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Marshal Luxembourg dies at Versailles January 4 at age 66 as the War of the League of Augsburg continues. François de Neufville, 51, duc de Villeroi, succeeds to the command of French forces in the Low Countries but will prove far less capable.
French siege forces under the duc de Villeroi bombard Brussels in August, damaging the interior of the 150-year-old town hall and destroying the wooden guild halls.
England's William III recaptures Namur from the French in September.
Parliament impeaches William III's chief minister Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby, for accepting a bribe from the East India Company. Created 1st duke of Leeds last year, the 63-year-old statesman will be stripped of all his offices in 1699.
The Ottoman sultan Ahmed II dies of dropsy January 27 after a 3½-year reign in which he has conquered Trebizond, Albania, Euboea, upper Greece, and much of the Peloponnesus. His nephew, 32, will reign until 1703 as Mustapha II.
Russian forces under Peter I lay siege to Azov on the Don, but the siege fails and the Turks inflict heavy casualties. The czar alienates the Cossacks and their hetman Ivan Mazepa by ordering them to perform disagreeable duties and permitting his soldiers to mistreat Ukrainian civilians (see 1708).
The Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies is created by an act of the Scottish Parliament. Bank of England founder William Paterson has returned to Edinburgh after a falling-out with his colleagues and has proposed a scheme to establish a settlement on the Isthmus of Darien (Panama) and "thus hold the key of the commerce of the world," but the project will end in disaster (see 1698; Paterson, 1694).
A nation's wealth depends not on how much money she possesses but on what she produces and exchanges, writes French economist Pierre Le Pesant, 49, sieur de Boisguilbert, in Le Détail de la France,La cause de la diminution de ses biens, et la facilitédu remède . . . Boisguilbert describes the ruin that the burdensome taxes of the late Jean Baptiste Colbert has brought to all classes of society and says France could regain her prosperity by abandoning war and switching from a policy of mercantilist protection to one of free enterprise based on agriculture (see Sully, 1598; Smith, 1776).
London watchmakers Thomas Tompion and Edward Barlow patent the cylinder escapement, a controlling device that permits use of a horizontal wheel and makes it possible to produce flat and more compact watches (see Tompion, 1675). Now 56, Tompion has been clockmaker for the Royal Observatory at Greenwich since 1676 and received help from physicist Robert Hooke, now 60; Tompion's apprentice George Graham, now 21, will perfect the cylinder escapement and invent a dead-beat escapement whose escape wheel will remain stationary when not moving forward, thereby producing a new standard of accuracy.
Multiplying machine inventor Samuel Morland dies at London at age 70 (approximate) having devised a calculator that was never very useful. He has also designed a capstan to weigh heavy anchors, a new gun carriage, an accurate diagonal barometer, and other more utilitarian devices.
Botanist Nehemiah Grew, now 54, isolates epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) from springs in the North Down.
Mathematician-astronomer-physicist Christiaan Huygens dies at his native The Hague July 8 at age 66.
Nonfiction: "New System" ("Système nouveau") by Gottfried W. Leibniz explains part of his dynamic theory of motion, treating the relationship of substances and the idea of a preestablished harmony between the soul and the body.
Writer-statesman George Savile, marquis of Halifax, dies at London April 5 at age 61.
Fabulist Jean de La Fontaine dies at the Paris home of the marquis d'Hervart April 13 at age 73.
Poet Henry Vaughan dies at his native Llansantffraed, Brecknockshire, Wales, April 23 at age 73.
Theater: Love for Love by William Congreve 4/30 at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, London: "You must not kiss and tell" (II).
Composer Henry Purcell dies at Westminster, London, November 21 at age 37 and is buried in the Abbey.
Captain William Kidd visits London, as does New York landowner Robert Livingston, now 41, who hears from the impecunious Lord Bellomont that the king has proposed to outfit a frigate and send her to the Indian Ocean with orders to protect English merchantmen from pirates. Bellomont's real intention is to have Kidd hijack pirate cargoes and bring them to New York, where they can be sold to his own benefit. Livingston recommends Captain Kidd as a "bold and honest man," and the earl signs an agreement with Kidd and Livingston at London October 10, giving the king half of all profits that may be reaped in the Indian Ocean venture, the other half to be divided between Lord Bellomont, Kidd, and Livingston (see 1696).
Brussels begins rebuilding; by 1699 the Grand'Place will have new stone guild halls.
Parliament imposes a window tax; Englishmen respond by boarding up windows, and the tax will be repealed, but it will influence residential architecture until 1851.
Annapolis is laid out in the Maryland colony to serve as the colonial capital.
The duc de Montaussier who governs for the French dauphin invents the soup ladle but meets with ridicule; guests at most French tables continue to dip into a common tureen with their own wooden or pewter spoons, an advance over the two-handled porringer passed round the table to be sipped from in turn. French and English diners continue to eat meat with their fingers, tearing it with their teeth. They dip into stews with their fingers or pieces of bread.
1691 1692 1693 1694 1695 1696 1697 1698 1699 1700
