JUNE 25.
1208. Philip, duke of Swabia, assassinated. He was elected emperor of Germany, but was obliged to give room to Otho, who had the most powerful supporters. His memory is still respected in Germany.
1520. The assaults of the Mexicans upon the Spaniards in the centre of their capital, which had continued without intermission since the massacre of the [13th May], (q.v.) was made with increased fury on this day. The Spaniards defended themselves with 12 pieces of artillery, which made terrible havoc upon their enemy; but as the number of them was infinite, they covered the sight of their dead with fresh numbers. The Spaniards with Cortez at their head made a sally into one of the principal streets, carrying fire and sword among the dense mass, destroying men and houses before them.
1526. An imperial diet assembled at Spires, and observed the rites of the reformed church. It was at this sitting that Charles V proposed the meeting of a general council for reforming the abuses of the church.
1634. John Marston died; an English dramatic author. He was a chaste and pure writer, avoiding the ribaldry and obscenity of the age.
1644. Thomas Westfield died; a learned English divine, whose eloquence and pathos procured him the appellation of the weeping prophet.
1663. John Bramhall, lord primate of Ireland, died. He was highly serviceable to the royal cause during the English civil wars.
1667. John Harman with 16 ships defeated a French fleet of 30, near Martinico.
1672. The king of France at the head of 120,000 choice troops, commanded by the ablest generals in the world, entered Utrecht in triumph, and advanced within 9 miles of Amsterdam. At this crisis the inhabitants of Amsterdam opened the sluices and laid the country under water. Fertile fields, numerous villas and flourishing villages were overwhelmed by the inundation. They even formed the design of migrating to their settlements in the East Indies, and erecting a new empire in the southern extremity of Asia. It was found that there were vessels in the harbor sufficient to transport 150 families, but a favorable turn in their affairs, prevented the necessity of having recourse to that desperate expedient.
1689. William Thomas, an English bishop, died; author of an Apology for the Church of England, and other works.
1695. Namur in Belgium taken from the French after a long and bloody siege.
1725. Jonathan Wild, the noted thief catcher, hanged at Tyburn. The evening previous he tried to poison himself, but lived to be stoned and hooted by the populace on his way to the gallows.
1744. Roger Gale, an English antiquary, died; esteemed one of the most learned and polite scholars of the age.
1767. Godfrey Sellius, a Prussian historian, died.
1781. The wives, children and dependents of those inhabitants of Charleston, who resided in the rebel colonies, ordered by the British to quit the place by the 1st of August. More than 1,000 persons were thus exiled.
1782. Action between the French and Spanish fleet, 25 sail, and the Newfoundland and Quebec fleets; 18 of the latter, laden chiefly with provisions, were captured.
1784. Judge White, with his family, having ascended the Mohawk river, landed at the mouth of the Sauquoit. Hence the origin of Whitestown. The country then was an unbroken wilderness.
1788. Virginia, the tenth state, adopted the federal constitution, 89 to 79, the least majority of any state except New York.
1794. Charles Barbaroux, a noted French revolutionist, guillotined. He attacked the usurpations of Robespierre and the machinations of the Jacobins, by which he fell.
1794. Charleroi surrendered to the French under Jourdan, seven days after the trenches had been opened. General Reinach and 3,000 Austrians who defended the fortress, were made prisoners of war.
1795. William Smellie, a Scottish naturalist, died. He was a printer by profession, wrote for the Encyclopedia Brittannica, translated Buffon, and conducted the Edinburgh Review and Magazine.
1807. An armistice between the emperors of France and Russia, when they held a personal conference upon a raft moored in the river Niemen, near Tilsit. The sovereigns embraced each other, and retiring under a canopy, had a long conversation, to which no one was a witness.
1813. British under admiral Cockburn, with 2,000 troops, took Hampton, Va., and pillaged it for two days.
1815. Bonaparte's farewell address to his soldiery.
1816. Hugh Henry Brackenridge, a Pennsylvania judge, died; known as the author of Modern Chivalry, a poem, and by other works.
1823. Alexander Griffiths, at once a parricide and suicide, was buried in the cross roads near London; the last so interred, as the act giving suicides Christian burial then took effect.
1841. Alexander Macomb, commander in chief of the army of the United States, died at Washington. He entered the service of the United States in 1799 as cornet of dragoons; was raised to the rank of brigadier general in 1814, and commanded at the successful battle of Plattsburgh.
1842. M. Sismondi, the historian, died near Geneva, aged 69.
1844. Jarvis Cutler, the first white man that cut down a tree for a settlement in Ohio, died at Evansville, Indiana.
1852. Dudley Marvin, an eminent lawyer of western New York, died, aged 65, at Ripley, Chautauque county. He was a native of Lyme, Ct., studied at Canandaigua, and was several times returned to congress.