1804
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A royalist conspiracy against France's first consul General Bonaparte comes to light in February. One conspirator, General Moreau, now 41, escapes to America (he settles in New Jersey), but Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Condé, 32, duc d'Enghien, is seized in Baden by gendarmes who have stealthily crossed the Rhine and bring him to the castle of Vincennes outside Paris; condemned by a commission acting under Bonaparte's orders without regard to law, he is shot at Vincennes the night of March 20, ending any hope of a reconciliation between Bonaparte and the royal house of Bourbon. "It is worse than a crime; it is a blunder," says political leader Antoine Jacques Claude Joseph, Comte Boulay de la Meurthe, 42, at news of the duc d'Enghien's execution; François René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, was appointed secretary to the French embassy at Rome last year but resigns following Enghien's execution. General Charles Pichegru, now 43, is found strangled in his cell at the Temple prison April 5; his royalist confederate Georges Cadoudal, 33, is guillotined June 5.
The Code Napoleon (Code civil des Françaises) drafted by Boulay de la Meurthe and others and promulgated March 21 (30 Ventose XII) goes into force immediately throughout France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Palatinate, those parts of Rhenish Prussia and Hesse-Darmstadt situated on the left bank of the Rhine, the territory of Geneva, Savoy, Piedmont, and the duchies of Parma and Piacenza. It is a code of civil laws common to the whole realm as promised in the constitution of 1791 and will have great influence on the legal codes of most European countries and even of countries as far distant as Japan (after 1870). Combining Roman law with some of the radical reforms brought by the French Revolution with respect to conditions affecting the individual, tenure of property, order of inheritance, mortgages, contracts, and the like, it removes feudal privileges and will make French law as much admired as French culture.
Bonaparte is proclaimed emperor May 18 by the French senate and tribunate, a national plebiscite ratifies his elevation by a vote of 3.6 million to 2,569, and Pope Pius VII consecrates the emperor Napoleon December 2 at Paris in a ceremony imitative of Pepin III's coronation in 754 and Charlemagne's in 800. The emperor's mother Marie Letizia (née Romolino), 55, is given special status in May as "Madame Mère de l'Empereur." Of her 12 children, seven survived infancy; Napoleon was her fourth (see 1814).
The Holy Roman Emperor Franz II assumes the title Emperor Franz I of Austria, which he will hold until his death in 1835. The title gives some semblance of unity to the widely extended German, Hungarian, Bohemian, Austrian, and Italian dominions that he rules with his wife (and first cousin), Maria Theresa, daughter of Ferdinand IV, king of Naples.
Prussia's Friedrich Wilhelm III summons nobleman (Heinrich Friedrich) Karl Stein, 47, to Berlin October 27 and makes him economic minister (minister for manufactures and excise) (see 1807).
Russia goes to war with Persia over sovereignty in Georgia in the Caucasus, whose ruler has switched allegiance to Russia. The Islamic mystical Sufi brotherhood leader Ghazi Muhammad becomes involved in the conflict and turns it into a holy war that will continue until 1813.
Britain's weak Addington government falls in May and William Pitt heads a new cabinet that will hold office until Pitt's death early in 1806.
Spain declares war on Britain as she did in 1796 (see Trafalgar, 1805).
A British frigate attacks a French ship under the command of Louis-Marie, vicomte de Noailles, who left France to escape the Reign of Terror, became a partner in a Philadelphia bank, accepted a command under the vicomte de Rochambeau in Saint-Domingue, defended the Môle Saint-Nicolas, escaped with the garrison to Cuba, and has been heading toward Havana. Noailles is severely wounded after a long naval engagement and dies at sea off Cuba January 9 at age 47.
Maryland-born Philadelphia-raised U.S. Navy lieutenant Stephen Decatur, 25, volunteers to carry out his commander's plan to destroy the frigate U.S.S. Philadelphia that was seized by the Tripolitanians last year and is being refitted in Tripoli Harbor for service as a Mediterranean corsair. The fearless (and impetuous) Decatur sails his ship Intrepid into the harbor February 4 disguised as a merchantman, keeping his crew belowdecks. His pilot speaks fluent Italian, he says his ship is having trouble and asks permission to tie up to the Philadelphia; the ruse succeeds: lying to alongside the Philadelphia, Decatur orders his men to attack and they swarm over the Philadelphia, setting the vessel ablaze and escaping with just one injury. Decatur is promoted to captain, but the Philadelphia's crew remains in captivity. Captain Edward Preble begins a bombardment of Tripoli in August and engages in some running naval skirmishes with the corsairs but is replaced in September by Commodore Samuel Barron (see 1805; Decatur, 1815).
