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Louis XVI goes to the guillotine January 21 in the Place de la Revolution that will later be the Place de la Concorde. Dead at age 38, the king has been tried before the convention, which has declared him guilty by a vote of 683 to 38 and voted that he be executed rather than imprisoned or banished. He proclaims his innocence as he goes to his death. His 37-year-old brother Louis-Stanislas-Xavier, comte de Provence, fled the country in 1791, has been organizing émigré societies while trying to enlist the support of other European monarchs, and promptly proclaims himself regent for his 7-year-old nephew Louis-Charles, duc de Normandie, who is proclaimed Louis XVII by royalist émigrés (see 1795).
The French republic declares war February 1 against Britain, Holland, and Spain and annexes the Belgian provinces. Britain, Holland, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire join in an alliance against France with Savoy (Sardinia), which has been at war with the French since July 1792.
A French army under the command of General Dumouriez invades Holland February 26, the Convention at Paris sends 82 representatives in early March into the provincial départements to expedite the conscription of 300,000 men, but Austrian forces prevail over the French March 18 at Neerwinden and March 21 at Louvain. Dumouriez concludes an armistice with the Austrians and prepares to march on Paris and overthrow the National Convention, which sends the minister of war Pierre Riel, comte de Beurnonville, with four commissaries to relieve him of his command. Dumouriez turns them over to the Austrians April 2, his troops desert, and he goes over to the Austrian side April 5, a defection that discredits his Girondist associates.
The comtesse du Barry returns from London March 3 against the advice of her English friends, saying that she has "a debt of honor to be settled in France."
Paris lawyer Antoine-Quentin Fouquier-Tinville, 46, is appointed public prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal in March and launches a determined and merciless prosecution of counterrevolutionaries in the growing Reign of Terror. A friend and relative of the journalist Camille Desmoulins, he will in the next 2 years prosecute well over 2,000 people, including Desmoulins himself.
A Committee of Public Safety organized at Paris April 6 has dictatorial powers and will use force to nationalize military production, impose mass requisitions, and raise, arm, equip, and feed 14 armies by means of a mass levy. Lawyer Bertrand Barère (de Vieuzac), 37, has made a "Report to the French Nation" in January favoring war against Europe's royalist powers as an extension of the revolutionary principles and formulates much of the propaganda against the "aristocratic conspiracy" issued by the new Comité de salut public, whose members include also Georges Jacques Danton and Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (see 1794).
French Girondists attack the radical Jacobin Jean Paul Marat, 49, and bring him to trial. Acquitted April 24, Marat joins with Danton and Robespierre of the Comité de salut public in overthrowing the power of the Girondists, 31 Girondist deputies are arrested June 2, and they are expelled from the Convention.
The Convention at Paris introduces a law in July authorizing local authorities to arrest anyone suspected of "uncivic behavior such as lack of patriotism or aristocratic tendencies" and Mme. du Barry is imprisoned. As many as 17,000 people go to the guillotine in July; at one point, 21 heads fall into wicker baskets in the space of just 38 minutes.
French patriot Charlotte Corday (Marie Charlotte Corday d'Armont), 25, assassinates the radical Jacobin Jean-Paul Marat July 13. Horrified by the excesses of the Jacobin terrorists, she stabs Marat to death in his bath, where he nurses a persistent skin disease. Corday has gained entrance to his rooms at 20 rue de Cordeliers by claiming to have detailed knowledge about a group of Girondin conspirators in the Calvados area; an ardent royalist and daughter of an impoverished aristocrat, she lives with an aunt in Caën and is involved with the same Girondist group that she has pretended to betray. Corday makes no effort to escape but stands calmly at the window, watching the mob that gathers, and offers no resistance to the police when they arrive to arrest her.
The Convention at Paris decrees that women may no longer join the army but offers only 5 sous per mile to help volunteers return home.
Prussian forces recover Mainz from the French after a 3-month siege, and the Allies take Conde and the Valenciennes (see 1792). The French general Adam Philippe, comte de Custine, is accused of treason, a revolutionary tribunal finds him guilty, and he goes to the guillotine at Paris August 28 at age 53 (he is survived by his 3-year-old son Astolphe).
