1744
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An armada of 27 French and Spanish warships attacks 29 Royal Navy ships February 21 and breaks a British siege of Toulon. France deserts Frederick II and declares war on both Britain and Austria's Maria Theresa.
Sweden officially designates Adolf Frederik of Holstein-Gottorp-Eutin as heir apparent, and Russia withdraws her occupation troops by July (see 1743).
France's indolent Louis XV assumes personal command of his army in Flanders at the insistence of his mistress Mme. de Châteauroux that he emulate the late Louis XIV. He takes along the haughty duchesse and her sister Mme. de Lauragais, a fat, jolly woman with whom Louis sometimes goes to bed in preference to Mme. de Châteauroux. The king's immorality outrages his troops, and he removes himself with his companions to Metz, where he falls deathly ill August 8. The bishop of Soissons threatens to withhold last rites unless the king gets rid of the unpopular Mme. de Châteauroux and Louis agrees; the bishop then announces that le roi is sincerely penitent and "asks pardon of God and man." Louis recovers, Queen Marie arrives at Metz to find him convalescent, he apologizes for having caused any unhappiness, but he has no intention of resuming sexual relations with her.
The Battle of Velletri August 11 ends in victory for 6,000 Austrians over a 10,000-man Spanish-Neapolitan army in the continuing War of the Austrian Succession (see 1743; 1745).
Prussia's Frederick II starts a Second Silesian War by marching through Saxony with 80,000 troops. He invades Bohemia in August and takes Prague in September before the Hapsburg forces of Austria's Maria Theresa drive him back into Saxony.
Louis XV enters Paris in triumph November 13. Now 34 and the handsomest man in France if not in all of Europe, Louis the Well-Beloved (le Bien-Aimé: a popular poet named Vadé has coined the soubriquet) appoints René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, 50, marquis d'Argenson, his minister of foreign affairs and soon effects a reconciliation with Mme. de Châteaurox, recalling her to Versailles, but she falls ill, probably of typhus, and dies in a delirium December 8. Argenson tries to implement schemes for ending hostilities through international arbitration, but the king undermines his activities through secret diplomacy, and court intrigues compound his difficulties.
King George's War breaks out March 15 in the Caribbean and will include engagements in North America—an offshoot of the War of the Austrian Succession between Britain and France, whose Western Hemisphere interests are now fiercely competitive. Britain has the advantage since her squadrons are permanently based in Jamaica and the Leeward Islands, with naval dockyards at Jamaica and Antigua, while the French have no dockyard facilities in the Caribbean, can rarely dispatch a ship from Europe for more than 6 months at a time, and must rely on convoys to protect their sugar shipments (French merchants pay for naval escorts). Edward Boscawen, 32, Royal Navy, distinguished himself 3 years ago in the siege of Cartagena and captures the French frigate Médée, the first prize taken in the new war.
The Iroquois Confederacy in North America agrees under terms of the Treaty of Lancaster to renounce its claims to western Maryland and Virginia in return for a bounty of trade goods (see 1722), but the charter of the Virginia colony gives it claims to land as far west as the "island of California." The Iroquois have earlier traded away to the French their claim to the Ohio country, but British colonial authorities have been weakening the confederacy's neutrality, and within a year the Virginia House of Burgesses will have granted about 300,000 acres of land along the Ohio River to speculators with good political connections, thereby infuriating the French, who have settlements in eastern Canada and in the Illinois country; they begin building a chain of forts from Lake Erie south to The Forks of the Ohio (later Pittsburgh) in order to defend their settlements (see Ohio Company, 1752).
Commodore George Anson, Royal Navy, arrives at Spithead June 15 aboard his flagship H.M.S. Centurion after a 45-month circumnavigation of the world (see 1743). He brings with him 32 wagons of Spanish treasure—1,313,843 pieces of eight plus tons of virgin silver and plate—whose value will later be estimated as being worth upwards of £800,000, a haul that goes into the Tower of London and will never be surpassed, but his difficulty in finding the island of Juan Fernandez for 9 days in 1741 lost him an estimated 70 or 80 men to scurvy and gives new urgency to the search for an accurate way to determine longitude (see transportation, 1736; 1761).
