1470s

Events

Contents: 1470 1471 1472 1473 1474 1475 1476 1477 1478 1479

1470

January–December

• March 12 – Wars of the Roses in England – Battle of Losecoat Field: The House of York defeats the House of Lancaster.
• March 20 (Julian calendar) – The Battle of Nibley Green is the last fought between the private armies of feudal magnates in England.
• May 15 – Charles VIII of Sweden, who has served three terms as King of Sweden, dies. Sten Sture the Elder proclaims himself Regent of Sweden the following day and is recognised by the estates on June 1.
• July 12 – The Ottomans capture Euboea.
• September 13 – A rebellion orchestrated by King Edward IV of England's former ally, Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, forces the King to flee England to seek support from his brother-in-law Charles the Bold of Burgundy.
• October 3 – Warwick releases Henry VI of England from the Tower of London and restores him to the throne.
• December 18 – Lê Thánh Tông leads the Đại Việt army into Champa, conquering the country in less than three months.

Date unknown

• Start of the Anglo-Hanseatic War.
• The first contact occurs between Europeans and the Fante nation of the Gold Coast, when a party of Portuguese land and meet with the King of Elmina (see also History of Ghana).
• Johann Heynlin introduces the printing press into France and prints his first book that same year.
• In Tonga, in or around 1470, the Tuʻi Tonga dynasty cedes its temporal powers to the Tuʻi Haʻatakalaua dynasty, which will remain prominent until about 1600.
• Between this year and 1700, 8,888 witches are tried in the Swiss Confederation; 5,417 of them are executed.
• Sir George Ripley (alchemist) dedicates his book The Compound of Alchemy to the King Edward IV of England.

1471

January–December

• March 1 – Emperor Le Thanh Tong captures the Champa Capital, establishing new regions in middle Vietnam.
• March – The Yorkist King Edward IV returns to England to reclaim his throne.
• April 14 – Battle of Barnet: Edward defeats the Lancastrian army under Warwick, who is killed.
• May 4 – Battle of Tewkesbury: King Edward defeats a Lancastrian army under Queen Margaret and her son, Edward of Westminster the Prince of Wales, who is killed. Later in the month, King Henry VI of England is murdered, eliminating all Lancastrian opposition.
• July 14 – Battle of Shelon: The forces of Muscovy defeat the Republic of Novgorod.
• August 9 – Pope Sixtus IV succeeds Pope Paul II, to become the 212th pope.
• August 24 – King Afonso V of Portugal conquers the Moroccan town of Arzila.
• August 29 – The Portuguese occupy Tangiers after its population flees the city.
• October 10 – Battle of Brunkeberg in Stockholm, Sweden: The forces of Regent of Sweden Sten Sture the Elder, with the help of farmers and miners, repel an attack by Christian I, King of Denmark.
• December 21 - Discovery of the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe by Portuguese navigators.^[1]

Date unknown

• Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui of the Inca Empire dies and is succeeded by his son Tupac Inca Yupanqui.
• João de Santarém and Pedro Escobar cross the Equator. The southern hemisphere is discovered and sailors begin to be guided by a new constellation, the Southern Cross.
• Portuguese sailors reach Mina de Ouro on the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) and explore Cape St. Catherine, two degrees south of the equator. Mina de Ouro becomes the chief center for the gold trade and a major source of revenue for the crown.
• Moorish exiles from Spain, led by Moulay Ali Ben Moussa Ben Rached El Alami, found the city of Chefchaouen in the north of Morocco.
• Marsilio Ficino's translations of the Hermetica into Latin, De potestate et sapientia Dei, are published.

1472

January–December

• February 20 – Orkney and Shetland are returned by Norway to Scotland, due to a defaulted dowry payment.
• December 31 – The city council of Amsterdam prohibits snowball fights: "Neymant en moet met sneecluyten werpen nocht maecht noch wijf noch manspersoon." ("No one shall throw with snowballs, neither men nor (unmarried) women.")

