Louis is the French form of the Old Frankish given name Chlodowig and one of two English forms, the other being Lewis ().

Etymology

The name Louis (through the intermediate form Clovis) derives from the Frankish name ᚺᛚᛟᛞᛟᚹᛁᚷ (in runic alphabet) or *Hlōdowik or *Hlōdowig (in Latin alphabet). Traditionally, this name is considered to be composed of two elements, deriving from both Proto-Germanic *hlūdaz ("loud, famous") and *wiganą ("to battle, to fight") respectively, resulting in the traditional practice of translating Clovis' name as meaning "famous warrior" or "famous in battle".

However, scholars have pointed out that Gregory of Tours consequently transcribes the names of various Merovingian royal names containing the first element as chlodo-. The use of a close-mid back protruded vowel (o), rather than the expected close back rounded vowel (u) which Gregory does use in various other Germanic names (i.e. Fredegundis, Arnulfus, Gundobadus, etc.) opens up the possibility that the first element instead derives from Proto-Germanic *hlutą ("lot, share, portion"), giving the meaning of the name as "loot bringer" or "plunder (bringing) warrior". This hypothesis is supported by the fact that if the first element is taken to mean "famous", then the name of Chlodomer (one of Clovis' sons) would contain two elements (*hlūdaz and *mērijaz) both meaning "famous", which would be highly uncommon within the typical Germanic name structure.

Variant forms

• Afrikaans: Louis, Lodewyk, Ludwig
• Arabic: لويس
• Albanian: Luigj, Ludovik
• Ancient Germanic: Chlodovech, Clodovicus, Ludovicus, Clovis, Hludowig
• Armenian: Լուդովիկ (Loudovik)
• Basque: Aloxi, Koldobika, Luki, Koldo
• Breton: Loeiz, Loïc
• Bengali: লুইস, লুডউইগ, romanized: Luis/Luish, Luduig
• Bulgarian: Людовик (Lyudovik)
• Catalan: Lluís
• Chinese Simplified: 路易 (Lùyì)
• Chinese Traditional: 路易 (Lùyì)
• Croatian: Alojzije, Ljudevit, Ludovik, Luj, Alojz
• Czech: Ludvík, Alois, Luděk
• Danish: Ludvig, Lodvig
• Dutch: Lodewijk, Lode, Lodevicus, Loe, Louis, Lowie, Lowieke, Ludo, Ludovicus
• English: Louis, Louie, Lou, Lewis, Lewes, Lewie, Lew, Lewy or Luey; Ludovic, Lodvig, Lodovig, Lutwidge
• Esperanto: Ludoviko, Luĉjo
• Faroese: Ludvík
• French: Louis, Ludovic, Clovis
• Galician: Lois, Luís
• Georgian: ხლოდვიგი (Khlodvigi), ლუდვიგი (ludvigi), ლუდოვიკო(ludoviko), ლუი (lui)
• German: Ludwig, Alois, Aloysius, Lutz
• Greek: Λουδοβίκος (Loudovíkos), Λοΐζος(Loizos)
• Hawaiian: Lui
• Hindi: लुइस (Lu'is)
• Hungarian: Lajos, Alajos
• Irish: Alaois, Alabhaois, Laoiseach, Lughaidh
• Indonesian: Aloysius, Louis, Ludowikus
• Icelandic: Loðvík
• Italian: Aloigi, Aloisi, Aloisio, Luigi, Lodovico, Ludovico, Alvise, Gigi, Gigio, Gigino, Ginetto, Gino, Luigino, Vico
• Japanese: ルイ(Rui)
• Korean: 루이 (Lui), 루이스 (Luiseu)
• Latin: Ludovicus, Aloysius
• Latvian: Ludviķis, Ludis, Ludvigs, Luijs, Luiss, Luī, Aloizs, Aloiss
• Lithuanian: Liudvikas, Aloyzas, Liudas
• Macedonian: Лудвиг (Ludvig), Луј (Luj), Људевит (Ljudevit)
• Medieval Occitan: Aloys, Aloysius
• Norwegian: Ludvig, Lodve
• Occitan: Loís
• Persian: لویی
• Polish: Ludwik, Alojzy
• Portuguese: Luís, Aloísio, Aluísio, Ludovico (Luiz is an archaic form), Luisinho
• Provençal: Louïs, Louei, Louvis
• Punjabi: ਲੂਯਿਸ (Lūyis)
• Romanian: Aloisiu, Ludovic
• Russian: Людовик (Lyudovik)
• Scottish Gaelic: Luthais
• Sicilian: Luiggi, Ludovicu
• Serbian: Луј (Luj), Људевит (Ljudevit)
• Slovak: Ľudovít, Alojz
• Slovene: Alojz, Lojze, Ljudevit, Luj, Alojzij, Ludvik
• Spanish: Luis, Ludovico
• Swedish: Ludvig, Love, Ludde
• Tamil: லூயிஸ் (Lūyis)
• Telugu: లూయిస్ (Lūyis)
• Thai: หลุยส์ (H̄luys̄̒)
• Ukrainian: Людовик (Lyudovyk)
• Welsh: Lewis, Lewys

Feminine variants

• Arabic: لويز
• Belarusian: Луіза (Luiza)
• Chinese Simplified: 路易丝 (Lùyìsī)
• Chinese Traditional: 路易絲 (Lùyìsī)
• Croatian: Alojzija
• Danish: Louise
• Dutch: Louisa, Louise, Ludovica
• English: Louise, Louisa, Lou, Louella, Lula, Luella, Lulu
• Estonian: Loviise
• Finnish: Loviisa
• French: Lou, Louise, Louisette
• German: Aloisia, Louisa, Luise, Lulu, Luisa
• Greek: Λουίζα (Louíza)
• Gujarati: લુઇસ (Lu'isa)
• Hebrew: לואיז
• Hindi: लुइस (Lu'isa)
• Hungarian: Lujza
• Italian: Lodovica, Ludovica, Luigia, Luisa, Gigia, Gina, Ginetta, Luigina, Luisella
• Japanese: ルイーザ (Ruīza), ルイ (Rui)
• Kannada: ಲೂಯಿಸ್ (Lūyis)
• Korean: 루이사 (Luisa)
• Lithuanian: Liudvika
• Maori: Ruiha
• Macedonian: Лујза (Lujza), Лојза (Lojza)
• Mongolian: Луиза (Luiza)
• Nepali: लुइस (Lu'isa)
• Norwegian: Lovise
• Persian: لوئیس
• Polish: Ludwika, Luiza
• Portuguese: Luísa, Luiza
• Romanian: Luiza
• Serbian: Луиз (Luiz)
• Slovak: Alojzia
• Slovene: Alojzija
• Spanish: Luisa, Luisana, Luisel, Luisina, Luisita
• Swedish: Lovisa, Lova
• Tamil: லூயிஸ் (Lūyis)
• Telugu: లూయిస్ ( Lūyis)
• Thai: หลุยส์ (H̄luys̄̒)
• Ukrainian: Луїза (Luyiza)
• Urdu: لوئیس

Arts and entertainment

• Louis (singer) (1952–2011), Serbian singer
• Louis Akin (1868–1913), American painter and illustrator
• Lou Albano (1933–2009), Italian wrestler, manager and actor
• Louie Anderson (1953–2022), American stand-up comedian and actor
• Louis Armstrong (1901–1971), American jazz musician
• Louis C.K. (born 1967), American comedian
• Louis Cachet (born 1973), Norwegian musician
• Louis Calabro (1926–1991), Italian American orchestral composer
• Louis Calhern (1895–1956), American actor
• Louis Cheung (born 1980), Hong Kong singer, songwriter, and actor
• Louis Clark (1947–2021), English musical arranger and keyboard player
• Louis Cole (musician), American musician
• Lou Costello (1906–1959), American comedian
• Louis Daguerre (1787–1851), French artist and photographer
• Louis Deland (1772–1823), Swedish ballet dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and ballet master
• Lou Dobbs (born 1945), CNN anchor
• Lou Ferrigno (born 1951), American bodybuilder and actor
• Louis Edwin Fry Sr. (1903–2000), American architect and professor
• Louis Gallodier (1734–1803), ballet master and choreographer
• Louis Gossett Jr. (born 1936), American actor
• Louis Hughes (1832–1913), American author
• Louis Johnson (bassist) (1955–2015), American bass player and singer, member of The Brothers Johnson
• Louis Jordan (1908–1975), pioneering American jazz, blues and rhythm & blues musician and songwriter
• Louis Jourdan (1921–2015), French actor
• Louis Jouvet (1887–1951), French actor and director
• Louis I. Kahn (1901–1974), American architect
• Louis Koo (born 1970), Hong Kong actor, singer and film producer
• Louis L'Amour (1908–1988), American author of Western fiction
• Louis Logic, American underground rapper
• Louis Masreliez (1748–1810), French-born Swedish painter and interior designer
• Louis Prima (1910–1978), Italian American jazz and swing musician and trumpeter
• Louis Rukeyser (1933–2006), American economic commentator
• Lou Diamond Phillips (born 1962), American actor
• Lou Rawls (1933–2006), American musician
• Lou Reed (1942–2013), American musician
• Louis Sachar (born 1954), American author of children's books
• Louis Spohr (1784–1859), German composer
• Louis Sullivan (1856–1924), American architect
• Louis Theroux (born 1970), British television broadcaster
• Louis Tomlinson (born 1991), English pop singer; one-fifth of English-Irish boy band One Direction. (Current solo artist)
• Louis Van Lint (1909–1986), Belgian artist
• Louis Vuitton (designer) (1821–1892), French fashion designer
• Louis Wain (1860–1936), British artist who drew cats
• Louis Walsh (born 1952), Irish entertainment manager
• Louis Yuen (born 1967), Hong Kong actor

Politics

• Louis A. Bloom (1900–1988), Pennsylvania State Representative and Judge
• Louis Borno, President of Haiti during United States occupation of Haiti
• Louis Brandeis (1856–1941), American Supreme Court justice and Zionist leader
• Louis Philippe de Bombelles, Austrian count and diplomat
• Louis Conradt, politician from Texas, investigated by To Catch a Predator
• Louis DeJoy (born 1957), American businessman and current postmaster general of the United States
• Louis René Édouard, cardinal de Rohan (1734–1803), French religious leader and politician
• Louis Farrakhan (born 1933), Afro-American social leader
• Louis De Geer (1818–1896), Sweden's first prime minister; baron, statesman and writer
• Gerhard Louis De Geer, known as Louis De Geer (1854–1935), Swedish prime minister
• Louis "Louie" Gohmert (born 1953), Texas politician and U.S. Congressman
• Louis Lucien Hunter, Sri Lankan civil servant and politician
• Louis Alphonse Koyagialo, Prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo
• Louis St. Laurent (1882–1973), Canadian politician who served as the 12th prime minister of Canada
• Louis Lingg (1864–1887), German anarchist arrested after Haymarket Square bombing
• Louis Michel (born 1947), Belgian politician
• Louis Riel (1844–1885), Canadian politician, a founder of Manitoba, and leader of the Métis
• Louis Eugène Roy (1861–1939), President of Haiti
• Louis Waldman (1892–1982), Ukrainian-American lawyer and New York City politician
• Louis L. Winston (1784–1824), justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi

Royalty

Holy Roman Emperors and Kings of Germany

• Louis the Pious, Emperor and King of the Franks from 814 to his death.
• Louis II, Holy Roman Emperor, eldest son of the emperor Lothair I
• Louis III, Holy Roman Emperor, maternal grandson of the emperor Louis II
• Louis the German (Louis II), the third son of the emperor Louis the Pious and his first wife
• Louis the Child (Louis III), the last true Carolingian ruler of East Francia
• Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor

Kings of France

• Louis the Pious, Emperor and King of the Franks from 814 to his death
• Louis the Stammerer, the eldest son of Charles the Bald and Ermentrude of Orléans
• Louis III of France, king of Western Francia
• Louis IV of France, king of France from 936 to 954
• Louis V of France, son of the Frankish King Lothair and his wife Emma
• Louis VI of France, King of France from 1108 to 1137
• Louis VII of France, King of France from 1137 to 1180
• Louis VIII of France, King of France from 1223 to 1226
• Louis IX of France, King of France from 1226 to 1270
• Louis X of France, King of France from 1314 to 1316
• Louis XI of France, King of France from 1461 to 1483
• Louis XII of France, King of France from 1498 to 1515
• Louis XIII of France, King of France and Navarre from 1610 to 1643
• Louis XIV of France, King of France and Navarre from 1643 to 1715
• Louis XV of France, King of France and Navarre from 1715 to 1774
• Louis XVI of France, King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791
• Louis XVII of France, the son of King Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette
• Louis XVIII of France, King of France and Navarre from 1815 to 1824
• Louis XIX of France, King of France and Navarre for twenty minutes in 1830 before his abdication
• Louis Philippe I, King of the French from 1830 to 1848

Other French royalty

• Louis (948–c. 954), Prince of France and son of King Louis IV of France
• Louis, Count of Évreux (1276–1319), Prince of France
• Louis of France (1264–1276), Prince of France and heir apparent of France

• Louis (1309–1328), Count of Chartres

• Louis I, Count of Nevers (1272–1322), Count of Nevers and Rethel
  • his son, Louis I, Count of Flanders (c. 1304–1346), Count of Flanders, Nevers and Rethel

• Louis I of Anjou (1339–1384), Prince of France and Duke of Anjou

• Louis Charles, Count of Beaujolais (1779–1808), "Louis Charles Alphonse Léodgard d'Orléans," Count of Beaujolais

• Louis I, Duke of Bourbon (1279–1341), "Louis the Lame," Duke of Bourbon
• Louis II, Duke of Bourbon (1337–1410), "Louis de Bourbon," "Louis the Good," Duke of Bourbon

• Louis, Duke of Guyenne (1397–1415), Dauphin of Viennois and Duke of Guyenne

• Prince Louis, Duke of Nemours (1814–1896), Prince Louis of Orléans, Duke of Nemours

• Louis I, Duke of Orléans (1372–1407), Duke of Orléans and Touraine
  • See also Louis d'Orléans

• Louis, Grand Dauphin (1661–1711), Prince of France
  • his son, Louis, Duke of Burgundy (1682–1712), "Petit Dauphin," Prince of France

• Louis Ferdinand (1729–1765), Dauphin of France
  • his son, Louis Joseph Xavier, Duke of Burgundy (1751–1761), Dauphin of France

• Louis I, Prince of Condé (1530–1569), "Louis I de Bourbon," Prince of Condé
• Louis, Grand Condé (1621–1686), "Louis II de Bourbon," "The Great Condé," Prince of Condé
• Louis III, Prince of Condé (1668–1710), Prince of Condé

• Louis Alexandre, Count of Toulouse (1678–1737)

• Louis de La Blaume Le Blanc (1667–1683), "Louis de Bourbon," "Légitimé de France," Count of Vermandois, "Louis of Vermandois"

• Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon (1692–1740), "Louis Henri Joseph," "Louis IV," Prince de Condé
  • his son, Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé (1736–1818), "Louis Joseph de Bourbon," "Louis V Joseph," Prince de Condé
    • his son, Louis Henri, Prince of Condé (1756–1830), "Louis Henri Joseph de Bourbon," "Louis VI Henri," "Louis Henry II," Prince of Condé
• Louis Armand I, Prince of Conti (1661–1685), "Louis Armand de Bourbon," Prince of Conti
• Louis Armand II, Prince of Conti (1695–1727), "Louis Armand de Bourbon," Prince of Conti
  • his son, Louis François, Prince of Conti (1717–1776), "Louis François de Bourbon," "Louis François I," Prince of Conti
    • his son, Louis François Joseph, Prince of Conti (1734–1814), "Louis François Joseph de Bourbon," "Louis François II" Prince of Conti
• Louis V, Elector Palatine (1478–1544), "Ludwig V. von der Pfalz" Count Palatine of the Rhine
• Louis Joseph, Dauphin of France (1781–1789), "Louis Joseph Xavier François"

• Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans (1725–1785) "Louis the Fat," Duke of Orléans, Prince of France
  • his son, Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (1747–1793), father of King Louis-Philippe I
  • his great-grandson, Prince Philippe, Count of Paris (1838–1894)

Kings of Etruria

• Louis I of Etruria, King of Etruria from 1801 to 1803
• Louis II of Etruria, King from 1803–1807, also Duke of Lucca (1824–1847) and Duke of Parma (1847–1849)

Kings of Holland

• Louis I Bonaparte, King of Holland from 1806 to 1810
• Louis II Bonaparte, King of Holland in 1810, also Grand Duke of Berg

Kings of Hungary

• Louis the Great, (Louis I of Hungary) Apostolic King of Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, Rama, Serbia, Galicia, Lodomeria, Jerusalem and Sicily from 1342, King of Poland from 1370
• Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia, King of Bohemia and Hungary from 1516 to 1526

King of Portugal

• Louis I of Portugal (1838–1889), succeeded to his older brother Peter V in 1861

King of Spain

• Louis I of Spain, the eldest son of Philip V of Spain by his first Queen consort Maria Louisa of Savoy

Princes of Monaco

• Louis I, Prince of Monaco
• Louis II, Prince of Monaco, Sovereign Prince of Monaco from 26 June 1922 until 9 May 1949

Princes of the United Kingdom

• Prince Louis of Wales (born 2018), son of William, Prince of Wales, and Catherine, Princess of Wales, grandson of King Charles III

Dukes and Kings of Bavaria

• Louis I, Duke of Bavaria
• Louis II, Duke of Bavaria
• Louis III, Duke of Bavaria
• Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor, also Duke of Bavaria
• Louis V, Duke of Bavaria, also Margrave of Brandenburg as Louis I
• Louis VI, Duke of Bavaria, also Margrave of Brandenburg as Louis II
• Louis VII, Duke of Bavaria
• Louis VIII, Duke of Bavaria
• Louis IX, Duke of Bavaria
• Louis X, Duke of Bavaria
• Louis I King of Bavaria from 1825 to 1848
• Louis II King of Bavaria from 1864 to 1886, the Märchenkönig (Fairy tale king)
• Louis III, Regent from 1912 to 1913, King from 1913 to 1918 (last king of Bavaria)

Grand-Duke of Berg

• Louis, Grand Duke of Berg from 1809 to 1813, also King of Holland as Louis II

Grand-Dukes of Hesse

• Louis I, Grand Duke of Hesse
• Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse
• Louis III, Grand Duke of Hesse
• Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse

Duke of Savoy

• Louis, Duke of Savoy, Duke of Savoy from 1440 to 1465

Duke of Württemberg

• Louis Eugene, Duke of Württemberg

Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt

• Louis IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt

Science and innovation

• Louis Blériot (1872–1936), French aviator and inventor
• Louis Braille (1809–1852), inventor of braille
• Louis de Broglie (1892–1987), French physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
• Louis Ignarro (1941) American pharmacologist and Nobel Prize laureate
• Louis Leakey (1903–1972), British paleontologist
• Louis Lliboutry (1922–2007), French-Chilean glaciologist
• Louis Mink (1921–1983), American philosopher of history
• Louis Pasteur (1822–1895), French microbiologist and chemist, discoverer of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization
• Louis Le Prince (1841–disappeared 1890), French inventor, Father of Cinematography
• Louis Schoonhoven (born 1931), Dutch entomologist
• Louis Slotin (1910–1946), Canadian physicist and chemist
• Louis Wirth (1897–1952), American sociologist

Sports

• Louis Almond (born 1992), English footballer
• Louis Babrow (1915–2004), South African rugby union player
• Louis Baise (1927–2020), South African Olympic wrestler
• Lou Boudreau (1917–2001), American, Hall of Fame baseball player and manager
• Lou Brock (1939–2020), American baseball player
• Louis Bullard (1956–2010), American football player
• Louis Campbell (born 1979), American basketball player
• Louis Chevrolet (1878–1941), racing driver and the founder of the Chevrolet Motor Car Company
• Lou Creekmur (1927–2009), American football player and Pro Football Hall of Fame class of 1996
• Louis Unser (1896–1979), American race car driver and Hillclimb racer
• Louis Delétraz (born 1997), Swiss race car driver
• Louis Clarke (1901–77), American Olympic track champion
• Louis Ford (footballer) (1914–1980), Welsh footballer
• Louis van Gaal (born 1951), Dutch footballer and manager
• Lou Gehrig (1903–1941), American baseball player
• Louis Jani (born 1957), Canadian judoka
• Louis Kaplan (1901–1970), nicknamed "Kid Kaplan", Russian-born American world champion Hall of Fame featherweight boxer
• Louis King (basketball) (born 1999), American basketball player
• Louis Klotz (1921–2014), nicknamed "Red", American NBA basketball player and owner of the Washington Generals and New York Nationals
• Louis Pilot (1940–2016), Luxembourgian footballer and manager
• Louis Riddick (born 1969), American football broadcaster and former player
• Louis Rubenstein (1861–1931), Canadian world champion Hall of Fame figure skater
• Louis Saha (born 1978), French footballer
• Lewis Hamilton (born 1985), English racing driver
• Louis Smith (gymnast) (born 1989), English gymnast

Others

• Louis Edmund Blaze (1861–1951), Sri Lankan Burgher educationist, founder of Kingswood College, Kandy, Sri Lanka
• Louis Botha (1862–1919), South African politician, first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, one of the principal commanders of the Second Boer War
• Louis Brouillard (1921–2018), American Catholic priest
• Louis Congo (c. 1725), emancipated slave, appointed public executioner of Louisiana
• Louis Le Duff, French billionaire businessman
• Louis Franchet d'Espèrey, French general during World War I
• Louis V. Gerstner Jr. (born 1942), chairman and CEO of IBM
• Louis Antoine Godey (1804–1878), American editor and publisher
• Louis Jolliet (1645–1700), French explorer, one of the first Europeans to reach the northern part of the Mississippi River
• Louis Kealoha, former Chief of the Honolulu Police Department and convicted felon
• Louis-Frédéric Lescure (1904–1993), French industrialist
• Louis Mountbatten (1900–1979), last Viceroy of India and first Governor-General of independent India, cousin of Queen Elizabeth II
• Louis Palander (1842–1920], Swedish naval officer
• Louis Pio (1841–1894), Danish political figure
• Louis (parrot), parrot from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, well-provided for by owner's will after her death in 1949
• Louis H. Pollak (1922–2012), American district court judge and dean of Yale Law School and the University of Pennsylvania Law School
• Louis Pope (b.1947), American businessman
• Louis Ruquoy, Chief of Staff of the Belgian Army during the second part of the First World War
• Louis Sabunji (1838–1931), Syriac Catholic priest and journalist
• Louis B. Schwartz (1913–2003), American law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School
• Louis Spencer, Viscount Althorp (born 1994), heir apparent to earldom.
• Louis Zamperini (1917–2014), American World War II veteran, Christian evangelist and an Olympic distance runner, best known for being a Japanese POW survivor.

Fictional characters

• Dr. Louis Faraday, a character in the 1986 American science fiction adventure movie Flight of the Navigator
• Louis, a character in the American sitcom television series Kate & Allie
• Louis, a protagonist of the Japanese manga series Beastars
• Louis de Pointe du Lac, character in the Vampire Chronicles novels by Anne Rice
• Louis the Alligator, a character from the animated film The Princess and the Frog
• Louie Duck, Disney character
• Louis Gara, a character in the 2013 American black comedy crime movie Life of Crime
• Louis Huang, character played by Randall Park in Fresh Off the Boat
• Louis Litt, character played by Rick Hoffman in Suits
• Louis Michaelson, a character played by Fred Savage in the 1986 American fantasy drama film The Boy Who Could Fly
• Louis Tully, character played by Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II
• Louis Wu, character in the Ringworld books by Larry Niven
• Louis, one of the protagonists of Left 4 Dead

See also

• Lewis
• Lois
• Louis (disambiguation)
• Louise
• Louie
• Ludwig
• Luis

References

This is a list of epic poems.

Ancient epics (to AD 500)

Before the 8th century BC

• Epic of Gilgamesh (Mesopotamian religion)
• Epic of Lugalbanda (including Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave and Lugalbanda and the Anzud Bird, Mesopotamian religion)
• Epic of Enmerkar (including Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta and Enmerkar and En-suhgir-ana, Mesopotamian religion)
• Atrahasis (Mesopotamian religion)
• Enuma Elish (Babylonian religion)
• The Descent of Inanna into the Underworld (Mesopotamian religion)
• Legend of Keret (Ugaritic religion)

8th to 6th centuries BC

• Iliad, ascribed to Homer (Greek mythology)
• Odyssey, ascribed to Homer (Greek mythology)
• Works and Days, ascribed to Hesiod (Greek mythology)
• Theogony, ascribed to Hesiod (Greek mythology)
• Shield of Heracles, ascribed to Hesiod (Greek mythology)
• Catalogue of Women, ascribed to Hesiod (Greek mythology; only fragments survive)
• Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Iliupersis, Nostoi and Telegony, forming the so-called Epic Cycle (only fragments survive)
• Oedipodea, Thebaid, Epigoni and Alcmeonis, forming the so-called Theban Cycle (only fragments survive)
• A series of poems ascribed to Hesiod during antiquity (of which only fragments survive): Aegimius (alternatively ascribed to Cercops of Miletus), Astronomia, Descent of Perithous, Idaean Dactyls (almost completely lost), Megala Erga, Megalai Ehoiai, Melampodia and Wedding of Ceyx
• Capture of Oechalia, ascribed to Homer or Creophylus of Samos during antiquity (only a fragment survives)
• Phocais, ascribed to Homer during antiquity (only a fragment survives)
• Titanomachy ascribed to Eumelus of Corinth (only a fragment survives)
• Danais (written by one of the cyclic poets and from which the Danaid tetralogy of Aeschylus draws its material), Minyas and Naupactia, almost completely lost

5th to 4th centuries BC

• Heracleia, tells of the labors of Heracles, almost completely lost, written by Panyassis (Greek mythology)
• Mahābhārata, ascribed to Veda Vyasa (Indian religion)
• Ramayana, ascribed to Valmiki (Indian religion)

3rd century BC

• Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes (Greek mythology)

2nd century BC

• Annales by Ennius (Roman history; only fragments survive)

1st century BC

• De rerum natura by Lucretius (natural philosophy)
• Georgics by Virgil (didactic poem)
• Aeneid by Virgil (Roman religion)

1st century AD

• Metamorphoses by Ovid (Greek and Roman mythology)
• Pharsalia by Lucan (Roman history; unfinished)
• Argonautica by Gaius Valerius Flaccus (Roman poet, Greek mythology; incomplete)
• Punica by Silius Italicus (Roman history)
• Thebaid and Achilleid by Statius (Roman poet, Greek mythology; latter poem incomplete)

2nd century

• Buddhacarita by Aśvaghoṣa (Indian epic poetry)

2nd to 5th centuries

• Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi by Faltonia Betitia Proba
• The Five Great Epics of Tamil Literature: Cilappatikāram, Manimekalai, Cīvaka Cintāmaṇi, Valayapathi, Kundalakēci

3rd to 4th centuries

• Posthomerica by Quintus of Smyrna (Greek mythology)
• De raptu Proserpinae by Claudian (Roman poet, Greek mythology; incomplete)

4th century

• Kumārasambhava by Kālidāsa (Indian epic poetry)
• Raghuvaṃśa by Kālidāsa (Indian epic poetry)
• Blemyomachia (Greek, only fragments survive)

5th century

• Argonautica Orphica by Anonymous (Greek mythology)
• Dionysiaca by Nonnus (Greek mythology)
• Mahavamsa, written in Pali
• Yadegar-e Zariran, written in Middle Persian

Medieval epics (500–1500)

6th century

• Iohannis by Corippus, Latin epic on the Byzantine conquest of North Africa

7th century

• Táin Bó Cúailnge (Old Irish)
• Bhaṭṭikāvya, Sanskrit courtly epic based on the Rāmāyaṇa and the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini
• Kiratarjuniya by Bharavi, Sanskrit epic based on an episode in the Mahabharata
• Shishupala Vadha by Magha, Sanskrit epic based on another episode in the Mahabharata

8th to 10th centuries

• Beowulf (Old English)
• Waldere, Old English version of the story told in Waltharius (below), known only as a brief fragment
• Alpamysh, a Turkic epic
• Karolus magnus et Leo papa (Carolingian, Latin, before 814)
• Daredevils of Sassoun (Armenian)
• Bhagavata Purana (Sanskrit) "Stories of the Lord", based on earlier sources
• Lay of Hildebrand and Muspilli (Old High German, c. 870)
• Kakawin Ramayana, Javanese version of the Ramayana (c. 870)
• Shahnameh (Persian literature; details Persian legend and history from prehistoric times to the fall of the Sassanid Empire, by Ferdowsi)
• Waltharius by Ekkehard of St. Gall (Germany, Latin); about Walter of Aquitaine
• Poetic Edda (no particular authorship; oral tradition of the North Germanic peoples)
• Vikramarjuna Vijaya and Ādi purāṇa (c. 941), Kannada poems by Adikavi Pampa
• Ajitha Purana and Gadaayuddha (c.993 and c.999), Kannada poems by Ranna
• Neelakesi (Tamil Jain epic)

11th century

• Ali Nameh by Rabi' (Persian), it's an Epic Poem about Caliphate of Imam Ali and it's the First Shia Epic Poem Ever seen, it has been composed of in 12,000 verses (c. 1080).

• Taghribat Bani Hilal (Arabic); see also Arabic epic literature
• Andhra Mahabharatam (Telugu) by Nannayya
• Ruodlieb (Latin), by a German author
• Digenis Akritas (Greek); about a hero of the Byzantine Empire
• Epic of King Gesar (Tibetan)
• Garshaspname (Persian) by Asadi Tusi (1066)
• Carmen Campidoctoris, the first poem about El Cid (c. 1083)
• Song of Armouris (Byzantine, acritic song)
• Borzu Nama, ascribed to 'Amid Abu'l 'Ala' 'Ata b. Yaqub Kateb Razi (Persian epic with a main character and a poetic style related to the "Shahnameh")
• Faramarz Nama (Persian epic with a main character and a poetic style related to the "Shahnameh")
• Mushika-vamsha (Sanskrit) by Atula
• The Song of Roland (Old French)

12th century

• Khamba Thoibi (Manipuri Epic by Hijam Anganghal)
• Acallam na Senórach (Middle Irish)
• Historia Regum Britanniae (Latin)
• Alexiad (Medieval Greek) by Anna Komnene, about the politics and warfare during the reign of Alexios I Komnenos
• The Knight in the Panther's Skin (Georgian) by Shota Rustaveli
• Alexandreis by Walter of Châtillon (Latin)
• De bello Troiano and the lost Antiocheis (Latin) by Joseph of Exeter
• Carmen de Prodicione Guenonis, version of the story of the Song of Roland in Latin
• Architrenius by John of Hauville, (Latin satire)
• Liber ad honorem Augusti by Peter of Eboli, narrative of the conquest of Sicily by Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor (Latin)
• The Tale of Igor's Campaign and Bylinas (Old east Slavic) (11th–19th centuries)
• Gita Govinda (Sanskrit) by Jayadeva
• Naishadha Charita (Sanskrit) by Sriharsha
• Parishishtaparvan (Sanskrit) by Hemachandra
• Prithviraja Vijaya (Sanskrit) by Jayanaka (1191–1192)
• Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure (Old French)
• Roman de Brut and Roman de Rou by Wace (Old French)
• Poem of Almería (Latin)
• Eupolemius (Latin) by an anonymous German-speaking author
• Bahman Nama and Kush Nama (Persian) ascribed to Hakim Īrānšāh b. Abi'l Khayr
• Banu Goshasp Nama (Persian)
• Ramavataram (Tamil) by Kambar, based on the "Ramayana"
• Cycle of the First Crusade (Old French) by Graindor de Douai and others

13th century

• Nibelungenlied (Middle High German)
• Kudrun (Middle High German)
• Daniel von dem blühenden Tal (Middle High German)
• Brut by Layamon (Early Middle English)
• Chanson de la Croisade Albigeoise ("Song of the Albigensian Crusade"; Old Occitan)
• Antar (Arabic); see also Arabic epic literature
• Sirat al-Zahir Baibars (Arabic); see also Arabic epic literature
• Osman's Dream (Ottoman Turkish)
• Epic of Sundiata (Malinke People)
• El Cantar de Mio Cid, Spanish epic of the Reconquista (Old Spanish)
• De triumphis ecclesiae by Johannes de Garlandia (Latin)
• Gesta Regum Britanniae by William of Rennes (Latin)
• Van den vos Reynaerde (Middle Dutch)
• Poema de Fernán González, cantar de gesta by a monk of San Pedro de Arlanza; 1250–1266 (Old Spanish)
• Jewang ungi by Yi Seung-hyu ("Rhymed Chronicles of Sovereigns"; 1287 Korea)
• Basava purana by Palkuriki Somanatha (Telugu)
• Jahangirnameh by Qāsem-e Mādeḥ (largely an imitation of the Borzu Nama)

14th century

• Divine Comedy (Christian mythology) by Dante Alighieri
• Cursor Mundi (Middle English) by an anonymous cleric (c. 1300)
• Africa by Petrarch (Latin)
• The Tale of the Heike, Japanese epic war tale
• The Brus by John Barbour (Scots)
• La Spagna (Italian) attributed to Sostegno di Zanobi (c. 1350–1360)
• Mocedades de Rodrigo (Old Spanish) (c. 1360)
• Siege of Jerusalem (c. 1370–1380, Middle English)
• Troilus and Criseyde (Middle English) by Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1380)
• Mabinogi (Middle Welsh)
• Zafarnamah (Persian) by Hamdollah Mostowfi

15th century

• Khavaran Nameh by Ibn Husam Khosfei, it means: Book of the East, it's based on a mythological story about Imam Ali's Conquests of the East and the West of the known World, it has been composed of 22,500 verses.
• Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• Hammira Mahakavya by Nayachandra Suri (Sanskrit)
• The Fall of the Princes by John Lydgate (1431–1438)
• Yuan Phai (Thai: ลิลิตยวนพ่าย) by Royal Poets of King Borommatrai-lokkanat (c. 1475)
• Mahachat Kham luang (Thai: มหาชาติคำหลวง) a Siamese retelling of Vessantara Jataka by Royal Poets of King Borommatrai-lokkanat (1492)
• Orlando innamorato (Italian) by Matteo Maria Boiardo (1495)
• Shmuel-Bukh (Old Yiddish chivalry romance based on the Biblical book of Samuel)
• Mlokhim-Bukh (Old Yiddish epic poem based on the Biblical Books of Kings)
• Book of Dede Korkut (Oghuz Turks)
• Le Morte d'Arthur (Middle English)
• Morgante (Italian) by Luigi Pulci (1485), with elements typical of the mock-heroic genre
• The Wallace by Blind Harry (Scots chivalric poem)
• Troy Book by John Lydgate, about the Trojan war (Middle English)
• Heldenbuch (Middle High German) a group of manuscripts and prints of the 15th and 16th centuries, typically including material from the Theodoric cycle and the cycle of Hugdietrich, Wolfdietrich and Ortnit
• Ibong Adarna (Filipino) whose real author is not known

Modern epics (from 1500)

16th century

• Lilit Phra Lo (Thai: ลิลิตพระลอ) by King Ramathibodi II (c. 1491–1529)
• Judita (Croatian) by Marko Marulić (1501)
• Shahenshah Nameh and Khamsa (including Timurnameh) by Hatefi, Poetic Epics One about expolits of Shah Ismail I and the other about Timur (1510)
• Ismailnameh an epic poem on shah Ismail I heroic deeds by Qsimi Qunabadi nephew of Hatifi (1513)
• Orlando Furioso (Italian) by Ludovico Ariosto (1516)
• Theuerdank and Weisskunig (Weisskunig only got published in 1775) by Maximilian I and Marx Treitzsaurwein, often considered the last medieval epics.
• Davidiad (Latin) by Marko Marulić (1517)
• Christiad (Latin) by Marco Girolamo Vida (1535)
• Padmavat (Hindustani) by Malik Muhammad Jayasi (1540)
• Süleymanname by Arifi çelebi (1558)
• Sang Sinxay, the most famous epic poem of Laos, was written around mid sixteenth century.
• Franciade (French) by Pierre de Ronsard (1540s–1572)
• Os Lusíadas by Luís de Camões (c. 1572)
• L'Amadigi by Bernardo Tasso (1560)
• La Araucana by Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (1569–1589)
• La Gerusalemme liberata by Torquato Tasso (1575)
• Ramacharitamanasa (based on the Ramayana) by Goswami Tulsidas (1577)
• The Faerie Queene (Early Modern English) by Edmund Spenser (1596)
• Venus and Adonis (1593) and Lucrece (1594) (Early Modern English) by Shakespeare
• The Dam San of the Ede people (now in Vietnam) is often considered to appear in the 16th or 17th century.

17th century

• La Argentina by Martín del Barco Centenera (1602)
• La Cleopatra by Girolamo Graziani (1632)
• Biag ni Lam-ang by Pedro Bucaneg (1640)
• Il Conquisto di Granata by Girolamo Graziani (1650)
• Exact Epitome of the Four Monarchies by Anne Bradstreet (1650)
• Szigeti veszedelem, also known under the Latin title Obsidionis Szigetianae, a Hungarian epic by Miklós Zrínyi (1651)
• Gondibert by William Davenant (1651)
• Paradise Lost (1667) (English) and Paradise Regained (1671) by John Milton
• Khun Chang Khun Phaen (Thai: ขุนช้างขุนแผน), a Thai epic poem by anonymous folk poets (c. 1650–1700)

18th century

• Kumulipo by Keaulumoku (1700), an Ancient Hawaiian cosmogonic genealogy first published in 1889
• Telemachus by Anna Seward (epic re-telling of François Fénelon's Les Aventures de Télémaque)
• Henriade by Voltaire (1723)
• Utendi wa Tambuka by Bwana Mwengo (1728)
• Der Messias by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1748–1773)
• La Pucelle d'Orléans by Voltaire (1756)
• Poems of Ossian by James Macpherson (1760–1765)
• The Seasons by Kristijonas Donelaitis (1765–1775)
• O Uraguai by Basílio da Gama (1769)
• Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill (1773)
• O Desertor das Letras by Silva Alvarenga (1774), a short mock-heroic epic
• Caramuru by Santa Rita Durão (1781)
• Joan of Arc by Robert Southey (1796)
• Hermann and Dorothea by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1797)

19th century

• The Tale of Kiều by Nguyễn Du (c. 1800)
• Thalaba the Destroyer by Robert Southey (1801)
• Madoc by Robert Southey (1805)
• Psyche by Mary Tighe (1805)
• The Columbiad by Joel Barlow (1807)
• Milton: A Poem by William Blake (1804–1810)
• Marmion by Walter Scott (1808)
• Alipashiad by Haxhi Shehreti (before 1817)
• Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Lord Byron, narrating the travels of Childe Harold (1812–1818)
• Queen Mab by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1813)
• Roderick the Last of the Goths by Robert Southey (1814)
• The Lord of the Isles by Walter Scott (1813)
• Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1815)
• The Revolt of Islam (Laon and Cyntha) by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817)
• Harold the Dauntless by Walter Scott (1817)
• Manuscripts of Dvůr Králové and Zelená Hora, forged epic published in 1818
• Endymion (1818) by John Keats
• Hyperion (1818) and The Fall of Hyperion (1819) by John Keats
• The Battle of Marathon by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1820)
• Phra Aphai Mani by Sunthorn Phu (1821 or 1822–1844)
• Don Juan by Lord Byron (1824), an example of a "mock" epic in that it parodies the epic style of the author's predecessors
• Camões by Almeida Garrett (1825), narrating the last years and deeds of Luís de Camões
• Dona Branca by Almeida Garrett (1826), the fantastic tale of the forbidden love between Portuguese princess Branca and Moorish king Aben-Afan
• Tamerlane by Edgar Allan Poe (1827)
• The Gypsies (poem) by Alexander Pushkin (1827)
• The Free Besieged by Dionysios Solomos (1828–1851)
• The Fall of Nineveh by Edwin Atherstone (1828–1868)
• Creation, Man and the Messiah by Henrik Wergeland (1829)
• The Bronze Horseman by Alexander Pushkin (1833)
• Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, translated by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1833)
• Messiah's Kingdom by Agnes Bulmer (1833)
• Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz (1834)
• The Baptism on the Savica (Krst pri Savici) by France Prešeren (1836)
• Florante at Laura, an awit by Francisco Balagtas (1838)
• Haidamaky by Taras Shevchenko (1841)
• King Alfred by John Fitchett (completed by Robert Roscoe and published in 1841–1842)
• Horatius by Thomas Babington Macaulay (1842)
• Germany. A Winter's Tale by Heinrich Heine (1843), a "mock" epic
• János Vitéz by Sándor Petőfi (1845)
• Smrt Smail-age Čengića by Ivan Mažuranić (1846)
• Toldi (1846), Toldi szerelme ("Toldi's Love", 1879) and Toldi estéje ("Toldi's Night", 1848) by János Arany, forming the so-called "Toldi trilogy"
• Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1847)
• The Mountain Wreath by Petar II Petrović-Njegoš (1847)
• The Tales of Ensign Stål by Johan Ludvig Runeberg (first part published in 1848, second part published in 1860)
• Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot (1849 Finnish mythology)
• I-Juca-Pirama (1851) by Gonçalves Dias
• Kalevipoeg by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1853; Estonian mythology)
• The Prelude by William Wordsworth
• Song of Myself by Walt Whitman (1855)
• The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855)
• A Confederação dos Tamoios by Gonçalves de Magalhães (1856)
• The Saga of King Olaf by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1856–1863)
• Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1857)
• Os Timbiras by Gonçalves Dias (1857)
• Meghnad Badh Kavya by Michael Madhusudan Dutta (1861)
• Terje Vigen by Henrik Ibsen (1862)
• La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Centuries) by Victor Hugo (1859–1877)
• The Earthly Paradise by William Morris (1868–1870)
• Ibonia, oral epic of Madagascar (first transcription: 1870)
• Martín Fierro by José Hernández (1872)
• Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson (c. 1874)
• Clarel by Herman Melville (1876)
• The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs by William Morris (1876)
• L'Atlàntida by Jacint Verdaguer (1877)
• The Light of Asia by Edwin Arnold (1879)
• The City of Dreadful Night by Bysshe Vanolis (finished in 1874, published in 1880)
• Tristram of Lyonesse by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1882)
• The Rape of Florida by Albery Allson Whitman (1884 later republished as Twasinta's Seminoles)
• Eros and Psyche by Robert Bridges (1885)
• La Fin de Satan by Victor Hugo (written between 1855 and 1860, published in 1886)
• Canigó by Jacint Verdaguer (1886)
• Lāčplēsis ('The Bear-Slayer') by Andrejs Pumpurs (1888; Latvian Mythology)
• Tabaré by Juan Zorrilla de San Martín (1888; national epic of Uruguay)
• The Wanderings of Oisin by William Butler Yeats (1889)
• Kotan Utunnai, Ainu epic, recorded in the 1880s, published in 1890
• Host and Guest by Vazha-Pshavela (1893)
• The 9th of July 1821 by Vasilis Michaelides (1893–1895; national epic of Cyprus written in Cypriot Greek)
• The Tale of Balen by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1896)
• Lục Vân Tiên by Nguyễn Đình Chiểu
• Amir Arsalan, narrated by Mohammad Ali Naqib al-Mamalek to the Qajar Shah of Persia

20th century

• The Divine Enchantment by John Neihardt (1900)
• An Idyl of the South: An Epic Poem in Two Parts by Albery Allson Whitman (1901)
• Lahuta e Malcís by Gjergj Fishta (composed 1902–1937)
• Ural-batyr (Bashkirs oral tradition set in the written form by Mukhamedsha Burangulov in 1910)
• The Ballad of the White Horse by G. K. Chesterton (1911)
• Mensagem by Fernando Pessoa (composed 1913–1934)
• The Cantos by Ezra Pound (composed 1915–1969)
• Dorvyzhy, Udmurt national epic compiled in Russian by Mikhail Khudiakov (1920) basing on folklore works
• The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún by J. R. R. Tolkien (composed 1920–1939, published 2009)
• A Cycle of the West by John Neihardt (composed 1921–1949)
• The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis (Greek verse, composed 1924–1938)
• Dymer by C. S. Lewis (1926)
• "A" by Louis Zukofsky (composed 1927–1978)
• John Brown's Body by Stephen Vincent Benét (1928)
• The Fall of Arthur by J. R. R. Tolkien (composed c. 1930–1934, published 2013)
• The Bridge by Hart Crane (1930)
• Ariadne by F. L. Lucas (1932)
• Kamayani by Jaishankar Prasad (1936)
• The People, Yes by Carl Sandburg (1936)
• In Parenthesis by David Jones (1937)
• Canto General by Pablo Neruda (1938–1950)
• Khamba Thoibi Sheireng (based on Khamba and Thoibi) by Hijam Anganghal (1940)
• Paterson by William Carlos Williams (composed c. 1940–1961)
• Sugata Saurabha by Chittadhar Hridaya (1941–1945)
• Victory for the Slain by Hugh John Lofting (1942)
• The Great South Land: An Epic Poem (1951) by Rex Ingamells
• Rashmirathi (1952), Hunkar by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar
• Savitri by Aurobindo Ghose (1950)
• The Maximus Poems by Charles Olson (composed 1950–1970)
• The Anathemata by David Jones (1952)
• Aniara by Harry Martinson (composed 1956)
• Helen in Egypt by H.D. (1961)
• Song of Lawino by Okot p'Bitek (1966)
• Puerto Rican Obituary by Pedro Pietri (1971)
• Prussian Nights by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1974)
• The Banner of Joan by H. Warner Munn (1975)
• Kristubhagavatam by P. C. Devassia (1976)
• Keralodayam Mahakavyam by K. N. Ezhuthachan (1977)
• The Changing Light at Sandover by James Merrill (composed 1976–1982)
• The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford (published 1977)
• Emperor Shaka the Great by Mazisi Kunene (1979)
• The Lay of the Children of Húrin and The Lay of Leithian by J. R. R. Tolkien (published 1985)
• The New World by Frederick Turner (1985)
• Empire of Dreams by Giannina Braschi (1988)
• Omeros by Derek Walcott (1990)
• Genesis by Frederick Turner (1990)
• Arundhati by Jagadguru Rambhadracharya (1994)
• Mastorava by A. M. Sharonov (1994)
• Astronautilía Hvězdoplavba by Jan Křesadlo (1995)
• The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley (1996)
• The Alamo: An Epic by Michael Lind (1997)
• Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson (1998)
• Fredy Neptune: A Novel in Verse by Les Murray (1998)

21st century

• Sribhargavaraghaviyam (2002), Ashtavakra (2009) and Gitaramayanam (2009–2010, published in 2011) by Jagadguru Rambhadracharya
• Solaris korrigert by Øyvind Rimbereid (2004)
• Lime Stone: An Epic Poem of Barbados (2008) by Anthony Kellman
• Zorgamazoo by Robert Paul Weston (2008)
• The Iovis Trilogy by Anne Waldman (2011)
• Our Lady of the Ruins by Traci Brimhall (2012)
• Brand New Ancients by Kae Tempest (2013)
• Apocalypse by Frederick Turner (2016)

Other epics

• Canaäd, an epic poem reconstructing Canaanite mythology, set during the Late Bronze Age.
• Epic of Bamana Segu, oral epic of the Bambara people, composed in the 19th century and recorded in the 20th century
• Epic of Darkness, tales and legends of primeval China
• Epic of Jangar, poem of the Oirat people
• Epic of Köroğlu, Turkic oral tradition written down mostly in 18th century
• Epic of Manas (18th century)
• Epic of the Forgotten, Bulgarian poetic saga
• Gesta Berengarii imperatoris
• Heavensfield, alliterative epic on the life of medieval king Oswald of Northumbria.
• Hikayat Seri Rama, Malay version of the Ramayana
• Hinilawod, Filipino epic from the island of Panay
• Hotsuma Tsutae
• Khun Chang Khun Phaen, a Thai poem
• Klei Khan Y Dam San, a Vietnamese poem
• Koti and Chennayya and Epic of Siri, Tulu poems
• Kutune Shirka, sacred yukar epic of the Ainu people of which several translations exist
• Lay of Mouse-fate (Musurdvitha), a fantasy epic inspired by animal fable and Arthurian legend.
• Mu'allaqat, Arabic poems written by seven poets in Classical Arabic, these poems are very similar to epic poems and specially the poem of Antarah ibn Shaddad
• Parsifal by Richard Wagner (opera, composed 1880–1882)
• Pasyón, Filipino religious epic, of which the 1703 and 1814 versions are popular
• Popol Vuh, history of the K'iche' people
• Ramakien, Thailand's national epic derived from the Ramayana
• Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner (opera, composed 1848–1874)
• Siribhoovalaya, a unique work of multi-lingual literature written by Kumudendu Muni, a Jain monk
• Yadegar-e Zariran (Middle Persian)
• Yama Zatdaw, Burmese version of the Ramayana
• Al Silsilah al Dahabiyah: Malhamat Ahlil Bayt by Fartosi, It's a Poetic Encyclopedia about 12 Imam's sacred Hadith and summary of their biographies in 50,000 verses.
• Al Alawiyah al Mubarkah by Abdul Masih al Antaki, Poetic work based on Imam Ali's biography in 6000 verses.
• Eid al Ghadir by Pulus Salamah, Poetic work based on Bani Hashim History in Early Islam in 3000 verses.
• Salasil al Dahab by Muhammad ben Shames al Battashi al Omani, Poetic Encyclopedia about Ibadi Fiqh contains History of early Islam and of Oman in 120,000 verses, considered as the longest Arabic Poem ever seen.
• Arajiz It's a Poetic works of Arabic language about many forms of education History, Feqh, Hadith, Medicine and grammar like Sirat al Mu'tadid of Ibn Mu'taz, Tarikh of Ibn Jahm and Alfiyat ibn Malik, however, the erliest form of it was Kitab Kalila wa dimna of Aban Lahiqi.

