palatinate was won and the link-up effected
between the two main columns. Now they only needed to advance in the plain and relieve Landau
and Germersheim to secure the rest of the Palatinate and capture all those corps that might still be
holding out in the mountains.

37 IV. To Die For the Republic
There  were  some  30,000  Prussians  in  the  Palatinate,  equipped  with  numerous  cavalry  and
artillery. On the plain, where the Prince of Prussia and Hirschfeld were pressing forward with the
strongest  corps,  nothing  stood  between  them  and  Neustadt  except  a  few  people's  militia
detachments, incapable of resistance and already half disbanded, and a section of the Rhenish
Hessians. A swift march on Speyer and Germersheim, and all the 4,000 to 5,000 troops of the
Palatinate concentrated or rather chaotically entangled at Neustadt and Landau would have been
doomed, routed, scattered and captured. But the Prussian gentlemen, who were so active when it
came  to shooting unarmed  prisoners,  were  extremely cautious  about  fighting and extremely
somnolent in pursuit.
If  throughout  the  campaign  I  am  frequently  forced  to  return  to  this  decidedly  strange
lukewarmness which the Prussians and the other imperial troops displayed in attack as well as in
pursuit, against an army mostly six times and never less than three times smaller, badly organised
and in parts pitifully commanded, it should be understood that I am not blaming it on some
singular cowardice on the part of the Prussian soldiers, all the less so since I had absolutely no
illusions, as will already have become clear, that our troops were especially brave. Neither do I
ascribe it, as reactionaries would do, to some sort of magnanimity or the desire to avoid the
inconvenience of too many prisoners. The Prussian civil and military bureaucracy has from time
immemorial gloried in gaining striking victories over weak enemies and taking its revenge on
defenceless men in a frenzy of blood-lust. It did this also in Baden and the Palatinate. Proof: the
executions by firing squad in Kirchheim, the night-time shootings in the Karlsruhe peasantry, the
countless instances on all the battlefields of the wounded and those who had surrendered being
butchered, the ill-treatment of the few who were taken prisoner, the murders by summary justice
in Freiburg and Rastatt and lastly the slow, secret and therefore all the more inhuman killing of
the Rastatt prisoners through ill-treatment, hunger, overcrowding in damp, suffocating dungeons
and the typhus that resulted. The Prussians, lukewarm prosecution of the war was certainly rooted
in cowardice, and indeed in that of the commanders. Quite apart from the slow, faint-hearted
precision of our Prussian martinets and manoeuvre heroes, which is enough in itself to inhibit any
bold move or quick decision, quite apart from the complicated service regulations intended to
prevent in a roundabout way a recurrence of so many ignominious defeats–would the Prussians
ever have conducted a war in a manner so insufferably boring for us and so downright disgraceful
for them if they had been sure of their own men? Therein lay the key. Messrs the Generals knew
that a third of their army consisted of recalcitrant army reserve regiments who after the first
victory of the insurgent army would go over to it and very soon bring after them half the regular
troops and in particular all the artillery. And it is not very difficult to see what the prospects
would then have been for the House of Hohenzollern and the unimpaired crown.36
In Maikammer, where I was forced to wait until the morning of the 16th for a new cart and escort,
the army, which had set out from Neustadt very early in the morning, caught up with me again.
The previous day there had still been talk of a march on Speyer, but this plan had evidently been
abandoned and they were making directly for the Knielingen bridge. With fifteen Pirmasensers,
half-wild peasant lads from the virgin forests of the Palatinate hinterland, I marched off. It was
not until I reached the vicinity of Offenbach that I learned that Willich had marched off with all
his troops to Frankweiler. a place situated to the north-west of Landau. I therefore turned round
and arrived towards noon at Frankweiler. Here I found not only Willich, but once again the entire
advanced guard of the Palatinate, which had taken the route to the west of Landau in order not to
have to march between Landau and Germersheim. In the tavern Sat the Provisional Government
with its officials, the general staff and the large numbers of democratic hangers-on who had
attached themselves  to both of these. General Sznayde  was having breakfast. Everyone  was
rushing around in great confusion – in the inn the regents, the commandants and the hangers-on
and in the street the soldiers. Gradually the main body of the army moved in: Herr Blenker, Herr
Trocinski, Herr Strasser and whatever their names were, all mounted on horseback at the head of

38 IV. To Die For the Republic
their valiant troops. The confusion grew and grew. Little by little it became possible to send
individual corps further on in the direction of Impflingen and Kandel.
One would not guess from looking at it that this army was on the retreat. Disorder was from the
very beginning as if at home in it, and even if the young warriors were already starting to grumble
about the unaccustomed marching, that still did not stop them from carousing in the taverns to
their hearts' content, talking big and threatening the Prussians with imminent extinction. Despite
their certainty of victory, one regiment of cavalry with some horse-artillery would have sufficed
to blow the whole merry company to the four winds and totally disperse the “liberation army of
the Rhenish Palatinate”. It needed only a quick decision and a dash of boldness; but in the
Prussian camp there was no question of either.
The next morning we set out. While the main body of the fleeing troops moved off towards the
Knielingen bridge, Willich marched with his corps and the Dreher Battalion into the mountains
against the Prussians. One of our companies, some fifty Landau gymnasts, had advanced right up
into the highest mountains, to Johanniskreuz. Schimmelpfennig and his corps were likewise still
on the road from Pirmasens to Landau. The idea was to hold the Prussians up and bar the roads to
them in Hinterweidenthal to Bergzabern and the Lauter valley.
Schimmelpfennig, however, had already abandoned Hinterweidenthal and was in Rinnthal and
Annweiler. The road makes a curve here, and it is precisely here that the mountains enclosing the
Queich valley form a sort of defile beyond which lies the village of Rinnthal. This defile was
manned by a sort of picket. In the night his patrols had reported that they had been shot at; early
in  the  morning  ex-Civil  Commissary  Weiss  from  Zweibrucken  and  a  young  Rhinelander,
M.J.Becker,  brought  the  news  that  the  Prussians  were  advancing  and  demanded  that
reconnaissance patrols be sent out. However, no reconnaissance was undertaken nor were the
heights on either side of the defile manned, so that Weiss and Becker decided to go reconnoitring
on their own initiative. As further reports came of the approach of the enemy, Schimmelpfennig's
men began to barricade the defile; Willich arrived, reconnoitred the position, issued some orders
to man the heights and had the completely useless barricade removed. He then rode quickly back
to Annweiler and fetched his troops.
As we were marching through Rinnthal we heard the first shots. We hurried through the village
and  saw  Schimmelpfennig's  troops  drawn  up  on  the  highway,  many  scythe-men  and  few
flintlocks,  some  already advancing into action.  The  Prussians  were  pushing forward  on  the
heights,  shooting  as  they  went;  Schimmelpfennig  had  calmly  allowed  them  to  get  into  the
position that he was supposed to occupy himself. No bullets fell into our columns yet; they all
went flying high over our heads. Whenever a bullet went whistling over the heads of the scythe-
men the whole line swayed and everyone started shouting at the same time.
Only with difficulty did we get past these troops, who blocked almost the whole of the road,
brought everything into disorder and anyway were quite useless with their scythes. The company
commanders and lieutenants were just as helpless and confused as the soldiers themselves. Our
riflemen were ordered to the front, where they were to advance on the heights, some to the right,
some to the left; on the left were two additional companies to reinforce the riflemen and outflank
the  Prussians.  The  main  column  stayed  where  it  was  in  the  valley.  Some  riflemen  posted
themselves behind the remains of the barricade in the curve of the road and shot at the Prussian
column, which was positioned a few hundred paces back. I went with a few men up the mountain
to the left.
We had scarcely climbed the bushy slope when we came to an open field from the opposite
wooded edge of which Prussian riflemen were loosing off their elongated bullets at us. I fetched
up a few more of the volunteers, who were scrambling around the slope helpless and rather
nervous, posted them with as much cover as possible and took a closer look at the terrain. I could
not advance with these few men over a completely exposed field 200 to 250 paces across, as long

39 IV. To Die For the Republic
as the outflanking detachment sent ahead further to the left had not reached the Prussians' flank;
at the very most we could hold out, since we were badly covered in any case. In spite of their
elongated-bullet guns, incidentally, the Prussians shot extremely badly; we stood for over half an
hour with next to no cover in the fiercest possible skirmish fire, and the enemy sharpshooters hit
only one shotgun barrel and the lappet of one tunic.
At last I had to go and see where Willich was. My men promised to hold their ground and I
climbed back down the slope. Down below everything was fine. The Prussian main column, shot
at by our riflemen on the road and to the right of it, was forced to retreat a little further. All of a
sudden our volunteers came leaping down the slope to the left, where I had been positioned, and
abandoned their ground. The companies which had advanced on the extreme left flank, weakened
by having left behind numerous skirmishers, considered that the route through a coppice lying
further on would take too long; with the captain who had won the battle of Bellheim at their head,
they advanced across the fields. They were met with a hail of fire; the captain and several others
fell; the rest, leaderless, yielded to the superior forces. The Prussians now advanced, attacked our
skirmishers in the flank, shot down on them from above and thus forced them to retreat. The
whole mountain was soon in the hands of the Prussians. They shot into our columns from above;
there  was  nothing  more  to  be  done,  and  we  started  to  retreat.  The  road  was  blocked  by
Schimmelpfennig's troops and the Dreher-Obermuller battalion, which in accordance with the
laudable Baden custom marched not in sections of four to six but in half-platoons of twelve to
fifteen abreast and took up the whole breadth of the highway. Our men had to march through
swampy meadows to get to the village. I stayed with the riflemen to cover the retreat.
The  battle  was  lost  partly because  Schimmelpfennig  had  disobeyed  Willich's  order  and not
manned the heights, which we could not retake from the Prussians with the few troops at our
disposal; partly because of the utter uselessness of Schimmelpfennig's troops and the Dreher
Battalion; and last of all partly because of the impatience of the captain who had been ordered to
outflank the enemy, and that impatience almost cost him his life and exposed our left flank. It
was, incidentally, lucky for us that we were beaten; a Prussian column was already on the way to
Bergzabern, Landau was relieved, and thus we would have been surrounded on all sides in
Hinterweidenthal.
We lost more men during the retreat than in the battle. From time to time Prussian musket bullets
hit the dense column, which was progressing, for the most part a model of disorder, shrieking and
bawling. We had about fifteen wounded, among them Schimmelpfennig, who had received a shot
in the knee soon after the beginning of the battle. Once again the Prussians showed no great
eagerness to pursue us and soon stopped shooting. Only a few skirmishers on the mountain slopes
came after us. In Annweiler, half an hour away from the battlefield, we were able to take some
food quite undisturbed and then marched to Albersweiler. We had the most important thing:
3,000 guilders payment towards the forced loan which had been waiting for us in Annweiler.
Afterwards the Prussians called it robbery. They also maintained in the elation of victory that at
Rinnthal they had killed Captain Manteuffel, a member of our corps, cousin of Ehren-Manteuffel
[A pun on Ehrenmann (man of honour) and Teufel (devil). The Manteuffel in Berlin refers to Otto
von Manteuffel, Minister of the Interior–Ed]  in Berlin and a Prussian N.C.O. who had come over
to us. Herr Manteuffel is so far from being dead that he has since even won a prize for gymnastics
in Zurich.
In  Albersweiler  two  Baden  guns  joined  up  with  us,  part  of  the  reinforcements  sent  by
Mieroslawski. We wanted to use them to make one more stand in the vicinity; but then we were
brought the news that the Prussians were already in Landau, so we were left with no choice but to
march straight to Langenkandel.
In Albersweiler we were safely rid of the ineffectual troops that had been marching with us. The
Schimmelpfennig corps had already partially disbanded following the loss of its leader and on its
own initiative was branching off to Kandel. At every step it left behind in the taverns exhausted

