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Letter to Emil Blank, March 26, 1848
First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, 1934.
To Emil Blank in London
Paris, 26 March 1848[edit source]
Dear Emil,
After the glorious February revolution and Belgium’s stillborn March revolution, I came back here last week. I wrote to Mother asking for money so that within a few days I could return to Germany[1] where we are starting up the [Neue] Rheinische Zeitung again. Mother is now very anxious to see me back in Germany, partly because she believes that there might again be some shooting here in the course of which I could get hurt, partly because she wants me to return anyway. However she also says in her letter:
‘How I can he expected to send you the money, I really don’t know, since a few days ago Fould notified Father that he was doing no more business, and since several good bills sent him by Father came back and were protested. Write and tell me, then, how I can be expected to let you have the money.'
The simplest thing would be for you to send me 20 pounds in banknotes, these being highly regarded here, and at once arrange with my old man to reimburse you. In this way I shall get my money quickly and be able to leave, whereas I would otherwise be stuck here for another week before getting money from Barmen, let alone Engelskirchen. I am therefore writing to Barmen this very day for them to repay you the £20, and I would ask you to arrange matters in the way I have just said, since bills are no longer any good.
You can send half of the bisected banknotes to me today, addressed to 19ter rue de la Victoire, Paris, and the remainder next day to Mlle Félicité André, same street and No. This will foil letter thieves.
Here things are going very well,[2] i.e. the bourgeoisie, who were beaten on 24 February and 17 March, are once more raising their heads and railing horribly against the Republic. But the only result of this will be that a thunderstorm quite unlike anything they have known before will very soon break over them. If the fellows persist in their insolence, some of them will very soon be strung up by the people. In the provisional government they have a certain party, namely Lamartine, the soft-soaper, whose life will also soon be forfeit. The workers here, 200,000-300,000 strong, will hear of no one but Ledru-Rollin, and they are right. He is the most resolute and radical of all. Flocon, too, is very good; I've been to see him once or twice and am about to do so again; he’s a thoroughly honest fellow.
We have nothing to do with the great crusade which is departing from here to set up the German republic by force of arms.[3]
My kindest regards to Marie [Blank] and the little ones and reply by return.
In haste,
Your
Frederick
- ↑ Neither Engels’ letter to his mother nor his mother’s letter quoted by Engels below has been found.
- ↑ On 24 February 1848 the people of Paris revolted, overthrew the monarchy and formed a Provisional Government, with the party of the National in the majority. Under pressure from the armed masses, however, the bourgeois republicans were compelled to include in the government four ministers from the list compiled by La Réforme, among them Louis Blanc and a worker Albert, a leader of secret republican societies and participant in the street fighting.
On 17 March there was a 100,000-strong demonstration of Paris workers demanding postponement of the elections to the Constituent Assembly.
The elections to the National Guard, fixed for 18 March, and to the Constituent Assembly of the Republic, which originally were to be held on 5 April 1848. To hold the elections in a short time would have benefited the anti-revolutionary forces. That is why the demonstration of the Paris workers on 17 March, of which Engels writes above, demanded that the Provisional Government, besides withdrawing the troops from the capital, should postpone the elections to the National Guard till 5 April and to the Constituent Assembly till 31 May 1848. The Government was compelled to comply with these demands, but the elections to the Constituent Assembly were postponed only till 23 April. - ↑ The reference is to the organisation of a legion of German refugees to march into Germany.
The German Democratic Society was formed in Paris after the February 1848 revolution. The Society was headed by petty-bourgeois democrats, Herwegh, Bornstedt and others, who campaigned to raise a volunteer legion of German refugees, with the intention of marching into Germany. In this way they hoped to carry out a revolution in Germany and establish a republic there. Marx and his followers in the Communist League opposed to this adventurist plan the tactics of uniting the German emigrants and organising their return to Germany individually to take part in the revolutionary struggle that was developing there. Late in April 1848 the volunteer legion moved to Baden, where it was dispersed by government troops.