Timeline

Here is a skeletal timeline covering the entire lifespan of the Jeunes France/Bouzingo, and the broader Romanticist community they were a part of. It will be continually updated as research progresses. There's a good deal of conflicting evidence, and even more which is vague or uncited (especially relating to the key years of 1830-35, in which the chronology is hopelessly vague), and therefore requires circumstantial guesswork; so things will change. I've tried to indicate areas of uncertainty.

Speaking of citation, I'm using this as a kind of working research-aide and as such it's not itself cited, and the entries come from a very wide array of scattered sources. At some point in the future  there will be an properly cited timeline. Moreover I'm just recently setting out to gain a comprehensive understanding of the history of France in the 19th Century, let alone its more esoteric aspects such as are being examined here, and my picture of it is still quite piecemeal. As with other parts of the project, if you know or suspect I have something wrong, let me know, if you want to know my sources, ask. Please see "ABOUT THE PROJECT" regarding these issues.

Names of the groups' members have been rendered in boldface and enlarged; names of major influences and of members of other groups in which the Bouzingo later participated are in bold but not enlarged. Broader social or political events are in darker grey; developments in Romanticist culture in other languages are in brown; groups whose membership overlaps with the Bouzingo are in crimson. The most concentrated activity of the group took place between late 1829 and 1833. I've been selective with work done after this period.

At some point I'll implant links in here.

1798

• The German Romanticist journal Athenäum is founded by Friedrich Schlegel, A.W. Schlegel,  Novalis, and Friedrich Schleiermacher. German philosopher and writer F. Schlegel articulates the theory of the inherent opposition of the Romantic to the Classical.

1800

• Athenäum folds after its third issue.
• Feb. 6: Achille Devéria is born in Paris.

1801

• Chateaubriand publishes Atala, establishing the groundwork for French Romanticism.
  

1802

• Feb. 26: Victor Hugo is born, the son of an atheist republican general in Napoleon's army, and a Catholic Royalist mother.

1804

• Napoleon is proclaimed Emperor of France, ending the First Republic.

1805

• A group of young Romantic writers including Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim, Joseph Görres, Friedrich Creuzer, and Graf Loeben (i.e. Isidorus Orientalis) begins condensing in Heidelberg, Germany. 
• April 22: Eugéne Devéria is born in Paris.

1806

• March 11: Louis Boulanger born in Piedmont, Italy (under Napoleonic control at the time) to French parents.

• The Romanticist Songwriter's group La Caveau Moderne is founded, including Pierre-Jean Béranger, Nicolas Brazier, Évariste-Desiré de Forges de Parny, and Émile Debraux. Over coming decades the group's output will become increasingly subversive, and gain mass appeal.

1807

•  Schlegel's writings on Romanticism are translated into French.
  
• April 20: Louis (later Aloysius) Bertrand born in Piedmont, Italy to French parents.

1808

• April: The Romanticist journal Newspaper for the Hermit is founded in Heidelberg, Germany by Görres, Brentano, and Arnim. They soon become engaged in a bitter public debate with the  Heidelberg Classicist group publishing the Morning Pages for the Educated--J.F. Cotta, J. H. and Heinrich Voß, Alois Schreiber, S.H.K. Michaelis, and Otto Martens. Through this debate, Romanticism begins to take form as a self-aware cultural community in Germany.
  
• May 22: Gérard Labrunie (later Gérard de Nerval) is born in Paris, son of a military surgeon. 
• ???: Jean Duseigneur (laterJehan du Seigneur) is born in Paris.

1809

• June 29: Petrus Borel born in Lyons, the twelfth son of an ironmonger.

1810

• Joseph Bouchardy is born in Paris. 
• Napoleon Thomas (Thom) is born.
  
• Gérard Labrunie's (later Nerval) mother dies in Silesia, accompanying his father on campaign with Napoleon's Grand Army. He is brought up by a great-uncle in the countryside.

1811

• A.W. Schlegel publishes the texts of his series of lectures on Romanticism given in 1808.
  
• Jan. 30: Théophile Dondey (later Philothée O'Neddy) born in Paris. 
• Aug. 30: Théophile Gautier born in Tarbes, France, son of a minor public official.

1812

• The Romanticist group centred on Samuel T. Coleridge, Robert Southey, and WilliamWordsworth becomes known as the Lake School.
• British poet George Gordon, Lord Byron publishes Childe Harolde's Pilgrimage, becoming a decisive model for the self-presentations of the French Frenetic Romanticists of two decades later.

1813

• A.W. Schlegel's lectures on Romantic literature are published in French.
• British Romanticist Percy Shelley publishes his epic Anarchist tract in verse, Queen Mab, in English.

• Célestin Nanteuil born in Rome. 

• Sept. 13: Auguste Maquet (later Augustus MacKeat) born in Paris.

• Pierre-Jean Béranger begins writing political songs criticizing the Napoleonic regime in thinly-coded language.

1814

• The Bourbon Monarchy is restored in France, the combined armies of Europe placing Louis XVIII on the throne.
• Madame de Staël's study of German culture, in which she promotes the German Romantic movement and the theory of the Schlegels, is published in France after four years of being banned under the Napoléonic regime.

• Louis/Aloysius Bertrand's family moves from Italy to Dijon, France. As he grows he becomes fascinated with the culture and history of the city. 
• Théophile Gautier's family moves to Paris. 
• Gérard Labrunie's (Nerval) father returns from campaign, and they move to Paris.

1815

• March 1: Napoleon Bonaparte returns from exile, returns to power in Paris for 100 days, and is defeated at Waterloo. Louis XVIII re-established. 
• July 7: Paris is handed over to British and Prussian troops, who will occupy the city for the better part of a year under the restored Bourbon Monarchy.

• German Romanticist writer E.T.A. Hoffman publishes Elixers
• Stendhal begins to refer to himself as a Romantic, the first major figure in France to do so explicitly.
  

• The Paris publisher Galignani brings out a French edition of Byron's poems.

•  Pierre-Jean Béranger of the Caveau Moderne publishes his first collection of satirical anti-Monarchist songs, which quickly gain immense popularity among both the working classes and the intellectual left.

1819

• Byron publishes the first two cantos of his epic, semi-erotic satirical poem Don Juan.
  