40 IV. To Die For the Republic
soldiers and other stragglers. In Albersweiler the Dreher Battalion started to become rebellious.
Willich and I went there to ask what they wanted. They all remained silent. At last a volunteer,
already pretty advanced  in years,  cried  out:  “They  want  to lead us  to  the  slaughter!”  This
exclamation was highly comical coming from a corps that had not even once seen battle and had
sustained two or at the most three light casualties during the retreat. Willich bade the man step
forward and surrender his rifle. The greybeard, rather the worse for drink, did so, staged a tragi-
comic scene and snivelled his way through a long speech, the gist of which was that no such thing
had ever happened to him before. This gave rise to general indignation among these very good-
natured but badly disciplined warriors, so that Willich ordered the whole company to march off at
once, saying he was sick of chatter and grumbling and did not intend to lead such soldiers one
moment longer. The company, which needed no second bidding, wheeled to the right and started
marching. The rest of the battalion, to which Willich had further allocated two cannon, followed
suit five minutes later. It was more than they could bear that they should be “led to the slaughter”
and expected to keep discipline! We let them go with pleasure.
We  turned right  into the  mountains  in the  direction of  Impflingen.  Soon we  arrived in the
proximity of  the  Prussians;  our  riflemen  exchanged a few shots with them.  Throughout the
evening shots were fired from time to time. I stayed behind in the first village we came to in order
to send news by messenger to our company of gymnasts from Landau; whether or not they
received it, I do not know, but they got safely to France and from there went over to Baden.
Because of this I lost the corps and had to make my own way to Kandel. The roads were crowded
with army stragglers; all the taverns were full; the whole splendour seemed to have faded into
complacency. Officers without soldiers here, soldiers without officers there, and volunteers from
all corps hurrying in colourful confusion on foot and by wagon in the direction of Kandel. And
yet the Prussians never gave a thought to serious pursuit! Impflingen is only an hour away from
Landau, and Warth (which is just before the Knielingen bridge) only four to five hours from
Germersheim; yet the Prussians made no hurry to dispatch troops to either of the two positions,
here to cut off the stragglers, there to cut off the entire army. The Prince of Prussia certainly won
his laurels in an odd way!
In Kandel I found Willich but not the corps, which was billeted further back. Instead, I once more
found the Provisional Government, the general staff and the large retinue of hangers-on. The
same cram of troops, only a much greater disorder and confusion than yesterday in Frankweiler.
There was a continuous stream of officers making enquiries about their corps and soldiers making
enquiries about their leaders. Nobody could tell them anything. The disintegration was complete.
The next morning, June 18, the entire gathering defiled through Warth and over the Knielingen
bridge. In spite of the large number of troops who had been cut off from the main body or gone
home, the army, with the reinforcements arrived from Baden, still numbered some 5,000 to 6,000
men. They marched as proudly through Worth as if they had just conquered the village and were
pushing on to fresh triumphs. They were still doing as Kossuth did. A Baden battalion of regulars
was the only one to display any military bearing and march past a tavern without some of its
number diving in. At last our corps came. We stayed behind as cover until the bridge could be
carted off; when everything was in order we marched over to Baden and helped carry out the
piles.
The government of Baden, in order to spare the valiant Karlsruhe philistines who had made such
a courageous stand against the republicans on June 6, 37 billeted everyone from the Palatinate in
the surrounding districts. We had explicitly insisted on coming to Karlsruhe with our corps; we
needed a lot of repairs and articles of clothing, and we also considered the presence of a reliable,
revolutionary corps in Karlsruhe very desirable. But Herr Brentano had taken care of us. He
directed us to Daxlanden, a village an hour and a half away from Karlsruhe, which was pictured
to us as a veritable Eldorado. We marched there and discovered the most reactionary den in the
whole area. Nothing to eat, nothing to drink, scarcely any straw; half the corps had to sleep on the

41 IV. To Die For the Republic
bare floor. Added to that, scowling faces at all the doors and windows. We acted quickly. Herr
Brentano was warned: unless he had by then assigned us other and better quarters, we would be
in Karlsruhe the next morning, June 19. We kept our word. We marched off at nine o'clock in the
morning. Not a rifle-shot away from the village Herr Brentano came up to us with a staff officer
and summoned up all his powers of flattery and eloquence to keep us away from Karlsruhe. The
town was already putting up 5,000 men, he said, the wealthier class had departed and the middle-
class was overburdened with billeted soldiers; he would not tolerate bad accommodation for the
valiant Willich corps, he continued, whose praises were on everybody's lips, etc. But nothing
helped. Willich demanded a few empty palaces belonging to the departed aristocrats, and when
Brentano refused we went to Karlsruhe for our billets.
In Karlsruhe we acquired rifles for our company of scythe-men and some cloth for topcoats. We
had our shoes and clothes mended as quickly as possible. Fresh forces came to us too, several
workers  whom  I  knew  from  the  Elberfeld  uprising,  then  Kinkel,  who  joined  the  Besancon
workers' company as a musketeer, and Zychlinski, adjutant to the supreme  command in the
Dresden uprising and leader of the rearguard during the retreat of the insurgents. He joined the
students' company as a rifleman.
While we were replenishing our equipment, we did not neglect tactical instruction. Drill was
assiduously carried out and on our second day there we undertook a mock storm of Karlsruhe
from the castle yard. The philistines demonstrated by their universal and deeply-felt indignation
at the manoeuvre that they had fully understood the threat.
Eventually the bold decision was taken to requisition the Grand Duke's arms collection, which
had up to now remained inviolable like something holy. We were just on the point of having
twenty of the guns thus obtained fitted with pistons when the news arrived that the Prussians had
crossed the Rhine near Germersheim and were in Graben and Bruchsal.
We marched off at once (on the evening of June 20) with two Palatinate cannon. When we
arrived at Blankenloch, an hour and a half from Karlsruhe in the direction of Bruchsal, we found
Herr Clement and his battalion there and learned that the Prussian advanced posts had pushed
forward to about an hour's march from Blankenloch. While our men were taking their evening
meal under arms, we held a council of war. Willich was for attacking the Prussians at once. Herr
Clement declared that with his untrained troops he could not make a night-attack. It was therefore
decided that we should immediately go ahead to Karlsdorf, attack shortly before daybreak and try
to break through the Prussian line. If we were successful, then we intended to march on Bruchsal
and throw in our forces wherever we could. Herr Clement was to attack at daybreak by way of
Friedrichsthal and support our left flank.
It was about midnight when we set out. Our venture was fairly risky. We had not quite 700 men
with two cannon; our troops were better drilled and more reliable than the rest of the Palatinate
troops, and also pretty accustomed to fire. With them we intended to attack an enemy corps
which was at all events much better experienced and staffed with more experienced subalterns
than ours, among whom were some captains who had scarcely even been in the civic militia; a
corps whose exact strength we did not know, but which numbered not less than 4,000 men. Our
corps had already fought more unequal battles, however, and there was certainly no hope of less
unfavourable odds in this campaign.
We sent ten students a hundred paces ahead as an advance guard; then followed the first column,
at the head of which were half a dozen Baden dragoons allocated to us for courier service, and
behind them three companies. The artillery, along with the three other companies, were a little
further back and the riflemen brought up the rear. The order was given not to shoot under any
circumstances, to march as quietly as possible and, as soon as the enemy showed himself, to
attack him with the bayonet.

42 IV. To Die For the Republic
Soon we saw in the distance the glow of the Prussian watch-fires We got as far as Spöck without
being challenged. The main body halted; only the advance guard pushed forward. All at once
there were shots; on the road at the entrance to the village a blazing straw-fire flared up and the
tocsin rang. To the right and to the left our skirmishers circumvented the village and the column
marched in. Large fires were also burning inside; at every corner we expected a volley. But
everything was quiet and only a sort of guard of peasants was encamped in front of the town hall.
The Prussian guard had already made off.
In  spite  of  their  colossal  numerical  superiority,  the  Prussian  gentlemen  did  not  consider
themselves safe, as we saw on this occasion, unless they had carried out the pedantic service
regulations covering outpost duties to the last boring detail. This outermost post was a whole hour
away from their camp. If we had wanted to tire our own men, unaccustomed to the exertions of
war, with outpost duties, just as the Prussians did, numbers of them would have been unfit to
march. We relied on the Prussian nervousness and were of the opinion that they would hold us in
more respect than we did them. And rightly so. Our outposts were never attacked the whole way
to the Swiss frontier and our quarters never raided.
At all events the Prussians had now been warned. Ought we to turn back? We decided not, and
marched on.
At Neuthard once more the tocsin; this time, however, neither beacons nor shots. Here too we
marched in fairly closed order through the village and the heights up to Karlsdorf. Our advance
guard, now only thirty paces ahead, had scarcely reached the high ground when it saw the
Prussian outpost close in front of it and was challenged by it. I heard the “Who goes there?” and
leapt forward. One of my comrades said: “He's a goner, we won't see him again.” But it was
precisely my going forward that saved me.
For at the same moment the enemy outpost loosed off a volley and our advance guard, instead of
despatching  them  with  the  bayonet,  fired  back.  The  dragoons,  alongside  whom  I  had  been
marching, did an immediate about-turn in keeping with their customary cowardice, charged at a
gallop into the column, rode down a number of men, totally dispersed the first four to six sections
and galloped off. At the same time the enemy's mounted guards posted in the fields to right and
left fired at us and to put the finishing touch to the confusion some blockheads in the middle of
our column started firing on our own men at the head, whereupon other blockheads followed suit.
In next to no time the first half of the column was routed, some scattered across the fields, some
put to flight, and some caught up in a confused tangle on the road. Wounded men, knapsacks,
hats and flintlocks lay in motley confusion amidst the young corn. All this was interspersed with
wild, distraught cries, shots and the whistle of bullets in all possible directions. And as the noise
subsided a little, far to the rear I heard our cannon trundling off in headlong flight. They had
performed the same service for the second half of the column as the dragoons for the first.
Though at that moment I was seized with rage at the childish terror that had gripped our soldiers,
I felt equal contempt for the behaviour of the Prussians who, notified as they had been of our
arrival, stopped firing after a few shots and likewise bolted off at top speed. Our advance guard
was still in its old position and had not been attacked once. A cavalry squadron or a tolerably
sustained skirmish fire would have put us to headlong flight.
Willich came rushing up to us from the advance guard. The Besancon company was the first to be
formed up again. The others, more or less ashamed, closed ranks. Day was just breaking. Our
losses  amounted  to six wounded,  among  whom was  one  of  our  staff  officers:  he  had been
trampled underfoot on the same spot that I had left the moment before to hurry to the advance
guard. Several others had clearly been hit by the bullets of our own men. We carefully collected
up all the discarded accoutrements so that not even the slightest trophy would fall into the hands
of the Prussians, and then retreated slowly to Neuthard. The riflemen took up a position behind
the first houses as cover. But there was no sign of the Prussians; and when Zychlinski went

