Napoleon abandons his army in Egypt and returns hastily to Paris at a time of great political opportunity

Napoleon contrives a military coup that ends the Directory and gives him sweeping powers as First Consul

Napoleon appoints a commission to prepare a code of civil law, which becomes known as the Code Napoléon

Italian physicist Alessandro Volta describes to the Royal Society in London how his 'pile' of discs can produce electric current

Welsh industrialist Robert Owen takes charge of a mill at New Lanark and develops it as an experiment in paternalistic socialism

Beethoven seeks medical advice for a very alarming condition, an increasing deafness

Napoleon takes a French army through the Alps before the snows have cleared, and defeats the Austrians at Marengo

Nelson and the Hamiltons visit Haydn, who composes a cantata on the Battle of the Nile for Emma Hamilton to sing

The Act of Union comes into effect, linking Ireland with Britain to form the United Kingdom

British prime minister William Pitt resigns when George III vetoes Catholic emancipation, but is recalled three years later

Horatio Nelson puts his telescope to his blind eye when the signal is given to withdraw from Copenhagen harbour

Napoleon mends France's fences with Roman Catholicism by agreeing a Concordat with Pope Pius VII

Both France and Britain, engaged against each other in the Napoleonic Wars, take the first census of their populations

Bonaparte Crossing the Alps (in 1800) is the first of several paintings by Jacques-Louis David celebrating the future emperor

The British parliament passes the first Factory Act, limiting a child's working day in a factory to twelve hours

A steam tug designed by William Symington, the Charlotte Dundas, goes into service on the Forth and Clyde canal

The treaty agreed at Amiens between France and Britain brings a welcome lull after ten years of warfare in Europe

At Heiligenstadt, near Vienna, Beethoven writes a letter, to be read only after his death, confronting the tragedy of his inexorable decline into deafness

English journalist William Cobbett launches a weekly newspaper, The Political Register, that he continues till his death in 1835

Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick drives a steam carriage in London, from Holborn to Paddington and back

The Frankfurt banker Mayer Amschel Rothschild lends 20 million francs to the Danish government

The peace of Amiens comes to an abrupt end when Britain declares war again on France

Napoleon assembles an invasion fleet against Britain, where Martello towers are hastily built in preparation

The uprising by Irish nationalist Robert Emmet ends in disaster when he marches on Dublin with only about 100 men

English chemist John Dalton reads a paper describing his Law of Partial Pressure in gases (discovered in 1801)