Foreword
Under the date ‘ London, 6 February  1860’ I published in the Berlin V olks-Zeitung, the Hamburg
Reform [1] and other German newspapers a statement that begins with the following words:
I hereby announce that I have made preparatory steps towards taking legal action for
libel against the Berlin National-Zeitung [2] for its leading articles no 37 and no 41 on
Vogt’s pamphlet: Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung. [3] I am reserving a
literary answer to Vogt for later.
Why I decided to answer Karl Vogt in a literary manner and the National -Zeitung in a legal manner
can be seen from the present book itself.
In the course of February 1860 I took action for libel against the N ational-Zeitung. After the case had
been through four stages of preparatory proceedings, I received, on 23 October of this year, the ruling

4

of the Prussian Royal Supreme Court denying me the right to prosecute my accusation to the highest
stage, and the case was thus dismissed before it could come to public proceedings. If this had taken
place, which I had a right to expect, I would have been spared the first third of the present publication.
A simple reprint of the shorthand record of the court proceedings would have been sufficient, and I
would thus have escaped the highly repugnant labour of answering accusations against my own
person, and thus being obliged to talk about myself. I have always avoided this so carefully that Vogt
could expect some success from his lying stories. However, sunt certi denique fines. [4] Vogt’s
farrago, summarised in its own way by the National -Zeitung, accuses me of a series of slanderous
actions which now, since I have been finally prevented from refuting them legally and publicly ,
demand a literary refutation. But apart from this consideration, which left me no choice, once I had to
go into Vogt’s tall stories about myself and my party comrades, I had other motives for dealing more
exhaustively with them: on the one hand, the almost unanimous shout of triumph with which the so-
called ‘liberal’ press in Germany greeted his alleged revel ations; on the other hand, the opportunity
offered by an analysis of this farrago for characterising such an individual, who represents a whole
tendency.
The answer to Vogt has forced me to expose here and there a  partie honteuse
[5] of the history of the
emigration. [6] Here I am only making use of the right of self -defence. Besides, with the exception of
a few people, the emigration can be accused of nothing worse than illusions, which were more or less
justified by the conditions of the times, and follie s, which necessarily grew out of the extraordinary
circumstances in which they unexpectedly found themselves. I speak here of course only of the first
years of the emigration. A comparison of the history of governments and of bourgeois society from,
say, 1849 to 1859 with the history of the emigration for the same period, would be the most splendid
apology for the latter that could be written.
I know in advance that the same clever men who, when Vogt’s farrago appeared, shook their heads
solemnly over the seriousness of his ‘revelations’, will now be completely unable to grasp how I
could squander my time on refuting such infantile nonsense, while the ‘liberal’ hacks who hawked
Vogt’s stale vulgarities and worthless lies with malicious haste around the German, Swiss, French and
American press will find the manner in which I send themselves and their heroes about their business
outrageously offensive. But never mind!
The political and legal parts of this book need no separate introduction. I would only like to note one
thing in order to avoid possible misunderstandings. The very men who, even before 1848, were in
agreement among themselves to support the independence of Poland, Hungary and Italy not only as
the right of those countries but as the interest of Germany and Europe, have laid down diametrically
opposed views on the tactics that Germany had to carry out in relation to Louis Napoleon on the
occasion of the Italian war of 1859. These contradictory views arose from contradictory judgements
of the factual assumptions, a decision on which will have to be reserved for a later occasion. For my
part I am concerned in this book only with the views of Vogt and his clique. Even the views he
claimed to represent and which he represented in the imagination of an in judicious mob fall outside
the terms of reference of my criticism. I deal with the views that he really represented.
Finally, I would like to express my hearty thanks for the ready help given to me in the writing of this
book not only by old friends in the party but also by many members of the emigration in Switzerland,
France and England who were not previously close to me and who, in part, were personally unknown
to me.
Karl Marx
London
17 November 1860
Notes
1 Volks-Zeitung — democratic daily paper, appeared from 1853 in Berlin. Reform —
liberal daily paper, appeared between 1848 and 1892 in Hamburg.

5

2 National-Zeitung — bourgeois daily paper which appeared between 1848 and 1915 in
Berlin. In the 1850s it represented a liberal tendency. From 1915 the 8 Uhr
Abendblatt/National-Zeitung.
3 Karl Vogt, Mein Prozess Gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung (Geneva, December 1859).
Allgemeine-Zeitung — bourgeois daily paper founded in 1798; appeared between 1810
and 1882 in Augsburg. In the 1850s and 1860s it supported plans for the national
unification of Germany under the domination of Austria.
4 There are after all certain limits.
5 Shameful chapter.
6 ‘Emigration’ — the German revolutionaries forced to emigrate from Germany after the
crushing of the revolution of 1848–49.

Chapter I: The Brimstone Gang
Clarín: Malas pastillas gasta;… hase untado con ungüento de azufre — Calderon [1]
That ‘rounded character ’, as the advocate, Hermann, tactfully described his rotund client, the
hereditary steward of Nichilberg, [2] before the District Court at Augsburg, begins his Horrendous
Contortions of History as follows:
Known under the name of the ‘Brimstone Gang’, [3] or also under the no less
characteristic name of the ‘Bürstenheimers’, there were, among the refugees of 1849, a
number of people who, at first scattered between Switzerland, France and England,
gradually gathered in London and there honoured Herr Marx as their visible chief. The
political principle of these fellows was the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc. (Karl
Vogt, Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung [4] (Geneva, December 1859),
p 136)
The Magnum Opus  [5] in which this important announcement occurs appeared in December 18 59.
Eight months previously, however, that ‘rounded character’ had published an article in the Biel
Handels-Courier [6] which must be regarded as the outline of the more far -reaching Contortions of
History. [7] Let us listen to the original text:
Since the overturn of the revolution in 1849 [crows the Biel Carpet-Bagger] a clique
of refugees has by and by gathered in London, whose members were known, among
the émigrés in Switzerland, as the ‘Bürstenheimers’ or in its [sic!] day as the
‘Brimstone Gang’. Their chief is Marx, the former editor of the Rheinische Zeitung in
Cologne — their password ‘Socialist Republic, Workers’ Dictatorship’ — and their
activity is the weaving of plots and conspiracies. (Reprinted in the Magnum Opus,
Section III, Documents, no 7, pp 31–32)
The clique of refugees who, ‘among the émigrés in Switzerland’, were known as the ‘Brimstone
Gang’, were transformed eight months later and for a larger audience into a mass ‘scattered’
throughout ‘Switzerland, France and England’, and known ‘am ong the refugees’ in general as the
‘Brimstone Gang’. It is the old tale of the buckram of Kendal green as told by Karl Vogt’s prototype,
the immortal Sir John Falstaff, who has by no means suffered any material loss in his zoological
reincarnation. From t he Biel Carpet -Bagger we learn that the ‘Brimstone Gang’  like the
‘Bürstenheimers’ were local Swiss flora. Let us have a look at their natural history.
Informed by friends that in the year 1849–50 a refugee society under the name ‘Brimstone Gang’ had
indeed flowered in Geneva, and that Herr SL  Borkheim, a well-established merchant in the City of
London, could give me more detailed information on the origins, growth and decay of this brilliant
association, I addressed myself in writing to that gentleman, who at the time was not known to me, in
February 1860, and did in fact receive, after a personal encounter, the following sketch, which I print
unaltered:

6

12 February 1860
18 Union Grove
Wandsworth Road
London
Dear Sir
Although until three days ago we were not acquainted with one another, despite the
fact that we have lived in the same country, and mostly in the same town, for nine
years, you were right to presume that I could not deny you, as a fellow exile, the
information you desired.
Well then, to the ‘Brimstone Gang’.
In 1849, shortly after we rebels had been driven out of Baden at gun-point, there met
in Geneva, partly sent there by the Swiss authorities and partly there by choice, several
young men who, as students, soldiers and merchants, had either been friends before
1848 in Germany or become acquainted with one another during the revolution.
The mood among the refugees was by no means bright. The so-called political leaders
tried to shrug off the blame for the failure on to each other’s shoulders, military
leaders criticised each other’s offensive retreats, flanking manoeuvres and strategic
withdrawals; people began to abuse each other as bourgeois republicans, Socialists and
Communists; it rained broadsheets, whose effects were far from soothing; spies were
suspected everywhere, and besides all this most people’s clothes were wearing to rags,
and hunger was to be read on many faces. In the midst of all these afflictions, the
young people I have already mentioned held together in friendship. They were:
Eduard Rosenblum, born in Odessa, the son of German parents; he had studied
medicine in Leipzig, Paris and Berlin.
Max Cohnheim from Fraustadt; he had been a shop assistant and was, at the outbreak
of the revolution, a volunteer in the Artillery of the Guard.
Korn, chemist and pharmacist from Berlin.
Becker, engineer from the Rhineland.
And I myself who, after I had taken my matriculation examination at the Werder
Gymnasium in Berlin, had resided in Breslau, Greifswald and Berlin for the purposes
of study, and whom the ‘48 revolution found in my native town of Glogau as a gunner.
I do not think that any of us were older than 24. We lived close together, in fact for
some time we all lived together in the same house in the Grand Pré. Our main
occupation was not to permit ourselves to be depressed and demoralised by the general
misery of the refugees and the political hangover we suffered in that little country,
which offered so few opportunities for earning a living. The climate and natural
surroundings were splendid — we remained true to our Prussian antecedents and
found the ‘Jegend jottvoll’. [8] Whatever one of us possessed belonged also to the
others, and when none of us had anything we found kind-hearted publicans or other
good people who would take pleasure in lending us something on the strength of our
young and vivacious faces. Honestly, we must all have looked really crazy! I must at
this point make grateful mention of the café proprietor, Bertin (Café de l’Europe), who
quite indefatigably gave ‘tick’ not only to us but also to many other German and
French refugees. In 1856, after an absence of six years, I visited Geneva while
returning from the Crimea for the sole purpose of paying my debts, with the reverence
of a repentant reveller. The good, round, fat Bertin was astonished, and assured me
that I was the first to do him this pleasure, but that he by no means regretted,
nevertheless, having 10,000 to 20,000 Francs outstanding to him from refugees who
had already been scattered all over the world. Quite apart from their debts to him, he
enquired with particular warmth about my closer friends. Unfortunately there was very
little I could tell him.

7

After the above digression I now return to the year 1849. We tippled joyfully and sang
merrily. I remember having seen refugees of every political shading, Frenchmen and
Italians too, at our table. Happy evenings spent in such dulci jubilo [9] all seemed to be
oases in the otherwise miserable desert of the life of the refugee. Even friends who
were, or were to become, members of the Grand Council of Geneva, found their way
now and then to our revels for relaxation.
Liebknecht, who is now here and whom I have seen only three or four times in the last
nine years, always meeting him by chance in the street, was not infrequently part of
our company. Students, doctors, former friends from the Gymnasium or the university
travelling abroad, often drank their way through many glasses of beer and many a
bottle of the good, cheap Mâcon with us. In between times we lay around for days,
indeed weeks, on Lake Geneva without ever coming ashore, singing the songs of the
troubadours and, guitar in hand, ‘serenading’ the windows of the villas on the Savoy
and Swiss shores.
I do not flinch from stating here that our boisterous blood relieved itself from time to
time in tricks that broke the law. That dear man, the late Albert Galeer, no mean
political opponent of Fazy’s in the Geneva corporation, would then preach morals to
us in the friendliest tone. ‘You fellows are crazy’, he would say, ‘but it is true that to
have such good spirits despite the misery of being refugees you can’t be moral or
physical weaklings — you need resilience for that.’ It was hard for that good- hearted
man to be any harder on us. He was a Grand Councillor of the Canton of Geneva.
The only duel that took place to my knowledge was with pistols between myself and
Herr R—n. The cause was by no means of a political nature. My second was a
Genevan artilleryman who spoke only French and the umpire was the young Oscar
Galeer, brother of the Grand Councillor, who unfortunately later, when a student in
Munich, was taken from us by typhus. A second duel, the cause of which was also
non-political, was to have taken place between Rosenblum and a refugee, Lieutenant
von F—g from Baden, who shortly afterwards returned to his own country and, I
believe, went back to the re-formed army of Baden. The quarrel was amicably settled
on the morning of the duel without coming to an actual fight, by the mediation of Herr
Engels — I assume this is the same man who is now said to live in Manchester. I have
not seen him since. This Herr Engels was on his way through Geneva and we certainly
did not drink any the less wine in his stimulating company. The encounter with him, if
I remember correctly, was particularly welcome to us as we could allow his purse to
take charge of the proceedings.
We joined neither the so-called blue republicans nor the red, neither the Socialist nor
the Communist party leaders. We took the liberty of judging the political activities of
Imperial Regents, of members of the Frankfurt Parliament and other talking-shops, of
revolutionary generals or corporals, and of the Dalai Lamas of Communism freely and
independently — I will not claim always correctly — and for that and for other
purposes that amused us we even founded a weekly paper entitled: RUMMELTIPUFF
—  Organ of the Rogueaucracy.
[10] Only two issues of the paper appeared. When I
was later arrested in France to be sent here, my papers and diaries were seized by the
French police, and I can no longer remember with accuracy whether our paper was
buried by an official ban or by poverty.
‘Philistines’ — from among the so-called bourgeois republicans and also from the
ranks of the so-called Communist workers — called us by the name of the ‘Brimstone
Gang’. Occasionally it seems to me that we gave ourselves this name. In any case, it
applied to our society solely in the amiable German sense of the word. I always meet
comrades in exile on the friendliest terms, friends of Herr Vogt and others who were,
and probably still are, friends of yours. But I am glad that I have never heard anyone,
on any side, speak with disrespect of the members of the Brimstone Gang I have
described, in either a personal or a political connection.

8

This ‘Brimstone Gang’ is the only one whose existence is known to me. It existed
between 1849 and 1850 in Geneva. In mid-1850 the few members of this dangerous
society, since they belonged to the categories of refugees who were to be expelled,
were forced to leave Switzerland with the exception of Korn. Thus the life of the
‘Brimstone Gang’ had come to an end. I know nothing of any other ‘Brimstone
Gangs’ existing anywhere else for any purpose whatsoever.
Korn remained, I believe, in Switzerland, and is said to have settled there as a
pharmacist. Cohnheim and Rosenblum went to Holstein before the battle of Idstedt.
[11] I think they both took part in it. Later, in 1851, they sailed to America. Rosenblum
returned to England at the end of the same year and went, in 1852, to Australia,
whence I have heard nothing from him since 1855. Cohnheim is supposed to have
been the editor of the New Yorker Humorist for some time. Becker went to America in
1850. I cannot unfortunately say with any certainty what has become of him.
I myself spent the winter of 1850–51 in Paris and Strasburg and was, as I already
indicated above, forcibly sent to England —  in the space of three months I was
dragged through 25 prisons and generally wore heavy iron chains during the march.
After spending the first year mastering the language, I devoted my life here to
business, not without a continuous lively interest in the political events of my
homeland, but always free of any refugee clique affairs. I am now doing quite well, or
as the English say: very well, sir, thank you. It is your own fault if you want to wade
through this long, but in any case not very important story.
I respectfully remain your devoted servant
Sigismund L Borkheim
So much for Herr Borkheim’s letter. With a premonition of their historical importance, the ‘Brimstone
Gang’ took the precautionary measure of carving a register of their members in woodcuts in the book
of history. The first issue of Rummeltipuff , that is to s ay, is decorated with the likenesses of its
founders.
The brilliant gentlemen of the ‘Brimstone Gang’ had taken part in Struve’s republican putsch of
September 1848, then been imprisoned in the gaol at Bruchsal, and finally fought as soldiers in the
campaign for the imperial constitution, which had carried them over the Swiss border.
[12] In the
course of 1850, two matadors of that same group, Cohnheim and Rosenblum, arrived in London,
where they ‘gathered round’ Herr Gustav Struve. I did not have the honour to be personally
acquainted with them. They entered into a political relationship with me by trying to form, under
Struve’s leadership, a committee in opposition to the London Refugees’ Committee [13] led at that
time by myself, Engels, Willich and other s. This committee’s pronunciamento, which was hostile to
us, and which was signed by Struve, Rosenblum, Cohnheim, Bobzin, Grunich and Oswald, appeared
in, among other journals, the Berlin Abend-Post.
In the heyday of the Holy Alliance the Charcoal Burners (Carbonari) [14] formed a lucrative mine for
police activity and aristocratic fantasy. Did our Imperial Gorgellantua think to exploit the ‘Brimstone
Gang’ in the same way as the Charcoal Gang for the instruction and edification of the Teutonic
citizenry? T he Saltpetre Gang would complete this policeman’s trinity. Perhaps, too, Karl Vogt  is
averse to sulphur because the smell of gunpowder terrifies him. Or does he, like other sick people,
hate the specific remedy for his disease? The doctor of occult medicin e, Rademacher, [15] as we
know, classifies diseases according to their remedies. Thus under the heading of sulphur disease
would come what the advocate, Hermann, calls his client’s ‘rounded character’ at the District Court in
Augsburg, what Rademacher calls a ‘stomach wall distended like a drum’, and what the even greater
Doctor Fischart calls the ‘vaulted belly from France’. All Falstaffian characters thus suffer from the
sulphur disease in more than one sense. Or did Vogt’s zoological conscience remind him that sulphur
is death to the itch -mite (sarcoptes scabiei), completely and utterly odious to those itch- mites who
have already frequently changed their skins. For, as recent researches have proved, only those itch -
mites that have moulted are capable of reproduction and have thus achieved self-consciousness. What
a nice contrast: on the one hand, sulphur and, on the other, the self-conscious itch-mite! But in any
case Vogt owes it to his ‘Emperor’ and the liberal Teutonic citizens to prove that all the trouble since

9

the ‘overturn of the revolution in 1849’ comes from the Brimstone Gang in Geneva and not the
December Gang in Paris. He had to elevate me personally to the chief of the Brimstone Gang which
he slanders, and which was unknown to me until the appe arance of the Magnum Opus , as a
punishment for my years of sacrilege against the head and members of the ‘Tenth of December
Gang’. [16] In order to make the justified resentment of the ‘jolly companion’ understandable I quote
here some passages from my boo k The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte  (New York, 1852),
relating to the ‘December Gang’ (see pages 31, 32 and 61, 62).
This gang [17] dates from the year 1849. On the pretext of founding a benevolent
society, the lumpen-proletariat of Paris had been organised into secret sections, each
section being led by Bonapartist agents, with a Bonapartist general at the head of the
whole. Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious
origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were
vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers,
mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, smugglers, gamblers, macquereaus, [18] brothel-
keepers, porters, casual labourers, organ-grinders, rag-pickers, knife-grinders, tinkers,
beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass thrown hither and thither,
which the French term la bohème; from this fraternity Bonaparte formed the core of
the Tenth of December Gang. A ‘benevolent society’ — in so far as, like Bonaparte,
all its members felt the need of benefitting themselves at the expense of the labouring
nation.
This Bonaparte, who constitutes himself chief of the lumpen-proletariat, who here
alone rediscovers in the mass the interests which he personally pursues, who
recognises in this scum, offal and refuse of all classes the only class upon which he
can base himself unconditionally, is the real Bonaparte, the Bonaparte sans phrase,
unmistakable even when later, being omnipotent, he shrugged off the guilt on to some
of his former fellow conspirators by sending them to Cayenne along with the
revolutionaries. Crafty old roué, he conceives the historical life of the nations and their
state dramas as comedy in the most vulgar sense, as a masquerade where the grand
costumes, words and postures merely serve to mask the pettiest knavery. Thus it was
on his expedition to Strasbourg, where a trained Swiss vulture had been playing the
part of the Napoleonic eagle. For his raid on Boulogne he puts some London lackeys
into French uniforms. They represent the army.
[19] In his Tenth of December Gang,
he assembles ten thousand rascally fellows, who are to play the part of the people, as
Nick Bottom that of the lion… [20]
What the national workshops were for the socialist workers, what the Gardes mobiles
were for the bourgeois republicans, the Tenth of December Gang was for Bonaparte
the party fighting force peculiar to him. On his journeys the detachments of this gang
packing the railways had to improvise a public for him, stage public enthusiasm, roar
Vive l’Empereur, insult and thrash republicans, under the protection, of course, of the
police. On his return journeys to Paris they had to form the advance guard, forestall
counter-demonstrations or disperse them. The Tenth of December Gang belonged to
him, it was his work, his very own idea. Whatever else he does, the circumstances do
for him or he is content to copy from the deeds of others. But Bonaparte with official
phrases about order, religion, family and property in public, before the citizens, and
with the secret society of the Schufterles and Spiegelbergs,
[21] the society of disorder,
prostitution and theft, behind him — that is Bonaparte himself as original author, and
the history of the Tenth of December Gang is his own history…
Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all classes. But he
cannot give to one class without taking from another. Just as at the time of the Fronde
[22] it was said of the Duke of Guise that he was the most ‘obliging’ man in France
because he had turned all his estates into his partisans’ obligations to him, so
Bonaparte would like to be the most ‘obliging’ man in France and turn all the
property, all the labour of France into a personal obligation to himself. He would like

10

to steal the whole of France in order to be able to give her to France, or, rather, in
order to be able to buy France back with French money, for as the chief of the Tenth of
December Gang he must buy what ought to belong to him. And all the state
institutions, the Senate, the Council of State, the legislative body, the courts, the
Legion of Honour, the soldiers’ medals, the washhouses, the public works, the
railways, the état major [23] of the National Guard not including privates, and the
confiscated estates of the House of Orleans — all beco me parts of the institution of
purchase. Every place in the army and in the government machine becomes a means of
purchase.
But the most important feature of this process, whereby France is robbed so that she
can be endowed, are the percentages that find their way into the pockets of the head
and the members of the Tenth of December Gang during the turnover. The witticism
with which Countess L, the mistress of M de Morny, characterised the confiscation of
the Orlean estates: ‘C’est le premier vol de l’aigle’
[24] is applicable to every flight of
this eagle, which is more like a raven. He himself and his adherents call out to one
another daily like that Italian Carthusian admonishing the miser who, with boastful
display, counted up the goods on which he could yet live for years to come: ‘Tu fai
conto sopra i beni, bisogna prima il conto sopra gli anni.’ [25] Lest they make a
mistake in the years, they count the minutes.
A gang of individuals push their way forward to the court, into the ministries, to the
head of the administration and the army, a crowd of the best of whom it must be said
that no one knows whence he comes, a noisy, disreputable, rapacious bohème that
crawls into gold-braided coats with the same grotesque dignity as the high dignitaries
of Soulouque. [26] One can visualise clearly this upper stratum of the Tenth of
December Gang, if one reflects that Véron-Crevel is its preacher of morals and
Granier de Cassaignac its thinker. [27] When Guizot, at the time of his ministry,
employed this Granier on a hole-and-corner newspaper against the dynastic
opposition, he used to boast of him with the quip: ‘C’est le roi des drôles.’ — ‘He is
the king of buffoons.’ One would be wrong to recall the Regency [28] or Louis XV in
connection with Louis Bonaparte’s court and tribe. For ‘often already, France has
experienced a government of mistresses; but never before a government of hommes
entretenus’. [29]
Driven by the contradictory demands of his situation and being at the same time, like a
conjurer, under the necessity of keeping the public gaze fixed on himself, as
Napoleon’s substitute, by springing constant surprises, that is to say, under the
necessity of executing a coup d’état en miniature every day, Bonaparte throws the
entire bourgeois economy into confusion, violates everything that seemed inviolable to
the Revolution of 1848, makes some tolerant of revolution, others desirous of
revolution, and produces actual anarchy in the name of order, while at the same time
stripping its halo from the entire state machine, profanes it and makes it at once
loathsome and ridiculous. The cult of the Holy Tunic of Trier
[30] he duplicates at
Paris in the cult of the Napoleonic imperial mantle. But when the imperial mantle
finally falls on the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, the bronze statue of Napoleon will
crash from the top of the Vendôme Column.
Notes
1 Clarin: ‘He spreads false words;… he has smeared himself with sulphur ointment.’
From Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s play El mágico prodigioso (The Mighty Magician) of
1637.
2 The word ‘vogt’ in German means a steward. Marx often uses the homonym of Vogt’s
surname (the title of a feudal official — steward or governor) to make fun of him. ‘The
Hereditary Steward of Nichilburg’ or ‘Erb-Vogt von Nichilburg’ (the castle that does not
exist) is a character in Johann Fischart’s satirical novel Geschichtklitterung und Aller

11

Praktik Grossmutter (Contortions of History and the Grandmother of all Practice).
Fischart’s work, which appeared in 1575, is a free translation of François Rabelais’ novel
Gargantua and Pantagruel. Marx quotes below from Fischart’s work.
3 Brimstone (or Sulphur) Gang (Schwefelbande) was originally the description of a
student association at Jena University in the 1770s, which had a bad reputation because
of the scandals caused by its members. The expression ‘Schwefelbande’ later became a
general term for mobs of delinquents.
4 My Case Against the Allgemeine Zeitung.
5 ‘Great Work’, ‘Hauptbuch’. Marx uses this term to distinguish Vogt’s book Mein
Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung from Vogt’s other, smaller publications in the
press on the same subject.
6 Trade-Messenger.
7 Marx refers here to Vogt’s article Zur Warnung (As a Warning) of 23 May, which
appeared in the supplement of no 150 of the Schweizer Handels-Courier of 2 June 1859.
Schweizer Handels-Courier — a bourgeois daily paper. Appeared between 1853 and
1909 in Biel (Switzerland). In the 1850s and 1860s it represented Bonapartist views.
Marx from time to time ironically calls this newspaper the Biel Carpet-Bagger.
8 ‘Jegend jottvoll’ is the Prussian pronunciation of ‘Gegend gottvoll’ (‘we found the
area divine’).
9 Sweet pleasure.
10 ‘“Rogueaucracy” was the title, if my memory serves me right, given to all the liberal
parties in any one of the German pocket parliaments or the Frankfurt Parliament. We
wanted to immortalise it.’ — Note by Borkheim.
11 Idstedt — a battle in the Schleswig -Holstein campaign of 1850. For more detailed
information on this campaign, see Franz Mehring, Absolutism and Revolution in
Germany 1525–1848 (New Park Publications, 1975), pp 198–99, 280n.
12 The republican uprising which broke out Baden at the end of September 1848 was
kindled by a group of German émigrés led by Gustav Struve, who came from
Switzerland on 21 September. With the support of armed detachments of Baden
democrats and of the local Bürgerwehr (Civic Guard), Struve declared the German
Republic. After a few days the uprising was quelled by Baden troops and Struve and a
number of the participants were arrested and sentenced to long periods of imprisonment,
to serve which they were sent to the town gaol of Bruchsal (Baden). In May 1849, during
a new uprising in Baden, Struve and other political prisoners were released by the rebels.
Imperial Constitution Campaign — the struggle for the defence of the Imperial
Constitution adopted by the Frankfurt National Assembly on 28 March 1849 was the last
stage of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1848–49 in Germany. The governments
of almost all the large German states (Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Hanover and others)
refused to recognise the constitution. In May and June 1849 there were, in the Rhineland,
Dresden, Baden and the Palatinate, armed struggles of the popular masses under the
leadership of often hesitant and vacillating petty-bourgeois democrats. The rebels
received no support from the Frankfurt National Assembly. The rising had a sporadic
and spontaneous character and was cruelly suppressed in the middle of July 1849. On the
character and course of these struggles, in which Engels took part, see Die Deutsche
Reichsverfassungskampagne (MEW, Volume 7, pp 109–97) and Revolution and
Counter-Revolution in Germany.
13 In September 1849, Marx was elected to the Committee for the Support of German
Political Refugees which was formed by the German Workers’ Educational Association.
In order to defeat the attempt of the petty-bourgeois democratic émigrés to bring the
proletarian elements of the London emigration under their influence, the Committee for
the Support of German Political Refugees was turned into the Social-Democratic

12

Refugees’ Committee, into the leadership of which Engels entered. In mid-September
1850, Marx and Engels announced their resignation from the Refugees’ Committee, as
the majority of members had fallen under the influence of the Willich–Schapper faction.
14 Carbonari (charcoal-burners) — a secret political society which existed at the
beginning of the nineteenth century in Italy and in the 1820s in France. The Italian
Carbonari, who had in their ranks representatives of the urban bourgeoisie, of the
bourgeoisified nobility and of the peasantry, fought for the national unity and
independence of Italy and for free-thinking state reforms. The French Carbonari, to
whom the representatives of various political tendencies belonged, had as their aim the
overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy.
15 Marx calls Johann Gottfried Rademacher a miracle doctor, referring to the title of his
book, Rechtfertigung der von den Gelehrten misskannten, verstandesrechten
Erfahrungsheillehre der alten scheidekünstigen Geheimärzte und treue Mittheilung des
Ergebnisses einer 25 Jährigen Erprobung dieser Lehre am Krankenbette (Justification of
the Rational Doctrine of the Experience of Healing, Misunderstood by the Academics, of
the Old Analytical Occult Doctors, and True Report of the Result of 25 Years’ Test of
this Doctrine at the Sick-Bed).
16 By Tenth of December Gang Marx means the participants in the Bonapartist coup
d’état of 2–4 December 1851, which led to the setting up of the counter-revolutionary
regime of the Second Empire in France under Napoleon III. In the preparations for this
coup the secret Bonapartist society of the Tenth of December, set up in 1849, played a
significant role. It was so called in honour of the election of their protector to the
Presidency of the French Republic on 10 December 1848, and Marx proceeds to give its
characteristics.
17 In this extract from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Marx everywhere
changes the word ‘society’ into the word ‘gang’.
18 Pimps.
19 This deals with the attempts undertaken by Louis Bonaparte under the July monarchy
to carry out coups d’état by means of military putsches. On 30 September 1836, he
succeeded in rousing the Strasbourg garrison with the aid of a few pro-Bonapartist
officers, but within a few hours the insurgents were disarmed. Louis Bonaparte was
arrested and deported to America. Taking advantage of a certain revival of Bonapartist
feeling in France, he landed with a handful of conspirators in Boulogne on 6 August
1840 and attempted to instigate a rebellion among the troops of the local garrison. But
this attempt proved to be an utter failure. Bonaparte was sentenced to life imprisonment,
but in 1846 he escaped to England.
20 Nick Bottom, a character in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.
21 Schufterle and Spiegelberg — characters in Schiller’s drama Die Räuber (The
Robbers) who plunder and murder unimpeded by any moral scruple.
22 Rebel party during the minority of Louis XIV of France.
23 General staff.
24 ‘Vol’ means either flight or theft — note by Marx: ‘It is the first flight/theft of the
eagle.’
25 You count your goods. You should first count your years.
26 Faustin Soulouque (c1782–1867) — President of the Negro Republic of Haiti, in
1849 he proclaimed himself Emperor, assuming the name of Faustin I.
27 Véron-Crevel — in his novel Cousin Bette, Balzac delineates the thoroughly
dissolute Parisian philistine in Crevel, a character whom he draws after the model of Dr
Véron, the proprietor of the Constitutionnel, a French bourgeois daily published in Paris
during 1815–70. Adolphe Granier de Cassaignac (1806–1880) — French journalist,

13

unscrupulous politician, before the revolution of 1848 Orleanist, later Bonapartist.
During the Second Empire a member of the legislative Corps.
28 A reference to Philippe d’Orléans’s regency during the minority of Louis XV from
1715 to 1723.
29 ‘Kept men’, the words quoted are those of Madame Girardin — note by Marx.
30 The holy tunic of Trier — a Catholic relic preserved in Trier  Cathedral, alleged to be
a holy vestment taken from Christ while he was being executed. It became an object of
veneration for pilgrims.

Chapter II: The Bürstenheimers
But, sirrah, there’s no room for faith, truth, nor honesty, in this bosom of thine; it is all
filled up with guts and midriff. (Shakespeare) [1]
‘Bürstenheimers’ or ‘Brimstone Gang’, it says in the Original Gospel according to Biel (page 3 of the
Magnum Opus, Documents). ‘Brimstone Gang’ or also ‘Bürstenheimers’, it says in the Magnum Opus
(p 136).
According to both readings the ‘Brimstone Gang’ and the ‘Bürstenheimers’ are one and the same
gang. The ‘Brimstone Gang’, as we have seen, quite died out in the middle of 1850. And the
‘Bürstenheimers’? The ‘rounded character’ is the civiliser att ached to the December Gang, and
civilisation, as Fourier says, is distinguished from barbarism by the fact that the simple lie is replaced
by the compound lie.
Our ‘compound’ imperial Falstaff tells us (Magnum Opus, p 198) that a certain Abt is the ‘lowest of
the low’. With what admirable modesty does Vogt put himself in the positive but his Abt in the
superlative, in a certain sense promoting him to his Field- Marshal Ney. When Vogt’s Original
Version of the Gospel appeared in the Biel Carpet -Bagger I asked the editorial board of the Volk
to print this Original Mop -Rag without any further commentary. The editorial board, however, added
this note to the reprint:
The above fragment originates from a degenerate character by the name of Abt, who,
eight years ago in Geneva, was unanimously found guilty of various dishonourable
activities by a court of honour of German refugees. (Volk, no 6, 11 June 1859)
The editorial board of the Volk held Abt to be the author of Vogt’s Original Mop-Rag; they forgot that
Switzerland had two Richmonds in the field, [3] not only an Abt but also a Vogt. [4]
In the spring of 1851, then, the ‘lowest of the low’ invented the ‘Bürstenheimers’, whom Vogt
pilfered from his Field Marshal in the autumn of 1859. The sweet habit of plagiar ism instinctively
pursues him from his hackwork in natural history to his hackwork on police matters. The Geneva
Workers’ Association was for a period presided over by the brush- maker (Bürstenmacher)
Sauernheimer. Abt took the first half of Sauernheimer’s trade and the second half of his name, and
from the two halves cleverly composed the whole ‘ Bürstenheimer’. With this title he originally
designated, apart from Sauernheimer , his closest associates, Kamm, from Bonn, a brush- maker by
trade, and Ranickel from Bingen, a journeyman book-binder. He appointed Sauernheimer the General
of the ‘Bürstenheimers’, Ranickel their Adjutant, and Kamm a ‘Bürstenheimer’ sans  phrases.
Later, when two refugees who belonged to the Geneva Workers’ Association, Imandt (now a
university professor at Dundee) and Schily (previously a lawyer in Trier, now in Paris), brought about
the ostracism of Abt by a court of honour of the Association, Abt published an abusive pamphlet in
which he elevated the whole of the Geneva Workers’ Association to the rank of ‘Bürstenheimers’. So
you see, there were Bürstenheimers in general and Bürstenheimers in particular. ‘ Bürstenheimers’ in
general embraced the Geneva Workers’ Association, the same Association from which the cornered
Vogt surreptitiously obtained for himself a testimonium pauperitatis
[6] published in the Allgemeine
Zeitung, and before which he crawled on all fours on the occasion of the Schiller celebration and the
Robert Blum celebration (1859). [7] ‘Bürstenheimers’ in particular meant, as I have said,

14

Sauernheimer, who was completely unknown to me and never came to London; Kamm, who was
deported from Geneva and travelled to the United States by way in London, where he sought out not
me, but Kinkel; and finally Ranickel, or rather the ranickel , who, as the adjutant of the
Bürstenheimers, stayed in Geneva, where he ‘gathered’ around that ‘rounded character’. In fact he
represented, in his own person, the Vogt proletariat. Since I shall return to the ranickel later, here are
some provisional details on the monster. Ranickel belonged to the force of refugees commanded by
Willich in Besançon after the failure of Hecker’s campaign.
[8] He went through the Imperial
Constitution campaign with them and later fled with them to Switzerland. Willich was his Communist
Mahomet, who was to bring about the millennium with fire and with sword. A vain, loquacious,
melodramatic coxcomb, the ranickel overbore the tyrant. In Geneva it raged in red fury against the
‘Parliamentarians’ in general, and threatened in particular, like another William Tell, ‘to throttle the
Governor (Land-Vogt)’. When, however, it was introduced to Vogt by Wallot, a refugee from the
1830s and Vogt’s boyhood friend, the ranickel’s bloody way of thinking was washed away in the milk
of human kindness. ‘The rascal was the Vogt’s man’, as Schiller says. [9]
The adjutant of the Bürstenheimers became the adjutant of General Vogt, whose military fame has
only been eclipsed because Plon- Plon [10] thought the Neapolitan Captain Ulloa (also a General by
courtesy) quite bad enough for the part his ‘ corps de touristes ’ [11] had to perform in the Italian
campaign, and is holding his Parolles in reserve for the great adventure with ‘the lost drum’ that will
take p lace on the Rhine. [12] In 1859, Vogt promoted his ranickel from the proletariat to the
bourgeoisie, procured him a business ( objets d’art, bookbinding, stationery) and in addition obtained
for him the custom of the Geneva government. The Bürstenheimers’ Adjutant became Vogt’s maid of
all work, Cicisbeo, family friend, Leporello, [13] tale-bearer and particularly after fat Jack’s [14] fall
from grace, his listening post and Bonapartist propagandist among the workers. A Swiss newspaper
recently announced the discovery of a third species of hedgehog, the rhine -hedgehog (Ran- or Rhein-
Igel), uniting the characteristics of the hedge-hog and the hedge-pig, and found in a little place on the
Arve, the country seat of Humboldt-Vogt. Was this Ran-Igel meant for our ranickel?
NB, the only refugee in Geneva with whom I was connected, Dr Ernst Dronke, a former fellow editor
of the Neue Rheinische Zeltung  [15] and now a merchant in Liverpool, was opposed to
‘Bürstenheimery’.
As a preface to the letters from Imandt and Schily that follow, I would only like to say that at the
outbreak of the revolution Imandt left the university to take part in the war in Schleswig -Holstein as a
Freischärler. [16] In 1849, Schily and Imandt led the attack on the arsenal at Prüm, [17] whence, with
their men and the weapons they seized, the two fought their way through to the Palatinate in order to
join there the ranks of the army of the Imperial Constitution. Thrown out of Switzerland in the early
summer of 1852, they came to London.
Dundee
5 February 1860
Dear Marx
I do not understand how Vogt can connect you with affairs in Geneva. It was known
among the refugees there that the only one of us who was connected with you was
Dronke. The Brimstone Gang existed before my time, and the only name I remember
in relation to it is Borkheim.
The Bürstenheimers were the Geneva Workers’ Association. The name owes its
origins to Abt. The Association was at the time a nursery of the Willich secret society,
in which I functioned as chairman. When, on my motion, Abt was declared by the
Workers’ Association, to which many refugees belonged, to be an infamous person
unworthy of associating with refugees and workers, he published shortly afterwards a
lampoon accusing Schily and myself of the most absurd crimes. We thereupon raised
the whole matter anew in a different place and in front of entirely different people.
Called upon to prove the slanders he had written, he rejected our demand and without
Schily or myself needing to say anything in our defence, Dentzer put down a motion
declaring Abt to be an infamous slanderer. This motion was unanimously passed for a

15

second time, this time in a meeting of refugees that consisted almost entirely of
Parliamentarians. I am sorry that my report is so extremely scanty, but this is the first
time I have thought about that rubbish in eight years. I would not like to be
condemned to writing about it, and I would be most surprised if you found yourself
able to dip your fingers in that stew.
Adieu
Your Imandt
A well-known Russia writer, [18] a great friend of Herr Vogt’s during his stay in Geneva, wrote to me,
in the sense of the closing lines of the above letter:
My Dear Marx
I have learnt with the liveliest indignation of the calumnies that have been spread
about you, which came to my attention through an article in the Revue contemporaine
signed Edouard Simon. What particularly astonished me was that Vogt, whom I did
not think either stupid or malicious, could have fallen into the moral abasement that
his pamphlet reveals. I did not need any evidence to be assured that you were
incapable of base and dirty intrigues, and it was all the more painful for me to read of
these defamations, since at the very moment they were printed you were giving the
world the first part of the fine work which is to renew economic science and place it
on a new and firmer basis… My dear Marx, do not concern yourself with all this
wretchedness; all serious men, all conscientious men are on your side, but what they
expect from you is something other than sterile polemics; they would like to be able as
soon as possible to study the continuation of your fine work — your success among
thinking men is immense, and if it is agreeable to you to learn of the sensation your
doctrines have aroused in Russia I shall tell you that at the beginning of this year
Professor —
[19] gave a public course on political economy in Moscow, the first
lecture of which was nothing other than a paraphrase of your recent publication. I am
sending you a copy of the Gazette du Nord in which you will see how your name is
esteemed in my country. Adieu, my dear Marx, stay in good health and work as in the
past to enlighten the world without preoccupying yourself with petty stupidity and
petty baseness. Please believe the friendship of your devoted…
Szemere, the former Hungarian minister, also wrote to me: ‘Is it worth your  while to busy yourself
with all this gossip?’
Why, despite this and similar dissuasions, I have, to quote Imandt’s powerful language, dipped my
fingers in Vogt’s stew, you will find briefly indicated in the foreword.
So back to the Bürstenheimers. I print the following letter from Schily complete including the parts
that do not refer to our ‘muttons’. [20] I have however abbreviated some of the information on the
Brimstone Gang already anticipated in Borkheim’s letter, and I have reserved some parts for a later
place, since I must deal with ‘my choice subject’ to some extent artistically, and thus cannot reveal all
my secrets at once.
Paris
8 February 1860
46 rue Lafayette
Dear Marx
I was very pleased to receive, in your letter of the 31st, a direct sign of life from you,
and you find me all the readier to give you the information you request on the
Geneveriana in question because I wanted to write to you about it proprio motu. [21]
That is to say that the fact that Vogt bundles you together with complete strangers was
the first thought, not only of myself, but also of all my acquaintances from Geneva
living here when we had occasion to speak of it. Thus I took over the job, as a duty to
truth, of giving you all the appropriate information on ‘Bürstenheimers’, ‘Brimstone
Gang’, etc. So you will understand that I found your two questions: ‘1: Who were the

16

Bürstenheimers and what did they do?’ and ‘2: Who were the Brimstone Gang, of
what elements did it consist and what did it do?’ very timely. First, however, I must
charge you with an infraction of chronological order, for, according to the latter,
priority belongs to the Brimstone Gang. If Vogt wanted to talk of the Devil to the
German philistine, or even heap burning brimstone on his head, and at the same time
‘pull his leg’, then he really should have chosen more diabolical figures as his
prototypes than those harmless, jolly, alehouse geniuses whom we elders of the
Geneva emigration jokingly and without any unfriendly mental reservations called by
the name of the Brimstone Gang, and who accepted the appellation just as guilelessly.
They were merry sons of the muses who had taken their examina and exercitia
practica
[22] in the various South German putsches and finally in the Imperial
Constitution campaign, and who were now strengthening themselves after the failure
they had suffered under their red examiners and taskmasters in Geneva for a
resumption of the business… It goes without saying that someone who never went to
Geneva, or only arrived after the gang had been broken up, obviously never belonged
to it. That is to say that it was a purely local flower, which only blossomed for a day
(so that this sublimate should really be called flowers of sulphur). However, and
probably because of the revolutionary whiff of their Rummeltipuff, they probably
smelled a little too strong for Swiss nerves, for: Druey
[23] blew, and the flower was
scattered to the four winds. It was only some time afterwards that Abt, and several
years after him Cherval, came to Geneva, where each smelled ‘after his own fashion’,
but by no means, as Vogt claims, like that bouquet, which had long since been torn up
and forgotten, and had lost its perfume.
The Gang’s activities can more or less be summed up in the words: Toiling in the
vineyard of the Lord. At the same time they edited Rummeltipuff under the motto,
‘Stay in the land and nourish thyself redly’, and in it wittily and humorously made fun
of God and the world, stigmatised false prophets, scourged parliamentarians (inde
irae), [24] spared neither themselves nor us, their audience, and caricatured one and all,
friend and foe alike, with admirable conscientiousness and impartiality.
I do not need to tell you that they had no connection with you and did not wear your
Bundschuh. [25] Nor can I conceal from you the fact that this footwear would not have
been to their taste. Soldiers of the revolution, they were for the time being lounging
around in the slippers of the cease-fire until the revolution could reactivate them and
equip them with her own buskins (the seven-league boots of decisive progress). And
anybody who tried to disturb their siesta with Marxist political economy, with
workers’ dictatorship, etc, would have been ill received by them. Dear God! The work
they did demanded a toast-master rather than a chairman, and their economic studies
revolved around a pot and its red contents. ‘The right to work’, Backfisch, an honest
blacksmith from the Odenwald, once said, ‘was all very well, but they should leave
him be when it came to the duty to work…’
Let us then allow the Brimstone Gang’s gravestone, so sacrilegiously raised, to fall
back into place. Actually, a Hafiz [26] ought to sing a Requiescat in pace to prevent
any further desecration of the Gang’s tomb. Lacking which, may it receive pro viatico
et epitaphio [27] the obituary: ‘They all had a whiff of gunpowder’, while their
sacrilegious historiographer only ever managed to smell brimstone.
By the time the Bürstenheimers appeared, the Brimstone Gangsters lived on only in
legend, in the registers of Geneva philistines and in the hearts of Geneva belles. The
brushmakers and bookbinders Sauernheimer, Kamm, Ranickel, etc, fell out with Abt.
Taking the part of the former, Imandt, myself and others also suffered the enmity of
the latter. Abt was then summoned to a general assembly composed of the refugees
and the Workers’ Association as a cour de pairs or rather as a haute cour de justice,
[28] before which he did in fact appear. Not only did he fail to uphold the accusations
he had hurled at this and that person, but he declared point blank that he had plucked

17

them out of thin air as a reprisal against his opponents’ accusations that were
composed of the same element: ‘Tit for tat, reprisals hold the world together’, he said.
Then, when he had boldly pleaded his tit-for-tat system and thoroughly persuaded the
high peers of its practical value, and thereupon proof had been brought forward
concerning the accusations made against him, he admitted that he had committed a
malicious slander, was found guilty of the other misdemeanours imputed to him and
accordingly ostracised and excommunicated. En revanche [29] he now named the
noble peers, originally only the above-mentioned guild members, ‘Bürstenheimers’: as
you see a happy combination of the name and the status of the first-named of that
guild, whom you therefore have to honour as the founding father of the guild of
Bürstenheim without, however, marching alongside or even behind that tribe, whether
it embraces the guild or the above-mentioned peerage. For you should know that those
among them who occupied themselves with the ‘organisation of the revolution’ did so,
not as your supporters but as your opponents, in that they honoured Willich as their
God-the-Father, or at least as their Pope, and reviled you as their Antichrist or Anti-
Pope, so that Dronke, who counted as your only supporter and legatus a latere [30] in
the diocese of Geneva, was excluded from all councils except the oenological ones,
where he was primes inter pares. [31] But the Bürstenheimery, like the Brimstone
Gang, was purely ephemeral, and blew away like dust before Druey’s powerful breath.
The fact that a pupil of Agassiz [32] could have got hopelessly lost among these fossils
of the Geneva emigration, and could dig up from them such fabulous little natural
histories as those served up in his pamphlet, is all the more astonishing in relation to
the species Bürstenheimerana for the fact that he has at his disposal in his zoological
cabinet a splendid specimen of that species in the shape of a mastodon of the order of
ruminants in the person of the prehistoric Bürstenheimer Ranickel. The rumination,
therefore, seems not to have proceeded correctly, or not to have been studied correctly
by the said pupil…
You now have everything you demanded, et au delà. [33] And now I would like to ask
you for something, that is to say your opinion on the introduction of an inheritance tax
pro patria, vulgo [34] the state, as a chief source of finance, with the removal of the
taxes burdening the propertyless classes and directed, of course, only against large
inheritances… Apart from this inheritance tax I am also concerning myself with two
other German institutions, ‘the consolidation of land-holdings’ and ‘the insurance of
mortgages’, an understanding of which I would like to introduce in these parts,
although it is entirely missing, as the French in general, with a few exceptions, see
only sauerkraut and nebulosity on the far bank of the Rhine. There was an exception
some time ago in the Univers, which, lamenting the undue parcellisation of landed
property, correctly added: ‘It would be desirable to apply immediately the energetic
remedies that have been used with advantage in parts of Germany: the obligatory re-
arrangement of property wherever seven-tenths of the proprietors in a community
demand this measure. This redistribution will facilitate drainage, irrigation, rational
cultivation and the construction of roads on the properties.’ Then there comes the
Siècle, in general anyway somewhat short-sighted and in the consideration of German
conditions in particular totally blind, by virtue of its self-satisfied Chauvinism, worn
proudly like the ragged clothes of Diogenes, which pulp it warms up daily for its
readers as patriotism. This same Chauvin, now, after giving the Univers, his bête
noire, the obligatory matutinal greeting, declaims: ‘Rural proprietors, follow this
advice. Hurry to demand the obligatory reorganisation of your properties; rob the poor
to profit the rich. O fortunatos nimium agricolas — too lucky inhabitants of the
countryside — sua si bona — if only they knew the advantage of the obligatory
reorganisation of property.’ As if on a vote by heads the rich would prevail over the
poor.

18

For the rest I let God’s water flow over God’s land, render unto Caesar the things that
are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s, and respectively even ‘the Devil’s
share’, and remain thus.
Your old friend
Schily
From the material we have seen up until now it follows that, if in Geneva there existed from 1849–50
a ‘Brimstone Gang’ and from 1851–52 the ‘Bürstenheimers’, two associations that had nothing to do
with one another and nothing in common with me, the existence of the ‘ Brimstone Gang ’ or
‘Bürstenheimers’ exposed by our Parliamentary clown, is cloth of his cloth, a lie to the power four,
‘fat as he that fathered it’. Imagine an historian having the shamelessness to report: ‘At the time of the
first French revolution a number of people were known under the name of the “Cercle sociale” [35] or
also under the no less characteristic name of the “Jacobins”.’
As far as the life and deeds of the ‘Brimstone Gang’ or ‘Bürstenheimers’ which he had made up were
concerned, our Friar Tuck avoided all expense on production costs. I shall quote a single example:
One of the main activities of the Brimstone Gang [he of the rounded character explains
to his astounded audience] was so to compromise people in the home country that they
had to resist their attempts at exploitation no longer and pay money [a nice turn of
phrase, ‘they had to resist their attempts at exploitation no longer’] so that the gang
would keep the fact that they were compromised secret. Not one but hundreds of
letters were written by these men [that is to say, Vogt’s homunculi] to Germany,
containing the unconcealed slogan that a denunciation would be made of participation
in this or that act of the revolution if a certain sum of money did not reach a given
address by a certain point in time. (Magnum Opus, p 139)
Why did Vogt not have one of these letters printed? Because the ‘Brimstone Gang’ wrote ‘hundreds’.
If threatening letters were as cheap as blackberries, Vogt would swear that we were not to have one. If
he was to be summoned tomorrow before a court of honour of the Grütliverein
[36] to explain the
‘hundreds’ of ‘threatening letters’, he would draw from his belt instead of a letter a bottle of wine,
smack his lips, snap his fingers and amidst the be lly-shaking laughter of a Silenus cry out with his
Abt: ‘Tit for tat, reprisals hold the world together.’
Notes
1 Henry IV, Part I, Act I, Scene II.
2 Das Volk — German -language weekly newspaper which appeared between 7 May and
20 August 1859 in London. It was founded as the official organ of the German Workers’
Educational Association in London under the editorship of the German publicist and
petty-bourgeois democrat Elard Biscamp. From the second issue Marx collaborated
unofficially with the newspaper, gave constant advice and help, wrote articles, organised
financial support, etc. From the sixth issue, 11 June 1859, the paper’s editorial board
officially announced the collaboration of Marx, Engels, Freiligrath, Wilhelm Wolff and
Heinrich Heise. From this time onwards Marx was effectively the editor of the
newspaper, which thenceforth became an organ of the proletarian revolutionaries. At the
beginning of July, Marx took over the whole running of the paper. The Volk defended
the revolutionary theories and the tactics of the proletarian struggle worked out by Marx,
discussed the class struggles of the proletariat and fought irreconcilably against the
representatives of the petty-bourgeois ideology. The paper analysed the events of the
Austro–Franco–Italian war of 1859 and the questions of German and Italian reunification
from the standpoint of proletarian internationalism, exposed the reactionary foreign
policy of the great European powers, and conducted a consistent struggle against
Bonapartism and its open and concealed supporters. In the Volk there appeared Marx’s
Foreword to his book Critique of Political Economy and five of his articles, including the
uncompleted series of articles ‘Quid pro Quo’; nine articles by Engels and his review of
Marx’s book Critique of Political Economy; the marginal notes on the contents of the

19

newspaper Hermann published by the German petty-bourgeois democrats in London,
composed by Marx with Biscamp’s participation and published as Gatherings from the
Press. Apart from these, a whole number of further articles and the Politische Rundschau
(Political Review) bear clear signs of having been worked over by Marx. In all 16 issues
of the paper appeared. On 20 August 1859, the paper ceased publication because of lack
of money.
3 ‘Two Richmonds’ — see Shakespeare, Richard III, Act V, Scene IV. The phrase
indicates the presence of a second, unexpected, enemy.
4 Not only an Abbot but also a Steward.
5 Pure and simple.
6 Certificate of bankruptcy.
7 See Chapter III; Robert Blum (1807–1848) — petty-bourgeois democrat, by profession
a journalist. Leader of the left at the Frankfurt National Assembly. Sent to represent the
Assembly in Vienna, where he was executed by drumhead court martial following the
defeat of the insurrection in October 1848.
8 ‘Hecker’s campaign’ — in April 1849 a republican insurrection broke out in Baden.
Frederick Hecker was one of the leaders. His detachment was, like other insurrectionary
groups, beaten by government troops. The insurrection was defeated. Some of the
participants later joined the troop of German refugees organised in November 1848 in
Besançon, France, by Willich. The members of this troop were materially supported by
the French government, but at the beginning of 1849 this support ceased. This troop later
joined the Free Corps which participated, under the command of Willich, in the actions
of the Baden–Palatinate insurrectionary army in May–June 1849.
9 ‘The rascal was the Vogt’s man.’ —  Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, Act I, Scene IV.
10 Prince ‘Plon-Plon’ was Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte (1822–1891),
cousin of Napoleon III. It was through Plon-Plon that Vogt received his subsidies from
Napoleon III: see DB Riazanov, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Monthly Review
Press, London and New York, 1973), p 118.
11 Party of tourists.
12 ‘The adventure of the lost drum’ — Marx’s ironical name for the efforts of Napoleon
III and Bonapartist groups, supported in the press by Vogt, to seize the left bank of the
Rhine. Marx compares these Bonapartist plans with the episode in Shakespeare’s All’s
Well That Ends Well (Act III, Scenes V and VI; Act IV Scenes I and III) in which
Captain Parolles goes in search of the missing drum and is finally unmasked as a
cowardly, boastful and corrupt person by his former companions.
13 Leporello — valet to Don Giovanni in Mozart’s opera.
14 Fat Jack — Falstaff.
15 Neue Rheinische Zeitung, ‘Organ der Demokratie’ — daily newspaper edited b y Karl
Marx and published in Cologne from 1 June 1848 to 19 May 1849. The editorial board
included Frederick Engels, Wilhelm Wolff, Georg Weerth, Ferdinand Wolff, Ernst
Dronke, Ferdinand Freiligrath and Heinrich Bürgers. As the organ of the proletarian
wing of the democracy, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung became the educator of the popular
masses in the struggle against the counter-revolution. The guiding lead-articles on the
most important questions involving the German and European revolutions were as a rule
written by Marx and Engels. The determined and irreconcilable attitude of the New
Rheinische Zeitung, its militant internationalism and its political revelations called forth
a hue and cry from the side of the feudal-monarchist and the bourgeois-liberal press even
in the first months of its publication, as well as persecution by the Prussian government,
which became stronger after the counter-revolutionary coup in Prussia in November–
December 1849. Disregarding all the persecution and the political disciplinary measures,

20

the Neue Rheinische Zeitung boldly defended the interests of the revolutionary
democracy and thus of the working class. In May 1849, when the counter-revolution in
general was going over to the offensive, the Prussian government, which had already
refused Marx’s citizenship, decreed his expulsion from Prussia. His expulsion and the
reprisals against the other editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung forced the editorial
board to cease publication of the paper. The last issue of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
(no 301, 19 May 1849) appeared in red ink. In their farewell appeal to the workers of
Cologne the editors declared: ‘Its last word will everywhere and always be:
Emancipation of the working class!’ The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was the ‘best,
unsurpassed organ of the revolutionary proletariat’ — Lenin.
16 A member of the revolutionary ‘Freishchar’ or ‘Freikorps’ (volunteer corps).
17 The storming of the arsenal at Prüm on 17–18 May 1849 was undertaken by
democrats with the support of the workers of Trier and the surrounding district. The
attackers’ aim was to seize arms in order to unleash an uprising in support of the
Imperial Constitution. Although the arsenal was for a time occupied by insurgents, the
movement was quickly crushed by government troops.
18 Ivan Kondratievich Babst.
19 Nicolai Ivanovich Sasanov.
20 This letter was originally written in French.
21 Of my own volition.
22 Examina — examinations; exercitia practica — practical exercises.
23 Henri Druey (1799–1855) — Swiss radical statesman, member of the Bundesrat
1848–55, from 1848 director of the Department of Police and Justice. In 1850, President
of the Swiss Confederation.
24 Hence this wrath.
25 Bundschuh — a peasant’s laced boot, symbol and name of a revolutionary peasant
organisation in the period leading up to the peasant revolt of 1525.
26 Hafiz — a Moslem priest.
27 As extreme unction and epitaph.
28 As a court of peers or rather as a high court of justice.
29 In revenge.
30 Papal Legate.
31 First among equals.
32 Louis-Jean-Rudolphe Agassiz (1807–1873) — Swiss naturalist who adopted an
extremely reactionary position in his scientific views. Opponent of Darwinism.
33 And more.
34 For the fatherland, in common parlance.
35 Cercle sociale — an organisation founded by representatives of the democratic
intelligentsia which emerged during the first years of the French bourgeois revolution in
Paris at the end of the eighteenth century. In the history of Communist ideas the place of
the cercle sociale is determined by the fact that its ideologist, Claude Fouchet, posed the
demand for the equal division of land, for limitations on the size of property and for the
labour of all citizens capable of working. Claude Fouchet’s critique of the formal
equality proclaimed by the French revolution cleared the ground for the much bolder
stance adopted by Jacques Roux, a leader of the ‘enragés’ on this question. The largest
part of the bourgeois-revolutionary Jacobins rejected the ideas of egalitarian socialism
represented by the members of the cercle social and particularly by the ‘enragés’.

21

36 A Swiss petty-bourgeois reformist organisation set up in 1838 for the enlightenment
of workers and tradesmen. In 1901, it affiliated to the Swiss Social Democratic Party,
with which it fused completely in 1925. The term ‘Grütli’ underlines the Swiss national
character of the association. According to the Swiss legend the representatives of the
three mountain cantons, Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden, pledge themselves to the
common struggle against the rule of the Habsburgs in 1307 during the nocturnal meeting
at the ‘Grütli’, a mountain meadow. Marx exploits this circumstance to aim an ironical
comment at Vogt.

Chapter III: Police Matters
What new infamy has the Vogt thought up? — Schiller
I say quite frankly [says Vogt, and strikes an attitude of the most earnest buffoonery], I
say quite frankly: Everyone who lets himself become involved in any way with the
political activities of Marx and his comrades falls sooner or later into the hands of the
police. These activities are betrayed to the secret police from the very start, known to
them and hatched out by them as soon as the time seems right. [The activities, it
seems, are eggs, and the police the broody hen that hatches them out.] The instigators,
Marx and Co, sit of course well out of the way in London. [While the police sit on the
eggs.] I am in no perplexity as far as producing proof of this claim is concerned.
Vogt is in no ‘ perplexity’. Falstaff was never in ‘ perplexity’: ‘perjury’, as much as you like, but
‘perplexity’? Your ‘proof’, Jack, your ‘proof’.
I: Self Confession
Marx himself says in his pamphlet Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in
Cologne, published in 1853, page 107: ‘After 1849 just as before 1848, only one path
was open to the proletarian party — that of secret association. And so after 1849 a
whole series of clandestine proletarian societies sprang up on the continent, were
discovered by the police, condemned by the courts, broken up by the gaols and
invariably resuscitated by the force of circumstances.’ Euphemistically [says Vogt]
Marx here calls himself a ‘circumstance’. (Magnum Opus, p 167)
So Marx says that the police have uncovered since 1849 a whole series of secret societies that
circumstances have recreated. Vogt says that it was Marx, and not ‘circumstances’, that ‘recreated the
secret societies’. This is how Vogt proves that, as often as Badinguet’s
[1] police uncovered the
Marianne, [2] Marx wove it together again in agreement with Pietri.
‘Marx himself says!’ I will now quote in context what Marx himself says:
With the suppression of the revolution of 1848–49 the party of the proletariat on the
continent lost every right it had enjoyed for once in a way during that short interval: a
press, freedom of speech and the right to associate, that is, the legal instruments of
party organisation. The social status of the classes they represented enabled both the
bourgeois liberal and the petit-bourgeois democratic parties to remain united in one
form or another and to function more or less effectively despite the reaction. After
1849 just as before 1848, only one path was open to the proletarian party — that of
secret association. And so after 1849 a whole series of clandestine proletarian
societies sprang up on the continent, were discovered by the police, condemned by the
courts, broken up by the gaols and invariably resuscitated by the force of
circumstances. Some of these secret societies had as their goal the direct overthrow of
the existing power of the state. This was fully justified in France… Others aimed at

22

organising the proletariat into a party, without concerning themselves with the existing
governments. This was necessary in countries like Germany…  There is no doubt that
here too the members of the proletarian party would take part once again in a
revolution against the status quo, but it was no part of their task to prepare for this
revolution, to agitate, conspire or to plot for it…
The ‘Communist League’, therefore, was no conspiratorial society… (Revelations,
pp 107, 108, etc)
The cruel Land -Vogt makes even mere ‘propaganda’ a crime, except, of course, the propaganda
carried out by Pietri and Laity. [3] ‘Agitation, conspiracy and plotting’ the Land-Vogt does allow, but
only when its central seat is the Palais Royal, [4] the home of Hal Good-heart and Heliogabalus Plon-
Plon. But ‘propaganda’ among the proletarians! For shame!
In the Revelations I continue as follows after the passage quoted above, so  cleverly mutilated by
Examining Magistrate Vogt:
It is self-evident that a secret society [such as the Communist League] could have but
few attractions for individuals who on the one hand concealed their personal
insignificance by strutting around in the theatrical cloak of the conspirator, and on the
other wished to satisfy their stupid ambition on the day of the next revolution, and who
wished above all to seem important at the moment, to snatch their share of the fruits of
demagogy and to find a welcome among the quacks and charlatans of democracy.
Thus a splinter broke off from the Communist League, or rather it was broken off, a
group that demanded, if not real conspiracies, at any rate the appearance of
conspiracies, and accordingly favoured an alliance with the democratic heroes of the
hour; this was the Willich–Schapper party. It is typical of them that Willich was,
together with Kinkel, one of the entrepreneurs in the German-American revolutionary
loan. [5]
And how does Vogt translate this passage in his ‘euphemistic’ police gibberish? Listen:
As long as both [parties] worked together, their work consisted, as Marx himself
indeed says, in instigating secret societies and compromising associations and
individuals on the continent. (Magnum Opus, p 171)
Only the fat rascal forgets to quote the page of the Revelations where Marx ‘himself indeed says’ this.
‘Egli è bugiardo e padre di menzogna.’ [6]
II: The Revolutionary Congress of Murten
‘Charles the Bold’, ‘bold Karl’, vulgo Karl Vogt now presents the defeat at Murten:
Workers and refugees in great numbers were so wheedled and worked on [that is to
say by Liebknecht] that finally… a revolutionary congress at Murten was announced.
The delegates of the branch associations were supposed to proceed there secretly,
where the final organisation of the League and the definitive date of the uprising were
to be discussed. All the preparations were kept strictly secret, the calling of the
conference was taken care of entirely by people in Herr Liebknecht’s confidence or by
his correspondents. The delegates came together from all sides in Murten, on foot, by
boat and by coach, and were immediately received by gendarmes who knew in
advance what, whence and in what manner. The whole group apprehended in this way
was locked up for a time in the Augustinian monastery of Freiburg and then
transported to England and America. Herr Liebknecht was treated with quite special
consideration. (Magnum Opus, p 168)
‘Herr Liebknecht’ had taken part in Struve’s putsch of September 1848, was then in gaol in Baden
until mid -May 1849, was freed as a result of the Baden military insurrection, entered the Baden
Peoples’ Artillery as a gunner, was thrown into the dungeons of Rastatt as a rebel by  Vogt’s friend
Brentano, was released once more and, during the Imperial Constitution campaign, joined the
detachment of troops commanded by Johann Philipp Becker, and finally, with Struve, Cohnheim,
Korn and Rosenblum, crossed the borders of France, whence he proceeded to Switzerland.

23

‘Herr Liebknecht’ and his Swiss ‘revolutionary congresses’ were at that time even more unknown to
me than the tap -room congresses at Benz’s tavern in the Kesslerstrasse in Berne, where the Round
Table of Parliamentarians took great pleasure in chewing over anew the speeches they themselves had
made in the Paulskirche, [7] distributed the future imperial offices among themselves by number, and
had the long night of their exile lightened by the lies, tall stories, dirty jokes and bombast of Charles
the Bold, who at that time, not without a trace of humour, and alluding to an old German legend,
invested himself by his own hand with letters patent as the ‘Imperial Wine-Swiller’.
The ‘legend’ begins with the words:
All the drinking I have seen
Child’s play it sure has been:
I have seen such a boozer
That clearly he was the master.
Mugs for him were far too small
He thought jugs no good at all;
He drank from buckets broad and tall.
Of any man that’s living
His was the noblest swilling.
By bison and by elks
Never such draughts were swallowed.
But back to the ‘revolutionary congress’ of Murten. ‘Revolutionary congress’! ‘Final organisation of
the League’! ‘Date of the uprising’! ‘Preparations kept strictly secret’! ‘Meeting in complete secrecy
from all sides, arriving on foot, by boat and by coach’! ‘Bold Charles’ has obviously studied with
profit the methods of Stieber exposed in my Communist Trial.
The facts are simply these: Liebknecht was — at the beginning of 1850 — chairman of the Geneva
Workers’ Association. He proposed an alliance of all the then quite unconnected German Workers’
Associations in Switzerland. The motion was passed. It was thereupon decided to issue a circular to
24 different Workers’ Associations, inviti ng them to Murten in order to discuss there the proposed
organisation and the foundation of a common press organ. The debates in the Geneva Workers’
Association, the circular, the discussion in relation to it in the 24 other Workers’ Associations — all
this was dealt with publicly and the arrangements for the Murten congress were public . If the Swiss
authorities wanted to ban it, they could have done so four weeks before it was held. But the liberal
Herr Druey, who was looking for somebody to devour in order to pacify the Holy Alliance, which was
becoming threatening, planned a police coup de théâtre. [9] Liebknecht, who had, as chairman of the
Workers’ Association, signed the invitation to the congress, enjoyed all the honours due to the chief
ringleader. S eparated from the other delegates, he received a free lodging in the highest turret of
Freiburg Tower, enjoyed an extensive view and even had the privilege of strolling an hour daily on
the battlements of the tower. The only thing that was original about his treatment was his solitary
confinement. His repeated request to be locked up with the others was repeatedly rejected. Vogt,
however, knows that the police do not put their ‘moutons’ in solitary confinement, but much prefer to
mix them up as jolly ‘companions’ with the mass.
Two months later Liebknecht was sent by the Freiburg police chief along with a certain Gebert to
Besançon, where he and his comrade received a one- way French passport to London, with the
warning that if they deviated from the route la id down they would be transported to Algiers. As a
result of this unforeseen journey Liebknecht lost the greater part of his effects, which were in Geneva.
Moreover, we owe it to Herren Castella, Schaller and the other members of the Freiburg government
at the time to comment that Liebknecht, no less than the other Murten prisoners, was treated
completely humanely. Those gentlemen remembered that they themselves had been prisoners or
fugitives only a few years previously and publicly declared their aversion  to the turnkey duties
imposed on them by the Coptic Grand Master Druey.
[10] The imprisoned refugees were not treated in
the way that the émigré ‘parliamentarians’ had expected. A certain fellow called H, who is still to be
found in Switzerland and who is  a comrade of the parliamentarians, felt himself therefore obliged to
publish a pamphlet in which he denounced the prisoners in general and the imprisoned Liebknecht in
particular for their ‘revolutionary’ ideas that exceeded the bounds of parliamentary good sense. And

24

‘Charles the Bold’ still seems inconsolable over the ‘quite special consideration’ with which
Liebknecht was treated.
Plagiarism characterises all our ‘bold’ hero’s hackwork. It is the same here. The Swiss liberals, that is
to say, have the fixed habit of ‘liberalising’ their brutal expulsion orders by slandering their victims as
‘mouchards’. [11] After Fazy had expelled Struve he publicly denounced him as a ‘Russian Spy’.
Druey similarly accused Bichot of being a French ‘mouchard’. Tourte acted in the same way against
Schily, after he had had the latter suddenly seized on the street in Geneva and sent to the prison tower
in Berne. ‘The Federal Mayor-Commissioner, Monsieur Kern, demands your expulsion’, the high and
mighty Tourte replied to Schily’s enquiry as to the cause of the brutality inflicted on him. Schily :
‘Then take me to Monsieur Kern.’ Tourte: ‘No, we do not wish Monsieur le commissaire fédéral to do
the work of the police in Geneva.’  The logic of this answer was quite worthy of the subtlety with
which that very same Tourte, as Swiss ambassador to Turin at the time that the secession of Nice and
Savoy was already fait  accompli, wrote to his federal president that Cavour was working with all his
might to prevent the Seces sion. But then it may be that certain diplomatic relations concerning
railways at that time interrupted his normal measure of subtlety. Scarcely had Schily been put into the
strictest solitary confinement in Berne when Tourte began to ‘liberalise’ his poli ce brutality by
whispering in the ears of German refugees, for example Dr Fink: ‘That Schily had been secretly in
contact with Kern, had denounced refugees in Geneva to him [etc].’ The Geneva Indépendant
listed the ‘systematic slandering of refugees, raised to the level of a maxim of state’ among the most
notorious crimes of the Geneva government (see Appendix I).
As soon as the German police made their first protests, the Swiss liberals broke the right of asylum —
and they had only granted the right o f asylum on the condition that the remnant of the revolutionary
army did not fight a last battle on the soil of Baden — by throwing out the so-called ‘leaders’. Later it
was the turn of the ‘misled’. Thousands of soldiers from Baden obtained passports home on the basis
of false promises, and were immediately received by gendarmes who knew in advance ‘what, whence
and in what manner’. Then came the threats from the Holy Alliance and with them the police farce at
Murten. However, the ‘liberal’ Federal Council [13] did not dare go so far as ‘bold Charles’. Nothing
about a ‘revolutionary congress’, ‘final organisation of the League’, ‘definitive date of the uprising’.
The enquiry that had had to be instituted for the sake of decency simply petered out.
‘Threats of war’ from abroad and ‘politico-propagandistic tendencies’ was all the ‘perplexed’ Federal
Council could splutter in its own defence in an official statement (see Appendix II). The police
exploits of ‘Swiss Liberalism’ were by no means at an end with the ‘revolutionary congress of
Murten’. On 25 January 1851, my friend Wilhelm Wolff (‘Parliament Wolff’ as the ‘Parliament -
sheep’ baptised him) wrote to me from Zurich:
By the measures it has carried out until now the Federal Council has cut the number of
refugees from 11,000 to 500, and it will not rest until all those who have neither
impressive fortunes or special connections have been completely driven out.
The refugees who had acted in favour of the revolution stood in the most natural opposition to those
of the Paulskirche who had talked it to death. The latter did not hesitate to betray their opponents to
the Swiss police.
Vogt’s faithful follower, the monster Ranickel , himself wrote to Schily , after the latter’s arrival in
London:
Do try to keep a few columns free in a Belgian journal for statements, and do not fail
to make life in America miserable for the rotten German dogs [parliamentarians], who
have sold themselves as tools to that goitrous diplomat [Druey].
One can now understand what ‘Charles the Bold’ means by the phrase:
I worked with all my strength to cut down revolutionary vagabondage and to provide
the refugees with a place to go, be it on the continent, be it overseas.
As early as No 257 of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung one could read under the following dateline:
Heidelberg, 23 March 1849: Our friend Vogt, ‘champion’ of the left, Imperial
Humorist of the present, Imperial Barrot [14] of the future, the ‘true warner’ against the
revolution, has united with — some comrades? indeed not! — with so me reactionaries

25

of the first water… and for what purpose? In order to send to America, or rather to
deport, some of the ‘figures’ who are staying in Strasbourg, Besançon and other places
on the German border… What Cavaignac’s [15] regime of the sabre imposes as a
punishment, these gentlemen wish to do in the name of Christian love… The amnesty
is dead, long live deportation! Of course in the process there can be no lack of the pia
fraus [16] that the refugees themselves expressed the desire to emigrate, etc. Now,
however, people are writing from Strasbourg to the Seeblättern that this lusting after
deportation has aroused a veritable storm of protest among all the refugees… They all
hope soon to return to Germany, even at the danger (as Herr Vogt so touchingly
remarks) of having to join a ‘foodhardy venture’.
But enough of ‘Charles the Bold’s’ revolutionary congress at Murten.
III: Cherval
The virtue of this jest will be the incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue will
tell us. — Shakespeare, Henry IV , Part I, Act I, Scene 2.
In my Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne  a chapter is reserved for the Cherval
plot.
[17] In it, I demonstrate how Stieber, with Cherval (pseudonym for Crämer) as his instrument and
Carlier, Greif and Fleury as midwives, brought the so-called Franco–German September Plot into the
world in Paris in order to get over the lack of ‘hard fact’ that the ‘Cologne Prosecution Council’
censured in the prosecution against the Cologne prisoners.
So striking were the proofs that I provided for the defence during the Cologne trial on the absolute
lack of any connection between Cherval on the one hand and myself and the Cologne defendants on
the other, that the very Stieber who had conjured up his Cherval against us on 18 Octob er 1852 was
already abjuring him by 23 October 1852. Driven into a corner, he gave up his attempt to identify
Cherval and his plot with us. Stieber was Stieber, but Stieber was no Vogt.
I do not think it would serve any purpose to repeat here disclosures I made in the Revelations over the
so-called September plot. At the beginning of May 1852, Cherval returned to London, whence he had
removed to Paris for business reasons in the early summer of 1850. The Paris police set him free a
few months after he had been sentenced in February  1852. In London he was at first greeted as a
political martyr by the German Workers’ Educational Association,
[18] which I and my friends had
already left in mid -September 1850. This deception, however, did not last long. His Parisian exploits
soon became known, and in the course of that very month of May he was expelled in infamy from the
Association at a public meeting. The defendants in the Cologne trial, in gaol from the beginning of
May 1851, were still imprisoned on remand awaiting trial. From a noti ce sent from Paris to his organ,
the Kölnische Zeitung, by the spy Beckmann, I saw that the Prussian police were trying retrospectively
to forge a connection between Cherval, his plot and the Cologne defendants. I therefore looked around
for information on Cherval. It turned out that the latter had, in July 1852, offered his services as an
agent for the Orleanists to Monsieur de R, a former minister under Louis Philippe and a well -known
eclectic philosopher. Monsieur de R’s links with the Prefecture of Poli ce in Paris enabled him to
receive from there extracts from Cherval’s dossier. In the French police reports Cherval is described
as Cherval alias Frank, whose real name is Crämer. He was said to have functioned for a long time as
the agent of Prince Hatzfe ldt, the Prussian Ambassador to Paris, to have been the betrayer of the
Franco–German plot and now simultaneously a French spy, etc. During the proceedings of the
Cologne trial I provided one of the defendants, the advocate Schneider II , with this information, and
empowered him, if necessary, to name my source. When, in the hearing of 18 October, Stieber swore
that the Irishman Cherval, of whom he himself said that he served time in Aachen for forgery in 1845,
was still under arrest in Paris, I informed Her r Schneider II by the next post that the Rhenish Prussian
Crämer was ‘still’ resident in London under the pseudonym Cherval, that he was in daily
communication with the Prussian Police Lieutenant Greif, and that, as a condemned Prussian
criminal, he would have to be extradited immediately from England on the application of the Prussian
government. His transportation to Cologne as a witness would immediately have wrecked the whole
Stieber system.

26

Hard pressed by Schneider II, Stieber finally said on 23 Octob er that he believed that he had heard
that Cherval had fled from Paris, but he denied by all that was holy any knowledge of the Irishman’s
present whereabouts and of his alliance with the Prussian police. In fact Cherval was at that time
attached to Greif in London with a fixed weekly wage. The debate in the Cologne Assize Court,
occasioned by my information, on the ‘Cherval mystery’, drove the latter from London. I heard that
he had gone to Jersey on a police mission. I had long lost him from sight when I accidentally saw, in a
letter from Geneva in the Republik der Arbeiter [19] which appears in New York, that Cherval had
turned up in Geneva in March 1853 under the name of N ugent, and that he had disappeared thence in
the summer of 1854. Thus he appeared w here Vogt was living in Geneva a few weeks after the
material in my Revelations compromising him was brought out by Schabelitz in Basle.
Let us now return to the Falstaffian contortions of history.
Vogt has his Cherval arrive in Geneva immediately after his pretended flight from Paris, just as he has
him ‘sent’ from London to Paris ‘a few months’ before the discovery of the September plot by the
Communist secret league ( Magnum Opus, p 172). If the intervening period between May 1852 and
March 1853 thus disa ppears entirely, the intervening period between June 1850 and September 1851
shrinks to a ‘few months’. What would Stieber not have given for a Vogt who would have sworn, at
the Cologne Assizes, that the ‘Communist secret league in London’ had sent Cherval to Paris in June
1850, and what would I not have given to see Vogt next to Stieber sweating in the witness -box! A
nice gathering, Stieber swearing his head off with his creature Greif, his Wermuth, his little Goldheim
and his — beadle (Bettelvogt)! Vogt’s Cherval brought to Geneva ‘Letters of recommendation to all
the acquaintances of Marx and Co, from whom Herr Nugent was soon inseparable’ (p 173). He takes
up ‘residence with the family of a correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung’ and, probably as a result
of my letter of recommendation (in the Revelations ), obtains access to Vogt, who employs him as a
lithographer (p 174) and to a certain extent, as he had previously with Archduke Johann and as he did
later with Plon-Plon, enters into ‘scientific relations’ with him. Busy one day in the cabinet [20] of the
Imperial Regency, ‘Nugent’ is recognised as Cherval by an ‘acquaintance’ who hints that he is an
‘agent provocateur’. Indeed, Nugent is employed in Geneva not only by Vogt but also in the
‘instigation of a secret society’.
‘Cherval-Nugent was the Chairman, kept the minutes and kept up the correspondence with London.’
(p 175) He had ‘ drawn a few rather gullible  but otherwise honest workers into his confidence’
(p 175), but ‘among the members there was als o an affiliate of the Marxist clique , whom everybody
described as a suspect envoy of the German police’ (p 175).
‘All’ Marx’s ‘acquaintances’, from whom Cherval -Nugent ‘was inseparable’, are suddenly
transformed into ‘an affiliate’, which one affiliate for his part once more divides into ‘ the Marxist
affiliates who had stayed behind in Geneva’ (p 176), with whom Nugent not only later ‘continued to
correspond from Paris’, but whom he also ‘attracted to himself’ in Paris like a magnet.
So we once more have the beloved ‘change of form’ of the buckram ‘material’ of Kendal green!
What Cherval-Nugent intended with his society was the mass manufacture of counterfeit banknotes
and treasury notes, ‘by issuing which the depositors’ credit was to be undermined and their finances
ruined’ (p 175).
Cherval, it seems, emulated the noble Pitt, who is known, during the war against the Jacobins, to have
set up a factory for the production of counterfeit French assignats not far from London.
Already various lithographic and copper plates had been engraved by Nugent himself
for this purpose, already the gullible members of the secret society had been chosen
who were to go, with packets of these [lithographic and copper plates? — no]
counterfeit banknotes [the banknotes were of course packed before they were
manufactured] to France, Switzerland and Germany. (p 175)
But already Cicero-Vogt was on the track of Cherval -Catalina,
[21] with drawn sword. Falstaffian
characters all have the feature that their actions are as inflated as their bellies. Just see how our
guzzler, who has already cut down the ‘revolutionary vagabondage’ in Switzerland and provided
whole ship-loads of refugees with an escape overseas , how he sets his scene, how he melodramatises

27

himself, how he immortalises  the adventure of Stieber’s fisticuffs in Paris with Cherval! (See
Revelations.) Thus:
‘The plan of this whole conspiracy was plotted in the most fearful way.’ (p 176) ‘That is to say that all
the Workers’ Associations were to be implicated in Cherval’s plan.’ Already ‘confidential enquiries’
had ‘been made on the part of foreign embassies’; already the attempt was being made ‘to
compromise Switzerland, particularly the Canton of Geneva’.
But the Land- Vogt was vigilant. He accomplished his first salvation of Switzerland, an experiment
which he later repeated several times with constantly increasing success.
I do not deny [cries this weighty man], I do not deny that I contributed my essentials
to thwart this devilry; I do not deny that I had recourse to the police of the Republic of
Geneva for this purpose; I regret to this day [disconsolate Cicero] that the zeal of some
of those who had been deceived served as a warning to the cunning instigator, so that
he was able to make himself scarce before he was arrested.
At all events, however, Cicero -Vogt had ‘thwarted’ the Cataline conspiracy, saved Switzerland, and
‘contributed’ his essentials, wherever he wears them. A  few weeks later, as he explains, Cherval
reappeared in Paris, ‘where he did not conceal himself at all, but lived as openly as any citizen ’
(p 176). We know how openly the Parisian citizens ( citoyens) of the counterfeit empire are
accustomed to living.
While Cherval goes about so ‘openly’ in Paris, poor Vogt has to hide himself every time he visits
Paris under Plon-Plon’s table at the Palais Royal!
I really regret that I now have to place after Vogt’s mighty Zachariade [22] the following letter of
Johann Philipp Becker. The revolutionary activities of Joh Philipp Becker, the veteran of the German
emigration, from the Hambach [23] festival to the Imperial Constitution campaign, in which he fought
as head of the fifth army division (a voice that is surely not  partisan, that of the Berlin Militär-
Wohenschrift, contains a testimony to his military achievements), are too generally known for me to
need to say anything here about the author of the letter. I shall therefore merely remark that the letter
was addressed to my friend, the German merchant R in London, that JP Becker is personally unknown
to me and has never had any political relations with me, and finally that I have left out the opening
part of the letter, which contains business matters, as well as most  of the material on the ‘Brimstone
Gang’ and the ‘Bürstenheimers’, which is already known from information previously given. (The
original of the letter is in Berlin with the documents of my trial.)
Paris
20 March 1860
… In the last few days Vogt’s pamphl et contra Marx has come to my attention. This
book depressed me all the more for the fact that I see the history of the so-called
‘Brimstone Gang’ and the infamous Cherval, of which I have quite precise knowledge
as a result of my stay in Geneva at the time, completely distorted and totally unjustly
connected with the political activities of the activities of the economist Marx. I neither
know this Herr Marx personally, nor have I ever had any form of contact with him, but
I have on the other hand known Herr Vogt and his family for more than 20 years, and
am therefore far closer to the latter in friendly relations. I must bitterly protest at and
most decisively reject the rashness and unscrupulousness with which Vogt enters this
fight. It is unworthy of a man to use distorted or even completely invented facts as
arguments. I am really sorry to see how in his quasi-suicidal thoughtlessness he ruins a
much better activity and compromises his position and his reputation and exposes
them to ridicule, even if he is completely innocent of the charge of being in the service
of Napoleon. How gladly, on the contrary, would I have granted him all honourable
means to free himself brilliantly of such serious accusations. With respect to what he
has already done in this unedifying affair I feel literally forced to tell you all about this
so-called Brimstone Gang and our fine Herr Cherval, so that you can judge for
yourself how far Marx can be made at all responsible for their existence and their
activity.

