Including Important Events, Scientific Discoveries, The Lives of Significant Personalities, Cultural Milestones, and Sundry Oddities.

The following is the second part of an excerpt from “Incidents and Scandals of the Ghastly Age”, to be part of the upcoming hard-copy edition of the “Ghastly Affair” role-playing game. As with all the other parts of “Incidents and Scandals” series, the most shocking and lurid interpretation of events is the one given – perfect inspiration for a Gothic Game of Romantic Horror!

Also see Incidents and Scandals of the 1810s – Part I (1810 – 1812)

1813
The Seething Year

• February 3: Journalist Leigh Hunt is sentenced to Surrey County Gaol for printing unflattering information about the Prince Regent (later George IV). Since the jail is run for profit, Hunt is able to purchase comfortable lodgings, and is visited by many well-known figures (including Lord Byron), in what amounts to a prison Salon.
• February 28: Prussia formally turns against France, and allies with Russia.
• May 2: Napoleon wins a Pyrrhic victory against a combined Russian-Prussian army near Lützen.
• May 21: Napoleon wins another Phyrric victory against the Russian and Prussian armies, at Bautzen.
• June: The first edition of Lord Byron’s poem “The Giaour” is published. Taking its title from a Turkish slur word for non-Muslims, this Orientalist tale of forbidden love, cruelty, and bloody revenge is notable for a passage describing the titular character being cursed to become a vampire.
• June 21: General Arthur Wellesley leads a combined British, Spanish, and Portuguese force to victory against King Joseph Bonaparte’s army near Vitoria, Spain.
• June 26: Lord Byron’s half-sister Augusta Leigh arrives in London to meet him. He brings her to a dinner in honor of Madame de Staël, now living in England. Byron and Augusta begin a sexual relationship soon after.
• July: English fashion icon “Beau” Brummell has a public falling out with his former close friend the Prince Regent. The famously corpulent George doesn’t acknowledge “Beau” at a party, and in return Mr Brummel turns to William Arden (Baron Alvanley) and asks “Alvanley, who’s your fat friend?”
• July 5: In response to insults from her lover Lord Byron at a party, Lady Caroline Lamb slashes herself with a broken wineglass and pair of scissors.
• August 12: Declaration of war against France by the Austrian Empire.
• August 31: British, Spanish, and Portuguese soldiers pillage and destroy the Spanish city of San Sebastian.
• October 7: General Wellesley’s army enters France from Spain.
• October 19: Austrian, Prussian, Austrian and Swedish forces defeat Napoleon and his allies at Leipzig in Saxony. Over 600,000 men fight in the three-day long battle. About 100,000 are killed. Napoleon retreats to France.
• November 21: After French forces leave the country, three Dutch noblemen seize power and declare the “Principality of the United Netherlands”. They invite William Frederick, son of former Stadtholder William V, and currently in exile in England, to become Prince.
• December 17: United Grand Lodge of England formed, combining the rival Grand Lodges of Freemasonry in the United Kingdom.
• December 20: An Austrian army crosses the Rhine into France.
• December 31: London’s Westminster Bridge is now lit with gaslights.
• The Waltz, considered scandalously erotic, is introduced to England. The dance at this time is fast-paced and lively, in contrast to the slower version which will becomes popular later in the century.
• Work is finally finished on scandalous author and MP William Beckford’s fantastic home, Fonthill Abbey. The Gothic-revival house is dominated by a central tower 300 feet high. Work on the house had been ongoing since 1796, and the central tower had twice collapsed during construction.

