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Denmark's Kristian II invades Sweden with a large army of French, German, and Scottish mercenaries. He has persuaded Pope Leo X to excommunicate the 26-year-old Sten Sture the Younger and place Sweden under an interdict. He defeats Sture at Bogesund; Sture sustains a mortal wound January 19 at the Battle of Tiveden and dies February 5 on the ice of Lake Malaren en route back to Stockholm. Kristian advances without opposition on Uppsala, where the Swedish Riksraad has assembled. The Swedish senators agree to accept Kristian as king provided that he rule according to Swedish laws and customs and without recriminations. The king signs a convention March 31, but Sture's widow, Dame Kristina Gyllenstjerna, at Stockholm has rallied the peasantry to defeat the Danish invaders at Balundsas March 19. The bloody Battle of Uppsala April 6 (Good Friday) gives Kristian a narrow victory over the Swedish patriots. The Danish fleet arrives in May, Kristian lays siege to Stockholm, and Kristina surrenders September 7 on the promise of a general amnesty. Kristian is crowned hereditary king of Sweden at Stockholm's cathedral November 4. Danish soldiers seize some of the king's guests November 7. Convicted of heresy and violence against the Church, the bishops of Skara and Stragnas are beheaded in the public square at Stockholm at midnight November 8, and the Danes kill 80 other Swedes in the ensuing bloodbath.
Kristian II has his men exhume the body of Sten Sture and burn it along with that of Sture's small child. He has Sten's widow, Dame Kristina, and other Swedish noblewomen sent to Denmark as prisoners and suppresses opposition on the pretense of defending the Church. Victims of the massacre at Stockholm include the nobleman Erik Vasa, whose 24-year-old son Gustav Eriksson hears about the incident from a peasant while hunting near Lake Mälar. Gustav escaped last year from the island fortress of Kalo on the east coast of Jutland, where Kristian II had treacherously held him hostage for 12 months. The peasant tells him that the king has put a price on his head. Gustav rallies the yeomen of the vales and will begin next year to drive the Danes out of Sweden (see 1523).
Last year's election of Spain's Carlos I as the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V provokes an uprising of the communeros, a group of cities led by Toledo aristocrat Juan (Lopez) de Padilla, 30. The king has summoned him to appear at Santiago in April, but Padilla has taken up arms instead. The communeros take exception to the king's leaving the country and using Spanish men and money for imperial purposes. They organize a Holy League (Santa Junta) at Avila in July and take Tordesillas August 29, giving them control over Carlos's mother (Joanna the Mad has lived at Tordesillas since losing her mind in 1506), but radical elements soon displace the aristocratic and bourgeois leadership (see 1521).
Portugal's Manuel I engages Polish commander Jan Tarnowski, now 32, to lead an army against the Moors, who are defeated.
Pope Leo X lures Perugian strongman Giovan Paolo Baglioni to Rome and has him killed at age 50 (approximate) (see 1506). He puts Giovan Paolo's cousin Gentile in charge of Perugia, but Gentile will be overthrown by his cousin Malatesta, now 29, who will be helped by his condottiere brother Orazio and rule Perugia until his death in 1531.
The Ottoman sultan Selim dies at Corlu September 22 at age 53 after an 8-year reign in which he has annexed Syria and Egypt to augment his Persian conquests. His 24-year-old son ascends the throne at Constantinople and will reign until 1566 as Suleiman I, adding to his father's conquests and winning the soubriquet Suleiman the Magnificent (see Belgrade, 1521).
A new Laotian king comes to power in the person of Photisarath, 19, a pious Buddhist who will reign until his death in 1547 and involve Lan Xang ("Kingdom of the Million Elephants") in wars with the Burmese and Siamese that will continue for 2 centuries (see 1546).
A new Spanish army of 1,400 men arrives in New Spain under the command of Panfilo de Narvaez to challenge Hernándo Cortéz (see 1519), but Cortéz surprises Narvaez near Veracruz and captures him (he will remain a prisoner for 2 years). Cortéz leaves Tenochtitlán for the coast in early May with his interpreters, Aguilar and Doña Marina, and most of his men. His garrison at Tenochtitlán comes under attack in his absence. Cortéz returns to the capital. He brings Montezuma II out to address the people, and the Aztec king, now 39 or 40, is either struck by a stone thrown by one of his people or garroted by a Spaniard (accounts will differ). Aztec forces attack the Spaniards, who are ambushed as they try to flee and lose 900 of their 1,300-man force; the remaining 400, including Cortéz, are all wounded but escape the massacre along with Doña Marina and another Indian woman (see 1521).
Ferdinand Magellan negotiates a stormy 38-day passage through the straits at the southernmost tip of South America (see 1519); he sails into the South Sea, and renames it the Pacific Ocean (see 1521; Balboa, 1513).
Bartolomé de Las Casas leaves for America in December with a party of farm workers to start a new colony in what later will be northern Venezuela (see 1519). He has failed to recruit enough farmers, however, and receives no encouragement from the encomenderos at Santo Domingo. Indians will attack his settlement, and his enterprise will end in disaster in January 1522 (see 1542).
England's Henry VIII and France's François I meet June 7 with 10,000 courtiers outside Calais on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The banquets, tournaments, and spectacles that ensue for 3 weeks will leave the French treasury crippled for 10 years.
German gunsmith August Kotter invents the rifle, a weapon whose "rifled" barrel makes it more accurate than earlier, smooth-bore firearms.
Smallpox takes a heavy toll at Veracruz. Introduced by a black seaman on a ship carrying the troops of Narvaez, the pox will spread until it kills half the population of New Spain.
Nonfiction: Appeal to the Christian Princes of the German Nation (An den Christlichen Adel deutscher Nation) by Martin Luther has a first printing of 4,000 copies and sells out in a week.
Painting: The Madonna with Saints Aloysius and Francis by Titian. Raphael dies April 6 at age 36, leaving his Transfiguration incomplete.
Theater: The Mandrake (La Mandragola) by Niccolo Machiavelli at Florence. "In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is lord."
A new wing to the doge's palace in Venice is completed. It replaces a structure destroyed by fire in 1483.
De Guisades Manjares y Potages by Spanish cook Ruperto de Nola gives recipes for berenjenas (aubergine, or eggplant—called in German Dollapffel). Mentioned in the Ebers papyrus of 1552 B.C., the vegetable was known in the Andean valleys of South America as guinea squash before it appeared in Europe (see agriculture [English introduction], 1587).
The Prospect of Whitby is mentioned for the first time in writing. The London pub will be the scene of cockfights, prize fights, and press-gang recruitment for the Royal Navy.
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