Spain declares war on France at the insistence of her handsome but reactionary new prime minister Manuel de Godoy y Alvarez de Faria, 26, who gained favor with Carlos IV (and the indolent king's wife, Maria Luisa of Naples) and last year replaced the count of Aranda as head of government, being created duke of Alcudia and a grandee.
France begins a levy of all men capable of bearing arms August 23 as the Allies drive republican troops back on all fronts; a squadron under the command of Royal Navy Vice Admiral Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood of Whitley, and Spanish admiral Juan de Lángara lays siege August 28 to Toulon, which has rebelled against the Convention. Maria Carolina of Naples, consort to Ferdinand IV, sends warships to join the British fleet; now 41, she has brought about the downfall of the liberal minister Bernardo Tanucci and been persuaded by her favorite (and reputed lover) Sir John Acton to side with Britain against the French. Fourteen new French armies succeed in taking Caen, Bordeaux, and Marseilles.
Lyons falls to the French republicans in October after a 2-month siege; the city is partially destroyed and much of its population massacred. The Convention at Paris has appointed military engineer Lazare (-Nicolas-Marguerite) Carnot, 40, a member of the Committee of Public Safety and sent him north to relieve the siege of Maubeuge; he is instrumental in winning the Battle of Wattignies October 16, leading the attack, raising the siege, and entering Maubeuge alongside the generals. Carnot then resumes his seat on the Committee of Public Safety, where he insists that France give up the ancient tactic of line combat and switch to attacking decisive points with concentrated masses of men.
The Reign of Terror gathers force at Paris and elsewhere. Marie Antoinette goes to the guillotine October 16 after being prosecuted by Antoine-Quentin Fouquier-Tinville. Some 15,000 are guillotined in 3 months at Nantes, and the 21 Girondist deputies arrested June 2 are guillotined October 31.
Poet Jeanne-Marie Roland (née Phlipon) goes to the guillotine at Paris November 8 at age 39, and her Girondist husband, Jean Marie Roland de La Platiere, 59, commits suicide a week later in Normandy at news of Mme. Roland's death (she has directed his career, singling out his rival Georges Danton for special venom). Known as Manon Phlipon, she has written her memoirs under the title "Appeal to Impartial Posterity" ("Appel à l'impartiale postérité") while in prison and her last words are reported to have been, "O Liberty! Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name!"
Former National Assembly orator Antoine Barnave is convicted of treason in a trial November 28 and goes to the guillotine November 29 at age 32.
The comtesse du Barry goes to the guillotine December 7 at age 52 after a trial that has taken up most of the previous day.
A purge of priests in the Vendée and efforts to conscript peasants into the revolutionary army incite a popular uprising. Generals Louis-Marie Turreau and François Westermann suppress the revolt with unbridled brutality, killing 300,000 to 600,000 men, women, and children. Jacobin judge Jean-Baptiste Carrier orders the execution of 13,000 at Nantes (many are deliberately drowned in the Loire in specially-built boats). General Westermann routs the Vendée rebel army at Savenay December 23.
Napoleon Bonaparte gains prominence for the first time as the French take Toulon from the British December 19 after a siege of nearly 4 months. Now 24, the Corsican-born artillery officer has won the favor of Robespierre's brother and been put in charge of directing siege operations to recover Toulon from Admiral Hood's British squadron, which came to the aid of the city in August; he moves his cannon to the high ground overlooking the city and uses them to good effect, but the British burn 41 ships of the French fleet on their way out of the great naval base, taking with them every royalist citizen who can be crammed aboard, and they destroy also Toulon's arsenal, cargo ships, and stores, all of which must be rebuilt (see Bonaparte, 1794). Several hundred remaining royalists are rounded up and shot after being tried by a special tribunal.
Poland is partitioned for a second time January 23, with Russia taking most of Lithuania and the western Ukraine, including Podolia, and Prussia taking Danzig, Thorn, and Great Poland (see 1792; first partition, 1772). Russia has been given free entry for her troops in Poland plus the right to control Poland's foreign relations (see 1794).
