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French military engineer Sébastien de Vauban dies at Paris March 30 at age 73, having fought in all of Louis XIV's wars and revolutionized the art of siege craft and defensive fortifications.
The Battle of Almanza April 25 ends in defeat for Portuguese forces at the hands of a French army commanded by James Fitzjames, 37, duke of Berwick. Spain's Felipe V has engaged the illegitimate son of England's late James II to head a mercenary army against the Portuguese.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain created May 1 unites England and Scotland under the Union Jack, whose design combines the cross of St. George and the cross of St. Andrew. Scotland is nearly bankrupt, her Parliament has voted itself out of existence in January in response to a perceived threat from the exiled Catholic Stuarts ("There's ane end of ane auld sang," the earl of Seafield has said), and gross bribery has attended the union of the two nations. Scottish law and legal administration are to remain unchanged, Scotland is to send 16 elective peers and 45 members of the Commons to the British Parliament at London, and no further Scottish peers are to be created (see 1715).
A French naval squadron under the command of Claude de Fobin seizes 22 British merchantmen and two men-of-war in May; Fobin captures 34 ships of the Dutch Moscovy convoy in June as the war of the Spanish Succession continues.
Geneva suppresses a popular uprising with help from the oligarchies of Bern and Zürich.
The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb dies March 3 at age 88 while campaigning against the Mahrathas after a 49-year reign in which he has annexed Bijapur and Golconda to extend his autocratic sway over all of northern and central India up to the Himalayas, persecuting Hindus and Sikhs in his fanatical devotion to Islam. He is succeeded by his eldest surviving son Bahadur, 63, who serves as governor of Kabul in Afghanistan, but Bahadur's brother Azam challenges the succession. Bahadur has had Aurangzeb's two other sons killed in order to gain the throne. He quickly mobilizes an army, reaches Agra June 12 to secure the imperial treasury, and uses his superior artillery to defeat Azam that day in the Battle of Jajau on the Yamuna River a few miles south of the city. Many of Azam's supporters desert him in the face of extreme heat and a shortage of water. Azam and his son Bidar Bakht are both killed. Bahadur will reign until his death in 1712 as Bahadur Shah I, but the empire will quickly disintegrate as provincial governors gain virtual independence amidst wars of succession and foreign invasions.
Northern Laotian provinces declare independence from the Vietnamese-controlled central government and establish the separate kingdoms of Luang Prabang and Vien Chan (see 1694; 1713).
Philadelphia mechanics demonstrate to protest competition from Indian slaves.
A Royal Navy squadron returning from Gibraltar runs aground in the fog October 22 on the Scilly Islands off Land's End, drowning nearly 2,000 men. Lacking any sure way to fix his longitudinal position, Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell, 57, loses his flagship, three other vessels, and his life (he reaches shore but is killed by a local woman for his emerald ring) (see Longitude Act, 1714).
A "pulse watch" invented by English provincial physician John Floyer, 58, is the first efficient clinical precision instrument for medical diagnosis. A great believer in cold baths, Floyer has designed the watch to run for exactly 1 minute (see Santorius, 1624).
The Elector Palatine invites Dutch still-life painter Rachel Ruysch, now 44, and her portraitist husband, Juriaen Pool, to live at his court in Düsseldorf. Ruysch continues to paint prolifically, signing her works with her maiden name. Willem van de Velde the Younger dies at Greenwich, London, April 8 at age 73.
Theater: The Comical Lovers by Colley Cibber 2/4 at London's Haymarket Theatre, a comedy made up of scenes from two of John Dryden's plays; The Beaux' Stratagem by George Farquhar 3/8 at London's Haymarket Theatre, with Anne Oldfield as Sylvia: "How a little love and conversation improve a woman!" (IV, ii) (paid in advance, Farquhar took ill before completing Act II but has finished the play, an extra benefit performance is given 4/29, and Farquhar dies penniless at London that day at age 30); Crispin, Rival of His Master (Crispin, rival de son mâitre) by French playwright Alain-René Le Sage, 34, 3/15 at the Comédie-Française, Paris; The Devil upon Two Sticks (Le Diable boiteux) by Le Sage is an adaptation of the 1641 satirical novel The Crippled Devil by the late Luis Veléz de Guevara; Atreus and Thyseus (Atrée et Tysée) by Prosper Jolyot, sieur de Crébillon, at the Comédie-Française, Paris; The Royal Convert by Nicholas Rowe 11/25 at London's Haymarket Theatre.
Danish organist-composer Diderik Buxtehude dies at Lübeck May 9 at age 70.
Salzburg's Kollegienkirche is completed by J. B. Fischer von Erlach after 13 years of construction.
Japan's Fujiyama volcano erupts for the last time.
Fortnum & Mason's opens in Piccadilly. Started by William Fortnum, a former footman in Queen Anne's household, in partnership with grocer Hugh Mason, the shop will make its delicacies, wines, picnic hampers, game pies, and other culinary items a tradition in better English households for centuries (see 1964).
An emigration begins from the Rhineland Palatinate that will bring thousands of Calvinists, Lutherans, and even some Roman Catholics to England and thence in many cases to America, where the emigrants will settle in New York's Hudson and Mohawk Valleys and in Virginia (see 1710).
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