43 IV. To Die For the Republic
reconnoitring again he found them still on the other side of the heights, whence they fired a few
shots without hitting anything.
The Palatinate peasants who had been conveying our artillery had taken the one cannon right
through to the other side of the village; the other had overturned and the men in charge had ridden
off with five horses, whose traces they had removed. We had to get the cannon upright and shift it
with just the one wheel-horse.
When we arrived at Spöck we heard rifle fire to our right, in the direction of Friedrichsthal. It was
gradually getting more intense. Herr Clement had at last attacked, an hour later than arranged. I
proposed supporting him with an attack on the flank, in order to make up for his mistake. Willich
was of the same opinion and gave the order to take the first path to the right. A part of our corps
had already taken the turning when one of Clement's orderly officers reported that Clement was
retreating. We therefore went to Blankenloch. Soon Herr Beust of the general staff met us and
was most surprised to see us alive and the corps in such fine trim. The blackguardly dragoons had
spread the word everywhere on their flight, which took them as far as Karlsruhe, that Willich was
dead, the officers all dead, and the corps scattered to the four winds and annihilated. We were
said to have been shot at with case-shot and “fiery cannon-balls”.
Outside  Blankenloch  we  were  met  by troops  of  the  Palatinate  and  Baden  and  finally Herr
Sznayde and his staff. The old codger, who had probably spent a very comfortable night in bed,
had the impudence to call over to us: “Gentlemen, where are you going! The enemy is that way!”
Needless to say we gave him a fitting reply, marched on past him and saw about getting some rest
and refreshment in Blankenloch. After two hours Herr Sznayde returned with his troops, naturally
without having seen the enemy, and had breakfast.
Counting the reinforcements received from Karlsruhe and the surrounding area, Herr Sznayde
now had approximately 8,000 to 9,000 troops under his command, including three Baden regular
battalions and two Baden batteries. All in all there were probably some twently-five pieces of
ordnance. As a consequence of Mieroslawski's rather vague orders and even more of the total
incompetence of Herr Sznayde, the entire army of the Palatinate stayed put in the region of
Karlsruhe  until  the  Prussians  had made  their  way across  the  Rhine  under  the  cover  of  the
Germersheim bridge-head. Mieroslawski (vid. his reports on the campaign in Baden) had issued
the general order to defend the Rhine crossings from Speyer to Knielingen after the withdrawal
from the Palatinate and the special order to cover Karlsruhe and to make the Knielingen bridge
the assembly point of the entire army corps. Herr Sznayde interpreted this as meaning that he
should stay at Karlsruhe and Knielingen until further notice. If, as Mieroslawski's general orders
implied, he had sent a strong corps with artillery against the Germersheim bridgehead, then the
absurdity would never have occurred of sending Major Mniewski, with 450 recruits and no
artillery,  to capture the bridge-head, 30,000 Prussians would never have got over the Rhine
unchallenged,  communications  with  Mieroslawski  would  never  have  been  broken  and  the
Palatinate army could have appeared in good time on the battlefield of Waghausel. Instead of this,
on  the  day  of  the  battle  of  Waghausel,  June  21,  it  wandered  around  aimlessly  between
Friedrichsthal, Weingarten and Bruchsal, lost sight of the enemy and wasted its time marching in
all directions.
We received the order to set out for the right flank and skirt the mountains via Weingarten. We
started out at noon on the same day, June 21, from Blankenloch and about five in the afternoon
from Weingarten. The Palatinate troops at last began to get uneasy; they noticed that the odds
were heavy against them and they lost that boastful certainty which up to now they had at least
had before battle. From now on the people's militia of the Palatinate and Baden, and gradually the
regular infantry and artillery too, began to smell Prussians everywhere, and false alarms, which
now became a regular daily occurrence, threw everything into disorder and gave rise to the most
amusing scenes. At the very first piece of high ground beyond Weingarten patrols and peasants
came rushing up to us with the cry: “The Prussians are here!” Our corps formed up in battle order

44 IV. To Die For the Republic
and advanced. I went back to the little town to have the alarm sounded and in doing so lost the
corps. The whole fuss was without foundation, needless to say. The Prussians had withdrawn
towards Waghausel and the same evening Willich marched into Bruchsal.
I spent the night in Obergrombach with Herr Oswald and his Palatinate battalion and marched
with him the next morning to Bruchsal. Outside the town we met  wagons full of stragglers
coming in our direction: “The Prussians are here!” At once the whole battalion started to waver
and could only with difficulty be made to advance. Of course it was another false alarm; Willich
and the rest of the Palatinate advance guard were in Bruchsal; the others came marching in one
after the other and there was no trace of the Prussians. Besides the army and its leaders, d'Ester,
the ex-government of the Palatinate and Goegg were there. Since Brentano's dictatorship had
become indisputable; Goegg had stayed almost exclusively with the army and helped to look after
the day-to-day civil affairs. The victualling was bad and the confusion was great. As usual, only
the headquarters lived well.
Once again we obtained a considerable number of cartridges from the Karlsruhe supplies and
marched off in the evening, the entire advance guard with us. The latter took up quarters in
Ubstadt, while we marched off to the right to Unterowisheim to cover the flank in the mountains.
To all appearances we were now quite a respectable force. Our corps had been reinforced with
two new units. The first of these was the Langenkandel Battalion, which had dispersed on the
way from its home town to the Knielingen bridge and whose  beaux restes [Beautiful remains.–
Ed] had joined up with us; they consisted of a captain, a lieutenant, a standard-bearer, a sergeant,
an N.C.O. and two men. The other was the “Robert Blum Column” with a red flag, a body of
approximately  sixty  men  who  looked  like  cannibals  and  had  performed  heroic  deeds  in
requisitioning. Besides that we were allocated four Baden cannon and a Baden people's militia
battalion, the Kniery,  Knüry or Knierim Battalion (it was impossible to discover the correct
reading of the name). The Knierim Battalion was worthy of its leader and Herr Knierim worthy of
his battalion. Both were staunch-minded, both were braggarts and roisterers and both constantly
drunk. The famous “enthusiasm” kindled their hearts to deeds of the most prodigious heroism, as
we shall have occasion to see.
On the morning of the 23rd Willich received a note from Anneke, who commanded the advance
guard of the Palatinate in Ubstadt. It announced that the enemy was advancing, a council of war
had been held and the decision made to withdraw. Willich, flabbergasted at this strange piece of
news, rode over at once and managed to persuade Anneke and his officers to give battle at
Ubstadt. He reconnoitred the position himself and specified the deployment of the artillery. He
then returned and had his troops stand to their arms. While our troops were forming up we
received the following order from the Bruchsal headquarters, signed by Techow: the main body
of the army was to proceed along the road to Heidelberg and should expect to get as far as
Mingolsheim the same day; at the same time we were to march via Odenheim to Waldangelloch
and spend the night there. Further news as to the successes of the main corps and instructions as
to our subsequent course of action were to be sent there.
In his fanciful Geschichte der drei Volkserhebungen in Baden,  pp. 311-17, Herr Struve published
a report on the operations of the Palatinate army from June 20 to 26 which is nothing more than
an apologia for the incompetent Sznayde and teems with inaccuracies and misrepresentations.
The following points emerge  from what was said above: firstly,  it is not true that Sznayde
“received reliable news of the battle of Waghausel and its outcome a few hours after marching
into Bruchsal (on the 22nd)”; secondly, it is therefore not true that “because of this he changed
his plan and, instead of marching to Mingolsheim, as at first had been the plan, decided” (as early
as the 22nd) “to stay with the main body of his division in Bruchsal” (the note from Techow
which is referred to was written during the night of the 22nd to the 23rd); thirdly, it is not true
that “on the morning of the 23rd a large-scale reconnaissance was to be carried out” – on the
contrary, it was the march on Mingolsheim which was to take place; and to say that fourthly “all

45 IV. To Die For the Republic
detachments received the order to march in the direction of the firing as soon as they heard that
firing”; and fifthly that “the detachment on the right flank (Willich) excused its failure to turn up
at the battle of Ubstadt by saying that it had heard nothing of the firing”, is a gross lie, as will be
seen.
We marched off at once. We were to have breakfast in Odenheim. Some Bavarian Chevaulegers,
who had been attached to us for dispatch duties, rode around the village to the left to reconnoitre
possible enemy corps. Prussian hussars had been in the village requisitioning fodder, which they
intended to collect later. While we were confiscating this fodder, and wine and food was being
distributed to our men under arms, one of the Chevaulegers came dashing in and shouted: “The
Prussians are here!” In next to no time the Knierim Battalion, which was nearest, broke ranks and
stampeded in all directions in a wild tangle, screaming, cursing and lumbering, while the major
was forced to leave his men in the lurch because his horse shied. Willich came riding up, restored
order and we marched off. Needless to say there were no Prussians there.
On the heights beyond Odenheim we heard the roar of cannon coming from the direction of
Ubstadt. The gunfire soon became more intense. More experienced ears were already able to
distinguish between the sound of bullets and the sound of case-shot. We deliberated whether to
continue our march or to go in the direction of the firing. Since our order was positive and since
the firing seemed to be moving in the direction of Mingolsheim, which indicated an advance by
our side, we resolved on the more dangerous march, the march on Waldangelloch. If the forces of
the Palatinate were defeated at Ubstadt, we would be as good as cut off up there in the mountains
and in a fairly critical position.
Herr Struve maintains that the battle of Ubstadt “could have led to brilliant results if the flank
detachments had attacked at the right moment”. The gunfire did not last an hour and we would
have needed two to two and a half hours to reach the battlefield between Stettfeld and Ubstadt,
that is an hour and a half after it had been abandoned. That is the way Herr Struve writes
“history”  A  halt  was  called near  Tiefenbach.  While  our  troops  were  refreshing themselves,
Willich sent out some dispatches. The Knierim Battalion discovered a kind of municipal cellar in
Tiefenbach, slapped a confiscation order on it, fetched out the barrels of wine and within an hour
everyone was drunk. Annoyance at the Prussian scare of that morning, the cannon-roar from
Ubstadt, the lack of confidence that these heroes had in one another and their officers – all this,
aggravated by the wine, suddenly broke out in open rebellion. They demanded an immediate
retreat; they said they did not care for eternally marching through the mountains in the face of the
enemy. As this was of course out of the question, they faced about and marched off on their own.
The  man-eating  “Robert  Blum  Column”  joined  them.  We  let  them  go  and  marched  to
Waldangelloch.
Here, in a deep basin-shaped valley, it was impossible to pass the night in any safety. Therefore a
halt was called and intelligence collected about the conditions of the terrain in the area and the
position of the enemy. In the meantime a few vague rumours of the retreat of the army on the
Neckar had been spread by peasants. It was claimed that considerable Baden corps had marched
on Bretten via Sinsheim and Eppingen, that Mierosiawski himself had passed through in strictest
incognito and that people in Sinsheim had wanted to arrest him. The artillerymen became uneasy
and even our students started to murmur. So the artillery was sent back and we marched on
Hilsbach. Here we learned further particulars about the retreat of the Neckar army 48 hours
earlier and about the Bavarians stationed in Sinsheim, an hour and a half away from where we
were. Their number was given as 7,000, but in fact, as we later discovered, it was about 10,000.
We were at the most  only 700 strong. Our men could not march any further. We therefore
quartered them in barns, as we always  did when we had to keep them together as much as
possible, detailed strong outposts and lay down to sleep. As we marched out the next morning,
the 24th, we could hear quite distinctly the sound of the Bavarians' marching step. A good quarter
of an hour after we had marched off the Bavarians were in Hilsbach.

