Year 1800-1849

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1800-1812: Napoleons new Europe and scientific progress  

William Henry (left), Wilhelm von Humboldt (center), and Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (right).

 

The political boundaries in Europe at the end of the 18th century and the constitutional arrangements within them were largely the legacy of medieval attempts at creating a pan-European empire. Germany was broken up into more than 300 different political units, ruled over by electors, archbishops, dukes, landgraves, city councils, counts, imperial knights, etc. What is now Belgium belonged to the Habsburgs and was ruled from Vienna, while Italy was divided up into 11 states, most of them ruled by Austrian Habsburgs or French and Spanish Bourbons. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation included Czechs, Magyars and half a dozen other nationalities. Poland was divided into three regions, ruled from Berlin, Vienna and St. Petersburg, respectively. Especially the Polish situation was to have consequences for the near future in Europe.

Between 1801 and 1806, following his victories over Austria and Prussia, Napoleon transformed the political, social and economic climate throughout the German lands. Each annexed territory was reorganised along the lines of French Enlightenment thought, rulers were dethroned, the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, imperial counts and knights lost their lands, nonsensical  borders were removed, caste privileges and other restrictions were abolished, and in their place came new institutions mounded on the French Pattern. The ending of feudal practices gave agriculture a boost, and the removal of tolls and frontiers liberated trade. The confiscation of church property was followed by the building of schools and the development of universities. Napoleon became very popular in most of Europe with the middle class, peasants, Jews, as well as with progressive intellectuals, students and writers. Many new scientific ideas and hypotheses were put forward in this new atmosphere of freedom.

With the victories of Jena and Auerstädt in 1806 Napoleon destroyed the Prussian army and shook the Prussian state to the core. A far-ranging programme of reform and modernisation was initiated, affecting not only the army, but also many other aspects of life, to enable Prussia to liberate and unite the German lands and challenging French cultural and political primacy. A powerful tool to obtain this was to be higher education, and Wilhelm von Humboldt was put in charge of a programme of reform, that culminated in the opening of a university in Berlin 1810.

Science in many other countries in Europe than just Prussia benefited directly or indirectly from Napoleon's period of French Enlightenment in the early 19th century. This development should also bee seen on the general background of the significant mental and cultural progress, which characterised the previous 18th century. The 18th century is in Europe also known as the century of enlightenment. To a high degree this was due to the efforts of the astronomer and philosopher Galileo Galilei in the 17th century, where he played a major role in the scientific revolution. With great clarity, he was able to describe and convince people of the fundamental difference between faith and formal knowledge. As a result of these previous developments the early 19th century was characterised by the proposal of many new scientific hypotheses and ideas, several of which were to have lasting influence on science in the form of fundamental theories.

One example of this is the English chemist William Henry (1775-1836), who in 1803 described his results with experiments on the quantity of gases (e.g. CO2) absorbed by water at different temperatures and under different pressures. His results are known today as Henrys law. This fundamental law among other things describes how the solubility of CO2 in water decreases with temperature.

Shortly after this, in 1816 and again in 1827, the French mathematician and physicist Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier proposed the hypothesis that the atmospheric temperature would depend, among other things, on the amount of atmospheric CO2. This resulted in the first broad scientific interest for CO2 as a chemical substance, and various scientists began measuring the actual concentration of atmospheric CO2. This was seen to vary over time, and using Henry's law, such variations were explained by small variations in the sea surface temperature, controlling the solubility of CO2 in ocean water. Also various geological and biological processes were considered as being potentially important for the variable atmospheric CO2 content. In addition to proposing the CO2 hypothesis, Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier actually became best known for initiating the investigation of mathematical Fourier series and their application to problems of heat flow.

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1801: The First Battle of Copenhagen  

 

The Battle of Copenhagen, as painted by Nicholas Pocock (left). Vice Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson (right).

 

Denmark was in dispute with Britain over the right to search neutral ships. As a neutral country, Denmark claimed the right to trade with any country and to transport any goods except for a narrow range defined as specific war materials. Britain saw the right to stop and search neutral ships as a matter of stopping French expansion under Napoleon, and ultimately the very survival of the British Isles. For Denmark it primarily meant money. Because of the British-French war, neutral ships were in huge demand and the Danish merchant fleet was making massive profits.

Before the Battle of the Nile (August 1, 1998), the British Navy had been on the defensive, with little spare capacity to deal with neutral ships, but Nelson’s victory had changed all that. The Mediterranean was now under the control of the British Navy, and suddenly ships were available to enforce a tight blockade of French and Spanish ports. What until now for Denmark had been merely profiteering now became a point of political principle. Britain maintained the right to search Danish ships, while Denmark denied that right. Danish convoys began to be escorted by Danish warships, but these were often outnumbered by British warships.

For Denmark the political answer to this situation was an alliance with other neutral nations, to actively protect their merchant ships from being stopped and investigated. Denmark actively prompted Russia to instigate such an alliance, the League of Armed Neutrality. This was, however, not an entirely prudent move by Denmark, as Tsar Paul was considered insane and his actions therefore not always quite predictable. The treaty was ratified by Russia, Sweden, Prussia and Denmark in Copenhagen on 4 November 1800. According to the treaty, if war for some reason broke out between Russia and Britain, Denmark would be forced to take Russia’s side.

On the very day the treaty was ratified in Copenhagen, the erratic Tsar Paul decided to place an embargo on all British ships in Russian ports and arrested all British citizens. Tsar Paul’s objective presumably was to use the new alliance to enable a joint Russian and French domination of the European continent, using Denmark and Sweden as buffer states against Britain. Suddenly Denmark was now effectively an enemy of Britain , and it was no longer just a question of preventing neutral ships from being searched. On the other hand, if Denmark did not live up to the treaty, this could well prompt a Russian invasion and the loss of everything.

The British government rapidly decided to take out the Danish fleet, which was strategically well placed at the entrance to the Baltic. In early 1801, a powerful fleet was assembled at Great Yarmouth under the command of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker with Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson under him. The British fleet sailed from Yarmouth on 12 March.

According to the treaty, Denmark should expect assistance from both the Russian and the Swedish fleets, which together with the Danish fleet would be able to muster a formidable force with no less than 123 ships of the line (battleships). So things did not look so bad for Denmark, after all.

Winters were generally cold during this part of the Little Ice Age, and the Danish government realized that there would come no assistance from the Russian fleet, as it still was locked by solid sea ice in its bases Kronstad and Reval, near St. Petersburg. At the same time, promised naval support for the Danes from Sweden did not arrive perhaps because of adverse winds. The Prussians had only minimal naval forces and too could not assist in any way. On 30 March, the British force passed through the narrows between Denmark and Sweden, sailing close to the Swedish coast to put them selves as far from the Danish guns as possible; fortunately for the British, the Swedish batteries remained silent.

On the afternoon of 1 April 1801 Nelson took his ships south in Øresund and anchored off the southern tip of the Middle Ground Shoal, south-east of Copenhagen, ready to attack the following day. The next morning, 2 April, there was a favourable wind to take the British ships north past the anchored Danis warships and floating batteries. 

