Made by : Carpen Diana Minea Claudia Pascu Cristina Popa Stefania Tudor Ema

Teacher : Marian Ichim

 Content
The political world : Politics and finance Tudor Ema
: Wilkes and liberty Pascu Cristina :Radicalism and the loss of the American colonies Pascu Cristina : Ireland Pascu Cristina : Scotland Tudor Ema

Life in town and country

: Town Life Popa Stefania : The rich Carpen Diana : The countryside Carpen Diana : Family life Popa Stefania

The years of revolution : Minea Claudia

The political world

-Politics and finance-

In the 18th century Britain was free from the revolutionary atmosphere that prevailed in the 17th century. The country became more and more wealthy through trade; the middle-class and landowners lived in a mood of complacency. The power of the king continued to decline. For the first time the king's ministers became real policy-makers. In 1707 the Act of Union formally united England and Scotland. In 1714, when Queen Anne, the last of the Stuarts died, Parliament chose the German-speaking elector of Hanover who was crowned as George I. He was succeeded by his son, George II, who, like his father, had little interest in British internal affairs.

Robert Walpole

The most outstanding political leader of this time was Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), the first 'Prime Minister', who developed the idea of the Cabinet( i.e. a group of ministers who took the actual control of administration from the Crown). In Parliament a two-party system began to evolve. Those who chiefly represented the financial and mercantile interests of the cities and towns, and the progressive element in the aristocracy opposed to any interference in politics by the monarchy, were called Whigs. Those who were strongly attached to tradition and the monarchy were called Tories. The Tories were supported by the gentry, the landed aristocracy, and the Anglican Church. Walpole had skillful political influence over a wide range of domestic and foreign policy matters. He was chiefly interested in domestic affairs and was able to improve royal finances and the national economy. He reduced the national debt and lowered the land tax, which had slowed investment in agriculture. He secured passage of a Molasses Act in 1733 to force British colonists to buy molasses from British planters and ensure British control of the lucrative sugar trade. Walpole kept Britain out of war during most of his administration. A growing sentiment in Parliament for British involvement in European conflicts forced Walpole to resign in 1742.


Walpole so firmly established the Whigs that the two-party system all but disappeared from British politics for

half a century. He created a patronage system, which he used to reward his supporters with positions in an expanding and increasingly wealthy government. Opposition to patronage eventually grew within the Whig Party among those who believed that ministers had acquired too much power and that politics had grown corrupt. In 1745 a Jacobite rebellion posed a serious threat to Whig rule. Led by Charles Edward Stuart, the grandson of James II, the rebellion broke out in Scotland. The rebels captured Edinburgh and successfully invaded the north of England. The rebellion crumbled after William Augustus, who was the duke of Cumberland and a son of George II, defeated the Jacobites at Culloden Moor in Scotland in 1746. The most important of Walpole's political enemies was William Pitt " the Elder", later Lord Chatham. Chatham wanted Britain to be economically strong in the world, and he agreed with Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, who had written in 1728, "Trade is the wealth of the world .

 In 1733 France made an alliance with Spain .Chatham feared that this alliance would give France a trade advantage over Britain

the through freer trade possibilities with the Spanish Empire in South America and the Far East. England had been trying unsuccessfully to develop trade with the Spanish Empire since the days of Drake. War with France broke out in 1756. Britain had already been involved in a war against France , from 1743 to 1748, concerning control of the Austrian Empire. However , this time Chatham left Britain's ally, Prussia, to do most of the fighting in Europe. He directed British effort at destroying French trade. The navy stopped French ships reaching or leaving French ports.In spite of this,the war against France's trade went on all over the world. This gave the British control of the important fish,fur and wood trades. In defeating France, Britain eventually went on to control most of India by conquest or treaty with the princes. Many Britons started to go to India to make their fortune. But a new king,George III,came to the throne in1760. He did not wish Chatharn to continue an expensive war. In 1763 GeorgeIII made peace with France. Britain did this without informing Prussia, which was left to fight France alone. For the rest of the century, Britain's international trade increased rapidly. By the end of the century the West Indies were the most profitable part of Britain's new empire. They formed one corner of a profitable trade triangle. British made knives, swords and cloth which were taken to West Africa and exchanged for slaves. These were taken to the West Indies, and the ships returned to Britain carrying sugar which had been grown by slaves. Britain's colonies were an important marketplace in which the British sold the goods they produced, from the eighteenth century until the end of the empire in The twentieth century.

