Karl Marx: Man and Fighter Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen-Helfen

Chapter 12: The Revolutionary Tempest

The first sign of revolution came from Switzerland in November, 1847.

The first shot was fired in the high country

Against the priests.1

The reactionary cantons which formed the Roman Catholic League rose against the decision of the Federal Council to expel the Jesuits. The governments of Russia, Austria, Prussia and France, always ready to step in on the side of reaction, which was the very principle of their existence, took the part of the Catholic cantons and threatened military intervention. A local Swiss conflict flared up into a question of European importance. Oxenbein, leader of the Swiss radicals, threatened that if Austria dared to intervene he would send an army of twenty thousand men into Lombardy and proclaim an Italian republic. The Austrian troops gathered at the frontier but did not move and three weeks later the Catholic cantons were beaten. The arrival in London of the news of the fall of Lucerne, their capital, coincided with the opening of the Communist Congress.

From the Alps the revolutionary avalanche poured down into the Italian plain. In the face of the Swiss threat Austria beat a pitiful retreat. The prestige of the alien ruler was shaken. There were stormy demonstrations in Lombardy, and in some places the demonstrations developed into open fighting. In January insurrection broke out in the south, in Sicily.

The dance started in the South; Scylla and Charybdis,

Vesuvius and Etna burst forth, outbreak on outbreak,
blow on blow.2

The revolutionaries defeated the troops of the Bourbon Ferdinand of Naples in a five-day street-battle. Insurrection broke out in one Italian state after another. Constitutions were declared in Naples, Turin and Florence. King Ferdinand barely escaped trial by a people's court.

The industrial crisis which had made Europe ripe for revolution was particularly severe in Belgium, where economic development was relatively high. In the winter of 1847-8 unemployment in the textile areas rose from week to week, and in the workers' quarters, which were accustomed to privation, famine stalked abroad. Not a single day passed by, writes the historian of the Belgian workers' movement, without a starving worker breaking a shop-window for the sake of appeasing his hunger in prison.

The 1847 elections had brought the Liberals into power. They demonstrated their incapacity to check the crisis, and the agitation of the radical Democrats fell on fertile soil. The Association Démocratique was the leading spirit. Branch associations sprang up one after another in Ghent, Liege, Namur and elsewhere. Members streamed in in masses. They came from the working classes, from the hard-pressed petty-bourgeoisie and from intellectual circles too. Political tension grew as the economic crisis became more acute.

Events abroad were followed in Belgium with the greatest interest. 'The executioner is waiting,' Engels exclaimed with joy when in January, 1848, he summed up the progress of the movement during the past year for the Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung. The revolutionary wave swept over all frontiers, no firm-built dam was strong enough to hold it. Engels actually anticipated by a century the collapse of the 'chequered' Austrian Empire, 'botched together of bits stolen here and inherited there.' Poland seemed to be striking a fatal blow at Europe's other gendarme, Nicholas I of Russia. Poland, as has already been observed, was the country to which the revolutionaries of all countries kept their gaze constantly riveted during the three decades of reaction. The rising of Poland must mean the rising of all Europe, the liberation of Poland would be at once a symbol and a signal for all the oppressed. In the winter of 1847-8 three great democratic demonstrations on behalf of Poland took place in Brussels. On February 14 Belgians, Poles and Germans demonstrated in honour of the heroes of the 1830 revolution and the martyrs of the rising of the Russian Dekabrists. A week later, on February 22, Marx spoke at a meeting in memory of the Cracow rising of 1846. Marx extolled the Polish revolution and lauded the rising at Cracow for the glorious example it set Europe, 'in identifying the cause of nationality with that of democracy and the emancipation of the oppressed class.'3 The meeting closed with a pathetic scene. Old Lelevel, the veteran of the Polish revolution, embraced Marx and kissed him.

The refugees, forced to restrain themselves for so many years, cast themselves the more passionately into political activity now. There was no meeting in which they did not participate. This applied in particular to the German exiles, who threw themselves enthusiastically into the Belgian movement, without of course, forgetting their more particular German duties. There were innumerable contacts with the adjacent territories of Prussia, particularly with the Rhineland. After Marx and his comrades joined the Communist League they saw to it that every Communist with whom they were in contact founded a branch of the League. Illegal literature published abroad was smuggled into Germany in great quantities, and the more important articles from the_Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung_ were reprinted as fly-sheets and fairly widely distributed.

