1815 - Definition and Overview

Events

• January 3 - Austria, Britain, and France form a secret defensive alliance treaty against Prussia and Russia.
• January 8 - War of 1812: Battle of New Orleans
• February 3 - The first commercial cheese factory is founded in Switzerland
• February 6 - New Jersey grants the first American railroad charter to a John Stevens.
• February 26 - Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from Elba
• March 1 - Napoleon returns to France from his banishment on Elba.
• March 16 - Willem I becomes King of the Netherlands
• March 20 - Napoleon enters Paris after escaping from Elba with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000 beginning his "Hundred Days" rule.
• April 5-April 12 - Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies blows its top during an eruption event. 92,000 are killed during this eruption. The event is the cause of 1816 becoming known as the Year Without A Summer.
• June 18 - Battle of Waterloo ends the Napoleonic wars.
• June 22 - Napoleon abdicates again, restoration of Louis XVIII as King of France
• July 8 - Louis XVIII returns to Paris
• July 17 - In France, Napoleon surrenders at Rochefort to British forces.
• October 15 - Napoleon I of France begins his exile on St. Helena in the Atlantic Ocean.
• Austria, Prussia and Russia sign a Holy Alliance to uphold the European status quo.

• British missionaries arrive in New Zealand
• In Britain, use of pillory is limited to punishment for perjury
• Second wave of Amish immigration to North America

Ongoing events

• Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815)-Seventh Coalition/Hundred Days
• War of 1812 (1812-1815)

Births

• January 10 - John A. Macdonald, first Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1891)
• February 15 - Constantin von Tischendorf, Biblical scholar
• April 1 - Otto von Bismarck, German statesman
• April 1 - Edward Clark, governor of Texas (d. 1880)
• April 6 - Robert Volkmann, composer
• April 24 - Anthony Trollope, British author
• October 16 - Francis Lubbock, Governor of Texas (d. 1905)
• November 12 - Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women's rights activist
• December 21 - Thomas Couture, French painter & teacher

Deaths

• February 24 - Robert Fulton, inventor, perfected the steamboat.
• March 4 - Frances Abington - English actress
• March 5 - Franz Mesmer, developer of hypnotism
• December 3 - John Carroll, First Roman Catholic Archbishop in the U.S.
• December 7 - Michel Ney, a marshal of the French army, execution by firing squad