All Events
After their success at Valmy, French republican armies overrun much of the Austrian Netherlands
During four September days, thugs are encouraged to massacre some 1400 aristocrats and priests held in Paris prisons
Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Pacific coast of Canada, becoming the first known person to cross the north American continent
The National Convention abolishes royalty in France and establishes the first republic
The first political parties, Hamilton's Federalists and Jefferson's Republicans, emerge in the USA
George III sends Lord Macartney on an embassy to the Chinese emperor Qianlong
Beethoven leaves Bonn and goes to Vienna to study composition with Haydn
Napoleon is appointed commander of French republican forces besieging royalists, supported by an Anglo-Spanish fleet, in Toulon
Napoleon's soldiers capture Toulon and his artillery fire forces the Anglo-Spanish fleet to withdraw from the harbour
Louis XVI is guillotined after a majority of just one in the national Convention has voted for death without delay
Britain joins other European nations in war against France, mainly in naval engagements in the West Indies and Atlantic
Lord Buckingham dies and the Marble Hill estate passes to Lady Suffolk's great niece Henrietta Hotham. She lives in the house briefly and then rents it out, living some of the time in Little Marble Hill, a house built in the grounds.
Russia and Prussia agree on a second partition of Poland
Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin, enormously speeding up the process of separating cotton fibres from the seeds
Rebellion breaks out in the Vendée and a peasant army marches against republican Paris
Civil war breaks out in Corsica and Napoleon's family flees to France
George Washington lays the cornerstone for the Congress building on Capitol Hill
25-year-old Charlotte Corday gains access to prominent republican Jean-Paul Marat and stabs him in his bath
France becomes the first nation to attempt national conscription, calling up bachelors between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five
The US Congress passes Fugitive Slave Laws, enabling southern slave owners to reclaim escaped slaves in northern states
Horatio Nelson, with his ship docked in Naples, meets Lady Hamilton, wife of the British envoy
The French Convention adopts imaginative names for the months in their new republican calendar
Toussaint L'Ouverture, a former slave, joins a Spanish force invading the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti)
The Terror begins in republican France, with executions rising to more than 3000 in December
English revolutionary Thomas Paine spends nearly a year in a French prison after opposing the execution of Louis XVI