A Regency Era Timeline 1815 in progress

Timeline

Each time I start a year, I have already compiled a list, months ago with about 6000 entered of what happened from 1788 to 1837. My first step now (It took several trials to get this down to a science) is to cut out the specific year I will work on and paste it into its own spreadsheet to work with. When I worked on the entire spreadsheet, sometimes inserting a line, with all the graphics I had begun to place, took a long time. Working on each year alone, is a lot faster.

With the year separated out, I now turn to my book sources,

The Timetables of History by Grun and Stein

Chronology of CULTURE by Paxton and Fairfield

What Happened When by Carruth.

, History of the World. A beautiful Dorling Kindersley book.

I now and diligently look through each of these to find entries that I did not come across on the internet, and other printed lists. It is possible that there are places that have more listings for each year. I have not found them. And when you go to the Timelines at the Regency Assembly Press page, there you will see all the graphical references as well. Something that I did not find anywhere else.

Here is the start of 1815:

Year

Month Day

Event



1815

Jan 5

Federalists from all over New England, angered over the War of 1812, drew up the Hartford Convention, demanding several important changes in the U.S. Constitution.



1815

Jan 8

US forces led by Gen. Andrew Jackson and French pirate Jean Lafitte led some 3,100 backwoodsmen to victory against 7,500 British veterans at Chalmette in the Battle of New Orleans in the closing engagement of the War of 1812. A British army marched on New Orleans without knowing that the War of 1812 had ended on Christmas Eve of 1814. A massacre ensued, as 2,044 British troops, including three generals, fell dead, wounded or missing before General Andrew Jackson’s well-prepared earthworks, compared with only 71 American casualties. Among the British victims were Gen. Sir Edward Pakenham and the Highlanders of the 93rd Regiment of Foot. In 2000 Robert V. Remini published “The Battle of New Orleans.”



1815

Jan 11

Sir John A. Macdonald, the first prime minister of Canada, was born in Glasgow, Scotland.



1815

Jan 21

Horace Wells (d.1845), dentist, was born. He pioneered the use of medical anesthesia and was the 1st to use nitrous oxide as a pain killer.



1815

Jan 30

The burned Library of Congress was reestablished with Jefferson’s 6,500 volumes.



1815

January

January: Andrew Jackson defeats British troops in the Battle of New Orleans. The Treaty of Ghent had been signed on December 24, 1814, but news of the peace does not reach New Orleans until February.



1815

January

January: Emma, Lady Hamilton, famous mistress of Lord Nelson, dies in Calais where she had fled to escape her creditors.



1815

January

January: Lord Byron marries Anne Isabella Milbanke.  



1815

Feb 3

World’s 1st commercial cheese factory was established, in Switzerland.



1815

Feb 6

The state of New Jersey issued the first American railroad charter to John Stevens, who proposed a rail link between Trenton and New Brunswick. The line, however, was never built.



1815

Feb 11

News of the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812, finally reached the United States.



1815

Feb 24

Robert Fulton (b.1765), steamboat pioneer, died at age 49. In 2001 Kirkpatrick Sale authored the biography: “The Fire of His Genius.”



1815

Feb 25

Napoleon left his exile on the Island of Elba, intending to return to France.



1815

Feb 26

Napoleon, escaped from the Island of Elba, and 1,200 of his men started the 100-day re-conquest of France.



1815

Feb

Congress appropriated funds for the restoration of the White House and hired James Hoban, the original designer and builder, to do the work.



1815

February

February: Napoleon escapes from Elba.



1815

7-Mar

On March 7, having escaped Elba, Napoleon lands in France and heads for Paris, growing an army as he goes.



1815

Mar 1

In France, returning from Elba, Napoleon landed at Cannes with a force of 1, 500 men and marched on Paris.



1815

Mar 1

Sunday observance in Netherlands was regulated by law.



1815

Mar 2

To put an end to robberies by the Barbary pirates, the United States declared war on Algiers.