The German Communists in Belgium prepared to hurry to Germany at the first sign. Wilhelm Wolff was arrested by the Brussels police in the middle of February, 1848, and stated openly that he and his friends were directing all their attention to Germany, where they were carrying out intense propaganda. 'Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle,' he is quoted as saying in a police report, 'were the places designated for the risings.'

Hitherto the Belgian police and the Belgian Conservatives had not paid any particular attention to the German Communists. The Prussian ambassador never kept them out of his sight, and from time to time called the attention of the Belgian authorities to their 'criminal activities,' but without result. This state of affairs altered when the situation in the country became acute and the Germans became active. Several newspapers started attacking the German exiles, and the Prussian ambassador probably had a hand in the campaign. On January 20 he was able to inform his Government that the Belgian police now considered it necessary to keep a watch on the agitation being carried out and that they intended to take definite steps against foreigners, and against the Germans in particular. There is no doubt that the ambassador did all he could to encourage police action. Meanwhile tension grew from day to day. But everybody knew that the revolution could only conquer after it had conquered in Paris. Everybody waited for the crowing of the Gallic cock.

Unrest was rife in France. Suffrage reforms were demanded and, in accordance with the custom of the time, a campaign of banquets was organised. But nothing pointed to an immediate revolutionary outbreak. Louis Philippe, an old cynic who had experienced many revolutions, attempted to pacify his ministers. 'The Parisians won't start a revolution in winter,' he said. 'They storm things in hot weather. They stormed the Bastille in July, the Bourbon throne in June. But in January or February, no.' The stout, phlegmatic Louis Philippe forgot that salvoes fired into a crowd can cause a July temperature in February. On February 23 the military fired at a peaceful demonstration. Next morning Paris was filled with barricades. The people's cry was not for electoral reform but a republic. On the evening of the 24th the Palais Royal was in the hands of the insurrectionists. The king fled and a bonfire was made of the throne. The same evening a Provisional Government was formed and a republic proclaimed.

Events in Paris were known in Brussels, but even the greatest optimists had not expected things to develop so rapidly and so successfully. After the outbreak of the insurrection connection between Paris and Brussels was interrupted.

'On the evening of February 24, 1848,' writes Stephan Born, 'half a dozen German youths were standing on the Paris platform at Brussels station. They were practically alone. Since morning there had been no train from the French capital and no news about the unrest which had broken out. The honest inhabitants of the Belgian capital were a somewhat slow-blooded race and had to be warmed up before they got going. Curiosity about what might have happened in Paris apparently did not trouble them. We few Germans were, as I said, almost alone on the platform, and we were foreigners. But no, there were two other people, a lady and a gentleman, standing silently and anxiously in a corner. They too were waiting for the train, which, even if it did not come all the way from Paris, would at least be coming from the French frontier. Occasionally one or other of them would cast a gloomy look at us as we stood there chattering happily, expressing our conjectures and hopes concerning the news the arrival of which could not be delayed much longer now. They guessed our thoughts and advanced a few paces towards us, but suddenly a protracted whistle announced the approach of the long-awaited train. Another moment and it was in the station. Before it came to a standstill, the guard jumped down and shouted at the top of his voice: "The Red flag is flying on the tower of Valenciennes and a Republic has been proclaimed."

'"Long live the Republic!" we shouted as with one voice. But the lady and gentleman who had been waiting for news turned pale and beat a hurried retreat. A station official told us that they were the French ambassador, General Rumigny, and his wife.'

The victory of the Paris revolution disconcerted and dismayed the Belgian Government, or at any rate so it appeared on the surface. Rogier, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, opened negotiations with his friend, Considérant, the Fourierist, who recommended a revolution from above. The Government, which was in the hands of the Liberals, should proclaim a republic itself. The king gave the Republicans the hint that he would not oppose the people's will and was ready to abdicate if the Belgians really wanted a Republic. All he wished was that everything should happen in an orderly manner and without bloodshed, and besides he hoped for a respectable pension.

