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Sweden's Gustav II Adolf returns to Polish soil in May with 7,000 men, thus raising his troop strength to 14,000 (see 1626). The Poles bring hetman (field commander) Stanislaw Koniecpolski from Prussia to the Baltic. He has only 9,000 men, but he uses superior strategy to frustrate the Swedes (see 1624). He defeats them at Puck, recovers the place, and goes on to score victories at Czarne (Haersztyn) and Tczew. Gustav II Adolf is so severely wounded and disabled in the course of the year that he will never again be able to wear armor, and even though he raises a seemingly insurmountable army of 32,000 men he cannot prevail against the far outnumbered Poles. The king loses 5,000 men, breaks camp September 10, and turns his attention to Prussia, but Koniecpolski uses a small fleet of warships to defeat a Swedish flotilla at Oliwa November 28 (see 1628).
George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, takes command of an 8,000-man army and prepares for an attack against the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle; barred entry to the harbor, he makes an ill-considered and poorly supported descent upon the nearby Ile de Rhé, suffers a shattering defeat, has to withdraw after 4 months, and is impeached by members of Parliament who include John Hampden, 33, John Pym, now 43, and Sir John Eliot, 35. They try to persuade Charles I to dismiss the duke, but the king remains loyal to his friend (see 1628).
Cardinal Richelieu lays siege to La Rochelle in late August.
The Catholic League forces of Albrecht von Wallenstein and graf von Tilly conquer Holstein; Wallenstein subdues Schleswig and Jutland, drives the dukes of Mecklenburg out of that duchy, and forces the duke of Pomerania to submit as Denmark's Kristian IV withdraws temporarily from the Thirty Years' War.
A new Bohemian constitution confirms the hereditary rule of the Hapsburgs and strengthens royal power. Most of the remaining Czech nobility emigrates, the rest having been executed or exiled.
Dutch vice admiral Piet Heyn, 49, captures 22 Portuguese ships at San Salvador, Brazil. Heyn was himself captured at sea at age 19 and spent 4 years as an oarsman aboard Spanish galleys before being released in an exchange of Dutch and Spanish prisoners. He thereafter became a merchant captain and amassed a considerable fortune before becoming a founding director of the Dutch West India Company 6 years ago (see commerce, 1628).
An Anglo-French war over Nova Scotia (New France) breaks out as the French contest claims to the territory by William Alexander and other Englishmen (see 1625; 1629).
The Mughal emperor Jahangir dies in October at age 58 while returning from Kashmir. He has ruled tyrannically from Delhi since 1605. His son of 35, who has effected a reconciliation following an abortive rebellion, has all of his male collateral relatives murdered to remove any challenges to his succession and will reign until 1658 as Shah Jahan. He orders construction of an extravagant Peacock Throne made of emeralds, diamonds, and rubies (it will take 7 years to complete).
China's 15th Ming dynasty emperor Tianji (T'ien-chi) dies at age 22 (approximate) after a disastrous 7-year reign in which he has devoted himself to carpentry while his eunuch minister Wei Zhongxian (Wei Chung-hsien, or Li Chin-Chung) has replaced hundreds of officials and created a network of spies to retain power while allowing the Dutch to occupy the island of Taiwan and offering little resistance to the Manchu tribesmen who have made incursions across the country's northwest frontier. Rebellions have become endemic in the southwestern provinces, and the imperial treasury is so depleted that there are no funds to repair the dikes when the Huanghe (Yellow River) floods its banks. Tianji is succeeded by his 16-year-old brother Chu Yu-chien, who banishes Wei Zhongxian, tries to revive the empire, but will find that conditions have deteriorated irreversibly. Wei hangs himself at age 59 to avoid trial, and the new emperor will reign until 1644 as Chongzhen (Zhu Youjian, or Ch'ung-chen) (see commerce [Yellow Tiger revolt], 1628).