28

A word therefore about the birth and demise of the Brimstone Gang, about which there
is scarcely anybody better able to provide information than myself. It was not only
that, during my stay in Geneva at the time, I had from the start through my position
every opportunity to observe the deeds and omissions of the émigrés, but also that,
keeping the general cause in mind, I had as an older man the special interest of
following attentively all their movements, in order to anticipate, avoid and prevent any
silly enterprises, so pardonable given a state of mind so exacerbated and so often made
desperate by misfortune. After all, I knew from 30 years of experience how well
endowed every emigration is with illusions.
(What follows here is, in its essence, anticipated in the letters of Borkheim and Schily.)
… This society, which was essentially a drinking club, was humorously and
contemptuously called the Brimstone Gang. It was an impromptu association of
fellows who had been thrown together without a chairman, a programme, statutes or
dogma. There was no thought of anything to do with a secret society or the systematic
pursuit of any political or any other kind of goal. All they did was to strive for effect
openly and indeed, with extravagant openness and open-heartedness to excess. Even
less did they have any connection with Marx, who for his part could quite certainly
have no knowledge of their existence, and from whom moreover they diverged widely
in their socio-political views. At that time also these lads exhibited a marked drive for
independence that amounted to an over-estimation of themselves, so that they would
scarcely have subordinated themselves to any authority either in theory or in practice.
They would have laughed as much at Vogt’s patriarchal admonitions as at any
factional directions from Marx. I was all the more exactly informed of everything that
happened in their circle for the fact that my eldest son kept up daily traffic with the
chiefs of the same… Altogether the whole frivolity of this unbridled gang scarcely
survived the winter of 1849–50. The force of circumstance scattered our heroes to all
four winds.
Who could have guessed that the Brimstone Gang, long since fallen into oblivion,
would be resurrected by Herr Professor Vogt after ten years of slumber, in order to
spread against supposed attackers an evil odour which smug newspaper-writers then
spread further like some kind of electro-magnetic sympathetic conductor. The liberal
par excellence, Herr von Vincke, himself talked about the Brimstone Gang on the
occasion of the Italian question and used it to enlighten the modest Prussian
parliament. And did not the citizenry of Breslau, otherwise in such good odour, in
sancta simplicitas
[24] stage a Shrovetide farce in honour of the Brimstone Gang, and,
as a symbol of their virtuous convictions, fumigate the town with sulphur candles?
Poor innocent Brimstone Gang! Did you have to, after your late demise, grow willy
nilly into a true Vulcan, a bogeyman to scare timid subjects into the arms of the police,
to vulcanise all the world’s dunderheads, to carbonise every burnt-out brain to the very
stump — just as Vogt, it seems to me, has burnt his fingers for good on this.
So now to Cramer, vulgo Cherval. This rogue in both the socio-political and in the
common meaning, came to Geneva in 1853, and that as an Englishman under the name
of Nugent. That was the family name of his alleged wife, who accompanied him and
really is an Englishwoman. He spoke fluent English and French, and avoided speaking
German for a long time, as it seemed very important for him to be taken for a typical
Englishman. As a skilled colour lithographer, it was he, as he boasted, who introduced
that art in Geneva. He is skilful in social intercourse, knows how to make an effect and
show himself to advantage. He soon found sufficient employment with professors of
the academy, drawing objects of antiquity and from natural history. He lived a very
retired life at first, and later sought the company almost exclusively of circles of
French and Italian refugees. I founded at that time a bureau de renseignements
[25] and
a daily paper, Le Messager du Léman, and had as an assistant a refugee from Baden by
the name of Stecher, formerly headmaster of a Realschule.
[26] The latter had a

29

particular talent at drawing, and intended to improve his prospects by learning colour
lithography. He found a teacher in the Englishman Nugent. Stecher often told me the
nicest things about this skilled, friendly and generous Englishman and the pleasantly
gracious Englishwoman. Now Stecher was also a singing teacher in the Workers’
Educational Association, and occasionally took his teacher Nugent there, where I first
had the pleasure of his acquaintance, and where he condescended to speak German,
and that so fluently in the lower Rhenish dialect that I said to him: ‘But you are never
an Englishman — not on your life .’ However, he insisted that he was, explaining that
his parents had sent him in early youth to an educational establishment in Bonn, where
he had stayed until his eighteenth year and had become accustomed to the local
dialect. Stecher, who was delighted with the ‘nice’ man until the very last minute,
helped him to sustain his pretence of being an Englishman. But this event made me
very suspicious of this alleged son of Albion, and I advised caution within the
Association. Later I met the Englishman in the company of French refugees, just at a
time when he was boasting about his heroic exploits in the Paris uprisings. That was
the first time that I saw that he was also involved in politics. This made me even more
suspicious of him. I made fun of the ‘lion-like courage’ with which he claimed to have
fought, in order to give him an opportunity to display it against me also in front of the
Frenchmen. But since he simply took my biting mockery with dog-like humility, he
became contemptible to me also.
From now on he avoided me entirely wherever he could. Meanwhile, with Stecher’s
help he staged dances for the German Workers’ Association, for which they attracted a
few unpaid musicians, an Italian, a Swiss and a Frenchman. At these balls I once more
met the Englishman as a true master of the revels and entirely in his element. For he
was much better at having a gay good time and pleasing the ladies than he was at lion-
like courage. In the Workers’ Association, however, he took no part in politics, but
only hopped and leapt, laughed, drank and sang. Meanwhile, however, I learned from
the goldsmith, Fritz from Württemberg, that the ‘thoroughly revolutionary
Englishman’ had formed a league, which consisted of him (Fritz), another German,
and several Frenchmen and Italians, altogether about seven members. I urged Fritz not
to get involved in anything serious with this political tightrope-walker, to leave the
league immediately and to make the others do the same. Some time later my
bookseller sent me a pamphlet by Marx on the Communist trials in Cologne, in which
Cherval was sharply delineated as Crämer, and sharply taken up as a rogue and a
traitor. I immediately suspected now that Nugent could be this Cherval, especially as,
according to this book, he was from the Rhine, which was in accordance with his
dialect, and that he lived with an Englishwoman, which also fitted. I immediately
communicated this suspicion to Stecher, Fritz and the others, and for this purpose had
the pamphlet circulated among them. Suspicion of Nugent grew rapidly; Marx’s book
had its effect. Fritz thereupon came to me and declared that he had left the ‘little
league’ and that the others would follow his example. He also revealed to me its secret
purpose. The ‘Englishman’ is supposed to have wanted to destroy the credit of various
states by reproducing state notes, and with the money thus gained to set the European
revolution into motion, etc. At the same time, a Monsieur Laya, a French refugee,
previously an advocate in Paris, was giving lectures on socialism. Nugent was present
at them. Laya, who had been his defence lawyer at his trial in Paris, recognised him as
Cherval, which he told him to his face. Nugent implored him not to betray him. I
learned of this situation from a French refugee who was a friend of Laya, and
immediately spread the news around. Nugent had the nerve to appear again in the
Workers’ Association, where he was unmasked as the German Crämer and the
Frenchman Cherval and thrown out. Ranickel from Bingen is supposed to have
attacked him the most violently in this affair. To cap it all, the Geneva police was now
after him because of the little league, but the manufacturer of state notes had
disappeared without trace.

30

In Paris, the latter occupied himself with the decoration of porcelain, and since I was
also engaged here in that trade, we encountered one another in way of business. I
always found him, however, still the same reckless, incorrigible windbag.
But what I really cannot understand is how Vogt could have dared to draw a
connection between this rascal in his activities in Geneva and the efforts of a Marx,
and characterise him as his comrade or tool, especially as this was meant to be at a
time when Marx was attacking this fellow so decisively in the book I have mentioned.
It was precisely Marx who unmasked him and chased him out of Geneva, where
according to Vogt he was supposed to have been working for Marx.
When I consider how it was possible for the scientist Vogt to get on to such a wrong
track, my brain reels. Is it not regrettable to see the noble influence that Vogt had
united in his person through the accidental coincidence of circumstances so fruitlessly
and prodigally brought to naught? Would it be surprising if, hearing of this, everybody
regarded with mistrust and suspicion Vogt’s scientific researches, as if his scientific
conclusions were based on the same recklessness, the same lack of conscientiousness,
and on false conceptions instead of on positive, thoroughly-researched facts?
There is more to being a statesman and a scholar than ambition, otherwise even
Crämer would be both. Unfortunately, through his Brimstone Gang and his Cherval,
Vogt himself has sunk to the level of a sort of Cherval. And in fact the two have an
inner similarity in their strongly-marked need for a comfortable life, for bodily
security, social gaiety and frivolous facetiousness in serious affairs… Anticipating
speedy and friendly news from you, I am, in hearty devotion.
Your
J Ph Becker
PS: I have just taken a further look at Vogt’s book, and see to my further amazement
that the Bürstenheimers are also done full honour. You should now know briefly how
matters stood with this gang…
I further see, also in the same book, that he claims that Nugent–Cherval–Cramer came
to Geneva on Marx’s behalf. I must therefore also add that the former, who laid claim
to the part of an Englishman until the very end of his stay in Geneva, never gave the
slightest sign that he had ever been in contact with German refugees anywhere, which
would not have suited his incognito anyway. Even here and now, when it could well
be less important to him than there at that time, he does not want to pass as one, and
denies all acquaintance with Germans from former times.
Previously I still believed that Vogt had frivolously allowed himself to be misled by
others, but now his behaviour appears to me more and more to be wicked malice. I am
also less sorry for him now, and I only pity his good, honest old father, who will surely
suffer many a bitter hour as a result of this affair.
I do not merely allow you, but ask you, in the interest of truth and of the good cause,
to make use of this information in the circle of your acquaintances.
Heartily yours
J Philipp B
(See Appendix III)
IV: The Cologne Communist Trial
From the Imperial Regent’s ‘closet’ in Geneva to the Royal Prussian Assize court in Cologne.
‘In the Cologne trial Marx played an outstanding role.’ Undoubtedly.
‘In Cologne his comrades were tried.’ Admittedly.
The Cologne defendants were kept on remand pending investigations for 1½ years.

31

The Prussian Police and Embassy, Hinckeldy [27] and all his tribe, the Post Office and the magistracy,
the Ministries of the Interior and of Justice, all of these made the most tremendous efforts during these
1½ years to give birth to a corpus delicti. [28]
Here, therefore, in his investigation into my ‘activities’, Vogt has, to a certain extent, at his disposal
the resources of the Prussian state and even possessed authentic material in my Revelations
Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne  (Basle, 1853), a copy of which he borrowed from the
Geneva Workers’ Association and ‘studied’. This time, therefore, the Boy Karl will not forbear to
make me tremble. But no! This time Vogt becomes ‘perplexed’, lets off a few of his natural steam and
stink bombs and stutters, seeking to retreat: ‘The Cologne trial has no especial importance for us .’
(Magnum Opus, p 172)
In the Revelations I could not avoid attacking, among others, Herr A  Willich. In the New Yorker
Criminal-Zeitung [29] of 28 October 1853, Willich starts his self -defence by characterising my book
as ‘a masterly critique of the ghastly conduct of the central police of the German League’. J
Schabelitz junior, the book’s publisher, wrote to me, after receiving my manuscript , dated Basle , 11
December 1852:
Your exposure of the infamy of the police is unsurpassable. You have erected a lasting
monument to the present regime in Prussia.
He added that his opinion was shared by experts, and at the head of these experts stands a ma n who is
at present a friend in Geneva of Herr Karl Vogt.
Seven years after its publication the same book gave rise to the following declaration by Herr
Eichhoff in Berlin, who was completely unknown to me — as is known, Herr Eichhoff was on trial
accused of libel against Stieber:
That he had made an exhaustive study of the Communist trial in Cologne, and that he
had not only to sustain his previous claim that Stieber had perjured himself, but to
extend it to say that the whole of Stieber’s testimony at that trial was false… that the
verdict against the Cologne defendants had been reached solely on the basis of
Stieber’s testimony… that Stieber’s whole testimony was perjury consistently carried
out. (First supplement to the Berlin Vossische Zeitung, 9 May 1860)
Vogt himself admits:
He [Marx] made every imaginable effort to give the defence lawyers material and
instructions for the conduct of the trial…
There (in Cologne), as is known, ‘false documents they themselves had forged’ were ‘put forward by
the agent s’ Stieber, Fleury, etc, ‘as “evidence” and in general such depths of depravity were
uncovered among this police rabble as arouse a shudder’ (Magnum Opus, pp 169–70).
If Vogt can prove his hatred of coups d’état by carrying out propaganda for Bonapartism, why should
I not prove my ‘agreement’ with the secret police by uncovering their bottomless depravity? If the
police possessed real evidence, why did they forge false evidence?
However, lectures Professor Vogt: ‘The blow nevertheless struck only the members of the Marxist
League in Cologne, only the party of Marx.’
Indeed, Polonius! Had the blow previously not struck another party in Paris, and did it not afterwards
strike another party in Berlin (the Ladendorf trial), and yet another in Bremen (the League of the
Dead) and so on and so forth?
As far as the verdict of guilty on the Cologne defendants is concerned, I shall quote a passage on it
from my Revelations:
The miracles performed by the police were originally necessary to make the public
forget that it was really political opinions that were on trial. The revelations you are
about to witness, Gentlemen of the Jury, said Saedt when opening for the prosecution,
will prove to you that it is not political opinions that are to be put on trial. But now [at
the end of the proceedings] he emphasises the importance of these opinions so as to
ensure that the police revelations are forgotten. After the 1½ year preliminary
investigation the jury needed objective evidence in order to justify itself before public

32

opinion. After the five-week-long police comedy they needed ‘opinions pure and
simple’ to extricate themselves from the sheer mess. Saedt therefore did not only
confine himself to the material that had led the Prosecution Council to the conclusion
that ‘there was no evidence of an indictable offence’. He went even further. He
attempted to prove that the law against conspiracy does not in fact require any
conspiracy to take place but only that it be advocated so that in effect the word ‘plot’
is only a pretext which enables the law to burn political heretics. The success of his
attempt promised to be all the greater because of the decision to apply the new
Prussian Penal Code that had been promulgated after the accused had been arrested.
On the pretext that this code contained milder provisions, the servile court brought
itself to permit its application to be retroactive. But if people were on trial because of
their political opinions, then why a preliminary investigation lasting 1½ years?
Because of yet other opinions. (p 114)
With the unmasking of the Minute-Book, forged and planted by the Prussian police
themselves, the case had advanced to a new stage. The jury was no longer free merely
to find the defendants guilty or not guilty; they must either find the defendants guilty
— or else the government. To acquit the accused would mean condemning the
government. (pp 112–13)
That the Prussian government of the day had a similar view of the situation is proved by a letter that
Hinckeldy wrote during the Cologne procee dings to the Prussian Embassy in London, where it said
that ‘the whole existence of the political police was dependent on the outcome of this trial’. He
therefore asked for a person to represent before the court the witness H, who had absconded, for
which performance he would receive a reward of 1000 Tlr. The person had in fact already been found
when a further letter arrived from Hinckeldy: ‘The State Prosecutor hoped, given the fortunate
composition of the jury, to obtain a verdict of guilty without any f urther exceptional measures, and he
[Hinckeldy] therefore begged them not to make any further efforts.’ — see Appendix IV.
It was in fact this fortunate composition of the jury in Cologne that inaugurated the Hinckeldy–Stieber
regime in Prussia. The police rabble attached to the Prussian Embassy in London knew as early as
October 1852 that ‘a blow would fall in Berlin if the Cologne defendants were found guilty’, although
the police bomb in Berlin (Ladendorf conspiracy) did not go off until the end of March 1853 — see
Appendix IV.
The liberal outcry after a period of reaction is always in proportion to the enormity of the liberal
cowardice that for years left the field clear for reaction. Thus, at the time of the Cologne trial, all my
attempts to expose Stieber’s system of deception in the liberal Prussian press failed. They had
inscribed in broad characters on their banner: Safety is the citizen’s first duty, and under this sign you
will — live.
V: Central Festival of the German Workers’
Education Associations at Lausanne (26–27
June 1859)
Our hero flees with ever-renewed pleasure back to — Arcadia. We find him once more in an ‘out-of-
the-way corner of Switzerland’, in Lausanne, at the ‘Central Festival’ of a number of German
Workers’ Educational Associations which was celebrated at the end of June in Lausanne. Here Karl
Vogt achieved the salvation of Switzerland for the second time. While Catalina sits in London, that
Cicero in a pied jacket thunders in Lausanne:
Jam, jam intelligis me acrius vigilare ad salutem quam te ad perniciem reipublicae. [30]
By coincidence there exists an authentic report on the said ‘Central Festival’ and the heroic deed done
by the ‘rounded character’. The title of the report written with Vogt’s collaboration by Herr G
Lommel reads Das Centralfest der deutschen Arbeiterbildungsvereine in der Wetschweiz (Lausanne
1859) (Markus Vaney, rue de la Croix d’or, Geneva, 1859). Let us compare the authentic report with
the Magnum Opus that appeared five months later. The report contains the speech that Cicero -Vogt

33

‘himself made’, at the outset of which he reveals the secret of his appearance at this event. He appears
among the workers, he harangues them, because:
… serious charges have recently been raised against him which, if they were tr ue,
would be bound to destroy confidence in him and completely undermine his political
effectiveness. I come [he continues], I come for that reason, to say an open word about
the [above-mentioned] secret underhand dealing. (pp 6–7 of the report)
He is accused of Bonapartist activities, he has to save his political effectiveness, and as is his custom
he defends his skin with his tongue. After threshing about idly for an hour and a half he bethinks
himself of Demosthenes’ admonition that ‘action, action and once more action is the soul of rhetoric’.
But what is action? In America there is a little creature called the skunk which, at times of extreme
danger, possesses only one defence, its offensive odour. When attacked it sprays from a certain
portion of its a natomy a material whose moisture condemns your clothes to death by fire, without
reprieve, and which, should it so much as touch your skin, excludes you for a certain time from the
company of all human beings. So horribly offensive is the smell that, as so on as their hounds
accidentally surprise a skunk, hunters immediately take to their heels more precipitately and more
fearfully than if they had a tiger or a wolf after them. Powder and lead can defend one against wolves
and tigers, but there is no remedy against the a posteriori of the skunk.
That is action, this naturalised citizen of the ‘Animal Kingdom’ said to himself, and after the manner
of the skunk, the orator sprayed the following over his presumed persecutors:
I warn you most urgently against one thing, however, and that is the activities of a
small handful of desperate men, whose whole aim and intention amounts to distracting
the worker from his profession, involving him in conspiracies and Communist
activities and finally, after living off his sweat, dashing him coldly [after, that is to say,
he has sweated himself out] to his ruin. And even now once more this handful is trying
by every possible means [as generally as possible] to draw the Workers’ Association
once more into its treacherous net. Whatever they may say [on Vogt’s Bonapartist
activities], be sure that they only intend to use the worker for their own selfish
purposes and finally to leave him to his fate. (p 18 of the report)
The skunk’s shamelessness in making myself and my friends, w ho have always represented the
interests of the working class gratis , sacrificing our own personal interests, ‘live off the sweat of the
workers’ is not even original. Not only did the Decembrist ‘mouchards’ scream similar slanders after
Louis Blanc, Blanqui, Raspail, etc, but every time, everywhere, the sycophants of the ruling class
have constantly slandered the literary and political champions of the oppressed classes in this
infamous manner (see Appendix V).
After this action, moreover, our ‘rounded character’ is not even able to keep a straight face. The
buffoon now compares his ‘persecutors’ who are at liberty, with the ‘Russian prisoners  at Zorndorf’
and himself with — guess whom! — Frederick the Great. Falstaff-Vogt remembered that, at the first
battle he took part in, Frederick the Great ran away. How much greater then is not he, who ran away
without taking part in a battle.
So much for the adventure of the Central Festival at Lausanne according to the authentic report. And
‘now just look’ (to quote Fischart) ‘at the sticky, sponging, boorish swill -cook and pastry -rag’ and
what an Eulenspiegel-like police-brew he serves up five months later for the German philistines:
The intention was at any price to bring about complications in Switzerland: the policy
of neutrality… was at all events to suffer a setback. I was informed that the Central
Festival of Workers’ Educational Associations was to be used to direct the workers
into paths which they had absolutely refused to tread. It was hoped to be able to use
the beautiful festival to form a secret committee which was to enter into contact with
like-minded people in Germany and take God knows [Vogt, although informed, does
not know] what kind of measures. Vague rumours and secret messages circulated
about active intervention in German politics at home. I immediately decided to oppose
this activity, in order to bring home to the workers once more that they should not lend
their ear to any proposals of this kind. I expressed the warning openly at the above-
mentioned end of my speech [etc]. (Magnum Opus, p 18)

34

Cicero-Vogt forgets that he openly babbled out at the start of his speech what really drove him to the
Central Festival — not the neutrality of Switzerland, but the salvation of his own skin. There is not a
syllable in his speech about the intended attentat on Switzerland, the conspiratorial longings at the
Central Festival, the secret committee, the workers’ active intervention in German politics, about
proposals of ‘ this’ or any other ‘kind’. There is nothing about any of these Stieberisms. His final
warning was merely the warning of that man of honour Sykes, who warned the jury at the Old Bailey
not to listen to the ‘depraved’ detectives who had discovered his theft.
‘The immediately subsequent events’, says Falstaff -Vogt ( Magnum Opus , p 181 ) ‘confirmed my
suspicions.’ What, suspicions! But Falstaff forgets again that a few lines previously he had not
‘suspected’, but had been ‘informed’, informed of the plans of the conspirators, and informed in
complete detail! And what, thou suspicious angel, were the immediately subsequent events?
‘An article in the Allgemeine Zeitung imputed tendencies to the festival and the life of the workers
about which they [that is to say the festival and the life] were not even thinking in the slightest.’ (Just
as Vogt imputes them to the Murten Congress and the workers’ organisations in general.) ‘On the
basis of this article and a reprint of it in the Frankfurter Journal there followed a confidential enquiry
from the Ambassador of a South German state in which that significance was ascribed to the festival’
— which the article in the Allgemeine Zeitung and the reprint in the Frankfurter Journal ‘imputed’ to
it — upon my soul no! — ‘which it was supposed to have had according to the thwarted intentions of
the Brimstone Gang.’
Yes indeed! Was supposed to have had!
Although the most superficial comparison of the Magnum Opus with the authentic report on the
Central Festival is sufficient to expose the secret of Cicero -Vogt’s second salvation of Switzerland, I
nonetheless wished to make sure whether or not some fact or other — however distorted — had
provided him with the material for his display of energy. I therefore applied in writing to the editor of
the authentic report, Herr G Lommel of Geneva. Herr Lommel must have been on friendly terms with
Vogt, as he not only wrote the report on the Lausanne Central Festival with his assistance, but also, in
a later pamphlet on the Schiller and Robert Blum Festival in Geneva, drew a veil over the blunder that
Vogt made there. Herr Lommel, who is not personally known to me, stated in a letter to me of 13
April 1860:
Vogt’s account that he had thwarted a dangerous plot in Lausanne is the purest myth or
lie; in Lausanne he was only looking for a place to be able to speak and have this
speech printed afterwards. In this 1½ hour speech he defended himself against the
accusation that he was in the pay of Bonaparte. The manuscript is safe in my hands.
A Frenchman living in Geneva, asked about this same conspiracy of Vogt’s, answered briefly: ‘Il faut
connâitre cet individu, surtout le faiseur, l’homme important , toujours hors de la nature et de  la
vérité.’ (‘One has to know this individual [that is to say, Vogt] above all the charlatan, with his self-
importance, always unnatural and untruthful.’
Vogt himself says on page 99 of his so- called Studies that he ‘had never boasted of possessing
prophetic qualities’. But we know from the Old Testament that the ass saw what the prophet had not
seen.
And thus is explained how Vogt saw the conspiracy which in November 1859 he suspected he had
‘frustrated’ in June 1859.
VI: Various
If my memory does not deceive me [says the Parliament clown], the circular [that is to
say, an alleged circular from London to the proletarians dated 1850] was at all events
written by a member of Marx’s party, the so-called Parliament-Wolf, and was passed
to the Hanoverian police —  this channel crops up once again in the story of the
circular ‘der Vaterlandsfreunde an die Gothaer’. (Magnum Opus, p 144)
A channel crops up! A prolapses ani perhaps, you jesting natural historian?

35

As far as ‘Parliament -Wolf’ is concerned — and we wil l hear later why Parliament -Wolf weighs
down like an incubus on the memory of the Parliament-clown — he published the following statement
in the Berlin Volks-Zeitung, the Allgemeine Zeitung and the Hamburg Reform:
Statement: Manchester, 6 February 1860. From a friend’s letter I learn that the
National-Zeitung (no 41 of this year) carried the following passage in a leading article
based on Vogt’s pamphlet: ‘In 1850, as Vogt seems to remember, another circular
letter from London was written by Parliament-Wolf, alias Battlement-Wolf, sent to the
proletarians in Germany, and simultaneously passed to the Hanoverian police.’ I have
not seen either that issue of the National-Zeitung or Vogt’s pamphlet, and therefore
answer solely with regard to the passage quoted.
1: In 1850 I lived in Zurich and not in London, whither I did not move until summer
1851.
2: In my whole life I have never written a circular letter, either to ‘proletarians’ or
anyone else.
3: As far as the insinuation regarding the Hanoverian police is concerned, I fling this
shamelessly invented accusation contemptuously back into the originator’s teeth. If
the rest of Vogt’s pamphlet is as stinking a lie as the part that refers to me, it is worthy
to stand beside the hack-work of Chenu, de la Hodde and company.
W Wolff
One can see that, just as Cuvier
[31] correctly reconstructs the whole structure of an animal from a
single bone, so Wolff has correctly reconstructed Vogt’s hack -work from a scrap of a quotation.
Alongside Chenu and de la Hodde, Karl Vogt does indeed appear as primus inter pares.
The ‘unperplexed’ Vogt’s final proof of my entente cordiale with the secret police in general and ‘my
relations with the Kreuz-Zeitung party [32] in particular’, consists of the fact that my wife is the siste r
of the retired Prussian minister Herr von Westphalen ( Magnum Opus , p 194). How now to parry
Falstaff’s dastardly wiles? Perhaps the clown will forgive my wife her cognate Prussian minister if he
learns that one of her Scottish agnates was beheaded as a r ebel in the Edinburgh market place in the
fight for freedom against James II. As is well known, it is only by an oversight that Vogt still carried
his own head around with him. That is to say, that at the Robert Blum celebration of the German
Workers’ Educational Association in Geneva (13 November 1859) he reported, ‘how the left of the
Frankfurt Parliament had long been undecided whom they should send to Vienna, whether Blum or
himself. In the end it was fate, the drawing of a straw, that decided in favour  of, or rather against,
Blum.’ (Die Schillerfeier zu Genf: Text der Gesänge und Declamationen (Geneva, 1859), pp 28–29)
On 13 October, Robert Blum travelled from Frankfurt to Vienna. On 23 or 24 October, a deputation
of the Frankfurt extreme left, on its way to the Congress of Democrats in Berlin, arrived in Cologne. I
saw these gentlemen, among whom there were several parliamentarians closely affiliated with the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung . These people, the first of whom was summarily shot during the Imperial
Constitution campaign, the second of whom died in exile, and the third of whom is still alive,
whispered a strange, uncanny story into my ear concerning Vogt’s activities in relation to Robert
Blum’s mission to Vienna.
However:
Ask me not to talk, ask me to keep my peace,
For sealed lips are my duty.
Heiß mich nicht reden, heiß mich schweigen,
Denn das Geheimnis ist mir Pflicht! [33]
The Robert Blum celebration (November 1859) mentioned above was an unpleasant experience for
the ‘rounded character’. As he entered the hall, Silenus-like, subserviently waddling around his patron
James Fazy, a worker called out: ‘There goes Hal, and behind him Falstaff.’ When he announced
himself, according to his pleasant anecdotes, to be Robert Blum’s alter ego , it was on ly by great
efforts possible to prevent some enraged workers from storming the platform. When, finally,
forgetting how only in June he had thwarted the revolution, he himself now called ‘once more on to
the barricades’ (Schillerfeier, p 29), a mocking echo repeated: ‘Barricades — bullshit!’ So accurately,

36

however, is Vogt’s revolutionary bluster gauged abroad that this time we were spared the otherwise
unavoidable ‘confidential inquiry by a South German Ambassador’, and no article appeared in the
Allgemeine Zeitung.
Vogt’s collected Stieberisms from the ‘Brimstone Gang’ to the ‘retired Minister’ betray in him the
kind of master-singer of whom Dante said:
Ed egli avea fatto del cul trombetta.
(And he made his arse a trumpet.)
Notes
1 A nickname for Napoleon Bonaparte.
2 Marianne was the name of a secret republican group founded in France in 1850.
3 Pietri — a French Bonapartist politician and police prefect of Paris; Laity — a French
politician and senator who took part in the Strasburg putsch with Louis Napoleon.
4 The Palais Royal had been the royal residence in Paris. Under the Second Empire it
was the residence of Napoleon I’s younger brother, Jérôme Bonaparte and his son,
Prince Napoleon, nicknamed Plon-Plon.
5 A loan which Kinkel and other leaders of the petty-bourgeois emigration tried to raise
in 1851–52 to get money for the immediate unleashing of a revolution in Germany.
6 He is a liar and the father of lies (Dante’s Inferno).
7 The Frankfurt National Assembly sat in St Paul’s Church in Frankfurt-am-Main from
May 1848 to May 1849.
8 Verses from a medieval German satirical poem.
9 A sudden dramatic act.
10 The title Coptic Grand Master refers to the eighteenth-century adventurer Cagliostro,
who set up a masonic society called the ‘Egyptian Freemasons’ under an omnipotent and
omniscient head, the Great Copt.
11 Police spies.
12 L’Indépendant — A bourgeois -democratic weekly founded in London in 1840. Marx
and Engels were active in it in 1847 and 1849–50 but left in 1850 because it lined up
with the minority in the Communist League in the fight against adventurism led by Marx
and Engels. Marx and Engels later were again active in it.
13 Governing body of the Swiss Confederation.
14 Barrot — leader of the French liberal opposition under the July monarchy, Prime
Minister from 1848–49 relying on the counter-revolutionary monarchists.
15 Cavaignac — French General and politician made War Minister in May 1848. Given
dictatorial powers by the National Assembly, he put down the June rising of the Paris
proletariat with great cruelty. Prime Minister from June to December 1848.
16 Pious fraud.
17 Cherval plot — In September 1851 members of the community of the Communist
League were arrested. With the help of Cherval, who was head of the community in
Paris, the French and Prussian police were able to invent the ‘Franco–German
conspiracy’. Cherval, who had acted as provocateur, was allowed to escape from prison.
The attempts of the Prussian police to implicate Marx and Engels in the conspiracy failed
completely.
18 The German Workers’ Educational Association was founded in London in 1840.
Marx and Engels were active in it in 1847 and again in 1849–50, when they left it
because the Association had sided against them in the Central Committee of the

37

Communist League. At the end of the 1850s Marx and Engels once more collaborated
with the Association.
19 The Workers’ Republic — published in New York in the early 1850s; represented the
views of the egalitarian Communists.
20 Vogt was one of the five members of the Imperial Regency set up by the rump
parliament of the Frankfurt Assembly. In June, the Assembly moved to Stuttgart since,
having been deserted by the conservative deputies and a good number of the liberals, it
feared it would be dispersed. It was dispersed by troops a few days later.
21 Catalina — Roman politician and patrician (108–62 BC), organiser of a conspiracy
against the aristocratic Republic of Rome.
22 Zacharias — Old Testament prophet.
23 A demonstration of South German liberals and radical supporters in 1832 demanding
freedom for citizens and the unity of Germany.
24 Saintly simplicity.
25 Information bureau.
26 Non-classical secondary school.
27 Hinckeldy — Police President of Berlin and Chief of the Prussian Police.
28 The sum or aggregate of the ingredients which make a given fact a breach of law.
29 New Yorker Criminal-Zeitung — published in New York in the 1850s.
30 Now, now you see that I am sharper in looking to the safety of the republic than you
to harming it.
31 Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) — French zoologist and palaeontologist who founded
the science of comparative anatomy.
32 The Neue Preussische Zeitung, which appeared in Berlin after 1848, was the organ of
the Prussian Junkers. It was known as the Kreuz-Zeitung because it had an Iron Cross
(Kreuz) in its heading.
33 Quotation from Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.

Chapter IV: Techow’s Letter
What else does the ‘rounded character’ now pull out of the ‘tristo sacco che merda fa
di quel, che si trangugia’ —  Dante [1]
A letter from Techow dated London, 26 August 1850:
To characterise those activities [that is to say of the Brimstone Gang] I can do no
better than to impart here the letter of a man that everybody who ever knew him will
recognise as a man of honour and that [the man of honour or the letter?] I may permit
myself to publish because it was explicitly intended for the purpose of information [for
whom?] and those considerations [on whose part?] that previously spoke against
publication are no longer in force. (Magnum Opus, p 141)
Techow came to London from Switzerland at the end of August 1850. His letter is addressed to the
former Prussian Lieutenant, Schimmelpfennig (at that time in Berne) ‘for the information of our
friends’, that is to say the members of the ‘Centralisation’, a secret society that was set up by German

38

refugees in Switzerland, died almost a decade ago, was highly variegated in its composition and was
to a large degree animated by parliamentary elements. Techow belonged to this society, unlike Vogt
and his friends. How, therefore, does Vogt come into possession of Techow’s letter and who gave him
permission to publish it ?
Techow himself wrote to me from Australia, dated 17 April 1860, ‘ I in any case have never had the
opportunity to give Herr Karl Vogt any authorisation at all in this matter.’
Of Techow’s ‘friends’ to whom the letter was to be imparted there are now only two in Switzerland.
Let both speak for themselves:
E to Schily, 19 April 1860, Upper Engandine, Canton Graubünden:
Upon the appearance of Vogt’s pamphlet My Case Against the Allgemeine Zeitung, in
which a letter from Techow to his friends in Switzerland dated 26 August 1850 is
printed, we decided, those of Techow’s friends who are still in Switzerland, to express
our disapproval of the unauthorised publication of this letter in a letter to Vogt.
Techow’s letter was addressed to Schimmelpfennig in Berne, and copies of it were to
be sent to friends… I am glad to say that we were right to the extent that no one
among Techow’s friends, no one who has a right to his letter of 26 August, has put it
to the same use as its accidental possessor. On 22 January, a letter was written to Vogt
disapproving of the unauthorised publication of Techow’s letter, protesting against
any further misuse of the same and demanding the letter back. On 27 January of this
year, Vogt replied: ‘That Techow’s letter had been intended for the information of his
friends, that the friend who had placed the same in his hands had given it to him for
the explicit purpose of publication… and that he would only give the letter back to the
person from whom he had received it.’
B to Schily, Zurich, 1 May 1860:
The letter to Vogt was written by me by prior agreement with E—. R was not one of
the ‘friends’ for whose information Techow’s letter was intended; from the content of
the letter, however, Vogt knew that it was addressed to me, but took good care not to
obtain my agreement to its publication.
To solve the riddle I have held back a part of the letter from Schily given above. It reads:
I must speak here of this Ranickel, because Techow’s letter must have got into Vogt’s
hands through him, a point in your inquiry that I almost overlooked. That is to say that
the letter was addressed by Techow to the friends with whom he had lived in Zürich,
Schimmelpfennig, B and E. I then also received the letter later, as a friend of these
friends and of Techow. When I was summarily and brutally expelled from Switzerland
(that is to say that, without previous notice of expulsion, I was seized in the streets of
Geneva and immediately carried off) I was not even granted the favour of entering my
apartment one last time to sort out my things. I therefore wrote from prison in Berne to
a reliable man in Geneva, the master cobbler Thum, asking him to have one or the
other of my friends who were still there (for I did not know which of them might
perhaps have been ordered out at the same time) pack my things and send the best of
them on to me in Berne, but to take the rest for the time being into his care,
recommending a careful inspection of my papers so that nothing should be added to
the consignment sent to me that could not stand the journey through France. So it
happened, and Techow’s letter was not added. Among those papers there were several
documents relating to the mutiny of parliamentarians then going on against the Geneva
local committee for distributing money for the refugees (the committee consisted of
three citizens of Geneva, among them Thum, and two refugees, Becker and myself),
documents which Ranickel knew perfectly as a result of his participation on behalf of
the committee against the parliamentarians. So, then, I had asked Thum, as treasurer
and archivist of the committee, to have Ranickel search those pieces out of my papers
for him. It may be that Ranickel, thus legitimated to be present at the inspection of my
papers, was handed Techow’s letter in one way or another, perhaps being informed of
it by one of the inspectors. I by no means impugn the transfer of possession from me to

39

him, but I most decidedly claim to distinguish it from a transfer of ownership. I then
soon wrote to Ranickel from London that he should send me the letter. But he did not
do so: from then on, therefore, dates his culpa manifesta, in the beginning, it is true,
only levis, but increasing according to the degree of his complicity in the unauthorised
publication of the letter to magna or maxima culpa, or even to doles. [2] That this
publication was unauthorised, that it was not permitted by any of the addressees, I do
not doubt for an instant, and I shall anyway write on that score to E to make sure. That
Ranickel lent a hand in the publication there can also be no doubt, given his notorious
intimacy with Vogt, and although I do not have the slightest intention of criticising
this intimacy as such, I cannot help drawing attention here to the way it contrasts with
what went before. Ranickel, that is to say, was not only one of the biggest
parliamentarian-baiters in general, but also expressed in relation to the Imperial
Regent in particular the most bloodthirsty intentions. ‘I must murder the fellow’, he
would cry, ‘even if I have to go to Berne to do it’, and we would have to put him in a
straitjacket, so to speak, to keep him from these regicidal intentions. Now, however,
that the scales seem to have fallen from his eyes, and Saul has turned into Paul, I am
curious to see how he will turn out in another respect, that is to say as the avenger of
Europe. ‘I have fought a hard struggle’, he said in those days, when he was vacillating
between Europe and America, ‘but now, happily, it is over. I shall stay — and avenge
myself!!’ Shudder ye Byzantines.
So much for Schily’s letter.
The Ranickel, therefore, Stieberated Techow’s letter from the papers of the refugee Schily. Despite
Schily’s demand from London, it retained the letter. ‘Friend’ Ranickel handed over the letter that was
thus fraudulently intercepted to ‘friend’ Vogt, and ‘friend’ Vogt, with that tenderness of conscience
peculiarly his own, declared himself justified in publishing the letter since Vogt and Ranickel are
‘friends’. Thus whoever wrote the letter for the ‘information’ of ‘friends’ wrote it necessarily for the
‘friends’ Vogt and Ranickel — arcades ambo .
I regret that this peculiar concept of justice takes me back to stories that are half -forgotten and have
long since been lost from sight: but Ranickel has started and I must follow.
The ‘Communist League’ was set up in Paris in 1836, originally under a different name. The way that
the organisation gradually took shape was this. A certain number of membe rs would form a
‘community’, the various communities in the town would form a ‘circle’ and a greater or lesser
number of circles would group themselves around a ‘leading circle’; at the head of the whole stood
the ‘central authority’ which, elected at a congress of the delegates of all the circles, nevertheless had
the right to co -opt members and in urgent cases to appoint its successors. The central authority was
based first in Paris, and from 1840 to the beginning of 1848 in London. The leaders of the
communities and the circles, like the central authority itself, were all appointed by election. This
democratic constitution, completely at variance with the purposes of a conspiratorial secret society,
was at least not disconsonant with the tasks of a propag anda society. The ‘League’s’ activities
consisted first of all in setting up public German Workers’ Educational Associations, and most of the
associations of this kind that still exist in Switzerland, England, Belgium and the United States were
either founded directly by the ‘League’ or brought to life by former members of it. For that reason the
constitution of these Associations is the same everywhere. One day in the week was set aside for
discussion, and another for social entertainment (singing, recitat ions, etc). Association libraries were
set up everywhere, and wherever possible, classes for the education of the workers in elementary
knowledge. The ‘League’ that stood behind the public Workers’ Associations and directed them, not
only found in them the  most convenient field for public propaganda, but also filled out and extended
itself from their most useful members. Given the migrant life of the German craftsman, it was only in
rare cases that the central authority needed to send special emissaries.
As far as the secret doctrine of the ‘League’ itself is concerned, it underwent all the transformations of
French and English socialism, as well as their German varieties (for example, Weitling’s fantasies).
From 1839, as is already obvious from the Bluntsch li report,
[4] the religious question played, next to
the social question, the most important role. The various phases that German philosophy underwent

40

between 1839 and 1846 were followed with eager partisanship in the bosom of the workers’ societies.
The secret form of the society owed its origin to Paris. The League’s main purpose —  propaganda
among the workers in Germany — dictated the later retention of this form. During my first stay in
Paris I cultivated personal relations with the leader of the ‘Leag ue’ there, as I did with the leaders of
most of the French secret workers’ societies, without however joining any of these. In Brussels, where
Guizot banished me, I set up, together with Engels, W Wolff and others, the German Workers’
Educational Association, [5] which still exists. At the same time we published a series of pamphlets,
partly printed and partly lithographed, in which the medley of Anglo -French Socialism or
Communism and German philosophy which at that time formed the secret doctrine of the ‘ League’
was subjected to merciless criticism, the scientific insight into the economic structure of bourgeois
society was established in its place as the only tenable theoretical foundation, and finally the fact that
what was at issue was not the introduction of some utopian system or other, but conscious
participation in a revolutionary social process taking place before our eyes, was explained in popular
form. As a result of this activity, the London central authority entered into correspondence with us
and, at the end of 1846, sent one of its members, the clockmaker Joseph Moll , who later as a soldier
of the revolution fell on the battlefield in Baden, to Brussels, in order to call on us to join the
‘League’. Moll countered the reservations that spoke against this intention by revealing that the
central authority proposed to convene a congress in London where the critical views we had asserted
were to be set forth as the League’s doctrine in a public manifesto, that, however, our personal
collaboration was indispensable in the face of the outdated and resisting elements, but that that
collaboration was tied to joining the ‘League’. We therefore joined. The congress, at which the
League’s members in Switzerland, France, Belgium, Germany and England were repr esented, took
place, and after a passionate debate that lasted several weeks the Manifesto of the Communist Party
that Engels and I had written was accepted, appearing in print at the beginning of 1848, and later
appearing in English, French, Danish and It alian translations. On the outbreak of the February
revolution, the London central authority transferred the supreme command over the ‘League’ to me.
During the period of the revolution in Germany, its activities died out of their own accord, as more
effective ways for the assertion of its aims now stood open. When, after being expelled from France
for a second time, I arrived in London in the late summer of 1849, I found the ruins of the central
authority reconstituted and communications with the reconstru cted circles in Germany restored.
Willich arrived in London a few months later, and on my proposal was accepted onto the central
authority. He was recommended to me by Engels , who had served as his adjutant in the Imperial
Constitution Campaign. To complet e the history of the League, I must also comment that on 15
September 1850 a split took place in the central authority. The majority, with Engels and myself,
transferred the seat of the central authority to Cologne , where the ‘leading circle’ for Central a nd
Southern Germany had been for a long time, and where the most significant centre of intellectual
forces outside London was to be found.
At the same time, we withdrew from the London Workers’ Educational Association. The minority of
the central authority, on the other hand, with Willich and Schapper, set up a separate League, which
not only kept up the link with the Workers’ Educational Association but also resumed
communications with France and Switzerland, interrupted after 1848. On 12 November 1852, the
Cologne accused were found guilty. A few days later the League, on my proposal, was declared
dissolved. I have included among the legal documents of my action against the National -Zeitung a
document relating to this dissolution, dated November 1852. Ment ioned there as the reason for the
dissolution is the fact that since the arrests in Germany, that is to say as early as the spring of 1851, all
contact with the continent has ceased, and that anyway such a propaganda society was no longer
timely. A few mon ths later, at the beginning of 1853, the separate Willich –Schapper League also
passed away.
One can find the principled reasons for the split touched on above in my Revelations Concerning the
Communist Trial, where an extract from the minutes of the meeting of the central authority on 15
September 1850 is printed. The immediate practical occasion was Willich’s exertions to involve the
‘League’ in the revolutionary games of the German democratic emigration. Completely opposing
conceptions of the political situation sharpened the conflict still further. I would like to quote only one
example. Willich deluded himself that the rivalry between Prussia and Austria, on the question of

41

Electoral Hesse and the Confederation, [6] would lead to serious conflicts and of fered an opportunity
for the practical intervention of the revolutionary party. On 10 November 1850, shortly after the split
in the ‘League’, he also published a proclamation in the same terms ‘Aux démocrates de toutes les
nations’ [7] signed by the centra l authority of the ‘separate League’ and also by French, Hungarian
and Polish refugees. Engels and I, on the other hand, as can be read on pages 174–75 of the Revue der
Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung (double issue of May to October 1850, Hamburg), [8] claimed t he
opposite; ‘all this noise will lead to nothing…  without a drop of blood being spilled, the two sides’ —
Austria and Prussia — ‘will find a way to one another on the benches of the Federal Diet’, [9] in
Frankfurt, ‘without either their mutual jealousies, or their dispute with their subjects or their chagrin
at the Russian supremacy being in the slightest diminished.’
Whether Willich’s personality — and his abilities, by the way, should not be denied — and his
memories of Besançon, which at that time (1850) were still fresh, qualified him of all people to
conceive ‘impersonally’ conflicts that were rendered inevitable by contradictory views and were
renewed daily, can be judged from the following document:
The German Column at Nancy to Citizen Joh Philipp Becker in Biel, President of the
German Association of Arms ‘Hilf Dir!’
Citizen!
We hereby announce to you, as the elected representative of all German republican
refugees, that a column of German refugees has formed in Nancy bearing the name
‘German Column in Nancy’. The refugees forming the column here are partly those
that previously formed the Vesoul column and partly, the refugees here, a component
of the Besançon column. Their withdrawal from Besançon is based on purely
democratic reasons. Namely that, in everything that he did, Willich asked the column
for advice very rarely; thus the rules of the Besançon column were not generally
discussed and decided upon, but given a priori by Willich and put into execution
without the agreement of the column.
Further, Willich also gave us a posteriori proof of his despotic character in a series of
orders that were worthy of a Jellačič or a Windischgrätz, but not of a republican.
Willich gave orders that a member leaving the column, named Schörr, should have the
new shoes that had been procured for him out of the column’s savings taken from his
feet, not thinking that Schörr, too, had a share in these savings, in that these savings
came for the most part from the 10 sous per man that are paid daily as a subsidy by
France… He wanted to take his shoes with him, but Willich had them taken off him.
Willich sent several sound members of the column away from Besançon on account of
trifles, such as absence during roll-call or drill, coming back too late (at night) and
petty bickerings, without consulting the column, with the comment that they could go
to Africa, for they could no longer remain in France; and if they did not go to Africa
he would have them handed over — to Germany, moreover, for he had complete
power to do so from the French government, which afterwards, following an inquiry at
the Besançon Prefecture, was declared to be untrue. Almost every day Willich stated
at roll-call that anybody who did not like it could go away whenever he wanted, the
sooner the better, they could go to Africa, etc; further, he once shouted the general
threat that anybody who opposed his orders could either go to Africa or he would have
them handed over to Germany, which had as a result the inquiry at the Prefecture
mentioned above. As a result of these threats many people became thoroughly fed up
with life in Besançon where, as it was said, they had everything thrown in their faces
every day. ‘If we want to be slaves’, they said, ‘we can go to Russia, or need not have
started anything in Germany.’ Enough; they declared that they could not hold out in
Besançon any longer at any price without coming into bitter conflict with Willich; for
that reason they went away, but since at that time there was not a column anywhere
else that could accept them, and they could not live on ten sous alone, there was
nothing left for them to do but to enlist for Africa, which they did. Thus Willich

42

brought 30 fine citizens to desperation, and he is to blame for the fact that these forces
were lost to the Fatherland for ever.
What is more, Willich was unwise enough always to praise his old people at roll-call
and to disparage the new, which caused constant strife. Indeed, Willich even declared
one day at roll-call that Prussians were far superior to South Germans in head, heart
and body, or, as he expressed himself, in physical, moral and intellectual powers. On
the other hand, the South Germans were, he said, good-natured. He meant to say
stupid, but he did not have the courage. In this way, Willich made all the South
Germans, by far the most, fearfully angry. The coarsest comes last.
When, 14 days ago, the Seventh Company allowed a member named Baroggio, whom
Willich had arbitrarily expelled from the barracks, to stay quartered in the room for
one night, and kept him in their room despite Willich’s ban and defended it against
Willich’s supporters, fanatical tailors, Willich ordered them to bring ropes and tie up
the rebels. And the ropes were actually brought. But although Willich’s intentions
were quite strong enough to have the order carried out, his authority was not… These
are the reasons for their withdrawal.
We have not written this in order to complain against Willich, for Willich’s character
and intentions are good, and many of us respect him. But the manner in which he
seeks to achieve his aims and the means that he applies did not please all of us. Willich
means well, but he thinks that he is wisdom and the ultima ratio,
[10] and thinks that
everybody who contradicts him, be it even in small things, is either an idiot or a
traitor. In short, Willich recognises no opinion other than his own. He is a mental
aristocrat and despot. If he approves of something, he will not stop at any means to
achieve it. But enough of this; we know Willich now. We know his strengths and his
weaknesses, and that is why we are no longer in Besançon. Moreover, in leaving
Besançon, we all declared that we were separating from Willich but not resigning from
the German Association of Arms, ‘Hilf Dir’.
And the same with the people from Vesoul…
With assurances of our highest esteem, fraternal greetings and a handclasp from the
Nancy column.
Adopted at the General Meeting of 13 November 1848.
Nancy, 14 November 1848, for and on behalf of the column, B— (Secretary).
Now back to Techow’s letter. As with the other reptile, this letter’s poison is in the tail, that is to say
in the postscript of 3 September [1850]. It deals with a duel between my friend Konrad Schramm ,
who died all too young, and Herr Willich . In this duel, which took place early in September 1850 in
Antwerp, Techow and the Frenchman Barthélemy figured as Willich’s seconds. Techow wrote to
Schimmelpfennig ‘for the information of friends’: ‘The former [that is to say, Marx and his
supporters] unl eashed their champion Schramm against Willich, who attacked him with the most
vulgar invective and finally challenged him to a duel.’ [Techow means: whom he attacked with the
most vulgar invective and finally challenged to a duel.] (Magnum Opus, pp 156, 157)
My refutation of this childish gossip has been available in printed form for the last seven years in the
pamphlet quoted earlier, The Knight of the Noble Consciousness (New York, 1853).
At the time, Schramm was still alive. Like Willich he was in the United States.
Willich’s second, Barthélemy, had not yet been hanged; Schramm’s second, the worthy Polish officer
Miskowsky, had not yet been burnt, and Herr Techow could not yet have forgotten his circular ‘for
the information of friends’.
In the said pamphlet is to be found a letter from my friend Friedrich Engels, dated Manchester, 23
November 1853, which says at the end:
At the meeting of the central authority which gave rise to a challenge between
Schramm and Willich, I [Engels] am supposed [according to Willich] to have
committed the crime of ‘leaving the room’ with Schramm shortly before the scene was
enacted, and thus of having prepared the whole scene. Previously it was Marx who

43

[according to Willich] is supposed to have ‘incited’ Schramm, now for a change I am
the one. A duel between an old Prussian Lieutenant experienced with pistols and a
merchant who had probably never had a pistol in his hand was truly a marvellous way
of getting rid of the Lieutenant. Nevertheless, friend Willich narrated everywhere,
orally and in writing, that we wanted to have him shot… Schramm was simply
enraged by Willich’s shameless conduct, and we were all greatly surprised when he
forced him to a duel. Schramm himself did not suspect, a few minutes previously, that
it would come to that. Never was there a more spontaneous action… Schramm only
left [the meeting room] when personally urged to do so by Marx, who wished to avoid
further scandal. (Fr Engels, The Knight, p 7)
How far I for my part was from suspecting that Techow would lend himself as a vehicle for this
childish gossip can be seen from the following passage in the same pamphlet:
Originally, as Techow himself told me and Engels upon his return to London, Willich
was firmly convinced that I intended to do away with His Lordship through the
intermediary of Schramm, and he wrote this idea to anybody and everybody. Upon
closer consideration, however, he found that such a diabolical tactician as myself
could not possibly hit upon the idea of getting rid of him by means of a duel with
Schramm. (The Knight, p 9)
The gossip Techow retailed to Herr Schimmelpfennig ‘for the information of friends’ was repeated
from hearsay. Karl Schapper, who took Willich’s part in the subsequent split in the League and was a
witness of the challenge scene, writes to me on this:
5 Percy Street
Bedford Square
27 September 1860
Dear Marx
The following with reference to the scandal between Schramm and Willich:
This occurred in a meeting of the central authority and as a result of a violent dispute
that developed coincidentally between the two during the discussion. I can still recall
very clearly that you did everything to calm things down and to settle the matter, and
that you seemed as surprised at this sudden explosion as I myself and the other
members present.
Greetings
Your Karl Schapper
I will finally just mention that a few weeks after the duel, Schramm himself, in a letter of 31
December 1850, accused me of partiality towards Willich . The disapproval that Engels and I had
openly expressed to him about the duel, both before and after it, had for the moment put him in a
temper. This letter of his and other papers concerning the duel that have come to me from him and
Miskowsky are available for inspection by his relatives. They do not belong in the public eye.
When Konrad Schramm next visited me in London in mid -July 1857, after his return from the United
States, this bold, tall figure of a youth was broken by incurable consumption, which, however, had
only transfigured that handsome head, which w as so full of character. With his own peculiar sense of
humour, which never deserted him for a moment, the first thing that he laughingly told me about was
his own obituary, which an indiscreet friend had already published in a German paper in New York
on the basis of a rumour. On medical advice Shramm went to St Hélier in Jersey, where Engels and I
saw him for the last time. Schramm died on 16 January 1858. At the funeral, which was followed by
the whole liberal population of St Hélier and all the émigrés who had settled there, the funeral oration
was pronounced by G Julian Harney, one of the best popular orators in England, who had earlier been
known as a Chartist leader, and who had befriended Schramm during his stay in London. Schramm’s
fiery, impetuous, bold and energetic character, which never allowed itself to be tied down by
humdrum interests, was permeated with critical intelligence, original power of thought, ironical
humour and naive good nature. He was our party’s Percy Hotspur.

44

Back to Herr Techo w’s letter. A few days after his arrival in London, he had a lengthy rendezvous
late at night with us in a wine -house where Engels, Schramm and I treated him. He describes this
rendezvous in his letter to Schimmelpfennig of 26 August 1850 ‘for the information of friends’. I had
never seen him previously, and afterwards saw him perhaps a couple of times, but only in passing.
Nevertheless he immediately saw through my head, heart and kidneys and those of my friends, and
hurried to send a psychological warrant  for our arrest to Switzerland, the secret duplication and
distribution of which he most carefully recommended to ‘friends’.
Techow busied himself greatly with my heart. I shall be generous enough not to follow him into this
area. ‘Ne parlons pas morale’, [11] as the Parisian grisette said when her friend talked politics.
Let us spend some time on the addressee of the letter of 26 August, the former Prussian Lieutenant
Schimmelpfennig. I do not know this gentleman personally and have never met him. I can draw his
character from two letters. The first letter, which I shall give in the form of extracts, was addressed to
me by my friend W  Steffen, former Prussian lieutenant and teacher at  the Divisional School, dated
Chester, 23 November 1853. It reads:
Willich had once sent over [to Cologne] an adjutant called Schimmelpfennig. The
latter did me the honour of summoning me, and was very firmly convinced that he
could judge all circumstances in advance better than anybody who had had the facts in
view day by day. He therefore formed a very poor opinion of me when I informed him
that the officers of the Prussian army would not count themselves lucky to fight under
his and Willich’s banner, and were not at all inclined to proclaim the Willichian
Republic citissime. [12] He became even more angry when not a single person was
senseless enough to want to duplicate his appeal to the officers, which he brought with
him ready-written, to proclaim themselves immediately in favour of what he called
‘democracy’.
He left ‘a Cologne enslaved by Marx’, as he wrote to me, in a rage, and obtained the
duplication of his nonsense elsewhere and sent it to a number of officers, and so it
came about that the chaste secret of this clever method of turning Prussian officers into
republicans was prostituted by ‘Spectator’ of the Kreuzzeitung.
At the time of this adventure, Steffen, who did not come to England until 1853, was completely
unknown to me. Schimmelpfennig characterises himself even more strikingly in the following letter to
the same Hörfel who was later unmasked as a French police agent, the soul of the revolutionary
committee set up in Paris at the end of 1850 by Schimmelpfennig, Schurz, Häfner and Kinkel’s other
friends in Paris at the time, and who was also the most intimate friend of the two matadors Schurz and
Schimmelpfennig.
Schimmelpfennig to Hörfel (in Paris 1851):
Here [in London] the following has now happened… we have written to all our
influential supporters there [in America] to prepare for the loan [the Kinkel loan] by
first of all speaking for a while personally and in the press of the power of conspiracy,
and to point out what powerful forces, neither from the German, French nor Italian
side, will never desert the field of battle. [Hasn’t history got no facts?]
[13] … Our
work has now got off to a good start. As soon as over-obstinate people are dropped,
they come back afterwards and gladly accept the conditions that are set. Tomorrow, as
soon as the work is firm and has been secured, I shall get in with Ruge and Haug… My
social position is, like yours, very oppressive. Our business must pull its socks up
soon. [That is to say Kinkel’s revolutionary loan business.]
Your
Schimmelpfennig
This letter is to be found in the ‘Revelations’ published by A Ruge in the Herold des Westens ,
Louisville, 11 September 1853. Schimmelpfennig, who was already in the United States at the time of
publication, has never protested against the authenticity of the letter. Ruge’s ‘Revelations’ are the
reprint of a document From the Files of the Berlin Pol ice Presidium . The document consists of
Hinckeldy’s marginal comments and papers that were either seized from Schimmelpfennig and Hörfel

45

in Paris by the French police or Stieberated from Pastor Dulon in Bremen, or, finally, entrusted to the
German-American press during the War of the Frogs and the Mice [14] between Ruge’s Agitational
Association and Kinkel’s Émigrés Association by the warring brothers themselves. Characteristic is
the irony with which Hinckeldy says of Schimmelpfennig that he broke short hi s Kinkel -
revolutionary-loan mission through Prussia because ‘he had the delusion that he was being followed
by the police’! In the same ‘Revelations’ there is to be found a letter from Karl Schurz , ‘the London
representative of the Paris Committee’ (that is to say of Hörfel, Häfner, Schimmelpfennig, etc), which
says:
It was decided yesterday by the members of the emigration present here to include
Bucher, Dr Frank, Redz from Vienna, and Techow, who will soon be here, in our
discussions. NB: Provisionally Techow should not be informed of this decision either
orally or in writing until he is here. (K Schurz to the ‘dear people’ in Paris, London,
16 April 1851)
It is to one of these ‘dear people’, Herr Schimmelpfennig, that Techow addresses his letter of 26
August 1850 for ‘the information of friends’. First of all, he informs the ‘dear man’ of theories which
I had held quite secret but which he immediately got out of me at our one meeting by means of the
proverb ‘in vino veritas’.
I [Herr Techow explains to Herr Schimmelpfennig ‘for the information of friends’]
finally declared ‘that I had always imagined them’ [Marx, Engels, etc] ‘to be above the
nonsense of a Communist abode of bliss à la Cabet etc’. (Magnum Opus, p 150)
Imagined! So Techow did not even know the ABC of our views, but was, however, generous and
condescending enough to imagine that they were not exactly nonsense.
Not to mention scientific works, if he had only read The Manifesto of the Communist Party , which he
later characterised as my ‘proletarian catechism’, he would have found in it a detailed section under
the title ‘Socialist and Communist Literature’ and at the end of this section a paragraph:
The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse
relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops
and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic
attacks on it, lose all practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore,
although the originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their
disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the
original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development
of the proletariat. They therefore endeavour, and that consistently, to deaden the class
struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental
realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated ‘phalansteries’,
[15] of
establishing ‘Home Colonies’, of setting up a ‘Little Icaria’ — pocket editions of the
New Jerusalem — and to realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to
appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois.
In the closing words Cabet’s Icarie or, as Techow calls it, ‘abode of bliss’, is explicitly described as ‘a
pocket edition of the New Jerusalem’.
His admitted complete ignorance of the views that Engels and I had made known in print years before
our meeting with him is a circumstance that fully expl ains his misunderstanding. A few examples of
his own character:
He [Marx] laughed at the fools who prayed his proletarian catechism after him, as well
as at the Communists à la Willich and at the bourgeois. The only people whom he
respects are the aristocrats, the pure ones who are conscious of it. In order to drive
them from domination, he needs a power which he can find only in the proletariat, and
that is why he has tailored his system to suit them. (Magnum Opus, p 152)
Thus Techow ‘imagines’ that I have composed a ‘proletarian catechism’. He means the Manifesto, in
which socialist and critical utopianism of every sort is criticised and, if Techow insists, ‘laughed at’.
Only this ‘laughter’ was not as simple as he ‘imagines’, but demanded a good piece of hard work, as
he could see from my book against Proudhon, Misère de la Philosophie  (1847). Techow further

46

‘imagines’ that I have ‘tailored’ a ‘system’ while on the contrary, even in the Manifesto, which was
intended directly for workers, I rejected all systems, and in their place put ‘the critical insight into the
conditions, the course, and the general results of real social movement’. Such an ‘insight’, however,
can be neither conjured up nor ‘tailored’ to order.
The way of conceiving of the relationship between the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat
as Techow ‘imagines’ (vorstellt) it and imputes (unterstellt) it to me, is of rare naïveté.
I ‘respect’ the aristocracy, ‘laugh’ at the bourgeoisie and ‘tailor a system’ to suit the proletariat i n
order through it to ‘drive’ the aristocracy ‘from domination’. In the first section of the Manifesto
entitled ‘Bourgeois and Proletarians’, the point is exhaustively developed that the economic, and
therefore also in one form or the other, the political domination of the bourgeoisie is the fundamental
condition not only for the existence of the modern proletariat but also for the creation of the ‘material
conditions for its liberation’. The ‘development of the modern proletariat’ (see Revue der Neuen
Rheinischen Zeitung, January 1850, p 15):
… is in general determined by the development of the industrial bourgeoisie. Only
under its domination does it win an extended national existence which can raise its
revolution to the level of a national revolution, and does it itself create the modern
means of production which become so many means for its own revolutionary
liberation. Only its domination tears out the roots of feudal society and prepares the
ground on which alone a proletarian revolution is possible.
I therefore declare in the same Revue that every proletarian movement in which England does not
participate is a ‘storm in a tea-cup’. As early as 1845, Engels had already developed the same view in
his Condition of the English Working Class . In countries therefore where the aristocracy in the
continental sense — and that was how Techow understood ‘the Aristocracy’ — still has to be ‘driven
from domination’, the first precondition of a proletarian revolution, that is to say an industrial
proletariat on a national scale, is in my opinion missing.
Techow found my view of the position German workers specifically took up in relation to the
bourgeois movement very definitely expressed in the Manifesto:
In Germany the Communist Party fights with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a
revolutionary way against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy and the petty
bourgeoisie.
But they never cease, for a single instant, to instil into the working class the clearest
possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat
[etc].
When I stood before a bourgeois jury in Cologne accused of ‘rebellion’, I also declared in the same
sense:
In modern bourgeois society there are still classes but there are no longer estates. Its
development consists in the struggle of these classes, though the latter are united in
confronting the estates and their God-anointed monarchy.
What else did the liberal bourgeoisie do in its appeals to the proletariat from 1688 to 1849 if it did not
‘tailor systems and phrases’ to force the aristocracy from domination through its strength? So when
we get down to what Herr Techow really extracted from my secret theory, it was only the most
ordinary bourgeois liberalism! Tant de bruit pour une omelette! [17] But since Techow, on the other
hand, knew that ‘Marx’ was no bourgeois liberal, there was nothing left for him to do save ‘go away
with the impression that his personal dominion is the purpose of all this activity’. ‘All my activity’,
what a modest expression for my one single conversation with Herr Techow!
Techow further vouchsafed to his Schimmelpfennig ‘for the information of friends’ the fact that I had
expressed the following monstrous opinion:
That in the end it was anyway all one whether this pitiful Europe collapsed, which
would have to happen in the near future without the social revolution, and whether
then America exploited the old system at the expense of Europe. (Magnum Opus,
p 148)

47

My conversation with Techow took place at the end of August 1850. In the February 1850 issue of the
Revue der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung, that is to say eight months before Herr Techow got this secret
out of me, I betrayed the following to the German public:
We come now to America. The most important fact that has occurred here, one more
important than the February revolution, is the discovery of the Californian gold mines.
Even now, after scarcely 18 months, it can be predicted that this discovery will have
even greater results than the discovery of America… For t he second time world trade
has been given a new direction… Then the Pacific Ocean will play the same role as
the Atlantic now and the Mediterranean Sea in antiquity and the Middle Ages — the
role of the great waterway of world trade; and the Atlantic will be diminished to the
role of an inland lake, such as is now played by the Mediterranean. The only chance
that the civilised European countries will not then fall into the same industrial,
commercial and political dependence in which Italy, Spain and Portugal now find
themselves lies in a social revolution [etc]. (Revue, Heft 2, February 1850, pp 76–77)
The ‘collapse in the near future ’ of old Europe and the accession of America to the throne the next
morning belongs only to Herr Techow. How clear I was at that time about America’s immediate
future one sees from the following passage from the same Revue:
Superspeculation will very soon develop and even if English capital… enters…
massively, New York nevertheless remains the centre of the whole swindle this time,
and, as in 1836, will be the first to experience its collapse. (Revue, double issue, May–
October 1850, p 149)
This forecast that  I made for America in 1850 was to be fulfilled literally in the great trade crisis of
1857. Of ‘old Europe’, I say:
In view of this general prosperity, in which the productive forces of the bourgeoisie
are developing so exuberantly… there can be no talk o f a real revolution… The
various squabbles in which the representatives of the individual factions of the
Continental Party of Order are now indulging and compromising one another are
remote from providing an opportunity for a new revolution. On the contrary, they are
possible only because the basis of conditions for the time being is so secure and —
what the reaction does not know — so bourgeois . All the attempts of the reaction to
hold up bourgeois development will recoil from it as certainly as all the moral
indignation and all the enthusiastic proclamations of the democrats. A new revolution
is only possible as a result of a new crisis. (Revue, double issue, May–October 1850,
p 153)
In fact, European history did not assume an acute, and, if you will, rev olutionary character again until
after the crisis of 1857 –58. In fact, precisely during the period of reaction of 1849 to 1859 industry
and trade developed on the continent on a previously unimagined scale and with them the material
foundations for the pol itical rule of the bourgeoisie. In fact, in that period ‘all the moral indignation
and all the enthusiastic proclamations of the democrats’ recoiled from the economic conditions.
If Techow took the serious part of our interview so light -heartedly, he took the light -hearted part all
the more seriously. With a solemnly straight face he lectures his Schimmelpfennig ‘for the information
of friends’:
Marx further said: The officers are always the most dangerous in revolutions, a chain
of traitors and treachery from Lafayette to Napoleon. One must always have poison
and the dagger to hand for them. (Magnum Opus, p 153)
Even Techow will surely not wish to bestow the commonplace about the treachery of the ‘military
gentlemen’ on us as an original thought. What is or iginal is the ‘poison and the dagger’ to be kept
constantly to hand. Did Techow not know even then that really revolutionary governments, like the
Committee of Public Safety, kept at hand for the ‘military gentlemen’ measures which, if they were
very drastic, were all the same less melodramatic? At the most, poison and daggers suit the affairs of a
Venetian oligarchy. If Techow studies his own letter anew, he will belatedly see the irony in it. Vogt’s
fellow vagabond, the notorious Bonapartist mouchard Edouard Simon, translated the last piece from
Techow’s letter in the Revue contemporain with the marginal comment:

48

Marx does not much like seeing officers in his gang. Officers are too dangerous in
revolutions.
Poison and the poignard must always be kept ready for them!
Techow, who is an officer, does not need telling twice; he re-embarks and returns to
Switzerland. (‘Le procès de M Vogt’, Revue contemporain, XIII, Paris, 1860, p 528)
Edouard Simon makes poor Techow so mightily terrified by the ‘poison and the dagger’ I kept at hand
for him that he immediately bolts, takes ship and returns to Switzerland. The Reichs -Vogt prints the
passage about ‘poison and the dagger’ in bold type to scare the German philistine. The same merry
person, however, writes in his so-called Studies:
The Spaniard’s poison and dagger shine today with a transfigured radiance — what
was at stake, indeed, was the independence of the nation. (Studien zur gegenwärtigen
Lage Europas, p 79)
Note, quite coincidentally: Spanish and English historical sources for the period from 1807 to 1814
have long since refuted the myth about poison invented by the French. But of course for political hot
air it continues undisturbed.
I come finally to the ‘gossip’ in Techow’s letter, and shall give a few examples to show his historical
impartiality:
At first the talk was about the competition between them and us, Switzerland and
London… They had had to defend the rights of the old League which, for the s ake of
its definite party position, could not tolerate in friendship another alongside it in the
same field [proletariat]. (Magnum Opus, p 143)
The rival company in Switzerland that Techow is speaking of here, and as the representative of which
he to some extent approached us, was the ‘Revolutionäre Zentralisation’ we have already mentioned.
Its central authority was based in Switzerland and led by a President, an advocate and former Vice-
President of the pocket parliaments of 1848 who had been a member of one of the German provisional
governments of 1849. In July 1850, Dronke arrived in Zurich, where, as a member of the London
‘League’, he was presented with a kind of notarised contract from the advocate for my ‘information’.
In it, it said word for word:
In consideration of the necessity of a unification of all the truly revolutionary
elements, and since all the members of the revolutionary central authority have
recognised the character of the next revolution as proletarian, even if they were not all
able to adopt unconditionally the programme drawn up in London [Manifesto of
1848], the following points are agreed between the Communist League and the
Revolutionary Centralisation:
1: Both parties are agreed to continue their work side by side — the Revolutionary
Centralisation by trying to prepare for the next revolution through the unification of all
revolutionary elements, the London society by trying to prepare the rule of the
proletariat through the organisation chiefly of the proletarian elements.
2: To this end, the Revolutionary Centralisation instructs its agents and emissaries that,
in setting up sections in Germany, the attention of the members who seem to be
suitable for entry into the Communist League should be drawn to the existence of an
organisation set up chiefly in the proletarian interest.
3 and 4: That the leadership for Switzerland should be entrusted only to real
supporters of the London Manifesto, and that there should be a mutual exchange of
reports.
One can see from this document, which is still in my possession, that this is not a matter of two secret
societies ‘in the same field’ (proletariat), but of an alliance of two societies in different fields and with
different tendencies. One can further see that, besides pursuing its own aims, the ‘Revolutionary
Centralisation’ declares itself ready to form a kind of branch office for the ‘Communist League’.
The proposal was rejected as to accept it was inconsistent with the ‘principled’ character of the
‘League’.

49

Now it was Kinkel’s turn…  To that they answered that… they had never striven for
cheap popularity, on the contrary! … As far as Kinkel was concerned they would
gladly have granted him his cheap popularity if he had stayed quiet. But after he had
published that Rastatt speech in the Berlin Abend-Post, peace had no longer been
possible. That they had known that everybody would raise a cry; that they had
predicted that in this they were staking the existence of their present paper [the Revue
der Rheinischen Zeitung]. That their fears had also come true. That they had been
ruined by the affair, had lost all their subscribers in the Rhenish Province, and now
had to let their paper close down. But that that did not worry them. (Magnum Opus,
pp 146–48)
First of all a factual report: the Revue did not close down then, for three months later a double issue of
the same appeared, nor had we lost a single subscriber in the Rhenish Province, as my old friend the
former Prussian artillery Lieutenant J Weydemeyer, at that time editor of the Neue Deutsche  Zeitung
in Frankfurt, who was so kind as to collect the subscriptions for us, can testify. Besides, Techow must
have known of Engels’ and my own literary activity only from hearsay, but he must at least have read
the critique, which he himself criticised,  of Kinkel’s speech. What was the purpose then of the
confidential information for the ‘dear people’ in Switzerland? Why ‘reveal’ to them what we
ourselves had already revealed to the public five months earlier? In the critique mentioned it says
word for word:
We know in advance that we will evoke the general indignation of the sentimental
swindlers and the democratic declaimers by denouncing this speech of the
‘imprisoned’ Kinkel to our party. That is a matter of complete indifference to us. Our
task is ruthless criticism… And in defending this position of ours, we gladly forgo
cheap democratic popularity. We have in no way endangered Herr Kinkel’s position
by our attack. We denounced him for the amnesty, confirming his admission that he is
not the man that people claimed to think he was, and stating that he was worthy not
only of being amnestied but even of entering the Prussian state service. Moreover his
speech has been published. (Revue der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung, April 1850, pp 70–
71)
Techow speaks of our ‘compromising’ of the petits grands hommes
[18] of the Revolution. He does
not, however, understand this ‘compromising’ in the police sense that Herr Vogt does. He means the
reverse, the operation by which we stripped sheep who had disguised themselv es in revolutionary
wolves’ clothing of their offensive raiment and thus preserved them from the fate of the famous
Provençal troubadour who was torn apart by the hounds because they believed in the wolfskin which
he wore to go hunting.
As an example of the offensive nature of our attacks, Techow particularly marks the occasional notes
on General Sigel in Engels’ description of the ‘Imperial Constitution Campaign’ (see Revue , March
1850, pp 70–78).
Now compare Engels’ well-documented criticism with the following malicious, insipid gossip that the
London ‘Emigration Association’ run by Techow, Kinkel, Willich, Schimmelpfennig, Schurz, HB
Oppenheim, Eduard Meyen, etc, had printed against the same Gener al Sigel about a year after our
meeting with Techow. And they did so for the simple reason that Sigel supported Ruge’s ‘Agitation
Association’ instead of Kinkel’s ‘Emigration Association’.
On 3 December 1851, that is to say, under the title ‘ The Agitation Association in London’  , the
Baltimore Correspondent , at that time a sort of Kinkel Moniteur, [19] carried the following
characterisation of Sigel:
Let us look a little deeper into who these sterling men are to whom all others appear as
‘immature politicians’. Generalissimo Sigel. If the muse of history is ever asked how
this pale nonentity achieved the rank of Generalissimo, it will embarrass her more than
the mooncalf Napoleon. The latter is at least ‘his uncle’s nephew’, but Sigel is only
‘his brother’s brother’. His brother became a popular officer through derogatory
remarks against the government caused by repeated arrest that he had to suffer for
disorderly conduct. Sigel minor thought this sufficient reason to proclaim himself

50

Generalissimo and Minister of War in the initial confusion of the revolutionary
uprising. The Baden artillery, which has often proved its excellence, had enough
senior and sterling officers, before whom the young, schoolboy-like Lieutenant Sigel
would have to withdraw, and who were not a little outraged to obey an insignificant
young man who was as inexperienced as he was untalented. But then there was a
Brentano who was weak-headed and treacherous enough to let everything happen that
would ruin the revolution. Indeed, it is a ridiculous fact, but it is a fact, that Sigel made
himself Generalissimo and that Brentano recognised him subsequently… One
remarkable characteristic, at least, is that Sigel left the bravest soldiers of the
republican army in the lurch in a desperate, hopeless fight at Rastatt in the Black
Forest, without sending the reinforcements promised while he himself drove around
Zürich in the epaulettes and cabriolet of the Prince of Fürstenburg and paraded himself
as an interesting, unlucky Generalissimo. That is the known greatness of the mature
politician who, remembering his earlier heroic deeds with ‘justified self-esteem’,
imposes himself once more as Generalissimo, this time upon the Agitation
Association. That is the famous great man, ‘his brother’s brother’.
Impartiality demands that we should also listen for a moment to Ruge’s ‘Agitation Association’ in the
person of its spokesman Tausenau . In an open letter dated London, 14 November  1851 ‘To Grizen
Seidensticker’, Tausenau remarks in relation to the ‘Emigration Association’ led by Kinkel, Techow,
etc, amongst other things:
They express the conviction that a unification of all in the interest of the revolution is
an urgent patriotic duty. The German Agitation Association shares this conviction, as
its members have shown in practice in long-drawn-out attempts at unification with
Kinkel and his supporters. Any basis for political cooperation disappeared, however,
as soon as it appeared to have been gained, and new deceptions succeeded the old
ones. Arbitrary action in breach of previous agreements, separate interests under the
mask of reconciliation, the systematic gerrymandering of majorities, the emergence of
unknown Great Men as organising chiefs of the Party, attempts to impose a secret
finance committee and all the other hole-in-the-corner moves with which immature
politicians always try to guide their country’s destiny from abroad. The very first
white heat of the revolution, meanwhile, evaporates such vanities to an empty haze…
We were publicly and officially denounced by Kinkel’s supporters; the reactionary
German press, to which we had no access, teemed with correspondence hostile to us
and favourable to Kinkel, and in the end Kinkel travelled to the United States in order
to dictate to us through the so-called German loan undertaken there a unification or
rather a subordination and dependence that is the intention of every author of financial
party mergers. Kinkel’s departure was kept so secret that we only learnt about it from
the report of his arrival in New York in American newspapers… This and yet more
were compelling reasons for revolutionaries, who do not overestimate themselves but
can say with self-assurance in the consciousness of previous achievements that at least
clearly defined sections of the people stand behind them, to enter an association which,
in its way, tries to advance the interests of the revolution.
The accusation is further made against Kinkel that the funds collected by him were to serve ‘a clique’,
as ‘his whole behaviour here’ (London) ‘and in America shows’, and similarly ‘the majority of the
guarantors appointed by Kinkel himself’.
It finishes by saying:
We promise our friends no interest and no repayment of their patriotic donations, but
we know that we will justify their confidence by positive [fair dealing?] achievements
and conscientious accountancy, and that the gratitude of the fatherland awaits them
one day with the publication of their names on our part. (Baltimore Wecker, 29
November 1851)

51

That was the kind of literary activity developed over three years in the German-American press by the
democratic heroes of the  ‘Agitation Association’ and the ‘Emigration Association’, to which the
‘Revolutionary League of the Two Worlds’ set up by Goegg was later added (see Appendix VI).
The refugee scandal in the American press was, moreover, opened by a paper tournament between the
parliamentarians Zitz and Roesler von Oels.
Here is yet another fact that is characteristic of Techow’s ‘dear people’.
Schimmelpfennig, to whom Techow’s letter ‘for the information of our friends’ was addressed, had
(as has already been mentioned above) set up a so-called Revolutionary Committee in Paris at the end
of 1850 together with Hörfel, Häfner, Goegg and others (K Schurz joined them later).
Several years ago, a letter by a former member of this committee to a political refugee here was made
over to me for whatever use I might like to put it to. The document is still in my possession.
It says, among other things:
Schurz and Schimmelpfennig constituted the whole of the committee. Whoever they
added in the way of members were only figureheads. At that time, these two
gentlemen believed that they would soon be able to place their Kinkel, whom they had
regularly expropriated to themselves, at the head of affairs in Germany. Ruge’s
sarcasms, like Marx’s criticism and daemonic impulses, were particularly hateful to
them. At a meeting of these gentlemen with their members they gave us a really
interesting portrait of Marx and instilled into us an exaggerated opinion of his
pandaemonic dangerousness… Schurz –Schimmelpfennig introduced a motion to
annihilate Marx. Insinuation and intrigue, the most impudent slanders, were
recommended as means. A vote in favour and a decision, if you want to call it that,
took place. The first step towards carrying it out was the characterisation of Marx by L
Häfner, based on the abovementioned portrait by Schurz and Schimmelpfennig,
published in the feuilleton of the Hamburger Anzeiger at the beginning of 1851.
At any event, there is the most striking elective affinity between Häfner’s feuilleton and Techow’s
letter, although neither the one nor the other can compare with Vogt’s ‘Lousiad’. The ‘Lousiads’ must
not be confused with Camoens’ ‘Lusiads’. The original ‘Lousiad’ was rather a mock-heroic epic by
Peter Pindar.
Notes
1 Wretched sack, which turns to dung all that goes in it.
2 Culpa manifesta —  manifest guilt; levis — slight; magna — great; doles  —  extreme.
3 One is as good/bad as the other.
4 Bluntschli, a Swiss lawyer and reactionary politician, who was a member of the
investigating committee examining the activities of German emigrants, wrote a report on
Communists in Switzerland.
5 Founded by Marx and Engels in Brussels in August 1847 with the aim of educating the
German workers in Belgium and of familiarising them with the ideas of scientific
Communism. Shortly after the February Revolution of 1848 in France, the Belgians
arrested and expelled the members of the Association.
6 The German Confederation, set up in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, comprised 28
principalities and four free cities. It lasted till 1866. It preserved the feudal fragmentation
of Germany and delayed the setting up of a central government. After the failure of the
1848 revolution, Prussia and Austria were rivals for supremacy in Germany. In 1850,
revolutionary events in Hesse gave them both an excuse to intervene in the affairs of that
state. Both despatched troops but, under pressure from the Russian Tsar, Prussia
withdrew.
7 To democrats of all nations.

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8 The Neue Rheinische Zeitung (Politisch-Oekonomisch Revue) was founded by Marx
and Engels in December 1849 as the paper of the Communist League to continue the
work of the previous Neue Rheinische Zeitung (see Chapter II, note 15). Six issues
appeared before it closed because of lack of funds and repression in Germany. Edited in
London and printed in Hamburg, the material published included Marx’s Class Struggles
in France from 1848 to 1850 and The Peasant War by Engels.
9 The Federal Diet or Bundestag was the central organ of the German Confederation; it
met in Frankfurt under the chairmanship of Austria. It consisted of representatives of the
German states and was an instrument for the reactionary policies of the German
governments.
10 Last word.
11 Let’s not talk about morality.
12 Most quickly.
13 A reference to a remark by a reactionary member of the Frankfurt National
Assembly: ‘There isn’t no fact on which to base an historical right.’
14 War of the Frogs and the Mice (Batrachomyomachia) — an ancient Greek parody of
Homer’s Iliad.
15 Phalanstery was the name given to the socialist colonies founded by Fourier. Owen
called his model Communist colonies ‘home-colonies’. Cabet, the French utopian
Communist, called his Utopia Icaria — a name he later gave to his Communist colony in
America.
16 A quotation from Marx’s Class Struggles in France.
17 So much noise over an omelette!
18 Little big men.
19 Marx ironically compares Kinkel’s paper with the French government paper
Moniteur.
20 Marx calls Vogt’s book a Lousiad, after the satirical poem of that name by the
English eighteenth-century poet, Peter Pindar. The title ‘Lousiad’ is itself a parody of the
name of the epic poem by the great Portuguese poet Camoens, who in 1572 wrote the
‘Lusiads’ celebrating Portuguese explorers.

Chapter V: Imperial Regent and Count Palatine
Vidi un col capo sì dì merda lordo,
Che non parea s’era laico o cherco,
Quei mi sgridò: Perchè se’tu sì ingordo
Di riguardar più me che gli altri brutti? — Dante [1]
The Vogt feels a mighty need to prove why it was precisely he who, as a ‘bête noir’, attracted the gaze
of the ‘Brimstone Gang’. Cherval and the ‘thwarted conspiracy’ at the Central Festival at Lausanne
are therefore supplemented by an adventure, which has no less substantial basis in reality, with the
‘runaway Imperial Regent’. Vogt, that is to say — and do not forget it — was in his day governor of
the parliamentary island of Barataria. [2] He recounts:
At the beginning of 1850 there appeared Kolatschek’s Deutsche Monatsschrift…
Immediately after the appearance of the first issue the Brimstone Gang, through one of
its members who immediately departed for America, issued a pamphlet under the title
The Runaway Imperial Regent Vogt with His Followers and Adolph Kolatschek’s
‘Deutsche Monatsschrift’, which was also mentioned by the Allgemeine Zeitung…  The
whole system of the Brimstone Gang reveals itself anew in this pamphlet. (Magnum
Opus, p 161)

53

There follows a long- winded explanation of how, in the said pamphlet, an anonymous article on
Gagern, written by Professor Hagen , is ‘ascribed’ to the runaway Imperial Regent, Vogt, and
precisely because ‘the Brimstone Gang knew’ that Hagen ‘was living in Germany at the time, was
being persecuted by the police and could not at that time be named without being exposed to the most
painful vexations’ (Magnum Opus, p 163).
Schily wrote to me in his letter dated Paris, 6 February:
That Greiner, who to my knowledge was never in Geneva, became entangled with the
Brimstone Gang is due to his obituary on the ‘Runaway Regent’. In parliamentary
circles its author was thought to be d’Ester, and he was as such ostracised until I
enlightened a friend and colleague of Vogt’s by letter on this point.
Greiner was a member of the provisional gover nment of the Palatinate. Greiner’s rule was ‘total
misery’ (see Vogt ’s Studien, p 28), that is, for my friend Engels , whom he had arrested on false
charges at Kirchheim. Engels himself has related the whole tragi -comic episode in detail in the Revue
der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung, February 1850, pp 53–55. And that is all that is known to me about
Herr Greiner. The fact that the runaway regent lyingly involves me in his conflict with the Count
Palatine reveals ‘anew’ the ‘whole system’ by which this inventive man has composed the life and
deeds of ‘The Brimstone Gang’.
What reconciles me, however, is the Falstaffian humour with which he has the Count Palatine depart
‘immediately’ for America. After the Count Palatine has loosed the pamphlet like a Parthian sho t at
the ‘Runaway Regent’, Greiner is gripped by terror. Away he flees from Switzerland to France, from
France to England. Even the channel does not seem sufficient protection to him, and on he flees to
Liverpool and on to a Cunard Steamer, where he calls breathlessly to the Captain: ‘Away over the
Atlantic.’ And the ‘stern mariner’ replies:
Wohl aus des Vogt Gewalt errett’ ich Euch!
Aus Sturmes Nöten muß ein andrer helfen.
Notes
1 I saw one with a head so heavy with dung, / I knew not be he layman or cleric. / He
shrieked at me: ‘What makes you so curious, / To stare at me more than the other
wretches?’
2 Vogt’s apparent powers as regent are ironically compared to those of Don Quixote’s
servant, Sancho Panza, as governor of the imaginary island of Barataria.
3 Though I shall save you from the Vogt’s power / From the tempest’s perils another
must protect you. — Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, Act I, Scene 1.

