1757
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Colonel Robert Clive of the British East India Company recovers Calcutta January 2 with support from a British naval squadron under the command of Admiral Charles Watson; he avenges last year's "Black Hole" incident and goes on to take the French settlement at Chandernagor. The Treaty of Alinagar concluded February 9 with the Bengalese nabob Siraj-ud-Daula (who has briefly renamed the city) restores the East India Company's privileges at Calcutta, allowing it to fortify the city and coin money, but the nabob has alienated Hindu bankers and lost the support of his army; he violates the pact, and his treachery will soon cost him his life.
Afghanistan's Ahmad Shah Durrani seizes Delhi January 28, plunders the city without resistance, does the same to Agra, Mathura, and Vrndavana, then annexes the Punjab and marries the daughter of the late Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah before an outbreak of cholera forces him to return home (see 1759).
The Battle of Plassey June 23 establishes British sovereignty in India as Robert Clive wins a victory over Bengal's nabob Suraj-ud-Doula. The encounter on the Hugli River 110 miles north of Calcutta in central Bengal pits Colonel Clive's 800 European and 2,100 Indian infantrymen with eight guns against Suraj-ud-Daula's 35,000 infantry, 15,000 cavalry, and 53 guns, but the British cover their powder during a heavy noonday monsoon shower, while the nabob's men take no such precautions. Their guns are useless, and by 5 o'clock their army has crumbled, having lost about 500 dead and wounded. British losses total 18 killed, 45 wounded. The British have plotted with Siraj-ud-Daula's 66-year-old general Mir Jafar to depose the nabob, and although Siraj-ud-Din flees to Murshidabad he is captured and put to death the night of July 2. Clive installs the Arab-born Mir Jafar as nabob, exacts a substantial indemnity, accepts £234,000 as his personal share plus the quitrent of the East India Company's territory, and becomes virtual ruler of Bengal. His puppet nabob Mir Jafar seized the government in 1740 with his brother-in-law General Ali Vardi Khan, conspired with others 16 years later to depose Siraj-ud-Doula, and has assured Clive that he would work with the British to exclude French interests from Bengal, pay £250,000 to Calcutta's European inhabitants as compensation for the loss of their city to Siraj last year, and pay £500,000 to the East India Company.
Burma's Aloung P'Houra captures the city of Pegu, takes the Mon king Binnya Dala prisoner, and establishes control over the entire region once ruled by the Toungoo dynasty (see Rangoon, 1755). He concludes a treaty with the British East India Company, whose troops are fighting French forces in the region and have helped him in his war with their ally Binnya Dala; he grants the company generous trade concessions (but see 1759).
Former French foreign minister René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d'Argenson, dies at his native Paris January 26 at age 62, having devoted the last 10 years to literary pursuits.
British admiral John Byng is court-martialed, found guilty, and executed by a firing squad on the deck of his flagship in Portsmouth Harbor March 14 at age 52 (see 1755; Fiction, 1759).
Britain's George II dismisses his secretary of state William Pitt when his son William Augustus, duke of Cumberland, refuses to serve as commander in chief of the British Army unless Pitt resigns. But Pitt is recalled in June following a public outcry against the king. Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st duke of Newcastle, becomes prime minister once again in a coalition government whose secretary of state is his former enemy Pitt, who handles the nation's war with France while Newcastle, now 63, handles matters of patronage and obtains parliamentary support.
Vienna forms an offensive alliance with Russia against Prussia's Friedrich II February 2 as the Seven Years' War continues (see 1756). Friedrich responds by invading Bohemia with a well-drilled army whose men have been trained to fear the enemy less than their own officers. His Cleve-born cavalry commander Colonel Friedrich Wilhelm Seydlitz, 36, helps him rout an inferior and far less prepared Austrian army four miles east of Prague May 6, but at a heavy cost: of his 67,000 men (66 infantry battalions, 113 cavalry battalions, and 82 guns), 14,300 are killed and wounded. The Austrians, commanded by Prince Charles of Lorraine, number 60,000 (60 infantry battalions, 20 cavalry battalions, 59 guns), and at the end of the battle have lost 12,000 killed and wounded, with 4,500 taken prisoner. The Austrians take revenge June 18 at the Battle of Kolin, 27 miles east of Prague, where Marshal Leopold Jozef, graf von Daun, commands a force of 40,000 (42 infantry battalions, 17 cavalry squadrons, 145 guns) against Friedrich's 32,000 (32 infantry battalions, 116 cavalry squadrons, 50 guns). Now 51, von Daun has gained field experience in Sicily (1718), on the Rhine in the 1730s, fighting the Ottoman Turks in the late 1730s, and in the War of the Austrian Succession. Friedrich exhorts his troops to fight harder ("Schweinhunds, would you live forever?") but loses 13,768 killed, wounded, and missing, 45 of his guns are captured, and he is forced to lift his siege of Prague and evacuate Bohemia (Austrian losses total 9,000 dead and wounded). A charge by Colonel Seydlitz checks the Austrian pursuit, and Friedrich promotes him to major general, giving him the order of merit.
