Karl Marx: The Civil War in France

The Second Address[2]

September 9, 1870

[Prussian Occupation of France]

In our first manifesto of the 23rd of July, we
said:

“The death-knell of the Second Empire has already
sounded at Paris. It will end, as it began, by a parody. But let us not
forget that it is the governments and the ruling classes of Europe who
enabled Louis Bonaparte to play during 18 years the ferocious farce of the
Restored Empire.”

Thus, even before war operations had actually set in, we treated the
Bonapartist bubble as a thing of the past.

If we were not mistaken as to the vitality of the Second Empire, we were
not wrong in our apprehension lest the German war should “lose its
strictly defensive character and degenerate into a war against the French
people.” The war of defense ended, in point of fact, with the surrender
of Louis Bonaparte, the Sedan
capitulation, and the proclamation of the republic at Paris. But long
before these events, the very moment that the utter rottenness of the
imperialist arms became evident, the Prussian military camarilla had
resolved upon conquest. There lay an ugly obstacle in their way –
[Prussian] King William’s own proclamations at the commencement of the
war.

In a speech from the throne to the North German Diet, he had solemnly
declared to make war upon the emperor of the French and not upon the French
nation, where he said:

“The Emperor Napoleon having made by land and sea an
attack on the German nation, which desired and still desires to live in peace
with the French people, I have assumed the command of the German armies to
repel his aggression, and I have been led by military events to cross the
frontiers of France.”

Not content to assert the defensive character of the war by the statement
that he only assumed the command of the German armies “to repel
aggression", he added that he was only “led by military events”
to cross the frontiers of France. A defensive war does, of course, not
exclude offensive operations, dictated by military events.

Thus, the pious king stood pledged before France and the world to a
strictly defensive war. How to release him from his solemn pledge? The stage
managers had to exhibit him as reluctantly yielding to the irresistible
behest of the German nation. They at once gave the cue to the liberal German
middle class, with its professors, its capitalists, its aldermen, and its
penmen. That middle class, which, in its struggles for civil liberty, had,
from 1846 to 1870, been exhibiting an unexampled spectacle of irresolution,
incapacity and cowardice, felt, of course, highly delighted to bestride the
European scene as the roaring lion of German patriotism. It re-vindicated its
civic independence by affecting to force upon the Prussian government the
secret designs of that same government. It does penance for its
long-continued, and almost religious, faith in Louis Bonaparte’s
infallibility, but shouting for the dismemberment of the French republic. Let
us, for a moment, listen to the special pleadings of those stout-hearted
patriots!

They dare not pretend that the people of Alsace and Lorraine pant for the
German embrace; quite the contrary. To punish their French patriotism,
Strasbourg, a town with an independent citadel commanding it, has for six
days been wantonly and fiendishly bombarded by “German” explosive
shells, setting it on fire, and killing great numbers of its defenceless
inhabitants! Yet, the soil of those provinces once upon a time belonged to
the whilom German empire.[A] Hence, it seems, the soil and the human beings grown
on it must be confiscated as imprescriptible German property. If the map of
Europe is to be re-made in the antiquary’s vein, let us by no means
forget that the Elector of Brandenburg, for his Prussian dominions, was the
vassal of the Polish republic.[B]

The more knowing patriots, however, require Alsace and the German-speaking
Lorraine as a “material guarantee” against French aggression. As
this contemptible plea has bewildered many weak-minded people, we are bound
to enter more fully upon it.

There is no doubt that the general configuration of Alsace, as compared
with the opposite bank of the Rhine, and the presence of a large fortified
town like Strasbourg, about halfway between Basle and Germersheim, very much
favour a French invasion of South Germany, while they offer peculiar
difficulties to an invasion of France from South Germany. There is, further,
no doubt that the addition of Alsace and German-speaking Lorraine would give
South Germany a much stronger frontier, inasmuch as she would then be the
master of the crest of the Vosges mountains in its whole length, and of the
fortresses which cover its northern passes. If Metz were annexed as well,
France would certainly for the moment be deprived of her two principal bases
of operation against Germany, but that would not prevent her from
concentrating a fresh one at Nancy or Verdun. While Germany owns Coblenz,
Mayence [i.e., Mainz], Germersheim, Rastatt, and Ulm, all bases of operation against
France, and plentifully made use of in this war, with what show of fair play
can she begrudge France Strasbourg and Metz, the only two fortresses of any
importance she has on that side? Moreover, Strasbourg endangers South Germany
only while South Germany is a separate power from North Germany. From 1792 to
1795, South Germany was never invaded from that direction, because Prussia
was a party to the war against the French Revolution; but as soon as Prussia
made a peace of her own[C] in 1795, and left the South to shift for itself, the
invasions of South Germany with Strasbourg as a base began and continued till
1809. The fact is, a united Germany can always render Strasbourg and
any French army in Alsace innocuous by concentrating all her troops, as was
done in the present war, between Saarlouis and Landau, and advancing, or
accepting battle, on the line of road between Mayence and Metz. While the
mass of the German troops is stationed there, any French army advancing from
Strasbourg into South Germany would be outflanked, and have its communication
threatened. If the present campaign has proved anything, it is the facility
of invading France from Germany.

