organisation.

The Queen hopes Lord Panmure will look at our position, as if the
Indian demands had not arisen, and he will find that to come to
Parliament with the Cavalry borne on the estimates reduced by three
regiments (as will be the case even after two shall have returned from
India, and the two new ones shall have been formed), will certainly
not prove _too little_ anxiety on the part of the Government to cut
down our military establishments.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

TO CHAPTER XXVII

On the 25th of January of the new year (1858) Prince Frederick William
of Prussia (afterwards the Emperor Frederick) was married, with
brilliant ceremonial, to the Princess Royal, at the Chapel Royal, St
James's, an event marked by general national rejoicings; another event
in the private life of the Queen, but one of a melancholy character,
was the death of the Duchess of Orleans at the age of forty-four.

A determined attempt was made by Orsini, Pierri, and others, members
of the Carbonari Society, to assassinate the Emperor and Empress of
the French by throwing grenades filled with detonating powder under
their carriage. The Emperor was only slightly hurt, but several
bystanders were killed, and very many more wounded. The plot had been
conceived, and the grenades manufactured in England, and a violently
hostile feeling was engendered in France against this country, owing
to the prescriptive right of asylum enjoyed by foreign refugees. The
French _militaires_ were particularly vehement in their language,
and Lord Palmerston so far bowed to the demands of the French Foreign
Minister as to introduce a Bill to make the offence of conspiracy
to murder, a felony instead of, as it had previously been, a
misdemeanour. The Conservative Party supported the introduction of the
Bill, but, on the second reading, joined with eighty-four Liberals
and four Peelites in supporting an Amendment by Mr Milner Gibson,
postponing the reform of the Criminal Law till the peremptory demands
of Count Walewski had been formally answered. The Ministry was
defeated and resigned, and Lord Derby and Mr Disraeli returned to
Office. Orsini and Pierri were executed in Paris, but the state trial
in London of a Dr Bernard, a resident of Bayswater, for complicity,
ended, mainly owing to the menacing attitude of France over the
whole question, in an acquittal. The Italian nationality of the chief
conspirators endangered, but only temporarily, the important