do here. I came to Lyons to
fight or to die with you. I came because I am profoundly convinced that
the cause of France has become again, at this supreme hour, ... the
cause of humanity. I have taken part in yesterday's movement, and I have
signed my name to the resolutions of the Committee of Safety of France,
because it is evident to me that, after the real and certain destruction
of all the administrative and governmental machinery, there is nothing
but the immediate and revolutionary action of the people which can save
France.... The movement of yesterday, if it had been successful ...
could have saved Lyons and France.... I leave Lyons, dear friend, with a
heart full of sadness and somber forebodings. I begin to think now that
it is finished with France.... She will become a viceroyalty of Germany.
_In place of her living and real socialism,[G] we shall have the
doctrinaire socialism of the Germans_, who will say no more than the
Prussian bayonets will permit them to say. The bureaucratic and military
intelligence of Prussia, combined with the knout of the Czar of St.
Petersburg, are going to assure peace and public order for at least
fifty years on the whole continent of Europe. Farewell, liberty!
Farewell, socialism! Farewell, justice for the people and the triumph of
humanity! All that could have grown out of the present disaster of
France. All that would have grown out of it if the people of France, if
the people of Lyons, had wished it."[14]

The insurrection at Lyons and Bakounin's decree abolishing the State
amounted to very little in the history of the French Republic. Writing
afterward to Professor Edward Spencer Beesly, Karl Marx comments on the
events that had taken place in Lyons: "At the beginning everything went
well," he writes. "Under the pressure of the section of the
International, the Republic had been proclaimed at Lyons before it had
been at Paris. A revolutionary government was immediately established,
namely the _Commune_, composed in part of workmen belonging to the
International, in part of bourgeois radical republicans.... But those
blunderers, Bakounin and Cluseret, arrived at Lyons and spoiled
everything. Both being members of the International, they had
unfortunately enough influence to lead our friends astray. The Hotel de
Ville was taken, for a moment only, and very ridiculous decrees on the
_abolition of the State_ and other nonsense were issued. You understand
that the fact alone of