1815

Mar 5

Friedrich (Franz) Anton Mesmer (b.1734), German physician who pioneered the medical field of hypnotic therapy, died in obscurity in Meersburg, Swabia (now Germany). He was suspected of having seduced a pretty pianist while attempting to cure her blindness through hypnosis.



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.



1815

March

March: A new alliance mobilizes to oppose Napoleon’s renewed threat to peace. Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Britain raise a combined force of one million men,



1815

March

March: Napoleon raises an army and marches into Paris where he takes over the government again for a period known as The Hundred Days.



1815

Apr 1

Otto von Bismarck (d.1898), German statesman, was born. He founded the German Empire and was the chancellor of Germany, the Second Reich, from 1866-90 [1971-1990]. The Iron Chancellor created the modern social insurance state when he introduced transfer payments to appease worker insecurities. “History is simply a piece of paper covered with print; the main thing is still to make history, not to write it.” “Every man had his basic worth – from which must be subtracted his vanity.



1815

Apr 5

Mount Tambora on Sumbawa Island, Indonesia, in the Java Sea began erupting. [see Apr 10]



1815

Apr 6

At Dartmoor Prison in southwest England 7 American prisoners were killed by British soldiers under the command of Captain Thomas G. Shortland. Some 6,000 prisoners were awaiting return to the US. A farmer’s jury with no victims or witnesses issued a verdict on April 8 of “justifiable homicide.”



1815

Apr 10

A third of the 13,000 foot Mount Tambora on Sumbawa Island, Indonesia, was blasted into the air. Some 50,000 islanders were killed and the whole planet was shrouded in a debris of sulfuric droplets. In 2006 scientist reported finding traces of Tambora society.



1815

Apr 24

Anthony Trollope (d.1882), British novelist, was born. His 47 novels included “The American Senator.” His 33rd novel was “The Way We Live Now.” “Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself.” An essay by Cynthia Ozick on the novel is in her 1996 book “Fame and Folly.”



1815

Apr 28

Andrew Jackson Smith (d.1897), Major General (Union volunteers), was born.



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.



1815

May 5

Eugene-Marin Labiche, French playwright, was born.



1815

May 29

Cornelis de Gijselaar (64), politician, patriot, died.



1815

18-Jun

On June 18, Wellington defeats Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.



1815

Jun 1

James Gillray (b.1757), British caricaturist and printmaker, died. He is famous for his etched political and social satires, mainly published between 1792 and 1810.



1815

Jun 8

The Congress of Vienna ended. Negotiations had begun in 1812 to rearrange Europe following the defeat of Napoleon. The final conclave began Nov 1, 1814. In 2007 Adam Zamoyski authored “Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna.”



1815

Jun 16

Napoleon defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny, Belgium.



1815

Jun 16

A French attack at the crossroads called Quatre Bras badly mauled the British army, 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.



1815

Jun 17

A heavy rainstorm prevented French forces from catching up with Wellington’s army as they retreated to Waterloo.



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.”



1815

Jun 22

Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated a second time.



1815

Jun 30

US naval hero Stephen Decatur signed a treaty ending attacks by Algerian pirates. Commodores Stephen Decatur and William Bainbridge had conducted successful operations against the Barbary States of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli  [See Aug 5].



1815

June

June: British caricaturist James Gillray dies at age 57.



1815

June

June: Despite Napoleon’s return to power, the Congress of Vienna has proceeded, and finalizes its last act nine days before Waterloo. The results of the Congress are too complex to list. Click here to read the Wikipedia entry that describes the Congress in detail.



1815

June

June: Final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. He again abdicates in favor of his son, but the Allies’ entry into Paris puts an end to the Bonaparte regime.



1815

June

June: London banker Nathan Mayer Rothschild receives carrier pigeon reports from Belgium advising him of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. Feigning gloom, he depresses the price of British consols by selling short, then has his agents buy them up at distress prices, and when news of Wellington’s victory sends prices sky-high, Rothschild sells, reaping a great fortune on the London Exchange



1815

Jul 7

After defeating Napoleon at Waterloo, the victorious Allies marched into Paris.



