1812:
§ June 18: President Madison and the American Congress declared war on Britain. It was a war, historians will agree, that was caused by the British orders in council forbidding neutral trade with French-occupied Europe and the British impressment of sailors on American ships.
1815:
§ June 18: The Battle of Waterloo.
1819:
§ May 24th: Queen Victoria was born.
1821:
§ Passenger service was established using a steamer between Dover and Calais, which, in favourable weather, reduced the traveling time across the channel to three or four hours.
§ July 19: The coronation of George IV took place.
1822:
§ October 12: Victor Hugo married Adele Foucher.
§ Eugene Hugo, Victor's brother, went mad.
1823:
§ Hugo's first child, Léopold, was born but died within the year.
1824:
§ Louis the XVIII died, his brother, Charles X, took his place.
§ Hugo's second child, Léopoldine, was born.
1826:
§ Hugo's third child, Charles, was born.
1828:
§ Publication of Hugo's Le jour d'un Condemmne.
§ Hugo's fourth child, François-Victor, was born.
1829:
§ The Hugos lived at 11, rue Notre-Dame des Champs, Paris.
1830:
§ French Revolution of 1830; the exile of Charles X, and the entry of the "Citizen king," Louis Philippe; and the era of the bourgeois monarchy (1830-45).
§ The Hugo family moves to 9, rue Jean-Goujon, off of Champs-Élysées, Paris.
§ Adele was born.
1831:
§ Madame Hugo's affair with Sainte-Beuve was first started.
§ Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame was published.
1833:
§ Up to this year, 1833, the East India Company "brought British goods to India, exchanged them for silver, and, with the silver, obtained Chinese silks and tea for the home market." It was more than just silk and tea involved in the China trade. There developed problems between the Chinese and the British which resulted in two Opium Wars: the First (1834–1843) and the Second (1856-1860).
§ Hugo's play, Lucrece Borgia premiered in which a young, pretty and delicate actress, Juliette Drouet performed a part (Hugo and Juliette became lifelong lovers).
1834:
§ Slavery was finally made unlawful throughout all of the British territories. The British Parliament abolished slavery throughout the English Empire and "Twenty millions sterling were paid in compensation to the slave-owners ... On the First of August, 1834, all slaves in the British Empire were to become free."
1837:
§ With the death of William IV on June 20, 1837, the young Queen Victoria took the English throne and the Victorian period began and lasted into the next century, a period that was marked by peace and prosperity.
§ Eugene Hugo, Victor's brother, died.
1839:
§ In Great Britain, by 1843 there was 2,000 miles of railway; by 1848 -- 5,000. "The posting inns and postilions disappeared, and with them went the public mail-coach, and the heavy family coach" of the aristocratic households.
1840:
§ The introduction of the penny post in England.
1841:
§ First hotel in Halifax, The Halifax Hotel, was established.
1842:
§ January 11: Gas lighting first used in Halifax.
1844:
§ The first telegraph line in England was run between Paddington and Slough.
1845:
§ Victor Hugo was recognized by the political authorities; he was made a member of the Legion of Honour and a peer of France.
1846:
§ "Doulton's manufacture of cheap glazed earthenware pipes began in 1846.".
§ June 6: Claire Pradier, Juliette's daughter died at the age of twenty.
§ October 16th: In the amphitheater of the Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Thomas Green Morton, a Boston dentist, demonstrated the use of ether as an anesthetic.
1847:
§ Marx'sCommunist Manifesto published at London.
1848:
§ Another revolution in France, another new government under President Louis Napoleon; and Hugo, in 1848, is elected a deputy to the constituent assembly. The history of France will show that the birth of democracy had many false starts. President Louis Napoleon frustrated by the acts of the assembly declared himself king and took power to himself. Hugo, in the face of this development boldly asserted the rights of the democratic assembly, and did so using his pen from the safe distance of the Channel Islands.
§ September 4: Hugo's daughter, Léopoldine and her husband of seven months, Charles Vacquerie, died in a boating accident on the Seine.
1849:
§ December 10: "Napoleon-the-Little," a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was elected by the people of France to be their head of government.
1851:
§ September 1: First postage stamps went on sale in Nova Scotia.
§ September 12: First telegraphic message sent from Halifax to Quebec.
§ The first undersea cable was laid between Calais and Dover. Reuters News Service was founded in this year.
