From the Preparatory Materials
In essence, associations — whether naturally evolved or created— have hitherto existed for economic ends, but these ends have been concealed and buried beneath ideological matters of secondary importance. The ancient polis,[459] the medieval town or guild, the feudal confederacy of landowning nobility — all had secondary ideological aims which they hallowed and which in the case of the patrician body of consanguinity and the guild arose from the memories, traditions and models of gentile society no less than in that of the ancient polis. The capitalist commercial companies are the first to be wholly rational and objective — but vulgar. The association of the future will combine the rationality of the latter with the old ones' concern for the social welfare of all, and thus fulfil its purpose.
Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XVI, Published in English for the first Part 1, Moscow, 1937 time
2. On the Peasant War
Reformation — Lutheran and Calvinist — bourgeoisie's revolution No. 1, in which Peasant War is the critical episode. Dissolution of feudalism, along with the development of towns, both decentralis-ing, absolute monarchy therefore a virtual necessity for holding together the nationalities. Had to be absolute, precisely because of the centrifugal nature of all the elements. Absolute not to be understood in the vulgar sense, however: constantly at odds partly with the Estates, partly with rebellious feudal lords and towns; the Estates nowhere abolished; thus better described as an Estate monarchy (still feudal, decaying feudal and embryonic bourgeois).
Victory of revolution No. 1, which was much more European than the English one, and became European much more quickly than the French one, in Switzerland, Holland, Scotland, England — to a certain extent in Sweden, too, already [under] G[ustavus] Vasa, and Denmark, here not until 1660 in orthodox, absolutist form.
I.(1) Causes in Germany. History from beginning. Germany broken after the heroic age of the migration of peoples. Only restored from France, by Charlemagne. Hence Roman empire idea. Renewed by Otto. More non-Germans than Germans. Ruin of Germany by this policy — of pillaging the Italian cities — under the Hohenstaufens. Thus fragmentation confirmed—excepto casu revolutionise Development from interregnum[461] to 15th century. Rise of the towns. Decay of feudalism never perfected in Germany under pressure from the princes (the emperor as sovereign against, as emperor for the imperial knights). Gradual emancipation of the peasants, until setback in 15th century. Germany materially on a par with the other countries of the day.—Crucial that in Germany because of provincial fragmentation and long-term freedom from invasion the need for national unity not so strong as in France (the Hundred Years' War), Spain, which had just been reconquered from the Moors, Russia, which had just driven out the Tatars, England (Wars of the Roses),[462] and that even the emperors of the day so shabby.
II. With the Renaissance in its European guise based on general decay of feudalism and rise of the towns. Then absolutist national monarchies — everywhere except in Germany and Italy.
3. On the Decline of Feudalism and the Emergence of National States
While the wild battles of the ruling feudal nobility filled the Middle Ages with their clamour, the quiet work of the oppressed classes had undermined the feudal system throughout Western Europe, had created conditions in which less and less room remained for the feudal lord. To be sure, the noble lords still carried on their mischievous ways in the country, tormenting the serfs, living high on their sweat, demolishing their crops under horses' hooves, raping their wives and daughters. But towns had sprung up all around; in Italy, Southern France, on the Rhine, old Roman municipia[464] had risen from their ashes; elsewhere, particularly in the heart of Germany, new creations; always ringed by protective walls and ditches, fortresses far stronger than the nobility's castles, because pregnable only by a large army. Behind these walls and ditches evolved the medieval handicrafts (burgher guild and pretty small), the first capitals accumulated, the need arose for traffic between the towns themselves and with the rest of the world, and, with this need, gradually the means to protect this traffic.
In the fifteenth century the burghers of the towns had already become more indispensable to society than the feudal nobility. True, agriculture was still the occupation of the vast majority of the population, and thus the main branch of production. But the few isolated free peasants who here and there withstood the arrogant behaviour of the nobility were sufficient proof that the main ingredient in farming was not the nobles' indolence and extortion, but the peasant's labour. And then the needs of the nobles, too, had increased and changed to such an extent that the towns had become indispensable even to them; after all, they procured their only instrument of production, their armour and weapons, from the towns! Native cloth, furniture and jewellery, Italian silks, Brabant lace, Nordic furs, Arabian perfumes, fruit from the Levant, Indian spices — everything apart from soap— they bought from the town dwellers. International trade of a kind had developed; the Italians travelled the Mediterranean and, beyond that, the Atlantic coasts as far as Flanders; the Hanseatic merchants still controlled the North Sea and the Baltic in the face of mounting competition from the Dutch and the English. Communication was maintained by land between the northern and southern centres of the maritime traffic; the routes along which this communication took place passed through Germany. While the nobility became increasingly superfluous and an ever greater obstacle to development, the burghers of the towns became the class that embodied the further development of production and trade, of culture and of the social and political institutions.
All these advances in production and exchange were, in point of fact, by today's standards, of a very limited nature. Production remained enthralled in the form of pure guild crafts, thus itself still retaining a feudal character; trade remained within the limits of European waters, and did not extend any further than the coastal towns of the Levant, where the products of the Far East were acquired by exchange. But small-scale and limited though the trades — and hence the trading burghers — remained, they were sufficient to overthrow feudal society, and at least they continued to move forward, whereas the nobility stagnated.
But then the burghers of the towns had a mighty weapon with which to oppose feudalism: money. Money had scarcely found any place in the archetype feudal economy of the early Middle Ages. The feudal lord obtained from his serfs everything that he needed; either in the form of labour or in finished products; the women spun and wove the flax and wool and made the clothes; the men sowed the fields; the children minded the lord's livestock, collected for him wild fruits, birds' nests and straw; besides that, the whole family had to supply corn, fruit, eggs, butter, cheese, poultry, young livestock and much else. Every feudal form was self-sufficient; even military services were exacted in products; trade and exchange did not exist, money was superfluous. Europe had been reduced to such a low level, had begun all over again to such an extent that at that time money had much less of a social function than a purely political one: it was a means of paying taxes, and was chiefly acquired through robbery.
All this had now changed. Money had again become a universal means of exchange, and consequently its volume had increased considerably; the noble could no longer do without it either, and having little or nothing to sell, since robbery was also not quite so easy now, he eventually had to make up his mind to borrow from the usurer among the burghers. Long before the castles of the knights were breached by the new artillery they had been undermined by money; in fact, gunpowder was merely a bailiff, as it were, in the service of money. Money was the burghers' greatest political leveller. Wherever a personal relationship was superseded by a money relationship, a payment in kind by payment in money, a bourgeois relationship took the place of a feudal one. Admittedly, in the countryside the old brutal natural economy continued to exist in the great majority of cases; but there were already whole districts where, as in Holland, in Belgium, on the Lower Rhine, the peasants paid the lord money instead of labour service and tributes in kind, where lords and bondsmen had already taken the first decisive step towards becoming landowners and tenants, where even in the countryside the political institutions of feudalism were thus losing their social basis.
The extent to which the feudal system had, by the end of the fifteenth century, already been undermined and eaten away on the inside by money is strikingly illustrated by the thirst for gold that seized Western Europe at this time. It was gold the Portuguese sought on the African coast, in India, throughout the Far East; gold was the magic word which drove the Spaniards across the Atlantic Ocean to America; gold was the first thing the white man enquired about the moment he set foot on a newly discovered shore. But this urge to set off on adventures to far-off places in search of gold, no matter how much it manifested itself in feudal and semi-feudal forms at the beginning, was nevertheless in its very roots incompatible with feudalism, whose foundation was agriculture and whose campaigns of conquest were essentially aimed at the acquisition of land. Moreover, shipping was a decidedly bourgeois trade which has stamped its anti-feudal character on all modern navies too.
