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Special pages :
Letter to Karl Marx, August 5, 1870
| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 5 August 1870 |
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44
ENGELS TO MARX
IN LONDON
Manchester, 5 August 1870
Dear Moor,
In great haste. The BROKERAGE was honestly earned.[1]
But what do you think of our soldiers? They have taken entrenched positions with bayonets against mitrailleuses[2] and breech-loaders! MoAOAeuT>![3] I'll bet that tomorrow Bonaparte will invent a victory so as to blur over the thing.
If you think it important, and if there is still time, you can add my name to the Oswald Address with the same reservations.[4]
Greenwood wrote very politely today, saying I should send him articles as often as I like. He's asked for it!
Best greetings.
Your
F. E.
Crucial battle tomorrow or Sunday,[5] this time probably right on the Lorraine frontier.[6]
- ↑ See this volume, p. 32.
- ↑ Mitrailleuse—a multi-barrelled, rapid-fire gun mounted on a heavy carriage. The mitrailleuse used in the French army in 1870-71 had 25 barrels that fired in succession by means of a special mechanism. It could fire up to 175 shots a minute with carbine cartridges. However, the experience of the Franco-Prussian War showed the mitrailleuse to be unsuited to battlefield conditions due to construction inadequacies.
- ↑ (Russ.) Well done!
- ↑ In his letter of 18 July 1870, Eugen Oswald, a German refugee, asked Marx to sign an Address on the Franco-Prussian War drawn up by a group of French and German democratic refugees. The Address was published as a leaflet on 31 July 1870; the editions that followed were signed by Marx, Engels, Liebknecht, Bebel and other members of the International. Marx and his associates agreed to sign it on conditions outlined by Marx in his letter to Oswald of 3 August 1870 (see this volume, p. 34).
Oswald enclosed with his letter an excerpt from Louis Blanc's letter in which he called for the Address on the Franco-Prussian War to be signed by as many people as possible. - ↑ 7 August
- ↑ Engels' forecast proved correct. On 6 August 1870 one of the major battles of the early period of the war took place at Forbach (in Lorraine, not far from Saarbrücken), in which the Prussian troops defeated the French 2nd Corps under General Frossard. In historical literature this battle is also called the Battle of Spicheren. Engels refers to it as such in several of his letters.