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1500 Columbus is arrested, put in irons, and brought back to Spain for "rehabilitation."

1500 The death of the Prince Bishop of Brixen, Jakob Fugger's chief creditor, whose inheritance is claimed by the Pope, brings about a serious crisis that Jakob manages to solve through shrewd negotiations. Prudently, he divided the company's assets equally into cash holdings, production plants and merchandise, landed properties, and precious stones. (Britannica)

1500 Pope Alexander VI proclaims a Year of Jubilee and imposes a tithe on all Roman Catholics to fund a crusade against the Turks. The Turks take Durazzo from Venice.

1501 Henry VII of England declines pope's request to lead the crusade against the Turks.

1502 Peasants revolt in the bishopric of Speyer, Germany.

1503 Venice abandons Lepanto and signs a peace treaty with the Turks.

1503 Nostradamus, Jewish-French physician and astrologer, is born.

1504 Jacob Fugger secretly purchases from the city of Basel a portion of the captured crown jewels of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy.

1504 Venice sends ambassadors to the Sultan of Turkey proposing construction of a Suez Canal. This idea will be resurrected by both the French and British. (Timetables)

1505 Maxamilian I begins a reformation of the Holy Roman Empire. He interprets it as a universal Habsburg (Hapsburg) monarchy.

1505 Luther enters Augustinian monastery at Ehrfurt, Germany.

1507 The Diet of Constance recognizes the unity of the Holy Roman Empire and founds the Imperial Chamber.

1507 Jakob Fugger begins laying the foundation for the family's widely distributed landholdings when he acquires the countships of Kirchberg and Weissenhorn from Emperor Maximilian I.

1507 Martin Luther is ordained.

1508 An alliance known as the League of Cambrai is formed by Margaret of Austria, the Cardinal of Rouen, and Ferdinand of Aragon for the purpose of bespoiling Venice. (Timetables)

1508 The Fugger family leases the Roman mint from 1508 to 1515.

1509 The Republic of Venice is excommunicated by Pope Julius II after he joins the League of Cambrai.

1509 A converted Jew, Johann Pfefferkorn, receives authority of Emperor Maximilian I to confiscate and destroy all Jewish books, especially the Talmud. Johann Reuchlin, a so-called humanist, publically opposes the action. (Timetables)

1509 Jakob Fugger lends Emperor Maximilian I 170,000 ducats to finance war against Venice.

1509 Bartolome de Las Casas, Roman Catholic bishop of Chiapas, proposes that each Spanish settler should bring a certain number of Negro slaves to the New World. Historians mark this date as the beginning of the American slave trade.

1510 Pope Julius II absolves Venice from excommunication.

1510 Luther travels to Rome as a delegate of his order (to 1511)

1510 Hamburg becomes Free City of the Holy Roman Empire.

1511 Pope Julius II forms what is called the Holy League with Venice and Aragon to force the French out of Italy. Henry VIII joins the Holy League and begins to reform the Royal Navy.

1512 Luther earns his doctorate in theology and becomes professor of Biblical literature at Wittenberg University.

1512 Public resistence to trading monopolies in Germany founders on the indebtedness of Emperor Maximilian I to Jakob Fugger.

1513 Juan Ponce de Leon of Spain discovers and explores Florida; Vasco Nunez de Balboa's discovers the Pacific Ocean.

1514 Maximilian I, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, makes Jakob Fugger a count and the House of Fugger secures the right to sell papal indulgences in Germany. This corrupt system puzzles and angers many faithful Catholics. (Timetables)

1516 Jakob Fugger makes an ally of King Henry VIII of England by granting him various loans. (Britannica)

1517 "Evil May Day" riots flare up in London. Sixty rioters are hanged on Cardinal Wolsey's orders.

The Protestant Reformation

1517 October 31 The Protestant Reformation in Germany is inaugurated by Martin Luther. Luther nails a list of 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. These propositions deny the right of the pope to forgive sins by the sale of indulgences, among other challenges. The theses are widely circulated in Germany and cause great controversy.

1518 Martin Luther is summoned by Cardinal Cajetan to the Diet at Augsburg. Luther refuses to recant.

1518 Lorens de Gominot is granted a license to import 4,000 African slaves to Spanish American colonies.

1519 Emperor Maximilian I dies, and his grandson, Charles I of Spain becomes Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V (to 1556).

Note: Financing of the election of Charles V is said to be Jakob Fugger's greatest achievement. Of the total election expenses of 852,000 guilders, Fugger alone raised almost 544,000 in order to eliminate Francis I of France. By skillful negotiations Fugger arranged to have this debt repaid out of the Maestrazgo -- the lease of the revenues paid to the Spanish crown by the three great knightly orders. (Britannica)

1519 Magellan begins his voyage around the world. He will not return until 1522.

1520? Action is brought against Jakob Fugger and other merchants by the imperial fiscal and governmental authorities in Nürnberg (Nuremberg) to halt their monopolistic tendencies. Fugger's position was furthermore threatened by social unrest among the miners in the Tirol and at Neusohl in Hungary, by attempts of the Hungarian nobles to nationalize his mines, and by the Peasants' Revolt. At the Augsburg headquarters he was threatened by an uprising of artisans. Fugger mastered these crises through sheer tenacity and fixity of purpose. Albrecht Dürer has immortalized the severe, taciturn countenance of the master merchant. As head of the company, Fugger, who was himself a man of few wants, created monuments to his time that have survived for centuries -- in the Fugger buildings and the splendid memorial chapel and above all in the Fuggerei, the world's oldest social settlement, which he endowed as a peaceful haven for his impoverished old servants and fellow citizens. (Britannica)

1521 The pope issues a Bull of Excommunication against Luther and orders Emperor Charles V to execute it. Instead, the emperor calls a "diet," or council, at Worms and summons Luther for examination. The diet demands that Luther recant. He refuses and is outlawed.

1524 German peasants use Luther’s teachings as a reason for revolting.

1525 Luther marries a former nun, Katharina von Bora (1499-1552), emphasizing his rejection of monasticism and celibacy.

1525 Grand Master Albert of the Teutonic Knights (1490-1568) transforms Prussia into the secular duchy of Brandenburg, with himself as Duke.

1525 Jakob (the Rich) Fugger dies. In his will he bequeaths to his nephew Anton Fugger, who had been destined for the succession since 1517, company assets totaling 2,032,652 guilders. The new chief, an ambitious and talented businessman, guides the company with a firm hand. (Britannica)

1527 The Sack of Rome. Imperial troops pillage the city, killing 4,000 inhabitants and looting art treasures. Pope Clement VII is imprisoned in Casel Sant' Angelo. Many historians mark this date as the "End of the Renaissance."

1527 Anton Fugger marries Anna Rehlinger, a patrician's daughter who bears him four sons. Most of Anton's time is taken up with the securing of permanent loans for the emperors Charles V and Ferdinand I and for King Philip II of Spain. In accordance with his credo that money is the sinews of war -- pecunia nervus bellorum -- Fugger, a strict Roman Catholic, grants the emperor credits that prove to be decisive in the struggle against the Protestants and particularly in the war against the Schmalkaldic League of Protestant princes and cities. (Britannica)

1531 The Schmalkaldic League (Schmalkaldischer Bund is established at Schmalkalden, Germany. The league is led by Philip the Magnanimous of Hesse and John Frederick I of Saxony. Among its other original member states are Brunswick, Anhalt, Mansfeld, Magdeburg, Bremen, Strassburg, and Ulm.

1531 The "Great Comet" (later known as Halley's Comet) arouses a wave of mass superstition throughout Europe and Asia.

1533 Henry VIII is excommunicated by the pope.

1533 Isaak Luria (1533-72), Jewish mystic and cabalist, is born.

1534 Final rift between England and the Roman Catholic Church. London and Rome split, creating tensions and animosities that continue until this very day.

1534 Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) founds the Jesuit Order. Several of Loyola's ancestors were Jewish of Jewish descent and this will later used by enemies of the Catholic Church to add creedence to various conspiracy theories.

1535 English clergy abjure the authority of the pope. Sir Thomas More, who refuses the oath of the king's supremacy is tried for treason and executed. He was canonized in 1935.

1536 Martin Luther delivers what he calls his "Table Talks."

Note: Adolf Hitler later adopted this same term for three different series of "Table Talks" 1932-33, 1941-42, 1945)

1538 The famous cartographer Mercator uses the name America for the first time on a map of the New World. He also differentuates North America from the southern hemisphere.

1538 The beginnings of the London Exchange begin to take shape.

1540 Pope Paul III confirms the Order of Jesuits.

1541 Ignatius Loyola is elected General of the Jesuits.

1541 Hernando De Soto of Spain discovers the Mississippi River and explores more of Florida; also travelled through what are now Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana. De Soto died of fever and was buried in the Mississippi River.

1542 Pope Paul III establishes the Inquisition in Rome.

1542 National resentments in Spain forced Anton Fugger to renounce the Maestrazgo lease after 1542 and to give up the silver mines of Guadalcanal.

