Manchester, 23 March 1854 

Dear Marx, 

I return Lassalle’s letter herewith. At the time I forgot to 
enclose the first one, which is still here.*”’ You’ll have received the 
two half notes yesterday and the day before. T/B 58 166, 
Newcastle on Tyne, 17 August 1852, £5. 

Lassalle’s strategical operations are very diplomatic. His answer 
to the Enos and Rodosto affair is the foolish platitude, itself 
merely intended as dust in the eyes, that Constantinople must be 
protected *; if the 2 fleets and the Army of the Danube cannot 
protect it, then neither can 100,000 French and English. From his 
own standpoint, what he ought to have said was: if they are to be 
launched against Sevastopol or Odessa, they are, at any rate, closer 
to hand at Rodosto than in Malta or Toulon. 

The notion that a move into Serbia would place the Austrians 
‘in the rear of the Turkish Army of the Danube’ is basically 
wrong. The Austrians must make their crossing at Belgrade or not 
very far below it, or else enter Wallachia via Mehadia along the 
left bank of the Danube. In the first case they would find 
themselves in the extension of the Turkish left wing, in the second, 
to the front of it. That this would mean the immediate sacrifice of 
Kalafat and Vidin, with the exception of the garrison, is 
evident—but not that this Turkish Jeft wing would be lost and its 

remnants compelled to fall back on the Shumla line. Au contraire,’ 
1. the correct tactics for the Austrians would be to march 
immediately on Softa via Nissa, hence the correct tactics for the 
Turks would be to withdraw from Vidin, likewise to Sofia. Not 
having so far to go, they would be there before the Austrians and 
could either make a stand in the Balkans or withdraw towards 
Adrianople.*” 

2. Should the Austrians be stupid enough to march on Vidin, 
the Turks would still make for Sofia. This division of Omer 
Pasha’s principal corps would not involve the fragmentation of his 
forces, since the new enemy would necessitate a new Adrianople- 
Sofia-Belgrade-Vidin operational line; thus the Turkish left wing 
would become an independent army. 

3. But should Lassalle’s peculiar strategy come To pass, no amount 
of falling back on the Shumia line would avail, for the latter, 
having already been outflanked as a result of the sacrifice of the 
highway from Belgrade to Constantinople, would, on the contrary, 
have to be abandoned all the more precipitately in order to 
assemble all available reserves at Adrianople and advance against the 
first enemy to pass through the Balkans. 

One can see, incidentally, that these lucubrations all emanate 
from that ‘diplomatic source’ which seems to enjoy showing off on 
the subject of strategic developments. 

Tomorrow I shall be sending The Daily News a description of 
Kronstadt *°; faulty though much of its fortifications may be, I’m 
afraid half a dozen screw ships of the line will nevertheless go to 
blazes before it knuckles under. 

The highwaymen have been kind enough to return Lupus his 
pocket-book minus 7 Prussian taler notes.” His philistines mean to 
do something towards making good the loss of his money and his 
watch, and he might even get some smart-money into the bargain. 
Borchardt is attending to his bruises, and so the thing is resolving 
itself. 

‘But as for the fright, the fright he got, 
There’s no compensation for that.’ 

Which is why he is somewhat caduc* and snappish, apparently in 
the belief that Heise and I were responsible for his foolishness, the 
drubbing he got and all. 

3 On the contrary - » See this volume, pp. 421 and 428. - © Probably a misquota- 
tion of Schiller’s ‘Das Lied von der Glocke’. - 4 decrepit 

Who is this chap who is getting Heinzen to pass him off as an 
editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung?* See last batch of Reforms, 
No. 50 or thereabouts. 

Your 
F. E.