Admiral Adam Duncan, Royal Navy (ret.), dies of a stroke at Cornhill, Berkshire, August 4 at age 72, having gained distinction for his victory at Camperdown in 1797.
The Republic of Haiti is established January 1 in the western part of Hispaniola with a black republican government (see human rights, 1803). Governor general Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaims the entire island of Hispaniola to be independent, using its Arawakan name Haiti, and in September adopts the title emperor, calling himself Jacques I. Port-au-Prince-born French colonial army officer Alexandre Sabès Pétion, now 34, returned with the army 2 years ago and supports the new regime; the son of a rich French colonist and a mulatto woman, he became one of the first officers to rebel against French rule, but he will grow restive when he sees Dessalines confiscate white-owned land, make it illegal for whites to own property (the law will remain in effect for more than a century), have thousands of whites massacred, favor the blacks who constitute 80 percent of the population, discriminate against elite mulattoes, and allow forced labor to continue on the plantations (see 1806).
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton is mortally wounded July 11 at age 49 in a duel at Weehawken, New Jersey, with Vice President Aaron Burr, now 48, who has heard of insults directed at him by Hamilton and reluctantly demanded satisfaction (see 1801). The two men have been law partners and personal friends, Hamilton has very possibly invited the contest with the intent of committing assisted suicide and at the same time ruining the career of his political adversary. He is taken back across the Hudson to Manhattan and dies soon afterward with his liver mangled and a .554-caliber bullet in his spine. Indicted in New York and New Jersey, Burr flees to Philadelphia and proceeds to the South, where he will conspire in the next 3 years with General James Wilkinson, 44, who until 1800 was secretly in the pay of Spain (while also working against them) but will soon be governor of the Louisiana Territory north of the 33rd parallel (see 1807).
The Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution that takes effect September 25 requires separate electoral ballots for president and vice president to prevent a recurrence of the confusion 4 years ago, when Aaron Burr was nearly elected president, and to provide another means of giving power to smaller states (see 1787). The wordy amendment does not use the term Electoral College but supports those who believe that the 17-state nation is not yet mature enough for direct elections and favor having the House of Representatives choose the chief executive: the college is to meet some weeks after the election with the candidate having "a majority of the whole number of electors appointed" to be declared the winner of the presidency, "and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President" (see 1824).
President Jefferson wins reelection in November with an overwhelming plurality of 162 electoral votes to 14 for Charles C. Pinckney, now 58. Both men come from the slave-holding aristocracy of the South, which owes its majority in the Electoral College to the "three-fifths" rule adopted by the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Radical elements in the Federalist Party have discredited the Federalists who have been able to mount serious campaigns only in Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland.
Revolutionary War general and politician Philip J. Schuyler dies at his native Albany, New York, November 18 at age 71.
Haiti's revolutionists free all slaves and kill all whites who do not flee (many emigrate to Baltimore).
The Code Napoleon regards an accused person as guilty until proven innocent. The tenet will be rejected in Britain and the United States but will remain the law throughout Europe and in many other parts of the world.
London-born surveyor George W. (William) Evans, 24, discovers the Warragamba River in New South Wales. Appointed survyor-general of the colony 2 years ago, he will be dismissed next year, try without success to farm land that he has been granted, win appointment as assistant surveyor at Port Dalrymple in 1809, and go on to make other important discoveries (see 1813).
The Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase territory leaves its winter encampment near St. Louis May 14, crosses the Mississippi, and begins an ascent of the Missouri River, seeking to determine whether the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean are linked by a river system, and in the absence of any such water connection, to pioneer an overland route across the Rocky Mountains. Funded by a congressional appropriation of $2,500, the 25-man Corps of Discovery is headed by President Jefferson's personal secretary Captain Meriwether Lewis, 29, and William Clark, 33, a brother of George Rogers Clark of 1778 Kaskaskia and Vincennes fame. Lewis has been preparing for a year to make the expedition, studying botany, astronomy, and medicine (under Benjamin Rush) at Philadelphia; purchasing scientific instruments, guns, tents, blankets, tobacco, whiskey, and gifts for native tribespeople; recruiting unmarried men; and building a large keelboat. Proceeding upstream at a rate of 10 to 15 miles per day (against a current of five to six miles per hour), the party encounters antelope, coyotes, jackrabbits, and prairie dogs on the treeless plain; fights off clouds of gnats and mosquitoes; lives on stores of flour and salt pork supplemented by fresh bass, perch, and wild game; receives a friendly reception from the Yankton Sioux, Arikara Sioux, and other tribes; but meets up September 25 with the Teton (Lakota) Sioux, who have moved west only in recent years and now control the flow of commerce on the Missouri. The Sioux have fought a bloody battle with the Omaha earlier in the month and try to stop the Corps of Discovery. One of the Lakota chiefs, Black Buffalo, intervenes to prevent bloodshed, and by late October the party has reached the Mandan Villages 1,600 miles up the river (the villages have a population of 4,500, more than St. Louis or Washington, D.C.). Lewis and Clark are invited to build a fort across the river from the villages, the Missouri freezes over December 6, and by mid-month the temperature has plunged to -38° F. and colder (see 1805).
Congress permits 160-acre tracts of U.S. public lands to be sold at auction (see exploration, 1841).
Banker William Bingham dies at his native Philadelphia February 6 at age 51, having acquired vast tracts of land in New England and upstate New York (the town of Chenango will be renamed Binghamton in his memory, although he never visited the area); former French finance minister Jacques Necker dies at Coppet, outside Geneva, April 9 at age 71, having lived on his estates since his retirement in 1790.
Napoleon imposes a new tax on salt at the rate of two centimes per kilo, a duty that will be maintained until 1945 (see 1790). Frenchmen are forbidden to take even a single liter of seawater without permission from the Ministry of Finance. Pans and saltworks become subject to the general taxation laws.
Gas lighting is demonstrated at London's Lyceum Theatre by a German promoter who has anglicized his name. Frederick Albert Winsor (originally Winzer), 41, has seen demonstrations by the French chemist Philippe Lebon, made his own thermolamp, and brought it to England (see Lebon, 1801; British National Light, 1812).
The Woolf high-pressure compound steam engine patented by English engineer Arthur Woolf, 37, has a thermal efficiency of 7.5 percent, nearly double that of the James Watt expansion engine. Originally a carpenter, Woolf became engineer for a London brewery and began experimenting with steam power.
The first steam locomotive to be tried on rails hauls five wagons containing 10 tons of iron and 70 men some 9.5 miles at nearly five miles per hour (see 1802). Richard Trevithick has built the locomotive for use on a tramway at Samuel Homfray's Penydaren Ironworks in South Wales and wins a wager for Homfray February 22 by demonstrating its capacity and power. He will build a similar locomotive next year at Gateshead and will be the first to apply high-pressure steampower to agriculture (see 1808; Blenkinsop, 1812).
Engineer Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot dies at Paris October 2 at age 79, having pioneered the automobile.
The S.S. Little Juliana launched at Hoboken, New Jersey, by Colonel John Stevens and his two sons is a twin-screw steamboat built with some parts brought from England. The vessel fails to achieve commercial success (see 1803; 1808; Fulton, 1807).
Captain John Chester's schooner Reynard lands the first shipment of bananas to arrive at New York. The fruit grows nowhere in the United States and must be imported by sailing ship from Caribbean or Central American ports, but only a handful of such imports will arrive in the next 50 years (see 1830; Baker, 1870).
Chemist-clergyman Joseph Priestley dies at Northumberland, Pennsylvania, February 6 at age 70.
Chemist-physicist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac makes a balloon ascent of 23,000 feet to collect samples of the atmosphere for chemical analyses and to measure the dependence of the Earth's magnetic field on elevation (see 1802). Now 26, Gay-Lussac reaches a height that will not be attained again for another 50 years and proves that air has the same composition at that height as it does on Earth and that the Earth has the same magnetic force; he will travel with explorer Alexander von Humboldt through the German and Italian states in the next 2 years, make measurements of terrestrial magnetic intensity, gain election to the Institut de France in 1806, and come up with some basic new ideas in chemistry (see 1808).
Disquisitiones Arithmeticae by German mathematician Karl F. (Friedrich) Gauss, 27, breaks new ground in the theory of numbers. A child prodigy whose intellect was resented by his father, a common laborer, Gauss presented the fundamental theorem of algebra 6 years ago in his doctoral thesis, "A New Proof That Every Rational Integer Function of One Variable Can Be Resolved into Real Factors of the First or Second Degree."
