I. The Brimstone Gang

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I. The Brimstone Gang[1][edit source]

Clarin: Malas pastillas gasta;........

..................hase untado

Con ungüento de azufre.

(Calderón)[2]

The "well-rounded character"[3], as the barrister Hermann so delicately described his spherical client, the hereditary Vogt of Noughtborough[4], to the District Court in Augsburg, the "well rounded character" begins his enormous travesty of history[5] as follows:

"Among the refugees of 1849 the term Brimstone Gang, or else the no less characteristic name of the Bristlers, referred to a number of people who after being scattered throughout Switzerland, France and England gradually congregated in London, and there they revered Herr Marx as their visible leader. The political principle of these fellows was the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc." (Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung by Karl Vogt, Geneva, December 1859, p. 136).

The "Magnum Opus"[6] into which this momentous piece of information had found its way appeared in December 1859. Eight months earlier, however, in May 1859, our "well-rounded character" had published an article in the Biel Handels-Courier which must be regarded as an outline of the more extensive travesty of history. Let us consider the original text:

"Ever since the failure of the revolution of 1849," so brags our Commis voyageur from Biel, "a clique of refugees has gradually congregated in London, whose members were in those days (!) known among the Swiss emigration as the 'Bristlers' or the 'Brimstone Gang'. Their leader is Marx, the former editor of the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne—their slogan, 'Social Republic, Workers' Dictatorship'—their business, establishing contacts and hatching plots."[7] (Reprinted in the "Magnum Opus", Section 3, Documents, No. 7, pp. 31, 32.)

In the course of eight months the clique of refugees known as the "Brimstone Gang" "among the Swiss emigration" has been transformed for the benefit of a larger public into a mass "scattered throughout Switzerland, France and England" and known as the "Brimstone Gang" "among the refugees" in general. It is the old story of the men in buckram of Kendal green, told so merrily by Karl Vogt's prototype, the immortal Sir John Falstaff[8], whose zoological reincarnation has forfeited nothing as to substance. The original text of our Commis voyageur from Biel makes it quite obvious that both the "Brimstone Gang" and the "Bristlers" were local Swiss flora. Let us try and trace their natural history. In February 1860, having learnt from friends that a refugee association by the name of "Brimstone Gang" had indeed flourished in Geneva in the years 1849-50 and that Herr S. L. Borkheim, a well-situated merchant in the City of London, could provide more exact information about the origins, growth and decline of that ingenious association, I wrote to that gentleman, who was not known to me at the time, and after a personal meeting I received from him the following sketch which I print without making any alterations.

"London, February 12, 1860 18 Union Grove, Wandsworth Road

"Dear Sir,

"Although, until three days ago, we had not met personally, despite having lived for nine years in the same country, and for the most part in the same town, you have rightly presumed that I, as a fellow-exile, would not refuse you the information you require.

"Very well then, here is what I know about the 'Brimstone Gang'.

"In 1849, soon after we rebels had been forced out of Baden[9], a number of young men who as students, soldiers or businessmen had been on friendly terms in Germany before 1848, or who had become so during the revolution, gathered together in Geneva either of their own free will or else because they had been directed there by the Swiss authorities.

"The refugees were not in a very rosy mood. The so-called political leaders blamed each other for the failure; the military leaders criticised each other's retrograde attacking movements, flanking manoeuvres and offensive withdrawals; people began to call each other names such as bourgeois republicans, socialists and communists; there was a flood of pamphlets, which did nothing to restore peace; spies were thought to be everywhere and, in addition to all this, the clothes of the majority gradually turned to rags and the signs of hunger could be seen on many faces. In the midst of this misery the young people referred to above held together in friendship. They were:

"Eduard Rosenblum, born in Odessa of German parents; he had studied medicine in Leipzig, Berlin and Paris.

"Max Cohnheim from Fraustadt; he had been an office-boy, and on the outbreak of the revolution, he was doing a year as a volunteer in the artillery guards.

"Korn, a chemist and pharmacist from Berlin.

"Becker, an engineer from the Rhineland.