References

12. https://www.rokomari.com/book/213367/nabinama

The 1740s (pronounced "seventeen-forties") decade ran from January 1, 1740, to December 31, 1749. Many events during this decade sparked an impetus for the Age of Reason. Military and technological advances brought one of the first instances of a truly global war to take place here, when Maria Theresa of Austria’s struggle to succeed the various crowns of her father King Charles VI led to a war involving nearly all European states in the War of the Austrian Succession, eventually spilling over to North America with the War of Jenkins’ Ear (which went on to involve many of the West’s first ferocious maritime battles). Capitalism grew robust following the fallout of the South Sea bubble two decades and the subsequent reign of Sir Robert Walpole, whose rule ended in the earlier half of this decade.

Events

1740

January–March

• January 8 – All 237 crewmen on the Dutch East India Company ship Rooswijk are drowned when the vessel strikes the shoals of Goodwin Sands, off of the coast of England, as it is beginning its second voyage to the Indies. The wreckage is discovered more than 250 years later, in 2004.
• February 20 – The North Carolina General Assembly incorporates the town of Newton as Wilmington, North Carolina, named for Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington and patron of Royal Governor Gabriel Johnston.
• March 16 – King Edward of the Miskito Indians signs a treaty making his kingdom, located on the coast of modern-day Nicaragua, a protectorate of Great Britain.
• March 25 – Construction begins on Bethesda Orphanage for boys near Savannah, Georgia, founded by George Whitefield.

April–June

• April 8 – War of the Austrian Succession: The Royal Navy captures the Spanish ship of the line Princesa off Cape Finisterre and takes her into British service.
• May 31 – Frederick II becomes King in Prussia upon the death of his father, Frederick William I.
• June 1 – Plantation Act or Naturalization Act of the Parliament of Great Britain comes into effect providing for Protestant alien immigrants (including Huguenots, and also Jews) residing in the American colonies for 7 years to receive British nationality.
• June 16 – Pour le Mérite first awarded in Prussia as a military honour.
• June 26 – War of Jenkins' Ear: Siege of Fort Mose – A Spanish column of 300 regular troops, free Black militia and Indian auxiliaries storms Britain's strategically crucial position of Fort Mose, Florida.

July–September

• July 7 – Adam Smith sets out from Scotland to take up a scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford.
• July 11 – Pogrom: Jews are expelled from Little Russia.
• August 1 – The song Rule, Britannia! is first performed at Cliveden, the country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in England.
• August 17 – Pope Benedict XIV succeeds Pope Clement XII, as the 247th pope.
• September 8 – Hertford College, Oxford, England, is founded for the first time.

October–December

• October 9–22 – Batavia Massacre: Troops of the Dutch East India Company massacre 5,000–10,000 Chinese Indonesians in Batavia.
• October 20 – Maria Theresa inherits the hereditary dominions of the Habsburg monarchy (Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and modern-day Belgium) under the terms of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 on the death of her father, Charles VI. Her succession to the Holy Roman Empire is contested widely because she is a woman, but she will reign for 40 years.
• November 6 – Samuel Richardson's popular and influential epistolary novel, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, is published anonymously in London.
• November 14 – The University of Pennsylvania is officially established.
• December 16 – Frederick II of Prussia invades the Habsburg possession of Silesia, starting the War of the Austrian Succession.

Date unknown

• Enfield, North Carolina, is founded.
• Spain begins construction on Fort Matanzas in the Matanzas Inlet, approximately 15 miles (24 km) south of St. Augustine, Florida.

1741

January–March

• January 13 – Lanesborough, Massachusetts is created as a township.
• February 13 – Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, popularizes the term "the balance of power" in a speech in Parliament.
• February 14 – Irish-born actor Charles Macklin makes his London stage debut as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, pioneering a psychologically realistic style with Shakespeare's text revived, replacing George Granville's melodramatic adaptation The Jew of Venice. Kitty Clive plays the travesti role of Portia.
• March 9 – War of the Austrian Succession: Prussian troops bring down the Austrian fortress of Glogau (modern-day Głogów in Poland).
• March 13 – The British Royal Navy takes 180 warships, frigates and transport vessels, led by Admiral Edward Vernon, to threaten Cartagena, Colombia, with more than 27,000 crew against the 3,600 defenders.

April–June

• April 6 – The New York Slave Insurrection, a plot to set fire to New York City, is discovered.
• April 10 – War of the Austrian Succession: An Austrian army is defeated by Prussian troops of Frederick the Great in the Battle of Mollwitz.
• May 4 – Vitus Bering sets out from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to map the coasts of Siberia and Alaska.
• May 9 – War of Jenkins' Ear: Battle of Cartagena de Indias – Spain's defenders in New Grenada, under the command of General Blas de Lezo, defeat Edward Vernon's Royal Navy force, leading to a British retreat to Jamaica.
• May 14 – HMS Wager, one of the vessels of George Anson's voyage around the world, is wrecked on the coast of Chile, killing most of the crew who have survived scurvy.
• May 15 – Nader Shah, Emperor of Persia, narrowly escapes an assassination attempt.
• May 21 – War of the Austrian Succession: King George II of Great Britain orders the British Army to prepare for an invasion of Prussia to defend his Electorate of Hanover.
• June 11 – 1741 British general election, begun on April 30, concludes with Prime Minister Robert Walpole's Whigs retaining their majority in the House of Commons but losing 44 seats to candidates who have defected to the new Patriot Whigs to oppose his policies.
• June 25 – Maria Theresa of Austria is crowned Queen Regnant of Hungary in Bratislava.

July–September

• July 8 – Jonathan Edwards repeats his Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God sermon at Enfield, Connecticut.
• July 15 – Alexei Chirikov sights land in Southeast Alaska, and sends some men aboard his ship ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to visit Alaska.
• August 4–5 – War of Jenkins' Ear: Invasion of Cuba – British Admiral Edward Vernon captures Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, which he renames Cumberland Bay, but which his forces are forced to abandon on December 9.
• August 10 – Raja Marthanda Varma of Travancore defeats the Dutch East India Company in the Battle of Colachel, ending the Dutch colonial rule in India and marking the first "major" defeat of a European colonial military power in India.
• August 23 – At least 2,000 die along the shores of the Sea of Japan after a volcanic eruption on an island generated the Kampo Tsunami.
• September 11 – War of the Austrian Succession: Linz falls to the Bavarian Army.

October–December

• October 12 – George II, as Elector of Hanover, signs the Neustadt Protocol with France, but fails to inform his British government until after his return from Germany.
• November 25–26 – War of the Austrian Succession: Franco-Bavarian troops commanded by Maurice of Saxony storm in Battle of Prague city Prague.
• December 6 (November 25, O.S.) – Elizabeth of Russia becomes czarina after a palace coup.
• December 7
  • War of the Austrian Succession: Charles Albert of Bavaria has himself proclaimed King of Bohemia.
  • Aleksei Chirikov of Russia presents the first written description of the northwest coast of North America.
• December 19 – Vitus Bering dies during his expedition, east of Siberia.
• December 25 – Anders Celsius develops his own thermometer scale, Centigrade, the predecessor of the Celsius scale.

Date unknown

• Stemmatographia by Hristofor Zhefarovich, regarded as the first Serbian and Bulgarian secular printed book, is printed in Vienna.
• The Royal Order of Scotland in freemasonry is founded.

1742

January–March

• January 9 – Robert Walpole is made Earl of Orford, and resigns as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, effectively ending his period as Prime Minister of Great Britain. On his formally relinquishing office five days later, he will have served 20 years and 314 days as Prime Minister, the longest single term ever, and also longer than the accumulated terms of any other British Prime Minister.
• January 14 – Edmond Halley dies; James Bradley succeeds him as Astronomer Royal of Great Britain.
• January 24 – Charles VII becomes Holy Roman Emperor.
• January 28? – The House of Commons of Great Britain votes on the alleged rigging of the Chippenham by-election. It becomes a motion of no confidence, which leads to the resignation of Robert Walpole.
• February 12 – John Carteret, 2nd Lord Carteret becomes Secretary of State for the Northern Department in Great Britain.
• February 15— First Silesian War, part of War of the Austrian Succession: Troops of the Kingdom of Prussia, Saxony and France, under the command of Prince Dietrich of Anhalt-Dessau, capture the Moravian town of Iglau (now Jihlava). At this point, the Saxons and French declare that their obligations to Prussia have ceased.
• February 16 – Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain.
• February 22 – Henry Fielding publishes his picaresque novel Joseph Andrews anonymously in London when "the first edition... reached the bookstalls" in the city.
• March 15
  • Denmark concludes a treaty of friendship with France, a day after the expiration of its 1739 treaty with Great Britain.
  • The Verendrye brothers take possession of South Dakota in the name of the King of France
• March 29 – Acting in his capacity of Grand Duke of Lithuania, Poland's King Stanisław August Poniatowski issues a proclamation allowing Jews in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius to live anywhere except for two public streets, the Pilies street and the Galves Street.

April –June

• April 13 – George Frideric Handel's oratorio The Messiah is first performed, in Dublin, Ireland in aid of local charities.
• May 17 – Battle of Chotusitz: Frederick the Great's army defeats the Austrians.
• May 24 – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Sahay: French forces defeat the Austrians.
• May – In Peru, Juan Santos takes the name Atahualpa II, and begins an ill-fated rebellion against Spanish rule. Father Domingo Garcia sends the first report of the rebellion to his superiors on June 2.
• June 7 – Christian Goldbach first describes Goldbach's conjecture ("Every even number is the sum of two primes") in a letter to fellow mathematician Leonhard Euler.
• June 11 – Peace of Breslau: Austria cedes Silesia to Prussia.
• June 20 – İzmir, formerly the ancient Greek city of Smyrna, is destroyed by fire.

July–September

• July 7 – War of Jenkins' Ear: Battle of Bloody Marsh – British troops repel those of Spain (under Montiano), in the Province of Georgia.
• July 14 – William Pulteney is created 1st Earl of Bath in Great Britain.
• August 17
  • Accompanied by 10 French Army observers, Choctaw Indians from the French Louisiana territory cross the Tombigbee River and raid Chickasaw Indian towns in Georgia. Over three days, the attackers lose 50 men, the Chickasaw defenders about 25. For permitting the attack, the French Louisiana governor, the Sieur de Bienville, is summoned back to Paris.
  • Irish author and poet Dean Jonathan Swift is declared by a court to be "of unsound mind and memory" and confined to home treatment for the remaining three years of his life.
• August 19
  • A British fleet led by Commodore William Martin enters the harbor of Naples with three warships, two frigates, and four bomb vessels, and sends a message giving the King Charles VII of Naples (the future King Charles III of Spain) 30 minutes to agree to withdraw Neapolitan troops from the Spanish Army. Don Carlos agrees and ends the threat of a Spanish foothold in Italy.
  • Voltaire's controversial play Fanatacism, or Mahomet the Prophet is first performed, in Paris, to a theatre audience filled with French nobility.
• August 20 – The Swedish-Russian War effectively ends as 17,000 Swedish troops surrender in Finland at Helsingfors (modern-day Helsinki).
• August 27 – George Anson, captain of HMS Centurion, arrives with his seriously ill crew at the island of Tinian (now U.S. territory as one of the Northern Mariana Islands and saves his mission.
• September 5 – The 46 survivors of Russia's Great Northern Expedition return to Petropavlovsk after having been shipwrecked on an island in the Bering Strait ten months earlier. They had completed the building of a new ship from the wreckage of the St Pyotr on August 21.
• September 16 – Construction starts on the Foundling Hospital in London.

October–December

• October 5
  • Pedro Cebrian y Agustin, Count of Fuenclara, arrives at Veracruz to become the new Spanish Viceroy of New Spain.
  • Pennsylvania's Colonial Governor George Thomas bars citizens from settling in Lancaster County, or west of the Blue Mountains.
• November 13 – The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters is founded.
• December 2 – The Pennsylvania Journal first appears in the United States.

Date unknown

• The Lopukhina Conspiracy arises at the Russian court.
• The Afghan tribes unite as a monarchy.
• Daniel le Pelley succeeds Nicolas le Pelley, as Seigneur of Sark.
• Molde, Norway, becomes a city.
• Eisenach, Germany builds its Stadtschloss (city castle).
• Spain completes the construction of Fort Matanzas in the Matanzas Inlet, approximately 15 miles (24 km) south of St. Augustine, Florida.
• The University of Erlangen is founded in Bavaria.
• Anders Celsius publishes his proposal for a centigrade temperature scale originated in 1741.
• Colin Maclaurin publishes his Treatise on Fluxions.
• Charles Jervas's English translation of Don Quixote is published posthumously. Through a printer's error, the translator's name is printed as 'Charles Jarvis', leading the book to forever be known as the Jarvis translation. It is acclaimed as the most faithful English rendering of the novel made up to this time.
• The Roman Catholic church decrees that Roman ceremonial practice in Latin (not in Chinese) is to be the law for Chinese missions.

1743

January–March

• January 1 – The Verendrye brothers, probably Louis-Joseph and François de La Vérendrye, become the first white people to see the Rocky Mountains from the eastern side (the Spanish conquistadors had seen the Rockies from the west side).
• January 8 – King Augustus III of Poland, acting in his capacity as Elector of Saxony, signs an agreement with Austria, pledging help in war in return for part of Silesia to be conveyed to Saxony.
• January 12
  • The Verendryes, and two members of the Mandan Indian tribe, reach the foot of the mountains, near the site of what is now Helena, Montana.
  • An earthquake strikes the Philippines
• January 16 – Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury turns his effects over to King Louis XV of France, 13 days before his death on January 29.
• January 23 – With mediation by France, Sweden and Russia begin peace negotiations at Åbo to end the Russo-Swedish War. By August 17, Sweden cedes all of its claims to southern Finland.
• February 21 – George Frideric Handel's oratorio, Samson, premieres in London.
• March 2 – A British expeditionary fleet under Sir Charles Knowles is defeated by the Spanish in the Battle of La Guaira.

April–June

• April 1 – Pope Benedict XIV issues a new bull, barring agreements by spouses not to appeal annulments of marriages
• April 2 – The Verendrye brothers bury a tablet claiming the Great Plains of North America for King Louis XV of France. A schoolgirl in Pierre, South Dakota, unearths the tablet 170 years later on February 16, 1913.
• April 3 – Prithvi Narayan Shah becomes the new King of the Gorkha Kingdom and begins a campaign to unify the 54 different principalities in the Himalayas under his rule as part of the unification of Nepal
• April 9 – The Verendrye brothers make the first contact since 1722 between Europeans and the Sioux Indians, whom they refer to as Les Gens de la Fleche Collee ("the people of the sheathed arrow").
• April 13 – The British East India Company ship Princess Louisa is wrecked off the coast of Maio Island in the Cape Verde Islands, killing 49 of her 179 crew.
• April 18 – The trustees of the English Province of Georgia vote to inaugurate public schools in the corporate territory.
• May 9 – Austrian army defeats the Bavarian army in the Battle of Simbach.
• May 10 – In New France, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville ends his final term (multiple times over 43 years) as Governor of colonial French Louisiana, which he helped colonize; he is succeeded by the Marquis de Vaudreuil (for the next 10 years) and returns to France.
• May 30 – The Dalecarlian rebellion (1743) breaks out in Sweden.
• June 27 (June 16 O.S.) – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Dettingen in Bavaria: British forces, in alliance with those of Hanover and Hesse, defeat a French army under the duc de Noailles; King George II of Great Britain (and Elector of Brunswick) leads his own troops, the last British king to do so.

July–September

• July 3 – As a concession to Russia, Sweden's parliament ratifies the election of Adolphus Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, a great-grandson of King Charles XI, to be heir to the throne of Sweden. Adolphus becomes king on the death of King Frederick on April 5, 1751, marking the end of the Hesse-Kassel dynasty and the start of the dynasty of the Holstein-Gottorp that will rule Sweden from 1751 to 1818
• July 13 – All 276 people on board the Dutch East India Company ship Hollandia drown after the ship strikes a rock off of the Isles of Scilly in England near Cornwall. The wreckage is located in 1971.
• July 20 – Lord Anson captures the Philippine galleon Nuestra Señora de Covadonga and its treasure of 1,313,843 Spanish dollars at Manila along with a treasure of 2 1/2 million dollars, and proceeds back toward Mexico, then returns to Britain in 1744
• July 23 – James Oglethorpe departs from Georgia to England and returns there in September.
• July 28 – France and the Allies of Britain conclude a treaty to provide care for each other's wounded.
• July 31 – At a summit in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the British colonies of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania conclude a treaty with the Six Nations, conceding that the member tribes are entitled to the territory west of the Appalachian mountains and north of the Ohio River.
• August 18 (August 7 Old Style) – Russia and Sweden sign the Treaty of Åbo.
• August 24 – The War of the Hats: The Swedish army surrendered to the Russians in Helsinki, ending the war and starting Lesser Wrath.
• August 27 – Henry Pelham becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain.
• September 11 – Russian noble Natalia Lopukhina is flogged in front of the Twelve Collegia building in Saint Petersburg, bringing a conclusion to the "Lopukhina Affair" plotted by France and the Duchy of Holstein.
• September 13 – The Treaty of Worms is signed between Great Britain, Austria and Sardinia.

October–December

• October 19 – Louis Maria Colons, one of nine French Canadians who had attempted to colonize territory in what is now New Mexico, is executed for attempting to persuade the Pueblo Indians to rise up against the Spanish colonial government.
• October 21 – Benjamin Franklin's view of a lunar eclipse from Philadelphia is spoiled by a rainstorm; several days later, he learns that residents of Boston received the same storm hours after the eclipse, demonstrating that weather moves from west to east.
• October 23 – After almost six weeks, Nader Shah of Persia lifts the siege of Mosul.
• November 5 – Coordinated scientific observations of the transit of Mercury are organized by Joseph-Nicolas Delisle.
• December 3 – Ecuadorian scientist Pedro Vicente Maldonado departs from Brazil in order to purchase the most state-of-the-art equipment for the French Geodesic Mission
• December 9 – At Haarlem, Dutch astronomer Dirk Klinkenberg becomes the first to observe the Great Comet of 1744. Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux discovers it independently on December 13. Both scientists are given credit for its discovery
• December 10 – King Louis XV of France informs King Philip V of Spain of his intent to try to restore the House of Stuart to the throne of the United Kingdom. James Francis Edward Stuart was briefly the Crown Prince of England and Scotland until his father, King James II, was deposed in 1688 and, as Pretender to the Throne, would become King James III if the attack, planned for January 1, 1744 succeeds.
• December 11 – Princess Louise of Great Britain, daughter of King George II, weds Frederick, Crown Prince of Denmark and Norway.

Undated

• Capodimonte porcelain is first manufactured, in Naples.
• Probable date – The last wolf in Scotland is shot, in Killiecrankie.

1744

January–March

• January 6 – The Royal Navy ship Bacchus engages the Spanish Navy privateer Begona, and sinks it; 90 of the 120 Spanish sailors die, but 30 of the crew are rescued.
• January 24 – The Dagohoy rebellion in the Philippines begins, with the killing of Father Giuseppe Lamberti.
• February 22–23 – Battle of Toulon: The British fleet is defeated by a joint Franco-Spanish fleet.
• February 27 – Violent storms frustrate a planned French invasion of Britain.
• March 1 (approximately) – The Great Comet of 1744, one of the brightest ever seen, reaches perihelion.
• March 13 – The British ship Betty capsizes and sinks off of the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) near Anomabu. More than 200 people on board die, although there are a few survivors.
• March 15 – France declares war on Great Britain.

April–June

• April – The Female Spectator (a monthly) is founded by Eliza Haywood in England, the first periodical written for women by a woman.
• April 2 – The first Rules of golf are drawn up at Leith, for the first golf competition.
• April 27 – Siege of Villafranca (1744): A joint French and Spanish force defeats Britain and Sardinia.
• May 11 – Russia's treasury begins an effort to reduce the number of copper five-kopeck pieces (20 of which equal a Russian ruble) by declaring that it will buy them back at a ruble for every 20 until August 1, after which kopecks would be redeemed at a ruble for every 25; then at the rate of 33 for a ruble on October 1, and 50 for a ruble on and after August 28, 1746.
• May 22 – The Union of Germany is proclaimed in Frankfurt Frederick II of Prussia, as articles of union are signed between Prussia, Hesse-Kassel and the Rhineland Palatinate.
• May 24 – After receiving the news from Europe that Great Britain and France are at war, the French Army at Louisbourg attacks the British settlement at Fort William Augustus at Canso, Nova Scotia and forces its surrender.
• June 13 – Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin is named as the new Chancellor of the Russian Empire by the Empress Elizabeth.
• June 15 – Commodore George Anson's voyage around the world concludes after four years as HMS Centurion returns to England at Spithead and Anson is greeted as a hero.
• June 28 – At the age of 15, Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future Empress of Russia, is received into the Russian Orthodox Church after converting from the Lutheran faith. Upon her conversion to the Russian Orthodox religion, she is given the name Yekaterina (Catherine). In 1762, she takes the throne as the Empress Catherine II, later known as Catherine the Great.

July–September

• July 8 – The Royal Navy privateer Somerset capsizes and sinks in the Bristol Channel, killing 86 of the 97 crew.
• July 19 – Battle of Casteldelfino: France defeats the Kingdom of Sardinia.
• July 29 – Nader Shah lays siege to the Ottoman citadel of Kars.
• August 12 – Battle of Velletri in the Kingdom of Naples: Spanish-Neapolitan forces defeat those of the Archduchy of Austria.
• September 30 – Battle of Madonna dell'Olmo: France and Spain defeat the Kingdom of Sardinia.

October–December

• October 4 – In one of the greatest disasters for the Royal Navy, HMS Victory sinks in a storm in the English Channel, killing 1,100 sailors and officers it had been bringing back from Gibraltar to England, including Admiral John Balchen. The wreck will be located 264 years later, in January, 2009.
• October 12 – The creator of binomial nomenclature for the identification of plant and animal species, Carl Linnaeus, is selected as president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, succeeding the late Anders Celsius, who had devised the centigrade measurement of temperature.
• October 19 – William Shirley, the British colonial Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, announces the declaration of war against the Miꞌkmaq and Maliseet Indian tribes.
• October 25
  • The Massachusetts General Court, colonial legislature for the Massachusetts Bay Province, approves an incentive for the killing of enemy Indians, authorizing the payment of 100 Massachusetts pounds for the scalping of a Mi'kmaq or Maliseet Indian, and 50 for the scalps of women or children.
  • Spanish explorers Antonio de Ulloa and Jorge Juan y Santacilla complete their mission of exploration and depart from the Peruvian seaport of Callao for a return to Spain.
• November 1 – Second Silesian War: The Prussian Army, under the command of Field Marshal Kurt Christoph Graf von Schwerin, begins the bombardment of Prague. The Bohemian capital surrenders after two weeks.
• December 18 – Queen Maria Theresa of Austria issues a proclamation to rid Bohemia of its Jewish residents, with the Jews to leave Prague over the next two weeks, and then to depart from Bohemia entirely in 1745.

Date unknown

• The third French and Indian War, known as King George's War, breaks out at Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.
• Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, sequel to Tommy Thumb's Song Book, containing the oldest version of many well-known and popular rhymes, is published in London.

1745

January–March

• January 7 – War of the Austrian Succession: The Austrian Army, under the command of Field Marshal Károly József Batthyány, makes a surprise attack at Amberg and the winter quarters of the Bavarian Army, and scatters the Bavarian defending troops, then captures the Bavarian capital at Munich
• January 8 – The Quadruple Alliance treaty is signed at Warsaw by Great Britain, Austria, the Dutch Republic and the Duchy of Saxony.
• January 20 – Less than two weeks after the disastrous Battle of Amberg leaves Bavaria undefended, the electorate's ruler (and Holy Roman Emperor) Karl VII Albrecht dies from gout at the age of 47, leaving the duchy without an adult to lead it. His 17-year-old son, Maximilian III Joseph, signs terms of surrender in April.
• February 22 – The ruling white colonial government on the island of Jamaica foils a conspiracy by about 900 black slaves, who had been plotting to seize control and to massacre the white residents.
• February 23 – The royal wedding of the Crown Prince of France takes place at Versailles; the Dauphin Louis Ferdiand, eldest son of King Louis XV, is united in marriage to Princess Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain, daughter of King Felipe V. The Dauphin never takes the throne, dying in 1765, eight years before the death of his father.
• February 27 – Pierre Bouguer appears before the French Academy of Sciences to deliver his report of the data gathered in the French Geodesic Mission, including the first precise measurement of the Earth's circumference. His determination that the circumference is 24,854.85 miles (40,000.00 km) and that the distance from the pole to equator is roughly 6,214 miles (10,000 km) eventually leads to the Academy's calculation of the metre and the metric system.
• March 1 – Augustus III, the King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, declares his candidacy to become the next Holy Roman Emperor, but loses in September to Francis, Duke of Tuscany.

April–June

• April 4 – (March 24, old style); Under the command of British Army General William Pepperrell, the first 4,300 American colonists in the New England Army depart Boston to liberate the French North American colony of Nova Scotia. The flotilla of 80 military transports and 18 armed escorts is scattered by a storm, but the first troops disembark at Canso, Nova Scotia, on April 15 and begin training while waiting for the arrival of the Royal Navy squadron commanded by Admiral Peter Warren
• April 15 – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Pfaffenhofen: The Austrian Army drives the French Army out of Bavaria, forcing the Electorate of Bavaria to withdraw from the war.
• April 22 – Having recently turned 18, Bavaria's ruler Maximilian III agrees to sign the Treaty of Füssen with Austria, withdrawing Bavaria from further participation in the War of the Austrian Succession, and agreeing to support Austria's candidate for the next Holy Roman Emperor
• April 29 – The heavily-armed French Navy frigate Renommée approaches the French colony of Nova Scotia, after having been dispatched to warn French forces at Louisbourg of the impending attack by British American forces. However, the Massachusetts privateer HMS Shirley Galley, commanded by John Rous, attacks the Renommée and forces it to sail away. The command at Louisbourg is not warned of the impending attack
• May 11 – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Fontenoy: French forces defeat an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army, including the Black Watch.
• June 4 – Battle of Hohenfriedberg: In the battle that earned him the descriptor of "Frederick the Great", King Frederick II of Prussia decisively defeats the Austrian and Saxon armies, effectively ending the Second Silesian War.
• June 16 – King George's War: The British capture Cape Breton Island in North America from the French.

July–September

• July 9 – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Melle: The French are victorious in an engagement against the Pragmatic Allies.
• July 15 – French army occupies Ghent after Fall of Ghent
• August 6 (July 26 Old Style) – The first recorded women's cricket match takes place in Surrey, England.
• August 19 – The Jacobite rising of 1745 begins at Glenfinnan, Scotland, where Charles Edward Stuart raises his standard.
• September 1 – Catherine the Great marries Peter III of Russia, in Saint Petersburg.
• September 11 – Jacobite rising of 1745: Jacobites enter Edinburgh; six days later, Charles Edward Stuart proclaims his father James Francis Edward Stuart, as James VIII of Scotland.
• September 12 – Francis I, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, is elected Holy Roman Emperor by the nine prince-electors of the Empire (from Bavaria, Bohemia, Brandenburg, Cologne, Hanover, Mainz, the Palatinate, Saxony, and Trier) with the support of his wife, Maria Theresa. He is the successor of Charles VII Albert of Bavaria, an enemy of the House of Habsburg, who died on January 20 of this year.
• September 14 – Madame de Pompadour is officially presented, at the court of Louis XV of France.
• September 16 – Jacobite rising of 1745 – "Canter of Coltbrigg": The British 13th and 14th Dragoons flee the Jacobites, near Edinburgh.
• September 21 – Battle of Prestonpans: British Government forces are defeated by the Jacobites in Scotland.
• September 30 – In Battle of Soor Prussian army wins over Austrian and Saxons armies.

October –December

• October 4 – Francis is crowned as the new Holy Roman Emperor
• October 8 – The Empress Elizabeth of Russia agrees to provide the Electorate of Saxony aid in its war against Prussia, but the agreement comes too late
• October 11 – At Köslin (now Koszalin in Poland) Prussian scientist Ewald Georg von Kleist independently invents the first electrical capacitor to store and discharge electricity. The invention, commonly called the Leyden jar is later credited to a subsequent inventor Pieter van Musschenbroek.
• October 14 – In Amritsar in India's Punjab region, the Sikh parliament (the Sarbat Khalsa) votes for a major reorganization of the Sikh nation's army, the Dal Khalsa, with 25 cavalry regiments and support troops under the command of General Nawab Kapur Singh
• November 1 – Pope Benedict XIV issues the encyclical Vix pervenit, referred to in English as "On Usury and Other Dishonest Profit", condemning the charging of interest on loans as a sin against the Roman Catholic Church
• November 8 – Jacobite rising of 1745: Charles Edward Stuart, known popularly as "Bonnie Prince Charlie", crosses from Scotland into England for the first time since beginning his quest to place his father on the English throne as the pretender King James III. Charles arrives at Longtown in Cumbria and spends the night at a nearby village, the Riddings, then leads his army south along the right bank of the River Eden the next day
• November 23 – In Battle of Hennersdorf Prussian army wins against Saxons army.
• November 28 – King George's War: A combined force of troops from the French Army and of the Wabanaki Confederacy (Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki, and Penobscot tribes) destroys the British American settlement at Fort Saratoga (now Schuylerville, New York), burning the fort and surrounding buildings to the ground, and killing 15 people. Another 103 survivors are taken prisoner.
• December 4 – Jacobite rising of 1745: The Scottish Jacobite army reaches as far south as Derby in England, causing panic in London; two days later it begins to retreat.
• December 17 – Two days after Prussian troops rout the Saxons at the Battle of Kesselsdorf, the Saxon capital of Dresden falls to Prussia's King Frederick the Great.
• December 18 – Jacobite rising of 1745 – Clifton Moor Skirmish: The Jacobites are victorious, in the last action between two military forces on English soil.
• December 23 – Jacobite rising of 1745 – Battle of Inverurie: The Jacobites are victorious over British royal troops.
• December 25 – The Treaty of Dresden gives Prussia full possession of Silesia.
• December 28 – For 5 days, fire destroys buildings in Istanbul.

1746

January–March

• January 8 – The Young Pretender Charles Edward Stuart occupies Stirling, Scotland.
• January 17 – Battle of Falkirk Muir: British Government forces are defeated by Jacobite forces.
• February 1 – Jagat Singh II, the ruler of the Mewar Kingdom, inaugurates his Lake Palace on the island of Jag Niwas in Lake Pichola, in what is now the state of Rajasthan in northwest India.
• February 19 – Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, issues a proclamation offering an amnesty to participants in the Jacobite rebellion, directing them that they can avoid punishment if they turn their weapons in to their local Presbyterian church.
• February 22 – Brussels, at the time part of the Austrian Netherlands, surrenders to France's Marshal Maurice de Saxe.
• March 10 – Zakariya Khan Bahadur, the Mughal Empire's viceroy administering Lahore (in what is now Pakistan), orders the massacre of the city's Sikh people.

April–June

• April 16 – The Battle of Culloden in Scotland, the final pitched battle fought on British soil, brings an end to the Jacobite rising of 1745.
• May 27 – The three Scottish leaders of the Jacobite uprising— the Earl of Kilmarnock, Lord Balmerino, and Lord Lovat— are imprisoned for treason in the Tower of London, where they are held by the British government until their execution. Boyd and Balmerino are beheaded in August, while Fraser is not put to death until April 1747.
• June 16 – Battle of Piacenza: Austrian forces defeat French and Spanish troops.
• June 18 – Samuel Johnson is contracted to write his A Dictionary of the English Language.
• June 29 – Catherine of Ricci (b. 1522) is canonized.

July–September

• July 3 – Father Joachim Royo, the last of the five Spanish Catholic missionaries to Fuzhou in China, is captured by Chinese authorities, after having spent three decades defying orders to not evangelize. He and three fellow priests are put to death two years later, on October 28, 1748.
• July 9 – King Philip V of Spain dies, after a reign of more than 45 years. His oldest living son succeeds him, as King Ferdinand VI.
• August 1 – The wearing of the kilt is banned in Scotland by the Dress Act (Note: the actual effective date of the Dress Act was August 1, 1747, not 1746).
• August 18 – Two of the four rebellious Scottish lords, Earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerinoch, are beheaded in the Tower of London (Lord Lovat is executed in 1747).
• September 20 – Bonnie Prince Charlie flees to the Isle of Skye from Arisaig, after the unsuccessful Jacobite rising of 1745, marked by the Prince's Cairn on the banks of Loch nan Uamh.

October–December

• October 11 – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Rocoux: The French army defeats the allied Austrian, British, Hanoveran and Dutch army in Rocourt.
• October 22 – The College of New Jersey is founded in Princetown, New Jersey. In 1896, it is renamed Princeton University.
• October 28 – An earthquake demolishes Lima and Callao, in Peru.
• November 4 – Anwaruddin Khan, the Nawab of the Arcot State in South India, is driven back by the Captain Louis Paradis of the French Army after he and 10,000 soldiers attempt to drive the French back out of Madras.
• December 5 – Rallied by a teenage boy, Giovanni Battista Perasso (nicknamed Balilla"), the citizens of the Republic of Genoa rise up against the Austrian occupying troops and the collaborator Military Governor, the Genoese Marquis of Botta d'Adorno. By December 11, the Austrian soldiers are driven from the Italian city-state, but return a few months later.

Date unknown

• Eva Ekeblad reports her discovery, of how to make flour and alcohol from potatoes, to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
• The town of Vilkovo (Odes'ka oblast', Ukraine) is founded.
• Gabriel Johnston, British Governor of the Province of North Carolina, moves to New Bern, the province's largest. New Bern replaces Edenton as the capital of North Carolina until Raleigh is established in 1792.
• Charles Batteux's Les beaux-arts réduits à un même principe is published in Paris, putting forward for the first time the idea of "les beaux arts": "the fine arts".

1747

January–March

• January 31 – The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital.
• February 11 – King George's War: A combined French and Indian force, commanded by Captain Nicolas Antoine II Coulon de Villiers, attacks and defeats British troops at Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia.
• March 7 – Juan de Arechederra the Spanish Governor-General of the Philippines, combines his forces with those of Sultan Azim ud-Din I of Sulu to suppress the rebellion of the Moros in the Visayas.
• March 19 – Simon Fraser, the 79-year old Scottish Lord Lovat, is convicted of high treason for being one of the leaders of the Jacobite rising of 1745 against King George II of Great Britain and attempting to place the pretender Charles Edward Stuart on the throne. After a seven day trial of impeachment in the House of Lords and the verdict of guilt, Fraser is sentenced on the same day to be hanged, drawn and quartered; King George alters Fraser's punishment to beheading, which is carried out publicly on April 9.

April–June

• April 9 – The Scottish Jacobite Lord Lovat is beheaded at Tower Hill, London, for high treason. He was the last person in Britain to be beheaded, although beheading would not be formally abolished until more than 200 years later.
• May 14 – War of the Austrian Succession – First battle of Cape Finisterre: The British Navy defeats a French fleet.
• June 9 – Emperor Momozono ascends to the throne of Japan, succeeding Emperor Sakuramachi.
• June 24–October 14 – The English ships Dobbs galley and California, under Captains William Moore and Francis Smith, explore Hudson Bay, discovering there is no Northwest Passage by this route.

July–September

• July 2 – War of the Austrian Succession – Battle of Lauffeld: France defeats the combined armies of Hanover, Great Britain and the Netherlands.
• August 15 – Great Britain, Russia and the Dutch Republic sign the Convention of Saint Petersburg (1747).
• August 24 – Seyyid Abdullah Pasha, the Turkish Governor of Cyprus, becomes the new Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and serves until 1750.
• September 13 – The Netherlands city of Bergen op Zoom falls to the Army of France after a 70 day siege during the War of the Austrian Succession.
• September 21 – A hurricane in the Caribbean Sea sinks 11 British ships, most of them off the coast of Saint Kitts.

October–December

• October 1 – On the 7th day of Shawwal, 1160 A.H., Pashtun chieftains in Kandahar, meeting in a special council (a loya jirga) vote to make Ahmad Shah Durrani their leader in Afghanistan and beginning the Durrani Empire.
• October 21 – King George II transfers Thomas Herring, Archbishop of York, to become the new Archbishop of Canterbury, three days after the death of John Potter
• October 24 – A Caribbean Sea hurricane sweeps across Saint Kitts, sinking 12 British freighters and one from France.
• October 25 – War of the Austrian Succession – Second battle of Cape Finisterre: The British Navy again defeats a French fleet.
• November 9 – Rioters in Amsterdam demand governmental reform.
• November 17–19 – The Knowles Riot breaks out in Boston, Massachusetts, protesting impressment into the British Royal Navy, .
• November 22 – End of Second Stadtholderless period: Prince William IV of Orange becomes stadtholder of all the United Provinces.
• December 7 – Benjamin Franklin forms the Pennsylvania Associators, the first militia in the colony of Pennsylvania, which had no standing militia because of its foundation by pacifistic Quakers.
• December 13 – The ordeal of the Maryland freighter sloop Endeavour begins when the ship departs Annapolis for the West Indies and encounters a hurricane. With its masts and rigging torn away, the ship drifts for six months before finally ending up at the island of Tiree off the coast of Scotland
• December 27 – The Parliament of Great Britain amends its Naturalisation Act of 1740 to extend recognition to all non-Anglican Protestant denominations in its colonies.

Date unknown

• James Lind's experiment begins to prove that citrus fruits prevent scurvy.
• War of the Austrian Succession: Spanish troops invade and occupy the coastal towns of Beaufort and Brunswick in the Royal Colony of North Carolina, during what becomes known as the Spanish Alarm. They are later driven out by the local militia.
• Samuel Johnson begins work on A Dictionary of the English Language in London.

