Little Glimpses of the 19th Century

The Great Events in the History of the Last One Hundred Years, Assembled so as to Present a Nutshell Record.

[Continued from page 46.]

SECOND DECADE.

1811

The French army under Masséna was finally driven from Portugal by the British under Wellington. France, the south and middle German states, and Austria formed an alliance against Russia. Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden, and formerly one of Napoleon's marshals, refused aid to France. Napoleon threatened Sweden and began preparations against Russia.

The United States seized West Florida. The American ship President and the British ship Little Belt exchanged shots, and friction between the two countries increased. At Tippecanoe, General Harrison defeated the Indians under Tecumseh. Resentment against Great Britain because of her conduct on the sea, and her assertion of her right to search American ships, increased in the United States.

The Mamelukes decoyed to attend a festival in Cairo and slaughtered by Mehemet Ali. Dutch settlements in Java captured by the English. The King of Rome, son of Napoleon and Marie Louise, born on March 20. Agitation in England against flogging soldiers and sailors. Luddites smashed machinery in Nottingham. Heinrich Kleist, German poet, committed suicide. Bishop Percy, ballad compiler, died.

POPULATION.—Washington, D.C., 8,208; New York, 96,373; London (including Metropolitan District, census 1811), 1,009,546; United States, 7,239,881; Great Britain and Ireland (census 1811), 15,547,720.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that the Prince of Wales became regent of Great Britain.

1812

The English under Wellington captured Ciudad Rodrigo, and began to press hard on the French in Spain. Badajos, held by the French under General Philippon, stormed by the British after a fight in which five thousand men fell. American privateers began to prey on British commerce. June 18, war began between America and England. The first contest was between the American ship President and the British ship Blandina; the Blandina escaped. The Essex, Captain David Porter, and with Midshipman David G. Farragut, aged thirteen, on board, captured a British transport with two hundred soldiers, and forced the Alert to surrender. The United States frigate Constitution sunk the British frigate Guerrière, but the British Poictiers captured the American sloop Wasp. Other naval duels ended in favor of American ships. Decatur, commanding the frigate United States, took the Macedonian, while the Constitution captured the Java. President Madison refused the services of General Andrew Jackson; Jackson thereupon organized an independent corps, which was reluctantly accepted when reverses came. General Hull led the Americans to Canada, and was defeated at Mackinaw. Hull surrendered Detroit to Brock, British governor of Upper Canada, who had formed an alliance with the Indians. Fort Dearborn (Chicago), was burned by the Indians, and the settlers massacred. In a battle near Fort George, on October 13, General Brock was killed, but the Americans were forced to retreat. Dearborn made a fruitless attempt to invade Canada.

On June 22, Napoleon, with over six hundred thousand men, began his disastrous Russian campaign. The Russians devastated the country as they retired before his advance. At Smolensk they inflicted upon the French a loss of fifteen thousand, fired the city, and retreated. The French, stricken with disease, suffering from lack of food, and beset on all sides by the Russians, pushed on toward Moscow. At Borodino, after a desperate battle, Napoleon won a disastrous victory; nearly a hundred thousand men fell on both sides. The French entered Moscow, but within a few hours the city was in flames—fired by the Russians at the order of the governor, Rostopchin. Russian peasants slaughtered thousands of French stragglers. Napoleon's peace overtures being rejected, he was compelled to evacuate Moscow, after blowing up the Kremlin. The retreat of the French was worse than the battles, and thousands of them perished from cold or lack of food. The Russians pursued, and won battle after battle. Of the grand army that invaded Russia, only a tenth recrossed the frontier. In Spain, the French lost Cadiz and Madrid, and were defeated by Wellington at Salamanca. In December, Napoleon hurried to Paris, crushed Malet's conspiration against him, and called for a new conscription of three hundred and fifty thousand men. This year more than a million lives were lost in the Napoleonic wars.

Louisiana admitted to the Union. Iodin discovered by Dr. de Courtois, of Paris. An earthquake in Caracas killed twelve thousand persons. The English publisher of Thomas Paine's books fined and pilloried. Luddite anti-machinery agitation increased in England.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1813

Napoleon set Pius VII at liberty, and arranged the Concordat between church and state in France. Prussia joined Russia against Napoleon, who fought a series of battles with the allies in central Germany, the most important being those of Lützen and Bautzen. Wellington's decisive victory over the French at Vittoria—where shrapnel shells were first used in warfare—gave renewed vitality to the combination of England, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden against France and Denmark.

