 In condemning this action, Engels wrote to Marx on 3 December 1851, characterising the coup as "comical" and referred to it as occurring on "the 18th Brumaire"the date of Napoleon I's coup of 1799, according to the French Republican Calendar.Marx was later to incorporate this comically ironic characterisation of Louis Bonaparte's coup into his essay about the coup.Indeed, Marx even called the essay "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" again using Engels's suggested characterisation.