Karl Marx; his life and work

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KARL MARX

ary cause; that young Schurz was romantically attached to Professor Kinkel, with whom Marx clashed, as he did on many subsequent occasions, much to that gentleman’s discomfiture. And the German-American statesman and publicist was not exactly the person best fitted to reproach Marx, or anyone else, for intolerance!

Early in the summer, soon after Marx and Engels reached Cologne, they were visited by their old friend, Michael Baku, nin, who had followed them from Paris. As usual, Marx and ' Bakunin quarrelled, the subject of their disagreement being the ‘ opposition of Marx and Engels to Herwegh’s plan of invading i Germany by armed legions, and their subsequent trenchant criticism of his actions. Bakunin left Cologne in high dudgeon, I vowing that he would never speak to Marx again. Upon his side Marx was almost as bitter.

It was not alone the fact of his agreement with Herwegh’s plan which led Bakunin to quarrel with Marx. There was also a sense of loyalty to his friend Herwegh, who was, he felt, attacked in his absence. Bakunin could never dissociate principles from personalities. When Marx and Engels violently assailed Herwegh’s plan Bakunin regarded the criticism as an attack upon Herwegh himself, though such was far from the intention of the two critics. Many years later, in 1871, Bakunin wrote: “ On this subject, when I think of it now, I must

say frankly that Marx and Engels were right. They truly estimated the affairs of those days.”

On the 6th of July, 1848, there appeared in the Neue Rhen- ische Zeitung an article reflecting upon Bakunin’s honour which he never forgot or wholly forgave, and which added greatly to the bitterness of his feelings toward Marx. The article accused Bakunin of being a paid spy in the employ of the Russian Ambassador, giving the name of the famous novelist, “ George Sand,” as authority for the charge, intimating that she possessed certain papers which would prove it.1 Of course, Baku

¹ “ In Bezug auf die Slavenpropaganda, versicherte man uns gestern,


CROWING OF THE GALLICAN COCK 153

nin was furious when the article was brought to his attention. He wrote to George Sand begging her to clear his name of the j odious charge, which she did later in a letter to the Neue j Rhenische Zeitung. “ The facts related by your correspondent * are absolutely false. I never had any documents which contained insinuations against M. Bakunin. I never had any reason, or authority, to express any doubts as to the loyalty of his character and the sincerity of his views. I appeal to your honour and to your conscience to print this letter in your paper immediately.”

Meantime, Bakunin had written an indignant denial, not to the Neue Rhenische Zeitung, but to the Allgemeine Oder-Zei- tung, of Breslau. Marx reproduced the letter in his paper on July the 16th, ten days after the publication of the original charge, with a brief note of explanation. The charge had been sent by the regular Paris correspondent of the paper,1 and the editors had published it as a matter of duty, for it was the duty of the press to watch the conduct of public men. Moreover, they had rendered M. Bakunin a service by giving him an opportunity to dispel a suspicion long current in certain Parisian circles.2

Marx had thus rendered the amende honorable, though' Bakunin was not entirely appeased. A few days later, however, | a formal reconciliation with Marx was effected through the in- \ tervention of friends of both. It is easy to understand that the * wound rankled, nevertheless, and that Bakunin never ceased to

sei George Sand in den Besitz von Papieren gelangt, welche den von hier verbannten Russen, M. Bakunin, stark compromittirten indem sie ihn als ein Werkzeug oder in jiingster Zeit gewonnenen Agenten Russ- lands darstellten, den der grosste Theil der Schuld der neuerdings verhafteten ungliicklichen Polen traf. George Sand hat diese Papiere einigen ihrer Vertrauten gezeigt.”—Neu. Rhen. Zeit.— July 6, 1848.

¹ Wilhelm Wolff.

² “ Wir erfiillten damit die Pflicht der Presse, offentliche Charactere streng zu iiberwachen, und gaben, damit zugleich Herrn Bakunin Gele- genheit einen Verdacht niederzuschlagen, der in Paris gewissen Kreisen allerdings aufgeworfen wurde.”—Neu. Rhen. Zeit.— July 16, 1848.

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KARL MARX

feel aggrieved and embittered over the incident. However much we may condemn Bakunin’s views — and they seem wildly fantastic in the light of subsequent experience — it is very difficult to imagine such a charge being brought against him. Bakunin was no spy. Fanatical he was, and often quite unscrupulous in controversy, but not Marx himself was more loyal to the working class.

