Read history

A year with no day in it

No contemporary source permits reconstruction of a specific day in 1431. Later Cambodian and Ayutthayan chronicles preserve a tradition that Ayutthayan forces conquered Angkor in approximately 1431–1432.

Those chronicles were written centuries afterwards and disagree over dates and rulers. Contemporary inscriptions disappear in the early fourteenth century, leaving a major evidentiary gap.

Michael Vickery concluded that an Ayutthayan intervention of some kind probably occurred around 1431, connected to the Cambodian political centre's movement south toward the Phnom Penh river-port region — while cautioning that the chronicles cannot be read literally.

What the ground says

Sediment cores from Angkor Thom show that land use, burning, erosion and moat maintenance had already declined during the fourteenth century, before the traditional conquest date. The evidence does not support a sudden demographic collapse in 1431.

Occupation and ritual activity continued at Angkor after the political centre shifted, which contradicts the idea that the whole city was emptied permanently in a single sack.

Fifty Buddhas

Material evidence does support some fifteenth-century Ayutthayan presence. Researchers identified more than fifty early Ayutthayan-style Buddha images whose stone indicates manufacture at Angkor, interpreted as possible offerings by an occupying force and its artists; one proposal puts the occupation at twelve to fifteen years.

Those images are consistent with an occupying presence, but they cannot by themselves establish the date, the violence, or the political form of the conquest.

Scholars accept an intervention or occupation far more readily than the full traditional story of a seven-month siege, catastrophic sack, mass deportation and immediate abandonment.

Where the number comes from

In John H. Rowe's historical chronology, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui ascended around 1438 as the ninth ruler in the traditional Inca king list, and Rowe treated that accession as the beginning of Cusco's imperial phase. His 1945 chronology assigns the reign to 1438–1471.

Rowe calculated the date chiefly from Miguel Cabello Balboa's chronicle of 1586. No contemporary, independently dated Inca document establishes an accession in that year, and no month or day is recoverable — even sources that keep Rowe's chronology normally write 'around' or 'circa'.

The story the colonial accounts tell

In the traditional narrative, the leader Yupanqui established dominance in the Cusco Valley after battles with the Chancas, was crowned Sapa Inca, and took the name Pachakuti.

The accession is presented as a shift from regional hegemony around Cusco to an explicitly expansionist state. Neither the date nor a single-day transformation can be independently demonstrated.

Scholars dispute the reliability of the traditional dynastic list and how literally the Chanca victory story should be read.

What the radiocarbon does to the date

Archaeological and radiometric evidence indicates that Inca expansion had already begun before 1438 in some regions. One cited analysis places the expansive phase at AD 1401–1518 at 68% probability.

The dispute is not a choice between a fully documented emperor and a wholly mythological figure. It concerns chronology, king lists, attributed deeds and the political shaping of oral history.

Not even the conquests of Pachacuti's own reign are all his: the later northern and Chimú campaigns are often attributed to his son Topa Inca Yupanqui.

Spring 1440, in manuscript

In spring 1440 Lorenzo Valla circulated the first redaction of De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, a polemical and philological argument that the supposed imperial donation was forged.

He was not the first to doubt it. Earlier medieval writers and Nicholas of Cusa had challenged the document; what Valla produced was the sustained philological refutation that became famous.

Nothing was printed in 1440. The first printed edition identified by the treatise's modern editor appeared in 1517, edited by Ulrich von Hutten.

Written for a king in a fight with a pope

Valla wrote while serving Alfonso V of Aragon, whose claim to Naples was opposed by Pope Eugenius IV. The treatise attacked the pope's asserted right to treat Naples as a papal fief and award its investiture.

He opened by acknowledging that he was attacking a pope armed with both political power and excommunication — and went on anyway, under a king's protection.

The tests he applied to the text

Valla combined historical, legal and linguistic criticism: that Constantine could not or would not have transferred the western empire, that no ancient history recorded such a transfer, and that the document was full of contradictions, barbarisms and anachronisms.

Among the concrete tests, he challenged the decree's use of Roman 'satraps' and its impossible dating formula, which named Constantine and Gallicanus as fourth-time consuls.

