17 May 1849, Second Edition]

* Cologne, 16 May. The *Neue Rheinische Zeitung* was also represented on the Elberfeld barricades.

To counter various false rumours we owe our readers a brief report on this matter:

On 10 May Friedrich Engels, editor of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*, travelled from Cologne to Elberfeld, bringing with him from Solingen two cases of cartridges which had been captured by the Solingen workers during the storming of the Gräfrath arsenal. On his arrival in Elberfeld, he reported to the Committee of Public Safety on the situation in Cologne, placed himself at the disposal of the Committee of Public Safety, and was immediately entrusted by the military commission with the direction of the fortification works by the following authorisation:

“The military commission of the Committee of Public Safety hereby instructs Herr Friedrich Engels to inspect all the barricades in the town and to complete the fortifications. All guard posts on the barricades are hereby requested to support him wherever it is necessary.

Elberfeld, 11 May 1849 (signed) Hühnerbein Troost”

The following day the artillery, too, was placed at his disposal:

“Authorisation for Citizen F. Engels to position the cannon at his own discretion and to requisition the necessary workmen, the costs of which shall be borne by the Committee of Public Safety.

Elberfeld, 12 May 1849 The Committee of Public Safety

On its behalf:
(signed) Pothmann Hühnerbein Troost”

On the very first day of his presence, Engels organised a company of pioneers and completed the barricades at several approaches to the town. He attended all meetings of the military commission and proposed Herr Mirbach to it as supreme commander, a proposal which was accepted unanimously. Over the following days he continued his activity, modified several barricades, designated positions for new ones and reinforced the pioneer companies. From the moment Mirbach arrived, he placed himself at his disposal and also took part in the councils of war held by the supreme commander.

Throughout his entire presence, Engels enjoyed the most unreserved confidence both of the armed workers of the Berg and Mark and of the free corps.

On the very first day of his presence, Herr Riotte, a member of the Committee of Public Safety, asked him about his intentions. Engels declared that he had come, firstly, because he had been deputed to do so from Cologne; secondly, because he believed that in military matters he might perhaps be of some use; and thirdly, because, being himself a native of the Berg region, he had considered it a point of honour to be present at the first armed rising of the people of the Berg. His wish was to concern himself exclusively with military matters and to remain completely outside the political character of the movement, since it was obvious that so far only a black-red-gold movement was possible here and that any action against the Imperial Constitution must therefore be avoided.

Herr Riotte fully agreed with this declaration.

On the morning of the 14th, after Engels had accompanied Supreme Commander Mirbach to the general muster on the Engelnberg, Herr Höchster, likewise of the Committee of Public Safety, came to him and declared: although there was absolutely nothing to be said against his conduct, the Elberfeld bourgeoisie was nevertheless in the highest degree alarmed by his presence; it feared at every moment that he would proclaim the red republic, and it was the general wish that he should withdraw.

Engels declared that he would neither force himself upon them nor desert his post in a cowardly manner, and demanded, without otherwise committing himself to anything, that this wish should be handed to him in black and white, signed by the entire Committee of Public Safety.

Herr Höchster brought the matter before the Committee of Public Safety, and on the same day the following resolution was adopted:

“The citizen Friedrich Engels of Barmen, lately resident in Cologne, is requested, with full recognition of the activity he has hitherto displayed in this town, to leave the municipal territory of this community today, since his presence might give cause for misunderstandings as to the character of the movement.”

Already before the resolution was adopted, Engels had declared that he would comply with the demand of the Committee of Public Safety only if Mirbach commanded him to do so. Mirbach had come on his instigation, and he therefore ought not to leave until Mirbach dismissed him.

On the morning of the 15th, after urgent pressure from the side of the Committee of Public Safety, Mirbach finally signed the resolution in question, which was then also made known by placard.

The armed workers and free corps were in the highest degree agitated over the resolution of the Committee of Public Safety. They demanded that Engels should stay; they would “protect him with their lives”. Engels went to them himself and calmed them, referring them to Mirbach and declaring that he would not be the first to refuse obedience to the commander who had been summoned at his instigation and who, moreover, possessed his unreserved confidence.

