Page:Karl Kautsky - Frederick Engels - 1899.djvu/15

 After this the campaign could be nothing but a more or less bloody farce. It was nothing else. Stupidity and treachery ruined it completely. With the exception of a few, the military chiefs were either traitors, or officious, unlearned, cowardly office-seekers, and the few exceptions were left in the lurch by the majority. As with the leaders, so with the soldiers. The Badish people had the best military element in them. In the insurrection from the first they were so mishandled and neglected that all the misery arose we have described. The whole revolution resolved itself into a comedy, and the only comfort was that the six times greater opponent had six times less courage.

"But this comedy had a tragic ending, thanks to the blood-thirstiness of the counter-revolution. The same soldiers, who on the march or on the field of battle more than once were seized with panic fright, died like heroes in the ditches of Rastat. Not one begged for mercy, not one trembled. The German people will not forget the fusillades and casemates of Rastat; they will not forget the nobility who commanded these infamies, nor the traitors whose cowardice was to blame for it; the Brentanos of Karlsruhe and Frankfurt." (The German Imperial Plan of Campaign, by Frederick Engels; "Neue Rheinische Zeitung," Political and Economic Revue, edited by Karl Marx, 1850, Vol. III., p. 80.)

Engels was one of the last of the conquered army to go over into the bounds of Switzerland after all was lost on the 11th of July, 1849. He remained in Switzerland a month. Meanwhile Marx had betaken himself to London. We know that he had gone to Paris with a commission from Democratic Revolutionary Central Committee, where the Democratic party was preparing an uprising upon which depended not only the fate of the French but also that of the German Democrats. The insurrection of June 13th, 1849, to which Engels refers in the above quotation, failed. This made it impossible for Marx to remain longer in Paris. He had to choose between going to Brittany or leaving France altogether. He went to London.

Since there was nothing in Switzerland to indicate the possibility of peaceful activity, Engels also went to London. As, however, the way through France was dangerous—the French government often sent German fugitives, who were passing through, on to America from Havre—he went by way of Genoa, and from there in a sailing ship through Gibraltar to London.