1543 Luther publishes a pamphlet entitled "On the Jews and Their Lies," a vicious anti-semtic tract that calls for organized persecution of the Jews.

1543 First Protestants burned at the stake by Spanish Inquisition. (Timetables)

1544 Charles V makes peace with his enemy Francis I of France. He then begins military operations against the Schmalkaldic League and its leaders -- effectively destroying it by 1547.

154? Lutherans raid and loot the Jewish synagogue in Berlin.

154? Luther convinces the government to ban all Jews and expel them for the entire country. Many Jews find new homes in Poland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine.

1546 February 18 Luther dies at Eisleben, his birthplace.

1546 Anton Fugger amasses a fortune of 5,100,000 guilders -- the highest capital in the company's history. (Britannica)

1547 The Schmalkaldic League ceases to exist.

1547 Anton Fugger gives up Neusohl altogether after production at their formerly rich Tirolean and Hungarian mines dries up. With dogged resolution but little success, he tried to make up for these losses by establishing new trade ties with Peru and Chile and by engaging in mining ventures in Sweden and Norway, as well as in the slave trade from Africa to America. (Britannica)

1548 "Spiritual Excercises," written by Ignatius Loyola in 1521 is finally published.

1560 Anton Fugger dies and an inventory taken after his death shows assets of 5,600,000 and liabilities of 5,400,000 guilders (2,900,000 in Spain alone). Anton had, however, safeguarded part of his fortune through the timely purchase of Babenhausen and other landed estates. After the personal bankruptcy of his nephew Hans Jakob Fugger, who had become a partner in 1543 and who eventually became Bavarian chancellor, Anton's oldest son, Markus, carried on the business successfully, if on a reduced scale. (Britannica)

Note: It is to Jakob and Anton Fugger's land purchases that the three surviving lines of the family (all dating from the mid-16th century) -- the counts Fugger-Kirchberg of Oberkirchberg, the prince Fugger-Glött of Kirchheim, and the prince Fugger-Babenhausen of Babenhausen -- owe the preservation of a part of the great wealth once held by the family firm.

1563 During the period 1563-1641 the Fugger company, which was not completely dissolved until after the Thirty Years' War, earns some 50,000,000 ducats from the production of mercury at Almadén alone. (Britannica)

Note: While Jakob and Anton Fugger had hardly made use of their title as counts, their descendants, showed little mercantile inclination, acquired humanistic educations at European universities, married within their class, and spent most of their lives on their great estates, where they established valuable libraries and built magnificent residences.

1572 Isaak Luria (1533-72), Jewish mystic and cabalist, dies.

1588 England defeats the Spanish Armada and establishes the superiority of English ships and sailors.

1603 The Tudor dynasty comes to an end with the death of Elizabeth I.

1618 The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) devastates most of Europe. The population of Germany is reduced by more than half.

1619 Black indentured servants are first brought to Jamestown, Virginia. Slavery will gradually spread to all the other North American colonies. It flourishes most, however, in the agrarian South, where crops such as sugar cane and cotton require large numbers of dependable workers.

1622 January 1 The papacy adopts January 1 as the beginning of the new year, instead of March 25.

1644 The Puritans defeat King Charles' "Cavaliers" at Marston Moor.

1648 The Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years' War. The peace agreement is condemned by Pope Innocent X in his bull "Zelo Domus Dei." Modern historians say this agreement marks the beginnings of modern nationalism.

1649? The Fugger Company is completely dissolved soon after the Thirty Years' War. The Fugger family is considered a prototype of the trading company of the early capitalistic era.

Note: In overcoming the economic concepts of the Middle Ages, they used methods that have evoked, both in their time and in the present, admiration as well as violent criticism. (Britannica)

1649 January 30 King Charles (Kings of England, Scotland, and Ireland) is beheaded. The Puritan "Rump Government" then declares England a Commonwealth (or republic) without a king or a house of lords.

1653 Oliver Cromwell, after putting down revolts in Ireland and Scotland with great cruelty, comes back from the wars. He dismisses Parliament, and "nominates" a Parliament of his own (called "Barebone's Parliament" after one of its members, Praisegod Barebone). The Commonwealth then takes the name of Protectorate, with Cromwell as Lord Protector.

1658 Oliver Cromwell dies and his eldest son, Richard Cromwell, becomes Lord Protector.

1659 Too weak to control the army, Richard Cromwell is forced to resign.

1660 George Monk, one of Cromwell's generals, brings an army from Scotland and has the Rump of the Long Parliament recalled to dissolve itself. A new Parliament is elected and offers the crown to Charles II, the exiled son of Charles I. The Puritan age suddenly comes to an end.

1682 De La Salle claims the Louisiana Territory for France, naming it for Louis XIV, King of France.

1700 August 9 The province of New York enacts a law expelling all Jesuits, priests and others ordained by the Pope from the province by November 1. Other American colonies soon enact similar laws against Catholics.

1717 June 24 English Freemasons publicly reveal themselves for the first time. Four previously secret lodges of Freemasons in London, meeting at the Apple-Tree Tavern in Convent Garden, declare that they are banding together to form an official association to be called a "Grand Lodge." The Grand Lodge of London was officially instituted and a Grand Master and other officers were elected. The four London lodges, simply by revealing themselves and the existence of their order, had violated their sacred oaths of secrecy and unilaterally decided secrecy was no longer necessary, or even desirable.

Prior to 1717 the Masonic Order was a true secret society; not just an organization with secret signs and secret handgrips, but a widespread society whose very existence was a secret. No Masonic historian claims to fully understand why that secrecy existed, or even why the group existed. Soon after Masonry finally revealed itself, it became clear there were secret lodges all over England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. But apparently, no where else. (Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, John J. Robinson, 1989)

1717 November 9 The Grand Lodge of London holds the first divine service of Quatuor Coronati since making its existence public in June.

1717 School attendance in Prussia ia made compulsory.

1718 The Grand Lodge of London asks all Masonic lodges in England to turn over to its possession any ancient records or other documents relating to Freemasonry so that they might be considered in drafting a constitution for the Grand Lodge. The reaction of many still-secret lodges was to burn all written references to their regulations or history, to prevent their being used to break the oath of secrecy.

1718 The site of the city of New Orleans is chosen by Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, who declares it the capital of the French Empire of the New World.

1722 Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf founds a mysterious religious order in the Upper Lusatia area of Moravia.

1725 The Masonic Lodge at York complains about the assumed superiority and antiquity of London Freemasonry. York Masonry, they claim, was as old as the setting of the foundation of York Cathedral in the seventh century and Edward, King of Northumbria, had been their first Grand Master.

1725 Irish Freemasonry reveals itself and declares a Grand Lodge of Ireland based in Dublin. The first Irish Grand Master was the Earl of Rosse, a young man of twenty-nine who had inherited a vast fortune from his grandmother the Duchess of Tyrconnel.

1728 The Madrid Lodge of Freemasons is founded, but is soon supressed by the Catholic Inquisition. (Timetables)

1730 A Freemason Lodge is founded in Philadalphia. (Timetables)

1732 February 22 George Washington is born.

1733 A Freemason Lodge is founded in Hamburg. Historians believe it was the first Freemason lodge founded in Germany. (Timetables)

1733 Conscription is introduced in Prussia.

1736 Pope Clement XII condemns Freemasory. (Timetables)

1736 English statutes against witchcraft are repealed.

1736 The still-secret masonic lodges of Scotland, begin meeting to discuss their own situation, nine years after the launching of the Grand Lodge of England.

1737 The Grand Lodge of Scotland holds its first formal meeting.

1737 March 21 Andrew Michael Ramsay, a Scotish scholar and Grand Chancellor of the Grand Paris Lodge of Freemasons, makes a speech, now known as Ramsay's Oration, to the Masonic Lodge of St. Thomas in Paris, saying:

"Our ancestors, the Crusaders, gathered together from all parts of Christendom in the Holy Land, desired thus to reunite into one sole Fraternity the indivduals of all nations." Ramsay went on to explain that the original Crusader-Masons were not themselves workers in stone, but rather men who had taken vows to restore the Temple of Christians in the Holy Land. Ramsay further stated that lodges of Freemasons were established by returning Crusaders in Germany, Italy, Spain, France and especially Scotland, where the lord stewart of Scotland was Grand Master of a lodge at Kilwinning in 1286. The lodges, he went on, were neglected in every country except Scotland, and although Prince Edward had brought Freemasonry back to England, Scotland clearly had the earliest Masonry in Britain and was the fountainhead of the Masonic spirit. Ramsay urgently appealed to France to take up the cause and "become the centre of the Order." (Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, John J. Robinson, 1989)

1738 New Masonic degrees and rites explode in France. These new rites are exported to many other countries, which, in turn, add embellishments of their own. One French system evolving from Ramsay's Oration -- Ecossaise, or Scottish Masonry -- graduated up to a thity-third degree and was exported to the United States, where it is still excercised , with modifications, as the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, and maintains a close relationship with the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (the "Shriners"). Of all the so-called "Scottish" Masonry in existence, only the Royal Order of Scotland has any direct connection to that country. (Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, John J. Robinson, 1989)

1738 Pope Clement XII issues Eminenti Apostolatus Specula, the first in a long series of papal bulls and encyclicals against Freemasonry, just twenty years after its existence first became known. Freemasons in Catholic countries were imprisoned, deported and tortured.