46 IV. To Die For the Republic
Two days before, on the 22nd, Mieroslawski had spent the night in Sinsheim and was already in
Bretten with his troops when we marched into Hilsbach. Becker, who was commanding the rear-
guard, was likewise already through. It follows that he cannot, as Herr Struve maintains [on page
308,] have passed the night of the 23rd to the 24th in Sinsheim, for the Bavarians, who the
evening before had fought a small engagement with Mieroslawski, were there at eight o'clock in
the evening and probably even earlier. Mieroslawski's retreat from Waghäusel via Heidelberg to
Bretten  is  depicted  by  the  men  who  took  part  in  it  as  a  highly  dangerous  manoeuvre.
Mieroslawski's operations from June 20 to 24, the rapid concentration of a corps at Heidelberg,
with which he hurled himself against the Prussians, and his speedy retreat after losing the battle
of Waghausel certainly constituted the most brilliant episode of his entire activity in Baden; but
the fact that this manoeuvre in the face of such a lethargic enemy was by no means so dangerous
is proved by the fact that 24 hours later our little corps effected its retreat from Hilsbach without
once being molested. We even passed through the Flehingen defile, where Mieroslawski had
already expected an attack on the 23rd, without being attacked and marched on Biichig. Here we
intended staying in order to cover against a first attack the camp Mieroslawski had set up at
Bretten.
Everywhere on our march, which led through Eppingen, Zaisenhausen and Flehingen, we were
the object of amazement, since all the corps of the Neckar army, including the rearguard, had
already marched through. When we marched into Buchig and our bugler started to play,  we
panicked people into thinking that the Prussians had arrived. A commando of the Bretten civic
militia, requisitioning victuals for Mieroslawski's camp, took us for Prussians and were the very
picture of confusion until we turned the corner and the sight of our tunics reassured them. We at
once confiscated the victuals and had barely consumed them when the news that Mieroslawski
had set out from Bretten with all the troops caused us to withdraw to Bretten.
We stayed overnight in Bretten, the civic militia providing outposts. Wagons were requisitioned
for the next morning to carry the whole corps to Ettlingen. Since Bruchsal had already been taken
by the Prussians on the 24th and we could not afford to engage in a battle in case the road via
Diedelsheim to Durlach was occupied by the enemy (it actually was, as we later discovered), this
was the only route to the main army open to us.
In Bretten a deputation of students came to us with a declaration that they did not like constantly
marching in the face of the enemy and they asked to be discharged. Needless to say they were
told by way of reply that no one is discharged in the face of the enemy; but if they wished to
desert, then they were free to do so. Thereupon about half the company marched off; the number
of those remaining soon dwindled so much due to individual desertions that only the riflemen
were left. During the course of the entire campaign the students generally showed themselves to
be malcontent and timid young gentlemen; they always wanted to be let into all the plans of
operation, complained about sore feet and grumbled when the campaign did not afford all the
comforts of a holiday trip. Among these “representatives of intelligence” there were only a
handful who through their truly revolutionary character and shining courage proved themselves
exceptions.
We were later informed that the enemy had marched into Bretten half an hour after we left. We
arrived at Ettlingen, and there Herr Corvin-Wiersbitzki directed us to march to Durlach, where
Becker was to hold up the enemy until Karlsruhe had been evacuated. Willich sent a Chevauleger
with a note to Becker in order to find out whether he intended to stay for a while; the man
returned in a quarter of an hour with the news that he had met Becker's troops already in full
retreat. We therefore marched off to Rastatt, where everyone was concentrating.
The road to Rastatt presented a picture of the most splendid disorder. Any number of the most
varied corps were marching or camping in motley confusion, and we had difficulty in holding our
troops together under the blazing sun and amidst the universal disarray. The Palatinate troops and
a few Baden battalions were encamped on the Rastatt glacis. The Palatinate forces were severely

47 IV. To Die For the Republic
depleted. The best corps, the Rhenish Hessian, had been assembled in Karlsruhe by Zitz and
Bamberger before the battle of Ubstadt. These bold freedom-fighters had declared to the corps
that all was lost, the odds were too great but there was still time to get home in safety; that they,
the parliamentary windbag Zitz and the valiant Bamberger, did not want innocent blood or any
other calamity on their hands and thereupon declared the corps disbanded. The Rhenish Hessians
were naturally so indignant at this infamous presumption that they wanted to arrest the two
traitors and shoot them; d'Ester and the government of the Palatinate were also after them to
arrest them. But the honourable citizens had already fled and the valiant Zitz watched the further
course of the campaign for an Imperial Constitution from the safety of Basle. As in September
1848, in his  Frakturschrift,38 so also in May 1849, Herr Zitz was among those parliamentary
braggarts who did most to incite the people to rise up, but on both occasions he occupied a
prominent place among those who during the uprising were the first to leave the people in the
lurch. At Kirchheimbolanden too Herr Zitz was among the first to bolt, while his riflemen were
fighting and being shot.
The Rhenish Hessian corps, in any case seriously weakened by desertion, as all corps were, and
disheartened by the retreat to Baden, at once lost its balance completely. Part of it disbanded and
went home; the remainder constituted itself anew and fought on until the end of the campaign.
The rest of the Palatinate troops were demoralised at Rastatt by the news that all those who
returned home before July 5 were to be amnestied. More than half of them dispersed, battalions
dwindled to company size, the subaltern officers were for the most part gone and the 1,200 or so
troops still remaining were now hardly of any more value. Our corps, although not in the least
disheartened, had also dwindled to little more  than 500 men through losses, illness and the
desertion of the students.
We went to Kuppenheim, where other troops were already present, for our billets. The next
morning I accompanied Willich to Rastatt and there met Moll once again.
There have been memorials from all sides in the press, in the democratic clubs, in verse and in
prose to the more or less educated victims of the Baden uprising. But no voice is raised on behalf
of the hundreds and thousands of workers who fought out the battles, who fell on the field, who
rotted alive in the Rastatt casemates or who now, alone of all the refugees, must drain to the dregs
the cup of exile. The exploitation of the workers is a traditional affair, too familiar for our official
“democrats”  to  consider  the  workers  as  anything  else  than  raw  material  for  agitation,  for
exploiting, for  causing trouble, as  anything  but cannon-fodder. Our “democrats”  are  far  too
ignorant and bourgeois to comprehend the revolutionary position of the proletariat, the future of
the working class. That is why they hate those genuinely proletarian characters who, too proud to
flatter them and too discerning to allow themselves to be used by them, are none the less always
there, arms in hand, whenever it is a question of overthrowing an existing authority, and who in
every revolutionary movement directly represent the party of the proletariat. But if it is not in the
interests of the so-called democrats to recognise such workers, it is the duty of the party of the
proletariat to honour them as they deserve. And among the best of these workers was  Joseph
Moll of Cologne.
Moll was a watchmaker. He had left Germany years ago and in France, Belgium and England
played his part in all the public and secret revolutionary societies. He helped found the German
Workers' Society in London in 1840. After the February Revolution he returned to Germany and
with his friend Schappelsoon took over the leadership of the Cologne Workers Association. 39 A
fugitive in London since the Cologne riots of September 1848, 40 he soon returned to Germany
under an assumed name, agitated in all sorts of districts and undertook missions so dangerous that
everyone else shrank back from them. I met him again in Kaiserslautern. Here too he undertook
missions to Prussia which if he had been found out, would have incurred the summary grace of a
firing squad. Returning from his second mission, he got safely through all the enemy armies to
Rastatt, where he immediately joined the Besancon workers' company in our corps. Three days

48 IV. To Die For the Republic
later he had fallen. I lost in him an old friend and the party one of its most unflagging, intrepid
and reliable champions.
The  party  of  the  proletariat  was  quite  strongly  represented  in  the  army  of  Baden  and  the
Palatinate, especially in the volunteer corps, as for example in our own, in the refugee legion,
etc., and it can safely challenge all the other parties to find even the slightest fault with any one of
Its members. The most resolute Communists made the most courageous soldiers.
On the next day, the 27th, we were moved somewhat further into the mountains, to Rothenfels.
The detailing of the army and the distribution of the various corps was gradually established. We
belonged to the right-flank division, which was commanded by Colonel Theme, the same as had
wanted to arrest Mieroslawski in Meckesheim41 and who had childishly been allowed to retain his
command, and then from the 27th onwards by Mersy. Willich, who had refused the command of
the Palatinate forces which Sigel had offered him, was acting as chief of divisional staff. The
division was located in the area stretching from Gernsbach and the Wurttemberg frontier to the
other side of Rothenfels and leaned on its left side against the Oborski division, which was
concentrated around Kuppenheim. The advance guard was pushed forward to the frontier as well
as to Sulzbach, Michelbach and Winkel. The victualling, at first irregular and bad, improved from
the 27th on. Our division consisted of several Baden regular battalions, the remainder of the
Palatinate forces under hero Blenker, our corps and one or one and a half batteries of artillery.
The Palatinate forces were stationed in Gernsbach and the surrounding area and the regulars and
ourselves in around Rothenfels. The headquarters were in the hotel in Elisbethenquelle opposite
Rothenlels.
On the 28th we – the divisional staff and that of our own corps together with Moll, Kinkel and
other volunteers – were just taking coffee after our meal in this hotel when the news arrived that
our advance guard near Michelbach had been attacked by the Prussians. We at once set out,
although we had every reason to suppose that the enemy had nothing more than a reconnaissance
in mind. It indeed proved to be nothing more. The village of Michelbach situated down in the
valley which had momentarily been captured by the Prussians had already been re-taken by the
time  we  arrived.  There  was shooting across the valley from both mountain-sides  and much
ammunition was expended to no purpose. I saw only one dead and one wounded. While the
regulars were pointlessly shooting off their cartridges at distances of 600 to 800 paces, Willich
bade our troops quietly pile their rifles and take a rest close by the alleged fighters and in the
thick of the alleged firing. Only the riflemen went down the wooded slope and, supported by a
handful of regulars, drove the Prussians from the heights opposite. One of our riflemen shot a
Prussian officer off his horse at about 900 paces with his colossal heavy rifle, a veritable portable
cannon; the officer's entire company at once did a right-about turn and marched back into the
wood. A number of Prussian dead and wounded as well as two prisoners fell into our hands.
The next day the general attack on the whole line took place. This time the Prussian gentlemen
disturbed  us  at  our  midday  meal.  The  first  attack  of  which  we  were  notified  was  against
Bischweier, that is, against the point at which the Oborski division linked up with ours Willich
urged that our troops should be held in the greatest possible readiness at Rothenfels, since the
main attack was expected in any case in the opposite direction, at Gernsbach. But Mersy replied
that we knew how things were, that if one of our battalions were attacked and the others did not
come to its aid at once and in force, then the cry of treason would go up and everyone would take
to their heels. We therefore marched towards Bischweier.
Willich and I advanced with the rifle company along the road to Bischweier on the right bank of
the Murg. Half an hour away from Rothenfels we came across the enemy. The riflemen spread
out in extended order and Willich rode back to fetch the corps, which stood a little way in the
rear, up into the fighting line. For a while our riflemen,  taking cover behind fruit-trees and
vineyards, stood up to some quite heavy fire, which they returned in good measure. But when a
strong enemy column advanced along the road in support of its skirmishers, the left flank of our