The American sloop Prince Charles of Lorraine sets sail from Newport in the Rhode Island colony September 8 with Bristol-born privateer Simeon Potter, 24, at her helm, letters of marque signed by the colonial governor William Greene, and a crew that includes Guadeloupe-born Mark Anthony De Wolf, whose Connecticut-born father went to the West Indies in his youth. Potter's commission authorizes him to seize vessels belonging to the kings of France and Spain, but he raids a Jesuit mission in French Guiana, steals the church silver and vestments, sets fire to the town, descends on a French garrison October 28, sacks the town, leaves for Barbados with six cannon and 60 to 70 small arms plus some 20 prisoners, arrives at Cayenne in French Guiana November 11, conducts a plundering raid up the river, and will return home next year with a fortune whose size will be exaggerated.
The gyroscope stabilizer for ships is pioneered by a Scotsman named Serson, who persuades the British Admiralty to sea-test a spinning rotor that will indicate a stable reference for navigators. The rotor is supported on a pivot so the rocking or pitching of the ship will not disturb it.
London's Baltic Mercantile and Shipping Exchange has its beginnings in the Virginia and Baltic Coffee House that opens May 24 in Threadneedle Street as a place "where all foreign and domestic news are taken in, and all letters or parcels, directed to merchants or captains in the Virginia or Baltic trade, will be carefully delivered as directed and the best attention give." An outgrowth of the Virginia and Maryland Coffee House, it will have an upstairs auction room where tallow is sold by 1823 and will become the world's shipping exchange, a vast marble-floored room where shippers and their agents will match vessels and cargoes through deals ("fixtures") made in great secrecy—often "by the candle," with bids continuing until an inch of candle has burned itself out. The building itself will stand until April 1992.
Dissertation sur la nature et la propagation du feu by the marquise du Châtelet-Lomont is published at Paris.
Astronomer Anders Celsius dies at his native Uppsala, Sweden, April 25 at age 42.
John Wesley holds love feasts modeled on rites of the early Church (see 1739). He has held class meetings with admission by "society tickets" to exclude undesirables, journeyed on horseback through England to organize Methodist societies, and holds the first conference of Methodists. Beginning in 1747, Wesley will make 42 trips to Ireland, beginning in 1751 he will make 22 trips to Scotland, and he will use his annual income of about £1,400 from his cheap books to help the needy and unemployed, in loans to debtors and businessmen, and to open dispensaries (see 1784).
Austria's Maria Theresa expels Jews from Prague and launches a pogrom to drive them out of Bohemia and Moravia. Expulsion has become rare, but Europe's Jews often live under degrading conditions even where tolerated, with regulations designed to limit their expansion and keep their status at a low level. What craft, trade, or profession they may pursue, where they may live, and whom they may marry are all determined by the decree of rulers who are often aliens (see Britain, 1753).
Islamic fundamentalism gains support in central Arabia from the sheik and emir of the ibn Saud family, who embrace the tenets of Wahhabism, expressed by the Nejd jurist Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, now 41, in his Book of Unity. Differing from Persian Shiites, scorning the "decadent" Sunnism of the Ottomans, Wahhab favors a return to what he calls the original, pristine state of Islamic monotheism, without the "innovations" that have "corrupted" it, and his views appeal to the puritanical leanings of local chieftain Mohammed ibn Saud, who aspires to power and needs an ideological basis for treating the Ottomans as an occupying force. Wahhabism rejects the interpretations of Islam's four great legal schools; it opts instead for a literal reading of Sharia law that calls for draconian punishment, integration of mosque and state, and scant regard for human rights, especially women's rights. Saud grants Wahhab religious and judicial control in his territory, lets him marry one of his daughters, and will capitalize on religious zeal to lead an armed campaign that will take the lives of Shiites, Sufis, and Sunnis by the thousands as he strives to acquire stewardship over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina (see politics, 1773).
Philosopher Giambattista Vico dies at his native Naples January 23 at age 75, having sought to merge history with other, more systematic social sciences to create a single science of humanity. He will be acknowledged in future years as the founder of what will become known as cultural anthropology, or ethnology.
Poetry: The Pleasures of Imagination (three volumes) and "An Epistle to Curio" by English physician-poet Mark Akenside, 22.
