1632
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Poland's Sigismund III Vasa dies suddenly at Warsaw April 30 at age 65 after a reign of 44 years; Moscow immediately declares war. The Treaty of Altmark confirms Sweden's annexation of Poland's Livonian coast. Sigismund's 37-year-old son succeeds to the throne as Wladislaw IV Vasa, appoints Stanislaw Koniecpolski commander of his armed forces, engages the Russians in a series of bloody battles in August (see 1633), and will reign until 1648, pursuing a course opposite from that of his obstinate and prejudiced father.
The Catholic League general von Tilly determines to make a stand at the confluence of the Lech (Lenz) and the Danube as the Thirty Years' War continues (see 1631). Sweden's Gustav II Adolf crosses the river April 15 in the face of murderous artillery directed by Lennart, count Torstensson. Von Tilly is mortally wounded by cannon fire, and he dies at Ingolstadt April 30 at age 72. Munich surrenders to Gustav Adolf, Swedish troops pour into the city, and the Austrian duke Albrecht von Wallenstein tries to keep Gustav Adolf from taking Nuremberg. Both sides withdraw from the city after 18,000 have died of scurvy and typhus.
Gustav Adolf moves against the ruined castle of Alte Veste inside Wallenstein's lines August 31, but 2 days of attacks fail to dislodge the Catholic League's army; Lennart, count Torstennson, is taken prisoner and will be held at Ingolstadt for nearly a year.
The Battle of Lützen November 16 pits 20,000 Swedes against 18,000 Catholics. Gustav II Adolf is killed at age 37 while leading a cavalry charge against the forces of Albrecht von Wallenstein. Bernhard, duke of Saxe-Weimar, immediately assumes command; kills a colonel who refuses to lead a charge; and wins the battle by sundown. The German commander Gottfried Heinrich, graf von Pappenheim, is mortally wounded and dies at Leipzig the next day at age 38.
Sweden's Gustav II Adolf is succeeded by his 6-year-old daughter Kristina, who will ascend the throne on her 18th birthday December 8, 1644, after a chancellorship administered by Count Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna, 49.
Cardinal Richelieu's forces defeat Languedoc's governor Henri II, duc de Montmorency, in battle at Castelnaudary September 1; taken prisoner, Montmorency is beheaded at Toulouse October 30 at age 38 for having conspired with the queen mother Marie de' Medici and the king's brother Gaston, duc d'Orléans.
Japan's former shōgun Hidetada Tokugawa dies at Edo March 15 at age 52; his son, Iemitsu, has ruled since 1623.
Ethiopia's emperor Susenyos abdicates his throne, having allowed an increase of Spanish and Roman Catholic influence in the country. His successor is Fasilidas, who will reign until 1667, expelling missionaries, reestablishing an alliance between the crown and the Coptic Christian Church, enlisting the help of Muslim rulers on the North African coast to bar Europeans, and isolating Ethiopia from outsiders.
An English legal manual for women states that wife-beating is still a husband's legal right and the wife has no redress. Under English law, a woman's personal belongings, money, furniture, linens, and the like become the absolute property of her husband when she marries and he is under no obligation to pass them on to her designated heirs. Her dowry does pass to her heirs; her husband enjoys the use of it only during his lifetime. If she predeceases him, he can continue to use her land until his own death. Most other Western countries have similar laws and customs.
Maryland receives a charter as the first of the English proprietary colonies in the New World. Charles I makes a grant of land from the Potomac River north to the 40th parallel to Cecilius (Cecil) Calvert, 27, whose father, George, Lord Baltimore, has died at London April 15 at age 52 after rejecting a grant of Newfoundland on account of its harsh climate. Obliged to remain in England to defend the charter against attack, young Cecilius will never visit the colony (see 1633).
French settlers in Nova Scotia found the colony of Acadia (see 1605); they will cut farms out of the region's dense forests (see 1710).
Irish and English settlers led by Sir Thomas Warner establish the first English colony on the west coast of the Caribbean island of Saint Christopher, whose name they shorten to Saint Kitts (see 1627), and another on Montserrat (see Columbus, 1493). Colonists from Virginia will join them on Montserrat in the next few years, and they will establish tobacco and indigo plantations (to be augmented in future years by cotton and sugar plantations) despite repeated attacks from Carib tribesmen and French naval forces (see politics, 1664).
