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5 January 1477, outside Nancy

On 5 January 1477, outside Nancy, René II of Lorraine and his Swiss and Alsatian allies attacked the Burgundian army besieging the city. Charles the Bold had held a winter siege there after René retook his capital.

René's numerically superior relief army outflanked and routed the depleted Burgundian force.

How Charles died, as far as it can be said

Charles died during the rout while trying to escape across a stream near the Saint-Jean pond. One source describes a severe wound running from above the ear toward the teeth.

The assailant, the weapon and the circumstances of the fatal blow cannot be established securely; the cinematic version, an identified halberdier delivering a known killing stroke, belongs partly to later tradition.

Accounts also disagree about the recovery of the body: a University of Edinburgh study says two days after the battle, the Musée Lorrain says five.

What was and was not settled

The defeat lifted the siege and restored René's control, opening what the Musée Lorrain describes as a new era of independence for Lorraine.

Burgundy did not thereby become French. Mary of Burgundy inherited the Burgundian Netherlands and Charles's other claims, while Louis XI moved to seize French Burgundian fiefs — producing a succession conflict rather than an instantaneous settlement.

René marked the place associated with Charles's death with a cross; it was replaced so often that the original cross and its inscription cannot now be reconstructed with certainty.

1 November 1478, at St Peter's

A royal petition had alleged that baptised Christians in the monarchs' jurisdictions were returning to Jewish rites, and asked for authority to pursue the alleged heresy under royal control. Pope Sixtus IV answered it on 1 November 1478 at St Peter's in Rome with the bull Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus, addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella as king and queen of Castile and León.

The bull, dated 1 November 1478, empowered the monarchs to select, dismiss and replace qualified clergy who would act as inquisitors in cities or dioceses under their jurisdiction. The appointees were to hold jurisdiction comparable to that of local ordinaries and existing inquisitors of heresy.

The specifications

Three appointees were permitted in a city or diocese, or at least two. Alongside academic credentials, the bull set a minimum age of forty.

Its stated targets were baptised Christians accused of returning to Jewish rites and beliefs, together with their supporters and protectors — not Jews who had never been baptised.

The decisive innovation was administrative: the pope let the monarchs choose, remove and replace the church judges.

Nothing started that day

No inquisitors were appointed by this bull. The first royal commissions were not issued until 27 September 1480.

It did not create the office of Inquisitor General, and it did not appoint Tomás de Torquemada; both came later.

What Ferdinand and Isabella acquired on 1 November was papal authority to choose and remove inquisitors — not an operating tribunal.

15 January 1478, or a process spread over two months

The conventional surrender date is 15 January 1478, when Novgorod accepted Ivan III's terms after a Muscovite campaign and siege begun the previous autumn.

Chronicle-based timelines describe a process rather than a single act: negotiations and concessions in December and early January, oaths sworn on several January dates, Ivan's entry into the city on 29 January, the bell lowered in February.

The 9 October in this entry was the day Ivan's main army set out for Novgorod — describing it as the start of a three-month Novgorodian rebellion reverses who was acting.

The terms

Ivan's central demands were that Novgorod would have no veche bell and no posadnik, and that he would hold sovereignty there as he did in Moscow.

A dispute over whether Novgorod had recognised him as gosudar — sovereign — rather than the less absolute gospodin gave him the pretext. After the city rejected his ultimatum his army marched, its divided leadership could not sustain resistance, and Novgorod's own military commander, Prince Vasily Grebenka-Shuisky, crossed to Ivan's camp.

Novgorod accepted direct rule without a final battle.

The oath, then the arrests

The oath ceremony was held in a chamber rather than the traditional square, because the veche had ceased to exist. The account says women and boyar retainers were also made to swear, and the oath document reportedly carried fifty-eight seals.

Arrests and confiscations began immediately, including the detention of Marfa Boretskaya and the seizure of the Boretsky family's property. Authority passed to governors appointed by Ivan.

The bell that had summoned citizens to the veche was ordered removed to Moscow, along with the civic archive.

