1805
Battle of Trafalgar
Off Cape Trafalgar, Horatio Nelson broke the combined Franco-Spanish fleet in an afternoon and died in the cockpit of HMS Victory with news of his victory whispered in his ear. Britain's century at sea was secured; Napoleon's invasion of England, already cancelled, became forever impossible. Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square, unveiled forty years later, gave London its most famous monument and the Royal Navy its eternal saint.
Muhammad Ali Seizes Egypt
An Albanian officer of the Ottoman army named Muhammad Ali outmaneuvered pashas, Mamluks, and a mob of Cairo ulema to have himself proclaimed wali of Egypt. The Porte ratified what Cairo had already decided. He would rule for forty-three years and drag Egypt, violently, into the modern age. His dynasty lasted until 1952, when Nasser's Free Officers overthrew his great-great-grandson and declared a republic.
Dessalines Crowned Emperor
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the most savage of Toussaint's lieutenants, had himself crowned Jacques I, Emperor of Haiti. He would last less than two years before being ambushed and hacked to pieces by his own generals. The precedent for caesarism in a young Black republic - and for its discontents - had been set in a single bloody reign.
Marines at Derna
In the First Barbary War, a ragtag force of eight US Marines and several hundred Greek and Arab mercenaries under William Eaton crossed five hundred miles of Libyan desert and stormed the port of Derna. It was the first American flag raised over a foreign city and the source of the Marine Hymn's reference to the shores of Tripoli.
Austerlitz: The Sun of Bonaparte
On frozen ponds in Moravia, Napoleon lured the Austrians and Russians off a plateau and smashed them between two pincers of French infantry. Tsar Alexander wept. The Holy Roman Empire, already a museum piece, was finished. Austerlitz remains, by acclamation, Napoleon's masterpiece. The emperor would refer to it for the rest of his life as his finest hour, the battle where geometry became annihilation.