1739 Count von Zinzendorf's mystical order takes on the style of Freemasonry; Zinzendorf claims the wound in Christ's side caused by the spear of Longinus became the veritable birth canal of the Christian Church; Rites of ritualistic sexual magic were said to be basis of his belief.

1740 Frederick the Great of Prussia seizes the Austrian province of Silesia and touches off the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48).

1743 German nobleman Karl Gotthelf, Baron von Hund und Alten-Grotkau, is received into a Masonic Order of the Temple by an unknown official he knew only as the Knight of the Red Feather. In attendence, von Hund said, was Lord Kilmarnock (a Jacobite who was beheaded for treason Aug. 18, 1746) and a certain Lord Clifford. Later von Hund claimed to have been presented to Prince Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) as a distinguished brother. Von Hund said that the "true history" of Freemasonry as told to him was:

At the time of the suppression of the Templars a group of the knights had fled to Scotland, keeping their condemned order alive by joining a guild of working masons. They had chosen a grand master to succeed their murdered leader, Jacques de Molay, and since then there had been an unbroken succession of Templar masters. For security purposes, the identity of the grand master was kept secret during his lifetime, his role known only to those few who had elected him. This made it necessary to swear to obey an "unknown superior." (Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, John J. Robinson, 1989)

Baron von Hund said he had been commissioned to set up lodges of Strict Observance in Germany and to promulgate "true" Freemasonry under a system known as "Strict Observance" because the oath of the Apprentice Mason included a vow of absolute obedience to "unknown superiors." The idea of a chivalric order, strict obedience, and a secret grand master must have had great appeal in Germany, because over the next twenty years, the new order promoted by von Hund spread like wild fire, and extended from Germany to almost every country of continental Europe.

1744 Sotheby's auction house is founded in London.

1744 Mayer Amschel Rothschild, patriarch of Rothschild dynasty, born in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany.

1745 Autumn Bonnie Prince Charlie lands in Scotland and begins what is called the Jacobite rebellion.

1746 April 16 The Jacobite cause is crippled by the bloody, one-sided Battle of Culloden Moor. Its aftermath results in the slaughter of Catholic Scots up and down the Scottish glens. Bonnie Prince Charles goes into hiding with a price of £30,000 on his head and is hunted across the Highlands and Islands from April to September.

1746 September 20 Bonnie Prince Charles makes his escape back to France sailing on the French privateer L'Heureux. Charles wandered around Europe trying to revive his cause, but his drunken, debauched behaviour is said to have alienated his friends.

1748 War of the Austrian Succession ends.

1751 November 9 In London, the date of Lord Mayor's Day and the famous Lord Mayor's Show is changed from October 28 (Feast day of St. Simon and St. Jude) to November 9 (Feast day of Quatuor Coronati). Lord Mayor's Day continued to be celebrated on November 9th each year until 1959 when the celebration date was officially changed to the second saturday in November.

1756 Maria Theresa, the ruler of Austria, tries for a third time to recapture Silesia. Before Austria and its new allies can strike, Frederick moves into Saxony. Sparking the Third Silesian War, better known as the Seven Years' War (1756-1763).

1757 May Frederick defeats the Austrians at Prague.

1757 November Frederick routes the French at Rossbach.

1757 December Frederick crushes the Austrians and the Swedes at Leuthen.

1760 George III ascends the English throne.

1760 Winter Berlin is occupied by Russian and Austrian troops who retreat after receiving news of Frederick's approach with a relief army.

1762 Elizabeth of Russia dies, and Peter III, her successor, makes a quick peace with Prussia. Sweden and France also desert the alliance.

1763 February 10 The Peace of Paris cedes the whole of Canada and various islands in the West Indies to Britain. French trading stations captured in India are restored but not refortified. Spain cedes Florida to England. France compensates Spain by giving up the Louisiana country west of the Mississippi. New Orleans is given by Louis XV to Charles III of Spain in a secret treaty. Prussia is now a major power in Europe, France has lost an empire and is approaching the French Revolution and Britain has an empire on which "the sun never sets."

1763 February 15 End of the Seven Years' War. Austria makes peace with Prussia. Silesia remains a possession of Prussia.

1763 The Spanish take possession of New Orleans. The Creoles, as the French settlers are known, are so outraged that a group of prominent men lead a rebellion against Governor Don Antonio de Ulloa, forcing him to flee the city. The rebellion is put down by an Irishman in service to Spain, Don Alexander O'Reilly. The leaders are publicly executed, and O'Reilly becomes governor.

1763 "Strict Observance" Masonry as promoted by Baron von Hund begins to wane and virtually dies out over the next decade. It appeared the grand master was not only unknown, but was also nonexistent. Von Hund said he had been told to await future instructions from his "unknown superiors," but was never contacted again. He went to his grave convinced that the "unknown superior" was Bonnie Prince Charlie himself. Those who believe the whole concept of Strict Observance was to recruit men and money for the Jacobite cause are inclined to agree with him.

1766 Bonnie prince Charles settles in Italy. The major Roman Catholic powers later repudiated his title to the British throne. He dies in Rome in 1788.

1769 August 15 Napoleon Bonaparte is born at Ajaccio, on the island of Corsica.

1771 April 23 The Loge des Amis Réunis is constituted in Paris, it develops a system of 12 "Classes," not Degrees, termed "les Philalèthes ou Cherceurs de la Vérité."

1772 Catherine II confines millions of Jews to the "Pale of Settlement," an area in western Russia.

1772 Maria Theresa joins forces with Russia and Prussia in the first partition of Poland. Galicia is Austria's share.

1772 Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick is elected Grand Master of the Convent of the Strict Observance.

1773 The Boston Tea Party, a protest against the tea duty, is staged by citizens of Boston, many of them Freemasons, dressed at "Indians" to protect their identities.

1773 October 23 The Duke d'Orleans is installed as Grand Master of the Grand Orient Lodge de la France.

1774 The British House of Commons refuses Massachusetts' petition to remove Thomas Hutchinson as Governor-General.

1774 British forces close the port of Boston in an attempt to coerce the population.

1774 The Virginia House of Commons issues a call for a Continental Congress.

1774 The Continental Congress meets in Philadelphia with representatives of all colonies except Georgia. It soon decides among other things to boycott British imports.

1774 Nonimportation of British goods to American colonies, decided upon by Continental Congress, comes into force.

American War for Independence

1775 April 18 General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, orders British troops to march against the Patriot arsenal at Concord and capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington.

1775 Paul Revere makes a legendary ride from Charleston to Lexington, Massachusetts.

1775 April 19 American "Minute Men" defeat the British at Lexington. At about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, marched into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town's common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment's hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the "shot heard around the world" was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun.

When the British troops reached Concord at about 7 a.m., they found themselves encircled by hundreds of armed Patriots. They managed to destroy the military supplies the Americans had collected but were soon advanced against by a gang of minutemen, who inflicted numerous casualties. Lieutenant Colonel Frances Smith, the overall commander of the British force, ordered his men to return to Boston without directly engaging the Americans. As the British retraced their 16-mile journey, their lines were constantly beset by Patriot marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone walls. At Lexington, Captain Parker's militia had its revenge, killing several British soldiers as the Red Coats hastily marched through his town. By the time the British finally reached the safety of Boston, nearly 300 British soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in action. The Patriots suffered fewer than 100 casualties.

The battles of Lexington and Concord were the first battles of the American Revolution, a conflict that would escalate from a colonial uprising into a world war that, seven years later, would give birth to the independent United States of America.

1775 Americans capture Fort Tyconderoga, New York.

1775 Americans captures Crown Point.

1775 The Second Continental Congress assembles at Philadelpia.

1775 George Washington becomes commander-in-chief of American forces.

1775 British are victorious at the battle of Bunker Hill.

1775 An attack on Quebec by Americans under Benedict Arnold fails.

1775 Britain hires 29,000 German mercenaries for war in North America.

1775 Birth of Salomon Mayer Rothschild (future Baron von Rothschild of Vienna) son of Mayer Amschel Rothschild.

1776 Continental Congress resolves to suppress the authority of the British crown. Washington soon forces the British to abandon Boston, however, American troops are forced out of Canada.

1776 Virginia Convention instructs its delegates to Congress to propose independence, and shortly afterwards Virginia publishes its Bill of Rights.

1776 July 4 The Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopts the Declaration of Independence.

1776 William Howe, commander-in-chief of the British army in America, takes New York and Rhode Island.

1776 Benedict Arnold is defeated at Lake Champlain.

1776 Continental Congress retires to Baltimore.

1776 Fort Lee is captured by the British.

1776 Washington retreats to Pennsylvania and defeats Hessian mercenary troops at Trenton. Many of these Germans had been conscripted by their prince and sold to the British at very reasonable prices. The Rothschild's are said to have been involved in the transactions.

