It is now a year since the Bonapartist-Piedmontese-Russian plot began to unfold before the public. First the New Year’s address, then the matchmaking of the “Italian Iphigenia”, then the cry of anguish of Italy, finally Gortchakov’s admission that he had entered into written commitments with Louis Napoleon. Between times, armaments, troop movements, threats, attempts at mediation. At that time, at the very first moment, an instinctive feeling shot through the whole of Germany: this is not about Italy but about our own skin. They begin on the Ticino, they finish on the Rhine. The ultimate goal of all Bonapartist wars can only be the reconquest of France’s “natural frontier”—the Rhine frontier.

Yet the very section of the German press that expressed the most violent horror at the covert French claim to the natural frontier of the Rhine—that same section, with the *Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung* at its head—defended, with equally violent fanaticism, Austrian rule in Upper Italy, under the pretext that the Mincio and the lower Po formed Germany’s natural frontier against Italy. Herr Orges of the *Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung* set his entire strategic apparatus in motion to demonstrate that without the Po and the Mincio Germany was lost, that abandoning Austrian rule in Italy was a betrayal of Germany.

This turned the matter round. Here, too, it was equally evident that the menacing talk about the Rhine was a mere pretext, and that the preservation of Austrian domination in Italy was the real object. The threat about the Rhine was intended solely to induce Germany to assume solidarity in the subjugation of Upper Italy by Austria. To this was added the ludicrous contradiction of asserting the same theory on the Po and condemning it on the Rhine.

At that time, the author of these lines wrote a work which he published under the title *Po and Rhine*. In the interest of the national movement itself, this pamphlet protested against the theory of the Mincio frontier; it endeavoured, on the basis of military science, to show that Germany did not need a single piece of Italy for her defence, and that France, if merely military reasons were to hold good, had indeed far stronger claims to the Rhine than Germany had to the Mincio. In a word, it attempted to make it possible for the Germans to enter the expected struggle with clean hands.

How far the pamphlet succeeded in this, others may decide. We are not aware of any attempt having been made to refute scientifically the argument developed in it. The *Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung*, against which it was primarily directed, promised to bring a special article about it, but instead supplied three foreign ones from the *Ostdeutsche Post*, whose criticism confined itself to declaring the author a “Little German”, because he was prepared to give up Italy. In any case, to our knowledge, the *Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung* has since then not mentioned the theory of the Mincio frontier again.

Meanwhile, the attempt to make Germany solidary with Austria’s rule and policy in Italy had given the North German Gotha Philistinism a welcome pretext to oppose the national movement. The original movement was truly national, far more national than all the Schiller festivals from Archangel to San Francisco; it arose spontaneously, instinctively, immediately. Whether Austria was right or wrong in Italy, whether Italy had a claim to independence, whether the Mincio line was necessary or not—all that was initially a matter of indifference to it. One of us was attacked, and by a third party who had nothing to do with Italy but all the more interest in the conquest of the left bank of the Rhine—and in the face of this—in the face of Louis Napoleon, in the face of the traditions of the first French Empire—we must all stand together. The popular instinct felt this, and it was right.

But for years the Gotha-liberal Philistinism had no longer regarded German Austria as “one of us”. It welcomed the war because it could weaken Austria and thereby make possible the eventual establishment of a small German or greater Prussian empire. Allied with it were the mass of the North German vulgar democracy, who speculated that Louis Napoleon would smash Austria and then allow them to unify the whole of Germany under Prussian rule; allied with it was a small part of the German emigration in France and Switzerland, who were shameless enough to link up openly with Bonapartism. But the strongest of the allies was—let us say it openly—the cowardice of the German petty bourgeoisie, which never dares to look danger in the face, which, in order to beg a year’s reprieve from the gallows, deserts its faithful allies, so that afterwards, without them, it is all the more assured of its own defeat. Hand in hand with this cowardice went the well-known super-cleverness, which always has a thousand pretexts why at no price should anything be done, but all the more talked; which is sceptical about everything except these pretexts; that same super-cleverness that jubilantly hailed the Peace of Basel, which ceded the left bank of the Rhine to France; that quietly rubbed its hands when the Austrians were beaten at Ulm and Austerlitz; the same super-cleverness that never sees its Jena approaching, and whose central seat is Berlin.

This alliance was victorious: Germany abandoned Austria. Meanwhile the Austrian army on the Lombard plain fought with a heroism that astonished its adversaries and commanded the admiration of the world—except from the Gothaers and their following. No parade-ground drill, no garrison square-bashing, no corporal’s stick had been able to extirpate the indestructible pugnacious talent of the Germans. Despite their tight clothing and heavy packs, these young troops, who had never been under fire, held out like veterans against the battle-hardened, lightly clad and lightly equipped French, and it took the very greatest expenditure of incapacity and disunity on the part of the Austrian command to get such troops beaten. And how beaten? No trophies, no flags, almost no guns, almost no prisoners—the one captured flag was found on the battlefield amid a heap of dead, and the unwounded prisoners were Italian or Hungarian deserters. From the private to the major, the Austrian army covered itself with glory—and this glory belongs quite pre-eminently to the German Austrians. The Italians were unusable and mostly removed, the Hungarians went over in masses or were very unreliable, the Croats in this campaign fought decidedly worse than usual.*) The German Austrians may with full right appropriate this glory; after all, upon them also, before all others, falls the disgrace of the bad leadership.

* See the report of the Times correspondent in the Austrian camp on Solferino. At Cavriana the old Feldzeugmeister Nugent, who was present as an amateur, vainly did everything possible to bring up several battalions of Grenzer.

This leadership was genuinely old-Austrian. What the incapacity of Gyulai alone could not bring off, the lack of unity in command—ensured by the Camarilla and the presence of Franz Joseph—did bring off. Gyulai invaded the Lomellina, and immediately came to a halt when he got within range of Casale-Alessandria; the whole offensive was mishandled. The French united unhindered with the Sardinians. To demonstrate his helplessness fully, Gyulai orders the reconnaissance of Montebello, as if he wanted to prove right from the start that the old-Austrian spirit of uncertain groping about and grave misgivings in the conduct of war is still as alive as in the days of the late Hofkriegsrath. He leaves the initiative completely to the opponent. From Piacenza to Arona he disperses his army, in order, according to the cherished Austrian manner, to cover everything immediately. The traditions of Radetzky have fallen into oblivion in only ten years. When the enemy attacks at Palestro, the Austrian brigades enter the fight so slowly, one after the other, that each is always thrown out of its position before the arrival of the next. And when the enemy actually undertakes the manoeuvre whose possibility first gave meaning to the whole position in the Lomellina—the flank march from Vercelli to Boffalora—when at last the opportunity arose to parry this risky manoeuvre by a thrust towards Novara and to exploit the unfavourable situation in which the enemy found himself—then Gyulai loses his head and runs back across the Ticino, in order—by a detour—to place himself squarely in front of the attacker. In the middle of this retreat, Heß appears—on 3 June at 4 a.m.—at the headquarters at Rosate. The Hofkriegsrath, resurrected at Verona, seemed to have got its doubts about Gyulai’s competence just at the decisive moment. Now there were two supreme commanders. On Heß’s proposal all columns halt, until Heß has convinced himself that the moment for the attack on Novara has been missed and that things must be allowed to take their course. Over this, however, nearly five hours passed, during which the troops had interrupted their march.*) They arrive singly, hungry, exhausted in the course of the 4th at Magenta; they fight nonetheless excellently and with the best success, until Mac-Mahon, contrary to his order—which was for a direct advance from Turbigo to Milan—turns towards Magenta and falls upon the Austrian flank. Meanwhile the remaining French corps come up, those of the Austrians fail to appear, and the battle is lost. The retreat of the Austrians is so slow that at Melegnano one of their divisions is attacked by two whole French army corps. One brigade holds the place against six French brigades for several hours, and only withdraws after losing over half of its men. Finally Gyulai is recalled. The army marches in a great arc from Magenta round Milan, and finds time (so little was there any talk of pursuit!)

* See the statement of Captain Blakeley, the first Times correspondent in the Austrian camp, in that paper, in which the above fact is communicated. In the Darmstadt Allgemeine Militair-Zeitung there is a defence of Gyulai, in which the delay of five hours is attributed to an event that for service reasons cannot be communicated and is independent of Gyulai’s influence, and the loss of the battle is put down to this. But Blakeley had already communicated what the event consisted of.

still to arrive before the enemy, who marched along the shorter chord, in the position of Castiglione and Lonato. This position, which the Austrians had for years most precisely reconnoitred, had been specially chosen, so it was said, by Franz Joseph for his troops. The fact is that it had long been incorporated into the defensive system of the quadrilateral fortresses, and offered an excellent position for a defensive battle with an offensive counter-stroke. Here the army now united with the reinforcements that had meanwhile arrived or had previously been held back; but as soon as the enemy reached the other bank of the Chiese, the signal to retreat sounds again, and it goes back behind the Mincio. Hardly has this operation been carried out when the Austrian army again advances across the same Mincio, in order to recapture from the enemy the very position it has just voluntarily abandoned. Through this muddle of ordre, contre-ordre, désordre, sufficiently weakened in its confidence in the supreme command, the Austrian army goes into the battle of Solferino. It is a lawless slaughter on both sides; of tactical supreme command there was no question with either French or Austrians; the greater incapacity, confusion and fear of responsibility among the Austrian generals, the greater sureness of the French brigade and division commanders, the natural superiority of the French, developed to the highest pitch in Algeria, in skirmishing and village fighting, finally drove the Austrians from the battlefield. Thus the campaign ends, and who was happier than poor Herr Orges, who had been obliged to praise the Austrian supreme command in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung through thick and thin and to impute to it rational strategic motives.

