d the circumstances one
has to deal with in such a case, are so plain and simple that the
short experience of 1848 had made the Germans pretty well acquainted
with them. Firstly, never play with insurrection unless you are fully
prepared to face the consequences of your play. Insurrection is a
calculus with very indefinite magnitudes, the value of which may
change every day; the forces opposed to you have all the advantage of
organization, discipline, and habitual authority: unless you bring
strong odds against them you are defeated and ruined. Secondly, the
insurrectionary career once entered upon, act with the greatest
determination, and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of
every armed rising; it is lost before it measures itself with its
enemies. Surprise your antagonists while their forces are scattering,
prepare new successes, however small, but daily; keep up the moral
ascendancy which the first successful rising has given to you; rally
those vacillating elements to your side which always follow the
strongest impulse, and which always look out for the safer side; force
your enemies to a retreat before they can collect their strength
against you; in the words of Danton, the greatest master of
revolutionary policy yet known, _de l'audace, de l'audace, encore de
l'audace!_

What, then, was the National Assembly of Frankfort to do if it would
escape the certain ruin which it was threatened with? First of all, to
see clearly through the situation, and to convince itself that there
was now no other choice than either to submit to the Governments
unconditionally, or take up the cause of the armed insurrection
without reserve or hesitation. Secondly, to publicly recognize all the
insurrections that had already broken out, and to call the people to
take up arms everywhere in defence of the national representation,
outlawing all princes, ministers and others who should dare to oppose
the sovereign people represented by its mandatories. Thirdly, to at
once depose the German Imperial Lieutenant, to create a strong,
active, unscrupulous Executive, to call insurgent troops to Frankfort
for its immediate protection, thus offering at the same time a legal
pretext for the spread of the insurrection, to organize into a compact
body all the forces at its disposal, and, in short, to profit quickly
and unhesitatingly by every available means for strengthening its
position and impairing that of its opponents.

Of all this