Friedrich Engels

No. 160, 5 December 1848
Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

Bern, 1 December. Thank God! At last the official report of the German border closure is said to have reached the Federal Council, and we shall therefore now presumably know where we stand. It was high time, after the highly praiseworthy Central Authority had for so long bamboozled and made fools of us Swiss. The Federal Council is said to have resolved that, in the face of this whole massive Imperial troop deployment of 50,000 men, not a single company of Swiss troops shall be placed on picket duty. The Imperial Authority may see from this how very much people here in Switzerland fear its resolutions, measures, threats, and troop deployments. To be sure, the “Reich” possesses no such military constitution as Switzerland, which, without paying a single man of standing troops, can put 150,000 men, ready for action and well-trained soldiers, on their feet within eight days – thus, proportionately, twice as many as the classic land of the parade march with its much-vaunted Scharnhorstian defence constitution.

Although the material for mirth, drawn from the contradictory rumours about the closure, now threatens to run out for the Swiss, the “Reich” still constantly provides us with something to laugh about. Yesterday the German, and especially the Frankfurt Reich papers, brought us, with the gravest mien in the world, a new fat newspaper canard: the new incursion of the refugees, or rather bandits, into Lörrach, together with the engagement in which four actual Baden dragoons were killed! That the whole ridiculous story, which excited the greatest mirth here, is based on a mystification, I need hardly tell you. But I can tell you that the fear of the Reich citizens of the two and a half free corps men who may still be roaming about the border makes the most comical impression in the world on every Swiss. Here the new phrase has already been established: “he is as afraid as six Reich citizens of one free corps man.” The new article in the Frankfurter Ober-Post-Amts-Zeitung about the continual machinations of the refugees on the border has contributed not a little to sustaining this mirth at the expense of the Reich. What formidable revelations have not Herr Schmerling’s spies brought to light! Metternich is staying in Muttenz and has been seen on the Birsfeld, where Neff is staying and writes and receives many letters; in Emmishofen Siegel and Katzenmaier are staying, and the Reich is not to tremble! Indeed, what is still more frightful, in Dornach, hard on the German border, in Dornach the Swiss government tolerates – – “some dispersed innkeepers from Lörrach and the surrounding area”!!! Moreover, “the conviction is general” that new “predatory raids” would have taken place if, etc. Indeed, has there not been sharp shooting from Gross-Laufenburg across the Rhine? – from whom, when, and how, the Reich newspaper of course does not know. In short, if the Reich is so badly built that it quakes in its foundations when Metternich is seen on the Birsfeld and a few dispersed innkeepers mourn in Dornach, then Switzerland will certainly not lend itself to serving as a prop to this rotten edifice! And on top of that these confusedly compiled reports of the Reich mouchards contradict each other in every line: thus it is said that Metternich is the sole refugee in Muttenz, and three lines further on “one hears from Muttenz that they (!!) are arming there again”!! They – i.e. Metternich all alone! And for this, for the fact that the Imperial Authority makes itself ridiculous before the whole world by such clumsy contradictions, it pays its mouchards in Switzerland! Trema Bizanzio, Metternich has been seen on the Birsfeld and “several dispersed innkeepers” in Dornach have sworn your downfall!

Yet let us leave the Reich aside. The Federal War Council has been dissolved pro forma, but immediately reconstituted as a military commission, the chairmanship of which Herr Ochsenbein has taken over as head of the Federal War Department. The Berner Zeitung criticises this reconstitution, or rather the continued existence of the most cumbersome and costly piece of the old federal government, in sharp words. The War Council, it says, never brought anything to completion, except the appointment of a few aristocratic officers and a federal gaiter regulation, finally brought into the world after long labour pains, which cost so much that the entire army could have been provided with gaiters and shoes for the money. For the rest, it confined itself to drawing its 16 francs per head daily, and long ago gave up achieving anything at all amid sheer difficulties and petty small-mindedness.

Apart from the duel between Luvini and Benz, a second was still in prospect as a result of the Ticino debate in the National Council – between Pioda and Michel from Graubünden. Colonel Michel had expressed himself very improperly and finally, full of rage, gave Herr Pioda a complete denial. Pioda answered extremely calmly and properly, but afterwards called the old blade from Graubünden to account. Herr Michel thereupon made such statements as gave Herr Pioda and his friends complete satisfaction, and the matter dropped.