1748

January–March

• January 12 – Ahmad Shah Durrani captures Lahore.
• January 27 – A fire at the prison and barracks at Kinsale, in Ireland, kills 54 of the prisoners of war housed there. An estimated 500 prisoners are safely conducted to another prison.
• February 7 – The San Gabriel mission project begins with the founding of the first Roman Catholic missions further northward in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, in what is now central Texas. On orders of the Viceroy, Juan Francisco de Güemes, Friar Mariano Marti establish the San Francisco Xavier mission at a location on the San Gabriel River in what is now Milam County. The mission, located northeast of the future site of Austin, Texas, is attacked by 60 Apache Indians on May 2, and San Xavier is abandoned after a few years.
• March 11 – In battle near Manupur (15 kilometres (9.3 mi) northwest of Sirhind), Mughal forces under Prince Ahmad Shah Bahadur are victorious against Ahmad Shah Durrani.
• March 25 – A fire in the City of London starts at Change Alley in Cornhill and continues for two days. Dr. Samuel Johnson later writes, "The conflagration of a city, with all its turmoil and concominant distress, is one of the most dreadful spectacles which this world can afford to human eyes". Another history notes more than a century later that "the fire led to a great increase in the practice of fire insurance", after the blaze causes more than £1,000,000 worth of damage.

April–June

• April 15 – The Siege of the Dutch fortress of Maastricht is started by the French under the command of Maurice de Saxe as part of the War of the Austrian Succession. The fortress falls on May 7 after a little more than three weeks.
• April 24 – A congress assembles at Aix-la-Chapelle (now Aachen), with the intent to conclude the War of the Austrian Succession. The treaty is signed on October 18.
• May 10 – As word arrives that the Dutch Republic has agreed to return control of Maastricht to France, the French Army's leader of the siege, Count Löwendal, marches through the opened city gates with his troops and accepts its surrender.
• June 1
  • A fire in Moscow kills 482 people and destroys 5,000 buildings.
  • José de Escandón is designated by the Viceroy of New Spain as the first Royal Governor of Nuevo Santander. The area covered by the Viceroyalty's new province is now part of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, and the part of the U.S. state of Texas south of the Guadalupe River (including San Antonio and Corpus Christi).

July–September

• July 29 – Royal Navy Admiral Edward Boscawen arrives at the coast of southeastern India with 28 ships, to defend Fort St. David from attacks by armies of French India. Historian Francis Grose later writes that Boscawen had brought the largest fleet "ever seen together in the East Indies", with nine ships of the line, two frigates, a sloop, and two tenders" and 14 ships of the British East India Company. Altogether, Boscawen has 3,580 sailors under his command. He then launches an offensive to destroy the French fort at Pondicherry and drive France from the subcontinent.
• August 26 – The first Lutheran Church body in America is founded at a conference in Philadelphia, organized by German-born evangelist Henry Muhlenberg and attended by pastors of orthodox and pious Lutheran communities. The two groups agree to create a common liturgy to govern public worship.
• August – The Camberwell beauty butterfly is named after specimens found at Camberwell in London.
• September 24 – Shah Rukh becomes ruler of Greater Khorasan.

October –December

• October 12 – War of Jenkins' Ear – Battle of Havana: a British Caribbean squadron engages a Spanish squadron based near Havana.
• October 18 – War of the Austrian Succession: The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle is signed to end the war. Great Britain obtains Madras, in India, from France, in exchange for the fortress of Louisbourg in Canada.
• November 22 – The Electorate of Hanover (now occupied by most of the northwestern German state of Niedersachsen or Lower Saxony) issues a decree banishing all adherents of the Moravian Church.
• December 4 – Austria and Spain sign a second treaty to settle the War of the Austrian Succession, and Austria agrees to remove its troops from Modena and Genoa.

Date unknown

• Leonhard Euler publishes Introductio in analysin infinitorum, an introduction to pure analytical mathematics, in Berlin.
• Montesquieu publishes De l'esprit des lois.
• Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock publishes the first three cantos of his epic poem Der Messias in hexameters (anonymously), in Bremer Beiträge (Leipzig).
• Adam Smith begins to deliver public lectures in Edinburgh.
• The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences makes Eva Ekeblad its first female member.
• Construction of the Sveaborg fortification begins near Helsinki.
• The ruins of Pompeii are rediscovered.
• Louis XV of France breaks his promise to eliminate the income tax, after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ends the war. The Parlement of Paris protests, so he reduces the tax to 5%.

1749

January–March

• January 3
  • Benning Wentworth issues the first of the New Hampshire Grants, leading to the establishment of Vermont.
  • The first issue of Berlingske, Denmark's oldest continually operating newspaper, is published.
• January 21 – The Teatro Filarmonico, the main opera theater in Verona, Italy, is destroyed by fire. It is rebuilt in 1754.
• February – The second part of John Cleland's erotic novel Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) is published in London. The author is released from debtors' prison in March.
• February 28 – Henry Fielding's comic novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling is published in London. Also this year, Fielding becomes magistrate at Bow Street, and first enlists the help of the Bow Street Runners, an early police force (eight men at first).
• March 6 – A "corpse riot" breaks out in Glasgow after a body disappears from a churchyard in the Gorbals district. Suspicion falls on anatomy students at the Glasgow Infirmary "had raised a dead body from the grave and carried it to the college" for dissection. The city guard intervenes after a mob of protesters begins breaking windows at random buildings, but groups of citizens begin to make regular patrols of church graveyards
• March 17 – At London's Covent Garden, composer George Frideric Handel conducts the first performance of his new oratorio, Solomon. More than 250 years later, an instrumental from Solomon, "The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba"; will be featured in the 2012 London Summer Olympics opening ceremony.

April–June

• April 14 – British Royal Navy ship HMS Namur is wrecked in a storm near Fort St. David, India, with the loss of 520 lives.
• April 27 – The first official performance of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks in London finishes early, due to the outbreak of fire. The piece had been composed by Handel to commemorate the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748.
• May 19 – King George II of Great Britain grants the Ohio Company 200,000 acres (81,000 ha) (312½ square miles or 810 km²) of land north of the Ohio River, encompassing most of the modern U.S. state of Ohio and part of West Virginia. The grant is conditioned on the Company being able to attract 100 European families every year, for seven years, to move to the area occupied by Indian tribes, and to build a fort to protect them
• June 4 – A fire in Glasgow leaves 200 families homeless.
• June 6 – The Conspiracy of the Slaves, which was to have taken place on June 29, is revealed in Malta.

July–September

• July 9 – The British naval fort at Halifax is founded on mainland Nova Scotia as a defense against the New France Fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, less than 100 miles (160 km) away.
• August 2 – Irish-born trader George Croghan, unaware of the recent British grant of land in the Ohio River valley to the Ohio Company, purchases 200,000 acres of much of the same land from the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, dealing directly with "the three most important Iroquois chiefs resident in that area, in return for an immense quantity of Indian goods." The deal takes place at the Iroquois capital of Onondaga, near present-day Syracuse, New York.
• August 3
  • The Battle of Ambur is fought in south India as the Second Carnatic War begins between the French-supported troops of Chanda Sahib of the Mughal Empire and the British-supported defenders of the Arcot State, led by its 77-year old Nawab, Anwaruddin Khan. After marching outside of the walls of Arcot to confront Chanda Sahib and Joseph Dupleix's 4,000 troops, Anwaruddin Khan's numerically superior force is routed and he is killed in the battle.
  • French explorer Pierre Joseph Céloron de Blainville, commissioned by New France to explore the Ohio Territory claimed by both France and Britain, buries the first of six engraved lead markers claiming the land for King Louis XV of France. The first plate is buried on the banks of the Allegheny River, near a rock with petroglyphs, in what is now Venango County, Pennsylvania.
• August 7 – Mary Musgrove Bosomworth, a woman of mixed British and Creek Indian ancestry, presents herself as Coosaponakeesa, Queen of the Creek Indians and marches with 200 Creek Indians into the town of Savannah, Georgia. During her confrontation with British colonial authorities, she and her husband Thomas Bosomworth demand payment of "nearly twenty-five thousand dollars" in compensation for property taken from the Creek Indians, before the British authorities determine that she doesn't have the authority to speak for the tribe.
• August 15 – Four Russian sailors— Aleksei Inkov, Khrisanf Inkov, Stepan Sharapov and Fedor Verigin— are rescued after having been marooned on the Arctic Ocean island of Edgeøya for more than six years. They are the only survivors of a crew of 14 whose koch had been blown off course in May 1743 and then broken up by ice. The four are returned home on September 28.
• August 19 – At a ceremony in San Antonio, Texas (then a part of the New Spain province of Nuevo Santander), four Apache chiefs and Spanish colonial officials and missionaries literally "bury the hatchet", placing weapons of war into a pit and covering it as a symbol that the Apaches and the Spaniards will fight no further war against each other.
• September 5 – A delegation of 33 members of the Catawba Indian nation and 73 from the Cherokee nation arrive in Charleston, South Carolina, to discuss a peace treaty with South Carolina's provincial governor, James Glen.
• September 12 – The first recorded game of baseball is played, by Frederick, Prince of Wales, at Kingston upon Thames in England.
• September 23 – Grand Chief Jean-Baptiste Cope, of the Miꞌkmaq Indian nation in Canada, declares war against the British Empire after the building of the fort at Halifax, Nova Scotia and begins hostilities by taking 20 British hostages at Canso.
• September 28 – Three Russian survivors of the shipwreck on Edgeøya return to their homeland after more than six years, as the ship Nikolai i Andrei brings them to the port of Archangelsk. A fourth survivor, Fedor Veriginare, died of scurvy during the six-week voyage home.

October–December

• October 2 – Edward Cornwallis, the British Governor of Nova Scotia, commands his militia and local citizens "to annoy, distress, take or destroy the Savage commonly called Micmac, wherever they are found" and promises a reward of ten guineas (21 British shillings) for every Mi'kmaq scalp brought in.
• October 4 – What is later described as "the least examined yet most influential" of clerical reforms, by the Spanish Bourbon monarchs of the 18th century, begins when King Ferdinand VI of Spain approves a royal cédula, removing control of the Roman Catholic parishes of Latin America from religious orders. Henceforward, jurisdiction over parishioners in the archdioceses of Lima, Mexico City and Bogotá is with the secular clergy.
• October 16 – At Falmouth, a part of the British Province of Massachusetts Bay that would later be the site of Portland, Maine, a peace treaty is signed between representatives of Massachusetts Bay and 19 sagamores and tribal chiefs of the Wabanaki Confederacy (encompassing the Penobscot, Kennebec, Odanak and Wôlinak tribes of the Abenaki Indians), temporarily settling territorial disputes in Maine during King George's War.
• October 19 – Two months after Pierre Céloron begins his inspection of the Ohio territory on behalf of France, Christopher Gist starts his survey of the lands along the right bank of the Ohio River on behalf of the British grant to the Ohio Company.
• November 9 – Battle of Penfui on Timor: A large Topass army is defeated by a numerically inferior Dutch East India Company.
• November 12 – In response to the increasing number of starving people moving into Paris from rural parts of France, King Louis XV issues an ordinance that "all the beggars and vagabonds who shall be found either in the streets of Paris, or in churches or church doorways, or in the countryside around Paris, of whatever age or sex, shall be arrested and conducted into prisons, to stay there as long as shall be necessary."
• November 24 – The Province of South Carolina House of Assembly votes to free African-American slave Caesar Norman, and to grant him a lifetime pension of 100 British pounds per year, in return for Caesar's agreement to share the secret of his antidote for poisonous snake venom. Caesar then makes public his herbal cure of juice from Plantago major (the common plantain) and Marrubium vulgare (horehound), combined with "a leaf of good tobacco moistened with rum".
• December 1 – Sultan Azim ud-Din I, recently forced to flee to Manila after being driven from the throne of Sultanate of Sulu elsewhere in the Philippine Islands, announces his intention to convert from Sunni Islam to become baptized as a Christian within the Roman Catholic Church. He changes his name to Fernando after being baptized.
• December 5 – French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau premieres his new opera, Zoroastre, at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris, but the first version is not a success. After five years of rewriting, Rameau will revive Zoroastre on January 19, 1756 and the opera will continue to be performed more than two centuries later.
• December 7 – Father Junípero Serra begins his missionary work in the New World, 100 days after departing on a voyage from Spain and a day after his arrival at Veracruz in Mexico. During the period from 1769 to 1782, Serra will be the founder of nine missions in the Province of Las Californias, including the sites around which future California cities will be built, including Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá in 1769 and Mission San Francisco de Asís in 1776.
• December 30 – Mir Sayyid Muhammad, a grandson of the Shah Suleiman of Persia, overthrows Shahrokh Shah to become the Shah of Persia, and briefly restores the Safavid dynasty as Suleiman II; his reign ends less than three months later, on March 20, when Kurdish tribesmen restore Shahrokh to the throne.

Date unknown

• A census is conducted in Finland.
• The land reform of the Great Partition begins in Sweden, and continues until the 19th century.

Births

1740

• February 4 – Carl Michael Bellman, Swedish poet, composer (d. 1795)
• February 15 – Juan Andrés, Spanish Jesuit (d. 1817)
• February 16 – Giambattista Bodoni, Italian publisher and engraver (d. 1813)
• February 17 – John Sullivan, American General in the American Revolutionary War, delegate in the Continental Congress (d. 1795)
• March – Johann van Beethoven, German musician, father of Ludwig van Beethoven (d. 1792)
• March 16 – Johann Jacob Schweppe, German-born inventor, founder of the Schweppes Company (d. 1821)
• April 7 – Haym Salomon, Polish-Jewish American financier of the American Revolution (d. 1785)
• April 14 – Anna Strong, Patriot spy during the American Revolutionary War (d. 1812)
• May 7 – Nikolai Arkharov, Russian police chief (d. 1814)

• June 2 – Marquis de Sade, French author, for whom sadism is named (d. 1814)
• June 24 – Juan Ignacio Molina, Spanish-Chilean Jesuit priest, naturalist, historian, translator, geographer, botanist, ornithologist and linguist (d. 1829)
• June 27 – James Woodforde, English clergyman and diarist (d. 1803)
• July 27 – Jeanne Baré, French explorer (d. 1803)
• August 23 – Emperor Ivan VI of Russia (d. 1764)
• August 26 – Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, French inventor (d. 1810)
• September 12 – Johann Heinrich Jung, German writer (d. 1817)
• September 23 – Empress Go-Sakuramachi of Japan (d. 1813)
• September 25 – Hercules Mulligan, tailor and spy during the American Revolutionary War (d. 1825)
• October 29 – James Boswell, Scottish author (d. 1795)
• October 31 – Philip James de Loutherbourg, English artist (d. 1812)
• December – Elisabeth Olin, Swedish opera singer (d. 1828)

• Ali Pasha of Ioannina, Albanian ruler (d. 1822)
• Margaret Bingham, Countess of Lucan, born Margaret Smith, English portrait miniature painter and writer (d. 1814)
• John Milton, American politician and officer of the Continental Army (d. 1817) (earliest estimated date of birth)
• Septimanie d'Egmont, French salonist (d. 1773)

1741

• January 14 – Benedict Arnold, American Revolutionary War general, traitor (d. 1801)
• January 27 – Hester Thrale, Welsh diarist (d. 1821)
• February 7 – Henry Fuseli, Swiss painter and writer (d. 1825)

• March 13 – Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1790)
• March 17 – William Withering, British physician (d. 1799)
• March 20 – Jean Antoine Houdon, French sculptor (d. 1828)
• April 14 – Emperor Momozono of Japan (d. 1762)
• May 13 – Ingeborg Akeleye, Norwegian noble known for her love life (d. 1800)
• May 23 – Andrea Luchesi, Italian composer (d. 1801)
• June 11 – Joseph Warren, American Patriot, physician (d. 1775)
• June 26 – John Langdon, American politician (d. 1819)
• September 22 – Peter Simon Pallas, German zoologist (d. 1811)
• October 4 – Edmond Malone, Irish scholar (d. 1812)
• October 18 – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, French general, author (d. 1803)
• October 24 – Johann August von Starck, German pastor (d. 1816)
• November 15 – Johann Kaspar Lavater, Swiss physiognomist (d. 1801)
• Date unknown –
  • Nikolaos Koutouzis, Greek painter, poet and priest (d. 1813)
  • Catherine Antonovna of Brunswick, German-Russian noble (d. 1807)
  • Gelelemend, Lenape chief (d. 1811)

1742

• January 8 – Philip Astley, English circus organizer (d. 1814)
• March 9 – Michael Anckarsvärd, Swedish politician (d. 1838)
• March 10 – Sampson Salter Blowers, American lawyer, jurist (d. 1842)

• March 14 – Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, Iranian king (d. 1797)
• March 12 – Aletta Haniel, German business person (d. 1815)
• April 28 – Henry Dundas, British statesman (d. 1811)
• May 6 – Jean Senebier, Swiss pastor, botanist (d. 1809)
• June 25 – Johann Schweighäuser, German classical scholar (d. 1830)
• June 26 – Arthur Middleton, American politician (d. 1787)
• June 28 – William Hooper, American statesman (d. 1790)
• July 21 – John Cleves Symmes, American statesman (d. 1814)
• July 27 – Nathanael Greene, American general (d. 1786)
• August 14 – Pope Pius VII (b. Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti), Italian Benedictine (d. 1823)

• September 14 – James Wilson, American politician, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1798)
• October 3 – Anders Jahan Retzius, Swedish chemist, botanist (d. 1821)
• October 6 – Johan Herman Wessel, Norwegian poet (d. 1785)
• November 5 – Richard Cosway, English artist (d. 1821)

• December 9 – Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Swedish chemist (d. 1785)
• December 16 – Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, Prussian general (d. 1819)
• December 26 (bapt.) – George Chalmers, Scottish antiquarian (d. 1825)
• date unknown – Túpac Amaru II, Peruvian indigenous rebel leader (d. 1781)
• date unknown – Rafaela Herrera, Nicaraguan heroine (d. 1805)
• date unknown – Francis Nash, American military officer (d. 1777)
• date unknown – Hendrik Frans de Cort, Flemish painter (d. 1810)

1743

• January 1 – Sir William Parker, 1st Baronet, of Harburn, British admiral (d. 1802)
• January 18 – Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, French philosopher, "le philosophe inconnu" (d. 1803)
• January 25 – Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, German philosopher (d. 1819)
• February 13 – Sir Joseph Banks, British naturalist and botanist (d. 1820)
• February 14 – George Morgan, American merchant and Indian agent (d. 1810)
• February 19 – Luigi Boccherini, Italian composer (d. 1805)
• February 23 – Mayer Amschel Rothschild, German-born banker (d. 1818)
• February 28 – René Just Haüy, French "father of modern crystallography" (d. 1822)
• March – Joseph Brant, Mohawk leader (d. 1807)
• March 4 – Johann David Wyss, Swiss author (d. 1818)
• March 14 – Hannah Cowley, English dramatist and poet (d. 1809)
• March 28 (March 17 O.S.) – Yekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova, Russian princess, courtier and patron of the arts and sciences (d. 1810)
• April – Etta Palm d'Aelders, Dutch-French feminist (d. 1799)
• April 1 – Richard Butler American general (d. 1793)
• April 13 – Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, author of the Declaration of American Independence (d. 1826)
• May 14 – Louis Lebègue Duportail French military leader in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War (d. 1802)
• May 17 – Seth Warner American revolutionary hero (d. 1784)
• May 20 – Toussaint Louverture, Haitian rebel (d. 1803)
• May 24 – Jean-Paul Marat, French revolutionary, doctor and scientist (d. 1793)
• June 2 – Alessandro Cagliostro, Italian Freemason (d. 1795)
• June 3
  • José Fernando de Abascal y Sousa, Spanish viceroy of Peru (d. 1821)
  • Lucia Galeazzi Galvani, Italian scientist (d. 1788)
• August 7 – Susan Carnegie, writer and founder of the first public asylum in Scotland (d.1821)
• August 26 – Antoine Lavoisier, French chemist (d. 1794)
• September 11 – Nikolaj Abraham Abildgaard, Danish painter (d. 1809)
• September 17 – Marquis de Condorcet, French mathematician, philosopher, and political scientist (d. 1794)
• October 20 – François Chopart, French surgeon (1795)
• November 11 – Carl Peter Thunberg, Swedish botanist (d. 1828)
• December 1 – Martin Heinrich Klaproth, German chemist, discoverer of uranium (1789), zirconium (1789), and cerium (1803) (d. 1817)
• December 23 – Ippolit Bogdanovich, Russian poet (d. 1803)
• date unknown
  • Károly Hadaly, Hungarian mathematician (d. 1834)
  • Elisabeth Christina von Linné, Swedish botanist (d. 1782)

1744

• February 6 – Pierre-Joseph Desault, French anatomist and surgeon (d. 1795)
• February 23 – Mayer Amschel Rothschild, German banker, founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty (d. 1812)
• May 19 – Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, queen of George III of Great Britain (d. 1818)
• May 21 – Samuel Ireland, British author and engraver (d. 1800)
• May 31 – Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Anglo-Irish politician, writer and inventor (d. 1817)
• July 20 – Joshua Clayton, American politician (d. 1798)
• August 1 – Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, French naturalist (d. 1829)
• August 16 – Pierre Méchain, French astronomer (d. 1804)
• August 25 – Johann Gottfried Herder, German writer (d. 1803)
• September 25 – King Frederick William II of Prussia (d. 1797)
• date unknown
  • Marie Barch, Danish ballerina (d. 1827)
  • Marie-Louise-Adélaïde Boizot, French engraver (d. 1800)

1745

• c. January – Isaac Titsingh, Dutch scholar, merchant-trader and ambassador (d. 1812)
• January 1 – Anthony Wayne, United States Army officer, statesman and member of the United States House of Representatives (d. 1796)
• January 6 – Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier, French inventor (d. 1799)
• January 7 – Johan Christian Fabricius, Danish zoologist (d. 1808)
• January 9 – Caleb Strong, American politician (d. 1819)
• February – Samuel Hearne, English explorer, fur-trader, author, and naturalist (d. 1792)
• February 2 – Hannah More, English religious writer, Romantic poet and philanthropist (d. 1833)

• February 18 – Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist (d. 1827)
• February 20 – Henry James Pye, English poet (d. 1813)
• February 21 – Olof Tempelman, Swedish architect (d. 1816)
• March 4
  • Charles Dibdin, English composer (d. 1814)
  • Kazimierz Pułaski, American Revolutionary War general (d. 1779)
• March 10 – John Gunby, Maryland soldier in the American Revolutionary War (d. 1807)
• March 25 – John Barry, officer in the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War and later in the United States Navy (d. 1803)
• April 6 – Thomas Peters, Dutch supercentenarian (d. 1857)
• April 20 – Philippe Pinel, French physician (d. 1826)
• July 8 – Sara Banzet, French educator and diarist (d. 1774)
• July 13 – Robert Calder, British naval officer (d. 1818)
• August 20 – Francis Asbury, American Methodist Bishop (d. 1816)
• August 30 – Johann Hieronymus Schröter, German astronomer (d. 1816)
• September 4 – Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Russian rabbi and founder of Chabad (d. 1812)
• September 16 – Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, Russian field marshal (d. 1813)
• November 13 – Valentin Haüy, French educator, founder of the first school for the blind (d. 1822)
• December 2 – Queen Jeongsun, Korean regent (d. 1805)
• December 15 – Johann Gottfried Koehler, German astronomer (d. 1801)
• December 24 – William Paterson, American politician and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1806)
• date unknown
  • Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua, Peruvian indigenous rebel leader (d. 1781)
  • Gim Hongdo (Danwon), Korean painter (d. 1806)
  • Robert H. Harrison, American jurist and lieutenant colonel of the Continental Army (d. 1790)
  • Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa), slave, abolitionist, author (d. 1797)

1746

• January 4 – Benjamin Rush, a Founding Father of the United States (d. 1813)
• January 12 – Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Swiss pedagogue (d. 1827)
• January 24 – King Gustav III of Sweden (d. 1792)

• February 4 – Tadeusz Kościuszko, Polish general and nationalist (d. 1817)
• February 5 – Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, American politician and soldier (d. 1825)
• March 3 – Izabela Czartoryska, Polish magnate princess (d. 1835)
• March 7 – André Michaux, French botanist (d. 1802)

• March 30 – Francisco Goya, Spanish painter (d. 1828)
• April 4 – John Andrews, American clergyman, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania (d. 1813)
• May 9 – Gaspard Monge, French mathematician and geometer (d. 1818)
• June 3 – James Hook, English composer (d. 1827)
• July 3 – Henry Grattan, Irish politician (d. 1820)
• July 16 – Giuseppe Piazzi, Italian astronomer (d. 1826)
• July 23 – Bernardo de Gálvez, Spanish military leader, aids the United States in its quest for independence in the American Revolutionary War (d. 1786)
• July 30 – Louise du Pierry, French astronomer (d. 1807)
• September 28 – Sir William Jones, English philologist (d. 1794)
• October 7 – William Billings, American composer (d. 1800)
• November 27 – Robert R. Livingston, American signer of the Declaration of Independence (d. 1813)
• December 29 – Saverio Cassar, Gozitan priest and rebel leader (d. 1805)
• date unknown
  • Hong Liangji, Chinese scholar, statesman, political theorist and philosopher
  • Isaac Swainson, English botanist (d. 1812)
  • Victor d'Hupay, French philosopher and writer (d. 1818)
  • Ekaterina Kozitskaya, Russian industrialist (d. 1833)
  • Ebenezer Pemberton, American educator (d. 1835)

1747

• January 10 – Abraham-Louis Breguet, Swiss horologist, inventor (d. 1823)
• January 15 – John Aikin, English doctor and writer (d. 1822)
• January 19 – Johann Elert Bode, German astronomer (d. 1826)
• February 21 – Eugenio Espejo, Ecuadorian scientist (d. 1795)
• February 28 – Justin Morgan, American horse breeder and composer (d. 1798)

• May 5 – Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1792)
• May 7 – Judith van Dorth, Dutch Orangist (d. 1799)
• June 23 – Michele Troja, Italian physician (d. 1827)
• July 2 – Rose Bertin, French fashion designer (d. 1813)
• July 6 – John Paul Jones, American naval captain (d. 1792)
• September 9 – Thomas Coke, first American Methodist Bishop (d. 1814)
• October 8 – Jean-François Rewbell, French politician (d. 1807)
• September 12 – Caleb Brewster, Patriot spy during the American Revolutionary War (d. 1827)
• December 12 – Anna Seward, English writer (d. 1809)
• December 31 – Gottfried August Bürger, German poet (d. 1794)
• date unknown
  • François Tourte, French musical instrument maker (d. 1835)
  • Francis Salvador, American patriot (d. 1776)
  • Anne Pépin, Senegalese Signara (d. 1837)
  • Grigory Shelikhov, Russian merchant (d. 1795)

1748

• January 19 – Antonio Carnicero, Spanish painter (d. 1814)
• February 2 – Adam Weishaupt, German founder of the Order of the Illuminati (d. 1811)

• February 15 – Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher (d. 1832)
• February 22 – Timothy Dexter, American businessman (d. 1806)
• February 27 – Anders Sparrman, Swedish naturalist (d. 1820)
• March 5
  • William Shield, English violinist, composer (d. 1829)
  • Jonas C. Dryander, Swedish botanist (d. 1810)
• March 8 – William V, Prince of Orange (d. 1806)
• March 10 – John Playfair, Scottish scientist (d. 1819)
• April 12 – Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, French botanist (d. 1836)
• April 13 – Joseph Bramah, English inventor, locksmith (d. 1814)
• April 27
  • Pierre-Louis Ginguené, French author (d. 1816)
  • Adamantios Korais, Greek scholar (d. 1833)
• May 3 – Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, French cleric, constitutional theorist (d. 1836)
• May 7 – Olympe de Gouges, French playwright (d. 1793)
• May 10 – Louis Pierre Vieillot, French ornithologist (d. 1830)
• May 28 – Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle (d. 1825)
• June 30 – Jacques Dominique, comte de Cassini, French astronomer (d. 1845)
• August 8 – Johann Friedrich Gmelin, German naturalist (d. 1804)

• August 9 – Bernhard Schott, German music publisher (d. 1809)
• August 30 – Jacques-Louis David, French painter (d. 1825)
• October 7 – King Charles XIII of Sweden (Charles II of Norway) (d. 1818)
• October 13 – Johann Dominicus Fiorillo, German painter, art historian (d. 1821)
• November 11 – King Charles IV of Spain (d. 1819)
• November 13 – William Chalmers, Swedish merchant (d. 1811)
• December 9 – Claude Louis Berthollet, French chemist (d. 1822)
• December 14 – William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire (d. 1811)
• date unknown
  • Gioacchino Navarro, Maltese priest and poet (d. 1813)
  • James Sayers, English caricaturist (d. 1823)
  • Timur Shah, Afghan king (d. 1793)
  • Thomas Holloway, English portrait painter, engraver (d. 1827
  • Stylianos Vlasopoulos, Greek judge, writer (d. 1822)

1749

• January 13 – Friedrich Müller, German painter, narrator, lyricist and dramatist (d. 1825)
• January 16 – Vittorio Alfieri, Italian dramatist (d. 1803)
• January 24 – Charles James Fox, English politician (d. 1806)
• January 29 – King Christian VII of Denmark (d. 1808)
• March 9 – Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, French politician (d. 1791)
• March 10 – Lorenzo Da Ponte, Italian librettist (d. 1838)

• March 23 – Pierre-Simon Laplace, French mathematician, astronomer (d. 1827)
• March 23 – Ulla von Höpken, Swedish courtier, influential socialite (d. 1810)
• May 17 – Edward Jenner, English physician (d. 1823)
• April 11 – Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, French portrait painter (d. 1803)
• June 15 – Georg Joseph Vogler, German composer (d. 1814)
• June 19 – Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois, French revolutionary (d. 1796)
• July 16 – Cyrus Griffin, last American President of the Continental Congress (d. 1810)

• August 24 – Madame Mère (Letizia Ramolino Bonaparte) mother of Napoleon I (d. 1836)

• August 28 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and politician (d. 1832)
• September 25 – Abraham Gottlob Werner, German geologist (d. 1817)
• September 30 – Comte Siméon Joseph Jérôme, French jurist and politician (d. 1842)
• October 25 – Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, Swedish ambassador (d. 1802)
• November 3 – Daniel Rutherford, Scottish physician, chemist and botanist (d. 1819)
• November 17 – Nicolas Appert French inventor (d. 1841)
• November 23 – Edward Rutledge, American statesman (d. 1800)
• December 2 – Elisabeth Berenberg, German banker (d. 1809)
• December 17 – Domenico Cimarosa, Italian composer (d. 1801)
• December 24 – Karl Gottfried Hagen, German chemist (d. 1829)
• December 25 – Samuel Jackson Pratt (known as Courtney Melmoth), English writer, poet and actor (d. 1814)
• date unknown – Charlotte Melmoth, British & American actress (d. 1823)

Deaths

1740

• January – Louise Élisabeth de Joybert, politically active Canadian governors' wife (b. 1673)
• January 5 – Antonio Lotti, Italian composer (b. 1667)
• January 17 – Matthias Buchinger, German artist (b. 1674)
• January 20 – Niccolò Comneno Papadopoli, Italian jurist of religious law and historian (b. 1655)
• January 21 – Nicholas Trott, colonial magistrate, South Carolina Chief Justice (b. 1663)
• January 27 – Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon, Prime Minister of France (b. 1692)
• January 29 – Richard Lumley, 2nd Earl of Scarbrough (b. 1686)
• February 6 – Pope Clement XII (b. 1652)
• February 23 – Massimiliano Soldani Benzi, Italian artist (b. 1656)
• February 29 – Pietro Ottoboni, Italian cardinal (b. 1667)
• March 23 – Olof Rudbeck the Younger, Swedish scientist and explorer (b. 1660)
• April 28 – Bajirao I, Great Maratha warrior and Prime Minister of Marartha Empire (b.1700)
• April 23 – Thomas Tickell, English writer (b. 1685)
• May 17 – Jean Cavalier, French Protestant rebel leader (b. 1681)
• May 31 – Frederick William I, King in Prussia (b. 1688)
• June 1 – Samuel Werenfels, Swiss theologian (b. 1657)
• June 6 – Alexander Spotswood, British governor of Virginia Colony (b. 1676)
• June 17
  • Theophilus of Corte, Italian Roman Catholic priest, preacher and missionary, canonized (b. 1676)
  • William Wyndham, English politician (b. 1687)
• June 18 – Piers Butler, 3rd Viscount Galmoye, Anglo-Irish nobleman (b. 1652)
• July 2 – Thomas Baker, English antiquarian (b. 1656)
• October 5 – Johann Philipp Baratier, German scholar (b. 1721)
• October 11 – Princess Magdalena Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst, Duchess of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (b. 1679)
• October 20 – Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1685)
• October 28 – Anna, Empress of Russia (b. 1693)
• December 1 – John Abernethy, Irish Protestant minister (b. 1680)
• December 20 – Richard Boyle, 2nd Viscount Shannon, British military officer and statesman (b. 1675)
• December 30 – John Senex, English geographer (b. ca. 1678)

1741

• January 15 – Ramon Despuig, Spanish-born 67th Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitaller (b. 1670)
• February 13 – Johann Joseph Fux, Austrian composer (b. 1660)
• February 21 – Jethro Tull, British agriculturist (b. 1674)
• March 16 – Eleonora Luisa Gonzaga, Tuscan princess (b. 1686)
• March 17 – Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, French poet (b. 1671)
• March 31 – Pieter Burmann the Elder, Dutch classical scholar (b. 1668)
• April 10 – Celia Fiennes, English travel writer (b. 1662)
• May 21 – Henry Dawnay, 2nd Viscount Downe, Irish peer (b. 1664)
• May 24 – Lord Augustus FitzRoy, Royal Navy officer during the Battle of Cartagena de Indias (b. 1716)
• May 25 – Daniel Ernst Jablonski, German theologian (b. 1660)
• June 14 – Landgravine Caroline of Hesse-Rotenburg, German noble (b. 1714)
• June 18 – François Pourfour du Petit, French anatomist, ophthalmologist and surgeon (b. 1664)
• July 3 – Elisabeth Therese of Lorraine, Sardinian queen consort (b. 1711)

• July 28 – Antonio Vivaldi, Italian composer (b. 1678)
• August 4 – Andrew Hamilton, American lawyer (b. 1676)
• August 31 – Johann Gottlieb Heineccius, German jurist (b. 1681)
• September 7 – Blas de Lezo, Spanish admiral (b. 1689)
• September 28 – Edward Bayly, Irish politician (b. 1684)
• October 12 – Joseph Talcott, British Governor of the Connecticut Colony for more than 17 years, since 1724. (b. 1670)
• November 18 – Stephen Delancey, major colonial New York figure (b. 1663)
• November 24 – Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden (b.1688)
• December 14 – Charles Rollin, French historian (b. 1661)
• December 19 – Vitus Bering, Danish-born explorer (b. 1681)
• December 21 – Bernard de Montfaucon, French Benedictine monk (b. 1655)
• December 31 – Andrew Archer, English politician (b. 1659)

1742

• January 1 – Peregrine Bertie, 2nd Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven, English statesman (b. 1686)

• January 25 – Edmond Halley, English astronomer (b. 1656)
• February 22 – Charles Rivington, English publisher (b. 1688)
• March 23 – Jean-Baptiste Dubos, French author (b. 1670)
• April 2 – James Douglas, Scottish physician, anatomist (b. 1675)
• April 15 – Samuel Shute, Governor of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire (b. 1662)
• April 17 – Arvid Horn, Swedish statesman (b. 1664)
• May 13 – Ludwig IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (b. 1719)
• May 21 – Lars Roberg, Swedish physician (b. 1664)
• May 26 – Pylyp Orlyk, Ukrainian Zaporozhian Cossack starshina, diplomat (b. 1672)
• June 18 – John Aislabie, British politician (b. 1670)
• June 27 – Nathan Bailey, English philologist, lexicographer
• July 1 – Bohuslav Matěj Černohorský, Czech composer (b. 1684)
• July 2 – Robert Petre, 8th Baron Petre, British peer, renowned horticulturist (b. 1713)
• July 4 – Guido Grandi, Italian mathematician (b. 1671)
• July 9 – John Oldmixon, English historian (b. 1673)
• July 12 – Evaristo Abaco, Italian composer (b. 1675)
• July 14 – Richard Bentley, English scholar and critic (b. 1662)
• July 19 – William Somervile, English poet (b. 1675)
• July 23 – Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley, known as mother of Methodism. (b. 1669)
• July 30 – Nicholas Roosevelt (1658–1742), Dutch-American politician (b. 1658)
• August 14 – Maria van Lommen, Dutch gold- and silversmith and guild member (b. 1688)
• August 25 – Carlos Seixas, Portuguese composer (b. 1704)
• September 18 – Vincenzo Ludovico Gotti, Italian Catholic cardinal (b. 1664)
• September 22 – Frederic Louis Norden, Danish explorer (b. 1708)
• September 27 – Hugh Boulter, Irish Archbishop of Armagh (b. 1672)
• September 28 – Jean Baptiste Massillon, French bishop (b. 1663)
• November 12 – Friedrich Hoffmann, German physician, chemist (b. 1660)
• November 20 – Melchior de Polignac, French diplomat (b. 1661)
• November 24 – Andrew Bradford, American publisher (b. 1686)
• December 18 – William Fairfield, Massachusetts Speaker of the House of Deputies (b. 1662)
• December 31 – Karl III Philip, Elector Palatine (b. 1661)

1743

• January 3 – Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena, Italian architect/painter (b. 1657)
• January 29 – Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus, chief minister of France under Louis XV (b. 1653)
• January 29 – Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre, French writer (b. 1658)
• February 1 – Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni, Italian composer (b. 1657)
• February 7 – Lodovico Giustini, Italian composer (b. 1685)
• February 18 – Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, last of the Medicis (b. 1667)
• March 22 – Emerentia von Düben, Swedish royal favorite (b. 1669)
• March 28 – Karl Frederick, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, German noble (b. 1712)
• April 4 – Daniel Neal, English historian (b. 1678)
• April 12 – Augustine Washington, father of the future first President of the United States (b. 1694)
• April 20 – Alexandre-François Desportes, French painter (b. 1661)
• May 3 – Moritz Georg Weidmann, German bookseller (b. 1686)
• May 6 – Andrew Michael Ramsay, English Freemason (b. 1686)
• May 10 – Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenburg, Duchess of Kendal and Munster (b. 1667)
• March 14 – Jean-Paul Bignon, French priest and man of letters (b. 1662)
• March 23 – Lancelot Blackburne, Archbishop of York (b. 1658)
• April 15 – Eiler Hagerup, Norwegian Roman Catholic bishop (b. 1685)
• June 16 – Louise-Françoise de Bourbon, eldest daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan (b. 1673)
• July 2 – Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington, British politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. c. 1674)
• August 5 – John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, English statesman and writer (b. 1696)
• August 30 – Henry Paget, 1st Earl of Uxbridge, British politician (b. 1663)
• September 14 – Nicolas Lancret, French painter (b. 1690)
• September 21 – Jai Singh II, King of Amber-Juiper, India (b. 1688)
• September 23 – Erik Benzelius the younger, Swedish priest (b. 1675)
• October 4 – John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll, Scottish soldier (b. 1678)
• December 27 – Hyacinthe Rigaud, French painter (b. 1659)
• date unknown
  • Manuela Desvalls Vergós, Spanish nun, agent and political controversialist
  • Pietro Paolo Troisi, Maltese artist (b. 1686)

1744

• January 11 – James Hamilton, 7th Earl of Abercorn (b. 1686)
• January 22 – Pierre Lepature, French artist (b. 1659)
• January 23 – Giambattista Vico, Italian philosopher and historian (b. 1668)
• January 26 – Ludwig Andreas von Khevenhüller, Austrian field marshal (b. 1683)
• February 11 – Hedvig Taube, mistress to King Frederick I of Sweden (b. 1714)
• February 14 – John Hadley, English mathematician (b. 1682)
• March 3 – Jean Barbeyrac, French jurist (b. 1674)
• March 4 – John Anstis, English herald (b. 1669)
• April 25 – Anders Celsius, Swedish astronomer (b. 1701)
• May 25 – Charles Edzard, Prince of East Frisia (b. 1716)
• May 30 – Alexander Pope, English writer (b. 1688)
• June 29
  • André Campra, French composer (b. 1660)
  • John Eames, English academic (b. 1686)
• June 30 – Januarius Maria Sarnelli, Italian Roman Catholic priest and blessed (b. 1702)
• July – Mihai Racoviță, Prince of Moldavia and Prince of Wallachia (b. c. 1660)
• August 9 – James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos, English patron of the arts (b. 1673)
• August 13 – John Cruger, Dutch-born Mayor of New York (b. 1678)
• August 26 – William Byrd II, prominent planter from Virginia (b. 1674)
• September 28 – Princess Thérèse of France, daughter of Louis XV of France (b. 1736)
• October 10 – Johann Heinrich Schulze, German professor and polymath (b. 1687)
• October 18 – Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, English friend of Anne, Queen of Great Britain (b. 1660)
• October 31 – Leonardo Leo, Italian composer (b. 1694)
• December 8 – Marie Anne de Mailly-Nesle, French mistress of King Louis XV (b. 1717)
• December 23 – Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans, duchess and regent of Lorraine (b. 1676)
• date unknown – Catherine Jérémie, French-Canadian botanist (b. 1644)

1745

• January 16 – Josiah Franklin, English-born American businessman, father of Benjamin Franklin (b. 1657)
• January 20 – Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1697)
• February 23 – Joseph Effner, German architect (b. 1687)
• February 26 – Henry Scudamore, 3rd Duke of Beaufort, English nobleman (b. 1707)
• March 27 – Tommaso Crudeli, Florentine free thinker imprisoned by the Roman Inquisition (b. 1702)

• March 18 – Robert Walpole, first Prime Minister of Great Britain (b. 1676)
• May 9 – Tomaso Antonio Vitali, Italian violinist and composer (b. 1663)
• May 22 – François-Marie, 1st duc de Broglie, French military leader (b. 1671)
• September 30 – Sir John Baird, 2nd Baronet, British politician (b. 1686)

• October 19 – Jonathan Swift, Anglo-Irish writer (b. 1667)
• October 22 – Isaac Greenwood, American mathematician (b. 1702)
• November 16 – James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, exiled Irish statesman and soldier (b. 1665)
• December 8 – Étienne Fourmont, French orientalist (b. 1683)
• December 19 – Jean-Baptiste van Loo, French painter (b. 1684)
• December 23 – Jan Dismas Zelenka, Bohemian composer (b. 1679)
• date unknown – Hedvig Catharina De la Gardie, Swedish-born salonnière (b. 1695)

1746

• February 4 – Robert Blair, Scottish poet and cleric (b. 1699)
• February 8 – Anton Josef Kirchweger, German writer
• February 26 – Thomas Watson, 3rd Earl of Rockingham, British politician (b. 1715)
• February 28 – Hermann von der Hardt, German historian (b. 1660)
• March 18 – Grand Duchess Anna Leopoldovna of Russia, regent of Russia (b. 1718)
• March 20 – Nicolas de Largillière, French painter (b. 1656)
• April 29 – William Flower, 1st Baron Castle Durrow, Irish politician (b. 1685)
• May 6 – William Tennent, Scottish-American theologian (b. 1673)
• May 13 – James Drummond, 3rd Duke of Perth, British noble (b. 1713)
• May 22 – Thomas Southerne, Irish playwright (b. 1660)
• June 14 – Colin Maclaurin, Scottish mathematician (b. 1698)
• July 2 – Thomas Baker, English antiquarian (b. 1656)