20 January 1479

Following John II's death in Barcelona, his son Ferdinand succeeded to the Crown of Aragon, and 20 January 1479 is the date conventionally used. Institutional sources disagree by a day about the death itself: Enciclopèdia Catalana gives 19 January, while Spain's PARES authority record and Aragón's documentary portal give the 20th.

Ferdinand was already ruling in Castile beside his wife Isabella, so the Aragonese inheritance brought the two crowns under the married pair's joint dynasty — ten years after their marriage.

Navarre went the other way

John's Navarrese crown passed separately to Eleanor, his daughter by Blanche I of Navarre and Ferdinand's half-sister. She had served as her father's lieutenant in Navarre.

Her hereditary right arose at John's death, but her formal proclamation at Tudela did not take place until 28 January. She lived fifteen days beyond it.

Two crowns, two systems

What resulted was a composite or dynastic monarchy. Castile and the territories of the Crown of Aragon kept distinct laws, institutions and political systems; Isabella remained queen regnant of Castile, and Ferdinand's accession did not make the two a single jurisdiction.

The War of the Castilian Succession had not formally ended either — the Treaty of Alcáçovas followed in September 1479.

'Catholic Monarchs' is a conventional later label: Alexander VI formally granted the title in 1496.

8 October 1480

On 8 October 1480, forces of Akhmat Khan attempted to force a crossing of the Ugra River and were repelled by Muscovite troops. The crossing battles continued through 11 October.

The defenders at the opening of the fighting were commanded by Ivan Ivanovich Molodoy, Ivan III's son, and Andrei Vasilyevich Menshoy, Ivan III's brother. Forces led by Ivan III himself joined them on 11 October.

The date is the conventional one used by Russian reference works, on a pre-Gregorian calendar, and should not be silently converted.

Why Akhmat was at that river

He sought to restore the Horde tribute Ivan III had suspended in 1472. Muscovite control of the Oka crossings forced him to manoeuvre west toward the Ugra.

Casimir IV, king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania, was expected to support him. That support never reached the Ugra.

Akhmat ruled the Great Horde, a successor of the fragmented Golden Horde.

A stand rather than a battle

The Great Horde failed to secure a bridgehead, and after the attempts through 11 October the two armies faced each other across the water. The conventional span of the stand runs from 8 October to 11 November 1480.

Historians differ over whether to call the episode a battle, a defensive operation or primarily a standoff. The physical attempts to cross on 8–11 October are well attested, while the precise places along the river remain subjects of investigation.

Later Orthodox commemoration associated the outcome with the Vladimir Icon and the intercession of the Theotokos — a religious tradition rather than a secular account of the fighting.

January 1483

A secondary academic account places publication on 1 January 1483 of an inquisitorial order directing Jews in the dioceses of Cádiz, Seville and Córdoba to move elsewhere in the kingdom.

The exact day is not secure. Academic summaries and Haim Beinart's history give 1 January; the Seville municipal minute of 21 January only confirms that inquisitors had already ordered Jews to leave the archbishopric of Seville and the bishopric of Cádiz.

Sources also disagree over scope — some specify those dioceses, others describe all Christian Andalusia, or say further areas were added soon afterwards.

Not 1492, and not out of Spain

The order was regional. It did not command Jews to leave all of Castile and Aragon, as the general decree of 1492 would.

What it generally meant was relocation to other Castilian territory rather than departure from the Iberian Peninsula. Accounts differ over whether those affected were given one month or six, and over where they were directed to go.

The reasoning, and how little followed

The early Inquisition pursued a policy of separating practising Jews from conversos, whom inquisitors suspected of maintaining Jewish observances. Border-security concerns during the Granada war have also been proposed.

Publication and enforcement were separate things: scholarship reports delayed, uneven implementation and evidence of Jewish residence in the affected region afterwards.

The documentary evidence does not support attributing the January initiative personally to Tomás de Torquemada — Spain's PARES authority record dates his appointment as inquisitor general of Castile to 2 August 1483.

22 August 1485, near Market Bosworth

The armies of King Richard III and the invading claimant Henry Tudor met near Market Bosworth in Leicestershire on 22 August 1485. Richard had the larger force.

