1521
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Juan de Padilla's insurgent communeros occupy Torrelobatón February 28, but the Battle of Villalar April 23 gives Carlos I a victory that ends the last Spanish resistance to absolutism (see 1520). Juan de Padilla is captured at Villalar while trying to retreat and is executed the next day at age 30 along with other leaders of the revolt. French support of the communeros and French designs on Navarre precipitate a war between France and Spain that will continue for 8 years. French forces take Pamplona May 20 and go on to take Fantarabia, but imperial forces invade Picardy with the mercenary army (Landsknechte) headed by Georg von Frundsberg, now 47. An army of 35,000 Spaniards lays siege to the town of Mézières, but the French knight Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard, leads a 1,000-man defense force that gives François I time to raise an army. The siege is lifted after 6 weeks, central France is saved, and François drives out the invaders.
Belgrade falls in August to the Ottoman sultan Suleiman I after a 3-week siege. His forces make raids into Hungary (see Rhodes, 1522).
Jan Tarnowski returns to his native Poland to lead an army against the Teutonic Knights in Prussia.
Former lord deputy of Ireland Sir Edward Poynings dies at Westenhanger, Kent, in October at age 62.
Portugal's Manuel I dies at Lisbon in December at age 52 after a 26-year reign marked by great Portuguese explorations and discoveries. He is succeeded by his 19-year-old son, who will reign until 1557 as João III.
China's 10th Ming emperor Zhengde (Cheng-te) drowns at age 31 (approximate) when his pleasure boat capsizes. In his 16-year reign he has had hundreds of court officials demoted, tortured, or killed for questioning his sometimes bizarre behavior, and while he has devoted himself to learning exotic languages and amusing himself by traveling around the country incognito, court eunuchs have gained so much power that future emperors will find it impossible to thwart them (see 1510). The southern provinces have had no representation at court, many people have turned to banditry, public offices have been bought and sold, and excessive taxes have been levied on the people. Zhengde is succeeded by a 15-year-old cousin who will reign until his death in 1566 as Jiajing (Chia-ching) but be no more effective (see 1542). The new emperor appoints Kiangsi province governor Wang Yangming (Wang Yang-ming) war minister and elevates him to the nobility. Wang's Instructions for Practical Living (Ch'uan-hsi hi) has elaborated on his basic philosophy that humans have an innate knowledge of what is good and what is evil.
Hernándo Cortéz starves out Tenochtitlán, which falls to his siege forces August 13 (see 1520). A group of 800 Aztec women and children have been captured when they came out of hiding at night in search of food. Cortéz becomes captain-general of New Spain and sole ruler of the Aztec with help from his mistress, Doña Marina (see 1522). She gives birth to the conquistador's son, and he rewards her for her services by bestowing upon her enough land, gold, and vassals to keep her comfortable for life, but he sends to Cuba for his young wife, the noblewoman Doña Catalina Suárez de Marcayda.
Juan Ponce de León lands in February near Charlotte Harbor on Florida's west coast. Now nearly 61, he is wounded by a native arrow, and although he is able to escape he dies of his wounds a few days later at Havana (see Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, 1526).
San Juan, Puerto Rico, is founded by Spanish conquistadors, who will pave the city's streets with stones brought as ballast in ships from Spain (see 1508). Concerned that rival European powers will try to seize the sugar-rich port, the Spaniards begin construction of city walls and the fortifications of El Morro Castle plus forts at San Cristóbal and San Gerónimo.
Ferdinand Magellan lays claims to islands in the Pacific that will be called the Marianas in 1668 (see 1520). Magellan calls them Islas de los Ladrones (Islands of Thieves) because the natives steal articles from his ships. He has crossed the Pacific in 98 days, part of the time with nothing for the crew to drink but putrid water and nothing for the men to eat but pieces of leather so hard that they must first be soaked in seawater for 4 or 5 days (many crewmen have died of scurvy). Only three of his original five ships have made the Pacific crossing, the other two having been lost, and his men have come close to starvation. Magellan discovers what later will be called the Philippine Islands March 15, sailing his fleet through the Surigayo Strait and landing on Cebu, whose chief he converts to Christianity. Hoping to subdue the fierce native chief Lapu Lapu and convert him to Christianity, Magellan wades ashore on Mactan Island April 24 with 48 men in full armor and is killed at age 40 in a skirmish with Mactan warriors. Survivors of the Mactan encounter sail on in two remaining ships under the command of Basque navigator Juan Sebastián de Elcano, 44, and reach the Moluccas, or Spice Islands (see 1522; 1564).
"Here I stand," says Martin Luther before the Diet of Worms April 18 (see 1517). "I could not do otherwise. God help me! Amen" ("Hier stehe ich! Ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir! Amen"). Luther has come to Worms under a safe-conduct pass after the ban of the empire has been pronounced against him. Carlos I's Diet orders him to recant, he refuses, and the Diet declares him an outlaw. But the German princes back him in starting an evangelical movement that will bring turmoil to much of Europe.
The elector of Saxony Friedrich III (the Wise) takes Martin Luther to Wartburg and protects him as Luther translates the Bible in defiance of the Edict of Worms, which prohibits all new doctrines (see Peasants' War, 1524).
Martin Luther writes that the sexual impulse is both natural and irrepressible. He will argue that celibacy was invented by the Devil as a source of sin and will advance the view that marriage is not a sacrament at all but rather a civil matter subject to city and state regulations, not canon law (see 1524).
Assertion of the Seven Sacraments by England's young Henry VIII is a reply to Luther. Pope Leo X gives Henry the title Defender of the Faith.
Huldreich Zwingli at Zürich condemns the hiring of mercenaries.
Basque knight Ignatius Loyola (né Iñigo de Oñez y Loyola), 29, is hit by a cannonball May 20 while fighting to defend the citadel of Pamplona against the French. His right leg is broken, his left damaged, and he is obliged to give up the military life. Although less than five foot two inches in height, he has been, as he will later write, "a man given to the vanities of the world, whose chief delight consisted in martial exercises, with a great and vain desire to win renown." Loyola becomes an ecclesiastic (see Society of Jesus, 1534).
Pope Leo X dies at Rome December 1 at age 45 after a 9-year reign, having excommunicated Martin Luther January 3. He has depleted the Vatican treasury in his successful efforts to make Rome a center of culture and increase the political power of the papacy.
The Sorbonne at Paris condemns a book by humanist theologian Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples, rejecting the view of the three Marys of the Gospels as being one person.
Painting: The Marriage of St. Catherine by the Italian painter Il Parmigianino (Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola), 18, who has been raised by two painter uncles; mythological frescoes by Jacopo da Pontormo for the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano.
Composer Josquin des Prés dies at Condé August 27 at age 76 (approximate). The best known musical figure of his time, he has written at least 20 masses and a great many chansons, hymns, motets, and psalms.
The Château de Chenonceaux is completed in the Loire Valley after 8 years of construction for the royal tax collector Thomas Bohier, whose handsome castle will soon be taken over by François I (see 1547).
Italian scholar Antonio Pigafetta accompanies the Magellan voyage and goes ashore at several ports to study the clove and nutmeg trees. He notes that ginger "in a green state . . . is eaten in the same manner as bread."
Hernándo Cortéz sees bison in Montezuma's menagerie.
Juan Ponce de León introduces cattle and (by some accounts) swine to Florida before his death (see 1513; de Soto, 1539). Some of the livestock that he has left behind will run wild in the Florida swamps.
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