The ‘Long Eighteenth Century’, 1688-1815.

1699		Peace of Karlowitz ends war between Austria and the Turks.
1700		Great Northern War begins.
		Death of Charles II of Spain.
1701		Act of Settlement establishing Hanoverian succession in England.
		War of the Spanish Succession begins.
		Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg becomes King Frederick I of Prussia.
1702		First national daily newspaper founded in England.
1703		Peter the Great founds St Petersburg.
1704		Battle of Blenheim.
1707		Union of England and Scotland.
1708		Vauban, Projet d’une dixième royale.
1709		Peter the Great defeats Charles XII of Sweden at the Battle of Poltava.
		Battle of Malplaquet.
		Louis XIV suppresses the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal.
		Darby produces coke-smelted cast iron at Coalbrooke in Shropshire.
		1709–10 Meissen porcelain manufactory established in Saxony.
1711		Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions,Times.
		Exterior of the Palace of Schönbrunn completed.
1712		Newcomen develops the first commercially successful steam engine (used in coal mines).
1713		Treaty of Utrecht: Britain makes territorial gains in North America and West Indies and acquires the right to supply slaves to Spanish empire.
		The papal bull Unigenitus condemns Jansenism.
1714		Treaty of Rastatt ends the War of the Spanish Succession.
		Death of Queen Anne; succession to the English throne of the Elector of Hanover as George I.
1715		Death of Louis XIV.
1715–16		Failed Jacobite rising in Britain.
1716		War between Austria and the Turks.
		Corps des Ingénieurs des Ponts et Chaussées begins to develop the French road system to be the finest in Europe.
1717		Establishment of the first Grand Lodge in London begins the modern history of Freemasonry.
1718		Death of Charles XII; beginning of Swedish ‘Age of Liberty’.
		Murder of Tsarevich Alexei of Russia.
		Treaty of Passarowitz ends war between Austria and the Turks.
1719		Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.
1721		Treaty of Nystad ends the Great Northern War.
		Montesquieu, Persian Letters.
		Russian edict makes it possible to assign groups (or entire villages) of serfs to certain factories.
1723		Frederick William I of Prussia establishes the General Directory.
1725		Death of Peter the Great.
		Vico, New Science.
		Blenheim Palace completed.
1726		Swift, Gulliver’s Travels.
1729		J. S. Bach, St Matthew Passion.
1730		Failed attempt to impose accession charter on Empress Anna of Russia.
		Russian protectorate declared over part of Kazakhs.
		The papal bull against Jansenism Unigenitus is incorporated in French law.
1731		Protestants expelled from Salzburg emigrate to Prussia.
		Holy Roman Empire issues law trying to restrict guild powers (proves largely ineffectual).
1732		Hogarth, A Rake’s Progress.
1733		War of the Polish Succession begins.
		Frederick William I of Prussia introduces the ‘canton system’ of conscription.
		Pergolesi, La serva padrona.
		Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man.
		Kay’s flying shuttle doubles woollen weavers’ output.
1734		Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques.
1736–9		War between Russia, Austria, and the Turks.
1738		John Wesley’s conversion experience begins the history of Methodism.
1739		Beginning of Anglo-Spanish war in Caribbean.
1740		Deaths of Charles VI, Frederick William I, and the Tsarina Anna.
		Frederick II invades Silesia; War of the Austrian Succession begins.
		Richardson, Pamela.
1741		Handel, Messiah.
1742		Treaty of Breslau ends the First Silesian War between Prussia and Austria.
1743		Paul’s spinning machine is first used with water power.
1745		Treaty of Dresden ends the Second Silesian War between Prussia and Austria.
		Battle of Fontenoy.
1745–6		Failed Jacobite rebellion in Britain.
1746		French capture Madras; beginning of Anglo-French wars in India.
1747		William IV’s Orangist ‘revolution’ in the Dutch republic.
		Muratori, Of the Well-Ordered Devotion of Christians.
1748		Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws.
		Treaty of Aachen ends War of the Austrian Succession.
		Excavations begin at Pompeii.
1749		Horace Walpole begins the construction of Strawberry Hill.
		Buffon, Natural History.
		Fielding, Tom Jones.
1751		First volume of the Encyclopédie, edited by Diderot and d’Alembert.
1753		Pope grants abolition of fifty-three feast days to help
		Catholic countries compete with Protestant rivals.