In the fifteenth century the feudal system was thus in utter decline throughout Western Europe; everywhere towns with anti-feudal interests, with their own laws and with an armed citizenry had wedged their way into feudal areas, bringing the feudal lords under their sway, in part already socially, through money, and here and there also politically; even in country areas where agriculture had flourished because of particularly favourable conditions the old feudal ties began to dissolve under the influence of money; only in newly conquered lands such as Germany east of the Elbe, or in otherwise backward tracts far from the trade routes, did the old rule of the nobility continue to prosper. But everywhere — in the towns and in the country alike — there had been an increase in the elements among the population whose chief demand was to put an end to the constant, senseless warring, to the feuds between the feudal lords which made internal war permanent even when there was a foreign enemy on their native soil, to that state of incessant, utterly pointless devastation that had persisted throughout the Middle Ages. Still too weak themselves to impose their will, these elements found strong support at the apex of the whole feudal system — in the monarchy. And this is the point where the consideration of social relations leads us to those of the state, where we make the transition from economics to politics.
Out of the confusion of peoples that characterised the earliest Middle Ages, there gradually developed the new nationalities, a process whereby, it will be recalled, in most of the former Roman provinces the vanquished assimilated the victor, the peasant and townsman assimilated the Germanic lord. Modern nationalities are thus also the product of the oppressed classes. Menke's district map of central Lorraine(1) gives a clear picture of the ways in which fusion took place here, boundary demarcation there. One need only follow the boundary line between Romance and German placenames on this map to be convinced that this linguistic boundary between Belgium and Lower Lorraine coincides in the main with that which existed between French and German as recently as a hundred years ago. Here and there one finds a narrow, disputed area where the two languages are struggling for predominance; but on the whole it is clear what is to remain German and what is to remain Romance. The Old Low Franconian and Old High German form of most placenames on the map shows, however, that they belong to the ninth century, to the tenth at the latest, and hence that the boundary had already been essentially drawn towards the end of the Carolingian age. On the Romance side, particularly close to the linguistic boundary, there are now mixed names, made up of a German personal name and a Romance placename, e.g. west of the Maas near Verdun:
Eppone curtis, Rotfridi curtis, Ingolini curtis, Teudegisilo-villa, today Ippécourt, Récourt la Creux, Amblaincourt-sur-Aire, Thier-ville. These were Franconian manor houses, small German colonies on Romance soil, which sooner or later succumbed to Romanisation. In the towns and in scattered rural areas there were stronger German colonies that retained their language for some time to come; it was from one of these, for example, that The Lay of Ludwig[465] originated at the end of the ninth century; but the fact that prior to this a large proportion of the Franconian lords had been Romanised is proved by the oath formulas of the kings and magnates of 842, in which Romance already appears as the official language of France.[466]
Once their boundaries had been fixed (disregarding subsequent wars of conquest and annihilation, such as those against the Slavs of the Elbe ) it was natural for the linguistic groups to serve as the existent basis for the formation of states; for the nationalities to start developing into nations. The rapid collapse of the mixed state of Lotharingia[468] shows how powerful this element was as early as the ninth century. True, linguistic boundaries and national frontiers were far from coincident throughout the Middle Ages; but every nationality except perhaps Italy was represented by a separate big state in Europe, and the tendency to form national states, which becomes increasingly clear and deliberate, constitutes one of the Middle Ages' most considerable levers of progress.
In each of these medieval states the king now constituted the head of the entire feudal hierarchy, a head with whom the vassals were unable to dispense and against whom they were at the same time in a state of permanent rebellion. The basic relation of the whole feudal system — the granting of land in return for the delivery of certain personal services and dues — provided, even in its original and simplest form, plenty of material for strife, especially when so many people had an interest in picking quarrels. So what was to be expected in the later Middle Ages, when the conditions of vassalage in every country formed an inextricable tangle of rights and duties that had been granted, withdrawn, renewed once more, forfeited, amended or subjected to new conditions? For part of his lands, Charles the Bold, for instance, was the Emperor's vassal, for others the King of France's vassal; on the other hand, the King of France, his liege lord, was simultaneously in certain areas the vassal of Charles the Bold, his own vassal; how were conflicts to be avoided? Hence these centuries of alternation between the vassals' attraction towards the royal centre, which alone could protect them from outsiders and from one another, and the repulsion away from the centre into which that attraction was continually and inevitably transformed; hence the incessant struggle between kings and vassals, whose desolate din drowned out all else during this long period when robbery was held to be the only source of income worthy of a free man; hence that endless, constantly regenerated cycle of betrayal, assassination, poisoning, treachery and every conceivable vileness that, concealed behind the poetical name of chivalry, never ceased to speak of honour and loyalty.
That in this general turmoil the monarchy was the progressive element is perfectly obvious. It stood for order amid disorder, the nation in the process of formation as opposed to disintegration into rebellious vassal states. Any revolutionary elements that formed beneath the surface of feudalism were as dependent on the monarchy as the monarchy on them. The alliance between the monarchy and the burghers dates from the tenth century; often interrupted by conflicts, just as nothing else followed a steady course during the Middle Ages, it was renewed, becoming firmer and more powerful each time, until it helped the monarchy to ultimate victory, and to show its gratitude the monarchy subjugated and plundered its ally.
Kings and burghers alike found a powerful support in the rising estate of lawyers. With the rediscovery of Roman law came the division of labour between the priests, the legal advisers of the feudal age, and the non-clerical law scholars. These new lawyers were from the very outset essentially a bourgeois estate; but the law they studied, purveyed and practised was by its nature essentially anti-feudal and in certain respects bourgeois. Roman law is the classic legal expression of the day-to-day relations and conflicts of a society in which pure private property dominates, so much so that no subsequent legislation has ever been able to improve on it in any major respect. But the bourgeois property of the Middle Ages still had a heavy admixture of feudal restrictions, and consisted, for example, very largely of privileges; to that extent, then, Roman law was a long way ahead of the bourgeois conditions of the time. Subsequent historical development of bourgeois property could proceed, however, only in one way: it was bound to turn into pure private property, and this is what happened. But this development was bound to find a powerful lever in Roman law, which already contained in a finished form all that the bourgeoisie of the later Middle Ages aspired to, albeit unconsciously as yet.
Though Roman law in many individual cases provided a pretext for even greater oppression of the peasants by the nobility, for instance when the peasants were unable to adduce any written proof of their exemption from otherwise customary burdens, it does not alter the matter. Even without Roman law, the nobility would have found such pretexts, and indeed found them daily. At any rate, it was a tremendous advance when a legal system came into force that knew absolutely nothing of feudal relations and fully anticipated modern private property.
We have seen how the feudal nobility started to become superfluous in economic terms, indeed a hindrance, in the society of the later Middle Ages — how it already stood in the way, politically, of the development of the towns and the national state which was then only possible in a monarchist form. In spite of all this, it had been sustained by the fact that it had hitherto possessed a monopoly over the bearing of arms: without it no wars could be waged, no battles fought. This, too, was to change; the last step would be taken to make it clear to the feudal nobles that the period in which they had ruled society and the state was now over, that they were no longer of any use in their capacity as knights — not even on the battlefield.
