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
The Communist Manifesto but such a document was later deemed inappropriate for an open, non-confrontational organisation. Engels nevertheless wrote the "Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith", detailing the League's programme. A few months later, in October, Engels arrived at the League's Paris branch to find that Moses Hess had written an inadequate manifesto for the group, now called the League of Communists. In Hess's absence, Engels severely criticised this manifesto, and convinced the rest of the League to entrust him with drafting a new one. This became the draft "Principles of Communism", described as "less of a credo and more of an