1785
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The affair of the diamond necklace creates a sensation in France beginning August 15 when Louis, Cardinal de Rohan, 51, is arrested as he prepares to officiate at Assumption Day services for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. His mistress Jeanne Valois, 29, comtesse de La Motte, has led him to believe that the queen is enamored of him and has authorized him to buy a necklace of diamonds collected by the Paris jewelry firm Boehmer and Bassenge originally for the king's mistress Marie Jean, comtesse du Barry. The comtesse de La Motte has presented the jewelers with notes signed by the cardinal, they have complained to the queen, she has told Boehmer that she never ordered the necklace and certainly never received it, the comtesse is also arrested, and much of France chooses not to believe the queen. The case will be tried before Parlement next year.
The Treaty of Fontainebleau November 8 resolves Austrian-Dutch disputes. Austria receives territory in Brabant and Limburg, complete control of the Scheldt above Sanftigen, plus 10 million florins, but gives up claims to Maastricht and leaves the mouth of the Scheldt in Dutch hands.
English widow Maria Anne Fitzherbert (née Smyth), 29, is married secretly in mid-December to George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales, 23, although the marriage is invalid under terms of the 1772 Royal Marriage Act since it was contracted without the king's permission. Because she is a Roman Catholic, the danger of Mrs. Fitzherbert's bearing a child who may one day claim the throne will be a source of gossip and concern for years to come (see 1795).
Burma's king Bodawpaya makes the former kingdom of Arakan a Burmese province and invades Siam, only to meet defeat at the hands of the Siamese (see 1784; revolt, 1794).
Georgia colony founder James E. Oglethorpe dies at Cranham Hall, Essex, June 30 at age 88; jurist William Whipple drops dead while on circuit in New Hampshire November 10 at age 55, having signed the Declaration of Independence 9 years ago.
French explorer Jean François de Galaup, 43, comte de La Pérouse, sets sail for the Pacific August 1, partly to look for new whaling grounds in the Pacific. His frigate La Boussole is accompanied by the Astrolabe (see 1786).
A French order in council July 17 sets strict limits on imports from Britain (see 1786).
Congress establishes the dollar as the official currency of the new United States August 8, employing a decimal system devised by Thomas Jefferson (see Mint, 1792); Jefferson is named minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin.
American economic troubles worsen as English goods undercut American manufactures. States erect tariffs to keep out goods from abroad and from other states, farmers are unable to sell their tobacco and surplus food crops because foreign markets have disappeared, and New Englanders can no longer find markets for the products of their shipyards.
An American land ordinance provides for the sale of public lands at auction in tracts of 640 acres at a cash price of at least $1 per acre, but few would-be western settlers can put up $640 in cash (see 1800).
Patriot financier Haym Solomon dies at Philadelphia January 6 at age 44, impoverished after having equipped several military units with his own money during the War of Independence and subscribed heavily to government loans (he has lost much of his fortune in the recession that began 2 years ago, and his descendants will try for generations to collect some of what he is owed). Solomon has founded Philadelphia's first synagogue, Mikvah Israel; glass maker Henry W. Stiegel dies in Berks County, Pennsylvania, January 10 at age 55. His extravagance brought "Baron von Stiegel" to bankruptcy in 1774, he spent a few months in debtors' prison, he has been supporting himself by teaching, but he is impoverished; merchant Joseph Brown of Nicholas Brown & Company dies at Providence, Rhode Island, December 3 at age 51, having won some distinction for his achievements in physics and architecture.
Steam powers textile machinery for the first time (see 1784). An English cotton factory at Papplewick, Nottinghamshire, installs a Boulton and Watt rotative engine; James Watt and his partner Matthew Boulton are elected fellows of the Royal Society (see 1788).
Boston-born English physician John Jeffries, 41, makes the first aerial crossing of the English Channel January 7. A Loyalist who moved to England during the American Revolution, Jeffries ascends in a hot air balloon from Dover with French aeronaut Jean-Pierre François Blanchard, 32, and crosses to a forest at Guines (see Montgolfier brothers, 1783; Blériot, 1909).
Nottinghamshire-born clergyman Edmund Cartwright, 42, patents a crude power loom based on one that he saw last year while visiting Richard Arkwright's cotton-spinning mills at Cromford, Derbyshire (see Arkwright, 1782). Cartwright sets up a weaving and spinning factory at Doncaster, Yorkshire, but his machine for weaving fabric-width goods merely sheds, picks, and winds woven cloth onto a cloth beam, it must be stopped repeatedly to apply sizing to the warp, and it saves neither time nor labor, but Cartwright's concept will lead to more efficient machines (see Horrocks, 1813).