Two French armies totaling about 100,000 men have invaded Prussia in April, and the Battle of Hastenbeck July 26 ends in a French victory over a British army in Hanover under the command of William Augustus, duke of Cumberland. Prince Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, 21, of Brunswick (Braunschweig)-Lüneburg leads a gallant cavalry charge that establishes the young man's reputation. His uncle Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick, succeeds Cumberland, who promises to evacuate Hanover in the Convention of Klosterzeven signed in September. George II repudiates the agreement and dismisses his son.
A Russian army that has invaded eastern Prussia defeats Friedrich's forces August 30 at Gross-Jagersdorf. Swedish forces invade Prussia's province of Pomerania in September, the Austrians reach Berlin October 15, but the Battle of Rossbach 26 miles southwest of Leipzig November 5 gives Friedrich a crushing victory over a combined French and Austrian army, whose strength is about 41,000 men as compared to Friedrich's 21,000. Friedrich has given his young general Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz command of his entire cavalry, elevating him over the heads of two senior generals, and Seydlitz's 38 squadrons completely rout the enemy (only seven of Friedrich's other battalions fire any shots); Prussian casualties number only 165 killed and 376 wounded, while the Franco-Austrian army under the command of Prince Charles de Soubise and Prince Joseph of Saxe-Hildburghausen suffers 3,000 killed and wounded; Friedrich takes 5,000 prisoners, captures 67 guns, and gives General von Seydlitz the order of the Black Eagle, but Seydlitz has sustained a wound and will not rejoin the army until next year. Louis XV (or his mistress, Mme. de Pompadour) says, "Aprés moi le déluge" ("After me, the flood"), an expression that has long since become proverbial. Friedrich marches his men 200 miles in 16 days and defeats the Austrians once again December 5 at the Battle of Leuthen, 10 miles west of Wroclaw (Breslau), hurling 35,000 men against 60,000 Austrians under the command of Prince Charles of Lorraine and Marshal Leopold Jozef, graf von Daun, but the Austrian general Franz Moritz, Count Lacy, distinguishes himself once again, and although the Prussians kill and wound 6,750 of the enemy, take 12,000 prisoners, and capture many enemy guns, their killed and wounded total 6,400.
Profligate John Wilkes gets himself elected to Parliament for Aylesbury (see 1754). Heavily in debt, he has spent a reputed £7,000 on his election campaigns, bribing voters shamelessly in hopes that he may find opportunities through his political connections to revive his flagging fortunes (see 1763).
The Ottoman sultan Osman III dies at age 58 after a 3-year reign. His nephew, 40, will reign until 1773 as Mustapha III.
Thomas Pownall wins appointment as British governor of Massachusetts and arrives at Boston August 3 (see 1754). He receives an appeal almost immediately from General Webb for help in resisting a French attack against Fort William Henry on Lake George, but before the reinforcements can arrive the fort has fallen to forces under the command of Louis de Montcalm, marquis de Saint-Véran (see 1756). Some 2,000 Abenaki, Caughnawaga, Huron-Peton, Malecite, Micmac, Nipissing, and Ottawa warriors supplement the army of 6,000 French regulars; the fort is garrisoned by only 2,500 men, including five companies of infantrymen under the command of Colonel George Munro and 1,000 colonial forces from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York; French cannonballs penetrate the walls of the fort, French siege mortars then splinter the walls. Montcalm offers Munro generous surrender terms, but his Indian allies seek plunder and when they find very little they fall upon the fort's sick and wounded, killing many of them before being stopped by the French. The tribesmen carry off camp followers who include mostly blacks, women, and children, and they attack Munro's retreating column the next day, killing nearly 200 with knives and tomahawks and carrying off hundreds more, but the scalps, captives, and clothing that they take are infected with smallpox, beginning an epidemic that will decimate their settlements. What they perceive as Montcalm's effort to deny them their promised spoils makes them far less willing to support the French. The French and Indian War that has brought British and French forces into conflict is a North American offshoot of Europe's Seven Years' War, and the massacre at Fort William Henry so antagonizes the British and Anglo-Americans that their acrimony toward the French and their Indian allies intensifies to outright hatred (see 1758).