1776 The Strict Observance Lodges sign a concordat with Grand Orient de la France, the oldest known document relating the two organizations. Up until this time the Strict Observance lodges had been under their own directories.

1776 The Loge des Neuf Soeurs is founded in Paris.

1777 British are defeated at Princeton, New Jersey, and Bennington, Vermont.

1777 Lafayette and a contingency of French volunteers arrive in America.

1777 German General von Steuben arrives to become inspector-general of American forces.

1777 Spain and Portugal settle their disputes concerning their South American colonies.

1778 February 25 Jose Francisco de San Martin is born in Yapeyu, an Indian settlement in what is now northern Argentina.

1778 France enters the Revolutionary War on the side of the Americans.

1778 American colonies reject a British peace offer.

1779 British surrender to Americans at Vincennes.

1779 Spain declares war on Britain and begins a siege on Gilbraltar that will continue until 1783.

1779 British war against Mahrattas in India (until 1882).

1780 November 28 Maria Theresa dies in Vienna. Joseph II succeeds her.

1781 April 10 Lodge Bienfaisance of the Strict Observence is constituted in Paris.

1782 Thomas Grenville is sent from London to Paris to open peace talks with Benjamin Franklin. Preliminary agreements are accepted by Great Britain and America.

1782 Bank of North America is established in Philadelphia.

1783 The American War of Independence comes to an end. Britain and America issue proclaimations for cessation of arms. A peace treaty is signed at Versailles and Great Btritain recognizes the independence of the United States.

1783 April 24 Pope Clement XII issues a papal Bull condemning and forbidding Freemasonry to all Catholics under penalty of excommunication.

1783 July 24 Simon Bolivar is born in Caracas (now in Venezuela) of a noble Spanish family; orphaned in boyhood, he is educated in Europe.

1784 - 1785 Napoleon attends the Ecole Militaire in Paris.

1785 Joseph-Alexandre-Victor Hupay de Fueva publishes "Project for a Philosophical Community," the first book to propose a modern communist society.

1786 Lord Cornwallis made Governor-General of India.

1786 Frederick the Great dies and is succeeded by his nephew Frederick William II.

1787 February An Assembly of "Notables" is called by Charles-Alexandre de Calonne.

1787 Johan Joachim Christopher Bode (1730-1793) an energetic member of the Strict Observance and the Baron de Busche said to be members of the Bavarian Illuminati visit Paris. Later, both Barruel and Robison will claim this visit by Bode and de Busche to be the defining link between the German Illuminati and Freemasonry. Bode who died in 1793 was not able to defend himself.

NOTE: Most Masonic scholars now agree that the visit by Bode and von Busche was too brief and limited to have had any significant causal effect on the French Revolution.

1787 August 29 Bode, who has returned to Weimer, tells Schiller and others that Paris is exhausted and in decay. Körner later wrote that Bode was "too short a time in Paris to have heard more than one side of the question."

1788 Parliament of Paris presents a list of grievences. Louis XVI calls Estates-General (National Assembly) for May of 1789 and recalls Jacques Necker as Minister of Finance.

1788 Charles Edward Stuart, the "Young Pretender" dies.

1788 Austria declares war on Turkey.

1788 A motion is made in British Parliament for abolition of slave trade.

1788 The U.S. Constitution is ratified by New Hampshire, the ninth state, and comes into force.

1788 New York is declared federal capital of the United States.

1788 George III suffers his first attack of mental illness, creating a "regency crisis" in England.

1789 The First U.S. Congress meets in New York. George Washington is inaugurated as the first President, John Quincy Adams, Vice President; Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State; Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury. The United States declares itself an economic and customs union.

The French Revolution

1789 May 5 The French National Assembly (Estates-General) meets at Versailles. Most historians mark this date as the beginning of the French Revolution. (See Cinco de Mayo).

1789 The Jacobins are formed under the name of the Breton Club. Its early members are Brittany delegates to the National Assembly, then meeting in Versailles. Some are nobles, many are professionals and middleclass, but only a few are peasants.

1789 July 14 A Paris mob storms and captures the Bastille.

1789 August 4 The French National Assembly (Estates-General) passes a decree abolishing the ancient feudal regime and the tithe system.

1789 August 26 The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen is issued throughout France.

1789 October 5 A mob from Paris marches on Versaille and returns the King to Paris.

1789 October After the king and the Assembly have moved to Paris, the Benton Club occupies a monastery on the Rue Saint Jacques formerly used by Dominican monks. Because of the street name, these monks had been known as Jacobins. The club officially adopts this name.

1789 Jose San Martin, only 11 years old, joins the Spanish infantry.

1790 The Loge Neuf Soeurs ceases to be a Masonic lodge, becoming "le Société Nationale des Neuf Soeurs."

1790 The word Jacobin becomes used as a tag or label for the most fiery of revolutionists.

1791 April 20 France declares war on Prussia and Austria.

1791 June 20 Louis XVI tries to flee country.

1791 The French Assembly completes a new constitution.

1791 September King Louis XVI accepts and signs the new constitution.

1791 Jose San Martin, now 13, fights his first battle in North Africa. He will spend the next 20 years fighting against the Moors and Napoleon. Eventually, he will rise to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

1792 Napoleon is stationed in Paris and is soon promoted to the rank of captain.

1792 August 10 Revolutionaries occupy the Tuileries and kill the guards. The French royal family is forced to seek refuge in the hall of the Legislative Assembly and are quickly imprisoned.

1792 Maximilien Robespierre, a Jacobin leader, and Georges-Jacques Danton, who participated in Jacobin club debates, help inaugurate the so-called "Reign of Terror" that will eventually disgrace the revolutionary movement.

1792 Autumn The Jacobins demand that King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, be tried for conspiring with foreign rulers against the Revolution.

1792 Over the opposition of moderates in the National Assembly, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are tried and executed.

1792 September 20 Prussian-Austrian invaders are turned back at Valmy.

1792 September 21 Decree is passed abolishing royalty in France and a French Republic is proclaimed.

1792 The seating arrangement at the French National Assembly (Left, Center and Right) becomes the basis for categorizing all political ideologies from that date forth.

1792 Denmark becomes the first Western nation to abolish the slave trade.

1793 January 21 Louise XVI is executed.

1793 September 5 Reign of Terror begins and will continue until July 27, 1794.

1793 French revolutionary forces become the most powerful force of militant democracy in history.

1794 July Robespierre is beheaded and the Jacobins influence wanes.

1794 July 27 The Reign of Terror finally comes to an end.

1794 November The Jacobin Club Is outlawed.

1795 April 15 Maria Anna Schicklgruber, grandmother of Adolf Hitler, is born in Strones, Austria.

1795 John Robison, professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, begins composing "Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies." Robison had been initiated in the Lodge La Parfaite Intelligence at Liège, Belgium, in March 1770. It is said that his interest in Masonry had soon wained, and he did not interest himself in Masonry again until 1795. Working Independently in France, the Abbé Barruel, a member of the Jesuit Society, is at work on his "Mémoires pour servir ˆ l'histoire du Jacobinisme."

1795 October The people of Paris, tired of war and privation, rose against the French legislative body. Napoleon 1s appointed to put down the revolt and takes complete control.

1795 October 5 Napoleon crushes a Royalist attempt to seize power in Paris. Without hesitation he ordered the rebels shot down in the streets.

1795 Napoleon is made commander of the French army in Italy.

1796 The Helige Lanz (Holy Lance) and Reichskleinodien are hidden in secret tunnels prepared for them under the castle of Nuremberg.

1797 Abbé Barruel publishes the first two of his volumes of "Mémoires pour servir ˆ l'histoire du Jacobinisme." Barruel claims to have unwillingly been initiated as a Master Mason without having made any obligation of secrecy.

1797 John Robison publishes "Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies.". He issues an hurried third edition in 1798, citing, with some satisfaction, the Abbé's first two volumes in a Postscript. Robison's attack on Freemasonry is dependent on an alleged link between the German Illuminati and French Freemasonry.

1797 May 27 Proto-communist Francois-Noel Babeuf is executed in France after formulating a doctrine for "equal distribution of land and income."

1797 Napoleon invades Austria and advances to within 80 miles of Vienna before the enemy surrenders.

1798 Abbé Barruel publishes the last two volumes of "Mémoires pour servir ˆ l'histoire du Jacobinisme." It is said that Barruel got his information from a Freemason and Lutheran pastor, Jean Auguste Starcke, as well as the Viennese journalist, Léopold Aloys Hoffman.

1798 July Napoleon's forces are victorious at the battle of the Pyramids.

1798 Admiral Horatio Nelson's victory of the Nile gives the British navy control of the Mediterranean and secures the route to India.

