[Manchester,] 31 December 1857 

Dear Moor, 

I have searched the whole town for newspapers containing 
Indian News, having sent you my Guardians on the subject the day 
before yesterday. I can’t get hold of the relevant numbers, either 
from the Guardian itself or from the Examiner & Times, nor has 
Belfield any left. I thought you had already dealt with this affair 
on Tuesday. In the circumstances I cannot do the article,” which is 

4 In reply to this request Engels wrote the article ‘The Siege and Storm of 
Lucknow’. - > The article in question, ‘The Siege and Storm of Lucknow’, was written 
later and published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 30 January 1858. In it Engels 
used some of the ideas expressed in this letter. 

all the more vexing in that this is the first afternoon in 4 weeks on 
which I'd have been able to do it without having to neglect urgent 
business. In future, let me know as early as possible what your 
intentions are as to military articles; just now 24 hours makes quite 
a difference to me. 

In any case, detailed information is so frightfully scarce, what 
there is being based almost wholly on telegraphic despatches from 
Cawnpore to Calcutta, that it’s virtually impossible to write a 
critical analysis.?"* The only points I can think of are these: It is 40 
mites from Cawnpore to Lucknow (Alam Bagh)— Havelock’s forced 
marches show that in India 15 miles a day over a protracted 
period is a very long march. Accordingly, with only 2-3 marches 
ahead of him, Colin* ought to have arrived at Alam Bagh no later 
than the 3rd day after his departure from Cawnpore, WITH PLENTY OF 
DAYLIGHT STILL LEFT TO ATTACK AT ONCE. It is by these standards that 
Colin’s march must be judged; I can no longer. recall the dates. 
2. He had, after all, some 7,000 men (far more had been counted 
on, so between Calcutta and Cawnpore the march must have gone 
atrociously badly and a great many men been lost) and if he beat 
the Oudhi with approximately 7,000 men (including the garrisons 
of Alam Bagh and Lucknow), it was no great feat. * An army of 
5-7,000 Englishmen has always been thought fully sufficient to go 
anywhere and do anything in the open field in India. That stamps 
the opponents at once.* A further consideration is that the Oudhi, 
although the most warlike race of the Ganges valley, were greatly 
inferior to the Sepoys as regards discipline, cohesion, weapons, 
etc., etc., precisely because they had never come under direct 
European organisation. Hence the main battle took the form of *a 
running fight, that is to say a skirmishing engagement in which 
the Oudhians were pushed back from post to post. Now it is true 
the British are, with the Russians, the worst light infantry in 
Europe, but they have learnt something in the Crimea, and at all 
events they had this great advantage over the Oudhians that their 
line of skirmishers was properly and regularly supported by 
pickets and lines the whole under one individual commander and 
cooperating towards a single end; while their opponents in the 
normal Asiatic manner, dispersed in irregular clusters, everyone — 
pressing to the front, thus offering a sixfold aim to the British, 
having no regular supports or reserves and each cluster com- 
manded by its own clannish chief, acting independently of every 
other clan. For it must be repeated, up to now we have not heard 

4 Colin Campbell 

in a single instance that any insurrectionary army in India had 
been properly constituted under a recognized chief.* No other 
indication as to the nature of the fighting is given in the 
despatches nor, for that matter, any description of the terrain or 
particulars about the employment of troops, so that it’s absolutely 
impossible for me to say anything further (let alone from 
memory). : 

As to France, you are right 1N Every particular, so far as I can 
judge. There, too, things have taken a normal course up till now. 
Over here the affair is in its infancy so far as HOME TRADE is 
concerned; it is to this category that the two London houses in the 
Manchester trave belong. But that’s only a beginning. This kind of 
firm can only become seriously embroiled when the pressure has 
lasted for 8-12 months. The course of the present crisis would 
seem to me to have more affinity with that of 1837-42 than with 
any other—if one disregards the splendid universality and 
all-embracing nature of the present one. Just now people here are 
deluding themselves into thinking that THE crisis is over because the 
first phase, the monetary crisis with its immediate consequences, is 
over. Au fond each individual bourgeois still believes that his 
particular branch of business, and notably his own business, has 
been thoroughly sounp and, being able to measure themselves aga- 
inst the sranparp of such splendid swindlers as Monteith, Macdo- 
nald, etc., etc., they naturally imagine themselves to be uncom- 
monly virtuous. Nevertheless, this will not compensate Mr. Troost 
for losing 7/3 to */, of his fortune on his 35,000 sacks of 
coffee, nor Mr Senator Merck for the fact that his shipments and 
other such operations to the tune of 22 million banco marks will 
eat up the whole of his capital. John Pondu, a Scot who has shot 
up here like a gigantic mushroom over the past 5 years, has, 
together with 5 others, 7,000 bales of silk in transit on which the 
loss will be £300,000. All this will not come to a head until March 
or April, and the tremendous efforts to push up prices on the 
commodity market will be frustrated at regular intervals as vessels 
arrive. It would seem that icy weather and east winds are at 
present preventing ships from arriving here. Should this continue 
for a week or a fortnight, the price of all. produce will 
undoubtedly rise, only to fall all the more precipitously as soon as 
a west wind brings in an entire fleet. Voila ce qui s’appelle Voffre et la 
demande en temps de crise.” Srocxs of cotton, too, are beginning to 
pile up in Liverpool—400,000 bales by today’s count, a RATHER MORE 

a at heart - > That’s what supply and demand is like in time of crisis. 

THAN AVERAGE stock, There’s still better to come and cotton is sure to 
fall again in the spring; it has just risen '/ed because de Jersey & 
Co.—a local firm which supplies almost the whole of the Russian 
market—having heard last week that their cancellation of all the 
orders they had placed in America had duly arrived—went and 
bought about 6,000 bales in Liverpool. That livened up the 
market, and any spinners who could afford to do so went in and 
bought something so as to supply their needs at the low prices. 
This alarmed, or rather put heart into, some other houses here 
and they, too, bought yarn and cloth so as to come in at the 
‘bottom’. It won’t last long; to start with we shall, I think, have 
moderate ups AND powns here, the tendency being generally down- 
ward, perhaps also rising a littl—one can’t say exactly—until 
somewhere or other the lightning strikes again. At all events, 
there’s a bad year ahead for spinners and manufacturers, if only 
because of insufficient demand and excessive supply. Stagnating 
pressure—that is the greatest danger so far as our local bourgeois 
are concerned. Monetary crises are of small account here, since all 
credits are extremely short-term (2-6 weeks). 

On Saturday I went fox-hunting—7 hours in the saddle. That 
sort of thing always keeps me in a state of devilish exhilaration for 
several days; it’s the greatest physical pleasure I know. I saw only 
2 out of the whole ririn who were better horsemen than myself, 
but then they were also better mounted. This will really put my 
health to rights. At least 20 of the chaps fell off or came down, 
2 horses were done for, 1 fox killed (I was in at THE DEATH); Otherwise 
no mishaps. Admittedly there were no real fox-hunters at the 
meet; they ride far better than I do, of course. I shall pass your 
thing on to Lupus. 

And now, a happy New Year to all your family and to the year _ 
of strife 1858. 

Your 
F. E.