2. A quotation from the second Address of the General Council on the Franco-Prussian War. Marx foresaw that after the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, France would be thirsting for revenge and would seek allies, turning in the first place to tsarist Russia. On September 1, 1870, Marx wrote to Sorge:
"What the Prussian jackasses do not see is that the present war is leading just as inevitably to a war between Germany and Russia as the war of 1866 led to the war between Prussia and France. That is the _best_result_ I expect from Germany. 'Prussianism' as such never has existed, and never can exist, except in alliance with an in subjection to Russia. And such a war -- No. 2 -- will act as the midwife to the inevitable social revolution in Russia."
Marx and Engels, _Letters to Americans_, International Publishers, 1953, pp.80-81.
3. The monarchists in France were at that time divided into three parties: the Legitimists -- adherents of the "legitimate" dynasty of the Bourbons; the Orleanists -- adherents of the Orleans dynasty; and the Bonapartists -- adherents of Louis Bonaparte.
4. The coup d'etat of Louis Bonaparte, by which he made himself Emperor. See Marx, _The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte_.
5. The Second Empire in France was the name given to the period of the rule of Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon III, 1852-70) in distinction to the First Empire of Napoleon I (1804-14).
6. The war with Austria was contrived by Bismarck in order to get rid of Prussia's old competitor in the unification of Germany. Prussia conquered Austria in this war and so secured the hegemony in German unification. Napoleon III remained neutral in the Austro-Prussian War because he hoped to receive, as a reward, part of the territory of the German states, as promised by Bismarck.
7. At Sedan (a town in northeast France) on September 2, 1870, the bulk of the French army, headed by the emperor, surrendered to the German troops.
8. The mobile National Guard -- reserve troops created by Napoleon III in 1868 for protection of the towns in case of war.
9. For the purpose of municipal administration, Paris was divided into _arrondissements_, each of which had a mayor at the head.
10. Louis XVI was executed during the first French bourgeois revolution (on January 21, 1793).
11. The split in the French Workers' Party, into the supporters of Brousse (Possibilists), and the supporters of Guesde (Marxists), took place at the congress in Etienne in 1882. The opportunist wing, the Possibilists or Broussists, who were hunting for electoral victories, repudiated the party programme, restricting themselves in their agitation solely to "realizable" demands; they fought against party discipline, demanding autonomy for the local organizations in the question of the election platform and in the tactic of blocs with other parties.
12. At an earlier period, the Democratic Party represented principally the interests of the landowning South, while the Republican Party represented the interests of the industrial North.
13. In all editions published previous to 1932, the text had the words "the German philistine". This was a falsification. Engels' manuscript, in the possession of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow, has the words "the Social-Democratic philistine". The phrase "Social-Democratic" was afterwards crossed out (not by Engels) as the word German" inserted in an unknown handwriting.
14. The plebiscite was arranged by Napoleon III in order to consolidate his empire and undermine republican agitation in the country. On May 8, 1870, the nation was to express its attitude to certain of the government's liberal reforms and amendments introduced in the constitution. Voting for the new constitution, and consequently for the empire, were 7,358,786 persons, against 1,571,939, while 1,894,681 abstained.
15. This refers to the third court prosecution against the International taking place under the empire.
16. The war between France and Germany began on July 19, 1870.
17. See Marx, _The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte_, p.75.
18. On the German side, the war was a war of defence in so far as it was directed against Bonapartist France, which was interested in the dismemberment of Germany and hindered German unification (national unity was a basic question for the German bourgeois revolution). While giving this characterization of the war, Marx and Engels at the same time demanded from the German Workers' Party that it should:
1. sharply distinguish between German national and Prussian dynastic interests;
2. oppose the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine;
3. make peace as soon as a republican, non-chauvinists government came to power in Paris;
4. unceasingly emphasize the unity of German and French workers, who did not approve of the war and had no quarrel with one another.
19. The battle of Sadowa (in Bohemia) on July 3, 1866, played a decisive role in the Austro-Prussian war. After the pRussian victory over Austria, the latter was excluded from the German Federation and an important part of Bismarck's plan for the unification of Germany was accomplished (the creation of the North German Confederation).
20. On the French side, the war was a dynastic one; Louis Bonaparte hoped, by victory over the foreign foe, to be able to save the crumbling edifice of the Bonapartist Empire.
21. Germany conducted the war against Napoleon I in alliance with tsarist Russia. By means of the "Holy Alliance", created after the victory over Napoleon I (1814-15), Russia attained a tremendous influence in international politics and began to play the role of "the gendarme of Europe". Prussia, as Marx expressed it, became the "fifth wheel of the coach of the European States."