Poet Alexander Pope dies of Pott's disease (a spinal tuberculosis) at Twickenham, outside London, May 30 at age 56.
Juvenile: A Little Pretty Pocket-Book is published at London with the earliest known versions of such nursery rhymes as "London Bridge is falling down"; "Who killed Cock Robin?/ 'I,' said the Sparrow,/ With my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin"; "Hickory, dickory dock,/ The mouse ran up the clock"; "Ladybird, ladybird,/ Fly away home"; "Little Tommy Tucker/ Sings for his supper"; "Oranges and lemons./ Say the bells of St. Clements./ You owe me five farthings,/ Say the bells of St. Martin's"; "Sing a song of sixpence/ A pocketful of rye" (see songs, 1765). Publisher of the work is Berkshire-born book seller and patent medicine huckster John Newbery, 31, who pioneers in putting out books exclusively for children (see Newbery Medal, 1922).
Painting: Captain Smith by Welsh portrait and topographical painter Richard Wilson, 30; Mrs. Elizabeth Salter by William Hogarth.
Sotheby's art auction house has its beginnings January 7 as London bookseller Samuel Baker holds his first real auction, selling the library of a local physician for £826. Baker will retire in 1767, his nephew John Sotheby will come into the firm a few weeks later, John's nephew Samuel Sotheby will take over from John, Samuel's son Samuel Leigh Sotheby will head the firm until his death in 1861, and the house will grow to have auction rooms worldwide (see Christie's, 1766).
Sculpture: Mercury by Paris-born sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, 30, whose marble statue wins him membership in the Royal Academy and is so popular that Louis XV will commission a life-size copy for presentation to Prussia's Frederick II.
Theater: Mrs. Cibber becomes David Garrick's leading lady at London's Drury Lane Theatre, forming a partnership that will continue until her death in January 1766.
Anthem: "God Save the King" is published at London with the opening words, "God save our Lord the King." They will be changed next year to "God save great George our King" and will later be changed to "God save our gracious King" (see "America," 1831).
The Well-Tempered Clavier (Part II) by Johann Sebastian Bach includes new preludes, toccatas, fugues, and other works.
Oratorio: Elisabeth Duparc sings in a November performance of G. F. Handel's 1733 work Deborah at Covent Garden and in a performance there of his 1743 work Samson.
The first recorded professional cricket match pits Kent against All England (see 1477; 1787).
The Honourable Company of Edinborough Golfers is founded and the first open tournament held (see St. Andrew's, 1552; 1754). The first English club will be organized in 1766 (see British Open, 1857).
Würzburg Residenz for the prince bishop is completed in baroque style after 25 years of construction. (Johann) Balthasar Neumann, 57, is the architect.
The 14,948-foot volcano Cotopaxi erupts in the Spanish viceroyalty of Peru.
Prussia's Friedrich II distributes free seed potatoes to reluctant peasants, recognizing the potato as a cheap food source for his growing nation. Following a period of acute food scarcity, he sends a wagonload of potatoes to Kolberg, but citizens of the place sent back a message saying, "The things have neither smell nor taste, not even dogs will eat them, so what use are they to us?" The king sends in Swabian troops and stations them in the fields to enforce his edict that the peasants plant potatoes or suffer their ears and noses to be cut off. He will eventually succeed in gaining acceptance for potatoes, partly by eating them himself (see 1757).
Virginia planter William Byrd dies at his Westover plantation August 26 at age 70.
Eliza Lucas in the South Carolina colony produces a successful indigo crop and ships 17 pounds of dye to London, where merchants find it equal to the dye they have been importing from the French colonies (see 1741). Parliament approves a 6-pence per pound bonus on indigo produced in British colonies, and France makes it a capital crime to export indigo seeds from its islands. Eliza marries Charleston planter Charles Pinckney, 41, a widower. She distributes seeds from her crop to any South Carolina planter who wants them, and by 1746 the colony will be exporting 40,000 pounds of dye to Britain (see 1749).
The Royal Navy looks for effective ways to combat scurvy after Lord Anson returns to Spithead, having lost close to 1,000 of his crew to the disease whose cause remains something of a mystery (see Lind, 1747).
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