Everything seemed to be developing excellently, but the whole thing was only a manœuvre. In the meantime the Government called up the reserves and the soldiers on furlough and marched the regiments to Brussels. So far from trying to stop the spreading of rumours to the effect that they were prepared to accede of their own accord to the most extreme demands, they rather encouraged them in order to diminish the tension and pacify the determined few.

The leadership of the movement was provided by the Association Démocratique practically alone. On February 27 it summoned a mass meeting, which decided to meet again on the following day, this time outside the Town Hall, to demand the calling up of workers and artisans to supplement the National Guard and provide the necessary pressure. An appeal to arms was made at the meeting, in order not to be defenceless in case of a police attack. Late that night there were a number of minor demonstrations, which were broken up by the police and gave them the desired opportunity to forbid the meeting on the following day. The Government, now having a sufficiency of military power on which to rely, suddenly adopted an entirely different tone. When the Democratic deputies said in the Chamber that the triumphal march of the Revolution would advance from Paris and conquer the whole world, the Government spokesman replied that it was scarcely necessary for freedom to make a world tour of that kind before it came to Belgium.

The German exiles were in the forefront of the revolutionary movement. Marx helped to draft the address of greeting the Association Démocratique sent the Provisional Government in France. The address spoke of the great tasks that still lay ahead of the revolution. German émigrés took part in the demonstration of the night of February 28. Wilhelm Wolff was arrested and a knife was found on him. According to the police Marx gave five thousand of the six thousand francs he had just received to buy weapons for the workers of Brussels. The police had their opportunity of dealing with the exiles at last. They worked in close touch with the Prussian ambassador, who had in his possession on February 29, only a day or two after it was drawn up, a list of those who were to be expelled. Marx's name was at the top of the list.

Marx had no intention of staying in Belgium in any case. The revolutionary centre of Europe was Paris, where his old acquaintance, Flocon, now a member of the Provisional Government, summoned him. He invited the 'dear and brave [cher et vaillant]' Marx to return to the land from which tyranny had banished him. 'Tyranny has banished you; free France flings wide her portals for you, and all who struggle in the sacred cause of the brotherhood of the peoples.'4

The letter was sent from Paris on the first of March. Marx received it on the second or the third and its arrival practically coincided with a police order giving him twenty-four hours to leave Brussels. The expulsion order was handed to Marx at five o'clock on March 3. He had a few hours in which to settle a mass of personal and political affairs.

Almost as soon as the news of the successful Paris rising reached London Schapper, Heinrich Bauer and others at the headquarters of the Communist League decided to hurry to Paris. The London branch of the League resolved to transfer the powers vested in it to the Brussels branch. The Brussels branch was Marx, but Marx was expelled from Brussels. On the evening of March 3 the five representatives of the branch gathered in Marx's room in the hotel in which he was living. The meeting dissolved the newly appointed League central office, invested Marx personally with full powers and entrusted him with the task of constituting a new central office in Paris. Before they had time to leave the premises, they were raided by the police. They failed to capture Marx's friends, who managed to slip away in the general confusion. But the League papers and documents fell into their hands, among them the minutes of the meeting which had just taken place. Thus the names of the chief officials of the League fell into their possession. As a sign and token of their new-born friendship, a copy of the minutes and other documents found in Marx's room was sent to the Prussian ambassador.

Marx described the disgraceful behaviour of the police in a letter to the Réforme:

'After receiving on March 3 at five o'clock in the afternoon an order to leave Belgium within twenty-four hours, on the evening of the same day, when I was still busy with preparations for my journey, a commissary of police, accompanied by ten municipal guards, entered my apartments, searched the whole house and ended by arresting me on the pretext that I had no papers. Apart from the highly regular papers which M. Duchâtel supplied me with on expelling me from France, I had in my possession the expulsion passport which Belgium had supplied me with but a few hours previously.

'I should not have spoken of my arrest and of the brutalities to which I was subjected were it not for one circumstance which would be difficult to understand, even in Austria.