49 IV. To Die For the Republic
riflemen gave way and no amount of talking to could persuade them to stand their ground. The
right flank had advanced further towards the heights and was later taken into our corps.
When I saw that nothing was to be done with the riflemen I abandoned them to their fate and
went towards the heights, where I could see the flags of our corps. One company had stayed
behind; its captain, a tailor, usually a brave fellow, was all of a dither. I took the company along
to join the others and met Willich, just as he was pushing the Besancon company forward in
extended order and drawing up the rest behind them in two battle lines, together with a company
pushed forward on the right towards the mountains to cover the flank.
Our skirmishers were met with a hail of fire. Facing them were Prussian riflemen, and against
their elongated-bullet rifles our workers only had muskets. However, they advanced so resolutely,
reinforced by the right flank of our riflemen who joined up with them, that the inferior quality of
their arms was soon made up for by the closeness of the range, especially on the right flank, and
the Prussians were dislodged. The two battle lines kept quite close on the heels of the skirmishers.
In the meantime two Baden artillery pieces had also been brought up on our left, in the Murg
valley, and they opened fire on the Prussian infantry and artillery occupying the road.
The battle here had probably been going on for an hour or so with intense rifle and musket fire,
the  Prussians  continually retreating  (some  of  our  riflemen  had  already penetrated  as  far  as
Bischweier), when the Prussians received reinforcements and pushed their battalions forward.
Our skirmishers retreated; the first line gave platoon fire and the second moved to the left into a
defile and also started firing. But the Prussians pressed forward in serried masses along the entire
line; both the Baden artillery pieces covering our left flank had already retreated. On the right
flank the Prussians came down from the mountains and we were forced to fall back.
As soon as we were out of the enemy cross-fire we took up a fresh position on the mountain
range. If up to now we had been facing the Rhine plain, and Bischweier and Niederweier, we
were now facing the mountains which the Prussians had occupied from Oberweier. Now the
regular battalions at last joined the fighting line and gave battle, together with two companies of
our corps which were once more pushed forward in extended order.
We had suffered heavy losses. About thirty men were missing, including Kinkel and Moll and not
counting the dispersed riflemen. The two above-named had advanced too far with the right flank
of their company and some riflemen. The riflemen's captain, head forester Emmermann from
Thronecken in Rhenish Prussia, who marched against the Prussians as if he were hunting hares,
had led them into a position from which they fired into a Prussian artillery section and forced it to
beat a speedy retreat. However, a company of Prussians at once emerged from a defile and fired
upon them. Kinkel fell to the ground, hit in the head, and he was dragged along until he could
once more walk unaided; soon, however, they came under cross-fire and had to hurry to get out of
it. Kinkel was unable to keep up and went into a farm-house, where he was taken prisoner by the
Prussians and ill-treated; Moll received a shot in the abdomen, was also taken prisoner and died
later of his wound. Zychlinski too had been hit in the neck by a ricochet, but this did not stop him
staying with his corps.
While the main body remained where it was and Willich rode to another part of the battlefield, I
hastened to the Murg bridge lower down than Rothenfels, which formed a sort of assembly point.
I wanted news of Gernsbach. But even before I reached there I saw the smoke rising from
Gernsbach which was in flames,and on the bridge itself I learned that they had heard the cannon-
roar from there. Later I returned to this bridge a few more times; each time the news about
Gernsbach was worse and each time there were more Baden regular troops assembled behind the
bridge, demoralised already even though they had scarcely been under fire. Eventually I learned
that the enemy was already in Gaggenau. It was now high time  to face up to him.  Willich
marched over the Murg with the corps in order to take up position opposite Rothenfeis and took
with him another four artillery pieces which had just happened to come his way. I went to fetch

50 IV. To Die For the Republic
our two companies of skirmishers, who in the meantime had pushed far ahead. Everywhere I met
regular troops, mostly without officers. One detachment was led by a doctor, who made use of the
occasion to introduce  himself  to me  with the  following words: “You must  know me,  I am
Neuhaus, chief of the Thuringian movement!” These good fellows had beaten the Prussians on all
fronts and were now on their way back because they could no longer see any of the enemy. Our
companies were nowhere to be found – they had made their way back through Rothenfels for the
same reason – and I returned to the bridge. Here I met Mersy with his staff and troops. I begged
him to give me at least a few companies with which to support Willich. “Take the whole division
if you can still do something with them,” was the reply. The same soldiers who had driven back
the enemy at all points and who had only been on their feet for five hours now lay around in the
meadows, dispersed, demoralised and fit for nothing. The news that they had been outflanked in
Gernsbach had done for them. I went my way. A company I came across on its way back from
Michelbach was not to be moved either. When I found the corps again at our old headquarters,
the fugitive forces of the Palatinate–Pistol Zinn and his gang, now with muskets, by the way–
came pressing on from Gaggenau. While Willich had been looking for and had found a position
for the artillery, a position that dominated the Murg valley and offered considerable advantages
for simultaneous skirmishing, the artillerists had run away with the cannon and the captain had
been unable to do anything to stop them. They were already back with Mersy at the bridge. At the
same  time  Willich  showed  me  a  note  from  Mersy  in  which  the  latter  informed  him  that
everything was lost and that he was going to pull back to Oos. We had no other choice but to do
the same and we marched into the mountains at once. It was about seven o'clock.
At Gernsbach things had taken the following course. Peucker's imperial troops, whom our patrols
had  already  sighted  the  day  before  at  Herrenalb  on  Wurttemberg  territory,  had  taken  the
Wurttemberg troops drawn up at the frontier with them and attacked Gernsbach on the afternoon
of the 29th, after using treachery to make our advanced troops withdraw; they approached them
with the call not to shoot, saying they were brothers, and then fired off a volley at eighty paces.
They then shelled Gernsbach, setting it on fire, and when the flames got out of hand Herr Sigel,
who had been sent by Mieroslawski to  hold the position at any price, Herr Sigel  himself gave the
order that Herr Blenker should make a fighting retreat with his troops. Herr Sigel will no more
deny this now than he did in Berne, when one of Herr Blenker's adjutants related the curious fact
in his, Herr Sigel's, and Willich's presence. With this order to make a “fighting”(!) surrender of
the key to the whole Murg position, the battle along the whole line, and with it the Baden army's
last position, was needless to say lost.
The Prussians incidentally did not particularly enhance their reputation by winning the battle of
Rastatt.  We  had  13,000  troops,  for  the  most  part  demoralised  and  with  few  exceptions
abominably  led;  their  army,  together  with  the  imperial  troops  that  marched  on  Gernsbach,
numbered at least 60,000 men. In spite of this colossal superiority they did not venture a serious
frontal attack, but defeated us through cowardice and treachery by encroaching upon the neutral
territory of Wurttemberg, which was closed to us. But even this piece of treachery would not
have done them much good, at least to begin with, and in the long run would not have saved them
the necessity of a decisive frontal attack, had not Gernsbach been so incredibly badly manned and
had not Herr Sigel given the priceless order spoken of above. There cannot be any doubt that the
by no means formidable position would have been snatched from us the next day; but victory
would have cost the Prussians many more casualties and would have done endless harm to their
military  reputation.  For  this  reason  they  preferred  to  violate  Wurttemberg's  neutrality,  and
Wurttemberg calmly let it happen.
By now barely 450 men strong, we marched back through the mountains to Oos. The road was
covered  with  troops  in  the  wildest  disarray,  with  wagons,  artillery,  etc.,  all  in  the  greatest
confusion. We marched through and rested in Sinzheim.  The next morning we assembled a
number of fugitives the other side of Buhl and spent the night in Oberachern. That day the last

51 IV. To Die For the Republic
battle took place; the German-Polish Legion, alongside some other troops from Becker's division,
beat back the imperial troops at Oos and captured from them a (Mecklenburg) howitzer which
they got safely into Switzerland.
The  army  was  completely  disbanded;  Mieroslawski  and  the  other  Poles  laid  down  their
commands; Colonel Oborski already on the evening of the 29th left his post on the battlefield.
However, this momentary disbandment did not really mean much. The Palatinate forces had
already been disbanded three or four times and each time had formed up anew  tant bien que mal.
A retreat spun out as long as possible, accompanied by the call-up of all the age groups in the
territories to be ceded and a rapid concentration of the conscripts from Upper Baden at Freiburg
and Donaueschingen, were two measures still to be tried. This would soon have restored order
and discipline to a tolerable level and made possible a last hopeless but honourable battle on the
Kaiserstuhl near Freiburg or at Donaueschingen. But the chiefs of the civil as well as the military
administration were more demoralised than the soldiers. They abandoned the army and the entire
movement to their fate and fell further and further back, dejected, distraught and shattered.
Since the attack on Gernsbach, the fear of being outflanked through Wurttemberg territory had
spread everywhere and contributed greatly to the general demoralisation. Willich's corps now
went to cover the Wurttemberg frontier, taking two mountain howitzers through the Kappel
valley into the mountains–several other artillery pieces assigned to us did not want to go any
further than Kappel. Our march through the Black Forest, in which we did not sight the enemy,
was a veritable pleasure tour. On July 1 we arrived at Oppenau via Allerheiligen and on the 2nd
at Wolfach via the Hundskopf. Here we learned on July 3 that the government was in Freiburg
and that the abandonment of that town also was being considered. We therefore set out for there
at once. We intended to force Messrs.the Regents and the high command, which hero Sigel now
led, not to relinquish Freiburg without a fight. It was already late when we marched off from
Wolfach, and so it was not until late that evening that we arrived at Waldkirch. Here we learned
that Freiburg had already been relinquished and that government and headquarters had been
removed to Donaueschingen. At the same time we received the positive order to occupy and
entrench ourselves in the Simonswald valley and set up our headquarters in Furtwangen. We
therefore had to go back to Bleibach.
Herr Sigel had now drawn up his troops behind the Black Forest mountain ridge. The defence line
was supposed to stretch from Lorrach via Todtnau and Furtwangen to the Wurttemberg frontier,
in the direction of Schramberg. The left flank was formed by Mersy and Blenker, who marched
through the Rhine valley towards Lorrach; then followed Herr Doll, a former  commis voyageur,
who in his capacity as one of Hecker's generals had been appointed divisional commander and
was posted in the region of the Hollental; then our corps in Furtwangen and the Simonswald
valley and, lastly on the right flank, Becker at St. Georgen and Triberg. On the other side of the
mountains  at  Donaueschingen  was  Herr  Sigel  with  the  reserve.  The  forces,  considerably
weakened by desertion and not reinforced by any contingents of conscripts, still amounted to
9,000 men and 40 cannon.
The orders which reached us one after the other from headquarters in Freiburg, Neustadt on the
Gutach and Donaueschingen breathed the most resolute defiance of death. Though the enemy was
expected to come through Wurttemberg again and attack us in the rear via Rottweil and Villingen,
there was a determination to defeat him and to hold the Black Forest ridge come what may, in
fact to do so, as it said in one of these orders, “almost without any regard for the movements of
the enemy”, in other words, Herr Sigel had ensured for himself a glorious retreat in four hours
from Donaueschingen onto Swiss territory; he could then sit back in Schaffhausen and wait in
perfect calm for news of what had become of us, encircled in the mountains. We shall soon see
what a merry end this defiance of death came to.
On the 4th we arrived at Furtwangen with two companies (160 men). The rest was employed to
occupy the  Simonswald  valley and  the  passes  of  Gutenbach  and  St.  Margen.  Via  the  last-