1814
The Year of the Exiles

• January 1: A combined Russian and Prussian army crosses the Rhine into France.
• February 1: Publication of Lord Byron’s “The Corsair”, an instant best-seller.
• March 31: Paris is occupied by Coalition soldiers.
• April 11: Napoleon abdicates as Emperor of the French.
• April 13: Napoleon is exiled to the island of Elba, to rules over its 12,000 inhabitants. Before he leaves France he tells supporters he will “return with the violets”. The violet become the emblem of support for the dethroned Emperor, and Bonapartists in France wear violets to identify each other.
• April 15: Birth of Augusta Leigh’s daughter Elizabeth Medora, who bears a striking resemblance to Augusta’s half-brother Lord Byron.
• May 3: The tyrannically-minded Louis XVIII, brother of Louis XVI, arrives in Paris with a pompous procession to the Tuileries Palace.
• May 11: General Arthur Wellesley, Marquess of Wellington, is made the 1st “Duke of Wellington”.
• May 12: Madame de Staël returns to Paris, after ten years of being exiled from the city by Napoleon.
• May 30: Treaty of Paris reduces France to its 1792 borders. Venice returns to Austrian rule.
• July 21: The Spanish Inquisition is re-established. Everybody expects it.
• July 28: Sixteen-year old Mary Godwin (daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft) runs off to France with her already-married lover, Percy Shelley, and her stepsister Jane (later known as “Claire”) Clairmont. Both Mary and Percy are proponents of Free Love, and Mary had wanted herself, Percy, and Percy’s wife Harriet to live as a threesome. The current Mrs. Shelley (who had been encouraged to take lovers by her husband) was not amenable to the idea of sharing her husband.
• August: A rain of small frogs fall with a storm in Fremon, France.
• August 7: Pope Pius VII restores the Society of Jesus to official existence.
• September: Representatives of the powers of Europe begin meeting in Vienna. In their spare time between lavish dinners, dancing parties, and sex, the representatives at the “Congress of Vienna” discuss and plan the future balance of power on the Continent. The reactionary dystopia they envision for Europe restores the absolute monarchies and brutal social order that existed before the French Revolution.
• October 17: In London, a massive flood of beer pours from Meux’s Brewery on Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street. At least 8 people are killed, and many more injured. The area smells like beer well into 1815.
• December 2: Death of the Marquis de Sade at Cherenton Asylum. Shortly thereafter, his son burns his father’s unfinished manuscripts.
• December 24: Great Britain signs a peace treaty with the United Sates of America.
• The Roman Inquisition re-starts.

