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Sweden's Gustav II Adolf attacks a Polish army at Walhof in January, kills one-fifth of its men in his first pitched battle, and scatters the rest (see 1625). He completes his conquest of Livonia (later Latvia) but finds it hard to support a force in the Dvina district and resolves to move hostilities to Poland's Prussian provinces in hopes of securing the Vistula. A Swedish fleet carrying 14,000 men anchors off the sand dunes that separate the Fische-Haff from the Baltic, and Gustav II Adolf occupies Pillau, taking the only Polish city with a port accessible to warships. He soon intimidates Königsberg into declaring neutrality, conquers the bishopric of Ermeland in July, obtains the surrender of Elbing and Marienburg, takes over the fertile Vistula delta, makes Axel Oxenstern the region's first Swedish governor, cuts off communications between Gdansk (Danzig) and the sea, and sets sail for Sweden in October to obtain reinforcements as Polish irregulars harass his troops (see 1627).
The Treaty of Monzon signed March 5 resolves differences between Spain, France, and the papacy over an Alpine valley used by troops to cross into and out of Italy. Spain agrees to destroy her forts in the Valtelline; France is to have free use of the passes.
A bill to impeach George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, is introduced in Parliament in May by critics of the duke's expedition against Spain last year. Charles I dissolves Parliament in June to spare his friend, whose case is tried before the Royal Court of the Star Chamber, whose judges dismiss the charges against him (see 1627).
Christian of Brunswick dies at Wolfenbüttel in Lower Saxony June 16 at age 26, having served as a military commander in the Thirty Years' War. His wholesale burning and plundering have won him a reputation for being mad.
The Battle of Dessau Bridge August 27 ends in victory for Catholic forces under the Austrian general Albrecht Eusebius Wenzel von Wallenstein, 43, and graf von Tilly, who crush Danish forces and pursue the enemy through Silesia to Hungary, where graf von Mansfeld obtains support from the Transylvanian prince Bethlen Gábor. But Bethlen soon withdraws from the war, and Count Mansfeld is obliged to disband his army. Mansfeld sets out for Venice, falls ill at Rakowitza, and dies there November 29 at age 46.
French authorities arrest the 32-year-old César, duc de Vendôme, and his brother Alexandre, grand prior of France, on charges of involvement in a plot to assassinate Cardinal Richelieu (the Chalais Conspiracy). Legitimized in 1595 and created a duke 3 years later, Vendôme is a son of the late Henri IV by his mistress Gabrielle d'Estrées. He participated in aristocratic revolts against his half brother Louis XIII in 1614, 1616, and 1620; he and his brother are imprisoned at Vincennes, where Alexandre soon dies, and Vendôme will be forced to resign as governor of Brittany before he is released in 1630 (see 1640).
The tribal leader Nurhachi dies at age 67 after a long reign in which he has extended Manchurian rule over the tribes of the inner Asian steppe and organized his own tribesmen into a bureaucratic Chinese-style state. His eighth son, Abahai, 43, is a brilliant military leader who soon eliminates his brothers as rivals and will reign until his own death in 1643, leading armies into Inner Mongolia and Korea, making those states vassals of Manchuria, and perfecting a military machine that will become known as the Eight Banners. Obtaining food and money from Korea and manpower and horses from the Mongols, Abahai will take the Amur region of northern Manchuria from the Chinese, break through the Great Wall on three occasions to make raids into northern China, and capture more and more Chinese, taking the more talented among them into his government (see 1643).
More black slaves from Angola are put ashore at Fort Amsterdam, bringing the total to about a dozen men (see 1625; women, 1628).
Madagascar receives its first French colonists. Arab traders built fortifications on the African island as early as the 9th century, European ships have explored its shoreline since the start of the 16th century, but the French seek to drive out the Hovas who have lived in Madagascar for 600 years (see 1674).
