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Contents: political eventscommerce transportation religion agriculture food availability |
China's Kublai Khan dies February 12 at age 78 after a 35-year reign that has established the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty, subdued Korea and Burma, and founded the city that will become Beijing (Peking). The great khan is succeeded by his grandson Timur Oljaitu, who continues the dynasty that will rule until 1368.
The Siamese kingdoms of Xieng-mai and Sukhotai are forced to pay tribute to Kublai Khan before his death.
England's Edward I begins a series of futile expeditions against France's Philippe IV in an effort to regain his Gascon fortresses. An alliance with the count of Flanders gives Edward some support, but Philip has a fleet under the command of the Genoese admiral Benedetto Zaccaria.
England's Devonshire mines in the next 7 years will provide the country's mint with an average of 500 pounds of silver per year, but most English coins will continue to be made from imported silver.
Paper money printed with both Chinese and Arabic characters is used at Tabriz in Azerbaijan (see 1280).
Travel in England is easier than it will be at any time for the next 500 years.
The vacancy that has existed on the papal throne at Rome since the death of Pope Nicholas IV 2 years ago ends July 5 with the election of the ascetic hermit Pietro del Morrone, 85, who earlier in life wore a hair shirt, lived in a mountain cave, and headed a group of hermits that will come to be called Celestines and incorporated into the Benedictine order. Lacking any education and unable to speak Latin, he accepts the position because the vacancy has imperiled the Church, and he rides to his inauguration on a donkey, but as Celestine V he is dependent on Charles II of Naples, to whose friends and relatives he gives titles in his Curia. Finding the papacy an obstacle to his ascetic struggle for salvation, he asks his lawyer if he may resign, is told that he can, and abdicates December 13, becoming the first pope to do so. He is succeeded by his lawyer, the Anagni-born Benedict Cardinal Caetani, who will reign until 1303 as Boniface VIII. Some claim that Celestine's abdication was unlawful, however, and he is captured while trying to escape via the Adriatic to his hermitage and sent back to Pope Boniface, who interns him in Fumone Castle to prevent a division in the Church occasioned by the existence of two popes.
English grain exports supply the Continent with wheat from the South and barley and oats from the North. Collected in manorial barns and in market towns for carriage by wagon to the ports, the grain is carried in heavy wagons on well-maintained roads.
Famine strikes England with special severity despite the fact that more English land is tilled than ever has been before and ever will be again.
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