1815
The Year of Last Stands

• February 17: A Spanish force embarks from Cádiz to re-establish Spanish control over the rebellious American colonies.
• February 26: Napoleon Bonaparte escapes Elba on the ship Inconstant, accompanied by 1,000 troops.
• March 1: Napoleon lands in France, at Golfe-Juan in the Côte d’Azur. He proceeds to march to Paris, gathering supporters along the way. Army units sent to apprehend him defect to his side instead.
• March 19: King Louis XVIII flees Paris for Lille, but eventually leaves France altogether and settles in Ghent.
• March 20: Crowds in Paris welcome the return of Napoleon to the city.
• March 25: The United Kingdom, The Austrian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire pledge to send 150,000 troops each to depose Napoleon.
• April 10: Mount Tambora, on the island of Sumbawa (east of Java), erupts and explodes. Nearly 10,000 people in the surrounding area die as a direct result, with many perishing later from the after-effects and famine. Global temperatures plummet.
• Spring: Mass mobilization begins in France. By May the French armed forces swell from 56,000 to 198,000.
• June 15: Napoleon attacks the British and Prussian forces in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (modern day Belgium).
• June 18: Napoleon is defeated near the village of Waterloo by the combined force of a British army commanded by the Duke of Wellington and a Prussian army commanded by Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. Throughout the campaign, Blücher is convinced that a French soldier has impregnated him with an elephant. Blücher’s other delusions include the belief that his staff are French agents who are trying to kill him by super-heating the floor wherever he stays. Accordingly, he walks on tip-toe when indoors.
• June 22: The Duke of Wellington’s account of the Battle of Waterloo is published in the London Gazette.
• July 8: The Duke of Wellington’s army re-imposes King Louis XVIII on France. The Royalist “White Terror” begins. Bonapartists are purged from government and imprisoned. Prominent former supporters of Napoleon are assassinated. Royalist mobs begin lynching and massacring Bonapartists. Far-right terrorists intimidate electors into voting for Royalist candidates in the August 14th elections for the Chamber of Deputies.
• July 15: Napoleon Bonaparte surrenders to Great Britain aboard the HMS Bellerophon, anchored off Rochefort.
• September: An article in the European Magazine mentions “The Curious Vault at Stanton in Suffolk”, another case coffins moving inside a sealed burial vault in a manner similar to those in the “Chase Vault” of Barbados. The incident supposedly happened in the late 18th century, but few details are given.
• September 26: The Russian Empire, Austrian Empire, and Kingdom of Prussia form the so-called “Holy Alliance” to oppose democracy and secularism in Europe. Rumors imply that Czar Alexander I was moved to propose such an alliance under the influence of sentimental novelist turned itinerant mystic, Julie de Krüdener.
• October 7: In France, the new Chamber of Deputies is seated. Due to election tampering, the body is so improbably dominated by far-right Royalist that an embarrassed King Louis XVIII calls it the “Chambre introuvable” (Unobtainable Chamber).
• December: Polish aristocrat and author Jan Potocki kills himself with a silver bullet blessed by a priest.
• December 10: Lord Byron’s wife Anne Isabella gives birth to a daughter, Augusta Ada. In hopes of preventing her from becoming like her father, the girl’s mother forbids her from having anything to do with poetry. She is encouraged to study mathematics and science instead. In 1835 she will marry William King-Noel, the Earl of Lovelace. In the 1840s Ada Lovelace will work with Charles Babbage on his Analytical Engine, in the process creating the theoretical basis of computer programming.
• In Vienna, Franz Schubert composes his first version of the lied (piano song) “Der Erlkönig” (“The Erlking”, or “The Elf-king”), based on a poem by Goethe. The poem depicts a father doomed attempt to save his son from supernatural assault by the titular fairy.
• Venice is joined to the newly created “Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia”, with Austrian Emperor Francis I as its King.
• First publication of Robert Kirk’s 1691 manuscript treatise on Scottish beliefs about fairies and second sight, “The Secret Commonwealth”.

Including Important Events, Scientific Discoveries, The Lives of Significant Personalities, Cultural Milestones, and Sundry Oddities.

The following is an excerpt from “Incidents and Scandals of the Ghastly Age”, to be part of the upcoming hard-copy edition of the “Ghastly Affair” role-playing game. The 1810’s were a momentous decade that witnessed the institution of the British Regency, the height and fall of Napoleon’s empire, and the subsequent attempt to destroy the legacy of the French Revolution. In the middle of the decade Europe was struck by disastrous weather that contributed to the creation of an enduring classic of Gothic fiction. As with the “Incidents and Scandals of the 1780s”, I have chosen to emphasize the weird, lurid, and shocking. Use the chronology to inspire stories and backgrounds for characters, or to suggest the characteristics of an imaginary world inspired by Napoleonic Europe.

Also see Incidents and Scandals of the 1810s – Part II (1813 – 1815).

