1741 1742 1743 1744 1745 1746 1747 1748 1749 1750
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The Holy Roman Emperor Karl VII dies at Munich January 20 at age 47 after a 3-year reign. His 17-year-old son Maximilian Joseph succeeds as elector of Bavaria.
The 15-year-old French dauphin is married February 25 at Versailles to the Spanish infanta in a match intended to heal the estrangement between the two branches of the Bourbon family that has existed since Louis XV tactlessly rejected a proposed marriage to the Infanta's older sister. At a masquerade ball to celebrate the nuptials, Louis met the intelligent bourgeois beauty Mme. Charles Guillaume Le Normant d'Etioles (née Jeanne Antoinette Poisson), 23. He made love to her beginning in late February or early March, she pretends that her husband will be insanely jealous unless Louis makes her mâitresse-en-titre, Louis promises to present her at court upon his return from the army, and he buys her the marquisate of Pompadour, an estate in Limousin with annual revenues of 12,000 livres.
Former British prime minister Robert Walpole, earl of Orford, dies at London March 18 at age 68. Asked on his deathbed what shall be read to him, he replies, "Anything but history, for history must be false." His residence at 10 Downing Street will become the permanent London home of future prime ministers.
The new elector of Bavaria signs the Treaty of Fussen April 22 with Maria Theresa to end the Second Silesian War; by renouncing any claim to Austria's throne and supporting the imperial election of Maria Theresa's husband, Franz Stefan, who regains the land conquered by Austria. Franz Stefan is elected Holy Roman emperor and will reign until 1765 as Franz I.
A 70,000-man French army under Maurice, comte de Saxe, defeats a 53,000-man Pragmatic army May 11 in the Battle of Fontenoy five miles southeast of Tournai and begins conquering the Austrian Netherlands in the continuing War of the Austrian Succession (see 1744). A January alliance against Prussia has joined Austria, Saxony, Britain, and Holland; Louis XV and his son have arrived May 10 at Marshal de Saxe's headquarters and participate in the battle. William Augustus, duke of Cumberland (and son of Britain's George II) has led an army to relieve the siege of Tournai. De Saxe has rushed construction of redoubts to withstand the British attack. The French hurl back the initial onslaughts from Dutch and Austrian troops, Cumberland's infantry advances deep into the French position before withdrawing to regroup, but Dutch and Austrian cavalry squadrons and infantry battalions are far less successful against the superior French force, whose Irish Brigade gains support from French artillery and cavalry to drive back the Anglo-Hanoverian infantry, which loses about half its number as it retreats toward Brussels. The Allied army sustains 7,500 casualties while inflicting 7,200 on the French, whose foreign minister René-Louis de Paulmy, marquis d'Argenson, fails to press the diplomatic advantage created by the triumph at Fontenoy. It will be the last great French military victory for 47 years.
Frederick the Great defeats superior Austrian and Saxon forces June 4 at the Battle of Hohenfriedberg in Silesia. His 60,000-man army loses 2,000 killed and wounded; Prince Charles of Lorraine's army flees into Bohemia after losing 11,000 killed, wounded, and taken prisoner out of about 85,000. Frederick pursues the Austrians, decides in September to withdraw to Silesia after 3 months of skirmishing, finds a 30,000-man Austrian army blocking his line of retreat, and with only 18,000 men defeats the Austrians September 30 at the Battle of Sohr (Soor) in northeastern Bohemia, sustaining 3,500 casualties while the Austrians lose 6,000 killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. Prussian field marshal Leopold I, prince of Anhalt-Dessau, takes to the field for the last time at age 69, and before Frederick can rush to his support the "Old Dessauer" ("Der Alte Dessauer") has defeated a superior army of Austrians and Saxons at Kesselsdorf in Saxony December 14 (see 1746).
Scotland has an uprising of Highland peasants who have been driven off the land by "lairds" who want to break up the clans and use the Highlands for sheep raising. Maurice, comte de Saxe, assembled a French invasion fleet early last year on orders from Louis XV, but a storm scattered Saxe's ships off Dunkirk in March, whereupon Louis declared war on Britain and promoted de Saxe to the rank of marshal. Clansmen rally behind the Rome-born, half-Polish Charles Edward "Bonny Prince Charlie" Stuart, 25, who lands in the Inner Hebrides July 25 and raises the Jacobite standard to proclaim his father, James Edward Stuart, now 57, James VIII of Scotland and James III of England (see 1716). Scottish statesman Duncan Forbes, 59, keeps his native Inverness loyal to the Hanoverian king George II and dissuades the chiefs of the Macdonald and Macleod clans from taking the field in support of the "Young Pretender," who nevertheless leads 2,000 Highlanders into Edinburgh September 11 and attracts recruits to his cause. General Sir John Cope fields an army of 2,200 with six guns to oppose him, but the Jacobites have 2,450 men and win the Battle of Prestonpans five miles east of Edinburgh September 21, taking 1,500 prisoners and capturing all of the enemy's guns while losing only 30 killed, 80 wounded. Prince Charles crosses into England with an army of 4,500 infantry and 400 cavalry, reaching Derby December 4, but withdraws to Scotland later in the month at the insistence of Lord George Murray, who sees that the British Army is returning from the Continent and sees the folly of trying to engage superior forces (see Falkirk, Culloden, 1746).