• Henri Saint-Simon founds the Utopian-Socialist journal The Organiser.
• Villemain publishes a two-volume History of the English Revolution and foundation of Parlaiment.
  

1820

• Public intellectual debate becomes intense about Romanticism, Classicism, and the relation of both cultural movements to Religion and to the politics of Monarchism, Liberalism, and Republicanism.
  
• Feb. 13: The heir to the French throne, the Duc de Berri (also spelled Berry) is stabbed to death by a Bonapartist assassin in the doorway of the Paris Opera House.
• 7 March: A military coup in Spain establishes a constitutional monarchy in which all adult male citizens receive suffrage, the most liberal constitution in Europe. Portugal and several Italian states soon follow suit.
• March: A series of laws censoring the press are passed. 
• Openly subversive songs proliferate in working-class Gougettes in the wake of Berri's assassination. 
• May: The right introduces a bill granting double-votes to the richest of the 90,000 Frenchmen eligible to vote. Students and workers become increasingly restless, with direct alliances being made with Liberal politicians in the Chambers.
• June 3: Voting begins on the Suffrage law. Masses of students and workers fill the streets in huge protests that are dispersed by Cavalry charges; one student is killed. Demonstrations continue until the law is passed with minor concessions by a five-vote majority on June 12, after which they cease.
  

• Lamartine publishes Poetic Meditations.

• Petrus Borel moves to Paris.
• Romanticist painter Eugéne Delacroix releases an engraving celebrating the Duc de Berri's assassin, Louis-Pierre Louvel.

• Amand Bazard founds 'The Friends of Truth', a semi-occult socialist group that develops into the French wing of the underground Carbonari insurrectionary network. Members include Bazard, Philippe Bouchez, Jacques-Thomas Flotard, and others. The Romanticist writer and theorist Stendhal returns to France from several years in Italy, where authorities have made him unwelcome due to his own connections with the Italian Carbonari goup.

1821

• The French Carbonari organize armed uprisings against the Monarchy in Belfort, Thouars, La Rochelle, and other provincial towns. All are put down, and the leaders go to ground for the better part of a decade before several become involved with the Sant-Simonists.
• May 5: Napoleon Bonaparte dies.

• Pierre-Jean Béranger releases his second popular volume of political songs, and is imprisoned for three months for 'offending public decency, religion, and the King's person and encouraging sedition'.
• Romanticist writer and organiser Charles Nodier travels to Britain to meet the novelist Walter Scott.

• Louis Boulanger enrolls in the École de Beaux-Arts, studying under Guillaume Lethiére, whose studio is becoming a hotbed of nascent Romanticism.

1822

• The Ultra-Monarchist party takes control of the Chamber, and King Louis XVIII reorganizes his cabinet, moving even farther to the right.
  
• The Royalist writer Victor Hugo publishes his first volume of Romanticist poetry, Diverse Odes and Poems.
• Emile Debraux publishes his first collection of political songs. 
• Achille Devéria begins exhibiting in the Paris Salon.

1823

• Jan: Émile and Antoni Deschamps found the Royalist Romanticist journal La Muse Française. 
• Jan/Feb: The Bourbon Monarchy declares war on Spain, vowing to topple the liberal Constitutional Monarchy and replace Ferdinand VII on the throne.

• Victor and Eugene Hugo found the Royalist Romanticist journal Le Conservateur litteraire
• Stendhal publishes his study of Racine and Shakespeare, rendering the latter, previously little read in France, a model of Romanticist theatre and establishing a programme for Romanticist theatre in a hypothetical post-Revolutionary society.
• Victor Hugo publishes his first novel, Han of Iceland; it makes a deep impression upon the future Bouzingos who are just discovering Romanticist subculture.
• Debraux publishes Child of the New Gouguette, an anthology of political songs by 25 poets and songwriters. He is imprisoned for a month for these songs' political "outrage to good manners".
• Borel apprenticed to Classicist architect Antoine Garnaud.
• July: A group of generally Royalist Romantics found the journal The French Muse, and are quickly embroiled in disputes and debates with both the Left and with Classicists on the Right.

The Muse group includes Emile and Antoni Deschamps, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Vigny, Souillard de Saint-Valry, Marceline Debord-Valmore, Alexandre Soumet, Alexandre Gauraud, Jules de Rességuier, Delphine Gay (later Girardin), Madame Tastu, and Dejardins.

• Nov. 13: Madrid falls to French troops.

1824

• Bolstered by military victory in Spain, the Right sweeps Paris elections, leaving only three liberal representatives.
• Eugéne Devéria begins exhibiting at the Paris Salon.
• ??? Jean Duseigneur (soon to be Jehan du Seigneur) is studying sculpture at the Ecolé de Beaux-arts under the Classicist Louis-Marie-Charles Dupaty.
• Jane Austin's parody of Gothic subculture, Northanger Abbey, is brought out in Paris. 
• The Liberal Romanticist journal The Globe is founded, becoming a standard-bearer of the Romanticist Left. 

The journal emerges from the group meeting weekly at the Salon of Etienne-Jean Delécluze and includes François-Pierre-Guillaume Guizot, Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard,  Jean-Jacques Ampère, Duvergier de Hauranne, Ludovic Vitet, Charles Saint-Beuve, Charles de Rémusat, and Charles Magnin, Stendhal, and Prosper Merimée.

• Sept. 16: Louis XVIII dies; Monarchy falls to Charles X.

• Several prominant members of the Muse group gradually shift their political views toward the Left, including Victor Hugo and Alfred de Vigny

1825

• A Saint-Simonist Society is founded, dedicated to the formation of a utopian community based on the principles of the Socialist theorist Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon. Members include a number of ex-Carbonari. Organisers include: Amand Bazard, Bartolémy Enfantin, Philippe Bouchez, and Olinde Rodrigues.
• ??? The Saint-Simonists found a journal, The Producer.
• Louis-Sébastien Saulnier founds the Revue Brittanique, which publishes translations and criticisms of British literature, culture, politics, and economics, including work by  William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Walter Scott, and Fenimore Cooper. 

• Béranger publishes a third collection of subversive songs, which are sung in working-class pubs across France.

