1734

1731 1732 1733 1734 1735 1736 1737 1738 1739 1740

political events

Danzig falls to Russian forces June 2 after a siege of nearly 8 months. Poland's former king Stanislaw Leszczynski eludes the Russians and escapes to Prussia (see 1735).

Spanish forces seize Naples and Sicily, while Milan falls to another Spanish force that has invaded Lombardy as the War of the Polish Succession spreads through Europe (see Naples, 1722). The 18-year-old Spanish duke Carlos has ruled Parma by right of his mother, Isabella of Parma; his father, Spain's Felipe V, installs him as king of Naples and Sicily (see 1735).

The duc de Villars dies at Turin June 17 at age 81 while directing French forces in Italy.

France's Louis XV becomes infatuated with his mistress's surviving younger sister Marie Anne de Nesle, the widowed marquise de la Tournelle. She has persuaded Mme. de Mailly (who has never received gifts to match those given her late sister Pauline) to invite her to Versailles, but before she will yield to the king she insists that he banish her sister Mme. de Mailly and make her, Marie Anne, duchesse de Châteauroux (see 1744).

exploration, colonization

Winnipeg has its beginnings in a fort erected on Lake Winnipeg by fur trader Pierre G. de Varennes, sieur de la Vérendrye (see 1731). Traveling through unexplored territory, one of his three sons has discovered the 9,416-square-mile body of water (264 miles long, 68 miles wide) at an altitude of 713 feet. Its average depth is only 50 feet (although its deepest point is 713 feet), its name comes from Cree words meaning "muddy water," and it is drained by the Nelson River into Hudson's Bay (see 1738).

commerce

Russian foreign minister Andrei Ivanovich Osterman concludes a commercial treaty with Britain.

Irish-born London economist and financier Richard Cantillon is murdered May 14 by a cook whom he has dismissed and who then robs his house and sets it afire. Having spent most of his life in France, Cantillon took over the bankrupt banking business of his uncle (also named Richard Cantillon) and profited immensely from the collapse of John Law's "Mississippi Scheme" 14 years ago.

science

Chemist Georg E. Stahl dies at Berlin May 4 at age 73. The "phlogiston" theory of combustion that he enunciated in 1700 will be commonly accepted until 1774.

religion

Moravian Church leader Nikolaus, graf von Zinzendorf has himself ordained an orthodox Lutheran minister (see 1727), but his success in attracting followers has antagonized the Lutheran Church, the German aristocracy, and the town guilds whose members view him as a sectarian and question his allegiance to the Augsburg Confession of 1530. His missionaries reach London en route to the American colonies (see 1738), but the Saxon government will banish him from his estate at Herrnhut in 1736, and he will go into exile, establishing theocratic Moravian communities at Herrnhaag and Marienborn in Wetteravia and forming new congregations in the Lowlands, the Baltic countries, and the West Indies (see 1749; Nitschmann, 1735; Bethlehem, 1740).

About 200 members of the Silesian Protestant sect Confessors of the Glory of Christ emigrate to America, having fled persecution by way of Saxony and the Netherlands. They drop anchor near New Castle, Delaware, where they obtain the first fresh water they have had in months and call themselves Schwenkfelders after their founder, the nobleman Caspar Schwenkfeld von Ossig who started the sect in the 1520s. Mostly farmers and craftsmen, they will settle within 50 miles of Philadelphia.

German Protestants driven out of the principality of Salzburg settle some 25 miles above the mouth of Georgia's Savannah River at Ebenezer.

literature

Nonfiction: Lettres anglaises ou philosophiques by Voltaire exalts the English Constitution, making special reference to representative government; The Analyst; or, a Discourse Addresed to an Infidel Mathematician by George Berkeley (see Bayes, 1736).

music

Ballet: Marie Sallé appears 2/13 in the ballet Pygmalion at London's Drury Lane Theatre without pannier, skirt, or bodice; apart from her corset and petticoat, she wears only a simple muslin robe draped in the style of a Greek statue. It is the first time that a dancer has ventured to abandon totally the cumbersome and often inappropriate regalia of baroque stage costume; the simpler style of dress allows Sallé greater freedom, and she dances with her hair down, disdaining to wear any ornament on her head.

Opera: Marie Sallé dances at Covent Garden 11/8 as Terpsichore in the prologue of Handel's opera Il pastor fido; she appears 12/18 in Handel's opera Oreste.

sports

Prizefighter James Figg retires from the ring and dies at London December 8 at age 39 after a 15-year career in which he has excelled at wrestling, fighting with cudgels, and swordplay as well as bareknuckle boxing. One of his pupils declares himself world heavyweight champion (see Broughton, 1743).

crime

Highland outlaw Rob Roy (Robert Macgregor) dies at Balquhidder, Perthshire, December 28 at age 63, having been pardoned in 1727 when he was about to be transported to Barbados. He has converted to Roman Catholicism.

architecture, real estate

Holkham Hall is completed in Norfolk to Palladian-style designs by English architect-landscape architect William Kent, 48, who was sent to Rome by a group of patrons in 1709 and remained there for a decade before returning to start work as an interior decorator.

agriculture

A crude threshing machine patented by Scottish engineer-farmer Michael Menzies fails to separate husks from grain in a satisfactory manner, does not gain any wide use, but will be the basis of later, more successful, machines (see Meikle, 1778).

The autumn crocus (Crocus sativa), whose stamens yield the spice and dyestuff saffron, will be introduced into America by the Schwenkfelders, who will settle in the Pennsylvania colony.

nutrition

An English seaman is afflicted with scurvy and marooned on the coast of Greenland because the disease is thought to be contagious. The man cures himself by eating scurvy grass (Cochlearia officinalis) and is picked up by a passing ship. News of the incident will reach His Majesty's Hospital at Haslar, near Portsmouth (see 1747).

population

Considérations sur les Causes de la Grandeur des Romains et de leur Décadence by Montesquieu claims that the ancient Roman world had a population larger than that of 18th century Europe.

New England's white colonist population reaches 250,000, up from 120,000 in 1706 despite the lack of any significant immigration (see 1762).

1731 1732 1733 1734 1735 1736 1737 1738 1739 1740