1815

Jul 8

With Napoleon defeated, Louis XVIII returned to Paris.



1815

Jul 9

The 1st US natural gas well was discovered.



1815

Jul 9

King Louis XVIII left Ghent for France.



1815

Jul 15

Napoleon Bonaparte was captured and exiled to St Helena. [see Jul 17]



1815

Jul 17

Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered to the British at Rochefort, France.



1815

July

July: The French Legislative Assemblies vote to restore Louis XVIII to the throne.



1815

July – December

July – December: Britain suffers economic depression as demand for military supplies abruptly ceases and as Continental markets are unable to absorb backlogged inventories of English manufactured goods. Prices fall, thousands are thrown out of work, and 400,000 demobilized troops add to the problems of unemployment.



1815

Aug 1

Richard Henry Dana (d.1882), US jurist, novelist, lawyer and sailor, was born. He wrote “Two Years Before the Mast.”



1815

Aug 5

A peace treaty with Tripoli, which followed treaties with Algeria (Jun 30) and Tunis (Aug 28), brought an end to the Barbary Wars. Commodores Stephen Decatur and William Bainbridge had conducted successful operations against the Barbary States of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli.



1815

Aug 8

Napoleon Bonaparte set sail for St. Helena, in the South Atlantic, to spend the remainder of his days in exile.



1815

Aug

The merchant ship Commerce, under Capt. James Riley (1877-1939) of Connecticut, wrecked off the northwest coast of Africa. He survived captivity under Muslim slave traders and endured a lengthy trek across the Sahara. He later authored “Sufferings in Africa” (1817) and “An authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce” (1818). In 2004 Dean King authored “Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival.”



1815

Sep 8

Alexander Ramsey (d.1903), territorial governor of Minnesota (1849-1853), was born near Harrisburg, Pa.



1815

Sep 9

John Singleton Copley (b.1737), American artist, died in London.



1815

Sep 26

Russia, Prussia and Austria signed a Holy Alliance. “Justice, charity and peace” were to be the precepts that guided the Holy Alliance as envisioned by Czar Alexander I of Russia. The alliance of Russia, Austria and Prussia was formed after the downfall of Napoleon and later all European rulers signed the agreement except the prince regent of Great Britain, the pope and the sultan of Turkey. With no specific aims beyond mutual assistance, the provisions of the Holy Alliance were so vague that it had little effect on European diplomacy. Metternich quietly replaced the entire alliance by the purely political alliance of 20 November, 1815, between Austria, Prussia, Russia and England.



1815

Sep 28

Joachim Murat’s fleet sailed from Corsica to Naples.



1815

September

September: American painter John Singleton Copley dies at age 77.



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.



1815

Oct 8

General Joachim Murat’s forces landed at Pizzo, Italy.



1815

Oct 13

Joachim Murat, marshal of France and King of Naples (1808-15), was executed.



1815

Oct 17

Napoleon (d.1821) arrived in St. Helena.



1815

Oct 22

Ascension Island was garrisoned by the British Admiralty. For administrative purposes it was treated as a ship, the HMS Ascension.



1815

Oct 29

Daniel Decatur Emmett, the composer of “Dixie,” which became the unofficial national anthem of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, was born in Mount Vernon, Ohio. Organizer of one of the first minstrel shows, “Dixie” was written in 1859 as a concluding number, or “walk-around,” for a minstrel show. Emmett died on June 28, 1904.



1815

Oct 31

Sir Humphrey Davy of London patented miner’s safety lamp after being hired by the Society for Preventing Accidents in Coal Mines.



1815

October

October: Napoleon begins his final exile on the island of St. Helena.



1815

October

October: Sir Humphry Davy patents the miner’s safety lamp for use in coal mining.



1815

Nov 1

Crawford Williamson Long, surgeon and pioneer (use of ether), was born.



1815

Nov 2

George Boole (d.1864), English-Irish mathematician and logician (Boolean algebra), was born.



1815

Nov 3

Adrien Louis Victor Boieldieu, composer, was born.



