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The Battle of Poltava June 28 avenges the Russian defeat at Narva in 1700 and makes Russia the dominant power in northern Europe as Peter the Great breaks the power of Sweden, forcing Karl (Charles) XII to take refuge in Anatolia. Short of ammunition and supplies, Karl launches a night attack on the encampment of a Russian army that has been sent to relieve the siege of Poltava. His 17,000-man force includes 18 infantry battalions, 12 cavalry squadrons, and a few guns, but a recent wound has left the king incapacitated. The czar sends a 10,000-man force, and with their numbers swelled to 80,000 (30 infantry battalions, 30 cavalry squadrons, and 40 guns), the Russians easily surround and overwhelm the Swedes, killing 7,000 and taking 2,600 prisoner while sustaining 1,300 casualties, killed and wounded. Karl XII flees for his life along with the Cossack hetman Ivan Mazepa, who dies at Bendery, Moldavia, September 8 at age 65 (approximate); the king reaches Constantinople, gains protection from the Ottoman sultan, but has to yield his conquests (but see 1711). Denmark's Frederik IV seizes the opportunity to reenter the war against Sweden (see 1700; 1720).
The elector of Saxony Augustus the Strong renews his claims to the Polish crown following the defeat of Sweden's Karl (Charles) XII at Poltava. He declares the 1706 Treaty of Altranstadt void, renews his alliance with Russia and Denmark, deposes Stanislaw Lesczynski, and resumes the Polish throne that he will try without success to make hereditary but will hold himself until 1733.
The Battle of Malplaquet 10 miles southwest of Mons September 11 is the War of the Spanish Succession's bloodiest encounter. An 80,000-man French army (96 infantry battalions, 180 cavalry squadrons, 60 guns) under the command of Marshal Chlaude de Villars and Marshal Louis de Boufflers is no match for the allied army of 110,000 men (128 infantry battalions, 253 cavalry squadrons, and 100 guns) commanded by the duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy. The duc de Villars is severely wounded, but the French retire in good order after losing 4,500 killed and 8,000 wounded; allied losses are much larger (6,500 killed, 14,000 wounded, including Prince Eugene, although Leopold I, prince of Anhalt-Dessau, gives a good account of himself in the fighting). Marlborough's Tory opponents call him a butcher and use his excesses to attack the power of Britain's Whigs (see 1710). The allies capture Mons October 26 but give up the idea of advancing on Paris and go into winter quarters.
Anglican preacher Henry Sacheverell, 35, delivers a sermon before the lord mayor and aldermen of London attacking the Whig lord high treasurer Sidney Godolphin, 65, and condemning the principles of the Glorious Revolution 21 years ago. A fellow of Oxford's Magdalen College, Sacheverell angers the powerful Godolphin, who orders him tried for sedition by the House of Lords, but Londoners are tired of the war and riot in a show of sympathy for Sacheverell (see 1710).
Kandahar rebels against her Persian overlords as Shah Hussein lets himself be persuaded by the mullahs to impose Shiite fundamentalism on all the Sunnis in his realm. The Ghilzai chief Mir Vais leads the Afghan revolt (see 1711).
Japan's shōgun Tsunayoshi Tokugawa dies at Edo February 19 at age 62 after nearly 29 years in power. He is succeeded by a 47-year-old cousin who will rule until 1712 as Ienobu.
Portugal creates the Brazilian captaincies of São Paulo and Minas Gerais as Portuguese colonists settle in the interior of Brazil.
New York's former provincial governor Lord Cornbury inherits enough money to pay off most of his debts following the death of his father, the earl of Clarendon (see 1708). Inheriting also the title earl of Clarendon, Cornbury returns to England, leaving the New York and New Jersey Province to be governed briefly by the assembly, headed by Council President Richard Ingoldesby, until Lord Lovelace is strong enough to assume office, but the new governor general dies May 7, and news of his death reaches London August 17. Sidney, first earl of Godolphin, recommends to the duke of Marlborough that Queen Anne appoint Scottish soldier Robert Hunter, 42, as Lovelace's replacement (see 1710).
Britain's Caribbean colonies import 20,000 slaves per year by official estimates, but many are for re-export to North and South America. French authorities require slave ships bound for Guadeloupe to stop first at Martinique, giving the latter first choice.
