1667
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The Treaty of Andrussovo January 20 ends a 13-year war between Russia and Poland, which cedes Kiev, Smolensk, and the eastern Ukraine to Russia. Polish field commander Jan Sobieski, 38, defeats an army of Tatars and Cossacks near Prodhajce (later Podgaytsy) in October, having gained command through the influence of his patroness, queen Ludwika. The boyar Afanasy Ordin-Nashchyokin whose shipyard on the Baltic was closed in 1661 by the Treaty of Cordis brings in Dutch experts and begins building warships at the confluence of the Oka and Volga rivers, but rebellious Cossacks will capture them.
Royalist Thomas Wentworth, earl of Cleveland, dies March 25 at age 75, having had his estates vastly reduced by early extravagances and the fortunes of war (the earldom becomes extinct); Royalist Edward Somerset, 2nd marquess of Worcester, dies outside London April 3 at age 65, having regained his estates since the Restoration but failed in his efforts to obtain the dukedom of Somerset that Charles had promised. George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, embarrasses the king by fighting a duel in which he kills the earl of Shrewsbury while the countess (who is Buckingham's paramour) looks on, disguised as a page. Released after a brief imprisonment, Buckingham helps bring down the government of lord chancellor Edward Hyde, 1st earl of Clarendon, and Charles's secretary of state Henry Bennet, 49, Baron Arlington becomes chief minister, a position that he will hold until 1674. Charles selects four other ministers who along with Arlington form a "Cabal" within the privy council (derived from the Hebrew word Kabbala, a mystical interpretation of scripture, the word cabal takes on a sinister connotation for the first time, but it is only coincidental that the king's five ministers are named Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley Cooper [later earl of Shaftesbury], and Lauderdale).
The Treaties of Breda signed July 21 end the second Anglo-Dutch war after a Dutch fleet under the command of Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, now 60, has broken the chain in England's Medway River, reached Chatham, and captured the flagship Royal Charles. The Dutch councillor pensionary Johan de Witt has gone to sea with the fleet and used his organizational skills and diplomacy to gain terms favorable to the United Provinces. A Dutch fleet has seized the English colony of Surinam in South America (see 1651). England cedes that sugar-rich country (plus the tiny Indian Ocean spice island of Pulau Run in the Bandas) to the Dutch in exchange for New Amsterdam, and except for two brief periods (1799 to 1802 and 1804 to 1815) Surinam will remain a Dutch colony until 1975 (the Dutch will call it Suriname). Acadia is restored to Holland's ally France; England receives Antigua, Montserrat, and Saint Kitts from France (see 1666); and Charles II makes a secret treaty with Louis XIV against Spain. Johan de Witt promulgates an edict calling for republican administration of Holland to continue for eternity (but see 1672).
French troops invade Flanders and Hainault with grenades to begin what will be called the War of Devolution (see 1668). Louis XIV, now 28, takes as his mistress Françoise Atenais Rochechouart, marquise of Montespan, 26, who proceeds to bear the first of several children whom she will have by the king. His longtime mistress Louise de La Vallière removes herself to a Carmelite nunnery.
Portugal's dissolute king Afonso VI dismisses his highly capable governor Luiz de Castelo Melhor, 31, September 9 and soon afterward yields the throne to his brother Pedro, 5 years his junior, who is declared Defender of the Realm. Afonso's wife has left him, their marriage has been annulled on grounds that he was incapacitated, and she has married Pedro, who will keep Afonso a virtual prisoner at Sintra in the Azores until he dies there in 1683. Castel Melhor goes into exile, first at Paris, then at London, and will not be permitted to return to Portugal until 1685.
Persia's Shah Abbas II dies October 25 at age 35 after a 25-year reign that by some accounts has restored his country's glory in the eyes of the world. His ministers pretend that his 20-year-old son is blind and try to install a younger son, but a court eunuch betrays their scheme and the dissolute elder son will reign until 1694 as Suleiman I.
The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb buys off the Maratha leader Shivaji by giving him the title rajah and allowing him to levy some taxes (see 1666; 1670).
Ethiopia's Solomonid emperor Fasilidas dies after a 35-year reign in which he has isolated his country from foreign influences and created a new capital at Gonder to protect his court from the danger of invasions by Galla peoples to the south.
Brooklyn is chartered under the name Brueckelen October 18 by the provincial New York governor Richard Nicolls. The new town includes "all the lots and plantations lying and being at the Gowanus, Bedford, Walle Bocht and Ferry."