1815

Nov 12

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a social reformer and militant feminist, was born in Johnstown, New York, and graduated from the Troy Female Seminary in 1832. She worked closely with Susan B. Anthony and served as president of the National Woman Suffrage Association. She died on October 26, 1902. She said, “The male element is a destructive force” in an address to the Women’s Suffrage Convention in Washington, D.C. in 1868.



1815

Nov 15

John Banvard, painter of the world’s largest painting (3 mile canvas), was born in NYC.



1815

Nov 20

The treaties known collectively as the 2nd Peace of Paris were concluded. Austria’s chancellor 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.



1815

Nov 25

Johann Peter Saloman (70), composer, died.



1815

Nov 27

Cracow, Poland, declared itself a free republic.



1815

Nov 28

Johann Peter Salomon (70), composer, died.



1815

November

November: A second Treaty of Paris signed, and is much harsher to France than the 1814 treaty. France is reduced to its 1790 boundaries, losing the territorial gains of the Revolutionary armies in 1790-92, which the previous treaty had allowed France to keep. It also requires France to support a 150,000-man Allied army of occupation.  



1815

Dec 10

Ada Lovelace (d. Nov 27, 1852), Lord Byron’s daughter and the inventor of computer language, was born. In 1998 the sci-fi film, “Conceiving Ada,” was directed by Lynn Hershman-Leeson.



1815

Dec 22

Spaniards executed Mexican revolutionary priest Jose Maria Morelos.



1815

Dec 31

George Gordon Meade (d.1872), Union general, was born. He defeated Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg.



1815



A Quadruple Alliance is formed to maintain the Congress System by Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia.



1815



France’s boundaries are restored back to their original 1790 dimensions with the Second Treaty of Paris.



1815



Humphrey Davy invents the miners’ safety lamp.



1815



In a final act of the The Congress of Vienna, the Austrian and Prussian monarchies are restored, the German Confederation replaces the Confederation of the Rhine, and Belgium and Holland formally unite to become the Kingdom of the Netherlands.



1815



Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm publish their second volume of Folk Tales for Children and the Home, adding 70 new fairy tales to the collection.



1815



Jane Porter publishes The Pastor’s Fireside.



1815



John McAdam’s new method for surfacing roads (a hard, durable process of crushed stone and gravel, similar to asphalt) is adopted by England. The new process came to be known as “macadamization” and roads were said to be “macadamized.”



1815



Lord Byron’s poem “She Walks in Beauty” is published in his collection Hebrew Melodies.



1815



Napoleon (The Little Corporal) escapes from Elba and marches on Paris, beginning the Hundred Days war.



1815



Napoleon is defeated at the Battle of Waterloo and exiled again, this time to the island of St. Helena.



1815



Percy Bysshe Shelley writes Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude.



1815



Portrait painter Thomas Lawrence is knighted by the Prince Regent.



1815



Russia, Austria and Prussia form the Holy Alliance.



1815



The Battle of Waterloo.



1815



The Corn Laws introduced import tariffs to support domestic grain prices against competition from less expensive foreign-grain imports, causing a significant increase in the price of grain (called “corn” in England).



1815



The English Corn Laws are enacted to restrict corn imports.



1815



The rebuilding of Brighton Pavilion by John Nash begins, replacing the neo-classical pavilion with a Mughal-inspired pleasure palace of minarets and onion domes.



1815



The Serbs revolt against Turkey in the Balkans, and their leader, Milosh Obrenovich is recognized as the Prince of Serbia by the Turks.



1815



Walter Scott publishes The Antiquary and Guy Mannering.



1815



Napoleon I of France defeated by the Seventh Coalition at the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon is exiled to St. Helena. The English Corn Laws restrict corn imports. Sir Humphry Davy patents the miners’ safety lamp. John Loudon Macadam’s road construction method adopted.



1815



Just before Easter, American David Tenant, Earl of Brentfield, finds himself in A Dangerous Dalliance with lovely artist Hannah Alexander.



