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The Italian republic created January 26 from the former Cisalpine Republic is headed by General Napoleon Bonaparte as president (see 1797). Its capital is Milan; it annexes Piedmont September 21, and annexes Parma and Piacenza in October (see Kingdom of Italy, 1805).
The Treaty of Amiens March 27 brings a temporary end to hostilities among Europe's warring powers. Spain yields Trinidad to Britain but secures Minorca, the Batavian republic cedes Ceylon to Britain, the British give up all their other conquests to France and her allies, but hostilities soon begin again.
The Legion of Honor (Légion d'Honneur) created by Bonaparte May 19 gives him a tool comparable to the orders of knighthood so that he may avoid criticism of his government by keeping his courtiers busy with matters of etiquette and protocol.
The French Tribunat chosen by the Senate makes Bonaparte first consul for life August 2 and gives him the right to name his successor. Tribunat member Lazare Carnot has voted against the measure, having opposed also the institution of the Légion d'Honneur, but he will retain his seat on the Tribunat until it is dissolved in 1807.
The Islamic holy city of Mecca falls to Wahhabi forces while other matters preoccupy the attention of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II (see 1811; Karbala, 1801).
The Nguyen dynasty that will reign in Vietnam until 1945 comes to power June 1 as Prince Nguyen Anh proclaims himself emperor under the name Gia Long (see 1801). Assisted by his trusted eunuch adviser Le Van Duyet, he himself will reign until his death in 1820, modeling his administration on that of the Qing (Ch'ing, or Manchu) dynasty that has ruled China since 1633.
Maratha military chief Daulat Rao Sindhia vies with Jaswant Rao Hulkar for control of the Maratha confederacy in India (see 1782). Hulkar's forces prevail in October over those of Sindhia and the peshwa of Poona Baji Rao II. Hulkar installs an adopted brother on the peshwa's throne, the peshwa flees to Bassein and appeals for British assistance, and he agrees under terms of the Treaty of Bassain signed December 31 to maintain a British force of six battalions, ceding territory to provide for their upkeep. He agrees also to give up his claims to Surat and Baroda, exclude all other Europeans from his service, and consult with the British before making any foreign policy decisions, but the treaty precipitates a Second Anglo-Maratha War (see 1803).
Bonaparte sends an army of 25,000 under his brother-in-law Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc, 30, to put down the rebellion that began in Hispaniola 8 years ago. Leclerc arrives in January, soon takes possession of all but a small part of Hispaniola, and makes peace with the rebel leaders Henri Christophe, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Pierre Toussaint L'Ouverture. But the rebellion takes on new life at news that Bonaparte has reintroduced slavery in Guadeloupe. Leclerc uses treacherous means in May to capture Toussaint L'Ouverture, whom he sends to France, where the liberator will die in prison April 7 of next year at age 55 (approximate); Leclerc himself dies of yellow fever at Cap-Français November 2, some 22,000 of his men succumb as well, and the survivors will surrender in November of next year (see 1804; human rights, 1803).
Royal Navy admiral Sir Thomas Graves dies on his Devon estate February 9 at age 76, having gained an Irish peerage for action against the French in 1794 despite his action in 1781; Continental Navy commodore Esek Hopkins dies at Providence, Rhode Island, February 26 at age 83; Continental Army general Daniel Morgan at Winchester, Virginia, July 6 at age 66.
The state of Georgia cedes to the U.S. government its claim to the Yazoo territory that figured in the land fraud of 1795 (see 1810).
Newspaper reports that President Jefferson has fathered children by his slave Sally Hemings create a minor scandal at Washington, D.C. Sally and her brother came to live with Jefferson at Paris in 1787, and he gave them temporary freedom (to which they were entitled as long as they were in France). Jefferson loaned money to journalist James Callender in 1800 to libel John Adams, and it is Callender who breaks the news September 2 in the Richmond Recorder, publishing accounts that Jefferson does not deny, although Callender and the Federalist press are less concerned with whether the story is true than they are with using the scandal to weaken Jefferson. Now 30, the light-skinned Hemings is a half sister of Jefferson's late wife, Martha Wayles Skelton, and she will survive until 1836. Other scandal mongers have called John Adams insane, but relatively few people read newspapers. It will be nearly 200 years before scientific evidence shows that Hemings did indeed bear at least one child by Jefferson, and meanwhile few people will care whether she did or did not.
President Jefferson writes to his secretary of the treasury Albert Gallatin, "We might hope to see the finances of the Union as clear and intelligible as a merchant's books so that every member of Congress, and every man of any mind in the Union should be able to comprehend them, to investigate abuses, and consequently to control them."
Parliament repeals the British income tax of 1799 following the Peace of Amiens and orders that all documents and records relating to the tax be destroyed in response to public outcry. Parliament will reimpose the tax next year and not let it lapse until 1815 (see 1842).
A Health and Morals of Apprentices Act voted by Parliament forbids cotton mills to hire pauper children under age 9, prohibits their working at night, and limits their work day to 12 hours.