22. The French army was heavily defeated at Sedan on September 2 and the emperor taken prisoner. On September 4, the republic was proclaimed in France and the so-called "Government of National Defence" set up.
23. By the Treaty of Tilsit (1807), France compelled Prussia to reduce the army, to pay a war indemnity of 100 million talers, and to surrender territory in the west and east.
24. In 1865, Louis Bonaparte promised Bismarck France's neutrality in case of an Austro-Prussian war. In 1870, the Russian Foreign Minister Gorchakov promised Russia's neutrality in a Franco-Prussian war.
25. The Russian press attacked the Russian government for its friendly attitude toward Prussia.
26. The basis for this manifesto was Marx's letter of instructions to the committee of the German Social-Democratic Party (published in the _Volkstaat_, September 11, 1871).
27. In regard to this, see Lenin's Preface to Marx, _Letters to Dr. Kugelmann_.
28. Marx has in mind the wave of national feeling among the masses in France in 1792 during the struggle with the attacking armies of the coalition of European states. He warns against a mechanical application of the slogan "the fatherland in danger" to the Franco-Prussian war. "To fight the Prussians on behalf of the bourgeoisie would be madness." (Engels)
29. At the presidential election (December 10, 1848), Louis Bonaparte exploited the prejudices of the French peasants; they gave him their votes in recollection of Napoleon Bonaparte, with whose name they erroneously associated the achievements of the first French bourgeois revolution.
30. Marx has in mind the great campaign of meetings, which developed in England on the initiative of Marx and the General Council of the International, for securing recognition of the French republic.
31. The war conducted by the first coalition of the powers (Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, etc.) against the French bourgeois revolution. In February 1793, England and Holland, and in March, Spain, also joined the war.
32. During the Civil War in America (1861-65), between the industrial North and the slave South, the English bourgeoisie supported the South -- i.e., slavery. this was due to the fact that the English bourgeoisie saw a growing rival in the industrial North, while the South represented a supplier of cotton for the English market. 33. The ferocious suppression in Paris in 1839 of the rising of the Society for the Rights of Man, during which unarmed person, including woman and children, were slaughtered.
34. Ferdinand II of Naples was given the nickname of King Bomba for his furious bombardment of Palermo nd Messina, September 1848, to suppress the revolution.
35. This refers to the suppression of the June insurrection of the Paris proletariat in 1848.
36. Don Carlos (1545-68). Spanish prince who took part in the conspiracy against his father. He is idealized by Schiller in the latter's tragedy, _Don Carlos_.
37. The chief historical works of Thiers are:
- History of the French Revolution
- History of the Consolate and the Empire.
38. The French system of protection was marked by high import duties on
commodities (e.g., the duty of English cast-iron was 70% of its
value, that on iron 105% of its value). As a result, many tools
and other commodities which could not be produced in France
vanished altogether from the market.
39. The Chamber of Deputies in France, which consisted mainly of extreme monarchists, representatives of the nobility, and was marked by its reactionary character.
40. The National Assembly, which opened at Bordeaux on February 13, had a majority of outspoken royalists (450 out of 750 deputies), chiefly representatives of the landowners. Hence the named of Assembly of the "Rurals".
41. Cayenne, capital of French Guiana in South America, notorious penal settlement.
42. His function was to serve imprisonment if the newspaper was prosecuted.
43. On October 31, 1870, an attempt was made of overthrow the Government of National Defence and to seize power. The impulse for the movement was provided by rumors of an armistice about to be concluded with the Prussians, of the defeat of the National Guard at Le Bourget (October 30) and of the capitulation of Metz. Led by Blanquists, a battalion of National Guards composed chiefly of workers, occupied the Town Hall, proclaimed the overthrow of the old government and the establishment of a new one which would organize elections to the Commune. The new government, which did not base itself on the masses,proved irresolute and vacillating. It entered into negotiations with the arrested members of the Government of National Defence and obtained from them a verbal promise to institute elections for the Commune (on November 1) and to declare a general amnesty. In the meantime, battalions of the Civil Guard were concentrated at the Town Hall and on the morning of November 1, they occupied it and restored the Government of National Defence to power.
44. On January 22, 1871, a new attempt was made to overthrow the Government of National Defence. The immediate occassion for this attempt was the defeat of the National Guard at Bougainville (January 20, 1871), rumors of an armistice, and the appointment of General Vinoy as military governor of Paris. The attempt of January 22, like that of October 31, was marked by lack of determination and unity, and absence of organizational contact with the masses. During its suppression, 30 person were killed or wounded, including women and children.
