Saxony, Austria

Abstract

Bakunin and Heubner, together with the other prisoners, were handed over to the nearest garrison at Altenburg. The Saxon authorities, apprised by telegraph, sent a sergeant and six men to fetch them; and by the afternoon of May 10th, 1849, the captives were back in Dresden. They were lodged for a fortnight in the old city prison. But the number of those taken in the insurrection so taxed the accommodation that even an important prisoner like Bakunin could not be isolated; and at one moment he shared a cell with an Austrian democrat named Kürnberger, to whom he complained that the Fourth Estate (i.e. the proletariat) had been deceived and betrayed by the Third (i.e. the bourgeoisie). These haphazard arrangements did not, however, long satisfy the authorities. Before the end of May Bakunin and other ringleaders were transferred to the cavalry barracks outside the town.¹