April 18 – Hungarian freedom activist
Ferenc Rákóczi is arrested by Austrian authorities and charged with sedition. Imprisoned near
Vienna and facing a death sentence, he escapes and later leads the overthrow of the Habsburg control of Hungary.
April 21 – In
India, the siege of the fortress of
Sajjangad (located in the
Maharashtra state) is begun by an army led by Fateullahakhan. The fortress falls on June 6.
April – Fire destroys many buildings in
Gondar, the capital of
Ethiopia, including two in the palace complex.
June 8 (May 28 O.S.) – The legislature for the
Province of Massachusetts Bay (the modern-day Commonwealth of
Massachusetts in the United States) passes into law "An Act against Jesuits & Popish Priests" making a finding that Roman Catholic clerics have attempted to incite American Indians into a rebellion against the Crown, and declaring "That all and every Jesuit, Seminary Priest, Missionary, or other Spiritual or Ecclesiastical Person made or ordained by any Authority, Power or Jurisdiction derived, challenged or pretended from the Pope or See of Rome, now residing within this Province or any part thereof, shall depart from and out of the same, at or before the tenth day of September next, in this present year, One Thousand and Seven Hundred."[7] The
Province of New York enacts similar legislation later in the year.
July 24 –
Charles XII of Sweden counter-attacks his enemies by invading
Zealand (Denmark), assisted by an Anglo-Dutch naval squadron under Sir
George Rooke, rapidly compelling the Danes to submit to peace.[9]
September 6 –
Edmond Halley returns to England after a voyage of almost one year on
HMS Paramour, from which he has observed the
Antarctic Convergence,[10] and publishes his findings on terrestrial magnetism in General Chart of the Variation of the Compass.
October 16 –
Adrian, Patriarch of All Russia, dies after more than 10 years as head of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is replaced by the hand-picked choice of Tsar
Peter the Great with the appointment of Simeon Ivanovich Yavorsky as Patriarch
Stefan.
November 23 – Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Albani, having been ordained as a Roman Catholic priest only two months earlier, is elected by the
Papal conclave to succeed
Pope Innocent XII, and becomes the 243rd
pope, taking the name of
Clement XI.
An English translation of the novel Don Quixote, "translated from the original by many hands and published by
Peter Motteux", begins publication in London. While popular among readers, it will eventually come to be known as one of the worst translations of the novel, totally betraying the spirit of
Miguel de Cervantes's masterpiece.[14]
The value of sales of English manufactured products to the Atlantic economy is £3.9 million.
March 3 (February 20 O.S.) – King
William III of England is fatally injured in an accident when he is thrown from his horse, "Sorrel", while riding in
Hampton Court Park near London. Already in poor health before the accident, he dies from his injuries 16 days later at the age of 51.[21]
March 14 – An earthquake in the middle of the
Calore valley in Italy, east of
Benevento, kills 400 people.
March 19 (March 8
Old Style) –
Princess Anne Stuart, daughter of the late
King James II and younger sister of his successor,
Mary II of England (who had reigned jointly with her husband, William III, as "William and Mary" until her death in 1694), ascends the English, Scottish and Irish thrones upon William's death. In her first speech to the English Parliament, made three days later, she tells the assembly "As I know my heart to be entirely English, I can very sincerely assure you there is not anything you can expect or desire from me which I shall not be ready to do for the happiness and prosperity of England."[22] Anne is the mother of 17 children by her husband,
Prince George of Denmark and Norway, but none will survive childhood, and she will die without an heir, bringing an end to the reign of the House of Stuart and enabling the
Hanoverian Succession. After the death of William, the
States General of the Netherlands do not appoint a new
stadtholder, and so the
Dutch Republic becomes a true
republic again.
October 1 – The founding deed of the
University of Wrocław is signed by the Holy Roman Emperor
Leopold I of the House of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia.
The travel diary Oku no Hosomichi (meaning "Narrow road to/of the interior"), a major work of haibun by the Japanese poet
Matsuo Bashō and one of the major texts of Japanese literature of the
Edo period, is published eight years after Bashō's death.
January 9 – The
Jamaican town of
Port Royal, a center of trade in the
Western Hemisphere and, at the time, the largest city in the
Caribbean, is destroyed by a fire. British ships in the harbor are able to rescue much of the merchandise that has been unloaded on the docks, but the inventory in marketplaces in town is destroyed.[30]
January 14 –
1703 Apennine earthquakes: The magnitude 6.7 Norcia earthquake affects
Central Italy with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). With a death toll of 6,240–9,761, it is the first in a sequence of three destructive events.
January 16 –
1703 Apennine earthquakes: The magnitude 6.2 Montereale earthquake causes damage at Accumoli, Armatrice, Cittareale, and Montereale, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe).
