HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-10-24T13:14:01.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Regency Masterclass, with Dr Lizzie Rogers
items: Regency Britain: an age of war and revolution
items: Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen
items: What was the global impact of the Napoleonic Wars?
items: Napoleonic Wars timeline: the key dates you need to know
items: 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Napoleonic Wars
items: The Napoleonic Wars: everything you wanted to know
items: Napoleon's planned invasion of England: what went wrong?
items: Napoleon on St Helena: how exile became the French emperor's last battle
items: Napoleon's comeback: from exile on Elba to the Hundred Days

Regency Masterclass, with Dr Lizzie Rogers
type: item
date: 2024-02-09T23:55:50.000Z
creator: Charlotte Hodgman
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: HistoryExtra Academy
subject: HistoryExtra Academy Regency Course
description: Dr Lizzie Rogers and Charlotte Hodgman explore some of the key learnings from the recent HistoryExtra Academy Regency course
encoded: View Green Video on the source website

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Regency Britain: an age of war and revolution
type: item
date: 2024-01-19T18:13:55.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: HistoryExtra Academy
subject: HistoryExtra Academy Regency Course
description: Jane Austen’s lifetime coincided with near-constant conflict and bloodshed on both sides of the Atlantic
encoded: The American Revolutionary War (1775–83) Born eight months after the outbreak of the American Revolution, Jane Austen entered a world on the brink of seismic change. Although the conflict that ended with the independence of 13 North American colonies from British rule did not affect her directly, its geopolitical legacy shaped the world in which she came of age. During the 1760s and 1770s, colonists in North America grew increasingly frustrated with taxation by Britain, and by its legislative supremacy over their lives. In 1773, the Tea Act effectively gave the East India Company a monopoly on importing tea to America – and levied taxes on that tea, payable to the British Government. In response, colonists disguised as Mohawk Native Americans boarded British ships and dumped an entire shipment of tea into Boston Harbour – a protest known as the Boston Tea Party. Westminster responded by passing the Intolerable Acts, ending local self- government and commerce in Boston. Tensions boiled over in April 1775, when British troops in Massachusetts attempted to confiscate weapons in Lexington and Concord. When they met resisting local militia, the “shot heard ‘round the world” was fired – marking the start of the Revolutionary War. The following year, on 4 July 1776, delegates from 13 colonies assembled in Philadelphia declared their independence and established the United States of America. Over the next five years, on battlefields from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, the colonists – led by figures including George Washington – fought for liberty and self-governance. And, with support from France and other European powers, the tide turned in their favour. Signing the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Britain formally recognised the US as an independent nation, ending the conflict. But the ideals championed in that war opened the era of the Atlantic Revolutions. The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) On 22 August 1791, the French colony of Saint- Domingue, on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola…

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Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen
type: item
date: 2024-01-19T18:13:04.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: HistoryExtra Academy
subject: HistoryExtra Academy Regency Course
description: Beneath the genteel surface of decorous society, unrest simmered in the world – and works – of Jane Austen
encoded: While the novels of Jane Austen might suggest an endless schedule of middle- and upper-class gaiety, disgruntlement was rumbling beneath the surface across the country – and, during this tail end of the Georgian era, it often erupted in violent, sometimes lethal protest. Not that Austen herself completely ignored what was happening in the country beyond Barton Cottage and Netherfield Park. For instance, her fifth novel, Northanger Abbey, refers to the unrest erupting in England’s larger cities. Although she writes about a riot as imagined by one of the characters, the rather visceral description depicts: “a mob of three thousand men assembling in St George’s Fields, the Bank attacked, the Tower threatened, the streets of London flowing with blood”. Whether real or imagined, Austen’s inspiration for this tableau does seem to have come from real-life events. The episode appears to be a conflation of at least two separate disturbances that occurred prior to Northanger Abbey’s publication. In 1808, perhaps 6,000 weavers from the local – and rapidly growing – textile industry in Manchester gathered in St George’s Fields to protest about the lack of a minimum wage in their trade. Eight years later, not long before Austen’s novel was published, another riot broke out in London at the end of a hitherto peaceful protest. During the violence, the rioters even planned to attack the Tower of London – so it was surely not mere coincidence that Austen’s imagined account of the unrest included the Tower being “threatened”. Fighting for fair pay The weavers’ protest in Manchester may have been violent but it did achieve a modicum of success. Though dragoons were called in to restore peace (and one protester died during this response), the rioting was replicated in surrounding towns in Lancashire, and the weavers won a small concession in the form of a modest rise in their wages. Some scholars of Jane Austen believe that the Gordon Riots of 1780 also contributed to her description i…

