Some of the characters in the book - Sal, Amos and Spade - are methodists. The Methodist Church of Great Britain, or simply the Methodist Church, is a Protestant Christian denomination in Britain.
Another invention was the spinning jenny. Invented around 1764-1765 by James Hargreaves in Lancashire, England, the spinning jenny was a, multi-spool machine that revolutionized the textile industry. It allowed a single operator to spin multiple threads simultaneously.
Another new contraption is the spinning mule. Invented by Samuel Crompton in 1779, the spinning mule is a landmark Industrial Revolution machine that combined the moving carriage of the spinning jenny with the rollers of the water frame. It revolutionized textile production by allowing one operator to spin over 1,000 spindles of high-quality, fine cotton yarn simultaneously.
The Jacquard machine is a device fitted to a loom that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with such complex patterns as brocade, damask and matelassé. The resulting ensemble of the loom and Jacquard machine is then called a Jacquard loom.
There are also references to the French Revolution, for example, when King Louis XVI was beheaded. On January 21, 1793, Louis XVI, the former King of France, was executed by guillotine at the Place de la Révolution in Paris, marking a pivotal moment in the French Revolution. Convicted of high treason by the National Convention, he was stripped of his title and power, with his death symbolising the end of the Ancien Régime.
The characters talk about the London Corresponding Society. The London Corresponding Society (LCS) was a federation of local reading and debating clubs that in the decade following the French Revolution agitated for the democratic reform of the British Parliament. In contrast to other reform associations of the period, it drew largely upon working men (artisans, tradesmen, and shopkeepers) and was itself organised on a formal democratic basis.
There is a mention of thirty men of the London Corresponding Society were tried for treason. In 1794, key leaders of the London Corresponding Society (LCS), including Thomas Hardy, John Horne Tooke, and John Thelwall, were arrested and tried for high treason for promoting parliamentary reform. The government accused them of conspiring to overthrow the monarchy, but juries acquitted them, marking a major, though temporary, victory for radical reform movements.
Spade reads in a newspaper about Lady Worsley's lover. Seymour Dorothy Fleming (5 October 1758 – 9 September 1818), styled Lady Worsley from 1775 to 1805, was a member of the British gentry, notable for her involvement in a high-profile criminal conversation trial. Lady Worsley’s primary lover was Captain George Maurice Bisset, a wealthy neighbor, military officer, and close friend of her husband, Sir Richard Worsley. They famously eloped in November 1781. When Lady Worsley left her husband to be with Bisset, Sir Richard sued him for £20,000 in a "criminal conversation" (adultery) trial.
Roger is the first one to give a lecture in the society that Sal and the others form. His lecture is about his orrery. An orrery is a mechanical, clockwork model of the Solar System that demonstrates the relative positions and motions of planets and moons around the Sun, typically driven by gears.
The society wants to discuss the book "The Rights of Man" by Thomas Paine. Rights of Man is a book by Thomas Paine first published in 1791, including 31 articles, positing that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard the natural rights of its people. Using these points as a base, it defends the French Revolution.
Trying to hide their main aim, they come up with the idea of discussing the book Reasons For Contentment by Archdeacon Paley. Archdeacon William Paley’s Reasons for Contentment (1792/1793) is an essay addressed to the British laboring class, urging satisfaction with their social station. Paley argues that happiness is generally distributed equally across classes, as higher-status individuals often face greater anxiety, while laborers enjoy better health, sounder sleep, and, crucially, a divine, orderly, and providentially arranged social hierarchy.
An event that caused trouble was when the king's carriage was attacked by a mob, demanding bread and peace. In October 1795, a famous and chaotic series of attacks occurred on King George III’s carriage in London. This event was a major flashpoint in British history, fueled by desperate economic conditions and the political influence of the French Revolution.
Prime Minister Pitt passed two acts: The Treason Act and the Seditious Meeting Act. The Treason Act 1795 and the Seditious Meetings Act 1795 (often called the "Gagging Acts") were two repressive laws passed by the British Parliament, largely in response to the stoning of King George III and growing radical unrest. These Acts significantly restricted public speech, assembly, and political expression to protect the government.
In 1799 a new act was passed which forbid the association of workers, which was called the Combination Act. The Combination Act 1799 passed by the Parliament of Great Britain, outlawed trade unions and collective bargaining by workers, aiming to prevent "unlawful combinations". It allowed magistrates to punish workers for striking or demanding higher wages with jail time. It was replaced by a stricter version in 1800.
As trade unions were forbidden, Sal and the others created a a friendly society. A friendly society is a mutual association for the purposes of insurance, pensions, savings or cooperative banking. It is a mutual organization or benefit society composed of a body of people who join together for a common financial or social purpose.
