COLOGNE 20 IMarx in Germany. The two friends decided to split up: Marx would go
to Paris while Engels put his talents as a bombardier at the service of the
Baden revolutionaries. However, on their way back from Kaiserslautern
to Bingen they were both arrested by Hessian troops who took them to
Darmstadt and Frankfurt where they were eventually released. Marx
returned to Bingen and left for Paris on 2 June accompanied by Ferdinand
Wolff.VI. PARIS AGAINMarx arrived in Paris, where he was to spend the next three months,
confident of an imminent revolutionary outbreak. In reality, following
the crushing victory of Louis Napoleon at the Presidential election the
previous December, a military autocracy was imminent. Marx settled in
the rue de Lille near Les Invalides under the pseudonym of M. Ramboz.
He found Paris 'dismal' - as indeed it must inevitably have seemed
compared to the previous year. In addition a cholera epidemic was raging
far and wide. Marx was nevertheless confident of an immediate uprising
and set about fulfilling his mandate. On 7 June he wrote to Engels: 'A
colossal eruption of the revolutionary crater was never more imminent
than now in Paris.... I am in touch with the whole of the revolutionary
party and in a few days will have all the revolutionary journals at my
disposition.'^91 In fact, however, the situation was grim: the sporadic armed
revolts in Germany were petering out, the Hungarian rebellion was
crushed by Russian troops, and in Italy the French army was in the
process of re-establishing papal authority. On 11 June, following a censure
motion on the Government proposed by Ledru-Rollin and the radical
Montagne, the workers' associations proposed an armed coup d'e'tat by
night, but the Montagne refused; and when the latter held a peaceful
demonstration themselves two days later, it was easily dispersed by govern-
ment troops. Thus the two parties 'mutually paralysed and deceived each
other'.^92 The 'revolution' was finished.
At the beginning of July Jenny and the children had joined Marx in
Paris to find themselves in a state of poverty that was to become chronic.
Marx enlisted Weydemeyer's help to try and persuade a lady who had
promised money for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung to give it to Marx person-
ally so that he could purchase the copyright of the Poverty of Philosophy
and make some money from a second edition. 'If help does not come
from some quarter,' he wrote to Weydemeyer, 'I am lost... the last
jewels of my wife have already gone to the pawnshop.'^93 Marx also wrote
to Lassalle, who responded promptly and generously, but he bitterly