Pieter Minuit arrives at Fort Amsterdam May 4, replacing director Willem Verhulst, who has been found guilty of mismanagement and recalled by the Dutch West India Company. Minuit later in the year buys Manhattan Island from Lenape tribal chiefs of the Wappinger Confederacy for cloth, beads, fish hooks, hatchets, and trinkets valued by the Dutch at 60 guilders. Details of the transaction will remain sketchy, and by some accounts the sale is not concluded until November 25, although a document dated November 7 by one Peter Schlager at Amsterdam informs the Staats-General that "They have bought the Island Manhattes from the wildmen for the value of 60 guilders; 'tis 11,000 morgens [22,000 acres] in size" (the letter will be found in the national archives at The Hague in 1839 by a secretary to the U.S. minister to the Netherlands); historians will base their accounts on this one brief mention, and it gives no details of what the colonists gave the "wildmen" or where exactly the transaction took place. Minuit assigns large tracts of Manhattan land to members of the Company (patroons) on condition that they bring over stipulated numbers of settlers to the new town of Nieuw Amsterdam founded by Minuit. The 60 guilders paid for Manhattan is by some accounts $24 and by others $39 (roughly 0.2 cents per acre), but a 20th century economist will reckon the purchasing power of 60 guilders at several thousand dollars in modern terms (and the recipients have sold land that does not belong to them).
The Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Plantation buy out their London investors November 15 for £1,800.
French trader Pierre Bélain, 41, sieur d'Esnambuc, drives Spanish forces from the coast of Guadeloupe and establishes a trading company on the Caribbean island that the late Christopher Columbus discovered in 1493 (see 1635; Saint Kitts, 1627).
Sir Francis Bacon experiments with the idea of freezing chickens by stuffing them with snow, publishes his work under the title "Touching the conservation and induration of bodies," but catches pneumonia (or bronchitis) and dies at his native London April 9 at age 65.
Mathematician Willebrord van Roijen Snell dies at his native Leyden October 30 at age 46.
London-born member of Parliament Nicholas Ferrar, 34, is ordained a deacon in the Anglican Church, moves his extended household to a remote area of Huntingdonshire, establishes a school there at Little Gidding for all 30 members of the household plus neighboring children. Believing that every hour of the day should be put to good use, Ferrar devises a set of rules for the community's religious discipline and puts it to work mastering bookbinding, needlework, and other crafts.
Rome's Irish College is founded.
Fiction: The Life of a Scoundrel (La Historia de la vide del Buscon) by Spanish picaresque satirist-poet Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Villegas, 46, is full of grotesque atmosphere and Machiavellian characters. After killing a dueling opponent in 1611, the club-footed Quevedo y Villegas fled to Italy, served as an agent of the duke of Osuna, had to return to Madrid after the duke's failure to overthrow the republic of Venice in 1620, was confined to his estate in Torre de Juan Abad, but received an honorary position at court upon the accession of Felipe IV in 1621.
Poet and lawyer Sir John Davies is appointed chief justice of England but dies December 8 at age 57 before he can take office.
Painting: The Baptism of the Moor and The Clemency of Titus by Dutch painter Rembrandt (Harmensz) van Rijn, 19; Isaac AbrahamszMassa by Frans Hals; Assumption of the Virgin (Antwerp altarpiece) by Peter Paul Rubens; Giovanni Vicenzo Imperiale by Anthony Van Dyck; The Rebuke of Adam and Eve by Il Domenichino; Drunken Silenus by Jusepe de Ribera. Flemish landscape painter Paul Brill dies at Rome October 7 at age 72.
Sculptor Adriaen de Vries dies at Prague December 13 at age 70 (approximate).
Playwright-poet Cyril Tourneur falls ill on the return voyage from Cádiz (he sailed there with Sir Edward Cecil last year on the latter's ill-fated expedition) and dies at Kinsdale, Ireland, February 28 at age 50; actor-theater proprietor Edward Alleyn dies at his native London November 25 at age 60 (widowed in 1623, he married Constance Donne, daughter of the poet).
Dutch whalers establish the port of Smeerenberg in Spitsbergen to process right whales, so called by the English to distinguish them from "wrong" whales that sink when dead. The whales are prized not as food but for their oil and whalebone, used respectively for illumination and lubrication and as stays.
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