1798 October 24 George Washington acknowledges his belief in the existence of the Illuminati and the principles of Jacobinism already active in the U.S. It "is too evident to be questioned" Washington wrote. (Sturdza 44)

Napoleon Seizes Power

1799 November 9 (18 Brumaire) Napoleon (30) joins a plot to overthrew the French government and seizes power in France as First Consul of a new Triumverate. He quickly proclaims the end of the French Revolution and soon becomes the virtual ruler of France. Then and now, many believe it was the result of a "Masonic/Illuminati" conspiracy.

1800 Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777-1836) moves to England.

1800 Napoleon persuades Spain to cede back Louisiana to France in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso.

1800 Pitt succeeds in bringing Ireland into a union with Great Britain similar to that between England and Scotland.

1801 January 1 The Act of Union creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland goes into force. The mass of the Irish, however, being Catholics, are still excluded from the government. George III allows only Church-of-England Irish to sit in Parliament.

1802 October 24 Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild is initiated into Emulation Lodge No. 12, London. (Masonic Portraits: Sketches of Distinguished Freemasons, W. W. Morgan, London: 1876)

1803 April Thomas Jefferson buys New Orleans and the entire Louisiana Territory from Napoleon for $15 million; purchase doubles the size of the U.S. and prompts a great increase in westward migration.

1803 May War breaks out between France and England. Russia, Austria, and Sweden join Britain in what is known as the Third Coalition.

1803 Birth of Amschel Salomon Rothschild, second Baron von Rothschild of Vienna; son of Salomon Mayer Rothschild.

1804 Napoleon declares himself "Napoleon I, Emperor of the French."

1804 December 21 Benjamin Disraeli born in London to Jewish parents.

1805 October 21 England's navy, under Admiral Horatio Nelson, destroys the French fleet at Trafalgar.

1805 December 2 Napoleon defeats Austria and Russia at Austerlitz.

1806 The Habsburgs receive the Holy Lance from Nuremberg for safekeeping against Napoleon. Austrian officials will later refuse to return it to Germany.

1806 August 6 Francis II (later Francis I of Austria) resigns as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, which then ceases to exist as a political reality.

1806 October 14 Napoleon crushes the Prussians at Jena.

1806 October 27 Napoleon enters a defeated Berlin.

1807 June 14 Napoleon defeats the Russians at Friedland.

1807 England follows Denmark's lead and abolishes the slave trade.

1808 The United States abolishes the slave trade, at least on paper.

1810 Napoleon marries Marie-Louise, daughter of Francis II, the last Habsburg to sit on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire.

1811 August 6 Judah P. Benjamin is born at Saint Thomas in the Virgin Islands.

1811 Venezuela becomes the first South American country to declare its independence from Spain.

1812 The revolt in Venezuela fails and the colony once again comes under Spanish rule. There is still much discontent and Simon Bolivar will soon rise to lead the fight.

1812 Mayer Amschel Rothschild dies.

1812 June 22 Napoleon's armies invade Russia.

1812 September 14 Napoleon's troops capture and occupy Moscow.

1812 October 19 Napoleon begins his retreat from Moscow.

1812 December Fewer than 20,000 of Napoleon's 500,000-man invasion force stagger back across the Russian frontier.

1812 Jose San Martin resigns from the Spanish army and returns to Argentina where he soon joins the growing revoltiuonary forces.

1812 The United States, exasperated by Britain's interference with its shipping and commerce, declares war on Britain (War of 1812).

1813 May 22 Wilhelm Richard Wagner is born in Leipzig, Germany.

1813 Grand Freemason Lodge founded. (Timetables)

1813 Mexico declares its independence.

1814 March 30 England, Austria, Prussia and Russia capture Paris.

1814 April 6 Napoleon, now without an army, is forced to abdicate.

1814 April 20 Napoleon is sent into exile on the island of Elba.

1814 Jose San Martin has himself made governor of a district in the foothills of the Andes.

1814 The Peace Treaty of 1814 ends War of 1812.

1815 Nathan Rothschild becomes banker in chief to the British government.

1815 March 1 Napoleon escapes from Elba and returns to France.

1815 June 18 Napoleon suffers his final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo by a combined force of English and Prussian armies; the British troops are commanded by the duke of Wellington.

1815 July 15 Napoleon is exiled to the island of Saint Helena.

1816 July 14 Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau is born at Ville-d'Avray near Paris.

1817 Benjamin Disraeli converts to Christianity. Until 1858 a Jew could not serve in the British Parliament.

1817 Jose San Martin leads an army across the high Andes into Chile. His men route the Spanish at Chacabuco and enter Santiago unopposed.

1818 Jose San Martin's decisive victory at Maipo sets all of Chile free.

1819 May 24 Queen Victoria, Alexandrina Victoria of the House of Hanover, is born at Kensington Palace in London. Her father, the Duke of Kent, was the fourth son of George III; her mother was a German princess.

1819 John Slidell settles in New Orleans and practices law until 1835.

1819 Missouri asks to be admitted to the Union as a slave state.

1820 Jose San Martin's army lands on the south coast of Peru.

1820 The Missouri Compromise on U.S. slavery issue.

1821 San Martin enters Lima.

1821 Carl Mayer Rothschild settles in Naples and opens a branch of the family bank (closed 1861).

1821 May 5 Napoleon, alone and deserted, dies on St. Helena. On his deathbed he is reported to have said, "They wanted me to be another Washington..."

1822 Metternich of Austria makes barons of all five of the Rothschild brothers.

1822 July San Martin meets with Bolivar at Guayaquil, Ecuador, and turns over the command to him. Upon returning to Argentina, San Martin learns his wife has died. He leaves for Europe with his daughter and spends the rest of his life in exile in France and Belgium.

1824 John Quincy Adams is elected sixth president of the United States by the House of Representatives after he fails to win an electoral college majority.

1825 Nathan Rothschild saves the Bank of England by arranging an emergency loan of gold from France.

1825 Bolivar reaches the height of his career (1825 -1828) becoming president/protector of Gran Colombia (now Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador), Peru and the newly formed Bolivia.

1827 August A new law for military conscription is promulgated in Russia. Jewish boys as young as twelve are drafted and forced to serve 25 years in the army. They are forbidden to speak Yiddish or practice their religion.

1828 Benjamin Disraeli leaves Britain and spends three years travelling in Spain, Italy and the Levant (Palestine).

1830 Bolivar bitter and broken in health resigns his offices and dies.

1832 Disraeli, who returned to Britain in 1831, runs as a Radical candidate for Parliament at High Wycombe, and is defeated, even though backed by Joseph Hume and Daniel O'Connell.

1832 Judah P. Benjamin becomes a lawyer in Louisiana; also an organizer of the Illinois Central Railroad.

1832 The Reform Act of 1832 benefits only the British middle class.

1834 Disraeli, after quarrelling with his Radicals supporters, runs unsuccessfully for Parliament as a Tory.

1835 Disraeli fails to win election to Parliament at Taunton.

1836 The Battle of the Alamo. Mexicans under General Santa Anna massacre or execute the entire American contingency occupying the mission in San Antonio, Texas.

1837 King William IV of England dies and his niece Victoria becomes queen.

1837 Benjamin Disraeli wins a seat in the British House of Commons

1837 June 7 Alois Schicklgruber, father of Adolf Hitler, born in Strones, Austria (conceived approximately Sept 7, 1836)

1837 Karl Marx begins law studies at Berlin University (1837-41).

1838 June 28 Queen Victoria, 18 years old, is crowned at Westminster Abbey.

1838 Disraeli manages to secure election as reprentative of Maidstone in the first Parliament of Queen Victoria. It had taken Disraeli five attempts to win office, and after he did, his peculiarities of dress, appearance and language caused a section of the House of Commons to laugh him down while he was delivering his maiden speech. He is said to have defiantly declared that the time would come when they would hear him.

1839 Disraeli improves his financial position by marrying Mrs. Wyndham Lewis, widow of his college in the representation of Maidstone.

1840 Wagner completes "Rienzi," his first significant opera.

1840 Queen Victoria marries her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a German.

1840 Lord Palmerston orders British diplomats during the Middle East crisis to take Jewish communities under their protection, since Britain was "the natural guardian of the Jews."

1840 British troops land in Palestine for the first time since the Crusades.

1841 Disraeli is elected to Parliament from Shrewsbury.

1841 November 9 Edward VII, eldest son of Queen Victoria, is born. He will became King of Great Britain after his mother's death in January 1901.

1842 Birth of Georg Ritter von Schonerer, Austrian proto-nazi.

1842 "Rienzi" is produced by Wagner for first time at the Dresden Opera House.

1842 The Webster-Ashburton Treaty obligates Great Britain and the U.S. to each keep a naval squadron on the African coast to prevent shipment of slaves. This marks the date when organized African slave trading is finally ended, though for a time cargoes continue to run illegally.