The U.S. frigate Juno founders in a storm off Assateague Island, Virginia, October 28, while en route from Puerto Rico, drowning 425 men, women, and children and carrying down what some records will indicate were 22 tons of silver and 700,000 gold coins.
Merchant and patriot Francis Lewis dies at New York December 31 at age 89, having had his Whitestone home and business destroyed in 1776 by the British, who imprisoned his wife in 1779 (she died within a few months). His support of the Revolution cost him most of his wealth, and he has lived in retirement with his sons' families.
Richard Trevithick and his cousin Andrew Vivian obtain a patent in March on high-pressure engines for stationary and locomotive use (see 1801). The Coalbrookdale Works has built the world's first railway locomotive with a high-pressure boiler for Trevithick, who will produce a second steam carriage next year and drive it through the streets of London, frightening horses and pedestrians alike (see 1804).
The New American Practical Navigator by Salem, Massachusetts, mathematican-astronomer Nathaniel Bowditch, 29, will soon be a second Bible for sea captains. Bowditch has found 8,000 errors in the tables of the standard English work on navigation.
The paddle-wheel tugboat Charlotte Dundas built by Scotsman William Symington is the first successful steamboat (see 1788; 1803).
E. I. du Pont de Nemours has its beginnings in a gunpowder plant built on the Brandywine River by Eleuthère Irènée du Pont, 31, who has signed an agreement April 27 to buy a 95-acre site outside Wilmington, Delaware. Having studied chemistry under the late Antoine Lavoisier when the latter headed France's powder works, du Pont saw his father's large Paris printing house shut down by the Jacobins in 1797, left for America in September 1799 aboard the American Eagle, and arrived with his father and brothers at Newport, Rhode Island, at the start of 1800. Young Irènée went hunting with a friend outside New York, ran out of powder, bought some more, found it costly and of poor quality, studied U.S. powder making, saw an opportunity, and returned to France for 3 months last year to acquire machinery and plans for a powder-making enterprise. It is funded for the most part by his father, Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, who returns to France, where he will serve a dozen years hence as secretary to the provisional government (see 1799; 1803).
Secretary of State James Madison makes the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office a distinct unit within his department and makes architect-inventor William Thornton its first chief June 1 (see 1790).
English chemist-physicist William Hyde Wollaston, 36, makes the first observation of lines in the spectrum of the sun (see Fraunhofer, 1814).
London manufacturing chemist and pharmacist Luke Howard, 30, delivers a paper "On the Modification of Clouds" in which he introduces the terms cumulus (Latin for heap), stratus (Latin for layer), cirrus (Latin for curl of hair), and nimbus (Latin for rain): "While any of the clouds, except the nimbus, retain their primitive forms, no rain can take place; and it is by observing the change and transitions of cloud form that weather can be predicted." Howard's classification system will gain quick acceptance, and he will be made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1821.
French chemist and physicist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, 24, publishes a law on the expansion of gases (equal volumes of all gases expand equally with the same increase in temperature) that will come to be known as Gay-Lussac's Law; although it will at first be called Charles's Law in honor of Jacques Charles, who came to the same conclusion 15 years ago but did not publish it, it is more elaborate than Charles's discovery. Gay-Lussac has studied at the Ecole Polytechnique under Pierre Simon de Laplace, Claude Louis Berthollet, and other scientists who subscribed to the late Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier's ideas of oxygen chemistry (see 1804).
Italian legal scholar Gian Domenico Romagnosi, 41, advances knowledge of electricity with the observation that an electric current flowing through a wire causes a magnetic needle to line up perpendicularly to the wire, but he publishes his work in an obscure newspaper and it is largely ignored (see Oersted, 1819).
Swedish chemist Anders Gustav Ekeberg, 35, at Uppsala discovers the element tantalum. He is partly deaf from an infection in childhood and last year was blinded in one eye by an exploding flask but has continued teaching.
German language scholar Georg Friedrich Grotefend, 27, reports at Göttingen September 2 that he has deciphered some of the wedge-shaped Persian cuneiform inscriptions copied by traveler Carsten Niebuhr at Persepolis in 1765. Having bet some drinking companions that he could find the key to the writing, which date to about the 5th century B.C., he has seen some recurring symbols that apparently signify king and king of kings, connected the names of Darius and Xerxes with the terms of royalty, and found a third symbol that equates with Hystaspes, governor of ancient Parthia and father of Darius I. Nine of the 13 symbols that he deciphers turn out to be correct, and Grotefend pursues the subject (see 1837).
Biologie oder Philosophie de Lebenden Natur by German naturalist Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, 26, introduces the word biology. His six-volume work will be completed in 1822.
French military surgeon Dominique-Jean, Baron Larrey, 36, notes the contagiousness of trachoma and is the first to do so. The eye infection is epidemic in General Bonaparte's armies.
Boston's Board of Health orders vaccination against smallpox (see 1798; Waterhouse, 1800). The board begins to improve the city's hygiene, regulate burials, and impose quarantines.
President Jefferson describes his understanding of the religious clauses in the First Amendment (see Treaty with Tripoli, 1797). Writing in reply to the Danbury Baptist Association (see 1801), he says, "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church and State" (see Supreme Court decision, 1947).
