London, 10 October* 1854 
28 Dean Street, Soho 

Dear Engels, 

D’abord mes compliments” on your exceedingly GLORIOUS and sound 
criticism.” It’s a pity that this ‘fait d’armes’ couldn’t have been 
accomplished in the London Press. A coup of this nature would 
have assured your position in that field. 

Quant a notre bon St-Arnaud who took good care to die at the 
right moment, I gave the Tribune a detailed biography of him *” 
MONTES AO: Of this fellow it may assuredly be said: ‘Non bis in 
idem.’ 

2 November in the original. - > First, my congratulations - © F. Engels, ‘The Battle 
of the Alma’. - 4 feat of arms - © As for our good - f Never twice on the same 
subject. 

How to explain: 1. that the English failed to station a group of 
warships off the Yenikale Straits in sufficient strength to prevent 
the Russians crossing from Anapa, etc.? Was it not perfectly 
possible, indeed imperative under PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES, to gain 
control of the Sz or Azov with small vessels in order to cut off all 
reinforcements by water? 

2. Should not a diversion in the direction of Bessarabia have 
been made (by Omer Pasha) to prevent the Russians from 
bringing reinforcements into the Crimea from that quarter? Can 
negligence on this score be explained otherwise than by Anglo- 
Austrian diplomatic trickery? 

I believe, or coursz, that diplomacy on the part of military 
commanders ceases as soon as they find themselves in a mousetrap 
as in the Crimea. But in all that concerns the plan as a whole, I do 
not believe that Palmerston has as yet ceased for one moment to 
evince at least his ‘good will’. 

In one of its recent issues, the Tribune is congratulated by my 
rival, A.P.C.,* for its ‘spLenpi characterisation’ of Espartero.” The 
man, of course, has no idea that he is ‘complimenting’ me, but.at 
the same time a sure instinct has led him to take Hotp of a very silly 
concluding sentence that belongs exclusively to the Tribune” 
Incidentally, they had deleted every one of my jokes about 
constitutional heroes en général, suspecting that, lurking behind the 
‘Monk-Lafayette-Espartero’ trio, were certain sarcasms aimed at 
the noble ‘Washington’. The paper’s uncritical attitude is horrifying. First, they extolled Espartero as the OnLy statesman OF Spain. 
Then they took my articles,“ which treat him if anything as a comic 
character, and added: From this one can see that nothing is to be 
expected of Spain. Then, when they got the first article on 
Spain—mere prolegomena leading up to 1808—they believed it 
to constitute the whole and accordingly added on a completely 
heterogeneous but well-meaning conclusion urging the Spaniards 
to show themselves worthy of the Tribune’s confidence.” How 
they will handle subsequent instalments, I do not know. 

Liebknecht, as you know, has been vacillating most despondently 
between an Englishwoman who wanted to marry him and a 
German woman* in Germany whom he wanted to marry. At last 

a [F. Pulszky,] An article dated 7 September 1854 and published in the section 
‘The State of Europe’ of the New-York Daily Tribune, No. 4190, 22 September 
1854. - > K. Marx, ‘Espartero’. - © See K. Marx, ‘The Spanish Revolution.— Greece 
and Turkey’, ‘Evacuation of the Danubian Principalities—The Events in Spain.— 
A New Danish Constitution—The Chartists’, ‘Evacuation of Moldavia and 
Wallachia.— Poland.— Demands of the Spanish People’. - 4 Ernestine Landolt 

486 245, Marx to Engels. 10 October 1854 

the German descended on him and he married her,—in a 
religious as well as a civil ceremony. Both of them seem very 
down-in-the-mouth. His job goes west, since the people are 
moving away. He spent a wretched honeymoon at No. 14 Church 
Street in a house where he got himself heavily in debt. But who 
forced the ass to get married—at this of all times since he was 
perfectly aware of all these circumstances. The woman had in the 
meantime already become engaged to someone else in Germany, 
so at any rate the case was by no means a pressing one. 

If you want to read something really funny you must try and 
get hold of Saturday’s Morning Advertiser, in which the Licensep 
VICTUALLERS take the present editorial board of that poTHousE paper to 
court.” Prosecution and defence both equally amusing. The first 
was conducted by Mr Foster who once figured as a Barrister in 
Baron Nicholson’s court.””? All the thanks Urquhart got for having 
extolled the sicensep as England’s party above parties were hard 
words and his dismissal. Never, by the way, has the curtain been 
raised quite so much to reveal the innermost squalor of the 
SHOP-KEEPER’S soul. 

I suppose you haven’t ‘seen Bruno Bauer’s L’Arrogance des 
pouvoirs occidentaux?” I haven’t yet managed to lay hands on it 
either. 

Should anything important happen in the military department 
before Friday,° send me something to be going on with, for in that 
case the Spanish article, if it is to be accertasie, will have to be 
preceded by a Russian one.™ 

I look forward to a letter from you soon. 

Your 
K. M. 
sel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, : : . . 
Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Published in English for the first 
Engels, Works, Hirst Russian Edition, time 

Vol, XXII, Moscow, 1929 

3 ‘The Incorporated Society of Licensed Victuallers’, The Morning Advertiser, No. 
19749, 7 October 1854. - > Presumably B. Bauer’s De la dictature occidentale. - 
¢ 13 October