London, 24 March 1877 
122 Regent’s Park Road, N. W. 

My dear old Friend, 

I am sending you herewith a money-order for 50 fr. and, I 
think, 20 centimes and would ask you to send me in return two 
copies of the Geschichte der süddeutschen Mairevolution and, if you 
can, the Bulletin de la Fédération jurassienne for 1876. If you can 
send it through a bookseller, give him the parcel addressed: F. E. 
care of F. Wohlauer, St. Paul’s Buildings, Paternoster Row, 
London; in which case it will cost very little. Marx and I would like 
you to use the rest of the money as an additional contribution to 
the Précurseur. 

In No. 32 of the Vorwärts there is an article of mine, ‘From 
Italy’, from which you will have seen that the empire of Messieurs 
les Bakuninists is in a truly splendid state of disintegration. The 
people on the Plebe deserve every support and would certainly be 
glad to make a reciprocal arrangement with the Précurseur. The 
paper’s address is La Plebe, Via Carlo Alberto No. 1, Milan. The 
editor is called Enrico Bignami and he has maintained correspon- 
dence with me for years, which only became dormant when the 
Bakuninists’ dictatorship was at its fiercest in Italy. Even Mr Malon 
has defected and he, after all, was one of the first seventeen 
International Brethren and founders of the Alliance?; one by 
one they are foreswearing their allegiance to the luckless 
Guillaume. World government is not exactly everybody’s cup of 
tea and, as for these gentlemen’s future congresses, there’s every 
likelihood that the goings-on there will be even wilder than at The 
Hague.” Our policy of mercilessly unmasking these people and 
then letting them rip has been gloriously vindicated. What with 
Belgium’s turning her back on them, the defection of the last 
remnant in Italy, and the lamentable role they play in Switzerland 
(the annual shindy in Berne with the obligatory free-for-all), they 
have nothing left save the minuscule Spanish Alliance which only 

a J. Ph. Becker und Ch. Essellen, Geschichte der stiddeutschen Mai-Revolution des 
Jahres 1849.-» See present edition, Vol. 24. 

keeps going because they have virtually no public outlet there and 
double-dealings are more easily conducted in the dark. 

Your little piece in the Neue Welt amused me greatly.* You 
ought to write a sequel; it’s good for the young to be reminded 
about the earlier movements, otherwise they imagine that they are 
indebted to no one but themselves. 

Your old friend, 

F. Engels