-Wilkes and liberty-

King George III

John Wilkes

 George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 1738 29 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland

from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death. He was concurrently Duke and prince-elector of BrunswickLneburg ("Hanover") in the Holy Roman Empire until his promotion to King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was the third British monarch of the House of Hanover, but unlike his two Hanoverian predecessors he was born in Britain, spoke English as his first language, and never visited Hanover. He wanted to take a more active part in governing Britain , and in particular he wished to be free to choose his own ministers. As long as he worked with the small number of aristocrats from which the king's ministers were chosen, and who controlled Parliament, it did not seem as if he would have much difficulty. Parliament still represented only a very small number of people. In the eighteenth century only house owners with a certain income had the right to vote . This was based on ownership of land worth forty shillings a year in the counties, but the amount varied from town to town. As a result ,while 'the mid-century population of Britain was almost eight million, there were fewer than 250,000 voters, 160,000 of them in the counties and 85,000 in the towns or "boroughs" . Only 55 of the 200 boroughs had more than 500 voters. This meant that bargains could be made between the two most powerful groups of people in each "constituency", allowing the chosen representative of each group to be returned to Parliament. Politics was a matter only for a small number of the gentry who had close connections with this political aristocracy. No one could describe Parliament in those days as democratic. However , there was one MP, John Wilkes, who saw things differently.


Wilkes was a Whig, and did not like the new government of George III. Unlike almost every other MP, Wilkes also

believed that politics should be open to free discussion by everyone . Free speech , he believed, was the basic right of every individual. When George III made peace with France in 1763 with out telling his ally Frederick of Prussia, Wilkes printed a strong attack on the government in his own newspaper, The North Briton. The king and his ministers were extremely angry. They were unwilling to accept free speech of this kind . Wilkes was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London and all his private papers were taken from his home . Wilkes fought back when he was tried in court. The government claimed it had arrested Wilkes "of state necessity". The judge turned down this argument with the famous judgement that "public policy is not an argument in a court of law". Wilkes won his case and was released. His victory established principles of the greatest importance: that the freedom of the individual is more important than the interests of the state, and that no one could be arrested without a proper reason. Government was not free to arrest whom it chose. Government, too, was under the law. Wilkes's victory angered the king, but made Wilkes the most popular man in London. As a result of his victory, people began to organise political activities outside Parliament in order to win their basic rights. Politics were no longer a monopoly of the landowning gentry. Newspapers were allowed to send their own reporters to listen to Parliament and write about its discussions in the newspapers. The age of public opinion had arrived.

-Radicalism and the loss of the American colonies-

In 1764 there was a serious quarrel over taxation between the British government and its colonies in America.

It was a perfect example of the kind of freedom for which Wilkes had been fighting. The British government continued to think of the colonists as British subjects. In 1700 there had been only 200,000 colonists, but by 1770 there were 2.5 million. Such large numbers needed to be dealt with carefully. Some American colonists decided that it was not lawful for the British to tax them without their agreement. Political opinion in Britain was divided. Some felt that the tax was fair because the money would be used to pay for the defense of the American colonies against French attack. But several important politicians, including Wilkes and Chatham, agreed with the colonists that there should be no taxation without representation". In 1773 a group of colonists at the port of Boston threw a shipload of tea into the sea rather than pay tax on it. The event became known as "the Boston Teapartv". The British government answered by closing the port. But the colonists then decided to prevent British goods from entering America until the port was opened again . This was rebellion, and the government decided to defeat it by force . The American War of Independence had begun and lasted from 1775 until 1783.