President Washington meets with department heads at his New York house February 25 in the first U.S. cabinet meeting. The cabinet is composed of the secretaries of state, treasury, and war, the attorney general, and the postmaster general.
President Washington issues a Proclamation of Neutrality in the European war April 22. He has resisted pressure from Alexander Hamilton to support the British and from Thomas Jefferson to support the French.
U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson suggests that the nation's sovereignty should extend offshore as far as cannonball range (see van Bynkershoek, 1702; marine resources [Santiago Declaration], 1952). Jefferson quits politics and retires to Monticello (but see 1796).
U.S. senator and Declaration of Independence signer Roger Sherman dies at New Haven, Connecticut, July 23 at age 72; former British colonial secretary Wills Hill, earl of Hillsborough and marquess of Devonshire, at London October 7 at age 75; Massachusetts governor and Declaration of Independence signer John Hancock at Quincy October 8 at age 56.
The Afghan king Timur dies and his throne is seized by his fifth son, Zaman, who has gained support from the Barakzai chief Sardar Payenda Khan, but the activities of the new king will alarm British colonial authorities in India, and they will persuade Persia's Fath Ali Shah to move against him (see 1800).
Japan's Tokugawa shōgun Ienari begins a personal reign of 45 years after a 6-year regency during which Matsudaira Sadanobu, now 34, has put through a series of reforms. The reign begins with the failure by Russian lieutenant Adam Laxman to establish friendly relations and will be marked by the collapse of military rule and the growth of extravagance and inefficiency in the Tokugawa court.
A British fleet arrives at Guangzhou (Canton) with an emissary who has been given instructions to establish ties with China. Lord George Macartney meets with a rebuff from the emperor Qianlong (Chien-lung), who gives him a message for George III that says his country has no need of Britain's friendship. "As your ambassador can see for himself, our Celestial Kingdom possesses all things in prolific abundance. We have never valued strange objects nor do we have the slightest need for your country's manufactures" (see opium, 1799).
Vietnamese nationalist Nguyen Nhac of the Tay Son brothers dies December 16 at age 41 (approximate), having outlived his brother Nguyen Hue, who died last year (see 1788). They have been unable to reform Vietnam's land-ownership system, their disillusioned followers have left them in droves, and they have been defeated by forces loyal to the young prince Nguyen Anh, a nephew of the legimate heir to the throne. Descendants of the Tay Son brothers try to continue the fight (but see 1801).
The Fugitive Slave Act voted by Congress at Philadelphia February 12 makes it illegal for anyone to help a slave escape to freedom or give a runaway slave refuge (see 1781; "Underground Railway," 1838). Eli Whitney's cotton gin is producing an increase in U.S. cotton planting and thus boosting demand for slave labor (see 1782; 1803; Whitney, 1792). The new measure stiffens a law enacted 1 year ago after three Pennsylvanians captured a slave and returned him to Virginia, raising questions that were referred to President Washington, who referred the matter to Congress (see Oney Judge, 1796).
The French governor of Saint Domingue Thomas-François Galbaud, 50, tries to raise a revolt of whites in June against the republican commissioners sent by the National Assembly to what later will be Haiti (see 1792). Léger Félicité Sonthonax issues an order August 29 that frees forever any slave that will fight against Galbaud, thousands of whites flee to the northern town of Cap Français (later Cap Haitien), black rebels burn it almost to the ground, and the incident marks the end of white domination (see 1794).
Scottish-born fur trader Alexander Mackenzie, 29, sets out on a journey of exploration to the west May 9 with six voyageurs in a specially-built 25-foot canoe, but the craft smashes on some rocks in the Fraser River June 13. Employed by the North West Company since age 15, Mackenzie discovered 4 years ago the river that will be called the Mackenzie, having left Fort Chippewa and sustained himself on his journey by eating pemmican (dried lean meat from a large game animal pounded to shreds and mixed thoroughly half and half with melted fat, bone marrow and wild berries or cherries; the word pemmican comes from the Cree word for "fat"). Mackenzie and his small party manage to reach the Pacific July 22 after traveling 2,811 miles through country never explored by Europeans and without losing a single man.
