IN ZALT-BOMMEL 

Manchester, 3 January 1864 

Dear Moor, 

The many Curisrmas drinking-sprees and consequent GENERAL 
UNFITNESS For Business have rendered me utterly incapable of replying 
any sooner. However, the affair is now happily over. 

I am sending your wife the amount in question.* For the rest, 
I'm delighted to hear that your second carbuncle has been 
operated on, and that you are thus over this latter crisis. You'll 
have got damned thin as a result of this tedious business. 

The Schleswig-Holstein affair has come off the rails again good 
and proper. If, as I believe, there’s war in the spring, we shall 
have Denmark, Sweden, France and Italy against us and, possibly, 
England. In Hungary and Poland Plonplonism,”* to which Kossuth 
had already pointed the way, is in full swing.*” I see only two ways 
out here: 1. either revolution in Berlin as soon as the troops have 
left and, in Vienna, a corresponding movement with concessions 
of an adequate kind to Hungary and, perhaps, also to Poland. 
That’s what would be most favourable, and there would be 
nothing to fear in such a case. But it is also what is most 
improbable, in view of the confusion that prevails. Or, alternative- 
ly, 2. a restoration of the Holy Alliance’" for which, as always, the 
partition of Poland would provide the cement (Russia has a 
greater interest in Poland than in Denmark and also the prospect, 
come the armistice, of having Austria and Prussia under her 
thumb, i.e. being able to impose her own conditions). 

a See this volume, pp. 500-01. 

506 $03. Engels io Marx. 3 January 1864 

Then the Russians would take over from the Prussians in Berlin 
and play the policeman, whereat we would be done for, and 
Bonaparte cock of the walk. 

The mock war in Schleswig under Wrangel can’t last very 
long.” In the first place, the Danish fortifications will make even 
the initial encounters too bloody and, in the second, Boustrapa '’ 
is too much in need of a popular war not to seize this opportunity. 
What more could he ask than the restoration of the Holy Alliance 
and a war for both Poland and the Rhine with, for good measure, 
England and Italy and al! the small states of Europe on his side? 

Apropos. Our worthy Faucher, who shows himself a rabid 
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg man in _— the 
Chamber," is, at the same time, sending The Manchester Guardian 
anti-German articles in which he arse-licks to the English bastards 
of The Times. Shouldn’t one do something to unmask this louse? 

If the curs in the Prussian Chamber were now to take their 
courage in both hands, they could straighten things out to their 
own satisfaction within the space of 6 weeks. Handsome William’s 
reply shows what a fix the government is in. No one will fork 
out, not even the worthy von der Heydt, and they know they 
won't get any money par force? 

Lupus has just come to pick me up and sends you his kindest 
regards. 

Here’s to a good recovery and a Happy New Year. 

Your 
F. E.