Louis Napoleon, too, had had enough. The meagre gloire of Magenta and Solferino was more than he had a right to expect, and amid those fatal four fortresses the moment might after all come when the Austrians would no longer let themselves be beaten by their own generals. Besides, Prussia was mobilising, and neither the French Army of the Rhine nor the Russians were ready for war. In short, Italy free up to the Adriatic Sea was dropped; Louis Napoleon offered peace, and the document of Villafranca was signed. France received not an inch of land; she magnanimously gave the Lombardy ceded to her to Piedmont; she had waged war for an “idea”; how could she have thought of the Rhine frontier!

Meanwhile Central Italy had provisionally annexed itself to Piedmont, and the Upper Italian kingdom presented for the time being a quite respectable power.

The previous provinces of the mainland and the island of Sardinia represented a population of … 4,730,500 souls,
Lombardy excluding Mantua approximately … … … … … 2,651,700 „
Tuscany … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 1,719,900 „
Parma and Modena … … … … … … … … … … … … … 1,090,900 „
the Romagna (Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna and Forlì) … … 1,058,800 „
                                total 11,251,800 souls
(according to the state of 1848). The area of the state expanded from 1,373 to 2,684 German square miles. The Upper Italian kingdom would thus, if it were to constitute itself definitively, be the leading Italian power.

Facing it there remained only Venetia with … … … … … 2,452,900 souls,
                      Naples … … … … 8,517,600 „
                      the rest of the
                      Papal States … … 2,235,600 „
                      total … … … … 13,206,100 souls,

so that Upper Italy alone would contain almost as many inhabitants as all the other Italian lands put together. By virtue of its financial and military power and the civilisation of its inhabitants, such a state could claim a position in Europe before Spain, i.e. immediately after Prussia, and, assured of the growing sympathies of the rest of Italy, it would also unconditionally demand it.

That, however, was not what Bonapartist policy had intended. A united Italy, it had loudly declared, France can and will never tolerate. By the independence and freedom of Italy it understood a kind of Italian Confederation of the Rhine under Bonapartist protection and under the honorary presidency of the Pope; the replacement of Austrian hegemony by the French. Alongside this ran the benevolent intention of founding a kingdom of Etruria, an Italian kingdom of Westphalia, in Central Italy for the heir of Jérôme Bonaparte. All these plans were put an end to by the consolidation of the Upper Italian state. Jérôme Bonaparte junior had acquired nothing on his march through the duchies, not even a vote; the Bonapartist Etruria was as impossible as the restoration, nothing remained but annexation to Piedmont.

But to the same degree in which the inevitability of the unification of Northern Italy emerged, to the same degree the “idea” for which France had gone to war this time also came to light. This was the idea of the annexation of Savoy and Nice to France. Already during the war, voices had been raised asserting that this was the price of the French intervention in Italy. But they had not been heard. And did not the Act of Villafranca refute them? Despite all this, the world suddenly learned that under the national and constitutional regime of the re galantuomo two provinces were languishing under foreign rule — two French provinces that turned their tearful eyes longingly towards the great fatherland, from which only brute force held them apart — and that Louis Napoleon could no longer close his ear to the cry of pain of Savoy and Nice.

Now it transpired indeed that Nice and Savoy constituted the price for which Louis Napoleon had undertaken to unite Lombardy and Venetia with Piedmont, and that, as Venetia was not to be had at the moment, he demanded it as the price of his consent to the annexation of Central Italy. Now began the repulsive manoeuvres of Bonapartist agents in Savoy and Nice, and the clamour of the paid Paris press that the Piedmontese government was suppressing the will of the people in these provinces, which loudly called for union with France; now at last it was openly stated in Paris that the Alps were the natural frontier of France, that France had a right to them.

II.

If the French press asserts that Savoy is French in language and customs, that is at least as correct as if the same were asserted of French Switzerland, the Walloon part of Belgium, and the English-Norman islands in the Channel. The Savoyard people speak a south French dialect, and the educated and written language is everywhere French. So little is there any question of an Italian element in Savoy that, on the contrary, the French (i.e., south French or Provençal) vernacular extends even over the Alps into Piedmont, up into the upper valleys of the Dora Riparia and the Dora Baltea. Nevertheless, before the war practically nothing was to be detected of sympathies for union with France; thoughts of this kind were cherished only by a few individuals here and there in the Savoyard lowland, which has some commercial intercourse with France; to the mass of the population they were as alien here as in all the other French-speaking countries bordering on France. It is altogether peculiar that none of the countries which were incorporated into France from 1792 to 1812 has the slightest desire to place itself again under the wings of the eagle. The fruits of the first French Revolution have been appropriated, but the strict centralisation of administration, the prefect system, the infallibility of the apostles of civilisation sent from Paris are heartily sick of. The sympathies reawakened by the July and February Revolutions were immediately stifled again by Bonapartism. No one has any desire to import Lambessa, Cayenne, the loi des suspects. Added to this is the Chinese seclusion of France from almost all import trade, which is felt most strongly precisely on the frontier. The first Republic found on all frontiers oppressed, exploited provinces, fragmented peoples, robbed of all common natural interests, to whom it brought the emancipation of the rural population, of agriculture, of industry, of trade. The second Empire encounters on all frontiers greater freedom than it is itself capable of offering; it encounters in Germany and Italy a strengthened national feeling, in the smaller countries consolidated separate interests which have grown up through forty-five years of an unprecedentedly rapid industrial development and are ramified in all directions with world trade; it brings nothing but the despotism of the Roman Caesars’ time, the locking-up of trade and industry in the great prison of its customs-line, and at most free passage to the land where the pepper grows.

Separated from Piedmont by the main chain of the Alps, Savoy obtains almost all its requirements from the north, from Geneva and partly from Lyons, just as, on the other hand, the canton of Ticino, which lies south of the Alpine passes, supplies itself from Genoa and Venice. If this circumstance is a motive for separation from Piedmont, it is certainly none for union with France, for the commercial metropolis of Savoy is Geneva; for this, apart from the geographical position, the wisdom of French tariff legislation and the chicanery of the French customs have seen to it.

But despite language, tribal affinity, and the Alpine chain, the Savoyards appear not to have the slightest desire to let themselves be blessed with the imperialist institutions of the great French motherland. They have the traditional feeling that it was not Italy that conquered Savoy, but Savoy that conquered Piedmont. From little Lower Savoy the warlike mountaineers of the whole province concentrated themselves into a state, then to descend into the Italian plain, and by conquest as well as by policy successively annex Piedmont, Monferrat, Nice, the Lomellina, Sardinia, Genoa. The dynasty settled in Turin and became Italian, but Savoy remained the cradle of the state, and the Savoy cross is today the arms of Northern Italy from Nice to Rimini and from Sondrio to Siena. France conquered Savoy in the campaigns of 1792—94 and until 1814 the country was called the Département du Mont-Blanc. But in 1814 it was by no means inclined to remain French; union with Switzerland or return to the old relationship with Piedmont was the only question. Nevertheless, the lowland remained French until after the Hundred Days, when it was given back to Piedmont. The old historical tradition has naturally weakened with time; Savoy was neglected, the Italian provinces of the state came to preponderate too much; the interests of Piedmontese politics pointed more and more towards the south and east. It is all the more remarkable that it was precisely the class of the population which professed to be the pre-eminent bearer of historical tradition that still cherished the most separatist aspirations: the old, conservative and ultramontane nobility; and these aspirations were directed towards union with Switzerland as long as the old oligarchic patrician constitutions prevailed there; only since the general introduction of democracy in Switzerland do they appear to have taken a different direction; under Louis Napoleon France has become reactionary and ultramontane enough to appear to the Savoyard nobility as a place of refuge from revolutionary Piedmontese politics.

The state of things now appears to be this: In general there is no desire to detach Savoy from Piedmont. In the upper country, in Maurienne, Tarentaise and Upper Savoy, the population is decidedly in favour of the status quo. In the Genevois, Faucigny and Chablais, if a change is to occur at all, union with Switzerland is preferred to any other. Only here and there in Lower Savoy, and more especially in the reactionary nobility of the country generally, does any desire for union with France manifest itself. These voices are, however, so isolated that even in Chambéry the largest part of the population is decidedly opposed to them, and the reactionary nobility (see the declaration of Costa de Beauregard) does not dare to avow its sympathies.

So much for the question of nationality and the will of the people.

How now stands the military question? What strategic advantages does the possession of Savoy give to Piedmont, what would it give to France? And how does a change of possession in Savoy affect the third frontier state, Switzerland?

From Basle to Briançon the French frontier forms a large, deeply indented curve; a good piece of Switzerland and the whole of Savoy project here against French territory. If we draw the chord of this curve, it will be found that the circular segment is filled almost exactly by French Switzerland and Savoy. If France’s frontier were pushed forward to this chord, it would form from Lauterburg to Fréjus a line as straight, on the whole, as from Lauterburg to Dunkirk; but this line would be of quite a different significance for defence than the other. While the northern frontier is completely open, the northern part of the eastern frontier would be covered by the Rhine, its southern part by the Alps. Between Basle and Mont Blanc, to be sure, no feature of the terrain would mark the frontier line; rather, the “natural frontier” here would be formed by the Jura up to Fort l’Écluse, and from there by the Alpine spur which, from Mont Blanc, borders the Arve valley on the south, and likewise terminates at Fort l’Écluse. But if the natural frontier makes an indented, concave curve, then it precisely fails to fulfil its purpose, and is therefore no longer a natural frontier. And if it turns out that this indented circular segment, which pushes our frontier back so unnaturally, is even inhabited by people who are, “in language, customs and civilisation”, French, must not the error that nature committed be rectified, must not the theoretically demanded convexity, or at least straightness, be first practically established, may the Frenchmen living beyond the natural frontier be sacrificed to a lusus naturae?