Royal Navy navigator George Vancouver, 36, explores an island off the west coast of Canada that will bear his name (see Juan da Fuca, 1592). A veteran of Captain Cook's second and third voyages, Vancouver left England in April of 1791, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, surveyed part of the southwest Australian coast, and sighted the west coast of North America in mid-April of last year at latitude 39°27' North. He has surveyed north this year to 56°44' N and next year will explore Cook's Inlet off southern Alaska before returning home.
Toronto has its origin in the frontier settlement of York founded by Upper Canada's (Ontario's) first lieutenant governor John G. (Graves) Simcoe, 41 (see 1787). Ontario's first parliament convened last year at the newly-established town of Newark (later Niagara-on-the-Lake), but its strategic location and good harbor have persuaded Simcoe to choose Toronto (a Huron word for meeting place) as his provincial capital and he renames it York. The settlement will be renamed Toronto in 1834 and become not only Ontario's capital but also Canada's financial center.
The French republic imposes anti-inflation measures to avoid a catastrophic fall in the value of the assignats that have been issued since 1790, the government fixes wages and establishes maximum prices for many commodities, and while there are frequent violations of the maximums, the new laws permit a rationing of goods and make it possible to provision the republican armies (but see 1796).
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand voyages to America to escape the Reign of Terror. He speculates in land and prospers (see 1790; 1796).
Samuel Slater introduces child labor at the first U.S. cotton mill (see 1790). He operates the mill under the name Almy, Brown & Slater and finds it advantageous to use children because they have small hands. Partner Moses Brown turns a blind eye to the fact that the cotton for the mill is produced by slave labor.
The Cornwallis Code imposed on India by Governor General Charles Cornwallis standardizes land assessments but fails to halt exploitation.
French aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard, now 40, makes the first hot-air balloon flight in the Western Hemisphere, leaving from Philadelphia on a warm January day and landing on a farm at Deptford, New Jersey (see 1785).
French émigré engineer and inventor Marc Isambard Brunel, 24, flees the Reign of Terror at Paris and arrives at New York, where he will soon gain appointment to the city post of chief engineer. He will remain until 1799, improving the defenses of the channel between Staten Island and Long Island, constructing an arsenal and a cannon factory, and putting up many other buildings of his own design.
Samuel Slater's wife Hannah (née Wilkinson) perfects a sewing thread of fine cotton yarn that can replace linen (see 1790). Her brothers establish a factory to produce it (see Lowell, 1812).
Plymouth, Connecticut, clockmaker Eli Terry, 21, goes into business for himself after 7 years of apprenticeship (see 1803).
English engineer William Smith, 24, makes preliminary surveys for a proposed Somersetshire Coal Canal and discovers that the rock strata outcropping in the northern part of the area dip regularly to the east like "slices of bread and butter" (see Steno, 1669). Further investigations next year will confirm his hunch that the strata extend far northward, and when excavation of the canal begins in 1795 Smith will study the fresh cuts, finding that each stratum contains "fossils peculiar to itself" (see 1799; Hutton, 1795).
Naturalist Gilbert White dies at his native Selborne, Hampshire, June 26 at age 72; astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly goes to the guillotine at Paris November 12 at age 57.
Physician Philippe Pinel, now 48, uses his connections with the revolutionary government at Paris to gain appointment as physician-in-chief at l'Hospice de Bicêtre, the large Parisian mental institution, where he finds patients beaten, locked in filthy cells, restrained with chains, and generally abused. Despite warnings that unchained patients will become violent, he has 49 of them released from their chains May 24 and has no trouble with any of them (see 1795).
Surgeon John Hunter dies at London October 16 at age 65, having been made surgeon general to the British Army in 1789. The government will buy his papers and specimens in 1799.
