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"Right," "Center," and "Left" political designations have their origin as France's Council of 500 meets in the palace of Louis XIV's illegitimate daughter Louise Françoise de Bourbon. The palace's "grand apartments" assembly hall is semicircular, and the representatives soon develop the habit of seating themselves with the most revolutionary on the left, the most reactionary on the right.
General Bonaparte occupies Rome in February, proclaims a Roman republic, and takes Pope Pius VI prisoner (see religion, 1799). French troops at Rome mutiny, General Masséna is recalled, and former Polish Army general Jan Dabrowski, now 42, enters Rome May 3, having obtained permission from the Directory 2 years ago to form a Polish legion in Italy.
The Battle of Frauenbrün March 3 ends in victory for the French over a Swiss force that includes 280 women under the leadership of Martha Glar, 64, who is killed along with the men in her family, her two daughters, three granddaughters (the youngest is only 10), and 154 other women. Survivors carry the wounded and mutilated from the field.
General Bonaparte assembles an army of England at Boulogne, but while the English await an invasion he sails from Toulon May 19 with 13 ships of the line, 18 frigates, some smaller vessels, and nearly 400 transports carrying some 34,000 troops and a large corps of scientists and engineers. Determined to cut Britain's overland trade route to India, Bonaparte takes Malta without resistance June 12, lands in Egypt July 1 after a rough 6-week passage, and captures Alexandria July 2 (once a great city of some 600,000, it has become a fishing village with a population of about 7,000).
The Battle of the Pyramids in a melon patch on the west bank of the Nile within sight of the pyramids July 21 gives a 25,000-man French army an easy victory over Murad Bey, who has about 40 cannon but whose 40,000-man army includes a crack 6,000-man medieval Mameluke cavalry force armed only with lances, rifles, and swords. Telling his men, "Soldiers, 40 centuries are looking down on you," General Bonaparte arranges his army in five divisional squares, each with six ranks of infantry on all four sides to protect the cavalry and transport at its center; supported by 30 cannon and able to move in any direction, the squares repulse the undisciplined mass charges by the Egyptians, who in about 1 hour of combat sustain 4,000 to 6,000 casualties, many of whom are driven into the Nile and drown while a larger Egyptian army under the command of Ibrahim Bey looks on from the east bank of the river. That force disperses into the desert after witnessing the defeat of the Mamelukes, who have controlled Egypt since the 13th century but whose power is now ended. French casualties total about 300; Cairo falls to Bonaparte July 22 (see 1799).
The Battle of the Nile August 1 destroys much of the French fleet in Abukir Bay east of Alexandria, cuts off Bonaparte and his men from their homeland, and dashes any hopes the French may have had of gaining India and Ceylon. General Bonaparte has given the 45-year-old Vice-Admiral François Paul Brueys d'Aigalliers, compte de Brueys, command of the fleet, whose 120-gun flagship L'Orient requires 30 feet depth in calm water and cannot anchor in Alexandria Harbor. Admiral Horatio Nelson, now 39, has sighted the French in early afternoon, Brueys prepares for a battle he expects to come the following day, but although Nelson has no charts or pilots to help him navigate the unfamiliar waters of the shallow bay he sends H.M.S. Goliath (74 guns) inside the French line as it gets dark, has his captains hoist identifying lanterns to keep them from firing at each other, and dispatches H.M.S. Zealous, Orion, Theseus, and Audacious in Goliath's wake. Some of the Royal Navy vessels slip in between the French ships and fire on the enemy from offshore, catching them off guard with their guns pointed out to sea; Nelson comes up on the outside in his 74-gun flagship H.M.S. Vanguard with support from Minotaur and Defence, and overwhelms the five old French vessels. H.M.S. Bellerophon opens fire in the dark on L'Orient, dismasts her, and leaves Brueys with two broken legs; he remains on his quarterdeck and is killed by a cannonball just before his ship explodes, killing all but 70 of her 1,010 men after a combined attack from several of Nelson's ships. Two of the 13 French ships escape. French losses total 1,700 killed, 1,500 wounded, 3,000 taken prisoner; British losses come to about 218 dead, perhaps 200 wounded, and although Nelson sustains a head wound it turns out to be minor. "Victory is not a name strong enough for such a scene," he says; news of his brilliant victory reaches Naples (where the people go wild with joy), and swift couriers speed the news northward to the Papal States, Florence, Venice, Vienna, and (after 2 months and a day) London. The hero of the battle is made Baron Nelson of the Nile November 6; Lloyd's members subscribe £38,000 to the Patriotic Fund for the relief of widows and orphans.
