1807

1801 1802 1803 1804 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809 1810

political events

A British Order in Council January 7 prohibits ships of neutral nations from trading with France and her allies, but while the Royal Navy blockades Napoleon's ports, the French are agriculturally self-sufficient and suffer less than do the British.

The Battle of Eylau (Prussich-Eylau) on the Pasmar River south of Königsberg in Lithuania February 7 to 8 pits Russian and Prussian forces against the French in a bloody slaughter that ends indecisively. Napoleon loses about 18,000 killed and wounded of his 53,000-man Grand Armée (Marshal Augereau loses half his corps in a blinding snowstorm but next year will be named duc de Castiglione in recognition of his victory in 1796); the 72,000-man coalition army (all but 10,000 are Russians), sustains 23,000 casualties (killed and wounded), 3,000 of its men are taken prisoner, the coalition loses 23 of its 400 guns, and it fails to lift the French siege of Danzig.

Corsican patriot General Pasquale Paoli dies at London February 5 at age 81.

A British squadron under Admiral Sir John Thomas Duckworth, 59, appears before Constantinople and forces the Dardanelles. The Turks drive him out and he loses two ships.

British forces occupy Alexandria March 18 but are able to hold it for only 6 months before the Turks force their evacuation.

The Nassau Memorandum (Nassauer Denkschrift) written in March by former Prussian economic minister Karl Stein lays out a comprehensive program for reforming the state. Dismissed from office January 3 after Friedrich Wilhelm III rejected his demands for a ministerial system free of interference from the king's personal cabinet. Stein has retired to his ancestral castle, studied Britain's constitutional monarchy, used the knowledge that he has gained from wide reading and personal experience, and bases his program on the principle that there must be a responsible way for Prussia's citizens to participate in state affairs (see 1808). Brunswick-born statesman Karl August Freiherr (Baron) von Hardenberg, 56, has taken over Stein's functions and manages in April to have Stein's demand for an end of cabinet interference implemented.

Britain's George III dismisses his prime minister William Wyndham Grenville March 25 and replaces him with (William Henry) Cavendish Bentinck, 3rd duke of Portland, who begins a second ministry that will continue until October 1809. Jacobite pretender Henry Cardinal Stuart dies at Frascati, Italy, July 13 at age 82, having lived since 1800 on an annual pension granted to him by George III.

Former French marshal J. B. D. de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, dies in his château at Thoré May 10 at age 81. He helped the Americans gain independence from Britain in 1783, escaped the guillotine in 1794, and has been pensioned by Napoleon.

French forces take Danzig May 26 with help from the Polish units raised last year by Jan Dabrowski and defeat the Russians June 14 in the Battle of Friedland, again with support from Gen. Dabrowski. Napoleon occupies Königsberg, concludes a truce after reaching the Niemen River, and meets with Russia's Aleksandr I and Prussia's Friedrich Wilhelm III on a raft in the river to conclude the Treaties of Tilsit, July 7 to 9. The emperor Napoleon has met at Tilsit July 6 with Prussia's young Queen Louisa, and although she has no political power (the Prussian Army has been virtually wiped out), she has pleaded with him to treat her conquered country justly. "I am a wife and mother and it is by these titles that I appeal for your mercy on behalf of Prussia," she said. He will call her "the most admirable Queen and at the same time the most interesting woman I had ever met" (but see 1810).

The Treaties of Tilsit oblige Russia to recognize the grand duchy of Warsaw created from Polish territory acquired by Prussia, recognize Jérôme Bonaparte, 33, as king of a new kingdom of Westphalia, restore the position of Danzig as a free city, and accept Napoleon's mediation in concluding peace with the Turks, while Napoleon accepts the Russian czar Aleksandr's mediation in concluding peace with Britain (a secret article provides for a Russo-French alliance against Britain should the British refuse to accept a peace offer). Bialystock in New East Prussia is ceded to Russia, while Prussia cedes to Napoleon all lands between the Rhine and the Elbe, makes other cessions, and recognizes the sovereignty of Napoleon's three brothers.