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What was the global impact of the Napoleonic Wars?
type: item
date: 2023-10-19T09:42:18.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Period
subject: Evergreen
description: Although the opposing sides were European, their status as imperial powers meant the Napoleonic Wars played out in many different corners of the world. Michael Rapport explores the conflict’s surprising global impact.
encoded: The Napoleonic Wars were a global conflict that in some ways anticipated the world wars of the 20th century, while still being rooted in the imperial battles of the 18th. To a great extent, they were a classic clash of early modern empires. Although Europe witnessed the bloodiest of the carnage, the involvement of Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal – all maritime and imperial powers – ensured that fighting would range across the globe. The European dimensions of the war, whether on the continent itself or overseas, have of course received ample attention from historians, but more genuinely global approaches have begun to explore how these struggles were entangled with the wider environment and context of the global regions concerned. So Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 interlocked with the politics and culture of the Middle East and the Ottoman empire. When the Franco-British rivalry in India ignited, the conflict was shaped by the relative strengths, weaknesses and aims of the Indian powers involved. Read more | Napoleonic Wars timeline: the key dates you need to know The Latin American wars of independence, which began in 1810 and were triggered by the Napoleonic Wars, were primarily shaped by local conditions. The fighting in North America during the War of 1812 may have helped to entrench American and Canadian identities, but they also involved Native Americans, whose motives were very different from those of the Europeans. The European war, in other words, was globalised because it became intertwined with longer-term rivalries and conflicts across the world – the consequences of which are explored here. The Middle East: Napoleonic-era power politics extended to Egypt and beyond “May God cause the upheaval in France to spread like syphilis to the enemies of the empire... Amen.” So wrote Ahmed Efendi, secretary to Selim III, the Ottoman sultan, in January 1792. His prayer was answered as the French Revolutionary Wars raged across most of Eur…

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Napoleonic Wars timeline: the key dates you need to know
type: item
date: 2023-10-17T06:22:27.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Period
subject: Evergreen
description: Jeremy Black charts Napoleon’s rise to power in Revolutionary France and the dramatic chain of events leading up to his final defeat at Waterloo
encoded: 20 April 1792 – Start of the French Revolutionary Wars Three years into the French Revolution, France’s Legislative Assembly declares war on Austria, fearing that it will launch an invasion in a bid to restore the absolute monarchy of Louis XVI. A Prussian-led coalition army attempts to march on Paris in September, but it is defeated at Valmy, around 108 miles from the capital. The first stage of the French Revolutionary Wars – commonly known as the War of the First Coalition – is now underway. 22 September 1792 – The French Republic is born Emboldened by the victory at Valmy, the revolutionaries abolish Louis XVI’s constitutional monarchy and proclaim the new French Republic. In November, General Charles François Dumouriez leads an army into the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium) to prevent an invasion of France via the Low Countries, defeating the main Austrian force in the region at the battle of Jemappes. 21 January 1793 – Louis XVI is executed Having been convicted of high treason, Louis XVI is beheaded by guillotine in what is now Place de la Concorde, Paris. The execution sparks outrage among the monarchies of Europe. 1 June 1794 – Britain’s ‘Glorious First of June’ With Britain now part of the coalition of powers fighting France, a fleet led by Admiral Lord Howe attacks 26 French warships sent to escort an American grain convoy into Brest. The vital convoy does reach France, but superior British gunnery costs the French seven warships (six captured and one sunk) and 5,000 casualties. 14 February 1797 – Spain is defeated at Cape St Vincent With Spain now allied to the French Republic, Britain’s Admiral Sir John Jervis (pictured below) and 15 warships attack a Spanish fleet of 27 off southern Portugal. Thanks to a melee created by the then-commodore Horatio Nelson, British captains win several individual ship encounters. Their superior rate of fire has a deadly effect and four Spanish ships are captured. 21 July 1798 – Battle of the Pyramids A young general, N…

