Timeline France (C) 1796-1869
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1796 Jan 8, Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois (46), French Revolution leader, died in exile. He was a member of the Committee of Public Safety that ruled during The Terror.
(MC, 1/8/02)
1796 Mar 9, Napoleon Bonaparte, age 26, married Josephine Tascher de Beauharnais (32) in Paris.
(AP, 3/9/98)(HN, 3/9/98)
1796 Apr 2, Haitian revolt leader Toussaint L’Ouverture commanded French forces at Santo Domingo.
(AP, 4/2/99)
1796 Apr 13, Battle at Millesimo, Italy: Napoleon beat the Austrians.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1796 Apr 22, Napoleon defeated the Piedmontese at Battle of Mondovi.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1796 May 10, Napoleon Bonaparte won a brilliant victory against the Austrians at Lodi bridge in Italy.
(HN, 5/10/99)
1796 Jul 16, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (d.1875), French painter, was born. His work included "Madame Corot" (1833-1835) and "Interrupted Reading" (1870-1873). He led the way toward new forms of perspective and composition that was later mined by impressionism and photography.
(SFC, 6/4/96, p.E5)(WSJ, 10/25/96, p.A15)(WSJ, 3/25/97, p.A16)(MC, 7/16/02)
1796 Nov 17, Napoleon Bonaparte defeated an Italian army near the Alpone River, Italy, in the Battle of Arcole.
(HN, 11/17/98)(MC, 11/17/01)
1796 In France Michael Thonet was born in the Rhenish village of Boppard. He invented the classic bent wood chair.
(WSJ, 12/4/97, p.A20)
1796 Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) painted "Marie-Anne-Celestine Pierre de Vellefrey," the portrait of a little girl.
(WSJ, 4/8/98, p.A20)
1796-1797 Napoleon conquered northern Italy.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, BR p.9)
1797 Jan 14, Napoleon Bonaparte defeated Austrians at Rivoli in northern Italy.
(HN, 1/14/99)
1797 Feb 19, Pope Pius VI ceded papal territory to France in the Treaty of Tolentino.
(PC, 1992 ed, p.353)
1797 Feb 22, The last invasion of Britain took place when some 1,400 Frenchmen landed at Fishguard, in Wales.
(HN, 2/22/99)
1797 Feb 23, Antoine d'Auvergne (83), French opera composer (Coquette), died.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1797 Mar 13, Cherubini's opera "Medee," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1797 Apr 14, Adolphe Thiers, 1st president of 3rd French Republic (1871-77), was born. [see Apr 18]
(MC, 4/14/02)
1797 Apr 18, Louis-Adolphe Thiers, president of France, was born. [see Apr 14]
(MC, 4/18/02)
1797 Apr 18, France and Austria signed a cease fire.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1797 Oct 22, French balloonist Andre-Jacques Garnerin made the first parachute descent, landing safely from a height of about 3,000 feet; at some 2,200 feet over Paris.
(AP, 10/22/97)(HN, 10/22/98)
1797 Henry-Louis Pernod began to manufacture absinthe. The drink was made with fennel, aniseed and the oil of wormwood which contained thujone, a poisonous ketone.
(WSJ, 1/22/99, p.W8)
1797 French forces attacked Britain at the port of Fishguard. The event was depicted in the tapestry "The Last Invasion of Britain."
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.T5)
1797 The wine bottles of Chateau Lafite that date back to this year are recorked every 25 years to safeguard the wine and prevent deterioration caused by oxidation through decayed corks.
(WSJ, 11/26/97, p.A12)
1797 The Republic of Liguria in NW Italy was set up by Napoleon.
(WUD, 1994, p.830)
1797-1863 Theophile Bra, French academic sculptor.
(SFC, 12/19/98, p.C18)
1798 Feb 20, Pope Pius VI fled Rome to Siena following an invasion of French forces. He was later arrested and deported 1st to Florence and then to France.
(www.zum.de/whkmla/region/italy/papalstate17891799.html)(WSJ, 4/14/06, p.W5)
1798 Apr 26, Ferdinand Eugene Delacroix (d.1863), French painter, lithograph, etcher (Journal), was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix)
1798 May 19, A French armada of 335 ships carrying nearly 40,000 men set sail for Alexandria, Egypt, which Napoleon planned to conquer. In 2008 Paul Strathern authored “Napoleon in Egypt."
(WSJ, 11/17/08, p.A17)
1798 Jul 1, Napoleon Bonaparte took Alexandria, Egypt. In 1962 J.C. Herold authored "Bonaparte in Egypt." A corps of 150 civilian artists and scientists traveled with Napoleon’s troops to Egypt. In 2007 Nina Burleigh authored “Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt."
(SFC, 9/11/97, p.E3)(HN, 7/1/98)(ON, 12/99, p.4)(SFC, 12/14/07, p.E3)
1798 Jul 7, Napoleon Bonaparte's army began its march towards Cairo, Egypt, from Alexandria.
(HN, 7/7/98)
1798 Jul 21, Napoleon Bonaparte defeated Murad Bey and his Arab Mameluke warriors on the outskirts of Cairo at the Battle of the Pyramids, thus becoming the master of Egypt.
(WSJ, 11/17/08, p.A17)
1798 Jul 22, Napoleon captured Cairo, Egypt.
(PC, 1992, p.354)
1798 Aug 1, Admiral Horatio Nelson routed the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile at Aboukir Bay, Egypt. Nelson's fleet of 14 ships led the attack on Napoleon's fleet in Abu Qir Bay, capturing six and destroying seven of the 17 French vessels. The flagship of Napoleon's fleet, L'Orient, sank in the battle. It was uncovered by a French team in 1998. More than 1,500 Frenchmen and 200 British soldiers reportedly died in the sea battle.
(AP, 4/19/05)
1798 Aug 21, Jules Michelet, French historian was born in Paris to a family with Huguenot traditions. He wrote the 24-volume "Historie de France".
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Michelet)
1798 Sep 2, The Maltese people revolted against the French occupation, forcing the French troops to take refuge in the citadel of Valetta in Malta.
(HN, 9/2/98)
1798 Dec 24, Russia and England signed a Second anti-French Coalition.
(MC, 12/24/01)
1798 Eugene Delacroix (d.1863), French artist, was born. His work included the "Baron Schwiter."
(WUD, 1994, p.381)(WSJ, 7/1/96, p.A11)
1798 Napoleon annexed Egypt.
(SFC, 9/11/97, p.E3)
1798 The French National Assembly began sitting in the Palais Bourbon.
(Econ, 7/27/19, p.51)
1798 Henri Jomini (d.1869), began his military career volunteering his services to the French Army. With the peace of Amiens, he left the army and wrote his "Treatise of Grand Military Operations." The book impressed Napoleon enough to have Jomini appointed a staff colonel in 1805, Jomini having volunteered again in 1804. Jomini rose to become chief of staff under Marshall Ney, but left the French army to fight for Russia in 1813 as a general and aide-de-camp of Alexander I.
(HNQ, 9/1/00)
1798 Napoleon expelled the Knights of Malta from their base in Malta. The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem (SMOM), without citizens or territory, became a permanent observer at the UN in 1994.
(WSJ, 6/28/01, p.A1)
1798-1857 Auguste Comte, the French founder of the philosophical system of Positivism.
(WUD, 1994, p.303)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A22)
1799 Feb 9, The USS Constellation captured the French frigate Insurgente off the coast of Wisconsin.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1799 Mar 6, Napoleon captured Jaffa, Palestine. [see Mar 7]
(MC, 3/6/02)
1799 Mar 7, In Palestine, Napoleon captured Jaffa and his men massacred more than 2,000 Albanian prisoners. [see Mar 26]
(HN, 3/7/99)
1799 Mar 12, Austria declared war on France.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1799 Mar 17, Napoleon Bonaparte and his army reached the Mediterranean seaport of St. Jean d'Acra, only to find British warships ready to break his siege of the town.
(HN, 3/17/00)
1799 Mar 19, Napoleon Bonaparte began the siege of Acre ( later Akko, Israel), which was defended by Turks.
(AP, 3/19/03)
1799 Mar 26, Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa, Palestine. [see Mar 7]
(HN, 3/26/99)
1799 Apr 14, Napoleon called for establishing Jerusalem for Jews.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1799 May 18, Pierre de Beaumarchais (b.1732), French inventor and dramatist, died. In 2007 Hugh Thomas authored “Beaumarchais in Seville." In 2009 Susan Emanuel translated to English “Beaumarchais: A Biography" by Maurice Lever (d.2006).
(www.theatrehistory.com/french/beaumarchais001.html)(SFC, 5/30/09, p.E2)
1799 May 20, Honore de Balzac, French novelist, was born in Tours, France. He is considered the founder of the realistic school and wrote "The Human Comedy" and "Lost Illusions."
(AP, 5/20/99)(HN, 5/20/99)
1799 May 20, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered a withdrawal from his siege of St. Jean d'Acre in Egypt. Plague had run through his besieging French forces, forcing a retreat. Napoleon, in pursuance of his scheme for raising a Syrian rebellion against Turkish domination, appeared before Acre, but after a siege of two months (March–May) was repulsed by the Turks.
(HN, 5/20/00)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre,_Israel)
1799 Jun 17, Napoleon Bonaparte incorporated Italy into his empire.
(HN, 6/17/98)
1799 Jun 22, In France a scientific congress adopted the length of the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance along the surface of the Earth from its equator to its pole, in a curved line of latitude passing through the center of Paris. The congress used data gathered by astronomers, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre and Pierre-François-André Mechain. The established meter proved to be .2 millimeters too short, due to incorrect latitude data gathered by Mechain.
(http://etherwave.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/hump-day-history-the-length-of-the-meter/)(ON, 2/09, p.9)
1799 Jul 17, Ottoman forces, supported by the British, captured Aboukir, Egypt from the French.
(HN, 7/17/99)
1799 Jul 30, The French garrison at Mantua, Italy surrendered to the Austrians.
(HN, 7/30/98)
1799 Aug 2, Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier (54), balloonist, died.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1779 Aug 10, Louis XVI of France freed the last remaining serfs on royal land.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1799 Aug 22, Napoleon slipped through the British blockade of the Egyptian coast and returned to France.
(ON, 12/99, p.4)
1799 Aug 29, Pope Pius VI (b.1717) died in Valence, France.
(www.newadvent.org/cathen/12131a.htm)
1799 Oct 7, Napoleon landed at Saint Raphael, 50 miles east of Toulon.
(ON, 1/02, p.11)
1799 Oct 16, Napoleon arrived in Paris and met with government leaders.
(ON, 1/02, p.11)
1799 Nov 9, Napoleon Bonaparte instigated coup of 18 Brumaire and declared himself dictator, 1st consul, of France.
(HN, 11/9/98)(Econ, 9/20/14, p.77)
1799 Dec 10, The metric system was established in France.
(MC, 12/10/01)
1799 Dec 24, A Jacobin plot against Napoleon was uncovered.
(MC, 12/24/01)
1799 Dec 25, Napoleon’s new constitution went into effect. It gave him, as First Consul, powers to promulgate laws, nominate senior officials, control finances and conduct negotiations with foreign powers.
(ON, 1/02, p.12)
1799 Jacques-Louis David created his painting “Rape of the Sabines."
(WSJ, 4/6/05, p.D11)
1799 Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin (b.1699), French painter, died.
(WSJ, 7/6/00, p.A24)
1799 In Paris, France, the Passage de Panoramas, a covered arcade, was built on the site of the former Hotel de Montmorency-Luxembourg. It was the first building in Paris equipped for gas lighting.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.M4)
1799-1914 This period in France was covered by Robert Gildea in his 2008 book: Children of the Revolution: The French 1799-1914."
(Econ, 8/2/08, p.87)
1800 Jan 8, Victor of Aveyron (~1785-1828), a feral child, emerged from French forests on his own. In 1797 he had been found wandering the woods near Saint-Sernin-sur-Rance, France, and was captured, but soon escaped. He was later portrayed in the 1969 movie, The Wild Child (L'Enfant sauvage), by François Truffaut.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_of_Aveyron)
1800 Jan 20, Carolina, the sister of Napoleon I, married King Joachim Murat of Naples.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1800 Mar 20, French army defeated Turks at Heliopolis, Turkey, and advanced to Cairo.
(MC, 3/20/02)
1800 May 5, Louis Hachette, French publisher (Librairie Hachette), was born.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1800 Jun 14, French General Napoleon Bonaparte pushed the forces of Austria out of Italy in the Battle of Marengo. In 2007 the sword he wore was auctioned off for over $6.4 million.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marengo)(SFC, 6/11/07, p.A2)
1800 Jun 14, Jean-Baptiste Kleber (47), French general, architect, was murdered.
(MC, 6/14/02)
1800 Sep 5, Malta surrendered to British after they blockaded French troops.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1800 Oct 1, Spain ceded Louisiana to France in a secret treaty.
(AP, 10/1/97)
1800 Dec 3, Austrians were defeated by the French at the Battle of Hohenlinden, near Munich.
(HN, 12/3/98)
1800 Robert Fulton (35) tested a 20-foot model of his torpedo-armed submarine on the Seine. He made two 20-minute dives himself.
(WSJ, 9/24/01, p.A22)
1801 Mar 21, The Kingdom of Etruria was created by the Treaty of Aranjuez. It was made up a large part of modern Tuscany and its name from Etruria, the old Roman name for the land of the Etruscans. The first king (Louis I) died young in 1803. His underage son Charles Louis succeeded him and continued to 1807 when Napoleon dissolved the kingdom and integrated it into France.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Etruria)
1801 Jun 29, Frederic Bastiat (d.1850), French free-market economist, was born in Bayonne. "The state is the great fictitious entity in which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else."
(WSJ, 7/5/01, p.A12)
1801 Jul 15, Pope Pius VII and Napoleon signed the Concordat of 1801 brokering religious peace with Rome and granting equality to Jews. It solidified the Roman Catholic Church as the majority church of France and brought back most of its civil status.
(Econ, 10/18/14, p.18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordat_of_1801)
1801 Oct 6, Napoleon Bonaparte imposed a new constitution on Holland.
(HN, 10/6/98)
1801 French artist Girodet depicted Ossian, the mythical 3rd century blind Scottish poet, before the story was exposed as a fraud.
(WSJ, 7/26/08, p.W8)
1801 Francois Rene de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), French writer, authored his novel “Atala" following a trip to the US.
(WSJ, 5/8/08, p.A13)
1801 Napoleon opened the Louvre to the public.
(SFC, 2/11/97, p.E5)
1801 Napoleon's army in Egypt surrendered to Turkish and English forces. The French civilian toll topped 25 of 150, while the military toll topped 25,000 over the 3-year expedition.
(ON, 12/99, p.4)(SFC, 12/14/07, p.E3)
1801-1806 Alexandre Dumas (d.1870) covered these years of French history in an 1869 serialized novel printed in the journal, "The Universal Monitor." In the 1980s Claude Schopp, a retired French lecturer, discovered the epic novel on microfilm. He got it published under the title "Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine," and in 2005 it became a top ten seller.
(Reuters, 7/20/05)
1802 Jan 25, Napoleon was elected president of Italian (Cisalpine) Republic.
(MC, 1/25/02)
1802 Feb 26, Victor Hugo (d.1885), French novelist and poet, was born in Besancon. In 1998 Graham Robb published the biography: "Victor Hugo." "Initiative is doing the right thing without being told."
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)(HN, 2/26/98)(AP, 6/13/99)
1802 Feb, Napoleon sent a large army under his brother-in-law, Charles Leclerc, to regain control of St. Domingue. Thousands of soldiers died mainly to yellow fever and French control was abandoned so as to support military ventures in Europe. Toussaint L'Ouverture turned to guerrilla warfare inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution and its motto of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."
(CO, Grolier's, 11/10/95)(AP, 4/7/03)
1802 Mar 27, Treaty of Amiens was signed. The French Revolutionary War ended.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1802 Apr 8, French Protestant church became state-supported and controlled.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1802 May 19 Napoleon established the French Order of Legion d'Honneur award (Legion of Honor). It was a general military and civil order of merit conferred without regard to birth or religion, provided that anyone admitted swore to uphold liberty and equality.
(DrEE, 9/28/96, p.5)(SFC, 10/19/96, A7)
1802 May, In Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) Gen. Toussaint L’Ouverture surrendered to French forces. Many of his generals continued to wage a guerilla campaign against the French.
(ON, 2/10, p.9)
1802 Jul 8, Gen. Toussaint L'Ouverture of Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) was sent to France in chains.
(AP, 4/7/03)(ON, 2/10, p.9)
1802 Jul 24, Alexandre Dumas (d.1870), French novelist and dramatist who wrote "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "The Three Musketeers," was born. Alexandre Dumas, pere, French author of romantic plays and novels. He wrote "The Man in the Iron Mask." He was the father of Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-1895), French author of plays of social realism.
(HFA, '96, p.34)(AHD, 1971, p.403)(WUD, 1994, p.441)(HN, 7/24/98)
1802 Aug 2, Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed "Consul for Life" by the French Senate after a plebiscite from the French people.
(HN, 8/2/98)
1802 Aug 7, Napoleon ordered the re-instatement of slavery on St. Domingue (Haiti).
(MC, 8/7/02)
1802 Aug 25, Toussaint L'Ouverture was imprisoned in Fort de Joux, Jura, France.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1802 Sep 4, A French aeronaut dropped eight-thousand feet equipped with a parachute.
(MC, 9/4/01)
1802 Sep 11, Piedmont, Italy, was annexed by France.
(HN, 9/11/98)
1802 Dec 20, The United States bought the Louisiana territory from France. [see Jan 11, 1803]
(HN, 12/20/98)
1802 French author Chateaubriand (1768-1848) authored “Rene" and introduced to the world the French youth whose existence embodied the mal du siècle.
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.84)
1802 Vivant Denon (1747-1825), French author and archeologist, authored Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte" (Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt during the campaigns of General Bonaparte in that country).
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.127)
1802 France legalized prostitution.
(NY Daily News, 10/27/21)
1802 The Rosetta Stone was seized by the British in Egypt after the defeat of Napoleon’s army and was sent to England.
(RFH-MDHP, p.182)
1803 Jan 11, Monroe and Livingston sailed for Paris to buy New Orleans; they ended up buying Louisiana. [see Dec 20, 1802]
(MC, 1/11/02)
1803 Apr 7, Francois D. Toussaint L'Ouverture (Louverture), Haitian revolutionary, died in a dungeon at Fort Joux in the French Alps. In 2007 Madison Smartt Bell authored “Toussaint Louverture: A Biography."
(AP, 4/7/03)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_L'Ouverture)(SFC, 1/15/07, p.D7)
1803 Apr 26, Villagers of L’Aigle, France, witnessed a meteor shower. The rocks helped to convince scientists that meteors were of extraterrestrial origin.
(ON, 7/02, p.5)
1803 May 16, Great Britain and France renewed their war.
(PCh, 1992, p.362)
1803 May 18, Great Britain declared war on France after General Napoleon Bonaparte continued interfering in Italy and Switzerland.
(HN, 5/18/99)(ON, 11/99, p.4)(SC, 5/18/02)
1803 May 23, Lord Elgin and his family were detained in Paris. Elgin's family was allowed to proceed but he was arrested and declared a prisoner of war.
(ON, 11/99, p.4)
1803 May 24, Charles LJL Bonaparte, Corsican, French prince of Canino, Musignano, was born.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1803 Sep 28, Prosper Merimee (d.1870), archeologist and playwright (Carmen-1845), was born in Paris, France.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/merimee.htm)(www.nndb.com/people/584/000107263/)
1803 Nov 30, Spain, in a ceremony at New Orleans, completed the process of ceding Louisiana to France, which had sold it to the United States.
(CO, Grolier’s, 11/10/95)(AP, 11/30/04)
1803 Dec 3, Hector Berlioz, French composer (Symphony Fantastique), was born. [see Dec 11]
(MC, 12/3/01)
1803 Dec 11, Hector Berlioz (d.1869), French composer and conductor, was born. He introduced arresting and gaudy instrumental colors in combinations that had not been dreamed of before him. He composed "Romeo and Juliet" in 1939 and conducted its first performance. He also composed the "Death of Cleopatra." He composed "Symphonie Fantastique" and "La Damnation de Faust." [see Dec 1]
(T&L, 10/80, p. 58)(SFC, 10/5/96, p.E1)(HN, 12/11/99)
1803 Dec 20, The Louisiana Purchase was completed as the territory was formally transferred from France to the United States during ceremonies in New Orleans. French Prefect Pierre Clement Laussat, US Gov. William CC Claiborne and US Gen. James Wilkinson signed 4 copies the treaty. The Louisiana Purchase effectively doubled the size of the existing U.S. With 827,987 square miles in the deal, that price translates to roughly $18 per square mile- under 3 cents/acre.
(AP, 12/20/97)(SSFC, 12/21/03, p.A2)
1803 French economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) penned "A Treatise on Political Economy," an exposition and expansion of the economic ideas of Adam Smith. Here he said that management is a factor of production.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say%27s_Political_Economy)(Econ, 8/12/17, p.54)
1803 The French Academy of Sciences insisted that meteorites could not exist because no specimens had been produced.
(WSJ, 4/2/96, p.A-15)
1803-1815 In 2007 Charles Esdaile covered this period in his book: “Napoleon’s Wars: An International History, 1803-1815."
(Econ, 11/10/07, p.103)
1804 Jan 1, Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaimed the Republic of Haiti and declared independence from France. Documentation of his speech was then lost and only re-discovered in 2010 by a Canadian graduate student searching in the British National Archives.
(WSJ, 3/1/04, p.A16)(SFCM, 5/30/04, p.19)(SFC, 4/2/10, p.A2)
1804 Mar 21, The French civil code, later called the "Code Napoleon," was adopted.
(AP, 3/21/08)
1804 Apr 20, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Haitian rebel leader, commanded a massacre of the French at town of Cape Francois. It is generally thought that Dessalines had around 20,000 French slaughtered in early 1804.
(http://tinyurl.com/yu94s8)(http://tinyurl.com/23fdxf)
1804 May 18, The French Senate proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte emperor.
(AP, 5/18/97) (HN, 5/18/98)
1804 Jul 1, George Sand (Amandine-Aurore Lucille Dupin de Francueil, d.1876), French novelist, was born in Paris. She wrote some 80 novels that included “Consuelo" (1842) and “La Comtesse de Rudolstadt" (1843). In 1975 Curtis Cate published the biography: "George Sand." "I would rather believe that God did not exist than believe that He was indifferent."
(WUD, 1994, p.1265)(HN, 7/1/01) (AP, 10/17/98)(HN, 7/1/01)(Econ, 7/31/04, p.72)
1804 Jul 21, Victor Schoelcher, abolished French slavery, was born in Guadeloupe.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1804 Dec 1, Emperor Napoleon married Josephine de Beauharnais, of Martinique.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1804 Dec 2, Napoleon crowned himself emperor of France with Josephine as Empress as Pope Pius VII looked on. In 1807 Jacques-Louis David completed his painting of the event.
(WSJ, 12/14/04, p.D10)(AP, 12/2/07)
1804 The 118 acre Pere Lachaise Cemetery of Paris was founded. It was named after a Jesuit priest, who was confessor to Louis XIV. His order built a house on the site in 1682.
(SFC, 6/16/96, T-6)
1804 Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon I, began a rose collection at Malmaison, and sparked a wide interest in rose culture.
(SFC, 7/14/99, p.4)
1804 French economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) enrolled in the National Conservatory of Arts in Paris to learn the principles of spinning cotton.
(Econ, 8/12/17, p.54)
1805 May 26, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned king of Italy.
(AP, 5/26/97)
1805 May 28, Napoleon was crowned in Milan, Italy. [see May 26]
(HN, 5/28/98)
1805 Jul 29, Alexis de Tocqueville (d.1859), French historian who wrote "Democracy in America, was born. "America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement."
(HN, 7/29/98)(AP, 1/20/01)
1805 Aug 9, Austria joined Britain, Russia, Sweden and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the Third Coalition against Napoleonic France and Spain.
(HN, 8/9/98)(HNQ, 10/19/98)
1805 Sep 30, Napoleon's army entered the Rhine valley.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1805 Oct 19, Austrian general Karl Mac surrendered to Napoleon’s army at the battle of Ulm.
(www.pbs.org/empires/napoleon/n_war/campaign/page_6.html)
1805 Oct 21, A British fleet commanded by Vice Adm. Horatio Nelson defeated a French-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar fought off Cape Trafalgar, Spain. Admiral Nelson won his greatest victory and though fatally wounded in the battle aboard his flagship, he lived long enough to see victory: "England expects every man to do his duty." The crew fittingly preserved his body in rum. Over 8,500 Englishmen, Frenchmen and Spaniards were lost in the battle or the hurricane that swept over the ships the next day. In 1807 Nelson’s surgeon William Beatty authored “authentic narrative of the Death of Lord Nelson." In 1999 Barry Unsworth authored the novel "Losing Nelson." In 2001 Joseph F. Callo edited "Nelson Speaks: Admiral Lord Nelson in His Own Words." In 2005 Adam Nicolson authored “Men of Honour: Trafalgar and the Making of the English Hero;" Roy Adkins authored “Nelson’s Trafalgar," and Adam Nicolson authored “Seize the Fire."
(WSJ, 5/24/01, p.A20)(Econ, 6/25/05, p.82)(WSJ, 8/19/05, p.W6)(ON, 3/06, p.2)(Reuters, 7/13/10)
1805 Nov 14, Napoleon took control of Vienna, Austria.
(SFC, 4/26/12, p.A2)(www.pbs.org/empires/napoleon/n_war/campaign/page_6.html)
1805 Nov 19, Ferdinand de Lesseps, French diplomat and engineer (built Suez Canal), was born.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1805 Dec 2, Napoleon Bonaparte celebrated the first anniversary of his coronation with a victory at Austerlitz over a Russian and Austrian army.
(HN, 12/2/98)
1805 Dec 6, Nicholas-Jacques Conti (b.1755), French pencil maker, died in Paris. He created the number system used to rate pencil lead hardness: the higher the number, the harder the graphite.
(SSFC, 1/23/05, p.C2)
1805 Dec 31, The French Revolutionary calendar law was abolished. France returned to the Gregorian calendar.
(K.I.-365D, p.43)(MC, 12/31/01)
1805 Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) painted "Empress Josephine at Malmaison."
(WSJ, 4/8/98, p.A20)
1805 Napoleon defeated Austria and Prussia. In 1997 Alistair Horne wrote: "How Far from Austerlitz? Napoleon 1805-1815."
(WSJ, 7/10/96, p.A16)(WSJ, 5/19/97, p.A16)
1805 Liguria was incorporated into France.
(WUD, 1994, p.830)
1805 Absinthe was popularized by Henri-Louis Pernod, who opened his first distillery in Switzerland before moving to Pontarlier, France, in 1805.
(WSJ, 12/24/96, p.A1)(WSJ, 1/22/99, p.W8)(SFC, 3/24/00, p.A3)
1805 Jean-Baptiste Greuze (b.1725), artist, died. Diderot said: "This man draws like an angel."
(WSJ, 5/14/02, p.D7)
1805-1815 The 1997 book by British historian Alistair Horne: "How Far From Austerlitz," covered this period Napoleon Bonaparte.
(SFEC,11/2/97, Par p.10)
1806 Apr 13, Jean-Jacques Bachelier (~82), French painter, died.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1806 Jun, Lord Elgin was paroled by the French government.
(ON, 11/99, p.4)
1806 Jul 12, Napoleon granted Liechtenstein sovereignty.
(AP, 7/12/06)
1806 Aug 22, Jean-Honore Fragonard (74), French painter, engraver, died.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1806 Oct 8, British forces laid siege to French port of Boulogne using Congreve rockets, invented by Sir William Congreve.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1806 Oct 14, The forces of French Emperor Napoleon I defeated the Prussians in the twin battles of Jena and Auerstadt.
(AP, 10/14/07)
1806 Oct 27, Emperor Napoleon entered Berlin.
(HN, 10/27/98)
1806 Nov 21, In the Decree of Berlin Emperor Napoleon banned all trade with England.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1806 Nov 28, French forces led by Joachim Murat entered Warsaw.
(AP, 11/28/06)
1806 Dec 26, Napoleon’s army was checked by the Russians at the Battle of Pultusk.
(HN, 12/26/98)
1806 Jean Ingres painted his magnificent: "Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne."
(WSJ, 5/28/99, p.W12)
1806 In Paris the 3-mile Canal St. Marten waterway was built to connect the Seine to northeast France.
(SFEC, 6/28/98, p.T7)
1806 Napoleon issued his Berlin Decrees. They established the Continental System to restrict European trade with Britain.
(WSJ, 7/10/96, p.A16)
1806 Napoleon ordered that all French citizens be vaccinated against smallpox.
(NW, 10/14/02, p.50)
1806-1813 Trieste was held under French rule.
(www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Rotunda/2209/Trieste.html)
1807 Jan 7, Responding to Napoleon's blockade of the British Isles, The British blockaded Continental Europe.
(HN, 1/7/99)
1807 Jan 20, Napoleon convened the great Sanhedrin in Paris.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1807 Feb 8, At Eylau, Poland, Napoleon’s Marshal Pierre Agureau attacked Russian forces in a heavy snowstorm. Like Napoleon, to whom he is most often compared, Alexsandr Suvorov believed that opportunities in battle are created by fortune but exploited by intelligence, experience and an intuitive eye. To him, mastery of the art and science of war was not, therefore, purely instinctive. Napoleon’s forces ran low on supplies at Eylau and ate their horses.
(HN, 2/7/97)(WSJ, 9/21/05, p.A8)
1807 Feb 9, French Sanhedrin was convened by Napoleon.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1807 Apr 4, Joseph Jerome Le Francaise de Lalande, French astronomer, died.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1807 Apr 20, Aloysius Bertrand ("Gaspard de la Nuit"), French poet, was born.
(HN, 4/20/01)
1807 Jun 25, Napoleon I of France and Russian Czar Alexander I met near Tilsit, in northern Prussia, to discuss terms for ending war between their empires.
(AP, 6/25/07)
1807 Jul 4, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) Italian military leader, was born in Nice, France. He led the movement to make Italy one nation.
(HN, 7/4/98)(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)
1807 Jul 7, Napoleon I of France and Czar Alexander I of Russia signed a treaty at Tilsit ending war between their empires. It divided Europe among themselves and isolated Britain.
(HN, 7/7/98)(AP, 7/7/07)
1807 Aug 5, Jeanne Baret (b.1740), botanist, died in France. She had joined the (1766-1769) expedition of Louis Antoine de Bougainville, disguised as a man, and enlisting as valet and assistant to the expedition's naturalist, Philibert Commerson, shortly before Bougainville's ships sailed on a voyage to circumnavigate the globe. In 2013 Glynis Ridley authored “The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Bar%C3%A9)
1807 Napoleon gave Danzig (later Gdansk) 6 years of formal independence.
(WSJ, 8/31/98, p.A4)
1807 Britain seized Heligoland, an island in the North Sea ruled by Danes, as a forward base to break Napoleon’s economic blockade. In 2017 Jan Ruger authored “Heligoland: Britain, Germany and the Struggle for the North Sea."
(Econ, 2/18/17, p.69)
1807 France’s Pleyel piano company was founded by Ignaz Pleyel, a composer and music publisher who studied with Franz Joseph Haydn. In 2013 the company closed its factory, unable to keep up with cheaper and more agile competition.
(SFC, 10/30/96, Z1 p.8) (AP, 11/16/13)
1807 In Naples, Italy, Major Leopold Hugo, the father of Victor Hugo, was promoted after a successful campaign against the Calabrian banditti.
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)
1808 Feb 20, Honoré Daumier (d.1879), French painter, sculptor, caricaturist and lithographer, was born in Marseilles. He painted Crispin and Scapin.
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.369)(WSJ, 3/10/00, p.W16)(HN, 2/20/01)
1808 Mar 1, In France, Napoleon created an imperial nobility.
(HN, 3/1/99)
1808 Mar 23, Napoleon's brother Joseph took the throne of Spain.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1808 Mar 31, French created the Kingdom of Westphalia and ordered Jews to adopt family names.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1808 Apr 17, The Bayonne Decree by Napoleon I of France ordered the seizure of U.S. ships.
(HN, 4/17/98)
1808 Apr 20, Charles Louis Napoleon (d.1873), nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, was born. He later served as president (1848-1852) and as emperor of France (1852-1870).
(WUD, 1994, p.950)(WSJ, 1/13/98, p.A20)(HN, 4/20/98)
1808 May 30, Napoleon annexed Tuscany and gave it seats in French Senate.
(MC, 5/30/02)
1808 Jul 20, Napoleon decreed that all French Jews adopt family names.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1808 Aug 1, Joachim Murat (1767-1815), French marshal and Napoleon's brother in law, became king of Naples (1808-1815) and Sicily.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Murat)
1808 Aug 21, Napoleon Bonaparte's General Junot was defeated by Wellington at the first Battle of the Peninsular War at Vimiero, Portugal.
(HN, 8/21/02)
1808 Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) painted "Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime."
(WSJ, 4/8/98, p.A20)
1808 Napoleon chased Portugal’s royal family to Brazil. King Joao VI of Portugal and his court were installed in Rio de Janeiro by a British fleet.
(Econ, 4/14/07, SR p.5)(Econ, 9/11/10, SR p.3)
1808 Napoleon codified the French educational curriculum.
(Econ, 12/19/09, p.91)
1809 Jan 4, Louis Braille (d.1852), inventor of a universal reading system for the blind, was born in Coupvray, France. He was blinded at age four as the result of an accident in his father's shop. He became an accomplished organist and cellist and won a scholarship in 1819 to attend the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris. In 1821 Louis learned of a communication system devised by Captain Charles Barbier of the French Army. While Barbier's system was too complex to be practical, Braille simplified and adapted it to a six-dot code representing letters that enabled people with impaired vision to not only read but also write for themselves. In 1829 his first Braille book was published, but Braille himself died of tuberculosis at age 43--before his system gained widespread acceptance.
(AP, 1/4/98)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Braille)
1809 Mar 12, Great Britain signed a treaty with Persia forcing the French out of the country.
(HN, 3/12/99)
1809 Mar 27, Georges-Eugene Haussmann (d.1891), French town planner, was born. He designed modern-day Paris.
(HN, 3/27/01)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Haussmann)
1809 Apr 10, Austria declared war on France and her forces entered Bavaria.
(HN, 4/10/99)
1809 Apr 20, Napoleon defeated Austria at Battle of Abensberg, Bavaria.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1809 Apr 22, At the Battle at Eckmahl Napoleon beat Austrian archduke Karl.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1809 May 12, Napoleon’s troops captured Vienna, Austria.
(SFC, 4/26/12, p.A2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wagram)
1809 May 17, The Papal States were annexed by France. Pope Pius VII responded by excommunicating Napoleon.
(MC, 5/17/02)(PTA, 1980, p.502)
1809 Jul 5, Pope Pius VII was taken prisoner to France and held there until 1814.
(PC, 1992 ed, p.371)
1809 Jul 5-1809 Jul 6, Napoleon beat Austria’s archduke Charles at the Battle of Wagram. He annexed the Illyrian Provinces (now part of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro), and abolished the Papal States.
(http://tinyurl.com/vx8dk)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wagram)
1809 Jul 27-1809 Jul 28, Arthur Wellesley led the British army to triumph against the Spanish King Joseph Bonaparte at Talavera de la Reina against a French army twice his size. For this he was made Duke of Wellington.
(WSJ, 6/6/96, p.A15)(PC, 1992 ed, p.371)
1809 Oct 14, The Treaty of Schönbrunn, also known as the Treaty of Vienna, ended hostilities between France and Austria. This treaty ended the Fifth Coalition during the Napoleonic Wars.
(PC, 1992 ed, p.371)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Sch%C3%B6nbrunn)
1809 Dec 16, Napoleon Bonaparte was divorced from the Empress Josephine by an act of the French Senate. Metternich had convinced Francis I of Austria to offer his daughter Marie Louise as a bride to Napoleon.
(AP, 12/16/97)(ON, 5/04, p.2)
1809 Nicholas Appert won a French prize of 12,000 francs for his method of keeping food in glass bottles. Napoleon had offered the prize with military needs in mind.
(SFC, 9/19/07, p.G6)
1809-1826 Civilians and soldiers who returned home from Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt (1798-1801) published during this period in serial form “Description de l’Egypte" (The Description of Egypt), the most comprehensive view of Egypt to date.
(SFC, 12/14/07, p.E3)(WSJ, 11/17/08, p.A17)
1810 Jan 10, French church annulled the marriage of Napoleon I & Josephine.
(MC, 1/10/02)
1810 Mar 11, Emperor Napoleon of France was married by proxy to Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria.
(AP, 3/11/98)(HN, 3/11/98)
1810 May 21, Charles Chevalier d'Eon de Beaumont (81), French spy, cross dresser, died.
(MC, 5/21/02)
1810 Aug 21, Sweden’s Riksdag elected Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, Marshal of France under Napoleon, as heir apparent to the Swedish throne.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernadotte)(Econ, 10/14/06, p.73)
1810 Oct 4, Alexander Walewski, French earl, foreign minister, son of Napoleon I, was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1810 General Count Hugo, the father of Victor Hugo, governed Central Spain during the Peninsula War. He exterminated guerrillas and nailed up their severed heads.
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)
1810-1857 Alfred de Musset, French author: "How glorious it is -- and also how painful -- to be an exception."
