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Special pages :
“To My People”, May 18, 1849
First published: in Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 301, May 19, 1849.
Cologne, May 18. “To my people!” [Appeal issued by Frederick William IV on May 15, 1849] Not — “To my glorious army!"[1] Have the Russians perhaps been defeated? Has the wind shifted and once again, as in March of last year, knocked the military cap from the head of the “unweakened” servant of Russia? Are the “loyal subjects”, living under a state of siege, once more in full rebellion?
When in 1813 the old “monarch of blessed memory” likewise derived from the advance of the Cossacks the necessary courage to shake off his abject cowardly role and the bloody punishments of the revolutionary empire, then — in spite of the Cossacks, Bashkirs and the “glorious army” made famous by battles at Jena and Magdeburg and by the surrender of Küstrin to 150 Frenchmen — it was only the lying promises of an “Appeal to My People"[2] which made possible the crusade of the Holy Alliance against the successors to the French revolution. And now! Has not the reinvigorated Hohenzollern, as a result of the incursion of the Cossacks into German territory, obtained sufficient courage to renounce his cowardly role of the post-March period and to cancel the “scrap of paper interposed between him and his people” owing to the revolution? [3] Has not “My glorious army” in Dresden, Breslau, Posen, Berlin, and on the Rhine, worthily wreaked vengeance on the revolution by the valiant slaughter of unarmed men, women and children with shrapnel and caustic? [4]
Have not the last cowardly concessions made in March — abolition of censorship, freedom of association, arming of the people — once more been abolished by the recently imposed martial-law Constitution, “even apart from the state of siege"?
No, the son of the hero of Jena and Magdeburg still does not feel safe enough in spite of the alliance with the Cossacks, in spite of the privileges in regard to murder and courts martial afforded to the uncurbed “glorious” military horde. The unweakened Crown is afraid, it appeals “To my people”, it “feels compelled” to address an appeal for help and support against “internal and external enemies” to the downtrodden besieged “people” which has been battered by grapeshot.
“In these difficult times, Prussia is called upon to protect Germany against internal and external enemies. Therefore, I call my people to arms already now. It is a matter of establishing law and order in our state and in the other German states where our help is required; it is a matter of creating Germany’s unity, of protecting her freedom from the rule of terror of a party that is ready to sacrifice morality, honour and loyalty to its passions, a party which has succeeded in casting a net of delusion and folly over a section of the people.”
“That is the gist of the royal address,” exclaims the filthy police agent Dumont, and the venal police claqueurs of Dumont have indeed discovered the “gist”.
“External enemies"! By that is meant the “party of terror”, the party which terrifies the valiant Hohenzollern, the party which demands our interference in the “other German states”. The people of the Rhine Province, Silesia and Saxony are called upon “in the name of German unity” to put an end to the revolutionary movements in the foreign German states of Baden, Bavaria, and Saxony! And to this end the bait with which the Hohenzollern gladdened the hearts of the people in 1813 is repeated, the well-tried “royal word” is pledged once again, promising the “people” a castrated recognition of the Frankfurt Constitution, promising them the “protection of law and liberty” against “godlessness”. “I and My house wish to serve the lord."[5] Is the well-tried pledge of a “Hohenzollern’s royal word” not worth a crusade against the “party which terrifies the Crown that promises so much”?
The powerful subordinate knyaz of imperial Russia recalled the Prussian deputies from Frankfurt only in order now, in accordance with his March promises, to put himself “at the head of Germany”. The Agreement Assembly and the imposed Chamber were dismissed, the “scrap of paper” was replaced by a martial-law Constitution and murderous military courts solely in order to guarantee the people the “protection of law and liberty!”
And freedom of the press has been suppressed, censorship has been imposed on the press in Erfurt, newspapers are directly banned throughout Posen, in Breslau, in the Silesian provincial towns, and even the National-Zeitung in Berlin. In Düsseldorf censorship has been re-introduced de jure, but the press has been totally abolished de facto (the Düsseldorf newspapers, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung etc.), and finally only the police cesspool of the Kölnische Zeitung and the rascally newspaper in Berlin [Neue Preussische Zeitung], were imposed on the “free” subjects. All this has been done so that there should not be the slightest doubt about the value of the “royal word”.
