1811
The French army under Massena was finally driven from Portugal by the
British under Wellington. France, the south and middle German states, and
Austria formed an alliance against Russia. Bernadotte, Crown Prince of
Sweden, and formerly one of Napoleon's marshals, refused aid to France.
Napoleon threatened Sweden and began preparations against Russia.
The United States seized West Florida. The American ship President and the
British ship Little Belt exchanged shots, and friction between the two
countries increased. At Tippecanoe, General Harrison defeated the Indians
under Tecumseh. Resentment against Great Britain because of her conduct on
the sea, and her assertion of her right to search American ships,
increased in the United States.
The Mamelukes decoyed to attend a festival in Cairo and slaughtered by
Mehemet Ali. Dutch settlements in Java captured by the English. The King
of Rome, son of Napoleon and Marie Louise, born on March 20. Agitation in
England against flogging soldiers and sailors. Luddites smashed machinery
in Nottingham. Heinrich Kleist, German poet, committed suicide. Bishop
Percy, ballad compiler, died.
=POPULATION.--Washington, D.C., 8,208; New York, 96,373; London (including
Metropolitan District, census 1811), 1,009,546; United States, 7,239,881;
Great Britain and Ireland (census 1811), 15,547,720.=
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that the Prince of Wales
became regent of Great Britain.=
1812
The English under Wellington captured Ciudad Rodrigo, and began to press
hard on the French in Spain. Badajos, held by the French under General
Philippon, stormed by the British after a fight in which five thousand men
fell. American privateers began to prey on British commerce. June 18, war
began between America and England. The first contest was between the
American ship President and the British ship Blandina; the Blandina
escaped. The Essex, Captain David Porter, and with Midshipman David G.
Farragut, aged thirteen, on board, captured a British transport with two
hundred soldiers, and forced the Alert to surrender. The United States
frigate Constitution sunk the British frigate Guerriere, but the British
Poictiers captured the American sloop Wasp. Other naval duels ended in
favor of American ships. Decatur, commanding the frigate United States,
took the Macedonian, while the Constitution captured the Java. President
Madison refused the services of General Andrew Jackson; Jackson thereupon
organized an independent corps, which was reluctantly accepted when
reverses came. General Hull led the Americans to Canada, and was defeated
at Mackinaw. Hull surrendered Detroit to Brock, British governor of Upper
Canada, who had formed an alliance with the Indians. Fort Dearborn
(Chicago), was burned by the Indians, and the settlers massacred. In a
battle near Fort George, on October 13, General Brock was killed, but the
Americans were forced to retreat. Dearborn made a fruitless attempt to
invade Canada.
On June 22, Napoleon, with over six hundred thousand men, began his
disastrous Russian campaign. The Russians devastated the country as they
retired before his advance. At Smolensk they inflicted upon the French a
loss of fifteen thousand, fired the city, and retreated. The French,
stricken with disease, suffering from lack of food, and beset on all sides
by the Russians, pushed on toward Moscow. At Borodino, after a desperate
battle, Napoleon won a disastrous victory; nearly a hundred thousand men
fell on both sides. The French entered Moscow, but within a few hours the
city was in flames--fired by the Russians at the order of the governor,
Rostopchin. Russian peasants slaughtered thousands of French stragglers.
Napoleon's peace overtures being rejected, he was compelled to evacuate
Moscow, after blowing up the Kremlin. The retreat of the French was worse
than the battles, and thousands of them perished from cold or lack of
food. The Russians pursued, and won battle after battle. Of the grand army
that invaded Russia, only a tenth recrossed the frontier. In Spain, the
French lost Cadiz and Madrid, and were defeated by Wellington at
Salamanca. In December, Napoleon hurried to Paris, crushed Malet's
conspiration against him, and called for a new conscription of three
hundred and fifty thousand men. This year more than a million lives were
lost in the Napoleonic wars.
Louisiana admitted to the Union. Iodin discovered by Dr. de Courtois, of
Paris. An earthquake in Caracas killed twelve thousand persons. The
English publisher of Thomas Paine's books fined and pilloried. Luddite
anti-machinery agitation increased in England.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=
1813
Napoleon set Pius VII at liberty, and arranged the Concordat between
church and state in France. Prussia joined Russia against Napoleon, who
fought a series of battles with the allies in central Germany, the most
important being those of Luetzen and Bautzen. Wellington's decisive victory
over the French at Vittoria--where shrapnel shells were first used in
warfare--gave renewed vitality to the combination of England, Russia,
Prussia, and Sweden against France and Denmark.
