1650
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James Graham, marquis of Montrose, returns from the Continent to avenge last year's execution of Charles I but loses most of his small Scottish army when its ship is wrecked in the passage from Orkney to Caithness. He pushes on with the remnants to the border of Ross-shire but fails to rouse the clans. Surprised and routed at Carbiesdale, his forces are cut to pieces April 27 at Invercharron, and although Montrose escapes he nearly starves to death in the wilds of Sutherland before being betrayed. He falls into the hands of Neil McLeod of Assynt, who turns him over to David Leslie; taken to Edinburgh, he is sentenced to death by Parliament and hanged in Edinburgh's High Street May 21 at age 37, protesting to the end that he is a true Covenanter and a loyal subject.
Puritan William Prynne goes to prison in June for refusing to pay taxes to the Commonwealth government, which he considers unconstitutional and lacking in moral authority; he will be confined until February 1653.
Charles II returns from the Continent, landing in Scotland June 24. He signs the National Covenant and is proclaimed king, but his army of 16,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry, and 30 guns under the command of David Leslie is defeated September 3 at the Battle of Dunbar by Oliver Cromwell, who just 1 month earlier wrote to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken." Sir Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Baron Fairfax of Cameron (he inherited his father's title 2 years ago) has resigned as commander in chief in protest against Cromwell's proposed invasion of Scotland, and Cromwell has only 7,500 infantry, 3,500 cavalry, and some guns, but Leslie has ordered most of his musketeers to extinguish their matches as an economy move, and when Cromwell launches his attack at first light the Covenanters are unprepared; only one in six is ready to fire. Covenanter casualties total 3,000 killed, 10,000 taken prisoner, and Cromwell, whose lossses are minimal, captures all 60 Covenanter guns.
Charles II is crowned at Scone despite the disaster at Dunbar and prepares to march on England (see 1652). Edinburgh Castle surrenders to Cromwell December 19.
France's Cardinal Mazarin has the Great Condé arrested January 14 along with his 20-year-old brother Armand de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, and his brother-in-law Henri II d'Orléans, duc de Longueville (see 1649). A cousin of the king, Condé had supported Mazarin against the Parlement in the Fronde uprising, but he has been frustrated in his personal ambitions for power. Longueville quits the rebel cause, having lost patience with the arrogance of the Condé and his own wife's adulterous affairs. Marshal Turenne is persuaded to lead an armed rebellion. Archduke Leopold sends an army from the Spanish Netherlands to aid Turenne, French peasants rise against Leopold's army, he withdraws, and Turenne's Frondeurs give way December 15 at the Battle of Blanc-Champ (or Rethel) as French government forces prevail (but see 1651).
Willem II of Orange dies of smallpox at Alkdaar November 6 at age 24, having failed to renew his country's war with Spain. His son and heir is born November 14.
Persia's Abbas II retakes Kandahar, but Mughal emperors will besiege the city repeatedly.
China's Qing dynasty regent Dorgon dies while hunting near the Great Wall at Kharahotu December 31 at age 38, having subdued most of China for the young Qing emperor (see 1648). He is posthumously proclaimed emperor, but he leaves no male heirs. His enemies will soon return to power, and Shunzhi (Shun-chih), now 12, will reign until his death in 1661 (see 1651).
Nzinga, queen of Ndongo and Matambma, makes peace with the Portuguese after 30 years of warfare in which tens of thousands have died and hundreds of thousands taken into slavery (see 1648). She agrees to cease hostilities in October and give the Portuguese 130 slaves in order to obtain the release of her sister Mukumbu (see 1663).
The Massachusetts Bay colony changes its law regarding adultery as a capital offense, making it punishable instead by whipping and the lifelong wearing of the scarlet letter "A" (see Fiction [Hawthorne novel], 1850).
Martinique's governor Jacques-Dyel du Parquet purchases the Caribbean island of Grenada from the Compagnie des Iles d'Amérique and establishes a settlement at what later will be called St. George's (see 1609). The island will remain in French hands until 1762.
German physicist-engineer Otton von Guericke, 47, at Magdeburg invents the first air pump and uses it to create a partial vacuum (see 1654). He will discover that while light travels through a vacuum, sound does not.
Mathematician-scientist-inventor René Descartes dies of pneumonia at Stockholm February 1 at age 53. Queen Kristina has invited him to teach her philosophy, but she has insisted on having the classes at 5 o'clock in the morning, and Descartes has been accustomed to remaining in bed until 11, reading and meditating. His final words are reportedly, "So, my soul, we must part" ("Ca mon âme, il faut partir"); astronomer Christopher Scheiner dies at Niesse, Silesia, July 18 a week shy of his 75th birthday.
England has a typhus epidemic that by one account converts "the whole island into one vast hospital."
England's new Puritan regime enforces church attendance, Parliament passes strict laws making adultery punishable by death and fornication by 3 months' imprisonment and limiting the elegance of clothing, but judges and juries will not enforce the laws and few people will be convicted; by 1657 the laws will have become virtually inoperative.