Sal was punished with hard labour, which meant she had to beat hemp. Hard labour hemp beating was a historically brutal form of penal labor, specifically in 17th-19th century British prisons and poor-law workhouses. Prisoners, or "mill-dolls," were forced to beat tough, woody hemp stalks with heavy wooden mallets (or "beaters") to break them down into raw fiber for cordage.
On 9 November 1799 Napoleon invaded the French Parliament and appointed himself the first consult of France. he Coup of 18 Brumaire brought Napoleon Bonaparte to power as First Consul of the French First Republic. In the view of most historians, it ended the French Revolution and would soon lead to the coronation of Napoleon as Emperor of the French. This bloodless coup d'état overthrew the Directory, replacing it with the French Consulate.
The British started building martello towers to defend the country from Napoleon. Martello towers were small, circular, heavily fortified coastal artillery forts built by the British between 1804 and 1812 to defend against a threatened invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte. Over 100 were constructed, mainly along the southeast English and Irish coasts, featuring thick walls, 360-degree rotating cannons, and elevated entrances, though they were never tested in battle.
Napoleon sold Louisiana to the USA. In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte sold the 828,000-square-mile Louisiana Territory to the United States for $15 million to fund his wars against Britain and following the failure to quell a slave revolt in Saint-Domingue. The deal doubled the size of the U.S.
Deborah, Hornbeam's daughter, mentions the Ladies' Diary or Woman's Almanack. The Ladies' Diary: or, Woman's Almanack appeared annually in London from 1704 to 1841. It featured material relating to calendars etc. including sunrise and sunset times and phases of the moon, as well as important dates (eclipses, holidays, school terms, etc.), and a chronology of remarkable events.
The English beat the French at Trafalgar. The Battle of Trafalgar was a naval engagement that took place on 21 October 1805 between the Royal Navy and a combined fleet of the French and Spanish navies during the War of the Third Coalition. As part of Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom, the French and Spanish fleets combined to take control of the English Channel and provide the Grande Armée safe passage. The allied fleet, under the command of French admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve, sailed from the port of Cádiz in the south of Spain on 18 October 1805. They encountered a British fleet under Lord Nelson, recently assembled to meet this threat, in the Atlantic Ocean along the southwest coast of Spain, off Cape Trafalgar.
Spade's brother-in-law writes to him from Badajoz as he is in the militia, and he tells him about the victory against the French. In the siege of Badajoz (16 March – 6 April 1812) an Anglo-Portuguese Army under the command of the Arthur Wellesley, the Earl of Wellington besieged Badajoz and forced the surrender of the French garrison. The siege was one of the bloodiest in the Napoleonic Wars and was considered a costly victory by the British, with some 4,800 Allied soldiers killed or wounded in a few short hours of intense fighting during the storming of the breaches as the siege drew to an end.
Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated. On 11 May 1812, at about 5:15 pm, Spencer Perceval, the prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, was shot dead in the lobby of the House of Commons by John Bellingham, a Liverpool merchant with a grievance against the government. Bellingham was detained; four days after the murder, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.
Britain enraged the USA by hijacking American ships, so the USA declared war n Britain and invaded Canada. On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on Great Britain, driven by disputes over maritime rights, the impressment of American sailors, and British support for Native American resistance. This conflict, known as the War of 1812, was formally signed into law by President James Madison and aimed to protect U.S. sovereignty
In Spain Napoleon's brother, Joseph, is appointed king of Spain. Joseph Bonaparte (7 January 1768 – 28 July 1844), regnal name Joseph I, was a French statesman, lawyer, diplomat and older brother of Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1806, Napoleon made him King of Naples, and then King of Spain and the Indies in 1808.
Wellington led the war in Spain. Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was a British Army officer and statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures in Britain during the early 19th century, twice serving as Prime Minister. He was among those who ended the Napoleonic Wars in a Coalition victory when the Seventh Coalition defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
Napoleon invaded Russia. he French invasion of Russia, also known as the Russian campaign, the Second Polish War, and in Russia as the Patriotic War of 1812, was initiated by Napoleon with the aim of forcing the Russian Empire to comply with the continental blockade of the United Kingdom.
As the machines means a loss of jobs, there is a violent response from workers. A faction, called the Luddites, aimed at destroying the machines. The Luddites were 19th-century English textile workers who smashed machinery (1811–1817) to protest against industrial changes that threatened their livelihoods, wages, and skills. Contrary to popular belief, they were not anti-technology, but rather opposed machines that produced shoddy goods and exploited labor, often acting under the mythical figure "General Ludd".