(AP, 5/6/00)
1811 Mar 20, Napoleon II, the Duke of Reichstadt, was born. He was the son of Napoleon Bonaparte.
(HN, 3/20/99)
1811 Aug 5, C.L. Ambroise Thomas, French composer (Mignon, Francoise de Rimini), was born.
(MC, 8/5/02)
1811 Aug 31, Théophile Gautier, French poet, novelist and author of "Art for Art's Sake," was born.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1811 Napoleon Bonaparte gave to his wife, Empress Marie Louise, a tiara with 950 diamonds (700 carats). The original emeralds were later replaced with Persian turquoise. Now part of the Smithsonian Inst. and bequeathed by Marjorie Merriweather Post.
(Postcard , Nat’l Mus. Nat. Hist.,1995)
1811-1823 The abbey at Cluny was quarried over this period. It had been shut down by French Revolutionaries.
(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.T4)
1811-1882 Louis Blanc, French utopian socialist, proposed the social ideal of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." The nineteenth-century writer and thinker had a profound influence on radical thought.
(HNQ, 4/12/99)
1812 Mar 9, Swedish Pomerania was seized by Napoleon.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1812 Apr 15, Pierre-Etienne-Theodore Rousseau, painter, was born.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1812 Jun 24, Napoleon crossed the Nieman River [in Lithuania] and invaded Russia. The French army under Napoleon crossed the Nemunas River near Kaunas. Prior to his march into Russia, Napoleon had taken land from Russia and returned it to Polish control in Warsaw. This assured him safe passage through Poland and Lithuania on his way to Russia. In 1824 the book “History of the Expedition to Russia, Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812" by Count de Segur, a general in Napoleon’s army, was first published. An English translation edited by Gerard Shelley was published in 1928.
(HN, 6/24/98)(WSJ, 8/25/07, p.P9)(H of L, 1931, p.83-84)
1812 Jul 22, English troops under the Duke of Wellington defeated the French at the Battle of Salamanca in Spain.
(AP, 7/22/97)(HN, 7/22/98)
1812 Aug 12, British commander the Duke of Wellington occupied Madrid, Spain, forcing out Joseph Bonaparte.
(HN, 8/12/98)
1812 Aug 17, Napoleon Bonaparte's army defeated the Russians at the Battle of Smolensk during the Russian retreat to Moscow.
(HN, 8/17/98)
1812 Aug 22, Charles Etienne Gudin (44), one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s favorite generals, died near Smolensk after being hit by a cannon ball during Napoleon’s unsuccessful invasion of Russia. His name was later inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. In 2019 his remains were formally identified by DNA tests after a one-legged skeleton was found under a dance floor in Smolensk. In 2021 his remains were repatriated to France.
(The Telegraph, 11/6/19)(https://tinyurl.com/dzjdj5k6)(AP, 7/13/21)
1812 Sep 7, On the road to Moscow, Napoleon won a costly victory over the Russians under Kutuzov at Borodino. This was the greatest mass slaughter in the history of warfare until the Battle of the Somme in 1916. In 2004 Adam Zamoyski authored “Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow."
(HN, 9/7/98)(Econ, 4/17/04, p.81)
1812 Sep 14, The Russian army left Moscow. Napoleon's invasion of Russia reached its climax as his Grande Armee entered Moscow, only to find the enemy capital deserted and burning, set afire by the few Russians who remained. The fires were extinguished by Sep 19.
(ON, 10/2010, p.11)(http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/B/Borodino.html)
1812 Sep 18, A fire in Moscow (set by Napoleon's troops) destroyed 90% of houses and 1,000 churches. [see Sep 14]
(MC, 9/18/01)
1812 Sep, In France as Napoleon’s army proceeded to invade Russia it numbered 442,000 troops. In Sept. it reached Moscow with 100,000 men. The remains of the Grandee Armee struggled out of Russia in 1813 with 10,000 men. A map drawn by Charles Joseph Minard plots six variables to depict the march over time: the size of the army, its location on a 2-dimensional surface, the direction of the army’s movement, and temperatures on various days during the retreat from Moscow. In 1970 Curtis Cate published the book: "The War of the Two Emperors."
(Adv. E. Tufte, 5/18/96, p.4)(SFEC, 6/15/97, Z1 p.3)
1812 Oct 18, The Russian army attacked French forces on the outskirts of Moscow. Some 2,500-3,000 French soldiers were killed.
(ON, 10/2010, p.11)
1812 Oct 19, French forces under Napoleon Bonaparte began their retreat from Moscow.
(AP, 10/19/97)(HN, 10/19/98)
1812 Oct 23, There was a failed coup against emperor Napoleon.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1812 Nov 9, Paul Abadie, French master builder (renovated Notre Dame), was born.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1812 Nov 14, As Napoleon Bonaparte's army retreated form Moscow, temperatures dropped to 20 degrees below zero. Michel Ney defended the Napoleon‘s rear during the retreat from Moscow and was called by Napoleon "The bravest of the brave." He rejoined Napoleon during the Hundred Days and the Waterloo campaign. After Napoleon‘s defeat, he was found guilty of treason and shot. It was later suggested that many soldiers died because their tin coat buttons deteriorated in the extreme cold.
(HN, 11/14/99)(HNQ, 9/21/00)(SSFC, 6/8/03, p.M2)
1812 Nov 26, In Belarus Napoleon Bonaparte's army began crossing the Beresina River over two hastily constructed bridges. The Battle of Berezina began as Napoleon’s army retreated from its invasion of Russia. Heavy losses were later estimated to be as many as 25,000.
(HN, 11/26/99)(AP, 11/24/19)
1812 Nov 27, One of the two bridges being used by Napoleon Bonaparte's army across the Beresina River in Russia collapsed during a Russian artillery barrage.
(HN, 11/27/99)
1812 Nov 29, The last elements of Napoleon Bonaparte's Grand Armee retreated across the Beresina River in Russia. Tens of thousands of French troops and civilians perished when the Russians attacked Napoleon's army as it crossed the Berezina River in Belarus on the punishing retreat from Moscow. The following Spring it was recorded that 32,000 bodies were rounded up and burned on the river banks near Studianka.
(HN, 11/29/99)(AP, 11/26/07)(www.wtj.com/articles/berezina/)
1812 Dec 6, The majority of Napoleon Bonaparte's Grand Armeé staggered into Vilnius, Lithuania, ending the failed Russian campaign. An estimated 50,000 soldiers reached Lithuania and as many as 20,000 died there. As many as 450,000 soldiers from France, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Germany and at least 15 other countries died in the Russian campaign.
(HN, 12/6/99)(Arch, 9/02, p.41)
1812 Dec 13, The last remnants of Napoleon Bonaparte's Grand Armeé reached the safety of Kovno, Poland, after the failed Russian campaign.
(HN, 12/13/99)
1812 Dec, 14, The last French units of Napoleon’s Grand Armeé crossed the Nieman River of Lithuania, leaving Russia.
(ON, 10/2010, p.11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia)
1812 Dec 18, Napoleon Bonaparte arrived in Paris after his disastrous campaign in Russia.
(HN, 12/18/99)
1812 Jacques-Louis David, French artist, painted a portrait of Napoleon as a working ruler.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.126)
1812 Louis-Vincent-Leon Palliere, French painter, created his work “Ulysses and Telemachus Massacre Penelope’s Suitors."
(WSJ, 12/28/05, p.D8)
1812 Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) painted "Venus and Adonis."
(WSJ, 4/8/98, p.A20)
1812 Georges Cuvier, French anatomist, published his 4 volume work "Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles" (Research on Fossil Bones).
(NH, 8/96, p.18)
1812 The Testament of Peter the Great was first published in Napoleonic France to demonstrate that the Russian Empire had grand plans to conquer and subjugate Europe. It was demonstrated to be a fraud in 1879. It was written by a Polish general in the late 1700s and has continued to find mainstream adherants in the modern era, particularly amongst scholars, journalists and politicians.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Russavia/Testament)
1813 Feb 28, Russia and Prussia formed the Kalisz union against Napoleon.
(LHC,2/28/03)
1813 Mar 4, The Russians fighting against Napoleon reached Berlin. The French garrison evacuated the city without a fight.
(HN, 3/4/99)
1813 Apr 10, Joseph-Louis Lagrange (b.1736), Italian-born mathematician, died in Paris. He is considered to be the greatest mathematician of the eighteenth century.
(www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/Lagrange/RouseBall/RB_Lagrange.html)
1813 Jun 26, Metternich met with Napoleon at Dresden and informed him that he must sue for peace if he wanted continued Austrian support.
(ON, 5/04, p.3)
1813 Jul 15, Napoleon Bonaparte's representatives met with the Allies in Prague to discuss peace terms.
(HN, 7/15/98)
1813 Aug 23, At the Battle of Grossbeeren Prussians under Von Bulow repulsed the French.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1813 Aug 27, The 2-day Battle of Dresden was Napoleon’s last major victory against the allied forces of Austria, Russia and Prussia. French forces under Napoleon scored a victory against the Allied army led by Field Marshal Schwarzenberg. Three days after the battle, the Allies surrounded and captured a French corps at the Battle of Kulm.
(www.napoleonguide.com/battle_dresden.htm)
1813 Oct 16-19, In the Battle at Leipzig (aka Battle of the Nations) Napoleon faced Prussia, Austria and Russia and suffered one of his worst defeats.
(DoW, 1999, p.325)
1813 Oct 18, The Allies defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at Leipzig.
(HN, 10/18/98)
1813 Nov 2, Treaty of Fulda. After the Battle of Leipzig (Oct 16-19) King Frederick I of Württemberg (1754-1816) deserted Napoleon’s waning fortunes. By a treaty made with Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar von Metternich (1773-1858) at Fulda, Hessen, Germany he secured the confirmation of his royal title and of his recent acquisitions of territory, while his troops marched with those of the allies into France.
(DoW, 1999, p.325)
1813 Nov 12, J. H. St. John de Crevecouer, French explorer and writer, died. He had spent more than half of his life in the New World and contributed two important concepts to the American consciousness. The first is the idea of the "American Adam," that there is something different, unique, special, or new about these people called "Americans." The second idea is that of the "melting pot," that people's "American-ness" transcends their ethnic, cultural, or religious backgrounds.
(http://cs1.mcm.edu/~cetheridge/crevec.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/3cbq3j)
1813 Dec 31, Some 83,000 Prussian and Russian soldiers pursued Napoleon across the Rhine at Pfalzgrafenstein Castle.
(SFEC, 3/15/98, p.T5)
1813 A new 45 carat blue diamond emerged in France. It was guessed to have been cut from the 112 carat Blue Diamond of the crown jewels. The 112 carot stone was re-cut in 1673 to 67 carats.
(THC, 12/3/97)(EB, 1993, V6 p.51)
1814 Feb 10, Napoleon personally directed lightning strikes against enemy columns advancing toward Paris, beginning with a victory over the Russians at Champaubert. During the Napoleonic Wars a British naval officer proposed the use of saturation bombing and chemical warfare to undermine the strength of Emperor Napoleon.
(HN, 2/10/97)
1814 Feb 27, Napoleon's Marshal Nicholas Oudinot was pushed back at Barsur-Aube by the Emperor's allied enemies shortly before his abdication.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1814 Mar 10, Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by a combined Allied Army at the battle of Laon, in France.
(HN, 3/10/99)
1814 Mar 30, Britain and allies marched into Paris after defeating Napoleon.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1814 Mar 31, Forces allied against Napoleon captured Paris.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1814 Apr 4, Napoleon Bonaparte first abdicated at Fontainebleau. He was allowed to keep the title of emperor. [see Apr 11]
(www.napoleonseries.org/reference/political/legislation/restoration.cfm)
1814 Apr 11, Napoleon Bonaparte (45) abdicated at Fontainebleau a 2nd time and was banished to the island of Elba, a small island in the Mediterranean, retaining the title of emperor and 400 volunteers to act as his guard. He was granted sovereignty over Elba and a pension from the French government. [see Apr 6]
(www.napoleonseries.org/reference/political/legislation/restoration.cfm)
1814 Apr 20, Napoleon departed for exile in Elba.
(Econ, 4/14/07, p.94)
1814 Apr 26, King Louis XVIII landed on Calais from England.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1814 Apr, The Duke of Wellington led 60,000 troops against 325,000 French troops at Toulouse and defeated them just days after Napoleon abdicated the throne.
(WSJ, 1/6/95, A-10)
1814 May 4, Bourbon reign was restored in France. Louis XVIII was crowned as successor to his guillotined brother.
(MC, 5/4/02)
1814 May 29, Empress Josephine (1804-14), first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, died. She maintained grand roses at Malmaison, where there were an estimated 250 varieties.
(TGR, 1995, p.2)(SC, 5/29/02)
1814 May 30, The First Treaty of Paris was declared, after Napoleon's first abdication. It returned France to its 1792 borders and secured for the British definite possession of the Cape of Good Hope.
(HN, 5/30/98)(HN, 5/30/99)(EWH, 4th ed, p.884)
1814 Jun 3, Nicolas Appert (b.1749), French cook, died. He was the winner of a 12,000 franc prize offered by Napoleon for developing a method to preserve food. His original canning method took 14 years to develop and used glass jars sealed with wax reinforced with wire.
(WSJ, 1/21/03, p.A1)(www.foodreference.com)
1814 Sep, The Congress of Vienna convened in late September and continued to June 8, 1815. Friedrich von Gentz of Austria served as secretary to the Congress. It was held after the banishment of Napoleon to Elba. The congress aimed at territorial resettlement and restoration to power of the crowned heads of Europe with Prince Metternich of Austria as the dominant figure. Viscount Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington represented Britain. Alexander I stood for Russia. Talleyrand stood for France. Prince von Hardenberg stood for Prussia. In 2007 Adam Zamoyski authored “Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna." In 2008 David King authored “Vienna 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War and Peace at the Congress of Vienna.
(Econ, 4/14/07, p.94)(www.bartleby.com/65/vi/Vienna-C.html)(SSFC, 4/6/08, Books p.4)
1814 Oct 4, Jean Francois Millet (d.1875), French painter, was born.
(www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/art.asp?aid=745)
1814 Jacques-Louis David created his painting “Leonidas at Thermopylae."
(WSJ, 4/6/05, p.D11)
c1814 Pierre Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823), French artist, drew his "Bust of a Female Figure."
(WSJ, 12/5/96, p.A16)
1814 Jean Francois Champollion (1790-1832), French scholar, published his 2-volume book “Egypt Under the Pharaohs." Income from the book provided him with royalties to continue his studies on the hieroglyphics of the Rosetta Stone.
(ON, 8/10, p.7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Champollion)
1814 Alexander I of Russia entered Paris at the head of an anti-Napoleon coalition.
(WSJ, 6/26/96, p.A16)
1814 The Marquis de Sade died. His writings included "Justine," "Juliette," and "120 Days of Sodom." In 1999 Neal Schaeffer published "The Marquis De Sade: A Life," and Francine du Plessix Gray published "At Home With the Marquis De Sade: A Life."
(SFEC, 7/25/99, BR p.3)
1815 Feb 25, Napoleon left his exile on the Island of Elba, intending to return to France.
(HN, 2/25/98)
1815 Feb 26, Napoleon, escaped from the Island of Elba, and 1,200 of his men started the 100-day re-conquest of France.
(HN, 2/26/98)(AP, 2/26/98)
1815 Mar 1, In France, returning from Elba, Napoleon landed at Cannes with a force of 1, 500 men and marched on Paris.
(HN, 3/1/99)
1815 Mar 20, Napoleon Bonaparte entered Paris, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule. He had escaped from his imprisonment on the island of Elba off the coast of Tuscany. He gathered his veterans and marched on Paris. At Waterloo, Belgium, he met the Duke of Wellington, commander of the allied anti-French forces and was resoundingly defeated. Napoleon was then imprisoned on the island of St. Helena in the south Atlantic. In 1997 Gregor Dallas published: "The Final Act: The Roads to Waterloo." The book includes a good account of the Congress of Vienna.
(AP, 3/20/97)(V.D.-H.K.p.232)(SFEC,11/2/97, Par p.10) (HN, 3/20/98)
1815 Apr, British General Arthur Wellesley, duke of Wellington, began assembling troops at Brussels, Belgium. 73,000 British troops were joined by 33,000 German, Dutch and Belgian troops preparing to face Napoleon. Prussian Gen. Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher gathered an army of 120,000 southeast of Brussels.
(ON, 4/06, p.1)
1815 May 5, Eugene-Marin Labiche, French playwright, was born.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1815 Jun 16, Napoleon defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny, Belgium.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ligny)
1815 Jun 16, A French attack at the crossroads called Quatre Bras badly mauled Anglo-Dutch army under Wellington, but failed to rout it or to take the crossroads. Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had marched into Belgium to find himself confronted by two allied armies, which he tried to split apart. Although similarly battered at Ligny that day, the Prussian army also retired intact. Both armies would face Napoleon again two days later at Waterloo.
(HNPD, 6/16/99)(Econ, 5/23/15, p.71)
1815 Jun 17, A heavy rainstorm prevented French forces from catching up with Wellington’s army as they retreated to Waterloo.
(Econ, 7/16/05, p.15)(ON, 4/06, p.3)
1815 Jun 18, British and Prussian troops under the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon Bonaparte and his forces at the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium. The French elite troops of the Imperial Guard wore bearskins to appear more intimidating. Afterwards Britain established towering bear skin hats for soldiers in ceremonial duties and to guard royal residencies and the Tower of London. Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher made a short speech to his troops saying that he was pregnant and about to give birth to an elephant. He was taken from the front in protective custody and missed the battle. Napoleon lost over 40,000 men at Waterloo; the British and Belgians lost 15,000; the Prussians lost 7,000. The total losses in 3 days of fighting was later estimated at 91,800. In 2002 Andrew Roberts authored "Napoleon and Wellington." In 2005 Andrew Roberts authored “Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Gamble."
(SFEC, 2/28/99, Z1p.10)(WSJ, 9/13/02, p.W10)(Econ, 2/12/05, p.81)(ON, 4/06, p.5)
1815 Jun 22, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated a second time.
(AP, 6/22/97)
1815 Jul 7, After defeating Napoleon at Waterloo, the victorious Allies marched into Paris.
(HN, 7/7/98)
1815 Jul 9, King Louis XVIII left Ghent for France.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1815 Jul 15, Napoleon Bonaparte was captured by the British Navy at Rochefort, France, while attempting to escape to America.
(ON, 4/06, p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon)
1815 Aug 8, Napoleon Bonaparte set sail for St. Helena, in the South Atlantic, to spend the remainder of his days in exile. He died there in 1821 at age 51.
(AP, 8/8/97)(SFEC, 8/1/99, Par p.16)
1815 Oct 7, Marshal Ney, one of Napoleon's most trusted field commanders, was condemned to death and shot for having left the services of the King.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1815 Oct 13, Joachim Murat, marshal of France and King of Naples (1808-15), was executed.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1815 Oct 17, Napoleon (d.1821) arrived in St. Helena.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1815 Nov 20, The treaties known collectively as the 2nd Peace of Paris were concluded. Austria’s Klemens von Metternich helped create a “Concert of Europe," a system by which 4-5 big powers kept miscreants in check and managed the affairs of smaller states for over a decade.
(www.newadvent.org/cathen/07398a.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/2sqgp9)(Econ, 6/9/07, p.68)
1816 Jan 12, France decreed the Bonaparte family to be excluded from the country forever.
(MC, 1/12/02)
1816 Jul 3, Dorothea Jordan (65), French actress, mistress (William IV), died.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1816 Sep 5, Louis XVIII of France dissolved the chamber of deputies, which had been challenging his authority.
(HN, 9/5/98)
1816 Jacques Louis David (1748-1825) painted the portrait: "Comte Henri-Amedee de Turenne".
(WUD, 1994 p.369)
1816 In France Joseph N. Niepce developed the first photographic negative. His earliest recorded image, an 1825 print of a man leading a horse, sold for $443,220 in 2002.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)(SFC, 7/14/99, p.4)(SFC, 3/22/02, p.A2)
1816 France adopted the Paris meridian as the standard clock time for the country. Sundials were used up to this time.
(WSJ, 10/26/99, p.A24)
1816 Dr. Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec invented the stethoscope.
(ON, 9/00, p.11)
1816 Saartjie Baartman (26), taken from S. Africa in 1810, fell sick and died penniless and friendless in France after being exhibited as the "Hottentot Venus." Her body was dissected, her brain and genitals were bottled, and her skeleton was wired and exhibited in the Musee de l’Homme in Paris. In 1994 Nelson Mandela requested that she be returned home. In 2002 her remains were returned to S. Africa. In 2003 Barbara Chase-Ribaud authored the novel "Hottentot Venus" based on the Baartman story. In 2007 Rachel Holmes authored “African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus."
(SFC, 5/4/02, p.A8)(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.M6)(SFC, 1/1/07, p.D2)(Econ., 2/28/15, p.31)
1817 Jul 14, Madame de Stael (51), writer and daughter of former French finance minister Jacques Necker, died. She was intimate with Benjamin Constant and their intellectual collaboration made them one of the most important intellectual pairs of their time. In 2005 Maria Fairweather authored “Madame de Stael." In 2008 Renee Winegarten authored the dual biography “Germaine de Stael & Benjamin Constant."
(Econ, 3/19/05, p.88)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/stael.htm)(WSJ, 6/23/08, p.A15)
1817 The Dutch and French agreed on a final pact to divide the control of St. Martin Island. The southern Dutch half comprises the Eilandgebied Sint Maarten (Island Territory of St. Maarten) and is part of the Netherlands Antilles. The northern French half comprises the Collectivité de Saint-Martin (Collectivity of St. Martin) and is an overseas collectivity of France.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Martin)
c1817-1924 Pierre Joseph Redoute printed "Les Roses."
(SFEM, 4/6/97, p.16)
1818 Jun 17, Charles Francois Gounod, opera composer of "Faust" and "Romeo et Juliette," was born in Paris, France.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1818 Aug 7, Henri Charles Litolff, French composer, pianist, was born.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1818 Theophile Bra, French academic sculptor, won the Prix de Rome.
(SFEM, 11/1/98, p.4)
1818 Baron Karl de Drais de Sauerbrun of Germany invented the draisienne, the first 2-wheeled, rider-propelled machine and exhibited it in Paris. The vehicle came to be known as the “velocipede," a 2-wheeled running machine without pedals.
(Wired, 2/98, p.172)(Econ, 2/5/05, p.77)
1819 Jun 10, J.D. Gustave Courbet (d.1877), French realist painter (Demoiselles the la Seine), was born. His realistic landscapes were marked by bold shadows and compositions fragmented by the play of natural light. This technique was pursued more fully by the impressionists. His work included "Rock at HautePierre."
(DPCP, 1984)(WSJ, 3/10/00, p.W16)(MC, 6/10/02)
1819 Jun 20, Jacques Offenbach (d.1880), French composer (Tales of Hoffmann), was born in Cologne. His work included the comedy opera "Barbe-Bleue" (Blue Beard).
(MC, 6/20/02)(WSJ, 2/20/98, p.A16)
1819 Sep 17, Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault, physicist (pendulum proved Earth rotates), was born. [see Sep 18]
(MC, 9/17/01)
1819 Sep 18, Leon Foucault, French physicist, was born. [see Sep 17]
(HN, 9/18/00)
c1819 In France a silver soup tureen was manufactured by Jean-Baptiste Claude Odiot. It fetched over a million dollars in a 1997 auction.
(WSJ, 10/24/97, p.B18)
1820 Feb 15, French statesman Pierre-Joseph Cambon (63), member of Committee of Public Safety (French Revolution), died.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Cambon)
1820 French economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) began working at the National Conservatory of Arts in Paris as the country’s first professor of economics.
(Econ, 8/12/17, p.54)
1820s A road was constructed through La Mas d'Azil, a tunnel cut by Arize River.
(SFEC, 5/30/99, p.T4)
1821 Feb 11, Auguste Edouard Mariette, French Egyptologist, (dug out Sphinx 12/16/42), was born.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1821 May 5, Napoleon Bonaparte (b.1769), former emperor of France (1799-1815), died in exile on the island of St. Helena. He died by slow poisoning at the hands of his companion Charles Tristan de Montholon. Scottish pathologist Dr. Hamilton Smith later used Napoleon’s hair to determine that arsenic had been administered about 40 times from 1820-1821. In 2010 a lock of Napoleon’s hair fetched 140,000 New Zealand dollars ($97,000) at auction. In 1992 Proctor Patterson Jones authored "Napoleon, An Intimate Account." In 1999 an English translation of Jean-Paul Kauffmann's "The Black Room at Longwood: Napoleon's Exile on St. Helena" was published. In 1904 F. De Bouirrienne published "Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte." In 1988 S. De Chair edited "Napoleon's Memoirs." In 2014 Andrew Roberts authored “Napoleon the Great."
(V.D.-H.K.p.232)(AP, 5/5/97)(SFEC, 1/18/98, BR p.9)(SFEC, 8/16/98, Z1 p.8)(SFC, 4/8/99, p.C5)(AP, 8/8/97)(SFEC, 8/1/99, Par p.16)(AP, 7/01/10)(Econ, 9/20/14, p.77)
1821 Aug 19, There was a failed liberal coup against French King Louis XVIII.
(MC, 8/19/02)
1821 Dec 12, Gustave Flaubert (d.1880), French novelist, was born. "Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times." [see May 8, 1880]
(V.D.-H.K.p.278)(AP, 6/19/99)(HN, 12/12/99)
1822 Sep 9, Napoleon J K P Bonaparte, French prince and member National Convention, was born.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1822 Dec 27, Louis Pasteur (d.1895), French chemist and microbiologist, was born in Dole, France. One of his several monumental contributions to science and industry was pasteurization, the process of heating wine, beer and milk to kill microorganisms that cause fermentation and disease. Pasteur also developed important vaccines and his work on molecular asymmetry led to the science of stereochemistry. He was the first to vaccinate animals for anthrax and chicken cholera, and in 1885 he proved that his rabies vaccine could be used successfully on humans when he saved the life of a 9-year-old boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog. The Pasteur Institute was formed in Paris in 1888 for research on rabies. Pasteur ran the institute until his death in 1895.
(WUD, 1994, p.1055)(AP, 12/27/97) (HNPD, 12/27/98)
1822 Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) painted "A Grief-Stricken Family." It was painted shortly after his student and mistress, Constance Mayer, slit her throat.
(WSJ, 4/8/98, p.A20)
1822 The French Bollore Group started out as a family-run manufacturer of paper for cigarettes and bibles.
(AFP, 4/24/18)
1823 Jan 27, Edouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo, French composer (Symphonie Espagnole), was born.
(MC, 1/27/02)
1823 Feb 28, Ernst Renan, French philosopher, historian, scholar of religion, was born.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1823 In Paris, France, the Galerie Viviene, a covered arcade, was built.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.M4)
1824 Jul 27, Alexandre Dumas fils, French playwright, novelist (Camille), was born.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1824 Jul 30, Gioacchino Rossini became manager of Theatre Italian in Paris.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1824 The book “History of the Expedition to Russia, Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812" by Count de Segur, a general in Napoleon’s army, was first published. An English translation edited by Gerard Shelley was published in 1928.
(WSJ, 8/25/07, p.P9)
1825 May 20, Charles X became King of France.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1825 Jun 9, Pauline Bonaparte (44), the sister of Napoleon, died. In 2009 Flora Fraser authored Pauline Bonaparte: Venus of Empire."
(Econ, 3/7/09, p.91)(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=27659636)
1825 Jun 19, Gioacchino Rossini's "Il Viaggio a Reims," premiered. Rossini wrote the "IL Viaggio a Reims" opera to celebrate the coronation of Charles X. The libretto by Luigi Balocchi was intended to show all major European nationalities coming together to celebrate the event.
(WSJ, 9/29/99, p.A20)(MC, 6/19/02)
1825 Jun 20, Coronation of French king Charles X, the surviving brother of guillotined Louis XVI.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1825 Oct 17, Franz Liszt's operetta Don Sanche premiered in Paris
(MC, 10/17/01)
1825 Dec 29, Jacques-Louis David (b.1748), French painter (Death of Marat), died.
(WUD, 1994 p.369)(MC, 12/29/01)
1825 Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), French lawyer and professor, invented the genre of food writing with his book “The Physiology of Taste."
(WSJ, 5/5/07, p.P10)
1825 A French emissary of Charles X demanded that Haiti pay 150 million gold francs in exchange for recognition as French warships cruised over the horizon. The deal required 5 annual payments of 30 million and required a loan from a French bank for the 1st payment. Haiti renegotiated the debt in 1838.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.A1)
1825 France established its imperial paramilitary, the Gendarmerie Coloniale, for law enforcement across its colonial empire.
(WSJ, 2/2/04, p.A12)
1826 Feb 2, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (b.1755), French lawyer and epicure, died. “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are." His famous work, Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste), was published in December 1825, two months before his death.
(WSJ, 7/19/08, p.W1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brillat-Savarin)
1826 Apr 6, Gustave Moreau, French painter, was born.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1826 Apr 22, French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville (1790-1842) sailed from Toulon towards the Pacific Ocean, for a circumnavigation of the world that was destined to last nearly three years. In the 1830s he explored the south and western Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Dumont_d%27Urville)
1826 Theophile Bra, French academic sculptor, experienced a nervous breakdown and began to make visionary paintings.
(SFEM, 11/1/98, p.)
1826 Corot painted "Cascade of Terni." "Its flat light, monumentalizing simplicity and minimal content anticipated Courbet, Manet and Cezanne."
(SFC, 6/4/96, p.E5)
1826 Ferdinand Eugene Delacroix (d.1863), French artist, painted his “Portrait of Charles de Verninac" about this time. De Verninac (1803-1834) died later in NYC while returning home after catching yellow fever while serving as French vice consul in Chile.
(SFC, 1/21/15, p.E1)
1826 In Egypt Jean-Francois Champollion, French Egyptologist and decipherer of the Rosetta Stone, began collecting Egyptian artifacts. He convinced Charles X to purchase the private collections of the French and English consuls in Egypt.
(WSJ, 1/29/98, p.A16)
1826 Dr. Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec, inventor of the stethoscope, died from tuberculosis.
(ON, 9/00, p.11)
1826-1829 Dumont d’Urville (1790-1842), French explorer and naturalist, sailed around the Pacific Ocean.
(CW, Spring ‘99, p.3)
1827 Feb 1, Alphonse de Rothschild, French banker, was born.
(MC, 2/1/02)
1827 Mar 5, Pierre-Simon Laplace (b.1749), French mathematician, astronomer, physicist, died. He invented perturbation theory and wrote the 5-volume work "Celestial Mechanics." In 1998 Charles Couiston Gillespie published his biography "Pierre-Simon Laplace: A Life in Exact Science."
(WSJ, 2/19/98, p.A20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace)
1827 Jul 14, Augustin-Jean Fresnel (b.1788), French engineer, died. He contributed significantly to the establishment of the theory of wave optics. Fresnel studied the behavior of light both theoretically and experimentally. He worked out a way to focus light using diffraction and was the first to construct a special type of lens, now called a Fresnel lens, as a substitute for mirrors in lighthouses.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel)(Econ, 6/9/12, p.85)
1827 Oct 20, British, French and Russian squadrons entered the harbor at Navarino, Greece, and destroyed most of the Egyptian fleet there. The Ottomans demanded reparations.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.770)(www.ipta.demokritos.gr/erl/navarino.html)
1827 Victor Hugo wrote the official coronation ode for Charles X, the last Bourbon king.
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)
1827 The first Egyptian Museum was housed in the Louvre’s Cour Caree with Jean-Francois Champollion as curator.
(WSJ, 1/29/98, p.A16)(WSJ, 10/7/98, p.A20)
1827 The lithopane (lithophane) was patented in Paris. It allowed a picture, embedded in porcelain, to be viewed in light by varying the thickness of a porcelain base. Generally credited as being the invention of Baron Paul de Bourguignon, of Rubelles, France, in 1827, the earliest forms of lithophanes were actually produced in China many years before other countries produced them.
(SFC, 3/1/06, p.G7)(http://bellerosefarm.com/html/_lithopane_history.html)
1827 Joseph Niepce, French inventor, met with English botanist Francis Bauer, who agreed to present Niepce’s ground breaking photographic work to the Royal Society, which rejected the bid. Before leaving London Niepce made a gift of his 1826 pewter image to Bauer. The pewter image was re-discovered in 1952 by photo historian Helmut Gernsheim.
(ON, 10/08, p.8)
1828 Feb 8, French author Jules Verne (d.1905) was born. He is considered the father of science fiction. Many of his 19th-century works forecast amazing scientific feats--feats that were actually carried out in the 20th century--with uncanny accuracy. Verne's 1865 book From the Earth to the Moon told the story of a space ship that is launched from Florida to the moon and that returns to Earth by landing in the ocean. Something of a scientist and traveler himself, Verne's 1870 work about a submarine, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," and "Around the World in Eighty Days" also foretold technological advances that seemed fantastic at the time.
(HNPD, 2/8/99)
1828 Apr 16, Francisco Jose Goya y Lucientes (b.1746), Spanish painter, cartoonist, died at age 82 in France. He had served 3 generations of Spanish kings as court painter. In 2002 Julia Blackburn authored "Old Man Goya." In 2003 Robert Hughes authored "Goya." See link for Goya timeline.
(WSJ, 5/10/02, p.W8)(Econ, 10/18/03, p.81)(http://tinyurl.com/ngxt7)
1828 Apr 21, Hippolyte Taine, French philosopher, historian (Voyage in Italy), was born.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1828 Aug 22, Franz Joseph Gall (70), German-French physician, fraud (phrenology), died.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1828 Sep 20, Gioacchino Rossini’s opera "Le Comte Ory," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1828 Dr. Paul Ferdinand Gachet was born in Lille. He moved to Paris in 1848 to study medicine and developed a clientele of artists that included Pissarro and Cezanne. He accepted paintings in exchanged for services and amassed a sizable collection. He also painted and used the pseudonym Paul Van Ryssel.
(WSJ, 2/16/99, p.A20)
1828 A perfume and cosmetics house was established. In 1998 the firm was led by Jean-Paul Guerlain, the great-grandson of the founder.
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.A11)
1828 In France Louis Daguerre contacted Joseph Niepce with an offer to work together on the photographic process that Niepce had developed.
(ON, 10/08, p.8)
1829 Feb 16, Francois-Joseph Gossec (95), Belgian-French composer (Messe de Morts), died.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1829 Aug 31, Giachinno Rossini's final opera "William Tell" was produced in Paris.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1829 Dec 14, In France Joseph Niepce signed a 10-year partnership agreement with Louis Daguerre to perfect a new photographic imaging process discovered by Niepce.
(ON, 10/08, p.9)
1829 Dec 18, Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (~85), French nature investigator, died.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1829 The Obelisk of Luxor, a gift from Egypt, was transported to the Place de la Concorde.
(WSJ, 10/26/99, p.A24)
1829-1833 Honore Daumier created his bust of Comte de Lameth. Daumier honed his caricaturing skills with a series of terra-cotta busts that lampooned the right-wing leaders of the court party. Lameth had fought for the colonists in the American Revolution and had voted to abolish the aristocracy during the French revolution.
(WSJ, 3/10/00, p.W16)
1830 Jan 28, Daniel Auber's opera "Fra Diavolo," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1830 Feb, The Comedie-Francaise performed "Hernani," a play whose hero swears vengeance against Don Carlo, i.e. King Charles. The play "provoked a brouhaha that heralded the July Revolution."
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)
1830 Jul 5, The French occupied the North African city of Algiers. A flotilla had set sail earlier from Toulon to wrest Algeria from Ottoman control.
(AP, 7/5/97)(Econ, 3/1/14, p.83)
1830 Jul 10, Camille Pissarro (d.1903), French impressionist painter, was born on the island of St. Thomas in the West Indies. He studied as a child in Paris but spent his early years as an artist in Caracas, Venezuela. In Paris he became a devotee of the neo-Impressionist technique.
(WUD, 1994, p.1097)(DPCP 1984)(HN, 7/10/01)
1830 Jul 25, King Charles X of France signed the July Ordinances, also known as "The Ordinances of Saint-Cloud". These, among other steps, suspended the liberty of the press, dissolved the newly elected Chamber of Deputies and excluded the commercial middle-class from future elections.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Revolution)
1830 Jul 27, A second Revolution broke out in Paris opposing the laws of Charles X.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Revolution)
1830 Jul 28, A revolution in France replaced Bourbon King Charles X with Louis Philippe (1773-1850).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Philippe_I)(Econ, 11/15/14, p.84)
1830 Jul 29, Liberals led by the Marquis of Lafayette seized Paris in opposition to the king's restrictions on citizens' rights.
(HN, 7/29/98)
1830 Jul 31, Charles X of France was forcibly ejected from the French throne. [see Jul 28]
(MC, 7/31/02)
1830 Aug 9, Louis Philippe (d.1850) formally accepted the crown of France, following abdication of Charles X, last brother of guillotined Louis XVI. He was the son of the opportunistic Duke d'Orleans, first cousin to the late king, who renounced his royal heritage and called himself plain Phillipe Egalite. Louis-Philippe voted for his cousin's death in 1793, but followed him to the guillotine in 1794.
(MC, 8/9/02)
1830 Dec 8, Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (b.1767), Swiss-born thinker, writer and French politician, died. He was intimate with Anne Louise Germaine de Staël and their intellectual collaboration made them one of the most important intellectual pairs of their time. In 2008 Renee Winegarten authored the dual biography “Germaine de Stael & Benjamin Constant."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Constant)
1830 Etienne Henri Dumaige (d.1888), French sculptor, was born.
(SSFC, 2/10/02, p.G5)
1830 Stendhal (1783-1842), the nom de plume of French author Henri Beyle, authored “The Red and the Black," the story of a peasant who reaches for upward mobility through the favors of two mistresses.