'Immediately after my arrest my wife called on M. Jottrand, president of the Democratic Association of Belgium, to ask him to take the necessary steps. On her return she found a policeman at the door who told her, with exquisite politeness, that if she wished to talk to M. Marx she had only to follow him. My wife eagerly accepted the offer. She was conducted to the police-station, where the commissary started by telling her that M. Marx was not there; he then rudely asked who she was, what she wanted with M. Jottrand and whether she had her papers with her. M. Gigot, a Belgian Democrat who accompanied my wife and the policeman to the police-station, indignant at the commissary's absurd and insolent questions, was silenced by the guards, who seized him and threw him into prison. My wife was taken to the Hôtel-de-Ville prison on the pretext of vagabondage and locked up in a dark room in the company of a number of prostitutes. At eleven o'clock next morning she was taken by an escort of gendarmes, in broad daylight, to the office of the examining magistrate. She was kept in a cell for two hours, in spite of violent protests which arrived from every quarter, and exposed to all the rigours of the season and to the basest insults by the gendarmes.

'Eventually she appeared before the examining magistrate, who was quite astonished at the police in their solicitude not having likewise arrested my young children. Under these circumstances the interrogation amounted to a complete farce, and my wife's only crime consists in sharing her husband's opinions, though she is of Prussian aristocratic origin.

'I shall not enter into all the details of this revolting business, but merely add that when we were released the twenty-four hours' grace had just expired and we were compelled to leave the country without even being able to take with us even the most indispensable personal effects.'5

The Belgian Liberal Press made a vigorous protest against the ignominy with which their country was covering itself. Engels mobilised the Chartist Press in England. The deputy Bricourt demanded an interpellation in the Belgian Chamber. The commissary of police who had arrested Marx and his wife was dismissed. But by that time Marx was no longer on Belgian soil.

He was taken to the frontier under police escort. It was a journey with many obstacles. The trains and the stations were packed to suffocation with soldiers on their way to the south. The air positively hummed with rumours. It was said that the French and Belgian legions which had been formed on French soil intended to found a Belgian republic at the point of the bayonet. They would be suitably received!

In France the victory of the Republic was still being celebrated. The stations were beflagged, the red flag and the tricolour flew side by side and enthusiasm was still running high. The railway lines had been torn up at Valenciennes and a half-hour omnibus ride was imposed on the travellers before they could resume their train journey. Here, as on the stretch between Pontoise and St. Denis, coachmen and innkeepers had taken advantage of the first days of confusion to avenge themselves on their new competitor, the railway. They had torn up rails, burned down stations, smashed engines and coaches. In spite of all these hindrances Marx reached Paris on March 4.

Paris still bore fresh marks of the fighting at the barricades. Fanny Lewald, the German writer, who arrived in Paris a few days after Marx, described the scene that confronted the newcomer. The paving stones at the street corners were lying loosely instead of being cemented down. Here and there smashed bread carts and overturned omnibuses indicated the scenes of former barricades. An iron railing outside a church had been completely torn up, except for a few feet which showed where an iron railing had been. At the Palais Royal, or Palais National, as it was now called in big letters, all the windows, many window-frames and much scaffolding were broken; the Château d'Eau, the guard-house opposite the Palais Royal, in which the guards had been burned to death, lay in smoke-black ruins; other guard-houses in the neighbourhood of the Seine had been razed to the ground, and National Guards kept guard, sitting in the nearest taverns which served them as guard-room. The trees on the Boulevards had been cut down and the water-pipes and pillars pulled down. Dirty white curtains fluttered from the paneless windows of the Tuileries.

The town was still at the height of its brief republican enthusiasm. 'The workers,' in the words of Engels, 'ate bread and potatoes in the day-time and spent the evening planting "trees of freedom" on the boulevards, while enthusiasts ran wild and sang the Marseillaise and the bourgeoisie hid in their houses all day long, trying to mollify the fury of the people by exhibiting coloured lanterns.' The old song of the Gironde was sung:

To die for one's country is the most beautiful and enviable fate.6

The tricolour flew over the Palais Royal and the Tuileries, where Marx's old friend, Imbert, was now installed as governor. Here and there the red flag of the proletarian revolution was to be seen.

