XXX. Le 5 septembre
XXX. September the Fifth
Daniel O'Connell proposes federalism for Ireland, Queen Victoria visits the French squadron at Spithead, and Prescott's history of the Aztec empire is reviewed.
- Daniel O'Connell, writing from Darrynane Abbey, publicly declares he is tempted to prefer a federal union with England over outright Repeal, inviting Protestant and federalist leaders to negotiate on equal terms.
- Queen Victoria boarded the French warship Gomer at Spithead, toured Louis-Philippe's scarlet-damask apartments, breakfasted with Admiral de La Susse, and laughed heartily when a French sailor failed to recognise her and handed her a plate of rum babas.
- Commander Billette's new percussion shells, tested at Brest after years at sea, proved perfectly preserved by moisture — unlike ordinary shells — and his near-instantaneous firing method promises to transform naval gunnery.
- A wren inadvertently revealed a hidden packet of arsenic in the home of arrested suspect Anaïs Lemaire at Marest-Dampcourt, providing investigators in a suspected poisoning case with their key piece of evidence.
- Captain Lenoir, tried before the Paris Council of War for misappropriating 900 francs from the estate of a soldier who died of typhoid in Algeria, was acquitted five votes to two — despite testimony from the regimental cantinière that Treasury warrants meant to repay her were the stolen funds.
- A medical prize-winner at the Val-de-Grâce has been identified as the grandson of the poet Roucher, guillotined on 7 Thermidor Year II — the same day as André Chénier, two days before Robespierre's fall.
- William H. Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico reveals that the Aztecs calculated the solar year to within one day per twenty-four centuries — more accurately than Caesar's Rome — and that at the dedication of the Great Temple in 1486, some 70,000 captives were sacrificed in succession.
- Henri Richelot's French translation of Goethe's Memoirs, accompanied by a selection of the poet's maxims and a substantial critical introduction, appears just as Frankfurt prepares to unveil a statue of Goethe in his native city.