London, 21 May 1851 

Dear Engels, 

Freiligrath is here and sends you his regards. He’s come to look 
around for a situation. If he doesn’t find one, he intends to go to 
America. 

He brought quite good news from Germany. The people in 
Cologne* are very active. Their agents have been travelling about 
since September. They have two tolerably good representatives in 
Berlin and, since the democrats are constantly coming to Cologne 
to consult them, they as constantly put spokes in those other 
gentry’s wheels. For instance, the Brunswickers were all set to give 
Schimmelpfennig 2,000 talers for the London Committee (social). 
But first they sent Dr Lucius to Cologne, and so the matter came 
to nothing. 

Kinkel is seriously discredited in the Rhine Province, particularly 
in Bonn. The committee there had sent Johanna” £200, but after 
a fortnight she was already asking for more. This greatly 
displeased the philistines. 

In a few weeks’ time the people in Cologne will be holding a 
communist congress. 

Sigel, the general-in-chief, is here and has attached himself to 
Windmill Street.**' 

Further, General Haug has brought out an issue of Kosmos. 
Contains puffs for Willich, Kinkel and Gohringer. The various 
bands are becoming more and more alike. Never have I seen or 
heard such inflated and complacent twaddle. Amongst other things 
it contains a harlequinade by Arnold Winkelried Ruge.“ This 
creature pretends to have received a letter from a German 
‘hospitable friend’ in which the latter expresses surprise at 
everything he reads in the papers about ‘English hospitality’, and 
anxiety lest Ruge, ‘being overwhelmed by affairs of state’, may be 

a members of the Central Authority of the Communist League in Cologne - 
b Johanna Kinkel (Gottfried Kinkel’s wife) -¢ Marx compares Arnold Ruge to 
Arnold Winkelried, a semi-legendary fourteenth-century Swiss warrior. 

prevented from enjoying his fair share of this ‘sybaritism of 
hospitality’, and asks him: 

‘It was not, I take it, the traitor Radowitz who was invited to Windsor, but 
Mazzini, Ledru-Rollin, Citizen Willich, Kinkel and yourself?’ 

Ruge then proceeds to disabuse his friend and assure him that 
English hospitality will not prevent them from returning to 
Germany torch in hand. L'imbécile! 

The style of the whole is pretentious, puerile, piffling and of a 
complacent stupidity unequalled in the annals of world history. To 
cap it all, an unheard-of want of talent. But I must try and hunt 
out a copy of this rubbishy sheet for you. 

That bedbug Meyen is busily scurrying around here telling 
everyone who will listen the secret that Marx and Engels have lost 
all influence and support in Germany. Frightful Meyen! 

To give you but one example of the bare-faced forwardness of 
these blackguards, of their shabby importunities: 

Last Sunday* I was at John Street where old Owen was giving a 
lecture on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. Despite his idées 
fixes, the old man was ironical and endearing. When the old 
gentleman had finished, one of the Kosmoss satellites pushed his 
way through to him and thrust the Kosmos into his hand, saying 
that the paper expressed his principles. And the old man actually 
commended it to the audience. C'est par trop dréle!” 

That evening, by the way, I was unable to avoid speaking to 
Harney again; he came up to me, rather the worse for drink and, 
with a very ingratiating air, asked after you. 

Willich’s begging business is doing pretty well. When the 
Schleswig-Holstein refugees arrived here, he wheedled over £200 
‘for the latter’ (!) out of the crry-mercuants. 

Girardin does indeed say that Cavaignac is now the only serious 
candidate of the parti de Uordre of the bourgeois mass. He 
himself, however, furiously attacks both him and Changarnier, 
and his polemic recalls once more the best period of his battle with 
the National. This fellow is responsible for more agitation in 
France than the whole gang of Montagnards and reds‘ put 
together. Bonaparte would seem to be hors de question. However, if 
the royalist majority in the National Assembly again violates the 
Constitution and, with a simple majority, decides upon its revision, 
it will finally be compelled—having lost all legal standing—to 

218 May-> It’s really too funny! -¢ ie. democrats and socialists of various 
trends - ¢ out of the question 

conclude a compromise with Bonaparte as the holder of executive 
power. In which case there could be serious clashes, since 
Cavaignac is unlikely to let such an opportunity be snatched away 
under his nose again. 

All the Neue Rheinische Zeitung lads will be here soon.*" I’m 
surprised that Lupus should not have arrived yet, and only hope 
some misfortune has not befallen him. 

I am now spending every day, from 10 in the morning until 7 in 
the evening, at the library and am saving up the industrial 
exhibition till you come.*”? 

Did you read the bogus and the genuine epistle by Mazzini in 
the Débats*? 

Your 
K. M. 

Musch” sends his love to ‘Friedrich Engels’. 
Apropos, Willich and Schimmelpfennig have published the 
inevitable appeal to ‘their brothers in the Prussian Army’.