"And myself, who, after matriculating from the Werder school in Berlin in 1844, had studied in Breslau[10], Greifswald and Berlin and was serving as a gunner in my home town of Glogau when the 1848 revolution began.

"I think none of us was more than 24 years old. We lived close together, for a time indeed in the Grand Pre, all in the same house. Finding ourselves in a small country that presented so little opportunity for earning a living, our chief occupation was to keep ourselves from being too much depressed and demoralised by the general misery of refugee life and political dejection. The climate and the surrounding country were glorious—we did not belie our Brandenburg origins and accents and found the place 'luv'ly' [fanden die Jegend jottvoll[11]. What belonged to one of us, the others had too, and if none of us had anything we could always find good-natured innkeepers and other friendly souls who took pleasure in lending us money on the strength of our young, vivacious faces. We really must have looked an honest set of madcaps! I must make specific thankful mention here of Bertin, the owner of the Café de l'Europe who was truly indefatigable in supplying us on tick, and not only us but also many other German and French refugees. In 1856, after six years' absence, I visited Geneva on my way back from the Crimea in order, with the piety of a well-intentioned tourist, to repay my debts. Our good old fat Bertin was amazed and assured me that I was the first person to give him this pleasure, but that he did not regret the 10,000-20,000 francs still owing to him from the refugees who were by now long since scattered to the four corners of the globe. Never mentioning the money they owed him, he asked with special affection about the fate of those I had been closest to. Unfortunately there was little I could tell him.

"I return from this digression to the year 1849.

"In those days we drank merrily and sang joyfully. I remember seeing refugees of every political shade and colour at our table, including Frenchmen and Italians. Convivial evenings spent in such dulci jubilo[12] seemed to everyone like veritable oases amidst the otherwise barren wastes of refugee life. Even those of our friends who sat on the Grand Council of Geneva, or were later to do so, would occasionally join our revels for the sake of a little relaxation.

"Liebknecht, who is now here and whom I have only seen three or four times in last nine years, having met him each time by chance in the street, was a frequent member of the company. Students, doctors, former friends from school and university, touring on holiday, would often drink their way through many glasses of beer and many a bottle of that good, cheap Mâcon. Sometimes we would spend days and even weeks on the Lake of Geneva without once going on shore; we sang old love-songs and, guitar in hand, paid court beneath the windows of the villas on both the Savoy and Swiss sides.

"I shall not conceal the fact that our wild behaviour occasionally brought us into collison with the police. On such occasions that dear man, the late Albert Galeer, who was a by no means insignificant opponent of Fazy's among the Genevan citizenry, would read us a sermon, though in the kindest manner possible. 'You are wild lads,' he would say, 'but it is true that to have such a sense of humour amid the miseries. of exile shows that you are no weaklings, either in mind or body—a certain flexibility is indispensable.' The good-natured man found it hard to rebuke us more severely than that. He was a Grand Councillor of the Canton of Geneva.

"To the best of my knowledge only one duel took place at the time, and that was fought with pistols by a Herr R...n and myself. But the quarrel was not political. My second was a Genevan in the artillery who spoke nothing but French, and Oskar Galeer acted as adjudicator. He was the Grand Councillor's brother, a young man who unfortunately later" died prematurely of a nervous disease while still a student in Munich. A second duel, also unpolitical in origin, was to have taken place between Rosenblum and a refugee lieutenant von F...g from Baden, who returned home soon after and, I believe, rejoined the resuscitated Baden army. On the morning fixed for the battle the quarrel was settled amicably before a blow was struck thanks to the intervention of Herr Engels[13]—presumably the same man who is now said to be in Manchester and whom I have not seen again since those days. This Herr Engels was passing through Geneva and we drank many bottles of wine in his entertaining company. The acquaintance with him was very welcome to us, if I recollect rightly, especially because we could allow his purse to take charge of the proceedings.

"We were associated neither with the so-called blue or red[14] republicans, nor with the socialist or communist party leaders. We reserved the right to form our own opinions freely and independently (I will not say always correctly) about the political activities of Imperial Regents, members of the Frankfurt Parliament[15] and other speech-making bodies, about generals of the revolution no less than the corporals and Dalai Lamas of communism. For this reason as well as for other reasons which diverted us we even founded a weekly paper entitled

RUMMELTIPUFF


Organ of Rapscallionocracy[16]

"The paper only survived two issues. Later, when I was arrested in France prior to being deported to this country, the French police confiscated my papers and diaries and I can no longer remember clearly whether it was official ban or lack of funds that brought about the paper's demise.