In America, eight hundred Americans were captured by the British at
Frenchtown, in Michigan. At sea, the American Hornet, Captain Lawrence,
sunk the Peacock; the Hazard captured the British frigate Albion, but the
Shannon took the American frigate Chesapeake, killing Captain Lawrence,
who said as he died: "Don't give up the ship!" The Enterprise captured the
British brig Boxer. On Lake Erie, September 12, Commodore Perry fought the
famous battle which he thus reported: "We have met the enemy and they are
ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop." General Harrison
put an end to the Creek rebellion by his victory at Fort Malden.
Austria joined the allies against France, and Moreau, hero of Hohenlinden,
and Bernadotte sided against their old leader, Napoleon. At Dresden
(August 26, 27) Napoleon won his last great victory; Moreau was killed. At
Wahlstatt, Bluecher routed the French, and Ney met disaster at Dennewitz.
King Jerome Bonaparte was forced to flee from Westphalia. Bavaria refused
longer to support Napoleon. The campaign in Germany culminated in the
great battle of Leipzig, fought October 16 to 19, in which four hundred
thousand Germans and Russians totally defeated two hundred thousand
Frenchmen, killing or capturing nearly half of them, and sweeping Germany
free of invaders. Meanwhile Wellington invaded France from the south, and
Napoleon's empire began to crumble fast. Spain was forever lost to him.
Napoleon dissolved the Corps Legislatif, determined to carry out his plans
for prosecuting the war, and called for a new conscription of three
hundred thousand men.
Cape of Good Hope ceded to the British by the Dutch. George Stephenson
built his first locomotive. The Jesuit order restored by Pius VII.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=
1814
On January 1 Bluecher crossed the Rhine to begin the invasion of France. He
was defeated at Brienne, but won at Rothiere, and with the aid of the
Russians pressed Napoleon hard in a series of battles. In March the allies
won decisive victories at Laon and Arcis-sur-Aube. England, Russia,
Prussia, and Austria bound themselves together for twenty years more,
England agreeing to pay each of the other powers two million pounds;
France was to be reduced to its original boundaries. Napoleon refused the
terms offered him. Marie Louise fled from Paris. The allied armies entered
Paris on March 31, and on April 11, after trying to poison himself,
Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau. He retired to Elba, which was
assigned to him as a mimic kingdom. Talleyrand now became dominant in
Paris, and the Bourbons were restored, Louis XVIII being crowned King of
France. Ferdinand VII resumed power in Spain. By the Treaty of Paris,
France retained her old territory, received back the colonies captured by
England, kept Alsace-Lorraine, and much of the plunder gathered by
Napoleon. Russia held Poland and Finland.
In June the Americans, under Brown, seized Fort Erie and fought indecisive
actions with the British at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane. In August a
British force, under Ross and Cockburn, landed in Maryland, defeated the
Americans at Bladensburg, and advanced to Washington. Madison and his
cabinet fled. The defenseless city was entered by the enemy; the White
House and uncompleted Capitol were burned, and the government stores and
buildings at Alexandria were destroyed. An attack on Baltimore was
repulsed, inspiring Key's "Star-Spangled Banner." On Lake Champlain,
McDonough captured four vessels of a British squadron and put the rest to
flight. Two hundred men from a British fleet on its way to New Orleans
attempted to board the privateer General Armstrong (Samuel Reid, captain),
in the neutral harbor of Fayal. They were repulsed. Three British vessels
closed in, and after a plucky fight Reid and his ninety men scuttled the
General Armstrong, and escaped, having seriously damaged the British
fleet. Jackson took Pensacola, in Florida, from the British; he also
killed eight hundred Creeks for their massacre of the inhabitants of Fort
Mims, and finally broke the power of the Indians in Alabama and Georgia by
his victory at Horseshoe Bend. During all this time New England had held
practically aloof from the war with the British, giving little assistance
to the other States. On Christmas Day a treaty of peace between England
and the United States was signed at Ghent.
Norway accepted the King of Sweden as ruler--an arrangement only recently
abandoned. The Bourbons entered on reprisals in France and Spain, having
"learned nothing and forgotten nothing." Jesuits permitted to return to
France. Despotism renewed in the German states. The Prince Regent of
England excluded his wife, Caroline, from court. Count Rumford, scientist,
and the ex-Empress Josephine, Napoleon's first wife, died.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that the Bourbons were
restored in France and Spain; Louis XVIII King of France, and Ferdinand
VII King of Spain.=
1815
On January 8, the news of the peace not having reached America, Jackson
won the battle of New Orleans, inflicting a loss of two thousand on the
British, and losing only twenty-one men. At Mobile, the Americans captured
another British force, but off New York Commodore Decatur had to
surrender, with his ship, the President, to the British blockading
squadron.
