[Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 107 (supplement), 
September 20, 1848] 

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, are defending with their lives Germany’s 
honour betrayed by the National Assembly to a Prussian Govern- 
ment 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 almost no use at all. 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 Wiesba- 
den—towns in which hatred of the brutal soldiery has reached its 

The Uprising in Frankfurt 443 

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 troops being sent 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 bourgeoi- 
sie 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 Gallic cock* will announce the hour of liberation, 
the hour of revenge. 

[Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 108, September 21, 1848] 

Cologne, September 20. The news from Frankfurt is beginning to 
gradually 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-martialled. 

Thus the gentlemen in St. Paul’s Church 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, which arrived showly on foot. 

But even if the fight has not been renewed in Frankfurt itself, it 
certainly does not mean that the uprising has been crushed. The 

9 Heinrich Heine, “Kahldorf tiber den Adel, in Briefen an den Grafen M. von 
Moltke”. Einleitung.— Ed. 

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 St. Paul’s Church can spread to six or 
eight petty princely residences and to hundreds of manorial estates. 
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. 3 

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

It is because all parties know that the struggle impending in all 
civilised 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 are enough to terrify all portly, stockjobbing bour- 
geols. 

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

In Frankfurt, too, the fight against the Parliament of the combined 
landowners and bourgeois was 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, 
mostly unarmed, have to fight not only the organised power of the 
bureaucratic and military state which the bourgeoisie has taken over, 
they have to fight the armed bourgeoisie itself. The people, who are 
unorganised and poorly armed, are confronted by all the other social 
classes, who are well organised 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 
demoralises their opponents. 

Such a great 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 

The Uprising in Frankfurt 445 

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 bour- 
geoisie, 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 junker state 
and will very soon taste the bitter fruits of its victory. 

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