London, 4 December 1889 

Dear Adler, 
I suggest that you undertake a revision of Avenel’s Cloots* for the 
following reasons: 

4G, Avenel, Anacharsis Cloots: d’orateur du genre humaine 

In my view (and Marx’s) the book contains the first accurate account, 
based on a study of the records, to deal specifically with the critical epoch 
of the French Revolution, namely the time between 10 August and 9 
Thermidor.>*> 

The Paris Commune? and Cloots were in favour of a propaganda 
war as the only possible expedient, whereas the Comité de salut public” 
went in for politics, was afraid of the European coalition and sought 
peace by dividing the members of that coalition. Danton wished for 
peace with England, in other words with Fox and the opposition party, 
which hoped to come to the helm at the elections. Robespierre was 
conducting intrigues in Basle with Austria and Prussia and wished to 
compound with those powers. Both joined forces against the Commune, 
primarily with the intention of overthrowing the men who wished for a 
propaganda war—the republicanisation of Europe. They succeeded and 
the Commune (Hébert, Cloots, etc.) had their heads cut off. From then 
on, however, no peace was possible between those who wanted to 
conclude peace only with Britain and those who wanted to conclude 
peace only with the German powers. The English elections turned out in 
favour of Pitt, which meant Fox’s exclusion from power for years to 
come; as a result Danton’s position was ruined, Robespierre emerged 
victorious and cut off Danton’s head. But—and this was a point upon 
which Avenel didn’t lay enough stress—whereas the reign of terror was 
now intensified beyond all reason, because indispensable if Robespierre 
was to remain at the helm in the conditions then obtaining in France, it 
was rendered wholly superfluous by the Fleurus victory of 26 June 
1794,°& which not only liberated the frontiers but delivered up to France 
both Belgium and, indirectly, the left bank of the Rhine, whereby 
Robespierre was also rendered superfluous and fell on 28 July. 

The whole of the French Revolution is dominated by the war with the 
coalition, a war upon which its every pulsation depends.—Let the coali- 
tion army advance into France, and the vagus takes over, the heart 
pounds, there’s a revolutionary crisis. Let it be pushed back—and the 
sympathetic ganglion takes over, the heart slows down, reactionary 
elements again push themselves to the fore, the plebeians—the forerun- 
ners of the later proletariat, thanks to whose energy alone the 
Revolution was saved—are restored to reason and order. 

The tragic thing about it was that the party of war a outrance,? of war 
for the liberation of the peoples, eventually turned out to be right, and 

2 to the knife 

that the Republic successfully tackled the whole of Europe, but not until 
after that party had itself long since been decapitated, while instead of 
the propaganda war, there ensued the Peace of Basle°>’ and the bourgeois 
orgy of the Directory.°** 

The book must be completely revised and abridged—the bombast 
must be excised, and the facts, having been supplemented from ordinary 
history books, made to stand out clearly. In the process Cloots can be 
completely relegated to the background; the most important things from 
the Lundis révolutionnaitres can be interpolated*—and in this way it can 
be made into a work on the Revolution such as has never existed before. 

The account of how the Battle of Fleurus precipitated the collapse of 
the reign of terror appeared in 1842 in the (first) Rheinische Zeitung, in 
an excellent review by C. F Köppen of H. Leo’s Geschichte der franzé- 
sischen Revolution.°°° 

Many regards to your wife and to Louise Kautsky. 

Your 
EE.