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14 August 1385, at Kreva Castle

At Kreva Castle on 14 August 1385 — the Monday before the Feast of the Assumption, as the act itself dates it — Grand Duke Jogaila issued a Latin document ratifying terms his envoys had negotiated with representatives of Queen Elizabeth of Bosnia and Polish lords. The subject was his proposed marriage to Jadwiga and his accession to the Polish throne.

The surviving parchment runs 26 lines, roughly 560 words. It is small, hastily prepared and visibly corrected.

What Jogaila actually promised

Roman-rite baptism for himself, his unbaptised relatives, nobles and people. The release of all Christian captives, efforts to recover lost lands, and payment of the 200,000 florins specified under Jadwiga's earlier marriage arrangement with William of Austria.

And the perpetual applicare of his Lithuanian and Ruthenian lands to the Polish Crown — a verb with no single uncontested legal reading, proposed translations running from incorporation to a looser dynastic association.

His brothers Skirgaila, Kaributas and Lengvenis and his cousin Vytautas were named with him and attached their seals; those seals survived for centuries and disappeared during the nineteenth century.

None of it was executed that day

The document did not baptise Jogaila, marry the couple, crown him, convert Lithuania or create a functioning common government. Those steps remained to be carried out in 1386 and 1387, beginning with the Polish counter-pledge issued at Vawkavysk on 11 January 1386.

Scholars agree the parchment is authentic and dispute what it legally is. One major Lithuanian diplomatic study classifies it as a ratification or authenticated protocol of marriage negotiations rather than an interstate treaty constituting a union.

The Jagiellonian dynasty was not established on 14 August: Jogaila had not yet been baptised, married or crowned.

4 March 1386, at Wawel Cathedral

At Wawel Cathedral in Kraków on 4 March 1386, Bodzanta, archbishop of Gniezno, crowned the Lithuanian grand duke Jogaila king of Poland as Władysław Jagiełło.

Bodzanta had also taken part in the baptism and the marriage that preceded it. Jogaila was probably about 24.

Three ceremonies in eighteen days

The coronation closed a rapid accession sequence: baptism on 15 February, marriage to the reigning Queen Jadwiga on 18 February, crown on 4 March.

Polish elites had confirmed his selection at Lublin, and the baptism and marriage satisfied the immediate religious and dynastic conditions for kingship.

His baptismal name, Władysław, deliberately recalled Władysław Łokietek, the Piast ruler remembered for reuniting the Polish kingdom.

Poland now had two crowned rulers

Jadwiga had been crowned in 1384 and kept her own royal authority; she did not become merely her husband's consort. By the end of the ceremony Poland had two crowned royal partners.

The coronation did not fuse Poland and Lithuania into a single state — that relationship developed through successive unions over generations — and Lithuania's organised Catholic conversion belongs mainly to Jogaila's 1387 mission there.

Both rulers' chanceries went on issuing documents.

The twenty-second day of the fifth lunar month

The date usually printed as 22 May is the twenty-second day of Goryeo's fifth lunar month, not 22 May on a European solar calendar. The National Institute of Korean History converts it to 26 June 1388, and on that day Yi Seong-gye and Jo Min-su turned the expeditionary army back across the Yalu River from Wihwa Island.

Ming's announced Tieling commandery claim had prompted King U and Choe Yeong to launch the Liaodong expedition. The official scholarly encyclopedia's reconstruction counts 50,464 personnel — 38,830 left- and right-army troops plus 11,600 attendants — and 21,682 horses.

Requests refused

Repeated requests to withdraw had been rejected by King U and Choe Yeong. The recorded complaints were hunger, deep floodwater and the difficulty of advancing during the rains.

No Ming army confronted Yi on the island. The obstacles in the record are weather, flooding, supplies, disease risk and desertion, alongside his wider strategic objections.

Yi persuaded the commanders to turn back and confront the king's advisers rather than cross into Ming territory.

Ten days to Gaegyeong

The army began marching south, but it did not attack the capital that day. It entered Gaegyeong on the third day of the following lunar month — 6 July in solar conversion — defeated the defenders and arrested Choe Yeong; King U was deposed soon afterwards.

The reversal was not Yi's act alone. Jo Min-su commanded the other half of the expedition and joined the decision, and whether it was a preplanned coup or an improvised seizure of opportunity remains debated.

