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Special pages :
Letter to Karl Marx, April 29, 1864
| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 29 April 1864 |
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41
ENGELS TO MARX
IN LONDON
Manchester, 29 April 1864
Dear Moor,
You will, presumably, at long last have rid yourself of the furunculosis. Meanwhile, Lupus has been suffering most vilely from the rheumatic headaches he was already having when you were here,[1] and from which he has since had no respite—on the contrary, they have got worse and worse so that he's had no proper sleep for weeks. He's already been confined to bed again on several occasions, and that sod Borchardt does nothing at all about it; he treats the touch of gout Lupus has got in his toe (but which doesn't bother him at all now, whereas the headaches and insomnia are really sapping his strength) with Colchicum and doesn't even give him an occasional dose of opium. Once or twice I have spoken to Lupus pretty seriously about the matter, but you know how much good that does. He believes himself to be under an obligation to B., and that's that. All the QUACK has done is to cup him of ten ounces of blood! That was the day before yesterday. This evening I shall visit Lupus again and see how things are going. Three weeks ago I too had a violent and most painful attack of rheumatism of the respiratory muscles, but Gumpert cured me of it within 24 hours.
The Garibaldi tomfoolery[2] came to a fitting end. The way the chap was shown the door after a week of being gaped at by the SWELLS is really too splendid and could happen nowhere but in England. It would be the ruin of anyone except Garibaldi, and even for him it's tremendously mortifying to have served the English aristocracy as a NINE DAYS' WONDER and then to have been thrown out into the street. They treated him as an out-and-out romantic. How could the fellow submit to it and how he could be so stupid as to take these Dundrearys for the English people? However, anyone who is not now convinced of the wholly bourgeois nature of this gentleman will never be convinced. For to respect the English press is almost worse than respecting the PEELERS. And as for his EXIT! Well, that beats everything.
But our friend Bismarck is also a lumen.[3] Of him it might even be said: n'est pas Soulouque qui veut[4] First he mimics Bonaparte's Press Laws, and now he's sending worthy Corporal William to Schleswig to induce the people to vote for annexation by Prussia! This jackass seems to imagine that the highways and byways are strewn with Savoys and Nices and that these are to be had for the taking.[5] As the Dagbladet quite rightly points out, by the way, the Prussian reactionary press has been in such a state of exaltation since the capture of Düppel,[6] and the chaps are so above themselves that one can count with certainty on the gang's coming a really bad cropper within a very short space of time.
I was a bit surprised by the way the Prussian army carried out the assault. The attack took place with 4 brigades (24 battalions) against 4 Danish brigades (16 battalions), i.e. by no means disproportionate superiority for an assault of this kind. Admittedly, the Danes had been greatly worn down by artillery fire but so, for that matter, had the Russians at Sevastopol, and to an even greater extent.[7] However, the fact that in 20 minutes the Prussians took the first 6 field-works and then, in 2 hours—N.B. without orders, for the worthy prince[8] wanted to call it a day—the whole peninsula[9] including the bridgehead, and inflicted losses of 5,000 on approximately 13,000 Danes, is more than one might have credited the fellows with. You will, by the way, remember that I have always said Prussian fire-arms—rifles as well as guns—were the best in the world, and that has been borne out here. On the other hand, the conference will soon reveal what marionettes their diplomats are. What with Russia, Boustrapa,[10] and Palmerston, aided and abetted by the 'grand' policy of Bismarck, the 'fall' that follows after pride can hardly be long in coming. But how about money? After all, the 22 millions from the public treasury and the railway loan of 6 millions must have been squandered by now, and what then?
I shall descend on you one of these Friday evenings but not, of course, without writing to you first.
Write soon, and give my regards to the FAMILY.
Your
F. E.
- ↑ On 12 March 1864 Marx came to stay with Engels in Manchester for a few days to tell him about his trip to Germany and Holland (see Note 561).
- ↑ See this volume, p. 516.
- ↑ a shining light
- ↑ Not everyone who wants can be a Soulouque (Victor Hugo, Napoleon le Petit, paraphrased).
- ↑ An allusion to France's annexation of Savoy and Nice under a treaty she concluded with the Kingdom of Sardinia in Turin in 1860. In keeping with that treaty, plebiscites were held in Savoy and Nice in April to create the illusion of a voluntary merger.
- ↑ The Danish stronghold of Düppel (Dybbøl) in Schleswig was stormed and captured by Prussian troops on 18 April 1864, in the course of the war that Prussia and Austria were waging against Denmark (see Note 572).
- ↑ Engels means the defence of Sebastopol in the Crimean war of 1853-56.
- ↑ Friedrich Karl of Prussia
- ↑ Sundewitt
- ↑ Boustrapa—nickname of Louis Bonaparte, composed of the first syllables of the names of the cities where he staged putsches: Strasbourg (30 October 1836), Boulogne (6 August 1840) and Paris (coup d'état of 2 December 1851, which culminated in the establishment of a Bonapartist dictatorship).