Ahmad Shah Durrani's army on its way…
March 1748 CE
The invaders' artillery store catches fire in the battle and roasts thousands of Durrani soldiers alive.
Ahmad Shah Durrani must therefore retreat at night.
The panicked Mughal forces do not chase them but the invaders are harassed by Sikh bands under Charat Singh and Baba Ala Singh, a Jat Sikh chieftain.
Sikhs loot their booty and horses while they are on the way back to Kabul.
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The Russo-Swedish War of 1741–1743, which had quickly turned from Swedish attack into Russian occupation of Finland, again underlined the importance of developing fortifications to Finland.
The lack of a base of operations for naval forces makes it difficult for the Swedish navy to operate in the area.
Other European states are also concerned about this circumstance, especially France, with which Sweden has concluded a military alliance.
After lengthy debate, the Swedish parliament had decided in 1747 to fortify the Russian frontier and to establish a naval base at Helsinki as a counter to Kronstadt.
The frontier fortifications are established in Svartholm near the small town of Lovisa.
Sweden starts building the fortress in 1748, Finland still being a part of the Swedish kingdom.
Augustin Ehrensvärd (1710–1772) and his gigantic fortification work on the islands off the town of Helsinki brings the district a new and unexpected importance.
The fortification of Helsinki and its islands begins in January 1748, when Ehrensvärd, as a young lieutenant colonel, comes to direct the operations. (Fortifications will also built on the Russian side of the new border during the eighteenth century, and some of the Swedish ones will be augmented.
There are two main aspects to Ehrensvärd's design for the fortress: a series of independent fortifications on each of the linked islands and, at the very heart of the complex, a navy dockyard.
Initially the soldiers are housed in the vaults of the fortifications, while the officers have specially built quarters integrated into the baroque cityscape composition of the overall plan.
The most ambitious plan will be left only half complete: a baroque square on Iso Mustasaari partly based on the model of Place Vendôme in Paris.
As the construction work progresses, more residential buildings are built, many following the shape of the fortification lines.
Ehrensvärd and some of the other officers are keen artists and produce oil paintings presenting a view of life in the fortress during its construction, and giving the impression of a lively "fortress town" community
Ehrensvärd's plan contains two fortifications: a sea fortress at Svartholm and a place d'armes at Helsingfors.
Sveaborg is to be just the sea fortress with additional landside fortifications comprising the rest.
Additional plans are made for fortifying the Hanko Peninsula, but these are postponed.
Construction starts in the spring of 1748, continue to expand, and by September has a construction crew of around around twenty-five hundred men.
Finding life at that university not to his liking, he had transferred in the spring of 1746 to Leipzig, where he joined a circle of young men of letters who contributed to the Bremer Beiträge, the designation for the weekly magazine Neue Beyträge zum Vergnügen des Verstandes und Witzes ("New contributions to the pleasure of the mind and wit").
In this periodical the first three cantos of Der Messias are published anonymously in hexameter verse in 1748.
A new era in German literature has commenced, and the identity of the author soon becomes known.
In Leipzig he has also written a number of odes, the best known of which is An meine Freund (1747) (afterwards recast as Wingolf in 1767).
He leaves the university in 1748 and becomes a private tutor in the family of a relative at Langensalza, where unrequited love for a cousin (the "Fanny" of his odes) disturbs his peace of mind.
Born at Quedlinburg as the eldest son of a lawyer, Klopstock had spent a happy childhood, both in his birthplace and on the estate of Friedeburg on the Saale, which his father later rented.
Having been given more attention to his physical than to his mental development, he had grown up strong and healthy and is considered an excellent horseman.
He had returned to Quedlinburg in his thirteenth year and attended the gymnasium there, and in 1739 went on to the famous classical school named Schulpforta, where he soon became adept in Greek and Latin versification, and wrote some meritorious idylls and odes in German.
Influenced by Milton's Paradise Lost, with which he had become acquainted through Bodmer's translation, he abandoned his original intention of making Henry the Fowler the hero of an epic in favor of a religious epic,
His childhood and early teens coincided with the occupation of Kakheti by the Ottomans from 1732 until 1735, when they were ousted from Georgia by Nader Shah of Iran, in his two successive campaigns of 1734 and 1735, by which the latter had quickly reestablished Persian rule over Georgia.
