Chlothar I Suppresses a Revolt in Saxony…

Yuan Huangtou of Ye, the son of the deposed Yuan Lang, the briefly reigning Emperor of Northern Wei, has been permitted to inherit his father’s title of Prince of Anding.

Northern Wei's branch successor state Eastern Wei having ended in 550 and been replaced by Northern Qi, its first emperor, Emperor Wenxuan of Northern Qi, carries out a major slaughter of Northern Wei's imperial Yuan clan in 559.

Several prisoners of Emperor Wenxuan, including Yuan Huangtou, are forced to launch themselves from a tower attached to a kite, as an experiment.

Yuan Huangtou is the sole survivor, successfully gliding over the city walls.

One Yuan Huangtou is imprisoned and starves to death, but it is not known for sure whether that Yuan Huangtou was Yuan Lang's son.

The Liang Dynasty ends in 557 as Chen Baxian, a distinguished general, becomes, as Emperor Wu, the first emperor of Southern China’s Chen Dynasty.

Chen Qian, age thirty-seven, succeeds his uncle Emperor Wu of Chen.

During his reign, he will consolidate the state against the rebellious warlords.

The Gaya confederacy cannot risk the hostility of either Baekje or Silla (two of the Three Kingdoms of Korea that dominated the peninsula, the third being Goguryeo).

By the sixth century, Ara Gaya has put a great deal of effort into pursuing a diplomatic solution for maintaining its independence, including hosting summits between Baekje, Silla and Yamato-Wa.

The Gaya confederacy had been greatly weakened as northwestern Gaya states fell under the influence of Baekje and southeastern states fell under Silla's influence.

Ara Gaya had sought to maintain its independence by allying itself with Goguryeo, and then asked Goguryeo to invade Baekje in 548.

This attempt to weaken Baekje's sphere of influence failed with Goguryeo’s unsuccessful campaign.

Silla had defeated Baekje in war in 553 and occupied the Gyeonggi area (the Han River basin), breaking its hundred and twenty-year alliance with Baekje.

Having started incorporating the parts of Gaya already under its sphere of influence, Silla also invades the rest of Gaya to eliminate Baekje's sphere of influence there.

Ara Gaya capitulates to Silla in 559.

The Kutrigurs and Huns under Zabergan, accompanied by Sclaveni, cross the Danube in 559 and divide their force into three columns.

One column reaches Thermopylae; the second, moving eastward through Thrace, gains a foothold on the Gallipoli Peninsula near Constantinople.

The third column advances as far as the suburbs of the city itself, which the aged Belisarius has to defend with an unlikely muster of civilians, demesmen, and a few veterans.

Worried by Roman naval action on the Danube, which seems to menace the escape route home, the Kutrigurs break off the attack, …

…return north, and find themselves under attack from the Utigur Bulgars, a people whose support Justinian's agents had earlier connived at and won by suitable bribes.

The two closely related peoples weaken each other in warfare, of which the episode of 559 is not the first instance, and this is precisely the result at which Roman diplomacy is aimed.

The Avars have moved westward from south Russia, subjugating Utigurs, Kutrigurs, and Slavic peoples to the profit of the empire.

By 560, the Avars, who enslave Slavs (hence the name), have apparently conquered all the territory occupied by Eastern Slavs, or Antes.

The Avars destroy one Bulgar tribe, but the rest save themselves by submitting to another horde of Turkic newcomers.

The Avars are familiar with the stirrup, and they may have introduced it into Europe.

(Some of the earliest unequivocal evidence of the use of the stirrup comes from Avar graves.)

The First Council of Braga, convened in 561 CE, formally condemns Priscillianism, a heretical movement that had persisted in Hispania since the fourth century. This council, held in the Suebi Kingdom of Galicia, reinforces the region’s alignment with Chalcedonian Christianity, further distancing it from Arian and Priscillianist influences.

Cealwin becomes King of Wessex in 560 upon the death of his father Cynric.

Conall mac Comgaill becomes king of Dál Riata, a Gaelic overkingdom on the western coast of Scotland.