• ???: Louis Boulanger befriends the Devéria brothers and Victor Hugo.

• Duseigneur's teacher Dupaty dies and is replaced by Jean-Pierre Cortot.

1826

• Romanticist Alfred de Vigny publishes Antique and Modern Poems and, three months later, a historical novel Cinq-Mars, about a conspiracy to assassinate the Cardinal Richilieu.

• ???: Jean Duseigneur (soon Jehan du Seigneur) is studying sculpture under Classicist masters.
• ???: Joseph Bouchardy is studying under the engraver Samuel William Reynolds.
• ???: Théophile Gautier attending school at the Collége Charlemaigne, concentrating on Latin.
• ???: Gautier befriends Gérard de Nerval at school, and starts writing verse.

• The Saint-Simonist socialist journal Le Producteur folds.

• The Romanticist Cénacle group is formed, with the aim of overcoming divisions within Romanticism; consolidating, articulating, and polemicising the principles of Romanticist culture; and of organising a cultural assault on Classicism for control of France's artistic infrastructure. They meet and operate from the weekly salons at the home of Charles Nodier.

The group includes Nodier, Alfred Vigny, Émile Deschamps and his brother, and soon Victor Hugo, Victor Pavie, Evariste Boulay-Paty, Charles Saint-Beuve, and Alphonse de Lamartine, Alfred de Musset, Prosper Mérimée, Antoine Fontenay, and Alexandre Dumas.

• ???: Hugo publishes Odes and Ballads, hailed as a Romanticist masterpiece.

1827

• Monarchist party suffers defeats in the polls. 
• April: Large Anti-Royalist demonstrations are held in Paris, some culminating in gunfights in the streets.

• The Royalist Romantic journal The French Muse folds.
• The Odéon Theatre in Paris stages a season of English-language Shakespeare productions, sparking further enthusiasm for Shakespeare among Romanticists such as Hector Berlioz, Théophile Gautier, and Alexandre Dumas, and prompting Vigny and Deschamps to collaborate on a translation of Romeo and Juliet.
  
• Béranger releases another volume of anti-Monarchist songs, and is imprisoned for sedition for nine months.

• Victor Hugo publishes the virtual manifesto of French Romanticism as his Preface to Cromwell. 
• Boulanger's painting Supplice de Mazeppa wins a medal at the annual Salon, in an area segregated off for Romanticist work. 

 

• Eugéne Devéria's painting The Birth of Henry the IV is critically lauded by the Romanticist party at the Paris Salon.

• Antoine-Louis Barye's proto-Romanticist sculpture is shown at the Paris Salon.

• Célestin Nanteuil becomes a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, studying under the engraver and history painter Langlois.
• Boulanger meets Théophile Gautier at the Devérias' house.

1828

• Ex-leader of the French Carbonari Amand Bazard gives a long series of lectures polemicizing Saint-Simonianist Socialism, well attended by the intellectual left, likely including DuSeigneur,  Borel and Dondey/O'Neddy.

• Théophile Dondey (soon Philothée O'Neddy) begins work on Fire and Flame.

• Twenty-year old Gérard de Nerval brings out his translation of Geothe's Faust, illustrated by Achille Devéria, to critical acclaim. Goethe himself claims that Nerval's translation helps him to better understand his own work.

• ???: Théophile Gautier begins training as a painter in the studio of Romantic painter Louis Rioult.

• ???: The Cénacle group come into touch with Aloysius Bertrand, already slowly dying of tuberculosis at 21, through his work published in Dijon in the journal The Provincial.

• Dec: Pierre-Jean Béranger is imprisoned a second time for subversive literary-musical activity.

1829

• Aug. 8: Charles X appoints Ultra-Royalist cabinet. The Globe and other Liberal and left journals attack the move.

• Borel, opposed to contemporary architecture in favour of Medieval Gothic models, sets up unsuccessful architectural practice, and probably begins writing Rhapsodies. 
• Borel meets Eugéne & Achille Devéria, begins painting.
• Alphonse Brot publishes Songs of Love, and Diverse Poems.
• Borel & the Devérias become involved with the Charles Nodier's Cénacle salon, meeting on Sunday evenings. Through the Cénacle they become involved with Hugo.
• Aloysius Bertrand moves to Paris.
• Théophile Dondey (soon Philothée O'Neddy) introduced to the Cénacle Salon?
• Romanticist composer Hector Berlioz composes his first published score in response to Nerval's translation of Faust.

• Victor Hugo's play Marion Delorme is banned for its anti-monarchical flavour.
• Spring?: Vigny's Romanticist adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello becomes the first non- Classicist play to be produced by the Comédie Française.
• Summer?: Alexandre Dumas' Romanticist Henry III and his Court at the Comédie Française combines popular and aristocratic audiences.

• Sept 22: Pierre-Jean Béranger is released from prison.

• Fall: Planning begins for the Romanticist 'coup' of the creative establishment at the premier of Hugo's Hernani. The central committee consists of Hugo, Borel, and Nerval.

• ???: Théophile Gautier is dismissed from Rioult's studio for his Romanticist tendencies and devotes himself increasingly to writing.

1830

• Hector Berlioz is awarded the Prix de Rome for a cantata inspired by Delacroix's Romanticist painting The Death of Sardanapolus. Also this year, he meets fellow Romanticist Franz Liszt at a performance of Shakespeare's Tempest for which Berlioz has written the prelude.
• DuSeigneur introduces Célestine Nanteuil to the Cénacle Group. 

•  Feb 25: Instructed and organised by Nerval and Borel, an 'army' of several hundred Romanticists engage in meticulously planned provocations, catcalls, and physical fights with Classicists in the 'Battle' of Hernani at the premier of Hugo's play. The story quickly engages the attention of all of France, and they succeed in turning the event into a spectacular victory over Classicism, the de facto State Art, signaling a decisive turn of fortune in the 'war' over access to the cultural machinery of France.

• In the wake of Hernani, Joseph Bouchardy gradually shifts his focus from visual art to dramatic writing.

• Spring? The more radicalized members of Nodier's salon--for the most part those most involved with planning and 'fighting' the Battle of Hernani--form Le Petit Cénacle group, including: Petrus Borel, Eugéne and Achille Devéria, Jehan du Seigneur, Aloysius Bertrand, Auguste Préault, Gérard de Nerval, Augustus MacKeat, 'Count' Ourlioff, Philothée O'Neddy, Célestin Nanteuil, Alexandre Dumas, and Théophile Gautier.

