ENGELS TO MARX 

IN LONDON 

[Manchester,] 11 February 1853 

Dear Marx, 

Well, here it is, the grande affaire* of Messrs Kossuth and 
Mazzini.**? Our news up here is very incomplete but my own view 
is that tomorrow or on Monday we shall certainly hear that all is 
over. Milan is first-rate terrain for street-fighting, few straight 
streets, none connecting with the other, almost everywhere 
narrow, crooked alleys with tall, massive stone houses, each a 
fortress in itself, their walls often 3-5 feet or more thick and 
virtually impossible to breach, the — rez-de-chaussée” windows 
provided with iron grills (almost invariably) as here and there in 
Cologne. But much good will all this do—they don’t stand a 
chance. After 1849 Radetzky ordered the restoration of the old 
citadel’s fortifications and, if the work is complete—and there has 
been time enough for this— Milan will belong to the Austrians so 
long as they occupy the citadel which is impregnable to insurgents 
unless abetted by a military insurrection. The fact that no further 
news is forthcoming from Bellinzona whence, from time im- 
memorial, the Tessinese have inundated the world with lies in 
support of every Italian movement,*” argues strongly against the 
spread of the insurrection in the surrounding region. 

I regard the whole business as very mal a propos since its only 
point dapput, apart from Austrian tyranny IN GENERAL, is the 
commotion in Montenegro** where also, aprés tout Turkish 
‘order’ is bound to prevail over Homeric Czernogorzan barbarism. 
Thus these great dictators, having allowed themselves to be 
bamboozled, altogether @ la Seiler, by the usual diplomatic 
melodramas, invoke the world-historical importance of the ‘orien- 
tal question’! They are obviously counting on some sort of windfall 

@ great affair - > ground floor - © untimely - 4 after all 

from Louis Napoleon but, unless everything turns out otherwise 
than expected, he will leave them to stew in their own juice and 
treat them as anarchists. It would further seem probable that, as 
with all insurrections organised in advance, the moment of 
outbreak is liable to be determined far more by the pettiest of 
local incidents than by crucial events. 

Mazzini does at least seem to be on the spot; it could hardly be 
otherwise. However stupid his bombastic proclamation, it may well 
prove something of a hit with the grandiloquent Italians. On the 
other hand we have Kossuth, that man of boundless activity! 
Celui-la est absolument mort, aprés cela“ Such absurd pretensions 
cannot be trumpeted with impunity in the year of our Lord 
1853. However preposterous Mazzini’s abstract passion for insurrec- 
tion may appear on this occasion, the man comes off splendidly when 
compared with the worthy Kossuth, who reassumes the role he 
played at Vidin**’ and, from the safety of the rear, decrees the 
liberation of the fatherland from nothing, with nothing, for 
nothing. The fellow really is a léche and a misérable.’ 

Now we shall see what the Italian peasants will do; even if, by 
some unheard of and incredible stroke of luck, pére Mazzini, his 
bourgeois and his aristocrats, should succeed, they might still be in 
for something very unpleasant at their hands; and should the 
Austrians find an opportunity to unleash these same peasants 
against the aristocracy they will not hesitate to do so. 

The Austrians must still have 120,000 men in Italy; how, in the 
face of this, a rebellion can be staged unless there are mutinies 
among the troops, I cannot conceive. And I refuse to believe that 
there could be Honved‘ mutinies in Italy, even on Kossuth’s 
orders,* this would demand events of greater magnitude, while 3 
years of discipline and peace have enabled the Austrians to flog 
many an unyielding Honved posterior into tractability. 

The whole business is of importance, I think, only as a 
symptom; a reaction has set in against the state of oppression 
obtaining since 49 and, naturally, at the most sensitive spot. The 
thing has made a great impact here, and the philistines are 
beginning to agree that this year will not elapse without trouble. 

a After this the man will be completely and utterly done for. - > a coward and a 
wretch - © soldiers of the Hungarian national army during the 1848-49 revolution; 
here: Hungarian soldiers serving in the Austrian army. -@ An allusion to the 
so-called Milan proclamation ‘In the Name of the Hungarian Nation—To the 
Soldiers Quartered in Italy (February 1853)’, The Times, No. 21348, 10 February 
1853 (see this volume, pp. 280, 283 and 290).