Prussia's Friedrich Wilhelm III dismisses Karl A. Freiherr von Hardenberg under terms of the Peace of Tilsit; former economic minister Karl Stein arrives at Memel September 30 to confer with the king, and his appointment as chancellor (Reichsfreiherr) is confirmed October 4.

A British fleet bombards Copenhagen in September and carries off the Danish fleet in punishment for having joined Napoleon's Continental system. Denmark makes an alliance with France, Russia declares war on Britain, and French troops occupy Stralsund and Rügen.

The Ottoman city of Kars beats back Russian efforts to take it, but Constantinople's Janissaries force their way into the Seraglio May 28, depose the Ottoman sultan Selim III, now 46, and replace him with the illiterate son of the late Abdul Hamid, who will reign until next year.

U.S. authorities arrest former vice president Aaron Burr February 19 in Alabama territory and bring him to trial May 22 at Richmond, Virginia, in a circuit court presided over by Chief Justice John Marshall of the Supreme Court. Burr has apparently schemed to establish an independent nation comprising Mexico and parts of the Louisiana Territory, but the court acquits him for lack of evidence. He will go to Britain and France next year in an effort to gain support for his various schemes but will return to New York in 1812, resume his law practice, and remain in obscurity until he dies in 1836.

A new Insurrection Act approved by Congress March 3 authorizes the president to use "part of the land or naval force of the United States" to restore order "in all cases of insurrection or obstruction of the laws, either of the United States or of any individual state or territory" (see 1795; Posse Comitatus law, 1878).

The British man-of-war Leopard under the command of Buck Humphreys fires three broadsides at the unprepared U.S. frigate Chesapeake off Cape Henry, Virginia, June 22, forcing her to strike her colors and removing four alleged British deserters (at least two are U.S. citizens). The lure of higher pay has persuaded many British tars to desert, and although the Americans charge the British with impressment of U.S. sailors on the high seas, the British insist that they are merely repatriating their own men (even though hundreds of the men were born in the United States). Commanded by James Barron, 38, the Chesapeake suffers casualties—three dead, about 20 wounded, including Barron himself—and limps back to Hampton Roads badly damaged. Urged by many to declare war, President Jefferson closes U.S. ports to all armed British vessels July 2 and tells France's Citizen E. Genêt that U.S. jurisdiction over territorial waters should extend to the Gulf Stream (see 1793; 1812).

U.S. Navy commander Edward Preble dies at his native Portland, Maine, August 15 at age 46; former U.S. Supreme Court chief justice Oliver Ellsworth at Windsor, Connecticut, November 26 at age 52.

Sierra Leone and the Gambia become a British crown colony (see 1843).

British general Charles Grey, 1st earl Grey, dies at Howick November 14 at age 78, having won acclaim for his successes against Continental Army forces in the American Revolution; the Mohawk chief Thayendonegea known as Joseph Brant dies at his Grand River, Ontario, home November 20 at age 64, having given support to the British against the Continental Army.

Edinburgh-born Board of Control president Gilbert Elliot, 56, is appointed governor general of India and sets sail for the subcontinent (see 1809).

Portugal refuses to cooperate in Napoleon's Continental system (see 1801). A French army under Andoche Junot, 36, invades the country and captures Lisbon. Junot is given the title duc d'Abrantes. A new treaty signed at Fontainebleau October 27 calls for French and Spanish forces to occupy Portugal and the eventual division of that country into three parts, with the king of Etruria (a grandson of Spain's Maria Luisa) ruling over the kingdom of Lusitania (between the Douro and Minho rivers). Manuel Godoy to rule over a principality of the Algarves, and the rest of the country to be divided up later. Portugal's royal Braganza (Bragança) family flees to Brazil aboard British ships November 29 (see 1808; 1822; commerce [Strangford Treaty], 1810).