The primary meeting-place for the Petit Cénacle is a studio space rented by Jehan du Seigneur in the spare room of a fruit-shop.

Members of Le Petit Cénacle take on pseudonyms with foriegn and aristocratic implications, and initiate a grotesque detourne of Dandyism, adopting outlandish and identifying costumes, hair, and beards calculated to offend bourgeosie, aristocrats, and dandies alike; their behaviour at Salons, parties, balls, etc. follows suit.

• Dondey takes on the anagrammatic pseudonym Philothée O'Neddy. He finishes his collection Fire and Flame, but cannot find a publisher or capital to publish himself.
• July 24:  Gautier's Poésies is published, but not distributed due to the revolt that breaks out two days later.

• July 25: Four Ordinances signed--putting the press under crown control, stripping suffrage from 75% of voters, and dissolving the lower chamber of the Assembly.
• July 26: When the Four Ordinances are made public, rioting breaks out in the streets of Paris.
• July 27: Streets are barricaded, the Carbonari and much of the intellectual left take up arms against Monarchist troops, who are fought from barricades, windows, and rooftops.
• July 28: Much of the army deserts or joins rebellion. Borel, on a visit to his family, is restrained and locked into a closed room by his father to prevent him from joining the battle.
• July 29: The Royal Palace at the Louvre is attacked and evacuated. Hector Berlioz, immediately after finishing composing his Cantata No. 4, takes to the streets with a pistol.
• A Republican government is established at the Hotel de Ville, but the Socialist-Republican block is unable to keep power from the Bourgeois Liberal party.

• July 31: A Consitutional Monarchy is established under Louis Phillipe of the Orleans Dynasty.
• Aug?: The Saint-Simonist group issues a manifesto demanding the enfranchisement of women, the abolition of the inheritance of property, and the communalization of property.
• Aug. 27: During a state-sponsored memorial service for the Duc de Beri, the Orleans heir apparent assassinated ten years earlier, a riot breaks out; rioters attack priests (associated with support of the Monarchy and anti-proletarian advocacy), seize and don ecclesiastical vestments, tear down crosses from the roofs of nearby churches, and spontaneously mock a Catholic procession, sprinkling their urine as 'holy water'.

• Lamartine publishes Poetic and Religious Harmonies.
• Alfred de Musset publishes Stories of Spain and Italy.
• Fall: Gautier's parents and sisters move to the suburbs; he spends most of his time with the Petit Cénacle, returning home on weekends.

•  Albert Laponneraye establishes a free school for the education of workers; a group of faculty from the school organise as the 'Société de la Jeune France', or Society of the Young France.
• Sept. 25: Violence nearly occurs at Republican demonstrations cordinated by various militant anti-Monarchist groups, including the nascent Society of Friends of the People.

• Alphonse Brot, Victor Hugo, and Edgard Quinet dine at the home of Franz Liszt's family.

• Dec. 5: Berlioz' Romanticist Fantastic Symphony premiers, and fighting breaks out in the audience as it had at the premier of Hugo's Hernani; many members of the Petit Cénacle and the broader Romanticist community attend every performance and engage in 'battle' with the Classicists.

1831

• The Globe becomes the mouthpiece of the Saint-Simonist Socialism. Meanwhile a Saint-Simonist utopian co-op is set up in Paris.

• Jehan du Seigneur exhibits his sculpture Orlando Furioso (from the romance by Ariosto) at the annual Salon, where it is hailed as the first truly Romanticist sculpture.

• Auguste Blanqui, a militant socialist agitator and member of the Carbonari, founds the anti-Monarchist activist group The Society of Friends of the People(Société des Amis du Peuple). Members include Armand Barbés, Godefrey Cavaignac, François-Vincent Raspail, Albert Laponneraye, Agricol Perdiguier, Ulysse Trélat, and Petrus Borel.
• Victor Hugo publishes the hugely popular Gothic-Romanticist novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
• The German Romanticist Heinrich Heine moves to Paris, where he befriends Nerval, Berlioz, and others in the Romanticist community, and attends meetings of the Saint-Simonians.

• The most radical members of the Petit Cénacle group re-organise as Les Jeunes France, including: Petrus Borel, Célestin Nanteuil, Joseph Bouchardy, Jehan du Seigneur, Philothée O'Neddy, Gérard de Nerval, Théophile Gautier, Alphonse Brot, Eugéne & Achille Devéria, and Gérard de Nerval.

They live collectively in a single large room and an adjoining garden filled with tents, naming the compound “The Camp of the Tartars”. In the inside room, no furniture iss provided, but the walls are covered with murals, plaster-cast 'medallions' or relief sculptures (many of the latter portraits of the members), daggers and other weapons, and a human skull on the spot on the mantlepiece which traditionally held the clock.

Meanwhile, an additional, less hectic gathering-place is the studio rented by Jehan du Seigneur in back of a fruit merchant's shop.

• Spring?: Borel and another of the Jeunes-France are followed by police, alerted by their Romanticist clothing and paraphenalia, and briefly imprisoned for 'lack of a proper passport'.
• Summer: The Jeunes France organises “concerts” at the Camp of Tartars, in which they present atonal noise on brass instruments none can play.

The “Camp of the Tartars” is visited by police and threatened with arrest for practicing Nudism.

Members acquire a dressmaker's dummy to use for various pranks, such as throwing it into the street in a shroud, claiming that they have just dug up a corpse from the cemetery.

• Petrus Borel acquires the nickname/title of The Lycanthrope ('Wolf-Man').
• Gautier begins writing art criticism to support himself, beginning with the Mercure de France.  Meanwhile he begins the Gothic narrative poem Albertus.
• Augustus MacKeat is made professor of History at the Lycée Charlemaigne (Gautier's old school), at age eighteen.
•  Jehan DuSeigneur becomes a member of a 'Historical Institute' along with other Romanticist Historians such as Prospér Mérimee and Auguste Barbier. He will remain a member until 1866.
• Aloysius Bertrand leaves Paris, returning to Dijon.