Chapter VI: Vogt and the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung
Sin kumber was manecvalt. — First collection of German fables, 1461. [1]
Vogt himself says that he is ‘concerned’ in the Magnum Opus, page 162, with ‘the development of his
personal position towards this clique ’ (Marx and Company). Strangely enough, he onl y recounts
conflicts that he never experienced and he only experiences conflicts that he has never recounted. I
must therefore counterpose to his fisherman’s tales a piece of real history. If one leafs through the
volume of Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1 June 1848 to 19 May 1849) one will find that during the whole
of 1848, with one single exception, Vogt’s name figures neither in the lead articles nor in the
correspondence of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung . It is to be found only in the daily reports on the
parliamentary debates, and the Frankfurt reporter never fails, to Herr Vogt’s great satisfaction, to
register conscientiously each time the ‘applause’ earned by the ‘speeches he himself made’. We have
seen that, while the right wing at Frankfurt had at its disp osal the combined forces of a Harlequin like
Lichnowski and of a clown like von Vincke, the left had nothing but the isolated pranks of the single
Vogt. We grasped the fact that he needed encouragement — ‘that important fellow the children’s

54

wonder —  Signor Punchinello’ —  and therefore quietly let the Frankfurt reporter have his own way.
A change in the colouration of the reports occurs after the middle of September 1848.
Vogt, who, in the debates at the Malmö armistice [2] had tried to provoke an uprising by revolutionary
Rhodomontades, did everything in his power at the moment of decision to thwart the acceptance of
the resolutions passed at the popular meeting on the Pfingstweide and endorsed by part of the extreme
left. After the fight on the barricades had been beaten down, Frankfurt had been transformed into an
open army camp and the State of Emergency had been proclaimed, the same Vogt declared himself to
be in favour of the urgency of Zachariä’s motion approving the measures adopted up to that time by
the Imperial Ministry and expressing gratitude to the imperial troops. Before Vogt mounted the
rostrum, Venedey himself had opposed the ‘urgency’ of those motions and declared such a discussion
at such a moment to be against the dignity of the assembly. B ut Vogt was lower than Venedey. As a
punishment, in the parliamentary report, after the word ‘Vogt’ I put the word ‘chatterer’, a laconic
hint to the Frankfurt reporter.
The following October, Vogt not only neglected to carry out his office and wave his ca p of bells over
the heads of the majority, who were at that time over -bold and rabidly reactionary. He did not even
dare to sign the protest that Zimmermann from Spandau introduced on 10 October on behalf of about
40 Deputies, against the law for the defence of the National Assembly.
[3] This law, as Zimmermann
correctly emphasised, was the most shameless infringement of the popular rights won by the March
Revolution — the right of assembly and the freedom of speech and of the press. Even Eisenmann
handed in a similar protest. But Vogt was lower than Eisenmann. When later he poked his nose into
the foundation of the ‘Central March Association’, [4] his name at last appears in an article in the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung (issue of 29 December 1848) in which the ‘March Association’ is described
as ‘an unconscious tool of the counter -revolution’, its programme is critically dissected, and Vogt is
presented as one half of a double figure whose other half is Vincke. More than a decade later both
‘Ministers of the future’ have recognised their affinity and chosen the partition of Germany as the
motto for their unification.
That we had understood the ‘March Association’ correctly was not only proved by its subsequent
‘development’. The Heidelberg ‘People’s League’, the Breslau ‘Democratic Association’, the Jena
‘Democratic Association’, etc, all rejected its loving overtures with scorn, and those members of the
extreme left that had joined it confirmed our criticism of 29 Decembe r 1848 in their declaration of
resignation of 20 April 1849. Vogt, however, sublimely unmoved, piled burning coals upon our heads,
as can be seen from the following quotation:
Neue Rheinische Zeitung, no 243, Cologne, 10 March 1849. The so-called ‘Frankfurt
March Association’ of the so-called ‘Imperial Assembly’ has had the impudence to
send us the following lithographed letter: ‘The March Association has decided that all
lists of all newspapers that have opened their columns to us should be drawn up and
communicated to all the associations with whom we are in correspondence so that the
association in question can work towards providing the newspapers mentioned
preferentially with, as it were, appropriate advertisements. In hereby communicating
to you the list drawn up, we do not think it necessary to draw your attention to the
importance of paid advertisements to a newspaper as its main source of
nourishment… Frankfurt, end of February 1849, the Committee of the Central March
Association.’
Also to be found on the enclosed list of those newspapers that have opened their
columns to the March Association, and are to be provided preferentially with
‘appropriate advertisements’ by the supporters of the March Association, is the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung, which, to boot, is especially honoured by the presence of an
asterisk. We hereby declare… that the columns of our newspaper have never been
opened to the so-called March Association… If, therefore, in its lithographed report
and in the newspapers whose columns really are open to it, the March Association
described our newspaper as one of its organs, then this is nothing but a simple libel on
the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and tasteless boasting on the part of the March
Association. We have, of course, no answer to the filthy remark of the patriots, rabid

55

for profit and beset by competition, about the importance of a newspaper’s paid
advertisements as the main source of nourishment for the whole enterprise. The Neue
Rheinische Zeitung has always distinguished itself from the patriots in this, as in
everything else, that it has never regarded the political movement as a branch of the
swindling industry or as a source of nourishment.
Shortly after this abrupt rejection of the source of nourishment offered by Vogt and Company, the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung was tearfully mentioned at a meeting of the Central Commercial Association
as a model of ‘authentic German disunity’. At the end of our reply to this Jeremiad (no 248 of the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung), Vogt is characterised as ‘a small-time university beer blusterer and failed
Imperial Barrot’. At that time (15 March), he had, moreover, not yet eaten the garlic of the question
of the Emperor. But we were clear about Herr Vogt for once and for all, and could therefore treat as a
deed already consummated the future treachery that was not yet clear even to him.
From then on, anyway, we left Vogt and Company in the hands of young Schlöffel, as intelligent as
he was bold, who had arrived in Frankfurt from Hungary at the beginning of Mar ch and who
subsequently reported to us about the storms in the Imperial frog-pond.
Vogt, meanwhile, had fallen so far — he himself, of course, had contributed more to this fall than the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung — that even Bassermann could dare to brand him  as an ‘ apostate and
renegade’ in the session of 25 April 1849.
As a result of his participation in the Elberfeld insurrection, one of the editors of the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung, F Engels, had to flee. I myself was shortly afterwards driven out of Prussia after repeated
attempts to silence me by court action had failed because of the juries and the organ of the coup d’état
ministry,
[5] the Neue Preussische Zeitung, had repeatedly denounced the ‘Chimborazo [6] impudence
of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, in comparison with which the Moniteur of 1793 appears pale’. Such
‘Chimborazo impudence’ was not out of place in a Prussian fortress town and at a time when the
victorious counter-revolution was trying to intimidate people by shameless brutality.
On 19 May 1849, there appeared the last issue of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (the Red Issue). As
long as the Neue Rheinische Zeitung existed, Vogt kept patiently silent. If a parliamentarian did
protest at all, it was always modestly, more or less as follows:
Sir, I esteem your paper’s sharp criticism no less highly for the fact that it watches
over all parties and all individuals equally strictly. (See no 219, 11 February 1849,
Wesendonck’s protest.)
A week after the fall of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Vogt thought that he was at last able, under the
shield of parliamentary immunity, to grasp by the scruff of the neck the opportunity for which he had
so long been waiting, and to develop into ‘energy’ the ‘matter’ that had long been accumulated in the
depth of his heart. That is to say that an editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung , Wilhelm Wolff, had
entered the Frankfurt Assembly, which was in ‘a state of progressive dissolution’, as a replacement
for a waning Silesian parliamentarian.
In order to understand the following scene from the parliamentary session of 26 May 1849, one must
remember that at the time the Dresden uprising and the partial movement in the Rhine Province had
already been beaten down, the imperial intervention in Baden and the Palatinate was coming, the main
Russian army was marching on Hungary, and, finally, the Imperial Ministry had simply annulled the
resolutions passed by the Assembly. On the agenda were two ‘Proclamations to the German People’,
the first written by Uhland and coming from the majority, the other from the members of a Committee
of Thirty, who belonged to the Centre. [7] The President was Reh  [8] from Darmstadt, who later
became a hare, and also ‘absolved’ himself from the ‘rapidly dissolving’ Assembly. I quote from the
official shorthand report no 229 of session no 228 in the Paulskirche:
Wolff from Breslau: Gentlemen, I have put my name down against the Proclamation
to the People, against the Proclamation written by the majority and read out here,
because I think it is inadequate for present conditions, and because I find it much too
weak. It is fit only to appear as an article in the daily papers of the party from which it
comes, but not as a proclamation to the German people. As a second one has now been
read out, I shall just comment incidentally that I am even more opposed to it, for

56

reasons that I do not need to go into here. [A voice from the Centre: ‘Why not?’] I am
speaking only of the majority proclamation. It is, to be sure, so moderate that even
Herr Buss could not say much against it, and that is certainly the worst
recommendation for any proclamation. No, gentlemen; if you want to retain any
influence upon the people at all, then you cannot speak to them in the way that the
proclamation does. You cannot speak there of legality, legal basis and so on, but of
illegality, in the same way as the government, the Russians, and by Russians I mean
the Prussians, the Austrians, Bavarians, Hanoverians. [Disturbances and laughter.]
These are all embraced by the common name Russians. [Great hilarity.] Indeed,
gentlemen, the Russians are represented in this Assembly too. You must tell them:
‘Just as you adopt the legal standpoint, so we too adopt it.’ It is the standpoint of force,
and you must in parenthesis explain legality in this sense, that you oppose the
Russians’ cannon with force, with well-organised storm columns. If a proclamation is
to be issued at all, then issue one in which you start by declaring the principal traitor
to the people, the Imperial Administrator, an outlaw. [Interjection: ‘Order!’ — Lively
applause from the galleries.] And similarly all the ministers. [Renewed disorder.] Oh,
I shall not let you interrupt me; he is the principal traitor to the people.
President: I think that Herr Wolff overstepped the bounds and violated all respect. He
cannot call the Archduke-Imperial Administrator a traitor to the people in front of this
House, and I must therefore call him to order. At the same time I give the galleries a
final warning not to intervene in the debates in the way that has happened.
Wolff: For my part I accept the call to order and declare that I wanted to overstep the
bounds, that he and his ministers are traitors. [Interjection from all sides of the House:
‘Order, that is vulgar.’]
President: I must ask you to stop speaking.
Wolff: Good, I protest; I tried to speak on behalf of the people here and to say what
the people think. I protest against any proclamation written in this sense. [Great
excitement.]
President: Gentlemen, please let me speak for a moment. I can say that the incident
that has just occurred is the first since Parliament has met here. [It was in fact the first
and only incident in this debating club.] No speaker has yet declared here that he
wanted to violate order, the foundation of this House. [When similarly called to order
in the session of 25 April, Schlöffel had said: ‘I accept the call to order, and do so all
the more gladly for the fact that I hope that the time will soon come when this
Assembly will be called to order from a different quarter.]
Gentlemen, it is a matter of deep sorrow to me that Herr Wolff, who has only just
become a member of the House, has made his début in this way. [Reh considers the
matter from the standpoint of the theatre.] Gentlemen, I called him to order because of
the severe infringement he permitted himself in regard to the respect and
consideration that we owe to the person of the Imperial Administrator.
The session proceeds on its way. Hagen and Zachariä make long speeches, one for and one against the
majority proclamation.
At last there rises to his feet:
Vogt from Giessen: Gentlemen, permit me to say a few words. I do not wish to tire
you. It is completely correct, gentlemen, that Parliament no longer is as it assembled
last year, and we thank Heaven [the blindly faithful Herr Vogt thanks Heaven!] that it
will have become so [yes indeed, will have become so!] and that those who despaired
of the people and who betrayed the cause of the people at the decisive moment have
separated themselves from the Assembly. Gentlemen, I have asked for the floor [so the
foregoing prayer of thanksgiving was merely humbug] to defend the crystal-clear
stream [defend a stream] that has flowed from a poetic soul [Vogt becomes soulful]
into this proclamation against the unworthy filth that has been thrown into the same or
flung against the same, to defend it against the dung that has been piled up in this

57

latest movement and threatens to inundate and contaminate everything there. Indeed,
gentlemen, it [that is to say the dung] is dung and is filthy [dung is filth!] which is
thrown in this way [in what way?] at everything you can think of that is pure, and I
express my deepest indignation [Vogt in deepest indignation, que tableau!] [9] that
such a thing [what?] could happen.
And what he says is — dung.
Wolff had not said a syllable about the way Uhland wrote the proclamation. As the President
repeatedly stated, he had been called to order and had raised the whole storm because he had declared
the Imperial Administrator  and all his ministers to be traitors to the people , and had called on the
Parliament to declare them traitors to the people . But the ‘Archduke-Imperial Administrator’, that
‘worn-out Habsburger’ (Vogt’s Studien, p 28) and ‘all his ministers’ are ‘everything you can think of
that is pure’ for Vogt. Like Walter von der Vogelweide, he sang:
Des fürsten milte ûz Österrîche
fröit dem süezen regen gelîche
beidiu liute und ouch daz lant.
The Prince of Austria’s kindness,
like the sweet rain, delights
Both the land and also the people.
Did Vogt at that time already entertain the ‘scientific relations’ he later admitted to having with
Archduke Johann? (See Magnum Opus, p 25, Document.)
Ten years later the same Vogt declared in his Studien, pages 27–28:
This much at least is certain, that the National Assembly in France and its leaders at
the time underestimated Louis Napoleon’s abilities just as much as the leaders of the
Frankfurt National Assembly did those of Archduke Johann, and that each of the two
sly foxes in his own sphere made those, that had underestimated him pay dearly for
their mistake. In this we are very far from placing them both on an equal footing. The
fearful ruthlessness [etc, etc, of Louis Bonaparte] — all this makes him appear by far
superior to the already old and worn-out Habsburger.
At that very same session Wolff challenged Vogt to a duel with pistols through Würth, the member
from Sigmaringen, and, when the said Vogt decided to preserve his skin for the Empire, threatened
him with corporal  punishment. But when Wolff, leaving the Paulskirche , found Charles the Bold
flanked by two ladies, he broke into loud laughter and left him to his fate. Although a wolf with the
teeth and heart of a wolf, Wolff is nevertheless a lamb where the fair sex is concerned. The only, very
harmless, revenge he took was an article entitled ‘Supplement on the Empire’, in the Revue der Neuen
Rheinischen Zeitung, April 1850, p 73, which reads, on the question of the ex-Imperial Regent:
In these critical days the Central Marchmen were most industrious. Before the retreat
from Frankfurt they had already called to the March Associations and the German
people in an appeal: ‘Fellow citizens! The eleventh hour has struck!’ From Stuttgart
they now issued a new proclamation ‘To the German People’ for the creation of a
people’s army, and lo, the hands of the Central March Clock still stood at the same
spot, or the figure 12 had broken off, like the clock on Freiburg cathedral. Be that as it
may, the proclamation again read: ‘Fellow citizens! The eleventh hour has struck!’ Oh,
if only it had struck on, and at the same time through your heads earlier, or at least
when the Central March hero Karl Vogt in Nuremburg was pacifying the Franconian
revolution to his own satisfaction and that of the loudmouths fêting him…
[10] The
regency opened its offices in the Freiburg government building. The Regent Karl
Vogt, simultaneously Foreign Minister and occupant of many other ministries, took
here too the good of the German people most earnestly to heart. After burning the
midnight oil for a long time, he brought about a most timely invention, ‘Imperial
Regency Passports’. The passports were simple, beautifully lithographed, and
obtainable free in any quantity the heart desired. They only had one small
shortcoming: they were valid and respected only in Vogt’s Chancellery. Perhaps one

58

day one or the other example of them will find its way into some Englishman’s
collection of curiosities.
Wolff did not follow Greiner’s example. Instead of ‘ departing for America immediately after the
appearance’ of the Revue, he awaited the Land-Vogt’s revenge for a further year in Switzerland.
Notes
1 His cares were manifold.
2 The armistice between Denmark and Prussia, which had taken part only formally in
the war in Schleswig-Holstein, was signed in August 1848 at Malmö in Sweden. The
effect of the armistice, which placed Schleswig-Holstein under a provisional Danish–
Prussian government, was to destroy the gains of the revolutionary and democratic
forces there. Yet the Frankfurt National Assembly accepted the armistice in September.
This immediately led to mass demonstrations in Frankfurt demanding that the deputies
who had agreed to it be arraigned for high treason and that the Left should leave the
Assembly. While part of the extreme Left accepted these demands, Vogt opposed them.
A couple of days later there was street fighting in Frankfurt against Prussian and
Austrian troops.
3 A reference to the law passed by the Frankfurt National Assembly for ‘the protection
of the constituent imperial assembly and the officials of the central power’ according to
which an insult to a deputy to the Assembly or to a representative of central power was
punishable by imprisonment. This law was one of the methods of reprisal used after the
September rising in Frankfurt.
4 The March Associations were founded at the end of November 1848 by deputies of the
Left from the Frankfurt National Assembly for the defence of the gains of the German
revolution of March 1848. Their leadership was made up of petty-bourgeois democrats,
whose policies Marx and Engels attacked in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung as favouring
the counter-revolution.
5 A reference to the coup d’état in Prussia at the beginning of December 1848 which
completed the victory of the counter-revolution.
6 Chimborazo — one of the highest peaks in South America.
7 The proclamation to the German people by the German National Assembly, drawn up
on behalf of the moderate democrats by the poet Uhland, was based on their attempt to
find common ground with the liberal bourgeoisie. It contained no concrete programme,
merely a helpless appeal to the German people to support the introduction of an Imperial
Constitution. The second appeal was drawn up by the Committee of Thirty. This
Committee was set up by the National Assembly in April 1849 to clear up the situation
with the Prussian King, Frederick William IV, who had refused the imperial crown, and
to enforce the Constitution. This appeal was equally useless; it called on the troops of
those states which did not recognise the National Assembly or its decisions to take an
oath on the Constitution.
8 Literally, ‘deer’.
9 What a picture!
10 In May 1849, as a result of the refusal of the Bavarian Government to recognise the
Imperial Constitution, the masses in Nuremburg became restless. A demonstration of
some 50,000 people was advised by Vogt not to take decisive action against the
government — this, together with the indecision of the democrats, who led the
movement, brought about the defeat of the mass movement.

59

Chapter VII: The Augsburg Campaign
Shortly after the citizen of the Canton of Thurgau [1] had finished his Italian war, the citizen of the
Canton of Berne opened his Augsburg campaign.
It had long since been the Marx clique there [in London] that had provided the major
part of the correspondence [of the Allgemeine Zeitung] and had been in contact with
the ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’ uninterruptedly since 1849. (Magnum Opus, p 194)
Although Marx himself has only lived in London since the end of 1849, that is to say since he was
expelled from France for the second time, the ‘Marx clique’ seems to have lived in London ‘long
since’, and although the Marx clique has ‘long since provided the major part of the correspondence
of the Allgemeine Zeitung’, it has been ‘uninterruptedly in contact’ with the Allgemeine Zeitung only
‘since 1849’. Be that as it may, Vogt’s chronology breaks down — and that is hardly surprising, since
the man ‘had not thought of concerning himself with politics’ before  1848 (Magnum Opus, p 225)
into two great periods, that is to say the period from ‘long since’ to 1849 and the period from 1849 to
‘this’ year.
From 1842 to 1843 I edited the old Rheinische Zeitung
[2] which waged a war to the death against the
Allgemeine Zeitung. Between 1848 and 1849, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung reopened the polemic.
What therefore remains for the period from ‘long since’ to ‘1849’ except the fact that Marx has ‘long
since’ been fighting the Allgemeine Zeitung , while Vogt was its ‘constant collaborator’ from 1844 to
1847? (See Magnum Opus, p 225.)
Now for the second period of Vogt’s world history.
From London I was ‘uninterruptedly in contact with the Allgemeine Zeitung ’, ‘uninterrupted since
1849’, because ‘from 1852’ a certain Ohly was chief London correspondent of the Allgemeine
Zeitung. Now Ohly never had any contact with me, either before or after 1852. I have never in my life
seen him. To the extent that he figured at all in London refugee circles it was as a member of Kinkel’s
Emigration Association. But this does not alter anything in the matter, since:
The earlier oracle of the English-speaking Old Bavarian Altenhöfer was my more
immediate countryman, the blond Ohly, who on the basis of Communism tried to
attain higher poetical standpoints in politics and literature, and was the chief
correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung at first in Zurich and from 1852 in London,
until he finally ended up in a madhouse. (Magnum Opus, p 195)
Mouchard Edouard Simon frenchifies the Vogtiad in the following way:
En voici d’abord un qui de son point de départ communiste, avait cherché à s’élever
aux plus hautes conceptions de la politique.
[3] [‘Higher poetical standpoints in
politics’ exceeds the powers even of an Edouard Simon.] A en croire M Vogt, cet
adepte fut l’oracle de la Gazette d’Augsbourg jusqu’en 1852, époque où il mourut daps
une maison de fous. (Revue contemporaine (Paris), Volume 13, 1860, p 529) [4]
‘Operam et oleum perdidi’, Vogt can cry about his Magnum Opus  and his Ohly. [5] While he himself
has his ‘more immediate countryman’ correspond with the Allgemeine Zeitung  from London from
1852 onwards ‘until he finally ends up in a madhouse’, Edouard Simon says, ‘if we are to believe
Vogt, Ohly was the oracle of the Allgemeine Zeitun g until 1852 , at which epoch he’ — who,
incidentally, is still alive — ‘died in a madhouse’. But Edouard Simon knows his Karl Vogt. Edouard
knows that once you make up your mind to ‘believe’ your Karl it is totally and utterly immaterial
what you believe, what he says, or the opposite of what he says.
‘Herr Liebknecht ’, says Karl Vogt, ‘replaced him’, that is to say Ohly , as correspondent on the
Allgemeine Zeitung.’ ‘Liebknecht was only accepted as a correspondent by the Allgemeine Zeitung
after he had been openly proclaimed to be a member of the Marxist party.’ (Magnum Opus, p 169)
That proclamation took place during the Cologne Communist trial, that is to say, at the end of 1852.

60

In fact, in the spring of 1851 Liebknecht became a contributor to the Morgenblatt , [6] in which he
reported on the London industrial exhibition. Through the Morgenblatt  he obtained in September
1855 the post of correspondent on the Allgemeine Zeitung.
His [Marx’s] comrades did not write a single line of which he had not previously been
made aware. (Magnum Opus, p 194)
The proof is simple: ‘He’ — Marx — ‘commands his people absolutely’ ( Magnum Opus , p 195),
while Vogt obeys his Fazy and Company implicitly. Here we come across a peculiarity of the way in
which Vogtian myths are formed. Everywhere we have the dwarfish scale of Giessen or Geneva, the
small-town framework and the smell of the Swiss tavern. Naïvely translating the hole- in-the-corner
conviviality of his clique system from Geneva to the metropolis of London, he does not perm it
Liebknecht in the West End to write a single line of which I, four miles away in Hampstead, ‘had not
previously been made aware’. And I perform the same La Guéronnière duties daily for a horde of
other ‘comrades’ scattered around London and corresponding all over the world. What a stimulating
profession in life — and how lucrative!
Vogt’s mentor, Edouard Simon, who is at least conversant with Parisian if not with London
conditions, shows the unmistakable tact of the artist in giving a metropolitan verve  to the clumsy
sketch of his ‘country friend’:
Marx, comme chef de la société, ne tient pas lui-même la plume, mais ses fidèles
n’écrivent pas une ligne sans l’avoir consulté: la Gazette d’Augsbourg sera d’autant
mieux servie. (Magnum Opus, p 529)
So:
Marx, as head of the society, does not write himself, but his followers do not write a
line without consulting him first. The Augsburger Zeitung is all the better served.
Does Vogt sense the whole finesse of this correction?
I had as much to do with Liebknecht’s reports to the Allgemeine Zeitung  from London as I did with
Vogt’s reports to the Allgemeine Zeitung from Paris. Moreover, Liebknecht’s reports were thoroughly
praiseworthy — critical descriptions of British politics, which he portrayed in the Allge meine Zeitung
in exactly the same way as he did in reports written at the same time for radical German -American
newspapers. Vogt himself, who has scrupulously ferreted through whole volumes of the Allgemeine
Zeitung in the search for something subversive i n Liebknecht’s letters, confines his criticism of their
contents to the fact that Liebknecht’s journalistic signature is ‘ two thin oblique strokes ’ (Magnum
Opus, p 196).
The fact that the strokes were oblique proved, of course, that all was not well with t he reports. And
then there was the ‘thinness’! If only Liebknecht had used two big round blobs for his journalistic coat
of arms! But even if no worse blemish than ‘two thin oblique strokes’ sullies the reports, the fact that
they appeared in the Allgemeine Zeitung at all still arouses scruples. And why not in the Allgemeine
Zeitung? It is well known to all that the Allgemeine Zeitung allows the most varied points of view to
be expressed, at least in neutral areas like British politics, and is accepted moreover abroad as the only
German newspaper that has a more than local importance. Liebknecht could confidently write his
London letters for the same paper for which Heine wrote his ‘Parisian’ and Fallmerayer his ‘Oriental
Letters’.
[7] Vogt reports that nast y people also write for the Allgemeine Zeitung . As we know, he
himself was its correspondent from 1844 to 1847.
As far as I myself and Frederick Engels are concerned — I mention Engels because we both work to a
common plan and by prior arrangement — to a c ertain extent, it must be admitted, we entered ‘into
relations’ with the Allgemeine Zeitung in 1859. That is to say that in January, February and March
1859 I published a series of leading articles in the New York Tribune [8] in which, among other things,
the ‘Central European Great Power Theory’ of the Allgemeine Zeitung, and its claim that the
continuation of Austrian domination was in Germany’s interest, were subjected to very exhaustive
criticism. Shortly before the outbreak of the war, and in agreement  with me, Engels published Po and
Rhine (Berlin, 1859), a pamphlet which is specifically aimed against the Allgemeine Zeitung and
which, in Engels’ own words (page  4 of his pamphlet Savoy, Nice and the Rhine  (Berlin, 1860))
proved from the standpoint of mi litary science ‘that Germany does not need any part of Italy for her

61

defence and that, on purely military grounds, France has a much stronger claim to the Rhine than
Germany to the Mincio’. With us, however, this polemic against the Allgemeine Zeitung and its theory
of the necessity of Austrian despotism in Italy went hand in hand with the polemic against
Bonapartist propaganda. For example, I proved exhaustively in the Tribune  (see for example,
February 1859) that the financial and domestic situation of th e ‘bas empire’ had reached a critical
point where only a foreign war could prolong the rule of the coup d’état government in France and
thus of the counter -revolution in Europe. I showed that the Bonapartist liberation of Italy was only a
pretext to keep F rance subjugated, subject Italy to the rule of the coup d’ état government, extend
France’s ‘natural frontiers’ to Germany, transform Austria into a tool of Russia, and force Europe into
a war between the legitimate and the illegitimate counter-revolution. All this happened before the Ex-
Reichs-Vogt blew his trumpet blast from Geneva.
Since Wolff’s article in the Revue der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung , I had completely forgotten the
‘rounded character’. I was once more reminded of the merry fellow in the spring  of 1859 one April
evening, when Freiligrath gave me a letter from Vogt to read, together with the enclosed political
Programme. [9] That was no indiscretion, for Vogt’s circular had been sent ‘for the information’ of
the friends, not of Vogt, but of the addressee.
When asked what I found in the Programme  I replied: ‘Hot air.’ I immediately recognised the old
joker in his entreaty to Freiligrath to solicit the service of Herr Bucher as political correspondent of
the propaganda paper planned in Geneva. Vogt’ s letter was dated 1 April 1859. It was well known
that Bucher had, in his reports from London to the Berlin National -Zeitung since January 1859,
advocated views diametrically opposed to Vogt’s programme. But to the man of ‘critical directness’
all cats seemed grey.
After this event, which I thought too unimportant to talk to a soul about, I received Vogt’s Studien zur
gegenwärtigen Lage Europas ( Studies on the Current Situation in Europe ), a wretched publication
that left me in no doubt as to his connection with Bonapartist propaganda.
The evening of 9 May 1859 found me on the platform of a public meeting held by David Urquhart on
the occasion of the Italian war. Even before the meeting started an earnest figure stepped weightily up
to me. From the Hamlet -like expression on its physiognomy I immediately recognised that there was
‘something rotten in the state of Denmark’. This was the homme d’état  [10] Karl Blind. After a few
preliminary phrases he got round to talking about Vogt’s ‘intrigues’. Shaking his head for emphasis,
he assured me that Vogt was receiving Bonapartist subsidies for his propaganda. He told me that a
South German writer whom he could not, ‘unfortunately’, name had been offered a 30,000 guilder
bribe by Vogt —  I could not rightly see what South German writer was worth 30,000 guilders — and
that attempted bribery had occurred in London. He said that the Italian war had been discussed as
early as 1858 at a meeting between Plon -Plon, Fazy and Company in Geneva, and that the Russian
Grand Prince Constantine had been named as the future King of Hungary. He said that Vogt had also
called upon him (Blind) to contribute to his propaganda, and that he had proofs of Vogt’s treasonable
intrigues. Blind betook himself back to his seat by his friend, J F röbel, at the far end of the platform;
the meeting began and, speaking in great detail, D Urquhart sought to portray the Italian war as the
fruit of Franco-Russian intrigue.
Towards the end of the meeting Dr  Faucher, foreign editor of the Morning Star  [12] (organ of the
Manchester school), [13] came up to me and told me that a new London- German weekly, Das Volk ,
had just appeared. He said that Die Neue Zeit , [14] the workers’ paper published by Herr A  Scherzer
and edited by Edgar Bauer , had collapsed a s the result of an intrigue on the part of Kinkel , the
publisher of the Hermann. [15] Hearing of this, he said, Biscamp , a former correspondent of the Neue
Zeit, had given up his teaching post in the south of England to set up Das Volk  in London in
opposition to the Hermann. He said that the German Workers’ Educational Association and some
other London Associations were supporting the paper, which of course, like all similar workers’
papers, was being written and edited gratis. He said that although he hims elf, Faucher, was, as a free
trader, alien to the Volk’s policies, he would not tolerate a monopoly in the German press in London,
and that he had therefore set up a finance committee to support the paper together with some other
acquaintances in London. B iscamp, he said, had already written to Liebknecht, whom he had not

62

previously known, asking for literary contributions, and so forth. Finally Faucher invited me to
contribute to the Volk.
Although Biscamp had been living in England since 1852, we had not previously become acquainted.
A day after the Urquhart meeting, Liebknecht brought him to my house. Because of lack of time, I
could not immediately comply with the invitation to write for the Volk , but I promised to ask my
German friends in England for subscriptions, money donations and literary contributions. In the
course of the conversation we came to talk about the Urquhart meeting, which led to Vogt, whose
Studien Biscamp already knew and correctly evaluated. I informed him and Liebknecht of the
contents of the Vogt ‘Programme’ and of Blind’s revelations, but remarked in relation to the latter that
South Germans had the habit of painting things in strong colours. To my amazement the second issue
of the Volk (14 May) carried an article entitled ‘Der Rei chsregent als Reichsverräter’ (‘The Imperial
Regent as Imperial Traitor’, see Magnum Opus , Documents, pp 17, 18), in which Biscamp mentions
two of the facts quoted by Blind —  the 30,000 guilders, which he reduced, however, to 4000, and the
Bonapartist origins of the Vogtian operating capital. For the rest, his article consisted of jokes after
the manner of the Hornisse (Hornet), [16] which he edited in Kassel in 1848– 49 together with Heise.
Meanwhile, as I learnt long after the appearance of the Magnum Opus  (see Appendix VIII), the
London Workers’ Educational Association had commissioned one of  its leaders, Herr Scherzer, to
request the Workers’ Educational Associations in Switzerland, Belgium and the United States to
support the Volk and to combat Bonapartist propaganda. Biscamp himself sent the above -mentioned
article from the Volk  of 14 May 1 859 by post to Vogt, who at the same time received Herr A
Scherzer’s circular through his own Ranickel.
With his famous ‘critical directness’ Vogt immediately dreamed up a romance in which I was the
demiurge of this web of hostility towards him. Without any further ado, therefore, he published the
Grundriss [17] of his later contortions of history in the often- quoted Extraordinary Supplement to
Issue 50 of the Schweizer Handels- Courier. This Original Version of the Gospel, in which the
mysteries of the Brim stone Gang, the Bürstenheimers, Cherval, etc, were first revealed under the
dateline Berne, 23 May 1859 (more recently therefore than the Books of Mormon), [18] was entitled
Zur Warnung (As a Warning) and amounted, as far as the contents went, to a transla tion of part of a
pamphlet by the notorious E About. [19]
Vogt’s Original Version of the Gospel Zur Warnung was, as has already been said, printed at my
request in the Volk.
At the beginning of June I left London to visit Engels in Manchester, where a subs cription of about
£25 had been raised for the Volk. Fr Engels, W Wolff, I myself and finally three German doctors who
had settled in Manchester and whose names are in a legal document sent by me to Berlin, provided
this subsidy whose ‘character’ caused the  ‘inquisitive’ Vogt to cast ‘a glance over the Channel’ to
Augsburg and Vienna ( Magnum Opus , p 2 12). Herr Vogt can enquire about the original finance
committee’s London collections from Dr Faucher.
Vogt tells us on page 225 of the Magnum Opus:
It has long since been a trick of reaction to demand of the democrats that they should
do everything for free, while they themselves [the reaction, that is to say, not the
democrats] claim the privilege of having themselves paid and of being paid.
What a reactionary trick, then, on the part of the Volk, not only to be written and edited free, but over
and above that to make its contributors pay! If that is not proof of the connection between the Volk
and reaction, then Karl Vogt is a Dutchman.
During my sta y in Manchester an event of decisive importance took place in London. Liebknecht
found in the composing room of Hollinger (the printer of the  Volk) the galleys of the anonymous
leaflet Zur Warnung (As a Warning) directed against Vogt, skimmed through it, i mmediately
recognised Blind’s revelations and, to cap it all, discovered from the compositor, A Vögele, that Blind
had given the manuscript in his own handwriting to Hollinger to be printed. What is more, the
corrections on the galley were also in Blind ’s handwriting. Two days later Liebknecht received from
Hollinger the corrected galley, which he sent in to the Allgemeine Zeitung. The type that had been set
for the leaflet was left standing and later served to reprint it in issue 7 of the Volk (of 18 June 1859).

63

The Ex-Reichs-Vogt’s Augsburg campaign opened with the publication of the As a  Warning by the
Allgemeine Zeitung. He prosecuted the Allgemeine Zeitung for publishing the leaflet.
In the Magnum Opus , pages 227–28, Vogt parodies Müllner’s  [20] ‘I am, I am, I am the robber
Jaromir’. But he translates it from ‘I am’ to ‘I have’…
I have prosecuted, because I knew beforehand that all the hollowness, emptiness and
wretchedness of that editorial board that has the presumption to claim to be ‘the
representative of High German culture’ would have to stand revealed, I have
prosecuted because I knew beforehand that the connection between that worthy
editorial board and the pro-Austrian policy it elevates to the heavens with the
Brimstone Gang and the dregs of the revolution would have become public
knowledge…
… followed by four more ‘I have prosecuteds’. Having prosecuted, Vogt becomes exalted, unless
Longin is right in his view that there is nothing drier in the world than a person with dropsy.
‘Personal considerations’, cries the ‘rounded character’, ‘were the least motive for my decision to
prosecute.’
 In reality, however, it was not quite like that. No calf could have been more fearful of the
slaughterhouse than Karl Vogt was of the courthouse. While h is ‘more immediate’ friends, the
Ranickel, Reinach (earlier the walking chronique scandaleuse
[21] about Vogt) and the loquacious
rump parliamentarian Mayer, from Esslingen, confirmed him in his fear of the courthouse, he received
urgent warnings from Zuri ch to proceed with the ‘prosecution’. At the workers’ festival in Lausanne
the furrier Roos told him in front of witnesses that he would no longer be able to respect him unless
he went to court. But Vogt became obstinate. He said that the Brimstone Gang in  Augsburg and
London could go to the devil, he would remain silent. Suddenly, however, he spoke. Various
newspapers carried notice of his court case, and the Ranickel said:
The people in Stuttgart had not left him [Vogt] in peace. He [Ranickel] had not agreed
to it.
Moreover, since he of the ‘rounded character’ was in a corner, a complaint against the Allgemeine
Zeitung seemed undeniably the most promising manoeuvre. Vogt’s self-defence against an attack by J
Venedey,
[22] who had accused him of Bonapartist intrigues, saw the light of day in the Biel Handels-
Courier of 16 June  1859, and therefore did not arrive in London until after the appearance of the
anonymous leaflet, which ended with the warning:
It is scarcely likely that Vogt will dare to deny this, but should he try to do so, this
revelation will be followed by No 2.
Now Vogt had denied it, and what did not follow was revelation No 2. Secure on this flank, therefore,
he could only be threatened with disaster by his dear friends, whom he knew well e nough to count on
their cowardly consideration. The more he laid himself open publicly by prosecuting, the more he
could bank on their discretion, for to a certain extent the whole of the rump parliament was in the
pillory in the person of the ‘Runaway Regent’.
In his Pro domo und Pro patria gegen Karl Vogt  (Hanover, 1860), pages 27–28, the parliamentarian
Jacob Venedy talks out of school in the following way:
Besides the letters communicated in Vogt’s description of his trial, I have read another
letter from Vogt which shows far more clearly than the one to Dr Loening Vogt’s
position as a helper of those who were at great pains to localise the war in Italy. To
convince myself, I copied a few passages out of this letter, which I cannot
unfortunately publish here because the person to whom the letter was addressed
communicated it to me under the condition that it was not to be published. The attempt
has been made to cover up Vogt’s activities in this matter in a way that does not seem
to me to do justice either to the party or to a man’s duty towards the Fatherland. This
reticence in many quarters is the reason why Vogt still has the cheek to appear as head
of a German party. But it seems to me that for this very reason the party that Vogt
supported became half-way responsible for his activities.

64

So if the risk involved in prosecuting the Allgemeine Zeitung was not exactly excessive, an offensive
in this direction on the other hand offered General Vogt the most favourable basis of operations. In
decrying the Allgemeine Zeitung , Vogt really decried Austria, and Austria in league with the
Communists! Thus the Reichs -Vogt appeared as the interesting victim of a monstrous coalition
between the enemies of bourgeois liberalism. And the Little German press, [24] already well disposed
towards Vogt because he is a diminisher of the Empire, [25] would raise him rejoicing on its shield!
At the beginning of July 1859, shortly after my return from Manchester, Blind visited me as the result
of an occurrence that is unimportant here. He was accompanied by Fidelio Hollinger and Liebknecht.
In this company I expressed my conviction that he was the author of the pamphlet Zur Warnung. He
swore that it was not the case. I repeated point by point what he had said on 9 May, which in fact
formed the whole content of the leaflet. He conceded all that, but said that he was nevertheless not the
author of the leaflet.
About a month later, in August 1859, Liebknecht showed me a letter from the editorial board of the
Allgemeine Zeitung  urgently asking him for evidence for the accusations made in the leaflet Zur
Warnung. At his request, I decided to accompany him to Blind’s home in St John’s Wood, for, if he
was not the author of the leaflet, he had in any case known at the beginning of Ma y what the leaflet
had not revealed to the world until the beginning of June, and he could, moreover, ‘ prove’ what he
knew. Blind was absent. He was to be found at a seaside resort. Liebknecht therefore informed him in
writing of the purpose of our visit. No reply. Liebknecht wrote a second letter. Finally, the following
statesmanlike document appeared:
St Leonard’s
8 September
Dear Herr Liebknecht
Both your letters, which were wrongly addressed, arrived almost simultaneously. You
will understand that I have not the slightest desire to become involved in the affairs of
a newspaper with which I have no connection at all. This is all the more true in the
case in question, in which, as I have already mentioned, I had no part at all.
Concerning the remarks made in private conversation which you quote, it is obvious
that they were completely misunderstood, and that an error exists on this about which I
shall come to speak orally when the occasion arises. Regretting that you and Marx
made the trip to visit me in vain.
I remain
Yours respectfully
K Blind
This diplomatically cool note, according to which Blind ‘had no part at all’ in the denunciations
against Vogt, reminded me of an article that appeared anonymously on 27 May 1859 in the London
Free Press and which reads as follows:
The Grand Duke Constantine to be King of Hungary
A Correspondent, who encloses his card, writes as follows:
Sir: Having been present at the last meeting in the Music Hall,
[26] I heard the
statement made concerning the Grand Duke Constantine. I am able to give you another
fact:
So far back as last summer, Prince Jérôme-Napoléon detailed to some of his
confidants at Geneva a plan of attack against Austria, and prospective rearrangement
of the map of Europe. I know the name of a Swiss senator to whom he broached the
subject. Prince Jérôme, at that time, declared that, according to the plan made, Grand
Duke Constantine was to become King of Hungary.
I know further of attempts made, in the beginning of the present year, to win over to
the Russo–Napoleonic scheme some of the exiled German Democrats, as well as some
influential liberals in Germany. Large pecuniary advantages were held out to them as a
bribe. I am glad to say that these offers were rejected with indignation.

65

This article, in which Vogt was admittedly not named, but described unmistakably for the London
émigrés, does indeed give the essence of the leaflet Zur Warnung that appeared later. The author of
the ‘Future King of Hungary’, driven by patriotic zeal to denounce Vogt anonymously, would of
course have to grasp eagerly the golden opportunity that dropped into his lap with the Augsburg trial,
the opportunity to unmask this treason legally before the eyes of all Europe. And who was the author
of the ‘Future King of Hungary’? Citizen Karl Blind . The form and the contents of the article had
already betrayed that to me in May, and that was now officially confirmed by the editor of the Free
Press, Mr Collet, as soon as I explained the importance of the unresolved dispute and informed him of
Blind’s diplomatic note.
On 17 September 1859, the compositor Herr A  Vögele gave me a written statement (printed in the
Magnum Opus, Documents nos 30, 31) in which he testifies, not indeed that Blind was the author of
the leaflet Zur Warnung, but that he himself (A Vögele) and his employer Fidelio Hollinger set the
leaflet in Hollinger ’s print shop , that the manuscript was written in Blind ’s handwriting , and that
Blind had at some time or another been described to him by Hollinger as the author of the leaflet.
Basing himself on Vögele’s statement and on the ‘Future King of Hungary’, Liebknecht wrote one
more time to Blind  for ‘proof’ of the facts that statesman had denounced in the Free Press, at the
same time giving notice that there was now evidence of his  participation in the publication of the
leaflet Zur Warnung. Instead of an answer to Liebknecht, Blind sent Mr Collet to me. Mr Collet was to
ask me on Blind’s behalf not to make any public use of my knowledge of the authorship of the article
in question in the Free Press. I replied that I could not give any undertaking, and that my discretion
would keep pace with Blind’s courage.
Meanwhile the date of the opening of the trial in Augsburg was approaching. Blind was silent. In his
various public announcements, Vogt had tried to implicate me as the secret instigator of the leaflet and
of the evidence for the statements in the leaflet. To parry this manoeuvre, to vindicate Liebknecht and
to defend the Allgemeine Zeitung, which, in my opinion, had done a good job in denouncing Vogt, I
let the editors of the Allgemeine Zeitung know through Liebknecht that I would be prepared to hand
over to them a document relating to the origins of the leaflet Zur Warnung if they asked for it in
writing. In this way came to pass the ‘ lively correspondence that precisely Marx is now carrying on
with Herr Kolb ’, as Vogt relates on page 194 of the Magnum Opus. This ‘lively correspondence’ of
mine ‘with Herr Kolb’ consisted in fact of two letters to me from Herr Orges, both of the same date,
in which he asks me for the promised document, which was then sent to him with a few lines  on my
part.
Both letters from Herr Orges, actually only a double issue of the same letter, arrived in London on 18
October 1859, while the legal proceedings in Augsburg were already due to take place on 24 October.
I therefore wrote immediately to Herr Vögele to fix an appoin tment with him for the following day at
the Marlborough Street Police Court building, where he was to give his statement on the leaflet Zur
Warnung the legal form of an affidavit. My letter did not reach him in time. On 19 October, therefore,
contrary to m y previous intention, I had to send the Allgemeine Zeitung, instead of an affidavit, the
written statement of 17 September mentioned above.
The court proceedings in Augsburg degenerated, as is known, into a true comedy of errors. The
corpus delicti was the leaflet Zur Warnung printed by the Allgemeine Zeitung and sent to it by Herr W
Liebknecht. But the publisher and the author of the leaflet were playing blind man’s buff. Liebknecht
could not subpoena his witnesses in London to appear in the stand at a court in Augsburg, the editors
of the Allgemeine Zeitung, in their juridical embarrassment, perorated politically tasteless gibberish,
Dr Hermann made great play with the ‘rounded character’s’ tall stories about the Brimstone Gang, the
Festival at Lausanne, etc, and finally the court rejected Vogt’s  complaint because the plaintiff had
mistaken the court’s competence. The confusion reached its climax when the trial in Augsburg was
closed and the report on it arrived with the Allgemeine Zeitung in London. Blind, who until then had
maintained his diplomatic silence inviolate, now leapt into the public arena, flushed out by the
compositor Vögele’s testimony that I had produced. Vögele had not  stated that Blind was the author
of the leaflet, but only that he had been described to him as such by Fidelio Hollinger. On the other
hand, Vögele stated categorically that the manuscript of the leaflet was written in Blind’s handwriting,
which he knew, and set and printed in Hollinger’s print-shop. Blind could still have been the author

66

of the leaflet, even if it had been neither written in Blind’s handwriting nor set in Hollinger’s print-
shop. Conversely, the leaflet could have been written out by Blind  and printed by Hollinger, even
though Blind was not the author.
In no 313 of the Allgemeine Zeitung, dated London, 3 November (see Magnum Opus, Documents,
pp 37–38) the citizen and statesman Blind states that he was not the author of the leaflet, and
‘publishes’ as evidence the ‘following document’:
a) I hereby declare that the claim by the compositor Vögele contained in no 300 of the
Allgemeine Zeitung, according to which the leaflet Zur Warnung was printed in my
print-shop or originated from Herr Karl Blind is a malicious invention.
Fidelio Hollinger
3 Litchfield Street
Soho
London
2 November 1859
b) The undersigned, who has been living and working at no 3 Litchfield Street for 11
months, testifies for his part to the correctness of Herr Hollinger’s statement.
JF Wiehe
Compositor
London
2 November 1859
Nowhere had Vögele claimed that Blind was the author of the leaflet. Fidelio Hollinger therefore first
invented Vögele’s claim in order then to declare it to be a ‘malicious invention’. On the other hand, if
the leaflet was not printed in Hollinger’s print-shop, how did that same Fidelio Hollinger know that
Karl Blind was not the author?
And how, too, can the circumstance that he ‘ had lived and worked’  in Hollinger’s house ‘ for 11
months’ (counting backwards from 2 November 1859)  qualify the compositor Wiehe to testify to the
‘correctness of Fidelio Hollinger’s statement’?
My reply to this statement by Blind — no 325 of the Allgemeine Zeitung (see Magnum Opus ,
Documents, pp 39– 40) —  closed with the words: ‘The whole mystère [27] Blind–Vogt would be
cleared up if the trial were transferred from Augsburg to London.’
Blind returns to the attack with all the moral indignation of the injured sentimentalist in the
‘Supplement’ to the Allgemeine Zeitung of 11 December 1859:
Referring repeatedly [remember this] to the documents signed by the print-shop
proprietor Herr Hollinger and the compositor Wiehe, I state one last time that the
imputation, which emerges now only as an insinuation, that I am the author of the
often mentioned leaflet is a downright lie. In the other statements about me are to be
found the crudest distortions.
In a postscript to this statement, the editors of the Allgemeine Zeitung  note that ‘this discussion no
longer interests the wider public’ and therefore begs the ‘gentlemen in question whom it may concern
to forego any further reply’. The ‘rounded character’ makes the following comment on this at the end
of his Magnum Opus:
In other words, the editors of the Allgemeine Zeitung are begging Messrs Marx,
Biscamp and Liebknecht, who have been set down as downright liars, not to get
themselves and the Allgemeine Zeitung into any more hot water.
This was how the Augsburg campaign for the time being ended.
Falling back into the tone of his Lousiad, Vogt has the ‘com positor Vögele’ give ‘false testimony’ to
myself and Liebknecht (Magnum Opus, p 195). But he explains the origins of the leaflet from the fact
that Blind ‘may have hatched suspicious thoughts and gossiped about them. Out of that the Brimstone
Gang then forged the leaflet and other articles which they brought down on the head of the cornered
Blind.’ (Magnum Opus, p 218)

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The Reichs-Vogt did not reopen his indecisive campaign, as he was challenged to do, in London,
partly because London is ‘a corner ’ and partly because the parties in question are ‘accusing each
other of lying’ (Magnum Opus, p 229).
‘Critical directness’ in this man means thinking that the involvement of the court is only suitable if the
parties do not dispute the truth.
* * *
I shall now j ump three months to pick up the threads of my story once more at the beginning of
February 1860. Vogt’s Magnum Opus  had not yet reached London, but the gleanings of the Berlin
National-Zeitung had, which said, among other things:
Now it was very easy for the Marx Party to throw the blame for writing the leaflet on
to Blind precisely because and after the latter had expressed himself in a similar way
in conversation with Marx and in the article in the Free Press. Using Blind’s
statements and turns of phrase the leaflet could be forged so that it looked like his
work.
Just as Falstaff held discretion to be the better part of valour, so Blind held silence to be the whole art
of diplomacy. He once more fell silent. In order to loosen his tongue I published an English circular
over my own signature dated London, 4 February 1860 (see Appendix XI).
The circular, addressed to the editor of the Free Press, said among other things:
Now, before taking any further steps, I want to show up the fellows who evidently
have played into the hands of Vogt. I therefore publicly declare that the statement of
Blind, Wiehe and Hollinger, according to which the anonymous pamphlet was not
printed in Hollinger’s office, 3 Litchfield Street, Soho, is a deliberate lie.
After laying down my evidence, I finish with the words:
Consequently I again declare the above-said Charles Blind to be a deliberate liar. If I
am in the wrong he can easily refute me by appealing to an English court.
On 6 February 1860, a London daily paper (the Daily Telegraph ) [29] — to which I shall return later
— published the gleanings of the National -Zeitung under the title ‘ The Journalistic Auxiliaries of
Austria’. I, however, started proceedings for libel against the National -Zeitung, gave the Telegraph
notice of a similar plaint, and began to obtain the necessary legal material.
The compositor Vögele swore an affidavit before the Bow Street Police Court dated 11 February
1860. It repeats the essential contents of his statement of 17 September 1859, that is to say th at the
manuscript of the leaflet was written in Blind’s handwriting and set in Hollinger’s print-shop, partly
by Vögele himself and partly by F Hollinger (see Appendix XII).
Incomparably more important was the affidavit of the compositor Wiehe to whose tes timony Blind
had repeatedly referred with constantly increasing self-confidence in the Allgemeine Zeitung. Besides
the original (see Appendix XIII) there therefore follows here a literal translation:
One of the first days of November last — I do not recoll ect the exact date — in the
evening between nine and ten o’clock I was taken out of bed by Mr F Hollinger, in
whose house I then lived, and by whom I was employed as compositor. He presented
to me a paper to the effect that, during the preceding 11 months I had been
continuously employed by him, and that during all that time a certain German flysheet,
Zur Warnung (As a Warning) had not been composed and printed in Mr Hollinger’s
Office, 3 Litchfield Street, Soho. In my perplexed state, and not aware of the
importance of the transaction, I complied with his wish, and copied and signed the
document. Mr Hollinger promised me money, but I never received anything. During
that transaction Mr Charles Blind, as my wife informed me at the time, was waiting in
Mr Hollinger’s room. A few days later, Mrs Hollinger called me down from dinner
and led me into her husband’s room, where I found Mr Charles Blind alone. He
presented me the same paper which Mr Hollinger had presented me before, and
entreated me to write, and sign a second copy, as he wanted two, the one for himself,

68

and the other for publication in the press. He added that he would show himself
grateful to me. I copied and signed again the paper.
I herewith declare the truth of the above statement and that:
1: During the 11 months mentioned in the document I was for six weeks not employed
by Mr Hollinger, but by a Mr Ermani.
2: I did not work in Mr Hollinger’s Office just at that time when the flysheet Zur
Warnung (As a Warning) was published.
3: I heard at the time from Mr Vögele, who then worked for Mr Hollinger, that he,
Vögele, had, together with Mr Hollinger himself, composed the flysheet in question,
and that the manuscript was in Mr Blind’s handwriting.
4: The types of the pamphlet were still standing when I returned to Mr Hollinger’s
service. I myself broke them into columns for the reprint of the flysheet (or pamphlet)
Zur Warnung (As a Warning) in the German paper Das Volk, published at London by
Mr Fidelio Hollinger, 3 Litchfield Street, Soho. The flysheet appeared in no 7, dated
18 June 1859, of Das Volk (The People).
5: I saw Mr Hollinger give to Mr William Liebknecht of 14 Church Street, Soho,
London, the proof-sheet of the pamphlet Zur Warnung, on which proof-sheet Mr
Charles Blind with his own hand had corrected four or five mistakes. Mr Hollinger
hesitated at first giving the proof-sheet to Mr Liebknecht, and when Mr Liebknecht
had withdrawn, he, F Hollinger, expressed to me and my fellow workman Vögele his
regret for having given the proof-sheet out of his hands.
Declared and signed by the said Johann Friedrich Wiehe at the Police Court, Bow
Street, this eighth day of February 1860, before me Th Henry, Magistrate of the said
court.
Johann Friedrich Wiehe
* * *
It was proved by the two affidavits  of the compositors Vögele and Wiehe that the manuscript of the
leaflet was written in Blind’s handwriting and set in Hollinger’s print-shop, and that the proofs were
corrected by Blind himself.
And that homme d’état wrote to Julius Fröbel, dated London, 4 July 1859:
A serious accusation of bribery has been raised here against Vogt, by whom I do not
know. In it various facts are alleged of which we had heard nothing previously.
And the same homme d’état wrote to Liebknecht on 8 September 1859 that:
He had no part at all in the case in question.
Not content with these achievements, the citizen and statesman Blind had into the bargain forged a
false statement , for which he had fraudulently obtained the signature of the compositor Wiehe by
offering him pecuniary advantages on the part of Fidelio Hollinger and gratitude for the future on his
own part.
Not only did he send this product of his own ingenuity with the fraudulently obtained signature
together with Fidelio Hollinger’s false testimony to the Allgemeine Zeitung, but he ‘refers repeatedly’
to these ‘documents’ and, in relation to these ‘documents’, hurls accusations of ‘downright lying’ at
my head in the greatest moral indignation.
I had both affidavits by Vögele and Wiehe copied and circulated in various quarters, w hereupon a
meeting took place at Blind’s home between Blind, Fidelio Hollinger and Blind’s family friend, Herr
Karl Schaible , MD, a good, quiet man who to a certain extent plays in Blind’s statesmanlike
operations the role of the tame elephant.
In the issue of the Daily Telegraph for 15 February 1860, there then appeared a paragraph which was
later reprinted in German newspapers and which reads as follows:
The Vogt-Pamphlet: To the publishers of the Daily Telegraph

69

Sir
In consequence of erroneous statements which have been current, I feel I owe it to Mr
Blind, as well as to Mr Marx, formally to declare that neither of them is the author of
the pamphlet directed some time ago against Professor Vogt, at Geneva. That
pamphlet originates from me; and on me the responsibility rests. I am sorry both with
regard to Mr Marx and Mr Blind, that circumstances beyond my control should have
prevented me from making this declaration earlier.
Charles Schaible, MD
London
14 February 1860
Herr Schaible sent me this statement, I immediately returned the compliment by sending him the
affidavits of the compositors Vögele and Wiehe and at the same time writing to him that his
(Schaible’s) statement changed nothing either as regarded the false testimonies whi ch Blind had sent
to the Allgemeine Zeitung  or as regarded Blind’s conspiracy with Hollinger to obtain fraudulently
Wiehe’s signature for the forged, false document.
Blind sensed that he was now no longer on the safe ground of the Allgemeine Zeitung  but within the
more alarming jurisdiction of the British courts. If he wanted to refute the affidavits and the ‘crude
insults’ in my circular which were based upon them, then he and Hollinger would have to swear
counter-affidavits. But felony is no joking matter.
Tweedledum Blind is not the author of the leaflet, for Tweedledee Schaible publicly states himself to
be the author. Blind has only written the manuscript of the leaflet, has only had it printed by
Hollinger, has only corrected the proof-sheets with his own hands, and only forged with Hollinger and
sent to the Allgemeine Zeitung false testimony to refute these facts. But he is nevertheless all injured
innocence because he is not the author or the originator of the leaflet. He only functions as
Tweedledee Schaible’s secretary. That is why he did not know on 4 July 1859 ‘ by whom’ the leaflet
had been put abroad, and why, on 8 September 1859, he had ‘no part at all in the case in question’.
Let us therefore calm his fears: Tweedledee Schaible is the author of the leaflet in the literary sense,
but Tweedledum Blind is the author within the technical meaning of the British law and the
responsible publisher within the meaning of all civilised legislation. Habeat sibi!
One last word to Herr Tweedledee Schaible.
The lampoon against me dated Berne, 23 May 1859, and published by Vogt in the Biel Handels -
Courier was entitled Zur Warnung. The leaflet composed by Schaible at the beginning of June 1859
and written out and published by his secretary, Blind, in which V ogt is denounced in quite precise
detail as a ‘bribing’ and ‘bribed’ agent of Louis Bonaparte, is also entitled Zur Warnung. Furthermore
it is signed: X. Although in algebra X denotes an unknown magnitude, it also coincidentally forms the
last letter of my  name. Was the purpose of the title and signature of the leaflet perhaps to make it
appear that Schaible’s ‘warning’ was my reply to Vogt’s ‘warning’? Schaible had promised a
revelation No 2 as soon as Vogt dared to deny revelation No 1. Not only did Vogt deny it, he
answered Schaible’s ‘warning’ with a libel action. And Schaible’s No 2 is missing to this day. At the
head of his leaflet Schaible printed the words: ‘Circulate at your pleasure.’ And since Liebknecht had
now done him the ‘pleasure’ of ‘circula ting’ it through the Allgemeine Zeitung, Herr Schaible’s
tongue was tied from June 1859 until September 1860 by ‘circumstances beyond his control’, and it
was only loosened by the affidavits at Bow Street Police Court.
Be that as it may, Schaible, who had originally denounced Vogt, has now publicly assumed
responsibility for the statements in the leaflet. Instead, therefore, of closing with the victory of the
defendant Vogt, the Augsburg Campaign closed with the appearance of the accuser Schaible on the
battlefield at last.
Notes
1 Ironic reference to Louis Bonaparte, who was offered honorary citizenship by the
Swiss canton of Thurgau, where he grew up.

70

2 Rheinische Zeitung — Appeared in Cologne from January 1842 to March 1843.
Founded by members of the bourgeoisie of the Rhineland, who were opposed to Prussian
absolutism, it had the collaboration of some Young Hegelians. Marx started working for
it in April 1842 and became editor in October of that year. The paper also published
articles by Engels. Under Marx’s editorship it became increasingly revolutionary and
democratic in tone; this led to its banning in April 1843 by the Prussian Government.
3 Here, to begin with, is someone who starting out from Communism had tried to rise to
the loftiest ideas of politics.
4 If we are to believe M Vogt, this disciple was the oracle of the Augsburg Gazette until
1852, when he died in a madhouse.
5 I have lost labour and oil. Quotation from the Roman writer of comedies, Plautus, put
in the mouth of a prostitute who has completed her toilet in vain. There is a pun on
‘oleum’ (oil) and Ohly.
6 Morgenblatt — A literary daily which in 1840 –41 published various articles by Engels
on art and literature.
7 Heine — German lyric poet and essayist living in exile in Paris. Fallmerayer —
German orientalist.
8 The New York Daily Tribune appeared from 1841 to 1924. Founded by the American
politician and journalist Horace Greely, it was the organ of the left wing of the American
Whigs until the mid-1850s and then organ of the Republican Party. In the 1840s and
1850s it took a progressive stance and opposed slavery. One of its editors at this period
was Charles Dana, the Utopian socialist writer. Marx contributed to the paper from 1851
to 1862. A large number of the articles were written by Engels at Marx’s request; they
dealt with important questions concerning the international labour movement, politics,
foreign politics, economic developments in Europe, questions of colonial expansion, etc.
The editorship of the paper in many cases shortened the articles arbitrarily or used them
without acknowledgement as leading articles, at which Marx often protested. Marx
finally broke off relationships with the paper when it abandoned its progressive position,
especially on the question of slavery.
9 In 1859, Vogt circulated to Freiligrath and others a political programme in which he
made Bonapartist propaganda in favour of the neutrality of the German Confederation in
the imminent war between France and Austria.
10 Statesman.
11 Vogt naturally derives the Marx clique’s attacks on Lord Palmerston from my
opposition to his own self-important person and its ‘friends’ (Magnum Opus, p 212). It
therefore seems appropriate to call to mind here briefly my relationship with D Urquhart
and his party. Urquhart’s writings on Russia and against Palmerston interested me but
did not convince me. In order to reach a definitive view I subjected Hansard’s
‘Parliamentary Debates’ and the diplomatic Blue Books of 1807 to 1850 to a painstaking
analysis. The first fruit of these studies was a series of lead articles in the New York
Tribune (end of 1853) in which I demonstrated Palmerston’s connection with the
Russian cabinet from his transactions with Poland, Turkey, Circassia, etc. Shortly
afterwards I had these articles reprinted in the Chartist organ People’s Paper edited by
Ernest Jones, adding new sections on Palmerston’s activities. Meanwhile the Glasgow
Sentinel had also reprinted one of these articles (‘Palmerston and Poland’), which
attracted the attention of Mr D Urquhart. As a result of the meeting I had with him, he
commissioned Mr Tucker in London to publish a part of that article in pamphlet form.
This Palmerston pamphlet was later sold in various editions of from 15,000 to 20,000
copies. As a result of my analysis of the Blue Book on the fall of Kars — it appeared in
the London Chartist paper (April 1856) — the Sheffield Foreign Affairs Committee sent
me a letter of appreciation (see Appendix). While researching into the diplomatic
manuscripts in the British Museum I discovered a series of English documents stretching

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back from the end of the eighteenth century to the period of Peter the Great, which reveal
the constant secret collaboration between the cabinets of London and St Petersburg and
make it appear that this collaboration was born in the age of Peter the Great. Of a
detailed work on this subject I have as yet only had the introduction printed, under the
title ‘Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century’. It appeared first
in the Sheffield and later in the London Free Press, both Urquhartite organs. The latter
has contained occasional contributions by myself ever since it was founded. My
preoccupation with Palmerston and Anglo-Russian diplomacy in general therefore
occurred, as one can see, without the slightest suspicion that behind Lord Palmerston
there stands Herr Karl Vogt. [Marx’s note]
12 Morning Star — Daily which appeared from 1856 to 1869 in London, organ of the
Free Trade movement.
13 The Manchester School consisted of English bourgeois ideologists in the first half of
the nineteenth century. They defended free trade, the non-interference of the state in
economic affairs, and the uncontrolled exploitation of the workers. Manchester was their
chief centre of activity. Their leaders were two textile manufacturers, Cobden and
Bright, who in 1838 founded the Anti-Corn-Law League. In the 1840s and 1850s they
formed the left wing of the Liberal Party.
14 Die Neue Zeit — Weekly German periodical of the petty-bourgeois German
emigrants in London.
15 Hermann — Organ of the German emigration, appeared in London in 1858–59
16 Hornisse (Hornet) —  Organ of petty-bourgeois democrats published in Kassel 1848–
50.
17 Outline or Foundations — Marx himself produced in 1857–58 a series of notebooks
known as the Grundrisse — Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy .
18 Basic text — claimed to be divinely inspired — of the Mormon Brotherhood, a
religious sect founded in America in 1830.
19 A word about the Biel Carpet-Bagger, the ‘Runaway Regent’s’ own hole-in-the
corner Moniteur. Publisher and editor of the Biel Handels-Courier is a certain Ernst
Shüler, a political refugee of 1838, post-master, wine merchant, and bankrupt, who is,
meanwhile, in pocket once more, to the extent that his paper, subsidised by the Anglo–
French–Swiss advertising business during the Crimean War, now has a circulation of
1200. [Marx’s note]
20 Müllner — minor dramatist. The quotation is actually from a play by the Austrian
dramatist Grillparzer.
21 Scandal sheet.
22 Venedey had published a letter in the Allgemeine Zeitung revealing Vogt’s
connections with Napoleon Bonaparte.
23 See also page 4 of the pamphlet quoted, where it says:
This ‘settlement of accounts’ out of party motives, the want of moral principle that there
is in admitting in private that Vogt has played a shabby game with the fatherland… and
then allowing this Vogt to accuse openly of slander those who have only said what they
know and what they can readily prove, this makes me sick [etc]. [Marx’s note]
24 That portion of the press which was against the union of Germany under Prussian
domination.
25 In the Middle Ages, the German Emperor was called the ‘Increaser of the Empire’.
26 This was the meeting mentioned above, held by D Urquhart on 9 May. [Marx’s note]
27 Mystery.

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28 Biscamp wrote a letter dated London, 20 October, on the Vogt affair to the editors of
the Allgemeine Zeitung, in which he finally offered himself as a correspondent. I only
became acquainted with this letter through the Allgemeine Zeitung itself. Vogt invents a
moral theory according to which support for a paper that has failed makes me
responsible for the subsequent private letters of the editor. How much more would Vogt
be responsible for Kolatschek’s Stimmen der Zeit since he was a paid contributor to
Kolatschek’s Monatschrift. As long as Biscamp published the Volk he showed the
greatest self-sacrifice, giving up a position he had held for years to take over the
editorship, editing the paper gratis under the very oppressing circumstances and finally
putting his position of correspondent for German papers such as the Kölnische Zeitung at
risk in order to be able to work in accordance with his convictions. Nothing else was or
is any concern of mine. [Marx’s note].
29 Daily Telegraph — Originally a Liberal paper; became a conservative organ in the
1880s.
30 So be it!

Chapter VIII: Da-Da Vogt and His Studies
‘Sine studio’ [1]
Approximately a month before the outbreak of the Italian War there appeared Vogt’s so- called
Studien zur gegenwärtigen Lage Europas (Studies on the Current Situation in Europe, Geneva, 1859).
Cui bono? [2]
Vogt knew that:
Britain will remain neutral in the forthcoming war.’ (Studien, p 4)
He knew that Russia ‘in agreement with France, will use all means short of open hostilities to damage
Austria’ (Studien, p 13).
He knew that Prussia — but let us allow him to say for himself what he knows about Prussia:
It must now have become clear even to the most short-sighted person that an
understanding exists between the Prussian government and the French Imperial
government; that Prussia will not take up the sword to defend Austria’s non-German
provinces, that she will agree to all measures affecting the defence of the territory of
the Confederation, but that otherwise she will prevent any participation by the
Confederation or individual members of the Confederation on Austria’s behalf, in
order then, in later peace negotiations, to receive her reward for these efforts on the
North German plain. (Studien, p 19)
Nett total: In Bonaparte’s forthcoming crusade against Austria, Britain will remain neutral , Russia
will act hostilely towards Austria, Prussia will keep whatever hotheads there are among the
Confederation members quiet, and Europe will localise the war. Louis Bonaparte will wage the Italian
War, as earlier the Russian War, with the permission of higher authority, to a certain extent as the
secret general of a E uropean coalition. Since Vogt knows that Britain, Russia and Prussia are acting
against Austria, what makes him write for Bonaparte? But it appears that, besides the old anti -French
feeling ‘led by Father Arendt, who has become childish, and the ghost of t hat old wretch Kahn’
(Studien, p 121), a kind of national movement was agitating ‘the German people’ and finding an echo
in all sorts of ‘chambers and newspapers’, ‘while the governments are only hesitantly and unwillingly
entering the prevailing current’ (Studien, p 114). It seems that ‘the belief in a threat of danger’ was
causing a ‘cry for joint measures’ to echo from the German ‘people’. The French Moniteur (see,
among others, issue of 15 March 1859) saw this German movement with ‘grief and amazement’.
A kind of crusade against France [it cries] is being preached in the chambers and in the
press of some of the states of the German Confederation. She is accused of nourishing
ambitious plans that she has denied, of preparing conquests she does not need [etc].

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Against these ‘slanders’ the Moniteur shows that ‘the Emperor’s’ intervention in the Italian question
should ‘on the contrary inspire the greatest confidence in German spirits’, that German unity and her
nationality are to a certain extent the hobby-horses of Decembrist France, etc. The Moniteur admits, it
is true (see 10 April 1859), that certain German apprehensions may seem to be ‘provoked’ by certain
Parisian pamphlets — pamphlets in which Louis Bonaparte urgently begs himself to give his people
the ‘long-awaited opportunity’ ‘pour s’étendre majestueusement des Alpes au Rhin’ (to stretch
majestically from the Alps to the Rhine). ‘But’, the Moniteur says:
Germany forgets that France stands under the aegis of legislation that permits no
preventive control on the part of the government.
This and similar statements by the Moniteur  achieved, as was reported to the Earl of Malmsbury (see
Blue Book: On the Affairs of Italy, January to May 1859), the exact opposite of the intended effect.
Perhaps Karl Vogt could do what the Moniteur could not. His Studien are nothing but a compilation ,
translated into German, of Moniteur-articles, Dentu-Pamphlets
[3] and Decembrist maps of the future.
Vogt’s hot air about Britain is interesting for one reason only — it illus trates the method of his
Studien. True to his original French sources, he transforms the British Admiral Sir Charles Napier
into a ‘Lord’ Napier (Studien, p 4). The literary Zouaves attached to Decembrism know from the
Theatre of the Porte St Martin that every English gentleman is at least a Lord.
Britain [Vogt tells us] has never been able to remain in harmony with Austria for long.
If a momentary community of interest brought them together for a time, political
necessity always separated them again immediately. With Prussia, on the other hand,
Britain entered again and again into a closer connection [etc]. (Studien, p 2)
Indeed! The common struggle of Britain and Austria against Louis XIV lasted, with slight
interruptions, from 1689 until 1713, that is to say almost a quarter of a century. In the War of the
Austrian Succession, Britain fought for about six years with Austria against Prussia and France. It was
not until the Seven Years’ War that Britain allied with Prussia against Austria and France, but by
1762 Lord Bute was already leaving Frederick the Great in the lurch to make proposals for the
‘partition of Prussia’ alternately to the Russian minister Golitsyn and the Austrian minister Kaunitz. In
1790, Britain concluded a treaty with Prussia against R ussia and Austria which, however, came to
nothing in the very same year. During the anti-Jacobin war, Prussia, despite Pitt’s subsidies, withdrew
from the European Coalition through the Treaty of Basle. Austria, on the other hand, incited by
Britain, fought on with slight interruptions from 1793 until 1809. Scarcely had Napoleon been
defeated when Britain (during the Congress of Vienna itself) immediately concluded a secret treaty
(of 3 January 1815) with Austria and France against Russia and Prussia. In 1821, in Hanover,
Metternich and Castlereagh reached a new agreement against Russia. So while the British themselves,
their historians and parliamentary speakers, choose to speak of Austria as of Britain’s ‘ ancient ally’,
Vogt discovers in the French pamphle ts published by Dentu that serve as his originals that,
discounting ‘momentary community of interest’, Britain and Austria were always drawing apart, but
that Britain and Prussia, on the other hand, were always in alliance. This could well be the reason
why, during the Russian War, Lord Lyndhurst cried out to the House of Lords in relation to Prussia:
‘Quem tu, Romane, caveto!’
[4] Protestant Britain feels antipathy towards Catholic Austria; liberal
Britain feels antipathy towards conservative Austria; free- trade Britain feels antipathy towards
protectionist Austria; and solvent Britain feels antipathy towards bankrupt Austria. But the element of
feeling was always foreign to British history. During his 30-year rule of Britain, Lord Palmerston, it is
true, occasionally glossed over the fact that he was a vassal of Russia by reference to his feeling of
antipathy towards Austria. For example, it was out of ‘antipathy’ towards Austria that, in 1848, he
refused British mediation in Italy, which was acceptable to Piedmont and France. According to this,
Austria would withdraw to the Adige Line and Verona; Lombardy, if she wanted, could be
incorporated into Piedmont; Parma and Modena fell to Lombardy; and Venice formed an independent
Italian state under an Austrian A rchduke and gave herself a constitution. (See Blue Book on the
Affairs of Italy, Part II, July 1849, nos 377, 478.) These conditions were in any case more favourable
than those of the peace of Villafranca.
[5] After Radetzky had beaten the Italians at all points,
Palmerston proposed the conditions that he himself had rejected. As soon as Russia’s interests
demanded the opposite procedure, during the Hungarian War of Independence, he refused to give the

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assistance asked for by the Hungarians on the basis of the treaty of 1711, for all his ‘antipathy’
towards Austria. He even refused to make any protest against the Russian intervention because:
The political independence and liberties of Europe are bound up with the maintenance
and integrity of Austria as a great European power. (House of Commons, 21 July
1849)
Vogt further tells us:
The interests of the United Kingdom… are everywhere opposed to them [the interests
of Austria]. (Studien, p 2)
‘Everywhere’ is immediately transformed into the Mediterranean:
Britain wishes at all costs to maintain her influence in the Mediterranean and the
countries on its coast. Naples and Sicily, Malta and the Ionian islands, Syria and Egypt
are the fulcrums of her policy directed towards the East Indies; Austria has everywhere
created the liveliest obstacles for her at all these points. (Studien, p 2)
What will Vogt not believe from his original sources, the Decembrist pamphlets published by Dentu
in Paris! The British have always imagined that they fought for possession of Ma lta and the Ionian
islands alternately with the Russians and the French, but never with Austria; that France, and not
Austria, sent an expedition to Egypt and was at this moment establishing herself on the Suez isthmus;
that France, and not Austria, made conquests on the north coast of Africa and, allied to Spain, tried to
wrest Gibraltar from the British; that Britain concluded the treaty of July 1840 in relation to Egypt and
Syria against France but with Austria; that in her ‘policy directed towards the East Indies’ Britain had
everywhere met the ‘liveliest obstacles’ on the part, not of Austria, but of Russia; that in the only
serious dispute between Britain and Sicily —  the sulphur question of 1840 [6] — it was a French and
not an Austrian company whose monopoly of the Sicilian sulphur trade had served as a pretext for the
friction; and that, finally, on the far side of the channel, there is occasionally talk of the Mediterranean
being transformed into a ‘lac français’, but never of its being transformed into a ‘lac autrichienne’. [7]
But here an important circumstance must be considered.
That is that in the course of 1858, a map of Europe appeared in London entitled L’Europe en 1860
(Europe in 1860 ). This map, which was published by the French Embassy and contains many
prophetic hints for 1858 — Lombardy-Venice annexed to Piedmont, and Morocco to Spain —
redraws the political geography of Europe with the single exception of France, who seems to remain
within her old frontiers. With sly irony the territorie s intended for her are presented to impossible
possessors. Thus Egypt falls to Austria, and the note printed on the margin of the map reads: ‘François
Joseph I, l’Empereur d’Autriche et d’Egypte’ (Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria and Egypt).
Vogt had the  map L’Europe en 1860 in front of him as a kind of Decembrist compass. Hence his
conflict between Britain and Austria over Egypt and Syria. Vogt prophesies that this conflict would
‘end in the destruction of the conflicting powers’, if, as he opportunely r emembers, ‘if Austria
possessed sea power’ (Studien, p 2). But the climax of the historical learning peculiar to his Studien is
reached in the following quotation:
When Napoleon I once tried to break the English Bank, the latter had recourse, for a
day, to counting sums and not weighing them, as had been the custom previously; the
Austrian treasury is in the same, indeed far worse, position, 356 days in the year.
(Studien, p 43)
As we know, the Bank of England (‘the English Bank’ is also a phantom of Vogt’s brain) suspended
cash payments from February 1797 to 1821, and for these 24 years British banknotes were not
exchangeable for any metal at all, weighed or counted. When the suspension started, there was, as yet,
no Napoleon I in France (although there was  a General Bonaparte waging his first Italian campaign),
and when cash payments were resumed in Threadneedle Street, Napoleon I had ceased to exist in
Europe. Such Studien even beat La Guéronnière’s conquest of the Tyrol by the ‘Emperor’ of Austria.
Frau von Krüdener, [8] the mother of the Holy Alliance, used to distinguish between the principle of
Good, the ‘white angel of the North’ (Alexander I) and the principle of Evil, the ‘ black angel of the
South’ (Napoleon I). Vogt, the adoptive father of the new H oly Alliance, transforms both, Tsar and

75

Caesar, Alexander II and Napoleon III, into ‘ white angels ’. Both are the predestined liberators of
Europe.
Piedmont, says Vogt, ‘has even earned the respect of Russia’ (Studien, p 71).
What more can you say about a s tate, than that it has even earned the respect of Russia! Particularly
after Piedmont had ceded the military harbour of Villafranca to Russia, and as the same Vogt warns in
relation to the purchase of the Jadebusen [9] by Prussia:
A military harbour in foreign territory without organic links with the country to which
it belongs is such ridiculous nonsense that its existence can only have any meaning if
it is regarded to a certain extent as the aim of future endeavours, as a marker set up
towards which to lay aim. (Studien, p 15)
As we know, Catherine II was already trying to win military harbours in the Mediterranean for
Russia.
Tender considerateness towards the ‘white angel’ of the North misleads Vogt into a piece of gross
exaggeration that infringes the ‘modesty of nature’ as vouchsafed by his original sources from Dentu.
In La vraie question. France –Italie–Autriche (Paris, 1859, published by Dentu)
[10] we read on page
20:
In any case, by what right could the Austrian government invoke the inviolability of
the treaties of 1815, when she herself violated them by confiscating Cracow, whose
independence was guaranteed by these treaties? [11]
He translates this French original of his into German in the following way:
It is strange to hear such language in the mouth of the one government that has up
until now impudently broken the treaties…  by stretching out a sacrilegious hand in
peacetime, without any reason, against the Republic of Cracow, which was guaranteed
by the treaties, and incorporating the same without any further ado into the imperial
state. (Studien, p 58)
Of course, Nicholas annihilated the constitution and the independence of the Kingdom of Poland,
guaranteed by the treaties of 1815, out of ‘respect’ for the treaties of 1815. Russia did not res pect the
integrity of Cracow any the less for the fact that she occupied that free city with Muscovite troops in
1831. In 1836, Cracow was once more occupied by Russians, Austrians and Prussians, was dealt with
completely like a conquered country, and was, in 1840, still vainly appealing to Britain and France on
the basis of the treaties of 1815. [12] Finally, on 22 February 1846, Russians, Austrians and Prussians
occupied Cracow once more in order to incorporate it into Austria. The breach of the treaties was
committed by the three northern powers , and the Austrian confiscation of 1846 was only the final
word of the Russian invasion of 1831. Out of delicacy towards the ‘white angel of the North’, Vogt
forgets the confiscation of Poland and falsifies the history of the confiscation of Cracow. [13]
The circumstance that Russia is ‘altogether hostile towards Austria and sympathetic towards France’
leaves Vogt in no doubt as to Louis Bonaparte’s national -liberationist tendencies, just as the
circumstance that ‘his’ (Louis Bonaparte’s) ‘policies are today most closely bound up with those of
Russia’ permits him no doubt as to the national-liberationist tendencies of Alexander II.
Holy Russia, therefore, must be considered as much ‘a friend of all strivings for freedom’ and of
‘popular and national development’ in the East as Decembrist France is in the West. This watchword
was passed out to all the agents of 2 December. ‘Russia’, Vogt read in the book La foi des traités, les
puissances signataires et l’empereur Napoleon III, [14] published by Dentu (Paris, 1859):
Russia belongs to the family of the Slavs, a chosen race… There has been surprise at
the chivalrous agreement that has suddenly sprung up between France and Russia.
There is nothing more natural: Harmony of principles, agreement on aims,
subordination to the law of the holy alliance of governments and the peoples, not to lay
traps and coerce, but to guide and support the divine march of the nations. From this
most perfect cordiality [between Louis Philippe and Britain there was only the entente
cordiale, but between Louis Napoleon and Russia la cordialité la plus parfaite reigns]

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the happiest results have emerged: railways, the emancipation of the serfs, trading
posts on the Mediterranean, etc. [15]
Vogt immediately picks up the ‘emancipation of the ser fs’ and hints that ‘the impetus now given…
could well make Russia into a friend of aspirations for freedom rather than an enemy of the same’ (La
foi des traités, p 10).
He, like his Dentu original, derives the impetus for the so -called emancipation of the Russian serfs
back to Louis Bonaparte, and for this purpose transforms the Anglo–Turkish Franco–Russian war that
gave the impetus into a ‘French war’ (La foi des traités, p 9).
As we know, the call for the emancipation of the serfs first rang out loud and long under Alexander I.
Tsar Nicholas occupied himself with the emancipation of the serfs all his life, created a special
Ministry of the Domains for this purpose, had the Ministry carry out preparatory steps in 1843, and
even decreed, in 1847, laws on the  sale of nobles’ lands that were favourable to the peasants. He was
only driven to repeal these in 1848 by fear of the revolution. Thus if the question of the emancipation
of the serfs has taken on mightier dimensions under the ‘benevolent Tsar’ as Vogt cordially describes
Alexander II, this seems to be due to a development of economic conditions that not even a Tsar can
order back.
Moreover, the emancipation of the serfs in the way intended by the Russian government would
increase Russia’s aggressive power one hundredfold. Its purpose is simply to perfect the autocracy by
tearing down the many barriers offered to the great autocrat by the many petty autocrats of the
Russian nobility resting on serfdom, as well as by the self -governing peasant communities whose
material basis, common ownership, is to be destroyed by the so-called emancipation.
Incidentally, the Russian serfs understand emancipation in quite a different way from the government,
and the Russian nobility understand it in yet another different wa y. The ‘benevolent Tsar’ therefore
discovered that real emancipation of the serfs was incompatible with his autocracy, just as the
benevolent Pope Pius IX discovered that the emancipation of Italy was incompatible with the
conditions for the existence of t he papacy. The ‘benevolent Tsar’ therefore saw the only means to
postpone an internal revolution in a war of conquest and the continuation of Russia’s traditional
foreign policy, which, as the Russian historian Karamsin notes, is ‘immutable’. The lying myth about
the dawning of the millennium under Alexander II, diligently spread all over Europe since 1856 by
the paid hacks of Russia, loudly proclaimed in 1859 by the Decembrists and pattered out by Vogt in
his Studien, has been critically annihilated by Pri nce Dolgorukov in his book La vérité sur la Russie
(1860).
Even before the outbreak of the Italian war, according to Vogt, the alliance between the ‘white Tsar’
and the ‘man of December’, set up for the sole purpose of liberating the nationalities, ha d proved its
worth in the Danube principalities, where the unity and independence of the Romanian nation was
sealed by the election of Colonel Cuza [17] as Prince of Moldavia and Wallachia:
Austria protests hand and foot, France and Russia applaud. (La foi des traités, p 65)
In a memorandum (printed in the Preussisches Wochenblatt, 1855) [18] drafted by the Russian cabinet
in 1837 for the then Tsar, we read:
Russia does not like to absorb states with alien elements immediately…  in any case, it
seems more appropriate to allow states whose acquisition has been decided to exist for
some time under special but quite dependent rulers, as we have done for example in
Moldavia and Wallachia [etc].
Before Russia absorbed the Crimea, she proclaimed its independence.
A Russian proclamation of 11 December 1814, says, among other things:
Tsar Alexander, your protector, appeals to you Poles. Arm yourselves for the defence
of your fatherland and the maintenance of your political independence.
And now even the Danube principalities! Russia has worked for their ‘ independence’ since Peter the
Great’s invasion of the Danube principalities. The Empress Anne demanded the independence of the
Danube principalities under a Russian protectorate from the S ultan at the Congress of Niemirov
(1737). Catherine II insisted on the independence of the provinces under a European protectorate at

77

the Congress of Fokshani (1772). Alexander I continued these efforts and set the seal on them by the
transformation of Bessarabia into a Russian province (Treaty of Bucharest, 1812). Nicholas even
blessed the Romanians, through Kisselev, with the still -valid Règlement organique , [19] which
organised the most infamous serfdom amidst the cheers of the whole of Europe at this Code of
Freedom. In semi -unifying the Danube principalities under Cuza, Nicholas II was only taking the
policies of his predecessors over the previous century and a half one step further. Vogt discovers that,
as a result of this unification under a Russian v assal, ‘the principalities would be a dam to Russian
penetration to the South’ (La foi des traités, p 61).
Since Russia applauded Cuza’s election ( La foi des traités, p 65), it is as clear as daylight that the
benevolent Tsar is using all his strength to ‘block the route to the South’, even though ‘Constantinople
remains a permanent aim of Russian policy’ (La foi des traités, p 9).
The twist of decrying Russia as the protector of liberalism and national aspirations is not new.
Catherine II was honoured by a  whole host of enlightened Frenchmen and Germans as the standard -
bearer of progress. The ‘noble’ Alexander I (Le Grec du Bas Empire, [20] as Napoleon ignobly called
him) played in his day the hero of liberalism all over Europe. Did he not bestow upon Finla nd all the
blessings of Russian civilisation? Did he not in his generosity give France not only a constitution but
also a Russian prime minister? Was he not the secret head of the ‘Hetairie’, [21] while at the same
time at the Congress of Verona he bribed Chateaubriand to drive Louis XVIII to war against the
Spanish rebels? Did he not egg on Ferdinand VII, through his confessor, to send an expedition against
the insurgent Latin American colonies, while at the same time he assured the President of the United
States of North America of his support against any intervention whatsoever by European powers on
the American continent? Did he not send Ypsilanti [22] to Wallachia as the head of the ‘holy horde of
Greeks’, and did he not betray the horde through that sa me Ypsilanti and have Vladimiresco, the
leader of the Wallachian rebels, treacherously murdered? Nicholas too was, before 1830, greeted in
every language, rhymed and unrhymed, as the heroic liberator of the nationalities. When, in 1828–29,
he undertook the  war against Machmut II for the liberation of the Greeks , after, that is to say,
Machmut had refused to let a Russian army march in to suppress the Greek rebellion, Palmerston
declared to the British parliament that the enemies of the Russian liberators were necessarily the
‘friends’ of the greatest monsters in the world, Dom Miguel, [23] Austria and the Sultan. Did not
Nicholas, in paternal solicitude, give the Greeks a Russian general, Count Capo d’Istria, as president?
Only the Greeks were no Frenchmen, and they murdered the noble Capo d’Istria. Although, from the
outbreak of the July revolution of 1830, the main role that Nicholas played was that of patron of
reaction, he still did not cease for a moment to labour for the ‘liberation of the nationalities ’. A few
examples will suffice. The constitutional revolution of September 1843 in Greece was led by
Katakasi, the Russian minister in Athens, earlier the Inspector General with responsibility over
Admiral Heyden during the catastrophe of Navarino.
[24] The centre of the Bulgarian revolution was
the Russian consulate in Bucharest. There, in the spring of 1842, the Russian general Duhamel
received a Bulgarian delegation and laid before it the plan for a general insurrection. Serbia was to act
as the reserve of the revolution, and the position of Hospodar [25] of Wallachia was to be conferred
upon the Russian general Kisselev. During the Serbian insurrection (1843) Russia, through her
embassy in Constantinople, drove Turkey to violent measures against Serbia i n order to use this
pretext to appeal to the sympathy and fanaticism of Europe against the Turks. Italy, too, was by no
means excluded from the liberation plans of Tsar Nicholas: L a Jeune Italie, [26] for a time the Paris
organ of Mazzini’s party, explains in an issue of November 1843:
The recent disturbances in Romagna and the movement in Greece are more or less
connected… The Italian movement failed because the really democratic party refused
to join in it. The republicans did not want to support a movement set going by Russia.
Everything in Italy had been prepared for general insurrection. The movement was to
start in Naples, where it was expected that part of the army would lead it or
immediately make common cause with the patriots. After the outbreak of this
revolution, Lombardy, Piedmont and the Romagna were to rise, and an Italian Empire
was to be founded under the Duke of Leuchtenberg, son of Eugène Beauharnais and
son-in-law of the Tsar. Young Italy foiled the plan.

