Karl Marx: A Biography

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200 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY

Of what use are your hypocritical phrases that strain after impossible

subterfuges? We also are ruthless and we ask for no consideration from

you. When our turn comes we will not excuse our terrorism. But

royal terrorists, terrorists by the grace of God and the law are brutal,

contemptible and vulgar in their practice, cowardly, secretive and

double-faced in their theory, and in both respects entirely without

honour.^88

Twenty thousand copies of the 'Red Number' were sold and were soon
changing hands at ten times the original price. It was even rumoured that
some copies had been expensively framed, to serve as ikons.
Marx was left with the task of winding up the affairs of the paper. All
the plant and machinery - which belonged to Marx personally - had to
be sold to pay the various debts to shareholders, employees and contribu-
tors: Marx later claimed to have sunk 7000 thalers of his own money in
the paper.^89 The circulation of the paper at the time of its demise was
almost 6000 , but its growth had merely increased the expenses without a
corresponding increase in revenue. Everything that remained, including
incoming articles, Marx gave over to the Neue Kolnische Zeitung. This left
them only Jenny's silver. This was packed in a suitcase lent by one of
Marx's creditors and the whole family left Cologne on 19 May 1849 and
went down the Rhine to Bingen where Jenny stayed with friends for a
few days. Marx and Engels went on to Frankfurt where, assisted by
Wilhelm Wolff, they met the leaders of the Left in the Frankfurt Assembly
to persuade them to assume leadership of the revolutionary movement in
South-West Germany by summoning the revolutionary forces to Frank-
furt. Meanwhile Jenny arranged, with the help of Weydemeyer, to pawn
her silver in Frankfurt. She then took the children to stay with her mother
in Trier for a few days. She found her mother much changed: 'Straitened
circumstances and old age have infiltrated into a soul that is otherwise so
mild and loving the qualities of hardness and selfishness that deeply
wound those near to her.' But she comforted herself with amusement at
the provinciality of Trier and the confidence of Marx that 'all the pressures
that we now feel are only the sign of an imminent and even more
complete victory of our views'.^90
When Marx and Engels could get no agreement from the Left in
Frankfurt, they went south to Baden where they spent a week vainly
urging the revolutionary leaders (who had established a provisional
government) to march on Frankfurt. In Speyer Marx encountered Willich,
still enthusiastic for campaigning, and in Kaiserslautern he met d'Ester
who gave him a mandate on behalf of the Democratic Central Committee
(of which Marx had recently been so severely critical) to liaise on their
behalf with the Paris socialists. There was plainly no further role for