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

This timeline is to be used in conjunction with “Incidents and Scandals of the 1780s – Part I (1780 – 1784)”. Together they form picture of a fascinating decade, dripping with opportunities for thrilling, terrifying, and poignant stories. Naturally, it is only practical to include the most noteworthy events, along with a selection of the salacious, bizarre, and outrageous.

The chronology is a set of opportunities, not restrictions. There are many events here to inspire historical and Gothic role-playing. Perhaps a Libertine character is involved in the “Affair of the Necklace”, or a Magician is initiated in Count Cagliostro’s “Egyptian Rite” of Freemasonry. Certainly the early events of the French Revolution will suggest numerous scenarios of doomed love, daring escapes, and horrible atrocities!

Its perfectly fine to bend historical facts in the interest of a good story. For example, the real Marie-Antoinette was probably guilty of nothing more than misunderstanding the plight of the poor in France. She certainly never said “let them eat cake”. However, the petty, sex-crazed sociopath of popular imagination makes a far more interesting character!

1785
The Year of Controversies

• Winter: French Cardinal de Rohan signs a note of credit for the purchase of the diamond necklace, which he believes the Queen will actually pay off once Jeanne de la Motte delivers the jewelry to Versailles. Once Jeanne has obtained the necklace, however, her husband breaks it up and sells the diamonds in London.
• January: Count Cagliostro and Serafina arrive in Paris.
• January 7: First crossing of the English Channel in a hot air balloon.
• August 15: Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan, arrested in the “Affair of the Necklace”.
• August 18: Jeanne de la Motte is arrested, as is Nicole d’Oliva. Jeanne accuses Count Caglisostro of involvement, so he and and his wife Serafina are also arrested and thrown in the Bastille (where the Marquis de Sade is currently housed).
• October 31: Transylvanian peasant revolt begins.
• November 27: British natural philosopher John Michell proposes that certain stars could be so massive that that not even light could escape from their gravity.
• December 15: George, the Prince of Wales (and future King George IV) secretly (and illegally) marries Catholic Maria Fitzherbert.
• Autumn: Poor harvests continue in France.
• Autumn: Franz Mesmer leaves Paris, and begins wandering Europe.
• German intellectuals become embroiled in the “Pantheism Controversy” regarding the validity of Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy, and whether God is knowable through reason or faith.
• Etteilla publishes “Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées Tarots” (“How to Entertain Yourself With the Deck of Cards Called Tarot”), the first book in print to explain a complete method of divination using Tarot cards.
• Count Cagliostro arrives in Paris.
• The “Learned Pig” causes a sensation in London. The animal can apparently answer questions and do arithmetic by selecting letters from printed cards set in front of him.
• The Marquis de Sade writes “Les 120 journées de Sodome ou l’école du libertinage” (“The 120 Day of Sodom; or, the School of Libertinage”) on paper smuggled into the Bastille. The pages are pasted together into a single scroll that he hides in his cell. His intention is to write “the most impure tale ever told since our world began”. The resulting work is a catalog of the worst extremes of human depravity.

1786
The Year of Unearthed Secrets

• January 1: Nineteen-year old Anne Louise Germaine Necker marries Swedish diplomat Baron Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, becoming “ Madame de Staël”. Her father Jacques Necker was formerly “Director-General of Finance” for the King. The French intelligentsia frequent the Paris salon of her mother, Suzanne Churchod (Madame Necker).
• April 7: Bodies begin to be moved from the cemeteries in Paris into the network of abandoned mines beneath the city. The work continues every night for the next two years, until the Paris Catacombs are filled with bones.
• May 1: Premiere of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” in Vienna.
• May 31: Conclusion of the trial of the accused conspirators in “The Affair of the Necklace”, which embarrasses and scandalizes the French royal family. Jeanne de la Motte is convicted. Without warning she is dragged from her cell, publicly stripped nude, whipped, branded with a “V” on each shoulder, and imprisoned in the Salpêtrière prison. Cardinal de Rohan and Nicole d’Oliva are acquitted. Cagliostro is banished from France, and flees to London with Serafina. Despite the results of the trial and her protestations to the contrary, the public believes that Queen Marie-Antoinette was involved and actually wanted the necklace.
• June 14: The Dey of Algiers agrees to stop piracy and slave raiding against Spain, as a result of years of heavy bombardment of Algiers by the Spanish Fleet.
• Claims that the Freemasons, Bavarian Illuminati, and Jesuits conspire to control the world become current.
• Yet another poor harvest in France.

