1407

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political events

Mantua's Francesco I dies after a 25-year reign in which he incurred the wrath of the late Gian Galeazzo Visconti and saved his estates and his own life only by allying himself with Visconti's Bolognese and Florentine enemies. He is succeeded by his son, who will reign until 1444 as Francesco II (see 1432).

Louis, duc d'Orléans, is murdered at Paris November 23 at age 35 after a night of drinking and wenching. He had become a favorite of his sister-in-law, the promiscuous French queen Isabelle of Bavaria, who bore the often mentally-deranged Charles VI six children in the years between 1393 and 1403. She has taken other lovers, including Jean the Fearless, duc de Burgundy, but had transferred her support to the unpopular spendthrift Louis, and his murder on orders from the duke of Burgundy begins a civil war between Burgundians and Armagnacs (the count of Armagnac is the father-in-law of Charles, the new duc d'Orléans). The Armagnacs are a reactionary, anti-English war party supported in the South and Southeast; the Burgundians, whose duke becomes the toast of Paris, are pro-English, favor peace, support the antipope Benedict XIII, and are themselves supported by the people, the University of Paris, and the Wittelsbach family that rules Bavaria (see 1419).

Chinese forces invade Vietnam, beginning an occupation that will continue until 1428 (see 980; 1418).

The Chinese admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho) returns from his first expedition with the prince of Palembang (Sumatra), who has been defeated in battle and placed in chains (see 1405; 1408).

medicine

The Black Death kills thousands of Londoners in a new epidemic of bubonic plague (see 1382; 1471).

literature

The Vast Documents [or Great Canon] of the Yong Le [Yung-lo] Era (Yong Le Dadian) is completed by Chinese scholars, thousands of whom have worked on the 22,877 manuscript rolls, or chapters, that constitute what will survive (in part) as the world's largest known encyclopedia. Designed to include all that has ever been written on history, philosophy, the arts, the sciences, and the Confucian canon, it contains both excerpts and entire works, filling 11,095 volumes.

food and drink

The French government begins to protect producers of Roquefort cheese. Made from the milk of ewes that graze on the stony soil of table land that cannot be cultivated, it is aged for 6 months in caves to acquire the fungal growth that gives it its special character. No maker of blue-veined cheese will be allowed to use the name Roquefort unless he or she makes it from ewes' milk by approved methods in or about the village of Roquefort, south of Bordeaux (see 1971).

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