OCTOBER 18.
447 B. C. Battle of Coronea; the Bœotians gained a great and most important victory over the Athenians. Clinias, the father of Alcibiades, and Tolmides, fell.
33. Agrippina, the virtuous wife of Germanicus Cæsar, died in exile of starvation. She was banished after the death of her husband.
1216. John (Lackland), king of England, died, aged 47. No prince in English history has been transmitted to posterity in darker colors; ingratitude, cruelty, and perfidy, were habitual in his character.
1547. James Sadolet, a polite and learned Italian writer and cardinal, died.
1564. Captain John Hawkins sailed from Plymouth, England, with four sail for the African coast; which was the first slave trade adventure, and the opening of that infernal commerce. The negroes were taken to Hispaniola, and sold to the Spaniards.
1605. John Riolan died; a Paris physician and writer on anatomy and medicine.
1631. Corn made a legal tender in Massachusetts, unless money or beaver were expressly stipulated.
1633. A royal declaration ordered to be read in churches, reviving in England, wakes, lawful sports and recreations, after divine service on sabbaths.
1744. The duchess dowager of Marlborough died in her 85th year, leaving many legacies. She was the famous Sarah Jennings in queen Anne's days.
1757. Rene Anthony Ferchault de Reaumur, a French philosopher, died. He gave a new construction to the thermometer which bears his name, and wrote much on the various branches of natural philosophy.
1770. John Manners died; an English nobleman, who distinguished himself at the head of the British forces in the German war, under Ferdinand of Brunswick.
1775. The Americans took Chamblee, in Canada, and for the first time captured the British colors; they also took 4 tons of powder.
1775. Falmouth, a town in the northeast part of Massachusetts, burnt. The inhabitants had obstructed some British movements, whereupon an armed vessel was sent to reduce the town to ashes. Of the dwelling houses, 139 were burnt, and 278 stores.
1783. Francis Xavier d'Oliveyra, a Portuguese statesman, died in England.
1783. The American army disbanded by proclamation.
1799. Treaty for the evacuation of Holland by the British and Russians.
1799. Three British frigates captured the Spanish galleon Santa Brigida, 36 guns and 320 men, with 1,500,000 Spanish dollars on board, and a cargo of merchandise, ivory, &c., of equal value.
1801. The Batavian republic again divided into the old provinces; the legislature was diminished to 35 deputies; the executive power extended to a council of twelve men.
1806. The French under Davoust took possession of Leipsic, in Saxony. They found there 15,000 quintals of flour, and British goods to an immense amount; sixty millions were offered as a ransom for the latter.
1809. Battle of Salamanca; the Spaniards defeated the French under Ney, and forced them to fall back with the loss of 1,500 men.
1811. The ladies of Cadiz formed a society to supply the wants of the Spanish soldiers.
1812. Action between the United States sloop of war Wasp, 18 guns, captain Jones, and British sloop of war Frolic, 22 guns; the latter captured in 45 minutes, with the loss of 30 killed, 50 wounded; Wasp had 5 killed, 5 wounded. Same day British ship Poictiers, 74 guns, came up with and captured both of them, the Wasp being
too much damaged in her rigging to escape.
1812. Battle of Poltosk; the Russians under Witgenstein and Steingel attacked the French and Germans under St. Cyr, and compelled them to retire within their entrenchments.
1812. Battle of Garalavitz; the Russians under Benningsen defeated the French, 50,000, under Murat, killed 2,500, took 1,000 prisoners, 38 cannon, 40 ammunition wagons, and a large amount of spoil, besides the great standard of honor belonging to the regiment of cuirassiers.
1812. The French abandoned the city of Moscow; Napoleon, on learning the defeat of Murat, determined to march to his support with the whole French army.
1813. Second day's battle of Leipsic; the two great armies had paused one day to prepare for this grand contest. The forces of Napoleon were not less than 180,000; those of the allies had been swelled to near 300,000. The carnage was fearful, and the French were compelled to yield before an overwhelming superiority of numbers. The loss of Bonaparte on this day, including defections and prisoners, was not less than 80,000 men, 200 cannon, and an immense amount of baggage.
1813. Theodore Koerner, the German poet, was killed in the battle of Leipsic. He is particularly celebrated for the spirited poems which he composed in the campaign against Napoleon, in which he fell.
1814. Union of Norway and Sweden.
1815. Bonaparte, the exiled emperor of France, with his suit, landed at St. Helena.
1817. Stephen Henry Mehul, an eminent French musical composer, died.
1827. The last lottery authorized by the British government, drawn in London. In that lottery there were six prizes of $133,200 dollars each.
1833. Captain John Ross, who left England in 1829 in search of a north-west passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, returned on this day, after an absence of four years, and when all hopes of his return had been given up.
1840. The ceremony of the exhumation of the body of Napoleon Bonaparte was performed at St. Helena, with great parade, in order to be conveyed to Paris. The body, which had been embalmed by French physicians previous to interment, in 1821, was found in a state of complete preservation. (See [Dec. 15].)
1841. A great flood of the Thames, caused by a succession of northerly gales; the water rose much higher than during the inundations of 1821 and 1828, and much property was destroyed.
1843. Ebenezer Elmer, an officer of the revolution, and the last survivor of the Jersey line, died at Bridgeton, aged 91.
1844. Destructive gale at Buffalo, carrying away part of the pier which protected the harbor, sinking vessels, and submerging a part of the city, by which more than fifty lives were lost.
1849. Leonidas Wetmore, an officer in the U. S. infantry, died on board a steam boat in the Mississippi. He was actively engaged in the Florida war, and participated in most of the hard fought battles of the Mexican campaign.
1850. Daniel Clark Sanders, formerly president of the university of Vermont, died, aged 82. He published a history of the Indians, and kept a meteorological register to the day of his death.
1852. Commodore McCauley, commander of the United States naval forces in the Pacific, by proclamation, withdrew his protection from American vessels proceeding to the Lobos islands for guano.
1854. Francis Burt, governor of the territory of Nebraska, died at Bellevue, aged 45. He was a native of South Carolina, and resigned the office of third auditor of the treasury at Washington for the governorship, which he held hardly two weeks after his arrival.