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Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, delivers a stirring address to the French National Assembly January 28; it elects him president the next day, but he comes under attack from leftists and dies at Paris April 2 at age 42. Beloved by the people, he is given a magnificent funeral and buried in the new Church of Ste. Geneviève, which is converted into the Panthéon. His death weakens support for the monarchy.
Louis XVI flees with his family to the northeast frontier to gain the protection of loyalist troops, but he is thinly disguised. Revolutionist Jean Baptiste Drouet, 28, recognizes the king June 22 at Sainte-Menehould in Lorraine, crosses the Argonne Forest, and alerts the townspeople of Verennes-en-Argonne; five national guardsmen and a few townspeople arrest Louis June 25 and return him to Paris with Marie Antoinette and their children.
The sermon "Discourse on the Love of Our Country" by moral philosopher Richard Price expresses admiration for the French Revolution; orator Edmund Burke replies with the pamphlet "Reflections on the French Revolution," criticizing the actions of the revolutionists; Thomas Paine answers Burke with the pamphlet "The Rights of Man." Paine returned to his native England 4 years ago to sell a pierless iron bridge that he had designed (see 1792). Chemist-clergyman Joseph Priestley also replies to Burke's pamphlet, prompting a Birmingham mob to break into his house and destroy its contents.
Louis de Saint-Just's pamphlet "Esprit de la Révolution et de la Constitution de France" states that the constitution framed by the Assembly is acceptable as a first step but that the French people are not yet free nor sovereign. "Law should yield nothing to opinion and everything to ethics," he says, and he proposes the making of a new society that will go beyond benevolence and patriotic activity.
The first mayor of Paris Jean-Sylvain Bailly orders out the national guard to disperse a riotous crowd on the Champ de Mars July 17; the ensuing massacre costs him his popularity and he retires in the fall. France has famine, and the Legislative Assembly has little power to relieve it; Grenoble-born National Assembly deputy Antoine (-Pierre-Joseph-Marie) Barnave, 29, delivers an address July 15 favoring the ultimate restoration of the monarchy, arguing that republicanism is not appropriate to French national interests; he appeals for an end to the Revolution and a return to the status quo ante.
Louis XVI accepts the constitution September 14, France annexes Avignon and Venaissin, and the National Assembly dissolves September 30 after voting that no member shall be eligible for election to the next assembly. Antoine Barnave retires to his home in Dauphiné and enrolls in the national guard (see 1792)
Irish revolutionists Theobald Wolfe Tone, 28, Thomas Russell, 24, James Napper Tandy, 51, and other Protestants found the Society of United Irishmen to unite Protestants, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics in agitating for independence from Britain (see 1796). Anglo-Irish independence promoter Henry Flood dies at Farmley, County Kilkenny, December 2 at age 59.
A new Polish constitution put through by patriots May 3 converts Poland's elective monarchy into an hereditary one. Friedrich Augustus III of Saxony declines the Polish throne offered him, and Russia resists the new constitution (see 1792).
Persia's Lotf Ali Khan suffers a setback as the governor of Shiraz abandons the capital city to Kajar forces, leaving the king without a base of operations and obliging him to keep on the move in order to avoid being captured (see 1789; 1794).
Vermont is admitted to the Union March 4 as the 14th state. Created from parts of New Hampshire and New York and an independent republic since 1777, the new state will soon be the nation's leading sheep raiser. The late Ethan Allen and his brothers had appealed to the British to annex the region to Canada, and the new state uses its tax laws to strip the Allen family of all its land.
Battle of Quebec veteran Archibald Campbell dies at London March 31 at age 51, having served as governor both of Jamaica and of Madras.
The Canada Act passed by Parliament June 10 takes effect December 26, dividing Canada at the Ottawa River into Upper Canada (whose inhabitants are mainly British) and Lower Canada (mainly French) with two governors and two elected assemblies. Governor in chief of British North America Sir Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester, has promoted the Constitution Act, which helps to develop representative institutions in Canada (see Act of Union, 1840).
Former governor of Virginia Benjamin Harrison V dies at his Berkeley family seat April 24 at age 64 (approximate), having signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. His 18-year-old Berkeley-born son William Henry gives up his medical studies at Richmond, obtains an army commssion, and goes off to the Northwest (see commerce, 1800).
