Manchester, 4 April 1867 

Dear Moor, 

Hurrah! There was no holding back that exclamation when at 
last I read in black and white that the Ist volume* 7s complete and 
that you intend taking it to Hamburg at once. So that you shall 
not be short of the nervus rerum,? I am sending you enclosed the 
halves of seven five-pound-notes, £35 in toto, and will despatch 
the other halves immediately I receive the usual telegram. Do not 
Jet the scrawl from Bucher *!*—it is undoubtedly from him—worry 
you, it is just Prussian police gossip and the scandal-mongering 
of men of letters, of the same ilk as that recent stuff about the 
Polish trip.*” I enclose a note for you to give to Meissner, so that 
you can also collect my fee.‘ 

There is no longer even a shadow of doubt about the alliance 
between Bismarck and the Russians. However, the Russians have 
never yet had to pay so high a price for their Prussian alliance, 
they have had to sacrifice their whole traditional policy in 
Germany and, if this time they were to imagine, as is their wont, 
that it is only ‘for the moment’, they may well be making the very 
deuce of a blunder. For all the shouting about the Empire, etc., 
German unity already seems on the point of outgrowing Bismarck 
and all those Prussians. They will have to press on all the harder 
in the Orient—the Russians, that is—, the present favourable 
conjuncture will surely not endure long. But how great does the 
financial need have to be and how sluggish must the industrial 
progress be, stl y’en a,‘ in Russia, if those fellows are still without a 
railway to Odessa and Bessarabia, 11 years after the Crimean War, 
when it would now be worth two armies to them! And so I also 
believe that the storm will break this year, if everything goes well 
for the Russians. 

The Luxemburg affair *!” appears to be taking the same course 
as with Saarlouis and Landau.**? Bismarck undoubtedly offered to 
sell it in 1866, but Louis* really does seem to have held back at 

@ of Capital - © sinew of things - © for The Prussian Military Question and the German 
Workers’ Party (see this volume, p. 348) - 4 if there is any - € Napoleon III 

First page of Engels’ letter to Marx of 4 April 1867 

that time in the hope that he would later get far more as a present. 
I have positive knowledge that the Prussian Ambassador Bernstorff 
told the Hanseatic ditto (Geffcken) in London a few days ago that 
he had received a despatch to the effect that Prussia was not going 
to give way over the Luxemburg question under any cir- 
cumstances. This is the same despatch that The Owl refers to as 
requesting Britain to make representations at The Hague, which 
are then said to have succeeded in making Holland withdraw from 
the deal. The point is that in the present situation Bismarck 
cannot remotely allow the French to annex German territory 
without making all his achievements appear ridiculous. What is 
more, that old jackass William* has gone and pronounced the 
words ‘not a single German village’ and is personally committed. It 
is, however, as yet by no means certain that the deal may not still 
come to fruition after all; the Kélnische Zeitung is screaming quite 
hysterically that we really cannot start a war over Luxemburg and 
that we have no right to it at all; Luxemburg, they say, should no 
longer be counted part of Germany, etc., so they have never 
behaved quite so despicably. 

Bismarck may not be Faust, but he does have his Wagener.” The 
way in which the poor devil translates his Lord and Master into 
Wagnerese makes you die of laughing. Bismarck recently em- 
ployed another of his horse-metaphors, and not wanting to be 
outdone in this either, Wagener ended a speech by trumpeting: 
Gentlemen, it is time for us to stop riding our hobby-horses and to 
mount that noble thoroughbred mare Germania!‘ Montez Mademoiselle ,* 
the Parisians used to say during the Terror.*” 

I hope that your carbuncles are more or less mended now and 
that the journey will help get rid of them entirely. You must put 
an end to this nonsense this summer. 

Many regards to the tapirs and Lafargue. 

Your 
F. E.