LXXXVIII. L'insulte
LXXXVIII. The Insult
French military operations in Oran province against Abd-el-Kader dominate this issue, alongside the carpenters' coalition trial and the Talleyrand deathbed retractation.
- Lieutenant-Colonel de Montagnac marched out of Ghazaouet with only 400 men to intercept Abd-el-Kader, was surrounded by 3,000 horsemen at Sidi-Brahim, and his entire column was destroyed — apparently lured into a trap by deliberate treachery.
- Marshal Bugeaud, writing privately to a prefect from Excideuil, revealed that the garrison of Djemaa had been 'almost entirely destroyed,' including a lieutenant-colonel, a chef d'escadron, a chef de bataillon, all officers, and approximately 400 soldiers.
- Chasseur Jeinne of the 4th Regiment of Chasseurs d'Afrique captured an enemy standard during the fighting near Touisa, received six wounds — two musket-shots and four sabre-cuts — and also saved his non-commissioned officer.
- Italian subjects of the Papal States circulated a clandestine petition demanding amnesty for all political prisoners since 1821, jury trials, abolition of the Inquisition's jurisdiction over laymen, freely elected municipal councils, and disbandment of foreign troops.
- Prince Talleyrand's secret deathbed retractation to Pope Gregory XVI — written 10 March 1838 but signed only on 17 May, the day before he died — has been published for the first time, with Talleyrand reportedly saying of the delay: 'I have always had time enough.'
- A Lyon train carrying 200 passengers narrowly avoided plunging 30 metres into the Saône when a misaligned switch sent the locomotive onto a service bridge; only the derailment of the engine, caused by weak rails, stopped the entire convoy at the abyss.
- A Paris civil court ruled that the mysterious 'Mademoiselle Douglas' — an Englishman who had lived for fifteen years in France in women's clothing, fought duels, and was identified as male only at autopsy — had validly lent furniture to a nephew, awarding the estate to George Carter over the public revenue administration.
- Advocate Berryer argued before the appeals court that Paris carpentry workers who struck for an extra 50 centimes per hour — men earning only 850 francs a year and idle for five winter months — committed no punishable offence, since their masters possessed their own syndical chamber and appointed delegates under published statutes.