§ December 2: Coup d'état at Paris.
§ Both of Hugo's son (Charles and François-Victor) because of certain anti-government articles written by them (all of the family members wrote) were both imprisoned for a number of months.
§ Victor Hugo flees to Brussels. His wife and daughter, the Adeles, stayed behind in Paris to pay visits to the imprisoned brothers.
1852:
§ Napoleon III became Emperor of France.
§ Hugo continues his exile, taking up residence on Jersey, Channel Islands. (The move likely took place in December of 1851.).
§ July: The two Adeles, together with Auguste Vacquerie, freshly released from prison, left Paris, and, via Southampton, sailed for Jersey.
1853:
§ The American Commodore, Matthew Perry, brought his fleet of ships into the port of Yedo (Japan). Two of his ships were steam driven, a completely new invention to the Japanese.
§ David Livingstone, the missionary, began his exploration of the Zambezi.
1854:
§ The Crimean War (1854–1856): This was a war which had Russia on one side and an alliance of France, the United Kingdom, and the Ottoman Empire on the other. The battles mostly took place on the Crimean peninsula which extends into the Black Sea. This war is considered to be the first modern conflict. The Crimean War was the first one where newspaper correspondents went to the front and reported to their editors back home.
§ "The Crimean War had its effect in lesser matters. In imitation of our heroes in the trenches before Sevastopol, smoking became fashionable again after being banished from polite circles for eighty years. For the same reason beards returned after an absence from well bred society of two centuries. The typical mid-Victorian of all classes was a man with a beard and pipe."
§ June: Adele first met Pinson at Jersey.
§ September: Pinson left Jersey for England.
§ November 6: Pinson joins the British Army (West Yorkshire Militia).
1855:
§ An Edinburgh doctor, Alexander Wood, invented the hypodermic syringe.
§ August: Hugo was obliged to move from Jersey to Guernsey in the Channel Islands.
1857:
§ Henry Bessemer, an Englishman, received his patent for his process of converting pig-iron into steel.
1858:
§ March 23: Then in Ireland, Pinson was promoted to lieutenant .
§ June 8: Nova Scotia flag used for first time.
1859:
§ A general amnesty is offered in 1859, but Hugo refuses to accept it.
§ Alarm in England that France was now headed up by another Napoleon, Napoleon III, and an evasion might be launched. "The dockyards and arsenals of England were unprotected from attack; a royal commission on national defence, appointed in 1859, recommended the expenditure of £11,000,000 on coastal fortifications."
§ Darwin'sThe Origin of the Species was published.
§ In 1859, Sir Joseph Whitworth (1803-1887) "invented a gun of compressed steel, with spiral polygonal bore."
§ Though apart, Adele and Pinson corresponded with one and other, indeed, they both traveled to be together, at least twice, at Brighton, at times when Pinson was on leave.
1860:
§ January 1st, 1860: The decimal system of accounting became law in Nova Scotia. The law passed in order to provide uniform currency for Canada. The denominations were to be the dollar/cent. Pounds, shillings, and pence were no longer accepted as an alternative method of accounting.
§ Steamships of wood with paddle wheels which came into being early in the century, by this year, 1860, had been replaced by steel hulls with screw propulsion. Indeed, it was in this year that the British launched their first iron-hulled war ship, the Warrier. "... the transition from sail to steam, from wood to iron and shot to shell ..." "The race between ordnance and armour plate had begun."
1861:
§ Civil War begins with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. It began on April 12, 1861 and ended April 9, 1865. The attitude of the British authorities was definitely sympathetic to the southern cause.
§ Breech-loading cannon came into use.
§ April: Pinson's regiment goes from Ireland to Aldershot.
§ Adele slips away from home, and while every one thought she was going to meet her mother in Paris who was temporarily there, she goes instead (with her maid, Rosalie) to the Isle of Wright where she meets up with Pinson who was then at Aldershot (not very far away).
§ Autumn: The son, Charles Hugo, left Guernsey to live in Brussels.
§ December: Lt. Pinson's regiment, the 16th, is ordered to Halifax.
§ December: Pinson spends Christmas with the Hugo family at Guernsey. At her urging, by this time, Adele's father was agreeable to a marriage to Pinson, though it would not appear Pinson had made a commitment "... After her initial rejection of him, Pinson had never formally courted Adele, and he had never asked her father for permission to marry her.