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7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Napoleonic Wars
type: item
date: 2023-10-16T09:50:13.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Period
subject: Evergreen
subject: Family and parenting
description: Jem Duducu, author of The Napoleonic Wars in 100 Facts, reveals seven things you might not have known about the 25 years (or so) of conflict...
encoded: What were the Napoleonic Wars? The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts that occurred from 1803 to 1815, fought between France under Napoleon and a series of coalitions of European powers. Though the Napoleonic Wars are often seen as a clash of European powers fighting for dominance over the European continent, in many ways they were also an example of a global conflict before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The Napoleonic Wars are usually numbered by the coalitions that were raised against Napoleonic France between 1803 and 1815: The War of the Third Coalition, 1805–06 The War of the Fourth Coalition, 1806–07 The War of the Fifth Coalition, 1809 The War of the Sixth Coalition, 1813–14 The War of the Seventh Coalition, also known as the Hundred Days, 1815 What of the wars of the first and second coalitions? These precede the Napoleonic Wars, both being part of the French Revolutionary Wars of the 1790s. Read more | Napoleonic Wars timeline: the key dates you need to know Why did the Napoleonic Wars happen? There are many explanations, but you could consider the Napoleonic Wars to be a consequence of the French Revolutionary Wars, which concluded with the 1802 Peace of Amiens. These wars had left France in a commanding strategic position in Western Europe, “something that no other European power could tolerate, because it appeared to threaten their own strategic security”, says Michael Rapport, reader in modern European history at the University of Glasgow, who spoke to us about the Napoleonic Wars on the HistoryExtra podcast. “Any peace – which occurred in 1802 through the Treaty of Amiens – was going to be really a truce.” That peace broke down in 1803. “The Peace of Amiens wasn't really honoured by either side,” he says. Neither side really trusted each other.” Who was Napoleon? The Napoleonic Wars are named after a single man – Napoleon Bonaparte. How did a young, inexperienced artillery officer from Corsica rise to such a position of military …

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The Napoleonic Wars: everything you wanted to know
type: item
date: 2022-03-20T12:40:43.000Z
creator: Jon Bauckham
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
description: Mike Rapport tackles listener questions about the 19th-century conflicts that tore Europe apart and had repercussions across the globe
encoded: Dr Mike Rapport tackles popular search queries and listener questions about the 19th-century conflicts that tore Europe apart and triggered seismic political changes around the globe. He speaks to Jon Bauckham about the causes of the Napoleonic wars, the pivotal battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo, and the life of Napoleon Bonaparte himself. Read more | Napoleonic Wars timeline: the key dates you need to know How to download the HistoryExtra podcast Download as MP3 Explore more content from week three of our Regency course: War and Conflict, with Dr Lizzie Rogers – watching time 11 mins Uncertainty and unrest: the madness of the Regency period – reading time 8 mins Peterloo: the story of a massacre – listening time 37 mins Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen – reading time 6 mins 1816: the year without summer – reading time 9 mins Regency Britain: An age of war and revolution – reading time 6 mins The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve? – reading time 6 mins

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Napoleon's planned invasion of England: what went wrong?
type: item
date: 2021-05-06T16:43:57.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Period
description: On 2 December 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of France, and his imperial ambitions extended to the islands across the Channel. Nicholas Best explains how Napoleon intended to invade Britain, and what Britain planned to do to stop him.
encoded: Napoleon’s coronation took place in the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, on 2 December 1804. Clad from head to toe in satin and diamonds, he marched up the aisle, wearing high-heeled shoes and carrying the sceptre of Charlemagne in his right hand. He was received by the Pope, who had travelled from Rome for the enthronement. In a ceremony that was partly religious but mostly secular, Napoleon was crowned with a diadem of gold laurel leaves designed to make him look like a Roman emperor. He placed the crown firmly on his own head at the climax of the proceedings, rather than receive it from the Catholic Church, as custom demanded. The Pope looked on with barely suppressed disapproval. Afterwards, Napoleon and his wife Josephine emerged from Notre-Dame to a mixed reception from the crowds lining the streets for the procession. Whatever his military achievements, Napoleon was far from popular with the ordinary people of Paris. They enjoyed the spectacle of the coronation – all the fireworks and illuminations – but they had little real enthusiasm for Napoleon himself, as he sourly noted. If anything, they preferred his wife. It was a critical time for Napoleon. He had been declared emperor in May as a “sure means of establishing peace and quiet in France”. Despite the horrors of the French Revolution, the country was still monarchist at heart and had grown weary of the constant plots against its head of state. By making Napoleon emperor and guaranteeing the succession to his heirs, the French were hoping to put an end to the attempts on his life and secure the continuity and stability of the new regime. But there were still plenty of people in France who preferred a return of the Bourbons to the promotion of this Corsican upstart. Napoleon’s chance: why the French Revolution was Bonaparte’s big break The ending of privilege in France gave the young Napoleon the opportunity to shine in his military career, says Marisa Linton, but what really allowed him to rise to the t…

