[Manchester, 26 September 1851] 

Dear Marx, 

As regards Techow’s war story,” from a military standpoint too, 
it is tremendously superficial and in parts downright wrong. Apart 
from the profound verities that only force avails against force and 
from the absurd discovery that revolution can only be victorious if 
it is general (i.e. literally if it meets no resistance and, by inference, 
if it is a bourgeois revolution), apart from the well-meaning 
intention to suppress those awkward ‘internal politics’, that is, the 
revolution itself through the agency of a military dictator as yet 
to be discovered, pace Cavaignac and Willich, and apart from this 
very significant political formulation of the views on revolution 
held by these gentlemen, it should, militarily speaking, be noted 
that: 

1. The iron discipline which alone can procure victory is the 
exact obverse of the ‘postponement of internal politics’ and of 
military dictatorship. Whence is that discipline to come? The 
gentlemen really should have gleaned some experience in Baden 
and the Palatinate.‘ It is a manifest fact that the disorganisation of 

a in a wrapper - > See this volume, p. 463. - © i.e. during the uprising of May-July 
1849 there 

armies and a total relaxation of discipline have been both 
precondition and consequence of all successful revolutions hither- 
to. It took France from 1789 to 1792 to reorganise an 
army—Dumouriez’s—of only about 60,000-80,000 men, and even 
that disintegrated again and there was no organised army to speak 
of in France until the end of 1793. It took Hungary from March 
1848 to the middle of 1849 to create a properly organised army. 
And who brought discipline to the army in the first French 
Revolution? Not the generals who, at a time of revolution, do not 
acquire influence and authority in improvised armies until a few 
victories have been won, but rather the terreur of internal politics, 
of the civil power. 

Armed forces of the Coalition: 

1. Russia. The estimate of an effective force of 300,000 men, 
200,000 of them under arms in the theatre of war, is on the high 
side. Passe encore.’ But they could not be on the Rhine (at most an 
advance guard on the Lower Rhine, at Cologne), or in Northern 
Italy in 2 months. In order to act in concert, to co-ordinate their 
movements adequately with those of Prussia, Austria, etc., etc., 
they would require 3 months—a Russian army does not cover 
more than 2-2'/) German miles a day, and rests every third. It 
took them almost 2 months to reach the theatre of war in 
Hungary. 

2. Prussia. Mobilisation: at least 4-6 weeks. The speculation 
regarding defections, uprisings, etc., etc., very uncertain. At best can 
make 150,000 men available, at worst maybe less than 50,000. This 
being so, to count on '/3 or '/, is sheer humbug, since everything 
depends on chance. 

3. Austria. Equally chanceux‘ and even more complex. No 
possibility here of estimating probabilities d la Techow. At best it 
could, as Techow supposes, put some 200,000 men into the field 
against France, at worst it would not succeed in detaching one 
man, and might at the very outside pit 100,000 men against the 
French at Trieste. 

4. Federal army—of the Bavarian, 7/3; would certainly march 
against the revolution, and here and there even a bit more. At all 
events a corps 30,000-50,000 strong could be raised within 3 
months, and against revolutionary soldiers this is enough to start 
off with. 

5. Denmark would immediately put 40,000-50,000 good troops 
into the field and, as in 1813, the Swedes and also the Norwegians 

a But let that pass - > 1 German mile is roughly 4-4!/9 statute miles - © risky 

would have to accompany it on the great crusade. Techow has 
overlooked this, as he has overlooked Belgium and Holland. 

Armed forces of the revolution: 

l. France. Has 430,000 men under arms. Of these, 100,000 in 
Algiers. 90,000 not présent sous les armes*—'/, of the remainder. 
This leaves 240,000—of whom not more than 100,000 could 
reach the Belgo-German and 80,000 the Savoyard-Piedmontese 
frontier in 4-6 weeks, despite the now largely completed railways. 
This time Sardinia will try, like Belgium in 1848, to be the firm 
rock in the turbulent sea; hence whether the Piedmontese army, 
crammed as it is with bigoted Sardinian peasant lads, is—at least 
in its present form, officered by aristocrats—as committed to the 
revolution as Techow imagines is highly questionable. Victor 
Emmanuel has taken Leopold for his model, c’est dangereux.” 

2. Prussia—? 3. Austria—?; ie. so far as regular organised 
soldiers are concerned. As regards volunteers, they will turn up in 
their thousands, useless, of course. If in the first months 
50,000-60,000 useful soldiers can be made out of troops who have 
defected, that’s a great deal. Where are the officers to come from 
in so short a time? 

Judging by all this, it is more likely that since any revolution 
(even in France) is bound to lack the very thing which enabled 
Napoleon to muster vast armies rapidly, to wit, good cadres, the 
revolution, if it takes place next year, will first either have to 
remain on the defensive or else confine itself to empty proclama- 
tions from Paris and highly inadequate, reprehensible and 
damaging Risquons-Tout expeditions on a larger scale. Unless, 
of course, the Rhine fortresses come over during the first attack 
and the Piedmontese army responds to Citizen Techow’s call; or 
unless the disorganisation of the Prussian and Austrian troops 
immediately centres on Berlin and Vienna, thus placing Russia 
on the defensive; or unless something else happens which cannot 
be foreseen. And to speculate on this and to calculate probabilities 
a la Techow is both otiose and arbitrary, as I know well enough 
from my own experience. All that can be said in this connection is 
that a very great deal depends on the Rhine Province.