Early Modern
Rampjaar (1672): The Dutch Republic's Disaster Year
The Republic survived invasion behind the flooded Water Line, but the De Witt regime collapsed, the brothers were murdered, and William III became stadtholder and leader of the state.
Region
Europe
Early Modern
Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678): Louis XIV Invades the Republic
The Dutch Republic survived intact; France gained the Franche-Comté and a belt of towns in the Spanish Netherlands at the Peace of Nijmegen.
Early Modern
Marquette and Jolliet Expedition (1673): Down the Mississippi
The expedition charted the upper and middle Mississippi and showed that the river flowed to the Gulf of Mexico, not the Pacific, opening the way for French claims in the interior.
Early Modern
Royal Observatory, Greenwich (1675): Charles II's Observatory
England gained a national observatory whose star catalogues, almanacs and time signals made Greenwich the reference point for world longitude and time.
Early Modern
Leeuwenhoek Discovers Microorganisms (1676): The Animalcules
Leeuwenhoek's letter of 9 October 1676 gave the first detailed descriptions of microorganisms, later confirmed by the Royal Society in 1677.
Early Modern
Affair of the Poisons (1677–1682): Scandal at Louis XIV's Court
A special court investigated several hundred people and sentenced 36 to death; the king closed the inquiry in 1682, shielded Madame de Montespan and issued new laws on poisons and fortune-telling.
Early Modern
Great Plague of Vienna (1679): Epidemic in the Habsburg Capital
A major bubonic plague epidemic devastated Vienna; Leopold I vowed a memorial that became the Plague Column on the Graben.
Early Modern
William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania (1681)
Penn received a vast proprietary colony, which he organised as a refuge for Quakers with broad religious freedom and a planned capital at Philadelphia.
Early Modern
Palace of Versailles: Louis XIV Moves the Court There (1682)
Versailles became the official residence of the French kings and the centre of government until 1789, and a model for palaces across Europe.
Early Modern
La Salle's Mississippi Expedition (1682): Claiming Louisiana
La Salle reached the Gulf of Mexico and claimed the whole Mississippi basin for France as Louisiana; his later attempt to settle the river mouth ended in disaster.
Early Modern
Great Turkish War (1683-1699): The Holy League Rolls Back
Holy League victory; the Ottomans ceded most of Hungary, Transylvania, Podolia and the Morea at Karlowitz in 1699 and Azov to Russia in 1700.
Early Modern
Battle of Vienna (1683): Sobieski and the Ottoman Defeat
The relief army destroyed the Ottoman siege, saving Vienna and beginning the Holy League war that drove the Ottomans out of Hungary.