, Most cruel of all was the fact that the slander once uttered ' pursued him all through his life. It was used against him at the congress of the League of Peace and Liberty at Geneva, in 1867, and on many other occasions. Even Marx himself, f it is to be regretted, stooped to a rather cowardly use of the old j charge in one of his “ confidential communications ” sent to the i Brunswick Committee in 1870, through Dr. Kugelmann. Marx did not definitely make the charge against Bakunin in the circular referred to, but wrote of him: “Bakunin . . .

found opponents there who not only would not allow him to exercise a dictatorial influence, but also said that he was a Russian spy.” That it was cowardly for Marx thus to write, cannot be successfully disputed. He knew the origin of the charge and how false it was, for he had himself denied it through the columns of the London Morning Advertiser in September, 1853. He knew also that when it was repeated by Liebknecht at Basel, in 1869, at the congress of the International, Bakunin demanded an investigation by a jury of honour and was abundantly vindicated. The jury, which included Cassar de Paepe, Moses Hess, George Eccarius, and others equally well known, found Liebknecht guilty of wrongful action “ in repeating calumnies,” and Liebknecht apologised to Bakunin, saying, “ I owe you honourable reparation.” In view of these facts it is not to be denied that the bitterness of the struggle betrayed Marx into the use of a cowardly method of attack which contrasted strongly with his usual scrupulous honesty and honour.

I A few months after his reconciliation with Marx, Bakunin ‘published his Appeal to the Slavs, which led to another trench


CROWING OF THE GALLICAN COCK 155.

ant criticism by Marx which Bakunin deeply resented, though it was entirely free from personal malice. Bakunin’s pamphlet outlined his gospel of “ Panslavisme.” He urged the union, both cultural and political, of all the Slavs for the purpose of destroying the Russian, Austrian and Prussian empires. He believed that this Slav union would prove to be a step toward j the formation of a great Federation of Slavs with a Communistic basis, all the Slavs being, according to his theory, Communists by instinct. He developed a wonderful agitation in | favour of the independence of the Slavs and against the Aus-s trian government.

Against this “ Panslavisme ” Marx set himself with great energy. “ Bakunin is our friend,” he wrote in the Neue Rhen- ische Zeitung on the 14th of February, 1849, “but that does not prevent us from criticizing his pamphlet.” He argued that except the Poles and the Russians, and a small number of Turkish Slavs, no other division of the Slavs could have any future as an independent people, for the reason that the fundamental conditions, historical, geographical, political and industrial, were lacking. The Panslavistic movement Marx denounced as j “ a movement which strives only to subject the civilized Westi to the barbarian East; the city to the village; commerce, in-? dustry, science and progress to the primitive culture of the j Slavish serfs.”

As a result of his frequent opposition to Bakunin, Marx 1 made a bitter foe of another great Russian revolutionist, Alex- ■ ander Herzen. For rather more than twenty years the antag-/ onism of Marx and Herzen equalled that of Marx and Bakunin. \ Since the enmity of Herzen was but a reflex of that of Bakunin, and due to precisely the same causes, it would be an unprofitable task to follow it in detail. Herzen was a great admirer of Bakunin, and his intimate friend, and to attack Bakunin was to offend Herzen. Quite as enthusiastic a Panslavist as Bakunin, he was equally affected by the trenchant attacks of Marx. With all his brilliance, Herzen was little more than


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KARL MARX

the echo of Bakunin during the early years of their association. By the time they met in London, after Bakunin’s return from exile, he had drifted far from his friend and mentor in his theoretical views, being much more of a Marxist than a Baku- ninist.

His hatred of Marx and the Marxists, however, was little, if at all, abated by this modification of his views. In 1852 an article had appeared in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, written, it is said, by Marx, making against Herzen the familiar charge of being a paid spy of the Russian government, and the charge rankled in his breast. When he received a letter from Bakunin, in 1869, in which Marx was called a giant, he wrote for an explanation, and Bakunin replied in a letter dated August 28, 1869, as follows: “Why did I then call

him a giant? Because in justice it is impossible to deny his greatness. I cannot deny his immense service in the cause of Socialism, which he has served wisely, energetically and truly for twenty-five years of my acquaintance with him, and in which direction he, undoubtedly, excelled us all. He was one of the founders of the International society, and that is in my opinion an excellent merit, which I will always acknowledge, his attitude toward us notwithstanding.”

It was about this time that Bakunin began the translation of the first volume of Marx’s Capital into Russian, a task which he never completed. When Herzen learned of this he wrote a letter to his friend, Ogarev, which shows his almost pathetic dependence upon Bakunin, his lack of independent thought. “God speed the Bakunin translation of Marx!” he wrote. “ But I don’t understand why he concealed his new attitude (i. e., of friendship). My entire enmity to the Marxists was on account of Bakunin.” In less than six months from the date of this letter Herzen was dead. It is said that before his death he definitely embraced Marxism.1

' Most of the facts relating to Herzen are from an article by Vladimir Ivanovsky in Mir Boji, January, 1907.


CROWING OF THE GALLICAN COCK 157

On the 9th of November, 1848, the Democrats of Cologne \ held a public meeting. The hall was crowded and the meeting in full swing when Marx entered, bearing a telegram in his hand. A great hush fell over the meeting and all faces were anxiously turned toward Marx as he made his way to the front and ascended the platform, the pallor of his face deepened by contrast with his jet black hair and beard. The message was brief and Marx read it with solemn tones; in accord- j ance with martial law, Robert Blum had been shot in Vienna. * Had the shooting taken place in the hall, before their very eyes, the effect could hardly have been greater. For a few seconds, which seemed like so many hours, there was an almost breathless silence. Then, like the roar of an angry sea, the fury of the crowd burst forth in cries of wrath and cheers for the Revolution.

