1711
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Russia's Peter I divorces his imbecilic wife, Eudoxia (or Eudokia) Loupokhina, and is married March 6 to his Latvian mistress Marta, 27, who will be known as the Empress Catherine (Marta Ekaterina). She has lived with the czar for the past 7 years and borne five children by him, including his surviving daughters Anna and Elizabeth, who are now legitimized. Now 38, Peter advances with Moldavian and Wallachian allies on the Pruth River but is surrounded there by superior Ottoman forces. Sweden's Karl (Charles) XII has persuaded the sultan to give him command of an army, and he avenges his defeat at Poltava 2 years ago. Forced to sign the Treaty of Pruth July 21, Peter returns Azov to the Turks. His German-born secretary Andrei Ivanovich Osterman, 25, has negotiated the peace settlement and will play a major role in Russian foreign affairs for the next 30 years. Karl XII is permitted safe return to Stockholm (but see 1713).
The Holy Roman Emperor Josef I dies of smallpox at Vienna April 17 at age 32 and is succeeded by his 26-year-old brother, who will reign until 1740 as Karl (Charles) VI. Heir to all the empire's Austrian territories, he fights to restore the empire of his Hapsburg ancestor Charles V in the continuing War of the Spanish Succession.
Hungarian followers of the patriot Ferenc (Francis) II Rákóczi, 35, accept the peace of Szamatar May 1. The new emperor agrees to redress Hungarian grievances and to respect the Hungarian constitution. Rákóczi takes refuge in Turkey after an 8-year revolt in which his forces have threatened Vienna.
Afghanistan gains independence after Persia's Shah Hussein sends a 25,000-man army to put down the Afghan uprising at Kandahar (see 1709). The Afghan chief Mir Vais prepares his Sunni garrison to fight to the death and beats off Persian assaults on Kandahar. The Persians' Georgian general Khusru Khan is killed, and fewer than 1,000 Persians escape.
Britain undertakes an attack on French Canada with seven of the duke of Marlborough's best regiments, augmented at Boston by 1,500 colonials (see Acadia, 1710), but the expedition commanded by Sir Hovenden Walker suffers serious losses along the St. Lawrence River. French forces abort the invasion of Quebec by sea in August. The French sink 10 ships of the fleet as it enters the river. Sir Hovenden returns home, and news of the naval disaster persuades Sir Francis Nicholson to give up a projected campaign against Montreal.
Rio de Janeiro is sacked by French forces under René Duguay-Trouin, 38, as Louis XIV fights the Portuguese allies of Britain in the War of the Spanish Succession.
Queen Anne dismisses the duke of Marlborough at year's end as his enemies increase their influence on the queen (see 1710). They have accused the duke of speculation, and the queen makes James Butler, 46, duke of Ormonde, commander in chief of British forces.
Tuscorora tribesmen massacre some 200 Carolina colonists, beginning a war that will not end until forces from Virginia move south to quell the revolt.
A slave revolt at New York ends with six whites killed before the militia can restore order; 12 blacks are hanged July 4 (six have hanged themselves). The revolt leaves whites suspicious of all blacks, whose treatment becomes harsher as a result. If three slaves are seen talking together in the street they may be tied to whipping posts and given 40 lashes. One citizen, John Van Zandt, horsewhips his slave to death after the man is picked up by city watchmen (the coroner's jury acquits him, saying that "correction given by the master was not the cause of his death, but that it was by the Visitation of God") (see 1741).
The Landed Property Qualification Act passed by Parliament's landed gentry excludes Britain's merchants, financiers, and industrialists from the House of Commons. The law will not be effectively enforced but will not be repealed until 1866.
New York's royal governor Robert Hunter secures 800 acres of land north of the 6,300-acre tract on the west side of the Hudson, south of what will become Catskill, New York, on which to settle the Palatine refugees brought over last year. Finding that the land has few pine trees of any size and inadequate access to navigable water, he goes on to buy from landowner Robert Livingston some 4,000 acres on the east side of the Hudson, south of what will become Hudson, New York, plus an ungranted tract of 2,000 on the west side. The Germans, however, find distasteful the work of producing turpentine, resin, tar, and pitch. Many of their children—especially those left orphaned—have been apprenticed at Albany and other distant places. They refuse to work, demanding relocation, and Governor Hunter sends 60 soldiers from Albany to stop what threatens to become an armed rebellion (see 1712).
The Mission Magdalena is founded March 15 at Sonora, California, by Italian- (or Austrian-) born explorer-missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino, who dies later in the year at age 66 (approximate).
Britain's Lord of the Exchequer Robert Harley, newly created 1st earl of Oxford, proposes a way to rid the government of a major part of the enormous £9 million debt that it has incurred in its war with France. He suggests that enterprising merchants may be willing to take on the obligation, paying the interest (and eventually the principal) in return for a monopoly on trade with South America. Oxford's colleagues at Westminster agree with his plan, and the venture is established as the South Sea Company, an entity that will become powerful enough to challenge the Bank of England established in 1694 (see politics [Saint Kitts], human rights [asientos], 1713).
Pirate Woodes Rogers arrives at London October 14 with the 500-ton galleon Lisbon that he captured in December 1709, bringing home a treasure of gold bullion, precious stones, and silks valued at nearly £800,000 (see 1710). Alexander Selkirk becomes a celebrity, journalist Richard Steele interviews him for a piece in the Englishman, and he will return to London next year to become a lieutenant on a Royal Navy man-of-war (see Fiction, 1719).
Philosopher-mathematician Gottfried W. Leibniz denies spontaneous generation and attempts to reconcile natural science with divine will. Now 64, Leibniz expounds his conclusion that all living matter is composed not of dead atoms but of living "monads," infinite in their variety.
"De mensura sortis" by French-born London mathematician Abraham de Moivre, 44, is published in Philosophical Transactions (see Huygens, 1657). Imprisoned as a Protestant in 1685 following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Moivre was released soon afterward, emigrated to England, became a close friend of Sir Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley, and has been working as a tutor and a consultant on gambling and insurance (see 1718).
The Black Death kills 300,000 in Austria, 215,000 in Brandenburg.
Parliament passes an Occasional Conformity Act that bars English Dissenters from qualifying for public office merely by taking occasional communion at an Anglican parish church (see Toleration Act, 1689; Schism Act, 1714).
The Spectator begins publication March 1 at London under the direction of Richard Steele and Joseph Addison, whose journal The Tatler, begun in 1709, appeared for the last time January 2. The new nonpolitical journal publishes Steele's Roger de CoverleyPapers and will continue for 20 months (see 1828).
Poetry: "Essay on Criticism" by Alexander Pope, now 23: "A little learning is a dangerous thing;/ Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring" (II); "Be not the first by whom the new are tried,/ Nor yet the last to lay the old aside" (II); "To err is human, to forgive divine" (II); "Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead;/ For fools rush in where angels fear to tread" (III, lxvi).
Poet Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux dies at his native Paris March 13 at age 74.
Theater: Rhadamisthus and Zénobia (Rhadamiste et Zénobie) by Prosper Jolyot, sieur de Crébillon, 1/23 at the Comédie-Française, Paris.
Opera: Rinaldo 3/7 at London's Haymarket Theatre, with music by George Frideric Handel, libretto by Giacomo Rossi.
Queen Anne establishes the Ascot races (see 1702; 1807).
Addison and Steele note in an early issue of The Spectator that good London households now serve tea in the morning and that dinner has been pushed forward to well past noon. Tea has come to edge out breakfast beer, and the English breakfast has begun to come into its own. Breakfast parties, given at noon, will become the custom later in the century.
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