This was a hazardous enterprise. The water was shallow and only a single channel with deeper water existed in this particular part of Øresund. The exact position of this was not known, and the Danish had understandably removed all markings. Nelson's pilots refused to serve for fear of causing the whole fleet to be grounded (Harvey 2007). Captain Murrau in the Edgar then lead the way. The previous night he had been sent by Nelson to take soundings in a muffled boat right under the nose of the Danish ships. Eventually, several of the British ships grounded during the battle, a situation which nearly ended in British defeat.

Some of the Danish ships were in poor condition, no more that grounded gun batteries, but at the northern end of the channel between Copenhagen and the island Saltholm to the east there were two strong forts. In total, quite a formidable Danish defence line. The battle that followed was hard. As the morning of the battle wore on, some Danish batteries ceased firering and some surrendered, but others continued to put up a strong resistance. Many British ships were being badly mauled, and slowly Nelson's situation was beginning to look critical. Unlucky for the Danish defence, however, the Danish flagship Dannebrog then spectacularly caught fire and began drifting down the Danish line. This sight had negative influence on the Danish efforts, and even more when Dannebrog exploded half past three in the afternoon. Three o’clock the Danes agreed to a cease-fire under the threat of Nelson to burn the captured Danish floating batteries with the Danish seamen still onboard.

Nearly 1100 km to the north-east, at St. Petersburg, Tsar Paul of Russia had been assassinated by strangling nine days earlier, on 24 March, an act widely attributed to the British secret service. At least, the intimate knowledge on the plot later disclosed by the British ambassador in St. Petersburg suggest British passive complicity (Harvey 2007). 

The new Tsar, Alexander I, immediately reversed Russian foreign policy, releasing British merchant ships which had been seized, and signed an agreement with Britain under which British goods were again allowed to sail in Baltic waters. In summer, news of such a momentous event, travelling by sea, would have reached Copenhagen long before the battle. But in the winter 1800-1801 the Russian ports were still ice-bound, and for much of their journey couriers had to tale a longer, overland route.

It is not entirely clear when the news about the assassination of Tsar Paul arrived in Copenhagen, but it has been suggested that it came while the battle was still raging, and influenced subsequent events. Had the the winter not been so cold and the intelligence therefore received earlier in Copenhagen, the whole melancholic affair today known as the First Battle of Copenhagen (Danish: Slaget på Rheden) might have been avoided (Adkins and Adkins 2006). And had the British Navy not intelligence on the Russian fleet still being ice-bound in March 1801, the First Battle of Copenhagen presumably would not have been fought at all.   

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1805: The Battle at Trafalgar – the stormy aftermath  

Battleorder at the onset of the Battele at Trafalgar, southern Spain (left). Horatio Nelson's flagship Victory breaking through the French battleline at 1.00pm 21st October 1805. Painting by Robert Taylor (centre). Horatio Nelson (right).

On the morning of Monday 21 October 1805 the French Admiral Villeneuve to his horror saw a British fleet with 27 ships approaching his own combined Franco-Spanish fleet consisting of 35 ships. The weather was pleasantly, with a soft breeze, so both fleets were moving slowly on the sea beyond Trafalgar on the south coast of Spain, north-west of Gibraltar.

The result of the following battle is well known. The British fleet under Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated the Franco-Spanish fleet, in the process taking no less that 16 battleships as prizes. By this feat, the French treat of invasion in Britain was removed, at least for some time.

When crossing the French line in his flagship Victory, Nelson was shot by a French Mariner called Guillemend, placed as sharpshoter in one of the masts of the nearby battleship Redoutable (see picture above). Later in the afternoon, Nelson died of his wound. He traveled back to Britain in the hold of Victory, preserved in a huge cask filled with brandy (Harvey 2007).

Nelson’s seamanship and prescience, however, remained to the last. While lying in his bed after being treated for his wound he noticed a growing swell, in spite of the fine weather. This alerted him that bad weather was on the way, threatening all ships by driving them by the wind on to the nearby lee shore. His last order was therefore to anchor the British ships to avoid this coming disaster.

Nelson’s second in command, Collingwood, however decided to ignore Nelson’s orders to anchor, partly because some of the anchors aboard British ships had been lost in the fighting, and partly to sail as far as possible from the dangerous lee shore of Spain , with its treacherous shoals at Trafalgar.

It the following night the British fleet with all prizes sailed straight into a fateful storm. Colossal waves battered the ships, many of them already crippled, rolling about helplessly with their gaping holes from the battle. Many of the captured French ships sank behind the ships towing her, or had to be cut adrift and then stranded on the shoals near the coast.

At dawn the storm continued unabated, and more French prizes went aground, sank or had to be destroyed. The captured French Admiral Villeneuve presumably saw with considerable relief that his ships now would not join the British fleet. The storm continued for three days, and no less than 12 of the original 16 prizes were lost. All British ships managed to limp back home (Harvey 2007).

The Battle of Trafalgar was a great British naval victory. But it would have been even more significant, had these 12 French battleships not been lost during the following storm, but instead successfully been incorporated into the British navy. This would even more significantly have changed the naval balance between the Britain and France at this critical time .

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1812: Background for Napoleon's Russian campaign  

The two emperors Napoleon (left) and Alexander I (right) negotiating the Tilsit Treaty in a pavilion set up on a raft in the middle of the Niemen River, beginning 25 June 1807.  

In 1806, Napoleon won a conclusive battle against Austria at Wagram. Austria was then forced to sign the treaty of Vienna, which reduced it to a state of powerlessness. From a military point of view, Napoleon had now gained control over most of Europe and was beginning to create a European Community, almost 200 years before it became a reality. As was the case for Adolf Hitler 129 years later, only two European nations stood between him and the total political dominance: Britain and Russia.

In November 1806 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church issued a denunciation of Napoleon, accusing him of conspiring with evil people against the Christan Faith, due to Napoleons declaration of his regard for Islam. Russia therefore launched a military crusade against him. This initiative was cut short by Napoleon routing the Russian army at Eylau (January 1807) and at Friedland (June 1807). Tsar Alexander I of Russia the sensibly enough suggested peace and and an alliance, which was negotiated and signed 7 July 1807 at Tilsit.

Cracks in this alliance, however, rapidly began to show. Especially Napoleon's creation of the Grande Duchy of Warsaw in 1807 had, in effect, introduced the first material renewed conflict of interest between France and Russia. This new political unit inevitably raised the possibility of a restoration of the Kingdom of Poland. Such a restoration would entail the loss of Russia of some if not all previous land acquisitions at the expense of Poland - an area of 463,000 km2 with a population of more than seven million. Napoleon was beginning to fear that Russia would use the Polish question as an excuse to seek an understanding with Britannia. The French-Russian relationship began to deteriorate. By 1811, there was much open talk about the coming war in both countries, although probably both Napoleon and Alexander had no personal wishes to go down the road to war.

Caught up by the internal dynamics of this development, Napoleon decided to strike first, and began a relentless build-up of forces through the autumn and winter of 1811 and into the spring of 1812. The army Napoleon was assembling would be large by any scale, including soldiers from almost every nation of Europe. The largest non-French contingent were the Poles, who numbered some 95,000. In total, the 'Grande Armée' probably numbered around 450,000. Also Alexander did everything he could to prepare his armed forces for the expected confrontation, and in 1812 he had almost 600,000 men under arms. Napoleons army, however, was fortified by the reputation of the French arms: The common belief that they were invincible made them almost invincible.

