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The French Revolution that begins with the tennis court oath June 20 follows widespread rioting triggered by rumors that the nobility and the clergy (the first and second estates) have plotted to collect all the nation's grain and ship it abroad. An unusually cold winter has caused rivers and canals to freeze, halting deliveries of grain and milling of flour in many places. Finance minister Jacques Necker has ordered requisitioning of all grain in April to assure fair distribution, and Necker enjoys wide popularity, but rumors abound that the first and second estates intend to disrupt the Estates General and starve the people.
The Estates General calls itself the National Assembly beginning June 17 in the first real challenge to royal absolutism since the suppression of the Fronde in 1653; its meetings are suspended June 20, and members repair to a neighboring tennis court, where they take an oath not to split up until they have given France a constitution. They elect Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, 40, comte de Mirabeau, to head the assembly, and some members of the nobility and clergy join the bourgeois third estate (headed since May 5 by astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly) in the assembly. Louis XVI has ordered 20,000 troops into the city from June 27 to July 1, and the authorities gather up gunpowder, placing it in the Bastille prison for safekeeping. The king dismisses Jacques Necker July 11, he concentrates more troops near Paris, and there are rumors that he will dissolve the assembly. The price of bread reaches 4½ sous per pound at Paris in July, and in some places it is 6 sous. Widespread unemployment has reduced the people's ability to avoid starvation, the National Assembly permits duty-free grain imports to relieve the hunger, but rioters take to the streets of Paris July 12.
Journalist (Lucie-Simlice) Camille Desmoulins (-Benoist), 29, jumps onto a table in the garden outside the Café de Foy in front of the Palais Royal at Paris July 13 and announces with a stutter that the revolution has begun. His fellow revolutionists—including Georges Jacques Danton, 30; Jean Paul Marat, 46; and (Maximilien Marie Isidore de) Robespierre, 31—will gather in the next few years at the Café de Chartres. The apt phrase "Omelets are not made without breaking eggs" will be attributed to Robespierre, but he is probably just quoting a proverb. Desmoulins publishes a pamphlet under the title "Free France" ("La France Libre"), and rioters seize thousands of firearms from the government arsenal in the Hôtel des Invalides.
Members of the third estate have attacked the Bastille July 12, its small garrison has resisted, dozens of Parisians are killed before it falls July 14 (only seven prisoners are inside the old fortress), and the revolutionists overthrow the regime of Louis XVI, maintaining the monarchy in name only.
Political economist Victor Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, dies at Argenteuil July 13 at age 73. He has paid the debts of his corpulent, hard-drinking, Paris-born son André-Boniface-Louis, 34, vicomte de Mirabeau, a staunch monarchist who is elected to the States General by the nobility of Limoges and opposes his revolutionist brother Honoré-Gabriel, comte de Mirabeau, who heads the National Assembly but whose Secret History of the Court of Berlin (Histoire secrète de la cour de Berlin) creates a scandal because it incorporates material gained from a mission to Prussia.
Jean-Sylvain Bailly is proclaimed the first mayor of Paris July 15, and all but four of France's 30 largest cities have similar uprisings. The National Assembly recalls Jacques Necker, names General Lafayette commander of the new National Guard, and adopts le drapeau tricolore as the flag of France (its blue and red represent the city of Paris, its white the Bourbons). Louis XVI travels to Paris July 17 and puts on a blue, white, and red cockade.
The National Assembly hears a proposal from Paris physician Joseph Ignace Guillotin, 51, that a beheading machine be used for executions. A deputy of the Estates General who was the first to demand a doubling of third-estate representatives, Guillotin says, "My victim will feel nothing but a slight sense of refreshing coolness on the neck. We cannot make too much haste, gentlemen, to allow the nation to enjoy this advantage." Various types of beheading machines have been used for centuries in Ireland, Scotland, and elsewhere, and there has been a French one called a louisette after a Dr. Antoine Louis. Supporters of Guillotin's idea say that it will bring equality to execution rather than having some people hanged, burnt, or shot to death by firing squads while those of gentler birth are beheaded, but critics call the idea barbaric and the machine will not be built and used until 1792.
The 33-year-old nobleman Louis-Marie, vicomte de Noailles, begins what the comte de Mirabeau calls an "orgie" August 4. Elected earlier in the year to the States General, Noailles responds to the abolition of all aristocratic privileges (see 1790).