In America, eight hundred Americans were captured by the British at Frenchtown, in Michigan. At sea, the American Hornet, Captain Lawrence, sunk the Peacock; the Hazard captured the British frigate Albion, but the Shannon took the American frigate Chesapeake, killing Captain Lawrence, who said as he died: "Don't give up the ship!" The Enterprise captured the British brig Boxer. On Lake Erie, September 12, Commodore Perry fought the famous battle which he thus reported: "We have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop." General Harrison put an end to the Creek rebellion by his victory at Fort Malden.

Austria joined the allies against France, and Moreau, hero of Hohenlinden, and Bernadotte sided against their old leader, Napoleon. At Dresden (August 26, 27) Napoleon won his last great victory; Moreau was killed. At Wahlstatt, Blücher routed the French, and Ney met disaster at Dennewitz. King Jerome Bonaparte was forced to flee from Westphalia. Bavaria refused longer to support Napoleon. The campaign in Germany culminated in the great battle of Leipzig, fought October 16 to 19, in which four hundred thousand Germans and Russians totally defeated two hundred thousand Frenchmen, killing or capturing nearly half of them, and sweeping Germany free of invaders. Meanwhile Wellington invaded France from the south, and Napoleon's empire began to crumble fast. Spain was forever lost to him. Napoleon dissolved the Corps Législatif, determined to carry out his plans for prosecuting the war, and called for a new conscription of three hundred thousand men.

Cape of Good Hope ceded to the British by the Dutch. George Stephenson built his first locomotive. The Jesuit order restored by Pius VII.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1814

On January 1 Blücher crossed the Rhine to begin the invasion of France. He was defeated at Brienne, but won at Rothière, and with the aid of the Russians pressed Napoleon hard in a series of battles. In March the allies won decisive victories at Laon and Arcis-sur-Aube. England, Russia, Prussia, and Austria bound themselves together for twenty years more, England agreeing to pay each of the other powers two million pounds; France was to be reduced to its original boundaries. Napoleon refused the terms offered him. Marie Louise fled from Paris. The allied armies entered Paris on March 31, and on April 11, after trying to poison himself, Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau. He retired to Elba, which was assigned to him as a mimic kingdom. Talleyrand now became dominant in Paris, and the Bourbons were restored, Louis XVIII being crowned King of France. Ferdinand VII resumed power in Spain. By the Treaty of Paris, France retained her old territory, received back the colonies captured by England, kept Alsace-Lorraine, and much of the plunder gathered by Napoleon. Russia held Poland and Finland.

In June the Americans, under Brown, seized Fort Erie and fought indecisive actions with the British at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane. In August a British force, under Ross and Cockburn, landed in Maryland, defeated the Americans at Bladensburg, and advanced to Washington. Madison and his cabinet fled. The defenseless city was entered by the enemy; the White House and uncompleted Capitol were burned, and the government stores and buildings at Alexandria were destroyed. An attack on Baltimore was repulsed, inspiring Key's "Star-Spangled Banner." On Lake Champlain, McDonough captured four vessels of a British squadron and put the rest to flight. Two hundred men from a British fleet on its way to New Orleans attempted to board the privateer General Armstrong (Samuel Reid, captain), in the neutral harbor of Fayal. They were repulsed. Three British vessels closed in, and after a plucky fight Reid and his ninety men scuttled the General Armstrong, and escaped, having seriously damaged the British fleet. Jackson took Pensacola, in Florida, from the British; he also killed eight hundred Creeks for their massacre of the inhabitants of Fort Mims, and finally broke the power of the Indians in Alabama and Georgia by his victory at Horseshoe Bend. During all this time New England had held practically aloof from the war with the British, giving little assistance to the other States. On Christmas Day a treaty of peace between England and the United States was signed at Ghent.

Norway accepted the King of Sweden as ruler—an arrangement only recently abandoned. The Bourbons entered on reprisals in France and Spain, having "learned nothing and forgotten nothing." Jesuits permitted to return to France. Despotism renewed in the German states. The Prince Regent of England excluded his wife, Caroline, from court. Count Rumford, scientist, and the ex-Empress Josephine, Napoleon's first wife, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that the Bourbons were restored in France and Spain; Louis XVIII King of France, and Ferdinand VII King of Spain.

1815

On January 8, the news of the peace not having reached America, Jackson won the battle of New Orleans, inflicting a loss of two thousand on the British, and losing only twenty-one men. At Mobile, the Americans captured another British force, but off New York Commodore Decatur had to surrender, with his ship, the President, to the British blockading squadron.