That such Bonapartist reasonings are not without all significance is proved by the first Empire, which proceeded from annexation to annexation until it was put a stop to; the most perfect frontier has its weak sides, where improvements and adjustments can be made; and if one does not have to be bothered, one can go on annexing without end. In any case, it follows from the above reasoning: Whatever can be said for the annexation of Savoy, both in regard to nationality and to the military interests of France, applies also to French Switzerland.

The Alps, which run north-north-west from the Col di Tenda, turn from Mont Tabor, which marks the boundary stone between Piedmont, Savoy and France, in their general direction to north-north-east, only to veer even more to the east from Mont Géant, the boundary point between Piedmont, Savoy and Switzerland. From Mont Tabor to Mont Géant, the Alps can therefore only form the natural border of France if this border continues in a straight line from Mont Géant to Basle. In other words: the demand for the annexation of Savoy to France includes the demand for the annexation of French Switzerland.

Over the whole stretch where the main ridge of the Alps forms the present border of the two states, there is only one metalled pass: the Mont Genèvre. Apart from it, the Col d’Argentera, which leads from Barcelonnette into the valley of the Stura, is passable for artillery, and other mule tracks may also be rendered passable for all arms with some effort. But as long as Savoy and Nice each offer two metalled passes across the main chain of the Alps, any French attacker, if not yet in possession of these provinces, will have to conquer at least one of them before he crosses the Alps.

Now, in addition, for an attack from France the Mont Genèvre only permits a direct thrust on Turin, whereas the Mont Cenis and even more the Little St Bernard, the two Savoyard passes, exert a flanking effect; and for an attacking Italian army the Mont Genèvre necessitates a great detour for a thrust into the heart of France, while the Mont Cenis forms the great main road from Turin to Paris. Hence no general would dream of using the Mont Genèvre for anything other than secondary columns; the great line of operations will always run through Savoy.

The possession of Savoy would therefore give France, in the first place, a terrain which it needs for an offensive war against Italy and which it would otherwise have to conquer first. An Italian army on the defensive will certainly never defend Savoy by a decisive battle, but by a vigorously conducted mountain warfare and by destroying the roads, already in the upper valleys of the Arc and Isère (through which the Mont Cenis and St Bernard roads run), it can delay the attackers to some extent and then, for some time, supported by the forts blocking the passes, hold the northern slope of the main Alpine chain. Of course, no more than elsewhere in mountain warfare can there be any talk of absolute defence here; the decisive battle will be reserved for the enemy’s descent into the plain. But time will certainly be gained, which can be decisive for the concentration of forces for the main battle, and which is particularly important for a country as extended and poor in railways as Italy, as against a compact country covered with an excellent strategic railway network like France; and this time is certainly lost if France already possesses Savoy before the war. Italy, however, will never wage a war against France alone; and if it has allies, the possibility exists that the two armies in Savoy will already hold each other in equilibrium. The consequence will be that the struggle for possession of the Alpine chain will be prolonged; that in the worst case the Italians will hold the northern slope of the ridge for some time and, after its loss, will contest the southern slope with the French, for only he who possesses both slopes and can cross it is master of a mountain ridge. Whether the attacker will then still be strong and resolute enough to follow the defender into the plain is very much open to question.

The campaigns of 1792 to 1795 in Savoy give us an example of such an indecisive mountain warfare, even if the action on both sides was slack, uncertain, and fumbling.

On 21 September 1792 General Montesquieu invaded Savoy. The 10,000 Sardinians who defended it were, according to the cherished fashion of the time, so split up into a cordon of posts that they could nowhere unite sufficient forces for resistance. Chambéry and Montmélian were occupied, and the French traversed the valleys as far as the foot of the main Alpine chain. The ridge itself remained entirely in the hands of the Sardinians, who, after some minor engagements under General Gordon on 15 August 1793, again advanced against the French, weakened by detachments sent to the siege of Lyon, and drove them out of the Arc and Isère valley back to Montmélian. Here the defeated columns rallied on their reserves, Kellermann came back from Lyon, immediately (11 September) went over to the attack and, with little effort, threw the Sardinians back as far as the Alpine passes; here, however, his strength was also exhausted, and he had to remain halted at the foot of the chain. But in 1794 the Army of the Alps was brought up to 75,000 men, against whom the Piedmontese could muster only 40,000, besides a reserve of perhaps 10,000 Austrians that might be available. Nevertheless, the first attacks by the French, both on the Little St Bernard and on the Mont Cenis, were unsuccessful, until finally on 23 April the St Bernard and on 14 May the Mont Cenis were taken, and thereby the whole ridge fell into their hands.

Thus three campaigns had been required to wrest from the Piedmontese the access to Italy on this side. Even though such indecisive warfare could not today drag on through several campaigns over so small a terrain, it will always be difficult for the French, given some equilibrium of forces, not only to force the Alpine passes but to remain strong enough to descend straight into the plain. Savoy does no more than this for Italy; but that is already quite enough.

Suppose, on the other hand, that Savoy were united with France. How would Italy then be situated? The northern slope of the Alpine chain is in the hands of the French; the Italians can only defend the southern slope, whose points of closure and positions are commanded or at least overlooked from the high ridge and, for the most part, can also be outflanked at no great distance. Mountain defence is reduced to its last, weakest, and at the same time most costly act. The opportunity for gathering intelligence which mountain warfare in Savoy affords is completely eliminated. Nor is that all. As long as Savoy had to be conquered, France could, under certain circumstances, content itself with doing just that and thereby restrict Italy to passive defence; a result had already been achieved; the troops could perhaps be better employed elsewhere; France had an interest in not committing too many forces to this theatre of war. Conversely, once Savoy has become definitively a French province, it is worth the trouble to defend it offensively, in the French manner. Passive defence can cost as many men in a single campaign as an attack on Italy; after all, not that many more troops are needed for the attack, and what quite different results are in prospect!

On the morning after annexation, one will see French general staff officers travelling up the Arc and Isère valleys, searching the lateral valleys, climbing the mountain ridges, questioning the best Alpine guides, measuring distances, surveying gradients and carefully noting everything; all this not with the arbitrariness of tourists, but according to a visible plan, already probably completed now. Engineers and entrepreneurs will soon follow them, and it will not be long before roads are built and structures erected in the deepest high mountains, of which neither the country dweller nor the traveller will be able to say what they mean. They are no concern of peasants or tourists either; their sole purpose is to develop the strategic natural endowments of Savoy.

The Mont Cenis Pass, like that of the Mont Genèvre, both lead to Susa. If the southern slopes of both are attacked by French columns, the Italian detachments defending them will find themselves in a complete double bind. They cannot know from which side the main attack will come; but they know from the outset that if one of the two passes is forced and Susa taken, the troops defending the other pass will be cut off. If the Mont Cenis is forced first, the troops on the Mont Genèvre may still perhaps save themselves by abandoning their artillery, baggage and horses and fleeing on footpaths into the valley of Fenestrelle; but if the attackers push on via the Mont Genèvre to Susa, the troops on the Mont Cenis are left without any retreat. Under such circumstances, the defence of these two passes is reduced to a mere demonstration. Now, however, the lines of operations of the two French detachments, the roads from Grenoble to Briançon and from Chambéry to Lanslebourg, run on the whole parallel and are separated only by a mountain ridge branching off from Mont Tabor, over which many footpaths and mule tracks lead. As soon as the French build a cross road across this ridge, which need be only four German miles in length, they can shift their masses at will from one road to the other, the double bind becomes even more effective, and the defence of the Alpine line against an incursion from Italy gains enormously in strength on this side.

Let us go further. Savoy possesses a second Alpine pass, the Little St Bernard. Many French authorities maintain that Napoleon would have done better to use this pass for his crossing of the Alps instead of the Great St Bernard. The pass is lower, therefore becomes free of snow earlier in the spring, and is altogether easier to cross. The columns converge from Lyon and Besançon with at least the same ease on Albertville as on Lausanne; and both passes lead to Aosta and Ivrea. The mere fact that a controversy could arise over the preference for one or the other pass for Napoleon’s purposes in the campaign of 1800 proves what importance this Little St Bernard has for warfare. To be sure, quite peculiar conditions must be presupposed before the Little St Bernard can serve for a repetition of the strategic turning movement of Marengo. Armies are now larger, and can never cross a high mountain range in a single column; a turning movement with only 30,000 men would nowadays, in most cases, prepare its own ruin. All this is correct for the first and second campaigns. But if, as seems probable, all wars fought with perseverance on both sides acquire, through the fortress groups and entrenched camps of the most recent period, a different, more protracted character, if a war can no longer really be fought out before the combatants have slowly worn each other down over several campaigns, then the armies too will finally become smaller and smaller. Let us assume the case of a war having surged back and forth across the upper Italian plain for several years; the French, having meanwhile taken Casale or Alessandria, or both, are thrown back across the Alps and the struggle here comes to a standstill with forces considerably weakened on both sides. Even then, with our railways, with the now everywhere increasingly easier...