February 2 –
1703 Apennine earthquakes: The magnitude 6.7 L'Aquila earthquake affects Central Italy, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). In the final large event (an example of
Coulomb stress transfer), damage occurs as far distant as Rome, with landslides, liquefaction, slope failures and at least 2,500 deaths.
March 1 – The
Recruiting Act 1703 goes into effect in England, providing for the forcible enlistment of able-bodied but unemployed men into the English Army and Royal Navy in order to fight in
Queen Anne's War in
North America. The Act expires at the end of February 1704.
March 20 – The
Akō incident occurs in
Japan as 46 independent
samurai (
rōnin) carry out an order of
seppuku (ritual suicide) for the revenge murder of a high-ranking government official,
Kira Yoshinaka, on January 30. The punishment is given by the
shōgun,
Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. The story continues to be dramatized more than 300 years later in Chūshingura theater, novels and film.
June 19 – Bavarian troops, who during the so-called
Bavarian Rummel have invaded
Tyrol, besiege
Kufstein. Fires break out on the outskirts that engulf the town, destroy it and reach the powder store of the supposedly impregnable
fortress. The enormous gunpowder supplies explode and Kufstein has to surrender on
20 June. This same day the Tyrolese surrender in
Wörgl; two days later
Rattenberg is captured and
Innsbruck is cleared without a fight on
25 June.
June 30 –
Battle of Ekeren: The French surround a smaller Dutch force, which however breaks out and retires to safety.
July–September
July 26 – After their victories at the Pontlatzer Bridge and the
Brenner Pass, Tyrolese farmers drive out the Bavarian Elector,
Maximilian II Emanuel, from North Tyrol and thus prevent the Bavarian Army, which is allied with France, from marching on Vienna during the War of the Spanish Succession. This success, at low cost, is the signal for the rebellion of the Tyrolese against Bavaria, and Elector Maximilian II Emanuel has to flee from Innsbruck. The Bavarian Army withdraws through
Seefeld in Tirol back to Bavaria.
October 11 – Nine Roman Catholic residents of the French village of
Sainte-Cécile-d'Andorge are massacred by a mob of more than 800 French Huguenot Protestants, the
Camisards. A reprisal against Protestants in the nearby village of Branoux is made less than three weeks later.
October 23 –
Hannah Twynnoy, a 24-year-old barmaid in
Malmesbury,
Wiltshire, becomes the first person to be killed in
Great Britain by a
tiger. While working at the White Lion Inn, where a group of wild animals is on exhibit, she is mauled after bothering the tiger.
October 30 – More than 47
Huguenots in the village of
Branoux-les-Taillades are massacred by Roman Catholic vigilantes in reprisal for the October 11 attack on nearby Sainte-Cécile, slightly more than two miles away.
War of the Spanish Succession:
Battle of Speyerbach (in modern-day Germany) – The French defeat a German relief army, allowing the French to take the besieged town of
Landau two days later, for which Tallard is made a Marshal of France.
March 23 –
War of the Spanish Succession: The English Navy ships HMS Kent, HMS Bedford and HMS Antelope intercept two newly-built Spanish warships, Porta Coeli and Santa Teresa off of the coast of
Cape Spartel, as the Spaniards attempt to sail into the
Strait of Gibraltar. The two Spanish ships are captured after a seven-hour battle and taken toward
Lisbon, but the Santa Teresa sinks along the way.
August 24 (August 13 OS) – War of the Spanish Succession – The French and Anglo-Dutch fleets
clash off Málaga, causing heavy casualties on both sides, but without sinking any ships.
September 12 –
War of the Spanish Succession: The siege of the French-held German town of
Landau, by Holy Roman Empire troops under the command of
Ludwig Wilhelm von Baden-Baden begins and lasts for more than ten weeks before the French surrender on
November 23. During the siege, the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I visits the area in a newly-developed vehicle, a
convertible horse-drawn carriage that has a removable roof. The style of vehicle itself is later called a "
landau".
October 28 –
Great Northern War: The
Battle of Poniec takes place as King Charles XII leads Swedish troops in pursuit of the Saxon Army commanded by General
Johann von der Schulenburg. The Swedes are forced to retreat despite surrounding the Saxons, and Schulenburg's troops escape.
November 11 –
Twelfth Siege of Gibraltar: A Spanish Bourbon special forces battalion, guided by Simon Susarte, scales the steepest side of the
Rock of Gibraltar in an attempt to surprise the British defenders, and kills the English sentries who have been manning the lookout. The attack is foiled the next day when a drummer boy, who was bringing food to the sentries, spots the invaders and raises the alarm.
December 25 – The fall of the
meteorite of
Barcelona is seen and heard over distances up to hundreds of kilometres and is interpreted as a divine sign.