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The Times of 20 November 1843 noted on this information in Jeune Italie:
If that great end — the establishment of a new Italian Empire the head of which would
be a Russian Prince — could be attained, so much the better; but there was another —
an immediate, though perhaps not quite so important advantage to be gained by any
outbreak in Italy — the causing of alarm to Austria and the withdrawal of her attention
from the fearful projects of Russia on the Danube.
After unsuccessfully trying ‘Young Italy’ in 1843, Nicholas sent Herr von Butenev to Rome in March
1844. On behalf of the Tsar, Butenev disclosed to the Pope that Russian Poland was to be ceded to
Austria in exchange for Lombardy, which was to form a North Italian kingdom under Leuchtenberg.
The Tablet of April 1844, at that time the British organ of the Roman Curia, noted on this proposal:
The bait for the Roman Curia contained in this beautiful plan lay in the fact that
Poland would fall into Catholic hands, while Lombardy would remain in the
possession of a Catholic dynasty as before. But the diplomatic veterans of Rome
perceived that while Austria can barely maintain its hold on its own possessions and in
all human probability will be forced sooner or later to relinquish its Slav provinces, the
cession of Poland to Austria, even if this part of the proposal were seriously intended,
would be nothing more than a loan to be repaid at a later date. Whereas North Italy
with the Duke of Leuchtenberg would in fact fall under Russian protection and before
long would infallibly come beneath the Russian sceptre. The warmly recommended
plan was consequently put aside for the present.
So much for the Tablet of 1844.
The sole circumstance that has justified Austria’s existence as a state since the middle of the
eighteenth century, its resistance to Russian progress in the East — a helpless, inconsistent, cowardly
but tough resistance — causes Vogt to make the discovery that ‘Austria is the source of all discord in
the East’ (La foi des traités, p 56). With ‘a certain childishness’ that goes so well with his fat nature,
he explains the alliance between Russia and France against Austria, besides the liberationist
tendencies of the ‘benevolent Tsar’, from the ingratitude of Austria for services rendered by Nicholas
during the Hungarian revolution:
In the Crimean War itself Austria went to the last extremes of armed hostile neutrality.
It goes without saying that this stance, which moreover bore the stamp of falseness
and fraud, had to embitter the Russian government to a huge extent towards Austria
and thus force it towards France. (La foi des traités, pp 10–11)
According to Vogt, Russia pursued a sentimental policy. The gratitude showed to the Tsar at
Germany’s expense by Au stria during the Warsaw Congress and through the march on Schleswig -
Holstein
[27] does not nearly satisfy the grateful Vogt.
In his famous dispatch dated Paris, October 1825, the Russian diplomat Pozzo di Borgo, says, after
first enumerating Austria’s intrigues against Russia’s plans to intervene in the East:
Our policy therefore directs us to show ourselves to this state [Austria] in an
intimidating way, and to convince it through our preparations that, if it dares to move
against it, the wildest storm it has ever experienced will break about its head.
After Pozzo has threatened war from outside and revolution from within, described Austria’s
intervention in the ‘provinces’ of Turkey ‘agreeable’ to her as a possible peaceful solution, and
depicted Prussia simply as a subordinate ally of Russia, he continues:
If the Vienna court had given way to our good aims and intentions, the imperial
cabinet’s plan would long have been fulfilled — a plan that extends not only to the
seizure of the Danube principalities and Constantinople, but to driving the Turks out of
Europe itself.
In 1830, as we know, a secret treaty was concluded between Nicholas and Charles X. It stipulated that
France would allow Russia to take possession of Constantinople and would receive the Rhen ish
Provinces and Belgium in compensation; that Prussia would be compensated by Hanover and Saxony,
and that Austria would receive part of the Turkish provinces on the Danube. Under Louis -Philippe,
the same plan was, at Russia’s instigation, once more put before the Petersburg cabinet by Molé. Soon

79

afterwards Brunnov took the document with him to London where he informed the British
government of it as proof of France’s treachery and used it to form the anti-French coalition of 1840.
Let us now see how Russ ia, in agreement with France, was supposed to  exploit the Italian War in the
view, inspired by his original Parisian sources, of Vogt. Russia’s ‘national’ composition, and in
particular the ‘Polish nationality’, would seem to create some difficulties for a man whose ‘Pole Star’
is ‘the principle of nationality’. But:
We hold the principle of nationality high; the principle of free self-determination even
higher. (La foi des traités, p 121)
When Russia annexed by far the greater part of what was actually Poland through the treaties of 1815,
she obtained such an advanced position to the West, drove such a wedge, not only between Austria
and Prussia, but also between East Prussia and Silesia, that even then Prussian officers (for example,
Gneisenau) were drawi ng attention to the intolerable nature of such frontiers shared with an over -
powerful neighbour. But it was not until the subjugation of Poland in 1831 placed this area completely
at the mercy of the Russians that the true meaning of the wedge emerged. The suppression of Poland
only served as a pretext for the fortifications laid out in the grand style at Warsaw, Modlin and
Ivangorod. Their real purpose was the complete strategic domination of the Vistula area, the creation
of a basis for attacks to the Nor th, South and West. Even Haxthausen, who is rapturous about the
orthodox Tsar and everything Russian, sees a quite decisive danger and threat to Germany here. The
Russians’ fortified position on the Vistula is a greater threat to Germany than all of France’s fortresses
put together, particularly when Poland’s national resistance ceases and Russia is able to use Poland’s
military strength as her own aggressive force. Vogt therefore reassures Germany that Poland is
Russian by free self-determination:
There is no doubt [he says], there is no doubt that, as a result of the strenuous efforts
of the Russian People’s Party, the abyss that yawned between Poland and Russia is
becoming significantly narrower, and perhaps it will only require a slight impulse to
bridge it completely. (La foi des traités, p 12)
This slight impulse was to be supplied by the Italian war. (Alexander II, however, convinced himself
during this war that Poland had not yet achieved the same level as Vogt.) Poland, absorbed into
Russia by ‘free self-determination’, would exert a gravitational attraction as a central body upon all
the former parts of the dissolved Polish Empire languishing under foreign rule. In order to facilitate
this process of attraction, Vogt advises Prussia to seize the oppo rtunity to get rid of the ‘Slav
appendage’ (La foi des traités, p 17), that is to say Posen ( La foi des traités, p 97) and probably West
Prussia too, since only East Prussia is recognised as ‘truly German territory’. The parts split off from
Prussia would fall back into the central body absorbed by Russia, and the ‘truly German territory’ of
East Prussia would be transformed into a Russian enclave.  On the other hand, as regards Galicia ,
which is also incorporated into Russia in the map L’Europe en 1860, its separation from Austria was
anyway a direct part of the war aims of liberating Germany from Austria’s non -German possessions.
Vogt remembers that:
… before 1848… the portrait of the Russian Tsar was to be seen more frequently in
Galicia than that of the Austrian Emperor [and]… given the uncommon skill that
Russia possesses in weaving such intrigues, significant grounds would exist here for
fears on Austria’s part. (La foi des traités, p 12)
However, it goes quite without saying that, in order to get rid of this ‘internal enemy’, Germany must
calmly allow the Russians ‘to push troops up to the frontier’ who support these intrigues. While
Prussia herself gives up her Polish provinces, Russia is to use the Italian War to separate Galicia from
Austria in the same way, indeed, that, as early as 1809, Alexander I received part of Galicia in
payment for his purely theatrical support of Napoleon I. We know that Russia successfully demanded
back, partly from Napoleon I and partly from the Congress of Vienna, a portion of the fragments of
Poland that had originally fallen to Austria and Prussia. By 1859 the moment had come, according to
Vogt, to unite the whole of Poland with Russia. Instead of the liberation of the Polish nationality from
Russians, Austrians and Prussians, Vogt demands that the whole of the former Polish Empire should
merge and disappear into Russia. Finis Poloniae!

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This ‘Russian’ idea of the ‘restoration of Poland’, which spread all over Europe immediately after the
death of Tsar Nicholas, was denounced as early as March 1855 by David Urquhart in his pamphlet
The New Hope of Poland. [28]
But Vogt has still not done enough for Russia.
The extraordinarily polite way [says this ‘courteous and sociable fellow’], indeed, the
almost fraternal way in which the Russians treated the Hungarian revolutionaries
contrasted so sharply with the way Austrians proceeded that it could not fail to have
full effect. Russia, it is true, overthrew the party [NB: according to Vogt, Russia
overthrew not Hungary, but the party] but, in treating it with consideration and
courtesy, she laid the basis for a new outlook which could more or less be expressed
by saying that one has to choose the lesser of two evils, and that, in the present case,
Russia is not the greater of the two.
How ‘extraordinarily politely, considerately and courteously’ indeed almost ‘fraternally’, does Plon-
Plon’s Falstaff conduct the Russians to Hungary and make himself a ‘channel’ for the illusions which
brought failure to the Hungarian revolution of 1849. It was Görgey ’s [30] party which at that time
spread belief in the idea of a Russian prince as future King of Hungary, and through this belie f broke
the power to resist of the Hungarian revolution.
Without any particular attachment to any race, the Habsburgs before 1848 naturally based their rule
on the ruling nationality — the Magyars. Let it be said, incidentally, that in general Metternich w as
the greatest upholder of independent nationalities. He misused them to fight one another, but he
needed them in order to misuse them. Therefore he upheld them. Just compare Posen and Galicia.
After the revolution of 1848–49, the Habsburg dynasty, which had used the Slavs to beat the Germans
and Magyars, attempted in imitation of Joseph II to put the German element in control in Hungary by
force. The Habsburgs did not dare to fall into the arms of their saviours, the Slavs, for fear of Russia.
Their whole state reaction in Hungary was directed much more against their saviours, the Slavs, than
it was against the Magyars they had defeated. In fighting against its own saviours, therefore, the
Austrian reaction drove the Slavs back under the banner of the Magyars, as Szemere [31] has shown in
his pamphlet Hungary, 1848–1860 (London, 1860). Austrian rule over Hungary and Magyar rule
within Hungary therefore coincided before and after 1848. It is quite different with Russia, whether it
rules directly or indirectly in Hungary. Taking the elements related to her ethnically and by religion
together, Russia would immediately have at her disposal the non -Magyar majority of the population.
The Magyar race would immediately succumb to the Slavs, related to the Russians ethnically, and the
Wallachians related to them by religion. Russian rule in Hungary is therefore synonymous with the
ruin of the Hungarian nationality , that is to say of a Hungary historically tied to the rule of the
Magyars. [32]
Vogt, who has the Poles absorbed into Russia by ‘free self-determination’, has Hungary disappear into
Slavism under Russian rule. [33]
But Vogt has still not done enough for Russia.
Among the ‘extra -German provinces’ of Austria, for which the German Confederation is not
supposed to ‘take up the sword’ against France, and Russia, ‘which sides completely with France’, are
to be found not only Galicia, Hungary and Italy, but also and particularly Bohemia and Moravia.
‘Russia’, says Vogt, ‘offers the fixed point around which the Slavic nationalities are more and more
striving to rally.’ (La foi des traités, pp 9–10)
Bohemia and Moravia are among the ‘Slavic nationalities’. Just as Muscovy developed into Russia, so
Russia must develop into Panslavonia. ‘With the Czechs…  at our sides we will succumb to every
enemy.’ (La foi des traités, p 134) We, that is, Germany, must attempt to get rid of the Czechs, that is,
Bohemia and Moravia. ‘No guarantee for extra-German possessions of the rulers.’ (La foi des traités,
p 133) ‘No more extra-German provinces in the Confederation’ (La foi des traités, p 133) — but only
German provinces in France! Not only must ‘the present French Empire’ therefore ‘ be allowed to
have its own way…  as long as it does not infringe on the territory of the German Confederation’ (La
foi des traités, p 9, Foreword), but Russia too must be ‘allowed to have its own way’ as long as it only
infringes on the ‘extra-German provinces in the Confederation’. Russia will help Germany to develop

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her ‘unity’ and ‘nationality’ by moving troops up on Austria’s ‘Slavic appendages’ that are subject to
her intrigues. While Austria is kept busy in Italy by Louis Bonaparte and Prussia sheathes the sword
of the German Confederation, the ‘benevolent Tsar’ will ‘know how to support’ revolutions in
Bohemia and Moravia ‘secretly with money, weapons and ammunition’ (La foi des traités, p 13).
And ‘with the Czechs at our sides we must succumb to every enemy’!
How generous, then, of the ‘benevolent Tsar’ to liberate us from Bohemia and Moravia and their
Czechs, who, as ‘Slavic nationalities’, must naturally ‘rally round Russia’.
Let us see how our Imperial Vogt defends the Eastern frontier of Germany by incorporating Bohemia
and Moravia into Russia. Bohemia Russian! But Bohemia lies in the middle of Germany, separated by
Silesia from Russian Poland and by a Moravia Russianised by Vogt from a Galicia and a Hungary
Russianised by Vogt. In this way Russia receives a part of the territory of the German Confederation
50 German miles long by 25 to 30 German miles wide. It pushes her Western frontier a full 65
German miles to the West. Since the distance from Eger to Lauterburg in Alsace is only 45 German
miles as the crow flies, North Germany would be completely separated from South Germany by the
French wedge on the one side and even more by the Russian wedge on the other side, and the division
of Germany would be complete. The direct route from Vienna to Berlin would pass through Russia, as
indeed would the direct route from Munich to Berlin. Dresden, Nuremburg, Regensburg and Linz
would be our frontier towns against Russia. Our position in relation to the Slavs in the South would,
to say the least, be the same as before Charlemagne (while in the West Vogt does not even allow us to
go back to Louis XV), and we could cross out a thousand years of our history.
The same purpose that Poland served can be even better served by Bohemia. Prague transformed into
a fortified camp with supporting fortresses at the confluences of the Moldau and the Eger with the
Elbe — and the Russian army in Bohemia can calmly await the approach of a German army divided
from the outset between Bavaria, Austria and Brandenburg. It could allow the strong forces to run up
against the fortifications and mop up the weak piecemeal.
Just look at the linguistic map of central Europe —  let us take for example a Slav authority, the
‘slovanský zeměvid’
[34] of Šafařík. Here the frontier of the Slav language runs from the coast of
Pomerania near Stolp (Słupsk) via Zastrow (Jastrowie) southwards to Chodziehen (Chodzież) on the
Netze (Noteć), and then westwards as far as Meseritz (Międzyrzecz). From here, however, it suddenly
turns to the south- east. Here the massive wedge of Silesia drives deeply in between Poland and
Bohemia. In Bohemia and Moravia, the Slav language then jumps far to the West once more —
although it is, admittedly, eroded on all sides by the advance of German elements and studded with
German towns and German-speaking enclaves, just as in the North the whole Lower -Vistula area and
the better part of East and West Prussia are German and thrust  forwards uncomfortably against
Poland. Between the most westerly point reached by the Polish and the most northerly point reached
by the Bohemian languages, there lies the Lusatian -Wendish language enclave in the middle of the
German language area, but in such a way that it almost cuts off Silesia.
For the Russian Panslavist  Vogt, who has Bohemia at his disposal, there can be no doubt here where
the natural frontier of the Slav empire lies. From Meseritz it runs directly to Lieberose and Lübben,
and from there to the point where the Elbe breaks through the mountains on the Bohemian border, and
then it goes on to follow the southern and western frontiers of Bohemia and Moravia. Everything to
the East is Slav; the few German enclaves and other intruders can n o longer stand in the way of the
development of the great Slav whole; anyhow, they have no right to be where they are. Once this ‘pan
Slav condition’ has been created, then it follows naturally that a similar rectification of frontiers is
necessary in the South. Here too a German wedge has unwarrantably obtruded between northern and
southern Slavs, occupying the Danube valley and the Styrian Alps. Vogt cannot tolerate this wedge,
and so, logically, he annexes Austria, Salzburg, Styria and the German parts of Carinthia to Russia.
Vogt has already unfolded, in defiance of Austria, the fact that, in this creation of the Slavo -Russian
empire, according to the tried and tested tenets of the ‘nationality principle’, the handful of Magyars
and Romanians will also f all to Russia, along with various Turks, as a punishment for intruding
between the northern and southern Slavs.
In this operation we Germans lose — nothing more than East and West Prussia, Silesia, parts of
Brandenburg and Saxony, the whole of Bohemia, Moravia and the rest of Austria apart from the Tyrol

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(a part of which falls to the share of the Italian ‘nationality principle’) — and our national existence
into the bargain!
But let us stay with the immediate proposals to make Galicia, Bohemia and Moravia Russian!
Under such conditions, German Austria, South- West Germany and North Germany could never act
together except — and it would necessarily come to this — under Russian leadership.
Vogt has us Germans sing what his Parisians sang in 1815:
Vive Alexandre,
Vive le roi des rois,
Sans rien prétendre,
Il nous donne des lois. [35]
The Vogtian ‘nationality principle’, which he hoped in 1859 to realise by the alliance of the ‘white
angel of the North’ with the ‘white angel of the South’, is supposed therefore in his own view to show
its worth first of all in the annexation of the Polish nationali ty, the annihilation of the Magyar
nationality and the deterioration of the German nationality all in the interests of — Russia .
I have not mentioned his original Dentu pamphlets this time because I was holding in reserve a single
striking example to prove that in everything that he half hints at and half lets slip a watchword passed
out by the Tuileries is being obeyed. In the issue of Pensiero ed Azione [36] for 2–16 May 1859, in
which he predicts events which were later to take place, Mazzini notes, among other things, that in the
coalition between Alexander II and Louis Bonaparte the first stipulation read: ‘abbandono assoluto
della Polonia’ (absolute abandonment of Poland on the part of France, which Vogt translates into ‘the
complete bridging of the abyss that yawns between Poland and Russia’).
Che la guerra si prolunghi e assuma… proporzioni europee, l’insurrezione delle
provincie oggi turche preparata di lunga mano e quelle dell’Ungheria, daranno campo
all’Allianza di rivelarsi… Principi russi governe rebbo le provincie che surgerebbo
sulle rovine dell Impero Turco e dell’Austria… Constantino di Russia è  già proposto ai
malcontenti ungheresi. (See Pensiero ed Azione, 2–16 May 1859)
But should the war be prolonged and assume European proportions, then the
insurrection in the present Turkish provinces and Hungary, which has long been
prepared, will give the Alliance an opportunity to reveal itself… Russian princes will
rule the states that will arise on the ruins of Turkey and Austria… Constantine of
Russia has already been proposed to the Hungarian malcontents.
* * *
Vogt’s Russianism is, however, only secondary. In it, he is only following a watchword passed out
from the Tuileries, only seeking to prepare Germany for manoeuvres that were agreed upon betwe en
Louis Bonaparte and Alexander II for certain eventualities in the war against Austria, and in fact only
slavishly echoing the pan-Slav phrases of original Parisian pamphlets. His real business is to sing the
Song of Ludwig [37] (Louis):
I know of a king yclept Sir Ludovic
Who gladly God [that is, the nationalities] serves.
We heard earlier how Vogt praises Sardinia by the assertion that ‘she has even earned the respect of
Russia’. Now the parallel.
There is no mention [he says] of Austria in the statements [by Prussia]… the language
would be no different in the case of an approaching war between North America and
Cochin China. But Prussia’s German vocation, German obligations, old Prussia, that is
emphasised with relish. France [according to his statement on page 27 on France:
‘France is now summed up… solely in the person of her ruler.’] consequently hands
out praise through the Moniteur and the rest of the press —  Austria rages.
The fact that Prussia has a correct conception of her ‘German vocation’ flows from the
praise handed out to her by Louis Bonaparte in the Moniteur and the rest of the
December press. (Studien, p 18)

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What cool impertinence! It will be remembered how, out of tenderness towards the ‘white angel of the
North’, Vogt has Austria alone break the treaties of 1815 and alone confiscate Cracow. He now
performs the same labour of love for the ‘white angel of the South’:
This ecclesiastical state on whose republic [the republic of the ecclesiastical state]
Cavaignac, the representative of the doctrinaire republican party… and the military
counterpart of Gagern [38] [that too is a parallel!] committed foul genocide [commit
genocide on the republic of a state!], which did not, however, help him to ascend the
presidential chair. (Studien, p 69)
So it was Cavaignac and not Louis Bonaparte who committed ‘ foul genocide ’ on the Roman
Republic! Indeed, in November 1848 Cavaignac sent a fleet to Civitavecchia for the personal defe nce
of the Pope. But it was not until the following year, not until months after Cavaignac had been
removed from the presidential chair, not until 9  February 1849 that the secular rule of the Pope was
abolished and the Republic proclaimed in Rome , and so C avaignac could not at all have murdered a
republic that did not yet exist when he was in power. On 22 April 1849, Louis Bonaparte sent General
Oudinot to Civitavecchia with 14,000 men, after fraudulently obtaining the funds required for the
expedition against Rome from the National Assembly by the solemnly-repeated assurance that he only
intended to resist an intended Austrian attack on the Roman States. As we know, the Paris catastrophe
of 13 June 1849 arose from the decision of Ledru- Rollin and the Mountain [39] — to take vengeance
for the ‘foul genocide of the Roman Republic’, which was at the same time ‘a foul breach of the
French constitution’ and a ‘foul infringement of the decision of the National Assembly’, on the person
of the author of all these foul deeds, Louis Bonaparte , by putting him on trial . One can see how
‘foully’ the vile sycophant of the coup d’état , how impertinently Vogt falsifies history in order to
place Sir ‘Ludovic’s’ vocation of liberating the nationalities in general and Italy in particular beyond
the shadow of a doubt. He now sets this right in the following way:
The present Empire has no party among the educated, no party… in the French
bourgeoisie. To it belong only two masses, the army and the rural proletariat that
cannot read or write. But that constitutes nine-tenths of the population and embraces
the mighty organised instrument with which resistance can be smashed and the herd of
mortgage-helots who possess nothing but a vote in the ballot-box. (Studien, p 25)
The non-urban population of France, including the army, amounts to scarcely two- thirds of the entire
population. Vogt transforms less than two -thirds into nine -tenths. The whole French population
outside of the towns, one -fifth of which approximately consists of prosper ous landowners, and
another one-fifth of which consists of people without land or property, he transforms one and all into
small peasants, ‘mortgage helots’. Finally, he abolishes all reading and writing in France outside of
the towns. Here he falsifies st atistics, as he did earlier history, in order to give his hero a bigger
pedestal. The hero himself is now placed on this pedestal:
France is now in fact summed up solely in the person of her ruler, of whom Masson
[40] [also an authority] said ‘he possesses great qualities as a statesman and a
sovereign, an unshakable will, a sure tact, powerful resolve, a strong heart, a high,
bold spirit and complete ruthlessness’. (Studien, p 27)
wie saeleclîche stât im an
allez daz, daz êr begât!
wie gâr sîn lîp ze wunsche stât!
wie gênt îm so gelîche inein
die fînen keiserlîchen bein. (Tristan)
Vogt seizes the censer from Masson in order to swing it himself. To Masson’s catalogue of virtues he
adds ‘cold calculation’, ‘powerful scheming’, ‘the cunning of the serpent’ and ‘tough patience’
(Studien, p 28), and then, like a Tacitus of the ante -chamber, he stammers: ‘The origin of this reign
was a horror’, which is itself — a nonsense. Above all he has to melodramatise the grotesque figure
of his hero into a great man, and so ‘Napoleon the Small’ [42] becomes this ‘man of destiny’ (Studien,
p 36).
Should present conditions [cries Vogt] lead to a change [what a modest expression, a
change] in his [the man of destiny’s] government, it will certainly not lack our ardent

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congratulations, even if we may not, for the time being, conceive any prospect of it.
(Studien, p 29)
How seriously this ardent admirer took his congratulations in petto  [43] can be seen from the
following:
If peace persists, however, conditions at home will become more and more untenable
as each day passes, because the French army has a far more intimate connection with
the party of the educated than is the case, for example, in German states, in Prussia
and Austria — because these parties find an echo,  particularly among the officers, and
so one fine day the only active power base the Emperor has may slip from his fingers.
(Studien, pp 26–27)
So ‘conditions at home’ became ‘more and more untenable ’ if ‘peace persisted’. Therefore Vogt had
to try to make  Louis Bonaparte’s breach of the peace easier. The army, ‘the only active base’ of his
‘power’, threatens to ‘slip out of his fingers’. That is why Vogt proved that Europe had the task of
binding the French ‘army’ once more firmly to Louis Bonaparte throug h a war ‘localised’ in Italy.
Indeed, at the end of 1858, it looked as if the role played by Badinguet, as the Parisians disrespectfully
call ‘his uncle’s nephew’, was going to come to a dreadful end. The general trade crisis of 1857–58
had paralysed French industry. The government’s manoeuvres aimed at preventing an acute outbreak
of crisis made the disease chronic, so that the slump in French trade dragged on until the outbreak of
the Italian war. On the other hand, corn prices fell so low between 1857 and 1859 that the complaint
loudly resounded at various Congrès agricoles
[44] that, with the low prices and the heavy burdens
weighing down upon it, French agriculture was becoming impossible. Louis Bonaparte’s ridiculous
attempt to raise corn prices artifi cially by a Ukase that was supposed to order all the bakers in France
to lay in stocks of grain merely betrayed his government’s helpless embarrassment.
The coup d’état’s foreign policy only produced a series of unsuccessful attempts to play the Napoleon
— nothing but forays, always crowned by official withdrawals. Thus there were his intrigues against
the United States, the manoeuvres to revive the slave trade and his melodramatic threats to Britain.
The liberties that Louis Napoleon at that time permitted  himself to take in relation to Switzerland,
Sardinia, Portugal and Belgium — although in Belgium he was not even able to frustrate the
fortification of Antwerp —  merely threw his fiascos in relation to the great states into sharper relief.
‘Napoléon le petit’ had become a standing joke in the British parliament, and in its closing articles in
1858 The Times made fun of the ‘man of iron’ as a ‘man of gutta -percha’. Meanwhile Orsini’s [45]
hand-grenades had flashed their warning over the internal situation i n France. It became clear that
Louis Bonaparte’s regime was still as unstable as it had been in the first days of the coup. The Lois de
Sûreté publique [46] betrayed his complete isolation. He had to abdicate in favour of his own generals.
France was divided, according to the Spanish custom, into five Captaincy -Generals, an unheard- of
event. [47] Through the introduction of the regency, Pélissier was in fact recognised as the highest
authority in France. In any case, the renewal of the terror did not intimidate anybody. The Dutch
nephew of the Battle of Austerlitz
[48] appeared merely grotesque instead of terrible. Montalembert
[49] could play the Hampden in P aris, Berryer and Dufaure could in their speeches for the defence
betray the aspirations of the bourgeoisie, and Proudhon, [50] in Brussels, could proclaim Louis
Philippism with an acte additional , while Louis Bonaparte himself betrayed to the whole of Eur ope
the growing power of the Marianne. During the Châlons uprising, [51] when the officers heard the
news that the republic had been proclaimed in Paris, they first of all carefully inquired at the
Prefecture whether the republic really had been proclaimed , instead of falling upon the insurgents.
Here was striking proof that even the army regarded the restoration empire as a pantomime whose
final scene was approaching. The arrogant officers’ scandalous duels in Paris, at the same time as
scandalous killings on the Bourse in which the most prominent chiefs of the Tenth of December gang
were compromised; the fall of Palmerston’s ministry in Britain because of his alliance with Louis
Bonaparte;
[52] and finally a treasury that could only be refilled on this ext raordinary pretext — such
was the position of the bas empire at the end of 1858. Either the Brummagem empire fell, or the farce
of a Napoleonic empire within the frontiers of the treaties of 1815 had come to an end. But what was
needed for that was a localised war. The mere prospect of a war with Europe would at that point have

85

been sufficient to set off the explosion in France. Any child could grasp what Horsman said in the
British parliament:
We know that France will support the emperor as long as our hesitation allows his
foreign policy to be successful, but we have reason to believe that she will desert him
as soon as we offer him decisive opposition.
Everything depended on localising the war, that is, conducting it with the permission of higher
authority in Europe. France herself had to be prepared for the war by a series of peace negotiations
and their repeated failure. Louis Bonaparte nearly came unstuck here. Lord Cowley, the British
ambassador, had travelled to Vienna with proposals drafted by Louis Bonaparte and endorsed by the
British cabinet (Derby). Under pressure from Britain the proposals were unexpectedly adopted there
(see the Blue Book quoted above). Cowley had just returned to London with the news of the ‘peaceful
settlement’, when the report also arrived there suddenly that Louis Bonaparte had given up his own
proposals and had joined a conference proposed by Russia to discuss measures to be taken against
Austria. The war only became possible through the intervention of Russia. Had Russia no t needed
Louis Bonaparte at that time for the execution of her plans — either to impose them with French help
or to transform Austria and Prussia into her helpless tools through blows from France  — then Louis
Bonaparte would at that time have fallen. But despite Russia’s secret support, despite the promises of
Palmerston, who at Compiègne had endorsed the conspiracy of Plombières, [53] everything still
depended on the attitude of Germany, since, on the one hand, the Tory cabinet was still at the helm in
Britain and, on the other, the silent rebellion of the day in France would have been driven into the
open by the prospect of a European war.
Vogt himself lets slip the fact that he sang his Song of Ludwig neither out of a lively sympathy for
Italy, nor out of  fear of the timorous, conservative despotism of Austria, which is as clumsy as it is
brutal. He believed rather that, if Austria, who, it must be noted, was forced to declare war, was
herself victorious in Italy, ‘the revolution would in any case break out in France, the empire would
fall, and quite a different future would be brought about’. He believed that ‘the Austrian army would
not be capable, in the last analysis, of withstanding the popular forces that would be released in
France’, and that ‘the victorious arms of Austria would create in the revolution in France, Italy and
Hungary the opponent that would have to destroy them’ (Studien, p 131).
For him, however, it was a matter, not of liberating Italy from Austria, but of enslaving France to
Louis Bonaparte.
Is there any proof needed that Vogt is merely one of the countless mouthpieces through which the
grotesque ventriloquist of the Tuileries made himself heard in foreign tongues?
It will be remembered that, at the time when Louis Bonaparte first di scovered his vocation of
liberating the nationalities in general and Italy in particular, France offered a spectacle unparalleled in
her history. The whole of Europe marvelled at the obstinacy with which she rejected ‘les idées
napoléoniennes’.
[54] The en thusiasm with which even the ‘ chiens savants’ of the Corps législatif
cheered Morny’s peace assurances; [55] the peevish notes in which the Moniteur lectured the nation
now on its lapse into material interests, now on its lack of patriotic vigour and its doubts as to
Badinguet’s skill as a general and his political wisdom, the soothing official messages to all France’s
chambers of commerce; the Emperor’s assurances that ‘étudier une question n’est pas la créer’ [56] —
all this still lives in the memory of the public. At the time the British press, amazed at this spectacle,
abounded in well-meaning twaddle about the transformation into peace -lovers that had taken place in
the character of the French, the Bourse treated ‘war’ and ‘no war’ as a ‘duel’ between L ouis
Napoleon, who wanted war, and the nation, which did not, and bets were laid over who would win,
the nation or ‘his uncle’s nephew’. In order to depict the situation at the time, I wish only to quote a
few passages from the London Economist  which, as t he organ of the City, as the spokesman of the
Italian war, and as the property of Wilson (the Chancellor of India and tool of Palmerston who died
recently), possessed great importance:
Alarmed at the colossal uproar which has been created, the French Government is now
trying the soothing system. (The Economist, 15 January 1859)
In its issue of  22 January 1859, in an article entitled ‘The Practical Limits of the Imperial Power in
France’, The Economist says:

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… whether the Emperor’s designs for a war in Italy  are or are not carried out to their
completion, one fact at least has become conspicuous enough — that his plans have
received a very severe and probably unexpected check in the chilling attitude assumed
by popular feeling in France and the complete absence of any sympathy with the
Emperor’s scheme… He proposes a war… and the French people show nothing but
alarm and discontent — the government securities are depreciated, the fear of the tax -
gatherer subdues every gleam of political or martial enthusiasm, the commercial
portion of the nation is simply panic-struck, the rural districts are dumb and
dissatisfied, fearing fresh conscriptions and fresh imposts — the political circles which
have supported the Imperial regime most strongly, as a pis alley against anarchy,
discourage war for exactly the same reason for which they support that regime… it is
certain that Louis Napoleon has found an extent and depth of opposition throughout all
classes in France to a war, even in Italy, which he did not anticipate.
It was at this popular sentiment in France that that part of the Dentu original pamphlet was aimed
which ‘in the name of the people’ ordered the ‘Emperor’ to help France ‘finally to stretch majestically
from the Alps to the Rhine’, and to cease his resistance to the ‘war lust’ and ‘urge of the nation to
liberate the nationalities’. Vogt blows the same horn as the prostitutes of December. At the very
moment that Europe was marvelling at France’s obstinate desire for peace, Vogt was discovering that
‘today this fickle people’ — the French —  ‘appears to be filled with war -like lusts’ (Studien, pp 29–
30), while Sir Ludovic was only following the ‘predominant trend of the day’ which strives precisely
for ‘the liberation of the nationalities’ (Studien, p 31). He believed, of course, not a syllable of what
he wrote.
[57] In his Programme calling on the democrats to collaborate with his Bonapartist
propaganda, he explains very precisely that the Italian war is unpopular in France:
I do not believe in any immediate threat to the Rhine, but it could emerge
subsequently, a war there or against Britain would almost make Louis Napoleon
popular, the war in Italy does not have this popular side. (Magnum Opus, Documents,
p 34)
If then one part of the Dentu original pamphlet  sought to kick the French nation out of its ‘peaceful
lethargy’ and put Louis Bonaparte’s private desires into the nation’s mouth, the other part, with the
Moniteur at the head, had the task of convincing above all Germany of the Emperor’s aversion to
territorial gains and of his ideal vocation as the Messiah of the liberation of the nationalities. The
proofs of the unselfishness of his policies on the one hand and of his nationality-liberating proclivities
on the other are easily learned by heart, as they  are constantly repeated and revolve around only two
axes. Proof of the unselfishness of Decembrist policies — the Crimean War. Proof of the nationality-
liberating proclivities — Colonel Cuza and the Romanian nationality. In this it was the Moniteur that
set the tone. See the Moniteur of 15 March 1859 on the Crimean War. The Moniteur of 10 April 1859
says on the Romanian nationality:
In Germany, as in Italy, she [France] wants the nationalities recognised by the treaties
to maintain and even strengthen themselves. In the Danubian principalities he [the
Emperor] has taken pains to help the legitimate wishes of these principalities to
triumph, to satisfy in this part of Europe too the order based on national interests.
See too the pamphlet published at the beg inning of 1859 by Dentu : Napoléon III et la question
roumaine.
[58] With reference to the Crimean War:
Finally, what compensation has France demanded for the blood she has spilt and the
millions she has spent on the Orient in an exclusively European interest? (La vraie
Question (Dentu, Paris, 1859), p 13)
Vogt germanises this theme, played in endless variations in Paris, so correctly that E  About, the
talkative magpie of Bonapartism, seems to have retranslated Vogt ’s German translation back into
French. See  La Prusse en 1860 . Here too we are pursued by the Crimean War and the Romanian
nationality under Colonel Cuza:
But this much at least we do know [Vogt echoes the Moniteur and the original Dentu
pamphlets] that France did not win a foot of ground [in the Crimea] and that the uncle,

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after the victorious campaign, would not have been satisfied with the slender results of
conclusive superiority in the art of war. (Studien, p 33)
Here, after all, an essential dissimilarity with the old Napoleonic policy becomes
evident. (Studien, p 34)
As if Vogt had to prove to us that ‘ Napoléon le Petit’ is not the real Napoleon! [59] Vogt could, with
equal justice, have prophesied in 1851 tha t the nephew, who had nothing to compare with the first
Italian campaign and the expedition to Egypt except the adventure at Strasburg, the expedition to
Boulogne and the sausage review at Satory, [60] would never imitate 18 Brumaire and still less ever
mount the Imperial throne. There was, after all, ‘an essential dissimilarity with the old Napoleonic
policy’. There is also a dissimilarity between waging a war against a European coalition and waging a
war with the permission of a European coalition.
The ‘glorious Crimean campaign’, in which Britain, France, Turkey and Sardinia together, after two
years, managed to ‘conquer’ one half of one Russian fortress, and in return lost a whole Turkish
fortress (Kars) to Russia, and at the conclusion of peace at the C ongress of Paris [61] had humbly to
‘beg the permission’ of the enemy to ship their troops home without interference —  was indeed
anything but ‘Napoleonic’, and glorious at all only in Bazancourt ’s novel. [62] But the Crimean War
proved all sorts of things . Louis Bonaparte betrayed the supposed ally (Turkey) in order to obtain an
alliance with her supposed enemy. The first fruit of the Treaty of Paris was the sacrifice of the
‘Circassian nationality’ and the Russian annihilation of the Crimean Tartars, and no less the dashing
of the national hopes that the Poles and Swedes had linked to a Western European crusade against
Russia. Another moral of the Crimean War was that Louis Napoleon could not wage a second
Crimean War. He could not lose an old army and gai n a new national debt in exchange for the
consciousness that France was rich enough ‘de payer sa propre gloire’; [63] that the name of Louis
Napoleon figures on a European treaty; that ‘the conservative and dynastic press of Europe’ — so
highly does Vogt rate him ( Studien, p  32) — unanimously recognises ‘the virtues as a ruler, the
wisdom and the moderation of the Emperor’; and that all Europe at the time did him all the honneurs
due to a real Napoleon on the express condition that, following the example of  Louis-Philippe, he
stayed well within the ‘bounds of practical reason’, that is, the Treaties of 1815, and did not for a
moment forget the thin line that separates the buffoon from the hero that he represents. The political
permutations, the rulers and the social conditions which made it possible for the chief of the
December gang to play the Napoleon at all, first of all in France and then outside of French territory,
belong in fact to his epoch, not to the annals of the great French Revolution:
The fact remains at least that present French policy in the East did justice to the
striving of one nationality [the Rumanian] for unification. (Studien, pp 34–35)
As has already been mentioned, Cuza is keeping the position open either for a Russian governor or for
a Russian vassal. On the map L’Europe en 1860 a Grand-Duke of Mecklenburg figures as the vassal.
Russia of course allowed Louis Bonaparte all the honneurs of this Rumanian emancipation, while she
herself pocketed all the advantages. The path towards her f urther benevolent intentions was blocked
by Austria. What the Italian war had to do, therefore, was to transform Austria from being an obstacle
into being a tool.
As early as 1858, the ventriloquist of the Tuileries was playing the ‘Rumanian nationality’ on his
countless mouthpieces. One of Vogt ’s authorities, Mr Kossuth, could therefore reply, as early as 20
November 1858, at a lecture in Glasgow:
Wallachia and Moldavia receive a constitution hatched out in the cave of secret
diplomacy… it is in reality no more and no less than a charter granted to Russia for the
purpose of disposing of the Principalities.
The ‘principle of nationality’ was therefore misused by Loui s Bonaparte in the Danubian
principalities in exactly the same way that the Austrian government misused the ‘principle of
nationality’ in 1848–49 to strangle the Magyar and German revolution through Serbs, Slavonians,
Croats, Wallachs, etc.
The Rumanian people — and this is taken in hand simultaneously by the Russian Consul in Bucharest
and the interests of the Boyar scum of Moldavia- Wallachia, the majority of whom are not even

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Rumanians but a colourful mosaic of foreign adventurers, a kind of oriental Dece mber gang — the
Rumanian people still languish as they did before under the most terrible feudal bondage, such as
could only be organised by Russians under a réglement organique and only be maintained by an
oriental demi-monde.
In order to refurbish the wisdom he had drawn from his original Dentu source with his own
eloquence, Vogt says:
Austria already had quite enough with one Piedmont in the South; she does not need a
second in the East. (Studien, p 64)
Piedmont annexes Ital ian territories. So do the Danubian principalities, the most unwarlike area of
Turkey, annex Rumanian territories? Conquer Bessarabia from Russia, Transylvania, the Banat of
Temesvár and the Bukovina from Austria? Vogt not only forgets the ‘benevolent Tsar’, he also forgets
that in 1848–49 Hungary did not appear at all inclined to let these more or less Romanian territories
be separated from her, and answered their ‘cry of pain’ with a drawn sword, and that it was much
more Austria who unleashed such ‘propaganda of the nationality principle’ against Hungary.
But Vogt’s Studies shine once more in the fullest brilliance of their historical erudition when, quoting
some half -remembered occasional pamphlet he has leafed through, he quite calmly ‘ derives the
miserable condition of the principalities… from the disruptive poison of the Greeks and Fanariotes’
(Studien, p 63).
He does not suspect that the Fanariotes  (so named after a quarter of Constantinople) are those very
same identical Greeks who, since the beginni ng of the eighteenth century, have lived in the Danube
principalities under Russian protection. It is in part the descendants of these Limondji  (lemonade-
sellers) of Constantinople who are now playing ‘Rumanian nationality’ once more in the service of
Russia.
* * *
So, then, the white angel of the North proceeds from the East and annihilates the nationalities in
honour of the Slav race, while the white angel of the South proceeds from the opposite direction as the
standard-bearer of the nationalities and ‘one must wait until the liberation of the nationalities by this
man of destiny has ensued’ (Studien, p 36).
During this operation schemed up ‘in the closest collaboration’ between the two angels and ‘two
greatest external enemies of German unity’ (Studien, Second Edition, Afterword, p 154) —  what role
does the Reichs-Vogt, who is, however, no ‘Extender of the Reich’, ascribe to Germany?
It must now have become clear even to the most short-sighted person that an
understanding exists between the Prussian government and the Imperial French
government; that Prussia will not take up the sword to defend Austria’s non-German
provinces [including, of course, Bohemia and Moravia]; that she will agree to all
measures affecting the defence of the territory of the Confederation [excluding its
extra-German provinces]; but that otherwise she will prevent any participation by the
Confederation or any individual members on Austria’s behalf, in order then, in later
peace negotiations, to receive her reward for these efforts on the North German plain.
(Studien, First Edition, pp 18–19)
By trumpeting abroad, even before the actual outbreak of the war against Austria, the secret entrusted
to him by the Tuileries, that Prussia was acting in a ‘secret understanding’ with ‘Germany’s external
enemy’, who would pay her ‘her reward on the North German plain’, Vogt of course rendered Prussia
the best help in achieving her alleged aims. He aroused the suspicions of the other German
governments not only towards her efforts to secure neutral ity but also towards her claim to the
supreme command in the course of the war.
Whatever the path may be [says Vogt] that Germany has to take in the present crisis,
there is no question that she has to take a definite path energetically, while the
unhappy Bundestag now… [etc] ( Studien, p 96)
The dissemination of the view that Prussia’s path lies arm in arm with the ‘external enemy’ and that it
leads to the swallowing up of the Northern plain could well create the unity lacking in the Bundestag.

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The attention of Saxony in particular is drawn to the fact that Prussia has already once inflicted on her
‘the loss of some of her fairest provinces’ ( Studien, p 93). The ‘purchase of the Jadebusen’ is
denounced (Studien, p 15).
Holstein was to form the price of Prussia’s collaboration [in the Turkish War] when
the notorious theft of the despatches gave the negotiations a different turn…
Mecklenburg, Hanover, Oldenburg, Holstein and whatever else there is more or less
around there… these German sister states formed the bait at which Prussia [‘at every
opportunity’, moreover] greedily snaps. (Studien, pp 14–15)
And with which, as Vogt lets slip, she is hooked on this occasion by Louis Bonaparte. On the one
hand, Prussia ‘will and must reach the coast of the North Sea and the Baltic at the expense of her
German sisters’ (Studien, p 14) and by a secret ‘understanding’ with Louis Bonaparte. On the other
hand: ‘Prussia will not have a natural frontier until the watershed of the Erz and Fichtel Mountains is
continued through the white Main and the line of the Main as far as Mainz.’ (Studien, p 93)
Natural frontiers in the middle of Germany! And formed, what is more, by a watershed that runs
through a river! Discoveries like this in the field of physical geography — and the ‘channel’ that
‘crops up’ (see Magnum Opus) is one of them — place the ‘rounded character’ on the same level as A
von Humboldt. At the same time as he instilled in the German Confederation such confidence in the
leadership of Prussia, Vogt, not satisfied with the ‘old rivalry between Prussia and Austria on German
territory’, etc, invented a rivalry between the two ‘which has so often emerged on territory outside
Europe’ (Studien, p 20). It must be supposed that this territory outside Europe is on the moon.
In fact Vogt merely translates into words the map L’Europe en 1860 published by the French
government in 1858. On this map Hanover, Mecklenburg, Brunswick, Holstein and Electoral Hesse,
along with the various Waldecks, Anhalts, Lippes, etc, are annexed to Prussia, while ‘L’Empereur des
Français conserve ses [!] limites actuelles’, the Emperor of the French keeps his (!) present frontiers.
‘Prussia as far as the Main’ is at the same time a catchphrase of Russian diplomacy. (See for example,
the Memorandum of 1837 that has already been mentioned.) A Prussian North Germany would come
face to face with an Austrian South Germany separated by natural frontiers, tradition, religion, dialect
and ethnic differences, the division of Germany into two would be accomplished by the simplification
of her internal contradictions, and the Thirty Years’ War would be declared in permanence.
Such then, according to the first edition of the Studien, is the ‘reward’ that Prussia is to receive for her
‘efforts’ to keep the sword of the Confederation sheathed during the war. That is to say that in Vogt’s
Studien as in the map L’Europe en 1860 it is not Louis Bonaparte , but Prussia who seeks and finds
territorial gains and natural frontiers through the French war against Austria.
It was, however, not until the Afterword of the second edition of his Studien, which appeared during
the Franco -Austrian War, that Vogt revealed Prussia’s true task. She was to start a civil wa r (see
second edition, p 152) in order to set up a ‘unified central authority’ ( Studien, p  153), in order to
incorporate Germany into the Prussian monarchy. While Russia proceeds from the East and Austria is
held in check by Louis Bonaparte in Italy, Pruss ia is to open a dynastic ‘civil war’ in Germany. Vogt
guarantees the Prince Regent that the ‘war now unleashed’ in Italy will take up ‘at least 1859, while
the unification of Germany, carried out with rapid decision, will not cost as many weeks as the Ital ian
campaign will months’ (Studien, p 155).
The civil war in Germany would only cost weeks! Apart from the Austrian troops who would
immediately march against Prussia, Italian War or no Italian War, Prussia would, as Vogt himself
relates, meet with resistance from ‘Bavaria…  which is completely subordinated to Austrian influence’
(Studien, First Edition, p 90), Saxony, who would be under immediate threat and would have no
reason to do violence to her ‘sympathy for Austria’ ( Studien, p 93), Württemberg, Hesse- Darmstadt
and Hanover ( Studien, p  94), in brief, from ‘ nine-tenths’ (Studien, p  16) of the ‘German
governments’. And as Vogt goes on to prove, these governments would not by any means have
remained undecided in such a  dynastic ‘civil war’ started by of all people Prussia at a time when
Germany was threatened by her ‘two biggest external enemies’.
The court (in Baden) [says Vogt] follows Prussia, but there can be no doubt that the
people do not join the ruling family in these sympathies. The Breisgau, even, is much
more firmly linked than one would think after such a long separation to the Emperor

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and the Imperial state, as is Upper Swabia, by the bonds of sympathy and religion and
by old memories of Upper Austria, to which it once belonged. (Studien, pp 93–94)
With the exception of Mecklenburg [and ‘perhaps’ Electoral Hesse], distrust of the
absorption theory and unwilling submission to Prussia reigns in North Germany. The
instinctive feeling of aversion, indeed of hatred, that South Germany harbours towards
Prussia… all the resounding howls of the Imperial party have not been able to
extirpate this feeling or declaim it away. It exists in a living way in the people, and no
government, not even that of Baden, can resist it for long. Prussia therefore does not
have true sympathy anywhere in the German people or in the governments of the
German Confederation. (Studien, p 21)
Thus spoke Vogt . And for that very reason, according to the same Vogt , a dynastic ‘civil war’
undertaken by Prussia in ‘secret understanding’ with ‘Germany’s two biggest external enemies’
would only have cost ‘weeks’. But this is still not enough:
Old Prussia follows the governments — Rhineland -Westphalia follows Catholic
Austria. If the popular movement there does not succeed in forcing the government to
side with Austria, the immediate result will be a renewed opening of the abyss between
the two parts of the monarchy. (Studien, p 20)
So if, according to Vogt , a simple refusal by Prussia to support Austria would reopen the abyss
between Rhineland-Westphalia and Old Prussia once more, then of course a ‘civil war’ undertaken by
Prussia in order to exclude Austria from Germany would, according to the same Vogt, have to tear
Rhineland-Westphalia entirely free from Prussia. But ‘what do these wh elps of Rome care about
Germany?’ (Studien, p 119), or, as he really means, what does Germany care about these whelps of
Rome? Rhineland-Westphalia is an ultra -montane, ‘Roman-Catholic’ and not ‘ truly German ’
province. So it too must be separated off from the territory of the Confederation, no less than Bohemia
and Moravia. And the dynastic ‘civil war’ recommended to Prussia by Vogt is intended to accelerate
this process of separation. In fact, just as the French government, in the map L’Europe en 1860 which
it published in 1858 and which served Vogt as a compass for his Studien, annexes Egypt to Austria, so
too it annexes the Rhenish Provinces to Belgium as countries of ‘Catholic nationality’ — an ironic
formula for the annexation of Belgium and the Rhenish Provinces to France. The fact that Vogt goes
further than the French government’s map and gives up Westphalia into the bargain is explained by
the runaway Regent’s ‘scientific relations’ with Plon-Plon, son of the ex-King of Westphalia.
To sum up then: on the one hand, Louis Bonaparte will allow Russia to stretch her arms from Posen
into Bohemia and via Hungary out towards Turkey; on the other, he himself will set up a united and
independent Italy by force of arms on France’s frontiers, and all — ‘pour le roi de Prusse’;
[64] all so
that Prussia can have the opportunity to bring Germany under her control through a civil war and to
secure the Rhenish Provinces for ever’ against France (Studien, p 121).
But, it is said, the territory of the Confederation is menaced, the hereditary foe
threatens; his real goal is the Rhine. So defend it, and defend the territory of the
Confederation. (Studien, p 105)
And defend the territory of the Confederation, what is more, by abdicating Bohemia and Moravia  to
Russia; defend the Rhine by starting a German ‘civil war’ intended, among other things, to tear
Rhineland-Westphalia loose from Prussia:
But it is said that Louis Napoleon wants to slake the Napoleonic thirst for land by
some means or other! We do not believe so, we have the example of the Crimean
campaign before us! (Studien, p 129)
Beside his disbelief in the Napoleonic thirst for land and his belief in the Crimean campaign, Vogt has
another argument in petto.
[65] The Austrians and the French in Italy will continue biting each other
until, after the example of the Kilkenny cats, nothing is left of either of them but the tails:
It will become a fearfully bloody, obstinate, perhaps indecisive war… Only by
harnessing her strength to the utmost will France, with Piedmont, achieve victory, and
she will need decades to recover from these exhausting efforts. (Studien, pp 127–29)

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This prospect of the duration of the Italian War strikes home at its opponents. The method by which
Vogt now prolongs Austria’s resistance to French arms in Italy and paralyses France’s aggressive
power is indeed original enough. On the one hand, the French have carte blanche in Italy; on the other
hand, the ‘benevolent Tsar’ is allowed, by his manoeuvres in Galicia, Hungary, Morav ia and
Bohemia, by revolutionary intrigues internally and military demonstrations on the borders ‘to keep a
significant part of the Austrian armed forces in those parts of the monarchy that are exposed to a
Russian attack or accessible to Russian intrigues’ (Studien, p 11).
And finally Austria is forced, by a dynastic ‘civil war’ opened simultaneously in Germany by Prussia,
to withdraw her main forces from Italy to defend her German possessions. Under such conditions
Franz Joseph and Louis Bonaparte will, of course, not sign a Treaty of Campoformio,
[66] but —
‘bleed each other to death in Italy’.
Austria will neither make the ‘benevolent Tsar’ concessions in the East, accepting the compensation
long since offered in Serbia and Bosnia, nor will she guarantee  the Rhenish Provinces to France and,
in league with Russia and France, fall upon Prussia. ‘Pon my soul, no!’ She will insist on ‘bleeding to
death in Italy’. In any case, Vogt’s man of destiny would reject such compensation on the Rhine in
moral indignati on. He knows that: ‘The foreign policy of the present Empire knows only one
principle, that of self-preservation.’ (Studien, p 31)
He knows that Louis Bonaparte ‘is pursuing only one single idea, that of maintaining himself in that
rule’ (over France) (Studien, p 29).
He knows that the ‘Italian War does not make him popular in France’, while the acquisition of the
Rhenish Provinces would make would make him and his dynasty ‘popular’. He says:
The Rhenish Provinces are a favourite desire of the French Chauvin, and perhaps, if
one gets down to it, one would only find a small minority of the nation that does not
carry this wish in its heart. (Studien, p 121)
On the other hand, ‘those in the know in France’, and thus presumably Vogt’s ‘man of destiny with
the cunning of the serpent’ too, know:
… that there is only hope of realising it [that is to say, the French acquisition of the
natural frontier on the Rhine] so long as Germany has 34 different governments… Let
a real Germany exist with united interests and firm organisation —  and the Rhine
frontier is secure for ever. (Studien, p 121)
For that very reason Louis Bonaparte, who at Villafranca offered Lombardy to the Emperor of Austria
in exchange for the guarantee of the Rhenish Provinces (see Kinglake’s
[67] statement in the House of
Commons, 12 July 1860), would have rejected Austria’s offer of the Rhenish Provinces for French
help against Prussia in indignation.
Vogt’s Dentu original sources too did not only indulge in feelings of enthusiasm for Germany’s
unification under Prussia. [68] In particular they rejected with virtuous emphasis any allusion to desire
for the Rhenish Provinces:
The Rhine! … What is the Rhine —  a frontier. Frontiers will soon be anachronisms.
(La foi des traités, p 36) [69]
Who, in the T housand Year Empire to be set up by Badinguet on the basis of the principle of
nationality, will speak of frontiers along the Rhine, or anywhere for that matter?
Does France stipulate compensation for the sacrifices she is prepared to make for a
purpose that is equitable, of just influence and in the interests of European
equilibrium? Does she demand the left bank of the Rhine? Does she even raise any
claim to Savoy and the County of Nice? (La vraie question (Paris, 1859), p 13) [70]
France’s renunciation of Savoy and Nice as proof that France will renounce the Rhine! Vogt did not
translate that into German.
Before the war started, it was of decisive importance for Louis Bonaparte to make the German
Confederation believe that he had enticed Prussia into an understanding even if he did not manage to
entice her. Vogt seeks to spread this belief in the first edition of his Studien . During the war it became
even more important for Louis Bonaparte to draw Prussia into moves that would supply Austria with

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proof, or  apparent proof, of such an understanding. In the second edition of the Studien , which
appeared during the war, Vogt therefore calls on Prussia, in his own afterword, to conquer Germany
and to start a dynastic ‘civil war’ which he proves, in the text of the book, will be ‘bloody, obstinate
and perhaps indecisive’, and will cost at least Rhineland- Westphalia, and which he solemnly swears
in the afterword of the same book ‘will only cost weeks’. Now Vogt’s voice is indeed no siren’s song.
Louis Napoleon, supported in his imposture by bottle -holder Palmerston, had therefore to present
Prussian proposals to Franz Joseph at Villafranca that he himself had forged.
[71] Austria had to make
Prussia’s modest claim to the military leadership of Germany the pretext for  a treaty that Louis
Bonaparte had to excuse to France by saying that the Italian War threatened to turn into a general war
‘which would have realised German unity and thus accomplished a work which ever since the time of
Francis I it has been the object of French policy to prevent’. [72]
After France had obtained Savoy and Nice through the Italian War, and with them a position that was
more valuable than an army in the event of a war on the Rhine, ‘German unity under Prussian
hegemony’ and ‘secession of the left bank of the Rhine to France’ became convertible magnitudes in
the probability calculations of 2 December. The map L’Europe en 1860 published in 1858 is
reinterpreted by the map L’Europe pacifiée (Europe put to sleep?) published in 1860, in which Egy pt
no longer falls to Austria and the Rhenish Provinces are annexed to France as a replacement for the
‘Nordic plain’ handed over to Prussia. [73]
Finally, at Etienne, Persigny  [74] officially stated that, if only in the interests of European
‘equilibrium’, every further move to centralise Germany would entail the advance of France to the
Rhine. But neither before nor after the Italian War has the grotesque ventriloquist of the Tuileries
spoken more shamelessly than he did through the mouthpiece of the runaway regent.
* * *
‘The New Swiss, citizen of the Canton of Berne and member of the Geneva Ständerat ’, [75] (Studien,
Foreword), opens the Swiss section of his Studien with a prologue (Studien, pp 37–39) which calls on
the Swiss to burst with joy at the replacement of Louis Philippe by Louis Bonaparte. Admittedly,
Louis Bonaparte demands ‘press measures’ from the Bundesrat, but ‘the Napoleonides seem to have
an extraordinarily thin skin in this respect’ (Studien, p 36). A mere skin disease that has taken such a
firm hold of the family that it is transmitted not merely in the blood but also — witness Louis
Bonaparte — through the bare family name. Admittedly:
The persecution of innocent people in Geneva, carried out by the Bundesrat on orders
from the Emperor against poor devils whose only crime was to be Italian; the setting
up of Consultates; the harassment of the press; the senseless police measures of every
kind; and finally the negotiations over the secession of the Dappe valley, have
contributed greatly to blurring the memories in Switzerland of the services the
Emperor really rendered in the Neuchâtel deal, particularly for that party that has now
turned against him most violently. (Studien, pp 37–38)
Generous Emperor, and ungrateful party! What the Emperor wanted in the Neuchâtel deal
[76] was not
at all a precedent for breaking the treaties of 1815, humiliating Prussia and establishing a protectorate
over Switzerland. For him it was a question of ‘rendering real services’ to Switzerland in his quality
as ‘New Swiss, citizen of the Canton of Thurgau and Artillery Captain of Oberstrasse’. Another
servant of the Emperor, M de Thouvenel , [77] accused the whole of Switzerland in June 1860 of the
ingratitude with which Vogt had reproached the anti-Bonapartist party in Switzerland in March 1859.
In The Times of 30 June 1860, one reads:
A few days ago a meeting took place between Dr Kern and M de Thouvenel in the
Foreign Ministry in Paris in the presence of Lord Cowley. Thouvenel informed the
honourable representative of Switzerland that the doubts and protestations of the
Federal Government were insulting inasmuch as they seemed to imply a want of faith
in the government of His Imperial Majesty. Such treatment was base ingratitude in
view of the services which the Emperor Napoleon had rendered the Confederation on
many occasions, and in particular the Neuchâtel affair. However that may be, since

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Switzerland had been so blind as to mistrust her benefactor, she must herself bear the
consequences.
And yet Vogt had already tried to open the eyes of the blind anti-Bonapartist party in Switzerland in
March 1859. On the one hand, he points to ‘the real services’ that ‘the Emperor has rendered’. On the
other hand, ‘imperial harassment’ disappears completely when compared with the royal harassment
under Louis -Philippe ( Studien, p 39). Whereas, for example, the Bundesrat in 1858 ‘on the orders
from the Emperor’ expelled ‘poor devils whose only crime was to be Italians’ ( Studien, p 37), it
refused, in 1838, despite Louis-Philippe’s threats, to expel Louis Bonaparte, whose only crime was to
conspire from Switzerland against Louis- Philippe’s throne. In 1846, Switzerland risked the
Sonderbund [78] war despite Louis -Philippe’s ‘military show’, for towards the peacemaker-King the
watchword was: don’t be intimidated. In 1858, she reacted with less than virginal modesty when
Louis Napoleon tried to lay hands on the Dappe valley. [79]
Louis-Philippe [Vogt himself says] had dragged out a poor existence in Europe,
treated with contempt on all sides, even by the smaller legitimate princes, because he
had not dared to pursue a strong foreign policy. (Studien, p 31)
But:
The policy of the Emperor towards Switzerland is without doubt that of a powerful
neighbour who knows that he can impose anything that he wants. (Studien, p 37)
And so Vogt concludes, with logic worthy of a Grandguillot, [80] ‘that from the purely Swiss point of
view one can only be delighted in the highest degree ’ (Studien, p  39) at the change that gave
Switzerland a ‘powerful neighbour who knows he can do anything he wants to her ’ instead of a
‘Louis-Philippe treated with contempt on all sides’.
This prologue, which creates the necessary mood, is followed by a German translation of the
Bundestag note of 14 March 1859. Oddly enough, Vogt praises this note in which the Bundestag
appeals to the treaties of 1815,
[81] appeal to which the same Vogt declares to be ‘hypocrisy’. ‘Be off
with you and your hypocrisy!’ (Studien, p 112) [82]
Vogt now goes on to investigate ‘from which side the first attack on the neutrality of Switzerland will
come’ (Studien, p 84) and superfluously proves that the French army, which did not have to conquer
Piedmont this time, would march neither over the Simplon pass nor over  the Great St Bernard. At the
same time he invents the non -existent route ‘over the Mont Cénis via Fenestrella through the Stura
valley’ (Studien, p 84). Its proper name is the Dora valley. So no danger threatens Switzerland from
France:
One cannot expect with the same assurance that the neutrality of Switzerland will be
respected on the part of Austria, and various phenomena even indicate that the
intention is to infringe it should the occasion arise… The concentration of a corps of
troops at Bregenz and Feldkirch could well be significant in this respect. (Studien,
pp 85–86)
Here the red thread becomes visible that runs through all the Studien and leads straight from Geneva
to Paris.
That is to say that the Blue Book published by the Derby cabinet entitled The Affairs of Italy: January
to May 1859 relates that ‘the concentration of an Austrian corps near Bregenz and Feldkirch’ was a
rumour intentionally spread by Bonapartist agents in Switzerland which lacked any basis in fact
(N174 of the Blue Book quoted, letter of Captain Harris to Lord Malmsbury, dated Berne, 24 March
1859). On this occasion too, Humboldt-Vogt discovers that in Bregenz and Feldkirch one…
… is in the immediate vicinity of the Rhine valley, into which three great Alpine
passes with passable roads open, that is to say the Via Mala, the Splügen and the St
Bernard, the latter leading to the Ticino, the two former to Lake Como. (Studien, p 86)
In reality the Via Mala leads first over the Splügen, secondly over the St Bernard and thirdly nowhere
else.
After all this Polonius -chatter intended to divert Swiss suspicion from her western to her eastern
frontier, the ‘rounded character’ finally gets round to his true task.

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Switzerland [says Vogt] is completely in the right if she decidedly rejects her
obligation not to allow troop trains over this railway [from Culoz to Aix and
Chambéry] and confines herself, should the matter arise, to claiming only as much of
the neutral zone as is necessary for the defence of her own territory. (Studien, p 89)
And he assures the Bundesrat that ‘the whole of Switzerland will, as one man, stand by’ this ‘ policy
indicated in its note of 14 March’.
Vogt published his Studien at the end of March. Louis Bonaparte did not use the said railway for troop
trains until 24 April , and he declared war even later. Initiated into all the details of Bonaparte’s war
plans, Vogt knew exactly ‘ from which side the first attack on the neutrality of Switzerland ’ would
come. His express mission was to lure her into tolerating a first infring ement of neutrality whose
logical consequence would be the annexation of the neutral area of Savoy to the December empire.
Tapping the Bundesrat on the shoulder, he attributes to its note of 14 March a meaning that it was
supposed to have from the Bonapartist point of view. In its note, the Bundesrat says that it will ‘fulfil’
its ‘mission’ of neutrality as laid down in the treaties ‘equally and loyally towards all’. It goes on to
quote an article of the treaties according to which ‘no troops of any power w hatsoever may be
stationed or pass through there’ (the neutral zone of Savoy). There is not a single word to say that it
will allow the French to use the railway that runs through the neutral zone. It conditionally reserves
for the Swiss Confederation ‘the  military occupation’ of the neutral zone as ‘a measure for the
security and defence of her territory’. The fact that Vogt is here lying , consciously and under orders
from above, about the Bundestag note, is proved not only by its text, but also by the sta tement by
Lord Malmsbury — at that time British Foreign Secretary — in the House of Lords on 23 April 1860:
When the French troops [more than a month after the Bundesrat Note of 14 March]
were about to march through Savoy into Sardinia, the Swiss government, true to the
neutrality upon which depends its independence, at first objected that those troops had
no right to pass through the neutralised territory.
And by what objections did Louis Bonaparte and the Swiss party allied to him overcome the
Bundesrat’s scruples? Vogt, who already knew at the end of March 1859 that French troops would
violate the neutral zone at the end of April 1859, could also, of course, anticipate at the end of March
the phrases with which Louis Bonaparte at the end of April  embellished his act of violence. The
scruple he raises is whether the ‘upper end of the line from Culoz to Aix and Chambéry falls within
the purlieus of the neutral zone’ (Studien, p 89) and demonstrates that ‘the specification of the neutral
zone by no m eans had the purpose of cancelling communication between France and Chambéry’, so
that morally the said railway line avoids the neutral zone.
Let us listen, on the other hand, to Lord Malmsbury:
Subsequently, there being some question as to whether the line of railway did not
avoid the neutralised portion of Savoy, the Swiss government withdrew their
objection, and allowed the troops of France to pass. I think that they were wrong in
doing so. We thought the maintenance of the neutrality of such European
consequence… that we protested at the French Court against the passage of those
troops to Sardinia on 28 April 1859.
Because of this protest, Palmerston accused Malmsbury of ‘Austrian’ sympathies, and said that he
‘had uselessly offended the French government’, just as Vogt in his Magnum Opus  accuses the Volk:
… it made every effort [to oblige Austria, of course] to embarrass Switzerland… one
only has to read the articles it carried on the question of neutrality and the march of the
French troops through Savoy to be able to see as clear as daylight the tendencies it
shares completely with the Allgemeine Zeitung.
One will now be able to ‘see as clear as daylight’ that the whole section of Vogt’s Studien relating to
Switzerland has no other purpose tha n to preface the first violation of the Swiss neutral zone by his
‘man of destiny’. It was the first step towards the annexation of Savoy and therefore of French
Switzerland. The fate of Switzerland depended on the energy with which she opposed this step a nd
maintained her rights by making use of them at the decisive moment, raising them into a European
question at a time when the support of the British government was certain and Louis Bonaparte, who

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was just starting his localised war, could not dare to th row down the gauntlet to her. [85] Once
officially involved, the British government could no longer back down. Hence the mighty exertions of
the ‘New Swiss, citizen of the Canton of Berne and member of the Geneva Ständerat ’ to raise clouds
of dust and to depict the granting of permission for French troops to march through the neutral zone as
a right that Switzerland had to assert as a bold demonstration against Austria. Had he not, after all,
saved Switzerland from Cataline-Cherval!
While Vogt echoes and amplifies the denial, in his Dentu original pamphlets, of any lusting towards a
Rhine frontier, he avoids any reference, even the slightest, to the renunciation of Savoy and Nice
contained in the same pamphlet. The very names Savoy and Nice are missing from his ‘Studies’. But
as early as February 1859, Deputies from Savoy were protesting in Turin against the Italian War
because the annexation of Savoy into the December empire formed the purchase price of the French
Alliance. The protest never reached Vogt’s e ars. Nor did the stipulations, agreed between Louis
Bonaparte and Cavour at Plombières in August 1858, which were well known to other émigrés
(published in one of the first issues of the Volk). In the issue of Pensiero ed Azione already mentioned
(2–16 May 1859), Mazzini had literally predicted:
But should Austria be defeated at the very beginning of the war, and repeat the
proposals that she made to the British government for a period in 1848, the
abandonment of Lombardy on the condition of retaining Venice, peace… would be
accepted. Only the conditions relating to the enlargement of the Sardinian monarchy
and the secession of Nice and Savoy to France would be put into operation.
Mazzini published his forecast in mid- May 1859, Vogt the second edition of his  Studien in mid-June
1859, but there is not a mortal word about Savoy and Nice. Even before Mazzini, and even before the
Savoy Deputies, as early as October 1858, a month and a half after the conspiracy of Plombières, the
President of the Swiss Confederati on informed the British Foreign Office in a personal despatch, ‘he
had reason to believe that some conditional agreement had been come to between the Emperor of the
French and Count Cavour in respect to Savoy’.
At the beginning of June 1859, the Swiss  President once more informed the British chargé d’affaires
in Berne of his fears concerning the coming annexation of Savoy and Nice. [87] Vogt, an expert where
the salvation of Switzerland is concerned, heard not a word about either the protest by the Sav oy
deputies, or Mazzini’s revelations or about the continuous fears of the Swiss government between
October 1858 and June 1859. Indeed, as we shall see later, even in March 1860 , when the secret of
Plombières was public in every street in Europe, Herr Vogt  avoided ever coming across it. It is
probably with reference to this dumbness on the threat of annexation that the Studien bear the motto:
‘Silence is the virtue of the slave.’ They do, however, contain one hint:
But just supposing [says Vogt], just supposing that the unlikely happens, and the price
of victory is paid in Italian territory, be it in the North or in the South… truly , from the
narrowest German point of view… one would most earnestly wish the French wolf to
get an Italian bone between its teeth. (Studien, pp 129–30)
Italian territory in the North means, of course, Nice and Savoy. After the New Swiss, citizen of the
canton of Berne and member of the Geneva Ständerat has, ‘from the purely Swiss point of view ’
(Studien, p 39) called on Switzerland ‘to be delighted in the highest degree ’ at possessing Louis
Bonaparte as a neighbour, it suddenly occurs to the runaway Regent how, ‘ from the narrowest
German point of view he truly would most earnestly wish’ the French wolf t o ‘get the bone’ of Nice
and Savoy, and thus French Switzerland, ‘between its teeth’. [88]
* * *
Some time ago there appeared in Paris a pamphlet entitled Napoléon III , not Napoléon III et l’Italie,
or Napoléon III et la question Roumaine , or Napoléon III et la Prusse, but plain Napoléon III, just
Napoleon III. It is a panegyric written on Napoleon III in hyperbole about Napoleon III. This
pamphlet has been translated by an Arab called Da-Da into his native language. In the ‘Afterword’
the intoxicated Da-Da is no longer able to contain his enthusiasm, and he breaks into glowing rhyme.
In the ‘Foreword’, however, Da-Da is still sober enough to confess that his book is published by order

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of the local authorities in Algiers and is intended for distribution among the native Arab tribes outside
the frontiers of Algeria so that ‘the idea of unity and nationality under one common chief can take
hold of their imagination’. This common chief which is to bring about the ‘unity of the Arab nation’
is, as Da-Da lets slip , no less a person than ‘the Sun of Beneficence, the Glory of the Firmament —
the Emperor Napoleon III’. Vogt, although his writing has neither rhyme nor reason, is no less a
person that the German Da-Da.
To dignify with the title of Studies his German paraphrase of the Moniteur articles, Dentu pamphlets
and revised maps of Europe that have radiated from ‘the Sun of Beneficence, the Glory of the
Firmament’ is the best jest that Da-Da Vogt has let fall in his entire merry career, even better than the
Imperial Regency and the Imperial Wine- Swiller and the passports for foreign travel that he himself
invented. In Vogt’s Studien Austria wrestles with Britain for possession of Egypt, Austria and Prussia
quarrel over territory outside Europe, Napoleon I forces the  Bank of England to weigh its gold out
instead of counting it out, Greeks and Fanariotes are different races and a road runs from Mont Cenis
via Fenestrella through the Stura Valley. For a ‘cultured’ German bourgeois to think that such Studien
are bona fide studies only goes to show the enormous pressure with which ten years of reaction have
weighed down on his liberal skull.
Oddly enough, the very same liberal German sluggard who applauded Vogt ’s grossly excessive
German translation of the original Decembr ist pamphlets leapt up from his armchair in fury as soon
as Edmond About translated Da-Da’s compilation back, with wise moderation, into French in his La
Prusse en 1860 (originally Napoleon III et la Prusse ). This talkative magpie of Bonapartism is,
incidentally, rather a wag himself. As proof of Bonaparte’s sympathy for Germany, About quotes, for
example, the fact that the December empire lumps Da-Da Vogt together with Humboldt just as much
as it does Lazarillo Hackländer with Goethe. At least this Vogt–Hackländer combination shows more
profound study on About’s part than could ever be found in the Studien of the German Da-Da.
Notes
1 Without malice — an ironical reference by Marx to the malice which Vogt shows in
his Studies of the Present Situation in Europe.
2 Who benefits?
3 Dentu — a Bonapartist publisher.
4 Beware of him, Roman!
5 The peace of Villafranca ended the war between France and the Kingdom of Sardinia
on the one side, and Austria on the other. The peace was concluded by Louis Napoleon
behind the back of his ally, the King of Sardinia. It gave Savoy and Nice to France,
united Lombardy to Sardinia, but left Venice in Austrian hands.
6 England and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies made an agreement in 1816 that the
latter would not grant any power trading rights which might damage English interests. In
1838, the King of the Two Sicilies granted a French company monopoly rights for
sulphur-mining in Sicily. England protested sharply and blockaded Naples from the sea.
The monopoly rights were withdrawn.
7 Lac français —  French lake; lac autrichienne — Austrian lake.
8 Baroness von Krüdener — a devoutly Catholic writer who was mistakenly credited
with originating the idea of the Holy Alliance of the reactionary powers of Europe.
9 In 1853, Prussia purchased from the Duchy of Oldenburg a strip of coast and built a
naval dockyard there — Wilhelmshaven.
10 The Real Issue: France–Italy–Austria.
11 The original reads:
‘De quel droit, d’ailleurs, le gouvernement autrichien viendrait-il invoquer l’inviolabilité
de ceux (traités) de 1815, lui qui les a violés en confisquant Cracovie, dont ces traités
garantissaient l’indépendance?’