James Ussher, 69, Archbishop of Armagh (Church of Ireland), calculates from biblical references that all life was created Sunday, October 23, 4004 B.C. The date will be included in many versions of the Bible and be widely accepted by much of the Western world until the 19th century.
German missionary-astronomer Adam Schall von Bell, 59, receives permission from the Chinese emperor Shunzhi (Shun-chih) to build a church at Beijing (Peking). Appointed head of the Imperial Board of Astronomy several years ago, Schall von Bell has cured the dowager empress of a strange malady; the young emperor will attend church services on several occasions himself out of respect for Schall von Bell, who has become a trusted adviser (Shunzhi calls him mafa, meaning grandfather).
The son of the Mongol khan of Urga (later Ulan Bator) is named a Living Buddha, reflecting the rise of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia (see monastery, 1639). Buddhist theocracy and secular aristocracy will share power in Mongolia until the first quarter of the 20th century.
London journalist Marchamont Needham switches from supporting the Royalist cause in his Mercurius Pragmaticus and begins editing the Mercurius Politicus, whose pages support Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth (see 1647; 1660).
Nonfiction: Medulla Theologiae Morales by German Jesuit theologian Hermann Busembaum, 50, preaches the philosophy that "the end justifies the means." Busembaum's work will be condemned for its sections on regicide, and copies will be publicly burned in 1757 by the Parlement of Toulouse.
Poetry: Silex Scintillans by Henry Vaughan includes his poem "They are all gone into the world of light"; The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America by English colonist Anne Bradstreet (née Dudley), 38, is published at London with metaphysical Puritan poems that include "To My Dear and Loving Husband" and "Upon the Burning of Our House." Derivative and conventional (her later work, published posthumously, will be more original), it is the first book of poetry from the New World. But few women are possessed of the courage to have their work published, and Puritan Thomas Parker writes to his sister, who has such courage, "Your printing of a Book beyond the customs of your Sex, doth rankly smell."
Painting: Woman with an Ostrich Fan and Jewish Merchant by Rembrandt van Rijn; View of Dordrecht by Dutch painter Jan van Goyen, 54; Arcadian Shepherds, Landscape with Calm, and Self Portrait by Nicolas Poussin; Portrait of Juan de Pareja and Views of the Villa Medici, Rome by Diego Velázquez; The Holy Family with the Little Bird by Bartolomé Murillo.
Theater: Andromeda (Andromede) by Pierre Corneille at the Théâtre Royal de Bourbon, Paris; Nicomedes (Nicomède) by Corneille at the Théâtre du Marais, Paris.
The minuet is introduced at the French court, where its tempo is slowed somewhat and its gaiety modified.
French courtesan Marion Delorme dies in poverty at her native Paris July 2 at age 36, having been forced by the government to leave the Place Royale, where her fashionable salon has attracted leading literary and political figures, many of whom became her lovers.
Sweden suffers a food crisis after the worst harvest that she will have in this century. By March the bakers of Stockholm are fighting at the town gates for flour, but while the nation's sociopolitical balance is jeopardized as the clergy and burghers side with the peasants, a threatened revolution does not materialize.
Italians eat maize for the first time; "turkey corn" (mais) will be popular in polenta, in cornmeal mush, and hardened as a cake (see nutrition [pellagra], 1749).
Royal Navy official Samuel Pepys, 27, at London notes in his secret diary that he has drunk a "cup of tee (a China drink) of which I never had drank before."
Dutch colonists at Nieuw Amsterdam receive their first shipment of tea (see 1610).
England's first coffeehouse opens at Oxford under the name Angel Inn of Parish of St. Peter's (see 1637; London, 1652).
The London pub The Grapes opens in Narrow Street, Stepney, to serve local bargemen.
England's population reaches an estimated 5.6 million, up from an estimated 2.6 million in 1500.
Ireland will lose close to one-fourth of her population in the next decade, declining from 1.3 million to less than 1 million as a result of ruinous wars, anti-Catholic penal laws, and laws that destroy the security of land-tenure and put Irishmen at the mercy of absentee landlords.
Denmark will lose more than a fifth of her population in the next decade to disease and starvation.
Europe's population falls to an estimated 74.6 million (excluding Russia and the Ottoman Empire), down from an estimated 78 million in 1600. Amsterdam's population reaches 175,000, up from 65,000 in 1600, while Paris has 440,000. London's population reaches 350,000 to 400,000 by most estimates, up from 200,000 in 1600 (see 1660). An estimated 8.3 percent of the people live in cities of 10,000 or more inhabitants, up from 7.6 percent in 1600, as urbanization increases.
Amsterdam's population reaches 175,000, up from 65,000 in 1600, while London has 400,000 and Paris 440,000.
Africa occupies just over 20 percent of the earth's land surface and has roughly 20 percent of the world's population, but native slave traders in this century and the next will decimate the continent by supplying human chattels to Arabs and Europeans, and the Europeans will introduce new diseases that will also take their toll.
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