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England's Henry VIII concludes peace with Scotland and with France, which cedes Tournai to England but will later buy it back for 600,000 crowns. The Royal Navy ship Great Harry ushers in a new era of naval warfare, using big guns to destroy enemy vessels rather than relying entirely on hand-to-hand combat after grappling or ramming and boarding, although those practices will continue for years to be the chief tactics of all navies.
France's Louis XII is married October 9 to the 18-year-old English princess Mary Tudor. His second wife has died without bearing a male heir to the throne.
Polish forces under Jan Tarnowski defeat a Muscovite army at Orsza (see 1512).
The Turkish city of Kars is incorporated into the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman sultan Selim the Grim invades Persia. Having slaughtered an estimated 40,000 of his "heretic" subjects, he is determined to impose Sunnism on the Shiite Persians, and his 80,000 cavalrymen rout a Persian army August 23 in the Battle of Chaldiran. Shah Ismail is wounded but escapes to Dagestan, leaving behind the favorites of his harem. Selim enters Tabriz September 15 and massacres much of its populace (see 1516).
Spanish conquistadors conquer Cuba from the "Indians" (see Havana, 1515).
"Not only the Christian religion but nature cries out against slavery and the slave trade" says Pope Leo X in a bull against slavery, but the trade continues to grow (see 1450; 1526).
Spanish priest Bartolomé de Las Casas, 40, protests enslavement of Indians in the New World. Formerly a planter in Hispaniola, he is the first priest to have been ordained in the Western Hemisphere, has turned his efforts to serve the interests of the oppressed natives, and delivers a sermon August 15 announcing that he is returning his Indian serfs to the colonial governor (see 1515).
Spanish soldier Pedro Arias (or Pedrarias) Dávila, 74, arrives at Panama with 19 ships bearing some 1,500 Spanish settlers (see 1509; 1513). A veteran of the wars against the Moors in Granada and more recently in North Africa, he has been appointed captain general of Spanish lands in the New World and establishes a colony (see Balboa, 1519).
Hungary's Dózsa Rebellion is a peasant uprising led by nobleman György Dózsa, 43, against large landowners, whose power has increased in the reign of Ladislas II. Cardinal Tamás Bakócz has called for volunteers to join a crusade against the Ottoman Turks April 16. Some 100,000 peasants have responded, and the crusade is suspended May 23. The peasants are left without food or clothing, they refuse to disperse or work in the fields, and the army declares its intention to overthrow the nobility who have oppressed the peasantry. The peasants attack their landlords, burn hundreds of manor houses and castles, murder thousands of nobles, capture the fortresses of Arad, Lippa, and Világos, threaten Buda, and lay siege to Temesvár, where they are defeated by János Zápolya, 27, governor (voivode) of Transylvania. Dózsa is captured along with his top aides and executed July 10. The rebel army is crushed by October, and the Diet condemns the entire peasant class to "real and perpetual servitude," binding it to the soil, imposing heavy taxes on it, ordering it to pay for the damaged caused by the uprising, and increasing the number of days that a peasant must work for his feudal lord.
Württemberg has a peasant uprising (the "Poor Conrad" insurrection) provoked by a new tax levied to keep up the splendor of the court. Duke Ulrich, now 27, has obtained territory through alliances with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, but his extravagance has driven him deeply into debt (see 1515).
England's Henry VIII charters Trinity House at Deptford in Kent as a royal dockyard. The "guild or fraternity of the most glorious and undividable Trinity of St. Clement" is an association of mariners that will monopolize the training and licensing of pilots and masters. Given charge of directing the new naval dockyard, it will be given authority late in the century to erect beacons and other marks to guide England's coastal shipping, and it will grow in influence for centuries.
Bishop-statesman William Elphinstone dies at Edinburgh October 25 at age 85, having founded the University of Aberdeen and helped to introduce printing into Scotland.
Painting: Birth of the Virgin by Andrea del Sarto; The Money Changer and His Wife by Quentin Massys.
The Vatican architect Bramante dies at Rome April 14 at age 69 (see Raphael, 1515).
Green peas come into use in England to a limited extent, but dried peas are more commonly used and are consumed as "pease porridge"—hot, cold, even 9 days old (see 1555).
Hispaniola has 17 chartered Spanish towns; the island's native population falls to 14,000, down from 60,000 in 1508 (see 1548).
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