From the English.

Karl Marx

["New-York Daily Tribune" No. 5950, May 19, 1860]

Berlin, May 1, 1860

The opinion that Louis Bonaparte is on the point of putting the German question on the order of the day prevails in all classes of society. In today’s *National-Zeitung* a correspondent even assures his readers that he knows from the most authentic sources that Badinguet (as Louis Bonaparte is commonly called in Paris) has definitively made up his mind to a campaign on the Rhine, and that Lord John Russell had just been informed of this plan when he rose a few weeks ago to alarm the House of Commons by violent invectives against the Emperor of the French and the sudden announcement that England was now looking around for new allies. The tone and vehemence of the semi-official French newspapers are by no means calculated to allay these apprehensions. Read, for example, the following extract from *Bullier’s Correspondence*, a Parisian publication from which most of the provincial journalists in France derive their inspiration:

“A friend of mine, who is given to witty prophecies, said to me the other day: ‘You will see, the Emperor will go to the Rhine to offer the King of Prussia his alliance and a slight rectification of the frontier.’ I replied with a quotation from the pamphlet ‘Napoleon III et l’Italie’: ‘It is better to arrange a territorial change by amicable means than to have to undertake it on the day after a victory.’”

Shortly after the commercial treaty with England had been concluded, the French government gave the Prussian ambassador in Paris to understand that a request for a similar treaty between France and the Zollverein would be favourably received; but when the Prussian government replied that the Zollverein had by no means the desire to conclude such a treaty, surprise and displeasure were expressed in a manner not exactly polite. Moreover, the Prussian government was fully informed of the negotiations which agents of Louis Bonaparte had recently entered into with the Bavarian court to induce it to cede the fortress of Landau to France, which, it is said, was surrendered to France by the treaty of 1814, but was wrongfully taken from her again by the treaty of 1815. The rumours current among the people of an impending rupture with France are thus strengthened by official suspicion.

In certain respects the situation of Prussia at the present moment bears a strong resemblance to that of Austria after the end of the Oriental war. Austria seemed at that time to have come off best of all the powers. It flattered itself that it had humiliated Russia, its dangerous neighbour, without exposing itself to further inconveniences beyond the mobilisation of its forces. Having played the armed mediator while the Western powers had to bear the main burden of the war, it could, after the proclamation of peace, imagine that by the arms of the Western alliance it had got rid of the preponderance which Russia had obtained over Austria since the events of 1849 in Hungary; and many compliments were indeed uttered at the time on the skilful diplomatic tactics of the Vienna cabinet. In reality, however, the ambiguous attitude which Austria assumed during the Oriental war deprived her of all allies, and enabled Louis Bonaparte to localise the Italian war.

Prussia, on her part, did not touch her resources during the Italian war. She shouldered the musket but did not use it, and contented herself with shedding the patient ink of her political wiseacres instead of blood. After the Peace of Villafranca, Prussia seemed to have weakened the rival House of Habsburg by means of the French victories, and to have cleared her own path to supremacy in Germany. Yet the very pretexts under which the Peace of Villafranca was proclaimed should have dispelled the delusions under which Prussia was labouring. While Louis Napoleon declared that Prussia’s arming and her threats of a possible intervention had blunted the sword of France, Austria declared that her own power of resistance had been destroyed by the dubious neutrality of Prussia. Throughout the whole war Prussia exhibited an arrogance which was rendered downright ludicrous by her actions. To Austria and the minor German states she appealed to her duties as a European Great Power; to England and Russia she appealed to her obligations as the paramount power in Germany, and, resting her claims on these double pretensions, she demanded of France to be recognised as the armed mediator of Europe. In accordance with her pretensions as the German power *par excellence* Prussia allowed Russia, in a circular of unparalleled impudence, to intimidate the smaller German princes, and in the person of Herr von Schleinitz she listened anxiously to Lord John Russell’s garrulous lectures on “constitutional” international law.

It fulfilled its pretensions as a European Great Power by calming the bellicose desires of the petty German princes and attempting to convert the military defeats of Austria into just as many legal claims, in order to seize the place which its rival had previously occupied in the Assembly of the German Confederation. When at last, forced by the successes of the French arms, it assumed something like a warlike attitude, Prussia met with the cold resistance of the small German states, which seemed to think it hardly worth while to disguise their mistrust of the ultimate intentions of the Prussian court. The Peace of Villafranca found Prussia completely isolated not only in Europe, but also in Germany, while the subsequent annexation of Savoy, which considerably shortened the exposed frontier of France, has materially improved her chances for a victorious campaign on the Rhine.

