1672

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File:De bestorming van Coevorden, 30 december 1672, SK-A-486.jpg

December 30: The Dutch Republic retakes Coevorden from the French Army after a string of losses, closing out the year of disaster, the "Rampjaar".

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File:Louis XIV crosses the Rhine at Lobith - Lodewijk XIV trekt bij het Tolhuis bij Lobith de Rijn over, 12 juni 1672 (Adam Frans van der Meulen).jpg

June 12: King Louis XIV of France crosses the Rhine at Lobith.

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Events

File:Jan de Baen- De lijken van de gebroeders de Witt.jpg

August 20: Cornelis and Johan de Witt are killed by a mob in The Hague.

January–March

January 2 – After the government of England is unable to pay the nation's debts, King Charles II decrees the Stop of the Exchequer, the suspension of payments for one year "upon any warrant, securities or orders, whether registered or not registered therein, and payable within that time, excepting only such payments as shall grow due upon orders on the subsidy, according to the Act of Parliament, and orders and securities upon the fee farm rents, both which are to be proceeded upon as if such a stop had never been made." The money saved by not paying debts is redirected toward the expenses of the upcoming war with the Dutch Republic, but the effect is for the halt by banks for extending further credit to the Crown. Before the end of the year, the suspension of payments is extended from December 31 to May 31, and then to January 31, 1674.
January 11 – The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, national science academy for England, elects Isaac Newton to its membership, and then demonstrates Newton's reflecting telescope to King Charles II.
January 13 – Pope Clement X issues regulations for the prerequisites of removing relics of Roman Catholic saints from sacred cemeteries, requiring advance approval from the Cardinal Vicar in Rome before the remains of the saint can be allowed for view. The Cardinal Vicar is directed to bar regular persons from viewing remains, and to limit inspection to high prelates and to princes.
January 25 – The Theatre Royal, located at the time on Bridges Street in London, burns down.<ref>Brian Dobbs, Drury Lane: Three Centuries of the Theatre Royal, 1663–1971 (Cassell, 1972) p. 51</ref> A replacement structure is built on Drury Lane in 1674.
February 16 (February 6, 1671 O.S.) – Isaac Newton sends a paper for publication regarding his experiments on the refraction of light through glass prisms and makes the first identification of the "primary colors" of visible light on the electromagnetic spectrum, reporting that "The Original or primary colours are, Red, Yellow, Green, Blew, and a Violet-purple, together with Orange, Indico, and an indefinite variety of Intermediate gradations."<ref>"A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton, Professor of the Mathematicks in the University of Cambridge; Containing His New Theory about Light and Colors: Sent by the Author to the Publisher from Cambridge, Febr. 6. 1671/72; In Order to be Communicated to the R. Society", Philosophical Transactions, February 19, 1671/72</ref>
February 25 – Willem, Prince of Orange, the 21-year-old Stadtholder of Gelderland and Utrecht, is approved by the States General of the Dutch Republic to command the Dutch States Army for the impending war with England.
March 12 – Action of 12 March 1672, a 2-day naval engagement between an English coastal patrol and a Dutch Smyrna convoy off the south coast of England. The English fleet suffers severe damage while most of the Dutch convoy escapes, although one of the Dutch commanders (De Haaze) is killed and one warship taken as a prize (Klein Hollandia) sinks; the latter will be rediscovered in 2019.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
March 15 – Charles II of England issues the Royal Declaration of Indulgence, suspending execution of Penal Laws against Protestant nonconformists and Roman Catholics in his realms;<ref name="Cassell's Chronology">Template:Cite book</ref> this will be withdrawn the following year under pressure from the Parliament of England.
March 16 – At the Synod of Jerusalem, presided over by Dositheos II of Jerusalem, the 68 bishops and representatives from the whole of Eastern Orthodox Christendom close by approving the Orthodox dogma against the challenge of Protestantism, declaring against "the falsehoods of the adversaries which they have devised against the Eastern Church" and making a goal of "reformation of their innovations and for their return to the catholic and apostolic church in which their forefathers also were."<ref>The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem, Sometimes Called the Council of Bethlehem, Holden Under Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1672, translated by J. N. W. B. Robertson (Thomas Baker publishing, 1899) pp. 173-181</ref>
March 17 – The Third Anglo-Dutch War begins as the Kingdom of England declares war on the Dutch Republic.<ref name="Cassell's Chronology"/>