Revolutionary and Socialist clubs sprang up like mushrooms. Newspapers, pamphlets and fly-sheets appeared every day. Paris seethed with political life. Boundless possibilities, intoxicating perspectives suddenly opened up before the exiles' eyes. It never entered their heads for a moment that the revolution might stop at the borders of France. The revolutionary flame that had been kindled in Paris would leap the frontiers and set Germany, Austria, Poland, the whole of Europe alight.

Since the great French Revolution it had appeared self-evident that democracies and autocratic monarchies could not live peacefully side by side. If democracy were victorious it must necessarily come into collision with neighbouring states which were still in the hands of absolutism. The revolutionary war was inevitable if the revolution were not to miscarry again. During the months that followed the events of February the question of the revolutionary war was one of the most important subjects of party controversy. The Blanquists, true to the tradition of the Great Revolution, which with them was only too often an obstinate obsession, kept agitating for a revolutionary war with all the passion which was their best inheritance. They urged it not only on the ground that it was the only thing that could save the new France, but also because they believed that it was only by and through a war that the revolution in France could really be fulfilled.

The Provisional Government, and Lamartine, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, wanted peace. From the very first he assured all the governments of Europe that France was willing to have peaceful relations with all states, whatever their form of government might be.

But the Belgian, Italian and Polish exiles were working for war and feverishly preparing for it. Each group formed its own legion to take its place in the great army which should march against the despots, vanguard of the army of revolutionary France in the last war of all, from which a brotherly alliance of free peoples should arise. The Germans took enthusiastically to this idea.

Before Marx's arrival in Paris a huge meeting of German exiles and artisans resolved to form a German legion. The resolution had been proposed by Bornstedt, and Herwegh was elected chairman of the committee. Appeals were already plastered on the walls of Paris:

'Appeal to the Citizens of France

'Arms!

'Arms for the Germans marching to the help of their brethren now fighting for liberty, offering their lives for their rights, whom their enemies are trying to deceive once more!

'The German Democrats of Paris have formed a legion to march and proclaim the German Republic.

'They need arms, ammunition, money, clothing. Help them. Your gifts will be gratefully received. They will help to deliver Germany, and Poland as well.

'German and Polish Democrats will march together to the conquest of liberty.

'Long live France! Long live Poland! Long live united Republican Germany! Long live the brotherhood of the peoples!'7

The first detachments of German legionaries had already started drilling on the Champ de Mars. They even had their anthem ready: 'We march to Germany in masses.'

The plan was to invade Germany and raise an insurrection in the Odenwald, where the people were already stirred up and memories of the great German Peasant War still survived. The whole of Germany, starting with the Odenwald, was to be roused to revolt. For some, however, this plan was not nearly ambitious enough. They actually visualised an alliance with the Poles, who planned a rising in Posen and another in Galicia, to be followed by an expedition against Russia. Everything seemed possible. It was sufficient for the first revolutionary trumpets to blow for the walls of the fortress of Peter and Paul, the citadel of European reaction, to fall of themselves. The Polish Democrats, who at that time were everywhere the heroes of the day, had already started squabbling with the Russian Democrats about the frontiers of free and independent Poland. Their revolutionary ardour seemed equal to the most impossible tasks. 'Oh, just for one day, dare it!' was the verse with which Herwegh spurred on the half-hearted. Only one thing was necessary: determination and again determination.

One of the few not carried away by the enthusiasm and the tumult was Marx. That France did not want war was plain enough to anyone who did not take the wish for the reality. A Blanquist Government would make war, but to bring the Blanquists into power would require another revolution. If Lamartine supported and encouraged the legions it was not on revolutionary grounds but for very much more sober and mundane reasons. The Provisional Government wanted to be rid of the foreign workers, who had been a disturbing element from of old. They were actually willing to subsidise their journey to the frontier. The legion, which consisted of at most two thousand men, had no prospects whatever if it fought alone. It could at best hope for an initial military success. To the attacked absolutist powers an inroad by the legion could only be welcome; for it would rouse national and patriotic feeling in the invaded country and willy-nilly strengthen the government.