Date unknown

• Foundation of the Kingdom of Fez.
• Possible discovery of Bacalao (possibly Newfoundland, North America) by João Vaz Corte-Real.
• An extensive slave trade begins in modern Cameroon, as the Portuguese sail up the Wouri River.
• Fernão do Po claims the central-African islands Bioko and Annobón for Portugal.
• Banca Monte Dei Paschi Di Siena, the world's oldest surviving bank, is founded.
• Leonardo da Vinci is listed as a master in Florence's "Company of Artists".
• Publication of Johannes de Sacrobosco's De sphaera mundi (written c. 1230) in Ferrara, the first printed astronomical book.
• Publication of Pietro d'Abano's Conciliator differentiarum quae inter philosophos et medicos versantur and De venenis eorumque remediis.
  

  Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum et precipue medicorum

• Volterra, a town in Italy, is sacked by Florentine soldiers.
• The Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Saint Peter in York, commonly known as York Minster was declared complete and consecrated.

1473

• February 12 – First complete printed edition of Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine (in Latin translation) published in Milan.
• August 11 – Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II defeats the White Sheep Turkmens led by Uzun Hasan at the Battle of Otlukbeli.

Date unknown

• Axayacatl, Aztec ruler of Tenochtitlan, invades the territory of the neighboring Aztec city of Tlatelolco. The ruler of Tlatelolco is killed and replaced by a military governor. Tlatelolco loses its independence.
• Possible discovery of Bacalao (possibly Newfoundland, North America) by Didrik Pining and João Vaz Corte-Real.
• The Almanach cracoviense ad annum 1474 is published.
• The city walls and defensive moat are built in Celje, Slovenia.
• Marsilio Ficino becomes a Catholic priest.
• Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye is the first book to be printed in English by William Caxton

1474

January–December

• February – The Treaty of Utrecht puts an end to the Anglo-Hanseatic War.
• March 19 – The Senate of the Republic of Venice enacts the Venetian Patent Statute, one of the earliest patent systems in the world.^[2] New and inventive devices, once put into practice, have to be communicated to the Republic to obtain the right to prevent others from using them. This is considered the first modern patent system.^[3]
• December 12 – Upon the death of Henry IV of Castile, a civil war ensues between his designated successor Isabella I of Castile and her niece Juana, who is supported by her husband, Afonso V of Portugal. Isabella wins the civil war after a lengthy struggle when her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon, the newly crowned king of Aragon, comes to her aid.

Date unknown

• Marsilio Ficino completes his book Theologia Platonica (Platonic Theology).

1475

January–December

• January 10 – Battle of Vaslui: Stephen III of Moldavia defeats the Ottoman Empire, which is led at this time by Mehmed the Conqueror of Constantinople.
• July 4 – Burgundian Wars: Edward IV of England lands in Calais in support of the Duchy of Burgundy against France.^[4]
• August 29 – The Treaty of Picquigny ends the brief war between France and England.
• November 13 – Burgundian Wars: Battle on the Planta: Forces of the Old Swiss Confederacy are victorious against those of the Duchy of Savoy near Sion, Switzerland.
• November 14 – The original Landshut Wedding takes place, between George, Duke of Bavaria, and Hedwig Jagiellon.

Date unknown

• Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye is the first book to be printed in English, by William Caxton in Bruges.
• Rashi's commentary on the Torah is the first dated book to be printed in Hebrew, in Reggio di Calabria.^[5]
• The oldest recorded game of chess is played, between Francesco di Castellvi and Narciso Vinyoles.
• Conrad of Megenberg's book, Buch der Natur, is published in Augsburg.^[6]

1476

January–December

• March 2 – Battle of Grandson: Swiss victory against Burgundy.
• November 26 – Vlad the Impaler declares himself reigning Prince of Wallachia for the third and last time. He was killed on the march to Bucharest, probably before the end of December. His head was sent to his old enemy Sultan Mehmed of the Ottomans.