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1812: Napoleon's Russian summer campaign   

22 June 1822 the Grande Armée invaded Russia, crossing the river Niemen. What officially was proclaimed as the Second Polish War had begun. The Russian army had spend a year and a half deploying for an offensive, but instead began retreating the moment operations began. To add to the general confusion, issues like command and strategy had not been decided because of chaos and intrigue at the Russian headquarters. As nobody and nothing was prepared, the Russian army commanded by general Barclay therefore continued their retreat without major resistance, looking for a suitable position in which to make a stand. Apparently such a position was not easily found, so the retreat continued for weeks. This development left people in Moscow and St. Petersburg bewildered about what was going on, and Tsar Alexander found himself in a difficult position. Already on 28 June Napoleon entered Vilna, 170 km east of Niemen.

In western Russia the weather July 1806 turned out to be exceedingly warm with daytime temperatures reaching 36oC (Zamoyski 2005). Many French soldiers who had previously campaigned in Egypt claimed that they had never marched in such a heat. Early July a heavy thunderstorm drifted across the area near Vilna, for a short time making all roads impassable. Worse, loses among the Grande Armée's horses were horrific. This left Napoleon's artillery in a difficult position, but the army’s supply organisation was even harder affected. After the rainstorm, the warm weather continued. The remaining horses were having a terrible time. Unused to the kind of diet they were exposed to, they suffered from colic and diarrhoea or constipation. The overall supply situation therefore rapidly deteriorated, and most soldiers had to find something to eat and to prepare it themselves. Not surprisingly, under these circumstances, many soldiers died of dehydration, malnutrition and hunger, while others got dysentery. When the Grande Armée 28 July reached Vitebsk 400 km into Russia, the whole army had already been reduced by a third, without fighting a single major battle. The summer weather was beginning to turn the whole campaign into a nightmare.

The Russian army was no happier than the French, and its troops were in a state of dejection as they retreated towards Smolensk, 380 km southwest of Moscow. Napoleon was convinced that the Russian army would have to fight in defence of the wholly city of Smolensk. The Russian forces and general Barclay were, however, in a state of tactical confusion, and no strong defence of the city was organised. Smolensk went up into flames, and fell to Napoleon 17 August. The burnt-out city represented neither an effective bastion nor a hard-needed resource for his army. According to his secretary Baron Fain (Zamoyski 2005), Napoleon himself was presumably feeling disheartened and disgusted at the turn events had taken, and did not quite know what to do next. 

The battle of Smolensk had also demonstrated the unpleasant fact to Napoleon, that the individual Russian soldier did not lay down his arms even in very difficult situations. 129 years later Adolf Hitler would make the identical observation. The French were dismayed by all this. This was not how war was supposed to be. In addition, these discomforts were added to by the fact that the Russians had adopted a new tactic now that the invaders were in the Russian homeland proper. They evacuated the entire population as they retreated, leaving towns and villages deserted and burnt down. It became increasingly difficult for the French army to find provisions.

Napoleon realised that he could not stop where he was, and as he would not retreat for political reasons, he could only advance in the hope of eventually obtaining a decisive military victory over the Russians. If not before, the Russians would surely make a stand in defence of their old capital Moscow. Based on existing knowledge on climate in western Russia, Napoleon at that time expected at least two months of decent campaigning weather ahead.

The mood at Russian headquarters was hardly better, even though the general situation was changing in their favour. The retreat was a good deal less orderly than before, and the Russian armies were now leaving behind them a trail of abandoned wagons and dead or dying men and horses. Like the French, the Russians were disturbed by the inhumane turn the campaign had taken. The ongoing retreat meant that discipline were fast breaking down, and everybody was on the lookout for traitors. All this was having a detrimental effect on the army and Barclay's authority.

In St. Petersburg Tsar Alexander found the general mood depressingly defeatist, and decided that the Russian army needed a new commander instead of Barclay. He was hard pressed by the public opinion to choose Field Marshal Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov as Barclay's successor. Alexander himself was not to happy about this, as he considered Kutuzov both immoral and incompetent. His sister Catherine, however, urged him to bow to the inevitable, and Kutozov was appointed 20 August 1812. Kutuzov declared that he was going to save Moscow, and set off to find his headquarters.

After assessing the state of the Russian army Kutuzov suddenly felt that he could not face Napoleon, whose strength now was gauged at 165,000, down from the original 450,000. The Russian summer had taken its toll. Kutuzov therefore decided to continue the retreat initiated by Barclay two months before. Perhaps he also suspected Napoleon to be a superior general to himself. On 3 September Kutuzov inspected defensive positions found near the village of Borodino, about 100 km west of Moscow. Here he was going to make a stand.

Kutuzov took up entirely defensive positions without any tactical possibility of gaining the initiative. Luckily for him, Napoleon had just caught a cold with an associated attack of dysuria, and was in anything approaching his usual form. In fact, Napoleon was going to deliver probably the worst performance of his entire military career. The invading French army was now down to 126,000, while Kutuzov had about 155,00 men under his command.

 

The Battle at Borodino 6 September 1812 (oil painting by Hess), with Napoleon watching from the Shevardino Redoubt (oil painting by Vereschagin). 

 

The first large battle during Napoleon's Russian campaign began in the morning of 6 September 1812. Before this battle, both armies had lost more than half their original strength during eight weeks of Russian summer. The battle of Borodino was a hard fought battle with several Russian counterattacks, but slowly the French was getting the upper hand due to its superiority on the tactical level, and the Russian army had to retreat. The battle of Borodino was the greatest massacre in recorded history, not to be surpassed until the first day of the battle at Somme in 1916. Recent estimates give a total of about 73,000 casualties, 45,000 Russian and 28,000 French including allies.

Kutuzov's army was now in no condition to give battle on any positions, however strong. He therefore fell back to the village Fili west of Moscow, initially announcing that he would fight in front of Moscow to the last drop of blood. At the following council of war in Fili, however, he took the decision to abandon Moscow to Napoleon, to preserve the Russian army in being, a scene memorably portaryed in Tolstoy's War and Peace. The Russian army therefore continued its retreat through the Moscow to the consternation of the inhabitants. Kutuzov then turned south and later southwest, setting up a fortified camp for his army near Tarutino, about 120 km SW of Moscow.

The village Fili (now a suburb of Moscow ) reappears later in history. Somewhat ironic, this was the location chosen by Trotsky in 1922 for cooperation with the German Junckers aircraft company for secret German-Russian production of aircrafts and engines, at a time where the German Reichvwehr by the 1919 Versailles treaty was limited to 100,000 men and the development of military aircraft, tanks, battleships and other top-of-the-range military assets was limited (Bellamy 2007). In early December 1941, Fili also marks one of the the foremost position reached by the German Wehrmacht on their trust towards Moscow during operation Barbarossa.

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1812: Napoleon in Moscow  

In the afternoon of 14 September, what was left of the Grande Armée entered Moscow. Napoleon took up residence at the Kremlin the following day. About two-thirds of the 270,184 inhabitants had left, and the remainder were hiding in their homes. Nobody with an official status was left to take care of a formal surrender and make arrangements for feeding the soldiers, as would normally be the case in a civilised war. To make things even worse, before leaving Moscow, the city commander Count Rostopchin had ordered his Police Superintendant Voronenko to burn not only the remaining supplies, but everything he could. Voronenko and his men set to work, presumably assisted by the city's criminal elements. The fire raged out of control and spread to several districts of the city. In the morning of 16 September flames were lapping around the walls of Kremlin, and Napoleon had to evacuate himself and take up residence in the Petrovsky Palace, a few kilometres outside Moscow.