Marx was from the first bitterly opposed to futile, nay harmful, playing at revolution. He counselled the workers not to rush headlong to destruction with the legion but to await developments in Germany, which were bound to lead to revolution in a very short time. Their place was Paris, not the Odenwald. Sebastian Seiler, then a member of the Communist League and an acquaintance of Marx, later wrote:

'The Socialists and Communists were bitterly opposed to attempting to establish a German republic by armed intervention from without. They held public meetings in the Rue St. Denis, which some of the later insurgents attended. Marx made a long speech at one of these meetings, and said that the February revolution was only to be regarded as the superficial beginning of the European movement. In a short time open fighting would break out in Paris between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie (as it actually did in June). On its result the victory or defeat of revolutionary Europe would depend. He therefore insisted that the German workers remain in Paris and prepare in advance to take part in the armed struggle.'

This was swimming against the stream. The majority of the revolutionary and democratic German exiles were opposed to Marx. They called him coward and traitor and hurled the great, fine-sounding phrases of the French Revolution at his head. In spite of his outstanding authority in the Communist League, he was opposed by some of its members. Marx did not retreat a step. The interests of the revolution and of the working-class were at stake.

At the beginning of March the Fraternal Democrats had sent a workers' deputation to Paris with an address to the Provisional Government. M'Grath represented the Chartist national executive committee, Jones the London section of the Party, Harney the Fraternal Democrats, and Schapper and Moll the London German Workers' Union. They were given a friendly reception by Garnier-Pagès and Ledru-Rollin. The London and Brussels branches of the Communist League, assembled now in Paris, were able to constitute the new central office in all due form. Marx was elected president, Schapper secretary, and the members were Engels, Moll, Bauer, Wilhelm Wolff and Wallau. Marx was now able on the League's behalf to break with the organisations which acknowledged Herwegh and his legion. Bornstedt, who had been elected to the League in Brussels, was expelled. The decision and the reasons for it were published and some newspapers in Germany actually reprinted the news, including the Trierer Zeitung, published in Marx's native town. Marx and his adherents withdrew from the democratic organisation and founded an organisation of their own, the German Workers' Union, which met at the Café de la Picarde in the Rue St. Denis. This club consisted almost exclusively of workers, especially tailors and bootmakers, men whom Alphonse Lucas, the reactionary chronicler of the clubs of this period, sneered at for arrogating to themselves the right 'indiquer à la France la manière dont elle devait se gouverner,' of showing France how she ought to be governed. Marx, however, was successful. As early as March 20 the ambassador of Baden reported to his Government that Marx's adherents were 'very numerous.' At the beginning of April the Union numbered four hundred members.

Soon after his arrival in Paris Marx revived his contacts with French revolutionary circles that he knew from 1844 and 1845. On the evening of the day on which he left Brussels he spoke at the club central of the Société des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen, the leader of which was Barbès, a Right Blanquist. Marx's relations with the groups which were represented in the Provisional Government by Ledru-Rollin and Flocon were particularly good. Both these ministers were praised in the letters Engels wrote his brother-in-law, Emil Blank. Engels said the workers would hear of no one but Ledru-Rollin, and they were quite right, because he was more resolute than any of the others. The men round Ledru-Rollin and Flocon were Communists without knowing it. Marx and Engels were on terms of personal friendship with Flocon, whom they frequently visited. Flocon offered them money to start a newspaper in Germany, but they did not accept it. Marx's relations with Ledru-Rollin and Flocon later changed, but to the end he criticised them comparatively mildly.

The European movement advanced with a giant's stride. 'Marvellous' news arrived daily. 'A complete revolution in Nassau; in Munich students, artists and workers in full insurrection; at Cassel revolution is at the gate; in Berlin there is unbounded fear and trepidation; freedom of the Press and a national guard proclaimed throughout the West of Germany. That is enough for a beginning. If only Frederick William IV remains stubborn! If he does, everything is won and in a few months we shall have the German revolution. If only he clings to his feudal ways! But the devil alone knows what that moody, crazy individual will do next.' Thus wrote Engels in Brussels to Marx in Paris on March 8.