Manchu forces invade Korea. The Manchus will make Korea a vassal state in 10 years, but Korea's court and people will remain loyal to the Ming and continue to pay tribute to China's new Ming emperor (see 1636).
Dutch governor-general Jan Pieterszoon Coen returns to Java, traveling incognito (see 1623). He is accompanied by his wife and a group of other respectable women in hope of attracting more Dutch settlers, but the directors of the Dutch East India Company refuse to grant the colonists free-trade privileges, and the new city of Batavia (later Jakarta) is threatened by attack from the sultan of Mataram, who will lay siege to Batavia in August of next year and the following August as well (see 1629).
Pierre Bélain, sieur d'Esnambuc, lands on the Caribbean island of Saint Christopher (Saint Kitts) with settlers who establish a colony rivaling the one started by Sir Thomas Warner in 1623. The French and English will contest possession of the island into the 18th century (see 1632; 1666; Utrecht, 1713).
Barbados in the West Indies is colonized by some 80 English settlers, who arrive aboard the William and John captained by John Powell but owned by a Dutch merchant in England (see 1625). Captain Powell captures a Portuguese ship bound for Lisbon with Brazilian sugar, he delivers her cargo to the William and John's Dutch owner, the Dutchman sells the sugar for nearly £10,000, and he devotes the windfall to developing the new colony at Barbados, an island never seen by Christopher Columbus (see 1636).
Merchant-explorer Frederik de Houtman dies at Alkmaar, the Netherlands, October 21 at age 56, having studied the Malay language while held prisoner by the sultan of Sumatra from 1599 to 1602, written the first Malay dictionary in 1603, served as governor of Amboina from 1605 to 1611, and as governor of the Moluccas from 1621 to 1623.
The Company of the Hundred Associates founded by Cardinal Richelieu is given control of New France April 25 with a monopoly on the fur trade and land from Florida to the Arctic Circle.
The English East India Company will omit dividends to its stockholders in 16 of the next 50 years, but they will be the only dividendless years in the 178 years between 1602 and 1780 (see 1708).
England's Charles I tries to float a general loan on his own authority; John Hampden refuses to pay his share and is imprisoned.
Prague's Jewish community appoints Bavarian-born rabbi Yom Tov Lippmann (ben Nathan ha-Levi) Heller, 48, its chief rabbi and charges him with overseeing the collection of the heavy taxes levied on Bohemia's Jews by the Holy Roman Emperor Friederich II to support his troops in the ongoing Thirty Years' War. The Jewish community will balk at paying, Heller will be subjected to false accusations, and after being severely fined and briefly imprisoned will be forbidden to serve as rabbi anywhere in the empire (see 1643).
Fiction: Le Berger extravagant by French satirist Charles Sorel, 25; Dreams (or Visions) (Los Sueños) by Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, who wrote his classic work in the new baroque conceptismo style between 1606 and 1622.
Poetry: Nymphidia by Michael Drayton.
Painting: The Jolly Toper and Banquet of the Civic Guard by Frans Hals; The Money-Changer by Rembrandt van Rijn; The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine by Peter Paul Rubens; Portrait of Peter Stevens by Anthony Van Dyck; Crucifixion by Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán, 28.
Playwright Thomas Middleton dies outside London in July at age 47 and is buried at Newington Butts.
Opera: Dafne 4/23 at Torgau, with music by German composer Heinrich Schütz, 41, libretto by Martin Opitz, now 30, who has adapted a 1594 melodrama by the late Ottavio Rinuccini to help write the first German-language opera. Schütz will travel next year to Venice next year to study under Claudio Monteverdi but will then resume his duties as director of the duke of Saxony's chapel at Dresden, a post to which he was appointed in 1617.
Inigo Jones completes the Queen's Chapel in St. James's Palace, Westminster, after 4 years of work.
France's Louis XIII entrusts the planning of a great château at Versailles to Jacques Le Mercier (see 1682; Louvre, 1624).
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