The Al-Qasimi coastal tribes of the Persian…

Serbo-Russian relations improve when Russia renews the war with the Turks in 1809.

British recruits to the British East India Company (and subsequently to the Indian Civil Service) are required to learn at least one Indian language fluently.

Usman dan Fodio, an Islamic scholar and an urbanized Fulani, had been actively educating and preaching in the city of Gobir with the approval and support of the Hausa leadership of the city.

However, when Yunfa, a former student of dan Fodio, became the Sultan of Gobir, he had restricted dan Fodio's activities, forcing him into exile in Gudu.

A large number of peoples had left Gobir to join dan Fodio and as a response on February 21, 1804, Yunfa declares war on dan Fodio.

Despite some early losses at the Battle of Tsuntua and elsewhere, the forces of dan Fodio begin taking over some of the key cities starting in 1805.

The war lastesfrom 1804 until 1808 and the forces of dan Fodio are able to capture the states of Katsina and Daura, and the important kingdom of Kano in 1807 and Gobir in 1808.

The Caliphate had been founded in February 1804 at Gudu when Dan-Fodio was proclaimed Amir al-Mu'minin, defender of the faithful.

Usman dan Fodio had then declared a number of flag bearers among those following him, creating an early political structure of the empire.

Muhammed Bello, the son of dan Fodio, founds the city of Sokoto, which becomes the capital of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1809.

Henry Salt had returned to England on October 26, 1806, his journey home taking him through Egypt where he met the pasha Mehmet Ali.

Salt's paintings from the trip are used in Valentia's Voyages and Travels to India, published in 1809.

The originals of all the drawings were kept by Valentia, as also the copper plates after Salt's death

The format and style of the plates is similar to Thomas and William Daniell's work, "Oriental Scenery" (1795-1808).

Salt returns to Ethiopia in 1809 on a government mission to explore trade and diplomatic links with the Tigrayan warlord Ras Wolde Selassie.

Upon arrival, he is unable to meet with the king due to unrest in the country so instead he goes to stay with his friend the ras of Tigré.

During this venture, Salt takes on the side mission of verifying and correcting the information about the region reported by the Scottish traveler James Bruce many years earlier.

Henry Salt had returned from Abyssinia to England on October 26, 1806.

His journey home had taken him through Egypt, where he had met the pasha Muhammad Ali.

Salt's paintings from the trip are used in Valentia's Voyages and Travels to India, published in 1809.

The originals of all the drawings are kept by Valentia, as also the copper plates after Salt's death.

The format and style of the plates is similar to Thomas and William Daniell's work, "Oriental Scenery" (1795-1808).

Salt returns to Ethiopia in 1809 on a government mission to explore trade and diplomatic links with the Tigrayan warlord Ras Wolde Selassie.

Upon arrival, he is unable to meet with the king due to unrest in the country so instead he goes to stay with his friend the ras of Tigré.

During this venture, Salt takes on the side mission of verifying and correcting the information about the region reported by the Scottish traveler, James Bruce many years earlier.

Sa'ud has made annual visits to Mecca from 1805 to preside over the pilgrimage as the imam of the Muslim congregation.

Britain severely curbs the naval allies of the Wahhabis in 1809.

The Iberian Revolt Reignites After Napoleon’s Departure (January 1809)

After personally leading a campaign in Spain in late 1808, Napoleon reasserted French control, crushing several Spanish armies and capturing Madrid on December 4, 1808. However, with Austria preparing for war in Central Europe, he departed Spain in January 1809, leaving the Peninsular War in the hands of his marshals.

The Resurgence of Resistance in Iberia

As soon as Napoleon left the peninsula, the Iberian revolt reignited, fueled by:

1. The survival of Spanish and Portuguese resistance movements, particularly in rural areas.
2. The brutality of French occupation, which continued to provoke outrage.
3. British military intervention, which helped sustain local uprisings.

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Spanish and Portuguese Forces Regroup

• Spain – Despite their defeat at Tudela (November 1808) and the fall of Madrid, the Spanish armies reformed, supported by a network of guerrilla fighters who harassed French supply lines and garrisons.
• Portugal – The Portuguese insurgency strengthened as British forces under Sir John Moore and later Sir Arthur Wellesley (Duke of Wellington) intensified their efforts.

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French Occupation Under Strain

With Napoleon gone, his marshals—Soult, Victor, and Ney—were left to contain the ever-growing rebellion. However:

• The French struggled to control the countryside, as local militias and guerrillas constantly attacked French supply lines.
• French forces were spread thin, facing uprisings across Spain and Portugal.
• The British, Portuguese, and Spanish began coordinating their efforts, creating a unified front against the French occupiers.

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Conclusion – The War Enters a New Phase

Napoleon’s departure in January 1809 marked a turning point in the Peninsular War:

• The French presence in Iberia became unsustainable, as revolts flared up across the peninsula.
• Guerrilla warfare, British reinforcements, and Spanish resilience ensured that Napoleon’s hold on Spain would never be secure.
• Over the next five years, the Peninsular War would drag on, bleeding French resources and contributing to Napoleon’s ultimate downfall in 1814.

