France was less fortunate. Her domestic difficulties were only temporarily overcome after grave disorder and much bloodshed. The cholera, brought back by the Russian armies from Turkey, had spread westwards. The disease, which made its first appearance in England in the latter months of 1831, did terrible execution in Paris during the spring and summer of 1832. M. Casimir Périer, who had been in bad health for some time past, was its most illustrious victim. His death, on May 16, 1832, was the signal for a furious outburst of hostility on the part of the parliamentary opponents of his system. At the same time the avowed enemies of the Orleans monarchy, both Republican and Carlist, actively prepared to take advantage of the situation. _The Society of the Friends of the People_, in defiance of the police, held meetings at which armed insurrection was preached openly. "I was present at one of them," wrote Heinrich Heine, "the smell reminded me of an old file of the _Moniteur_ of 1793 grown dirty from too much reading."[229] The funeral, on June 5, of General Lamarque, the most prominent advocate in the Chamber of the union of Belgium with France, was chosen by the revolutionary leaders as a favourable occasion for striking their blow. But the authorities were upon the alert and both regular troops and national guards were quickly upon the scene of action. Nevertheless, it was not until artillery had been brought up that, on the following day, June 6, the great barricade at the Cloître Saint-Merri was stormed and that this formidable insurrection was finally suppressed. Nor was it only in the streets of Paris that the government had to deal with an armed rising. On June 4 the Duchesse de Berri, the mother of the Duc de Bordeaux, the lawful King of France in the eyes of the Carlists, raised the standard of rebellion in La Vendée. But her insurrection, which had been undertaken against the advice of the wiser of the Carlists and of the old Royalist leaders in the West, was, in a few days, stamped out completely. The defence of the Château de la Pénissière, where a handful of Carlist gentlemen made a brave stand against overwhelming odds, imparted, however, a tinge of heroism to this, the last and the least famous of the Royalist rebellions of La Vendée.