But, in good faith, is it not altogether an absurdity and an anachronism
to make military considerations the principle by which the boundaries of
nations are to be fixed? If this rule were to prevail, Austria would still be
entitled to Venetia and the line of the Minicio, and France to the line of
the Rhine, in order to protect Paris, which lies certainly more open to an
attack from the northeast than Berlin does from the southwest. If limits are
to be fixed by military interests, there will be no end to claims, because
every military line is necessarily faulty, and may be improved by annexing
some more outlying territory; and, moreover, they can never be fixed finally
and fairly, because they always must be imposed by the conqueror upon the
conquered, and consequently carry within them the seed of fresh wars.

Such is the lesson of all history.

Thus with nations as with individuals. To deprive them of the power of
offence, you must deprive them of the means of defence. You must not only
garrote, but murder. If every conqueror took “material guarantees" for
breaking the sinews of a nation, the first Napoleon did so by the Tilsit
Treaty, and the way he executed it against Prussia and the rest of
Germany. Yet, a few years later, his gigantic power split like a rotten reed
upon the German people. What are the “material guarantees”
Prussia, in her wildest dreams, can or dare imposes upon France, compared to
the “material guarantees” the first Napoleon had wrenched from
herself? The result will not prove the less disastrous. History will measure
its retribution, not by the intensity of the square miles conquered from
France, but by the intensity of the crime of reviving, in the second half of
the 19th century, the policy of conquest!

But, say the mouthpieces of Teutonic [German] patriotism, you must not
confound Germans with Frenchmen. What we want is not glory, but
safety. The Germans are an essentially peaceful people. In their sober
guardianship, conquest itself changes from a condition of future war into a
pledge of perpetual peace. Of course, it is not Germans that invaded France
in 1792, for the sublime purpose of bayonetting the revolution of the 18th
century. It is not Germans that befouled their hands by the subjugation of
Italy, the oppressions of Hungary, and the dismemberment of Poland. Their
present military system, which divides the whole able-bodied male population
into two parts – one standing army on service, and another standing
army on furlough, both equally bound in passive obedience to rulers by divine
right – such a military system is, of course, “a material
guarantee,” for keeping the peace and the ultimate goal of civilizing
tendencies! In Germany, as everywhere else, the sycophants of the powers that
be poison the popular mind by the incense of mendacious self-praise.

Indignant as they pretend to be at the sight of French fortresses in Metz
and Strasbourg, those German patriots see no harm in the vast system of
Moscovite fortifications at Warsaw, Modlin, and Ivangorod [All strongholds of the Russian Empire] . While gloating
at the terrors of imperialist invasion, they blink at the infamy of
autocratic tutelage.

As in 1865, promises were exchanged between Gorchakov and Bismarck. As
Louis Bonaparte flattered himself that the War of 1866, resulting in the
common exhaustion of Austria and Prussia, would make him the supreme arbiter
of Germany, so Alexander [II of Russia] flattered himself that the War of
1870, resulting in the common exhaustion of Germany and France, would make
him the supreme arbiter of the Western continent. As the Second Empire
thought the North German Confederation incompatible with its existence, so
autocratic Russia must think herself endangered by a German empire under
Prussian leadership. Such is the law of the old political system. Within its
pale the gain of one state is the loss of the other. The tsar’s
paramount influence over Europe roots in his traditional hold on Germany. At
a moment when in Russia herself volcanic social agencies threaten to shake
the very base of autocracy, could the tsar afford to bear with such a loss of
foreign prestige? Already the Moscovite journals repeat the language of the
Bonapartist journals of the War of 1866. Do the Teuton patriots really
believe that liberty and peace will be guaranteed to Germany by forcing
France into the arms of Russia? If the fortune of her arms, the arrogance of
success, and dynastic intrigue lead Germany to a dismemberment of French
territory, there will then only remain two courses open to her. She must at all risks become the avowed tool of
Russian aggrandizement, or, after some short respite, make again ready for
another “defensive” war, not one of those new-fangled
“localized” wars, but a war of races – a war with
the Slavonic and Roman races.[D]