What he demonstrated was that the text is not a fourth-century imperial act. Dating the forgery to the middle or later eighth century is a conclusion of later scholarship, not one Valla securely established.

1441, off the Rio do Ouro

Prince Henry sent Antão Gonçalves to the Rio do Ouro region — around present-day Dakhla in Western Sahara — chiefly to obtain monk-seal skins and oil. In 1441, after loading that cargo, Gonçalves decided to seek human captives as an additional prize and a source of information.

He and nine companions, from a ship's company of twenty-one, seized two people: an Azenegue-speaking man, and a Black woman whom the chronicler Zurara describes as already enslaved by the local group.

The night raid

Nuno Tristão then arrived in an armed caravel, under orders that expressly included capturing inhabitants. The crews made a night attack on two encampments, killed four people and captured ten men, women and children, including a nobleman called Adahu.

The captives spoke what Zurara called the Azenegue language of the Sahara, and the Arabic-speaking interpreter the Portuguese had brought could not initially understand them; Adahu also knew the language the chronicle calls Moorish.

The captives were divided between the Portuguese parties aboard ship. Gonçalves returned to Portugal, and Zurara says both captains afterwards appeared before Prince Henry with them.

What the entry gets wrong

Zurara's chronicle, composed more than a decade later under royal patronage, is the principal narrative source. It is unusually detailed and openly celebrates Henry and the raiders, and it names 1441 without giving a departure, capture or arrival day.

It does not identify Lagos as the arrival port for this group. Lagos is securely associated with the much larger 1444 landing and the public partition of 235 captives there.

Calling all the 1441 captives Black Africans is also inaccurate — Zurara distinguishes an already-enslaved Black woman from Azenegue-speaking Saharan captives — and slavery and African presence in Europe long predated 1441.

The end of the twelfth lunar month

An undated entry at the close of the twelfth lunar month of King Sejong's twenty-fifth regnal year, 1443, records that the king had personally created 28 vernacular letters and called them Hunminjeongeum — 'Proper Sounds for the Instruction of the People'.

The entry records a script already substantially made, not the beginning of a project. The National Institute of Korean Language notes that no earlier annal entry documents the secret development.

The annals say only 'this month'. The commonly cited 30 December is the official database's placement of an undated monthly notice, and that lunar month ran into early 1444 in Western conversion.

Seventeen consonants, eleven vowels

The original system comprised 17 consonants and 11 vowels. Basic consonant forms reflected the articulatory organs; basic vowel forms represented heaven, earth and humanity.

Sejong's later preface explains that Korean speech differed from Chinese and that people unable to master Chinese writing often could not express what they wished, so he sought letters that could be learned and used conveniently.

'Hangul' is the modern name. In 1443 the script was called Hunminjeongeum, and also eonmun — vernacular writing.

Who made it, and who objected

The record attributes the creation to Sejong himself, as does Jeong Inji's later postface. Hall of Worthies scholars were afterwards ordered to prepare detailed explanations and examples, and their documented role is clearest in that explanation, testing and implementation rather than in the invention.

In the second lunar month of 1444, Choe Malli and other Hall of Worthies officials submitted a formal memorial objecting to aspects of the project.

The explanatory manuscript promulgating the alphabet was published in the ninth lunar month of 1446, three years after the creation recorded here.

The ninth lunar month of 1446

During the ninth lunar month of 1446, King Sejong's government completed and published the Hunminjeongeum, formally presenting the Korean alphabet Sejong had completed in 1443.

The Veritable Records of King Sejong say the work was completed 'this month' and reproduce Sejong's explanation of the letters, their sounds, syllable formation and tone marks. No source fixes publication to one verified day.

Where 9 October came from

Jeong In-ji's postface is dated to the first ten days of that month, not specifically to its tenth day. The modern observance was obtained by taking the last day of that interval and converting it to the solar calendar.

October 9 is therefore a commemorative date. The strongest event date the sources support is October 1446.

What was in the book

The published Haerye edition combined Sejong's proclamation with explanations and examples prepared by Hall of Worthies scholars, closing with Jeong In-ji's postface.