1787
The Year of the Damned

• Spring: In Naples, Sir William Hamilton’s mistress Emma Hart (already well-known as an artist’s model) begins performing her “Attitudes” for guests. Dressed in faux classical drapery, she strikes poses from Greek and Roman sculptures while audience members try to guess the reference. The performances become famous across Europe.
• May: Civil war begins in the Dutch Republic, between the pro-British supporters of Stadtholder William V of Orange and the anti-British Patriots.
  May 13: The first ship of 700 convicts leaves England to begin the colonization of Australia.
• May 22: “Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade” founded in London.
• July 8: The Marquis de Sade finishes “Les Infortunes de la Vertu” while imprisoned in the Bastille. The novel is better known by its later title, “Justine”.
• September 22: Prussian forces invade the Dutch Republic on behalf of the Orangists. A mass exodus of the Patriots to France begins.
• October 29: Premiere of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” in Prague.
• Famed jeweler and maker of automata James Cox purchases the severed head of Oliver Cromwell from drunkard and failed comedian Samuel Russell, who used to pas it around as a novelty at parties.
• Good harvest in France relives mass starvation.
• Jeanne de la Motte escapes from the Salpêtrière prison in Paris, and joins her husband in London.
• Count Cagliostro leaves London, and begins wandering Europe again.
• Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun scandalizes the art world again by exhibiting a self portrait that shows herself smiling with visible teeth, in defiance of classical standards.

1788
The Year Gone Mad

• January 22: Birth of poet George Gordon Byron, later known as Lord Byron.
• May: Severe drought across the north and west of France.
• May: In London, an unidentified man in begins stabbing attractive women on their buttocks (and sometimes faces). The press calls him “The Monster”.
• June 7: A riot breaks out in Grenoble, France, when the local government sends in troops to prevent the meeting of local nobility resisting new taxes.
• July 13: A severe storm of extraordinarily large hail strikes Paris. Some hailstones take three days to melt.
• August: The ship carrying Aimée du Buc de Rivéry disappears at sea. Rumors state that she was abducted by Barbary Pirates and sold as a harem slave to the Ottoman Turks. She is the cousin of the woman who will one day be Empress Josephine of France.
• October: King George III of Great Britain becomes obviously insane, promoting a crisis in Parliament.
• Winter temperatures across Europe fall as low as -10 Fahrenheit (@-23 Celsius).
• Food shortages again in France.
• Jacques Necker is re-instated as “Director-General of Finance” by King Louis XVI.