Close to 7 million Africans will come across the Atlantic in chains in this century—as many as 100,000 in a single year, but close to that number will die en route or soon after arrival.
English privateer Woodes Rogers, 29, embarks aboard the ship Duke on an expedition against foreign privateers in the South Pacific. A onetime poacher who turned gamekeeper before going to sea, Rogers has been engaged by some Bristol merchants to attack the pirates who have been looting their vessels. He reaches the Juan Fernández Islands in the South Pacific, where Thomas Dover, 49, his second captain, picks up sailor Alexander Selkirk February 1. Having lived alone for 4 years and 4 months, Selkirk is dressed in goatskins and has a waist-long beard (see 1704); he helps Rogers make a raid on the Spanish town of Guayaquil, Ecuador, and capture the Manila-bound galleon Lisbon loaded with gold and jewels (the Spaniards strike their colors after a 1½-hour battle December 21; William Dampier, now 57, serves as pilot for the expedition and participates in the capture). Rogers is shot in the face and his jaw is shattered, but he puts Selkirk in charge of the vessel and proceeds on the voyage of privateering that will take him around the world (see 1711).
An industrial revolution begins in England with the discovery that coke (coal heated to remove most of its gases) burns with intense heat and may be substituted for charcoal in blast furnaces used to make pig iron. Growth of iron smelting has been limited by the fact that it takes 200 acres of forest to supply one smelting furnace with a year's supply of charcoal, but Worcestershire-born Quaker ironmaster Abraham Darby, 31, finds that coke serves just as well for his furnaces at Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, where he founded the Bristol Iron Company last year and makes iron boilers for the Newcomen engine invented in 1705. His iron enables him to make thin castings that can compete successfully with brass in the manufacture of pots and other hollow ware. Regular use of coke will not come for 50 years and will await improvements by Darby's son and namesake, but Darby's breakthrough brings an immediate surge in the demand for coal and for the Newcomen engine, whose energy will be used increasingly to permit production of coal from flooded colliery galleries.
A bequest by English nobleman Sir Godfrey Copley establishes the Copley Medal for scientific achievement. The Royal Society chartered in 1662 will confer four other medals each year, but the Copley will survive as Britain's most prestigious scientific award.
The Fahrenheit alcohol thermometer introduced by German physicist Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, 23, has a scale on which the freezing point at standard atmospheric pressure (sea level) is +32° Fahrenheit (F.); 212° F. is the point at which water boils (see Celsius, 1714; 1742).
Traces of the town of Herculaneum that was buried along with Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. turn up near the Bay of Naples, close to where traces of Pompeii were found more than a century ago by the architect Domenico Fontana (see 1738).
The Black Death kills 300,000 in Prussia.
Aphorismi de Cognoscendis et Curandis Morbis by University of Leyden medicine and botany professor Hermann Boerhaave, 41, revives the Hippocratic method of the 5th century B.C., emphasizing that medicine's principal aim is to cure the patient. The leading medical technician and clinician of his day, Boerhaave makes observations from the bedside rather than from textbooks. His slim but encyclopaedic medical text will be translated into many European languages as will his Institutiones medicae in usus annuae exercitationis domesticos digestae of last year; patients from all over Europe will come to consult with him at Leyden, and he will reap a fortune, but like most others he has erroneous ideas about diseases of the solid parts as opposed to diseases of the so-called "humors."
The new Japanese shōgun Ienobu releases nearly 9,000 prisoners, most of them victims of Tsunayoshi's Buddhist laws against killing animals or eating fish or birds.
The Tatler begins publication at London. Editor of the new triweekly journal of politics and society is playwright Richard Steele, who inserts essays under the name Isaac Bickerstaff and publishes numerous essays submitted by Joseph Addison, 37 (see 1711).
Poetry: "January and May" by English poet Alexander Pope, 21, who writes, "All other goods by fortune's hand are given:/ a wife is the peculiar gift of Heav'n" and "To please a wife when her occasions call,/ Would busy the most vigorous of us all./ And trust me, sir, the chastest you can choose/ Will ask observance, and exact her dues." The Ladies Defence: or, The Bride-Woman's Counsellor Answered: A Poem in a Dialogue between Sir John Brute, Sir Wm. Loveall, Melissa, and a Parson by English author Lady Mary Chudleigh, 53, says that marriage is virtual slavery, that "wife and servant are the same, but only differ in the Name," and argues for women's education.