1843 B'nai B'rith is organized as a secret society in New York.

1843 The so-called Young England party is founded in London. It is formally lead by Lord George Bentinck.

1844 May 3 First skirmish in Philadelphia anti-Catholic riots.

1844 May 6 A major street battle and general riot break out in Philadelphia.

1844 Benjamin Disraeli publishes "Coningsby" - thereby popularizing the "myth of an international Jewish conspiracy." Sidonia, one of the major characters is this book, is an almost superhuman Jewish intellectual and international banker who spells out in great detail how a cabal of immensely wealthy Jews actually control the governments of the entire world. Disraeli's reasons for doing so can only be speculated upon. Many charcters in Disraeli's books were closely copied from the prominent people of the time and Sidonia is obviously a composite of Disraeli himself and Baron Rothschild. (Coningsby)

1844 Birth of Salomon Albert Rothschild, third Baron von Rothschild of Vienna. He is the son of Amschel Salomon Rothschild.

1844 Karl Marx publishes "A World Without Jews."

1845 A. Toussenel publishes "Les Juifs, rois de l'epoque," one of the first antisemitic works of this period. It's publication marks the beginning of modern antisemitism according to some historians. (Morais 169)

NOTE: It is probably no coincidence that Toussenel's book was published the year after Disraeli's "Coningsby" (Sidonia) popularized the idea of a powerful international Jewish establishment.

1846 January 13 President James Polk orders Gen. Zachary Taylor to advance to the Rio Grande River, a frank invasion of Mexican territory.

1846 May 8 A Mexican force crosses the river at Palo Alto, and a battle takes place providing Polk with the excuse to declare war against Mexico.

1846 Abraham Lincoln denounces the war as a fraud and a slaveowners’ conspiracy. He is driven out of politics for the next 12 years.

1846 July 4 Captain John C. Fremont marches to Sonoma near Yerba Buena (modern San Francisco). There he proclaims the independence of California and names himself governor.

1846 July 7 Navy Comdr. John D. Sloat, stationed in Mazatlan, Mexico, at the outbreak of the war, sails to Monterey, Calif., and takes possession of the city and its harbor.

1846 September 24 After a four-day siege and a gallant resistance by the Mexicans, General Taylor enters Monterrey.

1847 Maria Anna Schicklgruber (Adolf Hitler's grandmother) dies in Austria.

1847 February 23 Taylor wins his most famous victory at Buena Vista. There, for the entire day, his army of 4,700 men successfully withstands the attack of 20,000 Mexicans under Santa Anna.

1847 March 27 Gen. Winfield Scott captures the fortress on the harbor of Veracruz.

1847 September 14 American troops enter Mexico City.

1847 From 1847 until his elevation to the peerage in 1876, Benjamin Disraeli represents Buckinghamshire in the House of Commons.

1848 "The Great Year of Revolution."

1848 Benjamin Disraeli inherits his father's fortune and purchases the estate of Hughenden, near High Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire.

1848 February Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish the "Manifesto of the Communist Party." It's opening line is, "A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of Communism."

1848 February 2 The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo is signed. Mexico accepts the Rio Grande as its boundary. This gives the United States Mexico's northern provinces of California and New Mexico. These include parts of the present states of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming. Mexico receives 15 million dollars and is relieved of all claims by citizens of the United States against it.

1848 March 18 Revolution breaks out in Berlin, tens of thousands fight in the streets.

1848 March 21 With Berlin in the hands of the revolutionaries, Kaiser Frederick Wilhelm IV announces that henceforth "Prussia is merged with Germany."

1848 Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary is born.

1848 Lord George Bentinck, formal leader of the Young England party dies.

1848 Disraeli becomes leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons.

1848 October Prussian troops return to Berlin, overthrow the liberal parliament and reestablish autocracy.

1848 November Pope Pius IX flees Rome for Naples

1850 August 17 Jose San Martin dies in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France

1850 Thirteen-years-old, Alois Schicklgruber, the future father of Adolf Hitler, moves to Vienna.

1852 Judah P. Benjamin becomes the first professing Jew elected to the U.S. Senate (in 1852 and again in 1858).

1852 Benjamin Disraeli becomes chancellor of the British Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons in Lord Derby's short-lived ministry of 1852.

1852 Disraeli, referring to the numerous revolutions in Europe since 1848, writes in his "Political Biography of Lord George Bentink" the following quotation:

"The influence of the Jews may be traced in the last outbreak of the destructive principle in Europe. An insurrection takes place against tradition and aristocracy, against religion and property. Destruction of the Semitic principles, extirpation of the Jewish Religion, whether in the Mosaic or the Christian form the natural equality of men and the abrogation of property are proclaimed by the Secret Societies which form Provisional Governments and men of the Jewish Race are found at the head of every one of them. The people of God cooperate with atheists; the most skillful accumulators of property ally themselves with Communists; the peculiar and chosen Race touch the hand of all the scum and low castes of Europe; and all this because they wish to destroy that ungrateful Christendom which owes to them its name, and whose tyranny they can no longer endure."

1853 April 19 Russia claims to be the protectorate of Turkey in a prelude to the Crimean War.

1853 Gobineau publishes "Essay on the Inequality of Human Races."

1853 Harriet Beeher Stowe visits England after publishing ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin;’ meets Lord Palmerston and other British prominent Britons.

1854 May 28 Anti-Catholic riots break-out in New York City.

1854 July 6 An anti-Catholic mob in Bath, Maine, demolishes the Old South Church.

1854 July 13 Anti-Catholics riot in Buffalo, New York.

1854 August 7 In St. Louis, two days of anti-Catholic riots split the community.

1854 Slaveowners break the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and extend slavery into Kansas. This provocation and the President's compromising reaction to it help pave the way toward Southern secession.

1854 The Crimean War (1854-56) is fought to protect British and French imperial interests against Russia's threatened advance toward the Mediterranean and India.

1855 August 6 Anti-Catholic riots in Louisville, Kentucky.

1855 August 24 Abraham Lincoln denounces anti-Catholicism and the Know-Nothing Party for its prejudice against “Negroes, foreigners and Catholics”

1855 Houston Stewart Chamberlain is born.

1855 Alois Schicklgruber enlists in the frontier guards; joins the ranks of the Austrian civil service.

1856 Spring Father Theodorich Hagen leaves Austria for study in the Near East; visits Jerusalem, Patmos, Persia, Arabia, Turkey, the Caucasus.

1857 After helping the British East India Company put down the Sepoy Rebellion in India, Parliament deprives the company of its political powers and transfers the government of India to the British crown.

1857 December Jewish population of Vienna: 6,217 of 476,220 (1.3%)

1858 Jews, for the first time, are allowed to serve in the British Parliament.

1859 Mexican President Benito Juarez issues the Ley Lerdo - separating church and state, abolishing monastic orders, and nationalizing church property.

1859 William Gladstone joins Lord Palmerston’s Government.

1860 May 2 Theodor Herzl is born in Budapest, Hungary.

1860 August 12 Klara Poelzl, mother of Adolf Hitler, is born at Spital, Austria.

1860 November 6 Abraham Lincoln is elected President of the United States.

1860 November 10 North Carolina makes decision to secede from Union.

1860 December 20 South Carolina secedes from the United States.

1861 February 1 South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana, have all declared their withdrawal (secession) from the United States.

1861 February 4 At Montgomery, Ala., South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana organize a separate and independent government called the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi is elected president and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, vice-president.

1861 March 2 Texas becomes the seventh state admitted to the Confederacy.

1861 Alois Hitler is promoted to supervisor rank in the Austrian Customs.

1861 Benito Juarez announces a suspension of payment on foreign loans; the British, Spanish, and French occupy Veracruz in order to collect the Mexican debts owed to European Bankers.

War of Southern Secession

1861 April 12 At 4:30 A.M., Fort Sumter, which is still held by soldiers of the U.S. Army, is fired upon by Confederate artillery from nearby Charleston, S.C.

1861 April 14 Fort Sumter's small federal garrison surrenders.

1861 April 15 President Lincoln calls for the use of troops against seceding states.

1861 April 17 Virginia, caught between the warring states, takes its first step toward secession. It is soon followed in turn by Arkansas and North Carolina.

1861 May Upon Virginia's invitation, the capital of the new nation is moved to Richmond. The number of stars in the Confederate flag, originally seven, will be increased to 13 in recognition of the member states plus Kentucky and Missouri. Neither of these two states will secede, though both send representatives to Confederate Congress.

1861 June 24 Tennessee begins the secession process.

1861 Lord Palmerston (Sir Henry Temple) recognizes the Confederacy as a belligerent and offers to receive their representaives in London; even though America’s Seward had threatened to treat any country doing so as an enemy; Palmerston sends British reinforcements to Canada.

1861 July 21 Bull Run, the war’s first major battle, is won by Confederates under Gens. Joseph E. Johnston and Pierre Beauregard; overconfident Union forces under Gen. Irvin McDowell are routed.

1861 Benjamin Disraeli adopts a neutral position on America’s Civil War.

1861 Moses Hess, said by some to be the true founder of modern Zionism, writes “Rome and Jerusalem” which attacks Moses Mendelssohn’s idea that Judaism is a religion/culture. For Hess, Judaism is a race.