52 IV. To Die For the Republic
mentioned place we were in contact with Doll's corps, via Schonwald with Becker. All the passes
were blocked. We stayed in Furtwangen on the 5th. On the 6th news came from Becker that the
Prussians were advancing on Villingen, together with the request to attack them via Vohrenbach
and thus support Sigel's operation. At the same time he informed us that his main corps was duly
entrenched in Triberg, whither he himself would go as soon as Villingen was occupied by Sigel.
There could be no question of an attack from our side. With fewer than 450 men we had three
square miles to occupy and therefore could not spare a single man. We had to stay where we were
and informed Becker to this effect. Soon afterwards a dispatch arrived from headquarters: Willich
was to go to Donaueschingen at once and assume command of the entire artillery. We were just
getting ready to hurry over there when a column of the people's militia, followed by artillery and
several other battalions of the people's militia, came marching into Furtwangen. It was Becker
with his corps. His men had grown rebellious, it was said. I made enquiries of a staff officer who
was a friend of mine,  “Major” Nerlinger, and learned the following: He, Nerlinger, had the
position at Triberg under his command and was having the trenches dug when the officer staff
delivered him a written declaration, signed by them all. It said that the troops were rebellious and
that unless the order to march off were given at once, they would leave with all the troops. I took
a look at the signatures. It was the valiant Dreher-Obermüller Battalion again! Nerlinger had no
choice but to inform Becker and march to Furtwangen. Becker set out at once to catch them up
and so arrived with all his troops at Furtwangen, where the faint-hearted officers and soldiers
were received with immense laughter by our volunteers. They were ashamed of themselves and in
the evening Becker was able to lead them back to their positions again.
In the meantime we went to Donaueschingen, followed by the Besancon company. There were
already swarms  of Prussians right up to the highway;  Villingen was occupied by them.  We
nevertheless got through unchallenged and towards ten o'clock in the evening the Besancons
arrived as well. In Donaueschingen I found d'Ester and learned from him that in the Constituent
Assembly in Freiburg 42 Herr Struve had demanded an immediate move to Switzerland, saying
everything was lost, and that hero Blenker had followed this advice and had already crossed over
onto Swiss territory that morning at Basle. Both of these reports were quite correct. Hero Blenker
had gone to Basle on July 6, though it was he that was farthest from the enemy. He had paused
only to make a final number of requisitions so odd that they put him in bad odour with Herr Sigel
and later with the Swiss authorities. And hero Struve, the same hero Struve who even on June 29
had declared that Herr Brentano and all those wanting to negotiate with the enemy were traitors to
the fatherland, was so shattered three days later, on July 2, that he was not ashamed to put the
following motion to a session in camera of the Baden Constituent Assembly:
“In order that Upper Baden will not suffer the same horrors of war as Lower Baden and
to prevent a great deal more precious blood being spilt, and since it is necessary to save
what can be saved(!), therefore everyone participating in the revolution, together with
the Provincial Assembly, should have his salary or wage paid up to July 10 with
appropriate travelling expenses and all should withdraw to Swiss territory together with
cash, provisions, arms, etc.!”
The valiant Struve proposed this fine motion on July 2, when we were in Wolfach up in the Black
Forest, 10 hours away from Freiburg and 20 hours away from the Swiss frontier! Herr Struve is
naive enough to relate this incident himself and even to boast of it in his  Geschichte. The only
consequence that the acceptance of such a motion could have was that the Prussians would press
us as hard as possible in order to “save what could be saved”, that is, to do us out of our cash,
artillery and provisions, since this resolution assured them that there was no danger in vigorous
pursuit, and that our troops would then immediately disband  en masse, and whole corps make off
on their own to Switzerland, as actually happened. Our corps would have come off worst; it was
on Baden territory up to the 12th and was paid up to the 17th.

53 IV. To Die For the Republic
Herr Sigel, instead of re-taking Villingen, at first resolved to take up position at Hufingen the
other side of Donaueschingen and await the enemy. The same evening, however, it was decided
to  march  to  Stuhlingen,  close  by  the  Swiss  frontier.  We  hastily  sent  dispatch-riders  to
Furtwangen, to inform our own corps and that of Becker. Both were likewise to make their way
to Stuhlingen via Neustadt and Bonndorf. Willich went to Neustadt to meet his corps and I stayed
with the Besancon company. We spent the night in Riedbohringen and arrived at Stuhlingen on
the afternoon of the next day, July 7. On the 8th Herr Sigel held a review of his half-disbanded
army, recommended it not to ride in future but to march (at the frontier!) and departed. He left
behind for us half a battery and in order for Willich.
In the meantime news of the general retreat had been sent from Furtwangen first to Becker and
then to our own companies stationed to the fore. Our corps gathered first in Furtwangen and met
Willich in Neustadt. Becker, who was closer to Furtwangen than were our outlying troops, still
did not arrive till later and took the same road. He ran into entrenchments which held up his
march and which were later said in the Swiss press to have been dug by our corps. That is
incorrect; our corps only blocked the roads on the other side of the Black Forest ridge, and not on
the way from Triberg to Furtwangen, which it never occupied. Besides, our volunteers did not
march off from Furtwangen until Becker's advance guard had arrived there.
In Donaueschingen it was agreed that the remains of the entire army should gather on the other
side of the Wutach, from Eggingen to Thiengen, and there await the approach of the enemy. Here,
with our flanks abutting upon Swiss territory, we could attempt a last battle with our considerable
artillery. We could even wait and see whether the Prussians would violate Swiss territory and
thus bring the Swiss into the war. But how amazed we were when Willich arrived and we read in
the valiant Sigel's order:
“The main body of the army is to proceed to Thiengen and Waldshut and take up a firm
position there(!!). Endeavour to maintain the position (at Stuhlingen and Eggingen) as
long as possible.”
A “firm position” at Thiengen and Waldshut, the Rhine to the rear and heights accessible to the
enemy in front! The only possible interpretation of this was: We intend to cross the Sackingen
bridge into Switzerland. And this was the same hero Sigel who had said on the occasion of
Struve's motion that if it were passed then he, Sigel, would be the first to rebel.
We now occupied the position behind the Wutach itself and distributed our troops from Eggingen
to Wutöschingen,  where  our  headquarters  were.  Here  we  received the  following even more
priceless document from Herr Sigel:
“Order. Thiengen headquarters, July 8, 1849. – To Colonel Willich in Eggingen. Since
the canton of Schaffhausen is already taking up a hostile stance towards me, it is
impossible for me to take up the position we discussed. You will order your movements
accordingly and move in the direction of Griessen, Lauchringen and Thiengen. I am
marching off from here tomorrow, either to Waldshut or beyond the Alb” (i.e. to
Sackingen). “General-in-Chief Sigel.”
That  capped  it  all.  That  evening  Willich  and  I  went  to  Thiengen,  where  the  “General
Quartermaster” Schlinke admitted that they really were going to Sackingen and thence over the
Rhine. At first Sigel tried to come the “general-in-chief”, but Willich did not fall for that and
eventually prevailed upon him to give the order to turn round and march on Griessen. The pretext
for the march to Sackingen was a junction with Doll, who had marched thither, and an allegedly
strong position. The position, evidently the same one from which Moreau gave battle in 1800 43,
had only one drawback: it faced in quite another direction from that where our enemy was
coming  from;  and  as  for  the  noble  Doll,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  prove  that  he  could  go  to
Switzerland even without Herr Sigel.

54 IV. To Die For the Republic
Between the cantons of Zurich and Schaffhausen lies a small strip of Baden territory, with the
villages of Jestetten and Lottstetten, completely closed in by Switzerland apart from a narrow
access at Baltersweil. Here the last stand was to be made. The heights on both sides of the road
behind Baltersweil  presented  excellent  positions  for  our  artillery,  and our  infantry was  still
numerous enough to cover them if necessary until they had reached Swiss territory. It was agreed
that we should wait here and see whether the Prussians would attack us or starve us out. The main
body of the army,  to which Becker had attached himself, went into camp here. Willich had
selected the position for the artillery (we later found their park where their battle-position was to
be). We ourselves formed the rearguard and slowly followed after the main body of the army. On
the evening of the 9th we went to Erzingen, on the 10th to Riedern. On that day a general council
of war was held in the camp. Willich alone spoke for continued defence, Sigel, Becker and others
for a withdrawal onto Swiss territory.  A Swiss commissioner, Colonel Kurz, I believe, was
present and declared that Switzerland would not grant asylum if another battle were fought. When
it came to the vote Willich was alone with two or three officers. Apart from him, no one from our
corps was present.
While Willich was still in the camp the half-battery posted with us received orders to move off; it
departed without so much as a mention being made to us. All the other troops apart from us also
received orders to go into the camp. During the night I went once more with Willich to the
headquarters in Lottstetten; when we were on our way back, at daybreak, we met on the road all
those who had struck camp and were trundling towards the frontier in the most frantic confusion.
The same day, early on the morning of the 11th, Herr Sigel crossed onto Swiss territory with his
troops near Raft and Herr Becker with his near Rheinau. We concentrated our corps, followed
into the camp and from there to Jestetten. While we were there, at about midday, an orderly
officer brought us a letter Sigel had written from Eglisau. In it he said that he was already safely
in Switzerland, that the officers had retained their sabres and that we should join them as soon as
we could. They did not give us a thought until they were on neutral ground!
We  marched  through Lottstetten to the  frontier,  bivouacked that  night still  on German  soil,
discharged our rifles on the morning of the 12th and then set foot on Swiss territory, the last of
the army of Baden and the Palatinate to do so. On the same day and at the same time, Constance
was abandoned by the corps stationed there. A week later Rastatt fell through treachery and the
counter-revolution had for the moment reconquered Germany down to the last corner.
___
The campaign for the Imperial Constitution foundered because of its own half-heartedness and its
wretched internal state. Ever since the defeat of June 1848 the question for the civilised part of
the European continent has stood thus: either the rule of the revolutionary proletariat or the rule
of the classes who ruled before February. A middle road is no longer possible. In Germany in
particular the bourgeoisie has shown itself incapable of ruling; it could only maintain its rule over
the people by surrendering it once more to the aristocracy and the bureaucracy. In the Imperial
Constitution the petty bourgeoisie, in alliance with the German ideology, attempted an impossible
arrangement aimed at postponing the decisive struggle. The attempt was bound to fail: those who
were serious about the movement were not serious about the Imperial Constitution, and those
who were serious about the Imperial Constitution were not serious about the movement.
This does not mean to say, however, that the consequences of the campaign for the Imperial
Constitution were any the less significant. Above all the campaign simplified the situation. It cut
short an endless series of attempts at reconciliation; now that it has been lost, only the somewhat
constitutionalised feudal-bureaucratic monarchy or the true revolution can be victorious. And the
revolution can no longer be brought to a conclusion in Germany except with the complete rule of
the proletariat.

55 IV. To Die For the Republic
The Imperial Constitution campaign in addition contributed considerably to the development of
class  antagonisms  in  those  German  provinces  where  they  were  not  yet  sharply  developed.
Especially in Baden. In Baden, as we have seen, there existed hardly any class antagonisms at all
before the insurrection. Hence the acknowledged supremacy of the petty bourgeois over all other
classes in the opposition, hence the apparent unanimity of the population, hence the speed with
which the Badeners, like the Viennese, pass from opposition to insurrection, attempt an uprising
at every opportunity and do not even shy away from a battle in the field with a regular army. But
as soon as the insurrection had broken out, the classes emerged in definite outline and the petty
bourgeois separated themselves  from the workers and peasants. Through their representative
Brentano they disgraced themselves for all time. They themselves have been driven to such
despair by the Prussian dictatorship of the sabre that they now prefer any regime, even that of the
workers, to the present oppression; they will take a much more active part in the next movement
than in any previous one; but fortunately they never again will be able to play the independent,
dominant role they played under Brentano's dictatorship. The workers and peasants, who suffer
just as much as the petty bourgeois under the present dictatorship of the sabre, did not go through
the experience of the last uprising for nothing; they who besides having their fallen and murdered
brothers to avenge will take care that when the next insurrection comes it is  they and not the petty
bourgeois who get the reins in their hands. And even though no experience of insurrection can
substitute for the development of classes, which is only achieved by the operation of large-scale
industry over a  period of  years,  Baden has none  the  less through its latest uprising and its
consequences joined the ranks of  those German provinces which in the coming revolution will
play one of the most important roles.
Looked at from the political point of view, the campaign for the Imperial Constitution was a
failure from the very start. The same is true from the military point of view. Its only prospect of
succeeding lay outside of Germany, in the victory of the republicans in Paris on June 13, and June
13 came to nothing. After this event the campaign could be nothing but a more or less bloody
farce. And that is all it was. Stupidity and treachery ruined it completely. With the exception of a
small handful, the military chiefs were either traitors or intrusive, ignorant and cowardly place-
hunters, and the few exceptions were everywhere left in the lurch both by the others and by the
Brentano government. In the coming convulsion anyone who can produce no other title than that
of one of Hecker's generals or an officer of the Imperial Constitution deserves to be shown the
door at once. As the chiefs, so the soldiers. The people of Baden possess the very finest fighting
elements; during the insurrection these elements were from the start so demoralised and neglected
that there arose the wretched situation which we have broadly described. The whole “revolution”
was reduced to a veritable comedy and the sole consolation was that the opponent, although six
times as strong, had six times as little courage.
But this comedy came to a tragic end, thanks to the blood-thirstiness of the counter-revolution.
The same warriors who on the march or on the battlefield were more than once seized by panic,
died in the ditches of Rastatt like heroes. Not a single one of them pleaded, not a single one of
them trembled. The German people will not forget the executions and the casemates of Rastatt,
they will not forget the great gentlemen who ordered these infamies, but neither will they forget
the traitors who through their cowardice were responsible for them: the Brentanos of Karlsruhe
and of Frankfurt.