Engels then carried out a reconnaissance of the surrounding area and left Elberfeld, after he had handed over his command to his adjutant.

The workers of the Berg and Mark, however, who have shown such surprising affection and attachment to our co-editor, may consider that the present movement is only the prelude to another, a thousand times more serious, movement, in which it will be a question of their, the workers’, own most immediate interests. This new revolutionary movement will be the result of the present one, and as soon as it sets in, Engels—on that the workers may rely—will, just as much as all the other editors of the *N[eue] Rh[einische] Z[ei]t[un]g*, be at his post, and no power on earth will then move him to abandon that post.

No. 301, 19 May 1849]

* Cologne, 18 May. Some time ago, a demand was forwarded from Berlin to a local authority that a state of siege be once again imposed over Cologne. The intention was the silencing of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*[?] by martial law, but unexpected resistance was encountered. Later the Cologne government turned to the local *parquet* to achieve the same end through arbitrary arrests. It foundered on the juristic scruples of the *parquet*, just as it had twice already foundered on the sound common sense of the Rhenish juries.¹ Nothing else remained but to take refuge in a police trick, and for the moment the end has been achieved. The *Neue Rheinische Zeitung* is ceasing publication for the time being. On 16 May the following governmental scrawl was communicated to its editor-in-chief, Karl Marx:

“In its latest numbers (!) the *N[eue] Rh[einische] Z[eitung]* comes out ever more decisively with incitement to contempt of the existing government, to violent overthrow and to the introduction of the social republic. The right of hospitality (!), which he has so disgracefully abused, is therefore to be withdrawn from its editor-in-chief, Dr. Karl Marx, and since the same has not obtained permission for further sojourn in the states here, he is enjoined to leave them within 24 hours. Should he not comply voluntarily with the demand addressed to him, he is to be forcibly removed across the border.

Cologne, 11 May 1849
Royal Government
Moeller

To the Royal Police Director Herr Geiger, here”

What is the point of these silly phrases, these official lies!

The latest numbers of the *N[eue] Rh[einische] Z[eitung]* differ not one iota in tendency and language from its first “specimen number”. In that “first number” it said, among other things:

“Herr Hüser’s project (in Mainz) is only one part of the great plan of the Berlin reaction, which strives … to deliver us defenceless … into the hands of the army.”¹

Eh bien, messieurs, qu’en dites vous maintenant?²

As for our tendency – was it unknown to the government? Did we not declare before the juries that it is now “the task of the press to undermine all the foundations of the existing order”?³ What concerns the Hohenzollern *Unterthan* in particular, read the number of 19 October 1848, where it says:

“The King is consistent. He would always have been consistent, had not the March days unfortunately thrust that fateful piece of paper between His Majesty and the people. His Majesty at this moment seems again, as before the March days, to believe in the ‘iron feet’ of Slavdom, and the people of Vienna is perhaps the magician who will transform the iron into clay.”⁴

Est-ce clair, messieurs?⁵

And the “social republic” – did we proclaim it only in the “latest numbers” of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*?

For the feeble-minded, who could not see the “red” thread running through our whole manner of viewing and presenting the European movement, have we not spoken to them in open, unmistakable words?

“Assume,” it says in the number of the *N[eue] Rh[einische] Z[ei]t[un]g* of 7 November, “assume that the counter-revolution were to live throughout Europe by force of arms, it would die throughout Europe by force of money. The fatality that would cancel the victory would be the European – bankruptcy, the state bankruptcy. Against the ‘economic’ points the points of bayonets snap like rotten tinder. But the development does not await the day of expiry of those bills which the European states have drawn on the new European society.

In Paris the annihilating counter-blow of the June revolution will be struck. With the victory of the ‘red’ republic in Paris, the armies will be spewed forth from the interior of the countries to and across the frontiers, and the real power of the contending parties will become clearly apparent. Then we shall remember June, remember October, and we too shall cry:

Vae Victis!