General Bonaparte orders that medals be struck at Paris to make it appear that he has gained a great victory in Egypt, but Cairo has a bloody uprising in October as Muslims rise against their infidel occupation forces (Bonaparte had announced that he and his men were converting to Islam, but the men balked at being circumcised and giving up alcohol). Bonaparte tries to appease the mob by telling them they have been freed of Mameluke rule, but thousands of Egyptians rampage through the city, some 300 Frenchmen are killed, and the insurgency ends only when the French train their cannon on the El Azhar mosque (see 1799).
French forces in Italy capture Naples despite the truce signed in 1796; Ferdinand IV flees to Palermo aboard Horatio Nelson's ship, which nearly founders in a storm while a ship under the command of Naples-born admiral Francesco Caracciolo, 46, duca di Brienza, rides out the storm without trouble. Caracciolo fought with the Royal Navy against the Americans in their War of Independence and served under Nelson at Toulon 5 years ago (see 1799).
Britain's Irish militia seize the leaders of the United Irishmen along with their papers in March (see 1796). Roman Catholics seeking parliamentary reform and complete Catholic emancipation obtain French assistance for a rebellion fueled in large part by agrarian discontent, but the French delay sending arms and troops, British agents seize many of the conspirators in May, Lord Edward Fitzgerald is arrested at Dublin May 19 after a struggle in which he is shot in the arm, his comrades rise against the British May 23 but are suppressed, Lord Edward dies of his wounds in a London prison June 4 at age 34, radical nationalist lawyer Daniel O'Connell, 23, has allied himself with the United Irishmen and hides out in Kerry to avoid arrest, but he opposes the insurrection. The Battle of Vinegar Hill June 21 breaks resistance to British rule (vinegar is an English homonym for a Gaelic word meaning "Hill of the wood of the berries"). The earl of Camden resigns as lieutenant governor after 3 years in that post. Lieut. Gen. Gerard Lake, 54, savagely disarmed the north last year, now defeats the rebels and enters Wexford, which the United Irishmen have held for a month. A French force sent by the Directory at Paris at the urging of T. W. Tone lands August 22, defeats several British contingents, but surrenders to General Cornwallis September 15 at Ballynamuck in Connaught. Tone's brother is captured and hanged, Tone himself is taken at sea October 12 and sentenced to death, but he slits his throat with his penknife and dies November 19. James Napper Tandy is taken but released upon the intercession of General Bonaparte and will be remembered as the hero in "The Wearing of the Green" (see legislative union, 1800)
China's former emperor Qianlong (Chien-lung) dies at Beijing (Peking) February 7 at age 87, having retained control of the nation's affairs since abdicating to his son 2 years ago. The new emperor Jiaqing (Chia-ching) promptly arrests his handsome, affable, and witty brother-in-law He Shen (Ho-shen), who used his influence on Qianlong to obtain governmental positions and has prolonged hostilities against the White Lotus Rebellion in order that he and his confederates could embezzle money intended for the war effort. Jiaqing confiscates He Shen's loot (by some accounts at least 60 million ounces of silver, gold, and precious stones, 70,000 furs, and a gold table service of 4,288 pieces), and claps him in prison (see 1799). It will take the new emperor another 5 years to suppress the rebellion, and his efforts to restore the imperial treasury's finances will meet with only limited success as he tries to hold down court expenses rather than reduce official corruption.
British forces in Central America defeat the final Spanish attempts to drive them out of what later will be Belize and establish what becomes in effect the colony of British Honduras (see 1836). Spain and Britain have vied for more than a century to control the swampy and mountainous 8,867-square-mile Caribbean coastal territory, whose chief value is its logwood and mahogany resource.
President Adams appoints Washington, D.C., banker Benjamin Stoddert first secretary of the navy as an undeclared naval war with France takes its toll of U.S. commercial shipping (see 1794; Constitution, 1797). Having helped the Americans win their independence from Britain, the French feel betrayed because the Americans have not supported them in their war against the British; they have begun seizing U.S. ships on the high seas, and although the U.S. frigate Constellation takes the French ship l'Insurgente she is knocked to pieces by La Vengance. Stoddert drafts a bill in July that provides for the organization of a U.S. Marine Corps; now 47, he will add some 50 vessels to the U.S. Navy in the next 2 years (see 1803).