Opposing the feudal economy with an army that was itself feudal, in which the soldiers were bound by closer ties to their immediate liege lord than to the command of the royal army — this obviously meant going round in a vicious circle, without achieving any advance. From the beginning of the fourteenth century the kings strove to free themselves of this feudal army and create an army of their own. From this time on we find in the armies of the kings a constantly growing proportion of recruited or hired troops. At first they were chiefly infantry, comprising the scum of the towns and runaway serfs, Lombards, Genoese, Germans, Belgians, etc., who were employed for occupying towns and for siege duties, but in the beginning could scarcely be used on the battlefield. But towards the end of the Middle Ages we also find knights entering the service of foreign princes as mercenaries with their retinues gathered together the devil knows how, thus demonstrating the irrevocable collapse of feudal warfare.
The fundamental condition for an efficient infantry arose simultaneously in the towns and in the free peasants, wherever the latter were still to be found or had re-formed. Until then the knights with their retinue, likewise mounted, had been not so much the core of the army as the army itself; the baggage-train of attendant, serf infantrymen did not count, appearing in the open field merely in order to run away or to loot. As long as the golden age of feudalism lasted, until the end of the thirteenth century, the cavalry fought and decided every battle. From that time on things changed, and moreover in various points simultaneously. The gradual disappearance of serfdom in England created a sizeable class of free farmers, either landowners (yeomen) or tenants, and thus the raw material for a new type of infantry, skilled in the use of the bow, the English national weapon at the time. The introduction of these archers, who always fought on foot whether they travelled on horseback or not, gave rise to a major change in the tactics of English armies. From the fourteenth century onwards the English knights preferred to fight on foot where the terrain or other circumstances rendered this appropriate. Behind the archers, who started the battle and softened up the enemy, the massed array of dismounted knights awaited the enemy attack or the right moment to advance, while only part of them remained on horseback in order to facilitate the decisive encounter by attacks on the flanks. The then unbroken series of English victories in France[469] were largely due to the restoration of a defensive element in the army, and were for the most part just as much defensive battles with offensive retaliation as Wellington's in Spain and Belgium.[470] With the adoption of new tactics by the French — possible since Italian mercenary crossbowmen had assumed the functions of the English archers in their case — the triumphant progress of the English was at an end. Also at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the infantrymen of the Flemish towns had dared — often successfully — to confront the French knights in open battle, and Emperor Albrecht, by his attempt to betray the autonomous Swiss peasants to the Archduke of Austria, who was he himself, had provided the impetus for the formation of the first modern infantry with a European reputa-tion.[471] In the victories of the Swiss over the Austrians, and particularly over the Burgundians, heavily armed cavalry— mounted and dismounted — succumbed once and for all to the infantry, the feudal army to the beginnings of the modern army, the knight to the burgher and free peasant. And the Swiss, to establish from the outset the bourgeois character of their republic, the first independent republic in Europe, immediately turned their fame as warriors to cash. All political considerations faded away: the cantons turned into recruiting offices to drum up mercenaries for the highest bidder. The recruitment drive also made its way around other places, in Germany in particular; but the cynicism of
a government which only seemed to exist in order to sell off its native people remained unequalled until surpassed by German princes in the years of greatest national humiliation.
Then, also in the fourteenth century, gunpowder and artillery were brought over to Europe via Spain by the Arabs. Until the end of the Middle Ages hand guns remained unimportant, which is understandable, since the bows of the English archers at Crécy had as great a range as the smoothbore rifles of the infantry at Waterloo and were perhaps more accurate — though lacking the same effect.[472] Field guns were also still in their infancy; on the other hand, heavy guns had already breached the free-standing walls of the knights' castles on many occasions, demonstrating to the feudal nobility that gunpowder marked the end of their rule.
The spread of book printing, the revival of the study of classical literature, the entire cultural movement which had been gathering strength and becoming more widespread ever since 1450[473]—all these factors aided the bourgeoisie and the monarchy in their fight against feudalism.
The combined action of all these causes, strengthened year after year by their increasing interaction on one another, which tended more and more in the same direction, was crucial to the victory over feudalism in the second half of the fifteenth century, not yet for the bourgeoisie, but certainly for the monarchy. All at once the monarchy gained the upper hand throughout Europe, as far as the distant lands adjoining it that had not passed through the feudal state. On the Iberian peninsula two of the Romance language peoples there united to form the Kingdom of Spain, and the Provencal-speaking Aragonese empire submitted to standard Castilian(2); the third people joined its linguistic area (with the exception of Galicia) with the Kingdom of Portugal, the Iberian Holland, turning their back on the interior and demonstrating their right to a separate existence through its activity at sea.
In France Louis XI finally managed, after the demise of the Burgundian middle kingdom,[474] to establish national unity represented by the monarchy on the then much curtailed French territory to such an extent that his successor(3) was already able to interfere in Italian quarrels[475] and this unity was only once called into question for a short time, by the Reformation.
England had at last given up its quixotic wars of conquest in France, which in the long run would have bled it dry; the feudal nobility sought recompense in the Wars of the Roses,[477] and got more than they had bargained for: they wiped each other out, and brought the House of Tudor to the throne, whose royal power exceeded that of all its predecessors and successors. The Scandinavian countries had long since achieved unity; after its unification with Lithuania,[478] Poland was approaching its heyday, with the power of its monarchy as yet undiminished; even in Russia the subjugation of the princelings and the shedding of the Tatar yoke, had gone hand in hand and were finally sealed by Ivan III.a In the whole of Europe there were only two countries in which the monarchy, and the national unity that was then impossible without it, either did not exist at all or existed only on paper: Italy and Germany.
Proletarskaya Revolutsia, No. 6, 1935 Published in English for the first time
4. Chartist Agitation
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
Melbourne — September '41, Whig :
1838. August 6.
September 17.
December 13.
20.
1839. January 15.
" 2 1 , 22.
February 5.
March 16.
April 1.
Meeting in Birmingham (speakers: Attwood, Scholefield, F. O'Connor) to petition the House of Commons to make the People's Charter law.(1)
Chartist meeting in New Palace Yard, Westminster.(2)
Royal proclamation that torchlight meetings and armed assemblies illegal. Meeting of the ANTI-CORN LAW LEAGUE in Manchester.
ANTI-CORN LAW meeting in Birmingham: Chartist resolution CARRIED, that universal suffrage takes priority.— In Leeds UNSUCCESSFUL. ANTI-CORN LAW meetings [in] Manchester and Edinburgh. In the Queen's Speech Chartists threatened with the law. Chartist CONVENTION AT CROWN AND ANCHOR. PHYSICAL FORCE PROCLAIMED BY O'Connor AND Harney. Meeting in Edinburgh TO SUPPORT ministers. The Chartists won and threw the LORD PROVOST out of the CHAIR AND CARRIED
THEIR RESOLUTION. April 29. Chartist RIOTS in Llanidloes.—The Chartists in control of the town for a while. (In Newport shortly before, John Frost removed from the MAGISTRACY.) May 8. H. Vincent arrested FOR INCITING TO RIOT at Newport. (Ministerial crisis—replâtrage.a) " 13. The rest of the Chartist CONVENTION (thus the petty bourgeois out) removed to Birmingham. 50,000 men received and led through the city. Manifesto passed immediately at the first session: TO WITH-
DRAW ALL THEIR MONEY FROM BANKS, TO DEAL EXCLUSIVELY WITH CHARTISTS AND TO HAVE A SACRED
MONTH 4 8 0 AND TO ARM.— F. O ' Connor d e -mands that the petition to the Queen b to appoint a Chartist ministry should be presented peacefully by 500,000 men armed with rifles. May 25. Meeting in Kersal Moor. F. O'Connor says he came because the meeting had been declared illegal by the magistracy. June 14. Attwood presents the Chartist Petition, 1,280,000 signatures. URGENCY REFUSED BY 235:46. " 18. Grote's MOTION ON BALLOT rejected 333:216. July 4. Chartist RIOTS in Birmingham, Bull Ring meeting broken up by police and army. Secretary of the CONVENTION[480] arrested. The CONVENTION protests. " 15. Bull Ring riots again, procession through the town, looting, several shops burnt down. Army called out, NO LOSS OF LIFE.