The fruitless butcheries since the June and October days, the tedious sacrificial feast since February and March, the cannibalism of the counter-revolution itself will convince the peoples that there is only one means of abbreviating, simplifying and concentrating the murderous death-throes of the old society and the bloody birth-throes of the new society – only one means – the revolutionary terrorism.”⁶

Est-ce clair, messieurs?⁷

From the very outset we have thought it superfluous to conceal our view. In a polemic against the local *parquet* we called out to you:

“The real opposition of the *N[eue] Rh[einische] Z[eitung]* begins only in the tricolour republic.”⁸

And we were at that time speaking with the *parquet*. We summed up the old year 1848 (cf. the issue of 31 Dec[ember] 1848) in the words:

"The history of the Prussian bourgeoisie, as indeed of the German bourgeoisie from March to December, proves that in Germany a purely bourgeois revolution and the foundation of the rule of the bourgeoisie in the form of constitutional monarchy is impossible, that only the feudal-absolutist counter-revolution is possible or the social-republican revolution."*

Did we therefore have to wait for the "last numbers" of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung* before unmistakably coming forward with the social-republican tendency? Had you not read our articles on the June revolution, and was the soul of the June revolution not the soul of our newspaper?

What, then, is the purpose of your hypocritical phrases, fishing for an impossible pretext?

We are ruthless, we ask no quarter from you. When our turn comes, we shall not gloss over terrorism. But the royalist terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and of law, in practice they are brutal, contemptible, base, in theory cowardly, covert, double-tongued, in both respects without honour.

The Prussian government scribble is stupid enough to speak of a right of hospitality "shamefully violated" by the editor-in-chief of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Karl Marx.

The right of hospitality which the impudent intruders, the East Elbians (Borussians), have imposed on us Rhinelanders upon our own native soil has indeed been "shamefully" violated by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.* We believe we have thereby earned the thanks of the Rhine Province. We have saved the revolutionary honour of our home soil. Henceforth only the Neue Preußische Zeitung!?! will enjoy full civic rights in the Rhine Province.

At parting, we call to our readers' memory the words of our first January number:

"Revolutionary rising of the French working class, world war —
that is the table of contents of the year 1849."*!

And already a revolutionary army, mixed from fighters of all nationalities, stands in the East confronting old Europe represented by and coalesced in the Russian army; already the "red republic" is threatening from Paris!

No. 301, May 19, 1849 ]

* Cologne, May 18. At the moment when the Magyar war, owing to the actual entry of the Russians, becomes a European war, we are forced to discontinue our reports on its further course. It remains for us only to present to our readers once more, in a brief survey, the development of this grandiose East European revolutionary war.

It will be remembered how, even before the February revolution, in the autumn of 1847, the Pressburg Diet, under Kossuth's leadership, adopted a series of revolutionary resolutions; how it decreed the saleability of landed property, the freedom of movement of the peasants, the commutation of feudal dues, the emancipation of the Jews, equal taxation of all classes; how it granted the Croats and Slavonians the official use of their own language in internal affairs and, finally, by demanding a separate responsible ministry for Hungary, took the first step towards the severance of Hungary on the very day the February revolution began in Paris (February 22).

The February revolution broke out. With it, the resistance of the Vienna government to the demands of the Hungarians collapsed. On March 16, the day after the Vienna revolution, the independent Hungarian ministry was granted, thereby reducing the connection between Hungary and Austria to a mere personal union.

Now the Magyar revolution, which had become independent, advanced rapidly. All political privileges were abolished, universal suffrage was introduced, all feudal dues, labour services, and tithes were abolished without compensation, to be indemnified by the state; the union with Transylvania was carried through, the appointment of Kossuth as finance minister and the dismissal of the rebellious Ban Jellachich were exacted.

Meanwhile, the Austrian government recovered again. While the allegedly responsible ministry in Vienna remained impotent, the camarilla of the Innsbruck court rose all the more powerfully, supported by the imperial army in Italy, by the national aspirations of the Czechs, Croats, and Serbs, and by the obdurate narrow-mindedness of the Ruthenian[?] peasants.

On June 17, the Serb insurrection broke out in the Banat and the Bácska, instigated by money and emissaries from the court. On the 20th, Jellachich had an audience with the Emperor in Innsbruck and was reappointed Ban. On returning to Croatia, Jellachich renounced obedience to the Hungarian ministry and on August 25 declared war on it.

