1808

1801 1802 1803 1804 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809 1810

political events

Denmark's demented Kristian VII dies at Rendsberg, Schleswig, March 13 at age 59 after a 32-year reign. His 39-year-old son has ruled as regent since 1784, become an ally of Napoleon, and will reign until 1839 as Frederik VI.

Napoleon announces that France must guard the coast of Spain against Britain. He orders upwards of 70,000 men to cross the Spanish frontier in January. French forces occupy the fortresses of San Sebastian, Pamplona, Figuera, and Barcelona by treachery in February. By mid-March there are nearly 100,000 French troops in Spain. The revolt of Aranjuez March 17 forces the ouster of the repressive prime minister Manuel Godoy with a well-organized riot and overthrows the lazy king Carlos IV, who abdicates after a 20-year reign in favor of his son Ferdinand, 23. The French commander in chief Joachim Murat, 41, occupies Madrid March 26, and the seat of Spain's government moves to Cádiz. Napoleon resolves to make his younger brother Joseph king of Spain; he entices Ferdinand to the border, forces him to turn back the crown to his father, Carlos, who hands it to Napoleon at Bayonne in April (the son is sent to prison in France but will be restored to his throne in 1814 and reign until 1833 as Ferdinand VII). Carlos and his wife, Maria Louisa, relocate to southern Italy, Ferdinand arrests Godoy and hands him over to the French, the Spaniards revolt May 2, Murat intimidates the Spanish council at Madrid May 13 into requesting Joseph as king, the Portuguese join in the insurrection, and they ask for British help. French forces under the command of Jean-Baptiste Bessières defeat the Spaniards at Medina de Ríoseco, enabling Joseph to reach Madrid and establish himself as king, but when 12,000 French troops lay siege to Saragossa, a 20-year-old woman who will be remembered only as Augustina, the Maid of Saragossa, places a match to an artillery piece and rallies the city's disheartened defenders with the cry, "So long as the French are near, Saragossa has one defender!"

A French army of 18,000 under General Dupont surrenders to Spanish forces at Bailen July 23.

British forces invade Portugal August 1 under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley, whose 18,712-man army includes 2,000 Portuguese; having landed at Mondego Bay, they advance on Lisbon and defeat a 13,050-man French army under Marshal Junot at the Battle of Vimeiro 32 miles northwest of Lisbon August 21. The French lose 3,000 killed, wounded, and taken prisoner; British casualties are 160 killed, 505 wounded,;and Wellesley captures 13 guns, but his superiors prevent him from following up his victory. Junot surrenders his army August 30 in Estramadura to Generals Sir Harry Burrard and Sir Hew Dalrymple, who arrive after Wellesley's victory and sign the Convention of Cintra (or Sintra), whose terms provide for the repatriation of French troops in British ships but is so lenient that all three British commanders are called to account (Wellesley is exonerated).

The defeat of General Dupont at Bailen forces Spain's new king Joseph Bonaparte to leave Madrid in August. General Murat succeeds Joseph Bonaparte as king of Naples, enters Naples in September as King Joachim Napoleon, and wrests Capri from the British, but Italian patriots form a secret society (the charcoal burners, or Carbonaria) to oppose the reactionary regime imposed by the French.

Napoleon moves into Spain in the autumn with an army of 150,000, routs the Spanish in a series of engagements in November, takes Madrid December 4, and puts his brother Joseph back on the throne.

A Prussian Municipal Ordinance (Städteordnung) issued November 19 by H. F. Karl Reichsfreiherr von und zum Stein, enables towns to deal with their own affairs through town councils and salaried mayors and magistrates (see Nassau Memorandum, 1807). But Napoleon's agents have intercepted a letter that Stein wrote in August making reference to the likelihood of renewed hostilities against France, and Friedrich Wilhelm III dismisses Stein November 23 in response to French pressure. Napoleon declares him a public enemy December 16, and he flees for his life to Austrian territory.

The Ottoman grand vizier Mustafa Bairakdar, 33, marches on Constantinople to restore the sultan Selim III, Janissaries strangle Selim July 28 to prevent his restoration, and Bairakdar has the new sultan Mustafa IV deposed and assassinated. He installs a 23-year-old nephew of Selim's on the throne, sends his troops to the Danube, and commits suicide to avoid being captured by the Janissaries. The new sultan will reign until 1839 as Mahmud II (the Reformer).