Blacks born of free parents in the French West Indies gain voting rights and the same privileges as all French citizens. The National Assembly at Paris, rejects pleas from French Caribbean colonists, but Saint-Domingue's 30,000 white colonists refuse to obey the assembly's decree and prepare to secede as the colony's 480,000 blacks and 24,000 mulattoes grow restless (see 1789). Free blacks and mulattoes revolt to obtain the rights they have been granted, and within a few months some 2,000 whites have been killed along with 10,000 blacks and mulattoes. Sugar plantations in what later will be Haiti are burnt, but only after 70,000 tons of sugar have been produced. The National Assembly appoints three high commissioners to the Leeward Island, they include lawyer Léger Félicité Sonthonax, 28, and Etienne Polverol, 53, they leave La Rochelle in July with an army of 6,000 men, and they land at Cap Française September 19 (see 1792).
A motion by William Wilberforce to prevent further importation of slaves into the British West Indies fails by a vote of 188 to 163 in the House of Commons, whose members have been prejudiced by the slave insurrection at Saint-Domingue along with similar revolts in Martinique and on the British island of Dominica (see 1823; 1833; Wilberforce, 1789).
France's National Assembly enacts a law providing for the state to take over the responsibility for feeding abandoned children as the end of feudal rights also ends feudal obligations. Another law permits civil marriages, and there is agitation for legalized divorce (see 1792).
The Bill of Rights becomes U.S. law December 15 as Virginia ratifies the first 10 amendments to the Constitution drawn up in 1787. Lifelong Virginia slavery opponent George Mason, now 66, has been largely responsible for the bill's adoption. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press, the right of peaceable assembly, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. It will be known as the "establishment clause" because it begins, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . " (the Constitution makes no reference to "God," and the United States becomes the first nation to separate Church and State; see Adams, 1797); the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms ("a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State," [and each member of a militia being required to supply his own weapon]); the Third Amendment forbids quartering of soldiers without consent; the Fourth Amendment forbids unreasonable searches and seizures; the Fifth Amendment establishes legal rights of life, liberty, and property, saying that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself;" the Sixth Amendment protects rights of accused persons in criminal cases; the Seventh Amendment guarantees trial by jury; the Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishment; the Ninth Amendment protects rights not enumerated in the Constitution; "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," says the Tenth Amendment.
Boston shipmaster-explorer Robert Gray discovers the Columbia River, naming it after his ship Columbia. Gray last year completed a round-the-world voyage and embarked a month later on a second such voyage. U.S. claims to Oregon territory will be based on his discoveries (see 1843; Cook, 1778).
Explorer Alejandro Malaspina receives orders from Spain's Carlos IV to search for a Northwest Passage (see 1789). Malaspina has sailed up the North American coast to Alaska, surveying the coastal waters, making observations of the sun and stars to find his bearings, checking his chronometer to determine his longitude, making gravity measurements to determine variations in the shape of the Earth, and having naturalists in his party collect specimens. He ventures as far west as Prince William Sound, finds nothing to suggest the existence of a transcontinental passage, spends about a month at Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and returns to New Spain (see 1792).
Odessa is founded by Russian pioneers on the Black Sea.
The Dutch government takes over the 170-year-old Dutch West India Company, which has been far less successful than the Dutch East India Company and will be dissolved in 1794 following the French invasion of the Dutch Republic.
British landowners and farmers protest the low duty on grain imports that are depressing their prices. Parliament responds by raising the domestic price level at which imports are permitted (see 1773; 1797).
France's National Assembly adopts the Law (Loi) Le Chapelier making any association of workers or employers illegal (see Turgot, 1774). Revolutionary leader Jean Le Chapelier, now 37, was president of the Assembly beginning in August 1789 but has left the Jacobins since the flight of the king and joined the moderate group Les Feillants, whose members support limiting the vote to property owners. The law that bears his name will remain in effect until 1884 and will affect mainly workers, who will find it difficult to hide their activities.
Congress charters the First Bank of the United States in February at the insistence of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton (see 1790). The new central bank receives a 20-year charter, succeeding the Bank of North America chartered at the end of 1781; it opens at Philadelphia December 12 with an initial capital of $10 million, 80 percent of it from private investors who buy stock with bonds acquired under a funding plan devised by Hamilton.