1810
The Year of Rot

• January 12: Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte formally divorces Empress Joséphine, because she is unable to produce a male heir.
• January 14: Earthquakes in Hungary.
• January 16 – 17: Red snow and live insects fall in the Taro départment of France (current day Emilia-Romagna in Italy).
• January 23: In Hamburg, a newspaper states that British diplomat Benjamin Bathurst, who mysteriously disappeared last November while traveling with a courier in Perleberg (west of Berlin), is alive and has contacted friends. The supposedly contacted friends deny receiving any correspondence.
• January 29: The French government publicly disavows any involvement in the disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst.
• February 16: An earthquake strikes Crete, and is felt as far away as central Italy and Syria. 2,000 die in the Cretan city of Heraklion (Candia).
• February 20: Andreas Hofer, leader of the Tyrolean Rebellion against the Bavarians and their French allies, is executed by firing squad in Mantua. He becomes a symbol of resistance to the French Empire.
• March 11: Napoleon marries Marie Louise of Austria by proxy at a ceremony in Vienna. The Emperor does not actually meet his new wife until March 27. Her parents, Emperor Francis II and Empress Maria Theresa (of Naples and Sicily), are the niece and nephew of executed Queen Marie-Antionette (and Queen of Naples in exile, Maria Carolina).
• May: A mysterious blood drinking beast begins draining sheep in Ennerdale, England, near the border with Scotland. Villagers begin massive hunts for whatever is responsible.
• May 31, Early Morning: Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, and the fifth son of King George III, calls for help from his servants. He claims that he was awoken by a man striking him in the head, who then also wounded him in the leg with a saber. A search of the palace reveals one of the Duke’s valets, Joseph Sellis, is lying on the bed of his locked room with his throat slashed. The inquest into Sellis’ death will find that the wound was self-inflicted, but the public widely believes that the unpopular Duke murdered Sellis. Proposed reasons range from the Duke killing Sellis to cover up an affair with Sellis’ wife, to Sellis being silenced after discovering Ernest with a homosexual lover.
• June: Publication of the first book to describe the principles of modern canning, “L’Art de conserver les substances animales et végétales” (“The Art of Preserving Animal and Vegetable Substances”). The author, Nicholas Appert, is the winner of a cash prize of 12,000 francs offered by the French army for method to keep food from rotting.
• July 8: In London, the Bow Street Runners (London’s only professional police force) raid “The White Swan”, a “molly-house” (gay male social club/brothel) located on Vere Street. They arrest 27 men (called the “Vere Street Coterie”), and 8 are formally charged with attempted sodomy.
• July 9: The Kingdom of Holland is formally incorporated into France.
• August 21: Because King Charles XIII has no heirs, French Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte is elected the next King of Sweden by the Riksdag of the Estates.
• August 25: Peter Durand is granted a British patent for preserving food using tin cans, in contrast to the glass jar employed by Nicholas Appert.
• September 12: A dog shot in Ennerdale is reputed to have been the blood-drinking beast that terrorized the area.
• September 16: Mexican priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla issues a tract calling for revolt against Spain. Peasants take up arms and begin a war for independence.
• September 27: In London, 6 members of the “Vere Street Coterie” arrested at “The White Swan” molly-house on July 8 are pilloried in the Haymarket (ironically a well-known haunt for prostitutes). The men are savagely pelted with decomposing animals, rotten vegetables, and mud.
• October 12: The citizen of Munich in Bavaria are invited to a festival celebrating the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. The event includes feasting and horse-racing. The next year the festival is repeated, creating the Oktoberfest.
• November: King George III of the United Kingdom slips back into madness. He will never recover.
• December 22: The British ship HMS Minotaur breaks up after running aground off the island of Texel in Holland. About 400 sailors die, and the remaining 130 are taken as French prisoners of war.
• The Paris Catacombs are reorganized and remodeled, with the bones stacked in aesthetically pleasing patterns. Morbidly curious visitors begin touring the tunnels.

1811
The Year of the Comet

• February 5: Due to the obvious and persistent insanity of King George III, the British Parliament formally asks George, the Prince of Wales to act as Regent. This marks the legal beginning of the English Regency.
• February 5: French forces begin laying siege to Cádiz, capital of the anti-French Spanish government. The Siege of Cádiz continues until the French retreat in August of 1812.
• March 11: Hand weavers in Arnold, Nottinghamshire smash knitting factory machinery, initiating the Luddite movement. For the next several year, England is plagued by anti-industrial riots and the vandalism of mechanized factories by people claiming to be followers of “King Ludd”.
• March 25: Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from Oxford University over his pamphlet “The Necessity of Atheism”, published earlier in the year.
• March 25: A Great Comet is discovered by Honoré Flaugergues. By September it is visible to the naked eye. It remains visible until August of 1812. There is great speculation regarding what the comet portends.
• May 12: In Derbyshire, England, chunks of ice a foot across fall from the sky.
• May 14: Severe thunderstorm strikes Glasgow, Scotland, leading to fatalities.
• May 27: The British census counts 12.6 million people living in England, Scotland and Wales, 1.6 million more than in 1801. As in the previous census, Ireland is not counted.
• July: A meteorite explodes over Heidelburg. A thick, gelatinous substance rains down from the explosion.
• Autumn: A particularly good vintage of wine is produced.
• October 30: Jane Austin’s first published work “Sense and Sensibility” is issued in three volumes, with “A Lady” listed as the author.
• December: A gale in the North Sea sinks several ships of the British Royal Navy, with 2,000 lives lost.