Australian settlers in New South Wales revolt January 26 against the oppressive administration of Captain William Bligh, now 53, who was sent to administer the colony in 1805. He has alienated the officers of the New South Wales Corps, most recently by arresting sheep raiser and entrepreneur John Macarthur on charges of violating port regulations (see agriculture, 1793). Now 40, Macarthur fought a duel with the former governor Philip King and shot him in 1801 over a dispute involving the corps' monopoly in trade and labor supply. The corps is headed by officers who have purchased their commissions in Britain; its members have taken up all the good land, which is farmed by convict-laborers; and the officers exploit the workers, sometimes having them flogged to death for relatively minor offenses in what by all accounts is a desolate and shabby outpost of empire where ragged convicts are obliged to wear chains. Macarthur was sent to England to face trial, aroused the interest of English manufacturers in the idea of establishing Australia as a source of wool, and returned in 1805 with a grant of 5,000 additional acres and a mandate to develop wool production. He has evidently tried to manipulate commodity prices, and it is perhaps at his persuasion that the Corps commander, Maj. George Johnston, invades Government House January 26, arrests Bligh, and takes over the administration pending the arrival of Governor Lachlan Macquarie, who will not arrive until December 1809. Bligh has tried to interfere with the corps' monopoly in the rum trade, and the uprising will be remembered as the Rum Rebellion (see 1810).

Former commander in chief of British forces in India General Gerard Lake, 1st Viscount Lake of Delhi and of Aston Clinton, dies at London February 20 at age 63.

A British mission to Japan arrives August 15, but the Tokugawa shōgun Ienari rejects the emissaries.

Former royal governor of Quebec Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester, dies at Stubbings, Berkshire, November 10 at age 84.

Thomas Jefferson rejects petitions that he run for a third term, citing the example of George Washington. His Federalist opponent Fisher Ames has died at his native Dedham, Massachusetts, July 4 at age 50. Having been called a "despot" by the Federalists, Jefferson supports his Secretary of State James Madison, and Madison's Jeffersonian Republican Party wins the fall election with 122 electoral votes to 47 for Federalist Charles C. Pinckney.

human rights, social justice

Importation of slaves into the United States is banned as of January 1 by an act of Congress passed last year, but illegal imports continue (see 1814).

Bavaria's minister of the interior Maximilian, graf von Montgelas de Garnerin, produces a written constitution that abolishes serfdom, proclaims the principle of equality before the law, establishes a Council of State as the country's supreme court of appeal for all citizens, and envisages representative assemblies, but Montgelas, now 48, does not deem Bavaria ready for such assemblies and the constitution will never be wholly implemented.

commerce

North West Company fur trader Simon Fraser, 32, follows to its mouth a Canadian river that will later be called the Fraser, opening a vast area (see gold rush, 1858). Born either at Bennington, Vermont, or Mapletown, New York (accounts vary), Fraser was taken by his Loyalist parents to Canada, joined the North West Company as a clerk at age 15, and has been a partner since 1801. He set out in 1805 to find more suitable trade routes beyond the Rocky Mountains, establishes trading posts on the upper reaches of the river, followed the stream for more than a year with 20 companions, and is disappointed to learn that it is not the Columbia (see 1817).

John Jacob Astor incorporates the American Fur Company with himself as sole stockholder (see 1801). Now 45, he has bartered with the Indians to obtain animal pelts, chiefly beaver for use in hats (see everyday life [Hetherington], 1798; Pacific Fur Co., 1810).

Dire economic depression grips the United States as a result of the Embargo Act, signed into law by President Jefferson near the end of last year. One-third of all U.S. trade has passed through New York, and the complete suspension of that trade brings the city close to ruin. Merchant-shipowner Archibald Gracie, now 52, claims that he has lost $1 million and files suit against the federal government to recover his property.

energy

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, judge Jesse Fell proves February 11 that anthracite coal can burn on an open grate. News of the demonstration at Fell's Northampton Street hotel will gain national publicity (see 1812).

transportation

The S.S. Phoenix launched by New Jersey engineer John Stevens is the first steamboat with an American-built engine (see 1804; Fulton, 1807). Stevens learns that his brother-in-law Robert R. Livingston and Robert Fulton have obtained a 20-year monopoly on steamboat operations in New York State waters and prepares to have his son take the new sidewheeler to Philadelphia (see 1809; 1824).

Inventor Richard Trevithick demonstrates his steam locomotive Catch-me-who-can on a circular track near London's Euston Road (see 1804), but the cast-iron rails are too brittle to bear the weight of his engines, the business that he starts at London this year to make a type of iron tank that Trevithick has patented will founder due to a crooked partner, Trevithick will abandon his locomotives to concentrate on using high-pressure steam engines for an iron-rolling mill, a paddle-wheel barge, dredgers, and threshing machines, but he will file for bankruptcy in 1811 (see 1816).

technology

London inventor William Newberry obtains the first patent for an endless band saw that would improve on the circular saw used in sawmills, but although he has submitted a model to the Patent Office Newberry's saw will not go into production. It will be nearly 40 years before other inventors using higher-quality steel overcome the problem of creating a smooth joint in a steel band that is strong enough not to break when it is run over wheels.

