London, 13 June 1854 
28 Dean Street, Soho 

Dear Frederic, 

Enclosed letters from Cluss which you needn’t return since they 
have already been made known to the competent people and have 
been answered. 

The article on Silistria is splendid. The request made through 
Austria to Russia”? that she promise to evacuate the Danubian 
principalities (the intention being to conclude an armistice and 
convene a congress in Vienna on the strength of that promise) was 
of purely Russian inspiration. At the same time it was assumed 
that Silistria would quickly fall into Russian hands. The English 
public had been prepared for this event by the entire ministerial 
press. Hence Paskievich’s haste. The resistance of the Turks at 
Silistria upset these calculations—just as happened to a similar 
plan that had matured the previous autumn. 

Coton. Grach is an acquaintance of mine from Trier; not one of 
your Prussian instructors, but a talented adventurer who went to 
Turkey as much as 19 or so years ago to seek his fortune.*” A 
crapaud in the know tells me that Boichot, who was caught in 

@ See this volume, p. 458.- > F. Engels, ‘The Siege of Silistria’. - © philistine 

Paris,” had in fact been sent to France as a political emissary by 
Pyat’s clique and not, as Pyat declares in execrable English in the 
Advertiser,’ to pay a visit to his old mother, whom he hadn’t seen 
for 5 years. It’s really repulsive the way the crapauds continually 
act out of character and remain addicted to these ‘melodramatic’ 
lies calculated to appeal to the hearts of the petty bourgeois. C’est 
dégotitant© 

You will shortly have another consignment of Pioniers. Heinzen, 
of course, is ranting and roaring dreadfully about the defunct 
Reform, and has actually managed to trot out a quotation from 
Catullus, no doubt picked up from a school-book complete with 
crib. Also contains comical diatribes against Dulon. The great 
Ruge writes to them both, friend ‘Dulon’ and friend ‘Heinzen’. He 
informs the latter of his grand design for the foundation of a free 
university in Cincinnati where Ruge intends to drone away 
agreeably the remainder of his days as rector magnificus in partibus. 
He can hardly wait to become a professor at last, something which, 
for all his servility, he was unable to ‘wrest’ from the Saxon 
Minister Lindenau or, before that, from the Prussian Minister 
Altenstein. ‘Doctorates’ will also be awarded in this glorified 
contrefagon of a German university. All that is needed is dollars to 
the tune of 1,000,000 and 6 citizens of Cincinnati to administer 
the finances. In addition, a prospectus covering all disciplines. A 
wild omnium gatherum, mixtum compositum’ of headings from 
Hegel’s Encyclopddie and the table of contents from Ersch and 
Gruber.’ E.g. General Linguistics. (Cf. Ersch and Gruber, Pott’s 
article on the distribution of languages.) The following are to be 
excluded from professorial chairs: 1. Strauss and Bruno Bauer; 2. 
the ‘Sophists’ who make stuff and nonsense of philosophy; 3. not 
the doctrine of communism, but the ‘vile personages who have 
betrayed the Republic and Liberty’.*” 

In one of his rotten letters Ruge extols 2 anonymous pamphlets 
on Palmerston—never, of course, suspecting that one of them 
originated with me.” 

My wife is now confined to bed. Yesterday I at last managed to 
persuade her to call Dr Freund. As soon as she is at all fit to do 
so, he wants her to take a trip to Germany, which accords with the 

a See this volume, p. 458. - > F. Pyat, ‘The Arrest of Sergeant Boichot, at Paris, by 
the French Government’, The Morning Advertiser, No. 19646, 9 June 1854. - © It’s 
disgusting. - 4 vice-chancellor in exile - © here: version-' a crazy mixture - 
& Allgemeine Encyclopadie der Wissenschaften und Künste published by J. S. Ersch and 
J. G. Gruber. - h K. Marx, ‘Palmerston and Russia’. 

wishes of my mother-in-law* and has been impossible hitherto 
only on financial grounds, but will have to be engineered 
somehow. The children are back at school today. 

Dronke’s bad luck” is tragi-comical. The fellows seem to be 
playing havoc in Bradford. 

Your 
K. M.