Báthory, though personally tolerant of differing religious…

Francis Drake had sailed west across the Pacific in July 1579.

After sixty-eight days, he sights a line of islands (probably the remote Palau group).

Francis Drake, continuing his circumnavigation of the earth, arrives in the Philippines, where he waters ship before sailing to ...

...the Moluccas.

Here he is well received by a local sultan, becomes involved in some intrigues with the Portuguese, and succeeds in buying spices.

Drake's deep-sea navigation and pilotage have always been excellent, but in these totally uncharted waters his ship strikes a reef.

After three days of waiting for expedient tides and dumping cargo, the bark is miraculously freed without any great damage, and, ...

...after calling at Java, Drake sets his course across the Indian Ocean for the Cape of Good Hope.

Báthory now turns to face Poland's major enemy, Muscovy, which is attempting to seize an outlet on the Baltic Sea. The king secures a truce with Turkey and strengthens the Polish army by enrolling Cossacks on a regular basis.

The Polish forces, reorganized under his leadership, are able to carry the Livonian War onto Russian territory in 1579 while the Swedes recapture parts of Livonia.

The victories for the Reformation in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth have been gradually canceled by the Catholic Counter-Reformation under the leadership of Stanislaw Cardinal Hozjusz (Stanislaus Hosius), a Prince-Bishop of the Bishopric of Warmia, who dies in Capranica, in the Papal States, in 1579, described by St. Peter Canisius as the most brilliant writer, the most eminent theologian, and the best bishop of his time.

The Jesuits, having arrived in Poland in the 1560s, are developing a network of schools and colleges.

Their greatest preacher, Piotr Skarga, becomes the first rector of the Wilno Academy, the future University of Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania), founded in 1579.

Reichenberg, or Liberec, now in the northern Czech Republic and situated in the valley of the Luzická Nisa (German: Lausitzer Neisse) River amid the Giant (Krkonoše) Mountains, had been founded in the thirteenth century.

First mentioned in a document from 1348, chartered in 1577, the city begins in 1579 to host the cloth-making industry.

It will soon become an important textile center, manufacturing chiefly broadcloth, rugs, tapestries, and cotton and silk fabrics.

Sokollu, having made a number of enemies, is assassinated on October 11/12, 1579.

Real power now passes into the grasp of the chief Janissary officers, the agas.

The early Ottoman momentum does not last as the Persians begin to resist more successfully.

Furthermore, much effort is spent on securing Georgia, and taking the great fortress of Kars in 1579.

Akbar, ruling over a society that is predominantly non-Muslim, needs not simply to maintain his status as a Muslim ruler but also to be liberal enough to elicit active support from non-Muslims.

For this purpose, he must deal first with the Muslim theologians who, in the face of Brahmanic resilience, are rightly concerned with the community's identity and resist any effort that could encourage a broader notion of political participation.

Akbar begins his drive by abolishing both the jizya, the per capita tax imposed on free non-Muslim adult males who are neither old nor sick nor monks, and the practice of forcibly converting prisoners of war to Islam, and by encouraging Hindus as his principal confidants and policy makers.

To legitimize his nonsectarian policies, he issues in 1579 a public edict (mahzar) declaring his right to be the supreme arbiter in Muslim religious matters—above the body of religious scholars and jurists.

He has by now also undertaken a number of stern measures to reform the administration of religious grants, which are now available to learned and pious men of all religions, not just Islam.