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12 In 1836, there was an attempted rising in Poland which was successful only in
Cracow. A national government was set up and feudal burdens revoked. The rising was
put down by Austrian, Prussian and Russian troops; Cracow was handed over to Austria.
13 Palmerston, who fooled the whole of Europe with his ridiculous protest, had
collaborated untiringly in the intrigue against Cracow ever since 1831. See my pamphlet
Palmerston and Poland (London, 1853). [Marx’s note]
14 The Treaties, the Signatory Powers and Emperor Napoleon III.
15 The original reads:
‘La Russie est de la famille des Slaves, race d’élite… On s’est étonné de l’accord
chevaleresque survenu soudainement entre la France et la Russie. Rien de plus naturel:
accord des principes, unanimité du but… soumission à la loi de l’alliance sainte des
gouvernements et des peuples, non pour leurrer et contraindre, mais pour guider et aider
la marche divine des nations. De la cordialité la plus parfaite sont sortis les plus heureux
effets: chemins de fer, affranchisement des serfs, stations commerciales dans la
Méditerranée [etc].’ — La foi des traités  (Paris, 1859), p 33.
16 The Truth About Russia; Prince Dolgorukov — a Russian writer, historian and liberal
who emigrated in 1859 and collaborated with Herzen, the liberal publicist and editor of
The Bell.
17 Colonel Cuza — Romanian politician who ruled briefly over the Danube provinces
of Moldavia and Wallachia as John I. He was overthrown by a reactionary conspiracy
and fled the country.
18 Preussisches Wochenblatt — a reactionary Prussian paper.
19 Règlement organique — the first constitution of the Danube principalities of
Moldavia and Wallachia proposed by Kisselev, head of the administration under the
Russian occupation of the territories. The constitution confirmed the powers of the
feudal landowners but granted certain bourgeois reforms such as freedom of trade. It was
cancelled during the 1848 revolution.
20 The Greek from Byzantium.
21 Hetairie — a Greek secret society aiming at armed revolt against the Turks. It was
secretly supported by the Tsarist government.
22 Alexander Ypsilanti (1792–1828) — leader of the Greek freedom movement against
the Turks. After the defeat of the rising in Moldavia, he fled to Austria where he was
imprisoned.
23 Dom Miguel — King of Portugal during 1828–34, leader of the clerical and
absolutist forces in Portugal.
24 The sea battle at Navarino (Pylos) in Greece saw the destruction of the Turkish and
Egyptian fleets by English, French and Russian squadrons (the latter under Admiral
Heyden).
25 Ruler.
26 La Jeune Italie (Young Italy) — organ of the secret Italian organisation of that name
founded by Mazzini. During 1831–48 it fought for the unity of Italy and the setting up of
a bourgeois republic in Italy.
27 Austria sent an army corps to Schleswig-Holstein in 1850 with the support of Russia,
which was opposed both to the rise of Prussia and to the end of the division of Germany
into a number of feudal states.
28 David Urquhart (1805–1877) — Tory MP and supporter of Turkey; attacked the
foreign policy of Palmerston and the Whigs.
29 The Polish Colonel Lapinksi, who fought against the Russians until the surrender of
Komorn in the Hungarian revolutionary army, and later in Circassia, says:

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‘It was the misfortune of the Hungarians that they did not know the Russians… The
Vienna cabinet was completely in the hands of the Russians… the chiefs were murdered
on their advice… while the Russians used every means to win sympathy, Austria was
ordered by them to make herself even more hated than she ever had been.’ — Theophil
Lapinski, Feldzug der Ungarischen Hauptarmee im Jahre 1849 (Campaign of the Main
Hungarian Army in 1849, Hamburg, 1850), pp 188–89, 216. [Marx’s note]
30 Arthur Görgey (1818–1916) — commander of the Hungarian army during the
revolution of 1848–49; he was supported by the reactionary elements among the officers
and sabotaged the revolutionary war.
31 Bertolan Szmere (1812–1869) — Hungarian politician, Minister of the Interior in the
revolutionary government in 1848; later in exile.
32 General Moritz Perczel, famous for his part in the Hungarian revolutionary war,
withdrew while the Italian Campaign was still under way from the Hungarian officers
who had gathered around Kossuth and explained the reasons for his withdrawal in a
public statement — on the one hand, Kossuth, w ho was only serving as a Bonapartist
scarecrow, and, on the other, the perspective of Hungary’s Russian future. In a reply
(dated St Helier, 19 April 1860) to a letter in which I asked him for further information
about his statement, he said, among other things: ‘Never shall I allow myself to be used
as a tool in saving Hungary from the claws of the twin eagle merely in order to deliver
her over to the deadly embrace of the northern bear.’ [Marx’s note]
33 Herr Kossuth has never been under any illusion as to the correctness of the view
developed in the text. He knew that Austria can maltreat Hungary but never destroy her.
‘The Emperor Joseph II [he writes to the Grand Vizier Reshid Pasha from Kutayah, 15
February 1851], the only man of genius produced by the Habsburg family, exhausted the
extraordinary resources of his rare intellect and of the then still common notions of the
power of his House, in the attempt to Germanise Hungary, and integrate it within the
state as a whole. But Hungary emerged from the struggle with renewed vigour… In the
last revolution, Austria only raised itself from the dust in order to collapse once again at
the feet of the Tsar, its master, who never gives his aid but only sells it. And Austria had
to pay for this aid dearly.’ — Cor respondence of Kossuth, p 33.
On the other hand, he says in the same letter that only Hungary and Turkey united could
break the Panslavist intrigues of Russia. He writes to David Urquhart, dated Kutayah,
17 January 1851:
‘We must crush Russia, my dear Sir! And, headed by you, we will! I have not only the
resolution of will, but also that of hope! And this is no vain word, my dear Sir! No
sanguine fascination; it is the word of a man, who is wont duly to calculate every chance;
of a man though very weak in faculties, not to be shaken in perseverance and resolution
[etc].’ — Correspondence of Kossuth, p 39. [Marx’s note]
34 A map of the Slav lands in a book by the Czech scholar, Pavel Safarik.
35 Long live Alexander / Long live the king of kings / Asking nothing in return / He
gives us laws.
36 Literally Thought and Action — title of the organ of the Italian bourgeois democrats;
edited by Mazzini, it appeared in London and Lugano. Marx translated Mazzini’s
manifesto into English and published it in the New York Daily Tribune.
37 The Song of Ludwig — reference to the ninth-century Old High German epic of that
name.
38 Heinrich Gagern (1799–1880) — right -wing Liberal politician and member of the
Frankfurt National Assembly.
39 In June 1849, Ledru-Rollin, leader of the petty-bourgeois democrats, moved in the
legislative assembly that the President, Louis Bonaparte, should be tried for bombarding
Rome in order to destroy the Roman Republic and restore the temporal power of the

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Pope. The motion was defeated by the conservative majority. On 13 June, under popular
pressure, the democrats organised a mass demonstration which was dispersed by troops.
Politicians belonging to the ‘Mountain’ — the petty-bourgeois party in the assembly —
were deprived of their seats; many went into exile.
40 Masson — a French author.
41 How fortunate he is / in all he undertakes! / How perfect his body is! / How smoothly
those imperial legs even / Move together.
42 Napoleon the Small — nickname for Louis Napoleon invented by Victor Hugo.
43 Privately.
44 Agricultural congresses.
45 Felice Orsini (1819–1858) — Italian revolutionary republican who made an attempt
on the life of Louis Napoleon and was executed.
46 These laws dealing with ‘public safety’ gave the Emperor and his government the
power to imprison persons suspected of a hostile attitude towards the Second Empire, to
banish them within French territories or to send them into exile.
47 A decree dated January 1858 divided France up into military regions, on the lines of
Spain, with a field marshal in charge of each of the five regions.
48 Napoleon III (Louis Napoleon), whose father had been made King of Holland by his
brother, Napoleon I, carried out his coup d’état on the anniversary of the battle of
Austerlitz, where Napoleon I defeated the Russian and Austrian armies.
49 In 1858, the French writer Montalembert was sentenced for writing an article
condemning the regime of Louis Napoleon. When the Emperor wished to grant him a
pardon, Montalembert refused it and demanded rehabilitation. Marx compares him
ironically to John Hampden, who refused to pay ship money to Charles I in 1636; his
trial hastened the English Civil War.
50 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) — French sociologist and economist and one
of the founders of the anarchist movement. In a pamphlet published in Brussels he
compared the record of the Napoleonic dynasty with that of the Orleans dynasty and
gave preference to the latter, with the proviso that they had not carried out certain
democratic reforms.
51 In 1858, there was an unsuccessful republican uprising by members of the army at
Châlons-sur-Saône.
52 In 1858, Palmerston introduced a Bill which made any person, whether British or
foreign, who took part in conspiracies against any person in England or elsewhere
answerable under English law. Widespread protests led to the defeat of the Bill and to
Palmerston’s resignation.
53 In July 1858, a secret agreement was reached between Napoleon III and Cavour,
Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia. Napoleon promised to help to free
Lombardy and Venice from Austria in return for Savoy and Nice. In the autumn of 1858,
Palmerston, then leader of the Whig opposition, was invited to Compiègne to state his
position on the imminent war between France and Austria; he did not object to the
expulsion of Austria from Italy.
54 A reference to Louis Napoleon’s book Des idées napoléoniennes, which champions
Bonapartism as the doctrine of freedom through the exercise of power.
55 Duc de Morny (1811–1865) — Bonapartist politician. One of the  organisers of the
coup d’état of 1851, Minister of the Interior and chairman of the legislative assembly.
The ‘tame dogs’ (chiens savants) were the members of the legislature.
56 To study a question is not to create it.
57 Lord Chelsea, who deputised for Lord Cowley in Paris during his absence, writes:

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The official disavowal [in the Moniteur of 5 March 1859] of all warlike intentions on the
part of the Emperor, this Imperial message of peace, has been received by all classes of
Paris with feelings of what may be called exultation. — No 88 of the Blue Book:  On the
Affairs of Italy, January to May 1859). [Marx’s note]
58 NB: In his Studies he repeats, with the Moniteur and the original Dentu pamphlet,
‘that it is a peculiar whim of fate that forces this man [Louis Bonaparte] to push himself
forward as a liberator of the nationalities’ (Studien, p 35), and that one ‘must grant one’s
support to this policy as long as it remains within the bounds of the liberation of the
nationalities’, and that one must wait ‘until the liberation of the nationalities by this man
of destiny has ensued’ (Studien, p 36). In his Programme for Messrs the democrats, on
the other hand, it says: ‘We can and should warn against such assistance.’ — Magnum
Opus, p 34, Documents). [Marx’s note]
59 Moreover, ‘Napoléon le Petit’ has also borrowed the national-liberation phraseology
of the real Napoleon. In May 1809, for example, Napoleon issued from Schönbrunn a
Proclamation to the Hungarians which said, among other things: ‘Hungary! The moment
to regain your independence has come… I demand nothing of you. I only wish to see
you as a free and independent nation. Your connection with Austria was your curse
[etc].’ On 16 May 1797, Bonaparte concluded a treaty with the Republic of Venice,
whose last article read: ‘In future peace and good accord are to reign between France and
the Venetian Republic.’ He revealed his aims in signing this treaty three days later in a
secret despatch to the Directory, which begins with the words: ‘You receive herewith the
Treaty I have concluded with the Republic of Venice, by virtue of which General
Baraguay d’Hilliers has occupied the towns with between 5000 and 6000 men. I had
various aims in view in signing this treaty.’ As his last aim he recounts: ‘To mute
everything that may be said in Europe, since it will now appear that our occupation of
Venice is only a temporary operation which the Venetians themselves have eagerly
demanded.’ Three days after that, on 26 May, Bonaparte wrote to the municipality of
Venice:
‘The Treaty concluded in Milan may meanwhile be signed by the Municipality — the
secret articles by three of its members. I shall always do everything in my power to give
you proof of my desire to confirm your liberties and to see unhappy Italy at last occupy
that place it is destined to occupy in the world theatre, free and independent of all
foreigners.’
A few days later, he writes to General Baraguay d’Hilliers:
‘On receiving this report go to the Provisional Government of Venice and tell them that,
in harmony with the principles that now unite the Republics of France and Venice, and
given the immediate protection that the French Republic affords the Venetian, it is
essential that the sea power of the Republic should be placed on a footing capable of
commanding respect. On this pretext, you will take possession of everything, bearing in
mind the necessity of living on good terms with the Venetians, and enlist all the
Republic’s sailors into our service — at all times speaking in the name of Venice. In
brief, you must so manage it that you transport all the naval supplies and ships in the
harbour of Venice to Toulon. By virtue of a secret article in the treaty the Venetians are
obliged to supply the French Republic with naval supplies to the value of three millions
for the navy in Toulon, but it is my intention to take possession of all Venetian ships and
all their naval supplies for the benefit of Toulon.’ — Correspondance secrète et
confidentielle de Napoléon (seven volumes, Paris, 1817).
This order was carried out to the letter; and as soon as Venice had been plundered of all
naval and military resources, Napoleon handed over his new ally, the liberated Republic
of Venice, which he had solemnly sworn to defend against every danger, without the
slightest hesitation to the despotic yoke of Austria. [Marx’s note]
60 In 1840, Louis Napoleon, who had been exiled to America, landed in Boulogne and
attempted to start a revolt there. The ‘sausage review’ was a parade of troops near

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Versailles in 1850 at which Louis Napoleon attempted to win over officers and men by
providing them with sausage, venison, champagne and cigars.
61 The Peace of Paris arranged the conditions of peace after Russia’s defeat by England,
France and Turkey in the Crimean War.
62 Bazancourt — a Bonapartist novelist.
63 To pay for its own glory.
64 For the King of Prussia, that is, for nothing.
65 Literally, in the breast; that is, held in reserve and not revealed publicly.
66 The Peace of Campoformio in 1797 ended the war between France and Austria.
67 William Kinglake — a Liberal MP and historian.
68 It reads:
‘Prussia is Germany’s only hope… the German spirit is centred on Berlin… the German
spirit seeks the unity of its body, the truth of the Confederation. This is the force that is
raising Prussia… How is it that, while Italy demands integrity, national unity, which is
what Germany wants, the latter favours Austria, the living negation of all nationality? …
It is because Prussia is not yet at her head; because the head is Austria, weighing down
on political Germany.’ — La foi des traités, p  34. [Marx’s note]
69 The original reads:
‘Le Rhin! … Qu’est -ce que le Rhin? Une frontière. Les frontières seront beintôt des
anachronismes.’ — Studien, p 36. [Marx’s note]
70 The original reads:
‘La France stipule-t-elle des dédommagements pour les sacrifices qu’elle est prête à faire
dans un but d’équité, de juste influence, et dans l’intérêt de l’equilibre européen?
Demande-t-elle la rive gauche du Rhin? Elève-t-elle même des prétentions sur la Savoie
et sur le Comté de Nice?’ — La foi des traités , p 13. [Marx’s note]
71 A few days after the conclusion of the Treaty of Villafranca, the Prager Zeitung
carried the following official announcement:
‘This claim [Prussia’s claim to assume the supreme command of the arms of the
Confederation under the control of the Confederation] provides clear proof that Prussia is
striving for hegemony over Germany, and therefore for the exclusion of Austria from
Germany. Since disloyal Lombardy was worth infinitely less than the maintenance of
our position in Germany, we gave it up in order to obtain a peace which had become an
imperious necessity through the attitude of Prussia.’ [Marx’s note]
72 The Parisian Galignani’s Messenger, which only carries lead articles by way of
exception and on specific official instructions, says in its issue of 22 July 1859:
‘To give another province to the King of Piedmont, it would not only have been
necessary to support a war against two-thirds of Europe, but German unity would have
been realised, and a work thus accomplished, which ever since the time of Frances I it
has been the object of French policy to prevent.’ [Marx’s note]
73 Plon-Plon’s own private paper, the Opinion nationale, says in an article of 5 July
1860:
‘The day of demanding with violence is past. The Emperor is endowed with too fine a
tact, with too correct a feeling for the trends of public opinion for that… But is Prussia
bound by oath never to think of German unity? Can she guarantee that she will never
cast a lustful eye on Hanover, Saxony, Brunswick, Hesse, Oldenburg and Mecklenburg?
Today the Princes embrace one another, and certainly they are very sincere. But who
knows what the people will demand of them in a few years? And if Germany, under the
pressure of public opinion, centralises herself, would it be just, would it be reasonable,
for France not to be allowed to extend her territory at the expense of her neighbour? …

102

Should the Germans see fit to change their old political constitution and replace the
impotent Confederation with a strong, centralised government, then we cannot guarantee
that France will not see fit to demand compensation and assurances from Germany.’
[Marx’s note]
74 The Imperial Pecksniff outdoes himself in the Dentu pamphlet La Politique anglaise
(Paris, 1860). According to this, a couple of million Germans and Belgians have to be
stolen in order to improve the moral constitution of France, whose southern element
requires large admixtures of Nordic solidity. After explaining that for political and
military reasons France needs the frontiers that nature herself gave her, it goes on to say:
‘A second reason makes such an annexation [of the Rhenish Provinces and Belgium]
necessary. France loves and demands rational liberty [une sage liberté] and the southern
element forms a large element of its public bodies. This element has wonderful
qualities… but it lacks firmness and persistence. It needs the patient steadfastness, the
cold and unbending resolution of our northern brothers. The frontiers determined by
providence are therefore no less necessary for our freedom than for our independence.’
[Marx’s note]
75 The Ständerat — one of the two chambers of the Swiss Federal Parliament.
76 Neuchâtel — a S wiss canton which was also a vassal state of the Prussian monarchy.
After the revolution of 1848 it was proclaimed independent of Prussia. This led to a long
quarrel between Prussia and Switzerland which lasted until 1857 when, under pressure
from other powers including France, Prussia was persuaded to surrender her claims.
77 Thouvenel — Bonapartist politician and diplomat; Foreign Minister 1860–62.
78 Sonderbund — a separate league set up in 1843 by seven economically backward
Swiss cantons to counter progressive bourgeois developments and to defend the
privileges of the Roman Catholic Church and the Jesuits. The resolution of the Swiss
Federal Parliament in July 1847 to dissolve the league served as an excuse for it to attack
the other cantons. A few weeks later the troops of the league were defeated.
79 The Dappe valley lies on the frontiers between France and Switzerland. Recognised
as Swiss territory at the Congress of Vienna, it was for many years a bone of contention
with France. In 1862, Switzerland ceded part of the valley to France in return for
compensation.
80 Grandguillot — a Bonapartist journalist and editor.
81 The Congress of Vienna which had guaranteed Switzerland’s ‘eternal neutrality’
declared the province of Northern Savoy neutral territory and gave the Swiss the right to
occupy it in the case of war between neighbouring countries. This Switzerland
threatened to do in March 1859.
82 It had not in fact been the ‘treaties’ that had defended the neutrality of Switzerland
but the mutually paralysing interests of the various powers on her borders. ‘The Swiss
feel’, Captain Harris, the British chargé d’affaires in Berne, writes to Lord John Russell
after an interview with the Federal President Frey-Hérosé, ‘that… the events in recent
times have essentially changed the relative weights of the powers on her frontiers, in that
Prussia, since the Neuchâtel deal, is indifferent, Austria checked and France
incomparably more powerful than before.’ [Marx’s note]
83 The fact that the railway falls inside the neutral territory is expressly admitted in a
note addressed to Captain Harris on 18 November 1859 by Federal President Stämpfli
and Chancellor Schiess. It said:
‘Another point concerning the neutrality of Savoy could also come into question… we
mean the railway recently constructed from Culoz to Chambéry, with regard to which it
can well be asked whether it should continue to form part of the neutral territory.’
[Marx’s note]

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84 Vogt particularly reproaches the Volk with having attempted ‘to bring the Swiss
Confederation into conflict with the greater neighbouring powers’. When the annexation
of Savoy actually took place, the Eidgenössische Zeitung, a Bonapartist paper, accused
the official Bund, that: ‘Its views on Savoy and France were a pale remnant of the policy
which has been trying to involve Switzerland in European conflicts since as early as
1848.’ (See the Bund, Berne, 12 March 1860.) One can see that the phrases of the
Bonapartist scribblers are tailored to order. [Marx’s note]
85 ‘Had these provinces [Chablais and Faucigny] been occupied by the Federal
Troops… there can be little doubt they would have remained in them to this moment.’ —
L Oliphant, Universal Suffrage and Napoleon III (London, 1869), p 20. [Marx’s note]
86 In his speech mentioned above Lord Malmsbury says:
‘There is a despatch now in the Foreign Office, dated as long back as October 1858…
from the President of the Swiss Republic, stating that he had reason to believe that some
conditional agreement had been come to between the Emperor of the French and Count
Cavour with respect to Savoy.’ [Marx’s note]
87 See no 1 of the first Blue Book: On the Proposed Annexation of Savoy [etc]. [Marx’s
note]
88 Vogt’s desire to throw an Italian ‘bone’ into the jaws of the ‘French wolf’ from ‘the
narrowest German standpoint’, so that the wolf will suffer from indigestion, will
undeniably be fulfilled to a constantly increasing degree. In the semi-official Revue
contemporaine of 15 October 1860 — and, may it incidentally be said, Vogt ’s particular
patroness — there is to be found a report dated 8 October from Turin, which says,
among other things:
‘Genoa and Sardinia would be the legitimate price of a new French war for Italian unity.
I add that possession of Genoa would be the necessary instrument of our influence on the
peninsula and the only effective way of preventing the naval power to whose formation
we have contributed, from one day escaping our alliance in order to enter some new one.
Only with our knee in its throat can we secure the loyalty of Italy. Austria, a good judge
in this matter, knows that very well. We shall not press so brutally as Austria, but better
— that is the only difference.’  [Marx’s note]

Chapter IX: Agency
So muosens alle strîten
in vîl angestlîchen zîten
wart gescheiden doch her dan
… der Vogt da von Bërne. — Klage  [1]
In a programme which he wittily dates April Fool’s Day, that is to say 1 April 1859, Da -Da Vogt
called on all democrats of different shades to contribute to a newspaper that was to appear in Geneva
and was to spread the Russo- Decembrist views of his Studien. Carefully drawn up as the programme
had, of course, to be, the cloven hoof still occasionally  shows through its blotting -paper cover.
However, let us not waste any time on that.
At the end of the programme, Vogt begs his addressees to send him details of ‘like -minded people’
who ‘would be prepared to work in the same sense for papers and journals started by him’. At the
Central Festival in Lausanne, he stated that he had drafted a programme with an invitation to:
… those that wanted to follow the same, to work for an appropriate honorarium in the
organs of the press at his disposal. (Centralfest, p 17)
Finally, it says in a letter to Dr Loening:
Can you put me in touch with people who can, based on Frankfurt, work in this sense
on newspapers and journals? I am willing to pay them a decent honorarium for works,
an offprint of which is sent to me. (Magnum Opus, Documents, p 36)

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The ‘like-minded people’ of the programme become ‘those that’ at the Central Festival in Lausanne,
and ‘those that’ in relation to Dr Loening, are transformed into ‘people’, people sans phrase. [2] Vogt,
the General Treasurer an d General Auditor of the German press, has ‘funds placed at his disposal’
(Magnum Opus , p 36) in order to pay not only for articles ‘in newspapers and journals’ but also
‘pamphlets’. It will be grasped that an agency on this scale requires quite considerable ‘funds’.
— er sante nach allen den hêrren
die in diusken rîchen wären;
er klagete in allen sîn nôt,
unde bôt in ouch sîn golt rôt. (Kaiserchronik) [3]
— he sent to all the Lords
that lived in Germany;
He told them of his needs
And offered them his red gold.
But for what purpose were newspapers, journals and pamphlets to be ‘worked on’ by those who, when
they ‘sent them in’ to Vogt would be paid a ‘decent honorarium’ by him? ‘For the safe of Italy’,
nothing more; for in order to parry the threat to the Rhine it ‘seems’ to Herr Vogt ‘to be advantageous
to let Louis Bonaparte bleed to death in Italy’ (Magnum Opus, programme, p 34). No, ‘it is not for the
sake of Italy’ (Letter to Dr Loening, Magnum Opus , p 36). ‘It is for the sake of Hungary.’ (Letter to
Herr H—  in N— , Magnum Opus, p 36). No, it is not for the sake of Hungary. ‘It is for the sake of…
things about which I cannot tell you.’ (Magnum Opus, Documents, p 36)
Just as contradictory as the thing for whose sake it is, is the source from which the decent ‘funds’
flow. It is ‘a distant corner of French Switzerland’ ( Magnum Opus , p 210). No, ‘it is Hungarian
women from the West’ (Letter to Karl Blind, supplement no 44 of the Allgemeine Zeitung , 13
February 1860). Conversely, it is men ‘in the domain of the German, and particularly of the Austrian
Police’ (Centralfest, p 17). The quantity of his funds is no less chameleon- like than their purpose and
their source. It is ‘a few francs’ ( Magnum Opus, p 210). They are ‘small funds’ ( Centralfest, p 17).
They are sufficient funds to give everybody a decent honorarium who can work in a Vogtian way in
the German press and in pamphlets. Finally, the manner in which the funds were raised is also two-
fold. Vogt ‘scraped them together with great difficulty’ ( Magnum Opus , p 210). No, they ‘were
placed at his disposal’ (Magnum Opus, Documents, p 36).
If I am not mistaken [says the ‘rounded character’] then bribery is equivalent to using
money and other advantages to move somebody to do and say things that are against
his convictions. (Magnum Opus, p 217)
So nobody whose convictions permit him to sell himself can be bribed . When, for example, the
foreign press section of the Paris ministry offers to Swiss newspapers the Parisian Lithographierte
Correspondenz, which appears daily and costs 250 francs, for a half or a quarter of the price, or even
free, and draws the attention of ‘well disposed’ editors to the fact that they can count on monthly
subsidies of 50, 100 and 150 francs, increasing ‘in proportion to their success’, then ‘pon my soul that
is not bribery. Editors whose convictions are opposed to the daily Correspondenz and the monthly
subsidy are not forced to accept either. And is Granier de Cassagnac ‘bribed’, or La Guéronnière, or
About, or Grandguillot, or Bullier, or Jourdan of the Siècle
[4] or Martin and Boniface of the
Constitutionnel [5] or Rochaid Da-Da Albert? Has any act or utterance, backed by hard cash, ever in
the lives of these gentlemen managed to contradict their convictions? Or did Vogt, for example, bribe
the agent of a certain Swiss newspaper which had previously been hostile to him when he placed at
his disposal gratis several hundred copies of his Studien ? A peculiar invitation this, in any case, an
invitation from Vogt to publicists to work in acco rdance with their own convictions in the organs at
their disposal, and for this work to receive an honorarium through the organ of Herr Karl Vogt in
Geneva. The fact that Vogt mixes up the honorarium paid by a newspaper to its own contributors with
secret subsidies offered from an anonymous source by a third party to the correspondents of
newspapers totally unconnected with him — this quid pro quo simply goes to show how far the
German Da-Da has ‘assimilated’ the morals of 2 December.
‘An der Quelle Saß der Knabe.’ [6] But by what source?

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Instead of the weekly Die neue Schweiz that Vogt had intended, there later appeared in Geneva the
Neue Schweizer Zeitung set up by Vogt’s friend of many years’ standing, Herr A Brass. [7] One cool
November morning Herr Bras s announced, to the amazement of the whole of Geneva, that he had
‘written a letter to Vogt rejecting the French feeding trough that Vogt has wished to place before
him’.
At the same time he announced that he was prepared to back up his denunciation should the occasion
arise (Neue Schweizer Zeitung, 12 November 1859).  And the cock, or rather the capon who had
hitherto crowed so lustily fell silent as soon as he was tumbled on his own dung- heap. The ‘New
Swiss, citizen of the Canton of Berne and member of the Geneva Ständerat ’ had now been publicly
accused in the middle of Geneva by one of his ‘notorious’ friends of attempted bribery with French
money. And the member of the Geneva Ständerat fell silent.
Do not think that Vogt could simply ignore the Neue Schweizer Zeitung  with dignity. The
denunciation against him appeared, as has been said, in the issue of 12 November 1859. Shortly
afterwards, the same paper carried a piquant description of Plon- Plon, and the Revue de Genève, [8]
the organ of the dictator  of Geneva, James Fazy, immediately protested in a four -column lead-article
(Revue de Genève, 6 December 1859). It protested ‘au nom du radicalisme genèvois’, in the name of
Geneva radicalism. Such is the weight that Fazy himself ascribed to the Neue Schwe izer Zeitung. The
four-column lead- article in the Revue de Genève unmistakably shows Vogt’s helping hand. Brass
himself is excused to a certain extent. He himself is said not to be the author of the attack on Plon -
Plon, but only to have been led astray. In true Vogtian fashion the corpus delicti is shifted onto the
same L Häfner on to whom Vogt in the Magnum Opus (p 188) casts suspicion of writing ‘disgusting,
personal and scandalous stories about the Emperor and Prince Napoleon’. There is also the allusion,
inevitable with Vogt, to the ‘infamous ex-lieutenant Clossmann of Baden’ as Berne correspondent of
the Allgemeine Zeitung (see Magnum Opus, p 198). Let us spend a moment on the protest published
by the master and the servant, James Fazy [9] and Karl Vogt, ‘in the name of Geneva radicalism’ and
to save the honour of Plon-Plon on 6 December 1859 in the Revue de Genève.
Brass is accused of trying to ‘strengthen his German opinion of France by insulting a Prince of the
House of Bonaparte’. It is said that, as has already been known in Geneva for a long time, Plon-Plon
is a liberal of the purest water who, while in exile, was noble enough to refuse ‘to play a role in the
court of Stuttgart, or even of St Petersburg’; that nothing could be more ridiculous than a scribing to
him the idea of forming a little principality somewhere, a Kingdom of Etruria perhaps, as the
offending article in the Neue Schweizer Zeitung does:
Prince Napoleon, strongly conscious of his own genius and talent, values himself too
highly for these miserable little thrones.
He much prefers to play the Marquis of Posa to his sublime cousin ‘as a Citizen Prince’ ( prince-
citoyen) in France, ‘the centre of higher civilisation and general incentive’. ‘His cousin respects and
loves him, whatever people may say about it.’ The Prince is not only Bonaparte’s Marquis of Posa, he
is the ‘disinterested friend’ of Italy, of Switzerland and in brief of all the nationalities:
Prince Napoleon is, like the Emperor, a great economist… Surely, if ever the good
principles of political economy are victorious in France, Prince Napoleon will have
contributed a great deal towards it.
He was and is a ‘partisan of the most unlimited freedom of the press’, opponent of all preventive
police measures, proponent of the ‘idea of freedom in the broadest sense of the word, in its theory as
in its practice’. If he finds the Emperor’s ear blocked to his Egeria [10] voice by his evil entourage, he
withdraws with dignity but ‘without sulking’. It is none other ‘than his merit that has exposed him to
the slanders of Europe’:
The enemies of France fear him because he bases himself on the revolutionary support
of the peoples of Europe in order to restore to them their nationality and their freedom.
A misunderstood genius, therefore, a Ma rquis of Posa, an Egeria, an economist, protector of the
subjugated nationalities, democrat of the purest water — and — can it be possible? —  Plon-Plon [11]
is ‘habile comme général et brave comme tout officier français ’ — ‘skilled as a general and brave,
like every French officer’. ‘He proved that in the Eastern campaign during and after the Battle of

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Alma.’ And in the Italian campaign ‘he organised his army corps of 50,000 men [the famous Corps de
touristes, I am tempted to say Corps de ballet] very well and, in a short space of time, carried out a
difficult march through mountainous country without his troops lacking for anything’.
French soldiers in the Crimea are known to have christened cold feet under fire la maladie Plon-
Plonienne, and it is probable  that Plon-Plon only left the peninsula because of the growing lack of
food.
‘We’, the Revue de Genève triumphantly concludes, ‘we have shown him’ — that is to say Plon-Plon
— ‘as he is.’
Hurrah for General Plon-Plon!
No wonder Vogt says, then, that he has received his war -chest from ‘democratic hands’. Plon-Plon,
the Prince Rouge , [12] is Vogt’s ideal as he is Fazy’s, to a certain extent the bewitched Prince of
European democracy. Vogt could not receive his money from purer democrati c hands than Plon-
Plon’s. Even if part of the money handed over directly by Plon- Plon’s illustrious cousin to Mr
Kossuth finds its way through Hungarian hands into Vogt’s hands, ‘its origins’ remain ‘a horror’, but
from Plon- Plon’s hands! Even the money Vogt received at the time of the Neuchâtel deal from
Klapka’s [13] friend, Countess C—, may have come from more delicate hands, but certainly not from
purer or more democratic ones. ‘Plon-Plon est voluptueux comme Héliogabale, [14] lâche comme Ivan
III et faux comme un vrai Bonaparte’, says a well -known French writer. [15] The worst thing Plon-
Plon did was to make his cousin an homme serieux . [16] Victor Hugo could still say of Louis
Bonaparte: n’est pas monstre qui veut, [17] but since Louis Bonaparte invented Plon-Plon the business
aspect of the Imperial Janus face is concentrated on the man in the Tuileries and the grotesque aspect
is concentrated on the man in the Palais Royal. The false Bonaparte, who is his uncle’s nephew
without being his father’s son,
[18] appears real alongside this real Bonaparte, so that the French still
say: l’autre est plus sûr. [19] Plon-Plon is at the same time the Don Quixote and the Hudibras [20] of
the Bas Empire. [21] Hamlet brooded over the fact that Alexander’s ashes were perhaps fated to stop
the bung-hole of a barrel. What would Hamlet say if he caught sight of the severed head of Napoleon
on Plon-Plon’s shoulders!
Although Vogt mainly funded his war chest ‘from the French feeding-trough’, he may well also have
staged ostensible collections of ‘a few francs’ among his more or less democratic friends in order to
mask the feeding trough. In this way, the contradictions in the source and quantity of the funds and
the way in which they were raised are easily resolved.
Vogt’s agency was not confined to Studien, a ‘Programme’ and a recruiting office. At the Lausanne
Central Festival he proclaimed Louis Bonaparte’s mission of liberating the nationalities to the
German workers in Switzerland, although he did so, of course, from a much more radical point of
view than that of the Studien intended for liberal philistines. There he had, by a profound penetration
of the relationship between ‘matter and energy’, reached the conviction that there could be no thought
‘of the destruction and dissolution of the existing governments in Germany’ ( Studien, Foreword, p
vii), and he particularly appealed to the ‘German bourgeois’ (Studien, p 128) to ‘take to heart’ the fact
that the Bonapartist ‘liberation’ of Italy would prevent a ‘revolution’ in Germany. Conversely, he
informs the German workers that ‘Austria is the sole bulwark for their [the German Princes’]
continued existence’ (Centralfest, p 11).
I have just told you [he says] that, as far as people abroad are concerned, Germany
does not exist, that it first of all has to be created, and that it is my conviction that it
can only be created in the form of a confederation of republics similar to that of the
Swiss Confederation. (Centralfest, p 10)
He said this on 26 June 1859, while as recently as 6 June, in the Afterword to the second edition of the
Studien, he had begged the Prince Regent of Prussia to subjugate Germany to the House of
Hohenzollern by force of arms and by a dynastic civil war. Monarchist centralisation by force of arms
is, of course, the shortest path to a federal republic ‘similar to that of the Swiss Confederation’.
He further developed the theory of the ‘external enemy’ —  France —  with whom Germany would
have to ally herself against the ‘internal enemy’ — Austria.

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If I am given the choice [he cried] between the devil (Habsburg) and his grandmother
(Louis Bonaparte), I shall choose the latter; for she is an old woman, and she will die.
However, this direct appeal to Germany to throw herself into the arms of Decembrist France on the
pretext of hatred for Austria seemed to him to be too compromising for the reading public, so that in
the printed speech he altered it in the following way:
And if the question does arise of taking sides in the struggle between the devil and his
grandmother, we think it best if they both beat each other to death and eat each other
up, thus saving us the trouble. (Centralfest, p 13)
And finally, while in the Studien he appoints Louis Bonaparte Emperor of the peasants and soldiers,
he declares this time, in front of an audience of workers, that ‘ particularly the great majority of the
workers in Paris have been won at the present moment for Louis Bonaparte’:
Louis Bonaparte is [in the opinion of French workers] doing everything the Republic
ought to have done by giving the workers work and ruining the bourgeoisie [etc].
(Centralfest, p 9)
So Louis Bonaparte is a proletarian dictator, and as a proletarian dictator he is praised to the German
workers in Switzerland by that very same Vogt who, in the Magnum Opus, starts foaming with
bourgeois indignation at the very mention of the words ‘proletarian dictatorship’!
The Paris programme that dictated to the Decembrist agents in Switzerland their organisational plan
in relation to the annexation of Savoy consiste d of three points: 1: to ignore rumours of impending
danger completely for as long as possible and, if necessary, dismiss them as an Austrian invention; 2:
at an advanced stage to spread the view that Louis Bonaparte wants to incorporate the neutral zone
into Switzerland; and finally 3: after the annexation has been completed, to make use of it as a pretext
for an alliance between France and Switzerland, that is, the complete subordination of Switzerland to
a Bonapartist protectorate. We shall now see how l oyally the master and the servant, James Fazy and
Karl Vogt , the Dictator of Geneva and his appointee in the Geneva Ständerat, followed this
programme.
We already know that in his Studien Vogt avoided the slightest allusion to the idea for which his man
of destiny went to war. There is the same reticence at the Central Festival at Lausanne, at the National
Council, at the Schiller and Robert Blum celebrations, in the Biel Carpet -Bagger and finally in the
Magnum Opus. And nevertheless the idea dated back even before the conspiracy of Plombières . As
early as December 1851, a few days after the coup d’état, one could read in the Patriote savoisien:
Posts in Savoy… are already being shared out in the antechambers of the Elysée. Its
newspapers even joke about it pleasantly.
On 6 December 1851, Herr Fazy could already see Geneva falling victim to the December empire.
On 1 July 1859, Stämpfli, the Federal President, had an interview with Captain Harris, British chargé
d’affaires in Berne. He repeated his fears that the annexation of Savoy to France had been decided
upon in the event of an extension of Sardinian rule in Italy, and emphasised that the annexation,
particularly of North Savoy, would completely expose one flank of Switzerland and would soon entail
the loss of Geneva. (See the first Blue Book: On  the Proposed Annexation of Savoy and Nice , no 1.)
Harris reported to Malmsbury, who for his part commissioned Lord Cowley in Paris to demand
particulars from Walewski concerning the Emperor’s intentions. Walewski did not at all deny that:
Peut être le citoyen Thurgovien que nous avons si bien défendu contre les menaces de
Louis Philippe, nous fera-t-il la grâce de vouloir bien se constituer comme mediateur
et reprendre de nous Genève.
Perhaps the citizen of Thurgau whom we protected so well against the threats of
Louis-Philippe will show us the favour of being kind enough to play the mediator, and
take Geneva back from us. (Revue de Genève, 6 December 1851)
Walewski’s reply is dated from 4 July 1859, so that it  preceded the Treaty of Villafranca. In August
1859, Petétin’s pamphlet, which prepared Europe for the annexation of Savoy, appeared in Paris. That
same August, after the summer session of the Swiss National Assembly, Herr Vogt crawled to Paris in
order to fetch instructions from Plon -Plon there. To cover his tracks he had his fellow rascals spread
the rumour that he had gone to a health resort on Lake Lucerne.

108

ze Pârîs lëbt er mangen tac,
vil kleiner wîsheit er enpflac
sîn zerung was unmâzen grôz…;
ist ër ein esel und ein gouch,
daz sëlb ist ër zuo Pârîs ouch.
He lived in Paris many a day,
Became no wiser in any way,
He ate beyond all moderation…;
if he an ass or idiot is
He’ll still be one in Paris.
In September 1859, the Swiss Bundesrat saw the danger of annexation looming ( Blue Book: On the
Proposed Annexation of Savoy and Nice , no VI); on 12 November it decided to address a
memorandum in this sense to the Great Powers; and on 18 November President Stämpfli and
Chancellor Schiess handed over an official note to the British chargé d’affaires in Berne ( Blue Book:
On the Proposed Annexation of Savoy and Nice , no IX ). James Fazy, who had returned in October
from his unsuccessful journey to Tuscany, where he had worked for Plon- Plon’s Etruscan kingdom,
now opposed the rumours of annexation in his usual affectedly irascible, noisily quarrelsome way.
Nobody in France or Sardinia would dream of annexation. The larger the danger loomed, the greater
grew the confidence of the Revue de Genève, whose cult of the Napoleonides reached Chorybantic
[23] proportions in November and December 1859. (See for example, the Plon -Plon article quoted
above.)
The year of 1860 brings us to the second phase of the annexation deal.
It was no longer in the interests of the Decembrists to ignore or deny anything. The thing was now
much rather to lure Switzerland into the annexation and to trick her into a false position. The second
point of the Tuileries programme had to be carried out, that is to say that the catchword of the
intended gift of the neutral zone to Switzerland had to be rung out as loud as possible. The Swiss
Decembrists were, of course, supported by simultaneous manoeuvres in Paris. Thus Baroche , the
Minister of the Interior, announced at the beginning of January 1860 to the Swiss Ambassador, Dr
Kern, that:
… should any change in the ownership of Savoy occur hereafter it should only be
made with due regard to those provisions of the Treaties of 1815 which stipulated that
a portion of it sufficient to ensure a good line of defence should be at the same time
ceded to Switzerland. (See the Blue Book: On the Proposed Annexation of Savoy and
Nice, no XIII.)
As early as 2 February 1860, on the very same day that Thouvenel notified the British Ambassador,
Lord Cowley, that the annexation of Savoy and Nice was ‘a possibility’, he also informed him:
… indeed, in the opinion of the French government, it would be well if in these
circumstances the districts of Chablais and Faucigny should be united permanently to
Switzerland. (Blue Book: On the Proposed Annexation of Savoy and Nice, no XXVII)
Spreading this illusion was intended not only to lure Switzerland into accepting the annexation of
Savoy into the December empire, but also to blunt the edge of any subsequent protest on her  part
against the annexation and to compromise her in front of Europe as the accomplice, although duped,
of Decembrism. Frey-Herosé, Federal President from 1860, did not fall into the trap, but on the
contrary told Captain Harris his fears concerning the alleged advantages of incorporating the neutral
area into Switzerland. For his part, Harris warned the Federal government against the Bonapartist
intrigue, lest ‘Switzerland, too, should appear to be a power cherishing annexationist desires and
striving for territorial expansion’.
On the other hand, Sir James Hudson, British Ambassador in Turin, wrote, after a long interview with
Cavour, to Lord John Russell:
I have good ground for believing that Switzerland also is anxious to annex to herself a
portion of Savoy. Consequently, it ought to be clearly understood that when France is
blamed for seeking this cession, Switzerland is no less to blame… This question,

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therefore, becoming more complicated by this double attack, renders the position of
Sardinia more defensible. (Blue Book: On the Proposed Annexation of Savoy and
Nice, no XXXIV)
Finally, as soon as Louis Bonaparte threw away the mask, Thouvenel too quite unconcernedly let slip
the secret of the catchword of the Swiss annexation of the neutral zone. In a d espatch to the
representative of the French legation in Berne, he openly mocks the Swiss protest against the
annexation of Savoy by France, and with what? With the ‘plan for the partition of Savoy’ imposed on
Switzerland by Paris (see Thouvenel’s despatch of 17 March 1860).
And how, meanwhile, had the agents of December in Switzerland contributed to this tissue of defeat?
James Fazy is the first, in January 1860, to present the annexation of Chablais and Faucigny by
Switzerland to the British chargé d’affaires in Berne, not as a promise on the part of Louis Bonaparte,
but as the actual wish of the Swiss and of the inhabitants of the neutral districts ( Blue Book: On the
Proposed Annexation of Savoy and Nice , no XXIII). Vogt , who had hitherto never suspected t he
possibility of the annexation of Savoy and Nice by France, is now suddenly filled with the spirit of
prophecy, and The Times, which has not mentioned Vogt’s name once since its foundation, suddenly
reports in an item dated 30 January:
The Swiss Professor Vogt pretends to know that France will procure for Switzerland
Faucigny, Chablais and the Genevese, the neutral provinces of Savoy, if the Grand
Council of the Republic will let her have the free use of the Simplon. (The Times, 3
February 1860)
Yet more! At the end of January 1860, James Fazy assures the British chargé d’affaires in Berne that
Cavour, with whom he had held a long interview scarcely two weeks previously in Geneva, was up in
arms against any secessions to France. (See the Blue Book: On the Proposed Annexation of Savoy and
Nice, no XXXIII.) While Fazy thus vouches to Britain for Cavour, Cavour uses the same Fazy’s
annexationist lusts to excuse himself to Britain (Blue Book: On the Proposed Annexation of Savoy and
Nice, no XXXIII). And finally Tourte , the Swiss Ambassador in Turin, runs all by himself to the
British Ambassador Hudson on 9 February 1860 to assure him that:
… no engagement subsists between Sardinia and France for the cession of Savoy to
France, and that Sardinia is not in the least disposed to cede or exchange Savoy to
France. (Blue Book: On the Proposed Annexation of Savoy and Nice, no XXXIII)
The moment of decision loomed closer. The Parisian Patrie of 25 January 1860 prepared the ground
for the annexation of Savoy in an article entitled ‘les voeux de la Savoie’.
[24] In a further article of 27
January, ‘le Comté de Nice’, [25] it foreshadowed, December -style, the annexation of Nice. On 2
February 1860, Thouvenel notified the British Ambassador, Cowley, of the annexation of Savoy and
Nice as a ‘possibility’ that had already been agreed before the war by France and Sardinia. An official
note on France’s real decision to annex Savoy and Nice was not, however, conveyed to Lord Cowley
until 5 February (see Lord Cowley’s speech to the House of Lords of 23 April) and to Dr Kern until 6
February — with the specific statement to both Ambassadors, British and Swiss, that the neutral zone
was to be incorporated into Switzerland. Before these official revelations, James Fazy was informed
from the Tuileries that Sardinia had already ceded Savoy and Nice to France by a secret treaty, and
that the treaty did not contain a clause in favour of Switzerland. Before Thouvenel’s official statement
to Lord Cowley and Dr Kern, Fazy was supposed to sugar the imperial pill and administer it to his
subjects in Geneva. On 3 February therefore he had his blindly devoted tool John Perrier call a
popular meeting at the premises of the Club Populaire, at which he appeared as if by accident under
the pretext:
… that he had just heard [je viens d’entendre] that the subject under discussion was
any secret treaties that France and Sardinia may have concluded on the secession of
Savoy. Unfortunately such a treaty was signed on 27 January by the Sardinian
government; but from this positive fact we cannot yet conclude that our security is
really threatened… The treaty does not, it is true, contain any written reservation in
favour of our rights in the neutral territory of Sardinia, but we do not know whether
such a reservation exists in the minds of the contracting parties… so it may have been
the subject of an unspoken agreement [sous-entendu comme allant de soi]… we must

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not show premature spirit of distrust… we must appeal to sympathy [with the coup
d’état empire]… and avoid any hostile word.
(See Fazy’s ‘confidential’ speech, in its way a masterpiece of demagogy, in the Revue de Genève of 3
February 1860.)
The British chargé d’affaires in Berne found Fazy’s prophetic gift remarkable enough to inform Lord
John Russell of it in a special dispatch.
The official treaty on the secession of Savoy and Nice to France was to be signed on 24 March 1860,
so there was no time to lose. The Swiss patriotism of the Geneva Decembrists had to be officially
recognised before the annexation of Savoy was officially proclaimed. Signor Vogt therefore travelled,
in company with General Klapka, who was probably acting in good faith, at the beginning of March
to Paris, in order to bring his influence to bear on the Egeria of the Palais  Royal, the misunderstood
genius, Plon-Plon, and, before the eyes of the whole of Switzerland, throw his personal weight into
the scales in favour of the annexation of the neutral zone to Switzerland. From Plon- Plon’s Lucullan
board — for as we know, in ga stronomical matters Plon-Plon vies with Lucullus and Cambacérès, so
that if Brillat- Savarin himself were to rise from the dead he would marvel at Plon -Plon’s genius,
national economy, liberal ideas, generalship and personal bravery in this field — from Plon-Plon’s
Lucullan board which, as a ‘pleasant companion’, he boldly attacked, Falstaff-Vogt now called on the
Swiss to be bold. (See his letter from Paris to the Biel Carpet-Bagger of 8 March 1860, Supplement.)
Switzerland was to show that ‘her militia was  not simply there for parading and playing at soldiers’.
The ‘secession of the neutral zone to Switzerland’ was an illusion.
Relinquishing Chablais and Faucigny to France is a first step which would be followed
by others…. The twin stilts of nationality a nd natural frontiers will carry one from
Lake Geneva to the Aar and finally to Lake Constance and the Rhine — if the legs are
strong enough.
But — and this is the point — Falstaff-Vogt still does not believe what Thouvenel himself, the French
Foreign Minister, had officially admitted a month previously, and what all of Europe already knew —
that the secession of Savoy and Nice had been negotiated as the price of French intervention against
Austria as early as August 1858 at Plombières . On the contrary, his ‘man of destiny’ has only just
been driven into the arms of chauvinism against his will by the priests, and forced into the
confiscation of the neutral zone.
Obviously [stutters the embarrassed apologist], obviously leading circles have sought
a counter-weight to the constantly growing clerical movement, and now believe that
they have found it in so-called chauvinism — in that most short -sighted national
feeling that knows no better than the acquisition of a scrap [!] of land.
After making such a bold to- do, intoxicated by the fumes of Plon- Plon’s cook-house, in the Biel
Carpet-Bagger, Vogt used the same mouthpiece shortly after his return from France to tell fables
about the absolutely pro- French feelings of the inhabitants of Nice. He thus fell into an unpleasant
conflict with Vegazzi-Ruscalla, a member of the central executive of the Italian National Association
and author of the pamphlet La Nazionalità di Nizza. [26] And when that same hero who had played the
Winkelried [27] from Plon-Plon’s dining table now took the floor at the National Council in Berne, his
martial trumpet call was transformed into the diplomatic piping of a flute recommending the calm
continuation of negotiations with the Emperor, who had always been a fri end of the Swiss , and
warning with particular emphasis against an alliance with the East. Frey-Hérosé, the Federal
President, cast a few peculiar aspersions on Vogt , who did, on the other hand, have the pleasure of
seeing his speech praised in the Nouvelli ste Vaudois. The Nouvelliste Vaudois is the organ of Messrs
Blanche-nay, Delarageaz and the other state magnates of the Vaud, in a word of the Swiss Western
Railway, just as the Neue Züricher Zeitung is the organ of Zurich Bonapartism and the Northern
Railway. To characterise the patrons of the Nouvelliste Vaudois it is sufficient to note that, on the
occasion of the famous Oron Railway struggle, five members of the Vaud Government Council were
repeatedly and without punishment accused in the enemy press of  receiving 10,000 francs each in
stock (20 shares) as a present from the Paris Crédit Mobilier [28] — the main shareholder in the Swiss
Western Railway.

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A few days after Vogt , accompanied by Klapka, had set off to see the Egeria of the Palais Royal,
James Fazy, accompanied by John Perrier, [29] went to see the Sphinx of the Tuileries. As we know,
Louis Bonaparte enjoys playing the role of the Sphinx, and hires his own Oedipuses just as earlier
kings of France used to hire their own court jesters. At the Tui leries Fazy threw himself between
Switzerland and the Sphinx. As has been said, his companion on the journey was  John Perrier. This
John is his James’ shadow, does everything that he wants him to do, nothing that he does not want,
lives through him and for  him, became a Grand Councillor of Geneva through him, prepares all his
feasts and toasts, his Leporello and his Fialin. [30] Both returned to Geneva with nothing achieved as
far as the position of Switzerland was concerned, but with amazing success as reg ards Fazy’s own
threatened position. Fazy publicly thundered that the scales had fallen from his eyes, and that from
now on he would hate Louis Bonaparte as much as he had once loved him. A peculiar love this,
nourished for nine years by the republican Faz y for the murderer of two republics! Fazy played the
disappointed patriot with such virtuosity that the whole of Geneva was swamped with enthusiasm for
him, and the loss of Fazy’s illusions was felt almost more keenly than the loss of the neutral
provinces. Even Theodore de Saussure,
[31] his opponent of many years and the chief of the
aristocratic opposition party, conceded that it was no longer possible to doubt James Fazy’s Swiss
patriotism.
Having received such a well-deserved popular ovation, the tyrant of Geneva rushed off to the National
Council in Berne. Shortly after his departure his faithful servant, his companion on the journey to
Paris, in short his own John Perrier, undertook an Argosy [32] of quite a different sort. A gang of
Genevan drunkards  (or so, at least, they were described in the London Times), selected from the
Society of ‘ Fruitiers’, Fazy’s democratic bodyguard, sailed under Perrier ’s command unarmed to
Thonon to hold an anti-French demonstration in that part of the neutral zone. What this demonstration
consisted of or was supposed to consist of, whether the Argonauts had a golden fleece to conquer, or
whether they were taking on to their own skins the responsibility for someone else, to this day no one
can say, for no Orpheus accompanied Perrier’s Argosy and no Appolonius [33] sang of it. What it was,
it appears, was a kind of symbolic occupation of the neutral zone by John Perrier and his gang as
representatives of Switzerland. The real Switzerland, however, soon had her hands so full , what with
diplomatic excuses and declarations of loyalty and expressions of indignation on account of  John
Perrier’s symbolic occupation, that in fact it appeared very moderate on the part of Louis Bonaparte
to confine himself merely to the real occupation of Thonon and the rest of the neutral zone.
John Perrier, in whose pockets several thousand francs were found, was arrested in Geneva. M
Ducommun, the Vice-Chancellor of State and editor of the Revue de Genève, a young man without
any personal wealth and dependent in both the qualities mentioned above on the President of the
Council of State and owner of the Revue, James Fazy, was also arrested on Perrier’s evidence. He
admitted that he had given Perrier the money and that it had been taken from a fund that had been set
up to finance a Free Corps — a fund whose existence had until then been unknown to the Geneva
radicals. The legal investigation ended with the release first of Ducommun then of Perrier.
On 24 March, Nice and Savoy, together with the neutral zone, were officially ceded to Bonaparte by
Victor Emmanuel. On 29–30 March, John Perrier, who had returned to Geneva from Paris with Fazy,
undertook his Argosy , a burlesque demonstration which frustrated any ser ious demonstration at the
decisive moment. In Berne, James Fazy assured everyone that ‘he knew nothing about the incident’.
[34] In the former neutral zone Laity boasted that if the Swiss really had attacked there the Emperor
would immediately have marched  three divisions into Geneva. Last of all, the secret of the Argosy
was totally and utterly unknown to Vogt , for, a few days before it took place, he as a preventive
measure denounced to the Geneva police a collision of the Savoy frontier originating in Ge neva. But
it was a red herring. I have a letter before me on this subject written by a refugee living in Geneva, a
former friend of Vogt, to a refugee living in London. It says, among other things:
Vogt spread about that I was continually roaming around the West of Switzerland and
Savoy in order to plot a revolution against the interests of Switzerland and in favour of
powers hostile to her. This was only a few days before Perrier’s attentat, about which
Vogt certainly knew, but I knew as little as you. Obviously he tried to divert the trail
to me and to ruin me. Fortunately he also denounced me to the Director of Police,

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Duy, who summoned me and was not a little surprised when, at the very first question,
I interrupted him and said, smiling: ‘Aha! The well-known Vogtian intrigue!’ He now
asked for more information about my relationship with Vogt. My testimony was at the
same time confirmed by a government secretary, a member of the Helvetia, who the
other day travelled to a central meeting in Berne and there made unfriendly remarks
about Karl’s behaviour to Vogt’s brother, whereupon Gustav laconically remarked that
he had long since seen from his letters what his politics were like.
At first silence and denials and sermons preaching trust in Louis Bonaparte h ad diverted Swiss
attention away from the danger. Later the outcry over the intended incorporation of Faucigny,
Chablais and the Genevois into Switzerland had popularised the annexation of Savoy to France.
Finally, the burlesque at Thonon was intended to break any serious resistance. And now the
annexation, which had actually taken place, and the danger, which had become undeniable, had,
according to the Paris programme, to serve as motives for Switzerland to lay down her arms
voluntarily, that is, make an alliance with the December empire.
This task was so delicate that only  James Fazy himself could start on its solution. His servant Vogt
could warn against an alliance with the East, but only Fazy himself could advocate an alliance with
the West. He hinted at its necessity first of all in the Revue de Genève. On 18 April  1860, there
circulated in Geneva an extract from a letter from London, which said among other things:
Recommend to our influential fellow-citizens that they should be on their guard
against any advice James Fazy may give to Switzerland to give up her neutrality. It is
very probable that this advice originates from the French government itself, whose
faithful agent James Fazy has been up until today… He now adopts the attitude of a
good Swiss who is working against the intentions of France, but a usually well-
informed person assures me that this is a trap. As soon as Switzerland declares that she
is no longer willing or able to remain neutral, the French government will act upon it
and force her into an alliance as she did at the time of the first empire.
Fazy had the following reply to this printed in the Revue de Genève:
The day that Savoy and France are united, the neutrality of Switzerland will cease by
itself, and such advice on Fazy’s part would thus be superfluous.
Three months later, on 10 July, James Fazy made a speech at the Swiss National Council in which:
Cursing and roaring, shaking a fist at the Bonapartist moneymen and Barons of the
Confederation — he denounced them as le gouvernement souterrain —  he marched
into the Bonapartist camp.
The officially pro- French party of Zurich and the Vaud therefore calmly let him bluster, although
apparently it came under the crudest attack:
Europe, particularly Germany, has abandoned Switzerland. Thus neutrality has
become impossible; Switzerland must seek alliances, but where?
Then the old demagogue mutters something:
… about France, our neighbour and our kin, who will one day see the injustice she has
done and make it good, and could perhaps even become a republic, etc. But the money
men and the Barons of the Confederation, who have outlived their time, must not
inaugurate this new policy; Helvetia, the people, must do it. Just wait, the next election
will teach you your manners. The federal troops are extremely welcome in Geneva.
But should their presence cast the slightest doubt on the present government of
Geneva, then off with them. Geneva will help and defend herself.
Thus on 10 July, James Fazy carried out in the National Council what he had hinted at in the Revue de
Genève of 18 April — ‘the new policy’, alliance between Switzerland and France, that is, annexation
of Switzerland by December. Well -informed people in Switzerland thought that this dropping of the
anti-Bonapartist mask th at Fazy had worn since his return from the Tuileries was premature. Fazy,
however, possesses a virtuosity in the art of the calculated indiscretion almost reminiscent of
Palmerston.

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The most notorious representatives of the ‘gouvernement souterrain’, as we know, moved a motion of
censure against Stämpfli in the National Council because, as Federal President, he had grasped the
situation and for a moment had taken the correct decision to secure the neutral zone against French
infringement with Federal troops. The motion of censure was rejected by an enormous majority of the
votes, but Vogt’s vote was missing.
It is very characteristic of Karl Vogt [somebody wrote to me at the time from
Switzerland] that at the time of the discussion in the Swiss Ständerat concerning the
vote of censure against the Federal President, Stämpfli, he was missing. As a
representative of the Canton of Geneva, which was threatened by Bonaparte, Vogt
had, of necessity, to vote for its energetic defender. Moreover, he is his personal friend
and owes him a debt of gratitude. Vogt’s father and two brothers earn their bread as
employees of the Canton of Berne. Not long ago Stämpfli helped a third brother to
obtain a well-paid post as Senior Federal Statistician. Consequently it was not really
possible for him to come out against his friend, benefactor and countryman in a
division where every vote would be called out. On the other hand, it was no more
possible for Vogt, the Plon-Plonist, to approve a policy that fought Bonapartist
aggression to the death. Hence he ran away and hid his head, but in the process his
broad backside remained visible and received some knocks, the usual stratagem and
the destiny of the modern Falstaff here below.
The catchphrase of ‘Austrianism’ passed out by the Tui leries and bandied about so loudly by  James
Fazy in the Revue de Genève and by his servant Vogt in the Biel Carpet -Bagger, the Studien, the
Magnum Opus, etc, now rebounded upon Switzerland herself. About the middle of April a placard
appeared on the walls of Milan: ‘Conflict between Napoleon and Switzerland.’ It says:
Savoy seems to Switzerland to be an appetising morsel, and she is hurrying, spurred
on by Austria, to get in the way of Napoleon III’s plans in a matter that only concerns
Italy and France… Br itain and the northern great powers, excluding Austria, do not
oppose the annexation of Savoy in the slightest. Only Switzerland, egged on by
Austria, who strives to stir up disorder and tumult in all the states allied to Sardinia,
has used her veto… Switz erland is an abnormal state, which cannot for long withstand
the pressure of the great principle of nationality. Germans, Frenchmen and Italians are
not capable of submitting to the same laws. If Switzerland knows this, then let her not
forget that in the Canton of Ticino the language of Foscolo and Giusti is spoken, and
let her not forget that a great part of the population belongs to the great and
magnanimous nation called French.
Switzerland, it appears, is nothing but an Austrian invention.
While Vogt himself was making such zealous efforts to save Switzerland from the claws of Austria, he
entrusted to one of his most trusty accomplices, the Swabian chatterbox Karl Mayer from Esslingen ,
self-important, rump -parliamentarian, and presently proprietor of a trinket factory, the salvation of
Germany. At the consecration of the colours of the Neuchâtel German Workers’ Association,
celebrated in the Crown at St Blaise, the main speaker, rump -parliamentarian and trinket-maker Karl
Mayer from Esslingen called on Germany ‘just to let the French over the Rhine, for otherwise things
in Germany would never get better’.
Two deputies of the Geneva Workers’ Association, returning from the ceremony after t he New Year
(of 1860) reported this incident. After the report had been confirmed by the delegates of several other
West-Swiss Associations, the Geneva headquarters issued a circular as a general warning against
Bonapartist intrigues among German workers in Switzerland.
It recalled [I am quoting from a memorandum I have in front of me] the first empire,
when individual Germans also tried to encourage Napoleon’s world domination,
thinking that the colossus would not survive the fall of him that bore it, and that there
would emerge from the dissolution of the provinces of the Frankish Empire a
Germany at least united, which would then find it all the easier to win her freedom. It
said that it was political charlatanism to bleed a living body dry in the hope that, by a
miracle, healthy blood would grow in its place. Moreover, it criticised the idea of

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denying outright that a great people had the strength to defend themselves and the
right to self-determination. Finally, it noted that the expected Messiah of Germany
had, after all, just shown in Italy what he meant by national liberation, etc. The
circular was aimed, as it said, only at those Germans who had chosen the wrong means
to a good end, but it refused to have anything to do with venal publicists or ambitious
ci-devants.
At the same time, the Aargauer Nachrichten, the organ of the Helvetia, [35] scourged the:
… logic according to which you have to let the hedgehog into the mole -hole so that
you can more easily lay hold of it and pull it out. According to this fine logic, one
would also have to let the Ephialteses do as they wish so that there can be Leonidases.
[36] A certain Professor is said to be an upside-down version of Duke Ulrich of
Württemberg, [37] who tried to return home from exile by way of the ‘Bundschuh’
after the cavalier’s boot had shown itself to be no longer interested in him. That same
Professor, however, has fallen out with the shoe and is therefore trying on the boot
[etc].
The importance of this denunciation against Herr Professor Vogt lay in the fact that it appeared in the
organ of the Helvetia. But in return he was all the better received by the Espérance, [38] a journal set
up in 1859 in Geneva in a large format and at great expense to the French Treasury. The task of the
Espérance was to preach the annexation of Savoy and the Rhineland in particular and Louis
Bonaparte’s messianic vocation of national liberation in general. It is well known all over Geneva that
Vogt is an habitué of the Espérance editorial offices and one of its most active contributors. Details
have come into my possession which place the fact beyond all question. What  Vogt hints at in the
Studien, what he had openly announced in Neuchâtel by his fellow -rascal, the Swabian chatterbox,
rump-parliamentarian and trinket-maker Karl Mayer from Esslingen, finds its further development in
the Espérance. Thus for example it says in the issue of 26 March 1860:
If the only hope of German patriots is based on a war with France, what reason can
they have to wish to weaken that country’s government and prevent it from forming its
natural frontiers? Or can it be that the people in Germany are far from sharing this
hatred of France? Be that as it may, there are very upright German patriots,
particularly among the most advanced German democrats [particularly the Reichs-
Vogt, the Ranickel, Karl Mayer from Esslingen, and tutti quanti] who see no great
misfortune in the loss of the left bank of the Rhine, and who are, on the other hand,
convinced that the political life of Germany, of a Germany reborn, based on the
alliance and merging into the civilisation of the European West, will only begin after
this loss.
Accurately informed as it was by Vogt about the views of the most advanced German democrats, th e
Espérance declared in a leading article of 30 May, ‘a plebiscite on the left bank of the Rhine would
soon show that everybody there is sympathetic to France’.
The Postheiri, a humorous Swiss paper, now pours out bad jokes on the Espérance, calling it a ‘jaded
nag’ who, besides Bacchus Plon-Plon’s laurels, which were light enough, now had to carry ‘the heavy
paunch’ of his Silenus upon its crop as well.
The precision with which the Decembrist press -manoeuvres are carried out can be seen from the
following. On 30 May , the Espérance in Geneva had the left bank of the Rhine fall to France by
plebiscite. On 31 May , Louis Jourdan in the Siècle in Paris started advancing Rhine -annexation
earthworks, and at the beginning of June the Propagateur du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais unlimbered its
heavy artillery against Belgium. Shortly before the Geneva mouthpiece Edmond  About had declared
in the Opinion Nationale that the expansion of Sardinia had forced the Emperor ‘de prendre la
Savoie… c -à-d nous fermons notre porte’, [40] and, he continues, should the aspirations towards union
in Germany lead to similar expansion by Prussia, ‘ alors nous aurions à veiller a notre sûreté, à
prendre la rive gauche du Rhin, c-à-d nous fermerions notre porte’. [41] Hot on the heels of this light-
minded door -shutter comes that heavy -footed ox AA, the foreign affairs correspondent of the
Indépendence Belge, [42] a kind of Joseph Prudhomme and personal oracle of the ‘providence’ that
has settled in the Tuileries. The Espérance meanwhile took its peculiar enthusiasm for German unity

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and its indignant denunciation of the German anti -Decembrists as victims of Austria to such dizzy
heights that James Fazy, who has to take account of some diplomatic considerations and who,
moreover, was in the process of transforming the Revue de Genève into the Nation Suisse, deigned to
declare with magnanimous condescension in the Revue  that one could oppose Bonapartism without
being an Austrian.
Karl Vogt, German Da-Da, proprietor of a Decembrist recruiting office for the German press, Fazy’s
sub-agent, ‘pleasant companion’ in the Palais Royal, Plon- Plon’s Falstaff, Ranickel’s ‘friend’,
prompter to the Biel Carpet-Bagger, contributor to the Espérance , protégé of Edmond About, singer
of the ‘Lousiad’ — still had one step lower to sink. He was to appear in Paris, in full sight of
everybody, in the Revue contemporaine arm in arm with Monsieur Edouard Simon . [43] Let us just
look for a moment at what the Revue contemporaine is and who Monsieur Edouard Simon is.
The Revue contemporaine was originally the official Decembrist review, in sharp contrast to the
Revue des deux Mondes, [44] for which the elegant pens wrote, the people from the Journal des
Débats, [45] Orleanists, fusionists [46] and particularly, too, professors at the Collège de France and
Members of the Institute. [47] Since one could not simply order the latter official personnel to transfer
directly to the Revue contemporaine, the attempt was made to order them to leave the Revue des deux
Mondes and thus to press-gang them into working for the Decembrist Revue in a roundabout way. But
the coup was not really successful. The proprietors of the Revue contemporaine  even found it
impracticable to do business with the editorial bo ard imposed on it on M La Guéronnière ’s orders.
But since the ventriloquist of the Tuileries needs a variety of dummies, the Revue contemporaine was
transformed into the semi-official review, while the Revue européenne on the other hand was installed
as official review with the editorial board imposed by La Guéronnière.
Now for Monsieur Edouard Simon, by nature a Rhenish-Prussian Jew named Eduard Simon who pulls
the most comical faces in order to pass as a Frenchman by profession, except that at every moment his
style betrays the Rhenish-Prussian Jew translated into French.
Shortly after the Schiller Celebration (November 1859), I met at the home of an acquaintance in
London a highly respectable merchant who had resided in Paris for many years and who report ed in
detail on the Paris Schiller celebration, Schiller Societies, etc. I interrupted him to ask how German
societies and meetings got on with the Decembrist police. He answered with an amused grin:
Of course, there is no meeting without a mouchard and no association without a
mouchard. So to avoid any complications we follow for once and for all the simple
tactic — probatum est
[48] — of bringing a known mouchard and electing him on to
the committee straight away. And there we always have, just the job for such cases,
our Edouard Simon. You know that La Guéronnière, former lackey of Lamartine and
purveyor of padding to Emile de Girardin, is now the Emperor’s favourite, his secret
stylist, and at the same time chief censor of the French press. Now Edouard Simon is
La Guéronnière’s lapdog and (he added, wrinkling his nose in a peculiar way) a
stinking cur at that. Edouard Simon, and you will surely not hold this against him, did
not want to work pour le roi de Prusse, but thought that by joining the Decembrist
system he was doing himself and civilisation an incalculable service. He is a fellow
without much wit and with a mean character, but he is not bad in a certain sphere of
subordinate intrigue. La Guéronnière has ordered his Edouard Simon to the Patrie as
one of its lead-article writers. That proved the secret stylist’s tact. The proprietor of the
Patrie, that is to say, the banker Delamarre, is an arrogant, cross-grained, grumpy
parvenu who will tolerate nobody in his office apart from creatures of decidedly
servile pliancy. So our Edouard Simon, who despite his rat-poison is as pliant as an
angora cat, was in just the right place. As you know, at the time of the republic, the
Patrie was one of the most shameless organs of the Rue de Poitiers. [49] Since
December it has fought with the Pays and the Constitutionnel for the honour of being
semi-official organ of the Tuileries, and since the signal has been given, has outdone
all in annexation fever. You know, do you not, the beggars who pretend to have
epilepsy on the street to swindle a few sous off the passers-by? In fact the Patrie had
the honour of being able to be the first to announce the impending annexation of

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Savoy and Nice. Scarcely had the annexation taken place, when it enlarged its format,
for, as M Delamarre naively declared: ‘La Savoie et le Comté de Nice ayant été
annexés à la France, la conséquence naturelle est l’agrandissement de la Patrie.’ [50]
Who, on hearing that, does not remember the quip of the Parisian cynic who, to the
question ‘Qu’est-ce que la patrie?’, [51] simply replied: ‘Journal du soir.’ [52] And if
the Rhenish Provinces are annexed too, what an increase that would mean in the
Patrie and its format and in Edouard Simon’s wages. As regards economics, the Patrie
sees the salvation of France in the abolition of the Tourniquet de la Bourse, which
would allow dealings on the Stock Exchange and thus throughout the country to be
swindled up to the desired level once more. Edouard Simon too is enthusiastic about
the abolition of the Tourniquet de la Bourse. Our Edouard Simon is not only lead-
article writer of the Patrie and La Guéronnière’s lap-dog. He is also the most devoted
friend and informer of the new Jerusalem, alias the Prefecture of Police, particularly
of M Palestrina. In brief, gentlemen (the narrator concluded) a committee with M
Edouard Simon in its bosom is, for that reason alone, in the most completely
favourable odour with the police.
And Herr— burst out in peculiarly shrill laughter, as if the odeur du mauvais lieu [53] and Monsieur
Edouard Simon had some further, unmentionably secret, connection.
Mr Kinglake has drawn the attention of the House of Commons to the pleasant confusion of foreign
policy, police and the press that characterises the agents of December (House of Commons, 12 July
1860). Monsieur Edouard Simon —  Vogt’s notorious Eduard is, of course, not to be confused with
Vogt’s gentle Cunégonde , alias Ludwig Simon of Trier [54] — Monsieur Edouard Simon , La
Guéronnière’s lap -dog, Delamarre’s poodle, Palestrina’s nark and everybody’s cur, obviously
belongs, if not to the cream, at least to the Limburg cheese of 10 December, to the second circle,
where:
S’annida
Ipocrisia, lusinghe e chi affatura,
Falsità, ladroneccio e simonia,
Ruffiani, baratti e simile lordura.
Nest
hypocrisy, deceit and affectation,
falsehood, pilfering and simony,
pimps, ruffians and suchlike trash.
Karl Vogt had entrusted his Edouard Simon with reviewing his Magnum Opus in the French press
many weeks before it appeared. Edouard Simon was in favour of double emploi . First of all, he
translated the Magnum Opus privately for M  La Guéronnière and was then on this occasion ordered
by his patron to join the Revue contemporaine. In vain the editorial board of the Revue contemporaine
humbly begged that, if Edouard Simon had to appear in their columns, he should at least do so
anonymously. La Guéronnière was inexorable. Edouard Simon made his debut in the Revue
contemporaine on 15 February 1860 with a notice on his friend Vogt under the title ‘Un tableau de
moeurs politiques d’Allemagne. Le procès de M Vogt avec la Gazette d’Augsburg’ (‘A Picture of the
Political Customs of Germany: Herr Vogt’s Case Against the Augsburger Zeitung’) signed —
Edouard Simon.
The ‘Latin’ Edouard Simon does not think that, ‘in order to be a good Frenchman, he has to hurl
invective against the noble German race’ (Revue contemporaine, 15 February 1860, p 531), but as a
‘good Frenchman’ and ‘born Latin’ he must at least evince a certain native ignorance about Germany.
Thus, among other things, he says about his Karl Vogt : ‘He was one of the three Regents of the
ephemeral empire.’ [56] Of course, Monsieur Edouard Simon does not suspect that the Empire in
partibus groaned under a pentarchy, but rather imagines, ‘as a Frenchman’, that the Three Wise Men
of Cologne [57] corresponded, for simple reasons of symmetry, to three Parliamentary Imperial
Regents in Stuttgart. ‘Friend’ Vogt’s jokes in the Magnum Opus ‘often’ go ‘too far for French taste’.
[58] The Frenchman Edouard will give him a hand and ‘make an effort to choose’. [59] ‘Friend’ Vogt
has a native love of ‘glaring colours’, and ‘is not exactly a gourmet in the matter of language’. [60]

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But of course! ‘Friend’ Vogt is only an annexed German in the same way that Da -Da is an annexed
Arab, while Edouard Simon is a ‘good Frenchman’ by birth and a ‘Latin’ by race. Did Herr Orges and
Herr Dietzel ever go so far in their slanders on the ‘Latin race’?
Monsieur Edouard Simon amuses his superiors by exhibiting one  of the ‘Three’ Holy German Rump
Wise Men, and what is more by arrangement and in agreement with that Holy German Three Rump
Wise Man, to the Parisian public as a voluntary prisoner behind the triumphal chariot of the imperial
Quasimodo. One can see, says Edouard Simon, from a quotation from Vogt’s Magnum Opus:
One can see that Herr Vogt was not fussy about where the help for German unity came
from, just as long as it came. The French Empire, even, seemed to him to be
particularly suited to hastening the outcome he desired. Perhaps in that Herr Vogt
was trading in cheaply on his antecedents, and it must have appeared strange to his old
colleagues who sat with him on the extreme left of the Frankfurt Parliament to see this
ardent opponent of any concentration of power, this fervent zealot of anarchy, show
such lively sympathy for the sovereign who has defeated it in France.
Edouard transfers the ‘Runaway Regent’ from the un-‘decided’ Left at the Frankfurt Parliament to the
extreme Left. The man who voted for ‘the hereditary Emperor’ is turned into ‘an ardent opponent of
any concentration of power’, and the member of the Central March Association who preached ‘order’
at any price to the colourful mixture of drinking parties in Frankfurt becomes a ‘fervent z ealot of
anarchy’. All this in order to throw into proper relief what a catch 10 December has made in the
‘Runaway Regent’. All the dearer then are those ‘such lively sympathies’ that Vogt ‘cherishes for the
man who has defeated anarchy in France’, all the more valuable does his present recognition become
‘that the French Empire is particularly suited to bringing about German unity ’, and all the more
understandable is ‘friend’ Simon’s broad hint that ‘friend’ Vogt ‘perhaps sold his antecedents cheaply’
(de bon marché), and that in any case the man of December did not obtain them ‘ at too high a price’.
In order to leave not the slightest doubt in high places that ‘friend’ Vogt is now just as reliable as
‘friend’ Simon, Monsieur Edouard Simon recounts, smirking and rubbing his hands and winking with
his left eye, that in his longing for order Vogt ‘even, if I understood Herr Vogt correctly, attracted the
attention of the authorities in Geneva to revolutionary activities’
[62] in just the same way that
Monsieur Edouard Simon attracts the attention’ of Messieurs Palestrina and La Guéronnière.
It is generally known that About and Jourdan and Granier de Cassagnac and Boniface and Dr
Hoffmann, that the monks of the Espérance , the knights of the Nationalités , the wind- bags of the
Opinion Nationale , the penny -a-liners of the Indépendance, the Morning Chronicle , [63] the
Nouvelliste Vaudois, etc, the La Guéronnières and the Simons, stylists, civilisationists, Decembrists,
Dentuists and dentists all, together and severally, draw their inspiration from one and the same
sublime — cash box. Now we do not find Da-Da Vogt as an isolated partisan fighting off his own bat,
but subsidised, indoctrinated, regimented, rascalised, associated w ith Simon and appropriated by
Plon-Plon, bound up with them and strung up with them. The question remains: is Karl Vogt paid to
be an agent?
If I am not mistaken, bribery is equivalent to using money and other advantages to
move somebody to do and say things that are against his convictions. (Magnum Opus,
p 217)
And Vogt is a convinced Plon-Plonist. So even if he is paid in cash he is in no way bribed. But there
must be more ways of paying people than there are of minting coins.
Who knows whether Plon- Plon has not promised his Falstaff the post of Commander of the Mouse
Tower [64] in the Rhine at Bingen? Or his nomination as corresponding member of the Institut, since
About in his La Prusse en 1860 already has French naturalists fighting for the honour of
corresponding simultaneously with the living Vogt and the dead Dieffenbach. Or is there a prospect of
his restoration as Imperial Regent?
In any case, rumour has it, I know that there is a more prosaic explanation of things. Thus ‘with the
turn in the situat ion since 1859’ there is said to have been a turn in the conditions of the ‘jolly
companion’ (who had, a short time previously, been joint chief of a joint stock company in great
difficulties and involved in criminal investigations), which anxious friends tried to explain away by
saying that an Italian mining company had presented Vogt with quite a large number of shares in

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recognition of his ‘mineralogical’ merits, and that he turned them into cash during his first visit to
Paris. Experts who are completely unknown to one another have written to me almost simultaneously
from Switzerland and France that the ‘jolly companion’ was responsible, and paid a certain income,
for the supervision of the estate of ‘La Bergerie’ near Nyon (in the Vaud), the dower house bought by
Plon-Plon for the Iphigenia [65] of Turin. Indeed, I know of a letter in which a ‘New Swiss’ who was
in Vogt’s confidence long after the ‘turn of 1859’ at the beginning of 1860 specifies to a Mr PBB of
78 Fenchurch Street, London, a very large sum which his ex-friend is supposed to have received from
the central cash-box in Paris, not as a bribe, but as an advance payment.
Such things and worse have reached our ears in London, but for my part I do not give a straw for
them. I would much rather believe Vogt’s word when he says:
That where I [Vogt] get my means from is nobody’s business. I shall also in future
continue to attempt to obtain the means that are necessary to achieve my political
aims, and I shall continue to take them, conscious of my good cause, from wherever I
can get them. (Magnum Opus, p 226)
That is to say, from the central cash box in Paris.
Political aims!
Nugaris, cum tibi, Calve
Pinguis aqualiculus propenso sesquipede extet.
You trifle, Calvus,
Your fat belly out a foot and a half.
Good cause! This must be the German idealist expression for what the crude materialist Englishman
calls ‘the good things of this world’.
Whatever Dr Schaible thinks of it, why should we not take Vogt at his word when he says in that very
same Magnum Opus, at the end of the tall stories about the Brimstone Gang, etc, with just as much
ceremony:
Herewith closes this section of a part of contemporary history. These are no empty
dreams that I present here; they are pure facts! (Magnum Opus, p 182)
Why should not his agency be just as pure as the facts he recounts in the Magnum Opus?
For my part, I am firmly convinced that, unlike all the other scribbling, agitating, politicking, plotting,
propagandising, boasting, plon- plonising, conspiring and self -compromising members of the
December Gang, only Vogt , he exclusively and alone, conceives of his Emperor as ‘l’homme qu’on
aime pour lui-même’.
‘Swerz nicht geloubt, der sündet’, as Wolfram von Eschenbach says, or ‘if you don’t believe it, you
are mistaken’, as it goes in the modern song.
Notes
1 ‘So must they all squabble / In such times of fear / had to depart from here /… the Vogt
of Berne.’
In his Iwein, Hartmann has the Vogt, no doubt in reference to his difference of opinion
with the burghers of Berne, say on the contrary: ‘Von Bêrn mac wol heizen ich, wand ich
dâ nîht ze schaffen hân.’ (‘I can say I come from Berne, / Although I have no business
there.’)
Do not confuse this Hartmann however with Vogt’s friend, the lyrical parliamentary
mollusc of the same name. [Marx’s note]
The motto for this chapter Marx took from Die Klage (The Complaint), an anonymous
twelfth-century poem.
2 Without qualification.
3 Kaiserchronik —  a twelfth-century poem which deals with the history — in a more or
less legendary form — of the Roman and German Emperors from the time of Caesar up
to the twelfth century.

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4 Le Siècle — a Paris newspaper which appeared during 1836–39; represented a
moderate republican line.
5 Le Constitutionnel — in 1848 represented the views of the counter-revolutionary
royalist bourgeoisie; later became a Bonapartist paper. The names — Granier de
Cassaignac, etc — refer to journalists working for these two papers. See Chapter I, note
27.
6 ‘The boy sat by the spring’ (or source) — from a poem by Schiller.
7 August Brass — a journalist who took part in the German revolution of 1848 –49;
emigrated to Switzerland where he became editor of the Neue Schweizer Zeitung; later
became a supporter of Bismarck.
8 Revue de Genève — originally the organ of the radical party, it became a Bonapartist
paper.
9 James Fazy — a Swiss statesman and radical, Prime Minister of the Canton of Geneva;
pursued a pro-Bonapartist policy.
10 Egeria — in Roman legend, the name of a wood-nymph who advised a ruler of
Rome, hence the wise adviser of a prince.
11 Prince Napoleon (Plon-Plon) commanded a division of French troops in the Crimea.
He disapproved of the expedition, had little military skill, was unpopular with the Army,
pretended to be ill and returned to Paris on his own initiative.
12 The Red Prince.
13 György Klapka — an Hungarian general who commanded an Hungarian Army
during the revolution of 1848; emigrated and became connected with Bonapartist circles.
14 As he relates, as early as 1852 Vogt was supposed to enter into a voyage of
exploration (Bacchanals?) with Plon-Plon, whom a ‘Proudhonist’ had enthusiastically
recommended to him for his ‘mais do que promettia a forca humana’ (‘astounding
researches into natural history’). [Marx’s note]
15 Plon-Plon is as sensual as Heliogabalus (a Roman Emperor), as cowardly as Ivan III,
and as false as a true Bonaparte.
16 A man to be taken seriously.
17 Wanting to be a monster doesn’t make you one.
18 A reference to rumours about Napoleon III’s illegitimate birth, his father being
officially the King of Holland, Napoleon’s brother, Louis Bonaparte.
19 The other one is more genuine.
20 Hudibras — a pedantic figure and main character of a satirical epic poem directed
against the Puritans by Samuel Butler (1618–1680).
21 Bas empire — the Byzantine Empire and hence any empire in a state of decline.
22 The original reads: ‘On se partage déjà les places… de la Savoie dans les
antichambres de l’Elysée. Ses journaux plaisantent même assez agréablement là-dessus.’
23 Corybantes — priests of the goddess Cybele, who worshipped her in a wild state of
excitement.
24 The vows of Savoy.
25 The county of Nice.
26 The Nationality of Nice.
27 Winkelried — a legendary popular hero of the war of liberation fought by the Swiss
against the Hapsburgs in the fourteenth century.

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28 Crédit Mobilier — a great French bank which had close links with the government of
Napoleon III; took a large part in building railways in France, Austria, Hungary,
Switzerland, Spain and Russia; went bankrupt in 1867 and went into liquidation in 1871.
29 John Perrier — a Swiss radical politician.
30 Don Giovanni’s man-servant. Fialin, Duc de Persigny, organised the coup d’état of
December 1851.
31 Theodore de Saussure — a Swiss statesmen, writer and artist, leader of the
aristocratic opposition.
32 Jason, the Greek legendary hero, sailed in search of the golden fleece on the Argo;
his journey was called the Argosy and his companions Argonauts.
33 Appolonius — a Greek poet.
34 The consciousness that since the annexation of North Savoy Geneva has become an
enclave surrounded by France, and also the French occupation of the harbour of Thonon,
have, as we know, inflamed the anti-Decembrist mood of the old republic to the highest
degree in recent times. The genuine outbreaks of this popular mood, however, are
accompanied by fake ones, carried out on the orders of Paris and in part by French police
themselves. Thus we read in the Saturday Review, September 1860:
‘A party of self-styled Swiss were giving vent to gross insults against the Empire at
Thonon, when a blundering gendarme, in an excess of official zeal, seized them, and
insisted on looking at their passports. They turned out to be Frenchmen, with papers
perfectly en règle… The gravest fact relating to these artificial collisions is that in one of
the earliest and the worst of them, a close adherent of Mr Fazy [friend Perrier] was
prominently implicated.’
35 Helvetia — a Swiss student union which opposed Bona parte’s plans to annex Savoy
to France.
36 Leonidas, King of Sparta, was the hero of the defence of the pass of Thermopylae
against the invading Persian army of Xerxes in 480 BC.
37 Ulrich, Duke of Wüttemburg attempted to use the peasant movement of 1525, which
had a shoe (Bundschuh) as its badge, in order to return to power after banishment.
38 Espérance — a Bonapartist paper published in Geneva.
39 The original reads:
‘Si la seule expérience des patriotes allemands est fondée sur une guerre avec la France,
quelle raison peuvent-ils avoir de chercher à affaiblir le gouvernement de ce pays et
l’empêcher de former see frontières naturelles? Serait-il que le peuple en Allemagne est
loin de partager cette haine de la France? Quoi qu’il en soit, il y a des patriotes allemands
très sincères, et notamment entre les démocrates les plus avancés, qui ne voient pas
grand malheur dans la perte de la rive gauche du Rhin, qui sont, au contraire, convaincus
que c’est après cette perte seulement que commencera la vie politique d’une Allemagne
régenérée, appuyée sur l’alliance et se confondant avec la civilisation de l’Occident
européen.’ — Espérance, 25 March 1860.
40 To take Savoy… that is, we shut the door behind us.
41 Then we should have to attend to our security, take the left bank of the Rhine, that is,
shut the door behind us.
42 Indépendence Belge — a Belgian liberal paper.
43 Edouard Simon — a French journalist born in Berlin who was a Bonapartist spy.
44 La Revue des Deux Mondes, which still appears, is a French literary and political
journal.

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45 Short title for Journal des débats politiques et littéraires founded in Paris in 1789. In
the 1848 revolution it represented the views of the reactionary ‘party of order’; after
Bonaparte’s coup d’état of 1851 it represented the moderate Orleanist opposition.
46 The fusionists wished to achieve an alliance between the Legitimists, who supported
the elder branch of the French dynasty, the Bourbons, with the Orleanists, who supported
the younger branch.
47 The Collège de France, founded in Paris in 1530, is one of the oldest scientific
institutions. The French Institute is the highest scientific and artistic institution in France;
the Académie Française forms part of it.
48 It’s well proved.
49 The Club in the Rue de Poitiers was the leading organ of the ‘party of order’, a
coalition of the two monarchist factions; from 1849 to December 1851 and the coup
d’état it played a leading role in the legislative assembly of the Second Republic.
50 Savoy and the County of Nice having been annexed to France, the natural
consequence is the aggrandisement of the Fatherland.
51 What is the Fatherland?
52 Journal du soir — an evening paper.
53 The smell of a place of ill-repute.
54 Through the intervention of the gentle Cunégonde, some Vogt material was helped
into a hole-in-the corner rag in my home town of Trier. Here, among other things, there
is talk of my ‘carnal involvement’ with the Allgemeine. What an association of ideas for
the chaste Cunégonde! Very shocking, indeed! [Marx’s note]
55 Dante, Divina Commedia: Inferno Canto XI.
56 ‘Il fut un des trois régents de l’empire éphémère.’ — Revue contemporaine, 15
February 1860, p 518.
57 The relics of the Three Wise Men are supposed to be preserved in the Chapel of the
Three Kings in Cologne Cathedral.
58 ‘Il dépasserait le but au goût des Français.’ — Revue contemporaine, 15 February
1860, p 519.
59 ‘Nous efforcerons de choisir.’ — Revue contemporaine, 15 February 1860, p 519.
60 ‘M Vogt aime les couleurs tranchantes, et il n’est pas précisément un gourmet en
matière de language.’ — Revue contemporaine , 15 February 1860, p 530.
61 The original reads:
‘On le voit, M Vogt se souciait peu d’où vint le secours en faveur de l’unité allemande,
pourvu qu’il vînt; l’empire français lui semblait même singulièrement propre à hâter le
dénoûement qu’il désire. Peut-être en cela M Vogt faisait-il bon marché de ses
antécédents, et il dut paraître étrange, à ses anciens collègues qui siégaient avec lui à
l’extrème gauche dans le Parlement de Francfort, de voir ce fougueux antagoniste de tout
pouvoir unique, ce fervent zélateur de l’anarchie manifester de si vives sympathies
envers le souverain qui l’a vaincue en France.’ — Revue contemporaine , 15 February
1860, p 518.
62 ‘Si nous aeons bien ces menées.’ — Revue contemporaine, 15 February 1860, p 529.
63 A London bourgeois newspaper which appeared from 1769 to 1862.
64 Stands on a rock in the Rhine at Bingen; so called because Bishop Hatto of Mainz
(tenth century) is supposed to have hidden himself there after causing starving people to
be burned and to have been eaten by the mice.

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65 Iphigenia, a Greek princess, daughter of Agamemnon, who was to be sacrificed to
appease the wrath of the gods. Here a reference to Clotilde, daughter of the King of
Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel, and wife of Prince Napoleon.
66 The man who is loved for himself.