• ???: The Saint-Simonist utopian experiment is plagued with internal turmoil and splits into separate camps under Bazard and Enfantin. Bouchez leaves the group and devotes himself to the elaboration of a Christian Socialism.

• July: The Jeunes France, habituating both working-class pubs and intellectual salons, become increasingly rowdy and provocative in public, recognizable not only for their Romanticist paraphenelia but for their absurd, seditious, or aggressive drinking songs, including  tunes about each other and seditious songs by Béranger, others, and themselves.

On at least one occasion they inadvertently cause a near-riot when passers-by misinterpret their chants of “Long live Bouchardy!” as they charge down a street.

Paris newspapers begin publishing articles about the Jeunes France group. Seven articles appear by October.

• Sept: Poland declares independence from Russia; despite wide-spread demonstrations in favour of international revolutionary solidarity, the government refuses to intervene.

• Winter??: The Saint-Simonist group headed by Bazard hosts a number of extravagant and reportedly hedonistic events.

• Winter?: While singing a dirty song with the refrain, 'Nous allons faire du Bouzingo, du Bouzingo, du Bouzingo,' the Jeunes-France are confronted by National Guards in police uniforms. A fight ensues, and Gérard de Nerval and several others are detained by the police and imprisoned for a month. The police and others pick up on the word 'Bouzingo' (usually spelled 'Bouzingot'), taking it for a nickname of young Republican dissidents.

• Nov. 21: A textile workers' uprising takes control of France's second-largest city, Lyon, in fighting resulting in 600 casualties.
• Dec. 3: Government troops regain control of Lyon.

• Dec: Borel's collection of poems Rhapsodies is published, incorrectly dated 1832. It has labels by Napoléon Thom and a frontispiece by Célestin Nanteuil.
• Dec?: The Jeunes France are evicted from “The Camp of Tartars”.

1832

• Hetor Berlioz marries the English Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson.
• Gautier publishes Albertus; the volume includes poems from the undistributed collection, Poésies 

• Jan: Newspaper accounts begin to appear in the Conservative press referring to the Jeunes-France as "The Bouzingot". Removing the 't' in order to be perverse, they take up the name as they move into a new and even more radical stage of their social experiment.

The Jeunes-France / Bouzingo move to a tiny, one-story house with a basement on the Rue d'Enfer (several blocks from the convent where the Marquis de Sade's mother had once lived). In addition to murals and medalions, the wals are decorated with various weapons with satirical labels identifying them as exotic weapons or greusome artifacts.

• The Bouzingo inaugurate their new base in the Rue d'Enfer with an event in which guests attend in full Romantic costume, eat ice-cream and custard out of human skulls. Music by Musard is played, and the Romantic dance 'The Infernal Gallop' (reminiscent of modern Circle-Pits) is performed; as the dance is too violent for the enclosed space, the doors are opened and the orgy spills out into the street. The punch is so strongly spiked, and the physical and emotional exertion of the Infernal Gallop so exacerbating, that a 'casualty station' is set up in the basement of the Rue d'Enfer for unconscious guests.

• Feb 11?: Romanticist dances are introduced at Paris' Ash Wednesday Carnival: Romanticist popular composer Napoléon Musard directs the orchestra, and despite police intervention, Romanticists storm the dance-floors in masks, dancing the Cancan and the Infernal Gallop, singing subversive songs from the 1793 Revolution, while Romanticist dandies smuggle in a nude woman who reveals herself as 'Salomé'.

• March: Cholera epidemic begins in Paris.
• April?: Ragpickers demonstrate against the government's effort to sanitize Paris by clearing away the refuse which is their livelihood; the demonstration becomes a near riot.  
• April 1: A failed insurrection among political prisoners is staged at the Saint-Pélagie Prison, supported by the Society of Friends of the People.

• April: The Romanticist/Saint-Simonist journal The Globe folds. 
• May: The Saint-Simonist compound in Paris is shut down by police. A new colony of about 40 members is founded on a farm outside the city.
• Spring?: Philothée O'Neddy's father dies of cholera. One year from retirement, his family is denied his pension and O'Neddy takes a job at the Ministry of Finance to support his mother and sister.

• The Bouzingo develop their reputation on the streets of Paris for their aggressive pranks, seditious and anti- bourgeois drinking songs, and cultivation of absurd and morbid eccentricities, habits, and opaque ways of speaking, resulting in frequent run-ins with police.

Stories spread accusing the Bouzingo of Satanism, of keeping human feotuses in jars, and other morbid preoccupations and transgressions.

A Bouzingo anthology is planned, for which funding is never found.

• Borel is once more detained by police; when he protests and demands a charge, the police respond that 'pretense is useless, you have the walk of a Republican'.

• The Society of Friends of the People stages an attempted insurrection against the monarchy of Louis-Philippe. The revolt is unsuccessful and the group is proscribed, its members re-forming with the Society for Human Rights.
• Summer?: The Bouzingo are banned from Nodier's Cénacle salon, which most have been attending for at least two years. This signifies a split between 'high' or appolonian Romanticism and the Decadent/Frenetic/dark Romanticism exemplified by the Bouzingo.

June: Twenty articles have appeared in the past six months focusing on the Bouzingo, including news reports, urban legends, editorials, and a satirical biography.

• June 6-7: The Society of Friends of the People and other Republican groups orchestrate an attempted insurrection, sparked off during the funeral procession of Republican orator Gen. Jean Maxime Lemarque. Arséne Houssaye and others of the Romanticist community. probably including Borel, fight on the baricades and a sizable portion of the city is secured before the revolt is squelched by Monarchist troops.

• Summer/Fall?: The Bouzingo group gradually reverts to the name Jeunes France.

• The rural Saint-Simonist experiment in Ménilmontant is shut down by the Government. A small group of Saint-Simonists soon sets out for Egypt.

• Sept: Nerval publishes his story for the abortive Bouzingo Anthology (Main de Gloire, Conte de Bouzingo) in the journal Cabinet de Lecture.

• Borel launches the Journal La Liberté, Journal des Arts; Jehan du Seigneur is Sculpture editor, Eugéne Delecroix Painting editor. The journal's manifesto declares a war on all of the creative Institutions as such.

