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France's Henri IV receives the surrender in January of the Catholic League's leader, the duc de Mayenne. The War of the Catholic League ends with the decrees of Folembray, but forces sent by Spain's Felipe II capture Calais in April. France, England, and the United Provinces form a triple alliance against Spain, which has been at war with Dutch Protestants since 1568. Amsterdam-born lawyer Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, 48, has mobilized Dutch forces under the leadership of the hereditary stadholder Maurice, 28, Prince of Orange (see 1597).
Scottish Roman Catholic bishop-historian and erstwhile conspirator John Leslie dies outside Brussels May 31 at age 68.
An English fleet captures Cádiz July 1 and sacks the city in retaliation for Spanish raids on Cornwall last year (see 1597). In command of the fleet is Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex; Lord High Admiral Charles Howard, Baron of Effingham; and Francis Vere; flag captain to Essex is Lincolnshire-born Oxford graduate William Monson, 28, who served as a volunteer aboard a pinnace against the Spanish Armada in 1588 and has accompanied George Clifford, 3rd earl of Cumberland, on three voyages to the West Indies. Essex is lionized upon his return, and his adoration by the London populace angers the queen, who fears that his popularity may overshadow hers. She orders a ban on celebrations of the victory at Cádiz.
Ottoman forces commanded by the new sultan Mehmed III defeat a Hungarian army in September at Erlau (Eger). The Battle of Keresztes in October starts badly for Mehmed, much of his army deserts, but the sultan is persuaded to remain; the Christians break ranks to plunder the Turkish camp and the Ottoman cavalry charges, slaughtering more than 30,000 Hungarians and Germans, capturing 100 enemy cannon, and taking other spoils.
Sir Francis Drake dies of plague January 28 at age 55 (approximate) aboard his ship near the town of Nombre de Dios in the West Indies.
Dutch navigator Willem Barents, now 46, lands on the islands of Newland (Spitsbergen) (see 1557; Arctic, 1597; Hudson, 1607).
Dutch merchant Cornelis van Houtman reaches the East Indies (see 1595), establishes trade relations with the rules of Bali, Java, and Sumatra, and returns with his brother Frederik to Amsterdam with a cargo of spices, breaking the Portuguese monopoly (see 1599).
East Frisian Lutheran clergyman and astronomer David Fabricius (David Faber, originally David Goldsmid), 32, observes the star Mira Ceti in August. At first he thinks it is a nova, but he continues to watch it, and when he sees it brighten again in 1609 he will realize that it is a periodic, variable star, something never before seen (see sunspots, 1611).
The Palatine Work on Triangles (Opus Palatinum de triangulis) by the late George Joachim Rheticus gives tables of values for the trigonometric functions of an arc or angle in intervals of 10 seconds of arc and calculated to 10 decimal places.
Botanist-physician Leonhard Rauwolf dies at Waltzen, Hungary, September 15 at age 61, having left Linz to join the Imperial troops fighting the Ottoman Turks.
A Russian Orthodox Church synod at Brest accepts the guarantees made last year by Poland's Sigismund III and effects a union of the Roman Catholic Church with several million Ukrainian and Belorussian Orthodox Christians living under Polish rule in Lithuania, but although the bishops of Chelm, Lutsk, Pinsk, Polotsk, and Vladimir attend the synod, as does the Metropolitan of Kiev, the bishops of Lvov and Przemyshi refuse to comply with the union, saying that it would mean sacrificing their autonomy and ancient, nationalistic traditions; Orthodox laymen found brotherhoods to oppose it and gain support from the Orthodox Zaporozhian Cossacks (see 1633).
Nonfiction: The Triumphs over Death by the late Robert Southwell is published posthumously.
Philosopher Jean Bodin dies of plague at Laon in June at age 66 (approximate).
Poetry: "Orchestra, or Poem of Dancing" by English lawyer-poet John Davies, 27.
Painting: View of Toledo by El Greco; Portrait of Paolo Morigia and Judith and Her Handmaid by Italian painter Fede Galizia, 18.
Theater: The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare and collaborators: "Crowns in my purse I have and goods at home/ And so am come abroad to see the world" (I, ii); "Kiss me, Kate" (II, i); "Such duty as the subject owes the prince/ Even such a woman oweth to her husband" (V, ii); The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare: "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?" (Shylock, III, i); "The quality of mercy is not strained,/ It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven/ Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;/ It blesseth him that gives and him that takes" (Portia, IV, i), but many playgoers come away remembering only the insistence of Jessica's father Shylock on "a pound of flesh"; The Blind Beggar of Alexandria by poet-playwright George Chapman 2/12 at London's Rose Theatre, with the Lord Admiral's Men.
Blackfriars Theatre opens at London, where actor-theatrical manager James Burbage has paid £600 for part of a private house and converted it into an all-weather indoor playhouse for his son Richard's acting company the Lord Chamberlain's Men (see 1576). The house occupies the site of a 13th-century Dominican monastery between the Thames and Ludgate Hill; it can be lighted for nighttime performances (see Globe, 1599).
Madrigali is published at Augsburg by Nuremberg-born composer Hans Leo Hassler, 31, who traveled to Venice in 1585 to study but returned to Germany a year later and became organist to the Fugger family.
English courtier and amatuer poet Sir John Harington, 35, gives a description in his book The Metamorphosis of Ajax of the first design for a practical water closet. A godson of the queen, he was banished from the court for using off-color lanuage, built a house at Kelston outside Bath, devised a flush toilet, had it installed, and nicknamed it Ajax. Elizabeth relented, visited the house, used the device, and was so pleased that she had a similar device installed in Richmond Palace, but absent an adequate sewage system it cannot be widely adopted. The privy and chamber pot now in universal use will remain in common use for centuries (see Cummings, 1775).
Basque whaling captain François Sopite Zaburu devises the world's first factory ship. He builds a brick furnace on his deck and extracts whale oil from blubber, which he has "tryed out" (boiled down) aboard ship, a procedure far more economical than dragging whale carcasses to shore factories.
The tomato arrives in England as an ornamental plant (see 1534; 1752; Gerard, 1597).
Famine brings rural unrest to Austria, but food is plentiful at Vienna, albeit costly. Food shortages create misery in much of Europe, in English cities, in Asia, in the Caribbean islands, and in Peru.
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