(WSJ, 3/15/08, p.W10)
1830 The First Symphony by Berlioz had its premiere.
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.E1)
1830 The Hotel de Ville (City Hall), at 29 Rue de Rivoli, was built. It was rebuilt between 1874 and 1882 in the neo-Renaissance style and is used for official city receptions.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, p.T7)
1830 Henry Philip Hope purchased the 45 carot blue diamond. It later began to be known as the "Hope Diamond."
(THC, 12/3/97)
1830 A Frenchman patented a sewing machine.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R25)
1831 Sep 7, Victorien Sardou, French stage writer (Madame Sans-Gene, Tosca), was born.
(MC, 9/7/01)
1831 Balzac wrote his story "The Unknown Masterpiece." It became a parable of modern art.
(WSJ, 1/4/98, p.A8)
1831 The "Hunchback of Notre Dame" (Notre Dame de Paris) by Victor Hugo was published. Disney released an animated film based on the classic in 1996.
(WSJ, 6/20/95, p.B-1)
1832 Jan 6, Gustave Dore, illustrator (Inferno, Ancient Mariner), was born in Strasbourg, France.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1832 Jan 23, Edouard Manet (d.1883), French impressionist painter, was born. His work was a major influence on the young artists who created the Impressionist movement. His style was influenced by the Spanish masters, particularly Velasquez. His work included the "Execution of Maximilian," "Luncheon on the Grass," the pastel "Portrait of Mademoiselle Lemaire," "In the Boat," "La Promenade" and "Le Journal Illustre" (ca. 1878-79).
(WUD, 1994, p.871)(WSJ, 7/1/96, p.A11)(SFC, 8/21/96, p.A9)(AAP, 1964) (WUD, 1994, p.871)(WSJ, 2/13/97, p.A16)(DPCP 1984)
1832 Mar 4, Jean Francois Champollion (b.1790), French scholar, died. His work included the 2-volume book “Egypt Under the Pharaohs" (1814) and a translation of the hieroglyphics of the Rosetta Stone, completed in 1822.
(ON, 8/10, p.7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Champollion)
1832 May 31, Evariste Galois (b.1811), French mathematician who developed a general theory of equations, died from wounds suffered in a duel. In 2005 Mario Livio authored “The Equation That couldn’t Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry."
(www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Galois.html)(Econ, 8/27/05, p.68)
1832 Jun 5, In Paris an insurrection took place during General Lamarque's funeral when insurgents got as far as the Rue Montorgueil and were then driven back.
(SFC, 6/30/07, p.E2)(www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/07/01.htm)
1832 Nov 15, Jean-Baptiste Say (b.1767), French economist, died. He is remembered for what came to be called Say’s Law: “the supply (sale) of X creates the demand (purchase) of Y." This law can be shown by business-cycle statistics. When downturns start, production is always first to decline, ahead of demand. When the economy recovers, production recovers ahead of demand. A society can’t consume if it does not produce.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Say)(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.A25)
1832 Dec 15, Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, designed named the tower in Paris, was born.
(HN, 12/15/98)
1832 Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864), French artist, painted “Theseus Recognized by His Father."
(WSJ, 12/28/05, p.D8)(www.newadvent.org/cathen/06096a.htm)
1832 Jean Ingres painted the portrait of the self-made newspaperman "Louis-Francois Bertin."
(WSJ, 5/28/99, p.W12)
1832 Honore Daumier, French artist, was imprisoned for 6 months for his barbs against King Louis-Philippe.
(WSJ, 3/10/00, p.W16)
1832 Berlioz composed "Lelio."
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.E1)
1832 Charles-Louis Havas sets up a foreign newspapers translation agency.
(www.afp.com)
1833 Jan 19, Louis J. Ferdinand Herold (41), French composer (Zampa), died.
(MC, 1/19/02)
1833 Jul 5, Joseph Nicephore Niepce (b.1765), French inventor most noted as the inventor of photography, died. He is well-known for taking some of the earliest photographs, dating to the 1820s.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nic%C3%A9phore_Ni%C3%A9pce)
1833 In Paris the St. Vincent de Paul Society was founded to provide aid to the poor.
(SFC, 9/15/98, p.A9)
1833 Ferdinand de Lesseps, came to Cairo as a French consul. He was later posted to Alexandria. Inspired by the idea of joining the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, he persuaded the Ottoman governor of Egypt to build the canal and in 1859, he symbolically swung a pickax to launch the construction, which took 10 years. The canal was officially opened on Nov. 17, 1869.
(AP, 7/7/20)
1834 Apr 2, Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, sculptor (Statue of Liberty), was born in Colmar, France.
(HN, 4/2/01)
1834 Apr 15, The Honore Daumier painting "Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril 1834" showed the ghastly aftermath of a civilian massacre by government forces.
(WSJ, 5/9/00, p.A24)
1834 May 20, The Marquis de Lafayette (78), US Revolutionary War hero (Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roche Gilbert du Motier), died in Paris, France. He was the 1st foreigner to address Congress. In 2002 Congress moved to make him an honorary US citizen. In 1983 Olivier Bernier authored “Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds." In 200 Harlow Giles Unger authored “Lafayette."
(www.marquisdelafayette.net/)(WSJ, 1/15/97, p.A12)(SFC, 7/23/02, p.A2)(ON, 2/09, p.5)
1834 Jul 19, Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas (d.1917), French impressionist painter, was born. His mother was a Creole and he journeyed to New Orleans in the 1870s. His work included "The Millinery Shop," "Combing the Hair," "Nude Fixing Her Hair," "Two Dancers" (c1890-1898), "Frieze of Dancers" (1893-1898), "Self Portrait" (c1863-1865 & c1895-1900) and "Blue Dancers" (1895). He also collected art and by the time of his death had amassed more than 500 paintings and 5,000 prints. The collection was auctioned off in Paris from Mar 1918 to Jul 1919. His time in New Orleans is covered in the 1997 book "Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable" by Christopher Benfey.
(WUD, 1994, p.380)(WSJ, 10/2/96, p.B5)(SFC, 10/22/96,p.E8)(WSJ,10/21/97,p.A20)(SFEC, 1/4/98, BR p.9)(HN, 7/19/98)
1834 Honore Daumier created his lithograph "The Legislative Belly."
(WSJ, 5/9/00, p.A24)
1834 David Johnston founded a pottery in Bordeaux, France. He became mayor of Bordeaux in 1838 and sold his factory to technical director Jules Vieillard in 1845.
(SFC, 8/17/05, p.G5)
1834 The French mechanical telegraph system was subverted in a bond-trading scam that went undetected for two years.
(Econ 6/10/17, p.13)
1834 A Frenchman invented a wire nail-making machine.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, Z1 p.8)
1834 Joseph-Marie Jacquard (b.1752), French loom maker and inventor, died. In 2004 James Essinger authored “Jacquard’s Web," a biography that connects Jacquard’s work to computer technology.
(WSJ, 11/12/04, p.W10)
1834-1910 Leon Walras, French economist. He founded the marginalist school of economic thought, which held that prices depend on the level of customer demand. He developed a mathematical formulation of the mechanics of the price system with equations that tied together theories of production, exchange, money and capital. His general equilibrium theory is called "Walrasion general equilibrium" and is still part of modern economic theory.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)
1835 Apr 26, Frederic Chopin’s "Grand Polonaise Brillante," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1835 Jul 28, King Louis Philippe of France survived an assassination attempt by Giuseppe Maria Fieschi, who rigged 25 guns together and fired them all with the pull of a single trigger.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9034220&query=July%20Revolution)
1835 Oct 9, Camille Saint-Saens, composer (Carnival of the Animals, Organ Symphony, Samson et Dalilah), was born in Paris, France.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1835 Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville (25) wrote "Democracy in America." He had been dispatched by the French government to study America’s penal system. His book predicted that henceforth equality would always increase everywhere, and justice be thereby served in the life of mankind. He also foresaw that democratic man, no longer protected by traditional institutions, found himself in danger of being exposed to the absolute tyranny of the state that he himself had created, i.e. a case of totalitarianism. He also predicted that the extremes of social diversity would be lost and that more human beings would tend to cluster around a central norm. He stated that: "Americans of all ages, all conditions and all dispositions constantly form associations." In 1938 George Wilson Pierson wrote "Tocqueville in America."
(Smith., 4/1995, p.134)(SFEC, 6/14/98, Par p.10)(Econ, 1/30/10, p.92)
1835 The French government prohibited political caricature.
(Econ, 12/20/03, p.75)
1835 A foreign newspapers translation agency, set up by Charles-Louis Havas, became the Agence Havas, the first worldwide news agency.
(www.afp.com)
1836 Feb 21, Leo Delibes, ballet composer (Coppelia), was born in Saint-Germain-du-Val, France.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1836 Jun 10, Andre M. Ampere, French mathematician, physicist (Amp), died.
(MC, 6/10/02)
1836 Jun 26, Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, author, composer ("La Marseillaise"), died.
(MC, 6/26/02)
1836 Jul 6, French General Thomas Bugeaud defeated Abd al-Kader's forces beside the Sikkak River in Algeria.
(HN, 7/6/98)
1836 Nov 6, Charles X (79), King of France (1824-30), died.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1836 Nov 10, Charles Louis Napoleon (1808-1873), nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, failed in an attempted coup at Strasbourg and was exiled to the US by the government of Louis Philippe.
(www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0859871.html)
1836 Nov 27, Carle [Antoine CH] Vernet, French painter and lithographer, died.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1836 Auguste Mayer painted "Scene from the Battle of Trafalgar."
(WSJ, 5/7/02, p.D7)
1836 The 107-foot-tall Egyptian Obelisk reached Paris.
(SFC, 5/15/98, p.D3)
1836 In France the medieval timber roof of the Chartres cathedral burned. Architect J.B. Lassus replaced it with an innovative roof of iron.
(WSJ, 7/5/08, p.W9)
1836 Schneider-Electric, a French engineering firm, was founded. In 2011 CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire moved the top management to Hong Kong.
(Econ, 3/31/12, p.3)
1837 Jan 11, Francois Gerard (66), French baron, painter, died.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1837 Aug 11, Marie Francois Carnot, engineer, French pres (1887-94), was born.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1837 Dec 9, Charles Emile Waldteufel, waltz composer (Skaters), was born in Strasbourg, France.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1837 Thierry Hermes (1801-1878), French saddle maker, established the Hermes company as a harness workshop. It grew to become a maker of high fashion leather goods. The company went public in 1993.
(Econ, 1/1/11, p.56)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herm%C3%A8s)
1837 French explorer Dumont d’Urville (1790-1842) sailed along a coastal area of Antarctica that he named the Adélie Coast in honor of his wife. He also named the Adelie penguin after his wife.
(WSJ, 7/1/97, p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumont_D'Urville)
1838 Apr 3, Leon Michel Gambetta, French attorney, premier (1881-82), was born.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1838 Apr 3, Francesco Antommarchi (57), Napoleon's physician on St Helena, died.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1838 May 17, Charles-Maurice duke of Talleyrand-Perigord (84), diplomat, revolutionary, bishop and former PM of France (1815), died. In 2006 David Lawday authored “Napoleon’s Master: A Life of Prince Talleyrand."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Maurice_de_Talleyrand)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.93)
1838 Sep 4, Henrietta d'Angeville (1794-1871) became the 1st woman to climb to the top of Mt. Blanc, France. In 1808 mountain guides had carried Marie Paradis, a local serving girl, to the top.
(ON, 4/04, p.1)
1838 Sep 10, The opera "Benvenuto Cellini," by Hector Berlioz, premiered in Paris. It was based on Cellini's autobiography.
(MC, 9/10/01)(WSJ, 12/16/03, p.D10)
1838 Oct 25, Georges Alexandre-Cesar-Leopold Bizet, French composer (Carmen), was born.
(HN, 10/25/98)(MC, 10/25/01)
1838 Nov 8, Victor Hugo's "Ruy Blas," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1838 Nov 30, Mexico declared war on France.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1838 Frederic Chopin (1810-1849), Polish-born composer and pianist, began a volatile affair with French novelist George Sand. The relationship continued to 1847.
(Econ, 2/6/10, p.91)
1838 France agreed to reduce Haiti's 1825 "debt" to 60 million fold francs to be paid over 30 years. The final payment was made in 1883. Payments on loans made to repay France continued to 1947.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.A6)(Econ, 3/12/11, p.47)
1838 Louis Daguerre caught an image of a man who appears to be getting his shoes or boots shined at a street corner in Paris. This was the first ever photo of a person.
(http://tinyurl.com/37jtw74)
1839 Jan 2, French photographic pioneer Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre took the first photograph of the moon. Soon after his first photograph of people was a shoeshine scene on a Paris boulevard.
(HN, 1/2/99)(SFEC, 1/16/00, Z1 p.2)(ON, 4/00, p.10)
1839 Jan 9, The Daguerreotype photo process was announced at the French Academy of Science. Louis Daguerre had the influential astronomer Dominique-Francois-Argo make an announcement at the Academy of Sciences in Paris of the daguerreotype, a photographic process using fumes of iodine to sensitize a silver plate, vapor of mercury to bring out the image, and common salt to fix the image. [See 1765-1833, Nicephore Niepce, French lithographer, and 1816].
(http://www.articleworld.org/index.php/Louis_Daguerre)(http://tinyurl.com/arl5k5)(WSJ, 9/14/95, p.A-16)(ON, 10/08, p.9)
1839 Jan 19, Paul Cezanne (d.1906), French painter, was born in Aix-en-Provence in southern France. He was considered a founding figure in 20th century art. He departed from the Impressionists in his desire to render perspective through color. His work had a profound influence on the Cubists. A catalogue of his work was made by John Rewald (1912-1994) and published posthumously as: "The Paintings of Paul Cezanne: A catalogue Raisonne." His work includes: "The Feast" (late 60s), "Portrait of Achille Emperaire" (1869-70), "Self-Portrait" (c1875), "Rocks at L’Estaque" (1879-82), "Flowerpots" (c1885), "Chestnut Trees at Jas de Bouffan" (1885-86), "The Kitchen Table" (1888-90), "Madame Cezanne in a Yellow Chair" (1893-95), "The Lac d’Annecy" (1896), "Pyramid of Skulls" (1898-1900), "Garden at Le Lauves" (c1906), "Large Bathers" (1906), "Mont Ste.-Victoire Seen from Les Lauves." He is best remembered for his works Card Players and L'Oeuvre.
(SFC, 5/30/96, p.E1)(WSJ, 2/10/96, p.A16)(DPCP 1984)(HN, 1/19/99)
1839 Aug 19, At a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris a new photographic process was unveiled by Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre. He "was able to capture images directly onto small, silvered plates; and in England where William Henry Fox invented what he called "photogenic drawing." This process produced a negative image on paper from which positive images could be made... but it took more than an hour to take a picture and the fuzzy prints were difficult to see. The daguerreotype enabled the photographer to create a highly detailed image. The process consisted of polishing a copper plate, using iodine to sensitize it, and developing it over mercury after exposing it to light in a camera. Daguerreotypes became so popular in the United States that New York City boasted more than 70 daguerreotype studios by 1850.
(Smith., 5/95, p.72)(HNQ, 10/28/98)
1839 Oct 30, Alfred Sisley (d.1899), impressionist artist, was born in Paris of English parents. He studied in London and then in Paris in the studio of Charles Gleyre. He painted landscapes almost exclusively. His work included “A Turn in the Road" (1873).
(DPCP 1984)(HN, 10/30/00)
1839 Stendhal, Marie-Henri Beyle, wrote his novel "Charterhouse of Parma" in 52 days. A 1st edition from the library of Marie Louise, 2nd wife of Napoleon, sold for $157,310 in 1999.
(WSJ, 1/2/96, p. A-7)(WSJ, 3/25/97, p.A16)
1839 Jeanne Jugan founded the Little Sisters of the Poor to take care of the destitute elderly. She supported her project by begging house to house.
(WSJ, 12/17/05, p.A6)
1839 France began to mass produce women’s corsets about this time. See the discussion by Marilyn Yalom in her 1997 book: "History of the Breast."
(SFEC, 2/9/97, z1 p.3)
1839 Parisian tailors revolted and destroyed the new sewing machines.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R25)
1839 The photoelectric effect was 1st discovered by French physicist Alexandre Becquerel. He observed that light could generate an electric current between 2 metal electrodes immersed in a conductive fluid.
(Econ, 3/10/07, TQ p.23)
1839-1899 Alfred Sisley, impressionist artist, was born in Paris of English parents. He studied in London and then in Paris in the studio of Charles Gleyre. He painted landscapes almost exclusively. His work included "A Turn in the Road" (1873).
(DPCP 1984)
1840 Feb 11, Gaetano Donizetti's Opera "La Fille du Regiment," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1840 Mar 30, "Beau" Brummell (b.1778), English dandy and former favorite of the prince regent, died of syphilis in a French lunatic asylum for paupers. In 2006 Ian Kelly authored the biography “Beau Brummel."
(HN, 3/30/99)(WSJ, 5/7/06, p.P9)
1840 Apr 2, Emile Zola (d.1902), French novelist, reporter (Nana) , was born. He tried to wake the consciousness of the fin de siecle.
(HN, 4/2/98)(SFC, 12/29/00, p.C6)(V.D.-H.K.p.279)
1840 May 27, Nicolo Paganini (57), Italian legendary violinist, died in Nice. The local bishop refused to bury him in consecrated ground due to his scandal-ridden past. His remains were transferred to Parma in 1876. His 1742 violin, "the Canon," was put to rest in a museum in Genoa and later played annually by the winner of the Int'l. Paganini Competition. In 1980 John Sugden authored the biography "Nicolo Paganini: Supreme Violinist or Devil’s Fiddler"
(SFC, 8/15/96, p.D5)(SFC, 11/12/98, p.E1)(SFC, 4/26/99, p.E2)(ON, 3/02, p.7)
1840 Jun 29, Lucien Bonaparte (65), prince of Canino, Musignano, died.
(MC, 6/29/02)
1840 Nov 12, Auguste Rodin, French sculptor who created "The Kiss," was born.
(HN, 11/12/98)
1840 Nov 14, Claude Monet (d.1926), French Impressionist painter, best known for his late work done at Giverney, northwest of Paris after 1890. He came up with the idea of series pictures, which feature a single subject shown again and again under varying conditions of light and weather. He studied in Paris with Charles Gleyre, a Swiss academic painter, and there met Frederic Bazille, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. Together they developed open-air painting which came to be known as Impressionism.
(WSJ, 7/25/95, p.A-10)(HN, 11/14/98)
1840 Etienne Cabet (1788-1856), Ivory Coast-born French philosopher and utopian socialist, authored "Travel and Adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria". In 1848 he led his followers to the United States of America.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_Cabet)
1840 In Paris, France, there were some 200 brothels.
(Econ, 7/14/12, p.47)
1840-1916 Odilon Redon, French painter and etcher.
(WUD, 1994, p.1203)
1841 Jan 14, Berthe Morisot (d.1895) French impressionist painter, was born in Bourges.
(NMWA, 12/04, p.10)
1841 Jan 18, Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier, French composer (Louise), was born.
(MC, 1/18/02)
1841 Feb 25, Pierre Auguste Renoir (d.1919), French painter, was born. He was an Impressionist painter, father of Jean Renoir, and founder of the French Impressionist movement. He was the son of a Paris tailor and began his career as a porcelain painter in the Sevres china factory. His paintings included "Luncheon of the Boating Party," "Self-portraits" (1875 & 1899) and "Sleeping Girl With a Cat" (1880). [see 1894, J. Renoir]
(HFA, '96, p.22)(WSJ, 8/13/96, p.A9)(DPCP 1984)(HN, 2/25/99)
1841 Jun 28, The ballet "Giselle," also called Les Wilis, was premiered in Paris. It was the brain-child of Theophile Gautier, a leading voice of the Romantic Age. It told of a dance-loving peasant girl who dies of a broken heart when Albrecht, a philandering nobleman, betrays her.
(SFEM, 3/28/99, p.12)(WSJ, 4/22/99, A20)
1841 Sep 28, Georges Clemenceau, premier of France during World War I, was born. He served as premier from 1906-09 and 1917-1920.
(HN, 9/28/98)(MC, 9/28/01)
1841 Lord Elgin died in Paris at age 75.
(ON, 11/99, p.4)
1842 Jan 7, Gioacchino Rossini's "Stabat Mater" premiered in Paris.
(MC, 1/7/02)
1842 Mar 18, Stephane Mallarme (d.1898), French essayist and symbolist poet, was born. "Every soul is a melody which needs renewing."
(AP, 7/17/98)(HN, 3/18/01)
1842 Mar 23, Stendhal [Marie-Henri Beyle], French author (b.1783), died at 59.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal)
1842 Mar 30, Elisabeth Viglee Le Brun (b.1755), French artist, died in Paris. She had served as the portrait painter to Marie Antoinette.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_%C3%89lisabeth_Vig%C3%A9e_Le_Brun)(Econ, 2/20/15, p.76)
1842 May 8, The first French railway disaster, generally known as the Versailles rail accident. Among the dead were explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville and his family.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Dumont_d%27Urville)
1842 May 12, Jules Massenet Montaud (d.1912), French composer, was born. His work included "Manon," "Thais" and "Le Cid."
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A24)
1842 May 15, Emanuel ADMJ Count de las Cases (76), French historian (Napoleon), died.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1842 Jul 25, Dominique-Jean Larrey (b.1766), a French surgeon in Napoleon's Grande Armée, died in Lyon, France. He was an important innovator in battlefield medicine and triage.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey)
1842 France claimed the Marquesas Islands.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)
1842 The French declared a protectorate over the Wallis and Futuna Islands. They had been discovered by the Dutch and the British in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1959, the inhabitants of the islands voted to become a French overseas territory.
(www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/wf.html)
1843 Jan 4, Gaetano Donizetti's opera "Don Pasquale," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 1/4/02)
1843 Jul 2, Samuel Hahnemann (b.1755), German physician and founder of homeopathy, died in Paris. A renaissance for homeopathy started in the 1970s when it was rediscovered by West Germany’s glitterati, including Veronica Carstens, the wife of a former president.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Hahnemann)(Econ, 9/10/16, p.44)
1843 Sep 19, Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis (b.1792), French engineer and mathematician, died. He showed that the laws of motion could be used in a rotating frame of reference if an extra force called the Coriolis acceleration is added to the equations of motion.
(www.gap-system.org/~history/Mathematicians/Coriolis.html)
1843 Oct 30, A. G. Henri Regnault, French water colors painter, was born.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1843-1848 The Chateau de Boursault was built by the widow Clicquot. She contributed to the development of the champagne-making process.
(Hem., 10/97, p.104)
1844 Feb 21, Charles-Marie Widor, composer, professor (Paris Conservatory), was born in Lyons, France.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1844 Apr 16, Anatole France (d.1924), French novelist and essayist, was born. He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1921. His love for Madame de Caillavet, whose salon helped make him famous, formed the backdrop for his novel "Le Lys Rouge," (The Red Lily). "All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious."
(WSJ, 2/20/96, p.A-14)(AP, 10/11/98)(HN, 4/16/01)
1844 May 21, Henri Rousseau (d.1910), French painter (Dream), was born in Laval.
(HN, 5/21/01)
1844 Oct 23, Sarah Bernhardt, French actress, was born. [see Oct 22]
(HN, 10/23/00)
1844 Bishop Dominique Lefevre, a Catholic missionary and French citizen, engaged in a plot with other priests to overthrow Thieu Tri, the emperor of Cochin China (later Vietnam). Lefevre was imprisoned and condemned to death.
(AH, 12/02, p.25)
1844-1833 Celestine Chaumette from the French village of Chassignolles saved her personal letters. They were later found and published by British writer Gillian Tindall as "Voices from a French Village."
(SFC, 6/16/96, BR p.4)
1845 Apr 2, H.L. Fizeau and J. Leon Foucault took the 1st photo of Sun.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1845 May 10, During a celebrated round-the-world tour in 1844-46, the USS Constitution dropped anchor in the bay outside of Tourane, Cochin China (later part of Vietnam). While there, Bishop Dominique Lefevre, an imprisoned French missionary, requested the assistance of the ship's captain, "Mad Jack" Percival. The Americans attempted to negotiate with the Cochin Chinese, to no avail. Frustrated, they set sail from Cochin and continued on their course on May 26 without further word about or from the missionary, who was eventually retrieved by his own countrymen.
(HNQ, 10/18/02)(AH, 12/02, p.25)
1845 May 12, Gabriel Urbain Faure, French composer, was born in Pamiers. His work included "Requiem" and "Ballade."
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)(MC, 5/12/02)
1845 Sep 8, A French column surrendered at Sidi Brahim in the Algerian War.
(HN, 9/8/98)
1845 Oct 22, Sarah Bernhardt (d.1923), legendary stage actress, was born in Paris. "Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich." [see Oct 23]
(AP, 10/22/97)(AP, 2/20/00)(WUD, 1994 p.141)
1846 Jul 24, Louis Napoleon (67), French king of the Netherlands (1806-10), died.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1846 Aug 16, Gioacchino Rossini married Olympe Pelissier in Paris and stopped composing operas.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1846 Dec 6, Hector Berlioz' opera "La Damnation de Faust" was produced in Paris.
(MC, 12/6/01)(WSJ, 7/1/03, p.D8)
1846 In Paris, France, the Hotel Chopin was built inside the Passage Jouffroy, a covered arcade.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.M5)
1847 Feb 3, Marie Duplessis (b.1824), French courtesan, died. She was mistress to a number of prominent and wealthy men, the inspiration for Marguerite Gautier, and the main character of La Dame aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas the younger, one of her lovers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Duplessis)
1847 Nov 26, Alfred de Musset's "Un Caprice," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1847 Cartier jewelers opened in Paris.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)
1848 Feb 24, King Louis-Philippe abdicated and the 2nd French republic was declared. [see Feb 26]
(MC, 2/24/02)
1848 Feb 26, The Second French Republic was proclaimed. [see Feb 24]
(AP, 2/26/98)
1848 Apr 27, Slave trade was abolished in the French colonies.
(AFP, 3/24/10)
1848 Apr 28, The last slaves in French colonies were freed.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1848 Jun 7, Paul Gauguin, French post-impressionist painter, was born in Paris. He abandoned his family to focus on his work.
(AP, 6/7/97)(HN, 6/7/99)
1848 Jun 23, A bloody insurrection of workers in Paris erupted to protest inflation, unemployment and corruption. The insurrection was ruthlessly suppressed by Gen. Cavaignac.
(HN, 6/23/98)(SFEC, 6/28/98, p.T9)(WSJ, 3/13/09, p.A9)
1848 Jul 4, Vicomte Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (b.1768), French writer and statesman, 79, died in Paris.
(WUD, 1994, p.250)
1848 Jul 26, The French army suppressed the Paris uprising.
(HN, 7/26/98)
1848 Nov 21, Alfred de Musset's "Andre del Sarto," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1848 Dec 10, Napoleon III, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte), was elected president of France. In 1852 he dismantled the Republic and replaced it with the Second Empire of France, with himself as emperor.
(PC, 1992 ed, p.446)(WUD, 1994, p.950)
1848 Edouard Manet (1832-1883) at age 16 failed the French naval exam and after 3 months at sea became convinced that he would rather be a painter.
(WSJ, 12/3/03, p.D12)
1848 The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded. A group of artists led by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rosetti, fought against corrupt academic art based on the work of the Renaissance.
(WSJ, 2/19/97, p.A15)(Econ, 9/20/03, p.82)
1848 France abolished slavery. Victor Schoelcher was a major force in the abolition of slavery in France.
(WSJ, 2/26/02, p.A22)
1848-1894 Gustave Caillebotte, French impressionist painter, he was a Jewish lawyer turned painter with a crisp, almost photographic style. He is best know for "Paris Street: Rainy Day" done in 1877.
(WSJ, 2/23/95, p.A-10)
1849 Apr 6, Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera "Le Prophete," premiered in Paris. [see Apr 16]
(MC, 4/6/02)
1849 Apr 16, Giacomo Meyerbeer's Opera "Le Prophete," premiered in Paris. [see Apr 6]
(MC, 4/16/02)
1849 Apr 30, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian republican patriot and guerrilla leader, repulsed a French attack on Rome.
(HN, 4/30/98)(ON, 10/06, p.5)
1849 Jul 19, F.A. Alphonse Aulard, French historian, was born.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1849 Aug 18, Benjamin Louis Paul Godard, composer, was born in Paris.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1849 Sep 14, La Meuse, the first ship to sail from France to California, arrived in San Francisco with 41 all male passengers.
(SF, 8/29/15, p.C2)
1849 Oct 17, Frederic Chopin (b.1810), Polish-born composer and pianist, died in Paris of tuberculosis at the age of 39. The 1945 film "A Song to Remember" was about Chopin." In 2010 Adam Zamoyski authored “Chopin: Prince of the Romantics."
(HN, 10/17/00)(SFC, 11/25/02, p.A15)(Econ, 2/6/10, p.91)
1849 Gustave Boulanger (1824-1888), French artist, painted “Ulysses Recognized by Eeurycleia."
(WSJ, 12/28/05, p.D8)
1849 Alphonse Karr, French: "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
(SFCM, 10/14/01, p.36)
1849 Victor Hugo addressed an appeal for European unity to Germany, France and Russia.
(Econ, 5/7/05, p.50)
1849 Joseph Naudet, director France’s L’Enfer library, which started in the 1830s, described the library as a hiding place to lock up books that were very bad. The collection hid books and other documents from the public that were deemed dangerous for public morality.
(SFC, 12/7/07, p.E9)
1849 French brothers Adolphe and Edouard-Jean Cointreau created a brand of liqueur called Cointreau and soon founded their own distillery in Angers. The liqueur was a secret blend of orange peels and pure sugar-beet alcohol.
(SFC, 11/1/06, p.G2)
1849 French officer Claude-Etienne Minie invented a bullet that changed the face of warfare. The Minie ball was shot from a grooved bore, i.e. a rifle, and expanded when shot to clean out the grooves of the bore.
(WSJ, 7/24/98, p.W10)
1850 Aug 17, Jose Francisco de San Martin (b.1778), Argentine-born South American revolutionary hero, died in France. In 2009 John Lynch authored “San Martin: Argentine Soldier, American Hero."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_de_San_Mart%C3%ADn)(Econ, 4/25/09, p.87)
1850 Aug 18, Honore de Balzac (b.1799), French novelist, died at age 51.
(WUD, 1994, p.115)(MC, 8/18/02)
1850 Aug 26, Charles Richet, French physiologist (anaphylaxis-Nobel 1913), was born.
(MC, 8/26/02)
1850 Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), French artist, painted "Burial at Ornans."
(WSJ, 11/28/06, p.D8)
1850s The Petite Ceinture was a rail line built to haul merchandise between the major train stations of Paris. It was shut down in 1934 but opened again by the Germans during WW II.
(SFEC, 6/28/98, p.T9)
1851 Jan 6, Leon Foucault (d.1868), French scientist, watched a pendulum swing and shift its plane of motion. This he realized was due to the rotation of the Earth. In 2003 Amir D. Aczel authored "Pendulum: Leon Foucault and the Triumph of Science."
(WSJ, 8/28/03, p.D18)
1851 Mar 27, Paul-Marie-Theodore-Vincent d'Indy, composer (Symphonie Cevenole), was born in Paris.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1851 May 29, Leon Bourgeois, French premier (1895-96, Nobel 1920), was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1851 Jul 10, Louis-Jacques-Mand Daguerre, French painter (daguerreotype), died.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1851 Oct 2, Ferdinand Foch, French Allied commander in WW I, was born.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1851 Oct 19, Marie-Therese-Charlotte (b.1778), daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette died in Austria of pneumonia.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se_of_France)
1851 Oct, The first of 17 ships arrived in SF from France following a lottery by the government of Louis Napoleon, which provided passage to some 3,000 for the gold rush.
(SFCM, 4/30/06, p.4)
1851 Nov 2, Louis Napoleon staged a coup and took power in France as Napoleon III of the Second Empire.
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)(DoW, 1999, p182)
1851 Nov 13, The London-to-Paris telegraph opened.
(HN, 11/13/98)
1851 Nov 16, In France officials drew the winning numbers for the Lottery of the Golden Ingots. Some 7 million tickets had been sold for one franc each to finance the shipment of hand-picked French emigrants to California. From October 1851 to January 1853 a lottery ship sailed every month from Le Havre. 3,293 passengers of 4,016 arrived in San Francisco. The rest disembarked en route.
(SFC, 9/5/15, p.C2)
1851 Dec 4, Pres. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte forces crushed a coup d'etat in France.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1851 Victor Hugo sought refuge on the Channel island of Guernsey where he wrote "Les Miserables" and other works.
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)
1851 The Chateau Pichon-Longueville was built in the Bordeaux region of France.
(USAT, 5/9/03, p.2D)
1851 Paul Julius Reuter, a German-born immigrant, began transmitting stock-market quotes between London and Paris over the new Dover-Calais submarine telegraph cable.
(http://about.reuters.com/home/aboutus/history/informationandinnovation.aspx)
1852 Jan 6, Louis Braille (43) died of tuberculosis in France. He had been blinded by an accident during childhood and spent years developing a system to read by touch. In 1997 Russell Freedman wrote "Out of Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille."
(SFEC, 7/6/97, BR p.10)(ON, 10/04, p.9)( http://www.brailler.com/braillehx.htm)
1852 Feb 2, Alexandre Dumas Jr.’s "Le Dame aux Camelias," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1852 Feb 28, The French ship arrived in San Francisco from Le Havre with some 200 lottery emigrants. They included criminals, political prisoners, honest workers, common thugs and others considered undesirable. France had organized a national lottery for a gold bar and used the proceeds to ship people to California.
(SF, 8/29/15, p.C1)
1852 May 25, Louis Franchet d'Espèrey [Desperate Frankey], French marshal (WWI), was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1852 Sep 24, Henri Giffard, a French engineer, flew over Paris in the 1st dirigible flight.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/AVgifford.htm)
1852 Dec 2, Louis Napoleon, the little nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, established the Second Empire in France (1852-1870) and called himself Napoleon III. He married the Spanish beauty Eugenie and ran a semi-liberal autocracy for 18 years.
(WUD, 1994, p.950)(WSJ, 3/14/95, p.A16)(MC, 12/2/01)
1852 Eugene Delacroix painted "Desdemona Cursed by Her Father."
(WSJ, 9/24/98, p.A16)
1852 Maria Vernet Worth, a Parisian shop clerk, became the 1st professional model when her husband found that he sold more dresses when she helped.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, Z1 p.2)
1852 France established its penal colony at Devil’s Island, French Guiana. It was one of 3 islands called the Iles du Salut (Islands of Salvation). Some 70,000 convicts were sent there until 1946. The penal colony operated until 1951.
(SSFC, 12/15/02, p.L5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Guiana)
1852-1935 Paul Bourget, French author: "We had better live as we think, otherwise we shall end up by thinking as we have lived."
(AP, 2/11/00)
1853 Jan 16, Andre Michelin, French industrialist and tire manufacturer (Michelin), was born.
(MC, 1/16/02)
1853 Jan 19, Napoleon III married Eugenie de Montijo.
(MC, 1/19/02)
1853 Apr 2, Lucie de la Tour du Pin (83), born as Henriette-Lucie Dillon and former lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette, died Paris. Her memoir, “Journal of a Woman of Fifty Years," was not published until 1906. In 2009 Caroline Moorhead authored “Dancing to the Precipice: Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution."
(Econ, 3/7/09, p.91)(http://tinyurl.com/co3xor)
1853 May 11, Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild of England purchased Chateau Mouton in Bordeaux, France, for 1,125,000 gold francs.
(www.pageaday.com)
1853 Jul, Supported by Britain, the Turks took a firm stand against the Russians, who occupied the Danubian principalities (modern Romania) on the Russo-Turkish border. The Crimean War got under way in October. It was fought mainly on the Crimean Peninsula between the Russians and the British, French, and Ottoman Turkish, with support, from January 1855, by the army of Sardinia-Piedmont. The war aligned Anglican England and Roman Catholic France with Islam’s sultan-caliphs against the tsars, who saw themselves as the world’s last truly Christian emperors.
(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/143040/Crimean-War)(Econ, 10/2/10, p.89)
1853 Oct, Henry Bessemer (1813-1898), English mechanical engineer, invented a new type of artillery shell. He presented it to the War Department for use in the Crimean War, but they were not interested. He then offered it to France’s Napoleon III, who agreed to test the shells. The larger shells demanded a new type of cannon made of stronger metal, which led to his experiments in making iron.
(ON, 9/06, p.4)
1853 Jun 29, Napoleon III met with Georges-Eugene Haussmann to outline plans for the “strategic beautification" of Paris and assigned him to modernize the city. For the next 17 years Haussman, as prefect of the Seine, transformed Paris. He is responsible for the tree lined grand boulevards, the Bois de Boulogne, several railroad stations, the aqueducts, and a tourist friendly sewer system. Haussmann employed one Parisian in five and financed his projects using private capital raised with bonds. The project forced some 200,000 residents from their homes. He used surpluses in his operational budget to cover deficits in his capital budgets. The debts paralyzed the city until the Gaullist era.
(WSJ, 1/17/1995, p.A-16)(SFEC, 6/28/98, p.T9)(WSJ, 12/9/98, p.A20)(ON, 9/06, p.9)
1853 French wines were first ranked at the order of Napoleon. The top grades were selected on the basis of price, not taste.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.T4)
1853 The island of New Caledonia was made a French possession. It served as a penal colony for four decades after 1864. Agitation for independence during the 1980s and early 1990s has dissipated.