England restored Java to Holland, but retained Demerara and the Cape of Good Hope. The Papal States were reestablished, and the Swiss Federation formed. On February 26 Napoleon slipped out of Elba; on March 1 he landed in France, where he was received with joy by his old soldiers, and on March 20 he entered Paris, beginning the Hundred Days. Ney deserted Louis XVIII to join Napoleon, and practically the whole army followed. Louis fled to Ghent.

England, Austria, Prussia, and Russia at once united against Napoleon. In a few days he mobilized and equipped an army of one hundred and twenty thousand veterans, and in June he was ready to attack the British and Prussian forces in Belgium. At Quatre-Bras, on June 16, Ney fought an indecisive engagement with the former, while at Ligny, on the same day, Napoleon defeated the Prussians under Blücher. On the 18th, Napoleon's army confronted that of Wellington before Waterloo. Before noon the fight began. Ney made repeated and gallant charges against the solid British squares, but his cavalry was slaughtered. Late in the day Blücher, after a forced march, arrived with part of his army, and, joining the British, sent the French forces flying. Napoleon barely escaped, and the allies pursued the shattered remnants of his army. The Napoleonic wars, which had cost nine million lives and untold treasure, and had remade the map of the world, were ended.

On June 20 Napoleon reached Paris, and on June 22 he abdicated, the House of Representatives having adopted by acclamation Lafayette's motion that the chamber should sit permanently, and that any attempt to dissolve it should be high treason. On July 7 the allies again entered Paris; on the 15th Napoleon surrendered to Captain Maitland of the British ship Bellerophon, at Rochefort. He was taken to England, and thence sent as a prisoner to the island of St. Helena, where he arrived October 15.

Madison reelected President of the United States. Philadelphia began construction of waterworks system. United States victorious in the war with Algiers. The Holy Alliance formed, including all the rulers of Europe excepting the Sultan of Turkey, the Pope, and the King of England. Davy invented the safety lamp. Wollaston, English scientist, by means of electricity, brought platinum to incandescence—the forerunner of the incandescent electric light. Daniel O'Connell killed D'Esterre in a duel. Anti-corn-law riots in England. Robert Fulton died. Financial depression throughout the United States.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that for a hundred days (March to June) Napoleon was in power in France, Louis XVIII having fled from Paris.

1816

Twenty years of continual warfare had left England with a debt of eight hundred million pounds, with business at a standstill, riots general throughout the country, and hundreds of thousands of discharged sailors and soldiers added to the unemployed. Fouché was expelled from France by the Bourbons, and Talleyrand replaced in the ministry by the Duc de Richelieu. The Inquisition was reestablished in Spain, and stringent measures employed in the effort to put down the revolts in the American colonies. Bolivar, in Venezuela, inflicted serious losses on the Spaniards. Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay, declared themselves independent of Spain.

The United States still suffered from a general commercial and industrial depression. First tariff imposed; New England, with Daniel Webster as its leading orator, was at that time for free trade; the South, led by Calhoun, was for protection. New England's shipping trade was practically suspended as a result of the new tariff. Seminole Indian uprising in Florida quelled. First savings-bank in the country opened in Philadelphia. Indiana admitted to the Union. Freemasons expelled from Italy. Goods of English manufacture excluded from Russia. Rebuilding of Moscow begun. First form of the stethoscope invented by Laennec, of Paris.

Gouverneur Morris, American statesman, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, English dramatist and statesman, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1817

The United States entered upon the prosperous period known as the Era of Good Feeling. Government land rapidly taken up by settlers, and people began to push westward. Resumption of the trouble with the Seminoles on the border of Florida. Jackson took command of the troops after many white settlers had been massacred. First line of steamships between New York and Liverpool opened. On July 4 ground was broken for the Erie Canal. First school for deaf-mutes opened at Hartford. First insane asylum in America opened by the Friends in Philadelphia. Mississippi admitted to the Union.

Depression continued in England; several Luddites executed for smashing machinery; eighteen persons hanged for forging Bank of England notes; habeas corpus suspended. Pindaree and Mahratta wars in India; Lord Hastings, the English governor-general, won a series of victories and greatly extended the British power. The Prince Regent of England hooted by mobs because of his conduct to his wife.

Eleven persons in Philadelphia and seven in Norwich, England, killed by steamboat boiler explosions, resulting in violent public opposition to steam vessels. Cholera epidemic started in Bengal, spread over Asia and Europe, crossed the Atlantic, and caused a million deaths before it was checked some years later. Béranger, French poet, imprisoned for blasphemy.