"To the 'philistines'—and they were to be found in the ranks of the so-called bourgeois republicans as well as among the so-called communist workers[17]—we were known as the 'Brimstone Gang'. I sometimes imagine that we must have given the name to ourselves. At any rate it was only attached to us in its cosy German sense. I am on the friendliest terms with fellow-exiles, who are friends of Herr Vogt, and with others who were, and probably still are, friends of yours. But I rejoice to say that I have never found the members of what I have called the 'Brimstone Gang' referred to by anyone in a disrespectful tone in connection with either political or private matters.

"This 'Brimstone Gang' is the only one known to me. It existed in Geneva from 1849 to 1850. The few members who constituted this dangerous band were compelled, with the exception of Korn, to leave Switzerland in the middle of 1850, as they belonged to the category of undesirable aliens. Our departure meant the end of the 'Brimstone Gang'. I know nothing of other 'Brimstone Gangs', or whether other groups went by the name anywhere else, nor what goals they might have been pursuing.

"Korn remained, I believe, in Switzerland and is said to have settled down as a pharmacist. Cohnheim and Rosenblum went to Holstein before the battle of Idstedt[18] in which, I believe, both took part. Later, in 1851, they sailed to America. Rosenblum returned to England at the end of the same year and left again in 1852 for Australia and I have heard nothing more of him since 1855. Cohnheim is said to have been for some time now editor of the New-Yorker Humorist. Becker likewise emigrated to America in 1850. Unfortunately I have no definite subsequent news of him.

"I myself stayed in Paris and Strasbourg during the winter of 1850-51 and, as I mentioned earlier, in February 1851 the French police sent me to England by brute force—for three months I was dragged from one prison to the other, 25 in all, and for the most part in heavy iron chains while en route. I now live here where, having devoted the first year to learning the language, I am engaged in business. My interest in the course of political events in my native land is as persistent and lively as ever, but I have held aloof from all the activities of the political cliques among the refugees. I am doing tolerably well or, as the English would say: Very well, sir, thank you.—You have only yourself to blame if I have made you wade through this long and at all events not very important story.

"I remain, Sir, your humble servant,

Sigismund L. Borkheim"

Thus far Herr Borkheim's letter. In anticipation of its historical significance the "Brimstone Gang" took the precaution of carving its own civic register into the Book of History. For the first issue of the Rummeltipuff is adorned by woodcut portraits of its founders.

The prodigies of the "Brimstone Gang" had taken part in Struve's republican putsch of September 1848. They then sat in Bruchsal Gaol until May 1849[19] and finally fought as combatants in the campaign for the Imperial Constitution, and as a result were pushed across the Swiss frontier. At some point in 1850 two of their matadors, Cohnheim and Rosenblum, arrived in London where they "congregated" around Herr Gustav Struve. I did not have the honour of a personal acquaintance with them. But they established contact with me politically by attempting to form a counter-committee[20] under Struve's leadership in opposition to the London Refugee Committee[21] which was directed at the time by Engels, Willich, myself and others. Their manifesto, hostile to us, appeared in the Berlin Abend-Post and elsewhere over the signatures of Struve, Rosenblum, Cohnheim, Bobzin, Grunich and Oswald.