(www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/nc.html)
1854 Mar 28, During the Crimean War, Britain and France declared war on Russia.
(AP, 3/28/97)
1854 Apr 29, Henri Poincare (d.1912), French mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, was born. He investigated the idea of space and led to the notion that space is too complex for mathematics. Rather space is an assumption, and it can be described and controlled only so far as we assume it. In other words there is no such thing as space. Instead, there are as many spaces as there are people... for every person can assume an indefinite number of different spaces.
(V.D.-H.K.p.272)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9)
1854 Aug 12, French adventurer Count Gaston Raousset-Boulbon (b.1817) was shot and killed by a Mexican firing squad. He had led some 112 gold miners from California’s Tuolumne County on an invasion of Mexico.
(https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston_de_Raousset-Boulbon)(SFC, 9/5/15, p.C2)
1854 Sep 14, Allied armies, including those of Britain & France, landed in Crimea.
(MC, 9/14/01)
1854 Oct 20, Arthur Rimbaud (d.1891), French poet (Illuminations), was born in Charlesville.
(WUD, 1994 p.1234)(HN, 10/20/00)(MC, 10/20/01)(SFC, 2/12/02, p.D3)
1854 Oct 25, During the Crimean War, a brigade of British light infantry was destroyed by Russian artillery as they charged down a narrow corridor in full view of the Russians. The Crimean War is largely remembered for the Charge of the Light Brigade, a hopeless but gallant British cavalry charge against a heavily defended Russian force. The battle began when the Russians attacked the British-French supply depot at Balaclava near Chersonesos, some eight miles from Sevastopol, on the Black Sea Crimean Peninsula. Taken by surprise, the British counterattacked but failed to follow up. Through a staff error, Gen. Lord Cardigan's Light Brigade of 673 horsemen was ordered to charge the Russian position through a mile-long valley and prevent them from carrying away some captured cannon. The Light Brigade advanced up the valley, taking casualties all the way, and reached the guns. But once there, they could not hold their position and were forced to retreat. Of the 673 men who took part in the senseless charge, only 195 were present at roll call that night. The Charge of the Light Brigade ended the battle, but Balaclava remained in the hands of the British-French Allies. The event was described in a poem by Tennyson.
(SFC,12/190/97, p.F6)(AP, 10/25/97)(HNPD, 10/25/98)(HN, 10/25/98)
1854 Nov 5, The British and French defeated the Russians at Inkerman, Crimea.
(HN, 11/5/98)
1854 Gustave Courbet painted "The Meeting [Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet!]." It depicted a meeting with his patron, art collector Alfred Bruyas (1821-1877).
(SFC, 1/22/05, p.E1)
1854 Eugene Delacroix painted "Arabs Stalking a Lion."
(WSJ, 9/24/98, p.A16)
1854 The Marriage Freres tea shop at 30 Rue du Bourg-Tibourg was founded. It has a small 2nd floor museum of tea implements from around the world.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, p.T7)
1854 Eugene Delacroix painted "The Riding Lesson."
(WSJ, 9/24/98, p.A16)
1854 Franz Xaver Winterhalter painted a portrait of Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III.
(WSJ, 4/3/03, p.D8)
1854-1856 Eliphas Levi (1810-1875), French occult author and ceremonial magician, published Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie ("Dogma and Rituals of High Magic") as two volumes (Dogme 1854, Rituel 1856), in which he included an image he had drawn himself which he described as Baphomet and "The Sabbatic Goat", showing a winged humanoid goat with a pair of breasts and a torch on its head between its horns.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baphomet)
1855 Jun 13, Verdi's opera "Les Vepres Sicilenne" was produced (Paris).
(MC, 6/13/02)
1855 Jun 17, Heavy French-British shelling of Sebastopol killed over 2000.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1855 Sep 9, Sevastopol, under siege for nearly a year, fell to the Allies. France, England, the Ottoman Empire and Sardinia (as Italy was then known) defeated the Russians at Sevastopol in the decisive battle of the Crimean War.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War)(SFC, 7/27/13, p.C2)
1855 Phylloxera, a pale yellow sap-sucking insect and a pest of commercial grapevines, was first described in France. It was originally native to eastern North America.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylloxera)
c1855 Alexandre Marie Colin painted a portrait of Napoleon III.
(WSJ, 4/3/03, p.D8)
1855 Degas (21) painted a portrait of his 1-year-old brother Rene de Gas.
(SFC, 8/29/01, p.E1)
1855 Gustave Courbet, French artist, painted "The Studio of the Painter."
(WSJ, 11/28/06, p.D8)
1855 Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), French impressionist, moved to France from his native St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands.
(WSJ, 1/14/97, p.A16)(Hem., 1/97, p.124)(WUD, 1994, p.1097)
1855 Napoleon III ordered up a list of the best wines of Bordeaux and ranked the best according to quality and price. Those at the top became known as the first growths and included Châteaux Haut-Brion, Lafite Rothschild, Latour, and Margaux. Mouton Rothschild was elevated in 1973.
(WSJ, 4/23/04, p.A1)(SFC, 10/1/04, p.W6)
1856 Jan 5, Pierre J. David (67), [David d'Angers], French sculptor, died.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1856 Feb 17, Heinrich Heine (58), German poet, died in Paris.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1856 Mar 30, Russia signed the Treaty of Paris ending the Crimean War. It guaranteed the integrity of Ottoman Turkey and obliged Russia to surrender southern Bessarabia, at the mouth of the Danube. The Black Sea was neutralized, and the Danube River was opened to the shipping of all nations. In 2010 Allen Lane authored “Crimea: The Last Crusade."
(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/143040/Crimean-War)
1856 Apr 24, Henri Philippe Pétain, French Marshall, was born. He was known as the 'hero of Verdun' but collaborated with the Nazis after the fall of France in 1940 and convicted of treason in 1945. Petain was executed in 1951.
(HN, 4/24/99)(Econ, 5/21/05, p.84)
1856 May 3, Adolphe Charles Adam (52), French composer, critic (Giselle), died.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1856 May 20, Henri E. Cross (d.1910), French painter, was born. His real surname was Delacroix but was changed in 1881.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1856 Oct 1, The first installment of Gustav Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary (Emma Bovary) appeared in the Revue de Paris after the publisher refused to print a passage in which the character Emma has a tryst in the back seat of a carriage. It was later considered as the first novel of a liberated woman in modern literature. In 1998 Dacia Maraini published "Searching for Emma." A TV version for Masterpiece Theater was shown in 2000.
(HN, 10/1/00)(SFEC, 6/28/98, Par p.18)(WSJ, 2/4/00, p.W6)
1856 Francois Flameng (d.1923), French painter, was born. He painted imagined scenes from the domestic life of Napoleon Bonaparte.
(MT, Fall/03, p.13)
1856 Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), French writer, authored "The Old Regime and the French Revolution."
(Econ, 4/19/14, SR p.15)
1856 The ballet "Le Corsaire" (The Corsair) was first performed in Paris to a score by Adolph Adam. It was based on a work by Lord Byron.
(SFC, 12/20/99, p.E1)
1856 The order of nuns known as the "Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration" was founded in France. It was named after a 13th century saint who jettisoned her family's wealth for a life of poverty. The nuns spent their time praying on behalf of others.
(WSJ, 9/19/03, p.A1)
1856 Emperor Napoleon III decided to quell an impending revolt in Algeria by sending a magician, who would demonstrate the power of the Europeans to the natives. He sent Jean-Eugene Robert Houdin (1805-1871). The 1998 novel "The Magician’s Wife" by Brian Moore is based on the historic events. The magician is named Henri Lambert.
(WSJ, 1/13/98, p.A20)(SFEC, 1/25/98, BR p.5)
1856 The Countess de Castiglione (Virginia Oldoini) became the mistress of Napoleon III. She was chosen by her cousin Camillo Cavour, prime minister of Sardinia under King Victor Emanuel, to win the emperor's support for a war against the Austrians.
(WSJ, 12/27/00, p.A10)
1856 Theodore Chasseriau (b.1819), Dominican-born artist, died in Paris. His paintings included "The Toilette of Esther."
(WSJ, 11/26/02, p.D8)
1856 The Church of St. Anne in Jerusalem's walled Old City was gifted by the Ottomans to French Emperor Napoleon III.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
1857 Feb 7, A French court acquitted author Gustave Flaubert of obscenity for his serialized novel "Madame Bovary."
(AP, 2/7/08)
1857 Feb 12, Eugene Atget, French photographer, was born. He took over 10,000 photographs documenting Paris.
(HN, 2/12/01)
1857 Mar 3, Under pretexts, Britain and France declared war on China.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1857 Nov 2, Joseph F.F. Babinski, Polish-French neurologist (Babinski reflex), was born.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1857 Jean-Francois Millet painted "The Gleaners."
(WSJ, 7/12/99, p.A26)
1857 In France the Napoleon III theatre at Fontainebleau Palace south of Paris, built between 1853 and 1856 under the reign of Napoleon III, opened. It was used only a dozen times, which helped preserve its gilded adornments, before being abandoned in 1870 after the fall of Napoleon III. It reopened in 2019 following 12 years of restoration work with the help of a 10 million euro donation from Abu Dhabi.
(AFP, 6/18/19)
1857 Paul Broca, a French neurologist, discovered that particular regions of the brain are specialized for particular functions. In 1861 he authored a classical paper that detailed damage in the brain’s left temporal lobe to loss of speech.
(WSJ, 10/11/02, p.AB1)(http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Broca/perte-e.htm)
1857-1926 Emile Coue, French pharmacist. In 1920 [1910] he devised the mantra "Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better" to promote his theory of self-improvement through auto-suggestion.
(NH, 7/98, p.20)(SFEC, 6/20/99, Z1 p.8)
1858 Jan 14, Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie escaped unhurt after an Italian assassin threw a bomb at their carriage as they traveled to the Paris Opera. The hoop skirt was first worn by Empress Eugenie to conceal her pregnancy.
(HN, 1/14/99)(SFEC, 7/23/00, Z1 p.2)(AP, 1/14/08)
1858 Feb 11, Bernadette Soubirous (14), a French miller’s daughter, claimed for the first time to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary near Lourdes.
(AP, 2/11/97)(HN, 1/11/02)
1858 Mar 18, Rudolf Diesel, German mechanical engineer, was born in Paris. He designed the compression-ignition engine (1893).
(HN, 3/18/99)(AP, 3/18/08)
1858 Jul 13, Louis Martin and Zelie Guerin married in Alencon, France, and for 10 months refrained from sex in a “Josephite marriage." Assured by a priest that raising children was a sacred activity they went on to have 9 children, 5 of whom joined religious order. Their youngest daughter became famous as St. Theresa of Liseux, The Little Flower," canonized in 1925.
(WSJ, 10/17/08, p.W11)
1858 Sep 15, Charles E Vicomte de Foucauld (d.1916), French explorer and hermit, was born in Strasbourg, France.
(www.manntaylor.com/foucauld.html)
1858 Oct 21, Jacques Offenbach's opera "Orphee aux Enfers," premiered in Paris. The Can-Can music was part of the opera. Dancers in Paris displayed their tail feathers in a high kick routine called the "cancan." The word was a diminutive form of "canard," the word for duck, whose evenly displayed feathers were likened to those of the dancers.
(SFEC, 3/23/97, z1 p.7)(MC, 10/21/01)
1858 Dec, The French government’s Council of State limited the ability of Paris to condemn property. Land could be seized for roads but properties along the projected roads could not be expropriated.
(ON, 9/06, p.10)
1858 Charles Frederick Worth, an English tailor in Paris, began haute couture. He was hired by Napoleon to create a suitable wardrobe for Princess Eugenie and trigger a demand for French fashion.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R40)
1859 Mar 19, The opera "Faust" by Charles Gounod premiered in Paris.
(AP, 3/19/97)
1859 Apr 4, Giacomo Meyerbeer's Opera "Dinorah" was produced in Paris.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1859 Apr 16, Alexis de Tocqueville (b.1805), French writer, died in Cannes. His collected writings filled 17 volumes and included "Democracy in America" (1835) and "The Old Regime and the French Revolution" (1856). In 2001 a new English translation by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop was published. In 2001 Sheldon S. Wolin authored "Tocqueville Between Two Worlds." In 2006 Hugh Brogan authored “Alexis de Tocqueville: Prophet of Democracy in the Age of Revolution – A Biography."
(WSJ, 9/26/01, p.A18)(www.tocqueville.org/chap1.htm)(Econ, 11/25/06, p.85)
1859 Apr 29, In the Italian Campaign some 150,000 Piedmontese troops invaded Piedmontese territory as the French army raced to support them and the Austrian army mobilized to oppose them.
(HN, 4/29/00)
1859 Apr, In Paris, France, about 20 unlicensed stockbrokers were arrested and had their papers seized at the instigation of the market’s regulated brokers. the unregulated brokers were freed within days under pressure from clients.
(Econ, 5/11/13, SR p.9)
1859 May 3, France declared war on Austria.
(HN, 5/3/98)
1859 May 9, Threatened by the advancing French army, the Austrian army retreated across the River Sesia in Italy.
(HN, 5/9/00)
1859 May 10, French emperor Napoleon III left Paris to join his troops preparing to battle the Austrian army in Northern Italy.
(HN, 5/10/02)
1859 May 15, Pierre Curie, physicist (Nobel 1903), was born. He and his wife discovered radium.
(HN, 5/15/99)(MC, 5/15/02)
1859 May 28, The French army launched a flanking attack on the Austrian army in Northern France.
(HN, 5/28/00)
1859 Jun 2, French forces crossed the Ticino River, the last natural barrier between themselves and Milan with the Austrians in retreat.
(HN, 6/2/00)
1859 Jun 4, The French army under Napoleon III took Magenta from the Austrian army after a bloody battle in northern Italy.
(HN, 6/4/99)
1859 Jun 24, At the Battle of Solferino, also known as the Battle of the Three Sovereigns, the French army led by Napoleon III defeated the Austrian army under Franz Joseph I in northern Italy. Some 6,000 men died in the battle and thousands of wounded were effectively abandoned as witnessed by Henri Dunant (31), a Swiss businessman seeking Napoleon for a land development proposal. In 1862 Dunant published “A Memory of Solferino" and began a campaign for a volunteer society to aid wounded soldiers.
(HN, 6/24/99)(ON, 4/08, p.11)
1859 Jun 30, French acrobat Blondin (born Jean Francois Gravelet) crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope as 5,000 spectators watched.
(AP, 6/30/97)(HN, 6/30/98)
1859 Jul 8, With the signing of the truce at Villafranca Austria ceded Lombardy to France. France also received Nice and Savoy.
(HN, 7/8/99)
1859 Aug 4, French priest John Vianney (b.1789), known as the Cure of Ars, died. He had helped to hide priests on the run during the French Revolution. In 1925 he was canonized by Pope Pius XI, who in 1929 made him patron saint of parish priests. In 2019 the Knights of Columbus fraternity sponsored a US pilgrimage of his heart.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Vianney)(AP, 4/6/19)
1859 Oct 9, Alfred Dreyfus, French artillery officer who was falsely accused of giving French military secrets to foreign powers, was born.
(HN, 10/9/98)
1859 Oct 18, Henri Bergson (d.1941), French philosopher (Creative Evolution- Nobel 1927), was born. He is said to have taught that man acts first and thinks later as opposed to Descartes who said man thinks before he acts. He won the 1927 Nobel Prize for Literature. His dualistic philosophy held that man's intellect enables him to appraise the world and his intuition tells him something of the all-pervading life force, or elan vital. He was a spokesman for "process philosophy." "Only those ideas that are least truly ours can be adequately expressed in words."
(AHD, 1971, p.125)(WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-12)(SFC, 3/27/99, p.C2)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A22)(AP, 10/18/99)(MC, 10/18/01)
1859 Nov 12, The first flying-trapeze circus act was performed by Jules Leotard at the Circus Napoleon in Paris. He designed the garment that bears his name.
(HN, 11/12/00)(MC, 11/12/01)
1859 Dec 2, George Seurat (d.1891), French artist, was born in Paris. He entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1875. His method of painting with bright colors juxtaposed as tiny dots was called pointillism, often called Neo-Impressionism.
(SFC, 5/6/97, p.E4)(WUD, 1994, p.1306)(DPCP 1984)(HN, 12/2/98)
1859 Jean-Francois Millet painted "The Angelus," and it became the most reproduced painting of the 19th century.
(SFEC, 8/22/99, BR p.3)
1859 One of the first reports relating tobacco to cancer was published in France.
(HNQ, 11/10/98)
1859 Gaston Plante, French physicist, invented the first lead-acid rechargeable battery.
(Econ, 3/8/08, TQ p.23)(Econ, 3/7/09, TQ p.4)
1859 Leon Benouville (b.1821), French painter, died. His paintings included “The Wrath of Achilles" (1847).
(www.insecula.com/us/contact/A005594.html)
1860 Apr 6, Rene Lalique (d.1945), French goldsmith, jeweler, glassmaker and artist, was born. He helped mold the shape of 20th century art nouveau, art deco and architectural ornamentation.
(SFC, 3/26/97, z1 p.7)(Hem., 6/98, p.134)(MC, 4/6/02)
1860 Jun 25, Gustave Charpentier, French composer (Louise), was born.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1860 Oct 12, British and French troops captured Beijing.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1860 Britain forswore most import duties. Britain and France signed a free-trade treaty, which drastically reduced the duty on French wines.
(Econ, 9/1/07, p.74)(Econ, 12/19/09, p.132)
1860 Savoy was ceded to France.
(WUD, 1994, p.1272)
1860 The Parc Monceau in Paris was taken over by the state to enable Baron Haussmann to complete the Boulevard Malesherbes.
(SFEC, 3/26/00, p.T12)
1860 France sent 5,000 troops to Syria to stop the massacre of Maronite Christians at the hands of the Druze, which the Ottoman authorities were neither willing nor able to stop.
(SFC, 9/7/08, Books p.5)
1860 The 1st French gendarmes arrived in Vietnam.
(WSJ, 2/2/04, p.A12)
1860 Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville captured 10-second clip of a woman singing "Au Clair de la Lune," using a phonautograph, a device that created visual recordings of sound waves.
(AP, 3/28/08)
1860 In France the Yonne Department had almost 99,000 acres of grapevines for wine. Diseases such as oidium and phylloxera destroyed the Chablis vines in the late 19th century and the Carmenére grape was wiped out in France. In 1994 the Carmenére grape was found to be thriving in Chile.
(SFC, 7/16/97, Z1 p.4)(WSJ, 12/28/01, p.A17)
1860-1910 Auguste Moreau, a bronze sculptor, worked over this period. His art included the sculpture "Eglantine" (wild rose), which depicted a woman draped in a vine of roses. It was used as the design for a clock c1900. His bronzes were copied in spelter, a soft white metal that’s mostly zinc.
(SFC, 2/18/98, Z1 p.3)(SFC, 3/11/98, Z1 p.5)
1861 Dec 8, Aristide Maillol, French painter and sculptor (Seated Woman), was born.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1861 Dec, French, British and Spanish troops landed at Veracruz, Mexico, seeking to force Benito Juarez to resume his financial obligations.
(PCh, 1992, p.485)
1861 Pierre-Auguste Renoir, impressionist painter, entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts and studied with Charles Gleyre.
(DPCP 1984)
1861 Germain Sommeiller (d.1871), French engineer, began work on the Mount Cenis Tunnel (Frejus Tunnel) between France and Italy, using his newly developed pneumatic drills. Work proceeded from opposite ends and connected on Dec 26, 1870.
(ON, 2/03, p.8)
1861 Felix Nadar invented a battery operated flash lamp and began exploring the sewers and catacombs of Paris.
(Econ, 12/8/12, IL p.15)
1861 Protestant banker Edouard Andre (d.1894) married Catholic painter Nelie Jacquemart and caused a minor scandal.
(SFEC, 3/26/00, p.T12)
1862 Feb 28, Karl Goldmark's opera "The Queen of Sheba," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1862 Mar 28, Aristide Briand, premier of France (1909-22), was born.
(HN, 3/28/98)
1862 May 1, Marcel Prevost, French publisher, writer (Les demis-vierges), was born.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1862 May 5, At the Battle of Pueblo, a [2,000] 5,000 man Mexican force (cavalry), loyal to Benito Juarez and under the leadership of Gen’l. Ignacio Zaragoza, defeated 6,000 French troops sent by Napoleon III. The event became memorialized in the Cinco de Mayo annual festival. Napoleon intended to march through to the US and help the Confederacy in the Civil War.
(SCal, May 1995)(SFEM, 4/27/97, p.6)(AP, 5/5/97) (SFEC,11/9/97, p.T6)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T8)(SFC, 5/1/99, p.A13)
1862 Jun 24, U.S. intervention saved the British and French at the Dagu forts in China.
(HN, 6/24/98)
1862 Jun 30, Gustave Flaubert completed "Salammbo."
(MC, 6/30/02)
1862 Aug 22, Claude Debussy (d.1918), composer (La Mer, Clair de Lune), was born in St. Germain-en-Laye.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1862 Oct 19, Auguste Lumiere, French film pioneer, was born. He made the 1st film: "Workers Leaving Lumiere Factory."
(MC, 10/19/01)
1862 Nov 24, M. Levy published Gustave Flaubert’s "Salammbo."
(MC, 11/24/01)
1862 Dec 8, Georges Feydeau, French playwright (La Dame de Chez Maxim's), was born.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1862 Claude Monet (22) began studying painting with Charles Gleyre, a retired artist in Paris.
(ON, 9/06, p.6)
1862 Victor Hugo published "Les Miserables." The novel covers events in France from 1815 to 1833. In 2004 Mario Vargas Llosa authored his book-length Spanish essay: “The Temptation of the Impossible: Victor Hugo and ‘Les Miserables.’ The English translation came out in 2007. From 1909 to 2017 some 65 film versions were made of the novel, making it the most frequently adopted novel of all time.
(WSJ, 4/30/98, p.A17)(SFC, 6/30/07, p.E2)(Econ, 2/25/17, p.72)
1862 Empress Eugenie opened Le Grand Hotel in Paris to celebrate French science and art.
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.101)
1862 The French established their first colonial base of Cochin-China, a region encompassing the southern third of current Vietnam.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochinchina)(Econ, 7/23/16, p.68)
1863 Jun 7, Mexico City was captured by French troops.
(HN, 6/7/98)
1863 Jul, The European public first learned of Angkor in Cambodia from the posthumously published journal of French naturalist Henri Mouhot.
(SFEC, 7/26/98, p.T6)
1863 Aug 13, Eugene Delacroix (b.1798), French artist, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix)
1863 Sep 30, The George Bizet (1838-1875) opera "Les Pecheurs de Perles" (Pearl Fishers) premiered in Paris.
(www.operaphilly.com/03-04/bizet-bio.shtml)
1863 Jules Verne (1828-1905) authored his novel “Five Weeks in a Balloon." This was his first published book.
(WSJ, 9/18/07, p.D8)
1763 Voltaire authored his "Treatise on Tolerance." In 2015 it began climbing the French best seller list in the wake of attacks by French-born Islamic extremists.
(AP, 1/28/15)
1863 The Paris Salon des Refuses was a group show of artists rejected by the mavens of the official salon. The hit and scandal of the show was Edouard Manet’s "Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe" which depicted a happy foursome picnicking in the woods with the two women undressed. One of the women was Victorine Meurent, a professional model. Other refused artists included Cezanne, Pissarro, and other impressionists.
(WSJ, 6/14/95, p.A-14)(Econ, 1/26/13, p.76)
1863 French forces captured Puebla, Mexico.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T6)
1863 French Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III, collected art for her Chinese museum at Fontainbleau Castle.
(SFC, 3/2/15, p.A2)
1863 Pierre Lallemont, French mechanic, created a bicycle driven by foot pedals attached to the front wheel. In 1865 he moved to the US and applied for a patent, which was granted in Nov. 1866.
(ON, 2/10, p.1)
1863 Frenchman Felicien de Saulcy excavated an underground burial complex in one of the first modern-era archaeological digs in the Holy Land. He mistakenly identified the tomb as belonging to biblical kings. He took two sarcophagi found inside the "Tomb of Kings," as well as human remains, back to Paris despite protest by the local Jewish community, where they were held in the Louvre's collection.
(AP, 11/8/19)
1863-1874 This decade in France was covered in the 2006 book “The Judgement of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism," by Ross King. He focused on the period between two famous exhibitions, the scandalous Salon des Refuses in 1863 and the first Impressionist showing in 1874.
(SSFC, 2/5/06, p.M6)
1864 Mar 14, Rossini's "Petite Messe Solennelle," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 3/14/02)
1864 Mar 19, Charles Gounod's opera "Mireille" premiered in Paris.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1864 Apr 19, Naval Engagement at Cherbourg, France: USS Kearsarge vs. CSS Alabama. [see Jun 19]
(MC, 4/19/02)
1864 Jun 19, The CSS "Alabama" was sunk by the USS "Kearsarge" off Cherbourg, France. The Alabama had captured, sank or burned 68 ships in 22 months.
(DT, 6/19/97)(HN, 6/19/98)(HNQ, 11/28/00)
1864 Jul 31, Louis Hachette (64), French publisher, died.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1864 Sep 5, British, French & Dutch fleets attacked Japan in Shimonoseki Straits.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1864 Nov 24, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (d.1901), French post-impressionist painter, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_de_Toulouse-Lautrec)
1864 Gustave Moreau, French painter, created his work "Oedipus and the Sphinx." His students included Georges Rouault, Albert Marqyet, and Henri Matisse.
(WSJ, 6/1/99, p.A20)
1864 Phylloxera was 1st noted on grapevines in Roquemaure, France. It ravaged the vineyards there for nearly 20 years. In 1872 it reached Austria and Portugal. In 1875 it appeared in Australia and in 1886 in South Africa. In 1987 George Ordish authored “The Great Wine Blight." In 2004 Christy Campbell authored “Phylloxera: How Wine was Saved for the World." In 2011 George Gale authored “Dying on the Vine: How Phylloxera Transformed Wine."
(SSFC, 3/27/05, p.E3)(Econ, 7/23/11, p.81)
1864 A meteorite was found near Orgueil, France, that was later believed to be a fragment of a comet. It was later found to show traces of amino acids.
(SFC, 12/19/01, p.A8)
1864-1910 Jules Renard, French educator and author: "Talent is like money; you don't have to have some to talk about it."
(AP, 4/16/97)
1865 Jan 19, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (b.1809), French economist and a socialist, died. “Property is theft." He was the founder of Mutualist philosophy and was the first person to declare himself an anarchist.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon)
1865 Apr 28, Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera "L'Africaine," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1865 May 17, The International Telegraph Convention was signed in Paris. The International Telecommunication Union later became a specialized agency of the United Nations that is responsible for issues that concern information and communication technologies. By 2019 ITU's global membership included 193 Member States as well as some 900 companies, universities, and international and regional organizations.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union)(PR Newswire, 12/17/19)
1865 Oct 1, Paul Abraham Dukas, composer (Sorcerer's Apprentice), was born in Paris, France.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1865 Dec 23, France, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland formed the Latin Monetary Union (LMU). It was a 19th century attempt to unify several European currencies into a single currency that could be used in all the member states, at a time when most national currencies were still made out of gold and silver. Spain and Greece joined in 1868. It quickly weakened as members pursued their own economic policies. It was disbanded in 1927.
(WSJ, 1/13/98, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Monetary_Union)
1865 Frederic Bazille painted "Beach at Sainte-Adresse."
(WSJ, 3/9/99, p.A20)
1865 Monet painted "A Cart on the Snowy Road at Honfleur."
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D6)
1865-1866 Edouard Manet painted "The Tragic Actor (Rouviere as Hamlet)" about this time.
(WSJ, 4/16/03, p.D10)
1865 Emile Zola wrote a diatribe against the annual French state-sponsored art show called the Salon. He mocked the jurors who had rebuffed Edouard Manet amongst others.
(WSJ, 8/1/96 p.A13)
1865 Eduard Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye, a scholar, proposed a monument for America's centennial and strengthen the democratic cause in France. The monument took form as the Statue of Liberty.
(SFEC, 6/20/99, p.T10)
1865 The St. Anne Prison was built in Avignon, France, atop the ruins of a 13th century insane asylum. The prison was closed in 2003 and in 2007 the government offered to sell it for transformation to a luxury hotel.
(SFC, 12/28/07, p.A18)
1865-1867 Honore Daumier created his painting "The Strong Man" during this period.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.B1)
1866 May 17, Erik Alfred Leslie Satie, French composer, was born.
(HN, 5/17/01)
1866 May 18, French Government of De Putte resigned.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1866 Jul 29, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot (b.1777), head of the Clicquot champagne business, died. She was widowed at age 27 and transformed her husbands struggling business into one of the great champagne houses of France. In 2008 Tilar J. Mazzeo authored “The Widow Clicquot."
(WSJ, 11/5/08, p.A21)(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbe-Nicole_Clicquot-Ponsardin)
1866 Nov 17, Ambroise Thomas' opera "Mignon" was produced (Paris).
(MC, 11/17/01)
1866 Nov 20, Pierre Lallemont, French mechanic, was granted a US patent for his velocipede, a rotary crank bicycle.
(http://www.todayinsci.com/11/11_20.htm)(ON, 2/10, p.1)
1866 Gustave Courbet, French artist, painted "The Waterspout" and “Origin of the World."
(WSJ, 11/28/06, p.D8)
1866 Edouard Manet painted "Young Lady in 1866." The painting helped pave the way for Impressionism.
(WSJ, 8/3/01, p.W2)
1866 Jean-Francois Millet painted "Flight of Crows."
(WSJ, 7/12/99, p.A26)
1866 Monet created his painting "Jar of Peaches."
(WSJ, 12/12/01, p.A16)
1866 Edouard Seguin (1812-1880), French physician, authored “Idiocy and Its Treatment." He had established schools in France and the US for the intellectually handicapped, which stressed the importance of developing self-reliance and independence.
(ON, 3/07, p.3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edouard_Seguin)
1866 French colonial officials sent an expedition to explore the Mekong River and check its commercial potential.
(Econ, 1/3/04, p.29)
1866 French troops took away hundreds of Korean manuscripts and set fire to 5,000 more when they raided a royal library on an island off Korea's west coast. In 2011 the first batch of the looted Korean royal books were returned home.
(AP, 4/14/11)
1866-1954 Ernest Dimnet, French priest, lecturer and author: "The happiness of most people we know is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things."
(AP, 9/6/98)
1867 Jan 14, Jean-August-Dominique Ingres, a French neo-classical painter, and one of the major portrait painters of the 19th century, died.
(http://tinyurl.com/cheny)
1867 Apr 1, The International Exhibition, Exposition Universelle, opened in Paris.
(OTD)(ON, 9/06, p.11)
1867 Apr 27, Charles Gounod's Opera "Romeo et Juliette" was produced in Paris.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1867 Aug 31, [Pierre-]Charles Baudelaire (46), French poet (Journaux Intimes), died.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1867 Oct 3, Pierre Bonnard (d.1947), French painter and illustrator, was born. He wrote that he wanted to “show what one sees when one enters a room all of a sudden." He married Marthe de Meligny in 1925 and during his life painted some 384 images of her. In 1998 John Elderfield and Sarah Whitfield published “Bonnard."
(WSJ, 6/24/98, p.A16)(SFEC, 8/2/98, BR p.9)(www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_H_AseJpss)
1867 Nov 7, Marie Curie (d.1934), Polish-born French scientist, was born in Warsaw as Marya Salomee Sklodowska. Her discoveries included polonium, radium, which she isolated from pitchblende, and the radioactivity of thorium. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1903 with her husband, and in chemistry in 1911. "You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity."
(AHD, 1971, p.323)(AP, 10/26/98)(HN, 11/7/98)
1867 Claude Monet painted "The Beach at Sainte Adresse" and "Road by Saint-Simeon Farm Winter" while living in Normandy.
(DPCP 1984)(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D6)(SFC, 6/17/06, p.E10)
1867 The French opera comedy "La Grande’ tante," was composed by Jules Massenet.
(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A24)
1867 The opera “The Fair Maid of Perth" by Georges Bizet premiered in France.
(ON, 5/06, p.11)
1867 The facade of the new Paris Opera House, built to the glory of Emperor Napoleon III, was completed.
(SFC, 6/21/00, p.E5)(ON, 9/06, p.11)
1867 Ernest Michaux, a Parisian blacksmith, added pedals and brakes to an iron “velocipede," a 2-wheeled machine that used wooded wheels and was nicknamed “the boneshaker."
(WSJ, 10/22/04, p.A1)(Econ, 2/5/05, p.77)
1867-1868 Degas painted "Mlle. Fiocre in the Ballet ‘La Source’."
(SFEC, 6/21/98, BR p.8)
1868 Feb 11, Jean Bernard Leon Foucault (b.1819), French physicist, died. He discovered the 1st physical proof of Earth's rotation (1851) and invented the gyroscope.
(WUD, 1994 p.560)(MC, 2/11/02)(WSJ, 8/28/03, p.D18)
1868 Mar 9, Ambrois Thomas' opera "Hamlet" premiered in Paris.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1868 Apr 1, Edmond Rostand, French dramatist (Cyrano de Bergerac), was born.
(HN, 4/1/01)
1868 May 6, Gaston Leroux, French novelist (The Phantom of the Opera), was born.
(HN, 5/6/01)
1868 May 29, Frederic baron d'Erlanger, French composer, banker, was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1868 Aug 10, American actress Adah Isaacs Menken (b.1835) died in Paris. She was buried in the Jewish section of the Pere Lachaise cemetery.
(SFC, 4/28/18, p.C2)
1868 Nov 13, Italian composer Gioacchino Antonio Rossini (b.1792) died in France. His work included 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces. His opera "La Donna del Lago" (1819) was based on the Walter Scott romance "The Lady of the Lake."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gioachino_Rossini)(WSJ, 7/29/97, p.A12)(AP, 2/29/00)
1868 French painter Jean-Leon Gerome completed his work “Bonaparte before the Sphinx."
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.128)
1868 Jean-Francois Millet painted "Path Lined With Trees Near Vichy."
(WSJ, 7/12/99, p.A26)
1868 Claude Monet painted "The River." It shows the water of the Seine and was an early attempt by the artist to depict shimmering light on water.
(DPCP 1984)
1868 The first known bicycle race was held in Paris.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)
1868-1841 Emile Bernard, French poet. He founded the Pont-Aven Group of Symbolists.
(SFCM, 10/14/01, p.34)
1868-1955 Paul Claudel, French author: "Why must all the churches be closed at night? How often has the wanderer groaned in front of those closed doors?"
(AP, 12/27/98)
1869 Mar 1, Alphonse MLP de Lamartine (78), French poet (History of Girondins), died.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1869 Mar 8, Louis Hector Berlioz (b.1803), French composer (Symphony Fantastic), died. He was later hailed as the most blazing musical innovator of the early 19th century. In 1969 David Cairns translated his memoirs “The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Berlioz)(WSJ, 4/8/03, p.D4)(WSJ, 3/1/08, p.W8)
1869 Apr 12, Henri-Desire Landru (Bluebeard), French sex murderer, was born.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1869 Apr, France’s Emp. Louis Napoleon ordered the dissolution of the Public Works Fund.
(ON, 9/06, p.12)
1869 May 1, Folies Bergere opened in Paris.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1869 Jul 15, Margarine was patented by Hippolye Mega-Mouriss for use by French Navy.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1869 Oct 13, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, French writer (Tableau Historique), died.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1869 Nov 17, The Suez Canal was opened in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean and the Red seas. The 100 mile canal eliminated a 4000-mile trip around Africa. Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III, together with Ferdinand de Lesseps, chief architect of the canal, led the first file of ships from on board the French imperial yacht Aigle. It was financed by the Rothschild banking empire. In 2003 Zacharay Karabell authored "Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal."
(I&WWI, p.1041)(SFC, 7/12/96, p.A11)(AP, 11/17/97)(MC, 11/17/01)(WSJ, 7/10/03, p.D8)
1869 Nov 22, Andre Gide (d.1951), French novelist and critic (Lafcadio's Adventures- Nobel 1947), was born. "There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them." "Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it." “The color of truth is gray."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Gide)(AP, 10/31/97)(AP, 3/24/98)(SFEC, 6/28/98, Z1 p.8)
1869 Dec 31, Henri Matisse (d.1954), French artist best known for his paintings "Woman with a Hat" and "The Red Studio," was born. His work included the "Dance II," now at the Hermitage in Moscow. In 1998 Hilary Spurling authored "The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse, Vol. 1: 1869-1908."
(WSJ, 7/5/96, p.A5)(SFEC, 12/13/98, BR p.9)(HN, 12/31/98)
1869 Claude Monet painted "The Seine at Bougival, Evening."
(SFC, 7/11/01, p.D1)
1869 Renoir and Monet sat side by side and painted views of the bathing house, La Grenouillleres and its patrons.
(WSJ, 9/10/96, p.A16)(SFC, 10/30/96, p.E2)
1869 Camille Pissarro painted "The Versailles Road at Louveciennes."
(SFEM, 1/31/99, p.18)
1869 In Paris the Bon Marche department store, founded by Aristide and Marguerite Boucicaut, began displaying its wares for customers to inspect and introduced price tags.
(Econ, 10/2/04, p.18)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.15)
1869 Pierre and Ernest Michaux built the first motorcycle. It was powered by a steam engine.
(SFEC, 7/27/97, Z1 p.7)
1869 Frenchman Eugene Meyer invented wire wheels with individually adjusted spokes.
(www.everybicycletire.com/Encyclopedia/History.aspx)(ON, 2/10, p.2)
1869-1877 Elihu Washburne (1816-1887) served as America’s minister to France and was influential in negotiating the armistice for the Franco-Prussian War. During the 2 months of the Paris Commune (1870) he arranged passports for Americans to escape the siege.