Mme. de Staël, French writer, and Thaddeus Kosciusko, Polish patriot and soldier in the American Revolution, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that James Monroe became President of the United States on March 4.

1818

The army of occupation withdrawn from France. King Frederick William III of Prussia, at the instigation of Metternich and the Russian Czar Alexander, having become an implacable opponent of liberalism and popular education, began to suppress schools and colleges. General discontent in Spain, and several abortive uprisings occurred against Ferdinand VII, whose misgovernment had left an empty treasury and an unpaid army. Andrew Jackson invaded Florida, and Congress refused to rebuke him; negotiations with Spain for the purchase of Florida. Illinois admitted to the Union, and the contest over the admission of Missouri commenced in Congress. Pensions granted to needy Revolutionary soldiers, and to the widows and children of Revolutionary soldiers—the beginning of the pension system. The number of stripes in the United States flag reduced to thirteen, the number of stars to be equal to the total number of States in the Union.

Polar expeditions sent out both from America and from England. In the latter country, Abraham Thornton, accused of murder, claimed the right to prove his innocence by meeting his accuser in battle; under an ancient statute this was possible, and as Thornton's accuser declined the proposed combat, the prisoner was set free. The obsolete law was thereupon repealed. Patent leather and strychnia discovered. Steam first used for heating purposes.

Independence of Chile finally declared, after eight years of fighting, on February 12.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that Charles XIV (formerly Marshal Bernadotte) succeeded Charles XIII as King of Sweden and Norway.

1819

Most of the Cherokee Indians removed from Georgia to lands west of the Mississippi. Congress agitated by the Missouri discussion; bill to prohibit slavery in the territory of the Louisiana Purchase north of the parallel of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, excepting in Missouri, introduced, and passed the following year. Opposition to slavery increased in the Northern States. Yellow fever in New York. Alabama admitted to the Union. Würtemberg abolished serfdom. August Kotzebue, German playwright and leader of the opposition to liberal ideas and education, assassinated by Sand, a Jena student; severe measures of repression, under the influence of Metternich, the great Austrian minister, followed. Throughout the German States censorship of the press was established, wholesale arrests of liberals occurred, student societies were forbidden, and ninety-four students were executed for wearing black, red, and yellow ribbons, the emblems of liberalism.

Richard Carlisle, of London, arrested for reprinting Paine's "Age of Reason." Velocipedes, hobby-horses, and other forerunners of the bicycle became popular. Oersted, of Copenhagen, made important discoveries in electromagnetism.

Queen Victoria born; James Watt, Scottish inventor; General Blücher, Prussian soldier; and Warren Hastings, first governor-general of India, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1820

Riego's revolt in Spain failed, but was followed by other movements in favor of liberalism. In Madrid, the prison of the Inquisition was stormed, and the political prisoners it contained set at liberty. King Ferdinand was forced to convoke the Cortes and agree to restore the comparatively liberal constitution of 1812. Divorce suit of George IV of England before the House of Lords; when the prosecutor had just started his opening address, the peers rose suddenly and rushed out in a body to witness an eclipse of the sun; the suit failed. Sir Walter Scott was the first baronet created by George IV.

The Duc de Berry, heir presumptive to the French throne, assassinated by Louvel, February 13. The Carbonari, or charcoal burners, forced Ferdinand I, King of Naples, to grant a constitution, which he swore to uphold, but almost immediately repudiated. The people of Portugal also rebelled and obtained a constitution. Russia sold to Spain a fleet of fighting vessels, which proved later to consist of rotting hulks.

In the United States, the Missouri Compromise Bill was passed and signed by Monroe, who was reelected to a second term in the Presidency. Maine was admitted as a State, and Spain agreed to cede her title to Florida for the sum of five million dollars.

Hydropathy introduced by Priessnitz. Ampère discovered the galvanometer. Caffeine separated by Oudry, and quinin by Pelletier and Caventou.

George III, King of England; Benjamin West, American artist; Henry Grattan, Irish statesman; and Arthur Young, political economist, died.

POPULATION.—Washington, D.C., 13,247; New York, 123,706; London (Metropolitan District), 1,225,694; United States, 9,638,453; Great Britain and Ireland (1821), 22,566,755.

RULERS—United States, James Monroe; Great Britain, George III, died January 29, George IV succeeded; France, Louis XVIII; Spain, Ferdinand VII; Prussia, Frederick William III; Russia, Alexander I; Austria, Francis I; Pope Pius VII.

The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.—Jonathan Swift.