The Goryeosa shows Yi on a white horse with a red bow and white-feathered arrows, waiting on the riverbank until the whole army had crossed — a chronicle compiled under the dynasty he later founded, which calls him Taejo.

15 June 1389, on Kosovo Field

An Ottoman army led by Sultan Murad I met the coalition assembled by Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović on Kosovo Field, near present-day Priština, on 15 June 1389 in the old calendar.

The TDV scholarly encyclopedia puts both forces at roughly equal strength, each slightly above 30,000, and warns that the transmitted figures are greatly exaggerated.

Vidovdan is now commemorated on 28 June — a commemorative tradition rather than a straightforward conversion of the medieval date.

Nobody agrees who won it

The fighting caused heavy losses and ended with both commanders dead. Sources disagree over the tactical outcome, with claims running from Christian victory to no victor at all to Ottoman victory.

Early Christian reports could describe a victory because Murad had died, while later Ottoman narratives emphasised Ottoman success.

There is no dependable casualty total for either side.

Who killed Murad

Murad was killed in an attack whose timing and circumstances vary between source traditions. In the Ottoman account assessed by the TDV encyclopedia, Lazar was captured and killed after Murad's assassination.

Later Serbian tradition names Miloš Obilić as the assassin and accuses Vuk Branković, who commanded Lazar's right, of betraying him. Early reports confirm Murad's violent death but do not securely establish the killer's identity, and the betrayal charge is not supported by reliable reconstruction.

Bayezid, who had commanded an Ottoman wing, succeeded his father; Lazar's minor son Stefan inherited under the regency of his mother Milica. Serbia was badly weakened, but it was not conquered on the field that day.

June 1391, inside the walls of the judería

In June 1391 a Christian mob broke into Seville's walled Jewish quarter, set its gates on fire, killed hundreds of Jews, plundered homes and drove many survivors to accept baptism.

Rabbi Hasdai Crescas, writing in October 1391, dated the attack to 1 Tammuz 5151 — Sunday 4 June. The Cuarta crónica general, written in 1460, gives Tuesday 6 June; modern accounts generally use 6 June, but the date is not beyond dispute.

The figures that are repeated, and the one that is defensible

The cautious description of the deaths is hundreds killed. The familiar total of 4,000 comes from that 1460 chronicle, and its modern scholarly editor judges it almost certainly exaggerated.

The attack shattered Seville's aljama, the organised Jewish community, and reports of it helped inspire assaults elsewhere in Castile and the Crown of Aragon.

Benjamin Gampel's comprehensive study states that comparable attacks were not recorded in Portugal or Navarre.

The archdeacon nobody places at the scene

Contemporary royal officials blamed the long anti-Jewish agitation of Ferrán Martínez, archdeacon of Écija, though no contemporary account puts him physically at the riot. Royal letters had complained about his threats more than a decade earlier.

Royal and ecclesiastical authority in the city had weakened after the deaths of King Juan I and Seville's archbishop, and Enrique III was eleven years old and governed through a regency.

Alvar Pérez de Guzmán and Juan Alonso de Guzmán had suppressed an earlier Seville riot that year, on Ash Wednesday; the precise spark for the June assault is not securely known.

25 September 1396, outside Nicopolis

A Christian coalition that had been besieging the Ottoman-held Danubian fortress of Nicopolis met Sultan Bayezid I's relief army on 25 September 1396 and suffered a comprehensive defeat.

One modern reconstruction puts the coalition at roughly 12,000–16,000 and the Ottoman force at 15,000–20,000; medieval estimates run much higher and are unreliable.

The line-up was not simply Christians against Muslims: Stefan Lazarević's Serbian contingent fought for Bayezid, while Byzantine troops and Italian fleets supported the crusaders.

The charge that was claimed as a right

According to the survivor Johann Schiltberger, the French-Burgundian contingent under John, Count of Nevers, insisted on attacking first, despite Sigismund of Luxembourg's preference for troops experienced against Ottoman tactics.

It broke through the forward formations and was then surrounded and largely unhorsed or captured. Sigismund's remaining force was defeated by the Ottoman army and its Serbian vassal contingent.

Sigismund escaped to the Danube and boarded a galley; Schiltberger says desperate men clinging to overloaded boats had their hands struck away and drowned.

The morning after

The next day Bayezid ordered the captured crusaders brought before him. Schiltberger reports that many were executed, while selected nobles were spared for ransom and younger captives were retained.

