Marx and Engels in Neue Rheinische Zeitung September 1848
Source: MECW Volume 7, p. 448;
Written: on September 22, 1848;
First published: in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 110, September 23, 1848.
Cologne, September 22. It has happened after all! The Government of the Prince of Prussia is in being and the counter-revolution intends to risk the final decisive blow. [290]
Read the following letter by a deputy:
“Berlin, September 20, 10 p.m. We have just learned beyond doubt that an entirely counter-revolutionary Government has been formed, namely” (then follows the list of Ministers which we gave yesterday in accordance with the special edition of the Zeitungs-Halle). “At tomorrow’s session this same Government will read out a royal message wherein the prospect of the disbandment of the Assembly will be held out.. The result of this is a declaration of permanence which will probably lead to a new and very bloody revolution All parties of the National Assembly are consulting permanently in their usual premises. The population is very excited. Wrangel has held a military review today. Everything seems to be in question!”
It has happened after all! The Crown seeks the protection of the Uckermark grandees and the Uckermark grandees oppose the revolutionary movement of the year 1848. The Don Quixotes of Further Pomerania, these old warriors and debt-encumbered landed proprietors, will finally have their opportunity to cleanse their rusty blades in the blood of the agitators.[291] The guards, crowned with the cheap glory of Schleswig, are supposed to strike the decisive blow against the revolution which intrudes upon the rights of the Crown, which wants to prohibit the officers from plotting secretly and which intends, by the implacable hand of Hansemann’s financial measures, to take a terribly “bold dip” [expression first used by Karl Mathy and Heinrich von Gagern in the Frankfurt National Assembly in 1848] a into the already limp purse of the Brandenburg Junkers. The guards will take revenge for the humiliation of March 18, disperse the Berlin Assembly and the officers will ride down Unter den Linden over the corpses of the revolutionaries.
Go on! Forward with God for King and Fatherland! [from Frederick William III’s decree on formation of an army reserve, March, 1813]