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PAGES IN CHRONOLOGY [Selected 17th-C. Events] [18th-Century to 1784] [1785-1791] [1792-1793] [1794-1795] [1796-1798] [1799-1806] [1807-1814] [1815-22] [1823-1830] [1831-1837] [1838-1851]

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1792-93
1792                      1 7 9 2 1 7 9 2 1 7 9 2		Reform: violence in France; repression in Britain (restrictions on freedom of the press). Fox gets Libel Act through Parliament; the act requires a jury and not a judge to determine libel (this act saves reformers in 1794).
		Abolition: Mass petition compaign for abolition. Commons resolves on gradual abolition by 1796. Lords delay action in favor of preliminary hearings. Boycott of sugar begins. French Revolution begins to affect mass agitation. Sierra Leone settlement renewed. Denmark decrees gradual abolition by 1803.
		Ireland: Catholic Relief Act allows Catholics to practice law. Wolfe Tone appointed to the Catholic Committee.
		Blake "Motto to the Songs of Innocence and of Experience" (dated 1792) Marriage of Heaven and Hell (The poem was dated by Blake 1790, but until recently various critics have believed that he did not finish etching the plates for this work until 1792 or alternately 1793; recent evidence confirms the 1790 date. See 1790.)
		Charlotte Smith, Desmond
		Friedrich von Schiller, On the Ground of Pleasure in the Tragic Object
		Anna Letitia Barbauld, Letter to John Bull
		Abolition: Coleridge, his Greek Sapphic Ode "Ode on the Slave Trade," written during freshman year at Cambridge
		Abolition: Edmund Burke, Sketch of a Negro Code (proposes a plan for orderly abolition and emancipation)
		Religious Controversy: Mary Hays, Cursory Remarks on an Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship (vs. Gilbert Wakefield, signed "Eusebia")
		Blake, engravings for Stedman's Narrative, of a five years' expedition, against revolted Negroes of Surinam
	January	Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
	25 January	Shoemaker Thomas Hardy starts the London Corresponding Society; the group debates for five nights--"Have we who are Tradesman, Shopkeepers and mechanics any right to seek to obtain a parliamentary reform?"
	March	France: Girondins come to power, advocating a constitutional monarchy, overthrow of the clergy, and the aggressive export of the Revolution across Europe
	11 April	Radical Whigs declare themselves "The Society of the Friends of the People"
	20 April	France declares war against Austria
	May	Society for Constitutional Information prints as a pamphlet and cheaply distributes Paine's The Rights Of Man
	21 May	George III issues a Royal Proclamation vs. seditious writings: The Rights Of Man banned; Paine charged with sedition
	24 May	Arthur Young, Travels (pro-France)
	July	Haydn meets Beethoven in Bonn and accepts him as a pupil.
		France: Girondins (moderates, advocating a constitutional monarchy) under attack from Jacobins (radicals, advocating a Republic)
	August	France: Lafayette, leader of the French National Guard, deserts; he flees to Austria after failing to control the Jacobins
	4 August	Birth of Percy Bysshe Shelley
	10 August	France: Insurrection in Paris; attack on the Tuileries Palace leading to the suspension of the King's powers, the imprisonment of the royal family, and the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly; the monarchy is overthrown
	20 August	The Coalition Armies (Austrian, Prussian, and French royalist troops) attack France
	Aug.-Sept.	France: The Commune of Paris (six ministers including Danton) tries to fend off invasion and organize elections
	2-6 Sept.	France: The "September Massacres," also called "the uprising of the Paris Commune": 12,000 political prisoners murdered following the news of the fall of Verdun (these prisoners were ordinary criminals, priests, aristocrats, counter-revolutionaries, and servants of these people)
	13 Sept.	Paine flees to France
	20 Sept.	The French win a major battle at Valmy; Coalition army retreats to the Rhine.
	21 Sept.	Newly elected National Convention abolishes the monarchy; France declared a Republic
	27 Sept.	London Corresponding Society's "Joint Address to the French National Convention"
	29 Oct.	France: Louvet denounces Robespierre all alone
	Nov.	Beethoven leaves for Vienna to study with Haydn, never returning to Bonn.