Schiltberger was about 16, and in his account survived because Bayezid's son noticed his youth. He wrote after a long captivity, and his numbers need caution — his 16,000 crusaders is useful testimony, his 200,000 Ottomans plainly inflated.

Ransom negotiations for the high-ranking French and Burgundian captives began shortly afterwards and produced major early diplomatic contacts between the Ottomans and western European courts.

Morning of 15 July 1410

On the morning of 15 July 1410 the forces of Władysław II Jagiełło and Vytautas faced the Teutonic Order between the villages of Grunwald, Stębark and Łodwigowo in Prussia.

Estimates of the armies differ. Nadolski gives about 20,000 Polish troops, 10,000 Lithuanian and 15,000 Teutonic; Biskup gives about 18,000 Polish cavalry plus several thousand infantry, 11,000 Lithuanian cavalry, and about 21,000 Teutonic cavalry plus several thousand infantry. No contemporary source supplies a dependable headcount.

After a morning standoff in the heat, Teutonic heralds brought two unsheathed swords to Jagiełło and Vytautas, challenging them to stop delaying and begin — an episode recorded by the later chronicler Jan Długosz.

The withdrawal nobody can classify

Vytautas's right wing, made up of Lithuanian, Ruthenian, Samogitian and Tatar units, attacked first and later withdrew. Teutonic units pursued it.

Whether that was a genuine rout or a deliberate feigned retreat remains disputed. Długosz described flight; other scholars read at least part of the movement as controlled.

Długosz wrote roughly six decades after the battle and was not an eyewitness.

By about seven in the evening

The fighting ran more than six hours, ending around 19:00. Jagiełło committed his reserves, the Teutonic reserve was surrounded, Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen and the Order's senior officers were killed, and the Teutonic camp was taken. The battlefield museum's synthesis of the sources puts the Order's dead at 203 of roughly 250 members present.

The victors captured 51 Teutonic banners, which surviving evidence records being carried to Kraków and hung in the cathedral. The next day Jagiełło ordered von Jungingen's body covered in purple and sent to Malbork for burial.

Within days Prussian towns and castles began expelling Teutonic garrisons and submitting to Jagiełło — but Heinrich von Plauen, who had missed the battle, reached Malbork on 18 July and organised the defence that kept the field victory from destroying the Order.

The 37th session

At its 37th session on 26 July 1417, the Council of Constance pronounced sentence against Pedro de Luna, the Avignon claimant Benedict XIII. The 27 July date that circulates in some secondary accounts belongs to his excommunication; the session and the deposition sentence are consistently dated 26 July in the conciliar acts and in modern scholarship.

The council declared him a perjurer, a schismatic and a heretic, and deprived, deposed and expelled him from his claimed papal office and from the Catholic Church.

What the sentence did

It released Christians from obedience to Benedict and prohibited anyone from renewing allegiance to him.

He had refused repeated requests to abdicate even after the Spanish kingdoms withdrew their obedience, and Sigismund of Luxembourg had personally tried to negotiate a resignation. The other two claimants were already out: Gregory XII resigned through his representatives in July 1415, and John XXIII fled Constance and was deposed in May 1415.

Benedict was condemned as a heretic and a schismatic, but even hostile accounts did not attack his personal morality or priestly character.

Peñíscola

The decision left no important political power recognising Benedict and cleared the way for an election at Constance. He stayed at the fortress of Peñíscola, where he had been based since 1415, and went on regarding himself as the legitimate pope.

He never resigned or accepted the sentence. He was the last of the three principal Constance-era claimants, though his remaining cardinals later elected minor successors to his line.

Whether the Western Schism ended here or with Martin V's election on 11 November depends on what is meant: this removed the last broadly relevant claimant, the election supplied the widely accepted replacement.

11 November 1417, in a warehouse on the water

On 11 November 1417 a special electoral body at Constance elected the Roman cardinal Oddone Colonna pope. He took the name Martin V because the election fell on the feast of Martin of Tours.

The electors had entered the waterfront Kaufhaus on 8 November, occupying the upper floors while merchants' goods stayed below. Fifty-three of them lived in 56 temporary cells — three built for men who never arrived.

Not a conclave of cardinals

The election used an exceptional body of 23 cardinals plus 30 representatives, six from each of the council's five nations, rather than the College of Cardinals alone. The council wanted a result that could command support across the former obediences.