The Haitian Assembly drafts a constitution that strips liberator Henri Christophe of virtuallly all power (see 1806). His fellow liberator Alexandre Pétion heads the Assembly. Christophe leads troops against him, Pétion's forces defeat Christophe January 6, and he withdraws to the north, where he will set up his own despotic government while Pétion rules in the south. Pétion is elected president of southern Haiti and divides the plantations in his part of the island into small lots, giving one to each of his soldiers. Although he will be reelected in 1811 and be made president for life in 1816, his soldiers will become subsistence farmers, producing only enough for their own needs, and the resulting economic slowdown will lead to uncontrollable inflation (see 1822; Christophe, 1811; Santo Domingo, 1844).

human rights, social justice

Britian's Parliament votes February 23 to forbid trade in slaves (the margin is 41 to 26 in the Lords, 114 to 15 in the Commons). The members have received hundreds of petitions, their bill receives Royal Assent March 25, and the victory comes after great agitation by the humanitarian William William Wilberforce (see 1789), but the slave trade has been the basis of many great British fortunes, Wilberforce is vilified in some quarters, the new law will be difficult to enforce, it does not outlaw slavery (see antislavery society, 1823), and its chief effect will be to increase the cost of slave labor on Britain's colonial plantations (see Denmark, 1803). The Slave Trade Bill caps the career of coalition leader William Wyndham Grenville, Baron Grenville, who is dismissed for refusing to pledge himself never again to advocate a Catholic Relief Bill. George III dissolves Parliament rather than grant emancipation to Catholics (see 1829).

Congress follows Britain's example March 2 and bans importation of slaves beginning January 1 of next year. Supporters of slavery have spoken at great length in what later will be called a filibuster, the measure has passed only after a determined effort by humanitarians (see 1808), but the Koran (Q'uran) sanctions slavery and some Muslims perceive the new Christian laws as attacks on Islam. French, Portuguese, and Spanish traders continue to deal in slaves, and although the Royal Navy dispatches a West African Squadron to Freetown, Sierra Leone, with orders to crack down on the trade in "ebony," the navy risks war if it searches foreign-flag vessels, so British and U.S. slavers simply fly other flags and carry on their trade (see 1814).

Prussian serfs are emancipated from servitude by the country's new chancellor H. F. Karl Reichsfreiherr vom und zum Stein under a law published October 9 "concerning the Emancipated Possession and the Free Use of Landed Property as well as the Personal Relationships of the Inhabitants" (see 1810).

New Jersey revokes woman suffrage, granted in the constitution that it adopted July 2, 1776. Women have not been voting for the state legislators who hold power at Trenton, and the legislators strip them of their voting powers.

commerce

The Milan Decree issued by Napoleon December 17 reiterates the paper blockade against British trade with the Continent.

Imports entering New York reach a value of $7.6 million, up from $1.4 million in 1790, and are nearly double the value of imports arriving at Philadelphia; exports from the city have a value of $26 million, up from a mere $1.4 million in 1790, but an Embargo Act signed by President Jefferson December 22 prohibits all ships from leaving U.S. ports for foreign ports. Designed to force French and British withdrawal of restrictions on U.S. trade in the ongoing Napoleonic wars, the new law will effectively block overseas sales of U.S. farm surpluses, crippling the ports of New Orleans and New York. While it will stimulate America's infant industries, the embargo idles some 30,000 seamen, cotton and tobacco prices plummet, and New England shippers protest the measure, as do Southern cotton and tobacco planters, but William Gray has openly endorsed it August 12 in the Salem Gazette, thereby so antagonizing his fellow merchants that they have ostracized him socially; he will move next year to Boston (see 1809; Gray, 1799).

energy

Swiss engineer François Isaac de Rivaz, 54, receives a patent January 30 for the first internal-combustion engine. Rivaz has designed several successful steam-driven cars toward the end of the last century. His new engine runs on mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. He uses it to develop a kind of horseless carriage (see Cugnot, 1769), but although he will produce a self-propelled motor car in 1813 that measures six meters in length and weighs nearly a ton it will have no commercial success (see 1829; Lenoir, 1860).