1754		Beginning of Anglo-French hostilities in North America, merging after 1756 into worldwide Seven Years War.
1755		Pombal establishes monopoly company for part of Brazil trade.
		Lisbon earthquake.
		Winckelmann, Thoughts on the Imitation of the Greeks.
		Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language.
		Rebuilding of the Benedictine Abbey of Ottobeuren completed.
1756		The ‘diplomatic revolution’––i.e. the alliance of France and Austria.
		Seven Years War begins, as does the Third Silesian War.
1757		Attempted assassination of Louis XV.
		Battle of Plassey: British coup in Bengal.
		Battle of Rossbach.
		Battle of Leuthen.
		Sainte-Geneviève (the Panthéon) begun.
		Sankey Brook canal, the first modern canal, links the St
		Helen’s coalfield with the Mersey.
1758		David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
1759		British take Quebec.
		Battle of Kunersdorf.
		Jesuits expelled from Portugal.
		Voltaire’s Candide.
		British Museum opened.
1760		Greuze, The village betrothal.
1761		Duke of Bridgewater’s canal links the Worsley mines with Manchester.
1762		Murder of Tsar Peter III of Russia, accession of Catherine II (‘the Great’).
		Execution of the Protestant Jean Calas.
		Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract.
		British take Havana, Cuba.
		French legislation partly frees rural industry from guild domination.
		Gluck, Orfeo ed Eurydice.
		1763 Treaty of Paris ends Seven Years War.
		Treaty of Hubertusburg ends Third Silesian War between
		Prussia and Austria.
		Hontheim alias Febronius, On the Condition of the Church.
		Hargreaves’s spinning jenny enables one operator to work several spindles.
1764		Jesuits expelled from France.
		Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments.
1765		Stamp Act: British attempt to tax American colonies.
		British East India Company given diwani–– r e v e n u e administration of Bengal.
		Watt invents the separate condenser, solving the weakness of the Newcomen steam engine.
		Publication of the Encyclopédie, edited by Diderot and d’Alembert, completed.
1766		Serious rioting in Madrid forces Charles III to flee.
		Louis XV issues rebuke, known as the Flagellation, to the Parlement of Paris.
		Expulsion of Jesuits from Spanish empire.
1767		Catherine the Great’s Instructions to the Legislative Assembly.
1768		Bougainville at Tahiti.
		The Royal Academy founded, with Sir Joshua Reynolds as its first president.
1769		Cook at Tahiti on first voyage.
		Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford-on-Avon.
		Arkwright’s water frame improves the productivity of spinning.
1770		Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des deux Indes.
1771		Maupeou’s revolution remodels French parlements.
		Pope abolishes another twenty feast days to improve productivity of Catholic countries.
1771–2		Famine in central Europe; potato begins to be widely introduced.
1772		Gustav III’s coup ends Swedish ‘age of liberty’.
		First partition of Poland.
		Warren Hastings becomes governor of Bengal.
1773		Suppression of the Jesuit Order by Pope Clement XIV.
		Boston Tea Party.
		Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther.
1774		Death of Louis XV, accession of Louis XVI, recall of the old parlements.
		Herder, Another Philosophy of History Concerning the
		Development of Mankind.
		Swedish chemist Scheele discovers chlorine.
1775		First metalled road built in Prussia.
1776		Declaration of American Independence.
		Joseph II creates a National Theatre at Vienna.
		Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.
		Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
		Turgot’s edict on the suppression of guilds in France.
		Wilkinson installs the first Watt steam engine in an iron furnace.
1778		War of the Bavarian Succession.
1779		Treaty of Teschen.
		Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations is translated into French.
1780		The Gordon riots in London.
		Beginning of Tupac Amaru’s revolt in Peru.
		Joseph II becomes sole ruler of the Habsburg Monarchy on the death of his mother, the Empress Maria Theresa.
		The Ruhr river in western Germany is made navigable.
1781		British defeated at Yorktown in Virginia.
		Kant, Critique of Pure Reason.
		Schiller, The Robbers.
		Serfdom is abolished in the Habsburg Monarchy but labour services are left almost unaffected.
1782		British naval victory over the French at the Saintes in the West Indies.
		French and Spanish siege of Gibraltar fails.
1783		Recognition of the independence of the United States of America.
		Montgolfier brothers’ first balloon flight.
		Watt’s steam engine is first used to drive forge hammers for the British iron industry.
		Brügelmann sets up first copy of Arkwright’s water frame at
		Ratingen in the Rhineland.
1783–4		Russian annexation of the Crimea.
