1430s

This is a list of events occurring in the 1430s, ordered by year.

1430

January–December

• January 10 – Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, marries Isabella of Portugal. On the same date, he founds the Order of the Golden Fleece.
• March 29 – The Ottoman Empire under Murad II captures Thessalonica.
• May 14 – The French first attempt to relieve the Siege of Compiègne.
• May 23 – Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians while leading an army to relieve Compiègne.
• June 14 – William Waynflete becomes vicar of Skendleby, Lincolnshire.
• July 11 – The Battle of Trnava, Hussite victory on the Hungarian-Moravian-Serbian army.
• October 27 – Švitrigaila succeeds his cousin as ruler of Lithuania.

Date unknown

• Bratislava Castle is converted to a fortress under Sigismund of Luxemburg.
• Optical methods are first used in the creation of art.
• With the surrender of Chalandritsa and the citadel of Patras to the Byzantine Despotate of the Morea, the Principality of Achaea comes to an end.

1431

January–December

• January 9 – Pretrial investigations for Joan of Arc begin in Rouen, France under English occupation.
• March 3 – Pope Eugene IV succeeds Pope Martin V, to become the 207th pope.
• March 26 – The trial of Joan of Arc begins.
• May 30 – Nineteen-year-old Joan of Arc is burned at the stake.
• June 16 – the Teutonic Knights and Švitrigaila sign the Treaty of Christmemel, creating anti-Polish alliance
• September – Battle of Inverlochy: Donald Balloch defeats the Royalists.
• October 30 – Treaty of Medina del Campo, consolidating peace between Portugal and Castille.
• December 16 – Henry VI of England is crowned King of France.

Date unknown

• The University of Poitiers is founded.
• The Kingdom of Ayutthaya besieges Angkor and sack the Khmer capital, end of the Khmer Empire.
• Nezahualcoyotl is crowned Tlatoani of the Kingdom of Texcoco.
• Byzantine-Ottoman Wars – The Ottoman governor of Thessaly Turakhan Beg breaks through the Hexamilion wall for the second time and ravages the Peloponnese peninsula.^[1]

1432

• Spring – An Albanian revolt, led by Gjergj Arianit Komneni, breaks out against the Ottoman Empire and spreads through most of Albania.
• April – At the end of the Hook and Cod wars, Jacqueline, Countess of Hainaut and Countess of Holland and Zeeland is forced by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, to abdicate all her estates in his favour, ending Hainaut and Holland as independent counties.
• May 6 – Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece is first presented to the public.
• June 1 – Battle of San Romano: Florence defeats Siena.
• August 31 – Sigismund Kęstutaitis attempts a capture or murder of Švitrigaila, his rival for the throne of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Švitrigaila manages to escape.
• December 8 – The first battle between the forces of Švitrigaila and Sigismund Kęstutaitis is fought near the town of Oszmiana (Ashmyany), launching the most active phase of the civil war in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Date unknown

• The Université de Caen is founded.
• The first baccalaureate service is believed to have originated at the University of Oxford in 1432.

1433

January–December

• Winter – Much of the English town of Alnwick in Northumbria is burnt by a Scottish raiding party.
• May 31 – Sigismund is crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome. There has been no crowned Emperor since the death of his father, Charles IV, in 1378.
• August 14 – Edward I becomes King of Portugal.
• September – Cosimo de' Medici, later the de facto ruler of Florence and patron of Marsilio Ficino, is exiled by the Albizzi/Strozzi faction. (Cosimo returns a year later, to the day, in 1434).

Date unknown

• The Ming Dynasty in China disbands their naval fleet after the last great maritime expedition led by Admiral Zheng He, altering the balance of power in the Indian Ocean and making it easier for Portugal and other Western naval powers to gain dominance over the seas.
• In Ming Dynasty China, cotton is listed as a permanent item of trade on the tax registers of Songjiang prefecture.

1434

January–December

• April 14 – The foundation stone of Nantes Cathedral in Nantes, France, is laid.
• May 30 – Hussite Wars – Battle of Lipany: The Catholics and Ultraquists defeat the Taborites, ending the Hussite Wars.
• June 19 or 20 – Zara Yaqob becomes Emperor of Ethiopia.
• Late June – Miner Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson begins a Swedish rebellion against king Eric of Pomerania (named the Engelbrekt rebellion after him), eventually leading to the deposition of the king.
• July 10–August 9 – Suero de Quiñones and his companions stage the Passo Honroso at the Órbigo in León.
• August 16 – King Eric of Pomerania is deposed from the Swedish throne at a meeting in Vadstena. He still retains power in Denmark and Norway, though.
• September – Cosimo de' Medici returns to Florence one year, to the day, following his exile by the Alberti and Strozzi faction.
• October 19 – The University of Catania is founded in Italy.

Date unknown

• Jan van Eyck paints the Arnolfini Portrait.
• Explorer Gil Eanes rounds Cape Bojador in Western Sahara, thus destroying the legends of the "Dark Sea".
• Portuguese traders deliver their first cargo of African slaves to Lisbon.
• In Ming Dynasty China, a long episode of drought, flood, locust infestation, and famine cripple agriculture and commerce in areas throughout the country until 1448.

1435

January–December

• January 11 – Sweden's first Riksdag of the Estates is summoned under rebel leader Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson, who is elected rikshövitsman (military commander of the realm) in the absence of a king on January 13.
• February 2 – The Kingdom of Naples passes to Aragon under René of Anjou.
• August 5 – Battle of Ponza Alfonso V of Aragon captured at Genuezen
• September 1 – Battle of Pabaiskas ends a civil war between Grand Dukes Švitrigaila and Sigismund Kęstutaitis in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
• September 21 – The Treaty of Arras between Charles VII of France and Philip III of Burgundy ends the English-Burgundian alliance.
• October 14 – Eric of Pomerania is reinstated as king of Sweden, however only briefly, since he is once again deposed in January the following year.