An epidemic of yellow fever kills 4,044 at Philadelphia in the worst health disaster ever to befall an American city. Believed by many to have been brought to the capital by a shipload of refugees from Santo Domingo (the connection between the Aedes aegypti mosquito and yellow fever will not be understood for more than a century), the fever strikes nearly all of the 24,000 inhabitants who do not flee, and it kills one in every six despite homemade preventives that include cloth masks soaked in garlic juice, vinegar, or camphor; the victims turn yellow, run high fevers, hiccup, and vomit blood. Physican Benjamin Rush, now 47, believes the disease to be of local origin, says it is no more serious than a cold, and works round the clock to bleed more than 100 patients per day; he recruits free blacks who have not fled the city, trains them in the use of mercury, jalap, and bloodletting, and has them bleed and purge patients throughout Philadelphia even after his own sister dies following such treatment. The epidemic does not abate until autumn, when cold weather kills the mosquitoes, and when the College of Physicians publishes a report in November which concludes that the fever was imported, Rush resigns from the college that he helped to establish as a youth in 1765.
English-born Philadelphia teacher William Cobbett, 30, excoriates Benjamin Rush. "The times are ominous indeed/ When quack to quack cries purge and bleed," he writes, and he lampoons Rush as "the Pennsylvania Hippocrates" (see 1799; communications, 1794).
François-Joachim Cardinal de Bernis dies at Rome November 1 at age 77 while serving as French envoy to the Vatican. France abolishes worship of God November 10. A Cult of Reason is founded by Commune of Paris leaders Jacques René Hébert, 38; Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, 30; and Jean Baptiste du Val-de-Grace, 38, baron de Cloots. All will be guillotined next year.
Samuel Slater starts a Sunday school to teach factory children simple writing and arithmetic.
Williams College is founded at Williamstown, Massachusetts, at which French is accepted for entrance in lieu of the classics.
Hamilton College is founded near Utica, New York, under the name Oneida Academy. The founder is Samuel Kirkland, 52, a missionary to the Iroquois who was influential in obtaining a declaration of neutrality from the Six Nations at the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775. He names Alexander Hamilton as first trustee and the college will take Hamilton's name when it receives a charter in 1812.
France makes education compulsory beginning at age 6.
The semaphore developed by French engineer Claude Chappe, 30, with support from his brother Ignace (Urbain Jean), 33, is a visual telegraph system that was shown to the Legislative Assembly May 2 of last year and given official approval (see Nollet, 1746). The system employs a vertical wooden post that is interlinked to two lateral arms; the sender and receiver have copies of a 92-page, each page containing 92 words, and by changing the positions of the two arms a sender needs only two signals (for the page of the book and the number of the word) to transmit any of nearly 8,500 words. The two men achieve their first success transmitting messages from hill to hill between Paris and Lille and will see their system adopted rapidly throughout the country (see Ronalds, 1823; Henry, 1831).
Nonfiction: An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness by English philosopher William Godwin, 37, restates the political tenets of the Enlightenment, proposes small, self-sustaining communities in place of conventional government (which can use its power to manipulate society to corrupt and evil ends), and begins to develop a system of philosophical anarchy; Outlines of Moral Philosophy by Dugald Stewart; Advice to the Privileged Orders by Redding-born Connecticut Wit Joel Barlow, 39, is published at London as a reply to Edmund Burke's tract on the French Revolution and wins Barlow French citizenship; Réflexions sur le procès de la reine by Mme. de Staël, who has fled to the Necker family estate at Coppet on Lake Geneva to escape the Reign of Terror and written her Réflexions in the vain hope of saving Marie Antoinette.
Historian William Robertson dies at Edinburgh June 11 at age 71.
Poetry: Geschichte des Dreissigjahrigen Kreiges by Friedrich von Schiller is published at Jena, where Schiller has been professor of history since 1789; "America, A Prophecy" by William Blake, whose illustrated verse expresses the poet's utopian vision that the American and French revolutions are upheavals of the sort promised by Judeo-Christian Apocalyptic tradition, pitting liberty against tyranny.
Painting: The Death of Marat by Jacques Louis David, now 45, who has become an associate of Robespierre and helps abolish the Academy. Painting at Rest, Little Girls at a Crossroads, and Concealed Love by French painter Jeanne Philiberte Ledoux, 26; The Red Cross Knight by John Singleton Copley. Francesco Guardi dies at Venice January 1 at age 80.
The Louvre Palace that was begun at Paris in 1564 and remains incomplete opens to the public November 8 as an art museum (see 1624).
Playwright Carlo Goldoni dies in poverty at Paris February 6 at age 85.