Camille Desmoulin's pamphlet "The Streetlamp's Address to the Parisians" ("Discours de la lanterne aux Pariesiens") is published in September, a Paris mob riots from October 5 to 6, and a revolutionary band made up mostly of women marches to Versailles. General Lafayette rescues the royal family and moves it to Paris; France's nobility begins to emigrate as peasants rise against their feudal lords.
The Austrian Netherlands (Belgian provinces) declare their independence from Vienna. The Holy Roman Emperor Josef II has ordered peasants to pay more than 12 percent of the value of their land in taxes to the state, plus nearly 18 percent to their feudal landlords. Journalist-lawyer Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet received titles of nobility and 1,000 ducats from the emperor at Brussels 5 years ago but nevertheless pleads the case of the Belgian insurgents (see 1790).
The Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid dies of poison at Constantinople April 7 at age 65 after a 15-year reign. A 27-year-old nephew will reign until 1807 as Selim III.
Austrian forces under the command of Gideon von Loudon, now 72, capture Belgrade from the Ottoman Turks.
Persia's 10-year-old civil war continues as tribal chieftains vie for power. The Zand chieftain Jafar Khan dies after a 4-year reign and is succeeded by his 20-year-old son, who returns to the Zand capital of Shiraz, executes a rival, proclaims himself king, and will reign until his death in 1794 as Lotf Ali Khan, struggling against the larger forces of his Kajar enemies (see 1791).
Portuguese authorities in Brazil capture revolutionary Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, 41, who began an insurrection when the Portuguese tried to collect back taxes. Widely known as "the toothpuller" ("tiradentes"), he has worked as a dentist (as well as a physician, merchant, and soldier), was educated by his brother (a priest), has read the French philosophers, carried copies of the constitutions of the new American states, and favored complete independence from Portugal (see 1792).
The U.S. House of Representatives holds its first meeting April 1 at New York.
George Washington assumes office as president of the United States April 30 at New York's Federal Hall (the city's second city hall before being remodeled by French architect Pierre L'Enfant, 34, it will revert to use as city hall next year and continue as such until 1812). Washington has been rowed to the city from Elizabethtown Point by a crew of 13 ships' captains. He is sworn in by diplomat Robert R. Livingston, now 42, and begins the first of two terms as the nation's first president, taking care not to set any unfortunate precedents. He rejected suggestions made 2 years ago at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia that he be king, but he does not shake hands with visitors, choosing instead merely to bow. The president has taken up residence in the four-story house of importer Walter Franklin at 1 Cherry Street (a cherry orchard once grew in the vicinity, and the area will later be called Franklin Square). His five-man staff shares a house nearby at 39 Broadway.
Tammany Hall (the Society of St. Tammany, or Columbian Order) is organized officially May 12, alleged birth date of the legendary Delaware Algonquin chief Tamanend, who is reputed to have been wise and devoted to freedom (other Tammany societies have been started in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia). New York's Tammany began 2 years ago as a charitable, social, and patriotic order, mostly by craftsmen as an alternative to the city's more exclusive clubs; its members call themselves a "fraternity of patriots," protest rule by the aristocracy, and adopt pseudo-Native American titles and symbols (council members are called "sachems," ordinary members "braves"), but the organization will evolve into a powerful political machine. Initiation fees are $2 to $8, depending on ability to pay, quarterly dues are 24¢, and by the autumn of 1791 Tammany will have more than 300 members (see 1812).
Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen dies at Burlington, Vermont, February 12 at age 51; former Continental Congress envoy Silas Deane boards a Boston-bound ship at Deal, England, and dies under mysterious circumstances September 23 at age 51, having lived in exile since 1780.
The Judiciary Act signed by President Washington September 24 establishes the United States Supreme Court under terms of the Constitution. Elbridge Gerry, now 45, has drafted the measure, Washington nominates Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice William Cushing, 67, as the first member of the new federal court, and New Yorker John Jay, now 43, is nominated soon afterward as the court's first chief justice (all nominations are subject to confirmation by the Senate). Jay will preside until his resignation in 1795.
The United States Army established September 29 replaces the former Continental Army.
Maine-born New York lawyer Rufus King, 34, wins election to the state legislature, whose members elect him one of the state's two U.S. senators. King moved to the city last year.
North Carolina ratifies the Constitution November 21 to become the 12th state of the Union, having refused to join unless the Constitution was amended with a bill of rights.
