1786
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France's diamond necklace affair ends in the acquittal of Cardinal de Rohan May 31 (see 1785). The comte de La Motte is believed to have escaped to London with the necklace and is condemned in his absence to serve in the galleys for life. The comtesse de La Motte is condemned to be whipped, branded, and locked up in the Salpetrière. Cardinal de Rohan is exiled in disgrace to the abbey of la Chaise-Dieu; Marie Antoinette is disappointed by his acquittal. It is widely believed that he was trapped by the queen, he becomes a martyr to critics of royal absolutism, and when Mme. de La Motte escapes from the Salpetrière next year and takes refuge abroad, the court will be suspected of having connived in her escape (she will die in a drunken fall from a third-floor window in 1791). Palermo-born adventurer Giuseppe Balsamo, 42, is implicated in the scandal and will spend 9 months in the Bastille prison; he has assumed the name Alessandro and the title comte de Cagliostro, gaining great popularity in Paris society by giving séances (he has previously sold elixirs and youth powders in many other European cities, posing variously as an alchemist, medium, and soothsayer).
Prussia's Friedrich II (the Great) dies at his Sans-Souci Palace in Potsdam August 17 at age 72 after a 46-year reign. He is succeeded by his inept nephew, 41, who will reign until 1797 as Friedrich Wilhelm II.
Russia's Catherine the Great begins a second war with the Ottoman Empire, using Turkish intrigues with the Crimean Tatars as an excuse to pursue her objective of obtaining Georgia.
The sultan Mohammed of the northern Malay state of Kedah agrees to British occupation at the urging of Royal Navy officer Francis Light, 45, who has promised East India Company support for the sultan's defense against his Southeast Asia rivals in Burma and Siam. The British annex Penang Island in the Strait of Malacca August 11 and will make it a free port for the pepper trade.
Japan's feebleminded Tokugawa shōgun Ieharu dies at age 49 after a 26-year reign and is succeeded by his kinsman Ienari, 13, who will take power in 1793 after a 6-year regency and rule until 1837.
Former Continental Army general Nathaniel Greene dies at his Mulberry Grove plantation outside Savannah June 19 at age 44. He contributed his entire fortune and all his possessions to the war effort, and Georgians rewarded him at the end of hostilities by giving him the plantation.
Native Americans hold a council at which the Seneca chief Sagoyewatha (né Otetiani), now 28, argues the inevitability of making peace with the new United States (see 1779); known to the Continental Army as Red Jacket because he wore British colors during the War of Independence, he has been scorned as a coward for having made overtures to General John Sullivan 7 years ago, but he uses brilliant oratory to represent himself as a bitter enemy of whites.
French explorer Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, stops at Easter Island in the Pacific April 9, visits the Sandwich Islands, and reaches the southern coast of Alaska near Mount St. Elias in June as he investigates the possibility of a Northwest Passage (see 1785; 1787).
Russian sea captain Gerasim Pribylov discovers islands in the Bering Sea that will be called the Pribilofs (see 1741).
Syracuse, New York, has its beginnings in a trading post established by Yankee trader Ephraim Webster (see 1654; salt, 1825).
The Ohio Company of Associates is founded by Continental Army veterans who include Connecticut-born Congregational chaplain Manasseh Cutler, 44, who worked as a schoolteacher, whaling merchant, and lawyer before undertaking divinity studies. The Continental certificates issued to the veterans have depreciated in value, and the men hope to use them at par value for purchasing a 1.5 million-acre tract of land in the Ohio Valley that was ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris as part of the Northwest Territory (see 1787).
French manufacturers press for a measure of free trade that will give them a foreign market comparable to that of their envied British rivals. A commercial treaty is signed with London; English tariffs are lowered on French wheat, wine, and luxury goods; French tariffs are lowered on English textiles; but British imports flood the French market, undercut domestic prices, idle the looms at Troyes, and bring widespread unemployment, producing demands for renewal of tariff protection (see 1788).
Shays' Rebellion in western Massachusetts aims to thwart further farm foreclosures in the continuing U.S. economic depression. Heavy land taxes and mounting debts have bankrupted many farmers; hundreds have been taken to court, threatened with prison, and burdened with high legal fees. Fearing that they will be reduced to the status of tenant farmers, they call themselves "Regulators" and come together under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays, 39, who served at the Battle of Lexington, distinguished himself in the Battle of Bunker Hill, and later saw action at Saratoga and Stony Point. Some 800 farmers organize themselves into squads and companies, arm themselves with pitchforks, and prepare to march on debtors' courts, demanding circulation of paper currency. Governor James Bowdoin and Boston merchants use their own funds to field a state militia. Bowdoin warns that any interference with the legal system will "frustrate the great end of government—the security of life, liberty, and property." The militia prevents seizure of the Springfield arsenal September 26, but the rebels succeed in having the state supreme court adjourn without returning indictments against them. Scattered fighting will continue through the winter (see 1787).
News of Shays' Rebellion reaches a convention assembled at Annapolis to remedy the weaknesses of Articles of Confederation signed in 1781. Delegates will create a Congress with exclusive powers to coin money, forbidding states to levy tariffs or embargoes against each other that would restrict internal free trade (see 1785; Constitution, 1787).
Rhode Island farmers burn their grain, dump their milk, and leave their apples to rot in the orchards in a farm strike directed against Providence and Newport merchants who have refused to accept the paper money that has depreciated to the point of being virtually worthless. The strike has little effect, since 90 percent of Americans raise their own food, growing peas, beans, and corn in their gardens and letting their hogs forage in the woods for acorns.
