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The 1470s

566 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 15th century. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

1470 CE60 entries

  • July 12 – During the Ottoman–Venetian War, the Ottomans capture the Greek island of Euboea, territory of the Republic of Venice, after a four week siege of the fortified city of Negroponte by the Sultan Mehmed II.
  • August 20 – Battle of Lipnic: Stephen the Great defeats the Volga Tatars of the Golden Horde, led by Ahmed Khan.
  • December 18 – Lê Thánh Tông leads the Đại Việt army into Champa, conquering the country in less than three months.

1471 CE65 entries

  • January – Portuguese navigators João de Santarém and Pedro Escobar reach the gold-trading centre of Elmina on the Gold Coast of west Africa, and explore Cape St. Catherine, two degrees south of the equator, so that they begin to be guided by the Southern Cross constellation. They also visit Sassandra on the Ivory Coast.
  • February 24 – In what is now south Vietnam, the Champa–Dai Viet War begins when the Dai Viet Emperor Lê Thánh Tông sends 500 warships to block the Champa Kingdom's Bay of Sa Ky, while another 30,000 troops block all entrances to the capital city of Vijaya at what is now the Quảng Ngãi Province. The Me Can citadel in Quang Na falls two days later and the Vietnamese advance.
  • July 14 – At the Battle of Shelon, the forces of Muscovy defeat the Republic of Novgorod.

1472 CE54 entries

  • March 4 – A mount of piety is established in Siena (Italy), origin of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world's oldest surviving retail bank.
  • June 16 – Volterra, a town in the Republic of Florence in Italy, surrenders after a siege of 25 days by Florentine soldiers under the command of Federico da Montefeltro. Because the town had rebelled against the power of Lorenzo de' Medici, da Montefeltro allows his soldiers on June 18 to pillage Volterra and to commit rape and murder of its citizens.
  • October 6 – King Edward IV of England gives royal assent to the Statute of Westminster 1472 which requires, effective immediately, a tax of four bow staves per every tun (252 wine gallons) of cargo brought in by a ship to an English port. The Statute is passed to remedy a shortage of yew wood, from which longbows are made, following the issuing of an edict in 1470 requiring compulsory training for soldiers to use the longbow.

1473 CE74 entries

  • January 9 – Pope Sixtus IV lifts the order of interdict that had been placed by Pope Paul II on the late Bohemian King George of Poděbrady and his sons, granting absolution, after the sons convert to the Roman Catholic faith.
  • February 12 – The first complete inside edition of Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine (Latin translation) is published in Milan.
  • August 11 – At the Battle of Otlukbeli, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II defeats the White Sheep Turkmens, led by Uzun Hasan.

1474 CE54 entries

  • May 9 – The first war crimes trial in recorded history begins in Breisach am Rhein in Upper Alsace as the Burgundian general Peter von Hagenbach is put on trial for allowing his troops to murder and rape civilians during the Burgundian Wars. The trial is held before a panel of 28 judges drawn from Breibach and surrounding Alsatian towns, and is conducted outside before a large crowd. During the trial, Hagenbach becomes the first known person to raise the "superior orders defense", stating that he was simply following orders made his commanders. After deliberating for a few hours, the judges unanimously find Hagenbach guilty and sentenced to death. At the end of his one-day trial, Hagenbach is decapitated.
  • August 8 – The siege of Shkodra by the Ottoman Empire ends when the city is freed by a combined army of 25,000 troops from the Republic of Venice commanded by Antonio Loredan, supplemented by the Principality of Zeta and Albanian resistance forces. Nearly all of the 8,000 Ottoman troops commanded by Hadım Suleiman Pasha are killed.
  • October 26 – In a peace treaty between King Edward IV of England and King James III of Scotland, an agreement is reached for the betrothal and eventual marriage of King Edward's daughter Cecily to King James' eldest son and future King of Scotland, James, Duke of Rothsay.

1475 CE56 entries

  • May 10 – The War of the Castilian Succession begins as Portugal's army invades the Spanish kingdom of Castile and León with King Afonso of Portugal in command. The troops advance to the town of Plasencia, where King Afonso's fiancée Juana la Beltraneja (who claims to be the daughter of the late King Enrique IV of Castile) lives.
  • September 9 – The city of Köln (Cologne), already separate from the surrounding Köln is granted the status of a "free imperial city" by the Holy Roman Empire, with representation in the Imperial Diet and self-government within the Empire.
  • December – The Principality of Theodoro falls to the Ottoman Empire, arguably taking with it the final territorial remnant of the successor to the Roman Kingdom after nearly 2,228 years of Roman civilization since the legendary Founding of Rome in 753 BC.

1476 CE55 entries

  • September 6 – Matthias Corvinus, as King of Bohemia, orders the Transylvanian Saxons in his employment to assist Stephen V Báthory in the invasion of the principality of Wallachia.
  • December 12 – Philip the Upright becomes the new Elector of the Palatinate within the Holy Roman Empire, upon the death of his adoptive father, the Elector Frederick I.
  • December 22 – Beatrice of Naples marries Mathias Corvinus at Székesfehérvár, 10 days after her coronation as Queen Consort of Bohemia and Queen Consort of Hungary.

1477 CE52 entries

  • February 11 – Mary of Burgundy, the daughter of Charles the Bold and the new Duches, is forced by her disgruntled subjects to sign the Great Privilege, by which the Flemish cities recover all the local and communal rights which have been abolished by the decrees of the dukes of Burgundy, in their efforts to create a centralized state in the Low Countries.
  • February 27 – Uppsala University is founded, becoming the first university in Sweden and all of Scandinavia.
  • October 9 – The University of Tübingen, one of the 11 German Excellence Universities, is founded in Württemberg by Count Eberhard I.

1478 CE50 entries

  • April 26 – On Easter Sunday, the Pazzi family attacks Lorenzo de' Medici, the ruler of the Republic of Florence, and kills his brother Giuliano, during High Mass in Florence Cathedral. A total of 80 accused conspirators are executed. With the death of his brother and co-ruler Giuliano, Lorenzo becomes the sole ruler of Florence.
  • May 14 – The Siege of Shkodra in Albania begins. Federico Gonzaga becomes the new ruler of the independent Duchy of Mantua in Italy, three days after the death of his father, Ludovico III.
  • June 15 – The Fourth Siege of Krujë comes to an end as the Albanian city surrenders to the Ottoman Empire, which had prevented food and supplies from reaching the town for a year. After the surrender, made on a promise that the occupants would be allowed to leave, most of the men in Krujë are killed and the women and children taken away to be sold as slaves.

1479 CE46 entries

  • April 25 – The ratification of the Treaty of Constantinople in Venice ends the Siege of Shkodra after fifteen months, and brings all of Albania under the Ottoman Empire.
  • May 13 – Christopher Columbus, an experienced mariner and successful trader in the thriving Genoese expatriate community in Portugal, marries Felipa Perestrelo Moniz (Italian on her father's side), and receives as dowry her late father's maps and papers, charting the seas and winds around the Madeira Islands, and other Portuguese possessions in the Ocean Sea.
  • November 5 – Grand Admiral Gedik Ahmed Pasha of the Ottoman Navy gives the order to ravage the Greek island of Zakynthos, at the time a territory of the Republic of Venice, and the Ottoman troops destroy most of the island's churches and monasteries and many of its dwellings.