1618
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Contents: political eventsexploration, colonization commerce retail, trade medicine religion literature art theater, film agriculture food availability population |
The Defenestration of Prague May 23 precipitates a Thirty Years' War that will devastate Europe. Bohemian Catholics close a Protestant church and destroy another. Protestants are further embittered by the transfer of Bohemia's administration to 10 governors, of whom seven are Catholics. Two governors are thrown from a window in the Palace of Hradcany, and although they survive their 50-foot fall into a ditch, their "defenestration" begins a revolt headed by Protestant leader Count Heinrich Matthias von Thurn, 51, who gave the order to throw them out the window and who takes command of rebel troops to march on Austria (see 1619).
The duc de Richelieu negotiates a treaty between France's queen mother, Marie de' Medici, and the duc de Luynes. She returns from exile, whereupon Richelieu is exiled to Avignon for conspiring with her.
The double-decked warship Vasa launched August 10 at Stockholm is the largest vessel ever ordered for the Swedish Navy. Roughly 1,000 trees have been felled to provide timber for her elaborately carved oaken hull, and she is equipped with 10 sails, but only four have been raised when a strong wind capsizes the nearly 500-ton ship, and although 100 passengers reach safety nearly 50 people are drowned.
Venetian authorities expel the 46-year-old Spanish diplomat Alonso de la Cueva, marqués de Bedmar, for allegedly using his diplomatic privileges to increase Madrid's power through the viceroys of Milan and Naples. The authorities fabricate a story that Bedmar has conspired to seize the republic for Felipe III, who sends Bedmar to the Spanish Lowlands.
The Ottoman sultan Mustapha I is declared incompetent to rule in February, and his 14-year-old brother will reign until 1622 as Osman II. The Turks give up Georgia and Azerbaijan by treaty with Persia's Abbas the Great.
The Lebanese ruler Fakhr ad-Din II returns from exile, concludes a peace treaty with the Christian Maronite leader Yusuf Sayfa, makes a marriage alliance with Yusuf's daughter, but then begins to extend his territory (see 1614). By 1631 he will have gained domination over most of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine (see 1633).
Baron De La Warr sets out from England to investigate complaints of tyranny by his deputy Samuel Argall in the Virginia colony but dies June 7 at age 40 and is buried at sea.
Sir Walter Raleigh sends five small ships up the Orinoco with his son and a nephew while remaining himself at Trinidad, ill with fever (see 1617). The expedition under Lawrence Keymis encounters a Spanish settlement, and Raleigh's son and several Spaniards are killed in the fight that ensues. Keymis returns to Trinidad with the bad news and kills himself after being reproached by Raleigh, who returns to England, is arrested, and is beheaded in the Old Palace Yard at Westminster October 29 at age 66, fulfilling the king's promise to the Spaniards that any piracy on Raleigh's part would be punished by death.
French adventurer Etienne Brulé begins to assemble furs for sale to French traders. Brulé arrived at Quebec with Champlain in 1608 and has gone into the western wilderness, where he lives with the Huron (see exploration [Lake Superior], 1622).
Merchant Sir James Lancaster dies at London June 6 at age 63 (approximate).
An English fleet under the command of Sir Thomas Dale arrives off Java late in the year and tries to establish a fort at Jacatra (later Jakarta) in hopes of breaking the Dutch monopolies in cloves and nutmegs (see 1612). The Dutch governor-general Jan Pieterszoon Coen puts up an inconclusive naval resistance but lacks the warships needed to drive off the English. Giving orders to defend the Dutch fort as well as possible, he takes his merchant ships and their cargoes of valuable merchandise to Amboina in the Moluccas, where he will reorganize his fleet (see 1619).
The world's first pawnshop opens September 28 at Brussels.
Smallpox introduced by European explorers and colonists rages through New England and spreads south to Virginia, where it kills the Powhatan chief and many of his tribesmen.
A diphtheria epidemic kills up to 8,000 at Naples.
The London Pharmacopoeia appears in its first edition with some 1,960 remedies that include worms, dried vipers, foxes' lungs, oil of ants and wolves, and 1,028 simples (see 1677).
A massacre of Jews at Prague sends fears throughout the Bohemian Jewish community (see Ukraine, 1643).
Nonfiction: A History of Tythes by John Selden, who denies divine authority for the practice of tithing but not the legal right of the Church of England to collect as tithes 10 percent of people's income (his book is suppressed and the Privy Council forces him to recant).
Poet John Davies (of Hereford) dies at London in July at age 53 (approximate).
Painting: Old Woman Cooking and Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by Spanish painter Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez, 19; Crucifixion by Spanish painter Jusepe (José) de Ribera, 27, who has settled at Naples. Japanese landscape painter Togan Unkoku dies at age 61 (approximate).
Theater: King Torrismond (Il rey Torrismondo) by the late Torquato Tasso at Vicenza's Teatro Olympia.
English gardeners are warned not to plant apricots or peaches in the cold climate of what later will be called the British Isles.
Burgundy bans the planting of potatoes on charges that eating the tuber produces leprosy.
Jamestown produces a large enough crop to end the threat of starvation in the Virginia colony (see 1616).
The population of the German states will decline by at least 7.5 million from its present level of 21 million as a result of the Thirty Years' War (see 1648).
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