"Dissected Head of a Dog Shark" ("Canis carcariae dissectum caput") by Copenhagen-born geologist-anatomist Nicolaus Steno (né Niels Stensen, or Steensen), 29, concludes that large, tongue-shaped objects found in the rock strata of Malta are the teeth of sharks whose remains were buried beneath the seafloor and later raised out of the water by changes in the Earth's crust. Having studied human anatomy at Amsterdam, where he discovered the parotid salivary duct, Steno traveled to Florence 2 years ago and became physician to the grand duke Ferdinand II (see 1669).
Experimental chemist-physicist Robert Hooke shows that blood alteration in the lungs is the essential feature of respiration. Born on the Isle of Wight, the 31-year-old Hooke has been busy working with Christopher Wren on planning for the rebuilding of London after last year's fire, but he has found time to assist Robert Boyle in showing that air is essential to life and he uses bellows in a dog's trachea to prove his point.
The July 22 issue of Philosophical Transactions contains a report by Jean Baptiste Denis of the first recorded human blood transfusion (see 1666). Cornwall-born English physician Robert Lower, 36, at Oxford has experimented with blood transfusions from one dog to another and is elected to the Royal Society in November; he and his colleague Edmund King pay an eccentric 32-year-old former clergyman 20 shillings November 23 to let them transfuse him with sheep's blood, he survives, and the technique is soon being used in the Netherlands and the German and Italian states (see 1677).
Pope Alexander VII dies at Rome May 22 at age 68 after an 11½-year reign in which he has persuaded France's Louis XIV to restore Avignon to papal control and denounce the privilege of diplomatic residence. He is succeeded June 20 by Giulio Cardinal Rospigliosi, 67, who will reign until 1669 as Clement IX.
Poetry: Paradise Lost by John Milton, who has been blind since 1652 but has dictated to his daughters the 10-volume work on the fall of man ("Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven," I, 263). Milton's Adam questions the angel Raphael about celestial mechanics, Raphael replies with some vague hints and then says that "the rest from Man or Angel the great Architect did wisely conceal and not divulge His secrets to be scann'd by them who ought rather admire" (but see science [Newton], 1687). The work enjoys sales of 1,300 copies in 18 months and will be enlarged to 12 volumes in 1684, the year of Milton's death; Annus Mirabilis by John Dryden is about the Dutch War and last year's Great Fire.
Poet Abraham Cowley dies at Chertsey, Surrey, July 28 at age 49 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Painting: The Art of Painting and Girl With a Red Hat by Johannes Vermeer. Gabriel Metsu dies at Amsterdam October 21 at age 38.
Theater: Secret Love, or The Maiden Queen by John Dryden in March at London's Theatre Royal in Bridges Street, which has escaped the Great Fire; Sir Martin Mar-All, or The Feign'd Innocence by John Dryden, who has adapted Molière's L'étourdi as translated by William Cavendish, duke of Newcastle, in August at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, London; Andromache (Andromaque) by Jean Racine 11/7 at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, Paris, in a performance by the group that rivals Molière's company, whose work has not satisfied Racine.
German composer-organist-harpsichordist Johann Jakob Froberger dies at Héricourt, France, May 7 at age 50. His keyboard suites will be published in 1693, arranged in the order that will become standard: allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue.
Paris creates a police force March 15 under the name La Lieutenance de Police; it will be reorgnized in 1800 as the Préfecture de Police, helping to keep the city's streets safe (see Vidocq, 1809).
Architect Christopher Wren receives the commission to rebuild London, whose fires in January are still smoldering after the Great Fire of 4 months earlier. An Oxford mathematician and astronomer as well as an architect, Wren has earlier been commissioned by Charles II to restore St. Paul's Cathedral, which was completely gutted by last year's Great Fire. He envisions a plan inspired by the design of Paris, but although the Corporation of London approves widening of streets and new regulations that would forbid thatched roofs, and while it requires stone and masonry in place of wooden construction, it insists that a democratic country cannot countenance tearing down people's houses to make way for grandiose public boulevards and monuments (see 1710).
Rome's Piazza San Pietro (Saint Peter's Square) is completed after 11 years of work by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, now 68, who has designed the great square in monumental baroque style with a semicircular colonnade ringing the 83-foot Egyptian obelisk erected by Pope Sixtus V in 1586.
Rome's great Baroque architect Francesco Borromini commits suicide August 3 at age 66 in a fit of depression.
The Mexico Cathedral is completed after 94 years of construction.
Use of the fork will become firmly entrenched at court and among the aristocracy in the reign of Louis XIV, but Louis himself will rarely use one, preferring his fingers.
The first ice cream known to have been eaten in England is served at Windsor Castle.
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese reopens at 145 Lee Street, London, in a new building that replaces the one destroyed by last year's Great Fire.
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