French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, 49, enunciates the law of the force of electrical attraction and repulsion (Coulomb's Law). His investigations have shown him that if two electric charges are both positive or both negative they will repel each other along a straight line between their centers, whereas a positive charge and a negative charge will attract each other along a straight line joining their centers. Coulomb has determined the exact amount of the force of this electromagnetic attraction, which is analagous to the Newtonian law of gravitational force.
"Analysis of Volatile Alkali" ("Analyse de l'Alkali Volatil") by French chemist Claude Louis, 37, Comte Berthollet, says, "I sparked four measures of [volatile alkali] with a superabundance of vital air in a volta eudiometer. The result of this experiment is that this gas—volatile alkali—contains 2.9 of the inflammable gas from water and 1.1 of mephitic gas." A member of the Academy of Sciences since 1781, Berthollet has worked with Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, but his studies of prussic acid (hydrocyanic acid) and hydrogen sulfide have led him to disagree with Lavoisier's claim that oxygen is an essential element in all acids, and his demonstration that the thoroughness of chemical reactions depends on the relative quantities of the starting materials, as well as the physical conditions that pertain during the reaction, invalidates the tables devised by the late Etienne-François Geoffroy that have been considered authoritative since 1718. Berthollet determines the exact composition of pure ammonia (see Priestley, 1774; Haber, 1911), and he demonstrates the value of chlorine as a bleaching agent (see Scheele, 1774).
"An Account of the Foxglove" by Shropshire physician William Withering, 44, introduces medical use of the cardiac drug digitalis. Obtained from dried leaves of the foxglove plant Digitalis purpurea, it is frequently toxic but is nevertheless the first effective treatment for heart disease.
"Observations on the Diseases of Seamen" by Scottish-born physician Gilbert Blane, 36, champions good hygiene and the use of citrus fruits to prevent scurvy (see nutrition, 1775). Blane accompanied Admiral Rodney to the West Indies as his personal physician in 1779.
Benjamin Franklin returns to America after 9 years in France and introduces to his countrymen the gout remedy colchicine, obtained from seeds of the same autumn crocus whose stamens yield saffron.
The Virginia House of Delegates rejects a bill proposed by Patrick Henry that would provide financial support to "teachers of the Christian religion." Leaders of the opposition have included Thomas Jefferson and 34-year-old College of New Jersey (Princeton) graduate James Madison, 34, who completed his 4-year course of studies in 2 years, and fought for religious freedom nearly a decade ago in Virginia's first state legislature (see 1786). Madison reentered the House of Delegates last year.
Morgenstunden by Moses Mendelssohn, now 56, argues the rationality of believing in the existence of God.
The University of Georgia has its beginnings in Franklin College, founded at Athens by Connecticut-born educator Abraham Baldwin, 30, who will be president from 1786 to 1801.
The University of New Brunswick is founded at Fredericton.
Nonfiction: Wissenschaftslehre by German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 23, modifies the system of his teacher Immanuel Kant, positing the Ego as the basic reality and the non-ego as the external world that serves as its field of action; Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man by philosopher Thomas Reid, now 75; The Journal of the Tour to the Hebrides by lawyer James Boswell, now 46, describes a 1773 journey to his native Scotland and on to the isles of Skye and Ramasay with the late Doctor Johnson.
Fiction: On the Education of Women (De l'éducation des femmes) by Pierre Choderolos de Laclos; The Modern Women (Les Contemporaires) by Restif de la Bretonne, whose carelessly written work is preoccupied with eroticism.
Poetry: The Task, a Poem in Six Books by William Cowper, who includes "Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools" to commemorate the tyranny that he suffered as a schoolboy. Cowper also includes his 1772 ballad "The History of John Gilpin": "Variety's the spice of life,/ That gives it all its flavor" (II, 606-607); The Parish Register by George Crabbe.
Britain's poet laureate William Whitehead dies at London April 14 at age 70.
Painting: The Infant Hercules by Sir Joshua Reynolds; The Morning Walk by Thomas Gainsborough; The Annunciation by Francisco de Goya; Self-Portrait by Adelaïde Labille-Guiard, who leads a protest against the Académie Royale's rule limiting female membership to four, fails to overturn the rule, and holds an exhibition of her own for women artists, whose work is thereupon attacked by critics (see 1783). She has lobbied for government-subsidized art education for women. Pietro Longhi dies at Venice May 8 at age 82.