The Alien Acts empower President Adams to order any alien from the country and imprison any alien in time of war. Approved by Congress June 25 and July 6, respectively, the Naturalization Act requires a 14-year waiting period before a foreign-born resident can become a citizen and the Alien Friends Act allows the president to deport anyone born abroad and considered dangerous. Aimed at Republicans from France and Ireland, the acts force French aliens to flee the country at a time when war looms with France; Thomas Jefferson opposes the legislation and drafts Kentucky Resolutions that declare acts of Congress "void and of no force" when Congress "assumes undelegated powers." The governor of Kentucky approves Jefferson's resolutions November 16, Virginia legislator John Taylor gives strong backing to the Jefferson resolutions, James Madison drafts similar resolutions, and the governor of Virginia approves them December 24.
Former Supreme Court justice James Wilson dies at Edenton, North Carolina, August 21 at age 55, having lost his wealth in land speculations.
Georgia forbids further importation of slaves (see 1808; South Carolina, 1803).
Navigator George Vancouver dies at Richmond, Surrey, May 10 at age 40. His Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and round the World is published in three volumes with an atlas of maps and plates.
Stonington, Connecticut, sea captain and sealer Edmund Fanning, 28, discovers an island in the Marquesas June 11 that will bear his name. As skipper of the 93-ton ship Betsey, he has put out from New York carrying only some trinkets to trade with the natives for sandalwood, tortoiseshell, and the like, rounded Cape Horn, secured a full load of sealskins near Juan Fernandez, and rescued a missionary. In the next 4 days he discovers three more islands about 2,000 miles due south of the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). He goes on to Guangzhong (Canton), sells his cargo for $120,467, buys silk, tea, and other goods, and returns to New York via the Cape of Good Hope, receiving more than $15,000 from the ship's owners (who have laid out only $7,867 and make a net profit of $53,118).
New York landowner Lewis Morris dies at his Morrisania estate January 22 at age 71, having signed the Declaration of Independence and suffered British depredations as a result.
Congress levies a federal property tax to finance expansion of the army and navy in order to engage in an undeclared war with France (see Fries's Rebellion, 1799).
Steamboat pioneer John Fitch dies at Bardstown, Kentucky, July 2 at age 55, having failed to obtain financing for his project.
Eli Whitney pioneers the "American system" of mass production with jigs—metal patterns that guide machine tools to make exact replicas of any part—that will doom the handicraft methods of cottage industry and have an effect on American society as profound as that of the cotton gin (see 1792). Whitney has made little from his cotton gin, but he devises a method for producing firearms from interchangeable parts and obtains a $134,000 U.S. Army contract to deliver 10,000 muskets by September 30, 1800 (see 1801).
The slide-rest lathe patented December 14 by mechanical engineer David Wilkinson for cutting screw threads will prove immensely important to the fledgling U.S. machine-tool industry (see slide-rest, 1794; Maudslay's screw-cutting lathe, 1810).
Swiss artisan Pierre Louis Guinand, 50, patents a new way to make optical glass. He has found that flawless disks as large as 15 centimeters (six inches) in diamter can be cast from flint glass if the flint is stirred as it cools; his stirring process will be the basis of a great German optical industry and lead to improved telescopes.
Count Rumford establishes the first clear relationship between mechanical work and heat. Having studied the rise in temperature that accompanied the boring of a cannon, he concludes that the process of boring accounts for the heat produced.
French chemist Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin, 35, isolates chromium from lead ore. A peasant's son who found work as a laboratory assistant after working in an apothecary shop but had to leave France for a year to escape the Reign of Terror, he has been assistant professor at the Ecole Centrale des Travaux Publiques and has detected the chromium in lead ore from Siberia; it will find wide use in electroplating steel. Vauquelin also identifies beryllium in beryl and emerald gemstones.
Tableau Elementaire de l'Histoire Naturelle des animaux by French naturalist George Leopold Chrétien Frederic Dagobert, 29, Baron Cuvier, founds the science of comparative anatomy (see 1799).
Anatomist Aloisio Galvani dies at his native Bologna December 4 at age 61; naturalist and traveler Thomas Pennant at his Downing estate in his native Holywell December 16 at age 72.