Robert Blum, a native of Cologne, was a member of the f Frankfort National Assembly, and the most eloquent orator in * that body, although his eloquence was of the kind suited to popular platforms rather than to the floor of a parliamentary body. A thorough plebeian, he belonged to what was called the “ Moderate Democracy,” which term may perhaps express to the reader the indefiniteness and indecision of his views. He belonged to the most moderate section of the “ Left.” A man of much charm of manner, he was easily the most popular member of the Assembly. When the October insurrection t broke out in Vienna, Blum and another were sent there as j delegates by the left wing of the Assembly to uphold, together \ with other commissioners, the authority of the National As- i sembly, that tragi-comic “ parliament of the people.”

Blum saw at once that the fate of the whole revolutionary movement was for the time being dependent upon Vienna, and that compared with the importance of holding that city, the debates at Frankfort were child’s play. He at once assumed command of part of the revolutionary, forces, and proved himself a capable leader, cool, courageous and efficient. He re-


i₅8

KARL MARX

tarded the progress of the Austrian army for a considerable time, keeping them out of the city by burning the Tabor Bridge which spanned the river Danube. For this he was shot and the importance attached to his execution lay, not so much in the regret which the death of so great a hero called forth, as in the conviction that by the murder of one of their most popular members, their representative, the members of the National Assembly would at last be stirred to decisive action. “ Blum will be avenged and the great blow will be struck! ” was the cry. But the National Assembly did nothing more effective than to pass a resolution which by reason of its mildness was almost as much of an insult to the memory of the dead hero as a rebuke to Austria. From that moment, the situation was clearly hopeless. How the most radical of the Cologne Democrats regarded the martyrdom of Blum, may be seen from Freiligrath’s poem, which appeared in the Neue Rhenische Zeitung:

BLUM.

In that great city of Cologne, ’tis forty years ago to-day,

A child set up a lusty cry as on its mother’s knees it lay —

A babe with glad, bright, open brow, true omen of its life begun, Fit emblem of its father’s worth, a stalwart worker’s sturdy son —

So loud a cry that toiling nigh the father paused to hear his child,

The mother pressed its little lips the closer to her breast and smiled;

Against her breast, upon her arm she softly sang her son to sleep —■

Such cradle-song the hearers long among their sunny memories keep..

In this same city of Cologne, ’mid moaning winds of winter wild,

To-day in deepest organ tones resounds the grave-song of the child.

Robert Blum

CROWING OF THE GALLIC AN COCK 159

’Tis not the mother bowed in grief who sings it o’er her fallen son;

Nay, all Cologne bewails the death of him whose toil too soon is done.

With solemn woe the city speaks: “ Thou who didst bear the

noble dead,

Remain to weep within thy home, and bow to earth thine aged head.

I also am his mother 1 Yea, and yet a mightier one than I,

I and the Revolution’s self, for whom he laid him down to die.

Stay thou within and nurse thy foe. ’Tis we will do him honour here;

’Tis we will watch and requiem sing for thy dead son upon his bier.”

So speaks Cologne: and organ notes through her dim cloisters throbbing go.

The pillars of the altar stand enshrouded in the suits of woe;

The tapers give uncertain light, the clouds of incense denser' roll;

A thousand mourners weep to hear the requiem for a parted soul.

Thus doth the mother-city pay the toiler’s son his honour due;

Him who in far Vienna’s walls the minions of oppression slew;

Whom native worth had helped to climb the steep and painful path of life,

And meet the foremost of the land on equal terms of civil strife;

The man who, whatso’er might hap, could ne’er the People’s cause betray —

Why grasp ye not your swords in wrath, O ye that sing, and ye that pray ?

Ye organ pipes, to trumpets turn, and fright the scoundrels with your breath,

And din into their dastard ears the dreadful news of sudden death,

Those scoundrels who the order gave, the cruel murder dared to do —

The hero leant him on his knee in that autumnal morning’s dew,

Then silent fell upon his face in blood —’tis eight short days ago —

160 KARL MARX

Two bullets smote him on the breast, and laid his head forever low.

They gave him rest and peace at last; he lies in peaceful raiment dressed;

Then sing a requiem round his grave, an anthem of eternal rest;

Yea, rest for him who has bequeathed unrest to us for evermore;

For in the dim cathedral aisles, where moving masses thronged the door,

Methought through all the noise I heard a sound as of a whisper strange,

“ The passing moment is not all; the organs shall to trumpets change!

Yes, they that now sing dirges here shall seize the sword in wrath sublime,

For nought but fierce, unceasing strife yet wrestles in the womb of time.

A dirge of death is no revenge, a song of sorrow is not rage,

But soon the dread avenger’s foot shall tramp across the black- stoled stage;

The dread avenger, robed in red, and smirched and stained with blood and tears,

Shall yet proclaim a ceaseless war through all the coming tide of years;

Then shall another requiem sound, and rouse again the listening dead —

Thou dost not call for vengeance due, but time will bring her banner red.