Madrid's Prado Museum has its beginnings as Carlos III commissions architect Juan de Villanueva to design a natural-science museum (see 1819).
Sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle dies at his native Paris August 11 at age 71.
Theater: Actor John P. Kemble plays the role of Macbeth 3/31 at London's Drury Lane Theatre, his famous sister Sarah Siddons plays Lady Macbeth, and the performance establishes Kemble's reputation (see 1783). He will be appointed manager of the Drury Lane in 1788; I'll Tell You What by Elizabeth Inchbald at London's Haymarket Theatre.
A benefit for actress George Ann Bellamy is held at London's Covent Garden Theatre. Now 58, she has had both a legal and bigamous marriage, her excesses have cost her both her health and her beauty, and managers will no longer hire her.
Actress Kitty Clive dies at Twickenham, outside London, December 6 at age 74, having retired in 1769.
Opera: The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro) 5/1 at Vienna's Burgtheater, with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, libretto by Italian poet Lorenzo da Ponte (né Emanuele Conagliano), 36, from last year's Beaumarchais comedy (da Ponte lost his Jewish mother at an early age and was renamed as a child when his Jewish father converted to Roman Catholicism in order to marry a young woman whose family insisted on such a conversion). Italian soprano Maria Mandini creates the role of Marcellina, written (along with the aria "Il capro e la capretta") with Mandini's singing voice in mind; Italian mezzo-soprano Celeste Coltellini, 25, comes to Vienna at the urging of the emperor Josef II and sings 8/6 in the Cimarosa opera La Contadina in Spirito (Mozart will write soprano parts for her in a quartet and a trio).
First performances: Concerto for Pianoforte and Orchestra in D minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 2/11 at Vienna's Cardisches Casino in the Mehlgrube; Concerto for Pianoforte and Orchestra in B flat major by W. A. Mozart 2/12 at Vienna; Concerto No. 21 for Pianoforte and Orchestra in C major by W. A. Mozart 3/12 at Vienna's Burgtheater; Concerto for Pianoforte and Orchestra in E flat major by W. A. Mozart 12/23 at Vienna.
Venice's Ca' Rezzonico palazzo is completed for the family of Carlo Rezzonico, who served as Pope Clement XIII from 1758 to 1769. Begun in 1667 by Baldassare Longhena for the Priuli-Bon family, the palace had reached the first floor level by the time of Longhena's death in 1682.
Bangkok's Emerald Buddha Chapel is completed.
Antoine-Auguste Parmentier persuades Louis XVI to encourage cultivation of potatoes (see 1771). Louis lets him plant 100 otherwise useless acres outside Paris in potatoes; troops keep the field heavily guarded, arousing public curiosity, and when Parmentier allows the guards to go off duty one night, the local farmers, as he has hoped, steal into the field, confiscate the potatoes, and plant them on their own farms. The king, at Parmentier's suggestion, gives a banquet at which only potato dishes are served (Benjamin Franklin is one of the guests), and Parmentier persuades Marie Antoinette to wear potato flowers in her hair. Courtiers will make potato eating fashionable, and provincials will follow suit (see 1789).
"To a Haggis" by Robert Burns is about the "great chieftain o' the puddin' race." Made from the heart, liver, and lungs of a sheep, boiled in salt water, minced, and seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and chopped onion, to which is added a pound of chopped beef suet, grated liver, oatmeal, and a glassful of gravy, it is placed in a thoroughly cleaned sheep's stomach that has been turned inside out, boiled for 3 hours in a large pan, and served in a well-starched napkin accompanied by whisky. Haggis will be Scotland's national dish, served with great ceremony on Burns's birthday (January 25).
A Dissertation on the Poor Laws by Joseph Townsend suggests that hunger, "the stronger appetite," will provide a natural restraint on "the weaker" appetite and will thus "blunt the shafts of Cupid, or . . . quench the torch of Hymen . . ." to maintain a food-population equilibrium (see 1791; Malthus, 1798).
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, published at London, defines a condom as "the dried gut of a sheep, worn by men in the act of coition, to prevent venereal infection." No mention is made of the condom's use to prevent pregnancy, that being regarded as a woman's concern, not a man's.
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