 The American Revolutionary War was the culmination of the civil and political American Revolution resulting from the American

Enlightenment. Creating self-governing provinces, they circumvented the British ruling apparatus in each colony by 1774. Armed conflict between British regulars and colonial militiamen broke out at the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. After petitions to the Crown for intervention with Parliament were ignored, the rebel leaders were declared traitors by the Crown and a year of fighting ensued. The colonies declared their independence in July 1776, listing grievances against the British king and legislature while asking the support of the populace. Among George's other offences, the Declaration charged, "He has abdicated Government here ... He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people." The gilded equestrian statue of George III in New York was pulled down. The British captured the city in 1776, but lost Boston, and the grand strategic plan of invading from Canada and cutting off New England failed with the surrender of the British Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne at the Battle of Saratoga. As late as the Siege of Charleston in 1780, Loyalists could still believe in their eventual victory, as British troops inflicted heavy defeats on the Continental forces at the Battle of Camden and the Battle of Guilford Court House. In late 1781, the news of Lord Cornwallis's surrender at the Siege of Yorktown reached London; Lord North's parliamentary support ebbed away and he resigned the following year. The King drafted an abdication notice, which was never delivered, finally accepted the defeat in North America, and authorised the negotiation of a peace. The Treaties of Paris, by which Britain recognised the independence of the American states and returned Florida to Spain, were ratified in 1783. When John Adams was appointed American Minister to London in 1785, George had become resigned to the new relationship between his country and the former colonies. He told Adams, "I was the last to consent to the separation; but the separation having been made and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power."

The Boston Teaparty

-Ireland-

James II's defeat by William of Orange in 1690 had severe and long-term effects on the Irish people. Over the next half century the Protestant parliament in Dublin passed laws to prevent the Catholics from taking any part in national life. Catholics could not become members of the Dublin parliament, and could not vote in parliamentary elections. No Catholic could become a lawyer, go to university, join the navy or accept any public post. Catholics were not even allowed to own a horse worth more than 5. It was impossible for Catholics to have their children educated according to their religion, because Catholic schools were forbidden. Although there were still far more Catholics than Protestants, they had now become second-class citizens in their own land. By the I770s, however, life had become easier and some of the worst laws against Catholics were removed. But not everyone wanted to give the Catholics more freedom. In Ulster, the northern part of Ireland, Protestants formed the first "Orange Lodges", societies which were against any freedom for the Catholics. In order to increase British control Ireland was united with Britain in 1801, and the Dublin parliament closed. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland lasted for 120 years. Politicians had promised Irish leaders that when Ireland became part of Brita in the Catholics would get equal voting opportunities. But George III, supported by most Tories and by many Protestant Irish landlords, refused to let this happen.

- Scotland -

Scotland also suffered from the efforts of the Stuarts to win back the throne. The first "Jacobite" revolt to win

the crown for James II' s son, in 1715, had been unsuccessful. The Stuarts tried again in 1745, when James II's grandson, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, better known as "Bonny Prince Charlie" , landed on the west coast of Scotland. Prince Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart (31 December 1720 31 January 1788) commonly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or The Young Pretender was the second Jacobite pretender to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland. This claim was as the eldest son of James Francis Edward Stuart, himself the son of King James VII and II. Charles is perhaps best known as the instigator of the unsuccessful Jacobite uprising of 1745, in which he led an insurrection to restore his family to the throne of the Kingdom of Great Britain,which ended in defeat at the Battle of Culloden that effectively ended the Jacobite cause.