The wrongs of others cry aloud; deep tides of wrath arise in flood —

And woe to all the tyrants then whose hands are foul with guiltless blood! ”

In that great city of Cologne, ’tis forty years ago to-day,

A babe set up a lusty cry where on its mother’s knees it lay.

A man lay on Vienna’s dust in blood—’tis eight short days ago —

To-day his requiem on the Rhine bewails the doom that laid him low.

₍

Then came the coup d’etat of November. On the 8th of
November, 1848, the King nominated a new ministry, at the


CROWING OF THE GALLICAN COCK 161

head of which was Count Brandenburg. On the following day e the Assembly received from this new ministry an ordinance sus- , pending the sittings and removing the seat of the Assembly to j Brandenburg. The Centre and Left parties, 290 members in j all, refusing to obey the order, fifteen thousand troops under | General Wrangel entered Berlin on the xoth and the meeting! place of the National Assembly was occupied by a company of soldiers. On the 12th, Berlin was declared to be in a state of jj siege; the civic guard was disarmed and disbanded, all clubs i were closed, public meetings forbidden and a strict censorship! of newspapers and pamphlet distribution instituted.

These events stirred the Rhenish Democrats to quick, bold action. The Neue Rhenische Zeitung took the resolution adopted by the radical remnant of the National Assembly on the 15th, its last act, which protested that all taxes levied by the Brandenburg ministry would be illegal, as the cue for its campaign. Day after day the paper appeared with a notice calling upon the citizens to organize and offer armed resistance 1 to all efforts to collect taxes from them. On November 18th ' the Provincial Committee of the Rhenish Democrats issued a proclamation, which was posted all over the province, reading as follows:

“ The Provincial Committee of Rhenish Democrats calls upon all democratic associations of the Rhenish Province to secure the acceptation and execution of the following measures:

“ (1) The Prussian National Assembly having itself refused to vote the taxes, all attempts to collect such taxes by force to be resisted in every way.

“ (2) The ‘ Landsturm ’ (armed men) are everywhere to be organized for resisting the enemy. Those without means are to be supplied with arms and ammunition by the municipalities, or by voluqtary contributions.

“ (3) The authorities everywhere to be called upon to declare publicly whether they intend to acknowledge and carry out the wishes of the National Assembly.

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KARL MARX

“ In the event of their refusing to do this committees of public safety to be formed, whenever possible, in conjunction with the municipalities. Any municipality opposing the Legislative Assembly to be replaced by a new one duly elected.” 1

For their share in this, Marx and two other members of the ; Executive were arrested at Cologne, as was Lassalle at Dussel- j dorf, and tried for inciting to armed resistance to the King’s . authority. The trial of Marx and his associates took place on * the 9th of February, 1849; that of Lassalle three months later. The defence which Marx made at the trial has long been regarded as a masterpiece of legal argument. Before proceeding

₍

to its consideration, however, another trial calls for attention.
On the seventh of February, Karl Marx, as editor-in-chief of

} the Neue Rhenische Zeitung; H. Korff, as manager, and Fried-
S rich Engels, as assistant editor, were placed on trial, charged
with having libelled the public prosecutor and some constables,
concerning their official actions connected with the arrest of Dr.
Gottschalk and Lieutenant Annecke. After the public prosecu-
tor and the solicitor for the prosecution had spoken, Marx
made the speech for the defence, in reality an arraignment of
the ministry, which afforded great satisfaction to the crowded
galleries. He spoke for about an hour, first discussing with
great ability the legal aspects of the case. He spoke through-
out with calm force, concluding with this remarkable statement:

“ Not only does the general situation in Germany, but also the state of affairs in Prussia, impose upon us the duty to watch with the utmost distrust every movement of the government, and publicly to denounce to the people the slightest misdeeds of the system. The present, the Cologne Court, afforded us quite a special inducement to expose it before public opinion as a tool of the counter-revolution. In the month of July alone we had to denounce three illegal arrests. On the first two occasions, the public prosecutor kept quiet, the third time he tried to ex

¹ Quoted by Bernstein, Ferdinand Lassalle as a Social Reformer, p. 26.


CROWING OF THE GALLICAN COCK 163

culpate himself, but kept silent when we replied, for the simple reason that nothing could be said. And under these circumstances the ministers dared to affirm that the case was not one of denunciation, but of paltry malicious ‘ libel ’ 1 This view is derived from a misinterpretation of their own. I, for my part, assure you, gentlemen, that I prefer following the great historical events; I prefer analyzing the march of history to fighting events with local idols, with constables and public prosecutors. However great these gentlemen may be in their own imagination, they are as nothing in the gigantic struggles of the present.

I consider it a real loss when we have to break a lance with such opponents. But on the other hand, it is the duty of the press to step forward on behalf of the oppressed and their struggles.

“ And then, gentlemen, the edifice of slavery has its most effective supports in the subordinate political and social functionaries that immediately deal with private life — the person, the living individual. It is not sufficient to fight the general conditions and the superior powers. The press must make up its mind to oppose this constable, this attorney, this councillor. What has wrecked the March revolution? It reformed only the highest political class, but it left untouched all the supports of this class — the old bureaucracy, the old army, the old courts, the old judges, born, educated, and worn out in the service of absolutism. The first duty of the press is now to undermine all the supports of the present political state.”