Ned Ludd is the legendary person to whom the Luddites attributed the name of their movement. In 1779, Ludd is supposed to have broken two stocking frames in a fit of rage. When the "Luddites" emerged in the 1810s, his identity was appropriated to become the folkloric character of Captain Ludd, also known as King Lud or General Ludd, the Luddites' alleged leader and founder.
The Luddites were tried in York. The 1813 Luddite trials at York Castle were a series of show trials conducted in January 1813 to suppress machine-breaking textile workers in Yorkshire. Over 60 men were tried, resulting in 17 hangings—including three for the murder of mill owner William Horsfall—and several others transported to Australia, effectively breaking the movement.
When Amos decides to stand for parliament, he wants to do it as a whig. The Whigs were a major political faction in Britain (17th–19th century) favoring parliamentary supremacy and constitutional monarchy, and a prominent US political party (1834–1854) opposing Andrew Jackson. British Whigs championed industrial interests and liberal reforms, while American Whigs promoted federal infrastructure, banking, and tariffs, eventually dissolving over slavery divisions.
When Kenelm decides to join the war, he is sent to Ciudad Rodrigo. In the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, in Salamanca, the French Marshal Michel Ney took the fortified city from Field Marshal Andrés Pérez de Herrasti on 10 July 1810 after a siege that began on 26 April. Ney's VI Corps made up part of a 65,000-strong army commanded by André Masséna, who was bent on a third French invasion of Portugal.
Roger and Kit fight in the battle of Vitoria. At the Battle of Vitoria (21 June 1813), a British, Portuguese and Spanish army under the Marquess of Wellington broke the French army under King Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Jean-Baptiste Jourdan near Vitoria in Spain, eventually leading to victory in the Peninsular War.
Napoleon loses the Battle of Leipzig.The Battle of Leipzig, also known as the Battle of the Nations, was fought from 16 to 19 October 1813 at Leipzig, Saxony. The Coalition armies of Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and Russia, led by Tsar Alexander I, Karl von Schwarzenberg, and Gebhard von Blücher, decisively defeated the Grande Armée of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
Wellington's army invaded France from Toulouse. The Battle of Toulouse (April 10, 1814) was the final, costly battle of the Peninsular War, where the Duke of Wellington’s Allied army (British, Portuguese, Spanish) defeated French forces under Marshal Soult in southern France. Fought after Napoleon's initial abdication, it was a strategic victory for Wellington, forcing a French withdrawal.
The Allies entered Paris, and Bonaparte abdicated and was exiled in Elba. Napoleon's first abdication was a moment in French history when, in April 1814, the French emperor Napoleon was forced to relinquish power following his military defeat in the French campaign and his allies’ invasion.
Many British went to Brussels while in Vienna the powers divided Europe. The Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) restructured Europe after Napoleon’s 1812 downfall, creating a new balance of power among Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Britain. Key actions included reducing France to its 1792 borders, dividing Polish territory among the powers, creating a German Confederation under Austrian leadership, and enlarging the Netherlands.
One of the attendees was Lady Frances Webster, rumoured to be Wellington's mistress. Lady Frances Caroline Wedderburn-Webster (née Annesley; 1793–1837) was an Anglo-Irish woman who became a figure of scandal of the Regency period, for her supposed affairs with the leading celebrities, Lord Byron and the Duke of Wellington.
In Brussels the characters learn that Napoleon escaped from Elba. Napoleon escaped from Elba on a brig, landed in France with a thousand men, and marched on Paris, again taking control of the country.
Louis XVIII fled Paris. Louis XVIII (17 November 1755 – 16 September 1824) was King of France from 1814 to 1824, except for a brief interruption during the Hundred Days in 1815. When the Sixth Coalition first defeated Napoleon in 1814, Louis XVIII was placed in what he, and the French royalists, considered his rightful position. However, Napoleon escaped from his exile in Elba and restored the Napoleonic Empire. Louis XVIII fled, and a Seventh Coalition declared war on the French Empire, defeated Napoleon again, and again restored Louis XVIII to the French throne.
The French army heaead for Charleroi. Charleroi was a critical strategic focal point during Napoleon’s 1815 "100 Days" campaign, serving as the gateway for his surprise invasion of Belgium.
The French were defeated at Waterloo. The Battle of Waterloo, fought on June 18, 1815, near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, was Napoleon Bonaparte's final defeat. His French army was defeated by a Seventh Coalition force led by the Duke of Wellington and Prussian Marshal Blücher, ending 23 years of war and Napoleon’s reign.
No comments:
Post a Comment