1576
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Contents: political eventsexploration, colonization science medicine literature art theater, film architecture, real estate |
The Peace of Chastenoy May 6 ends France's fifth civil war since 1562, but the Paix de Monsieur concedes so much to the Huguenots that Catholics form a Holy League and make an alliance with Spain's Felipe II, hoping to bring the Guises to the throne. Alarmed at the League's ambitions, Henri III proclaims himself its head and forbids exercise of Protestantism in his realm.
Walter Devereux, 1st earl of Essex, dies of dysentery at Dublin September 22 at age 35, soon after returning from London, where Elizabeth has given him a barony in Monaghan and made him earl marshal of Ireland (see 1575). There are suspicions that he was poisoned by Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, who will marry his widow, but a postmortem examination reveals no hint of foul play.
The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II dies at Regensburg October 12 at age 49 and is succeeded by his eldest surviving son Rudolf, 24, who will move the Imperial Court from Vienna to Prague in 1583 and reign until his death in 1612.
"The Spanish Fury" erupts in November following the death of the governor-general, Luis de Requesens y Zuñiga at Brussels March 5 at age 47. Left unpaid and without food, Spanish garrisons in the Lowlands mutiny and vent their rage. At Antwerp they massacre 6,000 men, women, and children, burn 800 houses, and wreak havoc on the city's commerce. Don Juan de Austria has agreed to succeed Requesens on condition that he be allowed to invade England and marry the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots, but the Dutch balk at being governed by Don Juan, and they rebel against Roman Catholic rule. Willem of Orange (the Silent) persuades the 17 Lowland provinces to unite by treaty November 8 in the Pacification of Ghent, burying religious differences and vowing resistance until the Inquisition is ended and their liberties restored (see 1577).
Persia's Shah Tahmasp I is poisoned to death at age 53 after a 43-year reign in which he has lost vast territories to the Ottoman Turks. He has spent recent years in seclusion at his palace in Kazvin. His fourth son kills off nearly all of his relatives and begins a brief reign as Ismail II.
The Mughal emperor Akbar the Great completes his conquest of Bengal, the richest province in northern India (see 1575). The Battle of Haldighat (Gogunda) in June pits his general Raja Man Singh of Jaipur against the Rajput chief Pratap Singh of Mewar, whose inferior forces put up a stubborn fight at the pass of Haldighat, 12 miles from the fortress of Gogunda in Rajasthan. Mewar forces continue resistance from the hills and will not acknowledge Mughal sovereignty until 1614.
English explorer Sir Martin Frobisher, 41, crosses the Atlantic and discovers what later will be called Baffin's Land and a bay that will be called Frobisher Bay. Frobisher has studied navigation under John Dee (see 1558), gone on voyages to Africa's Guinea coast, and taken some French prizes in the English channel under a privateering license granted by the crown; he commands an expedition of three small ships in search of a Northwest Passage to Cathay and returns with some Eskimos (see Davis, 1585; Ross, 1818).
Plantarum seu stirpium historia by physician-botanist Matthias de L'Obel is a two-volume expansion of his 1570 work with an appendix containing 1,486 engravings by botanists who include Rembert Dodoens, Charles de l'Ecluse, and Pietro Mattioli (see Linnaeus, 1737).
Tycho Brahe establishes with royal aid an astronomical observatory on the island of Hven in the Sound, but he will reject the Copernican system of 1543, holding that the five planets revolve about the sun, which in turn revolves about an immobile Earth (see Kepler, 1609; Galileo, 1613).
The astronomer-mathematician Rheticus (Georg Joachim von Lauchen) dies at Kassa, Hungary, December 5 at age 62, having been among the first to adopt and promulgate the heliocentric theory of the late Nicolaus Copernicus.
Plague strikes Venice, which has a population of 180,000, many of whom are lost to the devastating disease.
A typhus epidemic ravages New Spain, taking at least as many lives as the epidemic of 1551.
Physician-mathematician-astrologer Girolamo Cardano dies at Rome September 21 at age 74, having given the first clinical description of typhus fever. (He has never recovered from the disgrace of having his favorite son executed in 1560 for murdering the disreputable girl whom he had married, and he himself was imprisoned for a few months in 1570 on charges of heresy.)
Nonfiction: Six Livres de la République by French political economist Jean Bodin, 46, attempts to revive the system of Aristotle and apply it to modern politics. Bodin defines the powers of a sovereign, but his theory of sovereignty is full of discrepancies.
Painting: Felipe II by Spanish painter Alonso Sánchez Coello, 44 (date approximate). Titian dies at Venice August 27 in his late 80s.
Hans Sachs dies at Nuremberg January 19 at age 81 after a career as Meistersinger in which he has composed innumerable Fastnachtsspiele—the popular plays that have emerged as drama has become more secular.
England's first playhouse opens at Shoreditch under the direction of actor-manager James Burbage, who has been one of the earl of Leicester's players (see Blackfriars, 1596; Globe, 1599).
Japan's Azuchi Castle goes up on the shores of Lake Biwa, where the Taira strongman Nobunaga Oda builds the country's first great castle.
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