The Communist Manifesto the Prussian police. At their trial in Cologne 18 months later in late 1852 they were sentenced to 3–6 years' imprisonment. For Engels, the revolution was "forced into the background by the reaction that began with the defeat of the Paris workers in June 1848, and was finally excommunicated 'by law' in the conviction of the Cologne Communists in November 1852". After the defeat of the 1848 revolutions the "Manifesto" fell into obscurity, where it remained throughout the 1850s and 1860s. Hobsbawm says that by November 1850 the "Manifesto" "had become sufficiently scarce for Marx to think it worth reprinting
Revolution of 1848 in Luxembourg belonged to the same social milieu: they were members of the same clubs and associations, and would meet in Masonic lodges. The different families of the bourgeoisie were all linked by intermarriage. The rest of the country, farmers, artisans, and workers, remained as excluded from political life as they had been before 1848: the Revolution changed little for them. Several of the achievements of the Revolution of 1848, including the Constitution itself, proved to be quite short-lived. William II died in 1849, to be succeeded by his rather more reactionary son, William III, who described the Constitution of 1848 as