March 14 –
Queen Anne gives
royal assent to the
Alien Act 1705, setting a deadline of December 25, 1705, for Scotland's parliament to authorize negotiations for the union with England to create the
Kingdom of Great Britain and, if Scotland fails to do so, to declare all Scots in England to be arrested and detained as illegal aliens until union is achieved.[36]
March 31 (March 20 O.S.) – The
Twelfth Siege of Gibraltar ends as a fleet of warships from the navies of England, Portugal and the Netherlands, commanded by English Admiral
John Leake, arrives at the Bay of Gibraltar with 35 warships and English and Portuguese troops. In the battle that follows, five of the French Navy's ships are sunk and Admiral Desjean is seriously wounded, forcing the French and Spanish to retreat.
April 9 –
The Queen's Theatre opens in
Westminster to serve as an
opera house, premiering with Gli amori di ergasto ("The Loves of Ergasto"), an Italian language opera by German composer
Jakob "Giacomo" Greber. It remains in operation for more than 300 years, becoming Her Majesty's Theatre.
June 6 – Voting ends in the
election of the English House of Commons, with the Tories retaining their majority but losing 38 seats, while the Whigs gain 49 seats. The balance in the 513 seats is 260 for the Tories, 233 for the Whigs, 20 for other candidates.
July 11 –
José de Grimaldo, the Marquis of Grimaldo, becomes the head of government of Spain after being appointed by
King Philip V as the Secretary of the Universal Bureau
July 14 – The newly-elected
English House of Commons, last to serve before the union with Scotland that produces Great Britain, is opened by Queen Anne.
July 18 –
War of the Spanish Succession: At the
Battle of Elixheim, near the city of
Tienen (in modern-day Belgium), is fought, as an exhausted group of soldiers under the command of England's
Duke of Marlborough kills 3,000 French troops under the command of the
Duc de Valleroy, and forces the retreat of the others, breaking the "Lines of Brabant". Because his soldiers had marched all night and then fought the battle over a full day, Marlborough is unable to send them in pursuit of Villeroy's troops.
July 20 – The planet
MercurytransitsJupiter, as seen by astronomers from Earth. The event happens again on October 4,
1708, but will not be seen again from Earth until October 27,
2088
September 20 –
Francis II Rákóczi is proclaimed as the ruler of Hungary by independence activists in
Szécsény who are opposed to the rule of the Habsburg successor to Leopold I, the Holy Roman emperor Joseph I.
December 25 – In
Munich, capital of
Bavaria, 1,100 militiamen from the
Oberland are killed during the
Sendlinger Mordweihnacht, after a failed attempt to break through several gates and capture a depot to seize better weaponry; many men were slaughtered by German federal infantry and Hungarian Hussars, despite their capitulation to
Austrian officers.
With the interest paid from daimyō loans, the Konoike buy a tract of ponds and swampland, turn the land into rice paddies, and settle 480 households numbering perhaps 2,880 peasants on the land.
The
Shogunate confiscates the property of a merchant in
Osaka "for conduct unbecoming a member of the commercial class". The government seizes 50 pairs of gold screens, 360 carpets, several mansions, 48 granaries and warehouses scattered around the country, and hundreds of thousands of gold pieces.
Great Northern War –
Battle of Grodno: A coalition of 34,000 Swedish and Polish troops besieges the then-Lithuanian city in the winter time, and clashes with 41,000 Russian and Saxon troops. After almost three months of fighting that lasts to
April 10, Sweden takes control of the city, which is now located in
Belarus.
March 21 –
Mary Channing, who was pregnant at the time that she was convicted of the murder of her husband, is burned at the stake at
Dorset, in front of a crowd of 10,000 onlookers.
May 12 – A
total eclipse of the Sun takes place and is visible in most of Europe, with a path crossing modern-day Spain, France, Germany, Poland and Russia
August 18 – King
Louis XIV of France makes his last visit to
Paris, and gets an update on the construction of the veterans' hospital at the
Dome des Invalides, which he had commissioned more than 35 years earlier.
September 7 – War of the Spanish Succession –
Battle of Turin: Forces of
Austria and
Savoy defeat the French near what is now the Italian city of Torino.
Augustus II, known as August der Starke (Augustus the Strong), Elector of Saxony, having ruled as King of Poland since 1706, signs the
Treaty of Altranstädt (1706), renouncing all claims to the throne to settle his fight with Sweden during the
Great Northern War
Iyasu I, Emperor of Ethiopia since 1682, is assassinated on the island of Tana, on orders of his son,
Tekle Haymanot I, who has ruled in Iyasu's place. After being crowned as the new Empeor, Tekle Haymanot is stabbed to death in 1708 on orders of Iyasu's brother,
Tewoflos
November 15 – Five months after having been deposed from his position as the
Dalai Lama,
Tsangyang Gyatso disappears while in exile in
Qinghai and is presumed to have been murdered.
June 4 – On the island now occupied by
Sri Lanka,
Narendra Sinha becomes the monarch of most of the area as the new
Kandyan king, succeeding to the throne upon the death of his father, King
Vimaladharmasuriya II. Narendra Sinha reigns for almost 32 years until his death on May 13, 1739.