(Econ, 6/4/11, p.95)
Return to home
1796 Jan 8, Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois (46), French Revolution leader, died in exile. He was a member of the Committee of Public Safety that ruled during The Terror.
(MC, 1/8/02)
1796 Mar 9, Napoleon Bonaparte, age 26, married Josephine Tascher de Beauharnais (32) in Paris.
(AP, 3/9/98)(HN, 3/9/98)
1796 Apr 2, Haitian revolt leader Toussaint L’Ouverture commanded French forces at Santo Domingo.
(AP, 4/2/99)
1796 Apr 13, Battle at Millesimo, Italy: Napoleon beat the Austrians.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1796 Apr 22, Napoleon defeated the Piedmontese at Battle of Mondovi.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1796 May 10, Napoleon Bonaparte won a brilliant victory against the Austrians at Lodi bridge in Italy.
(HN, 5/10/99)
1796 Jul 16, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (d.1875), French painter, was born. His work included "Madame Corot" (1833-1835) and "Interrupted Reading" (1870-1873). He led the way toward new forms of perspective and composition that was later mined by impressionism and photography.
(SFC, 6/4/96, p.E5)(WSJ, 10/25/96, p.A15)(WSJ, 3/25/97, p.A16)(MC, 7/16/02)
1796 Nov 17, Napoleon Bonaparte defeated an Italian army near the Alpone River, Italy, in the Battle of Arcole.
(HN, 11/17/98)(MC, 11/17/01)
1796 In France Michael Thonet was born in the Rhenish village of Boppard. He invented the classic bent wood chair.
(WSJ, 12/4/97, p.A20)
1796 Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) painted "Marie-Anne-Celestine Pierre de Vellefrey," the portrait of a little girl.
(WSJ, 4/8/98, p.A20)
1796-1797 Napoleon conquered northern Italy.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, BR p.9)
1797 Jan 14, Napoleon Bonaparte defeated Austrians at Rivoli in northern Italy.
(HN, 1/14/99)
1797 Feb 19, Pope Pius VI ceded papal territory to France in the Treaty of Tolentino.
(PC, 1992 ed, p.353)
1797 Feb 22, The last invasion of Britain took place when some 1,400 Frenchmen landed at Fishguard, in Wales.
(HN, 2/22/99)
1797 Feb 23, Antoine d'Auvergne (83), French opera composer (Coquette), died.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1797 Mar 13, Cherubini's opera "Medee," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1797 Apr 14, Adolphe Thiers, 1st president of 3rd French Republic (1871-77), was born. [see Apr 18]
(MC, 4/14/02)
1797 Apr 18, Louis-Adolphe Thiers, president of France, was born. [see Apr 14]
(MC, 4/18/02)
1797 Apr 18, France and Austria signed a cease fire.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1797 Oct 22, French balloonist Andre-Jacques Garnerin made the first parachute descent, landing safely from a height of about 3,000 feet; at some 2,200 feet over Paris.
(AP, 10/22/97)(HN, 10/22/98)
1797 Henry-Louis Pernod began to manufacture absinthe. The drink was made with fennel, aniseed and the oil of wormwood which contained thujone, a poisonous ketone.
(WSJ, 1/22/99, p.W8)
1797 French forces attacked Britain at the port of Fishguard. The event was depicted in the tapestry "The Last Invasion of Britain."
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.T5)
1797 The wine bottles of Chateau Lafite that date back to this year are recorked every 25 years to safeguard the wine and prevent deterioration caused by oxidation through decayed corks.
(WSJ, 11/26/97, p.A12)
1797 The Republic of Liguria in NW Italy was set up by Napoleon.
(WUD, 1994, p.830)
1797-1863 Theophile Bra, French academic sculptor.
(SFC, 12/19/98, p.C18)
1798 Feb 20, Pope Pius VI fled Rome to Siena following an invasion of French forces. He was later arrested and deported 1st to Florence and then to France.
(www.zum.de/whkmla/region/italy/papalstate17891799.html)(WSJ, 4/14/06, p.W5)
1798 Apr 26, Ferdinand Eugene Delacroix (d.1863), French painter, lithograph, etcher (Journal), was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix)
1798 May 19, A French armada of 335 ships carrying nearly 40,000 men set sail for Alexandria, Egypt, which Napoleon planned to conquer. In 2008 Paul Strathern authored “Napoleon in Egypt."
(WSJ, 11/17/08, p.A17)
1798 Jul 1, Napoleon Bonaparte took Alexandria, Egypt. In 1962 J.C. Herold authored "Bonaparte in Egypt." A corps of 150 civilian artists and scientists traveled with Napoleon’s troops to Egypt. In 2007 Nina Burleigh authored “Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt."
(SFC, 9/11/97, p.E3)(HN, 7/1/98)(ON, 12/99, p.4)(SFC, 12/14/07, p.E3)
1798 Jul 7, Napoleon Bonaparte's army began its march towards Cairo, Egypt, from Alexandria.
(HN, 7/7/98)
1798 Jul 21, Napoleon Bonaparte defeated Murad Bey and his Arab Mameluke warriors on the outskirts of Cairo at the Battle of the Pyramids, thus becoming the master of Egypt.
(WSJ, 11/17/08, p.A17)
1798 Jul 22, Napoleon captured Cairo, Egypt.
(PC, 1992, p.354)
1798 Aug 1, Admiral Horatio Nelson routed the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile at Aboukir Bay, Egypt. Nelson's fleet of 14 ships led the attack on Napoleon's fleet in Abu Qir Bay, capturing six and destroying seven of the 17 French vessels. The flagship of Napoleon's fleet, L'Orient, sank in the battle. It was uncovered by a French team in 1998. More than 1,500 Frenchmen and 200 British soldiers reportedly died in the sea battle.
(AP, 4/19/05)
1798 Aug 21, Jules Michelet, French historian was born in Paris to a family with Huguenot traditions. He wrote the 24-volume "Historie de France".
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Michelet)
1798 Sep 2, The Maltese people revolted against the French occupation, forcing the French troops to take refuge in the citadel of Valetta in Malta.
(HN, 9/2/98)
1798 Dec 24, Russia and England signed a Second anti-French Coalition.
(MC, 12/24/01)
1798 Eugene Delacroix (d.1863), French artist, was born. His work included the "Baron Schwiter."
(WUD, 1994, p.381)(WSJ, 7/1/96, p.A11)
1798 Napoleon annexed Egypt.
(SFC, 9/11/97, p.E3)
1798 The French National Assembly began sitting in the Palais Bourbon.
(Econ, 7/27/19, p.51)
1798 Henri Jomini (d.1869), began his military career volunteering his services to the French Army. With the peace of Amiens, he left the army and wrote his "Treatise of Grand Military Operations." The book impressed Napoleon enough to have Jomini appointed a staff colonel in 1805, Jomini having volunteered again in 1804. Jomini rose to become chief of staff under Marshall Ney, but left the French army to fight for Russia in 1813 as a general and aide-de-camp of Alexander I.
(HNQ, 9/1/00)
1798 Napoleon expelled the Knights of Malta from their base in Malta. The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem (SMOM), without citizens or territory, became a permanent observer at the UN in 1994.
(WSJ, 6/28/01, p.A1)
1798-1857 Auguste Comte, the French founder of the philosophical system of Positivism.
(WUD, 1994, p.303)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A22)
1799 Feb 9, The USS Constellation captured the French frigate Insurgente off the coast of Wisconsin.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1799 Mar 6, Napoleon captured Jaffa, Palestine. [see Mar 7]
(MC, 3/6/02)
1799 Mar 7, In Palestine, Napoleon captured Jaffa and his men massacred more than 2,000 Albanian prisoners. [see Mar 26]
(HN, 3/7/99)
1799 Mar 12, Austria declared war on France.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1799 Mar 17, Napoleon Bonaparte and his army reached the Mediterranean seaport of St. Jean d'Acra, only to find British warships ready to break his siege of the town.
(HN, 3/17/00)
1799 Mar 19, Napoleon Bonaparte began the siege of Acre ( later Akko, Israel), which was defended by Turks.
(AP, 3/19/03)
1799 Mar 26, Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa, Palestine. [see Mar 7]
(HN, 3/26/99)
1799 Apr 14, Napoleon called for establishing Jerusalem for Jews.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1799 May 18, Pierre de Beaumarchais (b.1732), French inventor and dramatist, died. In 2007 Hugh Thomas authored “Beaumarchais in Seville." In 2009 Susan Emanuel translated to English “Beaumarchais: A Biography" by Maurice Lever (d.2006).
(www.theatrehistory.com/french/beaumarchais001.html)(SFC, 5/30/09, p.E2)
1799 May 20, Honore de Balzac, French novelist, was born in Tours, France. He is considered the founder of the realistic school and wrote "The Human Comedy" and "Lost Illusions."
(AP, 5/20/99)(HN, 5/20/99)
1799 May 20, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered a withdrawal from his siege of St. Jean d'Acre in Egypt. Plague had run through his besieging French forces, forcing a retreat. Napoleon, in pursuance of his scheme for raising a Syrian rebellion against Turkish domination, appeared before Acre, but after a siege of two months (March–May) was repulsed by the Turks.
(HN, 5/20/00)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre,_Israel)
1799 Jun 17, Napoleon Bonaparte incorporated Italy into his empire.
(HN, 6/17/98)
1799 Jun 22, In France a scientific congress adopted the length of the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance along the surface of the Earth from its equator to its pole, in a curved line of latitude passing through the center of Paris. The congress used data gathered by astronomers, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre and Pierre-François-André Mechain. The established meter proved to be .2 millimeters too short, due to incorrect latitude data gathered by Mechain.
(http://etherwave.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/hump-day-history-the-length-of-the-meter/)(ON, 2/09, p.9)
1799 Jul 17, Ottoman forces, supported by the British, captured Aboukir, Egypt from the French.
(HN, 7/17/99)
1799 Jul 30, The French garrison at Mantua, Italy surrendered to the Austrians.
(HN, 7/30/98)
1799 Aug 2, Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier (54), balloonist, died.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1779 Aug 10, Louis XVI of France freed the last remaining serfs on royal land.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1799 Aug 22, Napoleon slipped through the British blockade of the Egyptian coast and returned to France.
(ON, 12/99, p.4)
1799 Aug 29, Pope Pius VI (b.1717) died in Valence, France.
(www.newadvent.org/cathen/12131a.htm)
1799 Oct 7, Napoleon landed at Saint Raphael, 50 miles east of Toulon.
(ON, 1/02, p.11)
1799 Oct 16, Napoleon arrived in Paris and met with government leaders.
(ON, 1/02, p.11)
1799 Nov 9, Napoleon Bonaparte instigated coup of 18 Brumaire and declared himself dictator, 1st consul, of France.
(HN, 11/9/98)(Econ, 9/20/14, p.77)
1799 Dec 10, The metric system was established in France.
(MC, 12/10/01)
1799 Dec 24, A Jacobin plot against Napoleon was uncovered.
(MC, 12/24/01)
1799 Dec 25, Napoleon’s new constitution went into effect. It gave him, as First Consul, powers to promulgate laws, nominate senior officials, control finances and conduct negotiations with foreign powers.
(ON, 1/02, p.12)
1799 Jacques-Louis David created his painting “Rape of the Sabines."
(WSJ, 4/6/05, p.D11)
1799 Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin (b.1699), French painter, died.
(WSJ, 7/6/00, p.A24)
1799 In Paris, France, the Passage de Panoramas, a covered arcade, was built on the site of the former Hotel de Montmorency-Luxembourg. It was the first building in Paris equipped for gas lighting.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.M4)
1799-1914 This period in France was covered by Robert Gildea in his 2008 book: Children of the Revolution: The French 1799-1914."
(Econ, 8/2/08, p.87)
1800 Jan 8, Victor of Aveyron (~1785-1828), a feral child, emerged from French forests on his own. In 1797 he had been found wandering the woods near Saint-Sernin-sur-Rance, France, and was captured, but soon escaped. He was later portrayed in the 1969 movie, The Wild Child (L'Enfant sauvage), by François Truffaut.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_of_Aveyron)
1800 Jan 20, Carolina, the sister of Napoleon I, married King Joachim Murat of Naples.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1800 Mar 20, French army defeated Turks at Heliopolis, Turkey, and advanced to Cairo.
(MC, 3/20/02)
1800 May 5, Louis Hachette, French publisher (Librairie Hachette), was born.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1800 Jun 14, French General Napoleon Bonaparte pushed the forces of Austria out of Italy in the Battle of Marengo. In 2007 the sword he wore was auctioned off for over $6.4 million.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marengo)(SFC, 6/11/07, p.A2)
1800 Jun 14, Jean-Baptiste Kleber (47), French general, architect, was murdered.
(MC, 6/14/02)
1800 Sep 5, Malta surrendered to British after they blockaded French troops.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1800 Oct 1, Spain ceded Louisiana to France in a secret treaty.
(AP, 10/1/97)
1800 Dec 3, Austrians were defeated by the French at the Battle of Hohenlinden, near Munich.
(HN, 12/3/98)
1800 Robert Fulton (35) tested a 20-foot model of his torpedo-armed submarine on the Seine. He made two 20-minute dives himself.
(WSJ, 9/24/01, p.A22)
1801 Mar 21, The Kingdom of Etruria was created by the Treaty of Aranjuez. It was made up a large part of modern Tuscany and its name from Etruria, the old Roman name for the land of the Etruscans. The first king (Louis I) died young in 1803. His underage son Charles Louis succeeded him and continued to 1807 when Napoleon dissolved the kingdom and integrated it into France.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Etruria)
1801 Jun 29, Frederic Bastiat (d.1850), French free-market economist, was born in Bayonne. "The state is the great fictitious entity in which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else."
(WSJ, 7/5/01, p.A12)
1801 Jul 15, Pope Pius VII and Napoleon signed the Concordat of 1801 brokering religious peace with Rome and granting equality to Jews. It solidified the Roman Catholic Church as the majority church of France and brought back most of its civil status.
(Econ, 10/18/14, p.18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordat_of_1801)
1801 Oct 6, Napoleon Bonaparte imposed a new constitution on Holland.
(HN, 10/6/98)
1801 French artist Girodet depicted Ossian, the mythical 3rd century blind Scottish poet, before the story was exposed as a fraud.
(WSJ, 7/26/08, p.W8)
1801 Francois Rene de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), French writer, authored his novel “Atala" following a trip to the US.
(WSJ, 5/8/08, p.A13)
1801 Napoleon opened the Louvre to the public.
(SFC, 2/11/97, p.E5)
1801 Napoleon's army in Egypt surrendered to Turkish and English forces. The French civilian toll topped 25 of 150, while the military toll topped 25,000 over the 3-year expedition.
(ON, 12/99, p.4)(SFC, 12/14/07, p.E3)
1801-1806 Alexandre Dumas (d.1870) covered these years of French history in an 1869 serialized novel printed in the journal, "The Universal Monitor." In the 1980s Claude Schopp, a retired French lecturer, discovered the epic novel on microfilm. He got it published under the title "Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine," and in 2005 it became a top ten seller.
(Reuters, 7/20/05)
1802 Jan 25, Napoleon was elected president of Italian (Cisalpine) Republic.
(MC, 1/25/02)
1802 Feb 26, Victor Hugo (d.1885), French novelist and poet, was born in Besancon. In 1998 Graham Robb published the biography: "Victor Hugo." "Initiative is doing the right thing without being told."
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)(HN, 2/26/98)(AP, 6/13/99)
1802 Feb, Napoleon sent a large army under his brother-in-law, Charles Leclerc, to regain control of St. Domingue. Thousands of soldiers died mainly to yellow fever and French control was abandoned so as to support military ventures in Europe. Toussaint L'Ouverture turned to guerrilla warfare inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution and its motto of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."
(CO, Grolier's, 11/10/95)(AP, 4/7/03)
1802 Mar 27, Treaty of Amiens was signed. The French Revolutionary War ended.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1802 Apr 8, French Protestant church became state-supported and controlled.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1802 May 19 Napoleon established the French Order of Legion d'Honneur award (Legion of Honor). It was a general military and civil order of merit conferred without regard to birth or religion, provided that anyone admitted swore to uphold liberty and equality.
(DrEE, 9/28/96, p.5)(SFC, 10/19/96, A7)
1802 May, In Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) Gen. Toussaint L’Ouverture surrendered to French forces. Many of his generals continued to wage a guerilla campaign against the French.
(ON, 2/10, p.9)
1802 Jul 8, Gen. Toussaint L'Ouverture of Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) was sent to France in chains.
(AP, 4/7/03)(ON, 2/10, p.9)
1802 Jul 24, Alexandre Dumas (d.1870), French novelist and dramatist who wrote "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "The Three Musketeers," was born. Alexandre Dumas, pere, French author of romantic plays and novels. He wrote "The Man in the Iron Mask." He was the father of Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-1895), French author of plays of social realism.
(HFA, '96, p.34)(AHD, 1971, p.403)(WUD, 1994, p.441)(HN, 7/24/98)
1802 Aug 2, Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed "Consul for Life" by the French Senate after a plebiscite from the French people.
(HN, 8/2/98)
1802 Aug 7, Napoleon ordered the re-instatement of slavery on St. Domingue (Haiti).
(MC, 8/7/02)
1802 Aug 25, Toussaint L'Ouverture was imprisoned in Fort de Joux, Jura, France.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1802 Sep 4, A French aeronaut dropped eight-thousand feet equipped with a parachute.
(MC, 9/4/01)
1802 Sep 11, Piedmont, Italy, was annexed by France.
(HN, 9/11/98)
1802 Dec 20, The United States bought the Louisiana territory from France. [see Jan 11, 1803]
(HN, 12/20/98)
1802 French author Chateaubriand (1768-1848) authored “Rene" and introduced to the world the French youth whose existence embodied the mal du siècle.
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.84)
1802 Vivant Denon (1747-1825), French author and archeologist, authored Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte" (Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt during the campaigns of General Bonaparte in that country).
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.127)
1802 France legalized prostitution.
(NY Daily News, 10/27/21)
1802 The Rosetta Stone was seized by the British in Egypt after the defeat of Napoleon’s army and was sent to England.
(RFH-MDHP, p.182)
1803 Jan 11, Monroe and Livingston sailed for Paris to buy New Orleans; they ended up buying Louisiana. [see Dec 20, 1802]
(MC, 1/11/02)
1803 Apr 7, Francois D. Toussaint L'Ouverture (Louverture), Haitian revolutionary, died in a dungeon at Fort Joux in the French Alps. In 2007 Madison Smartt Bell authored “Toussaint Louverture: A Biography."
(AP, 4/7/03)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_L'Ouverture)(SFC, 1/15/07, p.D7)
1803 Apr 26, Villagers of L’Aigle, France, witnessed a meteor shower. The rocks helped to convince scientists that meteors were of extraterrestrial origin.
(ON, 7/02, p.5)
1803 May 16, Great Britain and France renewed their war.
(PCh, 1992, p.362)
1803 May 18, Great Britain declared war on France after General Napoleon Bonaparte continued interfering in Italy and Switzerland.
(HN, 5/18/99)(ON, 11/99, p.4)(SC, 5/18/02)
1803 May 23, Lord Elgin and his family were detained in Paris. Elgin's family was allowed to proceed but he was arrested and declared a prisoner of war.
(ON, 11/99, p.4)
1803 May 24, Charles LJL Bonaparte, Corsican, French prince of Canino, Musignano, was born.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1803 Sep 28, Prosper Merimee (d.1870), archeologist and playwright (Carmen-1845), was born in Paris, France.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/merimee.htm)(www.nndb.com/people/584/000107263/)
1803 Nov 30, Spain, in a ceremony at New Orleans, completed the process of ceding Louisiana to France, which had sold it to the United States.
(CO, Grolier’s, 11/10/95)(AP, 11/30/04)
1803 Dec 3, Hector Berlioz, French composer (Symphony Fantastique), was born. [see Dec 11]
(MC, 12/3/01)
1803 Dec 11, Hector Berlioz (d.1869), French composer and conductor, was born. He introduced arresting and gaudy instrumental colors in combinations that had not been dreamed of before him. He composed "Romeo and Juliet" in 1939 and conducted its first performance. He also composed the "Death of Cleopatra." He composed "Symphonie Fantastique" and "La Damnation de Faust." [see Dec 1]
(T&L, 10/80, p. 58)(SFC, 10/5/96, p.E1)(HN, 12/11/99)
1803 Dec 20, The Louisiana Purchase was completed as the territory was formally transferred from France to the United States during ceremonies in New Orleans. French Prefect Pierre Clement Laussat, US Gov. William CC Claiborne and US Gen. James Wilkinson signed 4 copies the treaty. The Louisiana Purchase effectively doubled the size of the existing U.S. With 827,987 square miles in the deal, that price translates to roughly $18 per square mile- under 3 cents/acre.
(AP, 12/20/97)(SSFC, 12/21/03, p.A2)
1803 French economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) penned "A Treatise on Political Economy," an exposition and expansion of the economic ideas of Adam Smith. Here he said that management is a factor of production.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say%27s_Political_Economy)(Econ, 8/12/17, p.54)
1803 The French Academy of Sciences insisted that meteorites could not exist because no specimens had been produced.
(WSJ, 4/2/96, p.A-15)
1803-1815 In 2007 Charles Esdaile covered this period in his book: “Napoleon’s Wars: An International History, 1803-1815."
(Econ, 11/10/07, p.103)
1804 Jan 1, Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaimed the Republic of Haiti and declared independence from France. Documentation of his speech was then lost and only re-discovered in 2010 by a Canadian graduate student searching in the British National Archives.
(WSJ, 3/1/04, p.A16)(SFCM, 5/30/04, p.19)(SFC, 4/2/10, p.A2)
1804 Mar 21, The French civil code, later called the "Code Napoleon," was adopted.
(AP, 3/21/08)
1804 Apr 20, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Haitian rebel leader, commanded a massacre of the French at town of Cape Francois. It is generally thought that Dessalines had around 20,000 French slaughtered in early 1804.
(http://tinyurl.com/yu94s8)(http://tinyurl.com/23fdxf)
1804 May 18, The French Senate proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte emperor.
(AP, 5/18/97) (HN, 5/18/98)
1804 Jul 1, George Sand (Amandine-Aurore Lucille Dupin de Francueil, d.1876), French novelist, was born in Paris. She wrote some 80 novels that included “Consuelo" (1842) and “La Comtesse de Rudolstadt" (1843). In 1975 Curtis Cate published the biography: "George Sand." "I would rather believe that God did not exist than believe that He was indifferent."
(WUD, 1994, p.1265)(HN, 7/1/01) (AP, 10/17/98)(HN, 7/1/01)(Econ, 7/31/04, p.72)
1804 Jul 21, Victor Schoelcher, abolished French slavery, was born in Guadeloupe.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1804 Dec 1, Emperor Napoleon married Josephine de Beauharnais, of Martinique.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1804 Dec 2, Napoleon crowned himself emperor of France with Josephine as Empress as Pope Pius VII looked on. In 1807 Jacques-Louis David completed his painting of the event.
(WSJ, 12/14/04, p.D10)(AP, 12/2/07)
1804 The 118 acre Pere Lachaise Cemetery of Paris was founded. It was named after a Jesuit priest, who was confessor to Louis XIV. His order built a house on the site in 1682.
(SFC, 6/16/96, T-6)
1804 Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon I, began a rose collection at Malmaison, and sparked a wide interest in rose culture.
(SFC, 7/14/99, p.4)
1804 French economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) enrolled in the National Conservatory of Arts in Paris to learn the principles of spinning cotton.
(Econ, 8/12/17, p.54)
1805 May 26, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned king of Italy.
(AP, 5/26/97)
1805 May 28, Napoleon was crowned in Milan, Italy. [see May 26]
(HN, 5/28/98)
1805 Jul 29, Alexis de Tocqueville (d.1859), French historian who wrote "Democracy in America, was born. "America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement."
(HN, 7/29/98)(AP, 1/20/01)
1805 Aug 9, Austria joined Britain, Russia, Sweden and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the Third Coalition against Napoleonic France and Spain.
(HN, 8/9/98)(HNQ, 10/19/98)
1805 Sep 30, Napoleon's army entered the Rhine valley.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1805 Oct 19, Austrian general Karl Mac surrendered to Napoleon’s army at the battle of Ulm.
(www.pbs.org/empires/napoleon/n_war/campaign/page_6.html)
1805 Oct 21, A British fleet commanded by Vice Adm. Horatio Nelson defeated a French-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar fought off Cape Trafalgar, Spain. Admiral Nelson won his greatest victory and though fatally wounded in the battle aboard his flagship, he lived long enough to see victory: "England expects every man to do his duty." The crew fittingly preserved his body in rum. Over 8,500 Englishmen, Frenchmen and Spaniards were lost in the battle or the hurricane that swept over the ships the next day. In 1807 Nelson’s surgeon William Beatty authored “authentic narrative of the Death of Lord Nelson." In 1999 Barry Unsworth authored the novel "Losing Nelson." In 2001 Joseph F. Callo edited "Nelson Speaks: Admiral Lord Nelson in His Own Words." In 2005 Adam Nicolson authored “Men of Honour: Trafalgar and the Making of the English Hero;" Roy Adkins authored “Nelson’s Trafalgar," and Adam Nicolson authored “Seize the Fire."
(WSJ, 5/24/01, p.A20)(Econ, 6/25/05, p.82)(WSJ, 8/19/05, p.W6)(ON, 3/06, p.2)(Reuters, 7/13/10)
1805 Nov 14, Napoleon took control of Vienna, Austria.
(SFC, 4/26/12, p.A2)(www.pbs.org/empires/napoleon/n_war/campaign/page_6.html)
1805 Nov 19, Ferdinand de Lesseps, French diplomat and engineer (built Suez Canal), was born.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1805 Dec 2, Napoleon Bonaparte celebrated the first anniversary of his coronation with a victory at Austerlitz over a Russian and Austrian army.
(HN, 12/2/98)
1805 Dec 6, Nicholas-Jacques Conti (b.1755), French pencil maker, died in Paris. He created the number system used to rate pencil lead hardness: the higher the number, the harder the graphite.
(SSFC, 1/23/05, p.C2)
1805 Dec 31, The French Revolutionary calendar law was abolished. France returned to the Gregorian calendar.
(K.I.-365D, p.43)(MC, 12/31/01)
1805 Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) painted "Empress Josephine at Malmaison."
(WSJ, 4/8/98, p.A20)
1805 Napoleon defeated Austria and Prussia. In 1997 Alistair Horne wrote: "How Far from Austerlitz? Napoleon 1805-1815."
(WSJ, 7/10/96, p.A16)(WSJ, 5/19/97, p.A16)
1805 Liguria was incorporated into France.
(WUD, 1994, p.830)
1805 Absinthe was popularized by Henri-Louis Pernod, who opened his first distillery in Switzerland before moving to Pontarlier, France, in 1805.
(WSJ, 12/24/96, p.A1)(WSJ, 1/22/99, p.W8)(SFC, 3/24/00, p.A3)
1805 Jean-Baptiste Greuze (b.1725), artist, died. Diderot said: "This man draws like an angel."
(WSJ, 5/14/02, p.D7)
1805-1815 The 1997 book by British historian Alistair Horne: "How Far From Austerlitz," covered this period Napoleon Bonaparte.
(SFEC,11/2/97, Par p.10)
1806 Apr 13, Jean-Jacques Bachelier (~82), French painter, died.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1806 Jun, Lord Elgin was paroled by the French government.
(ON, 11/99, p.4)
1806 Jul 12, Napoleon granted Liechtenstein sovereignty.
(AP, 7/12/06)
1806 Aug 22, Jean-Honore Fragonard (74), French painter, engraver, died.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1806 Oct 8, British forces laid siege to French port of Boulogne using Congreve rockets, invented by Sir William Congreve.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1806 Oct 14, The forces of French Emperor Napoleon I defeated the Prussians in the twin battles of Jena and Auerstadt.
(AP, 10/14/07)
1806 Oct 27, Emperor Napoleon entered Berlin.
(HN, 10/27/98)
1806 Nov 21, In the Decree of Berlin Emperor Napoleon banned all trade with England.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1806 Nov 28, French forces led by Joachim Murat entered Warsaw.
(AP, 11/28/06)
1806 Dec 26, Napoleon’s army was checked by the Russians at the Battle of Pultusk.
(HN, 12/26/98)
1806 Jean Ingres painted his magnificent: "Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne."
(WSJ, 5/28/99, p.W12)
1806 In Paris the 3-mile Canal St. Marten waterway was built to connect the Seine to northeast France.
(SFEC, 6/28/98, p.T7)
1806 Napoleon issued his Berlin Decrees. They established the Continental System to restrict European trade with Britain.
(WSJ, 7/10/96, p.A16)
1806 Napoleon ordered that all French citizens be vaccinated against smallpox.
(NW, 10/14/02, p.50)
1806-1813 Trieste was held under French rule.
(www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Rotunda/2209/Trieste.html)
1807 Jan 7, Responding to Napoleon's blockade of the British Isles, The British blockaded Continental Europe.
(HN, 1/7/99)
1807 Jan 20, Napoleon convened the great Sanhedrin in Paris.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1807 Feb 8, At Eylau, Poland, Napoleon’s Marshal Pierre Agureau attacked Russian forces in a heavy snowstorm. Like Napoleon, to whom he is most often compared, Alexsandr Suvorov believed that opportunities in battle are created by fortune but exploited by intelligence, experience and an intuitive eye. To him, mastery of the art and science of war was not, therefore, purely instinctive. Napoleon’s forces ran low on supplies at Eylau and ate their horses.
(HN, 2/7/97)(WSJ, 9/21/05, p.A8)
1807 Feb 9, French Sanhedrin was convened by Napoleon.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1807 Apr 4, Joseph Jerome Le Francaise de Lalande, French astronomer, died.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1807 Apr 20, Aloysius Bertrand ("Gaspard de la Nuit"), French poet, was born.
(HN, 4/20/01)
1807 Jun 25, Napoleon I of France and Russian Czar Alexander I met near Tilsit, in northern Prussia, to discuss terms for ending war between their empires.
(AP, 6/25/07)
1807 Jul 4, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) Italian military leader, was born in Nice, France. He led the movement to make Italy one nation.
(HN, 7/4/98)(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)
1807 Jul 7, Napoleon I of France and Czar Alexander I of Russia signed a treaty at Tilsit ending war between their empires. It divided Europe among themselves and isolated Britain.
(HN, 7/7/98)(AP, 7/7/07)
1807 Aug 5, Jeanne Baret (b.1740), botanist, died in France. She had joined the (1766-1769) expedition of Louis Antoine de Bougainville, disguised as a man, and enlisting as valet and assistant to the expedition's naturalist, Philibert Commerson, shortly before Bougainville's ships sailed on a voyage to circumnavigate the globe. In 2013 Glynis Ridley authored “The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Bar%C3%A9)
1807 Napoleon gave Danzig (later Gdansk) 6 years of formal independence.
(WSJ, 8/31/98, p.A4)
1807 Britain seized Heligoland, an island in the North Sea ruled by Danes, as a forward base to break Napoleon’s economic blockade. In 2017 Jan Ruger authored “Heligoland: Britain, Germany and the Struggle for the North Sea."
(Econ, 2/18/17, p.69)
1807 France’s Pleyel piano company was founded by Ignaz Pleyel, a composer and music publisher who studied with Franz Joseph Haydn. In 2013 the company closed its factory, unable to keep up with cheaper and more agile competition.
(SFC, 10/30/96, Z1 p.8) (AP, 11/16/13)
1807 In Naples, Italy, Major Leopold Hugo, the father of Victor Hugo, was promoted after a successful campaign against the Calabrian banditti.
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)
1808 Feb 20, Honoré Daumier (d.1879), French painter, sculptor, caricaturist and lithographer, was born in Marseilles. He painted Crispin and Scapin.
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.369)(WSJ, 3/10/00, p.W16)(HN, 2/20/01)
1808 Mar 1, In France, Napoleon created an imperial nobility.
(HN, 3/1/99)
1808 Mar 23, Napoleon's brother Joseph took the throne of Spain.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1808 Mar 31, French created the Kingdom of Westphalia and ordered Jews to adopt family names.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1808 Apr 17, The Bayonne Decree by Napoleon I of France ordered the seizure of U.S. ships.
(HN, 4/17/98)
1808 Apr 20, Charles Louis Napoleon (d.1873), nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, was born. He later served as president (1848-1852) and as emperor of France (1852-1870).
(WUD, 1994, p.950)(WSJ, 1/13/98, p.A20)(HN, 4/20/98)
1808 May 30, Napoleon annexed Tuscany and gave it seats in French Senate.
(MC, 5/30/02)
1808 Jul 20, Napoleon decreed that all French Jews adopt family names.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1808 Aug 1, Joachim Murat (1767-1815), French marshal and Napoleon's brother in law, became king of Naples (1808-1815) and Sicily.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Murat)
1808 Aug 21, Napoleon Bonaparte's General Junot was defeated by Wellington at the first Battle of the Peninsular War at Vimiero, Portugal.
(HN, 8/21/02)
1808 Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) painted "Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime."
(WSJ, 4/8/98, p.A20)
1808 Napoleon chased Portugal’s royal family to Brazil. King Joao VI of Portugal and his court were installed in Rio de Janeiro by a British fleet.
(Econ, 4/14/07, SR p.5)(Econ, 9/11/10, SR p.3)
1808 Napoleon codified the French educational curriculum.
(Econ, 12/19/09, p.91)
1809 Jan 4, Louis Braille (d.1852), inventor of a universal reading system for the blind, was born in Coupvray, France. He was blinded at age four as the result of an accident in his father's shop. He became an accomplished organist and cellist and won a scholarship in 1819 to attend the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris. In 1821 Louis learned of a communication system devised by Captain Charles Barbier of the French Army. While Barbier's system was too complex to be practical, Braille simplified and adapted it to a six-dot code representing letters that enabled people with impaired vision to not only read but also write for themselves. In 1829 his first Braille book was published, but Braille himself died of tuberculosis at age 43--before his system gained widespread acceptance.
(AP, 1/4/98)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Braille)
1809 Mar 12, Great Britain signed a treaty with Persia forcing the French out of the country.
(HN, 3/12/99)
1809 Mar 27, Georges-Eugene Haussmann (d.1891), French town planner, was born. He designed modern-day Paris.
(HN, 3/27/01)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Haussmann)
1809 Apr 10, Austria declared war on France and her forces entered Bavaria.
(HN, 4/10/99)
1809 Apr 20, Napoleon defeated Austria at Battle of Abensberg, Bavaria.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1809 Apr 22, At the Battle at Eckmahl Napoleon beat Austrian archduke Karl.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1809 May 12, Napoleon’s troops captured Vienna, Austria.
(SFC, 4/26/12, p.A2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wagram)
1809 May 17, The Papal States were annexed by France. Pope Pius VII responded by excommunicating Napoleon.
(MC, 5/17/02)(PTA, 1980, p.502)
1809 Jul 5, Pope Pius VII was taken prisoner to France and held there until 1814.
(PC, 1992 ed, p.371)
1809 Jul 5-1809 Jul 6, Napoleon beat Austria’s archduke Charles at the Battle of Wagram. He annexed the Illyrian Provinces (now part of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro), and abolished the Papal States.
(http://tinyurl.com/vx8dk)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wagram)
1809 Jul 27-1809 Jul 28, Arthur Wellesley led the British army to triumph against the Spanish King Joseph Bonaparte at Talavera de la Reina against a French army twice his size. For this he was made Duke of Wellington.
(WSJ, 6/6/96, p.A15)(PC, 1992 ed, p.371)
1809 Oct 14, The Treaty of Schönbrunn, also known as the Treaty of Vienna, ended hostilities between France and Austria. This treaty ended the Fifth Coalition during the Napoleonic Wars.
(PC, 1992 ed, p.371)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Sch%C3%B6nbrunn)
1809 Dec 16, Napoleon Bonaparte was divorced from the Empress Josephine by an act of the French Senate. Metternich had convinced Francis I of Austria to offer his daughter Marie Louise as a bride to Napoleon.
(AP, 12/16/97)(ON, 5/04, p.2)
1809 Nicholas Appert won a French prize of 12,000 francs for his method of keeping food in glass bottles. Napoleon had offered the prize with military needs in mind.
(SFC, 9/19/07, p.G6)
1809-1826 Civilians and soldiers who returned home from Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt (1798-1801) published during this period in serial form “Description de l’Egypte" (The Description of Egypt), the most comprehensive view of Egypt to date.
(SFC, 12/14/07, p.E3)(WSJ, 11/17/08, p.A17)
1810 Jan 10, French church annulled the marriage of Napoleon I & Josephine.
(MC, 1/10/02)
1810 Mar 11, Emperor Napoleon of France was married by proxy to Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria.
(AP, 3/11/98)(HN, 3/11/98)
1810 May 21, Charles Chevalier d'Eon de Beaumont (81), French spy, cross dresser, died.
(MC, 5/21/02)
1810 Aug 21, Sweden’s Riksdag elected Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, Marshal of France under Napoleon, as heir apparent to the Swedish throne.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernadotte)(Econ, 10/14/06, p.73)
1810 Oct 4, Alexander Walewski, French earl, foreign minister, son of Napoleon I, was born.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1810 General Count Hugo, the father of Victor Hugo, governed Central Spain during the Peninsula War. He exterminated guerrillas and nailed up their severed heads.
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)
1810-1857 Alfred de Musset, French author: "How glorious it is -- and also how painful -- to be an exception."