England restored Java to Holland, but retained Demerara and the Cape of
Good Hope. The Papal States were reestablished, and the Swiss Federation
formed. On February 26 Napoleon slipped out of Elba; on March 1 he landed
in France, where he was received with joy by his old soldiers, and on
March 20 he entered Paris, beginning the Hundred Days. Ney deserted Louis
XVIII to join Napoleon, and practically the whole army followed. Louis
fled to Ghent.
England, Austria, Prussia, and Russia at once united against Napoleon. In
a few days he mobilized and equipped an army of one hundred and twenty
thousand veterans, and in June he was ready to attack the British and
Prussian forces in Belgium. At Quatre-Bras, on June 16, Ney fought an
indecisive engagement with the former, while at Ligny, on the same day,
Napoleon defeated the Prussians under Bluecher. On the 18th, Napoleon's
army confronted that of Wellington before Waterloo. Before noon the fight
began. Ney made repeated and gallant charges against the solid British
squares, but his cavalry was slaughtered. Late in the day Bluecher, after a
forced march, arrived with part of his army, and, joining the British,
sent the French forces flying. Napoleon barely escaped, and the allies
pursued the shattered remnants of his army. The Napoleonic wars, which had
cost nine million lives and untold treasure, and had remade the map of the
world, were ended.
On June 20 Napoleon reached Paris, and on June 22 he abdicated, the House
of Representatives having adopted by acclamation Lafayette's motion that
the chamber should sit permanently, and that any attempt to dissolve it
should be high treason. On July 7 the allies again entered Paris; on the
15th Napoleon surrendered to Captain Maitland of the British ship
Bellerophon, at Rochefort. He was taken to England, and thence sent as a
prisoner to the island of St. Helena, where he arrived October 15.
Madison reelected President of the United States. Philadelphia began
construction of waterworks system. United States victorious in the war
with Algiers. The Holy Alliance formed, including all the rulers of Europe
excepting the Sultan of Turkey, the Pope, and the King of England. Davy
invented the safety lamp. Wollaston, English scientist, by means of
electricity, brought platinum to incandescence--the forerunner of the
incandescent electric light. Daniel O'Connell killed D'Esterre in a duel.
Anti-corn-law riots in England. Robert Fulton died. Financial depression
throughout the United States.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that for a hundred days
(March to June) Napoleon was in power in France, Louis XVIII having fled
from Paris.=
1816
Twenty years of continual warfare had left England with a debt of eight
hundred million pounds, with business at a standstill, riots general
throughout the country, and hundreds of thousands of discharged sailors
and soldiers added to the unemployed. Fouche was expelled from France by
the Bourbons, and Talleyrand replaced in the ministry by the Duc de
Richelieu. The Inquisition was reestablished in Spain, and stringent
measures employed in the effort to put down the revolts in the American
colonies. Bolivar, in Venezuela, inflicted serious losses on the
Spaniards. Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay, declared themselves
independent of Spain.
The United States still suffered from a general commercial and industrial
depression. First tariff imposed; New England, with Daniel Webster as its
leading orator, was at that time for free trade; the South, led by
Calhoun, was for protection. New England's shipping trade was practically
suspended as a result of the new tariff. Seminole Indian uprising in
Florida quelled. First savings-bank in the country opened in Philadelphia.
Indiana admitted to the Union. Freemasons expelled from Italy. Goods of
English manufacture excluded from Russia. Rebuilding of Moscow begun.
First form of the stethoscope invented by Laennec, of Paris.
Gouverneur Morris, American statesman, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan,
English dramatist and statesman, died.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=
1817
The United States entered upon the prosperous period known as the Era of
Good Feeling. Government land rapidly taken up by settlers, and people
began to push westward. Resumption of the trouble with the Seminoles on
the border of Florida. Jackson took command of the troops after many white
settlers had been massacred. First line of steamships between New York and
Liverpool opened. On July 4 ground was broken for the Erie Canal. First
school for deaf-mutes opened at Hartford. First insane asylum in America
opened by the Friends in Philadelphia. Mississippi admitted to the Union.
Depression continued in England; several Luddites executed for smashing
machinery; eighteen persons hanged for forging Bank of England notes;
habeas corpus suspended. Pindaree and Mahratta wars in India; Lord
Hastings, the English governor-general, won a series of victories and
greatly extended the British power. The Prince Regent of England hooted by
mobs because of his conduct to his wife.
Eleven persons in Philadelphia and seven in Norwich, England, killed by
steamboat boiler explosions, resulting in violent public opposition to
steam vessels. Cholera epidemic started in Bengal, spread over Asia and
Europe, crossed the Atlantic, and caused a million deaths before it was
checked some years later. Beranger, French poet, imprisoned for blasphemy.