The German working class have resolutely supported the war, which it was
not in their power to prevent, as a war for German independence and the
liberation of France and Europe from that pestilential incubus, the Second
Empire. It was the German workmen who, together with the rural laborers,
furnished the sinews and muscles of heroic hosts, leaving behind their
half-starved families. Decimated by the battles abroad, they will be once
more decimated by misery at home. In their turn, they are now coming forward
to ask for “guarantees” – guarantees that their immense
sacrifices have not been bought in vain, that they have conquered liberty,
that the victory over the imperialist armies will not, as in 1815, be turned
into the defeat of the German people[E]; and, as the first of these guarantees, they claim an
honorable peace for France, and the recognition of the French
republic.

The Central Committee of the German Social-Democratic Workmen’s
Party issued, on September 5, a manifesto, energetically insisting upon these
guarantees.

“We,” they say, “protest against the
annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. And we are conscious of speaking in the
name of the German working class. In the common interest of France and
Germany, in the interest of western civilization against eastern barbarism,
the German workmen will not patiently tolerate the annexation of Alsace and
Lorraine.... We shall faithfully stand by our fellow workmen in all countries
for the common international cause of the proletariat!”

Unfortunately, we cannot feel sanguine of their immediate success. If the
French workmen amidst peace failed to stop the aggressor, are the German
workmen more likely to stop the victor amidst the clamour of arms? The German
workmen’s manifesto demands the extradition of Louis Bonaparte as a
common felon to the French republic. Their rulers are, on the contrary,
already trying hard to restore him to the Tuileries[F] as the best man to ruin France. However
that may be, history will prove that the German working class are not made of
the same malleable stuff as the German middle class. They will do their duty.

Like them, we hail the advent of the republic in France, but at the same
time we labor under misgivings which we hope will prove groundless. That
republic has not subverted the throne, but only taken its place, become
vacant. It has been proclaimed, not as a social conquest, but as a national
measure of defence. It is in the hands of a Provisional Government composed
partly of notorious Orleanists, partly
of middle class republicans, upon some of whom the insurrection of June
1848 has left its indelible stigma. The division of labor amongst the
members of that government looks awkward. The Orleanists have seized the
strongholds of the army and the police, while to the professed republicans
have fallen the talking departments. Some of their acts go far to show that
they have inherited from the empire, not only ruins, but also its dread of
the working class. If eventual impossibilities are, in wild phraseology,
promised in the name of the republic, is it not with a view to prepare the
cry for a “possible” government? Is the republic, by some of its
middle class undertakers, not intended to serve as a mere stop-gap and bridge
over an Orleanist restoration?

The French working class moves, therefore, under circumstances of extreme
difficulty. Any attempt at upsetting the new government in the present
crisis, when the enemy is almost knocking at the doors of Paris, would be a
desperate folly. The French workmen must perform their duties as citizens;
but, at the same time, they must not allow themselves to be swayed by the
national souvenirs of 1792, as the French peasant allowed themselves
to be deluded by the national souvenirs of the First Empire. They
have not to recapitulate the past, but to build up the future. Let them
calmly and resolutely improve the opportunities of republican liberty, for
the work of their own class organization. It will gift them with fresh
herculean powers for the regeneration of France, and our common task –
the emancipation of labor. Upon their energies and wisdom hinges the fate of
the republic.

The English workmen have already taken measures to overcome, by a
wholesome pressure from without, the reluctance of their government to
recognize the French republic.[G] The present dilatoriness of the British government is
probably intended to atone for the Anti-Jacobin war [1792] and the former
indecent haste in sanctioning the coup d’etat.[H] The English workmen call also upon their
government to oppose by all its power the dismemberment of France, which a
part of the English press is shameless enough to howl for. It is the same
press that for 20 years deified Louis Bonaparte as the providence of Europe,
that frantically cheered on the slaveholders’ rebellion.[I] Now, as then, it drudges
for the slaveholder.

Let the sections of the International Working Men’s Association in
every country stir the working classes to action. If they forsake their duty,
if they remain passive, the present tremendous war will be but the harbinger
of still deadlier international feuds, and lead in every nation to a renewed
triumph over the workman by the lords of the sword, of the soil, and of
capital.

Vive la Republique!

Chapter 3: [France Capitulates & the
Government of Thiers]