each other in the art of calling names: the Eisenachers accused the Lassalleans of accepting bribes from the Prussian government; the Lassalleans retaliated by styling the Eisenachers "traitors" and charging them with being the agents of the bourgeoisie.
Such was the situation when on July 19, 1870, the Reichstag of the North German Confederation was convened in extraordinary session to grant credits for the war which France had just proclaimed against Prussia. The Reichstag voted the credits unanimously except for the two votes of Bebel and Liebknecht. The latter merely withheld their votes: casting them in the negative might seem to countenance the criminal policy of Napoleon III.; casting them in the affirmative would certainly be construed as an endorsement of the inevitable outcome of the Bismarckian "crime of 1866". The deputies of the Lassallean faction and one Eisenacher, believing that Prussia had been outrageously attacked by the jealous and ambitious emperor of the French, voted the appropriations necessary for the conduct of the war.
After Sedan, all the German Socialists, both Eisenachers and Lassalleans, declared and voted against the continuation of a war which they considered no longer defensive. A "Manifesto to the German Workingmen", published by the party executive of the Eisenachers on September 5, 1870, stated that
it is a duty of the German people, and indeed it is in their own interests, to accord an honorable peace to the French Republic. … Above all it is the duty of the German workingmen, among whom the solidarity of interests between the German and French peoples has become a sacred conviction and who see in the French workingmen only brothers and comrades to whom they are united by a common lot and by common aspirations, to secure for the French Republic such a peace. … It is absolutely necessary that in all places the party, in accordance with our manifesto, shall organize popular demonstrations as imposing as possible against the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and in favor of an honorable peace with the French Republic.[1]
The answer of Bismarck's government to this appeal was the imprisonment of its signatories by military order in the fortress of Boyen near the Russian frontier and the quick forcible breaking-up of every attempted demonstration inspired by it. On November 24, when the government opened the regular session of the Reichstag and demanded a new loan for the prosecution of the war, Liebknecht and Bebel were quite outspoken in urging the rejection of the loan and in begging the chancellor to terminate the war without any annexations. In December, the two annoying and
- ↑ Carl Stegmann and C. Hugo, Handbuch des Socialismus (1897), art. "Eisenacher", p. 170.