In the heyday of the Holy Alliance the Charcoal Gang (or Carbonari[22]) was a mine richly productive of police activities and aristocratic fantasies. Was it the intention of our Imperial Gorgellantua[23] to exploit the "Brimstone Gang" in the same way as the Charcoal Gang had been exploited for the benefit of ye olde Teutonic burghers? If there were a Saltpeter Gang, it would round off the policemen's Trinity. Possibly, also, Karl Vogt is averse to brimstone because he cannot take the smell of gunpowder. Or is it that, like other patients, he cannot endure a medicine specific to his disease? It is well known that the magic Dr. Rademacher classifies diseases according to their antidotes[24]. The category of sulphur diseases would include what Hermann, the barrister in the District Court in Augsburg, referred to as his client's "well-rounded character", what Rademacher calls a "drum-like distension of the peritoneum", and what the even greater Dr. Fischart describes as "the great vaulted belly from France"[25]. Thus all Falstaffian natures suffered from the sulphur disease in more than one sense. Or can it be that Vogt's zoological conscience has reminded him that sulphur is fatal to scab-mites, and that it is therefore utterly repugnant to scab-mites that have several times changed skin? For, as recent research has shown, only the mite that has shed its skin is capable of procreation and has therefore achieved self-awareness. What a charming contrast: sulphur on the one hand, the self-aware scab-mite on the other! But in any case, Vogt was obliged to prove to his "Emperor"[26] and to the liberal Teutonic burghers that all disasters "since the failure of the revolution of 1849" stem from the Brimstone Gang in Geneva, rather than from the December Gang in Paris[27]. To punish me for my , many outrages, committed over a period of years, against the head and members of the "Gang of December 10", Vogt appointed me the leader of the Brimstone Gang which he has so reviled and which I had not heard of before the appearance of his "Magnum Opus". To render comprehensible the just indignation of this "agreeable companion"[28] I may cite here some of the passages referring to the "December Gang" from my book Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte, New York, 1852. (Cf. loc. cit., pp. 31, 32 and 61, 62.[29])

"This gang[30] dates from the year 1849. On the pretext of founding a benevolent society, the lumpenproletariat of Paris had been organised into secret sections, each section being led by Bonapartist agents, with a Bonapartist general[31] at the head of the whole. Alongside decayed aristocratic roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, rogues, mountebanks, lazzaroni[32], pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaus[33], brothel-keepers, porters, casual labourers, organ-grinders, rag-pickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars—in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French term la bohème; from this kindred element Bonaparte formed the core of the Gang of December 10. A 'benevolent society'—in so far as, like Bonaparte, all its members felt the need of benefiting themselves at the expense of the labouring nation.

"This Bonaparte, who constitutes himself chief of the lumpenproletariat, who here alone rediscovers in mass form the interests which he personally pursues, who recognises in this scum, offal, refuse of all classes the only class upon which he can base himself unconditionally, is the real Bonaparte, the Bonaparte sans phrase, unmistakable even when, later on, having become all-powerful, he pays his debt to a number of his former fellow-conspirators by decreeing their transportation to Cayenne along with the revolutionaries. An old crafty roué, he conceives the historical life of the nations and their performances of state [Haupt- und Staatsaktionen] as comedy in the most vulgar sense, as a masquerade where the grand costumes, words and postures merely serve to mask the pettiest knavery. Thus on his expedition to Strasbourg, where a trained Swiss vulture had played the part of the Napoleonic eagle. For his irruption into Boulogne he puts some London lackeys into French uniforms. They represent the army[34]. In his Gang of December 10, he assembles 10,000 rogues who are to play the part of the people, as Nick Bottom that of the lion[35]....

"What the national ateliers were for the socialist workers, what the Gardes mobiles[36] were for the bourgeois republicans, the Gang of December 10, the party fighting force characteristic of Bonaparte, was for him. On his journeys the detachments of this gang packing the railways had to improvise a public for him, stage public enthusiasm, roar vive l'Empereur, insult and beat up republicans, of course under the protection of the police. On his return journeys to Paris they had to form the advance guard, forestall counter-demonstrations or disperse them. The Gang of December 10 belonged to him, it was his work, his very own idea. Whatever else he appropriates is put into his hands by the force of circumstances; whatever else he does, the circumstances do for him or he is content to copy from the deeds of others. But he with official phrases about order, religion, family and property in public, before the citizens, and with the secret society of the Schufterles and Spiegelbergs, the society of disorder, prostitution and theft, behind him—that is Bonaparte himself as original author, and the history of the Gang of December 10 is his own history....

"Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all classes. But he cannot give to one class without taking from another. Just as at the time of the Fronde it was said of the Duke of Guise that he was the most obligeant man in France because he had turned all his estates into his partisans' obligations to him, so Bonaparte would fain be the most obligeant man in France and turn all the property, all the labour of France into a personal obligation to himself. He would like to steal the whole of France in order to be able to make a present of her to France, or, rather, in order to be able to buy France anew with French money, for as the chief of the Gang of December 10 he must needs buy what ought to belong to him. And all the state institutions, the Senate, the Council of State, the legislative body, the courts, the Legion of Honour, the soldiers' medals, the wash-houses, the public works, the railways, the état-major[37] of the National Guard excluding privates, and the confiscated estates of the House of Orleans—all become parts of the institution of purchase. Every place in the army and in the government machine becomes a means of purchase.

"But the most important feature of this process, whereby France is taken in order to be given back, is the percentages that find their way into the pockets of the head and the members of the Gang of December 10 during the transaction. The witticism with which Countess L.[38], the mistress of M. de Morny, characterised the confiscation of the Orleans estates: 'C'est le premier vol[39] de l'aigle',[40] is applicable to every flight of this eagle, which is more like a raven. He himself and his adherents call out to one another daily like that Italian Carthusian admonishing the miser who, with boastful display, counted up the goods on which he could yet live for years to come: 'Tu fai conto sopra i beni, bisogna prima far il conto sopra gli anni.'[41] Lest they make a mistake in the years, they count the minutes.

"A gang of shady characters push their way forward to the court, into the ministries, to the head of the administration and the army, a crowd of the best of whom it must be said that no one knows whence he comes, a noisy, disreputable, rapacious bohème that crawls into braided coats with the same grotesque dignity as the high dignitaries of Soulouque. One can visualise clearly this upper stratum of the Gang of December 10, if one reflects that Véron-Crevel[42] is its preacher of morals and Granier de Cassagnac its thinker. When Guizot, at the time of his ministry, utilised this Granier on a hole-and-corner newspaper against the dynastic opposition, he used to boast of him with the quip: 'C'est le roi des drôles','he is the king of the buffoons.'[43] One would do wrong to recall the Regency[44] or Louis XV in connection with Louis Bonaparte's court and clique. For 'often already, France has experienced a government of mistresses; but never before a government of hommes entretenus.[45]'...[46]

"Driven by the contradictory demands of his situation and being at the same time, like a conjurer, under the necessity of keeping the public gaze fixed on himself, as Napoleon's substitute, by springing constant surprises, that is to say, under the necessity of executing a coup d'état en miniature every day, Bonaparte throws the entire bourgeois economy into confusion, violates everything that seemed inviolable to the Revolution of 1848, makes some tolerant of revolution, others desirous of revolution, and produces actual anarchy in the name of order, while at the same time stripping its halo from the entire state machine, profanes it and makes it at once loathsome and ridiculous. The cult of the Holy Coat of Trier[47] he duplicates in Paris with the cult of the Napoleonic imperial mantle. But when the imperial mantle finally falls on the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, the bronze statue of Napoleon will crash from the top of the Vendôme Column."[48]