" 18. Llanidloes RIOTERS SENTENCED TO IMPRISONMENT. " 20. RIOTS [in] Newcastle. August 2. Vincent & Co. sentenced to imprisonment AT Monmouth. " 3. Birmingham RIOTERS TRIED, 3 sentenced to death, but REPRIEVED.
a Here: patching up.— b Victoria.— Ed. c William Lovett.— Ed.
August 6. Chartist CONVENTION, now in Arundel Cof-fee House, London, decides to postpone the SACRED MONTH set for August 12 owing to lack of preparation, but on the 12th the TRADES which can are to take 2-3 days off and to hold processions and meetings
ON THE PRESENT AWFUL STATE OF.THE COUNTRY. 11. St. Paul's Church [in London] and the Manchester OLD CHURCH occupied by Chartists during the sermon, which did not lead to anything. " 12. Manchester, Macclesfield, Bolton, etc. Attempt to go through with the three-day SACRED MONTH. Feeble and unsuccessful. " 15. Chester ASSIZES. J. R. Stephens' TRIAL for UNLAWFUL MEETING AND EXCITING TO RIOT AT Cotton Tree, Hyde. That was the meeting where the volleys were fired.— 18 MONTHS Knutsford.
" 27. PARLIAMENT PROROGUED. 30. Nouveau replâtrage ministeriell September 14. DISSOLUTION OF CHARTIST NATIONAL CONVENTION. " 20. F. O'Connor ARRESTED, Manchester, SEDITION. " 23. Ebenezer Elliott accuses the Chartists of being Tory agents (Sheffield). November 4. Newport RIOTS. The HILL MEN under Frost and Williams march on the town, meet u p at Tredegar Park with Jones' column (from Pontypool) and attack the soldiers, who had already been summoned (to protect the assembled magistrates). Skir-mish. 9 dead are left lying there, others ... and the wounded carried off. Frost arrested the next morning. The soldiers commanded by a lieutenant! Williams apprehended soon after.—TRIAL December 31-January 8. According to one witness the Welsh Mail to Birmingham was to be stopped, and its non-arrival was to be the signal to strike in the Midlands
and the North. Frost, Williams and Jones sentenced to death, TRANSPORTED FOR LIFE.
1840. January 13. Resumption of ANTI-CORN LAW agitation with BANQUET and meeting in Manchester. " 16. Parliament opened. March . The ministry twice defeated in the HOUSE
OF COMMONS. Start of the BLASPHEMY PROSECUTIONS by HOME SECRETARY'S COMMITTEE. " 17. F. O'Connor TRIED at York ASSIZE. Now
DEFERRED.
" 25. Meeting of the ANTI-CORN LAW LEAGUE. Palace Yard. Resolution PASSED. " 3 1 . T o date total of ANTI-CORN LAW petition
signatures only 980,352. April 8. Bronterre O'Brien, Liverpool ASSIZES, 18
MONTHS IMPRISONMENT FOR SEDITION. " 11. F. O'Connor 18 MONTHS IN York Castle FOR LIBEL, treated like a common criminal (F. O'Connor's letter April 20). August 4. Lord Ashley CARRIES ADDRESS TO CROWN (3) on child labour (thus only because of LIBERALS' weakness!) " 11. Parliament closed. November 6. Hetherington condemned for BLASPHEMY, SENTENCE DEFERRED.
1841. January 2 1 . RADICAL MEETING AT Leeds for unity with the Chartists. But only agreed on UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, not on the other points of the Charter. " 26. Parliament opened. February 16. MINISTRY DEFEATED BY 31 OUT OF 223. April 29. ANTI-CORN LAW MEETINGS in Deptford, in vain, in Leeds actually broken u p by Chartists. Russell wishes to tinker with CORN LAWS. May 7. MINISTRY DEFEATED 36 OUT OF 598. " 25. Duncombe presents Chartists' petition (amnesty), 1,300,000 signatures, the ANTI-CORN LAW only 474,448.
June 2.
" 4.
" 23.
August 19.
» 28.
October 7.
November 10.
December 29.
1842. January 7.
February 1.
" 2. " 3. " 9.
March 11.
May 2.
ANTI-CORN LAW meeting [in] Manchester attacked in vain by Chartists. Peel's NO CONFIDENCE IN MINISTRY: 312 for, 311 against dissolution. Hetherington versus Moxon. BLASPHEMY against Shelley. GUILTY. Parliament opened after the elections. Tory majority. Melbourne ministry brought down, MAJORITY — 91 out of 629. Peel. Peel Ministry—until July 1846. Parliament closed.
GREAT DISTRESS IN MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS Leeds, Paisley, Glasgow, Bradford, Nottingham, etc. Trade Convention in Derby, for FREE TRADE. Bankruptcies in Glasgow.
CHARTIST CONVENTION in Glasgow, F. O'Connor there.
ANTI-CORN LAW Meeting broken u p by Chartists in Southampton with Tory help?
ANTI-CORN LAW Bazar in Manchester. Parliament opened. Peel proposes the SLIDING SCALE 20/- at 5 1 / -corn price, 1/- at 73/- corn price.(4)
Peel's budget — tariffs of £1,200,000 abolished, particularly on raw materials and semi-manufactures. INCOME TAX. The SLIDING SCALE becomes law (ROYAL ASCENT) April 29. Chartist Petition with 3,317,702 signatures carried to Parliament in procession from Lincoln's Inn Fields. Had to be taken to pieces because the door too small. Duncombs demands that the Petition should be heard by COUNCIL AT THE BAR. 49:287.
May 2 5 . Meeting in Stockport ON DISTRESS. POOR RATES risen from £ 2 , 6 2 8 in 1 8 3 6 / 3 7 t o £ 7 , 1 2 0 ; over V2 the spinners ruined ; over 3 , 0 0 0 houses empty ( Stockport TO LET); in Heaton Norris V4 of the houses empty and 1,000 OCCUPANTS RELIEVED BY PARISH. June 1. STRIKE OF COLLIERS in Dudley DISTRICT. " 3 . Large meeting of UNEMPLOYED in Glasgow , ending in a BEGGING PROCESSION through the town .
In Ireland PROVISION RIOTS, in Ennis a ship carrying flour looted , in Cork futile assault on the POTATO MARKET. " 7. Ashley introduces a FACTORY BILL, RESTRICT-
ING WOMEN'S AND CHILDREN'S LABOUR IN MINES AND
FACTORIES. June 25. Leeds Mercury says 4,025 FAMILIES, = 1/s of the town's population receiving POOR RELIEF. Great "DISTRESS" everywhere. " 28. Peel's tariff through the Commons. July 4 through the Lords 2ND READING. July 1. DEBATE ON DISTRESS. N O result, as usual. In Ireland AGRARIAN OUTRAGES all the time.
" 2. FOOD RIOTS [in] Dumfries, several meal-mongers' shops looted. " 5. ANTI-CORN LAW CONFERENCE in London. Bright's threatening speech. Reports that in Sheffield 10,000 PEOPLE IN EXTREME DISTRESS, in Wolverhampton 62 blast fur-naces idle, in Stockport the POOR RATE of 2/-in the £ produces only £3,600, whereas in 1839 l/8d. had produced £5,000. More POOR RATE 3/4d. in the £ and almost daily meetings of workers and SHOPKEEPERS TO SEE WHAT TO DO. Burslem great agitation, MILITARY CALLED OUT.