"Inquiry into the Cause and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae" by Edward Jenner announces his discovery of vaccination, a much safer means of protection against smallpox than inoculation (see 1796). To counter widespread opposition to inoculation with an animal disease (he gives cowpox the name Variola vaccinae), Jenner shows that lymph from cowpox pustules on human skin is just as effective as lymph from infected cattle (the word vaccination comes from the Latin vacca for cow) (see Waterhouse, 1799).
A typhus epidemic kills thousands of Britons as starvation makes the country vulnerable to disease.
The U.S. Public Health Service has its beginnings in a bill signed into law by President Adams July 16 to provide medical relief to merchant seamen, who travel widely, often become ill at sea, and cannot find adequate health care in the port cities they visit. The nation relies on healthy seamen for trade and security, and since they come from different states their well-being is a federal responsibility; the government will deduct 20¢ per month from seamen's wages (one of the first direct taxes levied by the federal government and the first U.S. medical insurance program) to fund services at existing facilities in the Marine Hospital Service (MHS) and build new ones (see Surgeon General, 1870).
Practical Education by English writer Maria Edgeworth, 32, and her father Richard, 54, is based on recorded conversations of children with their elders to illustrate a child's chain of reasoning.
The Sedition Act passed by Congress July 14 suppresses editorial criticism of the U.S. president and his administration. The new law punishes any "conspiracy" to impede federal law with 5 years' imprisonment and any utterance or writing found to be contemptuous of the government, Congress, or the president with 2 years' imprisonment. Thomas Jefferson opposes the measure, just as he opposes the Alien Acts to which the new law is linked, but although it is explicitly written by the Federalist lawmakers to expire March 3, 1801, and has clearly been motivated by politics, it is used to prosecute the late Benjamin Franklin's grandson B. F. Bache, who edits the Philadelphia Aurora; Irish-born editor John Daly Burk, who puts out the New York journal Time Price; and Republican congressman Matthew Lyon for an article that he publishes in the Vermont Journal. Federal authorities seize 24 men, most of them editors who have been critical of President Adams; 10 are found guilty of sedition and sent to prison, Thomas Jefferson himself is confined to Monticello.
Paper making gains impetus with the invention of a machine that makes it possible to produce paper from wood pulp in continuous rolls. The inventor is Louis Robert, a clerk employed in France's Essonne paper mills, but the machine will be generally called the Fourdrinier machine after two English brothers who will introduce it in Britain (see 1807).
Nonfiction: Observations on the Zoonomia of Erasmus Darwin by Scottish-born metaphysician Thomas Brown, 20, who accepts many of the "common sense" ideas of the late Thomas Reid; Alcuin: A Dialogue on the Rights of Women by Philadelphia writer Charles Brockden Brown, 27. The first American professional writer, Brown has been influenced by the ideas of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft in England.
Fiction: Wieland, or The Transformation by Charles Brockden Brown, whose Gothic novel gains its author wide popularity; Juliette by the marquis de Sade, whose comte de Belmor says, "Our so-called chivalry, which consists in absurdly venerating an object intended to serve our needs, derives from the fear of witches that once plagued our ignorant ancestors. Their terror was transmuted first into respect, then into worship; thus gallantry was miraculously born from the womb of ignorant superstition. But such respect is fundamentally unnatural, since Nature nowhere gives a single instance of it. The natural inferiority of women to men is universally evident, and nothing intrinsic to the female sex naturally inspires respect."
Poetry: Lyrical Ballads by English poets William Wordsworth, 28, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 25, whose distinctive ballads use the language actually spoken by people and thus rebel against neoclassical forms. Prevented by the Napoleonic wars from marrying a young woman of Blois who has born his child, Wordsworth lives with his sister Dorothy, 27, on a legacy of £900 received in 1795 and will spend the winter with her in Germany. The meditative poem in blank verse, "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798," included in the Lyrical Ballads, demonstrates Wordsworth's conviction that poetry should express the moral relationship between man and nature. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Coleridge contains the lines, "Water, water everywhere,/ And all the boards did shrink;/ Water, water everywhere,/ Nor any drop to drink" (II, ix); "The Battle of Blenheim" by Robert Southey, whose wife, Edith, is the sister of Coleridge's wife, Sarah: "'And everybody praised the Duke/ Who this great fight did win.'/ 'But what good came of it at last?'/ Quoth little Peterkin./ 'Why, that I cannot tell,' said he/ 'But 'twas a famous victory'" (see 1704).
