1646

Love is the fart
Of every heart:
It pains a man when 'tis kept close,
And others doth offend, when 'tis let loose.

-- "Love's Offence", Sir John Suckling

Born in 1646:

• German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz.
• English astronomer John Flamsteed.
• (approx.) German-born English painter Godfrey Kneller.
• English painter John Riley.
• French architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart.
• French scholar Antoine Galland, first translator of the Thousand nights and a night to the West.
• Venetian composer and philosopher Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, the first woman to receive a doctorate (from the University of Padua, in 1678). Thx. to liveforever

• English jurist Sir Ranulphe Crewe.
• Portuguese composer Duarte Lobo.
• Polish general and statesman Stanislaw Koniecpolski.
• English painter William Dobson, shortly after being released from debtor's prison.
• Florentine painter Francesco Furini.
• German architect Elias Holl.
• German composer Johann Stobaeus.
• German composer Johann Theil.
• William Shakespeare's sister Joan Hart.
• Italian composer Virgilio Mazzocchi.
• English nobleman and collector Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel.
• English general Robert Deveraux, 3rd Earl of Essex, former commander of the Roundhead army before its reorganization.
• Jesuit missionaries Isaac Jogues and Jean de la Lande, killed by Iroquois.
• Henri II de Bourbon, prince de Condé, First Prince of the Blood. His son, currently duc d'Enghien, succeeds him as Louis II.
• Southern Ming Prince Tang.

• Several plays by Sir John Suckling appear posthumously, as well as a collection of poems, Fragmenta Aurea.
• Richard Crashaw's collection of religious poetry Steps to the Temple appears.
• Francis Quarles's posthumous poetry collection Eclogues appears.
• Estebanillo Gonzalez's picaresque autobiography appears, but the fashion fades.
• Sir Thomas Browne's compendium of sins presented as medical afflictions Pseudodoxia Epidemia appears. It includes attacks on Zeno's paradoxes.
• Blaise Pascal reproduces Evangelista Torricelli's results showing that air pressure decreases as altitude increases.  He also converts to Jansenism.
• George Fox has a revelation that will lead him to found the Society of Friends (i.e. Quakers).
• John Greaves publishes the first measurements of the Great Pyramid at Giza in his Pyramidographia.
• Shah Jahan sends an army north in an attempt to capture Samarkand.  He is unsuccessful, the army is destroyed, and the Mughal Empire is that much weaker.
• Nineteen-year-old Shivaji Bhosle carves out a realm for himself by capturing the Torana fort outside Pune.  Adil Shah is not amused; and wonders about the loyalty of his governor of Bangalore, Shivaji's father Shahaji.
• Manchu general Dorgon's armies continue the conquest of South China from remaining Ming holdouts. Fujian, under Prince Tang, is the next province to fall. Zheng Zhilong decides to cut a deal with Dorgon.  Because of this, he and his son Zheng Chenggong (later known as 'Koxinga') part ways.  In Beijing, Dorgon ensures his nephew's dynasty by reinstating the Confucian-centered civil service examination system.
• The English Civil War:
  • The West Country is pacified with the capture of Torrington in Cornwall.
  • The Roundheads take Oxford, and Charles I no longer has a kingdom to defend.  The fighting is all over.
  • Oliver Cromwell, realizing talent when he sees it, gives former Royalist general George Monck command over Parliamentary forces in Ireland.
  • Scottish Covenanters occupy the northern part of England.  Charles, realizing that the New Model Army wants his head, surrenders himself to the Scots instead at Newark.   The Scots imprison him at Newcastle upon Tyne, with the Earl of Leven as his jailer.
  • (July) Parliament presents the king with conditions for peace, most importantly, they demand Presbyterianism be made the national religion. Charles demurs, hoping for a split between the Puritans and Covenanters.
  • Parliament banishes Charles's brother Prince Rupert from England.
• The Thirty Years' War:
  • Political wrangling in Westphalia continues.  Saxony is officially out of the war with the Peace of Eilenberg., and France and Austria pull together a preliminary treaty.
  • Meanwhile a combined French-Swedish army (under Henri Turenne and Wrangel) invades Bavaria.
  • The duc d'Enghien (now prince de Condé) completes the French conquest of Flanders with the capture of Dunquerque.
  • At this point Countess Amalie Elizabeth of Hesse-Darmstadt tries to conquer Hesse-Cassel and Hesse-Marburg.  Austrian archduke Leopold William, hoping to shore up his allies and divert the French and the Swedes, sends his army into Hesse-Cassel, leaving Bavarian general Maximillian to face the combined armies.
  • Turenne and Wrangel ignore the feint, and conquer all of Bavaria except Munich.
• Roger Williams returns from England with a charter for Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
• Koniecpolski routs the Tatars at Brody, and Polish king Władysław IV negotiates an alliance with the Cossacks.  But Koniecpolski sickens and dies. Not only that, just to spite the King, the Sejm votes to discontinue the war with the Tatar Khanate of the Crimea.  Cossack hetman Bogdan Chmielnicki had fought alongside Koniecpolski, but Polish authorities stand idly by while a minor Polish nobleman steals his estate and his fianceé.  Chmielnicki's feelings of betrayal will cause much grief for Poland in later years.
• Deli Huseyin Pasha conquers Crete for the Ottoman Empire from Venice.
• An earthquake destroys Vieste's 11th century cathedral.

1645 - 1646 - 1647

How They Were Made - 17th Century