Is it such a feat, this artillery, to throw 30,000 to 40,000 men and even more rapidly over the Little St Bernard towards Ivrea? From Ivrea they can withdraw to their fortified base depot on the plain, where they will find the bare necessities and reinforce themselves with the garrison; should this not be possible, the road to Turin and the line of retreat over the nearest two passes can certainly not be blocked by a stronger force. These 30,000 to 40,000 men, together with the garrisons, will, however, at such a time already constitute a very respectable force, and in the worst case and after the dispersal of the nearest enemy corps they will be able to wage war around their entrenched camp with every prospect of success. One should consider how armies had already shrunk by 1814, and with how few forces Napoleon achieved such great things that year.

The St Bernard road, as has been said, runs in the valley of the Isère just as that of Mont Cenis runs in that of the Arc. Both rivers rise on Mont Iseran. Above Bourg St. Maurice the St Bernard road leaves the river to turn straight over the mountain, while the gorge (Val de Tignes) runs off to the south on the right.

Below Lans-le-Bourg, near Termignon, a small side valley (Val Saint-Barthélemy) opens into the valley of the Arc. From the Val de Tignes three footpaths run over the ridge between Mont Iseran and Mont Chaffequarré into the Val Saint-Barthélemy. One of these three cols will probably be suitable for a road. If a road is built here, then, in conjunction with the cross-road indicated earlier, the strategic road system of Savoy—as a French frontier province—is already fairly well developed. Right behind the main ridge of the Alps there would be a road linking the three most important passes with one another, making it possible in two days to transfer the main masses from the St Bernard and Mont Genèvre to the vicinity of Mont Cenis, and in four to five days to move them from one flank to the other. If this system is completed by a road from Moutiers over the pass at Pralognan to St Barthélemy and Lanslebourg, and a second from Moutiers to St. Jean de Maurienne, there would hardly be anything more to add. All that would remain would be to construct the fortifications necessary for support—not for absolute closure—and to secure Moutiers, the main road junction, as a central depot against a violent attack. In all, this involves less than twenty-five German miles of new road construction.

If these or similar works are carried out—and that the French general staff already has a plan for the full strategic exploitation of Savoy is beyond doubt—what then becomes of the defence of the southern slope of the Alps? And what mighty blows—in the case of defence—would not a new Lecourbe, supported by a strong central depot and small forts, be able to strike, if such a road network assured him mobility? Let no one say that mountain warfare can no longer occur with our present large armies. As long as the armies are really large, and decisive superiority is on one side, that is true enough. But armies will already wear themselves down against modern fortresses, and there will be cases enough where superiority gives way to equilibrium. Naturally, one does not go into the mountains if one does not have to, but the road from Paris to Italy and from Italy to Paris will always lead through Savoy or the Valais.

To sum up. By its geographical position, and especially by its Alpine passes, Savoy, as a French province, would allow a French army that is only slightly superior to take possession of the Italian slope of the Alps, to make foraging raids into the valleys, and to assume a far greater significance than that to which its numbers entitled it. With some preparation of the theatre of war, however, the French army would be so favourably placed that, given an otherwise complete equilibrium of forces, it would immediately be superior to its opponent; and in addition the Little St Bernard would compel the Italians to make a distant detachment, while under certain circumstances it offers the French the opportunity for more decisive offensive thrusts.

Savoy in the hands of France is, in relation to Italy, an exclusively offensive instrument.

What now of the interests of Switzerland?

In the present state of things, Switzerland can be attacked by none of her individual border neighbours except frontally. We count in this regard South Germany without Austria as one, and Austria as a second border neighbour, since we have just seen that these two do not always necessarily go together. South Germany can only attack on the line Basle-Constance, Austria only on the line Rheineck-Münster, Italy on the line Poschiavo-Geneva, and France on the line Geneva-Basle. Everywhere the Swiss army has its line of retreat perpendicularly behind its front; everywhere its neutral border territory covers its flanks to a greater or lesser extent. A strategic turning movement cannot, therefore, be initiated before the beginning of the struggle, so long as only one of the border neighbours attacks Switzerland. Austria alone possesses flank advantages via Grisons, but the Swiss would in any case under no circumstances deliver the decisive battle against an Austrian attack in Grisons, but further to the north-west, in the Alpine foothills. The cession of Lombardy by Austria has considerably increased this advantage for Switzerland; up to a year ago Austria indeed possessed the means for a concentric attack on south-western Switzerland, which in the high mountains with superior forces is by no means always to be despised. However, the effect of such an attack was still limited to Grisons, Ticino, Uri and Glarus, thus the least populated and poorest part of the country, and already presupposed a strong splitting up of the enemy forces if it was to go beyond the St Gotthard from Italy. The present favourable distribution of the border neighbours is worth more to Switzerland than the European neutrality guarantees. It gives her the chance, in the event of an attack by a single one of her border countries, to draw out the defence as long as possible, and that is after all the only thing on which so small a country can reckon.

From the moment that Savoy is French or is merely occupied by French troops, there can be no further question of a defence of the whole of French Switzerland, from the Bernese Jura to the Lower Valais. Geneva can already now be transformed into a French depot within 24 hours; the Jura is turned, just as is the line of the Zihl and the Lakes of Neuchâtel and Bienne; the French, instead of fighting their way through the defiles and then forcing the narrow path between these two lakes and through the great marsh (Grosses Moos), will comfortably march around through the rich hill country of Vaud, and the first position for serious resistance coincides with that in which the first main battle must be accepted, with the position before Berne behind the Saane and Sense; for a turning column from Savoy via Villeneuve and Vevey will render any resistance in Vaud useless.

Hitherto, Switzerland’s first line of defence against France has been the Jura, an excellent terrain for unskilled militia familiar with the country and supported by the population. But even on account of the very jagged frontier line, which often cuts across its parallel ridges, it cannot be seriously held. The second, more important line is that of the Zihl, which connects the Lakes of Neuchâtel and Bienne and flows from the Lake of Bienne into the Aar. It is continued on the right by the lower course of the Aar, on the left by the Orbe, which flows into the upper end of the Lake of Neuchâtel, near Yverdon. The Zihl is only half a mile long between the lakes, and only one mile from the Lake of Bienne to the Aar. The actual front of the position lies between the lakes and is further strengthened by the great marsh (Grosses Moos) lying in the low ground, which extends from the Lake of Neuchâtel to beyond Aarberg and can only be passed on the main road. A turning of this front on the right flank via Büren will be paralysed by the reserve at Aarberg; a wider outflanking movement presupposes the bridging of the Aar and lightly exposes its communications. A turning movement on the left can only be made through Vaud, and can be held up successively on the Orbe, the Mentue and the Broye. This resistance cannot be paralysed by a turning movement along the Lake of Geneva towards Freiburg, because the Swiss retreating along the Lake of Neuchâtel always retain the shorter road thither. Thus the position on the Zihl, while only usable for a main battle under special circumstances, in the event of great errors on the part of the enemy, nevertheless fulfils everything that Switzerland can demand of it: it gives an opportunity of delaying the enemy, and in particular of calling in the contingents of south-west Switzerland.

But as soon as Savoy is in the hands of the enemy, a column advancing from Saint Gingolph via Villeneuve and Châtel-Saint-Denis makes all resistance in Vaud useless, for at Vevey it is already scarcely two miles further from Freiburg than the Swiss on the Orbe, and can thus cut off their retreat. From Saint Gingolph to Freiburg is about twelve miles; Freiburg lies a day’s march behind the left flank of the Zihl position between the lakes, and three miles from Peterlingen (Payerne), where the French columns marching through Vaud can join hands with the Savoyard column. In three to four days, therefore, the attacker, if Savoy is at his disposal, can cut off the connection with the Valais through the Rhône valley, conquer Geneva, Vaud and Freiburg as far as the Saane, and get in the rear of the Zihl position with his main force, whereupon Basle, Solothurn, the Bernese Jura and Neuchâtel fall into his hands. And these are no inhospitable high mountain regions, but precisely the richest and most industrial cantons of Switzerland.

Switzerland felt so strongly the strategic pressure exerted on her by Savoy that in 1814 she secured the well-known neutralisation of its northern part, and in 1816 obtained from Sardinia the contractual assurance that it would never cede the Chablais, Faucigny and the Genevois to any power other than Switzerland herself. Louis Napoleon is also spreading the rumour everywhere that he demands only southern Savoy; the Chablais, Faucigny and a part of the Genevois as far as the stream Les Usses should fall to Switzerland. Since one gift is worth another, according to the “Times” Herr Vogt, he is making use of this to sound out, behind the scenes, the Swiss federal authorities as to whether they would not grant him in return the free use of the Simplon road. First hint that the Simplon is also a natural boundary-post of France, as it indeed actually was under the First Empire.