Painting: Love and Psyche by Baron Gerard; Caspar Melchor de Jovellanos and Ferdinand Guillemardet by Francisco de Goya. Painter-archaeologist-art dealer Gavin Hamilton dies at Rome January 4 at age 74, having excavated ancient archaeological sites near Rome and sold artifacts to British collectors.
Lithography is invented by Bavarian printer Aloys Senefelder, 25, who has developed a technique based on the incompatibility of grease and water. The Senefelder process permits ink from a grease base to be deposited on grease-treated printing areas, while dampened areas that are not to be printed reject the ink. He produces words or pictures on a flat stone covered with a greasy substance from which ink impressions are taken, and his process makes it possible for the first time to reproduce pictures in large numbers at low cost (see color, 1826).
Theater: Speed the Plough by English playwright Thomas Morton, 34. "Be quiet, wull ye [says farmer Ashfield]. Always ding, dinging Dame Grundy into my ears—What will Mrs. Grundy say? What will Mrs. Grundy think?" Wallenstein's Camp (Wallensteins Lager) by Friedrich von Schiller 10/12 at Weimar's Hoftheater.
Opera: Leonore, ou l'amour conjugal 2/19 at the Théâtre Feydeau, Paris, with an overture by Ludwig van Beethoven (Leonore No. 2), additional music by Pierre Gaveaux, libretto by Jean Nicolas Bouilly, 34.
First performances: Concerto No. 1 in C major for Pianoforte and Orchestra by Ludwig van Beethoven at Prague; The Creation Mass by Joseph Haydn 4/29 at Vienna; Mass in D minor (Nelson Mass) by Haydn 9/15 at the court of Prince Nicolaus II Esterházy, with Haydn playing the organ solo. He has written the work without knowing of Nelson's victory at Abukir, but people will soon begin calling it the Nelson Missa.
The advent of smallpox vaccinations begins to decrease demand for "beauty patches": star-, crescent-, moon-, and heart-shaped black silk or velvet patches worn as comouflage since the last century, sometimes a dozen at a time, by pock-marked women. The patches have been used as signals, one on her right cheek meaning that a woman is married, on her left that she is betrothed, near her mouth that she is willing to flirt, at the corner of her eye that she is in the grip of a smoldering passion.
London hatter John Hetherington makes the first top hat of silk shag, or plush, thus reducing demand for American beaver pelts.
The replacement of beaver hats with silk hats in the next half century will produce a rise in U.S. and Canadian beaver populations (see Marsh, 1864).
A paper submitted to New York's Common Council in June under the title "Memoir on the Utility and Means of Furnishing the City with Water From the River Bronx" calls for construction of dams on the Bronx and Harlem rivers with a series of pumps and pipes to divert a flow of water into a reservoir at a high point in the hilly north end of Manhattan Island. Physician-scientist-engineer Joseph Browne, a brother-in-law of State Assemblyman Aaron Burr, has written the "memoir," which proposes a $200,000 system to be privately operated. Some opponents say that the Collect, a spring-fed pond in the upper part of the city, could be cleared of dead animals and putrid garbage to make it a source of pure and wholesome water, others that the $200,000 cost estimate is far too low. A special committee reports to the Council in December, rejecting the idea of private ownership (see commerce 1799).
Britain has a poor crop year. Wheat prices climb to £12 per cwt and there is widespread hunger.
The Stairs pear originated in 1770 is planted in a Massachusetts orchard but will be forgotten (see Bartlett, 1817).
A pasta factory opened by a Frenchman at Philadelphia finds a ready market, but upper-class Americans will continue to import pasta from Sicily. The semolina flour needed for high-quality pasta is made from durum wheat, which will not be grown in America until the 20th century.
A British commission investigating Scotch whisky hears evidence that distilling "spreads itself over the whole face of the country, and in every island from the Orkneys to Jura . . . under such circumstances that it is impossible to take account of its operations; it is literally to search for revenue in the woods and around the mountains" (see 1784; 1814).
"Essay on the Principles of Population" by English parson Thomas R. (Robert) Malthus, 32, expounds the thesis that population increases in geometrical, or exponential, progression (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.), while food production ("subsistence") increases only in arithmetical progression (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc.). "The histories of mankind that we possess are histories only of the higher classes," Malthus writes. Resting his case on the history of the American colonies in this century, he poses the inevitability of a world food crisis and attacks proposals to reform England's Poor Law (see 1795). "A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison with the second," says Malthus, but he opposes the use of "improper arts," meaning contraception (see 1805; Townsend, 1785; Townsend, 1791).
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