• July 9 – King Philip V of Spain (b. 1683)
• July 28 – John Peter Zenger, American printer, whose court case advanced freedom of the press in the American colonies (b. 1697)
• July 30 – Francesco Trevisani, Italian painter (b. 1656)
• August 6 – Christian VI, King of Denmark and Norway (b. 1699)
• August 8 – Francis Hutcheson, Irish philosopher (b. 1694)
• September 25 – St George Gore-St George, Irish politician (b. 1722)
• October 2 – Josiah Burchett, English Secretary of the Admiralty (b. c. 1666)
• November 14 – Georg Steller, German naturalist (b. 1709)
• December 6 – Lady Grizel Baillie, Scottish poet (b. 1665)
• December 8 – Charles Radclyffe, British politician and rebel, by beheading after being convicted of treason against the Crown (b. 1693)

1747

• January 2 – Lord George Graham, Royal Navy officer and MP (b. 1715)
• January 16 – Barthold Heinrich Brockes, German poet (b. 1680)
• January 26 – Willem van Mieris, Dutch painter (b. 1662)
• March 2 – Margravine Sophie Charlotte of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, German noble (b. 1713)
• March 14 – Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, German aristocrat and general (b. 1661)
• March 16 – Christian Augustus of Anhalt-Zerbst, father of Catherine II of Russia (b. 1690)
• March 23 – Claude Alexandre de Bonneval, French soldier (b. 1675)
• April 2 – Johann Jacob Dillenius, German botanist (b. 1684)
• April 3 – Francesco Solimena, Italian painter (b. 1657)
• April 7 – Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, Prussian field marshal (b. 1676)
• April 9 – Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, Scottish clan chief (b. c. 1667)
• April 14 – Jean-Frédéric Osterwald, Swiss Protestant pastor (b. 1663)
• May 9 – John Dalrymple, 2nd Earl of Stair, Scottish soldier and diplomat (b. 1673)
• May 28 – Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues, French writer (b. 1715)
• May 31 – Andrei Osterman, Russian statesman (b. 1686)
• June 8 – Alan Brodrick, 2nd Viscount Midleton, English cricketer (b. 1702)
• June 17 – Avdotya Chernysheva, Russian noble, lady in waiting (b. 1693)

• June 19
  • Nader Shah, Persian leader (b. 1688)
  • Alessandro Marcello, Italian composer (b. 1669)
• July 9 – Giovanni Bononcini, Italian composer (b. 1670)
• October 7 – Giulia Lama, Italian painter (b. 1681)
• October 9 – David Brainerd, American missionary (b. 1718)
• October 10 – John Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. c. 1674)
• October 4 – Amaro Pargo, Spanish corsair (b. 1678)
• November 17 – Alain-René Lesage, French writer (b. 1668)
• December 2 – Vincent Bourne, English classical scholar (b. 1695)

1748

• January 1 – Johann Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician (b. 1667)
• January 16 – Arnold Drakenborch, Dutch classical scholar (b. 1684)
• February 18 – Otto Ferdinand von Abensberg und Traun, Austrian field marshal (b. 1677)
• March 7 – Élisabeth Thérèse de Lorraine, French noblewoman, Princess of Epinoy by marriage (b. 1664)
• March 14 – George Wade, British military leader (b. 1673)
• March 23 – Johann Gottfried Walther, German music theorist, organist and composer (b. 1684)
• April 8 – Empress Xiaoxianchun of Qing dynasty (b. 1712)
• April 12 – William Kent, English architect (b. c. 1685)
• April 16 – Muhammad Shah, Mughal emperor of India (b. 1702)
• May 12 – Thomas Lowndes, British astronomer (b. 1692)
• May 17 – Henri, Duke of Elbeuf, member of the House of Lorraine (b. 1661)
• June 16 – Jean Philippe d'Orléans, illegitimate son of future French regent Philippe d'Orleans (b. 1702)
• June 28 – Marretje Arents, Dutch rebel leader (b. 1712)
• August 27 – James Thomson, Scottish poet (b. 1700)
• September 6 – Edmund Gibson, English jurist (b. 1669)
• September 10 – Mother Ignacia del Espíritu Santo, Filipino founder of the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary (b. 1663)
• September 12 – Anne Bracegirdle, English actress (b. c. 1671)
• September 21 – John Balguy, English philosopher (b. 1686)
• November 25 – Isaac Watts, English hymn writer (b. 1674)
• December 2 – Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, English politician (b. 1662)

1749

• February 1 – Françoise-Marie de Bourbon, youngest daughter of Louis XIV (b. 1677)
• February 8 – Jan van Huysum, Dutch painter (b. 1682)
• February 11 – Philip Livingston, American politician (b. 1686)
• April 14 – Balthasar Denner, German artist (b. 1685)
• May 11 – Catharine Trotter Cockburn, English novelist, dramatist, and philosopher (b. 1674)
• May 28 – Pierre Subleyras, French painter (b. 1699)
• June 18 – Ambrose Philips, English poet (b. 1675)
• July 1 – William Jones, Welsh mathematician (b. 1675)
• July 12
  • Charles de la Boische, Marquis de Beauharnois, Governor of New France (b. c.1671)
  • George Carpenter, 2nd Baron Carpenter of England (b. 1702)
• July 23 – Ingeborg i Mjärhult, Swedish soothsayer (b. 1665)
• August 13 – Johann Elias Schlegel, German critic, poet (b. 1719)
• August 29 – Matthias Bel, Hungarian pastor, polymath (b. 1684)

• September 10 – Émilie du Châtelet, French mathematician, physicist (b. 1706)
• September 14 – Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham, English soldier, politician (b. 1675)
• October 4 – Baron Franz von der Trenck, Austrian soldier (b. 1711)
• October 9 – Luís da Cunha, Ambassador of Portugal (b. 1662)
• November 14 – Maruyama Gondazaemon, Japanese sumo wrestler (b. 1713)
• November 19 – Carl Heinrich Biber, German violinist and composer (b. 1681)
• December 4 – Claudine Guérin de Tencin, French salon holder (b. 1682)
• December 5 – Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye, French-Canadian explorer and trader (b. 1685)
• December 19 – Francesco Antonio Bonporti, Italian priest and composer (b. 1672)
• December 25 – John Lindsay, 20th Earl of Crawford, British Army general (b. 1702)
• date unknown – Maria Oriana Galli-Bibiena, Italian painter (b. 1656)

References

The city of Paris has been an important center for European music since the Middle Ages. It was noted for its choral music in the 12th century, for its role in the development of ballet during the Renaissance, in the 19th century it became famous for its music halls and cabarets, and in the 20th century for the first performances of the Ballets Russes, its jazz clubs, and its part in the development of serial music. Paris has been home to many important composers, including: Léonin, Pérotin, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Niccolò Piccinni, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Jacques Offenbach, Georges Bizet, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Hector Berlioz, Paul Dukas, Gabriel Fauré, César Franck, Charles Gounod, Jules Massenet, Vincent d'Indy, Camille Saint-Saëns, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, Sidney Bechet.

Music of medieval Paris

The cathedral schools and choral music

In the Middle Ages, music was an important part of the ceremony in Paris churches and at the royal court. The Emperor Charlemagne had founded a school at the first cathedral of Notre Dame in 781, whose students chanted during the mass; and the court also had a school, the schola palatina, which traveled wherever the imperial court went, and whose students took part in the religious services at the Royal Chapel. Large monasteries were founded on the Left Bank at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Sainte-Geneviève, and Saint-Victor, which taught the art of religious chanting, adding more elaborate rhythms and rimes. When the new Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris was constructed, the Notre Dame school became famous for its innovations in vocal counterpoint, or polyphony. The Archdeacon Albert of the Notre Dame school became famous for composing the first known work for three voices, each chanting a different part at the same time. Another famous teacher at the Notre Dame school, Pérotin, composed for four different voices, with highly complex rhythms, blending all the voices together in ways never heard before. In the 13th century, the monks of the Notre Dame school developed an even more complex form, the motet, or "little word"; short pieces for two or three voices, each chanting different words, and sometimes in different languages. The motet became so popular that it was used in non-religious music, in the court and even by musicians and singers on the streets.

A second important music school was established at the Sainte-Chapelle, the royal chapel on the Île de la Cité. Its choir had twenty-five persons, both men and boys, who were taught chanting and vocal techniques. The music of the religious schools became popular outside the churches; the melodies of chants were adapted for popular songs, and sometimes popular song melodies were adapted for church use.

Prior to the ninth century there were no written manuscripts of liturgy related to music. The Gallic music of the churches of Gaul was replaced by the plain songs traced to Rome.

In the late 12th century, a school of polyphony was established at Notre-Dame. A group of Parisian aristocrats, known as trouvères, became known for their poetry and songs. Choral polyphony is a musical genre which was introduced in the 15th century in the Western church music culture. At Notre-Dame, this culture became intertwined as its construction progressed. Composition of music and poetry was a culture that prevailed in the cathedral among its canons and dignitaries.

In the cathedral, polyphony and organ music were reserved for solemn occasions at a time when acoustics were not well developed. Organizing of the music group in the cathedral was such that the polyphonic vocal choir singing musicians were set behind the tapestries whereas the organ was placed in the nave. Before the 16th century all music performed in the cathedral was a cappella, except for use of organ while chanting.

One of the most famous composers of the 14th century was Guillaume de Machaut, who was also renowned as a poet. A canon at Notre-Dame de Reims, he composed a famous mass, the Messe de Nostre Dame, or Mass of our Lady, in about 1350, for four voices. Some of his motets use texts by Philip the Chancellor. Besides church music, he wrote popular songs in the style of the troubadours and trouvères.

Street singers and minstrels

The crowds on the streets, squares and markets of Paris were often entertained by singers of different kinds. The goliards were non-conformist students at the religious colleges, who led a bohemian life, and earned money for food and lodging by reciting poems and singing improvised songs, either love songs or satirical songs, accompanying themselves on medieval instruments. The trouvéres sang popular songs, romantic or humorous, largely borrowed in style and content from the troubadours of southern France. They often entertained crowds gathered on the Petit Pont, the bridge connecting the Île de la Cité with the left bank. They introduced a particular form, the rondeau, a round song. The Jongleurs were famous for burlesque songs, making fun of the merchants, clergy, and the nobility. Some of them became immensely popular, and received lodging and gifts from the nobles they amused.

The Menestrels, (Minstrels), were usually street singers who had established a more professional means of living, entertaining in the palaces or residences of noble and wealthy Parisians. In 1321, thirty-seven minstrels and jongleurs formed a professional guild, the Confrérie de Saint-Julien des ménétriers, the first union of musicians in Paris. Most of them played instruments: the violin, flute, hautbois, or tambourine. They played at celebrations, weddings, meetings, holiday events, and royal celebrations and processions. By their statutes enacted in 1341, no musician could play on the streets without their permission. In order to become a member, a musician had to be an apprentice for six years. At the end of the six years, the apprentice had to audition for a jury of master musicians. By 1407, the rules of the Confrérie were applied to all of France.

Musicians were also an important part of court life. The court of Queen Anne of Brittany, wife of Charles VIII of France, in 1493 included three well-known composers of the period: Antonius Divitis, Jean Mouton, and Claudin de Sermisy, as well as a tambourine player, a lute player, two singers, a player of the rebec (a three-stringed instrument like a violin), an organist, and a player of the manichordion, as well as three minstrels from Brittany.

Music of Renaissance Paris (16th century)

At the death of Charles VI in Paris in 1422, during the devastating Hundred Years' War which ended in 1453, the city had been occupied by the English and their Burgundian allies since 1418. The new (disinherited) French king, Charles VII, had his court established in Bourges, south of the Loire Valley, and did not return to his capital before liberating it in 1436. His successors chose to live in the Loire Valley, and rarely visited Paris. However, in 1515, after his coronation in Reims, king Francis I made his grand entrance in Paris and, in 1528, announced his intention to return the royal court there, and began reconstructing the Louvre as the royal residence in the capital. He also imported the Renaissance musical styles from Italy, and recruited the best musicians and composers in France for his court. La Musique de la Grande Écurie ("Music of the Great Stable") was organized in 1515 to perform at royal ceremonies outdoors. It featured haut, or loud instruments, including trumpets, fifes, cornets, drums, and later, violins. A second ensemble, La musique de la Chambre du Roi ("Music of the King's Chamber") was formed in 1530, with bas or quieter instruments, including violas, flutes and lutes. A third ensemble, the oldest, the Chapelle royale, which performed at religious services and ceremonies, was also reformed on Renaissance models.

Another important revolution in music was brought about by the invention of the printing press; the first printed book of music was made in 1501 in Venice. The first printed book of music in France was made in Paris by Pierre Attaingnant; his printing house became the royal musical house in 1538. After his death, Robert Ballard became the royal music printer. Ballard established a shop in Paris in 1551. The most popular musical instrument for wealthy Parisians to play was the lute, and Ballard produced dozens of books of lute songs and airs, as well as music books for masses and motets, and pieces from Italy and Spain.

The most popular genre in Paris was the chanson: hundreds of them were written on love, work, battles, religion, and nature. Mary, Queen of Scots and wife of king Francis II wrote a song of mourning for the loss of her husband, and French poets, including Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay, had their sonnets and odes put to music. The most popular composers of songs included Clément Janequin, who wrote some two hundred and fifty pieces, and became Court composer, and Pierre Certon, who was a cleric at the Sainte-Chapelle while he wrote some three hundred chansons, ranging from religious and courtly music to popular melodies, such as the famous Sur le Pont d'Avignon. In the second part of the century, a variation of the chanson, the air de cour or simply air (melody), became popular. Airs were lighter in subject, and were accompanied by a lute. They became immensely popular in Paris.

The Reformation and religious music

The movement of Protestant Reformation, led by Martin Luther in the Holy Roman Empire and John Calvin in France, had an important impact on music in Paris. Under Calvin's direction, between 1545 and 1550 books of psalms were translated from Latin into French, turned into songs, and sung at reformed services in Paris. The Catholic establishment reacted fiercely to the new movement; the songs were condemned by the College of Sorbonne, the fortress of orthodoxy, and in 1549 one Protestant tailor in Paris, Jacques Duval, was burned at the stake, along with his song book. When the campaign against the new songs proved ineffective, the Catholic Church, at the Council of Trent (1545-1563) which launched the Counter-Reformation, also launched a musical counter-reformation. It was calling for an end to complex but unintelligible chants, simpler melodies, and more serious and elevated lyrics.

Music and the first theater companies

The beginning of the 16th century saw the first theater performances in Paris, which frequently included music and songs. An amateur theater group called the Confrérie de la Passion was periodically performing Passion Plays, based on the Passion of Jesus, in a large hall on the ground floor of the Hospital of the Trinity (Hôpital de la Trinité) on rue Saint-Denis, where it remained until 1539. In 1543, the group bought one of the buildings attached to the Hôtel de Bourgogne at 23 rue Étienne-Marcel, which became the first permanent theater in the city. The church authorities in Paris denounced Passion and religious mystery plays, which they banned in 1548. The Confrérie rented out its theater to visiting theater troupes, notably an English company directed by Jean Sehais, an Italian company called the Comici Gelosi ("Jealous Comedians"), and a French company headed by Valleran Le Conte.

New instruments and the guild of instrument-makers

The Renaissance saw a great increase in the number and quality of musical instruments: the harp, violin and flute were produced with many new variations, the seven-string guitar appeared, and the lute, which was based on the oud, an Arab instrument brought to the Iberian Peninsula during the Moorish invasions. The trumpet evolved to something similar to its present form. Powerful organs were built for Paris churches, as well as smaller portable organs and the clavichord, ancestor of the piano. The lute, most often used to accompany songs, became the instrument of choice for minstrels and musically inclined aristocrats. In 1597, there were so many different instrument-makers in Paris that they, like the minstrels, were organized into a guild, which required six years of apprenticeship and the presentation of a master-work to be accepted as a full member.

Dance and ballet

Dance was also an important part of court life. The first French book of dance music was published in 1531 in Paris, with the title: "Fourteen gaillardes, nine pavanes, seven branles and two basses-danses". These French dance books, called Danceries, were circulated all over Europe. The names of the composers were rarely credited, with the exception of Jean d'Estrée, a member of the royal orchestra, who published four books of his dances in Paris between 1559 and 1574.

At the end of the 16th century, the ballet became popular at the French court. Ballets were performed to celebrate weddings and other special occasions. The first performance of Circé by Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx was performed at the Louvre Palace on September 24, 1581, to celebrate the wedding of Anne de Joyeuse, a royal favourite of Henry III, with Marguerite de Vaudémont. Ballets at the French royal court combined elaborate costumes, dance, singing, and comedy. During the reign of Henry IV, ballets were often comic or exotic works; those performed during his reign included "The Ballet of the fools", "The Ballet of the drunkards", "The Ballet of the Turks", and "The Ballet of the Indians".

17th century - royal court music, ballet and opera

In the 17th century, music played an important part at the French royal court; there was no day without music. Louis XIII composed songs, and in 1618 organized the first permanent orchestra in France, called La Grande Bande or the Twenty-four ordinary violins of the King, who performed for royal balls, celebrations, and official ceremonies. His son, Louis XIV, an accomplished musician, was taught the guitar and the harpsichord by the best musicians of the period. In 1647, Jean-Baptiste Lully was brought to Paris from his native Florence to be in the service of La Grande Mademoiselle. In early 1653, he caught the attention of Louis XIV, who named him court composer for instrumental music. Under Lully, music became not simply entertainment, but an expression of royal majesty and power.The royal ministers, Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin encouraged the development of French music in place of the Italian style.

In the families of the nobles and the wealthy, children were taught to sing and to play musical instruments, such as harp, flute, guitar, and harpsichord, either in the convent schools, or at home with private tutors. Louis XIV established the Royal Academy of Music (Académie royale de musique) in 1672, and commissioned Lully to create a music school, but a school for opera singers in Paris was not opened until 1714, and its quality was very poor; it closed in 1784. One notable music teacher and composer was Jacques Champion de Chambonnières, Louis XIV's harpsichord teacher, whose compositions established the French school of harpsichord music.

The Air de Cour, or Court Air, became very popular in the early 17th century, during the reign of Louis XIII, both at the royal court and in the palaces of the nobility and the wealthy. It was designed to be sung in a large room (chamber) where the nobility entertained their intimate friends. They usually were improvised songs on the themes of gallantry and love, in the form of a dialogue, performed with the lute and the théorbe. The composer Pierre Guédron, music teacher to the children of the King, published several books of court airs, and trained Angélique Paulet, the most famous Parisian singer of the early 17th century. The published songs were learned and sung by both nobles and wealthy Parisians.

Italian opera under Mazarin

Cardinal Mazarin, raised in Rome, was an enthusiastic supporter of Italian culture and imported Italian painters, architects and musicians to work in Paris. In 1644, he invited the castrato Atto Melani to Paris, along with his brother Jacopo Melani and the Florentine singer Francesca Costa, and introduced the Italian singing style to the French capital. The Italian style was much different than the French style of the day; voices were stronger and the singing expressed stronger emotions, rather than the finesse of the classical French style. The first Italian opera to be performed in Paris was a comédie italienne (which may have been Marco Marazzoli's Il Giudizio della Ragione tra la Beltà e l'Affetto (1643), although this has been disputed) at the Palais-Royal on February 28, 1645, followed by Francesco Sacrati's La finta pazza in December of that year and in 1647 by the more famous Orfeo of Luigi Rossi at the Petit-Bourbon next to the Louvre.

The debut of Italian opera in Paris had exactly the opposite effect that Mazarin desired. As Parisian audiences were not prepared for a theatrical work that was entirely sung, the Cardinal was denounced and ridiculed by Parisian streets singers and pamphlets called mazarinades for spending a fortune on opera decoration and bringing Italian castrati and singers to Paris. Furthermore, during the disorders of the Fronde, Mazarin was forced to leave Paris. When calm was restored, he returned to the capital and carried forward his project to build an opera house. At the time the city had no theater to rival the opera houses of Venice or Rome and, in 1659, Mazarin began construction of the Salle des Machines, a new theater in the north wing of the Tuileries Palace, between the Marsan Pavilion and the chapel. It could seat six thousand persons, had marble columns, was lavishly decorated, and contained the elaborate machinery needed to produce dramatic stage effects. The death of Mazarin delayed the opening, but it was finally inaugurated in 1662 with an Italian opera, Ercole amante, by Cavalli. The premiere was a disaster: the acoustics in the new hall were terrible, and the sound of the stage machinery drowned out the music.

The debut of French opera

The efforts to create a French opera continued. The poet Pierre Perrin persuaded the new Controller General of Finances, Colbert, to establish an Academy of Opera, and in 1669 Perrin was given a commission by the king to create works "in music and in French verse comparable to that of Italy." The first opera by Perrin, Pomone, with music by Robert Cambert, was performed on March 3, 1671, inside a converted jeu de paume, or tennis court, the Jeu de Paume de la Bouteille, between the rue des Fossés de Nesles (now rue Mazarine) and the rue de Seine. It was an enormous success, running for one hundred forty-six performances.

Seeing the success of Perrin's work, the official court composer, Lully, moved quickly; he persuaded the royal government to issue a decree banning any theatrical performances with more than two songs or two instruments without Lully's written permission. On November 15, 1672, he opened his own opera house in the Salle du Bel-Air. He also demanded and received from the king the exclusive rights to use the theater of the Palais-Royal, until then used by the theater company of Molière, giving him control over any and all musical performances in Paris. He presented a new opera each year, entirely funded by the royal treasury. In April 1673, he premiered Cadmus et Hermione, the first French opera in the lyric-tragedy form. This form, which dominated French opera for the next two centuries, but was rarely exported, featured stories based on mythology and ancient heroes. The performances made maximum use of machinery, allowing the creation on stage of storms, monsters, and characters descending or ascending into the heavens. The texts involved recitation of verse in a classical half-spoken, half-sung style, borrowed from Racine and Corneille, with a vocal range of an octave, words mingled with sighs, exclamations and vibrato. The works included not only singing, but also dance. The operas were all dedicated to the glory of the Sun King: in the dedication of Armide, Lully wrote: "All of the praises of Paris are not enough for me; it is only to you, Sire, that I want to consecrate all the productions of my genius."

After 1672, Louis XIV no longer lived in Paris, preferring the royal residences of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Chambord, Fontainebleau, and finally Versailles where he and the court moved permanently in 1682. The royal musicians and opera singers went with him, and Versailles, not Paris, became the center of French musical life.

Ballet

During his residence in Paris, the young Louis XIV was an avid dancer and participant in ballet. Ballet was commonly practiced by young nobles, along with fencing and horsemanship. Only men danced, except in ballets given by the ladies of the Queen. Louis practiced several hours a day, and made his first ballet appearance in the Ballet de Cassandre at the age of thirteen. He was featured in the Ballet Royal de la Nuit, at the Petit-Bourbon theater, on 23 February 1653. This court ballet lasted 12 hours, from sundown until sunrise, and consisted of 45 dances. Louis XIV appeared in five of them, the most famous of which saw the young monarch in the role of Apollo, the Sun King, appearing as the Soleil levant ("rising Sun").

With the arrival of the twenty-six-year-old Jean-Baptiste Lully at the court, the ballet began to take on a new dimension. Lully premiered his first Grand Ballet Royal, Alcidiane, on February 14, 1658, with the entire court in attendance. The performance, composed of seventy-nine different tableaux, or scenes, lasted several hours. In the 1660s, Lully evolved the performances into a combination of ballet, singing, and theater. The performance of Molière's comedy-ballet Le Mariage forcé ("The Forced Marriage"), at the Louvre on 29 January 1664, included not only scenes by Molière and his actors, but several ballets, and also songs by the leading singers of the day, Mademoiselle Hilaire and Signora Anna. However, in 1670, at the age of twenty-six, Louis XIV decided to give up dancing. As a result, Lully revised the format of the court ballets to please the King as a spectator, rather than dancer. For his new tragédie-ballet, Psyché, performed before the King on January 17, 1671, the performance included dancing, singing, acting, orchestral music, and immense visual spectacles created by stage machinery. At one point in the performance, three hundred performers were on or suspended above the stage, singing, dancing, or playing lutes, flutes, trumpets, cymbals, violins, the harpsichord, the hautbois and the théorbe.

Religious music

In the Baroque era, music was an important weapon to win ordinary people to the side of the Catholic Church, as it had been since the Counter-Reformation, a time when music was given a larger role in religious services. The Sainte-Chapelle was renowned for the purity and beauty of its music, while the Te Deum sung at Notre-Dame was reputed for its soloists, choirs, and double-choirs, and for the musical form called the motet created for the cathedral's singers. The churches were equipped with magnificent organs. Most organists of the churches of Paris were members of families who held the post for generations: the most illustrious were members of the Couperin family, who were organists at the church of St-Gervais-et-St-Protais, near the Louvre, for over two centuries, from 1650 until the French Revolution. The most outstanding member of the family was François Couperin, who composed and published numerous pieces, both religious and secular, for the organ and harpsichord. The dynasties included several women who made their mark on Parisian music: François' daughter, Louise Couperin, was a celebrated singer, and his granddaughter Marguerite became the first woman harpsichordist attached to the royal orchestra. Elisabeth Blanchet, the daughter of a prominent Paris harpsichord maker and wife of Armand-Louis Couperin, often took the place of her husband at the organs of Saint-Gervais, Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame. Her daughter, Céleste, also became a noted Paris organist at Saint-Gervais.

Street musicians and comic opera

The most popular gathering place for street musicians and singers, as well as clowns, acrobats, and poets, was the Pont Neuf, inaugurated by Louis XIII in 1613. All the carriages of the aristocracy and the wealthy crossed the bridge, and since it was the only bridge not lined by houses, there was room for a large audience. Listeners could hear comical songs about current events, romantic poems set to music, and (after 1673), the latest melodies of the court composer, Lully. Philipotte, the "Orpheus of the Pont-Neuf", Duchemin, "The Choir boy of the Pont-Neuf", and the one-legged Guillaume de Limoges, the "Lame Lothario", known for his ribald songs, were famous throughout Paris. The celebrated bateleur Tabarin set up a small stage on Place Dauphine, at the point where the bridge crosses the Île-de-la-CIté; his company presented theater, songs and comedy. Between acts, his business partner sold medicines and ointments.

The debuts of each of the lyric-tragic operas of Lully were followed almost immediately by parodies performed on the stages at the large outdoor fairs of Paris, at Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent. A large stage was constructed at the Saint-Germain fair in 1678. The Academy of Music moved quickly to have the city ban recitation of text on stage, which was the exclusive right of the Comédie-Française and the Royal Academy of Music. The actors at the fairs responded by writing their dialogue on signs and holding them up, where the audience read them aloud. The singers sometimes also sang with unintelligible words, mimicking the formal court style of Lully's music. The performers at the fairs invented a new style which combined comic songs with satire, and acrobatics, a form which took the name vaudeville.

The foundation of the Royal Academy of Music in 1672 created a growing gulf between the official musicians of the court and the popular musicians of Paris, who were members of the guild of ménétriers (minstrels), with its own rules and traditions, under their traditional head, the elected "King of the Minstrels". While the guild of minstrels had a monopoly over the music in the streets, Lully, the head of the royal academy, had an ordinance passed which gave academy members the exclusive right to play at balls, serenades, and other public events. Academy members did not have to go through the apprenticeship required to be a member of the minstrels guild. The guild of minstrels brought a lawsuit against François Couperin and all organists of the Paris churches, demanding that they join the minstrels guild. The guild won the lawsuit, but the organists appealed to the Parliament of Paris, which exempted them from the rules of the guild. The guild continued to exist until the Revolution: in 1791, it was quietly dissolved.

18th century—the opera, the comic opera, and the salons

The musical life of Paris at the beginning of the 18th century was gloomy; the court was at Versailles, and frivolity was officially frowned upon by Louis XIV and his second wife, the Marquise de Maintenon, and the religious party at court. The King's favorite composer, Lully, fell into disgrace because of his unorthodox lifestyle. Musical satires and farces continued to be sung on stages at the fairs, but they were constantly under attack from the Royal Academy of Music, which claimed a monopoly on singing performances. The Théâtre-Italien troupe was forced to leave Paris because of accusations that they made fun of Madame de Maintenon. After the death of the Louis XIV in 1715, the Regent and royal court returned to Paris, and the musical world brightened.

The Opera

The opera continued to create lavish productions of lyrical tragedies, in the style of Lully. In 1749, the management of the opera was transferred from the court to Paris, much to the dismay of city authorities, who had to pay for the huge spectacles. The opera performed at the theater of the Palais-Royal until April 6, 1763, when a fire destroyed that venue. It moved to the Hall of Machines of the Tuileries, then back to the Palais-Royal in 1770 when the theater was rebuilt. It burned down again in 1781. After Lully, the lyric-tragedy style of opera was faithfully maintained by a series of composers, the most prominent of whom was Jean-Philippe Rameau, who arrived in Paris from Dijon in 1723 and premiered his first opera, Hippolyte et Aricie, in 1733. The Mercure de France, the first Paris newspaper, described his music as "manly, harmonious, and of a new character" different from the music of Lully. The musical world of Paris soon divided into Lullyistes and Ramistes (or Rameauneurs, as they were termed by Voltaire). The prolific Rameau produced not only lyrical tragedies, but also opera-ballets, pastorales, and comic ballets.

By the 1750s, Paris audiences were beginning to tire of the formality, conventions, repetitive themes, mechanical tricks and great length of the lyrical tragedies. In the Enlightenment begun in France in 1715, critics demanded a new, more natural form of opera. The battle was launched by the first performance in 1752 of La Serva Padrona, a 1733 Italian opera by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi at the Academy by the company of Bouffons. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau praised the Italian opera for its simple plot, popular characters, and melodic singing. Describing the quarrel in his Confessions, Rousseau wrote: "On the one side, the most powerful and influential, were the rich, the nobles, and women, supporting the French style; on the other side, more lively, more proud, and more enthusiastic, were the true connaisseurs, the people of talent, the men of genius". Rameau defended his music: "Do you not know that music is a physical-mathematical science, and that sound is a physical object, and that the relationships between the different sounds are made by mathematics and geometry?" Roussau responded that music was the language of feelings; "from the melody comes all the power of music over the human spirit." To illustrate his point, Rousseau wrote a text for a new one-act opera (intermède), Le devin du village ("The village soothsayer"), about the love of two simple peasants, which became part of the Academy repertoire for the next sixty years. Over the course of the 18th century, the heroic style of Lully and Rameau quietly disappeared from Paris stages, replaced by the more natural and more romantic Italian style.

Another operatic feud began with the arrival of the German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck in Paris in 1776. He had already written a series of successful Italian operas. In Vienna, he had studied French and had been the music teacher of the young Marie Antoinette. In 1774, he staged the opera Iphigénie en Aulide in Paris, which became a huge popular triumph; he followed it with a French version of Orfeo ed Euridice, which he had written in Vienna in 1762, and then Alceste, reviving the classical lyrical tragedy style. The supporters of Italian opera responded by bringing the Italian opera composer Niccolo Piccinni to Paris in 1776. The rival new operas written by Gluck and Piccinni did not please the fickle Parisian audiences, and both composers left Paris in disgust. By the time of the Revolution the repertoire of the Paris opera consisted of five operas by Gluck, and those of Piccinni, Antonio Salieri, Sacchini and Gretry. Rameau and the French classical style had almost disappeared from the repertoire.

The fairs and the Opéra-Comique

Throughout the 18th century, the stages of the largest fairs, the Foire Saint-Germain and Foire Saint-Laurent, were the places to see popular entertainment, pantomime and satirical songs. They were only open for a short period of time each year, and were strictly controlled by the rules of the Royal Academy of Music. In 1714–15, the Academy was short of money, and decided to sell licenses to producers of popular theater. The Comédiens-Italiens, expelled from Paris under Louis XIV, were invited back to Paris to perform satirical songs and sketches on the stage at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. In 1726, a new company, the Opéra-Comique, made up of performers from the Saint-Germain fair, was formed. It first settled near the fair on rue de Buci, then moved to the dead-end street cul de sac des Quatre-Vents. Some of the most famous popular French singers of the period and the playwright Charles-Simon Favart made their debut there. In 1744, the Opéra-Comique was taken over by an ambitious new director, Jean Monnet, who built a new theater at the Saint-Laurent fair, with decorations by the famed artist François Boucher, and an orchestra of eighteen musicians conducted by Jean-Philippe Rameau. In 1762, the two competing comic opera theaters were merged under a royal charter, and were allowed to perform all year long, not just during the fairs. The two groups first performed independently on the stage at the Hôtel de Bourgone, and engaged the best composers of the time, including Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny, François-André Danican Philidor and André Grétry. In 1783, they built a brand-new theater, between rues Favart, Marivaux, and the future boulevard des Italiens. The new theater, called Salle Favart, opened on April 28, 1783, in the center of what soon became the city's main theater district.

Salons

Much of the musical activity of the city took place in the salons of the nobility and wealthy Parisians. They sponsored private orchestras, often with a combination of both professional and amateur musicians, commissioned works, and organized concerts of very high quality, often with a mixture of both professional and amateur musicians. Some very wealthy Parisians built small theaters within their homes. In 1764, Louis François, Prince of Conti hosted a reception in his palace where the featured attraction was the ten-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the harpsichord. A musical society was organized by the Marquise de Prie, the mistress of the Duke of Bourbon, which gave concerts of Italian music twice a week at the Louvre. The sixty-odd members who attended paid an annual fee, which went to the musicians. Though private individuals were forbidden to hold concerts without the permission of the Royal Academy of Music, a wealthy Parisian named Monsieur Bouland had a theater within his house on rue Saint-Antoine with a stage for two actors, an orchestra of twenty, and seating for three hundred. The owners of salons invited not only classical musicians, but also popular singers of comic opera from the Paris fairs, such as Pierre Laujon and Charles Collé, who became quite wealthy.

The Masonic movement became immensely popular among the Parisian upper classes; the first lodge opened in Paris in 1736, and had four famous musicians among its first members. By 1742, there were more than twenty, each with its own musical director. One of the most famous concert societies was the Concert Spirituel, created in 1725, which organized public concerts of religious music in Latin, and later Italian and French, in a salon within the Tuileries Palace provided by the King. Attendees at the concerts included queen Marie Antoinette. The society commissioned works of music by important composers, including Haydn and Mozart, who wrote and performed the Symphony n° 31, K. 297/300a, known as the "Paris Symphony", for the Society during his visit to Paris in 1778. In 1763, the society moved to the Hall of Machines, and had an orchestra of fifty-four musicians and vocal ensemble of six sopranos, six tenors, and six basses.

Popular music and street singers

The most popular venues for popular music, satire, and comic songs continued to be the stages at the major fairs, where crowds listened to satirical, comical and sentimental songs, though they were only open part of the year. In 1742, the royal government decided that the street singers on the Pont-Neuf were a public nuisance, and were blocking traffic. Only booksellers were allowed to remain, and they had to pay a fee to the royal government. The street and popular musicians migrated across town to the Boulevard du Temple, a wide street with vestiges of the old city walls on one side, and houses on the other. In 1753, the city authorized the construction of cafés and theaters, at first made of canvas and wood, along the boulevard; and the boulevard quickly became the center of popular theater of Paris, a position it held until the Second Empire.

Public balls

Public balls were banned on moral grounds during the last years of the reign of Louis XIV, and were not permitted again until after his death in September 1715. Shortly after, a royal ordinance of 31 December 1715 authorized the first public balls in the city. These were the famous masked balls of the Paris Opera, which took place on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays beginning on St. Martin's Day (November 11) and continuing until Carnival (February–March).

The music of revolutionary Paris (1789–1800)

Patriotic and revolutionary songs gave, as one journal of the period, the Chronique de Paris, wrote, "The national color to the Revolution". They were sung at political meetings, in theaters, in schools and on the streets. The most popular were the Carmagnole (about 1792); with words by an anonymous author, and music from an existing song; and Ça ira with words by Ladré and the music of an old contredanse by the violinist Bécaut called Le Carillon national. The song took its title from an expression, "That will happen," which Benjamin Franklin, the American envoy to Paris, had popularized, describing the American Revolution. The most famous song of the period was the Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin (Battle Song of the Army of the Rhine), by a young army officer, Claude Rouget de Lisle. It was first sung in public on 30 July 1791 by a battalion of volunteers from Marseille as they marched into Paris, and thereafter became known as the Hymne des Marseillais, which became, on 10 August 1792, the official anthem of the Revolution. During the revolutionary period, Ça ira was played by the orchestra in every theater before a performance, with the audience and performers singing. The Marseillaise was always performed at the intermission. Often the songs were sung during the performances, if the audience demanded it. In 1796, the Directory made the singing of such songs obligatory for all theaters, while banning the singing of songs by other political factions, such as the Réveil du people (Wake-up call of the People), the song of the Thermidorians.

Music was also an important ingredient of the enormous public festivals that were organized by the Revolutionary governments, usually on the Champ de Mars, which was transformed into an immense outdoor theater to host these spectacles. The first was the Fête de la Fédération on 14 July 1790, a festival marking the first anniversary of the taking of the Bastille. The fêtes began in the morning with the ringing of church bells and firing of cannons; patriotic songs were sung throughout the ceremonies, which always concluded with a concert by the musicians of the National Guard and a ball in the streets. The last of the great festivals was the Festival of the Supreme Being, organized on June 8, 1794, by Robespierre, as a substitute for traditional religious celebrations; it had singers and choirs surrounding an artificial mountain crowned by the Tree of Liberty. Robespierre's role in the event did not entirely please the audience; he was arrested and executed a few weeks later.

Founding of the Conservatory

The flight of the aristocracy from Paris had created an enormous number of unemployed musicians and music teachers. However, the growing number of public concerts and ceremonies required a great number of trained musicians, particularly for the orchestra and band of the Garde Nationale, which had been formed in June 1790 to perform at the Festival of the Federation on the Champ de Mars. Bernard Sarrette, a captain of the National Guard, founded a school to train eighty young musicians, who at first were taught only wind instruments. The first national music school in France, it was given the name the Institut national de Musique. The teachers were leading musicians and composers of the period. The revolutionary Committee of Public Safety (Comité de salut public) instructed the new music school to concentrate on the composition of "civic songs, music for national festivals, theater pieces, military music, all types of music which will inspire in Republicans the sentiments and memories most dear to the Revolution."

In 1792, the revolutionary government, the National Convention, decided to create a larger and more ambitious school of music, which would teach all instruments and genres of music. It was named the Conservatoire national de musique, using the name "Conservatory", an Italian Renaissance institution much praised by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It became the first music conservatory in France, with 350 students of both sexes from the 83 departments of France of that time. The 115 music teachers were paid by the State. The institute, in the meanwhile, collected the musical instruments and musical libraries of the thousands of aristocrats who had fled France, and stored them in a central depository for the use of students. The Conservatory opened its doors in 1796.

Musical theater and the opera

Despite the turmoil of the Revolution (or perhaps partly because of it) musical theater thrived during the period. New theaters appeared: the Théâtre du Vaudeville, the Palais-Variétes and the Théâtre Feydeau. The Feydau theater featured both a troupe performing French comic operas, and another performing Italian comedies. A half-dozen new theaters on the Boulevard du Temple, the new theater district of the city, performed vaudeville, pantomime and comic opera. The actress Mademoiselle Montansier opened her own musical theater in the Palais-Royal. The great fair of Saint-Germain, was closed by the Revolution, but a new theater, the Théâtre Lyrique de Saint-Germain, opened on its old site in 1791. Seventy-six new comic operas or vaudeville programs were staged in 1790, and fifty new works in each of the following years. Censorship of theatrical works was abolished in 1791, but this freedom did not last long. In 1793, the Committee of Public Safety decreed that any theater which put on plays "contrary to the spirit of the Revolution" would be closed and its property seized. After this decree, musical works on patriotic and revolutionary themes multiplied in the Paris theaters.

The opera itself, a symbol of the aristocracy, was officially taken away from the former Royal Academy and given to the city of Paris in 1790. When the Terror began in 1793, one of its two new directors fled abroad, and the second was arrested, and only escaped the guillotine because Robespierre was executed first. Price of tickets was reduced, and special free performances were given for the poor. The program at both the Opera and the Opéra-comique were largely patriotic, republican and sometimes anti-religious. At the same time, operas by Lully and Gluck were still performed, though sometimes new lyrics were added attacking the King and monarchy. In March 1793, in the midst of the terror, Parisians heard their first Mozart opera, The Magic Flute, in French and without the recitatives. The opera was forced to move from its theater at Porte Saint-Martin in 1794 to the Salle Montansier at the Palais-Royal so the government could use the theater for political meetings. The Opera saw its name changed from the Académie royale de musique to the Théátre de l'Opéra (1791), Théátre des Arts (1791), Théátre de la République et des Arts (1797), Théâtre de l'Opéra again in 1802, then, under Napoleon, to the Académie impériale (1804).

Pleasure gardens, cafés chantants and guinguettes

During the late 18th century, and particularly after the end of the Reign of Terror, Parisians of all classes were in constant search for entertainment. The end of the century saw the opening of the pleasure gardens of Ranelegh, Vauxhall, and Tivoli. These were large private gardens where, in summer, Parisians paid an admission charge and found food, music, dancing, and other amusements, from pantomime to magic lantern shows and fireworks. The admission fee was relatively high; the owners of the gardens wanted to attract a more upper-class clientele and keep out the more boisterous Parisians who thronged the boulevards.

With the closure of the fairs by the 1789 Revolution, the most popular destination for musical entertainment became Palais-Royal. Between 1780 and 1784, the duc de Chartres, (who became the Duke of Orleans in 1785 at the death of his father), rebuilt the garden of the Palais-Royal into a pleasure garden surrounded by wide covered arcades, which were occupied by shops, art galleries, and the first true restaurants in Paris. The basements were occupied by popular cafés with drinks, food and musical entertainment, and the upper floors by rooms for card-playing. The first famous musical café was the Café des Aveugles, which had an orchestra and chorus of blind musicians. In its early days it was popular with visitors to Paris, and also attracted prostitutes, trinket-sellers and pickpockets. Later cafés in the Palais Royal, named cafés chantants, offered musical programs of comic, sentimental and patriotic songs.

The guinguette was mentioned as early as 1723 in Savary's posthumously published Dictionnaire du commerce. It was a type of tavern located just outside the city limits, where wine and other drinks were much cheaper and taxed less. They were open Sundays and holidays, usually had musicians for dancing, and attracted large crowds of working-class Parisians eager for rest and recreation after the work week. As time went on, guinguettes also attracted middle class Parisians with their families.

Music during the First Empire (1800-1814)

During the reign of Napoléon Bonaparte as First Consul and then Emperor, music in Paris was used to celebrate his victories and glory. Napoleon installed his brother Lucien as chief censor in 1800, and all musical and theater works were examined by the police before being performed. The former Academy of Music became the Académie impériale de musique. The official composer of Napoleon's regime was Jean-François Lesueur, who wrote a heroic opera, Ossian, ou Les bardes to glorify Napoleon. It was performed more than a hundred times in Paris before Napoleon's fall. Lesueur also wrote a special march for the coronation of Napoleon as Emperor at Notre-Dame, and directed the solemn mass, Te Deum and other music performed at the coronation. Lesueur wrote new opera Le Triomphe de Trajan, to celebrate Napoleon's victories at Jena, Friedland and Eylau. The opera had spectacular staging, with parades of soldiers and cavalry on stage. Lesueur continued his musical career after Napoleon's fall, as a professor of composition at the Conservatory; his future students included Hector Berlioz and Charles Gounod.

The Empress Joséphine had her own favorite composer, the Italian Gaspare Spontini, who became her official composer of both historical dramas and comedies. Spontini's first lyrical work, La vestale, had a considerable success. His next work, Fernand Cortez, was commissioned when Napoleon decided to invade Spain, and celebrated the conquest of Mexico by Hernán Cortés. Unfortunately, the French army was defeated in Spain and Fernand Cortez was pulled from the repertoire, but it made a great impression on other French composers with its grand scenic effects, a Mexican ballet and a cavalry charge, its use of drums, and its huge chorus. Napoleon recreated the grandeur of the earlier royal court, constructing a new theater at the Tuileries Palace, which was finished in 1808. He also brought together an exceptional troupe of musicians and singers from Italy, including the composer Ferdinando Paër, who became master of his household music, the castrato Girolamo Crescentini, and the contralto Giuseppina Grassini. Napoleon did not allow applause in the hall during performances. The orchestra played a special air by André Grétry when Napoleon entered the theater, and the Vivat Imperator when he departed. But, because of his military campaigns, he was rarely in Paris to enjoy them.

