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Letter to Friedrich Engels, August 23, 1849
First published: abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913 and in full in MEGA, 1929.
To Engels in Lausanne
This letter was first published in English in full in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, 1979.
Paris, 23 August 1849[edit source]
Dear Engels,
I am being banished to the Morbihan département, the Pontine marshes of Brittany[1]. I need hardly say that I shall not consent to this veiled attempt on my life. So I am leaving France.[2]
They wonât give me a passport for Switzerland, hence I must go to London, and that tomorrow. In any case, Switzerland will soon be hermetically sealed and the mice would be trapped all at one go.
Besides, in London there is a positive prospect of my being able to start a German newspaper. [Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue] I am assured of part of the funds.
So you must leave for London at once. In any case your safety demands it. The Prussians would shoot you twice over: 1) because of Baden, 2) because of Elberfeld.[3] And why stay in a Switzerland where you can do nothing?
You will have no difficulty in coming to London, whether under the name of Engels or under the name of Mayer. As soon as you say you want to go to England, you will receive a one-way passport to London from the French Embassy.
I count on this absolutely. You cannot stay in Switzerland. In London we shall get down to business.
For the time being my wife will remain here. Continue to write to her at the same address: 45, rue de Lille, M. Ramboz.
But once again, I confidently count on you not to leave me in the lurch.
Your
K. M.
Lupus [Wilhelm Wolff] is at Dr LĂŒningâs, Zurich. Write and tell him also about my plan.
- â On 19 July 1849 in an atmosphere of repression against democrats and socialists following the events of 13 June in Paris (*), the French authorities notified Marx that an order had been issued for his expulsion from Paris to Morbihan, a swampy and unhealthy dĂ©partement in Brittany. Marx protested and the expulsion was delayed, but on 23 August he again was ordered by the police to leave Paris within 24 hours.
Marx compares the département of Morbihan with the Pontine marshes in Italy, mentioned by Strabo in his Geography, Book 5, Ch. 3, § 5, and other ancient authors, which are a breeding-ground of malaria and other diseases.
(*) On 13 June 1849 the Montagne (bloc of democrats and petty-bourgeois socialists grouped around the newspaper La RĂ©forme) staged a peaceful demonstration to protest against the sending of French troops to suppress the Roman Republic. The demonstration was dispersed by the army and the bourgeois detachments of the National Guards and there followed a counter-revolutionary offensive, persecution of democrats and proletarian activists, including emigrants. Many Montagnards were arrested or emigrated. - â On 23 August 1849 Marx and his wife were ordered by the police to leave Paris within 24 hours. Jenny Marx got permission to stay in Paris till 15 September with her children, but Marx was obliged to make leave in haste. According to the Boulogne stamp in the passport issued to him by the French police on 24 August, he was in this port on his way to London on 26 August (see Notification Sent by the Commissioner of Police Stating That Marx's Petition Was Rejected). Presumably he arrived on the same day in London, where he was based for the rest of his life.
Meanwhile Engels had left Vevey for Lausanne. - â The Elberfeld uprising of workers and petty bourgeoisie in defence of the Imperial Constitution, which flared up on 8 May 1849, served as a signal for armed struggle in a number of towns in the Rhine Province (DĂŒsseldorf, Iserlohn, Solingen and others). Engels arrived in Elberfeld on 11 May and took an active part in the uprising, in particular directing the erection of street barricades. However, his efforts to secure the disarmament of the bourgeois civic militia, the imposition of a war tax on the bourgeoisie, the formation of the nucleus of a Rhenish revolutionary army out of armed workersâ detachments and to unite localised uprisings, met with opposition from the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaders of the movement. Under pressure from bourgeois circles Engels was expelled front the town on 15 May. The uprising in Elberfeld, as in other towns of the Rhine Province, was a failure.
On Engelsâ participation in the revolutionary struggle in Baden and the Palatinate see notes 264 and 265.