Letter to Friedrich Engels, November 20, 1862

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 20 November 1862


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 20 November 1862

Dear Engels,

I acknowledge, with many thanks and in great haste, receipt of the first half of the ten-pound note.

If only the Mexicans (les derniers des hommes!)[1] were once more to beat the crapauds,[2] but even in Paris these particular swine—the allegedly radical bourgeois—are now talking of l'honneur du drapeau.[3]

Unless Spence prevails over the NORTHERNERS, nothing will do any good, not even McClellan's BAD GENERALSHIP.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ the dregs of humanity!
  2. ↑ This refers to French armed intervention in Mexico (see Note 411). By crapauds (French: toads; figuratively, nonentities) Marx means the Bonapartist generals.
  3. ↑ the honour of the flag