Napoleon gave eight theaters official status and, to avoid competition to his official theaters, he closed all the others. The Imperial Academy and the Opéra-Comique were at the top of the hierarchy; followed by the Théâtre de lEmpereur, the new Opera buffa of the Théâtre de l'Impératrice, the theater of the Empress, run by Mademoiselle Montansier. Major operas and melodramas were performed at the theater at Porte-Saint-Martin and Opéra-Comique; parodies at the Théâtre du Vaudeville, and rustic comedies at the Théâtre des Variétés. With the signing of the Concordat in 1801 between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII, the churches of Paris were re-opened, and religious music was allowed once more.

Music during the Restoration (1815–1830)

The Opera and the Conservatory

After Napoleon's second abdication at the end of the Hundred Days in 1815, and his exile to the island of Saint Helena, the new government of Louis XVIII tried to restore the Parisian musical world to what it had been before the Revolution. The opera once again became the Royal Academy; the Conservatory, renamed the École royale de musique, was given a new department of religious music; and the composer Luigi Cherubini was commissioned to write a coronation solemn mass, the "Mass in G major", for Louis XVIII, and in 1825, the "Mass in A major" for his successor, Charles X. Spontini was named director of royal music. Lavish concerts in salons resumed in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, often given with the most popular new keyboard instrument, the piano. However, the government greatly irritated ordinary Parisians by banning music and dancing on Sundays, closing the popular guinguettes.

At the beginning of the Restoration, the Paris Opera was located in the Salle Montansier on rue de Richelieu, where the square Louvois is today. On 13 February 1820, Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry was assassinated at the door of the opera, and King Louis XVIII, in his grief, had the old theater demolished. In 1820–1821, the opera performed in the Salle Favart of the Théâtre des Italiens, then in the salle Louvois on rue Louvois, and, beginning on 16 August 1821, in the new opera house on rue Le Peletier, which was built out of the material of the old opera house. It was intended to be a temporary home until a new opera house was built; it was neither elegant nor well-located, but it was large and had modern lighting and stage equipment, with gas lights installed in 1822, and the first electrical lighting in 1849. It remained the primary opera venue of Paris for a half century, until the opening of the Palais Garnier.

The opera repertoire was largely familiar works of Gluck, Sacchini and Spontini, to which were added fresh works by new composers, such as François Adrien Boieldieu, Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold, and Daniel Auber. An opera by Carl Maria von Weber, Der Freischütz, was translated into French under the title Robin des Bois ("Robin Hood"), and presented in 1824, causing a sensation. The first of new genre of romantic and nationalist French operas, La Muette de Portici by Auber, premiered in February 1829; the hero was an Italian patriot fighting against Spanish occupation and oppression. A performance of the same opera in Brussels in 1830 led to a popular uprising and the liberation of Belgium from Dutch rule. The opera also featured grand spectacles created with ingenious stage machinery and lighting, including recreations of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the realistic illusions of flames and moving water.

Rossini and the Théâtre Italien

The grand rival of the royal opera was the Théâtre-Italien, which beginning in 1819 performed at the Salle Favart. It was formally under the administration of the royal opera, but it had its own administrator and repertoire and produced only works in Italian. It presented the works of the composer Gioacchino Rossini, who staged his first work in the Paris, L'italiana in Algeri in 1817, followed by a series of successes. Rossini presented his most famous work, The Barber of Seville, in 1818, two years after it premiered in Rome. Rossini made modifications for the French audience, changing it from two to four acts and changing Rosina's part from a contralto to a soprano. This new version premiered at the Odéon-Théâtre on 6 May 1824, with Rossini present, and remains today the version most used in opera houses around the world. Rossini decided to settle in Paris and became the musical director of the theater. With Rossini at its head, the Théâtre-Italien had a huge success; its company included several of the finest singers in Europe, including Giulia Grisi, the niece of Napoleon's favorite, Giuseppina Grassi; and Maria Malibran, who became the most famous interpreters of the music of Rossini. After a fire burned the Salle Favart in 1838, the troupe had several homes before it finally settled in the Salle Ventadour in 1841.

Rossini continued to produce lavish operas with spectacular sets, rapid pace, the use of unusual instruments (the trombone, cymbals and triangle) and extravagant emotion. He staged Siege of Corinth (1827), followed by Moses and the comic opera Le comte Ory. He then undertook to write an opera that was entirely French; he wrote William Tell based on a play by Schiller, which premiered at the Salle Le Peletier on August 3, 1829. Though the famous overture was a success, the public reception for the rest of the opera was cool; the work was criticized for excessive length (four hours), a weak story, and a lack of action. Rossini, deeply wounded by the criticism, retired, at the age of thirty-seven, and never wrote another opera.

Popular music—the Goguette and the political song

The musical salons of the aristocracy were imitated by a new institution; the goguette, musical clubs formed by Paris workers, craftsmen, and employees. There were goguettes of both men and women. They usually met once a week, often in the back room of a cabaret, where they would enthusiastically sing popular, comic, and sentimental songs. During the Restoration, songs were also an important form of political expression. The poet and songwriter Pierre Jean de Béranger became famous for his songs ridiculing the aristocracy, the established church and the ultra-conservative parliament. He was imprisoned twice for his songs, in 1821 and 1828, which only added to his fame. His supporters around France sent foie gras, fine cheeses and wines to him in prison. The celebrated Paris police chief Eugène François Vidocq sent his men to infiltrate the goguettes and arrest those who sang songs ridiculing the monarch.

Music in Paris under Louis Philippe (1830-1848)

Public resentment against the Restoration government boiled over in July 1830 with an uprising in the streets of Paris, the departure of King Charles X, and the installation of the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe. Music played its part in the 1830 Revolution; the famed tenor Adolphe Nourrit, who had starred in the operas of Rossini, went onto the stages of Paris and emotionally sang the Marseillaise, which had been forbidden during the First Empire and the Restoration. As Europe was upset by revolutions and repression, many of the finest musicians in the continent came to seek sanctuary in Paris.

The most famous was Frédéric Chopin, who arrived in Paris in September 1831 at the age of twenty-one, and did not return to Congress Poland because of the crushing of the Polish uprising against Russian rule in October 1831. Chopin gave his first concert in Paris at the Salle Pleyel on 26 February 1832, and remained in the city for most of the next eighteen years. He gave just thirty public performances during these years, preferring to give recitals in private salons. On 16 February 1838 and on 2 December 1841, he played at the Tuileries for King Louis-Philippe and the royal family. (He also gave a recital for the royal family in October 1839 in the Château de Saint-Cloud). He earned his living from commissions given by wealthy patrons, including the wife of James Mayer de Rothschild, from publishing his compositions and giving private lessons. Chopin lived at different addresses in Paris: upon his arrival in September 1831 until 1836, at 27 boulevard Poissonnière, then at 38 rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, and 5 rue Tronchet. He had a ten-year relationship with the writer George Sand between 1837 and 1847. In 1842, they moved together to the Square d'Orléans, at 80 rue Taitbout, where the relationship ended. His last address in Paris was 12 Place Vendôme, where he moved in the second half of September 1849.

Franz Liszt also lived in Paris during this period, composing music for the piano and giving concerts and music lessons. He lived at the Hôtel de France on rue La Fayette, not far from Chopin. The two men were friends, but Chopin did not appreciate the manner in which Liszt played variations on his music. Liszt wrote in 1837 in La Revue et Gazette musicale: "Paris is the pantheon of living musicians, the temple where one becomes a god for a century or for an hour; the burning fire which lights and then consumes all fame." The violinist Niccolò Paganini was a frequent visitor and performer in Paris. In 1836, he made an unfortunate investment in a Paris casino, and went bankrupt. He was forced to sell his collection of violins to pay his debts. Richard Wagner came to Paris in 1839, hoping to present his works on the Paris opera stages, with no success. Some interest was finally shown by the director of the Paris Opera; he rejected Wagner's music but wanted to buy the synopsis of his opera, Le Vaissau fantôme, to be put to music by a French composer, Louis-Philippe Dietsch. Wagner sold the work for five hundred francs, and returned home in 1842.

The French composer Hector Berlioz had come to Paris from Grenoble in 1821 to study medicine, which he abandoned for music in 1824, attending the Conservatory in 1826, and won the Prix de Rome for his compositions in 1830. He was working on his most famous work, the Symphonie Fantastique, at the time of the July 1830 revolution. It had its premiere on 4 December 1830.

The Royal Academy, Opéra-Comique and Théâtre-Italien

Three Paris theaters were permitted to produce operas; The Royal Academy of Music on rue Le Peletier; the Opéra-Comique, and the Théâtre-Italien, nicknamed "Les Bouffes". The Royal Academy, financed by the government, was in dire financial difficulties. In February, the government handed over management of the theater to a gifted entrepreneur, Doctor Véron, who had become wealthy selling medicinal ointments. Véron targeted the audience of the newly wealthy Parisian businessmen and entrepreneurs; he redesigned the theater to make the loges smaller (six seats reduced to four seats), installed gas lights to improve visibility, and launched a new repertoire to make the Paris Opera "both brilliant and popular". The first great success of the new regime was Robert le Diable by the German composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, which premiered on November 21, 1831. The opera combined the German orchestral style with the Italian lyric singing style; it was an immense critical and popular success. Meyerbeer wrote a succession of popular operas, including At the end of his four-year contract, Doctor Véron retired, leaving the Opera in an admirable financial and artistic position.

The Opéra-Comique also enjoyed great success, largely due to the talents of the scenarist Eugène Scribe, who wrote ninety works for the theater, put to music by forty different composers, including Daniel Auber, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Fromental Halévy (La Juive (1835)), Cherubini, Donizetti, Gounod and Verdi (for whom he wrote Les vêpres siciliennes). Scribe left behind the grand mythological themes of earlier French opera, and wrote stories from a variety of historical periods which, with a mixture of strong emotion, humor and romanticism, exactly suited the taste of Parisian audiences.

The Théâtre-Italien completed the grand trio of Paris opera houses. After the fire at the Salle Favart, it moved briefly to the Odéon Theater and then permanently to the Salle Ventadour. In their repertoire, the ballet played a very small part, part, the costumes and sets were not remarkable, and the number of works was small; only a dozen new operas were staged between 1825 and 1870; but they included several famous works of Bel Canto opera, including I Puritani by Bellini and Marino Faliero and Don Pasquale by Donizetti. Verdi lived primarily in Paris between 1845 and 1847, and staged four of his operas at the Théâtre-Italien; Nabucco, Ernani, I due Foscari, and Jérusalem. The leading Italian singers also came regularly to sing at the Théâtre-Italien, including Giovanni Rubini, the creator of the role of Arturo in Bellini's I Puritani, Giulia Grisi, Fanny Persiani, Henriette Sontag and Giuditta Pasta, who created the role of Norma in Bellini's opera.

French composers including Hector Berlioz struggled in vain against the tide of Italian operas. Berlioz succeeded in getting his opera Benvenuto Cellini staged at the Royal Academy in 1838, but it closed after just three performances, and was not staged again in France during his lifetime. Berlioz complained in the Journal des Debats that there were six operas by Donizetti in Paris playing in one year. "Monsieur Donizetti has the air to treat us like a conquered country," he wrote, "it is a veritable war of invasion. We can no longer call them the lyric theaters of Paris, just the lyric theaters of Monsieur Donizetti."

The Conservatory and the symphony orchestra

With the growing popularity of classical music and the arrival of so many talented musicians, Paris encountered a shortage of concert halls. The best hall in the city was that of the Paris Conservatory on rue Bergére, which had excellent acoustics and could seat a thousand persons. Berlioz premiered his Symphonie Fantastique there on December 30, 1830; on December 29, 1832, Berlioz presented the Symphony again, along with two new pieces, Lelio and Harold en Italie, which he wrote specially for Paganini to play. At the end of the performance, with Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas in the audience, Paganini bowed down humbly before Berlioz. in tribute.

The Concert Society of the Paris Conservatory was founded in 1828, especially to play the symphonies of Beethoven; one at each performance, along with works by Mozart, Hayden and Handel. It was the first professional symphonic association in Europe. A second symphony association, the Societé de Sainte-Cecile, was founded shortly afterwards, which played more modern music; it presented the Paris premieres of Wagner's Tannhauser overture, works by Schubert, the Symphonie Italienne of Mendelssohn, the Fuite en Égypte of Berlioz, and the first works of Charles Gounod and Georges Bizet.

Birth of the romantic ballet

The ballet had been an integral part of the Paris Opera since the time of Louis XIV the 17th century. A new style, Romantic ballet, was born on March 12, 1832, with the premiere of La Sylphide at the Salle Le Peletier, with choreography by Filippo Taglioni and music by Jean-Madeleine Schneitzhoeffer. Taglioni designed the work as a showcase for his daughter Marie. La Sylphide was the first ballet where dancing en pointe had an aesthetic rationale and was not merely an acrobatic stunt. Other romantic ballets that had their first performances at the Opera were Giselle (1841), Paquita (1846) and Le corsaire (1856) Among the great ballerinas to grace the stage of the Opéra during this time were Marie Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, Carolina Rosati, Fanny Elssler, Lucile Grahn, and Fanny Cerrito.

Lucien Petipa danced the male lead in Giselle at its premiere, and his younger brother Marius Petipa also danced for a time at the Paris Opera. Marius Petipa moved from Paris to Saint Petersburg, where he became the ballet-master for the Russian Imperial ballet and created many celebrated ballets, including The Sleeping Beauty, La Bayadère and The Nutcracker.

Balls, Concerts-Promenades and the romance

The Champs-Élysées was redeveloped in the 1830s with public gardens at either end, and became a popular place for Parisians to promenade. It was soon lined with restaurants, cafes-chantants. and pleasure gardens where outdoor concerts and balls were held. The Café Turc opened a garden with a series of concert-promenades in the spring of 1833, which alternated symphonic music with quadrilles and airs for dancing. The 17-year-old jacques Offenbach wrote his first compositions for the dance orchestra at the Café Turc. The Tivoli, the Bazar of rue Saint-Honoré and the Casino Paganini competed with the Café Turc. In 1837, the King of the Viennese waltz, Johann Strauss, came in person to in Paris, competing with the French waltz king, Philippe Musard. The outdoor concerts and balls did not stay in fashion for long; most of the gardens began to close after 1838, and Musard took charge instead of the famous masked balls at the Paris Opera. The romance, a song with a simple, tender melody, sentimental words, accompanied on the piano, became the fashion in the Paris salons. Thousands of copies were sold by Paris publishers.

The piano and the saxophone

The July monarchy saw a surge in sales of instruments, especially pianos, for the French upper and middle class. Production of pianos in Paris tripled between 1830 and 1847, from four thousand to eleven thousand a year. The companies organized concerts and sponsored famous musicians to promote their brands. Chopin was contracted to play exclusively the Pleyel piano, while Liszt played on the Érard piano. The Paris firms of Pleyel, Érard, Herz, Pape and Kriegelstein exported pianos around the world. The crafts of other instruments also flourished; the Parisian firm of Cavaillé-Coll reconstructed the great organs of Notre-Dame, Saint-Sulpice, and the Basilica of Saint-Denis, which had been destroyed during the French Revolution.

In 1842 the Belgian Adolphe Sax, 28-years old, arrived in Paris with his new invention, the saxophone. He won a silver medal for his new instrument at the Paris Exposition of French Industry in 1844, and in April 1845 won a competition held by the French Army on the Champs-de-Mars, in which a fanfare was played on traditional instruments and then on the instruments of Adolphe Sax. The jury chose the instrument of Sax, and it was adapted by the French Army, and then by orchestras and ensembles throughout the world.

Popular music—street musicians and goguettes

At the beginning of the 1830s, the Paris police counted 271 wandering street musicians, 220 saltimbanques, 106 players of the barbary organ, and 135 itinerant street singers. The goguettes, or working class singing-clubs, continued to grow in the popularity, meeting in the back rooms of cabarets. The repertoire of popular songs ranged from romantic to comic and satirical, to political and revolutionary, especially in the 1840s. in June, 1848, the musical clubs were banned from meeting, as the government tried, without success, to stop the political unrest, which finally exploded into the 1848 French Revolution.

The 1848 Revolution and the Second Republic

following the 1848 Revolution and the abdication of Louis-Philippe, the censorship of Paris theaters was briefly abolished. The Opera was renamed the Théâtre de la Nation, then Opéra-Théâtre de la Nation, then Académie nationale de musique. A new musical theater, the Théâtre-Lyrique, was created, devoted to presenting the works of young French composers, who had been largely ignored during the July monarchy. It was located on the Boulevard du Temple, the new theater district, in a building which had previously been occupied by the theater founded by Alexander Dumas to present historical plays.

The cafés chantants became increasingly popular, spreading from the Champs Élysées to the Grand boulevards. Some, like the Café des Ambassadeurs, had outdoor concert gardens lit by gaslights. They presented romances by popular singers, and also a new comic genre, the minstrel show, featuring French singers with blackened faces playing the banjo and violin. The famous music cafés included the Moka on rue de la Lune, the Folies and Eldorado on boulevard Strasbourg, and the Alcazar on rue de Faubourg-Poissonniére,

The Second Empire

The Imperial Opera—Verdi and Wagner

During the reign of Emperor Napoleon III (1852–1870), the top of the hierarchy of Paris theaters was the Académie Imperial, or Imperial Opera Theatre, in the Salle Peletier. The opera house on Rue le Peletier could seat 1800 spectators. There were three performances a week, scheduled so as not to compete with the other major opera house in the city, Les Italiens. The best seats were in the forty boxes, which could each hold four or six persons, on the first balcony. One of the boxes could be rented for the entire season for 7500 francs. One of the major functions of the opera house was to be a meeting place for Paris society, and for this reason the performances were generally very long, with as many as five intermissions. Ballets were generally added in the middle of operas, to create additional opportunities for intermissions. The Salle Peletier had one infamous moment in its history; on 14 January 1858, a group of Italian extreme nationalists attempted to kill Napoleon III at the entrance of the opera house; they set off several bombs, which killed eight people and injured one hundred and fifty persons, and splattered the Empress Eugénie de Montijo with blood, though the Emperor was unharmed.

Giuseppe Verdi played an important part in the glory of the Paris opera. He had first performed Nabucco in Paris in 1845 at the Théâtre-Italien, followed by Luisa Miller and Il trovatore He signed a new contract with the Paris Opera in 1852, and wanted absolute perfection for his next Parisian project, Les Vêpres siciliennes He complained that the Paris orchestra and chorus were unruly and undisciplined, and rehearsed them an unheard-of one hundred and sixty-one times before he felt they were ready. His work was rewarded; the opera was a critical and popular success, performed 150 times, rather than the originally proposed forty performances. He was unhappy, however, that his operas were less successful in Paris than those of his chief rival, Meyerbeer; he returned to Italy and did not come back for several years. He was persuaded to return to stage Don Carlos, commissioned especially for the Paris Opera. Once again he ran into troubles; one singer took him to court over the casting, and rivalries between other singers poisoned the production. He wrote afterwards, "I am not a composer for Paris I believe in inspiration; others only care about how the pieces are put together".

Napoleon III intervened personally to have Richard Wagner come back to Paris; Wagner rehearsed the orchestra sixty-three times for the first French production of Tannhäuser on March 13, 1861. Unfortunately, Wagner was unpopular with both the French critics and with the members of the Jockey Club, an influential French social society. During the premiere, with Wagner in the audience, the Jockey Club members whistled and jeered from the first notes of the Overture. After just three performances, the Opera was pulled from the repertoire. Wagner got his revenge in 1870, when the Prussian Army captured Napoleon III and surrounded Paris; he wrote a special piece of music to celebrate the event, Ode to the German Army at Paris.

Napoleon III wanted a new opera house to be the centerpiece connecting the new boulevards he was constructing on the right bank. The competition was won by Charles Garnier and the first stone was laid by the Emperor in July 1862, but flooding of the basement caused the construction to proceed very slowly. As the building rose, it was covered with a large shed so the sculptors and artists could create the elaborate exterior decoration. The shed was taken off on August 15, 1867, in time for the Paris Universal Exposition, so visitors and Parisians could see the glorious new building; but the inside was not finished until 1875, after Napoleon's fall.

Hervé, Offenbach and the Opéra Bouffes

The operetta was born in Paris with the work of Louis Auguste Florimond Ronger, better known under the name of Hervé. His first operetta was called Don Quilchotte et Sancho Panza, performed in 1848 at the théâtre Montmartre. In the beginning they were short comic works or parodies, with a combination of songs, dance and dialogue, rarely with more than two persons on stage, and rarely longer than one act. Early operettas by Hervé was named Latrouillat and Truffaldini or the Inconvenience of a vendetta infinitely too prolonged and Agammemnon or the Camel with Two humps. Hervé opened a new theater, the Folies-Concertantes, on the Boulevard du Temple in 1854, later renamed the Folies-Nouvelle. The new genre was termed Opera Bouffe; works by Hervé appeared at a half-dozen theaters in the city, though the genre was ignored by the opera and the other official theaters.

In 1853, the young German-born musician and composer Jacques Offenbach, then director of the orchestra of the Comedie-Française, wrote his first operetta in the new style, Pepita for the Théatre des Varietes. It was a success, but Offenbach was still unable to perform his works in the official theaters. During the first Paris Universal Exposition, he opened his own theater, the Bouffes-Parisiens, in an old theater at the Carré Marigny on the Champs-Élysées. It was an immense success; Rossini termed Offenbach "The Mozart of the Champs-Élysées". Offenbach moved to a larger theatre on the passage Choiseul, and presented his next operetta, Ba-ta-clan, which also enjoyed spectacular success. In 1858 Offenbach wrote a more serious and ambitious work, Orphée aux enfers, a four-act opera with a large cast and chorus. It was also a popular and critical success; Emperor Napoleon III attended, and afterwards presented Offenbach with French citizenship. With the approval of the Emperor, the official theaters of Paris were finally open to Offenbach, and his works became popular with the upper classes. He achieved further success with La Belle Hélène with Hortense Schneider in the leading role; then, again with Schneider, in La Vie parisienne ad la Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein In 1867, five different Paris theaters were staging works by Offenbach. He was the champion of the Paris operetta, but he also had the ambition to be considered a serious composer of orchestral works; unfortunately he died before the successful premiere of his most ambitious orchestral work, the Contes d'Hoffmann.

The Théâtre Italien, the Théâtre-Lyrique, and the Opera-Comique

Besides the Imperial Opera Theater, Paris had three other important opera houses; the Théâtre Italien, the Opera-Comique, and the Théâtre Lyrique.

The Théâtre Italien was the based at the Salle Ventadour, and hosted the French premieres of several by Giuseppe Verdi, including Il Trovatore, La Traviata (1856), Rigoletto (1857) and Un ballo in maschera (1861). Verdi conducted his Requiem there, and Richard Wagner conducted a concert of selections from his operas. The soprano Adelina Patti had an exclusive contract to sing with the Italiens when she was in Paris.

The Théâtre Lyrique was originally located on the Rue de Temple, the famous "Boulevard de Crime," but when that part of the street was demolished to make room for the Place de la Republique, Napoleon III built a new theater for them at Place du Châtelet. The Lyrique was famous for putting on operas by new composers; it staged the first French performance of Rienzi by Richard Wagner; the first performance of Les pêcheurs de perles (1863), the first opera by the 24-year-old Georges Bizet; the first performances of the operas Faust (1859) and Roméo et Juliette (1867) by Charles Gounod; and the first performance of Les Troyens (1863) by Hector Berlioz.

The Opéra-Comique was located in the Salle Favart, and staged both comedies and serious works. It staged the first performances of Mignon by Ambroise Thomas (1866) and of La grand'tante, the first opera of Jules Massenet (1867).

Romantic ballet

Paris also had an enormous influence on the development of romantic ballet, thanks to the ballet troupe of the Paris Opera and its famous ballet masters. The first performance of Le Corsaire, choreographed by the ballet master of the opera, Joseph Mazilier to the music of Adolphe Adam, took place at the Paris Opera on January 23, 1856. Coppélia was originally choreographed by Arthur Saint-Léon to the music of Léo Delibes, and was based upon two stories by E. T. A. Hoffmann: It premiered on 25 May 1870 at the Théâtre Impérial l'Opéra, with the 16-year-old Giuseppina Bozzacchi in the principal role of Swanhilde. Its first flush of success was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War and the Siege of Paris (which also led to the early death of Giuseppina Bozzacchi, on her 17th birthday), but eventually it became the most-performed ballet at the Opéra.

The Cirque-Napoleon, concerts in the parks, and the Paris Expositions

Napoleon III re-established the custom of concerts at the imperial court, performed at the Louvre, with a new orchestra composed of students at the Paris Conservatory under the direction of Jules Pasdeloup. To reach a broader public, in 1861 he began a series of concerts by the orchestra at the huge Cirque-Napoléon (now the Cirque d'hiver) which could four thousand persons. Admission was fifty centimes. 1861 Pasdeloup decided to widen the audience for his orchestra. Besides playing the classical works of Beethoven, Mozart, Hayden and Mendellsohn, the orchestra performed new works by Schumann, Wagner, Berlioz, Gounod, and Saint-Saëns.

Napoleon had built a large number of new parks and squares in Paris, including the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes. The Emperor had bandstands installed in the new parks, and organized public concerts. Amateur as well as professional and military musicians were invited to take part in the concerts. The repertoire included classical music, military music, quadrilles, polkas and waltzes, and the latest music from Paris musical theater. Another force promoting musical education in Paris was the Orpheonic movement, which led to the creation of many new amateur orchestras and choral societies. Gounod directed the Orphéon of Paris between 1852 and 1856.

The Paris Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867, highlighting technological progress, also had an important musical component. New musical instruments, such as the saxophone and the Steinway piano, were put on display, and several new compositions were commissioned especially for performance during the expositions, including Verdi's Les Vêpres siciliennes and Don Carlos, Offenbach's La Grand-Duchesse de Gerolstein and La Vie parisienne, and Gounod's Romeo et Juliette.

Cafés-Concerts

During the Second Empire, the Café-Concert became extremely popular in Paris; by 1872, there were nearly one hundred and fifty in the city. Some were very simple; a cafe with a piano or small organ; others had an orchestra and professional singers. The café-concerts were strictly regulated, to prevent them from competing openly with the musical theaters. The singers were not allowed to wear costumes, and there could no sets, dialogue, or dancing by the performers. No more than forty songs could be sung in an evening, and the owners of the cafes were required to submit the musical program for each night to the police for review. If a song sounded subversive, the program was cancelled. After an actress of the Comedie-Française was condemned by the police for reciting classical verse at the Café Eldorado, and for wearing a long black dress rather street clothing, the law was relaxed in 1867. Thereafter cafe performers could wear costumes, recite dialogue, and have scenery on the stage. This opened the way for a new musical genre, the music hall, a few years later.

The Belle Époque (1872–1913)

Paris composers during the Belle Époque period had a major impact on European music, moving it away from Romanticism toward Impressionism in music and Modernism.

The defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 led to the downfall of Napoleon III, and the brief reign of the Paris Commune. During the two-month reign of the Commune, the Tuileries Palace was renamed the Maison du Peuple and hosted concerts of the music of Auber and Verd, while brass bands Bands of the Commune's National Guard gave concerts in the parks. The Commune produced one memorable song, Le Temps des cerises, with the melody of an 1866 song. In May 1871, as the French Army entered Paris and crushed the Commune, the Communards set fire to musical landmarks of the old regime, including the Tuileries Palace, the Théâtre-Lyrique on Place du Chatelet, and the house of Prosper Mérimée, the author of the novel Carmen and friend of Napoleon III. Despite the destruction, the opera reopened in July 1871 at rue de Pelletier with a performance of Auber's La Muette de Portici. The ruins of the Tuileries were eventual torn down, but the Théâtre-Lyrique was repaired and re-opened in November 1874, The opera house of Charles Garnier was completed and finally dedicated on January 5, 1875, in the presence of the President of the new Third Republic, Patrice de MacMahon and the King of Spain, with excerpts of music by Auber, Rossini, Halévy, Meyerbeer, and a ballet by Delibes and Minkus. Garnier appeared on the grand stairway during the intermission and received the applause of the crowd.

Bizet, Saint-Saëns and Debussy

The outbreak of the war between France and Germany in 1870 caused a group of French composers to form the Société Nationale de Musique, (SNM), officially founded on February 25, 1871, to promote new French music and resist the current of German music and particularly the influence of Wagner. It was led by Camille Saint-Saëns and included César Franck and Jules Massenet. The Society held its first concert at the Salle Pleyel in the autumn of 1871. The SNM played an important part through the Belle Époque by introducing Paris audiences to the music of new French composers, including Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, and Maurice Ravel.

In addition to the SNM, Paris had three world-class symphony orchestras during the Belle Époque. In 1873 the Concert National was founded, under the direction of Édouard Colonne. It performed regularly at the Théatre du Châtelet, and premiered works by Debussy, Franck, Charles Gounod, Fauré, Massenet, and Sant-Saëns. Colonne invited leading European composers, including Richard Strauss, Edvard Grieg, and Piotr Tchaikovsky to conduct their works in Paris. He was also the first conductor of note to make commercial gramophone (phonograph) records, for the Pathé company in 1906.

A second orchestra, the Societé des nouveaux concerts, was founded by Charles Lamoureux in 1881, devoted largely to the work of Wagner and his followers. This orchestra performed the Paris premiere of Wagner's Lohengrin at the Eden Theater in 1887. The society became known as the Lamouroux orchestra. A third symphony was created in 1905 by Victor Charpantier, brother of composer Gustave Charpentier, composed of amateur musicians, which gave free concerts at the Trocadero, under the direction of composers including Charpentier, Fauré and Saint-Saëns. In 1901, Gustave Charpentier founded the first trade union of professional musicians in France. Some of the SNM musicians felt that organization was too conservative, and in 1910 they founded the Societé musicale indépendente, or SMI, to promote "new tendencies" and music from abroad. Gabriel Fauré became head of the new organization; the SMI would go on to premiere his new works, as well as works by Ravel, Manuel de Falla, and Vaughan Williams, and the first performances of works by Eric Satie before a large public.

In July 1872 the Opéra-Comique commissioned Georges Bizet to write an opera based on the novel Carmen by Prosper Mérimée. The rehearsals for the finished opera were extremely difficult; in previous operas, the chorus simply lined up on stage and sang, but in Carmen, they were asked to walk around the stage, act, and even smoke cigarettes. It defied all conventions of comic opera, with its musical style, the profession of its heroine and its tragic ending. At its premiere on March 3, 1875, it scandalized both the critics and the audience; one critic reported it "was neither scenic nor dramatic." It was defended by Camille Saint-Saëns, who called it a masterpiece, but when Bizet died three months after the premiere, it was considered a failure. With time it became one of the most-performed works of Paris opera.

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was born in Paris and was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire when he was thirteen. When he finished the Conservatory, he became an organist at the church of Saint-Merri, and later at La Madeleine. His opera, Samson et Dalila (1877), was in the grand romantic tradition, though the music was new and innovative. He also won fame in Paris for Danse Macabre, the opera The Carnival of the Animals (1877), and his Symphonie No. 3 "avec orgue" in C minor, op. 78 (1886). Société Nationale de Musique,

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, and entered the Conservatory in 1872. He became part of the Parisian literary circle of the symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé, and an admirer of Richard Wagner, then went on to experiment with impressionism in music, atonal music and chromaticism. His most famous works included Clair de Lune (1890), La Mer (1905) and the opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1903-1905). He lived at 23 square de l'Avenue-Foch in the 16th arrondissement from 1905 until his death in 1918.

Other influential composers in Paris during the period included Jules Massenet (1842-1912), author of the operas Manon and Werther; Gustave Charpentier, composer of the working-class "opera-novel" Louise; and Erik Satie (1866-1925), who, after leaving the Conservatory, made his living as a pianist at Le Chat Noir, a cabaret on Montmartre. His most famous works were the Gymnopédies (1888).

Spanish music had an important part in the music of Paris in the Belle Époque, particularly between 1907 and 1914. The prominent Spanish composers Enrique Granados, Isaac Albeniz, Joaquín Turina and Manuel de Falla all lived in Paris, were inspired by the new works French music as well as traditional Spanish themes, and created a new school of modern Spanish music. They also in turn influenced French music; Debussy and Ravel wrote Iberia and Rapsodie espagnole inspired by Spanish themes.

Music of the Expositions

The great Paris Universal Expositions of 1878, 1889 and 1900 brought the greatest musicians in the world to Paris to perform, and also introduced musical genres from around the world, including Javanese, Congolese, New Caledonian, Algerian and Vietnamese music, to Paris audiences, The 1889 Exposition offered concerts by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov, while the 1900 Exposition featured band concerts conducted by John Philip Sousa. At the 1900 Exposition, Claude Debussy conducted a grand concert of his work at the Palais de Trocadero. The 1881 Exposition of electricity featured the first transmission of the sound of a musical performance from the Paris opera house to the Palace of Industry, while the 1889 Exposition displayed the new phonograph patented by Thomas Edison, which played the latest songs by Charles Gounod.

The café concert, the music hall and the cabaret

The café concert was an extremely popular musical venue at the beginning of the Belle Époque. Following the 1870 war, sentimental songs and songs calling for revenge against Germany for the loss of Alsace and Lorraine were the staple of all musical cafes. Over the course of the Belle Époque, the café chantant evolved into two different musical institutions; some, like Café des Ambassadeurs and the Eldorado, became very large, crowded and filled with noise and smoke, with orchestras, dance reviews, singers and comedy.

The music hall originated in England in 1842, and was first imported into France in its British form in 1862, but under the French law protecting the state theaters, performers could not wear consumes or recite dialogue, something only allowed in theaters. When the law changed in 1867, the Paris music hall flourished, and a half-dozen new halls opened, offering acrobats, singers, dancers, magicians, and trained animals.

The first Paris music hall built specially for that purpose was the Folies-Bergere (1869); it was followed by the Moulin Rouge (1889), the Alhambra (1866), the first to be called a music hall, and the Olympia (1893). The Printania (1903) was a music-garden, open only in summer, with a theater, restaurant, circus, and horse-racing. Older theaters also transformed themselves into music halls, including the Bobino Music Hall (1873), the Bataclan (1864), and the Alcazar (1858). At the beginning, music halls offered dance reviews, theater and songs, but gradually songs and singers became the main attraction. At the end of the Belle Epoque, the music halls began to face competition from movie theaters. The Olympia responded in 1911 with the invention of the grand stairway as a set for its musical and dance spectacles.

The smaller, more intimate clubs, called cabarets, focused on individual singers and personal songs, often written by the singer, along with satire and poetry. The Le Chat Noir, neighborhood of Montmartre, was created in 1881 by Rodolphe Salis, a theatrical agent and entrepreneur. It combined music and other entertainment with political commentary and satire. The Chat Noir brought together the wealthy and famous of Paris with the Bohemians and artists of Montmartre and the Pigalle. Its clientele was described by the historian Paul Bourget: "a fantastic mixture of writers and painters, of journalists and students, of employees and high-livers, as well as models, prostitutes and true grand dames searching for exotic experiences." The composer Eric Satie earned his living after finishing the Conservatory playing the piano at the Chat Noir.

By 1896 there were fifty-six cabarets and cafes with music in Paris, along with a dozen music halls. The cabarets did not have a high reputation; one critic wrote in 1897, "they sell drinks which are worth fifteen centimes along with verses which, for the most part, are worth nothing.".

Diaghilev, Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes

Russian music became extremely popular in Paris at the end of Belle Époque; The orchestras Lamoureux, Colonne, and the Paris Conservatory performed the music of Modest Mussorgsky, Glazunov, Mikhail Glinka, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Scriabin and flocked to hear the singer Chaliapin. In 1907 the French impresario Gabriel Astruc organized a season of Russian music, with performances by Scriabin and Sergei Rachmaninov.

In 1908 the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev brought to Paris a production of Boris Gudonov by Mussorgsky, with Chaliapin the leading role, while the Opéra-Comique staged The Snow Maiden by Rimsky-Korsakov. In 1909 Diaghilev brought dancers from the Imperial Théater in Saint Petersburg including Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova and Ida Rubenstein, to the Châtelet theater with a program of classical ballet. The Paris audiences loved the dancers but were not excited by the ballets, which lost money. For 1910, Diaghilev decided to do something entirely new, and commissioned Ravel to write a ballet, Daphnis and Chloë, for his new company, now called the Ballets Russes. The season made a celebrity of unknown composer, Igor Stravinsky and his ballet The Firebird. The Ballets Russes returned to Paris in 1911 with a new work of Stravinsky, Petrushka and a new version of Daphnis et Chloé with choreography by Fokine and sets by Léon Bakst. In 1912, the Ballets Russes presented Afternoon of a Fawn by Debussy, choreographed and danced by Nijinsky. Nijinsky and the ballet were denounced by the French press, which called his performance "vile, bestial and erotic", and by Debussy himself, though it was defended by many French artists, including Rodin and Odilon Redon.

The 1913 season, performed at the new Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, brought a new scandal, with The Rite of Spring, written by Stravinsky and choreographed by Nijinsky. The shouts of the audience during the performance, both for and against the dancers, were so loud that the dancers could not hear the music; the choreographer, in the wings, had to count in a loud voice to help them. The ballet transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure. The outbreak of World War I and the subsequent Russian Revolution of 1917 left the Ballets Russes stranded in Paris. They continued to perform in France and toured around Europe and the world, but never had the opportunity to perform in their own country.

Dance—the Bal-musette, the cakewalk, the can-can and the tango

Parisians of all social classes had a passion for dancing. The Bal-musette was a popular kind of dancing venue for working-class Parisians. It originated among the Auvergnats who came to Paris in large numbers in the 19th century. They took place at cafés and bars where patrons danced the bourrée to the accompaniment of the cabrette (a bellows-blown bagpipe locally called a "musette") and often the vielle à roue (hurdy-gurdy). Later Parisian and Italian musicians who played the accordion adopted the style. The Bal-musettes featured simple, fast and sensual dance steps, often with dancers holding each other very close; it could be danced in a small space.

The Cakewalk was introduced in Paris in 1903 by pair of American professional dancers, Professor Elk and his wife, at the Nouveau Cirque. The cakewalk was soon featured in other music halls, and was made into an early recording, with the singer Mistinguett. Claude Debussy composed a cakewalk, called Colliwog's cake-walk, between 1906 and 1908.

The Can-can originated in the 1820s, and in its original form was danced in cabarets and balls by couples at the fast pace of a galop. It was often described as immoral, because women lifted their shirts and showed their stockings. Beginning in the 1850s, it was modified into stage form, with dancers in a line facing the audience making high kicks, splits and cartwheels; a version which became known as the French can-can. The most famous accompaniment was Offenbach's The Infernal Galop from Orpheus in the Underworld (1858), though it was not written for that dance. The can-can was performed at music halls throughout the Belle Époque and remains popular today.

The tango was introduced into Paris in 1905, and was popularized by the Argentinian singer and composer Alfredo Gobb and his wife, singer Flora Rodiriguez, who came to Paris in 1907. They became professional tango teachers, and made numerous recordings of their music. It became popular throughout Paris; in 1913, even the President of France, Raymond Poincaré, danced a few steps of a tango at an official ball.

Links to music of the Belle Époque

• Le Temps des cerises (Music 1866, words 1871) [1]
• Maria Callas sing the Habanera from the opera Carmen, by Georges Bizet [2]
• Traditional Bal-Musette music [3]
• Debussy playing Golliwog's Cakewalk [4]
• Excerpt of Stravinsky's ballet Rites of Spring (1913) [5]

The Années Folles (1919-1939)

The first World War disrupted the Paris musical world; many musicians went into the army, and Ravel, too short to serve in the army, became a volunteer ambulance driver; but it did not stop musical creation altogether. The first cubist musical work, Parade, with a text by Jean Cocteau, music by Eric Satie, decor by Pablo Picasso, and choreography by Massine, was presented at the Chatelet theater on May 18, 1917. The poet and critic Apollinaire coined a new word, sur-realism, to describe it. The music by Satie featured an unusual mixture of instruments, including a saxophone, a harp, xylophone, a bouteillophone of bottles filled with varying amounts of water, and various noise-making devices, including a typewriter, siren, and a revolver. The production was denounced by one Paris newspaper as "the demolition of our national values" but Stravinsky praised it for its opposition to the "waves of impressionism, with language that is firm, clear, and without any connection with images."

Classical music—Ravel, Satie and Stravinsky

Many prominent composers worked in Paris during between the wars, including Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie, and Igor Stravinsky. Ravel was born in 1875; one of his last works, Boléro, written in 1928, became his most famous and most-often performed work. It was written on a commission from the Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein, who had been a member of the Ballets Russes before starting her own company. The composition was a sensational success when it was premiered at the Paris Opéra on November 22, 1928, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska and designs by Alexandre Benois. Satie (1866-1925) was in poor health, due largely to a long life of excessive drinking. Nonetheless, he established connections with the Dadaist movement, and wrote the music for two ballets shortly before his death.

Igor Stravinsky (1888-1971) first achieved fame in Paris just before World War I with his revolutionary compositions for the Ballets Russes. In 1920 he returned for a production of a new ballet, Pulcinella, with sets designed by Pablo Picasso. He, his wife and daughter were invited by designer Coco Chanel to stay in her new house in the Paris suburb of Garches. Struggling for money, he obtained a contract with the Paris piano company Pleyel et Cie to re-arrange his music for their popular player pianos. In February 1921 he met the Russian dancer Vera de Bosset and began a long affair with her, both in Paris and on tours around Europe. He became a French citizen in 1931 and moved into a house on the rue de Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. It was a very unhappy period for him; both his daughter and wife died of tuberculosis. In 1939, as World War II approached, he left Paris for the United States; he married Vera in 1940 and settled in Los Angeles.

New musical movements flourished in Paris. The most famous was Les Six, a group of six young French composers; brought together by Jean Cocteau and Eric Satie. They were Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre, all born between 1888 and 1899. Their music had no common style; they were united mainly in opposition to the dramatic style of Wagner and the impressionistic style of Debussy and Ravel. They provided music for many colorful theatrical pieces written by Cocteau for the Paris stage.

Between the wars, Paris was home to a remarkable colony of foreign composers, including Aaron Copland from the United States (from 1920 to 1925), Heitor Villa-Lobos from Brazil (1923-1930); and Béla Bartók from Hungary (after 1922). The American composer George Gershwin came to Paris in 1926 and 1928 and tried (without success) to have composition lessons with Ravel and Nadia Boulanger. During his 1928 visit, while staying at the Majestic Hotel, he wrote a symphonic poem, An American in Paris, which, at one point, turned into music the sound of Paris taxi horns on the nearby Etoile.

A new three-thousand seat concert hall, the Salle Pleyel, was built in Paris in the interwar period. It was commissioned in 1927 by piano manufacturer Pleyel et Cie and designed by Gustave Lion. The inauguration concert was performed by the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, with Robert Casadesus as soloist and Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, and Philippe Gaubert as conductors, A fire ravaged the interior of the hall on 28 June 1928, and it was extensively renovated, and the number of seats reduced to 1,913.

