The Rhenish Diet of Towns

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung”
No. 289, May 4, 1849]

* Cologne, May 3. The Congress of the Rhenish municipal councils will, in a less official form, nevertheless take place, and that not until next Tuesday.

It goes without saying that we expect nothing at all from this assembly of bourgeois, who have been elected according to three census classes and from whose election the mass of the people was excluded. A deputation will be sent to Berlin, which will not even be received by Herr von Hohenzollern.

Perhaps, however, the Congress will not take place at all. On Sunday various party congresses are being held here in Cologne. The government is seeking at any price to provoke a conflict between the people and the military, in order to be able to gag us Rhinelanders just as the Berliners have been gagged.

It depends on the workers of Cologne to thwart this fine little Prussian plan. By calm behaviour, by unshakable indifference to all provocations by the military, the workers of Cologne can deprive the government of any pretext for violent measures.

Decisive events are imminent. Vienna, Bohemia, South Germany, Berlin are in ferment and awaiting the appropriate moment. Cologne can co-operate, co-operate very vigorously, but it cannot begin a decisive blow.

May the workers of Cologne bear in mind, especially next Sunday, that all government provocations are aimed solely at an outbreak that would occur at a moment unfavourable for us and favourable for the government.

Only with great events can revolutions be made; but if one takes up the challenges of the government, one brings about at most a riot.

Workers of Cologne, remember the 25th of September!

Written by Friedrich Engels.

[The Third Party in the Alliance]

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung”
No. 289, May 4, 1849, Supplement]

* Cologne, May 3. We have pointed out a hundred times the fact that Herr von Hohenzollern and his ministry are “the third party in the alliance” of Russia and Austria. A hundred times the worthy German burgher has indignantly repudiated such a thing.

Now, then: it is now established that among the secret reasons for the dissolution of the Chamber was also this, that, by secret treaty with the knez of Olmütz and the All-Highest Pravoslavny Tsar of Petersburg, the Russian sub-knez at Sanssouci has undertaken to provide 40,000 Prussians for Bohemia to keep down the people and as a reserve against the Hungarians. Even in the Paulskirche there has been open talk of it. Even the Centres and a section of the Right in Berlin could not be moved to keep silent about it. So they were chased away.

As if that were not enough: The Berlin “National-Zeitung” writes from Berlin, May 1:
“We have just learned from a completely reliable source: ‘Yesterday morning the management of the Upper Silesian Railway received from the Minister of the Interior a telegraphic dispatch to the effect that 30,000 Russian troops would be transported from Cracow by way of the Upper Silesian Railway (i.e., from Cracow via Mislowitz, Kosel, Ratibor, Oderberg) to Austria. The management of the Upper Silesian Railway is being informed that the royal Prussian government has no objection and expects that the railway management will in no way hinder this transport.’

The dispatch was signed: v. Manteuffel.”

So that is what we have come to: Not only does the imperial Russian sub-knez government in Potsdam issue warrants for the arrest of Kossuth, Bem and Görgey; no, it even has 30,000 Russian myrmidons transported by railway through Prussian territory to Hungary — and what is more, it sends 40,000 Prussian soldiers to Bohemia to keep down a people that has been vilely trampled underfoot and is thirsting for revenge!

Hear it, Rhinelanders! It is for this, then, that we have been forced under the Russo-Prussian tyranny: so that our sons and brothers, Rhinelanders like ourselves, are sent to Bohemia and perhaps to Hungary, to help suppress, in the service of the Russian Tsar, the last people that is defending the revolution of 1848 with arms in hand!

It is for this that we were betrayed to Prussia in 1815, so that the disgrace should also fall upon us, that we had tolerated that across our territory, through a land united with us in the same state, the Russians marched with drums beating and flags flying against the Magyar revolutionary army.

We became subjects of Prussia and have remained subjects only by force. We were never Prussians. But now, when we are led against Hungary, when Prussian territory is trodden by Russian robber bands, now we feel ourselves to be Prussians, indeed, we feel what a disgrace it is to bear the name of Prussian!