June 6 – The soldiers and officers defending the Aragonese city of Játiva are massacred after a larger force of Castilian troops breaks through the walls at the end of a
30-day siege. The rest of the town's residents are deported, and most of the dwellings are burned, with the area being renamed "San Felipe". [48]
June 19 – The coronation of Muhammad Mu'azzam as the new Emperor of India,
Bahadur Shah I, takes place in
Delhi
June 28 –
Yeshe Gyatso is installed as the new
Dalai Lama by his father,
Lha-bzang Khan, who has recently deposed the
6th Dalai Lama. Though the justification is that the 21-year-old Yeshe was the true reincarnation of the
5th Dalai Lama, Yeshe receives no recognition from Buddhists in Tibet or Mongolia and the
7th Dalai Lama is installed in 1710.
August 27 –
Charles XII of Sweden launches his campaign to conquer Russia, marching to the east from
Altranstädt with 60,000 coalition troops. [49] Another 16,000 soldiers are waiting on the outskirts of
Riga, guarding the
Swedish supply lines.
Italian philosopher
Giambattista Vico delivers his inaugural lecture to the University of Naples, which will be published in
1709 as his first book, De Nostri Temporis Studiorum Ratione (On the Order of the Scholarly Disciplines of Our Times).
The Company of Merchants of London Trading (with consent of the
Parliament of Great Britain) merges with the East Indies, and the more recently established English Company Trading to the East Indies, to form the United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies, known as the
Honourable East India Company.[58]
January 6 – Western Europe's
Great Frost of 1709, the coldest period in 500 years, begins during the night, lasting three months, with its effects felt for the entire year.[59] In France, the Atlantic coast and
Seine River freeze, crops fail, and 24,000 Parisians die. Floating ice enters the
North Sea.
Herculaneum, an ancient town in
Ercolano,
Campania, Italy and buried under volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of
Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, is discovered by accident when attempts to drill a well for a monastery encountered marble and other materials.
The first
piano is exhibited in
Florence by its inventor
Bartolomeo Cristofori, who names it "gravicembalo col piano e forte", a name which is subsequently shortened to "pianoforte" and then "piano".
^Hochman, Stanley. McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama. Vol. 4. p. 542.
^Johnson, Samuel (1799). Lives of the Poets. Vol. 2. p. 213, n.2. Probably produced in the first week of March, 1700, as the book of the play was published March 28th, 1700.
^Theodore Ayrault Dodge, Gustavus Adolphus (Houghton Mifflin, 1890) p. 838
^James Falkner, Marlborough's War Machine 1702-1711 (Pen & Sword Military, 2014) p. 16
^Wijn, J.W. (1956). Het Staatsche Leger: Deel VIII Het tijdperk van de Spaanse Successieoorlog (The Dutch States Army: Part VIII The era of the War of the Spanish Succession) (in Dutch). Martinus Nijhoff.
^
abc John A. Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV 1667-1714 (Taylor & Francis, 2013)
^Richard Harding, Seapower and Naval Warfare, 1650-1830 (Taylor & Francis, 2002) p. 169
^Ball, W. W. Rouse (1889). A History of the Study of Mathematics at Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. p. 193.
^"Fires, Great", in The Insurance Cyclopeadia: Being an Historical Treasury of Events and Circumstances Connected with the Origin and Progress of Insurance, Cornelius Walford, ed. (C. and E. Layton, 1876) p47
^Marley, David (1998). "High Tide of Empire (1700-1777)". Wars of the Americas: A Chronology of Armed Conflict in the New World, 1492 to the Present. ABC-CLIO. p. 225.
^Three hundred years later, Albuquerque is the largest city in U.S. state of
New Mexico. Howard Bryan, Albuquerque Remembered (University of New Mexico Press, 2006) pp. 28-30
^Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 204–205.
ISBN0-7126-5616-2.
^Robert S. Rait, The Parliaments of Scotland (Maclehose, Jackson and Company, 1924) p.121
^Payne, Stanley G. (1973). "Chapter 16: The Eighteenth-Century Bourbon Regime in Spain". A History of Spain and Portugal. Vol. 2. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
ISBN0-299-06270-8. Retrieved 2008-04-17.
^Majdalany, Fred (1959). The Red Rocks of Eddystone. London: Longmans. p. 86.
^Wilmshurst, David (2019). "West Syrian patriarchs and maphrians". In Daniel King (ed.). The Syriac World. Routledge. p. 812.
^Naragon, Steve (2016).
"Salthenius, Daniel Lorenz (1701–50)". In Klemme, Heiner F.; Kuehn, Manfred (eds.). The Bloomsbury dictionary of eighteenth-century German philosophers. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 645–6.
ISBN9781474256001.
^Bulletin. City Art Museum of St. Louis. 1996. p. 31.