Maryland agrees to let Delaware build a canal to connect the Delaware River with the Chesapeake Bay.
Bridgewater, Massachusetts, inventor Ezekiel Reed devises a nail-making machine, but nails remain so costly that houses are put together in large part with wooden pegs (see tariff, 1789; Perkins, 1790).
A breech-loading musket invented by London gunsmith Henry Nock is a departure from the muzzle-loader that has been used for centuries, but the muzzle-loader will continue to be the standard rifle used by infantrymen (see "needle gun," 1848).
Chemist Karl Wilhelm Scheele dies at Köping, Sweden, May 21 at age 43.
A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia becomes law January 16 (see 1779; 1785). James Madison said 2 years ago, "Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate [liberty] needs them not." He has reintroduced Thomas Jefferson's measure, it has passed with only one minor change, and Jefferson will rank it among his three best achievements, the others being the Declaration of Independence and the establishment of the University of Virginia (see education, 1819).
The four-page weekly Pittsburgh Gazette published beginning July 29 is the first newspaper west of the Allegheny Mountains. John Scull and Joseph Hall have brought a wooden press by wagon across the mountains from Philadelphia (seePost-Gazette, 1927).
Fiction: Vathek by eccentric English dilettante William Beckford, 27, who studied piano under Mozart when he was 5 (and Mozart 8 or 9). The only legitimate son (and namesake) of the former lord mayor of London, Beckford inherited a fortune upon the death of his father in 1770 and wrote the Oriental romance in French 4 years ago, having completed its outline in 3 days and 2 nights. A scandal forced him to go into exile last year with his beautiful wife, Lady Margaret Gordon, and infant daughter; Lady Margaret has died of puerperal fever after giving birth to a second daughter in May in Switzerland; and Beckford will remain abroad for nearly a decade.
Poetry: Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect by Robert Burns, whose verse "To a Mouse" contains the line, "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley"; "To a Louse" contains the line, "Oh wad some Power the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as ithers see us!" Burns includes also "The Cotter's Saturday Night," "Scotch Drink," "Halloween," "The Vision," and "Epistle to Davie." His first edition brings in only £20 but its critical success dissuades the poet from emigrating to Jamaica, and an enlarged edition will be printed next year at Edinburgh; "The Wild Honey Suckle" by Philip Freneau.
Painting: The Duchess of Devonshire and Her Daughter by Sir Joshua Reynolds; Colonel Mordaunt's Cock-Match by Johann Zoffany, who has lived in India since 1783 and will remain until 1789; Marie Antoinette and Her Children and The Marquise de Pezé and the Marquise de Rouget and her Two Children by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun; The Piano Lesson (date approximate) by French painter Marguerite Gérard, 26, a sister-in-law of Jean Honoré Fragonard.
Ballet: Whims of Cupid and the Ballet Master (Amors og Balletmesterns luner) at Copenhagen's Royal Theater, with choreography by Florence-born Royal Danish Ballet director Vincenzo Galeotti (né Tomascelli), 53, who has been director since 1775 and whose comic work will remain in the classical repertoire for more than 2 centuries.
First performances: Concerto No. 24 for Pianoforte and Orchestra in C minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 4/7 at Vienna's Hoftheater; Symphony No. 38 in D major (Prague) by W. A. Mozart 5/1 at Vienna's Burgtheater; Concerto for Pianoforte and Orchestra in C major by W. A. Mozart in December at Vienna.
Two French mountaineers scale Mont Blanc in the French Alps near Chamonix for the first time. Jacques Balmart and Michel-Gabriel Paccard have conquered Europe's highest peak.
The first U.S. golf club is founded at Charleston's Green near Charleston, South Carolina, by local clergyman Henry Purcell.
Americans mix woolen yarn with linen fibers to make rough "linsey-woolsey" cloth stained with sumac or butternut dyes. They obtain the cash they need for salt, sewing needles, and land taxes by selling pot ashes (potash) produced by burning wool and leaching the ashes.
Furniture and cabinet maker George Hepplewhite dies at London June 21 at age 65 (approximate) (see 1788).
London's Somerset House is completed to designs by architect Sir William Chambers, 60, after 10 years of work.
The Pribilof Islands have an estimated 5 million fur seals. Gerasim Pribylov founds a colony to harvest pelts (see 1867).
Paris sends the Abbé Dicquemare to report on the state of oyster beds in the gulf at the mouth of the Seine. The naturalist reports that the oysters have diminished by half "in the last forty years . . . The real causes of the deficit are the maneuvers of cupidity and the insufficiency of laws" (see 1681).
Former French colonial administrator Pierre Poivre dies at his native Lyons January 6 at age 66, having broken the Dutch monopoly in nutmeg and mace.
Millwright Andrew Meikle develops the first successful threshing machine (see 1778). Now 67, he has analyzed earlier models and developed one with a strong drum and fixed beaters that employ a basic principle (probably derived from scutching machines used to beat the fibers from flax plants) that will be used in future threshing machines (see Pitts, 1837).
Montreal's Molson brewery opens outside the walled city, where English-born brewer John Molson uses eight bushels of barley for malting and brews four hogsheads of ale and beer per week for the 20-week brewing season, a total of 4,230 gallons. Molson emigrated from Lincolnshire 3 years ago, returned home to settle his estate at Snake Hall, and obtain equipment for his log brewery at St. Mary's Current. His family will continue the enterprise for more than six generations, making it Canada's largest brewery.
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