In the eighth in his series of letters from the revolutionary year of 1871, Liebknecht analyses the peace accord and the political forces at play in both France and Germany.

‘Letter from Leipzig, VIII’ by Wilhelm Liebknecht from Workingman’s Advocate (Chicago). Vol. 7 No. 29. March 18, 1871.

Leipzig, February 12, 1871

To the Editor of the WORKINGMAN’S ADVOCATE:

The shape in which the news of the capitulation of Paris and the armistice has reached the European, and most likely the American public as well, proves clearly that these events do in reality possess that character which the purveyors of the news should like them to have and think fit to stamp upon them. An armistice and a capitulation are two things which have nothing whatever to do with one another, and even exclude an armistice, and a garrison that concludes an armistice cannot capitulate. If Paris had capitulated in the proper sense of the word, we could not have heard of an armistice in conjunction with this fact. It is true, in Paris is the government of France; but in consequence of the government having been enclosed in Paris together with the garrison, the government could not conclude an armistice for France, after this garrison had capitulated. The fact is, the capitulation of Paris and the armistice are not the result of the military actions of the Prussians, but of regular peace negotiations, into which Count Bismarck has been forced to enter with the French Republic, fostered by the conviction that to destroy the Republic was a hopeless task, and forced by Austrian and English mediation, which had at last become so pressing as almost to be menacing, and which was driven to a final and decisive effort by Count Bismarck’s dispatch refusing Jules Favre a Prussian pass to the Pontus Conference. This dispatch, insulting to the French government and its representative at the Conference, was not less insulting to the neutral powers, especially England and Austria, who had, to the disgust of Prussia, insisted upon the formal invitation of France to the conference, and carried their point in spite of all Prusso-Russian opposition. The Austrian and the English governments combined for a common and very energetical protest against Count Bismarck’s dispatch, and further, for a still more energetical protest against the continuation of the war and Count Bismarck’s plan to restore Bonaparte. Count Bismarck would, perhaps, have given a blustering reply; but the King-Emperor, Crown Prince and other influential members of the Imperial headquarters, being thoroughly sick of the war, were inclined to listen to reason, and so the offer of mediation was accepted. At the same time the neutrals were active in Paris, and here also the mediation was accepted. The first interview between Jules Favre and Bismarck’ had nothing at all to do with the capitulation of Paris, except in an indirect manner. Its object was solely to find a basis for negotiations of peace, and under the pressure of the neutral powers the following agreement was arrived at:

1. Paris, which was unable to hold out much longer, had simply to lay down its arms; the besiegers were not to be allowed to enter the town; and the soldiers of the garrison were not to be treated as prisoners of war, in acknowledgement of the fact that in case the interview of Favre and Bismarck came to nothing, the effective divisions of the garrison would have been able to break through the Prussian lines.

2. Armistice of three weeks.

3. Election of a Constituante.

The territorial question, it appears, was not touched upon.

The Constituent Assembly, which is to meet at Bordeaux within a fortnight after the beginning of the armistice, shall decide whether the war is to be continued or a definitive peace concluded on the conditions which in the mean-time are to be fixed by military and diplomatic representatives of France and Prussia, with the moral aid of the neutral powers.

There is very little doubt that the armistice will lead to a treaty of peace. By consenting to leave the territorial question an open question, Prussia has made a concession of decisive moment, and removed the great stumbling block of all previous negotiations and mediations. Of course I do not suppose that Prussia has given up her plans of annexation, but I think Luxemburg will, with the assent of the neutral powers, be substituted for Metz (Lorraine); and with regard to Alsace, some arrangement must be discovered acceptable to both parties. A narrow strip of land on the left bank of the Rhine will, perhaps, have to be sacrificed by France, and the rest neutralized, or what other device cunning diplomacy may hit upon.

Even if the conditions should not meet with the approval of the majority of the Constituante, yet a continuation of the war is nearly out of the question, for it cannot be denied that Jules Favre and his Parisian colleagues by their one-sided proceedings, without first consulting Gambetta and the Bordeaux delegation, have broken the unity existing till then between all factions of Democracy, and thrown France upon the mercy of the neutral powers. That it has long been understood so in Paris is shown by the late popular demonstrations, which were so cruelly suppressed, and in the government proclamations, so unjustly branded as the work of Prussian agents. However, about these unfortunate conflicts there is still so little known that I will not venture upon any reflections today. The mutual relations of the different parties, especially of the Honnêtes (Honest) Republicans, the Bourgeois Democrats of Jules Favre’s color, the Radical Republicans (Delescluze, Felix Pyat”) and the Socialist Republicans, (Blanqui’ and the men of the Internationale), will be one of the most interesting themes for the near future; now, we know nothing about it–nay, less than nothing: the silly reports and impudent lies, propagated by an unprincipled press, which considers it a sacred duty to misguide the public and to circulate the most infamous calumnies whenever the workingmen step on the political stage.