1861 Simon Wolf moves from Cleveland to Washington D.C. as the B’nai B’rith representative in the nation’s capital

1861 Judah P. Benjamin is appointed secretary of war for the Confederacy.

1861 Simon Wolf is arrested by U.S. Army Counterintelligence director Lafayette Baker who suspects the B’nai B’rith is a Confederate intelligence front. B’nai B’rith’s official history says that Wolf was merely “defending several Southern Jews arrested in Washington and charged with being Confederate spies”

1861 In Cincinatti, Bertha Ochs, wife of Julius Ochs, is arrested for smuggling drugs to the Confederate Army in her son’s baby carriage. Later Julius and Bertha’s son, Adolph Ochs, will marry the daughter of Issac Wise and buy the New York Times. Their daughter will eventually marry Arthur Sulzberger, whose family still owns the New York Times.

1861 October 20 Lord Palmerston sends a note to Foreign Office stating that it is probable the South will win the war, and that without doubt, the South as an independent State would be a valuable market for British goods, but the outcome is still too uncertain to fully recognize the South.

1861 November 1 Lord Palmerston learns an American warship, the James Adger, is at South Hampton and intends to intercept the Southern representatives, John Slidell and James Murray Mason, who are bound for England on the British passenger ship Trent.

1861 Slidell and Mason, the Confederacy's commissioners to England, are captured by the Union ship San Jacinto which boards the Trent off the coast of Cuba; Slidell and Mason are taken to Boston. This incident nearly involves Great Britain in the American Civil war.

1861 December Lord Palmerston sends 3,000 more reinforcements to Canada.

1861 December 5 Palmerston writes the Queen that England is in a better state than at any former time to inflict a severe blow upon the United States.

1861 December 6 Lord Palmerston writes to Russell that war will be a "proabable result."

1861 Palmerston agrees with Russell's suggestion to put an embargo on supply of arms to the North, though not to the South.

1861 December 19 Seward informs Russell that Slidell and Mason will be released.

1862 Slidell and Mason are released by the North. Slidell then completes his journey to England, and eventually travels to France, seeking support for the Confederate cause from a sympathetic Napoleon III.

1862 February 17 Palmerston writes the Queen informing her of the U.S.humiliation.

1862 May 1 New Orleans is occupied by Union forces.

1862 Judah P. Benjamin named secretary of state of the Confederacy; serves from 1862 to end of war; his urging that slaves be recruited into the Confederate army enrages many Southerners.

1862 July 22 Northern representatives in London learn of a ship is being built in the shipyards at Birkenhead for use by the Confederate navy.

1862 July 29 Palmerston’s advisors recommend that the ship should be detained.

1862 July 31 Orders are given to detain the ship, but it has already sailed on the 29th. As soon the vessel was outside the three-mile limit, it hoisted the Confederate flag and took the name C.S.S. Alabama. Over the next two years, it will inflict heavy damage to Northern shipping.

1862 August U.S. accuses Britain of intentionally allowing the Alabama to escape and demands compensation for all damage incurred. (see 1872)

1862 September 17 Lee meets the numerically superior forces of McClellan at the little creek of Antietam in Maryland. Loss of men on each side was about 11,000, but was considered a Union victory since Lee left the field first. Antietam is considered one of the most important battles of the war.

1862 September 22 Lincoln issues his Emancipation Proclamation freeing all the slaves in the Southern states as of January 1, 1863. Many believe Lincoln is attempting to incite a slave rebellion in the South.

1862 October 7 William Gladstone in a speech at Newcastle praises the South and declares that Jefferson Davis has "made a nation."

1862 Karl Marx organizes public meetings in England supporting the North; the English aristocracy supports the South, the workers the North.

1862 U.S. Navy wins a Mississsippi River battle and takes Memphis.

1862 Issac Wise's Memphis B'nai B'rith representative, Abraham E. Frankland, is arrested and admits being a Confederate spymaster.

1863 January 1 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation declaring the freedom of all slaves in the rebelling southern states.

1863 January A "Great Rally" of trade unions in London supports the North in America's War of Secession.

1863 March Seward, U.S. Secretary of State, informs the British that the U.S. will use stronger measures against neutral shipping dealing with the South.

1863 Czar Alexander II sends two Russian fleets to American ports with orders to join Lincoln against Britain and France should war break out.

1863 Clement Laird Vallandigham (1820-71), leader of the Peace Democrats (Copperheads) in the North and an Ohio congressman, is convicted of sedition by a military court ; sentence of imprisonment is commuted by Lincoln to banishment to Confederate states. Subsequently becomes supreme commander of the Knights of the Golden Circle.

1863 General Braxton Bragg's Confederate forces defeat Union troops lead by General William S. Rosecrans at the Chickamauga River in Tennesee. The name was Cherokee and meant "River of Death." Bragg's failure to follow up on his victory soon leads to his defeat at Chattanooga.

1863 Besieged Union forces under general George H. Thomas at Chattanooga, Tennesee, sieze the initiative and route the Confederate troops under General Braxton Bragg. It is said to be a decisive engagement.

1863 May Lee defeats an attack by Northern armies at Chancellorsville.

1863 June 30 Debate in the House of Commons points out that "the men of the South are Englishmen," but the army of the North are "the scum of Europe." Roebuck further says that it is vital for Britain that the South should be established as an independent state, because if the North and South are allowed to re-unite, America will soon be the most powerful nation on earth.

1863 The Northern army begins enrolling negro soldiers.

1863 July 1-3 At Gettysburg, General Lee suffers a disastrous defeat.

1863 July 4 Vicksburg falls to General Grant after a long and desperate siege.

1863 July 9 Port Hudson, Louisiana, the last Confederate fort on the Mississippi, surrenders.

1863 August The string of Southern defeats destroys English confidence in the South's ability to win the war.

1863 September 5 The U.S. Ambassador in London warns Palmerston that new Confederate ships are being fiited out at Birkenhead and that if they are allowed to sail - "this is war." That same day, Palmerston orders their seizure.

1863 B'nai B'rith leader Issac Wise is nominated at an Ohio Convention to run for state senator on the radical anti-Union Copperhead ticket. His running mate for Ohio governor is Clement Vallandigham then living in exile in Canada. Wise's own synagogue issues a formal demand for him to withdraw and he is soon forced off the ticket.

1864 Summer The Alabama is sunk off the coast of Cherbourg, France.

1864 Summer Grant launches his great offensive against Lee in Virginia. In a series of bloody engagements, Grant slowly advances, but suffers such heavy losses that victory is virtually a defeat. Northern morale faltered and many believe Lincoln cannot be elected for a second term.

1864 August A would-be assassin shoots at President Lincoln as he rides on horseback by night from the White House to his private retreat three miles away at the suburban Anderson Cottage. His stovepipe hat was later retrieved with a bullet hole through it. Lincoln preferred staying at the Anderson Cottage rather than the White House, and from 1862 to 1864, commuted almost daily by horseback, often at night and without guards, until this incident.

1864 August Lord Palmerston agrees to officially meet with Mason, the Confederate representative, in person, supposedly for the first time.

1864 September 2 Sherman's Army of the West captures Atlanta.

1864 September Sherman begins a devastating march to the sea.

1864 Clement Laird Vallandigham returns to Ohio.

1864 November 7 Last session of the Congress of the Confederate States of America.

1864 November Lincoln is re-elected President of the U.S.

1864 France overthrows the Mexican government and declares Mexico an empire with Maximilian I of Austria (Habsburg) as emperor.

1864 December Sherman completes his march to the sea.

1865 February 20 Confederate House of Representatives passes a bill authorizing the use of slaves as soldiers in the Confederate army.

1865 March Grant and Sherman enclose Lee in a giant pincer movement.

1865 March 8 Confederate Senate passes bill for slaves as soldiers.

1865 March 12 Bill for slave soldiers is sent to President Jefferson Davis.

1865 March 13 Jefferson Davis signs bill allowing Negroes in the Confederate army. The Confederate government, which was outaged in 1863 when the Northern army enrolled negro soldiers, proclaims that any negro slave who volunteers for the Confederate army will be given his freedom.

1865 March 19 Mason, in London, asks Lord Palmerston if Britain would recognize the South if his government abolished slavery. Palmerston would not even consider the question, but said that slavery had never been a factor in preventing the British government from recognizing the Confederacy.

1865 March 21 The "Richmond Sentinel" announces that a company of "colored troops" will parade on the town square in Richmond.

1865 March 24 The Sentinel announces that "the Negro brigade being raised by Majors Pegram and Turner is being rapidly filled up."

1865 April 1 A Federal victory at Five Forks, Virginia, forces Lee to abandon both Petersburg and Richmond. Lee and his men flee westward.

1865 April 9 Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.

1865 April 14 President Lincoln is assassinated in Washington, D.C. (Only five days after the end of the war). An attempt is also made on Seward's life.

1865 April 26 John Wilkes Booth is found hiding in barn near Bowling Green, Virginia. He is killed - either by suicide or by his captors.