1784		Spanish administrative reforms introduced into Peru.
		Cort perfects the puddling process for converting pig iron into wrought iron in a reverbratory furnace.
		Guilds abolished in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium).
1785		Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii.
		First Boulton and Watt steam engine is erected in a Belgian coalfield, at Jemappes.
1785–6		Berthollet experiments with chlorine for bleaching cloth.
1786		Spanish administrative reforms introduced into Mexico.
		Death of Frederick the Great.
		Frederick William II creates a National Theatre at Berlin.
		Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro.
		Steam power is first applied to cotton-spinning.
		Feudalism abolished in Denmark.
1787		Assembly of Notables meets at Versailles, thus beginning the ‘pre-Revolution’.
		Dutch patriots defeated by the stadholder William V and his Prussian and British allies.
		Ottoman Empire declares war on Russia.
		Mozart, Don Giovanni.
		Cartwright develops the power loom (remains
		economically unviable until 1822).
1788		Louis XVI agrees to convene the Estates General.
		Sweden invades Russia.
		Founding of first British colony in Australia.
		Mozart’s symphonies 39–41.
1788–9		Regency crisis in Britain.
1789	may	Meeting of the Estates General.
	july	Fall of the Bastille.
	aug.	Promulgation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
	oct.	The royal family and the National Assembly brought to Paris.
	nov.	Expropriation of the Church begins.
		Leblanc invents process for deriving soda from sea salt.
1790		Death of Joseph II, succeeded by his brother Leopold II.
	july	Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
		Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France.
		Mozart, Cosí fan tutte.
1791	may	New Polish constitution.
	june	Louis XVI’s flight to Varennes.
		Beginning of Saint-Domingue slave revolt.
		Mozart, The Magic Flute.
		Tom Paine, Rights of Man.
		Revolution government abolishes all guilds in France.
		Brandenburg Gate completed.
1792		Death of Leopold II, accession of Francis II.
	apr.	Wars of the French Revolution begin.
	aug.	France becomes a republic.
	sept.	Massacres in Paris.
	sept.	Battle of Valmy.
1793	jan.	Execution of Louis XVI.
	mar.	Counter-revolutionary revolt in the Vendée begins.
	apr.	Committee of Public Safety established.
	aug.	Levée en masse.
	sept	Terror begins.
		Second partition of Poland.
		Last witch executed in Poland.
		Central Museum of the Arts opened in the Louvre.
		Revolutionary government in France abolishes all seigneurial claims, restrictions, and obligations.
1794	july	Battle of Fleurus.
	july	Fall of Robespierre.
		Prussian Allgemeines Landrecht (General Legal Code) promulgated.
1795		British occupation of Dutch colonies.
		Third partition leads to the extinction of the Polish state.
		Treaties of Basle end wars between France and Prussia and France and Spain.
		Belgium annexed to France.
		Crompton’s spinning mule is adapted for power.
1796		Bonaparte conquers northern Italy.
		Catherine the Great of Russia dies; with the accession of her son, Paul I, Russia suspends its role in the First Coalition.
		Trevithick begins to apply steam power to traction.
		Edward Jenner introduces vaccination against smallpox.
1797		Treaty of Campo Formio ends war between France and Austria.
1798		General Bonaparte leads an expedition to conquer Egypt.
		Battle of the Nile, a British fleet commanded by Nelson destroys Napoleon’s fleet.
		Irish rebellion.
		War of the Second Coalition.
		Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads.
		Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads.
		Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population.
		Haydn, Creation.
		Aloys Senefelder invents lithography.
1798–9		Tennant and Macintosh invent bleaching powder for cloth.
1799	mar.	War between France and Austria resumes; Russia enters the war on the side of Austria; the French are expelled from Italy.
	oct.	Bonaparte returns from Egypt.
	nov.	Bonaparte seizes power in France.
		Collapse of Dutch East India Company.
		First water-driven spinning mule is set up in Saxony.
1800		Battle of Marengo, Bonaparte defeats the Austrians.
		Battle of Hohenlinden, Moreau defeats the Austrians.
		Friedrich von Hardenberg alias Novalis, Hymns to the Night.
		Alessandro Volta demonstrates first electric battery.
1801		Treaty of Lunéville ends war between France and Austria.
		Assassination of Paul I, accession of Alexander I.
		Bonaparte’s Concordat with the Pope.
		Act of Union unites Great Britain and Ireland.
1802		Treaty of Amiens.
		Chateaubriand, The Genius of Christianity.
