Letter to Karl Marx, January 30, 1858

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 30 January 1858


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 30 January 1858

Dear Marx,

Your two letters arrived together this morning. I enclose a fiver; unfortunately I'm very tight for money myself and Schramm touched me for five pounds at the beginning of January—in the circumstances there was absolutely no question of refusing, but in consequence I was even more broke. 'Windham'[1] will be ready for Tuesday.

Apropos, would you send me another copy of the B articles Dana asked for (both the original ones and those subsequently ordered) as I have mislaid mine.

How goes it with 'Camp', 'Catapults' and 'Caps' (Percussion)?[2]

Well, the would-be assassins[3] may not have bagged Bonaparte, but they caught K. Heinzen all right.. You will recall his bloodthirsty threats of destruction in 1848 and his big talk about the deadly weapons of modern science concerning which he, of course, knew nothing. Kossuth is a great man, but Kossuth forgot fulminating silver, etc. Eh bien,[4] after this business we shall hear no more of fulminating silver. I said at once, judging by the appalling number of injured and relatively few dead, that the bombs had been overfilled and had therefore burst into a mass of small splinters, none of which had much force. The asses went about it with more stupidity than cunning. With a filling of ordinary powder the bombs would inevitably have had a much greater effect. Instead they cram in as much fulminating mercury as the things will hold, thereby producing a hail of small, relatively innocuous splinters. Dr Larrey confirms my view. So MUCH FOR Heinzen.

On the 21st courant[5] there was another attempt on Bonaparte's life in the Bois de Boulogne, with a pistol; the fellow was arrested before he could pull the trigger. The affair has been hushed up. As soon as I can dispense with the relevant Guardian you shall have it.

I shall send for Charras' Cent jours.[6] Mightn't we go in for literary criticism in America? An article on the subject would certainly be interesting and not difficult to do.

Warm regards to your wife and children.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ F. Engels, 'Windham's Defeat'.
  2. ↑ The article 'Caps (Percussion)' was not printed in The New American Cyclopaedia.—241, 257, 259
  3. ↑ Marx refers to an attempt on the life of Napoleon III by the Italian revolutionary Felice Orsini on 14 January 1858. Orsini hoped thus to give an impetus to revolutionary actions in Europe and activate the struggle for Italy's unification. The attempt failed and Orsini was executed on 13 March of that year.—251, 255, 256, 257, 266, 271, 289
  4. ↑ Well
  5. ↑ instant
  6. ↑ J. B. A. Charras, Histoire de la campagne de 1815.