Iron maker John "Iron-mad Jack" Wilkinson dies at Bradley, Staffordshire, July 14 at age 80 and is buried in a cast-iron coffin of his own design.

science

Humphry Davy isolates barium, boron, calcium, and strontium (see 1807; 1813; Choss, 1840). He also produces the amalgam (e.g., the mercury alloy) of the metal magnesium (see Black's magnesia, 1755). Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and his colleague Louis Jacques Thénard, 31, claim that they isolated boron 36 hours before Davy did and that Davy used their method to obtain the potassium with which he treated borax; Gay-Lussac publishes a law of combining volumes of gases that will prove more important than his 1802 law (see 1804). Still only 30, he has worked on the determination of vapor densities and the coefficients of the expansion of gases, pioneering procedures and quantitative measurements that will later be useful in establishing the kinetic theory of gases and thermal physics (see 1814).

A New System of Chemical Philosophy by John Dalton establishes the quantitative theory of chemistry (see Mendeléev, 1870).

French chemist Joseph-Louis Proust, 52, proves that the relative quantities of the constituents of any given pure chemical compound remain constant, whatever the compound's source. His finding supports the "law of definite proportions" propounded by John Dalton, which holds that the elements in any compound are present in fixed proportion according to weight. Formerly chief apothecary at the Salppetrière Hospital in Paris, Proust has become director of the Royal Laboratory at Paris; chemist Claude Berthollet has questioned his ideas for some years (see 1803), but Berthollet cannot dispute Proust's proof of the principle of constant composition.

Lectures on Animal Chemistry by Jöns Jakob Berzelius, now 29, explores the composition of blood, gall, milk, bone, fat, and other bodily substances. His studies will influence fundamental knowledge of life and bodily functions.

Tables astronomiques by Paris Observatory director Alexis Bouvard, 41, accurately predicts the orbital locations of Jupiter and Saturn. His theory that a celestial body as yet unknown causes an irregularity in the movement of Uranus will be confirmed in 1846 by the discovery of Neptune.

medicine

The Medical Society of the State of New York is founded with Massachusetts-born Saratoga County physician John Stearns, 37, as secretary. A paper by Stearns published in the New-York Medical Repository describes amazing results in easing parturition (women's labor pains) by administering a medication made according to an old midwife's instructions from diseased heads of rye that contain the fungus ergot (see 1774). By inducing labor, the medication saves the doctor's time as well as avoiding the distress of prolonged labor. Stearns has learned from an immigrant German midwife about ergot and states that it has no ill effects, but he cautions that it produces an incessant action, leaving no time to turn the child in the uterus or birth canal, and should be used only after the fetus is well positioned for easy delivery. The fungus contains several alkaloid drugs for which there is not yet any antidote but now begins to come into wide use in the medical profession; by the end of the century it will be routinely employed to stimulate uterine muscles, speed up labor, quicken expulsion of the placenta, and stem post-partum hemorrhage by forcing the uterus to contract, although if used without proper care it can prevent expulsion of the placenta, and if the fetus does not move as expected ergot can cause the uterus to mold around the body of the infant, rupturing the uterus and killing the child (see ergotamine, 1918).

communications, media

The London Examiner begins publication at London April 3. Poet Leigh Hunt, 23, edits the witty journal owned by his brother John, and he will be imprisoned along with his brother for ridiculing the prince regent as "a fat Adonis of 50," but the paper will continue until 1881.

The Times of London sends journalist-diarist Henry Crabb Robinson, 33, to report on the Peninsular War in Spain. He is the world's first war correspondent.

literature

Nonfiction: The Social Destiny of Man; or, Theory of the Four Movements (Théorie des quatre mouvement et des destinées generales by French social theorist (François-Marie-) Charles Fourier, 36, who has worked as a commercial traveler but become repelled (and obsessed) by the abuses of "civilization." He suggests the existence of a natural social order that corresponds to Isaac Newton's ordering of the physical universe, arguing that both evolved in eight ascending periods. The highest stage of society is one of harmony, in which human emotions can be freely expressed, and to achieve this highest stage Fourier proposes that society be divided into falanges (phalanxes).

