Karl Marx 
Interesting from Prussia 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 5986, 30. Juni 1860 

Interesting from Prussia. 

From Our Own Correspondent. 
Berlin, June 13,1860. 

This evening the Prince Regent will leave for Baden-Baden, where a sort of 
conference between Louis Napoleon and a council of crowned German 
heads is to take place on the 16th and 17th inst. The Prince Regent's suite 
will be formed by Gen. von Manteuffel, the chief of the Military Cabinet; 
Gen. von Alvensleben, Lieut.-Col. von Schimmelmann, von Loe, chef d'es- 
cadron, Count von Piickler, the Court Marshal, Privy Councilor von lllaire, 
Mr. Borkmann, the Regent's Secretary, and Prince von HohenzoUern- 
Sigmaringen, the chief of the Cabinet and a member of the Royal family. You 
will remember that on occasion of the private letter addressed by the Prince 
Regent to the Prince Consort of England, intercepted at London and thence 
communicated to Louis Bonaparte, the latter insisted upon a personal inter- 

view with the Prince Regent as the best means of clearing away the misunder- 

standing that seemed to have sprung up between France and Prussia. Shortly 
afterward, on the Prince Regent's visit to Saarbrücken and Trier, towns 
situated on the confines of France, Louis Napoleon again intimated his wish 
to improve this opportunity for meeting the Prince. This proposal was, 
however, declined. Meanwhiie, the rumor having got abroad of the Prince 
Regent's intention to stay for a month at Baden-Baden, Max, the King of 
Bavaria, took it into his head to propose to the Regent a sort of conference 
at the watering-place with the Princes of Southern Germany, who wanted 
to come to a friendly understanding with Prussia, and by this very meeting 
to show a united front against France. The Prince Regent, jumping at once 
into this scheme, which was also embraced by the Grand Duke of Baden, 
the King of Wurtemberg, andthe Grand Duke of Hessen-Darmstadt, one fine 

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Interesting from Prussia 

morning the French Embassador at Berlin officially notified Herr von 
Schleinitz, the Prussian Foreign Minister, that his august master, in order 
to dispel the distrust, whose innocent object France appeared to be, thought 
a friendly interview at Baden-Baden, with the actual chief of the Prussian 
State, a great benefit to both Germany and France. On the Prussian minister's 
reply that unjust suspicions, not likely to be dispelled by such an interview, 
hovered also over Prussia, and that besides a confidential conference of 
German Princes at Baden-Baden had already been convened, the French 
Embassador, on further information from Paris, rejoined that Louis Napo- 
leon would delight in finding together the greatest possible number of Ger- 
man Princes, and that, moreover, he had some important communication to 
personally impart, which would allow of no further delay. At this point the 
Hohenzollern power of resistance gave way. A Vienna dispatch conveyed 
at once to Berlin the expression of Austria's displeasure at the intended 
rendezvous, but the other German Courts were more or less soothed by a 
circular note of the Prussian Foreign Minister. Consequent upon this circular 
note, the King of Hanover unexpectedly arrived at Berlin this morning, and 
declared spontaneously his willingness of accompanying to Baden-Baden the 
Prince Regent, who then, by a telegraphic dispatch, summoned also the King 
of Saxony to the conference. It need hardly be said, that the Dukes of Coburg 
Gotha and Nassau will follow in the track. 

Thus, a meeting of German princes, originally purporting to mean a demon- 
stration against France, has turned into a sort of levee, held by Louis Bona- 
parte, on German soil, and crowded by the Kings, Grand Dukes, and other 

little potentates of the German Confederation. On the part of the Prince 
Regent it looks like contrition for the sin of having uttered his suspicions 
as to the French usurper's aggressive schemes, and on the part of the smaller 
princely fry as a precaution taken for not being sold by their huger confrére 
to their common enemy. The lead in the humiliation of the crowned heads 
before the Quasimodo of the French Revolution was notoriously taken by 
Queen Victoria and the King of Sardinia. The Czar's personal interview at 
Stuttgart with the man of December, in 1857, could surprise nobody beyond 
the coffee-house politicians, duped by the ostentatious coquetry of the 
Petersburg Court with the tenets of legitimacy. After the battle of Solferino, 
the Hapsburg's Villafranca meeting with his victor was a matter of business, 
not of courtesy. The Prince Regent, together with the minor stars clustering 
around him, has neither to plead an alliance, like Victoria and Victor Ema- 
nuel, nor a conspiracy, like Alexander II., nor a defeat, like Francis Joseph; 
but, leaving the motives aside, he may plead the general precedent put by 
his betters. At all events, he has seriously impaired his factitious popularity 
by the acceptance of Louis Bonaparte's overture, and the more so since the 

Karl Marx 

latter, only a few weeks ago, had the impudence of intimating, through a 
dispatch of his Foreign Minister, M. de Thouvenel, to the Grand Dukes of 
Hessen-Darmstadt and Baden, that, for the future, they ought to sign then- 
letters to the French Emperor with the words: "Voire frére et serviteur.' 
Such was, indeed, the formula Napoleon I. had invented for the German 
Princes, forming part of the Rhenish Confederation, of which he was the 
protector, and to which belonged Baden and Hessen-Darmstadt, together 
with Wurtemberg, Bavaria, and other German principalities. In order to 
prevent Louis Bonaparte from introducing M.de Thouvenel into the 
presence of the highly-offended monarchs of Baden and Hessen-Darmstadt, 

the Prince Regent and his crowned associates have unanimously forborne 
to be accompanied by their respective Foreign Ministers; but, then, do these 
gentlemen really fancy that the affront was offered to them by the servant, 
instead of the servant's master? 

