Karl Marx

[Garibaldi in Sicily –]

Prussian Affairs

From the English.

[“New-York Daily Tribune,” No. 5972, June 14, 1860]

Berlin, May 28, 1860

Here, as everywhere throughout Europe, Garibaldi’s exploits in Sicily are naturally the predominant topic of conversation. Now, you know that the telegraph has never before been set to work in such an impudent manner as in the present case by Naples as well as by Genoa or Turin. Locusts never fell upon Europe in such swarms as now the electric canards (false reports). It therefore seems worthwhile to reproduce in a few words the views held here in the most competent military circles on the Sicilian affairs. First of all, the insurrection, as is generally known, lasted a full month until Garibaldi’s appearance; but however extraordinarily significant this fact is, it can still be overrated, as the Paris Constitutionnel has shown. The military forces which Naples had at its disposal in Sicily before General Lanza was sent across with fresh troops amounted to hardly 20,000 men, the far greater part of which had to be concentrated in the fortresses of Palermo and Messina, so that the flying corps which remained available for pursuing the insurgents could indeed boast of several successful encounters, disperse the enemy at certain points, and harass him in various directions, but had to prove entirely insufficient to suppress the uprising completely. At the present moment, some 30,000 Neapolitan troops appear to be assembled in Palermo, two-thirds of whom occupy the fortress, while one-third has encamped outside its range. Fifteen thousand Neapolitans are said to occupy Messina.

Now, according to the latest reports, Garibaldi had not advanced beyond Monreale. To be sure, this place lies on hills which command Palermo from the land side, but in order to exploit the possibilities offered by this position, Garibaldi still lacks the most important prerequisite, namely siege artillery. Garibaldi’s immediate chances, whose army numbers about 12,000 men, will accordingly depend on two important circumstances: on the rapid spread of the insurrection over the whole island and on the behaviour of the Neapolitan soldiers in Palermo. If the latter waver and fall into dispute with the foreign mercenaries among them, Lanza’s means of defence may fall apart in his own hands. If the insurrection develops much vitality, Garibaldi’s army will grow to threatening dimensions. Should Garibaldi enter Palermo, he will capture everything that lies before him, with the exception of Messina, where the difficult task begins anew. You will recall that in 1848-49 the Neapolitans had lost everything except Messina, which served as a tête-de-pont (bridgehead) between Sicily and Naples; at that time Messina sufficed to reconquer the whole island. The fall of Palermo and the military retention of the whole island by the patriots, with the exception of Messina, would, however, this time, owing to the altered political circumstances, have more decisive significance than in 1848-49. If Garibaldi subdues Palermo, he will be officially supported by the “King of Italy.” If he fails, his incursion will be dismissed as a private adventure. There is something like ironic pathos in Garibaldi’s words addressed to Victor Emmanuel, in which he tells the king that he will conquer a new province for him and hopes the king will not sell it again, like Nice, Garibaldi’s birthplace.

Among the topics concerning Prussian politics, the first place in public opinion is naturally occupied by the private letter of the Prince of Prussia to the Prince Consort of England. The Prince de La Tour d’Auvergne, Louis Bonaparte’s ambassador at the court of Berlin, had not only the impudence to hand a copy of this letter to Herr von Schleinitz, the Prussian foreign minister, but went so far as to demand explanations regarding certain passages in it which referred to the character and plans of the great Parisian saltimbanque (mountebank). This event recalls a similar incident that occurred shortly before the ratification of the Treaty of Hunkiar Iskelessi in 1833. The Grand Vizier, who at that time had transmitted a copy of the secret treaty drawn up by Count Orlov to the British embassy in Constantinople, was greatly dismayed when, to his not very pleasant surprise, Count Orlov returned this very copy to him the next day with the spiteful advice to find better confidants in future. Here in Berlin everyone is convinced that the English postal service had taken an interest in the Prince Regent’s letter, which had been sent by post via Ostend and not via Calais, where a numerous staff is openly employed to sniff about in suspicious letters – a practice carried so far that at the time of the coalition cabinet, the Earl of Aberdeen admitted that he did not dare entrust his own letters to his London friends to the post. Lord Palmerston, who thus holds a copy of the Prince Regent’s letter, is suspected of having, out of spite against Prince Albert and in the interest of the Anglo-French-Russian alliance, slipped a copy of this letter into the hands of the French ambassador in London. In any case, the path of the intended and much-talked-of Anglo-Prussian alliance runs anything but smoothly.