45. About these fatal mistakes of the Central Committee, Marx wrote to Kugelmann on April 17, 1871.
46. Marx here formulates one of the fundamental lessons of the Paris Commune. The tremendous significance attached by Marx and Engels to this lesson is evident from their remarks in the Preface to the Communist Manifesto, dated June 24, 1872. There it is said that the Programme of the Communist Manifesto has "in some details become antiquated. One thing especially," they continue, "was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes'..."
47. The wars waged by england, Russia, Prussia, Austria, Spain, and other states against revolutionary France and later against the empire of Napoleon I.
48. Refers to the Bonapartist empire.
49. In connection with this characterization of the Commune as a new type of state, see Chapter III, _State_and_Revolution_.
50. In regard to this characterization of parliamentarism, see Chapter III, _State_and_Revolution_, part C, "The Destruction of Parliamentarism".
51. The Girondins were the party of the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie during the epoch of the first French bourgeois revolution. Wishing to behead the revolution and to weaken the centralization of revolutionary forces, they endeavored to convert France into a Federation and to destroy the leading role of Revolutionary Paris.
52. For Lenin's analysis of the historical importance of the lessons derived from the Commune by Marx, see Chapter III, _State_and_Revolution_, part E, "Destruction of the Parasite-State."
53. The Central Committee of the National Guard, as late as March 20, had postponed payment on bills of exchange until October 1, 1871. On April 18, the Commune promulgated a decree postponing payments on debt obligations for three years.
54. Free-thinking -- hostile to the priests and the church.
55. The Bourbon dynasty, which was restored to power after the overthrow of Napoleon I, decided to compensate the French nobility for the land taken from it during the first French bourgeois revolution. One billion francs was paid to the nobility.
56. The 45-centime tax was introduced in 1848 by the bourgeois provisional government with the object of creating dissension between the proletariat and the peasantry. The government gave as the reason for the tax the necessity of feeding the workers. The increase of taxation on the peasants by almost 50 per cent turned the peasantry against the revolution and the republic.
57. The Party of Order during the 1848 Revolution united the royalist big bourgeoisie and the landowners.
58. Alsace and Lorraine.
59. During the Second Empire, Baron Haussmann was Prefect of the Department of the Seine -- i.e., the City of Paris. He caused a number of new streets and buildings to be constructed.
60. In the church of St. Laurent were discovered skeletons of women who had been violated by the monks and buried alive in the vaults. In the Picpus nunnery, women were held on the pretext that they were insane, and they suffered the same fate.
61. Irish landlords who squandered their "income" outside the country, hardly ever visiting their estates.
62. Then tennis court where, in 1789, the National Assembly took an oath not to dissolve, ins spite of the royal command, before the constitution had been drafted.
63. The centre of the counter-revolutionary nobility in emigration during the first French bourgeois revolution.
64. De Calonne was Comptroller General (a kind of Prime Minister) in France on the eve of the 1789 Revolution.
65. The outbreak of the revolution and proclamation of the Commune in Lyons occurred on March 22, and in Marseilles on March 23; both were quickly crushed by the Thiers government. The Commune was also proclaimed in Toulouse, Narbonne, St. Etienne, and some other towns.
66. By the commercial treaty with England concluded by Napoleon III in 1860, duties on English goods were lowered.
67. This letter was first published in _Neue_Zeit_ XX-I, 1901-02, p.709. Ludwig Kugelmann (1830-1902), a physician and a German Social-Democrat, took part in the German Revolution of 1848 and became a member of the First International. From 1862-74, he corresponded with Marx, informing him of events in Germany.
68. Lenin's explanation of why Marx restricted in conclusion to the Continent found in _State_and_Revolution_.
69. For Lenin's summary of the mistakes of the Commune, see Lenin's preface to Marx, _Letters_to_Dr._Kugelmann_. First Russian edition appeared 1907, edited by Lenin.
70. See Marx, _The Class Struggles In France, 1848-50_. Chapter III.
71. Jules Favre (1809-1880), bourgeois republican and member of Government of National Defence (1870), took part in the bloody suppression of the Paris Commune. See Marx's references to him in the Addresses.
72. Etienne Cabet (1788-1856), French utopian Communist, author of _Travels in India_.
73. Jean-Baptiste Milliere (1817-71), Left follower of Proudhon, who participated in the COmmune and was shot by the Versaillists, May 26, 1871, by orders of Jules Favre.
74. Appended to the pamphlet was a further note, as follows:
"In an article on 'The International Society and Its Aims', that pious informer, the London _Spectator_ (June 24), among other similar tricks, quotes, even more fully than Jules Favre has done, the above document of the 'Alliance' as the work of the International, and that 11 days after the refutation had been published in the _Times_. We do not wonder at this. Frederick the Great used to say that of all Jesuits, the worst are the Protestant ones."