The betrayal of the Habsburg camarilla lay openly exposed. Once more the Hungarians tried to bring the Emperor back onto the constitutional path. They sent a deputation of 200 members of the Diet to Vienna; the Emperor answered evasively. The agitation grew. The people demanded guarantees and compelled a change of ministry. The traitors who were also sitting in the Pest ministry were removed, and on September 20 Kossuth was appointed prime minister. But only four days later the Emperor's deputy, the Palatine Archduke Stephen, fled to Vienna, and on the 26th the Emperor issued the notorious manifesto to the Hungarians, in which he dismissed the ministry as rebellious, appointed the Magyar-devourer Jellachich as governor of Hungary, and assailed the most essential revolutionary conquests of Hungary.

The manifesto, countersigned by no Hungarian minister, was declared null and void by Kossuth. *

In the meantime, Jellachich, favoured by the disorganisation and treachery that prevailed throughout the nominally Hungarian but in reality old-imperial officer corps and general staff, had advanced as far as Stuhlweißenburg. There the Hungarian army, despite its treacherous leaders, repulsed him and drove him back onto Austrian territory to beneath the walls of Vienna. The Emperor and the old traitor Latour resolved to send him reinforcements and to reconquer Hungary with German and Slav troops. Then the Vienna revolution of October 6 broke out and, for the time being, put an end to the imperial-royal projects.

Kossuth immediately marched to the aid of the Viennese with a Magyar corps. At the Leitha, the indecision of the Vienna Diet, the treachery of his own officers, and the poor organisation of his army — which consisted largely of the Landsturm — prevented him from entering immediately. He was finally obliged to have a few score officers arrested, taken to Pest, and some shot, and now he dared the attack. Too late — Vienna had already fallen, and his undisciplined Landsturm were thrown back at Schwechat by the regular Austrian troops.

The truce between the Imperial forces and the Magyars lasted another six weeks. While both armies made every effort to reinforce themselves, the Olmütz camarilla[29] carried out its long-prepared coup: it had the idiot Ferdinand, who had compromised and worn himself out by concessions to the revolution, abdicate, and set the child Franz Joseph, the son of Sophie, upon the throne as its instrument. Relying on the Hungarian constitution, the Pest Diet rejected this change of throne.

In mid-December, the clouds finally opened. By that time, the imperial army had all but encircled Hungary. The attack was launched from all sides.

From Austria, three army corps under the personal supreme command of Field Marshal Windischgrätz, at a strength of at least 90,000 men, advanced south of the Danube. From Styria, Nugent with about 20,000 men moved along the left bank of the Drave; from Croatia, Dahlen with 10,000 men along the right bank of the Drave towards the Banat. In the Banat itself, several border regiments, the garrison of Temesvár, the Serb Landsturm, and the Serbian auxiliary corps of Knićanin, together 30,000–40,000 men under Todorovich and Rukavina, were fighting. In Transylvania stood Puchner with 20,000–25,000 men and Malkowski, who had invaded from the Bukovina, with 10,000–15,000 men. Finally, from Galicia, Schlick pressed forward with a corps of 20,000–25,000 men against the upper Theiss.

The imperial army thus totalled at least 200,000 regular troops, mostly soldiers accustomed to war, not counting the Slav, Romanian, and Saxon Landsturm and national guards who took part in the fighting in the south and in Transylvania.

Against this colossal armed force, Hungary could pit an army of perhaps 80,000–90,000 drilled troops, among them 24,000 seasoned ex-Imperial soldiers, and, in addition, 50,000–60,000 still completely unorganised Honvéds and Landsturm; an army whose leaders were for the most part just such traitors as the officers Kossuth had arrested at the Leitha.