It is to be expected that the radical and socialistic Republicans will try to effect the resumption of the war, and will for that purpose use their whole influence in support of Gambetta, who has already pronounced in this sense; but I believe these efforts will prove fruitless. Not as if I doubted the capability of France for further resistance. Notwithstanding the loss of the Paris garrison, in consequence of J. Favre’s diplomatic coup d’état–for that it is–notwithstanding the loss of the eastern army, through Bourbaki’s incapacity or treason it is remarkable what talent these Bonapartist generals have to ruin armies notwithstanding the ill-success of Chanzy’s and Faidherbe’s operations, I am still firmly convinced that the war, if the French people persist, must end in the retreat or utter ruin of the invading armies. Yet after what Jules Favre has done, it is improbable in the highest degree that the French people will persist, unless it be driven to extremities by the demands of Prussia–a turn not very likely, since Bismarck has ceased to be the master of the situation. His counter-revolutionary plan for destroying the French Republic and restoring the French Empire has signally failed; and should he even succeed in his annexation schemes, this would not be a sufficient set-off for his defeat in the principal question. What strength would Alsace and maybe Lorraine-bring to the Prussian “Empire?” None at all. On the contrary, the French Venetia would draw strength from Prussia, requiring, like the Italian Venetia, an army of 100,000 men to keep the inhabitants in obedience during time of peace–twice as many in time of war, and if the war was to be with France, more soldiers than were needed to conquer it. Bismarck is fully aware of that, and he is fully aware of the fact, besides, that the annexation will render France the natural ally of every enemy who will in future rise against Prussia, and that the fortresses of Strassburg and Metz will prevent the Frenchmen, if prepared for war, as little from penetrating into the heart of Germany as they prevented the Germans from penetrating into the heart of France. On this point he has no illusions and would, when France rose after the disaster of Sedan, most willingly have resigned the scheme could he, by resigning it, have got rid of the Republic. The annexation was always only of secondary importance to him, subordinate in every respect to his chief aim-destruction of the French Republic. More than four months ago the Volksstaat, the organ of our party, wrote:

“If Count Bismarck destroys the French Republic and leaves to France her whole territory, he is victor in this war; and if Count Bismarck does not succeed in destroying the Republic and wrests half her territory from France, he is vanquished in this war.”

And vanquished he is, in spite of a hundred victories. The French Republic has, in the Titanic struggle of the last five months, amply proven her vitality. She has wiped off the infamy of the Empire and reconquered for France the esteem of the world. She has grown into one with the French people, and her future is the future of France.

Members of our own party–for instance, the brave veteran of Social Democracy, J. Ph. Becker, in his Vorbote (Pioneer) of Geneva–have blamed the French government for not yielding Alsace and Lorraine without a blow. From the international point of view, they argued, it is quite the same whether the provinces belong to France or to Germany. All we have to care for is that Germany and France may be soon won for Social Democracy. This reasoning would have been correct if Germany was a Republic, like France, and not a military despotism. The Alsacians and Lorrainers do not object to our nationality, which is in fact theirs, too, but to our political misery, which has been increased by this war, though gilded with “glory.” And then what practical effect would such submission on the part of the Republic have had? Nobody who is acquainted with the character and temper of the French people can have the least doubt that in this case the people would either have overturned the Republic at once or left it to an ignominious death at the hands of the enemy. At present the situation is completely changed, and should the Republic be forced to make territorial concessions, its existence will not be endangered by it anymore; and if the government sets to work wisely and is honestly supported by the people, the wounds of this war will soon be healed and France will have her revenge, and annex not only Alsace and Lorraine, but all of Germany–not by sword and cannon, but, morally, by institutions guaranteeing the liberty and welfare of the people.