An Experimental Inquiry into the Nature and Propagation of Heat by Scottish physicist-mathematician John Leslie, 38, breaks new ground. Leslie gave the first modern explanation of capillary action 2 years ago and next year will be elected to the chair of mathematics at the University of Edinburgh.
William Hyde Wollaston discovers palladium in platinum.
Chemical Research on Vegetation (Récherches chimiques sur la végétation) by Swiss chemist and plant physiologist Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure, 36, not only proves the theory advanced by Stephen Hales in 1727 that plants absorb water and carbon dioxide in sunlight and increase in weight but also demonstrates that plants are dependent upon absorption of nitrogen. Saussure has studied under Jean Senebier (see 1800); his work establishes the foundations of phytochemistry (see chlorophyl, 1817).
The Natural History of Cetaceans (Histoire naturelle des cétacés) by Etienne de la Ville-sur-Illon, comte de Lacépède is published at Paris.
Ohio University is founded at Athens, Ohio.
Brown University takes that name. The College of Rhode Island moved to Providence in 1770 after 16 years at Warren.
Nonfiction: Observations on the Nature and Tendency of the Doctrine of Mr. Hume, Concerning the Relation of Cause and Effect by metaphysician Thomas Brown, who adopts some of the late Thomas Reid's common-sense arguments but gives more emphasis to sense perception.
Philosopher Immanuel Kant dies at his native Königsberg February 12 at age 79, never having married (he held women in low regard).
Fiction: St. Clair by Irish novelist Sydney Owenson, 21, who went to work as a governess to support the family after her father, a theatrical manager, encountered financial problems.
Poetry: The Monks of St. Mark's by English poet Thomas Love Peacock, 18.
Painting: Napoleon in the Pesthouse at Jaffa by Antoine Jean Gros; The First Feeling of Coquetry by Pauline Auzou; Baron Graham by John Singleton Copley.
Theater: The Feud of the Schroffensteins (Die Familie Schroffenstein) by German playwright (Bernd Wilhelm) Heinrich von Kleist, 26, 1/9 at Graz's Nationaltheater; Wilhelm Tell by Friedrich von Schiller 3/17 at Weimar's Hoftheater is based on the 15th-century legend of a Swiss hero of the previous century who used his crossbow to shoot an apple placed on the head of his young son by the Austrian tyrant Gessler, bailiff of Uri (see Rossini opera, 1829); Homage to the Arts (Die Huldigung der Künste) by Schiller 11/12 at Weimar's Hoftheater.
L'Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l'art, des moeurs et de la législation by Paris architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux, now 68, proposes an ideal city, "Chaux," that presages functional architecture.
Botanist William Bartram, now 65, declines an invitation from President Jefferson to join the Lewis and Clark expedition, which sights frequent herds of bison (buffalo), estimated to number at least 10 million on the western plains and thought by some to number five times that many (although their actual numbers are probably 20 to 24 million at most).
Ohio farmer Felix Renic, 34, drives a corn-fed herd of cattle across the mountains to Baltimore, losing less than 100 pounds per head and making a sound profit. Many western farmers will follow his example, but there are still food surpluses west of the Alleghenies and shortages on the seaboard.
Rust destroys part of England's wheat crop, bread prices rise, but Parliament imposes prohibitory duties that discourage imports of foreign grain. Naturalist and Royal Society president Sir Joseph Banks, now 61, will identify wheat rust next year, becoming the first to do so, and will also identify barberry fungus, which is related. Customs and excise duties on food make up nearly half of Britain's total revenues (see commerce [Corn Law], 1815).
Haitian sugar production falls to 27,000 tons, down from 70,000 in 1791, as the new regime disrupts plantations despite efforts by Jean-Jacques Dessalines to prevent a reversion to subsistence agriculture (see 1825).
New York entrepreneur William Havemeyer, 35, and his brother Frederick open a sugar refinery in Vandam Street.
Nicolas Appert opens the world's first vacuum-bottling factory, or cannery, at Massey (Seine-et-Oise) near Palaiseau and Paris (see 1795). He has used glass jars sealed with wax, reinforced them with wire, and subjected his vacuum-packed foods to public tests at Brest (see 1809).
Grimod de La Reynière's Almanach des Gourmands publicizes the products of Nicolas Appert (see 1804; 1808).
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