But while, for the time being, no more recruits could be drawn from the forcibly held-down Austria, while Austria was financially ruined and almost without money, the Magyars still had great resources open to them. The enthusiasm for freedom of the Magyars, heightened still further by national pride, grew with every day and placed at Kossuth's disposal a number of volunteers eager to fight unheard-of for a small people of five million; the Hungarian banknote press provided him with an inexhaustible source of money, and every Magyar accepted these national assignats as if they were hard silver coin. Rifle and cannon factories were in full operation. The army lacked only weapons, training, and good leaders, and all that could be provided in a few months. The only thing that mattered, therefore, was to gain time, to lure the Imperial forces into the country, where they would be worn down by ceaseless guerrilla warfare and weakened by leaving behind strong garrisons and other detachments.

Hence the plan of the Hungarians: to withdraw slowly into the interior, to train the recruits in constant skirmishes, and, in the utmost emergency, to place the Theiss line, with its impassable swamps — that natural moat drawn around the core of the Magyar land — between themselves and the enemy.

By all reckoning, the Hungarians ought to have been able to hold out in the area between Pressburg and Pest for two to three months, even against superior Austrian force. But then the severe frost set in, which for several months covered all rivers and all swamps with a sheet of ice passable even for heavy artillery. This eliminated all terrain conditions favourable for defence, rendered all the entrenchments the Magyars had thrown up useless, and exposed them to being outflanked. Thus it came about that the Hungarian army, in barely twenty days, was thrown back from Oedenburg and Pressburg to Raab, from Raab to Moor, from Moor to Pest, that it even had to evacuate Pest and, practically at the beginning of the campaign, had to withdraw behind the Theiss.

While this was happening with the main army, the same was occurring among the other corps. In the south, Nugent and Dahlen pressed on ever further against Esseg, occupied by the Magyars, and the Serbs drew ever closer to the Maros line; in Transylvania, Puchner and Malkowski joined forces at Maros-Vásárhely; in the north, Schlick advanced from the Carpathians down to the Theiss and, via Miskolcz, established communication with Windischgrätz.

The Austrians seemed to have almost done with the Magyar revolution. Two-thirds of Hungary and three-quarters of Transylvania were in their rear, and the Hungarians were beaten simultaneously in front, on both flanks and in the rear. A few miles further advance, and all the imperial corps would have joined hands in an ever more tightly constricting circle, in which Hungary would have been crushed as in the coils of a boa constrictor.

Now it became necessary that, while the Theiss formed a trench for the time being impassable for the enemy on the front, breathing space be created on some side.

This was done on two sides: in Transylvania by Bem, in Slovakia by Görgey. Both carried out operations by which they documented themselves as the most brilliant commanders of the present time.

Bem arrived in Klausenburg on 29 December, the only point in Transylvania still in the hands of the Magyars. He rapidly concentrated the reinforcements he had brought with him, the remnants of the beaten Magyar and Székler troops, marched on Maros-Vásárhely, beat the Austrians and pursued Malkowski first over the Carpathians into Bukovina and from there into Galicia, where he advanced as far as Stanislawow. Then he quickly turned back to Transylvania and drove Puchner before him to within a few miles of Hermannstadt. A few engagements, a couple of rapid cross marches, and all Transylvania was in his hands, except for two towns, Hermannstadt and Kronstadt, and these were lost unless the Russians were called into the country. The weight thrown into the scales by the 10,000 Russian auxiliary troops forced Bem to withdraw into the Székler land. There he organised the uprising of the Széklers, and when he had succeeded in this, he kept Puchner, who had advanced as far as Schässburg, busy with the Székler Landsturm, bypassed his position, moved directly on Hermannstadt, beat out the Russians, defeated the pursuing Puchner, marched on Kronstadt and entered it without striking a blow.

With that, Transylvania was conquered and the rear of the Magyar army was free. The natural fortress line formed by the Theiss now found its continuation and complement in the chain of the Carpathians and Transylvanian Alps, from the Zips down to the Banat borders.

At the same time, Görgey carried out a similar triumphal march in north-western Hungary. Having set out from Pesth with a corps for Slovakia, for two months he held in check the corps of Generals Götz, Csorich and Simunich, operating against him from three sides, and finally, when his position became untenable against superior forces, he fought his way through the Carpathians to Eperies and Kaschau. Here he stood in Schlick’s rear, forcing him hastily to abandon his position and his entire operational base and to fall back on the main army of Windischgrätz, while he himself marched down along the Hernad to the Theiss and joined forces with the Magyar main body.

