[49] A Royal decree had charged the Court of Peers with the duty of trying the authors of the Republican insurrection which occurred from April 7 to April 13, 1834, in several provincial towns and in Paris. The sentences were not passed till December 1835 and January 1836.
[50] The crime of Fieschi who tried to assassinate King Louis-Philippe.
[51] The Abbaye-aux-Bois was a religious community of women; it was situated in Paris at the corner of the Rue de Sèvres and the Rue de la Chaise. During the Revolution it was used as a place of detention. Later it reverted to its former character, and, besides the convent occupied solely by the nuns, it afforded a peaceable refuge to ladies of great fashion. Madame Récamier settled there.
[52] Fieschi's attempt on the King's life.
[53] The burial of General Lamarque, who died of cholera on June 2, 1832, took place on June 5, and was the occasion of a revolt which continued all day on the 6th.
[54] A castle belonging to the Duc de Montmorency.
[55] An allusion to the request made to the King by M. de Talleyrand that M. de Bacourt should be appointed to Carlsruhe.
[56] In 1789 the Cours Prévôtales were tribunals empowered to punish summarily and without appeal certain crimes and offences defined by an Ordinance of 1731. Under the Consulate and the Empire exceptional jurisdictions were established under the same name to deal with desertions, mutiny, political offences and smuggling. The Cours Prévôtales of the Restoration were composed of Judges of Courts of first instance, and were directed by a Prévôt, a superior officer of the army. These Courts from 1815 to 1817 took cognisance of offences against the public safety and acted retrospectively; they were an instrument of Reaction and Political vengeance.
[57] September 22 is the day of Saint Maurice, the patron Saint of M. de Talleyrand.
[58] This speech is given at the end of this volume. I shall quote only the phrase here referred to. "England, like France, repudiates in her foreign relations the principle of interfering in the affairs of her neighbours, and the ambassador of a monarchy established by the unanimous votes of a great people feels himself at ease in a land of liberty, in the presence of a scion of the illustrious House of Brunswick."