" 5. FREETRADE CONFERENCE [in] Sheffield. REVEREND W. Bailey: IT WAS NOT WORDS WHICH WOULD MOVE PARLIAMENT, BUT FORCE, a GENTLEMAN is reported to have spoken of Peel's assassination, etc. " 11. Villiers' MOTION FOR COMMITTEE OF WHOLE HOUSE TO CONSIDER CORN LAWS rejected, 117:231.
July 18.
August 1.
12. 15.
17.
18. 24.
September 5.
" 30.
October 6.
December 9.
" 31.
1843. January 9.
" 26.
February 11.
At the same time several attempts on the Queen's life and Peel's protective law against causing a nuisance to the Queen: transportation and the [colonies]. Meetings in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds ON DISTRESS, deputation to Peel to d o something before the closing of Parliament.
STRIKE of the COAL and IRON MINERS, Airdrie and Coatbridge, immediately followed by the Glaswegians, FOR ADVANCING WAGES. Ashton AND Oldham STRIKE — Manchester
RIOTS. Parliament closed. Delegate Trades Meeting [in] Manchester— peaceful. Proclamation by the Chartist NATIONAL EXECUTIVE (in contrast)—warlike.
" THE PACIFICATION OF THE NORTH ISCOMPLETED." White (George) in Birmingham despite the police, despite warrant goes with guard to meetings and speaks. York AND Lancaster SPECIAL ASSIZES, some 156 RIOTERS TRIED.
Stafford SPECIAL ASSIZES FOR RIOTERS. F. O'Connor arrested FOR EXCITING TO SEDITION in Manchester, etc., at meetings in August. Cobden announces at Manchester meeting that the League intends to raise £50,000. The quaint city COMMON COUNCIL votes for
FREE TRADE IN CORN.
REVENUE FOR QUARTER SHOWS DECREASE £940,062.
O'Connell announces REPEAL[481] for this year — hence renewed agitation.
ANTI-CORN LAW WEEKLY MEETING, Wilson announces renewed agitation, 400,000
TRACTS SENT OUT LAST WEEK, 3 TONS MORE TO-
MORROW. Parliament opened.
February 13.
23.
March 1.
15.
/larch 24,
>> 31,
April 27,
May 9.
" 24.
June 8.
" 10.
" 15.
July 19.
" 25. August 15.
24.
Ld. Howick's motion for COMMITTEE OF WHOLE HOUSE ON DISTRESS. Debate till 17, then defeated, 301:191. Cobden threatening towards Peel. Walter's motion for easing the POOR LAW, during which it emerged that the Government has been implementing the new POOR LAW with increasing severity. TRIAL OF F. O'Connor and Co. in Lancaster. O'Connor guilty and many others, now RESERVED ON POINT OF LAW. From today weekly MEETINGS of the ANTI-CORN LAW LEAGUE in Drury Lane Theatre resumed.
FACTORY BILL READ 2ND TIME.482
Revenue a/c rising, but still below last year (EXCEPT NEW INCOME TAX). Irish Arms Bill,[483] as many arms bought u p there. Villiers' CORN LAW Motion, after 5 evening debates, defeated 381:125. Peel declares that he intends to oppose REPEAL absolutely. Richard Arkwright's WILL PROVED— £8,000,000.
MONSTER REPEAL MEETING [in] Kilkenny— 300,000 men. Rebecca RIOTS in Wales [484] BEGAN: ABOLITION
OF TURNPIKES, OF TITHES AND COMMUTED RENT CHARGES, CHURCH RATE AND NEW POOR LAW. REPEAL MEETING [in] Ennis — 500,000 MEN. EDUCATIONAL CLAUSES 5 — I N FACT BILL ABANDONED on account of opposition of the DISSENTERS[486] (petition over 2,000,000 signatures). (All REPEAL MAGISTRATES in Ireland dismissed u p to now.) Still over a week's debate Smith O'Brien's MOTION FOR INQUIRY INTO DISTRESS in Ireland defeated 243:164. Bright M.P. FOR Durham City. MONSTER REPEAL MEETING [at] Tara Hill. Parliament closed.
September 28.
October 1.
7.
10.
" 14.
" 21
" 23
" 26
November 8
1844. January 1
January 15.
February 1. " 6.
" 12.
1845. June 6.
Rebecca in Wales continuing . — OUTRAGES in Ireland . — Threat to withhold rent payment , CUTTING CROPS, etc.
ANTI-CORN-LAW agitation in London re -sumed with meeting in Covent Garden Theatre . 9 , 0 0 0 , 0 0 0 TRACTS distributed in previous year .
REPEAL MONSTER MEETING in Mullaghmust .
[in] Clontarf banned BY PROCLAMATION.
ROYAL COMMISSION TO INQUIRE INTO Rebecca CAUSES. O ' Connell accused — still no point formu -lated, but QUIT UNDER BAIL TO APPEAR NEXT TERM
TO ANSWER ANY CHARGE BY ATTORNEY GENERAL.
ANTI - CORN - LAW VICTORY AT CITY LONDON ELEC-
TION: Pattison OVER Baring .
COUNCIL AT HALL in Dublin opened . — O ' Connell now "PEACEFUL"!
TRIALS OF Rebecca — heavy sentences (Car-diff). O ' Connell finally charged .
Marquis [of] Westminster goes over to the ANTI - CORN LAW LEAGUE. Many ANTI -
CORN LAW and PRO-CORN LAW MEETINGS held throughout the country . O ' Connell ' s TRIAL. Sentenced , confirmed on May 2 4 b y QUEENS BENCH. 4 8 12 MONTHS. Parliament opened .
New FACTORY BILL ( not passed previous year).
REVEREND Oastler freed after 3 years in debtors gaol.
FACTORY ACT , LAW. Railway speculation and autumn potato blight.
July ' 4 6 - February ' 6 2 . Russell
1847. July 2 8 . Elections. F. O ' Connor and Walter elected in Nottingham .
December 7. F. O'Connor's motion to investigate how the Union with Ireland had been made and what it had achieved, 23:255.
1848. March 13. Chartist Demonstration [on] Kennington Common. Jones spoke forcefully. In Ireland Young Ireland[488] revolutionary, demanding arms. At Trafalgar Square meeting, March 6, ostensibly about INCOME TAX, police knocked down, strengthened to 500 men, new ROW in the evening.—On the 6th RIOT in Glasgow by UNEMPLOYED, some looting, military called out, but the mass dispersed without shooting. Similar in Edinburgh and Liverpool. April 1. RIFLE CLUBS formed in Ireland. " 4. NATIONAL CHARTIST CONVENTION in London, demonstration for the 10th. E. Jones for FIGHTING. B. O'Brien for waiting until the people stronger than the law. " 6. F. O'Connor's motion to pardon Frost, Williams and Jones defeated 91:23. " 7. A GAGGING ACT[489] against inflammatory speeches introduced by Grey. " 10. Kennington Common. The Chartists in processions to Kennington Common to assemble there and thence on to the HOUSE OF COMMONS with the MONSTER petition. 250,000 SPECIAL CONSTABLES.—4,300 soldiers to Kennington.— On Saturday evening SPLIT over arming: B. O'Brien for, F. O'Connor against. B. O'Brien withdraws with his LOT. The demonstration fell FLAT, the march to Westminster abandoned, and F. O'Connor handed over the petition that evening in the usual way. " 13. Debate on the petition, instead of 5,706,000 signatures, said to be only 1,975,496, including much nonsense. May 16. CHARTIST NATIONAL CONVENTION BREAKS UP. " 27. John Mitchel 14 YEARS TRANSPORTATION.— RIOTS in Clarkenwell Green and Bethnal Green, nothing significant, because of this CONVICTION of Chartists and Re-pealers.[490]
June GOLD EXCITEMENT IN CALIFORNIA.