Dance—the Ballets Russes and Ida Rubinstein

The most famous Paris dance company was the Ballets Russes, Founded by Sergei Diaghilev in 1909. The company performed in Paris and internationally until Diaghilev's death in 1929. The set designers included Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Joan Miró, and Salvador Dalí. Its choreographers included Bronislava Nijinska (1891-1972), the younger sister of the star dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, and a young George Balanchine (1904-1983). In 1924, Balanchine, then a dancer, fled a Soviet dance company on tour in the Weimar Republic and came to Paris, where Diaghilev hired him as a choreographer. The most famous production was the 1924 ballet Le Train Bleu with a story by Cocteau, music by Darius Milhaud, costumes by Coco Chanel and a curtain painted by Picasso.

The dancer Ida Rubinstein left the Ballets Russes in 1911 and started her own troupe, commissioning famous poets, including André Gide and Paul Valéry, and composers, including Stravinsky and Honneger, to write ballets for her. Her most famous creation was Boléro, written for her by Ravel, which she first danced at the Paris Opera on November 22, 1928. Ravel originally called the music Fandango, since it much more closely resembled that dance rather than a true bolero.

In 1920 a new ballet company, directed by Swedish choreographer and dancer Jean Börlin, was established at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and then performed in a more intimate new hall, the Studio des Champs-Élysées. Like the Ballets Rousses, Börlin also commissioned famous artists, including Pierre Bonnard and Fernand Léger to create the decor, famous poets including Paul Claudel to write the texts, and avant-garde musicians, including Ravel, Satie and members of the Group of Six, including Taillefere, Milhaud Honnege to write the music.

The arrival of jazz—the Hot Club de Paris

Jazz came to Paris in 1917, with the American soldiers arriving to fight in the First World War. The soldiers were accompanied by military bands, including the 369th regiment band, composed of fifty black musicians directed by a celebrated Broadway band leader, James Reese Europe, and several other regimental bands led by famous American musicians. They gave concerts at the kiosks in the parks of Paris, performing the foxtrot, the two-step, the one-step, and the Memphis Blues and "The Army Blues" of W.C. Handy.

In August 1918, the orchestra of J.R. Europe was invited to perform at a music hall on the Champs-Élysées. The one-night performance was extended for eight weeks. The Casino de Paris presented the first French jazz review, with Gaby Deslys and Harry Pilcer and a ragtime orchestra. A black American jazz orchestra, the Jazz Kings, led by drummer Louis Mitchell, came to the Casino de Paris in 1919 to present a jazz review called Pa-ri-ki-ri, followed in 1920 by the jazz review Laisse-les-Tomber, with the young singer Mistinguett. The author jean Cocteau, enchanted by the new sound, described jazz as "an improvised catastrophe" and "a sonic cataclysm".

By 1930, Parisians were listening to recordings of American jazz; Duke Ellington brought his orchestra to Paris in 1932, Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway in 1934, Bill Coleman, Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter in 1935. The first famous Paris jazz club, the Hot Club de Paris, was founded in 1932. The first famous French jazz group, the Quintette du Hot Club de France, was formed in 1934; its members were Django Reinhardt, his brother Joseph, Stephane Grapelli, Louis Vola and Roger Chaput. They became the most famous jazz ensemble in France, touring Europe and eventually to the United States.

The music hall—Mistinguett and Josephine Baker

The singer Mistinguett made her debut the Casino de Paris in 1895 and continued to appear regularly in the 1920s and 1930s at the Folies Bergère, Moulin Rouge and Eldorado. Her risqué routines captivated Paris, and she became one of the most highly-paid and popular French entertainers of her time.

The Swedish ballet performing at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées closed in 1925, and its manager, André Davin, decided to create a musical show in the American style. He dispatched an American producer, Caroline Dudley, to New York, to recruit a company. She went to Harlem and returned in September 1925 with a troupe of twenty-five black musicians, singers and dancers, including the pianist Claude Hopkins, the clarinetist Sidney Bechet and the twenty-five year old singer Josephine Baker. The new show was called La Revue Nègre. The director, Jacques Charles, recruited from the Moulin Rouge, persuaded Baker to perform a Charleston called 'Danse sauvage,' half-nude, wearing only ostrich feathers. The audience at opening night on October 25, 1925, included Jean Cocteau, composers Darius Milhaud and Maurice Ravel, and fashion designer Paul Poiret. The show was an immense success. After a successful tour of Europe, Baker returned to France three months later to star at the Folies Bergère. The Théâtre des Champs Élysées continued its American series in July 1926 with the first French performance of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra The other music halls, including the Casino de Paris, Moulin Rouge and les Ambassadeurs presented jazz reviews, while the main concert halls, Pleyel and Gaveau, offered symphonic jazz concerts. New cabarets featuring jazz, including Bricktop's, the Boeuf sur le toit and Grand Écart opened, and American dance-styles, including the one-step, the fox-trot, the boston and the charleston, became popular in the dance halls. .

The music-halls suffered growing hardships in the 1930s, facing growing competition from movie theaters The Olympia was converted into a movie theater, and others closed. But others continued to thrive; In 1937 and 1930 the Casino de Paris presented shows with Maurice Chevalier, who had already achieved success as an actor and singer in Hollywood.

One genre remained highly popular in Paris; the Chanson réaliste; dramatic, emotional, tragic songs about love and passion. The leading singers of the genre were Yvonne George, Marie-Louise Damien and Fréhel. 1935, a twenty-year old singer named Édith Piaf was discovered in the Pigalle by nightclub owner Louis Leplée, whose club Le Gerny, off the Champs-Élysées, was frequented by the upper and lower classes alike. He persuaded her to sing despite her extreme nervousness. Leplée taught her the basics of stage presence and told her to wear a black dress, which became her trademark apparel. Leplée ran an intense publicity campaign leading up to her opening night, attracting the presence of many celebrities, including Maurice Chevalier. Her nightclub appearance led to her first two records produced that same year, and the beginning of a legendary career that continued into the 1960s.

The radio, phonograph, and the musical film

The arrival of radio and the musical film had a gradual but dramatic impact on Paris music. The first radio station in Paris, Radio Tour Eiffel, broadcast from the Eiffel Tower starting on December 24, 1921. The first classical music concert broadcast on French radio, was transmitted by the station Radiola on November 6, 1922, beginning with a march composed by Christoph Gluck, followed by symphonic and opera works. In 1929, a weekly series of broadcasts of classical music for school students was launched, but it had limited success. Due to the financial crisis, very few Paris schools had money to buy radios. At the beginning of Les Années Folles, the French company Pathé had a monopoly on the sale of phonograph records in France, and kept out records by other artists. In 1925, the Pathé label was bought by the American company Columbia, and soon American disks began to appear in the French market. After 1926, Parisians could buy records made by other foreign companies.

The motion picture had the greatest impact on Paris music. Due largely to competition from the movies, between 1910 and 1920 two-thirds of the Paris music halls were transformed into movie theaters. Collaboration between the Paris movie studios and the film industry had begun early. The composer Camille Saint-Saëns had written music to accompany the 1908 film L'Assassinat du duc de Guise. The composer Arthur Honegger composed music for two of the most important silent films of Abel Gance, La Roue and Napoleon. Napoleon had its grand premiere on April 7, 1927, at the Palais Garnier with a full orchestra playing the score.

The arrival in France of the first sound film, The Jazz Singer in 1927 caused a revolution in the French movie business, and was quickly followed by the production of French film musicals at the studios just outside Paris. New French films featured the singing talents of Jean Gabin (Pépé le Moko, Cœur de lilas), and Danielle Darrieux (La crise est finis, Mon cœur t'appelle, Un mauves garçon), Maurice Chevalier et Claudette Colbert (La Chanson de Paris) both made successful careers in Hollywood; Colbert remained in the U.S., but Chevalier returned to Paris and continued his singing career on the Paris music hall stage. Music hall singers, including Fernandel, Frehel and Josephine Baker, began making musical films. The 1934 musical film Zouzou, with Jean Gabin and Josephine Baker, was the first film to star a black actress. The French music industry was born, as movie studios merged with record companies and used films to promote records. The route to success for Paris singers became the recording and film.

World War II—occupation and liberation

In 1939, in the early days of World War II, the music hall orchestra of Ray Ventura had a popular hit with the song We'll hang out our laundry on the Siegried Line, but many musicians and composers living in Paris, including Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud and Kurt Weil, departed Paris for the United States. The German army crossed the Meuse, and by the end of June occupied Paris. The repression of Jews in the musical world of Paris began; Jewish faculty were dismissed from the Conservatory; Jewish students were banned in 1942. The director of the orchestra of the Conservatory, Roger Désormière, helped organize an underground organization of French musicians, with a clandestine newspaper. The new director of the Conservatory, Claude Delvincourt, organized and clandestine music lessons for Jewish pupils. He also organized a student orchestra, and protected the male musicians from being sent to forced labor in Germany by promising to organize concerts for the German soldiers in Paris.

The four major symphony orchestras of Paris (Pasdeloupe, Colonne, Lamoureux and the Conservatory Concert Orchestra) continued to perform, giving 650 concerts during the four seasons of the Occupation. The Colonne orchestra, named for the composer Édourard Lamoureux, was forced to change its name. The Germans also organized a series of thirty-one concerts in Paris by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, and other German orchestras. French composers and musicians, including Martin Honegger, were invited to participate in music festivals in Vienna and Salzburg. The pianist Alfred Cortot became the Commissioner of Fine Arts of the Vichy government, took part in the Berlin music festival, and made a tour of German cities.

French music hall performers continued to perform to audiences of Parisians and German soldiers. The Germans organized a tour to Germany of several the most popular singers, including Maurice Chevalier, Édith Piaf, and Charles Trenet; they performed for French workers who had been forced to work in German factories.

Radio Paris became an important vehicle for Nazi and Vichy propaganda; it had an orchestra of ninety musicians and gave free concerts at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, which featured everything from Beethoven to Tangos and jazz. Jazz was officially banned in Germany as "decadent", and American records were banned after but remained highly popular in occupied Paris. Charles Delaunay organized a jazz festival in Paris in December 1940, and two concerts month were given at the Gaveau, and continued through 1944. Delaunay's band, called Jazz de Paris, gave a concert at the Salle Pleyel on January 16, 1941. The singer Johnny Hess also had an enormous success with his 1940 jazz-swing song, ils sont Zazous.

American jazz returned to Paris with the U.S. army on August 25, 1944. The program director of the Voice of America, Sim Copans, equipped a truck with loudspeakers and broadcast excerpts of Gershwin and other American musicians in the Paris streets. The VOA also distributed V-disks, phonograph records with the songs of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton and Cab Calloway. These were the first American records to arrive in Paris since the war began.

Just a month after the liberation of Paris, the first of a series of concerts was performed by the Orchestre national at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, presenting pieces by composers whose work was banned from public performance during the Occupation, including Gustave Mahler, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Hindemith and Bartók. In May 1945, a Committee of National Cleansing was created for the artistic professions, to investigate musicians accused of collaborating with the Germans. Honegger was censured for touring in Germany, Mistinguett for singing on Radio-Paris. The pianist Alfred Cortot was stripped of his professorship at the Conservatory and moved back to his native Switzerland, but returned to Paris with a triumphant concert at the Salle Pleyel in 1949.

Post-war Paris (1946–2000)

Jazz clubs of Saint-Germain-des-Pres

In the early post-war period, immediately after World War II, the Saint-Germain-des-Pres neighborhood and the nearby Saint-Michel neighborhood became home to many small jazz clubs. They were mostly located in cellars, due to the shortage of any suitable space, and because the music at late hours was less likely to disturb the neighbors. The first to open in 1945 was the Caveau des Lorientais, near Boulevard Saint-Michel, which introduced Parisians to New Orleans Jazz, played by clarinetist Claude Luter and his band. It closed shortly afterward, but was soon followed by other cellars; Le Vieux-Columbier, the Rose Rouge, the Club Saint-Germain; and Le Tabou. The clubs attracted students from the nearby university, the Paris intellectual community, and celebrities from the Paris cultural world. They soon had doormen who controlled who was important or famous enough to be allowed inside into the cramped, smoke-filled cellars. A few of the musicians went on to celebrated careers; Sidney Bechet was the star of the first jazz festival held at the Salle Pleyel in 1949, and headlined at the Olympia music hall in 1955.

A concert by Dizzy Gillespie and his orchestra at the Salle Pleyel in 1948 introduced Paris to a new variety of jazz, called bebop, and soon the jazz world of Paris was divided into two rival camps, those for bebop and those for more traditional New Orleans jazz, in the style of Louis Armstrong; this group was led by Sidney Bechet and trumpet player Boris Vian; Mezz Mezzrow, André Rewellotty, and guitarist Henri Salvador.

Beginning in 1958, the leading figures in American jazz, including Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane came to Paris to perform in a series called Paris Jazz Concert, at the Olympia music hall. The musician/composer Quincy Jones came to Paris both to perform and to study composition with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen. Jazz also played an important part in the French New Wave films of the 1950s; the film Les Liaisons dangereuses of Roger Vadim, set in Paris in the 1960s. featured music by Thelonious Monk and Art Blakey; À bout de soufflé (Breathless) by Jean-Luc Godard had a jazz score music by Martial Solal. Most of the clubs closed by the early 1960s, as musical tastes shifted toward rock and roll.

Rock and roll

Rock and roll made its first appearance in Paris in 1956, when pianist and arranger Michel Legrand returned from the United States with American rock and roll records and, with Boris Vian and Henri Salvador, recorded the first French rock and roll records Rock coquet and Rock n'roll mops. In 1957 Legrand and Albert Raisner recorded a French version of Bill Haley's Rock around the Clock and Eddy Constantine recorded Rock! Rock!. At about the same time, the Golf Druout, an indoor miniature golf course at the corner of rue Drouout and boulevard Montmartre installed the first jukebox in Paris, supplied with records from an American military base. The juke box attracted crowds of listeners, and became the first rock-and-roll club in Paris. Among the young musicians who came to the Golf Druout to hear new sound was Jean-Philippe Met, who had changed his name to Johnny Hallyday and became the most enduring Parisian rock singer. The first Parisian rock band, the Five Rocks, was founded at the beginning of the 1960s; it soon changed its name to the Chausettes Noirs (the black socks) The lead singer of the Chausettes noirs, Eddy Mitchell, became famous singing Eddie sois bon, a French remake of Johnny be Good by Chuck Berry. He left the band in 1962 and became a popular film actor. In 1965, the Beatles gave two hugely successful concerts at the Palais des Sports. Rock was firmly installed as the preferred music of young Parisians.

Popular music took a big step forward in 1981 when the government gave up its monopoly over radio stations. Two hundred new private radio stations appeared in Paris alone, the great majority devoted entirely to music, covering every genre, including classical, jazz, world music, French songs from the 1920s to 1960s, and every type of rock and roll.

Music from the Maghreb, Africa and the Caribbean

During the first part of the 20th century, the music from France's colonies in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean was largely ignored; or, during the 1900 Universal Exposition and the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931. it was treated as an exotic novelty, performed by costumed singers and dancers for the benefit of Exposition visitors. That began to change after World War II, when large numbers of temporary workers and students came to live, work and study in Paris. In the 1960s the migration grew even larger, as the colonies were granted their independence. The migrants settled in the outer neighborhoods and suburbs and brought their music with them. The music was almost entirely ignored by the French television and radio stations until 1981 when private radio stations were allowed. Soon dozens of new stations went on the air, playing the music of the new wave of immigrants.

The singer Dalida was one of the first musicians from North Africa to achieve fame in Paris. Her father was Italian, the first violinist at the Cairo Opera. She moved to Paris in 1954 at the age of twenty and became a singer at Olympia Paris, and began making recordings. Her song Bambino in 1956 became a hit in France, selling three hundred thousand records, making her one of France's leading popular singers. She recorded Italians in French, Arabic, Italian, and a half-dozen other languages, before her death in 1987.

One of the first popular styles imported from North Africa was Raï, a singing style from the Algerian city of Oran. One of the first famous singer of the style, Khaled, was born in Oran in 1960, started a band when he was fourteen, and moved to France in 1986, where he became a recording star with an international audience.

In the 1980s and the 1990s, the traditional African, Maghreb and Caribbean musical styles were blended together with French and American styles of hip-hop, techno, and rap, to create an original style, which became popular well outside the immigrant communities.

Musical styles imported into Paris include Sega from the Island of Mauritius. Zouk from the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, Zouglou, a dance-oriented style of music from Côte d'Ivoire; and Mbalax from Senegal and the Gambia. a fusion of popular Western music and dance such as jazz, soul, Latin, and rock blended with sabar, the traditional drumming and dance music of Senegal.

Cabarets and music halls

Between 1945 and 1960 the cabarets and music halls played an important part in Paris culture, giving a stage to established stars and new talent. The most important music halls of the period were the Olympia Paris and Bobino, while the important cabarets included La Galerie 55, L'Echelle de Jacob, le Port de Salut, l'Ecluse and Trois Baudets. Future French stars who debuted in the cabarets after the war included Bourvil in 1946, Yves Montand in 1947, Juliette Gréco in 1948, Georges Brassens at the Trois Baudets in 1952, and Jacques Brel at the same club in 1953. Headliners at the Olympia included Édith Piaf in 1949, Gilbert Bécaud in 1954, and Charles Aznavour, Tino Rossi and Dalida in 1955. Paris singing stars in the 1980s and 1990s included Serge Lama, Serge Gainsbourg, Michel Berger, Yves Duteil, Francis Cabrel, Patrick Bruel, and Jean-Jacques Goldman.

Classical music—the Orchestre de Paris

During first decades after the war Paris could boast four top-quality professional symphony orchestras: the Colonne orchestra at the Châtelet; the Lamoureux at Salle Pleyel; the Pasdeloup at the palais de Chaillot, and the Concert Society of the Conservatory at the théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The orchestras did not coordinate their programs; they played during the same season (October to Easter) at the same time (Sunday afternoons at 5:45) and for the most part played the same classical repertoire, rarely venturing into modern music.

In the late 1960s, André Malraux, the Minister of Culture under President Charles de Gaulle, decided to create a new orchestra as the prestige symphony of Paris. the Society of Concerts of the Conservatory was abolished in 1967, and replaced by the Orchestre de Paris. The French government provided sixty percent of the funding for the new orchestra, with smaller shares from the City of Paris and the Department of the Seine. The first conductor of the orchestra was Charles Munch. After his death in 1968, it was conducted by Herbert von Karajan, then Georg Solti, then Daniel Barenboim, who directed the orchestra from 1975 to 1989.

Much musical experimentation was taking place inside other Paris institutions. In 1954 Pierre Boulez founded Le Domaine musical, which between 1954 and 1966, presented regular concerts of new music by composers including Schoenberg and Webern. The most influential modernist composer in post-war Paris was Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), organist at the Trinity Church beginning in 1930 and professor at the Paris Conservatory of Music from 1942. he was noted for his scientific study of bird songs (1958), his adaptations of traditional Asian and Latin American rhythms (1960); and original church music. Other notable composers included Pierre Schaeffer, founder of the school called Musique concrète, based on recorded sounds of the real world, such as the noise made by trains; and composer of Symphonie pour un home seul (1950) and Orphée 51 (1951); the composer Pierre Henry, a collaborator of Schaeffer, pioneer of electroacoustic music; and composer of The Well-Tempered microphone; and the conductor and composer Boulez, a pioneer of Serial music.

Musical theater—the mega-musical

Musical theater had a difficult time in the postwar years, due to stiff competition from musical films and high production costs. The exceptions were several mega-musicals first produced in Paris; Les Misérables, based on the novel by Victor Hugo, with music by Claude-Michel Schönberg and original French lyrics by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, opened in Paris in 1980, and went on to success in London and New York, and became one of the most popular musicals of all time. Notre Dame de Paris, also based on a novel by Victor Hugo, with music composed by Riccardo Cocciante and lyrics by Luc Plamondon, opened on September 16, 1998, and made immediate stars of its lead singers, Hélène Ségara as Esmeralda and Garou, who played Quasimodo.

The Bastille Opera and the City of Music

When President François Mitterrand took office in 1981, his new culture minister, Jack Lang, launched a series musical innovations. On June 21, 1982, he began the Fete de la Musique, a day of free musical performances all over Paris and in other cities of France. A giant rock concert took place at the Trocadero, the opera orchestra played on the steps of the Opera Garnier, and the Garde Republicaine band played at the Pantheon. The Fete became an annual event. He also planned and began construction of a second opera house at Place de la Bastille, in place of an old suburban train station. Revolution. It was designed to have an equally good view from all seats (unlike the Palais Garnier) and to have less expensive tickets. After many technical problems, design changes, controversies and the dismissal of the opera's director, the Opera Bastille opened in July 1989.during the celebration of the bicentennial of the French Revolution.

The second grand musical project of Mitterrand and Lang, announced in 1982, was the Cité de la Musique, a large musical performance center at La Villette, a former-industrial section of the city. The first piece built was the Le Zénith, a concert hall with six thousand seats, inaugurated on January 12, 1984. It hosted concerts by Johnny Halladay, Serge Gainsbourg, Vanessa Paradis, the rock group Téléphone, and other celebrated Paris pop musicians. The Paris Conservatory of Music was moved to a new building on the site, opened to students in 1990. The museum of musical instruments of the Conservatory was opened at the beginning of 1997. The final piece, the Philharmonie de Paris concert hall, designed by architect Jean Nouvel, with 2,500 seats, was opened on January 24, 2015.

See also

• Music of France

References

Notes and citations

Books cited in article

• Bezbakh, Pierre (2004). Petit Larousse de l'histoire de France. Larousse. ISBN 2-03505369-2.
• Blanchard, Pascal; Deroo, Eric; El Yazami, Driss; Fournié, Pierre; Manceron, Gilles (2003). Le Paris Arabe. La Découverte. ISBN 2-7071-3904-1.
• Combeau, Yvan (2013). Histoire de Paris. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN 978-2-13-060852-3.
• Damschroeder, David; Williams, David Russell (1990). Music Theory from Zarlino to Schenker: A Bibliography and Guide. Pendragon Press. ISBN 978-0-918728-99-9. Archived from the original on 1 January 2016. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
• Dussault, Éric (2014). L'invention de Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Vendémiaire. ISBN 978-2-36358-078-8.
• Fierro, Alfred (1996). Histoire et dictionnaire de Paris. Robert Laffont. ISBN 2-221-07862-4.
• Héron de Villefosse, René (1959). Histoire de Paris. Bernard Grasset.
• Marchand, Bernard (1993). Paris, histoire d'une ville (XIX-XX siecle). Éditions du Seuil. ISBN 2-02-012864-0.
• Powell, John S. (2000). Music and Theatre in France 1600–1680. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198165996.
• Sarmant, Thierry (2012). Histoire de Paris: Politique, urbanisme, civilisation. Editions Jean-Paul Gisserot. ISBN 978-2-755-803303.
• Vila, Marie Christine (2007). Paris musique. Parigramme. ISBN 978-2-84096-419-3.
• Wright, Craig (2008). Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500-1550. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-08834-3.
• Dictionnaire historique de Paris. La Pochothèque. 2013. ISBN 978-2-253-13140-3.
• Petit Robert - Dictionnaire universal des noms propres. Le Robert. 1988.

Links to music by period

Early music

• Medieval motet in three voices from the School of Notre Dame
• Mass of Notre Dame in four voices by Guillaume de Machaut

16th century

• [6] Listen to Song of the birds by Clement Janequin
• [7] Listen to the song Je n'ose le dire by Pierre Certon

17th century

• [8] Listen to songs of the French Royal Court from the 17th century
• [9] Listen to "March for the Turkish Ceremony" by Jean-Baptiste Lully
• [10] Watch a ballet from the opera Armide by Lully (1686)
• [11] Listen to an organ work by François Couperin (1690)

18th century

• [12] Watch Hippolyte et Aricie by Jean Philippe Rameau (1733)
• [13] Listen to Mozart's Symphony number 31 (The Paris Symphony), written for the Concert Spirituel
• [14] Listen to French popular music from the 18th century
• [15] Listen to a song by André Grétry from the Paris Opéra-Comique (1788)

Songs of the French Revolution

• Listen to the Revolutionary song Ça ira
• Listen to La Carmagnole [16]
• Listen to the Marseillaise, with English translation [17]

The Second Empire

• [18] Watch a scene from the opera Les Troyens by Hector Berlioz (1858)
• [19] Watch scenes from the opera La Belle Hélène by Jacques Offenbach (1864)

1917–1939

• [20] Watch an excerpt of the ballet Parade with music by Eric Satie and costumes by Picasso (1917)
• [21] Listen to Mistinguett sing Mon Homme (1920)
• [22] Watch performance of Josephine Baker at the Folies Bergere (1927)

Links to music (1940–1945)

• [23] Listen to Johnny Hess sing Je suis Swing (1940)

Links to music of postwar Paris (1945–2000)

• [24] Listen to Quartet for the End of Time by Olivier Messiaen (1941)
• [25] Listen to Study of trains, a work of concrete music by Pierre Schaeffer (1948)
• [26] Edith Piaf sings Milord
• [27] Sidney Bechet and Claude Luter play Petit Fleur (1952)
• [28] Watch performances of Sidney Bechet, Django Reinhardt and Louis Armstrong (1952)
• [29] Watch an early performance by Johnny Hallyday (1961)
• [30] Listen to Eddy Mitchell and the Chaussettes noires (1962)

Since the first printing of Carl Linnaeus's Species Plantarum in 1753, plants have been assigned one epithet or name for their species and one name for their genus, a grouping of related species. Thousands of plants have been named for people, including botanists and their colleagues, plant collectors, horticulturists, explorers, rulers, politicians, clerics, doctors, philosophers and scientists. Even before Linnaeus, botanists such as Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Charles Plumier and Pier Antonio Micheli were naming plants for people, sometimes in gratitude for the financial support of their patrons.

Early works researching the naming of plant genera include an 1810 glossary by Alexandre de Théis and an etymological dictionary in two editions (1853 and 1856) by Georg Christian Wittstein. Modern works include The Gardener's Botanical by Ross Bayton, Index of Eponymic Plant Names and Encyclopedia of Eponymic Plant Names by Lotte Burkhardt, Plants of the World by Maarten J. M. Christenhusz (lead author), Michael F. Fay and Mark W. Chase, The A to Z of Plant Names by Allan J. Coombes, the four-volume CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names by Umberto Quattrocchi, and Stearn's Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners by William T. Stearn; these supply the seed-bearing genera listed in the first column below. Excluded from this list are genus names not accepted (as of January 2021) at Plants of the World Online, which includes updates to Plants of the World (2017).

Key

Ba = listed in Bayton's The Gardener's Botanical

Bt = listed in Burkhardt's Encyclopedia of Eponymic Plant Names

Bu = listed in Burkhardt's Index of Eponymic Plant Names

Ch = listed in Christenhusz's Plants of the World

Co = listed in Coombes's The A to Z of Plant Names

Qu = listed in Quattrocchi's CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names

St = listed in Stearn's Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners

In addition, Burkhardt's Index is used as a reference for every row in the table, except as noted.

Genera

See also

• List of plant genus names with etymologies: A–C, D–K, L–P, Q–Z
• List of plant family names with etymologies

Notes

Citations

References

• Bayton, Ross (2020). The Gardener's Botanical: An Encyclopedia of Latin Plant Names. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-20017-0.
• Burkhardt, Lotte (2018). Verzeichnis eponymischer Pflanzennamen – Erweiterte Edition [Index of Eponymic Plant Names – Extended Edition] (pdf) (in German). Berlin: Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum, Freie Universität Berlin. doi:10.3372/epolist2018. ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5. S2CID 187926901. Retrieved January 1, 2021. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ for license.
• Burkhardt, Lotte (2022). Eine Enzyklopädie zu eponymischen Pflanzennamen [Encyclopedia of eponymic plant names] (pdf) (in German). Berlin: Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum, Freie Universität Berlin. doi:10.3372/epolist2022. ISBN 978-3-946292-41-8. S2CID 246307410. Retrieved January 27, 2022. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ for license.
• Christenhusz, Maarten; Fay, Michael Francis; Chase, Mark Wayne (2017). Plants of the World: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Vascular Plants. Chicago, Illinois: Kew Publishing and The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-52292-0.
• Coombes, Allen (2012). The A to Z of Plant Names: A Quick Reference Guide to 4000 Garden Plants. Portland, Oregon: Timber Press. ISBN 978-1-60469-196-2.
• Cullen, Katherine E. (2006). Biology: The People Behind the Science. New York, New York: Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8160-7221-7.
• POWO (2019). "Plants of the World Online". London: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Archived from the original on March 22, 2017. Retrieved January 1, 2021. See http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/terms-and-conditions Archived 2021-04-23 at the Wayback Machine for license.
• Quattrocchi, Umberto (2000). CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names, Volume II, D–L. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press. ISBN 978-0-8493-2676-9.
• Stearn, William (2002). Stearn's Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners. London: Cassell. ISBN 978-0-304-36469-5.

Further reading

• Gledhill, David (2008). The Names of Plants. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-86645-3.

The 1540s decade ran from 1 January 1540, to 31 December 1549.

Events

1540

January–March

• January 6 – King Henry VIII marries Anne of Cleves, his fourth Queen consort; the marriage lasts six months.
• February 14 – Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, enters Ghent without resistance, and executes rebels, ending the Revolt of Ghent (1539–1540).
• March 23 – Waltham Abbey is the last to be closed as part of Henry VIII of England's dissolution of the monasteries.

April–June

• April 3– Estêvão da Gama becomes the new Governor of Portuguese India.
• April 7– The English cathedral priories of Canterbury and Rochester are transformed into secular cathedral chapters on Easter Sunday, concluding the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
• April 12– Printing of the first translation of the New Testament into the Icelandic language is completed after King Christian III of Denmark finishes having Oddur Gottskálksson's text compared to the original Latin.
• May 17 – Battle of Kannauj: Sher Shah Suri defeats and deposes Mughal Emperor Humayan, establishing the Sur Empire.
• June 10 – Thomas Cromwell, Chief Minister for King Henry VIII, is arrested at meeting of the Privy Council of England at Westminster and charged with treason. Cromwell is removed from his positions as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Privy Seal, Lord Great Chamberlain and Governor of the Isle of Wight, and will be executed on July 28.

July–September

• July 7 – Spanish conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado captures Hawikuh in modern-day New Mexico, at this time known as part of Cíbola, but fails to find the legendary gold.
• July 9 – King Henry VIII of England's marriage to Anne of Cleves, his fourth Queen consort, is annulled.
• July 28 – Thomas Cromwell, is executed for treason on the orders of king Henry VIII of England. Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day.
• August 15 – In Peru, Spanish captain Garcí Manuel de Carbajal founds the Villa Hermosa de Arequipa; one year later, Charles V of Germany and I of Spain will give the valley a status of 'city' by royal decree.
• September 3 – Gelawdewos succeeds his father Lebna Dengel as Emperor of Ethiopia.
• September 10 – Gibraltar is sacked by the fleet of Barbary pirate Ali Hamet, a Sardinian renegade in the service of the Ottoman Empire, and many of its leading citizens are taken as captives to Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera in Morocco. This leads to construction of the defensive Charles V Wall, at this time known as the Muralla de San Benito.
• September 27 – The Society of Jesus (Jesuits) is approved by Pope Paul III, in his bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae.

October–December

• October 1 – Battle of Alborán: A Habsburg Spanish fleet, under the command of Bernardino de Mendoza, destroys an Ottoman fleet commanded by Ali Hamet off Alborán Island in the Mediterranean.
• October 18 – An expedition led by Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto destroys the fortified village of Mabila in modern-day Alabama, killing paramount chief Tuskaloosa.
• November 8 – William Whorwood becomes the new Attorney General for England and Wales, succeeding Sir John Baker
• December 16 – Honoré I, Lord of Monaco reaches the age of 19 and after the future principality of Monaco had been administered by regents for more than 18 years.
• December 20 – Stephen V, Prince of Moldavia, is assassinated by two of the Moldavian nobles (boyars), Mihul and Trotsanul, after word arrives that he will be replaced by Petru IV Rareş, who had paid a bribe to the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman in order to be appointed the new Prince. Alexandru Cornea is crowned temporarily as Prince Alexandru III.
• December 31 – Estêvão da Gama, Governor of Portuguese India, departs from Goa with a plan to sail into the Red Sea, and destroy the Ottoman Empire's access to the Indian Ocean by plundering Suez. The planned attack fails.

Date unknown

• Europe is hit by a heat wave and drought lasting for about seven months. Rivers such as the Rhine and Seine dry up, and many people die from dysentery and other illnesses, caused by lack of safe drinking water.
• Georg Joachim Rheticus publishes De libris revolutionum Copernici narratio prima in Danzig, an abstract of Copernicus' as yet unpublished De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, and the first printed publication of Copernican heliocentrism.
• Martin Luther expels theologian Caspar Schwenckfeld from Silesia.
• approximate date – The musket is introduced into Japan from Europe.

1541

January–March

• January 4 – Leonardo Cattaneo della Volta is elected to a two-year term as the new Doge of the Republic of Genoa, succeeding Giannandrea Giustiniani Longo
• February –
• February 8 – (13th day of 1st month of Tenbun 10) In Japan, the Siege of Koriyama, started by Amago Haruhisa of the 30,000 strong Amago clan the previous September in an attack against the Mōri clan led by Mōri Motonari and the Ōuchi clan, ends with a defeat of the attackers. The Amago clan sustains heavy losses, including the death of Amago Hisayuki.
• February 12 – Pedro de Valdivia founds Santiago del Nuevo Extremo, which will become the capital of Chile.
• February 19 – Petru Rareș becomes the Prince of Moldavia for a second time, overthrowing the Voivode Alexandru Cornea at Suceava (now in Romania) at the direction of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman.
• March 8 – At the Battle of Suakin, fought at an Ottoman port city on the Red Sea in what is now Sudan, Portuguese General Estêvão da Gama and his brother Cristóvão da Gama lead an attack against the Ottoman ruler and plunder the city.
• March 12 – The Portuguese Empire's fortress at Agadir falls to the Moroccan general Mohammed al-Shaykh after a siege of 24 days.
• March 28 – In what is now the capital of Ecuador, San Francisco de Quito is declared a city by the decree of King Charles I of Spain and the Viceroyalty of Peru.

April–June

• April 7 – Francis Xavier leaves Lisbon, on a mission to the Portuguese East Indies.
• April 24 – Battle of Sahart: Gelawdewos is defeated by the forces of Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi.
• May 8 – Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto reaches the Mississippi River, naming it the Rio de Espiritu Santo ("River of the Holy Spirit").
• May 23 – Jacques Cartier departs from Saint-Malo, France on his third voyage.
• June 13 – The Parliament of Ireland is opened by King Henry VIII for a session that will last for two years.
• June 16 – Şehzade Mustafa, the son of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, is appointed as the new Ottoman Governor of the Amasya region of Turkey.
• June 26 – At Lima, Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish conqueror of the Inca Empire of Peru and Governor of Nueva Castilla since 1529, is assassinated by 20 heavily-armed supporters of Diego de Almagro II in retaliation for the 1538 execution of Diego de Almagro.

July–September

• July 7 &ndash (Tenbun 10, 14th day of the 6th month) Takeda Shingen becomes head of Japan's powerful Takeda clan of samurais that rules the Kai Province, overthrowing and banishing his father, Takeda Nobutora. Nobutora is exiled to Suruga Province for the next 32 years.
• July 9 – Estêvão da Gama departs Massawa, leaving behind 400 matchlock men and 150 slaves under his brother Cristóvão da Gama, with orders to assist the Emperor of Ethiopia to defeat Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, who had invaded his Empire.
• August 21 – The Janissaries of Suleiman the Magnificent besiege Buda, wounding Wilhelm von Roggendorf, who dies from his wounds on the way to Komárno a few days later.
• September 9–11 – Spanish noblewoman Beatriz de la Cueva serves as governor of the colony of Guatemala, before she is killed in a mudslide from Volcán de Agua, which ruins the capital city, Ciudad Vieja.
• September 13 – After three years of exile, John Calvin returns to Geneva to reform the church under a body of doctrine that comes to be known as Calvinism.
• September 28 – King Charles of Spain begins the disastrous against the Regency of Algiers as he assembles a fleet of 500 ships, with 24,000 soldiers, at the Spanish island pf Majorca and prepares to cross the Mediterranean with the fleets of allied nations led by the Admiral Andrea Doria of the Republic of Genoa.

October–December

• October 7 – Through royal decree, the city of Arequipa is granted its coat of arms.
• October 24 – Algiers Expedition: One day after thousands of Spanish, German and Italian soldiers arrived on the North African coast and proceeded to surround the city of Algiers, heavy storms begin and the Algerian defenders surround King Charles and the other commanders. Fifteen European ships are wrecked onshore, and 33 others sink. Over the next 30 days, the Europeans are forced to retreat.
• November 1 – King Henry VIII of England is first informed of that the Queen consort, Catherine Howard, has been having an affair with Thomas Culpeper.
• November 19 – (1st waxing of Tazaungmon 903 ME) King Tabinshwehti of Burma, having concluded the Buddhist Lent, leads the attack on the Kingdom of Prome with 17,000 troops and 1,400 boats.
• November 23 –
  • Catherine Howard, the Queen consort of England, is arrested after 16 days of questioning by Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, reveals that she had also been conducting an adulterous affair with Francis Dereham while married to King Henry VIII. She is imprisoned at Syon Abbey in Middlesex near London.
  • Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, who also serves as King Carlos I of Spain, is finally able to depart from Algiers and abandons his army.
• December 3 – The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V is finally able to return to Spain, arriving at Cartagena
• December 10 – Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham are both executed at Tyburn after being convicted of treason in committing adultery with Queen Catherine. Culpeper is beheaded, while Dereham is hanged, drawn and quartered. As a warning to the public, the severed heads of both men are placed on spikes on the London Bridge.

Date unknown

• Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent seals off The Golden Gate in Jerusalem, likely because of a prophecy that that the Messiah would return through this gate to Jerusalem.
• Iceland adopts the Lutheran faith.
• Gerardus Mercator makes his first globe.
• The first official translation of the entire Bible into Swedish is made, and is called the Gustav Vasa Bible.
• John Calvin translates his Institutio Christianae religionis into French, as L'Institution chrétienne.
• Elia Levita's chivalric romance, the Bovo-Bukh, is first printed, the earliest published secular work in Yiddish.

1542

January–March

• January 6 – In the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, the Spanish colonists create the new town of Mérida.
• January 16 – The 8th Parliament of Henry VIII assembles at Westminster after having been summoned on November 23.
• January 20 – The first legislature for the Voivode of Transylvania meets at Vásárhely in the Kingdom of Hungary (now Târgu Mureș in Romania).
• January 23 – Tutul-Xiu, the Mayan ruler of the Maní in Yucatán, arrives at the Spanish settlement of Merida with food supplies for the colonists and offers to assist the Spaniards in their conquest of Yucatan in return for being installed as the leading Mayan ruler in Mexico.
• February 2 – Battle of Baçente: The Portuguese under Cristóvão da Gama capture a Muslim-occupied hillfort in northern Ethiopia.
• February 13 – Catherine Howard, until recently the Queen consort of England and the wife of King Henry VIII, is executed by beheading, two days after the King gives royal assent to a bill of attainder passed by the English Parliament on February 7. Catherine had been arrested in November on accusations that she had sexual relations with Thomas Culpeper.
• February 14 – Guadalajara, Mexico, is founded by the Spaniards after three previous attempts failed, due to aggressive opposition from local tribes.
• February 15 – Antoine Escalin des Aimars of France completes the negotiation with the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman for the Franco-Ottoman alliance.
• March 8 – Antoine Escalin des Eymars, the French ambassador, returns from Constantinople, with promises of Ottoman aid in a war against Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.

April–June

• April 1 – As the 1542 session of the English Parliament ends, King Henry VIII gives royal assent to numerous laws, including the Witchcraft Act, the Treason Act, and the Leases by Corporations Act.
• April 4 – The Battle of Jarte begins in Ethiopia as the Army of the Portuguese Empire, commanded by Cristóvão da Gama encounters the army of the Ethiopian ruler, the Imam Ahmad Gragn, achieving a victory on April 16.
• May 19 – The Prome Kingdom, in modern-day central Burma, is conquered by the Taungoo Dynasty.
• June 18 – The Parliament of Ireland passes the Crown of Ireland Act, which dissolves the title of Lord of Ireland and reestablishes it to the Kingdom of Ireland, with its last Lord, Henry VIII of England, becoming its first king.
• June 27 – Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sets sail to explore the northwest of the Pacific Ocean.

July–September

• July 21 – Pope Paul III establishes the Holy Office with the bull Licet ab initio, with jurisdiction over the Roman Inquisition.
• July 23 – (10th day of 6th month of Tenbun 11) In Japan, a six-year rebellion within the Date clan when clan leader Date Tanemune, returning home from a day of falconry, is attacked by his oldest son, Date Harumune, and imprisoned at Kōri-Nishiyama Castle in Fukushima Prefecture. Tanemune is rescued by an aide, Koyanagigawa Munetomo, and escapes. The war lasts for six yars before Harumune triumphs and becomes the new leader of the Date clan.
• July 24 – Guelders Wars: Maarten van Rossum leaves Antwerp, having failed to take it by siege.
• August 24 – Battle of Haddon Rig: Scotland defeats England.
• August 27 – Citizens of Hildesheim in the Holy Roman Empire profess themselves to the Lutheran teachings, thus joining the Schmalkaldic League. As a pledge owner, the city provides for the carrying out of the Protestant Reformation in the city and Peine. Priests from the localities of Clauen, Hohenhameln, Soßmar, Schmedenstedt, Lengede and Rosenthal resume their offices in the interest of the Reformation.
• August 28 – Battle of Wofla in Ethiopia: Reinforced with at least 2900 arquebusiers and cavalry, the Imam Ahmad Gragn attacks the Portuguese camp. The Portuguese are scattered; Cristóvão da Gama is captured and executed.
• September 4 – The earliest recorded Preston Guild Court is held in Lancashire, England, in the modern sequence, which lasts unbroken until 1922.
• September 28 – Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo lands in what is now San Diego Bay, and names it "San Miguel", claiming it for the Spanish Empire. San Miguel will later become the city of San Diego. This marks the first time a European sees what is now the U.S. state of California.

October–December

• October 7 – Cabrillo becomes the first European to set foot on California's Santa Catalina Island.
• November 9 – King James V of Scotland writes a letter to Pope Paul III and notes that he defied Henry VIII's attempts to convert him to the Protestant faith.
• November 24 – Battle of Solway Moss: An English army invades Scotland, and defeats a Scottish army.
• November 27 – Palace plot of Renyin year: A group of Ming dynasty palace women fail to murder the Jiajing Emperor, and are executed by slow-slicing.
• December 14 – Mary, Queen of Scots, aged six days, becomes queen regnant on the death of her father, James V of Scotland.

Date unknown

• The first contact of Japan with the West occurs when a Portuguese ship, blown off its course to China, lands Antonio Pexoto, Francisco Zeimoto and António Mota in Japan, according to António Galvão. According to the Japanese books Tanegashima Kafu and Teppoki, it is stated they landed in 1543.
• Bartolomé de las Casas completes A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, which will be published in 1552.

1543

January–March

• January 4 – Andrea Centurione Pietrasanta begins a two-year term as the new Doge of the Republic of Genoa, replacing Leonardo Cattaneo della Volta.
• January 8 – The burial of King James V of Scotland is carried out at Holyrood Abbey.
• February 11 – King Henry VIII of England allies with Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, against France.
• February 21 – Battle of Wayna Daga: A joint Ethiopian-Portuguese force of 8,500, under Emperor Gelawdewos of Ethiopia, defeats Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi's army of over 14,000, ending the Ethiopian–Adal war.
• March 7 –
  • Abu Abdallah Muhammad VI is installed as the new ruler of the Kingdom of Tlemcen in what is now Algeria, succeeding his brother Abu Zayyan III.
  • Massive flooding of the Mississippi River and the Arkansas River begins in southeastern North America over a 40 day period while Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto and his team are passing through. The event is noted by the chronicler of the DeSoto Expedition, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.