1 The  Imperial  Constitution  was  adopted  by  the  Frankfurt  National  Assembly  on  March  28,  1849.  While
proclaiming a number of civil liberties and introducing national central institutions, the Constitution nevertheless
shaped the united German state as a monarchy. On March 28 the Prussian King Frerderick William IV was
elected “Emperor of the Germans” by the Frankfurt National Assembly. Prussian-oriented liberal deputies of the
Assembly in particular insisted on handing the imperial crown to the Hohenzollerns. However, Frederick William
IV refused to accept the offer. Apart from the Prussian Government, those of almost all the larger German states
(including Saxony, Bavaria and Hanover) refused to recognise the Constitution. Afraid of revolutionary action,
liberals and democrats in the Frankfurt National Assembly proved incapable of upholding the Constitution. The
people themselves were its sole defender, and in the spring and summer of 1849, they started an armed struggle
led by petty-bourgeois democrats. Despite its limitations, the Constitution was seen by the people as the only
remaining achievement of the revolution. On May 3, an armed uprising broke out in Dresden and later in a
number of towns in Rhenish Prussia; however, these uprisings were rapidly suppressed by troops. The most
powerful struggle in support of the Imperial Constitution developed in the Bavarian Palatinate and Baden, where
workers, urban petty bourgeoisie and peasants rose in its defence. They were soon joined by military units,
especially mounted units. In the middle of May provisional governments were set up, Leopold, the Grand Duke of
Baden, fled, and the separation of the Palatinate from Bavaria was proclaimed. The leadership of the movement,
however, fell mainly into the hands of moderate petty-bourgeois democrats, who were hesitant and refused to
proclaim a republic. They chose passive defensive tactics confining the movement to local limits and preventing
the  uprising  from spreading  outside the  Palatinate  and Baden. Nevertheless,  the  combined  Palatinate-Baden
insurgent army, in which there were many workers' units, put up a strong resistance to the Prussian-Bavarian-
Wurttemberg  troops  who  greatly  exceeded  the  insurgents  in  numbers  and  strength.  The  insurgents'  last
stronghold–Rastatt–fell on July 23. The uprisings in the Palatinate and Baden in the spring and summer of 1849
were the closing events of the German revolution.
2 The March Association, thus named after the March 1848 revolution in Germany, was founded in Frankfurt am
Main at the end of November 1848 by Left-wing deputies to the Frankfurt National Assembly and had branches in
various towns in Germany. Frobel, Simon, Wesendock, Eisenmann, Vogt and other petty-bourgeois democratic
leaders of the March associations confined themselves to revolutionary phrase-mongering and showed indecision
and inconsistency in the struggle against counter-revolutionaries, for which Marx and Engels criticised them
sharply.
3 The reference is to a legend of the Swiss Confederation the origin of which dates back to the agreement between
the three mountain cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden in 1291. The legend runs that representatives of the
three cantons met in the Grutli (or Rutli) meadow in 1307 and took an oath of loyalty in the joint struggle against
Austrian rule.
4 The Left wing of the Frankfurt National Assembly consisted of two factions: the Left (Robert Blum, Karl Vogt
and others)  and  the extreme Left,  known as  the radical-democratic party (Arnold  Ruge,  Friedrich Wilhelm
Schloffel, Franz Zitz, Samuel Truzschler and others), which, in the main, represented the petty bourgeoisie, but
was nevertheless supported by a section of the German workers. The extreme Left vacillated and took a halfway
position on the basic problems of the German revolution - abolition of the remnants of feudalism and unification
of the country. In April and May 1849, after the conservative and most of the liberal deputies had left the
Assembly, the Left and the extreme Left gained the majority. But they, too, continued the policy of curbing the
revolutionary actions of the masses.
The Regency of the Empire was formed in Stuttgart on June 7 by what remained of the Frankfurt National
Assembly, instead of the Central Authority headed by the Imperial Regent, Archduke John, who was openly
counter-revolutionary. The Regency consisted of five deputies representing the Left faction (moderate democrats):
Franz Raveaux, Karl Vogt, Ludwig Simon, Friedrich Schuler, August Becher. They failed in their attempts to
carry by parliamentary means the Imperial Constitution that had been worked out by the Frankfurt Assembly and
rejected by the German princes: The Regency virtually ceased its activities after the Frankfurt Assembly was
finally dispersed on June 18, 1849. Some of its former deputies emigrated to Switzerland.
5 Presumably Engels himself intended to write this work to complement his essays on the campaign for the
German  Imperial  Constitution,  but  no  article  on  this  was  ever  published  in  the  Neue  Rheinische  Zeitung.
Politisch-okonomische Revue.
6 From May 3 to 9, 1849, Dresden, the capital of Saxony, was the scene of an armed uprising caused by the refusal
of the Saxon King to recognise the Imperial Constitution. The insurgents captured a considerable part of the city,
with the workers playing the most active part in the barricade fighting, and formed a Provisional Government
headed by the radical demcocrat Samuel Tzschirner. The moderate line pursued by the other members of the
Provisional Government, the desertion of the bourgeois civic militia and the treacherous actions of the bourgeoisie
in Leipzig where they suppressed the workers' solidarity movement, weakened the insurgents' resistance to the
counter-revolutionary forces. The uprising was crushed by Saxon and Prussian troops. The Russian revolutionary

Mikhail Bakunin, the German working-class leader Stephan Born and the composer Richard Wagner took an
active part in the uprising.
7 On May 6 and 7, 1849, workers and other democratic elements in Breslau (Wroclaw) erected barricades in
protest to the dispatch of artillery to suppress the Dresden uprising, but they were defeated by vastly superior
counterrevolutionary forces.
8 The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (962-1806) included, at different times,  German,  Italian,
Austrian, Hungarian and Bohemian lands, Switzerland and the Netherlands, forming a motley conglomeration of
feudal kingdoms and principalities, church lands and free towns with different political structures, legal standards
and customs.
9 The Napoleonic Code (Code Napoleon) – Napoleon's 1804 civil code which he introduced into the conquered
regions of Western and South Western Germany. It remained in force in the Rhine Province after its incorporation
into Prussia in 1815.
10 Prussian Law (Allgemeines Landrecht fur die Preussischen Staaten) was promulgated in 1794. It included
criminal, state, civil, administrative and ecclesiastical law and bore the distinct imprint of obsolete feudal legal
standards.
After the annexation of the Rhine Province to Prussia in 1815, the Prussian Government tried to introduce
Prussian Law into various legal spheres there to replace the French bourgeois codes in force in the province. This
was done by introducing a series of laws, edicts and instructions aimed at restoring the feudal privileges of the
nobility (primogeniture), Prussian criminal and marriage law, etc. These measures were resolutely opposed in the
province and were repealed after the March revolution by special decrees issued on April 15, 1848.
11 The army reserve (Landwehr) was formed in Prussia at the time of the struggle against Napoleonic rule. In the
1840s it was made up of persons up to 40 years of age who had served three years in the army and been on the
reserve list for at least two years. As distinct from the regular troops, the army reserve was mobilised only in
special emergencies (war or threat of war).
12 On  May  1,  1849,  the  Cologne  Municipal  Council,  composed  mainly  of  representatives  of  the  liberal
bourgeoisie, issued an appeal for the convocation, on May 5, 1849, of a meeting of all the municipal councils of
the  Rhine  Province  to  discuss  the  new  situation  in  Prussia  resulting  from  the  dissolution  by  the  Prussian
Government on April 27 of the Second Chamber of the Prussian Provincial Diet, which had approved the Imperial
Constitution despite the King's intention to reject it. The Prussian Government banned the meeting. Even so, the
Cologne Municipal Council convoked a congress in Cologne of delegates from the Rhine cities on May 8, 1849.
The congress came out in support of the Imperial Constitution and demanded that the dissolved Diet be convoked.
It was made clear that, if the Prussian Government ignored the resolution of the congress (Engels quotes it below),
the Rhine Province would consider secession from Prussia. This threat, however, proved empty as it was not
backed up by resolute action on the part of the liberal majority of the congress, which rejected a proposal for
arming the people and offering resistance to the authorities.
13 The description of revolutionary events given below deals mainly with Elberfeld, which was one of the main
centres of the uprising in Rhenish Prussia in defence of the Imperial Constitution.
The Elbefeld uprising involved mainly workers and petty-bourgeois strata. It flared up on May 9, 1849, and
served as a signal for armed struggle in a number of towns in the Rhine Province (Dusseldorf, Iserlohn, Solingen
and  others).  The  immediate  cause  of  the  uprising  was  the  Prussian  Government's  attempt  to  suppress  the
revolutionary uprising on the Rhine with arms. crush democratic organisations and the press and disarm those
army reserve units which had refused to take orders and backed the demand for the Imperial Constitution (the
army reserve had been mobilised by the Prussian Government itself). After the expulsion of the Prussian troops
who tried to capture the city, power in Elberfeld passed into the hands of the Committee of Public Safety,
composed mainly of moderate democrats and liberals. In contrast to Elberfeld, the uprising that broke out in
Dusseldorf on May 9 was suppressed by troops on the following day. In Elberfeld and other towns the insurgents
were able to hold out longer.
14 Engels arrived in Elberfeld on May 11, 1849, from insurgent Solingen, where, the day before, he had formed a
detachment of workers to help the Elberfeld insurgents. In Elberfeld he worked for a reform of the bourgeois civic
militia, the imposition of a war tax on the bourgeoisie and the extensive arming of workers with a view to creating
the nucleus of a Rhenish revolutionary army and uniting localised uprisings. These efforts were counteracted by
the  Committee  of  Public  Safety,  in  which  considerable  influence  was  wielded  by  representatives  of  the
bourgeoisie.
Under pressure from bourgeois circles, Engels was deported from the city on the morning of May 15. On May 17,
the Neue Rheinische Zeitung carried an article, entitled “Elberfeld”, describing the situation in the insurgent city
and Engels' activities there. Later an action was brought against Engels for his part in the Elberfeld uprising.
Engels also touches on his stay in Elberfeld during the uprising in this series of articles.