" 6. Jones and 3 others COMMITTED FOR SEDITION. " " O'Connell's REPEAL ASSOCIATION BROKEN UP. " 11. Great precautions in London against Chartist insurrection: bank, mint, government offices, Thames steamers full of soldiers. Parliament moreover pro-visioned. " 12. Chartist demonstration a failure it seems, very pitiful. June. Insurrection.a
July 7. Jones and 5 others 2 years and BOUND OVER
AFTERWARDS. " 22. Russell demands suspension OF habeas corpus [491] in Ireland, BILL introduced. " 25. Smith O'Brien's attempt at insurrection.— [On the] 29th Smith O'Brien ap-prehended. August 8. Berkeley's BALLOT MOTION CARRIED AGAINST GOVERNMENT 86:81. " 14. Chartists' rising [in] Ashton under Lyne. MIDNIGHT ATTACK AGAINST TOWN HALL with pistols and lances — one POLICEMAN shot— broken up. " 15. 14 Chartist leaders arrested in Manchester for INCITING TO RISE IN ARMS. " 16. 18 Chartist leaders arrested in London, Orange Street, armed; others in Moor Street. Allegedly they were due to strike during the night. Lot of ammunition seized. " 25. TRIAL of the London Chartists, 26th, TRIAL of Manchester Chartists. Condemned to
[2] YEARS HARD LABOUR. " 26. TRIAL of those arrested on August 16 in London — TRANSPORTATION FOR LIFE.
a Of the Paris workers on June 22-25, 1848.— Ed.
1852. June 8. F. O'Connor gets up to silly tricks in HOUSE OF COMMONS, arrested by SERGEANT AT ARMS, taken to madhouse.
1855. August 30.
1856. May 3.
tF. O'Connor in Notting Hill.
Amnesty for Frost, Williams and Jones and the other transported Irish prisoners.
tErnest Jones, 50.
5. Plan of Chapter Four of the Pamphlet The Role of Force in History
1. 1848. Postulate of national states. Italy, Germany, Poland, Hungary. 2. Bonaparte's enlightened policy of conquest: nationhood in exchange for compensation. Italy. 3. Against this, [Prussian] army reorganisation. Conflict. Bismarck. Policy not original. 4. Position in Germany. Unity: 1. through revolution, 2. through Austria, 3. through Prussia (Customs' Union). 5. War [of] 1864 and 1866. Revolutionary means. 6. Bismarck's best years — until 1870. 7. French War.(1) Empire. Annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Russia the arbitrator. 8. Bismarck at the end — turns reactionary, feeble-minded. Kulturkampf[492] (civil marriage). Protective tariffs and agrarian alliance with bourgeois.—Colonial swindles. Slandering of Bismarck.— Anti-Socialist Law.[493]—Suppression of coalition.—Social reform.— Militarism because of annexation of Alsace.—The Junker [in Bismarck] comes to the fore for the lack of other ideas.
6. Plan of the Final Section of Chapter Four of the Pamphlet The Role of Force in History
I. 3 classes: two lousy, one of them decaying, the other on the ascent, and workers who only want bourgeois FAIR PLAY. Manoeuvring between the latter two therefore the only proper way — perish the thought! Policy: To strengthen state power in general and to make it financially independent in particular (nationalisation of the railways, monopolies), police state and regional principles of justice.
"Liberal" and "National", the dual nature of 1848, still in evidence in Germany of 1870-88.
Bismarck had to rely on the Reichstag and the people, and this called for complete freedom of the press, speech, association and assembly, just for orientation. II. 1. Structure [of the a) Economic — ill-conceived curren-Empire] cy law main achievement already, b) Political — restoration of the police state, and anti-bourgeois judicial laws (1876), poor copy of the French version.— Legal uncertainty.—Culminated in the Imperial Court. 1879. 2. Lack of ideas a) Kulturkampf. The Catholic proved by playing priest is no gendarme or police-around and slan-man. Jubilation by the bour-dering Bismarck. geoisie — hopelessness — going to Bismarck's party Canossa.[494] Only rational result— sans phrase. civil marriage!
3. Swindles and crash. His involvement. Wretchedness of conservative Junkers, who are just as dishonourable as the bourgeoisie. 4. [Bismarck's] complete transformation into a Junker.
a) Protective tariffs, etc., coalition of bourgeois and Junkers, with the latter taking the lion's share. b) Attempts at a tobacco monopoly defeated in 1882. c) Colonial swindles. 5. Social policy a la a) Anti-Socialist Law and crushing Bonaparte. of workers' associations and funds, b) Social reform crap. III. 6. Foreign policy. Threat of war, effect of annexation.
Increase in strength of army. Septennate.[495] In due course, a return to the pre-1870 year group to maintain superiority for a few more years. IV. Result: a) A domestic situation which collapses with the
7. Notes on My Journey Through America and Canada
Primitiveness. "CIVILISED COUNTRY."a Furniture.— Manners — Boston cabs. Hotel organisation, STAGE COACHES, 17th-century travel. Alongside hypermodern features— even in rooms. Window fastenings — roller blinds — keys — double locks.
Country of unexpected contrasts: more railways than roads and the latter appalling — GOOD PLANK ROAD — ELEVATED RAILWAYS above and dreadful pavement below — log cabins but carpets and pianos inside — indeed, even the bourgeois Yankees and the feudal Canadians alongside them — the idyllic Hoboken and insects close to New York.
Publicness of life, in contrast to England. Only bedrooms private, and even these scarcely so (fanlights, ventilation).— HALL, OFFICE, WRITING ROOM, LADIES' PARLORS; heaters make it unnecessary to keep rooms closed even in winter, and so it does not exist. LOAFING ABOUT in the hotels.
Greeks in Rome in the last days of the republic. Religion—their theory, to be grasped historically. GO-AHEAD NATION — pushing past, not being able to see anyone walking or standing in front of them. Even in Boston, and worst there on account of the narrow streets — women too.
Spitting — privies — hypocrisy about drink not only in PROHIBITION STATES — nobody drinks in public — prudery — ROOSTER and ROACHES.
Opposite to Canada.—French Canadians really detached from France by the Revolution and have preserved the feudalism guaranteed by the conquest — they are going to ruin — Falls opposite Niagara[497]—empty houses, bridges, etc.—Emigration to
a The words in English are written in the margin.— Ed.
New England, where they replace the Chinese.—English Canadians also slow, even in Toronto much dilapidation.
The Americans unable to enjoy. The Americans unable to walk — either rush or loaf.
Provincials.* Foundation the old solid petty bourgeois, small townsman and small peasant of the 17th-18th centuries. He is everywhere unmistakable with his wooden fashion, but also forms the solid foundation amidst wild speculation, just like the Swiss, to whom a certain resemblance.