###

Chapter X: Patrons and Accomplices
Principibus placuisse viris non ultima laus est. [1]
Bail for the ex-Reichsvogt’s good behaviour is stood by:
Kossuth, [and] those two other men, Fazy, the regenerator of Geneva, and Klapka, the
defender of Komorn, ‘whom he’ proudly calls his friends. (Magnum Opus, p 213)
I call them his patrons.
After the battle of Komorn (2 July 1849), Görgey usurped the supreme command of the Hungarian
army against the orders of the Hungarian government, which had deposed him.
Had the government been headed by an energetic man [says Colonel Lapinski, who
was still, in his book, a supporter of Kossuth] then even at that time an end could have
been put to all Görgey’s intrigues. Kossuth only needed to come into the camp and say
20 words to the Army, and all of Görgey’s popularity could not have prevented his
overthrow… But Kossuth did not co me, he did not have the strength to come out
openly against Görgey, and while in secret he intrigued against the General, he tried
to justify his activities to the world. (Th Lapinski, Feldzug der ungarischen
Hauptarmee, pp 125–26)
Görgey’s intended treachery was, by his own admission, formally denounced to Kossuth some time
later by General Guyon. (See David Urquhart, Visit to the Hungarian Exiles at Kutayah.)
It is true that Kossuth said in a fine speech at Szagedin that if he knew of a traitor he
would murder him with his own hands, and in saying so he was probably thinking of
Görgey. But not only did he fail to carry out this somewhat theatrical threat, he did not
even name the man he suspected to any of his ministers; and while he concocted
wretched plans against Görgey with a few people, he… always spoke of him with the
greatest respect, and indeed wrote him the most affectionate letters. Let him who can
understand, for I cannot, how, having seen the only salvation of one’s fatherland in the
overthrow of a dangerous man, one can try half-heartedly to bring him down and at the
same time support him and afford him respect and a following by showing confidence
in him, thus putting all power in his hands. While Kossuth worked now against
Görgey and now for him in this deplorable way…  Görgey, firmer and more consistent
than the other, carried out his black plan. (Lapinski, Feldzug der ungarischen
Hauptarmee, pp 163–64)
On 11 August 1849, Kossuth issued, on Görgey’s orders and allegedly from the Fortress of Arad, a
public manifesto of abdication, in which he invested Görgey ‘with supreme civil and military
government authority’ and declared:
After the unlucky struggles which God in recent days has visited upon the nation,
there is no longer any hope that we can continue the struggle for self-defence any
further against the two great powers… with any prospect of success.
Having started the Manifesto by declaring that the Hungarian cause is irretrievably lost, and moreover
as a result of a visitation of God , Kossuth goes on to make Görgey ‘responsible before God for the
fact that he will use’ the power entrusted to him by Kossuth ‘for the salvation’ of Hungary. He trusts
Görgey enough to yield all of Hungary to him, but too little to yield his own person to him. His

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personal distrust of Görgey was so great that he skilfully caused the arrival of his person on Turkish
soil to coincide with that of his act of abdication in Görgey’s hands. That is also why the Manifesto
closes with the words: ‘If my death can be of any use at all to the Fatherland, I shall gladly sacrifice
my life.’
What he had sacrificed to Görgey on the altar of the Fatherland was t he government, the title to
which, however, he immediately usurped once more under Turkish protection.
At Kutayah HE the Governor in partibus  [2] received the first Blue Book  on the Hungarian
catastrophe that Palmerston placed before the British parliament . The study of these diplomatic
documents, he wrote to David Urquhart, convinced him that ‘Russia possesses a spy, indeed, an agent
in every cabinet’ and that Palmerston had betrayed dear Hungary in the interests of Russia . And the
first public words that he let fall after landing on British soil in Southampton were: ‘Palmerston, the
dear friend of my bosom!’ [3]
When his internment in Turkey had been lifted, Kossuth sailed to Britain. En route in Marseilles,
where he could not, however, land, he issued a m anifesto in the sense and in the phraseology of the
French social democracy. On British soil he immediately denied:
… that novel doctrine , social democracy, which rightly or wrongly is held to be
incompatible with social order and the security of property. Hungary neither has nor
wishes to have anything to do with these doctrines, if only for the extremely simple
reason that in Hungary there is no opportunity nor even the slightest inducement for
them to be introduced. [Compare with this the letter from Marseilles.]
During the first 14 days of his stay in Britain he changed his creed as often as he changed his audience
— all things to all men. Count Kasimir Batthyany explained the reasons for his open breach at that
time with Kossuth: [4]
It is not just the bévues [5] that Kossuth has committed in the first two weeks since his
release that have induced me to take this step, but all my experience of him,
everything I have seen, suffered, allowed, endured, and, as you will recall, disguised
and concealed, at first in Hungary and then in exile — in short it is a matter of the
opinion I have formed about the man… Permit me to remark that whatever Mr
Kossuth has said or may say in Southampton, Wisbech or London, in England, in
short, cannot undo what he said in Marseilles. In the land of the ‘young giant’
(America) he will again sing a different tune, for just as he is unscrupulous in other
matters and bends like a reed beneath any gust of wind, so too does he gainsay his own
words sans gene,
[6] and does not hesitate to hide behind the great names of men now
dead whom he has ruined, such as my poor cousin, Louis Batthyany… I do not
hesitate to declare that before Kossuth leaves England you will have good reason to
regret the honours you have squandered on a most undeserving heart. (Letter of Count
Batthyany to Mr Urquhart, Paris, 29 October 1851, Correspondence of Kossuth)
Kossuth’s guest appearance in the United States, where he came out against slavery in the North and
in favour of it in the South, left nothing behind but gigantic disappointment and the corpses of 300
speeches. Quickly passing over this peculiar episode, I should only like to observe that he glowingly
recommended to the Germans in the United States, and particularly to the German exiles, an alliance
between Germany, Italy and Hungary to the exclusion of France (not just of the coup d’état
government, but of France, even of the French exiles and the parties they represented in France).
Immediately after his return he tried, from London, to forge an alliance with Louis Bonaparte through
a certain dubious subject, Count Szirmay, and Colonel Kiss in Paris. (See my letter to the New York
Tribune of 28 September 1859, and my statement in the same of 16 November 1852.)
During the Mazzinist mutiny in Milan in 1853 [7] there appeared on the walls of that town a
proclamation to the Hungarian troops stationed there calling on them to join up with the Italian
insurgents. It was signed: Louis Kossuth . Scarcely had the news of the defeat of the insurrection
reached London when Kossuth in great haste declared in the pages of The Times  and other British
papers that the proclamation was a forgery, and thus gave a public dementi to his friend Mazzini.
Nevertheless the proclamation was genuine . Mazzini received it from Kossuth, possessed the

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manuscript of the same in Kossuth’s writing, and acted with Kossuth’s agreement. Convinced that the
overthrow of the Austrian despotism in Italy demanded joint action by Italy and Hungary, Mazzini
first of all tried to replace Kossuth with a more reliable Hungarian leader, but, when this failed
because of the splits among the Hungarian exiles, he forgave his uncertain ally and generously spared
him the exposure that would have destroyed him in Britain.
As we know, the opening of the Russian–Turkish War fell in the same year of 1853. On 17 December
1850, Kossuth had written to David Urquhart from Kutayah:
Take away the Turkish supremacy from Turkey and it will cease to be. And after all,
as matters stand, Turkey is indispensably necessary to the freedom of the world.
His enthusiasm for Turkey was intensified in a letter of 15 February 1851 to the Grand Visier
Reschid-Pasha. In flowery language he offered his services to the Turkish government. During his
tour of the United States, on 22 January 1852, he wrote to David Urquhart:
Would you feel inclined, knowing how much the interests of Hungary and Turkey
were identical, to plead my cause at Constantinople? The Porte did not know who I am
when I was there. My reception in England and America, and the position in which the
chances of fortune, and I may say Providence, have placed me, could show the Porte
that I am a true friend, and perhaps a not uninfluential one, of Turkey and her future.
On 5 November 1853, he offered Mr Crawshay (Urquhartite) in writing to go to Constantinople as an
ally of Turkey, ‘but not with empty hands’ and he therefore begged Mr Crawshay to get hold of some
money ‘… by private applications addressed confidentially to such liberal me n as might well afford
the assistance he required’.
In this letter he says: ‘I hate and despise the artifice of making revolutions.’ While he thus flowed
over with hatred of revolutions and love of Turkey as far as the Urquhartites were concerned, he
issued, together with Mazzini, manifestos proclaiming that the Turks should be driven out of Europe
and that Turkey should be transformed into ‘the Switzerland of the East’, and equally signed the
appeals for revolution in general of the so-called Central Committee of European Democracy.
Since Kossuth had already, by the end of 1853, squandered to no purpose the money he had drummed
up in 1852 in the United States, and since, on the other hand, Mr Crawshay turned a deaf ear to his
entreaties, he forwent his intended knight -errantry in Constantinople and sent instead his agent,
Colonel Johann Bangya, with the warmest recommendations. [9]
On 20 January 1858, a court-martial sitting at Aderbi, in Circassia, unanimously sentenced ‘Mehemed
Bey, formerly Johann Bangya d’Illosfalva, found guilty on his own admission and evidence of high
treason and secret correspondence with the enemy’ (the Russian General Philippson) to death, which
has not, however, prevented him from living on happily in Constantinople to this mom ent. In his
written confession handed in to the court-martial Bangya says, among other things:
My political activity was completely and utterly on the instructions of the chief of my
country, Louis Kossuth…  Provided with letters of introduction from my political chief,
I reached Constantinople on 22 December 1853.
He then became, as he goes on to say, a Moslem, and entered the Turkish service with the rank of
Colonel:
My instructions [from Kossuth] urgently recommended me to attach myself by one
means or another to such troop units as were charged with operations on the Circassian
coast.
There he was to attempt to prevent any participation by the Circassians in the war against Russia. He
carried his task out successfully, and at the end of the war he sent fr om Constantinople a ‘detailed
report on the position in Circassia to Kossuth’. Before his second expedition to Circassia, undertaken
in conjunction with the Poles, he received orders from Kossuth to work with certain specified
Hungarians, among others General Stein (Ferhad Pasha).
Captain Frankini [he says], the Russian Envoy’s military secretary, was present at
various of our conferences. The purpose was to win Circassia for Russian interests in a
peaceful, slow but sure manner. Before the expedition left Constantinople [mid-

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February 1857], I received letters and instructions from Kossuth approving of my plan
of operation.
In Circassia, Bangya’s treachery was discovered by the capture of a letter to the Russian general
Philippson.
According to my instructions [says Bangya], I had to enter into communications with
the Russian General. For a long time I could not make up my mind to take this step,
but in the end I received such explicit orders that I could hesitate no longer.
The proceedings at the court -martial in Aderbi, and especially Bangya’ s confession, aroused a great
sensation in Constantinople, London and New York. Kossuth was repeatedly and urgently, and also
on the part of Hungarians, called upon to make a statement, but in vain. To this day he has maintained
a fearful silence on Bangya’s mission in Circassia.
In the autumn of 1858, Kossuth went round England and Scotland hawking low -priced lectures
against the Austrian concordat [10] and Louis Bonaparte. The passionate fanaticism with which he at
that time warned the British against the treacherous intentions of Louis Bonaparte, whom he described
as a secret ally of Russia, can be seen, for example, in the Glasgow Sentinel , 20 November 1858.
When, at the beginning of 1859, Louis Bonaparte revealed his plans for Italy, Kossuth denounced him
in Mazzini’s Pensiero ed Azione, and warned ‘all true republicans’, Italians, Hungarians, even
Germans, not to let themselves be used as the catspaws of the imperialist Quasimodo. In February
1859, Kossuth ascertained that Colonel Kiss, Count Teleki and General Klapka, who had already long
belonged to the red camarilla of the Palais Royal, were, with Plon -Plon, hatching plans for a
conspiracy to raise a revolt in Hungary. Kossuth now threatened a public polemic in the British press
if they would not allow him in to the ‘secret society’. Plon- Plon was more than ready to open the
doors of the conclave to him. With a British passport under the name of Mr Brown, Kossuth travelled
to Paris at the beginning of May, rushed t o the Palais Royal and set forth his plans for raising a revolt
at great length to Plon -Plon. On the evening of 3 May, the Prince Rouge accompanied the ex-
Governor in a coach to the Tuileries in order to present him there to the Saviour of Society. During
this meeting with Louis Bonaparte, his tongue, usually so eloquent, failed him, so that Plon- Plon had
to play the spokesman and as it were fetch Kossuth’s programme to his cousin like a gun -dog.
Kossuth was afterwards full of praise for the literal accuracy of Plon-Plon’s translation. After listening
carefully to his cousin’s exposition, Louis Bonaparte declared that there was only one obstacle in the
way of accepting Kossuth’s proposals, and that was Kossuth’s republican principles and his
republican connections. The ex-Governor thereupon most ceremoniously abjured the republican faith
with the assurance that he was neither a republican now, nor had he ever been one, that political
necessity alone, and a peculiar concatenation of circumstances had forced hi m into alliance with the
republican party among the European exiles. As proof of his anti -republicanism he offered Plon-Plon
the Hungarian crown on behalf of his country. The question of this crown had not yet been settled at
that time. Nor did Kossuth pos sess the power of attorney to auction it, but whoever has followed his
performance abroad with any attention will also know that he has long since been accustomed to talk
of his ‘dear Hungary’ in the same way that a Prussian cabbage-Junker speaks of his country estate.
I believe that his denial of republicanism was sincere. The civil list of 300,000 florins to which he laid
claim in Pest to maintain the lustre of the Executive; the patronage of the hospitals which an Austrian
Arch-Duchess transferred to his sister; the attempt to christen a regiment ‘Kossuth’; his efforts to form
a camarilla; the persistence with which he clung on while abroad to the title of Governor which he had
renounced in the hour of danger; his whole performance later, which was much m ore that of a
President than that of a refugee — all that points to tendencies that are alien to republicanism.
After the clearing -of-suspicion-of-republicanism scene, three million francs were, according to
contract, placed at Mr Kossuth’s disposal. There  was nothing objectionable in this stipulation in and
of itself, for the military organisation of the Hungarian exiles required financial means. And why
should the Governor not receive subsidies from his new allies by the same right that every despotic
power in Europe received subsidies from Britain for the whole duration of the Anti -Jacobin War?
Kossuth immediately received an advance payment of 50,000 francs and in addition negotiated
himself certain pecuniary advantages, as it were, an insurance premium against a premature ending of
the war. An eye for finance and melodramatic sensibility are by no means mutually exclusive… Did

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Kossuth not, after all, as his ex-Minister of Finance Dušek must know, take the elementary precaution
even during the Hungarian r evolution of having his salary paid, not in Kossuth notes, but in silver or
Austrian banknotes?
Before Kossuth left the Tuileries it was agreed that he was to neutralise the allegedly ‘pro -Austrian
tendencies’ of the Derby ministry by opening a neutrality campaign in Britain. We already know how
the ready support of the Whigs and the Manchester School enabled him to fulfil this preliminary part
of the contract with the greatest success. A lecture tour from the Mansion House to the Free Trade
Hall in Manchester formed the antithesis of the Anglo-Scottish tour of 1858, when he had hawked his
hatred of Bonaparte and Cherbourg, ‘the standing menace to England’, at a shilling a head.
The greater part of the Hungarian exiles had drawn back from Kossuth after the end of 1852. The
prospect of an invasion of the Adriatic coast with French help brought the majority back under his
flag. His dealings with the military portion of these newly -won supporters were not without their
Bonapartist flavour. So as to be able to al lot them a larger amount of French money, he promoted
them to higher military ranks — Lieutenants, for example, to the rank of Major. First of all, everyone
received his travelling expenses to Turin, then an opulent uniform (the price of a Major’s uniform
came to £150 sterling), and finally six months’ pay in advance and the promise of a pension for one
year following the conclusion of peace. In other respects, the pay was not excessive, 10,000 francs for
the Senior General (Klapka), 5000 for the Brigadiers, 4000 for Lieutenant-Colonels, 3000 for Majors,
etc. The Hungarian military forces gathered in Turin consisted almost exclusively of officers without
private soldiers, and I have heard many bitter complaints on this score from the ‘lower orders’ among
the Hungarian exiles.
As we have already said, General Moritz Perczel made a public statement and withdrew as soon as he
had seen through the diplomatic game. Klapka insisted, despite Louis Bonaparte’s orders to the
contrary, on a landing near Fiume, but Koss uth kept the Hungarian refugee corps within the scenic
boundaries prescribed by the theatre director.
Scarcely had the rumour of the conclusion of the Treaty of Villafranca reached Turin, when Kossuth,
fearful of being handed over to Austria, ran away head over heels to Geneva, secretly, behind the
backs of the military forces at his disposal. No name, neither Francis Joseph nor Louis Bonaparte, had
a more unpleasant sound in the Hungarian camp in Turin at the time than the name of Louis Kossuth,
except that the comedy of his latest escapade to a certain extent silenced criticism. After his return,
Kossuth published in London a letter to his tame elephant, a certain MacAdam in Glasgow, declaring
himself to be disappointed but not beaten and closing with the moving flourish that he had nowhere to
lay down his head, for which reason all letters to him were to be addressed to the residence of his
friend F Pulszki, who had offered asylum to the refugee. The less than Anglo- Saxon courtesy with
which the London press told Kossuth that he should at least have the goodness to rent his own house
in London with the Bonapartist subsidies convinced him that for the time being his role in Britain had
been played out.
Beside his talent as an orator, Kossuth possesses the gr eat talent of falling silent when his audience
shows decided disfavour or when he does not actually know what to say for himself. Like the sun, he
is an expert at eclipses. The fact that he has been able to act consistently at least once in his life was
proved by his recent letter to Garibaldi warning him against an attack on Rome so as not to annoy ‘the
sole support of the oppressed nationalities’, the Emperor of the French.
Just as Alberoni, in the first half of the eighteenth century, was called the colo ssal Cardinal, so
Kossuth can be called a colossal Langenschwarz .
[11] He is essentially the improviser who receives
his impressions from his audience at any given time, not the author who imprints his original ideas
upon the world. Just as Blondin balance s on his tightrope, so Kossuth balances on his tongue.
Separated from the atmosphere of his people, he had to degenerate into mere virtuosity and all the
vices of virtuosity. The instability of thought characteristic of the improviser is necessarily reflected in
the ambiguity of his actions. If Kossuth was once the Aeolian harp through which the popular
hurricane roared, he is now the ear of Dionysius amplifying to a murmur the whispering in the secret
chambers of the Palais Royal.
It would be absolutely un just to put Vogt’s second patron, General Klapka, on the same level as
Kossuth. Klapka was one of the best Generals of the Hungarian revolution. Like most of the officers

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who, in 1859, gathered in Turin, he regards Louis Bonaparte in more or less the same way that
Ferencz Rákóczi [12] regarded Louis XIV. [13] To them, Louis Bonaparte represents the military
might of France, which can serve Hungary but which, for geographical if for no other reasons, can
never endanger her. But why does Vogt refer to Klapka?  Klapka has never denied that he belongs to
Plon-Plon’s red camarilla. So that ‘friend’ Klapka can vouch for ‘friend’ Vogt? Klapka does not show
any special talent for choosing friends. One of his most favoured friends in Komorn was Colonel
Assermann. Let us hear what Colonel Lapinski, who served under Klapka until the surrender of
Komorn and who later distinguished himself in Circassia by his fight against the Russians, has to say
about this Colonel Assermann.
The treachery at Vilàgos [says Lapinski] [14] aroused the greatest terror among the
numerous and unoccupied staff-officers to be found in Komorn… The perfumed
gentlemen with gold collars, many of whom knew neither how to use a rifle nor even
how to command three men, milled about in fear and confusion and considered ways
of getting away in one piece at any price. They who had successfully used all kinds of
excuses to be detached from the main body of the army and withdraw into the snug
security of the impregnable fortress, and whose only occupation was to write a receipt
once a month to draw their full wages, were terrified at the thought of a stand to the
last… It was these wretches that lyingly described to the General phantoms of internal
dissention, mutiny, etc, simply in order to persuade him to surrender the fortress as
quickly as possible… if only they could save themselves and their property. This latter
was particularly close to their hearts; for all their aspirations throughout the revolution
amounted to making themselves rich, which many succeeded in doing. This self-
enrichment was easy for various individuals as six months often passed before money
received was accounted for. Since this favoured disloyalty and fraud, many people
may well have reached deeper into the cash-box than they could properly answer for…
A cease-fire was concluded. How was it now used? Unnecessarily large rations were
taken out to the villages from the supplies in the fortress, which were sufficient for a
year, while, on the other hand, no provisions were brought in from the surrounding
countryside. Even the hay and oats of the peasants in the nearby villages, which they
asked to be bought off them, was left there, and a few weeks later the Cossack horses
were eating the peasants’ property while we in the fortress were complaining of
shortages. The fat stock kept there was, for the most part, sold outside the town on the
pretext that there was not enough forage available. Colonel Assermann probably did
not know that meat can be salted. A large part of the corn there was similarly sold on
the excuse that it was going mouldy. This was happening in public and to an even
greater extent in secret. With a man like Assermann at his side and a few such
individuals in his entourage, Klapka obviously had to drop any good ideas that
occurred to him very quickly; these gentlemen took care of that… (Lapinski, Feldzug
der ungarischen Hauptarmee, pp 202–06)
Görgey’s and Klapka’s political memoirs speak out equally loudly on Klapka’s lack of character and
of political insight. All the mista kes that he committed during the defence of Komorn stemmed from
this lack:
If only Klapka has possessed, for all his knowledge and patriotism, a firm will of his
own, and if only he had acted according to opinions he formed himself and not those
taught him by blockheads and cowards, the defence of Komorn would have shone in
history like a meteor. (Lapinski, Feldzug der ungarischen Hauptarmee, p 209.)
On 3 August, Klapka had won a brilliant victory near Komorn against the Austrian corps encircling
him, had broken through it and rendered it unfit to fight for a long time. He thereupon took Raab, and
could even have taken Vienna without difficulty, but he lingered indecisively and idly in Raab for
eight days and then returned to Komorn, where he found news of G örgey’s capitulation and a letter
from him. The enemy asked for a cease- fire so as to be able to concentrate the Austrians’ shattered
encircling corps and the Russians advancing from Rima Szombat near Komorn and to surround the
fortress at leisure. Instead of attacking the enemy detachments, which were only just starting to draw

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together, individually one after the other, Klapka once more vacillated to and fro indecisively,
refusing however to grant a ceasefire to the Austrian and Russian emissaries. Then, Lapinski relates:
… one of Emperor Nicholas’ Adjutants came to Komorn on 22 August… But, said the
Russian Mephisto in honey-sweet tones: You will surely grant us a cease-fire, sir. His
Most Gracious Majesty the Emperor asks you for it personally! That worked like a
quick-acting poison. What the efforts of the Austrian and the persuasion of the Russian
emissaries had been unable to achieve, this cunning Russian achieved in a few words.
Klapka could not resist the fine compliment and signed a cease-fire for 14 days. From
here dates the fall of Komorn.
The use to which Klapka himself put the cease- fire was, as has already been mentioned, to have his
Colonel Assermann clear the fortress in two weeks of sufficient supplies for a whole year . At the end
of the cease -fire, Grabbe surrounded Komorn on the Waag side while the Austrians, who were
gradually increasing their strength to 40,000 men, camped on the right bank of the Danube. The
garrison of Komorn was demoralised by being cooped up behind its walls and fortif ications. Klapka
did not even make a sortie against the Russian corps surrounding him, which had not yet been in
battle and was only 19,000 strong. The enemy went undisturbed about his work of preparing the siege.
All Klapka’s preparations in fact after accepting the cease- fire were not for defence but for
capitulation. The only energy he was able to develop was of a political nature, that is to say directed
against those brave officers who opposed capitulation. ‘In the end’, says Lapinski, ‘it became
dangerous to say anything about the Austrians unless one wanted to be arrested’.
Finally, on 27 September, the capitulation was signed.
When compared [says Lapinski] with the power, with the desperate position of the
country, which had put its last hope in Komorn, when compared with the position of
relations in Europe and the powerlessness of Austria, who would have suffered grave
losses because of Komorn, the conditions of surrender were as wretched as they
possibly could be.
They ‘just about served to get one hurriedly over the frontier from Komorn’, but did not stipulate the
slightest guarantee either for the Hungarians or for the revolutionary generals in Austrian hands. And
in addition they were worded in such precipitate haste and so unclearly and ambiguous ly that it was
later easy for Haynau to infringe them.
So much for Klapka. If Vogt does not possess any ‘character’, then Klapka is the last person to have
any of that commodity to spare for him.
His third patron is ‘James Fazy, the regenerator of Geneva’, as his court jester, Vogt, calls him. The
following letters from  Johann Philipp Becker ,
[15] sent to the recipient of his letter printed above,
contain a characterisation of Fazy that is too telling to be spoilt by additions. So I shall note only one
thing beforehand. The most nauseating trait of Vogt’s so-called Studien is the simulation of Lutheran,
nay Calvinist horror of the ‘Ultramontane Party’. [16] Thus, for example, he poses Germany with the
absurd alternative of giving Louis Napoleon a free hand or falling under the domination of the
Austrian concordat, and ‘truly, we would prefer to go through a second period of national humiliation’
(Studien, p 52). In the most puritan of nasal tones he raises a hue and cry against the ‘Ultramontane
party, that hereditary enemy that gnaws at the innermost marrow of the whole of mankind, that
horror’ (Studien, p 120).
He has, of course, never heard what even Dupin the elder let slip in the Decembrist Senate, that is to
say that:
… under Louis Bonaparte ’s regime the congregations, associations and foundations of
every kind directly controlled by the Jesuit order have grown to a greater extent than
under the ancien régime,
[17] and that all the state obstacles that even before 1798
limited Ultramontane propaganda have been systematically torn down by the
Decembrist legislature and administration.
But what Vog t does know is that the power of his local Bonaparte, Mr James Fazy , rests on a
coalition of many years’ standing between the so -called radical party and the Ultramontane party.
When the Congress of Vienna incorporated Geneva, the old seat of Calvinism, in to the Swiss

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Confederation, it added to its territory several districts of Savoy with a Catholic rural population and
the cream of the Ultramontane priesthood. It is the alliance with this ‘hereditary enemy of mankind,
this horror’ that has made Fazy the dictator of Geneva and Vogt a member of Fazy’s Ständerat. So
much for the preliminary comment.
Paris
2 July 1860
My friend R—
In the end I must after all comply with your wish and write you my opinion of Mr
James Fazy…
Just as the scientific study of the state is useless without the art of applying it to life, so
statecraft is sterile if it is not based on science and philosophical thought. With science
alone a so-called statesman has no appeal, and he will soon show his lack of ability
clearly. A man of one-sided statecraft, on the other hand, can more easily hide his lack
of knowledge and intellectual productivity, pass as a practical statesman and have the
great market of mediocrity to himself. Whether a people progress in the cultural-
historical sense through the management of such a man, and whether guarantees are
created for further undisturbed development, lies beyond the powers of judgement of a
blindly admiring throng. As long as it has the appearance of making good progress,
and everything happens in the name of freedom and civilisation!
I shall now submit in our Mr James Fazy a splendid example of the species states-
craftsman. This skilful man does not really only pursue one statescraft, but a wide
variety of statescrafts, performs tricks and tours de force as often as the ‘public good’
demands it, but protects himself with his usual cunning from involvement in any really
dangerous acts. Clever at weaving roles behind the scenes, skilled as a director and
prompter, he is the Non plus ultra
[18] of the Gallic actor. His ‘spiritual strength’,
which will not flinch at any means to achieve his ends, would be highly estimable if it
did not proceed from the filth of his ends. When one knows this man’s lack of
character and principles, one is less inclined to admire the subtlety with which he
chooses his means and the skill with which he applies them. Everything good that
happens or is generated in the life of the people he governs is impudently conjured by
this states-craftsman into his own lap and then presented to the great multitude in his
name, so that they think that it was all done by ‘Papa Fazy’, or that it only happened
through him. He is just as skilful at shifting responsibility for what is bad and
unpopular from his own shoulders and pinning it on others. In his governing councils
he will not tolerate any independent character. His colleagues must all let him disclaim
them as and when he sees fit and stand godfather to his failures. Enjoying his
domineering brutality à discrétion, they must always be prepared to act as scapegoats
and whipping-boys for the good of the people and the reputation of the President. Just
as a crowned head, at every political step, however much in the popular interest it may
be, must ask himself, before His Majesty ‘deigns’, whether or not it will harm the
dynasty, so Papa Fazy asks himself in everything he does or does not do: ‘Does it not
undermine my presidency?’ Our hero therefore always directs his policies according to
circumstances and lives from hand to mouth. Today he acts a ghost scene in the
Government Council, tomorrow he does a juggling act in the Grand Council and the
day after he produces some dramatic sound effects at a popular meeting. And the great
crowd, which he skilfully wheedles, is for its part glad to have a God it can see and
hear, honour and revere, and becomes credulous and believes that black is white and
white black. I do not at all mean to say that the people of Geneva are underdeveloped
or unintelligent; on the contrary, I believe that scarcely anywhere is a more active
public life and more powerful intellectual efforts to develop free civic conditions to be
found than on the banks of Lake Geneva. I shall return later to how Mr Fazy has
nevertheless repeatedly been able to secure himself a majority.

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He credits his regime, or has his lackeys and admirers credit it, with everything that
has brought about a lively generation in Geneva in the last 15 years. The levelling of
the fortifications and the expansion and embellishment of the cantonal capital, for
example, are supposed to be his work. And yet any administration, even Mr Fazy’s,
would have been mercilessly thrust aside if it had at all opposed the mighty urge of the
population to pull down the useless fortifications and expand the town, which was
becoming more and more insanitary as a result of the pressure of masses of people.
The question was thus a matter of life and death for Fazy and — to his credit — he
took it in hand energetically and helped to achieve many things to the general
satisfaction. But the individual cannot, without arrogant presumption, push himself
forward as the author and creator of something created by the mighty requirements of
the hour with the powerful collaboration of a generation. Only the whole of society,
and that only relatively, produces a whole, to which each member contributes a greater
or a smaller fraction according to his strength and his position. Blind belief in
authority is a superstition like any other and a hindrance to healthy development.
I know very well that our Mr Fazy is like every other son of man, that he only does
what he cannot omit, and he only omits what he cannot do; that under the pressure of
the absolute stamp of his individuality he — like everything else in the animal world
— strives to satisfy his needs. One could no more expect him to be any different than
one could demand of a cat to enter water voluntarily, or of a horse to climb trees.
Otherwise he would not, after all, be James Fazy, and if he were not Fazy, then
perhaps he would be Louis Bonaparte or something of the sort. If to possess authority
and to keep the people in leading reins, dazzling them with conjuring tricks without
impressing intellectual and moral culture with the stamps of intensive progress, and
only marking the traces of an existence by the corruption of society, is greatness, then
Fazy too is great, and can with good reason be envied by more powerful tyrants.
Our man understands as well as any other how to navigate with contradictions, and the
compass by which he steers his little ship is magically shaped of them. At one point
radicalism supplies the crew and Ultramontanism the cargo, at another vice-versa, just
as it suits the helmsman. Thus the state machine is constantly in motion, always going
to and fro like the action of a watch. Happy outcome! The radicals swear that things
are going forwards and the Ultramontanists believe they are going backwards. Both
are correct, both are happy in their belief, and Fazy remains Lord God at the helm.
Now, dear friend, make do with these lines for the while.
Hearty greetings meanwhile.
Your Joh Philipp Becker
Paris
20 July 1860
Dear R—
So you think I may have laid the colours on too thick in the portrait of Fazy. Not at all,
my dear friend! Anyway, a man cannot think about and judge things and people as he
wishes, but as he logically must according to his perceptions and inner experience.
Whoever says other than what he thinks in these matters, and acts differently from
what he says, is untrue to himself and a scoundrel.
Fazy, who received his first education at a Moravian institute in Neuwied and speaks
good German, seems even today, a 65-year-old man, to judge Germany and her people
according to the impressions of that model institution. Nothing German, be it only
from German Switzerland, is to his taste, and only finds favour with him in rare
exceptions. As a born Genevan and through his long stay in the free states of North
America, he became intimately acquainted with republican institutions, methods of
agitation and particularly his own natural bent for the artifices of intrigue. He is more
of a demagogue than a republican, and his main maxim of state and device, laissez

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aller et laissez faire, would not be so bad if he could stop himself from sticking his
nose in everywhere in society where the attempt is being made to bring something into
being without the blessing of the state, in order either to add credit to his reputation or,
if this cannot be, to undermine the enterprise, as was the case with the Banque de
Crédit et d’Echange planned by Herr Mayer and others and the setting up of a trades
hall. In the Geneva revolution of 1846, Mr James Fazy followed the proposition that
the only old soldiers are the ones who never saw the firing line, and he gave more
consideration to ways of getting away from it than he did to ways of winning. He was
just poised to leave Geneva secretly when Albert Galeer, the heart and soul of the
whole movement, won the indecisive struggle with one last effort, and reported
complete victory to him. Galeer, for whom the cause was everything and personal
fame nothing, and who then at least still believed in Fazy’s sincere love of the people,
was not at all put out to see the hero whom he had saved just in time from precipitate
flight give himself out to be the victor at a popular meeting held immediately after the
victory. It was anyway impossible for Galeer to think at that time of occupying a
position in government circles after the revolution since he was a citizen, not of
Geneva, but of Berne, and therefore could neither vote nor be elected according to the
state of the Federal law of the day. Citizenship was, it is true, soon granted to him, and
he was then elected to the Grand Council as well as obtaining the post of translator of
state documents. As the centre of the active youth of Geneva he became a firm pillar
of the radical regime. Through him Fazy became more and more the popular man of
the great crowd. Fazy agitated in the press and on the rostrum with the phraseology of
French radicalism, which he had absorbed while a correspondent of the Nation in Paris
at the time of Louis Philippe, and with it masked his real thoughts and intentions to his
heart’s content. Despite his demagogic arts, however, he was seriously accused in
various circles before the year was out of having secret relations with leading
Ultramontanists and soon afterwards of being a supporter of the French. In German
Switzerland, where matters are looked at more coolly and judged more calmly, his
intrigues seem to have been seen through early on. Towards the end of 1847, directly
after the end of the ‘Sonderbund’ war, Mr James Fazy came to the offices of the War
Department to visit General Ochsenbein. I was alone, as Ochsenbein and the other
officers were visiting the wounded in the hospitals. When I reported to Ochsenbein on
his return that Mr Fazy had visited him while he was away, he let slip the words, with
an expression of contempt: ‘Oh, the false hypocrite!’ Perhaps General Ochsenbein, the
former Federal President and President of Berne, who has for several years been
enjoying an imperial French pension in Switzerland, now cherishes milder feelings
towards his colleague in office, who is certainly his social equal. One thing that is
striking is that Mr Fazy has never yet been elected from the National Assembly to the
Bundesrat, although he and his friends have made great efforts to that end and despite
the fact that the Assembly has the tendency almost to the point of narrow-mindedness
to rotate representation in the central government between the more important cantons.
He always showed himself refractory towards the central authority, where he himself
was unable to exercise any authority and which limits the sovereignty of the local
cantons which is so convenient for him, and he made difficulties for it wherever he
could.
When, at the beginning of 1849, the Federal Police found it politically expedient to
persecute me because I was organising a Sicilian Legion, I went to Geneva where
Fazy told me I could organise as much as I wanted and did not need to worry about the
Federal Police. I know that Mr Fazy is quite prepared to sacrifice anybody as soon as
he is hard-pressed, even when the law is on his side, as I experienced in a later case
that would take up too much space for a letter and about which the Federal
Commissioners Dr Kern and Mr Trog could tell a tale.
Although in refugee matters he was recalcitrant towards the central authorities’
measures under the pretext of humanity, he persecuted the refugees he personally

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disliked with arbitrary heartlessness. Prominent people close to Galeer, in whom he
suspected a future rival, were in particular subjected to ruthless persecution. Mazzini
had to be more on his guard against him than against the Federal Police. Lofty
Heinzen was anathema to him and had to leave the canton forthwith. ‘He acts as if he
owns the place’, was Fazy’s only, naive, reason. Struve was arrested, without any
initiative from the Bundesrat, while taking a walk with his wife, and taken over the
frontier to the canton of Vaud as a Russian spy. Galeer hurried off in time to see Fazy
and make him remedy his mistake. The discussion became heated, as Fazy thinks he is
all the more credible the louder he shouts and the more he adopts the pose of
indignation. Struve had to remain a Russian spy. If my memory serves me right this
scene took place at the Hotel des Bergues, at the home of the Russian exile, Mr
Herzen, where the President of Geneva liked to dine. In any case, that gentleman had
no part in the allegation against Struve. It is certain that Fazy is a greater Russophile
than Struve, for I once heard him say in a speech at a festival: ‘The works of Jean-
Jacques Rousseau are read more and understood better in Russia than they are in
Germany.’ Admittedly, his main intention in saying that was to strike at Galeer’s
German friends and Germans in general.
Galeer, who previously had gone with Fazy through thick and thin in political
questions, and with whom I spoke immediately after his collision with Fazy about
Struve, told me with a heavy heart: ‘It is all over with Fazy. I cannot honourably
associate with him any longer. The man is a real political monster, he is a pure animal
in his greed; if I stay with him any longer it would mean helping to destroy the cause
of the people from the inside. He is only forced to raise the flag of radicalism to save
his own position when a decisively free-thinking opposition party is put up against
him. As long as he only has the old aristocracy against him, the cause will become
more and more rotten, as he has long been making eyes at the Ultramontanists, and he
can do exactly as he likes. In any case, he is not Swiss in his outlook, and looks to
Paris rather than to Berne. I have long had reason enough to turn away from him, but
the habit I have had for a long time of regarding him as a sound man prevented me
from doing so. Now repeated internal conflicts and today’s open collision have
prevailed upon me to settle accounts with him.’
Around Galeer there rallied all the men of more independent character and particularly
the people of the new school of political economy, and the resolute radical and
socialist elements ‘united’ in this way were soon called the democratic party.
Radicalism only continued, apart from a few exceptions, in conscious or unconscious
servility towards Fazy, who had now found the main support for his majority in the
Catholic areas of Savoy united with Geneva since 1815. The Ultramontane priests who
are all-powerful there entered into the alliance with Fazy’s rump ‘radicalism’. Galeer
was placed under suspicion, persecuted and dismissed from his post in the basest way.
The young democratic party, standing now between the aristocratic party and the
united old radical and Ultramontane parties, could not yet put up an independent list in
the forthcoming elections. And although Mr James Fazy refused to accept any
democratic names in his own list, Galeer and his friends nevertheless decided to spurn
all offers from the aristocratic party and to continue to vote for Fazy’s list, expecting
the future to give them their victory. So if Fazy was sincere about progress and radical
bourgeois development, he did not need to hang on to the wretched coat-tails of the
Ultramontanists, who are always backward-looking. In order to continue persecuting
Galeer and casting suspicion on him with more success, a special scandal sheet was set
up by His Excellency the ‘radical’ President’s satellites, so that their clever lord and
master did not need to sully his Moniteur, the Revue de Genève, with his invective,
with which his whipping-boy’s rag, all knowledge of which he could deny at will, was
all the more richly adorned. Galeer, who was in poor health, succumbed to this
insidious persecution and died during that same year (1852) aged 33. How often did I
hear it said in Geneva: ‘Our good, noble Galeer has fallen victim to the implacable

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revenge of our jesuitical tyrant.’ In the subsequent elections to the government,
Galeer’s friends were all the more eager to enter the connection offered to them by the
aristocratic party for the fact that the latter were content with the overthrow of Fazy
and a very modest share in the administration. The principled Galeer would probably
have rejected this connection too, but all the people in his party said: ‘Why did Mr
Fazy give us the good example of his alliance with the Ultramontanists? Why should
we be ashamed of the respectable coat-tails of the aristocracy when Mr Fazy is not
ashamed of the disreputable ones of the Ultramontanists? Why should we not be able
to make as much progress with the educated aristocracy as Mr Fazy claims to make
with ignorant Ultramontanism?’
So in the elections (I believe it was in November 1853), in which many more radicals,
even colleagues of Fazy’s in the government, went over to the democrats, the hero of
1846 was ejected from the presidency by a large majority. And now the ex-president,
burdened with debts, was in extreme embarrassment. Before I go into this I must say
something very characteristic about his life.
Even before his accession as head of government, Mr James Fazy had squandered a
fair inheritance on pleasure and delight. Up to his ears in debt and pursued by his
creditors, he tried, once he had attained the presidency, to bring about the abolition of
the imprisonment of debtors, ‘in the interests of personal freedom’, of course. Thus a
citizen of Geneva who was plagued by debts could tell me in 1856: ‘It is a good thing
after all to have had as President a debtor who, if he did not abolish the debts, at least
abolished the debtor’s prison.’
At the beginning of the 1850s, however, Mr Fazy came under very heavy material
pressure, so that the ‘grateful people’ had to present him with a big piece of building
land on the area gained by levelling the fortifications. And why not? Did he not help to
liberate this land from the fortifications, and why should he not have part of it
‘annexed’, as even greater potentates make no bones about doing? Mr Fazy could now
sell many big house-sites and build himself a fine big house. Unfortunately, however,
he immediately got deep into debt once more, and was unable to pay the building
workers. Early in 1855, he had to let a master carpenter to whom he owed several
thousand francs shout after him in the street: ‘Pay me, you rascal, so that I can buy
bread for my children.’
It was under these conditions that this hard-pressed man became ex-President and, to
fill his cup to overflowing, he was overtaken by an even more painful embarrassment.
The Caisse d’Escompte, namely, a radical credit institution, had to suspend its
payments. Fazy’s friends in this institution, groaning under a similar burden of debts,
had granted him and themselves credits far beyond their means and in contravention of
the statutes. The manager of the bank, who is still in prison today, had — bad
examples ruin good habits — provided himself with ev en more immoderate credits.
Thus the Caisse d’Escompte was on the eve of a serious event — bankruptcy. The
savings of a hundred provident workers’ families were in danger. Now good advice
and saving deeds were needed if bankrupt Fazyism was not to be scattered like spray
in the wind. There was, of course, no money to be had directly for the Caisse
d’Escompte under such circumstances. But just at that time another credit institution
was labouring through its birth-pangs in Geneva, the Banque Générale Suisse.
Considerable funds had to be obtained for this bank so that in return it could save the
Caisse d’Escompte from the shortage of money and Fazy from the surfeit of debts.
Fazy had to play the saviour in order to be saved himself. Should the move succeed, he
was assured of a worthwhile provision of so many per cent and the Caisse d’Escompte
was assured of the necessary capital aid. For this purpose therefore Mr Fazy went pro
domo and for the Banque Générale Suisse to Paris, where he succeeded, after a stay of
several weeks and — as the saying used to go — with the gracious assistance of the
‘Almighty’ in raising a saving broadside of many millions of francs from the Crédit
Mobilier. Just at that time (November 1855) preparations for fresh government

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elections were taking place, and the Saviour therefore wrote even before his arrival in
Geneva that he would very shortly be bringing this million-strong salvo along himself.
That was balm to the aching hearts of the Caisse d’Escompte shareholders and a
miraculous torch for the Ultramontane–radical voters. A caricature of the day shows a
good likeness of him in the form of a giant swan loaded with money-bags sailing on
the lake into Geneva harbour. One wit told me at the time that at the beer people were
telling him that Fazy had brought back 50 million francs, at the wine 100 million and
at the absinthe 200 million. The reputation of Papa Fazy’s miraculous powers was
completely restored among his children. Deluded into thinking that their victory with
the voters was assured, the democrats made no special efforts. The society of powerful
young men — les fruitiers — that had already been formed some time previously, now
acted entirely as Fazy’s bodyguard, terrorising the elections in the most brutal manner
— and their idol ascended the presidential throne once more.
This time, however, it soon became absolutely clear that the Ultramontanists had not
delivered their massive quota of votes for nothing, but that they too wanted to enjoy
the fruits of victory. The Bishop of Freiburg, Mr de Marilley, an eternal maker and
fomenter of trouble, who had been expelled from Switzerland as a result of the
Sonderbund war, returned to Geneva from France one fine day with the high official
authorisation of Mr Fazy, and began to conduct ‘holy’ masses. A cry of indignation
swept around the town and was immediately echoed all over Switzerland. This sort of
thing was too much, even for the blindest radical, the most devoted fruiterer. A
popular meeting was immediately held, and the President was presented with a vote of
no confidence. His colleague, Government Councillor Tourte, although he was a
protégé and pupil of Fazy, felt a considerable urge towards independence, and
thundered away ruthlessly at his lord and master. But Mr Fazy had already gone away
before the Bishop’s arrival, as he always did when he had cooked his colleagues a
sauce they had to drink on their own. Mr de Marilley had to leave the city and the
country immediately, of course. But Papa Fazy wrote from Berne, taking his unruly
children to task for the time being, saying that he had been misunderstood, that the
government had not done its job well, and that he had only acted ‘in the interests of
religious freedom’, merely allowing the Bishop to come on a visit. When the first
storm died down, Papa Fazy returned, deeply offended. It was now all the easier for
him to restore his injured authority and belief in his pure love of country and freedom
with a few oracular sayings that apply to everything and always appear true, since his
colleagues were so good as to shoulder the main blame themselves. But in this way
Fazy had achieved the fine aim of showing his friends the Ultramontanists that he was
always prepared to do for them — anything in his  power. In the last few years Mr
James Fazy has been a very rich man. Not only is the Banque Générale Suisse
supposed to have assured him a certain percentage for life, but as President he has also
not neglected his own interests in his canton’s railway undertakings, etc. In his fine big
house (Hôtel Fazy on the Quai du Mont Blanc) elegant society revolves around the
Cercle des Etrangers. And since Piedmont has found the ‘gambling hells’ of the
Savoyan spas to be incompatible with her state morals, the sympathetic President of
the Republic of Geneva has been moved to house such a hell as a refugee in his own
spacious halls. Long live freedom! Laissez aller et laissez faire! Allez chez moi et
faites votre jeu!
My dear man, what more can you want?
Your Johann Philipp Becker
From Vogt’s patrons I descend to his accomplices.
Peace and goodwill to this fair meeting,
I come not with hostility but with greeting.
At the head of the procession, of which I shall name only a few of the more prominent figures, we ar e
met by the Berlin National -Zeitung, commanded by Herr F Zabel’s swagger -stick. A comparison of

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the notice of the Magnum Opus , prompted by Vogt himself, by Mr Edouard Simon in the Revue
contemporaine with the corresponding articles in the National-Zeitung, Breslauer Zeitung, etc, would
almost lead us to believe that the ‘rounded character’ issued two programmes, one to prepare the
ground for the Italian campaign and one to prepare the ground for the Augsburg campaign. What in
the world possessed Herr F Zabel of the National -Zeitung, otherwise such a careful and boring tip-
toer and wool-gatherer, to kick over the traces so violently and turn Vogt’s street -corner ballads into
lead articles?
The first detailed consideration of the National -Zeitung is to be found in no 205 of the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung on 26 January 1849, in a leading article beginning with the words ‘ Signpost to
Schilda’. The arms of the signpost are, however, too long to be reprinted here. In a lead article in no
224 of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung on 17 February 1849, one reads:
The Berlin National-Zeitung is the weighty expression of triviality. A few new
samples. The question discussed is the Prussian circular note… Moreover and but!
Can and may and seem! Find and wish that the Prussian government may like! Every
phrase carries a ball and chain around its leg like a convict, and so weighs a
hundredweight. Every ‘if’, every ‘moreover’, every ‘but’ is a veritable Doctor of
Roman and Common Law. And when all this Christian-Teutonic padding, all the
cotton rags with which the National-Zeitung carefully wraps up its wisdom, are just as
carefully unwrapped, what remains? … Hot air, black on white, as a full-dress Berlin
lead article… The National-Zeitung is obviously written for the thinking reader, like
Rotteck’s World History. The French have a splendid formula for this kind of
thinking, whose whole movement is purely verbal. ‘Je n’aime pas les épinards et j’en
suis bien aisé; car si je les aimais, j’en mangerais beaucoup, et je ne peux pas les
souffrir.’ — ‘I do not like eating spinach, and that is a very good thing for if I did like
eating it, I would never be able to eat enough of it, and I cannot stand it.’ … The
National-Zeitung wants what is best for Prussia, and therefore — a different cabinet.
But what it wants at all events is — a cabinet. That, too, is the only thing about which
the patrons of the National-Zeitung are clear among themselves, and on which they
enjoy positive self-assurance.
In no 296 of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung one reads under the dateline:
Berlin, 9 May 1849… It is interesting to observe the attitude of the Berlin press
towards the Saxon revolution. The National-Zeitung feels only one thing —  fear of
being banned.
But fear is an elixir of life, as the National-Zeitung has demonstrated during the Manteuffel decade.
The National-Zeitung has proved the truth of Pope’s words:
Still her old Empire to restore she tries,
For born a Goddess Dullness never dies.
Save that Pope’s Empire of Dullness is distinguished from the Empire of the National -Zeitung by the
fact that there ‘now Dunce the second reigns as Dunce the first used to’, whereas here the old Dunce
still reigns, Dunce the first.
Hot on the heels of the  National-Zeitung follows the Breslauer Zeitung , which is now as rapturous
about the Hohenzollern cabinet as it previously was about the Manteuffel cabinet. At the beginning of
1860 I received the following letter:
Breslau
27 February 1860
Dear Marx
I read your address and your statement against the National-Zeitung in the Volks-
Zeitung. The Breslauer Zeitung also carried an article similar to that in the National-
Zeitung, from the pen of its daily correspondent Dr Stein. This is the same Dr Stein
who sat on the extreme left of the Berlin National Assembly with D’Ester, and moved
the famous resolution against the officers of the Prussian army. This great Stein of the
small body was suspended from his post as teacher. Since the new cabinet came in, he

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has set himself the task of agitating for it, not only last year during the elections, but
even now, in order to unify the Silesian democrats with the constitutionalists.
Nevertheless, his plea to be granted a dispensation to teach privately was rejected by
the present cabinet, not once but several times. The retiring cabinet had closed an eye
to his doing so, but the present one has forbidden him to do it as being illegal. He then
travelled to Berlin to obtain a dispensation, but unsuccessfully, as you can read in
greater detail in the issue of the Volks-Zeitung that carries your statement. Now Dr
Stein has also had the Brimstone Gang acted out in the Carnival Parade for the
Breslauer Ressourcen-Gesellschaft. But nevertheless Dr Stein, Schlehan, Semrau and
their accomplices have had to take one humiliation after the other from the
constitutionalists. But that sort will never stray from their patriotism. What do you
think of this fine company?
What can I say about my colleague Stein, for Stein was indeed my colleague? That is to say, I was, for
a whole six months (1855), correspondent for the Neue Oder Zeitung, [21] and that is the only German
newspaper for which I have written during my stay abroad. Obviously Stein ( Stone) is a man with a
heart of stone, which is not even softened by the refusal of a dispensation to teach privately. The Neue
Rheinische Zeitung had carved away at this stone a good deal in order to make a bust out of it. Take,
for example, no 225:
Cologne, 16 February 1849… As concerns Herr Stein spec ifically, we remember a
time when he came out as a fanatical constitutionalist against the republicans, and, in
the Schlesische Zeitung, [22] absolutely denounced the representatives of the working
class, and had them denounced by a like-minded schoolmaster, at present a member of
the ‘Association for Law and Order’. Just as wretched as the Assembly of Conciliators
[23] was the so-called democratic faction of that Assembly. It was to be anticipated
that, in order to be re-elected, these gentlemen would now recognise the constitution
that had been imposed on them. It is even more characteristic of their position that they
afterwards deny in the democratic clubs what they had affirmed before the elections at
election meetings. Such sly liberal petty cunning was never the diplomacy of
revolutionary characters.
The stone himself proved that the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had not sculpted it in vain as soon as
Manteuffel [24] once more deposed the chamber he had just imposed, for Dr Julius Stein now cried in
the ‘Main Democratic Association in Breslau’:
We [the Berlin extreme left] gave the German question up as lost from the very start…
one must now be convinced that no German unity is possible as long as there are
German princes. (No 290 of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung)
Is it not indeed heartrending, enough to melt a heart of stone, that that same Stein, although no longer
a bone, or rather a stone, of contention, continues to be the stone that the builder in Schwerin —
rejected.
I do not know whether my readers have seen Punch at first hand, I mean the London Kladderadatsch.
On the title page sits Punch, and opposite him stands his dog Toby, staring morosely and with a pen
behind his ear, both signs that he is a born penny -a-liner. If one may compare something small w ith
something great, then one could, perhaps, compare Vogt with Punch, particularly since the latter has
lost the point of his joke, a misfortune which overtook him in 1846 with the abolition of the Corn
Laws.
[25] But his companion, the dog Toby, can only  be compared with himself or with — Eduard
Meyen. Indeed Eduard Meyen, should he ever actually die, will not require any Pythagorean
transmigration of his soul. Toby has taken care of that even during his lifetime. I do not exactly mean
to claim that Eduard Meyen sat as a model for the artist who drew the vignette, but in any case I have
never in my whole life seen such a great similarity between a man and a dog. No wonder, however,
for Eduard Meyen is by nature a penny- a-liner, and the penny -a-liner is by nature a Toby. Eduard
Meyen has always loved to devote his importunately bustling quill-drivings to ready-made Institutions
for the Undertaking of Writing for Party Organisations. A programme imposed from above saves the
bother of thinking for oneself, the sense of being connected to a more or less organised mass deadens
one’s feelings of one’s own inadequacy, and one’s consciousness of the presence of a war -chest

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overcomes for a moment even Toby’s professional peevishness. Thus we find Eduard Meyen in his
day tacked on to the unhappy democratic Central Committee, that hollow nut that sprang in 1848 from
the German Democratic Assembly [26] at Frankfurt -am-Main. In exile in London, he was attached
busily to turning out the lithographed leaflets by means of wh ich Kinkel’s Loan Funds for the
Fabrication of Revolution were in part hawked, which did not, of course, prevent that same Eduard
Meyen from deserting bag and baggage to the camp of the Prince Regent in order to howl amnesty
and in fact beg permission to i nflict on us, from Wandsbek, his ideas on foreign politics in the
Hamburg Freischütz. Vogt, who was recruiting ‘those that’, people who were prepared to ‘follow his
policy’ and fetch him articles, and, what is more, dangled a well -lined war-chest before th eir eyes,
came along at a wonderfully opportune moment for our Eduard Meyen, who was running around
temporarily masterless, and whose dog -licence nobody wanted to pay for in those hard times. And
like a mad thing Toby barked out the rumour that I was trying to cheat Vogt’s Institution for the
Undertaking of Party Writing of its credit and its quill-driving pug-dogs of their fees! Quelle horreur!
Vogt had instructions on the obligatory adaptation of the Magnum Opus  sent to his Eduard Meyen
that were just as detailed as those sent to his Edouard Simon, and Eduard Meyen did indeed garnish
five issues of the Freischütz  (nos 17 to 21, 1860) with crumbs from his Magnum Opus . But what a
difference! While Edouard Simon corrects the original, Eduard Meyen mutilates i t. The simplest
aptitude for grasping any given material objectively is shown, after all, in the ability to copy out
printed matter, but our Eduard Meyen is absolutely incapable of copying a single line correctly.
Toby’s mind lacks even the strength needed for copying. Just listen.
Freischütz, no 17:
The newspaper [Allgemeine Zeitung]… now stands condemned… of also enlisting the
aid of a revolutionary party that Vogt brands as the Brimstone Gang of German
Republicans.
Where and when does Vogt spin yarns about the Brimstone Gang of German Republicans?
Freischütz, no 18:
It is Liebknecht who has to raise the accusation against Vogt in the Allgemeine Zeitung
by repeating there the charges forged by Biscamp in the London Volk. But they did not
attain their full weight until Marx sent to the Allgemeine Zeitung a leaflet that
appeared in London, the authorship of which he ascribed to Blind.
Vogt may have told a good many lies, but Hermann, his lawyer, alone would have prevented him
from saying that Biscamp’s art icle, which was not printed in the Allgemeine Zeitung , had been
‘repeated’ there by Liebknecht. Nor does it even occur to Vogt to say that I sent the Allgemeine
Zeitung the leaflet As a Warning. On the contrary, he expressly says: ‘It is… Herr Liebknecht w ho
sent the slanderous leaflet to the Allgemeine Zeitung.’ (Magnum Opus, p 167)
Freischütz, no 19:
Blind has positively denied authorship of the leaflet and the printer has testified that it
was not handed to him by Blind for printing. But it is established that the defamatory
text was immediately transferred, in the same type, to the Volk, that Marx caused it to
be published in the Allgemeine Zeitung [etc].
In the Magnum Opus  Vogt prints, on the one hand, Fidelio Hollinger’s statement in which Fidelio
testifies that the leaflet had not been set in his print -shop, and, on the other hand, my counter -
statement that the original type of the defamatory text was still standing in Hollinger’s shop when it
was reprinted in the Volk and what confusion the unhappy Toby makes of all this!
Freischütz, no 19:
As far as they personally are concerned [Engels and I are supposed to say in Techow’s
letter] they are purely men of reason, who know no nationality.
No sentimentality, my good Toby, no sentimentality is what Techow writes according to Vogt.
Freischütz, no 20:

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Marx… had the two duellists betake themselves to Ostend to shoot each other there.
Techow served as Willich’s second [etc]. After this incident Techow broke with Marx
and his league.
Eduard Meyen is not content merely to write Ostend instead of Antwerp. In London he probably heard
the Frenchman in the West End complaining that the English write London and pronounce it
Constantinople. Eduard Meyen has Techow, who had seen me just once in his life, and who,
moreover, explicitly writes that he at first intended to  join me and my league, break with me and my
league, to which he never belonged.
Freischütz, no 21:
This incident [the Central Workers’ Festival in Lausanne] explains the violent attack
on Vogt published in the Volk in London.
Vogt himself informs us in the Magnum Opus of the date of the ‘violent attack’ on him that appeared
in the Volk — 14 May  1859. (The leaflet appeared in the Volk of 18 June 1859.) The Lausanne Central
Festival, on the other hand, took place on  26 and 27 June 1859, that is to say long after the ‘violent
attack’ it provoked, according to Meyen.
But enough of these gems from Toby. No wonder Toby, who read everything that was not there in
Vogt’s book, also read into it that: ‘Vogt’s book wil l take its place among the boldest, wittiest and
most useful polemics in our literature.’ (Freischütz, no 17)
And now just picture the unfortunate Toby, incapable as he is of copying even two lines accurately
from a printed book, picture him condemned to decipher the book of world history daily from
Wandsbek, to copy out hourly the events of the day fleetingly hinted in the obscurest of initial letters,
and to photograph life-size for the Freischütz the dissolving views of the moment! Unhappy herald of
Wandsbek! Happy Hamburg readers of the Freischütz!
A few days ago the London Times carried a curious paragraph whi ch went through all the English
press and was entitled ‘A Man Shot by a Dog’. So it seems that Toby knows how to shoot, and it is
not surprising that Eduard Meyen sings in the Freischütz: [27] ‘Ein Schütz bin ich in des Regenten
Sold.’ [28]
The Kölnische Zeitung confined itself to a few malicious paragraphs and sly insinuations on Vogt’s
behalf. Eight days after the publication of the Magnum Opus it spread in its columns the legend that
the book was already out of print, presumably in order to avoid having to print anything about it itself.
Anyway, how funny the way of the world is!
Could I only somehow have guessed in 1848– 49, at the time of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung , when
we broke a lance almost daily with our neighbour in Cologne on behalf of the Poles, Hungarians and
Italians, that the same Kölnische Zeitung would in 1859 arise as a knight of the nationality principle,
and that the simple Herr Jusepp Dumont  would be metamorphosed into a Signor Giuseppe Del
Monte! But at that time, of course, Louis Bonaparte had not yet lent the nationalities the sanctity of
the higher morality, and the Kölnische Zeitung will never forget of Louis Bonaparte that he was the
saviour of society. Let the red fury with which the paper at that time used to attack Austria be shown
by Neue Rheinische Zeitung, no 144:
Cologne, 15 November 1848: At a moment when the whole of Germany starts up
with a cry of indignation at the fact that the blood-stained servant of the Austrian
bandit, that a Windischgrätz could dare to have the Deputy Robert Blum shot like a
dog — at such a moment it is timely to return to two German papers, one of which
attempts with rare perfidy to besmirch the last days of the departed, while the other
pursues him to the grave with its stale cretinism. We speak of the Kölnische Zeitung
and the Rheinische Volks-Halle (vulgo Fools-Halla)… In issue no 292, the Kölnische
Zeitung reports: ‘On the 22nd [of October] the enthusiastic leaders of the Democratic
Party… removed themselves from Vienna; similarly… Robert Blum.’ The Kölnische
Zeitung carried this information without any further addition, but set the denunciation
against Blum in Garamond type so as to impress it all the more easily on the memories
of the readers. The Kölnische Zeitung made good its omissions in later issues. It did
not even flinch at carrying in its columns articles from the Camarilla’s deepest black-

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yellow paper, items from Grand Duchess Sophie’s organ… the most infamous of all
Austrian newspapers… [There then follows the quotation of, among other t hings:]
‘Robert Blum reaped no laurels in Vienna… he spoke, that is to say, at the Aula about
the inner enemy of irresolution, lack of courage and persistence; he said that should
there, however, be other inner enemies too, apart from this one — and he hoped there
were none — or should there still exist in the city people who preferred the victory of
the military to the victory of freedom, then the war to the knife against the hosts
outside the city would have to be turned against them too… In Herr Blum’s s peech
there is the madness of a Septembrist… If Herr Blum  spoke these words then, we say
it frankly, he has — dishonoured himself.’ So much for the Kölnische Zeitung.
By means of an artificial system of hidden piping all the lavatories of London empty thei r physical
filth into the Thames. In the same way the world capital daily spews all its social filth through a
system of goose- quills into one big central paper sewer — the Daily Telegraph. Liebig correctly
criticises the senseless waste that robs the waters of the Thames of their purity and the soil of Britain
of its manure. But Levy, the proprietor of the central paper sewer, is an expert not only at chemistry
but also at alchemy. After transforming all the social filth of London into newspaper articles, he
transforms the newspaper articles into copper and finally the copper into gold. On the gate that leads
to the central paper sewer are inscribed di colore oscuro
[29] the words: ‘Hic… quisquam faxit
oletum!’ Or, as Byron has already beautifully translated it in verse: ‘Stop, traveller, and — piss!’
Levy, like Habbakuk, is capable de tout . [30] He is quite capable of writing a lead article three
columns long on a single rape-case. At the beginning of this year he treated his numerous audience of
connoisseurs to an asafoetida-ragout skilfully brewed from the details of a certain legal case that were
so sordidly nauseating that they had obliged the judge to order the court to be cleared of women and
children. Unfortunately, Levy spiced the ragout with the nam e of an innocent person. The libel case
that ensued ended with his conviction and the public condemnation of his organ from the bench. As
we know, libel cases are, like all trials, exorbitantly expensive in Britain, and are, to a certain extent,
the privil ege of the coffre fort .
[31] A number of unemployed lawyers in the city, however, soon
discovered that Levy was easy game. They got together and offered their services gratis on spec to
anybody who wants to prosecute Levy for libel. Levy himself has therefore loudly complained in his
organ that a new variety of extortion is going around prosecuting Levy for libel. Since then,
prosecuting Levy has become something that is not to be undertaken lightly. One lays oneself open to
improper gossip, for just as the notices on every wall in London read ‘Commit no nuisance’, those on
the gates of British Law-courts read ‘Commit Levy’.
Politicians call the Daily Telegraph ‘Palmerston’s Mobpaper’, but in general Levy’s sewage- barge
only takes politics on as ballast. The Saturday Review , on the other hand, aptly characterised his
penny paper as ‘cheap and nasty’.
It is a fatal symptom [it says, among other things] that it should have given such a
definite preference for dirt to cleanliness. In every case it will exclude the most
important report in order to leave space for a disreputable article.
Levy, however, also has his own prudery. Thus he finds fault with the immorality of the theatre and, a
second Cato censor, persecutes the garments of the ballerinas, which start too late and finish too soon.
Through such attacks of virtue Levy falls out of the frying pan into the fire. O consistency! cries a
London theatre journal, The Players, O cons istency, where is thy blush? How the rogue must have
laughed in his beard! … The Daily Telegraph preach about the propriety of female attire on the stage!
Holy Jupiter, what next? Earthquakes and fiery comets are the very least that is now to be expected.
Propriety! ‘I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.’
[32] And, as Hamlet does Ophelia, The
Players advises Levy to get him to a monastery, or rather a nunnery. ‘Get thee to a nunnery, Levy!’
Levy in a nunnery! Perhaps the ‘nunnery’ is only a misprint for ‘Nonaria’, so that it should read: ‘Get
thee to Nonaria, Levy’, in which case everybody will be:
multum gaudere paratus,
Si Cynico [the cynic, Levy] barbam petulans Nonaria vellat.
Prepared to rejoice greatly
If Nonaria ruffles the cynic’s beard.

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The Weekly Mail claimed that although Levy does not pull the wool over the public’s eyes, he does
give them a ‘Y’ in place of an ‘I’, and indeed, among the 22,000 Levis counted by Moses during the
march through the wilderness, there was not a single Levi who spelled his name with a ‘Y’. Just as
Edouard Simon absolutely insists on belonging to the Latin race, Levy positively insists on belonging
to the Anglo -Saxon race. At least once a month, therefore, he attacks the un -British policies of Mr
Disraeli, for Dis raeli, ‘the Asiatic mystery’, unlike the Daily Telegraph, does not originate from the
Anglo-Saxon race. But what use is it Levy attacking Mr D’Israeli and taking a ‘Y’ instead of an ‘I’
when mother nature has written his lineage in the middle of his face i n the most extravagant black -
letter script. The nose of Slavkenbergius’ mysterious stranger (see Tristram Shandy), [33] who fetched
himself the finest nose from the promontory of noses, was only the talk of Strasbourg for a week,
while Levy’s nose is the talk of the City of London all year round. A Greek epigrammatist describes
the nose of a certain Castor, which served him as everything, as shovel, trumpet, sickle, anchor, etc.
He closes the description with the following words:
Οΰτως εύχρήστου σχεύους Κάστωρ τετύχηχε
Ρϊνα φέρων πάσης άρμενον έργασίας
And thus Castor possesses a tool for every occasion
Holding his nose at the ready for whatever work may arise.
But even Castor could not guess what Levy uses his nose for. The English poet comes closer with t he
lines:
And ‘tis a miracle we may suppose,
No nastiness offends his skilful nose.
The great art of Levy’s nose in fact consists in courting the smell of putrescence, sniffing it out a
hundred miles away and fetching it. Thus Levy’s nose serves the Daily Telegraph as elephant’s trunk,
feeler, light -house and telegraph. Hence one can say without exaggeration that Levy writes his
newspaper with his nose.
This fine Daily Telegraph  was of course the only English newspaper in which Vogt’s Lousiad
appeared, in which it could not fail to appear. On 6 February 1860, an article two and a half columns
long appeared in Levy’s organ with the title ‘The Journalistic Auxiliaries of Austria’, in fact a mere
translation into malodorous English of the two lead articles in the Berlin National-Zeitung. In order to
mislead, the article bore the by -line: ‘From an occasional correspondent, Frankfort on the Main, 2
February.’ I knew, of course, that the Telegraph ’s only correspondent lived in Berlin, where Levy’s
nose had discovered him with its usual virtuosity. I therefore wrote immediately to a friend in Berlin
to ask whether he could not tell me the name of the correspondent of Levy’s organ. My friend, a man
whose erudition even A von Humboldt has recognised, was nevertheless obstinate enough to claim
that there was no Daily Telegraph  in London and consequently no correspondent of the same in
Berlin. Under these conditions I turned to another acquaintance in the city on the Spree. Answer: the
Berlin correspondent of the Daily T elegraph exists and is called — Abel. In this I saw wicked
mystification. Abel was obviously a simple abbreviation of Zabel. The fact that Zabel cannot write
English did not worry me in the least. If Abel, as Zabel, could edit the National -Zeitung without
knowing how to write German, then why should not Zabel, as Abel, be correspondent of the
Telegraph without knowing how to write English? So Zabel, Abel, Abel, Zabel? How find a way out
of this Babel? I compared the Berlin organ of wisdom one more time with Levy’s organ, and
discovered on this occasion in issue 41 of the National-Zeitung the following text:
Liebknecht fügt wunderbar hinzu: ‘Wir wollten von deco Magistrat [?] unsere
Unterschrift beglaubigen lassen.’
Liebknecht adds surprisingly: ‘We wanted to have our signatures attested by the City
Council [?].’
This part about the Magistrat (City Council) with Zabel’s astonished question mark is reminiscent of
that Swabian who ‘no sooner had he got off the ship in A sia when he asked: “Ain’t any of my mates
from Bebbingen ‘ere?”’ Not only is this whole piece missing in Levy’s organ, but the question mark
too, from which it follows as clear as daylight that Levy’s correspondent does not share the view of F
Zabel, according to whom the London police court Justices, or Magistrates, are the Berlin Magistrat.

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So Zabel was not Abel and Abel was not Zabel. Meanwhile, other acquaintances in Berlin had heard
of my efforts. One of them wrote: ‘Among the 22,000 Levis in the Fourth Book of Moses there is also
to be found an Abel, but he spelled his name Abigail.’ Another wrote: ‘So this time Abel has killed
Cain and not Cain Abel’. And so I got deeper and deeper into the ‘Labyrinth’ until the editor of a
London newspaper assured me  with dry English solemnity that Abel was not a joke but a Jewish
literary man in Berlin whose full name was Dr Karl Abel , which dear boy had served some
considerable time under Stahl and Gerlach as a zealous drudge on the Kreuz -Zeitung but, with the
change of government, had changed if not his skin then at least his colour. Now the importunate zeal
of the renegade would, admittedly, explain why Levy’s Berlin correspondent thinks that the British
freedom of the press was invented for the sole purpose of per mitting him to hawk his epileptic awe of
the Hohenzollern government in public. Hypothetically therefore it may be assumed that besides a
Levy in London there is also an Abel in Berlin — par nobile fratrum .
Abel keeps his Levy supplied from all imagin able places simultaneously — from Berlin, Vienna,
Frankfurt am Main, Stockholm, Petersburg, Hong Kong, etc, which is a much greater trick than de
Maistre’s Voyage autour de ma chambre. [35] But under whatever dateline Abel writes to his Levy, he
always writes under the sign of Cancer. In contrast to the Echternacht procession, [36] which takes two
steps forward and one step back, Abel’s articles go one step forward and two steps back.
No crab more active in the dirty dance,
Downward to climb and backward to advance. (Pope)
Abel possesses an undeniable skill at making the state secrets of the continent accessible to his Levy.
The Kölnische Zeitung, for example, carries some article or other, let us say on Russian finances,
borrowed perhaps from the Baltische Monatsschrift. Abel lets a month pass by and then suddenly
writes the article in the Kölnische Zeitung from Petersburg to London, not forgetting to hint in the
process that, if not exactly the Tsar himself, and perhaps not even the Russian Finance Minister , then
at least one of the directors of the state bank whispered the statistical secret to him entre deux cigares.
[37] And so he cries out triumphantly: ‘I am in a position to state [etc].’ Or the official Preussische
Zeitung puts out a ministerial feeler and hints maybe at Herr von Schleinitz’s unauthoritative views on
the question of Electoral Hesse. This time Abel does not wait an instant, but writes to Levy that very
day, and openly from Berlin what is more, on the question of Electoral Hesse. A week l ater he reports
that the Preussische Zeitung , the government organ, is carrying the following article on the question
of Electoral Hesse, and ‘I owe it to myself to point out that a week ago I already’, etc. Or he translates
an article from the Allgemeine Zeitung and dates it, say, from Stockholm. Then there inevitably
follows the phrase ‘I must warn your readers’ not against the article that he has copied, but against
some other article in the Allgemeine Zeitung . But as soon as Abel comes to talk about the  Kreuz-
Zeitung he crosses himself in order to make himself unrecognisable.
As far as Abel’s style is concerned, one can only describe it metaphorically as a copy of the genres
Stern Gescheidt, [38] Isidor Berlinerblau and Jacob Wiesenriesler.
With Abel’s permission, a small digression. The original Stern Gescheidt is another accomplice of
Vogt’s, a certain Ludwig Bamberger, in 1848 the editor of a hole -in-the-corner paper in Mainz and at
present a ‘full pay’ loup-garou [39] by marriage in Paris and Decembri st democrat ‘in the simplest
sense of the word’. In order to understand this ‘simple’ sense, one has to know the Romany language
of the Paris stock exchange synagogue. Stern Gescheidt’s ‘simple’ democracy is what Isaac Péreire
calls ‘la démocratisation du crédit ’, which consists in transforming not individual circles in a nation
but the whole nation into a gambling hell so as to be able to swindle it en masse. Whereas the
oligarchic stock exchange wolf under Louis Philippe was so narrow -minded as to hunt the national
wealth concentrated in the hands of the upper bourgeoisie, under the aegis of Louis Bonaparte, all is
fish for the democratic stock exchange wolf  who, like the Roman Emperor, cries non olet , [40] and,
with Stern Gescheidt Bamberger, adds: ‘The masses must do it.’ That is Stern Gescheidt’s democracy
at its most ‘simple’. Stern Gescheidt Bamberger has recently become known under the name ‘Hurrah,
we’re off to Italy ’. During the Imperial Constitution campaign, on the other hand, he answered the
call: ‘Oy Vey, we’re off from Kirchheimboland!’ Having decamped from Kirchheimboland and led the
Rhineland-Palatinate free corps a dance, Stern Gescheidt Bamber ger, about whose heroic exploits a
delicious manuscript has been entrusted to my care, was much too clever not to sniff out the fact that

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there was gold for the clever treasure- hunter in the bloated, blood- permeated night-soil of December.
He therefore betook himself to Paris where, as his friend Isidor Berlinerblau, alias HB  Oppenheim, so
prettily put it: ‘Where one feels freer than one knows.’ Stern Gescheidt, whose ‘circulation’ began to
‘falter’ in 1858 (see the document of the Banque de France on circulation in 1858–59), was as pleased
as punch when the night -soil of December suddenly began to shimmer with the bright colours of
grandiose ideas. Stern Gescheidt, who is as clever as he is tinsel -democratic, realised that a flood in
Paris would wash away t he Pro in his ledger along with the soil of December, leaving only the
Contra. As we know, Stern Gescheidt Bamberger has increased the nine Hellenic muses by one
Hebrew muse, the ‘muse of Time’, as he calls the stock-exchange price-list.
Back to Abel. Abel’s style is permeated with the odor specificus indispensable to the Daily Telegraph,
the great paper sewer of the world capital. When Levy is really moved by the perfume of Abel’s
despatches, Abel’s erudition and the industrious devotion with which Abel wr ites from 20 different
degrees of longitude simultaneously, in such moments of profound emotion Levy calls Abel
caressingly, lovingly, his — ‘industrious bug’.
Poetic justice alone demands that the ‘rounded character’ should not end the comedy stuck, with Abel,
in the manure of London. But who is to pull him out of the manure? Who is to be his saviour? The
fink must be his saviour, that is to say Baron von Vincke, Junker of the red earth, knight of the joyful
countenance, chevalier sans peur et sans reproche.
As has been said earlier, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung  had already betrayed the unity of the opposites
Vogt and Vincke in 1848, and Vogt himself suspected it in 1859, when he wrote in his Studien , ‘Herr
von Vincke as the apostle of new state freedom … that really verges on the territory of the ridiculous ’
(Studien, p 21), on Vogt territory, that is to say. Vincke, however, openly pronounced words of
reconciliation when he, as Joh Philipp Becker says, ‘illuminated the modest Prussian chamber with
the Brimstone Gang’. Scarcely a year beforehand he recommended to the same house the pamphlet
Po and Rhine [42] whose sulphurous origins, lacking Levy’s nose, he did not, of course, suspect. With
Vincke now, just like Vogt, playing the Italian, with Vincke, lik e Vogt, insulting the Poles, and
Vincke, like Vogt, proclaiming the partition of Germany, the hostile brothers fell for ever into each
other’s arms.
It is known that equal poles irresistibly repel each other. And so for a long time Vogt and Vincke
found each other mutually repulsive. Both suffer from excessive verbal salivation, and hence each of
the two fears that the other will not let him get a word in edgeways.
Vogt, as Ranickel testifies, is a great zoologist, and so is Vincke, as his pig-breeding at Ickern proves.
In Spanish drama there are always two buffoons for every hero. Even St Cyprian, the Spanish Faust,
is provided by Calderon with Moscon and Clarin. In the same way, the reactionary general von
Radowitz possessed in the Frankfurt parliament two comic adjutants, his Harlequin Lichnowsky and
his clown Vincke. Vogt, however, the liberal anti -clown, had to do everything on his own, which
obviously soured him towards Vincke, since Jacobus Venedey could only do the sob- stuff in his role
of Pantaloon. Vincke loved to wear the jester’s cap from time to time. Thus he declared in the
parliamentary session of 21 June 1848: ‘That from time to time he was more inclined to believe he
was in a theatre than in such an assembly.’
And at a festive gathering of the  Tories in the Frankfurt parliament, he performed as the Prince of
Fools, sat on a barrel and sang:
I am the prince of fools,
Until I die I’ll booze.
That too annoyed his counterpart. Besides, neither Vogt nor Vincke could scare the other, and so they
thought it wisest to attack one another. Falstaff Vogt knew with whom he was dealing in the knight
without fear and without reproach, and vice versa. In his day the Westphalian Bayard had studied law
at German universities, not so much the Roman corpus juris  for, as he said, his ancestors of the red
earth had not defeated Varus in vain. All the more zealously did he apply himself to Teutonic law,
that is to say, to the Students’ Code, whose foundations he measured in all dimensions and afterwards
made famous under the name legal basis . As a result of this casuistically profound study of the
Students’ Code, he always hit, in the event of a duel, upon some Scotist
[43] hair that was laid with as

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much hair -splitting sharpness between the knight and bloodshed as the naked sword between the
Princess and the locum tenens . This hair -splitting always got in the way with the regularity of a
periodic fever, from the adventure with Supreme Court As sessor Benda at the time of the United
Landtag [44] until the no less notorious adventure with the Prussian War Minister in the House of
Deputies in 1860. So one can see how wrong people were to accuse the Junker recently of having lost
his legal basis. It is not his fault if his legal basis consists entirely of loopholes. Much rather, since the
Students’ Code only serves for the higher levels of legal debate, the ingenious Junker replaces it in
day-to-day parliamentary practice with the — Code of Sharp Practice .
In the Frankfurt  frog-pond Vincke once bitterly abused his counterpart Vogt as ‘ future minister’. As
soon as he learned, at Ickern, that Vogt, remembering the saying ‘Take a little office on, and be called
master all year round’, had not only become Imperial Regent, but even Minister for Foreign Affairs in
partibus, [45] it quite overcame him, and he was angrily resentful about the neglected claims of
seniority. For even in the United Landtag of 1847 Vincke had been in the opposition as a Frondeur
and a noble representative of the bourgeois opposition. At the outbreak of the March revolution,
therefore, he saw himself as called upon before all others to save the crown. His rivals, however, all
became actual ministers, while he retained his position of  ‘future minister’, a post he has occupied to
this day with uninterrupted success.
To take his revenge, he shook the dust of Berlin from his feet and betook himself to Frankfurt, to the
extreme right in the Paulskirche, to operate here as clown, claqueur and bully of General Radowitz.
The fink was a fanatically good Austrian as long as that earned the applause of the authorities. He
raved like a man possessed against the nationalities:
The left is in raptures about every imaginable nationality in turn, Italians, Poles, and
now even Magyars. (Session of 23 October 1848)
The three knights Vincke, Uchnowski and Arnim sang the musical trio, ‘The ox gives a roar, the cow
gives a f—, the donkey follows the bass part’, with such virtuosity against the speakers who were in
support of Poland (Session of 5 June 1848), that even the President’s bell ran out of breath, and when
Radowitz went so far as to claim the Mincio for the German Empire on military -natural grounds
(session of 12 August 1848), Vincke, to the delight  of the gallery and to Vogt’s secret admiration,
stood on his head and telegraphed applause with his legs. Claqueur in chief of the decisions by which
the Frankfurt frog -pond placed the stamp of the approval of the will of the German people on the
dynastic subjugation of Poland, Hungary and Italy, the Junker of the red earth raised an incomparably
merrier outcry as soon as it came to sacrificing the claims of the German nation in the shameful
Malmö armistice. In order to secure a majority for the ratificati on of the armistice, diplomatic and
other visitors had crept from the gallery to the benches of the right. The deception was discovered and
Raveaux insisted on a fresh vote. The fink inveighed against him, saying it did not matter who voted,
but what was v oted for (session of 16 September 1848). During the September insurrection in
Frankfurt, called forth by the decision on the Malmö armistice, the Westphalian Bayard disappeared
without trace, only to revenge himself, after the proclamation of martial law, with rabidly reactionary
somersaults for the terror for which nobody could compensate him.
Not satisfied with lashing out with his tongue at Poles, Italians and Hungarians, he proposed Arch-
Duke Johann of Austria as President of the provisional central pow er (session of 21 June 1848), with
the most obedient reservation, however, that the Habsburg executive of the German parliament did
not have either to execute or to proclaim its plebeian decisions, or even concern itself with them at all.
He sprang up in f ury when his own colleagues of the majority, for the sake of variety, voted that the
Imperial Vicar should graciously deign to reach an agreement with parliament before declaring war or
peace or signing treaties with foreign powers (session of 27 June 1848 ). And the great oratorical fire
with which the fink tried to bully out of the German parliament a vote of confidence in the imperial
minister Schmerling and company as recompense for their and the Imperial Vicar’s complicity in the
bloody and infamous treachery of Vienna
[46] victoriously refutes Fischart’s [47] slander:
O, Westphalian mugs
Are like chilled mugs!
Thus Vincke was a good neighbour to the Habsburgs until suddenly over the parliamentary Sahara
there appeared the fata morgana [48] of Little Germany, in which the Junker thought to see a life-sized

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minister’s portfolio with a fink under its arm. Since the walls of the Paulskirche had unusually long
ears, he could flatter himself that the clamour in Frankfurt of his outbreaks of loyalty towards the
Hohenzollern dynasty would make a favourable impression in Berlin. Had he not declared in the
middle of the Paulskirche on 21 June 1848:
I was sent here by my voters to represent the rights not only of the people but also of
the princes. I still comfort myself with the words of the Great Elector, who once called
the people of the Mark his most loyal and obedient subjects. And we in the Mark are
proud of that.
And the Bayard of the Mark went from words to deeds in that famous platform battle that he owed to
his knightly spurs (session of 7 and 8 August 1848). When Brentano, namely, on the occasion of the
demand for an amnesty for Friedrich Hecker,
[49] let fall from the rostrum an ambiguous allusion to a
Hohenzollern prince, the fink was overcome by a veritable rabies -attack of loyalty. Rushing from his
seat up to Herr Brentano, he tried to pull him down from the rostrum with the words: ‘Down, you
cur!’ Brentano kept his place. Later the Junker once more rushed at him and cast down the gauntlet
for a chivalrous duel, without prejudice, of course, to the possibility of later considerations concerning
the legal basis. Brentano accepted the challenge with the words:
Outside the church you can say what you like to me. Here you will let me go
immediately or I will slap your face.
The Junker now reached into his verbal quiver and from it flung a variety of insults at the left, until
Reichardt shouted at him: ‘Von Vincke, you really are a s—t.’ (session of 7 August 1848) The fink
tried to prevent the debate on the conflict between the Brandenburg government and the agreementist
Assembly by moving next business.
Since Wrangel’s victorious entry into Berlin [he said] there had been calm, shares had
risen… the Berlin Assembly had no right to issue proclamations to the people [etc].
Scarcely had the agreementists been dispersed when the Knight without fear and without reproach fell
on them all the more furiously.
We lack the political education for a republic [he howled during the session of 12
December 1848]. The representatives of the former Berlin Assembly proved that by
passing resolutions that proceeded from base personal ambition.
He tried to pacify the storm that broke out at that with the statement:
That he was ready to defend his views chivalrously against any person, [but the careful
knight added] he did not mean any member of this Assembly, but the members of the
dispersed Berlin Assembly.
So defiantly did the challenge of the Bayard of the Mark ring out against the whole army of dispersed
agreementists. One of those dispersed heard the challenge, rallied himself, and in fact achieved the
unheard-of feat of bringing the Junker of the Red Earth to battle at Eisenach. Bloodshed seemed to
have become inevitable when, at the decisive moment, Bayard smelled a Scotist rat. His opponent was
called Georg Jung, and although the rules of honour commanded the knight without fear and without
reproach to fight the dragon, they did not under any circumstances allow him to fight a namesake of
the knight of the dragon. The fink w ould not let himself be talked out of this idée fixe.
[50] Rather, he
swore by all that was holy, rather slit his own belly open like a Japanese Daimyo [51] than harm a hair
on the head of a man called George, who was, moreover, still too jung to be of age  for duelling. All
the more recklessly did this resolute expert at duelling rage in the Paulskirche against Temme and
other opponents of the government who were safely under lock and key in gaol in Münster (session of
9 January 1849). If he scorned such mi nor details to make a favourable impression in high places, he
outdid himself in loyal zeal in his gigantic efforts for the creation of a Little Germany and a great
Prussian crown. Warwick the Kingmaker was a child compared with Vincke, the maker of Emperors.
The Bayard of the Mark thought that he had heaped enough fiery coals on the head of the ingratitude
of March 1848. When the ‘government of action’ [52] collapsed, Vincke disappeared from the
Paulskirche for a period and held himself in readiness. Ditto when the von Pfuel government fell. But
since the mountain would not come to Mahomet, Mahomet decided to go to the mountain. Elected for
some rotten borough or other, the knight of the red earth suddenly turned up in Berlin as a member of

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the imposed cham ber, full of the great urge for the requital of the reward that awaited his deeds in
Frankfurt. In addition, the knight felt infinitely at ease in the state of emergency, which would not fail
him in any unparliamentary liberty. He sucked in greedily with both ears the hissing and shouts of
contempt with which he was greeted by the people of Berlin while waiting with the deputies of the
imposed chamber before the Schloss to be received in the White Room, particularly since Manteuffel
had delicately hinted that, in order to find a ministerial portfolio vacant for certain merits, a certain
person in high places was inclined to accept the imperial crown from the hands of the Emperor -maker
of Frankfurt. In the sweet illusion of these expectations the fink tried f or the time being to make
himself useful as the dirty boy of the cabinet. He composed the draft of the address to the crown
according to the instructions of the Kreuz- Zeitung, thundered against an amnesty, accepted even the
imposed constitution only with t he explicit reservation that it should be revised and expurgated by a
‘strong state power’, insulted the deputies of the left suffering under the state of emergency, etc, and
awaited his triumph.
The catastrophe approached, the Emperor deputation had arrived in Berlin from Frankfurt, and Vincke
had, on 2 April 1849, tabled an amendment proposing an Emperor, for which Manteuffel had, in all
innocence, voted. Immediately after the session Vincke leapt madly goat -like into a neighbouring
second-hand shop to buy a portfolio there with his own hands, a portfolio of black pasteboard lined
with red satin and edged with gold. Glad at heart and smirking, faun -like in triumph the knight of the
happy countenance sat next morning in his place in the centre of the chamber, but — ‘Never, never,
never’ it rang out, Manteuffel’s lips twitched, dripping honey, and the fearless knight, white about the
gills and quivering with inner excitement like an electric eel, snapped wildly to his friends: ‘Hold me
back, I shall do something unfortunate.’ In order to hold him back the Kreuz -Zeitung, according to
whose instructions Vincke had been living for months, and for whose draft address of the chamber he
had been Godfather, published an article the next day under the headline ‘The Fatherland is in
Danger’, saying, among other things:
The government remains, and the King replies to Herr von Vincke and Comrades that
they should not meddle in matters that do not concern them.
And the cheated knight sans peur and sans reproche trotted off from Berlin to Ickern with a longer
nose than Levy ever wore, and such as could only be pinned onto — a future minister!
After vegetating for long sad years of practical zoology in Ickern, the Cincinnatus
[53] of the red earth
awoke one fine morning as the official leader of the opposition in the Prussian House of Deputies.
Since he had fared so badly with his right -wing speeches in Frankfurt, he now held gauche speeches
in Berlin. Whether he represented the opposition of confidence or the confidence of the opposition
was not to be ascertained exactly. However, he overplayed his role once more. He had soon made
himself so irreplaceable to the cabinet on the opposition benches that he was forbidden ever to leave
them again. And so the Junker of the Red Earth remained — a future minister .
Under those circumstances the fink grew tired of the matter and concluded the famous treaty of
Ickern. Vogt gave it him in black and white: as soon as Plon-Plon conquers the first Island of Barataria
on the continent of Europe, peoples it with dips-Oppenheimers and installs his Falstaff as regent, Vogt
will appoint the Westphalian Bayard his Prime Minister, invest him with final authority in all duels,
raise him, further, to the rank of real Privy General Supreme Master Road -Builder,
[54] elevate him in
addition to the rank of prince with the title Prince of Thoren and finally have struck in the tin, which
will in any case circulate instead of money in this insular Vogtary, a pair of Siamese twins. Vogt on
the right as Plon -Plon’s regent, Vincke on the left as Vogt’s minister, and draped around the
capacious double figure the vine-wreathed inscription:
Mouth to mouth with thee
I defy my century.
Notes
1 To have pleased Princes is not the highest praise.
2 That is, ‘in partibus infidelium’ — among the infidel non- believers.

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3 At that time Kossuth could not grasp how Palmerston’s mock hostility towards Russia
‘could’ deceive anybody with any common sense. ‘How could a man of any intellect for
a single moment believe that the minister who allowed Russia’s intervention in Hungary,
would give the word for an attack against her?’ — Letter dated Kutayah, 17 December
1850, Correspondence of Kossuth. [Marx’s note]
4 The fact that such things reach the light of day appears less astonishing when one
considers that at least two very talkative parties were involved here. Moreover, the facts
were published in the English papers during Kossuth’s presence in London (in the late
summer of 1859). [Marx’s note]
5 Gaffes or blunders.
6 With no embarrassment.
7 The rising aimed at the overthrow of Austrian rule in Italy but was conspiratorial in its
methods, did not appreciate the situation properly, and was quickly put down.
8 The Central Committee of European Democracy was founded in London in 1851 on
the initiative of Mazzini, the Italian republican. It contained bourgeois and petty-
bourgeois emigrants from a number of countries. It was dissolved in 1852 because of
conflicts between French and Italian exiles.
9 I myself had become acquainted with Bangya and his then friend, the present General
Türr, in 1850 in London. He overcame the suspicion that his chicanery with every
possible party, Orleanist, Bonapartist, etc, and his traffic with policemen of every
‘nationality’ aroused in me simply by producing letters patent made out in Kossuth’s
own hand, in which he, who had earlier already been the Police President in Komorn
under Klapka, is installed as Police President in partibus. As secret police chief in the
service of the revolution, he naturally had to keep his contacts with the police in the
service of the governments ‘open’. In the course of the summer of 1852, I discovered
that he had misappropriated a manuscript that I had entrusted to him to supply a
bookseller in Berlin and arranged for it to fall into the hands of a German government.
After I had written about this incident and other peculiarities of the man which had long
since impressed themselves upon my attention, to a Hungarian in Paris, and the Bangya
mystery had been completely solved by the intervention of a third person with precise
information, I sent an official denunciation signed in my own name at the beginning of
1853 to the New-Yorker Criminal Zeitung. In an apologia which I still have in my
possession, Bangya underlined the fact that I was the last person to think him a spy since
(and this was correct) he had always avoided discussing the affairs of my own party with
me. Although Kossuth and his supporters did not drop him at that point, my revelations
in the Criminal-Zeitung made further operations in London difficult for him, and he was
all the more eager to seize the opportunity offered by the confusion in the Orient for the
realisation of his talents on a new stage. Soon after the Treaty of Paris had been signed
(1856), I saw in a Paris newspaper that a certain Mehemed Bei, a Colonel in the Turkish
service, previously known as a Christian under the name of John Bangya, had sailed with
a number of Polish refugees to Circassia, where he figured as the chief of staff to Sefer-
Pasha and to a certain extent as the ‘Simon Bolivar’ of the Circassian. I referred to the
Liberator’s past in the London Free Press, many copies of which go to Constantinople.
On 20 January 1858, Bangya, as mentioned in the text, was condemned to death by a
court-martial of the Polish Legion under the command of Colonel Th Lapinski in Aderbi
for the intended betrayal of Circassia. Since Bangya was a Turkish Colonel, Sefer-Pasha
held execution of the sentence to be incompatible with the consideration due to the
Sublime Porte, and therefore shipped the condemned man to Trebizond, whence he soon
appeared, a free man, in Constantinople. Meanwhile, the Hungarian exiles in
Constantinople had passionately taken Bangya’s side against the Poles. Secured against
the Divan by the Russian Embassy, which to cap it all had to feed him, as a ‘Colonel’,
together with his harem, and against the Poles by the prejudices of his own compatriots,
Bangya with the greatest coolness published a self-apology in the Journal de

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Constantinople. The arrival shortly afterwards of a delegation from Circassia soon put an
end to the farce, however. The Hungarian exiles officially dropped their protégé,
although de très mauvais grâce. All the documents of the court-martial in Aderbi,
including Bangya’s confession, together with the documents that had later been
exchanged in Constantinople, were sent by the Polish exiles there to London, where an
extract appeared in the Free Press (May 1858). These documents were published in
greater detail by me in the New York (Daily) Tribune, 16 June 1858. [Marx’s note]
10 By the Concordat of 1855 between the Papacy and Austria, the Catholic Church in
Austria obtained autonomy, the right to a direct relationship with Rome, the right to
acquire property, powers of censorship and a strong influence over the schools.
11 Langenschwarz — an early nineteenth -century poet and improviser who tried to base
improvisation on a scientific theory.
12 Ferencz Rákóczi — the leader of the Hungarian movement for independence from
Austria at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
13 Although I can understand such an attitude on Klapka’s part, it is distasteful to me to
find something approaching it in the book by Szemere mentioned above, and I have
often communicated to him my views in this respect. Even less can I understand his
latest statement on the Austrian concession. I know that in public affairs Szemere does
not allow himself to be led by private motives, and that he had very important reasons
for his statement: that with what has been given in Vienna the Hungarians can take
anything they want in Pest; that every Hungarian insurrection from abroad, and
particularly with French support, would necessarily entail a Russian intervention in
Hungary, for or against Austria; and finally that the autonomy granted to Transylvania,
Slovenia and Croatia, as well as Vojvodina, would secure those ‘nationalities’ for the
Vienna cabinet against the Magyars in just the same way as 1848–49. All that is correct,
but it could have been said without giving the appearance of recognising the version of
the Hungarian Constitution mutilated ‘in usum Delphini’ in Vienna. [Marx’s note]
14 The revolutionary Hungarian army capitulated to Russian troops at Világos in August
1849. Although the army still had the resources to continue the struggle, its commander,
Görgey, surrendered in line with the interests of the counter-revolutionary elements in
the Hungarian nobility.
15 Johann Philip Becker (1819–1886) took part in the democratic movements of the
1830s and 1840s in Germany and Switzerland. In the emigration he became an important
leader of the International Workers Association and a close friend and collaborator with
Marx and Engels.
16 The Ultramontane party was an extreme reactionary Catholic party.
17 The ‘old regime’, that is, the monarchy before the French Revolution.
18 Unsurpassed example.
19 Come to my place, and place your bets!
20 It is impossible to translate ‘Dullness’ into German. It is more than boredom, it is
ennui elevated to a principle, somnolent lifelessness, blunted torpidity. As a quality of
style, Dullness is what the Neue Rheinische Zeitung calls ‘the weighty expression of
emptiness’. [Marx’s note]
A quotation from The Dunciad (1728) by Alexander Pope; a satirical attack on Pope’s
literary enemies, it deals with one of the most important themes of the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment: the struggle between reason and ignorance.
21 Marx was the London correspondent of this bourgeois-democratic newspaper.
22 The Schlesische Zeitung appeared from 1742 to 1945. During the 1848 revolution it
represented the views of the constitutional monarchists.