April 18 – Hungarian freedom activist
Ferenc Rákóczi is arrested by Austrian authorities and charged with sedition. Imprisoned near
Vienna and facing a death sentence, he escapes and later leads the overthrow of the Habsburg control of Hungary.
April 21 – In
India, the siege of the fortress of
Sajjangad (located in the
Maharashtra state) is begun by an army led by Fateullahakhan. The fortress falls on June 6.
April – Fire destroys many buildings in
Gondar, the capital of
Ethiopia, including two in the palace complex.
June 8 (May 28 O.S.) – The legislature for the
Province of Massachusetts Bay (the modern-day Commonwealth of
Massachusetts in the United States) passes into law "An Act against Jesuits & Popish Priests" making a finding that Roman Catholic clerics have attempted to incite American Indians into a rebellion against the Crown, and declaring "That all and every Jesuit, Seminary Priest, Missionary, or other Spiritual or Ecclesiastical Person made or ordained by any Authority, Power or Jurisdiction derived, challenged or pretended from the Pope or See of Rome, now residing within this Province or any part thereof, shall depart from and out of the same, at or before the tenth day of September next, in this present year, One Thousand and Seven Hundred."[7] The
Province of New York enacts similar legislation later in the year.
July 24 –
Charles XII of Sweden counter-attacks his enemies by invading
Zealand (Denmark), assisted by an Anglo-Dutch naval squadron under Sir
George Rooke, rapidly compelling the Danes to submit to peace.[9]
September 6 –
Edmond Halley returns to England after a voyage of almost one year on
HMS Paramour, from which he has observed the
Antarctic Convergence,[10] and publishes his findings on terrestrial magnetism in General Chart of the Variation of the Compass.
October 16 –
Adrian, Patriarch of All Russia, dies after more than 10 years as head of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is replaced by the hand-picked choice of Tsar
Peter the Great with the appointment of Simeon Ivanovich Yavorsky as Patriarch
Stefan.
November 23 – Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Albani, having been ordained as a Roman Catholic priest only two months earlier, is elected by the
Papal conclave to succeed
Pope Innocent XII, and becomes the 243rd
pope, taking the name of
Clement XI.
An English translation of the novel Don Quixote, "translated from the original by many hands and published by
Peter Motteux", begins publication in London. While popular among readers, it will eventually come to be known as one of the worst translations of the novel, totally betraying the spirit of
Miguel de Cervantes's masterpiece.[14]
The value of sales of English manufactured products to the Atlantic economy is £3.9 million.
March 3 (February 20 O.S.) – King
William III of England is fatally injured in an accident when he is thrown from his horse, "Sorrel", while riding in
Hampton Court Park near London. Already in poor health before the accident, he dies from his injuries 16 days later at the age of 51.[21]
March 14 – An earthquake in the middle of the
Calore valley in Italy, east of
Benevento, kills 400 people.
March 19 (March 8
Old Style) –
Princess Anne Stuart, daughter of the late
King James II and younger sister of his successor,
Mary II of England (who had reigned jointly with her husband, William III, as "William and Mary" until her death in 1694), ascends the English, Scottish and Irish thrones upon William's death. In her first speech to the English Parliament, made three days later, she tells the assembly "As I know my heart to be entirely English, I can very sincerely assure you there is not anything you can expect or desire from me which I shall not be ready to do for the happiness and prosperity of England."[22] Anne is the mother of 17 children by her husband,
Prince George of Denmark and Norway, but none will survive childhood, and she will die without an heir, bringing an end to the reign of the House of Stuart and enabling the
Hanoverian Succession. After the death of William, the
States General of the Netherlands do not appoint a new
stadtholder, and so the
Dutch Republic becomes a true
republic again.
October 1 – The founding deed of the
University of Wrocław is signed by the Holy Roman Emperor
Leopold I of the House of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia.
The travel diary Oku no Hosomichi (meaning "Narrow road to/of the interior"), a major work of haibun by the Japanese poet
Matsuo Bashō and one of the major texts of Japanese literature of the
Edo period, is published eight years after Bashō's death.
January 9 – The
Jamaican town of
Port Royal, a center of trade in the
Western Hemisphere and, at the time, the largest city in the
Caribbean, is destroyed by a fire. British ships in the harbor are able to rescue much of the merchandise that has been unloaded on the docks, but the inventory in marketplaces in town is destroyed.[30]
January 14 –
1703 Apennine earthquakes: The magnitude 6.7 Norcia earthquake affects
Central Italy with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). With a death toll of 6,240–9,761, it is the first in a sequence of three destructive events.
January 16 –
1703 Apennine earthquakes: The magnitude 6.2 Montereale earthquake causes damage at Accumoli, Armatrice, Cittareale, and Montereale, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe).