Obtrusiveness of American manners: Doctor, City of Berlin}(1)
Get up early. New York — harbour — beauty.— Natural setting for the centre of capitalist production — and how this destiny is fulfilled. First evening impression, dazzling, pavements, dirt, noise, horrible. By day even more ugliness — telegraph poles, overhead railways, signs crossways, company signs, architecture hidden, throngs of people, carriages, TRAMS and ELEVATED far above London, ugly, disfigured, everywhere advertisements, obtrusiveness. Croupier type. Haggard appearance of the people, even the women. Shops dazzling compared with London, and in greater numbers. This the gateway to the promised land. Ghastly noises at sea and on land. Noise from the carts, one makes more than ten in Europe. All aesthetics trampled underfoot as soon as momentary profit comes in view.
Horses like the people: elements of a good stock, not yet ready. Mostly lighter than in England — in Canada, on the other hand, thoroughly English type.
Résumé: capitalist production is overexploitation. Adirondacks forest devastation — nowhere else timber forest either (Isle of Gnats perhaps excepted).
Railways poor, slow, stopping train, delay and wait in Buffalo, incomprehensibly long halt at the stations; few trains per day; long bends, hence the long carriages (cf. street corner tracks in New York — ELEVATED), rolling, due to elasticity of the beams and the trembling, sea-sickness.
Americans no nation. 5-6 different types, held together by the need for cohesion forged in the Civil War,[498] and the feeling that they have in them the making of the greatest nation of the 20th century.
Genuinely capitalist(2): Business is concluded in a strictly businesslike manner. No tips. Anyone who gives them in situations where we would consider them unavoidable is then thoroughly exploited as a GREENHORN.
The parvenu — national character.
8. Impressions of a Journey Round America
We generally imagine America to be a new world — new not merely with regard to the time of its discovery, but also in all its institutions, far ahead of us olde-worlde sleepy Europeans in its scorn for everything hereditary and traditional, a world, newly built from scratch on virgin soil, by modern men on purely modern, practical, rational principles. And the Americans do their part in strengthening this view of ours. They look down with contempt on us as dubious, impractical people, enmeshed in all sorts of received prejudices, who go in fear of everything new, whereas they, THE MOST GO-AHEAD NATION,(1) examine every new proposal for improvement simply for its practical utility and, having once recognised it as possible, introduce it immediately, indeed almost overnight. But in America everything ought to be new, rational, practical — that is, everything ought to be different from what it is with us.
I first met a large number of Americans on the steamer City of Berlin. They were mostly very nice people, ladies and gentlemen, more accessible than the English, at times somewhat blunt in their speech, but otherwise rather like the better dressed people anywhere else. What, however, set them apart was a strangely petty-bourgeois bearing — not that of the timid, uncertain German petty bourgeois, nor that of the English; a bearing which, by virtue of the great assurance with which it presented itself as if it were quite natural, showed itself to be an inherited quality. The younger ladies, in particular, left the impression of a certain naivety such as is found in Europe only in smaller towns; when striding resolutely, almost fiercely across the deck, arm in arm, or on the arm of a man, they had the very same springy gait and held down their skirts when threatened by the wind with the same demure grip as innocent young things from the country back home. They reminded me mostly of Swedish girls — they were big and robust like them, too — and I expected them to curtsey at any moment, as Swedish women do. My American fellow travellers had also received their share of the physical and intellectual clumsiness which is the universal hereditary trait of the Germanic race and had not shaken it off at all. In short, my initial impression of the Americans was by no means one of national superiority over the Europeans, by no means that of a totally new, modern national type, but on the contrary that they were people who still clung on to inherited petty-bourgeois habits which are considered outdated in Europe, that we Europeans contrast with them in this connection as the Parisians with the provincials.
When I entered my first bedroom in New York, what did I find? Furniture of the quaintest old style imaginable, chests of drawers with brass rings or hoops as handles on the drawers, such as was the fashion in the early years of the century, and in Europe are still found only in the country; alongside them, more recent styles after the English or French pattern, but even these were also dated enough and mostly in the wrong place; nothing new since the huge rocking chair, which described an arc of 240 degrees, went out of fashion again. And thus everywhere, the chairs, tables and cupboards mostly look like the heirlooms of past generations. The carriages on the New York streets have such an outdated appearance that at first glance one believes no European farm would still have in its possession a hand-cart of such a model. True, on closer observation one finds that these carriages are much improved and most expediently equipped, furnished with excellent suspension and extremely lightly built out of very strong wood; but for all these improvements the old-fashioned model remained intact. In London, right up to the early 40s, there were cabs which people boarded from the rear and where they sat on the right and the left opposite one another, as in an omnibus; since 1850 they have disappeared; yet in Boston, as far as I know the only American city where cabs are in common use, these boneshakers still flourish to this day. The American inns of today, with their luxurious furnishings and their hundreds of rooms, show in their entire AMERICAN PLAN that they have grown out of the remote farmhouses in sparsely populated areas, which even today occasionally offer travellers board and lodging for payment — I shall return to this point — and hence display peculiarities which appear to us to be not simply strange, but downright quaint. And so on.
APPENDICES
Endnotes
[459] Polis (a city state)—a typical socio-economic and political organisation in Ancient Greece and Ancient Italy. The Greek polis emerged in the 8th-6th cent. B.C. It included the city proper and the adjacent agricultural settlements. Only its indigenous inhabitants who owned land and slaves possessed full civic rights. There were also free citizens who did not enjoy full rights, such as metoikos (see Note 108), they engaged in trades and commerce.
[461] Interregnum—the period between 1254 and 1273 in Germany after the Hohenstaufen dynasty had ceased to exist. It witnessed the struggle between various pretenders to the Imperial crown, incessant strife between princes, knights and cities, and the mounting arbitrary rule of the princes in their estates. In 1273, Rudolf Habsburg was elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
[462] The Hundred Years' War—a series of wars between England and France lasting from 1337 to 1453. It was caused by the dispute between the two countries over the possession of the commercial and industrial towns of Flanders, the main consumer of English wool, and the English kings' claims to the French throne. During the war, the English managed to seize a considerable part of France. However, as a result of a popular war against the foreign invaders, the English were driven out of French territory with the exception of Calais. The reference is to the so-called reconquista, in the course of which the peoples inhabiting the Peninsula recaptured the territories conquered in the 8th-15th centuries by the Arabs and the Berbers collectively known as the Moors. By the mid-13th century, the Moors retained only the Emirate of Granada, which fell in 1492. The reference is to the final period of Tartar-Mongol rule in Russia, which lasted throughout the 13th and 15th centuries. The popular struggle against the invaders resulted in the formation of the Russian centralised state. This enabled Prince Ivan III of Muscovy to refuse to pay tribute to the Golden Horde in 1476. After the unsuccessful campaign against Russia undertaken by Khan Ahmed in 1480, the country set itself completely free from the Tartar-Mongol yoke. The Wars of the Roses (1455-85)—wars between the feudal houses of York and Lancaster competing for the throne, the white rose being the badge of the House of York, and the red one of the House of Lancaster. The wars almost completely wiped out the ancient feudal nobility and brought Henry VII to power to form a new dynasty, that of the Tudors, who set up an absolute monarchy in England.
[464] Municipium—at the time of the Roman Republic, a city tied to Rome by a treaty. Municipia were of two categories, depending on the nature of the treaty with Rome, equal or unequal. The former usually enjoyed self-government and their citizens enjoyed full civil and political rights in Rome. The citizens of the latter did not have political rights in Rome but performed the duties of Roman citizens. A municipium had no permanent status.
[465] The Lay of Ludwig (Das Ludwigslied) was written in the Franconian dialect by an anonymous poet in the late 9th century. It is a panegyric of the West Frankish King Ludwig III celebrating his victory over the Normans at Sancourt in 881 (Hausschatz der Volkspoesie, Leipzig, 1846).