(AP, 5/6/00)
1811 Mar 20, Napoleon II, the Duke of Reichstadt, was born. He was the son of Napoleon Bonaparte.
(HN, 3/20/99)
1811 Aug 5, C.L. Ambroise Thomas, French composer (Mignon, Francoise de Rimini), was born.
(MC, 8/5/02)
1811 Aug 31, Théophile Gautier, French poet, novelist and author of "Art for Art's Sake," was born.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1811 Napoleon Bonaparte gave to his wife, Empress Marie Louise, a tiara with 950 diamonds (700 carats). The original emeralds were later replaced with Persian turquoise. Now part of the Smithsonian Inst. and bequeathed by Marjorie Merriweather Post.
(Postcard , Nat’l Mus. Nat. Hist.,1995)
1811-1823 The abbey at Cluny was quarried over this period. It had been shut down by French Revolutionaries.
(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.T4)
1811-1882 Louis Blanc, French utopian socialist, proposed the social ideal of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." The nineteenth-century writer and thinker had a profound influence on radical thought.
(HNQ, 4/12/99)
1812 Mar 9, Swedish Pomerania was seized by Napoleon.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1812 Apr 15, Pierre-Etienne-Theodore Rousseau, painter, was born.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1812 Jun 24, Napoleon crossed the Nieman River [in Lithuania] and invaded Russia. The French army under Napoleon crossed the Nemunas River near Kaunas. Prior to his march into Russia, Napoleon had taken land from Russia and returned it to Polish control in Warsaw. This assured him safe passage through Poland and Lithuania on his way to Russia. In 1824 the book “History of the Expedition to Russia, Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812" by Count de Segur, a general in Napoleon’s army, was first published. An English translation edited by Gerard Shelley was published in 1928.
(HN, 6/24/98)(WSJ, 8/25/07, p.P9)(H of L, 1931, p.83-84)
1812 Jul 22, English troops under the Duke of Wellington defeated the French at the Battle of Salamanca in Spain.
(AP, 7/22/97)(HN, 7/22/98)
1812 Aug 12, British commander the Duke of Wellington occupied Madrid, Spain, forcing out Joseph Bonaparte.
(HN, 8/12/98)
1812 Aug 17, Napoleon Bonaparte's army defeated the Russians at the Battle of Smolensk during the Russian retreat to Moscow.
(HN, 8/17/98)
1812 Aug 22, Charles Etienne Gudin (44), one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s favorite generals, died near Smolensk after being hit by a cannon ball during Napoleon’s unsuccessful invasion of Russia. His name was later inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. In 2019 his remains were formally identified by DNA tests after a one-legged skeleton was found under a dance floor in Smolensk. In 2021 his remains were repatriated to France.
(The Telegraph, 11/6/19)(https://tinyurl.com/dzjdj5k6)(AP, 7/13/21)
1812 Sep 7, On the road to Moscow, Napoleon won a costly victory over the Russians under Kutuzov at Borodino. This was the greatest mass slaughter in the history of warfare until the Battle of the Somme in 1916. In 2004 Adam Zamoyski authored “Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow."
(HN, 9/7/98)(Econ, 4/17/04, p.81)
1812 Sep 14, The Russian army left Moscow. Napoleon's invasion of Russia reached its climax as his Grande Armee entered Moscow, only to find the enemy capital deserted and burning, set afire by the few Russians who remained. The fires were extinguished by Sep 19.
(ON, 10/2010, p.11)(http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/B/Borodino.html)
1812 Sep 18, A fire in Moscow (set by Napoleon's troops) destroyed 90% of houses and 1,000 churches. [see Sep 14]
(MC, 9/18/01)
1812 Sep, In France as Napoleon’s army proceeded to invade Russia it numbered 442,000 troops. In Sept. it reached Moscow with 100,000 men. The remains of the Grandee Armee struggled out of Russia in 1813 with 10,000 men. A map drawn by Charles Joseph Minard plots six variables to depict the march over time: the size of the army, its location on a 2-dimensional surface, the direction of the army’s movement, and temperatures on various days during the retreat from Moscow. In 1970 Curtis Cate published the book: "The War of the Two Emperors."
(Adv. E. Tufte, 5/18/96, p.4)(SFEC, 6/15/97, Z1 p.3)
1812 Oct 18, The Russian army attacked French forces on the outskirts of Moscow. Some 2,500-3,000 French soldiers were killed.
(ON, 10/2010, p.11)
1812 Oct 19, French forces under Napoleon Bonaparte began their retreat from Moscow.
(AP, 10/19/97)(HN, 10/19/98)
1812 Oct 23, There was a failed coup against emperor Napoleon.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1812 Nov 9, Paul Abadie, French master builder (renovated Notre Dame), was born.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1812 Nov 14, As Napoleon Bonaparte's army retreated form Moscow, temperatures dropped to 20 degrees below zero. Michel Ney defended the Napoleon‘s rear during the retreat from Moscow and was called by Napoleon "The bravest of the brave." He rejoined Napoleon during the Hundred Days and the Waterloo campaign. After Napoleon‘s defeat, he was found guilty of treason and shot. It was later suggested that many soldiers died because their tin coat buttons deteriorated in the extreme cold.
(HN, 11/14/99)(HNQ, 9/21/00)(SSFC, 6/8/03, p.M2)
1812 Nov 26, In Belarus Napoleon Bonaparte's army began crossing the Beresina River over two hastily constructed bridges. The Battle of Berezina began as Napoleon’s army retreated from its invasion of Russia. Heavy losses were later estimated to be as many as 25,000.
(HN, 11/26/99)(AP, 11/24/19)
1812 Nov 27, One of the two bridges being used by Napoleon Bonaparte's army across the Beresina River in Russia collapsed during a Russian artillery barrage.
(HN, 11/27/99)
1812 Nov 29, The last elements of Napoleon Bonaparte's Grand Armee retreated across the Beresina River in Russia. Tens of thousands of French troops and civilians perished when the Russians attacked Napoleon's army as it crossed the Berezina River in Belarus on the punishing retreat from Moscow. The following Spring it was recorded that 32,000 bodies were rounded up and burned on the river banks near Studianka.
(HN, 11/29/99)(AP, 11/26/07)(www.wtj.com/articles/berezina/)
1812 Dec 6, The majority of Napoleon Bonaparte's Grand Armeé staggered into Vilnius, Lithuania, ending the failed Russian campaign. An estimated 50,000 soldiers reached Lithuania and as many as 20,000 died there. As many as 450,000 soldiers from France, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Germany and at least 15 other countries died in the Russian campaign.
(HN, 12/6/99)(Arch, 9/02, p.41)
1812 Dec 13, The last remnants of Napoleon Bonaparte's Grand Armeé reached the safety of Kovno, Poland, after the failed Russian campaign.
(HN, 12/13/99)
1812 Dec, 14, The last French units of Napoleon’s Grand Armeé crossed the Nieman River of Lithuania, leaving Russia.
(ON, 10/2010, p.11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia)
1812 Dec 18, Napoleon Bonaparte arrived in Paris after his disastrous campaign in Russia.
(HN, 12/18/99)
1812 Jacques-Louis David, French artist, painted a portrait of Napoleon as a working ruler.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.126)
1812 Louis-Vincent-Leon Palliere, French painter, created his work “Ulysses and Telemachus Massacre Penelope’s Suitors."
(WSJ, 12/28/05, p.D8)
1812 Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) painted "Venus and Adonis."
(WSJ, 4/8/98, p.A20)
1812 Georges Cuvier, French anatomist, published his 4 volume work "Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles" (Research on Fossil Bones).
(NH, 8/96, p.18)
1812 The Testament of Peter the Great was first published in Napoleonic France to demonstrate that the Russian Empire had grand plans to conquer and subjugate Europe. It was demonstrated to be a fraud in 1879. It was written by a Polish general in the late 1700s and has continued to find mainstream adherants in the modern era, particularly amongst scholars, journalists and politicians.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Russavia/Testament)
1813 Feb 28, Russia and Prussia formed the Kalisz union against Napoleon.
(LHC,2/28/03)
1813 Mar 4, The Russians fighting against Napoleon reached Berlin. The French garrison evacuated the city without a fight.
(HN, 3/4/99)
1813 Apr 10, Joseph-Louis Lagrange (b.1736), Italian-born mathematician, died in Paris. He is considered to be the greatest mathematician of the eighteenth century.
(www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/Lagrange/RouseBall/RB_Lagrange.html)
1813 Jun 26, Metternich met with Napoleon at Dresden and informed him that he must sue for peace if he wanted continued Austrian support.
(ON, 5/04, p.3)
1813 Jul 15, Napoleon Bonaparte's representatives met with the Allies in Prague to discuss peace terms.
(HN, 7/15/98)
1813 Aug 23, At the Battle of Grossbeeren Prussians under Von Bulow repulsed the French.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1813 Aug 27, The 2-day Battle of Dresden was Napoleon’s last major victory against the allied forces of Austria, Russia and Prussia. French forces under Napoleon scored a victory against the Allied army led by Field Marshal Schwarzenberg. Three days after the battle, the Allies surrounded and captured a French corps at the Battle of Kulm.
(www.napoleonguide.com/battle_dresden.htm)
1813 Oct 16-19, In the Battle at Leipzig (aka Battle of the Nations) Napoleon faced Prussia, Austria and Russia and suffered one of his worst defeats.
(DoW, 1999, p.325)
1813 Oct 18, The Allies defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at Leipzig.
(HN, 10/18/98)
1813 Nov 2, Treaty of Fulda. After the Battle of Leipzig (Oct 16-19) King Frederick I of Württemberg (1754-1816) deserted Napoleon’s waning fortunes. By a treaty made with Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar von Metternich (1773-1858) at Fulda, Hessen, Germany he secured the confirmation of his royal title and of his recent acquisitions of territory, while his troops marched with those of the allies into France.
(DoW, 1999, p.325)
1813 Nov 12, J. H. St. John de Crevecouer, French explorer and writer, died. He had spent more than half of his life in the New World and contributed two important concepts to the American consciousness. The first is the idea of the "American Adam," that there is something different, unique, special, or new about these people called "Americans." The second idea is that of the "melting pot," that people's "American-ness" transcends their ethnic, cultural, or religious backgrounds.
(http://cs1.mcm.edu/~cetheridge/crevec.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/3cbq3j)
1813 Dec 31, Some 83,000 Prussian and Russian soldiers pursued Napoleon across the Rhine at Pfalzgrafenstein Castle.
(SFEC, 3/15/98, p.T5)
1813 A new 45 carat blue diamond emerged in France. It was guessed to have been cut from the 112 carat Blue Diamond of the crown jewels. The 112 carot stone was re-cut in 1673 to 67 carats.
(THC, 12/3/97)(EB, 1993, V6 p.51)
1814 Feb 10, Napoleon personally directed lightning strikes against enemy columns advancing toward Paris, beginning with a victory over the Russians at Champaubert. During the Napoleonic Wars a British naval officer proposed the use of saturation bombing and chemical warfare to undermine the strength of Emperor Napoleon.
(HN, 2/10/97)
1814 Feb 27, Napoleon's Marshal Nicholas Oudinot was pushed back at Barsur-Aube by the Emperor's allied enemies shortly before his abdication.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1814 Mar 10, Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by a combined Allied Army at the battle of Laon, in France.
(HN, 3/10/99)
1814 Mar 30, Britain and allies marched into Paris after defeating Napoleon.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1814 Mar 31, Forces allied against Napoleon captured Paris.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1814 Apr 4, Napoleon Bonaparte first abdicated at Fontainebleau. He was allowed to keep the title of emperor. [see Apr 11]
(www.napoleonseries.org/reference/political/legislation/restoration.cfm)
1814 Apr 11, Napoleon Bonaparte (45) abdicated at Fontainebleau a 2nd time and was banished to the island of Elba, a small island in the Mediterranean, retaining the title of emperor and 400 volunteers to act as his guard. He was granted sovereignty over Elba and a pension from the French government. [see Apr 6]
(www.napoleonseries.org/reference/political/legislation/restoration.cfm)
1814 Apr 20, Napoleon departed for exile in Elba.
(Econ, 4/14/07, p.94)
1814 Apr 26, King Louis XVIII landed on Calais from England.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1814 Apr, The Duke of Wellington led 60,000 troops against 325,000 French troops at Toulouse and defeated them just days after Napoleon abdicated the throne.
(WSJ, 1/6/95, A-10)
1814 May 4, Bourbon reign was restored in France. Louis XVIII was crowned as successor to his guillotined brother.
(MC, 5/4/02)
1814 May 29, Empress Josephine (1804-14), first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, died. She maintained grand roses at Malmaison, where there were an estimated 250 varieties.
(TGR, 1995, p.2)(SC, 5/29/02)
1814 May 30, The First Treaty of Paris was declared, after Napoleon's first abdication. It returned France to its 1792 borders and secured for the British definite possession of the Cape of Good Hope.
(HN, 5/30/98)(HN, 5/30/99)(EWH, 4th ed, p.884)
1814 Jun 3, Nicolas Appert (b.1749), French cook, died. He was the winner of a 12,000 franc prize offered by Napoleon for developing a method to preserve food. His original canning method took 14 years to develop and used glass jars sealed with wax reinforced with wire.
(WSJ, 1/21/03, p.A1)(www.foodreference.com)
1814 Sep, The Congress of Vienna convened in late September and continued to June 8, 1815. Friedrich von Gentz of Austria served as secretary to the Congress. It was held after the banishment of Napoleon to Elba. The congress aimed at territorial resettlement and restoration to power of the crowned heads of Europe with Prince Metternich of Austria as the dominant figure. Viscount Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington represented Britain. Alexander I stood for Russia. Talleyrand stood for France. Prince von Hardenberg stood for Prussia. In 2007 Adam Zamoyski authored “Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna." In 2008 David King authored “Vienna 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War and Peace at the Congress of Vienna.
(Econ, 4/14/07, p.94)(www.bartleby.com/65/vi/Vienna-C.html)(SSFC, 4/6/08, Books p.4)
1814 Oct 4, Jean Francois Millet (d.1875), French painter, was born.
(www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/art.asp?aid=745)
1814 Jacques-Louis David created his painting “Leonidas at Thermopylae."
(WSJ, 4/6/05, p.D11)
c1814 Pierre Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823), French artist, drew his "Bust of a Female Figure."
(WSJ, 12/5/96, p.A16)
1814 Jean Francois Champollion (1790-1832), French scholar, published his 2-volume book “Egypt Under the Pharaohs." Income from the book provided him with royalties to continue his studies on the hieroglyphics of the Rosetta Stone.
(ON, 8/10, p.7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Champollion)
1814 Alexander I of Russia entered Paris at the head of an anti-Napoleon coalition.
(WSJ, 6/26/96, p.A16)
1814 The Marquis de Sade died. His writings included "Justine," "Juliette," and "120 Days of Sodom." In 1999 Neal Schaeffer published "The Marquis De Sade: A Life," and Francine du Plessix Gray published "At Home With the Marquis De Sade: A Life."
(SFEC, 7/25/99, BR p.3)
1815 Feb 25, Napoleon left his exile on the Island of Elba, intending to return to France.
(HN, 2/25/98)
1815 Feb 26, Napoleon, escaped from the Island of Elba, and 1,200 of his men started the 100-day re-conquest of France.
(HN, 2/26/98)(AP, 2/26/98)
1815 Mar 1, In France, returning from Elba, Napoleon landed at Cannes with a force of 1, 500 men and marched on Paris.
(HN, 3/1/99)
1815 Mar 20, Napoleon Bonaparte entered Paris, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule. He had escaped from his imprisonment on the island of Elba off the coast of Tuscany. He gathered his veterans and marched on Paris. At Waterloo, Belgium, he met the Duke of Wellington, commander of the allied anti-French forces and was resoundingly defeated. Napoleon was then imprisoned on the island of St. Helena in the south Atlantic. In 1997 Gregor Dallas published: "The Final Act: The Roads to Waterloo." The book includes a good account of the Congress of Vienna.
(AP, 3/20/97)(V.D.-H.K.p.232)(SFEC,11/2/97, Par p.10) (HN, 3/20/98)
1815 Apr, British General Arthur Wellesley, duke of Wellington, began assembling troops at Brussels, Belgium. 73,000 British troops were joined by 33,000 German, Dutch and Belgian troops preparing to face Napoleon. Prussian Gen. Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher gathered an army of 120,000 southeast of Brussels.
(ON, 4/06, p.1)
1815 May 5, Eugene-Marin Labiche, French playwright, was born.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1815 Jun 16, Napoleon defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny, Belgium.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ligny)
1815 Jun 16, A French attack at the crossroads called Quatre Bras badly mauled Anglo-Dutch army under Wellington, but failed to rout it or to take the crossroads. Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had marched into Belgium to find himself confronted by two allied armies, which he tried to split apart. Although similarly battered at Ligny that day, the Prussian army also retired intact. Both armies would face Napoleon again two days later at Waterloo.
(HNPD, 6/16/99)(Econ, 5/23/15, p.71)
1815 Jun 17, A heavy rainstorm prevented French forces from catching up with Wellington’s army as they retreated to Waterloo.
(Econ, 7/16/05, p.15)(ON, 4/06, p.3)
1815 Jun 18, British and Prussian troops under the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon Bonaparte and his forces at the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium. The French elite troops of the Imperial Guard wore bearskins to appear more intimidating. Afterwards Britain established towering bear skin hats for soldiers in ceremonial duties and to guard royal residencies and the Tower of London. Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher made a short speech to his troops saying that he was pregnant and about to give birth to an elephant. He was taken from the front in protective custody and missed the battle. Napoleon lost over 40,000 men at Waterloo; the British and Belgians lost 15,000; the Prussians lost 7,000. The total losses in 3 days of fighting was later estimated at 91,800. In 2002 Andrew Roberts authored "Napoleon and Wellington." In 2005 Andrew Roberts authored “Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Gamble."
(SFEC, 2/28/99, Z1p.10)(WSJ, 9/13/02, p.W10)(Econ, 2/12/05, p.81)(ON, 4/06, p.5)
1815 Jun 22, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated a second time.
(AP, 6/22/97)
1815 Jul 7, After defeating Napoleon at Waterloo, the victorious Allies marched into Paris.
(HN, 7/7/98)
1815 Jul 9, King Louis XVIII left Ghent for France.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1815 Jul 15, Napoleon Bonaparte was captured by the British Navy at Rochefort, France, while attempting to escape to America.
(ON, 4/06, p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon)
1815 Aug 8, Napoleon Bonaparte set sail for St. Helena, in the South Atlantic, to spend the remainder of his days in exile. He died there in 1821 at age 51.
(AP, 8/8/97)(SFEC, 8/1/99, Par p.16)
1815 Oct 7, Marshal Ney, one of Napoleon's most trusted field commanders, was condemned to death and shot for having left the services of the King.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1815 Oct 13, Joachim Murat, marshal of France and King of Naples (1808-15), was executed.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1815 Oct 17, Napoleon (d.1821) arrived in St. Helena.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1815 Nov 20, The treaties known collectively as the 2nd Peace of Paris were concluded. Austria’s Klemens von Metternich helped create a “Concert of Europe," a system by which 4-5 big powers kept miscreants in check and managed the affairs of smaller states for over a decade.
(www.newadvent.org/cathen/07398a.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/2sqgp9)(Econ, 6/9/07, p.68)
1816 Jan 12, France decreed the Bonaparte family to be excluded from the country forever.
(MC, 1/12/02)
1816 Jul 3, Dorothea Jordan (65), French actress, mistress (William IV), died.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1816 Sep 5, Louis XVIII of France dissolved the chamber of deputies, which had been challenging his authority.
(HN, 9/5/98)
1816 Jacques Louis David (1748-1825) painted the portrait: "Comte Henri-Amedee de Turenne".
(WUD, 1994 p.369)
1816 In France Joseph N. Niepce developed the first photographic negative. His earliest recorded image, an 1825 print of a man leading a horse, sold for $443,220 in 2002.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)(SFC, 7/14/99, p.4)(SFC, 3/22/02, p.A2)
1816 France adopted the Paris meridian as the standard clock time for the country. Sundials were used up to this time.
(WSJ, 10/26/99, p.A24)
1816 Dr. Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec invented the stethoscope.
(ON, 9/00, p.11)
1816 Saartjie Baartman (26), taken from S. Africa in 1810, fell sick and died penniless and friendless in France after being exhibited as the "Hottentot Venus." Her body was dissected, her brain and genitals were bottled, and her skeleton was wired and exhibited in the Musee de l’Homme in Paris. In 1994 Nelson Mandela requested that she be returned home. In 2002 her remains were returned to S. Africa. In 2003 Barbara Chase-Ribaud authored the novel "Hottentot Venus" based on the Baartman story. In 2007 Rachel Holmes authored “African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus."
(SFC, 5/4/02, p.A8)(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.M6)(SFC, 1/1/07, p.D2)(Econ., 2/28/15, p.31)
1817 Jul 14, Madame de Stael (51), writer and daughter of former French finance minister Jacques Necker, died. She was intimate with Benjamin Constant and their intellectual collaboration made them one of the most important intellectual pairs of their time. In 2005 Maria Fairweather authored “Madame de Stael." In 2008 Renee Winegarten authored the dual biography “Germaine de Stael & Benjamin Constant."
(Econ, 3/19/05, p.88)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/stael.htm)(WSJ, 6/23/08, p.A15)
1817 The Dutch and French agreed on a final pact to divide the control of St. Martin Island. The southern Dutch half comprises the Eilandgebied Sint Maarten (Island Territory of St. Maarten) and is part of the Netherlands Antilles. The northern French half comprises the Collectivité de Saint-Martin (Collectivity of St. Martin) and is an overseas collectivity of France.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Martin)
c1817-1924 Pierre Joseph Redoute printed "Les Roses."
(SFEM, 4/6/97, p.16)
1818 Jun 17, Charles Francois Gounod, opera composer of "Faust" and "Romeo et Juliette," was born in Paris, France.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1818 Aug 7, Henri Charles Litolff, French composer, pianist, was born.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1818 Theophile Bra, French academic sculptor, won the Prix de Rome.
(SFEM, 11/1/98, p.4)
1818 Baron Karl de Drais de Sauerbrun of Germany invented the draisienne, the first 2-wheeled, rider-propelled machine and exhibited it in Paris. The vehicle came to be known as the “velocipede," a 2-wheeled running machine without pedals.
(Wired, 2/98, p.172)(Econ, 2/5/05, p.77)
1819 Jun 10, J.D. Gustave Courbet (d.1877), French realist painter (Demoiselles the la Seine), was born. His realistic landscapes were marked by bold shadows and compositions fragmented by the play of natural light. This technique was pursued more fully by the impressionists. His work included "Rock at HautePierre."
(DPCP, 1984)(WSJ, 3/10/00, p.W16)(MC, 6/10/02)
1819 Jun 20, Jacques Offenbach (d.1880), French composer (Tales of Hoffmann), was born in Cologne. His work included the comedy opera "Barbe-Bleue" (Blue Beard).
(MC, 6/20/02)(WSJ, 2/20/98, p.A16)
1819 Sep 17, Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault, physicist (pendulum proved Earth rotates), was born. [see Sep 18]
(MC, 9/17/01)
1819 Sep 18, Leon Foucault, French physicist, was born. [see Sep 17]
(HN, 9/18/00)
c1819 In France a silver soup tureen was manufactured by Jean-Baptiste Claude Odiot. It fetched over a million dollars in a 1997 auction.
(WSJ, 10/24/97, p.B18)
1820 Feb 15, French statesman Pierre-Joseph Cambon (63), member of Committee of Public Safety (French Revolution), died.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Cambon)
1820 French economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) began working at the National Conservatory of Arts in Paris as the country’s first professor of economics.
(Econ, 8/12/17, p.54)
1820s A road was constructed through La Mas d'Azil, a tunnel cut by Arize River.
(SFEC, 5/30/99, p.T4)
1821 Feb 11, Auguste Edouard Mariette, French Egyptologist, (dug out Sphinx 12/16/42), was born.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1821 May 5, Napoleon Bonaparte (b.1769), former emperor of France (1799-1815), died in exile on the island of St. Helena. He died by slow poisoning at the hands of his companion Charles Tristan de Montholon. Scottish pathologist Dr. Hamilton Smith later used Napoleon’s hair to determine that arsenic had been administered about 40 times from 1820-1821. In 2010 a lock of Napoleon’s hair fetched 140,000 New Zealand dollars ($97,000) at auction. In 1992 Proctor Patterson Jones authored "Napoleon, An Intimate Account." In 1999 an English translation of Jean-Paul Kauffmann's "The Black Room at Longwood: Napoleon's Exile on St. Helena" was published. In 1904 F. De Bouirrienne published "Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte." In 1988 S. De Chair edited "Napoleon's Memoirs." In 2014 Andrew Roberts authored “Napoleon the Great."
(V.D.-H.K.p.232)(AP, 5/5/97)(SFEC, 1/18/98, BR p.9)(SFEC, 8/16/98, Z1 p.8)(SFC, 4/8/99, p.C5)(AP, 8/8/97)(SFEC, 8/1/99, Par p.16)(AP, 7/01/10)(Econ, 9/20/14, p.77)
1821 Aug 19, There was a failed liberal coup against French King Louis XVIII.
(MC, 8/19/02)
1821 Dec 12, Gustave Flaubert (d.1880), French novelist, was born. "Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times." [see May 8, 1880]
(V.D.-H.K.p.278)(AP, 6/19/99)(HN, 12/12/99)
1822 Sep 9, Napoleon J K P Bonaparte, French prince and member National Convention, was born.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1822 Dec 27, Louis Pasteur (d.1895), French chemist and microbiologist, was born in Dole, France. One of his several monumental contributions to science and industry was pasteurization, the process of heating wine, beer and milk to kill microorganisms that cause fermentation and disease. Pasteur also developed important vaccines and his work on molecular asymmetry led to the science of stereochemistry. He was the first to vaccinate animals for anthrax and chicken cholera, and in 1885 he proved that his rabies vaccine could be used successfully on humans when he saved the life of a 9-year-old boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog. The Pasteur Institute was formed in Paris in 1888 for research on rabies. Pasteur ran the institute until his death in 1895.
(WUD, 1994, p.1055)(AP, 12/27/97) (HNPD, 12/27/98)
1822 Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) painted "A Grief-Stricken Family." It was painted shortly after his student and mistress, Constance Mayer, slit her throat.
(WSJ, 4/8/98, p.A20)
1822 The French Bollore Group started out as a family-run manufacturer of paper for cigarettes and bibles.
(AFP, 4/24/18)
1823 Jan 27, Edouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo, French composer (Symphonie Espagnole), was born.
(MC, 1/27/02)
1823 Feb 28, Ernst Renan, French philosopher, historian, scholar of religion, was born.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1823 In Paris, France, the Galerie Viviene, a covered arcade, was built.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.M4)
1824 Jul 27, Alexandre Dumas fils, French playwright, novelist (Camille), was born.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1824 Jul 30, Gioacchino Rossini became manager of Theatre Italian in Paris.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1824 The book “History of the Expedition to Russia, Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812" by Count de Segur, a general in Napoleon’s army, was first published. An English translation edited by Gerard Shelley was published in 1928.
(WSJ, 8/25/07, p.P9)
1825 May 20, Charles X became King of France.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1825 Jun 9, Pauline Bonaparte (44), the sister of Napoleon, died. In 2009 Flora Fraser authored Pauline Bonaparte: Venus of Empire."
(Econ, 3/7/09, p.91)(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=27659636)
1825 Jun 19, Gioacchino Rossini's "Il Viaggio a Reims," premiered. Rossini wrote the "IL Viaggio a Reims" opera to celebrate the coronation of Charles X. The libretto by Luigi Balocchi was intended to show all major European nationalities coming together to celebrate the event.
(WSJ, 9/29/99, p.A20)(MC, 6/19/02)
1825 Jun 20, Coronation of French king Charles X, the surviving brother of guillotined Louis XVI.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1825 Oct 17, Franz Liszt's operetta Don Sanche premiered in Paris
(MC, 10/17/01)
1825 Dec 29, Jacques-Louis David (b.1748), French painter (Death of Marat), died.
(WUD, 1994 p.369)(MC, 12/29/01)
1825 Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), French lawyer and professor, invented the genre of food writing with his book “The Physiology of Taste."
(WSJ, 5/5/07, p.P10)
1825 A French emissary of Charles X demanded that Haiti pay 150 million gold francs in exchange for recognition as French warships cruised over the horizon. The deal required 5 annual payments of 30 million and required a loan from a French bank for the 1st payment. Haiti renegotiated the debt in 1838.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.A1)
1825 France established its imperial paramilitary, the Gendarmerie Coloniale, for law enforcement across its colonial empire.
(WSJ, 2/2/04, p.A12)
1826 Feb 2, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (b.1755), French lawyer and epicure, died. “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are." His famous work, Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste), was published in December 1825, two months before his death.
(WSJ, 7/19/08, p.W1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brillat-Savarin)
1826 Apr 6, Gustave Moreau, French painter, was born.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1826 Apr 22, French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville (1790-1842) sailed from Toulon towards the Pacific Ocean, for a circumnavigation of the world that was destined to last nearly three years. In the 1830s he explored the south and western Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Dumont_d%27Urville)
1826 Theophile Bra, French academic sculptor, experienced a nervous breakdown and began to make visionary paintings.
(SFEM, 11/1/98, p.)
1826 Corot painted "Cascade of Terni." "Its flat light, monumentalizing simplicity and minimal content anticipated Courbet, Manet and Cezanne."
(SFC, 6/4/96, p.E5)
1826 Ferdinand Eugene Delacroix (d.1863), French artist, painted his “Portrait of Charles de Verninac" about this time. De Verninac (1803-1834) died later in NYC while returning home after catching yellow fever while serving as French vice consul in Chile.
(SFC, 1/21/15, p.E1)
1826 In Egypt Jean-Francois Champollion, French Egyptologist and decipherer of the Rosetta Stone, began collecting Egyptian artifacts. He convinced Charles X to purchase the private collections of the French and English consuls in Egypt.
(WSJ, 1/29/98, p.A16)
1826 Dr. Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec, inventor of the stethoscope, died from tuberculosis.
(ON, 9/00, p.11)
1826-1829 Dumont d’Urville (1790-1842), French explorer and naturalist, sailed around the Pacific Ocean.
(CW, Spring ‘99, p.3)
1827 Feb 1, Alphonse de Rothschild, French banker, was born.
(MC, 2/1/02)
1827 Mar 5, Pierre-Simon Laplace (b.1749), French mathematician, astronomer, physicist, died. He invented perturbation theory and wrote the 5-volume work "Celestial Mechanics." In 1998 Charles Couiston Gillespie published his biography "Pierre-Simon Laplace: A Life in Exact Science."
(WSJ, 2/19/98, p.A20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace)
1827 Jul 14, Augustin-Jean Fresnel (b.1788), French engineer, died. He contributed significantly to the establishment of the theory of wave optics. Fresnel studied the behavior of light both theoretically and experimentally. He worked out a way to focus light using diffraction and was the first to construct a special type of lens, now called a Fresnel lens, as a substitute for mirrors in lighthouses.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin-Jean_Fresnel)(Econ, 6/9/12, p.85)
1827 Oct 20, British, French and Russian squadrons entered the harbor at Navarino, Greece, and destroyed most of the Egyptian fleet there. The Ottomans demanded reparations.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.770)(www.ipta.demokritos.gr/erl/navarino.html)
1827 Victor Hugo wrote the official coronation ode for Charles X, the last Bourbon king.
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)
1827 The first Egyptian Museum was housed in the Louvre’s Cour Caree with Jean-Francois Champollion as curator.
(WSJ, 1/29/98, p.A16)(WSJ, 10/7/98, p.A20)
1827 The lithopane (lithophane) was patented in Paris. It allowed a picture, embedded in porcelain, to be viewed in light by varying the thickness of a porcelain base. Generally credited as being the invention of Baron Paul de Bourguignon, of Rubelles, France, in 1827, the earliest forms of lithophanes were actually produced in China many years before other countries produced them.
(SFC, 3/1/06, p.G7)(http://bellerosefarm.com/html/_lithopane_history.html)
1827 Joseph Niepce, French inventor, met with English botanist Francis Bauer, who agreed to present Niepce’s ground breaking photographic work to the Royal Society, which rejected the bid. Before leaving London Niepce made a gift of his 1826 pewter image to Bauer. The pewter image was re-discovered in 1952 by photo historian Helmut Gernsheim.
(ON, 10/08, p.8)
1828 Feb 8, French author Jules Verne (d.1905) was born. He is considered the father of science fiction. Many of his 19th-century works forecast amazing scientific feats--feats that were actually carried out in the 20th century--with uncanny accuracy. Verne's 1865 book From the Earth to the Moon told the story of a space ship that is launched from Florida to the moon and that returns to Earth by landing in the ocean. Something of a scientist and traveler himself, Verne's 1870 work about a submarine, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," and "Around the World in Eighty Days" also foretold technological advances that seemed fantastic at the time.
(HNPD, 2/8/99)
1828 Apr 16, Francisco Jose Goya y Lucientes (b.1746), Spanish painter, cartoonist, died at age 82 in France. He had served 3 generations of Spanish kings as court painter. In 2002 Julia Blackburn authored "Old Man Goya." In 2003 Robert Hughes authored "Goya." See link for Goya timeline.
(WSJ, 5/10/02, p.W8)(Econ, 10/18/03, p.81)(http://tinyurl.com/ngxt7)
1828 Apr 21, Hippolyte Taine, French philosopher, historian (Voyage in Italy), was born.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1828 Aug 22, Franz Joseph Gall (70), German-French physician, fraud (phrenology), died.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1828 Sep 20, Gioacchino Rossini’s opera "Le Comte Ory," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1828 Dr. Paul Ferdinand Gachet was born in Lille. He moved to Paris in 1848 to study medicine and developed a clientele of artists that included Pissarro and Cezanne. He accepted paintings in exchanged for services and amassed a sizable collection. He also painted and used the pseudonym Paul Van Ryssel.
(WSJ, 2/16/99, p.A20)
1828 A perfume and cosmetics house was established. In 1998 the firm was led by Jean-Paul Guerlain, the great-grandson of the founder.
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.A11)
1828 In France Louis Daguerre contacted Joseph Niepce with an offer to work together on the photographic process that Niepce had developed.
(ON, 10/08, p.8)
1829 Feb 16, Francois-Joseph Gossec (95), Belgian-French composer (Messe de Morts), died.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1829 Aug 31, Giachinno Rossini's final opera "William Tell" was produced in Paris.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1829 Dec 14, In France Joseph Niepce signed a 10-year partnership agreement with Louis Daguerre to perfect a new photographic imaging process discovered by Niepce.
(ON, 10/08, p.9)
1829 Dec 18, Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (~85), French nature investigator, died.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1829 The Obelisk of Luxor, a gift from Egypt, was transported to the Place de la Concorde.
(WSJ, 10/26/99, p.A24)
1829-1833 Honore Daumier created his bust of Comte de Lameth. Daumier honed his caricaturing skills with a series of terra-cotta busts that lampooned the right-wing leaders of the court party. Lameth had fought for the colonists in the American Revolution and had voted to abolish the aristocracy during the French revolution.
(WSJ, 3/10/00, p.W16)
1830 Jan 28, Daniel Auber's opera "Fra Diavolo," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1830 Feb, The Comedie-Francaise performed "Hernani," a play whose hero swears vengeance against Don Carlo, i.e. King Charles. The play "provoked a brouhaha that heralded the July Revolution."
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)
1830 Jul 5, The French occupied the North African city of Algiers. A flotilla had set sail earlier from Toulon to wrest Algeria from Ottoman control.
(AP, 7/5/97)(Econ, 3/1/14, p.83)
1830 Jul 10, Camille Pissarro (d.1903), French impressionist painter, was born on the island of St. Thomas in the West Indies. He studied as a child in Paris but spent his early years as an artist in Caracas, Venezuela. In Paris he became a devotee of the neo-Impressionist technique.
(WUD, 1994, p.1097)(DPCP 1984)(HN, 7/10/01)
1830 Jul 25, King Charles X of France signed the July Ordinances, also known as "The Ordinances of Saint-Cloud". These, among other steps, suspended the liberty of the press, dissolved the newly elected Chamber of Deputies and excluded the commercial middle-class from future elections.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Revolution)
1830 Jul 27, A second Revolution broke out in Paris opposing the laws of Charles X.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Revolution)
1830 Jul 28, A revolution in France replaced Bourbon King Charles X with Louis Philippe (1773-1850).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Philippe_I)(Econ, 11/15/14, p.84)
1830 Jul 29, Liberals led by the Marquis of Lafayette seized Paris in opposition to the king's restrictions on citizens' rights.
(HN, 7/29/98)
1830 Jul 31, Charles X of France was forcibly ejected from the French throne. [see Jul 28]
(MC, 7/31/02)
1830 Aug 9, Louis Philippe (d.1850) formally accepted the crown of France, following abdication of Charles X, last brother of guillotined Louis XVI. He was the son of the opportunistic Duke d'Orleans, first cousin to the late king, who renounced his royal heritage and called himself plain Phillipe Egalite. Louis-Philippe voted for his cousin's death in 1793, but followed him to the guillotine in 1794.
(MC, 8/9/02)
1830 Dec 8, Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (b.1767), Swiss-born thinker, writer and French politician, died. He was intimate with Anne Louise Germaine de Staël and their intellectual collaboration made them one of the most important intellectual pairs of their time. In 2008 Renee Winegarten authored the dual biography “Germaine de Stael & Benjamin Constant."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Constant)
1830 Etienne Henri Dumaige (d.1888), French sculptor, was born.
(SSFC, 2/10/02, p.G5)
1830 Stendhal (1783-1842), the nom de plume of French author Henri Beyle, authored “The Red and the Black," the story of a peasant who reaches for upward mobility through the favors of two mistresses.
