1653

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February 2: New Amsterdam (now New York City) is incorporated.

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Events

January–March

January 3 – By the Coonan Cross Oath, the Eastern Church in India cuts itself off from colonial Portuguese tutelage.
January – The Swiss Peasant War begins after magistrates meeting at Lucerne refuse to hear from a group of peasants who have been financially hurt by the devaluation of the currency issued from Bern.
February 2 – New Amsterdam (now New York City) received municipal rights by a charter from New Netherland Governor Peter Stuyvesant.<ref>"The New York Tercentenary: An Exhibition of the History of New Netherland", in by Victor Hugo Paltsits, in Bulletin of the New York Public Library (October, 1926) p.780</ref>
February 3 – Cardinal Mazarin returns to Paris from exile.
February 10 – Swiss peasant war of 1653: Peasants from the Entlebuch valley in Switzerland assemble at Heiligkreuz to organize a plan to suspend all tax payments to the authorities in the canton of Lucerne, after having been snubbed at a magisterial meeting in Lucerne. More communities in the canton join in an alliance concluded at Wolhusen on February 26.
February – The Morning Star Rebellion (Morgonstjärneupproret) of peasants breaks out in Sweden's province of Närke, against Queen Christina.<ref>Oskar Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia: The Age of Gustavus Adolphus and Queen Christina of Sweden, 1622-1656 (E. J. Brill, 1992) p. 688</ref> It is brutally suppressed by April, and its leader, the self-proclaimed King Olof Mårtensson (who uses a morning star as his scepter) is executed on a breaking wheel on April 6.
March 14 – A Dutch fleet defeats the English in the Battle of Leghorn in the Mediterranean but the Dutch commander, Johan van Galen, later dies of his wounds.

April–June

April 20 – Oliver Cromwell expels the Rump Parliament in England.
April 28 – The Great Fire of Marlborough destroys 224 houses and much of the textile businesses in the Wiltshire town which, "at that date was one of considerable importance, and had merchants of affluence and repute."<ref name=Fires>"Fires, Great", in The Insurance Cyclopeadia: Being an Historical Treasury of Events and Circumstances Connected with the Origin and Progress of Insurance, Cornelius Walford, ed. (C. and E. Layton, 1876) p30 </ref>
May 31 – Ferdinand IV, already the King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, is elected King of the Romans by his fellow German monarchs, making him eligible to succeed his father Ferdinand III as Holy Roman Emperor. Ferdinand IV will not live to become Holy Roman Emperor, instead dying from smallpox 14 months after his designation.
June 13 – First Anglo-Dutch War: The English navy defeats the Dutch fleet in the Battle of the Gabbard after a two-day fight.
June 20 – The Swiss peasant war of 1653 ends after Swiss Army troops under the command of Sebastian Peregrin Zwyer suppress the last rebels in Switzerland's Entlebuch Valley.

July–September

July 4 – Barebone's Parliament, named for a prominent Puritan member, Praise-God Barebone, opens its session in London with elected representatives to pass laws for the Commonwealth of England.
July 8 – John Thurloe becomes Cromwell's head of intelligence.
August 5 – Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg reaffirms the nobility's freedom from taxation, and its unlimited control over the peasants, in return for a grant to him of 530,000 silver Joachimsthalers to be paid in installments over six years.<ref>Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, 1648-1840 (Princeton University Press, 1959) p. 59</ref>
August 8 – The petite post, a system of postage using prepaid labels and post boxes, is inaugurated in Paris by Jean-Jacques Renouard de Villayer for the mailing of letters within the city, an event noted by Madeleine de Scudéry in her manuscript Chroniques du samedi.<ref>"The Marais: 'Paris' in the seventeenth century", by Joan Dejean, in The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Paris, ed. by Anna-Louise Milne (Cambridge University Press, 2013) p. 29</ref>
August 10 – The Battle of Scheveningen, the final naval battle of the First Anglo-Dutch War, ends after three days of fighting off the island of Texel, as the English Navy gains a tactical victory over the Dutch fleet.
September 13 – A violent storm off the west coast of Scotland sinks the English Navy warship Swan, and the commandeered merchantmen Speedwell and Martha and Margaret, all of which have been anchored off of Mull. Most of the crews had gone ashore, but 23 of the men on the ship Speedwell are killed.
September 29 – In India, the third and final attempt by the Mughal Empire, to recapture the city of Kandahar from the Safavid Empire, ends in failure after almost six months despite the presence of 70,000 Mughal soldiers under the command of Prince Dara Shukoh.

October–December

October 11 (October 1 O.S.) – The Zemsky Sobor, the Russian Empire's national assembly, opens its session to declare a war against the Kingdom of Poland.
October 20 – The Battle of Bordeaux is fought between French and Spanish warships in the Gironde estuary of France as part of the Franco-Spanish War. The Spanish fleet of 30 warships, under the command of Álvaro de Bazán y Manrique de Lara, Marquis of Santa Cruz, overwhelms the French fleet of César, Duke of Vendôme and captures ten galleys and brigantines, as well as burning four other warships and 15 barges.
October 25 – Erdeni Bumba, the wife and chief consort of China's Shunzhi Emperor, is demoted from being the empress to being a concubine.
October 29 – Pierre-Esprit Radisson, a French Canadian teenager who had been captured by a Mohawk raiding party two years earlier and then tortured, escapes captivity in what is now the U.S. state of New York.
November 8 – The Battle of Arronches takes place near the town of Arronches on the Portuguese side of the border between Portugal and Spain, with the Portuguese Army outflanking and defeating a larger Spanish force.
November 16 – The Krishnanattam, a series of eight dance dramas written by Mana Veda, Zamorin of Calicut in India to tell the epic of the Hindu god Krishna, is completed.
November 30 – Jacques Dyel du Parquet completes his installment payments, totaling 41,500 French livres, to become the exclusive owner of the Caribbean islands of Martinique, Grenada, Saint Lucia and the Grenadines.
November – John Casor, a servant of African descent in Northampton County of the colony of Virginia, leaves Anthony Johnson's farm, after claiming his contract of indenture had expired, and goes to work for a new employer, Robert Parker. Johnson sues Parker, claiming that Casor is a slave for life, rather than an indentured servant, and the court issues a landmark ruling on March 8, 1655, establishing African-Americans as property.
December 7 – The Moti Masjid, an Islamic mosque made completely of white marble and within the walls of the Agra Fort in what is now the city of Agra in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, is dedicated by the Mughal Emperor, Shah Jahan, on 16 Muharram 1064.<ref>"The Symbolic Role of Calligraphy on Three Imperial Mosques of Shah Jahan", by Wayne E. Begley, in Kalādarśana: American Studies in the Art of India (E. J. Brill, 1981) p. 8</ref>
December 12 – The dissolution of Barebone's Parliament is voted by its members after having passed laws for the Commonwealth of England.
December 16 – The Instrument of Government in England becomes Britain's first written constitution, under which Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland,<ref name="Pocket On This Day">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> being advised by a remodelled English Council of State. This is the start of The First Protectorate, bringing an end to the first period of republican government in the country, the Commonwealth of England.

Date unknown

Marcello Malpighi, an Italian pioneer of microscopical anatomy becomes a doctor of medicine.
Stephen Bachiler, a clergyman and early advocate for the separation of church and state returns to England after having spent more than 20 years overseas in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The gardens surrounding the Taj Mahal mausoleum are completed at Agra.