 

Moscow burning 15-18 September 1812. On the 18 September Napoleon returns to Kremlin after having evacuated himself to the Petrovsky Palace outside Moscow. Oil paintings by Vereschagin.

 

After three days the fire began to abate, and on 18 September Napoleon rode back into Moscow. Two thirds of the city was destroyed by the fire, robbing him of a wealth of material resources. And there was still no delegation formally surrendering Moscow to him. Even worse, Tsar Alexander still apparently did not understand that Russia was defeated, and therefore had no ambitions of making peace with Napoleon. It was all very frustrating.

Napoleon now had to consider taking up winter quarters in Moscow. Alternatively he would have to retreat with his back home, a move which for political reasons was difficult. So for the time being, he choose to remain in Moscow, hoping that Alexander finally would come to his senses.

Napoleon had studied the available weather information, which told him that it normally did not get really cold until the beginning of December, so he did not feel any sense of urgency. What he did not realise, was how sudden low temperatures may come if a high pressure area settles over eastern Europe, pumping arctic air masses south across Russia, where the lack of high mountains leave the whole country open for arctic air masses. In addition, he had no experience of temperature being only one factor, but that the wind strength also had to be taken into account.

Early October 1812 the weather remained to be fine and warm, and Napoleon was teasing Armand Caulaincourt, his finest civilian aide, about his anxiety about the winter climate. On 13 October, however, the weather suddenly turned cold, and Moscow was covered in a blanket of thin snow. Presumably this was a meteorological surprise to Napoleon, and it rapidly made him make up his mind. The same day he declared that the army would leave as rapid as possible, and take up winter quarters further west, where well-stocked bases were at hand in Minsk and Vilna. Napoleons army left Moscow 20 October.

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1812: Napoleon's retreat from Moscow  

The actual armed forces at Napoleon's disposal as he left Moscow numbered no more than 95,000, and probably less. Marchal Kutuzow was still camping passively SW of Moscow, reinforcing his army to about 97,000 men. He was, however, still in no hurry to engage in regular warfare. So while Napoleon was retreating west towards Smolensk along the Moscow road, Kutuzov did not seriously attempt to cut across their line of retreat, even though he was excellently placed to do so.

The French retreat was slow, mainly due to lack of horsepower. The shortage of fodder had debilitated the horses, and they were growing too week to pull the guns and wagons. Part of the problem was that Napoleon saw himself carrying out a tactical withdrawal rather than a retreat. Therefore he refused to abandon a proportion of their guns to liberate horses and thereby save time. This determination not to loose face would cost him dear. As well as slowing their progress, all this had a demoralising effect on the French troops, marching down a devastated road, seeing only abandoned equipment, human and animal corpses. Kutuzow was still following south of the French army, but resolutely opposed to any suggestions from his generals to make an offensive move.

The good news for the French was that the weather was magnificent, and that the early snow in Moscow presumably just was a meteorological mishap. On 31 October, at Viazma, Napoleon therefore ridiculed those who had been attempting to scare him with stories of the Russian winter. The weather remained fine during the first days of November 1812, until 3 November, which was to be the last warm day. The wind turned north and the night between 4 and 5 November brought with it a rapid drop in air temperature. On 6 November the French retreat was entering a new phase. It began to snow, and in short time it lay half a meter thick on the ground. The drop in temperature had not been that great, probably not exceeding -10oC. But the French army was not used to or dressed for cold weather. There was no such thing as a winter uniform, since in those days armies did not fight in winter. The cold also provided the last straw for many of the remaining horses. The meteorological change early November 1812 had a profound effect on the whole French army.

Napoleon and his army retreating across western Russia early November 1812. 

 

Also the Russian army under Kutuzow was affected by the cold, and food and clothing was equally scarce. The war now grow even more vicious than before, and captives had become an unwelcome encumbrance to both sides. Many prisoners, French or Russian, were simply despatched with a bullet to the head.

When Napoleon 9 November reached Smolensk, the wind was still northerly and air temperatures were down to -15oC. On 14 November, they sank to -28oC. His army was now reduced to about 35,000 men. Kutuzow made some attempts at intersecting Napoleons further retreat towards Minsk, but without substantial success. 22 November Napoleon reached Tolochin, where he was informed that other Russian forces just had taken Minsk further to the west. What was left of the French army was surrounded. Napoleon, nevertheless, managed to extricate himself from this impossible situation by fainting an attack towards south, while his engineers at the same time was constructing two bridges across the frozen river Berezina, which was crossed 27-28 November.

The following two days may have been among the worst of the entire retreat. When Napoleon reached Pleshchenitse on 30 November, a temperature of -30oC was recorded be Dr. Louis Lagneau (Zamoyski 2005). Frostbite was widespread among the tired and hungry soldiers. Selfishness reached new heights. Now that Napoleon had managed to get beyond his reach, Kutuzov felt even less inclined to force the pursuit than before. Also his army was in a terrible condition. His main force, which has marched out of Tarutino 97,000 strong one month before, was now reduced to 27,000 men due to the cold, according to his own figures (Zamoyski 2005).

 

Retreat of the French army in western Russia, mid- and late November 1812. Oil paintings by Vereschagin.

 

On the evening of 5 December, at Smorgonie, Napoleon decided that it was time for him to go back to Paris, and take control from there. He called together his marshals and apparently apologised for his mistake of having remained in Moscow for too long. He then set off into the night. The Imperial Mameluke, Roustam, later reported that the wine in Napoleon's carriage froze that night, causing the bottles to shatter. On 6 December the temperature fell even more, reaching -37.5oC according to Dr. Louis Lagneau. 

This was the end. On 9 December the main mass of the French army turned up at the gates of Vilnia. Vilnia, however, could not be hold, and the retreat had to continue towards the starting point along the river Niemen. The weather continued bitterly cold, with daytime temperatures around -35oC. The French commander Murat realised that the line of Niemen could not be held, and had to retreat all the way to first Kö nigsberg, and later Danzig and Küstrin much longer to the west. Eventually, the remnants of the French army were driven all the way back to Dresden.

It was only when the French retreat finally came to a stop towards the end of January 1813 that the true scale of the disaster began to emerge. June 1812 somewhere between 550,000 and 600,000 French and allied troops have been assembled along Niemen. Only about 120,000 came out of Russia in December 1812, including substantial reinforcements received after the invasion was launched 22 June. Presumably at least 400,000 French and allied troops died during the campaign, less than 100,000 in battle. On the Russian side is has been estimated that up to 400,000 soldiers and militia died, about 110,000 of them in battle. 

The extremely cold winter November-December 1812, in combination with the previous warm summer July-August 1812 had been devastating for the whole military operation on both French and Russian side, and were to have lasting effects on Europe's political future.

The catastrophic outcome of the Russian campaign sealed Napoleon's fate. Not only did it cost him 300,000 of his best French soldiers (today this would compare to a loss of 700,000 men), but it also punctured the aura of superiority and being invincible that has been surrounding Napoleon's person. Few saw this more clearly than the German patriots in Prussia, who had been suffering under the humiliation of French dominion. On 28 February 1813 an alliance was concluded between Russia and Prussia, and two weeks the latter declared war on France.

