The Uprising in Frankfurt

Cologne, September 19, 7 p.m. The German-Danish armistice has
raised a storm. A sanguinary revolt has begun in Frankfurt. The workers
of Frankfurt, Offenbach and Hanau, and the peasants of the surrounding
districts, have staked their life to defend Germany's honor betrayed by
the National Assembly to a Prussian government which has ignominiously
resigned.

The outcome of the struggle is still uncertain. Until yesterday
evening the soldiers apparently made little progress. In Frankfurt, apart
from the Zeil and perhaps a few other streets and squares, artillery is
of little use, and cavalry of hardly any use. In this respect the people
are in 'an advantageous position. Citizens of Hanau, armed with weapons
from the arsenal they had stormed, have come to their assistance, as have
also peasants from numerous villages in the vicinity. Yesterday evening
the military probably numbered about 10,000 men and very little artillery.
Large reinforcements of peasants must have arrived during the night, and
considerably smaller ones of soldiers, the immediate vicinity being denuded
of troops. The revolutionary temper of the peasants in the Odenwald, Nassau
and the Electorate of Hesse precluded further withdrawals; it is likely
that communications have been interrupted. If today the insurgents are
still holding out, then the whole of the Odenwald, Nassau, the Electorate
of Hesse and Rhenish Hesse will take up arms, the entire population between
Fulda, Koblenz, Mannheim and Aschaffenburg will be in arms, and there are
insufficient troops available to crush the uprising. And who will answer
for Mainz, Mannheim, Marburg, Cassel and Wiesbaden -- towns in which hatred
of the army has reached its highest pitch as a result of the bloody excesses
of the so-called Federal troops? Who will answer for the peasants on the
Rhine, who can easily prevent troop movements along the river?

We admit, nevertheless, that we have little hope of the courageous
insurgents being able to win the day. Frankfurt is too small a town, the
number of troops is disproportionately large, and the well-known counter-revolutionary
sentiments of the local petty bourgeoisie are too great to allow us to
be very hopeful.

But even if the insurgents are defeated, this will settle nothing.
The counter-revolution will become arrogant, it will enslave us for a time
by introducing martial law, by suppressing freedom of the press, and banning
the clubs and public meetings; but before long the crowing of the Gaelic
cock [81] will announce the hour of liberation, the hour of revenge.

Cologne, September 20. The news from Frankfurt is beginning
to confirm our fears of yesterday. It seems certain that the insurgents
have been ejected from Frankfurt, and that now they are holding only Sachsenhausen,
where they are said to be strongly entrenched. A state of siege has been
declared in Frankfurt; anyone caught carrying weapons or resisting the
"Federal Authority" is to be court-martialed.

Thus the gentlemen in the Paulskirche are now on an equal footing
with their colleagues in Paris. They can now at their leisure and under
the rule of martial law reduce the fundamental rights of the German people
to a "minimum

The railway line to Mainz is torn up in many places, and the post
arrives either late or not at all.

It appears that artillery decided the outcome of the fight in
the wide streets and enabled the army to attack the fighters on the barricades
from the rear. Additional factors were the zeal with which the petty bourgeois
of Frankfurt opened their houses to the soldiers, thus giving them every
advantage in the street-fighting, and the superior strength of the troops,
swiftly brought up by rail, over the peasant contingents, who arrived slowlyon foot.

But even if the fight has not been renewed in Frankfurt itself,
it certainly does not mean that the rising has been crushed. The angry
peasants are not likely to put their weapons down forthwith. Though they
may not be able to break up the National Assembly, they still have enough
at home that has to be cleared away. The storm that was repelled outside
the Paulskirche can spread to six or eight petty residences and to hundreds
of manor-houses. The peasant war begun this spring will not come to an
end until its goal, the liberation of the peasants from feudalism, has
been achieved.

What is the reason for the persistent victory of "order" throughout
Europe and for the series of recurrent defeats of the revolutionary party
from Naples, Prague and Paris to Milan, Vienna and Frankfurt?

All parties know that the struggle impending in all civilized
countries is quite different from, infinitely more significant than, all
previous revolutions; in Vienna and Paris, in Berlin and Frankfurt, in
London and Milan the point at issue is the overthrow of the political rule
of the bourgeoisie, an upheaval whose immediate consequences horrify all
portly, stockjobbing bourgeois.

Is there a revolutionary centre anywhere in the world where the
red flag, the emblem of the militant, united proletariat of Europe, has
not been found flying on the barricades during the last five months?

The fight in Frankfurt against the Parliament of the combined
landowners and the bourgeoisie was likewise waged under the red flag.

The reason for all these defeats is that every uprising that now
takes place is a direct threat to the political existence of the bourgeoisie,
and an indirect threat to its social existence. The people, largely unarmed,
have to fight not only the well-armed bourgeoisie but also the organized
power of the bureaucratic and military state which the bourgeoisie has
taken over. The people, who are unorganized and poorly armed, are confronted
by all the other social classes, who are well organized and fully armed.
That is the reason why up to now the people have been defeated and will
continue to be defeated until their opponents are weakened either through
dissension, or because the army is engaged in war-or until some important
event impels the people to begin a desperate fight and demoralizes their
opponents.

Such an event is impending in France.

Hence we need not give up hope, even though during the last four
months the barricades everywhere have been defeated by grape-shot. On the
contrary, every victory of our opponents was at the same time a defeat
for them, for it divided them and, ultimately, gave control not to the
conservative party that was victorious in February and March, but in each
case to the party that had been overthrown in February and March. Only
for a short time did the victory won in Paris in June establish the rule
of the petty bourgeoisie, the pure republicans; hardly three months have
passed and the big bourgeoisie, the constitutional party, is threatening
to overthrow Cavaignac and drive the "pure ones" into the arms of the "reds".
This will happen in Frankfurt too -- the victory will benefit, not the
respectable gentlemen from the centre parties, but those of the Right.
The bourgeoisie will have to give pride of place to the gentlemen representing
the military, bureaucratic and aristocratic state and will very soon taste
the bitter fruit of victory.

May it do them good! Meanwhile we shall await the moment when
the hour of liberation for Europe will have struck in Paris.