LXVI. Projets de mariage
LXVI. Marriage Plans
Russian military operations against Shamil in the Caucasus, Swiss political crisis, and the Beauvallon-Dujarier duel case dominate this issue.
- Field Marshal Vorontsov's report describes Shamil's forces fleeing at such speed across the Caucasus mountains that Russian cavalry could only catch the rearguard after six verstes of pursuit — yet Chechen commander Hadji-Mourad still ambushed a timber convoy with impunity.
- At Enniskillen, an Orangist rally expected to draw 140,000 fell into disarray when Lord Belmore refused use of his field and Tory grandees Lords Erne and Enniskillen withheld all support.
- The Ottoman government ordered Smyrna rebuilt with wider streets, prohibited projecting upper storeys, and ruled that wooden houses must be separated by stone firebreak walls — reforms prompted by a fire that left thousands without shelter.
- Pietist nursing sisters at Berlin's Charité hospital told women patients they faced eternal damnation and halved their food rations; three patients threw themselves from a third-floor window, one dying on the spot.
- The Court of Cassation quashed the Royal Court of Paris ruling in the Beauvallon–Dujarier duel affair, simultaneously annulling a nearly identical ruling from Rennes in the Thaloir–Dumas case, forcing both before new committal chambers.
- At the Rouen marked-cards retrial, the accused — including Englishmen Walker, Fraser, and Drummond-Baring, and the notably well-dressed Mlle Emma Caye — denied all fraud; Drummond-Baring remained in default.
- An honest file-maker named Soyer noticed a hidden groove in a cheap writing-desk at a Nièvre estate sale, inserted a penknife, and recovered 10,000 francs in old gold louis — simultaneously clearing a maidservant who had been dismissed on suspicion of theft.
- Composer Meyerbeer dispatched a special courier to Homburg to summon cellist Alexandre Batta to Stolzenfels Castle, where the King of Prussia was entertaining Queen Victoria.