A few months earlier, when Lord John Russell discovered one fine morning that England must go in search of new alliances, and when this news was received with much childish enthusiasm in official circles in Berlin, there suddenly appeared, in the form of an English parliamentary paper, a despatch from Lord Bloomfield to the Foreign Office in Downing Street, in which a private conversation was reproduced that he had held with Herr von Schleinitz during the last Italian war, and which sadly compromised the probity of Prussian foreign policy. Lord John at the time admitted having committed an unheard-of indiscretion, but the first blow against the new alliance had been struck. The second blow is the misdirection of the Prince Regent’s letter.

You will have noticed that the Prince, in his speech from the throne, speaks very emphatically of upholding treaty rights and of the united front which Germany is prepared to show against any violation of the independence and integrity of the common fatherland. The unpleasant impression which the obvious threat had left on the Paris Bourse has been softened by the Russian journal Le Nord, which, in a tone of ironically condescending bonhomie (good-nature), strips the Prince’s speech of any serious significance, recalls similar phrases he uttered during the Italian war, and finally characterises the whole passage as merely falling in with the mood of the people. As for the rest of the Prince’s speech, it is in fact merely an enumeration of legislative failures. The only important projects debated by the chambers, the proposed marriage law and the laws on municipal administration and the reform of the land tax, from which the nobility in the greater part of the kingdom is still exempt, have all foundered. In addition, the Prince complains that his favourite measures regarding the army reform have not yet received legislative sanction.

Although the government, even with the present Chamber of Deputies, the great majority of which consists of supporters of the government party, has proved incapable of carrying through its proposed army reform, it has finally obtained a special grant of nine and a half million thalers for military expenditures, while at the same time – as I am informed by letters from the provinces – the intended changes in the army organisation are being silently introduced in practice, so that when the chambers reassemble, no alternative will remain to them but to sanction what will then have become a fait accompli. The essence of the intended army reform is explained in the Baltische Monatsschrift, a Russo-German journal published in Riga and printed with the permission of the Russian governor-general of Livonia, Estonia, and Courland.

“The Prussian army reform,” writes this journal, “which was instituted immediately after the Peace of Villafranca, can hardly serve any other purpose than to emancipate the government from the direct appeal to the whole population – an appeal which, under the previous military system, always became unavoidable when the government deemed it necessary to reinforce its policy by warlike demonstrations. Given the present political groupings of Europe, a state like Prussia, which is still struggling for full recognition as a great power, can neither suspend its entire peaceful existence in every case where it considers the use of its armed power necessary, nor can it, in every case, guarantee the nation called to arms an actual outbreak of hostilities. There is in the Landwehr system a certain democratic contradiction to the monarchical principle. The two mobilisations within a comparatively short space of time, in 1850 and 1859, which were never followed by any warlike action but merely by demobilisation, seemed to impair the authority of the external state policy among a large part of the Prussian population. It is precisely from the circumstances attending both mobilisations that public opinion appears to have drawn the conclusion that the government is bound by the consent of the public in every application of military force. Even the official explanations of Prussia’s conduct during the Italian complications contain the admission that the mobilisation of the Landwehr encountered unexpected obstacles.”

From this the Russian-German paper concludes that Prussia should rid itself of the Landwehr system in its present form, but at the same time it intimates with an ironical smile that “such a change in one of the most popular institutions precisely at the present moment, when Prussia is giving itself the appearance of standing on the ground of liberalism”, is a very delicate operation. I may remark here that this “Baltische Monatsschrift”, which appears in Riga under tsarist tutelage, forms to a certain extent the counterpart to the “Straßburger Correspondent”, which is published in Strasbourg under Bonapartist influence. Both skirmish on the German frontiers, the one from the east, the other from the west. The correspondents of the one can be regarded as literary Cossacks; those of the other as literary Zouaves. Both feign great solicitude for Germany and overflow with wise counsels for the country whose mother tongue they after all deign to use. Both strive to prepare the fatherland for great changes to come, and both smack of the entente cordiale <cordial understanding> that just now links the Caesarism of Paris with the Tsarism of Petersburg. But here the equality ceases. Even though the Strasbourg paper also exhales that certain odour of false melodramatic dignity which is characteristic of the bohemian literature of the Second French Empire, it is nevertheless written in the comfortable style proper to South Germany. It appeals to common sense and assuredly lays no claim to literary rank. In contrast, the Riga monthly struts along with a didactic solemnity and metaphysical profundity that smack of the traditions of the University of Königsberg. Nevertheless, I consider the outbursts of patriotic wrath with which the German press assails both the “Monatsschrift” and the “Correspondent”, but above all the latter, to be foolish manifestations of childish incapacity.