Napoleon slips away from Elba with a fleet of small vessels and lands on the coast of France

Napoleon reaches Paris, already accompanied by an enthusiastic regiment that has joined him on his journey north

Scottish engineer John McAdam builds the first macadamized road, in the Bristol region of southwest England

The English and Prussian generals Wellington and Blücher defeat Napoleon in a closely fought battle at Waterloo

The first news of the victory at Waterloo is given to the British government by a private citizen, Nathan Mayer Rothschild

The rulers of Russia, Prussia and Austria form a Holy Alliance to preserve their concept of a Christian Europe

The congress of Vienna establishes a Confederation of the German States, now reduced in number to thirty-five

Napoleon, held on a British warship off Torquay and hoping now to live in Britain, becomes an instant tourist attraction

Poland becomes a kingdom of very limited independence, since the Russian tsar Alexander I is to be its king

Wellington is presented with a twice-life-size nude marble statue, by Canova, of his vanquished enemy Napoleon

English architect John Nash designs the exotic Royal Pavilion in Brighton for the Prince Regent

Jacques-Louis David, unmistakably identified as Napoleon's painter, is banished from France after the fall of the emperor and moves to Brussels

Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville has its premiere in Rome

René Laënnec, reluctant to press his ear to the chest of a young female patient, finds a solution in the stethoscope

German physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer observes and draws dark lines in the solar spectrum

On the death of Princess Charlotte, not one of seven princes has an heir to succeed to the British throne in the next generation

Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes probably his best-known poem, the sonnet Ozymandias

The first Reform congregation within Judaism is established in Germany, in the Hamburg Temple

The king of Prussia, Frederick William III, makes a bid for German leadership by turning his extensive lands into a custom-free zone (Zollverein)

In The World as Will and Idea Schopenhauer develops the bleakest possible view of the effects of the human will

Two of Jane Austen's novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, are published in the year after her death

Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, a Gothic tale about giving life to an artificial man

William Cobbett brings back to England the bones of Thomas Paine, who died in the USA in 1809

Magistrates order troops to fire on a crowd in Manchester, in what becomes known as the Peterloo massacre

Byron begins publication in parts of his longest poem, Don Juan an epic satirical comment on contemporary life