  1. ↑ The Brimstone Gang (Schwefelbande)—the name of a students' association at Jena University in the 1770s whose members were notorious for their brawls; subsequently the expression "Brimstone Gang" became widespread.
  2. ↑ He's free with empty phrases; ... he has smeared himself with sulphur ointment (El Mágico prodigioso, Act 2).—Ed.
  3. ↑ Here and below Marx puns on the phrase abgerundete Natur which can mean both "a well-rounded character" (in the physical sense) and "an intellectually mature character". In his speech of October 24, 1859 the barrister Hermann used the phrase in the latter sense (see Carl Vogt, Mein Prozess ..., S. 17).—Ed.
  4. ↑ Marx often puns on the name of Karl Vogt. Vogt or Landvogt was the name of provincial governors and other administrators in the German Empire in the Middle Ages. The "hereditary Vogt of Noughtborough (Nichilburg)" is an allusion to a character in Johann Fischart's satirical novel Affentheurliche, Naupengeheurliche Geschichtklitterung: von Thaten und Rahten der vor kurtzen langen und je weilen vollenwolbeschreyten Helden und Herrn: Grandgoschier, Gorgellantua und Pantagruel. Königen inn Utopien, Iedewelt und Nienenreich, Soldan der Neuen Kannarrien und Oudyssen Inseln: auch Grossfürsten im Nubel Nibel Nebelland, Erbvögt auf f Nichilburg, und Niderherren zu Nullibingen, Nullenstein und Niergendheym Etwan von M. Franz Rabelais Französisch entworffen. Achte Ausgabe, 1617. Fischart's work, a German adaptation of François Rabelais' novels Gargantua and Pantagruel, was published in 1757. Below Marx frequently uses phrases from it.
  5. ↑ Cf. Johann Fischart, Affentheurliche, Naupengeheurliche Geschichtklitterung....—Ed.
  6. ↑ By "Magnum Opus" Marx means, here and below, Vogt's book Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung, as distinct from Vogt's other, shorter writings on the same subject.
  7. ↑ Karl Vogt, "Zur Warnung", dated May 23, published in the Schweizer Handels-Courier, No. 150 (special supplement), June 2, 1859. Sometimes Marx ironically refers to this newspaper as the Biel Commis voyageur.—Ed.
  8. ↑ Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I, Act II, Scene 4.—Ed.
  9. ↑ This refers to the closing stage of the campaign in support of the Imperial Constitution which was adopted by the Frankfurt National Assembly on March 28, 1849. Most German states refused to recognise the Constitution. The people were its sole defender. Led by petty-bourgeois democrats, they launched an armed struggle in its support in the spring of 1849. The most violent uprisings occurred in the Bavarian Palatinate and Baden. However, in July the joint Prussian, Bavarian and Württemberg troops crushed the resistance of the Palatinate and Baden insurgent army and forced the remaining units to withdraw into Switzerland. The Baden and Palatinate events marked the end of the German revolution of 1848-49. Engels described them in The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution and Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany.
  10. ↑ The Polish name is Wroclaw.—Ed.
  11. ↑ Berlin dialect.—Ed.
  12. ↑ In dulci jubilo (in sweet merriment)—the opening words of a fourteenth-century Christmas carol. Later the phrase occurred in various student songs.
  13. ↑ Engels took part in the Baden-Palatinate uprising and on July 12, 1849, after its defeat, crossed over into Switzerland together with the detachment of August Willich, whose adjutant he was. He first settled in Vevey, but later moved to Lausanne. In September he met with members of the Communist League in Berne and Geneva. In early October, after obtaining a permit to leave Switzerland (see MECW Vol. 10, p. 595) he left for London where Marx wanted him to take part in the publication of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue and in reorganising the Communist League (Marx to Engels, end of July, August 17 and 23, 1849, MECW, Vol. 38).
  14. ↑ The blue republicans—bourgeois republicans; red republicans—democrats and socialists of various trends.
  15. ↑ The Frankfurt Parliament or the German National Assembly, opened in Frankfurt am Main on May 18, 1848. It was convened to unify the country and draw up a Constitution. The liberal deputies, who were in the majority, turned the Assembly into a mere debating club. At the decisive moments of the revolution, the liberal majority condoned the counter-revolutionary forces. In spring 1849, the liberals left the Assembly after the Prussian and other governments had rejected the Imperial Constitution' that it had drawn up. What remained of the Assembly (the Rump) moved to Stuttgart and was dispersed by the Württemberg forces on June 18.The Regency of the Empire was formed in Stuttgart on June 6, 1849 by what remained of the Frankfurt National Assembly. The Regency consisted of five deputies representing the Left faction (moderate democrats), including Karl Vogt. Their attempts to ensure by parliamentary means the implementation of the Constitution drawn up by the Frankfurt Assembly and rejected by the German princes ended in total failure.
