XXXIII. Bandits romains
XXXIII. Roman Bandits
French currency counterfeiting, Spanish affairs in Morocco and Barcelona, and an Algerian tribal murder trial dominate this issue.
- France's mints are so poorly equipped that two bags of 200 five-franc pieces, each nominally worth 1,000 francs, differ by a measurable weight — making counterfeiting almost trivially easy compared to England's precision coinage.
- Spanish minister Martínez de la Rosa told the Cortes that France's King Louis-Philippe personally assured him Spain was "perfectly free to watch over her honour" over Morocco, but would prefer a peaceful outcome.
- Marshal Bugeaud, the Duc d'Isly, routed 3,000–4,000 Kabyle fighters in Algeria, losing only 8–10 men, after which the Flissas-el-Bahar tribe submitted entirely on 29 October.
- An Algiers military tribunal condemned three Arabs — Dekkich, Dahman-ben-Ali, and Hadj-ben-Djelloul — to death for the daylight assassination of the aga Mahoun, shot point-blank inside his own tent.
- A Paris fraudster sent a flowery letter to a rent-collector promising to return four lost Banque de France shares in exchange for 1,000 francs reward — the sealed envelope handed over by the mystery sender contained only an old newspaper cut into four pieces.
- Louis-Philippe gifted Pope Gregory XVI two royal manufactory works: a Sèvres porcelain copy of Raphael's La Vierge au Voile painted by Mme Jacquotot, and a Gobelins tapestry of Saint Stephen, both displayed publicly at the Quirinal Palace.
- A Faraday electro-magnetic telegraph installed on the Taunus railway between Mainz and Frankfurt-am-Main now transmits messages across sixteen French leagues in under one minute.