1812
The Year of Fatal Whims

• Jan 1: A new civil code is put into effect in the Austrian Empire.
• February 12: In France, a new system of measures, called Mesures usuelles, is introduced for commercial use. The new system combines the new metric system with pre-Revolutionary units, and the people of France are now thoroughly confused about how they are supposed to measure things.
• February 27: Lord Byron addresses the British House of Lords, speaking against industrialism and defending the Luddites who have been breaking machines to protest the loss of their jobs.
• Spring: Romantic painter John Martin’s sublimely melancholic “Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion” premieres at the Royal Academy Exhibition in London. The painting depicts a lone man desperately attempting to climb a dark landscape of jagged rocks, rushing water, and towering peaks.
• March 5: The Treaty of Paris makes peace and creates an alliance between France and Prussia.
• March 19: The Spanish Cortes (parliament) in Cadiz writes a new constitution for Spain, which would make it a constitutional monarchy. The constitution cannot be implemented, however, because Spain is still under French occupation.
• April: Lord Byron begins his affair with the cross-dressing Lady Caroline Lamb, the niece of Georgiana Cavandish, Duchess of Devonshire.
• April 6: British forces commanded by General Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington) enter the Spanish town of Badajoz after a costly siege. Looting of the town commences, as British soldiers proceed to massacre Spanish civilians who thought they were about to be liberated. Although he records his disgust privately in his journal, the General praises his troops’ conduct in battle in a letter sent to the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies.
• May 11: At 5:15 PM British Prime Minister Spencer Percival is shot to death by merchant John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons. Mister Bellingham is frustrated that the British government will not compensate him for his unjust imprisonment in Russia several years prior.
• May 23: In order to escape Napoleon’s power, Madame de Staël leaves her chateau in Coppet for Vienna. Securing an Austrian passport, she eventually makes her way to to Russia.
• June 18: The United States of America declares war on the United Kingdom over perceived mistreatment in trade matters, territorial boundaries in North America, and the impressment (kidnapping and enslavement) of American sailors to serve in the British Navy.
• June 24: Napoleon begins the invasion of Russia with his Grande Armée of over 600,000 men. Only 1 in 6 will return alive.
• August: A funeral vault belonging to the Chase family in the British colony of Barbados is opened, and the coffins within are found to be in an inexplicable state of disarray.
• August 6: British and Portuguese forces take Madrid.
• August 9: Lord Byron receives a letter from Lady Caroline Lamb, with her pubic hair enclosed.
• September 7: Napoleon wins a bloody victory in Russia at the Battle of Bordino, but loses over 30,000 soldiers.
• September 14: Napoleon enters Moscow, which has been set on fire by its Governor, Fyodor Rostopchin.
• October 19: After suffering significant defeats, the French Grande Armée begins retreating from Russia.
• October 23:In Paris, Claude François de Malet and several conspirators attempts a coup against Napoleon, under the false pretense that the Emperor has died. Malet is arrested that same day, and executed on the 29th.
• October 28: Witnesses in Havanah Park in England see a troop of phantom soldiers in the sky.
• December 30: A Prussian force under the command of General Ludwig Yorck enters into an officially unsanctioned armistice with the Russian army.
• First publication of “Kinder- und Hausmärchen” (Children’s and Household Tales) by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
• A London diamond merchant named Daniel Eliason has in his stock an enormous diamond over 45 carats in weight. The stone looks like it is cut from the French Blue stolen from the French Crown Jewels in 1792. According to rumor the stone is purchased by George, the Prince of Wales. By 1830 it will be acquired by Thomas Hope, and become the infamous Hope Diamond. Those who possesses the reputedly cursed gem are said to suffer great calamities.