For the natives, they are near all dead of the smallpox, so has the Lord hath cleared our title to what we possess.
- Pilgrim leader John Winthrop, expressing a curious conception of God's ends and means.
In the year AD 1634...
- The Thirty Years War enters its 16th year. Imperial general Albrecht von Wallenstein, grown sickened by the carnage of the war, has unilaterally started trying to negotiate a peace with the Protestant powers. This leads him to be excoriated as a traitor by his opponents in the Austrian court, who influence Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II to issue a top secret patent calling for his arrest. Catching wind of the danger, Wallenstein attempts to flee, setting out with 100 soldiers he considers his most loyal men for the camp of Protestant general Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, with whom he hopes to find protection. But en route some of the soldiers burst into his bed chamber and assassinate him. Supreme command of the Imperial forces is given to the Emperor's son Ferdinand (the future Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand III), who, reinforced by 21,000 Spanish troops, recaptures Regensburg and utterly crushes the combined Swedish-German army under Gustav Horn and Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar at the Battle of Nördlingen, in which the best and most experienced units of the Swedish army are completely wiped out.
- The Smolensk War between Poland and Russia comes to an end as the defeated Russians sign the Peace of Polyanovka, disavowing their claims to Swedish territory and returning the Swedish-Russian border to the status quo ante. Russian national hero Mikhail Shein is unjustly made a scapegoat for the defeat, which was really more due to the ravages of bubonic plague among the Russian forces.
- In Japan, Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu issues a second sakoku edict, further restricting foreign trade and travel overseas.
- Tulipomania starts taking off in Holland, as prices of tulips, especially multi-colored plants affected by a mosaic virus, start fetching absurdly high prices driven upward by speculators.
- After a lengthy trial, Puritan pamphleteer William Prynne is fined, sentenced to life in prison, pilloried, and shorn of his ears for perceived attacks against the character of Queen Henrietta Maria in his 1632 polemic Histriomastix.
- French explorer Jean Nicolet becomes the first European to set eyes on Lake Michigan, which he then crosses, proceeding on to explore the area around what is now Green Bay, Wisconsin.
- John Milton writes his masque Comus.
- Oxford University Press receives its charter and becomes the second of the privileged presses.
- The Oberammergau Passion Play, still performed to this day once every ten years in the village of Oberammergau in Bavaria, is performed for the first time, in fulfillment of a vow before God made the year before, in the midst of an attack of the bubonic plague.
- The first European settlers arrive in what is now Maryland, establishing St. Mary's City as the fourth English settlement in North America.
- Stockholm is named the official capital of Sweden.
- The paper ballot is put into use for the first time in elections for the governorship of Massachusetts.
These people were born in 1634...
These people died in 1634...
1633 - 1634 - 1635
17th century
How they were made