1683

Now the bitterness of death is past.

-Algernon Sidney, saying farewell to his wife before his execution

Ow, now the Plot is all come out,
 That caus'd our Doubts and Fears,
And all the Tribe that made the Rout,
    Both Commoners and Peers;
The mighty Patrons of the Cause,
    'Gainst Pagan Popery,
Who rais'd a Gibbet for our Foes,
    And hey Boys up go we.

-"Murder out at last", Tory satirical ballad by John Murcot

Born in 1683:

• English poet Elijah Fenton.
• English poet Edward Young.
• English actress Anne Oldfield.
• Scurrilous English pamphleteer Edmund Curll.
• French composer Jean-Phillipe Rameau.
• Italian mathematician Giovanni Poleni.
• French playwright Thomas-Simon Gueullette.
• French physicist René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur.
• German composer Johann Christoph Graupner.
• German composer Johann David Heinichen.
• English theologian Conyers Middleton, foil for Edward Gibbon.
• French painter Antoine Pesne.
• Italian violin maker Carlo Bergonzi, pupil of Antinio Stradivari.
• Italian composer Francesco Maria Benedetti.
• Italian composer Roque Ceruti.
• Dutch poet Pieter Langendyk.
• German composer Meinrad Spiess.
• Future Bourbon King Philip V of Spain, grandson of Louis XIV and pretext for The War of the Spanish Succession.
• Future Elector of Hanover and King of Great Britain and Ireland George II, as well as Caroline of Ansbach, his future Queen Consort.

• English fishing maven Izaak Walton.
• English Puritan theologian John Owen.
• English dramatist and theater manager Thomas Killigrew.
• English poet John Oldham.
• English mathematician John Collins.
• German poet Ferdinand von Fürstenberg.
• German composer Andreas Fromm.
• German composer Philipp Friedrich Böddecker.
• GErman composer Johann Sebastiani.
• Dutch painter Willem van Aelst.
• Dutch painter Nicolaes Berghem.
• Dutch painter Jan Davidsz de Heem.
• Italian architect and mathematician Guarino Guarini.
• Austrian violin maker Jacob Stainer.
• English composer John Hingston.
• Portuguese sculptor Manuel Pereira.
• George Duca, prince of Moldavia. Stephen Petriceicu outlives his rivals and takes the throne.
• John Lambert, Parliamentary general during the English Civil War.
• Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island.
• Jean Baptiste Colbert, chief minister of French king Louis XIV.
• Queen Marie-Thérèse of France, wife of Louis XIV.
• Several Whig politicians for suspicion of involvement in the Rye House Plot (see below):
• Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury.
• Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex.
• English Lord William Russell, see below.
• English politician Algernon Sidney, see below.
• Italian-born composer Alessandro Poglietti, killed in the siege of Vienna.
• 15,000 Turkish soldiers and 4,000 Polish, Austrian, and Bavarian soldiers before Vienna, see below.
• Kara Mustafa, Grand Vizier of The Ottoman Empire, see below.

• Anton Van Leeuwenhoek looks into his microscope and discovers the bacteria that cause gingivitis.
• Charlottenburg Palace is completed in Copenhagen.
• Takakazu Seki Kowa publishes a study of determinants.
• Isaac Newton describes how tides are the effect of gravity.
• Cristopher Wren designs Piccadilly Circus and St. James' Place.
• William Penn enters into a treaty with the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) Indians, granting him southeastern Pennsylvania.
• New York's legislature meets for the very first fime in Fort Orange.

(Albany, Dutchess, Kings, Manhattan, Orange, Queens, Richmond County, NYRichmond, Suffolk, Ulster,  and Westchester Counties are created).
• Siamese King Phra Narai makes Greek adventurer Constantine Phaulkon his first minister.
• The Siege of Vienna
• (March) Polish King Jan III Sobieski and Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I sign a mutual defense treaty in Warsaw.
• (July) An Ottoman army of 100,000 arrives before Vienna and lays siege.
• (August) Vienna is running out of food and ammunition, and the walls have been breached in several places.
• (September) Sobieski and 30,000 Polish troops arrive before Vienna. Sobieski leads a Bavarian-Polish cavalry charge into the middle of the Turkish camp, and the Viennese garrison breaks out of the city and attacks the Turkish army from the rear; the siege becomes a rout.  Kara Mustafa's son is captured.  Although Kara Mustafa escapes, Sultan Mohammed IV has him garrotted for his humiliating failure.  The next 250 years will see the once-mighty Ottoman Empire degenerate into 'The Sick man of Europe'.
• Among the fighters is 20-year-old Prince Eugene of Savoy, who had come to Vienna after being refused a commission by Louis XIV.
• A Jewish baker in Vienna invents the Bagel in honor of Sobieski's victory.
• English king Charles II and his brother James  (Duke of York) are expected to go to the races at Newmarket.  Several Whig politicians plan to assassinate them at a Hoddeston, Hertfordshire watering-hole, Rumbold's Rye House, on the way back.  The jig is up when Charles leaves earlier than expected.  Of the leaders, the Earl of Shaftesbury is captured and  the Duke of Monmouth escapes to France. In a round-up of the usual suspects, William Russell and Algernon Sidney are also arrested. Although the evidence against them is flimsy, Russell is beheaded, Sidney hanged.  Executioner Jack Ketch dulls his hatchet before striking.  (Some sources indicate that there were several plots).
• Laurens Cornelis van Graff leads eight ships full of buccaneers in a sack of Veracruz.

1682 - 1683 - 1684

How They Were Made - 17th Century