 

1813-14: The invasion of France

In astonishingly short time Napoleon managed to raise a new army of 200,000 men, and rapidly regained his old self-confidence. In April 1813 he lead a huge counter-offensive with his new army into the Preussian heartland towards Dresden. His strategy was to retake Berlin and relieve Danzig, thus rescuing the 150,000 French troops sourrounded along the Vistula. At this time, the minor German princes still supported him.

At Lützen Napoleon defeated the combined Russo-Prussian force on 2 May and once again at Bautzen 20 May, but all to no avail. Sweden joined the coalition against Napoleon and Britain contributed money. And as Napoleon's enemies grew in strength, his remaining allies began to waver. On 12 August Austria declared war on France. Napoleon responded by defeating a combined Russian-Austrian army 26 August outside Dresden. On 16 October 1813 Napoleon faced the combined forces of the new coalition at Leipzig, being outnumbered by two to one. Napoleon nevertheless held his ground for long, but finally had to fell back across the Rhine early November 1813. 

In the spring of 1814 Napoleon fought his perhaps most brilliant campaign against the invading armies on French soil. In January 1814 the Prussian army under the generals Blücher and Gneisenau crossed the river Meuse and penetrated 120 km into French territory. In a fierce winter blizzard, Napoleon attempted to work his way around the Prussian's rear, nearly capturing Blücher and Gneisenau, and forcing their army to retreat towards La Rothiére (Harvey 2006). The allies had great trouble concentrating one big army to face and defeat Napoleon, as the cold winter 1813-1814 made it difficult to keep any big army supplied on French soil during the winter. The allied armies therefrore remained seperated and vulnerable. 

However, this development and other French victories were unable to do more than delay the evitable end. Paris capitulated 31 March 1814, and Napoleon was force to abdicate on 6 April, less than 18 month after leaving Moscow. He was exiled to the island of Elba off the Italian coast. One year later, on 1 March 1815, he landed in France and took power once again. On 18 June 1815 he was defeated at Waterloo by a combined British and Russian army under Wellington. Even at this final confrontation, Napoleon proved himself to be an outstanding general. The final outcome of the battle was, in a phrase used by the Duke of Wellington in describing his victory at Waterloo, "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life" (Massie 2005). Napoleon was then exiled to St. Helena in the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean, where he died 5 May 1821.

France, a state at least as powerful as Britain before the industrial revolution, was crippled politically and economically for decades after 1815. For long, it remained a largely agrarian country, and its own industrial revolution was seriously posponed. In total, France was considerably worse off economically and more backward politically in 1816 than in 1788. The French industrial revolution had been limited to military-related manufacturing, which was not particularly efficient. While Britain was undergoing a significant industrial revolution during this period, France in many respects fell way behind, and ceased to be a major economic and political rival to Britain until the late 20th century.

In Europe most nations in 1816 were far less progressive and democratic than in 1788. The Napolean period and its final outcome had set the clock back, not forward, except in one respect: the expansion of the role of the central state, fuelled by the military imperative. This was a legacy that was to last well into the 20th century.

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1815: The year without summer. The Tambora volcanic eruption  

The 1815 eruption of Tambora was probably the largest eruption in historic time. About 150 cubic kilometres of ash were erupted. This is about 150 times more than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in USA. Ash fell as far as 1,300 km from the volcano. In central Java and Kalimantan, 900 km from the eruption, one centimetre of ash fell. The eruption column is estimated to have reached a height of about 45 km.

An estimated 92,000 people were killed by the eruption. About 10,000 direct deaths were caused by bomb impacts, tephra fall, and pyroclastic flows, the rest indirectly by starvation, disease, and hunger. The eruption apparently lowered average world temperature by about 0.5-0.7°C over a period of 2-3 years. The 1815 eruption of Tambora was followed in North America and Europe by what was called "the year without a summer". London experienced snow in August.

 

 

Central England temperature series 1770-1840. The length of the cooling effect of the Tambora 1815 eruption is indicated by the blue bar. These graphs has been prepared using the composite monthly meteorological series since 1659, originally painstakingly homogenized and published by the late professor Gordon Manley (1974). The data series is now updated by the Hadley Centre and may be downloaded from there by clicking here. A graph showing the entire Central England temperature series since 1659 can be seen by clicking here. 

 

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1817: Royal Society of London on the retreat of Arctic sea ice  

President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817 (Royal Society of London 1817):

"It will without doubt have come to your Lordship's knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated....

..... this affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations."

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1822-1878: Petermann and the model of the open Arctic Ocean    

August Heinrich Petermann (left). Map of the Arctic published around 1860 (right).

 

August Heinrich Petermann (1822-1878) was a German cartographer and geographer. In 1854 he was appointed as director of the geographical institute of Justus Perthes in Gotha (Germany), and in 1855 founded the famous geographical journal Petermanns Mittellungen, which existed until 2004.

August Petermann’s main geographical interest was two-fold: The geography of the interior of Africa, and that of the North Polar regions. His Arctic interest made August Peterman an engaged supporter of the model of an ice-free Arctic Ocean around the North Pole. The warm Kuro Siwo current in the Pacific Ocean was imagined to flow through the Bering Strait to combine with the Gulf Stream flowing into the Arctic Ocean between Greenland And Svalbard. Based on this assumption, it was calculated that warm water masses would rise to the surface near the Pole to create an open polar sea, possibly teeming with life, or to surround an unknown continent populated with creatures as yet undiscovered. The basic flaw was the lack of knowledge on the shallow water depth in the Bering Strait, which makes water exchange between the Arctic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean negligible.

In 1852, August Petermann's belief in the ice-free central part of the Arctic Ocean made him propose that search expeditions for the lost Franklin expedition should sail north between  Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya, thereby taking a shortcut to the open, navigable Polar Sea, providing easy access to the areas north of the American continent.

Petermann was appointed as royal geographer by Queen Victoria. He later died by his own hand at Gotha on September 25, 1878.

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1830-1850: Famine and depopulation of the Scottish Highlands  

Flood in the Highlands; painting by Sir Edwin Landseer. From the 1820s Landseer painted many scenes from highland life, particularly wildlife.

For political reasons, in the 19th century liberty was a dangerous word in Scotland, and it was not much used, especially in the Highlands. In addition, Little Ice Age climate conditions often made a difficult situation even worse. Many people therefore simply choose to leave and emigrated to Canada. In 1831, 58,000 people left (Hanley 1995). A year later, more than 60,000. The law limiting the number of passengers per ship had been abandoned in 1827, and the conditions of the emigrants were appalling. A great many died before they could see the New World .

 

A magazine illustration from 1853 showing the loading of a ship with emigrants from the Isle of Skye, northwestern Scotland.

 

It was, however, the climate-induced famine of the 1840s that started the real emptying of the Scottish Highlands. The British Government, which had once tried to find ways of preventing the depopulation of the Highlands , now wanted the area emptied, and all its troubles off its hands. It, however, stopped short of providing the money for the depopulation scheme. One official, visiting the departure of a emigrant ship from Glasgow , was disturbed to find that the Highland emigrants all looked strong and healthy (Hanley 1995). He had assumed that the purpose of the emigrations was to rid the highlands of the poor, the sick and the useless. Apparently, also the healthy ones at that time have had enough of the adverse climate and the difficult politically conditions.

