XXXV. La mazzolata
XXXV. La Mazzolata
French and British trade figures, the Algerian campaign against Kabyle insurgents, and the Lord Mayor of London's Guildhall banquet dominate this issue.
- Marshal Bugeaud's forces stormed a fortified Kabyle position near Abizzar defended by dry-stone parapets with loopholes, killing 150–200 fighters in under two hours before the Flisset-el-Bahr and Beni-Djennad tribes — together mustering 9,700 muskets — submitted.
- French textile exports grew 15 per cent between 1839 and 1843 against only 5 per cent for Britain, though England's cotton-goods exports still reached 406 million francs in value — the equivalent of 205,000 leagues of cloth, nearly 23 times the Earth's circumference.
- At the Guildhall banquet for new Lord Mayor Alderman Gibbs, French ambassador the Comte de Sainte-Aulaire told assembled diplomats and merchants that the King of the French's visit to Queen Victoria was 'one guarantee more in favour of universal peace.'
- The steam frigate le Gomer, fitted out 'with great magnificence,' sailed from Toulon to Naples to collect Princess Caroline of Salerno as bride for the Duc d'Aumale, escorted by three ships of the line and two steamers.
- A Calais police commissioner named Sallior, who murdered an English physician friend, was committed for trial at the Pas-de-Calais assizes on a charge of murder, while the editor of the Journal de Dunkerque was sentenced to a month in prison for defaming the prefect of the Nord.
- Carlo Boggi, a chimney-sweep's apprentice, was trapped for half an hour in a burning flue on the Boulevard des Italiens; his arm was burned to the muscle and left crippled after nine months at the Beaujon hospital — his master was held only civilly liable.
- A Madrid medical school dissection revealed a cadaver whose heart, liver, and all chest organs were mirror-reversed — only the fourth or fifth such case recorded in anatomical history; the body was preserved for the Faculty museum.
- Philosopher Victor Cousin publicly rebuked scholar Prosper Faugère for claiming priority over the publication of Jacqueline Pascal's letters, noting he had himself printed previously unknown correspondence in the Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes in January 1844 before Faugère announced his edition.