1573
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Contents: political eventsmedicine religion literature art theater, film everyday life crime environment marine resources agriculture food and drink |
Venice makes peace with the Turks March 7 at Constantinople, breaking with Spain, abandoning Cyprus, and agreeing to pay an indemnity of 300,000 ducats. Only Candia (Crete), Paros, and the Ionian Islands remain under Venetian control.
Poland elects her first king May 11, choosing Henri d'Anjou de Valois, brother of France's Charles IX. His mother, Catherine de' Medici, has paid heavily to secure the election. The Pacta Conventa (Henrician Articles), signed by Henri, places strict limits on royal power and formally recognizes the right of the Polish nobility to elect kings. Henri pledges himself to convoke the Sejm (legislature) every 2 years, hold council meetings on a regular basis between sessions with members of the council to be senators chosen by the Sejm, which reserves the right to restrict the king's power over the army and legislation, choose his successor, and even choose his bride. If he should default on his promise the gentry is automatically to be released from its allegiance to him (see 1574).
Spanish forces under Don Juan de Austria take Tunis from the Ottoman Turks, who have held it since 1569. The Ottomans will regain it next year through the strategy of the grand vizier Mehmed Sokollu, now 68, who effectively controls the empire of the drunken sultan Selim II.
The Edict of Boulogne July 8 ends a fourth war between French Catholics and Huguenots on terms favorable to the Huguenots (but see 1574).
Spanish forces lay siege August 21 to the fortified town of Alkmaar, 23 miles northwest of Amsterdam (see 1572). Don Frederic de Toledo aims to massacre the town's garrison and townfolk as an example to other insurgents. He has 16,000 troops and plenty of guns in his command; the patriot garrison only 800 trained soldiers plus 1,300 armed citizens. But the Dutch repel Don Frederic's September 21 assault, killing 1,000 of his men (only 24 Dutch soldiers and 13 armed citizens are killed). Don Frederic abandons the siege October 3 when the Dutch threaten to open their dikes and flood the area; Spanish prestige suffers a blow, and the Dutch insurgents are elated. Deciding to pursue a more conciliatory policy, Felipe II sends Luis de Requesens y Zuñiga, 45, to govern the Lowlands in place of Fernando, duque de Alva, now 65, whose cruelty has made his name infamous; Requesens arrives at Brussels November 17 (see Leyden, 1574).
Walter Devereux, 1st earl of Essex, leads an expedition to colonize the Irish province of Ulster. Now 31, Essex has offered to mount the expedition at his own expense to subdue that part of the province whose people have not accepted English overlordship. Sir Brian MacPhelim and Turlough Luineach O'Neill lead the opposition to English rule, and Essex takes harsh measures against the Irish (see 1574).
China's Wan Li assumes the imperial throne at age 10 and begins a 47-year reign as Shen Zong. Ming dynasty culture will flourish in the new reign, but Manchu power will increase.
The Ashikaga shōgunate that has ruled Japan since 1336 ends as the shōgun Yoshiaki Ashikaga takes arms against the strongman Nobunaga Oda, who assumed power 5 years ago. He has the support of Oda's brother-in-law Nagamasa Asai (see 1570), but Oda sacks Asai's castle (permitting his own sister Oichi and her children to escape), Asai commits seppuku (ritual suicide), Oda banishes Ashikaga from Kyoto, and Ashikaga, now 35, shaves his head and becomes a Buddhist priest (see 1582).
Augsburg botanist-physician Leonhard Rauwolf, 38, embarks from Marseilles as physician to the Near East factors of his brother-in-law Melchior Manlich's merchant firm, which hopes to profit from the discovery of new drugs.
A typhus epidemic strikes the area surrounding the city of Mexico (Tenochtitlan) in New Spain.
The Compact of Warsaw January 28 guarantees absolute religious freedom to people of all faiths under the Polish constitution. Poland's new king Henri de Valois participated in last year's St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, Polish Protestants have objected to his election, and Catholics have agreed to adopt the Compact. It will be reaffirmed in years to come, and it will help Poland to avoid the religious wars that will trouble other European countries in the century ahead. A safe haven since about 1500 (see 1495), Poland will have more than half of Europe's Jews by 1800, but the compact will not protect non-Catholics permanently from discrimination (see Russia, 1766).
Poetry: Five hundred good points of Husbandry by Suffolk farmer Thomas Tusser contains rhymed proverbs to guide fellow farmers.
Painting: The Battle of Lepanto by Tintoretto for the Doges' Palace at Venice.
Theater: Amyntas (Aminta) by Sorrento-born playwright Torquato Tasso, 29, 7/31 at a theater on Belvedere Island in the Po River.
Italian beauty Vittoria Accoramboni, 16, marries Francesco Peretti, a young man whose uncle Felice, Cardinal di Montalto, is expected to become pope. Her husband will use his influence to have her brother Marcello made chamberlain to the powerful Paolo Giordano Orsini, duke di Bracciano, who is known to have murdered his wife, the late Isabella de' Medici, because of her infidelity (see 1581).
Sea captain Francis Drake returns to Plymouth August 9 with a small fleet of frigates and the biggest haul in the history of piracy (see 1572). Helped by Indians and blacks, he has attacked a mule train at Nombre de Dios and captured the annual shipment of Spanish silver from the Potosí mines in Peru being being carried across the isthmus of Panama to be loaded aboard Spanish galleons—£20,000 worth of silver and gold plus treasures plundered from Spanish ships in the Caribbean (see exploration, 1577).
Flemish botanist-physician Carolus Clusius, 46, plants tulip bulbs from Constantinople in Vienna's Imperial Botanical Gardens, where he will be director until 1587 (see 1559; Leyden, 1594).
Thomas Tusser recommends September as the month to stock the stew-pond for Lent. "Thy ponds renew,/ Put eeles in stew,/ To leeve til Lent,/ and then be spent."
Thomas Tusser says, "Fruit gathered too timely will taste of the wood,/ will shrink and be bitter; and seldom prove good:/ So fruit that is shaken, and beat off a tree, with bruising and falling, soon faulty will be."
Thomas Tusser describes the perfect cheese as being, among others things, "Not like Gehazi, dead white, like a leper; not like Lot's wife, all salt; not like Argus, full of eyes; not like Tom Piper, hoven and puffed like the cheeks of a piper; not like Crispin, leathery; not like Lazarus, poor; not like Esau, hairy; and not like Mary Magdelen, full of whey or maudlin."
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