transportation

The first commercially successful steamboat travels up the Hudson River August 17 and arrives in 32 hours at Albany to begin regular service between New York and the state capitol. Having persuaded the British government to let him export a Watt steam engine, Robert Fulton, now 42, last year married a plain 24-year-old cousin of U.S. Minister to France Robert R. Livingston, who holds a 20-year monopoly on steamboat transport in New York State and has offered inventor Samuel Morey $7,000 for the latter's monopoly on a route to Amboy, New Jersey (Morey refused); now 60, the prosperous lawyer has not only provided financial backing but promised Fulton 50 percent of any profits (see 1803). The Clermont (initially called the North River Steamboat of Clermont) has paddle wheels (suggested by inventor Nicholas Roosevelt, 40) powered by an English Boulton and Watt engine with a cylinder 24 inches in diameter and a four-foot stroke; the vessel is 133 feet long, 18 feet in the beam, with a seven-foot draft and a stack 30 feet high, and is the forerunner of steamboats that soon will be carrying western grain to Gulf Coast ports via the Ohio and Mississippi. The Clermont (she will get that name only after Fulton's death in 1815) completes her round trip in 62 hours of steaming time; in the next 30 weeks (before the Hudson freezes over) she makes a profit of $400 per week (see 1811; Stevens, 1804; Stevens, 1808).

science

Chemist and surgeon Nicolas Leblanc commits suicide at Saint-Denis January 16 at age 63 (approximate). His cheap, simple, process for converting salt to soda ash for use in producing glass and salt won him a 15-year patent in 1791, but the patent and his factory were confiscated in 1794 and although Napoleon later returned the factory to him he was unable to raise the necessary funds to reopen it (see Solvay process, 1863).

System of Chemistry (3rd edition) by Scottish chemist Thomas Thomson, 34, gives the first detailed account of John Dalton's 1803 atomic theory.

On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity by Humphry Davy gives aluminium (aluminum), sodium, and potassium their names (see 1800). Davy has prepared the elements by electrolysis and recognizes that aluminium must be the oxide of a new metal but he fails to extract it (see Marggraf, 1754; calcium, 1808).

The emperor Napoleon orders his troops to spare the city of Göttingen because "the greatest mathematician of all time is living there." The fame of Karl F. Gauss, now 30, has spread far and wide, and when Napoleon demands that Gauss pay a fine of 2,000 francs it is paid by the French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace, now 59, who calls Gauss "the greatest mathematician in the world."

medicine

Phrenology arrives at Paris with German physician Franz Joseph Gall, 49, who introduced the pseudoscience in 1800. Gall claims that most emotional and intellectual functions are determined by specific areas of the brain that can be recognized by bumps in the skull.

religion

The London Missionary Society sends its first missionary to China. Northumberland-born Presbyterian minister (newly ordained) Robert Morrison, 25, will become translator to the East India Company in 1809, translate the New Testament into Chinese in 1813, and then translate the Old Testament as well.

communications, media

The Fourdrinier machine spurs the growth of newspapers (see Robert, 1798). Helped by civil engineer Bryan Donkin, 31, English papermaker Henry Fourdrinier, 41, and his brother Sealy have developed an improved machine that can produce a continuous sheet of paper in any desired size from wood pulp (see soda process, 1854).

Papers satirizing New York's genteel society begin appearing under the title Salmagundi, or, the Whim-whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff and Others. Written by men who include James Kirke Paulding, 29, and Washington Irving, 23, it sardonically calls the city "Gotham," originally the name of a town near Nottingham, England, whose citizens in medieval times pretended to be insane in order to avoid taxation by King John. The word was Anglo-Saxon for "goat town," and Irving uses it to suggest that New York is a town of self-important but foolish people (residents of the English Gotham were said to be "foolishly wise").

literature

Nonfiction: The Phenomenology of Mind (Phänomenologie des Geistes) by German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 37, describes how the human mind has evolved from mere consciousness to absolute knowledge, having progressed through self-consciousness, reason, spirit, and religion.