 

Deserted farm buildings in Trath Filland, 2 km northwest of Crianlarich, western Scotland, February 15, 2008. The location is about 200 m above sea level, and the main modern crop is grass because of the limited number of growing degree days. The former farm is located on a slope facing SW, in an attempt to maximise solar radiation in the afternoon, while fog and low clouds often dominate the meteorological conditions during the morning in this part of Scotland.

 

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1838: Charles Darwin visits the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy  

View of the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, western Scotland (drawing published in Darwin 1839a; left). Compare with Glen Roy scenery June 2006. The young Charles Darwin shortly after returning from the Beagle expedition, about the time when he visited Glen Roy (right).

 

The parallel roads of the valley Glen Roy in the western highlands of Scotland have fascinated local people and travellers for many hundreds of years.  It was once thought they were constructed by Fingal the Giant as hunting roads, or that they were the work of fairies.

In the 19th century, the Parallel Roads attracted the attention of many early geologists, including the Reverend William Buckland, James Geikie, Charles Lyell and Joseph Prestwich. This interest ensured that the Parallel Roads featured prominently in the rapid development of geological science and understanding of landforms.

Charles Darwin back from his famous Beagle expedition (Darwin 1839b) had great geological interest and therefore visited Glen Roy in June 1838. Next year he published his findings in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Darwin 1839a), a publication which later was known as Darwin's "Gigantic Blunder" and which was bitterly regretted by himself.

Drawing on his recent findings in South America during the Beagle expedition Darwin argued in detail that the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy were old shorelines of marine origin. This was later contradicted by Louis Agassiz’s Glacial theory of 1840 which instead suggested that the Parallel Roads  were shorelines which had been cut by freeze-thaw processes along the shore of an glacier-dammed lake ice during the last ice age.

Darwin's ‘Gigantic Blunder’ is interesting to consider, because it illustrates how even the most sophisticated scientific analysis may lead to a completely wrong result, if the contemporary understanding of all relevant processes is not fully understood. As such, it is a general warning to all engaged in science. Darwin later recognized his grave error, made while he still was a relatively new scientist, and his ‘blunder’ therefore in no way today discredits his otherwise exceptional fine scientific standing.

Glen Roy had the attention of geologists of that time. Two geologists, Sir Thomas Lauder Dick and Dr. MacCullock, had shortly before in separate talks before the Edinburgh Royal Society and The Geological Society of London suggested that the so-called Parallel Roads of Glen Roy were old shorelines, created by a lake dammed by some unknown object at the lower end of the valley. This was simply what their observations and plain common sense told them, but given accepted geological knowledge at that time, they were unable to explain the physical character of this past damming object.

Map showing with red lines the inferred ocean shorelines proposed by Charles Darwin (Darwin 1839a). Glen Roy is the valley in the left centre part of the map. The map covers an area about 35 km from east to west.

 

The young Charles Darwin, fresh from his voyage to South America, had been deeply impressed by the uplift of the Chilean coastline by recent earthquakes (McKirdy et al. 2007). On this background it is interesting to read and follow Darwins line of argumentation on the origin of the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy (click here to read the paper). His line of argumentation demonstrates substantial self-confidence and also attempts of ridiculing scientists holding another opinion than himself. Here are a few examples:

Page 47: …. it is here, where the slope of the turf-covered hills is unbroken, where there is not a remnant of any projecting mass, that we are compelled by the theory (Dick and MacCullock) to believe that the two enormous barriers stood, which formed Glen Roy into the imaginary Loch Roy.

Page 48: …. In conclusion, therefore, I do not hesitate to affirm, that more convincing proofs of the non-existence of the imaginary Loch Roy could scarcely have been invented, with full play given to the imagination, than those which are marked in legible characters on the face of these hills.

Page 49: …. It may be safely asserted that more improbable situations could hardly be imagined in the whole of Scotland . It is perhaps useless to ask, were the barriers composed of rock or alluvium? if of the former, they were transverse to every line of hill in this part of the country; if of alluvium, we must assume an unexampled case; for where in the whole world shall we find even one barrier a mile and upward in length, and 1200 feet high, composed of loose waterworn materials? Secondly, the theory of one large lake does not explain in a satisfactory manner the remarkable coincidence between the shelves and the watersheds. Thirdly, when by the bursting of any one of the barriers, the level of the lake had fallen from one shelf to another, the hypothesis requires (as with Loch Roy) that the three other barriers, now high and dry, and distant many leagues from each other, should have been swept away by some unknown power, acting by some unknown and scarcely conceivable means, from the smooth sides of the mountains, without a remnant of them having been left; so that MACCULLOCH even frankly confesses one part is almost as probable (I would say improbable) as another for the position of the barriers. And it should be borne in mind, that these extraordinary forces are supposed to have acted on the outskirts of that large area, throughout which we have proofs, most wonderful and unequivocal, of the entire preservation of the surface of the land, as it was left at a period long anterior to the removal (if such removal ever did take place) of the barriers of the lower lakes. I do not hesitate to assert that this one difficulty, even by itself, would be sufficient to refute the theory of one great lake: Sir LAUDER'S theory has been shown to be equally untenable….. Finally, then, in giving up both, the conclusion is inevitable, that no hypothesis founded on the supposed existence of a sheet of water confined by barriers, that is, a lake, can be admitted as solving the problematical origin of the "parallel roads of Lochaber."

Page 55: …. It is a startling assumption to close up the mouth of even one valley by an enormous imaginary barrier; to do this with all would be monstrous. Of such barriers in the district we are considering I need not say there does not exist any trace, nor need I repeat what I have already said against so vain a supposition as that they could have been swept away by any great debacle from the sides of those hills, of which the whole alluvial covering has been preserved since the period when the upper shelves formed beaches, without even a remnant of them being left.

Webmasters note: The hypothesis on the former existence of an unknown damming body at the lower end of the valley Glen Roy clearly did not appeal to Charles Darwin, which several times is seen falling into the self-made trap of ridiculing his opponents point of view. Instead, he argued that the Parallel Roads were formed as marine shorelines at a time when the ocean partly covered Scotland, and that subsequent tectonic uplift explained why these marine shorelines today were found high above the modern sea level. Based on the contemporary geological accepted knowledge this was a quite understandable conclusion to reach. But is gave no reason whatsoever to ridicule alternative points of view, just because they appeared unreasonable, given his understanding of what might be physical possible.

Page 58: …. From these facts it is certain that there has been a change of level affecting within recent times the whole central part of Scotland, and of a kind very similar to that which has been the subject of so much attention in Sweden, where, according to Mr. Lyell, remains of existing marine animals have been raised to the height of between 500 and 600 feet above the sea. The change of level in the case of Sweden is as certainly known to be due to a slow movement of the land, and not of the water, as it is on the coast of Chile, where a small tract is violently upraised during an earthquake, the distant parts of the same coast being unmoved. It would, however, be quite superfluous here to enter into this question at length, as it has almost ceased to be debateable ground. It may then be concluded that the supposed great change of level in Scotland, deduced from the foregoing arguments, as well as that smaller fraction of it attested by marine remains and ancient sea-beaches, is due to the rising of the land, and not to the sinking of the waters….

