French Naval Victory and the Reconquest of…

Human figures are absent in the landscapes of hermit painter Ni Zan, their spare composition reflecting the artist’s quiet, reclusive personality.

His paintings, executed in ink monochrome, display the calm, detached quality exemplified in his 1372 masterpiece, Rongxi (“Studio”).

Ni Zan had traveled around southern China during the fall of the Yuan and spent his time painting.

His work is highly valued and it itself is enough to pay for the hospitality provided by his friends as he travels.

Having returned to his hometown, Wuxi, after the establishment of the Ming dynasty, he dies here on December 4, 1374.

Art historians consider him, together with Wang Meng and the hermit painters Huang Gongwang, Wu Zhen, one of the Four Great Masters of the Yüan dynasty.

Louis and the representatives of the Polish nobility had started negotiations of Louis's succession in Poland in the autumn of 1373.

After a year of negotiations, he issues the so-called Privilege of Koszyce on September 17, 1374, reducing the tax that Polish noblemen pay to the king by about eighty-four percent and promising a renumeration to noblemen who participate in foreign military campaigns.

In exchange, the Polish lords confirm the right of Louis's daughters to inherit Poland.

Jan Milic, a popular Bohemian preacher whose attacks on clerical laxity and corruption had resulted in 1367 in a brief imprisonment by the Inquisition, has from 1369 to 1372 preached daily in the Týn Church in Prague.

Having established a community of reformed prostitutes in 1372, he had again been denounced in the Prague clergy, but, having been summoned to the papal court at Avignon in Lent 1374, is cleared of the heresy charges against him by Pope Gregory XI and is authorized to preach before the assembly of cardinals shortly after his death here in 1374.

King Borommaachathirat, having led invading Ayutthayan forces in seizing the rebellious Sukhothai towns of Muang Nakhon, Phangka, and Sengcharao in 1372, had next moved in 1373 against Chakangrao, where he had had its chieftain, Sai Keo, killed and forcibly expelled the other chieftain, Kham Heng.

The Ayutthayan monarch ends a two year-cessation of hostilities by returning in 1375 to take control of the city of Phitsanulok, capturing its chieftain Khun Sam Keo and enslaving many of the city’s residents.

The ecumenical patriarch at Constantinople, after three decades of opposition, finally accepts and recognizes the Serbian Orthodox church.

John's rivals, the Genoese, have meanwhile aided the escape of Andronikos, who on August 12, 1376, enters Constantinople and takes his father prisoner.

Louis invades Wallachia in May 1375, because the new prince of Wallachia, Radu I, has formed an alliance with the Bulgarian ruler, Ivan Shishman, and the Ottoman Sultan Murad I.

The Hungarian army routs the united forces of the Wallachians and their allies, and Louis occupies the Banate of Severin, but Radu I does not yield.During the summer, Wallachian troops storm into Transylvania and Ottomans pillage the Banat.

The Hethoumids had ruled the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia from 1266 until the murder of Leo IV in 1341, when his cousin Guy Lusignan had been elected king.

The Lusignan dynasty is of French origin, and had already had a foothold in the area, the Island of Cyprus.

There had always been close relations between the Lusignans of Cyprus and the Armenians.

However, when the pro-Latin Lusignans took power, they had tried to impose Catholicism and the European way of life.

The Armenian leadership had largely accepted this, but the peasantry had opposed the changes.

Eventually, this led way to civil strife.

Constantine IV, the son of Hethum of Neghir, a nephew of Hethum II of Armenia, had come to the throne in 1362 on the death of his cousin Constantine III, whose widow, Maria, daughter of Oshin of Korykos, he had married.

He had formed an alliance with Peter I of Cyprus, offering him the port and castle of Korykos, and on Peter's death in 1369 had sought a treaty with the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt.

The barons were unhappy with this policy, fearing annexation by the sultan, and in 1373 Constantine was murdered.

Upon his death he had been succeeded by his distant cousin Leo V, the son of John of Lusignan (Constable and Regent of Armenia) and his wife (or, more probably, mistress) Soldane, daughter of George V of Georgia.

Constantine III, in order to wipe out all claimants to the throne, had given orders to kill Levon and his brother Bohemond, but they had escaped to Cyprus before the murder could be carried out.

He had been made a Knight of the Chivalric Order of the Sword in 1360 and Titular Seneschal of Jerusalem on October 17, 1372.

After a short regency by Maria, Levon had left Famagusta in spite of the ongoing conflict between Cyprus and Genoa.

Landing at Korykos, he had managed with difficultly to reach Sis, which was already being besieged by the Muslim emir of Aleppo.

Leo and Marguerite of Soissons, daughter of Jean de Soissons, whom he had married at Cyprus in May, 1369, had been crowned at Sis on July 26 or September 14, 1374, according to both the Latin and Armenia rites.

His right to the throne is challenged by a baron named Ashot and his reign has been marked by numerous disputes between the various factions.

The fall of Sis in April, 1375 puts an end to the kingdom; after several battles against superior Mamluk forces, Levon locks himself in the Kapan fortress and eventually surrenders in 1375 after being granted safe passage, thus putting an end to the Armenian state.

(Ransomed in 1382, he will die in exile in Paris in 1393 after calling in vain for another Crusade.)

Sis, demolished by the order of the Mamluk sultan, is never to recover its prosperity.

Lord Enguerrand VII de Coucy, the thirty-five-year-old son-in-law of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault, and a nephew of the Duke of Austria, claims (as the right of his mother, Katharina von Habsburg) the Swiss territory of Aargau held by his Habsburg cousin Duke Leopold III of Austria.

Having obtained both permission and gold from the French crown to gather a ten thousand-man army of French and English mercenaries, joined, at de Coucy’s invitation, by knights, he engages a number of Free Companies, including one led by Owain Lawgoch, to seize the Aargau.

Advancing across France to Alsace, the mercenary army ravages areas while marching south to Basel, crosses the Jura Mountains, and in November 1375 enters the lower Aargau, which forms part of a great tableland to the north of the Alps and the east of the Jura.

The mercenaries wear heavy cloaks with pointed hoods, called “Güglers” in Swiss-German, and become known by this name (as does the associated conflict).

Duke Leopold, installed comfortably at Breisach to the north, refuses to engage de Coucy’s invaders and instead orders a systematic destruction of Aargau.

This leaves no villages, people, booty, or food for the invaders, but also earns Leopold the intense enmity of his Swiss subjects.

Various citizens’ armies of the small Swiss Confederation, experienced resisters of Austrian aggression, oppose the invading Güglers, who mistakenly divide into thirds to contend with the defenders.

The Bernese march in support of the Swiss to overwhelm the Güglers at Fraubrunnen on December 26, 1375.

The elegant Gothic International Style, originating in the French court, permeates Italy from about 1375.