 

Italian princess Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily had been educated in the Catholic tradition, which she appears to have taken to heart.

Her mother, Maria Carolina, like her famous mother before her, Empress Maria Theresa, had made an effort to be a part of her daughter's life, though she was cared for daily by her governess, Donna Vicenza Rizzi.

As a child, Maria Amalia's mother and her aunt, Marie Antoinette, had arranged for her to be engaged to Marie Antoinette's son, the future king of France, due to which, her mother encouraged her to remember that she would someday be his queen.

Tragically, her young fiancé died in 1789.

Maria Amelia had faced chaos and upheaval from a young age.

The death of her aunt Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution and her mother's subsequent dramatic actions had emblazoned the event in the young girl's memory.

On the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, the Neapolitan court was not hostile to the movement.

When the French monarchy was abolished and her aunt and uncle were executed, her parents had joined the First Coalition against France in 1793.

Although peace was made with France in 1796, by 1798 conflict was again fierce.

It was decided that the royal family flee to the Kingdom of Sicily.

The family left Naples on December 21, 1798 on board the HMS Vanguard, a British Royal navy vessel that was in turn protected by two Neapolitan warships.

It was on board the warship that her younger brother Alberto, age six, died of exhaustion on Christmas Day, 1798.

He was buried in Palermo soon after the family arrived there; his funeral was the first official engagement his family attended in Sicily.

Forced to leave her home at the age of eighteen, Maria Amalia had spent the next few years jumping from various royal dwellings to escape turbulent times in Italy.

While in flight, she had encountered her future husband, Louis Philippe d'Orléans, also forced from his home in France due to political complications of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon.

Louis-Philippe's father, the previous Duke of Orléans, had been guillotined during the French Revolution, though he had advocated it in the early years.

The two are married in 1809, three years after they met in Italy, whereupon Marie-Amelie becomes the Duchess of Orléans.

Domenico Barbaia, who was born in Milan, began his career by running a coffee shop, and made his first fortune by creating (or at least taking the credit for creating) a special kind of coffee with frothing milk, the "Barbajada", probably the first "cappuccino."

This drink, and a variation with hot chocolate like Bicerin, had become so popular in Milan that the erstwhile waiter had benable to open a string of coffee houses in the city that all featured his novel concoction.

Barbaia has made his second fortune by buying and selling munitions during the Napoleonic wars.

Also, after the French re-allowed gambling as they advanced southwards in Italy, he had become involved in the operations as a card dealer at the La Scala opera house, but had quickly achieved the position of sub-contractor to run the entire gaming operation of the house in 1805.

With his eyes on controlling gambling opportunities further south in Italy as the French armies advanced, taking over the concession in Naples had quickly beome his preoccupation.

Arriving in the city, in 1806, he is successful enough by 1809 to take over the royal Teatro San Carlo, the major opera house, as well as the second royal theater, the Nuovo.

Nicéphore Niépce was born in Chalon-sur-Saône, Saône-et-Loire, where his father was a wealthy lawyer; this had caused the whole family to flee the French Revolution.

His elder brother Claude (1763–1828) was also his collaborator in research and invention.

He also had a sister and a younger brother called Bernard.Baptised Joseph, he had adopted the name Nicéphore, in honor of Saint Nicephorus, the ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople.

While studying at the Oratorian college in Angers, he had learned science and the experimental method, rapidly achieving success and graduating to work as a professor of the college.Niépce had served as a staff officer in the French army under Napoleon, spending a number of years in Italy and on the island of Sardinia, but ill-health had forced him to resign, whereupon he married Agnes Romero and became the Administrator of the district of Nice in post-revolutionary France.

In 1795, Niepce resigned as administrator of Nice to pursue scientific research with his brother Claude.

One source reports his resignation to have been forced due to his unpopularity.

In 1801, the brothers had returned to the family's estates in Chalon to continue their scientific research, and where they were united with their mother, their sister and their younger brother Bernard.

Here, they manage the family estate as independently wealthy gentlemen-farmers, raising beets and producing sugar.

The Niépce brothers had invented and patented the Pyréolophore, probably the world's first internal combustion engine to be built, in 1807.

This engine ran on controlled dust explosions of Lycopodium and was installed on a boat that ran on the river Saône.

(Ten years later, the brothers will be the first in the world to make an engine work with a fuel injection system.)

Coincidentally, in 1807 François Isaac de Rivaz also constructs an engine powered by internal combustion .

In 1807, the imperial government had opened a competition to receive projects of hydraulic machines to replace the original Marly Machine (located in Marly-le-Roi) that delivered water to the Palace of Versailles from the Seine river.

The machine had been built in Bougival in 1684, from where it pumped water a distance of one kilometer and raised it 150 meters.

The Niépce brothers, having conceived a new principle for the machine, improve it once more in 1809.

The machine has undergone a lot of changes in many of its parts.

The mechanisms in the system are more elaborated: its pistons joined to the advantage of being more precise; another, that is to create far less resistance.

They have tested it many times, but in December 1809 they receive a message that they had waited too long and the Emperor has taken upon himself the decision to ask the engineer Perier (1742–1818) to build a fire machine, also known as a steam engine, to operate the pumps at Marly.