Under these circumstances the political line which Prussia is now pleased to adopt proves equally false in her internal as in her external relations. In spite of all the boastful declamations of Prussian newspapers and representative bodies, nothing has been changed in her internal affairs but the phraseology of her officials. The army reform proposals, far from strengthening the military force for the threatening difficult situation, aim at a constant augmentation of the standing army, already too large, at the overburdening of the financial resources, already too heavily taxed, and at the annihilation of the only democratic institution of the country – the Landwehr. All reactionary laws on the press, the right of association, municipal administration, and the relations between landlords and peasants, bureaucratic tutelage, the omnipresence of the police have been carefully maintained. Even the infamous paragraphs relating to marriages between nobles and persons of humble origin have not been repealed. The mere idea of restoring the constitution which was swept away by a *coup d’état* is hissed down as a fantastic dream.

I will give you a single example of the civil liberty now enjoyed by a Prussian subject. A native of the Rhineland was sentenced during the worst period of reaction by a packed jury, for an act then designated a political crime, to seven years’ imprisonment in a Prussian fortress. At the expiration of his term, which was not shortened by the Liberal Ministry, he repaired to Cologne, whence he was expelled by order of the police. He then set out for his native town, but – strangely enough – was informed by the authorities that, having been absent from the place for seven years, he had lost his civic rights and must look about for another place of residence. He pleaded that his absence had been involuntary, but all in vain. From Berlin, whither he next went, he was again expelled on the pretext that, apart from his personal resources of labour-power and knowledge, he could show no means of subsistence, his whole property having been consumed during his imprisonment. He finally took refuge in Breslau, where an old acquaintance employed him as a clerk; but one morning he was summoned to the police and informed that his permission to reside could be extended for a few weeks only, unless he meanwhile acquired the right of citizenship in Breslau. His application to the municipal authorities of Breslau was met with a multitude of petty difficulties, which were at length removed through the intervention of zealous friends, whereupon his application for the grant of civic rights was at last acceded to; but simultaneously with the grant he received a heavy bill comprising a series of fees which every fortunate mortal has to pay on being admitted into the ranks of the citizens of Breslau. Had his friends not found means by clubbing together to raise the sum demanded, this Prussian subject, like the Wandering Jew, would have found no place in his glorious fatherland where to lay his head in peace.

["New-York Daily Tribune" No. 5950, May 19, 1860]

Berlin, May 2, 1860

After the conclusion of the Peace of Villafranca, the Prussian government – which for months had nursed the vain hope of being recognised as the armed mediator of Europe and of erecting the edifice of Hohenzollern greatness on the ruins of the Habsburg monarchy – seemed to be at last awakening to a sense of the immense dangers threatening in the future. Its policy, at once irresolute, vacillating and treacherous, had deprived it of its allies, and even von Schleinitz, whose prolix despatches had become a standing joke in the diplomatic world, could hardly conceal from himself the truth that, as soon as France’s internal situation should again drive the Man of December beyond the French frontiers, Prussia would be the predestined object of a new localised war.

Had not Louis-Napoleon, in a moment of apparent frankness, let drop a few words on the subject, which showed that he knew what Germany needed – namely unity, that he was the man to realise it, and that the Rhenish provinces were no price too high for the acquisition of so precious a commodity. True to the tradition of Prussia’s past, the first idea of the Prince Regent and his adherents was to surrender themselves to the mercy of Russia. Had not Frederick William I, by a partition treaty concluded with Peter the Great against Charles XII of Sweden, acquired Pomerania? Had not Frederick II, in the Seven Years’ War, come off victorious and annexed Silesia because Russia withdrew from its Austrian ally? Had not the multiple partitions of Poland, agreed between the courts of Berlin and St Petersburg, bloated the tiny dimensions of the Prussian monarchy? Had not, at the Congress of Vienna, the unbounded servility of Frederick William III, who stood by Alexander I when in 1814 England, Austria and France showed signs of opposition and resistance, been rewarded with the incorporation of Saxony and the Rhenish province into Prussia? In a word: in its interventions in Germany, Prussia had always enjoyed the protection and support of Russia, naturally on the express condition that it help the latter great power to subjugate the countries bordering on the Fatherland and play the role of its humble vassal on the European stage. In October 1859, the Prince Regent and Alexander II, surrounded by diplomats, generals, and courtiers, met in Breslau to conclude a treaty whose articles have until now remained an unfathomable secret — not, indeed, for Louis Bonaparte or Lord Palmerston, but for the Prussian subjects, whose liberal representatives, of course, showed themselves much too polite to interpellate Herr von Schleinitz, the foreign minister, on so delicate a question. So much, however, is certain: that the Bonapartist press was not disconcerted by the Breslau conference; that since then relations between Russia and France have become strikingly more intimate; and that this conference could neither prevent Louis Bonaparte from seizing Savoy nor threatening Switzerland with an inevitable “rectification of the frontiers on the Rhine”; and finally, that Prussia itself, despite the pleasant prospect of being permitted to be Russia’s vanguard, has lately eagerly snapped at the bait of an alliance with England, a bait held out in London only to amuse the British House of Commons for a week or two.