		France: France calls on other nations to revolt, pledging her assistance and fraternity
	20 Nov.	The anti-jacobin backlash: John Reeves founds the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers. They begin bringing charges of libel and sedition against pro-reform booksellers and publishers, many of whom, after spending years in prison and paying inordinate fines, emigrated to the U.S.
	Dec.	First General Convention of Scottish Reformers in Edinburgh (Muir & Palmer)
		France: Louis XVI tried for treason
	1 Dec.	King's Proclamation drawing out the British militia
	Dec.	W. Wordsworth returns to England, leaving his lover Annette Vallon
	15 Dec.	France: Annette Vallon gives birth to Caroline, her daughter by W. Wordsworth
	Dec.	Wollstonecraft leaves for France 3 weeks after her confrontation with Sophia Fuseli
	18 Dec.	Paine found guilty of sedition for The Rights Of Man (Part II) and sentenced to death (people convicted of "treason," a charge worse than "sedition," were sentenced to something worse than death: their entrails were to be cut out and burned in front of their eyes just before they were drawn and quartered)
	22 December	Whigs form a group, "Friends of the Liberty of the Press," for the purpose of defending free speech against the attack of the Reevites and other Loyalist Associations.
1793 1 7 9 3 1 7 9 3 1 7 9 3 1 7 9 3	The Terror: Terrorism in France, Alarmism in England
		France: internal factionalizing of the revolutionary movement (inciting the Terror), uprisings, and counter-revolutionary revolts. Girondins fall to the militaristic Jacobin faction headed by Jean-Paul Marat, Georges Jacques Danton, Maximilien Robespierre, the last two soon to become opponents. Feudal rights abolished without compensation to former aristocracy (aristocrats, like the clergy before them, lose their property)
		Abolition: Wilberforce's second bill for abolition passed by Commons but defeated by Lords. Commons narrowly rejects motions to reintroduce general abolition and to abolish the British foregin slave trade. A compromise is forged by slavery advocate Sir William Dundas, at the behest of Prime Minister Pitt, providing for gradual abolition by January 1, 1796. It passes 230 to 85. Decline of public agitation and abolition society activity. Britain begins campaign to capture the French slave islands. Tobago and Cape Nicolas-Mole on St. Domingue are occupied.
		Ireland: Catholic petition presented to the King.
		Charlotte Smith, The Old Manor House, The Emigrants: a Poem in Two Books
		Wollstonecraft, "Letter on the Present Character of the French Nation," not published during her lifetime (it expresses some doubt in the revolutionaries)
		Blake America a Prophecy Visions of the Daughters of Albion For Children: The Gates of Paradise (dated 1793) his Prospectus "To the Public" Blake advertises The Songs of Experience as a separate book from Innocence Marriage of Heaven and Hell (The poem was dated by Blake 1790, but until recently various critics have believed that he did not finish etching the plates for this work until 1792 or alternately 1793; recent evidence confirms the 1790 date. See 1790.)
		Thomas Spence, One Pennyworth of Pig's Meat (entitled in response to Edmund Burke's use of the phrase "the swinish multitude" to refer to the lower classes)
		W. Wordsworth's An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches published
		W. Wordsworth writes Salisbury Plain
		Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone
		Mary Hays, Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous
		Religious Controversy: Anna Letitia Barbauld, Remarks on Mr. Gilbert Wakefield's Enquiry
		Hannah More, Village Politics
		Six string quartets by Haydn appear as Opp. 71 and 74
		In 1793-4, Beethoven writes the trios for piano, violin and cello in E flat major, G major, and C minor.
	21 January	France: execution of Louis XVI
	27 Jan.-7 Feb.	Formal mourning of the British Court for Louis's death
	30 January	Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff publishes an "Appendix" to the reprint of a Sermon of 1785 which answers Paine (see also Paine, Answer to Bishop Llandaff); later in 1793, he publishes "The Wisdom and Goodness of God in Having made both Rich and Poor"
	1 February	France declares war on Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, and Spain
	11 February	England declares war on France
	14 February	William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice
	26 February	Arthur Young, The Example of France, A Warning to Britain (popular opinion in England begins to turn against France and, with it, against reform of the British government)
	February	William Frend, Peace and Union
	Feb.-Mar .	Ireland: Legislation restricting movement of arms and suppressing volunteering.
