1799 - A Pan-European Perspective

1799 C.C.

 

 A PAN-EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE

 

                   EUROPE

 

Britain joined the Russo-Ottoman alliance (January 2).

 

Britain introduced income tax for the first time (January 9).

 

The French dominated Parthenopean Republic was established in Naples (January 23-June 19).

 

Austria declared war on France (March 12).

 

An Austrian army under Archduke Charles defeated Jean-Baptiste Jourdan’s French army at Stockach in Germany (March 25).

 

French troops occupied the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (March 25).

 

The French army of General Barthelemy Scherer was defeated at Magnano, Italy, by an Austrian army under General Paul von Kray (April 5).

 

The peace conference between France and the Holy Roman Empire at Rastatt, Germany, opened on December 16, 1797, was dissolved without agreement (April 8).

 

A Russo-Austrian army in Italy under the Russian field marshal Count Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov defeated the French army of General Jean Victor Moreau in the Battle of Cassano and occupied Turin (April 27).

 

At the Battle of Zurich (Switzerland), an Austrian army commanded by Archduke Charles defeated a French army under Andre Massena (June 4-7).

 

The Russo-Austrian army under the Russian field marshal Count Suvorov decisively defeated the French governor of Rome, Jacques-Alexandre MacDonald, in the Battle of the Trebbia, Italy, while the French forces were advancing to relieve the army of General Moreau at Genoa (June 17-19).

 

Political associations were banned in Britain (July 12).

 

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand resigned as French foreign minister (July 20).

 

Count Suvorov’s Russo-Austrian army defeated French forces under Barthelemy-Catherine Joubert at Novi, Italy, and advanced across the Alps toward France. Joubert was killed in the battle (August 15).

 

The Duke of York took command of an Anglo-Russian army in the Netherlands, intending to reconquer the Batavian Republic and the Austrian Netherlands from France (September 13).

 

The Anglo-Russian army commanded by the Duke of York was defeated by Franco-Batavian troops at Bergen-op-Zoom in the Batavian Republic (September 19).

 

The Russian force was driven out of Zurich by the French (September 26).

 

French forces under General Massena defeated a Russian army under Alexander Korsakov at Zurich, Switzerland (September 25-27).  The Russian forces had been reduced by starvation and the main Russian force under Field Marshal Count Suvorov arrived too late, and was forced to retreat across the Alps. Austrian forces under the Archduke Charles retreated to the River Danube. 

 

Napoleon Bonaparte landed at Frejus, southern France, on his return from Egypt (October 9).

 

The Anglo-Russian army commanded by the Duke of York surrendered to French and Batavian forces at Alkmaar in the Batavian Republic (October 18).  Britain agreed to release all its French prisoners of war.

 

Britain declared the entire coast of the Batavian Republic to be under naval blockade (October 21).

 

Russia broke its coalition agreement with Austria against France complaining that Austria and the other allies had given her no support (October 22).

 

Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the ruling Directory (ruling executive) in France in the coup of 18 Brumaire (revolutionary calendar) (November 9).

 

Napoleon Bonaparte was given command of all the armies of France (November 9) and by the end of the year had become the de facto ruler of France. 

 

Austria occupied the Italian March of Ancona, on the Adriatic coast of the Papal States in central Italy (November 13).

Napoleon was elevated to First Consul (November 19).

 

Napoleon Bonaparte (originally Napoleone Bounaparte) was born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, Corsica, which had been acquired by France from Genoa in 1768.  Napoleon was the second of eight children of Carlo (Charles) Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino Buonaparte.  Of minor nobility, Napoleon was educated for the army at the expense of Louis XVI at Brienne (which he entered at age nine) and the Ecole Militaire, from which he emerged a sub-lieutenant of artillery in 1785, at the age of sixteen.  After the Revolution began, he was elected a lieutenant colonel (1791) in the Corsican National Guard but came into conflict with Pascal Paoli (1793) and fled to France with his family.  Returning to his regular army grade of captain, he was assigned to the army besieging Toulon, in revolt against the Republic and aided by a British fleet.  The artillery commander was wounded, and A. Christophe Saliceti, a fellow Corsican, got Bonaparte the position.  His guns drove out the enemy fleet, and he was promoted to general of brigade at age twenty-four.  In 1795, he saved the Convention with his “whiff of grapeshot.”

 

In 1796, Napoleon married Josephine de Beauharnais, a widow with two children.  Almost simultaneously he took command of the French Army of Italy.  During 1796-1797, Napoleon repeatedly defeated larger Austrian armies and forced all of France’s continental enemies to make peace.  He founded the Cisalpine (Italian) Republic as well and sent millions in treasure to Paris.  Only Britain remained at war.  To strike at its trade, Napoleon seized Egypt in 1798, but Admiral Horatio Nelson destroyed his fleet, leaving him stranded.  He turned to restructuring Egyptian government and law, and the French scholars with him created Egyptology. 