The defendants were immediately acquitted by the jury, and ^ Marx returned to his desk to forge new thunderbolts and to | prepare for the trial of the 9th the speech which was to reveal, ' alike to his friends and his foes, forensic powers which, had he chosen, might have won him eminence as a great court pleader. Facing what was, under the circumstances, a charge of high^ treason, he seemed wholly indifferent to that fact, barely con-? descending to consider its personal side at all. Calmly, with-j out a single artifice of the orator, he dealt with the legal aspect of the charge, analyzing the case for the prosecution with faultless logic, in language that was as concise and simple as he

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KARL MARX

would have used in lecturing to a class of 'workingmen. He was not merely addressing a jury in the hope of securing the acquittal of himself and comrades. That was relatively unimportant. He was addressing through that jury the public of Germany, especially its proletariat. Clearly and vigorously, but without a trace of passion, he explained the standpoint from which he viewed the events of the time and ended with a summary of the political situation.

After brief remarks by his codefendants, that jury, wholly ! composed of members of the bourgeoisie he held in such contempt, quickly and unanimously acquitted the defendants, and ; actually sent one of their number to Marx to express their thanks for the very interesting and instructive lecture he had given them! Three months later, at Diisseldorf, Lassalle was tried upon a similar charge and also acquitted. Much has been written concerning the great oratorical effort Lassalle made upon that occasion, and of the profound effect his speech produced in court. As a matter of fact, however, it was never delivered at all! Owing to the fact that the speech had been printed before the trial and some proofs of it circulated, the court decided to exclude the public, whereupon Lassalle refused to deliver the speech he had so carefully prepared.

A comparison of the speech of Marx and the undelivered oration of Lassalle shows the argument of the latter to be almost a reproduction of that of the former. Lassalle was following Marx as a disciple. But in manner the two were as opposite as the poles. Concluding with a quotation from Schiller’s William Tell, Lassalle’s address is remarkable for the splendour of its rhetoric and passionate sentiment. To get a proper comparison of the two men we have only to imagine Marx calmly addressing the Cologne jury, thinking only of great principles and ignoring his own interests at stake, and Lassalle repeating the same careful, scholarly argument to the jury at Diisseldorf, passionately declaiming well-polished, sonorously beautiful phrases, superb in his oratorical pride.


CROWING OF THE GALLICAN COCK 165,

As regards Lassalle, the scene is wholly imaginary, but in such a picture we get the most accurate comparison of the two men to whom modern Socialism owes so much.

The triumph of Marx was short-lived. Failing in its attempts to crush him by legal methods — perhaps because even bourgeois juries would not convict, in spite of abundant evidence — the Prussian government adopted summary methods of ridding itself of the ablest and most dangerous of its enemies. In May there was a rising in Dresden led by Bakunin and risings in several places in the Rhine Province, to all of which Marx at once gave his support. He was summarily expelled from Prussia, and the Neue Rhenische Zeitung suppressed. The last issue of the paper appeared on the 19th of May, printed in red ink, and containing a defiant “ Farewell ” poem by Freiligrath. One stanza of this poem has been much quoted and is well-known, but the poem as a whole is unfamiliar to English readers of this generation. It is here given in the admirable translation by Ernest Jones:

FAREWELL OF THE “ NEW RHENISH GAZETTE”

May, 1849.

No open blow in an open fight,

But with quips and with quirks they arraign me,

By creeping treachery’s secret blight The Western Calmucks have slain me.

The fatal shaft in the dark did fly;

I was struck by an ambushed knave;

And here in the pride of my strength I lie,

Like the corse of a rebel brave I

With a deathless scorn in my dying breath,

In my hand the sword still cherished;

“ Rebellion ” still for my shout of death,

In my manhood, untainted, I perished.

Oh 1 gladly, full gladly, the Pruss and the Czar The grass from my grave would clear;

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KARL MARX

But Germany sends me, with Hungary far,

Three salvoes to honor my bier.

And the tattered poor man takes his stand,

On my head the cold sods heaving;

He casts them down with a diligent hand,

Where the glory of toil is cleaving.

And a garland of flowers and May he brought On my burning wounds to cast;

His wife and his daughters the wreath had wrought When the work of the day was past.

Farewell! farewell! thou turbulent life!

Farewell to ye! armies engaging!

Farewell! cloud canopied fields of strife,

Where the greatness of war is raging!

Farewell! but not forever farewell!

They can not kill the spirit, my brother!

In thunder I’ll rise on the field where I fell,

More boldly to fight out another.

When the last of crowns like glass shall break,

On the scene our sorrows have haunted,

And the People the last dread “ guilty ” shall speak,

By your side ye shall find me undaunted.

On Rhine, or on Danube, in word and deed,

You shall witness, true to his vow,

On the wrecks of thrones, in the midst of the freed,

The rebel who greets you now!