Page 79-80: ….Considering these latter facts, together with the inferences deduced from the phenomena observed in South America , it may be granted as not improbable in any high degree, that this part of Scotland when it was upraised rested on matter possessed of considerable fluidity, which underwent a slow change of form.

 

Glen Roy with its Parallel Roads on June 2, 2008, looking north. The horizontal terraces indicate variations in the surface level of a former ice-dammed lake filling the valley, and are arguably the most famous landforms in Great Britain. Three systems of terraces are found, at 350 m, 325 and 260 m above sea level. These different terraces were caused by thickness variations in the glacier blocking the lower part of the valley, controlling the damming ability of the glacier. Glen Roy after 1840 became a key locality for the acceptance of the glacial hypothesis in the 19th century. Compare with drawing above, published in Darwin 1839a.

 

A few years later, new geological knowledge on the action of glaciers was introduced when Louis Agassiz visited Scotland. Of cause Agassiz had to visit the already at that time famous Glen Roy valley, and drawing upon his knowledge on glaciers from the Alps, he immediately suggested that the ‘unknown damming body’ suggested by Dick and MacCullock and ridiculed by Darwin simply had been a glacier, which later had melted away. New knowledge was put forward, and previously ridiculed observational-based conclusions suddenly appeared very reasonable. 

As mentioned above, Darwin later admitted his error. In 1838, he had been deeply impressed by the uplift of the Chilean coastline by recent earthquakes, and presumably was inclined to see this as a likely explanation of similar landforms found elsewhere in the world. This was a very understandable human error, and in addition, geology at that time still was a relatively young science. The effects of large natural climatic variations on landscapes were far from fully understood at that time, neither was the extent of natural climatic changes.

Actually, Darwin's so-called 'Gigantic Blunder' was not the fact that he made a flawed interpretation of his observations and arrived at a wrong geological explanation, being carried away as he was by a new and important idea about tectonic uplift. This happens all the time when new interpretations are put forward, and should simply be considered an integral part of scientific progress. His really 'Gigantic Blunder' was the sad fact that he in the process allowed himself to ridicule other fellow scientists, just because he believed (wrongly) himself to be driven by a superior hypothesis and have sufficient physical understanding of all relevant processes in nature.

Today the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy is seen as textbook examples of shorelines created along an ice-dammed lake filling the valley, when it about 12.000 years ago became blocked at the lower end by an advancing glacier. This glacier advance was caused by  a sudden period of climatic cooling at the end of the last ice age. This climatic reversal is today known as the Younger Dryas or the Greenland Stadial 1. In Scotland it is locally better known as the Loch Lomond Readvance.

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1840: Louis Agassiz visits the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy  

Popular explanation on the origin of the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy as displayed at parking lot in Glen Roy, June 2, 2008 (left). The valley Glen Roy is recognized as one of the most important geological sites and arguably the most famous landforms in Great Britain. This is the place where the former existence of glaciers outside the Alps for the first time in earnest was recognized by scientists. This, in turn, also lead to the conclusion that Earth had been exposed to large, natural climatic variations. Portrait of Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (right).

 

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807-1873) was born in Môtier (now part of Haut-Vully) in the canton of Fribourg, Switzerland. He studied at the universities of Zürich, Heidelberg and Munich, extending his knowledge of natural history, especially of botany. Following a subsequent move to the University of Paris, he became interested in geology and zoology, especially fish.

In 1832 he was appointed professor of natural history in the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. Here the fossil-rich slates and limestones attracted his interest, although very little had been accomplished in the way of scientific study of them previously. This resulted in a long palaeontological interest in the classification of fossile fish. Under his inspiring leadership, the University of Neuchâtel soon became a leading institution for scientific research.

In the meantime, the glaciers of the Alps had been made the a object for scientific studies by naturalists and scientists like De Saussure, Venetz, Charpentier and Schimper. Both Charpentier and Schimper had come to the conclusion that fragments of alpine rocks scattered over the slopes and summits of the Jura Mountains in westernmost Switzerland had been transported there by glaciers.

This issue attracted the attention of Agassiz, and he had the opportunity to discuss it with both Charpentier and Schimper and made successive journeys to the alpine regions in company with them. He even had a hut constructed upon one of the Aar glacier in central Switzerland, to investigate the structure and movement of the glacier. Based on this work, Agassiz in 1837 became the first to scientifically propose that the Earth once had been subject to a past ice age with much cooler climate and more extensive glaciers. A bold hypothesis requiring large climatic changes in the past.

 

Lake Marjelensee at Grosser Aletschgletscher in Berner Oberland, Switzerland (left). Previously, during the Little Ice Age, Aletschgletscher was thicker and Marjelensee dammed by the glacier and therefore larger and deeper than now. Grosser Aletschgletscher looking NW (right). Lake Marjelensee, including a remnant ice-dammed par, is seen in the lower right corner. The grey zone above the glacier indicate the outline of the glacier surface and Marjelensee around 1850-60, when the present period of glacier reduction began in the Alps.

 

In 1840 Agassiz published two volumes entitled Etudes sur les glaciers ("Study on Glaciers"). Here he discussed glacier movement, formation of moraines, and glacier erosion as demonstrated by striae and roches moutonnées seen in front of many glaciers in the Alps. As many glaciers at that time was growing, he had no difficulty in accepting Charpentier's and Schimper's idea that some of the alpine glaciers had extended across the wide plains and valleys beyond their contemporary size. Agassiz went still farther in his conclusions. He concluded that, in the relatively recent past, Switzerland had been like Greenland, and that one vast sheet of ice, originating in the central Alps, had extended over the entire valley of northwestern Switzerland until it reached the the Jura mountains.

The publication of this work gave a fresh impetus to the study of glacial phenomena in all parts of the world. In addition, it was important to Agassiz to convince the geological community in Britain, then at the forefront of geological science. For that reason Agassiz in 1842 visited Scotland.

Following a presentation of his 'outrageous ideas' at a meeting of the British Association in Glasgow, Agassiz departed on a tour of the West Highlands, accompanied by the Rev. William Buckland, professor of Geology and Mineralogy at Oxford University. North-east of Fort Williams, Agassiz visited the already at that time famous Parallel Roads of Glen Roy. A few years before, in 1938, Charles Darwin had interpreted the Parallel Roads as former marine shorelines, suggesting that Scotland since had been exposed to considerable tectonic uplift because of movements of molten rock below the surface. Glen Roy is said to have made a thorough impression on Agassiz. He immediately interpreted the terraces as shorelines formed along a past lake dammed by a now vanished glacier. In Switzerland, he had seen similar terraces around present-day ice dammed lakes, especially at the eastern side of Grosser Aletschgletscher in Berner Oberland.

Upper end of Glen Roy, looking ENE on September 3, 2000. The uppermost of the former lake shorelines (350 m asl.) are seen to fit in altitude with the pass at the head of the valley. During this maximum sea level, water from ice-dammed Loch Glen Roy spilled over in the neighbouring Drummin valley to the east, to continue into the Spey drainage system further east. After the disappearance of the lake, a major landslide has taken place on the southern valleyside (to the right), destroying the old shorelines. The age of this landslide is not known, but it has been speculated that this and other landslides in the area were released as permafrost thawed.