James Madison rises in the House of Representatives at New York in what later will be called Federal Hall June 8 to propose a number of amendments to the Constitution. Both houses pass 12 of them and submit them to the states for ratification September 25 (see Bill of Rights, 1791).
The Declaration of the Rights of Man adopted by the French assembly declares that man has "natural and imprescribable rights. These rights are liberty, property, personal security, and resistance to oppression." "No one may be accused, imprisoned, or held under arrest except in such cases and in such a way as is prescribed by law." "Every man is presumed innocent until he is proved guilty." "Free expression of thought and opinion is one of the most precious rights of mankind: every citizen may therefore speak, write, and publish freely." "Since the ownership of property is a sacred and inviolable right, no person may be deprived of his property except with legal sanction and in the public interest, after a just indemnity has been paid."
Planters in Saint Domingue on Hispaniola send delegates to the National Assembly in Paris demanding a free hand to deal with the colony's affairs. Saint Domingue (later Haiti) has 480,000 slaves and is the envy of the Caribbean, but the revolutionists at Paris are not sympathetic to the slave-owning pressure group (see 1791).
Slaves on the French Caribbean island of Martinique rise up against their owners, but troops suppress the rebellion.
Jamaica has 211,000 slaves, up from 40,000 a century ago. Britain's House of Commons hears from William Wilberforce that one third of the African slaves landed in the West Indies die within a few months of arrival, many of them by suicide (see 1787; 1791).
Japan bans streetwalkers and requires prostitutes at Edo to move into the Yoshiwara section established in 1617. Some 2,000 move into the area within a few days (mixed bathing is also prohibited, and public bathhouses separate men from women).
The Judiciary Act signed by President Washington September 24 includes an Alien Tort Claims Act asserting that federal "district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." Intended in part to help recover property taken by pirates, the law will be used more than 200 years hence as the basis for lawsuits against companies and individuals, foreign and domestic, charged with human rights abuses.
Rochester, New York, is founded by Yankee miller Ebenezer Allen, who settles in a swamp on the bank of the Genesee River at the point where it empties into Lake Ontario.
Explorer Alejandro Malaspina leaves Cádiz July 30 with the corvettes Descubierta and Atrevida on a government-sponsored expedition to Latin America and Asia (see 1788). Built especially for the purpose, his three-masted, shallow-draft ships are 120 feet in length, 31½ feet wide in the beam, and have copper-lined wooden bottoms; the venture will take 5 years and take Malaspina around the world once again (see 1791).
The United States is $77 million in debt as President George Washington assumes office. The federal government had no power to tax under the Articles of Confederation, the colonists borrowed heavily from France and Holland to finance their war of independence, and the individual states have debts of their own. Congress establishes a U.S. Customs Service under terms of the Tariff Act adopted July 4 passed at what later will be called Federal Hall. The second piece of federal legislation, it creates a source of revenue that will be the nation's major source until 1913. A customs house that will evolve into the Treasury Department opens at New York and levies duties of $145,329 its first year as revenue cutters put to sea and meet incoming ships; the figure will grow to more than $8.3 billion in 165 years as New York becomes the nation's major port of entry, but in New York State the city still lags behind Sag Harbor as a port of entry.
The U.S. Government incurs its first loan September 13, borrowing money at 6 percent interest from the Bank of North America chartered at the end of 1781 and opened early in 1782 (see 1790; First Bank of the United States, 1791).
"Nothing is certain but death and taxes," writes Benjamin Franklin in a letter to a French acquaintance.
Landowner Colonel John Stevens III petitions the state legislature at Albany February 9 to grant him exclusive rights to build steamboats (see 1788). A King's College (later Columbia) graduate who served as treasurer for New Jersey during the Revolution, Stevens has seen such a boat operated on the Delaware River by James Rumsey and worked out designs of boilers and engines, but Rumsey has submitted a similar petition and the legislature awards him the grant (see technology [patent office], 1790).
Congress imposes a prohibitively high tariff on imports of iron nails in order to protect domestic producers (see Reed, 1786; Perkins, 1790).