On March 19 there was a parade of Herwegh's Democrats at the Butte de Monceau, with sabre-rattling, fixing of bayonets, rifle-practice, marching and counter-marching. At the final rally Herwegh read a German address to the Polish Democrats. At about four o'clock some thousand men marched back to Paris in military formation. When they reached it they learned the news that had just come to Paris: a revolution in Vienna, Metternich deposed, the Emperor forced to yield to all the demands of the fighters at the barricades. Tens of thousands of Frenchmen exuberantly fraternised with the Germans. Next day there came the news of victory in Berlin. The boldest dreams were more than fulfilled. Rumours spread beyond all bounds. The King of Prussia was said to have been arrested by the insurgents and thrown into prison, Warsaw had risen and the Russians had been put to flight, and the garrison of St. Petersburg had hoisted the flag of insurrection.

The legion was no longer to be restrained. It left Paris on April 1. It was given a magnificent send-off. The son of Marshal Ney, the Prince of Moscow, made an eloquent speech in which he referred to the great revolutionary traditions and spoke of the revolution's struggle against the bulwark of absolutism in the north, and then the adventure which was to end so quickly and so pitifully began. The leaders of the legion had not yet even decided what they wanted; whether to kindle a peasant war or march peacefully through Germany, their weapons in their hands, to attack Russia, or fight a civil war in Germany until the French advance began. When Ledru-Rollin tried to find out what the exact aims of Herwegh's movement were, he is said to have brought a long conversation to a close with the words: 'Ah, now I understand, you want to take a corps of barricade professors to Germany.'

The 'barricade professors' were stopped at Strasbourg. That they carried with them the heartiest good wishes of the Blanquists helped them not at all. Lamartine had very guilefully and diplomatically done everything in his power to give the German Government time to prepare their troops for the legion's reception. The forces the legion met when it crossed the Rhine were so infinitely superior and it was so inadequately armed that it was overwhelmed and beaten at the first encounter.

This outcome had been foreseen by Marx. He had opposed the blind, desperate enthusiasm, the reckless, plunging spirit of the insurgents without heeding the mockery and scorn heaped upon him as a doctrinaire. In his view it was infinitely more important for the revolutionaries to make themselves acquainted with the programme dictated to them by the precipitous course of events. The outcry against Marx among the hyper-revolutionaries had reached its zenith at a moment when, they believed, all true revolutionaries ought to be teaching the workers the use of arms, while he spent his time lecturing them on political economy, damping down their enthusiasm and turning them into doctrinaires.

The outbreak of revolution in Germany gave the Communists new tasks. Their place was no longer in Paris, but in the country in which they and they only could show the working class the way. That country was Germany. Marx advised the exiles to return to Germany individually and start building up proletarian organisations.

By a coincidence the leaders of the Communist League left Paris on the same day as Herwegh's legion; but without music and without a speech by the Prince of Moscow. A young member of Herwegh's expedition sent a report about it to some German newspapers. 'The German Communists left Paris too,' he wrote. 'Unlike the German Democrats, they did not depart fraternally and sociably, in closed ranks, but each man went to a different point on his own initiative--travellers each carrying the salvation of the world in his own breast.' The writer of those lines soon saw how misguided was the contempt with which he wrote. He was Wilhelm Liebknecht, then aged twenty-two.

The Communists left Paris. Four and a half years before Marx had transplanted himself from the Prussia of Frederick William IV to the Paris of Louis Philippe. Since then there had been the breach with the Left Hegelians, the arrival at clarification, the rejection of semi-demi, muddle-headed, sentimental Socialism, the Communist Manifesto, the Communist League. When Marx left Paris the flag of the Republic was flying from the Palais Royal and Germany was in flames.

Chapter 12 notes

1: Im Hochland fiel der erste Schuss,

Im Hochland wider die Pfaffen
.

2: Drauf ging der Tanz in Welschland los

Die Scyllen und Charybden,
Vesuv und Aetna brachen los,
Ausbruch auf Ausbruch, Stoss auf Stoss

. ...