 

After having visited Glen Roy, Aggassiz travelled to Fort Augustus 30 km north of Glen Roy, on way to Inverness in NE Scotland, before continuing to Edinburgh. From Fort Augustus Agassiz wrote a letter about his findings to Robert Jameson in Edinburgh, intending that it be published in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (McKirdy et al. 2007). Jameson immediately recognised the significance of Agassiz' discoveries. As the latest issue of the journal was already in press, Jameson passed the letter on to Charles Maclaren, Editor of the still existing newspaper the Scotsman. Maclaren was also a geologist by training, and equally rapidly grasped the importance. Thus on 7 October 1840, under the headline, 'Discovery of former glaciers in Scotland, especially in the Highlands, by Professor Agassiz', the Ice Age was first announced to the wider public.

The ice-dammed lake in Glen Roy and in two other valleys in the Lochaber region of western Scotland were produced by the advance of glaciers from west of the Great Glen (the walley with Loch Ness) up the lower part of Glen Spean. These valleys today drains west, towards the Atlantic Ocean. The advance of glaciers 12,500-12,000 years ago blocked off the drainage outlet, causing Glen Roy, Glen Glory and Glen Spean to fill with water, until spilling over a threshold at 260 m altitude into valleys draining east into the present North Sea area. Further advance of ice up these glens fragmented this large water body into three separate lakes, forcing the Glen Roy lake to empty over a higher col at 325 m, eventually to empty directly into the Spey drainage sustem across a col at the valley head at 350 m altitude. At the glaciers later retreated, each of these three outlets was opened up in turn, presumably starting with a flood event, a jökulhlaup, and then for a time stabilising the level of the lake surface at successively lower altitudes.

 

Fort Augustus at the south-western end of Loch Ness, looking W on June 2, 2008 (left). The valley bottom is filled with glaciofluvial sediments, deposited by a large river draining meltwater from glaciers further to the SW. A thick layer of the glaciofluvial sediments is very coarse-grained, with individual clasts up to 30-40 cm in size, and may be derived from a jökullaup generated by sudden drainage of the former ice-dammed lake in Glen Roy (right).

 

The Parallel Roads of Glen Roy themselves presumably were eroded by a combination of wave action and frost weathering of bedrock at lake level maintained by those of the lowest available outlet possibility. In Glen Roy there are three main shorelines, at 350 m, 325 and 260 m above sea level. At its maximum size the lake in Glen Roy attained a surface area of c. 73 km2 and a maximum water volume of c. 5 km3. Sissons (1979) suggested that, in common with many present-day ice-dammed lakes, this huge body of water would periodically have emptied in a gigantic flood or jökulhlaup, with a discharge of possibly as much as 22,500 m3/s. The earliest such jökulhlaup followed the Great Glen to Inverness in NE Scotland, passing through Loch Ness. At the town Forf Williams at the SW end of Loch Ness a huge fan of of coarse gravel and stones 7 km2 in area and up to 39 m thick was interpreted by Sissons (1979) as a jökulhlaup deposit, produced in a few days some time 11,500-12,000 years ago, as a result of the breaching of the ice dam in lower Glen Roy, some 30 km away (see photos above).

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1840: Louis Agassiz visits Blackford Hill in Edinburgh, Scotland  

Agassiz Rock near the south-eastern end of Blackford Hill in southern Edinburgh, looking NE on 17 June 2008 (left). Portrait of Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (centre). Detail showing glacial striae on Agassiz Rock (right; picture source: Scottish Natural Heritage). The striae are preserved at several places on the  overhanging surface near the foot of rock face. 

 

Two weeks after his visit at Glen Roy, Louis Agassiz arrived in Edinburgh. Agassiz's letter had by now been published in newspaper the the Scotsman, so huge interest was attached to his visit in Edinburgh. A party of local geologists stood ready and took him to inspect the southern slope of Blackford Hill in southern Edinburgh (see picture above), where additional interesting evidence might be at hand. 

Blackford Hill is the remnant of a volcano, dating back in Devonian time (416 million years ago). This was probably not quite clear to Agassiz, as he was lead to the place the local geologists looked forward to hear his opinion about. On the south side of Blackford Hill a steep andesite cliff has been undercut to form a shallow cave, the rock surfaces of which was polished with peculiar scratches and grooves. Previously, Rhind (1836) had explained the groving by molten rock falling on a bed of sand and retaining the moulded impression of its surface, while Milne Home (1840) had explained the phenomena in terms of marine submergence. Agassiz immediately confirmed that the scratches and grooves were perfectly identical to glacial striae and grooves, well known to him from present-day glaciers in Switzerland. He is said to have exclaimed: “That is the work of ice!”. The site is now known as ‘Agassiz Rock’.

Blackford Hill in southern Edinburgh, looking north. The yellow arrow indicate the location of Agassiz Rock. The large large building on top of the volcanic neck is the Royal Observatory. Blackford Hill is also a fine example of a so-called crag and tail, a hill shaped in streamline form by moving glacier ice. The former glacier movement was from west (left) towards east. Five is seen in the background, north of the Firth of Forth. Picture source: Google Earth.

 

Agassiz Rock on Blackford Hill rapidly became of considerable significance for the growing acceptance of the glacial hypothesis, since the striations under the rock overhang could not have been produced by icebergs floating in an ocean, the hyphotesis of many contemporary geologists to explain these and similar phenomena. Nor could they have been formed by debris-laden catastrophic deluges or floods as suggested by other contemporary geologists.

Agassiz himself recognised the high value of his experience in Scotland (McKirdy et al. 2007). In 1842 he wrote: “It was in Scotland that I acquired precision in my ideas regarding ancient glaciers. The existence in that country of so considerable a network of these traces, enabled me to appreciate better the geological mechanism of glaciers and the importance of many facts of detail observed in the neighbourhood of those which now exists.”

However, at that time the glacial hypothesis was still not broadly accepted in the scientific community, and despite the initial persuasiveness of Agassiz’ arguments, many eminent geologists continued to promote the flood and iceberg hypothesis for several decades. Eventually, however, the glacial hypothesis prevailed, surviving many attepts of empirical falsification. Finally, therefore, the hypothesis was accepted as a theory, along with its implicit consequences for significant, natural global climatic changes. Several prominent Scottish geologists contributed greatly to this development, among others, Archibald Geikie, James Geikie, Andrew Ramsay and James Forbes.

Only six years later than the visit of Agassiz in Scotland, in 1846, the pioneering Scottish glaciologists James Forbes published detailed observations on the effects of local glaciers on the Isle of Sky, NW Scotland. His account included the first ever map of an end moraine - that of Coir a'Ghrunnda in the Cullin Hills, clear geomorphological evidence of past climatic changes.

The mid-nineteenth century saw a revolution in geological thinking about the processes that shaped the present landscape, and landscape elements at Glen Roy (see above) and at Blackford Hill in Edinburgh played a key part. Until then, most geologists explained surface landforms and loose deposits in terms of a great submergence, akin to the Biblical Flood. By the end of the century, however, these ideas has been dismissed and it was now generally accepted that glaciers and climatic changes had played a fundamental part in shaping the modern landscape in Europe during the course of repeated glaciations.

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1840: Arctic explorations becomes a national obsession in England  

 

John Barrow, second secretary to the Admiralty (left). Map showing area of Canada where the Hudson's Bay Company was active (centre). John Rae, the Arctic traveller and Hudson's Bay Company doctor, who later solved the fate of the doomed Franklin expedition and found the last navigable link in the Northwest Passage.