The Netherlands, forced by invasion into the French camp, is transformed into the Batavian republic

Thomas Paine publishes his completed Age of Reason, an attack on conventional Christianity

A secret Protestant group, the Orange Society, is formed in Co. Armagh to resist Irish nationalism

The 26-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte comes to public attention for his part in saving the Convention in Paris from an assault by rebels

Poland's neighbours – Russia, Prussia and Austria – are all on hand for the final partition of the kingdom

A treaty negotiated by US minister Thomas Pinckney provides a temporary resolution of disputes between Spain and the USA

In Berkeley, Gloucestershire, Edward Jenner inoculates a boy with cowpox in the pioneering case of vaccination

Napoleon Bonaparte takes command of the French army of Italy, with astonishingly successful results

French astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace publishes his nebular hypothesis, arguing that the planets formed from a mass of incandescent gas

Irish nationalist Wolfe Tone sails from France to invade Ireland with a force of 14,000 French soldiers

German physician Samuel Hahnemann coins the term 'homeopathy' and describes this new approach to medicine

Pope Pius VI is seized by a French army in Rome and is taken off to captivity in France

Samuel Taylor Coleridge says that while writing Kubla Khan he is interrupted by 'a person on business from Porlock'

By the Treaty of Campo Formio the free republic of Venice, created by Napoleon, is handed over to Austrian rule

After four years in Copenhagen, German artist Caspar David Friedrich makes his life-long home in Dresden

Austrian author Alois Senefelder, experimenting with grease and water on stone, discovers the principles of lithography

The US public is outraged by news of the XYZ Affair, in which the French ask for bribes before being willing to negotiate a treaty

Irish nationalist Wolfe Tone, convicted of treason for his failed invasion, cuts his throat to cheat the British gallows

English poets Wordsworth and Coleridge jointly publish Lyrical Ballads, a milestone in the Romantic movement

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' is published in Lyrical Ballads

The tsar, Paul I, establishes the Russian-American Company with the express purpose of developing Alaska

Haydn's oratorio The Creation has its first public performance in Vienna, in the Burgtheater

English surveyor William Smith compiles a manuscript, Order of the Strata, revealing chronology through fossils in rocks

The British parliament passes a Combination Act, classing any association of labourers as a criminal conspiracy

A Portuguese prince regent, the future John VI, rules on behalf of his deranged mother, Queen Maria