1803		War resumes between France and Britain.
		France sells Louisiana to the USA.
		Imperial Recess decrees sweeping territorial changes in
		Germany, which ensure French domination.
		Widespread secularization of monasteries in Germany.
		Beethoven’s Third Symphony, ‘Eroica’, composed (first performed 1805).
1804		Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, proclaims himself also
		Emperor of Austria as Francis I.
		Bonaparte proclaims himself Emperor Napoleon I, is crowned by the Pope Pius VII.
		Code Napoléon enacted.
1805		Bonaparte reorganizes Italy under direct French control.
	aug.	The third coalition consisting of Britain, Austria, Russia,and Sweden is formed against France; war resumes on the continent.
	oct.	Austrian army capitulates at Ulm.
	oct.	Battle of Trafalgar.
	dec.	Battle of Austerlitz; Napoleon inflicts a crushing defeat on an Austro-Russian army.
	dec.	Treaty of Pressburg; Russia withdraws from the war.
1806	mar.	Napoleon makes his brother Joseph King of Naples.
	june	Napoleon makes his brother Louis King of the Netherlands.
	july	Napoleon reorganizes Germany as the ‘Confederation of the Rhine’.
	aug.	Formal end of the Holy Roman Empire when the Emperor
		Francis II abdicates and becomes Francis I of Austria.
	oct.	Prussia declares war on France.
	oct.	Battles of Jena and Auerstedt, Prussia defeated.
1807		Russia rejoins war as Prussia’s ally; indecisive campaign in Poland.
	june	Decisive French victory at Battle of Friedland.
	july	Treaty of Tilsit ends war; France and Russia enter alliance.
		Portuguese royal family flees to Brazil.
		Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation.
		Caspar David Friedrich, The Cross in the Mountains.
		Britain abolishes the slave trade.
		Humphry Davy isolates sodium and potassium from their compounds.
1808		Napoleon imposes his brother Joseph as King of Spain;
		Spanish people rise in revolt, assisted by the British army.
		Rome occupied by French troops.
		Goethe, Faust, Part I.
1809	apr.	War resumes between France and Austria.
	may	Austrians defeat Napoleon at the Battle of Aspern-Essling.
	july	Napoleon defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Wagram.
	oct.	Treaty of Schönbrunn ends war between Austria and France. Papal States annexed to France.
1810		Napoleon marries the Archduchess Marie Louise, daughter of the Emperor Francis I.
		Napoleon annexes the Netherlands to France.
		Napoleon annexes the north-western coast of Germany.
		Revolts against Spanish rule in Venezuela and Rio de la Plata (future Argentina).
1811		‘Luddite’ machine-breaking riots in Britain.
1812		Battle of Salamanca, defeat of French in Spain by army commanded by the Duke of Wellington.
		Goya, The Disasters of War.
	june	Napoleon with his German and Italian satellites invades Russia.
	sept.	Napoleon fights the indecisive Battle of Borodino and enters Moscow a week later.
	oct.	Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow begins.
	dec.	Remnants of Napoleon’s army leaves Russia.
		Henry Bell’s The Comet, the world’s first commercial steamship begins operations on the Clyde.
1813	feb.	Treaty of Kalisch between Prussia and Russia.
	june	Wellington defeats the French at Vittoria, prompting King Joseph to flee to France.
	aug.	Austria declares war on France.
	oct.	Napoleon is defeated at the Battle of Leipzig and loses control of Germany.
	dec.	Prussian army under Blücher begins the invasion of France.
		Colombia declares independence from Spain.
		Rossini, Tancredi.
1814	mar.	Allies abandon attempt to negotiate with Napoleon and conclude Treaty of Chaumont for wartime and post-war alliance.
	mar.	Wellington captures Bordeaux.
	apr.	Napoleon abdicates, is exiled to the island of Elba; Louis XVIII returned to French throne.
	sept.	General negotiations for a comprehensive peace settlement begin at Vienna.
		Uruguay declares independence from Spain.
1815	mar.	Napoleon returns from Elba
	June(18)	Battle of Waterloo; Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to St Helena.
		Congress of Vienna completes restructuring of Europe.
	sept.	Russia, Austria, and Prussia form the ‘Holy Alliance’.
	nov.	Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia form a Quadruple Alliance to maintain the Vienna settlement.
	nov.	Second treaty of Paris reduces France to frontiers of 1790.
		Humphry Davy invents miner’s safety lamp.