The proclamation did not merely list letters. It told readers which vowels went below an initial consonant and which went to its right. The original alphabet had 28 letters, four more than the 24 basic letters of modern Korean.

It was a publication milestone rather than a replacement of Chinese-character writing: official documents remained predominantly in Hanja until Hangeul became the official national writing system in 1894.

Where 1451 comes from

The year rests on identifying a possible eclipse in one Seneca version of the tradition with the solar eclipse of 28 June 1451. William Canfield published that calculation in 1902.

Later researchers challenged it, because the eclipse's central track did not cross the presumed council location. Mann and Fields argued instead for 31 August 1142; other scholarship places the formation broadly around 1450–1550, or treats it as a process rather than a date.

No contemporaneous written record supplies a verifiable founding year or day. The history was preserved orally and through wampum.

What the tradition describes

In Haudenosaunee tradition the Peacemaker and Aiionwatha — commonly called Hiawatha — travelled among the communities and persuaded the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca to accept the Great Law of Peace. Haudenosaunee scholarship also identifies Jikohnsaseh, the Mother of Nations, as an essential founder.

The narrative culminates in planting the Tree of Peace, burying weapons beneath it, recording the laws through wampum, and binding five arrows together to represent the nations' united strength.

Haudenosaunee sources describe the Peacemaker as a messenger sent to the nations rather than as a Mohawk chief; traditions about his origin vary, and some place his birth among Wendat/Huron people.

What the confederacy actually was

The nations accepted the longhouse as the symbol of their unity while keeping their own national councils. Confederacy-wide questions would be deliberated by a Grand Council at Onondaga.

That council holds 50 chief offices — Mohawk 9, Oneida 9, Onondaga 14, Cayuga 10 and Seneca 8. Clan mothers presented the leaders, retained authority over their conduct and could remove a leader who departed from his obligations.

The Confederacy was not dissolved after the American Revolution; its traditional government continues.

18 June 1452, at St Peter's

At St Peter's in Rome, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas to King Afonso V of Portugal. Its closing formula dates it to the fourteenth day before the Kalends of July, which under Roman inclusive counting is 18 June 1452.

The bull granted Afonso and his successors apostolic permission to invade, conquer and subjugate Saracens, pagans and other designated enemies of Christ wherever situated, to appropriate their territories and property, and to reduce their persons to perpetual servitude.

The spiritual accounting

Nicholas offered plenary remission of sins to Afonso and to participating Christians, and extended spiritual benefits to people who contributed money or material support to the campaign.

Participants who died while going to war, fighting or returning were offered restoration to the state of innocence associated with baptism.

The grant also authorised Portuguese kings to appropriate their opponents' movable and immovable property for their own use and profit.

What the bull does not say

Dum Diversas identifies no geography — not Africa, not West Africa, not the Ottoman Empire. Applying it particularly to Portuguese African expansion is a historical interpretation informed by surrounding events and by the later Romanus Pontifex.

The authorisation ran to Afonso V and his Portuguese successors, not generally to every European state, and what it created was a claimed religious-legal license rather than a record of any same-day conquest or slave shipment.

Romanus Pontifex, in 1455, repeated the operative grant and attached it explicitly to Ceuta, Guinea and Portuguese possessions south of Cape Bojador.

8 January 1455, at St Peter's

Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Romanus Pontifex at St Peter's in Rome for King Afonso V of Portugal and Prince Henry. Portugal's national archive and museum sources catalogue the promulgated parchment as 8 January 1455.

A developing Portuguese–Castilian dispute over Guinea trade and territory had created pressure for a papal settlement. Portugal had seized an Andalusian vessel returning from Guinea, Castile demanded restitution, and Portuguese rulers wanted their existing monopoly backed by papal sanctions.

John II of Castile, who had threatened war over it, died before the bull was issued; Henry IV succeeded him in July 1454 with the dispute unresolved.

What it granted

The bull incorporated and extended Dum Diversas, declaring Portuguese title to Ceuta, to existing and future acquisitions, and to conquest from Capes Bojador and Não through Guinea and beyond toward the southern shore.

