Karl Marx

[“Neue Oder-Zeitung” No. 118, 11 March 1855]

London, 7 March. The “Morning Post”, Palmerston’s private Moniteur, today publishes the well-known Brussels “Memoire” in an English translation, with a short preface in which Prince Napoleon is named as the presumed author of the pamphlet. At the same time, the same paper carries a leading article full of spiteful attacks on Napoleon Bonaparte, with the tastelessly oft-repeated point that “only a
Russian spy
” could be the author of the “Memoire”.

Under the pretext of breaking a lance for Louis Bonaparte against his cousin and guarding the memory of the immaculate Achille Leroy, alias Florimond, alias de S[ain]t-Arnaud, the “Post” obviously aims only at accumulating material for Franco-English collisions. Saint-Arnaud was one of the
Saints
such as crop up in the calendar of French industrial chivalry in all epochs, e.g. Saint-Germain, Saint-Georges, etc. The “Morning Post” deserves the credit for having canonised these Saints and turned them into saints befitting their station. The assertion that the “Memoire” makes “military” revelations to the Russians is sheer nonsense. Criticism, neither in England nor in America or Germany, has waited for the “Memoire” in order to present the Crimean expedition as a failure. The “Memoire” has not added a single syllable to the previous criticism, although it possesses the merit of supplying intimate portraits of the mediocrities who hold forth before Sevastopol. It is only in the Russian interest to keep up illusions about the Crimean expedition, and the pathos with which the “Post” declaims about Russian agents and Russian spies is reminiscent of Aeschines, who likewise boasted of having been the first to see through the plans of the King of Macedonia, while he accused Demosthenes of having been bought by Philip. Naturally, however, we are far from passing off Prince Napoleon Bonaparte as a Demosthenes.