It is significant that the fall of Paris has made comparatively very little of an impression in Germany; nowhere has there been a genuine outburst of public joy, nothing except the official and business puffing illuminations. Our Nationals, who are furious at this want of patriotic enthusiasm, pretend to think it was caused by the piecemeal way in which the news became known, so that the patriotic enthusiasm exploded bit by bit in little fizzes instead of one great thundering roar; of course that is all nonsense. The long and the short of it is, the Germans are tired of the war, and save their enthusiasm for the eagerly and anxiously expected peace. Still cooler than with the general public, was the reception of the news of the German exchanges; they celebrated this unparalleled success of our arms by a-baisse! The meaning of which is, that the experienced speculators, who, while peace was yet in infinite distance, had discounted the high-flown hopes of patriotic greenhorns, must now treat it as a near reality, and are under the necessity of divulging the secret, that no treaty of peace, be it ever so advantageous, will fulfill these high-flown hopes; that no sum of money, which France is made to pay, and be it as large as the most sanguine patriot hopes for, will be sufficient to cover but half of the losses, which the war has caused to our industry and commerce-not to speak of the hundreds of thousands of men killed, or crippled in the prime of life, to whom no peace can render life or health.

Before passing to some other matter, I must not forget to mention that Count Bismarck has made an attempt to refute Chandordy’s protest against the barbarous way in which the Prussians have been carrying on the war. The refutation is in every respect worthy of its origin; the principal charges are left unanswered, and counter charges brought forward which either mean nothing or answer themselves. Great cruelties have been committed by French soldiers–people wounded, killed, noses cut off, not to mention other brutalities, surgeons shot at, etc. Well, whether the particular cases of cruelty enumerated here are true, I do not know, but I do know that ten and perhaps a hundred times as many cases as are enumerated here must have really occurred on the French side, and on the Prussian. These horrors are the inseparable concomitants of war. But battering down open towns, burning villages because a shot has been fired out of a cottage, bombarding the towns of Strassburg, Verdun, Belfort, Paris–these deeds are not inseparable concomitants of war; they might all have been avoided without the slightest detriment to the military operations–and just these deeds the French memorial had reproached the Prussians with. Not a word about them says Count Bismarck. To make up for this characteristic omission, he accuses the Republican government of having terrorized France into war after Sedan, and of preventing her, by its terrorism, to pronounce for peace. And this accusation from the mouth of a man who has, at home in Germany, by the most violent measures stifled the voice of opposition to his war policy! The ink of this refutation was not yet dry, when one of the victims of Bismarck’s liberalism breathed his last at Hanover. Dr. Eichholz, an honest Democrat of the old school, who could not believe that wrong, by being successful, was changed into right, and had, therefore, at the beginning of the war been sent to the fortress of Lötzen, which he was graciously allowed to leave in November last-to die in his own bed.

The elections will take place on the third of next month, and the new Reichstag is to meet six days later. There are four parties in the field, representing the different tendencies of political life in Germany.

1. The Conservatives-Prussian, Junkers, Landräte,–Prefects–and all kind of government officials-who go through thick and thin with Count Bismarck and want to force time back behind the French Revolution, a century or so. A subdivision of this party, the Free Conservatives, think it prudent to flatter the spirit of our age by a liberal word now and then. Otherwise chips off the same block.

2. The National Liberals–members of the Bourgeoisie, lawyers, etc.–who, from fear of Democracy, and above all Social Democracy, are for “a strong government,” which only Prussia can give them. They have liberal inclinations, which, however, they are always ready to suppress in the “national”-that is their own and Bismarck’s-interest. A curious appendage to these forms the Party of Progress, so called because it does not progress. The progressionists are the thin remnant of the Democrats of 1848 and 1849–not exactly apostates, for they never had any principles–nor weather-cocks either, for they never know whence the wind comes; but rather a mixture of the two. The sole difference between these “invalides” and the national liberals is that the former suppress their liberal inclinations with a murmur, while the latter do it without one.

3. The Particularists–the Conservatives of the annexed provinces of Prussia and of the smaller German states. They are opposed to the centralizing power of Prussia, and wish to weaken it by gaining more independence for the smaller states. In South Germany this party is chiefly composed of Catholics, and called there the Patriotic Party. In Saxony, Hanover, etc. they go by the name of Federal Constitutionalists.

4. Social Democracy.

From this short classification you will perceive that we have nothing whatever in common with any of the other parties, and that we have to fight by ourselves against them all. “Many enemies, much honor,” says a German proverb.

The Chicago Workingman’s Advocate in 1864 by the Chicago Typographical Union during a strike against the Chicago Times. An essential publication in the history of the U.S. workers’ movement, the Advocate though editor Andrew Cameron became the voice National Labor Union after the Civil War. It’s pages were often the first place the work of Marx, Engels, and the International were printed in English in the U.S. It lasted through 1874 with the demise of the N.L.U.

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