That Lord John Russell, however, indiscreetly blabbed about Herr von Schleinitz’s coquetry with the Tuileries during the last Italian war in a Blue Book, gave the death blow to the Anglo-Prussian alliance which the Prussian government had for a moment taken to be a plan seriously under consideration. But in London it was known that this was nothing but a phrase concealing a parliamentary ruse. After all this, Prussia is now, despite the conference with Alexander II in Breslau and Lord John Russell’s “search for new allies”, exactly as after the Peace of Villafranca, completely isolated and wholly exposed to the French theory of the natural frontiers.

Can it be grasped at all that, under such adverse circumstances, the sole expedient that occurred to the Prussian government should be to revive its plan of a Little Germany with a Hohenzollern at its head and, by the most impudent provocations, not only to drive Austria into the enemy camp but to alienate the whole of South Germany from itself? And yet — incredible though it may seem, and all the more incredible because this line of policy is zealously recommended by the Bonapartist press — such is the case. The nearer the danger approaches, the more eagerly Prussia puts its hunger for a new partition of Germany on display. Incidentally, it is highly probable that after the blow dealt to Austria, Germany will need a similar blow dealt to Prussia in order to get rid of “both houses”; but in any case, no one will suspect the Prince Regent and Herr von Schleinitz of acting according to such pessimistic principles. Since the Peace of Villafranca, the Regent’s political intentions were betrayed in minor press skirmishes and brief, occasional debates on the Italian question, but on 20 April, during the debates on the Hessian constitutional question in the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, the cat was let out of the bag.

I have already explained this Hessian constitutional question to your readers and shall therefore now confine myself to setting out in a few words the main points around which the debates revolved. When the Hessian constitution of 1831 was eliminated in 1849/50 by the Elector under Austria’s protection, Prussia was momentarily seized with the urge to draw the sword on behalf of the protesting chamber of deputies; but at the meeting of Prince Schwarzenberg and Baron Manteuffel at Olmütz in November 1850, when Prussia submitted completely to Austria, confirmed the restoration of the old German Federal Diet, betrayed Schleswig-Holstein, and renounced all claims to supremacy, it also abandoned its posture as knight-errant on behalf of the Hessian constitution of 1831.

In 1852, the Elector imposed a new constitution, which was confirmed by the German Federal Diet despite the protest of the Hessian population. After the Italian war, the question, secretly stirred up by Prussia, was discussed anew. The Hessian chambers again declared in favour of the legal validity of the constitution of 1831, and fresh petitions for its restoration were sent to the Federal Diet at Frankfurt. Thereupon Prussia declared that the constitution of 1831 alone had validity, but, it was cautiously added, it should be adapted to the monarchist principles of the Federal Diet. Austria, on the other hand, insisted that the constitution of 1852 was legal, but had to be improved in a liberal sense. Thus the dispute was a mere verbal skirmish, a sophistry; at bottom it was a power struggle between the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs in the German Confederation. A very large majority of the Federal Diet finally decided for the validity of the constitution of 1852, i.e. for Austria against Prussia. The motives which influenced the decision of the smaller German states were transparent. They knew Austria to be too entangled in external difficulties and too unpopular to attempt anything beyond the preservation of the general status quo in Germany, while they suspected Prussia of harbouring ambitious plans of innovation. If they had not recognised the competency of the Federal Diet’s resolution of 1851, the competency of all the Diet’s decisions since 1848 would have been put at risk. Finally, they did not approve of Prussia’s strategy of dictating to all the petty German princes and encroaching upon their sovereignty by seeking to take up the grievances of the Hessian people against the Elector. Consequently, Prussia’s motion did not pass.

Now, on 20 April, when the matter came up for debate in the Chamber of Deputies in Berlin, Herr von Schleinitz in the name of the Prussian government explicitly declared that Prussia did not consider itself bound by the resolution of the German Federal Diet; that in 1850, when the Prussian constitution was established, no German Federal Diet had existed, since that body had been swept away by the earthquake of 1848, from which it was to be inferred that all resolutions of the German Federal Diet running counter to the plans of the Prussian government lacked legal force; and finally that the German Federal Diet actually belonged among the dead, although the German Confederation, it was true, continued to exist. Can one imagine a more foolish step on the part of the Prussian government? The Austrian government declared that the old constitution of the German Empire had lapsed after Napoleon I had extinguished it. In this, Habsburg merely proclaimed a fact. The Hohenzollerns, on the other hand, now proclaim the nullity of the Federal constitution of Germany at a moment when Germany is being threatened with a foreign war, as if they wanted to provide the man of December with a pretext for entering into separate alliances with the smaller German states that have hitherto been prevented from any such step by the laws of the Federal Diet. If Prussia had proclaimed the right of the revolution of 1848 and declared null and void all counter-revolutionary acts that it and the Federal Diet have committed since then, and had proclaimed the restoration of all institutions and laws of the revolutionary epoch, it would have won the sympathies of all Germany, including German-Austria. As it is now, it has only divided the German princes without uniting the German people. It has indeed opened the door through which the Zouaves can be let in.