1797. Bonaparte took possession of Venice, boasting an independence of fourteen centuries.
1798. Sidney Smith escaped from France after two years imprisonment.
1809. Vienna capitulated to the French, and Napoleon established his head quarters in the imperial palace of Schoenbrunn. The emperor had already quitted it, with all his family except his daughter the archduchess Maria Louisa, afterwards wife of Napoleon, who was confined to her chamber by sickness—on learning which, Bonaparte ordered that there should be no firing in that direction.
1809. Lord Wellington took Oporto by assault, and the French under Soult were compelled to retreat to Amarante.
1809. Alcantara, in Spain, taken by a division of the French under Victor, together with the British garrison.
1848. Alexander Baring, lord Ashburton, died in England, aged 78. He passed much of his youth in America, and was British embassador at Washington, to settle the Maine boundary in 1842. He acquired great wealth, and was a highly accomplished man.
1848. Posen incorporated with Germany, and the insurgent Poles disarmed.—Violent earthquake at Sienna, Italy.
1849. A crevasse was made in the levee above New Orleans flooding much of the city.
1854. The British ship Tiger, 16 guns, was captured near Odessa by the Russians, with 226 prisoners.
1855. D. J. McCord, an American lawyer, died at Columbia, S. C. He published law reports, and edited the Statutes at Large, on the death of Dr. Cooper, to whom the work was first entrusted.