		W. Wordsworth writes his "Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff" (not published during his life); the letter is dated June 1793, but Owen and Smyser date it earlier.
	10 March	France: establishment of the Revolutionary Tribunal (according to some accounts, the unofficial beginning of the Terror; between March 1793 and July 1794, 17,000 people were executed in France)
	11 March	Revolt of La Vendée (really the beginning of Civil War in France): an uprising of French royalists vs. the Republican government
	April	Ireland: Relief Act granting Irish Catholics parliamentary franchise and certain civil and military rights. St. Patrick's [Catholic] College, Carlow, opened
	30 April	The second general convention of Scottish reformers in Edinburgh
	May	William Frend is tried by a University Court and banished from Cambridge.
		The British Critic begins publication.
	6 May	Grey's motion on reform: petitions from radical societies are presented to parliament. The petitions are dismissed as disrespectful and tabled; the motion is defeated 282 to 41.
	31 May - 2 June	France: insurrection leading to arrest of the Girondins in the 1793 National Convention
	15 June	The Association of the Friends of the Liberty of the Press has its last meeting (too heterogenous a group to hold together)
		Paine imprisoned in France (he wasn't guillotined because not a French citizen)
	13 July	France: Marat murdered in his bathtub by a knife-wielding Charlotte Corday (see 17 July)
	17 July	France: Execution of Charlotte Corday (she assassinated the revolutionary journalist Marat) officially begins the Terror
	27 July	Robespierre elected to the Committee of Public Safety
	late July	W. Wordsworth tours western England and Wales (including Salisbury Plain, Tintern Abbey, Goodrich Castle). His travel over Salisbury Plain alone on foot (and nap at Stonehenge) leads to the writing of Salisbury Plain, largely composed between now and Sept. of this year, with some work in 1794. (The poem was later revised and expanded between 1795 and 1798 as Adventures on Salisbury Plain; then further altered in 1841 as Guilt and Sorrow; or Incidents upon Salisbury Plain, pub. 1842.) He later remembers this first visit to the Tintern Abbey area in "Tintern Abbey" (1798) after a second visit calls it to mind.
	10 August	Festival of Republican Reunion; Montagnards (radical Jacobins) and sans-culottes (more of a working-class group than a political party) celebrate their collective victory over the king in 1792 and over the Girondins now
	Aug.-Sept.	Scotland: Scotch radicals Muir and Palmer are sentenced to 7-14 years transportation to Botany Bay by Chief Justice in Edinburgh, Lord Braxfield
	Sept.	Robert Burns, "Scots wha hae?" a poem responding to outrageous severity of the sentence received by Scotch radicals Muir and Palmer
	5 Sept.	France: uprising in Paris; institution of "Terror" as "the order of the day" in the National Convention
	17 Sept.	France: "The Law of Suspects"; Hébertists push through a law mandating incarceration of suspected traitors to the new regime
	25 Sept.	Felicia Browne (Hemans) born in Liverpool.
	5 Oct.	France: adoption of the revolutionary calender
	16 Oct.	Execution of Marie-Antoinette. Mme. Roland and other leading Girondins also executed this month
	19 Nov.	Scotland: a convention of Scottish and British reformers meet in Edinburgh: one of the five delegates from England, Charles Sinclair, later moved that the meeting be called "The British Convention of the Delegates of the People, associated to obtain Universal Suffrage and Annual Parliaments." Among the English reformers were Maurice Margarot and Joseph Gerrald of the London Corresponding Society; William Skirving headed up delegates from the Scottish societies
	5-6 Dec.	Margarot and Gerrald arrested; later Skirving and Sinclair; the British Convention dissolved by magistrates
		By the end of 1793, 50,000 copies of Part I and 150,000 copies of Part II of Paine's The Rights Of Man have been sold in England

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