Thus closed another chapter in a brave and brilliant career. The fight which he had waged against the Prussian autocracy had involved great risks and still greater sacrifices upon the * part of all concerned. Marx and his little family suffered i many hardships during that fight against poverty on the one side and despotism on the other. Lessner has told how, when he reached Cologne, in 1848, he was ceremoniously appointed “ Master of the Wardrobe ” by the facetious Engels, who had learned that he was a tailor by trade. The office imposed upon Lessner the onerous and unprofitable task of keeping the clothes




Ferdinand Freiligrath

CROWING OF THE GALLICAN COCK 167

of the editor-in-chief of the Neue Rhenische Zeitung and his lieutenant presentable.

But that was the least serious side of the struggle with poverty. Marx had a wife and three young children to support,; and at times they suffered great hardship and privation. The 1 income of the paper was often insufficient to meet all the sal-1 aries of its staff, and when that happened, Marx and Engels invariably went without, in order that the other workers might be paid. Hardly anything definite is known of the sacrifices thus made, but one who was intimate with the family in those days told the present writer that he had, by accident, discovered that actual want of food at times was not unknown to them. And though he was not legally responsible, and his expulsion j would, in any case, have placed him beyond the reach of credit-' ors, when he was ordered to leave the country, Marx first paid: all bills due, including arrears of wages and salaries, ml order that the paper might leave behind it no dishonourable memories. To do this, his brave wife pawned her much-prized heavy silver, valuable heirlooms of the Westphalens, inherited from their Argyll ancestors, and sold all their furniture.

When everything had thus been sacrificed there was barely enough money left to take the family to Paris, but Marx had the satisfaction of knowing that “ the honour of the paper and the cause ” had been saved. In later years, he was often twitted by less scrupulous friends for his extreme punctiliousness in such matters, and “ as honest as old Marx ” became rather a byword in revolutionary circles.


VIII

“ THE MOTHER OF EXILES ”

As soon as he was expelled from Prussia, Marx hastened ’ to Paris, going in advance of his family to arrange for their | reception. The hardships of this forced and hasty flight were | somewhat lessened by the fact that he bore an important mes- !■ sage from the Provincial Committee of Rhenish Democrats to the workers of Paris, where a new crisis was preparing. The workers of the French capital were getting ready for a new uprising which might prove of the greatest consequence to the German revolutionary movement. This exile, therefore, meant a fresh opportunity for service and struggle, i Engels did not go to Paris. Instead, he went into the Palat- | inate of Bavaria to take active part in the rising there. The ! beautiful Palatine country was being swept by the fires of revolution. The King of Bavaria had refused to recognize the national constitution, and the Pfaelzers, who had no sense of loyalty to Bavaria, to whose rule they had been somewhat arbitrarily assigned after the Napoleonic wars, rose in rebellion. They were all for a “ United Germany,” and if the King of Bavaria would not be German, then the Palatinate must cease to be Bavarian. Professor Kinkel had become a secretary, of the Provisional Government of the Palatinate, while Lieutenant Annecke, whose arrest had been one of the causes leading to the prosecution of the Neue Rhenische Zeitung in February, when Engels was one of the defendants, was chief of artillery. Of course, Carl Schurz was there also, his rank being that of lieutenant. Engels joined a volunteer corps and received a commission, that of adjutant. t In the neighbouring Grand Duchy of Baden the people had

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“THE MOTHER OF EXILES” 169

risen, also, and in June the Palatine troops, some eight thousand men, crossed the Rhine into Baden territory and marched toward its capital city, Karlsruhe. Engels fought in three small battles of no great importance, in the three days’ fight on the Murg River, June 28th, 29th and 30th, and in the defence of the fortress of Rastatt against the siege. He was one of the last of the conquered army to leave, remaining until all was lost, on the nth of July, 1849. Then he escaped into Switzerland. He had gone into the fight out of sheer love of excitement, with no illusions concerning it. He knew that there was no earthly chance of success, unless a striking victory by the Republicans of Paris should occur in June. But the j rising in Paris on the 13th of June was a dismal failure. After I that, the Baden-Palatinate struggle was a bloody farce, as * Engels later described it.

Marx reached Paris in May, and as soon as his family was *, settled he devoted himself to the discharge of the commission ) with which the Rhenish Democrats had entrusted him. Even * his almost imperturbable spirit must have been sorely dismayed by the conditions he found. The revolution for which prepara- ? tions were being made, and with which his commission had to ; do, was, he saw only too clearly, foredoomed to sanguinary de- i. feat. As Liebknecht has so well said: “ The radical middle

class is nothing without the labourers, and the flower of the labourers had been shot in June, 1848, or had fallen a prey to the ‘ dry guillotine ’ (i. e., were banished to Cayenne, the French convict colony in Guiana). The ‘ 13th of June,’ in 1849, only revealed the impotency of the radical middle class.”