 The Jacobite cause was still supported by many Highland clans, both Catholic and Protestant. Charles hoped for a

warm welcome from these clans to start an insurgency by Jacobites throughout Britain, and the Highland clans indeed provided him with a warm welcome. Charles raised his father's standard at Glenfinnan and gathered a force large enough to enable him to march on Edinburgh. The city, under the control of the Lord Provost Archibald Stewart, quickly surrendered. On 21 September 1745, he defeated the only government army in Scotland at the Battle of Prestonpans. The government army was led by General Sir John Cope, and their disastrous defence against the Jacobites is immortalised in the song Johnnie Cope. By November, Charles was marching south at the head of approximately 6,000 men. The Jacobites were pursued by King George II's son, the Duke of Cumberland, who caught up with them at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746.

Battle of Culloden between the Jacobites and the 'Redcoats'

 Ignoring the advice of his best commander, Lord George Murray, Charles chose to fight on flat,

open, marshy ground where his forces would be exposed to superior government firepower. Charles commanded his army from a position behind his lines, where he could not see what was happening. Hoping Cumberland's army would attack first, he had his men stand exposed to Hanoverian artillery. Seeing the error in this, he quickly ordered an attack, but the messenger was killed before the order could be delivered. The Jacobite attack, charging into the teeth of musket fire and grapeshot fired from the cannons, was uncoordinated and met with little success. The Jacobites broke through the bayonets of the redcoats in one place, but they were shot down by a second line of soldiers, and the survivors fled. Cumberland's troops committed numerous atrocities as they hunted for the defeated Jacobite soldiers, earning him the title "the Butcher" from the Highlanders. Murray managed to lead a group of Jacobites to Ruthven, intending to continue the fight. However Charles, believing himself betrayed, had decided to abandon the Jacobite cause. James, the Chevalier de Johnstone, acted as Murray's Aide de Camp during the campaign and, for a brief spell, the Young Pretender's. He gives a first-hand account of these events in his "Memoir of the Rebellion 17451746".

Life in town and country

- Town life -

In 1700 England and Wales had a population of about 5.5 million. This had increased very little by 1750, but then grew quickly to about 8.8 million by the end of the century. In 1700 England was still a land of small villages. In the northern areas of England, in Lancashire and West Yorkshire, and in the West Midlands, the large cities of the future were only just beginning to grow. All the towns smelled bad. There were no drains. Streets were used as lavatories and the dirt was seldom removed. The streets were muddy and narrow, some only two metres wide. Around London and other larger towns a few vegetable growers took the dirt from the streets to put on their fields. During the eighteenth century, efforts were made to make towns healthier. Streets were built wider, so that carriages drawn by horses could pass each other. From 1734, London had a street lighting system. After 1760 many towns asked Parliament to allow them to tax their citizens in order to provide social services, such as street cleaning and lighting.


Many towns in England were improved in the later 18th century when bodies of men called Paving or Improvement Commissioners were formed by Acts of Parliament. They had powers to pave and clean the streets and sometimes to light them with oil lamps and candles. Some also arranged collections of rubbish. Soon London and the other towns were so clean and tidy that they became the wonder of Europe. Indeed London had so much to offer that the great literary figure of the day, Samuel Johnson, made the now famous remark: "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. For there is in London all that life can afford. "

London in the 18th century

There were four main classes of people in 18th century towns: - the wealthy merchants

- the ordinary merchants and traders - the skilled craftsmen - the large number of workers who had no skill and who could not be

sure of finding work from one day to another.

- The rich-

England in the 18th century was like two different worlds, depending on whether you were rich or poor. Yet,

social conditions were probably better than in any other country in Europe. British aristocrats had less power over the poor than European aristocrats had. In 1760 an English lord was actually hanged for killing his servant. There were few places in Europe where that would have happened. To foreigners, used to the absolute power of the king and his nobles, English law seemed an example of perfect justice, even if it was not really so.