Massachusetts repeals its Puritanical anti-theater laws after a fight led by Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton and her husband, Perez.
A Royal Navy fleet puts in at Naples, where the ambassador's wife, Lady Hamilton (née Emma Lyon), now 32, is introduced to naval officer Horatio Nelson, 34. She becomes Nelson's mistress (see 1800; politics [Corsica], 1794; Opera, 1794).
France's Convention proclaims a new Revolutionary Calendar with 12 30-day months beginning with the Year One of the revolution (September 22, 1792). The year is to begin with the autumnal equinox; the new months are Vendemiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire, Nivose, Pluviose, Ventose, Germinal, Floreal, Prairial, Messidor, Thermidor, and Fructidor; every tenth day is a holiday, and there are five sans culottides (intercalary) days. This new 100-part calendar has almost no admirers, and the government will give it up beginning April 7 (18 Germinal), 1795, but it will remain official until the beginning of 1806.
Fashionable young Parisian women go about in December with their bodies draped only in sheer gauze, adopting a fashion that critics say displays "insolent luxury amidst public wretchedness." Wearing blonde wigs and followed by their bedazzled young male "handkerchief bearers," the "Incredible Women" ("Les Incroyables") wear fans at their belts and purses at their breasts to provide some concealment but are otherwise barely clothed as they brave the cold.
Lansdown Crescent is completed at Bath to create a spectacular new English townscape.
President Washington lays the cornerstone of the Capitol building at Washington, D.C., September 18. A Georgian design by British Virgin Islands-born architect and inventor William Thornton, 34, won a competition last year; even though it was submitted months after the competition was closed, it was considered superior to all the others (see 1794).
U.S. farmers export grain and other foodstuffs to Britain and the Continent as the European war booms demand (see 1804; 1806).
The outbreak of war between Britain and France February 1 halts British imports of French grain. Since domestic output is barely sufficient to meet a growing demand, food shortages soon develop. Parliament establishes a Board of Agriculture to make "the principles of agriculture better known" and increase domestic food production.
French revolutionists turn the Tuileries gardens at Paris into a potato field. A French ordinance forbids consumption of more than one pound of meat per week on pain of death.
Indigo-cultivation pioneer Eliza Pinckney dies of cancer at Philadelphia May 26 at age 71. President Washington serves as a pallbearer at his own request.
Captain William Bligh sails into Jamaica's Port Royal Harbor with his ship H.M.S. Providence so loaded with breadfruit saplings that natives call it "the ship that have the bush" (see 1792). His men plant breadfruit in St. Vincent as well as in Jamaica, and they also plant seedlings of Blighia sapida, whose fruit (ackee) will become a West Indian food staple.
Australian pioneer John Macarthur, 25, receives a large grant of land near Parramatta and names it Elizabeth Farm. He arrived with his wife, Elizabeth (née Veale), then 23, in New South Wales 4 years ago with the second British fleet as a lieutenant with the Corps in 1789 and attained power as corps paymaster and inspector of public works. Probably the first woman in New Holland (Australia) with any education, Elizabeth will have seven surviving children, manage her husband's complex business ventures in his frequent absences from the colony, and introduce merino sheep, conducting successful breeding experiments that will lay the foundation for Australia's wool industry (see politics, 1808).
Berlin chemist Franz Karl Achard, 40, reveals a process for obtaining sugar from beets (see 1799; Marggraf, 1747; Delessert, 1810).
A chinoiserie "Willow" patterned blue and white porcelain tableware designed by Thomas Minton, 27, is introduced at Caughley, Shropshire. Minton's son Herbert, born this year, will take over after Thomas's death in 1836, having successfully produced designs for other potteries, and will continue until his own death in 1858.
French chefs accompanying their aristocratic employers in their flight from the revolution's Reign of Terror introduce the tall white toque to Britain along with French cooking, but master chefs continue to wear the short cap of black cloth originally worn to catch soot that fell from chimneys as they operated spits turning on hearth ovens (the short cap has also been useful when carrying platters down corridors to the dining room). Only the chief cook in a kitchen is entitled to wear the black cap.
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