Karl Marx

Pélissier’s Mission in England

Translated from the English.

[The New-York Daily Tribune, No. 5299, April 15, 1858]

Paris, March 27, 1858

The most difficult governmental position for a civilian is that at the head of a despotic military state. In the Orient this difficulty is more or less met by transforming the despot into a god, the theocratic attributes of the ruler not permitting the same standard to be applied to him as to his warriors. In imperial Rome the deification of the emperors, although it did not afford the same protection, sprang from the same necessity. Now, Louis Bonaparte is a civilian, though editor of the history of the cannon, but he cannot employ the Roman expedient. Hence the accumulating difficulties of his position. In proportion as France grows weary of the yoke of the army, the army grows bolder in its design to subjugate Bonaparte. After December 10, Bonaparte could imagine himself the elect of the peasantry, i.e., of the mass of the French people. Since the attempt of January 14, he knows that he is at the mercy of the army. Having been forced to admit that he governs through the army, it is quite natural that it will try to govern through him.

The division of France into five pashalics was therefore only the prelude to the appointment of Espinasse as Minister of the Interior. The latter step was followed by the handing over of the Paris police to M. Boittelle, who in 1830 had been a non-commissioned officer and had served with M. de Persigny in the same regiment at La Fère, and who, at the outbreak of the July revolution, had tried to induce his comrades to raise the cry: “Long live Napoleon II!” Boittelle’s appointment is strengthened by the nomination of Pélissier, Duke of Malakoff, as the representative of His Imperial Majesty at the

Court of St. James. This nomination amounts to a piece of flattery for the army and a threat to England. It is true that the “Moniteur” endeavours to convert it into a compliment to John Bull, but Veuillot of the “Univers”, who notoriously has petites et grandes entrées <free access on all occasions> to the Tuileries, foreshadowed the event in a grim article containing this significant paragraph.

“England’s pride is wounded. The wound is old. It was inflicted in the Crimea at the Alma, at Inkerman, and on the Malakoff hill, wherever the French were the first on the battlefield and penetrated deepest into the ranks of the enemy. Saint-Arnaud, Bosquet, Canrobert, Pélissier, Mac-Mahon—these are the men who have wounded England’s pride.”

In a word, Napoleon III has dispatched his Menschikoff to London, being, moreover, very glad to be rid of him for a while, since Pélissier, from the moment his appointment as commander-in-chief of the five pashalics was cancelled, had assumed the attitude of a frondeur. Prices on the Paris Bourse fell immediately the news became known.

Pélissier has more than one bone to pick with England. Palmerston publicly branded him in 1842 before his constituents at Tiverton as a monster, and gave the London press the signal for his general vilification. After the Crimean campaign, General de Lacy Evans, in the House of Commons, more than once alluded to Pélissier as the principal author of the disgrace suffered by the English army before Sevastopol. He was also treated rather rudely by the British press, which expatiated at length upon General Evans’ hints. Finally, at a banquet to the Crimean generals, Pélissier simply claimed the whole glory of the Crimean campaign for the French eagles, and did not even condescend to mention John Bull’s co-operation. In retaliation, the London press hacked Pélissier to pieces once more. Moreover, it is known that his disposition is totally unsuited for the part of that mythological Greek personage who alone was able to heal the wounds he had inflicted. We cannot, however, share the opinion of those London journals which rise to Roman dignity and call upon the consuls to see to it “ne respublica detrimenti capiat” <“that the state suffer no harm”>. Pélissier means intimidation, but he does not mean war. This appointment is a mere coup de théâtre.

The broad ditch separating perfidious Albion from la belle France <lovely France> is their Lacus Curtius, but Bonaparte is not the romantic youth who closes the yawning chasm by plunging into the abyss and disappearing. He, of all men in Europe, knows best that his brittle power depends upon the alliance with England, but this, for the avenger of Waterloo, is a fatal truth, which he must hide as well as he can from his armed myrmidons by treating John Bull harshly, and clothing the alliance itself in the garb of a feudal dependence imposed by France and accepted by England.

Such is his game, a most dangerous game, which may easily hasten that end it seeks to avoid. If Pélissier fails in his mission of intimidation, and he certainly will, the last card will have been played, and the theatrical performance must give way to real actions, or Bonaparte will stand before his army as a convicted impostor, concealing behind his Napoleonic swagger the sorry figure of the London constable of April 10, 1848.

At bottom, it was only the alliance with England that for a time allowed the nephew to copy the uncle. By dealing the death blow to the Holy Alliance and destroying the European equilibrium, the close connection between England and France naturally gave Bonaparte, as the continental representative of that alliance, the appearance of an arbiter of Europe. As long as the war against Russia and the internal condition of France permitted, he was only too glad to be able to content himself with his rather symbolic than real superiority. All this has changed since peace has prevailed in Europe and the army in France. Now the army demands from him the proof that he exercises the dictatorship in Europe like a true Napoleon, not in trust for England, but in spite of England. Hence his difficulties. On the one hand, he intimidates John Bull; on the other, he gives him to understand that he means no harm. He almost begs him, out of politeness, to affect fright at the sham threats of his “illustrious ally”. That is the right way to make John Bull obstinate, who perceives that he risks nothing by playing the heroic.