Marx witnessed the failure of that abortive rising. Its principal hero, Ledru-Rollin, the friend and patron of Jean Frangois Millet, had to flee to London, as Louis Blanc had been forced to do one year previously, also in June. The Prince- s President, Louis Bonaparte, was in the saddle, antagonizing all | the liberal elements and makitlg a strong allegiance with the| Roman Catholic Church, upon the clergy of which he relied for

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support. It was not strange, therefore, that Marx should soon find himself compelled to leave Paris. A diary kept by his faithful wife describes what occurred: “We remained in

Paris a month. Here, also, there was to be no resting-place for us. One fine morning the familiar figure of the sergeant of police appeared with the announcement that Karl ‘ et sa dame ’ must leave Paris within twenty-four hours. We were graciously told we might be interned at Vannes, in the Mor- bihan. Of course, we could not accept such an exile as that, and I again gathered together my small belongings to seek a safe haven in London. Karl had hastened thither before us.”

The reason why the French government offered to permit the family to reside at Vannes, in Brittany, was that it was considered to be “ fireproof ” against all revolutionary propaganda, and that was, of course, for Marx, a good reason for not going there. Further, the authorities would probably have been very glad to get Marx at Vannes, where he could be kept under close surveillance — and arrested at any convenient moment. So there was nothing to do but to seek the protection of London, that “ Mother of Exiles ” whose glorious tradition of inviolable asylum brought to her doors so many of the choicest spirits of Europe. Once more Marx hastened on in advance of the family. This was necessary, for within a month another child was expected, and provision had to be made for the family so that the mother would not be too heavily burdened upon her arrival.

It should, perhaps, be noted here that Mrs. Marx was not left alone with her children upon such occasions. With her always went her faithful companion, Helene Demuth, the noble “Lenchen” or “Nymny,” of whom we shall hear further. As a girl of eight or nine years of age, Helene had been taken into the Westphalen household, apparently as a sort of nurse to the children. She grew up in the household of the West- phalens and became as one of the family, treating little Jenny and her playmate, Karl, as her own sister and brother. When

“THE MOTHER OF EXILES” 171

her daughter was married — apparently after the young bride had gone to Paris with her husband and was homesick — Mrs. von Westphalen sent her, as the best she could send, “ the faithful, dear Lenchen,” who remained with the Marx family through many trying years, sharing without a murmur all their trials and hardships, and, at last, their grave. “ Lenchen’s ” devotion and sacrifice is a story of noble and beautiful friendship worthy to be immortalized by some great poet.

Marx arrived in London toward the end of June, 1849, an<^ J took furnished lodgings for the family somewhere in Camber- j well, the rent being one pound twelve shillings and sixpence per week, an excessive amount, even for furnished apartments in Camberwell. Only the fact that Marx had been able to dis- f pose of some small property which he owned in Trier made it \ possible for him to pay so much. And that money was soon | exhausted, so that they suffered great poverty and were in ar- j rears with the rent. Into this state of poverty came in July ) the fourth child, a boy, named Henry, cursed from birth by * the black monster of poverty and doomed to the early death which is the fate of so many thousands of poor children.

In August, Marx was joined by Engels. After the failure j of the Baden-Palatinate insurrection, Engels had gone to i Switzerland, where he remained a month, until he knew the plans of Marx. As there was nothing to be done in Switzer- j land, he decided to join Marx in London. To attempt in those days to reach London by passing through France was dangerous, not a few German fugitives having been illegally seized at Havre and sent on to America. This led him to choose another route. He went first, therefore, to Genoa, and from thence to London in a sailing ship.

Marx and his family lived at the Camberwell house for some j months, during which time he strove to obtain work. Unfitted s for any manual labour, a German radical, every line of whose \ work had been of a kind which could not be submitted to pros-1 pective employers without destroying any small chance of ob- 1

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taining work that there might be, his position was an exceedingly tragic one. Rare and ill-paid were the little jobs he obtained in those days. He wrote for some of the Chartist journals but probably never received a single penny in payment. If perchance any such articles were ever paid for the occasions must have been rare and the sums paid quite trifling.

In the midst of this struggle with poverty another struggle had developed within the movement and taxed the energies of tboth Marx and Engels. A friend who knew Marx in those ■ days described him to the present writer as “ a man who ap-

_I

peared to be haunted; a big, haggard, hopeless-looking man,
who seemed to forget his misery only in the intensity of his

struggle within the ranks of the Communists.” In order that

we may understand the nature of this struggle, it is necessary
to obtain a mental picture of the effects upon the working-
class movement of the revolution of 1848. And Marx himself
has provided such a picture:

“After the defeat of the Revolution in 1848 to 1849, working-class party on the Continent lost what they had gained during its short epoch — a free press, liberty of speech, and the right of association. The Liberal bourgeois party, as well as the Democratic Party, found in the social conditions of the classes they represented the opportunities to keep together under one form or another, and to assert more or less their | common interests. To the working-class party, after 1849, as | before 1848, only one way was left open — the way of a se- I cret society. So, after 1849, there developed a whole series I of proletarian societies on the Continent, discovered by the f police, condemned by the courts, broken up by imprisonment, but always reorganized under pressure of existing conditions. Part of these secret societies had for their object the immediate revolution of the state. This was right in France, where the working class was conquered by the bourgeoisie, and the attack on the actual government immediately coincided with the attack on the governing class. Another part of the secret societies sought the formulation of a party of the working class 'without caring for the actual .governments. This was necessary

“ THE MOTHER OF EXILES ” 173

in countries like Germany, where the bourgeoisie and the working class together succumbed to the half-feudal governments, and, where, therefore, a victorious attack on the actual government would have brought about a victory for the middle class.”

