During the day the streets presented the appearance of a holiday. The police were withdrawn from their beats, and concentrated on special points, the town being patrolled by special constables—among whom, by the way, Prince Charles Louis Bonaparte, afterwards Napoleon III., was enrolled—who wore white bands on their arms, and carried truncheons as emblems of authority. These patriotic citizens were mercilessly ridiculed by their ungrateful fellow-citizens, who passed rude remarks on their awkward appearance and their incongruities of stature and costume. People were extremely unfeeling in their comments on the appearance of certain “specials” who wore spectacles or eyeglasses, and who carried umbrellas in addition to their staves. All the public buildings were garrisoned with troops; the clerks in the public offices formed special corps of defence, and many gentlemen of rank brought up their gamekeepers from the country, armed them, and prepared their mansions for a regular siege.[96] Trafalgar Square was occupied by 200 police. The parks were closed; a corporal’s guard of the Household Troops held each entrance to them, and patrols of the Guards
FEARGUS O’CONNOR.
marched up and down the Mall. Apsley House was barricaded, and Mr. Carlyle says Piccadilly was almost deserted, the Green Park shut, “even the footpaths of it;” and “in the inside stood a score of mounted Guardsmen, privately drawn up under the arch—dreadful cold, I daresay. For the rest, not a single fashionable carriage was in the street, not a private vehicle, but, I think, two surgeons’ broughams all the way to Egyptian Hall, omnibuses running, a few street carts, even a mud-cart or two; nothing else; the flag pavements also
THE CHARTIST DEMONSTRATION ON KENNINGTON COMMON.
nearly vacant, not a fifth of the usual population there, and those also of the strictly business kind.”[97] Buckingham Palace was protected by a strong force under arms at Wellington Barracks, ready to march on it the moment it was threatened. The Bank was fortified by a company of Sappers and Miners, who built on the roof platforms for cannon, and guarded them with loopholed breastworks of sandbags, &c., so that a mob could be swept away by grapeshot at a moment’s notice. Special constables, organised by Aldermen of the wards, guarded the City. Hardly a single red-coat, however, was to be seen anywhere, but at various strategic points troops were in readiness, to be let loose if the mob showed signs of fighting. There was a fight between the police and the mob at Blackfriars Bridge. But the police who guarded Waterloo Bridge were able to amuse themselves as they pleased. No Chartists came near it—the bridge being guarded by something much more formidable to them than troops, namely, the man who kept the toll-bar.