It gave Afonso, his successors and Prince Henry authority to legislate, impose tribute and license trade in the claimed territories and seas. Licensed trade with Muslims and other non-Christians was permitted, minus five categories: iron implements, construction timber, cordage, ships and armour.

It prohibited other Christians from navigating, trading, fishing or otherwise interfering in those waters and possessions without Portuguese permission, under excommunication for individuals and interdict for communities.

How the penalties bit

They did not depend on personal delivery. Once the bull was posted at the Lisbon church, a two-month clock ran, after which violators were bound by it.

The bull did not initiate Portuguese capture and trafficking of Africans: its own narrative says people from Guinea had already been taken by force, barter and purchase and sent to Portugal.

Its enslavement language largely repeats and geographically applies the authority already granted by Dum Diversas in 1452.

27 March 1462, in Moscow

Vasily II, grand prince of Moscow and Vladimir, died in Moscow on 27 March 1462. Russian encyclopedic sources date both the death and Ivan's inheritance to that day; some modern English references start Ivan's reign on 28 March, the difference being whether the death-day or the following day counts as the first regnal day.

The Russian Orthodox Encyclopedia says Ivan inherited the grand principality, Nizhny Novgorod, Suzdal and substantial additional lands.

Four brothers, four towns

Ivan's four younger brothers received appanages under Vasily's settlement. Yuri's centred on Dmitrov, Andrey the Elder's on Uglich, Boris's on Volok Lamsky and Andrey the Younger's on Vologda.

These were subordinate appanages, not shares equal to Ivan's grand-princely domain.

Continuity, not elevation

This was an inheritance by an established co-ruler rather than an improvised succession after a power vacuum. Ivan had appeared in documents alongside his father as a grand prince since the late 1440s, and had exercised authority when Vasily was absent.

What he became was grand prince of Moscow and Vladimir — not the ruler of a fully formed nation-state called Russia.

His later annexations, titles, symbols and confrontation with the Great Horde all came afterwards.

12 December 1474

Henry IV died in Madrid during the night of 11–12 December 1474, though historical authorities normally record 11 December as his death date. On the 12th the royal councillors Rodrigo de Ulloa and Garcí-Franco carried the official news from Madrid to Isabella in Segovia.

Isabella was not proclaimed that day. The ceremony took place on 13 December in Segovia's main square and the adjoining church of San Miguel, and a municipal act records that date.

The rival who got no banner

Henry's twelve-year-old daughter Juana was in Madrid, the city where he had died. The consulted archival synthesis reports that no immediate proclamation was made for her there.

Opponents disputed Juana's legitimacy, but her biological paternity cannot be resolved from the partisan allegations circulated by Isabella's supporters.

Not yet a war

The internationalised civil war did not begin when the messengers arrived in Segovia.

Afonso V of Portugal — Juana's maternal uncle, not yet her husband — invaded Castile and married her in May 1475.

The War of the Castilian Succession began with that invasion, five months after the news reached Segovia.

Sunset, 1 March 1476

At sunset on 1 March 1476, west of Toro near Peleagonzalo, Ferdinand's Castilian-Aragonese army intercepted the Portuguese and pro-Juana army of Afonso V and Prince John. The Portuguese were returning toward Toro after operations against Ferdinand's position at Zamora.

One estimate gives each side approximately 8,000 men, and presents that explicitly as an estimate rather than a muster.

This was not a plain Castile-against-Portugal fight: Castilians served on both dynastic sides, and Ferdinand's army also drew on Aragonese resources.

Two results on one field

Ferdinand's forces defeated and scattered the part of the opposing army commanded by Afonso V.

Elsewhere on the same field, Prince John defeated the Castilian right wing, took prisoners, kept his formation and retained possession of the ground.

Contemporary casualty figures conflict sharply and look vulnerable to partisan inflation, so no total can be treated as verified.

The letters that followed

Ferdinand and Prince John each sent victory announcements. Ferdinand's message circulated more effectively inside Castile — the kingdom whose allegiance was in question.

The battle did not end the war or award anyone the crown that evening. What it produced was political momentum behind Ferdinand and Isabella's version of events.

Isabella was not the battlefield commander; she used Ferdinand's claim of victory to win Castilian support.