Directory

1400 CE

King Swa Saw Ke, of Ava, the largest kingdom in Burma, dies after a reign of 33 years and is succeeded by his son, King Tarabya, who reigns less than seven months before being assassinated. Jingnan campaign: In China, Prince Zhu Di of Yan expands his conquests with the capture of Cangzhou in Heibei province. Manuel II Palaiologos becomes the only Byzantine Emperor ever to visit England, and is greeted at Blackheath by King Henry IV, who hosts the Emperor at Eltham Palace during the Christmas holiday.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • March 23 – Five-year-old Trần Thiếu Đế is forced to abdicate as ruler of Đại Việt (modern-day Vietnam), in favour of his maternal grandfather and court official Hồ Quý Ly, ending the Trần dynasty after 175 years and starting the Hồ dynasty. Hồ Quý Ly subsequently changes the country's name to Đại Ngu.source
  • August 21 – Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine, is elected as King of the Romans.source
  • September 16 – Owain Glyndŵr is proclaimed Prince of Wales by his followers, and begins attacking English strongholds in northeast Wales.source
  • Jean Froissart completes his Chronicles, detailing the events of the 14th Century in France.source
  • Prince Parameswara establishes the Malacca Sultanate, in present-day western Malaysia and northern Sumatra.source
  • In modern-day Korea, King Jeongjong of Joseon abdicates in fear of an attack by his ambitious younger brother, Taejong. Taejong succeeds to the throne.source

Conflict & Security

  • February – Henry Percy (Hotspur) leads English incursions into Scotland.source
  • April 21 – Sir Thomas Percy, 1st Earl of Worcester, resigns as England's Admiral of the North and West to join the resistance against King Henry IV. The office will remain vacant for more than six years. Percy will be beheaded in 1403 after his defeat in the Battle of Shrewsbury.source
  • April 25 – Jingnan campaign: In the Shandong province of Ming dynasty China, Zhu Di, Prince of Yan, defeats the Imperial forces of General Li Jinglong in the two-day Battle of Baigou River, by taking advantage of the chaos that results when a gust of wind breaks the staff of General Li's flag of battle. The Yan forces capture 100,000 of the Imperial soldiers as prisoners and Li and the others retreat to Jinan.source
  • June 5 – Duke Frederick I of Brunswick-Lüneburg is assassinated after being identified as a rival to Wenceslaus, Holy Roman Emperor. Frederick, on his way back from a May 22 meeting of the prince-electors, is ambushed by a party of men led by Count Henry of Waldeck while passing through the village of Kleinenglis in the Principality of Waldeck and Pyrmont (now part of the German state of Hesse, near Borken).source
  • August 14 – King Henry IV leads the English Army into Scotland, after receiving no answer from Scotland's King Robert III to his August 6 demand. The troops reach Haddington, East Lothian the next day and at Leith, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, by August 18. As historian James Hamilton Wylie will note almost 500 years later, "the walls of Edinburgh did not fall before this ram's-horn blast, and August 23rd came and went without the required homage or recognition."source
  • October 7 – Tamerlane, the Mongol conqueror, stops between Malatya and Aleppo at the Turkish garrison in Behesna. According to author Peter Purton, the garrison "had the temerity to shoot a catapult ball at Timur which rolled into his tent. Setting up his own battery of 20 machines, it is said that the first shot hit and destroyed the offending weapon. Treating this as a good omen, the attack was launched, the towers mined... and the place surrendered."source
  • October 29 – Jingnan campaign: In China, Prince Zhu Di of Yan expands his conquests with the capture of Cangzhou in Heibei province.source
  • October 30 – (11 Rabi' I 803 AH) Tamerlane begins the destruction of the Syrian city of Aleppo overwhelming the Mamluk Sultanate defenders.source
  • November 2 – The Mamluk Sultanate surrenders the city of Aleppo and Tamerlane's Army massacres many of the inhabitants.source
  • November 25 – (9th waxing of Nadaw, 730 ME) Minkhaung I becomes the new King of Ava, the largest kingdom in what is now northern Myanmar, after a battle for power that follows the assassination of the erratic King Tarabya.source
  • December 25 – In China, the Jingnan campaign of Prince Zhu Di of Yan suffers a serious reversal at the Battle of Dongchang as Imperial General Sheng Yong, replacement of Li Jinglong, encircles the Yan forces. Yan Army General Zhang Yu is killed, but Zhu Di is able to escape to the northern capital at Beijing and regroups his forces for a second attack to take place in February.source
  • A Wallachian army captures Iuga, and makes Alexandru cel Bun the Prince of Moldavia.source
  • Hananchi succeeds Min as King of Hokuzan, in modern-day north Okinawa, Japan.source
  • Timur conquers the Empire of The Black Sheep Turkomans, in present-day Azerbaijan, and the Jalayirid dynasty in present-day Iraq. Black Sheep ruler Qara Yusuf and Jalayirid Sultan Ahmad flee, and take refuge with the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I.source
  • Timur defeats both the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, to capture the city of Damascus in present-day Syria. Much of the city's inhabitants are subsequently massacred by Timur's troops.source
  • Wallachia (modern-day southern Romania) resists an invasion by the Ottomans.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • July 7 – Sir John Swinton, an envoy of King Robert III of Scotland, crosses the border into England along with 20 knights, after being given a writ of safe conduct by King Henry IV to allow their travel to negotiate during the standoff between the two British kingdoms between phases of the Hundred Years' War.source
  • August 29 – Having failed in his expedition to receive a pledge of fealty from the King of Scotland, King Henry IV crosses back into England.source