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23 The name given by Marx and Engels to the Prussian National Assembly, which in
May 1848 was called upon to work out a constitution ‘in conjunction with the crown’. It
was dispersed by the coup d’état of December 1848. The ‘imposed’ constitution was put
into force as soon as the Assembly had been broken up; it provided for two chambers
whose members had to meet certain property qualifications.
24 Otto, Freiherr von Manteuffel (1805–1882) — Prussian statesman, representative of
the reactionary nobility, was at various times Minister for the Interior, Prime Minister
and Foreign Minister of Prussia.
25 The Corn Laws had been introduced in 1815 to regulate the import of wheat in the
interests of the great landowners. In 1846, they were repealed under pressure from the
English industrialists who fought under the banner of Free Trade.
26 The first German democratic congress met for four days in June 1848. On the
initiative of the worker-delegates it declared a democratic republic to be the only
tolerable constitution for Germany. The congress was extremely divided and
disorganised owing to the weakness of the petty-bourgeois leadership of the democratic
movement. The Jacobins were called Septembrists by their enemies who accused them
of perpetrating the massacres of September 1792.
27 Marksman.
28 I am a marksman in the Regent’s pay.
29 In dark lettering.
30 Capable of anything.
31 Strong-box.
32 A quotation from Portia’s speech in The Merchant of Venice.
33 Tristram Shandy —  a novel by Lawrence Sterne, published 1760–67.
34 Noble pair of brothers.
35 Journey around my bedchamber.
36 A procession held every Whitsun in Echternach in Luxemburg as a thanksgiving for
the end of an epidemic of St Vitus dance which raged there in 1374. Those taking part
move backwards and forwards during the procession.
37 Between two cigars.
38 Gescheidt — a pseudonym of Ludwig Bamberger, who took part in the risings of
1849 in Germany, emigrated to France and later became a National Liberal deputy in the
Reichstag.
39 Werewolf.
40 It doesn’t smell.
41 A knight without fear and without reproach. Marx ironically calls Vincke ‘knight of
the joyful countenance’ on the lines of Cervante’s name for Don Quixote, ‘the knight of
the doleful countenance’. The ‘knight without fear or stain’ was the French knight
Bayard.
42 Po and Rhine — an anonymous pamphlet by Engels.
43 Duns Scotus — a medieval philosopher whose followers after the Reformation
attacked the ‘new learning’ and were famous for their sophistical arguments.
44 An assembly of provincial Landtags called in Berlin by Frederick William IV in
April 1847; he hoped they would rescue him from his financial difficulties by a
guarantee on a foreign loan. Because he refused the slightest reforms the assembly
refused the guarantee, whereupon the king dissolved the Assembly — an act wh ich
hastened the revolution in Germany.

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45 Literally, in the parts; usually referring to parts of a domain no longer under the
control of the authorities.
46 A reference to the counter-revolutionary attitude of the German and Austrian
bourgeoisie to the rising in Vienna in October 1848. Under the banner of mediation, the
majority in the Frankfurt National Assembly sabotaged aid to the revolution in Austria.
Vincke warmly supported this line.
47 Johann Fischart — a German satirical poet.
48 A very distorted image of a distant object.
49 Friedrich Hecker — a radical republican, one of the leaders of the rising in Baden in
April 1848, emigrated to Switzerland and then to the United States where he fought as an
officer in the Army of the North during the Civil War.
50 Set idea.
51 Daimyo — a Japanese nobleman.
52 The ‘government of action’ was the name given to the government which ruled from
June to September 1848.
53 Cincinnatus — a Roman patrician of the fifth century BC, who is said to have lived a
simple life and cultivated his own farm.
54 See the little publication, Another Description of the Liberal Deputy von Vinke and
the Edifying Tale of the Building of the Sprochhövel–Elberfeld Road (Auch eine
Charakteristik des liberalen Abgeordneten von Vinke und erbauliche Geschichte des
Sprochhövel–Elberfelder Wegbaues, Hagen, 1849). [Marx’s note]

Chapter XI: A Trial
At the end of January 1860, two issues of the Berlin National-Zeitung reached London with two lead
articles, the first entitled ‘Karl Vogt and the Allgemeine Zeitung’ (no 37 of the National-Zeitung), and
the second ‘How to Make Radical Leaflets’. Under these various titles Frederick Zabel  [1] carried a
version of Vogt’s Magnum Opus reworked in usum delphim . [2] The latter did not arrive in London
until much later. I immediately decided to institute proceedings for libel against Frederick Zabel  in
Berlin.
Masses of abuse against me have piled up in the German and the German -American press in the last
ten years, but I have only taken it into account in the literary sense in those very rare exceptions, such
as the occasion of the Cologne Communist trial, when the interests of the Party were involved. In my
view, the press possesses the right to insult writers, politicians, actors and other public figures. If I
thought it worthwhile to take cognisance of the attack, then I followed in such cases the motto: à
corsaire, corsaire et demi. [3]
Here matters were different. Zabel accused me of a series of criminal and slanderous actions in front
of an audience, m oreover, which was inclined, out of party prejudices, to believe the greatest
monstrosities and which, on the other hand, given my 11 -year absence from Germany, lacked the
slightest firm basis for a personal judgement of me. Apart from all political consid erations, therefore,
I owed it to my family, my wife and my children to subject Zabel’s slanderous accusations to a legal
examination.
The way in which I made my complaint excluded from the very start any legal comedy of errors such
as Vogt’s trial against  the Allgemeine Zeitung . Even if I had cherished the incredible intention of
appealing against Vogt to the same court of Fazy’s that had already turned down a criminal
investigation, then there were points of decisive importance that could only be settled in Prussia, and
not in Geneva, while, on the other hand, the only statement by Zabel for which he may have wished to
seek proof from Vogt is based on alleged documents that Zabel could just as easily produce in Berlin
as his friend Vogt in Geneva. My ‘complaint’ against Zabel contained the following points.

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I: Zabel says in no 37 of the National -Zeitung, 22 January 1860, in the article entitled ‘Karl Vogt and
the Allgemeine Zeitung’:
Vogt reports on pages 136 et seq: Known under the name of Brimstone Gang or also
of Bürstenheimers, there were, among the refugees of 1849, a number of people who,
at first scattered between Switzerland, France and England, gradually gathered in
London and there honoured Herr Marx as their visible chief. The political principle of
these fellows was the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, and with this mirage they
deluded at first not only many of the best among the refugees but also the workers
from the free bands of Willich’s corps. They continued among the refugees the work of
the Rheinische Zeitung, which in 1849 had warned against any participation in the
movement, just as it constantly attacked all members of parliament, because the
movement after all only had the imperial constitution as its content. The Brimstone
Gang exercised a fearful discipline over its supporters. Any of those who tried to
achieve bourgeois prosperity for himself was, for the very reason that he tried to make
himself independent, in and of itself a traitor to the revolution, a renewed outbreak of
which was expected at any moment, and which, therefore, had to mobilise its soldiers
to send them into the field. Discord, fights and duels were created among this carefully
maintained class of idlers by widespread rumours and correspondence, etc. One cast
suspicion upon the other as a spy and a reactionary. Distrust existed among all against
all. One of the main occupations of the Brimstone Gang was so to compromise people
in the fatherland that they had to pay money so that the gang would keep their secrets
without compromising them. Not one but hundreds of letters were written to Germany
saying that a denunciation would be made of participation in this or that act of the
revolution if certain sum of money did not reach a given address by a certain point in
time. According to the principle that ‘those who are not absolutely for us are against
us’, everybody that opposed this activity was ‘ruined’, not only among the refugees,
but also by means of the press. The ‘proletarians’ filled the columns of the reactionary
press in Germany with their tale-bearing against those democrats who did not pay
homage to them, they became the allies of the secret police in France and Germany.
For a further characterisation Vogt gives us among other things a letter of 26 August
1850 from the former Lieutenant Techow, in which the principles, activities, enmities
and warring secret societies of the ‘proletarians’ are depicted and one sees how Marx,
in his Napoleonic arrogance at his mental superiority, brandishes his whip among the
Brimstone Gang.
For a better understanding of what is to follow, let me note straight away that Zabel , having allegedly
allowed Vogt to ‘report’ in the passage printed above, now describes in his own name blow by blow,
in the interests of a better description of the Brimstone Gang, the Cherval trial in Paris, the
Communist trial in Cologne, the book I published about it, Liebknecht’s revolutionary congress in
Murten and his relationship, through my mediation, with the Allgemeine Zeitung , Ohly, ‘also a
channel of the Brimstone Gang’, and finally Biscamp’s letter to the Allgemeine Zeitung of 20 October
1859, and then closes with the words:
Eight days after Biscamp, Marx too wrote to the Allgemeine Zeitung and offered a
legal document as proof against Vogt, about which we shall perhaps speak another
time. These are the correspondents of the Allgemeine Zeitung.
Out of the whole of this lead article no 1, I made only the passage printed under point I the subject of
my complaint, and of that only the following sentences contained in it:
One of the main activities of the Brimstone Gang was so to compromise people that
they had to pay money so that the gang would keep their secrets without
compromising them. Not one but hundreds of letters were written to Germany saying
that a denunciation would be made of participation in this or that act of the revolution
if a certain sum of money did not reach a given address by a certain point in time.
Here, of course, I demanded of Zabel proof that his statemen ts were true. In my first instructions to
my lawyer, Justizrat Weber in Berlin, I wrote that I did not demand of Zabel ‘hundreds of threatening

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letters’, or even one letter, but one single line in which any one of my notorious party comrades made
himself guilty of the alleged infamy. Zabel only needed, after all, to turn to Vogt, who would send
him dozens of ‘threatening letters’ by return of post. And if by any chance Vogt was unable to show
one line from the hundreds of threatening letters, then at all ev ents he could name several hundred
‘people in the fatherland’ who had been held to ransom in the manner stated. Since the people are to
be found ‘in Germany’, they were in any case more accessible to a court in Berlin than to a court in
Geneva.
My complain t against Zabel’s lead article no 1 was therefore confined to one single point —  the
political compromising of people in Germany in order to blackmail them for money. In order to refute
at the same time the other statements in his lead article no 1, I adduced a series of facts. Here I did not
demand proof that his statements were true, but produced proof that they were false.
Johann Philipp Becker ’s letter was sufficiently clear about the Brimstone Gang or also
Bürstenheimers. As far as the character of the Communist League and the nature of my participation
in it were concerned, then among others H Bürgers , one of those sentenced in the Cologne
Communist trial, could be summoned as a witness from Cologne to Berlin and examined under oath
during the proceedings. Further, F Engels had found among his papers a letter dated November 1852
and authenticated by London and Manchester postmarks in which I informed him of the dissolution of
the League which took place on my proposal and also of the motives that had le d to this decision to
dissolve: the fact that since the arrest of the Cologne defendants all contact with the continent had
been broken off, and that such a propaganda society was not all appropriate any longer. As far as
Zabel’s shameless assertion about my connection ‘with the secret police in Germany and in France’
was concerned, it was supposed to be proved partly by the Cologne Communist trial and partly by the
Cherval trial in Paris. I shall return to the latter. In relation to the former, I sent my lawyer my
Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne  published in 1853 and drew his attention to
the fact that the lawyer Schneider II could be summoned to Berlin from Cologne and examined under
oath about my share in the exposure of the infamies  of the police. Zabel’s claim that I and my party
comrades had ‘filled the columns of the reactionary press in Germany with tale -bearing against those
democrats’ who did not ‘do homage’ to us I countered with the fact that I had never, directly or
indirectly, written from abroad in a German newspaper, with the single exception of the Neue Oder -
Zeitung. My contributions printed in this paper and if necessary the testimony of one of its editors, Dr
Elsner, would prove that I did not think it worth the effort the mention even the name of a ‘democrat’.
As far as Liebknecht’s correspondence in the Allgemeine Zeitung  was concerned, it began in the
spring of 1855, three years after the dissolution of the ‘League’, and moreover without my prior
knowledge, and for the rest contained reports on British politics in keeping with his party standpoint,
but not a mortal word about ‘democrats’, as the volumes of the Allgemeine Zeitung show. If, in my
absence from London, Liebknecht sent the Allgemeine Zeitung  a leaflet published in London against
the ‘democrat’ Vogt, he had a complete right to do so, for he knew that the leaflet had as its publisher
a ‘democrat’ whom the ‘democrat’ Vogt had himself called upon to collaborate in his ‘democratic’
propaganda, and whom he thus had recognised as a ‘democrat’ of the same rank as himself. Zabel’s
nonsense about naming me myself as a ‘correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung’ was strikingly
refuted by a letter (Appendix X) written to me by Herr Orges a few days before the o pening of the
Augsburg trial in which, among other things, he tries to correct my presumed ‘liberal’ prejudices
against the Allgemeine Zeitung. Finally Zabel’s lie that ‘eight days after  Biscamp Marx too wrote to
the Allgemeine Zeitung collapsed under its own weight, since Biscamp’s letter is dated 20 October
1859, and the small covering note with which I sent Herr Orges the ‘document’ he required was
before the district court in Augsburg on 24 October 1859, and thus could not have been written in
London on 29 October 1859.
With an eye to the court, it seemed appropriate to add to the evidence already quoted some few
documents that cast the grotesquely infamous light the ‘democrat’ Zabel had tried to throw on my
position among the exiles and my ‘activities’ abroad back at the author of the slanders.
I first lived in Paris from the end of 1843 until the beginning of 1845, when Guizot expelled me. To
characterise my attitude to the French party of the revolution during my stay in Paris, I sent my lawyer
a letter from Flocon
[4] revoking Guizot’s expulsion order on behalf of the provisional government of
1848 and inviting me to return to France from Belgium (Appendix XIV). I lived in Brussels from the

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beginning of 1845 until the end of February 1848, when Rogier expelled me from Belgium. The
municipality of Brussels later removed from office the police inspector who had arrested my wife and
myself on the occasion of that expulsion. There was in Brussels an international democratic society
[5] whose honorary presid ent was the aged General Mellinet , the saviour of Antwerp against the
Dutch. The president was the lawyer Jottrand, formerly a member of the Belgian provisional
government. The Vice-President for the Poles was Lelewel, a former member of the Polish provisional
government, the Vice -President for the French was Imbert, governor of the Tuileries after the
February revolution of 1848, and I functioned as Vice -President for the Germans, elected by a public
meeting consisting of the German Workers’ Association an d all the German exiles in Brussels. A
letter from Jottrand to me at the time of the foundation of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (Jottrand
belongs to the so- called American school of republicans, that is to say a tendency alien to me) and a
couple of lines t hat are otherwise of no interest from my friend Lelewel are sufficient to show my
position in the democratic party in Brussels. I therefore added them to the defence documents
(Appendix XIV).
After I was thrown out of Prussia in the spring of 1849 and out of France in the late summer of 1849 I
went to London where, since the dissolution of the League (1852) and since most of my friends have
left London, I have kept my distance from any public or secret societies, or indeed any society at all,
although from time to time, with the permission of the ‘democrat’ Zabel, I hold free lectures on
political economy for a selected circle of workers. The London German Workers’ Educational
Association, from which I resigned on 15 March 1850, held on 6 February 1860 a cel ebration to mark
the twentieth anniversary of its foundation, to which I was invited and at which a unanimous
resolution was passed ‘ to brand as slander ’ Vogt’s assertion that I have ‘exploited’ the German
workers in general and the London workers in parti cular. The then President of the Workers’
Association, Herr Müller, had this decision authenticated on 1 March 1860, in front of the Police
Court at Bow Street. Besides this document I also sent my lawyer a letter from the English lawyer and
leader of the Chartist Party, Ernest Jones (Appendix XIV), in which he expresses his indignation at
the ‘infamous articles’ in the National-Zeitung (Ernest Jones, born and brought up in Berlin,
understands German better than Zabel) and remembers among other things my ye ars of unpaid
collaboration on the London organs of the Chartist Party. I may also mention here that when a British
workers’ parliament [6] met in Manchester at the end of 1853, Louis Blanc and myself alone among
the European exiles in London received an invitation to be honorary members.
Finally, since the Honorary Vogt has me ‘living from the sweat of the workers’, from whom I have
never received or demanded a centime, and the ‘democrat’ Zabel has me ‘so compromising people in
the Fatherland that they had to pay money so that the gang would keep their secret without
compromising them’, I asked Mr Charles A Dana, the managing editor of the New York Tribune, the
first English-American newspaper, whose readership is 200,000, and which therefore almost rivals the
Biel Carpet-Bagger and Zabel’s Organ of Democracy  in circulation, for a written statement on my
nine years of paid work for the Tribune, the Cyclopaedia Americana, etc. His letter (Appendix XIV),
which does me great honour, is the final document with w hich I thought it necessary to provide my
lawyer in defence against Vogt-Zabel’s stink-ball number I.
II: In Zabel’s lead article no II, ‘How to Make Radical Leaflets’ (no 41 of the National-Zeitung, 25
January 1860) it says:
Where the money came from for this generously distributed newspaper [that is to say
the Volk] God only knows. Men only know that Marx and Biscamp have no money to
spare.
Considered in isolation, this passage could be taken as an impartial exclamation of astonishment, as if
I, for example, were to say:
How a certain layabout, whom I knew at university as a mentally and materially
degenerate dunce — he was proprietor of a child- minding establishment, and his
literary achievements before 1848 were confined to a few furtive articles in a hole-in-
a-corner literary paper — how the said layabout dunce set about becoming editor in
chief of the National-Zeitung, a shareholder in it and a ‘democrat with money to

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spare’, God only knows. Men who have studied a certain novel by Balzac and the
Manteuffel period can guess.
Zabel’s remark receives a completely different malicious meaning from the fact that it follows his
allegations about my connections with the secret police in France and Germany and my political -
conspiratorial blackmailing letters, an d is immediately followed by the ‘mass production of forged
banknotes’ to be mentioned under III. The obvious aim is to imply that I obtained funds for the Volk
by dishonest means.
An affidavit of 3 March 1860 in Manchester, according to which all the mone y I made over to the
Volk, with the exception of an aliquot part that I myself paid, came, not as Vogt claimed ‘over the
Channel’, but from Manchester, and moreover from the pockets of my friends, served as a legal
refutation of Zabel. (See the Augsburg Campaign.)
III: ‘To characterise the tactics’ of the ‘party of the “proletarians” under Marx’, Frederick Zabel
relates, among other things, in his leading article no II:
In this way a conspiracy of the most scandalous kind, involving the mass production
of counterfeit banknotes, read Vogt for the details, was in 1852 devised against the
Swiss Workers’ Associations [etc].
This is how Zabel elaborates Vogt’s statements about the Cherval adventure and makes me moral
author of and criminal participant in ‘the mass production of counterfeit banknotes’. My evidence in
refutation of these allegations by the ‘democrat’ Zabel extends over the whole period from Cherval’s
entry into the ‘Communist League’ until his flight from Geneva in 1854. An affidavit sworn by Karl
Schapper before the Bow Street Police Court on 1 March 1860 proved that Cherval’s entry into the
League in London took place before my entry into the League, that from Paris, where he lived from
the summer of 1850 until the spring of 1852, he entered into relations not with me but with the hostile
counter-league under Schapper and Willich, and that after his pretended escape from St Pélagie prison
and his return to London (spring 1852) he entered the local German Workers’  Educational
Association, to which I  had not belonged since September 1850, until he was finally unmasked,
declared to be an infamous person and expelled. Further, the lawyer Schneider II in Cologne could be
examined under oath as to the fact that the revelations about Cherval and his relati ons with the
German police in London, etc, came from me. My Revelations  published in 1853 proved that I had
publicly denounced him after the closure of the trial. Finally, Johann Philipp Becker’s letter gave
information about Cherval’s Geneva period.
IV: After drivelling with truly dunce -like logic in lead article no II about the leaflet As a Warning
directed against Vogt, and casting as much suspicion as possible on Vögele’s testimony which I sent
to the Allgemeine Zeitung and which relates to the origins of the same, the ‘democrat’ Frederick Zabel
concludes as follows:
He [Blind] is obviously not a member of the more immediate Marx party. It seems to
us that it was not too difficult for the latter to make a scapegoat out of him, and if the
accusation against Vogt was to have any weight, then it would necessarily have to be
attributed to a specific person who would have to answer for it. Now the Marx party
could shrug off responsibility for the authorship of the leaflet on to Blind very easily
precisely because and since the latter had expressed himself in a similar sense in
conversation with Marx and in the article in the Free Press; the leaflet could be forged
using the same expressions and turns of phrase as Blind so that it looked like his
work… Anybody c an now hold Marx or Blind to be the author as he sees fit [etc].
Zabel here accuses me of having forged a document, the leaflet As a Warning, in Blind’s name, and of
having later stated that he was the author of the leaflet I had forged in a false testimony sent by me to
the Allgemeine Zeitung. The legal refutation of these assertions by the ‘democrat’ Zabel was as
striking as it was simple. It consisted of Blind’s letter to Liebknecht quoted earlier, Blind’s article in
the Free Press, the two affidavits of  Wiehe and Vögele (Appendices XII and XIII) and the printed
statement by MD Schaible.
Vogt, who, as we know, pours scorn on the Bavarian government in his Studien, laid a complaint
against the Allgemeine Zeitung  at the end of August 1859. By the following September, the
Allgemeine Zeitung already had to apply for a postponement of the public court hearing, and despite

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the granting of this postponement the hearing actually took place on 24 October  1859. If such a thing
could happen in the darkest state of Ba varia, what was not to be expected of the enlightened state of
Prussia, quite apart from the fact that there are proverbially ‘judges in Berlin’.
My lawyer, Herr Justizrat Weber, formulated my complaint in the following way:
The editor of the National-Zeitung, Dr Zabel, libelled me repeatedly and publicly in
the lead articles contained in nos 37 and 41 of this year of that newspaper and in
particular accused me of 1) obtaining and having obtained money by dishonest and
criminal means; 2) having forged the anonymous leaflet As a Warning and having not
only given out to the Allgemeine Zeitung, against my better knowledge, that the author
was a certain Blind, but also having attempted to prove it by means of a document the
incorrectness of whose contents must have been manifest to me.
Herr Justizrat Weber chose first of all the criminal law procedure, that is, he denounced Zabel’s libels
to the public prosecutor so that official action could now be taken against Zabel. On 18 April 1860,
there then ensued the following ‘ordinance’:
Returned to Herr Dr Karl Marx in the hands of Herr Justizrat Weber, with notification
that no public interest is involved which might give me occasion to intervene (Article
XVI of the Introductory Law to the Penal Code of 14 April 1851) Berlin, 18 April.
Signed Lippe, Public Prosecutor at the Royal City Court.
My lawyer appealed to the attorney general and, on 26  April 1860, received a second ‘ordinance’
reading:
To königl Justizrat Weber as attorney here for Herr Dr Karl Marx in London. I return
the documents handed in here with the complaint of 20 April inst, in the matter of the
denunciation against Dr Zabel with the remark that the only consideration by which
the public prosecutor can permit himself to be guided in the discretion granted to him
by Article XVI of the Introductory Law to the Penal Code is indeed the question
whether prosecution furthers any recognisable public interest. In the present case, I
must agree with the public prosecutor and answer this question in the negative, and
therefore reject your complaint.
Berlin, 26 April 1860, signed Schwarck, Attorney General at the Royal Supreme
Court.
I fou nd these two refusals by the public prosecutor, Lippe , and the attorney general, Schwarck ,
entirely justified. In every state in the world, and therefore presumably in the Prussian state too, what
is understood by public interest are the interests of the government. No ‘recognisable public interest’
in prosecuting the ‘democrat’ Zabel for libel against my person existed or could exist on the part of
the Prussian government. Rather, its interests lay in the opposite direction. Moreover, the public
prosecutor does not possess the judicial authority to reach a verdict; he has to follow the instructions
of his superiors, in the last instance of the Minister of Justice, blindly, even against his own
convictions or views. In fact, therefore, I am in complete agreement with the decisions of Herren
Lippe and Schwarck, although I harbour a legal scruple about Lippe’s reference to Article XVI of the
penal code of 14 April 1851. The department of public prosecutions is not bound to give reasons why
it makes no use of it s powers to intervene by any provision of the Prussian penal code. Nor does
Article XVI, which Lippe quotes, contain a syllable in this respect. So why quote it?
My lawyer now adopted the civil law procedure, and I heaved a sigh of relief. If the Prussian
government had no public interest in prosecuting Frederick Zabel, then my private interest of self -
defence was all the livelier. And I now appeared in my own name. How the verdict fell was a matter
of indifference to me, as long as I succeeded in bringing Frederick Zabel to the bar of a public court.
Now imagine my amazement! It was not yet, I learned, a question of starting legal proceedings on my
complaint, but of starting legal proceedings to establish whether I had the right to prosecute Frederick
Zabel.
In the Prussian legal system, I learned to my horror, before the judge introduces the complaint, that is,
has preparations made for the actual verdict, every plaintiff must present the case to the same judge in
such a way that the latter can see whether th e right to prosecute exists. In this preliminary

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examination of the material, the judge may demand new evidence or suppress part of the old
evidence, or find that no right to prosecute exists at all. If it pleases him to grant the plaintiff the right
to prosecute, the judge introduces the complaint, the case is argued before the court and the matter is
decided by a verdict. If the judge refuses the right to prosecute, he simply rejects the plaintiff per
decretum, [7] by an ordinance. This procedure is pecul iar not only to cases of defamation but to civil
cases in general. Thus a prosecution for defamation, like any other civil prosecution, can be rejected
in a court of any level by such an ordinance, and consequently never be settled.
It will be admitted that legislation that does not recognise the right to prosecute of a private person in
his own private affairs has not yet grasped the simplest of all the basic laws of bourgeois society.
From being the manifest right of an independent private person, the rig ht to prosecute becomes a
privilege bestowed by the state through its judicial employees. In every legal quarrel the state pushes
in between the private person and the doors of the court, which are its private property , and which it
opens and shuts as it sees fit. The judge first of all ordains as an employee of the state in order later to
reach a verdict as a judge. The same judge who, without examining the defendant or hearing both
sides of the case argued out, prejudges whether the right to prosecute exists, who may take the side of
the plaintiff, and thus decide to a certain extent in favour of the justice of the complaint and thus to a
certain extent against the defendant, that very same judge, then, is later supposed to reach an impartial
verdict between the plaintiff and the defendant, that is to say pass judgement on his own pre -
judgement. B boxes A’s ears. A cannot prosecute the ear -boxer until he has respectfully obtained a
licence to do so from the judicial employee of the state. A denies B the use of a piece of land. B needs
a provisional concession in order to validate his claim to possession in court. He may or may not
obtain it. B libels A in the public press, and a judicial employee of the state may ‘ordain’ in secret that
A cannot prosecute B. One can grasp what enormities such a procedure can engender in the actual
civil trial itself. But in a libel action between political parties in the public press! In every country,
even in Prussia, judges are known to be men like any others. Did not one of the Vice-Presidents of the
Royal Prussian High Court of Appeal, Herr Dr  Götze declare in the Prussian House of Lords that
Prussian jurisprudence had got into difficulty as a result of the confusion of the years 1848, 1849 and
1850, and that it had taken some time to orient itself? Who will guarantee that Dr Götze did not
miscalculate the time needed for orientation? The fact that in Prussia the right to prosecute, for
example, a slanderer depends on the provisional ‘ordinance’ of a state employee whom, to cap it all,
the government can punish for so- called ‘dereliction of duty in office’ with a reprimand, a fine, a
forced transfer to another position and even dishonourable discharge from the legal service (see the
provisional regulation of 10 July 1849 and the disciplinary law of 7 May 1851) — how am I to start to
make that not just clear but credible to the English?
I propose, that is, to publish an English pamphlet on my case against Frederick Zabel. And what
would Edmond About, while he was writing La Prusse en 1860, not have given for the knowledge
that, throughout the whole extent of the Prussian monarchy, the right to prosecute exists nowhere
except in the Rhenish province ‘blessed’ with the Code Napoléon?
[8] People have to suffer under the
courts everywhere, but only in a few countries are they forbidden to complain.
It will be grasped that under these conditions my case against Zabel before a Prussian court had to be
transformed in my hand into my case against the Prussian courts about Zabel. Let us then turn our
gaze from the theoretical beauty of legislation to the practical charms of its application.
On 8 June 1860, the Royal City Court of Berlin decreed the following ‘ordinance’:
Ordinance on the complaint of 5 June 1860, in the matter of defamation Marx vs Zabel
M 38 de 1860.
1: The complaint is dismissed because of lack of evidence because the two articles in
the National-Zeitung of this city forming the basis of the charge have solely the
political position of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung and the history of the
anonymous leaflet As a Warning as their subject of discussion and the remarks and
assertions, insofar as they are made by the author himself and do not consist of mere
quotations from other persons, do not overstep the bounds of permitted criticism and
therefore cannot be considered culpable under the provisions of paragraph 154 of the

156

penal code, since no intention to insult emerges either from the form in which these
remarks were made or from the circumstances under which they ensued.
Berlin, 8 June 1860 Royal City Court, Department Of Criminal Matters, Commission I
for Matters of Defamation (LS).
So the City Court forbids me to  prosecute Frederick Zabel and relieves Zabel of the bother of
answering for his public slanders! And why? ‘Because of lack of evidence.’ The Department of Public
Prosecutions refused to take steps against Zabel for me because no public interest at all was involved.
The City Court forbids me to take steps in my own person again st Zabel because no evidence exists.
And why is there no evidence?
Firstly: ‘Because the two articles in the National-Zeitung are concerned solely with the political
position of the Allgemeine Zeitung.’ Because provisionally Zabel lyingly transforms me int o a
‘correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung ’, Zabel has the right to make me the whipping boy in his
squabble with the Allgemeine Zeitung  over circulation, and I do not even have the right to complain
about this ‘ordinance’ of the mighty Zabel! The Brimst one Gang, the Bürstenheimers, the Franco –
German plot, the revolutionary congress at Murten, the Cologne Communist trial, the counterfeit
banknotes of Geneva, the ‘work of the  Rheinische Zeitung’, etc, etc —  all that is ‘solely concerned
with the political position of the Allgemeine Zeitung’.
Secondly: Frederick Zabel had ‘no intention to insult’. Pon my soul, no! The good fellow merely
intended to slander me to death politically and morally.
If the ‘democrat’ Frederick Zabel claims in the National -Zeitung that I counterfeited masses of
banknotes, forged documents in the names of third parties and compromised people politically in the
fatherland in order to extort money out of them under the threat of denunciation, etc, then legally
speaking Zabel can only h ave intended one thing or the other by these assertions, to slander me or to
denounce me. In the first case Zabel is legally culpable, in the second case he has to supply legal
proof of the truth of his assertions. What concern of mine are any other privat e intentions ‘democrat’
Zabel has?
Zabel slanders, but without ‘the intention to insult’. He cuts off my honour in the same way that the
Turk cut off the Greek’s head, without intending to hurt him.
If it is a question of ‘insulting’ and ‘intention to insu lt’, then with the kind of infamies ‘democrat’
Zabel makes up about me, Zabel’s specific ‘ intention’ to ‘insult’ me, the good Zabel’s very wicked
intention breathes out of every pore of his lead articles I and II.
Vogt’s Magnum Opus , including Appendices, numbers no fewer than 278 pages. And Frederick
Zabel, accustomed ‘to draw out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument’, the
bombastic Frederick Zabel, dunce Zabel, manages to compress these 278 pages into about five
newspaper colu mns without losing a single one of Vogt’s slanders against myself and my party.
Frederick Zabel gives a choice bouquet of the dirtiest passages and a table of contents of the less
drastic ones. Frederick Zabel, accustomed to drawing two molecules of though t out into 278 pages,
condenses 278 pages into two lead -articles without dropping a single atom of malice in the process.
Ira facit poetam.
[9] How intense then the malice must have been that could magically transform
Zabel’s water on the brain into a hydraulic press of such compressive power!
On the other hand, his malice obscures his vision so completely that he ascribes miraculous powers,
literally miraculous powers to me just so that he can insinuate one more piece of baseness.
After starting the first article with a description of the Brimstone Gang under my command and
happily making myself and my party comrades ‘ allies of the secret police in France and Germany ’,
after relating, among other things, that ‘those people’ hated Vogt because he was constan tly saving
Switzerland from them, he continues:
When, then, Vogt last year raised his complaint against the Allgemeine Zeitung,
another London accomplice, Biscamp, reported to the paper in writing…  In the most
shameless manner the writer offered his pen as a second correspondent beside Herr
Liebknecht. Eight days after Biscamp, Marx also wrote to the Allgemeine-Zeitung
offering a ‘legal document’ as proof against Vogt, of which [document, proof or
Vogt?] we shall perhaps speak on another occasion.

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Zabel makes the latter promise on 22 January and he had already made it good by 25 January, in no
41 of the National-Zeitung, which reads:
So Blind denies that he is the author of the leaflet; he is described as such for the first
time… in  Biscamp’s letter to the Allgemeine Zeitung of 24 October… Marx writes to
the Allgemeine Zeitung on 29 October in order further to plead Blind’s authorship.
So not once but twice, first of all on 22 January and then again on 25 January, after he had had three
days to consi der, Zabel credits me with the miraculous power of writing, on 29 October 1859 in
London a letter that was before the District Court in Augsburg on 24 October 1859, and both times he
credits me with this miraculous power in order to make a connection between the ‘document’ I sent to
the Allgemeine Zeitung and Biscamp’s offending letter to the Allgemeine Zeitung, in order to make it
appear that my letter was the pedissequus  [10] of Biscamp’s letter. And was it not malice, perverse
malice, that made this Frederick Zabel so utterly stupid, far beyond his usual degree of stupidity, that
he believes in miracles?
But, the City Court goes on to ‘plead’, Zabel’s lead article II has ‘solely the history of the anonymous
leaflet As a Warning’ as ‘its subject of discussion’. As its subject? That should read: as its pretext.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee, concealed this time under the name of ‘Friends of the Fatherland’, [11]
had, it appears, sent an ‘open letter’ in November 1859 to the Nationalverein [12] which was reprinted
in the reactionary Neue Hannoversche Zeitung . The ‘open letter’ exceeded the measure of Zabel’s
‘democracy’, which balances its lion -like courage towards the Habsburg dynasty with its crawling
before the Hohenzollern dynasty. From the ‘open letter’ the Neue Preussische Zeitung  made the
admittedly not very original discovery that once democracy starts it does not necessarily end in —
Frederick Zabel and his ‘Organ of Democracy’. Zabel grew angry and wrote lead article II: ‘ How to
Make Radical Leaflets’.
In inviting [says the weighty Zabel] the Kreuz-Zeitung to go through the history of the
leaflet As a Warning with us on the basis of the documents and explanations imparted
to us by Vogt, we expect them in the end to concede that we were right to say eight
days ago that the ‘open letter’ to the Nationalverein was something for them and not
for us, that it was written for their columns and not for ours.
So the ‘democrat’ Zabel, initiated radicaliter into all the mysteries of radicalism, wants for his part to
lecture the Kreuz- Zeitung on the mystery of ‘How to Make Radical Leaflets’, or, as the City Court
puts it, has solely the history of the leaflet As a Warning as its subject of discussion ’. And how does
Frederick Zabel start?
He begins with the ‘tactics’ of the ‘party of the “proletarians” under Marx’. He relates first of all how
the ‘“proletarians” under Marx’ behind the back of but in the name of a Workers’ Association, carried
on correspondence from London with foreign Workers’ Associations ‘the compromising of which is
intended’, set ‘intrigues’, the organisation of a secret society, etc, into motion, and finally had
‘documents’ written which ‘inevitably attract the attention of the poli ce’ to the associations ‘the
compromising of which is intended’. So in order to teach the Kreuz- Zeitung ‘how to make radical
leaflets’ Zabel first of all teaches how the ‘party of the “proletarians” under Marx ’ makes political
‘correspondence’ and ‘documents’, which are not ‘leaflets’. In order to explain ‘how to make radical
leaflets’, he goes on to explain how, in 1852 in Geneva, the ‘“proletarians” under Marx ’ made
‘masses of counterfeit banknotes’, which once more are not ‘radical leaflets’. In order to explain ‘how
to make radical leaflets’ he reports how, at the central festival at Lausanne in 1859, the ‘“proletarians”
under Marx’ carried out anti-Swiss ‘manoeuvres’ intended to compromise the Workers’ Associations,
which again are not ‘radical leaflets’; how ‘Biscamp and Marx’, with financial sources known only to
‘God’, brought out the Volk, which once again was not a ‘radical leaflet’ but a weekly paper, and after
all this he puts in a good word for the spotless purity of Vogt’s recruiting office, whi ch was not a
‘radical leaflet’ either. This is how he fills two of the three and a half columns of the article ‘How to
Make Radical Leaflets’. The history of the anonymous leaflet therefore only serves as a pretext for
these two-thirds of the article in or der to repeat those of Vogt’s infamies that ‘friend’ and accomplice
Frederick Zabel had not yet peddled under the heading of ‘ political position of the Allgemeine
Zeitung’. Finally, at long last, Dunce I comes to the art of ‘making radical leaflets’, that is to say to
‘the history’ of the leaflet As a Warning:

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Blind insists he is not the author of the leaflet. He is impudently described as such, and
for the first time, in Biscamp’s letter to the Allgemeine Zeitung of 20 October… In
order to plead further the case for Blind’s authorship, Marx writes to the Allgemeine
Zeitung: ‘I have obtained the enclosed document because Blind refuses to answer for
remarks he has made to me and to others.’
Zabel now casts suspicion on this document too particularly because L iebknecht… ‘surprisingly’
adds: ‘We wanted to have our signatures validated by the Magistrate (?)’ (this question mark is in
Zabel’s text), and because Zabel is determined once and for all not to recognise any other magistrate
apart from the Berlin Magistrat.
Zabel further informs us of the contents of Vögele’s declaration, as a result of which Blind sent the
Allgemeine Zeitung the testimonies of Hollinger and Wiehe as proof that the leaflet had not been set
in Hollinger’s print-shop and therefore had not been written by Blind, and then continues: ‘ Always
quick to answer, Marx replies in the Allgemeine Zeitung on 15 November.’
Zabel enumerates the various points in my reply. Marx says this… Marx says that… ‘moreover Marx
refers’. And so, since I moreover say nothing, does that mean that Zabel has informed his readers of
all the points in my reply? You know your Zabel! He conceals, pilfers away, suppresses the main
point of my reply. In my statement of 15 November I adduce various points  which are, moreover,
numbered. Like this:
1… 2… and finally 3…, incidentally the reprint [of the leaflet] in the Volk  is run off
the type set for the leaflet, which was still standing in Hollinger’s print-shop. Thus
legal proof could be furnished that the leaflet originated from F Hollinger’s print-shop
by a simple comparison between it and the reprint in the Volk without taking any
testimony.
That decides the matter, Zabel says to himself. My readers must not know that. And he conjures away
the main poi nt of my reply in order to burden my conscience with a suspicious quickness to reply.
That is how Zabel tells the ‘history of the leaflet’, by falsifying history twice, once in relation to the
chronology and the other time in relation to the content of my statement of 15 November. His double
falsification smooths the path to his conclusion that I ‘forged’ the leaflet, and moreover in such a way
that it ‘looked like’ Blind’s ‘work’, in other words that in Vögele’s testimony I sent false testimony to
the Allgemeine Zeitung, and did so knowingly . According to the view of the Berlin City Court , the
accusation of forging documents with the intention of attributing them to a third party ‘does not
overstep the bounds of permitted criticism’, even less does it involve ‘the intention to insult’.
At the end of his recipe ‘How to Make Radical Leaflets’, it suddenly occurs to Zabel that there is still
one of Vogt’s shameless inventions that has not yet been peddled, and immediately after his lead
article II he hastily throws in the note:
In 1850 another circular [as Vogt seems to remember] written by Parliament-Wolf
alias Dungeon-Wolf, was sent to the ‘proletarians’ in Germany and at the same time
passed to the Hanoverian police.
With this nice police anecdote about a former editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, the layabout and
democrat Zabel takes his smirking departure from his readership. The words ‘alias Dungeon -Wolf’
are not Vogt’s, but Frederick Zabel’s. He intended his Silesian readers to know quite exactly that t he
person they were dealing with was their compatriot W Wolff, a former co -editor of the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung. Such is the supreme care with which the good Zabel is concerned to establish in
the smallest detail the link between the Neue Rheinische Zeitu ng and the police in France and
Germany! His Silesians could, perhaps, have believed that they were dealing with Zabel’s own B
Wolff, Zabel’s natural superior, who as we know, in a ‘secret society’ with those notorious fabricators
of lying dispatches Reuter in London and Havas in Paris, rearranges world history by telegraph to suit
his purposes. Sigmund Engländer, the notorious secret police agent, is however the soul of Reuter’s
agency, and therefore the animating unity of the trinity B Wolff–Reuter–Havas.
Despite all this and despite democrat Zabel’s intention not to insult, the Berlin City Court declares
that there are, admittedly, ‘contained’ in Zabel’s two lead articles, ‘remarks and assertions’ which
‘overstep the bounds of permitted criticism’, and ar e therefore ‘culpable’ and thus also at any event
liable to prosecution. So where is Zabel? Hand Zabel over to me so that he can wriggle in front of the

159

court! Halt! cries the City Court . The ‘remarks and assertions’, says the City Court, ‘insofar as they
are made by the author himself and do not consist of mere quotations from other persons ’, do not
overstep ‘the bounds of permitted criticism’, are not ‘culpable’, and thus Zabel is not only not
culpable, but not even liable to prosecution, and the ‘documents are to be returned to the account of
the plaintiff. So the slanderous part of Zabel’s ‘remarks and assertions’ are ‘mere quotations’.
Voyons!
From the beginning of this section it will be remembered that my complaint of libel rests on four
passages in Zabel’s two lead articles. In the passage on sources of finance (under point II of the heads
of complaint quoted above) Zabel himself does not pretend to be quoting, and is in fact not quoting,
for:
Zabel: National-Zeitung, no 41: ‘Where the money came from for this generously
distributed newspaper [Volk], God only knows. Men only know that Marx and
Biscamp have no money to spare.’
Vogt: Magnum Opus, p 212: ‘The constant correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung
works for this paper (Volk), which was founded with unknown funds, since neither
Biscamp nor Marx possess the necessary means for this purpose. [That is to say for
founding a newspaper with unknown funds?]
In the second of the passages forming the basis of the charge (see under IV above), in which I am
accused of forging a document in Blind’s name, Zabel even states that he is speaking in his own name
as Zabel, and not in Vogt’s name:
It seems to us [as ruler in the Empire of Dullness Zabel, of course, uses the royal we] it
seems to us that it was not too difficult for the latter [the Marx Party] to make a
scapegoat of him [Blind]… the leaflet could be forged using the same expressions and
turns of phrase as Blind so that it looked like his [Blind’s] work. (National-Zeitung, no
41)
The third passage forming the basis of my charge (under III above) I must once more ‘quote’ in full:
In this way a conspiracy of the most scandalous kind, involving the mass production
of counterfeit banknotes (read Vogt for the details) was in 1852 devised against the
Swiss Workers’ Associations, and it would have created the most extreme
unpleasantness for the Swiss authorities had it not been discovered in time.
Is this ‘mere quotation’ as the City Court claims, or is it quotation at all? It is in part plagiarised from
Vogt, but in no sense is it quotation.
First of all, Zabel himself claims that he is not quoting but speaking in his own name by telling the
reader in parentheses ‘read Vogt for the details’. And now just look at the passage! In Geneva it was
known that Cherval did not come to Geneva until the spring of 1853, that his ‘conspiracy’ and flight
took place in the spring of 1854. Vogt in Geneva, therefore, did not dare to say that the ‘conspiracy’
had been devised in ‘1852’. He leaves this lie to the good Zabel in Berlin. Further: Vogt says:
Already various lithographic and copper plates had been engraved by Nugent himself
for this purpose [the manufacture of counterfeit banknotes, etc]. (Magnum Opus,
p 175)
So various lithographic and copper plates had already been engraved for the counterfeiting, the
banknotes and treasury notes had not yet been manufactured. According to Zabel , on the other hand,
‘the production of counterfeit banknotes’, and ‘ mass production ’ at that, had already taken place.
Vogt says that the statutory ‘purpose’ of Cherval’s conspiracy had been:
To combat despotism by its own methods, and moreover by the mass fabrication of
counterfeit banknotes and treasury notes. (Magnum Opus, p 175)
Zabel deletes the combating of despotism and holds on to the ‘mass production of counterfeit
banknotes’. So what we have according to Zabel is a common bourgeois crime not even justified to
the members of the ‘secret society’ by the false pretext of political ends. And this is how Zabel
‘quotes’ the Magnum Opus altogether. Vogt had to turn his tall stories into a ‘book’. He therefore adds
details, spins things out, splotches, blots, colours, manipulates, complicates, motivates, invents, fa del
cul trombetta,
[13] and thus his Falstaffian soul appears through all  the alleged facts that he

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unconsciously dissolves anew into their original nothingness through his own narration. Zabel,
however, who had to compress the book into two lead articles without losing a single piece of malice,
suppresses everything except the Caput mortuum [14] of every alleged fact, lines these dried bones of
slander up one after the other and then counts the beads of this rosary with all the zeal of the Pharisee.
Take, for example, the case at hand. Vogt links his inventions to the fact, whi ch I was the first to
expose, that Cherval is a secret police agent provocateur in the pay of various embassies. The story
then goes, among other things, that:
Already various lithographic and copper plates had been engraved by Nugent
[Cherval] himself for this purpose [counterfeiting], already the gullible members of
the secret society had been decided who were to go with packets of these [not yet
manufactured] counterfeit banknotes to France, Switzerland and Germany; but already
the denunciations to the police too had ensued, and for the while the Workers’
Associations had been involved in them in a scandalous manner [etc]. (Magnum Opus,
p 175)
So Vogt has Cherval already denounce his own operation to the police when he has, as yet , only
engraved copper plates and lithographic stones for his intended counterfeiting, and before the purpose
of his conspiracy has been achieved, before there is a corpus delicti , or anyone else compromised
beyond himself. But Vogt’s Cherval is impelled by the urge to involve ‘the Workers’ Associations in
a scandalous manner’ in his ‘conspiracy’. The foreign embassies using Cherval are just as stupid as
Cherval and are just as over -precipitate to draw the ‘attention of the Federal Police to the fact that
political intrigues were taking place in the Workers’ Associations, etc, through confidential enquiries’.
At the same time, these simpletons of ambassadors, who do not have the patience to allow the
conspiracy hatched on their behalf by Cherval to ripen, and who in their childish i mpatience uselessly
expose their own agent, draw up Gendarmes on ‘the frontiers’ so that, ‘should the matter go so far’ as
they would not let it go, ‘they would arrest’ Cherval’s emissaries ‘with the counterfeit banknotes’
whose production they thwarted, ‘and use the whole affair for a general witch -hunt in which masses
of innocent people would have to suffer for the intrigues of a few vile men’.
If Vogt now goes on to say that ‘the plan of this whole conspiracy was plotted in the most horrible
way’, then anybody would concede that it was plotted in the most horribly stupid way , and when he
concludes with the boast ‘I do not deny that I contributed my essentials to thwart this devilry’,
everybody will see the point and split their sides laughing at the merry devil. But now compare it with
the monkish chronicle of Zabel’s version!
In this way a conspiracy of the most scandalous kind, involving the mass production
of counterfeit banknotes (read Vogt for the details) was in 1852 devised against the
Swiss Workers’ Associations, and it would have created the most extreme
unpleasantness for the Swiss authorities had it not been discovered in time.
Here is a whole bundle of facts that are as dry as they are scandalous rolled up into a single short
sentence. ‘A conspiracy of the most scandalous kind’ dated 1852. ‘The mass production of counterfeit
banknotes.’ That is to say, a common bourgeois crime. ‘Intentional compromising of the Swiss
Workers’ Associations.’ That is to say, treachery to one’s own party. The possibility of creating ‘the
most extreme unpleasantness’ for the ‘Swiss authorities’. That is to say, an agent provocateur in the
interests of the continental despots against the Swiss republic. Finally, ‘the timely discovery of the
conspiracy’. Here the critic has none of the points of reference offered to him by Vogt’s account; they
have been conjured quite away. One simply has to believe or not believe. And this is how Zabel
revises the whole of the Magnum Opus insofar as it deals with myself and my party comr ades. Heine
rightly says that there is nobody as dangerous as an ass in a rage.
Admittedly, Zabel introduces the fourth of the passages forming the basis of my charge (under point I
above), with which his lead article I opens its revelations on the ‘Brimstone Gang’, with the words:
‘Vogt reports on page 136 et seq.’ Zabel offers no opinion as to whether he himself is giving a resume
or quoting. He avoids using quotation marks. In fact he is not quoting. That was out of the question
from the start, since Zabel compresses pages 136, 137, 138, 139, 140 and 141 of the Magnum Opus in
51 lines of 48 letters each, indicates no gaps, but rather packs the sentences in as tightly as Dutch
herrings, and finally still finds room in the 51 lines for material of hi s own. Where he encounters a

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particularly slimy sentence, he takes it up more or less unchanged into his bundle. For the rest he
mixes all the extracts up, not according to the sequence of the pages in the Magnum Opus , but as he
sees fit. He provides the head of one of Vogt’s sentences with the tail of another. There again, he
makes up one sentence from the catchwords of a dozen of Vogt’s sentences. Where in Vogt some
stylistic rubbish or other blocks the limelight fro m falling directly on the slander, Zabel clears the
rubbish away. For example, Vogt says: ‘So to compromise people in the fatherland that they had to
resist their attempts at exploitation no longer and pay money.’
But Zabel says: ‘So to compromise people that they had to pay money.’
At other points, Zabel changes what seems to him to be ambiguous in Vogt’s lack of style. Thus Vogt
says: ‘… and pay money so that the gang would keep the fact that they were compromised secret.’
Whereas Zabel says: ‘… so that t he gang would keep their secrets without compromising them.’
Finally, Zabel interpolates whole sentences of his own  fabrication, such as: ‘The Brimstone Gang
exercised a fearful discipline over its members’, and ‘they’ — that is to say the fellows who continued
among the refugees the work of the Rheinische Zeitung  — ‘they became the allies of the secret police
in France and Germany’.
Thus of the four passages forming the basis of my charge, three are Zabel’s own work according to
Zabel himself , while the fourth, the alleged ‘quotation’, is not a quotation , although it has an
admixture of quotations, and still less is it a ‘ mere quotation’ as the City Court claims. Least of all is
it a quotation ‘from other persons’ the plural, as the same City Court  claims. Vice versa, there is, on
the other hand, in all the ‘remarks and assertions’ Zabel makes about me, not a single line containing
‘criticism and evaluation’ (‘permitted’ or ‘not permitted’).
But even assuming that the City Court’s factual postulates  were as true as they are false; even
assuming that Zabel was only quoting his slanders against me, would this circumstance legally justify
the City Court in forbidding me to prosecute Frederick Zabel? In an ‘ordinance’ that is to be quoted
shortly the Royal Prussian Supreme Court declares on the contrary that:
… whether the facts adduced in the article in question are represented as the author ’s
own assertions or as quotations from third persons would alter nothing in the
substance of paragraph 156 of the criminal law.
So, quotation or no quotation, ‘democrat’ Zabel remains answerable for his ‘assertions’. The City
Court has already stated that Zabel had made assertions about me that were ‘culpable’, only they were
quoted and therefore bulletproof. Away with this pretext, which is legally false, cries the Supreme
Court. So at last I shall get a grip on Zabel, the doors of the court will open, Italiam, Italiam! [15]
From the City Court my lawyer appealed to the Supreme Court, and received on 11 July 1860 the
following ‘ordinance’:
No libel of the plaintiff, Dr Karl Marx of London, can be found in the lead articles
published under the titles ‘Karl Vogt and the Allgemeine Zeitung’ and ‘How to Make
Radical Leaflets’ in numbers 37 and 41 of the National-Zeitung of 22 and 25 January
of this year. Whether or not the facts adduced in the article in question are represented
as the author’s own assertions or as quotations from third parties indeed alters nothing
in the substance of paragraph 156. However, the press cannot be prevented from
subjecting the activities of the parties and their literary disputes to discussion and
criticism insofar as no intention to insult emerges from the form of the polemic, which
cannot be assumed in the present case.
In the articles in question, light is cast pre-eminently on the conflict that has raged
between the views of Dr Karl Vogt on the one hand and the Augsburg Allgemeine
Zeitung on the other over support for the interests of the Italians and the interests of
Austria occasioned by the recent war, and thereby on the participation of the so-called
German emigration in London in favour of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung against
Vogt and also occasionally on the divisions and machinations of these refugees among
and between themselves!
If in the course of these remarks the relationship of the plaintiff to those parties and his
partial participation in their aspirations, and particularly his efforts to come to the

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assistance of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung with evidence, is drawn into the ambit
of the discussion, then the remarks made in the two articles in relation to this find
rather their confirmation than the intended refutation in the facts brought forward by
the plaintiff himself in his complaint. If, on the other hand, he goes on to claim that he
was identified, in a manner detrimental to his honour, with those party activities,
which are, admittedly, sharply condemned in those articles as eccentric, or rather
lacking in character and dishonourable, then this claim cannot be recognised as being
justified. For, if the first article quotes from Vogt’s account ‘that the refugees of 1849
gradually gathered in London and there honoured the person Marx as their visible
chief’, and talks about a letter by Techow ‘in which one sees how Marx, in his
Napoleonic arrogance at his mental superiority, brandishes his whip among the
Brimstone Gang’, then what is essentially contained in this is a characterisation of the
‘Brimstone Gang’, so-called by Vogt, and not invective against Marx, who is much
rather portrayed as the superior bridling the others. Least of all is his person connected
with those people who are accused of extortion and tale-bearing. Similarly, nowhere in
the second article is it said that the plaintiff ascribed authorship of the leaflet As a
Warning against his better knowledge to the person Blind, or that he knowingly
forwarded the untrue testimony of third parties to this effect to the Allgemeine Zeitung.
The plaintiff himself, however, admits in his complaint that the testimony of the
compositor Vögele is contested by referring to the contrary assurances of the printer
Hollinger and the compositor Wiehe. Besides, according to his own deposition, a
certain Schaible has since made himself known as the author of the leaflet, and
moreover after the two articles in the National-Zeitung had appeared.
The complaint against the ordinance of rejection of the Royal City Court of the 8th of
last month raised on the 21st of the same month has had, therefore, to be regarded as
being groundless and is hereby rejected. Costs of 25 silver groats for the rejection of a
groundless complaint are to be paid to the City Court Salary Office of this town
immediately on threat of distraint.
Berlin, 11 July 1860, Criminal Senate of the Royal Supreme Court Second
Department, Guthschmidt, Schulze.
To Dr Karl Marx, In the hands of Herr Justizrat Weber of this town.
When I received this ‘ordinance’ from my lawyer I skimmed through the beginning and the end at the
first reading and, unacquainted as I am with Prussian law, I thought that what I had in front of me was
the copy of a defence document handed into the Supreme Court by the ‘democrat’ Frederick Zabel.
What Zabel has written, I said to mysel f, about ‘the views’ (see Appendix XV) ‘of Dr Karl Vogt and
the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung ’, about ‘the interests of the Italians and the interests of the
Austrians’, must have wandered by accident from a lead article intended for the National-Zeitung into
his defence plea.
In any case, in the four columns dealing with me in the two articles, which are scarcely six columns
long, Zabel does not mention those views and these interests in a single syllable . Zabel says in his
defence plea that I had ‘come to the assistance of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung  with evidence in
its polemic against Vogt’. He calls Vogt ’s trial against the Allgemeine Zeitung the Allgemeine
Zeitung’s polemic against Vogt . If trials and polemics were the same thing, why would I need t he
permission of the Attorney General, the City Court, the Supreme Court, etc, for my ‘polemic’ against
Zabel? And now there is Zabel’s assurance that the ‘remarks in relation’ to my relationship with the
Allgemeine Zeitung  in his two lead articles found rather their confirmation than the intended
refutation in the ‘facts’ I myself ‘brought forward’. Rather — than! Either or, says the law. And what
were Zabel’s remarks?
Zabel’s ‘remarks in relation’ to my relationship with the Allgemeine Zeitung in lead article I were:
I: That Liebknecht had become a correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung as a result of a testimonial
publicly given to him by me. I threw the lie in Zabel’s teeth in my complaint, but thought it
superfluous to adduce other ‘facts’ about this nonsense.

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II: Zabel has me send the Allgemeine Zeitung a ‘legal document’ from London on 29 October which
was before the district court in Augsburg on 24 October, and he found the confirmation of this
‘remark’ in the ‘facts’ that I brought forward! Zabel realised, it is true, from the facts brought forward
in my complaint, that, quite apart from any political motives, it became necessary for me to send
documents relating to the origins of the Warning once Vogt, even before the trial started, had publicly
attempted to pin responsibility for the authorship of the leaflet on to me.
III: I refuted Zabel’s ‘remark’ that I was one of the correspondents of the Allgemeine Zeitung  with
authentic documents. The only ‘remark in relation’ to my relationship with the Allg emeine Zeitung
that Zabel’s lead article no  II contained was, as was shown earlier, that I myself had forged the
Warning, foisted it upon Blind, and attempted to prove that it was his hack -work by means of
Vögele’s false testimony. Did these ‘remarks find rather their confirmation in the facts brought
forward “in my complaint” than the refutation I had thereby intended’? Zabel himself admits the
contrary.
Could Zabel have known that Schaible was the author of the leaflet As a Warning? Did Zabel have to
believe that the testimony of the compositor Vögele, in my own deposition ‘contested’, was correct?
But where in the world have I implied that Zabel had that knowledge or that belief? My complaint
relates rather to Zabel’s ‘remarks in relation’ to the claim that I ‘forged the leaflet so that it looked like
his’ —  Blind’s —  ‘work’ and that I later attempted to prove that it was Blind’s hack-work by means
of Vögele’s testimony.
Finally, I encountered a defensive position of Zabel’s which at least seemed interesting.
If [he says] he [the plaintiff Marx] on the other hand goes on to claim that he was
identified, in a manner detrimental to his honour, with those party activities, which
are, admittedly, sharply condemned in those articles [Zabel’s lead articles] as
eccentric, or rather lacking in character and dishonourable, then this claim cannot be
recognised as being justified… Least of all is his person connected with those people
who are accused of extortion and tale-bearing.
Obviously Zabel is not one of those Romans of whom it was said ‘ Memoriam quoque cum voce
perdidissimus’
[16] — he has lost his memory but not his tongue. Zabel transforms not only sulphur
but the Brimstone Gang from the crystal into the fluid state and from the fluid into the vaporous state
in order to throw dust into my eyes with the red vapour. The Brimstone G ang, he claims, is a ‘party’
with whose ‘activities’ he has never ‘identified’ me, and with whose ‘extortions and tale -bearing’ he
has never even linked the people ‘connected’ with me. It will be necessary to transform the sulphur
vapour into flowers of sulphur.
In lead article I (National-Zeitung, no 37, 1860)  Zabel opens his ‘remarks in relation to’ the
Brimstone Gang by calling ‘Marx’ its ‘visible chief’. The second member of the Brimstone Gang,
whom he does not, it is true, name, but whom he describes ‘ for the further characterisation’ of the
same, is Frederick Engels. That is to say that he refers to the letter in which Techow reports his
meeting with Frederick Engels, Konrad Schramm and myself. Frederick Zabel refers to the latter two
as illustrations of the ‘Brimstone Gang’. Immediately afterwards he mentions Cherval as an emissary
from London. Then it is the turn of Liebknecht:
This Liebknecht, in nomine omen,
[17] one of Marx’s most servile supporters…
Liebknecht took service with Marx immediately after his arrival and earned the
complete satisfaction of his master.
Close behind Liebknecht marched ‘Ohly, also a channel of the Brimstone Gang’. Finally ‘another
London accomplice, Biscamp’. All these details follow each other blow by blow in lead article I, but
in lead article II yet another member of the Brimstone Gang is belatedly named, Wilhelm  Wolff —
‘Parliament-Wolf, alias Dungeon- Wolf’, who is entrusted with the important business of  ‘issuing
circulars’. So according to Zabel’s ‘remarks’ the Brimstone Gang consists of Marx, chief of the
Brimstone Gang; Frederick Engels, illustration of the Brimstone Gang; Cherval, London emissary of
the Brimstone Gang; Liebknecht, ‘one of the Marx’s m ost servile supporters’; Ohly, ‘also a channel
of the Brimstone Gang’; Biscamp, ‘another’ London ‘accomplice’; and finally, Wolff, circular-writer
of the Brimstone Gang.

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In the first 51 lines Zabel already has the Brimstone Gang, thrown together in this wa y, figure
alternately under the various names: ‘Brimstone Gang or also Bürstenheimers’, ‘fellows who
continued among the refugees the work of the Rheinische Zeitung ’, ‘the proletarians’ or, as it says in
lead article II, the ‘party of the “proletarians” under Marx’.
So much for the personal composition and the names of the Brimstone Gang. Zabel portrays its
organisation briefly and strikingly in his ‘remarks’. ‘Marx’ is the ‘chief’. The ‘Brimstone Gang’ itself
forms the circle of his ‘more immediate’ supporters, or, as Zabel says in the second lead article, ‘the
more immediate Marx party’. Zabel even gives a hallmark by which one can recognise the ‘ more
immediate Marx party ’. The member of the more immediate Marx party, that is to say, must have
seen Biscamp at least once in his life.
‘He’ (Blind), says Zabel in lead article II, ‘states that he has never seen Biscamp in his life, he is
obviously not a member of the more immediate Marx party.’
The ‘more immediate Marx party’, or the actual Brimstone Gang, is therefore the peerage of the gang,
and is to be distinguished from the third category, the plebeians of the ‘ supporters’ or ‘this carefully
maintained class of idlers ’. So first we have the chief, Marx, then the actual ‘Brimstone Gang’ or
‘more immediate Marx Party’, and finally the plebeians of the ‘supporters’ or ‘class of idlers’. The
Brimstone Gang, divided into these three categories, rejoices in a truly Spartan discipline. ‘The
Brimstone Gang’, says Zabel, ‘exercised a fearful discipline over its supporters’, while on the other
hand ‘Marx… brandishes his whip among the Brimstone Gang’. It goes without saying that, in such a
well-organised ‘Gang’, the characteristic ‘activity’ of the gang, its ‘main occupation’, the deeds that
the gang carried out qua gang, take place on the orders of its chief, and are explicitly described by
Zabel as the deeds of this whip-brandishing chief. And what was the so to speak official occupation of
the gang?
One of the main occupations of the Brimstone Gang was so to compromise people in
the fatherland that they had to pay money so that the gang would keep their secrets
without compromising them. Not one but hundreds of letters were written to Germany
saying that a denunciation would be made of participation in this or that act of the
revolution if a certain sum of money did not reach a given address by a certain point in
time… Everybody that opposed this activity was ruined, not only among the refugees,
but also by means of the press. The ‘proletarians’ filled the columns of the reactionary
press in Germany with their tale-bearing against those democrats who did not pay
homage to them, they became the allies of the secret police in France and Germany
[etc]. (National-Zeitung, no 37)
After opening his ‘remarks in relation t o’ the Brimstone Gang with the observation that I was its
‘visible chief, and then enumerating the ‘main occupations’ of the Brimstone Gang, that is to say, the
extortion of money, tale-bearing, etc, he closes his general description of the Brimstone Gang with the
words:
… they became the allies of the secret police in France and Germany. For a further
characterisation Vogt gives us among other things a letter of 26 August 1850 from the
former Lieutenant Techow… in which one sees how Marx, in his Napoleonic
arrogance at his mental superiority, brandishes his whip among the Brimstone Gang.
Having made the Brimstone Gang ‘honour’ me as its ‘visible chief’ at the beginning of his description
of it, Zabel is now seized by fear that the reader could believe that there was another, invisible, chief
standing behind the visible one, or that, like the Dalai Lama, I was satisfied merely to be ‘honoured’.
At the end of his description, therefore, he transforms me (in his , and not in Vogt ’s words) from the
merely ‘visible’ chief into the whip-brandishing chief, from the Dalai Lama into the Napoleon of the
‘Brimstone Gang’. And it is precisely this that he quotes in his speech for the defence as proof that, in
his article, he did not ‘identify’ me ‘with the party activities’ of the Brimstone Gang, ‘which are
sharply condemned as eccentric, or rather lacking in character and dishonourable’. But no! Not quite!
He did ‘identify’ me, but not in a manner ‘detrimental to my honour ’. ‘Much rather’, indeed, he did
me the honour of naming me the Napoleon of extortionists, writers of threatening letters, mouchards,
agent provocateurs, counterfeiters, etc. Obviously Zabel draws his concepts of honour from the
dictionary of the December Gang . Hence the epithet ‘Napoleonic’. But it is precisely because of this

165

honour he has done me that I am prosecuting him! I have proved by the facts brought forward in my
complaint, proved so strikingly that Zabel is unwilling to follow me into any public court at all,
proved that all his ‘remarks in relation to’ the Brimstone Gang are Vogtian inventions and lies which
Zabel only quotes so that he can ‘honour’ me as the Napoleon of this ‘Brimstone Gang’. But does he
not portray me as the ‘superior bridling the others’? Does he not make me exercise discipline in the
Gang? He himself explains what the bridling, the superiority, the discipline consisted of:
The Brimstone Gang exercised a fearful discipline over its supporters. Any of those
who tried to achieve bourgeois prosperity for himself was, for the very reason that he
tried to make himself independent, in and of itself a traitor to the revolution…
Discord, fights and duels were created among this carefully-maintained class of idlers
by widespread rumours and correspondence [etc].
But Zabel is not content with this general depiction of the party activities of the Brimstone Gang, with
which he honourably ‘identified’ me.
Liebknecht, a ‘notorious member of the Marx party’, ‘one of Marx’s most servile supporters, who
earned the complete satisfaction of his master’, intentionally compromised the workers in Switzerland
through the ‘revolutionary congress at Murten’ where, brimming with joy, he ‘led them into the arms’
of the waiting ‘Gendarmes’. ‘In the Cologne trial the authorship of the fake minutes book was
ascribed to this Liebknecht.’ (Zabel, of course, forgets to say that this lie of Stieber’s was publicly
proved to be a lie of Stieber’s during the proceedings themselves.) Wolff, a former co -editor of the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung, sends from London a  ‘circular to the proletarians’ which ‘he at the same
time passes to the Hanoverian police’.
While presenting people who are so ‘notoriously’ connected with me as agents of the secret police,
Zabel on the other hand links me with a ‘notorious’ secret polic e agent, agent provocateur and
counterfeiter, that is to say with Cherval. Immediately after his general depiction of the Brimstone
Gang, he has ‘several people’, including Cherval , go from London to Paris ‘in the dual role of
revolutionary seducers of the workers and allies of the secret police’ and there instigate the ‘so-called
Communist trial’, etc. In lead article II he goes on to relate:
In this way a conspiracy of the most scandalous kind, involving the mass production
of counterfeit banknotes (read Vogt for the details) was in 1852 devised against the
Swiss Workers’ Associations [etc].
If the reader of the National -Zeitung obeys Zabel’s imperious summons and reads Vogt for the
details, what does he find? That Cherval was sent by me to Geneva, set ‘th e scandalous conspiracy
with the counterfeit banknotes’ into motion under my direct supervision, etc. The reader, directed to
Vogt by Zabel, further finds:
However, Marx’s personal attitude in relation to this is completely irrelevant, for, as
has already been said, whether Marx himself does something or whether he has it done
by a member of his gang is a matter of complete indifference; he rules his people
unconditionally.
But Zabel had still not done enough for himself. He felt the urge to whisper a last word into the
reader’s ear at the end of his two lead articles. He says:
He [Blind] states at the same time that he has never seen Biscamp in his life. He is
obviously not a member of the more immediate Marx party. It seems to us that it was
not difficult for the latter [the more immediate Marx party] to make a scapegoat of him
[Blind]… The Marx party could shrug off responsibility for the authorship of the
leaflet on to Blind very easily precisely because the latter had expressed himself in a
similar sense in conversation with Marx and in the article in the Free Press; the leaflet
could be forged using the same expressions and turns of phrase as Blind so that it
looked like his [Blind’s] work.
So ‘the Marx party’  or the ‘more immediate Marx party ’, alias th e Brimstone Gang, ‘forged’ the
leaflet so that it looked like Blind’s work? Having developed this hypothesis, Zabel summarises its
meaning dryly in the following words: ‘Anyone can now hold Marx or Blind to be the author , as he
sees fit.’

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Not, therefore, the Marx Party or Blind, nor yet Blind or the more immediate Marx Harty, vulgo the
Brimstone Gang, but Blind or Marx, Marx sans phrases. The Marx party, the more immediate Marx
party, the Brimstone Gang, etc, were therefore only pantheistic  names for Marx , the person Marx.
Zabel does not only ‘identify’ Marx with the ‘party’ of the Brimstone Gang, he personifies the
Brimstone Gang in Marx. And the same Zabel dares to claim before the court that, in his lead articles
he did not ‘ identify’ ‘the plaintiff’ Marx with this Brimstone Gang ‘in a manner detrimental to his
honour’. He beats his breast and swears that ‘ least of all ’ had he ‘connected’ my ‘person with those
people’ whom he had ‘accused of extortion and tale -bearing’! What a figure, I th ought to myself,
what a figure Zabel will cut in the public session of the court! With this consoling cry I reached once
more for the document my lawyer had sent me, read it through once more, thought to discover
something like the names Müller and Schultze at the end, but soon discovered my mistake. What I had
in my hand was not Zabel’s defence, but an ‘ ordinance’ of the Supreme Court signed Guthschmidt
and Schultze, an ordinance that deprived me of the right to prosecute Zabel and on top of that ordered
me, as a punishment for my ‘complaint’, to pay 25 silver groats immediately to the Berlin City Court
Salary office on threat of distraint. I was indeed attonitus. [18] However, my astonishment was allayed
by a further mature reading of the ‘ordinance’.
Example I: Zabel prints in the lead article of the National-Zeitung, no 37, 1860:
Vogt reports on page 13 et seq: Known under the name of Brimstone gang or also of
Bürstenheimers, there were, among the refugees of 1849, a number of people who, at
first scattered between Switzerland, France and England, gradually gathered in
London and there honoured Herr Marx as their visible chief.
Herren Guthschmidt and Schultze read in the lead article of the National-Zeitung, no 37, 1860:
For, if the first article quotes from Vogt’s account ‘that the refugees of 1849 gradually
gathered in London and there honoured the person Marx as their visible chief’.
Zabel says: a number of people , etc, among the refugees of 1849 known under the name of the
Brimstone Gang or also the Bür stenheimers gradually gathered in London and there honoured me as
their visible chief. Herren Guthschmidt and Schultze, on the other hand, have Zabel say: the refugees
of 1849 gradually gathered in London (which is not even correct, since a large part of the refugees
gathered in Paris, New York, Jersey, etc) and honoured me as their visible chief, an honour that was
neither done to me nor, by Zabel and Vogt, imputed to me. Herren Guthschmidt and Schultze are not
even summarising, but quote in quotation marks a sentence cited ‘from Vogt’s depiction’ in Zabel’s
first lead article which Zabel nowhere prints. What Herren Guthschmidt and Schultze had in front of
them therefore was a secret edition of no 37 of the  National-Zeitung equally unknown to me and the
public. That explains every misunderstanding.
The secret edition of no 37 of the National -Zeitung is not distinguished from the popular edition of
the same number merely by the phrasing of individual sentence s. The whole context of the first lead
article in the popular edition has nothing at all in common with its context in the secret edition apart
from a few words.
Example II: Zabel prints in no 37 of the National-Zeitung after appointing me Chief of the Brimstone
Gang:
These fellows [the Brimstone Gang]… continued among the refugees the work of the
Rheinische Zeitung… One of the main occupations of the Brimstone Gang was so to
compromise people in the fatherland that they had to pay money… The ‘proletarians’
filled the columns of the reactionary press in Germany with their tale-bearing… they
became the allies of the secret police in France and Germany. For a further
characterisation [of this ‘Brimstone Gang’ or these ‘proletarians’] Vogt gives us a
letter from… Techow, in which the principles, activities , etc, of the ‘proletarians’ are
depicted and one sees how Marx, in his Napoleonic arrogance at his mental
superiority, brandishes his whip among the Brimstone Gang.
Herren Guthschmidt and Schultze read in no 37 of the National-Zeitung, after Zabel has appointed me
Chief of the refugees of 1849:

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And if it [the first article in the National-Zeitung] goes on to speak of a letter by
Techow: ‘in which one sees how Marx, in his Napoleonic arrogance at his mental
superiority, brandishes his whip among the Brimstone Gang.’
If judges do possess the authority to allow or deny a private person the right to prosecute, then Herren
Guthschmidt and Schultze were not only justified in denying me the right to prosecute Zabel, t hey
were actually obliged to do so. For the context of the lead article in no 37 of the National -Zeitung,
imparted to them in nuce  [19] in the secret edition , positively excludes any corpus delicti . Indeed,
what does Zabel express in this secret edition ? F irst of all, he does me the undeserved honour of
having me ‘honoured’ as the ‘visible chief’ of the refugees gathered in London in 1849. Am I
supposed to ‘prosecute’ him for that? And secondly, he does me the no less undeserved honour of
having me ‘brandish my whip’ over a certain ‘Brimstone Gang’ which in other respects he does not
link with me in any way, more or less in the same way that I brandished my whip over Zabel & Co in
1848–49. Am I supposed to ‘prosecute’ Zabel for that?
One can see what confusi on is caused when legislation allows judicial state employees to ‘ ordain’,
and to ‘ordain’ in secret, whether or not one person has the right to prosecute another, for example, for
libel in the National-Zeitung. The plaintiff lodges his complaint on the basis of a popular edition of no
37 of the National -Zeitung available to the public in an edition of perhaps 10,000 copies, and the
judge ordains on the basis of a secret edition of the same issue prepared for him alone. How uncertain
even the bare identity of the corpus delicti is in this procedure.
By making the right of a private person to prosecute subject in every individual case to a judicial
concession, Prussian legislation proceeds from the view that the state must , as a paternal power,
regulate the civil life of its children and hold it in tutelage. But even from the point of view of
Prussian legislation the Supreme Court’s ‘ordinance’ seems odd. Obviously, Prussian legislation
wants to exclude frivolous prosecutions and therefore gives the judge, if I understand its spirit
correctly and am right to assume that it does not intend a systematic denial of justice, and therefore
gives the judge the right to reject a complaint, but only if the complaint is prima facie unfounded, and
therefore, prima facie  frivolous. Is this true in this case? The City Court admits that Zabel’s lead
articles in fact contain remarks that are ‘detrimental to my honour’ and therefore ‘culpable’. It only
places Frederick Zabel out of reach of my legal revenge because Frederick Zabel ‘ merely quoted’ his
slanders. The Supreme Court declared that, quoted or not quoted, remarks detrimental to one’s honour
remain equally legally culpable, but, for its part, it now denies that Zabel’s lead articles contain any
remarks at all — quoted or not quoted — detrimental to my honour. The City Court and the Supreme
Court therefore have views on the facts of the case itself that are not merely different but directly
contradictory. The one finds remarks detriment al to the honour of my person where the other finds
none. This contradiction between the views of the different judges on the facts of the case itself
proves strikingly that, prima facie , the complaint is well founded. If Papinian and Ulpian say, ‘This
printed remark is detrimental to his honour’, while Mucius Scaevola and Manilius Brutus on the other
hand maintain on the contrary, ‘This printed remark is not detrimental to his honour’, what will the
people of the Quirites think? Why should the people not t hink, with Papinian and Ulpian, that Zabel
has printed remarks detrimental to my honour in nos 37 and 41 of the National -Zeitung? If I assure
the people of the Quirites that Mucius Scaevola and Manilius Brutus have issued me a secret
testimonial according to which Zabel’s remarks and assertions ‘detrimental to my honour’ in no way
affect my person, the people of the Quirites will shrug their shoulders and say: ‘A d’autres.’
Since the Supreme Court has to reach a decision in the final resort about the facts of the case, and thus
had, in the final resort, to decide whether in fact my honour was impugned and the intention to insult
me existed in Zabel’s two lead articles, and since the Supreme Court denied that these were the facts
of the case, recourse to the High Court of Appeal  only left open the question of whether the factual
judgement of the Supreme Court rested on a legal error. The Supreme Court itself had found, in the
factual judgement in its ‘ ordinance’ that Zabel had alleged ‘activities lacking in character and
dishonourable’, ‘tale-bearing and extortion’ on the part of the Brimstone Gang, the same Brimstone
Gang that the same Zabel in the same lead article explicitly characterises as ‘ the Marx party’ or ‘the
more immediate Marx party ’ with ‘Marx’ as its visible and whip -brandishing ‘chief’. Did the
Supreme Court possess the legal authority not to find in this an impugnment of the honour of my

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person? My lawyer, Herr Justizrat Weber, comments on this in h is written complaint to the High
Court of Appeal, among other things:
Admittedly, nowhere is it directly said [by Zabel] that Marx extorted money and
committed tale-bearing and forgery. But does it need to be stated any more clearly
than to say that Marx was the chief of a party that pursued the criminal and immoral
aims alleged? Nobody of sound and unprejudiced judgement can deny that the chief of
an association whose aims and whose principle activity are dedicated to the
commission of crimes not only countenances the same but himself organises and leads
it and enjoys the fruits; and this chief is therefore unquestionably doubly responsible,
not only as a participant, but also as the intellectual author, even if not a single act of
direct participation in the commission of a specific crime can be proved against him.
The views expressed in the disputed ordinance [of the Supreme Court] would lead to
the good name of any man being abandoned without any defence to him who wants to
ruin him. Instead of claiming falsely of A that he has committed murder, the slanderer
only needs to say that there exists somewhere a gang that carries on the business of
murder and that A is the chief this gang. The Supreme Court’s view assures the
slanderer of complete immunity. According to the correct view, however, the
punishment for slander would strike the slanderer just as much whether he
unveraciously branded a third party as a robber or as a robber chief.
From the point of view of common sense a slander does indeed exist. Does it exist within the meaning
of Prussian legislation? The Supreme Court says no, my lawyer says yes. If the Supreme Court has
decided against the City Court that the quotation form does not make the slanderer immune to
prosecution, why should the High Cour t of Appeal not decide, against the Supreme Court, that the
slanderer’s tape-worm form does not make him immune either? It was on this legal point , on this
legal error, committed by the Supreme Court in its judgement of the facts of the case, that my lawye r
appealed to the High Court of Appeal , that is to say to a certain extent to the Areopaga. The High
Court of Appeal ‘ordained’:
I: Your complaint of 23 August of this year concerning the ordinance of the Criminal
Senate of the Royal Supreme Court in the matter of defamation of Dr Karl Marx vs the
editor of the National-Zeitung Dr Zabel of 11 July of this year is, after a study of the
documents, herewith rejected as unfounded.
II: For the Royal Supreme Court has neither found an objective impugnment of the
plaintiff’s honour in the two leading articles in question in the National-Zeitung nor
assumed the existence of the intention of insulting the latter, and therefore the
institution of the requested prosecution for defamation was rightly rejected. But
whether an impugnment of the plaintiff’s honour objectively exists, and whether the
intention to insult him actually existed, are essentially factual judgements which can
only be disputed by a complaint to the Royal High Court of Appeal if the assumption
of the Appeal Judge in this respect is based on a legal error.
III: Such does not, however, emerge in the case in hand.
IV: You have to pay the costs of this ordinance at 25 silver groats at the Salary Office
of the Royal City Court of this city within eight days.
Berlin, 5 October 1860, Royal High Court of Appeal, von Schlickmann.
To Herr Justizrat Weber of this City
To have an easier  overall view, I have numbered the different parts of the High Court of Appeal ’s
‘ordinance’.
Under I, Herr von Schlickmann explains that the complaint against the Supreme Court is ‘rejected’.
Under II, he lectures us on the relative competence of the Supr eme Court and of the High Court of
Appeal — obviously a didactic digression not germane to the issue. Under IV, Herr Weber is ordered
to pay the sum of 25 silver groats to the Berlin City Court Salary Office, a result of the ‘ordinance’
but surely not its cause.

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So where is the reason for the ordinance ‘of rejection’? Where is the answer to my lawyer’s very
detailed written complaint? That is to say:
Under III: ‘Such [a legal error] does not, however, emerge in the present case.’
If the little word not is crossed out in this sentence under III, the motivation would read: ‘Such [a
legal error] does, however, emerge in the present case.’ With this, the Supreme Court’s ordinance
would have been set aside. So it is only upheld by the little word not  put in as an  afterthought, with
which Herr von Schlickmann, in the name of the High Court of Appeal, ‘rejects’ Herr Justizrat
Weber’s written complaint.
Not! Herr von Schlickmann  does not refute the legal considerations unfolded by my lawyer, he does
not discuss them,  he does not  even mention them. Herr von Schlickmann  naturally had sufficient
reasons for his ‘ordinance’, but he keeps them silent. Not!  This little word’s validity as proof lies
exclusively in the authority, the hierarchical position, of the person in whose mouth it is used. In and
of itself not proves nothing. Not! Αύτότατος έφη. [21]
And so the High Court of Appeal also forbade me to prosecute the ‘democrat’ Frederick Zabel.
And so ended my case against the Prussian courts.
Notes
1 Frederick Zabel — a liberal journalist and editor of the Berlin National -Zeitung.
2 According to the oracle.
3 Fight fire with fire.
4 Ferdinand Flocon — a Fr ench politician, editor of La Réforme, and member of the
provisional government in 1848.
5 The Association Démocratique was founded in Brussels in the autumn of 1847. It
contained German proletarian revolutionaries and bourgeois and petty-bourgeois
democrats. Marx and Engels were active in founding the association, Marx being elected
Vice-President. During the bourgeois February revolution in France, the proletarian wing
of the association attempted to arm the Belgian workers and to begin the struggle for a
democratic republic. After Marx was expelled from Brussels in March 1848 and the
Belgian authorities had dealt with the revolutionary elements in the association, its
activities became increasingly restricted. It ceased to function in 1849.
6 The parliament met in Manchester during 6–18 March 1854. It was called together on
the initiative of a Chartist group led by Ernest Jones with the aim of creating a broad
working-class organisation to coordinate strikes throughout England. Marx, who was
invited to be an honorary delegate, wrote a paper for the parliament which was read out
on 10 March; in it he proclaimed the need to create an independent political mass party
of the working class. The mass movement at which the parliament aimed failed because
of the refusal of support by the majority of trade-union leaders. The parliament did not
meet again.
7 By decree.
8 The code of French civil law was revised in 1807 as the Code Napoléon. It was
introduced into the conquered area of West and Southern Germany by the French; even
after the union with Prussia it still had force in the Rhine province. The code was based
on the gains of the French Revolution and took its stand on the base of formal bourgeois
equality.
9 Anger makes the poet.
10 Footman or attendant.
11 The Friends of the Fatherland was a republican society of German emigrants in
London in the 1850s and 1860s.

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12 The Nationalverein (National Club) was an association of German liberals who
aimed at the unity of Germany as a strong, centralised state under a monarchist Prussia.
It was founded at a congress in Frankfurt in 1859. The real core of the Nationalverein
consisted of the pro-Prussian Gotha Party, founded in 1849 by representatives of the
counter-revolutionary big bourgeoisie and the right-wing liberals, who had left the
National Assembly when the King of Prussia refused to accept the crown from the
Assembly.
13 Makes his arse a trumpet (Dante).
14 Literally, dead head; useless residue.
15 To Italy, to Italy! — a quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid .
16 We have lost our memory and our voices too.
17 As the name suggests, ‘Liebknecht’ means ‘dear servant’ in German.
18 Astonished.
19 In a nut-shell.
20 It’s up to others.
21 He said it himself.