(WSJ, 3/15/08, p.W10)
1830 The First Symphony by Berlioz had its premiere.
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.E1)
1830 The Hotel de Ville (City Hall), at 29 Rue de Rivoli, was built. It was rebuilt between 1874 and 1882 in the neo-Renaissance style and is used for official city receptions.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, p.T7)
1830 Henry Philip Hope purchased the 45 carot blue diamond. It later began to be known as the "Hope Diamond."
(THC, 12/3/97)
1830 A Frenchman patented a sewing machine.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R25)
1831 Sep 7, Victorien Sardou, French stage writer (Madame Sans-Gene, Tosca), was born.
(MC, 9/7/01)
1831 Balzac wrote his story "The Unknown Masterpiece." It became a parable of modern art.
(WSJ, 1/4/98, p.A8)
1831 The "Hunchback of Notre Dame" (Notre Dame de Paris) by Victor Hugo was published. Disney released an animated film based on the classic in 1996.
(WSJ, 6/20/95, p.B-1)
1832 Jan 6, Gustave Dore, illustrator (Inferno, Ancient Mariner), was born in Strasbourg, France.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1832 Jan 23, Edouard Manet (d.1883), French impressionist painter, was born. His work was a major influence on the young artists who created the Impressionist movement. His style was influenced by the Spanish masters, particularly Velasquez. His work included the "Execution of Maximilian," "Luncheon on the Grass," the pastel "Portrait of Mademoiselle Lemaire," "In the Boat," "La Promenade" and "Le Journal Illustre" (ca. 1878-79).
(WUD, 1994, p.871)(WSJ, 7/1/96, p.A11)(SFC, 8/21/96, p.A9)(AAP, 1964) (WUD, 1994, p.871)(WSJ, 2/13/97, p.A16)(DPCP 1984)
1832 Mar 4, Jean Francois Champollion (b.1790), French scholar, died. His work included the 2-volume book “Egypt Under the Pharaohs" (1814) and a translation of the hieroglyphics of the Rosetta Stone, completed in 1822.
(ON, 8/10, p.7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Champollion)
1832 May 31, Evariste Galois (b.1811), French mathematician who developed a general theory of equations, died from wounds suffered in a duel. In 2005 Mario Livio authored “The Equation That couldn’t Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry."
(www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Galois.html)(Econ, 8/27/05, p.68)
1832 Jun 5, In Paris an insurrection took place during General Lamarque's funeral when insurgents got as far as the Rue Montorgueil and were then driven back.
(SFC, 6/30/07, p.E2)(www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/07/01.htm)
1832 Nov 15, Jean-Baptiste Say (b.1767), French economist, died. He is remembered for what came to be called Say’s Law: “the supply (sale) of X creates the demand (purchase) of Y." This law can be shown by business-cycle statistics. When downturns start, production is always first to decline, ahead of demand. When the economy recovers, production recovers ahead of demand. A society can’t consume if it does not produce.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Say)(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.A25)
1832 Dec 15, Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, designed named the tower in Paris, was born.
(HN, 12/15/98)
1832 Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864), French artist, painted “Theseus Recognized by His Father."
(WSJ, 12/28/05, p.D8)(www.newadvent.org/cathen/06096a.htm)
1832 Jean Ingres painted the portrait of the self-made newspaperman "Louis-Francois Bertin."
(WSJ, 5/28/99, p.W12)
1832 Honore Daumier, French artist, was imprisoned for 6 months for his barbs against King Louis-Philippe.
(WSJ, 3/10/00, p.W16)
1832 Berlioz composed "Lelio."
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.E1)
1832 Charles-Louis Havas sets up a foreign newspapers translation agency.
(www.afp.com)
1833 Jan 19, Louis J. Ferdinand Herold (41), French composer (Zampa), died.
(MC, 1/19/02)
1833 Jul 5, Joseph Nicephore Niepce (b.1765), French inventor most noted as the inventor of photography, died. He is well-known for taking some of the earliest photographs, dating to the 1820s.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nic%C3%A9phore_Ni%C3%A9pce)
1833 In Paris the St. Vincent de Paul Society was founded to provide aid to the poor.
(SFC, 9/15/98, p.A9)
1833 Ferdinand de Lesseps, came to Cairo as a French consul. He was later posted to Alexandria. Inspired by the idea of joining the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, he persuaded the Ottoman governor of Egypt to build the canal and in 1859, he symbolically swung a pickax to launch the construction, which took 10 years. The canal was officially opened on Nov. 17, 1869.
(AP, 7/7/20)
1834 Apr 2, Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, sculptor (Statue of Liberty), was born in Colmar, France.
(HN, 4/2/01)
1834 Apr 15, The Honore Daumier painting "Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril 1834" showed the ghastly aftermath of a civilian massacre by government forces.
(WSJ, 5/9/00, p.A24)
1834 May 20, The Marquis de Lafayette (78), US Revolutionary War hero (Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roche Gilbert du Motier), died in Paris, France. He was the 1st foreigner to address Congress. In 2002 Congress moved to make him an honorary US citizen. In 1983 Olivier Bernier authored “Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds." In 200 Harlow Giles Unger authored “Lafayette."
(www.marquisdelafayette.net/)(WSJ, 1/15/97, p.A12)(SFC, 7/23/02, p.A2)(ON, 2/09, p.5)
1834 Jul 19, Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas (d.1917), French impressionist painter, was born. His mother was a Creole and he journeyed to New Orleans in the 1870s. His work included "The Millinery Shop," "Combing the Hair," "Nude Fixing Her Hair," "Two Dancers" (c1890-1898), "Frieze of Dancers" (1893-1898), "Self Portrait" (c1863-1865 & c1895-1900) and "Blue Dancers" (1895). He also collected art and by the time of his death had amassed more than 500 paintings and 5,000 prints. The collection was auctioned off in Paris from Mar 1918 to Jul 1919. His time in New Orleans is covered in the 1997 book "Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable" by Christopher Benfey.
(WUD, 1994, p.380)(WSJ, 10/2/96, p.B5)(SFC, 10/22/96,p.E8)(WSJ,10/21/97,p.A20)(SFEC, 1/4/98, BR p.9)(HN, 7/19/98)
1834 Honore Daumier created his lithograph "The Legislative Belly."
(WSJ, 5/9/00, p.A24)
1834 David Johnston founded a pottery in Bordeaux, France. He became mayor of Bordeaux in 1838 and sold his factory to technical director Jules Vieillard in 1845.
(SFC, 8/17/05, p.G5)
1834 The French mechanical telegraph system was subverted in a bond-trading scam that went undetected for two years.
(Econ 6/10/17, p.13)
1834 A Frenchman invented a wire nail-making machine.
(SFEC, 5/31/98, Z1 p.8)
1834 Joseph-Marie Jacquard (b.1752), French loom maker and inventor, died. In 2004 James Essinger authored “Jacquard’s Web," a biography that connects Jacquard’s work to computer technology.
(WSJ, 11/12/04, p.W10)
1834-1910 Leon Walras, French economist. He founded the marginalist school of economic thought, which held that prices depend on the level of customer demand. He developed a mathematical formulation of the mechanics of the price system with equations that tied together theories of production, exchange, money and capital. His general equilibrium theory is called "Walrasion general equilibrium" and is still part of modern economic theory.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)
1835 Apr 26, Frederic Chopin’s "Grand Polonaise Brillante," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1835 Jul 28, King Louis Philippe of France survived an assassination attempt by Giuseppe Maria Fieschi, who rigged 25 guns together and fired them all with the pull of a single trigger.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9034220&query=July%20Revolution)
1835 Oct 9, Camille Saint-Saens, composer (Carnival of the Animals, Organ Symphony, Samson et Dalilah), was born in Paris, France.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1835 Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville (25) wrote "Democracy in America." He had been dispatched by the French government to study America’s penal system. His book predicted that henceforth equality would always increase everywhere, and justice be thereby served in the life of mankind. He also foresaw that democratic man, no longer protected by traditional institutions, found himself in danger of being exposed to the absolute tyranny of the state that he himself had created, i.e. a case of totalitarianism. He also predicted that the extremes of social diversity would be lost and that more human beings would tend to cluster around a central norm. He stated that: "Americans of all ages, all conditions and all dispositions constantly form associations." In 1938 George Wilson Pierson wrote "Tocqueville in America."
(Smith., 4/1995, p.134)(SFEC, 6/14/98, Par p.10)(Econ, 1/30/10, p.92)
1835 The French government prohibited political caricature.
(Econ, 12/20/03, p.75)
1835 A foreign newspapers translation agency, set up by Charles-Louis Havas, became the Agence Havas, the first worldwide news agency.
(www.afp.com)
1836 Feb 21, Leo Delibes, ballet composer (Coppelia), was born in Saint-Germain-du-Val, France.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1836 Jun 10, Andre M. Ampere, French mathematician, physicist (Amp), died.
(MC, 6/10/02)
1836 Jun 26, Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, author, composer ("La Marseillaise"), died.
(MC, 6/26/02)
1836 Jul 6, French General Thomas Bugeaud defeated Abd al-Kader's forces beside the Sikkak River in Algeria.
(HN, 7/6/98)
1836 Nov 6, Charles X (79), King of France (1824-30), died.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1836 Nov 10, Charles Louis Napoleon (1808-1873), nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, failed in an attempted coup at Strasbourg and was exiled to the US by the government of Louis Philippe.
(www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0859871.html)
1836 Nov 27, Carle [Antoine CH] Vernet, French painter and lithographer, died.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1836 Auguste Mayer painted "Scene from the Battle of Trafalgar."
(WSJ, 5/7/02, p.D7)
1836 The 107-foot-tall Egyptian Obelisk reached Paris.
(SFC, 5/15/98, p.D3)
1836 In France the medieval timber roof of the Chartres cathedral burned. Architect J.B. Lassus replaced it with an innovative roof of iron.
(WSJ, 7/5/08, p.W9)
1836 Schneider-Electric, a French engineering firm, was founded. In 2011 CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire moved the top management to Hong Kong.
(Econ, 3/31/12, p.3)
1837 Jan 11, Francois Gerard (66), French baron, painter, died.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1837 Aug 11, Marie Francois Carnot, engineer, French pres (1887-94), was born.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1837 Dec 9, Charles Emile Waldteufel, waltz composer (Skaters), was born in Strasbourg, France.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1837 Thierry Hermes (1801-1878), French saddle maker, established the Hermes company as a harness workshop. It grew to become a maker of high fashion leather goods. The company went public in 1993.
(Econ, 1/1/11, p.56)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herm%C3%A8s)
1837 French explorer Dumont d’Urville (1790-1842) sailed along a coastal area of Antarctica that he named the Adélie Coast in honor of his wife. He also named the Adelie penguin after his wife.
(WSJ, 7/1/97, p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumont_D'Urville)
1838 Apr 3, Leon Michel Gambetta, French attorney, premier (1881-82), was born.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1838 Apr 3, Francesco Antommarchi (57), Napoleon's physician on St Helena, died.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1838 May 17, Charles-Maurice duke of Talleyrand-Perigord (84), diplomat, revolutionary, bishop and former PM of France (1815), died. In 2006 David Lawday authored “Napoleon’s Master: A Life of Prince Talleyrand."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Maurice_de_Talleyrand)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.93)
1838 Sep 4, Henrietta d'Angeville (1794-1871) became the 1st woman to climb to the top of Mt. Blanc, France. In 1808 mountain guides had carried Marie Paradis, a local serving girl, to the top.
(ON, 4/04, p.1)
1838 Sep 10, The opera "Benvenuto Cellini," by Hector Berlioz, premiered in Paris. It was based on Cellini's autobiography.
(MC, 9/10/01)(WSJ, 12/16/03, p.D10)
1838 Oct 25, Georges Alexandre-Cesar-Leopold Bizet, French composer (Carmen), was born.
(HN, 10/25/98)(MC, 10/25/01)
1838 Nov 8, Victor Hugo's "Ruy Blas," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1838 Nov 30, Mexico declared war on France.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1838 Frederic Chopin (1810-1849), Polish-born composer and pianist, began a volatile affair with French novelist George Sand. The relationship continued to 1847.
(Econ, 2/6/10, p.91)
1838 France agreed to reduce Haiti's 1825 "debt" to 60 million fold francs to be paid over 30 years. The final payment was made in 1883. Payments on loans made to repay France continued to 1947.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.A6)(Econ, 3/12/11, p.47)
1838 Louis Daguerre caught an image of a man who appears to be getting his shoes or boots shined at a street corner in Paris. This was the first ever photo of a person.
(http://tinyurl.com/37jtw74)
1839 Jan 2, French photographic pioneer Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre took the first photograph of the moon. Soon after his first photograph of people was a shoeshine scene on a Paris boulevard.
(HN, 1/2/99)(SFEC, 1/16/00, Z1 p.2)(ON, 4/00, p.10)
1839 Jan 9, The Daguerreotype photo process was announced at the French Academy of Science. Louis Daguerre had the influential astronomer Dominique-Francois-Argo make an announcement at the Academy of Sciences in Paris of the daguerreotype, a photographic process using fumes of iodine to sensitize a silver plate, vapor of mercury to bring out the image, and common salt to fix the image. [See 1765-1833, Nicephore Niepce, French lithographer, and 1816].
(http://www.articleworld.org/index.php/Louis_Daguerre)(http://tinyurl.com/arl5k5)(WSJ, 9/14/95, p.A-16)(ON, 10/08, p.9)
1839 Jan 19, Paul Cezanne (d.1906), French painter, was born in Aix-en-Provence in southern France. He was considered a founding figure in 20th century art. He departed from the Impressionists in his desire to render perspective through color. His work had a profound influence on the Cubists. A catalogue of his work was made by John Rewald (1912-1994) and published posthumously as: "The Paintings of Paul Cezanne: A catalogue Raisonne." His work includes: "The Feast" (late 60s), "Portrait of Achille Emperaire" (1869-70), "Self-Portrait" (c1875), "Rocks at L’Estaque" (1879-82), "Flowerpots" (c1885), "Chestnut Trees at Jas de Bouffan" (1885-86), "The Kitchen Table" (1888-90), "Madame Cezanne in a Yellow Chair" (1893-95), "The Lac d’Annecy" (1896), "Pyramid of Skulls" (1898-1900), "Garden at Le Lauves" (c1906), "Large Bathers" (1906), "Mont Ste.-Victoire Seen from Les Lauves." He is best remembered for his works Card Players and L'Oeuvre.
(SFC, 5/30/96, p.E1)(WSJ, 2/10/96, p.A16)(DPCP 1984)(HN, 1/19/99)
1839 Aug 19, At a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris a new photographic process was unveiled by Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre. He "was able to capture images directly onto small, silvered plates; and in England where William Henry Fox invented what he called "photogenic drawing." This process produced a negative image on paper from which positive images could be made... but it took more than an hour to take a picture and the fuzzy prints were difficult to see. The daguerreotype enabled the photographer to create a highly detailed image. The process consisted of polishing a copper plate, using iodine to sensitize it, and developing it over mercury after exposing it to light in a camera. Daguerreotypes became so popular in the United States that New York City boasted more than 70 daguerreotype studios by 1850.
(Smith., 5/95, p.72)(HNQ, 10/28/98)
1839 Oct 30, Alfred Sisley (d.1899), impressionist artist, was born in Paris of English parents. He studied in London and then in Paris in the studio of Charles Gleyre. He painted landscapes almost exclusively. His work included “A Turn in the Road" (1873).
(DPCP 1984)(HN, 10/30/00)
1839 Stendhal, Marie-Henri Beyle, wrote his novel "Charterhouse of Parma" in 52 days. A 1st edition from the library of Marie Louise, 2nd wife of Napoleon, sold for $157,310 in 1999.
(WSJ, 1/2/96, p. A-7)(WSJ, 3/25/97, p.A16)
1839 Jeanne Jugan founded the Little Sisters of the Poor to take care of the destitute elderly. She supported her project by begging house to house.
(WSJ, 12/17/05, p.A6)
1839 France began to mass produce women’s corsets about this time. See the discussion by Marilyn Yalom in her 1997 book: "History of the Breast."
(SFEC, 2/9/97, z1 p.3)
1839 Parisian tailors revolted and destroyed the new sewing machines.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R25)
1839 The photoelectric effect was 1st discovered by French physicist Alexandre Becquerel. He observed that light could generate an electric current between 2 metal electrodes immersed in a conductive fluid.
(Econ, 3/10/07, TQ p.23)
1839-1899 Alfred Sisley, impressionist artist, was born in Paris of English parents. He studied in London and then in Paris in the studio of Charles Gleyre. He painted landscapes almost exclusively. His work included "A Turn in the Road" (1873).
(DPCP 1984)
1840 Feb 11, Gaetano Donizetti's Opera "La Fille du Regiment," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1840 Mar 30, "Beau" Brummell (b.1778), English dandy and former favorite of the prince regent, died of syphilis in a French lunatic asylum for paupers. In 2006 Ian Kelly authored the biography “Beau Brummel."
(HN, 3/30/99)(WSJ, 5/7/06, p.P9)
1840 Apr 2, Emile Zola (d.1902), French novelist, reporter (Nana) , was born. He tried to wake the consciousness of the fin de siecle.
(HN, 4/2/98)(SFC, 12/29/00, p.C6)(V.D.-H.K.p.279)
1840 May 27, Nicolo Paganini (57), Italian legendary violinist, died in Nice. The local bishop refused to bury him in consecrated ground due to his scandal-ridden past. His remains were transferred to Parma in 1876. His 1742 violin, "the Canon," was put to rest in a museum in Genoa and later played annually by the winner of the Int'l. Paganini Competition. In 1980 John Sugden authored the biography "Nicolo Paganini: Supreme Violinist or Devil’s Fiddler"
(SFC, 8/15/96, p.D5)(SFC, 11/12/98, p.E1)(SFC, 4/26/99, p.E2)(ON, 3/02, p.7)
1840 Jun 29, Lucien Bonaparte (65), prince of Canino, Musignano, died.
(MC, 6/29/02)
1840 Nov 12, Auguste Rodin, French sculptor who created "The Kiss," was born.
(HN, 11/12/98)
1840 Nov 14, Claude Monet (d.1926), French Impressionist painter, best known for his late work done at Giverney, northwest of Paris after 1890. He came up with the idea of series pictures, which feature a single subject shown again and again under varying conditions of light and weather. He studied in Paris with Charles Gleyre, a Swiss academic painter, and there met Frederic Bazille, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. Together they developed open-air painting which came to be known as Impressionism.
(WSJ, 7/25/95, p.A-10)(HN, 11/14/98)
1840 Etienne Cabet (1788-1856), Ivory Coast-born French philosopher and utopian socialist, authored "Travel and Adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria". In 1848 he led his followers to the United States of America.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_Cabet)
1840 In Paris, France, there were some 200 brothels.
(Econ, 7/14/12, p.47)
1840-1916 Odilon Redon, French painter and etcher.
(WUD, 1994, p.1203)
1841 Jan 14, Berthe Morisot (d.1895) French impressionist painter, was born in Bourges.
(NMWA, 12/04, p.10)
1841 Jan 18, Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier, French composer (Louise), was born.
(MC, 1/18/02)
1841 Feb 25, Pierre Auguste Renoir (d.1919), French painter, was born. He was an Impressionist painter, father of Jean Renoir, and founder of the French Impressionist movement. He was the son of a Paris tailor and began his career as a porcelain painter in the Sevres china factory. His paintings included "Luncheon of the Boating Party," "Self-portraits" (1875 & 1899) and "Sleeping Girl With a Cat" (1880). [see 1894, J. Renoir]
(HFA, '96, p.22)(WSJ, 8/13/96, p.A9)(DPCP 1984)(HN, 2/25/99)
1841 Jun 28, The ballet "Giselle," also called Les Wilis, was premiered in Paris. It was the brain-child of Theophile Gautier, a leading voice of the Romantic Age. It told of a dance-loving peasant girl who dies of a broken heart when Albrecht, a philandering nobleman, betrays her.
(SFEM, 3/28/99, p.12)(WSJ, 4/22/99, A20)
1841 Sep 28, Georges Clemenceau, premier of France during World War I, was born. He served as premier from 1906-09 and 1917-1920.
(HN, 9/28/98)(MC, 9/28/01)
1841 Lord Elgin died in Paris at age 75.
(ON, 11/99, p.4)
1842 Jan 7, Gioacchino Rossini's "Stabat Mater" premiered in Paris.
(MC, 1/7/02)
1842 Mar 18, Stephane Mallarme (d.1898), French essayist and symbolist poet, was born. "Every soul is a melody which needs renewing."
(AP, 7/17/98)(HN, 3/18/01)
1842 Mar 23, Stendhal [Marie-Henri Beyle], French author (b.1783), died at 59.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal)
1842 Mar 30, Elisabeth Viglee Le Brun (b.1755), French artist, died in Paris. She had served as the portrait painter to Marie Antoinette.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_%C3%89lisabeth_Vig%C3%A9e_Le_Brun)(Econ, 2/20/15, p.76)
1842 May 8, The first French railway disaster, generally known as the Versailles rail accident. Among the dead were explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville and his family.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Dumont_d%27Urville)
1842 May 12, Jules Massenet Montaud (d.1912), French composer, was born. His work included "Manon," "Thais" and "Le Cid."
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A24)
1842 May 15, Emanuel ADMJ Count de las Cases (76), French historian (Napoleon), died.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1842 Jul 25, Dominique-Jean Larrey (b.1766), a French surgeon in Napoleon's Grande Armée, died in Lyon, France. He was an important innovator in battlefield medicine and triage.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey)
1842 France claimed the Marquesas Islands.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)
1842 The French declared a protectorate over the Wallis and Futuna Islands. They had been discovered by the Dutch and the British in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1959, the inhabitants of the islands voted to become a French overseas territory.
(www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/wf.html)
1843 Jan 4, Gaetano Donizetti's opera "Don Pasquale," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 1/4/02)
1843 Jul 2, Samuel Hahnemann (b.1755), German physician and founder of homeopathy, died in Paris. A renaissance for homeopathy started in the 1970s when it was rediscovered by West Germany’s glitterati, including Veronica Carstens, the wife of a former president.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Hahnemann)(Econ, 9/10/16, p.44)
1843 Sep 19, Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis (b.1792), French engineer and mathematician, died. He showed that the laws of motion could be used in a rotating frame of reference if an extra force called the Coriolis acceleration is added to the equations of motion.
(www.gap-system.org/~history/Mathematicians/Coriolis.html)
1843 Oct 30, A. G. Henri Regnault, French water colors painter, was born.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1843-1848 The Chateau de Boursault was built by the widow Clicquot. She contributed to the development of the champagne-making process.
(Hem., 10/97, p.104)
1844 Feb 21, Charles-Marie Widor, composer, professor (Paris Conservatory), was born in Lyons, France.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1844 Apr 16, Anatole France (d.1924), French novelist and essayist, was born. He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1921. His love for Madame de Caillavet, whose salon helped make him famous, formed the backdrop for his novel "Le Lys Rouge," (The Red Lily). "All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious."
(WSJ, 2/20/96, p.A-14)(AP, 10/11/98)(HN, 4/16/01)
1844 May 21, Henri Rousseau (d.1910), French painter (Dream), was born in Laval.
(HN, 5/21/01)
1844 Oct 23, Sarah Bernhardt, French actress, was born. [see Oct 22]
(HN, 10/23/00)
1844 Bishop Dominique Lefevre, a Catholic missionary and French citizen, engaged in a plot with other priests to overthrow Thieu Tri, the emperor of Cochin China (later Vietnam). Lefevre was imprisoned and condemned to death.
(AH, 12/02, p.25)
1844-1833 Celestine Chaumette from the French village of Chassignolles saved her personal letters. They were later found and published by British writer Gillian Tindall as "Voices from a French Village."
(SFC, 6/16/96, BR p.4)
1845 Apr 2, H.L. Fizeau and J. Leon Foucault took the 1st photo of Sun.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1845 May 10, During a celebrated round-the-world tour in 1844-46, the USS Constitution dropped anchor in the bay outside of Tourane, Cochin China (later part of Vietnam). While there, Bishop Dominique Lefevre, an imprisoned French missionary, requested the assistance of the ship's captain, "Mad Jack" Percival. The Americans attempted to negotiate with the Cochin Chinese, to no avail. Frustrated, they set sail from Cochin and continued on their course on May 26 without further word about or from the missionary, who was eventually retrieved by his own countrymen.
(HNQ, 10/18/02)(AH, 12/02, p.25)
1845 May 12, Gabriel Urbain Faure, French composer, was born in Pamiers. His work included "Requiem" and "Ballade."
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)(MC, 5/12/02)
1845 Sep 8, A French column surrendered at Sidi Brahim in the Algerian War.
(HN, 9/8/98)
1845 Oct 22, Sarah Bernhardt (d.1923), legendary stage actress, was born in Paris. "Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich." [see Oct 23]
(AP, 10/22/97)(AP, 2/20/00)(WUD, 1994 p.141)
1846 Jul 24, Louis Napoleon (67), French king of the Netherlands (1806-10), died.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1846 Aug 16, Gioacchino Rossini married Olympe Pelissier in Paris and stopped composing operas.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1846 Dec 6, Hector Berlioz' opera "La Damnation de Faust" was produced in Paris.
(MC, 12/6/01)(WSJ, 7/1/03, p.D8)
1846 In Paris, France, the Hotel Chopin was built inside the Passage Jouffroy, a covered arcade.
(SSFC, 2/23/14, p.M5)
1847 Feb 3, Marie Duplessis (b.1824), French courtesan, died. She was mistress to a number of prominent and wealthy men, the inspiration for Marguerite Gautier, and the main character of La Dame aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas the younger, one of her lovers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Duplessis)
1847 Nov 26, Alfred de Musset's "Un Caprice," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1847 Cartier jewelers opened in Paris.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)
1848 Feb 24, King Louis-Philippe abdicated and the 2nd French republic was declared. [see Feb 26]
(MC, 2/24/02)
1848 Feb 26, The Second French Republic was proclaimed. [see Feb 24]
(AP, 2/26/98)
1848 Apr 27, Slave trade was abolished in the French colonies.
(AFP, 3/24/10)
1848 Apr 28, The last slaves in French colonies were freed.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1848 Jun 7, Paul Gauguin, French post-impressionist painter, was born in Paris. He abandoned his family to focus on his work.
(AP, 6/7/97)(HN, 6/7/99)
1848 Jun 23, A bloody insurrection of workers in Paris erupted to protest inflation, unemployment and corruption. The insurrection was ruthlessly suppressed by Gen. Cavaignac.
(HN, 6/23/98)(SFEC, 6/28/98, p.T9)(WSJ, 3/13/09, p.A9)
1848 Jul 4, Vicomte Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (b.1768), French writer and statesman, 79, died in Paris.
(WUD, 1994, p.250)
1848 Jul 26, The French army suppressed the Paris uprising.
(HN, 7/26/98)
1848 Nov 21, Alfred de Musset's "Andre del Sarto," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1848 Dec 10, Napoleon III, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte), was elected president of France. In 1852 he dismantled the Republic and replaced it with the Second Empire of France, with himself as emperor.
(PC, 1992 ed, p.446)(WUD, 1994, p.950)
1848 Edouard Manet (1832-1883) at age 16 failed the French naval exam and after 3 months at sea became convinced that he would rather be a painter.
(WSJ, 12/3/03, p.D12)
1848 The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded. A group of artists led by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rosetti, fought against corrupt academic art based on the work of the Renaissance.
(WSJ, 2/19/97, p.A15)(Econ, 9/20/03, p.82)
1848 France abolished slavery. Victor Schoelcher was a major force in the abolition of slavery in France.
(WSJ, 2/26/02, p.A22)
1848-1894 Gustave Caillebotte, French impressionist painter, he was a Jewish lawyer turned painter with a crisp, almost photographic style. He is best know for "Paris Street: Rainy Day" done in 1877.
(WSJ, 2/23/95, p.A-10)
1849 Apr 6, Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera "Le Prophete," premiered in Paris. [see Apr 16]
(MC, 4/6/02)
1849 Apr 16, Giacomo Meyerbeer's Opera "Le Prophete," premiered in Paris. [see Apr 6]
(MC, 4/16/02)
1849 Apr 30, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian republican patriot and guerrilla leader, repulsed a French attack on Rome.
(HN, 4/30/98)(ON, 10/06, p.5)
1849 Jul 19, F.A. Alphonse Aulard, French historian, was born.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1849 Aug 18, Benjamin Louis Paul Godard, composer, was born in Paris.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1849 Sep 14, La Meuse, the first ship to sail from France to California, arrived in San Francisco with 41 all male passengers.
(SF, 8/29/15, p.C2)
1849 Oct 17, Frederic Chopin (b.1810), Polish-born composer and pianist, died in Paris of tuberculosis at the age of 39. The 1945 film "A Song to Remember" was about Chopin." In 2010 Adam Zamoyski authored “Chopin: Prince of the Romantics."
(HN, 10/17/00)(SFC, 11/25/02, p.A15)(Econ, 2/6/10, p.91)
1849 Gustave Boulanger (1824-1888), French artist, painted “Ulysses Recognized by Eeurycleia."
(WSJ, 12/28/05, p.D8)
1849 Alphonse Karr, French: "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
(SFCM, 10/14/01, p.36)
1849 Victor Hugo addressed an appeal for European unity to Germany, France and Russia.
(Econ, 5/7/05, p.50)
1849 Joseph Naudet, director France’s L’Enfer library, which started in the 1830s, described the library as a hiding place to lock up books that were very bad. The collection hid books and other documents from the public that were deemed dangerous for public morality.
(SFC, 12/7/07, p.E9)
1849 French brothers Adolphe and Edouard-Jean Cointreau created a brand of liqueur called Cointreau and soon founded their own distillery in Angers. The liqueur was a secret blend of orange peels and pure sugar-beet alcohol.
(SFC, 11/1/06, p.G2)
1849 French officer Claude-Etienne Minie invented a bullet that changed the face of warfare. The Minie ball was shot from a grooved bore, i.e. a rifle, and expanded when shot to clean out the grooves of the bore.
(WSJ, 7/24/98, p.W10)
1850 Aug 17, Jose Francisco de San Martin (b.1778), Argentine-born South American revolutionary hero, died in France. In 2009 John Lynch authored “San Martin: Argentine Soldier, American Hero."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_de_San_Mart%C3%ADn)(Econ, 4/25/09, p.87)
1850 Aug 18, Honore de Balzac (b.1799), French novelist, died at age 51.
(WUD, 1994, p.115)(MC, 8/18/02)
1850 Aug 26, Charles Richet, French physiologist (anaphylaxis-Nobel 1913), was born.
(MC, 8/26/02)
1850 Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), French artist, painted "Burial at Ornans."
(WSJ, 11/28/06, p.D8)
1850s The Petite Ceinture was a rail line built to haul merchandise between the major train stations of Paris. It was shut down in 1934 but opened again by the Germans during WW II.
(SFEC, 6/28/98, p.T9)
1851 Jan 6, Leon Foucault (d.1868), French scientist, watched a pendulum swing and shift its plane of motion. This he realized was due to the rotation of the Earth. In 2003 Amir D. Aczel authored "Pendulum: Leon Foucault and the Triumph of Science."
(WSJ, 8/28/03, p.D18)
1851 Mar 27, Paul-Marie-Theodore-Vincent d'Indy, composer (Symphonie Cevenole), was born in Paris.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1851 May 29, Leon Bourgeois, French premier (1895-96, Nobel 1920), was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1851 Jul 10, Louis-Jacques-Mand Daguerre, French painter (daguerreotype), died.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1851 Oct 2, Ferdinand Foch, French Allied commander in WW I, was born.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1851 Oct 19, Marie-Therese-Charlotte (b.1778), daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette died in Austria of pneumonia.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se_of_France)
1851 Oct, The first of 17 ships arrived in SF from France following a lottery by the government of Louis Napoleon, which provided passage to some 3,000 for the gold rush.
(SFCM, 4/30/06, p.4)
1851 Nov 2, Louis Napoleon staged a coup and took power in France as Napoleon III of the Second Empire.
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)(DoW, 1999, p182)
1851 Nov 13, The London-to-Paris telegraph opened.
(HN, 11/13/98)
1851 Nov 16, In France officials drew the winning numbers for the Lottery of the Golden Ingots. Some 7 million tickets had been sold for one franc each to finance the shipment of hand-picked French emigrants to California. From October 1851 to January 1853 a lottery ship sailed every month from Le Havre. 3,293 passengers of 4,016 arrived in San Francisco. The rest disembarked en route.
(SFC, 9/5/15, p.C2)
1851 Dec 4, Pres. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte forces crushed a coup d'etat in France.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1851 Victor Hugo sought refuge on the Channel island of Guernsey where he wrote "Les Miserables" and other works.
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)
1851 The Chateau Pichon-Longueville was built in the Bordeaux region of France.
(USAT, 5/9/03, p.2D)
1851 Paul Julius Reuter, a German-born immigrant, began transmitting stock-market quotes between London and Paris over the new Dover-Calais submarine telegraph cable.
(http://about.reuters.com/home/aboutus/history/informationandinnovation.aspx)
1852 Jan 6, Louis Braille (43) died of tuberculosis in France. He had been blinded by an accident during childhood and spent years developing a system to read by touch. In 1997 Russell Freedman wrote "Out of Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille."
(SFEC, 7/6/97, BR p.10)(ON, 10/04, p.9)( http://www.brailler.com/braillehx.htm)
1852 Feb 2, Alexandre Dumas Jr.’s "Le Dame aux Camelias," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1852 Feb 28, The French ship arrived in San Francisco from Le Havre with some 200 lottery emigrants. They included criminals, political prisoners, honest workers, common thugs and others considered undesirable. France had organized a national lottery for a gold bar and used the proceeds to ship people to California.
(SF, 8/29/15, p.C1)
1852 May 25, Louis Franchet d'Espèrey [Desperate Frankey], French marshal (WWI), was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1852 Sep 24, Henri Giffard, a French engineer, flew over Paris in the 1st dirigible flight.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/AVgifford.htm)
1852 Dec 2, Louis Napoleon, the little nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, established the Second Empire in France (1852-1870) and called himself Napoleon III. He married the Spanish beauty Eugenie and ran a semi-liberal autocracy for 18 years.
(WUD, 1994, p.950)(WSJ, 3/14/95, p.A16)(MC, 12/2/01)
1852 Eugene Delacroix painted "Desdemona Cursed by Her Father."
(WSJ, 9/24/98, p.A16)
1852 Maria Vernet Worth, a Parisian shop clerk, became the 1st professional model when her husband found that he sold more dresses when she helped.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, Z1 p.2)
1852 France established its penal colony at Devil’s Island, French Guiana. It was one of 3 islands called the Iles du Salut (Islands of Salvation). Some 70,000 convicts were sent there until 1946. The penal colony operated until 1951.
(SSFC, 12/15/02, p.L5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Guiana)
1852-1935 Paul Bourget, French author: "We had better live as we think, otherwise we shall end up by thinking as we have lived."
(AP, 2/11/00)
1853 Jan 16, Andre Michelin, French industrialist and tire manufacturer (Michelin), was born.
(MC, 1/16/02)
1853 Jan 19, Napoleon III married Eugenie de Montijo.
(MC, 1/19/02)
1853 Apr 2, Lucie de la Tour du Pin (83), born as Henriette-Lucie Dillon and former lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette, died Paris. Her memoir, “Journal of a Woman of Fifty Years," was not published until 1906. In 2009 Caroline Moorhead authored “Dancing to the Precipice: Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution."
(Econ, 3/7/09, p.91)(http://tinyurl.com/co3xor)
1853 May 11, Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild of England purchased Chateau Mouton in Bordeaux, France, for 1,125,000 gold francs.
(www.pageaday.com)
1853 Jul, Supported by Britain, the Turks took a firm stand against the Russians, who occupied the Danubian principalities (modern Romania) on the Russo-Turkish border. The Crimean War got under way in October. It was fought mainly on the Crimean Peninsula between the Russians and the British, French, and Ottoman Turkish, with support, from January 1855, by the army of Sardinia-Piedmont. The war aligned Anglican England and Roman Catholic France with Islam’s sultan-caliphs against the tsars, who saw themselves as the world’s last truly Christian emperors.
(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/143040/Crimean-War)(Econ, 10/2/10, p.89)
1853 Oct, Henry Bessemer (1813-1898), English mechanical engineer, invented a new type of artillery shell. He presented it to the War Department for use in the Crimean War, but they were not interested. He then offered it to France’s Napoleon III, who agreed to test the shells. The larger shells demanded a new type of cannon made of stronger metal, which led to his experiments in making iron.
(ON, 9/06, p.4)
1853 Jun 29, Napoleon III met with Georges-Eugene Haussmann to outline plans for the “strategic beautification" of Paris and assigned him to modernize the city. For the next 17 years Haussman, as prefect of the Seine, transformed Paris. He is responsible for the tree lined grand boulevards, the Bois de Boulogne, several railroad stations, the aqueducts, and a tourist friendly sewer system. Haussmann employed one Parisian in five and financed his projects using private capital raised with bonds. The project forced some 200,000 residents from their homes. He used surpluses in his operational budget to cover deficits in his capital budgets. The debts paralyzed the city until the Gaullist era.
(WSJ, 1/17/1995, p.A-16)(SFEC, 6/28/98, p.T9)(WSJ, 12/9/98, p.A20)(ON, 9/06, p.9)
1853 French wines were first ranked at the order of Napoleon. The top grades were selected on the basis of price, not taste.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.T4)
1853 The island of New Caledonia was made a French possession. It served as a penal colony for four decades after 1864. Agitation for independence during the 1980s and early 1990s has dissipated.