Of necessity, the Communist movement became again largely 1 a secret movement, which Marx abominated above all things. As is always the case in secret, conspiratory movements, all kinds of “ shady ” characters wormed their way into it, including, of course, spies. Intrigue within intrigue was almost an inevitable accompaniment of the only form of activity open j to such a movement under these conditions. Marx and Engels' saw with alarm the rapid undoing of the work they had done in 1847. Karl Schapper, the proof reader who saw the Communist Manifesto through the press and later worked on the Neue Rhenische Zeitung; Lieutenant August von Willich, who in March, 1848, violently entered the Council Chamber at Cologne; Professor Kinkel and, a little later on, the excitable Frenchman, Barthelmy,— these men and others formed one faction, contending for “ direct action,” for conspiracies and insurrections, a return to the old ways from which Marx and Engels had diverted the movement at the end of 1847.

Against this policy, Marx and Engels, joined early in 1850 by Wilhelm Liebknecht, set themselves. They refused absolutely to attempt to “ rekindle the ashes and dross ” of the revolutions of February and March. As against the Schap- per-Willich-Kinkel faction, with their chimerical notions of a new and successful outbreak in Germany, and their frightfully bombastic manifestoes, the Marx faction stood out bravely for a policy which comprised better organization of the movement, without secrecy; educational propaganda in Germany and elsewhere, and personal study. “ Let us organize to educate and agitate, and educate to agitate and organize,” they said. For this policy Marx was frequently denounced as a “ traitor ” and a “ tool of the reaction,” by Messrs. Willich and Kinkel, the very “ tolerant ” friends of Carl Schurz.


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For a while Marx and his friends seemed to make headway. In pursuance of a plan agreed upon by the Communists in Cologne, Hamburg and other places, the Neue Rhenische Zeitung was resuscitated, as a monthly review, published from Hamburg, but edited by Marx from London. This review was to be the means of reaching the German working class with an educational propaganda. Owing to the dissension in the London organization and other circumstances not differing in any particular from those commonly attending such ventures, it failed after only six numbers had been published. In his “ Farewell ” of the Neue Rhenische Zeitung, Freiligrath had written defiantly,

“ Farewell! but not forever farewell!

They can not kill the spirit, my brother!

In thunder I’ll rise on the field where I fell,

More boldly to fight out another.”

The prophecy had in a manner been fulfilled, but to small purpose. The rising had taken place, to be followed by a fall less glorious than that of May, 1849.

The six issues of the review contained a great deal of valuable matter, much of which has since been republished in the form of brochures. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the whole review was the insistence of Marx and Engels upon the fact that the raising of an immediate revolution was impossible, that only as a result of a long evolutionary process in the industrial world would any social revolution ever be possible. However unpleasant such teaching might be to the romantic radicals, it was necessary; Marx and Engels were bound to destroy the illusions of these gentlemen, and the review suffered accordingly. The money for the review was not always forthcoming, and that, as we shall see, added greatly to the poverty and distress from which Marx and his family suffered so terribly.

Early in the fight within the League, Marx and his sup-

“THE MOTHER OF EXILES” 175

porters made a desperate effort to save the organization, and to confine the fight to London, by getting the headquarters transferred to Cologne, where the faithful and eloquent Less- ner was still residing, under the name of “ Carstens.” This move, it was hoped, would keep the strife confined to the London organization and, at the same time, enable Marx effectually to control the whole movement, through Lessner. The plan succeeded very well for a time, until the trial of the Communists at Cologne, in October, 1852, broke up the campaign.

At that famous trial, of which Marx afterwards wrote such a scathing and convincing exposure, an attempt was made to fasten upon Marx responsibility for plotting a terrible insurrection. A paper, professedly in his handwriting and containing a lot of “ rabid nonsense,” was presented in evidence, but was at last admitted by the prosecution to be a forgery. The defendants at the trial were Messrs. Lessner, Nothjung, Burgers, Roser, Otto, Reiff, and Ehrhardt, workingmen, and Drs. Becker, Daniels, Klein and Abraham Jacobi, the last named now one of the most honoured and best beloved men in the medical profession in the United States. Seven of the defendants received prison sentences of from three to six years, the other four, including Dr. Jacobi, being acquitted.

As the charges brought against the accused were mainly supported by evidence supplied by spies well known to the London Communists, and consisting of the most odious charges of alleged plottings in London, the case for the defence had to be prepared almost entirely in London, and evidence of the falseness of the charges secured. And this work, quite naturally, fell entirely upon the shoulders of Marx, still further taxing his energies and increasing the poverty and misery from which he and his family suffered. Engels had, like Marx, found it | impossible to make a living by literary work, and was obliged f to capitulate to his stern old father and enter the mill at Man-1