The United States Military Academy is established by act of Congress March 16 as a school for the Corps of Engineers (see 1779). The act authorizes the president to "organize and establish a Corps of Engineers . . . that the said Corps . . . shall be stationed at West Point in the State of New York and shall constitute a Military Academy." The Continental Army depended on foreign engineers during the War of Independence. The academy opens July 4 on a 16,000-acre site 50 miles up the Hudson River from New York City. It is actually the first U.S. engineering school, and the Corps of Engineers will have the responsibility of operating it until 1865 (see 1812; transportation [River and Harbor Act], 1824).
Pestalozzi's Idea of an ABC of Sense Perception (Pestalozzis Idee Eines ABC der Anschaunung) by German philosopher-educator Johann Friedrich Herbart, 26, exposes more people to the ideas expressed last year by Johannes H. Pestalozzi. Herbart will expand on the ideas in his 1806 book Universal Pedagogy (Allgemeine Pädagogik), advocating five formal steps to teaching: 1) preparation (relating new material to past ideas or memories that are relevant); 2) presentation (using concrete objects or actual experience to present new material); 3) association (comparing previous ideas in order to help the pupil assimilate new ideas); 4) generalization (developing the adolescent mind by going beyond the concrete to more abstract ideas); and 5) application (using acquired knowledge in a way that enables the student to make a new idea his or her own Froebel, 1826).
The weekly Political Register begins publication at London under the direction of journalist William Cobbett, who will publish it until his death in 1835. It initially supports the government, but the Treaty of Amiens March 27 draws his displeasure and he calls for a renewal of the war with Bonaparte, saying that commercial interests are determining British foreign policy.
Fiction: Delphine by Mme. de Stäel, whose liberalism enrages General Bonaparte (he will exile her and her lover Benjamin Constant next year to the Necker family estate on Lake Geneva).
Poetry: "Lochiel's Warning" by Thomas Campbell: " 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,/ And coming events cast their shadows before"; Poetry by the Author of Gehir by English poet Walter Savage Landor, 27.
Poet Richard Owen Cambridge dies at Twickenham, outside London, September 17 at age 85.
Painting: Madame Récamier by François Gérard; Phèdre et Hippolyte by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin; Two Young Girls Reading a Letter by Pauline Auzou. Thomas Girtin dies at London November 9 at age 27; George Romney at Kendal, Westmoreland, November 15 at age 67.
Sculpture: Napoleon Bonaparte and The Pugilists by Antonio Canova.
British physician Thomas Wedgwood, 31, produces the world's first photograph. A son of the late potter Josiah Wedgwood, he sensitizes paper with moist silver nitrate to retain an image projected on its surface but can find no way of fixing the image, which quickly fades (see Schulze, 1727; Scheele, 1777). Wedgwood reports to the Royal Society that silver chloride is more sensitive than silver nitrate (see Niepce, 1822).
Theater: Irish comic actress Julia Glover (née Betterton), 23, makes her Drury Lane Theatre debut, thus beginning a notable career. She first appeared onstage at age 10 and was sold by her father in 1798 to Samuel Glover.
Ludwig van Beethoven's Sonata Quasi una Fantasia is published in March at Vienna. It will be called the Moonlight Sonata in midcentury by the music critic Ludwig Rellstab.
Composer-conductor Giuseppe Sarti dies at Berlin July 28 at age 72, having written more than 50 operas as well as liturgical music.
English horse racing at Goodwood is introduced by Charles Lennox, 67, duke of Richmond.
Swiss wax modeler Marie Tussaud (née Gresholtz), 42, takes her collection of wax models to London. Commissioned during the Reign of Terror at Paris 9 years ago to make death masks of famous guillotine victims, Mme. Tussaud used the heads of decapitated bodies. She has recently inherited the wax museum of her uncle, J. C. Curtius, and her collection includes such notables as Benjamin Franklin, Horatio Nelson, and Voltaire; she will settle it in Baker Street in 1833 and connect it with a room containing relics of criminals and instruments of torture (see 1845).
Arlington House is completed on a Virginia hill across the Potomac from the U.S. capital to provide a residence for Martha Washington's grandson George Washington Parke Custis, 21. The house will later be the home of Custis's son-in-law Robert E. Lee.
The nitrogen potential of guano is studied by Alexander von Humboldt, who has crossed the Cordilleras to Quito, descended to Callao, and found great deposits of guano concentrated on islands off the west coast of South America (see 1800). The guano represents droppings from seabirds over the course of thousands of years, nitrates from guano can be used both for fertilizer and explosives, and Peru will export guano to Europe in large quantities primarily on the basis of Humboldt's reports (see 1809).
Soybeans are introduced into the United States via England but will not be widely grown in either country for more than a century (see 1920).
The world's first beet sugar factory goes into production but soon runs deep in debt (see 1799; 1801). A disciple of Franz Karl Achard is no more successful with a factory that he sets up at Krayn, also in Silesia, but he does succeed in growing the white Silesian beet that is higher in sugar content and will be the basis of all future sugar-beet strains (see 1808).
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