Religion & Belief

  • May 22 – Meeting in Frankfurt, three of the prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire (Rupert, elector of the Palatinate, Rudolf III, Duke of Saxe-Wittenberg, elector of Saxony, and Jobst of Moravia, elector of Brandenburg) meet in an attempt to replace the Emperor, Wenceslaus, King of the Romans because of his failure to stamp out civil unrest or to resolve the Western Schism. They select Frederick I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg as the replacement for Wenceslaus.source
  • August 20 – Meeting at the Lahneck Castle in what is now the German state Rhineland-Palatinate, the princes of the German states vote to depose the Holy Roman Emperor, Wenceslaus, due to his weak leadership and mental illnesses.source

Economy & Finance

  • Newcastle upon Tyne is created a county corporate, by Henry IV of England.source

Health & Medicine

  • The Mississippian culture starts to decline.source
  • Europe is reported to have around 52 million inhabitants.source
  • The House of Medici becomes powerful in Florence.source

Climate & Environment

  • The Haast's eagle and Moa are both driven to extinction by Māori hunters.source

Culture & Society

  • April 23 – In what is now Romania, Alexandru cel Bun (Alexander the Good) is installed as the new Prince (Voivode) of Moldavia by Mircea the Elder, the Voivode of Wallachia, after Mircea removes the reigning monarch, Prince Iuga.source
  • December 21 – Manuel II Palaiologos becomes the only Byzantine Emperor ever to visit England, and is greeted at Blackheath by King Henry IV, who hosts the Emperor at Eltham Palace during the Christmas holiday.source

Births

  • January 13 – Infante John of Portugal, the Constable (d. 1442)source
  • March 15 – Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins, Justice Minister of France (d. 1472)source
  • May 19 – John Stourton, 1st Baron Stourton, English baron (d. 1462)source
  • July 26 – Isabel le Despenser, Countess of Worcester, English noble (d. 1439)source
  • October 24 – Mani' ibn Rabi'a al-Muraydi, oldest known ancestor of the House of Al Sa'ud (d. 1463)source
  • December 25 – John Sutton, 1st Baron Dudley, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (d. 1487)source
  • Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, English politician (d. 1460)source
  • Gennadius Scholarius, Byzantine Greek philosopher and theologian, and Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (d. 1473)source
  • Vettore Cappello, merchant, statesman and military commander of the Republic of Venice (d. 1467)source
  • Pietru Caxaro, Maltese philosopher and poet (d. 1485)source
  • Thomas Boleyn, Master of Gonville Hall, Cambridge and English priest (d. 1472)source
  • Alexander of Masovia, Polish prince member of the House of Piast and Bishop of Trento (d. 1444)source
  • Andronikos V Palaiologos, Byzantine ruler of Thessalonica and surrounding territories alongside his father John VII Palaiologos (d. 1407)source
  • Ausiàs March, medieval Valencian poet and knight (d. 1459)source

Deaths

  • January 4 – The Epiphany Rising begins in England against King Henry IV by nobles planning to restore King Richard II to the throne, and is quickly crushed. Baron Lumley dies after attempting to seize Cirencester. The Earl of Salisbury and the Earl of Kent are captured and beheaded on January 7. Sir Thomas Blount is hanged, drawn and quartered at Oxford on January 12. Thomas le Despenser, 1st Earl of Gloucester is captured and executed by a mob in Bristol on January 13. The Earl of Huntingdon is beheaded at Pleshey on January 16.source
  • January 7 – John Montagu, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, English earl (executed) (b. 1350)source
  • January 7 – Thomas Holland, 1st Duke of Surrey, English politician (executed) (b. 1374)source
  • January 13 – Thomas le Despenser, 1st Earl of Gloucester, English politician (executed) (b. 1373)source
  • January 16 – John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter, English politician (executed)source
  • February 14 – The deposed Richard II of England dies by means unknown in Pontefract Castle. It is likely that King Henry IV ordered his death by starvation, to prevent further uprisings.source
  • April 23 – Aubrey de Vere, 10th Earl of Oxford, third son of John de Vere (b. 1338)source
  • April 28 – Baldus de Ubaldis, Italian jurist (b. 1327)source
  • April – King Swa Saw Ke, of Ava, the largest kingdom in Burma, dies after a reign of 33 years and is succeeded by his son, King Tarabya, who reigns less than seven months before being assassinated.source
  • June 5 – Frederick I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, rival King of the Romanssource
  • July 26 – Jagiellonian University is re-established in Kraków by order of King Władysław II, with the creation of the Faculty of Theology at what is then called the Kraków Academy. The restoration is partially financed by the sale of jewelry owned by the King's late wife, Queen Jadwiga, who had died in 1399.source
  • November 20 – Elizabeth of Moravia, Margravine of Meissen (b. 1355)source
  • November – Tarabya of Ava (b. 1368)source
  • December – Archibald the Grim, Scottish magnate (b. 1328)source