1679
Habeas Corpus Act
The English Parliament passed a law forbidding imprisonment without a speedy opportunity to appear before a court. The principle was ancient; the procedure was new and enforceable. Habeas corpus would become the single most famous English legal protection against arbitrary detention and would migrate wherever English common law traveled, from Philadelphia to Calcutta to Sydney, shielding the liberty of millions.
Aurangzeb Abolishes the Jizya Reimposition Debate
Mughal emperor Aurangzeb reimposed the jizya, the discriminatory poll tax on non-Muslims that his great-grandfather Akbar had abolished over a century earlier. Hindu merchants, artisans, and farmers now owed a yearly tribute for the privilege of their own faith. The edict alienated millions and accelerated the Rajput and Maratha revolts that would fracture the empire.
Plague Devastates Vienna
Bubonic plague swept through Vienna in the summer, killing an estimated seventy-six thousand people in a city of barely two hundred thousand. Bodies piled in the streets faster than gravediggers could haul them away. Emperor Leopold I fled to Prague while his capital choked. The Pestsaule column would later memorialize the horror in gilded baroque.
Treaty of Nijmegen
The Franco-Dutch War ended with a series of treaties concluded at Nijmegen that left Louis XIV the most powerful monarch in Europe. France gained Franche-Comte and additional towns in Flanders. Louis awarded himself the title Louis the Great, and Europe began to organize itself around the problem of containing him.