  16. ↑ {*1}
  17. ↑ This presumably refers to the advocates of utopian workers' communism.—Ed.
  18. ↑ The battle of Idstedt (June 24-25, 1850) was the closing episode of the war waged by the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein against Denmark. Under the impact of the March 1848 revolution in Germany a national liberation uprising had flared up in the two duchies, which were subject to the King of Denmark but populated mainly by Germans. The uprising became part of the struggle for the unification of Germany. The ruling circles of Prussia, which was at war with Denmark over Schleswig and Holstein, feared a popular outbreak and an intensification of the revolution. They therefore sought an agreement with the Danish monarchy to the detriment of overall German interests, which also had a negative effect on the operations of the Prussian army. The war lasted intermittently until July 1850. The Schleswig-Holstein army was defeated at Idstedt. As a result, the two duchies remained part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
  19. ↑ On September 21, 1848 German refugees led by Struve invaded Baden from Swiss territory. Supported by the local republicans, Struve proclaimed a German Republic in the frontier town of Lörrach and formed a provisional government. The insurgent detachments were soon dispersed by troops, and Struve, Blind and other leaders of the uprising were imprisoned in Bruchsal by decision of a court-martial. They were released during another uprising in Baden in May 1849.
  20. ↑ This refers to attempts by Struve and other German democrats to form a refugee Democratic Association and a Central Bureau of the United German Emigration. The activities of the petty-bourgeois democrats were to a considerable extent directed against the Social-Democratic Refugee Committee, then led by Marx and Engels (see Note 25↓), and aimed at bringing the proletarian sections under their influence. A critical assessment of these activities is given in the "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, June 1850", written by Marx and Engels and in Engels' letter to Joseph Weydemeyer of April 22, 1850.
  21. ↑ The London German Refugee Committee was set up on September 18, 1849 on Marx's initiative under the auspices of the German Workers' Educational Society. Besides Marx and other members of the Communist League, it included a number of petty-bourgeois democrats. At a meeting of the Society on November 18, the Committee was transformed into the Social-Democratic Refugee Committee, the aim being to dissociate the proletarian section of the London refugees from the petty-bourgeois elements (the report on the meeting was dated December 3, 1849). The new Committee included only members of the Communist League: Karl Marx (who was elected chairman), Heinrich Bauer, August Willich, Karl Pfänder and Frederick Engels. Besides providing material assistance for the refugees, predominantly those belonging to the proletarian wing, the Committee played an important part in restoring ties between members of the Communist League, in uniting the supporters of Marx and Engels in London and in reorganising the Communist League. In mid-September 1850, following the split in the Communist League, when most members of the Educational Society, to which the Committee was accountable, came under the influence of the Willich-Schapper sectarian group, Marx and Engels, together with their followers, withdrew from the Educational Society and the Committee (for details see MECW, Vol. 10, pp. 483 and 632).
  22. ↑ Carbonari—members of secret political societies in Italy and France in the first half of the nineteenth century. In Italy they fought for national independence, unification of the country and liberal constitutional reforms. In France their movement was primarily directed against the rule of the restored Bourbon dynasty (1815-30).
  23. ↑ An allusion to Vogt. Gorgellantua or Gurgelgrosslinger=Gargantua. Gorgellantua occurs in Johann Fischart's adaptation of Rabelais' Gargantua et Pantagruel.—Ed.
  24. ↑ By calling J. G. Rademacher a doctor of magic, Marx alludes to the former's book Rechtfertigung der von den Gelehrten misskannten, verstandesrechten Erfahrungsheillehre der alten scheidekünstigen Geheimärzte und treue Mittheilung des Ergebnisses einer 25-jährigen Erprobung dieser Lehre am Krankenbette, Berlin, 1846-1847 (Vindication of the Neglected Rational Empirical Science of Medicine of the Old Doctors of Magic, Experts in Analytical Chemistry. With a Truthful Account of the Results of a 25-Year-Long Application of this Science at the Sick-Bed).
  25. ↑ Johann Fischart, Affentheurliche, Naupengeheurliche Geschichtklitterung..., S. 130.—Ed.
  26. ↑ Napoleon III.—Ed.
