The census for 1841 returned the population at 8,175,124. In parliament, when submitting the census report, Disraeli commented that Ireland was the most densely populated country in Europe and ‘that on arable land the population was denser than that of China’. This was the first occasion when people were asked questions about their educational attainments. … Read more
Waterloo was, as Wellington described it afterwards, a battle fought ‘in the old style’. It took three days to collect the dead and wounded afterwards. The Anglo-Allied army had close to 3,000 dead (1,419 British), and the Prussians had 1,200 dead. The figure for those wounded was considerably larger, closer to 28%. Over half the … Read more
The Irish poet Edmund Lenthal Swifte published a poem in honour of Waterloo in November 1815 which included the lines: ‘That day!—What grief, what glory, marked that day! Tears dim our triumphs, triumphs dry our tears’. Many songs and ballads published after 1815 took Waterloo as their theme. For example, in a collection of songs … Read more
Forced to abdicate in April 1814, Napoleon spent nine months in exile on Elba studying developments in Europe. In February 1815 he made his escape, returning to France with a small force of 1,000 loyal men. General Ney, one of his former subordinates, set out with a large army to arrest him, promising to bring … Read more
The Talbot brothers of Carton, Co. Kildare, carried on a tradition of noisy political activism: their father William had led a deputation sent to James I to bemoan the packing of the 1613 parliament and was thrown in the Tower for his pains. The eldest brother, Sir Robert, had been briefly imprisoned in the summer … Read more