1668

1661 1662 1663 1664 1665 1666 1667 1668 1669 1670

political events

A Triple Alliance negotiated January 23 joins England, Holland, and Sweden in resistance to France's Louis XIV in the Spanish Netherlands. The Dutch councillor pensionary Johan de Witt has employed his diplomatic brilliance to conclude the treaty, but Louis has claimed title to the territory in the name of his wife, the infanta Maria Teresa, following the death of his father-in-law, Felipe (Philip) IV of Spain in 1665, and will soon buy off the English and Swedes.

The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle signed May 2 ends a brief War of Devolution waged over Louis XIV's claim to the Spanish possessions in the Belgian provinces. Spain regains Franche-Comte in return for Lille, Tournay, Oudenarde, and nine other fortified border towns.

Portuguese independence gains recognition from Spain after 88 years in which the two countries have been united under one crown (see 1665).

Poland's Jan II Casimir abdicates at age 58 and retires to France as the abbé de Saint-Germain. His army field commander Jan Sobieski has returned in triumph to Warsaw in the spring and been named commander-in-chief (see 1667; 1669).

Austrian generalissimo Raimondo Montecuccoli is named president of the Hapsburgs' supreme imperial war council (Hofkriegsrat) and begins sponsoring reforms that will include elevating grenadiers to an elite force and introducing lighter muskets, which will permit reducing the number of infantry pikemen and increasing the number of infantrymen equipped with firearms.

exploration, colonization

Spanish conquistadors in the Pacific rename the Islas de los Ladrones found by Magellan in 1521. They call them Las Marianas to honor Maria Anna of Austria, widow of Spain's Felipe (Philip) IV.

New France's intendant Jean Talon returns home (see 1665); he will be persuaded 2 years hence to go back to Canada, where he will become more and more anxious about the growing threat posed by English settlers. Talon will encourage exploration and colonization, but religious and business monopolies will resist his efforts, and he will remain only until 1672.

Sault-Sainte-Marie is founded by French colonists between what later will be called Lake Superior and Lake Huron—the first permanent European settlement in the Michigan region (see 1701; transportation, 1855).

commerce

Rupert House (Fort Rupert) opens in western Quebec—the first European trading settlement in northern Canada (see 1665; Hudson, 1611). England's "Mad Cavalier" Prince Rupert, now 49, has backed Pierre Radisson and his brother-in-law Médart Chouart, sieur de Groseilliers, in a venture to trade with les sauvages in the Hudson's Bay area. The two men have left England in May, sailing in separate ships for North America, but Radisson's Eaglet was nearly swamped in a storm off Ireland and had to turn back; skippered by Groseilliers, the 50-ton ketch Nonsuch sails into Hudson's Bay in August after a voyage of 118 days and anchors at the mouth of what will be called Rupert's River, establishing what is initally called Fort Charles (see Bay Company, 1670).

France's Louis XIV purchases 14 large diamonds and several smaller ones from traveler and jewel trader Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who since 1631 has been visiting India, where diamonds have been mined since about 800 B.C. and where mining towns are among the richest cities on earth; included is a 112-carat sapphire-blue stone that probably came from the Kollur mine in Golconda and is said to have been stolen from the eye of a statue of the Hindu goddess Sita, wife of Rama (Tavernier has made at least five visits to India and will by some accounts be torn to pieces by wild dogs on his next visit). Louis will have his court jeweler recut the diamond in 1673 into a 67-carat, heart-shaped stone and make it part of France's crown jewels (it will later be called the French Blue, and later still the Hope Diamond) (see 1792).

science

Italian physician-naturalist Francesco Redi, 42, disproves the notion of spontaneous generation. He shows that no maggots will develop in meat, no matter how putrefied it may be, if it is covered with a thin cloth to protect it from flies that will lay eggs, but most people will continue for centuries to believe that maggots are products of spontaneous generation rather than of fly larva (see Needham, 1748; Pasteur, 1859).

Astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini compiles a table giving the positions of Jupiter's satellites (see Mars, 1666). France's Louis XIV will hear of his discoveries next year and invite Cassini to Paris as a member of the newly created Académie Royale des Sciences (see Römer 1676).

Chemist Johann R. Glauber dies at Amsterdam March 10 at age 63.

medicine

The Black Death reaches Austria, having traveled from Flanders to Westphalia and into Normandy and Switzerland (see 1666; 1672).

literature

Fiction: Fables by French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine, 47, who will follow his six-volume work with five more between 1678 and 1679 and a twelfth in 1694.

John Dryden is named England's first poet laureate and renews a loan of £500 that he made last year to Charles II.

Poet Esteban Manuel de Villegas dies at Matute September 2 at age 80.

theater, film

Theater: She Wou'd if She Cou'd by George Etherege 2/26 at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, London. The first comedy of manners to eliminate incongruous romantic verse, it fails because of poor acting, but Etherege's style will be followed by others; The Sullen Lovers, or The Impertinents by English poet-playwright Thomas Shadwell, 26, 5/2 at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre. Shadwell has adapted the Molière play Les fâcheux of 1661; George Daudin, or The Abused Husband (Georges Daudin, ou le mati confondu) by Molière 11/19 at the Palais-Royal, Paris.

Poet-dramatist Sir William Davenant dies at his Lincoln's Inn Fields home the night of April 7 at age 62 and is buried in Westminster Abbey's Poets Corner, having gained an enduring reputation as stage manager although his poems and plays have been third rate.

music

Danish organist-composer Diderik Buxtehude, 31, is named organist at the Marienkirche in Lübeck, succeeding Franz Tunder (whose daughter, Anna, he marries); his sacred Abendmusiken concerts will be presented each year during Advent on the five Sundays before Christmas. Buxtehude's cantatas and instrumental organ work will have a strong influence on other composers.

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