1865 John H. Surratt, an admitted Confederate agent, claims that Booth had deposited funds in a Montreal bank regularly used by operatives of Confederate the Secret Service. Surratt confessed to plotting with Booth to abduct Lincoln and take him to Richmond in attempt to end the war and using the Montreal bank for Benjamin's spies.

1865 July 7 Mary Surratt, mother of John Surratt, is tried, convicted, and executed even though there is little evidence of her involvement.

1865 Judah P. Benjamin escapes to England and soon becomes counsel to the Queen.

1865 Lord Palmerston dies.

1866 Austria is defeated by Prussia in the Seven Weeks' War.

1867 French army withdraws from Mexico; Maximilian I is executed.

1867 British Parliament takes another step in the direction of democracy by putting through the second Reform Act giving the vote to almost all adult males residing in the towns (but not those in the rural areas).

1868 March 23 Dietrich Eckart born.

1868 Father Hagen returns from Near East; orders swastika designs carved into the Benedictine Abbey at Lambach, Austria.

1868 Disraeli becomes prime minister of Great Britain.

1869 March 16 Neville Chamberlain is born.

1869 Henri Gougenot des Mousseaux quotes Disraeli on the title page of his book "Le Juif le judaisme et la judaisation des peuples chretiens," - "the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those by who are not behind the scenes."

1870 April 22 Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) born in Simbirsk, Russia.

1870 April 28 Lenin baptized at the Orthodox church of St. Nicholas.

1870 Prussia defeats France in Franco-Prussian War.

1870 Cyrus R. Teed proclaims that the Earth is hollow and begins publishing a small, international journal entitled "The Sword of Fire."

1871 January 18 The Second Reich is proclaimed; Wilhelm I of Prussia becomes emperor (Kaiser) in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, France.

1871 March 5 Rosa Luxemburg is born at Zamosc, Russian Poland (now Poland).

1871 June 17 Clement Laird Vallandigham dies of accidentally self-inflicted bullet wound in Lebanon, Ohio.

1871 July 29 John Slidell dies on the Isle of Wight.

1871 Augustus Rohling publishes "Der Talmudjude" and continues a vicious campaign against the Jews in the Rhineland.

1871 The Jews of Germany are fully emancipated.

1871 The Trade Union Act of 1871 gives full legal recognition to British trade unions.

1872 Britain pays the U.S. $15.5 million in gold for damage done by the C.S.S. Alabama to Union shipping during the American Civil War.

1872 The secret ballot is introduced into British parliamentary elections.

1873 Georg Ritter von Schonerer is first elected to the Austrian Parliament.

1873 Wilhelm Marr publishes "The Victory of Jewism over Germanism."

1874 November 27 Chaim Weizmann is born at Motol in western Russia.

1874 November 30 Winston Churchill is born at Blenheim Palace, the 21,000-acre estate of his family, the famous dukes of Marlborough.

1874 Disraeli again becomes prime minister of Britain.

1874 Death of Amschel Salomon Rothschild.

1875 Alois Schicklgruber promoted to full inspector of Customs.

1875 November 9 Baron Rudolf Sebottendorff, future founder of the Thule Society in Munich, is born in the Saxon market town of Hoyerswerda, north of Dresden.

1875 Lionel Nathan Rothschild (1808-79) loans Britain the money used by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli to buy control of the Suez Canal.

1876 Alois Schicklgruber is legitimized and changes his name to Alois Hitler.

1876 The first Wagnerian festival is held at Bayreuth in Bavaria.

1876 Disraeli arranges for Queen Victoria to be proclaimed empress of India.

1876 Disraeli becomes Lord Beaconsfield and joins the House of Lords.

1877 Politically, the period of Southern reconstruction is completed. Economically, the effects of the war will last much longer.

1878 June Disraeli calls the Congress of Berlin which permits Austria-Hungary to occupy the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. (see 1908)

1878 Adolph Ochs, 20, rises from newsboy to owner of Chattanooga Times.

1879 Wilhelm Marr founds an Anti-Semitic League reputed to be the first of its kind in the world and thereby coins the word "anti-Semitism."

1879 Leon Trotsky is born in Ukraine of Jewish parents named Bronstein.

1879 December 21 Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Joseph Stalin) born at Gori in Trans-Caucasian Georgia.

1880 Disraeli is ousted by the General election of 1880. Many saw it as a repudiation of his pro-Turkish and Afghan policy.

1881 April 19 Disraeli dies in London and is buried at his estate (Hughenden) near High Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire.

1881 Czar Alexander II (1855-81) is murdered, alleged by anarchists. A number of Jews are implicated in the plot and are quickly blamed.

1881 Large-scale pogroms begin in no less than 160 Russian cities; soon thousands of Jewish refugees flood into Austria and Eastern Europe.

1882 April 19 British naturalist Charles Darwin dies at the age of 73. His theory of evolution based on natural selection revolutionized the study of biology. His most famous works include "Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man."

1882 Georg von Schonerer helps draft the "Linz Program."

1882 Baron Edmond de Rothschild of Paris, begins work to establish a Jewish homeland after meeting with Shmuel Mohilewer.

1882 The First International Anti-Jewish Congress is held in Dresden.

1882 October 13 Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau, dies in Turin, Italy.

1883 Schonerer demands dismissal of all Jewish teachers; soon calls for the destruction of the Habsburg monarchy and the union of all German peoples under the Prussian Hohenzollerns.

1883 July 29 Benito Mussolini born in Dovia di Predappio, Italy

1883 Richard Wagner dies in Venice.

1884 May 6 Judah P. Benjamin dies in Paris.

1884 During Gladstone's second ministry, 1880-85, a third Reform Bill is enacted giving rural voters the same voting privileges as townspeople.

1885 January 7 Alois Hitler marries Klara Polzl, his niece and former servant.

1885 Schonerer adds anti-semitism clauses to the "Linz Program."

1885 Death of Baron Salomon Mayer Rothschild.

1885 June 1 Father Berenger Sauniere arrives in the tiny French village of Rennes-le-Chateau on the ancient pilgrimage route from Europe to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

1885 French-born Rudolf Diesel sets up his first shop-laboratory in Paris and begins what will become a 13-year ordeal to create a pressure ignited engine.

1886 January 12 - Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076 is consecrated at a ceremony in the City of London. The lodge's warrant had been issued by the United Grand Lodge of England on November 28, 1884. According to its official history, it was founded by a group of nine Freemasons: Colonel Sir Charles Warren (later general), W. Harry Rylands, Robert Gould, the Rev. Adolfus F.A. Woodford, Sir Walter Besant, John P. Rylands, Major Sisson C. Pratt, William James Hugan and George W. Speth. All were scholars and several were highly distinguished in the field of Masonic study.

Note:Sir Charles Warren served as London Commissioner of Police during the Jack the Ripper murders and was District Grand Master in Masonry, 1891-5.

1886 November 9 Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076 celebrates the feast day of Quatuor Coronati for the first time since its founding.

1887 Schonerer calls for legislation restricting Jewish immigration.

1887 Viennese newspaper discloses that Schonerer's wife has Jewish blood.

1887 Emperor Franz Joseph announces the Rothschilds are Hoffahig, officially acceptable in the highest social circles.

1888 Cyrus R. Teed, the first Koresh, sets up a utopian commune in Chicago known as the Koreshean Unity; Koresh is Hebrew for Cyrus

1888 November 9 Jean-Omer-Marie-Gabriel Monnet, the so-called "Father of Europe" is born in Cognac, France.

1889 April 20 Adolfus Hitler (Adolf Hitler) is born at Braunau am Inn, Austria. According to his birth certificate, he was born at 6:17 PM and baptized two days later by Father Ignaz Probst at the local Catholic church. (Payne)

Note: Hitler's father, Alois, was a 51-year-old Austrian customs official of questionable birth. His mother, Klara, was his father's niece and former servant -- twenty-three years his junior. Married in 1885, their first three children, two boys and a girl, all died before Adolfus was born.

1889 April 24 Solomon Formstecher, Jewish idealist philosopher and rabbi at Offenbach from 1842, dies at Offenbach, Germany. Die Religion des Geistes ("The Religion of the Spirit," 1841) is considered the most complete exposition of his philosophy and a thorough systematization of Judaism. He believed there were only two basic religions: the religion of nature (paganism) and the religion of spirit (Judaism). He thought the essence of Judaism was ethical. Its ethics, adulterated by myth and art, were also disseminated by Christianity and Islam but existed in purest form in Judaism. (Britannica)

1889 June An antisemitic conference held at Bochum, Germany, draws a number of representatives from France and Austria-Hungary, including Georg von Schoenerer (Schönerer), and soon leads to the foundation of two German antisemitic political parties, the Deutsch-Soziale Partei led by Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg and the radical Antisemitische Volkspartei under peasant-rousing demagog, Otto Böckel. (P.G.J. Pulzer; Roots)

1889 August Leading socialist theorist and founder of the German Communist party, Rosa Luxemburg is forced into exile in Switzerland. Born into a prosperous Jewish business family in Russian Poland, she had been engaged in revolutionary activity since 1887.

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