The Upper Classes

The wealthy upper classes had a privileged, grand life. As England became more powerful and wealthy due to the Industrial Revolution, the rich people became richer and the poor even poorer. Many wealthy people lived in large mansions on huge estates. Life was filled with fancy social events, such us dinner parties, operas and the theatre. The men went hunting and riding, and carried out "improvements" to their estates such as rebuilding houses in the classical style, arranging natural-looking gardens and parks to create a carefully made "view of nature" from the windows of the house. Some of the gentry became interested in collecting trees or plants from abroad.

The conditions of women were difficult. They did not have many rights and were financially dependent on their husbands or families. An average wife spent some 15 years either in a state of pregnancy or in nursing a child for the first year of its life. They were only allowed to amuse themselves. As one lord wrote: "Women are only children of larger growth... A man of sense only plays with them... he neither tells them about, nor trusts them with serious matters. Children were well educated and often had their own tutors who taught them how to read, write, do arithmetic and play musical instruments.

 What the Upper Class Thought

The rich often treated the poor with disdain. Many had no sympathy or understanding for the poor and blamed them for their own situation. Many wealthy people had never worked in their lives. Their money was inherited, so they had very little knowledge of how harsh life could be. They had never suffered from lack of food, shelter or clothing. They never had to empty their own chamber pot, or cook their own food, or do their own washing. That was left to the poor, working-class people.

- The poor-

For the poor, life in the 18th century England was extremely difficult.

The Lower Classes

For those with jobs, life was bearable because they could usually afford food, clothing and shelter. For people out of work, life was a never-ending struggle to find food, somewhere to sleep and ways to keep warm during the freezing English winters. Life was even worse for those with a family to look after. Many people moved to the cities to find work. Towns and cities became more and more crowded and jobs were hard to find. Food was expensive and people were always hungry. It was difficult to stay clean, so deadly diseases spread quickly and easily. The government didn't care about the poor. There was no help for people who were poor, old, sick, disabled or out of work. Every one had to look after themselves. In the early 18th century England suffered from gin drinking. It was cheap and it was sold everywhere as you did not need a license to sell it. Many people ruined their health by drinking gin. Yet for many poor people drinking gin was their only comfort. The situation improved after 1751 when a tax was imposed on gin.

- The countryside -

The majority of people still lived in the countryside and their main occupations were agriculture and rural

crafts. Most farming at the beginning of the century was still done as it had been for centuries. Each village stood in the middle of three or four large fields, and the villagers together decided what to grow, although individuals continued to work on their own small strips of land. Most farmers were smallholders renting up to 8 hectares of land. Freeholders owned their land and were socially superior to smallholders. At the bottom of the social structure were the landless labourers who worked on large farms, especially in summer; in winter they were often out of work. At the top of the social hierarchy were the nobility, who held the highest offices and accumulated the greatest wealth, and the gentry, who included the major landowners in a county but were not necessarily of noble birth. The chief landowner in a village was called the squire. He was usually the local Justice of the Peace. Another important person in the district was the person who looked after the religious needs of his parishioners. In the late 18th century there were the beginnings of a movement of population away from the countryside into the towns, partly as a result of enclosures. This meant that the old common land used by peasants for grazing was taken over by private landowners for more intensive agriculture and enclosed by hedgerows.

The cultural life of Edinburgh was in total contrast with life in the Scottish Highlands. Because the kilt and the tartan were forbidden, everyone born since 1746 had grown up wearing Lowland (English) clothes. The old way of colouring and making tartan patterns from local plants had long been forgotten. By the time the law forbidding the kilt and tartan was abolished in 1782, it was too late. Highland dress and tartans became fancy dress, to be worn by Scottish soldiers and by lovers of the past, but not by the real Highlanders. Very few of the tartans that were worn after 1782 would have been recognised as "clan" tartans by the men who had fought at Culloden.

 The real disaster in the Highlands, however, was economic. Towards the end of the 18th century, the clan

chiefs began to realise that money could be made from sheep for the wool trade. They began to push the people off the clan lands and to replace them with sheep, a process known as the clearances. The chiefs treated the clan lands as their personal property, and the law supported the enclosure off common land in England. Between 1790 and 1850 hundreds of thousands of Highlanders lost their old way of life so that their chiefs could make a profit from the land.