As to the "important communication" which the Dutch savior of society 
is about to impart to the crowned heads of Germany, there is every reason 
to believe that, imitating Metternich's operations on the successive Con- 
gresses of Vienna, Aix-la-Chapelle, Troppau, Laibach and Verona, Louis 
Napoleon will try his utmost to convince the Prince Regent of the existence 
of a vast conspiracy among the revolutionists, straining every nerve to bring 
about a collision between France and Prussia, in order to enthrone the Red 
Republic in Paris and a Central Repubhc in Germany. All the Bonapartist 
organs in Switzerland, Belgium, and Germany, swarm, since a fortnight, with 
paragraphs full of similar dark insinuations; and a confidential Bonapartist 
agent at Geneva—a well-known German naturalist—has already triumphantly 
announced that the Anti-Bonapartist eruptions of the German press would 
very soon be stopped by the competent authorities. 

' 

While the Prince Regent and his German dii minorum gentium are thus 
to be convinced of the necessity to gather round the general savior of society, 
the Prussian people is to be belabored in the opposite sense by M. About's 
new pamphlet, "The Emperor Napoleon III. and Prussia." Although this 
pamphlet has as yet been retained, some stray copies of it have already found 
their way to Berlin, and by another letter I have sent you the most remarkable 
passages from this newest Tuileries manifesto. The Prussian people must 
choose, says the oracle from the Seine, between the feudalism of Austria 
and the democratic principle of the French Empire. It is only by the latter 
that, resolving of course to give its mighty neighbor some material guaranties, 
the German people can hope to realize the unity.so much coveted by it. 
Having traced the shortcomings of the present Prussian Government in a 
very superficial manner, the author of the pamphlet sets out on informing 
the Prussians of the true nature ofthe "Democratic principle" so character- 

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Interesting from Prussia 

istic of the second French Empire, and which consists, to say it shortly, in 
the election of its chief by what is called in modern Gaul, "general suffrage." 
It is true, and M. About does hardly dare deny it, that every sort of liberty 
has been sequestrated in France to the profit of the Dutch adventurer, but, 
then, this sequestration was based on general suffrage. Itis in this way, with 
the aid of France, and on the same democratic basis, that a Teutonic Empire 
under the auspices of a Hohenzollern ought to be reared in Germany. The 
operation is a very simple one. Prussia has only to cede part of her "legiti- 
mate" possessions to France and to simultaneously encroach, under the form 
of an appeal to general suffrage, on the possessions of the minor princes, 
and she will at once be transformed from a feudal into a democratic state. 
It must be owned that this new "democratic principle" discovered by Louis 
Bonaparte and his sycophants is no innovation, but, on the contrary, has for 
about two centuries been flourishing in holy Russia. The Romanoff family 

15 was seated on the throne by general suffrage. Hence democracy reigns from 

the Niemen to the Amoor. Perhaps it might be retorted by the prophets of 
the new "democratic principle" that the Romanoffs were freely elected; that 
no coup d'état preceded the appeal to the people; and that, on their accession 
to the throne, a general state of siege failed to keep the electoral urns within 
the proper limits of the democratic principle. At all events, since Louis 
Bonaparte cannot afford to become a "legitimate" prince, the next best thing 
he can do is to convert his brother sovereigns of Italy and Germany into 
"democratic" princes, after the pattern of the Lesser Empire. The Roman 
Emperors, of course, were no truly "democratic" sovereigns, because 
modern progress requires the principle of hereditary monarchy to be en- 
grafted upon the principle of "general suffrage," so that, when a fellow by 
hook or crook has once succeeded in usurping a throne, and coloring his 
usurpation by the farce of general election, his dynasty must forever be 
supposed to remain the living incarnation of the people's general will. (Rous- 
seau's volonté générale.) 
In another letter I propose surveying the state of the Schleswig-Holstein 
complications, which impart to the Baden-Baden Conference its actual 
importance. For the present, I shall only mention that on the 10th of June 
an interview took place at the castle of Kronburg between the King of 
Sweden and the King of Denmark. A fortnight before this rendezvous the 
Swedish Foreign Minister had sent to the Danish Foreign Minister a note 
to the purport that it was very desirable that the King of Denmark's suite 
should contain no persons the encounter with whom might prove em- 
barrassing for his Swedish Majesty. In other words, the King of Denmark 
was called upon to clear his company from the presence of his wife the 
Countess Danner, ci-devant Mademoiselle Rasmussen. Accordingly, the 
King of Denmark thought fit to leave his girl behind him.