Let us assume that Switzerland were to be enriched by the new Canton of North Savoy. The frontier would be formed by the mountain ridge which, separating from the main massif between the Little St Bernard and Mont Blanc, runs towards the Rhône narrows (Fort l’Écluse); it would therefore appear to be entirely “natural”. But the following roads run across this mountain ridge from the Isère and Rhône valleys: 1) Seyssel to Geneva; 2) Annecy to Geneva; 3) Annecy to Bonneville; 4) Albertville to Sallanches. From Bonneville, as from Sallanches, roads run over the northern ridge of the Arve valley to Thonon. The country thus lies completely open to an offensive directed against Thonon on the southern shore of the Lake of Geneva, and since the distances from Seyssel or Albertville to Thonon do not exceed 15 miles, possession of North Savoy would gain the Swiss defensive at most only five extra days. But since there is no prospect of defending this new canton with any troops other than a *Landsturm*, the attacking column could just as well march from Geneva direct to Thonon – five miles – from where it is only about four miles from Saint Gingolph. In this case North Savoy affords Switzerland only three days’ grace. Apart from this, it can only serve to split up the Swiss forces of defence. The line of retreat of a Swiss army attacked from France patently runs through Berne into the lowlands; if possible along the Aar to Zurich, failing that, to Lucerne, and from both places into the upper Rhine valley. The army must therefore not take up a position so far to the south that it can be pushed away from these lines and forced into the high mountains. As we have seen, the Vaud can still quite readily be drawn into the Swiss defensive system; North Savoy and the Valais, the latter opened up by the cessation of Savoyard neutrality, certainly cannot. It is well known, however, how, in a threatened federal state defended by militias, everyone wants his own home region defended. It is well known that the troops will grumble, the National Councillors will cry out, if whole towns and cantons are abandoned without resistance – and now, on top of that, a new canton which Switzerland has supposedly acquired precisely for its defence! Even in the General Staff, everyone wants to help ensure that his own locality is specifically covered, and in a militia army, where even in the best case discipline is already lax enough thanks to the cosy peacetime pettifoggery, all these influences make it difficult enough for the commander to keep his forces together. In nine cases out of ten you can wager that the commander will prove weak or be forced to give way, and that North Savoy will be occupied by troops who can be of no use whatever to the defence, but who will in any case suffer on the retreat and be thrown partly into the Valais, where they may then see how they get back over the Gemmi or the Furca to the main army.

The only security for Switzerland is that North Savoy belongs neither to her nor to France; then, in a war between these two states, it is in fact neutral and really covers Switzerland. If, however, it belongs to Switzerland, this is not much better for her than if it belonged to France. Its value amounts to a gain of three, at most five days, the greater part of which is then lost again in the defence of the Vaud. What is that compared with the security of being able, in all circumstances, to be attacked only between Basle and the Lake of Geneva?

North Savoy is a Greek gift for Switzerland; it is more than that; this gift implies a threat. In the assumed case, France dominates the whole of French Switzerland militarily and forecloses any even half-serious defence of it. The annexation of South Savoy by France immediately raises the demand for the incorporation of French Switzerland.

III.

The County of Nice, as is well known, lies at the foot of the Maritime Alps and its border with the Genoese territory slopes down to the sea a mile east of Oneglia, at Cervo. The western half speaks a Provençal dialect, the eastern half, beyond the Roia, an Italian one. With the exception of a few villages on the Var, however, Italian is everywhere the written language; only in the town of Nice does French, as a result of the heavy influx of foreigners, hold the scales against it. To deal correctly with the nationality question we must pause here for a moment to consider the linguistic conditions of the western Alps.

At all points where Italian comes into contact with other languages in the Alps, it has proved the weaker element. At no point does it advance over the Alpine chain; the Romance dialects of the Grisons and the Tyrol are entirely independent of Italian. By contrast, all the neighbouring languages have won territory from it south of the Alps. In the western mountain districts of the Venetian province of Udine, Carnic-Slovenian is spoken. In the Tyrol the German element is master of the whole southern slope and the entire upper Adige valley; further south, in the midst of Italian territory, there are the German language islands of the *sette comuni* and the *tredici comuni*; on the southern foot of the Gries, both in the Ticinese Val di Cavergno and in the Piedmontese Val Formazza, in the upper Val di Vedrò at the foot of the Simplon, and finally on the whole south-eastern slope of Monte Rosa, in the Val de Lys, the upper Val Sesia and the Val Anzasca, German is spoken. From the Val de Lys onwards begins the French language frontier, which embraces the whole Aosta valley and the eastern slope of the Cottian Alps from Mont Cenis onwards, so that, according to the usual assumption, the sources of all the rivers of the upper Po basin belong to it. According to the same assumption, this frontier runs from Demonte (on the Stura) somewhat west of the Col di Tenda, to the Roia and follows it down to the sea.

About the frontier between German or Slavonic and Italian vernaculars there can be no doubt. The matter is otherwise, however, where two Romance languages meet – and not, on the one hand, the Italian written language, *il vero toscano*, and not the educated northern French, but the Piedmontese dialect of Italian and the southern French language of the troubadours, which has been dissolved into a thousand degenerate *patois* and which for brevity’s sake we will designate by the inexact but familiar term “Provençal”. Whoever has ever, even superficially, pursued the comparative grammar of the Romance languages or Provençal literature cannot fail to be struck in Lombardy and Piedmont by a great similarity between the vernacular and Provençal. In Lombard, it is true, this similarity is confined to the outward habit of the dialect; the dropping of masculine vowel endings while the feminine ones are retained in the singular, as well as of most vowel endings in conjugation, give it a Provençal sound, while on the other hand the nasal *n*, the pronunciation of *u* and *œu*, call northern French to mind. But word-formation and phonetics are essentially Italian, and where deviations occur they often, as in Rhaeto-Romance, recall Portuguese in a curious way.* The basic features of the Piedmontese dialect agree fairly closely with Lombard, but already incline more towards Provençal, and in the Cottian and Maritime Alps it will undoubtedly come so near to it that it will be difficult to draw a definite boundary.** To this it must be added that most of the southern French *patois* are not much closer to the northern French written language than is the Piedmontese dialect itself. Here, then, the vernacular can decide little about nationality; the Alpine peasant who speaks Provençal learns Italian just as easily as French, and uses the one just as seldom as the other; Piedmontese, with which he gets along quite far enough, is perfectly intelligible to him. If, however, a criterion is to be found, only the written language can provide it, and this is indeed Italian throughout Piedmont and Nice – the only exceptions being perhaps the Aosta valley and the Waldensian valleys, where French as a written language predominates in places.

To seek to assert the French nationality of Nice on the basis of a Provençal *patois* which, moreover, embraces only half the province, is therefore preposterous from the start. The assertion becomes even more preposterous,

* Lat. *clavis*, It. *chiave*, Port. *chave*, Lomb. *ciau* (pronounced *tschau*), key. Last summer the *Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung* had it written from Verona (see the reports from the Austrian headquarters) that there the people in the street accost one another with “*Tschau, tschau*.” The sapient paper, which generally has an eye for linguistic blunders, was evidently at a loss for the key to this *tschau, tschau*. The word is *s-ciau* (*stschau*) and is the analogous Lombard form for *schiavo*, slave, servant, just as people in our own country greet one another with: “Your servant, Your obedient servant,” etc. – We can think of only two genuinely Provençal forms in Lombard: the feminine past participle in *-da* (*ama, amada*) and the first person present in *-i* (*ami*, I love, *saludi*, I greet).

** Decisive distinguishing marks between Italian and Provençal dialects would probably be: 1) the Italian vocalisation of *l* after consonants (*fiore, più, bianco*), which is foreign to Provençal; 2) the formation of the plural of nouns from the Latin nominative (*donne, cappelli*). In the Middle Ages, Provençal and Old French also had this formation for the nominative, while all the other cases were derived from the Latin accusative (ending in *-s*). All modern Provençal dialects, however, so far as we know, have only the latter form. In border areas, nevertheless, it might appear doubtful whether the surviving nominative form derives from Italian or from Provençal.

when one considers that the Provençal language also extends across the Pyrenees, embracing Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, and that in these Spanish provinces, despite a few Castilian overtones, it has not only on the whole preserved itself far more purely than anywhere in France, but still maintains an existence as a written language in popular literature. What is to become of Spain if Louis Napoleon soon lays claim to these three tracts of land as being nationally French as well?

To bring about French sympathies in the County of Nice seems even more difficult than in Savoy. From the countryside one hears nothing at all; in the town all attempts miscarry even more glaringly than in Chambéry, although it is much easier to concentrate a host of Bonapartists in this watering-place by the sea. The idea of making the Nizzan Garibaldi a Frenchman is, in truth, not a bad one.

If Savoy is of the highest importance for the defence of Piedmont, Nice is far more so. From Nice three roads lead into Italy: the Corniche road along the coast to Genoa, the road over the Col di Nava from Oneglia through the valley of the Tanaro to Ceva, and the road over the Col di Tenda to Cuneo (Coni). The first, though eventually blocked by Genoa, gives an advancing column an opportunity, first at Albenga and again at Savona, to cross the Apennines by well-chaussiert roads, and offers in addition a host of mule tracks and footpaths across the mountains; Napoleon gave an example of how these can be used in war in 1796. The third road, over the Col di Tenda, is to Nice what Mont Cénis is to Savoy; it leads straight to Turin, but offers few or no flanking advantages. The middle road, over the Col di Nava, on the other hand, leads directly to Alessandria and thus acts in the south like the Little St Bernard in the north, only far more directly and with much less complication. It has the further advantage that it lies near enough to the coastal road to receive considerable support from it in an attack. The column advancing on the Nava road can re-establish contact as early as Garessio with the column that has pushed forward as far as Albenga on the coastal road, since the cross-road from Albenga joins it here; once it has passed Ceva, the road to Alessandria runs via Careare, where the road from Savona joins it, which lies halfway between Ceva and Savona. Between Ceva, Savona and Oneglia, however, lie high mountains, where the defence cannot hold its ground. In addition, the northern slope of the Col di Nava, with the sources of the Tanaro, lies on Niçois territory, so that the pass belongs from the outset to whoever possessed Nice before the war.

A French army that had Nice at its disposal even before the outbreak of war threatens from there the flank, the rear and the lines of communication of any Italian detachment pushed forward west of Alessandria. In time of war, therefore, the cession of Nice to France signified the withdrawal of the rallying point of the Italian forces to Alessandria, the abandonment of the defence of Piedmont proper, which can only be conducted from Nice and Savoy. Here, too, the history of the revolutionary war provides the best example.