Painter Meindert Hobbema dies at Amsterdam December 7 at age 71.
Theater: The Rival Fools by Colley Cibber 1/11 at London's Drury Lane Theatre; Turcaret by Alain-René Le Sage 2/14 at the Comédie-Française, Paris.
The gravicembalo col piano e forte (pianoforte) built by the Padua-born Florentine harpsichord maker Bartolomeo (di Francesco) Cristofori, 54, is the first keyboard instrument with a successful hammer action (year approximate). Cristofori is curator of a collection of musical instruments at the Medici court; the strings of a harpsichord are plucked rather than struck, but his pianoforte has leather-covered poplar hammers that replace the jacks of the harpsichord, strike the strings with enough force to produce loud (forte) as well as soft (piano) notes, and permit the player to produce gradations of tone by changing the force and manner in which the keys are struck.
Eau de Cologne is introduced at the German city by Italian barber Jean-Baptiste Farina, whose non-greasy, alcohol-based blend of lemon spirits, orange bitters, and minto oil from the bergamot fruit is much cheaper than perfume and will gain wide popularity for uses such as bath essence and mouthwash (see Grasse, 1873).
A sudden cold snap January 5 kills thousands throughout Europe.
Famine ravages Europe as frost kills crops, fruit trees, and domestic fowl as far south as the Mediterranean Coast. France has food riots; officials set up grain depots in an effort to make distribution more equitable, but they continue to export grain reserves. Restrictions on internal trade strangle shipments of food stores, keep food prices high, and contribute to the starvation.
"The fear of having no bread has agitated the people to the point of fury," writes French controller general of finances Nicolas Des Marets, 61, seigneur de Maillebois. "They have taken up arms for the purpose of seizing grain by force; there have been riots at Rouen, at Paris, and in nearly all the provinces; they are carrying on a kind of war that never ceases except when they are occupied with the harvest." "The winter was terrible," writes the duc de Saint-Simon Louis de Rouvroy, 34, in his journal: "The memory of man could find no parallel to it. The frost came suddenly on Twelfth Night, and lasted nearly two months, beyond all recollection. In four days the Seine and all the other rivers were frozen, and what had never been seen before, the sea froze all along the coasts, so as to bear carts, even heavily laden, upon it [see environment [England], 1684]. The violence of the cold was such that the strongest liquors broke their bottles in cupboards of rooms with fires in them. There were no walnut trees, no olive trees, no apple trees, no vines left. The other trees died in great numbers; the gardens perished, and all the grain in the earth. It is impossible to imagine the desolation of this general ruin."
Britain's Mediterranean fleet intercepts French grain supplies from North Africa, and market women from Paris march on Versailles to complain about the lack of bread. Mme. de Maintenon, now 73, is falsely accused of having bought up all the grain available (she has, in fact, made a point of eating only black bread to set an example).
Parliament enacts legislation giving British bakers two distinct systems of selling bread; they may continue as they have since 1266 to sell it by weight, with the weight based on the prevailing price of flour (Assize Bread), or they may bake it to standard weights with prices geared to weight (Priced Bread), but they must choose one system or the other and may not change once they have chosen. The quartern, or quarter-peck loaf, weighing four pounds 5½ oz. is the most commonly baked size (it is officially reckoned to be the yield from a quarter-peck, or three-and-a-half pounds, of flour). Bakers also produce peck loaves that weigh 17 pounds six ounces and half-peck loaves weighing eight pounds 11 ounces. A 280-pound sack of low-protein flour is expected to yield 347 pounds of bread.
Johann Friedrich Böttger at Meissen submits a paper to Saxony's August the Strong March 28 announcing his discovery of the formula for producing porcelain (see 1708). Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhausen will help Böttger open the Porzellan Manufaktur of Meissen next year to produce the red porcelain, using kaolin found near the Saxon town of Auenseiditz and at Elbogen in Bohemia. Employees will be threatened with severe punishment if they reveal Böttger's secret, and by 1715 the porcelain from Meissen will be known all over Europe. Böttger himself will be kept at Dresden and taken to Meissen only under guard (see Entrecolles, 1712).
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