Letter to Karl Marx, April 2, 1866

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 2 April 1866


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


ENGELS TO MARX

IN MARGATE

Manchester, 2 April 1866

Dear Moor,

I hope you have received the £10 which I sent to you in Margate. I was in Wales over the holiday and have at last got round to writing to you today.

Orsini called on me, but unfortunately I could do nothing for him; I have no connections of any kind in New York any more, and it is OUT OF THE QUESTION to find anyone here to run the guano DODGE with him and advance the funds for it. He is a very nice fellow.

Polish article No. 3[1] will be done tomorrow evening, if nothing interferes. I shall send it direct to Eccarius, CARE OF EDITOR OF The Commonwealth. Unfortunately, the proof-reading is so abysmal, and it's about time that they stopped reprinting the LEADERS from The Nonconformist every week. It really is sheer impudence on Miall's part to pass the newspaper off so openly as a mere appendix of The Nonconformist.

What do you say to Bismarck? It almost looks now as if he is pushing for war and is thereby offering Louis Bonaparte a splendid opportunity to acquire a piece of the left bank of the Rhine without any effort and thus set himself up à vie.[2] Even though all those who bear any responsibility for this war—if it comes to that—deserve hanging, and I would with equal impartiality gladly extend that to the Austrians as well, yet I would most of all like to see the Prussians soundly thrashed. Then there are 2 possibilities: 1. the Austrians will dictate the peace in Berlin within a fortnight, and direct intervention from abroad will thereby be avoided, but at the same time the present regime in Berlin will be made impossible, and there will be another movement which will disavow the specific nature of the Prussian regime right from the outset; or 2. there will be a sudden change in Berlin before the Austrians arrive, in which case the new movement will also get under way.

My opinion of the military situation is that the two armies are more or less evenly matched, and that the battles will prove very bloody. In any case, however, Benedek is a better general than Prince Frederick Charles, and unless Francis Joseph assists Benedek or Frederick Charles has some very good and influential staff officers, I believe the Prussians are in for a drubbing. Alone the braggery after Düppel[3] indicates that another Jena is possible.[4]

If the first battle ends in a decisive defeat for the Prussians, there will be nothing to stop the Austrians advancing on Berlin. If Prussia wins, she has not the power to launch and sustain an offensive to Vienna across the Danube, let alone to Pest and beyond. Austria is quite capable of imposing a peace on Prussia SINGLE-HANDED, although Prussia cannot do so on Austria. Every Prussian success would thus be an encouragement to Bonaparte to intervene. Furthermore, both the German swine will now already be seeking to outbid each other with offers of German territory to the third, French, swine.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ F. Engels, "What Have the Working Classes to Do with Poland?'
  2. ↑ for life
  3. ↑ The original has 'inneren Düppel', an expression first used in the meaning of 'enemy within' in a political survey published in the Bismarckian Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung on 30 September 1864. It became widely current later. Düppel (Dybböl)—Danish fortification in Schleswig which the Prussians captured by storm on 18 April 1864, during the war of Prussia and Austria against Denmark (see Note 9).
  4. ↑ At the battle of Jena (14 October 1806) the French army, commanded by Napoleon, routed the Prussian army, thus forcing Prussia to surrender.