A "Report on Manufactures" prepared by Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton with help from Philadelphia-born political economist Tench Coxe, 36, lists 17 viable industries in the new republic. Coxe tried without success 5 years ago to import copies of Richard Arkwright's cotton-processing machinery and has urged large-scale cultivation of cotton. The report makes no mention of milling, although flour has long been a major U.S. export.
Rhode Island merchant Nicholas Brown dies at Providence May 29 at age 61, having engaged at times in the triangular slave trade, helped to organize a monopoly in candlemaking and whale oil, helped establish an iron foundry, contributed funds to move the College of Rhode Island (later Brown University) from Warren to Providence, and used his ships and overseas connections to provide the Continental Army with clothing and munitions.
Middleton, Massachusetts-born privateer Joseph Peabody settles at Salem, Massachusetts, having amassed a small fortune in the West Indian and European trade. Now 33, Peabody became first officer during the Revolution on the letter-of-marque Ranger and was severely wounded one night when he fought off a band of Loyalists that boarded the ship as she lay in the Potomac laden with Alexandria flour; they outnumbered the Ranger's crew three to one, but Peabody put up a spirited defense in his nightshirt. He was captain of a Salem merchantman at the close of the war, purchased a schooner shortly afterward, and now starts a shipping business that will soon own 83 vessels (some of them built to his order in Salem yards), employ 6,500 to 7,000 sailors, and trade with Calcutta, Guangzhou [Canton], St. Petersburg, and dozens of other world ports (see 1814).
Inventor John Fitch receives a patent on his steamboat in April (see 1787); inventor James Rumsey receives a patent on his steamboat the same day. Both publish pamphlets and letters trying to discredit the other's work, but the wreck of his fourth vessel in a storm next year (as well as his shabby appearance) will discourage financial backers of Fitch's Perseverance, and he will move to Kentucky (see Morey, 1795; Stevens, 1804; Fulton, 1807).
The stone-arch Pont de la Concorde (Bridge of Concord) spans the Seine at Paris with masonry from the demolished Bastille. Engineer Jean (-Rodolphe) Peronnet, now 82, proposed the bridge in 1772, but his design was considered too daring and construction did not begin until 1787. Peronnet has kept the work going through the revolution.
The French National Assembly grants chemist and surgeon Nicolas Leblanc, 49, a 15-year patent in September for the process he has perfected for producing soda ash (sodium carbonate) used by French glass and soap makers. The French Academy offered a prize of 12,000 francs in 1784 to anyone who could find a substitute for the soda ash imported from Spain, which is obtained from the ashes of burnt seaweed. Leblanc has treated salt (sodium chloride) with sulfuric acid to produce salt cake (sodium sulfate), which he roasts with charcoal and chalk (calcium chloride) to produce a black ash from which he then dissolves out and crystallizes as sodium carbonate (see 1806; Solvay process, 1863).
The French National Assembly sets up a General Commission of Weights and Measures to "bring to an end the astounding and scandalous diversity in our measures." The Academy of Sciences committee established last year has advised the assembly to establish a natural standard for the metre (meter, from the Greek word for measure), making it one ten-millionth part of a quadrant of the earth's circumference (or at least of the meridian that runs through Paris), multiplying it by 1,000 to create the kilometer, and dividing it into 100 centimeters and 1,000 millimeters. The committee has urged that the gram be standardized at one cubic centimeter of water at 4° Centigrade and has established the liter as a dry and wet measure equivalent to a cube measuring one-tenth of a meter on each side (see 1799; 1801).
English clergyman-chemist-mineralogist William Gregor, 30, at Manaccan in Cornwall discovers titanium in the mineral ilmenite and isolates it for the first time.
New York Hospital reopens February 1 in a large two-story greystone building built in the shape of a letter "H" on Broadway between what later will be Worth and Duane streets with two wings, a theater for surgery, and separate wards for surgical and other patients (see 1788). President Washington's personal physician, Samuel Bard, now 49, heads the institution, whose building is set back about 90 feet from the street and has windows that look down on the Hudson River, about 600 yards away. Medical students are allowed for a small fee to accompany surgeons on their rounds, and private patients are afforded what is generally considered the best medical care available in the city, being treated with far more skill than the barber-surgeons who ply their trade. A yellow fever epidemic causes a panic in the city.
The closing of France's universities begins to create a shortage of trained physicians that will lead to a restructuring of an institution dating to the late 17th century to create the modern medical clinic. The clinics will advance medical knowledge by applying observations gained in actual practice to modify dusty textbook theories.