This main body, now headed by Dembinski, had likewise crossed the Theiss and thrown back the enemy at all points. It

had advanced as far as Hatvan, six miles from Pesth, when the stronger concentration of the enemy forces compelled it to resume the retreat. After fierce resistance at Kapolna, Maklar and Poroszlö, it fell back again across the Theiss, at the very moment when Görgey arrived at Tokaj on the Theiss. The junction of the two corps gave the signal for a new, splendid advance of the Hungarians. Freshly trained recruits had arrived from the interior and reinforced the operational army of the Magyars. Polish and German legions had been formed, capable leaders had developed or had been drawn in, and instead of the leaderless, unorganised mass of December, the imperial troops suddenly faced a concentrated, courageous, numerous, well-organised and excellently led army. |

In three corps the Magyars advanced across the Theiss. The right wing (Görgey) moved northwards, bypassed the Ramberg division which had earlier followed him at Eperies, and drove it hastily back via Rimaszombat onto the imperial main army. The latter was beaten by Dembinski at Erlau, at Gyöngyös, at Gödöllő and at Hatvan, and retreated in haste to before Pesth. The left wing (Vetter), finally, expelled Jellachich from Kecskemét, Szolnok and Czegléd, beat him at Jászberény, and also forced him to retreat under the walls of Pesth. Here the imperial troops now stood along the Danube from Pesth to Waitzen, surrounded by the Magyars in a wide semicircle.

In order not to expose Pesth to bombardment from Ofen, the Hungarians resorted to their tried and tested method of dislodging the Austrians from this position by manoeuvre rather than by a direct frontal attack. Görgey took Waitzen and threw the Austrians back behind Gran and the Danube, beat Wohlgemuth between Gran and Neutra and thereby relieved Komorn, which was besieged by the imperial troops. The imperial troops, threatened in their line of retreat, had to resolve on a hasty retreat; Welden, the new commander-in-chief, fell back in the direction of Raab and Pressburg, and Jellachich, in order to appease his highly refractory Croats, had to march in haste with them down the Danube to Slavonia.

On their retreat, which more resembled a wild flight, Welden (especially his rearguard under Schlick) and Jellachich suffered considerable setbacks. While the corps of the latter struggles laboriously and slowly through the Tolna and Baranya county, Welden has been able to concentrate the remnants of his army in Pressburg. Remnants which possess absolutely no serious capacity for resistance. –

Simultaneously with these surprising victories of the Magyars against the Austrian main army, Moritz Perczel advanced from Szegedin and Tolna against Peterwardein, relieved it, took possession of the Bácska and penetrated into the Banat, to join hands here with Bem, who was advancing from Transylvania. Bem has already taken Arad and is besieging Temesvár; Perczel stands at Werschetz, hard on the Turkish border, so that in a few days the Banat will be conquered. At the same time, the Széklers cover the fortified Transylvanian mountain passes, the Landsturm the Upper Hungarian passes, and Görgey stands with a considerable force in the Jablunka Pass, on the Moravian-Galician border. |

In short, a few more days, and the victorious Magyar army, driving the remnants of the enormous Austrian armies before it, would march in triumph into Vienna and annihilate the Austrian monarchy for ever.

Hungary’s renunciation of Austria had already been resolved on 14 April in Debreczin; the alliance with the Poles had been openly declared since mid-January and had become a reality through the entry of 20,000-30,000 Poles into the Hungarian army. The alliance with the German-Austrians, which had existed since the Vienna revolution of 6 October and in the battle of Schwechat, was likewise borne and maintained by the German legions in the Hungarian army, as well as by the strategic and political necessity for the Magyars to obtain recognition for their declaration of independence through the capture of Vienna and the revolutionising of Austria.

Thus the Magyar war very quickly lost the national character it had at the beginning, and precisely through the seemingly most national step, the declaration of independence, it assumed a definitively European character. The alliance with the Poles for the liberation of both countries, the alliance with the Germans for the revolutionising of Eastern Germany, only acquired a definite character, a solid foundation, when Hungary renounced Austria and thereby declared the Austrian monarchy dissolved. Hungary independent, Poland restored, German-Austria turned into the revolutionary focus of Germany, Lombardy and Italy independent of themselves – with the execution of these plans the entire Eastern European state system was destroyed, Austria vanished, Prussia dissolved, Russia pushed back to the borders of Asia.