An initial scrutiny on 10 November produced no winner. Accessions of votes the next day gave Colonna the required majorities and ultimately made the choice unanimous — unanimous by the medieval procedure of accessio, not on a first ballot.

By Colonna's own later statement, the final election came at about ten in the morning.

Deacon, priest, bishop

Colonna was only a subdeacon when chosen. He was ordained deacon on 12 November, priest on 13 November and consecrated bishop on 14 November; his coronation followed on 21 November.

The election won recognition across the former obediences and institutionally restored one broadly accepted head to the Latin Church.

The previous claimants were gone only in the sense that the council no longer recognised them: John XXIII and Benedict XIII were both still alive, and Benedict still asserted his claim.

21 November 1417

Oddone Colonna, elected Pope Martin V ten days earlier, was ceremonially crowned at Constance on 21 November 1417. The ceremonies used both Constance Cathedral and the courtyard of the episcopal palace.

The cardinals conferred the papal coronation insignia in the presence of King Sigismund, prelates, princes, clergy, nobles and townspeople.

Three ordinations in three days

Colonna held no priestly or episcopal orders when the electors chose him. Jean Allarmet de Brogny, cardinal-bishop of Ostia, ordained him deacon on 12 November and priest on 13 November, then consecrated him bishop on 14 November.

Only after that sequence could the coronation proceed.

Where the official list begins

The Holy See's papal list dates Martin V's pontificate from 21 November 1417 and numbers him the 206th pope.

By the end of the ceremony he had been publicly inaugurated as the single pope around whom the major Western obediences could reunite. He stayed at Constance through the council's closing phase rather than going straight to Rome.

Benedict XIII never personally surrendered his claim, and retained a small following.

29 April 1429, opposite Chécy

A supply convoy accompanying Joan reached the Loire opposite Chécy, east of Orléans, on 29 April 1429. Marshal Sainte-Sévère and Admiral Louis de Culant commanded the escort, estimated at about 400–500 soldiers.

Charles VII had authorised Joan to travel with the convoy, which had been assembled at Blois. Its commanders had come up the safer southern side of the river, which meant the provisions now had to be transferred into boats.

Waiting on the wind

The wind at first kept the boats from reaching the loading point. Jean de Dunois — then known as the Bastard of Orléans, and commanding the city's defence — met Joan near the river, and his later testimony associated the wind's favourable change with that meeting.

The provisions and part of the escort then crossed into Orléans by water.

Through the Burgundy Gate at about eight

Joan entered the city through the Burgundy Gate at around 8 p.m., while the rest of the convoy turned back toward Blois. She lodged in the house of Jacques Boucher, treasurer to the Duke of Orléans.

Her arrival was not the lifting of the siege, and most of the army that had escorted her was still outside the walls.

Within days Dunois brought additional troops from Blois, French attacks on the English bastilles began on 4 May, and the English withdrew on 8 May.

Morning, 30 May 1431

On the morning of 30 May 1431 Joan confessed and received the Eucharist before being taken from Rouen Castle to the Old Market, dressed in women's clothing.

At about 9 a.m., Pierre Cauchon and the ecclesiastical court publicly pronounced her a relapsed heretic, near the Church of Saint-Sauveur.

She was about 19. Her exact birth date is unknown, and that figure rests on a birth around 1412.

Abandoned to secular power

After a sermon by Nicolas Midi, the ecclesiastical judges formally abandoned Joan to secular power. Later witnesses said English personnel took her directly to the prepared pyre, without a separate secular sentence being read.

The legal classification was relapse into heresy, not witchcraft. On 24 May she had abjured and received a life sentence; after she resumed male clothing and reaffirmed that her voices came from God, Cauchon's court treated her as having relapsed.

Surviving evidence about why she resumed male clothing is contested.

The Old Market

Joan was bound to a high execution structure and burned alive. A cleric later testified that she asked for a church cross to be held where she could see it, and that she repeatedly invoked Jesus as the fire rose.

Witnesses examined during the nullification proceedings of 1450–1456 said the executioner gathered the remains and cast them into the Seine. Those accounts were collected more than twenty years after the fact and belong to the witnesses, not to the record of the day.

Ministers of Henry VI sent a narrative of the trial to European rulers on 8 June.