1477

January–December

• January 5 – Battle of Nancy: Charles the Bold of Burgundy is again defeated, and this time is killed. This marks the end of the Burgundian Wars.
• February? – Volcano Bardarbunga erupts with a VEI of 6.
• February 11 – Mary of Burgundy, the daughter of Charles the Bold, is forced by her disgruntled subjects to sign the Great Privilege, by which the Flemish cities recover all the local and communal rights which have been abolished by the decrees of the dukes of Burgundy, in their efforts to create in the Low Countries a centralized state.
• February 27 – Uppsala University is founded, becoming the first university in Sweden and all of Scandinavia.
• August 16 – Mary of Burgundy marries Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, in Ghent, bringing her Flemish and Burgundian lands into the Holy Roman Empire and detaching them from France.^[7]
• November 18 – William Caxton produces Earl Rivers' translation into English of Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres at his press in Westminster, the first book printed in England on a printing press.^[8]

Undated

• Ivan III of Russia marches against the Novgorod Republic, marking the beginning of Russian Colonialism.
• Giovanni Pico della Mirandola starts to study canon law at the University of Bologna.
• Thomas Norton (alchemist) writes Ordinall of Alchemy.
• First printed edition of The Travels of Marco Polo.

1478

January–December

• January 14 – Novgorod surrenders to Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow.
• January 15 – Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, aged four, is married to five-year-old Anne de Mowbray, 8th Countess of Norfolk.
• February 18 – George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, convicted of treason against his older brother Edward IV of England, is privately executed in the Tower of London.
• April 26 – The Pazzi family attack Lorenzo de' Medici, and kill his brother Giuliano, during High Mass in Florence Cathedral.
• May 14 – Siege of Shkodra begins.
• November – Eskender succeeds his father Baeda Maryam as Emperor of Ethiopia at the age of six.
• November 1 – Start of the Spanish Inquisition
• December 28 – Battle of Giornico: Swiss troops defeat the Milanese.

Date unknown

• Lorenzo de' Medici becomes sole ruler of Florence.
• The Fourth Siege of Krujë by the Ottoman Empire of Krujë in Albania concludes and results in the town's capture after the failure of three prior sieges.
• Vladislav II of Bohemia makes peace with Hungary.
• Possibly the first reference to cricket, in "criquet", as discovered in France by Rowland Bowen in the 20th century. It has been dismissed by some (most notably John Major) and presaged with Edward II's "Creag" (1300) by others.
• First printing (in Padua) of Mondino de Liuzzi's Anathomia corporis humani, the first complete published anatomical text.

1479

January–December

• January 20 – Ferdinand II ascends the throne of Aragon and rules together with his wife Isabella I, Queen of Castile over most of the Iberian peninsula.
• January 25 – Treaty of Constantinople between the Ottoman Empire and Republic of Venice according to which Venice will cede Argo, Negroponte, Lemnos and Shkodër, and pay an annual tribute of 10,000 golden ducati.
• April 25 – Ratification of the Treaty of Constantinople in Venice ends the Siege of Shkodra after fifteen months and brings all of Albania under the Ottoman Empire.
• May 13 – Christopher Columbus, an experienced mariner and successful trader in the thriving Genoese expatriate community in Portugal, marries Felipa Perestrelo Moniz (Italian on her father's side) and receives as dowry her late father's maps and papers charting the seas and winds around the Madeira Islands and other Portuguese possessions in the Ocean Sea.
• August 7 – Battle of Guinegate: A French army sent to invade the Netherlands is defeated by Maximilian of Austria.
• September 4 – The Treaty of Alcáçovas (also known as the Treaty or Peace of Alcáçovas-Toledo) is signed between the Catholic Monarchs of Castile and Aragon on one side and the King of Portugal and his son on the other side, ending the four-year War of the Castilian Succession.
• October 13 – Battle of Breadfield (Hungarian: Kenyérmezei csata, Turkish: Ekmek Otlak Savaşı): The army of the Kingdom of Hungary, led by Pál Kinizsi and István Báthori, defeats that of the Ottoman Empire in Transylvania, Hungary, leaving at least 10,000 Turkish dead.

Ongoing

• The plague is in Florence.
• Johann Neumeister prints a new edition of Juan de Torquemada's Meditations, or the Contemplations of the Most Devout.^[9]

Births

• Nicolaus Copernicus, astronomer and mathematician

References