Archaeology has since relocated the core battlefield roughly two miles southwest of the traditional Ambion Hill interpretation, and the narrative sources vary in reliability and contradict one another on formations, terrain and individual actions.

The charge

After the fighting reached a stalemate, Richard led a rapid mounted charge straight at Henry Tudor's banners, trying to kill the claimant himself.

Sir William Stanley's previously uncommitted force entered the fighting on Henry's side, and Richard was surrounded and killed. Thomas Stanley's family army had stayed separate for much of the battle, leaving both sides unsure of its allegiance.

Stanley's intervention was decisive, but the evidence does not establish that he personally killed Richard.

What the bones show

Examination of Richard's skeleton found multiple blows from several bladed weapons, especially to his unhelmeted head, consistent with an attack by more than one person. One wound through the buttocks was probably inflicted after death, as a deliberate insult.

The individual killer cannot be identified. Contemporary accounts refer generally to Tudor supporters or Welsh foot soldiers, and the attribution to Rhys ap Thomas is traditional rather than proved.

Henry was not crowned on the field: his coronation followed at Westminster Abbey on 30 October, and Yorkist resistance continued to the Battle of Stoke Field in 1487.

18 January 1486

Henry VII and Elizabeth of York were married on 18 January 1486, making Elizabeth queen consort of England. Thomas Bourchier, cardinal and archbishop of Canterbury, officiated, according to later accounts drawing on the contemporary record.

English documents sometimes render the date 1485/86, because the English legal year then began on 25 March.

No detailed contemporary description of the ceremony survives. Many accounts name Westminster Abbey; other scholarship proposes St Stephen's Chapel in the Palace of Westminster; a recent Historic Royal Palaces article says St Paul's Cathedral, where the dispensation proceedings certainly took place shortly before.

The paperwork

The ceremony went ahead under a dispensation issued by the papal legate, James, Bishop of Imola. Papal instruments issued in March later confirmed both the marriage and the legate's authority.

Henry had pledged in 1483 to marry Elizabeth if he gained the crown, and Parliament petitioned him on 10 December 1485 to complete the match. He had already won, been recognised and been crowned first.

What it did and did not settle

The marriage joined Henry's Lancastrian-associated Tudor claim to Elizabeth's stronger hereditary connection to the Yorkist kings, giving their future children descent from both sides. It did not legally merge two corporate houses, and Henry did not become king through her.

Contemporary and near-contemporary accounts record unusually extensive public rejoicing in London — more than Henry's entry into the city or his coronation had produced.

Elizabeth became queen consort that day but was not crowned until 25 November 1487, and Yorkist-backed rebellion continued to Stoke that same year.

3 February 1488, not the 4th

Dias's two caravels approached the southern African coast from the south and reached the bay now called Mossel Bay on 3 February 1488. The 4 February date carried in this entry is not supported by the Portuguese academic encyclopedia, the Dias Museum or the South African scholarship consulted.

The anchorage was named for Saint Blaise, whose feast falls on 3 February; the Portuguese name is rendered variously as Aguada, Angra or Golfo de São Brás. The saint's day preserves a date the expedition's lost log cannot.

How they arrived from the wrong direction

After leaving the coast near Serra dos Reis on 6 January, the caravels worked southwest into the Atlantic for thirteen days, found westerly winds, sailed east, then turned north when no land appeared. They had already passed south of the Cape without sighting it.

It is unsafe to say a storm simply blew the fleet around the Cape. Eric Axelson's wind analysis argues that the mariners deliberately made long offshore tacks.

The watering stop

At the bay the expedition replenished its water and encountered Khoikhoi livestock herders. A confrontation reportedly ended when Dias killed one person with a crossbow.

No contemporary narrative of the voyage survives. The itinerary is reconstructed from later chronicles, early maps, rutters, saint's-day place-names and surviving padrões.

The landing supplied the first clear practical confirmation that the expedition had passed Africa's southern extremity, though the moment Dias understood that is not recorded.