  27. ↑ By the December Gang Marx means the secret Society of December 10 founded in 1849 and so called to commemorate the election of Louis Bonaparte, the Society's patron, to the Presidency of the French Republic on December 10, 1848. Marx describes the December 10 Society further in the text. The Society played an active part in the Bonapartist coup d'état of December 2, 1851 which established the counter-revolutionary regime of the Second Empire (1852-70) headed by Napoleon III.
  28. ↑ Marx applies to Vogt the expression angenehmer Gesellschafter which the latter used in reference to Jérôme Napoleon (see Carl Vogt, Mein Prozess..., Dokumente, S. 24).—Ed.
  29. ↑ The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In the extracts quoted here Marx leaves out a number of passages and slightly alters others.—Ed.
  30. ↑ In the passage from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte quoted here Marx consistently substitutes the word "gang" (Bande) for "society" (Gesellschaft).
  31. ↑ Jean Pierre Piat.—Ed.
  32. ↑ Lazzaroni—a contemptuous name for declassed proletarians, primarily in the Kingdom of Naples. These people were repeatedly used by reactionary governments against liberal and democratic movements.
  33. ↑ Pimps.—Ed.
  34. ↑ This refers to Louis Bonaparte's attempts during the July monarchy to stage a coup d'état by means of a military mutiny. On October 30, 1836 he succeeded, with the help of several Bonapartist officers, in inciting two artillery regiments of the Strasbourg garrison to mutiny, but they were disarmed within a few hours. Louis Bonaparte was arrested and deported to America. On August 6, 1840, taking advantage of a partial revival of Bonapartist sentiments in France, he landed in Boulogne with a handful of conspirators and attempted to raise a mutiny among the troops of the local garrison. This attempt likewise proved a failure. Louis Bonaparte was sentenced to life imprisonment, but escaped to England in 1846.
  35. ↑ The reference is to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act I, Scene 2.—Ed.
  36. ↑ The National ateliers (workshops) were instituted by the Provisional Government immediately after the February revolution of 1848. By this means the government sought to discredit Louis Blanc's ideas on the "Organisation of Labour" in the eyes of the workers and, at the same time, to utilise those employed in the national workshops, organised on military lines, against the revolutionary proletariat. Revolutionary ideas, however, continued to gain ground in the national workshops. The government took steps to reduce the number of workers employed in them, to send a large number off to public works in the province and finally to liquidate the workshops. This precipitated a proletarian uprising in Paris in June 1848. After its suppression, the Cavaignac Government issued a decree on July 3 disbanding the national workshops.For an assessment of the national workshops see Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850.The Gardes mobiles (Mobile Guards), set up by a decree of the Provisional Government on February 25, 1848 with the secret aim of fighting the revolutionary masses, were used to crush the June uprising of the Paris workers. Later they were disbanded on the insistence of Bonapartist circles, who feared that in the event of a conflict between Louis Bonaparte and the republicans, the Gardes mobiles would side with the latter.
  37. ↑ General Staff.—Ed.
  38. ↑ Lehon.—Ed.
  39. ↑ Vol means flight and theft. [Note by Marx to The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.]
  40. ↑ "It is the first flight (theft) of the eagle."
  41. ↑ "Thou countest thy goods, thou shouldst first count thy years." [Note by Marx to The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.]
  42. ↑ In his novel Cousine Bette, Balzac delineates the thoroughly dissolute Parisian philistine in Crevel, a character based on Dr. Véron, owner of the Constitutionnel. [Note by Marx to The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.]
  43. ↑ Quoted in the article by Emile Dupont, "Chronique de l'intérieur", La Voix du Proscrit, No. 8, December 15, 1850, p. 118.—Ed.
  44. ↑ This refers to the Regency of Philippe of Orleans in France from 1715 to 1723 during the minority of Louis XV.
  45. ↑ Hommes entretenus: kept men.—Ed.
  46. ↑ The words quoted are those of Madame Girardin. [Note by Marx to The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.]
  47. ↑ The Holy Coat of Trier—a relic exhibited in the Catholic Cathedral at Trier, allegedly a garment of Christ of which he was stripped at his crucifixion. Generations of pilgrims came to venerate it.
  48. ↑ The Vendôme Column was erected in Paris between 1806 and 1810 as a tribute to the military victories of Napoleon I. It was made of bronze from captured enemy guns and crowned by a statue of Napoleon; the statue was removed during the Restoration but re-erected in 1833. In the spring of 1871, by order of the Paris Commune, the Vendôme Column was destroyed as a symbol of militarism.
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