Poetry: Marmion by Walter Scott, who introduces the romantic hero Young Lochinvar: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave/ When first we practice to deceive" (VI); Lyudmila by Russian poet Vasily Andryevich Zhukovsky, 25, who has adapted the 1773 poem Lenore by the late German poet Gottfried August Burger. Zhukofsky's ballad marks the start of modern Russian poetry.

art

Painting: The Battle of Eylau by Antoine Jean Gros; Execution of the Citizens of Madrid by Francisco de Goya, now 62, who records massacres by the French that will be seen in his etchings Disasters of the War. Formerly court painter to Carlos IV, Goya becomes court painter to Joseph Bonaparte. Goya paintings owned by the Spanish prime minister Manuel de Godoy, 41, are inventoried and the list includes The Naked Maja and The Maja Clothed, painted nearly life-size and possibly showing the duchess of Alva, who died in 1802. The word Maja is derived from maya, title of the queen of the May; it means something between "wanton" and "wench," and the work is so scandalous that Godoy is able to keep it only by virtue of his position as prime minister and lover of the queen Maria Luisa; La Grande Baigneuse by J. A. D. Ingres; Portrait of Mme. de Staël as Corinne by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun; Coquetry Punished, or The Broken Mirror by Pauline Auzou; The First Care of a Young Doctor by Constance Charpentier; The Cross on the Mountains by Dresden painter Kaspar David Friedrich, 34.

theater, film

Theater: The Broken Jug (Der zerbrochen Krug) by Heinrich von Kleist 3/2 at Weimar; Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is published in its first part. Goethe's drama of dissatisfaction, seduction, and infanticide is rooted in German legend, in the academic turmoil of his student days, and in the 1601 Christopher Marlowe drama (see Gounod opera, 1859).

London's Covent Garden Theatre burns down September 20. Actor John P. Kemble, now 51, has managed the house since 1803, owns a one-sixth share in it, and suffers a severe financial loss. When the Covent Garden reopens next year with higher ticket prices, rioters will virtually shut down performances for 3 months, and Kemble will survive ruin only by selling his library and obtaining a large loan (it will be converted into a gift) from the duke of Northumberland.

Playwright John Home dies at Merchiston Bank, near Edinburgh, September 5 at age 85; actor Lewis Hallam at Philadelphia November 1 at age 68.

music

Opera: Fernando Cortez 11/28 at the Paris Opéra, with music by Gasparo Spontini.

First performances: Symphony No. 5 in C minor and Symphony No. 6 in F major (Pastoral) by Ludwig van Beethoven 12/22 at Vienna's Theater-an-der-Wien, in a concert that also includes Beethoven's Concerto No. 4 in G minor for Pianoforte and Orchestra and Fantasy for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra.

Irish Melodies is published with music by John Stevenson, lyrics by Irish poet Thomas Moore, 29. It includes "Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms" (Moore will gain fame also for "The Harp that Once Through Tara's Halls," "The Minstrel Boy," and "Oft in the Stilly Night").

Ballet dancer Gaétan (or Gaetano) Vestris dies at Paris September 23 at age 79, having seen his son Auguste, now 43, achieve even greater renown than his own.

crime

Parliament repeals an Elizabethan statute making it a capital offense to steal from the person following a campaign by London barrister Samuel Romilly, 51, who is reforming the English criminal laws and agitating against slavery.

agriculture

Soaring Welsh food prices following a bad harvest produce a large-scale enclosure movement throughout Wales and parts of England (see 1801). Strip-farming, heretofore widespread, will soon disappear as arable lands are consolidated in a few Anglo-Welsh hands.

An article on beet sugar written by Franz K. Achard in Berlin appears in the Moniteur and arouses French interest in domestic sugar production, as the British Orders in Council issued last year cut France off from sugar imports (see 1810; Achard, 1802).

food and drink

Confectioner Nicolas Appert wins a prize of 12,000 francs (a great fortune) for his method of vacuum-packing food in jars (see 1804; Bonaparte, 1794). It has taken 14 years to perfect the technique of boiling meat and vegetables in jars and then sealing them with corks and tar, Appert's factory packs food for Napoleon's armies, and his method will remain briefly a French military secret (see Durand, 1810).

English-born entrepreneur Benjamin Bakewell, 41, pioneers U.S. glassware production with a factory he opens at Pittsburgh to make flint glass (see technology, 1798). It will begin making both cut and engraved glass in 1810 and have little or no competition for the next 10 years as it turns out elaborately decorated glassware (see technology [pressed glass], 1825).

restaurants

The first Parisian restaurant of any substance with fixed prices opens in the Palais Royal under the management of the restaurateur Véry.

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