On 1 October 1792 General Anselme crossed the Var with a division of 9,000 men, while at the same time the French fleet (12 ships of the line and frigates) dropped anchor within 1,000 paces of Nice. The inhabitants, favourably disposed toward the revolution, rose up, and the weak Piedmontese garrison (2,000 men) hastily withdrew to the Col di Tenda, where it took up position at Saorgio. The town of Nice received the French with open arms, but the latter plundered the entire countryside, burned down the peasants’ houses, violated their women, and could be kept in check neither by Anselme’s order of the day nor by the proclamations of the Convention’s commissaries. This was the original kernel of the later Army of Italy, with which General Bonaparte won his first laurels. Bonapartism seems always to have to rely on the lumpenproletariat in its beginnings; without a Society of the Tenth of December it never gets on its feet. — The warring parties long remained inactive facing one another; the French held the town and its environs, while the Piedmontese, reinforced by an Austrian division, remained masters of the mountains and stood in a strongly entrenched position with their centre at Saorgio. In June 1793 the French made several attacks, all of them fruitless on the whole; in July they took the Col d’Argentera, which leads into the rear of the enemy position. After the capture of Toulon (December 1793) the Army of Italy received considerable reinforcements, and General Bonaparte was attached to it. The following spring he combined an assault on the camp of Saorgio, which was carried out with the most complete success on 28 April and won the French possession of all the Maritime Alps passes. Bonaparte then proposed uniting the Army of the Alps with the Army of Italy in the valley of the Stura and conquering Piedmont; but the plan was not adopted. Soon afterwards Bonaparte lost, through the Ninth Thermidor, his most powerful protector, the younger Robespierre, and with him his influence in the war council; he remained only a simple divisional commander. The army went over to the defensive, and only when the Austrian General Colloredo advanced on Savona with habitual slowness in order to cut the French off from their supremely important link with neutral Genoa did Bonaparte find an opportunity to fall upon him and inflict a reverse. Despite this, the road to Genoa remained threatened, and the campaign of 1795 was opened with the expulsion of the French from the entire Genoese Riviera. Meanwhile the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees had become available through the peace with Spain and was directed to Nice, where it was fully assembled by November. Scherer, now commanding in the Maritime Alps, immediately went over to the offensive according to a plan worked out by Masséna. While Sérurier engaged the Piedmontese at the Col di Tenda, Masséna moved through the high mountains to outflank Loano, which was attacked frontally by Augereau (23 November). The plan succeeded completely; the Austrians lost 2,000 dead, 5,000 prisoners and 40 cannon and were completely separated from the Piedmontese. The link with Genoa was now made secure again, and possession of the mountains remained undisputedly with the French throughout the winter. Finally, in the spring of 1796, Bonaparte received supreme command of the Army of Italy, and things now took a different turn. Supported by the possession of Nice and the Riviera di Ponente, he moved from Savona into the mountains, beat the Austrians at Montenotte, Millesimo and Dego, and thereby separated them from the Piedmontese, who, outflanked and isolated by a superior French force, immediately concluded peace after a few rearguard actions. Thus four successful engagements in the upper valleys of the Bormida and the Tanaro won the French military possession of all Piedmont, without the need for a direct thrust against Turin; the war rolled over forthwith into Lombardy, and Piedmont became part of the French operational base.

During the first three years of the war, therefore, Italy was completely shielded by Nice. Only in the third campaign were the passes of the Maritime Alps lost, and only in the fourth did they come into effect—but then in an instantly decisive manner. After the engagements of the first week in the mountains, a mere vigorous demonstration against the Piedmontese was sufficient to make their helpless situation and the necessity of capitulation clear to them. The real thrust was able to continue almost without interruption in the direction of Milan; the whole territory lying between the Bormida, the Ticino and the Alps fell into the hands of the French of its own accord.

If Nice is a French province, Italy finds itself vis-à-vis France in the position in which it was at the close of the campaign of 1794. Not only is the Stura valley open to the French via the Col di Tenda, and the Tanaro valley via the Col di Nava; the road to Albenga and Savona cannot be contested by a superior attacking French army, which, three or four days after the opening of the campaign, thus finds itself once more at the starting point of the campaign of 1796. Where is the main Italian force to oppose it? On the Riviera of Genoa it has no room to deploy; west of the Belbo and the Tanaro it endangers its communications with Alessandria, Lombardy and the peninsula. The only thing it can do is to advance southwards from Alessandria and fall with united force on the individual columns debouching from the mountains. This, however, presupposes that the defence of the Alpine frontier has been given up from the very outset, for all the detachments stationed at the Col di Tenda and further west and north-west would otherwise be cut off. In other words, the possession of Nice gives France mastery of the Alps, which then cease to be a protective wall for Italy, and hence military mastery over Piedmont.

Nice gives France the same flanking advantages in the south that Savoy gives it in the north, only even more completely and directly. If, however, Nice or Savoy, each by itself, already lays Piedmont proper completely open to a French attack, what power will France have over Piedmont once it possesses both provinces! Piedmont is squeezed between them as in a pair of pincers; along the whole line from the Little St Bernard round to the Col di Nava and the mountain paths above Savona the fork play of feints can be executed in endless variations, until at last the real attack takes place at one of the flanking points and cuts off all Italian detachments that have bitten down too firmly in the mountains. An Italian army would be left with no alternative but to concentrate at Alessandria and Casale, leaving the Alps only under observation, and to throw itself with concentrated force on the main direction of the attack as soon as that reveals itself. If this is conceded, it means in other words that not only the Alpine chain, but also the entire Piedmontese Po basin is delivered up to the enemy from the outset, and that the first defensive position of an Italian army against France lies behind the ramparts of Alessandria. With Savoy and Nice as outworks, Piedmont is the first operational base of the Italian army; without them, militarily speaking, Piedmont belongs to the French offensive and can only be wrested back again by a victory on Piedmontese soil and the conquest of the Savoyard and Niçois passes.

The annexation of Savoy and Nice is tantamount, if not to the political, then certainly to the military annexation of Piedmont to France. When in future Victor Emmanuel surveys the magnificent Alpine chain from the Villa della Regina near Turin, not a single mountain of which will then belong to him, this will become clear enough to him.

But, it is argued, as soon as a strong military state is formed in Upper Italy, France will need Nice and Savoy for its own defence.

We have seen that Savoy would considerably strengthen the French defensive system. Nice would bring it reinforcement only in so far as this province too would have to be conquered before the present French Alpine departments could be attacked. The question, however, is whether a strong Italian military state would threaten France at all to such an extent that it required special protection against it.

Italy, even if it were completely united, could never, with its 26 million inhabitants, wage an offensive war against France except in alliance with Germany. But in such a war Germany would always provide the great mass of the armed forces, and Italy the subordinate power. This alone would suffice to shift the main weight of the attack from the Alps to the Rhine and the Meuse. Now, in addition, there is the position of the decisive point of attack, Paris, in the north of France. The most telling attack upon France will always be that from Belgium; if Belgium is neutral, that from the German left bank of the Rhine and from the Baden Upper Rhine. Any other makes a detour and is already somewhat eccentric, not directed straight at Paris. And if Clausewitz already (Vom Kriege, Book VI, Chapter 23) makes fun of the fact that in 1814 an army of 200,000 men, instead of marching straight to Paris, allowed itself to be led on the fool’s rope of a foolish theory on a detour through Switzerland to the plateau of Langres – what would he say to campaign plans that wanted to direct the main attack on Paris through Upper Italy and Savoy or even Nice? Every attack through Savoy is at a decided disadvantage compared with that from the Rhine, on account of the longer line of communications, which, moreover, crosses the Alps, of the longer route to Paris, and finally of the force of attraction of the great entrenched camp of Lyons, which will in most cases bring it to a halt. In the campaign of 1814, therefore, the corps penetrating into France through Italy also played practically no role at all.

With such means of defence, France truly needs no extension of territory on this, its anyway most covered frontier, and against one of its weakest neighbours. If France’s present frontier were everywhere as far from Paris, as strong by nature and art and by the difficulty of the enemy’s communications, as it is against Italy, France would be unassailable. But if Bonapartism picks out precisely this point in order to claim the so-called natural frontiers here, under the pretext that France cannot do without them for her defence – how much easier will it then be for it to justify its claims to the Rhine!

Nice will always remain Italian, even if it is momentarily ceded to France. Savoy may and probably will at some later time itself desire its incorporation with France, when the great European nationalities have become more consolidated. But it is something quite different whether Savoy becomes French voluntarily, when Germany and Italy have also realised their national unity politically and militarily and have thereby considerably enhanced their European power position – or whether a ruler reliant upon conquest, like Louis Napoleon, purchases it from a still divided Italy, in order to perpetuate his overlordship over this Italy and at the same time to establish the first precedent for the theory of the natural frontiers.

IV.

For us Germans, three things in this Savoy-Nice haggling are of principal concern.