• Nov. Cholera epidemic subsides after 20,000 deaths in Paris.
• Nov: The Duchesse du Berri, widow of the Heir to the Bourbon dynasty assassinated in 1820, leads an unsuccessful ultra-monarchist insurrection in Vendée. 
• Dec: Charles Philippon, a frequent collaborator with Célestin Nanteuil, founds the left-wing satirical journal Charivari (later the inspiration for England's Punch). It develops a reputation as the most savage satirical paper yet published in Europe. Contributors include Achille Devéria, Paul Gavarni, almost certainly Nanteuil.

1833

• Phillipe Buchez, ex-Carbonari and Saint Simonist, publishes his proposed system of Christian Socialism in Introduction to the science of history or science of human development. The work has a deep and immediate effect on Jehan de Seigneur, who quickly comes to know him personally.

• Pierre-Jean Béranger publishes his final collection of poems, critical of the Government of King Louis-Phillipe, and announces his retirement from active publication.

• Lord Henry Seymour founds the Jockey Club, which by 1835 evolves into the most influential Dandyist circle, including the Marquis de Saint Criq, Charles la Battut, Nestor Roqueplane, Roger de Beauvoir, and Barbey d'Aurevilly.

• Gautier publishes a fictionalized account of Decadent Romantic subculture as the novella Les Jeunes France: Tales Told with Tongue in Cheek.

• Feb: Borel's journal La Liberté ceases publication for lack of funds.
• Napoleon Thom's portrait of Petrus Borel in 'Bouzingo Costume' is exhibited at the Salon. 
• Spring?: Borel's collection of Gothic short stories, Champavert, is published.
• Summer: Champavert, predictably, is a financial failure, and despite scattered stories and articles in newspapers Borel is soon close to starvation; he gives away his dog, which he is no longer able to feed.

• July 28: King Louis-Phillipe survives an assassination attempt by Republican dissidents.

• Aug: O'Neddy's Fire and Flame is finally published, under the imprint of his cousin, Dondey-Dupré, with a frontispiece by Nanteuil. 300 copies are printed.

• Fall?: The Jeunes France are by this time no longer living in the Rue d'Enfer; O'Neddy is living with his mother and sister.

Petrus Borel and Jules Vabre, working together as clerks for an architectural firm, rent or squat the basement of an otherwise vacant building. They cook meals over a fire built on the floor, have blueprints spread on an improvised table of barrels and scavenged wood planks, and write on the floor.

• Dec: Alexandre Dumas mounts a spectacular Christmas Ball with decorations/scenography by Nanteuil.

1834

• April 9-15: Workers in the silk industry in Lyon stage an unsuccessful revolt. Republican groups in Paris respond with their own uprising, but both fail. 10,000 workers in Lyon are imprisoned or deported for supporting the rebellion.

• Borel [arguably] becomes the regular guest of a widow, Marie Antoinette Grangeret, and her children.

• Jehan DuSeigneur marries Charlotte Eleanor Biffe. Her brother-in-law, the historian, librarian and novelist Paul Lacroix, will become a life-long collaborator.

• As Borel and O'Neddy, chief organizers of the Jeunes France, become increasingly exhausted and overstrained, the group becomes looser and gradually drifts apart as members begin to explore other modes of activity.

• Nov. 23: Berlioz premiers his viola concerto Harold in Italy, based on the poem by British Romanticist George Gordon, Lord Byron.

1835

• Borel, unable to support himself in Paris, moves to the village of Le Baizil, where he rents a tool-shed to live in, subsisting off of vegetables he grows in the attached garden. He calls the place 'Lycanthropolis' or alternately 'The Inn of the Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman' in reference to Janin's most famous Gothic novel. He is visited frequently by (among others) O'Neddy, Nanteuil, and Gautier.

He begins work on an unfinished play and two novels including Madame Putiphar, and a translation of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.



• Aloysius Bertrand returns to Paris, though his tuberculosis has become advanced.

• July 28: An 'infernal machine' firing 28 bullets simultaneously is used in an attempt to assassiniate the King at a commemoration ceremony for the July Revolution. 22 are wounded and 18 killed, but the King miraculously escapes unscathed.

• May: Nerval and Anatole Bouchardy (?) found a journal entitled, The World Drama: a review of ancient and modern events.

• Heinrich Hein publishes a book on The Romantic School.
• Fall?: Ex-Jeunes France/Bouzingo members join with the more Bohemian-leaning Dandies to form the Bohême Doyenné group. Members include: Théophile Gautier, Camille Rogier, Gérard de Nerval, Arséne Houssaye, Roger de Bouvoir, Célestine Nanteuil, Eugéne & Achille Deveria, Augustus MacKeat, Louis Boulanger, Edouard Ourliac, Hector Berlioz, August de Châtillon, Eugéne Delacroix, Jean-Babtiste Corot, Théodore Rousseau, and Théodore Chasseriau.

The group operates from a flat rented by Gautier in the Impasse du Doyenné, from which they took their name, decorated with murals, paintings, and fixtures with decadent and classical themes, painted by members of the group.

• Borel, in the countryside, is largely immobilized by alternating bouts of fever, depression, and near- starvation.

• Sept: Harsh new censorship laws are passed, reinstating state censorships of plays and prints,  threatening deportation to anyone insulting the king or questioning the basic structure or legitimacy of the Constitutional monarchy. Around thirty Republican newspapers and journals are shut down.

• The Caveau Moderne Group bans political content; Béranger and Brazier leave the group in protest, becoming involved with more radicalized groups on the goguette model.

• Vigny's Chatterton, a play based on the life of the British proto-Romantic poet and Medievalist who died in poverty at 18, is produced.

• Nov: The Bohême Doyenné throw an opening event for the Impasse du Doyenné house. Guests (invited and otherwise) attend wearing full Romantic costume. The event includes a ballet-pantomime entitled The Crippled Devil, a pantomime in which Ourliac plays the role of Harlequin, and several 'parades', in which texts by Gautier and Ouliac are recited from behind a curtain while the scenes described are silently acted out in accompaniment.

