The Palatinate
When the revolutionary upsurge renewed itself in the spring of 1849, the uprisings started in Elberfeld in the Rhineland on May 6, 1848. However, the uprisings soon spread to the state of Baden, when a riot broke out in Karlsruhe. The states of Baden and the Palatinate bordered each other, separated only by the Rhine. The uprising in Baden and the Palatinate took place, largely, in the Rhine Valley along the border between Baden and the Palatinate. Thus, the uprisings in Baden and the Palatinate were basically the same uprising. In May 1849, the Grand Duke was forced to leave Karlsruhe, Baden and seek help from Prussia. Provisional governments were declared in both the Palatinate and Baden. While in Baden conditions for the provisional government were ideal—the public, including the army, strongly in support of constitutional change and democratic reform in the government, there was a ready army, which also strongly supported the demands for a constitution, amply supplied arsenals and a full exchequer—conditions in the Palatinate were somewhat less ideal.
While Baden had the near unanimous support of its population, the Palatinate traditionally contained more upper-class citizens than other areas of Germany. Accordingly the populace of the Palatinate was more divided with regard to support for the provisional government and the demands for constitutional change in the government. In Baden the army supported the provisional government. However, in the Palatinate, this was not the case. When the insurrectionary government took over in the Palatinate, they did not find the same abundantly supplied arsenals, a full organized state machinery or a full exchequer that were to be found in Baden. Instead there were a limited number of privately held muskets, rifles and sporting guns available in the Palatinate. To solve this problem of the shortage of arms the provisional government of the Palatinate sent agents to France and Belgium to purchase arms. However, nothing resulted from these forays. France banned sales and export of arms to either Baden or the Palatinate.
The provisional government first appointed Joseph Martin Reichardt, a lawyer, democrat and deputy in the Frankfurt Assembly, as the head of the military department in the Palatinate. First Commander in Chief of the military forces of the Palatinate was Daniel Fenner von Fenneberg, a former Austrian officer who commanded the national guard in Vienna during the 1848 uprising. He was soon replaced by Felix Raquilliet, a former Polish staff general in the Polish insurgent army of 1830-1831. In the end, Ludwik Mieroslawski was given supreme command of the armed forces in the Palatinate and field command of the troops was given to Franz Sznayde. Other noteworthy military officers providing assistance to the provisional government in the city of Kaiserlautern in the Palatinate, were Friedrich Strasser, Alexander Schimmelpfennig, Captain Rudolph von Manteuffel, Albert Clement, Herr Zychlinski, Friedrich von Beust, Eugen Oswald, Amand Goegg, Gustav von Struve, Otto Julius Bernhard von Corvin-Wiersbitzki, Joseph Moll, Johann Gottfried Kinkel, Herr Mersy, Karl Emmermann, Franz Sigel, Major Nerlinger, Colonel Kurz, Friedrich Karl Franz Hecker and Hermann von Natzmer. Hermann von Natzmer was the former Prussian officer who had been in charge of the arsenal of Berlin. Natzmer had become a hero to the insurgents all across Germany, when he refused to shoot the insurgent forces that had stormed the Berlin arsenal on June 14, 1848. Natzmer had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for refusing orders to shoot the crowd, but in 1849, he escaped prison and fled to the Palatinate to join the insurgent forces there. Also in Kaiserlautern aiding the provisional government of the Palatinate was Gustav Adolph Techow another former Prussian officer and democrat who had served with Natzmer at the Berlin arsenal. Organizing the artillery and providing services in the ordnance shops for the Palatinate forces was Lieutenant Colonel Freidrich Anneke, who was also a member of the Communist League, one of the founders of the Cologne Workers Association in 1848, editor of the Neue Kölnische Zeitung and a Rhenish District Committee of Democrats.
Democrats of the Palatinate and across Germany saw the Baden-Palatinate insurrection as more than a local uprising. To them it was part of the wider all-German struggle for constitutional rights. Because of this, Franz Sigel a second lieutenant in the Baden army, a democrat and a supporter of the provisional government, developed a plan for the protection of the reform movement in Karlsruhe and the Palatinate. Lieutenant Sigel's plan recommended using a corps of the Baden army to advance on the town of Hohenzollern and declare the Hohenzollern Republic, then to march on Stuttgart. After having incited Stuttgart and the surrounding state of Württemberg, the plan recommended that the military corp march on to Nuremburg and set up a camp in the state of Franconia. The plan did not take into account the necessity dealing with the Town of Frankfurt, the home of the Frankfurt Assembly, in order to establish an All-German character to the military campaign for the German constitution.