Firstly, Louis Napoleon’s practical declaration of Italian independence: Italy divided into at least three, if possible four states, Venetia Austrian, and France, through the possession of Savoy and Nice, master of Piedmont. The Papal territory, after the separation of the Romagna, will completely cut off Naples from the Upper Italian state and prevent any enlargement of the latter towards the south, since the Pope is to be ‘guaranteed’ his remaining territorial possessions. At the same time, Venetia is dangled before the Upper Italian state as the next bait; the national movement of Italy retains in Austria its most immediate and primary opponent; and in order that the new kingdom may be set in motion against Austria at Louis Napoleon’s pleasure, the French seize all the positions commanding the Western Alps and push their outposts to within nine miles of Turin. This is the position that Bonapartism has created for itself in Italy, and which, in a war for the Rhine frontier, is worth an army to it. It gives Austria the best pretext to supply at most its federal contingent – if that much at all. Here only one thing could help: a complete reversal of German policy with regard to Italy. That Germany does not need Venetia up to the Mincio and the Po, we believe we have demonstrated elsewhere. We likewise have no interest in the existence of Papal and Neapolitan rule, but we do have an interest in the establishment of a strong and united Italy that can have an independent policy. Under given circumstances, therefore, we can offer Italy more than Bonapartism; it may perhaps soon be a matter of importance to bear this in mind.

Secondly, the blunt proclamation of the theory of the natural frontiers of France. That this theory has again been inscribed on the banner by the French press, not only with the consent but on the direct order of the government, no one can doubt. For the moment, the theory is applied only to the Alps; this is still fairly harmless; Savoy and Nice are small territories, with only 575,000 and 236,000 inhabitants respectively, which would thus increase the population of France by only 811,000 souls, and their politico-military significance is not apparent at first glance. But the fact that, in the claim to these two provinces, precisely the standpoint of the natural frontiers is once more singled out and recalled to the memory of the French people, that the ear of Europe is to grow accustomed to the word again, just as to other Bonapartist catchwords that have been alternately uttered and dropped again over the last ten years – that is what specifically concerns us Germans. In the French of the First Empire, which was afterwards so assiduously echoed by the republicans of the National, the natural frontier of France par excellence was understood to be the Rhine. Even today, when the natural frontier is spoken of, no Frenchman thinks of Savoy or Nice, but only of the Rhine. What government, one moreover relying on the traditions of conquest and the lust for conquest within the nation, would dare to provoke the cry for the natural frontiers again and then try to fob off France with Savoy and Nice?

The renewed proclamation of the theory of the natural frontiers of France is a direct threat against Germany and an unmistakable fact that vindicates the national feeling which expressed itself in Germany a year ago. It is true, not Louis Napoleon, but the press directed by him, now declares to everyone who cares to listen that it indeed has been and still is a question of nothing else but the Rhine.

Thirdly and mainly, the position of Russia in the whole intrigue. When the war broke out last year, when Gorchakov himself admitted that Russia had entered into “written engagements” towards Louis Napoleon, rumours reached the public concerning the content of these engagements. They came from various sources and substantially confirmed each other. Russia undertook to mobilise four army corps and to station them on the Prussian and Austrian frontiers, in order thereby to facilitate Louis Napoleon’s game. For the course of the war itself, it was said, three eventualities were contemplated:

Either Austria makes peace on the Mincio; in that case she loses Lombardy and, isolated from Prussia and England, will easily be induced to join the Russo-French alliance, whose further aims (partition of Turkey, cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France) will then be pursued by other means.

Or she continues to fight for the possession of Venetia; she will then be completely driven out of Italy and Hungary will be insurgated, which, under certain circumstances, is to be handed over to the Russian Grand Duke Constantine; Lombardy and Venetia fall to Piedmont, Savoy and Nice to France.

Or else, Austria continues to fight and the German Confederation stands by her; then Russia enters the struggle actively, France receives the left bank of the Rhine and Russia gets a free hand in Turkey.

We repeat it: these statements concerning the essential content of the Russo-French alliance were already known and published at the outbreak of the war. A considerable part of them has been confirmed by events. What of the rest?

To furnish documentary proofs for this is, from the nature of the matter, so far impossible. These only come to light when the events in question themselves belong to history. The policy of Russia, as established by facts and documents from earlier historical periods (e.g., the Russian state papers found in Warsaw in 1830), can alone serve as a guide in this tangle of intrigue; for this purpose, however, it fully suffices.

Twice in this century Russia has allied itself with France, and each time the alliance had the partition of Germany as its aim or basis.

The first time on the raft at Tilsit. Russia abandoned Germany completely to the French Imperator, and even accepted a piece of Prussia as a pledge for it. In return it received a free hand in Turkey; it hastened to conquer Bessarabia and Moldavia, and to send its troops across the Danube. That Napoleon soon afterwards “studied the Turkish question” and considerably altered his opinion on the subject was one of the main reasons for the war of 1812, so far as Russia was concerned.

The second time in 1829. Russia concluded a treaty with France by which France was to get the left bank of the Rhine, and Russia, again, a free hand in Turkey. This treaty was torn to pieces by the July Revolution; the relevant papers were found by Talleyrand when the charge against the Polignac ministry was being prepared, and were thrown by him into the fire, in order to spare French and Russian diplomacy the colossal scandal. Towards the exoteric public, the diplomats of all countries form a secret league and never openly compromise one another.

In the war of 1853, Russia relied on the Holy Alliance, which it believed it had re-established by the intervention in Hungary and the humiliation of Warsaw, and strengthened by the mistrust of Austria and Prussia towards Louis Napoleon. It deceived itself. Austria astounded the world by the magnitude of its ingratitude (it had in the meantime paid off its debt to Russia with usurious interest in Schleswig-Holstein and in Warsaw) and by the consequent resumption of its traditional anti-Russian policy on the Danube. The Russian calculation failed on this side; on the other, it was again saved by treachery in the enemy camp.

Thus much was clear: the fixed idea of the conquest of Constantinople could now only be carried through by a French alliance. On the other hand, there had never been a government in France which stood in such need of the conquest of the Rhine frontier as that of Louis Napoleon. The situation was even more favourable than in 1829. Russia had the game in hand; Louis Napoleon could not but pull the chestnuts out of the fire for him.

Above all, the thing was to destroy Austria. With the same tenacity with which Austria had resisted the French in the field from 1792 to 1809, with the same tenacity it had, from 1814 onwards – and this is its sole, but indisputable merit – offered diplomatic resistance to Russian lust for conquest on the Vistula and the Danube. In 1848-1849, when the revolution in Germany, Italy and Hungary brought Austria to the brink of collapse, Russia saved Austria – it was not to be allowed to collapse through a revolution, for that would have wrested from the hands of Russian policy the direction of the components that had become free. Nevertheless, the movement of the individual nationalities, having become independent from 1848 onwards, had made Austria incapable of opposing Russia any longer, and thereby abolished the last inner, historical ground for the existence of Austria.

The same anti-Austrian national movement was now to become the lever for hoisting Austria out of its joints. In Italy first; later, if necessary, in Hungary. Russia does not operate like the first Napoleon; towards the West especially, where it encounters dense populations superior in civilisation to its own people, it proceeds only slowly. The beginnings of the subjugation of Poland date from Peter the Great, and even now it is only partially completed. Slow but sure successes are just as welcome to it as swift, decisive blows with great results; but both possibilities are always kept in view. In the use of the Hungarian insurrection in the war of 1859, in its being held back in reserve, for the second act, the Russian hand is clearly discernible.

But if Russia was in one respect satisfied with the weakening of Austria through the short campaign of 1859, had it therefore made no provision for other eventualities? Did it mobilise its four first army corps merely to have that satisfaction? What if Austria did not give way? If the military and political combinations compelled Prussia and the rest of Germany – as would have been unavoidable had the war been continued – to take up arms for Austria? What then? What obligations could Russia have entered into with France for this case?

The treaties of Tilsit and 1829 provide the answer. France must likewise have its share of the booty if Russia expands on the Danube and rules directly or indirectly in Constantinople. The only compensation Russia can offer France is the left bank of the Rhine; the sacrifices must again be borne by Germany. The natural as well as the traditional policy of Russia towards France is: to promise France possession of the left bank of the Rhine, or to help her to it in a given case, in return for the grant and support of Russian conquests on the Vistula and the Danube; and then to support Germany, which in gratitude recognises the Russian conquests, in reconquering the territories lost to France. This programme can naturally only be carried out in great historical crises, but that in no way precludes that such eventualities were just as much provided for in 1859 as in 1829.

That the conquest of Constantinople is the immutable goal of Russian foreign policy, and that every means is right to it for attaining this goal, to seek to prove that today would be ridiculous. We wish here only to recall one thing. Russia can never complete the partition of Turkey except through an alliance with France or with England. When direct offers to England appeared opportune in 1844, Emperor Nicholas went to England and himself brought with him a Russian memorandum on the partition of Turkey, in which the English were promised, among other things, Egypt. The offers were refused. Lord Aberdeen, however, put the memorandum in a small box, which he handed over sealed to his successor in the Foreign Ministry; and each later Foreign Secretary read the document, sealed it again, and so handed it to his successor, until the matter finally came to light in the debates of the House of Lords in 1853. At the same time the well-known conversation of Emperor Nicholas with Sir Hamilton Seymour on the “sick man” was published, in which England was also offered Egypt and Candia, while Russia seemed willing to content itself with small advantages. The Russian promises to England were thus in 1853 the same as in 1844; should the promises to France in 1859 have been less generous than in 1829?