 

In 1799, Napoleon failed to capture Syria but crushed a Turkish invasion force at Aboukir. Meanwhile Austria, Russia, and lesser powers allied with Britain.  Bonaparte, convinced that he must "save France,” left his army and returned to Paris, where he overthrew the Directory (coup d’etat of 18-19 Brumaire).  Under the new Constitution of the Year VIII, all male adults could vote, but Bonaparte ruled.  Nevertheless, the voters approved overwhelmingly.  They similarly voted for amendments in 1802 (Year X) making Bonaparte consul for life and in 1804 (Year XII) making him emperor. 

 

The French Directory was ended as a new Constitution was approved and Napoleon was installed as de facto dictator (December 25).

 

The Constitution of the Year VIII created the French Consulate.  It comprised three consuls, with Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul.  Britain and Austria rejected French offers of peace.

 

Joseph Fouche (1763-1820) was appointed French Minister of Police. 

 

The Russian government granted a monopoly of trade in Alaska to the Russia-American Company.

 

                      AFRICA

 

The Rosetta Stone was discovered in Egypt by French army Captain Pierre-Francois Bouchard.  Bouchard believed that the three sets of inscriptions in demotic, hieroglyphs and Greek might hold the key to understanding the ancient Egyptian language.

 

Father Pinto turned Lacerda’s expedition back towards Tete. {See A Christian Perspective.}

 

        THE UNITED STATES

 

Responding to a peace-seeking effort by Dr. George Logan, Congress passed legislation that prohibited private citizens from negotiating international affairs with foreign governments (January 30).

 

Pennsylvania rebel John Fries led an armed force of German-Americans against American tax assessors to protest a federal property tax levied in anticipation of a war with France.  President John Adams ordered federal troops into the area.  They arrested Fries (February 7).  A court subsequently convicted him of treason and sentenced him to death.  However, President Adams pardoned him in 1800.

 

The first clear-cut victory for the newly formed United States Navy was scored off the island of Nevis in the West Indies by the recently commissioned American frigate Constellation in a duel with the French ship Insurgente (February 9).

 

The first federal quarantine act was passed by Congress, offering federal aid for local quarantine enforcement (February 23).

 

Editor Charles Brockden Brown published the first quarterly review in the United States, the American Review and Literary Journal (April 1).

 

Captain James Devereaux landed in Boston harbor in May not only with coffee and spices from the Dutch East Indies but also the first products (Japanese mats, lacquered goods and pans) imported from Japan. 

 

New Hampshire adopted a resolution vigorously supporting the Alien and Sedition Acts (June 15).

 

Plagued by lawsuits and having lost his land claims in Kentucky, Daniel Boone, the old pioneer, and a large group of his family and friends left Kentucky for the Spanish lands west of the Mississippi in the Missouri River country (September).

 

Thomas Jefferson attacked the Alien and Sedition Acts (November 22) asserting that since the states created the union, the states, therefore, had the right to oppose, in a constitutional manner, all present and future violations of the Constitution.

 

The Sixth Congress convened (December 12).  It would be the last to hold a Federalist majority.

 

The Russian American Company established its headquarters in Sitka, Alaska.

 

In the first organized labor action in the United States, the Federal Society of Cordwainers (shoemakers) won a nine-day strike.  The term “scab” (strikebreaker) was used for the first time.

 

A census recorded only 368 people living in Arkansas Territory.

 

New York passed a gradual emancipation act.

 

In Southhampton County, Virginia, slaves rebelled, killing two whites.  Four to 10 people of African descent were executed.

 

Authorities arrested Bailey E. Chaney, a Baptist minister, for conducting services near Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

 

The second state constitution of Kentucky was adopted.  State officers were subject to direct election.

 

Many Russian missionaries died in a shipwreck in Alaska, including Joasaph Bolotov who was returning to Alaska following his consecration as first Russian Orthodox bishop to the New World.

 

Gracie Mansion was constructed in New York City.  It would be acquired for the mayor’s residence in 1924.

 

Johann Christian Gottlieb Graupner played in blackface in performance of Oroonoko, one of the earliest minstrel shows.

 

Benjamin Waterhouse devised the first American vaccination against smallpox.

 

Many of the British loyalists who fled to Nova Scotia and other Canadian areas after the Revolutionary War continued making their way back to the United States.

 

Patrick Henry, the American anti-federalist and orator who declared “Give me liberty or give me death” at the start of the American Revolution died in Red Hill, Virginia, at the age of 63 (June 6).  {See A Humanist Perspective.}

 

George Washington died at Mount Vernon (December 14). {See also A Humanist Perspective.}

 

George Washington died at Mount Vernon and when the news reached Philadelphia four days later his wartime cavalry general Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee was chosen to deliver the funeral oration which contains the famous phrase: “First in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in the humble and endearing scenes of private life …”