January–March •
January 21 – After being tricked into deserting a battle against India's
Mughal Empire by the rebel
Sayyid brothers, Prince
Azz-ud-din Mirza is blinded on orders of the Emperor
Farrukhsiyar as punishment. •
February 7 – The
Siege of Tönning (a fortress of the
Swedish Empire and now located in Germany in the state of
Schleswig-Holstein) ends after almost a year, as Danish forces force the surrender of the remaining 1,600 defenders. The fortress is then leveled by the Danes. •
February 28 – (February 17 old style) Russia's Tsar
Peter the Great issues a decree requiring compulsory education in mathematics for children of government officials and nobility, applying to children between the ages of 10 and 15 years old. •
March 2 – (February 19 old style) The
Battle of Storkyro is fought between troops of the Swedish Empire and the Russian Empire, near what is now the village of Napue in
Finland. The outnumbered Swedish forces, under the command of General
Carl Gustaf Armfeldt, suffer 1,600 troops killed in action while the Russians led by General
Mikhail Golitsyn lose 400 men. •
March 7 – The
Treaty of Rastatt is signed between
Austria and
France, concluding the
War of the Spanish Succession between them. Austria receives the Spanish territories in Italy (the
Kingdom of Naples,
Duchy of Milan and
Kingdom of Sardinia), as well as the
Southern Netherlands; and from France,
Freiburg and
Landau. The Austrian
Habsburg Empire reaches its largest territorial extent yet, with
Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor succeeding
Philip V of Spain, as ruler in the ceded territories.
April–June •
April 11 – France signs five separate treaties— with Great Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia and Savoy— to end hostilities in the War of the Spanish Succession following the negotiations of the
Peace of Utrecht. •
April 12 – Italian Jesuit missionary
Niccolò Gianpriamo is dispatched from
Portugal on an evangelical trip to Asia starting with the Portuguese Indian colony of
Goa, where he arrives after five months. •
May 19 –
Anne, Queen of Great Britain, refuses to allow members of the
House of Hanover to settle in Britain during her lifetime. •
May 20 –
Johann Sebastian Bach leads the first performance of his cantata for Pentecost,
Erschallet, ihr Lieder, BWV 172, at the chapel of
Schloss Weimar. •
June 3 – The city of
Kassel in
Germany inaugurates the summer tradition of the "water stairs" or "great cascades" (
Grossen Kaskaden) emptying from the base of the
Hercules monument down to the Wilhelmshöhe castle. •
June 20 – In France,
Henri-Charles du Cambout de Coislin, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Metz, condemns the papal bull
Unigenitus, issued by
Pope Clement XI against the 1671 commentary by
Pasquier Quesnel of the four Gospels and inflaming the
Jansenist controversy. •
June 26 – Spain and the Netherlands sign a peace treaty to end hostilities between those two nations in the War of the Spanish Succession.
July–September •
July 8 –
Longitude prize: The
Parliament of Great Britain votes "to offer a reward for such person or persons as shall discover the
Longitude" (£10,000 for any method capable of determining a ship's longitude within 1 degree; £15,000, within 40 minutes, and £20,000 within ½ a degree). •
July 27 – The
Imperial Russian Navy gains its first important victory against the
Swedish Navy in the
Battle of Gangut. •
August 1 – Georg Ludwig von Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Elector of
Hanover, becomes King
George I of Great Britain and Ireland, on the death of
Queen Anne. Anne's death brings an end to the reign of the
House of Stuart, in that her half-brother
James Francis Edward Stuart, the eldest son of
James II of England, has been ineligible for the British throne based on the
Act of Settlement 1701 had barred members of the
Roman Catholic church from becoming monarchs. George of Hanover, as great-grandson of James I of England and a second cousin to Anne, is deemed the eldest living Protestant descendant of James I. •
September 11 –
War of the Spanish Succession:
Barcelona is taken after a
year's siege, and
Catalonia surrenders to Spanish and French Bourbon armies. •
September 18 –
George I, the new King of Great Britain and Ireland, arrives in Britain for the first time in his life, after having departed
Hannover and sailing from the Netherlands. •
September 29 –
The Great Hatred: the
Cossacks of the
Tsardom of Russia kill about 800 people overnight on the Finnish island of
Hailuoto.
October–December •
October 20 – The
coronation of
George I of Great Britain and Ireland takes place in
Westminster Abbey, a little less than three months after George became the new British monarch. A century later, in 1815, the land is ceded to Great Britain and later merged with neighboring colonies to form what is now
Guyana. •
November 30 – King
Philip V of Spain issues a decree reorganizing the
Spanish government to create four ministries, with the Secretary of State being the chief minister, predecessor to the office of
Prime Minister of Spain.
José de Grimaldo becomes the first person to have the chief ministry. •
December 9 –
Ottoman–Venetian War (1714–1718): The
Ottoman Empire declares war on the
Republic of Venice.
Date unknown •
Archbishop Tenison's School, the world's earliest surviving mixed gender school, is established by
Thomas Tenison,
Archbishop of Canterbury, in
Croydon, south of London, England. •
Louis Juchereau de St. Denis establishes Fort St. Jean Baptiste, at the site of present day
Natchitoches, Louisiana (the first permanent European settlement in the
Louisiana Territory, after
Biloxi (
1699) and
Mobile, Alabama (
1702) were separated). •
Worcester College,
University of Oxford is founded (formerly
Gloucester College, closed during the
Dissolution of the Monasteries). •
Stockholm County is founded. • The river
Kander (Switzerland) is redirected into
Lake Thun. == Births ==