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France's Louis XIII makes Cardinal Richelieu his chief minister April 29. Known as "the red eminence," Richelieu begins a domination of the government that will continue until his death in 1642.
France and England sign a treaty providing for the marriage of Charles, Prince of Wales, to Louis XIII's sister Henrietta Maria.
Polish forces under the command of Stanislaw Koniecpolski defeat a Tatar army at Martynów. Now 33, Koniecpolski was appointed field commander 5 years ago. The Ottoman Turks took him prisoner at the Battle of Tutora (Cecora) the following year. He has been released from confinement at Constantinople, and his victory over the Turks' vassals win him not only the thanks of Poland's Sejm (Diet) but also royal appointment as palatine of Sandomierz (see 1627).
Lord High Admiral Charles Howard, baron Howard of Effingham and earl of Nottingham, dies at Croyden, Surrey, December 14 at age 88. He is celebrated as the victor over the Spanish Armada in 1588.
China's 15th Ming dynasty emperor Tianji (T'ien-chi) gives his 56-year-old eunuch butler Wei Zhongxian (Wei Chung-hsien) what amounts to power of attorney. Having gained influence by ingratiating himself with the young emperor's onetime nurse, Wei hires a division of eunuch troops to control the palace in Beijing's (Peking's) Forbidden City while he fills government positions with corrupt opportunists, levying extortionate taxes on the people, and when idealistic Confucian officials try to stop him he will launch attacks on their reporters, driving hundreds of loyal officials out of office and having some put to death while erecting temples in his honor under an oppressive rule that will continue until Tianji's death in 1627.
Ndongo's Nzinga creates the new kingdom of Matamba after being driven out of Ndongo by the Portuguese (see 1623). She begins to train an elite army that she will lead against the Portuguese, first in alliance with the Jaga people, later in alliance with the Dutch (see 1641).
Dutch naval forces seize Brazil's capital Bahia May 10.
Virginia becomes a royal colony May 24 as the Virginia Company's charter is revoked after 17 profitless years (see House of Burgesses, 1619). Robert Rich, 37, 2nd earl of Warwick, has had a falling out with other members of the company, partly because of his Puritan sympathies, and this has had much to do with the company's suppression.
Some 34 Dutch families land in May on Manhattan Island (see 1623). Sent by the 3-year-old Dutch West India Company under the command of Cornelis Jacobsen May, the 110 men, women, and children have come by way of the Canary Islands and the West Indies and have taken nearly 2 months to make the trip aboard the 260-ton vessel Nieuw Nederland. Most are French-speaking Protestant Walloons from the Spanish Netherlands under the leadership of Jesse De Forest of Avesnes, Hainaut, and most settle on what later will be called Governors Island off the southern tip of Manhattan, but in order to cover as much territory as possible, Captain May sends a few upriver to Fort Nassau, where they find that the stockade has been ruined by spring flood waters and build a new one, naming it Fort Orange (the House of Orange is Holland's ruling family) and others to the Connecticut River Valley.
"Good News from New England, or a True Relation of Things Very Remarkable at the Plantation of Plymouth in New England" by colonial leader Edward Winslow is published at London.
Spain's Felipe IV publishes sumptuary laws in response to popular criticism of his court's extravagance; he reduces his household staff and bans wearing of the ruff, a sartorial symbol of profligacy since 1540 that will soon go out of style everywhere in Europe as luxury gives way to austerity, partly as a means of discouraging social disorder.
Japan expels all Spanish traders and puts an end to trade with the Philippines (see 1609; 1641).
The Walloon colonists on Manhattan Island export 4,000 beaver pelts and 700 otter skins worth a total of 27,125 guilders, an amount slightly higher than the value of the goods supplied to the colonists by the Dutch West India Company.
English mathematician Henry Briggs, 63, works out logarithmic tables for numbers from 1 to 20,000 (see Napier, 1614). Briggs has invented common logarithmic notation and will be credited with inventing the modern method of long division.
Tiphys batavus by astronomer and mathematician Willebrord Snell includes Snell's studies of the loxdrome, the path of the spheres that makes constant angle with the meridians. His work will prove helpful to navigators.
Anatomist-botanist Gaspard Bauhin dies at native Basle December 5 at age 64.
Medical professor Santorio Santorius, now 63, resigns from the University of Padua, where his students have included Englishman William Harvey (see 1628).
A ziekentrooster (comforter of the sick) arrives on Manhattan Island as the colony's first preacher.
Amsterdam rationalist Uriel Acosta produces a work condemning rabbinic Judaism and denying the immortality of the soul (see 1616). The local magistracy arrests him, fines him, takes away his books, and generally heaps such scorn upon him that he finds his isolation unbearable and recants (see 1640).
Nonfiction: On Truth (De Veritate) by English courtier-diplomat-philosopher Edward Herbert, 1st baron Herbert, 41, is published at Paris. An older brother of the metaphysical poet George Herbert, the author examines with fresh eyes the nature of truth in an effort to establish instructed reason as the basis for any such examination and concludes that five religious ideas are innate in the human mind: a belief in a supreme being, in the need to worship that being, in the pursuit of a pious and virtuous life as the best form of worship, in repentance, and in rewards and punishments in the next world. Introduction to Universal Geography (Introductio in Universam Geographiam) by the late German geographer Philipp Clüver, who died at Leyden in December 1622 at age 42, is published. Clüver founded the discipline of historical geography, and his posthumously-published six-volume work will remain the standard for more than a century.
Poetry: Devotions upon Emergent Occasions by John Donne, now dean of St. Paul's in London: "No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a piece of the Continent . . . If a Clod bee washed away by the sea, Europe is the lesse . . . any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinds; And therefore never seek to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee" (17th Meditation).
Painting: The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals; Portrait of Emanuel Philibert by Anthony Van Dyck. Luis Tristán dies at Toledo December 7 at age 38.
Pope Urban VIII threatens snuff users with excommunication as the use of tobacco from the New World gains in popularity.
The Louvre Palace at Paris is completed in part for Louis XIII by French architect Jacques Le Mercier, 39. The palace will be enlarged repeatedly over the next 2 centuries.
The Plymouth Plantation produces enough food for the first time to end the threat of starvation, but there is still no great abundance (see 1623); there are cows to provide milk and sometimes beef, but those colonists who cannot fend for themselves in obtaining venison, fowl, and fish continue to suffer from malnutrition and hunger.
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