Derbyshire mechanic Samuel Slater, 21, brings England's textile technology to the United States, whose government has offered rewards for information relating to such technology. He has spent 6½ years as apprentice to Jebediah Strutt, a partner of Richard Arkwright, and is familiar also with the cotton-spinning inventions of James Hargreaves and Samuel Crompton (see 1769; 1770; 1779). British law forbids export to America of information relating to machinery, but Slater makes his way to London without telling his family and slips out of the country. Having posed as a common laborer to deceive English emigration inspectors, he arrives at New York in November after a crossing that began in September; within a few days he takes a job with a local factory but is disappointed to find that it is poorly equipped and lacks access to adequate water power. He writes in December to Providence merchant Moses Brown, 51, who has gone into business this year with his son-in-law William Almy, 30, to experiment with a hand-operated jenny and wooden spinning frame; Brown replies to Slater December 12, inviting him to join the firm "and have the credit as well as advantage of perfecting the first water mill in America" (see 1790).
Elements of Chemistry (Traité élémentaire de chimi) by Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier is the first modern chemical textbook (see 1784). Lavoisier lists 23 elements but includes as an inorganic element a substance that he calls caloric (heat) (see 1794).
Genera Plantarum by French botanist Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, 41, improves on the Linnaean system of 1737 and begins the modern classification of plants.
German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth, 46, at Berlin analyzes a gemstone from Ceylon and discovers a silvery grey element he calls Zirkonerde (from the Persian word zargun); it will be renamed zirconium and come into extensive use with corrosive agents in the chemical industry (see uranium, 1797).
Hookworm (Haakenwurm) receives its name in a report by a Norwegian zoologist named Froelich who has discovered a hairlike parasitic worm in the intestine of a fox (see Goeze, 1782). Froelich notes curious hooklike structures in the worm's tail, and he assigns it to a new genus that he establishes under the name Uticinaria. Introduced into the Americas from Africa 2 centuries ago, hookworm causes debilitating anemia and pain (see Ashford, 1899).
Former Continental Army physician-in-chief John Morgan dies impoverished at his native Philadelphia October 15 at age 54.
The Bible used for President Washington's swearing-in belongs to the St. John's Lodge No. 1. Washington has been a Freemason since 1752, Robert R. Livingston has been grand master of New York State's Freemasons since 1784, and by 1800 the city will have 10 lodges (see 1739). The First Amendment to the Constitution mandating separation of Church and state will not come into effect until 1791, and for more than 2 centuries thereafter custom will take precedence over that mandate as legislative sessions open with prayers and courts use Bibles for swearing in witnesses (see 1826).
President Washington issues the first Thanksgiving Proclamation November 26, but few states will observe the secular holiday that celebrates the assistance given by Native Americans to the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620 (see 1863).
The University of North Carolina, founded at Chapel Hill, is the first U.S. state university.
Georgetown University has its beginnings in a Roman Catholic college founded by John Carroll, first archbishop of Baltimore. The Jesuit school will be prominent for its School of Foreign Service.
Journalist Camille Desmoulins begins publication at Paris in November of a newspaper under the name The Revolutions in France and in the Brabant (Les Révolutions de France et de Brabant), attacking policies that impede the democratic movement.
Nonfiction: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation by English barrister Jeremy Bentham, 41, expounds the basic ethical doctrine of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" as the chief object of all conduct and legislation. Bentham returned last year from a visit to his younger brother Samuel, a naval architect in the service of Russia's Catherine the Great, and he suggests that the morality of actions is determined by utility, meaning the capacity for rendering pleasure or preventing pain: "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do . . . The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law." Bentham takes his key phrase from clergyman-chemist Joseph Priestley, who used it in his 1768 "Essay on the First Principles of Government" (see 1774; Owen, 1809).
Philosopher Paul-Henri Dietrich, baron d'Holbach, dies at Paris June 21 at age 65.
Fiction: The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne by English Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe (née Ward), 25, whose Oxford-educated husband, William, owns and edits the weekly English Chronicle.
Poetry: Songs of Innocence by English artist-poet William Blake, 32, includes "The Lamb" and is illustrated by Blake with water-colored etchings; The Botanic Garden by physician and botanist Erasmus Darwin, now 57, whose The Loves of the Plants will be followed in 1792 by The Economy of Vegetation. Inspired by translations of botanical writings by the Swedish botanist Linnaeus, the work was originally intended as a version of the Linnaean catalog in rhyming couplets and introduces terms such as convoluted, frenzied, iridescent, hydrogen, and oxygen into the English language; Organt by French ideologue Louis (-Antoine-Léon) de Saint-Just, 22, who has witnessed the storming of the Bastille and whose epic, satirical, and licentious poem is published anonymously and is seized by the authorities.