[466] The reference is to the extant texts in the Old High German and the Romance (Old French) languages — oaths of allegiance exchanged by the East Frankish King Louis the German and the West Frankish King Charles the Bald, as well as by their vassals in Strassburg in 842.
[468] Lotharingia (Lorraine)—a state on the left bank of the Rhine established in 855 during the division of Emperor Lothair I's possessions and named after his son Lothair II, to whom it was handed over as an independent kingdom. Its position between the West and the East Frankish kingdom made it unstable and was one of the causes of the struggle for its territory. After the death of Lothair II in 870, Lotharingia was divided (roughly along the language frontier) between his brothers, the East Frankish King Louis the German and the West Frankish King Charles the Bald.
[469] The reference is to the English victories over the French in the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) (see Note 462).
[470] The reference is to Wellington's campaign against France in the Peninsular War of 1808-13 and his victory at Waterloo (Belgium) on June 18, 1815. The best-known victories won by Wellington in Spain in the way described by Engels were the battles of Talavere in 1809 and of Salamanca in 1812.
[471] Engels is referring to the refusal of the German Emperor Albrecht I of the Austrian Habsburgs to recognise the freedoms of the Swiss cantons confirmed by his predecessor, Adolf of Hassau. In the 14th-15th centuries, in their continued struggle for independence, the cantons managed to defeat the troops of the Austrian feudal lords and to secure for Switzerland the position of a state free from Austrian rule and subordinate only formally to the German Empire.
[472] At the battle of Crécy on August 26, 1346, the English, using a combination of knights and archers, defeated the French army, whose main force was cavalry. This battle was fought during the Hundred Years' War between England and France (see Note 462). On the Battle of Waterloo, see Note 226.
[473] The reference is to the printing with movable type invented by Johann Gutenberg in the mid-15th century. This invention was one of the main factors which promoted science and literature in the 15th and 16th centuries, and eventually led to the growth of the productive forces throughout the world.
[474] The Duchy of Burgundy, which was formed in the 9th century in the basins of the Saône, Seine and Loire and later annexed considerable territories (Franche-Comté, part of Northern France, the Netherlands), became an independent feudal state in the 14th-15th centuries. It reached the peak of its might in the second half of the 15th century under Duke Charles the Bold (1467-77). He sought to expand his possessions and this hindered the formation of a centralised French monarchy. King Louis XI of France managed to form a coalition of the Swiss and the Lotharingians against Burgundy. As a result of the Burgundian wars of 1474-77, the troops of Charles the Bold were defeated, and he himself was killed in the Battle of Nancy (1477). His lands were divided between Louis XI and Maximilian of Habsburg, the son of the German Emperor.
[475] Capitalising on Italy's political fragmentation and the discord between the Italian states, King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494 and occupied the Kingdom of Naples. Charles VIII's campaign was the start of the Italian Wars (1494-1559) during which Italy was repeatedly invaded by French, Spanish and German troops and became the scene of a prolonged struggle for supremacy in the middle Mediterranean peninsula.
[477] See Note 462.
[478] The first attempt at unification of Poland and Lithuania was made in 1385, when the two states concluded a dynastic Krewo Union (after Krewo Castle, where it was signed), which was aimed mainly at joint defence against the mounting aggression on the part of the Teutonic Order (see Note 218). At the same time, it promoted the interests of both states, which sought to expand their territories at the expence of Ukrainian and Byelorussian lands. In 1569, the Lublin Union was concluded, under which Poland and Lithuania formed a single state under the name of Rzecz Pospolita. Lithuania retained its autonomy. The Union existed up to 1795.
[480] "A sacred month"—the slogan advanced by Chartists in 1839, a call for a general strike.
[481] The Union with England was imposed on Ireland by the English government after the suppression of the Irish rebellion in 1798. The Union, which came into force on January 1, 1801, abolished the autonomous Irish Parliament and made Ireland still more dependent on England. The demand for the repeal of the Union became widespread in Ireland from the 1820s.
[483] An Act to amend and continue for Two Years, and to the End of the next Session of Parliament, the Laws in Ireland relative to the registering of Arms, and the Importation, Manufacture, and Sale of Arms, Gunpowder, and Ammunition was passed by the House of Commons in August 1843 following an upsurge in Ireland in the movement for the repeal of the Union (see Note 481).
[484] Rebecca Riots—popular unrest in 1839 and 1842-43 in South Wales. They were triggered off by the imposition of charges at the toll-gates on the public roads. The name was borrowed from the Bible: "And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them" (Genesis 24: 60). Many participants in the movement were associated with Chartism.
[486] Dissenters were members of Protestant religious sects and trends in England who rejected the dogmas and the rites of the official Anglican Church.
[488] The Young Ireland group was formed in 1842 by the Irish bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intellectuals.
[489] The reference is to An Act for the Better Security of the Crown and Government of the United Kingdom introduced in the House of Commons by the Home Secretary George Grey and passed on April 19, 1848.
[490] Repealers—supporters of the repeal of the Anglo-Irish Union of 1801, which had abrogated the autonomy of the Irish Parliament. In January 1847, the radical elements of this movement formed an Irish Confederation. Representatives of its revolutionary Left wing, who stood at the head of the national liberation movement, were subjected to severe repression in 1848. See also Note 481.
[491] The reference is to the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679. It introduced a writ of Habeas Corpus, the name given in the English judicial procedure to a document enjoining the pertinent authorities to present an arrested person before a court on the demand of the persons desiring to check the legitimacy of the arrest. The procedure does not apply to persons accused of high treason and can be suspended by decision of Parliament. The British authorities frequently made use of this exception in Ireland.
[2] In the nineteenth century the term Aryans referred to the peoples using Indo-European languages. Nowadays the term is applied to the tribes and peoples speaking Indo-Iranian languages.
[492] See Note 351.
[493] Yhe reference is to court proceedings instituted by Bismarck in 1876-77 against a number of conservative journalists and politicians, who exposed his involvement in the stock-exchange machinations, on the charge of insulting him in the press. The incident revealed the mounting tension between Bismarck's government and the conservatives, who criticised his policies from a Right-wing standpoint. On the Anti-Socialist Law, see Note 174.
[494] The expression "to go to Canossa" dates back to the humiliating pilgrimage to the Canossa Castle in Northern Italy undertaken by the German Emperor Henry IV in 1077 for the purpose of persuading Pope Gregory VII to revoke his excommunication. It became a current phrase after Bismarck said in the Reichstag in May 1872: "We shall not go to Canossa." In the late 1870s, needing the support of the Catholic Party of the Centre, because his old stronghold, the National Liberal Party (see Note 170) was losing its influence, Bismarck repealed nearly all anti-Catholic laws passed during the Kulturkampf (see Note 351) and forced the principal adherents of the anti-Catholic policy to retire. By using the expression "going to Canossa", Engels ironically alludes to Bismarck's concessions to the clerical circles in 1878-87, which in fact amounted to giving up the Kulturkampf.
[495] Septennate (a seven-year period)—the German law on army credits, fixed for seven years ahead. It also approved an increase in the numerical strength of the standing army in peacetime (401,000) for the same term.
[497] The reference is to the establishment of a National Park near the Niagara Falls recounted by Engels in his letter to Laura Lafargue of September 5, 1888: "The State of New York bought up all the grounds (on the American side) about the falls, turned out all the touts, hucksters and exhortionists, and transformed the whole into a public park. ...And the simple fact of the Americans having done this compelled the Canadian government to do the same on their side..." (present edition, Vol. 48).
[498] The reference is to the American Civil War of 1861-65. See also Note 432.
[500] See Note 220.