French physician Philippe Pinel, 46, established his reputation 2 years ago with his work on clinical medicine Nosographie philosophique, which will remain a standard text for 20 years, and he now advocates more humane treatment of the insane in TraitéMedico-Philosophique sur L'Aliénation Mentale (see 1793).
Methodist Church founder John Wesley dies at London March 2 at age 87 and is buried at the City Road chapel; evangelical revival leader Selina Hastings, countess of Huntingdon, dies at London June 17 at age 83. The religious college she established in Brecknockshire 23 years ago will be moved next year to Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, and in 1904 to Cambridge, and the chapels of her Connexion will survive for the most part under Congregational auspices.
France's revolutionaries close the nation's "Gothic universities and aristocratic academies" in order to open the learned professions to competition, experiment, and the unobstructed flow of ideas.
Clergyman and College of Rhode Island (later Brown University) founder James Manning suffers a stroke July 24 and dies at Providence July 29 at age 52.
Harvard's Porcellian Club has its beginnings in a group of undergraduates who gather to eat roast pork. It will become the college's most exclusive club, blackballing even some of the most blue-blooded applicants.
The University of Vermont is founded at Burlington.
Salem, Massachusetts-born Philadelphia merchant Timothy Pickering, 46, wins appointment as the first U.S. postmaster general, a position he will hold until 1795.
The Observer begins publication at London December 5 with quotations from Doctor Johnson and a motto promising that the paper will be "unbiased by prejudice, uninfluenced by party . . . and delivered with the utmost dispatch." The weekly will gain wide readership with its accounts of sensational trials.
Nonfiction: The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell, who credits the late "Great Cham of Literature" with such lines as "No nation was ever hurt by luxury; for it can reach but to a very few" (4/13/73); "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel" (4/7/75); "When a man is tired of London he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford" (9/20/77); The Life of Dr. Benjamin Franklin written by himself is published in part at Paris using a French translation of a fair copy made by the late Franklin's grandson B. F. Bache 2 years ago. Franklin's other grandson, William Temple Franklin, has the original manuscript, which is more than seven pages longer, and blocks publication of an English version (see 1868).
Moral philosopher Richard Price dies at Hackney, outside London, April 19 at age 68, having eulogized the French Revolution in a celebrated sermon and provided the mathematical basis for life insurance actuaries; historian and radical political writer Catharine Macaulay dies at Binfield, near Windsor, Berkshire, June 22 at age 60, having published her last political tract last year under the title, "Observations on the Reflections of The Right Hon. Edmund Burke on the Revolution in France," in which she defended the revolution and called France's one-chamber National Assembly superior to the U.S. Congress.
Fiction: Justine by French libertine Donatien Alphonse François, comte de Sade, 51, who has been confined for much of his life in prisons, partly for using Spanish fly made from the pulverized bodies of the blister beetle Lytta vesicatoria that irritates the bladder and urethra. The marquis de Sade describes sexual gratification by inflicting pain on a loved one in his obscene novel, and it will be called "sadism" (see "Masochisim," 1874); A Simple Story by playwright-novelist Elizabeth Inchbald, now 37; The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe; Charlotte—A Tale of Truth by English-born U.S. novelist Susanna Rowson (née Haswell), 29, whose English schoolgirl heroine is seduced by a British officer and taken to America, where she gives birth to a child and is abandoned. Retitled Charlotte Temple—A Tale of Truth in later editions, it becomes the first U.S. bestseller.
Poetry: "Tam O'Shanter" by Robert Burns appears in the March Edinburgh Magazine; "Lines Written for a School Declamation" by English schoolboy David Everett: "You'd scarce expect one of my age/ To speak in public on the stage;/ And if I chance to fall below/ Demosthenes or Cicero,/ Don't view me with a critic's eye,/ But pass my imperfections by./ Large streams from little fountains flow,/ Tall oaks from little acorns grow."
Theater: Wild Oats; or, The Strolling Gentlemen by English playwright John O'Keefe 4/16 at London's Theatre Royal in Covent Garden.
Opera: Cosi fan tutte (So Do They All) 1/26 at Vienna's Burgtheater, with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte; La Clemenza di Tito 9/6 at the Prague Theater, with music by W. A. Mozart, libretto from the Pierre Corneille play Cinna of 1640; The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) 9/30 at Vienna's Theater auf der Wieden, with music by W. A. Mozart.