• March 15 – James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran, is elected by the Scottish Parliament as the Regent for the infant Mary Queen of Scots.
• March 18 – As flooding of the Mississippi continues De la Vega notes that "on the eighteenth of March, 1543, while the Spaniards.. were making a procession in honor of Our Redeemer's entrance into Jerusalem, the river entered the gates of the little village of Aminoya in the wildness and fury of its flood, and two days later on ecould not pass through the streets except in canoes."
• March 20 – King Gustav of Sweden leads troops in troops crushing Dacke's Rebellion, led by Swedish peasant Nils Dacke, with defeat coming at the Battle of Hjortensjon.
• March 21 – In Nuremberg, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) is printed during the illness of Nicholas Copernicus, offering mathematical arguments for the existence of the heliocentric universe, denying the geocentric model. According to legend, Copernicus, who had a stroke in December, is presented a copy of the book on his deathbed shortly before passing away on May 24 in Frombork at the age of 70.

April–June

• April 23 – Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, follows up on his 1541 annexation of Hungary by invading a second time to capture areas that had been taken by Archduke Ferdinand, including Esztergom.
• May 5 – Elizabeth of Austria, daughter of Archduke Ferdinand I, marries Sigismund II Augustus, King of Poland. Her coronation as coronation as Queen consort of Poland takes place three days later at Kraków Cathedral as the Archbishop of Gniezno, Piotr Gamrat, places the crown of Hedwig of Kalisz upon her head.
• May 12 –
  • King Henry VIII of England gives royal assent to numerous laws passed by parliament, including the Act for the Advancement of True Religion, restricting the reading of the Bible to clerics, noblemen, and upper class society. The Act will be repealed in 1547 during the reign of King Edward VI.
  • Laws in Wales Act 1542, second phase of the Consolidating Act of Welsh Union, is given royal assent, establishing counties and regularizing parliamentary representation in Wales.
• May 24 – On his deathbed, Nicolaus Copernicus is presented a copy of his groundbreaking book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium.
• June 4 – Fabiano di Monte San Savinov leads 500 infantry men and some cavalry in an attempt to conquer the Republic of San Marino, but the group fails after getting lost in a dense fog on Saint Quirinus' Day.
• June 22 – King Henry VIII of England declares war on King Francis I of France, one month after sending an ultimatum.
• June – Andreas Vesalius publishes De humani corporis fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body), revolutionising the science of human anatomy.

July–September

• July 1 – The Treaty of Greenwich is signed between representatives of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland as part of a plan to eventually unify the two nations under one monarch. As part of the treaty, the two nations agree to avoid war during the reign of King Henry VIII in England or Mary, Queen of Scots in Scotland and for another year after both are gone. The second part of the Treaty provides that Mary, Queen of Scots (six months old at the time) will eventually become the wife of Crown Prince Edward (then 5 years old), son of King Henry VIII. The Scottish Parliament repudiates the treaty five months later.
• July 12 – King Henry VIII of England marries Catherine Parr. It is Henry's sixth and last marriage and Catherine's third. Princess Elizabeth attends the wedding. This month, the Parliament of England passes the Third Succession Act, restoring the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth I of England, Henry's daughters, to the line of succession to the English throne.
• July 25–
  • The first large naval battle in the Atlantic Ocean, the Battle of Muros Bay, takes place off of the coast of Galicia in Spain between the French fleet and the Spanish fleet. Although France has the larger force, the Spanish Admiral Álvaro de Bazán identifies the flagship of French Admiral Jean de Clamorgan and sinks the vessel. Spain then captures the remaining 23 other ships and takes 3,000 prisoners, while France loses 3,000 dead and injured.
  • Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Sultan, begins the siege of the city of Esztergom in Hungary.
• August 6– The Siege of Nice by the Ottoman Empire and French forces (under the Franco-Ottoman alliance), led by Admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa, begins. At the time, the city is under the control of the Duchy of Savoy and is defended by the Savoyards, assisted by the Habsburg armies of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. The siege lasts for 16 days.
• August 10 – Esztergom surrenders to the Ottomans led by Suleiman the Magnificent.
• August 22 – The city of Nice is captured by the Ottomans and Barbarossa after a long bombardment. The Ottomans pillage the city and take away 2,500 captives to be sold into slavery.
• August 25 – (24th day of 7th month of Tenbun 12) The first Europeans arrive in Japan and introduce firearms to the Asian monarchy, as the Chinese pirate Wang Zhi escorts Portuguese traders to in Tanegashima island in southern Kyushu. The first European visitors include António Mota, António Peixoto, Francisco Zeimoto, and Fernão Mendes Pinto.
• September 4 – Campaign of Suleiman: Suleiman the Magnificent captures the Hungarian coronation city of Székesfehérvár after a siege that had started on August 20. The city will be occupied by the Ottoman Empire for 145 years.
• September 9 – Mary Stuart is crowned the Queen of Scots in Stirling at the age of nine months old.
• September–October – Landrecies in Picardy is besieged by forces under Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, but the siege is withdrawn on the approach of the French army.

October–December

• October 6 – In order to aid James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, Regent of Scotland, in his defense against challenger Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, King Francois of France arranges for two envoys, Jacques de La Brosse and Jacques Ménage to deliver money and munitions to Dumbarton Castle. The envoys unwittingly deliver Arran's materials to Lennox.
• November 16 – Suleiman, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, completes his campaign to bring Hungary under Ottoman rule, having captured Esztergom, Székesfehérvár, Siklós and Szeged
• December 7 – (11 waxing of Natdaw 905 ME) The land and naval forces of the Confederation of Shan States (consisting of the principalities of Mohnyin, Mogaung, Bhamo, Momeik, and Kale), led by Prince Sawlon of Mohnyin and King Hkonmaing, depart from the Shan capital, Awa, to start an invasion of the Toungoo Empire in upper Myanmar. The invaders easily overrun Toungoo and its capital at Prome a week later. Royal Historical Commission of Burma (1832). Hmannan Yazawin (in Burmese). Vol. 1 (2003 ed.). Yangon: Ministry of Information, Myanmar.
• December 11 – The Parliament of Scotland votes against ratifying the Treaty of Greenwich that had been signed with England on July 1.
• December 20 – The Eight Years War, also called the "War of Rough Wooing", begins as Scotland's Parliament votes to declare war on the Kingdom of England. "Arran, Earls of", in Encyclopædia Britannica, ed. by Hugh Chisholm (11th ed., Volume 2) (Cambridge University Press, 1911) pp. 642–644.
• December 31 – King Henry VIII of England signs and agreement with Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor to invade France by June 20, 1544 with at least 35,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry.

Date unknown

• Martin Luther publishes On the Jews and Their Lies.
• Mikael Agricola publishes Abckiria.
• The Lighthouse of Genoa is completed in present form.
• Indians in the Spanish Empire are declared free, against the wishes of local settlers.

1544

January–March

• January 4 – In India, Maldeo Rathore, King of Marwar (now part of the state of Rajasthan) is tricked by counterintelligence spread by Mughal Emperor and Afghan Shah Sher Shah Suri into departing from Jodhpur. The Battle of Sammel begins shortly afterward and is won by the Afghan and Mughal armies.
• January 13 – At Västerås, the estates of Sweden swear loyalty to King Gustav Vasa and to his heirs, ending the traditional electoral monarchy in Sweden. Gustav subsequently signs an alliance with the Kingdom of France.
• January 24 – During a solar eclipse visible over the Netherlands, Dutch mathematician and designer Gemma Frisius makes the first recorded use of a camera obscura and uses it to observe the event without directly looking at the Sun. Frisius writes about the event the next year and illustrates it in his book De Radio Astronomica et Geometrica (Regarding rays of light in astronomy and geometry).
• February 20 – The Fourth Diet of Speyer is convened.
• March 7 – Five Roman Catholic priests— John Larke, John Ireland, the vicar of Eltham and Robert Singleton are executed at Tyburn, outside of London, in England after being convicted of participating in the Prebendaries' Plot to remove Thomas Cranmer, the Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury.
• March 16 –
  • The Battle of Glasgow is fought for control of Scotland between Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox and the troops of the Regent, James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran
  • Friedrich II becomes the new Elector Palatine of Germany's Rhineland within the Holy Roman Empire upon the death of his brother Ludwig V at Heidelberg.
• March 29 – Royal assent is given by King Henry VIII to laws passed by the English Parliament, including the Third Succession Act, the amended Treason Act and the King's Style Act.

April–June

• April 11 – Battle of Ceresole: French forces under the Comte d'Enghien defeat forces of the Holy Roman Empire, under the Marques Del Vasto, near Turin.
• April 21 – The Italian town of Agropoli, frequently targeted by pirates from North Africa, is sacked by Ottoman raiders and 100 people are taken prisoner.
• May 3 – Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, with an English army, captures Leith and Edinburgh from the Kingdom of Scotland.
• May 7 – Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford, carries out the burning of Edinburgh, capital of the Kingdom of Scotland, by the English Navy, then proceeds to destroy neighboring areas.
• May 17 – At Lima, Blasco Núñez Vela takes office as the first Spanish Governor of the Viceroyalty of Peru, which encompasses most of what are now the nations of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay, as well as the western part of Brazil.
• May 23 –
  • The Treaty of Speyer is signed between the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Denmark (which includes Norway). Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor agrees to recognize Christian III as the ruler of Denmark and Norway, and abandons further attempts to restore King Christian II to the throne. In return, Denmark and Norway agree to support the Habsburg monarchy in the Empire.
  • The allied French and Ottoman navies depart from the French port of Marseilles and travel to Constantinople, the Ottoman capital. The French fleet is commanded by Antoine Escalin des Aimars, known as Captain Polin, French ambassador to the Ottomans, while the Turks are led by Hayreddin Barbarossa.
• May 25 – On orders of King Henry VIII, the English Navy. commanded by Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, begins crossing the English Channel to invade from the west with 19,000 troops, while Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, commences an invasion of France from the east.
• June 4 – A combined force of troops from the Holy Roman Empire and from Spain, both commanded by Emperor Henry V, defeat the Italian French defenders of San Marino in the Battle of Serravalle after three days of fighting.
• June 8 – The Duke of Norfolk crosses the English Channel after having landed troops in Normandy.
• June 24 – The plundering of the Italian island of Ischia, part of the Kingdom of Naples is carried out by the Ottoman Empire Navy, commanded by Hayreddin Barbarossa, who captures 4,000 of the residents and then sells them as slaves in Algeria.

July–September

• July 10– Troops of the Holy Roman Empire begin the six-week siege of Saint-Dizier in eastern France.
• July 15 – Battle of the Shirts: The Clan Fraser of Lovat and Macdonalds of Clan Ranald fight over a disputed chiefship in Scotland; reportedly, five Frasers and eight or ten Macdonalds survive.
• July 19– Italian War of 1542–46: King Henry VIII of England begins the siege of the city of Boulogne in northern France and continues for almost two months before the city surrenders.
• July 20 – Albert, Duke of Prussia signs a deed granting land for creation of the University of Königsberg.
• August 17 –
  • The University of Königsberg is inaugurated in Prussia.
  • In France, Saint-Dizier surrenders to the Holy Roman Empire after a siege of more than a month.
• September 14 – The siege of Boulogne ends as the city surrenders to King Henry VIII.
• September 18
  • Peace of Crépy: Peace is declared between Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and Francis I of France. The war between France and England continues.
  • The expedition of Juan Bautista Pastene makes landfall in San Pedro Bay, southern Chile, claiming the territory for Spain.
• September 22 – Captain Juan Bautista Pastene leads the first European expedition to the estuary of Valdivia, Chile and Corral Bay.

October–December

• October 9 – Second Siege of Boulogne: French forces under the Dauphin assault Boulogne, but are ultimately unsuccessful.
• November 24 – Rüstem Opuković Pasha, son-in-law of the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, is appointed as the new Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, replacing Hadım Suleiman Pasha.
• December 9 – Crown Prince Yi Ho becomes the new King of Korea upon the death of his father, King Joseon. Yi Ho reigns for eight months before being poisoned by his own mother, and is posthumously named as King Injong of Joseon.

Date unknown

• Mongols, led by Anda, burn the suburbs of Peking in China.
• After being asked by Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, botanist Luca Ghini comes to the University of Pisa as the chair of botany, where he had the year prior established the Orto botanico di Pisa.
• Rats make their first appearance in South America, arriving in Peru with the species black rat.
• Portuguese explorers encounter the island of Taiwan, and call it Ilha Formosa ("Beautiful Island").

1545

January–March

• January 1 – King Francis I of France issues the "Arrêt de Mérindol", to destroy the Protestant Waldensians of Provence.
• January 4 – Giovanni Battista De Fornari begins a 2-year term as the Doge of Genoa, succeeding Andrea Centurione Pietrasanta.
• February 22 – A firman of the Ottoman Empire is issued for the dethronement of Radu Paisie as Prince of Wallachia.
• February 27 – Battle of Ancrum Moor: The Scots are victorious over numerically superior English forces.
• March 17 – Mircea the Shepherd enters Bucharest as the new ruler of Wallachia, now in Romania.
• March 24 – At a diet in Worms, Germany, summoned by Pope Paul III, the German Protestant princes demand a national religious settlement for Germany. Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V refuses.

April–June

• April 1 – Potosí is founded by the Spanish as a mining town after the discovery of huge silver deposits in this area of modern-day Bolivia. Silver mined from Huayna Potosí Mountain provides most of the wealth on which the Spanish Empire is based until its fall in the early 19th century.
• May 20 –
  • Sher Shah Suri, King of the Sur Empire in northern India, is fatally injured by an explosion from one of his own cannons while leading the siege of the Kalinjar Fort and dies two days later.
  • In Vietnam, warlord Nguyễn Kim of the Lê dynasty leads troops toward an attack on Ninh Binh when he is invited by Dương Chấp Nhất of the Mạc dynasty to dinner. General Kim is treated to a watermelon by Duong and dies the next day.
• May 27 – Prince Jalal Khan, the second son of the late Sher Shah Suri, is crowned as the new King of the Suri Empire and takes the regnal name of Islam Shah Suri.
• May 31 – During the Italian War, a French expeditionary force under the direction of Claude d'Annebault begins an invasion of Britain by landing in Scotland.
• June 13 – Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez sets out to navigate the northern coast of New Guinea.
• June 20 – Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez arrives at a large island in the South Pacific Ocean. Stopping at the Mamberamo River, Ortiz claims the island for Spain and christens it "Nueva Guinea" after concluding that the natives resemble the people on the coast of the Guinea coast of West Africa.

July–September

• July 18– The Battle of the Solent begins between the English and French navies in The Solent, the strait between the British mainland and the Isle of Wight.
• July 19 – The Royal Navy's flagship, the Mary Rose, is sunk along with 365 of its 400 crew before the Battle of the Solent ends inconclusively. The wreckage will be located in 1971, more than 400 years after the sinking, and raised on October 11, 1582.
• July 21 – Italian Wars: Battle of Bonchurch – The English reverse an attempted French invasion of the Isle of Wight, off the coast of England.
• August 5 – Scottish nobleman Domhnall Dubh, also called "Black Donald", secures an alliance with King Henry VIII of England and plans an invasion of Scotland (Dubh's Rebellion) seeking to install the Earl of Lennox as the regent for Mary, Queen of Scots, rather than the incumbent Regent Arran. The rebellion attracts little support from other nobles and Dubh dies of a fever while in Ireland, before an invasion can take place.
• August 8 – King Injong of Joseon, ruler of the Korean Empire, dies at the age of 30, after only eight months as monarch. His allies suspect that he had slowly been poisoned by his stepmother, Queen Janggyeong, who had been Queen consort as the wife of King Jungjong. Queen Janggyeong's 12-year-old son Myeongjong is enthroned as the new King, with Janggyeong as the regent.

• August 16 – The elaborate Tomb of Sher Shah Suri is completed in Sasaram, three months after Sher Shah's death, in what is now India's Bihar state.
• September 16 –
  • The Duchy of Parma and Piacenza is created in Italy by order of Pope Paul III, formerly Alessandro Farnese, to be ruled by his son, Pier Luigi Farnese.
  • In a one-day campaign in the Rough Wooing border war between England and Scotland, the English generals Lord Hertford and Robert Bowes carry out a mission of burning Scottish towns along the River Teviot. He writes later that with 1,500 light horsemen from 5:00 in the morning to 3:00 in the afternoon, his army "burnt 14 or 15 towns" including "Rowle, Spittel, Bedrowle, Rowlewood, The Wolles, Crossebewghe, Donnerles, Fotton, West Leas, Troonyhill, and Dupligi.
• c. September – Mobye Narapati succeeds as ruler of the Ava Kingdom and offers peace to the Taungoo Dynasty, ending the Taungoo–Ava War (1538–45), and leaving the Taungoo as the dominant rulers in Burma.

October–December

• October 20 – The "New Laws"(Leyes Nuevas), officially the New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians are repealed less than a year after being issued by King Carlos of Spain.
• October 31 – (26th day of 9th month of Tenbun 14) The Siege of Kawagoe Castle begins, as part of an unsuccessful attempt by the Uesugi clan to regain Kawagoe Castle from the Late Hōjō clan in Japan.
• November 9 – Pietro Lando, the Doge of the Republic of Venice since 1538, dies and Francesco Donato is elected in his place.
• November 10 – A truce is signed between the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire following the Siege of Nice, as Emperor Charles V acknowedges the Ottoman conquests.
• November 15 – (10 Ramadan 952 AH) Hamida Banu Begum, Empress consort of India's Mughal Empire and wife of the Emperor Humayun, returns to the capital, Agra, after a three-year absence. She is accompanied by an army provided to Humayun by Tahmasp I, Shah of Iran.
• November 23 – King Henry VIII opens the Parliament of England for the ninth time, in a session that lasts until December 24.
• December 13 – The Council of Trent officially opens in northern Italy (it closes in 1563).
• December 24 – King Henry VIII gives royal assent to multiple acts passed by the English Parliament on its final day, including the Dissolution of Colleges Act and the Custos Rotulorum Act.

Undated

• Battle of Sokhoista: The army of the Ottoman Empire defeats an alliance of Georgian dynasties.
• Diogo I Nkumbi a Mpudi overthrows his uncle Pedro I of Kongo to become manikongo.
• In China, a large failure of the harvest in Henan province occurs due to excessive rainfall, which drives up the price of wheat, and forces many to flee their rural counties; those who stay behind are forced to survive by eating leaves, bark, and human flesh.
• In the territory of New Spain in modern-day Mexico, the Cocoliztli Epidemic of 1545–1548 begins.
• St. Anne's Church, Augsburg converts to Lutheranism.

1546

January-March

• January 11 – (Tenbun 15, 20th day of the 12th month): Ashikaga Yoshifushi becomes 13th Shōgun of the Ashikaga shogunate.
• January 13 – Jeremias I of Constantinople, Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church dies
• January 18 – Blasco Núñez Vela first Spanish Viceroy of Peru fights with Gonzalo Pizarro at the Battle of Iñaquito and is killed.
• February 12 – The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico, one of the largest in the world, with over four million Catholics, is created
• February 15 – Martin Luther delivers his final sermon, three days before his death about "obdurate Jews, whom it was a matter of great urgency to expel from all German territory,"
• March 1 – Scottish Protestant reformer George Wishart, arrested on January 19, is burned at the stake at St Andrews on orders of Cardinal David Beaton of the Roman Catholic church, after being found guilty of heresy. Cardinal Beaton is assassinated less than three months later.
• March 8 – King John III of Portugal issues an order for Portuguese India (at Goa) to forbid Hinduism, destroy Hindu temples, prohibit the public celebration of Hindu feasts, expel Hindu priests and severely punish those who created any Hindu images in Portuguese possessions in India.

April-June

• April 8 – The Council of Trent, by a vote of 24 to 15, with 16 abstentions, issues the Decretum de Canonicis Scripturis for the scripture considered to be canon by the Roman Catholic Church. The decree recites that if anyone declines to receive all parts of the Vulgate edition of the Bible, they are in contempt of the Church and should be excommunicated. and approves the 4th century Vulgate of Jerome as its official Bible
• April 13 – Alice Glaston, age 11, becomes the youngest girl ever to be legally executed in England (though John Dean, age 8, is executed on February 23, 1629)
• April 17 – Dionysius II, the Eastern Orthodox Metropolitan of Nicomedia, is elected as the Patriarch of Constantinople to succeed Jeremias.
• April 18 – Hermann of Wied, the German Archbishop of Cologne, is excommunicated by Pope Paul III after his conversion to Protestantism.
• April 20 – The Siege of Diu begins as the Gujarat Sultanate, led by Mahmud Shah III attacks the Portuguese colonial fortress at Diu. Reinforcements arrive on July 19 and Governor Castro arrives with 3,000 soldiers on November 7. The keeper of the King's Ports and Galley siege lasts until November 10 and ends with a Portuguese victory
• April 24 – The first government body to administer England's Royal Navy, the Keeper of the King's Ports and Galleys, is created by order of King Henry VIII.
• May 1 – Sir John Alan is dismissed from his post as Lord Chancellor of Ireland by England's Privy Council after accusations of corruption and promoting discord are made by the Lord Deputy, Anthony St Leger. Alan is later reinstated in 1548.
• May 16 – Writing from Portuguese India, Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier asks King João III of Portugal, proposing what will become the Goa Inquisition of 1561.
• May 19 – The Siege of Kawagoe Castle ends in defeat for the Uesugi clan, in their attempt to regain Kawagoe Castle from the Late Hōjō clan in Japan.
• May 28 – Edward Whitchurch and Richard Grafton are granted the exclusive right to publish prayer books for the Church of England by order of King Henry VIII.
• May 29 – David Beaton, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of St Andrews and the only Scottish cardinal, is assassinated at St Andrews Castle by William Kirkcaldy and Norman Leslie in retaliation for the March 28 execution of Protestant preacher George Wishart.
• June 7 – The Treaty of Ardres (also known as the Treaty of Camp) is signed, resulting in peace between the kingdoms of England and France and ending the Italian War of 1542–1546.
• June 17 – The Council of Trent approves its second decree on Roman Catholic doctrine, Decretum de Pecatto Originali, regarding original sin, declaring that excommunication should be applied to any person who denies the teaching that the sins of Adam in the Garden of Eden condemned all of humanity, or that Christian baptism remits the guilt of original sin.

July–September

• July 4 – After the death of Martin Luther, the leaders of the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League German states (Saxony, Hesse, the Palatinate, Württemberg, Pomerania and Anhalt-Köthen) gather at Ichtershausen as the guests of Saxon Elector John Frederick I in order to make plans to defend against the Roman Catholic forces of the Holy Roman Empire.
• July 8 – the Earl of Arran, Regent of Scotland for Mary, Queen of Scots recaptures Dumbarton Castle from England after a 20-day siege.
• July 10 – The Schmalkaldic War begins with an attack by the Protestant German states against the town of Füssen, a village of the Prince-Bishopric of Augsburg in Bavaria.
• July 20 – Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, imposes a Reichsacht declaring Schmalkadic leaders John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony and Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse to be outlwas, and directs Maurice, Duke of Saxony to enforce it.
• August 14 – The Scottish Parliament ratifies the Treaty of Ardres.
• August 20 – Claude d'Annebault, Admiral of France, arrives in England to negotiate English approval of the Treaty of Ardres to end the Italian War of 1542–1546.
• August 24 – Mircea the Shepherd, ruler of the Principality of Wallachia (now Romania) stages a surprise attack in the Battle of Periș and decimates the members of the Wallachian nobility (boyars) who oppose his rule.
• August 28 – In the Imperial counterattack in the Schmalkaldic War, the Holy Roman Empire army attacks Frankfurt, the German stronghold of the Schmalkaldic League, but is forced to retreat after a two-day siege.
• September 3 – Ilie II Rareș becomes the new Prince of Moldavia upon the death of his father Petru IV Rareș, in the Moldavian capital, Suceava.
• September 8 – The first Protestant Huguenot church in France, established by Pierre LeClerc and Etienne Mangin at Meaux 25 miles (40 km) from Paris, is seized by the French Army and its 60 members are arrested.Ten women are released and 50 others put on trial for heresy. LeClerc, Mangin and 12 others are burned at the stake on October 8.
• September 23 –Pier Luigi Farnese, already the Duke of Parma and Piacenza, is given control of the Italian cities of Camerino and Nepi by after a donation to the Papal States, ruled by Pope Paul III.
• September 27 – San Salvador, now the capital of the Central American nation of El Salvador, is re-established in a new location at the Valle de Las Hamacas. Until 1545, the colonial capital had been at the Ciudad Vieja, 10 miles (16 km) further northewest, near Suchitoto.

October—December

• October 8 – The Fourteen of Meaux, French Huguenots found guilty of heresy for practicing the Protestant faith and rejecting Catholicim, are burned at the stake in front of the ruins of the first Reformed Church of France.
• October 17 – Irish noble James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond, the chief opponent of the policies of Sir Anthony St Leger, England's Lord Deputy of Ireland up until April 1, is fatally poisoned after being invited to the Ely Palace near London. Ormond dies 11 days later, and no investigation is carried out by the Crown as to whether St Leger is involved. St Leger becomes the Lord Deputy again less than three weeks after Ormond's death.
• October 28 – (4th waxing of Tazaungmon 908 ME) A second campaign begins in the Toungoo–Mrauk-U War in what is now the Asian nation of Myanmar, as King Tabinshwehti of Burma starts an invasion of the Kingdom of Mrauk U (led by Min Bin) in the Arakan Mountains. King Tabinshwehti dispatches 19,000 troops, 400 horses, and 60 elephants, with 4,000 invading by land and the other 15,000 being transported on a fleet of 800 war boats, 500 armored war boats, and 100 cargo boats through the Bay of Bengal to the coast of Mrauk U.
• November 4 – Christ Church, Oxford, is refounded as a college by Henry VIII of England under this name.
• November 8 – (5 Cimi 19 Xul, Mayan calendar) An uprising by the Maya civilization against the Spanish colonial administrators of New Spain begins in the Yucatan area of Mexico, with simultaneous attacks Mérida, Valladolid, and Bacalar. The attack comes from seven Mayan provinces on the Gulf of Mexico, Cupul, Cochuah, Sotuta, Tases, Uaymil, Chetumal, and Chikinchel. The rebellion is suppressed by March and the instigators are arrested and executed.
• November 10 – The European colonists defending the city of Diu in Portuguese India defeat the six-month siege that had been started by the Gujarat Sultanate on April 20. The Portuguese victory comes three days after the arrival of 3,000 troops and 38 ships.
• November 14 – The Treaty of Prague is signed between King Ferdinand of Bohemia and Maurice, Elector of Saxony with Ferdinand agreeing not to give shelter in Bohemia to John Ferdinand I, the former Elector of Saxony, who is under an Imperial ban.
• December 12 – Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and the Lord High Treasurer of England since 1522 is arrested along with his eldest son, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and both are imprisoned in the Tower of London. The Earl of Surrey is executed for treason on January 19; the Duke of Norfolk is sentenced to death, but before the sentence can be carried out, King Henry VIII passes away and Norfolk remains in the Tower until being pardoned in 1553.
• December 18 – A truce is agreed to between the Kingdom of Scotland (led by the Regent Arran) and the "Catilians", a group of Scottish Protestants who have been holding St Andrews Castle since their May 29 assassination of Cardinal David Beaton. With England's King Henry VIII threatening an invasion to protect the Protestant Castilians, the parties agree that no action will be taken until the Pope can consider whether to absolve the Protestants of murder, and that if the Pope grants the absolution, the Protestants will be allowed to surrender on good terms.
• December 19 – Trinity College, Cambridge, is founded by Henry VIII of England.
• December 30 – Less than a month before his death, King Henry VIII of England revises his last will and testament and designates his preference for the line of succession to the throne. The first four people on the list serve as monarchs at different times, starting with Edward VI (1547-1553), Mary I (1553-1558) and Elizabeth I (1558-1603). The fourth in the line of succession, Lady Jane Grey, reigns for nine days after the death of Edward before Mary assumes the throne.

Date unknown

• Katharina von Bora flees to Magdeburg.
• Michelangelo is made chief architect of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
• The Spanish conquest of Yucatán is interrupted by an uprising of the Eastern Provinces of the completed in November, but the conquest is completed by March of 1548.

1547

January–March

• January 8 – The first Lithuanian-language book, a Catechism (Katekizmo paprasti žodžiai, Simple Words of Catechism), is published in Königsberg by Martynas Mažvydas.
• January 13 – Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey is sentenced to death for treason in England.
• January 16 – Grand Prince Ivan IV is crowned as Tsar of all Russia at the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow, thereby proclaiming the Tsardom of Russia.
• January 28 – King Henry VIII of England dies in London, and is succeeded by his 9-year-old son Edward VI, as King of England.
• February 20 – Edward VI of England is crowned at Westminster Abbey.
• March 31 – King Francis I of France dies at the Château de Rambouillet and is succeeded by his eldest surviving son Henry II (on his 28th birthday) as King of France.

April–June

• April 4 – Catherine Parr, widow of King Henry VIII of England, secretly marries Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley.
• April 24 – Battle of Mühlberg: Emperor Charles V defeats the Lutheran forces of the Schmalkaldic League and takes John Frederick I.
• May 19 – John Frederick I signs the Capitulation of Wittenberg in order to have his life spared by the Holy Roman Empire.
• May 23 – The Protestant Schmalkaldic League defeats the Catholic Army of the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Drakenburg. Of 6,000 Imperial troops, 2,500 are killed and another 2,500 are taken prisoner by the Protestants.
• June 4 – Maurice, Duke of Saxony is formally raised to the status of the Elector.
• June 13 – A peace treaty is signed between by representatives of the Holy Roman Empire and of the Ottoman Empire and France after the Empire's defeat at the 1543 Siege of Nice.
• June 21 – The apparition of Mary, mother of Jesus is seen by several women in the Sicilian city of Alcamo. She becomes the patron saint of the city and is celebrated as the Madonna of Miracles (la Madonna dei Miracoli)
• June 23 – Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse and John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony, leaders of the Schmalkaldic League who were both captured at the battle of Muhlberg, are transported to south Germany and imprisoned for their revolt against the Empire.
• June 26 – King Henri of France orders the division of France's easternmost provinces and divides them into three zones of control, each administered by a Marshal of the Army. Harding, Robert (1978). Anatomy of a Power Elite: the Provincial Governors in Early Modern France. Yale University Press. p. 29.
• June 29 – A fleet of 21 French galleys, commanded by Leone Strozzi, arrives at Fife in Scotland and begins the siege of St Andrews Castle. The siege lasts for a month before John Knox and Protestant nobles surrender on July 31.

July–September

• July 10 – In France, a duel takes place at between Guy I de Chabot, the future Baron of Jarnac, and François de Vivonne, Lord of La Châtaigneraie, in front of the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Vivonne, known for his fencing ability, is wounded and dies the next day.
• July 17 – After the Earl of Arran, Regent of Scotland for Mary, Queen of Scots, is unable to get England to voluntarily return control of Langholm to Scotland, he "reduces it by force.".
• July 25 – The coronation of Henri II as King of France at the Reims Cathedral.
• August 13 – The Duchy of Brittany unites with the Kingdom of France.
• September 10
  • Battle of Pinkie Cleugh: An English army under the Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector of England, defeats a Scottish army under James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran, the Regent. The English seize Edinburgh.
  • Conspirators led by Ferrante Gonzaga murder Pier Luigi Farnese, Duke of Parma and son of the Pope, and hang his body from a window of his palace in Piacenza.

October–December

• October 13 – (New Moon of Thadinovut 909 ME) With the end of the Buddhist Lent, the Kingdom of Burma (now Myanmar) mobilizes to invade the Kingdom of Arakan (now Thailand).
• The English Parliament, the first convened since the death of King Henry VIII, is opened by King Edward VI.
• November 5 – Catherine Parr, the former Queen consort of England and widow of King Henry VIII, publishes her book The Lamentation of a Sinner.
• November 15 – A fleet of 60 Ottoman Navy ships, commanded by Piri Reis, arrives at the port of Aden (now in Yemen) and captures the city in slightly more than three months, by February 26, 1548.
• December 6 – The Battle of Perlis River is fought between the Portuguese Navy and the navy of the Aceh Sultanate (now a province of Indonesia) at the Perlis River in Malaysia. With nine light warships and 230 soldiers, the Portuguese sink or capture 45 of the 60 ships of Aceh vessel leave 4,000 of their 5,380 soldiers dead or missing.
• December 24 – King Edward VI of England gives royal assent to numerous laws enacted by Parliament, including the Treason Act and the Vagabonds Act.
• December 28 – Sir John Luttrell of England, recently victorious over Scotland in the Battle of Pinkie, raids the Scottish port of Burntisland on the Firth of Forth, after his uncle Thomas Wyndham brings two Royal Navy warships. Luttrell and Wyndhamburn ships and buildings on the pier and capture Rossend Castle

Date unknown

• Huguenots increasingly immigrate to the English county of Kent, especially Canterbury, from France.
• The Chambre Ardente is established in Paris for trying heretics.
• Work on construction of the Château de Chambord, in the Loire Valley, for Francis I of France, ceases.
• John Dee visits the Low Countries, to study navigation with Gemma Frisius.
• Edward VI of England outlaws execution by boiling.

1548

January–March

• January 5 – Abu al-Abbas Ahmad III, ruler of the Hafsid Sultanate in what is now Tunisia in northern Africa, renews the 1547 treaty of friendship with Spain that had been signed by representatives of his father.
• January 19 – Three ships from the Portuguese Navy arrive at the port of Aden to assist Mohammed bin Ali al-Tawlaki, who has been defending the city against an attack by the Ottoman Navy. The Portuguese ships are forced to retreat to Zeila in Somalia, where 120 survivors are captured and their ships are burned.
• January 27 – King Henri II of France makes the Châtillon agreement, a contract for betrothal for an arranged marriage between his four year old son, Prince Francois, to the five year old Mary, Queen of Scots, to take place in 1558.
• January 28 – (Tenbun 17, 30th day of 12th month) Nagao Kagetora (later Uesugi Kenshin) leads a triumphant entry into Kasugayama Castle in Japan, replacing his older brother Nagao Harukage as the lead samurai in the Nagao clan that rules the Echigo Province.
• February 2 – On Candlemas day in Scotland, during the Rough Wooing War with England, the Byllye Castle near Auchencrow is captured by a force of 11 English soldiers led by Thomas Carlile, and becomes a garrison for English troops.
• February 14 – (Tenbun 18, 4th day of 1st month) At the Battle of Uedahara, firearms are used for the first time on the battlefield in Japan, and Takeda Shingen is defeated by Murakami Yoshikiyo.
• February 26 – The Ottoman Navy, led by Admiral Ahmed Muhiddin Piri (commonly known as Piri Reis), recaptures Aden.
• March 9 – Le Trung Tong becomes the new Emperor of Dai Viet (corresponding to northern Vietnam) upon the death of his father, Lê Trang Tông.

April–June

• April 1 – Sigismund II Augustus succeeds his father, Sigismund I the Old, as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.
• April 15 – General Zhu Wan of Ming dynasty China dispatches a fleet of ships, commanded by Lu Tang, to destroy smugglers and pirates at Shangyu, a port on Liuheng Island. The fleet sets off from Wenzhou and makes its attack in June.
• May 15 –
  • The Diet of Augsburg approves a decree of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, the "Declaration of His Roman Imperial Majesty on the Observance of Religion Within the Holy Empire Until the Decision of the General Council", informally referred to as the Augsburg Interim, directing German Protestants to resume the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, including observance of the Seven Sacraments. As a concession, the Emperor allows the continuation of some Protestant customs, including the right of Protestant clergy to marry and for believers to receive the Protestant communion of bread and wine.
  • Ratan Singh of Amber, Raja of the Amber Kingdom in what is now the Indian state of Rajasthan, is poisoned by his younger brother Askaran, Raja of Narwar.
• June 1 –
  • The Japanese city of Uchiyama in Shinano Province (now in the Nagano Prefecture) is burned by the clan of Murakami Yoshikiyo after the February defeat of the Takeda clan at the Battle of Uedahara.
  • Bharmal becomes the new raja of the Kingdom of Amber, in territory now occupied by India's Rajasthan state, upon the overthrow of his nephew, Askaran, Raja of Narwar, who had reigned for only 16 days.
• June 10 – (5th day of the waxing moon in the 8th month of the 910th year of the Chula Sakarat Era): Yotfa, the 13-year-old ruler of the Ayutthaya Kingdom of Thailand since 1546, is murdered with the consent of his mother, the regent Si Sudachan, who installs her lover, Worawongsathirat, on the throne. Yotfa's younger brother, Prince Sissin, is spared from execution. Worawongsathirat and Si Sudachan are both killed in a counter-coup in November.
• June 11 – Suleiman the Magnificent, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire begins an invasion of Safavid Iran that will last for almost two years before he abandons it.
• June 16 – The first of 8,000 French troops under the command of General André de Montalembert arrive at the port of Leith at the invitation of the King of Scotland, who seeks to drive out the occupying forces of the Army of England.
• June 30 – The Augsburg Interim, approved May 15, is codified into law in the Holy Roman Empire.
• June
  • Ming Chinese naval forces commanded by Zhu Wan destroy the pirate haven of Shuangyu,frequented by Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese smugglers.
  • John Dee starts to study at the Old University of Leuven.

July–September

• July 7 – A marriage treaty is signed between Scotland and France, whereby five-year-old Mary, Queen of Scots, is betrothed to the future King Francis II of France.
• August 7 – Mary, Queen of Scots, leaves for France.
• September 13 – Archduke Maximilian of Austria, is married to his first cousin, Maria of Spain, at the arrangement of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, Maria's father and Maximilian's uncle. Charles, who also serves as King of Spain, makes the arrangement in order to have the couple serve as his regents while he travels to Germany.

October–December

• October 1 – Archduke Maximilian and Princess Maria, who married 18 days earlier, become the co-regents of Spain as King Charles V departs for Germany to administer the affairs of the Holy Roman Empire. They serve until Prince Philip, the first regent, returns from battle on July 12, 1551.
• October 20 – The city of La Paz, Bolivia, is founded.
• October 31 – At the first sejm of King Sigismund II Augustus of Poland, deputies demand that the king renounce his wife Barbara Radziwiłł.
• November 11 – Worawongsathirat, ruler of the Ayutthaya Kingdom of Thailand after usurping the throne on June 10, stages his coronation along with his wife, Si Sudachan. Both husband and wife had after both conspired to murder her son, King Yofta, in June. The King and Queen are assassinated on January 13, 1549.
• December 17 – King João III of Portugal, creates a colonial government of Brazil, with a capital at Bahia, in order to maintain unity among various Portuguese captaincies (São Vicente, Nova Lusitania, Ilhéus and Porto Seguro) scattered along the coast. The document contains 48 articles governing the installation of the government, the organization of trade, measures for defense, treatment of the indigenous tribes, and policies toward foreigners. The King provides for a Governor-General, and appoints Tomé de Sousa as the first officeholder.
• December – Siam attacks Tavoy, beginning the Burmese–Siamese War of 1548.

1549

January–March

• January 4 – Gaspare Grimaldi Bracelli begins a two-year term as the Doge of the Republic of Genoa in Italy, succeeding Benedetto Gentile Pevere.
• January 11 – An uprising of the Diaguitas natives outside of the South American Spanish colonial city of La Serena (now in Coquimbo province of Chile) begins. Within a day, the South American village is burned down and nearly every Spanish resident is killed.
• January 19 – Maha Chakkraphat is crowned as the King of Siam after having been installed on the throne in 1548 by Maha Thammaracha of Burma.
• January 21 – The Act of Uniformity 1548 is passed by the Parliament of England and establishes the 1549 version of the Book of Common Prayer as the sole legal prayer book in England, replacing the use of different versions of the Latin-language Missal.
• January – Burmese–Siamese War (1547–49): King Tabinshwehti of Burma begins his invasion of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, which ends in retreat.
• February 3 – Burmese–Siamese War: Burmese viceroy Thado Dhamma Yaza I of Prome slays Sri Suriyothai, queen consort of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, on her war elephant, when she intervenes in battle to protect the life of her husband.
• March 29 – The city of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil's first capital, is founded by Tome de Sousa.

April–June

• April 8 – Giovanni Angelo Medici is appointed as a Roman Catholic cardinal by Pope Paul III, effective May 10. In 1559, Medici is elected as Pope Pius IV.
• April 14 – Prince Zhu Zairui, age 12, heir to the throne of Ming dynasty China as the oldest living son of the Jiajing Emperor, dies a few days after becoming ill during the Guan Li coming of age ceremony.
• April 15 – Portuguese Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier departs from Goa on a mission to bring Christian ministry to Japan.
• April 23 – In County Wicklow in Ireland, Phelim O'Toole is granted a pardon by the King for unspecified offenses.
• May 15 – King Henri II of France makes a triumphant return to Paris after suppressing the Revolt of the Pitauds in Bordeaux.

July–September

• June 9 – The Book of Common Prayer is introduced in English churches; the Prayer Book Rebellion against it breaks out in the West Country.
• June 19 – In the war of the Rough Wooing between Scotland and England, a Scottish and French force commanded by André de Montalembert retakes the island of Inchkeith, killing more than 300 soldiers from the English Army.
• July 8 – Kett's Rebellion, with 18,000 troops led by Robert Kett, breaks out at Wymondham in East Anglia, against fences and enclosures put up by wealthy landowners. and in Oxfordshire, against landowners associated with religious changes.
• July 18 – (Tenbun 18, 24th day of the 7th month) In the Battle of Eguchi, fought in Japan's Settsu Province near Osaka, General Miyoshi Nagayoshi defies the Governor, Hosokawa Harumoto to attack the Eguchi Castle of Nagayoshi's cousin, Miyoshi Masanaga. After a 12-day battle, Miyoshi Masanaga is killed along with several of Hosokawa's other generals. Governor Hosokawa, fearing a reprisal, flees and eventually loses his authority over Settsu Province.
• July 21 – Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, delivers his most important sermon, speaking at St Paul's Cathedral to defend the Church of England's reasons for uniformly requiring the use of The Book of Common Prayer.
• July 27 – (Tenbun 18, 3rd day of the 7th month) European Jesuit Francis Xavier arrives in Japan at the port of Kagoshima, the first Christian missionary there, but is not allowed to go to shore until three weeks later.
• July 29 – Norwich, in Norfolk falls to Kett's rebels.
• August 1– Kett's rebels defeat a Royal Army led by William Parr, Marquess of Northampton
• August 8– England and France declare war.
• August 15 – Francis Xavier, his translator Anjirō, and three other Jesuit priests are allowed to come ashore at Kagoshima in Japan.
• August 17 – Battle of Sampford Courtenay in England: The Prayer Book Rebellion is quashed.
• August 27 – At the Battle of Dussindale in England, Kett's Rebellion is ended by troops led by John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland.
• September 17 – The Council of Trent is prorogued indefinitely.
• September 19 – The English Army abandons Haddington, East Lothian as it continues its retreat from Scottish and French forces.
• September 29 – Shimazu Takahisa, the ruling daimyo of Japan's Satsuma Province, welcomes the Jesuit party of Francis Xavier.

October–December

• October 5 – Sir Thomas Smith is replaced by Ambassador Nicholas Wotton as the second Secretary of State of England, primarily in charge of England's foreign affairs. Wotton serves for less than a year before being dispatched by King Edward VI back to France.
• October 11 – Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, the Lord Protector of England and Lord High Treasurer since 1547, is arrested on orders of the Regency Council on charges of "ambition, vainglory, entering into rash wars" as well as malfeasance and improper use of the royal treasury.
• October 22 – Catherine of Habsburg, daughter of Ferdinand, Duke of Habsburg, marries Francesco III Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. Francesco, only 16 years old, dies of pneumonia after only four months of marriage.
• November 4 – The Pragmatic Sanction is proclaimed by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. The Seventeen Provinces of the Habsburg Low Countries are declared inseparable.
• November 10 – Pope Paul III dies at the age of 81 after a reign of 15 years.
• December 3 – The papal conclave to decide on a successor to Pope Paul III, goes into session in the Apostolic Palace in Rome with 51 cardinal electors.Participants at the papal conclave agree to elect the next Pope by secret ballot.
• December 7 – Robert Kett is hanged from the walls of Norwich Castle after being found guilty of treason for leading Kett's Rebellion. His brother William is hanged from the walls of Wymondham Abbey on the same day.
• December 21 – Ottoman Empire Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent abandons his campaign against Safavid Iran after 21 months, during which he was unable to proceed further than Tabriz.