The Holy Alliance therefore had to strain every nerve to erect a barrier against the threatening Eastern European revolution: The Russian armies rolled towards the Transylvanian and Galician border. Prussia occupied the Bohemian-Silesian border and had the Russians led through its territory to Prerau, and in a few days the first Russian army corps stood on Moravian soil.

The Magyars, well aware that in a few weeks they would have to deal with numerous fresh forces, did not march on Vienna as rapidly as was initially expected. They could no more take Vienna than Pesth by a frontal attack without having to bombard it, and that they might not do. They were again, as at Pesth, compelled to take it by envelopment, and this required time, required the certainty that they themselves would not be threatened in flank and rear. But precisely here it was the Russians who threatened them in the rear, while from the other side, in the event of a direct threat to Vienna, strong momentary detachments from Radetzky’s army were to be expected.

Instead of advancing quickly on Vienna, the Hungarians thus acted very wisely in contenting themselves with driving the imperial troops ever further back out of Hungary, surrounding them in a great arc from the Lesser Carpathians to the foothills of the Styrian Alps, detaching a strong corps against the Jablunka, fortifying and covering the Galician mountain passes, attacking Ofen and rapidly pressing forward the new levy of 250,000 men, especially in the reconquered western counties. In this way they secured their flank and rear and assembled an army which has no more to fear from the Russian reinforcements than from the formerly so colossal imperial army. Of this glorious black-yellow army, 200,000 men marched into Hungary and scarcely 50,000 have returned; the rest have fallen, are wounded, sick, captured or have gone over. |

The Russians, it is true, threaten with many more armies. 120,000, according to others 170,000 men, are said to be on the march. According to the “Triester Freihafen”, the mobile operational army is to amount to well over 500,000 men. But one knows the Russian exaggerations; one knows that of the stated figures only half are on the muster rolls and that of the muster-roll figure again not half are actually present. If the Russian aid, after deduction of the troops needed to occupy Poland, raises 60,000-70,000 effective men, Austria may count itself fortunate. And with this number the Magyars will deal.

The Magyar war of 1849 has much in common with the Polish war of 1830/31.[133] But it is precisely in this that it differs from it, in that all the chances that Poland then had against it, it now has in its favour. It is well known that Lelewel at that time urged, without success, first, that the mass of the population be chained to the revolution by the emancipation of the peasants and the Jews, and, second, that by insurgent actions across the whole of old Poland all three partitioning powers should be drawn into the war, making the war a European one. What only went through in Poland at that time when it was too late, the Magyars are beginning with at once. The social revolution at home, the destruction of feudalism, was the first measure in Hungary; the involvement of Poland and Germany in the war the second, and with that the European war was here. It began with the entry of the first Russian corps onto German soil; with the entry of the first French battalion onto German soil it will take its decisive turn.

By the fact that the Hungarian war has become European, it enters into interaction with all the other moments of the European movement. Its course affects not only Germany, it also affects France and England. That the English bourgeoisie will tolerate the transformation of Austria into a Russian province is not to be expected; that the French people will not calmly look on as counter-revolution moves closer and closer towards it is certain. However the elections in France may turn out, the army has in any case declared for the revolution, and for the present the army decides. If the army wants war – and it does want it – then war is here.

And it will come. The revolution in Paris, whether by the elections, or by the fraternisation of the army with the revolutionary party that has already taken place at the ballot box, stands at the door. And while in South Germany the nucleus of a German revolutionary army is forming and Prussia is prevented from taking an active part in the Hungarian campaign, France is on the point of actively participating in the struggle. A few weeks, perhaps only a few days will decide, and the French, the Magyar-Polish and the German revolutionary armies will soon celebrate their feast of fraternisation on the battlefield beneath the walls of Berlin.

