1718 | Political Events
Political Events
Russia's Peter the Great has his emissary Count Peter Tolstoi bring back the czarevich Alexius Petrovich, forces him to sign a "confession" February 18 implicating his friends, and has them impaled, broken on the wheel or otherwise dispatched (see 1716). The ex-czarevich Eudoxia is dragged from her monastery and publicly tried for alleged adultery. Alexius is given 25 lashes with the knout June 19 (nobody has ever survived 30), given 15 more June 24, and dies in the guardhouse of the citadel at St. Petersburg June 26 at age 28, 2 days after being condemned by the senate for "imagining" rebellion against his father. His death increases the power of Peter's wife, the empress Catherine (Marta Ekaterina), who gives birth to another daughter, Natalia, and will spend the next 7 years trying to keep the czar away from vodka and from other women.
The Quadruple Alliance (Britain, France, the United Provinces of the Netherlands, and the Holy Roman Emperor Karl VI) block an effort by Tuscany's minister Carlo Rinuccini to restore a republican form of government in the grand duchy, whose sixth grand duke Cosimo III de' Medici is now 76. They agree in the Treaty of London that upon the extinction of the Medici family's male line the grand duchy shall pass to Don Carlos de Borbón along with Parma and Piacenza (see 1720).
The Treaty of Passarowitz July 21 ends a 4-year war between Venice and Constantinople in which Austria has intervened on behalf of the Venetians. The Ottoman Turks lose the Banat of Temesvar, northern Serbia, and Little Wallachia (see 1690), but they retain the Morea while Venice retains only the Ionian Islands and the Dalmatian Coast (see 1739).
Spain's Felipe V sends troops into Sicily in July, and his seizure of the country raises fears of a new European war. The Quadruple Alliance formed August 2 by the Holy Roman Emperor, Britain, and France (Holland will join next year) determines to prevent Felipe from overturning the peace of 1714 (see 1720).
France's regent Philippe II, duc d'Orléans, dissolves his cumbersome and inefficient conciliar government in September and reinstates the secretaries of state whose authority he removed in 1715.
Sweden's Karl (Charles) XII is shot through the head December 11 as he peers over the parapet of the foremost trench 280 paces from the fortress of Fredriksten during a military expedition to Norway (see 1715). Dead at age 36 after a momentous 21-year reign, Karl is succeeded by his sister Ulrika Eleanora, 30, who accepts the crown on condition that the riksdag be allowed to draft a new constitution and who brings the Great Northern War to a close. Peter the Great's secretary Andrei Ivanovich Osterman represents the czar at a peace conference with Sweden (see 1721).