February 2 –
1703 Apennine earthquakes: The magnitude 6.7 L'Aquila earthquake affects Central Italy, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). In the final large event (an example of
Coulomb stress transfer), damage occurs as far distant as Rome, with landslides, liquefaction, slope failures and at least 2,500 deaths.
March 1 – The
Recruiting Act 1703 goes into effect in England, providing for the forcible enlistment of able-bodied but unemployed men into the English Army and Royal Navy in order to fight in
Queen Anne's War in
North America. The Act expires at the end of February 1704.
March 20 – The
Akō incident occurs in
Japan as 46 independent
samurai (
rōnin) carry out an order of
seppuku (ritual suicide) for the revenge murder of a high-ranking government official,
Kira Yoshinaka, on January 30. The punishment is given by the
shōgun,
Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. The story continues to be dramatized more than 300 years later in Chūshingura theater, novels and film.
June 19 – Bavarian troops, who during the so-called
Bavarian Rummel have invaded
Tyrol, besiege
Kufstein. Fires break out on the outskirts that engulf the town, destroy it and reach the powder store of the supposedly impregnable
fortress. The enormous gunpowder supplies explode and Kufstein has to surrender on
20 June. This same day the Tyrolese surrender in
Wörgl; two days later
Rattenberg is captured and
Innsbruck is cleared without a fight on
25 June.
June 30 –
Battle of Ekeren: The French surround a smaller Dutch force, which however breaks out and retires to safety.
July–September
July 26 – After their victories at the Pontlatzer Bridge and the
Brenner Pass, Tyrolese farmers drive out the Bavarian Elector,
Maximilian II Emanuel, from North Tyrol and thus prevent the Bavarian Army, which is allied with France, from marching on Vienna during the War of the Spanish Succession. This success, at low cost, is the signal for the rebellion of the Tyrolese against Bavaria, and Elector Maximilian II Emanuel has to flee from Innsbruck. The Bavarian Army withdraws through
Seefeld in Tirol back to Bavaria.
October 11 – Nine Roman Catholic residents of the French village of
Sainte-Cécile-d'Andorge are massacred by a mob of more than 800 French Huguenot Protestants, the
Camisards. A reprisal against Protestants in the nearby village of Branoux is made less than three weeks later.
October 23 –
Hannah Twynnoy, a 24-year-old barmaid in
Malmesbury,
Wiltshire, becomes the first person to be killed in
Great Britain by a
tiger. While working at the White Lion Inn, where a group of wild animals is on exhibit, she is mauled after bothering the tiger.
October 30 – More than 47
Huguenots in the village of
Branoux-les-Taillades are massacred by Roman Catholic vigilantes in reprisal for the October 11 attack on nearby Sainte-Cécile, slightly more than two miles away.
War of the Spanish Succession:
Battle of Speyerbach (in modern-day Germany) – The French defeat a German relief army, allowing the French to take the besieged town of
Landau two days later, for which Tallard is made a Marshal of France.
March 23 –
War of the Spanish Succession: The English Navy ships HMS Kent, HMS Bedford and HMS Antelope intercept two newly-built Spanish warships, Porta Coeli and Santa Teresa off of the coast of
Cape Spartel, as the Spaniards attempt to sail into the
Strait of Gibraltar. The two Spanish ships are captured after a seven-hour battle and taken toward
Lisbon, but the Santa Teresa sinks along the way.
August 24 (August 13 OS) – War of the Spanish Succession – The French and Anglo-Dutch fleets
clash off Málaga, causing heavy casualties on both sides, but without sinking any ships.
September 12 –
War of the Spanish Succession: The siege of the French-held German town of
Landau, by Holy Roman Empire troops under the command of
Ludwig Wilhelm von Baden-Baden begins and lasts for more than ten weeks before the French surrender on
November 23. During the siege, the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I visits the area in a newly-developed vehicle, a
convertible horse-drawn carriage that has a removable roof. The style of vehicle itself is later called a "
landau".
October 28 –
Great Northern War: The
Battle of Poniec takes place as King Charles XII leads Swedish troops in pursuit of the Saxon Army commanded by General
Johann von der Schulenburg. The Swedes are forced to retreat despite surrounding the Saxons, and Schulenburg's troops escape.
November 11 –
Twelfth Siege of Gibraltar: A Spanish Bourbon special forces battalion, guided by Simon Susarte, scales the steepest side of the
Rock of Gibraltar in an attempt to surprise the British defenders, and kills the English sentries who have been manning the lookout. The attack is foiled the next day when a drummer boy, who was bringing food to the sentries, spots the invaders and raises the alarm.
December 25 – The fall of the
meteorite of
Barcelona is seen and heard over distances up to hundreds of kilometres and is interpreted as a divine sign.