- Family Life -

In the eighteenth century families began to express affection more openly than before. In addition it seems that for

the first time children were no longer thought of as small adults, but as a distinct group of people with special needs. However, girls continued to be victims of the parent's desire to make them match the popular idea of feminine beauty of slim bodies, tight waists and a pale appearance.

English school, 18th century Portrait of a young girl

 Parents still often decided on a suitable marriage for their children, but they increasingly sought their children's opinion.

However, sons and daughters often had to marry against their wishes. But love and companionship were slowly becoming accepted reasons for marriage. The increase in affection was partly because people could now expect a reasonably long life. In the 17th century middle-class and wealthier families were served by servants, who listened their conversation as they ate. They lived in rooms that led one to another. But in the 18th century, families began to eat alone, preferring to serve themselves than to have servants listening to everything they had to say. They also rebuilt the insides of their homes, putting in corridors, so that every person in the family had their own private bedroom. Britain was ahead of the rest of Europe in this individualism. Almost certainly this was the result of the political as well as economic strength of the middle class, and the way in which the middle class mixed so easily with the gentry and aristocracy. Individualism was important to trade and industrial success. Such individualism could not exist for the poorer classes. Where women and children could find work making cloth, a worker family might double its income, and do quite well. But a poor family in which only the father could find work lived on the edge of starvation. Children of the poor had always worked as soon as they could walk. Horrified by the suffering of children, two men campaigned for almost thirty years to persuade Parliament to pass a Regulating Act in 1788 to reduce the cruelty involved.

The years of revolution

- Industrial Revolution The era known as the Industrial Revolution(1750-1840) was a period in which fundamental changes occurred in

agriculture, textile and metal manufacture, transportation, economic policies and the social structure . This process began in England in the 18th century and from there spread to other parts of the world. Although used earlier by French writers, the term Industrial Revolution was first popularized by the English economic historian Arnold Toynbee (185283) to describe Englands economic development from 1760 to 1840. Since Toynbees time the term has been more broadly applied. The main features involved in the Industrial Revolution were technological, socioeconomic, and cultural. The technological changes included the following: (1) the use of new basic materials, chiefly iron and steel, (2) the use of new energy sources, including both fuels and motive power, such as coal, the steam engine, electricity, petroleum, and the internal-combustion engine (3) the invention of new machines, such as the spinning jenny and the power loom that permitted increased production with a smaller expenditure of human energy,


(4) a new organization of work known as the factory system, which entailed increased division of

labour and specialization of function, (5) important developments in transportation and communication, including the steam locomotive, steamship, automobile, airplane, telegraph, and radio, (6) the increasing application of science to industry. These technological changes made possible a tremendously increased use of natural resources and the mass production of manufactured goods.


There were also many new developments in nonindustrial spheres, including the following: (1) agricultural improvements that made possible the provision of food for a larger nonagricultural

population, (2) economic changes that resulted in a wider distribution of wealth, the decline of land as a source of wealth in the face of rising industrial production, and increased international trade, (3) political changes reflecting the shift in economic power, as well as new state policies corresponding to the needs of an industrialized society, (4) sweeping social changes, including the growth of cities, the development of working-class movements, and the emergence of new patterns of authority, (5) cultural transformations of a broad order. The worker acquired new and distinctive skills, and his relation to his task shifted; instead of being a craftsman working with hand tools, he became a machine operator, subject to factory discipline. Finally, there was a psychological change: mans confidence in his ability to use resources and to master nature was heightened.