12 March 1488, at Kwaaihoek

On the homeward leg of the voyage, Dias's two caravels anchored at Kwaaihoek, a headland west of the Bushman's River mouth in today's Eastern Cape. There the expedition erected a Portuguese limestone pillar and cross, the Padrão de São Gregório, dedicated for Saint Gregory's feast day on 12 March 1488.

Kwaaihoek sits on Algoa Bay in the Eastern Cape — not at the Cape of Good Hope this entry's title names.

Already on the way home

Dias's crew had compelled him to turn back farther east, at Rio do Infante — named for João Infante, who commanded the São Pantaleão — because they were exhausted, frightened and short of provisions.

Kwaaihoek was not where that decision was made. After placing the padrão the caravels resumed their westward voyage.

The marker was a substantial stone monument serving both as proof of arrival and as a declaration of Portuguese presence; Axelson distinguished it from the probable wooden cross erected at Ilhéu da Cruz.

Found under the sand

The stone cross vanished from the written record for centuries. Eric Axelson located and excavated the broken monument at Kwaaihoek in 1937–38.

About 5,000 pieces and chips were recovered in 1938 and reconstructed at the University of the Witwatersrand, giving physical corroboration for both the site and the monument.

The surviving monument corroborates Kwaaihoek strongly, but it cannot by itself prove every detail attached to 12 March.

Saturday, 23 April 1491

On Saturday 23 April 1491, Ferdinand's field army came within sight of Granada after entering the Vega, beginning the conventional chronology of the city's final siege. He set his first camp at a village rendered 'Guetar' in the early English translation of Juan de Mariana's history, about a league and a half from the city.

Mariana specifies 23 April. An Arabic-derived chronology places Ferdinand's movement into the Vega around 22 April, and some modern military chronologies give 23 or 26 April for the arrival — so 'the siege began on 23 April' compresses a developing operation into a single date.

The first moves

Ferdinand sent the Marquis of Villena with 3,000 horse, in Mariana's account, to range through the neighbouring mountains, promising support if they were attacked.

Isabella was not beside him at the forward camp. She remained at Alcalá la Real with their children, organising supplies, and joined later.

Muhammad XII had repudiated an earlier agreement to surrender the city, which is why the monarchs mounted a decisive spring campaign.

A camp that turned into a town

By nightfall the royal army had a camp within sight of Granada and cavalry operating against the surrounding approaches. The temporary encampment became a sustained investment lasting about eight months.

After a later fire, the besiegers built the permanent-looking camp-town of Santa Fe, to demonstrate that they would not withdraw.

Granada did not fall that April: capitulation followed in November, and Muhammad XII surrendered the Alhambra on 2 January 1492.

31 March 1492, in Granada

In Granada on 31 March 1492, Ferdinand II and Isabella I signed royal provisions ordering every Jewish man, woman and child in their kingdoms and lordships to depart by the end of July and never return.

'Alhambra Decree' is a convenient singular label. Archival authorities describe two closely related royal provisions governing the territories of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon, not one statute for a modern nation-state.

Beneath the royal signatures, the secretary Juan de Coloma certified that he had caused the Castilian text to be written at the monarchs' command.

What the text ordered

Jews who remained or returned were threatened with death and confiscation without further trial. People sheltering them after the deadline risked losing possessions and privileges.

The edict temporarily placed Jews and their property under royal protection so they could sell what they owned and leave — while prohibiting the export of gold, silver, coined money and other restricted goods.

Its stated reasoning was that contact with practising Jews caused baptised Christians to Judaize, citing twelve years of inquisitorial activity, the residential segregation ordered in 1480 and an earlier expulsion from Andalusian towns as failed remedies. Those were the crown's accusations, not proof.

Nothing public for a month

The signed edict was not promulgated that day. Publication followed in Aragon on 29 April and across Castile on 1 May, after which Jewish households faced a compressed window in which to accept baptism or liquidate property and go.

Published estimates of how many emigrated run from roughly 40,000 to more than 150,000, and remain highly disputed.

The familiar story of Torquemada brandishing a crucifix while Jewish courtiers offered the crown 30,000 ducats is a later legend; Haim Beinart notes there is no evidence that such a petition occurred.