Letter to Friedrich Engels, October 10, 1854

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 10 October 1854


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

London, 10 October 1854 28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Engels,

D'abord mes compliments[1] on your exceedingly GLORIOUS and SOUND CRITICISM.[2] It's a pity that this fait d'armes[3] couldn't have been accomplished in the London Press. A coup of this nature would have assured your position in that field.

Quant à notre bon[4] St-Arnaud who took good care to die at the right moment, I gave the Tribune a detailed biography of him[5] MONTHS AGO. Of this fellow it may assuredly be said: Non bis in idem.[6]

How to explain: 1. that the English failed to station a group of warships off the Yenikale Straits in sufficient strength to prevent the Russians crossing from Anapa, etc.? Was it not perfectly possible, indeed imperative under PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES, to gain control of the SEA OF AZOV with small vessels in order to cut off all reinforcements by water?

2. Should not a diversion in the direction of Bessarabia have been made (by Omer Pasha) to prevent the Russians from bringing reinforcements into the Crimea from that quarter? Can negligence on this score be explained otherwise than by Anglo-Austrian diplomatic trickery?

I believe, OF COURSE, that diplomacy on the part of military commanders ceases as soon as they find themselves in a mousetrap as in the Crimea. But in all that concerns the plan as a whole, I do not believe that Palmerston has as yet ceased for one moment to evince at least his 'good will'.

In one of its recent issues, the Tribune is congratulated by my rival, A.P.C.,[7] for its 'SPLENDID CHARACTERISATION' of Espartero.[8] The man, of course, has no idea that he is 'complimenting' me, but at the same time a sure instinct has led him to take HOLD of a VERY SILLY concluding sentence that belongs exclusively to the Tribune.[9]

Incidentally, they had deleted every one of my jokes about constitutional heroes en general, suspecting that, lurking behind the 'Monk-Lafayette-Espartero' trio, were certain sarcasms aimed at the noble 'Washington'. The paper's uncritical attitude is horrifying. First, they extolled Espartero as the ONLY STATESMAN OF SPAIN. Then they took my articles,[10] which treat him if anything as a comic character, and added: From this one can see that nothing is to be expected of Spain. Then, when they got the first article on Spain—mere prolegomena leading up to 1808—they believed it to constitute the whole and accordingly added on a completely heterogeneous but well-meaning conclusion urging the Spaniards to show themselves worthy of the Tribune's confidence. How they will handle subsequent instalments, I do not know.

Liebknecht, as you know, has been vacillating most despondently between an Englishwoman who wanted to marry him and a German woman[11] in Germany whom he wanted to marry. At last the German descended on him and he married her,—in a religious as well as a civil ceremony. Both of them seem very down-in-the-mouth. His job goes west, since the people are moving away. He spent a wretched honeymoon at No. 14 Church Street in a house where he got himself heavily in debt. But who forced the ass to get married—at this of all times since he was perfectly aware of all these circumstances. The woman had in the meantime already become engaged to someone else in Germany, so at any rate the case was by no means a pressing one.

If you want to read something really funny you must try and get hold of Saturday's Morning Advertiser, in which the LICENSED VICTUALLERS take the present editorial board of that POTHOUSE PAPER to court.[12] Prosecution and defence both equally amusing. The first was conducted by Mr Foster who once figured as a BARRISTER in Baron Nicholson's court.[13] All the thanks Urquhart got for having extolled the LICENSED as England's party above parties were hard words and his dismissal. Never, by the way, has the curtain been raised quite so much to reveal the innermost squalor of the SHOP-KEEPER'S soul.

I suppose you haven't seen Bruno Bauer's L'Arrogance des pouvoirs occidentaux?[14] I haven't yet managed to lay hands on it either.

Should anything important happen in the military department before Friday,[15] send me something to be going on with, for in that case the Spanish article, if it is to be ACCEPTABLE, will have to be preceded by a Russian one.[16]

I look forward to a letter from you soon.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ First, my congratulations
  2. ↑ F. Engels, 'The Battle of the Alma'.
  3. ↑ feat of arms
  4. ↑ As for our good
  5. ↑ Marx wrote about Saint-Arnaud in three articles sent to New York on 6, 9 and 16 June 1854 as emerges from entries in Marx's notebook. The first article has not been found in the issues of the New-York Daily Tribune, New-York Weekly Tribune and New-York Semi-Weekly Tribune available to the editors of the present edition. The material relating to Saint Arnaud in the article of 16 June, 'State of the Russian War', was omitted by the Tribune editors, and hence only part of the biographical essay on Saint-Arnaud is extant in the article 'Reorganisation of the British War Administration.—The Austrian Summons.— Britain's Economic Situation.—St. Arnaud' (see present edition, Vol. 13)
  6. ↑ Never twice on the same subject.
  7. ↑ [F. Pulszky,] An article dated 7 September 1854 and published in the section 'The State of Europe' of the New-York Daily Tribune, No. 4190, 22 September 1854.
  8. ↑ K. Marx, 'Espartero'.
  9. ↑ See K. Marx, 'The Spanish Revolution.—Greece and Turkey', 'Evacuation of the Danubian Principalities.—The Events in Spain.—New Danish Constitution.—The Chartists', 'Evacuation of Moldavia and Wallachia.— Poland.— Demands of the Spanish People'.
  10. ↑ For Tuesday, 26 September 1854, Engels wrote 'The Attack on Sevastopol' (see present edition, Vol. 13)
  11. ↑ Ernestine Landolt
  12. ↑ 'The Incorporated Society of Licensed Victuallers', The Morning Advertiser, No. 19749, 7 October 1854.
  13. ↑ By 'Baron Nicholson's court' Marx means a club—the Judge and Jury Society—formed by Renton Nicholson in London in 1841. Its visitors staged parody trials presided over by Nicholson himself, who was called Lord Chief Baron
  14. ↑ Presumably B. Bauer's De la dictature occidentale.
  15. ↑ 13 October
  16. ↑ This article was probably not written because the entry concerning its dispatch is crossed out in Marx's notebook