3: 'en identifiant la cause de la nationalité à la cause de la démocratie et à l'affranchissement de la classe opprimée.'

4: 'La tyrannie vous a banni, la libre France vous ouvre les portes, à vous et à tous ceux qui luttent pour la sainte cause de la fraternité des peuples.'

5: 'Après avoir reçu, le 3 mars, à cinq heures du soir, l'ordre (le quitter le royaume belge dans le délai de vingt-quatre heures, j'étais occupé encore, dans la nuit du même jour, de faire mes préparatifis de voyage, lorsqu'un commissaire de police, accompagné de dix gardes municipaux, pénétra dans mon domicile, fouilla toute la maison, et finit par m'arrêter, sous prétexte que je n'avais pas de papiers. Sans parler des papiers très réguliers que M. Duchâtel m'avait remis en m'expulsant de la France, je tenais en mains le passeport d'expulsion que la Belgique m'avait délivré il y avait quelques heures seulement.

'Je ne vous aurais pas parlé, monsieur, de mon arrestation et des brutalités que j'ai souflertes, s'il ne s'y rattachait une circonstance qu'on aura peine à comprendre, même en Autriche.

'Immédiatement après mon arrestation, ma femme se fait conduire chez M. Jottrand, président de l'association démocratique de Belgique, pour l'engager à prendre les mesures nécessaires. En rentrant chez elle, elle trouve à la porte un sergent de ville qui lui dit, avec une politesse exquise, que, si elle voulait parler à M. Marx, elle n'aurait qu' à le suivre. Ma femme accepte l'offre avec empressement. On la conduit au bureau de la police, et le commissaire lui déclare d'abord que M. Marx n'y était pas; puis il lui demande brutalement qui elle était, ce qu'elle allait faire chez M. Jottrand, et si elle avait ses papiers sur elle. Un démocrate belge, M. Gigot, qui avait suivi ma femme au bureau de la police avec la garde municipal, se révoltant des questions à la fois absurdes et insolentes du commissaire, est réduit au silence par des gardes qui s'emparent de lui et le jettent en prison. Sous le prétexte de vagabondage, ma femme est amenée à la prison de l'Hôtel-de-Ville, et enfermée avec des femmes perdues, dans une salle obscure. A onze heures du matin, elle est conduite en plein jour, sous toute une escorte de gendarmerie, au cabinet du juge d'instruction. Pendant deux heures, elle est mise au secret, malgré les plus vives réclamations qui arrivent de toutes parts. Elle reste là exposée à toute la rigeur de la saison et aux propos les plus indignes des gendarmes.

'Elle paraît enfin devant le juge d'instruction, qui est tout étonné que la police, dans sa sollicitude, n'a pas arrêté egalement les enfants de bas-âge. L'interrogatoire ne pouvait étre que factice, et tout le crime de ma femme consiste en ce que, bien qu'appartenant à l'aristocratie prussienne, elle partage les sentiments démocratiques de son mari.

'Je n'entre pas dans tous les détails de cette révoltante afiaire. Je dirai seulement que, lorsque nous étions relâchés, les vingt-quatre heures étaient justement expirées, et qu'il nous fallait partir sans pouvoir seulement emporter les effets les plus indispensables.'

6: Mourir pour la patrie C'est le sort le plus beau Le plus digne d'envie.

7: 'Appel au Citoyens Français.

'Des Armes!

'Pour les Allemands marchant au secours de leur frères qui combattent en ce moment pour la liberté, qui se font égorger pour leur droits, et qu'on veut tromper de nouveau.

'Les démocrates allemands de Paris se sont formés en légion pour aller proclamer ensemble la République allemande.

'Il leur faut des armes, des munitions, de l'argent, des objets d'habillement. Prêtez-leur votre assistance; vos dons seront reçus avec gratitude. Ils serviront à délivrer l'Allemagne et en même temps la Pologne.

'Démocrates allemands et polonais marcheront ensemble à la conquête de la liberté.

'Vive la France! Vive la Pologne! Vive l'Allemagne unie et républicaine! Vive la fraternité des peuples!'