1400

1391 1392 1393 1394 1395 1396 1397 1398 1399 1400

political events

England's legitimate king Richard II dies childless in Pontefract Castle, Yorkshire, February 14 at age 33, possibly at the hands of an assassin but more probably of illness contracted in the cold, damp Tower of London (see 1399). Rumors spread that Richard has escaped and that the body buried without ceremony is that of another man. Many consider his 24-year-old nephew Edmund de Mortimer to be his rightful heir, and a revolt begins in August against the Lancastrian king Henry IV (Henry of Bolingbroke); the uprising starts as a land dispute between Welsh chieftain Owen Glendower and his rival Lord Reginald Grey of Ruthin but quickly becomes a full-fledged rebellion when Henry sides with Ruthin and awards him the land. Glendower gathers his followers September 16 and 9 days later they loot the English garrison town of Ruthin, putting it to the torch (see 1402).

The Holy Roman Emperor Wenceslas of Bohemia is deposed for drunkenness and incompetence after a 22-year reign. Wenceslas refuses to accept the decision and will continue to hold the imperial crown for 10 years against the challenges of his rivals Sigismund and Jobst, who will have the support of two rival kings. But the elector palatine of the Rhine, 48, is elected German king August 21 at Rense, Pope Boniface IX will recognize him in 1403, and he will reign until 1410 as the emperor Rupert.

The Tatar leader Tamerlane regains control of Azerbaijan, marches on Syria, storms and sacks Aleppo, and defeats a Mameluke army (see 1399; 1401).

literature

Nonfiction: Chronique de France, d'Angleterre,d'Ecosse et d'Espagne by French poet-chronicler Jean Froissart, who entered the Church in 1372, becoming chaplain to Guy II de Chatillon, comte de Blois, under whose auspices he was ordained canon of Chimay, in Hainaut. Now 63, he has cited exact dialogues, included all available facts, given firsthand accounts of weddings, funerals, and great battles (notably the "honorable adventures and feats of arms of the Hundred Years' War"), incorporated also allegorical poetry celebrating courtly love, and written in a didactic, moral tone to please his patrons with exaltation of chivalric ideals and an emphasis on pageantry and splendor.

Poetry: The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, who dies at his native London October 25 at age 57 (approximate), leaving the work incomplete. He has been urged by friends to write in Latin, since the English language is changing so fast that they question whether future generations will be able to read Chaucer's words. His tales will immortalize the poet's name with such Chaucerian phrases as "bless this house," "every man for himself," "through thick and thin," "love is blind," "brown as a berry," "pretty is as pretty does," "it is no child's play," "murder will out," and "for in the stars is written the death of every man." Chaucer's Saintly Constance says in "The Man of Law's Wife," "Wommen are born to thraldom and penance/ And to ben under mannes governance." His Wife of Bath says, "In wifehood I intend to use my instrument as generously as my Maker sent it. If I am niggardly, may God give me sorrow! My husband shall have it morning and night when it pleases him to come forth and pay his debt." (She is depicted as a compendium of all women's vices.)

food and drink

Italian shops produce pasta on a commercial basis (see 1279); durum wheat is used to mill a granular semolina flour that is used, in turn, to make a straw-colored dough. Men tread barefoot on this dough for as much as a day to make it malleable, and a screw press powered by two men or a horse is then used to extrude the vermicelli under pressure through pierced dies. The shops employ night watchmen to protect the valuable pasta (see Naples, 1785).

population

"The Nun's Priest's Tale" by Chaucer criticizes those who have sex "moore for delit than world to multiplye," an implication that people are using coitus interruptus, sponges, or other ways to avoid pregnancy.

London's population reaches 50,000, but no other English city is as populous as Lübeck or Nuremberg, each of which has 20,000, much less as big as Cologne, which has 30,000. Most Britons and Europeans live on the land, as they will continue to do for the next 4 to 5 centuries.

Paris has more than 230,000 inhabitants: virtually every household keeps poultry, and many have pigs, despite laws forbidding it.

1391 1392 1393 1394 1395 1396 1397 1398 1399 1400

Astronomy

By this date the Chinese have learned that the length of the solar year is about 365.25 days. See also 1200 Astronomy.

The dulcimer is mentioned for the first time. See also 1360 Communication.

Hughes Aubriot, provost of Paris and builder of the Bastille, roofs over a stretch of the open ditches that serve as sewers in Paris (as such ditches do in most medieval cities). Eventually, all the drainage ditches of Paris are covered, giving some semblance of a sewer system. See also 1388 Ecology & the environment.

Oil begins use as a base for paints. See also 1420 Communication.

During this century the suction pump is invented. See also 1650 Tools.

A lateen sail rigged fore and aft and carried on a mizzenmast begins to be used in the Basque region of Spain around the Bay of Biscay. Its use spreads rapidly to northern Europe and the Mediterranean. See also 1570 Transportation.

The Chinese ship called the junk has four permanent masts and two temporary ones, lugsails stiffened with battens of bamboo, a central rudder, and a hold divided into watertight compartments. Fleets of junks patrol the Indian Ocean to as far away as Ceylon, some with crews of 600 or more. See also 1414 Transportation.

By this date carvel-constructed ships weighing up to 1000 tons are in existence in Europe, far larger than any European ships in Antiquity, although perhaps matched in size by Chinese junks. See also 1300 Transportation; 1450 Transportation.

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