The Treaty of Dresden December 25 brings peace between Prussia, Austria, and Saxony; Prussia recognizes the Pragmatic Sanction of 1731 but retains Silesia, the British army is recalled to fight "Bonny Prince Charlie," but the War of the Austrian Succession that began in 1740 continues.
British and New England forces take the French fortress of Louisburg on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia June 16 after a 7-week siege by Maine-born merchant-soldier William Pepperrell, 49, who is promoted to the rank of colonel. He will be created a baronet next year, the first American to be so honored.
Japan's shōgun Yoshimune Tokugawa resigns after a 29-year rule in which he has made extensive reforms that have completely reshaped the country's central administrative structure, reducing the number of hereditary governmental retainers, eliminating court luxuries, and instituting measures to combat corruption. He is succeeded by his son Ieshige, who will rule until 1760 but will prove far less competent, allowing a resumption of the corruption and inefficiency that prevailed before his father came to power.
French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson, 36, mechanizes silk weaving with a device that uses perforated cards that guide hooks connected to the warp yarns. Appointed inspector of silk manufacture 4 years ago, de Vaucanson had earlier constructed automatons, one of which imitated the eating, drinking, and "digesting" motions of a live duck; his automated loom is intended to be powered by falling water or animals (see Jacquard, 1801).
The Leyden jar (or Kleistian jar) discovered at Leyden and (independently) in Pomerania is a capacitor that can store large amounts of electrical charge. Dutch mathematician and physicist Pieter van Musschenbroek, 53, at the University of Leyden finds accidentally that a vial partly filled with water and containing a thick conducting wire whose end projects from the vial's cork retains charges of static electricity when the exposed end of the wire is brought into contact with a spark-making device that employs glass revolving between cloth rubbers. E. (Ewald) Georg von Kleist, 45, dean of the Cathedral of Kamin in Pomerania, makes the same discovery but investigates it less thoroughly (see Nollet, Watson, Franklin, 1746).
Vénus physique by Pierre de Maupertuis challenges the preexistence theory of genetics advanced by Jan Swannerdam in 1699. Swannerdam's ovist theories, says Maupertuis, cannot explain congenital "monsters," nor the production of hybrids, nor even the fact that offspring usually have characteristics of both parents (see 1741; 1751).
Fauna Suecica by Carolus Linnaeus places humans and all other animals that nourish their young with milk secreted by mammary glands in a class he names Mammalia, partly because wet-nursing is a controversial social issue (see 1737). Linnaeus is among those who are trying to convince women of quality that breast-feeding their own babies is the "natural" thing to do, whereas Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and others have favored the use of wet nurses (see Paris, 1780).
Dublin's Lying-in Hospital (later to be called the Rotunda Hospital) is founded. Charity patients at lying-in hospitals are generally unmarried girls ashamed of their condition; most married women are delivered at home.
Yale University is chartered under that name at New Haven in the Connecticut colony (see 1718; 1861).
Author Jonathan Swift dies at his native Dublin October 19 at age 77 and is buried in the city's St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Poetry: Odes on Several Subjects by Mark Akenside.
Painting: Garrick in the Character of Richard III, Lord George Graham in His Cabin, and Self Portrait (with his dog Trump) by William Hogarth; Antony and Cleopatra (frescoes) for Venice's Labia Palace by Giambattista Tiepelo.
Theater: Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John by Colley Cibber 2/15 at London's Covent Garden Theatre (now 73, Cibber has adapted Shakespeare's King John for his final stage appearance); Tancred and Sigismunda by James Thomson.
Oratorio: Hercules 1/5 at the King's Theatre, London, with Mrs. Cibber creating the role of Lichas, music by George Frideric Handel.
Anthem: "The Campbells Are Coming" is published in Scotland.
The quadrille becomes fashionable in France.
Vienna's Schönbrunn Palace is completed after half a century of construction to designs by Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt, who dies November 16 at age 77. The palace will serve as a summer residence for the emperor.
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