I. “An mein Volk!”

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung” No. 301, dated May 19, 1849]
* Cologne, May 18. “An mein Volk!”[8] Not “Mein herrliches Kriegsheer!”[96] Have the Russians perhaps been defeated? Has the wind veered and again blown the military cap from the head of the “undiminished”[321] servant of Russia, as it did in March of last year? Are the besieged “loyal subjects” again in full revolt?

When in 1813 the old “sainted one” likewise plucked up the necessary courage from the advance of the Cossacks to cast off his miserable coward’s role, the bloody castigations of the revolutionary imperial power, then, despite Cossacks, Bashkirs and the “glorious army” known from Jena![100], from Magdeburg, from the surrender of Küstrin to 150 Frenchmen![122], it was first the lying promises of a “proclamation to my people” which brought about the crusade of the Holy Alliance against the successors of the French Revolution.[123] And now! Has not the re-strengthened Hohenzoller, through the incursion of Cossacks onto German soil, found the courage necessary to abandon his post-March coward’s role, to remove the “scrap of paper thrust by the revolution between himself and his people”? Has not “My glorious army” taken revenge on the revolution in Dresden, Breslau, Posen, Berlin and on the Rhine in worthy fashion through the brave massacres of the defenceless, of women and children, with shrapnel and lunar caustic?

Has not the newly octroyed martial-law charter, “even outside the state of siege”, once again repealed the last cowardly concessions of March—abolition of censorship, right of association, arming of the people?

No, the son of the hero of Jena and Magdeburg still does not feel safe enough, despite Cossack alliances, despite the murder and martial-law privileges granted to the unleashed “glorious” soldiery mob. The undiminished crown is afraid, it appeals “To my People”, it “feels impelled” to address a cry for help for support against “internal and external foes” to the trodden-down, besieged, grapeshot-riddled “people”.

“Prussia is called to shield Germany in so difficult a time against internal and external foes. I therefore now summon My people to arms. The task is to establish order and law in our own land and in the other German states where our help is demanded; the task is to found Germany’s unity, to protect its liberty from the reign of terror of a party which would sacrifice civilisation, honour and loyalty to its passions, a party which has succeeded in casting a net of delusion and madness over a part of the people.”

“That is the kernel of the royal address,” cries the police cloaca Dumont[?], and Dumont’s paid police claqueurs have indeed found the right “kernel”.

The “external foes”! It is the “party of terror”, the party that spells terror for the valiant Hohenzoller, which demands our intervention in the “other German states”. The people in the Rhineland, Silesia, Saxony are called upon, “in the name of German unity”, to put an end to the revolutionary movements in the German abroad—Baden, Bavaria, Saxony! And to this end the bait of Hohenzoller popular bliss of 1813 is repeated, the tested “royal word” is once more pledged, a castrated recognition of the Frankfurt Constitution is promised to the “people”, and the “protection of law and liberty” against “godlessness” is promised. “I and My house want to serve the Lord.”[31] Is not the tested pledging of a “Hohenzoller royal word” worth a crusade against the “party of terror for the many-promising crown”?

The mighty imperial Russian underling has recalled the Prussian deputies from Frankfurt solely in order now to place himself, in accordance with his March pledge, “at the head of Germany”. The Assembly of Agreement and the octroyed Chamber have been blown apart, the “scrap of paper” has been replaced by the martial-law constitution and military murder courts, only for the purpose of guaranteeing the people the “protection of law and liberty”!

And the freedom of the press is suppressed, the press in Erfurt placed under censorship, the newspapers in the entire province of Posen, in Breslau, in Silesian provincial towns, in Berlin itself the “National-Zeitung”[?] directly banned, in Düsseldorf censorship de jure reintroduced, the press de facto totally eliminated (Düsseldorfer Blätter, “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”, etc.), and finally only the filthy police cloacas of the “Kölnische Zeitung” and the Berlin gallows-sheet[?] are octroyed upon the “free” subjects—all so that not even the last doubt may arise as to the value of the “royal word”!

And the word of the Hohenzoller is indeed worth the people’s putting on the uniform to strengthen the king’s courage, in order, under the Militia Law, to obtain for the wives left behind “protection against beggary” a monthly sum of one thaler of royal bounty money.[?]