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Napoleon on St Helena: how exile became the French emperor's last battle
type: item
subject: Georgian
subject: Period
description: He’d already escaped one island internment, but Napoleon’s banishment to St Helena in 1815 was permanent. All at sea in the Atlantic, the fallen French ruler’s final years were a battle of a different kind, writes historian Julian Humphrys
encoded: The isle of St Helena, 4,500 miles from England and 1,200 miles from West Africa, was once described as being the place “further away from anywhere else in all the world”. So when, in 1815, the British government was looking for somewhere secure to house Napoleon Bonaparte – who not long before had abdicated as Emperor of France and surrendered to them – St Helena seemed the ideal place. This was the second time Napoleon had abdicated. He did so for the first on 6 April 1814; Paris had fallen to the European coalition formed against him, the Duke of Wellington had crossed the Pyrenees and invaded the south of France, and Napoleon’s marshals were no longer prepared to fight on. 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Napoleonic Wars The defeated emperor was treated relatively generously by the victorious allies. They sent him to rule the Mediterranean island of Elba and even allowed him to take a tiny army with him, chiefly drawn from his Imperial Guard. Energetic as ever, Napoleon busied himself with a series of improvements to the island’s infrastructure, but he always kept a close eye on European affairs. Aware of the growing unpopularity of the restored French monarchy, he soon decided to take a gamble. Slipping away from Elba with a small force, he landed in France near Antibes on 1 March 1815. As he headed north, the troops sent to intercept him came over to his side in droves and – on 20 March – he was back in the Tuileries Palace in Paris, which had been hastily abandoned by Louis XVIII. The nations of Europe began mobilising once more, but Napoleon struck first, attacking an allied army under Wellington and a Prussian army under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher in what is now Belgium. Napoleon initially caught his enemies on the hop, but on 18 June he was crushingly defeated at the battle of Waterloo. Four days later, after what has become known as the Hundred Days, he abdicated for a second time. View Riddle on the source website Napoleon’s immediate pla…

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Napoleon's comeback: from exile on Elba to the Hundred Days
type: item
date: 2021-05-04T07:05:21.000Z
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
description: After abdication, exile and humiliation, the ex-emperor of France was down, but not out. Soon enough, Napoleon launched his return to greatness, and to the battlefield…
encoded: The former master of Europe was now the nominal monarch of an obscure island. In exile on Elba, he was surrounded by the faded trappings of court ceremony, while the pension promised to him did not materialise. Napoleon wrote again and again to his wife Marie Louise, the daughter of the Austrian emperor, asking her to come to him. Even if she could not or would not, he begged her to send their infant son. Neither request was granted as, although he did not know it, the letters were intercepted by his wife’s family and never reached her. Napoleon's exile on Elba A Napoleon who longs for his wife and child may cut a very human figure, but he remained the ambitious, supremely self-confident gambler who had made himself emperor. As the months passed, he received regular reports on events in Europe and sensed a shift. The Bourbon King Louis XVIII, younger brother of the man beheaded in 1793, returned to rule France. Ageing, overweight and lacking charisma, he had spent the last decades as an exile in Britain. He did not know his subjects and they did not know him. The same was true of all the royalist exiles who returned with him and received plum posts in government and the army. This was no longer the France of before the Revolution. Napoleon’s soldiers resented the drastic reduction in size of the army and being made to serve under exiles who had never smelled powder. Tens of thousands of prisoners of war returned home and were left unemployed and resentful of their former captors. Civilians saw the royal court as corrupt, incompetent and arrogant. At the same time, the great powers met at the Congress of Vienna to decide the shape of Europe, where memories of their recent alliance quickly faded as old rivalries reappeared. Disputes over territory became so bitter that there were fears of war. Napoleon watched and waited, sensing the game was not yet over, and that even from defeat he could somehow turn everything around. He could not delay too long. Given time, the n…

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