15 The arsenal in Prüm was stormed by democrats and workers from Trier and neighbouring townships on May 17
and 18, 1849. Their aim was to seize the arms and extend the uprising in defence of the Imperial Constitution to
the areas on the left bank of the Rhine. The insurgents succeeded in capturing the arsenal, but government troops
soon arrived on the scene and the movement was suppressed.
16 The  tricolour–the  black-red-and-gold  flag,  symbolising  Germany's  national  unity,  was  the  banner  of  the
movement in support of the Imperial Constitution.
17 As  a  result  of  behind-the-scenes  negotiations  between  a  delegation  of  the  Elberfeld  bourgeoisie  and the
government, and the defeatist attitude of the Committee of Public Safety, the Committee was dissolved by the city
authorities on May 16, 1849. On the night of May 17, the workers' detachments, including reinforcements from
other towns, were led out of Elberfeld under false pretences and the previous order was restored in the city. The
failure of the Elberfeld uprising brought the triumph of reaction throughout Rhenish Prussia.
18 Immediately after the Neue Rheinische Zeitung ceased publication, Marx and Engels went to Frankfurt am
Main and then to insurgent Baden and the Palatinate. Their attempts to convince the Left deputies to the Frankfurt
Assembly and members of the Baden and Palatinate provisional governments of the need to extend the movement
throughout Germany, to mount a resolute offensive, and to persuade the Assembly openly to join in the uprising
proved, however, unavailing. In late May 1849, Marx and Engels arrived in Bingen (Hesse) where they parted.
Marx went on to France to establish contacts with French democrats and socialists, while Engels returned to the
Palatinate to take a direct part in the impending armed struggle against the concentrating counterrevolutionary
troops. Besides Marx, two other editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Ferdinand Wolff and Ernst Dronke, went
to Paris, where the Montagne party and the revolutionary clubs were preparing for mass actions against the ruling
party of Order.
19 On May 12, 1849, in conditions of general popular ferment and mounting unrest in the army, the leaders of
democratic organisations assembled in Offenburg (Baden) and took preparatory measures for calling a popular
meeting. The decisions of the assembly, reflecting the attitude of the moderate democrats, were confined to a
demand for the resignation of the reactionary Beck Ministry and the convocation of a Constituent Assembly. By
the time the popular meeting opened on the following day, however, news had arrived that the army had sided
with the people everywhere, that insurgent garrisons had captured the Rastatt fortress on May 11 and later
Karlsruhe and other cities, and that Grand Duke Leopold had fled. As a result, more radical decisions were
adopted at the meeting, which voted for the dissolution of the Baden Diet, universal arming of the people,
liberation of political prisoners, the return of refugees, and other far-reaching measures. At the same time, the
republican wing failed to secure approval for a resolution on the introduction of a republican government. A
Baden provincial committee was set up, composed mainly of moderate democrats. The committee soon formed a
provisional government, the Executive Committee, headed by Lorenz Peter Brentano. Its policy, however, was
very moderate and irresolute, and gave rise to differences between the moderate democrats and more radical
elements. On June 10, the Constituent Assembly was called in Karlsruhe, which consolidated the dominant
position of the moderate democrats. Brentano was again appointed head of the provisional government and vested
with extensive powers.
20 The  Senate  was  one  of  the  governing  bodies  of  the  free  city  of  Frankfurt;  it  had  both  legislative  and
administrative functions.
21 The  Prussian  Major  Schill  first  distinguished  himself  during  brave  guerrilla  actions  in  the  war  against
Napoleon's army in 1806-07. In April 1809, during Napoleon's war against Austria, Schill, leading a regiment of
hussars and a company of riflemen, set out from Berlin on his own account with the aim of drawing “neutral”
Prussia into a war against Napoleonic rule. After an abortive attempt to capture Magdeburg, he tried to fight his
way to the Baltic, hoping for British support from the sea. At the end of May, his forces were routed at Stralsund,
Schill himself falling in action.
22 Fickler had to undertake a dangerous mission to Stuttgart
23 The Club of Resolute Progress, founded in Karlsruhe on June 5, 1849, was the more radical wing of the petty-
bourgeois democratic republicans (Struve, Tzschirner, Heinzen and others) discontented with the conciliatory
policy of the Brentano Government and the increasing strength of the Rightist elements within it. The Club
suggested that Brentano should extend the revolution beyond Baden and the Palatinate and introduce radicals into
his government. Brentano refused, so the Club tried, on June 6, to force the government to comply by threatening
an armed demonstration. The government, however, supported by the civic militia and other armed units, proved
the stronger party in the conflict. The Club of Resolute Progress was disbanded.
24 The six scourges of humanity was the phrase used by Gustav Struve in a letter published in the Deutsche
Londoner Zeitung No. 238 (supplement), October 26, 1849, referring to the monarchy, the hereditary nobility,
officialdom, the standing army, the clergy, and finance magnates.

25 The Rastatt fortress on the Murg was the scene of the last major battle of the insurgent army against Prussian
and imperial forces (June 29 and 30, 1849). The 13,000 Baden soldiers held out for 24 hours against the 60,000-
strong enemy, but were ultimately forced to retreat to the Swiss border to avoid encirclement. Engels describes the
battle in Chapter Four of his essays.
26 In the Standehaus (House of the Social Estates) in Karlsruhe sittings of the Brentano Government were held.
27 At Waghausel, a major battle took place on June 21, 1849, between the insurgent army and Prussian troops who
had captured the Palatinate and invaded Baden. By a vigorous counterattack the insurgents held up the Prussians,
thus avoiding encirclement, but they were unable to prevent the Prussian army from advancing. Engels describes
the battle in Chapter Four of his essays.
28 This refers to the strategic miscalculation by Gorgey, the commander-in-chief of the Hungarian revolutionary
army, in refusing to take advantage of the victories scored by the Hungarians during their spring offensive in 1849
to extend the fighting to Austria and launch operations to capture Vienna.
29 The Central Committee of German Democrats was elected at the Second Democratic Congress, held in Berlin
from October 26 to 30, 1848. It included d'Ester, Reichenbach and Hexamer. Marx was handed a mandate of the
Central Committee by d'Ester at the end of May 1849.
The French social-democrats – the party of petty-bourgeois democrats and socialists grouped round the newspaper
La Reforme.
At the time of Marx's trip to France a clash was brewing between the Montagne, which represented the Reforme
party in the Legislative Assembly, and conservative circles. The Montagne took action on June 13, 1849.
30 The Fruchthalle – a covered fruit and vegetable market in Kaiserslautern where the central administration of the
Palatinate revolutionary Provisional Government had its offices in 1849.
31 Chevaux-ligers (literally: light horses) – light cavalry armed with sabres, pistols and carbines in some West-
European countries.
32 On June 14, 1848, Berlin workers and craftsmen, outraged by the national Assembly's renunciation of the
March revolution, took the arsenal by storm in an attempt to uphold the revolutionary gains. This action, however,
was spontaneous and unorganized, and army reinforcements and units of the bourgeois civic militia were soon
able to push back and disarm the people.
33 An allusion to the participation of some of the N.C.O.s of Willich's German refugee volunteer corps in France's
colonial war in Algeria, which ended on the eve of the February 1848 revolution.
34 An allusion to “wailers” (Heuler) – the name the republican democrats in Germany applied to the moderate
constitutionalists who, in turn, called their opponents “agitators” (Wuhler).
35 This refers to Frederick William IV's New-Year message “To My Army” (“An mein Heer”) signed in Potsdam
on January 1, 1849, and published in the Preussischer Staats-Anzeiger of January 3, 1849. The Neue Rheinische
Zeitung used this document to expose the counter-revolutionary actions of the Prussian military (see Marx's article
A New-Year Greeting, present edition, Vol. 8).
36 An allusion to the statement made by Frederick William IV in his speech at the opening of the First United Diet
on April 11, 1847, that he was “heir to an unimpaired crown” and must pass it on unimpaired to his successors
(see Der Erste Vereinigte Landtag in Berlin 1847, erster Teil).
37 The Club of Resolute Progress, founded in Karlsruhe on June 5, 1849, was the more radical wing of the petty-
bourgeois democratic republicans (Struve, Tzschirner, Heinzen and others) discontented with the conciliatory
policy of the Brentano Government and the increasing strength of the Rightist elements within it. The Club
suggested that Brentano should extend the revolution beyond Baden and the Palatinate and introduce radicals into
his government. Brentano refused, so the Club tried, on June 6, to force the government to comply by threatening
an armed demonstration. The government, however, supported by the civic militia and other armed units, proved
the stronger party in the conflict. The Club of Resolute Progress was disbanded.
38 This refers to a speech Franz Heinrich Zitz, an extreme Left-wing deputy to the Frankfurt parliament, made at a
meeting in Frankfurt am Main on September 17, 1848, on the eve of the popular uprising sparked off by the
parliament's  ratification  of  the  Malmo  armistice,  which  jeopardised  the  liberation  movement  in  Schleswig-
Holstein  and  Germany's  national  interests.  Zitz  condemned  the  parliament's  stand  and  objected  to  sending
petitions to it, declaring that the time had come for resolute action.
39 The Cologne Workers' Association–a workers' organisation founded by Andreas Gottschalk on April 13, 1848.
By early May its members numbered about 5,000, mostly workers and artisans. The Association was led by the
President and the committee, which consisted of representatives of various trades, and had several branches.
Most  of  the  Association's  leaders  (Gottschalk,  Anneke,  Schapper,  Moll,  Lessner,  Jansen,  Roser,  Nothjung,
Bedorf) were members of the Communist League. After Gottschalk's arrest, Moll was elected President (on July

6). On October 16, Marx agreed to assume this post temporarily at the request of Association members. From
February to May 1849 the post was held by Schapper.
In the beginning, the Workers' Association was influenced by Gottschalk, who, ignoring the proletariat's tasks in
the democratic revolution, pursued a policy of boycotting elections to representative bodies and came out against
an alliance with democratic forces. He combined ultra-left talk with very moderate actions (petitions, etc.) and
support for the demands of the workers affected by craft prejudices. From the outset, Gottschalk's sectarian
attitude was challenged by the supporters of Marx and Engels. At the end of June 1848 they brought about a
radical change in the Association's activities, making it a centre of revolutionary agitation among the workers, and
from the autumn of that year, also among the peasants. By studying Marx's works, members of the Association
familiarised themselves with scientific communism. The Association maintained contacts with other workers' and
democratic organisations.
In January and February 1849, Marx, Schapper and other leaders reorganised the Association with a view to
strengthening it. On February 25, new Rules were adopted, proclaiming the Association's main task as raising the
class consciousness of the workers.
The mounting counter-revolution and intensified police reprisals prevented the Cologne Workers' Association
from continuing its work of rallying and organising the working masses. After the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
ceased publication and Marx, Schapper and other leaders of the Association left Cologne, it gradually turned into
an ordinary workers' educational society.
40 On  September  26,  1848,  the  authorities,  frightened  by  the  upsurge  of  the  revolutionary  and  democratic
movement in Cologne, declared a state of siege in the city to ensure “security of property and person”. An order of
the  military  command  prohibited  all  associations  pursuing  “political  and  social  aims”,  banned  meetings,
disbanded  and  disarmed  the  civic  militia,  introduced  courts-martial  and  suspended  publication  of  the  Neue
Rheinische Zeitung and several other democratic newspapers. A protest campaign forced the Cologne military
authorities  to  lift  the  state  of  siege  on  October  2.  On  October  12,  the  Neue  Rheinische  Zeitung  resumed
publication.
41 On June 23, 1849, during the retreat of the Baden-Palatinate insurgent army, one of its units mutinied. The
soldiers, led by their commander Thome, made an attempt to arrest Mieroslawski and Sigel and turn them over to
the Prussian army.
42 The Baden Constituent Assembly held its sittings in Freiburg (the last on July 2, 1849) after moving there from
Karlsruhe at the end of June.
43 This refers to the battle of Hohenlinden (December 3, 1800), in which General Jean Victor Moreau of the
French Republic defeated the Austrian army.