The Crisis of 1865
‘’Revolution is the inspired frenzy of history’’
If this is the true definition of revolution then perhaps the events that have gone down in history as the Crisis of 1865 would be better remembered as the Revolution of 1865. For the Crisis did bring about serious change in the Republic and throughout it the course of events were dictated by the snap decisions of the major figures. All the major parties did of course enter the Crisis with grand plans and schemes but as is so often the case plans do not survive first contact with the enemy and very soon things developed into simple improvisation.
The Crisis occurred in the wake of the intense election of 1865 which was won by the United Cooperationists by just 0.08% as they narrowly edged out the Anarchists. Following the election the victorious Engels struggled to get the legitimising support he needed from the Marxists and Anarchists and was instead left extremely vulnerable as both the Blanquists and Anarchists started to arm themselves.
Whilst his man, Blanqui, had been defeated in the election Karl Marx was far from unhappy and although he saw Engel’s ideas of a continued peace between the factions as utopian things could have turned out far worse and he gave his quiet support to Engels before loading himself aboard a train and leaving Cologne on January 9th. Marx wanted to quickly leave the political hub of Cologne so he would not be used as a tool by any faction in the coming crisis.
With Blanqui’s most powerful asset speeding out of Cologne the Marxist-Centralist candidate was greatly weakened. Blanqui himself knew this and feared that the Anarchists would take this opportunity to not only destroy him but to also seize power – something he could not allow. When his intelligence agents detected the arming of the Anarchist militia he started to call AKVD agents back to Cologne whilst he also armed a large number of Blanquist thugs in preparation for a counter-coup should the Anarchists make a move against Engels.
To the surprise of Blanqui the first major outbreak of violence did not occur in Cologne but instead in Northern Westphalia at the Armley High Security Jail. A group of around 50 heavily armed Anarchist militiamen stormed the institute and freed the infamous Young Anarchist known as Comrade Kadon, interestingly only prisoners imprisoned for political acts were freed with other criminals being left in their cells. As news got out of Kadon’s freeing from prison the country seemed to explode in agitation. The Young Anarchists were energised beyond belief as across the Republic thousands turned out in dozens of major cities to celebrate his release whilst many thousands more shuddered at the news. Blanqui’s interpretation of what had happened was clear. The Young Anarchists were seizing control of the entire Anarchist faction and would now soon direct their attentions towards Cologne. In his private diaries Blanqui wrote ‘’if I do not act now then I shall hang in the morning’’.
Yet Blanqui’s interpretation of what was going on was totally inaccurate. Bakunin and the Anarchist mainstream had successfully hoodwinked their great foe. When Blanqui ordered the 9,000 man paramilitary core of the AKVD to march on Cologne he terrified Engels and the UC government. Engels demanded that the units turn around but instead Blanqui merely ensured the Chairman that he was going to ‘’restore order’’. With nowhere else to turn Engels threw himself into the open arms of Bakunin and in doing so formed a UC-Anarchist alliance. Blanqui had been enticed into being the first to commit himself to clear action against the government and had now made himself the Napoleon that the revolutionaries had so long feared and the enemy of the People’s Republic.
In this situation Blanqui started to see his support from the mainstream of the Marxist faction waver meaning he was forced to direct his coup effort against not only the Anarchists, not only the UC government but also the doubtful Marxists.
Despite its hasty planning the Blanquist coup on January 14th was, at first glance, very successful. In Cologne Marshal Weydemeyer (the head of the Armed Forces) was captured in the Red Army HQ, this would give Blanqui control over the military; near Hanover AKVD troops captured Karl Marx and placed him aboard an armoured train headed back to Cologne, this would provide the political legitimacy Blanqui needed; all the major train stations were captured giving the AKVD control over who entered and who left the city; finally most major government buildings fell the AKVD and Blanquist thugs. The Anarchist militiamen were simply no match for the trained AKVD units and were forced to withdraw.
However all was not lost for the UC and their Anarchist allies. In the centre of the city around the very building where the Central Committee held its meetings the Anarchists were holding out. Famously, just when all seemed lost Comrade Kadon emerged from a house and bellowed ‘’To the barricades! Save the Republic!’’ With this the broken Anarchist militiamen were energised and hastily formed a not unimpressive system of fortifications around the small area they still held. By this stage the Anarchists only had around 4,000 armed men left whilst the Blanquists had 9,000 elite AKVD paramilitaries, a further 6,000 AKVD special policemen and about 5,000 thugs off the streets. However the mood of the city was firmly against the Blanquists. As night fell on January 14th with a tiny area still under Anarchist control Kadon, the man who had taken command of the militiamen now styling themselves as the ‘Communards’, sent out his agents into the city to transform discontent into men on the ground for him.
Blanqui’s lack of heavy weaponry meant that it was next to impossible for him to finally break down the Anarchist positions whilst it was becoming increasingly difficult to hold onto the rest of the city in the face of violent resistance to his coup. At the same time Anarchist militiamen from the rest of the Ruhr were infiltrating the city, making the situation increasingly worse for Blanqui.
At this stage Blanqui decided to employ the Marxist tool he had taken control of. In the early morning he convinced Weydemeyer to send out a call to nearby units to come to Cologne and assist him in putting down an Anarchist revolt. Around 3PM Karl Marx arrived in the city and Blanqui instantly demanded that he come out to openly support his seizure of power. Marx refused and was subsequently placed under house arrest in a more peaceful city district.
Even without Marx the Blanquists might have hoped that it would have been possible to secure a swift victory if only Red Army troops could arrive with their heavy equipment. However most commanders seemed totally unwilling to commit. The information that was getting out of Cologne was very vague about the situation there and many orders sent out by Blanqui were not getting to their intended targets. It was therefore pointless for commanders to commit to a side that could potentially lose (meaning execution from the victors) when they could simply wait and see before committing when a clear victor had emerged. The simple fact was that there were few commanders passionate enough about Blanquist rule to risk their lives for it. None came.
That was with the exception of General Pierre Bodin, commander of the Wallonian Army. The Wallonian Army had been the brainchild of Minorities Secretary Necazian – it was an entirely Francophonic formation of 12,000 men (with plenty of artillery) with everything from its officers to the common soldiers recruited from Wallonia. Like Wallonia itself the Army was heavily pro-Anarchist whilst Bodin was a committed proponent of the United Cooperationists. When news of the attempted coup reached Bodin’s Army at Arlon the General could do little, even if he had wanted to, to stop his men from marching on Cologne to save the government.
On January 16th the Wallonian Army surrounded Cologne. At the centre of the city there were the Anarchist militiamen under Kadon, in the rest of the city the Blanquists (although the city was heavily saturated with anti-Blanquist civilians and insurgents) and around the city lay the Wallonian Army.
Over the course of the next day and a half the city was swept by violence as thousands died and thousands more lost their homes in the fighting that engulfed the VSVR capital. However by the late afternoon of January 18th the Blanquists had been defeated and Blanqui himself had been placed under arrest pending trial.
Friedrich Engels and the United Cooperationists were now left to pick up the pieces following this violent outbreak at the very heart of the Republic. Yet there was no better faction to guide the Republic towards peace and future prosperity than one dedicated to unity.