Teimuraz had sided with the Persians and was installed as a Persian wali (governor) in neighboring Kartli.
Teimuraz and Heraclius had remained loyal to the shah, partly in order to prevent the comeback of the rival Mukhrani branch, whose fall early in the 1720s had opened the way to Teimuraz's accession in Kartli.
From 1737 to 1739, Heraclius had commanded a Georgian auxiliary force during Nader’s expedition in India and gained a reputation of an able military commander.
He then served as a lieutenant to his father and assumed the regency when Teimuraz was briefly summoned for consultations in the Persian capital of Isfahan in 1744.
During his father's absence, Heraclius defeated a coup attempt by the rival Georgian prince Abdullah Beg of the Mukhrani dynasty, and helped Teimuraz suppress the aristocratic opposition to the Persian hegemony led by Givi Amilakhvari.
As a reward, Nader had granted the kingship of Kartli to Teimuraz and of Kakheti to Heraclius in 1744, and arranged the marriage of his nephew Ali-Qoli Khan, who eventually would succeed him as Adil Shah, to Teimuraz’s daughter Kethevan, yet, both Georgian kingdoms had remained under heavy Persian tribute until Nader was assassinated in 1747.
Teimuraz and Heraclius tske advantage of the ensuing political instability in Persia to assert their independence and expel Persian garrisons from all key positions in Georgia, including Tbilisi.
In close cooperation with one another, they manage to prevent a new revolt by the Mukhranian supporters fomented by Ebrahim Khan, brother of Adil Shah, in 1748.
They conclude an anti-Persian alliance with the khans of Azerbaijan, who are particularly vulnerable to the aggression from Persian warlords and agree to recognize Heraclius's supremacy in eastern Transcaucasia.
The death of the Nizam-ul-Mulk, the Nizam of Hyderabad, in 1748, had sparked a civil war for succession, now known as the Second Carnatic War, in the south between Mir Ahmad Ali Khan (Nasir Jung), the son of the Nizam-ul-Mulk, and Hidayat Muhi ud-Din Sa'adu'llah Khan (Muzaffar Jung), the grandson of Nizam-ul-Mulk.
This opens a window of opportunity for Chanda Sahib, who wants to become Nawab of Arcot.
He joins the cause of Muzaffar Jung and begins to conspire against the Nawab Anwaruddin Muhammed Khan in Arcot.
Together, they plan to gather their powers in the south with the help of the Nawab of Kadapa and ally themselves with the French.
Their plans score a success when Hindus from Kurnnool ally with them.
From the reign of Henry IV, Toulon has functioned as a naval military port, Marseille having become a merchant port, and served as the headquarters of the galleys and of the convict rowers (galériens).
After the incorporation of the galleys, the system sends the majority of these latter to Toulon, the others to Rochefort and to Brest, where they work in the arsenal.
Convict rowers also go to a large number of other French and non-French cities: Nice, Le Havre, Nîmes, Lorient, Cherbourg, Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, La Spezia, Antwerp and Civitavecchia; but Toulon, Brest and Rochefort predominate.
At Toulon the convicts remain (in chains) on the galleys, which are moored as hulks in the harbor.
Their shore prisons have the name bagnes ("baths"), a name given to such penal establishments first by the Italians (bagno), and allegedly deriving from the prison at Constantinople situated close by or attached to the great baths there.
All French convicts will continue to use the name galérien even after galleys have gone out of use; only after the French Revolution will the new authorities officially change the hated name—with all it signifies—to forçat ("forced")
The first time any part of them was unearthed had ben in 1599, when the digging of an underground channel to divert the river Sarno ran into ancient walls covered with paintings and inscriptions.
The architect Domenico Fontana was called in; he unearthed a few more frescoes, then covered them over again, and nothing more came of the discovery.
A wall inscription had mentioned a decurio Pompeii ("the town councilor of Pompeii") but its reference to the long-forgotten Roman city was missed.
Fontana's covering over the paintings has been seen both as censorship—in view of the frequent sexual content of such paintings—and as a broad-minded act of preservation for later times, as he would have known that paintings of the hedonistic kind later found in some Pompeian villas were not considered in good taste in the climate of the counter-reformation.
Herculaneum had been properly rediscovered in 1738 by workmen digging for the foundations of a summer palace for the King of Naples, Charles of Bourbon.