René Descartes pioneers use of exponents in mathematics by introducing the symbol a3 (see 1619; Wallis, 1655).
Galileo Galilei repeats his advocacy of the Copernican system of astronomy in Dislogo de Massimi Sistemi del Mondo (Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems) (see 1616). Pope Urban VIII has told the mathematician and philosopher that he could use the system as a tool for astronomical calculations and even write about it, as long as he treated it only as a hypothetical and mathematical device; to evade the pope's injunction, Galileo has written his treatise in the form of a dialogue between fictional characters, who debate the relative merits of the Copernican and scriptural systems without endorsing either; his work is published with ecclesiastical approval February 21 but he is then summoned to Rome to answer charges that his views are heretical, since they fly in the face of Scripture. If Copernicus was correct, then Joshua in the Old Testament could not have commanded the sun to stand still, and the Psalms would have been wrong in crediting God with having fixed "the Earth upon its foundation, not to be moved forever." On the defensive against the Reformation in the Thirty Years' War, the Vatican cannot allow Scripture to be contradicted, and Galileo's book will remain on the Church's Index of Prohibited Books until 1835 (see 1633).
The bishop of London William Laud, now 59, becomes Archbishop of Canterbury following the death of George Abbott. Laud has raised fears of papist tendencies by his persecution of Puritans and imposition of certain Church ceremonies while trying (without much success) to restore the Church's position as a powerful landowner, using his royal prerogative as religious adviser to Charles I to direct the judgments of the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission.
Nonfiction: Elenchus Religionis Papisticae and Flagellus Pontificis et Episcoporum Latalium by English physician and religious zealot John Bastwick, 40, are published in the Netherlands. Prelates who include William Laud consider themselves to be the targets of Bastwick's attacks and have him fined, excommunicated, and barred from practicing medicine.
Poetry: "On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-Three" by English poet John Milton, 23: "How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,/ Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year."
Painting: The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicholaes Tulp by Rembrandt van Rijn, who depicts members of Amsterdam's Guild of Surgeons; The Garden of Love by Peter Paul Rubens, now 55, who in December 1630 married the 16-year-old daughter of a silk and tapestry merchant (his wife, Helena [née Fourment] will bear him five children and inspire some of his best work); King Charles I and Queen Henrietta by Anthony Van Dyck, who visited Sofonisba Anguissola at Palermo 9 years ago and has now been named court painter (he is careful not to betray the diminutive size of the king); Children with a Cat by Judith Leyster.
Theater: Justice Without Revenge (El castigo sin vangenza) by Lope de Vega 2/3 (approximate) at Madrid; Hyde Park by James Shirley, in April at London's Phoenix Theatre.
English Puritan William Prynne, 32, attacks the London theater in his pamphlet "Histrio Mastix: The Players Scourge, or, Actors tragedie": "It hath evermore been the notorious badge of prostituted Strumpets and the lewdest Harlots, to ramble abroad to plays, to Playhouses; whither no honest, chaste or sober Girls or Women, but only branded Whores and infamous Adulteresses, did usually resort in ancient times." Prynne's lines are construed as an aspersion on Queen Henrietta Maria, who has taken part in a performance of a play at court. The king's religious adviser William Laud, bishop of London, has Prynne committed to prison in February; he will be sentenced next year to life imprisonment, branded on his cheeks with the letters S.L. (for Seditious Libeler), heavily fined, have the stumps of his ears cut off, and serve 8 years of his sentence before being released (see theater closings, 1642).
The Palais-Royal is completed at Paris to provide a residence for Cardinal Richelieu.
English colonists plant apple trees in territory that will become the New Jersey colony in 1665.
An act of the Virginia colony's General Assembly orders all free adult men to plant grape vines, "the said vines [to] be weeded, tended, and well preserved," with fines for noncompliance. An earlier order by the House of Burgesses has compelled each man to plant 20 vines in an effort to develop a domestic wine industry that will free the colony of dependence on imported wines (see 1783).
Rotterdam's population reaches 20,000. The city will become the world's largest seaport (see 1299).
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