1789
The Year of the End

• February: The price of bread nearly doubles in Paris.
• May 5: The French Estates-General meets for the first time in 175 years. The meeting is called by King Louis XVI to help find solutions for the financial problems of the French state. The meeting becomes deadlocked over discussion of how the Estates should organize and vote.
• June 17: The Third Estate of the Estates-General, representing the commoners, declares itself to be the “National Assembly” of France. Some members of the nobility and clergy defect from their own Estates and begin meeting with the National Assembly.
• June 20: The deputies of the National Assembly are locked out of the meeting of the Estates-General. They meet instead in an indoor tennis court in the city of Versailles, where they take an oath to continue meeting until they write a constitution for France.
• June 23: King Louis XVI orders the nobility and clergy to meet together with the National Assembly.
• July 2: The Marquis de Sade shouts “They are killing the prisoners here!” from his window to the crowd around the Bastille fortress in Paris. He is quickly transferred out of the prison.
• July 9: The National Assembly renames itself the “National Constituent Assembly”, and begins writing a constitution.
• July 11: King Loius XVI dismisses Director-General of Finance Jacques Necker from his post, fueling rumors that the King intends to stop the National Constituent Assembly.
• July 14: An angry mob storms the Bastille, looking for gunpowder to arm themselves against a rumored crackdown by Royal troops. The manuscript scroll of de Sade’s “120 Days of Sodom” is found and smuggled out by a guard.
• August 4: The National Constituent Assembly of France votes to abolish all remaining feudal rights and privileges, as well as the mandatory tithe to the Church. A stipulation that peasants pay the landowners to be released from their obligations is widely ignored, and then rescinded in 1793.
• August 18: The Prince-Bishop of Liège in the Austrian Netherlands is overthrown, and a Republic is declared.
• August 26: “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” issued by the National Constituent Assembly.
• September 22: A numerically superior Ottoman army is destroyed by a combined Russian and Austrian force in Wallachia.
• October 5: 7,000 women seize arms and march from Paris to Versailles, demanding that action be taken to lower the price of bread.
• October 6: The mob occupying Versailles forces the royal family to return with it to Paris.
• October 10: French doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin addresses the National Constituent Assembly, calling for a more humane implementation of capital punishment through the creation of a machine for decapitation.
• October 24: The Austrian Netherlands is invaded by a pro-republican army from the Dutch Republic.
• December 23: The Marquis de Favras is accused in print of organizing a conspiracy to rescue the royal family from Paris, lay seige to the city, and assassinate leading reformers. The Marquis is arrested the next day.
• December 27: Count Cagliostro is arrested and imprisoned in Rome for attempting to establish Freemasonry in the city.
• Publication of Antoine Lavoisier’s “Traité élémentaire de chimie” (“Elements of Chemistry”), the first textbook of modern chemistry.
  Nobles begin fleeing France.

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

The following chronology of the 1780’s is excerpted from the complete complete Ghastly Age Timeline, to be part of the future Ghastly Companion. As the last decade of Ghastly Affair‘s Decadent Era, the 1780’s make a great starting time for new Ghastly Affair Sagas. Its a historical period filled with horrific disasters, shocking scandals, outrageous fashion, and stunning technological innovations. Then it ends with the outbreak of Revolution.

These are the events that will be discussed at salons, in coffee houses, and among the guests at parties. Presenters (or any Game Master) will find much to inspire them among the shocking and sometimes inexplicable occurrences.

The timeline is not only useful for historical gaming. If your game is set in an imaginary world inspired by the 18th century, use the Timeline to inspire the characteristics of your setting.

Because the history provided is intended to be used for Gothic role-playing, I have generally chosen to interpret controversial events in the most sensational way possible. Ghastly Affair assumes that the most lurid version of history is the correct one!

For certain events it is impossible or impractical to give exact dates. Nonetheless, such events have been included if they are noteworthy.

Note: In general, news travels no more than 50 miles (80.5 kilometers) per day. Therefore, if something happens in Paris, people in Rome won’t hear about it until at least 18 days later. News can sometimes travel up to 200 miles (322 kilometers) a day, however, if carried by homing pigeons.

Part II covers the years from 1785 to 1789.

1780
The Year of the Rising Dark

• May 19: The noontime skies become as dark as evening over Great Britain’s New England colonies, currently in a state of rebellion. The darkness lasts until the morning of May 21.
• May 30: A basement wall adjoining Les Innocents cemetery in Paris breaks from the weight of an overcrowded mass grave, and decomposing corpses spill in.
• June 2: Anti-catholic demonstrations led by Lord George Gorden devolve into violent riots and widespread looting in London.
• June 3: Rioters in London attack Newgate Prison, the Clink, and Fleet Prison, freeing hundreds of prisoners. The Bank of England is also attacked.
• June 7: Soldiers puts down the riots in London. Almost 300 rioters are killed, and over 200 are wounded. Hundreds more are arrested.
• August 24: Official use of torture ended in France by royal decree.
• September: Renowned alchemist, healer and magician Count Alessandro Cagliostro (and his gorgeous wife Serafina) arrive in Strasbourg. Clients begin flocking to attend Caglisotro’s famous séances, where messages from the spirits are delivered by child mediums. Many return from the city with stories of miraculous cures. Cagliostro soon enjoys the patronage of Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan, Bishop of Strasbourg. Cagliostro’s great rival for patients is Franz Mesmer in Paris.
• December 20: Great Britain declares war on the Dutch Republic over the Republic’s continued trade with France and the rebelling North American colonies.
• Luigi Galvani makes the legs of a dead frog move by application of metal. He attributes the effect to “animal electricity”.