March 14 –
Queen Anne gives
royal assent to the
Alien Act 1705, setting a deadline of December 25, 1705, for Scotland's parliament to authorize negotiations for the union with England to create the
Kingdom of Great Britain and, if Scotland fails to do so, to declare all Scots in England to be arrested and detained as illegal aliens until union is achieved.[36]
March 31 (March 20 O.S.) – The
Twelfth Siege of Gibraltar ends as a fleet of warships from the navies of England, Portugal and the Netherlands, commanded by English Admiral
John Leake, arrives at the Bay of Gibraltar with 35 warships and English and Portuguese troops. In the battle that follows, five of the French Navy's ships are sunk and Admiral Desjean is seriously wounded, forcing the French and Spanish to retreat.
April 9 –
The Queen's Theatre opens in
Westminster to serve as an
opera house, premiering with Gli amori di ergasto ("The Loves of Ergasto"), an Italian language opera by German composer
Jakob "Giacomo" Greber. It remains in operation for more than 300 years, becoming Her Majesty's Theatre.
June 6 – Voting ends in the
election of the English House of Commons, with the Tories retaining their majority but losing 38 seats, while the Whigs gain 49 seats. The balance in the 513 seats is 260 for the Tories, 233 for the Whigs, 20 for other candidates.
July 11 –
José de Grimaldo, the Marquis of Grimaldo, becomes the head of government of Spain after being appointed by
King Philip V as the Secretary of the Universal Bureau
July 14 – The newly-elected
English House of Commons, last to serve before the union with Scotland that produces Great Britain, is opened by Queen Anne.
July 18 –
War of the Spanish Succession: At the
Battle of Elixheim, near the city of
Tienen (in modern-day Belgium), is fought, as an exhausted group of soldiers under the command of England's
Duke of Marlborough kills 3,000 French troops under the command of the
Duc de Valleroy, and forces the retreat of the others, breaking the "Lines of Brabant". Because his soldiers had marched all night and then fought the battle over a full day, Marlborough is unable to send them in pursuit of Villeroy's troops.
July 20 – The planet
MercurytransitsJupiter, as seen by astronomers from Earth. The event happens again on October 4,
1708, but will not be seen again from Earth until October 27,
2088
September 20 –
Francis II Rákóczi is proclaimed as the ruler of Hungary by independence activists in
Szécsény who are opposed to the rule of the Habsburg successor to Leopold I, the Holy Roman emperor Joseph I.
December 25 – In
Munich, capital of
Bavaria, 1,100 militiamen from the
Oberland are killed during the
Sendlinger Mordweihnacht, after a failed attempt to break through several gates and capture a depot to seize better weaponry; many men were slaughtered by German federal infantry and Hungarian Hussars, despite their capitulation to
Austrian officers.
With the interest paid from daimyō loans, the Konoike buy a tract of ponds and swampland, turn the land into rice paddies, and settle 480 households numbering perhaps 2,880 peasants on the land.
The
Shogunate confiscates the property of a merchant in
Osaka "for conduct unbecoming a member of the commercial class". The government seizes 50 pairs of gold screens, 360 carpets, several mansions, 48 granaries and warehouses scattered around the country, and hundreds of thousands of gold pieces.
Great Northern War –
Battle of Grodno: A coalition of 34,000 Swedish and Polish troops besieges the then-Lithuanian city in the winter time, and clashes with 41,000 Russian and Saxon troops. After almost three months of fighting that lasts to
April 10, Sweden takes control of the city, which is now located in
Belarus.
March 21 –
Mary Channing, who was pregnant at the time that she was convicted of the murder of her husband, is burned at the stake at
Dorset, in front of a crowd of 10,000 onlookers.
May 12 – A
total eclipse of the Sun takes place and is visible in most of Europe, with a path crossing modern-day Spain, France, Germany, Poland and Russia
August 18 – King
Louis XIV of France makes his last visit to
Paris, and gets an update on the construction of the veterans' hospital at the
Dome des Invalides, which he had commissioned more than 35 years earlier.
September 7 – War of the Spanish Succession –
Battle of Turin: Forces of
Austria and
Savoy defeat the French near what is now the Italian city of Torino.
Augustus II, known as August der Starke (Augustus the Strong), Elector of Saxony, having ruled as King of Poland since 1706, signs the
Treaty of Altranstädt (1706), renouncing all claims to the throne to settle his fight with Sweden during the
Great Northern War
Iyasu I, Emperor of Ethiopia since 1682, is assassinated on the island of Tana, on orders of his son,
Tekle Haymanot I, who has ruled in Iyasu's place. After being crowned as the new Empeor, Tekle Haymanot is stabbed to death in 1708 on orders of Iyasu's brother,
Tewoflos
November 15 – Five months after having been deposed from his position as the
Dalai Lama,
Tsangyang Gyatso disappears while in exile in
Qinghai and is presumed to have been murdered.
June 4 – On the island now occupied by
Sri Lanka,
Narendra Sinha becomes the monarch of most of the area as the new
Kandyan king, succeeding to the throne upon the death of his father, King
Vimaladharmasuriya II. Narendra Sinha reigns for almost 32 years until his death on May 13, 1739.