The Pennsylvania colony sends Benjamin Franklin to London as its representative in a dispute involving taxation of the proprietary Penn family; Franklin sends home advice as to how far American importers can safely go in flouting London's mercantilist acts (see 1750; Sugar Act, 1764).
British sea captain John Campbell creates the sextant for celestial navigation by extending the arc of John Hadley's quadrant of 1731 to measure angles of up to 120 degrees rather than 90. Accurate to a three-mile radius, Campbell's wedge-shaped sextant has a triangular frame, with one side an arc; the arc has a scale of degrees, an index pointer pivots across the frame and the arc, and a system of reflecting mirrors brings together the two objects whose angle is to be observed by the navigator, but plotting a ship's course on a map requires a tedious 22-step mathematical calculation.
Natural History of Senegal (Histoire naturelle de Sénégal) by French botanist Michel Adanson, 30, describes the flora of the African country, whence he returned 2 years ago with a large collection of plant specimens after 4 years as an employee of the trading company Compagnie des Indes (see 1763).
Scientist René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur dies at Saint-Julien-du-Terroux October 17 at age 74.
An essay "On the Most Efficient Means of Preserving the Health of Seamen" by James Lind establishes principles of hygiene to guard against typhus and other diseases (see 1753).
English printer John Baskerville, 51, at Birmingham publishes his first book, an edition of Virgil. Having made enough money from his 17-year-old lacquering business to dabble in typefounding, he has set up a printing house and next year will put out an edition of Milton, using a distinctive typeface and black ink, both of his own design, that will catch the eye of a don at Cambridge, who will secure Baskerville's appointment as university printer. A edition of Horace published in 1762 and the Bible published 1 year later will establish Baskerville's reputation, and he will go on to print a series of editions of Latin authors.
Britain's George II transfers the Royal Library to the British Museum founded 4 years ago (see 1759).
Nonfiction: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke, who gains notice abroad; The Morality of Stage Plays Seriously Considered by Scottish historian-philosopher Adam Ferguson, 34, who gives up his career as chaplain to the Black Watch Regiment and succeeds his friend David Hume as keeper of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh.
French man of letters Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle dies at Paris January 9 at age 99.
Only a few hundred Parisians concern themselves with "literature, the arts and healthy philosophy," writes journalist-critic Friedrich Melchior, 34, freiherr von Grimm, who has become a naturalized citizen noted for his letters about Paris. Not only are books expensive, but if publications have been banned because of salacious passages or anticlerical views they are prohibitive in price.
Poetry: The Fleece by John Dyer, who dies at Coningsby, Lincolnshire, in December at age 58.
Painting: The Artist's Daughter with a Cat by Thomas Gainsborough; The Fowler and La Paresseuse Italienne by Jean Baptiste Greuze. Rosalba Carriera dies at her native Venice April 15 at age 81.
Theater: Peg Woffington falls ill May 17 at London's Covent Garden Theatre while playing the role of Rosalind in the epilogue of Shakespeare's 1600 comedy As You Like It. Her acting career is ended, and she will devote her final 3 years to charitable works.
Actor-playwright-theater manager Colley Cibber dies at his native London December 11 at age 86. He is succeeded as poet laureate by poet-playwright William Whitehead, now 42, who will write florid tributes to the Crown each year until his death in 1785.
Composer-harpsichordist Domenico Scarlatti dies at Madrid July 23 at age 71.
Jacques Ange Gabriel completes enlargements to the Louvre Palace at Paris.
Potato planting increases rapidly in northern Europe as the famine that accompanies the Seven Years' War gives impetus to potato culture (see Friedrich, 1744).
James Lind describes his 1747 experiment with scurvy patients in a second edition of his 1753 "Treatise." He reports that he divided 12 patients into pairs and experimented with six different diets, trying such things as vinegar, cider, and elixir vitriol (sulfuric acid, alcohol, and an extract of ginger and cinnamon). The best results were obtained, Lind reports, when diets were supplemented with oranges and lemons (see Cook, Pringle, 1775).
George Washington seeks election to the Virginia House of Burgesses from Fairfax County, campaigning for votes with 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 of beer, and two of cider royal. The county has 391 voters.
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