1745
Bonnie Prince Charlie Lands in Scotland
Charles Edward Stuart, grandson of James II, landed on Eriskay with seven companions and raised his standard at Glenfinnan. Highland clans rallied; Edinburgh fell; an English army was routed at Prestonpans. For a month the Pretender made his court at Holyrood. The last Jacobite rising had begun its brief, glamorous, catastrophic arc.
Louisbourg Falls to New Englanders
An expedition of untrained Massachusetts militia, funded by colonial assemblies and led by a merchant named William Pepperrell, captured the great French fortress of Louisbourg after a six-week siege. Britons at home barely understood what had happened. Americans did. They would remember, bitterly, when the fortress was handed back at Aix-la-Chapelle.
Dupleix's Carnatic Gambit
Joseph-Francois Dupleix, French governor of Pondicherry, began building an alliance of Indian princes to counter British influence along India's southeast coast. He trained Indian sepoys in European tactics, an innovation that Clive would steal. The small wars of the Carnatic would decide who would eventually rule the subcontinent. Dupleix's strategy was brilliant but underfunded; Paris recalled him in disgrace, and Britain inherited his methods.
Leyden Jar Invented
Ewald von Kleist in Pomerania, and independently Pieter van Musschenbroek at Leyden, found that electricity could be stored in a glass jar with metal foils. Musschenbroek's first discharge nearly killed him: I would not take a second shock for the crown of France. The world's first capacitor had arrived in parlor science.
Battle of Fontenoy
Marshal de Saxe, a Saxon bastard in French service, defeated the Duke of Cumberland's Anglo-Dutch army in Flanders through a redoubt, a rallied infantry, and his own stretcher-borne genius. Gentlemen of the English Guards, an officer is said to have called, fire first. The courtesy made the battle famous. It also lost it.