Painting: The Artist and Her Daughter by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who leaves for Italy at the outbreak of the Revolution. She will arrive at London in 1802, paint celebrities including Lord Byron and the Prince of Wales, and not return to Paris until 1805.
Theater: The Father, or American Shandyism by Perth Amboy-born playwright William Dunlap, 23, 9/7 at New York's John Street Theater, with Maria Storer; Charles IX by Marie-Joseph-Blaise de Chenier 11/4 at Paris with actor François-Joseph Talma in the title role (other actors have refused to appear in the anti-monarchical play lest they face political persecution). The play precipitates demonstrations at the theater, and Talma establishes the rival Théatre de la République troupe.
Ballet: La Fille mal gardée at the Grand Théâtre, Bordeaux, with ballerina Marie-Madeleine-Crespé creating the role of Lise, choreography by her ballet master husband, Jean D'Auberval (né Bercher), 47. The comic work portrays realistic characters rather than idealistic or mythological ones and will remain in the classic repertory for more than 2 centuries.
Pears' soap is introduced by London soapmaker Andrew Pears, whose oval and translucent product will gain worldwide distribution. Made purely of glycerine, rosemary extract, thyme extract, rosin, and water (sodium palmitate and fragrance essence will later be added), the product contains no animal fats.
The first known American advertisement for tobacco appears with a picture of an Indian smoking a long clay pipe while leaning against a hogshead marked "Best Virginia." The advertisement has been placed by Peter and George Lorillard, whose Huguenot French immigrant father, Pierre, then 18, opened a shop in 1760 on the High Road between New York and Boston at a point that will later be called Park Row but was killed by Hessian troops in the Revolution (see 1760; 1911).
Sailors aboard H.M.S. Bounty bound for the West Indies with breadfruit plants mutiny April 28 in protest against being deprived of water that is being lavished on the plants (see agriculture, 1787). Having spent 23 idyllic weeks on Tahiti, the mutineers, led by master's mate Fletcher Christian, 25, cast Captain Bligh adrift with only a few provisions in a 22-foot, six-oared open boat with 18 men near the island of Tofau, return to Tahiti for native brides, and establish a colony on the desolate 1.75-square-mile Pitcairn Island southeast of Tahiti at the southeastern extreme of Polynesia, where the sole survivor of nine mutineers, six Tahitian men, and 13 women will be discovered by a Nantucket sealing captain in 1808. Lieutenant Bligh reaches Timor in the East Indies June 14 after a 45-day voyage across 3,600 miles of open sea in which he has used dead reckoning to navigate his course and lost seven of his 18 men (see agriculture, 1791). The mutineers will burn the Bounty on January 23 of next year, and when a U.S. whaler anchors off Pitcairn's island 18 years later only one mutineer will be left, along with nine women and 23 children.
Roman authorities arrest Allesandro, conti di Cagliostro, who is tried and sentenced to death (see 1786). His wife, Serafina, has denounced him to the Inquisition as a heretic, conjurer, magician, and Freemason, but his sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment and he will live until 1795.
The Panthéon is completed at Paris as a monument to Ste. Geneviève. Begun in 1764 by the late Louis XV, it was designed by the late architect Jacques Germain Soufflot, who had seen the Pantheon at Rome completed in about 125.
Traité sur la culture et les usages des pommes de terre by Antoine-Auguste Parmentier at Paris instructs readers on how to cultivate potatoes and cook them (see 1785; Tuileries gardens, 1793).
The first movable-frame beehive is constructed by Swiss naturalist François Huber, 39, who has discovered the aerial impregnation of the queen bee and the killing of males by worker bees. Huber is nearly blind, but his wife, his son, and a servant have helped him to study the life and habits of honeybees (see Langstroth, 1852).
Nine out of 10 Americans are engaged in farming and food production (see 1820).
"I am so antiquated as still to dine at four," writes author Horace Walpole, now 72; most English people now dine at 5 or 6 o'clock.
Baptist minister Elijah Craig distills the first bourbon whiskey in the bluegrass country established as Kentucky County last year by the Virginia state assembly. The territory will become Bourbon County in the state of Kentucky, and although many others are making whiskey out of corn, Craig's corn whiskey (the word bourbon will not be used in print for whiskey until 1846) is so refined that it will become more popular than rum or brandy in America (see tax, 1791; politics [Whiskey Rebellion], 1794).
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