(www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/nc.html)
1854 Mar 28, During the Crimean War, Britain and France declared war on Russia.
(AP, 3/28/97)
1854 Apr 29, Henri Poincare (d.1912), French mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, was born. He investigated the idea of space and led to the notion that space is too complex for mathematics. Rather space is an assumption, and it can be described and controlled only so far as we assume it. In other words there is no such thing as space. Instead, there are as many spaces as there are people... for every person can assume an indefinite number of different spaces.
(V.D.-H.K.p.272)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9)
1854 Aug 12, French adventurer Count Gaston Raousset-Boulbon (b.1817) was shot and killed by a Mexican firing squad. He had led some 112 gold miners from California’s Tuolumne County on an invasion of Mexico.
(https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston_de_Raousset-Boulbon)(SFC, 9/5/15, p.C2)
1854 Sep 14, Allied armies, including those of Britain & France, landed in Crimea.
(MC, 9/14/01)
1854 Oct 20, Arthur Rimbaud (d.1891), French poet (Illuminations), was born in Charlesville.
(WUD, 1994 p.1234)(HN, 10/20/00)(MC, 10/20/01)(SFC, 2/12/02, p.D3)
1854 Oct 25, During the Crimean War, a brigade of British light infantry was destroyed by Russian artillery as they charged down a narrow corridor in full view of the Russians. The Crimean War is largely remembered for the Charge of the Light Brigade, a hopeless but gallant British cavalry charge against a heavily defended Russian force. The battle began when the Russians attacked the British-French supply depot at Balaclava near Chersonesos, some eight miles from Sevastopol, on the Black Sea Crimean Peninsula. Taken by surprise, the British counterattacked but failed to follow up. Through a staff error, Gen. Lord Cardigan's Light Brigade of 673 horsemen was ordered to charge the Russian position through a mile-long valley and prevent them from carrying away some captured cannon. The Light Brigade advanced up the valley, taking casualties all the way, and reached the guns. But once there, they could not hold their position and were forced to retreat. Of the 673 men who took part in the senseless charge, only 195 were present at roll call that night. The Charge of the Light Brigade ended the battle, but Balaclava remained in the hands of the British-French Allies. The event was described in a poem by Tennyson.
(SFC,12/190/97, p.F6)(AP, 10/25/97)(HNPD, 10/25/98)(HN, 10/25/98)
1854 Nov 5, The British and French defeated the Russians at Inkerman, Crimea.
(HN, 11/5/98)
1854 Gustave Courbet painted "The Meeting [Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet!]." It depicted a meeting with his patron, art collector Alfred Bruyas (1821-1877).
(SFC, 1/22/05, p.E1)
1854 Eugene Delacroix painted "Arabs Stalking a Lion."
(WSJ, 9/24/98, p.A16)
1854 The Marriage Freres tea shop at 30 Rue du Bourg-Tibourg was founded. It has a small 2nd floor museum of tea implements from around the world.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, p.T7)
1854 Eugene Delacroix painted "The Riding Lesson."
(WSJ, 9/24/98, p.A16)
1854 Franz Xaver Winterhalter painted a portrait of Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III.
(WSJ, 4/3/03, p.D8)
1854-1856 Eliphas Levi (1810-1875), French occult author and ceremonial magician, published Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie ("Dogma and Rituals of High Magic") as two volumes (Dogme 1854, Rituel 1856), in which he included an image he had drawn himself which he described as Baphomet and "The Sabbatic Goat", showing a winged humanoid goat with a pair of breasts and a torch on its head between its horns.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baphomet)
1855 Jun 13, Verdi's opera "Les Vepres Sicilenne" was produced (Paris).
(MC, 6/13/02)
1855 Jun 17, Heavy French-British shelling of Sebastopol killed over 2000.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1855 Sep 9, Sevastopol, under siege for nearly a year, fell to the Allies. France, England, the Ottoman Empire and Sardinia (as Italy was then known) defeated the Russians at Sevastopol in the decisive battle of the Crimean War.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War)(SFC, 7/27/13, p.C2)
1855 Phylloxera, a pale yellow sap-sucking insect and a pest of commercial grapevines, was first described in France. It was originally native to eastern North America.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylloxera)
c1855 Alexandre Marie Colin painted a portrait of Napoleon III.
(WSJ, 4/3/03, p.D8)
1855 Degas (21) painted a portrait of his 1-year-old brother Rene de Gas.
(SFC, 8/29/01, p.E1)
1855 Gustave Courbet, French artist, painted "The Studio of the Painter."
(WSJ, 11/28/06, p.D8)
1855 Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), French impressionist, moved to France from his native St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands.
(WSJ, 1/14/97, p.A16)(Hem., 1/97, p.124)(WUD, 1994, p.1097)
1855 Napoleon III ordered up a list of the best wines of Bordeaux and ranked the best according to quality and price. Those at the top became known as the first growths and included Châteaux Haut-Brion, Lafite Rothschild, Latour, and Margaux. Mouton Rothschild was elevated in 1973.
(WSJ, 4/23/04, p.A1)(SFC, 10/1/04, p.W6)
1856 Jan 5, Pierre J. David (67), [David d'Angers], French sculptor, died.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1856 Feb 17, Heinrich Heine (58), German poet, died in Paris.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1856 Mar 30, Russia signed the Treaty of Paris ending the Crimean War. It guaranteed the integrity of Ottoman Turkey and obliged Russia to surrender southern Bessarabia, at the mouth of the Danube. The Black Sea was neutralized, and the Danube River was opened to the shipping of all nations. In 2010 Allen Lane authored “Crimea: The Last Crusade."
(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/143040/Crimean-War)
1856 Apr 24, Henri Philippe Pétain, French Marshall, was born. He was known as the 'hero of Verdun' but collaborated with the Nazis after the fall of France in 1940 and convicted of treason in 1945. Petain was executed in 1951.
(HN, 4/24/99)(Econ, 5/21/05, p.84)
1856 May 3, Adolphe Charles Adam (52), French composer, critic (Giselle), died.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1856 May 20, Henri E. Cross (d.1910), French painter, was born. His real surname was Delacroix but was changed in 1881.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1856 Oct 1, The first installment of Gustav Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary (Emma Bovary) appeared in the Revue de Paris after the publisher refused to print a passage in which the character Emma has a tryst in the back seat of a carriage. It was later considered as the first novel of a liberated woman in modern literature. In 1998 Dacia Maraini published "Searching for Emma." A TV version for Masterpiece Theater was shown in 2000.
(HN, 10/1/00)(SFEC, 6/28/98, Par p.18)(WSJ, 2/4/00, p.W6)
1856 Francois Flameng (d.1923), French painter, was born. He painted imagined scenes from the domestic life of Napoleon Bonaparte.
(MT, Fall/03, p.13)
1856 Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), French writer, authored "The Old Regime and the French Revolution."
(Econ, 4/19/14, SR p.15)
1856 The ballet "Le Corsaire" (The Corsair) was first performed in Paris to a score by Adolph Adam. It was based on a work by Lord Byron.
(SFC, 12/20/99, p.E1)
1856 The order of nuns known as the "Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration" was founded in France. It was named after a 13th century saint who jettisoned her family's wealth for a life of poverty. The nuns spent their time praying on behalf of others.
(WSJ, 9/19/03, p.A1)
1856 Emperor Napoleon III decided to quell an impending revolt in Algeria by sending a magician, who would demonstrate the power of the Europeans to the natives. He sent Jean-Eugene Robert Houdin (1805-1871). The 1998 novel "The Magician’s Wife" by Brian Moore is based on the historic events. The magician is named Henri Lambert.
(WSJ, 1/13/98, p.A20)(SFEC, 1/25/98, BR p.5)
1856 The Countess de Castiglione (Virginia Oldoini) became the mistress of Napoleon III. She was chosen by her cousin Camillo Cavour, prime minister of Sardinia under King Victor Emanuel, to win the emperor's support for a war against the Austrians.
(WSJ, 12/27/00, p.A10)
1856 Theodore Chasseriau (b.1819), Dominican-born artist, died in Paris. His paintings included "The Toilette of Esther."
(WSJ, 11/26/02, p.D8)
1856 The Church of St. Anne in Jerusalem's walled Old City was gifted by the Ottomans to French Emperor Napoleon III.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)
1857 Feb 7, A French court acquitted author Gustave Flaubert of obscenity for his serialized novel "Madame Bovary."
(AP, 2/7/08)
1857 Feb 12, Eugene Atget, French photographer, was born. He took over 10,000 photographs documenting Paris.
(HN, 2/12/01)
1857 Mar 3, Under pretexts, Britain and France declared war on China.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1857 Nov 2, Joseph F.F. Babinski, Polish-French neurologist (Babinski reflex), was born.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1857 Jean-Francois Millet painted "The Gleaners."
(WSJ, 7/12/99, p.A26)
1857 In France the Napoleon III theatre at Fontainebleau Palace south of Paris, built between 1853 and 1856 under the reign of Napoleon III, opened. It was used only a dozen times, which helped preserve its gilded adornments, before being abandoned in 1870 after the fall of Napoleon III. It reopened in 2019 following 12 years of restoration work with the help of a 10 million euro donation from Abu Dhabi.
(AFP, 6/18/19)
1857 Paul Broca, a French neurologist, discovered that particular regions of the brain are specialized for particular functions. In 1861 he authored a classical paper that detailed damage in the brain’s left temporal lobe to loss of speech.
(WSJ, 10/11/02, p.AB1)(http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Broca/perte-e.htm)
1857-1926 Emile Coue, French pharmacist. In 1920 [1910] he devised the mantra "Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better" to promote his theory of self-improvement through auto-suggestion.
(NH, 7/98, p.20)(SFEC, 6/20/99, Z1 p.8)
1858 Jan 14, Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie escaped unhurt after an Italian assassin threw a bomb at their carriage as they traveled to the Paris Opera. The hoop skirt was first worn by Empress Eugenie to conceal her pregnancy.
(HN, 1/14/99)(SFEC, 7/23/00, Z1 p.2)(AP, 1/14/08)
1858 Feb 11, Bernadette Soubirous (14), a French miller’s daughter, claimed for the first time to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary near Lourdes.
(AP, 2/11/97)(HN, 1/11/02)
1858 Mar 18, Rudolf Diesel, German mechanical engineer, was born in Paris. He designed the compression-ignition engine (1893).
(HN, 3/18/99)(AP, 3/18/08)
1858 Jul 13, Louis Martin and Zelie Guerin married in Alencon, France, and for 10 months refrained from sex in a “Josephite marriage." Assured by a priest that raising children was a sacred activity they went on to have 9 children, 5 of whom joined religious order. Their youngest daughter became famous as St. Theresa of Liseux, The Little Flower," canonized in 1925.
(WSJ, 10/17/08, p.W11)
1858 Sep 15, Charles E Vicomte de Foucauld (d.1916), French explorer and hermit, was born in Strasbourg, France.
(www.manntaylor.com/foucauld.html)
1858 Oct 21, Jacques Offenbach's opera "Orphee aux Enfers," premiered in Paris. The Can-Can music was part of the opera. Dancers in Paris displayed their tail feathers in a high kick routine called the "cancan." The word was a diminutive form of "canard," the word for duck, whose evenly displayed feathers were likened to those of the dancers.
(SFEC, 3/23/97, z1 p.7)(MC, 10/21/01)
1858 Dec, The French government’s Council of State limited the ability of Paris to condemn property. Land could be seized for roads but properties along the projected roads could not be expropriated.
(ON, 9/06, p.10)
1858 Charles Frederick Worth, an English tailor in Paris, began haute couture. He was hired by Napoleon to create a suitable wardrobe for Princess Eugenie and trigger a demand for French fashion.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R40)
1859 Mar 19, The opera "Faust" by Charles Gounod premiered in Paris.
(AP, 3/19/97)
1859 Apr 4, Giacomo Meyerbeer's Opera "Dinorah" was produced in Paris.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1859 Apr 16, Alexis de Tocqueville (b.1805), French writer, died in Cannes. His collected writings filled 17 volumes and included "Democracy in America" (1835) and "The Old Regime and the French Revolution" (1856). In 2001 a new English translation by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop was published. In 2001 Sheldon S. Wolin authored "Tocqueville Between Two Worlds." In 2006 Hugh Brogan authored “Alexis de Tocqueville: Prophet of Democracy in the Age of Revolution – A Biography."
(WSJ, 9/26/01, p.A18)(www.tocqueville.org/chap1.htm)(Econ, 11/25/06, p.85)
1859 Apr 29, In the Italian Campaign some 150,000 Piedmontese troops invaded Piedmontese territory as the French army raced to support them and the Austrian army mobilized to oppose them.
(HN, 4/29/00)
1859 Apr, In Paris, France, about 20 unlicensed stockbrokers were arrested and had their papers seized at the instigation of the market’s regulated brokers. the unregulated brokers were freed within days under pressure from clients.
(Econ, 5/11/13, SR p.9)
1859 May 3, France declared war on Austria.
(HN, 5/3/98)
1859 May 9, Threatened by the advancing French army, the Austrian army retreated across the River Sesia in Italy.
(HN, 5/9/00)
1859 May 10, French emperor Napoleon III left Paris to join his troops preparing to battle the Austrian army in Northern Italy.
(HN, 5/10/02)
1859 May 15, Pierre Curie, physicist (Nobel 1903), was born. He and his wife discovered radium.
(HN, 5/15/99)(MC, 5/15/02)
1859 May 28, The French army launched a flanking attack on the Austrian army in Northern France.
(HN, 5/28/00)
1859 Jun 2, French forces crossed the Ticino River, the last natural barrier between themselves and Milan with the Austrians in retreat.
(HN, 6/2/00)
1859 Jun 4, The French army under Napoleon III took Magenta from the Austrian army after a bloody battle in northern Italy.
(HN, 6/4/99)
1859 Jun 24, At the Battle of Solferino, also known as the Battle of the Three Sovereigns, the French army led by Napoleon III defeated the Austrian army under Franz Joseph I in northern Italy. Some 6,000 men died in the battle and thousands of wounded were effectively abandoned as witnessed by Henri Dunant (31), a Swiss businessman seeking Napoleon for a land development proposal. In 1862 Dunant published “A Memory of Solferino" and began a campaign for a volunteer society to aid wounded soldiers.
(HN, 6/24/99)(ON, 4/08, p.11)
1859 Jun 30, French acrobat Blondin (born Jean Francois Gravelet) crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope as 5,000 spectators watched.
(AP, 6/30/97)(HN, 6/30/98)
1859 Jul 8, With the signing of the truce at Villafranca Austria ceded Lombardy to France. France also received Nice and Savoy.
(HN, 7/8/99)
1859 Aug 4, French priest John Vianney (b.1789), known as the Cure of Ars, died. He had helped to hide priests on the run during the French Revolution. In 1925 he was canonized by Pope Pius XI, who in 1929 made him patron saint of parish priests. In 2019 the Knights of Columbus fraternity sponsored a US pilgrimage of his heart.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Vianney)(AP, 4/6/19)
1859 Oct 9, Alfred Dreyfus, French artillery officer who was falsely accused of giving French military secrets to foreign powers, was born.
(HN, 10/9/98)
1859 Oct 18, Henri Bergson (d.1941), French philosopher (Creative Evolution- Nobel 1927), was born. He is said to have taught that man acts first and thinks later as opposed to Descartes who said man thinks before he acts. He won the 1927 Nobel Prize for Literature. His dualistic philosophy held that man's intellect enables him to appraise the world and his intuition tells him something of the all-pervading life force, or elan vital. He was a spokesman for "process philosophy." "Only those ideas that are least truly ours can be adequately expressed in words."
(AHD, 1971, p.125)(WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-12)(SFC, 3/27/99, p.C2)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A22)(AP, 10/18/99)(MC, 10/18/01)
1859 Nov 12, The first flying-trapeze circus act was performed by Jules Leotard at the Circus Napoleon in Paris. He designed the garment that bears his name.
(HN, 11/12/00)(MC, 11/12/01)
1859 Dec 2, George Seurat (d.1891), French artist, was born in Paris. He entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1875. His method of painting with bright colors juxtaposed as tiny dots was called pointillism, often called Neo-Impressionism.
(SFC, 5/6/97, p.E4)(WUD, 1994, p.1306)(DPCP 1984)(HN, 12/2/98)
1859 Jean-Francois Millet painted "The Angelus," and it became the most reproduced painting of the 19th century.
(SFEC, 8/22/99, BR p.3)
1859 One of the first reports relating tobacco to cancer was published in France.
(HNQ, 11/10/98)
1859 Gaston Plante, French physicist, invented the first lead-acid rechargeable battery.
(Econ, 3/8/08, TQ p.23)(Econ, 3/7/09, TQ p.4)
1859 Leon Benouville (b.1821), French painter, died. His paintings included “The Wrath of Achilles" (1847).
(www.insecula.com/us/contact/A005594.html)
1860 Apr 6, Rene Lalique (d.1945), French goldsmith, jeweler, glassmaker and artist, was born. He helped mold the shape of 20th century art nouveau, art deco and architectural ornamentation.
(SFC, 3/26/97, z1 p.7)(Hem., 6/98, p.134)(MC, 4/6/02)
1860 Jun 25, Gustave Charpentier, French composer (Louise), was born.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1860 Oct 12, British and French troops captured Beijing.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1860 Britain forswore most import duties. Britain and France signed a free-trade treaty, which drastically reduced the duty on French wines.
(Econ, 9/1/07, p.74)(Econ, 12/19/09, p.132)
1860 Savoy was ceded to France.
(WUD, 1994, p.1272)
1860 The Parc Monceau in Paris was taken over by the state to enable Baron Haussmann to complete the Boulevard Malesherbes.
(SFEC, 3/26/00, p.T12)
1860 France sent 5,000 troops to Syria to stop the massacre of Maronite Christians at the hands of the Druze, which the Ottoman authorities were neither willing nor able to stop.
(SFC, 9/7/08, Books p.5)
1860 The 1st French gendarmes arrived in Vietnam.
(WSJ, 2/2/04, p.A12)
1860 Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville captured 10-second clip of a woman singing "Au Clair de la Lune," using a phonautograph, a device that created visual recordings of sound waves.
(AP, 3/28/08)
1860 In France the Yonne Department had almost 99,000 acres of grapevines for wine. Diseases such as oidium and phylloxera destroyed the Chablis vines in the late 19th century and the Carmenére grape was wiped out in France. In 1994 the Carmenére grape was found to be thriving in Chile.
(SFC, 7/16/97, Z1 p.4)(WSJ, 12/28/01, p.A17)
1860-1910 Auguste Moreau, a bronze sculptor, worked over this period. His art included the sculpture "Eglantine" (wild rose), which depicted a woman draped in a vine of roses. It was used as the design for a clock c1900. His bronzes were copied in spelter, a soft white metal that’s mostly zinc.
(SFC, 2/18/98, Z1 p.3)(SFC, 3/11/98, Z1 p.5)
1861 Dec 8, Aristide Maillol, French painter and sculptor (Seated Woman), was born.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1861 Dec, French, British and Spanish troops landed at Veracruz, Mexico, seeking to force Benito Juarez to resume his financial obligations.
(PCh, 1992, p.485)
1861 Pierre-Auguste Renoir, impressionist painter, entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts and studied with Charles Gleyre.
(DPCP 1984)
1861 Germain Sommeiller (d.1871), French engineer, began work on the Mount Cenis Tunnel (Frejus Tunnel) between France and Italy, using his newly developed pneumatic drills. Work proceeded from opposite ends and connected on Dec 26, 1870.
(ON, 2/03, p.8)
1861 Felix Nadar invented a battery operated flash lamp and began exploring the sewers and catacombs of Paris.
(Econ, 12/8/12, IL p.15)
1861 Protestant banker Edouard Andre (d.1894) married Catholic painter Nelie Jacquemart and caused a minor scandal.
(SFEC, 3/26/00, p.T12)
1862 Feb 28, Karl Goldmark's opera "The Queen of Sheba," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1862 Mar 28, Aristide Briand, premier of France (1909-22), was born.
(HN, 3/28/98)
1862 May 1, Marcel Prevost, French publisher, writer (Les demis-vierges), was born.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1862 May 5, At the Battle of Pueblo, a [2,000] 5,000 man Mexican force (cavalry), loyal to Benito Juarez and under the leadership of Gen’l. Ignacio Zaragoza, defeated 6,000 French troops sent by Napoleon III. The event became memorialized in the Cinco de Mayo annual festival. Napoleon intended to march through to the US and help the Confederacy in the Civil War.
(SCal, May 1995)(SFEM, 4/27/97, p.6)(AP, 5/5/97) (SFEC,11/9/97, p.T6)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T8)(SFC, 5/1/99, p.A13)
1862 Jun 24, U.S. intervention saved the British and French at the Dagu forts in China.
(HN, 6/24/98)
1862 Jun 30, Gustave Flaubert completed "Salammbo."
(MC, 6/30/02)
1862 Aug 22, Claude Debussy (d.1918), composer (La Mer, Clair de Lune), was born in St. Germain-en-Laye.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1862 Oct 19, Auguste Lumiere, French film pioneer, was born. He made the 1st film: "Workers Leaving Lumiere Factory."
(MC, 10/19/01)
1862 Nov 24, M. Levy published Gustave Flaubert’s "Salammbo."
(MC, 11/24/01)
1862 Dec 8, Georges Feydeau, French playwright (La Dame de Chez Maxim's), was born.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1862 Claude Monet (22) began studying painting with Charles Gleyre, a retired artist in Paris.
(ON, 9/06, p.6)
1862 Victor Hugo published "Les Miserables." The novel covers events in France from 1815 to 1833. In 2004 Mario Vargas Llosa authored his book-length Spanish essay: “The Temptation of the Impossible: Victor Hugo and ‘Les Miserables.’ The English translation came out in 2007. From 1909 to 2017 some 65 film versions were made of the novel, making it the most frequently adopted novel of all time.
(WSJ, 4/30/98, p.A17)(SFC, 6/30/07, p.E2)(Econ, 2/25/17, p.72)
1862 Empress Eugenie opened Le Grand Hotel in Paris to celebrate French science and art.
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.101)
1862 The French established their first colonial base of Cochin-China, a region encompassing the southern third of current Vietnam.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochinchina)(Econ, 7/23/16, p.68)
1863 Jun 7, Mexico City was captured by French troops.
(HN, 6/7/98)
1863 Jul, The European public first learned of Angkor in Cambodia from the posthumously published journal of French naturalist Henri Mouhot.
(SFEC, 7/26/98, p.T6)
1863 Aug 13, Eugene Delacroix (b.1798), French artist, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix)
1863 Sep 30, The George Bizet (1838-1875) opera "Les Pecheurs de Perles" (Pearl Fishers) premiered in Paris.
(www.operaphilly.com/03-04/bizet-bio.shtml)
1863 Jules Verne (1828-1905) authored his novel “Five Weeks in a Balloon." This was his first published book.
(WSJ, 9/18/07, p.D8)
1763 Voltaire authored his "Treatise on Tolerance." In 2015 it began climbing the French best seller list in the wake of attacks by French-born Islamic extremists.
(AP, 1/28/15)
1863 The Paris Salon des Refuses was a group show of artists rejected by the mavens of the official salon. The hit and scandal of the show was Edouard Manet’s "Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe" which depicted a happy foursome picnicking in the woods with the two women undressed. One of the women was Victorine Meurent, a professional model. Other refused artists included Cezanne, Pissarro, and other impressionists.
(WSJ, 6/14/95, p.A-14)(Econ, 1/26/13, p.76)
1863 French forces captured Puebla, Mexico.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T6)
1863 French Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III, collected art for her Chinese museum at Fontainbleau Castle.
(SFC, 3/2/15, p.A2)
1863 Pierre Lallemont, French mechanic, created a bicycle driven by foot pedals attached to the front wheel. In 1865 he moved to the US and applied for a patent, which was granted in Nov. 1866.
(ON, 2/10, p.1)
1863 Frenchman Felicien de Saulcy excavated an underground burial complex in one of the first modern-era archaeological digs in the Holy Land. He mistakenly identified the tomb as belonging to biblical kings. He took two sarcophagi found inside the "Tomb of Kings," as well as human remains, back to Paris despite protest by the local Jewish community, where they were held in the Louvre's collection.
(AP, 11/8/19)
1863-1874 This decade in France was covered in the 2006 book “The Judgement of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism," by Ross King. He focused on the period between two famous exhibitions, the scandalous Salon des Refuses in 1863 and the first Impressionist showing in 1874.
(SSFC, 2/5/06, p.M6)
1864 Mar 14, Rossini's "Petite Messe Solennelle," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 3/14/02)
1864 Mar 19, Charles Gounod's opera "Mireille" premiered in Paris.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1864 Apr 19, Naval Engagement at Cherbourg, France: USS Kearsarge vs. CSS Alabama. [see Jun 19]
(MC, 4/19/02)
1864 Jun 19, The CSS "Alabama" was sunk by the USS "Kearsarge" off Cherbourg, France. The Alabama had captured, sank or burned 68 ships in 22 months.
(DT, 6/19/97)(HN, 6/19/98)(HNQ, 11/28/00)
1864 Jul 31, Louis Hachette (64), French publisher, died.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1864 Sep 5, British, French & Dutch fleets attacked Japan in Shimonoseki Straits.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1864 Nov 24, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (d.1901), French post-impressionist painter, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_de_Toulouse-Lautrec)
1864 Gustave Moreau, French painter, created his work "Oedipus and the Sphinx." His students included Georges Rouault, Albert Marqyet, and Henri Matisse.
(WSJ, 6/1/99, p.A20)
1864 Phylloxera was 1st noted on grapevines in Roquemaure, France. It ravaged the vineyards there for nearly 20 years. In 1872 it reached Austria and Portugal. In 1875 it appeared in Australia and in 1886 in South Africa. In 1987 George Ordish authored “The Great Wine Blight." In 2004 Christy Campbell authored “Phylloxera: How Wine was Saved for the World." In 2011 George Gale authored “Dying on the Vine: How Phylloxera Transformed Wine."
(SSFC, 3/27/05, p.E3)(Econ, 7/23/11, p.81)
1864 A meteorite was found near Orgueil, France, that was later believed to be a fragment of a comet. It was later found to show traces of amino acids.
(SFC, 12/19/01, p.A8)
1864-1910 Jules Renard, French educator and author: "Talent is like money; you don't have to have some to talk about it."
(AP, 4/16/97)
1865 Jan 19, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (b.1809), French economist and a socialist, died. “Property is theft." He was the founder of Mutualist philosophy and was the first person to declare himself an anarchist.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon)
1865 Apr 28, Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera "L'Africaine," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1865 May 17, The International Telegraph Convention was signed in Paris. The International Telecommunication Union later became a specialized agency of the United Nations that is responsible for issues that concern information and communication technologies. By 2019 ITU's global membership included 193 Member States as well as some 900 companies, universities, and international and regional organizations.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union)(PR Newswire, 12/17/19)
1865 Oct 1, Paul Abraham Dukas, composer (Sorcerer's Apprentice), was born in Paris, France.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1865 Dec 23, France, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland formed the Latin Monetary Union (LMU). It was a 19th century attempt to unify several European currencies into a single currency that could be used in all the member states, at a time when most national currencies were still made out of gold and silver. Spain and Greece joined in 1868. It quickly weakened as members pursued their own economic policies. It was disbanded in 1927.
(WSJ, 1/13/98, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Monetary_Union)
1865 Frederic Bazille painted "Beach at Sainte-Adresse."
(WSJ, 3/9/99, p.A20)
1865 Monet painted "A Cart on the Snowy Road at Honfleur."
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D6)
1865-1866 Edouard Manet painted "The Tragic Actor (Rouviere as Hamlet)" about this time.
(WSJ, 4/16/03, p.D10)
1865 Emile Zola wrote a diatribe against the annual French state-sponsored art show called the Salon. He mocked the jurors who had rebuffed Edouard Manet amongst others.
(WSJ, 8/1/96 p.A13)
1865 Eduard Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye, a scholar, proposed a monument for America's centennial and strengthen the democratic cause in France. The monument took form as the Statue of Liberty.
(SFEC, 6/20/99, p.T10)
1865 The St. Anne Prison was built in Avignon, France, atop the ruins of a 13th century insane asylum. The prison was closed in 2003 and in 2007 the government offered to sell it for transformation to a luxury hotel.
(SFC, 12/28/07, p.A18)
1865-1867 Honore Daumier created his painting "The Strong Man" during this period.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.B1)
1866 May 17, Erik Alfred Leslie Satie, French composer, was born.
(HN, 5/17/01)
1866 May 18, French Government of De Putte resigned.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1866 Jul 29, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot (b.1777), head of the Clicquot champagne business, died. She was widowed at age 27 and transformed her husbands struggling business into one of the great champagne houses of France. In 2008 Tilar J. Mazzeo authored “The Widow Clicquot."
(WSJ, 11/5/08, p.A21)(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbe-Nicole_Clicquot-Ponsardin)
1866 Nov 17, Ambroise Thomas' opera "Mignon" was produced (Paris).
(MC, 11/17/01)
1866 Nov 20, Pierre Lallemont, French mechanic, was granted a US patent for his velocipede, a rotary crank bicycle.
(http://www.todayinsci.com/11/11_20.htm)(ON, 2/10, p.1)
1866 Gustave Courbet, French artist, painted "The Waterspout" and “Origin of the World."
(WSJ, 11/28/06, p.D8)
1866 Edouard Manet painted "Young Lady in 1866." The painting helped pave the way for Impressionism.
(WSJ, 8/3/01, p.W2)
1866 Jean-Francois Millet painted "Flight of Crows."
(WSJ, 7/12/99, p.A26)
1866 Monet created his painting "Jar of Peaches."
(WSJ, 12/12/01, p.A16)
1866 Edouard Seguin (1812-1880), French physician, authored “Idiocy and Its Treatment." He had established schools in France and the US for the intellectually handicapped, which stressed the importance of developing self-reliance and independence.
(ON, 3/07, p.3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edouard_Seguin)
1866 French colonial officials sent an expedition to explore the Mekong River and check its commercial potential.
(Econ, 1/3/04, p.29)
1866 French troops took away hundreds of Korean manuscripts and set fire to 5,000 more when they raided a royal library on an island off Korea's west coast. In 2011 the first batch of the looted Korean royal books were returned home.
(AP, 4/14/11)
1866-1954 Ernest Dimnet, French priest, lecturer and author: "The happiness of most people we know is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things."
(AP, 9/6/98)
1867 Jan 14, Jean-August-Dominique Ingres, a French neo-classical painter, and one of the major portrait painters of the 19th century, died.
(http://tinyurl.com/cheny)
1867 Apr 1, The International Exhibition, Exposition Universelle, opened in Paris.
(OTD)(ON, 9/06, p.11)
1867 Apr 27, Charles Gounod's Opera "Romeo et Juliette" was produced in Paris.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1867 Aug 31, [Pierre-]Charles Baudelaire (46), French poet (Journaux Intimes), died.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1867 Oct 3, Pierre Bonnard (d.1947), French painter and illustrator, was born. He wrote that he wanted to “show what one sees when one enters a room all of a sudden." He married Marthe de Meligny in 1925 and during his life painted some 384 images of her. In 1998 John Elderfield and Sarah Whitfield published “Bonnard."
(WSJ, 6/24/98, p.A16)(SFEC, 8/2/98, BR p.9)(www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_H_AseJpss)
1867 Nov 7, Marie Curie (d.1934), Polish-born French scientist, was born in Warsaw as Marya Salomee Sklodowska. Her discoveries included polonium, radium, which she isolated from pitchblende, and the radioactivity of thorium. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1903 with her husband, and in chemistry in 1911. "You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity."
(AHD, 1971, p.323)(AP, 10/26/98)(HN, 11/7/98)
1867 Claude Monet painted "The Beach at Sainte Adresse" and "Road by Saint-Simeon Farm Winter" while living in Normandy.
(DPCP 1984)(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D6)(SFC, 6/17/06, p.E10)
1867 The French opera comedy "La Grande’ tante," was composed by Jules Massenet.
(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A24)
1867 The opera “The Fair Maid of Perth" by Georges Bizet premiered in France.
(ON, 5/06, p.11)
1867 The facade of the new Paris Opera House, built to the glory of Emperor Napoleon III, was completed.
(SFC, 6/21/00, p.E5)(ON, 9/06, p.11)
1867 Ernest Michaux, a Parisian blacksmith, added pedals and brakes to an iron “velocipede," a 2-wheeled machine that used wooded wheels and was nicknamed “the boneshaker."
(WSJ, 10/22/04, p.A1)(Econ, 2/5/05, p.77)
1867-1868 Degas painted "Mlle. Fiocre in the Ballet ‘La Source’."
(SFEC, 6/21/98, BR p.8)
1868 Feb 11, Jean Bernard Leon Foucault (b.1819), French physicist, died. He discovered the 1st physical proof of Earth's rotation (1851) and invented the gyroscope.
(WUD, 1994 p.560)(MC, 2/11/02)(WSJ, 8/28/03, p.D18)
1868 Mar 9, Ambrois Thomas' opera "Hamlet" premiered in Paris.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1868 Apr 1, Edmond Rostand, French dramatist (Cyrano de Bergerac), was born.
(HN, 4/1/01)
1868 May 6, Gaston Leroux, French novelist (The Phantom of the Opera), was born.
(HN, 5/6/01)
1868 May 29, Frederic baron d'Erlanger, French composer, banker, was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1868 Aug 10, American actress Adah Isaacs Menken (b.1835) died in Paris. She was buried in the Jewish section of the Pere Lachaise cemetery.
(SFC, 4/28/18, p.C2)
1868 Nov 13, Italian composer Gioacchino Antonio Rossini (b.1792) died in France. His work included 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces. His opera "La Donna del Lago" (1819) was based on the Walter Scott romance "The Lady of the Lake."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gioachino_Rossini)(WSJ, 7/29/97, p.A12)(AP, 2/29/00)
1868 French painter Jean-Leon Gerome completed his work “Bonaparte before the Sphinx."
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.128)
1868 Jean-Francois Millet painted "Path Lined With Trees Near Vichy."
(WSJ, 7/12/99, p.A26)
1868 Claude Monet painted "The River." It shows the water of the Seine and was an early attempt by the artist to depict shimmering light on water.
(DPCP 1984)
1868 The first known bicycle race was held in Paris.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)
1868-1841 Emile Bernard, French poet. He founded the Pont-Aven Group of Symbolists.
(SFCM, 10/14/01, p.34)
1868-1955 Paul Claudel, French author: "Why must all the churches be closed at night? How often has the wanderer groaned in front of those closed doors?"
(AP, 12/27/98)
1869 Mar 1, Alphonse MLP de Lamartine (78), French poet (History of Girondins), died.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1869 Mar 8, Louis Hector Berlioz (b.1803), French composer (Symphony Fantastic), died. He was later hailed as the most blazing musical innovator of the early 19th century. In 1969 David Cairns translated his memoirs “The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Berlioz)(WSJ, 4/8/03, p.D4)(WSJ, 3/1/08, p.W8)
1869 Apr 12, Henri-Desire Landru (Bluebeard), French sex murderer, was born.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1869 Apr, France’s Emp. Louis Napoleon ordered the dissolution of the Public Works Fund.
(ON, 9/06, p.12)
1869 May 1, Folies Bergere opened in Paris.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1869 Jul 15, Margarine was patented by Hippolye Mega-Mouriss for use by French Navy.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1869 Oct 13, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, French writer (Tableau Historique), died.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1869 Nov 17, The Suez Canal was opened in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean and the Red seas. The 100 mile canal eliminated a 4000-mile trip around Africa. Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III, together with Ferdinand de Lesseps, chief architect of the canal, led the first file of ships from on board the French imperial yacht Aigle. It was financed by the Rothschild banking empire. In 2003 Zacharay Karabell authored "Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal."
(I&WWI, p.1041)(SFC, 7/12/96, p.A11)(AP, 11/17/97)(MC, 11/17/01)(WSJ, 7/10/03, p.D8)
1869 Nov 22, Andre Gide (d.1951), French novelist and critic (Lafcadio's Adventures- Nobel 1947), was born. "There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them." "Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it." “The color of truth is gray."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Gide)(AP, 10/31/97)(AP, 3/24/98)(SFEC, 6/28/98, Z1 p.8)
1869 Dec 31, Henri Matisse (d.1954), French artist best known for his paintings "Woman with a Hat" and "The Red Studio," was born. His work included the "Dance II," now at the Hermitage in Moscow. In 1998 Hilary Spurling authored "The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse, Vol. 1: 1869-1908."
(WSJ, 7/5/96, p.A5)(SFEC, 12/13/98, BR p.9)(HN, 12/31/98)
1869 Claude Monet painted "The Seine at Bougival, Evening."
(SFC, 7/11/01, p.D1)
1869 Renoir and Monet sat side by side and painted views of the bathing house, La Grenouillleres and its patrons.
(WSJ, 9/10/96, p.A16)(SFC, 10/30/96, p.E2)
1869 Camille Pissarro painted "The Versailles Road at Louveciennes."
(SFEM, 1/31/99, p.18)
1869 In Paris the Bon Marche department store, founded by Aristide and Marguerite Boucicaut, began displaying its wares for customers to inspect and introduced price tags.
(Econ, 10/2/04, p.18)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.15)
1869 Pierre and Ernest Michaux built the first motorcycle. It was powered by a steam engine.
(SFEC, 7/27/97, Z1 p.7)
1869 Frenchman Eugene Meyer invented wire wheels with individually adjusted spokes.
(www.everybicycletire.com/Encyclopedia/History.aspx)(ON, 2/10, p.2)
1869-1877 Elihu Washburne (1816-1887) served as America’s minister to France and was influential in negotiating the armistice for the Franco-Prussian War. During the 2 months of the Paris Commune (1870) he arranged passports for Americans to escape the siege.
(Econ, 6/4/11, p.95)
