Cologne in Danger

** Cologne, 10 June. Whitsun, the lovely feast, had come, the fields were green, the trees in bloom, and as far as there are people who confuse the dative with the accusative, preparations were being made to pour out the holy spirit of reaction upon all lands for one day.

The moment is well chosen. In Naples, ensigns of the guards and Swiss mercenaries have succeeded in stifling young freedom in the blood of the people. In France, an assembly of capitalists places the gag of draconian laws on the Republic and appoints as commandant of Vincennes General Perrot, who on 23 February gave the order to open fire at the Hôtel Guizot. In England and Ireland, Chartists and Repealers are being thrown into prison en masse, and unarmed meetings are being broken up by dragoons. In Frankfurt, the National Assembly is now itself installing the triumvirate proposed by the late Federal Diet and rejected by the Committee of Fifty. In Berlin, the Right is carrying one victory after another by strength of numbers and drum-beating, and the Prince of Prussia, by entering the “property of the whole nation”, declares the revolution null and void. In Rhenish Hesse, troops are being concentrated; all around Frankfurt are encamped the heroes who earned their spurs against the republican free corps in the Lake District; Berlin is encircled, Breslau is encircled, and how things look in the Rhine Province we shall speak of straight away.

Reaction is preparing a great blow.

While fighting is going on in Schleswig, while Russia is sending threatening notes and mustering three hundred thousand men around Warsaw, Rhenish Prussia is being flooded with troops, although the bourgeois of the Paris Chamber are already once more proclaiming “peace at any price”!

In Rhenish Prussia, Mainz and Luxembourg there are (according to the *Deutsche Zeitung*) fourteen whole infantry regiments (the 13th, 15th*, 16th, 17th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 30th, 34th, 35th, 38th, 39th, 40th), that is, one third of the entire Prussian line and guard infantry (45 regiments). A part of them is completely on a war footing, and the rest have been reinforced by calling up one third of the reserves. In addition, three Uhlan, two Hussar and one Dragoon regiment, along with which a Cuirassier regiment is expected shortly. On top of that, the greater part of the 7th and 8th Artillery Brigades, of which at least half have already been made mobile (i.e., brought from 19 to 121 horses per foot battery, or from 2 to 8 horsed guns). For Luxembourg and Mainz a third company has been formed in addition. These troops are stationed in a great arc from Cologne and Bonn via Coblenz and Trier to the French and Luxembourg frontier. All fortresses are being armed, the moats palisaded, the glacis trees are being felled, partly entirely, partly within the line of fire of the cannon.

And how do things look here in Cologne?

The Cologne forts are fully armed. The gun platforms are being laid, the embrasures cut, the guns are there and are being brought up. Work is going on every day from 6 in the morning till 6 in the evening. The guns are even said to have been moved out of the city at night with muffled wheels to avoid all noise.

The arming of the encircling wall has begun at the Bayenturm and has already advanced as far as Bastion No. 6, i.e., half of the fortifications. On Sector I, 20 guns are already in position.

On Bastion No. 2 (at the Severinstor) the guns stand above the gate. They only need to be turned round to bombard the city.

The best proof that these armaments are only ostensibly directed against an external enemy, but in fact against Cologne itself, lies in the fact that here the trees of the glacis have everywhere been left standing. In the event that the troops have to leave the city and throw themselves into the forts, the cannon on the city wall are thereby rendered useless against the forts, whereas the mortars, howitzers and 24-pounders of the forts are in no way prevented from throwing shells and bombs over the trees into the city. The distance of the forts from the encircling wall is only 1,400 paces and allows the forts to hurl bombs, which fly up to 4,000 paces, into any part of the city they please.

*) Not quite correct. The 13th is partly, the 15th entirely in Westphalia, but can be here in a few hours by rail.

Now for the measures that are aimed directly at the city.

The armoury, opposite the government building, is being cleared out. The rifles are being nicely packed up, so that it is not noticed, and taken to the forts.

Artillery ammunition is being brought into the city in rifle crates and deposited in the bomb-proof military stores along the encircling wall.

While we are writing this, rifles with bayonets are being distributed to the artillery, although it is well known that the artillery in Prussia is not at all trained in their use.

The infantry is lying partly in the forts. The whole of Cologne knows that the day before yesterday 5,000 rounds of live ammunition per company were distributed to it.

The following dispositions have been made for the event of a clash with the people.

At the first alarm signal, the 7th (Fortress) Artillery Company moves out into the forts.

Battery No. 37 then likewise moves forward out of the city. This battery is already completely equipped for “field service”.

The 5th and 8th Artillery Companies remain for the time being in the city. These companies have 20 rounds in each limber.

The Hussars come across from Deutz to Cologne.

The infantry occupies the Neumarkt, the Hahnentor and Ehren Gate to cover the withdrawal of all troops from the city, and then likewise throws itself into the forts.

In addition, the senior officers do everything they can to instil in the troops an old-Prussian hatred against the new order of things. Given the present flourishing state of reaction, nothing is easier than, under the pretext of a speech against agitators and republicans, to bring home the most odious attacks against the revolution and against the constitutional monarchy.

To crown it all, Cologne has never been quieter than precisely in this last period. Apart from an insignificant crowd gathering outside the house of the district governor and a brawl on the Heumarkt, nothing has happened in the last four weeks that would have alarmed even the civic militia in the slightest. All these measures are thus completely unprovoked.

We repeat: After these measures, otherwise utterly incomprehensible, after the troop concentrations around Berlin and Breslau, which have been confirmed to us by letters, after the flooding with soldiers of the Rhine Province, so hated by the reactionaries, we cannot doubt that the reaction is preparing a general great coup.

The outbreak here in Cologne appears to be fixed for Whit Monday. The rumour is being deliberately spread that on that day things are going to “kick off”. An effort will be made to provoke some little scandal, in order then to set the troops in motion at once, to threaten the city with bombardment, to disarm the civic militia, to lock up the chief agitators, in short, to maltreat us in the style of Mainz and Trier.

We earnestly warn the workers of Cologne against this trap that the reaction is setting for them. We urgently request them not to give the old-Prussian party the slightest pretext for placing Cologne under the despotism of martial law. We request them to let the two Whit days pass by in particularly great quiet, and thereby to thwart the reactionaries’ whole plan.

If we give the reaction a pretext to attack us, we are lost, we shall fare like the people of Mainz. If we compel it to attack us, and it really dares the attack, then the people of Cologne will have an opportunity to show that they too will not hesitate for a moment to stake blood and life for the gains of 18 March.

Postscript. The following orders have just been issued:

For the two Whit days the parole is suspended (whereas it used to be issued with quite special ceremony). The troops remain confined to barracks, where the parole is communicated to the officers.

The fortress and artisan companies of the artillery, as well as the infantry garrison of the forts, are receiving from today, in addition to the ordinary bread ration, a daily bread advance for 4 days, so that they are always provisioned for 8 days.

The artillery is already drilling with rifles this evening at 7 o’clock.