Despite the plan presented to the provisional government by Lieutenant Sigel, the new insurgent government did not go on the offensive. Sitting on the defensive, the uprising in Karlsruhl and the state of Baden was eventually suppressed by the Bavarian Army. At the head of the Baden provisional insurgent government was Lorenz Peter Brentano, a lawyer and democrat from Baden. Brentano wielded absolute power in the provisional government. He appointed Karl Eichfeld as War Minister of the new insurgent provisional government. Later, Eichfeld was replaced as War Minister for the provisional government by Rudolph Mayerhofer. Florian Mördes was appointed as Minister of the Interior. Other members of the provisional government included Joseph Fickler a journalist and a democrat from Baden. Other leaders of the constitutional forces in Baden were Karl Blind, a journalist and a democrat in Baden; and Gustav von Struve, another journalist and democrat from Baden. John Phillip Becker was placed in charge of the peoples militia. Ludwik Mieroslawski, a Polish born national who had taken part in the military operations during the Polish uprising of 1830-1831, was placed in charge of the military operation on the Palatinate side of the Rhine River. Whereas, the provisional government, under the virtual dictatorship of Brentano tended to administer the day-to-day affairs of the uprising on the Baden side of the Rhine River, Mieroslawski ran things under military jurisdiction on the Palatinate sid of the Rhine River. There was, however, an unfortunate lack of coordination between the two sides of the River. Take for instance, Mieroslawski's decision to abolish the long standing toll on the Mannheim-Ludwigshaven bridge over the Rhine River. The toll was not collected on the Palatinate side of the River, yet Brentano continued to collect the toll on the Baden side of the river. Due to the continued lack of coordination between the two sides of the River, Mieroslawski lost battles in Waghausle and Ubstadt on the Baden side of the River and he and his troops were forced to retreat across the mountains of southern Baden where they fought one last battle against the Prussians in the town of Murg on the frontier between Baden Switzerland. Murg was the last battle of the uprising in Baden and the Palatinte. Mieroslawski and the other survivors of the battle escaped across the frontier to Switzerland. Mieroslawski fled to Paris.
Frederick Engels actually took an active role in this renewed uprising in Baden and the Palatinate. On May 10, 1848, Engels left Cologne, Germany, with Karl Marx to observe, for themselves, the events that were taking place in Baden and the Palatinate. Since June 1, 1848, Engels and Marx had been editing the Neue Rhenische Zeitung. However, on May 19, 1849 the Prussian authorities had closed down the newspaper because of its support for constitutional and democratic reforms. Marx and Engels also wanted to find Karl Ludwig Johann D'Ester who was now serving as a member of the provisional government in Baden and the Palatinate. D'Ester was a physician, a democrat and a socialist who had been a member of the Cologne community chapter of the Communist League. D'Ester had been elected as a deputy to Prussian National Assembly in 1848. The reason Marx and Engels wanted to find D'Ester was that he had been elected to the Central committee of the German Democrats together with Reichenbach and Hexamer at the Second Democratic Congress held in Berlin from October 26 through October 30, 1848. Because of his commitments to the provisional government D'Ester was not going to be able to attend an important meeting in Paris on behalf of the German Central Committee. Accordingly he was wanting to provide Marx with the mandate to attend the meeting in his place. Marx and Engels finally caught up with D'Ester in the town of Kaiserlautern in the Palatinate. Marx obtained the mandate from D'Ester and headed off to Paris.
Engels remained in the Palatinate to join the citizens gathering on the barricades of the city of Elberfeld in the Rhineland, to fight the anticipated Prussian troops that were expected to arrive and suppress the uprising. On his way to Elberfeld, Engels took two cases of rifle cartridges which had been gathered by the workers of Solingen, Germany, when those workers had stormed the arsenal at Gräfrath, Germany. The anticipated Prussian troops arrived and, despite the resistance from the citizens on the barricades, crushed the uprising in August 1849. Engels and some other participants in the uprising escaped to Kaiserlautern, Germany. While in Kaiserlautern on June 13, 1849, Engels joined an 800 member group of workers that was being formed into a military corps by August Willich a former Prussian military officer, who was also a member of the Communist League and was fighting for revolutionary change in Germany. The newly formed Willich Corps combined with other revolutionary groups to form an army of about 30,000 strong which fought to support the uprising in the Palatinate from being crushed by the Prussian troops. Engels fought with the Willich Corps for the whole of the campaign in the Palatinate. However, the Prussians defeated the revolutionary army and the survivors of Willichs Corps crossed over the frontier from Baden into the safety of Switzerland. Engels was one of the last survivors to reach Switzerland on July 25, 1849. Only then was he able to send word to Marx and his friends and comrades in London, England that he was alive and well. Once he was safe in Switzerland, Engels began writing down his memories of the experiences he had been through in Baden and the Palatinate. These writings eventually became the article "The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution." The quick and effortless way in which the Prussian troops succeeded in crushing this uprising convinced many South German states that Prussia, not Austria, was the nation to watch. The suppression of the uprising in Baden and the Palatinate spelled the final end of the revolutionary uprisings in Germany that had begun in the spring of 1848.
Read more about this topic: Revolutions Of 1848 In The German States