§ December 14: Queen Victoria'a husband, Prince Albert dies from typhoid fever at Windsor Castle.
1862:
§ January 15: Pinson and a fellow officer, though most of the regiment had arrived a month earlier, arrived at Halifax.
§ Les Miserables is published.
1863:
§ June 2: Adele refused yet another marriage proposal by an Italian poet.
§ John Forbes, a native Nova Scotian, invents the "spring skates" and the Starr Manufacturing Company of Dartmouth goes into production.
§ July 1st-3rd, Battle of Gettysburg.
§ U.S. Emancipation Proclamation (1863).
§ Before July, Adele, again with her family thinking she was to meet up with a family member in Europe, takes ship for Weymouth, England. Then she takes passage for New York on the Great Eastern.
§ July 2: Madame Hugo with son Charles go from Paris to Guernsey. (Charles had been living in Brussels since the autumn of 1861.).
§ End of July: Adele took the New York mail packet for Halifax.
1864:
§ September 2: General Sherman captures Savannah.
§ The British infantry was at this point equipped with breech-loading rifles.
§ October: Quebec conference which leads to the federation of the Canadian provinces.
§ At the First Geneva Convention, International Rules of War were established.
§ Open-hearth process.
1865:
§ While up to now Hugo refused to accept a general amnesty and return to France, it was in this year that Hugo thought it best to move back to France.
§ The Hugo family is mailing boxes of clothes for Adele in care of Mr & Mrs Saunders at Halifax.
§ Victor Hugo is now writing to Mr. & Mrs Saunders from Guernsey.
§ April 9: General Lee surrenders to Grant.
§ April 14: Lincoln is assassinated.
§ Adele Hugo consults lawyer Motton.
§ July: Pinson's regiment goes to Jamaica.
§ September: Pinson's regiment returns to Halifax from Jamaica.
§ Halifax City Railroad comes into being, it consists of five horse drawn vehicles.
§ The first telegraph line is laid across the ocean floor from England to America. A new cable ship was employed, the largest ship afloat, the Great Eastern. Actually, the first cable was laid in 1858, but it did not work due to insulation problems.
§ "... in 1865 the steam tonnage added to Lloyd's register for the first time exceeded that of sailing ships." However, sailing vessels still hauled a lot of cargo. "Steam has ousted sail for passenger and mail traffic, but sail could compete successfully in the carriage of bulky commodities (including coal for steamships) over long distances."
1866:
§ April 10: The ship, England out of Liverpool and bound for New York hauled into Halifax Harbour. She carried 1,200 passengers besides crew. Fifty-six deaths had occurred on the crossing, all of Asiatic cholera; the bodies were towed along in boats strung out behind the vessel. A quarantine station was set up on McNab's Island. Before it was over, 300 souls were buried on the southern end of the island.
§ May 11: Pinson goes to the Barbados with his regiment.
§ Adele follows Pinson.
1868:
§ August 13: Hugo's wife, Adele's mother (Adele Foucher) died at Brussels.
§ October 6: Hugo and Juliette returned to Guernsey. "They continued to inhabit separate houses, but dined together at one or the other."
1869:
§ Pinson with his regiment goes from Barbados to England via Dublin; Adele was never to see him again.
1870:
§ March 31: Pinson married Catherine Edith Roxburgh at Hampstead, England.
§ August: Victor Hugo returns to Paris to live.
1871:
§ Hugo took a seat in the general assembly.
§ March 13: Hugo's son, Charles, died.
§ Hugo is soon at odds with forces of the right and takes his leave of France, once again; going first to Brussels and then to London (it would appear he did not stay long).
1872:
§ Adele was brought home to France to live out the rest of her days in a French mental institution.
1873:
§ December 26th: Hugo's son, François-Victor, died.
1874:
§ April 28: The remaining members of the Hugo family took apartments at Paris. "Juliette took possession of the third floor with her maid, while Madame Charles Hugo, her children, and the poet settled in the fourth." Juliette now, more than ever, took charge of the households.
1876:
§ Hugo is made a French senator.
1883:
§ Juliette Drouet died.
1885:
§ May 22: Victor Hugo died at Paris and was buried at the Pantheon, a place located on the highest point in Paris on the left bank of the Seine, a place where many of the great men of France were buried.