April–June

April 8 – France declares war on the Dutch Republic, invading the country on April 29.
May 2 – John Maitland becomes Duke of Lauderdale and Earl of March.
June 1 – Münster and Cologne begin their invasion of the Dutch Republic; hence 1672 becomes known as het rampjaar ("the disaster year") in the Netherlands.
June 7 – Third Anglo-Dutch War – Battle of Solebay: An indecisive sea battle results, between the Dutch Republic, and the joined forces of England and France.<ref name=CBH1672>Template:Cite book</ref>
June 12 – Battle of Tolhuis: French forces under King Louis XIV cross the Rhine into the Netherlands; the city of Utrecht is occupied by the French Army.

July–September

July 4 – William III of Orange is appointed Stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland.
August 20 – Johan de Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland and his brother Cornelis de Witt are killed by an Orangist mob in The Hague.
September 10 – William III of Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, dismisses nine of the regenten who lead cities in the Netherlands, after being granted authority by the States-General.
September 15 – In India, Admiral Mai Nayak Bhandari of the Maratha Empire captures the island of Khanderi.
September 16 – The Board of Trade is created in England by a merger of the Council of Trade and the Council of Foreign Plantations, both of which had been created by King Charles II in 1660, under the name The Board of Trade and Plantations. The Earl of Shaftesbury is appointed as the first Lord of Trade, administering the Board until its dissolution in 1676.
September 26 – General Raimondo Montecuccoli, commander of the army of the Holy Roman Empire, joins forces with the Brandenburg troops commanded by Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg and the two groups assemble at Halberstadt, to attack the French and the bishops of Münster and Cologne.<ref>Olaf van Nimwegen, The Dutch Army and the Military Revolutions, 1588-1688 (Boydell Press, 2010) p. 448</ref>

October–December

October 2 – Manuel de Cendoya, Spain's Governor of Florida, breaks ground for the construction of the Castillo de San Marcos, a masonry fortress designed to protect St. Augustine.<ref>Albert C. Manucy, The Building of Castello de San Marcos (U.S. National Park Service, 2014)</ref> Governor Cendoya follows on November 9 with the ceremonial laying for the first stone for the foundation.
October 18 – The Treaty of Buchach, between the Ottoman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, is signed.
November 24 – Five-year-old Sikandar Adil Shah is enthroned as the last Sultan of Bijapur (located in southwestern India in what is now the Karnataka state) upon the death of his father, the Sultan Ali Adil Shah II. In 1686, the sultanate of Bijapur is conquered and annexed by the Mughal Empire.
November 28 – After more than five years of administration of the Treasury of England by a five-member commission, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, one of the commission members, becomes the Lord High Treasurer of England.
December 18
- Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp ends her regency of the Swedish Empire after more than 12 years, having exercised power in the name of her minor son, Charles XI, since the death of her husband Karl X Gustav in 1660. Hedwig Eleonora had served as the chair of the six-member Regency Council.
- An English invasion force captures the Caribbean island of Tobago from Dutch colonists and destroys the settlement.
December 23 – French astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini discovers Rhea, a previously-unknown satellite of the planet Saturn. Rhea is the second-largest overall, and the third moon of Saturn to be discovered by Earth astronomers, Titan having been found by Christiaan Huygens on March 25, 1655 and Iapetus by Cassini on October 25, 1671.
December 30 – Troops of the Dutch Republic, under the command of Carl von Rabenhaupt, are able to reclaim lost territory for the first time in the Third Anglo-Dutch War, liberating Coevorden, which had been forced to surrender to France on July 1. The moment, a boost for morale in what is remembered in Dutch history as the Rampjaar (the "Disaster Year"), is later memorialized in a painting by Pieter Wouwerman, The Storming of Coevorden.

Undated

Richard Hoare becomes a partner in the London goldsmith's business which, as private banking house C. Hoare & Co., will survive through to the 21st century.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Foundation of the Chorina Comedy, the first theater in Russia.