1694
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The Royal Navy bombards Dieppe, Le Havre, and Dunkirk in the continuing War of the League of Augsburg, but the French turn back an attack on Brest despite having been weakened by hunger and disease.
The Triennial Bill passed by Parliament provides for new English parliamentary elections to be held every third year. The Place Bill prevents officers of the crown from sitting in the House of Commons.
England's William II determines to replace New York's Governor Fletcher with Richard Coote, earl of Bellomont, who has told him that New York is infested with pirates.
Colonist Richard Salstonstall dies April 29 at age 83, having returned to his native England several times to regain his health and oversee the family property; New France's first intendant Jean Talon, comte d'Orsainville, dies at Paris November 24 at age 69, having received his title in 1675.
England's Mary II dies of smallpox at London December 28 at age 32, leaving her husband, "Dutch William," to rule alone.
Persia's Shah Suleiman dies after a dissolute reign of 27 years. His son Husein, 19, succeeds to the throne and will reign until 1722 but like his father is a voluptuary who will leave governance to his courtiers and eunuchs.
The Laotian king Souligna Vongsa dies after a glorious 57-year reign in which he has fixed the borders with Siam and Vietnam by treaty, led two successful expeditions against the principality of Chieng Khouang to his south, defended Buddhism, made his capital Vien Chan (later Vientiane) an intellectual center, and supported the arts. A nephew seizes power with help from the Vietnamese army and thereby places Lan Xang ("The Kingdom of the Million Elephants") under Vietnamese rule, inaugurating a chaotic era that will end with Laos being partitioned, as some members of the royal family refuse to accept Vietnamese suzerainty (see 1707).
The Bank of England chartered July 27 opens in London's Threadneedle Street to compete with small private banks that have grown out of the city's widely distrusted goldsmiths (see Bank of Amsterdam, 1609). A company of merchants headed by Scots financier William Paterson, 36, has received the charter in return for loaning the hard-pressed government £1.2 million. The government agrees to accept Bank of England notes in payment of taxes. Financial genius Charles Montagu becomes chancellor of the exchequer, and the new joint stock company will soon control the nation's money supply by setting the bank rate (discount rate) for commercial banks (see 1708).
Parliament doubles the English salt tax to raise money for the continuing war with France.
The War of the League of Augsburg drains the French economy.
On the Sex of Plants (De sexu plantarum) by German botanist Rudolph Jacob Camerarius, 29, at the University of Tübingen pioneers knowledge of sexual differentiation in plant life by identifying and defining the male and female reproductive parts and describing their functions in fertilization. Camerarius has performed experiments to verify studies reported by Nehemiah Grew 12 years ago.
Disease epidemics sweep through France's lower classes and take a heavy toll among people weakened by hunger and exhaustion.
Greenwich Hospital is founded by royal charter October 25 "to erect and found an Hospital without Our Mannor of East Greenwich in Our County of Kent for the relliefe and support of Seamen serving on board the Shipps or Vessells belonging to the Navy Royall . . . who by reason of Age, Wounds, or other disabilities shall be unable to maintain themselves." A 1696 act will extend the benefits of the hospital to "mariners, watermen, seamen, fishermen, lightermen, bargemen, and keelmen as shall voluntarily come in and register themselves in and for His Majesty's sea service." Architect Christopher Wren will design the hospital, and it will remain open until 1869.
Physician-biologist Marcello Malpighi dies at Rome November 29 at age 66, having pioneered histology. The first to make extensive use of the microscope, he discovered capillaries, thereby filling in the gap between venous and arterial systems. He also discovered that blood flows over the lung.
England's press censorship ends with the expiration of the Licensing Act, which is not renewed for 1695.
Nonfiction: An Account of Several Late Voyages and Discoveries in the South and North by the late Sir John Narborough, whose work will be translated into French, German, Dutch, and Italian in the next century.
Poetry: "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" by Japanese haiku poet Matsuo Bashō (né Matsuo Munefusa), who dies October 12 at age 50.
Painting: Hampton Court Beauties by Sir Godfrey Kneller. Japanese ukiyoe painter Morinobu Hishikawa dies at age 76 after a career in which he has pioneered the art of making prints that depict the everyday life of the people.
Arcangelo Corelli's 12 Chamber Trio Sonatas for Two Violins and Violone or Harpsichord, Opus 4 is published. Corelli has written the works for the academy of Cardinal Ottoboni.
Royal Navy midshipman Henry Avery takes over the privateer Charles in Spanish waters when her captain is incapacitated by drink, renames her the Fancy, sets sail for Madagascar and the Red Sea, lies in wait for Muslim pilgrim ships outbound from India to Mecca, and in a raid that nets each of his men £1,000 captures the Ganj-i-Sawai, the Great Mughal of India's largest vessel.
Moravia's Frain Castle is completed with an oval Hall of the Ancestors after 6 years of construction by Austrian architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, 38.
Spaniards plant cacao in the Philippines, whence it will eventually make its way to Java, Ceylon, and India (year approximate).
English colonial administrator John Archdale is appointed governor of the Carolinas August 31. He will arrive in June of next year and encourage colonial planters to cultivate rice (see 1671), dividing among them a bag of the grain that he has obtained from the captain of a ship arrived from Madagascar. Archdale will return to England in 1696, but planters will grow rice as a commercial crop in the Carolina colony's freshwater inland swamps, and by the end of the next century it will be widely cultivated by slaves in coastal South Carolina, particularly in the area of Georgetown, and will move into North Carolina and Georgia, with smaller crops harvested in Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida (see 1865).
"All France is nothing more than a vast poorhouse, desolate and without food," writes François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon, tutor to the grandson of Louis XIV.
French government economic controls prevent the free flow of food into famine districts, and speculators corner grain supplies, adding artificial scarcity to the natural famine that grips the country.
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