30 May 1814

The First Treaty of Paris is signed, returning the French frontiers to their 1792 extent, and restoring the House of Bourbon to power.

The First Treaty of Paris was signed on May 30, 1814, between France and the victorious powers of the Sixth Coalition, which included Austria, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia. It marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the downfall of Napoleon Bonaparte’s rule as Emperor of the French.

The treaty aimed to restore peace and redraw the map of Europe after years of conflict. Its main provisions included:

France’s boundaries: France was restored to its pre-revolutionary borders, as they stood on January 1, 1792, before Napoleon’s expansionist campaigns.

Return of occupied territories: The countries that had been occupied by French forces during the Napoleonic Wars were to be returned to their pre-war rulers. This involved the return of territories to various European states, including Spain, Portugal, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and the Papal States.

Compensation for France: France was allowed to retain its overseas colonies, such as Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, and Réunion. It also received financial compensation to compensate for the loss of territories in Europe.

Restoration of monarchies: The treaty aimed to restore the monarchies that had been overthrown by Napoleon. This included the reinstatement of the Bourbon monarchy in France, with Louis XVIII becoming the King of France.

Reparations: France was required to pay reparations to the allied powers for the costs of the war. The exact amount was determined later in subsequent treaties.

Congress of Vienna: The treaty also established the Congress of Vienna, which was held from September 1814 to June 1815. The Congress aimed to negotiate and establish a long-term balance of power in Europe and redefine the political landscape after the Napoleonic era.

The First Treaty of Paris set the stage for further negotiations and agreements that would shape Europe for the next century. However, the peace would prove to be temporary, as Napoleon would later escape from exile and regain power in France for a brief period in what is known as the Hundred Days, leading to the final defeat of the French at the Battle of Waterloo and the subsequent Second Treaty of Paris in 1815.

17 October 1814

Eight people die in the London Beer Flood.

On Monday 17th October 1814, a terrible disaster claimed the lives of at least 8 people in St Giles, London. A bizarre industrial accident resulted in the release of a beer tsunami onto the streets around Tottenham Court Road.

The Horse Shoe Brewery stood at the corner of Great Russell Street and Tottenham Court Road. In 1810 the brewery, Meux and Company, had had a 22 foot high wooden fermentation tank installed on the premises. Held together with massive iron rings, this huge vat held the equivalent of over 3,500 barrels of brown porter ale, a beer not unlike stout.

On the afternoon of October 17th 1814 one of the iron rings around the tank snapped. About an hour later the whole tank ruptured, releasing the hot fermenting ale with such force that the back wall of the brewery collapsed. The force also blasted open several more vats, adding their contents to the flood which now burst forth onto the street. More than 320,000 gallons of beer were released into the area. This was St Giles Rookery, a densely populated London slum of cheap housing and tenements inhabited by the poor, the destitute, prostitutes and criminals.

The flood reached George Street and New Street within minutes, swamping them with a tide of alcohol. The 15 foot high wave of beer and debris inundated the basements of two houses, causing them to collapse. In one of the houses, Mary Banfield and her daughter Hannah were taking tea when the flood hit; both were killed.

In the basement of the other house, an Irish wake was being held for a 2 year old boy who had died the previous day. The four mourners were all killed. The wave also took out the wall of the Tavistock Arms pub, trapping the teenage barmaid Eleanor Cooper in the rubble. In all, eight people were killed. Three brewery workers were rescued from the waist-high flood and another was pulled alive from the rubble.

London Beer Flood – 19th century etching
19th century engraving of the event

All this ‘free’ beer led to hundreds of people scooping up the liquid in whatever containers they could. Some resorted to just drinking it, leading to reports of the death of a ninth victim some days later from alcoholic poisoning.

‘The bursting of the brew-house walls, and the fall of heavy timber, materially contributed to aggravate the mischief, by forcing the roofs and walls of the adjoining houses.‘ The Times, 19th October 1814.

Some relatives exhibited the corpses of the victims for money. In one house, the macabre exhibition resulted in the collapse of the floor under the weight of all the visitors, plunging everyone waist-high into a beer-flooded cellar.

The stench of beer in the area persisted for months afterwards.

The brewery was taken to court over the accident but the disaster was ruled to be an Act of God, leaving no one responsible.

The flood cost the brewery around £23000 approx. £1.25 million today. However the company were able to reclaim the excise duty paid on the beer, which saved them from bankruptcy. They were also granted ?7,250 ?400,000 today as compensation for the barrels of lost beer.

This unique disaster was responsible for the gradual phasing out of wooden fermentation casks to be replaced by lined concrete vats. The Horse Shoe Brewery was demolished in 1922; the Dominion Theatre now sits partly on its site.