Louis Napoleon is, by his personality as by his position, dependent on serving the purposes of Russia. The alleged heir of a great military tradition, he has also taken over the inheritance of the defeats of 1813-15. The army is his mainstay; he must satisfy it by new military successes, by the chastisement of the powers that overthrew France in those years, by the restoration of the natural frontiers of the country. Only when the French tricolour waves along the whole left bank of the Rhine, only then is the disgrace of the two conquests of Paris wiped out. And to achieve all that, a strong ally is needed; the choice is only between England and Russia; England, with its frequently changing ministries, is at least unreliable, even if an English minister should lend himself to such projects – but Russia? For a reasonable equivalent it had twice already shown its readiness for an alliance on a similar basis. Never did a man come more opportunely for Russian policy than Louis Napoleon, never was a situation more favourable to it than his. On the French throne a ruler who must wage war, must make conquests, merely in order to survive, who needs an alliance and for this alliance is dependent on Russia alone – that was something it had never been offered before. From the meeting at Stuttgart onwards, all the ultimate mainsprings of French policy are to be sought no longer in Paris, in the head of Louis Napoleon, but in St. Petersburg, in the cabinet of Prince Gorchakov. The “mysterious” man who inspires such awe-struck reverence in the German Philistine reduces himself to a tool with which Russian diplomacy plays and whom it allows to pocket all the semblance of greatness, while it contents itself with the real advantages. Russia, which never sacrifices a single kopek and a single soldier unless it is absolutely necessary, but which allows the other European powers to tear one another to pieces and weaken one another as far as possible, Russia had first to give its permission through the Gorchakov treaty, before Louis Napoleon could throw out his chest as the liberator of Italy.

And when the reports on the mood in Russian Poland sounded too bad to permit any rising whatsoever in the immediate neighbourhood, in Hungary; when the attempted mobilisation of the four first Russian army corps proved the country’s still unovercome exhaustion; when the peasant movement as well as the resistance of the nobility assumed dimensions that could become dangerous in a foreign war – a general-adjutant of the Russian emperor appeared at the French headquarters and the Peace of Villafranca was concluded. For the moment Russia had achieved enough. Austria was severely chastised for the “ingratitude” of 1854, harder than Russia could ever have expected. Its finances, on the point of being put in order before the war, ruined for decades, its whole internal system of government irretrievably collapsed, its rule in Italy destroyed, its territory diminished, its army discouraged and robbed of confidence in its leaders; the Hungarians, the Slavs and the Venetians so elevated in their national movement that severance from Austria was now openly proclaimed as their goal; from now on Russia could, to be sure, completely disregard all consideration of Austria’s resistance and count on gradually transforming it into a tool. Those were the successes for Russia; Louis Napoleon took home nothing but a very meagre gloire for his army, a very dubious one for himself, and a very uncertain expectancy of Savoy and Nice – two provinces which are, at best, Danaë gifts to him and bind him still more firmly to Russia.

The further plans are deferred for the moment, not abandoned. For how long, will depend on the development of international relations in Europe, on the length of time for which Louis Napoleon is able to keep his praetorian army quiet, and on the greater or lesser interest that Russia has in a new war.

What Russia intends to play for a role vis-à-vis us Germans, the well-known circular which Prince Gorchakov addressed to the small German states last year says clearly enough. Never before has such language been offered to Germany. The Germans will, it is to be hoped, never forget that Russia undertook to forbid them to come to the aid of a German state that was attacked.

The Germans will, it is to be hoped, also not forget a great many other things about Russia.

In 1807, at the Peace of Tilsit, Russia had a piece of the territory of its ally Prussia, the district of Bialystok, ceded to itself, and delivered Germany over to Napoleon.

In 1814, when even Austria (see Castlereagh’s Memoirs) advocated the necessity of an independent Poland, Russia incorporated almost the whole Grand Duchy of Warsaw (i.e. formerly Austrian and Prussian provinces) and thereby assumed an offensive position against Germany which will threaten us until we have driven it out of it. The group of fortresses Modlin, Warsaw, Ivangorod, built after 1831, is even recognised by the Russophile Haxthausen as a direct threat against Germany.

In 1814-15 Russia did everything to bring the German Federal Act into being in its present form and thereby to perpetuate the impotence of Germany externally.

From 1815 to 1848 Germany stood under the direct hegemony of Russia. If Austria opposed it on the Danube, Russia carried out, at the Congresses of Laibach, Troppau, Verona, all the wishes of Russia in the west of Europe. This hegemony of Russia was a direct result of the German Federal Act. When Prussia sought for a moment to evade it in 1841 and 1842, it was immediately forced back into its former position. The consequence was that on the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 Russia issued a circular in which the movement in Germany was treated as a revolt in the nursery.

In 1829 Russia concluded with the Polignac ministry the treaty prepared since 1823 by Chateaubriand (and publicly acknowledged by him), which huckstered away the left bank of the Rhine to France.

In 1849 Russia supported Austria in Hungary only on condition that Austria should restore the Federal Diet and destroy the resistance of Schleswig-Holstein; the London Protocol secured to Russia the succession in the entire Danish monarchy already in the near future and gave it the prospect of realising the plan, cherished since Peter the Great, of entering the German Confederation (formerly the Empire).

In 1850 Prussia and Austria were summoned to Warsaw before the Tsar, who sat in judgement over them. The humiliation was no less for Austria than for Prussia, although in the eyes of the beer-house politicians Prussia alone had to bear it.

1853, in conversation with Sir H. Seymour, Emperor Nicholas disposed of Germany as if it were his hereditary property. Austria, he said, was secure to him. Prussia he did not even do the honour of mentioning.

And finally 1859, when the Holy Alliance seemed completely dissolved, the treaty with Louis Napoleon, the attack of France upon Austria with Russian approval and support, and the circular of Gortschakoff, which in the most impudent fashion forbade the Germans to render any assistance to Austria.

This is what we have to thank the Russians for since the beginning of this century, and what we Germans, hopefully, will never forget.

At this very moment the Russo-French alliance is still threatening us. France by itself can only become dangerous to us at particular moments, and even then only through the alliance with Russia. But Russia constantly threatens and insults us, and when Germany rises against it, then it sets the French gendarmes in motion by the prospect of the left bank of the Rhine.

Are we still to put up with having this game played with us any longer? Are we, forty-five million strong, to go on tolerating that one of our most beautiful, richest and most industrialised provinces is constantly used as the bait which Russia dangles before the praetorian rule in France? Has the Rhineland no other calling than to be drawn into war so that Russia may have a free hand on the Danube and the Vistula?

That is the question. We hope that Germany will soon answer it with sword in hand. If we stand together, we shall send the French praetorians and the Russian kapustchiks packing.

In the meantime we have gained an ally in the Russian serfs. The struggle which has now broken out in Russia between the ruling class and the subjugated class of the rural population is already undermining the entire system of Russian foreign policy. Only so long as Russia had no internal political development was this system possible. But that time is over. The industrial and agricultural development, promoted in every way by the government and the nobility, has reached a degree which the existing social conditions can no longer endure. Their abolition is a necessity on the one hand, an impossibility without violent change on the other. With the Russia which existed from Peter the Great down to Nicholas, the foreign policy of that Russia also falls.

It appears that it is reserved for Germany to make this fact clear to the Russians, not only with the pen but also with the sword. If it comes to that, it will be a rehabilitation of Germany that will outweigh centuries of political disgrace.

Karl Marx
Declaration
February 6, 1860

London, Feb. 6, 1860.

To the Editors of the "Allgemeine Augsburger Zeitung".

Gentlemen,

I request you to print the enclosed written declaration in one of your next numbers and to send me a copy.
Your obedient servant,
K. Marx.

To the Editors of the "Allgemeine Augsburger Zeitung".

Declaration.

I hereby announce that I have taken preliminary steps to institute a libel action against the Berlin "Nationalzeitung" on account of the leading articles No. 37 and No. 41 concerning Vogt's pamphlet: "Mein Prozeß gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung". A literary reply I reserve for later, since it requires inquiries to be made of persons who are outside Europe.

For the present, therefore, only this much:

1.) Judging from the excerpts in the Nationalzeitung — the book itself had, by a special dispensation, so far been unobtainable in London, neither from booksellers nor from acquaintances to whom Herr Vogt had earlier sent his so-called "Studies" — Vogt's concoction is a mere elaboration of a sketch which he published 9 months ago in his private monitor — the Bieler Handelskurier. At that time I had his libel printed in London without comment. Such a simple procedure sufficed here, where the circumstances and personalities are known, to characterise the Herr Professor.

2.) The pretext upon which Herr Vogt opens his campaign against me is, like the pretext for the Italian campaign, an "idea". I am supposed, namely, to be the author of the anonymous pamphlet "Zur Warnung". From the English circular which I have published and which I enclose, you will see how I adopted means to compel Herr Blind and his associates either to acknowledge the falsity of that pretext by their silence, or to allow themselves to be convicted of it before an English court of law.

Karl Marx
February 6, 1860
9 Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park.
Haverstock Hill.

Karl Marx
To the Editor of the "Daily Telegraph"
February 6, 1860

To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph.

Sir,

In your to-day's impression you publish, under the title: "The Journalistic Auxiliaries of Austria", a letter full of libellous and scandalous imputations against my person. That letter, purporting to be written at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, but probably indited at Berlin, is, in point of fact, but a clumsy amplification of two articles contained in the "Berlin Nationalzeitung" d.d. January 22, and January 25, which paper will have to give account of its calumnies before a Prussian Court of Law. The false pretext, upon which Vogt launched his libel against me, is the assertion that I am the author of the anonymous German pamphlet "Zur Warnung" (a warning), first circulated at London, and afterwards reprinted in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung. From the inclosed print you will see that I have provoked my adversaries to bring this point to a judicial issue, before an English Court of Law.

In conclusion, if you do not prefer being sued for libel, I request you to make in your next number an amende honorable for the recklessness with which you dare vilify a man of whose personal character, political past, literary productions, and social standing, you cannot but confess to be utterly ignorant.

Your obedient servant:
Dr. Karl Marx
February 6, 1860.
9, Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park, Haverstock Hill, London.