1444
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William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, secures a 2-year truce with France in an effort to end the exhausting Hundred Years' War that has continued off and on since 1337; his cession of Maine and Anjou to the French enrages his countrymen, but he will be created duke of Suffolk in 1448.
Margaret of Anjou, the beautiful daughter of Lorraine's King René, is betrothed to England's feeble-minded Henry VI May 1 in St. Martin's Church at Tours. René's second daughter, Yolande, takes part with Agnès Sorel in a ballet at Châlons in June.
Leonardo Bruni dies at Florence March 9 at age 73 (approximate), having served as the city's chancellor since 1427. An outstanding humanist scholar, he has gained renown for his Ciceronian Latin translations of classical Greek works and has written Italian-language biographies of Dante, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccacio plus a 12-volume history of the Florentine people (Historiarium Florentini populi libri XII). Bruni is buried in the Church of Santa Croce.
The Ottoman sultan Murad II summons the Walachian prince Dracul across the Danube and forces him to leave as hostages his son Radu and his son Dracula, 13 (see 1448).
The Truce of Adrianople (Edirne) June 12 brings temporary peace between the Christians and Ottoman Turks; Serbian despot George Brankovich, now 77, is restored to power. János Hunyadi and counselors to Poland's Wladyslaw III Warnenczyk (Hungary's Ladislas [or Ulászló] IV), force the Ottoman sultan Murad II to conclude the Peace of Szeged July 1, Murad agrees to evacuate Serbia and Albania plus any other territory taken from Hungary and to pay an indemnity of 100,000 gold florins, but a papal representative encourages the Hungarians to break the truce and resume their invasion of the Balkans, they resume hostilities July 3, advancing through Bulgaria toward the Black Sea under the leadership of János Hunyadi, but the Battle of Varna November 10 ends in victory for the sultan Murad II, who has been called back from retirement to head the Ottoman army and overwhelms the Christian forces. Murad has crossed the Bosphorus in defiance of a Venetian fleet that has blocked the Dardanelles and defeats a large force of Hungarians and Walachians, whose attack on the sultan's camp miscarries; Murad takes many knights prisoner, although János Hunyadi escapes by the skin of his teeth. Poland's Wladyslaw III Warnenczyk (Hungary's Ladislas [or Ulászló] IV) is killed in the fighting at age 20; Zbigniew Cardinal Oleshnicki will rule Poland until Wladyslaw's death can be proved (see 1447), and although the 4-year-old Ladislas V is elected king of Hungary under the guardianship of his cousin Friedrich, that country lapses into feudal anarchy for lack of a strong ruler (see 1446).
Venetian efforts to find new spice routes gain impetus from reports by Niccolo de' Conti, a traveler who has returned to Venice after 25 years in Damascus, Baghdad, India, Sumatra, Java, Indochina, Burma, Mecca, and Egypt. Pope Eugenius IV orders de' Conti to relate the story of his travels to papal secretary Poggio Bracciolini as penance for his compulsory renunciation of Christianity.
Painting: St. Peter Altarpiece by Konrad Witz, who uses a landscape of Lake Geneva to depict ChristWalking on the Water.
Architect-sculptor Bernardo Rossellino, 34, begins work on a magnificent tomb for the eminent chancellor Leonardo Bruni (Rossellino has studied under Filippo Brunelleschi).
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