26 July 1814

The Swedish–Norwegian War begins.

As early as in 1812, prior to the Napoleonic invasion of Russia, the Swedish Crown Prince Charles John had entered into an agreement with Tsar Alexander I that Russia would support a Swedish attack on Norway in order to force Denmark-Norway to cede its northern part to Sweden. The Swedish attack against Norway was rejected, however, Swedish forces were instead directed against France in Central Europe. The Swedish troops were deployed against Napoleon’s forces as a result of agreements between Charles John and diplomats from the United Kingdom and Prussia, which indicated that Norway would be ceded to Sweden after France and its allies which included Denmark-Norway were defeated.

By the Treaty of Kiel in January 1814, King Frederik VI of Denmark-Norway had to cede Norway to the King of Sweden, due to Denmark-Norway’s alliance with France, and its defeat during the later phases of the Napoleonic Wars. This treaty was however not accepted by the Norwegians.

Norwegian Constituent Assembly
Prince Christian Frederick of Denmark, heir presumptive to the thrones of Denmark and Norway and Governor-general of Norway, took the lead in the insurrection, and he called for a constitutional assembly. This adopted the liberal constitution of 17 May, which also elected Christian Frederick as the king of an independent Norway.

As the head of the new state, Christian Frederick desperately tried to gain support from the United Kingdom, or any of the other major powers within the Sixth Coalition, in order to maintain Norway’s independence. However, the foreign diplomats gave no hope for any outside support to the Norwegians.

The hostilities opened on 26 July with a swift Swedish naval attack against the Norwegian gunboats at Hvaler. The Norwegian army was evacuated and the vessels managed to escape, but they did not take part in the rest of the war. The main Swedish offensive came across the border at Halden, bypassing and surrounding the fortress of Fredriksten, and then continuing north, while a second force of 6,000 soldiers landed at Kråkerøy outside of Fredrikstad. This town surrendered the next day. This was the start of a pincer movement around the main part of the Norwegian army at Rakkestad.

On the front towards Kongsvinger the forces were more evenly matched, and the Norwegian army eventually stopped the Swedish advance at Lier on 2 August, and won another victory at Matrand on 5 August. On 3 August, King Christian Frederick reached the front at Østfold and was persuaded to change his strategy and use the 6,000 men stationed at Rakkestad in a counterattack against the Swedes. The order to counterattack was given on the 5th of August, but the order was recalled a few hours later. The Norwegian forces therefore withdrew over the Glomma river at Langnes in Askim. The last major battle of the war was fought on 9 August at the bridgehead at Langnes, where the Swedish forces once more were driven back. Sweden then attempted to outflank the Norwegian line, and successfully did so during the battle of Kjølberg Bridge on the 14th of August. The Swedes then had a clear path to Kristiania, the Norwegian capital, which made the Norwegian situation unsustainable.

Although the Norwegian Army had won at Langnes, it was nevertheless clear to both the Norwegian and Swedish military authorities that a defeat was inevitable. Even as they had managed to deliver several minor offensive blows to the Swedes, thus applying pressure on the Swedes to accept Norway as a sovereign nation, it was considered impossible to try to stop the Swedes in the long run. The Swedish offer of negotiations was therefore accepted as the war had put a heavy strain on the Norwegian finances. Every day of delay in securing Norway by the Swedes brought uncertainty to them regarding the outcome, so both parties were interested in a quick end to the war.

For the ordinary Norwegian soldier the war had seemed ill-prepared and ill-fought. The allegations of the loss were against Christian Frederick and the Norwegian general Haxthausen; the latter was accused of treason. For the Norwegian government it probably[citation needed] had been more of a matter of getting the best possible bargaining position, as without the support of major powers Norway’s independence was impossible to secure. But by agreeing to talks following the victory at Langnes they were in a situation where they could avoid an unconditional surrender.

13 July 1814

The Carabinieri, the national gendarmerie of Italy, is set up.

Inspired by the French Gendarmerie, the corps was created by King Victor Emmanuel I of Savoy with the aim of providing the Kingdom of Sardinia with a police corps. Previously, police duties were managed by the Dragoni di Sardegna Corps, created in 1726 and composed of volunteers, after French soldiers had occupied Turin at the end of the 18th century and later abandoned it to the Kingdom of Piedmont, the Royal Carabinieri Corps was instituted under the Royal Patents of 13 July 1814.

The new force was divided into divisions on the scale of one division for each province, the divisions were further divided into companies and subdivided into lieutenancies, which commanded and coordinated the local police stations and were distributed throughout the national territory in direct contact with the public.