While industrialization brought about an increased volume and variety of manufactured goods and an improved standard of living for some, it also resulted in often grim employment and living conditions for the poor and working classes.
More and more factories were built

- Revolution in France and the Napoleonic wars -

The French Revolutionary & Napoleonic Wars began in 1792, just three years after the beginning of the

French Revolution. Quickly becoming a global conflict, the French Revolutionary Wars saw France battling coalitions of European allies. This approach continued with the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the start of the Napoleonic Wars in 1803. Though France dominated militarily on land during the early years of the conflict, it quickly lost supremacy of the seas to the Royal Navy. Weakened by failed campaigns in Spain and Russia, France was eventually overcome in 1814 and 1815. The French Revolution was the result of famine, a major fiscal crisis, and unfair taxation in France. Unable to reform the nation's finances, Louis XVI called the Estates-General to meet in 1789, hoping it would approve additional taxes. Gathering at Versailles, the Third Estate (the commons) declared itself the National Assembly and on June 20 announced it would not disband until France had a new constitution. With antimonarchy sentiment running high, the people of Paris stormed the Bastille, a royal prison, on July 14.

 The Napoleonic Wars (18031815) were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by

opposing coalitions. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly owing to the application of modern mass conscription. French power rose quickly as Napoleon's armies conquered much of Europe but collapsed rapidly after France's disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812. Napoleon's empire ultimately suffered complete military defeat resulting in the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France and the creation of the Concert of Europe. Unlike its many coalition partners, Britain remained at war throughout the period of the Napoleonic Wars. Protected by naval supremacy (in the words of Admiral Jervis to the House of Lords "I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea"), the United Kingdom maintained lowintensity land warfare on a global scale for over a decade. The British government paid out large sums of money to other European states, so that they could remain at war with France. These payments are colloquially known as the Golden Cavalry of St George. The British Army provided long-term support to the Spanish rebellion in the Peninsular War of 18081814, assisted by Spanish guerrilla ('little war') tactics. AngloPortuguese forces under Arthur Wellesley campaigned successfully against the French armies, eventually driving them from Spain and invading southern France.

- Battle of Trafalgar -

In one of the most decisive naval battles in history, a British fleet under Admiral Lord Nelson defeats a

combined French and Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar, fought off the coast of Spain. At sea, Lord Nelson and the Royal Navy consistently thwarted Napoleon Bonaparte, who led France to preeminence on the European mainland. Nelson's last and greatest victory against the French was the Battle of Trafalgar, which began after Nelson caught sight of a Franco-Spanish force of 33 ships. Preparing to engage the enemy force on October 21, Nelson divided his 27 ships into two divisions and signaled a famous message from the flagship Victory: "England expects that every man will do his duty." Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar ensured that Napoleon would never invade Britain. Nelson, hailed as the savior of his nation, was given a magnificent funeral in St. Paul's Cathedral in London. A column was erected to his memory in the newly named Trafalgar Square, and numerous streets were renamed in his honor.

- Battle of Waterloo -

The Battle of Waterloo was a major and the last military engagement of the Napoleonic Wars. It was fought between

Napoleons army and the Seventh Coalition forces, led by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard von Blcher, on June 18, 1815, near the Belgian town of Waterloo. The outcome of this fiercely-fought military encounter was a fatal blow inflicted by British forces on Napoleon, marking the end of his Hundred Days Campaign and his ambition to perpetuate himself as an emperor of a European dominant empire. One of the consequence of the Battle of Waterloo was the emergence of Great Britain as the worlds hegemonic power. Having been defeated, Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to the island of Saint Helena, in the middle of the Atlantic, where he spent the rest of his days until he died in 1821. Concluding in June 1815, the Congress of Vienna outlined new borders for states in Europe and established an effective balance of power system that largely maintained peace in Europe for the remainder of the century. The Napoleonic Wars were officially ended by the Treaty of Paris which was signed on November 20, 1815. With Napoleon's defeat, twentythree years of near-continuous warfare came to an end and Louis XVIII was placed on the French throne. The conflict also sparked wide scale legal and social change, marked the end of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as inspired nationalist feelings in Germany and Italy. With the French defeat, Britain became the world's dominant power, a position it held for the next century.