1836

• Feb 7: The first production of a play by Bouchardy, written in collaboration with Eugéne Deligny--The Son of Bravo, is mounted at the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique, who will go on to produce eight plays by Bouchardy. 
• May: Nerval and Bouchardy's journal World Drama announces a change in editorial direction.
• ???: Borel's translation of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is published by his brother, Francisque Borel. It includes illustrations by most of the visual artists associated with the Bouzingo: Eugéne and Achille Devéria, Célestin Nanteuil, Louis Boulanger, and Napoléon Thom.
• Borel remains in poverty, reduced to making night excursions to steal vegetables from the fields to supplement his own gardening.

• Classicists temporarily regain complete control of the hanging committee of the Paris Salon, and a host of Romanticist artists are rejected, including Delacroix, Barye, Rousseau, Corot, Préalt, and Maldron.
• German poet Heinrich Heine publishes The Romantic School.

• June 11: Bouchardy and Deligny's Hermann the Drunkard is produced at the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique.

• June 25: An assassination attempt on the King fails, despite being fired at point-blanck range.

• ???: Gautier publishes his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin, with a Preface denouncing all practical utility as inherently bourgeois, and calling for creative activity which formulates its own demands exclusively according to its own internal structure, ('Art for Art's sake').
• Aloysius Bertrand finishes and sells Gaspard de la Nuit, but actual publication is held up for years, until after his death.

• Célestin Nanteuil accompanies Victor Hugo on holiday in Normandy

1837

• Jan. 14: Bouchardy's Gaspardo the Fisherman is mounted at the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique, with a preface by Gautier, and becomes a huge success.
• ???: The Bohême Doyenné group is evicted from their apartment by their landlord, who lives directly underneath.
• Berlioz premiers his Mass for the Dead, a requiem for those killed in the Revolution of July, 1830 in which he himself had fought.

• Oct. 11: Four hundred people attend the funeral of the utopian socialist Charles Fourier in Paris.

1838

• Gautier publishes his long narrative Gothic poem, The Comedy of Death, illustrated by Louis Boulanger. On the cover of this or another volume of Gautier's published this year is a notice for an essay by Borel entitled Do You Like the Bagpipes?.
• Nerval introduces Augustus MacKeat (now once again Auguste Maquet) to Alexandre Dumas.

1839

• May 12: An uprising by followers of the Socialist agitator Jean Blanqui is quelled in Paris; over 900 insurgents take control of the national Assembly, the Palace of Justice, and City Hall, but are unable to hold them against the French army.

• Alexandre Dumas' book Celebrated Crimes is illustrated by Boulanger and published by Dondey-Dupré.
• MacKeat/Maquet's play Night Carnival is re-written by Alexandre Dumas and produced as Bathilde, acheiving considerable popularity. Dumas and Maquet begin collaborating regularly, though Maquet's name is supressed. He is compensated through a higher cut of the income. 
• Borel publishes his novel Madame Putiphar. His old friend and fellow writer of Republican Gothic fiction Jules Janin attacks it in a review, claiming that it has gone too far, comparing Borel to the Marquis de Sade.
• O'Neddy publishes two short stories, “The Purse and the Rapier” and “The Abbot of Saint-Or” under his given name Théophile Dondey, drawn from chapters of his unfinished novel Sodom and Solime.
• Jehan DuSeigneur co-founds The Society of St. John the Evangelist, an organisation of Catholic artisans.
• Borel returns to Paris.
• As Aloysius Bertrand enters the critical stages of tuberculosis, he gradually withdraws from his friends and lives in poverty and self-enforced anonymity.

1840

• Dec: Francisque Borel founds the leftist satirical journal Les Coulisses (or Backstage).

1841

• Hugo is elected to the French Academy, after nearly a decade of successful opposition from the Classicist and Monarchist party.

• April 29: Aloysius Bertrand dies of tuberculosis in a pauper's hospital.
• Nerval suffers his first nervous breakdown.

1842

• Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit (Treasurer of the Night) is published postumously, five years late.
• Théophile Dondey / O'Neddy publishes his novella The Charmed Ring: A Chivalric Romance.
• Nerval travels the Near East.
• DuSeigneur collaborates with Victor Gay on plans for an academy of sculpture along Medieval lines.

1843

•  Hugo's play The Burgraves is produced.
• O'Neddy / Dondey publishes the short story “The Lazarus of Love”.
• Jan-March: Dondey writes theatre criticism for la Patrie.
• Feb: Francisque Borel's journal Les Coulisses changes its name to Satan.
• May-Oct: Dondey writes theatre criticism for the French Courier.
• Jehan DuSeigneur begins drawing up plans for the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours in Rouen, for which he will design all of the decoration and oversee the execution.
• June-July: Francisque Borel is imprisoned for a month for publishing seditious articles in Satan.
• Nov: Francisque Borel is imprisoned again, now for five months, for seditious publication.

1844

• Maquet/MacKeat and Dumas' collaborative novel The Three Musketeers achieves huge success, though Maquet's name is not on the cover.
• DuSeigneur executes a number of decorations for the Church of St. Vincent-de-Paul in Paris, including the alter and a number of stone figures.

• Ex-members of the Bohéme Doyenne/Juennes France join with the experimental psychologist and physician Jacques-Joseph Moreau to form the Club de Hasischins, dedicated to the exploration of modifying psychological functions, primarily through the use of opium and hashish, in concert with other mystic and social methods many had already been exploring for some time. 

Members include: Moreau, Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, Eugéne Delecroix, Alexandre Dumas, and Charles Baudelaire.

• Feb: Petrus Borel returns to Paris, becoming editor of Satan while his brother, the former editor, is in prison.

• Sept: Financially unviable, Satan merges with the journal Le Corsaire; Borel's editorship ends.

1845

• Borel co-founds the journal La Revue Pittoresque along with Déchéres, publishing Nanteuil, Gavarni, Gautier, Nerval, & Sainte-Beuve.
• Borel and Nerval co-found a press, publishing Cazotte's Le Diable Amoureux, illustrated by Edouard de Beaumont. It soon folds, financially inviable.
• Dec: Borel reluctantly accepts a bureaucratic post in the colony of Algeria.

1846

• The economy flounders as a draught sweeps Europe.

• Jan: Borel arrives in Algeria.
• The Cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours, with all decoration designed and overseen by DuSeigneur, is completed in Rouen.

