The second demonstration collapsed like the first. Only a fraction-- not more than twenty-three thousand of the vast multitude expected to appear--assembled at the meeting-place, and the people dispersed quietly. But it is only necessary to mention the precautions employed to show how great had been the alarm. The Duke of Wellington devised and conducted the steps which were taken beforehand. On the bridges were massed bodies of foot and horse police, and special constables, of whom nearly two hundred thousand--one of them Prince Louis Napoleon, the future Emperor of the French--are said to have been sworn in. In the immediate neighbourhood of each bridge strong forces of military, while kept out of sight, were ready "for instant movement." Two regiments of the line were at Millbank Penitentiary, twelve hundred infantry at Deptford Dockyard, and thirty pieces of heavy field ordnance at the Tower prepared for transport by hired steamers to any spot where help might be required. Bodies of troops were posted in unexpected quarters, as in the area of the untenanted Rose Inn yard, but within call. The public offices at Somerset House and in the City were liberally supplied with arms. Places like the Bank of England were "packed" with troops and artillery, and furnished with sand-bag parapets for their walls, and wooden barricades with loopholes for firing through, for their windows. "Thank God," her Majesty wrote to the King of the Belgians, "the Chartist meeting and procession have turned out a complete failure. The loyalty of the people at large, has been very striking, and their indignation at their peace being interfered with by such wanton and worthless men immense." Never was cheerfulness more wanted to lighten a burden of work and care. In this year of trouble "no less than twenty-eight thousand dispatches were received or sent out from the Foreign Office." All these dispatches came to the Queen and Prince Albert, as well as to Lord Palmerston, the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Across the Channel the inflammatory speeches and writings of Messrs. Mitchel, Meagher, and Smith O'Brien became so treasonable in tone that, after the passing of a Bill in Parliament for the better repression of sedition, the three Irish leaders were arrested and brought to trial, the jury refusing to commit in the case of Meagher and Smith O'Brien, but in that of Mitchel, who was tried separately, finding him guilty, and sentencing him to transportation for fourteen years.