June 6 – The soldiers and officers defending the Aragonese city of Játiva are massacred after a larger force of Castilian troops breaks through the walls at the end of a
30-day siege. The rest of the town's residents are deported, and most of the dwellings are burned, with the area being renamed "San Felipe". [48]
June 19 – The coronation of Muhammad Mu'azzam as the new Emperor of India,
Bahadur Shah I, takes place in
Delhi
June 28 –
Yeshe Gyatso is installed as the new
Dalai Lama by his father,
Lha-bzang Khan, who has recently deposed the
6th Dalai Lama. Though the justification is that the 21-year-old Yeshe was the true reincarnation of the
5th Dalai Lama, Yeshe receives no recognition from Buddhists in Tibet or Mongolia and the
7th Dalai Lama is installed in 1710.
August 27 –
Charles XII of Sweden launches his campaign to conquer Russia, marching to the east from
Altranstädt with 60,000 coalition troops. [49] Another 16,000 soldiers are waiting on the outskirts of
Riga, guarding the
Swedish supply lines.
Italian philosopher
Giambattista Vico delivers his inaugural lecture to the University of Naples, which will be published in
1709 as his first book, De Nostri Temporis Studiorum Ratione (On the Order of the Scholarly Disciplines of Our Times).
The Company of Merchants of London Trading (with consent of the
Parliament of Great Britain) merges with the East Indies, and the more recently established English Company Trading to the East Indies, to form the United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies, known as the
Honourable East India Company.[58]
January 6 – Western Europe's
Great Frost of 1709, the coldest period in 500 years, begins during the night, lasting three months, with its effects felt for the entire year.[59] In France, the Atlantic coast and
Seine River freeze, crops fail, and 24,000 Parisians die. Floating ice enters the
North Sea.
Herculaneum, an ancient town in
Ercolano,
Campania, Italy and buried under volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of
Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, is discovered by accident when attempts to drill a well for a monastery encountered marble and other materials.
The first
piano is exhibited in
Florence by its inventor
Bartolomeo Cristofori, who names it "gravicembalo col piano e forte", a name which is subsequently shortened to "pianoforte" and then "piano".
^Hochman, Stanley. McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama. Vol. 4. p. 542.
^Johnson, Samuel (1799). Lives of the Poets. Vol. 2. p. 213, n.2. Probably produced in the first week of March, 1700, as the book of the play was published March 28th, 1700.
^Theodore Ayrault Dodge, Gustavus Adolphus (Houghton Mifflin, 1890) p. 838
^James Falkner, Marlborough's War Machine 1702-1711 (Pen & Sword Military, 2014) p. 16
^Wijn, J.W. (1956). Het Staatsche Leger: Deel VIII Het tijdperk van de Spaanse Successieoorlog (The Dutch States Army: Part VIII The era of the War of the Spanish Succession) (in Dutch). Martinus Nijhoff.
^
abc John A. Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV 1667-1714 (Taylor & Francis, 2013)
^Richard Harding, Seapower and Naval Warfare, 1650-1830 (Taylor & Francis, 2002) p. 169
^Ball, W. W. Rouse (1889). A History of the Study of Mathematics at Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. p. 193.
^"Fires, Great", in The Insurance Cyclopeadia: Being an Historical Treasury of Events and Circumstances Connected with the Origin and Progress of Insurance, Cornelius Walford, ed. (C. and E. Layton, 1876) p47
^Marley, David (1998). "High Tide of Empire (1700-1777)". Wars of the Americas: A Chronology of Armed Conflict in the New World, 1492 to the Present. ABC-CLIO. p. 225.
^Three hundred years later, Albuquerque is the largest city in U.S. state of
New Mexico. Howard Bryan, Albuquerque Remembered (University of New Mexico Press, 2006) pp. 28-30
^Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 204–205.
ISBN0-7126-5616-2.
^Robert S. Rait, The Parliaments of Scotland (Maclehose, Jackson and Company, 1924) p.121
^Payne, Stanley G. (1973). "Chapter 16: The Eighteenth-Century Bourbon Regime in Spain". A History of Spain and Portugal. Vol. 2. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
ISBN0-299-06270-8. Retrieved 2008-04-17.
^Majdalany, Fred (1959). The Red Rocks of Eddystone. London: Longmans. p. 86.
^Wilmshurst, David (2019). "West Syrian patriarchs and maphrians". In Daniel King (ed.). The Syriac World. Routledge. p. 812.
^Naragon, Steve (2016).
"Salthenius, Daniel Lorenz (1701–50)". In Klemme, Heiner F.; Kuehn, Manfred (eds.). The Bloomsbury dictionary of eighteenth-century German philosophers. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 645–6.
ISBN9781474256001.
^Bulletin. City Art Museum of St. Louis. 1996. p. 31.