First performances: Concerto No. 27 for Pianoforte and Orchestra in B flat major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 3/4 at Vienna. Mozart completes the motet Ave verum Corpus, a Quintet for Strings in E flat major and completes a Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in A major September 28; Symphony No. 93 in D minor and Symphony No. 96 in D major (Miracle) by Joseph Haydn 3/11 at London's Hanover Square Rooms, in a concert conducted by German-born London conductor Johann Peter Solomon, who has invited Haydn to England, where the composer writes and conducts six new symphonies this year.
Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dies of kidney failure during an influenza epidemic at Vienna December 5 at age 35 with his Requiem still incomplete (it will be completed by Austrian composer Franz Xavier Süssmayr, now 26). The three great Mozart symphonies, No. 31 in E flat major, No. 40 in G minor, and No. 41 in C major (Jupiter), all written in 1788 during a space of less than 2 months, remain unperformed (see Kochel listings, 1862).
The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book by London furniture maker Thomas Sheraton, 40, advocates a style more severe than those of Chippendale and the late George Hepplewhite (whose work he deprecates) (see 1749).
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, now 36, agrees in December to pay $1,000 in blackmail to silence James Reynolds, who agrees in return to destroy certain letters and not to expose Hamilton's amorous affair with his wife, Maria. The hush money represents about one third of Hamilton's annual salary, and some congressmen call on him at his home to investigate charges that he has conspired with Reynolds to speculate in government securities; Hamilton assures them that the money given over to Reynolds was merely to keep him from revealing the affair with Maria, an amour that will continue until next year behind the back of Hamilton's wife.
Berlin's Brandenburg Gate (Brandenburger Tor) is completed by Prussian architect Carl Gotthard Langhaus, 59, at the end of the Unter den Linden nearly a mile from the royal palace. A protégé of the king's first mistress Wilhelmine Enke, Langhaus has copied the Propylaea at Athens.
The Dublin Customs House is completed on the north bank of the Liffey by Irish architect James Gandon, 48.
Venice's island of San Giorgio gets a new campanile (belltower) designed by Bologna architect Benedetto Buratti.
Captain William Bligh sails for Tahiti once again to obtain breadfruit (see crime [mutiny], 1789). Bligh has returned from the East Indies to England and voyages now on H.M.S. Providence to complete the mission that he began in 1787 (see 1792; 1793).
French colonist Etienne de Boré plants sugar cane in Louisiana, where efforts to cultivate the crop have been made since 1725 without much success. Boré brings in experts from Santo Domingo to supervise the boiling kettles used for crystallizing sugar and will be elected mayor of New Orleans in recognition of his achievement.
President Washington prepares the first U.S. crop report in response to letters from Annals of Agriculture editor Arthur Young, now 50, who has written from England to ask what crops are produced on American farms, what the crops are worth, and so forth. Washington has conducted a personal survey by mail and compiled the results, giving all prices in English pounds but providing a conversion ratio (the dollar is worth 7 shillings 6 pence). Young is an ardent advocate of up-to-date farming methods and of enclosure but will admit that 19 out of 20 enclosure acts injure the poor, sometimes gravely. Driven off the land, peasant farmers are often obliged to work as laborers on land that they once owned themselves. Some will enlist in the army; others will go to work in factory towns, emigrate to America, or fall to drinking.
Oliver Evans patents an "automated mill" whose power not only turns the millstones but also conveys wheat (grist) to the top of the mill (see 1787).
Congress imposes a 9¢-per-gallon tax on whiskey to discourage frontier farmers, blacksmiths, and storekeepers from diverting grain needed for food to use as distillery mash (and from competing with rum made in New England distilleries) (see Craig, 1789; politics [Whiskey Rebellion], 1794).
"Increase the quantity of food, or where that is limited, prescribe bounds to population," writes Joseph Townsend in A Journey Through Spain in the years 1786 and 1787 (see 1785). "In a fully peopled country, to say, that no one shall suffer want is absurd. Could you supply their wants, you would soon double their numbers, and advance your population ad infinitum . . . It is indeed possible to banish hunger, and to supply that want at the expense of another; but then you must determine the proportion that shall marry, because you will have no other way to limit the number of your people. No human efforts will get rid of this dilemma; nor will men ever find a method, either more natural, or better in any respect, than to leave one appetite to regulate another" (see Malthus, 1798).
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