Date unknown

• Peter Canisius starts the Counter-Reformation in Bavaria.
• The spire of Lincoln Cathedral in England is blown down, leaving St. Olaf's Church, Tallinn, in Estonia as the World's tallest structure.
• Although trade existed between the two beforehand, in this year the Portuguese begin to send regular seasonal maritime trade missions to Ming dynasty China, at Sao João Island (also known as Shangchuan Island) near Macau.
• Siege of Kajiki: firearms are used for the first time in a siege in Japanese history. (The previous year's Battle of Uedahara was the first battle in which they were used.)
• Excerpta antiqua is published by Hervagius at Basel, Switzerland.
• Maidstone Grammar School is founded in England by Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset.

Births

1540

• January 18 – Catarina of Portugal, Duchess of Braganza, claimant to the Portuguese throne in 1580 (d. 1614)
• January 25 – Edmund Campion, English Jesuit and Roman Catholic martyr (d. 1581)
• January 28 – Ludolph van Ceulen, German mathematician (d. 1610)
• February 12 – Won Gyun, Korean general and admiral during the Joseon Dynasty (d. 1597)
• February 23 – Hedwig of Brandenburg, Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (d. 1602)
• February 25 – Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton, English aristocrat and courtier (d. 1614)
• March 1 – Enrique de Guzmán, 2nd Count of Olivares, Spanish noble (d. 1607)
• March 17 – Bernhard VII, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, German prince of the House of Ascania (d. 1570)
• April 3 – Maria de' Medici, Italian noble (d. 1557)
• April 8 – Toyotomi Hidenaga, Japanese warlord (d. 1591)
• May 9 – Maharana Pratap, Indian warrior king (d. 1597)
• May 14
  • Paolo Paruta, Italian historian (d. 1598)
  • Bartholomäus Scultetus, German mayor of Görlitz, astronomer (d. 1614)
• May 22 – James, Duke of Rothesay, Scottish prince (d. 1541)
• May 31 – Henry Cheyne, 1st Baron Cheyne, English politician and baron (d. 1587)
• June 3 – Charles II, Archduke of Austria, regent of Inner Austria (d. 1590)
• June 9 – Shima Sakon, Japanese samurai (d. 1600)
• June 11 – Barnabe Googe, English poet (d. 1594)
• June 29 – Ana de Mendoza, Princess of Eboli, Spanish countess (d. 1592)
• June 30 – Countess Palatine Elisabeth of Simmern-Sponheim, Duchess of Saxony (d. 1594)
• July 7 – John Sigismund Zápolya, King of Hungary (d. 1571)
• July 11 – Adolf of Nassau, Count of Nassau, Dutch soldier (d. 1568)
• July 16 – Alfonso Carafa, Italian cardinal (d. 1565)
• July 19 – Ludowika Margaretha of Zweibrücken-Bitsch, spouse of Count Philip V of Hanau-Lichtenberg (d. 1569)
• August 4 – Sisto Fabri, Italian theologian (d. 1594)
• August 5 – Joseph Justus Scaliger, French Protestant scholar (d. 1609)
• August 25 – Lady Catherine Grey, English noblewoman, potential successor to the throne (d. 1568)
• September 5 – Magnus, Duke of Holstein, Prince of Denmark (d. 1583)
• September 9 – John VII, Count of Oldenburg (d. 1603)
• October 1 – Johann Jakob Grynaeus, Swiss Protestant clergyman (d. 1617)
• November 12 – Anna of Veldenz, Margrave of Baden (d. 1586)
• November 16 – Princess Cecilia of Sweden (d. 1627)
• December 8 – Giovanni Vincenzo Gonzaga, Italian Catholic cardinal (d. 1591)
• December 21 – Thomas Schweicker, German artist (d. 1602)
• December 28 – Charles I, Duke of Mecklenburg (d. 1610)
• December 31 – Silvio Antoniano, Italian Catholic cardinal (d. 1603)
• date unknown
  • Andrea Andreani, Italian wood engraver (d. 1623)
  • Inés de Hinojosa, Venezuelan hacendada (d. 1571)
  • Francis Drake, English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, pirate and politician (d. 1596)
  • Christopher Hatton, English politician (d. 1591)
  • George Hastings, 4th Earl of Huntingdon, English nobleman (d. 1604)
  • Pierre Jeannin, French statesman (d. 1622)
  • François Viète, French mathematician (d. 1603)
  • Amago Yoshihisa, Japanese samurai and warlord (d. 1610)
• probable
  • William Byrd, English composer (d. 1623)
  • Bernardino de Mendoza, Spanish military commander (d. 1604)
  • Paschal Baylon, Spanish friar (d. 1592)

1541

• January 24 – Magdalena Moons, Dutch woman associated with the 1574 Siege of Leiden (d. 1613)
• January 26 – Florent Chrestien, French writer (d. 1596)
• February 21 – Philipp V, Count of Hanau-Lichtenberg (d. 1599)
• March 25 – Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (d. 1587)
• April 8 – Michele Mercati, Italian physician and gardener (d. 1593)
• April 12 – Ipatii Potii, Metropolitan of Kiev (d. 1613)
• September 7
  • Luigi Groto, Italian lutenist and poet (d. 1588)
  • Hernando de Cabezón, Spanish musician (d. 1602)
• September 5 – Roberto de' Nobili, Italian Catholic cardinal (d. 1559
• September 21 – Anna of Nassau-Dillenburg, Countess consort of Nassau-Weilburg (d. 1616)
• November 9 – Menso Alting, Dutch preacher and reformer (d. 1612)
• November 25 – Michele Bonelli, Italian Catholic cardinal (d. 1598)
• February 12 – Johann Bauhin, Swiss botanist (d. 1613)
• date unknown
  • Pierre Charron, French philosopher (d. 1603)
  • El Greco, or Domênikos Theotokópoulos (Greek: Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος), Cretian painter, sculptor and architect (d. 1614)
  • Hatano Hideharu, Japanese samurai (d. 1579)
  • Mizuno Tadashige, Japanese nobleman (d. 1600)
  • Guðbrandur Þorláksson, Icelandic mathematician (d. 1627)
  • Hattori Hanzō, Japanese ninja who served under Tokugawa Ieyasu (d. 1596)

1542

• February 1 – John Scudamore, English politician (d. 1623)
• February 22 – Santino Garsi da Parma, Italian musician (d. 1604)
• March 19 – Jan Zamoyski, Polish nobleman (d. 1605)
• April 29 – Henry III, Duke of Münsterberg-Oels (d. 1587)
• May 5 – Thomas Cecil, 1st Earl of Exeter, English politician (d. 1623)
• May 11 – Jakob Christoph Blarer von Wartensee, Swiss Catholic bishop (d. 1608)
• May 16 – Anna Sibylle of Hanau-Lichtenberg, German noblewoman, daughter of Count Philip IV of Hanau-Lichtenberg (d. 1580)
• June 15 – Richard Grenville, English politician (d. 1591)
• June 24 – John of the Cross, Spanish Carmelite mystic, theologian, poet (d. 1591)
• July 25 – Magnus, Duke of Östergötland, Swedish prince (d. 1595)
• Between August 18 and August 28 – Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland (d. 1601)
• August 27 – John Frederick, Duke of Pomerania and Protestant Bishop of Cammin (d. 1600)
• August 31 – Isabella de' Medici, Italian princess (d. 1576)
• September 25 – Elisabeth of Nassau-Dillenburg, sister of William the Silent (d. 1603)
• October 1 – Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira, Spanish explorer (d. 1595)
• October 4 – Robert Bellarmine, Italian saint (d. 1621)
• October 14 – Philip IV, Count of Nassau-Weilburg (d. 1602)
• October 15 – Akbar, Mughal Emperor (d. 1605)
• October 31 – Henriette of Cleves, Duchess of Nevers, Countess of Rethel (d. 1601)
• November 1 – Tarquinia Molza, Italian singer (d. 1617)
• November 9 – Anders Sørensen Vedel, Danish historian (d. 1616)
• November 11 – Scipione Gonzaga, Italian Catholic cardinal (d. 1593)
• December 8 – Mary, Queen of Scots (d. 1587)
• December 21 – Thomas Allen, English mathematician and astrologer, some suggest 1540 (d. 1632)
• date unknown
  • Joris Hoefnagel, Dutch painter and engraver (d. 1601)
  • Toda Kazuaki, Japanese samurai in the service of Tokugawa Ieyasu (d. 1604)
  • Douglas Sheffield, Baroness Sheffield, lover of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester (d. 1608)
  • Horio Yoshiharu, Japanese daimyō (d. 1611)
  • Kuki Yoshitaka, Japanese naval commander (d. 1600)

1543

• January 18 (baptized) – Alfonso Ferrabosco, Italian composer (d. 1588)
• January 31 – Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japanese shōgun (d. 1616)
• February 4 – Johannes Heurnius, Dutch physician (d. 1601)
• February 4 – Giovanni Francesco Fara, Italian writer (d. 1591)
• February 16 – Kanō Eitoku, Japanese painter (d. 1590)
• February 18 – Charles III, Duke of Lorraine (d. 1608)
• February 25 – Sharaf Khan Bidlisi, Emir of Bitlis (d. 1603)
• March 7 – John Casimir of the Palatinate-Simmern, German prince and reigning count palatine of Simmern (d. 1592)
• April 1 – François de Bonne, Duke of Lesdiguières, Constable of France (d. 1626)
• April 11 – George John I, Count Palatine of Veldenz (d. 1592)
• May 2 – Jan Moretus, Belgian printer (d. 1610)
• June 8 – Petrus Albinus, German historian, local history researcher and poet (d. 1598)
• June 29 – Christine of Hesse, duchess consort of Holstein-Gottorp (1465-1486) (d. 1604)
• July 20 – Nils Svantesson Sture, Swedish diplomat (d. 1567)
• August 3 – Nicasius de Sille, Dutch diplomat (d. 1600)
• August 21 – Giovanni Bembo, Doge of Venice (d. 1618)
• September 14 – Claudio Acquaviva, Italian Jesuit (d. 1615)
• October 21 – Michael Hicks, English politician (d. 1612)
• November 2 – Kasper Franck, German theologian (d. 1584)
• November 8 – Lettice Knollys, English noblewoman (d. 1634)
• December 3 – Alessandro Riario, Italian Catholic cardinal (d. 1585)
• December 29 – Catherine of Nassau-Dillenburg, daughter of William I (d. 1624)
• date unknown
  • Nicolas de Neufville, seigneur de Villeroy, 2nd Prime Minister of France (d. 1617)
  • Thomas Deloney, English novelist and balladeer (d. 1600)
  • Domenico Fontana, Italian architect (d. 1607)
  • Sonam Gyatso, 3rd Dalai Lama, first Dalai Lama (d. 1588)
  • François Pithou, French lawyer and author (d. 1621)
  • Hayyim ben Joseph Vital, Syrian Jewish rabbi and mystic (d. 1620)
  • Chen Lin, Ming Dynasty general (d. 1607)
• probable
  • Giovanni Maria Nanino, Italian composer (d. 1607)
  • Federico Zuccari, Italian painter (d. 1609)

1544

• January 19 – King Francis II of France (d. 1560)
• January 24 – Gillis van Coninxloo, Flemish painter (d. 1607)
• February 3 – César de Bus, French Catholic priest (d. 1607)
• March 11 – Torquato Tasso, Italian poet (d. 1595)
• April – Thomas Fleming, English judge (d. 1613)
• April 20 – Renata of Lorraine, duchess consort of Bavaria (d. 1602)
• May 24 – William Gilbert, English scientist and astronomer (d. 1603)
• July 14 – Henry Compton, 1st Baron Compton, English politician (d. 1589)
• August 9 – Bogislaw XIII, Duke of Pomerania (d. 1606)
• September 1 – John Gordon, Scottish bishop (d. 1619)
• September 28 or September 29 – Giovanni de' Medici, Italian Catholic cardinal (d. 1562)
• November 1 – Hasan Kafi Pruščak, Bosnian scholar and judge (d. 1615)
• November 15 – Dorothea Susanne of Simmern, Duchess of Saxe-Weimar (d. 1592)
• December 23 – Anna of Saxony, only child and heiress of Maurice, Elector of Saxony (d. 1577)
• date unknown
  • Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1610)
  • Thomas Hobson, English carrier and origin of the phrase Hobson's choice (d. 1631)
  • Maddalena Casulana, Italian composer, lutenist and singer (d. 1590)
• probable
  • George Whetstone, English writer (d. 1587)

1545

• January 1 – Magnus Heinason, Faroese naval hero (d. 1589)
• January 11 – Guidobaldo del Monte, Italian mathematician, astronomer and philosopher (d. 1607)
• March – Gaspare Tagliacozzi, Italian surgeon and anatomist (d. 1599)
• March 2 – Thomas Bodley, English diplomat and scholar, founder of the Bodleian Library, Oxford (d. 1613)
• March 18 – Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn, German bishop (d. 1617)
• March 25 – John II, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sønderburg (d. 1622)
• April 1 – Peder Claussøn Friis, Norwegian clergyman and author (d. 1614)
• April 2 – Elisabeth of Valois, queen of Philip II of Spain (d. 1568)
• April 15 – Karl II, Duke of Münsterberg-Oels, Duke of Oels (1565–1617), Duke of Bernstadt (1604–1617) (d. 1617)
• April 24 – Henry Wriothesley, 2nd Earl of Southampton, English earl (d. 1581)
• April 28 – Yi Sun-sin, Korean naval commander (d. 1598)
• May 1 – Franciscus Junius, French theologian (d. 1602)
• May 22 – Karl Christoph, Duke of Münsterberg (d. 1569)
• June 6 – Jerome Gratian, Spanish Carmelite and writer (d. 1614)
• June 13 – Naitō Nobunari, Japanese samurai and daimyō of Omi Province (d. 1612)
• June 19 – Princess Anna Maria of Sweden, Swedish royal (d. 1610)
• July 8 – Don Carlos of Spain, son of Philip II of Spain (d. 1568)
• August 1 – Andrew Melville, Scottish theologian and religious reformer (d. 1622)
• August 27 – Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma (d. 1592)
• September 7 – Eitel Friedrich IV, Count of Hohenzollern, First Count of Hohenzollern-Hechingen (d. 1605)
• September 20 – Yamanaka Yukimori, Japanese samurai (d. 1578)
• October 15 – Elisabeth of Anhalt-Zerbst, Abbess of Gernrode and Frose, later Countess of Barby-Mühlingen (d. 1574)
• October 19 – John Juvenal Ancina, Italian oratorian and bishop (d. 1604)
• November 20 – Ernst Ludwig, Duke of Pomerania (d. 1592)
• November 25 – Ana de Jesús, Spanish Discalced Carmelite nun and spiritual writer (d. 1621)
• December 6 – Janus Dousa, Dutch historian and noble (d. 1604)
• December 7 – Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, consort of Mary, Queen of Scots (d. 1567)
• date unknown
  • George Bannatyne, collector of Scottish poems (d. 1608)
  • John Field, British Puritan clergyman and controversialist (d. 1588)
  • John Gerard, English botanist (d. 1612)
  • Ismihan Sultan, Ottoman princess, daughter of Selim II and wife of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha (d. 1585)
  • William Morgan, Welsh Bible translator (d. 1604)
  • Azai Nagamasa, Japanese nobleman (d. 1573)
  • Mashita Nagamori, Japanese warlord (d. 1615)
• probable – Nicholas Breton, English poet and novelist (d. 1626)

1546

• January 27 – Joachim Friedrich, Elector of Brandenburg (d. 1608)
• February 1 – Mogami Yoshiaki, Japanese daimyō of the Yamagata domain (d. 1614)
• February 4 – Jakob Monau, Polish writer and linguist (d. 1603)
• February 14 – Johann Pistorius, German historian (d. 1608)
• March 16 – Francesco Barbaro, Italian diplomat (d. 1616)
• March 21 – Bartholomeus Spranger, Flemish painter (d. 1611)
• March 25 – Giacomo Castelvetro, Italian writer (d. 1616)
• March 27 – Johannes Piscator, German theologian (d. 1625)
• March 29 – Anne d'Escars de Givry, French Catholic cardinal (d. 1612)
• April 1 – Nanbu Nobunao, Japanese daimyō (d. 1599)
• April 20 – Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas, Spanish Catholic cardinal (d. 1618)
• June 13 – Tobias Matthew, English Archbishop of York (d. 1628)
• June 14 – Wolfgang, Count of Hohenlohe-Weikersheim, German count (d. 1610)
• June 24 – Robert Parsons, English Jesuit priest (d. 1610)
• June 29 – Dorothea of Denmark, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1561-1592) (d. 1617)
• July 4 – Murat III, Ottoman Sultan (d. 1595)
• August 10 – Juliana of Nassau-Dillenburg, Dutch prince (d. 1588)
• August 13 – Jan Opaliński, Polish nobleman and Castellan of Rogozin (d. 1598)
• August 31 – Daniel Adam z Veleslavína, Czech lexicographer (d. 1599)
• September 6 – Pedro Álvarez de Toledo, 5th Marquis of Villafranca, Spanish noble and politician (d. 1627)
• September 11 – Arild Huitfeldt, Danish historian (d. 1609)
• September 13 – Isabella Bendidio, Italian singer and noble in Renaissance court of Ferrara (d. 1610)
• October 5 – Rudolph Snellius, Dutch linguist and mathematician (d. 1613)
• November 11 – Richard Madox, English explorer (d. 1583)
• December 14 – Tycho Brahe, Danish astronomer (d. 1601)
• date unknown
  • Luca Bati, Italian Baroque composer (d. 1608)
  • Thomas Digges, English astronomer (d. 1595)
  • Veronica Franco, Venetian poet and courtesan (died 1591)
  • Takeda Katsuyori, Japanese nobleman (d. 1582)
  • Mikołaj VII Radziwiłł, Polish magnate (d. 1565)
• probable – Lodewijk Elzevir, Dutch printer (d. 1617)

1547

• January 15 – Duchess Hedwig of Württemberg, by marriage countess of Hesse-Marburg (d. 1590)
• January 20 – Laurence Bruce, Scottish politician (d. 1617)
• January 24 – Joanna of Austria, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Austrian Archduchess (d. 1578)
• February 8 – Girolamo Mattei, Italian Catholic cardinal (d. 1603)
• February 18 – Bahāʾ al-dīn al-ʿĀmilī, Syrian Arab co-founder of the Isfahan School of Islamic Philosophy (d. 1621)
• February 24 – Don John of Austria, military leader (d. 1578)
• March 1 – Rudolph Goclenius, German philosopher (d. 1628)
• March 26 – Bernardino Bertolotti, Italian instrumentalist and composer (d. 1609)
• April 8 – Lucrezia Bendidio, noblewoman and singer in Renaissance Ferrara (d. 1584)
• May 15 – Magnus Pegel, German mathematician (d. 1619)
• May 19 – Gustaf Banér, Swedish nobleman and member of the Privy Council of Sweden (d. 1600)
• June 28 – Cristofano Malvezzi, Italian organist and composer (d. 1599)
• July 5 – Garzia de' Medici, Italian noble (d. 1562)
• August 10 – Francis II, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg (d. 1619)
• September 10 – George I, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (d. 1596)
• September 14 – Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, Dutch statesman (d. 1619)
• September 20 – Faizi, Indo-Persian poet and scholar (d. 1595)
• September 22 – Philipp Nicodemus Frischlin, German philologist and poet (d. 1590)
• September 29 – Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish fiction writer (d. 1616)
• October 2 – Philipp Ludwig, Count Palatine of Neuburg (1569–1614) and Count Palatine of Sulzbach (1604–1614) (d. 1614)
• October 18 – Justus Lipsius, Flemish humanist (d. 1606)
• October 29 – Princess Sophia of Sweden, Swedish princess (d. 1611)
• November 7 – Rudolf Hospinian, Swiss writer (d. 1626)
• November 10
  • Martin Moller, German poet and mystic (d. 1606)
  • Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg, Archbishop of Cologne (d. 1601)
• November 12 – Claude of Valois, daughter of King Henry II of France (d. 1575)
• November 26 – Nicolaus Taurellus, German philosopher and theologian (d. 1606)
• December 5 – Ubbo Emmius, Dutch historian and geographer (d. 1625)
• December 15 – Magdalena of Nassau-Dillenburg, German noblewoman (d. 1633)
• date unknown
  • Matteo Perez d'Aleccio, Italian painter (d. 1616)
  • Mateo Alemán, Spanish novelist and man of letters (d. 1609)
  • Peter Bales, English calligrapher (d. 1610)
  • Louis Carrion, Flemish humanist and classical scholar (d. 1595)
  • Oichi, Japanese noblewoman (d. 1583)
  • Krzysztof Mikołaj "the Thunderbolt" Radziwiłł, Polish nobleman (d. 1603)
  • Richard Stanihurst, English translator of Virgil (d. 1618)
  • Roemer Visscher, Dutch writer (d. 1620)
  • Stanisław Żółkiewski, Polish nobleman (d. 1620)

1548

• January 5 – Francisco Suárez, Spanish priest, philosopher, theologian and saint (d. 1617)
• February 6 – Francesco Panigarola, Italian bishop (d. 1594)
• March 13 – Sasbout Vosmeer, Dutch Apostolic Vicar (d. 1614)
• March 17 – Honda Tadakatsu, Japanese general (d. 1610)
• March 18 – Cornelis Ketel, Dutch painter (d. 1616)
• April 15 – Pietro Cataldi, Italian mathematician (d. 1626)
• May – Carel van Mander, Dutch painter and poet (d. 1606)
• May 8 – Giacomo Boncompagni, illegitimate son of Pope Gregory XIII (d. 1612)
• May 10 – Antonio Priuli, Doge of Venice (d. 1623)
• July 8 – Kim Jang-saeng, Korean scholar and writer (d. 1631)
• July 15 – George III, Count of Erbach-Breuberg (1564–1605) (d. 1605)
• August 26 – Bernardino Poccetti, Italian painter (d. 1612)
• September 2 – Vincenzo Scamozzi, Italian architect (d. 1616)
• September 7 – Filippo Boncompagni, Italian Catholic cardinal (d. 1586)
• September 29 – William V, Duke of Bavaria (d. 1626)
• October 4 – Matsumae Yoshihiro, Japanese daimyō of Ezochi (Hokkaidō) (d. 1616)
• November 27 – Jacopo Mazzoni, Italian philosopher (d. 1598)
• December 30 – David Pareus, German theologian (d. 1622)
• approx. date – Ma Shouzhen, Chinese Gējì, painter, playwright and poet (d. 1604)
• date unknown
  • Giordano Bruno, Italian philosopher, astronomer, and occultist (d. 1600)
  • Oda Nagamasu, Japanese nobleman (d. 1622)
  • Luis Barahona de Soto, Spanish poet (d. 1595)
  • William Stanley, English soldier (d. 1630)
  • Saitō Tatsuoki, Japanese daimyō (d. 1573)
  • Sidonia von Borcke, German noble and alleged witch (d. 1620)
  • Tomás Luis de Victoria, Spanish composer (d. 1611)
  • Fernando Ruiz de Castro Andrade y Portugal, Grandee of Spain (d. 1601)
• probable
  • Francesco Andreini, Italian actor (d. 1624)
  • Francesco Soriano, Italian composer (d. 1621)
  • Mariangiola Criscuolo, Italian painter (d. 1630)
  • Simon Stevin, Flemish mathematician and engineer (d. 1620)

1549

• January 26 – Jakob Ebert, German theologian (d. 1614)
• January 26 – Francesco Bassano the Younger, Italian painter (d. 1592)
• February 3 – Louis of Valois, French prince (d. 1550)
• February 4 – Eustache Du Caurroy, French composer (d. 1609)
• February 15 – Barnim X, Duke of Pomerania (1569–1603) (d. 1603)
• February 20 – Francesco Maria II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, last Duke of Urbino (d. 1631)
• March 10 – Francis Solanus, Spanish missionary and saint (d. 1610)
• March 11 – Hendrik Laurenszoon Spiegel, Dutch writer (d. 1612)
• April 5 – Françoise d'Orléans-Longueville, French princess (d. 1601)
• April 13 – Count Juraj IV Zrinski of Croatia (d. 1603)
• June 15 – Elizabeth Knollys, English noblewoman (d. 1605)
• July 2 – Duchess Sabine of Württemberg, by marriage Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel (d. 1581)
• July 5 – Francesco Maria del Monte, Italian Catholic cardinal (d. 1627)
• July 12 – Edward Manners, 3rd Earl of Rutland (d. 1587)
• July 20 – Pierre de Larivey, Italian-born French dramatist (d. 1619)
• July 30 – Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (d. 1609)
• August 2 – Mikołaj Krzysztof "the Orphan" Radziwiłł, Polish nobleman (d. 1616)
• August 10 – Catherine of Brandenburg-Küstrin, daughter of Margrave John of Küstrin (d. 1602)
• September 1 – Charles Philippe de Croÿ, Marquis d’Havré, Belgian noble and politician (d. 1613)
• November 2 – Anna of Austria, Queen of Spain (d. 1580)
• November 5 – Philippe de Mornay, French writer (d. 1623)
• November 30 – Sir Henry Savile, English educator (d. 1622)
• December 9 – Costanzo Antegnati, Italian composer, organist (d. 1624)
• December 20 – John Petre, 1st Baron Petre, English politician and baron (d. 1613)
• December 24 – Kaspar Ulenberg, German theologian (d. 1617)
• date unknown
  • Kutsuki Mototsuna, Japanese military commander (d. 1632)
  • John Rainolds, English scholar and Bible translator (d. 1607)
  • Juan de Salcedo, Spanish conquistador (d. 1576)
  • Marek Sobieski, Polish noble (d. 1605)
  • Ogawa Suketada, Japanese warlord (d. 1601)

Deaths

1540

• c. January – Elizabeth Blount, mistress of Henry VIII of England (b. 1502)
• January 27 – Angela Merici, Italian religious leader and saint (b. 1474)
• March 30 – Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg, German statesman and archbishop of Salzburg (b. 1469)
• April 21 – Afonso of Portugal, Catholic cardinal (b. 1509)
• May 6 – Juan Luís Vives, Spanish scholar (b. 1492)
• May 22 – Francesco Guicciardini, Italian statesman and historian (b. 1483)
• June 16 – Konrad von Thüngen, German noble (b. c. 1466)
• July 22 – John Zápolya, King of Hungary (b. c. 1490)
• July 28 – Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, English statesman (executed) (b. c.1485)
• July 30
  • Thomas Abel, English priest (martyred) (b. c. 1497)
  • Robert Barnes, English reformer (martyred) (b. 1495)
  • Eric I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Prince of Calenberg (1491–1540) (b. 1470)
• August 23 – Guillaume Budé, French scholar (b. 1467)
• August 24 – Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola (Parmigianino), Italian artist (b. 1503)
• August 28 – Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua (b. 1500)
• September 2 – Lebna Dengel, Emperor of Ethiopia (in battle) (b. 1501)
• September 16 – Enrique de Borja y Aragón, Spanish noble of the House of Borgia (b. 1518)
• September 20 – Infante Duarte, Duke of Guimarães, son of King Manuel I of Portugal (b. 1515)
• October 5 – Helius Eobanus Hessus, German Latin poet (b. 1488)
• date unknown – Francisco de Ulloa, Spanish explorer
• probable
  • Tristão da Cunha, Portuguese explorer (b. 1460)
  • Johann Georg Faust, German alchemist (b. 1480)

1541

• January 2 – Wang Gen, Chinese philosopher (b. 1483)
• January 5 – Philip of the Palatinate, Bishop of Freising and Naumburg (b. 1480)
• April – Jerzy Radziwiłł, Polish nobleman (b. 1480)
• April 21 – James, Duke of Rothesay, Scottish prince (b. 1540)
• April 24 – Celio Calcagnini, Italian astronomer (b. 1479)
• April 29 – Johann Gramann, German theologian (b. 1487)
• May 27 – Margaret Pole, 8th Countess of Salisbury (executed) (b. 1473)
• June 26 – Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistador (b. c. 1475)
• July 4 – Pedro de Alvarado, Spanish conquistador (b. 1495)
• August – Juan de Valdés, Spanish religious writer (b. 1500)
• August 1 – Simon Grynaeus, German scholar and theologian (b. 1493)
• August 18 – Henry IV, Duke of Saxony (1539–1541) (b. 1473)
• August 19 – Vincenzo Cappello, Venetian admiral and statesman (b. 1469)
• September 24 – Paracelsus, Swiss alchemist and physician (b. 1493)
• September – Beatriz de la Cueva, Governor of Guatemala (b. 1510)
• October 18 – Margaret Tudor, queen of James IV of Scotland (b. 1489)
• November 4 – Wolfgang Fabricius Capito, German reformer (b. 1478)
• November 30 – Amago Tsunehisa, Japanese warlord (b. 1458)
• December 10
  • Thomas Culpeper, English courtier, lover of Catherine Howard (b. c. 1514)
  • Francis Dereham, English lover of Catherine Howard (executed)
• December 24 – Andreas Karlstadt, Christian theologian and reformer (b. 1486)
• date unknown
  • Jean Clouet, French miniature painter (b. 1480)
  • Margareta von Melen, Swedish noblewoman (b. 1489)
  • Gül Baba, Ottoman dervish poet
  • Giovanni Guidiccioni, Italian poet (b. 1480)
  • Gazi Husrev-beg, Ottoman statesmen (b. 1480)

1542

• January 21 – Azai Sukemasa, Japanese samurai and warlord (b. 1491)
• February – Nikolaus Federmann, German adventurer in Venezuela and Colombia (b. 1501)
• February 1 – Girolamo Aleandro, Italian cardinal (b. 1480)
• February 13
  • Catherine Howard, fifth queen of Henry VIII of England (executed) (born c. 1522)
  • Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford, English noblewoman (executed) (born c. 1505)
• March 3 – Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle, illegitimate son of King Edward IV of England
• May 21 – Hernando de Soto, Spanish explorer, navigator and conquistador (b. c. 1500)
• June 14 – Christoph von Scheurl, German writer (b. 1481)
• June 19 – Leo Jud, Swiss reformer (b. 1482)
• July 15 – Lisa del Giocondo, Florentine noblewoman, believed to be the subject of the Mona Lisa (b. 1479)
• August 24 – Gasparo Contarini, Italian diplomat and cardinal (b. 1483)
• August 29 – Cristóvão da Gama, Portuguese soldier (b. c. 1516)
• September 17 – Lucas Fernández, Spanish dramatist and musician (b. c. 1474)
• September 21 – Juan Boscán Almogáver, Spanish poet (b. c. 1490)
• October 11 – Thomas Wyatt, English poet and diplomat (b. 1503)
• October 18 – Giovanni Gaddi, Italian priest (b. 1493)
• December 14 – King James V of Scotland (b. 1512)
• December 16 – Thomas Lovett III, High Sheriff of Northamptonshire (b. 1473)
• date unknown
  • Dosso Dossi, Italian painter (b. 1490)
  • Lapulapu, Filipino king (b. 1491)

1543

• January 2 – Francesco Canova da Milano, Italian composer (b. 1497)
• January 3 – Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, Portuguese explorer (b. 1499)
• January 9 – Guillaume du Bellay, French diplomat and general (b. 1491)
• February 13 – Johann Eck, German Scholastic theologian (b. 1486)
• February 21 – Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, Imam of Adal (in battle) (b. c. 1506)
• March 2 – John Neville, 3rd Baron Latimer, English politician (b. 1493)
• March 6 – Baccio D'Agnolo, Florentine woodcarver (b. 1460)
• April 23 – Susanna of Bavaria, German noble, House of Wittelsbach (b. 1502)
• May 24 – Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish mathematician and astronomer (b. 1473)
• June 27 – Agnolo Firenzuola, Italian poet (b. 1493)
• July 19 – Mary Boleyn, English courtier, mistress of Kings Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England (b. 1500)
• August 1 – Magnus I, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, German noble (b. 1470)
• August 29 – Maria of Jülich-Berg, German duchess, Spouse of John III, Duke of Cleves (b. 1491)
• September 2 – Sultan Quli Qutb Mulk, founder of the Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda (b. 1470)
• September 20 – Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland (b. 1492)
• September 23 – Johanna of Hachberg-Sausenberg, countess regnant of Neuchatel (b. 1485)
• November 29 – Hans Holbein the Younger, German artist, active in England
• December 27 – George, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach (b. 1484)
• December 29 – Maria Salviati, Italian noble (b. 1499)
• December 30 – Gian Matteo Giberti, Italian Catholic bishop (b. 1495)
• date unknown
  • Polidoro da Caravaggio, Italian painter (b. 1492; murdered)
  • Madeleine Lartessuti, French shipper and banker (b. 1478)
  • Al-Mutawakkil III, last caliph of the Cairo-based Abbasid caliphate
  • Sehzade Mehmed, Ottoman prince (b. 1521)
• probable
  • Sebastian Franck, German freethinker (b. 1515)
  • Margaret Lee, English courtier, sister of poet Thomas Wyatt (b. 1506)

1544

• March 16 – Louis V, Elector Palatine (1508–1544) (b. 1478)
• March 22 – Johannes Magnus, last Catholic Archbishop of Sweden (b. 1488)
• April 30 – Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor of England (b. 1488)
• June 14 – Antoine, Duke of Lorraine (b. 1489)
• July 15 – René of Châlon, Prince of the House of Orange (b. 1519)
• June 23 – Eleonore of Fürstenberg, wife of Philip IV, Count of Hanau-Lichtenberg (b. 1523)
• August 19 – Hans Buser, Swiss noble (b. 1513)
• September 12 – Clément Marot, French poet (b. 1496)
• September 25 – Valerius Cordus, German physician and scientist (b. 1515)
• October 10 – Charles Blount, 5th Baron Mountjoy, English courtier and patron of learning (b. 1516)
• October 12 – Antonio Pucci, Italian Catholic cardinal (b. 1485)
• November 13 – Ursula van Beckum, Dutch Anapabtist (b. 1520)
• November 15 – Lucy Brocadelli, Dominican tertiary and stigmatic (b. 1476)
• November 29 – Jungjong of Joseon (b. 1488)
• December 9 – Teofilo Folengo, Italian poet (b. 1491)
• date unknown
  • Ulick na gCeann Burke, 1st Earl of Clanricarde
  • Chen Chun, Chinese painter (b. 1483)
  • Margaret Roper, English writer (b. 1505)
  • Nilakantha Somayaji, Indian mathematician and astronomer (b. 1444)
  • Manco Inca Yupanqui, Inca ruler (b. 1516)
  • Bonaventure des Périers, French author (b. 1500)

1545

• January 16 – George Spalatin, German reformer (b. 1484)
• February 12 or April 2 – Stanisław Odrowąż, Polish noble (b. 1509)
• April 3 – Antonio de Guevara, Spanish chronicler and moralist (b. 1481)
• April 10 – Costanzo Festa, Italian composer (b. 1495)
• April 22 – Louis X, Duke of Bavaria (b. 1496)
• April 25 – Jobst II, Count of Hoya (b. 1493)
• May – Agnes Howard, Duchess of Norfolk, English noblewoman (b. c. 1477)
• May 22 – Sher Shah Suri, Indian ruler (b. 1486)
• June 4 – John Louis, Count of Nassau-Saarbrücken (1472–1545) (b. 1472)
• June 12 – Francis I, Duke of Lorraine (b. 1517)
• June 15 – Elizabeth of Austria, Polish noble (b. 1526)
• July 7 – Pernette Du Guillet, French poet (b. c. 1520)
• July 12 – Maria Manuela, Princess of Portugal (b. 1527)
• August 8 – Injong of Joseon, 12th king of the Joseon Dynasty of Korea (b. 1515)
• August 22 – Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, English politician and husband of Mary Tudor (b. c. 1484)
• August 27 – Piotr Gamrat, Polish Catholic archbishop (b. 1487)
• September
  • Hans Baldung, German artist (b. 1480)
  • Hkonmaing, king of the Ava kingdom (b. c. 1497)
• September 1 – Francis de Bourbon, Count of St. Pol, French noble (b. 1491)
• September 9 – Charles II de Valois, Duke of Orléans, (b. 1522)
• September 24 – Albert of Mainz, elector and archbishop of Mainz (b. 1490)
• October 18 – John Taverner, English composer (b. c. 1490)
• date unknown
  • William Latimer, English churchman and scholar (b. c. 1467)
  • Fernão Lopez, Portuguese renegade
  • Vicente Masip, Spanish painter (b. 1506)

1546

• January 11
  • Ernest I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (b. 1497)
  • Gaudenzio Ferrari, Italian painter and sculptor (b. c. 1471)
• January 21 – Azai Sukemasa, daimyō (b. 1491)
• February 18 – Martin Luther, German religious reformer (b. 1483)
• February 23 – Francis, Count of Enghien, French military leader (b. 1519)
• March 1 – George Wishart, Scottish religious reformer (martyred) (b. 1513)
• March 26 – Thomas Elyot, English diplomat and scholar (b. c. 1490)
• April 7 – Friedrich Myconius, German Lutheran theologian (b. 1491)
• May 17 – Philipp von Hutten, German explorer (b. 1511)
• May 28 – Ottaviano de' Medici, Italian politician (b. 1484)
• May 29 – David Beaton, Scottish Catholic cardinal (assassinated) (b. c. 1494)
• June 13 – Fridolin Sicher, Swiss composer (b. 1490)
• July 4 – Khair ad Din "Barbarossa", corsair ruler of Algiers (b. 1475)
• July 9 – Robert Maxwell, 5th Lord Maxwell, Scottish statesman (b. c. 1493)
• July 16 – Anne Askew, English Protestant (burned at the stake) (b. 1521)
• August 1 – Peter Faber, French Jesuit theologian (b. 1506)
• August 3
  • Étienne Dolet, French scholar and printer (b. 1509)
  • Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Italian architect (b. 1484)
• August 12 – Francisco de Vitoria, Renaissance theologian (b. 1492)
• November 1 – Giulio Romano, Italian painter (b. 1499)

1547

• January 5 – Johann Heß, German theologian (b. 1490)
• January 7 –Albrecht VII, Duke of Mecklenburg (b. 1486)
• January 16 – Johannes Schöner, German astronomer and cartographer (b. 1477)
• January 18 – Pietro Bembo, Italian cardinal and scholar (b. 1470)
• January 19 – Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, English nobleman, politician and poet, beheaded (b. c.1517)
• January 27 – Anne of Bohemia and Hungary, Queen consort of the Romans, Bohemia and Hungary (b. 1503)
• January 28 – King Henry VIII of England (b. 1491)
• February 25 – Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara (b. 1490)
• February 28 – Philippa of Guelders, Duchess of Lorraine (b. 1467)
• March 31 – King Francis I of France (b. 1494)
• April 11 – Dorothea of Denmark, Duchess of Prussia, Danish princess (b. 1504)
• May 22 – Daniel, Metropolitan of Moscow (b. c. 1492)
• c. May – Edward Hall, English chronicler and lawyer (b. c.1496)
• June 21 – Sebastiano del Piombo, Italian painter (b. 1485)
• July 20 – Beatus Rhenanus, German humanist and religious reformer (b. 1485)
• August 7 – Saint Cajetan, Italian priest and saint (b. 1480)
• August 17 – Katharina von Zimmern, Swiss sovereign abbess (b. 1478)
• September 10 – Pier Luigi Farnese, Duke of Parma (b. 1503)
• September 17 – Frederick II of Legnica, Duke of Legnica from 1488 (until 1495 and 1505 with his brothers) (b. 1480)
• October 18 – Jacopo Sadoleto, Italian Catholic cardinal (b. 1477)
• December 2 – Hernán Cortés, Spanish conquistador of Mexico (b. 1485)
• December 28 – Konrad Peutinger, German humanist and antiquarian (b. 1465)
• date unknown
  • Jörg Breu the Younger, German painter (b. 1510)
  • Meera (Mirabai), Rajput princess (b. 1498)
  • Photisarath, King of Laos (b. 1501)

1548

• January 9 – Matthäus Zell, German Lutheran pastor (b. 1477)
• January 23 – Bernardo Pisano, Italian composer (b. 1490)
• February 26 – Lorenzino de' Medici, Italian writer and assassin (b. 1514)
• March 23 – Itagaki Nobukata, Japanese retainer
• March 24 – Gissur Einarsson, first Lutheran bishop in Iceland
• April 1 – King Sigismund I the Old of Poland (b. 1467)
• June 3 – Juan de Zumárraga, Spanish Catholic bishop of Mexico (b. 1468)
• June 6 – João de Castro, Portuguese explorer (b. 1500)
• June 14 – Carpentras, French composer (b. c. 1470)
• July 4 – Philip, Duke of Palatinate-Neuburg, German duke (b. 1503)
• July 29 – Gian Gabriele I of Saluzzo, Italian abbot, Marquess of Saluzzo (b. 1501)
• August 2 – Henry II, Duke of Münsterberg-Oels and Count of Glatz (b. 1507)
• September 5 – Catherine Parr, sixth and last Queen of Henry VIII of England (b. c. 1512)
• September 8 – John III of Pernstein, Bohemian land-owner, Governor of Moravia and Count of Kladsko (b. 1487)
• October 27 – Johannes Dantiscus, Polish poet and Bishop of Warmia (b. 1485)
• November 16 – Caspar Creuziger, German humanist (b. 1504)
• December 27 – Francesco Spiera, Italian Protestant jurist (b. 1502)
• date unknown
  • Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, Mexican Catholic saint (b. 1474)
  • Chief Queen Sri Suriyothai, consort of King Maha Chakkrapat of Ayutthaya (killed in battle)
  • Strongilah, Jewish Ottoman businesswoman.

1549

• January 28 – Elia Levita, German Yiddish writer (b. 1469)
• February 14 – Il Sodoma, Italian painter (b. 1477)
• March – Mingyi Swe, Burmese viceroy of Toungoo
• March 14 – Lorenzo Cybo, Italian condottiero (b. 1500)
• March 20 – Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, English politician and diplomat (b. 1508)
• March 25 – Veit Dietrich, German theologian, writer and reformer (b. 1506)
• April – Andrew Boorde, English traveller (b. 1490)
• April 3 – Matsudaira Hirotada, Japanese daimyo (b. 1526)
• April 15 – Christine of Saxony, German noble (b. 1505)
• April 24 – Ralph Neville, 4th Earl of Westmorland, English earl (b. 1498)
• May 11 – María de Toledo, Vicereine and regent of the Spanish Colony of Santo Domingo (b. 1490)
• June 26 – Luis Cáncer, Spanish Dominican priest, missionary, martyr and servant of God (b. 1500)
• July 19 – Edmund Sheffield, 1st Baron Sheffield, English baron (b. 1521)
• August 11 – Otto I, Duke of Brunswick-Harburg, Prince of Lüneburg and Baron of Harburg (b. 1495)
• September 10 – Anthony Denny, confidant of Henry VIII of England (b. 1501)
• September 21 – Benedetto Accolti the Younger, Italian Catholic cardinal (b. 1497)
• October 27 – Marie d'Albret, Countess of Rethel, French nobility (b. 1491)
• November 10 – Pope Paul III (b. 1468)
• November 26 – Henry Somerset, 2nd Earl of Worcester (b. 1496)
• December 7 – Robert Kett, English rebel (executed)
• December 21 – Marguerite de Navarre, queen of Henry II of Navarre (b. 1492)
• date unknown
  • Daniel Bomberg, Brabantian printer

References