1781
The Year of Wonders

• January 1: The first arched iron bridge opens across the River Severn near Coalbrookdale in England.
• February: Polish dwarf musician Józef Boruwlaski arrives in Vienna, to begin a concert tour of Europe. He is 39 inches (89 centimeters) tall. He is often referred to as “Count” Boruwlaski.
• March 13: Sir William Herschel announces his discovery of a new planet (Uranus).
• October 19: British forces surrender to a combined American and French army at Yorktown in Virginia, ending British military operations on land in North American. Naval battles continue, however.
• Popular pornography depicts French Queen Marie-Antoinette as a nymphomaniac who is both cuckolding the king with his brother, and fond of lesbian sex (the so-called “German Vice”).
• James Watt patents a steam engine that can operate at 10 horsepower.
• Court de Gébelin publishes “Le Monde primitif”, where he states that the cards used for the game of Tarot actually embodied the secret wisdom of ancient Egypt.
• Richard Payne Knight publishes “A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus”, in which he discusses the prominence and symbolism of the human genitals in ancient religion.

1782
The Wicked Year

• February: Sir Richard Worsley brings a suit for £20,000 against Captain George Bisset, on the grounds that Bisset stole his property by running off with Worsley’s wife, Lady Seymour Worsley (rumored to have 27 lovers). The resulting trial includes revelations that Sir Richard enjoyed watching his wife have sex with other men, and had been the one who wanted Bisset and Lady Worsley to become lovers in the first place.
• April 24: Announcement in London that the Irish giant Charles Byrne, who is over eight feet tall, can be seen in a room near Spring Gardens.
• May 5: Chemist and British Royal Society fellow James Price conducts his first public alchemical experiment, apparently using mysterious white and red powders to transform mercury into silver, and silver into gold. He conducts several more public demonstrations in his Guildford laboratory between May 5th and 25th.
• May 9: Anglo-Swiss painter Henry Fuseli exhibits his Gothic masterpiece “The Nightmare” at the Royal Academy of London. The painting is a sensation.
• May 17: Fearing an American-style revolt in Ireland, the British Parliament restores the independence of the Irish Parliament.
• June 13: Anna Göldi, the last person to be officially executed for witchcraft in Europe, is beheaded in Glarus, Switzerland.
• Lady Elizabeth Foster, separated from her husband, joins the household of the Duke of Devonshire and his wife, the ultra-fashionable Georgiana. The three live as a ménage à trois for the next 25 years.
• “La Grande Taverne de Londres”, the first restaurant with a menu and individual tables, opens in Paris.
• Reconstruction of Newgate Prison in London is completed. The facade is deliberately designed to inspire dread.

