London, 14 November 1885 

My dear Lafargue, 

Thanks for the portrait— what a surly face they make me pull in 
France, a country where they nevertheless laugh from time to time, or 
so it is said. Perhaps they will laugh at me too. Nim says it makes me 
look ten years older, out of flattery no doubt. 

The insurrections of May 1849 were provoked by the refusal of 
most of the German governments to accept the constitution for Ger- 
many as a whole approved by the National Assembly at Frank- 
furt.*73 This assembly, which never had any real power and neglect- 
ed any steps to acquire some, also contrived to lose the last vestige of 
its moral power just at the moment when it had realised on paper its 
somewhat romantic ‘constitution’. Nevertheless that constitution was 
then the sole banner under which it was still possible to try to launch 
anew movement — if they were not to deprive themselves of one after 
victory had been achieved. In the smaller states, therefore, they 
sought to compel the governments to recognise it. There followed the 
insurrections in Dresden (3 May) and, a few days later, in the Ba- 
varian Palatinate and the Grand Duchy of Baden where the Grand 
Duke” took flight, the army having declared itself for the people. 

The Dresden insurrection was put down after a heroic resistance — 
the fighting went on for four days— with the help of Prussian troops. 

@ (Russ.) black earth - > Leopold 

(In Prussia reaction had gained the upper hand as a result of the coup 
d’état of November 1848; Berlin was disarmed and placed under 
a state of siege.) But to subdue the Palatinate and Baden an army was 
needed. So in Prussia they made a start by calling the Landwehr +7‘ to 
arms. At Iserlohn (Westphalia) and Elberfeld (Rhenish Prussia) men 
refused to march. Troops were sent, who found the towns barricaded 
and were repulsed. About a fortnight later Iserlohn was taken after 
two days’ resistance. Elberfeld offered relatively few opportunities for 
defence and so, with troops bearing down on them from every side, 
the defenders, about a thousand in number, resolved to fight their 
way through to the states that had risen in the south. They were cut 
to pieces en route, but a fair number managed to get down there with 
the help of the population. I was aide-de-camp to Mirbach, the com- 
mandant at Elberfeld. Before carrying out his plan he sent me on 
a mission to Cologne, in other words into the enemy’s camp, where 
I hid in Daniels’ house. The truth is that he did not want to have 
a known communist in his corps for fear of alarming the bourgeoisie 
of the regions through which he was to pass. He made a rendezvous 
with me in the Palatinate but failed to turn up, having been taken 
prisoner (acquitted by the Elberfeld jury a year later). Mirbach had 
gone through the campaigns in Greece from 1825 to 1829 and Poland 
from 1830 to 1831; he later again returned to Greece where he died. 
Meanwhile the insurrection in the south was gathering strength, 
but it made the fatal blunder of not attacking. The troops of the small 
adjacent states were only looking for a pretext to join the insurrec- 
tion, at that time they were determined not to fight against the peo- 
ple. A pretext was then provided, namely that they should advance 
on Frankfurt in order to protect the assembly against the Prussian 
and Austrian soldiers who were surrounding the place. After the sup- 
pression of the Neue Rheinische Keitung Marx and I had gone to Mann- 
heim to recommend this move to the leaders. But they produced all 
manner of excuses— that the army was disorganised by the flight of 
their former officers, that they were short of everything, etc., etc. 
About the beginning of June the Prussians on the one hand and the 
Bavarians on the other, reinforced by those same troops from the 
smaller states whom we could have won over with greater daring, but 
who saw themselves drowned in an ocean of reactionary armies, ad- 
vanced on the insurgent areas. It took them no more than a week to 
clear the Palatinate — there were 36,000 Prussians against 8-9,000 in- 
surgents, and the two fortresses of the country were in reactionary 

hands. We withdrew to the troops in Baden, some 8,000 men of the 
line and 12,000 irregulars, themselves beset by 30,000 reactionary 
troops. There were four general engagements in which numerical 
superiority and the violation of Württemberg territory, a move that 
enabled them to outflank us at the decisive moment, gave the reac- 
tionaries the advantage. After six weeks of fighting the remains of the 
rebel army had to cross over into Switzerland. 

During this war I was aide-de-camp to Colonel Willich who com- 
manded a corps of irregulars of marked proletarian character. I took 
part in three minor engagements and also in the last decisive battle of 
the Murg. 

That, I trust, will enable you to sum the whole thing up in a few 
lines if you absolutely insist on writing a commentary on Citizen 
Clarus’ fine work. 

I trust your interesting furuncle will discharge its purulent contents 
before long. Wash the sore with 2% carbolic acid in 98% water; it’s 
a capital way of killing suppurating cells. 

A kiss for Laura. 

Yours ever,