1815



In the Indonesian Archepelgo, Mount Tamobra has been inactive for thousands of years, but on April 10 it begins a week of eruptions. Its debris in the stratosphere reduces sunlight. In the Northern Hemisphere in September there are days with no sunlight. Crops fail and livestock die in much of the Northern Hemisphere, creating the worst of 19th century famines.



1815



Napoleon returns to France in February. He inspires men to reach again for glory, and his final military defeat comes June 18th at the Battle of Waterloo. 



1815



Adolph Menzel (d.1905), German painter, was born. He combined elements of many styles and was considered the greatest artist in Germany at the time and was Prussia’s foremost historical artist. He was considered Germany’s French Impressionist.



1815



J.M.W. Turner made paintings in this summer renowned for their red skies. The coloration was due to the April 5 eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia.



1815



The novel “Emma,” by English writer Jane Austen (1774-1817), was published.



1815



Nathaniel Coverly Jr. and ghostwriter Nathaniel Hill Wright published a fictitious narrative of the adventures of Lucy Brewer, a “Female Marine” who disguised herself as a sailor and served as a marine in the War of 1812.



1815



John Roulstone of Sterling, Mass., penned the first 3 stanzas of the poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb” after his classmate Mary Sawyer came to school followed by her pet lamb.



1815



William Smith (d.1839), British geologist, made the 1st geological map of England and became impoverished in the process. In 2001 Simon Winchester authored “The Map That Changed the World.”



1815



The San Francisco de Asis church de Taos, New Mexico, was completed and still operates today as a parish church. It is one of the 6 adobe missions scattered along the western shoulder of the Sangre de Cristo mountains between Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico.



1815



Mackinaw Island, Michigan, was permanently signed over to the US.



1815



Jose Francisco de San Martin, governor of Cuyo, Argentina, founded a militia and prepared for an attack on Spanish royalists in Chile.



1815



Austria’s chancellor 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.



1815



The city-state of Geneva, briefly the capital of the Kingdom of Burgundy, and then a republic, became part of the Confederation of Switzerland.



1815



The British Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, warned the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, that Czar Alexander must be watched and resisted just like Napoleon.



1815



Britain passed a law severely restricting grain imports from European neighbors. Austria retaliated with tariffs on wool and cotton. Sicily raised tariffs on textiles, Sweden raised tariffs on silk, wool, cotton, iron steel and copper. English manufacturers formed the anti-Corn-Law League to lobby against the measure.



1815



Britain took action against pirate sheikhs protected by the Wahabis, later rulers of Saudi Arabia, because ships of the East India Company were attacked in int’l. waters. Britain allied with the ruler of Muscat and Oman and Mohamed Ali of Egypt.



1815



The British took over Ceylon (Sri Lanka).



1815



British debt reached 745 million pounds.



1815



Following the wars with Napoleon John Barrow, 2nd secretary to the admiralty, directed the British Navy to a campaign of exploration. In 2000 Fergus Fleming authored “Barrow’s Boys,” an account of the expeditions he generated.



1815



Nepalese soldiers, later known as Gurkhas, began serving in the British military.



1815



The first German Burschenschaft (fraternity) was founded in Jena, Germany.



1815



Authorities in Milan issued an edict that forbade gambling in the back rooms of the opera houses including La Scala.



1815



Giovanni Battista Belzoni, Italian hydraulic engineer and vaudeville entertainer, arrived in Egypt and began to search for tombs of pharaohs.



1815



As part of the post-Napoleonic settlement at the Congress of Vienna, most of Lithuania was absorbed by Russia.



1815



Switzerland became officially neutral.



1815-1820



The current Mission Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara, Ca. was built around an earlier structure damaged by earthquake. It is the 10th of California’s 21 missions and is the only one with twin towers.



1815-1848



This period in US history was later covered in the book “Waking Giant: American in the Age of Jackson” (2008), by David S. Reynolds.



1815-1862



Edwin P. Christy, originator of the popular Negro minstrel shows.



1815-1864



Eliza Farnham, American reformer: “The ultimate aim of the human mind, in all its efforts, is to become acquainted with Truth.”