Pompeii is rediscovered as the result of intentional excavations in 1748 by the Spanish military engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre.
Both towns will be excavated to reveal many intact buildings and wall paintings.
Charles of Bourbon will continue to take great interest in the findings even after becoming king of Spain, because the display of antiquities reinforces the political and cultural power of Naples.
The Spirit of the Laws (French: De l'esprit des lois, originally spelled De l'esprit des loix; also sometimes called The Spirit of Laws) is a treatise on political theory first published anonymously by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, in 1748 with the help of Claudine Guérin de Tencin.
Montesquieu has spent around twenty-one years researching and writing De l'esprit des lois, covering such topics as law, social life, and the study of anthropology and providing more than three thousand commendations.
In this political treatise Montesquieu pleads in favor of a constitutional system of government and the separation of powers, the ending of slavery, the preservation of civil liberties and the law, and the idea that political institutions ought to reflect the social and geographical aspects of each community.
In his classification of political systems, Montesquieu defines three main kinds: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
As he defines them, Republican political systems vary depending on how broadly they extend citizenship rights—those that extend citizenship relatively broadly are termed democratic republics, while those that restrict citizenship more narrowly are termed aristocratic republics.
The distinction between monarchy and despotism hinges on whether or not a fixed set of laws exists that can restrain the authority of the ruler: if so, the regime counts as a monarchy; if not, it counts as despotism.
A second major theme in De l'esprit des lois concerns political liberty and the best means of preserving it.
"Political liberty" is Montesquieu's concept of what we might call today personal security, especially insofar as this is provided for through a system of dependable and moderate laws.
He distinguishes this view of liberty from two other, misleading views of political liberty.
The first is the view that liberty consists in collective self-government—i.e. that liberty and democracy are the same.
The second is the view that liberty consists in being able to do whatever one wants without constraint.
Not only are these latter two not genuine political liberty, he thinks, they can both be hostile to it.
Generally speaking, establishing political liberty on a sound footing requires two things: The separation of the powers of government, and the appropriate framing of civil and criminal laws so as to ensure personal security.
The third major contribution of De l'esprit des lois is to the field of political sociology, which Montesquieu is often credited with more or less inventing.
The bulk of the treatise, in fact, concerns how geography and climate interact with particular cultures to produce the spirit of a people.
This spirit, in turn, inclines that people toward certain sorts of political and social institutions, and away from others.
Originally published anonymously partly because Montesquieu's works are subject to censorship, its influence outside France will be aided by its rapid translation into other languages.
The British capture the fortress of Louisbourg during the War of the Austrian Succession, but then cede it back to France in 1748.
New England colonists resent their losses of lives, as well as the effort and expenditure involved in subduing the fortress, only to have it returned to their erstwhile enemy.
Afghanistan, being a poor and backward country, cannot provide subsistence to its population or provide a financial support for running the government.
The primary objective of Ahmad Shah Durrani's invasion of India is to plunder the subcontinent's wealth of gold and precious gems, and to enslave men, women, and children to sell in the markets of Central Asia.
A secondary objective is to establish political hegemony in India, as he is familiar with the weakness of the Mughal administration in Delhi.
Crossed the Khyber Pass in December 1747 with forty thousand men, he begins by occupying Peshawar, the first military post in Indian beyond Afghanistan.
Durrani next reaches Shahdara Bagh, a suburb of Lahore, on January 11, 1748, and defeats Shahnawaz Khan and Adina the following day.
His forces sack and absorb Lahore.
Flushed with victory, Durrani commands his troops to march Delhi.
All sail is immediately made; HMS Nottingham under Captain Robert Harland, having at 1 am closed with the chase, commences the action and a running fight of six hours duration ensues.
The rear admiral, having observed the size of the ship, sends the sixty-gun HMS Portland under Captain Stevens to proceed to the Nottingham's assistance.
By the time the Portland had arrived up, the French ship, after receiving a few shots from the Portland, is forced to strike her colors.
The Magnanime has forty-five killed and one hundred and five wounded out of a crew of six hundred and eighty-six men; Nottingham has sixteen killed and eighteen wounded while Portland, catching up and joining the fight an hour later, has only four wounded.
Magnanime, being a new ship of less than four years old, is added to the British navy under the same name.