1783
The Year of Disasters

• February 5: An earthquake strikes Calabria. Earthquakes occur again on February 6th, February 7th , March 1st , and March 28th.
• April 8: The Crimean Khanate is annexed by the Russian Empire, putting an end to slave raids by the Crimean Taters.
• April 8: Earthquakes in Comorn, Hungary.
• May 7: Earthquakes in Portugal.
• May 12 – 31: Earthquakes again in Hungary.
• June: Irish giant Charles Byrne dies in London. Surgeon John Hunter steal’s Byrne’s body, boils the flesh from the bones, and puts the skeleton on display.
• June 3: First public flight of an unmanned hot air balloon, at Annonay, France.
• June 8: Volcanic eruptions of the Laki fissure begin in Iceland, and continue sporadically until February of 1784. One quarter of the population of Iceland eventually dies from poisoning and famine. More than half of all livestock in Iceland perish.
• June 17 : Thick, toxic haze spreads to Prague. The cloud covers Berlin by June 18, Paris by June 20, and Great Britain by June 23. The haze cause exposed people to choke, and damages plants.
• June 23: Temperatures plummet in Great Britain, with crop-killing frost.
• June 28: The sun appears red from the thick haze over Paris.
• July to August: Severe thunderstorms with numerous lightning strikes across Europe. Storms occur in Bohemia and Hungary on July 4, in Poland on July 6, in Orleans France on August 3, and across England and the Netherlands on August 30.
• July 20: Haze begins to lift from Great Britain.
• July 23: Severe thunderstorms with hail in France and Switzerland wrecks crops.
• August 2: Heat wave across England.
• August 3: Alchemist James Price commits suicide by drinking prussic acid in front of witness who believed they were about to see another demonstration of his alleged ability to transform mercury into precious metals.
• August 18: Between 8:15 and 8:30 PM a bright meteor is seen passing over eastern Scotland, England, France, and Italy before exploding into several pieces over Rome.
• September 3: Treaty of Paris formally ends the American Revolution.
• November 21: First flight of a hot air balloon with human passengers, over Paris. Famous Venetian libertine Giacomo Casanova (currently 58) is in Paris to witness the flight of the balloons, and meets with American inventor and statesman Benjamin Franklin.
• December 1: First flight of a manned hydrogen balloon, from Paris.
• December 14: Thick fog in Amsterdam, leading to many fatal accidents from people falling into canals.
• Count Caglisotro moves to the village of Riehen, outside Basel in Switzerland.
• The City of London moves the site of public executions from Tyburn to Newgate Prison.
• The “Hameau de la Reine” (Queen’s Hamlet), a collection of gardens and faux peasant cottages where Marie-Antoinette and her friends can play at being simple shepherdesses and farm girls, is constructed at Versailles. Outrage grows as the exorbitant cost of the construction becomes known.
• A minor scandal erupts in France over painter Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun’s portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette en chemise. The sheer muslin dress depicted in the portrait is considered inappropriate for the Queen of France, and a threat to the French textile industry.

1784
The Hungering Year

• Severely cold and snowy winter across Europe all winter.
• February 27: Marquis de Sade, imprisoned since 1777, is transferred to the Bastille prison in Paris.
• February 27: The mysterious diplomat, alchemist, and violinist Count Saint-Germain reportedly dies in his laboratory tower at Louisenlund, in the Duchy of Schleswig. Many of his former patrons are puzzled, because they were under the impression that he was immortal.
• Spring: Severe floods in the German states of the Holy Roman Empire.
• Summer: Con-woman Jeanne de la Motte begins a scheme to obtain the necklace commissioned by Louis XV for Madame du Barry in 1772. Claiming to be a Countess and intimate of Marie-Antoinette, she convinces her lover, Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan into buying the necklace as a gift, that she will deliver to the Queen on the Cardinal’s behalf. Since the Cardinal is out of favor at court and wants to gain the Queen’s friendship, he agrees.
• August: French King Louis XVI appoints a commission to investigate Franz Mesmer’s theory of “animal magnetism”. The commission includes ambassador Benjamin Franklin, chemist Antoine Lavoisier, and surgeon Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (who will eventually lend his name to the method by which Louis is executed). The verdict is that “animal magnetism” exists only in the mind of those who experience the phenomenon.
• August 11. In the Grove of Venus at Versailles, Cardinal de Rohan meets with a veiled figure that he believes to be Queen Marie-Antoinette. The woman gives him a rose as an apparent token of affection. In reality, the woman is Nicole d’Oliva (also known as Madame Leguay), an actress and prostitute hired by Jeanne de la Motte.
• September: Drought begins in France.
• Autumn: Poor harvests across Europe. Mass starvation.
• December 24: Count Cagliostro founds the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry, in Lyon France.