Chapter XII: Appendices
I: Schily’s Expulsion from Switzerland
Because of lack of space I can, unfortunately, only give extracts of a letter from Schily on his
expulsion from Switzerland in which the treatment of non-parliamentarian refugees is illustrated by an
example. The letter starts by relating that two Ge rman refugees, B and I, friends of Schily’s, had left
Geneva, had been arrested on their tour through Switzerland, been set free by Druey, and had returned
to Geneva.
On their behalf [Schily continues] I went to Fazy to see whether they were wanted
men, and received from him the assurance that, as far as the Canton was concerned, he
did not want to disturb their incognito, and that no federal warrant had been received.
For the rest, he said, I would do well to contact the chef du département de justice et
de police, M Girard, mentioning his name and what he had said, which I then did with
about the same result, leaving my address in case a federal warrant should arrive. A
few weeks later a police officer comes to me and demands the addresses of B and I. I
refuse to give them, run off to the said Girard and, when he threatens to have me
deported if I do not give him the addresses, explain to him that, according to our
earlier agreement, my assistance could be demanded as an intermediaire, but not as a
denonciateur. He thereupon: Vous avez l’air de vouloir vous interposer comme
ambassadeur entre moi et ces refugiés, pour traiter de puissance à puissance?
I: Je n’ai pas l’ambition d’être accredité ambassadeur près de vous. [1]
I was, in fact, henceforth dismissed without any ambassadorial ceremony. On the way
home I learned that the two, B and I, had just been found, arrested and carried off, and
thus I could consider the above threat as closed. But I had reckoned without 1 April,
for on that ominous date in 1852 I was requested by a police officer on the street to
accompany him to the Hôtel de Ville, where they wanted to ask me something. Here
Herr Staatrat Tourte, the Geneva Commissar for the Expulsion of Refugees ad latus
[2] to the Federal ditto at that time present there, Trog, announced: that I was expelled
and that I would therefore have to direct my steps to Berne, all to his deepest regret, in
that there was nothing against me as far as the Canton was concerned, but that the

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Federal Commissar insisted on my expulsion. At my demand to be taken to the latter,
he replied: Non, nous ne voulons pas que le commissaire fédéral fasse la police ici. [3]
With this, he contradicted what he had just said, and altogether fell out of his role as
Geneva Staatsrat, which consisted in resisting the federal government’s unreasonable
demands for expulsion with liberal prudery and only giving way to force, but also
ceding with pleasure or with resignation to gentle pressure. Another characteristic of
this role consisted in saying behind the back of the person expelled that he was a spy,
and that he had had to be put out in the interests of the ‘good cause’… Thus Tourte
afterwards told the refugees he had had to put me out because I was hand in glove with
the Federal Commissar and had, with him, thwarted his (Tourte’s) measures for the
protection of refugees, that is to say with the same Commissar who, to his deep regret,
had had me expelled. Quelles tartines! What lies and contradictions! All for a little
aura popularis!
[4] Admittedly, wind is the only means that gentleman has of keeping
his balloon in the air. A Grand Councillor and Councillor of State in Geneva, Swiss
Standerat or National Councillor, born councillor of confusion, it is only in the
Federal Council that he is not present to assure peaceful days for Switzerland, for it is
A protest against Tourte’s slander, which Schily, on his arrival in London, sent to the Geneva
Indépendant, at that time under the influence of Raisin , whom we shall mention later, which a short
time previously had sharply censured the donkey-like kicks of slander with which ‘the liberal faiseurs
drove the refugees out of Switzerland’, was not printed.
From the Hôtel de Ville in Geneva [Schily continues], my path now led to prison, and
the next day accompanied by the police by post to Berne, where Herr Druey held me
for 14 days under close arrest in the so-called old Tower…
In his correspondence with the imprisoned Schily, which we shall mention later, Druey placed all the
blame on the Canton of Geneva, while Tourte for his part had assured him that all the blame lay on
the Federal authorities, and that as far as the Canton of Geneva was concerned there were no
complaints against him. The Geneva examining magistrate Raisin had given him a similar assurance a
short time previously. On the latter gentleman Schily writes, among other things:
On the occasion of the Federal Rifle-Shooting held in Geneva in the summer of 1851
Raisin had taken over the editorship of the Journal du tir federal printed in German
and French and engaged me to work for him on the promise of an honorarium of 300
Francs. Among other things I also had to note down in flagrante delicto [6] the
speeches of welcome and farewell made in German by the Committee President,
Tourte, which, may I say in gratitude to Tourte, was rendered very much easier by the
fact that, on each occasion, he addressed to the various deputations of marksmen very
much the same enthusiastic words, with slight variation according to whether he had to
compliment Muts from Berne or Stier from Uri or other members of the
Confederation. The result was that, particularly at the refrain ‘should, however, the
hour of danger strike, then we shall’, etc, I could happily put down my pen and, to
Raisin’s question why, reply: C’est le refrain du danger, je le sais par Coeur. [7]
Instead of my hard-earned honorarium of 300 Francs, however, I received 100 from
Raisin with great difficulty but with the expectation of further work, that is to say for a
political review he wished to set up in Geneva. It was intended, independently of all
the existing political parties, to attack on all fronts, particularly against the ‘liberal’
government of Fazy–Tourte, however much he himself belonged to it. He was exactly
the right man for such an undertaking, capable, as he used to boast, ‘d’arracher la peau
à qui que ce soit…’. [8] Accordingly he gave me the commission of making contacts
for that undertaking on a trip round Switzerland which I started after my exertions in
connection with the Tir federal, which I then did and about which I gave him a written
report on my return. In the meantime, however, quite a different wind had blown, and
it had driven him under full sail from that pirate expedition to the safe haven of the
existing government. J’en étais donc pour mes frais et honoraires, [9] with demands

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for which I importuned him in vain, and do so to this hour, although he has become a
rich man… Shortly before my arrest he was still swearing that there was no question
of my being expelled, as his friend Tourte himself had assured him, that I did not need
to take any preventive steps on account of Girard’s threats, etc… In answer to a letter
that I sent him de profundis of my old prison tower asking him for a small part
payment of the money owed me and for an explanation of what had happened (my
arrest), he was obstinately silent, however much he assured the person who took the
letter that he wanted to fulfil my demands…
K, a reliable and unprejudiced man, wrote to me some months later that the fugitive
parliamentarians had brought about my expulsion, and this was confirmed mordicus
by a few lines enclosed by Ranickel. The same view was also confirmed many times
over by experts on the subject from whom I later had the opportunity to enquire orally
about the occurrence… I was, nevertheless, not actually such an ogre towards the
parliamentarians as the hyena Reinach, who daily dragged the late Imperial Regent
Vogt from the imperial tomb to the luncheon board in Berne where he, Reinach,
himself sat, a reincarnated ‘Prometheus Bound’, and entre poire et fromage [10]
cruelly consumed him to the general horror, mummy, reincarnation and all. Now it is
true that I was not an admirer of the deeds of the parliament. On the contrary! But did
the gentlemen wish to take their revenge on me for that by imposing the Imperial Ban
on me, reckoning Switzerland to be part of the Empire because the Imperial
Constitution is buried there along with the last decisions of the Imperial Diet? I rather
think that the suspicion that they were persecuting me is based on the parliamentary
mutiny, mentioned in an earlier letter, against the Geneva Refugees’ Committee
formed by myself, Becker and some citizens of Geneva… The gentlemen were not
even agreed among themselves why they wanted to usurp the distribution of money to
the refugees. Some, among them Dentzel of the Baden Chamber, wanted to depart
from our practice, which was to give a hand particularly to penniless workers, and by
preference dry the tears of professional mealy-mouths, heroes of the revolution and
sons of the fatherland who had seen better days… Is fecit cui prodest , [11] as we say in
the profession, and since my activities had made these gentlemen uncomfortable,
suspicion grew that they had used their influence in authoritative circles to have me
removed. Was it not known that they had the aurem principis, [12] or at least stood
close enough to that ear to blow into it something about my unruliness, and that
princeps Tourte in particular had on several occasions gathered them around himself…
After recounting his dispatch from the old tower in Berne to Basle and over the French frontier,
Schily notes:
In connection with the expense attached to the expulsion of refugees, I cherish the
hope that these costs will not be met at all by the Swiss Federal Exchequer, but by that
of the Holy Alliance. One day, that is to say, sometime after our entry into
Switzerland, Princess Olga sat at luncheon at an inn in Berne with the Russian chargé
d’affaires there. Entre poire et fromage (sans comparaison with the terrible Reinach),
her Ladyship said to her companion at table: ‘Eh bien, Monsieur le Baron, avez-vous
encore beaucoup de refugiés ici?’ ‘Pas mal, Princesse’, said the other, ‘bien que nous
en ayons déjà beaucoup renvoyé. M Druey fait de son mieux à cet égard, et si de
nouveaux fonds arrivent, nous en renverrons bien encore.’
[13] Such was heard and
related to me by the waiter serving them, a former member of the Free Corps in the
Imperial Campaign under my high command.
When Schily was dispatched his travelling effects disappeared mysteriously and irretrievably:
It remains inexplicable to this day how it could come about they could suddenly
disappear in Le Havre out of the chaos of the parcels of a train of German emigrants
(into which we had been incorporated by the emigration agent Klenk, to whom the
Swiss Federal authorities had entrusted us for transport as far as Le Havre, under
conditions, moreover, where all the baggage of the emigrants and the refugees had

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become mixed up) other than with the assistance of a list of the refugees and their
parcels. Perhaps the merchant Wanner, Consul of the Swiss Confederation in Le
Havre, to whom we were directed for forwarding, knows more. He promised us full
compensation. Druey later confirmed this promise in a letter to me, which I sent to the
Lawyer Vogt in Berne to pursue my claim in the Bundesrat. I have not, however,
received it back to this hour, nor could I obtain a reply to all the letters I have
addressed to him. On the other hand, in the summer of 1856 my claim was rejected by
the Bundesrat, who told me to shut up, without any reason for the decision being
given…
All this and all the expulsions in general, however much they involved troopers,
handcuffs, etc, are mere details compared with the deportations to country of origin,
practiced in a peculiarly friendly atmosphere of good-neighbourly agreement, of the
so-called less seriously implicated refugees from Baden, with travel documents
specially prepared for the purpose and the instruction to report to the local authorities
when they returned home. They were not then allowed, as they thought, to follow their
trade, but had to undergo all sorts of unexpected penances. The silent sufferings of the
people thus extradited (and extradited is the right word) still await their historian and
avenger.
It is praise indeed for a man ‘if one can tell all one’s mistakes without ceasing to be
great’, the Swiss Tacitus says of Switzerland. Well, there is no lack of material for that
kind of praise. It will never hurt her to give it… qui aime bien chatie bien. [14] And for
my part I have an indestructible inclination for Switzerland taken by and large. I like
the country and the people well. Keeping his gun with the household utensils and
always ready and skilled to use it for the preservation of historical traditions of good
repute and modern achievements of his own sound home manufacture, the Swiss is,
for me, a thoroughly respectable phenomenon. He has a claim on sympathy abroad
because he himself harbours it for strivings for better conditions abroad. ‘I would
rather our dear Lord had lost his best pair of angels’, a Swiss farmer said in his
vexation at the failure of the South German uprising. Perhaps he would not have
risked one of his own draught teams for it, but he would have risked his skin, and his
gun with it. Thus, at the bottom of his heart, the Swiss is not neutral, even if he is
neutral on the basis of and for the protection of inherited possessions. Anyway, this
old crust of neutrality which surrounds his better kernel will soon burst from all the
foreign trampling on it — and that is in fact the essence of neutrality — and then there
will be fireworks, and that will clear the air.
So much for Schily’s letter. In the tower of the Berne prison, he could not manage a personal meeting
with Druey, but he did correspond with that gentleman. To a letter in which Schily asks him about the
motive for his imprisonment and requests permission for a legal consultation with the lawyer Wyss in
Berne, Druey replies in a letter dated 9 April 1852:
… L’autorité gen evoise a ordonné votre renvoi du Canton, vous a fait arrêter et
conduire à Berne à la disposition de mon département, parce que vous vous êtes
montré un des refugiés les plus remuants et que vous avez cherché à cacher I et B, que
vous vous étiez engagé à representer à l’autorité. Pour ce motif et parce que votre
sejour ulterieur en Suisse nuirait aux relations internationales de la Confederation, le
Conseil federal a ordonné votre renvoi du territoire suisse, etc… Comme votre
arrestation n’a pas pour but un proces criminel ou correctionel, mais une mesure de
haute police… il  n’est pas necessaire que vous consultiez l’avocat. D’ailleurs, avant
de…  autoriser l’entrevue que vous me demandez avec M l’avocat Wyss je desire
savoir le but de cette entrevue.
… The G enevan authorities have ordered that you be sent back from the Canton, have
had you arrested and taken to Berne in charge of my department, because you have
shown yourself to be one of the most active of the refugees and you have tried to hide
I and B, whom you had undertaken to bring before the authorities. For this reason and

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because your further staying in Switzerland would damage the Confederation’s
international relations the Federal Council has ordered your removal from Swiss
territory, etc… As your a rrest does not have the objective of a criminal or civil trial,
but a strong police measure… it is not necessary for you to consult a lawyer.
Moreover, before authorising the interview you request with the lawyer Mr Wyss, I
wish to know the aim of this interview.
The letters that Schily was allowed to write to his friends in Geneva after several requests all had to be
given to Herr Druey for inspection beforehand. In one of these letters Schily used the expression:
‘Vae Victis.’ [15] On this, Druey writes to him, dated 19 April 1852:
Dans le billet que vous avez adressé à MJ se trouvent les mots: vae victis… Cela veut -
il dire que les autorités federales vous traitent en vaincu? S’il en était ainsi, ce serait
une accusation mensongere, contre laquelle je devrais protester.
In the note you sent to MJ are the words: vae victis… Does this mean that the federal
authorities are treating you as vanquished? If this were the case, it would be a lying
accusation, which I would have to protest against.
Schily answered with a letter to Druey, dated 21 April 1852, among other things:
Je ne pense pas, M le conseiller federal, que cette manière de caracteriser les mesures
prises à mon egard, puisse me valoir le reproche d’une accusation mensongere; du
moins un pareille reproche ne serait pas de nature a me faire revenir de l’idée que je
suis traité avec dureté: au contraire, adressé à un prisonnier, par celui qui le tient en
prison, une telle reponse me paraitrait une dûreté de plus.
I do not think, Federal Councillor, that this way of describing the measures taken in
relation to me could bring me the reproach of a lying accusation; at least such a
reproach would not make me likely to abandon the idea that I am harshly treated: on
the contrary, addressed to a prisoner from the man who is holding him in prison, such
a reply would seem to me a further hardship.
Towards the end of March 1852, shortly before Schily’s arrest and the administrative removal of
other non-parliamentary refugees, the reactionary Journal de Geneve  had chattered all kinds of
mixed-up rubbish about Communist plots among the German refugees in Geneva, saying that Herr
Trog was busy stamping out a nest of German Communists with a brood of 84 Communist dragons,
etc. Besides this reactionary Geneva paper, a s cribbler in Berne belonging to the parliamentary gang
— one must assume that it was Karl Vogt , since he repeatedly claims in the Magnum Opus that he
saved Switzerland from the Communist refugees — was in the Frankfurter Journal , under the
correspondent’s mark SS, spreading similar reports, saying for example that the Geneva committee
for the support of German refugees, consisting of Communists, had been brought down because of the
unlawful distribution of money and replaced by sound men (parliamentarians) who would soon put an
end to the mischief, and further that the dictator of Geneva was now appearing after all to give way to
the orders of the Federal Commissars, in that recently two German refugees belonging to the
Communist faction had been brought unde r arrest from Geneva to Berne, etc. In its issue no 70 of 25
March 1852 the Schweizerische National -Zeitung, published in Basle, carried a reply which said,
among other things:
Every impartial observer knows that, just as Switzerland is solely concerned with the
strengthening and constitutional development of her political achievements, so too the
small remnant of German refugees here devote themselves only to earning their daily
bread and completely harmless occupations, and that the fairy stories about
Communism are only hatched out in the fantasy of the petty-bourgeois haunted by
apparitions and by informers with a political or personal interest.
After denouncing the Berne political correspondent of the Frankfurter Journal as an informer , the
article concludes:
Refugees here think that there are among them several so-called ‘sound men’ in the
pattern of the former ‘Imperial Bieder- and Bassermanns’ who, driven by nostalgia for
the flesh-pots of their native land, seek to smooth their path back into the favour of the

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rulers of their country with such reactionary expectorations; one wishes them good
luck and a speedy departure, so that they will not long continue to compromise the
refugees and the government that gives them asylum.
Schily was known by these fugitive parliamentarians to be the author of this article. The latter
appeared in the Basle National-Zeitung on 25 March, and on 1 April Schily’s completely unmotivated
arrest took place. ‘Tantaene animis celestibus irae?’
II: Revolutionary Congress at Murten
After the Murten scandal the body of German refugees in Geneva, with the exclusion of the fugitive
parliamentarians, issued a protest, ‘To a High Department of Justice and Police of the
Confederation’. I shall only print one passage from it:
The monarchies were not satisfied with their previous diplomatic achievements. They
rattled their war-sabres around Switzerland, threatening military occupation to clear
out the refugees. At least, in an official document the Bundesrat has expressed its
concern about this danger. And lo! what follows are these expulsions, motivated this
time by the well-known Murten meeting and the assertion that, as a result of the
procedures thereupon instituted, traces of politico-propagandistic tendencies had been
found. In relation to the facts, this assertion must be vigorously contested… In relation
to the law, however, it can be maintained that, wherever conditions of legality prevail,
only the legal punishment for offences anticipated by the law can be inflicted, which
also applies to deportation, unless it is to be characterised as arbitrary police
despotism. Or do they wish to commend diplomacy to us here, perhaps, saying that, in
consideration of foreign powers, in order to maintain international relations, they had
to act in this way? Very well then, if that is the case let the Swiss cross hide itself
before the Turkish crescent, which, when the refugee-hunter knocks at the Porte,
shows its horns and does not bend its knee, so let us be given our passports to Turkey,
and, when the gates have been shut behind us, let the keys of the Swiss bastion of
liberty be handed as a feudum oblatum
[17] to the Holy Alliance, so that henceforth
they can be born in the latter’s service as the insignia of its gentleman of the
bedchamber, with the motto: Finis Helvetiae!
III: Cherval
I realised from JP Becker’s letter that the ‘affiliate of Marx’ or ‘affiliates of Cherval’ mentioned by
the Imperial Vogt could be none other than Herr Stecher who lives in London. Until then I had not
had the honour of a personal acquaintance with him, although I had heard much in praise of his great
and all-sided artistic talent. We met as a result of Becker’s letter. The result is a letter written to me by
my ‘affiliate’.
17 Sussex Street
London WC
14 October 1860
Dear Herr Marx
I shall be glad to give you an explanation of the article on Nugent (Cherval–Cramer) in
Vogt’s pamphlet, an extract of which you were good enough to send me. In March
1852, I arrived in Geneva from a journey in Italy. Nugent came to Geneva at about the
same time, and I made his acquaintance in a lithographic establishment. I had just
started lithographic work, and since Nugent possesses a comprehensive knowledge of
it and has an extremely obliging and active, not to say industrious, nature, I accepted
his offer of working together with him in a studio. What Vogt says about Nugent’s
activities in Geneva is more or less what I heard about it at the time, if you take away
the usual exaggeration of the feuilletonist or pamphleteer. His success was extremely
small. I only knew one member of the society, a good humoured and industrious but
otherwise imprudently rash young man; and since he was one of the leading figures, it

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is easy to conclude that N was everything in the society and the others only inquisitive
spectators. I am convinced that neither copper nor lithographic plates were engraved,
although I heard N talk of such things. My acquaintances were mostly Geneva people
and Italians. I know that I was later regarded as a spy by Vogt and other German
refugees whom I did not know, but I did not let that worry me — the truth will always
out. I did not hold it against them, it was so easy to arouse suspicion, since there was
no lack of spies and it was not always easy to find them out. I am almost certain that
Nugent did not correspond with anybody in Geneva after he had been expelled from
there. I later received two letters from him in which he invited me to come to Paris to
take over the completion of a work on medieval architecture, which I did. In Paris, I
found Nugent cut off from all politics and correspondence. From the above it can,
admittedly, be explained how I could be regarded as ‘Marx’s affiliate’, for I saw and
heard of no one else whom Nugent had attracted to Paris. Of course, Herr Vogt could
not know that I never, either directly or indirectly, came into contact with you, and
would probably not have done so had I not taken up residence in London, where by a
coincidence I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with you and your family.
With hearty greetings to you and your wife
HC Stecher
IV: Cologne Communist Trial.
The information I give, in this section, on the Prussian embassy in London and its correspondence
with the Prussian authorities on the continent during the proceedings in Cologne is based on the
confessions of Hirsch published by A Willich in the New Yorker Criminal-Zeitung in April 1853 under
the title ‘The Victims of Moucharderie, an Article in Justification by Wilhelm Hirsch’. Hirsch, now in
prison in Hamburg, was the chief tool of Police Lieutenant Greif and his agent Fleury, and also forged
the fake minutes book produced by Stieber during the trial on their instructions and under their
guidance. I give here some extracts from Hirsch’s memoirs. During the Great Exhibition:
… the German associations were kept under joint surveillance by a police triumvirate
of Polizeirat Stieber for Prussia, a Herr Kubesch for Austria and Polizeidirektor Huntel
from Bremen.
Hirsch describes the first meeting that he had with Alberts, the Secretary of the Prussian embassy, as a
result of his offer to act as a mouchard, in the following way:
The rendezvous the Prussian embassy in London gives to its secret agents takes place
in an appropriate spot. ‘The Cock’ tavern, Fleet Street, Temple Bar, is so unobtrusive
that, were it not for the sign of a golden cock indicating its entrance, the casual passer-
by would hardly see it. A narrow entrance led me into the interior of this old-English
tavern, and upon my enquiring after Mr Charles, there presented himself to me under
that title a corpulent personage with as friendly a smile as if we two were already old
acquaintances. This agent of the embassy, for such he was, seemed to be in a very
merry mood, and his humour took sustenance in brandy and water to such an extent
that for a whole length of time he seemed to forget the purpose of our meeting. Mr
Charles, or, as he immediately called himself by his correct name, Embassy Secretary
Alberts, informed me first of all that he did not actually have anything to do with
police matters, but that he was nevertheless prepared to assume the role of mediator…
A second rendezvous took place at his apartment at the time, 39 Brewer Street, Golden
Square. Here I became acquainted for the first time with Police Lieutenant Greif, a
figure cut in the true police manner, of medium height with dark hair and a beard of
the same colour trimmed in regulation style, so that his moustache met his whiskers,
leaving his chin free. His eyes, which betrayed anything but intelligence, seemed to
have become accustomed to a bulging stare as a result of frequent association with
thieves and rogues. Herr Greif wrapped himself in the same mantle of pseudonymity
as had at first Herr Alberts, and called himself Mr Charles. The new Mr Charles was at
least of a more serious humour. He thought that the first thing he had to do was to test

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me…  Our first meeting closed with his instructing me to report to him in detail on all
the activities of the revolutionary refugees… On the next occasion, Herr Greif
introduced me to ‘his right hand’ as he called him, ‘that is to say one of my agents’, he
added. The person so named was a tall, elegantly dressed young man, who once more
introduced himself to me as Mr Charles; the whole political police seem to have
adopted this name as a pseudonym, and I now had three Charleses to deal with. The
latest arrival, however, seemed to be the most remarkable. ‘He too’, as he told me,
‘had been a revolutionary, but that all things were possible, all I had to do was go with
him.’
Greif left London for some time and took his departure from Hirsch, with the expressive rem ark ‘that
the new Mr Charles always acted on his behalf, and that I should not have any reservations about
trusting him. Even if there were many things that seemed strange to me, I should not be put off by
that.’ In order to make that clearer to me he added: ‘The ministry requires this or that object from time
to time; documents are the main thing. If they are unobtainable, a way round has to be found!’ Hirsch
goes on to say that:
… the latest Charles was Fleury, previously engaged in the despatch of the Dr esdener
Zeitung edited by L Wittig. In Baden, on the basis of recommendations he had brought
from Saxony, he was sent by the provisional government to the Palatinate to take in
hand the organisation of the local militia, etc. When the Prussians entered Karlsruhe,
he was taken prisoner, etc. He suddenly reappeared in London at the end of 1850 or
the beginning of 1851. Here he has gone by the name of de Fleury from the very
beginning, and as such is to be found among the refugees in an at least apparently a
bad situation, moves with them into the refugee barracks set up by the refugee
committee, and enjoys their support. Early in the summer of 1851, his situation
suddenly improves, he moves into a decent flat and marries at the end of the year the
daughter of an English engineer. We see him later as a police agent in Paris… His real
name is Krause, and moreover he is the son of the cobbler Krause who, together with
Backhof and Beseler, was executed some 15 to 18 years ago in Dresden for the murder
there of Countess Schonberg and her chambermaid… Fleury -Krause has often told me
that he has worked for the government since he was 14.
This was the Fleury -Krause whom Stieber admitted in open court in Cologne to be a Prussian police
spy serving directly under Greif. I  say of Fleury in my Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial:
‘So Fleury is not indeed the Fleur de Marie of the police prostitutes, but he is a flower and he will
bear blossom, albeit only the fleur de lys .’
[19] To a certain extent this has been fulfi lled. A few
months after the Communist Trial, Fleury was sentenced in England to several years in the hulks for
forgery.
‘As Police Lieutenant Greif’s right hand’, says Hirsch, ‘Fleury communicated directly with the
Prussian embassy in his absence.’
Fleury was in contact with Max Reuter, who carried out the theft of the letters from Oswald Dietz,
archivist of the Willich–Schapper league.
Stieber [writes Hirsch] was informed by the agent of the Prussian Ambassador in
Paris, that notorious Cherval, of the letters that the latter had himself written to
London. He merely had Reuter inform him of where they were kept, whereupon
Fleury carried out the theft on Stieber’s behalf with Reuter’s assistance. Those are the
stolen letters which Stieber was brazen enough to depose ‘to be such’ openly in front
of the jury in Cologne… Fleury had been in Paris together with Greif and Stieber in
the autumn of 1851, after the latter had already formed an association there, through
the mediation of Count Hatzfeld, with that Cherval, or more correctly, Joseph Cramer,
with whose help he hoped to bring the plot into existence. To that end Herren Stieber,
Greif, Fleury, two additional police agents, Beckmann and Sommer, conferred in Paris
together with the famous French spy, Lucien de la Hodde (under the name of Duprez)
and issued to Cherval their instructions according to which he had to tailor his
correspondence. Fleury has often had a laugh with me about that fight staged between

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Stieber and Cherval. And that Schmidt who introduced himself into the association set
up by Cherval on police instructions as the secretary of a revolutionary league of
Strasburg and Cologne, that Schmidt was none other than Herr de Fleury… Fleury was
undoubtedly the sole agent of the Prussian secret police in London, and all the offers
and proposals made to the embassy went through his hands… Herren Greif and
Stieber trusted his judgement in many cases.
Fleury revealed to Hirsch:
Herr Greif has told you how we must act… The Central Police in Frankfurt are
themselves of the view that what is at stake above all is to secure the existence of the
secret police, and that what means we use to achieve this is a matter of indifference;
one step has already been taken with the September plot in Paris.
Greif returns to  London and expresses his satisfaction with Hirsch’s work, but demands more,
particularly reports on ‘the secret league meetings of the Marx Party’.
A tout prix, concluded the Police Lieutenant, we must report on the League meetings.
Do it as you wish, as long as you never exceed the bounds of probability. I myself am
too busy. Herr Fleury will work with you on my behalf.
Greif’s business at the time consisted, as Hirsch says, in correspondence with Maupas through de la
Hodde-Duprez on the mock escape of Ch erval and Gipperich to be arranged from the St Pelagie
prison. On Hirsch’s assurance that:
Marx had not set up a new central association of the league in London… Greif
arranged with Fleury that under the circumstances we should, for the time being,
prepare reports on league meetings ourselves; he, Greif, would take responsibility for
and represent their authenticity, and whatever he submitted would be accepted
anyway.
So Fleury and Hirsch set to work. The ‘content’ of their reports on the secret league held  together by
me ‘was filled up’, says Hirsch:
… by saying that discussions had been held from time to time, members accepted into
the league, a new community set up in some corner of Germany, some reorganisation
had taken place, Marx’s imprisoned friends in Cologne had some prospect or no
prospect of release, that letters had arrived from this or that person, etc. As far as the
latter was concerned, Fleury usually mentioned people in Germany who were already
under suspicion as a result of political investigations or who had developed political
activity in some way or another. Very often, however, we had to rely on our
imagination, and then a member of the league would probably occur whose name did
not exist anywhere in the world. Herr Greif, however, thought that the reports were
good, and that anyway some had to be created a tout prix. In part, Fleury alone took
over their composition, but in the main I had to help him in this, as it was impossible
for him to find the right style down to the smallest detail. This is how the reports came
into being, and Herr Greif guaranteed their veracity without any reservations.
Hirsch now goes on to relate how he and Fleury visit Arnold Ruge in Brighton and Eduard Meyen (of
Tobyite memory) and steal letters and lithographe d correspondence from them. And that is not
enough. Greif-Fleury rent a lithographic press in the Stanbury print -shop in Fetter Lane and, together
with Hirsch, now make ‘radical leaflets’ themselves. There is a lesson for ‘democrat’ Frederick Zabel
here. Let him listen:
The first leaflet I [Hirsch] made was, in accordance with Fleury’s instructions, entitled
To the Rural Proletariat, and we succeeded in running off a few good copies of it.
Herr Greif sent these in as if they originated from the Marx Party, and, to add
plausibility, included a few words about the distribution of such a leaflet in the reports
of the so-called league meetings which were fabricated in the manner described. A
similar fabrication also occurred under the title To the Children of the People. I do not
know under what signature Herr Greif sent it in this time. Later this trick was dropped,
chiefly because so much money was wasted doing it.

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Cherval now arrives in London after his mock escape from Paris, and is provisionally attached to
Greif with a wage of £1 10s per week, ‘in return for which he was required to report on contacts
between the German and French refugees’.
Publicly exposed in the Workers’ Association and expelled as a mouchard:
Cherval, for easily explicable reasons, represented the German emigrants and their
organs as being as insignificant as possible, since, after all, it was completely
impossible for him to supply anything whatsoever from this quarter. He therefore
drafted for Greif a report on the non-German revolutionary party which outdid
Munchhausen.
Hirsch now returns to the Cologne trial:
Herr Greif had already been questioned on several occasions on the contents of his
reports on the League manufactured by Fleury at his behest… Specific orders, too,
would arrive on the subject. On one occasion Marx was supposed to be corresponding
with Lassalle by way of an ale-house, and the Public Prosecutor wished to see
investigations instituted in this matter… Even more naive was a request from the
Public Prosecutor asking to receive more detailed information on the financial support
Lassalle was said to be sending to Roser imprisoned in Cologne. The money, that is,
was thought to be really coming from England.
It has already been mentioned in Chapter III, Section IV how, on Hinckeldy’s instructions, Fleury was
supposed to dig somebody up in London to represent before the Cologne assize the runaway witness
H, etc. After describing this incident in detail, Hirsch continues:
Herr Stieber had meanwhile insistently demanded that Greif should if possible supply
original minutes of the league meetings he had reported. Fleury thought that, if only
we had a few people available, he would be able to produce some original minutes, but
that, in particular, the handwriting of some of Marx’s friends was needed. I used this
last remark to reject the idea. Fleury only came to speak of this matter once more, and
then he was silent about it. At this time Herr Stieber suddenly emerged in Cologne
with a minutes-book of the central association of the league meeting in London… I
was even more astonished when I recognised in the extracts from the minutes
published in the journals an almost exact copy of the reports forged by Fleury at
Greif’s behest. Herr Greif or Herr Stieber themselves had therefore managed after all
by some means to produce a copy, for the minutes in this alleged original bore
signatures, while those that Fleury had handed in were not provided with them. All
that I learned from Fleury himself about this miraculous phenomenon was ‘that
nothing was beyond Stieber, the affair would raise a storm’!!
As soon as Fleury learned that ‘Marx’ had had the genuine handwriting of the alleged signatories of
the minutes (Liebknecht, Rings, Ulmer, etc) witnessed before a London Police Court, he composed
the following letter:
To the Royal Police Presidium in Berlin. London. With the aim of representing the
signatures of the signatories of the League minutes to be false, Marx and his friends
intend to have signatures witnessed here which will then be submitted to the assizes as
the genuine signatures. Everybody who knows the English law also knows that in this
respect it allows itself to be twisted and turned, and that he who vouches the
authenticity of a thing at bottom does not really guarantee anything at all. The supplier
of this information is not afraid to sign his name in a matter in which the truth is at
stake. Becker, 4 Litchfield Street.
Fleury knew the address of Becker, a German refugee who lived in the same house as Willich , so that
afterwards suspicion of being the author could all the more easily fall on the latter as an opponent of
Marx… Fleury was delighted in advance with the scandal it would cause. Of course, the letter would
be read out so late, he thought, that any doubts about its authenticity could only be sorted out after the
trial… The letter signed Becker was addressed to the Police Presidium in Berlin , but went, not to
Berlin, but to ‘Police Officer Goldheim, Frankfurter Hof in Cologne’, and an envelope for the letter
went to the Police Presidium in Berlin with the covering note: ‘Herr Stieber in Cologne will give you

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more precise information on its purpose.’… Herr Stieber made no use of the letter. He made no use
of it because he was forced to drop the whole minutes-book.
In relation to the latter, Hirsch says:
Herr Stieber declares [before the court] he had had it in his hands 14 days previously
and considered the matter before making use of it. He further stated that it had come to
him by courier in the person of Greif… Greif had consequently brought  over his own
work — but how does this fit in with a letter from Herr Goldheim ? Herr Goldheim
writes to the embassy ‘that the minutes-book had only been brought so late so as to
avoid the success of any questions as to its authenticity’…
Herr Goldheim arrived in London on Friday, 29 October.
Herr Stieber, that is, was faced with the impossibility of maintaining the authenticity
of the minutes-book. He therefore sent a deputy to negotiate with Fleury on the spot.
The question was whether proof could not be obtained in one way or another. His
discussions remained fruitless and he went back empty-handed, leaving Fleury in a
state of desperation. Stieber, that is, was determined to expose him in case the police
chiefs were compromised. I did not learn that this was the cause of Fleury’s anxiety
until I saw the statement by Herr Stieber that followed shortly afterwards. In dismay
Fleury now tried his last resource. He brought me a specimen of handwriting in which
I was to copy out a statement and sign it with the name ‘Liebknecht’. I was then to
swear to it before the Lord Mayor of London, declaring that I was Liebknecht…
Fleury said that the handwriting was that of the man who had written the minutes-
book, and that Herr Goldheim had brought it [from Cologne]. But, if Herr Stieber had
just received the minutes-book from London by the courier Greif, how could Herr
Goldheim bring a sample of the handwriting of the person who had allegedly written it
from Cologne at a time when Greif had only just returned to London? … All that
Fleury gave me was a few words and the signature… I [Hirsch] copied the
handwriting as exactly as possible and wrote in it a statement that the undersigned,
that is Liebknecht, declared the legalisation of their signatures by Marx and Co was
false and that this, his signature, was the only authentic one. When I had finished my
work and had in my hands the specimen [that is the specimen given to him by Fleury
for copying] which I fortunately still possess, I expressed my doubts to Fleury, which
surprised him not a little, and roundly turned down his request. Disconsolate at first,
he then told me that he would swear the oath himself… for safety’s sake, however, he
told me he would have the sample countersigned by the Prussian Consul, and he went
straight off to the latter’s office. I waited for him in a tavern. When he returned he had
obtained the counter-signature and he thereupon betook himself to the Lord Mayor,
intending to swear the oath. But things did not go smoothly; the Lord Mayor
demanded further guarantees which Fleury could not furnish, and the swearing of the
oath did not take place… Late at night I saw Herr de Fleury once more for the last
time. That very day he had had the nasty surprise of reading Herr Stieber’s statement
concerning him in the Kolnische-Zeitung! ‘But I know there was nothing else for
Stieber to do’, Herr Fleury very rightly consoled himself, ‘otherwise he would have
had to compromise himself.’ … ‘ A blow would fall in Berlin if the Cologne defendants
were found guilty’, Herr Fleury told me on one of the last days that I saw him.
Fleury’s last meeting with Hirsch took place at the end of October 1852; Hirsch’s confessions are
dated the end of November 1852; and at the end of March 1853 the ‘blow in Berlin’ (the Ladendorf
conspiracy) fell.
V: Slanders
After the conclusion of the Cologne Communist trial, Vogt -like slanders about my ‘exploitation’ of
the workers were busily peddled about, particularly in the German- American press. A few of my
friends living in America — Herr J oseph Weydemeyer, Dr A Jacobi (medical practitioner in New
York, one of the accused in the Cologne Communist trial) and A Cluss (an official at the United

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States Navy Yard in Washington) — published a detailed refutation of this nonsense dated New York,
7 November 1853, with the comment that I had the right to keep silent about my private affairs as far
as the favour of the petty bourgeois was concerned. ‘But in the face of the mob, the petty bourgeois
and the degenerate idler it does in our view harm the cause, and we shall break the silence.’
VI: The War of the Frogs and the Mice
In my pamphlet quoted earlier, The Knight, one can read on page 5:
The ‘Agitation Association’ was founded on 20 July 1851, and the German
‘Emigration Club’ on 27 July 1851. From that day on… dated the struggle waged on
both sides of the ocean between ‘Emigration’ and ‘Agitation’, the great war of the
frogs and the mice began.
Where find the words, o how am I to write,
And these mighty deeds with justice full to tell?
For prouder struggles waged with bitterer spite
Since the world’s creation never yet befell;
All other battles, however hard the fight
Were mere beds of roses, and my poetic spell
Forsakes me here, where bravery and glory
With equal honour shine through this great battle’s story.
(After Boiardo, Orlando Inamorato, Canto 27)
Now it is by no means my intention to go into any greater detail here on ‘this great battle’s story’, nor
yet the ‘Preliminaries to a Treaty of Union ’ (published in full under that title in the whole German-
American press) agreed between Gottfried Kinkel on behalf of the Emigration Association and A
Goegg on behalf of the ‘Revolutionary League of the Two Worlds’. I will only remark that the entire
body of parliamentary refugees, with few exceptions (at that time every party avoided names like K
Vogt out of a simple sense of decency) took part in the masquerade on one side or the other.
At the end of his shadow -boxing excursion around the United States, Go ttfried Kinkel, the passion
flower of German Philistinism, expressed in the Memorandum on the German National Loan for the
Advancement of the Revolution, dated Elmira in the State of New York, 22 February 1852, views
which at least possess the virtue of ex treme simplicity. Gottfried thinks that making revolutions is the
same as making railways. Once the money is there, the railway will make itself in the one case and the
revolution in the other. While the nation carries the urge towards revolution in its bo som, the
revolution-makers must carry cash in their pockets, and therefore everything depends on ‘a small,
well-equipped troop, richly provided with money’. One can see into what mental aberrations the
mercantile wind from England blows even melodramatic b rains. Since here everything, even ‘public
opinion’, is created with the help of stocks and shares, why not have a joint -stock company ‘for the
advancement of the revolution’?
At a public encounter with Kossuth, who at that time was also indulging in revol utionary shadow-
boxing in the United States, Gottfried gave vent to the most aesthetic utterance:
Even from your pure hand, Governor, freedom granted would be a hard morsel of
bread for me, which I would bathe with the tears of my shame.
Having looked this  gift horse so abruptly in the mouth, Gottfried assured the Governor that if the
latter handed him ‘the Revolution in the East’ with his right hand, he, Gottfried, would hand him ‘the
Revolution in the West’ with his right hand. Seven years later that very  same Gottfried, in the
‘Hermann’ that he himself set up, assured us that he was a man of rare consistency. Having called,
before the Court Martial at Rastatt, for the Prince Regent to be Emperor of Germany, he said, he had
always held fast to that slogan.
One of the original three Imperial Regents was Count Oskar Reichenbach, who was also treasurer of
the Revolutionary Loan. Dated London,  8 October  1852, he published a statement of accounts
together with a declaration severing his association with the undertaking. At the same time, however,
he said: ‘In any case I cannot and shall not hand over the money to Citizens Kinkel [etc].’ On the

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contrary, he called on the shareholders to cash in the provisional loan certificates against the cash still
in hand. He said that he had been forced to resign the treasurer’s position:
… for political and legal reasons… the prerequisites on which the idea of the loan was
based have not been met. The loan was only to have been proceeded with after the
sum of $20,000 had been realised, and this had not been reached… No support has
been forthcoming for the proposal to set up a periodical to carry out intellectual
agitation. To say that it is possible to carry on with the loan now and to guarantee in an
active revolutionary way that is equally fair to all parties, that is to say impersonal, at
this moment, is only political charlatanism or revolutionary monomania.
However, Gottfried’s faith in the revolution was not so easily shaken. For that purpose he obtained a
‘resolution’ that allowed him to carry on the business under another name.
Reichenbach’s statement of accounts contains interesting data.
The guarantors cannot be held responsible [he said], for any contributions paid later by
the committees to anybody other than myself. I ask the committees to take this into
account in accepting certificates back and settling them.
According to his statement of accounts receipts totalled £1587 6s 4d, to which London had
contributed £2 5s and ‘ Germany’ £9. Payments amounted to £584 18s 5d, and were made up as
follows: Kinkel’s and Hillgartner’s travelling expenses: £ 220; other travellers: £54; lithographic
press: £11; production of the provisional loan certificates: £14; lithographic correspondence, postage,
etc: £106 1s 6d. On the instructions of Kinkel, etc: £100.
The revolutionary loan ended up as £1000 which Gottfried Kinkel is keeping in the Westminster Bank
ready as earnest money for the first German provisional government. And despite that is there still no
provisional government! Perhaps Germany thinks she has enough on her hands with 36 definitive
governments.
Individual American loan funds which were not incorporated into the central fund in London did at
least find a patriotic application here and there, such as, for exampl e, the £100 that Gottfried Kinkel
handed over to Herr Karl Blind early in 1858 to be turned into ‘radical leaflets’, etc.
VII: The Palmerston Polemic
Council Hall
Sheffield
6 May 1856
Dr Karl Marx
Doctor
The Sheffield Foreign Affairs Committee instruct me to convey to you an expression
of their warm thanks for the great public service you have rendered by your admirable
exposé of the Kars-papers published in the People’s Paper.
I have the honour, etc
Wm Cyples
Secretary
VIII: Statement by Herr A Schemer
Herr A Scherzer, who has played a notable part in the workers’ movement since the 1830s, writes to
me, dated London, 22 April 1860:
Dear Citizen
I must protest against a passage that concerns me personally in the tissue of lies and
infamous slanders in Vogt’s pamphlet. In document no 7, the reprint from the
Schweizer Handels-Courier, no 150 of 2 June, supplement, it says: ‘We know that at
present renewed efforts are being made from London. From there, letters signed A

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Sch… are being sent to associations and individuals, etc.’ No doubt it is those ‘letters’
that cause Vogt to write, in another part of his book: ‘At the beginning of this year
(1859), however, new soil for political agitation seemed to offer itself. The
opportunity was immediately seized in order, if possible, to regain some influence. In
this respect tactics have not changed in years. A committee, about which “nobody
knows nothing”, as it says in the old song, sends out letters through a president or
correspondence secretary who is also completely unknown, etc, etc. When the ground
has been sounded out in this way, some “travelling brethren” drop in to the country
and immediately busy themselves with setting up a secret society. The association
itself which it is intended to compromise learns nothing of these intrigues, which
remain the activity of a separate little group of individuals. In the main, even the
correspondence which is carried out in the association’s name is completely unknown
to the latter. But the letters always say ‘our association’, etc, and the complaints by the
police that later invariably follow, and are based on seized documents, always affect
the whole association, etc.’
Why has Herr K not printed the whole letter that he hints at in document no 7? Why
does he not ‘sound out’ the source from which it emanated? He could easily have
learned that the public London German Workers’ Educational Association appointed,
at a public meeting, a correspondence committee to which I had the honour to be
elected. If Herr Vogt speaks of unknown correspondents and all that, I am delighted to
be unknown to him but I am also glad to say that I am known to thousands of German
workers who have all partaken of the knowledge of men after which he thirsts. Times
have changed. The days of the secret societies are over. It is absurd to talk of secret
societies and the activities of separate little groups when the cause can be discussed
openly in a workers’ association where strangers take part in every meeting as visitors.
The letters I signed were composed in a way that could not harm a hair on anybody’s
head. All that we German workers in London were concerned to do was to find out the
mood of workers on the continent and to set up a newspaper that would represent the
interests of the working class and take the field against writers in foreign pay.
Naturally, it never occurred to any German workers to act in the interests of a
Bonaparte; only a Vogt or his ilk is capable of that. We certainly abhor the despotism
of Austria more earnestly than does Herr Vogt, but we do not seek its overthrow
through the victory of a foreign despot. Every people must free itself. Is it not
remarkable that Herr Vogt claims for himself the right to use methods which, when we
turned them against his activities, he said made us criminals? Herr Vogt asserts that he
is not paid by Bonaparte, but has only received money for setting up a newspaper from
democratic hands, and thinks that that has washed him clean. How then can he be so
block-headed, despite all his learning, to accuse and cast suspicion upon workers who
are concerned for the good of their fatherland and are carrying out propaganda for
setting up a newspaper?
Yours faithfully
A Scherzer
IX: Letters from Herr Orges
Augsburg 16–10
Dear Sir
I received news from Herr Liebknecht today that you will be so good as to place at our
disposal a legal document concerning the origins of the leaflet against Vogt. I urgently
ask you to send me the same as quickly as is at all possible, so that we can produce it.
Please send the document by registered post and charge any expenses to us. For the
rest, dear sir, the liberal press from time to time misjudges the Allgemeine Zeitung: we
(the editorial board) have survived all the trials by fire and by water as to the firmness
of our political convictions. Do not consider our work piece by piece, the individual

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article, but as a whole, and then you must conclude that no German paper strives as we
do, without haste but also without rest, for unity and freedom, power and education,
mental and material progress, and to raise the level of national feeling and morality in
the German people. You must judge our deeds by their effect.
Once more most urgently pressing that you will be so good as to grant my request, I
am most respectfully,
Your faithful servant
Hermann Orges
The second letter, of the same date, was simply an extract of the first, ‘also sent’, as Herr Orges
writes, ‘for the sake of greater safety’. It similarly demands ‘that the documents which, as Herr
Liebknecht writes, you have been so  good as to place at our disposal on the origins of the leaflet
against Vogt should be sent to us as quickly as possible’.
X: Circular Against Karl Blind
I shall only print here the conclusion of my English circular against Blind dated 4 February 1860:
Now, before taking any further steps, I want to show up the fellows who evidently
have played into the hands of Vogt. I, therefore, publicly declare that the statement of
Blind, Wiehe and Hollinger, according to which the anonymous pamphlet was not
printed in Hollinger’s office, 3 Litchfield Street, Soho, is a deliberate lie. First Mr
Vögele, one of the compositors formerly employed by Hollinger, will declare upon
oath that the said pamphlet was printed in Hollinger’s office, was written in the
handwriting of Mr Blind, and partly composed by Hollinger himself. Secondly, it can
be judicially proved that the pamphlet and the article in the Das Volk have been taken
off the same type. Thirdly, it will be shown that Wiehe was not employed by Hollinger
for 11 consecutive months, and, especially, was not employed by him at the time of
the pamphlet’s publication. Lastly, witnesses may be summoned in whose presence
Wiehe himself confessed having been persuaded to sign the wilfully false declaration
in the Augsburg Gazette. Consequently I again declare the above said Charles Blind to
be a deliberate liar.
Karl Marx
From the London Times, 3 February: Vienna, 30 January — The Swiss Professor Vogt pretends to
know that France will procure for Switzerland Faucigny, Chablais a nd the Genovese, the neutral
provinces of Savoy, if the Grand Council of the Republic will let her have the free use of the Simplon.
XI: Vögele’s Affidavit
I declare herewith: That the German flysheet Zur Warnung (As a Warning) which was
afterwards reprinted in no 7 (dated 18 June 1859) of Das Volk (a German newspaper
which was then published in London) and which was again reprinted in the Allgemeine
Zeitung of Augsburg (the Augsburg Gazette) — that this flysheet was composed partly
by Mr Fidelio Hollinger of 3 Litchfield Street, Soho, London, partly by myself who
was then employed by Mr Fidelio Hollinger, and that the flysheet was published in Mr
Hollinger’s Printing Office, 3 Litchfield Street, Soho, London; that the manuscript of
the said flysheet was in the handwriting of Mr Charles Blind; that I saw Mr Hollinger
give to Mr William Liebknecht of 14 Church Street, Soho, London, the proof-sheet of
the flysheet Zur Warnung; that Mr Hollinger hesitated at first giving the proof-sheet to
Mr W Liebknecht, and that, when Mr Liebknecht had withdrawn, he, Mr F Hollinger,
expressed to me and to my fellow workman JF Wiehe, his regret for having given the
proof-sheet out of his hands.
Declared at the Police Court, Bow Street, in the County of Middlesex, the eleventh
day of February 1860, before me, Th Henry, one of the Police Magistrates of the
Metropolis.

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A Vögele
XII: Wiehe’s Affidavit
One of the first days of November last — I do not recollect the exact date — in the
evening between nine and ten o’clock I was taken out of bed by Mr F Hollinger, in
whose house I then lived, and by whom I was employed as compositor. He presented
to me a paper to the effect that, during the previous 11 months I had been continuously
employed by him, and that during all that time a certain German flysheet Zur Warnung
(As a Warning) had not been composed and printed in Mr Hollinger’s Office, 3
Litchfield Street, Soho. In my perplexed state, and not aware of the importance of the
transaction, I complied with his wish and copied and signed the document. Mr
Hollinger promised me money, but I never received anything. During that transaction
Mr Charles Blind, as my wife informed me at the time, was waiting in Mr Hollinger’s
room. A few days later, Mrs Hollinger called me down from dinner and led me into
her husband’s room, where I found Mr Charles Blind alone. He presented me the same
paper which Mr Hollinger had presented me before, and entreated me to write, and
sign a second copy, as he wanted two, the one for himself and the other for publication
in the press. He added that he would show himself grateful to me. I copied and signed
again the paper.
I herewith declare the truth of the above statements and that:
1: During the 11 months mentioned in the document I was for six weeks not employed
by Mr Hollinger but by a Mr Ermani. 2: I did not work in Mr Hollinger’s office just at
that time when the flysheet Zur Warnung (As a Warning) was published. 3: I heard at
the time from Mr Vögele, who then worked for Mr Hollinger, that he, Vögele, had,
together with Mr Hollinger himself, composed the flysheet in question, and that the
manuscript was in Mr Blind’s handwriting. 4: The types of the pamphlet were still
standing when I returned to Mr Hollinger’s service. I myself broke them into columns
for the reprint of the flysheet (or pamphlet) Zur Warnung (As a Warning) in the
German paper Das Volk (The People) published at London, by Mr Fidelio Hollinger, 3
Litchfield Street, Soho. The flysheet appeared in no 7, dd 18 June 1859, of Das Volk
(The People). 5: I saw Mr Hollinger give to Mr William Liebknecht of 14 Church
Street, Soho, London, the proof-sheet of the pamphlet Zur Warnung, on which proof-
sheet Mr Charles Blind with his own hand had corrected four or five mistakes. Mr
Hollinger hesitated at first giving the proof-sheet to Mr Liebknecht, and when Mr
Liebknecht had withdrawn, he, F Hollinger, expressed to me and my fellow workman
Vögele his regret for having given the proof-sheet out of his hands.
Declared and signed by the said Johann Friedrich Wiehe at the Police Court, Bow
Street, this 8th day of February 1860, before me Th Henry Magistrate of the said court.
LS
Johann Friedrich Wiehe
XIII: From the Trial Documents.
Provisional Government
French Republic
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
In the Name of the French People
Paris
1 March 1848
Good and loyal Marx

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The soil of the French Republic is a place of asylum for all the friends of liberty. Tyranny banned you,
free France reopens her gates to you, to you and to all those who fight for the holy cause, the fraternal
cause of all the peoples. Every agent of the French government has to interpret his duty in this sense.
With fraternal greetings.
Ferdinand Flocon
Member of the Provisional Government
* * *
Brussels
16 May 1848
My dear Mr Marx
It is with great pleasure that I learn from our friend Weerth that you are going to bring out in Cologne
a New Rhenish Gazette, the prospectus for which he has sent me. It is certainly necessary to have this
newspaper to keep us in Belgium up to date with the affa irs of the German democrats, as it is
impossible to learn anything about them from the Cologne Gazette , the General Gazette of Augsburg
and the other aristocratic German newspapers we receive in Brussels, any more than we can through
our own Ind épendance Belge, all of whose special reports are written from the point of view of the
interests of our Belgian aristocracy. Mr Weerth tells me that his aim is to join you in Cologne to
contribute to the undertaking of the New Rhenish Gazette; on your behalf he has also promised to send
me the paper in exchange for the Debat Social which I, for my part, shall send to you. I could ask no
better than to keep up in this way correspondence between us on the common affairs of our two
countries. It is essential, in the int erests of the two countries, that Belgians and Germans should not
remain strangers to each other, for events are being prepared in France which will bring into play
questions which affect the two countries jointly. I have just returned from Paris, where I spent ten
days which I used to the best of my ability to study the situation in the great capital. At the end of my
stay I found myself just in the middle of the events of 15 May. I was even present at the session of the
National Assembly where the people burst in… What I have understood by seeing the attitude of the
people of Paris and hearing the people who are at the moment prominent in the affairs of the French
republic is that a strong reaction by the bourgeois spirit is expected against the events of February last;
no doubt the events of 15 May will precipitate this reaction. Well, this will undoubtedly lead in a very
short time to a new rising of the people… Soon France will have to have recourse to a war. It is
against this eventuality that we will h ave to discuss, here and in your country, what we shall have to
do together. If the war is directed primarily against Italy, we shall have a reprieve… but if it is
directed immediately against this country, I am not really sure what we shall have to do, an d then we
shall need the advice of Germans… Meanwhile I shall announce the forthcoming publication of your
paper in Sunday’s Debat Social…
[20] I expect to go to London towards the end of the coming month
of June. Should you have occasion to write to any of  your friends in London, please be so kind as to
ask them to receive me there.
Cordially yours,
L Jottrand
Advocate
* * *
Brussels
10 February 1860
My dear Marx
Having had no news of you for a very long time, I received your last letter with the liveliest
satisfaction. You complain about the slow pace of things, and the lack of urgency on my part to reply
to the question you asked me. What am I to do: old age slows my pen; I hope, nevertheless, that you
will find my opinions and my sentiments unchanged. I see that your last letter was written to your
dictation by the hand of your private secretary, your adorable better half; well, Mrs Marx has never

187

forgotten the old hermit of Brussels. I hope she will graciously deign to accept my respectful
greetings.
Keep me, dear colleague, always in your friendship.
Fraternal greetings
Lelewel
* * *
5 Cambridge Place
Kensington
London
11 February 1860
My dear Marx
I have read a series of infamous slanders against you in the National -Zeitung and am utterly
astonished a t the falsehood and malignity of the writer. I really feel it duty that every one who is
acquainted with you should, however unnecessary such a testimony must be, pay a tribute to the
worth, honour and disinterestedness of your character. It becomes doubly  incumbent on me to do so,
when I recollect how many little articles you contributed to my little magazine, the Notes to the
People and subsequently to the People’s Paper [21] for a series of years, utterly gratuitously; articles
which were of such high value to the people’s cause, and of such great benefit to the paper. Permit me
to hope that you will severely punish your dastardly and unmanly libeller.
Believe me, my dear Marx, most sincerely, yours
Ernest Jones
* * *
Tribune Office
New York
8 March 1860
Dr Charles Marx
My dear Sir
In reply to your request I am very happy to state the facts of your connection with various
publications in the United States concerning which I have had a personal knowledge. Nearly nine
years ago I engaged you to write for the New York Tribune , and the engagement has been continued
ever since. You have written for us constantly, without a single week’s interruption, that I can
remember, and you are not only one of the most highly valued, but one of the best paid contributors
attached to the journal. The only fault I have to find with you has been that you have occasionally
exhibited too German a tone of feeling for an American newspaper. This has been the case with
reference both to Russia and France. In questions relating to both, Czarism and Bonapartism, I have
sometimes thought that you manifested too much interest and too great anxiety for the unity and
independence of Germany. This was more striking perhaps in connection with the late Italian war than
on any other occasion. In that I agreed perfectly w ith you: sympathy with the Italian people , I had as
little confidence as you in the sincerity of the French Emperor, and believed as little as you that
Italian liberty was to be expected from him; but I did not think that Germany had any such ground for
alarm as you, in common with other patriotic Germans, thought she had.
I must add that in all your writings that have passed through my hands, you have always manifested
the most cordial interest in the welfare and progress of the labouring classes; and that  you have
written much with direct reference to that end.
I have also at various times within the past five or six years been the medium through which
contributions of yours have been furnished to Putnam ’s Monthly , a  literary magazine of high

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character; and also to the New American Cyclopaedia, of which I am also an editor, and for which you
have furnished some very important articles.
If any other explanations are needed, I shall be happy to furnish them. Meanwhile I remain, yours
very faithfully.
Charles A Dana
Managing Editor of the NY Tribune
XIV: Dentu Pamphlets
I have shown that the Dentu pamphlets are the source from which the German Da -Da has drawn his
wisdom on world history in general and ‘Napoleon’s beneficial policies’ in particular. The ‘beneficial
policies of Napoleon’ is a phrase from a recent lead article by the ‘democrat’ F  Zabel. What the
French themselves think of and know about these pamphlets can be seen from the following extract
from the Paris weekly Courier du Dimanche, no 42, 14 October 1860.
As far as the present moment is concerned, take any ten pamphlets, and you will see
that at least nine have been thought up, worked out and written… by whom? By
professional novelists, song-writers, vaudeville artists, sacristans!
Is there talk in the newspapers of mysterious interviews between the powers of the
North, of the resuscitation of the Holy Alliance? Then along comes an agreeable
maker of couplets that are literary enough and (once) even passably liberal. He runs
off to the inevitable M Dentu and brings him, under the high falutin’ title, The
Coalition, a long and insipid paraphrase of the articles of M Grandguillot. Does the
English Alliance sometimes seem to displease M Limayrac? Along comes a M
Chatelet, a knight of the order of Gregory the Great, who, to go by his style, is a
sacristan somewhere, and he publishes or republished a long and ridiculous history:
The Crimes and Misdeeds of England Against France. Already the author of Grandpa
Guillery (Edmond About) has thought it in order to enlighten us on the political secrets
of the Prussian monarchy and, from the heights of his theatrical diarrhoea, to advise
caution to the Berlin chambers. It is announced that M Clairville is shortly going to
elucidate the question of the Panama Isthmus which M Belly so mixed up; and no
doubt a few days after the royal conference of 21 October we will see appear in the
windows of all our bookshops a splendid pink pamphlet bearing the title: Memoir on
the Warsaw Interview by the Corps de Ballet of the Opera.
This apparently inexplicable invasion of political questions by the dii minores of
literature has a number of causes. We shall only quote one single one here, but it is the
most immediate and the most incontestable.
In the almost universal decay of the spirit and the heart, these gentlemen who follow
the sad calling of amusers of the public no longer know how to shake their readers
awake. The old joys of their refrains and their anecdotes constantly haunt them. They
themselves feel as mournful, sad and bored as those they undertake to amuse. That is
why, running out of resources and in despair, some of them have started to write
biographies of prostitutes and others diplomatic pamphlets.
And then one fine morning a literary adventurer who has never sacrificed a single hour
of serious study to politics, and does not even have the shadow of a conviction of any
sort in his breast, gets up and says: ‘I must strike a great blow! What shall I do to
attract public attention to myself, since it instinctively flees from me? Shall I write a
little opus on the leotard question or the Eastern question? Shall I reveal to an
astonished world the secrets of boudoirs I have never entered, or those of Russian
politics, which I know even less about? Should I wax tender in Voltairean prose on
fallen women or in evangelical prose on the unfortunate Maronite peoples persecuted,
plundered and massacred by fanatical Mahomedans? Should I launch an apologia for
Mademoiselle Rigolboche or a plea in favour of temporal power? I shall definitely
choose politics. I shall entertain my audience much more with kings and emperors

189

than with grisettes.’ Having said this, our bohemian literary supernumerary devours
the Moniteur, haunts the colonnades of the Bourse for a few days, visits a few
officials, and ends up knowing which way the wind of public interest is blowing and
which way that of court favour. He then chooses a title that this wind can inflate
sufficiently, and rests content upon his laurels. He has already done everything
necessary, for all that counts where pamphlets are concerned nowadays is the title and
the author’s relations with ‘highly placed personages’.
Is it necessary to say, after that, what the pamphlets that are inundating us are worth?
Take your courage in both hands one day and try to read one of them through to the
end. You will be horrified by the unheard-of ignorance and the intolerable
insouciance, not to say loss of moral sense they reveal in their authors. I am not
speaking of the worst ones here… And each year bows us further down, each year sees
a new sign of intellectual decadence appear, each year adds a new literary shame to
those that we already have to blush for, so that even the most optimistic sometimes
start to worry about the morrow, and ask in anguish: Where will it all end?
Above, I quoted the phrase ‘ the beneficial policies of Napoleon ’ from the National -Zeitung. Oddly
enough, the Paris correspondent of the Manchester Guardian — whose usually accurate reporting is
recognised all over England — relates the following curious fact dated Paris, 8 November… ‘Louis
Napoleon spends his gold in vain supporting such newspapers as the National -Zeitung.’ (Manchester
Guardian 12 November 1860)
However, I believe that the correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, who is usually well informed,
has made a mistake this time. F Zabel, that is, is supposed to have deserted to the Bonapartist camp to
prove that he has not been bought by Austria. At least, that is what was reported to me from Berlin,
and it fits — the Dunciad.
XV: Postscript
a) K Vogt and ‘La Cimentaire’: While this last section was going through the press, the October
[1860] issue of Stimmen der Zeit  accidentally fell into my hands. A  Kolatschek, previously the
publisher of the Deutsche Monats-schrift, the organ of the runaway parliamentarians, who is thus to a
certain extent the ‘Runaway Regent’s’ superior, relates the following about his friend Karl Vogt on
page 37:
The Geneva joint-stock company ‘La Cimentaire’, which had as one of its directors
none other than Herr Karl Vogt himself, was set up in 1857. By 1858 the shareholders
did not have a penny left, and the public prosecutor immediately locked up one of the
directors on a charge of fraud. At the time the director was arrested, Herr Vogt was in
Berne. He hurriedly returned, the arrested man was released and the trial was
suppressed ‘to avoid a scandal’. The shareholders, however, lost everything. Faced
with such an example, one could hardly claim that the protection of property is very
sound in Geneva. Herr Karl Vogt’s error in this respect is all the stranger in that he
was, as has been said, one of the directors of the said company. In such cases, even in
France, the guilty parties are sought among the directors, they are imprisoned and their
property is used to cover the civil claims of the shareholders.
Compare this with what JP Becker said in his letter (Chapter X) about the banking events that drove
Mr James Fazy into the arm s of December. Details of this kind contribute a great deal to solve the
riddle of how ‘Napoleon le Petit’ became the greatest man of his age. As we know, ‘Napoleon le
Petit’ himself had to choose between a coup d’état and — Clichy. [22]
b) Kossuth: The following extract from a memorandum of a conversation with Kossuth is striking
proof of how precisely Kossuth knows that Russia is Hungary’s main danger. The memorandum
comes from one of the most famous radical members of the present House of Commons.
Memorandum of a conversation with M Kossuth on the evening of 30 May 1854, at…
A return to strict legality in Hungary [said he, viz Kossuth] might renew the union of
Hungary and Austria, and would prevent Russia from finding any partisan in Hungary.

190

He [Kossuth] would not offer any opposition to a return to legality. He would advise
his countrymen to accept with good faith such a restoration, if it could be obtained,
and would pledge himself not in any way to be an obstacle to such an arrangement. He
would not himself return to Hungary. He would not himself put forward such a course
of Austria as he had no belief in Austria’s return to legality, except under pressure of
dire necessity. He gave me authority to say, such were his sentiments, and if appealed
to, he should avow them, though he could not commit himself to any proposal, as he
should not expect Austria to abandon her traditional scheme of centralisation till
forced to do so… He would have consented in 1848 to Hungarian troops being sent to
resist attacks of the Piedmontese [in 1848, Herr Kossuth went much further, forcing
through the despatch of Hungarian troops against the Italian ‘rebels’ with an
impassioned speech in the Pest parliament], but he would not employ them to coerce
Austrian Italy, as he would not consent to foreign troops in Hungary.
The ability of the popular imagination to create myths has manifested itself in every epoch in the
invention of ‘Great Men’. The most striking example of this kind is unquestionably Simon Bolivar. As
far as Kossuth is concerned, he is celebrated, for example, as the man who abolished feudalism in
Hungary. Nevertheless, he is totally innocent of the three great measures — universal taxation,
abolition of the feudal impositions on the peasants, and removal of the tithe without compensation.
The motion in favour of universal taxation (the nobility had previously been exempt) was tabled by
Szemere, the motion for the abolition of socage, etc, by Bonis , the deputy for Szabolcz, and it was the
clergy itself, in the person of the deputy and canon Jekelfalusy, who voluntarily renounced the tithe.
c) Edmond About’s La Prusse en 1860 : At the end of Chapter VIII, I express the view that E
About’s pamphlet La Prusse en 1860 or, as it was originally called, Napoleon III et  la Prusse, is a
retranslation back into French of extracts from Da -Da Vogt’s German version of a compilation of
Dentu pamphlets. The only consideration that spoke against this view was that failed playwright E
About’s total ignorance of the German languag e. However, why should Compere Guillery not have
found a Commere allemande in Paris? Who this commere was remained a matter of conjecture for the
critic. La Prusse en 1860 was, as we know, written as a vademecum for Louis Bonaparte’s journey to
Baden-Baden.
[23] It was supposed to improve his standing with the Crown Prince and make it clear
to Prussia that, as the closing words of the pamphlet say, Prussia possesses in 2 December an ‘allié
très utile, qui est peut-être appelé à lui rendre de grands services, pourvu qu’elle s’y prête un peu’. [24]
In German that ‘pourvu qu’elle s’y prête un peu’ means: ‘provided Prussia sells the Rhine Provinces
to France’, as E About had already let slip in French in the Opinion Nationale  in the spring of 1860
(see above Cha pter IX, Agency). Under these aggravating circumstances, I am unwilling to name
anybody by name as the German prompter of the failed playwright and Dentu- pamphleteer E About
on the basis of mere supposition. Now, however, I can state with authority that compere Guillery’s
German commere is none other than Vogt’s sweet Cunegonde — Herr Ludwig Simon of Trier . The
German refugee in London who wrote the famous reply to About’s pamphlet can scarcely have
suspected that!
XVI: Additional Material by Marx on the Vogt
Case
Karl Marx, Letter to the Editor of the Allgemeine Zeitung  (Allgemeine Zeitung, no 300, 27
October 1859)
19 October 1859
9 Grafton Terrace
Maitland Park
Haverstock Hill
London
Sir

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As long as I had a hand in the German press I attacked the Allgemein e Zeitung and the Allgemeine
Zeitung attacked me. That of course does not prevent me from giving what assistance I can to the
Allgemeine Zeitung in a case where, in my opinion, it has fulfilled the first  duty of the press, that of
denouncing humbug. The enclosed document would be a legal document here in London. I do not
know whether it is so in Augsburg . I obtained the said document because Blind refused to answer for
the remarks he made to me and others and which I repeated to Liebknecht, remarks that cou ld have
left him in no doubt about the denunciation contained in the anonymous leaflet.
Yours faithfully
Dr K Marx
* * *
On Karl Vogt’s Action Against the  Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung  (Die Reform , no 139, 19
November 1859, Supplement)
London
7 November 1859
I see from no 132 of the Freischütz sent to me by a friend in Hamburg that Eduard Meyen felt himself
obliged to put his decisive weight in the scales in the Vogt affair. The horsepower, or should I say the
donkey-power of his logic is concentrated on the  great proposition: because he was friendly with
Blind and Blind sent him a copy of the anonymous leaflet, the original document sent to the Augsburg
Allgemeine Zeitung  is necessarily a forgery. Of course, in his petty cunning he avoids saying this
directly; he says it indirectly.
Incidentally, I wish Herr Eduard Meyen would show some proof that my time is so worthless anyway
that I can waste it dealing with German vulgar democracy.
From the end of 1850 I broke off all connections with the German emigration in London, which began
to decompose in all earnest when I pulled the one point they held in common, their opposition to me,
out from under their feet. The process of its dissolution was particularly hastened by the industrious
activity of such agents as Meyen, who, for example, openly agitated for the Kinkel faction against the
Ruge faction. In the nine years that have passed since then, I have been a constant contributor to the
New York Tribune, a paper with 200,000 readers, a circulation which will appro ximate to that of the
Freischütz. Have I ever even named the name of a vulgar German democrat, have I honoured with a
single word, the filthy attacks that these worthies have heaped on me in the last three years in the
German and particularly the German American press?
Admittedly, I have in this time attacked ‘great’ democrats whom Herr Eduard Meyen dutifully
admires, although I have not slandered them. The great Lord Palmerston is an example. My offence
was all the more unpardonable because not only did English papers of the most varied party
tendencies from the People’s Paper, the Chartist newspaper, to the Free Press, Mr Urquhart’s organ
— reprint my ‘slanders’, but at least 15,000 copies of those same ‘slanders’ were reproduced in
pamphlet form without my stirring a finger in London, Sheffield and Glasgow. During the same
period, what is more, I have denounced the great democrat Louis Bonaparte, first in a German book
(The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon ) which was confiscated everywhere on the Ger man
frontier, but which was widely circulated in the United States and appeared in extract in the then
London organ of Chartism. I have continued to this very day these slanders of the ‘great democrat’
Bonaparte in the Tribune, analysing his financial syst em, his diplomacy, his military skill and his
‘idées napoléoniennes’. Louis Bonaparte has sent the New York Times  a public statement for its
opposition to those ‘slanders’. Seven years ago I even denounced the ‘great democrat’ Stieber in the
Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial , which was pulped on the Swiss –Bavarian border.
Surely Herr Meyen will hold that to my credit. Today this slander is democratic, since it takes place
‘with the permission of higher authority’. How often I have erred in my judge ment of time is proved
not only by the organ of Herr Eduard Meyen, but also by that of Herr Joseph Dumont in Cologne.
When I took the liberty, in 1848 and 1849, of coming out in favour of the Hungarian, Polish and
Italian nationalities in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, who scolded more, who howled more than the
organ of Mr Joseph Dumont of Cologne? But admittedly, at that time no Louis -Napoleon Bonaparte

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had yet invested the nationalities with the odour of ‘liberal’ sanctity. That the former editors of the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung have remained true to their views, even the former Herr Joseph Dumont, at
present Guiseppe Delmonte, knows from the pamphlet published by Frederick Engels at the beginning
of the war entitled Po and Rhine. As far, now, as Eduard Meyen’s democracy ‘in the more immediate
sense’ is concerned, after ignoring the same for nine years I have only broken my silence twice, and
that in the very recent past, once against Kossuth and on the other occasion against Gottfried Kinkel.
In fact, I made a few marginal comments in the Volk , from the purely grammatical point of view, on
Kinkel’s aesthetic effusions in the Herrmann. That was all that I wrote for the Volk apart for an article
on the peace of Villafranca entitled ‘Quid Pro Quo’. In the imagination of Eduard Meyen, however, a
‘good democrat’ probably has just as much right to infringe the ‘despotic’ rules of syntax as he has to
desert from the republican camp to the royalist one.
At the end of this letter I now find myself in exactly the opposit e difficulty to the one Hegel was in at
the beginning of his Logic. He wants to pass from being to nothing, I from nothing to being, that is to
say from Eduard Meyen to an affair, the Vogt affair. To cut it short I shall ask Karl Blind the
following questions:
1: Did Blind on 9 May, on the platform of the Urquhartite public meeting, give me information on
Vogt that completely coincided with the leaflet As a Warning?
2: Did Blind in the London Free Press of 27 May publish an anonymous article with the headli ne
‘The Grand-Duke Constantine to be King of Hungary’, which, leaving out the name Vogt, reproduces
the essence of the content of the leaflet As a Warning?
3: Did Blind have the said leaflet printed at his expense in London by Herr F Hollinger, Litchfield
Street, Soho?
Despite all the attempts of the Meyen democracy to distort the matter, and even in spite of the great
unknown, Herr Joseph Dumont’s ‘foremost legal expert’, everything revolves around the question:
who had the leaflet As a Warning printed? It is only because it reprinted this leaflet that the Augsburg
Allgemeine Zeitung was prosecuted. It is only of the accusations in this leaflet that Vogt feels he has
publicly to clear himself. The publisher of the leaflet has, as Robert Peel would have said, three
courses open to himself. Either he has knowingly told a lie. I do not believe that of Karl Blind. Or he
later became convinced that the information that justified him in printing the leaflet was false. Then
he is all the more obliged to make a statement. Or, finally, he has the evidence in his hand, but wishes
to whitewash the whole business for personal reasons, and bears with great resignation the rotten eggs
that are thrown not at him but at me. But should not all personal reasons be dropped in s o important a
matter as throwing light on the relationship between German Imperial Regent in partibus and the de
facto Emperor of the French?
* * *
Karl Marx, Statement (Allgemeine Zeitung, no 3259, 21 November 1859, Supplement)
9 Grafton Terrace
Maitland Park
Haverstock Hill
London
15 November 1859
Vogt, who knows his Pappenheimers, manoeuvred very cleverly when he transferred the origin of the
accusation against him from the so -called democratic camp into the socialist. For my part, I have no
interest at all in giving aid and comfort to this quid pro quo. I cannot therefore leave Blind’s statement
in no 313 of the Allgemeine Zeitung unanswered.
On 9 May, on the platform of an Urquhartite meeting, Blind informed me of all the accusations raised
against Vogt  in the leaflet As a Warning. He mentioned the same details to others, for example
Freiligrath. Given the complete identity of form and language between his oral account and the
printed leaflet, he naturally counts de prime abord as its author.

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In the London Free Press of 27 May, there appeared an anonymous article by Blind with the headline
‘The Grand-Duke Constantine to be King of Hungary’, which anticipated, in its essentials, the leaflet
As a Warning. In this article Blind stated that he knew liberals in Germany and democrats in London
to whom ‘large bribes’ had been offered for Bonapartist propaganda. While the Vogt trial was still
pending, Mr D Collet, the responsible editor of the Free Press, visited me in order to beg me, on
Blind’s behalf, to make no use of my knowledge of the authorship of the said article. I answered Mr
Collet, who found this quite pertinent, that I could not enter into any obligations and that my
discretion depended rather on how Blind behaved.
Fidelio Hollinger’s statement is simply laughable. Fidelio Hollinger knows that he formally infringed
the English law by publishing the leaflet without stating where it was printed . He therefore issued
himself in a most high -handed manner with a testimonial that he had not committed that pec cadillo.
Incidentally, the reprint in the Volk  was taken off the same types as the leaflet, which were still
standing in Hollinger’s print shop. Thus legal proof can be supplied that the leaflet ‘proceeded from
the print-shop of F Hollinger’ without taking  any evidence from witnesses, simply by comparing it
with the reprint in the Volk . The transfer of the trial from Augsburg to London would clear up the
whole Blind–Vogt mystery.
* * *
Karl Marx, To the Editor of The Free Press
9 Grafton Terrace
Maitland Park
Haverstock Hill
London
4 February 1860
Sir
You will remember that the Free Press of 27 May 1859 published an article headed ‘The Grand Duke
Constantine to be King of Hungary’. In that article Mr Vogt, of Geneva, although not named, was
pointed at, in a manner intelligible to the German refugees, as a Bonapartist agent, who, on the outset
of the Italian war, had offered ‘ large bribes ’ to Liberals in Germany, and German Democrats in
London. The writer gave vent to his intense delight at the indignant repulse those attempts at bribery
had met with. Mr Charles Blind I assert to be the author of that notice. You can correct me if I am in
error. Some time later, there circulated in London an anonymous German pamphlet, entitled Zur
Warnung (As a Warning), which, in point of fact, may be considered a reproduction of the article of
the Free Press, only that it gave fuller details and Vogt’s name. Having been reprinted in a German
London paper, entitled Das Volk ( The People), thence the anonymous pamphlet found its way to the
columns of the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung ( The Augsburg Gazette ), which, consequently, was
sued by Mr Vogt for libel. Meanwhile I had obtained from Mr Vögele, a compositor then employed
by Mr Hollinger, the publisher of Das Volk , a written declaration to the effect that the pamphlet was
printed in Hollinger’s office, and drawn up by Mr Charles Blind. This declaration, as I told you at the
time, was sent over to the Augsburg Gazette . The Augsburg tribunal having declined to decide the
case, Mr Blind at last came out in the Augsburg Gazette. Not content with a point-blank denial of his
authorship of the anonymous pamphlet, he, in terms most positive, declared the pamphlet not to have
issued from Hollinger’s printing office . In proof of this latter statement, he laid before the public a
declaration signed by Hollinger himself, and one Wiehe, a compositor, who, as he said, had for 11
months been continuously employed by Hollinger. To this joint dec laration of Blind, Hollinger and
Wiehe I replied in the Augsburg Gazette; but Blind, in his turn, repeated his denial, and again referred
to the testimony of Hollinger and Wiehe. Vogt, who, from the beginning, and for purposes of his own,
had designated me  as the secret author of the pamphlet, then published a brochure full of the most
infamous calumnies against myself.
Now, before taking any further step, I want to show up the fellows who evidently have played into the
hands of Vogt. I, therefore, publicly  declare that the statement of Blind, Wiehe and Hollinger,
according to which the anonymous pamphlet was not printed in Hollinger’s office, 3 Litchfield Street,

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Soho, is a deliberate lie . First, Mr Vögele, one of the compositors, formerly employed by Holli nger,
will declare upon oath that the said pamphlet was printed in Hollinger’s office, was written in the
handwriting of Mr Blind , and partly composed by Hollinger himself. Secondly, it can be judicially
proved that the pamphlet and the article in Das Volk  have been taken off the same types. Thirdly, it
will be shown that Wiehe was not employed by Hollinger for 11 consecutive months, and, especially,
was not employed by him at the time of the pamphlet’s publication. Lastly, witnesses may be
summoned in whos e presence Wiehe himself confessed having been persuaded by Hollinger to sign
the wilfully false declaration in the Augsburg Gazette . Consequently, I again declare the above said
Charles Blind to be a deliberate liar.
If I am wrong, he may easily confound me by appealing to an English Court of Law.
Karl Marx
* * *
Open Letter on the Matter of Vogt and the Berlin National -Zeitung (Volks-Zeitung, no 35, 10
February 1860)
9 Grafton Terrace
Maitland Park
Haverstock Hill
London
6 February 1860
To the Editorial Board of the Volks-Zeitung
Statement: I hereby announce that I have made preparatory steps towards taking legal action for libel
against the Berlin National-Zeitung for its leading articles no 37 and no 41 on Vogt’s pamphlet Mein
Prozess gegen du Allgemeine Zeitung. I am reserving a literary answer to Vogt for later, since that
requires enquiries to people who live outside Europe.
For the moment therefore I should just like to say.
1: To judge by the choice selection in the National-Zeitung —  the book itself has not yet proved to
obtainable through the usual channels in London, either through booksellers or from acquaintances to
whom Herr Vogt previously sent his so- called Studies — Vogt’s hack-work is merely a dressed -up
version of a sketch which he published nine months ago in his private Moniteur  — the Biel Handels
Courier. At that time I had his lampoon printed without comment in London. Such a simple procedure
was quite sufficient to characterise the Herr Professor here, where condition s and personalities are
known.
2: The pretext on which Herr Vogt opens his campaign against me is, like the pretext for the Italian
campaign, an ‘idea’. I am supposed, that is, to be the author of the anonymous pamphlet As a
Warning. From the English circular I published, and which I enclose, you will see that I have taken
steps to force Herr Blind and Co either to confess the falsity of that pretext by their silence or let
themselves be found guilty of the same before an English court.
Karl Marx
* * *
Letter to the Editorial Board of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung
6 Thorncliffe Grove
Oxford Road
Manchester
21 February 1860
To the Editorial Board of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, Private.

195

One of the two letters dated 16 October 1859, which I received from the Editorial Board of the
Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung  said literally: ‘Please rest assured of our particular gratitude  should
we, dear sir, ever have the opportunity to express our thanks to you.’
That I neither wish nor expect the ‘thanks’ or ‘particul ar gratitude’ of the Allgemeine Zeitung  is
shown sufficiently clearly by my answer dated 19 October. What I did, however, expect in the
particular case was the common fairness that no English paper, of whatever colour, would dare to
withhold.
The ‘particular gratitude’ and the ‘thanks’ proved to consist of the following:
1: My first statement was not printed. Blind’s impudent statement was printed instead, with two false
testimonies obtained by conspiracy. The Reform in Hamburg printed the statement immediately.
2: It took douce violence to get my counter -statement against Blind printed. For all that, it did not
appear where I had justly asked for it to appear, in the same place as Blind’s statement, that is to say
in the main pages of the paper.
3: The Augs burg Allgemeine Zeitung prints a second statement by Blind in which he has the
impudence to talk of barefaced lies and to refer to two testimonies by Wiehe and Hollinger that are
open to criminal prosecution. It thereupon states that the correspondence is closed and thus denies me
the right to reply.
4: On 6 February I send the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung my latest statement together with the
English circular. The honourable editorial board pushes it aside and prints instead the statement by
Blind which only arose as a result of my circular. Naturally, it was careful not to print the billet doux
enclosed by that great diplomat. Further, it printed Biscamp’s statement, dated three days later, as my
own. Finally, having become convinced that my statement had l ong since been printed in the
Kölnische Zeitung, the Volks-Zeitung, etc, it decides to send it to press, but takes the amiable liberty of
censuring me and undertaking arbitrary alterations. In 1842–43 I endured a double Royal Prussian
censorship, but I never suspected that I would fall under the censorship of Herr Kolb and Co in 1860.
I think it is quite unnecessary to characterise such a procedure in any greater detail.
Karl Marx
* * *
Statement to the Editorial Boards of the Newspapers Freischutz and Reform (Die Reform, no 29,
7 March 1860) [25]
Manchester
28 February 1860
Correspondence: On the effusions of Herr Eduard Meyen in nos 17 to 21 of the Freischütz, I should
merely like to say:
The action for libel which I am pursuing against the Berlin National -Zeitung will be completely
sufficient for the legal elucidation of Vogt’s pamphlet. His affiliate, Eduard Meyen, cannot lay claim
to a similar honour. All I can do for Eduard Meyen is to give him a niche that corresponds to his
stature in the pamphlet which is to appear when the case has been heard.
Karl Marx
* * *
Karl Marx: Statement (Allgemeine Zeitung, no 336, 1 December 1860)
The Editorial Board of the Allgemeine Zeitung  was so kind as to print at the beginning of February
1860 a statement by me which began with the following words:
I hereby announce that I have made preparatory steps towards taking legal action for
libel against the Berlin National-Zeitung for its leading articles no 37 and no 41 on
Vogt’s pamphlet Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung. I am reserving a literary
answer to Vogt for later.

196

In the course of February 1860, I took action for libel against F Zabel, editor -in-chief of the National-
Zeitung. My lawyer, Herr Justizrat Weber, chose first of all the criminal law procedure . By an
ordinance of 18 April 1860, the public prosecutor refused to ‘proceed’ against F Zabel, since no
public interest gave him reason to do so. On 26 April 1860, his refusal was confirmed by the attorney
general.
My lawyer now adopted the civil law procedure. By an ordinance of 8 June 1860, the Royal City
Court forbade me to proceed with the complaint because those ‘remarks and assertions’ of F Zabel’s
that really were detrimental to my honour consist of mere quotations, and the ‘intention of insulting’
did not exist. For its part, the Royal Supreme Court declared in an ordinance of 11 July 1860 that the
allegation that the article was in the form of a quotation had no effect on its culpability, but that the
passages in it detrimental to my honour did not refer to my ‘person’. Moreover, the intention to insult
could ‘not be assumed in the present case’. The Royal Supreme Court therefore confirmed the
ordinance of the City Court rejecting my complaint. The Royal High Court of Appeal, in an ordinance
of 5 October which reached me on 23 October of this year, found that ‘in the present case’ no ‘legal
error’ on the part of the Royal Supreme Court ‘emerged’. I was therefore left with the prohibition
against prosecuting F Zabel and never obtained a public hearing in court.
My answer to Vogt will appear in a few days.
Karl Marx
London
24 November 1860
Notes
1 Girard: You seem to want to place yourself as ambassador between myself and these
refugees, to deal as between one power and another?
I: I have no ambition to be appointed ambassador to you.
2 Carried forth.
3 No, we don’t want the Federal Commissar acting the policeman here.
4 Literally, popular breeze; popularity.
5 Switzerland was saved by the Providence of God and the confusion of men.
6 Literally, in a blazing wrong; caught in the act.
7 It is the sound of danger, I know it by heart.
8 Of skinning anyone.
9 I was therefore short of my expenses and honorarium.
10 Between the fruit and the cheese.
11 The one who benefited from it did it.
12 The ear of the prince.
13 ‘Well, Baron, have you still many refugees here?’ ‘Quite a lot, Princess’, said the
other, ‘although we have already sent many of them back. M Druey does his best in this
respect, and if more funds arrive we will send back more.’
14 Those who love, chastise.
15 Woe to the conquered!
16 Such anger in the spirits of heaven?
17 Feudal possession.
18 The end of Switzerland.
19 The fleur de lys was the name given to the letters branded on those condemned to
forced labour: TF — travaux forcés.

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20 A Belgian radical weekly.
21 The People’s Paper, the Chartist weekly, appeared from 1851 to 1852 under the
editorship of Ernest Jones; Marx and Engels supported and wrote for it.
22 The Paris debtors’ prison.
23 Bonaparte went to Baden-Baden in 1860 to meet the Prussian Prince Regent,
William.
24 Very useful ally, who may be called on to render great services, providing she makes
an effort to.
25 This statement was also sent to the Volkszeitung and the Allgemeine Zeitung but not
published by them. The editor of Die Reform wrote that ‘Dr K Marx should not be
denied the right to throw new light’ on the subject of Vogt’s case against the Allgemeine
Zeitung of Augsburg.