Date unknown

• Francis of Paola founds the Order of the Minims in Italy.
• China returns to a policy of isolation.
• Gil Eanes and Afonso Gonçalves Baldaia explore the coast of Africa as far as the Angra dos Ruivos.

1436

January–December

• January 11 – Eric of Pomerania is deposed from the Swedish throne for the second time, only three months after having been reinstated. Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson remains the leader of the land, in his capacity of rikshövitsman (military commander of the realm).
• February – Charles Knutsson becomes joint rikshövitsman with Engelbrekt. The two share the title until Engelbrekt's death in May.
• April – Paris is recaptured by the French.
• May 4 – Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson is murdered by a personal enemy, while on his way to Stockholm for negotiations. Charles Knutsson temporarily holds the position of leader of Sweden alone. The probable first meeting of the Riksdag of the Estates afterwards takes place in Uppsala.
• June 25 – The Incorporated Guild of Smiths is founded in Newcastle upon Tyne.
• July 5 – The Hussite Wars effectively end in Bohemia. Sigismund is accepted as King.
• August 30 – Brunelleschi's Dome at Florence Cathedral is dedicated.^[2]
• September 1 – Eric of Pomerania is once again reinstated as king of Sweden. Charles Knutsson at the same time resigns the post of rikshövitsman.

Date unknown

• The Bosnian language is first mentioned in a document.
• Date of the Visokom papers, the last direct sources on the old town of Visoki.
• In Ming Dynasty China, the inauguration of the Zhengtong Emperor takes place.
• In Ming Dynasty China, a significant portion of the southern grain tax is commuted to payments in silver, known as the Gold Floral Silver (jinhuayin). This comes about due to officials' and military generals' increasing demands to be paid in silver instead of grain, as commercial transactions draw more silver into nationwide circulation. Some counties have trouble transporting all the required grain to meet their tax quotas, so it makes sense to pay the government in silver, a medium of exchange that is already abundant amongst landowners through their own private commercial affairs.
• The Florentine polymath Leon Battista Alberti begins writing the treatise On Painting, in which he argues for the importance of mathematical perspective in the creation of three-dimensional vision on a two-dimensional plane. This follows the ideas of Massacio and his concepts of linear perspective and vanishing point in artwork.
• Afonso Gonçalves Baldaia becomes the first to explore the western coast of Africa past the Tropic of Cancer.
• Johannes Gutenberg begins work on the printing press.

1437

January–December

• February 20–21 – James I of Scotland is fatally stabbed at Perth in a failed coup by his uncle and former ally Walter Stewart, Earl of Atholl.
• March 25 – In a ceremony in Holyrood Abbey, James II of Scotland is crowned at the age of six by Pope Eugene IV.
• April 23 – Malmö in Denmark (now Sweden) receives its current coat of arms.
• September 20–October 19 – A Portuguese attempt to conquer Tangier fails and Prince Ferdinand is taken hostage.

Date unknown

• Ulugh Beg's Zij-i Sultani star catalogue is published.
• The Kazan Khanate is established.
• Edinburgh is made the capital of Scotland.
• Sandside Chase in the north of Scotland: Clan Mackay defeat the Clan Gunn of Caithness.

1438

January–December

• January 1 – Albert II of Habsburg becomes King of Hungary.
• March 18 – Albert II of Habsburg becomes King of Germany.
• July 7 – Charles VII of France issues the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, giving the French church control over the appointment of bishops and depriving the Pope of French ecclesiastical revenues.
• September 13 – Afonso V becomes King of Portugal.
• October – Eric of Pomerania, King of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, loses direct control of Sweden as Karl Knutsson Bonde is elected Regent of Sweden.

Date unknown

• Council of Florence is moved to Ferrara.
• Pachacuti (who will later create Tahuantinsuyu, or the Inca Empire) becomes the ruler of Cuzco.
• In Italy, the siege of Brescia by the condottieri troops of Niccolò Piccinino is raised after the arrival of Scaramuccia da Forlì.
• Just two years after the Ming Dynasty court of China allowed landowners paying the grain tax to pay their tax in silver instead, the Ming court now decides to close all silver mines and to ban all private silver mining in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. This is a concerted effort to halt the increase of silver circulating into the market. Illegally mining silver is now an offense punishable by death; although illegal mining became a dangerous affair, the high demand for illegal mining also made it very lucrative, and so many chose to defy the government and continued to mine silver.
• All Souls College, University of Oxford is founded.

1439

January–December

• May 4 – Battle of Grotnik: The Hussite movement is defeated in Poland.
• June 29 – supposed date of Venerable Macarius' Miracle of the Moose, according to Russian hagiographers.
• September 8 – Cardinal Giovanni Vitelleschi captures Foligno, ending Trinci's signoria.
• September 29 or October 1 – Eric of Pomerania, King of Sweden, Denmark and Norway is declared deposed in Sweden. Karl Knutsson Bonde continues to serve as Regent of Sweden.
• November 12 – In England, Plymouth becomes the first town incorporated by the English Parliament.

Date unknown

• Johannes Gutenberg develops printing with movable type at Mainz at about this date.
• The Great Ordinance is adopted by the French Estates-General. This measure grants the king the exclusive right to raise troops, and establishes the taxation measure known as the taille in support of a standing army.
• Council of Florence is moved to Florence.
• At the Portuguese Cortes, Peter, Duke of Coimbra is appointed Regent of the Kingdom.

Significant people

Births

People

Deaths

References