• Dec. 6: Berlioz uses Nerval's translation of Geothe's Faust as the principal text for his 'concert opera' or 'dramatic legend' The Damnation of Faust.

1847

• France plunges into economic depression, with 30% unemployment in Paris. Small peasant rebellions break out in the provinces but are put down by the Government; anarchist and socialist groups proliferate.
• July: Leftist organizations, denied the right of political assembly, launch a series of 'fund-raising banquets' to evade the new law.

• Oct: Borel's family moves into a house in Algeria that he names 'The Castle of Lofty Thought'.

1848

• Feb: Leftist 'fund-raising banquets' are specifically outlawed.
• Revolt breaks out in Paris; barricades are built and fighting ensues between the army and the populace. Many of the young generation of Romanticists, including Charles Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle, and Louis Ménard, fight on the barricades as does the older Delacroix.
• Feb. 23: The Prime minister steps down; at the announcement, confrontation between the army and the people leads to the shooting of 52 demonstrators. Violence in Paris escalates, and King Louis-Phillippe flees the city.
• A Socialist-Republican radical government is established at the Hotel de Ville, but fails to gain legitimation.
• Feb. 26: Bourgeois-Liberal elements of the rebellion begin to organize a republican government.
• March 2: Suffrage is restored to all adult males in France

• April 16: A Socialist demonstration for more comprehensive social change and postponed elections is fired on by troops of the provisional government.
• April 23: Conservatives win a majority in elections to the new General Assembly, though leftist Republican Romanticists such as Victor Hugo, Charles Lassilly, and Pierre-Jean Béranger are elected to the opposition.

• May 15: A Socialist demonstration for the support of Polish independence almost escalates into insurrection when demonstrators force their way into the National Assembly.
• June 21: The Conservative majority government closes down the National Workshops established to support the otherwise unemployed. Barricades again appear in the working-class quarters of the city.
• June 23-26: Government troops launch assaults against blockaded parts of the city against working-class, Socialist, and other radical elements. Unlike previous uprisings, the Bourgeosie and middle-classes take the side of the government against the proletariat.

• Nanteuil becomes director of the Academy of Arts in Dijon, and Conservator of the museum there.
• There is a Romanticist reunion at the celebration thrown for Nanteuil. Théophile Dondey (Philothée O'Neddy) is seen by his friends for the first time in a decade.

• Dec. 10: The supposedly moderate-conservative Louis Napoleon is elected President.

1849

• The Club of Hashischin meets with decreasing frequency.

• Achille Devéria is appointed head of the Bibliothéque Nationale's Department of Engravings, and assistant director of the Louvre's Egyptian department.

1850

•  Jehan DuSeigneur publishes a book on the Baroque sculptor Antoine Coysevox.

1851

• DuSeigneur writes the chapter on sculpture in Paul Lacroix's The Middle Ages and the Renaissance. He will go on to work with Lacroix on a number of historiographic projects.

• Dec. 2: Louis Napoleon stages a coup d'etat, declaring himself Emperor Napoleon III and instituting an anti-parlaimentary consitution. The next twenty years will be the most politically repressive period in France since the reign of Napoleon the First.
• Openly attacking Napoleon III as a traitor to Democracy and France, Victor Hugo goes into self-imposed exile.
• Baudelaire considers writing a play inspired by Borel's Champavert, but it never materialises.

1855

• Jan. 26: Gérard de Nerval hangs himself.
• The bas-relief medallion of Nerval sculpted in 1831 by Jehan DuSeigneur is cast in bronze for Nerval's grave.

• DuSeigneur helps to found The Universal Journal of the Arts: A Franco-Belgian Review, jointly edited by Paul Lacroix (France) and Marie-Camille de Aguirre Marsuzi (Belgium).
• April 25: Napoleon III is the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt.

1857

• Dec. 23: Achille Devéria dies.

1859

• July 17: Petrus Borel dies in Algeria, aged 50.
• Baudelaire publishes an article on Borel in La Revue Fantaisiste.

1861

• Dondey / O'Neddy's mother, who has been paralyzed for years, dies.

1865

• Feb. 3: Eugéne Devéria dies.
• Jehan DuSeigneur becomes editor of The Universal Journal of the Arts: A Franco-Belgian Review.

1866

• Jan/Feb?: Seigneur falls victim to a stroke.
  
• March 6: Jehan du Seigneur dies.

1867

• March 5: Louis Boulanger dies in Dijon.
• June 21: The revival of Hugo's Hernani serves as the final and largest reunion of the Romanticist community, attended by Gautier, O'Neddy, probably Bouchardy, Nanteuil and , and most of the other Romanticists who are still living.

1868

• Romanticist archivist/publisher Charles Asselineau publishes a new edition of Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit, with a frontispiece by Decadent illustrator Felicien Rops.
  

1869

• Baudelaire's collection of prose-poems Paris Spleen is published postumously; in the preface Baudelaire states that he read Aloysius Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit 20 times in preperation for the writing of his own volume.

• March 8: Hector Berlioz dies.

1870

• May 28: Joseph Bouchardy dies.

• July 19: Napoleon III declares war on Prussia. 
• Sept. 2: Napoleon III captured at the battle of Sedan. 
• Sept. 4: The 'Government of National Defense' takes hold of the reins of government in Paris, instituting the 'Third Republic'. 
• Sept. 19: Prussian armies besiege Paris and begin shelling it. 
• Sept.-Dec: The population of Paris is progressively starved, and disease runs rampant

1871

• Jan 28: Paris surrenders to the Prussian army.
• Feb: German armies return to the re-negotiated borders of France.
• Hugo returns to France, and is once again elected to the National Assembly.
• Fall: Gautier's health begins to seriously deteriorate due to heart disease. He begins writing A History of Romanticism.

1872

• Théophile Gautier publishes A History of Romanticism, focusing on the Jeunes-France/Bouzingo group and their immediate community.
• Oct. 23: Théophile Gautier dies.

1873

• Dec. 6: Célestin Nanteuil dies.

1875

• Feb. 19: Théophile Dondey (Philothée O'Neddy) dies.

1885

• May 22: Victor Hugo dies.

1888

Jan. 8: Auguste Maquet (Augustus MacKeat) dies.