Photo of a Carabiniere around 1875. The ‘Medal of Italian Independence’ is worn, indicating a veteran of the Risorgimento.
In 1868, the Corazzieri mounted division was formed – initially as an escort of honour for the sovereign, and since 1946 for the President of the Republic, the Italian unification saw the number of divisions increased, and on 24 January 1861 the Carabinieri were appointed the “First Force” of the new national military organization.

In May 1915 Italian troops marched to encompass South Tyrol, territory of their former allies the Austro-Hungarian empire, in the Fronte italiano campaign. The defenders had sufficient time to prepare strong fortifications there, and in the Carso theatre to the east, and the Italian regiments, under overall command of General Cadorna, found themselves repeatedly repulsed in harsh fighting. The role of the Carabinieri was to act as barrier troops, setting up machine gun posts to control the rear of the attacking regiments and prevent desertion.

17 October 1814

Eight people die in the London Beer Flood.

hith-london-beer-flood-brewery-drawing-iStock_000013377382Large-V

Late on the Monday afternoon of October 17, 1814, distraught Anne Saville mourned over the body of her 2-year-old son, John, who had died the previous day. In her cellar apartment in London’s St. Giles neighborhood, fellow Irishwomen offered comfort as they waked the small boy and awaited the arrival of their husbands and sons who toiled in grueling manual labor jobs around the city. Upstairs on the first floor of the cramped New Street tenement, Mary Banfield sat down for tea with her 4-year-old daughter, Hannah. Behind the Tavistock Arms public house on nearby Great Russell Street, 14-year-old servant Eleanor Cooper scoured pots at the outdoor water pump in the shadow of a 25-foot-high brick wall.

On the other side of the soaring barrier stood the extensive Bainbridge Street brewery of Messrs. Henry Meux and Co., which dominated the Irish enclave. Founded early in the reign of King George III and famous for its porter, the brewery produced more than 100,000 barrels of the dark-colored nectar each year.

Only two days after the catastrophe, a jury convened to investigate the accident. After visiting the site of the tragedy, viewing the bodies of the victims and hearing testimony from Crick and others, the jury rendered its verdict that the incident had been an “Act of God” and that the victims had met their deaths “casually, accidentally and by misfortune.” Not only did the brewery escape paying damages to the destitute victims, it received a waiver from the British Parliament for excise taxes it had already paid on the thousands of barrels of beer it lost.

26 July 1814

Sweden and Norway go to war. Sweden won.

Andreas_Bloch_-_Kampen_ved_Lier_1808

The Swedish–Norwegian War, also known as the Campaign against Norway, War with Sweden 1814, or the Norwegian War of Independence; was a war fought between Sweden and Norway in the summer of 1814. The war resulted in Norway entering into union with Sweden, but with its own constitution and parliament.

The hostilities opened on 26 July with a swift Swedish naval attack against the Norwegian gunboats at Hvaler. The Norwegian army was evacuated and the vessels managed to escape, but they did not take part in the rest of the war. The main Swedish offensive came across the border at Halden, bypassing and surrounding the fortress of Fredriksten, and then continuing north, while a second force of 6,000 soldiers landed at Kråkerøy outside of Fredrikstad. This town surrendered the next day. This was the start of a pincer movement around the main part of the Norwegian army at Rakkestad.

On the front towards Kongsvinger the forces were more evenly matched, and the Norwegian army eventually stopped the Swedish advance at Lier on 2 August, and won another victory at Matrand on 5 August. On 3 August, King Christian Frederick reached the front at Østfold and was persuaded to change his strategy and use the 6,000 men stationed at Rakkestad in a counterattack against the Swedes. The order to counterattack was given on the 5th of August, but the order was recalled a few hours later. The Norwegian forces therefore withdrew over the Glomma river at Langnes in Askim. The last major battle of the war was fought on 9 August at the bridgehead at Langnes, where the Swedish forces once more were driven back. Sweden then attempted to outflank the Norwegian line, and successfully did so during the battle of Kjølbergs bro on the 14th of August. The Swedes then had a clear path to Kristiania, the Norwegian capital, which made the Norwegian situation unsustainable.

Although the Norwegian Army had won at Langnes, it was nevertheless clear to both the Norwegian and Swedish military authorities that a defeat was inevitable. Even as they had managed to deliver several minor offensive blows to the Swedes, thus applying pressure on the Swedes to accept Norway as a sovereign nation, it was considered impossible to try to stop the Swedes in the long run. The Swedish offer of negotiations was therefore accepted as the war had put a heavy strain on the Norwegian finances. Every day of delay in securing Norway by the Swedes brought uncertainty to them regarding the outcome, so both parties were interested in a quick end to the war.