Fiction: Corinne by Mme. de Staël is based on the court beauty Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaide Récamier (née Bernard), 30, who has presided over the most interesting salon in Paris but whose banker husband, Jacques, has suffered financial reverses.

Poetry: Poems in Two Volumes by William Wordsworth brings the poet to the height of his powers, although his masterpiece, The Prelude, will not appear until after his death in 1850. Included are the sonnets "London, 1802" ("Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour") and "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802": "Earth has not anything to show more fair:/ Dull would he be of soul who could pass by/ A sight so touching in its majesty:/ This city now doth, like a garment, wear/ The beauty of the morning: silent, bare." Other poems included by Wordsworth in his new books are "Ode to Duty," "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood," "She Was a Phantom of Delight," "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" ("Daffodils"), all written in 1804, "My Heart Leaps Up" ("The Child is father of the man"), his 1806 sonnets "The World Is Too Much with Us" and "Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland," and his 1806 poem "Character of a Happy Warrior"; Hours of Idleness by Cambridge University student George Gordon, 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale, 19, who will receive a harsh review of his work next year in the Edinburgh Review. Grandson of the late naval officer John "Foulweather Jack" Byron, who died in 1786, Lord Byron succeeded to the title upon the death of his great-uncle in 1798.

Juvenile: Tales From Shakespeare by English essayist-critic Charles Lamb, 32, and his sister Mary Ann, 43. Lamb has been taking care of Mary Ann since she killed their invalid mother in a fit of insanity 11 years ago and has given up his own projected marriage to devote his efforts to that responsibility, although he himself has been mentally unbalanced and was confined to an asylum from age 20 to 21.

art

Painting: Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine by Jacques Louis David; The Cross in the Mountains by German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, 33. Angelica Kauffmann dies at Rome November 15 at age 66.

music

Opera: La Vestale 12/15 at the Paris Opéra, with music by Italian composer Gasparo (Luigi Pacifico) Spontini, 33, who settle in Paris 4 years ago.

First performances: Symphony No. 1 in C minor and Symphony No. 2 in C major by German composer Carl Maria von Weber, 20, at Schloss Carlsruhe in Silesia, where the sickly von Weber lives with his father and aunt at the invitation of Duke Eugen of Würtemberg; Symphony No. 4 in B flat major by Ludwig van Beethoven 3/5 at the Vienna palace of Prince Lobkowitz, in a program that includes Beethoven's three earlier symphonies, his Coriolanus Overture, and his Concerto in G major for Pianoforte and Orchestra; Mass in C major by Ludwig van Beethoven 9/13 at the palace of Nicholas Esterházy; Sonata in F minor (Appasionata) by Beethoven.

sports

England's Ascot Gold Cup horse race has its first running (see 1711; 1872).

English bare-knuckle pugilist Tom Cribb, 26, defeats challenger Henry Pearce and offers to defend his title "against any fighter in the world" (see Figg, 1734; Broughton, 1743). Boxing has become popular among Regency dandies as a "civilized" alternative to dueling, and Cribb won the title 5 years ago by defeating the American-born ex-slave Bill Richmond in a 76-round match (rounds end with falls or knockdowns, not when any given amount of time has elapsed) (see 1810).

agriculture

Clearances begin on the Highland estates of the Countess of Sutherlandshire, forcing peasants off the land to permit enclosure for sheep raising (see 1814).

food and drink

Water carbonated with carbonic gas is bottled and sold in the New York City area by Yale's first chemistry professor Benjamin Silliman, 28, who pioneers America's soft drink industry (see 1809; Schweppe, 1790).

Napoleon encourages his troops to drink coffee as a stimulant rather than alcohol, but the British blockade cuts off imports and obliges the French to extend their dwindling coffee supplies with chicory.

population

"Reply to Malthus" by essayist William Hazlitt refutes the arguments of the economist-clergyman.

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