And the word of the Hohenzollern does indeed merit that the people don military uniforms to strengthen the royal courage so as to procure — under the army reserve law — a royal bounty of one taler monthly for the wives they leave behind as a “safeguard against begging”.
- ↑ This fragment is apparently part of the draft of the fourth article in the series “The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution” which dealt with Hansemann and the Government of Action. Several items written by Engels on the war in Northern Italy were published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung under the title “From the Theatre of War” which headed the majority of his reports on the revolutionary war in Hungary. However, the former were printed in the section entitled “Italy” and the latter in the “Hungary” section. To distinguish the Italian items from his Hungarian reports, the former are published in this edition with the subtitle “Italy” supplied by the editors. He in practice headed. Some of the ideas were reflected in the published version of the article (see this volume, pp. 168-70)
- ↑ The extant part of the draft of a speech at the trial of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung held on February 7, 1849. The Hungarian Constitution of 1848 — a number of laws promulgated in the second half of March 1848 by the Hungarian National Assembly in the atmosphere of revolutionary upsurge. An allusion to the debate on a number of Bills in the National Assembly (Diet) then in session in Pressburg: on the abolition of labour services and tithe. On March 18, 1848, the Assembly promulgated an agrarian law annulling some of the peasants’ feudal services, and passed laws on representation of the people, national independence, the press etc. These Bills were proposed under the impact of the growing revolutionary movement in the country. Concerned political organisation in the country. These laws proclaimed Hungary independent of the Austrian Empire in financial and military matters; legislative power was concentrated in the elected National Assembly, and the executive body — the Cabinet Council — was proclaimed responsible to the latter. However, Hungary remained bound to the empire by the common emperor of the Habsburg dynasty and suffrage was limited by a property qualification. Though the new Constitution preserved many of the nobility’s privileges, it was an important step towards a bourgeois transformation of the political order in Hungary. Refers to that part of Marx’s speech in which, on the basis of a legal analysis of the relevant articles of the French Code pénal he refutes the accusation levelled :At the newspaper’s editors of insulting Chief Public Prosecutor Zweiffel and calumniating the police officers. To what extent Marx used this draft in the speech itself tan be seen by comparing it with the published text (see this volume, pp. 304-17). The manuscript of the draft has come down to us in an incomplete and rough form, indecipherable in some places
- ↑ Marx was summoned before the examining magistrate on November 14, 1848, after the Neue Rheinische Zeitung published the second article in the series “Counter-Revolution in Berlin” containing a call to refuse to pay taxes as a measure against the counter-revolutionary coup d'état in Prussia (see this volume, pp. 16-18). However, fearing the people’s reaction to the persecution of the editors of a popular newspaper, the authorities confined themselves to confirming one of the charges brought against the Neue Rheinische Zeitung earlier, after it had published the appeal “To the German People” by the republican Friedrich Hecker (see Note 93)
- ↑ Engels wrote this petition when he arrived in Berne about November 9, 1848, as a political refugee. On the reasons for his departure to Berne see Note 3. The warrant for his arrest and trial, mentioned in the petition, was issued by the Cologne judiciary, who, on the demand of the Imperial Minister of Justice, instituted proceedings against him and. a number of other persons for their speeches. at the public meeting in Cologne on September 26, 1848. Later, the judicial authorities found it expedient to annul the case, and this was officially announced at the end of January 1849, when Engels, who had returned to Germany, was summoned before. the examining magistrate (see this volume, p. 516)
- ↑ The People’s Committee was elected on November 13, 1848, at a public meeting in Cologne held in protest against the transfer of the Prussian National Assembly from Berlin to Brandenburg. It consisted of 25 representatives of Cologne democratic and proletarian circles, among them Marx, Beust, Nothiung, Weyll and Schneider II. The Committee became one of the organising centres of the people’s struggle in the Rhine Province against the coup d'état in Prussia. It sought to rearm the civic militia, which was disarmed in September 1848, when a state of siege was declared in Cologne, and reorganise the army reserve on a democratic basis; it carried out agitation among soldiers and attempted to create a workers’ volunteer detachment. Taking part in the tax-refusal campaign, the People’s Committee tried to draw into it peasants from the neighbouring localities