Mme. de Stael, French writer, and Thaddeus Kosciusko, Polish patriot and
soldier in the American Revolution, died.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that James Monroe became
President of the United States on March 4.=
1818
The army of occupation withdrawn from France. King Frederick William III
of Prussia, at the instigation of Metternich and the Russian Czar
Alexander, having become an implacable opponent of liberalism and popular
education, began to suppress schools and colleges. General discontent in
Spain, and several abortive uprisings occurred against Ferdinand VII,
whose misgovernment had left an empty treasury and an unpaid army. Andrew
Jackson invaded Florida, and Congress refused to rebuke him; negotiations
with Spain for the purchase of Florida. Illinois admitted to the Union,
and the contest over the admission of Missouri commenced in Congress.
Pensions granted to needy Revolutionary soldiers, and to the widows and
children of Revolutionary soldiers--the beginning of the pension system.
The number of stripes in the United States flag reduced to thirteen, the
number of stars to be equal to the total number of States in the Union.
Polar expeditions sent out both from America and from England. In the
latter country, Abraham Thornton, accused of murder, claimed the right to
prove his innocence by meeting his accuser in battle; under an ancient
statute this was possible, and as Thornton's accuser declined the proposed
combat, the prisoner was set free. The obsolete law was thereupon
repealed. Patent leather and strychnia discovered. Steam first used for
heating purposes.
Independence of Chile finally declared, after eight years of fighting, on
February 12.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that Charles XIV
(formerly Marshal Bernadotte) succeeded Charles XIII as King of Sweden and
Norway.=
1819
Most of the Cherokee Indians removed from Georgia to lands west of the
Mississippi. Congress agitated by the Missouri discussion; bill to
prohibit slavery in the territory of the Louisiana Purchase north of the
parallel of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, excepting in Missouri,
introduced, and passed the following year. Opposition to slavery increased
in the Northern States. Yellow fever in New York. Alabama admitted to the
Union. Wuertemberg abolished serfdom. August Kotzebue, German playwright
and leader of the opposition to liberal ideas and education, assassinated
by Sand, a Jena student; severe measures of repression, under the
influence of Metternich, the great Austrian minister, followed. Throughout
the German States censorship of the press was established, wholesale
arrests of liberals occurred, student societies were forbidden, and
ninety-four students were executed for wearing black, red, and yellow
ribbons, the emblems of liberalism.
Richard Carlisle, of London, arrested for reprinting Paine's "Age of
Reason." Velocipedes, hobby-horses, and other forerunners of the bicycle
became popular. Oersted, of Copenhagen, made important discoveries in
electromagnetism.
Queen Victoria born; James Watt, Scottish inventor; General Bluecher,
Prussian soldier; and Warren Hastings, first governor-general of India,
died.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=
1820
Riego's revolt in Spain failed, but was followed by other movements in
favor of liberalism. In Madrid, the prison of the Inquisition was
stormed, and the political prisoners it contained set at liberty. King
Ferdinand was forced to convoke the Cortes and agree to restore the
comparatively liberal constitution of 1812. Divorce suit of George IV of
England before the House of Lords; when the prosecutor had just started
his opening address, the peers rose suddenly and rushed out in a body to
witness an eclipse of the sun; the suit failed. Sir Walter Scott was the
first baronet created by George IV.
The Duc de Berry, heir presumptive to the French throne, assassinated by
Louvel, February 13. The Carbonari, or charcoal burners, forced Ferdinand
I, King of Naples, to grant a constitution, which he swore to uphold, but
almost immediately repudiated. The people of Portugal also rebelled and
obtained a constitution. Russia sold to Spain a fleet of fighting vessels,
which proved later to consist of rotting hulks.
In the United States, the Missouri Compromise Bill was passed and signed
by Monroe, who was reelected to a second term in the Presidency. Maine was
admitted as a State, and Spain agreed to cede her title to Florida for the
sum of five million dollars.
Hydropathy introduced by Priessnitz. Ampere discovered the galvanometer.
Caffeine separated by Oudry, and quinin by Pelletier and Caventou.
George III, King of England; Benjamin West, American artist; Henry
Grattan, Irish statesman; and Arthur Young, political economist, died.
=POPULATION.--Washington, D.C., 13,247; New York, 123,706; London
(Metropolitan District), 1,225,694; United States, 9,638,453; Great
Britain and Ireland (1821), 22,566,755.=
=RULERS--United States, James Monroe; Great Britain, George III, died
January 29, George IV succeeded; France, Louis XVIII; Spain, Ferdinand
VII; Prussia, Frederick William III; Russia, Alexander I; Austria, Francis
I; Pope Pius VII.=
The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young
ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making
cages.--=Jonathan Swift.=