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THREE:The example of Oxford, who made an attempt on the life of the Queen, was followed by another crazy youth, named Francis, excited by a similar morbid passion for notoriety. On the 29th of May, 1842, the Queen and Prince Albert were returning to Buckingham Palace down Constitution Hill in a barouche and four, when a man who had been leaning against the wall of the palace garden went up to the carriage, drew a pistol from his pocket, and fired at the Queen. Her Majesty was untouched, and seemed unaware of the danger. The assassin was observed by Prince Albert, and pointed out by him to one of the outriders, who dismounted to pursue him; but he had been at once arrested by other persons. The carriage, which was driving at a rapid pace, no sooner arrived at the palace, than a messenger was sent to the Duchess of Kent to announce the Queen's danger and her safety. The prisoner, John[491] Francis, the son of a machinist or stage carpenter at Covent Garden Theatre, having been twice examined by the Privy Council, was committed to Newgate for trial at the Central Criminal Court on a charge of shooting at the Queen with a loaded pistol. He was only twenty years of age. The trial of Francis took place on the 17th of June, before Chief Justice Tindal, Baron Gurney, and Justice Patteson. The principal witness was Colonel Arbuthnot, one of the equerries who was riding close to the Queen when the shot was fired, and cried out to a policeman, "Secure him!" which was done. Colonel Wylde, another equerry, with several other witnesses, corroborated the testimony of Colonel Arbuthnot; and it appeared that Francis had on the previous day pointed a pistol at the Queen, though he did not fire. For the defence it was alleged that the attempt was the result of distress, and that the prisoner had no design to injure the Queen. The jury retired, and in about half an hour returned into court with a verdict of "Guilty," finding that the pistol was loaded with some destructive substance, besides the wadding and powder. Chief Justice Tindal immediately pronounced sentence of death for high treason, that he should be hanged, beheaded, and divided into four quarters. The sentence was commuted to transportation for life.On the 6th of November came down that fierce Russian winter of which Buonaparte had been so long vainly warned. A thick fog obscured everything, and snow falling in heavy flakes blinded and chilled the soldiers. Then commenced wild winds, driving the snow around their heads in whirls, and even dashing them to the earth in their fury. The hollows and ravines were speedily drifted full, and the soldiers by thousands disappeared in the deceitful depths, to reappear no more till the next summer revealed their corpses. Numbers of others fell exhausted by the way, and could only be discovered by their following comrades by the slight hillocks that their bodies made under the snow. Thus the wretched army struggled and stumbled to Smolensk, only to find famine and desolation, seeming to forget, in the mere name of a town, that it was now but a name, having been burnt by the Russians. On commencing this terrible march of the 6th of November Buonaparte received the ill news that there was insurrection in Paris��that produced by Mallet, but soon put down; and also that Wittgenstein had driven St. Cyr from Polotsk and Vitebsk, and reoccupied the whole course of the Düna. To clear his retreat of this obstruction, Buonaparte dispatched Victor to repulse Wittgenstein and support St. Cyr. But this was only part of the evil tidings which came in simultaneously with winter. Two thousand recruits from France, under Baraguay d'Hilliers, had been surprised and taken prisoners on the road to Kaluga, and other detachments in other quarters. On arriving at Smolensk Buonaparte's troops had acquired such a wild, haggard, and ragged appearance that the garrison at first refused to admit them; and many perished before they could be relieved from the stores. They had no shelter amid the terrible frost but wretched sheds, reared from half-burnt timber, against the fire-blackened walls. FORE:Immediately after the termination of the armistice the Russians and Prussians joined the great army of the Austrians, which had been concentrated at Prague. Their plan was to fall upon Buonaparte's rear. Full of activity, that unresting man had been busy, during the whole armistice, in defending his headquarters at Dresden by fortifications. He had cut down all the trees which adorned the public gardens and walks, and used them in a chain of redoubts and field-works, secured by fosses and palisades. He was in possession of the strong mountain fortresses of the vicinity, as well as those of Torgau, Wittenberg, Magdeburg, and others, so that the valley of the Elbe was in his hands; and he had a bridge of boats at K?nigstein, extending his communications to Stolpe: thus guarding against an attack on the side of Bohemia. In the beginning of August he assembled two hundred and fifty thousand men in Saxony and Silesia. Of these, sixty thousand lay at Leipsic under Oudinot, and one hundred thousand in different towns on the borders of Silesia, under Macdonald; he himself lay at Dresden with his Imperial Guard. Eugene Beauharnais he had dispatched to Italy, where he had forty thousand men. Besides these, he had a reserve of Bavarians, under General Wrede, of twenty-five thousand men.Such were the means employed by the British Government in 1817 to quiet the country under its distress��a distress the inevitable result of the long and stupendous war. The only idea was to tighten the reins of Government��to stimulate the sufferers into overt acts, and then crush them. Fortunately, with the exception of the Derby juries, the juries in general saw through the miserable farce of rebellion, and discharged the greater part of Oliver's and Lord Sidmouth's victims. Watson was acquitted of high treason in London on the 16th of June, less than a week after the Derbyshire insurrection. His son had eluded the pursuit of the police. Seventeen prisoners on the like charges were liberated in July in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and were paid seven shillings each to carry them home. On the 22nd of August, of the twenty-four persons that Oliver had entrapped in Yorkshire, twenty-two were discharged��against eleven of them no bills being found by the grand jury��and the two left in prison were detained there because, under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, they were not brought up for trial. The Manchester Blanketeers were, in like manner, all discharged, though the Duke of Northumberland did his utmost to stimulate Lord Sidmouth to get them punished. On the country at large the impression was that the Government had propagated a most needless alarm, and that those who had fallen on the scaffold had been exalted by them from poor, ignorant labourers into burlesque traitors, through the execrable agency of their incendiaries, Oliver, Castles, Mitchell, and others.